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● 04.25.23

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● Links 24/04/2023: A Focus on Red Hat and Fedora

Posted in News Roundup at 3:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Kernel Podcast: S2E4 – 2023/04/24

• Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 6.3, noting, “It’s been a calm release this time around, and the last week was really no different. So here we are, right on schedule”. As usual, the KernelNewbies website has a summary of Linux 6.3, including links to the appropriate LWN (Linux Weekly News) articles with deep dives for each new feature (if you like this podcast and want to support Linux Kernel journalism, please subscribe to Linux Weekly News).

• Linux 6.3 includes additional support for the Rust programming language, a new red-black tree data structure for BPF programs, and the removal of a large number of legacy Arm systems. 

• With the release of Linux 6.3 comes the opening of the “merge window” (period of time during which disruptive changes are allowed to be merged into the kernel source code) for what will be Linux 6.4 in another couple of months. The next podcast release will include a full summary.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ The 6.3 kernel is released

• Significant changes in this release include the removal of a lot of obsolete Arm board files and drivers, ongoing improvements to the (still minimal) Rust language support, red-black trees for BPF programs, ID-mapped mounts for tmpfs filesystems, BIG TCP support for IPv4, support for non-executable memfds, the hwnoise jitter-measurement tool, and a lot more. See the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) and the (in-progress) KernelNewbies 6.3 page for more information.

Applications

=> ↺ Machine Learning in Linux: Upscaler – upscale and enhance images

• Our Machine Learning in Linux series focuses on apps that make it easy to experiment with machine learning.

• Upscaler is GUI GTK4 software that uses sophisticated AI models to enhance your images by guessing what the details could be. It’s free and open source software.

• There’s a similar project we’ve reviewed called Upscayler. Upscaler is a different project, but both Upscaler and Upscayler are GUI frontends for Real-ESRGAN, software which creates practical algorithms for general image/video restoration.

=> ↺ Alternatives to popular CLI tools for Linux

• One of the many strengths of Linux is that there are lots of choices.

• This series looks at alternatives to popular CLI tools. Many of them are classic commands that have been modernised in some way, such as written in a funky programming language with additional functionality added. The alternatives are not necessarily drop-in replacements. The vast majority of alternatives offer a CLI, but we don’t exclude GUI tools.

• This is a new series, so bear with us while we ramp up the compilation.

• All the software featured here is free and open source.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Enable AppImage Support in Ubuntu 23.04

• If you’re an avid user of AppImages wondering why they don’t appear to work in Ubuntu 23.04, I’ve got you covered.

=> ↺ Optimise your ROS snap – Part 5

• Welcome to Part 5 of our “Optimise your ROS snap” blog series. Make sure to check Part 4. This fifth part is going to cover two different optimisations. The first one, covers the compression algorithm.

=> ↺ How to Set Up Linux and Linux Apps on a Windows PC

• Virtual machines have been around for a while—since 1999, to be precise, when VMware first introduced the concept of virtualization. They have evolved multiple times over the years, but the primary purpose is still the same: to help you run a specific operating system on top of a ‘host’ computer that works on a different OS.

• Windows has a few options to choose from when it comes to picking a virtual machine. VirtualBox, VMware, and Bootcamp are some of the free options you can try out. And then there’s Parallels, Bluestacks, etc., on the proprietary side, too.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Akonadi with SQLite on FreeBSD

• On FreeBSD, the default database for Akonadi is now SQLite3. Existing users of MySQL as the database are unaffected.

• “Unaffected” is perhaps not the whole truth. There’s an update to MySQL in the FreeBSD ports tree which bumps the default MySQL from 5.7 to 8.0, which happened to my workstation as well. After that, Akonadi would no longer start because MySQL wouldn’t accept the data directory. This is what I found in ~/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/mysql.err: [..].

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ What’s new in GNOME 44

• I use GNOME as my primary desktop environment on my Linux PC at home. GNOME gives me an easy-to-use graphical desktop that provides the flexibility I need yet doesn’t get in my way when I focus on my work.

• GNOME recently released GNOME 44 with a bunch of new features. I reached out to the GNOME team to ask about the latest version and what was in it. Here’s what team members Caroline Henriksen (brand manager), Matthias Clasen (GNOME developer and release team member), and Allan Day (design team) had to share.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Xorg back to old-school without libinput

• The Easy Dunfell-series does not have ‘xf86-input-libinput’ nor ‘libinput’ packages. Doesn’t have ‘xf86-input-tslib’ nor ‘tslib’ packages either.

• For the Kirstone-series, decided to get more “with it” and added the above packages. However, ‘xf86-input-tslib’ crashes Xorg on my Acer Aspire 3 laptop. Which doesn’t have a touchscreen.

