● 03.15.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 15/03/2023: Transmission 4.0.2 and Lots in Geminispace

Posted in News Roundup at 9:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Kernel Space

=> ↺ How eBPF unlocks cloud native innovation

• Barbara Liskov—the brilliant Turing Award winner whose career inspired so much modern thinking around distributed computing—was fond of calling out the “power of abstraction” and its role in “finding the right interface for a system as well as finding an effective design for a system implementation.”

• Liskov has been proven right many times over, and we are now at a juncture where new abstractions—and eBPF, specifically—are driving the evolution of cloud native system design in powerful new ways. These new abstractions are unlocking the next wave of cloud native innovation and will set the course for the evolution of cloud native computing.

Applications

=> ↺ Machine Learning in Linux: StemRoller – separate vocal and instrumental stems from songs

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

• This series looks at highly promising machine learning and deep learning software for Linux.

=> ↺ Transmission 4.0.2 Limits In-Kernel File Copying to 2GB Blocks at a Time, Fixes Bugs

• Transmission 4.0.2 is here to limit in-kernel file copying to 2GB blocks at a time to avoid potential issues with CIFS mounts, fixes displaying of IPv6 tracker URLs, improves sanity checking of magnet links added via RPC, and improves handling of the leechers parameter in the tracker announce responses.

• Multiple bugs were addressed in this release for all supported platforms. These include a misleading error message when Transmission is unable to write to an incomplete directory, a regression that prevented the download priority for the first and last pieces of files from being increased, which in turn prevented previewing/playing while downloading, as well as a small error when calculating the protocol overhead when receiving peer messages.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to install OTRS (OpenSource Trouble Ticket System) on Debian 11

• OTRS is an open-source Ticket Request System that helps organizations process customer tickets and requests. This post will explain how to install OTRS on Debian 11 server.

=> ↺ Can’t remember the Linux command you ran earlier? Let history repeat itself

• If you use the Linux command line quite a bit, you might find yourself lost in what to type at some point. The history command is there to give your mind a jog.

=> ↺ How to Protect Your Linux PC From Network Threats With OpenSnitch

• Keeping yourself safe and secure from malware is a daunting task, even on Linux. You need to be sure that the tools you use aren’t phoning home to criminals for instructions or exfiltrating your personal pics to blackmailers on the other side of the world.

• While there are various firewall solutions available for Linux, these are usually used via the terminal and can be difficult to understand and use.

• OpenSnitch is an easy-to-use GUI firewall application for Linux that captures all outgoing network connections and gives you the choice of how to handle them.

=> ↺ How to Copy and Paste Text in the Linux Terminal

• You’re viewing a tutorial online and need to paste a command inside the Linux terminal. You copy the text from the browser window, switch to the terminal, and press Ctrl + V, only to find “^V” appear on-screen. What happened? Why can’t you paste the text inside the terminal?

• Copying and pasting text to and from the Linux command line isn’t as intuitive as it should be. The keyboard shortcuts work, but there’s a catch. We’ll show you two ways to copy/paste text within the Linux terminal so you can finally paste that command sitting in your clipboard for hours.

=> ↺ How to know if You are Behind a Proxy Server?

• Curious if you are behind a proxy server? Here’s how you can check:

=> ↺ How-to: Unattended Ubuntu server or desktop installation in Virtualbox

• With the new version of VirtualBox, we can install Ubuntu Linux VM or other OS unattended. Just configure the virtual machine and the rest of all settings will be done by the VirutaBox.

=> ↺ How To Install Sensu Monitoring on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Sensu monitoring on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

=> ↺ How To Install Perl on Rocky Linux 9

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Perl on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Perl is a powerful scripting language used for various purposes such as web development, system administration, network programming…

=> ↺ Víctor Jáquez: Review of Igalia Multimedia activities (2022)

• We, Igalia’s multimedia team, would like to share with you our list of achievements along the past 2022.

• WebRTC

• Phil already wrote a first blog post, of a series, on this regard: WebRTC in WebKitGTK and WPE, status updates, part I. Please, be sure to give it a glance, it has nice videos.

• Long story short, last year we started to support Media Capture and Streams in WebKitGTK and WPE using GStreamer, either for input devices (camera and microphone), desktop sharing, webaudio, and web canvas. But this is just the first step. We are currently working on RTCPeerConnection, also using GStreamer, to share all these captured streams with other web peers.

=> ↺ Mastering Chmod 777 Permissions on Linux: A Beginner’s Guide

• Have you ever stumbled upon a Linux command called chmod 777? If you have, then you know that this command can be a powerful tool for managing file permissions on a Linux system.

=> ↺ How To Install Gitkraken on Debian 11

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Gitkraken on Debian 11.

Games

=> ↺ Steam Deck Now Lets You Transfer Games from PC over Your Home Network

• The March 15th Steam Deck Client update introduces a new feature called “Local Network Game Transfers,” which promises to allow Steam users to transfer existing Steam games (installation and update files) from one PC to another or from a PC to the Steam Deck over a local area network.

• Since the transfer is done locally, users no longer need to download and install the games from a Steam content server over the Internet, which leads to reduced internet traffic and faster game installs or updates. Moreover, users have full control over which files can be sent via Self only (default), Friends only, or Everyone filters.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ After nearly two decades of waiting, GNOME 44 brings you… image thumbnails

• GNOME 44 is reaching readiness, just in time for inclusion in the next versions of the two big distro daddies, Ubuntu “Lunar Lobster” and Fedora 38.

• GNOME 44 reached beta in mid-February and now it’s moved to the next version, 44.rc, or release candidate.

• The removal of Gtk 3 support and its replacement with Gtk 4 continues. The last use in Mutter of legacy OpenGL has been removed, leaving only OpenGL ≥ 3.1 and GLES ≥ 2.0, as has the last use of Gtk 3. However, Mutter has gained preliminary support for HDR, or High Dynamic Range. HDR is a feature in the ThinkPad X1 Carbon that we wrote about last week.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ Kali Linux 2023.1 Released – What’s New!

• A new distribution called “Kali Purple” was released recently by Offensive Security as part of the Kali Linux 2023.1 project for its 10th anniversary, and it’s the first version of 2023.

• Since the Kali Linux 2022.4 was released last year, This new version, Kali Purple is specially designed for defensive security, and it’s aimed at Blue and Purple team members.

• While Kali Linux is primarily designed to be used by ethical hackers and security auditors in order to conduct penetration testing, security auditing, and cybersecurity research on network systems.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” opts for astrology-themed wallpaper

• Canonical has shared the default wallpaper that it will use in the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” release due on April 20. Taking the word “Lunar”, the company decided to run with an astrology-based approach to the wallpaper and made the lobster into a constellation. There’s a full-on purple-orangish version of the wallpaper which will serve as default and a black-and-white version (check the gallery below) for those with more sensitive eyes.

• Explaining a bit about what users can look forward to, in mumbo-jumbo astrology speak, Ubuntu Project Manager Oliver Smith said…

=> ↺ Ubuntu Flatpak Remix Adds Flatpak Support Preinstalled

• Recently, Canonical announced that Ubuntu and all of its official spins would no longer ship with Flatpak installed out of the box. Of course, anyone can install Flatpak on any of the official versions of the open-source operating system, but some might prefer not to have to take the extra steps.

• If that sounds like you, there’s a new unofficial spin, called Ubuntu Flatpak. As you might expect, this version is a pretty straightforward take on Ubuntu, only with Flatpak pre-installed.

• To take this one step further, Ubuntu Flatpak also installs a few of its basic apps (such as Firefox, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice) as Flatpak apps (instead of the official Snap versions installed on Ubuntu).

=> ↺ Learn Linux TV Releases Ubuntu Flatpak Remix Distro

• Jay from the Learn Linux TV YouTube channel has released an Ubuntu-based distro built around Flatpaks.

• Flatpaks and Snaps are two universal packaging formats for Linux, giving developers the ability to build an app that can be run on any distro that has Flatpak support. The format accomplishes this by bundling all necessary dependencies within the package, although Flatpaks can share dependencies between them.

• As the maker of the far less popular Snap format and the Ubuntu distro, Canonical recently made the decision to prohibit official Ubuntu flavors from shipping with Flatpak installed and enabled out of the box. Despite the decision, Ubuntu is still a solid distro, one with wide hardware and app support.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 23.04 will come with Linux 6.2 kernel, could be backported to LTS

• Eagle-eyed Joey Sneddon from OMG! Ubuntu! has spotted an important detail about Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” in a recent mailing list thread. The next version of Ubuntu, which is due in April, will apparently ship with the Linux 6.2 kernel over the older 6.1 kernel. This detail is not only important for those who plan to use the cutting-edge version but also for those on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

• As pointed out by OMG! Ubuntu!, Canonical typically backports kernels from the latest release back to the most recent LTS via a hardware enablement (HWE) update. This means that those who receive the HWE update will benefit from all the latest improvements added to the kernel since Linux 5.19 was released (this kernel is included right now).

