● 02.17.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 17/02/2023: More Linux Phones and GNU Lightning 2.2.1

Posted in News Roundup at 9:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Jiri Eischmann: How is Linux used by FIT BUT students

• The Faculty of Information Technology of Brno University of Technology is one of the two top computer science schools in Brno, Czech Republic. Our development office of Red Hat has intensive cooperation with them including educating students about Linux and open source software. To find out more about how they use Linux, we ran a survey that collected answers from 176 students which is a pretty good sample. I promised to share results publicly, so here they are:

• The following chart shows the distribution of responders by year of school. The survey was primarily targeting students in the first year which is why they make up over 50% of the responses.

• [...]

• We also asked students what prevents them from using Linux primarily. By far the most frequent answer (80%) was “Software I use is not available for Linux”, followed by “I don’t like the UX and logic of the OS” (28%) and “Compatibility with my hardware” (11%). Some students also responded that they simply hadn’t had enough time to get familiar with Linux and are staying with what they know. Other reasons were marginal.

Applications

=> ↺ List of Git GUI applications for Linux

=> ↺ Linux GUI text editors

=> ↺ Linux GUI network managers

=> ↺ Linux Performance Optimization: Tools and Techniques

=> ↺ Graphical user interface (GUI) applications for managing MySQL

=> ↺ Croc: Easily Share Files Between Computers

• croc is a tool that allows any two computers to simply and securely transfer files and folders. AFAIK, croc is the only CLI file-transfer tool that does all of the following:

• • allows any two computers to transfer data (using a relay)

• • provides end-to-end encryption (using PAKE)

• • enables easy cross-platform transfers

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Downgrading a Package via apt-get

• Yes! That’s totally possible. You can downgrade a recently updated package using the apt command in Ubuntu and Debian based distros. Here’s how to do that.

=> ↺ Install Portainer Docker UI Web Interface on Ubuntu 22.04

• To install the Portainer Docker UI Web Interface on Ubuntu 22.04, pull the latest version of the Portainer image from Docker Hub and install it in the system.

=> ↺ Setup Docker Private Registry on Ubuntu

• To set up a private Docker registry on Ubuntu, pull the “registry” image from Docker Hub and set up the docker private registry in the system.

=> ↺ Install and Use Rancher on Ubuntu

• To install Rancher on Ubuntu, execute the “docker run -d –restart=unless-stopped -p 8080:8080 rancher/server:stable” command.

=> ↺ Fixing the ‘Cannot Open Display’ Error on Linux

=> ↺ Solving the ‘Segmentation Fault’ Error on Linux

=> ↺ Troubleshooting the ‘Disk Full’ Error on Linux Systems

=> ↺ How to install tar.gz file on Linux

=> ↺ How to setup Linux Apache Mysql Python server

=> ↺ How to Boost FPS in Linux?

• To boost FPS, you can “upgrade hardware”, “optimize system settings”, “update drivers”, use “game-specific optimization tools” and “stop unnecessary services”.

=> ↺ Setting up Kali Linux on AWS EC2

• To set up Kali Linux in an AWS EC2 Virtual Machine, simply use the Kali Linux AMI while creating the EC2 instance. Follow this guide for details.

=> ↺ How to Install Docker on Debian 11 (Bullseye): The Easy Way

• Learn how to easily install Docker on Debian 11 (Bullseye) with our detailed step-by-step guide, so get up and running in no time!

=> ↺ How to tackle multiple tasks at once on Ubuntu 22.04

• Got a ton of stuff on your plate? Running Ubuntu 22.04 and feeling overwhelmed by all the tasks you need to get done? Well, you’re in luck! With a little know-how, you can run multiple tasks at once on Ubuntu 22.04.

Games

=> ↺ 14 Open Source Free First-Person Shooter FPS Games for Linux, Windows, and macOS

• While there are dozens of closed-source none-free first-person shooter games, open-source community was busy for decades to offer open source alternatives.

• Here in this list we compiled a list of the best competitive single- and multi-player FPS games for Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

FOSS communities: You don’t need to yellThis is kind of open letter I suppose. I’ve seen a lot of similar stuff happen in other projects too, like GNOME. So I wanted to write down what happened to me and my inbox today. It’s written in my perspective, but I’m sure many can sympathize. And I sympathize with them.You don’t need to yellKDE Plasma 5.27 landed with my outline change that I made for accessibility reasons mostly. You can read more about it in here: https://www.akselmo.dev/2022/10/31/I-made-outlines-for-KDE-Breeze.htmlThey certainly have been dividing opinions. I think that’s fine. I do enjoy good critique and discussion: It’s how things get better!However, what I don’t enjoy is:Getting my blog comments spammed with “Revert the outlines, they’re ugly”Asking people to send developers angry messagesActing like an complete ass, then hiding behind the whole “but it was critique!” facade.[...]