New Releases

=> ↺ Arch-based blendOS has a Cool Trick up its Sleeve

• Imagine being able to install apps from Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, Android, and even the web onto a single distribution. That’s what blendOS does.

• Created by the same maintainer as Ubuntu Unity, blendOS allows you to use the native Arch package manager (pacman), as well as dnf (from Fedora) and apt (from Ubuntu). Both dnf and apt are made available as containers by way of the Podman container runtime engine (with a bit of help from Distrobox for init and NVIDIA driver support).

• Even though blendOS is based on Arch Linux, the developers have made it such that you can use any app from a supported distro. On top of that, you can choose between either the GNOME or KDE Plasma desktop.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Red Hat Layoffs Help Company ‘Compete In a New Environment’

• Early Monday morning, Matt Hicks, who has served as the company’s president and CEO for less than a year, sent a company-wide email announcing the Red Hat layoffs.

=> ↺ IBM pauses counting its billions to trim Red Hat staff

• On Monday, Matt Hicks, CEO of IBM-owned Red Hat, said the Linux distro maker plans to lay off just under four percent of its roughly 20,000 person workforce, which amounts to less than 800 people.

• In a published note, Hicks said the staff reductions will occur over the next few months.

• “Our reductions will focus on general and administrative and similar roles across all functions and represent a reduction of just under four percent in total,” he said. “We will not reduce roles directly selling to customers or building our products.”

=> ↺ Fedora Magazine: The Community Platform Engineering F2F 2023 Experience – Part I

• The Community Platform Engineering team is a Red Hat-sponsored team dedicated to the Fedora Project and CentOS Project that contributes to developing limited-scoped projects called initiatives, maintaining the community infrastructure, and helping manage releases of our offerings. As a remote-only team, the members were unable to get many opportunities to strategize the next big thing as a team and to bond with their fellow teammates beyond the scope of the designated work. Owing to the fact that the last team face-to-face meeting took place in Waterford City, Ireland in 2019, it became necessary for the team to meet up again when the travel restrictions started loosening up. After all, the popular saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” applies to everyone — even to community members and teammates, right?

• Barcelona, Spain was selected as the destination for the team face-to-face meeting and the duration was picked to be from 20th March 2023 to 23rd March 2023. As this was going to be one of the first times that people started embarking on travels again after a long spell of inactivity during COVID-19, the management made sure to begin the travel planning and event management well in advance to account for everyone in the team. This was no small feat to achieve considering the fact that the team had grown significantly since the last team face-to-face meeting; both in terms of member counts and scope diversity. The common accommodation point was chosen to be Hotel Abba Balmoral, Barcelona for the entire team, which is located at the very heart of the city and around a walking distance from the nearest Red Hat office.

=> ↺ Fedora Infrastructure Status: FMN frontend outage

• FMN’s web interface will be inaccessible during the outage, but the backend service that sends notifications will keep running. No notification will be lost.

=> ↺ The NeuroFedora Blog: Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 24 April 1300 UTC

• Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 24 April at 1300 UTC. The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 784

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 784 for the week of April 16 – 22, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Attention Android Users — Activate This New Privacy Setting to Help Keep Thieves Out of Your Phone « Android :: Gadget Hacks

=> ↺ Billions of Android users warned to delete 19 apps right now – ‘criminals’ may be hiding on your phone | The US Sun

=> ↺ Nokia G11 Plus is receiving Android 13 | Nokiamob

=> ↺ Investors, Take Note: GM, Ford, And Volkswagen Are All Adopting Android Automotive

=> ↺ BMW drivers can start unlocking their cars with Android phones

=> ↺ BMW brings digital car key support to Android

=> ↺ Best Android Car Stereos For Easy Connectivity – Times of India (April, 2023)

=> ↺ The 5 Best Android Apps For Editing Videos In 2023

=> ↺ Top 10 Ways to Turn Flashlight On and Off in Android

=> ↺ Android users in India may soon see a new alternative to Google Play Store | Android Central

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Luis Villa: Notes on using Freedom to block digital distractions

• I’ve been using freedom.to more or less since it launched. I was recently asked by someone how I use it, and since it didn’t fit in the text box on that platform, here’s a mid-ish-long set of notes on how I use it.

Events

=> ↺ Felipe Borges: Thanks everyone for Linux App Summit 2023!

• We just wrapped up the 2023 edition of Linux App Summit here in Brno, and the conference was a blast! I was delighted to see so many friends and new people. I feel the future of Desktop Linux and our ecosystem is in very good hands!

=> ↺ Joe Brockmeier: See you at Open Source Summit North America!

• In just a few weeks I’m going to be dusting off the slide clicker and giving two talks at Open Source Summit North America. I’ll be giving one talk on databases and containers, and another talk about working with text on Linux using Vim and other tools. Kind of a 101 for people who might want to delve into some command line magic for working with text.

