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● Links 22/02/2023: Distros Rebel Against Flatpak

Posted in News Roundup at 8:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Notes to self: Ansible, SSH, and a password

• Using a pipe lookup, the password can be read directly from a password manager API program which emits a single-line password to stdout. Not super elegant, but workable to the point of being usable directly in an inventory file, and the variable is not visible in the play.

=> ↺ Grafana Loki doesn’t compact log chunks and what this means for you

• Many of these streams of log messages are low volume and infrequent because some parts of their labels are uncommon. Some systemd units only emit a few messages a day; systems may not log kernel messages for weeks; ‘warning’ level syslog messages (especially for specific units) are uncommon, and so on. Certainly you’ll have some frequent, high volume log streams, but you’ll also have many that only emit at most a few messages a day. These low volume streams are where your problems are in a default Loki configuration.

=> ↺ How to password protect a static HTML page with no JS

• I recently saw Robin Moisson’s method of password protecting a statically served HTML page. It’s quite neat! But it does rely on JavaScript. That got me wondering if there was a way to encrypt a static page only using CSS?

• And… I think I’ve done it!

• I’ll warn you now, this is a deeply stupid way to solve the problem.

=> ↺ How I organize my digital music collection

• Unfortunately, the hard drive space required to store my collection in a lossless format was far out of reach for me at the time, so I resigned myself to keeping everything as lossy low-bitrate MP3s. Later, a new free/open-source and patent-unencumbered format called Ogg Vorbis turned up on the scene, and my enthusiasm for it overpowered my horror at re-encoding from one lossy format to another, so I gritted my teeth at the quality degradation and converted everything.

• Now in the present, Vorbis has been surpassed by Opus, FLAC exists, hard drives are cheap, and it’s time to start over.

• My objective is to end up with a high-quality lossless “archival” version of all my physical and digital album purchases on my home storage server, comprehensively tagged with a full set of accurate metadata. Along with that, I want at least two sets of derived Ogg Opus re-encodings with differing levels of compression/quality: a lower-quality one for keeping on my cellphone, and a better one for desktop and laptop personal computer use.

=> ↺ Use Rocky Linux ISO as a Local Repository

• There are various cases when you may want to utilize the local repository such as on a temporary basis, the internet connection is not allowed and you want to install a specific package.

Games

=> ↺ 1980s mystery adventure Unusual Findings added Linux support

• Here’s one from late last year that I missed, 1980s mystery adventure Unusual Findings gained a Native Linux version. The new support was announced for Linux and macOS back in November 2022 where the developer mentioned they “worked day and night to polish and release versions of Unusual Findings for macOS and Linux”.

=> ↺ Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER new trailer and release window announced

• Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER, a cyberpunk point and click adventure from developer MidBoss, LLC. has a new trailer and it’s releasing this Summer. A sequel to 2064: Read Only Memories, which they said had more than 2.35 million downloads.

=> ↺ Steam Mystery Fest live until February 27th

• Another good chance to discover some new games is the Steam Mystery Fest, live now until February 27th with lots of discounts.

=> ↺ Environmental strategy game Terra Nil releases March 28th

• A game idea I absolutely love and the early demos were impressive, the environmental strategy game Terra Nil releases on March 28th. In this game you’re transforming a ruined wasteland, to bring it back to life and get it green. Purify the soil, clean up the oceans, get rivers flowing, plant some trees and make it right.

=> ↺ Wreckfest is a smashing good time on Steam Deck

• Got the need for speed? You should check out Wreckfest! It’s a lot of fun and it works amazingly well on Steam Deck.

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

=> ↺ Transferring a jail from one host to another

• In this post, I’ll be copying over a lot of data while the jails are running. This is to get the bulk of the data over and in place. Later, when moving each jail individually, I will stop the jail, run another syncoid, then start the new jail. That second sync of the data will catch any changes since the initial copy.

=> ↺ Theo de Raadt on pinsyscall(2)

• Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) posted to tech@ a message entitled pinsyscall, execve, and rop pivots, etc. It explains pinsyscall(2), OpenBSD’s latest security innovation.

• We reproduce the posting below with added links: [...]

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE Leap 15.5 Beta Available to Download

• opeSUSE Leap 15.5 is due to be released on June 7, 2023 and will be the final release in the Leap 15 series, which made its debut back in May of 2018.

• But before that stable release can arrive there’s a beta build for folks to tussle with.

=> ↺ openSUSE Leap 15.5 Reaches Beta Phase for Testing

• Exciting news! Luboš Kocman, the release manager for openSUSE Leap, will soon make an announcement about the Beta phase of Leap 15.5. It is already syncing on mirrors worldwide so that users can download and experience it firsthand.

• By testing the beta versions, users can uncover any bugs prior to its official launch date of June 1st, according to the openSUSE Leap Release Cycle roadmap. This is a chance given to users to get a jump start on identifying potential issues before everyone else!

• This version of the distribution will present some upgraded versions, although this release is not a feature-rich upgrade.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Fedora 38: Overview of Its Features and Enhancements

• Fedora (backed/financed by RedHat) has recently become popular for many Linux users. Usually, Ubuntu and Fedora are the two main “go-to” distributions for any workload. Due to several Ubuntu policies in the recent past and “over-friendliness” with Microsoft, a good number of long-term Linux users started adopting Fedora workstations for their desktops.

• In addition, Fedora is backed by Red Hat, a leading open-source company, and it always pioneers adopting new technologies before any mainstream Linux distributions. Last year, Fedora was the first distro to offer the modern Wayland, Pipewire as default in its workstation flavour and a few performance-related improvements such as out-of-memory handling (OOM). All of these are eventually adopted by others later on.

• The upcoming release – Fedora 38, also plans for some interesting new features and improvements, which make it an attractive option for developers, Linux users and system administrators.