=> ↺ Canonical collaborates with MediaTek to optimize Ubuntu for IoT innovations

• Canonical is partnering with MediaTek to meet the growing demands of the IoT industry, reduce development costs and accelerate time-to-market.

• By partnering to enable Ubuntu on the Genio platform, MediaTek and Canonical will make it easier for developers, innovators and the embedded community to take advantage of this power-efficient, high-performance IoT SoC. The collaboration ensures developers and enterprises can create reliable and secure devices, benefiting from up to 10 years of enterprise-grade Ubuntu support, security updates, and anywhere, anytime connectivity.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Core now compatible with the Arm SystemReady IR systems specification

• Canonical announced its Ubuntu Core OS is now compatible with the Arm SystemReady IR system specification, enabling security best practices across connected devices.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ A Pi Calculating Pi For Pi Day

• What is it about pi that we humans — at least some of us — find so endlessly fascinating? Maybe that’s just it — it’s endless, an eternal march of digits that tempts us with the thought that if we just calculate one more digit, something interesting will happen. Spoiler alert: it never does.

=> ↺ Why Raspberry Pi is a Recommended Tool for Aspiring Hackers

• Raspberry Pi is a small and affordable computer that has gained popularity in recent years due to its versatility and ease of use. While it was originally intended to be used as an educational tool for learning programming and electronics, it has since been adopted by various communities, including hackers.

=> ↺ Why Raspberry Pi is a Valuable Tool for Aspiring Hackers

• Aspiring hackers should consider using Raspberry Pi for their hacking projects. This affordable, credit-card sized computer is a powerful tool for learning about hacking and cybersecurity.

=> ↺ Thundercomm Launches its New SOMs TurboX C2210, C4210, C5430 at Embedded World 2023 to Accelerate Innovations in Robotics and Handheld Devices

• TurboX C2210 SOM is powered by the Qualcomm® QRB2210 System-on-Chip (SoC). It’s designed with an optimized Linux operating system, discrete memory for more memory options to save the cost, and system fast boot, supports 1080P@30FPS video decode and a long life cycle to 2028, aiming to bring advanced features to entry-level devices with better performance and improved power consumption. The TurboX C2210 SOM supports the Linux system and can be applied to a variety of products like entry-tier robotics, e-scooter, smart home dock, smart camera and rugged handheld, etc.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android bloatware comes under fire in India

=> ↺ People are just realizing Android phones have secret ‘button click’ – don’t ignore free perk | The US Sun

=> ↺ All Android users urged to check their phones today as ‘dangerous’ new bug spreads across the world – Mirror Online

=> ↺ Billions of Android users must check hidden ‘timeline’ that reveals ‘dangerous stalking’ – or live to regret it | The US Sun

=> ↺ Wallpaper Wednesday: Android wallpapers 2023-03-15 – Android Authority

=> ↺ Samsung unveils Galaxy A34 and Galaxy A54 with 4 years of Android updates | Technology News,The Indian Express

=> ↺ Here Comes the Android 13 QPR3 Beta 1 Update

=> ↺ Android 13 vs Android 12: Is the new version worth upgrading to?

=> ↺ Firefox 111 for Android is here to block cross-site tracking

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Pulsar – The New Atom Editor Successor

• Pulsar version 1 for the first time released on Thursday, 15 December 2022 is the official successor to the free/open source Atom Editor software. Its slogan now says “A Community-led Hyper-Hackable Text Editor”. The release date of Pulsar matches exactly the date of the discontinuation date of Atom like a seed sprouting a new tree right after an old tree died in a forest. It is available for all major operating systems namely GNU/Linux, MacOS and Windows. Currently, Pulsar is still under rapid development by the community and here we at Ubuntu Buzz want to convey the message to all computer users to try Pulsar and, if you can, help with the software development.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Down and Out in Paris With Rainer Maria Rilke

• “Paris is a difficult place,” Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to a friend on New Year’s Eve, 1902. “And the beautiful things here and there do not quite compensate for the cruelty of its streets and the monstrosity of its people.” Then 26, the writer had recently moved to the city from the German countryside, leaving behind his new wife and their young child. His plan was to work there for a year and send money to his family, which had been relying on a trust fund that his father had abruptly withdrawn. For reasons that remain hard to pin down, however, he stayed for six years, without warming to the cruel streets and monstrous people or, for that matter, earning much money. It was a period of loneliness and frustration, during which he was wracked with doubts about his art. And yet a part of him seemed obscurely drawn to its hardships. In “Turning Point,” a poem about spiritual growth, he quotes as an epigraph these lines from the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Kassner: “The road from intensity to greatness / passes through sacrifice.” His fictional record of Paris would likewise turn on ascetic withdrawal and renewal.1

Science

=> ↺ Everest Is Preserving The Germs Coughed And Sneezed Out by Climbers

• We’ll just save this for later.

Hardware

=> ↺ Mice Play In VR

• Virtual Reality always seemed like a technology just out of reach, much like nuclear fusion, the flying car, or Linux on the desktop. It seems to be gaining steam in the last five years or so, though, with successful video games from a number of companies as well as plenty of other virtual reality adjacent technology that seems to be picking up steam as well like augmented reality. Another sign that this technology might be here to stay is this virtual reality headset made for mice.

=> ↺ Cheap Camera Gives Clay-Pigeon’s-Eye View Of Trap Shooting

• Speaking from experience, it’s always fun to build something with the specific intention of destroying it. Childhood sessions spending hours building boats from scrap wood only to take them to a nearby creek to bombard them with rocks — we disrespectfully called this game “Pearl Harbor” — confirms this. As does the slightly more grown-up pursuit of building this one-time-use clay pigeon camera.

=> ↺ Hackaday Berlin: The Badge, Workshops, And Lightning Talks

• Hackaday Berlin is just under two weeks away, and we’ve got news times three! If you don’t already have tickets, there are still a few left, so grab them while they’re hot. We’ll be rolling out the final full schedule soon, but definitely plan on attending a pre-party Friday night the 24th, followed by a solid 14-hour day of hacking, talks, and music on Saturday the 25th, and then a mellow Bring-a-Hack brunch with impromptu demos, workshops, and whatever else on Sunday from 10:30 until 14:00.

=> ↺ Pocket-Sized Thermal Imager

• Just as the gold standard for multimeters and other instrumentation likely comes in a yellow package of some sort, there is a similar household name for thermal imaging. But, if they’re known for anything other than the highest quality thermal cameras, it’s excessively high price. There are other options around but if you want to make sure that the finished product has some sort of quality control you might want to consider building your own thermal imaging device like [Ruslan] has done here.

=> ↺ Solar Powered Split Wireless Mechanically Keyboard

• When thinking about a perfect keyboard, some of us have a veritable laundry list: split, hot-swapping, wireless, 3d printed, encoders, and a custom layout. The Aloidia keyboard by [Nguyen Vincent] has all that and more.

=> ↺ Mechanical Keyboard As Travel Saxophone

• Those who play larger musical instruments, things like drums, piano, harp, tuba, upright bass, or Zeusaphone, know well the challenges of simply transporting their chosen instrument to band practice, a symphony hall, or local watering hole. Even those playing more manageably-sized instruments may have similar troubles at some point especially when traveling where luggage space is at a premium like on an airplane. That’s why [jcard0na] built this electronic saxophone, designed to be as small as possible.

=> ↺ A Bumper Crop Of Ethernet Switches Harvested In Q4

• With each passing year, the phrase “The network is the computer,” coined in 1984 by John Gage, director of research and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, becomes more and more true.

=> ↺ DOE Wants A Hub And Spoke System Of HPC Systems

• We talk about scale a lot here at The Next Platform, but there are many different aspects to this beyond lashing a bunch of nodes together and counting aggregate peak flops.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ “She Had a Heartbeat Too”: Waiting for One Dead Woman

• Before a speaking event last week, I memorized as much as I could about the near-death experience Amanda Zurawski endured while losing her pregnancy. From the lawsuit Zurawski filed with four other women over the abortion bans in Texas, I learned that doctors, fearful of breaking the law, refused to end Zurawski’s pregnancy when her water broke at 18 weeks. Days later, as she was miscarrying, her fever spiked to 103.2 degrees. Zurawski’s family members flew in to see her in the ICU because they believed she was dying.

=> ↺ Dem Governors, US Senators Call On Top Pharmacies to Clarify Medication Abortion Plans

• With Walgreens under fire for its new abortion pill policy, 14 Democratic U.S. governors on Tuesday asked the corporate leaders of seven other major pharmacies to clarify their plans to lawfully distribute abortion medication like mifepristone.

