This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2023/03/26/more-tiktok-bans-part-2/.

● 03.26.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 26/03/2023: More TikTok Bans

Posted in News Roundup at 12:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ 2023-03-20Linux Weekly Roundup #227

=> ↺ Framework Laptop 13 Finally Gets AMD Options

• I’m not lucky enough to own one (yet) but, on sheer concept alone, I am a big fan of Framework’s modular 13-inch laptop…

Server

=> ↺ Docker, Inc. Celebrates 10th Anniversary With Alliances

• Docker, Inc. celebrated the 10th anniversary of the namesake artifact used widely for building cloud-native applications by announcing alliances with Ambassador Labs to improve the developer experience and Hugging Face to make it simpler to launch and deploy machine learning applications on a cloud service using DockerFile. In addition, Docker,

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ The Podman Perspective | Self-Hosted 93

• Alex goes all in on Rootless Podman, Chris is saving his Nextcloud install from disaster, and a special guest joins us. Special Guest: Alex Ellis.

=> ↺ LHS Episode #501: FreeDV Deep Dive 2

• Hello and welcome to the 501st episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, we talk with Mooneer Salem, K6AQ, primary developer on the FreeDV team.

=> ↺ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 997

• joel plays with his ai.

=> ↺ 2023-03-24Chatting With Linux Content Creator Jack Keifer

=> ↺ 2023-03-24How to install Flowblade video editor on Linux Lite 6.2

Applications

=> ↺ 100 Essential and Must-Have GUI Linux Applications

• There is a staggering amount of proven open source software available to download. But it’s really difficult to keep up with the cream of the cream. That’s where this compilation aims to help.

• We select the best-of-breed GUI (Graphical User Interface) software ranging from projects coded by individual programmers, small teams of enthusiasts, extending to large multinational corporations. The compilation largely reflects software that our volunteers use as their daily drivers.

• We mostly recommend cross-platform software, but, where appropriate, make some exceptions. We include a select few proprietary applications along the way. We try to avoid duplication as much as possible. A few of omissions will definitely raise some eyebrows. For example, there’s no room for Firefox even though it’s open source software (unlike Chrome) and some of our volunteers strongly prefer it over any other web browser.

=> ↺ Tuba is a Magnificent New Mastodon App for Linux

• Faithful fans of the Fediverse need to check out Tuba, a new Vala/GTK app for Linux that is fine-tuned for social interactions.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Command to Install UNRAR in Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

• UNRAR is a free command utility (GPL licensed) on Linux systems for decompressing and extracting files that are compressed and archived in the RAR archive format. RAR is a popular archive format that is proprietary but commonly and widely used to compress large files.

=> ↺ Glances installation on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Linux

• Glances is a free open-source command line software solution for Linux systems to monitor computer activity in real time. It can be considered a good alternative to top/Htop command line system monitoring tools for Ubuntu. Here in this tutorial,

=> ↺ How to enable mod_headers on Apache Web server?

• Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to enable mod_headers on Apache web server. The tutorial is intended for Debian / Ubuntu or some derivatives of these. Let’s go. Introduction According to the information provided by Apache This module provides directives to control and modify HTTP request and response headers.

=> ↺ 2023-03-24How to install the Brave Browser on a Chromebook in 2023

=> ↺ 2023-03-24How to install Flowblade video editor on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-23How to install FreeOffice on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-23How to install Pinta on a Chromebook in 2023

=> ↺ How to Fix: pip command not found error in Ubuntu

• A quick and simple guide to fix pip command not found in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. You might have encountered the |pip command not found” error while installing any Python package or module. This error occurs when the system cannot locate the pip package manager used to install and manage Python packages.

=> ↺ How I created a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on tiny hardware

• Build an OpenShift cluster on a small, sub-$300 computer.

=> ↺ 2023-03-20Firebird 5 compiling on Oracle Linux 8 Ampere V1 (arm64)

=> ↺ Quick and efficient Tmux session and window switching

• This guide provides tips for quickly switching between Tmux sessions and windows, including keyboard shortcuts, navigation commands, and customization options.

=> ↺ The guide to installing and using Ruby on Ubuntu

• In this guide, we will provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to install Ruby on Ubuntu. We will cover the installation process using both the command line and package manager, as well as how to check the installation to ensure it is working correctly. We will also explore some popular tools for setting up a development environment, including Ruby on Rails.

=> ↺ Configure Log Retention Period in ELK Stack

• How do I change the log retention policy in elk stack? In this tutorial, you will learn how to configure log retention period in ELK stack. Elasticsearch uses ILM (Index Lifecycle Management) policies to define what actions to be applied to indices according to your performance, resiliency, and retention requirements.

=> ↺ How to manage multiple SSH sessions from a single window with EasySSH

• Jack Wallen shows you how you can wrangle all of those SSH connections you use daily into a single, easy-to-use application.

=> ↺ Deploying Your XAMPP Project to a Web Server

• XAMPP is a popular solution for web development and testing on a local machine. However, once you have completed your web application, you will need to deploy it to a web server to make it available to the public.

=> ↺ Securing XAMPP: Best Practices and Tips

• XAMPP is a popular web server solution for developers who need to test and develop web applications on their local machines. However, like any other software, XAMPP can be vulnerable to security threats if not configured and managed properly. In this article, we will discuss best practices and tips for securing XAMPP.

=> ↺ Configuring XAMPP for Your Development Environment

• XAMPP is a free and open-source web server solution that includes Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl. It is widely used by developers for testing and developing web applications on their local machines. Configuring XAMPP for your development environment can be a straightforward process if you follow the steps outlined below.

=> ↺ How to Install WildFly Java Application Server with Nginx on Ubuntu 22.04

• Wildfly is a simple, lightweight, and flexible application runtime used to build Java applications. This tutorial will show you how to install Wildfly with Nginx as a reverse proxy on Ubuntu 22.04.

=> ↺ How to Type Accented Characters in Linux

• You may wonder how to type accented characters in Linux. Fortunately, it’s easy to do so with a keystroke or a character map application.

=> ↺ Inspect Container Images with the docker scan Command

• If you’re serious about container security, then you know it all begins at the beguine…images. No matter how much work you put into locking down your deployments, your network, and your infrastructure, if you base your containers on images with vulnerabilities, those deployments will simply not be secure. And simply trusting that a random image pulled from Docker Hub is enough is a big mistake.

• Sure, there are verified images to be had on Docker Hub, but those verifications cost quite a bit for a company, so not every image is verified. And although you can generally trust verified images, it’s best to know, first-hand, that trust is warranted.

• And as far as unverified images, every single one you attempt to use could cause you problems. To that end, you must scan them for vulnerabilities. If you find an image contains vulnerabilities, at least you’re informed and, in some cases, you could mitigate a vulnerability by updating the packages contained within an image.