=> ↺ The State of Customer and Partner Experience at Red Hat 2022: How your feedback improves your experience

• Each year, Red Hat works to improve our products, services and the overall customer and partner experience based on the feedback that we receive. This past year was no different, and we not only drove enhancements and improvements across the company based on that feedback, we also worked to improve the way we listened to our customers and partners.

• This blog post is part one of our three-part annual State of Customer and Partner Experience summary. Here, we will recap how the Customer and Partner Experience (CPX) team listened to customers and partners in the past year and how we worked with teams across Red Hat to act on the feedback we received. 

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak

• In a surprise move, Ubuntu developers have agreed to stop shipping Flatpak, preinstalled Flatpak apps, and any plugins needed to install Flatpak apps through a GUI software tool in the default package across all eight of Ubuntu’s official flavors, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 release.

• Ubuntu says the decision will ‘improve the out-of-the-box Ubuntu experience’ for new users by making it clearer about what the “Ubuntu experience” is.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Monitoring an Aquarium with InfluxDB and Grafana

• I’ve been setting up a new tropical fish tank and wanted to add some monitoring and alerting because, well, why not?

=> ↺ Converting KiCad Schematics to Verilog

• I wrote a KiCad plugin to generate Verilog code from a schematic.

=> ↺ How to detect the difference between a Pico and a Pico W #RaspberryPiPico #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_pi

• Hardware-wise, both boards are nearly identical. But there are a couple subtle differences. And the onboard LED is connected differently.

=> ↺ This little robot helps fight fires

• This robot, which is a mid-sized rover, can operate via manual control or in an autonomous mode. In both cases, its job is to explore buildings, either during a fire or after a disaster, to map the interior and find hazards. Its camera system allows for visual detection, but it also has a host of integrated sensors for detecting elevated temperatures, gas pockets, and more. With that information, firefighters can then enter the building and rescue anyone trapped inside while avoiding hazardous areas or bringing the equipment necessary to deal with them.

=> ↺ Testing Raspberry Pi’s new Debug Probe

• The Debug Probe is powered by an RP2040, and lets you connect from USB to UART (serial) or SWD (Serial Wire Debug), perfect for debugging most embedded devices.

• UART is useful to connect to a device’s console when you don’t have a display or other means of controlling it, and you can find UART/serial/console ports on almost any device with a processor or microcontroller.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Debug Probe

• The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe is a kit comprising the Debug Probe hardware in its own plastic case together with a USB cable and three types of debug cable, covering the vast majority of debug use cases. It is designed to make it easy to debug and program Raspberry Pi Pico and RP2040 with a range of host platforms including Windows, Mac, and typical Linux computers, where you don’t have a GPIO header to connect directly to the Pico’s serial UART or SWD port.

• While designed for use with Raspberry Pi products, the Debug Probe provides standard UART and CMSIS-DAP interfaces over USB, so it can also be used to debug any Arm-based microcontroller that provides an SWD port with 3V3 I/O, or even just as a USB-to-UART cable. It works with OpenOCD and other tools that support CMSIS-DAP.

=> ↺ Developing for Mobile Linux with Phosh – Part 0: Running Nested

• Mobile Linux is gaining in popularity. What is a simple way to develop for it?

• This upcoming series of posts will help with that using Phosh and related technologies. We’ll start out really simple and move into more complicated topics step by step.

• For many bits you won’t even need to modify your phone (or even need to have one). A desktop or laptop running Linux with a graphical Wayland session is sufficient.

=> ↺ How to build a super-slim smart

• While a smart mirror isn’t exactly a beginner-friendly build, it is a bit of a rite of passage for makers. Being able to put together and code a smart mirror suggests that your skills have reached a certain level, and ending up with something big and impressive like this at the end of the process underlines your achievement. It’s also something you can look at and use every day — a satisfying reminder of your accomplishment.

=> ↺ Reverse-engineering the interrupt circuitry in the Intel 8086 processor

• I’ve been reverse-engineering the 8086 starting with the silicon die. The die photo below shows the chip under a microscope. The metal layer on top of the chip is visible, with the silicon and polysilicon mostly hidden underneath. Around the edges of the die, bond wires connect pads to the chip’s 40 external pins; relevant pins are marked in yellow. I’ve labeled the key functional blocks; the ones that are important to this discussion are darker and will be discussed in detail below. Architecturally, the chip is partitioned into a Bus Interface Unit (BIU) at the top and an Execution Unit (EU) below. The BIU handles bus activity, while the Execution Unit (EU) executes instructions and microcode. Both parts are extensively involved in interrupt handling.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ How to use split screen feature on Android

=> ↺ Gmail users unable to sync Hotmail or Outlook account on Android

=> ↺ Android 12 is finally rolling out to T-Mobile OnePlus 7T units

=> ↺ Some of 2022′s best gaming phones are finally getting Android 13

=> ↺ Oppo Pad Air tablet starts receiving Android 13 update – Times of India

=> ↺ Android Auto 9.0 Beta is Now Available: Here’s How to Download It

=> ↺ STMicro adds more STM32U5 Cortex-M33 MCUs with NeoChrom 2.5D GPU, 128KB to 4MB flash, NIST certification, etc… – CNX Software

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ How to use Pocket with Tunde Oyeneyin

• Fitness instructor Tunde Oyeneyin, a favorite among Peloton riders, makes it a habit to stay intentional of what she consumes online. 

Education

=> ↺ Building a DIY Clozemaster

• A friend introduced me to Clozemaster, which is a very simple concept: you get two sentences, one in English, another in French, and one of the words is a Cloze deletion. You have to figure out what goes in the blank. You’re testing vocabulary, grammar, and, since the blank can appear in either sentence, you’re testing in both directions. But Clozemaster has an absolutely demonic UX: the font is this ridiculous, unserious, 8 bit font literally from Super Mario Bros.; pasted over some tired Bootstrap theme. And the free version is limited to 30 sentences a day.