=> ↺ Linux Plumbers Conference: eBPF & Networking Track

• Linux Plumbers Conference 2023 is pleased to host the eBPF & Networking Track!

• For the fourth year in a row, the eBPF & Networking Track is going to bring together developers, maintainers, and other contributors from all around the globe to discuss improvements to the Linux kernel’s networking stack as well as BPF subsystem and their surrounding user space ecosystems such libraries, loaders, compiler backends, and other related system tooling.

• The gathering is designed to foster collaboration and face to face discussion of ongoing development topics as well as to encourage bringing new ideas into the development community for the advancement of both subsystems.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ Annual Report: The Document Foundation in 2022

• In 2022 we had with elections for the foundation’s Membership Committee, along with regular Advisory Board calls, and support for other projects and activities (This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022 — we’ll post the full version here soon.)

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Andy Wingo: structure and interpretation of nativescript

Leftovers

Proprietary

=> ↺ What Frightens Me the Most About Stock Investing? “AI” (Microsoft, Google, Coca-Cola…..) Bonus: Crypto and Samsung

• No, not the thought of living in the Future War of The Terminator.

• [...]

• According to Gartner (which itself is Microsoft-affiliated), PC shipments have fallen more than 30% in the first quarter of 2023 vs. the comparable period last year, and so new PCs sales are not happening. Are people switching to Macs? Apple had the worst decline of a single OEM. Even worst than Lenovo.

• Microsoft has basically given up on demanding “TPM 2.0” or new PCs, and has unofficially started trying to cannibalize all the Windows 10 systems it can by waving them through. Figuring that they’ll at least make some extra money with all of the additional adware and spyware if they can’t sell you on a new PC?

=> ↺ Microsoft earnings: AI hype could take backseat to cloud growth troubles

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Monday

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (389-ds-base, chromium, connman, curl, redis, and thunderbird), Fedora (ceph, doctl, dr_libs, ffmpeg, freeimage, golang-github-digitalocean-godo, insight, libreswan, mingw-binutils, mingw-freeimage, mingw-freetype, openvswitch, rnp, suricata, webkitgtk, and wireshark), Mageia (dnsmasq, emacs, openimageio, php-smarty, redis, squirrel/supertux, and tcpdump), Red Hat (emacs), and SUSE (avahi, chromium, dmidecode, indent, jettison, openssl, openstack-cinder, openstack-nova, python-oslo.utils, and ovmf).

=> ↺ San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department shuts down internet systems following recent cyberattack

• More than two weeks after the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department was hit with a cyberattack, the department is still working to get all of its systems back online.

• Multiple sources have told Eyewitness News that the hack likely started after someone clicked a hyperlink that was malicious, and that suddenly encrypted many of the department’s systems.

=> ↺ Yellow Pages Canada confirms cyber attack as Black Basta leaks data

• Yellow Pages Group, a Canadian directory publisher has confirmed to BleepingComputer that it has been hit by a cyber attack.

• Black Basta ransomware and extortion gang claims responsibility for the attack and has posted sensitive documents and data over the weekend.

• Founded in 1908, the Yellow Pages Group today owns and operates the YP.ca and YellowPages.ca websites, along with Canada411 online service.

=> ↺ Naivas Supermarket’s System Hacked, Data Stolen

• Wycliffe Musalia reports that Kenya’s Naivas supermarket chain in Kenya has been the victim of a ransomware incident, but the chain assures customers that certain customer data such as payment card data was never at risk because it is not stored on their system.

• From the news report, it sounds like the company notified law enforcement, brought in CrowdStrike, and published a notice to consumers on Twitter on April 23.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Data Bill age­-gating worries edtech, gaming, social media firms

• With India retaining the age of children as below 18 in the upcoming Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, firms across several sectors such as edtech, gaming apart from social media are concerned about being significantly impacted.

• Experts pointed out that the international norms for age of consent is 16 and are arguing that a significant part of the population will have to go through many hoops to get Internet access. They argued that the poor’s access to videos, access to technology and access to platform information will get impacted further increasing the digital divide for them.

=> ↺ UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

• In an open letter, seven secure messaging apps—including Signal and WhatsApp—point out that the UK’s Online Safety Bill could destroy end-to-end encryption: [...]

=> ↺ WhatsApp and Signal Threaten to End Service in UK if ‘Online Safety Bill’ Passed

• Meta’s WhatsApp is threatening to leave the UK if the government passes the Online Safety Bill, saying it will essentially eliminate its encryption methods. Alongside its rival company Signal and five other apps, the company said that, by passing the bill, users will no longer be protected by end-to-end encryption, which ensures no one but the recipient has access to sent messages.

