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● Links 11/03/2023: Curl is 25

Posted in News Roundup at 8:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ What Are Package Dependencies on Linux? Explained

• The term “dependencies” is often used when downloading packages on Linux. But what does it mean?

• You may have heard about package dependencies in Linux and wondered what they are. Dependencies might seem confusing, but there are tools in Linux to make sure every program you install has all the components it needs.

• Let’s understand Linux dependencies and their impact on package management on Linux.

Applications

=> ↺ Mixxx Free DJ Software 2.3.4 Released! Ubuntu PPA

• Free DJ mixing software Mixxx announced the 2.3.4 release a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 22.10, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 via PPA. The new release added controller mapping for the Traktor Kontrol S2 Mk1, and initial mapping for Numark Party Mix. I

=> ↺ 7 Best Free and Open Source Photo Metadata Editors (Updated 2023)

• A metadata editor is computer software which allows users to view and edit metadata tags interactively and save them in the graphics file. So, metadata is information that is part of the image file and contains information about the image itself and the creation of the image. It can set textual information such as title, description, exposure time, ISO value, focal length, and copyright. Some modern digital cameras and camera phones are GPS enabled and they can save the location co-ordinates (latitude and longitude) with the photographs. Metadata editors can also set geolocation information by browsing a map or setting coordinates directly, which is particularly useful for cameras without GPS. There are many reasons why users might wish to modify metadata of photographs.

=> ↺ How To Read Online News on Ubuntu

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to install SSL Let’s Encrypt using Lego?

• SSL / TLS (Secure Socket Layer / Transport Layer Security) are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communications security over a computer network: web, email, instant messengers.

=> ↺ How to Install Spotify on Ubuntu 22.04 or Ubuntu 20.04

• Spotify is a popular music streaming service that has taken the world by storm since its launch in 2006. With over 320 million active users across 178 countries, it has become one of the most widely used music platforms globally.

=> ↺ Getting started with iperf3 – Network Troubleshooting

• iperf3 is a tool to measure the throughput between hosts in a network and can test TCP, UDP, and SCPT, whereby TCP is the default. iperf3 must be installed and active on two hosts in which one host acts as a server and the other one as a client. By default, you measure the upload from the client to the server, but you can test the download from the client with the -R flag.

=> ↺ Is your jail not getting an IPv6 address soon enough? Blame DAD.

• Looking in the jail, it had IPv6 addresses. What gives?

=> ↺ Cleaning up metadata, and building with Dublin Core

• But what schema to keep? After mulling whether to just use HTML metadata and call it a day, I decided to stick with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. As an archivist and aspirational librarian, their metadata cause has always spoken the most to me, and I still think they offer the most flexible and broadly useful schemas for all sorts of data, not least a personal blog. It also fits in well with existing HTML metadata tags, so there isn’t much more markup to write.

=> ↺ File Uploads for the Web (1): Uploading Files with HTML

• To actually send the file to a server, we need to make an HTTP request, which means we need a . We’ll put the file input inside along with a to submit the form. The input will also need a to make it accessible for assistive technology, an id attribute to associate it with the label, and a name attribute in order to include its data along with the HTTP request.

=> ↺ ZFS on Linux and when you get stale NFSv3 mounts

• There are at least three ways to move a ZFS fileserver from Ubuntu 18.04 to Ubuntu 22.04. I’ll skip upgrading it in place because we don’t have any experience with that; we upgrade machines by reinstalling them from scratch. That leaves two approaches for a ZFS server, which I will call a forklift upgrade and a migration. In a forklift upgrade, you build new system disks, then swap them in by exporting the ZFS pools, changing system disks, booting your new 22.04 system, and importing the pools back.

Games

=> ↺ Valve Designer: No Beefed Up Steam Deck 2 for ‘a Few Years’

• Valve Designer says a more powerful steam deck sequel isn’t in the cards for the next few years.

=> ↺ No true next-gen Steam Deck for ‘a few years’ Valve say

• As expected really, Valve said they don’t really expect to see a true next-gen Steam Deck for a few years yet. Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, it’s clear Valve are very happy with the first year of the Steam Deck.

=> ↺ The Humble Heroines Bundle is an awesome deal for Steam Deck and Linux Desktop

• The Humble Heroines Bundle is an absolutely fantastic deal, with some great compatibility across Steam Deck and Linux Desktop with Proton. Here’s what to expect from it. As I usually do, I’ll go over each title individually and list the rating for Steam Deck, along with ProtonDB rating for Desktop users to save you some clicking around.

=> ↺ Aethermancer is a new creature collector rogue-lite from the dev of Monster Sanctuary

• Seems moi rai games are sticking to what they know, with them moving on from Monster Sanctuary (which is still being updated) to their new announcement with Aethermancer.

=> ↺ Proton Hotfix updated for Resident Evil 4 remake, Steam Deck needs SteamOS 3.4.6 Preview

• Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais mentioned that they’ve updated Proton Hotfix, which should allow the new Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo of the remake to run on Linux and Steam Deck.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ How platform integration in Qt/KDE apps works

• There has been some recent discussions about how KDE applications (or Qt apps in general) should look and feel like outside of the Plasma desktop, particularly in a GNOME environment.

• During this discussion I noticed two major disconnects between the involved parties. One of them is technical in nature, where (understandably) not everyone involved has deep knowledge about how Qt and KDE apps work. The other one is cultural in nature, where there’s opposing views about who gets to decide how an application should look and feel like on a given platform.

• I can’t do much about the cultural issue, but I can help the conversation by giving some much needed overview of how any of this works on a technical level. Everyone being on the same page technically could help foster a more productive conversation about this complex topic.

• First of all it’s important to note that Qt to its core is an abstraction across various plaforms (most important here are Linux, Windows, and macOS, but also to some degree Android and iOS). Whenever possible Qt tries to use the platform’s native facilities to do anything, whether that’s rendering, file dialogs, widget styles etc. This becomes somewhat messy when you consider that “Linux” isn’t exaclty a single, well-defined “platform”. Qt does usually have non-native fallbacks for things like file dialogs and widget styles, but they aren’t necessarily something you want a user to have to see. It’s also important to mention that Qt has two somewhat competing ways of defining UIs, the traditional QtWidgets, and the more recent QtQuick/QML.

• There are several somewhat independent pieces involved in how a Qt application looks and feels. Jan Grulich already talked about some of them in the context of GNOME and QGnomePlatform, but there are also things specific to KDE applications that aren’t mentioned.

=> ↺ This week in KDE: Qt apps survive the Wayland compositor crashing

• Thanks to the heroic work of David Edmundson, Qt apps (including all KDE software) in Plasma 6 will now survive when the Wayland compositor crashes! This is huge! And work is ongoing to add this functionality to other common app toolkits, such as GTK.

• Beyond that, Plasma 6 porting work continues, with more and more people using it daily. Not me yet, because I’m a scaredy-cat about this kind of instability and am waiting for it to converge a bit more But hopefully soon! Meanwhile, check out what else happened…

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

=> ↺ TeX and DragonFly

• TeX Live 2023 is available on DragonFly.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ PipeWire 0.3.67 (2023-03-09)

• This is a bugfix release that is API and ABI compatible with previous 0.3.x releases.

=> ↺ Innovating in an economic downturn: 4 tips

=> ↺ 3 ways IT leaders can break free from outdated software

=> ↺ IT leadership: 3 ways to boost your Generational IQ (GQ)

=> ↺ IT leadership: How to lead with strategic clarity

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian Project — What is the difference between a Project and a proper Association?

• A project starts with a plan and finishes with a product or outcome. Projects are transient in nature. Therefore, being part of a project team also implies a somewhat transient status.

• When you consider the quantity and quality of the work and intellectual property that volunteers contribute to Debian and Fedora, this inferior and transient status is somewhat insulting.

• This inconvenient vocabulary is no accident. Every time there is an election for the Debian Project Leader, somebody raises the idea of creating a proper Debian foundation or a Debian association. In other words, creating a body with its own legal status where all the volunteers have a status as equal members. In the 2022 election, Christian Kastner raised the topic here.

• In reality, all of the money and other assets associated with Debian development have been siphoned off into other legal entities. They are described as “trusted organizations” and there is a list of them on the Debian wiki site. Each of these organizations puts out an obscure financial report from time to time.