• So I looked for ways to build my own language learning flashcards for use with Mochi. I found some French frequency lists, and thought to use that to learn vocabulary, but vocabulary alone is not useful. Then I found a list of English-French sentence pairs, ranked by frequency; but the corpus is OpenSubtitles, so the vocabulary is very skewed to movie dialogue. And then I found Tatoeba: an open-source database of sentences and their translations.

• The rest of this post is a walkthrough of the Python code I wrote to generate Cloze flashcards from Tatoeba sentence pairs.

=> ↺ Shiny in Production 2023: Workshops

• Shiny in Production is returning to the Catalyst this October! Our workshop lineup has now been finalised, and our first two speakers are confirmed. If you want to read more about the speakers, or register for the conference, head over to the website. Early bird tickets are now on sale!

• For the workshops this year, we see the return of the extremely popular Introduction to Posit (formerly RStudio) Connect, as well as a two new shiny-centered topics.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Sex, death and sonnets: Musings of a software developer

• If there are any sonnets, do they rhyme and what are they about?

• I have since many years been a great fan of the tutorial Unix™ for Poets by Kenneth Ward Church. This note is an investigation of what can be done with a corpus of literary text with very simple tools similar to the ones described by Church in his tutorial. I do not claim that there is anything novel or even significant in this text. Being a scientist, I think like a scientist and don’t expect any deep literary theory here.

=> ↺ Unix for Poets

• What can we do with it all?

• • It is better to do something simple, than nothing at all.

• • You can do the simple things yourself (DIY is more satisfying than begging for ‘‘help’’ from a computer officer.)

=> ↺ Why DSLs Fail

• Domain-specific languages seem like an attractive solution when templating becomes too cumbersome for a set of problems. The proposition: fit the programming model space to the problem space. Just enough control flow, macros, and functions to solve a specific set of problems (infrastructure configuration, build systems, scripting, etc.)

=> ↺ Mapping the program counter back to the function name in your code

• Compilers are commonly used to convert human-readable source code into a series of instructions that are directly executed by the computer. A common question is “How do the debuggers and error handlers report the place in the source code where the processor is currently at?” There are various methods to map instructions back to locations in the source code. With the compiler optimizing the code, there are also some complications in mapping the instructions back to the source code. This first article in the series describes how tools map the program counter (also known as the instruction pointer) back to the function name. Subsequent articles in this series will cover mapping the program counter back to the specific line in a source file. It also provides a backtrace describing the series of calls that resulted in the processor being in the current function.

=> ↺ How I do automated accessibility testing for my website

• This article covers adding accessibility tests to your site using Pa11y (pa11y-ci with axe) and Cypress (with cypress-axe) in GitLab CI/CD. I use a Jekyll website as an example, but any website technology that runs in CI/CD can leverage this setup.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Shell Scripting Tips (revisited)

• Targeted at ksh, but much is applicable to bash & sh

Leftovers

=> ↺ Supreme Court Tests Live Transcription Of Its Hearings – A First

• This will be on an experimental basis for a day or two to iron out creases in transcription before becoming a norm.

• During the hearing, Chief Justice DY Chandrachud explained the new experiment to the lawyers and said, “it will help especially those in law schools to know how the case was argued”.

=> ↺ Five emerging trends that could change our lives online

• The way we live our lives online is rapidly changing. Artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality and innovations such as blockchain – a kind of digital record for transactions — are set to transform the online world, affecting everything from social media to how people and businesses make money from their creativity.

• If you’re feeling confused by the pace of change, here’s what you need to know about five trends on the cusp of making a major impact.

=> ↺ The Internet

• Let’s get right into it: What is a protocol?

Science

=> ↺ Construing cube faces as pairs of something or other

• I provided a different approach, and OP declared themselves satisfied, but I kept thinking about it. My approach did provide a combinatorial description of the cube that related its various parts to the square’s corresponding parts. But it didn’t produce the requested map from pairs of objects (the !!\binom 42!! part) to the six faces.

Education

=> ↺ Page numbers aren’t the answer

• Firstly, page numbers aren’t stable. If you’ve got the large-print version of a paper, it will have a different page numbers than the regular print edition. Paperbacks and hardbacks have different numbers. The paper copy might be formatted differently from the digital copy.

• Secondly, most modern documents simply don’t have pages. Anything published as HTML / ePub won’t have a page number. Page numbers are a skeuomorph in those contexts.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ The Devil’s glass

• Being into video games today, though, in the year of our lord 2023? It entails clicking a colorful icon and then having soulless A/B-tested dopamine shot directly into your fucking eyeballs by billionaire warlords and their minions. Your time with these monstrosities is wasted rather than spent. I still play video games ‒ my drug of choice is Rocket League, where I’ve racked up 500 hours since 2016 (ranked Diamond 2, by the way, and pretty happy with that) which works out to about an hour and a half each week. That’s a healthy amount, I think.

=> ↺ This original video game console features a VFD

• VFDs (vacuum fluorescent displays) were common a few decades ago and have a nice, distinct glow that many find appealing. But like Nixie tubes and CRTs, VFDs have are outdated and almost obsolete at this point. They can’t come close to matching the price or functionality of modern LCD and OLED screens, but they still have a lot of charm. Simon Boak harnessed that charm when he built this custom video game console that features a VFD.

=> ↺ Research: New smart ring detects whether a drink has been spiked

• Drink spiking means that sedatives (mostly GHB drugs) are secretly added to the drinker’s beverage without their knowledge.

• The resulting mixture is also known as the rape drug, as it is easy to take advantage of the sedated person. Researchers at the University of Tartu have created a smart ring that could aid in safeguarding against such threats.