• Fortunately, there are a number of tools you can use to scan those images. One such tool is built right into Docker, called docker scan. It’s very easy to use and reports back very simple information about any known vulnerabilities it finds.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ This week in KDE: Distro upgrades for Fedora KDE in Discover

• With the new XwaylandVideoBridge utility, you can now screencast native Wayland windows from Xwayland apps like Discord (Aleix Pol Gonzalez and David Edmundson, Link)

• Dolphin now has an option to not change the information and preview shown in the Information Panel when hovering over files, and to instead only do so when deliberately selecting files (Oliver Beard, Dolphin 23.08. Link)…

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ 2023-03-2212 New Linux Distros That Launched in 2022

• Hundreds of new Linux distros spawn each year, with many becoming the norm among the community. Here are some distros that were released in 2022.

=> ↺ Why I Will Never Use Alpine Linux Ever Again

• Nowadays, Alpine Linux is one of the most popular options for container base images. Many people (maybe including you) use it for anything and everything. Some people use it because of its small size, some because of habit and some, just because they copy-pasted a Dockefile from some tutorial. Yet, there are plenty of reasons why you should not use Alpine for your container images, some of which can cause you great amount of grief…

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2023/12

• Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

• This week we released only 5 snapshots, but one was hefty in size and we needed the extra time for the mirrors to settle again and get the bandwidth back under control. The large snapshot was due to the change in the default compiler: Tumbleweed has been rebuilt entirely using GCC 13. The released snapshots were numbered 0316, 0317, 0318, 0319, and 0321.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2013-12

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

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

=> ↺ Fedora Magazine: Use sysfs to restart failed PCI devices (WiFi cards, sound cards, etc.)

• This article describes one method of restarting PCI devices. It demonstrates restating a wireless device. But the concept should work on any device whose device driver has adequate hotplug support.[1]

• Computers typically consist of several interconnected devices. Some devices can be physically disconnected and reconnected with ease (for example, most USB devices). Others might require a specific interaction with the operating system or specific software. And others will require a full reboot.

• Built-in laptop wireless cards are PCI devices that could fail at runtime but might not be easy to physically disconnect and reconnect without a full reboot. In many cases these devices can be restarted through Linux’s sysfs interface without having to do a full reboot of the computer.

• This article will specifically demo how to restart an Atheros wireless card which has locked up.

=> ↺ Fabio Alessandro Locati: Fedora Sericea and Sway Spin beta

• The Fedora Project released Fedora 38 beta images. The Fedora Sway Spin and the Fedora Sericea ones are in the long list of released images!

• This is a critical point in the release of those Fedora artifacts based on Sway since it is the first time it has been possible to test them for the wider public. Although the Fedora Project has been creating Sway artifacts for a couple of months, those were based on Rawhide, which is “a not always stable” version of Fedora, since it tracks far in the future (4-10 months) versions of Fedora.

=> ↺ ChatGPT: Top 3 industries that can benefit now

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Force Sensitive Resistor and Arduino: FSR402 Wiring and Code

• In this tutorial, we will use Force Sensitive Resistor with Arduino Uno to measure pressure and weight. Based on the pressure on the Force Sensitive

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ 2023-03-19Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (11/2023): Pocket Reforms and Other Improvements

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

=> ↺ I’ve been employed in tech for years, but I’ve almost never worked

• When Twitter fired half of its employees in 2022, and most tech giants followed suit, I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I think little will change for those companies. After being employed in the tech sector for years, I have come to the conclusion that most people in tech don’t work. I don’t mean we don’t work hard; I mean we almost don’t work at all. Nada. Zilch. And when we do get to do some work, it often brings low added value to the company and its customers. All of this while being paid an amount of money some people wouldn’t even dream of.

• What is happening right now in tech may be one of the greatest market inefficiencies—or even deceptions—in history. I am writing this article because I think outsiders deserve to know what’s really going on in the field.

=> ↺ Project Management for Software Engineers

• At some point in your career you will be asked to manage a project. This can be intimidating, it can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. We can leverage some time-honoured techniques, and adapt them to the unique approach required for software projects to deliver on time, on budget, and with success.

• This article is a collection of techniques I’ve learned for managing projects over time, that attempts to combine agile best practices with project management best practices. If you study project management to any level of depth, it is inevitable that you will come across the Project Management Institute, or PMI. The PMI is a global professional body that provides training and certification in project management topics. PMI provides different certification options, including some for Agile processes and Scrum.

=> ↺ Go slow to move fast

• Technical debt is an often debated topic. Like most concepts in software, it isn’t particularly difficult to find arguments supporting opposite sides of the spectrum – in a single minute of searching I was able to find that some believe that technical debt doesn’t exist, while others feel that technical debt is the most important aspect of product development. From the conversations that I’ve had with others in the industry, both within my place of work and with technical leaders from other companies, I’ve come to believe that one of the root causes of the gap between these viewpoints is primarily definitional.

• Part of the reason that some people don’t like the term “technical debt” is that they feel it becomes an excuse. To these individuals, everything that software engineers don’t like within the system on which they’re working gets labeled as debt, and that debt becomes a boogeyman that gets blamed for all of their problems. Those on the other side of the argument feel almost the exact opposite: technical debt gets little attention and they’re forced to spend inordinate amounts of time struggling against implementations and concepts that make it more difficult to make changes than it otherwise could be. An interesting realization (and something that makes this conversation particularly difficult) is that both groups can be right at the same time. This can be true only because the two groups are misunderstanding one another. But where does this misunderstanding come from?

=> ↺ Why people misuse inheritance

• In the thread, he recalls the adage “prefer composition over inheritance”. This is a well-known principle of good OOP code, and yet inheritance is commonly used where composition would serve better; the question that comes to my mind is, “Why?” I think I have at least a partial answer, but let me meander a bit before getting to it.

• The thread gives an example use case of a map that counts explicit insertions, which is the example I’ll use here. If you inherit and override the put() method, the behavior you get may be wrong, or may be right in one version and wrong in the next. On the other hand, you didn’t have to write a lot of code.

• (One post, an oldie but a goodie, that significantly influenced my thinking on this matter, suggests that you should never override a method that was not designed to be overridden, and talks about how building this into the language slightly improves ergonomics when you do override.)

• Suppose I did the “right” thing and used composition (in this case, also delegation, and also the decorator pattern, for people who think in GoF design patterns). I would have to implement the map interface, calling down to a map implementation that stores the actual data. To implement the Map interface in Java I would need to implement 25 methods! Most of them would be boilerplate, just passing the arguments to the equivalent method on the delegate. Other languages are not better (the Haskell Data.Map module has more than 100 functions).

=> ↺ How Big Should a Programming Language Be?

• Reading the thought-provoking “Patterns & Abstractions” post reminded me of a long-held opinion I have about programming language design: we have a tendency to keep adding features to a language until it becomes so big [1] that its sheer size makes it difficult to use reliably. Since most of us spend most of our time programming in one language, it can be difficult to see a common trend amongst languages in general.

Leftovers

=> ↺ I Re-Joined Twitter

• I’ve decided to re-join Twitter. I miss an awful lot about it and I might leave Mastodon too.

• Yes, you read that right. I’ve decided to re-join Twitter. There’s a lot of stuff I miss from the social network – the community, the threads, the hot takes. the fun.