• In 2023, we will be celebrating 30 years of the Debian Project. To put it in the terminology of the Afghan war, Debian and Fedora are forever-projects, like forever-wars, that seem to be losing their way. The Debian Social Contract gives us promises of transparency but in 30 years, we have never seen anybody publish a consolidated set of Debian financial accounts.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Meet Ubuntu Flatpak Remix, Ubuntu with Flatpak Support Preinstalled

• That was fast! After Canonical’s announcement that future Ubuntu releases won’t include Flatpak support by default, someone already made an unofficial Ubuntu flavor that ships with support for Flatpak apps preinstalled and working out of the box, called Ubuntu Flatpak Remix.

• Several key apps are preinstalled in the Flatpak format rather than as a Snap app, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird email client, and LibreOffice office suite. Support for the Flathub portal is installed as well, so you’ll be able to install more apps with just a few clicks.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Mini review of the Raspberry Pi Global Shutter Camera

• Raspberry Pi Trading has just launched the 1.6MP Raspberry Pi Global Shutter Camera which can capture rapid motion without introducing artifacts usually experienced with rolling shutter cameras such as the earlier Raspberry Pi Camera modules, including the latest Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3.

=> ↺ PotatoP Laptop Aims for Two Years of Battery Life

• PotatoP demonstrably runs better than a potato, but uses a 96 MHz CPU and mono reflective display to facilitate its 2-year battery life.

=> ↺ Replacing My Eero Mesh Network with Two Mangos

• Luckily for me, the Mini Mangos were perfect for my basic requirements:

• Max. 300Mbps Wi-Fi Speed (more than enough for my use-case)

• Running open-source software via openwrt

• Hardware VPN toggle

• Tiny physical footprint

• Extremely portable

=> ↺ Learn how to drive flip-disc displays with your Arduino

• Part of the reason that flip-disc displays are hard to find today is that they’re electromechanical devices that require dedicated manufacturing. Each “pixel” is a bistable device that will remain in its set position until the user actively resets the position. To flip the disc, the user must supply a pulse of electricity through an electromagnet coil in the correct polarity. One direction sets the disc to one side, and the reverse polarity sets the disc to the other side. Because the discs are bistable, the user only needs to flip the necessary discs to achieve the states they require — not the entire display. Flip-discs are relatively slow, so that is important for reducing overall refresh time.

=> ↺ Arduino UNO compatible Adafruit Metro M7 features 500 MHz NXP i.MX RT1011 Cortex-M7 SoC

• Adafruit Metro M7 is a development board based on a 500 MHz NXP i.MX RT1011 Arm Cortex-M7 crossover MCU that follows Arduino UNO form factor and integrates the ESP32-based “AirLift” WiFi module for wireless connectivity. The board also comes with 4MB QSPI storage, a few LEDs and buttons, a Qwiic connector for additional expansion beyond Arduino Shields, and an SWD connector for debugging.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ People are going wild for three new Android phones which take amazing photos every time | The US Sun

=> ↺ How to Download Apps on Android Without Google Play Store?

=> ↺ Google is Changing the Way Pixel Users Exit the Android Beta Program

=> ↺ BMW updates iDrive for all models ahead of shifting to Android platform | HT Auto

=> ↺ Google releases security updates for Android owners with millions warned over ‘critical’ flaws putting phones at risk | 7NEWS

=> ↺ Popular shopping app used by 100million Android owners caught spying on what you type – check your phone right now | The US Sun

=> ↺ Millions of Android users are just noticing free ‘loophole’ upgrade – it instantly stops infuriating problem | The Sun

=> ↺ Android 14 makes me excited for the future of gesture navigation

=> ↺ Android 13 Beta Testers Need to Consider Opting-Out Immediately

=> ↺ Android Beta Program requires opt out to get 13 QPR2 stable

=> ↺ Android 13 QPR3 Beta 1 set to arrive next week

=> ↺ Android Auto 9.1 Beta Build is Now Available

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Open source reimagines the traditional keyboard

• The present model only defines the exterior dimensions and shape resulting from the novel design approach. The next steps are defining the internal assembly (comprising of how the keys are attached to the butterfly spring support) and designing the internal electronics, etc. Those tasks are slated for future follow-up work. Ultimately, anyone with access to 3D printing and an electronics lab should be able to create and test a working prototype. Alternatively, if you are just an enthusiast wanting to get a feel for what the one-handed keyboard would look like, then you can 3D print it as is, permitting you to experiment with how easily you can type sentences. Nowadays, this service is reasonably accessible via online manufacturing stores. For those that want to be even more involved, the fact that the one-handed keyboard design is open source provides the opportunity for it to be commercially developed as a product of a company producing computer-related equipment.

Events

=> ↺ Recap/Summary of the Digital Market Act workshop in Brussels

• This Monday, I was in Brussels to attend a stakeholder workshop…

=> ↺ Connecting at Embedded World 2023

• Nestled in the historic city of Nuremberg, the annual Embedded World conference will be taking place from March 14 to 16.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

=> ↺ curl 25 years online celebration

• If it works out, I will do a presentation walking over the bigger changes done over the years while sipping on the 25 year old single malt I have arranged for the occasion. With the ability for everyone to ask questions or otherwise contribute.

=> ↺ CURL turns 25 years old: a celebration #CURL @bagder

• The author states: “At 17:00 UTC March 20, 2023. We run a Zoom birthday party open for everyone to join.”

Mozilla

=> ↺ The Depths of Wikipedia creator on finding the goofy corners of the web

• Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later, and what sites and forums shaped them.

=> ↺ Real talk: Did your 5-year-old just tease you about having too many open tabs?

• No one ever wanted to say “tech-savvy toddler” but here we are. It’s not like you just walked into the kitchen one morning and your kid was sucking on a binky and editing Wikipedia, right? Wait, really? It was pretty close to that? Well, for years there’s been an ongoing conversation on internet usage in families’ lives, and in 2020, the pandemic made us come face-to-face with that elephant in the room, the internet. There was no way around it. We went online for everything from virtual classrooms for kids, playing video games with friends, conducting video meetings with co-workers, and of course, streaming movies and TV shows. The internet’s role in our lives became a more permanent fixture in our family. It’s about time we gave it a rethink.

=> ↺ Ad blocker roundup: 6 ad blockers to improve your internet experience

• Ad blockers are a specific type of browser extension (i.e. software that adds new features or functionality to Firefox). Using ad blockers, you can eliminate distraction and frustration associated with online ads popping up across your internet travels. Here are six of our favorite ad blockers that make the web a whole lot easier to enjoy. 

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ The Tough Climb To Profitability For MongoDB

• There is something weird about storage companies that were started around the same time as the Great Recession.

=> ↺ pg_anonymize, a new extension for simple and transparent data anonymization

• I’m pleased to announce the beta version of pg_anonymize.

• pg_anonymize is a PostgreSQL extension that provides simple, robust and transparent infrastructure for data anonymization. Its goal is to ensure that anyone connected with an anonymized role will only ever see the anonymized version of the data without any restriction on the client used (could be psql, pg_dump, your own application or even other tools like pg_sample…) or the number of schemas and relations.

=> ↺ pgAdmin 4 v6.21 Released

• The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 6.21. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 19 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.

• pgAdmin is the leading Open Source graphical management tool for PostgreSQL. For more information, please see the website.

• This is the last release of pgAdmin that will support Python 3.6 and Psycopg2. Future releases will require Python 3.7 or later. This means that this is also the last release that will be supported on CentOS and RHEL 7.x

Education

=> ↺ Spatial Data Wrangling with R workshop

• Learn how to wrangle spatial data in R ! Join our workshop on Spatial Data Wrangling with R: A Comprehensive Guide which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series.

=> ↺ When Will I Open “Run Your Own Mail Server” sponsorships?

• Email is a huge topic. Postfix, exim or Exchange? Dovecot, Cyrus, or Courier? Sendmail or syphilis? What exactly is this book about, anyway? I’m using a couple programs for my reference implementation, but this is not exactly a book about system administration. It is about citizenship and society. A novice sysadmin will not be able to use this book without reading a bunch of other books first. This is mostly about how the system hangs together, and about the less well-known services that help email happen. SPF and DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, and TLS-RPT. How not to warm up your IP address. Defeating Google. IPv4 or IPv6?

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Museums and herbarium books available online

• The new location at the Research Museums Center on Varsity Drive — which holds the collections of the Anthropological Archaeology, Herbarium, Paleontology, and Zoology Museums — didn’t offer preservation-grade space for rare and fragile books, some of which date back to the 18th century. Those books were placed in a remote facility better equipped to preserve them, and are available on request for viewing in the Research Museums Center.

• To enable more immediate access to these materials, Scott Martin, biological sciences librarian, teamed up with digital conversion specialists Lara Unger and Larry Wentzel to obtain a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Commercial LTS Qt 5.15.13 Released

• We have released Qt 5.15.13 LTS for commercial license holders today. As a patch release, Qt 5.15.13 does not add any new functionality but provides bug fixes and other improvements.