=> ↺ ‘Punitive Enforcement Does Not Save Lives, or Reduce Drug Supply’

• Janine Jackson interviewed Drug Policy Alliance’s Maritza Perez Medina about fentanyl for the February 17, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Proprietary

=> ↺ HardBit Ransomware Offers to Set Ransom Based on Victim’s Cyberinsurance

• The ransom note dropped on compromised systems does not specify how much the victim has to pay to recover its files. Instead, the targeted company is instructed to contact the hackers through email or the Tox instant messaging platform.

• However, the note does contain some important information about paying the ransom, specifically for victims that have a cyberinsurance policy covering ransomware attacks.

=> ↺ 2022 a breakthrough year in the development of malware targeting critical infrastructure: Report

• As in previous years, the ICS/OT community have managed a growing number of vulnerabilities, many without the right mitigations needed to reduce risk and maintain operations. Meanwhile electric grids, oil and gas pipelines, water systems, and manufacturing plants continued to struggle with more complex regulatory environments that demand marked progress in shoring up defences.

• The sixth edition of Dragos’s report, which provides an ‘on-the-ground’ understanding of what is happening in the industrial space contains the latest threat intelligence on adversary activity targeting operational technology (OT) and recent ICS-specific malware discoveries, data to inform vulnerability management practices, and cybersecurity benchmarks for industries.

=> ↺ Don’t Sell Your Indie Business to Digital Ocean!

• The sad part of the story is that most of what happened can’t be traced easily. Domain redirect can be set up with a few clicks of a button, and soon enough, most people forget these indie blogs ever existed and what happened to them. I want to write down what I saw so that there is a record of what Digital Ocean has done or has not done.

• [...]

• What triggers me to write down these words above as “record” is that Digital Ocean bought CSS Tricks — another beloved tech blog — about a year ago, and recently they laid off the only editor of CSS Tricks. It is entirely possible that one day we will lose access to CSS Tricks content like “A Complete Guide to Flexbox” — a front-end “staple food,” a link that always shows up in purple in search results; and instead, we get to enjoy losing 3 seconds of our life being redirected and then bounce.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ A DNA Testing Company Forgot About 2.1 Million People’s Data. Then It Leaked.

• The Register reports that the stolen data was part of a “legacy database” that DDC had amassed years ago and then apparently forgot that it had. In 2012, DDC had purchased another forensics firm, Orchid Cellmark, accumulating the firm’s databases along with the sale. DDC has subsequently claimed that it was unaware that the data was even in its systems, alleging that a prior inventory of its digital vaults turned up no sign of the information of millions of people that was later boosted by the hacker.

• Not long after news of the data breach emerged, Ohio and Pennsylvania sued the company.

=> ↺ Dutch gov’t ordered to stop collecting, processing plane passengers’ data

• The Ministry of Justice and Security must immediately stop the large-scale collection and processing of airline passenger travel details, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) said on Tuesday. The data is meant to gain insight into terrorists and criminals’ movements, but the Ministry collects, processes, and stores all airline passengers’ data. “This is not permitted and must stop,” the AP said.

=> ↺ Nokia and Bosch team up to develop 5G precision positioning technology

• The two companies say they have deployed the proof of concept in a Bosch production plant in Germany, where extensive tests under realistic manufacturing conditions have shown “an accuracy within 50 cm in 90 percent of the factory footprint”.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Cognitive neuroscientist explains why stupidity is an existential threat to America

• It is less surprising that politicians who regularly exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect are being elected to office when one realizes that they are being voted in by people who also display the Dunning-Kruger effect. A 2008 study by the political scientist Ian Anson surveyed over 2000 Americans in an attempt to see whether or not the effect was playing a role in one’s ability to overestimate their political knowledge. The results clearly showed that the people who scored lowest on political knowledge were the very same people who were the most likely to overestimate their performance. While this is shocking, it also makes perfect sense: the less we know about something, the less of an ability we have to assess how much we don’t know. It is only when we try to become an expert on some complex topic that we truly realize how complicated it is, and how much more there is to learn about it.

=> ↺ Murdoch Propaganda Readies Australia for War With China

• Anyone who’s paying attention knows the behavior of the U.S. war machine is as relevant to Australians as it is to Americans, writes Caitlin Johnstone.

=> ↺ Biden Makes Surprise Visit to Ukraine

• The president says the purpose of the trip was to reaffirm ‘unwavering and unflagging’ support for Ukraine.

=> ↺ Patrick Lawrence: Totalized Censorship

• Content warning, canceling, de-platforming, denying access: The fate of Sy Hersh’s Democracy Now! interview on YouTube is the latest indication of how much rougher press suppression is in this new media era.

=> ↺ March To War In Iraq, 20 Years Later: February 21, 2003

=> ↺ If You Don’t Like Rules: Y’all’s Racism Is Showing

• On the anniversary of the murder of Malcolm X – “Culture is an indispensable weapon (to) forge the future with the past” – we salute Rep. Justin Pearson, a young black man who wore a dashiki – “This dress is resistance” – to mark his first fiery day as Tennessee’s newest lawmaker. America on a GOP, stubbornly stuck on the wrong side of history, freaking out that Pearson failed to follow (fictional) “rules” of decorum: “Masters’ boys still thinking they in charge of events.”

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ ‘Transparency for thee, not for me’: Study shows SEC mounting secrecy about whistleblower program

• The whistleblower program encourages people to share information about financial malfeasance with the SEC by offering monetary payments for tips that lead to successful SEC enforcement actions. The program has recently come under fire for its excessive secrecy, which some fear has tilted the playing field in favor of well-connected repeat players. Last summer, one member of the commission cited Platt’s earlier study of the program in a speech calling for increasing transparency surrounding the program.

