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● 02.15.23

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● Links 15/02/2023: Old PCs Reborn With GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Things I ran into when moving from Fvwm2 to Fvwm3

• I don’t use a standard desktop environment like Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or Cinnamon on my home and work desktops (I do use Cinnamon on my work laptop because it was the easy way). Instead I use a custom X11 environment with FVWM as the window manager. Specifically, I used FVWM version 2 (‘fvwm2′), until recently when I had to switch to fvwm3, (aka ‘fvwm 3′) because that was the easiest way to work around what was effectively an API change in libX11 1.8 (see this Fedora issue, also (via)). Fvwm 2 isn’t being actively updated any more so it was unlikely to get a ‘fix’ for the libX11 API change, while Fvwm3 had been fixed as part of general updates to its code.

=> ↺ What’s Old Is New Again: A Linux PC From A Set Top Box

• There was a time around two decades ago, when the new hotness was taking control of home routers to use as small Linux computers. An echo of this era lives on in the name of the OpenWrt minimal Linux distribution, in reference to the Linksys WRT54G router which started it all. Routers as small computers were displaced by small cheap Linux machines from the likes of Raspberry Pi, and the promise of discarded home network gear doing interesting stuff receded. Now it might just be back, as [Jasper Devreker] shows us an Android TV set-top box from a mobile carrier repurposed as a Linux computer that can even run a desktop environment.

=> ↺ Final Round Voting Begins in FOSS Force ‘Favorite Desktop Environment’ Poll

• The elimination round of our Readers Choice Favorite Desktop Poll 2022 has ended and voting has begun for the final round. The team of developers behind the desktop environment that wins the final round will receive a pair of SCALE passes to attend the Southern California Linux Expo that’s coming up in March courtesy of the team at SCALE, as well as two passes to All Things Open, t-shirts, and hats, courtesy of All Things Open, the large East Coast open source event that’s held in October.

Server

=> ↺ Manage OpenStack using Terraform and GitLab

• One virtue of GitOps is Infrastructure as Code. It encourages collaboration by using a shared configuration and policy repository. Using GitLab can further enhance collaboration in your OpenStack cluster. GitLab CI can serve as your source control and orchestration hub for CI/CD, and it can even manage the state of Terraform.

• To achieve this, you need the following: [...]

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ D8VK is an in-progress implementation of Direct3D 8 for DXVK

• While we have VKD3D-Proton for Direct3D 12 to Vulkan and DXVK for Direct3D 9 / 10 / 11 to Vulkan translation, what about Direct3D 8? D8VK is an upcoming in-progress project for that.

Applications

=> ↺ Machine Learning in Linux: GFPGAN – Face restoration software

• Machine Learning is the practice of using algorithms to parse data, learn insights from that data, and then make a determination or prediction. The machine is ‘trained’ using huge amounts of data.

• Deep Learning is a subset of Machine Learning that uses multi-layers artificial neural networks to deliver state-of-the-art accuracy in tasks such as object detection, speech recognition, language translation and others. Think of Machine Learning as cutting-edge, and Deep Learning as the cutting-edge of the cutting-edge.

• With the availability of huge amounts of data for research and powerful machines to run your code on with distributed cloud computing and parallelism across GPU cores, Deep Learning has helped to create self-driving cars, intelligent voice assistants, pioneer medical advancements, machine translation, and much more. Deep Learning has become an indispensable tool for countless industries.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install NGINX Web Server on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

=> ↺ Getting Started With Proxmox Backup Server

• In this tutorial, we will learn how to get started with Proxmox Backup Server. First, we will be discussing about the Proxmox Backup Server’s dashboard and then we will move on to learn how to backup and restore VMs and Containers using Proxmox Backup Server.

=> ↺ Simulate an unreliable network connection with tc and netem on Linux

• There are various reasons why you want to modify the traffic between devices. The last time we had to ensure that a streaming server in Frankfurt could handle incoming video streams with a high latency over an unreliable connection from the US. The other time we had to provide proof that some SAP modules can’t handle the additional latency of a VPN and that the problem is on their side and not ours.

=> ↺ CSS Grid Gap Behavior with Hidden Elements

• I was recently prototyping a component layout that included a way to toggle the visibility of sibling elements inside a grid display. What tripped me up was, while these elements were hidden, all of the container’s gap gutters remained, leaving undesired extra visual spacing. I expected these gutters to collapse. The reason they stick around is related to explicitly defining grid templates.

=> ↺ My CSS wish list

• I believe we have no right to complain. We’re super spoiled, especially with the stuff happening around Interop 2022 and 2023, but these are just examples of things that would make my life easier. I’d love to hear what’s on your wish list, too.

=> ↺ How to Enable Fractional Scaling on Fedora Linux

• I run Fedora on a Chromebook that has a 3:2 ratio 2K screen, but the only scaling options I can use out-of-the-box are 100% or 200%.

• And sadly neither is ideal.

Games

=> ↺ Too Cool For 8-bit Retro? Try 1-bit Gaming

• While the world has been racing for higher and higher bit counts for CPUs, there are always those that buck the trend. Consider the venerable Motorola MC14500B, a 1-bit CPU, no kidding. [Usagi Electric] built up a computer based on one of these chips using a breadboard but has since pulled it apart to use the breadboard for other things. So this time, he’s made a permanent version on a PCB and created a simple game to show it off. You can see the result in the video below.

=> ↺ Pick up some sweet deals during the We Love Games Sale on GOG

• You just love games right? Need some more? Check out the big We Love Games Sale over on GOG to continue building up that collection.

=> ↺ EVERSPACE 2 gets a Steam Deck and Linux release update

• For those of you curious on what’s happening with EVERSPACE 2 for Linux, ROCKFISH Games have given an official update on what to expect.

=> ↺ 10 years ago Steam released for Linux

• I’m starting to feel old. I remember a time before Steam for Linux, back in the dark days even before the first set of Humble Indie Bundles, it’s truly crazy how far Linux has come overall as a platform for gaming. 10 years ago today, Steam for Linux left Beta and released officially and what a difference it made!

=> ↺ Fanatical have another Play On The Go bundle for Steam Deck

• Need more games for your Steam Deck or Linux Desktop? Fanatical have launched another Play On The Go bundle. With all games being Steam Deck Verified, I’ll also note what to expect from Linux Desktop compatibility using ProtonDB ratings.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ How I use Ansible to add a feature to my Linux KDE desktop

• I run the KDE Plasma Desktop on my computer because it’s a flexible environment with lots of options for customization. Having choices in your desktop is about more than just having lots of menus and buttons to activate or deactivate. The thing I love most about KDE Plasma Desktop is the ability to add my own features to it. One reason this is possible is KServices, a simple but powerful plugin framework for handling desktop services.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Use apt-get build-dep to install build dependencies

• There are times you want to use a more up-to-date software than what comes with your Linux Distribution (distro). I had to do this when I was using Ubuntu 16.04. I wanted to use the latest tmux for its advanced mouse support but Ubuntu 16.04 came with an older version of tmux without the feature. Since the LTS versions rarely do a major-version upgrade, the only way to get the newer version was to build it from source.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ TI Sitara AM62x based SoM from Variscite starts at $33.00

• Variscite launched earlier this month the VAR-SOM-AM62 built around the AM62x processor from Texas Instruments. This SoM comes with up to 4GB DDR4, 128GB eMMC, dual-band Wi-Fi/BLE 5.2, dual GbE and flexible multimedia support.

=> ↺ The Open-Source ESPGateway features 2x ESP32 modules

• ThingPulse recently launched a new revision ESPGateway which integrates two ESP32 WROVER-IB modules and support for a LoRa E5 module. The device includes a USB-C port for programming, external 2.4GHz antennas, and access to 36x pins from the ESP32 modules to connect sensors, displays, etc.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ KiCad Version 7.0.0 Released #KiCad @kicad_pcb

• KiCad 7 is a big release despite coming only a year after KiCad 6 — in the past year, developers have made more than 6000 commits, fixing over 1200 reported issues and adding a number of new features.

