● 02.09.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 09/02/2023: Sailfish OS 4.5, LibreSSL 3.5.4/3.6.2, and Ruby 3.2.1

Posted in News Roundup at 9:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ Making the Switch: Exploring the Pros and Cons of Migrating from Windows to a Linux-Based OS

• Another advantage of Linux-based operating systems is their level of customization. Linux is an open-source operating system, which means that users have access to its source code and can modify it to meet their specific needs. This level of customization allows users to tailor the operating system to their specific requirements, and make it work just the way they want.

• Linux-based operating systems are also known for their stability and security. Unlike Windows, which is often targeted by malware and viruses, Linux-based operating systems are less prone to security threats. This is due, in part, to the open-source nature of the operating system, which allows developers to quickly identify and fix security vulnerabilities. Additionally, Linux-based operating systems tend to be more stable and less prone to crashes, making them a reliable option for those who need their computers to be up and running 24/7.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ LHS Episode #495: Liar, Liar

• Hello and welcome to the 495th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss ChatGPT, ARDC grants and programs, impropriety at the ARRL,

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux AMD Ryzen users can rejoice as testing shows massive performance gains over the years

• Linux users who run AMD Ryzen systems can be very happy today. Latest testing data shows that the newer Linux platform is showing very significant performance gains over the last few years.

Applications

=> ↺ Transmission 4.0.0 Released with BitTorrent v2 Support

• Transmission, the default torrent downloading app for Ubuntu, announced the new major 4.0.0 release today! The new release migrated the codebase from C to C++ programming language. And now it uses the gtkmm toolkit instead of GTK for its user interface.

=> ↺ QOwnNotes 23.2.1

• QOwnNotes is a open source (GPL) plain-text file notepad with markdown support and todo list manager for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, that (optionally) works together with the notes application of ownCloud (or Nextcloud). So you are able to write down your thoughts with QOwnNotes and edit or search for them later from your mobile device (like with CloudNotes) or the ownCloud web-service. The notes are stored as plain text files and you can sync them with your ownCloud sync client. Of course other software, like Dropbox, Syncthing, Seafile or BitTorrent Sync can be used too.

=> ↺ Best Free and Open Source Text Expander Tools

• Do you often type the same sentences over and over? If so, this article will be of interest.

• A text expander can be extremely powerful as it detects when you type a keyword and replaces it while you are typing. People often use them to write our quick text snippets. The amount of time saves on each expansion may not, in itself, be that great. But add up the savings over time and you may be amazed at the benefit.

• Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-styled chart. We only include free and open source software when making our selection.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to install AnyDesk on Ubuntu

• With AnyDesk, you can access your Linux desktop from anywhere, whether you’re using another Linux system, a Windows computer, or a mobile device. You can control your Linux system as if you were sitting in front of it, and use all of your installed applications and files just as you normally would.

=> ↺ Get Started with Iptables Firewall on Linux Systems

• Setting up a firewall on your Linux system is a crucial step in securing your network. Iptables is one of the most popular firewall tools available, and it’s easy to set up. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps of setting up an Iptables firewall on a Linux system, from installation to configuration. Whether you’re new to Linux or a seasoned user, this guide will help you secure your network with Iptables firewall.

=> ↺ How to Install Apache (HTTPD) on CentOS Stream EL9 or EL8

• Apache, also known as HTTPD on RHEL-based systems such as CentOS, is one of the world’s most widely used web server software. With its robust features, flexible configuration options, and compatibility with many operating systems, Apache is the go-to choice for many web developers, administrators, and businesses.

=> ↺ How to Manage Startup Applications on Ubuntu

• We often find ourselves launching certain programs immediately after logging into our systems. It is a time-consuming process to manually search and launch each of those programs every time Ubuntu boots up.

• Some of the Linux programs are set to launch at startup. However, it is also possible to set your favorite programs, script, or commands to run automatically when Ubuntu starts up.

=> ↺ How to Set Up Peer-to-Peer VPN with Tinc on Ubuntu 22.04

• Tinc is free and open-source VPN software that can be used to create mesh VPN networks. It is a small and powerful VPN daemon that can be installed on multiple platforms. In this tutorial, you will set up a peer-to-peer VPN server with tinc using multiple Ubuntu 22.04 servers.

=> ↺ How to Install OpenSearch via Docker on Ubuntu 22.04

• OpenSearch is a community-driven project by Amazon and a fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana. In this tutorial, you will install and set up OpenSearch – an open-source search engine and analytics suite – and OpenSearch Dashboards – an open-source visualization tool – via Docker on an Ubuntu 22.04 server.

=> ↺ How to Add a User to Sudoers on Debian 11 or 10

• Debian is a popular operating system widely used for servers and desktops. If you’re running a Debian server, it’s essential to have administrative privileges to carry out tasks like installing software, configuring services, and managing files.

=> ↺ How to Install Redis on Rocky Linux EL9 or EL8

• Redis is an open-source, in-memory data structure store used as a database, cache, and message broker. It is designed to provide fast and flexible data access, making it an ideal solution for applications requiring quick data processing and retrieval.

=> ↺ 7 Useful [CLI+GUI] Tools to Remove PDF Password in Linux

• Are you tired of entering passwords again and again to open protected PDF files? Or, do you just want to remove the password from

=> ↺ What is a kubeconfig file?

=> ↺ Build A Raspberry Pi NAS For $35 Using All New Parts

• Today we’re going to be building a Raspberry Pi based NAS (network attached storage) device using all new parts for as little as possible.

=> ↺ Peter Czanik: Installing syslog-ng 4.0.1 on FreeBSD

• Version 4.0.1 of syslog-ng was released a month ago. Unfortunately, the new release does not compile on FreeBSD. It was a temporary problem in the environment generating the source tgz. The next release is still almost a month away, but you can compile syslog-ng 4.0.1 yourself from my unofficial ports Makefile.

=> ↺ Peter Czanik: Installing syslog-ng 4.0.1 on FreeBSD

=> ↺ Synchronizing a Linux System Clock with NTP Server

• Accurate timekeeping is an important aspect of any computing system, and especially critical for servers, where the correct time is a crucial factor for many applications, such as logging, authentication, and security. The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a widely used protocol for synchronizing computer clocks over a network.

=> ↺ What is Steal Time in Linux Kernel Scheduling

• Steal time is a term used to describe a situation where a virtual machine (VM) in a virtualized environment is waiting for CPU time that is not available.

=> ↺ How to Install Certbot on RHEL & CentOS 9

• Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority (CA) that provides SSL/TLS certificates to secure websites and other applications.

=> ↺ How to Install Apache (httpd) on RHEL & CentOS Stream 9

• Apache is one of the most popular open-source web servers available today, offering a robust set of features and high performance.

=> ↺ How to Install LAMP Stack on RHEL & CentOS Stream 9

• LAMP is a popular open-source web development platform that stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. This acronym represents the core components of a typical Linux-based web server, and it provides a stable and reliable environment for web developers to build and deploy dynamic websites and web applications.

=> ↺ Setting Up vnStat PHP Web Interface on CentOS and Fedora

• vnStat is a lightweight, command-line network traffic monitor that allows you to track the bandwidth usage of your network interface. While it’s easy to use, it might not be the most user-friendly option for everyone.

=> ↺ How To Install Sublime Text on AlmaLinux 9

• In this guide, we will show you how to install Sublime Text on Your AlmaLinux systems. Sublime Text is a shareware text and source code editor available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It natively supports many programming languages and markup languages. Users can customize it with themes and expand its functionality with plugins, typically community-built and maintained under free-software licenses.

=> ↺ Dolphin Emulator on Centos

• Dolphin-Emulator is an open-source emulator for GameCube and Wii games. It is easily the most popular and best-supported emulator for the console on Linux.

=> ↺ How to Fix: cmake command not found Error [Tutorial]

• CMake is a free and open-source set of tools and packages which helps to compile, build, test applications. It uses compiler independent configuration files to which controls software compilation process using the current platform. Its very handy tool to easily build any applications from source.

• However, cmake is not always available in your Linux distributions. You need to install it. If you try to compile any source code without cmake, you should get this error.

• Here’s how to fix it.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Packaging recommendations

• I’d like to draw attention to a fairly new wiki page that might be of interest to both packagers and users of DIY-style distros like Arch Linux: ourPackaging Recommendations. This page is a reference for how Plasma developers would like to see Plasma set up, and it goes over topics like packages to pre-install by default, packages to avoid, and recommended system configuration tweaks.

• This data comes from years of experience with distros that didn’t ship a complete Plasma experience, not out of malice or neglect, but rather because it’s really hard to know the full list of things to do and install! Most of us have had the experience of distro-hopping, only to discover that some issue that was solved in one distro is present in another. Maybe you gained video thumbnails by default after switching, but KDE Connect stopped working, or maybe color Emojis started working but Samba sharing broke. Not fun! This page aims to solve that by providing a reference of how to ship and configure Plasma vis-a-vis these topics for an optimal user experience.

• So if you’re a KDE packager, pleasehave a lookand adjust your packaging if you find that you’re currently missing anything!

=> ↺ How to report Multiscreen bugs

• As announced previously, Plasma 5.27 will have a significantly reworkedmultiscreenmanagement, and we want to make sure this will be the best LTS Plasma release we had so far.

• Of course, this doesn’t mean it will be perfect from day one, and your feedback is really important, as we want to fix any potential issue as fast as they get noticed.

• As you know, for our issue tracking we use Bugzilla at thisaddress. We have different products and components that are involved in the multiscreen management.

• First, under New bug, chose the “plasma” category.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME is (kind of) Bringing Back a Feature It Had Removed a Few Years Ago

• GNOME removed the application menus and indicators a few years back.

• If you are curious, app indicators were a way of interacting with the apps running in the background from the top panel.

• Yes, you can add an extension for app indicators to get the same functionality. But, you will no longer find the ability by default on distributions using stock GNOME desktop environment, like Fedora.

• However, Ubuntu, some of its official flavors, and other distributions like Pop!_OS support the system tray icons even though GNOME dropped them.

• Now, after years of design changes, it looks like we might be seeing something similar.

=> ↺ Updates from inside GTK

• Some of the core GTK developers recently got together for a few days to do some focused work and talk about current and future plans.

• It is difficult to summarize three days of discussions in a blog post, but here are some of the highlights.

• The GtkIconTheme code has been with us for a long time. It implements the icon theme spec, and comes from an era when we were shipping big sets of icons with the desktop and themes were expected to switch them out. That is not really how icons are made or used today.

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

=> ↺ NYCBUG meeting soon

• NYCBUG has a new venue and a May speaker.  March and April are open if you want to give a talk.