• But rather than expanding transparency, the SEC has done precisely the opposite, according to Platt. As he shows in his new study, which was featured on the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, the SEC’s Fiscal Year 2022 report on the whistleblower program omitted a wide range of significant information that had been included in every prior annual report.

=> ↺ Spain officials quit over trains that were too wide for tunnels

• Two top Spanish transport officials have resigned over a botched order for new commuter trains that cost nearly €260m ($275m; £230m).

• The trains could not fit into non-standard tunnels in the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria.

=> ↺ Spain train chief quits over order of too wide trains

• The resignations of Isaias Taboas, who has headed Renfe since June 2018, and Isabel Pardo brings the total number of people to lose their jobs over the scandal to four.

• The resignations were announced shortly before the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sanchez, met on Monday with the presidents of the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria to explain how the errors in the measurements occurred.

• The error will cause a delay in the manufacturing process of two years.

=> ↺ US Military Continues To Violate The Law By Limiting Access To Court Records

• Court transparency and equitable access to court documents are ongoing struggles. The federal court system’s malicious compliance with congressional directives has given us exorbitant fees and a clunky, counterintuitive platform for online access to court documents.

=> ↺ From Russiagate with Love: Corporate Media Spin and Revisionist Reporting on Russia’s Alleged Meddling in the 2016 Election Continue – Censored Notebook

• A January 2023 publication from the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) spawned the latest round of spin and shifting baselines from Russiagate apologists. Russiagate refers to the claims that Russia meddled in and influenced the outcome of the U.S. election in 2016, had direct connections to Donald Trump and his associates, and worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton for the presidency. A recent article from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, written by investigative reporter Jeff Gerth, utilized exiting media reports, and “dozens of people at the center of the story—editors and reporters, Trump himself, and others in his orbit,” to conclude that the legacy news media inaccurately covered the connection between Russia and Donald J. Trump during his Presidency. While this may be news to some diehard Democrats and their allies in the “liberal” press, the media’s reporting failures on the matter were not missed by all.

Environment

=> ↺ The Train Derailment in Ohio Was a Disaster Waiting to Happen

• When crews are stretched thin, Mikulka said, accidents and derailments are just waiting to happen. He said calls from workers for increased safety measures have gone unheard. “There are so many different points in this process where we look at how we can make it safer, and the rail company says ‘Yeah, but we don’t want to pay for that.’”

• At a press conference last week Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said the train that went through East Palestine was not marked as hazardous, despite the chemicals on board. He called it “absurd” and is asking Congress to investigate how hazardous materials are handled.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ [Cryptocurrency] Mining Regulation in the Pacific Northwest

• In a county of just over 100,000 residents, sitting directly below the Grand Coulee Dam, 13 [cryptocurrency] mining operations—think warehouses stacked with networked computers continuously working on complex math equations to earn bitcoin—might seem like a lot. But the combined 27 megawatts of electricity those miners use today comprise only a fraction of the requests the Grant County Public Utility District has fielded since 2017, when bitcoin surged in value to nearly $20,000.

=> ↺ “Russia Is Good at Cheating”

• Vlasiuk: Never believe a word of what Russian authorities are saying. They stopped publishing many statistics that were published before – for good reasons. Russia is struggling to get hold of fresh money and is running a record-high deficit. Lots of Russia’s assets are frozen, less and less technology is available. The European Union’s ban on Russian oil products alone has cost the Russian economy a market of 30 to 40 billion euros. At the end of 2022, Russia was forced to impose an additional 600 billion rubles in new taxes on the biggest companies, including Gazprom. Russia now spends 20 percent less on drugs for hospitals. Expenditures for road construction were cut in half. They are losing whole industries – their car industry, for example. So, it would be absurd to assume that the sanctions don’t have a significant impact. They do, only Russia is trying to hide it, by lying with their statistics.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Ecocide in Ukraine

Finance

=> ↺ Comparing Kickstarters

• I intended to use the Devotion and Corrosion campaign to compare “Kickstarter with Twitter” to “Kickstarter without Twitter.” That seemed sensible, right? The videos are comparable, the campaigns are comparable. The story for the orcs is stronger, because “Orcs in Prohibition” is a solid hook, but still, it’d do something, right?

=> ↺ Getting Settlement Money to Former Kushner Tenants May Prove Difficult

• A decade ago, Jasmine Cox was living with her young son in the Cove Village rental complex in Essex, Maryland, just east of Baltimore, when she started experiencing a plague of problems. The bedroom ceiling started leaking one day, then maggots started coming out of the living room carpet, and then raw sewage started flowing out of the kitchen sink, she said. She stopped cooking to keep food away from the sink. With so much black mold around, her son started needing an inhaler. When she moved out soon afterward, the landlord, Westminster Management, sent her a $600 invoice for a new carpet and other repairs.

• The experience haunted her for years. So she was hit with a welter of emotions when she recently received a letter at her new home from the Maryland attorney general, alerting her that she could apply for restitution from Westminster, the property management arm of Kushner Companies, the family real estate company of Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a former senior adviser to the president. She has started going through old SD cards and photo-storage apps to find pictures of the apartment woes to submit with the claims form that accompanied the letter. “We were living in a biohazard,” she said. “I’m just glad something has come about to compensate people, to clear things up.”

=> ↺ Investigation Shows Rail Giant Donated to Ohio Governor a Month Before Toxic Crash

• If Norfolk Southern “can pay for lobbyists and politicians, they can pay to clean up the mess they made in our community,” said one local group.

=> ↺ Ralph Nader: Letter to Tim Cook, Other Ultra-Rich CEOs and Hedge Fund Titans

• The victims of the devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria need your help now. The surviving families and children and those rescued alive from the rubble are in serious danger in affected wintertime impoverished regions. Refugees in other places fleeing their war-torn homelands are also suffering.