• Some highlights: [...]

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi runs Apollo Guidance Computer code in this homemade DSKY

• The DSKY or display/keyboard, pronounced “diskey”, was the primary interface between Apollo astronauts and the computers on both the Command and Lunar Modules. During our visit to Space Center Houston last week, we got to see the perfectly preserved Mission Control room just as it was during the moon landing, and we can confirm this project has the aesthetics down.

=> ↺ Teach your learners with The Computing Curriculum

• Computing combines a very broad mixture of concepts and skills. We work to support any school to teach students about the whole of computing and how to create with digital technologies. A key part of this support is The Computing Curriculum.

=> ↺ 5-Axis Printer Wants To Design Itself

• RepRap 3D printers were designed with the ultimate goal of self-replicating machines. The generatively-designed Gen5X printer by [Ric Real] brings the design step of that process closer to reality.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Tomorrow’s Top-Tier Android Modem Promises to Boost Lackluster 5G Signals – CNET

=> ↺ Motorola Android 12 update and bugs tracker (cont.updated)

=> ↺ Android 13 and Material You could be about to hit your Chromebook

=> ↺ Google rolls out new features to make in-app browsers better on Android • TechCrunch

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

=> ↺ cURL audit: How a joke led to significant findings

• While discussing the threat model of the application, one of our team members jokingly asked, “Have we tried curl AAAAAAAAAA… yet”? Although the comment was made in jest, it sparked an idea: we should fuzz cURL’s command-line interface (CLI). Once we did so, the fuzzer quickly uncovered memory corruption bugs, specifically use-after-free issues, double-free issues, and memory leaks. Because the bugs are in libcurl, a cURL development library, they have the potential to affect the many software applications that use libcurl. This blog post describes how we found the following vulnerabilities: [...]

Python

=> ↺ OpenSPICE: A Portable Python Circuit Simulator

• [Roman Parise] and [Georgios Is. Detorakis] have created OpenSPICE a fork of the PySpice project, adding a new simulation engine written entirely in Python. This enables the same PySpice simulations to be executed on any platform that runs python (which we reckon is quite a few!) whilst leveraging the full power of the python infrastructure. Since it is a fork — for supported platforms — you can also run your simulations upon Ngspice as well as Xyce, giving options for scaling up to larger systems when required, but importantly without having to recreate your circuit from scratch.

=> ↺ CircuitPython 8.0.2 Released! @circuitpython

• CircuitPython has a number of “ports” that are the core implementations for different microcontroller families. Stability varies on a per-port basis. As of this release, these ports are consider stable: [...]

Leftovers

=> ↺ Love Each Other, Love the World

=> ↺ How I Remember Jen

=> ↺ 1. Write Letters to People in Prison

=> ↺ Kathryn Tewson Invites DoNotPay To Use Its AI Lawyer In Court… To Address Her Petition For Pre-Action Discovery For A Consumer Rights Claim

• Over the last few weeks, you may have noticed that the world’s most tenacious paralegal, Kathryn Tewson, has been carefully dismantling claim after claim after claim from the company DoNotPay and its CEO Joshua Browder. I won’t rehash all of her discoveries, but many of them called into question Browder’s apparent tendency to massively overstate what his company can do, even as he would then seek to quietly cover his tracks every time Tewson pointed out another bit of nonsense.

=> ↺ Generations

• A woman wakes with blood between her legs. Other women she knows have done so, too. The elders of the isolated religious colony in which they live say they’ve been attacked by demons as punishment for their sins. Others say the women made it up. They deny until a man is caught and names his co-conspirators. The rapists—husbands, sons, brothers—are arrested and taken to a nearby city for their own protection. The rest of the men have gone to the city to post their bail. They will return in two days.

=> ↺ The latest from Arte Weekly: How the earthquake in Turkey might shake Erdoğan’s authority

=> ↺ Rihanna’s Hungarian gloves at Super Bowl

=> ↺ The Forgotten Poets of the Attica Uprising

• Turn in your “Right on’s” and “Power to the People’s.” Feel the beat of a Cracker club in tune to “We shall overcome.” Replace the ready-to-die make-up kit with a grin. Boy, happy days are here again!—Charles Johnson, “Good Old Days”1

=> ↺ Welcome to the Age of Bullshit

• What’s really happening is that AI is amplifying a much more fundamental problem: Search Engine Optimization. We’re exposed to so much information on a daily basis that we don’t know what’s real, and Google can’t help us. As SEO makes Google searches progressively more useless, the web has become a morass of nonsensical data, blurring the line between fact and fiction. AI is now allowing us to generate even more information at an accelerating rate, essentially weaponizing disinformation. We have absolutely no way to deal with this, because we’ve invented the informational equivalent of gunpowder and decided it would be a good idea to give it to everyone.

=> ↺ My Time At The Recurse Center

• I would say that RC is for anyone who loves to program and wants to improve while contributing to a friendly and supportive community. The hard part is having the privilege to spend six-to-twelve weeks not working. I made it work by attending towards the end of a long paternity leave. If you’re considering it, you should definitely apply. I’d love to answer any questions you have.

• A couple of things that helped me out during my batch was the planning I did before I attended. I made a list of topics that I wanted to work on. During the day one introductions, having this list helped me find people who I shared similar interests with. I also had a separate list of specific projects I wanted to build, ordered from small to large. When I was stuck or listless, I popped something off the stack and kept up my momentum.

Science

=> ↺ Herding Cats: Biden’s Myopic Approach to Scientific Integrity

• Just a week after his inauguration nearly two years ago, President Joe Biden issued an all-agency directive to strengthen the scientific integrity policies commissioned under former President Barack Obama and that had proven to be utterly ineffectual during the “alternative facts” tenure of President Donald Trump.

Education

=> ↺ Kazakhstan will fund young generation’s education and housing through personal accounts set up at birth — Meduza

• Kazakhstan’s Finance Ministry has unveiled a new social welfare project geared towards funding housing and education expenses for the next generation of Kazakhstan’s citizens.

=> ↺ A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review

• We found that the total time reviewers globally worked on peer reviews was over 100 million hours in 2020, equivalent to over 15 thousand years. The estimated monetary value of the time US-based reviewers spent on reviews was over 1.5 billion USD in 2020. For China-based reviewers, the estimate is over 600 million USD, and for UK-based, close to 400 million USD.

Hardware

=> ↺ Curve Tracer Design For Power Vacuum Tubes Testing

• Regardless of the mythical qualities that are all too often attributed to vacuum tubes, they are still components that can be damaged and wear out over time. Much like with transistors and kin, they come with a stack of datasheets, containing various curves detailing their properties and performance. These curves will change as a part ages, and validating these curves can help with debugging a vacuum tube-based circuit. This is where one can either spend an enormous sum on a commercial curve tracer like the Tektronix 570, or build your own, as [Basin Street Design] has done.

=> ↺ How Home Made Robot Arms Used To Be Made

• With laser cutters and 3D printers in our arsenal as well as the global toy shop of mass-produced parts and single-board computers, building a robotic project has almost never been easier. In times past though, there was more of a challenge, with a computer likely meaning a chunky desktop model and there being no plethora of motors at low prices, a robot arm required more ingenuity. [Marius Taciuc] shares with us an arm he built from the most minimal of parts back in 2003, and it’s a beautiful exercise in creative reuse.

=> ↺ OS Detecting QMK keyboard

• After reading the OS-detection code by KapJI, I understood that there is a function get_usb_descriptor to return whatever USB descriptor type the host requests, and that their os detection code records the frequency of the value of the wLength field for “String-type descriptors”. I had a vague understanding of what a “usb descriptor” might be (that it’s related to the USB device initialization) but wasn’t sure how it works. I understood that this counter has to be reset but wasn’t sure where to do it. There was documentation for the feature but, it did not explain to me why this works, or what the meaning of those fields were. I decided to dig deeper since I was having a slow week.