=> ↺ EPA Proposes Limiting “Forever Chemicals” in Drinking Water for the First Time

=> ↺ Biden EPA Praised for ‘Historic Progress’ But Pressured to Ban Forever Chemicals

• The Biden administration’s proposed first-ever national drinking water standard for six “forever chemicals” is both “groundbreaking” and far from the comprehensive action needed to address the environmental and public health crisis, advocates, scientists, and people from polluted U.S. communities said Tuesday.

=> ↺ Norfolk Southern CEO Makes Obligatory Congressional Appearance But Doesn’t Commit to Rail Safety Changes

• On March 9, the Senate held the first congressional hearing on rail safety following the February 3 Norfolk Southern rail disaster in which a nearly two-mile-long train carrying hazardous materials derailed and caught fire in East Palestine, Ohio. If the people of East Palestine were hoping to see the wheels of justice start to turn in their favor with this hearing, they may be sorely disappointed. The hearing began with some troubling revelations from a first responder, before senators went on to grill Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, who dodged questions and refused to commit to any meaningful changes to his company’s safety strategy. 

• It likely wasn’t a pleasant experience for Shaw, especially when Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) informed him mid-hearing that another of Norfolk Southern’s trains had just derailed. However, even this painful irony could not nudge Shaw toward specific commitments to financially support East Palestine residents or to back new rail safety regulations. 

=> ↺ Why Were the Cancer Studies at Nuclear Facilities Canceled?

• In an ironic twist, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California received the first $1.1 billion nuclear bailout to keep operating, even though it was political leaders from California who had asked for a health study.

• If you thought the government of the United States, the country with the most nuclear power reactors in the world, might be interested in finding out the cancer impact of nuclear power on our children, you’d be wrong. But, our government is willing to give failed, uneconomic, decaying nuclear power reactors oodles of taxpayer money without first figuring out if and how they harm our children. Assessing potential health damage should be a prerequisite for reactor license renewal.

=> ↺ Bird Flu, Mpox And Marburg. Why Do So Many Viruses Seem to Be Emerging Right Now?

• A virologist explains.

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ The Linux Foundation Announces Conference Schedule for Open Source Summit North America 2023

Security

=> ↺ CISA Program Warns Critical Infrastructure Organizations Vulnerable to Ransomware Attacks

• A new CISA pilot program to warn critical infrastructure organizations if their systems are unpatched against vulnerabilities exploited in ransomware attacks.

=> ↺ Microsoft SmartScreen Zero-Day Exploited to Deliver Magniber Ransomware

• A cybercrime group has been exploiting a Microsoft SmartScreen zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-24880 to deliver the Magniber ransomware.

=> ↺ Adobe Warns of ‘Very Limited Attacks’ Exploiting ColdFusion Zero-Day

• Adobe issues urgent warning for “very limited attacks” exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in its ColdFusion web app development platform.

=> ↺ Two U.S. Men Charged in 2022 Hacking of DEA Portal

• Two U.S. men have been charged with hacking into a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) online portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. Both are alleged to be part of a larger criminal organization that specializes in using fake emergency data requests from compromised police and government email accounts to publicly threaten and extort their victims.

=> ↺ Ring Denies Falling Victim to Ransomware Attack

• Ring says it has no indications it has fallen victim to a ransomware attack after cybergang threatens to publish supposedly stolen data.

=> ↺ ICS Patch Tuesday: Siemens, Schneider Electric Address Over 100 Vulnerabilities

• Siemens and Schneider Electric have addressed more than 100 vulnerabilities with their March 2023 Patch Tuesday security advisories.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ FBI, Defense Department Worked Together To Develop Facial Recognition Tech For Drones, Surveillance Cameras

• Another FOIA lawsuit has paid off for the ACLU. But there are no real winners here, since the documents pried from the government’s grasp detail a bunch of stuff we all wish the government wouldn’t be doing with its time and our money. Here’s Drew Harwell with the details for the Washington Post:

=> ↺ ADC’s New Argentina Report Flags How ISPs Can Do More for Users’ Data Privacy

• In this third edition of Argentina’s report, most of the improvements relate to the ISPs’ privacy policies. ADC has increased the evaluation parameters in this category to follow crucial data protection principles. Among others, the report checks whether ISPs commit to only collect data for specific, explicit, and lawful purposes and stick to those purposes when processing user data; ensure the data they process is true, adequate, relevant, and not excessive in regard to the purposes of collection; and adopt security measures to protect user data.  All  companies received credit for their privacy policies, while none of them got more than a half star.

• Once again, Movistar leads the ranking, with three and a half out of five stars. The company has almost doubled its score compared to the 2019 report, and is far ahead of second-place IPLAN, which earned roughly two stars. IPLAN was the only company to engage with ADC researchers in the last edition. Back then, IPLAN, a smaller company in Argentina’s market, was taking its  first steps to properly adjust its data protection policies and practices. The improvements in IPLAN’s policy show the company’s disposition to receive criticism and recommendations, the ADC report highlights. Arlink, another small local ISP first featured in this new edition, came in last place, while Claro, a much larger provider, was almost as bad.

• The new ¿Quién Defiende Tus Datos? (Who Defends Your Data?) edition evaluated Movistar (Telefónica), Claro (América Móvil/Carso), DirecTV, Personal (Telecom Group), Telecentro, IPLAN, and Arlink. While Personal and DirecTV failed to improve their scores over the last edition, all others featured in 2019 improved theirs, at least a little.

=> ↺ Even Rep. LaHood Likely Can’t Sue the NSA or FBI to Protect His Rights

• What’s equally stunning is that despite absolutely knowing that he was spied upon – something that is extremely rare given the level of secrecy around 702 – neither Rep. LaHood nor anyone else illegally spied upon will likely get a chance to seek a remedy in a court.  That’s not just because  702 is poorly drafted and has been even more poorly executed.  It’s because of how governmental secrecy has now metastasized to completely prevent anyone from stopping illegal NSA spying of them, much less get any other legal remedy.  

• Quite simply, governmental secrecy now renders moot many of the accountability and oversight mechanisms for national security surveillance that exist on paper in FISA as well as in the U.S. constitution. 

• One of EFF’s highest priorities for nearly two decades is making sure you can have a private conversation online.  And specifically, we want to ensure that individuals can seek judicial accountability for violations of their constitutional and statutory rights committed through the government’s warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance inside the United States. 

=> ↺ French Legislators Think Hosting 2024 Olympics Justifies Massive Domestic Surveillance Expansion

• Massive sports events tend to make everyone crazy. The NFL has turned the Super Bowl into The Game That Must Not Be Named (without express written [and paid] permission) by unapproved advertisers and promoters. The Olympic Committee has abused pretty much every available IP law to ensure the Olympic brand remains known as… a massive abuser of intellectual property laws.

=> ↺ Colorado Catholic Group Spent Millions On Sensitive Grindr Data To Shame Priests

• It’s time once again to play: “things that probably wouldn’t happen if the U.S. wasn’t too corrupt to pass a decent internet-era privacy law.”

=> ↺ Zigbee vs. Wi-Fi: Which is Better for your Smart Home Needs

• All smart home devices require a wireless technology to connect to each other. Wi-Fi is a ubiquitous choice here as it can easily pair with Amazon Alexa and Google Home-compatible devices. In recent years though, many low-power IoT devices have been switching to Zigbee. So, which one is better for your smart home needs?

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ March To Iraq War, 20 Years Later: March 14, 2003

=> ↺ Foreign Exchange Pilots (Including Americans!) Don’t Always Think the USAF is the Greatest

• In his 2007 book Canada’s Air Forces on Exchange, author Larry Milberry offers a variety of views on the USAF as seen from Canadian pilots who served on exchange, and even some critical comments from USAF pilots who served in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and found the Canadian service better in some ways. As I read this well-written book, I often encountered comments from Canadians who found the USAF lacking in one way or the other. In the late 1960s, Flight Lieutenant (F/L) Harvey Schaan, RCAF served as an exchange flight training pilot in the USAF, and according to Milberry, “As did all Canadians on USAF exchange F/L Schaan found the USAF training system regimented – micromanagement was the rule. Takeoffs were strictly at 3-minute intervals. Each flight was obliged to reserve its aircraft (for any given day) two weeks in advance. This was a headache for schedulers (a secondary duty for [Instructor Pilots]. Should there be an accident, all senior officers from Wing Commander and Base Commander on down could expect to be fired within hours.” (p. 134) At about the same time, a USAF pilot named Captain R.E. Lushbaugh wrote of the Canadian pilots training USAF pilots and said “Since the Canadian air force is smaller, about 35,000, they all feel that the personal contact between the instructor and student is greater, and the atmosphere is more relaxed in Canada.” (p. 141) Thus, the Royal Canadian Air Force treated its pilots like adults whereas the micromanaged USAF treated theirs like children, and that may help to explain why the RCAF often gets better results in exercises and competitions. Micromanagement is still a very familiar concept to USAF pilots in the 21st century too.