=> ↺ Distortion of Breakfast Price Hikes Leaves WSJ With Egg on Face

• The Wall Street Journal (2/14/23) gave a crash course on the true meaning of freedom under capitalism with its piece “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast.” Ironically, the article sat behind a paywall. So instead of skipping breakfast to cut costs, maybe Journal readers should cancel their subscriptions.

=> ↺ Can New York Make Deadbeat Dolan Stop Freeloading at Madison Square Garden?

• Out of all the preening, egomaniacal billionaires in New York, James Dolan may be unmatched. The owner of the famed Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks, and the New York Rangers, Dolan has long been a uniquely powerful figure in America’s largest city, a mogul who always seems to get his way. Of late, he’s been in the news for wielding facial recognition technology to wantonly ban from his properties anyone who offends him. Attorneys who work at firms engaged with litigation against Dolan’s company have found themselves turned away from Knicks games and shows at Radio City.

=> ↺ Walmart’s Statement on Inflation Undermines Biden Narrative As Many Americans Flee The Country. (Government Stops Reporting Numbers.)

• American consumers would have to go back to the 1970s to find something worse than what is unfolding now.

• The cause, of course, is endless government money printing to prop up the stock market and keep mortgages impossibly cheap, while they invade and run the rest of the world. They don’t have to print as much money to do this, but it’s easier to inflict an inflation tax on Americans than to demand that people like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Tim Cook, and Elon Musk pay more while they’re playing “See who can die with the most hundreds of billions of dollars.”

• In a ludicrous display of toxic masculinity gone wrong, Musk marched into Twitter in November, promising to turn things around, and the company is still hemorrhaging cash despite losing over 85% of its employees. They just had another layoff last Friday, which went mostly unreported.

• But while Elon Musk is busy losing his fortune and trying to get a consolation prize of using a reverse shadow ban to multiply the number of people who see his tweets by 1,000, most Americans are facing a 9% increase in the price of cat food since last month.

• I’m certainly glad I got a “cat food mountain” back when they had rebates on it. I still grab a bag now and then when there’s a rebate and stick it in the pile, sorted by the date of expiration.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Pentagon warning US military to avoid poppy seeds, citing effects on drug testing

• According to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, poppy seeds can absorb opium extract when being harvested. This can then sometimes cause morphine and codeine — which are pain relief drugs in the opioid family — to be detected in urine up to 48 hours after poppy seeds are ingested, which can then cause false positives in drug testing.

=> ↺ Twitter May Open Source Its Algorithm Next Week

• In a subsequent tweet, Musk said people could find the algorithm disappointing when it’s made open source next week but emphasised that it would improve.

=> ↺ Tamil Nadu to revisit policy on cyber security: IT Minister

• The Tamil Nadu Information Technology Department was working in upgrading its policy on cyber security and was holding discussions with various stake-holders in this connection, Minister T Mano Thangaraj said here on Tuesday. The Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services appealed to the industry experts to ensure adoption of technology by various government departments.

=> ↺ Discovery of Lithium Reserve in Kashmir: New Complications in resolution of disputed land

• This has increased the importance of Kashmir for India which can be understood as statement; that lower Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir need to be properly explored, according to Jugal Kishore Sharma, a senior Democratic Azad Party (DAP) politician and former minister. The growing concern would be India will speed up her approach towards Kashmir by increasing military troops , more will intensify its plans to change the demographic composition of Jammu and Kashmir and convert the Muslim majority into a minority and also will swiftly work on merging Kashmir in India as own state. And will create lobby to zero flex over issue on international forums. This can also can be understood that the Geology & Mining Department of Jammu and Kashmir is now putting two significant mineral blocks of limestone up for e-auction in the border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, close to Reasi. The process of determining the availability of lithium and e-auctioning the output in a time-bound way, according to officials, has already begun.

=> ↺ House Judiciary subpoenas Tim Cook & rest of big tech about alleged collusion

• The subpoenas require Sundar Pichai, Andy Jassy, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckberg, and Satya Nadella to turn over all requested documents and communications by March 23, 2023. According to The Wall Street Journal, it’s a probe to determine if the companies censored viewpoints on issues such as COVID-19 policy that disagreed with White House policy.

=> ↺ TikTok’s DC Lobbying Charm Offensive Unsurprisingly Isn’t Going So Hot

• To fend off a ban in the U.S., TikTok lobbyists have attempted to put on a doomed charm offensive in DC, spending a record $5.4 million on U.S. lawmaker influence last year. The effort has even involved opening “transparency centers” in DC designed to “educate” lawmakers on content moderation and the steps TikTok is apparently taking to assuage privacy and security concerns.

=> ↺ Twitter Is Correct To Move Away From SMS Two Factor Authentication, Though, There Are Much Better Ways To Do It

• A lot of people freaked out on Friday after the news came out that Twitter was going to make SMS two-factor authentication (2FA) only available to paid Twitter Blue subscribers. The news was first broken, like so much Twitter news these days, by Platformer reporter Zoe Schiffer.

=> ↺ Meta Following Elon Down The Road Of Making Verification An Upsell Is A Terrible Idea

• And here I was thinking that the last few months of Twitter shenanigans with Elon Musk at the helm had done something nearly impossible: made Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership of Meta (Facebook/Instagram) look thoughtful and balanced in comparison. But then, on Sunday, Zuckberg announced that Meta is following Musk down the dubious road of making “verification” an upsell product people can buy. This is a mistake for many reasons, just as it was a mistake when Musk did it.