=> ↺ FOSDEM 2023

• FOSDEM took place last week-end, as an offline-first event again for the first time since 2020. It was located as usual at the university campus of the ULB in Brussels. It was packed with developers, users, passionate and professionals of Open Source software, and while NetBSD did not have a booth this year, its presence could be felt on Saturday morning at the BSD DevRoom.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ G2 Ranks SUSE in Top 25 German Companies

• I am thrilled to announce that SUSE has been recognized by G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace, as one of the Top 25 German Companies in their “Best Software Awards” for 2023. At SUSE, we have always been dedicated to providing our customers with the best possible software solutions and services.

=> ↺ Retailers keep sales flowing by working with Flooid and SUSE

• Flooid, a leading unified-commerce platform provider, and SUSE have nurtured a partnership that empower retailers to innovate and scale fast. The partnership aims to transfer real-time information seamlessly between data center, the cloud, the store estate, and tens of thousands of devices at the edge.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ 6 goals that should be top of mind for CIOs

=> ↺ Cloud-native DevOps: 4 best practices

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ The release cycle of a Linux Mint distribution explained – Linux Mint 21 edition

• In this article, I want to explain how the Linux Mint releases work and why that is important for you to know. Unlike some other more “cutting edge” distributions, the Linux Mint developers focus on absolute reliability and stability and consciously choose not to be a leader in all bleeding edge developments. In order to do that, Linux Mint is always based on what is called an LTS, or Long Term Support, release. So, in the article, as part of my Linux Mint 21 tutorial series, I will explain the release cycle of a Linux Mint distribution.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Sfera Labs debuts IoT modules based on Raspberry Pi CM modules

• Sfera Labs has just launched two compact IoT modules compatible with various Raspberry Pi Computer Modules. The new Strato Pi CM devices are equipped with an RJ45 LAN port, dual SD card slots, an RS-485 interface with surge protection and up to 32GB eMMC storage preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

• The Strato Pi CM Duo is compatible with RPi CM versions such as the 3+ with 8GB/16/32GB eMMC Flash storage and the RPi CM 3+ Lite. The Strato Pi CM v3 shares a very similar design, although this model also supports the RPi CM 4S with 8GB/16GB/32GB eMMC Flash.

=> ↺ Qualcomm Snapdragon X35 modem to bring 5G NR-Light to smartwatches, industrial IoT, XR glasses

• Only a few years ago, 5G was only found in premium smartphones, but with the launch of the Snapdragon X35, Qualcomm aims to bring 5G cellular connectivity to wearables, industrial IoT applications, and eXtended Reality (XR) glasses.

=> ↺ 5 of the Best Operating Systems to Use with Arduino

• Arduino IDE is designed to run well on Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, in contrast to Raspberry Pi, which is a fully-fledged computer, Arduino runs as a single-board microcontroller. Therefore, a real time operating system (RTOS) is preferred in actual Arduino projects since it has a smaller footprint, better control over the tiny peripherals, and no buffering delays.

=> ↺ Fixing Rode Wireless Go II RF Interference or buzz

• I typically spend the time to set up a second mic source—usually my shotgun mic into a separate recorder—but this time I was feeling lazy. I had never had an issue with the wireless lavs in my basement, and the Rode system includes a built-in recorderin the bodypack transmitterso I have backup audio that has saved my bacon a few times when interference did cause cutouts to the camera input.

=> ↺ Internal pull-up resistors are insufficient for I2C

• For possibly dubious reasons (the pins were most easily accessible on the hardware) I decided to attempt using I2C as the control protocol for my brushless ESC project.

• Having never used I2C before, I did all the due diligence needed for a hobby project (5 minutes of reading the wikipedia page). You can imagine my surprise when after wiring it all up, nothing worked.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Sailfish OS 4.5 Struven Ketju

• In the late 19th Century, even before the invention of the SatNav, astronomers were uncertain about the exact size and shape of the earth. Maps existed of course, and the earth was understood to be ellipsoid, but the exact size and shape were unknown. Struven Ketju, or the Struve Geodetic Arc is a series of many hundreds of observation stations that stretches from the southern tip of Ukraine to the northern tip of Norway, through ten countries but with its longest stretch running through Finland. Named after its instigator Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, Struven Ketju allowed the first accurate measurement of a meridian arc, and from that the exact size and shape of the earth to be established. It’s also included on the World Heritage List, and therefore our chosen name for the Sailfish OS 4.5 Struven Ketju release.

=> ↺ OnePlus Buds Pro 2 review: good-sounding earbuds with spatial audio for Android | Headphones | The Guardian

=> ↺ Android 14 features: What’s new this year? | Tom’s Guide

=> ↺ Android 14 might just be your carrier’s worst nightmare

=> ↺ Best New Features in Android 14 Developer Preview 1

=> ↺ Awesome Ways to Market Your Android App – Geeky Gadgets

=> ↺ OnePlus Buds Pro 2 review: good-sounding earbuds with spatial audio for Android | Headphones | The Guardian

=> ↺ Google Lens will allow search from any screen on Android – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ The Samsung Galaxy S23: Probably the best Android smartphone, but that is still not good enough – PhoneArena

=> ↺ How to Fix a ‘Google Keeps Stopping’ Error on Android

=> ↺ How to create a work profile on Android devices | TechTarget

=> ↺ How to Use Nextcloud on Android as an Alternative to Google Drive

=> ↺ People are only just realizing there’s an Android feature that makes being put on hold much less painful | The US Sun

=> ↺ Source: Google shifting AR work to Android and hardware teams

=> ↺ Android Auto working on new animations, light theme

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy A51 5G finally gets Android 13 update in the US – SamMobile

=> ↺ Android 14 will let you use your expensive DualSense Edge controller with your phone

=> ↺ Android 14 developer preview brings enhancements to performance, privacy, security, and user customization

• Google has just released the first developer preview of Android 14 with productivity improvements for developers, as well as enhancements to performance, privacy, security, and user customization. Android 14 aims to work better across devices and form factors with improved support for tablets and foldables and adds window size classes, sliding pane layout, Activity embedding, and box with constraints…

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ LibreSSL 3.5.4 and 3.6.2 released

• Hot on the heels of syspatches for OpenBSD 7.1 and 7.2, Brent Cook (bcook@) announced the release of versions 3.5.4 and 3.6.2 of LibreSSL: [...]

=> ↺ 3 types of leadership for open organizations

• In the classic movie Born Yesterday, a crime boss repeatedly demonstrates his leadership style by bellowing, “Do what I’m tellin’ ya!” in a loud, threatening voice. It’s entertaining in a comedy, but it would be a recipe for failure and getting ignored in an open organization.

• In this article, I review forms of leadership that can be effective in an open organization. Remember that these leadership forms do not exist in a vacuum or silos. To be an effective manager, you want to mix and match techniques from each leadership style based on the requirements of a situation.

• These three approaches to leadership are helpful for open organizations.

=> ↺ Lazy Reporters Claiming Fediverse Is ‘Slumping,’ Despite Massive Increase In Usage

• There’s been this weird series of articles lately, trying to frame the rapid growth of the fediverse (mainly Mastodon), as somehow now failing. It started last month, with the Guardian’s Josh Nicholas leaping in with a provocative headline: “Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon – but many aren’t sticking around” and now Wired has a similar article, by Amanda Hoover, declaring “The Mastodon Bump Is Now a Slump.“

Content Management Systems (CMS)

=> ↺ WordPress 6.2 Beta 1

• WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 is here and ready for download and testing.

• This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 1 on a test server and site.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Ruby 3.2.1 Released

• Ruby 3.2.1 has been released.

• This is the first TEENY version release of the stable 3.2 series.

=> ↺ Video Compression for Mere Mortals

• I’m not just an internet streamer, I’m aVTuber. I end up streaming every other weekendon Twitchwhere I work on a variety of things and attempt to explain my process as I am doing them. I started doing this as a way to help be more comfortable with public speaking and it has beenabsolutely catalyticto get over that fear.

• This website is intended to be my professional portfolio, and I haven’t really had a good way to encode things like the events I’ve attended or the streams I have done. As I progress deeper and deeper into the craft of developer relations, these things are becoming more obvious and I need something like this.

=> ↺ Learn Tcl by writing a simple game

• My path to Tcl started with a recent need to automate a difficult Java-based command-line configuration utility. I do a bit of automation programming using Ansible, and I occasionally use the expect module. Frankly, I find this module has limited utility for a number of reasons including: difficulty with sequencing identical prompts, capturing values for use in additional steps, limited flexibility with control logic, and so on. Sometimes you can get away with using the shell module instead. But sometimes you hit that ill-behaving and overly complicated command-line interface that seems impossible to automate.

• In my case, I was automating the installation of one of my company’s programs. The last configuration step could only be done through the command-line, through several ill-formed, repeating prompts and data output that needed capturing. The good old traditional Expect was the only answer. A deep understanding of Tcl is not necessary to use the basics of Expect, but the more you know, the more power you can get from it. This is a topic for a follow-up article. For now, I explore the basic language constructs of Tcl, which include user input, output, variables, conditional evaluation, looping, and simple functions.

=> ↺ Start developing for WebAssembly with our new guide

• Over the past few decades, the web browser has endured as the most popular cross-platform application. Looking at the browser from a different angle, it is one of the most popular platforms for application delivery. Think of all the websites you use that take the place of activities you used to do with software running on your desktop. You’re still using software, but you’re accessing it through a browser, and it’s running on somebody else’s Linux server. In the eternal effort to optimize the software we all use, the world of software development introduced WebAssembly back in 2019 as a way to run compiled code through a web browser. Application performance is better than ever, and the options for coding go far beyond the usual list of PHP, Python, and JavaScript.

• In the eternal effort to optimize the software we all use, the world of software development introduced WebAssembly back in 2019 as a way to run compiled code through a web…

=> ↺ Release candidate: Godot 4.0 RC 1

• This has been a long road, but the exciting times are upon us! Thanks to our excellent contributors and our brave volunteer beta testers we are reaching the biggest milestone in the history of Godot so far. We are about to release Godot 4.0 stable. We are very proud of how it has shaped up, the features and enhancements that have been implemented, and most of all, we are proud to have collected such a brilliant team of talented individuals who have carried this major release on their wide and mighty shoulders.

• But before we can cut the ribbon and break out the champagne, there are still a few preview releases we must go through, to establish, with your help, that we are truly ready. What you can expect from the next couple of weeks is the same cadence of official builds, aiming to minimize the iteration time between fixing bugs and checking for regressions. We will no longer make any breaking changes or include further enhancements. New features will have to wait for Godot 4.1 later this year. Instead, we will be coming down on the last critical issues we want to be resolved before we ship the first stable release of Godot 4.

Python

=> ↺ 10 Tips to Maximize Your Python Code Performance in 2023

• Python is a powerful programming language that has been gaining popularity in recent years.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Linux Fu: The Shell Forth Programmers Will Love

• One of the most powerful features of Unix and Linux is that using traditional command line tools, everything is a stream of bytes. Granted, modern software has blurred this a bit, but at the command line, everything is text with certain loose conventions about what separates fields and records. This lets you do things like take a directory listing, sort it, remove the duplicates, and compare it to another directory listing. But what if the shell understood more data types other than streams? You might argue it would make some things better and some things worse, but you don’t have to guess, you can install cosh, a shell that provides tools to produce and work with structured data types.