• Careerism and low quality training aircraft were also mentioned by the RCAF training pilots. As Milberry put it, “Something else that Canucks at Otis [Air Force Base] note was the emphasis on climbing the USAF ladder – most officers were on career paths, so were very politically correct. In the RCAF the opposite was normal –get the job done, have fun, don’t worry a lot about your career. After all, few RCAF aircrew were careerists.” (p. 214) As for the training aircraft used by the USAF back then, some RCAF pilots had complaints and said the Canadian equivalents were better. “On May 15, 1968, F/L [Bob] Endicott first flew the T-37. Knowing the [Canadian-designed and built] Tutor well, he was not impressed by the underpowered, unpressurized ‘Tweet’ as the T-37 was nicknamed.” (p. 137). This runs contrary to the belief that many American nationalists have that the US makes the best military aircraft in the world. And again, careerism and political correctness are alive and well, sadly, in the USAF, as are badly designed aircraft like the F-35.

=> ↺ ‘We’ve seen things a lot worse than this’: Pro-Russian hackers try and fail to blackmail Ukrainian video game developers — Meduza

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, due for release this year, is one of the most anticipated games in the industry’s history. Last year, its developer, a Ukrainian company called GSC Game World, announced that the game won’t be sold in Russia, nor will it include a Russian-language voiceover. In response, a group of pro-Russian hackers is currently trying to blackmail the game’s creators, threatening to release “dozens of gigabytes” of hacked materials meant to spoil the game if the company doesn’t apologize for its “disrespectful attitude” towards the game’s Russian and Belarusian players. So far, the attempt has failed.

=> ↺ Macron reminded Orbán of the importance of European unity at Paris meeting

=> ↺ Pushing Russian propaganda as if we were on their side

=> ↺ Ukrainian Game Devs To Russian Hackers: ‘Russian Hackers, Go Fuck Yourselves’

• Back in the early days of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, one of the most captivating stories was that of Snake Island, a small island in Ukrainian territorial waters. Under constant radioed threats from a Russian cruiser, Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov uttered his now iconic response to the warship: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Keep that story in the back of your mind.

=> ↺ Dare Call It A Coup? CIA Front Threatens Color Revolution in Georgia

• Kit Klarenberg exposes the US and EU’s sinister meddling in Georgia’s sovereignty and democracy through NGOs, propaganda and the tried and true method of sowing the seeds of discontent.

=> ↺ Biden Signs Executive Order on Guns to Enhance Background Checks

=> ↺ 60+ Faith Groups Urge Congress to ‘Dramatically’ Slash Pentagon Budget

• “The country is sprinting towards a trillion-dollar budget for weapons and war—propping up an expensive and harmful militarized foreign policy while people struggle to meet their basic needs,” reads a new letter to members of Congress signed by U.S., international, and state and local groups including the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice, Hindus for Human Rights, and dozens of others.

=> ↺ The Urbanity of Evil: 20 Years After the US Invasion of Iraq

• Vast quantities of lies from top U.S. government officials led up to the Iraq invasion. Now, marking its 20th anniversary, the same media outlets that eagerly boosted those lies are offering retrospectives. Don’t expect them to shed light on the most difficult truths, including their own complicity in pushing for war.

=> ↺ Blood Does Not Wash Away Blood

• The extraordinary March 10, 2023 announcement that China’s top diplomat, Mr. Wang Yi, helped broker a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran suggests that major powers can benefit from believing that, as Albert Camus once put it, “words are more powerful than munitions.”

=> ↺ China Condemns US Plan to Sell Nuclear Submarines to Australia

=> ↺ ‘Path of Error and Danger’: China Rebukes US Plan to Sell Nuclear Submarines to Australia

• China accused Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of threatening peace in the Pacific region after leaders of the so-called AUKUS military partnership unveiled further information about their plan to expand the reach of Washington’s nuclear-powered submarine technology.

=> ↺ Honduras will seek to establish diplomatic ties with China

• Honduras President Xiomara Castro says her government will seek to establish diplomatic relations with China, which would imply severing relations with Taiwan. Castro said on her Twitter account Tuesday that she instructed Honduran Foreign Affairs Minister Eduardo Reina to start negotiations with China and that her intention is “to expand the borders with freedom.” Honduras is one of the few remaining allies of Taiwan, and Castro’s announcement represents a change on its diplomatic views. China claims self-ruled, democratic Taiwan is part of its territory and has engaged in a long campaign to isolate Taiwan diplomatically. Taiwan’s official media quoted an official saying its government had no further details.

=> ↺ Just How Likely Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan?

• Is China really on the verge of invading the island of Taiwan, as so many top American officials seem to believe? If the answer is “yes” and the U.S. intervenes on Taiwan’s side — as President Biden has sworn it would — we could find ourselves in a major-power conflict, possibly even a nuclear one, in the not-too-distant future. Even if confined to Asia and fought with conventional weaponry alone — no sure thing — such a conflict would still result in human and economic damage on a far greater scale than observed in Ukraine today.

=> ↺ Protest at the White House, March 18, Against US Proxy War In Ukraine

• On March 18 protesters will gather at the White House to call for an end to Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war. “Cruel” is the operative word, because the war cynically uses Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Russia and bring about regime change.

=> ↺ ‘Really Scary Stuff’: US Drone Crashes During Encounter With Russian Fighter Jet

• Fears of an escalation between nuclear superpowers Russia and the United States mounted Tuesday after a U.S. Air Force Reaper drone went down in international waters in the Black Sea during an encounter with a Russian fighter jet, with both sides giving varying accounts of the incident.

=> ↺ Russia’s Defense Ministry denies collision between Russian Su-27 fighter plane and U.S. reconnaissance drone — Meduza

• Commenting on the incident that led to the loss of the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Black Sea, Russia’s Defense Ministry has issued a statement about what happened.

=> ↺ ‘Monica exists, and Russia will win’: How a former Russian Orthodox deacon joined the occult, invented a wife, and made her hate Ukraine — Meduza

=> ↺ Patrick Lawrence: China’s Great Leap in the Middle East

• What Beijing just sponsored and got done, putting two millennia of diplomatic craft to work, is an exquisite example of what can be accomplished once this imperative is fully realized.

=> ↺ Israel and Its US Lobby Dealt Major Blow by China-Saudi-Iran Peace Initiative

• On Thursday the New York Times ran yet another report about Saudi Arabia’s entry into an “Abraham Accord,” but if only certain conditions could be met.

=> ↺ China Brokers Agreement Between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Sidelining the US

• Until it happened, it was unthinkable. The US has for decades guarded its role as the sole negotiator in the Middle East. It has insisted on being the chief arbiter of agreements and the architect and decider of partnerships.

=> ↺ Saudi-Iran Deal a Possible US ‘Suez Moment’

• The U.S. does not want to experience what Britain experienced in Suez in 1956: a watershed moment signaling its global decline.

=> ↺ Protest at the White House, March 18, Against US Proxy War In Ukraine

• Protests and Popular Sentiment growing for “Peace In Ukraine – No weapons, no money for the Ukraine War.”

• On March 18 protesters will gather at the White House to call for an end to Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war. “Cruel” is the operative word, because the war cynically uses Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Russia and bring about regime change.

=> ↺ Georgia’s murky ‘transparency’ bill The ‘foreign agent’ draft law that sparked mass protests in Tbilisi was presented as a solution to the country’s lack of transparency, but the legislation’s real goals are themselves opaque — Meduza

• Last week, the Republic of Georgia found itself on the cusp of adopting a new law for “transparency in foreign influence,” more commonly referred to as a “foreign agent” law, and widely believed to be modeled on Russia’s repressive legislation. If passed, the bill would have required the media and NGOs even partly financed from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence.” It would also have compromised Georgia’s entry into the E.U. and NATO. Intensive protests in Tbilisi finally forced Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, to back down in trying to push the bill through the parliament. Nevertheless, the activities of the majority party and its derivative movement, People’s Power, are unlikely to stop at this failed initiative. Meduza’s correspondent Diana Shanava reports from Tbilisi.

=> ↺ Convicted drug dealer pardoned by Putin after her clandestine chemist husband joined Wagner Group — Meduza

• The St. Petersburg physics teacher Diana Gribovskaya was convicted of illicit drug dealing in 2018, together with her husband, the veterinarian and clandestine chemist Dmitry Karavaichik. It has now emerged that Gribovskaya has been pardoned by President Vladimir Putin’s personal decree, adding yet another twist to the couple’s improbable story.