=> ↺ From Perl to Rust

• My currents¹ day job is mostly Perl. It occurred to me that an introduction to Rust aimed at people who already know Perl could be useful.

• Rust is exciting to Perl programmers for a number of reasons.

=> ↺ Trimming spaces from strings faster with SVE on an Amazon Graviton 3 processor

• Programmers sometimes need to trim, or remove, characters, such as spaces from strings. It might be a surprising expensive task. In C, the following function is efficient: [...]

=> ↺ Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in February 2023

• This month I accepted 284 and rejected 49 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 286.

• I love this calm and peaceful time now within the Debian project, when everybody only cares for RC bugs and NEW does not grow.

• This was my hundred-fourth month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. 

• This month my all in all workload has been 8h.

Java

=> ↺ How to Implement a Retry Logic in Java

• Retry logic can be implemented in Java using various libraries and frameworks, but the general idea is to have a block of code that can potentially fail, and then wrap that code in a loop that will retry the code execution a certain number of times until either the code succeeds or the maximum number…

Rust

=> ↺ CXX-Qt 0.5 Released

• We just released CXX-Qt version 0.5! CXX-Qt is a set of Rust crates for creating bidirectional Rust ⇄ C++ bindings with Qt. It can be used to integrate Rust into C++ applications using CMake or build Rust applications with Cargo.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Protocol-Based Social Media Is Having A Moment As Meta, Medium, Flipboard, And Mozilla All Get On Board

• Over the last couple of weeks there have been a number of interesting developments regarding protocol-based, decentralized social media, and each time I plot out an article about it, something else pops up to add to the story, including Thursday evening as I finally started writing this and news broke that Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) is at least in the early stages of creating an ActivityPub-compatible social media protocol and app, that it considers to be something of a Twitter competitor.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Boonton Police Captain Allegedly Steals Computer Towers, Internal Affairs Records

• Stephen Jones, 42, of Toms River, has been charged with computer theft, tampering with public records, and other offenses in connection with the April 2022 incident. The charges result from an Office of Public Integrity and Accountability’s (OPIA) Corruption Bureau investigation.

• The investigation revealed Jones removed at least five computer towers from the Boonton Police Department, three of which contained police information, including files on internal affairs (IA) matters. He allegedly stole his personnel and IA files, stashing the computer towers in his Toms River home and the files at his in-laws’ home in Edison.

=> ↺ Danes unconcerned about crime

• But perception and reality are two different things

=> ↺ Deadlines as Technology

• Then I heard Paul Ford, a professional writer for Wired and other publications, say something on The Aboard Podcast, Episode 3 that resonated. Referring to a moment when lots of folks online were looking for the perfect writing environment, he said the software tool, workflow, environment, whatever, it didn’t matter. You could do it with pen and paper if you want.

=> ↺ Load ‘em up and throw ‘em under the bus

• The original team had been founded some years before, but none of those original members were still there. They had moved on to other things inside the company. There was one person who had joined the team while the original people were still there, and at this point, he was the only one left who had “overlapped” with the original devs.

• What I found was that this one person who had history going back to when the “OGs” were still around was basically carrying the load of the entire team. Everyone else was very new, and so it was up to him.

Science

=> ↺ Brief Notes on Computer Word and Byte Sizes

• There are three starting points important to remember. First, punch card data processing is far older than computers: it dates back to Hollerith in the late 19th century. When computerization started taking place, it had to accommodate these older “databases”. Second, early computers had tiny amounts of storage by today’s standards, both RAM and bulk storage (which may have been either disk (for some values of “disk”!) or tape). Third, until the mid-1960s, computers were either “commercial” or “scientific”, and had architectures suited for those purposes.

Education

=> ↺ Young Americans pass on ‘piece of paper,’ find path without college

• Whether avoiding high tuition or finding jobs out of high school, Americans are increasingly pursuing alternatives to college. Experts had predicted that students would return to college after a pandemic-era lull, but schools still see low enrollment.

=> ↺ Big backers of public schools in Texas? Rural Republicans.

• Rural Texans are deeply conservative – and deeply committed to their public schools. How will that play out in an era when school choice has become a GOP litmus test?

=> ↺ Ron DeSantis Is Destroying Florida’s New College Just Because He Can

• Now, this little kooky place, beloved by students and alumni alike, is being destroyed by another kind of leader, Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor has packed the New College board of trustees with “culture warriors,” hell-bent on destroying what makes the place so special. It’s ironic that this tiny school where so many nerdy kids come to find refuge from bullies is itself now being assaulted by Florida’s bully in chief.

• Raised in Orlando and the beach town of Dunedin, and with degrees from Yale and Harvard Law, DeSantis embodies a certain kind of ham-fisted privilege assumed by a burgeoning cadre of people who literally have everything—money, status, titles, access—but somehow remain unsatisfied. Instead, they have to take the little that you have. Not because they need it or even want it, but just to show you that they can. The only logic relevant to them is the logic of force.

=> ↺ The modern classroom chair: Exploring the ‘coercive design’ of contemporary schooling

• This new paper explores the politics of educational design … exploring how the coercive logics of neoliberal schooling are baked into the design of everyday physical objects such as classroom chairs

• This paper analyses three examples of ‘innovative’ new chair designs now being sold to schools with promises of disciplining students’ bodies to achieve classroom order, ‘learning gains’, efficient cognition, and even a corporate atmosphere in the classroom

Hardware

=> ↺ Microchip unveils Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) 10BASE-T1S and 100BASE-T1 Ethernet devices

• Microchip has introduced a range of industrial-grade Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) devices for IIoT and industrial Operational Technology (OT) networks for low-speed Ethernet edge devices and a simplified cabling infrastructure for latency-sensitive applications. Microchip LAN8650/LAN8651 10BASE-T1S single pair Ethernet Controllers The LAN8650 and LAN8651 10BASE-T1S MAC-PHY Ethernet controllers come with an SPI for integration into basic microcontrollers rather than higher-end MCUs with a MAC.

=> ↺ SONOFF iHost Smart Home Hub enables local control of SONOFF, Tasmota, Matter home automation devices

• SONOFF iHost is a Smart Home Hub that enables local control of SONOFF smart switches, lightbulbs, Zigbee sensors, and so on without having to require a connection to the cloud (e.g. eWelink). Future software upgrades will also add more devices such as the ones flashed with Tasmota firmware and any device compatible with the Matter IoT protocol.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Dry farming could help agriculture in the western U.S. amid climate change

• Finding a more sustainable way to grow food in a thirsty state like California, for example, where agriculture accounts for roughly 80 percent of water usage and where a third of U.S. vegetables are grown, is a top priority. Dry farming won’t solve all of agriculture’s woes, but it offers a way forward, particularly for smaller-scale producers, while drawing less on a scarce natural resource. And even though the practice isn’t without limitations — dry-farmed produce tends to be physically smaller, and harvests are less bountiful overall — its benefits extend beyond water savings: Dry farming can also yield longer-lasting and better-tasting produce.

=> ↺ New study finds women suffer from chronic stress more often than men in Nordic countries

• A recent study by If, a Nordic insurance company, has found that women are more stressed than men across all Nordic countries, with 43% of women in Finland experiencing chronic stress compared to 34% of men. The study surveyed Nordic countries and found several factors that contributed to stress, such as balancing personal and professional life. It also found regional differences within Finland, with women in the capital experiencing more stress than those in the North or East.

=> ↺ Norfolk Southern train derails in Alabama, third in several weeks

• Another Norfolk Southern train derailed in Alabama on Thursday morning, the company confirmed in a statement to Axios.

=> ↺ Sex won’t solve your loneliness

• Even as we inch further away from the apex of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of isolation are ever present. While its toll on our physical health has been at the forefront of our minds, this pandemic’s most profound and lasting effects are on our mental health.

=> ↺ Multiresistant bacteria from recalled antibiotic found in two Danish patients

• Denmark’s infectious disease control agency State Serum Institute (SSI) has detected the multiresistant bacteria CPO in a further two people who were treated with antibiotic medicine Dicillin.

=> ↺ People Were Unwittingly Implanted With Fake Devices in Medical Scam, FBI Alleges

• Stimwave allegedly told doctors that the plastic implantable rods would help ease patients’ chronic pain.

=> ↺ Product recall: Argos recalls Habitat sofas and footstools due to fire safety risk

• Argos has identified a number of products that fail to meet fire safety standards

=> ↺ Air pollution makes more than 1.3 million Thais sick so far this year

• There were 196,311 cases of patients falling sick due to air pollution this week.

