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● 04.02.23

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● Links 02/04/2023: Taking Stock of a Week, Including Videos

Posted in News Roundup at 11:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ [Old] Intel Arc on Ubuntu 23.04 Daily Builds

• Ubuntu 22.04 and 22.10 didn’t provide an out-of-box experience for the new Intel Arc GPUs. Is Lunar Lobster ready for the challenge?

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Linux Weekly Roundup #228

Server

=> ↺ [Old] Red Hat Linux comes to Oracle Cloud

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux is now certified and fully supported on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure virtual machines.

=> ↺ Oracle Cloud Native Environment 1.6 is available!

• Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Cloud Native Environment Release 1.6, the scalable and highly available Kubernetes distribution that you can use to deploy your containerized applications across public clouds and on-premises.

• This release includes Kubernetes 1.25, advanced networking virtualization and new technology preview modules. If you are running Kubernetes clusters across public clouds and on-premises, the enhanced cluster management features will make it much easier for you to manage your workloads by providing you a consistent view across all environments. Oracle Cloud Native Environment is an integrated suite of software components for the development and management of cloud native applications. Based on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Open Container Initiative standards, Oracle Cloud Native Environment delivers a simplified framework for installation, update, upgrade, and configuration of key features for orchestrating microservices through Kubernetes.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] siduction 21.1.1 overview | the community based OS

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Steam Deck Verified: The Future of PC Gaming or a Sisyphean Task?

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Nitrux 2.7.0 Quick Overview #shorts

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] The Raspberry Pi Pironman Case – There’s a Status Display!

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Xorg Foundation Has A Serious Problem

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Dmscripts now has ‘-d’, ‘-r’ and ‘-f’ options. (dmenu, rofi, & fzf)

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] KDE Fixes Discord On Wayland Because Discord Can’t

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Valve’s latest game announcement proves that they’re back with avengeance!

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Steam Deck finally gives us native customization options! | Press Steam to Start – EP 1

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] John Deere Refuses To Respect Free Software & GPL

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] Review: GNOME 44 is a Great Release (Mostly)

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] Wayland Is Linux’s Future, But Why Do I Care?

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Framework 16″ laptop, Nextcloud’s HUGE AI update, Twitter goes Open Source: Linux & FOSS News

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Why BSD Documentation Is Just Better Than Linux

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Enterprise Linux Security Episode 61 – The Principle of Least Privilege

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] An Update Borked My Linux System. How Did I Fix It?

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Garuda Linux 230305 Quick Overview #shorts

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] How to install Minetest on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0 overview | 100% free as in freedom

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] How You Can Easily Swap Linux Kernels with Ubuntu Mainline

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] How to install WPS Office on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Enterprise Linux Security Episode 61 – The Principle of Least Privilege

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] How to install Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] System76 Pangolin Review: the 15″ all rounder AMD Linux laptop

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 998

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started With Linux

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Manjaro Linux’s Biggest Drama That Never Happened

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] How to install Visual Studio Code on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] How to install Microsoft Edge on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Using LINUX at WORK – GNOME edition: extensions, apps & workflow

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] How to install Firefox on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] The Year of the Linux Desktop – IS FINALLY HERE!!!

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] CachyOS : Get Ready to Be AMAZED – The Ultimate Performance Linux Distro of 2023 (NEW)

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] I’m Leaving Arch Linux For A Better Distro!!

Applications

=> ↺ MusicPod: A Beautiful Flutter-based Music, Radio, and Podcast Player for Ubuntu

• Ready to listen to some tunes? With MusicPod you can!

• The project resides under the purview of the Ubuntu Flutter Community as an open-source Flutter-based music player that offers quite a few features.

• Allow me to show you what MusicPod can do.

• MusicPod has a very similar look to the GTK theme of GNOME, but it is not an actual GTK app.

• It uses Flutter’s ‘yaru.dart’ design elements around its interface, with the Dart programming language as the building blocks, resulting in the aforementioned similarities.

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] The 8 Best DIY Security Camera Apps and Software for Linux

• Looking for a DIY security webcam client for Linux? These Linux-compatible apps are ideal for any DIY security cam project.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Understanding /etc/shadow file format on Linux

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] How to check if port is in use on Linux or Unix

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] How to find SSH server and client version on Linux and Unix

=> ↺ How to Configure Networking on Ubuntu Servers

• Without a network connection, a server can’t function. Here’s what you need to know to configure networks on Ubuntu from the command line.

=> ↺ [Old] Backing up to a Remote Server with SSH and rsync

• Protect your important files with this basic script!