=> ↺ Sol-20 Integrated Computer Teardown

• [Action Retro] came into an antique Sol-20 computer and argues that it was the first totally integrated computer aimed at consumers that didn’t require you to buy or build some kind of terminal. These are fairly rare, so we appreciated the peek inside that you can see in the video below.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Rail Workers Say the Industry Courts Derailments in Its Quest for Profits

• As public outrage has grown over the toxic fallout from last week’s fiery derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio, the urgent questions behind this disaster echo the past year’s confrontations over working conditions in the lightly regulated rail industry. Indeed, the catastrophe in Ohio—together with another hazardous derailment in Houston, Tex., just a week later—drives home the steep costs in health and well-being that we all incur when we fail to heed rail workers’ calls for more regulation and adequate staffing mandates.

=> ↺ Ohio Train Derailment: Reports of Dead Fish, Chickens

• The EPA classifies vinyl chloride as a carcinogen; routine exposure could increase one’s risk of liver damage or liver cancer. Short-term exposure to high concentrations can cause drowsiness, loss of coordination, disorientation, nausea, headache or burning or tingling.

=> ↺ “Bomb Train” in Ohio Sickens Residents After Railroad Cutbacks, Corporate Greed Led to Toxic Disaster

• Fears of a wider health and environmental disaster are growing, after a 150-car freight train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed and a so-called controlled burn released toxic chemicals last week in East Palestine, Ohio. Residents reported seeing a fireball and mushroom cloud of smoke fill the skyline. Data released by the Environmental Protection Agency shows the train contained more toxic and carcinogenic chemicals than initially reported, including phosgene, a poisonous gas that has been used as a chemical weapon in war. Officials lifted an evacuation order for residents last Wednesday, saying the air and water were safe, but residents have reported sore throats, burning eyes and respiratory problems, and wildlife has been found dead. Meanwhile, scrutiny has turned onto Norfolk Southern, which in recent years has challenged regulatory laws aimed at making the rail industry safer and made mass cuts to railroad staffing while spending billions on stock buybacks and executive compensation. We get an update from Emily Wright, community organizer based near the site of the derailment; Ross Grooters, a locomotive engineer and co-chair of Railroad Workers United; and Julia Rock, an investigative reporter with The Lever.

=> ↺ Progressives Demand Buttigieg Act on Rail Safety Amid Toxic Ohio Disaster

• Progressives are demanding that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg improve rail safety regulations in response to the unfolding public health disaster in East Palestine, Ohio—the site of a recent fiery train crash and subsequent “controlled release” of toxic fumes that critics say was entirely avoidable.

=> ↺ Toxic Chemicals Continue to Go Unregulated in the U.S. – Validated Independent News

• The head of chemical regulation at the EPA, Michal Freedhoff, admitted to decades of regulatory failure on behalf of her department. Freedhoff blames the department’s inaction on barriers created by the Trump administration, including a lack of funding and staffing shortages. However, there are broader failures at play. Through various interviews with environmental leaders around the globe, ProPublica uncovered a half century’s worth of legislation, lawsuits, EPA documents, oral histories, chemical databases, and global regulatory records to expose the institutional failure to protect Americans from toxic chemicals.

=> ↺ How Erdoğan Set the Stage for Turkey’s Disastrous Earthquake Response

• The authoritarian President has stuffed his government with corrupt and inexperienced loyalists. Can a kneecapped civil society fill the gap?

=> ↺ Psychopaths: why they’ve thrived through evolutionary history – and how that may change

• From an evolutionary point of view, psychopathy is puzzling. Given that psychopathic traits are so negative, why do they remain in successive generations? Psychopathy seems to be, in the words of biologists, “maladaptive”, or disadvantageous. Assuming there’s a genetic component to this family of disorders, we’d expect it to decrease over time.

• But that’s not what we see — and there’s evidence that the tendencies are, at least in some contexts, an evolutionary benefit. According to my own research, the reason for this may be down to the ability to fake desirable qualities through deception.

=> ↺ Russia has plenty of domestic Viagra analogs to treat erectile dysfunction — Meduza

• Viatris, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, has notified the Russian government that it’s going to pause deliveries to Russia. The Trade Ministry has acknowledged getting notified of this in 2022, to Interfax.

=> ↺ 60 Minutes’ Weight-Loss Tip: Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You

• CBS’s segment on a weight-loss drug featured two doctors paid by the drug maker—which happened to be a sponsor of the broadcast.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Airline SAS network hit by hackers, says app was compromised

• Earlier, she told the national news agency TT that there was a risk of getting incorrect information by logging onto the app and urged customers to refrain from using it.

• The entire website was down for a while on Tuesday.

=> ↺ Indigo website still offline nearly 1 week after cybersecurity incident

• The company has been relatively tight-lipped about what’s happened, but multiple cybersecurity companies interviewed by CBC News say the incident has all the hallmarks of what’s known as a ransomware attack. That’s the term for when hackers infiltrate a company’s internal systems, disable them, then demand a ransom to undo what they’ve done.

=> ↺ US defence forces no match for the unstoppable fiend known as Reply-All

• “There are far too many technically illiterate captains who would benefit from learning how to use Microsoft Outlook (particularly how to set up sorting rules) instead of replying like boomers using new technology,” the anonymous author opined.

=> ↺ Modern Mono

• The finalists · That leaves Fira Code Retina, Go Mono, Hack, Inconsolata, JetBrains Mono, and MesloLGS NF. Let’s go look at some actual code, from this file.

• Here they are, but they’re not alphabetical, because I want you to look at them; scroll back and forth a bit. See if you draw any impressions before you check which is which.

=> ↺ What’s Going on Over North America?

• So let’s start by noting that whatever is going over the United States and Canada, it’s not that kind of threat. There are some objects over our shared continent, and these objects, according to both Washington and Ottawa, don’t belong there. Four of them have been shot down, including one taken down in an operation by NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canadian command that has been defending North American airspace since the early days of the Cold War. This is a first: Until last week, NORAD had never shot down anything.

• These facts don’t tell us very much, and with so much still unclear, the Biden administration isn’t sharing a whole lot at the moment. So let’s consider a few possibilities.

Security

=> ↺ You may want to run system updates, after a recent sudo security flaw

• It was pointed out to me recently in the GamingOnLinux Discord, that the sudo package recently had a security flaw, so time to check for updates.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Voice Actors Say AI Is Being Used to Fuel a Nightmarish Harassment Campaign

• Voice actors Zane Schacht and Tom Schalk were among several who were targeted by videos on Twitter containing faked audio that shared their home address while using racist slurs. Schacht, who has done voice work for properties like Fallout 4, told Gizmodo he and other voice actors were targeted after posting their outspoken antipathy toward generative AI. Schalk, who has done voices in several indie video games and animated series, also said the folks targeted by the malicious tweets had been outspoken on AI.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Sociotechnical harms (notes on Shelby et al. 2022)

• In short, we live in times when most digital technologies and digital systems work to reinforce and amplify existing social inequalities in a society. This is why the most vocal cheerleaders for increased digitisation are often those in privileged positions – white, middle-class, relatively well-off and relatively young. However, if you are someone who is black/ queer/ female/aging and living in a society where it is already disadvantageous to be black/ queer/ female/aging, then it makes sense to not expect new and emerging digital technologies to necessarily work in your best interests.

• These disparities are being increasingly acknowledged within computer science and technology circles – indeed, Shelby’s paper is rooted in the computing literature and authored by a large group of authors affiliated with Google. Based on a scoping review of 172 articles and frameworks from computing research, these authors systematically examine how computing researchers tend to conceptualise harms in algorithmic systems. This results in the identification of five major types of sociotechnical harm: [...]