=> ↺ WhatsApp says it will leave the UK rather than weaken encryption under Online Safety Bill

• WhatsApp’s warning follows similar threats from another encrypted messaging app, Signal. The president of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, said last month that the company “would absolutely 100 percent walk [away from the UK] rather than ever undermine the trust that people place in us to provide a truly private means of communication.”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ The Protests in France Are About to Collide With the 2024 Paris Olympics

• “No withdrawal, no Olympics.” The slogan spread across social media after President Emmanuel Macron signed a law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in fiery protest. Macron, who undemocratically fast-tracked the legislation, has seen his popularity slump like a wet baguette. A recent poll showed that if last spring’s election between Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen were replayed today, the neofascist would trounce the centrist president 55 percent to 45 percent. Activists even torched the awning of one his favorite brasseries.

=> ↺ KNK: The genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 must be recognised by Turkey

• “Beginning on the 24th April,1915, the Ottoman Empire and their allies began a major genocide against the local Christians, together with a large number of Yezidi Kurds, living in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. This genocide was led by Ittihad and Terakki Society (The Committee of Union and Progress), the gangs of the Special Organization called Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa (a paramilitary organisation), the The Hamidiye Regiments/Cavalries and the officers of the Ottoman Army.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Celebrating Daniel Ellsberg Week: A Special Episode of the Project Censored Show with Kevin Gosztola and Daniel Ellsberg – The Project Censored Show

• NOTES: Kevin Gosztola is the managing editor of Shadowproof, and also writes at The Dissenter. He has covered the Julian Assange legal proceedings in the UK from their beginning, as well as other press-freedom and whistleblower cases. His new book on the Assange case, Guilty of Journalism is now available in bookstores. Daniel Ellsberg is best known for leaking classified Pentagon documents in 1971, which revealed covert operations against North Vietnam, as well as secret assessments that the war could not be won, and executive-branch lies to Congress and the US public. In the decades since then, Ellsberg has remained an antiwar activist, and an ally of whistleblowers. The news of his recent diagnosis of an inoperable cancer has prompted press-freedom advocates to declare a week of appreciation for Ellsberg, to begin Monday April 24.

Environment

=> ↺ Supreme Court Rejects Big Oil’s Bid to Derail Climate Liability Lawsuits

• The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied requests from major oil companies to intervene in climate liability lawsuits aimed at holding fossil fuel producers accountable for climate damages and alleged disinformation campaigns. The court’s denial of the industry’s petitions means that the lawsuits can advance in state courts, where companies like ExxonMobil and Shell could be forced to face trial.

• “Big Oil companies have been desperate to avoid trials in state courts, where they will be forced to defend their climate lies in front of juries, and today the Supreme Court declined to bail them out,” Richard Wiles, president of the advocacy organization Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement.

=> ↺ Supreme Court Allows Climate Lawsuits Against Big Oil to Go Forward in State Courts

• Justices Deny Fossil Fuel Companies’ Petition to Review Lower Court Rulings for Communities Across U.S., Removing a Major Hurdle for Dozens of Accountability Lawsuits Against Big Oil

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ E-fuels: EU-based automaker is testing ‘low carbon fuels’ for existing cars

• Amsterdam-headquartered automaker, Stellantis, is betting on synthetic fuels, also known as e-fuels, to keep combustion engines alive, even as the world looks to electrify transportation in the near future.

• Formed only in 2021, Stellantis is a merger of two legacy carmakers, the Italian Fiat Chrysler and French Peugeot S.A. Even as the merger has plans in place to comply with the European Union mandate to sell only battery electric vehicles by the end of the decade, Stellantis isn’t giving up on the combustion engine vehicles just yet.

=> ↺ OpenBSD: Managing an inverter/converter with NUT

• Having an Eaton Ellipse ECO UPS, I use the NUT project to manage it under OpenBSD.

=> ↺ Stockholm launches world’s first autonomous, fully-electric passenger ferry

• Stockholm has become the first city in the world to launch a self-driving, fully-electric commercial passenger ferry. The ferry, an electric catamaran with a capacity of 25 people, will operate between Kungsholmen and Søder Mellarstrand in Stockholm with 15 hours of continuous electric operation every day.

• The vessel is part of a project aimed at creating more sustainable urban mobility and attracting international interest due to its green profile.

=> ↺ Premiere of the world’s first self-driving ferry

• Stockholm launches the world’s first self-driving commercial passenger ferry – entirely powered by electricity. The Norwegian shipping company Torghatten AS is behind the initiative and will operate the passenger ferry between the Stockholm islands of Kungsholmen and Södermalm.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Supreme Court to hear cases involving disputes over public officials blocking people on social media

• The two cases right now may not have the same spotlight appeal, but the question remains: Do officials have the right to block their critics, or is their doing that a breach of free speech considering they work for the public? The outcome of these cases could have profound ramifications down the line.