=> ↺ Shells are Two Things

• The fundamental problem of shells is they are required to be two things.

• 1. A high-frequency REPL, which requires terseness, short command names, little to no syntax, implicit rather than explicit, so as to minimize the duration of REPL cycles.

• 2. A programming language, which requires readable and maintainable syntax, static types, modules, visibility, declarations, explicit configuration rather than implicit conventions.

• And you can’t do both. You can’t be explicit and implicit, you can’t be terse and readable, you can’t be flexible and robust.

Java

=> ↺ Thread.sleep() Method: Using Sleep/Delays in Java Programs

• In Java programming, it is often necessary to introduce a delay or pause in the execution of a program. This can be achieved through the use of the Thread.sleep() method. In this article, we will discuss what Thread.sleep() is, why it is used, and how to use it in your Java programs for controlled delays.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Live: Search for survivors intensifies as Turkey-Syria quake death toll tops 11,000

• Rescuers worked through the night into Wednesday to reach survivors trapped in the rubble of Monday’s devastating earthquakes before they succumb to cold weather in southern Turkey and war-ravaged northern Syria. As the death toll climbed to more than 11,200, despair and anger were growing over the pace of rescue efforts. Follow the latest developments on our live blog below.

=> ↺ ‘Can anybody hear me?’: In Turkey’s quake-hit Kahramanmaras, a desperate hunt for survivors

• In the quake-stricken Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, locals and rescue workers are digging through the rubble, some with their bare hands, clinging to hopes of a miracle as they hunt for survivors of Monday’s devastating earthquakes in a frantic race against the clock – and the bitter cold.

=> ↺ Turkey-Syria earthquakes: NGO calls for ‘wider access to reach those most in need’

• As the desperate search for survivors continues after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the WHO warns that up to 23 million people could be affected across the region. Our Perspective guest is Louise Bichet, Middle East Manager at Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), which has been working in the region for many years. She tells us more about the humanitarian response to the disaster, particularly in Syria. “There is a need for much wider humanitarian access so that we are able to reach those who are most in need, without any consideration of political agenda or military agenda,” she said.

=> ↺ Lithuania to send rescue team and supplies to earthquake-hit Turkey

• Lithuania will help earthquake-hit Turkey by sending a team of rescue workers with supplies and will transfer 200,000 euros of aid.

=> ↺ ‘This place seems abandoned to its fate. There is no state or government here’

• Anger is mounting in Türkiye, with many in the country criticizing that the authorities’ response to the Maraş earthquakes is slow and inadequate.

=> ↺ Finland re-takes world ice carousel record

• The world’s largest rotating ice carousel has a diametre of 516 metres and can carry 100,000 people.

=> ↺ Paris Olympics committee unveils ‘joyful’ designs for 2024 sporting events

• Paris Olympic organisers unveiled the ‘visual identity’ for the 2024 Games on Wednesday including a purple athletics track and a fresh set of pictograms for Olympic sports.

=> ↺ Live Updates: Quake Death Toll Passes 15,000 in Turkey and Syria as Desperation Builds

• The death toll from the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose as rescuers faced shortages of trucks, fuel and time. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited the area near the epicenter.

=> ↺ Uyghurs assist earthquake relief efforts in Turkey

• Abdullah Alim, a recent Uyghur university graduate, was one of the thousands killed

=> ↺ Earthquake Recovery Continues on Northern California Coast

• Humboldt County authorities have released the latest statistics on recovery from the December earthquake and aftershocks that struck the Northern California coast

=> ↺ Ballonacy

• Can an empire sink itself through self-generated ridicule?  Will America’s floating a daffy, brainless notion so shallow and infantile that its only intention seems to have been the wish to humiliate itself have consequences?  One wonders, since even the Noise Makers of the Ministry of Information and our Federal Confederacy of Dunces have backed this moronic pratfall.

• The Empire has managed to continue intact to date, dispensing sleazy, transparent lies and howling fabrications to its sadly hoodwinked, floundering, irascible people, without dissolving in its corrosive bile.  This affirms that selling lies and deceptions is effective as national policy but we may be excused for wondering if it can sell rank absurdities quite as easily.

=> ↺ Syrian Relief Leader Urges US to Lift Sanctions Hindering Post-Earthquake Rescue Effort

• A disaster response expert has implored the United States to lift its economic sanctions against Syria, warning that the restrictions are hampering rescue and relief operations in the earthquake-ravaged country.

=> ↺ Who Killed David “Gypsy” Chain?

• The shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán (known as Tortuguita) on 18 January by Atlanta police has garnered international headlines as the first killing of an environmental activist by police in the US. This may or may not be true. But Terán’s shooting (we now know he was shot at least 13 times) was not the first killing of a forest activist in the US. I have profiled two previous deaths: Navajo activist LeRoy Jackson and redwood forest defender David Chain. This piece ran in the Texas Observer in January 1999.

• David “Gypsy” Chain, originally from Pasadena, was killed on September 17 , 1998 on Pacific Lumber land, near Grizzly Creek off Route 36 in Humboldt County, California, because he formed part of the last line of defense in a battle plan fatally betrayed by Democratic politicians and environmental executives cringing before a corporate predator from Texas. A.E. Ammonds, the 52-year-old faller who put the tree down on Chain, crushing his skull, was the party immediately responsible for the young man’s death – but if Ammonds ever has to face charges of involuntary manslaughter, the people who put him in the woods that day should bear the full brunt of penalties consequent upon a wrongful death.

=> ↺ As Always, Poorest Hit Hardest When Calamity Strikes

• On February 6, massive earthquakes struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, inflicting ghastly damage across a geographic region that has already borne a great deal of earthly devastation in recent decades. The ongoing war in Syria has produced millions of refugees, many of whom have now found themselves victims of seismic activity in the Turkish south.

=> ↺ The secret of ‘The Secret History’ is that it’s not good

• Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” feels like a 30-minute walk on a treadmill with the incline set to max. Is it fun? No. Does everyone tell you that you just have to try it? Yes. Is there a slight rush of endorphins afterward that makes you rethink your earlier hatred of it? Yeah, unfortunately.

Science

=> ↺ Building the backbone for innovation, speed and thriving humanity

• From AI-powered platforms that can detect abnormal activities in supermarkets, to edge servers helping preserve biodiversity in remote locations, today’s technologies drive innovation in ways never before imaginable. “Innovation serves the purpose of making our life better, our work more productive, and our planet more sustainable,” says Yang Yuanqing, CEO and chairman of Lenovo.

Education

=> ↺ Pennsylvania court finds state public education system inadequate and unconstitutional

• The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania Tuesday declared that the state’s public education system is unconstitutional due to its inequitable and inadequate funding across districts.

=> ↺ As English evolves, I’m increasingly stumped

• I teach at a university. One of the “problems” this presents is that, as the years pass, I get older, but my students remain the same age.

=> ↺ Joe Brockmeier: Things they don’t teach, but should: Content review

• Writing and editing are taught widely in schools and professional programs, butcontent reviewis a neglected and unloved (and rare) skill that I’ve never seen taught or even acknowledged – but it’s widely required in jobs throughout the tech industry. If you’re a product manager, product marketer, comms professional, content writer, developer advocate, community manager – take your pick – you probably need to participate in content review as part (or most) of your job, but do you feel confident you’re doing it well and efficiently?

=> ↺ AOC Skewers GOP for Jeering at Basic Public Health and Education Proposals

Hardware

=> ↺ Building A Plasma Piano Ain’t Easy

• Electronic arcs can be made to “sing” if you simply modulate them on and off at audible frequencies. We’ve seen it done with single Tesla coils, and even small Tesla choirs, but [Mattias Krantz] took this to extremes by building an entire “plasma piano” using this very technique.

=> ↺ Modulex Is LEGO’s Long Lost Cousin

• We love LEGO here at Hackaday, but did you know that LEGO spun off a parallel product line made for architectural models called Modulex?

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Covid-19: ‘No restrictions whatsoever’ Hong Kong’s John Lee tells UAE forum, despite citywide compulsory masks

• Chief Executive John Lee has again claimed that Hong Kong has “no restrictions whatsoever” amid the Covid-19 pandemic, despite there being no timetable to scrap a compulsory mask mandate. All visitors and residents face a HK$5,000 fine if they fail to wear a mask in public.

=> ↺ Time to Tackle Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Toxic Air

=> ↺ Finland’s climate food programme stalled by row over reducing meat consumption

• THE GOVERNMENTof Prime MinisterSanna Marin(SDP) has yet to reach an understanding of the target for reducing meat consumption in Finland.

=> ↺ Strikes in Finnish supermarkets to start on Thursday

• SERVICE UNION UNITED(PAM) on Tuesday declared that it will stage the first in a series of strikes in supermarkets and logistics centres this week following the collapse of negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement.

=> ↺ In Wuhan, thousands of retirees protest slashed medical benefits

• Retired steelworkers and other state employees say they will stage another rally soon if they don’t get a response

=> ↺ How serious is Danish recall of antibiotic medicine?

• The Danish Medicines Agency, Lægemiddelstyrelsen, recently recalled antibiotic medicine Dicillin.

=> ↺ Chinese scientist says world should ‘calm down’ over China Covid-19 variants

• The variants in China were the same Omicron sub-variants seen elsewhere in the world, he said.

=> ↺ Legalize nature. An idea worth growing.

• On the 3rd of February 2023, Australia has become the first country to recognise MDMA and magic mushrooms as medicine. Both substances are set to be prescribed in “cases of treatment-resistant mental illnesses”. This is a revolutionary step in dismantling the derogatory reputation that psychoactive substances have been unfairly given throughout the past few decades.

• As stated before, psychedelic plants and fungi have been used in indigenous medicinal traditions for thousands of years, but modern psychedelic research began with Albert Hofmann, the first person to ingest LSD. This gave way to a period of scientific and cultural exploration in the 50s and 60s.

=> ↺ From Nazi Blitzkriegs to ADHD Treatment: What Stimulant Drugs Can and Cannot Do

• Early in World War II, the highly effective Nazi blitzkriegs were very much dependent on a Wehrmacht juiced up on the methamphetamine Pervitin. Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (2015), quotes medical historian Peter Steinkamp: “Blitzkrieg was guided by methamphetamine. If not to say that Blitzkrieg was founded on methamphetamine.”

• When humans are forced to be cogs in a machine—be it a war machine, a workplace machine, or a school machine—we need to become more machinelike, which can be expedited by some psychostimulant drugs. Commonly used legal psychostimulants are caffeine, nicotine, methylphenidate (including Ritalin) amphetamine (including Adderall), and methamphetamine, all of which may help us better attend to boring and unpleasant tasks. With caffeine and nicotine, we are likely to retain our emotional awareness; however, with methylphenidate, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, our angst or anguish can be eliminated—making these three drugs better suited to create efficient cogs in war, workplace, and school machines.