=> ↺ Avoiding HTTP/3 (for a while) as a pragmatic default

• One of the unusual things about HTTP/3 is that it doesn’t use TCP but instead a new network transport protocol, QUIC, and QUIC operates over UDP. Operating over UDP instead of TCP has a number of consequences; for example, firewalls need adjustments to let ‘QUIC’ traffic through and the path your QUIC traffic takes may be different than your TCP HTTP traffic. All of this creates many opportunities for different things to happen with HTTP/3 requests than with your TCP HTTP requests. Some of these different things will be one version working and the other not, and since HTTP/3 is the newer and less common version, it’s the version most likely to not work.

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] How to install Minetest on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] How to install MuseScore on a Chromebook in 2023

=> ↺ Using DTrace to find block sizes of ZFS, NFS, and iSCSI

• A member of our Storage Team, Cloud Engineer Goran Mekic, shared that documentation and books on DTrace were not terribly helpful to him in finding out what function he should trace. Goran said that he would have been extremely happy if he could refer to a blog post like the one below before starting with his task, so he offered to share the process because it is more important than the measurement itself.

• So in that spirit of sharing – you can download these steps, and walk through Goran’s instructions on finding block sizes of ZFS, NFS, and iSCSI using DTrace below…

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] How to install SSF2 v0.9b on a Chromebook

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] How to install Mario Vs. Luigi – Cubby’s Character Mod on a Chromebook

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] How to install Firefox on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] How to install UPBGE on a Chromebook

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] How to Fix the "make: command not found" Error in Ubuntu

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] How to Play Xbox One and Series X|S Games on a Linux PC With Cloud Gaming and Remote Play

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] How to install Visual Studio Code on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] How to Install Visual Studio Code in Ubuntu

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] How to install the Watefox browser on a Chromebook

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] How to install Microsoft Edge on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] How to Install Kdenlive on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] How to Install KTorrent on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] How to Install MyPaint on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] How to Install Tor Browser on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

=> ↺ Vim Tips – Edit Remote Files With Vim On Linux

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] How to install MetaTrader 4 with the Hankotrade Broker on a Chromebook

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] How to install WPS Office on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] How to record your screen on a Chromebook

Games

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] DoomLinux:the Distro That Loads Only Enough Software to Play DOOM

=> ↺ 6 Tips to Use the Steam Deck’s Desktop Mode Without a Dock

• You can use your Steam Deck as a portable PC. Here are some tips to get the best out of Steam Deck’s Desktop Mode, without using a dock.

• [...]

• The Steam Deck isn’t just a gaming console. By holding down the power button, you can restart the device into Desktop Mode. There you can see that, underneath Valve’s attractive Steam interface, the Deck is just like any other computer.

• But can you comfortably use the Steam Deck as a portable PC? It takes adjustment, but sure you can! Here are some tips to help you get the most out of the experience.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Giving Gnome-Terminal some margins makes me happier with it

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Alpine 3.14.10, 3.15.8 and 3.16.5 released

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Alpine 3.17.3 released

=> ↺ Linux Lite 6.4 Final Released

• Congratulations on another fine Linux Lite release! Three upgrades to 6.4 complete without a hitch; one on Qemu, one on Hyper-V, one on hardware. Flawless and clean. Thank you for the hard work once again.

BSD

=> ↺ MidnightBSD 3.0.0 Released. This is What’s New

• MidnightBSD 3.0.0 has been released, featuring enhancements imported from FreeBSD 12 stable. This version includes various bug fixes and new features, such as the fix for GELI that silently omits the keyfile if read from stdin, and an update to the caroot CA bundle processor to support certificates marked with a DISTRUST_AFTER entry.

• Learn more about this release.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ Linux power SUSE appoints New CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen

• Europe’s leading Linux company, SUSE, has announced that veteran Unix and Linux executive Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen will take over as its CEO starting May 1, 2023. Melissa Di Donato, the current CEO, is stepping down immediately to pursue the next chapter of her career. During the transition, CFO Andy Myers will serve as interim CEO alongside his CFO role.

• Why this sudden change in leadership? We don’t know. Di Donato was a good CEO. She oversaw the successful acquisition of Rancher Labs in 2020. This positioned SUSE as a serious Kubernetes services contender. For any software infrastructure business to be taken seriously in 2023, it must have a strong Kubernetes position. During her tenure, SUSE’s revenues increased by over 60% and its adjusted EBITDA by over 70%.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ What’s New in Fedora 38

• Fedora 38 is just around the corner. You can expect updated applications, refreshed desktop environments including a step up to GNOME 44, and two new desktop environment options. One of these is Budgie, and the other is a tiling window manager called Sway.