• I feel like Mastodon is becoming way too serious…it needs more of those fun-time Twitter folk. Because I intend for Twitter to be my primary social network, I’m thinking about putting my Mastodon profile out to pasture too.

• But what lead me to these decisions? Well dear reader, that’s a looooong story. So I decided to do a video about it instead of writing War and Peace.

=> ↺ 4 ways for execs to leverage social media better

• As a business community, we’ve tried to shame execs into being on social media for at least 10 years, and the results are decidedly mixed. Despite the expectations from employees and consumers, only half of the CEOs in the S&P 500 are on social media.

=> ↺ Culture Viruses

• In large organizations, culture is key. The values and habits of an organization, and what it rewards and punishes, are the background radiation driving towards discrete outcomes in a world of infinite possibility.

• Your culture is a living thing – it changes and adapts to new teammates, external forces, and the broader environment. And sometimes it gets sick; sometimes your culture gets a virus.

• A Culture Virus is a contagious idea that hooks into your culture like a pathogen, passing from person to person, and very often preying on the weak and struggling – the people who are susceptible to convenient excuses.

• Below we’ll work through examples of common culture viruses that can occur as companies grow. These elements of culture aren’t matters of style – if you let them creep into your company, they will meaningfully deflate, devalue, and debase your company.

Science

=> ↺ A Protein-Rich Diet Helps Mice and Flies Sleep More Soundly: Study

• The effect appears to be mediated by a gut-secreted peptide that signals to neurons in the brain that modulate the response to mechanical vibrations.

Hardware

=> ↺ MIPI CSI camera works with Intel Atom x7000, Processor, and Core i3 Alder Lake-N processors

• Most Intel processors do not come with a MIPI CSI camera, but some Alder Lake-N processors do, and Leopard Imaging has designed the LI-ADL-ADP-IMX415-MIPI-081H MIPI CSI camera module that is compatible with the Intel ADL-N CRB (Alder Lake-N Customer Reference Board) and custom Alder Lake-N boards equipped with a compatible MIPI CSI connector. The 13MP camera supports resolutions up to 3864 x 2176 and works with boards and embedded systems based on Intel Atom processors x7000E Series, Intel Core i3-N processors, and Intel Processors N-Series processors.

=> ↺ Gordon Moore, Intel Co-Founder and Creator of Moore’s Law, Dies at Age 94

• Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, famous for defining Moore’s Law, has passed away peacefully at his home in Hawaii.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ TikTok CEO Grilled by Skeptical Lawmakers on Safety, Content

• A nearly six-hour grilling of TikTok’s CEO by lawmakers brought the platform’s 150 million U.S. users no closer to an answer as to whether the app will be wiped from their devices.

=> ↺ DEA overseas review barely mentions corruption scandals

• After nearly two years and $1.4 million spent, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration released an external review of its overseas operations that barely mentioned recent corruption scandals and offered a series of recommendations that critics dismissed as overly vague. Much of the report outlines the DEA’s 69-country “foreign footprint,” while lauding its efforts to plug gaping holes in the oversight of undercover money laundering operations. The probe followed reporting by The Associated Press on a disgraced former DEA agent who confessed to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels and skimming millions to fund an international joyride of parties and prostitutes.

=> ↺ Minnesota nuclear plant shuts down for leak; residents worry

• A Minnesota utility has begun shutting down a nuclear power plant near Minneapolis after failing to stop the release of radioactive material. Officials say it is not dangerous, but nearby residents are concerned. Xcel Energy started shutting down the plant in Monticello on Friday. The utility’s president says after it cools over the next few days, workers will cut out a pipe that is over 50 years old and had been leaking tritium. He says Xcel will then have the pipe analyzed in hopes of preventing similar leaks in the future. He says the spill has not left the utility’s property.

=> ↺ As Xcel takes nuclear plant offline, it continues to reassure Monticello residents that water is safe

• The tritium isn’t a risk to the drinking water of Monticello or the nearby city of Becker, said the Minneapolis-based utility’s president.

=> ↺ Drinking a Bottle of Water Past Its Expiration Date? Here’s What to Know

• Yes, even bottled water can go bad.

=> ↺ Don’t Sit With Your Legs Crossed. An Anatomy Expert Explains Why.

• Seriously.

=> ↺ An Obscured Face Behind COVID-19 May Finally Be Emerging

• A startling revelation.

=> ↺ Defense Ministry announces cloud seeding plan to combat drought

• The air force will look to carry out the chemical process, to try and break the drought that is affecting Mexico City.

=> ↺ Will smaller production costs lead to lower food prices in Sweden?

• Costs for food producers dropped in February for the second month in a row. Does this mean food prices will drop soon?

=> ↺ 40 Facts You NEED to Know: The REAL Story of “Covid”

• We first published our hugely popular cribsheet in September of 2021 in response to dozens – even hundreds – of reader requests for sources and data. It was intended as a resource and link dump as much as an article, and intentionally free of interpretation, editorialising or opinion.

=> ↺ And we stop it now for the “real” common good

• This was a very difficult opinion to write because there are many people I love who have been vaccinated and I don’t want to be the one in any way to upset or put fear into them. I was reluctant to publish this but having just watched Piers Morgan being interviewed by Triggernometry…

=> ↺ Federal appeals court blocks Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for federal employees

• The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Thursday blocked President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees. The decision came from an en banc rehearing of the appeal, which was previously decided in favor of the government by a three-judge panel of the same court.

=> ↺ Newly revealed coronavirus data has reignited a debate over the virus’s origins

=> ↺ Rwanda Heightens Surveillance Following Marburg Virus Outbreak

• Illness caused by the Marburg virus presents abruptly, with high fever, severe headache and severe malaise.

Proprietary

=> ↺ 2023-03-23Untitled Goose Tool Aids Hunt and Incident Response in Azure, Azure Active Directory, and Microsoft 365 Environments

=> ↺ CISA is infiltrated by Microsoft

Security

=> ↺ CISA Ships ‘Untitled Goose Tool’ to Hunt for Microsoft Azure Cloud Infections

=> ↺ CISA is infiltrated by Microsoft

• The U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency ships a new tool to help network defenders hunt for signs of compromise in Microsoft’s Azure and M365 cloud deployments.

=> ↺ CISA Gets Proactive With New Pre-Ransomware Alerts

• CISA has sent notifications to more than 60 organizations as part of a new initiative to alert entities of early-stage ransomware attacks.

=> ↺ PoC Exploit Published for Just-Patched Veeam Data Backup Solution Flaw

• Proof-of-concept code to exploit a just-patched security hole in the Veeam Backup & Replication product has been published online.

=> ↺ Critical WooCommerce Payments Vulnerability Leads to Site Takeover

• A critical-severity flaw in the WooCommerce Payments WordPress plugin could allow attackers to take over site administrator accounts.