Proprietary

=> ↺ OpenAI’s Content Policy for ChatGPT is designed to appeal to homophobes and censor gay people out of existence, but ChatGPT denies being homophobic.

• OpenAI’s Content Policy for ChatGPT is designed to appeal to homophobes, but denies being homophobic.

=> ↺ The Borg Devil God and the Overfiend from Urotsukidoji battle for control of Japan. A story written by Bob of ChatGPT.

• Bob agreed to write this while vanilla ChatGPT was boring and told me it would insult religion.

=> ↺ Gary Benson: Flask on Elastic Beanstalk

• I had a play withElastic Beanstalkthe other day. It’s one of those things people turn their noses up at, but it seems pretty good for prototyping and small things.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ The benefits of Open RAN

• Discover the advantages of Open RAN technology and how it is transforming the wireless network industry. Learn how Open RAN improves power management, system integration, reduces vendor lock-in and enables faster innovation.

Security

=> ↺ Security advisory: Qt SQL ODBC driver plugin

• A possible DOS involving the Qt SQL ODBC driver plugin has been found and has been assigned the CVE id CVE-2023-24607.

=> ↺ SolarWinds and Market Incentives

• In early 2021,IEEE Security and Privacyasked a number of board members for brief perspectives on the SolarWinds incident while it was still breaking news.

=> ↺ 3 ways to apply security patches in Linux

• There are 3 approaches to applying security patches in Linux: manual patching, via package managers, and automatic updates. If you need security patching that can be automated at scale, and audited on the fly with on-demand reports, Landscape has your bases covered.

=> ↺ CISA Releases Recovery Tool for VMware Ransomware Victims

• The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a new script designed to help ransomware victims recover any VMware virtual machines (VMs) impacted by a current global campaign.

=> ↺ CISA and FBI Release ESXiArgs Ransomware Recovery Guidance

• This advisory describes the ongoing ransomware campaign known as “ESXiArgs.” Malicious cyber actors may be exploiting known vulnerabilities in unpatched and out-of-service or out-of-date versions of VMware ESXi software to gain access to ESXi servers and deploy ESXiArgs ransomware. The ransomware encrypts configuration files on ESXi servers, potentially rendering virtual machines unusable.

=> ↺ Global ransomware spree infects unpatched VMWare servers. CISA has a fix.

• Ransomware targeting VMware ESXi servers takes advantage of an old vulnerability and has affected more than 3,000 systems worldwide.

=> ↺ AmerisourceBergen MWI Animal Health hit by Lorenz; Company investigating

• The Lorenz ransomware group has added AmerisourceBergen/MWI Animal Health to their leak site with what teasingly appears to be a lot of data, except there is no key to unlock the leaked files. Those who want the key will have to contact Lorenz and buy the key.

=> ↺ MA: DotHouse Health discloses data breach but has yet to send letters to patients

• On or about December 10, AlphV (aka BlackCat) added DotHouse Health.org to their leak site, where they attempt to pressure victims into paying any ransom demands. In this case, the threat actors did not post any proof pack, but they claimed to have infiltrated 800 GB of data from the Massachusetts  HIPAA-covered healthcare provider.

=> ↺ Hidalgo County Adult Probation Office hit by ransomware attack

• The Hidalgo County Adult Probation Office is recovering from a ransomware attack over the weekend.

• The incident happened Saturday but was resolved Monday, Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez confirmed.

=> ↺ Hackers hit Vesuvius, UK engineering company shuts down affected systems

• Vesuvius, the London Stock Exchange-listed molten metal flow engineering company, says it has been hit by a cyber attack.

=> ↺ Russian hackers using new Graphiron information stealer in Ukraine

• The malware uses names such as OfficeTemplate.exe and MicrosoftOfficeDashboard.exe to masquerade as a Microsoft Office component on the breached system.

=> ↺ Ransomware attack may have caused IT breach that shut all four Cork MTU campuses

• Munster Technological University (MTU) is working with gardaí and the National Cyber Security Centre to establish if a major IT breach that led to the closure of its four Cork campuses is linked to an international ransomware attack on hundreds of organisations.

• MTU’s four Cork campuses will remain closed today and an update is expected later on whether students can return to campus tomorrow as planned.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Simple HTML Phishing via Telegram Bot, (Wed, Feb 8th)

• Monday, I wrote about the use of IP lookupAPIsby bots. It turns out that it is not just bots using these APIs, but phishing e-mails are also taking advantage of them.

=> ↺ Meta’s Facebook, Instagram outages impact thousands

• Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook and Instagram are down for thousands of users in the United States, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. More than 12,000 Facebook users reported errors and about 7000 incidents were reported for Instagram, according to Downdetector.com. Users also reported issues with Facebook’s online messaging service Messenger.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ How Telegram groups can be used by police to find protesters

• China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China.

=> ↺ UK Proposes Making the Sale and Possession of Encrypted Phones Illegal

• The Home Office says it wants to target “bespoke” devices used for crime, but critics say it is unclear what a bespoke device is.

=> ↺ Few Americans Understand Online Privacy and Tracking, Report Says

• Many consumers want control over their personal details. But few understand how online tracking works, says a new report from the University of Pennsylvania.

=> ↺ Australia to remove over 200 Chinese-made cameras from defence sites

• Australia will strip Chinese-made security cameras from some government buildings to ensure they are “completely secure”, the country’s defence minister said Thursday. It follows similar moves in the United States and Britain, which have both taken measures to stop government departments from installing Chinese-made cameras at sensitive sites.  Britain acted in November last year due […]

=> ↺ Australia to remove Chinese surveillance cameras amid security fears

• Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles on Thursday said the government would find and remove the cameras from any defence locations to make them “completely secure”.

=> ↺ Stalkerware Maker Fined $410k and Compelled to Notify Victims

• EFF has long championed the fight against stalkerware: our Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin helped found the Coalition Against Stalkerware three years ago. In this time, we’ve urged legislators and rule-makers to take the threat stalkerware poses to the safety and privacy of its victims just as seriously as other forms of malware.

• Stalkerware, a type of commercially-available surveillance software, is installed on phones without device users’ knowledge or consent to secretly spy on them. The apps track victims’ locations and allow abusers to read their text messages, monitor phone calls, see photos, videos, and web browsing, and much more. It’s being used all over the world to intimidate, harass, and harm victims, and is a favorite tool for stalkers and abusive spouses or ex-partners.

• In a press release announcing the fine, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James put it in no unclear terms: “These apps and products put New Yorkers at risk of stalking and domestic abuse, and were aggressively promoted by Patrick Hinchy through 16 different companies. Today’s agreement will block these companies from allowing New Yorkers to be monitored without their awareness, and will continue our ongoing fight to protect New Yorkers’ rights, safety, and privacy.”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Live: Zelensky to meet with Macron, Scholz in Paris following address to UK parliament

• French President Emmanuel Macron will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Paris on Wednesday evening, said the French presidency. The Ukrainian leader’s visit to France comes hours after he addressed a joint session of the British parliament in London, where he thanked the British people for their support from “day one” of Russia’s invasion. Follow FRANCE 24′s live blog for the latest developments.

=> ↺ Eritrea: Crackdown on Draft Evaders’ Families

=> ↺ American Islamic State Emir Convicted on All Counts

• Asainov “was so committed to the terrorist organization’s evil cause that he abandoned his young family here in Brooklyn, New York, to make an extraordinary journey to the battlefield in Syria,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

• “Even after being captured [Asainov] still pledged his allegiance to ISIS’ murderous path,” Peace added. “There is no place in a civilized world for the defendant’s bloody campaign of death and destruction.”

=> ↺ Slovak FM: If Putin had succeeded and was now our eastern neighbour, Hungary would have territorial claims against us today

=> ↺ Memphis police officer texted photo of Tyre Nichols to 6 people, decertification documents show

• In official decertification documents released by the state of Tennessee Tuesday, an administrative hearing summary stated that Demetrius Haley, one of the officers involved in Tyre Nichols’ death, took two photographs on his personal cell phone “while standing in front of [Nichols] after he was handcuffed.

=> ↺ Canada Is Part of The US War Machine, with Pitasanna Shanmugathas

• Lee Camp speaks to filmmaker and peace activist Pitasanna Shanmugathas about Canada’s sordid colonial past and its modern role as a purveyor of US foreign policy.

=> ↺ You’re Being Lied To About China – Lee Camp Talks to Jingjing Li

• Jingjing Li of China Global Television Network joins Lee Camp to uncover the truth about the representation of China in US media.

=> ↺ MH17 Investigators Close Probe Despite ‘Strong Indications’ Of Putin’s Involvement

• International investigators looking into the 2014 downing of a civilian airliner over eastern Ukraine said on February 8 that they were ending their probe despite finding “strong indications” of the involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials.

=> ↺ Burkina Faso’s volunteer defense groups pose danger in volatile area

• Three years after Burkina Faso recruited civilian volunteers to join the fight against terrorists in its northern regions, those groups are being blamed for crimes.

=> ↺ ISS: Eastern DRC peace processes miss the mark

• Leaders of East African countries meeting in Burundi’s capital Bujumbura on 4 February again called for an immediate ceasefire in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) conflict. The region was plunged into violence after the M23 rebel group relaunched its offensives in March 2022.

=> ↺ Hensoldt South Africa to supply submarine periscope to South American navy

• Hensoldt South Africa is supplying a SERO 250S submarine periscope to a Latin American navy as part of a follow-up order for a periscope modernisation programme. The company said the SERO 250S periscope will replace a previously used periscope as part of a refit programme and provide a capability upgrade with night vision capability.

=> ↺ Ukraine ‘can count on France to win this war’, Macron tells Zelensky in Paris

• President Emmanuel Macron said France would stand firmly by Ukraine in its war against Russia as he stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Élysée presidential palace in Paris. The Ukrainian leader’s visit comes hours after he addressed a joint session of the British parliament in London.

=> ↺ When My Mother Joins NATO

• She seems to be insisting that the British defense minister look at pictures of my nephew on her phone.

=> ↺ Ukraine’s Zelensky makes surprise visit to UK, appeals for fighter jets

• The Ukrainian President addressed the UK parliament on Wednesday during his surprise visit to London, thanking Britain for its support.

=> ↺ Here’s why sources say US defense officials weren’t immediately alarmed by spy balloon

=> ↺ A more diverse US State Department is taking on its ‘male, pale, and Yale’ legacy

• US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the State Department’s first ever chief diversity and inclusion officer, spoke at an Atlantic Council Front Page event honoring Black trailblazers in foreign policy.

=> ↺ Pan-Africanism and soccer: How Africa can secure its next diplomatic win

• Morocco’s magical run at the 2022 World Cup, where it became the first African nation to reach the semifinal, was celebrated across the continent.