• Fedora Linux has always placed stability at the core of everything they do. Fedora 37 was delayed several times until they were happy it was ready to be shipped. Fedora isn’t a Linux distribution for those who want to live on the cutting edge. It’s a distribution for those who need reliability, and expect their computer and applications to work every time they turn it on.

• Evidently, this is a popular viewpoint. Fedora continues to go from strength to strength. Fedora 38 has an early final target date of April 18. If required, the date can be pushed back to April 25 as the final target date.

• There’s a beta release of Fedora 38 available now, so we fired up a copy to give you the lowdown on what to expect when Fedora 38 hits the streets.

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Top new features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 and 9.2 Beta

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ NanoPi R6C review – Ubuntu 22.04, NVMe SSD, USB debug

• FriendlyElec has recently announced the NanoPi R6C mini PC that a variant of the Rockchip RK3588S powered NanoPi R6S mini PC and 2.5GbE router that we reviewed with FriendlyWrt/OpenWrt and Ubuntu 22.04 earlier this year, but with just one 2.5GbE and one GbE interface, a built-in M.2 NVMe SSD socket and USB-C Debug UART port for easy external access to the serial console.

• The company sent me a NanoPi R6C sample for review, but since we’ve already tested the similar NanoPi R6S extensively, I’ll write a single-post mini review this time around, checking out the hardware, and focusing on testing the new features such as the NVMe SSD and the USB debug port when running Ubuntu 22.04.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Hackaday Does Berlin

• If you’re wondering why there was no newsletter last weekend, it was because we had our hands full with Hackaday Berlin. But boy, was it worth it! Besides being the launch party for the tenth annual Hackaday Prize, it was the first Hackaday gathering in Europe for four years, and it was awesome to see a bunch of familiar faces and meet many more new ones.

=> ↺ Supercapacitor free flight planes | HackSpace #65

• There are lots of designs out there to build electric planes that carry a small LiPo cell and a timer circuit, so that the propeller is only driven for a short and specific amount of time – often, less than a minute. This is an excellent approach, but there’s a little bit of a weight penalty carrying a battery and also a bit of complexity in building a timer circuit. The electric option we’re going to look at is using a supercapacitor to drive a motor and propeller, adjusting the amount you charge the supercapacitor to change the driven flight time.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Pixel 7a, Pixel 8, and Pixel Fold: Something strange is happening with Google’s new Android phones – PhoneArena

=> ↺ ChromeOS is improving (and proving) itself, the Android Police podcast finds out

=> ↺ Samsung’s weird web app gives you a taste of Android from your iPhone | Tom’s Guide

=> ↺ 5 Android features Apple should bring to iOS

=> ↺ 8 best farming games on Android

=> ↺ how to restore deleted photos: Photos accidentally deleted or lost due to error: Here’s how to recover deleted photos on Android – The Economic Times

=> ↺ How to Find Hidden Apps on Your Android Phone – Make Tech Easier

=> ↺ Which Samsung Galaxy Devices are Eligible for 4 Years of Android Updates?

=> ↺ People are only just realizing you can’t trust all Android notifications – how to spot a fake | The US Sun

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

GNU Projects

=> ↺ GnuCash Review 2023: Features, Pricing & More

• GnuCash is an accounting software that offers basic accounting functionality and is completely free, making it an excellent option for startups and small businesses with limited budgets, as well as for individuals interested in tracking their personal finances. GnuCash is a single-user system, so you won’t be able to add any additional users to the application. As a result, the product is great for a sole proprietor, but would not be a good fit for businesses expecting to grow. GnuCash is not cloud-based software, so you’ll have to download the application from their website.

• GnuCash was initially developed way back in 1997 as an alternative to Quicken, but newer releases of the application also include solid business features. GnuCash has been translated into 21 languages and offers solid multi-currency capability, making the product an excellent option for small businesses and startups that conduct business globally.

Licensing / Legal

=> ↺ Twitter reveals code showing why tweets pop-up

• The recommendations algorithm source code explains why tweets appear on a user’s “For you” timeline.

• Making it public addresses common concerns among users and lawmakers, who increasingly scrutinize social media platforms over how algorithms select the content users see.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ International Pascal Congress: July 3-7, 2023, Salamanca (Spain)

• The International Pascal Congress (IPC) is an international forum dedicated to bringing together the different players in the software industry whose technologies are based on the Pascal family of programming languages. The IPC 2023 will be held from 3 to 7 July 2023, hosted by the University of Salamanca in Spain, and it will be a stunning and forward-looking reflection on the Pascal family of languages in the software industry.