=> ↺ Why child safety bills are popping up all over the US

• Bills ostensibly aimed at making the [Internet] safer for children and teens have been popping up all over the United States recently. Dozens of bills in states including Utah, Arkansas, Texas, Maryland, Connecticut, and New York have been introduced in the last few months. They are at least partly a response to concerns, especially among parents, over the potentially negative impact of social media on kids’ mental health.

• However, the content of these bills varies drastically from state to state. While some aim to protect privacy, others risk eroding it. Some could have a chilling effect on free speech online. There’s a decent chance that many of the measures will face legal challenges, and some aren’t necessarily even enforceable. And altogether, these bills will further fragment an already highly fractured regulatory landscape across the US.

• The situation is very messy and complex. But below the surface, there are some important arguments that will shape how tech is regulated in the US. Let me walk you through three of the most important debates.

=> ↺ Twitter a serious danger for traditional media’s ability to control narrative: Elon Musk

• Musk has always been at the loggerheads with traditional media.

=> ↺ Coding is the only global language, I wish more Indian kids learn it: Tim Cook

• In an interaction with IANS during his India visit last week, Cook said that coding is one thing schools worldwide including in India should embrace early in children’s lives.

=> ↺ Tucker Carlson out at Fox News, network confirms

• Fox News said Monday it has “agreed to part ways” with Tucker Carlson, its popular and controversial host, less than a week after settling a lawsuit over the network’s 2020 election reporting. The network said in a press release that the last program of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” aired Friday. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” the press release from the network said. Carlson became Fox’s most popular personality after replacing Bill O’Reilly in Fox’s prime-time lineup in 2016. He’s also consistently drawn headline for controversial coverage, including most recently airing tapes from the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to minimize the impact of the deadly attack.

=> ↺ Tucker Carlson Out At Fox News, No New Shows Or Farewell To Audience

• Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News, RadarOnline.com can confirm, after the network confirmed his shocking departure in a statement.

=> ↺ Don’t Let the Door Hit You in the Ass, Tucker Carlson!

• I hate to find happiness in the misfortune of others… oh, screw that. The news that Fox fired racist misognyist authoritarian Tucker Carlson, its top-rated host, makes me very happy indeed. I know they’ll replace him with someone comparably monstrous. But Carlson is a uniquely awful monster, and his departure is good news for truth, democracy—and women.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Be careful when using plant identifying apps, as they can be quite imprecise

• A study published in the journal Plos One shows that some of the most famous apps for identifying plants can have accuracy as low as 4%. The researchers used Google Lens, iNaturalist, Leaf Snap, PlantNet, Plant Snap and Seek, with the aim of identifying 38 species of herbaceous plants in their natural habitats in Ireland. What they found was that most of them yielded unreliable results; even the best one did not exceed 88% accuracy.

=> ↺ A repeatable scoring system for assessing Smartphone applications ability to identify herbaceous plants

• The ubiquity of Smartphone applications that aim to identify organisms, including plants, make them potentially useful for increasing people’s engagement with the natural world. However, how well such applications actually identify plants has not been compressively investigated nor has an easily repeatable scoring system to compare across plant groups been developed. This study investigated the ability of six common Smartphone applications (Google Lens, iNaturalist, Leaf Snap, Plant Net, Plant Snap, Seek) to identify herbaceous plants and developed a repeatable scoring system to assess their success. Thirty-eight species of plant were photographed in their natural habitats using a standard Smartphone (Samsung Galaxy A50) and assessed in each app without image enhancement. All apps showed considerable variation across plant species and were better able to identify flowers than leaves. Plant Net and Leaf Snap outperformed the other apps. Even the higher preforming apps did not have an accuracy above ~88% and lower scoring apps were considerably below this. Smartphone apps present a clear opportunity to encourage people to engage more with plants. Their accuracy can be good, but should not be considered excellent or assumed to be correct, particularly if the species in question may be toxic or otherwise problematic.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Facebook Made BuzzFeed, Then Killed It

• In his memo announcing the closure of BuzzFeed’s news operations, CEO Jonah Peretti acknowledged a grave mistake: He hadn’t worked out that Facebook wasn’t his friend.

=> ↺ Journalist Kayvan Samimi rearrested in Iran, held in undisclosed location

• On April 20, authorities in Tehran arrested Samimi, the editor-in-chief of the state-run Iran-e Farda magazine, and took him to an undisclosed location, according to news reports. Samimi was due to speak on April 21 on a panel organized by a group of Iranian journalists and university professors, according to those reports and a person familiar with the situation who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, for fear of government reprisal.