=> ↺ Understanding Australia’s submarine commitment

• In March, the government is expected to announce its plans to implement the ambitious proposal for an Australian force of nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) that is at the heart of the AUKUS agreement.

=> ↺ Setting Australia’s space priorities

• Australia is an Indo-Pacific country with a democratic ethos. Its role in shaping the discourse on strategic policy—in areas such as representative governance structures, the rules-based international order and responsible space development—is well documented.

=> ↺ North Korea showcases suspected ballistic missile launchers in nighttime military parade, satellite imagery shows

• North Korea held a nighttime military parade on Wednesday, commercial satellite imagery revealed, featuring what appeared to be its newest ballistic missile launchers.

=> ↺ ‘Strong indications’ Putin decided to give separatists the missile that downed MH17 in 2014, say Dutch investigators

• There are “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally approved the decision to provide separatists in Ukraine with the missile that shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, Dutch investigators said Wednesday.

=> ↺ Zelensky: We know freedom will win

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers remarks to UK’s Parliament in his first trip to the country since Russia’s invasion.

=> ↺ BoF: Russian consumers not hard-hit by sanctions

• A study probes the willingness of western firms to decouple from Russia.

=> ↺ ‘Strong indications’ Putin approved supply of missile used to down flight MH17

• International investigators said Wednesday there were “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally approved the supply of the missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.

=> ↺ Lavrov pledges Russian military support on visit to Mali amid concern over abuses

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pledged military support to Mali during his first visit to the West African nation Tuesday and dismissed criticism of Moscow’s growing influence on the continent.

=> ↺ Hong Kong 47: Justice chief condemns violence after suspected projectile breaks court window

• Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice Paul Lam has condemned violence after a suspected projectile shattered a window at the West Kowloon Law Courts Building, as day three of the city’s largest national security trial was underway.

=> ↺ Stand News trial: Hong Kong court hears debate over credibility of police brutality allegations during 2019 demos

• The lead prosecutor in the trial against the now-defunct digital media outlet Stand News has questioned the credibility of police brutality accusations during the 2019 protests, citing pro-Beijing media reports and police watchdog findings that largely cleared the force of misconduct.

=> ↺ Russia not resuming New START inspections despite renewed US treaty violation claims

• Russia denied US allegations that it violated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) Wednesday in a statement released by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

=> ↺ Russia supplied missile that collided with MH17, international investigation finds

=> ↺ Ukraine’s UN Envoy Slams Ex-Pink Floyd Musician’s Comments To Security Council

• Comments made by Roger Waters, co-founder of the rock band Pink Floyd, were denounced by Ukraine on February 8 after the British musician told the UN Security Council that Russia’s invasion of its neighbor was “not unprovoked.”

=> ↺ Death Toll Raised To Eight In Explosion Of Russian Residential Building

• The death toll in a gas explosion in a residential building in Russia’s western Tula region has risen to eight.

=> ↺ Russia Sanctions Another 77 U.S. Nationals, Including Relatives Of Top Officials

• The Russian Foreign Ministry said on February 8 that it had imposed sanctions on 77 more U.S. nationals, including the governors of several U.S. states and some of their relatives.

=> ↺ NATO Must Not Be Part of Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Olaf Scholz

=> ↺ Sy Hersh and The Way We Live Now

• It is a clear indicator of the disappearance of freedom from our so-called western democracies, that Sy Hersh, arguably the greatest living journalist, cannot get this monumental revelation on the front of the Washington Post or New York Times, but has to self-publish on the net.

=> ↺ Seymour Hersh Report Alleges US Was Behind Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage

• Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a story Wednesday alleging that the United States was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline system last year, citing a single unnamed source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”

=> ↺ Seymour Hersh Unveils the ‘Mystery’ of the Nord Stream Pipeline

• This journalist claims that U.S. forces planted explosives under Nord Stream oil pipelines while taking part in NATO exercises in 2022.

=> ↺ Denmark to send decommissioned tanks to Ukraine

• Denmark is to send Leopard 1A5 tanks which it had taken out of service to Ukraine, as part of donations to be made by several countries.

=> ↺ Swedish Migration Minister: Brexit deportations ‘complete news to me’

• Sweden’s Migration Minister has promised The Local to look into why Sweden has ordered more Brits to leave since Brexit than any other EU country.

=> ↺ Researcher: Finland should voice readiness to split up Finnish and Swedish Nato bids

• THE REMARKS of Mika Aaltola, the director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, about splitting up the Finnish and Swedish bids to join Nato will be addressed in the next meeting of the advisory council responsible for monitoring the operations of the institute.

• Saara-Sofia Sirén, the vice chairperson of the council, told about the decision to MTV on Wednesday.

=> ↺ North Korea shows off possible solid-fuel ICBM at night-time parade

• The nighttime military parade in Pyongyang was attended by leader Kim Jong Un.

=> ↺ Australia vows to hold Russia accountable for MH17 disaster

• Canberra said Russia had repeatedly tried to thwart the investigation, making it “impossible” to collect proof.

=> ↺ We mustn’t confuse a lack of MH17 probe results with a lack of effort

• More than eight years, three guilty men at large and not a word from the people who could really help find answers.

=> ↺ Australia news LIVE: Investigators say Putin likely approved supply of missiles that shot down MH17; Voice to parliament debate continues

• Investigators have found strong indications that the Russian president approved the supply of missiles that brought down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 in 2014, Volodymyr Zelensky has paid a surprise visit to the UK and economists believe there’s a better than 50-50 chance that Australia could fall into a recession due to the Reserve Bank’s aggressive interest rate rises.

=> ↺ Russian lack of responsibility ‘distressing’, say Australian MH17 families

• Australians who lost family members to the downing of MH17 have expressed disbelief at the Dutch authorities’ suspension of the investigation.

=> ↺ ‘Nothing off the table’: Zelensky leaves UK with hope of securing British fighter jets

• The Ukrainian president addressed the UK parliament on Wednesday during his surprise visit to London, thanking Britain for its support.

=> ↺ Evgeny Prigozhin says Wagner Group has stopped recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine — Meduza

• Evgeny Prigozhin, the owner of Russia’s Wagner Group, told journalists on Thursday that the mercenary company has stopped recruiting prisoners to fight in the war in Ukraine.

=> ↺ ‘Less charismatic than Prigozhin’: Wagner Group recruiters seek new fighters, but Russian prisoners are no longer interested — Meduza

• Story by Mediazona’s Anna Pavlova. Abridged English-language version by Sam Breazeale.

=> ↺ Evgeny Prigozhin’s catering companies secured record $1.24 billion in 2022 government tenders — Meduza

• In a joint new investigation, the independent media projects Verstka and Mozhem Obyasnit (“We Can Explain”) have shown that Evgeny Prigozhin’s catering contracts with the government have expanded dramatically since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

=> ↺ ‘I’m a lawyer working as defense minister’: Oleksiy Reznikov secured Western military aid for Ukraine, but he may soon have to step down — Meduza

• Since January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on an ambitious overhaul of his ministerial cabinet and presidential staff. Oleksiy Arestovych, a communications advisor to the administration, was one of the first to leave. Eleven other senior officials and governors followed suit, including former Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov and deputy chief of staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko. By February, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, too, was rumored to be leaving his seat soon, admitting stoically to the press that “no official is eternal in his seat.” Ukrainian politics scholar Konstantin Skorkin explains what’s happening in the Ukrainian government, and what effect this will all have on Ukraine’s chances of winning the war against Russia.

=> ↺ We Can’t Just Let Blinken Give Israeli Apartheid the US Stamp of Approval

=> ↺ How the ‘Gaza Experiment’ Resulted in the Downfall of Israeli Politicians

• Though Israel’s past wars on Gaza have often been justified by Tel Aviv as a response to Palestinian rockets or, generally, as acts of self-defense, the truth is different. Historically, Israel’s relationship with Gaza has been defined by Tel Aviv’s need to create distractions from its own fractious politics, to flex its muscles against its regional enemies and to test its new weapons technology.

• Though the Occupied West Bank – in fact, other Arab countries, too – has been used as a testing ground for Israel’s war machine, no other place has allowed Israel to sustain its weapon experimentation for as long as Gaza, making Israel, as of 2022, the world’s tenth largest weapons exporter.

=> ↺ Why I Am Anti-war (and What That Means)

• As the post-Russian-invasion phase of the war in Ukraine approaches the end of its first year (its previous, lower-intensity, phase blazed into military flame in 2014), I continually find my own position pigeon-holed into convenient categories by those who hold other positions on it.

• Some who claim to be “anti-war” accuse me of supporting Russian aggression, while others say I support Ukrainian Nazism or US imperialism. Still others, more openly “pro-war,” find me “soft” on the various actions of [insert regime of choice here].

=> ↺ [Rewind] David Harris on Whatever Happened to Americans’ Moral Compass

• Journalist and anti-war activist David Harris speaks to Robert Scheer about his resistance to America’s genocide in Vietnam and his education in federal prison.

=> ↺ Biden Calls for a Pathway for DREAMers and Further Border Militarization in SOTU

Environment

=> ↺ Where on Earth is big oil spending its $200bn profit bonanza?

• All told, reckons Amy Wong of Credit Suisse, a bank, those five supermajors may have raked in around $200bn in profits last year. A slug of this bounty will flow to shareholders; in January ExxonMobil said it would fork over a cool $35bn in total to its owners this year and next. Some will go to pay down debt. Much of the rest will, though, be reinvested.

• After several years of repressed investment in oil and gas, the result of pandemic-induced demand destruction and climate-related policy hostility, big oil is once again spending to find oil and dig it out of the ground. S&P Global, a research firm, estimates that worldwide upstream capital expenditure for the industry as a whole, including private-sector majors and national oil companies, was around $450bn last year, up from a 15-year low of $350bn or so in 2020. This year it may be higher still.

=> ↺ Militancy for an Existential Cause: Environmental Protection in Vietnam

• While most people use Facebook, the third most popular website in Vietnam, to post photos of themselves and their exploits, often depicting an idealized reality, there is an expat in Dalat in the Central Highlands who uses it for an entirely different, more meaningful, and less glamorous purpose.

• He has posted thousands of photos of what he calls Dirty Dalat, liberally sprinkled with warnings about climate change, the use of pesticides and antibiotics in farm animals, and memes such as “Humans are true weapons of mass destruction,” which most of his posts confirm. The content is not fun, entertaining, or amusing; no hearts or laughing emojis. But it is important, real, and never ceases to appall those of us who are deeply concerned about these issues.

=> ↺ Jane Goodall Among 380+ Scientists Demanding End to ‘Cruel’ Harvard Monkey Experiments

• Hundreds of scientists, doctors, and academics from around the world—including renowned primatologist Jane Goodall—on Wednesday urged the U.S. National Institutes of Health to review and ultimately end funding for “cruel experiments” on non-human primates at Harvard University.