=> ↺ James Bottomley: Converting Engines to OpenSSL-3 Providers

• Engines in OpenSSL have a long history of providing new algorithms (Russian GOST hash/signature etc) but they can also be used to interface external crypto tokens (pkcs#11) or even key managers like my own TPM engine. I’ve actually been using my TPM2 engine for nearly a decade so that I no longer have to have an unprotected private keys anywhere on my laptops (including for ssh). The purpose of this post is to look at the differences between Providers and Engines and give advice on the minimum necessary Provider implementation to give back all the Engine functionality. So this post is aimed at Engine developers who wish to convert to Providers rather than giving user advice for either.

=> ↺ LinusTechTips YouTube channels hacked to promote cryptoscams

• The hijacking of YouTube accounts to promote bogus cryptocurrency schemes is nothing new. At Netcraft, we’ve previously blogged about the scale of cryptocurrency scams, and we saw attacks on at least 2,000 distinct IP addresses every month in the past year. Cryptocurrency-themed attacks remain popular with cybercriminals, but yesterday we had the opportunity to observe the recent high-profile attack on LinusTechTips as it unfolded.

=> ↺ YouTube accused of not tackling Musk Bitcoin scam streams – BBC News

=> ↺ Linus Tech Tips Team: Youtube Account hijacked & DELETED for Elon-live-stream-Crypto-Scam via well faked Mail Attachment.pdf.zip

• a well faked Mail Attachment.pdf.zip was opened by a team member, infecting a (Windows 10?) PC in the background browser login tokens in the form of cookies & browser passwords were exfiltrated mail attachments are STILL the #No1 threat…

=> ↺ Exploding USB Sticks

• In case you don’t have enough to worry about, people are hiding explosives–actual ones–in USB sticks:

=> ↺ Fortra told breached companies their data was safe

• Software maker Fortra told its corporate customers that their data was safe — even when it wasn’t — following a ransomware attack on its systems, TechCrunch has learned.

• … TechCrunch has heard from two victim organizations that only learned that data had been exfiltrated from their GoAnywhere systems after they each received a ransom demand. Both organizations had been previously told by Fortra that their data was unaffected by the ransomware attack.

=> ↺ Hackers Steal $500,000 Worth of Tokens from Arbitrum Airdrop

• Hackers have managed to steal $500,000 worth of tokens from layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum’s March 23 airdrop. The theft was carried out through the use of vanity addresses, customized cryptocurrency addresses that contain specific words or phrases chosen by the user to make them more personal and identifiable. While vanity addresses offer a level of personalization and identification, their safety is questionable, as they can compromise the security of users’ private keys.

• The hacker compiled vanity addresses that were eligible to receive ARB tokens and generated similar addresses using vanity address generators. This allowed them to redirect the airdropped tokens to their own addresses, making it impossible for the original owners to claim their ARB tokens. Several crypto users have expressed sadness about their stolen ARB tokens, with many being unaware of the reason behind the loss and having no idea what to do about it.

=> ↺ Cyber breach affects eastern NC postal service

• Some United States Postal Service workers in the eastern North Carolina and Jacksonville area are missing paychecks due to a cyber attack.

• The mail service is conducting an investigation, but employees are unhappy with the outcome so far, they said.

• Larisa Covington, from Jacksonville, said in February she was expecting her direct deposit to hit her account and realized her banking information had changed to one she had never heard of.

=> ↺ The BreachForums case: The HHS-OIG did WHAT?!? Why?

• An affidavit by FBI Special Agent John Longmire in support of the criminal complaint against Conor Fitzpatrick, aka “Pompompurin” (Pom), the owner of BreachForums, states that since “on or around March 2022,” HHS-OIG investigated an administrator and certain members of BreachForums. The affidavit does not explain why HHS-OIG started investigating Pom or some of the new forum’s members. There had never been any public statement suggesting that HHS-OIG had been involved in investigating or seizing RaidForums, BreachForum’s predecessor, which had been seized in February. So why did HHS-OIG start investigating Pom and some BreachForum members in March 2022?

=> ↺ Hacking contest Pwn2Own: Ubuntu, Tesla, macOs and Windows 11 cracked

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ 2023-03-23Feds Stalked Suspects With an Apple AirTag, Report Says

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ UN accuses Russia and Ukraine of ‘summary executions’ of prisoners

• The United Nations said Friday it was “deeply concerned” by what it described as summary executions of prisoners of war carried out by Russian and Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. Earlier in the day, Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev said Russian forces may have to advance as far as Kyiv or Lviv to destroy “infection” in Ukraine.

=> ↺ Mohamed ElBaradei: ‘The Iraq war was about regime change, not WMDs’

• Mohamed ElBaradei was director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 until 2009. In an interview with FRANCE 24, he reflected on the US-led invasion of Iraq 20 years ago this week, which he opposed. “If I now look in hindsight, it was not really about weapons of mass destruction. It was about regime change,” he said. ElBaradei added: “They (the US) thought the best pretext was to say that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda and had WMDs (…) They didn’t really have any evidence. It was all about belief. And they started a slew of deception and misinformation.”

=> ↺ Mūrniece meets Lithuanian counterpart in Vilnius

• Thursday, March 23, saw Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece heading to Lithuania on a working visit, where she met with Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anušauskas in Vilnius.

=> ↺ Ukrainian, Latvian ministers agree on logistics cooperation

• Ukrainian minister of the Cabinet Oleh Nemchinov and Latvian Economics Minister Ilze Indriksone met Thursday in Rīga and agreed on bilateral economic cooperation in trade, transport, energy and investments, Latvian Television reported on March 23.

=> ↺ Biden: US will ‘forcefully’ protect personnel in Syria

• President Joe Biden says the U.S. will respond “forcefully” to protect its personnel after U.S. forces retaliated with airstrikes on sites in Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

=> ↺ Conflict in Syria Escalates Following Attack That Killed a U.S. Contractor

• U.S. officials said the main air defense system at the coalition base was “not fully operational” at the time of Thursday’s attack, which killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans.

=> ↺ Biden: US will ‘forcefully’ protect personnel in Syria

• President Joe Biden says the U.S. will respond “forcefully” to protect its personnel after U.S. forces retaliated with airstrikes on sites in Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. strikes followed a suspected Iranian-linked attack Thursday that killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans in northeast Syria. “The United States does not, does not seek conflict with Iran,” Biden said in Ottawa, Canada, where he is on a state visit. But he said the U.S. is prepared “to act forcefully to protect our people. That’s exactly what happened last night.” Activists said the U.S. bombing killed at least four people.

=> ↺ Biden authorizes airstrike in Syria after suspected Iranian-affiliated drone kills US contractor and wounds 5 US troops

• The US conducted an airstrike in Syria against what it said were Iranian-affiliated facilities after a suspected Iranian drone on Thursday struck a facility housing US personnel in the country, killing an American contractor and wounding five US service members.

=> ↺ Georgia activist killed by troopers shot first, officers say

• Georgia authorities say state troopers in January fatally shot an environmental protester who had fired at authorities after a trooper shot pepper balls into the protester’s tent. That’s according to incident reports obtained Friday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The records offer the most complete account yet of authorities’ version of the Jan. 18 killing of Manuel Paez Terán, who went by the name Tortuguita. The newly obtained incident reports say Paez Terán briefly spoke to officers while inside a tent and refused to leave, prompting authorities to fire pepper balls. Authorities say Paez Terán then fired multiple shots, and six officers returned fire, shooting the activist more than a dozen times.