=> ↺ Lithuanian parliament designates Wagner Group as terrorist organization — Meduza

• The Seimas (unicameral parliament) of Lithuania has univocally adopted a resolution to designate Evgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group as a terrorist organization.

=> ↺ Daniel Ellsberg Is Calling on All of Us to Work to Avert Nuclear War

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ In FBI Case, the First Amendment Takes Another Bizarre Hit

• The same Democratic minority staff that trashed the First Amendment in last week’s Twitter Files hearings put something amazing in writing in a parallel case.

=> ↺ Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

• For years, we’ve written about the many, many, many ways in which people are wrong about the 1st Amendment, from trotting out the “fire in a crowded theater” line (for which we have a t-shirt, mug, pillow, and notebook) or how people falsely believe that hate speech is not protected by the 1st Amendment (it is, and for good reasons).

Environment

=> ↺ Peoples’ Earth Week: Climate Justice Arts and Action

• In this country, there are two centers of power large enough to make a real difference in the global climate fight: the federal government and the financial industry. That’s why our coalitions are focused on these two arenas of contestation. People vs Fossil Fuels is a coalition of more than 1,200 organizations demanding President Biden end fossil fuel expansion. Stop the Money Pipeline is a network of more than 240 groups dedicated to ending Wall Street’s financing of the fossil fuel industry.Now, for the first time, our coalitions are coming together for a shared project: Peoples’ Earth Week – Climate Justice Arts & Action.Right now, people all over the country are signing up to receive climate justice movement poster art created by leading artists who are involved in movements for justice. Between April 15th and 25th, activists will use the poster art to organize mass wheat pasting actions, pop-up art shows, and arts-centered direct actions. This Earth Day will be the biggest day of coordinated climate arts-based action.

=> ↺ The paradox of the climate crisis: Former president of Ireland talks sustainability

• About 600 University of Michigan community members lined up outside of the Rackham Auditorium Monday evening to hear from internationally renowned politician and diplomat Mary Robinson on sustainability.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Despite objections, Chevron says it reported oil price data

• Chevron says it has reported how much money it made in January from selling gasoline in California. The disclosure to state regulators comes after a new state law required oil companies to report more pricing data. The law is aimed at gathering information to determine why California gas prices are so high. The California Energy Commission said four of the state’s big five companies reported the information by a March 2 deadline. Chevron initially objected to reporting the data. Regulators warned they would be fined if they did not report. A spokesperson for Chevron said the company filed the data late Tuesday afternoon.

=> ↺ Lawmakers fear spill on Keystone system in southern Kansas

• State lawmakers worry that southern Kansas is vulnerable to oil spills from the Keystone pipeline system because earthquakes have become more frequent there. They raised the concern Tuesday as they questioned an executive for the pipeline’s operator about a massive spill in northeastern Kansas in December. A vice president of Canada-based TC Energy is briefing three Kansas legislative committees about the Dec. 7 rupture on the Keystone pipeline in Washington County, Kansas. The company expects cleanup efforts to last at least into the summer. But several lawmakers said they are nervous about the pipeline in the Wichita area about 160 miles south because of earthquake activity.

Finance

=> ↺ The GOP Has Become the Pro–Child Labor Party

• In February, The New York Times published a front-page report from Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Hannah Dreier that shed light on a shocking reality: migrant children are being illegally exploited in staggering numbers, working brutal jobs in kitchens and factories, hotels and slaughterhouses across the United States.

=> ↺ Failure of SVB Confirms Surprising Extent of Corporate Fraud

• The high-profile and sudden failure of Silicon Valley Bank, which hid huge losses from its depositors, investors, and regulators, highlights the dangers of corporate fraud for our financial system. It confirms the kind of problems highlighted by a recent study published in the Journal of Financial Economics estimating that only one-third of corporate frauds are detected, with an average of 10% of large publicly traded firms committing securities fraud every year. This means that the true extent of corporate fraud is much larger than what is currently being reported. The study also estimates that corporate fraud destroys 1.6% of equity value each year, which equals to $830 billion in 2021.

=> ↺ Warren, Watchdogs Demand Independent Probes of Fed Role in Bank Failures

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined financial industry watchdogs Tuesday in demanding an independent investigation of the Federal Reserve’s role in two of the largest bank collapses in U.S. history, failures that experts say were caused in part by the deregulatory actions of Congress and the central bank.

=> ↺ How Silicon Valley Bank & Signature Bank Lobbied to Weaken Regulations That Could Have Prevented Collapse

• The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are the largest bank failures since the 2008 financial crisis, which prompted lawmakers to pass legislation to increase regulations on banks and other financial institutions. But during the Trump administration, a number of Democrats joined Republicans in Congress to weaken laws including Dodd-Frank, the landmark regulatory reform passed in the wake of the crisis. Executives from Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were among those who successfully lobbied to weaken rules that may have prevented their collapse. The fallout from the bank failures now threatens to spread to other financial institutions, and the Biden administration has taken extraordinary steps to guarantee all deposits in the two failed banks and to shore up the rest of the sector in what many are criticizing as a bailout of rich bank customers. For more, we speak with The Lever’s David Sirota and banking law professor Mehrsa Baradaran, whom progressive groups at one point backed as the Biden administration’s pick for comptroller of the currency, an influential regulator of banks.

=> ↺ How Covid lockdowns primed the current financial crisis

=> ↺ Calls to protect payments following builder collapse

• The federal government has been urged to do more to protect worker payments following the collapse of several construction companies.

=> ↺ Washington reacts on the fly to Silicon Valley Bank failure

• After a frenetic weekend of round-the-clock briefings, U.S. policymakers took the audacious step of guaranteeing all the deposits of the failed Silicon Valley Bank — even those exceeding the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s $250,000 limit. The hope is that it will restore confidence in the financial system after the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history. The plan came together as the government was unable to sell off the defunct institution on time. But the FDIC may try to auction it off again. Meanwhile, policymakers and lawmakers are starting to look ahead for ways to prevent the next crisis.

=> ↺ Why the Bank Crisis isn’t Over

• When interest rates rise, bond prices fall (and stock prices tend to follow). However, banks don’t have to mark down the market price of their assets to reflect this declining valuation. They can simply hold on to their securities. They only have to reveal the market-price decline when there is a run on the bank and they have to actually sell these bonds or packaged mortgages to raise the cash to enable the withdrawals to be made.

• For Silicon Valley Bank, it turned out that they gambled to make a capital gain by buying long-term Treasury bonds, whose interest rates were being raised sharply by the Fed’s tightening. The bank expected that the Fed couldn’t keep rates high without bringing on a serious recession – and indeed, Fed Chairman Powell said that a recession was indeed what he wanted.

=> ↺ Reflections on Occupy Wall Street Before the Next Banking Collapse

• The sixteenth-biggest bank in the US has just suddenly and dramatically collapsed and is being bailed out by the federal government.  This may or may not be a precursor for a cascading series of other bank collapses, but with subprime (aka “variable rate”) mortgages being more popular now than they have been since 2007, I smell an imminent financial crisis.

• This is not the only thing that makes me think about Occupy Wall Street, and the autumn of 2011, especially, but it’s one of them.  Witnessing the fizzling-out of another very youthful and multiracial movement that took over the streets throughout the US more recently reminds me a lot of the last time I had that experience, in the wake of Occupy.

=> ↺ Manchin Now Says Bank Deregulation Isn’t Great Despite “Yes” Vote on 2018 Repeal

=> ↺ Silicon Valley Bank and the Anti-Regulation Bank Lobby

• Before the financial collapse come the aggressive anti-regulation lobbyists.  These are often of the same ilk: loathing anything resembling oversight, restriction, reporting and monitoring.  They are incarnations of the frontier, symbolically toting guns and slaying the natives, seeking wealth beyond paper jottings, compliance and bureaucratic tedium.

• The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), for a period of time the preferred bank for start-ups, is the bitter fruit of that harvest.  Three days prior to the second-largest failure of a US financial institution since the implosion of Washington Mutual (Wamu) in 2008, lobbyists for the banking sector had reason to gloat.  They had the ears of a number of GOP lawmakers and were pressing the case that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had little reason to sharpen regulations in the industry.

=> ↺ Strong Job Growth in February, but Hours Drop, and Wage Growth Slows

• The February employment report gave a very mixed picture of the labor market. The job growth was again surprisingly strong, with the establishment survey showing a gain of 311,000 jobs. However, the index of aggregate hours actually fell by 0.1 percent, as the length of the average workweek fell back by 0.1 hour. Wage growth also slowed, with the annual rate over the last three months being just 3.6 percent, a pace that would be consistent with the Fed’s 2.0 percent inflation target.