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Felix Häcker: #83 Sharing Is Caring

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from February 10 to February 17.

• [...]

=> ↺ Sam Thursfield: Status update, 17/02/2022

• This month I attended FOSDEM for the first time since 2017. In addition to eating 4 delicious waffles, I had the honour of presenting two talks, the first in the Testing & Automation devroom on Setting up OpenQA testing for GNOME.

• GNOME’s initial OpenQA testing is mostly implemented now and it’s already found its first real bug. The next step is getting more folk interested within GNOME, so we can ensure ongoing maintenance of the tests and infra, and ensure a bus factor of > 1. If you see me at GUADEC then I will probably talk to you about OpenQA, be prepared!!

• My second talk was in the Python devroom, on DIY music recommendations. I intermittently develop a set of playlist generation tools named Calliope, and this talk was mostly aiming to inspire people to start similar fun & small projects, using simple AI techniques that you can learn in a weekend, and taking advantage of the amazing resource that is Musicbrainz. It seemed to indeed inspire some of the audience and led to an interesting chat with Rob Kaye of the Metabrainz Foundation – there is more cool stuff on the way from them.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Zig Bits 0×1: Returning slices from functions

• I decided to start a new blog series called “Zig Bits” where I share interesting bits of information about the Zig programming language. It is written especially for beginners because I’m also a beginner.

=> ↺ The langpack PETs are gone

• I have imported part of L18L’s German langpack to woofQ:

• https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/a6c66b0105dc6e0e8e226232d032cf28c6df151a

• The de langpack was last updated in 2020, so some updating is going to be required.

• All langpack PETs in the noarch repository have now been removed:

• https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/716697979220baca96e1b96c547a9297175f9f46

• They are still on ibiblio.org, won’t be actually deleted until I perform an rsync.

BSD

=> ↺ Funny BSD Pictures

• AKA Funny Programming Pictures Part XXIV

=> ↺ helloSystem: A New, Promising Macintosh-like Free Desktop OS

• helloSystem is a completely new desktop operating system based on FreeBSD. It is created by the founder of AppImage technology for GNU/Linux, Simon Peter, a software developer from Germany. Its look and feel mostly designed to be like MacOS but ten times simpler. The application packages are also bundles too similar to AppImages we often use on Ubuntu. We are fans of AppImage and we would love to try out the helloSystem even though now it’s still in alpha development stage. A good news for everyone is that it is Free/Libre Open Source Software and the project allows everyone to participate in the development. You can read the rest of our little adventure in this article. Happy reading!

Fedora Family / IBM

Tomasz Torcz: Migrated home server to the UEFI bootI’ve migrated my home server to boot using UEFI. It means suprising number of things:I did something useful during my unplanned PTO days [...] [...]I can unsubscribe from BIOS Boot SIG, as this was my last legacy-booting computer. The SIG mailing list is completely empty, apparently all the ruckus with needing BIOS booting within Fedora has no real standing.

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly Update – Week 7 2023

• This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

• We provide you both infographics and text versions of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in-depth details look at the infographic.

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2023-07

• Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

• I have weekly office hours most Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time). Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

Fedora Magazine ☛ Fedora Magazine: Working with Btrfs – CompressionThis article will explore transparent filesystem compression in Btrfs and how it can help with saving storage space. This is part of a series that takes a closer look at Btrfs, the default filesystem for Fedora Workstation, and Fedora Silverblue since Fedora Linux 33.In case you missed it, here’s the previous article from this series: https://fedoramagazine.org/working-with-btrfs-snapshots[...]Not all files compress equally well. Modern multimedia formats such as images or movies compress their contents already and don’t compress well beyond that.The script performs each compression and decompression exactly once. Running it repeatedly on the same input file will generate slightly different outputs. Hence, the times should be understood as estimates, rather than an exact measurement.Given the numbers in my output, I decided to use the zstd compression algorithm with compression level 3 on my systems. Depending on your needs, you may want to choose higher compression levels (for example, if your storage devices are comparatively slow). To get an estimate of the achievable read/write speeds, you can divide the source archives size (about 260 MB) by the (de)compression times.[...]ConclusionThis article detailed transparent filesystem compression in Btrfs. It is a built-in, comparatively cheap, way to get some extra storage space out of existing hardware without needing modifications.

Debian Family

Enrico Zini: Monitoring a heart rate monitorI bought myself a cheap wearable Bluetooth LE heart rate monitor in order to play with it, and this is a simple Python script to monitor it and plot data.[...]Things I learnt:The UUID for the heart rate interface starts with 00002a37.The UUID for checking battery status starts with 00002a19.A longer list of UUIDs is here.The layout of heart rate data packets and some Python code to parse themWhat are RR values

=> ↺ Gunnar Wolf: We are GREAT at handling multimedia!

• I have mentioned several times in this blog, as well as by other communication means, that I am very happy with the laptop I bought (used) about a year and a half ago: an ARM-based Lenovo Yoga C630.