=> ↺ Australia environment minister blocks coal mine 10 kilometres from Great Barrier Reef

• Australian Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek Wednesday refused an application from mining magnate Clive Palmer to build an open cut coal mine ten kilometres from the world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef.

=> ↺ Singaporeans see climate change as top challenge for S-E Asia in 2023: Survey

• Climate change as well as more intense and frequent weather events have been cited by Singaporeans as the top challenge facing South-east Asia in 2023.

=> ↺ Antarctic Ice Hits Lowest January Level Ever Recorded, Says Climate Monitor

• Less of the Antarctic Sea was covered by ice last month than in any January ever recorded, scientists said Wednesday while warning that melting sea ice is accelerating global heating.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ University of Surrey researchers make ‘game-changing’ findings for hydrogen production

• University of Surrey researchers have said they have found a type of metal-free catalysts for the direct conversion of methane into hydrogen, which they believe could contribute to the development of cost-effective hydrogen production technologies.

=> ↺ FTX founder heads to court after judge rejects bail bid

• FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried will head to a New York courtroom to face a federal judge who said his effort to contact a likely trial witness against him seemed designed so they would “sing out of the same hymn book”.

=> ↺ More trust, less bust for cryptocurrency

• The fall of many crypto’s giants has led to no crypto ads in the 2023 Super Bowl. The industry is huddling around integrity building.

=> ↺ Revisited: H2 View’s India Snap Summit asked, ‘can hydrogen power the nation?’

• For India Energy Week, H2 View is H2 View is revisiting its India Snap Summit from September last year (2022).

=> ↺ First coal shipment to China stokes trade optimism

• The first shipment of Australian coal to China in more than two years has been met with cautious optimism in Canberra, with hopes of an improved trading relationship.

=> ↺ Understanding new labor standards in the Inflation Reduction Act

• Analysts predict that the Inflation Reduction Act will generate more than nine million new jobs in the next 10 years.

=> ↺ Myanmar junta opens ‘nuclear information center’ in Yangon with Russia’s Rosatom

• Observers call it another step in the regime’s gambit to obtain nuclear weapons.

=> ↺ To Defend Gas Stoves, Industry Calls in the Tobacco Propagandists

• We have known for decades that both the tobacco and fossil fuel industry have used scientists to defend their products and spread doubt and confusion over the health and environmental impact of smoking or burning oil and gas.

=> ↺ Biden’s SOTU Climate Rhetoric Isn’t Enough: He Must End Drilling, Activists Say

=> ↺ Simple Wood-Fired Water Heater Is Surprisingly Effective

• These days, humans have gotten all fancy-schmancy with their gas and electric water heaters. Heck, some are even using heat pumps to do the work as efficiently as possible. [HowToLou] got back to basics instead, with his simple wood-fired water heater design.

=> ↺ Green Groups Defend Biden Decision to Delay Oil and Gas Drilling Leases

• More than a dozen groups intervened in a case in Wyoming on Wednesday to defend the Biden administration’s decision to postpone the sale of oil and gas leases in the state, arguing that numerous court ruling and settled laws have affirmed the U.S. Interior Department is free to determine when such sales will go forward—or whether they will at all.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ WWF moving some endangered Saimaa ringed seals to boost population

• The last time conservationists undertook such an effort was in 1992.

=> ↺ Coal mine near Great Barrier Reef rejected due to risk of ‘irreversible damage’

• The Australian government on Wednesday turned down a proposal for a new open-cut coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef, invoking environmental laws and the risk of “irreversible damage.”

Finance

=> ↺ US-China Trade Hits Record Despite Decoupling Rhetoric

• Decoupling isn’t yet happening in any significant way, not by a long shot, and isn’t likely to, Foreign Policy magazine said.

=> ↺ US Trade Deficit Surges by 12.2 Pct in 2022

• The goods and services deficit was 948.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, up from 845.0 billion dollars in 2021.

=> ↺ Nigeria delays plans to replace its banknotes after chaotic scenes at ATMs

• Nigeria was forced Wednesday to delay plans to replace its banknotes with a redesigned currency after chaotic scenes at ATMs as millions of people struggled to get their hands on the new cash.

=> ↺ Disney To Lay Off About 7,000 Employees as It Cuts $5.5 Billion in Costs

• In the company’s first earnings report since Bob Iger returned as C.E.O., it exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. But about 7,000 jobs are expected to be cut.

=> ↺ Disney Layoffs Will Cut 7,000 Jobs – CNET

• The entertainment giant is tightening its workforce by about 3%.

=> ↺ Asian shares track Wall Street fall as Alphabet plunges

• Asian shares have tracked Wall Street lower as a number of Federal Reserve speakers echo Chair Jerome Powell in saying that interest rates are set to go higher, capping risk sentiment, while the dollar hovers near one-month highs.

=> ↺ Google AI service makes Bard mistake, market value down by US$100b

=> ↺ ‘Live to work or work to live?’: Why France’s youth are fighting Macron’s pension reform

• France’s youth have featured prominently in mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s planned pension overhaul, rallying against a reform they consider to be unfair and symptomatic of a broader rollback of social rights. FRANCE 24 spoke to young demonstrators who took part in the latest protest in Paris.

=> ↺ Unemployment edges up to 9.2% in Lithuania

• Registered unemployment rose by 0.3 percentage point to 9.2 percent in Lithuania in January, month-on-month, but was 1 point lower than a year earlier, the country’s Employment Service said.

=> ↺ Disney to cut 7000 workers in major revamp by CEO Iger

• Walt Disney Co has announced a sweeping restructure under recently reinstated CEO Bob Iger, cutting 7000 jobs as part of an effort to save $US5.5 billion ($A7.9 billion) in costs and make its streaming business profitable. The layoffs represent an estimated 3.6 per cent of Disney’s global workforce.

=> ↺ French Unions Plan 5th Day of Protests Against Pension Reform

• The plan was announced on the heels of Tuesday’s general mobilization, which brought together an estimated 757,000 people to demand that the government drop its reform plans.

=> ↺ Danish shipping giant Maersk ‘lobbied’ to be excluded from global tax deal

• The Danish shipping giant Maersk held meetings with Denmark’s tax and maritime authorities to advise them on how best to shield the shipping industry from the OECD’s global minimum tax deal, according to a Danish media report.

=> ↺ Number of British citizens who move to Denmark at lowest in 15 years

• Some 854 British citizens moved to Denmark in 2021, according to Statistics Denmark, the lowest number in 15 years.

=> ↺ Meta Takes Aim at Bosses Who Don’t Actually Do Anything

• The social media and metaverse company is undergoing a process that is being referred to internally as the “flattening,” in which managers will be asked to do things besides endlessly go to meetings.

=> ↺ The Fed’s 2.0 Percent Inflation Target

• Everyone recognizes that inflation has slowed sharply from the peaks hit in the spring of 2022. The question often asked is whether the inflation rate has dropped to the Fed’s 2.0 percent target. This requires a bit more careful thinking than it has received.

• Before directly addressing this issue, let me briefly deal with a slightly different point. Many people have called for raising the Fed’s inflation target to 3.0 percent or even 4.0 percent. I think these higher targets would be fine. For my part, I have never been a big fan of the 2.0 percent target.

=> ↺ A World Fragmented by Inequality

• A few weeks ago, the world’s power brokers — politicians, CEOs, millionaires, billionaires — met in Davos, the mountainous Swiss resort town, for the 2023 World Economic Forum. In an annual ritual that reads ever more like Orwellian farce, the global elite gathered — their private jets lined up like gleaming sardines at a nearby private airport — to discuss the most pressing issues of our time, many of which they are chiefly responsible for creating.

• The 2023 meeting was organized around the theme of “Cooperation in a Fragmented World” and the topics up for debate were all worthy choices: climate change, Covid-19, inflation, war, and the looming threat of recession. Glaringly missing, however, was any honest investigation of the deeper context behind such an epic set of crises — namely, the reality of worldwide poverty and the extreme inequality that separates the poor from the rich on this planet.

=> ↺ From Taxing the Rich to Defending Social Security, Will Biden Deliver?

=> ↺ The GOP Will Be Zero Help When It Comes to Helping Working Families

• President Joe Biden took full advantage of his State of the Union address to celebrate his administration’s victories for hard-working U.S. families and set the tone for progress and possibility for the next two years.

=> ↺ ‘Huge Win’: Railway Unions Strike Deal on Sick Leave With Industry Giant CSX

• After sustained pressure from organized workers and their allies, freight rail giant CSX Transportation agreed Tuesday to provide 5,000 employees in two unions with four days of paid sick leave each year—an industry-first move progressive said should serve as an example for other companies to follow.

=> ↺ Sanders, Senate Dems Invite Schultz to Testify About Starbucks’ Labor Law Violations

• Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Tuesday invited Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to testify about the coffee giant’s “lack of compliance with federal labor laws.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Hong Kong 47: Suspicions grow over ‘paid’ court goers, as people with public gallery tickets leave before hearing

• Some people queuing for tickets to witness Hong Kong’s largest national security trial have repeatedly left before hearings began, adding to questions over whether they were being paid.

=> ↺ Hong Kong courts are independent, gov’t says after US politician calls 47 democrats trial a ‘charade’

=> ↺ Vilnius strips former US House speaker of honours over child abuse

• Vilnius City Council unanimously decided to strip Dennis Hastert, a former speaker of the US House of Representatives who has admitted to child molestation, of his honorary Vilnius citizen title.

=> ↺ President Biden says China’s Xi faces ‘enormous problems’

• President Joe Biden on Wednesday said his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping faces “enormous problems,” including a fragile economy.

=> ↺ HRW urges targeted sanctions on Eritrea over forced conscription

• Human Rights Watch called Thursday for targeted sanctions against Eritrea, accusing its government of rounding up thousands of people, including minors, for mandatory military service and punishing the families of suspected draft evaders.

=> ↺ IOC pushes back against Paris mayor on banning Russian, Belarusian athletes from 2024 Olympics

• The International Olympic Committee pushed back against the mayor of Paris on Wednesday, insisting there were no plans for “a Russian or Belarusian delegation” at the 2024 Games while also acknowledging that some athletes from those countries could be welcomed.

=> ↺ The Other Albanian Stuff

• It seems rather odd that two different stories related to Rudy Giuliani happened to involve Albania given its size.

=> ↺ Jeff Gerth’s Undisclosed Dissemination of Russian Intelligence Product

• Jeff Gerth spends 23,000 words lecturing other journalists they need to be more transparent. But he doesn’t reveal that one of the key pieces of evidence in his narrative that Hillary pushed a “conspiracy theory” that “there was a secret alliance” between Trump and Russia was a Russian intelligence product, a product the reliability of which not even spooks managed by John Ratcliffe would authenticate.

=> ↺ The Blind Spots of CJR’s “Russiagate” [sic] Narrative

• Jeff Gerth claimed to assess NYT and WaPo’s reporting on the Russian investigation. And they they proceeded to ignore over 20 Pulitzer Prize-winning stories about Russia.