• The household survey showed a modest uptick in the unemployment rate to 3.6 percent. While these data are erratic, there were rises in unemployment of 0.3 percentage points for Blacks, 0.6 percentage points for Asian Americans, and 0.8 percent for Hispanics. At 5.3 percent, the unemployment rate for Hispanics is now 1.3 percentage points above the 4.0 percent low hit in November. The unemployment rate for Asian Americans is 1.2 percentage points above the 2.4 percent low hit in December.

=> ↺ How to Persuade a Billionaire

• A mid-pandemic survey from Pew found that 55 percent of Americans have no opinion on whether billionaires –  whose wealth doubled during the pandemic – are good or bad for the United States.

• How do we shift the narrative to convince a larger majority of the dangers of wealth hoarding at the top end of our economic ladder?

=> ↺ Banks Lobbied to Weaken Regulations That Could Have Prevented Their Collapse

=> ↺ ‘They’re Such Cowards’: GOP Pushes Bill Targeting Food Aid for the Poor

• More than a dozen House Republicans are expected to release legislation Tuesday that would impose more harsh work requirements on certain recipients of federal food aid, a clear signal that the GOP intends to target nutrition assistance in critical debt ceiling, budget, and farm bill talks.

=> ↺ House GOP Pushes Bill Targeting Food Assistance for the Poor

=> ↺ Warren: Jerome Powell Should Recuse Himself From Bank Probe for Role in Failure

=> ↺ Coalition Rises to ‘Stop the Merger’ of Kroger and Albertsons

• A progressive coalition of more than 100 unions and consumer advocacy groups from across the United States has come together to build the “Stop the Merger” campaign, a national and state-level effort to prevent Kroger from acquiring Albertsons and establishing the country’s most powerful grocery cartel.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ The Death and Life and Second Death of Great American Cities

• If American cities died after World War II only to see their rebirth with New Urbanism in the 1990s, the covid pandemic has dealt a second death to cities that we are only beginning to see.

• The United States started as a rural nation.  Rapid urbanization occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as immigration, the Great Migration of former slaves from the South,  and America’s second industrialization around steel, cars, and other forms of manufacturing-built metropolises from New York to San Francisco.

=> ↺ How Tucker Carlson Duped the People His Producer Called “Dumb … Cousin-Fucking … Terrorists”

• What we’ve learned from Tucker Carlson’s effort to lie about January 6 is that Tucker is the one lying about what happened. Before Tucker’s propaganda gave reason to respond, DOJ, had actually been withholding some of the most damning video from journalists. Tucker’s propaganda effort has provided yet another glimpse of how many close calls the police managed to avert on January 6.

=> ↺ History Will Hold Trump Accountable

• During Saturday night’s white-tie annual Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington, DC, former US Vice President Mike Pence, a former Trump loyalist, made some of his harshest comments about his one-time boss. Despite previously seeming reluctant to confront Trump, Pence publicly stated that Trump was wrong about the Jan 6 insurrection, and that he had no right to overturn the election. Pence also made jokes at Trump’s expense about the secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago. The event was attended by politicians and journalists. Pence acknowledged that Trump’s reckless words had endangered his family and everyone at the Capitol that day. Significantly, he said he believes that history will hold Trump accountable for his actions.

• Trump played a significant role in inciting the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. In the weeks leading up to the event, Trump repeatedly made false claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and encouraged his supporters to “stop the steal” and “fight like hell” to overturn the election results. He held a rally on the morning of January 6, where he continued to make false claims about the election and urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “never give up” in their fight.

=> ↺ Problem Child

=> ↺ Gallego Says Lobbyists ‘Bought Sinema’s Vote’ That Resulted in Bank Collapse

• Democratic Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego on Tuesday accused Sen. Kyrsten Sinema—who he hopes to oust from the U.S. Senate next year—of playing a major role in the Silicon Valley Bank collapse by taking campaign contributions from lobbyists that represented the bank and then voting to deregulate it.

=> ↺ Greens accuse Labor of ‘vote-buying’ in key Sydney seat

• NSW Labor has been accused of pork-barrelling in a key Sydney seat by offering a $20,000 community grant to a public school’s Parents & Citizens Association in exchange for votes.

=> ↺ Glenn Greenwald in Lalaland

• Glenn Greenwald, along with his buddy Matt Taibbi, is currently the most prominent ideological turncoat emanating from the American left. He has established a brand for himself as a conservative-friendly “decent leftist” with his numerous friendly guest appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Ingraham Angle; as one who agrees with the right-wing on issues ranging from trans rights to supposed Big Tech targeting of conservatives for censorship, the January 6 riots and COVID lockdowns. Last summer he even conducted a softball interview with Alex Jones, despite previously expressing great disdain for the latter. This stance has been popular: at one point in 2021, he was reportedly earning between $80,000 and $160,000 per month in Substack subscriptions. Currently his primary venue, besides Twitter, is his hosting of the System Update podcast on Rumble, the right-wing video platform, funded, in part by Peter Thiel, the pro-MAGA billionaire Silicon Valley tycoon and Pentagon contractor. His Rumble page lists 321,000 followers. Transcripts and full videos of System Update episodes are currently accessible only behind a paywall—the transcripts will be utilized as sources in the article below.

• Like other formerly left turncoats, Greenwald has a variation of the “I didn’t leave the left, it left me” line. This is to the effect that on the issues he cares most about—foreign policy, the national security state—the “populist right” represented by MAGA embodies views far more congruent with traditional left views than does the current iteration of the progressive left. He has also expressed admiration for the general populist tone taken by MAGA politicians and publicists; he argued in 2021 that both Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon were socialists—and that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was economically populist to such an extent that it should be considered socialist.

=> ↺ Pat Schroeder, Fighter for Workers and Women in Congress, Dies at 82

• Progressive lawmakers were among those mourning the death of former U.S. Rep. Patricia Schroeder, who served in the House for 24 years and pushed for legislation to protect the jobs of parents, control military spending, and expand healthcare for low-income people. She died in Celebration, Florida on Monday at age 82.

=> ↺ How Kanye West Helped to Embolden Anti-Semites on College Campuses

• In 2020, musician and fashion designer Kanye West—now known as Ye—announced his candidacy for president. The West campaign was defined by consistent use of Christian nationalist language, with policy proposals ranging from “restoring prayer in the classroom,” to supporting “faith-based groups” and turning the United States into a “new Garden of Eden.” West performed poorly. He received around 60,000 votes while appearing on the ballot in only 12 states.

=> ↺ Greene Robes

=> ↺ Is Gavin Newsom Attacking Walgreens For Its Choices Different From DeSantis Attacking Disney?

• There has been some back and forth over the past week regarding Walgreens and how it’s handling the distribution and dispensing of the pharmaceutical Mifepristone, which is prescribed by doctors for early term abortions. In February, a bunch of anti-abortion Attorneys General sent Walgreens a letter threatening the company if it chose to make the drug available. In response, Walgreens sent a short reply letter saying that it wasn’t planning on dispending Mifepristone in any state where it was illegal.

=> ↺ Hungarian government to request delayed implementation of Ukrainian law on national minorities

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Lying for Lucre: Fox’s Fake News Fiasco

• Thanks to a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, the nation and world are peeling back the covers on the shocking lies perpetrated by Fox’s top commentators. And how ironic is it that these are the very people who baselessly accused other networks of “fake news” for reporting there was no evidence whatsoever that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

• In a nutshell — and boy did it hold a lot of nuts — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, the cheerleading outfit for Trump’s circus —  all lied through their teeth about the stolen election. And why did they do it? For the most basic of reasons. They did it for the money because they feared if they told Trump supporters the truth, they’d lose their viewing audience.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ The Importance of Independent Media when Reporting on Global Issues From Palestine to East Africa – The Project Censored Show

=> ↺ Pro-Israel Lobby Doesn’t Deserve Exemption From Criticism of Money in Politics

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Zambian police briefly detain 2 Millennium TV journalists covering protest

• Phiri told officers that she had her press ID in her car, but they did not listen to her, she said. Musonda said that police confiscated the phone he used to film the protest.

• Police mocked Phiri and Musonda during their detention, Phiri told CPJ, saying one officer told her that she could “write news from the cells.”

• Authorities released the journalists about six hours later, after Mbewe intervened. Police returned Musonda’s phone the following day, he told CPJ, adding that it was not password protected.

=> ↺ Russian Journalist Not Allowed To Reenter Georgia After 10-Day Trip To Latvia

• [...] Dozhd TV and its journalist Anna Mongait said on March 14 that Shvedchenko was informed at the Tbilisi airport that she is not allowed to reenter the country for unspecified reasons. [...]

=> ↺ A Las Vegas Reporter Was Killed; His Last Story Wasn’t

• At the time of his killing, German was working on a new story, about an alleged Ponzi scheme.