=> ↺ Finland’s worker burnout trend growing, study finds

• The study also found that people are increasingly working when they’re ill while career development opportunities are perceived to be lower than before.

Proprietary

=> ↺ UK ends antitrust investigation of Google’s ‘Jedi Blue’ agreement with Meta

• The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, announced the decision today. The CMA also stated that it will continue to review some of the antitrust concerns raised during the probe, but in a different manner than before. The review will be combined with a separate, ongoing antitrust probe into Google that began last year.

=> ↺ New laptops are riddled with ‘bloatware’

• Free trials of Microsoft Office and McAfee antivirus software are by far the most common additions to new computers, according to Which? research. But just under a third of consumers actually use the software that comes pre-installed. We run through the usual suspects and explain how you can get rid of unwanted software on your computer.

=> ↺ Capitol Hill data breach more ‘extensive’ than previously known

• Unlike the private sale offer in the first listing, this second listing allows anyone with 8 forum credits or tokens to download the data. Free samples were provided of the data.

=> ↺ Capitol Hill data breach more ‘extensive’ than previously known

• The compromised data is “extensive,” and includes sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, home addresses and information on Senate employees’ health insurance plans, the sergeant-at-arms said in the email, which urged Senate staff to freeze their family credit to guard against fraud.

• Law enforcement gave the sergeant-at-arms a list of Senate employees whose data was stolen, the email said, and the sergeant-at-arms was contacting those employees so they could protect themselves from fraud.

=> ↺ EPA Requires States to Address the Cybersecurity of Public Water Systems

• [...] EPA’s memorandum requiring states to address the cybersecurity of PWSs follows quickly after the White House’s release of its new National Cybersecurity Strategy, which calls for the need to use minimum cybersecurity requirements, as opposed to voluntary measures, in critical sectors to enhance national security and public safety. [...]

=> ↺ Reddit is shutting down its Clubhouse-style feature Talk

• Talk, the audio conversation feature inspired by the pandemic darling Clubhouse, is being folded before it even reaches its two-year anniversary. “Today we’re sharing that we have made the difficult decision to sunset the Reddit Talk product in the coming weeks,” the company announced.

Security

=> ↺ City of Waynesboro targeted in cyber attack

• Some personal information in floating around in cyberspace after a ransomware attack against the city of Waynesboro.

• The city’s manager, Mike Hamp, said in a statement they were notified of a potential cyberattack in January. It affected Waynesboro’s information technology infrastructure.

• Hamp declined to meet or speak with NBC29, but in the statement he says the city took immediate action to remove the attack and put in place preventative security measures to “lessen the system’s vulnerability to cyberattacks.” He goes on to say that the city and the police department are trying to identify what happened.

=> ↺ Co-Working for the Ransomware Age: How Hive Thrived

• Business gurus who preach strategic adaptability may have no greater adepts than ransomware hackers, who have demonstrated levels of innovation that – were they not criminal extortionists – would be worthy of a business case study.

=> ↺ Another Malware with Persistence

• Here’s a piece of Chinese malware that infects SonicWall security appliances and survives firmware updates.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ 2 landlords arrested by Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog for allegedly doxxing tenants over rental disputes

• Two landlords aged 40 and 42 have been arrested by Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog for allegedly posting personal information about unsatisfactory tenants on social media, along with derogatory comments. According to a statement by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data…

=> ↺ Gizmodo Found 28,000 Apps Sending TikTok User Data

• Under the dull roar of our great TikTok moral panic I’ve been trying to make the semi-nuanced point that while TikTok does present some legitimate privacy issues, a ban won’t fix the actual problem. Largely because U.S. policymakers and businesses don’t want to fix the actual problem. They don’t even want to acknowledge what the actual problem is.

=> ↺ 60% of Germany’s 5G network is Huawei, says Chinese embassy

• Huawei accounts for nearly 60 percent of Germany’s 5G network equipment, according to a spokesperson from the Chinese embassy.

• The official was responding to reports that Germany intends to ban Chinese technology, including Huawei and ZTE components, in the construction of the nation’s 5G infrastructure.

=> ↺ Here’s how Microsoft hopes to inject ChatGPT into all your apps and bots via Azure

• Redmond this week was “thrilled to announce” ChatGPT will be selectively available as a preview within the Azure OpenAI Service. That service is largely aimed at corporations that want to put large-language models to work in their applications and workflows, such as using Dall-E2 for generating images, GPT-3.5 for text, and Codex for something that resembles code.

=> ↺ UNC data leak exposes more than 1,000 Social Security numbers

• The university said human error played a role in tax forms that were sent to the wrong people.

=> ↺ UNC data leak exposes more than 1,000 Social Security numbers

• UNC said 1,025 people had their personal information mailed incorrectly. The university mistakenly sent out IRS Form 1099s with names, addresses, social security numbers, or tax identification number to the wrong people.

• “While 3,403 forms were printed correctly, only 2,214 envelopes were mailed. Upon further investigation, the University determined that due to human error and a processing issue, some of the 2,214 mailings included more than one IRS form,” said Query.AI Chief Information Security Officer Neal Bridges.

=> ↺ Exclusive: Meta mulls a Twitter competitor codenamed ‘P92’ that will be interoperable with Mastodon

• The app will be Instagram-branded and will allow users to register/login to the app through their Instagram credentials, they said. Moneycontrol has seen a copy of an internal product brief that elaborates on the functioning and various product features of the app.

• To be sure, it’s not clear whether this app, codenamed P92, is still at an idea-stage or the development has begun on the app. A source close to the development said that it is still a work-in-progress.

=> ↺ Meta Mulling To Rival Twitter With New App

• “We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests,” a Meta spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement.

• Meta’s app will be based on a similar framework that powers Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that was launched in 2016.

=> ↺ Meta explores decentralized social network to rival Twitter

• According to a report published by Moneycontrol today, the developing project is codenamed P92 and will allow users to log into it using their Instagram credentials. Meta confirmed it was developing the project but did not reveal any details about a release timeline.

=> ↺ Meta confirms decentralized Twitter rival in the works

• Reportedly dubbed “P92″ internally, the app may well interoperate with Mastodon by supporting the ActivityPub protocol, and could be Instagram-branded and accessed via that social media juggernaut – if it ever clears the “wouldn’t it be cool if” stage. Existence of the project was revealed exclusively by Indian business news website Moneycontrol, which said it spoke with insiders and also saw a copy of an internal P92 product brief.

=> ↺ Privatizing our digital identities

• What happens if one doesn’t have such an ID-card? One basically doesn’t exist, or at least practically can’t get anything done. Lose it, and one needs to get another ID-card, which is identical to the previous one, obviously after jumping through some hoops in a sacred bureaucratic ritual. If one, for some reason, doesn’t manage to get an identical ID-card to the previous one, but instead gets even a slightly different one, for all practical purposes it’s just like one is now a completely different person that was born just yesterday. (Remember, this is a strange far away parallel universe.)

• Now, unlike in our universe, imagine that these ID-cards are not issued by the government (or a branch of it) but instead by any private enterprise that happens to be registered as providing such a service. Unfortunately, the ID-cards issued by any of these business aren’t even equivalent; choose another business and one is now a completely different person…

Confidentiality

=> ↺ DC health exchange breach affects former national security officials, Congress

• Leaked data from the capital’s health insurance broker exposes sensitive data belonging to the city’s powerbrokers.

=> ↺ AT&T Notifying some wireless customers of vendor incident

• AT&T has been notifying some wireless customers of an incident involving an unnamed vendor.

=> ↺ Asante Notifies More than 8,800 Patients Whose Records Appeared to Be Inappropriately Accessed by a Physician

• On February 28, it issued a notice about an insider-wrongdoing incident. As they describe it on their site, they became aware of a concern that a doctor with admitting privileges, Dr. Paul Hoffman, may have accessed a number of patients’ records without a valid clinical need.

• “Dr. Hoffman is not an employee of Asante but had access to Asante’s electronic health record system in order to treat his patients when they are seen at Asante facilities,” their notice explains.

=> ↺ Cerebral Inc. notifying 3,179,835 patients of tracking technologies breach

• Cerebral Inc. has notified HHS of a breach affecting 3,179,835 individuals. They are the latest entity to report a breach due to exposing personal or protected health information data through tracking analytics.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Timothy Snyder on the Ukraine War: “In Russia, Will Is Placed over Reason”

• Historian Timothy Snyder is one of the best and most argumentative experts on Ukrainian history. In an interview, he explains why he considers fears of a nuclear strike by Vladimir Putin to be irrational – and how the war in Ukraine might end.