=> ↺ Chinese journalist Dong Yuyu held since February 2022, facing espionage charges

• On March 23, 2023, Dong’s family was notified that he would face trial for espionage, according to that statement and a statement by the U.S. National Press Club. Dong’s family said they had kept his detention private in hopes that the charges could be reduced or dropped, but went public after they were informed that his case would be sent to trial.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ A Group of Amazon Drivers Just Joined One of the Biggest Unions in the US

• Amazon drivers and dispatchers in California have joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the oldest, largest, and most powerful unions in the U.S., to organize for better working conditions, according to an announcement by the Teamsters on Monday.

• On the same day, workers marched on Amazon’s management offices at the warehouse to demand that the company respect their right to unionize. This is the first time the Teamsters have successfully organized an Amazon-related facility.

=> ↺ U.S., EU, Britain Tighten Sanctions On Iran For Rights Abuses, With Focus On IRGC

• The European Council on April 24 said it was placing sanctions on eight individuals, with most linked to the IRGC and its financial arm and on telecom company Ariantel, which it said plays a key role in government efforts to “quash dissent and critical voices in Iran.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Boosting connectivity in border villages: 254 4G mobile network towers launched in Arunachal

• The towers will connect around 70,000 people with the fast [Internet], and among them are many villages that have remained unconnected since independence.

• These towers will provide connectivity to 336 villages, mostly in border areas. The government has already approved the installation of altogether 2,605 4G mobile towers which will cater to 3,721 villages in this frontier state.

=> ↺ The Philippines Internet landscape

• The Philippines is an archipelago comprising three major island groups: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao with 7,641 islands at high tide and a population of 113 million spread across roughly 2,000 of those islands. The Philippines has 10 international subsea cable systems, nine International Cable Landing Stations (CLS), 678 Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs), 10 local Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), and 14 data centres currently.

=> ↺ All We Saw at SEE 11

• On 4-5 April, the South East Europe (SEE) Internet community gathered in the coastal town of Split, Croatia – the same country where we held the first SEE meeting over a decade ago. Over 100 participants from 19 countries joined to discuss developments in IPv6, BGP security, DNS, peering, IXPs, and the local telecommunications market.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ The Evolution and Limitations of Hardware Security Modules

• Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) have not substantially evolved in the last two decades. The advent of enclave technology, such as Intel SGX and AMD SEV, despite their weaknesses [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], has enabled some to build mildly re-envisioned versions of these devices [10]. However, the solutions currently available on the market today are far from meeting the needs of the market. In this paper, we will explore what some of the shortcomings of these devices look like and discuss how the market for them has evolved.

=> ↺ Switch hacker Gary Bowser released from jail, will pay Nintendo 25-30% income ‘for the rest of his life’

• Bowser was sentenced in February 2022 to 40 months in prison for his part as a member of a hacking group called Team-Xecuter, which in 2013 began creating and selling circumvention devices enabling users to play illegal ROMs on consoles, including Switch and 3DS.

=> ↺ Switch hacker Gary Bowser released from jail, will pay Nintendo 25-30% income ‘for the rest of his life’

• In order to pay off Nintendo fully under this agreement, Bowser would have to earn at least $40 million before taxes. Given that Bowser is 53 years old, TorrentFreak suggests this will mean Bowser is unlikely to ever fully clear his debt and will likely be paying Nintendo for the rest of his life.

=> ↺ Netflix to invest $2.5 billion in South Korean content

• “Netflix is delighted to confirm that we will invest USD 2.5 billion in Korea including the creation of Korean series, films, and unscripted shows over the next four years,” Sarandos said in a statement given to AFP Tuesday.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Apple declares ‘resounding victory’ after decision reached in Epic Games appeal

• An appeals court on Monday mostly sided with Apple over its App Store rules in a suit with Epic Games.

• The decision signals that Apple’s control over the App Store and the fees it charges likely won’t significantly change as a result of an ongoing legal challenge by Epic Games.

=> ↺ Apple cannot ban links to outside App Store payments, US appeals court says

• Apple said it may appeal the decision. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld a 2021 order in an antitrust case brought by “Fortnite” creator Epic Games that could require Apple to allow developers to provide links and buttons for third-party in-app payment options and avoid paying sales commissions to the iPhone maker.

• Apple shares ended the day up slightly at $165.33. The appeals court sided with Apple on nine other matters in the case, agreeing with the trial court that Apple’s App Store rules do not violate antitrust laws and allowing its commissions of up 30% for in-app payments to stand.

Patents

=> ↺ Double patenting and the Brazilian patent practice

• The Brazilian Patent Statute (Law #9,279/96) does not explicitly prohibit double patenting per se.  However, as shown in the statistics set out below, the BRPTO regularly considers double patenting.  This is based on the BRPTO’s interpretation of Article 6 of the Patent Statute (as set out below).