• Yes, I knew from the very beginning that using this laptop would pose a challenge to me in many ways, as full hardware support for ARM laptops are nowhere as easy as for plain boring x86 systems. But the advantages far outweigh the inconvenience (i.e. the hoops I had to jump through to handle video-out when I started teaching presentially, which are fortunately a thing of the past now).

• Anyway — This post is not about my laptop.

• Back in 2018, I was honored to be appointed as a member of the Debian Technical Committee. Of course, that meant (due to the very clear and clever point 6.2.7.1 of the Debian Constitution that my tenure in the Committee (as well as Niko Tyni’s) finished in January 1, 2023. We were invited to take part of a Jitsi call as a last meeting, as well as to welcome Matthew Garrett to the Committee.

• Of course, I arranged so I would be calling from my desktop system at work (for which I have an old, terrible webcam — but as long as I don’t need to control screen sharing too finely, mostly works). Out of eight people in the call, two had complete or quite crippling failures with their multimedia setup, and one had a frozen image (at least as far as I could tell).

=> ↺ Jonathan McDowell: First impressions of the VisionFive 2

• Back in September last year I chose to back the StarFive VisionFive 2 on Kickstarter. I don’t have a particular use in mind for it, but I felt it was one of the first RISC-V systems that were relatively capable (mentally I have it as somewhere between a Raspberry Pi 3 + a Pi 4). In particular it’s a quad 1.5GHz 64-bit RISC-V core with 8G RAM, USB3, GigE ethernet and a single M.2 PCIe slot. More than ample as a personal machine for playing around with RISC-V and doing local builds. I ended up paying £67 for the Early Bird variant (dual GigE ethernet rather than 1 x 100Mb and 1 x GigE). A couple of weeks ago I got an email with a tracking number and last week it finally turned up.

• Being impatient the first thing I did was plug it into a monitor, connect up a keyboard, and power it on. Nothing except some flashing lights. Looking at the boot selector DIP switches suggested it was configured to boot from UART, so I flipped them to (what I thought was) the flash setting. It wasn’t – turns out the “ON” marking on the switches represents logic 0 and it was correctly setup when I got it. I went to read the documentation which talked about writing an image to a MicroSD card, but also had details of the UART connection. Wanting to make sure the device was at least doing something before I actually tried an OS on it I hooked up a USB/serial dongle and powered the board up again. Success! U-Boot appeared and I could interact with it.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Get Horizontal OSD for Brightness & Volume Changes on Linux Mint

• The “Horizontal OSD” extension for Linux Mint (yes, Linux Mint has extensions too) reformats Cinnamon’s default volume and screen brightness indicators from a vertical box to a horizontal bar. It’s a subtle tweak that I think gives the Cinnamon desktop an extra splash of modernity (GNOME Shell switched its OSD from boxes to bars last year).

• While the look of the horizontal OSD blends in perfectly with the rest of the Linux Mint’s default look (meaning out of the box it looks totally native) you do get ample controls to adjust the appearance.

=> ↺ Salih Emin: ucaresystem core 4.4.0 : Now published for Ubuntu Kinetik and Lunar

• The new release of ucaresystem core is released and available for Ubuntu Kinetik (22.10) and Ubuntu Lunar (23.04) The all time classic uCareSystem is now release for Ubuntu Kinetik (22.10) and Ubuntu Lunar (23.04).

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ No Android or iOS: Here’s a new Phone with two operating systems

• Hallo Welt Systeme, a German company that specializes in developing open-source technology, has recently launched a new addition to their Volla Phone line – the Volla Phone X23. This smartphone is the latest smartphone model to not use the Google ecosystem, and it boasts an open-source operating system that offers users more control over their device.

• Customers can choose from two versions of the Volla Phone X23 – one that comes with the Volla OS installed and the other with Ubuntu Touch installed. The device is available for pre-order at a price of 522 euros (about $558). With deliveries scheduled to begin in May 2023. The Volla OS version of the phone is compatible with most Android apps, while Ubuntu Touch is not.

=> ↺ Auspicious Machine is a modular handheld Linux PC with a BlackBerry-style keyboard and gaming buttons

• The Auspicious Machine is a pocket-sized computer that bears a more than passing resemblance to a classic BlackBerry smartphone thanks to a 3.5 inch, 640 x 480 display positioned above a backlit QWERTY keyboard.