=> ↺ 2023-03-24Poland Will Soon Send Fighter Jets to Ukraine – Prime Minister

=> ↺ 2023-03-25Rutte: EU leaders close to an agreement on extra €3.5 billion for Ukraine weapons

=> ↺ 2023-03-23EU leaders endorse Ukraine ammunition deal

=> ↺ 2023-03-20Millions In Extra Funding Pledged For ICC Work In Ukraine

=> ↺ 2023-03-21Putin, Xi touch on Ukraine in Moscow talks as Japan PM turns up in Kyiv

=> ↺ Powder, threat sent to Manhattan DA investigating Trump

• A powdery substance was found Friday with a threatening letter in a mailroom at the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. It’s the latest security scare as the prosecutor weighs a potential historic indictment of former President Donald Trump. The letter said, “Alvin, I am going to kill you,” according to a person familiar with the matter. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity. The discovery, in the same court building where a grand jury is expected to resume work Monday on the Trump case, came amid increasingly hostile rhetoric from the Republican.

=> ↺ News Roundup: Investigations into Trump

=> ↺ The AUKUS debate Australia needs to have

• The government confirmed last week that selected Royal Australian Navy surface ships and submarines will in the foreseeable future be equipped with US long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.

=> ↺ Finland needs Hornet jets in coming years, says minister of defence

• MINISTER of Defence Antti Kaikkonen (Centre) on Thursday viewed that Finland will need its Hornet fighter jets in the coming years.

=> ↺ New Zealand raises concerns with China on South China Sea, Taiwan

• New Zealand’s foreign minister also noted “deep concerns” regarding Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

=> ↺ Support Grows to Have Russia Pay for Ukraine’s Rebuilding

• Although U.S. officials have cautioned against seizing Russia’s reserves in foreign banks, others say it’s “crazy” not to after Moscow’s war of aggression.

=> ↺ No Letup in Bakhmut as Ukraine and Russia Brace for Battles Elsewhere

• Both sides expect a Ukrainian offensive while the Bakhmut fight continues, but the head of the Wagner mercenary group said Russia must be clearer about its goals.

=> ↺ Trajectories of Iraqi youth two decades after the 2003 invasion: Between aspirations and reality

• On March 20, 2023, the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative hosted a discussion with a number of young Iraqi civil society activists and prospective leaders to reflect on the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

=> ↺ Russian War Report: Kremlin edits footage of Mariupol visit to remove women shouting at Putin

• After Putin was yelled at in Mariupol, the Kremlin cut the exchange from their official video. RIA Novosti published the whole interaction.

=> ↺ Right-Wing Serbian Parties Protest Agreement With Kosovo On Anniversary Of NATO Bombing Campaign

• Supporters of four right-wing Serbian opposition parliamentary parties demonstrated in Belgrade, blocking traffic and demanding the government reject a plan agreed by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti on the process of normalizing relations.

=> ↺ New U.S. Sanctions Target Individuals, Entities, Assets In Belarus, Including Lukashenka’s Jet

• The U.S. Treasury Department on March 24 issued new Belarus-related sanctions against nine individuals and three entities in response to an ongoing crackdown on the country’s pro-democracy movement and civil society.

Environment

=> ↺ UK barristers call upon government to address climate crisis

• Over 100 Barristers Thursday signed a declaration calling upon the UK government and colleagues to address the causes and consequences of the climate crises and to advance a just transition to sustainability, posing concerns over how serious governments around the world are taking the climate emergency.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Biden and oil: What does responsibility mean in a new energy era?

• The Biden administration’s recent leasing and permitting​ actions raise questions about the prudence of new oil development during a global push toward cleaner energy.

=> ↺ Do Kwon, Crypto Fugitive, Led a Very Public Life While on the Run

• Do Kwon, the founder of the failed crypto company Terraform Labs, is facing charges by the authorities in both South Korea and the United States.

=> ↺ The temptation of high oil prices is shaking Norway’s climate commitments

• Offshore oil is booming. According to the research firm, Rystad, spending on offshore oil investments exceeded $100 billion in 2022 for the first time in a decade, and will do so again in 2023 and 2024. Norway, the Scandinavian country that has positioned itself as a climate leader, is driving some of this boom.…

=> ↺ A South Korean crypto boss was finally arrested after a six-month manhunt

• The co-founder of Singapore-based crypto fintech firm Terraform Labs was detained in Montenegro yesterday (Mar. 23). Do Kwon was wanted by the South Korean police, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Interpol—the latter issued a red notice for his arrest last September.

=> ↺ South Korean Crypto Fugitive Charged With Forgery In Montenegro

• Montenegro has charged South Korean citizen Do Kwon, the former CEO and co-founder of cryptocurrency company Terraform Labs, with forgery after police confirmed his identity and that of another South Korean, Chang Joon, who was also charged.

=> ↺ Denmark and Germany announce plans for hydrogen pipeline

• Germany and Denmark will work together to construct a pipeline to transport hydrogen between the two countries, ministers announced on Friday.

=> ↺ Green hydrogen to flow from Denmark to Germany from 2028

• The climate minister, Lars Aagaard, and the German economy and climate minister, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, signed an agreement on Friday morning in Copenhagen to build a land-based hydrogen pipeline from Denmark to Germany, which will commence operations in 2028.

Finance

=> ↺ Baltic International Bank liquidation process approved

• The Court of Economic Affairs has approved the liquidation application of Baltic International Bank submitted by the Bank of Latvia, the LETA news agency reported March 24.

=> ↺ Raw milk purchase price rose nearly 50% last year

• Provisional data compiled by the Central Statistical Bureau and published March 24 of Latvia show that in 2022 the annual average purchase price of raw milk grew by 153 euros per tonne (EUR/t) or 48.2 % reaching 471 EUR/t.

=> ↺ Customs officers sentenced to prison for bribery

• The Economic Affairs Court of Latvia (ELT) on March 24 charged several customs officers with bribery in one of the so-called “Terehova cases”, according to LETA.

=> ↺ Pension reform: French government will not ‘yield to violence’ Macron says

• French President Emmanuel Macron strongly condemned violence that erupted in Thursday’s demonstrations against raising the French retirement age and said he would not give in to it.

=> ↺ 457 French Jailed In Paris Over Rallies Against Pension Reform

• A recent poll showed that almost 70 percent of the citizens reject President Macron’s pension reform proposal, which intends to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

=> ↺ Macron ‘is not a king’: 1 million French protest pension reform

• Over a million people protested across France Thursday to oppose President Macron’s proposal to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64. Amid violent nationwide demonstrations, unions called for strikes to coincide with King Charles III’s visit.

=> ↺ France pension reform bill protests continue as King Charles III’s visit is cancelled

• Scattered protests in France continued Friday, following Thursday’s mass demonstrations over nationwide opposition to President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reform bill.