=> ↺ Using mocks in Python

• April 1st is all about fake stories and pretending. This makes it the perfect day to talk about mocking.

• Sometimes, using real objects is hard, ill-advised, or complicated. For example, a requests.Session connects to real websites. Using it in your unittests invites a…lot…of problems.

=> ↺ Write a cute program with Emojicode

• In this article, I’ll cover the greatest coding language to learn how to make anything! It’s called Emojicode. Created in 2014 by Theo Belaire, Emojicode is an open source programming language that uses emoji characters to represent its syntax. When working in Emojicode, emoji are used to create variables, functions, and control structures. Because it’s a statically typed language, variable types must be declared before use, but it also supports object-oriented concepts like classes and inheritance. This language can be run on every OS, and it’s a super fun way to code, especially if you’re a non-native English speaker. This is helpful because pictographic representations can bring us all together and allow us to speak the same language in a way similar to math.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 Weather::WeatherKit and Weather::Astro7Timer

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 Graph – Weekly Travelling in CPAN

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Perl Weekly Challenge #210

Leftovers

=> ↺ Modern Dance Or Full-Body Keyboard? Why Not Both!

• If you felt in your heart that Hackaday was a place that would forever be free from projects that require extensive choreography to pull off, we’re sorry to disappoint you. Because you’re going to need a level of coordination and gross motor skills that most of us probably lack if you’re going to type with this full-body, semaphore-powered keyboard.

=> ↺ Have an A1 day

• “Yawn-inducing” is too charitable a word for these soul-grinding, suffocating, self-owning, sulphur-whiffed stunts, these pain-by-numbers pitiful parroted pratfalls.

• “Lol [thing] is now about [opposite thing]”

• “Lol we are gonna switch to discord”

• “Lol I’m gonna quit my show”

• “Lol I’m gonna kms”

=> ↺ Book Review: Radicalized – Cory Doctorow

• The third is deeply disturbing. It is a compelling dive into the community aspect of radicalisation. But it’s difficult to write a story about “domestic terrorism” without straying dangerously close to endorsing those radical and violent behaviours.

Education

=> ↺ Florida Teachers’ Unions Are Front Line of Resistance Against DeSantis’s Fascism

Hardware

=> ↺ Apple Never Gave Them USB. Now, They’re Getting It For Themselves

• These days we use USB as a default for everything from low-speed serial ports to high-capacity storage, and the ubiquitous connector has evolved into a truly multi-purpose interface. It’s difficult to believe then, that the first Apple Mac to be designed with a USB interface was shipped without it; but that’s the case with 1997’s grey Power Mac G3.

=> ↺ Blender And OpenEMS Teamed Up Make Stunning Simulations

• There’s tons of theory out there to explain the behavior of electronic circuits and electromagnetic waves. When it comes to visualization though, most of us have had to make do with our lecturer’s very finest blackboard scribbles, or some diagrams in a textbook. [Sam A] has been working on some glorious animated simulations, however, which show us various phenomena in a far more intuitive way.

=> ↺ Building An Energy Sword Replica From Halo

• A good many of us whiled away the hours of our youths playing Swords Only deathmatch in Halo 2. The Energy Sword, aka the Plasma Sword, was the star of the show, with its devastating glowing blades granting us scoreboard domination. [Arnov Sharma] has now built a quality replica of this science-fiction weapon.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ FDA requires medical devices be secured against cyberattacks

• The Food and Drug Administration will now require medical devices meet specific cybersecurity guidelines after years of concerns that a growing number of internet-connected products used by hospitals and healthcare providers could be hit by hacks and ransomware attacks.

=> ↺ ‘Bending the Knee’ to Insurance Lobby, Biden Admin Delays Medicare Advantage Reforms

• The Biden administration announced Friday that it will allow Medicare Advantage plans to continue overbilling the federal government in the short term after the insurance industry lobbied aggressively against proposed rule changes aimed at cracking down on fraud in the privately run program.

=> ↺ 15 Million People Could Lose Coverage as Nightmarish Medicaid ‘Purge’ Begins

• Beginning on Saturday, states across the U.S. will start the process of stripping Medicaid coverage from millions of people as pandemic-related protections lapse, part of a broader unraveling of the safety net that was built to help families withstand the public health crisis and resulting economic turmoil.

=> ↺ Biden’s Justice Department Sues Norfolk Southern Over Toxic East Palestine Crash

=> ↺ 15 Million People May Lose Health Coverage as Medicaid “Purge” Begins

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Orlando Health faces lawsuit alleging it shared patient data with Facebook

• The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Florida, alleges that the health system did not inform patients of the pixel tracking technology nor did the health system inform patients that some of their information they were inputting on its website was being sent to Facebook.