• But this little device isn’t a phone. It’s a modular portable computer with built-in game controller keys and support for GNU/Linux software. It’s up for pre-order in China for RMB 1656 (about $240) and the developer is hoping to begin shipping the Auspicious Machine to customers in June.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

=> ↺ Brendan Gregg: USENIX SREcon APAC 2023: CFP

• USENIX’s SREcon conference is the best venue for learning the latest in systems engineering (not just site reliability engineering) and if you have useful production stories and takeaways to share — especially if you are in the Asia/Pacific region — please consider submitting a talk proposal to [SREcon APAC 2023]. The [call for participation] ends on March 2nd, only two weeks away. It is held this year in Singapore, June 14-16, and I’m excited to be program co-chair with fellow Aussie [Jamie Wilkinson]. To quote from our CFP:

• You build computer platforms, debug them, and support them, and you have learned something useful to share: You are invited to submit proposals to give talks at SREcon23 Asia/Pacific, which welcomes speakers from a variety of backgrounds, not just SRE, and from a variety of different-sized companies, not just those that are technology-focused. Your insights will help create a relevant, diverse, and inclusive program. Conversations are never complete when they focus just on successes; we encourage talks that focus on lessons learned from failures or hard problems.

• At the seventh SREcon Asia/Pacific, we are especially seeking the deepest engineering talks: Those that cover gritty technical internals, advanced tools and techniques, and complex problems that may matter to others, whether your solutions were elegant, ugly, or unsuccessful.

• We look forward to learning from speakers across the SRE and systems engineering space. This year we particularly welcome new speakers; many of our best talks have come from people with new perspectives to share and the last few years most certainly has given us all new experiences and stories we can share and from which we can learn.

• At every SREcon globally, we welcome and encourage participation from all individuals in any country, including people that are underrepresented in, or excluded from, technology, including but not limited to: people of all colours, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, neurodiverse participants, students, veterans, and others with unique characteristics.

• Similarly, we welcome participants from diverse professional roles: QA testers, performance engineers, security teams, OS engineers, DBAs, network administrators, compliance experts, UX designers, government employees, and data scientists. Regardless of who you are or the job title you hold, if you are a technologist who faces unique challenges and shares our areas of interest, we encourage you to be a part of SREcon23 Asia/Pacific.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Mike Hoye: Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

• Over on Mastodon I asked: “What modern utilities should be a standard part of a modern unixy distro? Why? I’ve got jq, pandoc, tldr and a few others on my list, but I’d love to know others.”

• Here’s what came back; I’ve roughly grouped them into two categories: new utilities and improvements on the classics.

• In no particular order, the new kids on the block: [...]

• [...]

• So, there you go. Life in the terminal is still improving here in 2023, it’s great to see.

=> ↺ Spidermonkey Development Blog: SpiderMonkey Newsletter (Firefox 110-111)

• SpiderMonkey is the JavaScript engine used in Mozilla Firefox. This newsletter gives an overview of the JavaScript and WebAssembly work we’ve done as part of the Firefox 110 and 111 Nightly release cycles.

FSF

=> ↺ FSF Blogs: Associate members: Nominate your FSF board candidate by March 3

GNU Projects

GNU ☛ lightning @ Savannah: GNU lightning 2.2.1 releaseGNU lightning is a library to aid in making portable programs that compile assembly code at run time.Development:http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/lightning.gitDownload release:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/lightning/lightning-2.2.1.tar.gz  GNU Lightning 2.2.1 main new features:Variable stack framesize implemented for aarch64, arm, i686, mips, riscv, loongarch and x86_64. This means function calls use only the minimum required stack space for prolog and epilog. Optimization of prolog and epilog to not create a frame pointer if not required, and not even save and restore the stack pointer if not required on a leaf function. These features implemented for the ports with variable stack framesize. New clor, czr, ctor and ctzr instructions, that count leading/trailing zeros/ones. These use hardware implementation when available, otherwise fallback to a software implementation. Correct several bugs with jit_arg_register_p and jit_putarg{r,i}{_f,_d}. These bugs were not noticed earlier due to an incorrect check for correctness in check/carg.c. Add rip relative addressing support for x86_64 and shorter signed 64 bit constant load if the constant fits in a signed 32 bit integer. This significantly reduces code size generation. Correct bugs in branch generation code for pppc and sparc. Correct bug in signed 32 bit integer load in ppc 64 bits. Add short relative unconditional branches and calls to mips, reducing code size generation. And several extra minor optimizations.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Retrospectives Antipatterns

=> ↺ Fixing “Too much WIP”. “too much WIP” means too many things… | by Jason Yip | Jan, 2023 | Medium

=> ↺ Re: Factor: Proquint

=> ↺ Simple Physics-based Flight Simulation with C++ | Jakob Maier

• Creating simple but realistic physics-based flight simulations from scratch with C++ and OpenGL.

=> ↺ The Real C++ Killers (Not You, Rust) | HackerNoon

• Technologies that can replace C++ in the near of far future are not compilers. They are Spiral, Numba, and ForwardCom.

=> ↺ How C++23 changes the way we write code – Timur Doumler – Meeting C++ 2022 – Invidious

=> ↺ Named Booleans prevent C++ bugs and save you time

• During a recent code review I found a hard to spot bug, a misplaced parenthesis in an if statement. I often employ a technique I call named booleans, which would have prevented this bug. It’s a simple technique, instead of a long if statement, give every comparison a seperate boolean variable with a descriptive name and use those variables is the if statement. This post shows the bug in question, an example of my named booleans technique and another tip regarding naming magic numbers.