=> ↺ Big Tech Hires Hundreds of Ex-Israeli Spies – Validated Independent News

• Unit 8200 made mainstream news last year after agents were caught spying on the world’s most rich and powerful. This incident was coined the “Pegasus scandal” and was responsible for leaking tens of thousands of politicians’ private information. The scandal also played a major role in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

=> ↺ US-China Tensions Escalate Amid Mutual Accusations of Surveillance

=> ↺ FBI Director Chris Wray Turns On The Charm, Tries To Convince Tech Companies He’s Not Their Enemy

• After years of portraying tech companies as havens for nerd antagonists, FBI Director Chris Wray is trying to build a few extremely belated bridges.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ As Pentagon Budget Nears $1 Trillion, Groups Tell Biden: Enough

• In response to reports that the Biden administration may propose the highest level of military spending in U.S. history for fiscal year 2024, a broad range of nearly 60 advocacy groups on Tuesday urged the White House to divert “some of our supersized Pentagon budget to better meet the needs of the American people.”

=> ↺ How the US crushed the struggle for a Somali nation

=> ↺ The Movement to Close Singapore’s Death Row

• Singapore—When Angelia Pranthaman and her older sister visit their brother in Singapore’s Changi prison, they take the midnight bus from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s an eight-hour journey to the border and costs about 150 ringgits ($35) for the round trip. Once in Singapore, they wait for another bus to the prison. The exchange rate—currently 1 ringgit to 0.30 Singapore cents—is always on Angelia’s mind. She works as a life insurance agent, but she and her family do not have much in savings. She splits costs for travel with her sister, and sometimes the rest of her family pitches in too.

=> ↺ Why Russia has failed to win the cyberwar in Ukraine

• This has not been for lack of trying. As NATO’s top intelligence official David Cattler explained in April, Russia used more destructive malware against Ukraine in the first quarter of 2022 “than the rest of the world’s cyber-powers combined typically use in a given year.” As soon as the conflict started, Russia attacked several Ukrainian government organizations and financial companies with a wiper (a type of malware designed to erase information). They also caused some institutional websites to collapse. The day before the start of the invasion, another wiper called AcidRain tried to disable the network of military satellites used by the Ukrainian army, an attack that failed thanks to the help of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system.

=> ↺ We Can’t Reduce the Ukraine War to a Morality Play

• “To defend civilization, defeat Russia.” Writing in the unfailingly bellicose Atlantic, an American academic of my acquaintance recently issued that dramatic call to arms. And lest there be any confusion about the stakes involved, the image accompanying his essay depicted Russian President Vladimir Putin with a Hitler mustache and haircut.

=> ↺ The Impact of the Anti-War Movement 20 Years After the US Invaded Iraq

• On February 15, 2003, in hundreds of cities across the world, some 10 million people demonstrated against the United States’ impending invasion of Iraq. By many accounts, it was the largest single day of anti-war protest in history. More than a million people jammed London’s center, while huge throngs marched in Rome, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, and Sydney. In New York City, hundreds of thousands braved the bitter cold to rally against the war. “The world says no to war” was the slogan and the reality.1

=> ↺ The Golden Rule Peace Boat and the Kings Bay Plowshares 7

• On Friday, February 7th, the Golden Rule peace boat gently sailed over sacred whale breeding grounds, with an ever respectful sense of protection to our beautiful fellow creatures, then bravely showed its sails entering St. Mary’s River of the historic town of St. Mary’s which joins the beautiful, yet ominous entrance of the East River. Along the East River exists the most deadly concentration of Ohio Class nuclear weapon laden submarines on the East Coast, if not the world, the Naval Submarine Base of Kings Bay.

=> ↺ Michigan State Student, Who Survived Sandy Hook Massacre a Decade Ago, Speaks Out

• Hours after a man opened fire on Monday night at two locations at Michigan State University, killing at least three students and injuring at least five, a 21-year-old student at the school posted a TikTok video to share that this was not the first mass shooting she’d survived.

=> ↺ NYC truck terror attacker fights to avoid death penalty over ethnic discrimination claims

• Saipov was convicted of carrying out the deadliest terror attack in New York City since Sept. 11 when he drove a truck down a bicycle and pedestrian path along the Hudson River in October 2017, killing eight people.

=> ↺ Man hurt in NYC bike path attack says he wanted death too

• They also have argued that Saipov, a citizen of Uzbekistan, remains dangerous and committed to terrorism, even while incarcerated.

=> ↺ 20 Years of Wars and 20 Years Standing for Peace

• From the passage of the AUMF to providing Ukraine with tanks, more than two decades of wars have hurtled by since the freezing cold morning when we got up, dressed in our warmest layers and braved the cold to board the bus at Town Hall and travel to New York City joining the millions on the day the world said no to war.

=> ↺ FSB claims having arrested Ukrainian “terrorist” who allegedly confessed of railway sabotage — Meduza

• The FSB press service has announced the arrest of a Ukrainian national suspected of sabotage on the Moscow railway.

=> ↺ Only 12 Russians received Ukrainian visas in latter half of 2022 — Meduza

• From the time Ukraine introduced a visa requirement for Russians entering the country in July 2022 to the end of the year, only 12 Russian citizens obtained Ukrainian visas, Meduza has learned from a source close to Ukraine’s leadership.

=> ↺ Ukrainian citizen sentenced to 16 years for espionage in Russia’s Tula region — Meduza

• A Tula court has sentenced a Ukrainian citizen to 16 years in prison on espionage charges, Russian state media reported on Wednesday.

=> ↺ Forensic Probe Confirms Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda Was Poisoned to Death After Pinochet Coup

• Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel poet laureate, diplomat, and leftist politician who died days after Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power in a 1973 U.S.-backed military coup, was poisoned to death, his nephew said Monday ahead of the expected publication of a new toxicology report later this week.

=> ↺ Force Design 2030 and Stifling Opposing Views

• To say that Force Design 2030 is a controversial plan to update the U.S. Marine Corps to meet the needs of future warfare would be a gross understatement. On December 21, 2022, the journal The Hill published an article titled “Reduce the Risk to National Security: Abandon ‘Force Design 2030’” by two retired U.S.M.C. generals, and they described FD2030 as follows: “Almost three years ago, the United States Marine Corps adopted a new, unproven concept to guide future combat developments. The overarching vision for the approach was codified in Force Design 2030. The path chosen focused almost entirely on a single threat — China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The strategy embraced was defensive, essentially arguing that the proliferation of precision munitions and advanced sensors had changed the character of war, rendering the defense decisively dominant over the offense. A ‘Mature Precision Strike Regime’ had made maneuver all but impossible. The Marine Corps now deemed defense the primary method for fighting peers, and even lesser rivals”.

=> ↺ More on the China Balloon Episode: Much Ado About Very Little

• We have just exited Phase 2 of the balloon incident. In Phase 1, “Discovery,” the Biden administration went into action mode on finding that a Chinese “spy” balloon had crossed over half the US. An air force jet shot the balloon down, displaying Cold War-style toughness with China. In Phase 2, “Evaluation,” new facts have emerged that shed further light on the episode. To wit:

• · US intelligence was aware of the balloon from the moment it entered US airspace. Intelligence officials did not consider the balloon a particularly threatening weapon, aware that at least four times in the recent past—including three on Trump’s watch—such intrusions had occurred, all without incident. In fact, senior Trump officials, by their own admission, were completely unaware of those incidents.

=> ↺ Blood, Money and Imperial War

• As we approach the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the only obvious certainty about the conflict is that some corporations are making a killing from the killing. Although there has been armed conflict in Ukraine since 2015, it wasn’t until the Russian invasion in 2022 that most western governments acknowledged the fact. Since that date in 2022, NATO governments and their cohorts have pumped tens of billions of dollars into the war. Despite this infusion of military aid, the conflict seems to be stalemated. Meanwhile, the clown prince of Kyiv–otherwise known as President Zelenskyy–continues his ostentatious and overblown solicitation of arms manufacturers and the governments that work for those manufacturers. It seems not a day goes by where Mr. Zelenskyy is not demanding more lethal and more numerous weapons and money. His demands border on the homicidal and reflect the reality of an arrogant and self-centered regime with a belligerent military alliance backing it up. Meanwhile, his allies in Washington, Berlin and London feed his government’s self-importance while they lose count of the Ukrainian dead.