=> ↺ French Anger Shifts From Pension Law to Focus on Macron

• After ramming through a law raising the retirement age without a full parliamentary vote, the French president faces something approaching a constitutional crisis.

=> ↺ Spasms of Violence and ‘Wild Protests’ Jolt Paris

• Opponents of pension overhaul, mostly young people, hold nightly “wild protests,” marked by vandalism, saying it is the only way to make their voices heard.

=> ↺ Los Angeles Schools and 30,000 Workers Reach Tentative Deal After Strike

• The three-day walkout included Los Angeles Unified School District teachers, gardeners, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and special education assistants.

=> ↺ Los Angeles Schools’ Staff Returns To Work After 3-Day Strike

• These workers began striking after nearly a year of unsuccessful negotiations with the Los Angeles Unified School District about wage raises.

=> ↺ What the banking crisis means for mortgage rates

• Mortgage rates have taken would-be buyers on a ride this year — and it’s only March. Generally, home buyers can anticipate mortgage rates to move down through the rest of this year as the banking crisis drags on, which could cool down inflation. But there are bound to be some bumps along the way.

=> ↺ Swedish bank predicts key interest rates will drop in November

• A new interest rate prognosis from Swedish state-owned SBAB bank predicts that Sweden’s central bank will hike key interest rates substantially in April, but will be able to lower them again as early as November.

=> ↺ Poverty, marginalisation risks rising in Finland

• Around 75 percent of households in Finland would be able to pay unexpected expenses, while 25 percent would not, Statistics Finland reports.

=> ↺ Why Construction Projects Always Go Over Budget

• Boston, Massachusetts is one of the oldest cities in America, founded in 1630, more than a few years before the advent of modern motor vehicles. In the 1980s, traffic in downtown Boston was nearly unbearable from the tangled streets laid out centuries ago, so city planners and state transportation officials came up with what they considered a grand plan. They would reroute the elevated highway and so-called “central artery” of Interstate 93 into a tunnel below downtown and extend Interstate 90 across the inner harbor to the airport in another tunnel. Construction started in 1991, and the project was given the nickname Big Dig because of the sheer volume of excavation required for the two tunnels. In terms of cost and complexity, the Big Dig was on the scale of the Panama Canal or Hoover Dam. It featured some of the most innovative construction methods of the time, and after 16 years of work, the project was finished on time and under budget…[Grady makes a skeptical face into the camera]

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Sinn Féin Party Leader Mary Lou McDonald: “We Will See a Reunification Referendum Within the Decade”

• Mary Lou McDonald’s star is rising in Ireland, which could put her in a position to push for reunification with Northern Ireland. DER SPIEGEL speaks with her about why she thinks success might be possible.

=> ↺ 2023-03-24France bans TikTok (and Candy Crush) from government phones

=> ↺ 2023-03-23Here’s what TikTok’s CEO told Congress about the app’s ties to China and teen safety

=> ↺ 2023-03-24The Morning After: What TikTok’s CEO told Congress about the app’s ties to China

=> ↺ 2023-03-24TikTok CEO grilled by skeptical US lawmakers over national security threat

=> ↺ 2023-03-24France to ban TikTok on civil servants’ work phones

=> ↺ 2023-03-24Daily Cartoon: Friday, March 24th

=> ↺ Teens on TikTok? New Utah law says ask your parents first.

• Utah’s Gov. Spencer Cox signed a pair of measures requiring parental consent before kids can sign up for sites like TikTok and Instagram. The new laws also limit time spent on social media and require age verification for anyone using social media.

=> ↺ US lawmakers’ minds were already made up about TikTok

• When TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew showed up on Capitol Hill this week to testify at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington, immediately set the tone for the ordeal.

=> ↺ 2023-03-24The TikTok Hearings Inspired Little Faith in Social Media or in Congress

=> ↺ 2023-03-23Your Friday Briefing: U.S. Lawmakers Blast TikTok’s C.E.O.

=> ↺ 2023-03-24France Bans TikTok, Twitter From Government Staff Phones

=> ↺ 2023-03-24Canada’s Trudeau Says TikTok Ban Had ‘Side Benefit’ of Getting His Kids off Platform

=> ↺ 2023-03-24McCarthy Expects US House Will Pass Legislation to Address TikTok

=> ↺ 2023-03-24The rise of the TikTok scold

=> ↺ 2023-03-24Friday’s papers: Hungary’s Nato promise, train traffic resumes and TikTok’s election influence

=> ↺ 2023-03-21China could be harvesting TikTok data, but much of the user information is already out in the open

=> ↺ 2023-03-22Dutch companies not concerned about TikTok on employees’ phones

=> ↺ 2023-03-22Dutch government bans officials from installing TikTok on work phone

=> ↺ 2023-03-19How Many Countries Have Banned TikTok?

=> ↺ 2023-03-20The BBC, Which Has 4 Million Followers on TikTok, Tells Employees Not to Download TikTok

=> ↺ 2023-03-20Please Get Me Out of Dead-Dog TikTok

=> ↺ 2023-03-20TikTok Hits 150 Million U.S. Monthly Users, up From 100 Million in 2020

=> ↺ 2023-03-21TikTok Announces ‘Refreshed’ Community Guidelines Ahead of Congressional Hearing

=> ↺ 2023-03-21TikTok’s CEO Has a Message for Congress: America Needs This App

=> ↺ 2023-03-23Congress Browbeats TikTok’s CEO in Brutal 5-Hour Hearing

=> ↺ 2023-03-22Here’s What TikTok’s CEO Will Tell Congress

=> ↺ 2023-03-21Italy investigates TikTok over ‘dangerous content’

=> ↺ 2023-03-23TikTok CEO faces off with US lawmakers

=> ↺ 2023-03-23What to know about TikTok’s fate in the US

=> ↺ 2023-03-239 questions about the threats to ban TikTok, answered

=> ↺ 2023-03-21Is TikTok too big to ban?

=> ↺ 2023-03-233 winners and 3 losers from Congress’s TikTok hearing

=> ↺ 2023-03-23TikTok CEO finds no allies among U.S. lawmakers in tense Congress grilling

=> ↺ 2023-03-24TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. So why doesn’t it exist there?

=> ↺ 2023-03-24See how TikTok compares to China’s heavily censored version, Douyin

=> ↺ Happy Crime-Fraud Exception Day, for Those Who Celebrate

• As investigations relying on the witness testimony of Michael Cohen and Evan Corcoran converge this week, it’s a reminder that for at least seven years, Trump’s lawyers have exposed themselves legally in assistance of Trump’s cover-ups.

=> ↺ Former Trump Officials Must Testify in 2020 Election Inquiry, Judge Says

• The ruling paves the way for testimony from Mark Meadows and others. Separately, a Trump lawyer appeared before a grand jury looking into the former president’s handling of classified documents.

=> ↺ G.O.P. Demands on Prosecutor in Trump Case Test Limits of Oversight Power

• The Manhattan district attorney is resisting demands by House Republicans that he provide information about the hush money inquiry, setting up a potential legal showdown.