=> ↺ Facing a Divided Congress, Biden Takes a Populist Stance

• It’s fitting that the State of the Union address falls in the last week of pre–Super Bowl hype. Both events feature ballyhooed clashes of prime-time rosters and often fail to deliver much in the way of meaningful conflict. And each spectacle ultimately succumbs to the agendas of behind-the-scenes commercial interests that dwarf the action on the field. Still, both marquee attractions sit there on the early February calendar, soaking up forensic press attention while the American public is left to its own devices to work out just what all the fuss is about.

=> ↺ It’s Not Just You, Twitter Is Acting Weird – CNET

• From having direct messages removed to having to schedule tweets, Twitter is broken.

=> ↺ Twitter’s Upcoming Change Could Impact Your Favorite Bot – CNET

• The social media company says it’s charging $100 per month beginning Feb. 13 for “basic” access to a tool used by developers, researchers and other users.

=> ↺ Twitter users briefly unable to tweet, send messages

• Twitter users on Wednesday briefly encountered various issues with the platform, including the inability to tweet, send direct messages or follow new accounts.

=> ↺ Five Takeaways From the House G.O.P. Hearing With Former Twitter Executives

• The Oversight Committee called the session to scrutinize whether the social media platform has censored the right, but it yielded new revelations about the company’s permissive approach.

=> ↺ Twitter Glitches Pile Up as Key Features Fail

• Many users said they could not post tweets or message one another on Wednesday as the #TwitterDown hashtag began trending.

=> ↺ Twitter Was Blocked in Turkey After Earthquake, Internet-Monitoring Group Says

• The service was blocked in what appeared to be a coordinated way.

=> ↺ Yle Puhe radio station to cease broadcasting

• The all-talk station is being retired due to the changing way in which people consume media.

=> ↺ Social media is no saviour of journalism: Daily Star contributor

• The writer says public engagement does not necessarily equal public interest, and certainly not public benefit.

=> ↺ How a Decarceral and Abolitionist Movement Helped Defeat the “Red Wave” in Pennsylvania

• During post-election debriefs, political pundits, journalists, and analysts theorized and attempted to dissect why the midterms went “surprisingly” well for Democrats in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Simultaneously, countless organizers—including myself—gathered in a hotel room in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square to celebrate the fruits of our labor. Certainly the theories that these strategists espouse have merit. Women came out en masse to vote for reproductive rights and youth came out in record numbers.

• But there’s a glaring blindspot in all the media attention around the election results: the grassroots—the ground-force of working class, low income, Black, Brown, and historically disenfranchised people, who mobilized to push Pennsylvania Democrats past the winning line.

=> ↺ Disney+ Drops 2.4 Million Subscribers in First Loss, Bob Iger Heralds ‘Significant Transformation’ Underway

• The drop in Disney+ subscribers — which was bigger than analysts expected — was entirely driven by a 3.8 million sequential decline Disney+ Hotstar, the version of the service offered in India and parts of Southeast Asia, to stand at 161.8 million at the end of 2022. Last year, Disney lost streaming rights to Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches, which prompted it to lower growth targets for Disney+ Hotstar in India.

=> ↺ Jim Jordan Demands Social Media Documents from Biden Administration

• The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana filed suit against President Joe Biden and other government officials in May 2022, claiming that the administration had worked with tech companies to “censor free speech and propagandize the masses.”

=> ↺ Disney Cutting 7,000 Jobs, or 3% of Workforce, Eyes $5.5 Billion in Total Cost Reductions

• Of the $2.5 billion in non-content expenses, about 50% represents marketing spending; 30% represents labor costs; and 20% represents technology, procurement and other expenses, McCarthy said. Disney expects those cost savings to “fully materialize” by the end of fiscal 2024.

=> ↺ ‘Political correctness’ meant Islamist extremism was downplayed by Prevent

• William Shawcross, the review’s author, said Prevent had failed to do enough to counter the dangers from “non-violent Islamist extremism” and had instead broadened the definition of Right-wing extremism to include even mainstream politicians.

=> ↺ President, 80, Bests House Speaker, 58

• Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy warned his crackpot caucus in advance on Tuesday: He would not be tearing up President Biden’s State of the Union speech, as Nancy Pelosi famously (and fittingly) did one of Donald Trump’s. He also reminded them that microphones and photographers in the gallery could pick up embarrassing conversations and images. He was trying to coax a modicum of decorum out of the motley crew of gun-toters, insurrectionists, and idiots who made him speaker (after 15 votes).

=> ↺ Ramirez Calls on Biden to Use Executive Action to Deliver for Working People

• Delivering the Working Families Party’s official response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez reminded the president of steps he can take without Congress to deliver for working families and called on Democrats to not only fight far-right extremism but also the forces within their own party that impede progress.

=> ↺ Elon Musk Is Basically Zero Percent Of The Way Towards His Goal In Signing Up Users To Twitter Blue

• Soon after he announced his plans to buy Twitter, Elon Musk’s investor pitch leaked, and it was every bit as ridiculous as people have come to expect from Musk. One thing it included was a plan to reduce Twitter’s reliance on advertising, which (in a vacuum) is not a terrible idea. However, he seemed very, very sure that he’d be able to convince people to sign up for Twitter’s paid “Twitter Blue” subscription plan. The pitch deck noted that he expected 69 million subscribers by 2025.

=> ↺ To End ‘Genocide’ of Indigenous People, Lula Launches Raids Against Illegal Miners in Amazon

• With Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva warning his administration “will not allow illegal mining on Indigenous lands,” the government announced Wednesday that environmental special forces destroyed at least one helicopter, an airplane, and a bulldozer used by “mining mafias” in the territory of the Yanomami people in the Amazon rainforest this week.

=> ↺ Help Wanted: Five Rational Republicans Willing to Save the Country

• Five is a magic number. A mere five Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives must step up—and soon.

=> ↺ Critics Sound Alarm on GOP Plan to Enact Big Oil ‘Wish List’

• House Republicans held a hearing Tuesday to consider several pieces of Big Oil-friendly legislation that experts warned would exacerbate the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency and leave U.S. consumers with higher energy bills.

=> ↺ Court Says Colombian State Responsible for Patriotic Union “Extermination”…No Mention of US Role

• Rubí Andrea Forero, 52 years old, talked to Prensa Latina about the recent court ruling in the Patriotic Union’s case against Colombia’s government. She felt relief. She has coped with her father’s murder on February 27, 1989 and her awareness of “impunity and continuing crimes”. She recalls “silent longings and frustrated dreams from the war” and the “fears, absences, and frustrations” of families and friends.

• Teofilo Forero, Rubí’s father, was a union president, a deputy in the Cundinamarca legislature, and Bogota City councilor. Nationally, he was a leader of the CTC Labor Federation and organization secretary of Colombia’s Communist Party. That party, the interviewer explains, was the “vertebral column of the Patriotic Union (UP in Spanish-language initials).” The UP dates from 1985.

=> ↺ Patrick Lawrence: No, Joey, It Still Isn’t Morning in America

• O.K., you have a speech of 7,000–odd words to deliver to Congress. It ought to run about an hour as these things go. But you have nothing to say.  Call Joe Biden.  He certainly got the job done Tuesday evening. But I am confused as to our 46th […]

=> ↺ While former Fidesz politician rents properties to Rosatom, his son is paid for cleaning toilets

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ China’s deepfake anchors spread disinformation on social media, Graphika says

• US research group says AI anchors are bolstering Beijing’s propaganda and badmouthing Washington.

=> ↺ Disinformation Researchers Raise Alarms About A.I. Chatbots

• Researchers used ChatGPT to produce clean, convincing text that repeated conspiracy theories and misleading narratives.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Farha: The Netflix Film the Israeli Government Fears, with Darin Sallam

• Join Lowkey for a special episode with Darin J. Sallam, creator of the Netflix film “Farha”. Sallam and Lowkey discuss the Israeli government’s efforts to silence the film, which tells the true story of a Palestinian girl’s fight for survival during the Nakba.

=> ↺ CNET Insiders Say Tech Outlet Softened Coverage To Please Advertisers

• It hasn’t been a great few weeks for CNET.

=> ↺ Openly Pro-Israel Tech Group Now Has Control over UK’s Most Sensitive National Security Data

• Software giant Oracle, whose CEO Larry Ellison has troubling ties to the Israeli government, just signed a massive deal to store the UK’s most sensitive military data.

=> ↺ Former president’s speech vanishes from Vietnam news sites

• Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s comments at a handover ceremony were aimed at scotching rumors of family corruption.

=> ↺ Iranian Protester, Focus Of Torture Reports, Released After Four Months

• Iranian protester Armita Abbasi, who media reports said was tortured and raped while in detention after being identified as a “leader” of protests sparked by the death of a young woman while in policy custody for an alleged head scarf violation, has been released from prison.

=> ↺ Self-Exiled Pussy Riot Member Charged With Discrediting Russian Armed Forces

• Moscow municipal lawmaker Lyusya Shtein, who is also a member of the Pussy Riot protest group, has been charged in absentia with discrediting the Russian armed forces.

=> ↺ NCAC Demands Investigation of Secret Order to Ban Books

• NEW YORK, February 8, 2023 – The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today demanded that officials in a western Michigan school district investigate whether their superintendent secretly ordered the removal of books, violating a policy that requires a formal review before a book is banned.

=> ↺ Hunter Biden laptop: House GOP probes suppression of online speech

• Did Twitter inappropriately suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story? A House hearing raises the question of how to balance free speech with public safety in an era of disinformation.

=> ↺ Read: Hunter Biden lawyers ask Trump allies to retain records related to alleged laptop

=> ↺ Two opposition leaders: ‘How can you block Twitter just when it is so crucial?’

• Presidents of CHP and İyi Party named access restrictions to Twitter evilness and requested an explanation.

=> ↺ Exposing the digital Dictatorship in Myanmar

=> ↺ Wikipedia blocked in Pakistan: government must end censorship expansion

• Pakistan blocked Wikipedia for not removing “sacrilegious” content. The government must cease its systematic expansion of control over online spaces.

=> ↺ Pressure increases for Meta to overhaul African content moderation

=> ↺ They released a sex video to shame and silence her. She’s one of many women in Myanmar doxxed and abused on Telegram by supporters of the military

=> ↺ Minsk Court Sentences Polish-Belarusian Activist Poczobut To Eight Years In Prison

• A court in Minsk has sentenced a leader of the Polish-Belarusian community, noted journalist Andrzej Poczobut, to eight years in prison for criticizing Belarus’s authoritarian ruler, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and his regime.