• Calls for peace talks are rejected by the NATO powers almost before they make the news. These rejections are supported by social democrats, Green party bureaucrats, Democrats and Republicans, and certain elements of the socialist movement in the US and Europe. Somehow, this latter bunch have convinced themselves that this battle set up and conducted through the world’s greatest imperial government and its military alliance is a war for Ukrainian national liberation. World War One should have taught us that supporting one side or the other in a war between imperial governments is a foolhardy and bloody endeavor. As a point of order, even though I only address Washington and its co-conspirators in this piece, that doesn’t mean I consider Moscow without blame.

=> ↺ Moldova closes its airspace temporarily, due to ‘security concerns’ — Meduza

• Moldova has closed its airspace temporarily, due to “security concerns.” According to an AirMoldova update, it has since been reopened.

=> ↺ Norway intelligence chief: Russia’s military losses in Ukraine may lower nuclear escalation threshold — Meduza

• Russian land forces on the Kola Peninsula were reduced by 80 percent prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, said the chief of Norway’s Intelligence Service, Nils Andreas Stensønes, when speaking to The Barents Observer.

=> ↺ Russia’s Defense Ministry: Mobilization isn’t over, and here is why — Meduza

• In response to an official query from Pskov Legislature Deputy Artur Gaiduk, Russia’s Defense Ministry has issued a statement about the legal status of mobilization in the country.

=> ↺ War with China Is Not Inevitable: Jake Werner on How to Defuse Tensions Between Washington & Beijing

• We look at the state of U.S.-China relations after the U.S. shot down a suspected high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina last week. In recent days the U.S. has also shot down three additional objects flying at lower altitudes in northern Alaska, over Lake Huron and over the Yukon Territory in Canada. Meanwhile, China has accused the United States of flying surveillance balloons into Chinese airspace at least 10 times over the past year, which the Biden administration has denied. For more, we speak with Jake Werner, a historian of modern China and a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new piece for The Nation with William Hartung is titled “War With China Is Preventable, Not Inevitable.”

=> ↺ 2022 Was Worst Year for School Shootings “by Nearly Every Meaningful Measure”

=> ↺ Mike Pence Plans to Oppose DOJ Subpoena in Trump Investigation

=> ↺ The state of Russia’s offensive Wagner Group’s tactics near Bakhmut, destroyed Russian tanks by Vuhledar, and other updates to Meduza’s interactive combat map — Meduza

• Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Meduza has adopted a consistent antiwar position, holding Russia responsible for its military aggression and atrocities. As part of this commitment, we regularly update an interactive map that documents combat operations in Ukraine and the damage inflicted by Russia’s invasion forces. Our map is based exclusively on previously published open-source photos and videos, most of them posted by eyewitnesses on social media. We collect reports already available publicly and determine their geolocation markers, adding only the photos and videos that clear this process.

=> ↺ The U.S. Has 750 Overseas Military Bases, and Continues to Build More to Encircle China

• The United States struck a deal with the Philippines earlier this month to expand its military presence in its former colony to four additional bases, part of a years-long Pentagon buildup in the Asia-Pacific region meant to counter Chinese influence. The U.S. has about 750 overseas military bases in more than 80 countries, and Washington elites are pushing the country ever closer to conflict with China, says researcher David Vine. “I think the people of the United States absolutely do not want war,” says Vine. He is a professor of anthropology at American University and co-founder of the Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition.

=> ↺ Beware Militarism’s New Mega-Mergers

• It’s early in the new Congress, but lawmakers are already hotly debating spending and debt levels. As they do so, they risk losing track of an important issue hiding in plain sight: massive Pentagon waste. At least in theory, combating such excess could offer members of both parties common ground as they start the new budget cycle. But there are many obstacles to pursuing such a commonsense agenda.

=> ↺ Merger Mania in the Military-Industrial Complex

• Tackling Pentagon Waste Means Battling the Big Weapons Makers and Asking More of Congress.

=> ↺ An Interview With the Taliban

• After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States government, led by President George W. Bush, ordered the Taliban—then the rulers of Afghanistan—to give up Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The refusal of then-Taliban Emir Mullah Muhammad Omar to accept the Bush administration’s demands precipitated the beginning of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. The 20-year conflict, which claimed approximately 200,000 lives, came to an end in the summer of 2021. After President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of American troops, the Taliban managed to recapture most of the country and announced the restoration of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”1

=> ↺ Diana Johnstone: Demonstrate Together

• If the Feb. 19 rally to end the war in Ukraine fails it will not be a success for other antiwar organizations that disagree with the Libertarian Party. It will only show that internal divisions can unravel every hope.

=> ↺ Missing Links in Textbook History: Cold War Origins

• Original to ScheerPost Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you’re always afraid You step out of line, the man come and take you away  Buffalo Springfield “Somethings Happening Here” (1966) Paranoia may be the major ingredient in American Exceptionalism. Where else can a kid grow up in security […]

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Russia deports thousands of Ukrainian children. Investigators say that’s a war crime

• Gathering evidence of alleged war crimes has always been difficult. That part hasn’t changed.

• But now, open-source investigators have a trove of potential source material from on-the-ground witnesses who photograph war damage, map mass graves, record interviews with refugees — and post the results online. In addition, high-resolution satellite images make it easier than ever to identify deliberately damaged hospitals, targeted grain silos or local children’s summer camps.

• The Yale team are all young Internet sleuths who work to verify the data they dig up and document the steps needed to meet the exacting standards and protocols for trial.

Environment

=> ↺ Climate Groups Cheer Khanna, Whitehouse Bill to Tax Big Oil Windfall Profits

• In a move welcomed by climate campaigners, a pair of Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday reintroduced a Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax, legislation meant to take on corporate greed and “send relief to the American public.”

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Big Oil’s Trade Group Allies Outspent Clean Energy Groups by a Whopping 27x, With Billions in Ads and Lobbying To Keep Fossil Fuels Flowing

• The Conversation You’ve probably seen ads promoting gas and oil companies as the solutions to climate change. They’re meant to be inspiring and hopeful, with scenes of a green, clean future. But shiny ads are not all these companies do to protect their commercial interests in the […]

=> ↺ I Occupied Shell’s Ship to Hold Them Accountable

• As a farmworker in Applegate, Oregon, I learned the delicate balance of nature. Water, soil, air, and countless other factors all play their role in creating life. From season to season I saw how even small changes would affect the health of the crops. But the changes in recent years have been anything but small. Today, that farm’s once lush, fertile fields are dry and arid, a victim of extreme drought brought on by the climate crisis.

=> ↺ A Viper’s Nest of Conflicts and Intrigue

• Sam Bankman-Fried, BlockFi and Sullivan & Cromwell

• On December 21, Big Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell filed a conflict disclosure with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, where it was hoping to be officially appointed as lead counsel for the bankruptcy estate of Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed crypto house of cards – FTX, Alameda Research and its more than 100 opaque affiliates. Judge John Dorsey signed the order making Sullivan & Cromwell lead counsel on January 20, despite a mind-numbing list of conflicts of interests, including extensive past legal work for the FTX group and personal legal work for its now indicted kingpin, Sam Bankman-Fried. The disclosure showed that in addition to FTX and Alameda Research, Sullivan & Cromwell had 10 other current crypto clients, including four major crypto competitors to FTX — BlockFi, Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ We pulled pandas back from the brink of extinction. Meanwhile, the rest of nature collapsed.

• But if giant pandas are mascots for endangered species, then their team is, so to speak, losing. In the time that environmental advocates were saving pandas, much of the rest of the planet’s wildlife continued to deteriorate. The world now faces an unprecedented and accelerating crisis of biodiversity loss, with more than 1 million species at risk of extinction. Forests are quieter. The oceans are emptier.