=> ↺ Orlando Health accused of sharing patients’ information with Facebook, lawsuit says

• “By installing the Facebook Pixel on its Website, (Orlando Health) effectively planted a bug on (W.W.) and Class Members’ web browsers and compelled them to disclose their communications with (Orlando Health) to Facebook,” the lawsuit said.

• Facebook uses that information for targeted advertisements or to sell it to third-party marketers, the lawsuit said, adding it was possible to glean if someone is pregnant or has cancer, dementia or HIV or considering weight loss surgery, for example.

=> ↺ Researchers warn of Wi-Fi security flaw affecting iOS, Android, Linux

• To achieve the attack, miscreants must forcibly disconnect the victim device before it properly connects to the network, spoof the MAC address of the device to connect to the network using the attacker’s credentials, then grab the response. The vulnerability exploits on-device power-save behavior within the Wi-Fi standard to force data to be shared in unencrypted form.

• The researchers have published an open source tool called MacStealer to test Wi-Fi networks for the vulnerability.

=> ↺ Squeezing Secrets Out Of An Amazon Echo Dot

• As we have seen time and time again, not every device stores our sensitive data in a respectful manner. Some of them send our personal data out to third parties, even! Today’s case is not a mythical one, however — it’s a jellybean Amazon Echo Dot, and [Daniel B] shows how to make it spill your WiFi secrets with a bit of a hardware nudge.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Gun Rights Groups Continue to Target Assault Weapons Bans Amid Mass Shootings

=> ↺ Why Congress Should Be Curtailing War Powers, Not Expanding Them

• Last month, the House and Senate Armed Services committees held hearings to discuss the Department of Defense’s legislative asks and priorities regarding U.S. special operations forces. In those hearings, Department officials made clear that one of their top priorities for the upcoming legislative cycle is expanding an obscure security cooperation authority: section 1202 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes the U.S. military to work “by, with, and through” foreign partners to counter foreign adversaries like Russia and China.

=> ↺ The Problem in Israel Goes Much Deeper Than Smotrich’s Individual Racism

• By his own admission, Israel’s new Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is a “fascist homophobe.” This declaration, which he made on January 16, should be enough to accentuate the violent nature of the new political concoction created by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last December.

=> ↺ Some Congress Members Need To Sit Down and Shut Up

• Not too long ago, senator Marco “Bring Back Aerial Dogfights” Rubio took to the airwaves to inform the American people that their military must send fighter jets to escort drones near Russia’s border.

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Ukrainian kickboxing champion dies from wounds sustained on the battlefield, mayor says

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Russia’s chief general ‘pushing the limits’ of Putin’s tolerance of failure in Ukraine, UK says

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia takes UN Security Council presidency

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Russia runs the UN Security Council this month. Ukraine says it’s the worst April Fools’ joke

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Gerasimov was expected to launch a winter offensive to extend control over Ukraine’s Donbas region. Eighty days on, it’s clear the ‘project has failed,’ UK says

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kyiv slams Russia’s Belarus nuclear plan

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Hear US official’s warning for Americans in Russia

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Russia blocks Goethe-Institut bank accounts

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Russia detains Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Russia will deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus – EU and NATO went ballistic

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] The Only Realistic Answer to Putin

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Jihadists target Africa and Afghanistan, but also eye China and Russia

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] Russia expert decodes Putin’s new threat

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Figure skaters fleeing Russia as Ukraine war rages on

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] How Russia’s War Broke the Backbone of the European Left

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Is Kazakhstan misleading world on firms fleeing Russia?

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Russians may compete as neutral athletes, IOC says

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] IOC to debate Russian pathway to Paris 2024 Olympics

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia suffers tank losses in Donetsk

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] US charges alleged Russian spy who tried to infiltrate ICC

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] America’s hypersonic arms race with China, explained

Environment

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ The City Wears a Coat to Bed

• The white army of winter spreads across the city. Boilers and radiators die in their sleep, their skin cold to the touch in the morning. The city wears a coat to bed. The city watches the wraith of breath rise in the kitchen.

• On Friday afternoons, the judges slip off their black robes and drive home. There is no light in the windows of the courthouse. There is no one to read the affidavit or sign the injunction to shove into the landlord’s hand so that heat courses through the heart of the boiler and the looping hard veins of the radiator again, no one to hear the tenant’s story translated, her sons and daughters shivering in their coats on the mattress, snot on their sleeves.

=> ↺ Why is India so thirsty for Russian oil?