=> ↺ The Heisenbug lurking in your async code – Textual

=> ↺ Modularizing React Applications with Established UI Patterns

Python

=> ↺ Python Check If String Contains Substring From List

• To check if the string contains substring from the Python list, the “list comprehension”, the “any()” method, and the iterative function “for” loop is used.

=> ↺ Divide Two Columns Pandas

• To divide two columns Pandas in the Python, the “/” divide operator, “div()” methods, and “np.where()” methods can be used.

=> ↺ Convert 1d Array to 2d Array Python

• To convert a one-dimensional array into a two-dimensional array, the “reshape()” method, “np.reshape()” method and “np.arange()” method can be used.

=> ↺ Remove Number From String Python

• To remove the number from the string in Python, the “join()” and “isdigit()” methods, “translate()”, “filter()”, and “sub()” methods are used.

=> ↺ How Do You Repeat a String n Times in Python?

• To repeat a string “n” times in Python, the repetition “*” operator, “for” loop an iterative function, and user-defined function can be used.

=> ↺ How to Initialize a Dictionary in Python

• To initialize the dictionary, “fromkey()”, “defaultdict()”, “setdefault()”, “dict()”, “zip()”, passing arguments, and curley “{}” braces techniques are used.

=> ↺ Datetime Get Previous Month Python

• To get previous month’s datetime in Python, the “datetime” module with “replace()” method and “datetime” module using the extension “dd” techniques can be used.

=> ↺ Initialize 2D List in Python

• To initialize the 2d list in Python, the “range()” method and “numpy.full()” method with the “tolist()” method are used.

=> ↺ Remove Quotes From String Python

• To remove the quotes from any Python string, the “for” Loop, the “replace()”, “re.sub()”, “strip()”, “Istrip()” and “rstrip()” methods are used.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Why I’m not the biggest fan of Single Page Applications – Manuel Matuzović

• Sometimes it seems like accessibility experts and other web professionals hate JavaScript. This might be true for some, but most understand that JavaScript can be useful for improving UX and even accessibility. JavaScript solutions are often more accessible than their pure HTML or CSS counterparts.

Jussi Pakkanen ☛ Jussi Pakkanen: PDF output in imagesGenerating PDF files is mostly (but not entirely) a serialization problem where you keep repeating the following loop:Find out what functionality PDF hasRead the specification to find out how it is expressed using PDF document syntaxCome up with some sort of an API to express sameSerialize the latter into the formerDebugThis means that you have to spend a fair bit of time without much to show for it apart from documents with various black boxes in them. However once you have enough foundational code, then suddenly you can generate all sorts of fun images. Let’s look at some now.

Leftovers

=> ↺ FEBRUARY 6 EARTHQUAKES: Leader of international rescue teams laments having to choose between people under rubble

• Leading 91 rescue teams following the devastating February 6 earthquakes in the rescue efforts, Marco Gaebler said he had to give many difficult decisions trying to save as many lives as possible.

=> ↺ FEBRUARY 6 EARTHQUAKES: Number of migrants the quake killed in Türkiye transported to Syria rises to 1,745

• Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announces the toll update for number of bodies died in the earthquake in Türkiye and transported to Syria.

=> ↺ navigating futures

• i. it’s been at least a decade—maybe two—since the data, the reports, the dire proclamations, the naming of the Anthropocene have declared a climate and nature emergency. and the march continues. daily some aspect of the media reports the latest in our inexorable march towards the sixth (or is it the seventh?) extinction, global climate….

Education

=> ↺ Latest updates: Stanford president under investigation for research misconduct

• University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne is under investigation for alleged research misconduct following allegations first reported in The Daily that multiple papers co-authored by the president contain altered images. The Daily’s ongoing coverage contains all allegations reported so far and updates that continue to emerge over the president and the multiple bodies investigating his work.

=> ↺ What my failed sell-out attempts have taught me

• Chunhua Yu writes about her failed sell-out journey and how she discovered how to love learning — and SymSys — again.

Hardware

=> ↺ AMD Grabs Over 30% CPU Market Share As Intel Continues To Decline

• AMD has achieved a historical market share of over 30% within the server CPU segment thanks to its EPYC CPUs.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Norfolk Southern’s Profits and Accident Rates Rose Before Ohio Derailment

• Safety experts say a focus on financial returns may be partly to blame for derailments and accidents like the one in Ohio.

=> ↺ House GOP’s overlapping COVID investigations

• Two House committees, and potentially several more, are getting involved in investigating the origins of COVID — setting them up for a lot of overlap, and even friction.