• The story of the panda is, in a sense, a story of success. Tales of rebounding animal populations are rare. But it carries with it a warning: The model of conservation that lifted up pandas won’t work to save everything else.

=> ↺ Oregon’s Blue Mountains: Opportunities for Carbon Storage and Wildlands Preservation

• The Blue Mountains Complex of Oregon stretches east to west from the Snake River to the Cascades. The Blue Mountain Complex is made up of sub-ranges, including the Wallowa, Elkhorns, Strawberries, Aldrich, and Ochoco.

• These forests must be preserved for biodiversity, and carbon storage. Notwithstanding that the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon’s largest protected area, lies within the complex, the Blue Mountains Complex still has some of the lowest percentages of designated wilderness or other protected landscape of any ecoregion in the state of Oregon.

Finance

=> ↺ A Standing Provocation: The Right’s Ploy to Overthrow Student Debt Relief

• College graduates saddled with student debt not only must cope with tightly constrained budgets; they also need to navigate a convoluted and sometimes capricious loan-repayment bureaucracy. But even they may be taken aback by the audacity of two cases currently pending before the Supreme Court that Republicans and their allies have filed to overturn the Biden administration’s invocation of executive emergency powers to forgive student debt. In seeking to reverse this landmark bid to provide desperately needed income support to college graduates trying to regain their footing in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the plaintiffs are gambling that the Supreme Court’s hyper-conservative super-majority will grant them legal standing despite their tenuous connection to the legal claims they assert.

=> ↺ Sanders Says His New Bill to Raise Teacher Pay Could Be Fully Funded by Taxing Rich Estates

• Sen. Bernie Sanders announced this week that he will soon introduce legislation to set the minimum annual salary for U.S. public school teachers at $60,000, a change the senator said could be fully financed with progressive changes to the estate tax.

=> ↺ Tesla Workers Are Organizing a Union in Buffalo—With Help From Starbucks Veterans

• Tesla workers at a factory in Buffalo, New York told billionaire chief executive officer Elon Musk in an early Tuesday email that they are seeking to form the electric vehicle manufacturer’s first-ever union.

=> ↺ Why We Must Defend SNAP to Combat Hunger in the US

• The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our nation’s most effective tool for combating hunger. It plays a critical role in reducing poverty, improving health and economic outcomes, supporting people who are paid low wages, and serving as the first line of defense against hunger during economic downturns. Access to SNAP provides families with the money they need to purchase groceries, freeing up their limited resources to spend more on other basic needs such as housing, utilities, and medical and child care.

=> ↺ Oxfam Calls Updated EU Tax Haven Blacklist Nothing But a ‘Joke List’

• International anti-poverty organization Oxfam on Tuesday called an update to the European Union’s list of tax havens a “joke,” saying no inventory that excludes “countries with zero corporate tax rates” and countries within the E.U. can be taken seriously as a true accounting of the places used by the ultrawealthy to avoid taxes.

=> ↺ Warren Calls for Ban on Stock Buybacks by Subsidized Semiconductor Companies

=> ↺ Sanders-Warren Plan Would Expand Social Security by Taxing the Rich

=> ↺ State Legislators Can Finally Make Billionaires Pay What They Owe

• For decades, billionaires have rigged the rules in their favor at the state and federal level to avoid paying what they owe in taxes while working people have paid the price. With the active support of politicians who depend on them to fund their campaigns, the rich just keep getting richer. During the Covid-19 pandemic alone, the world’s ten richest men vastly expanded their fortunes to $1.5 trillion by gouging prices, taking advantage of a global crisis, and denying fair wages to workers.Last month, state legislators and grassroots organizations from eight states banded together to say “enough” and launched the first-ever multi-state effort to pass wealth tax bills across the country, and foster a fair shake economy where all families from all backgrounds have the freedom to thrive. In California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Maryland, and Washington, they introduced legislation to finally make billionaires pay what they owe toward making healthcare, education, and many other essential needs accessible to all of us. We’re now calling on lawmakers in the remaining 42 states to join this nationwide effort and do the same in their own legislatures. No longer should a handful of billionaires be able to rig the rules to redirect resources from our communities to their country clubs, from our classrooms to their ballrooms, and from our public parks to their private jets.We’re seeing the results of rising income inequality every single day — in overcrowded classrooms, car-sized potholes on our streets, a healthcare system that puts people in debt at the most difficult times of their lives, and communities that have become unlivable due to rising costs and generations of underinvestment. The solution to this is obvious: unrig the rules and tax the ultrarich. But with Congress in gridlock, states must assume the responsibility of putting a check on billionaires and wealthy corporations.

=> ↺ A Step Towards Greater Financial Autonomy

• Argentina and Brazil are striving for a common currency. Such a union could boost regional trade and lead to more independence from the US.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Hungarian government doesn’t accept Strasbourg ruling about Hungarian electoral rules being unlawful

=> ↺ Nathan J. Robinson’s “Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments”

• Likewise, the general conservative pessimism that reform isn’t possible – bad regulations can’t be replaced with good ones, bad working conditions can’t be improved through unionization. These arguments are repeated again and again, impervious to evidence.

=> ↺ Joe Biden Is Embracing His Inner FDR

• Joe Biden is, most emphatically, not a socialist. When Donald Trump tried to paint Biden as a “radical socialist” during the fall campaign of 2020, Biden noted that he had gained the Democratic nomination by beating an actual democratic socialist, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. “I beat the socialist,” Biden said during a campaign swing through Wisconsin. “That’s how I got elected. That’s how I got the nomination. Do I look like a socialist? Look at my career—my whole career. I am not a socialist.”1

=> ↺ Nicola Sturgeon – Used and Discarded

• Nicola Sturgeon is discarded, having served her purpose for the British Establishment once she obtained the UK Supreme Court judgment that Scotland could not hold a referendum on Independence.

=> ↺ Trump-Supporting, Far-Right Nikki Haley ‘No Moderate,’ Warn Progressives

• Following former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s launch of her 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday, progressives cautioned that while the Republican has spent years cultivating a so-called “moderate” public persona, her policy positions make it abundantly clear that as president, she would promote a right-wing agenda similar to the Trump administration, in which she served for nearly two years.

=> ↺ Haley Is Running for President — Polls Show It’s Near Impossible for Her to Win

=> ↺ ‘How many more idiots are there?’ – Hungarian EU Commissioner at the EP

=> ↺ Conservative Contradictions Stacking Up

=> ↺ An Open Letter to President Biden on Optimism of the State of Union 2023

• I listened to your prideful nationalism in the State of the Union address with stunned disbelief, wondering how such sentiments could have slipped by your entourage of previously reliable self-censoring staffers. When I received a private email text the next morning featuring your words, I was perplexed and disturbed. I began to understand better your intentions when it turned out that this follow up was one more in an endless succession of daily appeals from Democratic leaders for money to support the Democratic Party, with even a listing of proposed pledge amounts.  These are the most offending words drawn from your long presidential address, which you seem in the process of adopting as a theme heading into the anticipated 2024 fight to govern increasingly ungovernable America:

• If I had been a person of color, an indigenous survivor, or just poor, I might have wondered whether your inappropriate message was after all intended as dark comedy. In a spirit of arrogant empathy, I yielded to the temptation to edit this passage of yours in the following way: “I’ve never been more pessimistic about the future of America. We’re a nation tainted by a weak soul, a racist, patrioteering backbone, and a seemingly endless love affair with guns, war, and militarism. We could do better if we try finally to do our best to remedy the sins of the past and failures of the present.  In the spirit of long overdue and solemn remembrance I call upon all citizens to take steps to erase these national memories of who we were by transferring some of future expenditures from future annual military budgets to a reparations trust fund for the benefit of past and present victims of slavery, ethnic cleansing, and official forms of racism. If we want to be serious about overcoming this tainted past of our country we must also become more positively engaged in the wider planetary struggles for justice and species survival. It would be an embrace of futility to suppose that we can currently meet these challenges by acting together as a nation when we cannot even cooperate at home, much less internationally, for the global common good. If I am to speak realistically, I would have to admit that we seem to be able to act together only when comes to waging war or preparing for it with real or imagined adversaries.”