=> ↺ Sweden sends new terror law to parliament

• Sweden’s government has sent a new law to parliament criminalising taking part in a terror organisation, a key step in convincing Turkey the country is taking action to crack down on the Kurdish PKK terror group.

=> ↺ Chinese security vessel orders Philippine plane carrying media to ‘leave’

• The Filipino pilot responded that they were flying within Philippine territory.

=> ↺ Finland’s latest Nato talks with Turkey, Sweden fail to find resolution

• The head of the Swedish delegation in Brussels told reporters that progress is unlikely before Turkish elections, scheduled for 14 May.

=> ↺ 6-Year-Old Who Shot Teacher Will Not Be Charged, Prosecutor Says

• The boy shot and injured his first-grade teacher at an elementary school in Newport News, Va., in January.

=> ↺ Ukraine Needs Shells, and Arms Makers Want Money. Enter the E.U.

• Ukraine is firing artillery shells faster than manufacturers can make them. Brussels is working on a plan to increase production by guaranteeing big advance purchases.

=> ↺ Latvia Is Sending Cars Seized From Drunken Drivers to Ukraine

• The first batch of cars will start making their way on Friday, the head of a charity helping deliver them said, and will go to the military and hospitals.

=> ↺ NATO talks, elections and exciting summer plans: Finland in the world press

• No NATO yet, Turkey tells Sweden and Finland

• The trilateral meeting between Finland, Sweden and Turkey about the NATO membership of the former two countries was covered in an article by Politico on March 10. The article provides details of the meeting – first time since November 2022, emphasising on Turkey’s continued blockade of Helsinki and Stockholm for NATO.

=> ↺ Saudi Arabia, Iran Restore Relations in Surprise Agreement Brokered by China

• Several Western analysts expressed surprise at news of the restoration of diplomatic relations as detailed in a statement from China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, following previously undisclosed talks in Beijing. It will take effect by reopening their respective embassies within two months, along with new talks about potential economic and security exchanges.

=> ↺ Boat Packed With 500 Migrants Needs Rescue off Sicily – Charity

• The boat left from Libya and is “south of Sicily” in Italy’s search and rescue (SAR) maritime zone, Alarm Phone added. The EU border force Frontex, which operates spotter flights off the Italian coast, declined immediate comment.

=> ↺ The New Anarchy: America faces a type of extremist violence it does not know how to stop.

• In recent years, Americans have contemplated a worst-case scenario, in which the country’s extreme and widening divisions lead to a second Civil War. But what the country is experiencing now—and will likely continue to experience for a generation or more—is something different. The form of extremism we face is a new phase of domestic terror, one characterized by radicalized individuals with shape-shifting ideologies willing to kill their political enemies. Unchecked, it promises an era of slow-motion anarchy.

=> ↺ Anonymous Sources Are Newsworthy—When They Talk to NYT, Not Seymour Hersh

• The New York Times (3/7/23) on Tuesday ended its month-long boycott of veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s February 8 story claiming the US destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

=> ↺ March To Iraq War, 20 Years Later: March 10, 2003

=> ↺ ‘We have never been so close to a local war escalating into a world war’ – Orbán

=> ↺ Finland’s Niinistö remains optimistic about Nato membership

• PRESIDENT Sauli Niinistö on Thursday indicated that he remains optimistic about the timeline for Finnish and Swedish admission to Nato, reiterating that he believes the membership applications will be ratified by the defence alliance’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.

• “We’ll both be in Nato by Vilnius. The US has supported and continues to support our memberships,” he told reporters in Washington DC.

=> ↺ Man jailed after firing 200 bullets in NSW

• A man who killed a person after using two rifles to fire more than 200 bullets at his neighour’s homes and cars in NSW has been jailed.

=> ↺ Will morale prove the decisive factor in the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

• Putin is preparing for a long war in Ukraine and still believes he can outlast the West, but mounting signs of demoralization among mobilized Russian soldiers may pose a serious threat to the success of his invasion, writes Peter Dickinson.

=> ↺ Calls to appease Putin in Ukraine ignore the lessons of history

• While the desire for peace in Ukraine is perfectly understandable, mounting calls to appease Putin by handing him a partial victory ignore the lessons of history and would almost certainly lead to more war.

=> ↺ Coastal countries try to learn lessons from extremism’s spread in the Sahel

• As Gulf of Guinea countries confront growing extremism on the northern borders, experts are urging them to find ways to engage with local populations and avoid the pitfalls, such as recruiting ethnic militias, that have crippled anti-extremist efforts in Sahel countries.

=> ↺ Several killed in shooting at Jehovah’s Witness hall in German city of Hamburg

• Shots were fired inside a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday evening, and an unspecified number of people were killed or wounded, police said.

=> ↺ Israeli police say three wounded in Tel Aviv shooting

• A Palestinian gunman opened fire on a crowded street in central Tel Aviv late Thursday, wounding three people before he was shot and killed, Israeli officials said. The shooting came hours after an Israeli military raid killed three Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

=> ↺ Latvia becomes safe haven for Russians opposed to war in Ukraine

• Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Latvian capital Riga has become a hub of journalists, Russian intellectuals and Ukrainian refugees opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Local Latvians, who are proud of their independence gained in 1991, do not want to turn back the clock. Hundreds of Soviet-era monuments have been torn down throughout the country. FRANCE 24′s Laura Cambaud and Marie Pennetrat report.

=> ↺ Russian ship, private plane denied entry to Lithuania

• Last week, Lithuania did not allow a drifting Russian-owned ship into the seaport of Klaipėda, as well as denied entry to a private plane chartered by a dual Russian-Israeli citizen, authorities said on Thursday.

=> ↺ Lithuania mulls allowing dual citizenships

• A group of Lithuanian MPs have proposed allowing the country’s nationals to hold a passport of another country, as long as it isn’t Russia or other blacklisted states.

=> ↺ Superpower Posturing: Fears Grow of New Cold War Between U.S. and China

• China and the United States are lurching from one crisis to the next. It’s not just deep economic interdependence that is at stake, but also global peace. Is there still a way out of this downward spiral?

=> ↺ North Korean leader Kim calls for intensified drills for ‘real war’

• This comes as the US and South Korea were set to kick off large-scale military exercises next week.

=> ↺ Rudd: US and China risk war ‘by accident’

• Comments come ahead of a submarine deal to be announced by US, UK and Australian leaders next week.

=> ↺ Russia Imposes Sanctions On 144 Citizens Of Estonia, Latvia, And Lithuania

• Russia has imposed sanctions on 144 citizens of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — three EU and NATO member states that have been among the strongest backers of Ukraine since Russia launched its ongoing unprovoked invasion in February 2022.

=> ↺ Belarus Approves Death Penalty For Officials Convicted Of High Treason

• Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed a law on March 9 allowing for the use of the death penalty against officials and army servicemen convicted of high treason.

=> ↺ Lithuanian Secret Services Say Russia Ready For Two More Years Of War

• According to Lithuanian intelligence services, Russia is capable of continuing its war in Ukraine for two more years.

=> ↺ Lavrov Slams West’s Reaction to Nord Stream Explosions

• Western media have pointed to a pro-Ukrainian group as the perpetrator of the sabotage.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ The Right accuses their critics of the conspiracy they themselves engage in

• Of all the absurd libels of the right, the weirdest one is that leftists are secretly funded by woke billionaires spending dark money to foment the overthrow of the USA. The idea of “leftist billionaire” is laughable on its face: how did this imaginary billionaire make their billions while paying a living wage and providing decent working conditions?

=> ↺ The Story Behind Germany’s Embarrassing Intelligence Leak

• From the shores of a lake near Munich to a brothel in the German capital city and a brasserie in Moscow: It is one of the biggest intelligence scandals in Germany’s postwar history. How was Russia able to pilfer information about Ukraine from Berlin’s most accomplished spy organization?

=> ↺ Unauthorized Disclosure: Brian Becker

Environment

=> ↺ Trains keep derailing all over the country, including Thursday in Alabama. What’s going on?

• According to federal records, trains derailed 1,164 times last year, and 1,095 times in 2021. That’s a significant improvement from past decades. In 1979, for instance, railroads reported 7,482 derailments, and reported 6,442 in 1980.

=> ↺ Fear of Nature, Love of the Ocean, and Other Links From the Brink

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Human Rights Watch condemns Lebanon for failure to defend ‘right to electricity’

• Human Rights Watch Thursday released a report arguing that Lebanese authorities have “failed to uphold the right to electricity by mismanaging the sector for decades”.