• New Delhi has resisted Western pressure to freeze out Moscow, opting instead to strengthen trade ties with its long-standing ally — with the added benefits of tempering inflation while saving money.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ U.N. food chief says billions of dollars are needed to avert unrest and starvation

• Without billions of dollars more to feed millions of hungry people, the world will see mass migration, destabilized countries, and starving children and adults in the next 12 to 18 months, the head of the Nobel prize-winning U.N. World Food Program warned Friday.

Finance

=> ↺ Paris Is Overflowing With Trash—and With Rage at Macron

• On March 7, 1884, the newly appointed préfet of the Seine Eugène Poubelle decreed that every Paris apartment building must provide residents with covered containers—soon to be aptly called poubelles (trash bins)—to collect their refuse. Until then, everything from animal and human excrement to food scraps and hospital waste had been dumped directly onto the streets. The fetid black sludge that coated the pavement could disintegrate fabric. Surprisingly (at least by our modern hygienic standards), Poubelle’s decree was met with explosive hostility: Press campaigns, open letters, caricatures, slanders, and satirical songs attacked Poubelle and his poubelles.

=> ↺ How Corporate America Subverts Reform to Boost Profits

• One measure of corporate power’s dominance is its 24/7 relentless, profit-driven capacity to strike back and prevail over reforms or other efforts designed to give the people voice and fairness.

=> ↺ United Auto Workers Prepare for Big Fights Ahead Under New Reform Leadership

=> ↺ April 4 Runoff May Determine Whether Chicago Remains Playground for the Wealthy

=> ↺ Wall Street Bonuses Continue to Soar Compared to Worker Wages ​

• After a historic 22 percent spike in 2021, the average annual bonus for New York City-based securities industry employees fell 26 percent in 2022, according to just-released New York State Comptroller data. But the rate of increase in average Wall Street bonuses since the 2008 crash is still far higher than wage increases for ordinary workers, according to Institute for Policy Studies analysis of comptroller and BLS data.

=> ↺ Citibank Australia were pleased to close our account

• I stopped using Citibank for travel as soon as the sale was announced, because we all knew this would happen. It sucks, because it had decent support for ATMs in the US and Japan, and their phone support was among the better ones I interacted with.

=> ↺ GnuCash Review

• GnuCash is an accounting software that offers basic accounting functionality and is completely free, making it an excellent option for startups and small businesses with limited budgets, as well as for individuals interested in tracking their personal finances. GnuCash is a single-user system, so you won’t be able to add any additional users to the application. As a result, the product is great for a sole proprietor, but would not be a good fit for businesses expecting to grow. GnuCash is not cloud-based software, so you’ll have to download the application from their website.

• GnuCash was initially developed way back in 1997 as an alternative to Quicken, but newer releases of the application also include solid business features. GnuCash has been translated into 21 languages and offers solid multi-currency capability, making the product an excellent option for small businesses and startups that conduct business globally.

=> ↺ How Big Tech camouflaged Wall Street’s crisis

• Apple, at roughly $2.4 trillion, and Microsoft, at $2.1 trillion, are so large that, taken together, the two companies would be the third-largest sector of the index, behind tech and health care. They would be larger than the energy sector and roughly the size of the financials sector.

• This influence is a result of a decadeslong shift in both the markets and the economy since the dot-com boom, a change that accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis. Low interest rates put in place to support the economy after the Great Recession made borrowing cheap and pushed investors to seek out higher returns from riskier companies, spurring financing and growth for tech companies. Apple and Microsoft excelled.

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] If You “Don’t Dream of Labor,” You Should Organize for Socialism

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Imposing a nationwide TikTok ban can be US lawmakers’ only chance to restrict the app

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] France Bans All Fun Apps From Government Phones

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Civil servants in Eindhoven are no longer allowed to use TikTok at work

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Asian Americans are anxious about hate crimes. TikTok ban rhetoric isn’t helping

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] After TikTok chief’s grilling in Washington, Apple’s Tim Cook is all smiles in Beijing

=> ↺ White House talks with TikTok stall after blistering congressional hearing

• TikTok’s proposed $1.5 billion plan to avoid a U.S. ban would cordon off American user data in Texas-based Oracle servers. Oracle and other third-party auditors would be responsible for auditing the code to make sure it meets its commitment to the U.S. government. Security personnel who would eventually be approved by the U.S. government would oversee the arrangement.

• The White House has pushed for TikTok to totally divest the Chinese giant and has signaled that anything short of a sale will lead to a ban. The Chinese government has publicly expressed opposition to a ban.