=> ↺ US Anti-Socialism Resolution Demeans US Allies

• The anti-socialism resolution passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month sent a chilling message not only to socialists in the United States but to many U.S. friends and allies around the world. By backing a resolution that “denounces socialism in all its forms,” policymakers condemned a broad range…

=> ↺ The Absurd Specter of “Woke Communism”

• Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and perhaps the next president of the United States, is waging war against something he and many others on the right identify as “woke communism.” DeSantis even persuaded the Florida legislature to pass a “Victims of Communism” law, mandating that every November 7 (the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia), all public schools in the state must devote 45 minutes of instruction to the evils of the red menace.

=> ↺ Supreme Court showdown for Google, Twitter and the social media world

• At the center of two cases to be argued over two days is Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress when internet platforms were just beginning. In just 26 words, Section 230 draws a distinction between interactive computer service providers and other purveyors of information. Whereas newspapers and broadcasters can be sued for defamation and other wrongful conduct, Section 230 says that websites are not publishers or speakers and cannot be sued for material that appears on those sites. Essentially, the law treats web platforms the same way that it treats the telephone. And just like phone companies, websites that are host to speakers cannot be sued for what the speakers say or do.

=> ↺ Five things to know about the Supreme Court case that could change the [Internet]

• As Congress is largely at a stalemate on how to proceed with rules regulating content moderation, all eyes are on how the justices respond in the first Section 230 case to hit the highest court.

• “There is a potential, for the first time really, to very significantly change the way that Section 230, which is one of the pillars of internet law, has been interpreted going forward,” said Ashley Johnson, a senior policy analyst at the think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

• Here are five things to know heading into Tuesday’s oral argument: [...]

=> ↺ Supreme Court wrestles with immunity for social media companies

• For the first time Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court wrestled with the scope of a landmark federal law that’s given sweeping legal immunity to [Internet] and social media companies for more than 25 years.

• Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — known in the tech world as the “26 words that created the modern internet” — protects the companies from liability for content posted by individual users, no matter how discriminatory, defamatory or even dangerous the information may be.

=> ↺ What is Section 230, the rule that made the modern internet?

• The outcomes of these cases could reshape the [Internet] as we know it. Section 230 won’t be easily dismantled. But if it is, online speech could be drastically transformed.

=> ↺ AT&T seeks to shed cybersecurity division

• AT&T Inc, the second-biggest U.S. wireless carrier, is exploring a sale of its cybersecurity division, potentially undoing an acquisition it completed five years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

• The sale of the cybersecurity business would add to a string of divestments AT&T has turned to in order to pay down debt following its $108.7 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc in 2018, a deal it has since also unwound.

=> ↺ Section 230 liability protections on trial in Google Supreme Court case

• Whether Google can be held liable for recommending harmful content on YouTube is at the heart of a watershed case that could shape the future of the [Internet].

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Republican Operatives Are Astroturfing Opposition to Solar Power

• And it looks like Ralston was being paid well by parties with a vested interest in not seeing renewable energy projects succeed. According to NPR, her consulting firm, SBR Enterprises Inc, received almost $300,000 between 2018 and 2020 from the Paul E. Singer Foundation, the charitable giving outlet of wealthy venture capitalist Paul Singer. Singer’s investment firm is the largest shareholder of coal company Peabody Energy; Singer has also funneled money towards prominent climate denier Bjorn Lomborg’s think tank. (In 2019, Ralston said Citizens for Responsible Solar had raised no money from fossil fuel interests; Ralston would not identify the group’s current funders for NPR and Floodlight.)

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ “Censoring dissent”: Florida GOP wants to make it easier for officials like DeSantis to sue critics

• Filed by Florida state Rep. Alex Andrade (R-2), H.B. 951 laments that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan has “foreclosed many meritorious defamation claims to the detriment of citizens of all walks of life” by placing such claims under the purview of the federal government and establishing a high standard of proof.

=> ↺ Let Kids Read Roald Dahl’s Books the Way He Wrote Them

• In the late 17th century, Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear with a happy ending. In the early 19th century, Henrietta and Thomas Bowdler made Shakespeare safe for women and children by taking out all the sexy bits. History has not been kind to either project. It is my dearest hope that the Inclusivity Ambassadors will meet a similar fate.

=> ↺ Roald Dahl’s Books Being Rewritten Sparked Backlash On Censorship

• Roald Dahl was a British novelist whose children’s books became classics all over the world. However, Dahl was a controversial figure when he was alive, and his works were often called antisocial and anti-feminist. Despite the controversy, several of his books were adapted into films for even wider-spread consumption. Recently, his estate worked with his book publisher to edit words and phrases that could be considered inappropriate. The changes stirred an immediate backlash from other authors in the industry, who described the venture as unnecessary censorship.

=> ↺ After DeSantis Criticized, Florida Teacher Fired Over Video of Empty Library Shelves

• Brian Covey started working as a full-time substitute teacher for Duval County public schools in Florida in October 2022, as he told multiple outlets. The role was helping to address what a working paper from Brown University last year called out as the highest number of teacher vacancies in the country. This past week, following backlash from governor Ron DeSantis, Covey was fired for posting a video to social media demonstrating the impact of DeSantis’s restrictive policies on education, as reported by the Washington Post and elsewhere.

=> ↺ Iran Sentences Detained US-Based Opposition Figure to Death

• A senior member of a U.S.-based Iranian opposition group held by Iran and accused of orchestrating a deadly 2008 mosque bombing has been sentenced to death, authorities said Tuesday.

• Iran says Jamshid Sharmahd, a 67-year-old Iranian-German national and U.S. resident, is the leader of the armed wing of a group advocating the restoration of the monarchy that was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

=> ↺ Left or Right, Politicians Shouldn’t Be Telling Academics What They’re Allowed to Teach

• Rufo’s desire to oppose the “ignorance and fanaticism” of woke fundamentalists is understandable—commendable, even. It’s an impulse I share. But principled opposition and top-down suppression are two very different things. With the words, “We’re in charge now,” Rufo is signalling to us either that he’s willing to ignore the moral distinction between the two; or, less charitably, that he simply never cared about this distinction to begin with.