=> ↺ Because The U.S. Is Too Corrupt To Pass Privacy Legislation, Data Brokers Increasingly Traffic In Sensitive Mental Health Data

• We’ve noted for a long while that the performative hysteria surrounding TikTok is basically a giant distraction from our failures on consumer protection and privacy legislation.

=> ↺ Twitter’s Remaining Engineers Appear To Solve Elon Musk’s Complaint That His Tweets Aren’t Getting Enough Views By… Making The Algorithm Forcefeed All Of Elon’s Tweets To Everyone

• Last week we highlighted an amazing story of how Elon apparently threw a tantrum at Twitter HQ because the amount of “engagement” on his tweets was declining. Also in that article were details about how Musk sends engineers totally random bullshit requests all the time and they feel they have to deal with it, dropping whatever else they might be working on.

=> ↺ Techdirt Podcast Episode 343: Congress v. Twitter

• We’ve got a double-header of cross-post episodes for you this week! Recently, Mike joined two different podcasts to discuss Congress’s response to the Twitter Files and the dumpster fire of a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee: The New Abnormal podcast from the Daily Beast, and The Sunday Show podcast from Tech Policy Press. You can listen to both conversations back-to-back right here in today’s extra-long episode.

=> ↺ ‘I never settled things this way’: Khabarovsk’s ex-governor just got 22 years in prison, but his case was riddled with conflicts of interest — Meduza

• Last week, Sergey Furgal, the former governor of the Khabarovsk region in Russia’s Far East, was sentenced to 22 years in a high-security prison, allegedly for commissioning two murders and an unsuccessful murder attempt while doing business roughly two decades ago. Several other defendants were also sentenced to 9.5–17 years in prison, in a case that was marked by a lack of conclusive material evidence and massively compromised by conflicts of interest. Meduza breaks down how prosecutors established Furgal’s “guilt” using a mixture of insinuations about real organized crime in the Khabarovsk region and a web of dubious witnesses.

=> ↺ Russia’s long game A civil-military relations expert explains why the Kremlin may be prepared to wage war in Ukraine for years to come — Meduza

• Analysts, researchers, and even the head of the CIA (according to German media reports) believe that Vladimir Putin is confident (despite failures on the battlefield, so far) that Russia will ultimately win the war against Ukraine. Consequently, some experts think Moscow will be willing to continue fighting for at least several more years. Ukraine’s Western allies have repeatedly vowed to support Kyiv for “as long as it takes,” but that’s surely easier said than done. For a better understanding of what the outcomes of such a long war might be, Meduza spoke to a Russian politics researcher who is a member of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society and holds a Ph.D. from Central European University. As a security measure, given our new designation as an “undesirable” organization under Russian law, we’ve omitted his name from this article.

=> ↺ FCC Nominee Sohn Faces Third Hearing As Democrats Dawdle, The GOP Obstructs, And A Sleazy Telecom Industry Smear Campaign Continues

• Telecom and media giants have been working overtime to block Gigi Sohn from being seated at the FCC. That has involved a sleazy smear campaign, seeded in the press by non-profits linked to companies like News Corporation, AT&T, and Comcast, falsely accusing Sohn of being a radical extremist who hates Hispanics, rural Americans, cops, puppies, and freedom.

=> ↺ Mexico’s AMLO Announces Campaign Against US Blockage of Cuba, Denounces Neoliberalism

• President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Mexico will lead an international movement to end the US government’s “inhumane” blockade against Cuba. Praising Fidel Castro as a “visionary”, AMLO denounced neoliberalism and pledged support for universal public healthcare and education.

=> ↺ Chomsky and Prashad: Cuba Is Not a State Sponsor of Terrorism

• The inclusion of Cuba on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list has further restricted its ability to purchase essential goods for its population.

=> ↺ Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau Cuts City’s Ties With Israel Over ‘Crime of Apartheid’

• “We cannot be silent,” said Colau.

=> ↺ Russian parliament to hold unscheduled meeting on February 22 — Meduza

• Russia’s parliament will hold an unscheduled meeting on February 22, Russian state media reported on Wednesday, citing a source from the parliament’s upper chamber, the Federation Council.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Patrick Lawrence: Objectivity and Its Discontents

• Look, it is one thing for reporters and line editors to abandon the fundamental principle of objectivity as they hurl their hatchets at those who provoke their prejudices—Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, this, that or the other governor or senator, this, that, or the other dissident. It is greatly, […]

=> ↺ Hersh, the US and the Sabotage of the Nordstream Pipelines

• The revelations contained Seymour Hersh’s analysis of the evidence pointing to US authorship of the blowing up of the  Nordstream pipelines[1] is compelling, and in a normal world this would cause a governmental crisis, a condemnation of the terror attack by the US Congress, a call for an internal investigation into illegal activities by the CIA and Pentagon, an international investigation under UN auspices, a cautious statement by the UN Secretary-General, a Protest by the United Nations Environmental Programme, a generalized media uprising, and even require the Biden Administration to step down in the light of the magnitude of the gross violation of the UN Charter and international treaties.

• It is mind-boggling:  The country that claims to be a defender of international law engages is a brazen terror operation conducted in the name of the American people, who certainly would oppose the US government involvement in false flag operations and outright State terrorism.

=> ↺ Russia-Ukraine war: US dismisses ‘utterly false’ report on Nord Stream pipeline bombings

• A bombshell report claiming the United States was responsible for the bombing of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year has been blasted as “utterly false” by the White House.

• Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with The New York Times and New Yorker, made the explosive claim on Wednesday in his first piece for the Substack blogging platform.

=> ↺ How “Gaslighting” and “Oligarchs” Came to Rank as Top Words of the Year

=> ↺ New Leaks Reveal DHS’s Plans to Regulate Disinformation Online – Validated Independent News

• Records seized in a lawsuit filed by Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s Attorney General, show how the US government is using its power and influence to shape narratives online. The leaked records from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency’s (CISA) Cybersecurity Advisory Committee show various discussions involving the range and limits of US influence in online discourse, as well as conversations surrounding strategies to successfully remove requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ As Right Media Hail DeSantis as ‘Woke’ Killer, Centrists Admire His Brand

• The College Board has “purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism” from its Advanced Placement African-American studies curriculum after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—and likely Republican presidential candidate—moved to ban the curriculum in public schools (New York Times, 2/1/23).

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ ‘I am challenged at the court for simply doing my job’: Journalists covering climate issues in Europe face growing threats

• Skyrocketing temperatures and catastrophic flooding have hammered home the realities of climate change in Europe, making environmental coverage one of the continent’s most important beats. It’s also an increasingly dangerous one as journalists face legal and physical harassment for reporting on polluters, amid other concerns. Of course, Europe isn’t the only place where journalists find themselves under threat for covering the environment; British journalist Dom Phillips was murdered in the Brazilian Amazon in one of the most high-profile killings of last year.

• To better understand the challenges they face, CPJ interviewed three European journalists who experienced physical violence, lawsuits, and backlash while reporting on these issues. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

=> ↺ Siberian journalist Maria Ponomarenko sentenced to six years on ‘disinformation’ charges for posts about Russia’s Mariupol theater strike — Meduza

• A Barnaul court has sentenced journalist Maria Ponomarenko to six years in prison on charges of spreading “false information” about the Russian army, according to her employer, the Siberian outlet RusNews. The court also banned Ponomarenko from working as a journalist for five years.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Hasna A. denies having kept a Yazidi woman as a slave

• It is the first time that someone in the Netherlands has been tried for a crime committed against Yazidis, a religious and ethnic Kurdish minority mainly living in northern Iraq. “Today is a special day that the Yazidi community has been waiting for for a long time,” the prosecutor said. “The Yazidi community has been completely disrupted, displaced and traumatized by the actions of IS. IS treated Yazidis as if they were disenfranchised objects with which you could do anything.”