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] The RESTRICT Act is more bad news for TikTok

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Dutch tax office also wants to ban apps like TikTok from work telephones

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Municipality of Amsterdam is going to ban TikTok on work phones; Telegram could be next

=> ↺ TikTok Enlisted Ex-Disney Communications Chief Zenia Mucha as Adviser in Fight Against U.S. Ban (Report)

• In addition to Mucha, TikTok tapped former Obama advisers David Plouffe and Jim Messina to prep Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, for more than a month before Chew’s March 23 appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee — which observers said only reinforced anti-TikTok attitudes among both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who are concerned about the app’s ownership by Chinese parent company ByteDance.

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] The 10 Craziest Moments From Congress’ TikTok Ban Hearing

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Why TikTok Needed to Pay for Influencers to Attend Anti-Ban Rally

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Asia Fact Check Lab: Can TikTok share US user data with China’s government?

=> ↺ Half of American Adults Support a U.S. Ban of TikTok, but Only 19% of the App’s Users Do

• Americans who are aware that TikTok is owned by the ByteDance are particularly likely to support banning it: About 60% of those surveyed who know TikTok’s parent company is based in China support the U.S. government banning the app, compared with 27% of those who are unaware of TikTok’s Chinese ties, according to the Pew survey.

=> ↺ Ship of Fools: The Race to Ban TikTok

• These so-called concerns seem to entirely revolve around the idea that because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, that the data TikTok collects can be accessed by the the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Personally I don’t really care what the CCP can or can not access. The fact we are opting to give so much data to any of these companies at all, regardless of what nation-states their corporate overlords are most associated with, is the actual problem we should be attacking.

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] How Many Countries Have Banned TikTok?

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Hyundai and Kia Offer Free Steering Wheel Locks After Rise in Vehicle Thefts

=> ↺ Can a White House initiative compel tech companies to write safer code?

• Since 1999, security researchers have logged at least 189 vulnerabilities in Exchange Server. There are likely many more but that was the first year that researchers began recording such flaws on the CVE List. In 2021 alone, Microsoft disclosed 31 Exchange vulnerabilities, its highest annual total. Using four of them, Chinese state-backed hackers utilized Exchange for a sprawling campaign targeting U.S. law firms, think tanks and defense contractors that hit perhaps as many as 30,000 targets. And last year, hackers returned to hit Exchange, targeting a flaw that Microsoft had failed to fix.

• Over nearly three decades, Exchange vulnerabilities have opened up businesses and government agencies to countless hacks, costing many millions of dollars and putting Americans at risk. Despite these enduring problems, Microsoft faces no real penalties beyond reputational harm for its security failures — nor do other software companies. When a consumer buys a piece of software, the terms of service will almost always exempt the provider from liability if something goes wrong.

=> ↺ Russia will preside over the U.N. Security Council for the month of April — Meduza

• Russia will preside over the U.N. Security Council during April 2023, the U.N. reports on Twitter.

=> ↺ Russian human rights advocates appeal to the European Commission and the Council of Europe to block Alexey Moskalev’s extradition to Russia — Meduza

• Russian human rights organizations Memorial and OVD-Info sent a letter to the European Commission and the Council of Europe, in which they ask international authorities to pay attention to the persecution of Alexey Moskalev and his daughter, Masha, in Russia.

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Russia: Two-year prison sentence for child’s drawing

=> ↺ Trump and the Triviality of Evil

• A New York Grand Jury empaneled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indicted the former president, Donald John Trump. So report Ilya Marritz, Andrea Bernstein, Bill Chappell and Vanessa Romo at NPR.

=> ↺ Biden Embraces Autocracies and Deteriorating Democracies to Challenge China

• The Biden administration opened its second Summit for Democracy this week with a panel featuring India’s Narendra Modi and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. As the leaders of their countries, both have pursued similar forms of exclusionary nationalism.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Social media’s new pay-for-play rules

• The new strategy “is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle,” Musk argued. “Voting in polls will require verification for same reason.”

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Tourist faces deportation after posting nude photo in Bali

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] YouTube closes Med Music TV channel without any explanation

=> ↺ Russia is persecuting dissenters by taking away their children

• The prosecution and conviction herald a new type of Kremlin clampdown: separating families as a punishment for anti-war activism. Outside the courtroom, Mr Moskalyov’s lawyer, Vladimir Biliyenko, expressed shock. “Never have I seen a verdict delivered without a defendant,” he said. “All I can say is I hope he is safe. Where is a secondary concern to me.” A day later, Mr Moskalyov was detained in a safehouse in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. He had apparently been in the process of being smuggled to the West.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Taliban shut down women-run broadcaster Radio Sada e Banowan, seal office

• On Thursday, March 30, authorities in the city of Faizabad, in Badakhshan province, shuttered the broadcaster’s operations and sealed its office, according to news reports and an employee of the radio station who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

• The officers at the scene, from the Taliban’s Directorate of Information and Culture and Directorate of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, accused the outlet of illegally airing music during the holy month of Ramadan. The Taliban banned playing and listening to music when it retook power in August 2021.