=> ↺ Independent journalists banned from covering opening session of new Tunisian parliament

• In response to news reports that Tunisian lawmakers on Monday banned all non-state media journalists from covering the opening session of parliament, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement of condemnation: [...]

=> ↺ Reach warns of ‘online attention recession’ as it tells staff of ‘significant’ new job cuts

• Reach editorial staff have been told “tough decisions” need to be made because of current headwinds.

=> ↺ How can publishers sell more online subscriptions? Lower the price, survey says

• Polling reveals cost is the key factor in determining whether UK and US consumers would pay for news.

=> ↺ Who are Sky News presenters? Everything you need to know

• Rupert Murdoch’s News International launched Sky in 1989 as the UK’s first satellite TV service with four free-to-air channels, including Sky News, which was Europe’s first 24-hour news channel.

=> ↺ Ofcom chief: Tory MPs can present shows on GB News and interview who they like

• Dame Melanie Dawes said politicians can present shows if there is a range of opinion represented.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.3

• EFFECTOR 35.3 – International Women’s Day is Every Day

• Make sure you never miss an issue by signing up by email to receive EFFector as soon as it’s posted! Since 1990 EFF has published EFFector to help keep readers on the bleeding edge of their digital rights. We know that the intersection of technology, civil liberties, human rights, and the law can be complicated, so EFFector is a great way to stay on top of things. The newsletter is chock full of links to updates, announcements, blog posts, and other stories to help keep readers—and listeners—up to date on the movement to protect online privacy and free expression. 

=> ↺ Atlanta Was a Constitution-Free Zone During “Stop Cop City” Week of Action

=> ↺ Police Accountability & Reinventing Policing, with Stephen Janis and Taya Graham

• Lee Camp speaks to Taya and Stephen, hosts of the show, “The Police Accountability Report,” about police brutality, corruption and the growing push for reform.

=> ↺ South Carolina Bill to Execute People Who Have Abortions Gets Support From 21 Republicans

• A new pro-forced pregnancy proposal in the South Carolina General Assembly that would make people who obtain abortion care eligible for the death penalty was portrayed as coming from the fringes of the Republican Party by one GOP lawmaker—but with 21 state Republicans backing the legislation, critics said the idea is representative of the party’s anti-choice agenda.

=> ↺ The latest from Arte: Massive train crash may derail Greek government, and Hungary among stragglers in gender equality in EU

=> ↺ Texas Lawmakers Propose Drag Ban Modeled After Anti-Abortion “Bounty Hunter” Law

=> ↺ ‘Our System Is Broken,’ Say Labor Leaders as California Court Upholds Prop 22

• Labor advocates on Tuesday decried the California appellate court largely upholding Proposition 22, the industry-backed 2020 state ballot measure allowing app-based ride and delivery companies to classify their drivers as independent contractors—which is serving as a template for legislation to deny basic worker rights, benefits, and protections in other states.

=> ↺ One in five women experience sexual violence

• One in five Australian women have experienced sexual violence and stalking in their lifetime, new data shows.

=> ↺ New Mexico Legislature rejects ban in immigration detention

• New Mexico legislators have rejected a proposal to prohibit local government participation in immigration detention for people seeking asylum in the U.S. The bill failed on a 17-21 vote of the state Senate. Republicans were joined by several Democratic senators in opposition. The initiative aimed to unwind contractual arrangements at a major immigrant detention facility in southern New Mexico. Proponents of the New Mexico bill highlighted reports of prison-like conditions, poor sanitation and suicide attempts at immigrant detention facilities. Opponents prevailed after warning of dire financial consequences for a county that invested in building an immigration detention center.

=> ↺ On Lhasa riot anniversary, Chinese authorities search Tibetans, keep up surveillance

• March 14 marks the 15th anniversary of a 2008 riot in Lhasa during which Chinese police suppressed peaceful Tibetan protests and led to the destruction of Han Chinese shops in the city and deadly attacks on Han Chinese residents.

• [...]

• “There are ‘interrogation posts’ stationed near all the streets that lead to Jhokang Temple, Potala Palace and the Sera and Drepung monasteries,” he wrote. “They are searching the cell phones and the backpacks of tourists and anyone who is walking around these places.”

=> ↺ ‘Cop City’ protester had hands raised when fatally shot by state trooper

• An environmental activist who was fatally shot in a confrontation with Georgia law enforcement in January was sitting cross-legged with their hands in the air at the time, the protester’s family said Monday as they released results of an autopsy they commissioned.

=> ↺ Autopsy Suggests “Cop City” Protester Sitting Cross-Legged, Hands Up, When Shot 14 Times by Police

• New details from an independent autopsy of the activist fatally shot by Atlanta police in January concludes their hands were raised up and in front of their body when they were killed. Georgia State Patrol shot Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán during a raid on an encampment of forest protectors who oppose the construction of Atlanta’s $90 million police training center dubbed “Cop City.” An independent autopsy released Monday also shows 26-year-old Tortuguita was likely seated cross-legged when they were shot 14 times. Tortuguita’s family on Friday sued the city of Atlanta after the release of more video evidence of the shooting was blocked. “There’s no reason to withhold this evidence. The public deserves to know. More importantly, the family deserves to know,” says civil rights attorney Jeff Filipovits, who is representing the family. He adds that despite law enforcement claims that Tortuguita may have fired on officers, there is no evidence of that.

=> ↺ California court says Uber, Lyft can treat state drivers as independent contractors

• The ruling wasn’t a complete defeat for labor unions, as the court ruled the companies could not stop their drivers from joining a labor union and collectively bargain for better working conditions, said Mike Robinson, one of the drivers who filed the lawsuit challenging Proposition 22.

• “Our right to join together and bargain collectively creates a clear path for drivers and delivery workers to hold giant gig corporations accountable,” he said. “But make no mistake, we still believe Prop 22 — in its entirety — is an unconstitutional attack on our basic rights.”

=> ↺ eBay Finally Has Its First Worker Union in 27 Years

• The election was held last week, and the votes were announced on Friday—the union won with a strong majority of 136-87. The workers, who work at the company’s trading card authentication center in Syracuse, NY, have unionized with the CWA, the largest communications and media worker union in the country. Their union will represent all 272 non-supervisory workers in the company’s authentication department, the CWA stated in a press release.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ In Final Act Of Mindless Megadeal Stupidity, Warner Bros. Discovery Execs Kill The HBO Brand

• The AT&T Time Warner and DirecTV mergers were a monumental disasters. AT&T spent $200 billion to acquire both companies thinking it would dominate the video and internet ad space. Instead, the company lost 9 million subscribers in nine years, fired 50,000 employees, closed numerous popular brands (including Mad Magazine), and stumbled around incompetently for several years before giving up.

=> ↺ How the Espírito Santinho Community Created Brazil’s First Fiber Community Network

• Espírito Santinho’s Internet access was made possible by a partnership model that could connect other communities in Brazil, where over a quarter of rural households are unconnected.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Microsoft inks licensing deal with cloud gaming provider Boosteroid

• Ukraine-based Boosteroid’s access to Call of Duty is conditional on regulatory approval for the Activision deal. The agreement will also bring Microsoft’s Xbox PC games to Boosteroid’s cloud gaming platform.

=> ↺ Wrath at Khan: Right Sets Sights at FTC for Regulating Tech

• Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan is bent on holding Twitter and its owner, Elon Musk, accountable—and the right-wing outrage machine isn’t having it.

Patents

=> ↺ ‘Much More Needs to Be Done,’ Says Sanders as 2nd Insulin Maker Caves to Pressure and Lowers Prices

• Crediting advocacy groups with pressuring two out of the three pharmaceutical companies that supply insulin to patients with diabetes in the United States to drastically lower their prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called on the last of the trio, Sanofi, to do the same while arguing price caps should be mandatory—not a choice.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Why the emerging new copyright landscape is both good news and bad news for creators and the public

• Moreover, the shift to this kind of privatised law-making provides the copyright industry with multiple opportunities to shape those new rules. It can do this through backroom chats with Internet platforms, “encouraging” them to move in a certain direction, using carrots and sticks. It can publicly threaten and then instigate legal action against the online companies. And it can lobby governments to bring in laws that force platforms to change the rules in favour of the copyright industry, as happened with Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive.

=> ↺ The Last Time I Saw Paris

• The film was released in 1954; however, there was an error with the Roman numerals in the copyright notice showing “MCMXLIV” (1944), meaning the term of copyright started 10 years before the film was released.< name=crd> Thus, the normal 28-year copyright term ended just 18-years after the film was released, and MGM neglected to renew it presumably because they believed there was still 10 years left in the term.