=> ↺ AI Inventor and the Ethics Trap for US Patent Attorneys

• The Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thaler v. Vidal, a case involving inventor Dr. Stephen Thaler’s attempt to patent an invention created by his artificial intelligence (AI) system, DABUS. Thaler argued that DABUS, not himself or any other human, conceived the invention and identified its significance. However, both the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit  (CAFC) maintained that US patent laws require a human inventor, and as a result, they refused to consider Thaler’s patent application.

• In his petition to the Supreme Court, Thaler asked if the Patent Act restricts the statutory term “inventor” solely to human beings. The current legal stance in the US remains that the answer to this question is “yes,” human inventors and only human inventors.

=> ↺ Intel’s Patent Details Meteor Lake’s ‘Adamantine’ L4 Cache

• While the patent itself does not mention Meteor Lake, images supplied with it clearly demonstrate a processor with two high-performance Redwood Cove and eight energy-efficient Crestmont cores on one tile produced on Intel 4 fabrication process, a graphics chiplet based on Intel’s Gen 12.7 architecture (Xe-LPG), an SoC tile containing two more Crestmont cores, and an I/O chiplet interconnected using Intel’s Foveros 3D technology. The description corresponds to that of Intel’s Meteor Lake processor. Meanwhile, the Adamantine L4 cache can be used for a wide array of applications beyond Meteor Lake.

=> ↺ US Supreme Court snubs that guy who wants AI recognized as patent inventors

• This all stems from Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist and founder of Imagination Engines, who sued the head of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2020 after his patent applications were rejected. Thaler had filed them on behalf of his AI system named DABUS, claiming the software came up with the idea of a fractal food container and a unique pattern for an emergency light beacon that he wished to patent. Thaler put DABUS down as the inventor in the submissions.

• The USPTO, however, didn’t accept Thaler’s paperwork since it could only consider inventions from “natural persons” and not machines. In an attempt to challenge the decision, Thaler and his lawyer Ryan Abbott sued Andrei Iancu, who was the director of the patent office at the time, in federal court in eastern Virginia. The lawsuit was later directed against Katherine Vidal, who took over to lead the office in 2022.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Ed Sheeran hit, Marvin Gaye classic soul of copyright trial

• While the jury will hear the recordings of both songs, probably many times, their lyrics — and vibes — are legally insignificant. Jurors are supposed to only consider the raw elements of melody, harmony and rhythm that make up the composition of “Let’s Get It On,” as documented on sheet music filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

=> ↺ Ed Sheeran Trial: Did He Copy Marvin Gaye? Here’s What to Know.

• Sheeran is expected to testify at the trial, which is getting underway less than two weeks before he plans to release a new album and begin an extensive North American stadium tour. The case, originally filed in 2017, has been delayed multiple times.

• The music industry is keenly interested in the outcome. Over the last decade, the business has been rocked by a series of infringement suits that have involved questions of just how much or how little of the work of pop songwriters can be protected by copyright, and how vulnerable they are to legal challenges.

=> ↺ Ed Sheeran to face trial over copyright claim involving Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get it On

• The heirs of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the 1973 soul classic, are suing Sheeran, alleging the English pop star’s hit 2014 tune Thinking Out Loud has “striking similarities” to Let’s Get It On and “overt common elements”.

=> ↺ Did Ed Sheeran hit pilfer Marvin Gaye classic? Trial to tell

• The lawsuit filed in 2017 has finally made it to a trial that is expected to last a week in the Manhattan federal courtroom of 95-year-old Judge Louis L. Stanton.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Armchair Philosopher on Definition of Creativity

• Recently, I got into a debate with a friend of mine about whether AI art is.. art and whether is should be allowed in commercial projects. He is on the position that it is not as it can only mix and replicate existing works. Thus not art. While I’m on the team calming that it can be and we don’t know yet due to the lack of understanding of the what even art exactly means. Also that when we advance enough to create a special kind of AI – a full brain simulation – it should be treated as an actual person and thus be allowed to create art.

=> ↺ Sunrise + More Birds 2023-04-24 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

• I caught this nice sunrise on the way into work, about 6am.

=> ↺ Album #244: B.B. King – Live at the Regal

• Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of live albums. This is a good one, but it’s still a live album. I’ve also yet to find a way in to the blues generally, so.. this was never going to be a huge hit for me.

• What does work is the energy of the whole thing. The whole band are working together amazingly, there is just the right amount of crowd noise – no background chatter, but enthusiastic whoops and cheers, giving you some of the feeling off being there. And the charisma of B. B. is inspirational. But the songs aren’t for me, so while it was a pleasure to listen to, I won’t be back soon.