• Why it matters: What comes out of these COVID origin investigations could have implications for federal funding of scientific research, vaccination campaigns and future pandemic responses — as long as the committees don’t blunt the impact by stepping on each other.

=> ↺ Feds are sending medical experts to Ohio toxic train wreck site as residents’ safety concerns simmer

=> ↺ Chemical train derailment in Ohio causes major ecological disaster

• The derailment of a train with hazardous chemicals in the US state of Ohio (photo) is a serious environmental disaster. As a result, poisonous phosgene is being released into the air, Russia’s special presidential representative for environmental protection, ecology and transport Sergey Ivanov, told TASS in an interview.

=> ↺ The Meal(worm)y Mouthed Monsters

• Sylvia Shawcross And so we have to go back to discussing insects I’m afraid. It is just the way it is going to have to be because there are far too many things we disagree on now—even more things than since we last realized that we all didn’t really want to eat insects.

=> ↺ Amazon will ask employees to spend at least three days a week in the office

Proprietary

=> ↺ ChatGPT Is Ingesting Corporate Secrets – Schneier on Security

=> ↺ The Online Search Wars Got Scary. Fast.

• Our technology columnist encounters the darker side of Bing’s A.I. chatbot.

=> ↺ ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare. If you’ve ever posted online, you ought to be concerned

• ChatGPT is fuelled by our intimate online histories. It’s trained on 300 billion words, yet users have no way of knowing which of their data it contains.

=> ↺ Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps – Bennett Notes

• Apple still charges a $99 yearly developer fee, even if you don’t want to publish your app on the Appstore. The provisioning certificate that Xcode provides only lasts one week.

Security

=> ↺ New Protections for Food Benefits Stolen by Skimmers

• Millions of Americans receiving food assistance benefits just earned a new right that they can’t yet enforce: The right to be reimbursed if funds on their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards are stolen by card skimming devices secretly installed at cash machines and grocery store checkout lanes.

=> ↺ Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 236 released

• The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 236. This version includes the following changes:

• [...]

=> ↺ HTTP request smuggling bug patched in HAProxy

• Exploitation could enable attackers to access backend servers

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Russia to introduce digital identity cards

• Riley Waggaman It seems QR codes will soon be back in vogue in Russia. Via Interfax: The Ministry of Digital Development, together with the FSB, will submit to the Russian government by May 1 a draft decree allowing the use of a digital identity card on smartphones instead of [an internal] passport…

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Outgunned Ukrainian pilots take the fight to Russia in ancient Soviet-era helicopters

• The horizon disappears for a moment as the nose of the helicopter rears. There’s a faint thump as rockets trailing brown smoke arc ahead. The aircraft banks as if flicked on its side by an outside force.

=> ↺ Ukraine is burning through ammo faster than the US and NATO can produce it. Inside the Pentagon’s plan to close the gap

• Inside a sprawling factory just off the President Biden Expressway in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, the future arsenal of Ukraine’s war effort is being forged, one red hot artillery shell at a time.

=> ↺ CNN flies with Ukrainian attack helicopter

• CNN spent time embedded with the Sikorsky Brigade in eastern Ukraine operating from a secret base where they conduct combat missions against Russian forces. CNN’s Sam Kiley reports.

=> ↺ Navy Divers Complete Recovery of Chinese Spy Balloon Debris

• The salvaged material was sent to the F.B.I. for further analysis.

=> ↺ Macron Calls for Intensified Support for Ukraine but Eyes Peace Talks

• His support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia have hardened, but France’s president still stands out among Western leaders in insisting that compromise will be needed to end the war.

=> ↺ Germany’s allies pushed Germany to send tanks to Ukraine. Now, Scholz is the one urging them.

=> ↺ One year since the war in Ukraine: ceremony at the Council of Europe in support of the Ukrainian people

• On 24 February, the Council of Europe will hold a ceremony to mark one year of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, followed by an extraordinary meeting of the Committee of Ministers (to be broadcast live).

=> ↺ Western Leaders Pledge Support for Ukraine at Munich Security Conference

• As Russia’s invasion approaches its second year with no end in sight, Ukraine’s supporters faced lingering questions at the Munich Security Conference about how long their resolve will last.

=> ↺ How Huge Casualties of the Russian Army Affect the War in Ukraine

• As of February 15, according to statistics from the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army, around 140,000 Russian troops have been killed in battle. Calculated based on the 1:3 ratio of deaths and injuries, the Russian army suffered a total of 460,000 casualties…

=> ↺ German MP: Europe requires an autonomous foreign and security policy independent from U.S.

• Sevim Dagdelen, a German politician (photo) and a member of the Left Party in an interview with ‘Global Times’ said that sending increasingly heavy weapons to Ukraine heightens the risks of the conflict spilling over into World War III and that it is German people that are suffering.