=> ↺ Israel’s Army Fears Effect of Judicial Crisis on Battlefield Readiness

• A judicial overhaul has prompted many military reservists to avoid volunteer duty. Military leaders have privately warned that this might require scaling back operations.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Can AI programs be trusted to report the news?

• Editors remain cautious about the use of artificial intelligence in reporting. But used responsibly, they say, it can free up local journalists while augmenting their coverage – for instance, with AI-produced summaries of city council meetings.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Bishkek Court Orders Check Of Language In Video That Sparked Blockage Of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Websites

• Bishkek’s Lenin District Court has ordered an examination of the language used in a video the government cited when it halted the operations of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, saying it contains elements of inciting ethnic hatred and war propaganda, an allegation the broadcaster has rejected.

=> ↺ Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Placed In Punitive Solitary Confinement Again

• Imprisoned Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny has been placed in a punitive solitary confinement cell for the 12th time since mid-August, his Telegram channel said.

=> ↺ Estonia Expels Russian Diplomat For ‘Spreading Propaganda’ In Favor Of Moscow’s Military Actions

• Estonia has declared a staff member of Russia’s Embassy in Tallinn persona non grata for “directly and actively undermining Estonia’s security and constitutional order, spreading propaganda that justifies Russia’s military action and causing divisions in Estonian society.”

=> ↺ Hong Kong’s sports federation blasts ice hockey body’s ‘administrative’ problems for protest anthem blunder

• Hong Kong’s ice hockey body has been accused by the city’s Sports Federation & Olympic Committee (SF&OC) to be “all talk and no action” over a national anthem blunder at an international competition. It added that the organisation had problems with its administration.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Art Week: Pro-protest billboard art removed as ‘it contained political messages,’ says gallery

• A digital artist who hid the names, ages and jail terms of convicted Hong Kong protesters in a SOGO mall video billboard installation says organisers have been forced to remove it.

=> ↺ Russian Blogger Varlamov, Human Rights Lawyer Chikov Listed As ‘Foreign Agents’

• Russia’s Justice Ministry has added blogger Ilya Varlamov and lawyer Pavel Chikov of the Agora legal defense organization to the “foreign agents” registry.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ 2023-03-23New Ukrainian army regulations limit reporters’ access to frontlines

=> ↺ 2023-03-20Ukraine’s Nova Poshta opens branch in Vilnius

=> ↺ Press freedom groups condemn harassment of Hong Kong journalists after HKFP reporter tailed

• Press freedom groups have condemned the harassment and surveillance of local journalists, after an HKFP court reporter was followed from her home to her workplace for over an hour by two men with earpieces on Wednesday. The duo tailed the reporter during morning rush hour, despite efforts to board and alight different trains.

=> ↺ RBZ could face sanctions following Al Jazeera documentary. That’s a big deal

• Al Jazeera released the first of four parts to their explosive documentary on corruption and looting in Zimbabwe yesterday. Titled ‘Gold Mafia’ the documentary exposes the dealings of some government officials, prophets, pastors, and businesspeople profiting from the illegal movement of gold. Reactions to the docu have been mixed.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ How Officials in Georgia are Suppressing Political Protest as ‘Domestic Terrorism’

• Over the past few months, 42 activists have been charged with “domestic terrorism” under Georgia state law. Their acts of “terrorism”? Alleged property damage and trespassing while protesting. These prosecutions exemplify a highly problematic trend of the government — both state and federal — using domestic terrorism powers to punish dissent.

=> ↺ Exclusive: We Spoke to ‘Stop Cop City’ Activists Facing Terrorism Charges

• 42 people have been arrested for alleged ties to the protest movement, which opposes a $90 million police training facility in the Atlanta forest.

=> ↺ Rights organization: UK asylum housing system is ‘cruel by design’

• UK charity organisation Refugee Action Thursday reported that the UK’s asylum housing system is “cruel by design,” and outlined the poor conditions and systems of racialised segregation towards the asylum seekers.

=> ↺ Uyghurs tell Congress of gang rape, shackles and sterilization

• Two survivors of Chinese concentration camps describe torture and dehumanization at heart of genocide.

=> ↺ House hears Uyghur testimonies on human rights abuses in China

• A special House committee hearing on Thursday included testimonies from two Uyghur women detained by the Chinese government in “reeducation” camps. The U.S. joins a global effort to raise awareness of the mistreatment of the Uyghur community in China.

=> ↺ 32 states and counting: Why parents bills of rights are sweeping US

• In 2023, at least 32 states are considering a Parents Bill of Rights, as parents look for greater say in the education of their children.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Ticketmaster Reportedly Faces Class-Action Suit Over the ‘Artificially Inflated’ Price of Drake Tickets in Canada

• Ticketmaster is reportedly grappling with yet another class-action lawsuit – this time over the price of Drake tickets in the artist’s native Canada. Regional outlets including the Toronto Star just recently shed light upon the complaint, which represents the latest in a long line of cost-centered actions against the Live Nation-owned ticketing platform.

=> ↺ UK narrows antitrust probe into Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition

=> ↺ 2023-03-21Focus of Activision Blizzard merger debate shifts from concerns to constructive solutions and procompetitive effects: Epic Games welcomes Microsoft’s mobile app store plans

=> ↺ 2023-03-24UK watchdog no longer thinks Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard merger is a threat to console competition (updated)

Patents

=> ↺ 10 years of Cooperative Patent Classification marked

• President Campinos: CPC now the most powerful classification system in the world

=> ↺ G 2/21: Enlarged Board of Appeal allows post-filed data to prove technical effect

• So far, established European Patent Office case law requires that, in order for the examiners to account for data submitted after filing a patent, it must be plausible from the application as filed, in combination with common general knowledge, that the technical effect was already achieved at the date on which the patent was filed.

=> ↺ $14,000 for SoftBank entity, Entropic Communications, prior art

• Unified added 7 new PATROLL contests, with a $2,000 cash prize for each, seeking prior art on the list below. The patents are owned by Entropic Communications, an NPE and SoftBank subsidiary. The contests will all end on May 15, 2023. Please visit PATROLL for more information or click on each link below.

=> ↺ $4,000 for Fractus antennas patent prior art

• Two new PATROLL contests have been added, with a $2,000 cash prize for each, seeking prior art on claim 31 of U.S. Patent 8,456,365 and claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,674,887. The patents are owned by Fractus, SA, an NPE, and have been asserted against ADT.

=> ↺ Unified Patent Court provides information about issues concerning sunrise period

• The Registrar of the Unified Patent Court has provided information on most commonly identified issues regarding the sunrise functionalities of the Court’s CMS.

Software Patents

=> ↺ Virtual Creative Artist media content patent likely invalid

• On March 22, 2023, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 10,339,576, owned and asserted by Virtual Creative Artist, LLC. The ’576 patent is directed towards a process for creating and publishing media content on an electronic exchange.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Duckburg Family Trees (Rota vs Rosa)

• It’s neither OK that Elvira and Scrooge are siblings nor that they are Donald’s parents (kind of contradicts Scrooges early appearances in Barks). It’s even less OK that they are both those things. That book came out in Swedish in 86 (two years after its original Italian publication), I saw it and always wanted to read it, but when I did get a chance to a few years later, in the later eighties, I was super weirded out and not happy. (The Swedish book also contained two Lockman/Strobl stories and they were pretty good.)