=> ↺ Solar for Health project has saved lives, showing that ZESA has blood on its hands for its failures

• The thing I hate about Zimbabwe is how it messes with your mind to think basic services are luxuries you should not even think about. Medicine at a hospital? Come back to earth o dreamer.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Young polar bear electrocuted at Copenhagen Zoo

• CPH Zoo promised to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter in order to avoid similar occurrences in the future

Finance

=> ↺ Construction job openings plunge nearly 50%

• A big drop in construction job openings in January shows the tightrope Fed officials face as they try to calibrate plans for more rate hikes.

=> ↺ Worried about the future, France’s young people are fighting pension reform

• Young people in France — including some who haven’t even entered the job market yet — protested Thursday against the government’s push to raise the retirement age. FRANCE 24 spoke to an expert on French employment matters to better understand this phenomenon.

=> ↺ French pension reform strikes continue to disrupt fuel supplies, power output

• Workers striking in protest against proposed changes to France’s pension system continued to block fuel deliveries and reduce electricity production at several sites on Thursday.

=> ↺ Biden pitches 2024 budget hiking taxes on billionaires, corporations

• President Joe Biden presented Thursday what amounts to his 2024 reelection pitch on the US economy, with a proposed budget targeting the rich with new taxes, while promising to assist the country’s “working families.”

=> ↺ The French Senate Increases the Retirement Age to 64 Years

• President Macron will face massive protests organized by all the French unions, which have reached unprecedented levels of collective coordination and action.

=> ↺ Biden’s $6.8 Trillion Budget Proposes New Social Programs and Higher Taxes

• The president requested trillions in new spending that has no chance of passing a Republican House, even as he sought to reduce deficits by raising taxes on businesses and the rich.

=> ↺ Biden proposes $6.8 trillion budget to make rich pay “fair share”

• President Biden is using the release of his $6.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2024 to challenge House Republicans to produce their own tax and spending blueprint without cutting Medicare or Social Security.

=> ↺ Think Grocery Prices Are High Now? Just Wait.

=> ↺ Kim Knackstedt on Disability Policy, Algernon Austin on Unemployment & Race

=> ↺ Constitutional Court lifts blocking of Treasury aid to HDP

• The supreme court decided to lift the blocking of treasury aid to the party by a majority of votes.

=> ↺ Sweden’s economy bounces in January despite rate rises

• Sweden’s economy grew by an unexpectedly high two percent in January, freeing up the Riksbank to take bolder actions to combat inflation.

=> ↺ Rail workers awarded pay rise above wages cap in blow to Perrottet government

• NSW rail workers will receive a pay rise well above the state’s wages cap after the industrial umpire found the current limit would lead to a “significant decline” in real wages.

=> ↺ Split Verdict for Ex-Fox Execs in Soccer Rights Bribe Case

• A former Fox executive has been convicted of paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to nab broadcasting rights to the World Cup and other top soccer matches

=> ↺ Former Fox exec found guilty in bribery scheme for soccer game rights

• A New York federal jury found a former 21st Century Fox executive guilty on Thursday in an alleged scheme to bribe FIFA officials for lucrative soccer game broadcasting rights.

=> ↺ Verkkokauppa lays off 75 employees

• The retailer issued a profit warning in January, noting that its operations had been severely affected by record-low consumer confidence.

=> ↺ New pay agreement raises salaries of 420,000 municipal workers across Finland

• Nurses’ salaries will rise by 6.7 percent this year and 6.5 percent next year.

=> ↺ Crypto Firm Circle Has $3.3 Billion in Reserves at Collapsed Silicon Valley Bank

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ How genealogy can help restore historical ties through meaningful diaspora engagement

• If the United States truly wants to embrace the African diaspora, it must create policies that promote the digitization of records and the creation of databases that are affordable and accessible to the public.

=> ↺ Xi Jinping handed historic third term as China’s president

• Xi Jinping was handed a third term as Chinese president on Friday, capping a rise that has seen him become the country’s most powerful leader in generations.

=> ↺ MP calls for legally binding Editors’ Code with domestic abuse clause following Emma Pattison reporting

• Dawn Butler wants journalists to be “legally bound” to report domestic abuse responsibly.

=> ↺ GB News reports losses ten times greater than revenue for first year on air

• The broadcaster made advertising revenues of £2.97m and digital revenues of £564,000.

=> ↺ 5 News editor steps down: Cait Fitzsimons on five years running the news at 5

• Cait Fitzsimons sat down with Press Gazette ahead of the news breaking that she is leaving 5 News.

=> ↺ Facebook-Parent Meta Plans To Cut More Jobs In Coming Months: Report

• Facebook-parent Meta Platforms is planning additional layoffs to be announced in multiple rounds over the next few months, which could match the 13% job cut tally from last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday citing people familiar with the matter.

=> ↺ Digital India Bill draft post consultation to be ready by July

• The draft Digital India Bill, which will replace the Information Technology Act, 2000, is likely to be ready by early July, sources told ET.

• There will be at least two more consultations on the principles of the Bill by March 20, and the draft consultation will last 90 days, they added.

• The first consultation meeting on the Bill was held in Bengaluru on Thursday. It was attended by as many as 300 stakeholders, of whom more than 200 attended virtually.

=> ↺ Are Failing Banks About to Destroy the Economy?

• With two banks now totally collapsed, many are now worried about contagion—that is, whether the collapse of these niche banks could spiral out into the wider economy. Shares of other banks in the U.S. (largely on the West Coast) fell precipitously on the news. European banks are also feeling the squeeze as share prices drop, and even larger banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan saw dips in their stock price.

• The right way to see this situation, however, might be that the contagion has already spread; Silvergate and SVB failing won’t wreck the economy, rather, they are failing because the economy is already wrecked.

=> ↺ Silicon Valley Bank is seized by US after historic failure

• Silicon Valley Bank’s failure arrived with incredible speed, with some industry analysts on Friday suggesting it was a good company and still likely a wise investment. Silicon Valley Bank executives were trying to raise capital early Friday and find additional investors. However, trading in the bank’s shares was halted before the opening bell due to extreme volatility.

=> ↺ Silicon Valley Bank collapse marks 2nd biggest bank failure in U.S. history

• Regulators rushed Friday to seize the assets of one of Silicon Valley’s top banks, marking the largest failure of a U.S. financial institution since the height of the financial crisis almost 15 years ago.

• Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th-largest bank in the U.S., failed after depositors hurried to withdraw money this week amid anxiety over the bank’s health. It was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history after the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.

=> ↺ Cutting Through the Noise of the Bill C-11 Debate: Regulating User Content Remains a Reality

• The debate on Senate amendments to Bill C-11 continued in the House of Commons yesterday, with hours devoted to MPs from all parties claiming misinformation by their counterparts. There were no shortage of head-shaking moments: MPs that still don’t know that CraveTV is not a foreign streaming service, references to Beachcombers as illustrations of Cancon, comparisons to China that go beyond the reality of the bill, calls for mandated cultural contributions from TikTok even as the government bans the app, and far too much self-congratulation from MPs claiming to have done great work on the bill when the Senate review demonstrated its inadequacy. But buried amongst those comments were several notable moments that illustrated the reality and risks of Bill C-11.

=> ↺ The Consequence of Mandated Payments for Links: Facebook Confirms It Will Drop News Sharing in Canada Under Bill C-18

• Google has been in the spotlight for the past few weeks with reports that it has been testing removal news links from search results. The move sparked outrage from MPs, who grilled executives earlier today at Canadian Heritage committee. But now it appears Google has company: the Globe and Mail reports that Facebook has confirmed that it will remove news sharing from its platforms if Bill C-18 passes in its current form. The decision, which would affect Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram, should not come as a surprise since it warned that it was considering the possibility last fall. In fact, the case for Facebook blocking news sharing is even stronger than Google given that news constitutes only three percent of news feeds on the platform and the experience in Australia was that its removal had little impact on user engagement.

=> ↺ DHS Just Turned 20. It’s Time To Abolish It.

• A 2019 inspector general report called out DHS for failing to rein in rampant bad behavior, ranging from padding expense accounts to drinking on the job and illegal reprisals against sexual-harassment whistleblowers. The report concluded no one was really in charge of organizing and inspecting reports of employee misbehavior. As President Biden likes to boast, DHS has almost 260,000 employees, yet its employee relations office told the inspector general it had “limited staffing to perform these functions and staff do not believe they are responsible for managing the allegation process.”