=> ↺ Who is Mr. Hersh? Or, when US media outlets were collectively speechless

• Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published the results of an investigation according to which acts of sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines were initiated by the US government with the support of Norway. The American government and the CIA denied Hersh’s version of events.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Right of Access to Court Records Applies Even Absent Any Current “Substantial Public Interest in This Case”

• “[P]ublic access is designed not only to allow the press and the public to follow high-profile cases, but also to permit ongoing and future access. Law students or legal scholars review case files for law review articles, attorneys review past cases when similar litigation arises, and litigation may be a source of information for policy-makers considering, for example, safety regulations or for journalists reporting more broadly on either the courts or the subject matter of particular litigation.”

=> ↺ Public University Committee Members’ Names Aren’t Protected by the Right of Expressive Association

• The University of Washington thus wasn’t barred by the First Amendment from disclosing such names in response to a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals public records request.

Environment

=> ↺ Rising sea levels threaten Copenhagen in not-too-distant future

• As water levels continue to rise globally, the Danish capital could look to Venice for inspiration in effort to keep water masses at bay

=> ↺ Storm Otto to impact Copenhagen traffic today

• The capital looks to miss out on the worst of it, but public encouraged to be aware of storm development and increased travel times by train

=> ↺ Cow about that! Danish researchers find new key to greener agriculture

• By adding food additive to cattle feed, scientists from Aarhus University have managed to cut methane emissions from cows by about 30 percent

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ SEC charges Do Kwon, Terraform Labs with fraud over the collapse of TerraUSD

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Terraform Labs Pte. Ltd. and its Chief Executive Officer Do Kown with “orchestrating a multibillion-dollar crypto asset securities fraud” almost a year after the meltdown of his company’s so-called “algorithmic” stablecoin TerraUSD that sent ripples through the crypto industry.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Genetically Modified Trees Planted in U.S. Forest for First Time

• Living Carbon, a biotechnology company, hopes its seedlings can help manage climate change. But wider use of its trees may be elusive.

Finance

=> ↺ Climate change real estate bubble is worth up to $237 billion

• A climate housing bubble threatens to erode real estate prices in much of the U.S. in the coming years, posing particular challenges for low-income residents, a new study finds.

• Why it matters: With more severe and frequent extreme weather events, the resilience of homeowners and communities is on the line.

=> ↺ Rick Scott accuses Biden and McConnell of “gotcha politics” on Social Security

• Sen. Rick Scott is firing back after his spending plan became a focal point at the State of the Union, saying President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were unfair to attack him over Social Security and Medicare.

=> ↺ Rock-bottom jobless claims might be overstated

• Over the last few months, there’s been a steady stream of large, high-profile layoffs — while unemployment claims remain at rock-bottom levels.

=> ↺ Peso at strongest level against the dollar since 2018

• The value of the U.S. dollar dipped to 18.33 Mexican pesos on international markets, according to data from Bloomberg.

=> ↺ Feds giving states 10% increase in security funding for 2023

• Of the 21 states whose crime fighting funding was announced Wednesday, Jalisco will receive the largest amount, at close to US $18.5 million.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ “A Demonic Force:” Dominion Just Gave Jack Smith Useful Evidence

• Fox News knew that platforming of Trump’s false claims would damage the country. And they did it anyway. 

=> ↺ Fox News has been exposed as a dishonest organization terrified of alienating its audience

=> ↺ What Fox News Says When You’re Not Listening

• The extravagant cynicism behind the network’s conspiracy theorizing.

=> ↺ Rupert Murdoch Called Trump’s Stolen-Election Fantasy ‘Really Crazy Stuff.’ Fox News Promoted It Anyway.

• Hosts and producers privately called Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s claims “complete bs,” “insane,” and “unbelievably offensive.”

=> ↺ Megan Fox found suspicious texts and DMs in Machine Gun Kelly’s phone: sources

• A source tells us Fox, who has since taken off her engagement ring, found things on Kelly’s phone that made her believe the rocker is “having an affair.”

=> ↺ Fox stars privately bashed election fraud claims the network pushed

• Top hosts and executives at Fox News privately slammed former President Trump’s election fraud claims as “total BS,” according to court documents filed in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox.

=> ↺ ‘Propaganda network’: See reporter’s reaction to damning Fox News texts

• The most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives at Fox News privately ridiculed claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, despite the right-wing channel allowing lies about the presidential contest to be promoted on its air, damning messages contained in a court filing revealed. CNN’s Oliver Darcy has more.

=> ↺ India’s G20 presidency an event to watch out for

• The G20 summit concluded in Bali’s closing month and provided the world’s leading economies with a platform to resolve worldwide issues. The middle cause of the G20 has constantly been to apprehend the significance of collective motion and inclusive collaboration among entire developed nations and rising economies around the arena.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Prof. Cynthia Estlund (NYU) in the Journal of Free Speech Law on “Can Employees Have Free Speech Rights …

• … Without Due Process Rights (in the Private Sector Workplace)?”