=> ↺ “Rushdie Now No More Than Living Dead”: Iran Foundation Rewards Attacker

• “We sincerely thank the brave action of the young American who made Muslims happy by blinding one of Rushdie’s eyes and disabling one of his hands,” said Mohammad Esmail Zarei, secretary of the Foundation to Implement Imam Khomeini’s Fatwas.

=> ↺ The Supreme Court battle for Section 230 has begun

• The first shots have been fired in a Supreme Court showdown over web platforms, terrorism, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Gonzales v. Google — one of two lawsuits that are likely to shape the future of the internet.

• Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh are a pair of lawsuits blaming platforms for facilitating Islamic State attacks. The court’s final ruling on these cases will determine web services’ liability for hosting illegal activity, particularly if they promote it with algorithmic recommendations.

=> ↺ No ideological splits, only worried justices as High Court hears Google case

• “How do I draw a line between an algorithm and active collusion?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.

=> ↺ School District Pays Legal Fees After Banning Mothers From Reading Sexually Graphic Passages at Meetings

• A group of conservative Georgia mothers on a quest to ban library books has won a key victory against a school district that sought to limit their ability to recite graphic passages from those books at school board meetings.

• Forsyth County Schools agreed this month to pay $107,500 in legal fees to the group, called the Mama Bears. Like many conservatives nationwide, the Mama Bears have taken to trying to get books removed from school libraries by reading sexually explicit passages aloud at school board meetings.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Farsi-language TV channel in U.K. moving to U.S. after warnings of potential threat from Iranian agents

• Iran International television said Saturday it had “reluctantly closed its London studios” due to mounting threats against its journalists and on the advice of London’s Metropolitan Police.

• “I cannot believe it has come to this. A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move,” Mahmood Enayat, the station’s general manager, said in a statement from the broadcaster.

• “We refuse to be silenced by these cowardly threats,” he said. “We will continue to broadcast. We are undeterred.

=> ↺ UN Experts Demand Reinstatement of Cambodian News Outlet

• U.N. experts have demanded the reinstatement of Voice of Democracy after the online Khmer- and English-language broadcaster, one of Cambodia’s last independent media outlets, was stripped of its license.

• Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier this month ordered VOD’s license revoked over what he said was an erroneous report about his eldest son.

=> ↺ Chechen opposition blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov reappears after going missing in early December

• On Tuesday, Abdurakhmanov posted his first YouTube video in almost three months. In it, he confirmed that he’s alive and healthy, but didn’t provide further details about his situation.

=> ↺ Another Belarusian Journalist Gets Prison Term Amid Crackdown

=> ↺ Newly released from Turkish prison, Kurdish journalist Nedim Türfent reflects on sham prosecution

• Though Türfent’s prosecution was openly retaliatory and all 13 of the state’s initial witnesses recanted their testimony against him, he told CPJ that his case received comparatively limited attention in Turkey because he’s Kurdish. Türfent was born on the Turkey’s southeastern edge bordering Iran and Iraq, a predominantly Kurdish area and a stronghold for armed groups seeking autonomous rule. He began reporting on rights violations in local conflict zones for the now-shuttered Dicle News Agency (DİHA) to help victims whose stories never made it beyond the region. Instead, he became one of those stories.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ New York Legislators Once Again Trying To Curb Law Enforcement Access To Military Gear

• For years, law enforcement agencies converted themselves into quasi-military agencies with the assistance of the Defense Department. Whatever the military no longer needed, cops could have for cheap or free, as long as they remembered to say things about “national security” when filling out their 1033 program requisitions.

• Unsurprisingly, the acquisition of warrior gear (camouflage uniforms, assault rifles, mine resistant vehicles) made cops feel more like warriors, rather than protectors. Violence increased as cops began to look less and less like cops. Ever since law enforcement rolled into anti-police violence protests following the killing of Michael Brown looking for all the world like an occupying force, the 1033 program has faced increased scrutiny.

=> ↺ ‘I never wear a headscarf anymore’: Iranian women continue to defy Islamic regime

• However, Iranian women still face pressure from the regime to continue wearing the veil, in the form of threats, restrictions and acts of violence.

• Hossein Jalali, an Iranian MP, told Iranian media on December 20,2022 that “the restrictions regarding the hijab are very much in place, it’s just the way they are enforced that has changed.”

=> ↺ Can Buses Drive Change for Jordanian Women?

• Nodznaya had taken public transportation in the Jordanian capital before. Counterintuitively, what is called “public transit” in Amman has long been a private, for-profit enterprise of taxis, buses, and shared taxis known as “services”—essentially, a network of all vehicles that are not personal cars. Until the BRT, government-run transit did not exist.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Microsoft’s president to push Activision deal at EU hearing; Google, Nvidia also present

• Smith will lead a delegation of 18 senior executives, including Microsoft Gaming Chief Executive Officer Phil Spencer, while Activision will be represented by its CEO Robert Kotick according to a European Commission document seen by Reuters.

=> ↺ Podcast Episode: The Right to Imagine Your Own Future

• That idea guides Deji Bryce Olukotun’s work both as a critically acclaimed author and as a tech company’s social impact chief. Instead of just envisioning the oligarch-dominated dystopia we fear, he believes speculative fiction can paint a picture of healthy, open societies in which all share in technology’s economic bounty. It can also help to free people’s imaginations to envision more competitive, level playing fields. Then we can use those diverse visions to guide policy solutions, from antitrust enforcement to knocking down the laws that stymie innovation. 

• Olukotun speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about rejecting the inevitability of the tech future that profit-driven corporate figureheads describe, and choosing instead to exercise the right to imagine our own future and leverage that vision into action. 

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