=> ↺ Spinrilla Wants to Ban the Terms ‘Piracy’ and ‘Theft’ at RIAA Trial

• Popular mixtape platform Spinrilla will face several major record labels in court next month in a trial worth millions of dollars in copyright infringement damages. A few days ago, Spinriilla asked the court to ban disparaging terms such as “piracy” and “theft” as these may give the jury the wrong impression.

=> ↺ High Court Bans Singer From Hitting YouTube Rival With DMCA Notices

• The High Court of Justice has issued a permanent injunction to stop a man filing copyright complaints against a rival’s YouTube channels. As part of a fraudulent campaign against “the music mafia,” the singer used copyright strikes and YouTube’s repeat infringer policy to have a music publisher’s channels suspended. The background to the dispute is nothing short of extraordinary.

=> ↺ Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez Contradicts His Own Bill and Department Officials in Effort to Defend Bill C-18

• Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez is on the defensive as he tries to defend Bill C-18 in the wake of both Google and Facebook signalling that they may remove Canadian news from search results and social media sharing in light of the government’s approach that creates mandated payments for links.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Yoga routine for fieldwork

=> ↺ Magic Moments: Crows at Dawn; Planets at Dusk

• In a break of routine for some reason I went to work by car on Thursday morning and arrived there maybe a quarter to seven in the morning. The sky was overcast, dawn was well underway. It was cold, just above freezing and windy. On my way from the most distant parking lot to the main entrance I noticed a large group of crows heading East towards some secret meeting place, or whereever the crows were heading. I looked up for a lengthy moment. Several large groups were flying above in what would amount to maybe seven minutes of my walk. Absolutely fascinating, even though I have seen this a few times since I work in this place.

=> ↺ Rumors of my dead garden links were exaggerated

• Whenever tax season comes around, I start to talk about Exit Planning[1] because it is “death and taxes.” I’m pretty proud of it as a project and as a living documentation of something I think a lot of us are missing, how to prepare for our deaths (or incapacitation).

=> ↺ Fear and Delight

• I always wanna mind the mood. Description, tone of voice, situation, resources, danger can all make a situation tense or scary. It can get wrecked by whipping out the dice.

• I try to normalize some mechanics by speaking of them so often and so bluntly that they become part of the interface, part of the conversation, almost making them invisible through their overuse. They find something, whether it’s some pocket lint or the holiest of grails? I say the item size. They try to defend themselves? I say the save DC or HP cost.

Politics

=> ↺ Why Can’t We Leave the British Aristocratic System Behind?

• I live on the edge of a national park, with hundreds of square kilometres of beautiful, rolling downland. It is a place I spend a lot of time in, walking and relaxing, driving and picnicking. But only five percent of the land in the park is actually open to the public. There are rights of way through much of the rest, but usually that is a footpath or bridleway with fences either side to stop anyone wandering.

• Why is there so little open access? The biggest reason is that this national park is 95% owned by eight men: dukes, barons, viscounts and baronets. These eight own the land, and take rent off farmers, but you can’t really count this income stream as earnings because they never did even buy the land. It has been granted over the centuries to influential aristocrats who performed a service to another aristocrat or the monarch. It was gifted, even though other people had been living and working on the land continually from the neolithic, through the bronze and iron ages, up to the present. Saxon and Roman settlements and artefacts are commonplace. But a distant King claimed the area, and he gave it to a friend or rival who then arrived to build castles and secure their claim and start their wealth extraction from the local people.

=> ↺ Do Mention the War

• I found the half-decade of repetition insufferable, but every so often I hear from people around my generation saying ‘this is just like the Nazis’, when referring to things which are definitely not like the Nazis. So I think I finally get it, and I’m retroactively happy to suffer through the boredom. At this point I’d happily sentence the entire planet to a year of mandatory education on the Nazis, just to make sure nobody can say this without knowing that everyone around them has just taken a measure of their mind, and found them wanting.

Technical

=> ↺ I replaced my RPi4s with one ThinkCentre M900 Tiny

• Because of the actual prices for a Raspberry Pi I looked around for some cheaper alternatives. I played with the thought of buying an Intel NUC for my home server needs but the low spec models didn’t resonate with me and the higher spec models are too expensive.

• While surfing Youtube for some infos about some other SBCs I accidentally found a video about the so called 1 liter PCs. The “1 liter” comes from the small form factor which has the volume of nearly one liter. Perfect!

=> ↺ Now available via gemini!

• Previously this site has only been available as a blog on the World Wide Web.[1] But now it is also available as a gemini capsule![2]

=> ↺ Copyright, but Punk

• I am not a lawyer. But I do have to live in their shitty world, so I get to have opinions anyway.

• For a long time I used the MIT license for all my open-source projects. Really I just used it for everything, because I shoved everything onto github and github encourages you to set a license, and not knowing the difference I would just pick MIT because it was small and easy to read.

• Eventually I came to understand that the MIT license is next to pointless. The first half only really prevents someone from re-distributing your software with a different license. But people do it anyway, and none of us are going to do anything about it. The second half of the license is a release of liability, and everyone knows that releases of liability are for babies.

=> ↺ Adding a minimal fingerd to bubblewrapped services (bws)

• Some time back Toby Kurien published details and code about his favourite setup regarding self hosting services at home. He did put in quite some effort to make this simple to install and run. I quite like this setup and I have written a minimal finger daemon to run in this setup.

=> ↺ The Shocking Truth About AI, Revealed

• Excuse me, I invented the term artificial intelligence … I invented it because we had to do something when we were trying to get money for a summer study

• … and all that is solid melts into Public Relations (PR).

Programming

=> ↺ Cross Compilers: Part 1

• One of my recent projects has had me exploring the feasability of cross compiling Rust code for several achitectures on Linux. It turns out that it is not difficult to do once you have a suitable cross toolchain for C, but getting to that point is often a challenge as what documentation is available is often severely out of date. Worse, pretty much all of the documentation has a caveat saying that you should just use crosstool-ng, and my experience with that tool has been less than great. I’m writing this series both as a way to help others who may wish to take a diy approach to cross compilation, and as documentation for myself for future reference.

• Note that there are probably other methods to get a working cross toolchain and some of them may be more efficient. Your distro may even have a suitable cross toolchain already built in it’s repositories for you. This is what works for me, and while I have been working with cross toolchains for a number of years at this point YMMV.

=> ↺ Dynamic Typing is Fine

• The upshot is that most of the studies have limitations that limit their general applicability, but if you wanted to take home a message from them, in aggregate, it’s that if static typing provides stability/reliability/maintainability benefits to programs, the effect is very, very small. But also likewise, if dynamic typing provides a benefit to developer productivity, it is also very, very small.

• There are a couple of studies that both come to about the same estimate of what percentage of errors in dynamically-typed languages are from type errors — about two (2) percent. It ought to follow that this is about the reliability benefit that you should expect to see from using static typing.

=> ↺ Chatbots and the Chinese Room

• He says a few more reasonable things, but i want to push back on these, because I think they give the purveyors of LLMs too much credit.

• For the first claim: it is wrong only in the details. If you take out any mention of Markov chains, but keep the claim that LLMs are just stats engines, the claim is right. LLMs are vastly more complex than Markov chains, both in program design and language corpus. But they /are/ still just statistics engines. As I saw it pithily explained, to an LLM, the only difference between the phrase “Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon” and the phrase “Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on Mars” is that the former is more likely to appear in its training corpus.

=> ↺ We Don’t Know Git

• Something I’ve been thinking this week is that I really wish my school had a required course that did a deep dive on git for a week or two. So many of the junior and senior level courses have group projects, but nobody, myself included, is really sure of how to use git effectively as a team tool. Even at this level there’s a lot of students for whom git is just a “commit all and push” thing to backup their work at the end of the day. I like to think I have slightly more git experience than many at my level and there’s still lots of things I’m not familiar with and feel the need to learn, like:

=> ↺ Re:We need to talk about your Github addiction

• I’m mostly posting this on the very unlikely chance that there’s someone out there following me that’s not yet following ploum. So if you haven’t read ploum’s blog post linked above, I recommend you do so now.

• I have only one thing to add to this: If you are still using GitHub, I think you should sit down and ask yourself ‘Why?’, and ‘Is it worth it?’.

=> ↺ Re: Emacs undo

• I’m with you there on not fully trusting or being comfortable with Emacs’ undo functionality. It’s extremely powerful (unlimited undo AND redo), but it’s also often hard to predict what the undo function and associated keybindings; it used to be worse when there was a difference between undo’ and advertised-undo’ and I couldn’t remember which was on which key. The problem is that you have to keep a mental model of the buffer’s undo state to do anything complex with `undo’, and that’s actually quite hard to do once the undo state is not linear.

=> ↺ Unlikely Unicode, Episode MMMDCCCXXX

• In Lojban we have nanba for bread, and thus jgenanba is not bread, having been modified to make something else. Quite the puzzle, jenga.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

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