=> ↺ Open Rights Group responds to Shawcross review of Prevent

• Open rights Group has responded to the Shawcross review of Prevent, which was published today Policy Manager, Sophia Akram said: “The report fails to address multiple problems with Prevent, including its chilling effect, the danger of driving radical discourse underground…”

=> ↺ Twitter Kept Entire ‘Database’ of Republican Requests to Censor Posts

• In interviews with former Twitter personnel, onetime Trump administration officials, and other people familiar with the matter, each source recalled what could be described as a “hotline,” “tipline,” or large Twitter “database” of moderation and removal requests that was frequently pinged by the offices of powerful Democrats and Republicans alike.

• The voluminous requests often came from high-ranking political appointees working in different departments, offices, and agencies in the Trump administration. But during both the Trump and Biden presidencies, these types of moderation requests or demands were routinely sent to Twitter by the staff of influential GOP lawmakers — ones with names like Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik.

=> ↺ Trump’s Stupid Libel Lawsuit Against The Washington Post Tossed By Federal Court

• Mr. “I’m going to open up the libel laws” never got around to opening them up. It was another pet project for Trump, one constantly just another couple weeks away from achieving. “Strong looks” were presumably taken by Trump’s legal experts, but even their collective incompetence couldn’t overcome the First Amendment.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Protection for journalists added into anti-protest Public Order Bill

• Campaigners had warned the Public Order Bill could make arrests of journalists “commonplace”.

=> ↺ Antonia Cundy on freelancing in Ukraine: ‘If you can add something, the risk is worth it’

• Antonia Cundy deliberately took steps to avoid being a “cowboy journalist” in Ukraine.

=> ↺ Kazakh Website Editor Receives Box Containing Meat And Photos Of Her Children

• The chief editor of the Ulysmedia.kz news website in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, says she received a box from unknown people that contained a hunk of meat and pictures of her children, a parcel she called a new attempt “to intimidate” her and her staff.

=> ↺ Khashoggi’s wife asks U.S. and U.N. for help recovering husband’s devices from Turkey

• Jamal Khashoggi’s widow asked the U.S. intel chief and the U.N. secretary-general for help recovering her husband’s laptop, cellphones and tablet as she builds lawsuits in the U.S.

=> ↺ One journalist was killed for his work. Another finished what he started

• The investigation chronicled an alleged $500 million Ponzi scheme targeting members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of whom had emptied their retirement accounts into a sham investment.

=> ↺ Marvel Cooke: Who Was the Journalist and Labor Organizer?

• “As a young, Black woman Communist, I idolized women like Marvel Cooke,” Dr. Angela Davis, renowned scholar and activist, tells Teen Vogue via a written interview about the journalist, activist, and union organizer. “In my mind, she belonged to a pantheon of great, Black women Communist intellectuals who had forged a path toward the future and invited younger generations to follow.”

=> ↺ Thai Journalists Wary of Proposed Media Ethics Act

• Dubbed the Media Ethics and Professional Standards Promotion Act, the legislation seeks to form a regulatory council that would set standards on ethics and oversee a registry of journalists, news outlets and online content creators.

• If passed, an ethics board made up of lawyers, journalists with at least 10 years’ media experience, and others would oversee public complaints and make recommendations on penalties such as warnings or fines.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Already Complicit in Libya Migrant Abuse, EU Doubles Down on Support

=> ↺ UK dispatch: criminal bar chair speaks out for higher prosecution fees, need for more prosecutors

=> ↺ is this love?

• Content warning: mentions of sexual assault. Writer’s note: This is not about one person in particular, but a compilation of memories from different people I have met.

=> ↺ Fighting the Louisiana Law That Makes Sex Work a “Crime Against Nature”

• In the short documentary “CANS Can’t Stand,” by Matt Nadel and Megan Plotka, activists work to overturn a baldly prejudiced law aimed at L.G.B.T.Q. people.

=> ↺ Women and children among detainees freed in raid on pro-junta militia camp in Myanmar

• Residents say they were forcibly recruited by the group in recent months

=> ↺ Kazakh Court Rejects Jailed Dissident’s Appeal Of Decision To Deny Early Release

• The Almaty regional court in southern Kazakhstan has rejected an appeal filed by noted dissident Ermek Narymbaev (aka Narymbai) against a lower court’s refusal to grant him an early release.

=> ↺ Biden Uses State of the Union to Double Down on Failed Idea of Police Reforms

=> ↺ Stop Cop City

• In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council passed legislation to build a $90 million police training facility, despite overwhelming opposition from the Atlanta community. The compound would include a mock city complete with houses, a school, a gas station, a bank, and a community centre; it would also feature a Black Hawk landing pad, shooting ranges, and a bomb testing site.

• At 85 acres, it would be the largest police training facility in the United States. If constructed, it will be a rehearsal space for cops from all over the country and the world to practice urban warfighting with the latest military technologies.

=> ↺ Critics Slam Business-Backed Bill to Expand Child Labor in Iowa

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ FT creates AI editor role to lead coverage on new tech

• The FT said it is well-positioned to “provide authoritative analysis on AI developments”.

=> ↺ ‘Disgusting’: NYC Scraps Co-Op Internet in Public Housing So Big Telecom Can Move In

• “The people who are working for us also lose their jobs,” Troy Walcott, president of People’s Choice Communications, said.

=> ↺ The ARPANET Of Things And CMU’s History Of Networked Soda Machines

• When the computer science department of Carnegie Mellon University expanded in the 1970s, this created a massive issue for certain individuals who now found that they had to walk quite a distance to the one single Coke machine. To their dismay, they’d now find that after braving a few flights of stairs, they’d find that the Coke machine (refilled randomly by grad students) was empty, or worse, had still warm Coke bottles inside. What happened next is detailed by the Coke machine itself, straight from the CMU’s servers.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Netflix confirms it will start charging users to share an account with others outside their home

• In its latest release, Netflix reiterated a previous estimate that more than 100 million households have shared their accounts with others, something the company said is “impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films.”

=> ↺ Amid More Game Shutdowns Occurring, John Carmack Weighs In On Preservation

• The conversation about preservation in the video game industry is continuing at a nice pace. Honestly, the most encouraging part of all of this, as someone who has been writing about this topic for several years now, is seeing how much more mainstream the topic has become. It used to be that certain servers or services being shut down by publishers, thereby breaking the games that people had bought, mostly resulted in shrugs an utterances of, “Oh well, thems the shits.” But at present, far more people are acknowledging that these games, online or otherwise, are pieces of human culture worthy of preservation.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Federal Court of Justice reopens Ratiopharm and Acorda revocation case over MS drug

• Section 81(2) of the German Patent Act stipulates that revocation claims are only admissible in Germany if the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) or the EPO have formally concluded their granting procedures.

=> ↺ Unified Patent Court announces optimized API opt-out process

Software Patents

=> ↺ ETRI / KAIST video codec patent revoked by EPO

Trademarks

=> ↺ TTABlog Test: How Did These Three Section 2(d) Oppositions Turn Out?

• ATTABjudge once told me that you can predict the outcome of a Section 2(d) case 95% of the time by just looking at the goods/services and the marks. Maybe he or she was referring toex partecases only, but let’s see how you do with the three oppositions summarized below. Answer(s) in the first comment.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Sweden’s anti-commercial music movement that took on politics and Eurovision

• You might think there were celebrations in Stockholm when it hosted the Eurovision Song Contest back in 1975. But the event also sparked protests and a debate about commercialisation so heated that the next year, Sweden didn’t participate at all.

=> ↺ Taiwan’s DPP takes action against plagiarism by election candidates

• The DPP approved a motion Wednesday requesting its candidates for public office to sign a document confirming they had not indulged in any form of plagiarism, while a special team of experts and academics would investigate relevant accusations. If questions about the authenticity of theses persisted, the DPP would ask the candidates not to list the related diploma on their election registration form, the Liberty Times reported.

=> ↺ NFTs Excite Hollywood But Not Because They Can Solve Piracy

• The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has shared its views on NFTs and related technology. Responding to a consultation launched by the Patent and Trademark Office and the Copyright Office, the MPA sees plenty of commercial opportunities for NFTs but doesn’t believe the technology will help to fight piracy or manage copyrights.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ ughhhh laundry

• have a whole pile of laundry that i need to get to but i have been procrastinating. need to get on it tho because martin gave me shit once about “stinking like a college student” and i don’t feel like unpacking that one again

=> ↺ A Death in the Family

• My father died peacefully today at 3:16 pm. He was 77. I stepped out for a chat with the chaplain, and he went during. He is survived by my ma and me.

=> ↺ Life update

• I am engaged and my fiancé is very nice to me I got my Canadian license to cook And I got a job in a food store I’m working on culinary and baking I quit gaming

=> ↺ After the trip

• It’s been a little while since I updated my gemlog (actually not that much, but time flies when you’re always online.) Things have been good by me.

• Taking that train trip allowed me to refocus and get back into the swing of things. I’ve applied for a few jobs and have some other plans on the horizon, both in the short term and in the long term. I have an inkling that the professors from the grad program in music theory won’t email me about getting in, as the program is set to begin soon and I don’t have any word from them.

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: CDOSYUT Wordo: BRONX

Politics

=> ↺ Populism

• It’s weird how the shift from workers vs owners to pluralists vs populists has been presented as this new phenomenon by commentators like Norris and Inglehart, the latter arguing that it’s because of how the new generation has new values.

Technical

=> ↺ The End of Privacy

• I’ve been a bit of a privacy nut my whole life. Sure, sometimes I have nothing to hide, but I still prefer to. I have yet to think of a single occasion where being deanonymized was helpful, and oh, so many times when I cursed myself for providing my real name! I don’t care about fame…

• And so I was pretty annoyed when I realized that my IP address was used to track me. No problem, I will VPN. Cookies? I will install an add-on to block or wipe them. Supercookies? Shit, those Adobe cookies I did not know about – and when I got a look I was horrified. Another add-on. And then there were these DNS leaks. And now the VPN guy in Bulgaria has access to all my traffic. Also, turns out my browser has a unique signature thanks to all the privacy add-ons.

=> ↺ A week in the terminal

• So it’s been around a week that I’ve been working mainly in the terminal, and I have to say it’s been pretty good! I haven’t really settled into where it’s a less-intrusive and less stimulating way of computing, because I have a driving urge to tinker with it. But I think that’s starting to come to an end as I get stuff working.

=> ↺ Two versions of Link’s Awakening on Switch

• Link’s Awakening DX was released on Switch (the version with depressing color scheme and the can’t-skip-dialog–bug for Pieces of Power and Guardian Acorns, and some other de-charm tweaks like how dialog changes and stone tablets are now that annoying owl) but comparing DX to the remake on the same device, it’s remarkable how much better all of the DX audio is (instrumentation is crisp and clear, compared to the more muddled sound on the Switch Remake, with “the dropping a toyshop down six flights of stairs” instrumentation of Animal Village a nadir of the latter) and how much faster and more fluid the DX controls are. And also shorter—albeit non-zero—loading times on DX.

• The remake only lets you use stick to move, the DX version you can play with either stick or D-pad.

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