=> ↺ Taliban shutters women-run radio station for playing music

• Moezuddin Ahmadi, the director for Information and Culture in Badakhshan province, said the station violated the “laws and regulations of the Islamic Emirate” several times by broadcasting songs and music during Ramadan and was shuttered because of the breach.

=> ↺ ‘Let Him Go,’ Biden Says as Russia Orders American Journalist Held Until May

• Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was detained in Yekaterinburg, a city about 800 miles from the Russian capital, on accusations of espionage. His media outlet has denied those allegations.

• A Moscow court on Friday ordered Gershkovich to be held in pre-trial detention until May 29.

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Russia detains Wall Street Journal reporter for ‘spying’

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Russia’s Security Service Arrests American Reporter

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Labor’s labors lost? A year after stunning victory at Amazon, unions are stalled

• Since then, though, the Amazon Labor Union has gained little ground. It has yet to win another union election. And Amazon still refuses to sit down for contract negotiations.

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Russian authorities in Crimea deny medical treatment for jailed journalist Iryna Danylovych

=> ↺ NYPD’s Illegal Parking Needs to Be Curbed

• It’s a great idea, but for traffic safety advocates, the commissioner’s words sounded like a bitter joke. Every day, cops illegally park their personal vehicles on sidewalks, in crosswalks, at bus stops, and in bike lanes, turning the streets and sidewalks around every police precinct into a trash-strewn obstacle course (sanitation sweepers can’t clean gutters blocked by cars 24 hours a day).

=> ↺ Iran president says hijab is the law as unveiled women had yogurt thrown at them

• Growing numbers of women have defied authorities by discarding their veils after nationwide protests that followed the death in September of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman in the custody of the morality police for allegedly violating hijab rules. Security forces violently put down the revolt.

• Judicial authorities in a town near the northeastern city of Mashhad issued arrest warrants for the man seen pouring yoghurt over the heads of the two women, a mother and her daughter. They were also the subject of arrest warrants for flouting Iran’s strict female dress rules, state media reported.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Cat Skull For Internet Connection Divination

• [Emily Velasco] has an internet provider that provides sub-par connectivity. Instead of repeatedly refreshing a browser tab to test if the network is up, [Emily] decided to create an internet status monitor by embedding indicator lights in a cat skull…for some reason.

=> ↺ Tribal Nations Face Challenges in Accessing and Maximizing Funding: Connected America Conference

• Much of this development is being bolstered by federal funding. On March 23, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced two new grants through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, bringing its total to more than $1.75 billion awarded to 135 Tribal entities.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ PrimeWire Won’t Die or Stop Pirating, $21.7m Judgment Be Damned

• For more than a decade, pirate streaming site PrimeWire took every anti-piracy measure Hollywood could muster and simply carried on. Having seen enough, in 2021 the MPA sued PrimeWire in the U.S., seized its domains, pursued it around the world, and won itself a sweet $20.7m judgment and a permanent injunction. Like a zombie that refuses to die, PrimeWire is back doing what it’s always done.

=> ↺ Humans vs. machines: The fight to copyright AI art

• At a time when new AI programs like ChatGPT, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion seem poised to transform human expression as they smash records for user growth, the legal system still hasn’t figured out who owns the output — the users, the owners of the programs, or maybe no one at all.

=> ↺ Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Escape From 1927

• We’re nearing the end of our series of posts showcasing the winners in all six categories of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927. So far we’ve featured Best Remix winner Lucia, Best Visuals winner Urbanity, Best Adaptation winner To And Again, and Best Deep Cut winner The Pigeon Wager. Today, we’re turning the spotlight on the winner of the Best Digital Game category: Escape from 1927 by Jacob P. Silvia.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Have an A1 day

• Jealous of everyone who missed out on the endless stream of utterly boring April Fools jokes on IRC which were boring me to tears. I was crying bone. 🩻

• Good Friday used to be the boringest day of the year but now it’s April’s Fools Day. A day that’s an insult against comedy and taste. Every yawn-inducing bore-fest trite done-to-death over-templated clumsy cruel prank can go die in a sawmill.

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: ACIYRVP Wordo: JESUS

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