=> ↺ Pseudonymity and Self-Incrimination

• From the Seventh Circuit decision Jan. 27 in Roe v. Dettelbach, by Judge Diane Wood and joined by Judges David Hamilton and Amy St. Eve: This suit is about a person’s right to have a gun part called a “drop-in auto sear.” John Roe, litigating under a pseudonym to avoid potential criminal liability, filed suit…

=> ↺ Section 230 and the Curse of Politics

• Gonzalez v. Google presents the Supreme Court’s first opportunity to weigh in on Section 230.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ How big companies like Tesla and Starbucks are fending off unionization

• Starbucks workers are struggling to clear the biggest hurdle when it comes to union organizing — negotiating their first contract.

• Why it matters: Though surveys show that the public is increasingly pro-labor, big employers — even widely recognized brands like Starbucks, Amazon and Tesla — are not shy about aggressively fending off unionization.

• Driving the news: It’s been a busy week. Tesla was accused of firing 30 employees in Buffalo in retaliation for announcing a union campaign, according to a charge filed at the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday, first reported by Bloomberg.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Introducing the Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide

• As the knowledge economy expanded and concerns about trade secret misappropriation mounted in the digital age, federal policymakers undertook efforts to reinforce trade secret protection a decade ago.  These efforts came to fruition with passage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA).  This landmark legislation, modeled on the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, elevated and expanded trade secret law’s role in the federal intellectual property system.  DTSA fully opened the federal courts to trade secret litigation as well as added several new features, including an ex parte seizure remedy and whistleblower immunity.

Patents

=> ↺ BREAKING NEWS: Germany ratifies Unified Patent Court Agreement

• Today, Germany has ratified the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. This has been confirmed by a statement of its Federal Ministry of Justice. Germany’s ratification launches the countdown as set under Article 89 of the UPC Agreement according to which the Agreement will enter into force on 1 June 2023.

=> ↺ UPC: First step – Opting-Out

• The launch of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has been waiting on Germany to formally ratify the UPC agreement.  That has now happened.

• The court is set to begin operation on June 1, 2023.  Folks with European Patents will want to consider whether to file opt-outs for your patents (beginning March 1, 2023).  Some patentees with highly valuable patents will likely opt-out because the UPC rules allows competitors to challenge and invalidate the patents.  Unlike in the US IPR system, EPO opposition does not appear to create any estoppel against later UPC challenges.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

=> ↺ Thinking About Playing SOMA Again

• I should try finishingS SOMA (2015). I really adore the story and the general atmosphere of it; but it’s the only game I stopped playing because it scared me too much. It’s very well executed but the scariness isn’t exclusively because of that, it’s more the weird biomechanical creatures and the philosophical themes of the game.

• I very rarely get scared of horror media, mostly because 99.9999999% of it is absolutely awful and horribly done. Like the “old people or children doing something really w e i r d and c r a z y” trope that scares ~stupid babies~ apparently literally everyone other than me. But even the well-done media, weird psychological stuff can make me introspective but rarely actually scared; I don’t find machines particularly scary, they’re at most intimidating because they’re arbitrarily stronger than you; and biological monsters I typically have the opposite reaction the designers expected.

=> ↺ Sorbet G4: Hints for working with X11

• X11 is quite outdated on Mac OS X. Even on current “macOS” versions it is still difficult to work with xorg applications of a linux hosts. The problem is, that current linux applications want stuff the Mac OS X version doesn’t implement like XInput 2. If you just work with Terminology or Leafpad (…) it’s not a problem. But what if you want to use for example a modern Terminal or KeePassXC? Than you have to go with Xepyhr. It’s a nexted X server that runs inside a window of X11 on Mac OS X; basically a X server in another X server. It is really slow to use. You will see the frames. But with it you can use every X application the linux host – your Zero inside your G4 – has to offer.

=> ↺ feeds are a dark pattern

• I’m glad to see the current wave of non-corporate social media. I’m also disappointed to see how most of them copy the worst feature of corporate ones – the feed. I know this might sound weird, especially if you haven’t tried out anything else – but bear with me.

• One of the issues with feeds is how they (don’t) handle the conflict between frequent vs. rare posters. Their posts are all mixed together. The only way to ensure that you’ve seen the posts from the latter is to try to scroll down as much as possible each time – which gets addictive. The alternative is to just take short peeks of the feed – seeing posts only from a small minority of the people you follow. Neither is ideal. And, if you’ve only tried feed-based social media, you might think that the tradeoff between time spent on the platform and missed posts is unavoidable. It isn’t.

• Around 2 years ago, I made an experimental Mastodon client. Instead of a feed, it presented you with a page per each day, each with a list of people who posted on that day. You could expand out everyone’s posts – but everything started out collapsed. You saw everyone at a glance. If any of your rarely posting friends posted something, you could prioritise them. Otherwise, you could browse the usual shitposting of your fedi-addicted friends.

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