=> ↺ Album #243: George Michael – Faith

• The good songs are great. There just aren’t that many great songs on here. By the end it really starts tailing off. It’s a quintessential solo effort after a band breaks up: some good ideas, but too much filler.

=> ↺ When Seemingly Infinite Becomes Suddenly Finite

• … or, we’re buying a house!

• We’ve been renting our current apartment for 4yr now, and yesterday our bid was accepted on a house. Needless to say, it’s been a whirlwind of a day. Shopping for mortgages, emailing attorneys, organizing pay stubs, etc.

• But what struck me most has been the sensation that the small routines of my life will be changed. The little things, like the dishwasher door needing an extra shove or the lamp chord working 25% of the time. In our four years here I’ve come to accept them as part of life; seemingly infinite in nature.

• And then just like that, they’re finite. As I loaded the dishwasher tonight, I thought about how it was one of the last dozen times I would run it.

Technical

=> ↺ thoughts on nosurf

• I thought back on my time when I was really active in the nosurf subreddit. I used to be one of the three taking care of the project around 2018/19; I helped moderate the subreddit, build the site, write articles for the blog, make informative threads on the forum and so on (as anthymnx) I left at some point because of differing opinions about the project and personal issues. Right now I think the sub is leaderless, accounts deleted, website is no more, forum and blog are also gone, last time I checked.

=> ↺ On So-Called AI

• The marketers are at it again, whipping up a public frenzy with generative AI. To be fair, it’s pretty amazing, but once again it is not what it looks like, and the backlash will inevitably come, bringing yet another AI winter.

• History rhymes, and in case of AI it rhymes like clockwork, in 30-year cycles. Long enough for a new generation to come and be excited by the mass media frenzy before forgetting all about it.

=> ↺ New Technological Frontiers Pt. 2

• It was I guess “technically” the first chatbot to use GPT-4, and I would say it is still the best one currently on the market. Initially rolled on February 7th, it was memed at launch. Not only did it make errors, it made headlines when it seemingly tried to convince people it wanted to be human, along with flirting with people.

=> ↺ Error mounting /dev/sdb2 wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error

=> ↺ Online Gambling

• Or maybe it should just be called gambling? I don’t know. Regardless, the ads are everywhere. I’ve been a baseball fan since I was a teenager. I watch the Blue Jays, and catch most games. Previously, when the games were available via MLB.tv, there were no ads. It was glorious: just baseball and a wavering image during commercial breaks. Then, a couple of years ago, Rogers (the corporate owners of the Jays) decided to black out the Jays on MLB.tv. If you were living in Canada, you had to either pay up for Sportsnet Now, or, you know, sail the high seas.

=> ↺ ESP32

• Surprisingly, I am really fond of this device — even though it is pretty much an undocumented hodgepodge of weird crap. However, it is a lot of weird crap in there, and the CPU is interesting.

=> ↺ darkmode..

• I found that about:config option privacy.resistFingerprinting has a feature that breaks light and dark mode css styling. so if you’re scratching your head why websites stay stuck in light mode even if about:config’s style changes, it is probably this.

=> ↺ notes about Firefox

• /I/ prefer to not use DNS over HTTPS because I run my own DNS servers and would prefer for everything on my network to use them.

=> ↺ Dating Apps Suck 2: Electric Boogaloo

• Tomorrow will be the year anniversary of the first post I made to Gemini

• [...]

• I’ve come to realize that many of the things I described are just part of the game of online dating. Being left without a response is par for the course, along with unprompted unmatching. I’ve even done it myself a few times. Each time it would happen to me I would feel so hurt, thinking “why couldn’t they have just let me down easy with a simple no”, but after some time I’ve realized how much worse that would feel. Likewise it’s not easy to say no to someone. Some time after June of last year I stopped getting completely infatuated with each person I matched with, and after those dates with Jade in August, I’ve stopped liking anyone I’ve matched with all together. Sure there will be aspects that I may find attractive, either in their appearance or something interesting in their bio, but I come at them with a neutral attitude, looking for things to be weary of, not solely aspects to admire.

=> ↺ Postfix SASL Configuration

• Thanks to the Free Thinker and his recent post on postfix configuration [0]. While I was aware of port 587 and its use, I have been using the same postfix config for years and have always used port 25 for SASL authentication from remote email clients without much thought. I also use fail2ban on the server because of the non-stop SASL login attempts.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Splitting French and English capsules

• I was posting both french and english posts on this capsule, but since I created a new one, I will only post english posts here.

=> ↺ A comic, a cameo and an extraction of the incorrect essence

• So a few years ago I was in a Discord chat for /r/worldbuilding. I was talking to one of the mods, who happened to be running a web comic at the time. As it turned out, the comic is mostly horror-themed, which is /entirely/ not my cup of tea, so I don’t actually read it.

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

=> Techrights

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