• Perhaps worst of all, DHS is a determined foe of civil liberties. As the ACLU documents in a new study of the department, DHS routinely undermines our ability to move freely about the very country it’s supposed to be protecting. For instance, since immigration enforcement became part of a national security agenda, ICE agents encourage local police “to stop, arrest, and bring low-level charges against people who ‘look’ like immigrants, with the actual aim of helping ICE deport them.” Looking like an immigrant isn’t against the law and it shouldn’t be a pretext for a police stop.

=> ↺ President Niinistö of Finland visits Stanford, calls for trans-atlantic security cooperation

• Stamos, who is a member of NATO Cybersecurity Advisory Board in addition to his capacities here at Stanford, described his concerns with cybersecurity in NATO. “NATO has no idea what it’s doing around cybersecurity … NATO is a non-entity from a cybersecurity perspective,” he said.

• Stamos said that he believes that Ukraine is doing exceptionally well on the cybersecurity front in their war against Russia because Ukraine has built “immunity” through more than a decade of peacetime cybersecurity attacks, and its technological infrastructure is less advanced, so it is inherently less exposed. He contrasted this with the U.S., who he said he believes would suffer in a war against Russia or China, particularly due to a lack of public-private partnerships.

• “The private sector sees themselves as a component of the war fighting and defensive capabilities of Ukraine. That is not true in the West,” he said. “[Our companies] didn’t really understand that they are political players, that they are part of the defense of the general West and their specific countries.”

=> ↺ The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble

• The most remarkable thing about this incredibly stupid story is that LBCC wasn’t the peak of the blockchain bubble – rather, it was the start of blockchain’s final pump-and-dump. By the standards of 2022′s blockchain grifters, LBCC was small potatoes, a mere $138m sugar-water grift.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ USAGM CEO Describes Efforts to Counter Russian and Chinese Propaganda

• The United States Agency for Global Media’s Chief Executive Officer Amanda Bennett said Thursday the agency she leads is facing a critical time globally in which access to credible news is threatened by authoritarian regimes.

• During a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, Bennett told lawmakers that USAGM news networks routinely outperform better-funded Russian and Chinese media operations in many key markets around the world because of their independent journalism.

=> ↺ NYT report on Kashmir motivated, to spread anti-India propaganda: Anurag Thakur

• Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur on Friday accused The New York Times of “spreading lies” about India, describing an opinion piece published in it on the freedom of press in Kashmir as “mischievous and fictitious”.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ NCAC Welcomes Applications for Student Advocates for Speech

• New York – The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is now accepting applications for Student Advocates for Speech (SAS), a project for high school students, for the 2023 – 2024 school year.

=> ↺ Constitutional Court lifts blocking of Treasury aid to HDP

• The supreme court decided to lift the blocking of treasury aid to the party by a majority of votes.

=> ↺ The Reason Why Europe’s “Right To Be Forgotten” Hasn’t Made it To The United States

• While the right to be forgotten was not a GDPR’s invention — it had been present in several jurisdictions in Europe — it gained significantly more traction after the 2014 Google vs. Spain case. The case related to a lawyer whose bankruptcy records had been published on a website that was accessible via Google. The Court ruled in favour of the plaintiff, radically changing the way Europe dealt with digital privacy.

=> ↺ 3 Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil group activists jailed for 4.5 months for refusing national security data demand

• All three were former standing committee members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the group behind the city’s annual candlelight vigils to remember the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown.

=> ↺ Maine motorists appeal to keep naughty vanity license plates

• The state concluded the license plate “LUVTOFU” could’ve been seen as a reference to sex instead of admiration for bean curd. The motorist insisted there was no mistaking his intent because the back of his car had several tofu-related stickers.

=> ↺ Stand News sedition trial: Ex-editor of questioned over op-ed likening Hong Kong to Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’

• A former editor of defunct Hong Kong independent news outlet Stand News on trial for sedition has been questioned over an op-ed that compared Hong Kong to the fictional totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Meanwhile, the judge presiding over the trial asked whether Nineteen Eighty-Four was a book, and what it was about.

• Chung Pui-kuen appeared before Judge Kwok Wai-kin at District Court on Friday, as the sedition trial, which began last October and was supposed to last 20 days, continued. Chung, former chief editor Patrick Lam and Stand News’ parent company stand accused of publishing 17 allegedly “seditious” article between July 2020 and December 2021.

=> ↺ ‘This chills speech’: Faculty Senate raises concerns about Protected Identity Harm Reporting

• Drell noted that, from May 2021 to Jan. 2023, eight reports involving a classroom setting were filed. However, Drell said that the classroom reporting feature would be suspended for now, as it could “potentially bump up against academic freedom.”

• “We can model a respectful culture, but we cannot mandate it,” Drell said.

=> ↺ WhatsApp tells the UK it would rather be blocked than adhere to the Online Safety Bill

• Meta Platforms Inc.’s chat app WhatsApp says it will not compromise end-to-end encryption, and since that’s required in the U.K. under the new Online Safety Bill, it might mean the end of its existence in the country.

• Will Cathcart, Meta’s WhatsApp boss, said today that he will not weaken the app’s encryption, so if he can’t find a way past this after talking with the U.K.’s legislators, the country’s most loved chat app will be gone. WhatsApp is by far the most popular chat app in the U.K., used by seven out of 10 adults.

=> ↺ Boycott Bans Are an Assault on Free Speech

• There are certainly activities that are purely economic and have no expressive utility. The First Amendment doesn’t protect fraud, for example (although when it comes to fossil-fuel companies, some conservatives wish it did). But boycotts are both an economic and an expressive activity, making the distinction difficult to parse. A brief submitted by the Knight First Amendment Institute dryly observes that “purchasing decisions function like campaign contributions, which similarly involve elements of both expression and association.”

• If states can require contractors to disavow BDS, then they could have imposed similar restrictions related to some of the most consequential protest movements in American history, such as the Montgomery bus boycott or the anti–South African apartheid movement. The Knight Institute brief notes that upholding the Arkansas law would make it so that states “could even forbid such boycott activity outright.”

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ China weakens itself by suppressing civil society and silencing independent voices

• Unconstrained by civil society and democratic institutions, Xi Jinping has set China on a dangerous course.

=> ↺ Democrats Deride the Twitter Files Reporters as ‘So-Called Journalists’

• Too many Democrats, national security experts, and mainstream journalists have found themselves in the position of implicitly arguing that various tweets could be spreading disinformation—and thus undermining American democracy—even if the speech contained therein is truthful. Indeed, the entire countering-disinformation industry is operating off of a largely false assumption that Russian influence on social media corrupted the 2016 election and led to Trump’s victory.

=> ↺ Why The Georgian Government Climbed Down On The ‘Foreign Agents’ Law

• The vote, which was adopted in its first reading, was another sign of a rushed process that looked designed to avoid debate and accountability by a party that has governed in uncompromising fashion since the 2012 elections, its first after its founding by Russia-linked billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.

=> ↺ Georgia drops a draft ‘foreign agents’ law that set off mass protests over parallels to Russia.

• The proposed law, “on transparency and foreign influence,” would have required civil society groups and news media outlets to register as “agents of foreign influence” if they received more than 20 percent of their funding from “a foreign power.” Failure to do so would have resulted in fines of up to $9,600.

• Protesters raised concerns that the proposed law mimicked similar legislation in Russia, where it became a potent tool that helped the Kremlin purge civil society of many pro-Western groups.

=> ↺ Journalist Fırat Bulut taken into custody upon his return from the earthquake zone

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Hong Kong national security police arrest woman over alleged incitement to secession

• A 23-year-old Hong Kong woman was arrested under the Beijing-imposed national security law on Wednesday, the police have said. According to a statement by the police released on Thursday night, the woman was arrested in Sau Mau Ping for allegedly inciting secession. The 23-year-old is currently in police custody under investigation.

=> ↺ Hong Kong prosecutors upgrade sedition charge against Portuguese man to secession

• A Portuguese man who allegedly managed social media accounts for the Hong Kong Independence Party saw his sedition charge upgraded to conspiracy to incite secession. The more serious offence under the national security law is punishable by up to 10 years in prison rather than two years for sedition.

=> ↺ Police arrest veteran Hong Kong labor activist for ‘collusion’

• Officers stop Elizabeth Tang outside the prison where her unionist husband is serving time for ‘illegal’ protests

=> ↺ Men had longer working week than women in 2022

• Women worked four hours less on average per week than men in 2022, according to Danmarks Statistik.  The yearly Arbejdskraftundersøgelsen survey showed that men had an average working week of 38.3 hours, while for women it was 34.2.

=> ↺ Why China Is Tightening Its Oversight of Banking and Tech

• A series of regulatory changes approved this week reflect the increasingly centralized control of Xi Jinping, newly confirmed for a third term as China’s president.