=> ↺ A Virtual Reality Sex Worker Was Denied Entry to the U.S. for ‘Prostitution’

• Hex had plans to travel from the UK to visit her friends in the U.S. this year, and applied for a tourist visa. But in late January, she said, she received a letter stating that she was permanently ineligible for admission to the U.S. The reason given was the code for “prostitution.”

• “My reaction to the notice was honestly ‘what the hell? How is this possible? What I’m doing is completely legal,’” she told Motherboard. “I was very upset and confused, it baffled me completely and it still does.”

=> ↺ Arkansas Proposes Requiring ID to Watch Porn Online

• Senate Bill 66, the Protection of Minors from Distribution of Harmful Material Act, would require anyone in Arkansas to provide a “digitized identification card” before viewing a site that contains more than 33.33 percent of “harmful material.” That arbitrarily-defined number, and the language of the bill itself, is a copycat of a recently-enacted law in Louisiana that blocks people from seeing porn if they don’t hand over official identification.

=> ↺ New York’s Incarcerated Population Forced To Work Dangerous Jobs For “Slave” Wages During COVID-19 Pandemic – Validated Independent News

• Seven states have overturned laws allowing slave labor in prisons, which is exempt under the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery. Currently, New York’s state constitution does not protect the rights of incarcerated workers, nor does it offer any provisions for slavery.

=> ↺ Elon Musk Aids US Regime-Change Efforts in Iran – Validated Independent News

• This is not Musk’s first attempt at aiding in Washington’s effort to weaken or overthrow authorities in Tehran. Last year, the tech giant responded to a tweet from Secretary Anthony Blinken about taking action against internet censorship by tweeting, “Activating Starlink.” On the surface, it may seem like a positive attempt to inspire change in the region, but history has shown the US does not have a good track record spreading “freedom” across the Middle East. Moreover, it is an opportunity for Musk to make headlines and sell his products—a 2-for-1 deal for both Tesla and the US government.

=> ↺ After their genitals were cut, some women search for healing

• A global target aims to eradicate the deeply entrenched practice by 2030, and protect the next generations of girls, though campaigners acknowledge the difficulties in achieving that. The United Nations has designated an International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, or FGM, observed every Feb. 6.

=> ↺ Liberia: Banning FGM in Montserrado County is Commendable, But Don’t Forget the Other Counties

• In a groundbreaking declaration made on the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, Chief Zanzar Zanzan, head of the Traditional Council of Liberia, with the authorization of 15 paramount Chiefs across Liberia declared, “By the power vested in me by all the Paramount Chiefs of the 15 political divisions in Liberia and signed by myself… FGM is banned in Liberia.”

=> ↺ How Governor Sakaja’s Wife Beatrice Escaped FGM By Whisker

• “My mother told me FGM was one of the harmful cultural practices in my community. She confessed that I had actually escaped the cut by a whisker, after she stood firm against my grandmother’s push to have me circumcised,” she said.

• Beatrice spoke during the launch of a pilot programme to address FGM among the Somali community members in Eastleigh, Nairobi.

• The initiative is dubbed Hoiyo Haigoynin, meaning ‘Mum don’t cut me’.

=> ↺ I Wanted to Attend a Specialized High School. Imposter Syndrome Almost Stopped Me.

• “OK class, we’re about to transition to community meeting,” announced my 4th grade teacher. “On my count. One!”

=> ↺ For Decades, the Ojibwe Tribe Shunned Scientists—Until Their Partnership Became Vital

• On a warm August afternoon in 2019, University of Minnesota professor Crystal Ng, along with a handful of environmental science colleagues and students, launched a flotilla of kayaks and canoes down a slow-moving river in northern Wisconsin. The group was taking time out of its tight research schedule to follow Joe Graveen and Eric Chapman, natural resource managers for the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe reservation, to a spot where wild rice, against all odds, was flourishing.

=> ↺ Portland Took Cops Out of Schools in 2020. Now It May Put Them Back.

=> ↺ Tesla Workers in Buffalo Are Unionizing, With Help From Starbucks Unionists

=> ↺ Police Accountability Is a ‘Non-Starter’ Without Discarding the Qualified Immunity Doctrine

• Some reps in Congress assert that dismantling qualified immunity (“QI”)—a police officer’s so-called good faith defense to a civil rights lawsuit—is a “non-starter” in negotiations to pass the George Floyd Civil Rights Act. In reality, meaningful police accountability is a non-starter without discarding QI. QI is a regressive framework which […]

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ ‘Absurd’: Telecom Puppet Ajit Pai Was Confirmed to FCC, So Why Not Gigi Sohn?

• The U.S. Senate’s refusal to confirm Gigi Sohn in the nearly 500 days since President Joe Biden first nominated her to the Federal Communications Commission stands in stark contrast to the chamber’s treatment of other candidates, including Ajit Pai.

=> ↺ Report Shows Comcast Continues To Lie About Its Broadband Coverage

• As we’ve noted a few times now, U.S. taxpayers have doled out more than $400 million to map broadband access, yet regulators are still struggling to get it right. U.S. ISPs routinely overstate broadband availability and coverage, and they’ve historically challenged efforts to improve broadband maps lest it truly illustrate the downsides of monopoly power and limited competition.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Hala Essalmawi — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 2

• Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage.  Hala is the Head of the Legal Department at the Library of Alexandria. With more than 25 years of experience she has worked on IP and Copyright issues around the world with her work the library and with WIPO.

=> ↺ Extreme-Down: ACE Shuts Down Major Pirate Site After 15 Years of Resilience

• After being targeted in French courts by movie companies, blocked by French ISPs, and then deindexed by Google, illegal streaming/DDL site Extreme-Down burned domain after domain in an effort to stay in the game. Ending 15 years of resilience, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has shut down the site following a mission to Africa.

=> ↺ Bungie Requests $12 Million in Damages from Veterancheats

• Game developer Bungie has requested a default judgment against the Romanian operator of Veterancheats, who failed to appear in court after being sued two years ago. Cheaters are unskilled and unethical players who ruin games for others, Bungie notes. The company requests over $12 million in damages for the various Destiny 2 hacks the site sold.

=> ↺ IPTV Piracy: Cloudflare Says Thousands of Legal Sites Blocked Multiple Times

• In submissions to the European Commission, rightsholders insist that intermediaries must kill pirate IPTV streams within minutes and proactive internet blocking should be ramped up across Europe. In its submission to the EC, Cloudflare reveals that a voluntary site-blocking program in a member state saw an ISP block thousands of entirely legal sites, on several separate occasions.

=> ↺ In A World Where AI Art Is Cheap And Easy To Generate, Do We Still Need Copyright?

• To say that AI-generated art is controversial would be something of an understatement. The appearance last year of free tools like Stable Diffusion has not just thrown the world of art into turmoil, it has raised profound questions about the nature of human creativity. AI art also involves thorny issues of copyright that have piqued the interest of lawyers, who sense an opportunity to sue tech companies for large sums.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

=> ↺ Modern AI and the end of privacy

• When you think about it, the gigacorps currently developing consumer-facing AI chatbots are also the same companies which are spying the most heavily on our private life.

• Well, it’s obvious because every single company is now trying to spy on you as much as it can and gathering so much data that they can’t even handle it (no later than last week, I have asked to be removed from some shop databases, received a reply telling me that everything was erased yet I’m still receiving daily spam from them). Companies have so many data, duplicated in many backups, they don’t even know what to do with it.

• And those data, sooner or later, will be used to train AI. In fact, they already were for years: look no further than reply suggestions from Gmail.

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