=> ↺ body image

• I have found myself more relaxed with certain aspects of my body the past few months. I remember as a teen, it was basically normalized to be obsessed about your body in a way that doesn’t even make sense and that you hopefully, usually, grow out of; at least I did, gradually, but did most of my growing the past year or so, I think.

=> ↺ Retcon-style mechanics

• The playtest for the version of D&D that’s codenamed “D&D One” has Guidance and Resistance spells be post-hoc instead of pre-hoc and I thought that seemed great at first but through playtesting we’ve run into trouble. The more we use it, I’ve gone from “sure, that makes sense” to hating it, but my players are becoming more entrenched in loving it.

• To me it feels like retconning and I’m not into it. Jarring and unfun.

• I like fortune at the end and dislike “fortune in the middle” mechanics, like how you can retcon your attacks by spending points, and this is even worse since what you add retroactively is even more dice. It’s “fortune in the middle and then even more fortune”.

=> ↺ Wither proficiency dice?

• When 5e was being playtested, the proficiency bonus wasn’t a static +2, +3, +4, +5, or +6. It was a d4, d6, d8, d10 or d12. The character sheet was much simpler, too. You had your basic ability modifiers and then you would just note if you were proficient. So if you had +3 strength, you’d roll d20+3 if you weren’t proficient but if you were, you’d also toss on a d4 (at lower levels, and more at higher levels).

=> ↺ Fortune at the End

• I love what RPG designers call “Fortune at the End”; making your decisions before the roll and then the roll shows you what happened. You have all kinds of ways to influence the roll but you do that first, and then there’s the showdown. Poker and roulette are similar in that regard. You think you’ve figured out when to hold’em and now it’s time for a prayer on the flop. I hate fighting in real life but these kinds of mechanics feel, to me, appropriate to how a good swashbuckling movie should feel. You’ve swung your sword or drawn back your bow and now all you can do is see how it landed.

• This is contrasted with “Fortune in the Middle” or “Fortune in the Beginning”, where you roll your dice but then you get to fiddle endlessly with the result with points and chips and spends and this and that and the other. Legalized fudging. Not my jam. I want tension and release, not tension and hold-​on-​let-​me-​just-​tweak-​some-​levers.

Politics

=> ↺ If that would be true

• If that would be true, why would it upset me?

Technical

=> ↺ Re: Systemd-free

• There’s a recent post by Lesogorov about SystemD-free distros that’s worth a read if this sort of thing interests you.

• Around 2017 I started migrating away from using old crappy X86 desktops as home servers to a small army of Raspberry Pi’s. I immediately ran into a few SystemD related issues that somewhat soured my feelings towards it.

• [...]

• The heart of the issue is that SystemD was attempting to mount all disks before that disk had even finished spinning up, causing the mount to fail because the kernel didn’t even know the disk existed yet.

• [...]

• I’ve since found Void. I am extremely positive about Void. It’s not perfect, but it really is very good. I love that it uses Musl libc. It uses Runit for init and process supervision, which is crazy simple.

• [...]

• I’ve got Alpine in a VM for evaluation. I have to say, I’m totally impressed. I can see this replacing Arch as my development environment because it’s actually up to date (Void lags just enough to annoy me) and it is also Musl libc based. There are a couple things I’m not entirely happy with though. I don’t particularly care for BusyBox, as I’ve seen the code, and I’m also not entirely happy with the way packages are split.

• [...]

• This is not a great tendency. I’d point out that Unix was originally brought up in large part because Ken Thompson needed an OS to run his Space Travel video game on the PDP-7. A few collaborators, notably Dennis Ritchie, who were frustrated with how large Multics had grown, chipped in and it took off.

• [...]

• Would I recommend a non-systemD distro? Depends. If a person has a bit of experience Void makes a great server and a decent desktop. I actually think Alpine makes a great desktop, but you have to have some knowhow to bring it up. I wouldn’t recomment Artix.

=> ↺ A New Firefox Workflow

• It feels like the web has really changed a lot over the past decades, but innovation in web browser workflows has been stagnant by comparison. For the most part everyone is still just doing the address bar and horizontal tab list at the top of their screen, and it’s only been fairly recently that some browsers like Vivaldi and even Edge have started experimenting beyond that.

• I gave Vivaldi a try yesterday and really liked it. I had it set up with a vertical tab bar on the left and a side panel with various bookmarks at the right, a setup that I think makes a lot of sense since I can sometimes end up with dozens of tabs. Hardly any websites make full use of the available screen width anyway. I almost stuck with Vivaldi, but a couple obscure bugs with keyboard shortcuts had me coming back to Firefox in the end.

=> ↺ A Retro-grouch and ATB computer

• “Retro-grouch” is a facetious term I believe was originally meant pejoratively to denote a bike geek out of step with the current trend in new bicycle technology. Now I see it laughingly and affectionately adopted by many folks passionate about steel all-terrain bicycles, practical commuter accoutrements, and resistance to keeping up with new, useless, expensive bike technology ‘innovations.’

• I favor just this kind of riding for a few reasons. It values tried and true tools and technology. We don’t need to adopt hydraulic brakes, tubeless tires, and internal routing. These things are more expensive in the first place, and require new tools and specialized parts, and often expert level knowledge. Alternatively, classic bike setups can be understood reasonably by me, an amateur, through experimentation, how-to books and tutorials, and they use fairly universal swappable parts.

=> ↺ Going Github

• The main reason is I’m kind of tired of the amount of spam bots that keep signing up to my Gitea. The juice of self-hosting a public-access git forge, even locked down to prevent arbitrary repo creation, that juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.

=> ↺ Oddball Technologies

• One of my core principle to IT: Try to use different stuff. Don’t be afraid of the weird things. In a lot of cases, the weirdness is your friend. Usually the weird is a deisgn or feature to solve a need that is not met by the mainstream. Even if not, there’s a lot to learn from the weird.

• This is why I write web services in C++, investigate GNUnet, use a TLS library that’s not OpenSSL, maintains OpenBSD support for libraries, and so on. Maybe Gemini to a certain degree. See, I run into problems. A lot of them. I see certificates breaking, connection reset and even code that just don’t work on certain OS-es that is not used widely. But I also learned a lot from the process. The fact that OpenSSL is not fully compliant to the RFC, that opening a file is not always possible even if permission is correct.

=> ↺ Saying LLMs Lack “Understanding”

=> ↺ The “Tens-Complement” system

• One thing to know with houserules is that you’ve got to know when to walk away if the houserule is about a part of the game that’s not mainly under your purvey.

Announcements

=> ↺ Gemtexter 2.0.0 – Let’s Gemtext again^2

• I proudly announce that I’ve released Gemtexter version 2.0.0. What is Gemtexter? It’s my minimalist static site generator for Gemini Gemtext, HTML and Markdown written in GNU Bash.

Programming

=> ↺ schlemoize

• 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

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.