=> ↺ Tibetans in Ladakh celebrate New Year

• The event celebrates what Tibetan Buddhists believe was the Buddha’s revealing of miraculous powers on the first 15 days of that month. Many Tibetan Buddhists believe that prayers, meditations and good deeds done during their period give significantly higher benefits.

=> ↺ “Work Until You Die” Is Not a Retirement Plan

• The problem with all of this is that there is no “problem.” Rather, the system is working exactly as it was designed to work. And because of gargantuan gaps in our social insurance landscape, “work until you die” has become the retirement plan for so many disabled people.

=> ↺ Berlin to allow women to go topless in public swimming pools

• Authorities agreed they had been victims of discrimination and said that all visitors to Berlin’s pools were now entitled to go topless.

=> ↺ Police in Tibet clamp down on eve of 1959 uprising anniversary

• Authorities are taking similar initiatives in other parts of Tibet, including Nagchu, Chamdo, Lhoka and Shigatse.

• Friday’s anniversary commemorates a 1959 revolt in which tens of thousands of Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa in protest against China’s invasion and occupation of their homeland a decade earlier.

=> ↺ Why Unions Matter So Much

• Jamelle Bouie, a Times Opinion columnist, captured this asymmetry when he wrote: “Republicans and other conservatives know who their enemies are — they know that organized labor is a key obstacle to dismantling the social safety net. The question is whether Democrats understand that their fortunes are also bound up in the fate of workers.”

• But events in Michigan this week raise the question of whether Democrats are starting to change their approach and devote more attention to strengthening organized labor.

=> ↺ Cops Harass Parents Who Let 6-Year-Old Daughter Take a Walk Outside, Arrest Dad

• When they arrived, the girl introduced the officer to her mother and father, according to Kaplan. But the officer refused to release her unless her parents presented their identification. When they declined to do so—arguing they hadn’t done anything wrong—he called for backup.

• When Kaplan arrived at his friends’ home, he started filming the encounter. By now, the girl had started crying. Then her father did “what any dad would—he went to hug his crying kid,” says Kaplan. “And at that point he was arrested. With handcuffs.”

=> ↺ Stand News trial: Ex-editor denies commentary about fate of top Chinese dissident was seditious

• A former Hong Kong editor on trial for sedition said on Thursday that a commentary which he had published about the fate of a top Chinese dissident was not intended to stir up hatred against authorities but to point out their mistakes.

=> ↺ Georgia’s ruling coalition drops ‘foreign agent’ bill after protests

• Georgia’s governing coalition Thursday agreed to withdraw a controversial ‘foreign agent’ bill after large civilian and international protests. They made the announcement on their Facebook page. The ruling People’s Power Party said they were in agreement with their partners in “unconditionally” withdrawing support for the bill.

=> ↺ Georgia Plans to Withdraw Foreign Agents Bill After Protests

• It was not clear whether the government intended to scrap the legislation, which critics said mimicked a law that stifles dissent in Russia, or was merely delaying it to assuage protesters.

=> ↺ Georgians Protest Against ‘Foreign Influence’ Bill

• The new norm sets fines and jail sentences for directors of media outlets and NGOs that receive funds from other countries.

=> ↺ Rattled by Ukraine war, Georgia wrestles with tighter societal controls

• As its huge neighbor wages war in Ukraine, Georgia is finding its own society polarizing between those who distrust Russia and those who want to avoid entanglement in the West’s anti-Kremlin efforts.

=> ↺ Former bulldozer-blocking MP wants to protect activists

• Sue Higginson says she would not be where she is today if she hadn’t chained herself to a bulldozer nearly three decades ago. The NSW Greens MP and former environmental lawyer says participating in protests when she was young helped guide her trajectory and worries today’s activists risk severe punishments such as jail time.

=> ↺ Police in Tibet clamp down on eve of 1959 uprising anniversary

• Photos from Lhasa police website show officers checking IDs and record books.

=> ↺ China, Myanmar, North Korea listed as ‘worst of worst’ in freedom report

• Chinese Communist Party plays ‘leading role’ in promoting autocracy, think tank says.

=> ↺ Danish far-right party in crisis as new leader fired over funds dispute

• The far-right Nye Borgerlige (New Right) party has deposed its leader Lars Boje Mathiesen and excluded him from the party over a dispute related to use of party funding.

=> ↺ Judge addresses jury over breastfeeding decision

• A Victorian judge who asked a breastfeeding mother to leave a public gallery in his courtroom has told a jury his actions were “self-explanatory”.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

• The root cause of this error is that the Widevine DRM module is not installed (which is also why Netflix doesn’t work).

• Thus begins the “do not violate the DMCA challenge 2023″. The goal of this challenge is to figure out how to watch Netflix on Asahi Linux without bypassing or otherwise breaking DRM.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Reddie & Grose bolsters Munich office with Maiwald partner

=> ↺ Multiple dependent claims, blaze marks, and ipsis verbis support

• This is a follow-up to Dennis’s post discussing a recent Federal Circuit decision, University of Minnesota v. Gilead, wherein the university was essentially precluded from claiming priority to a provisional patent application because the provisional failed to provide adequate written description support for a later claimed invention.

=> ↺ Issue its “Mandate and Opinion”

• The Federal Circuit regularly affirms PTAB judgments without issuing any explanatory opinion to justify the result.  Although not found in the Rules of Appellate procedure, the court has created its own local rule allowing itself to “enter a judgment of affirmance without opinion.”  In a 2017 paper, I argued that these no-opinion affirmances violated both the spirit and letter of 35 U.S.C. 144, which requires the court to issue a “mandate and opinion” in cases appealed from the USPTO. 

Trademarks

=> ↺ Guest Post by Michael Hall: “Ignoring Federal Circuit Precedent, the Board Toes the Line on the Burden of Proof for Genericness Refusals”

• Michael Hall of Womble Bond Dickinson has kindly provided the following thought-provoking comments on the current status of the TTAB’s genericness jurisprudence, and particularly on the Board’s recent Uman Diagnostics decision applying a “preponderance of the evidence” standard for proof of genericness while ignoring venerable CAFC precedent requiring “clear and convincing” evidence.

=> ↺ TikTok wins US trademark trial over Stitch video feature

• Bytedance’s TikTok Inc persuaded a federal jury in Los Angeles on Thursday that its Stitch feature does not violate trademark rights belonging to British video-editing company Stitch Editing Ltd.

• The jury rejected Stitch Editing’s argument that TikTok confuses consumers by using the Stitch name to brand the popular social-media platform’s technology for “stitching” videos together.

Copyrights

=> ↺ A Winnie-the-Pooh horror film? Welcome to the public domain

• Milne enthusiasts may find their spin-offs similarly pooh-poohed if they aren’t careful. Tigger didn’t come bouncing on to the scene until 1928 in The House at Pooh Corner, so he won’t be following his playmates into the public domain until next year. And the new-found freedom to transplant Milne’s characters into any scenario applies only to the versions illustrated by EH Shepard. The designs originated by Disney, which have earned that company more than $80bn since it produced Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in 1966, are off limits. Reimagine the characters as savage, rampaging maniacs by all means – as the new low-budget British horror film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey has done – but keep your paws off Pooh’s trademark tomato-red T-shirt and naked lower half.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

=> ↺ Martin Isenburg’s legacy

• To give a bit more context here, Martin Isenburg was the developer of the most successful Open Source library to interact with LIDAR data, a type of geospatial data coming from laser sensors, typically acquired from airplanes to generate 3D models of large land areas.

=> ↺ Happy Birfday, Zaibatsu-kun! Or, Wages of the Smolnet

• So, our good captain of the satellite in which we dwell has written a lovely homage to the Mare Tranquillitatis People’s Circumlunar Zaibatsu. As well as outlining the history of the Zaibatsu and the smol constellation of circumlunarspace server communities, this post by Solderpunk serves as an excellent manifesto for minimalist pubnix (smolnix!).

=> ↺ T── on Technology

• Someone on a ##forth channel wondered why Tolkien was so down on technology; an easy answer is that factory production had gotten a little out of hand, given the something like a billion shells burnt in the “Materialschlachte” or Great War. But Tolkien is not the author that concerns this post.

• Arnold Toynbee likewise was deeply affected by the Great War and concluded that the West was suffering from a spiritual crisis.

• The quotes and indeed much of this material is cribbed from “Arnold Toynbee and the Crisis of the West” by Marvin Perry (1982). This copy was discarded by the Karachi-American School Library. Nobody had checked it out.

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