This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2023/04/29/many-companies-collapsing/.

● 04.29.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 29/04/2023: Many Companies Collapsing (or Resort to Enron-Style Accounting) and Yet Another Big Bank Bailout

Posted in News Roundup at 12:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ The Kubuntu Focus Ir14 Is a Premium Linux Laptop With KDE

• The options for Linux laptops are growing more and more every day. While System76 mostly leads the charge, Kubuntu Focus also has some options. And this new laptop is geared towards getting work done.

• The Kubuntu Focus Ir14 is the latest laptop by the Kubuntu Focus team in partnership with Carbon Systems. According to the press release it’s designed to “exude quality everywhere the customer looks and touches.” While we can’t evaluate that statement before we get our hands on one of these—and we do plan on reviewing this laptop—the Focus Ir14 sure has a premium look, with a metal finish and narrow screen bezels.

=> ↺ Kubuntu Focus Ir14 is a 3 pound Linux laptop with Core i5-12450H and Thunderbolt 4 for $895 and up

• The Kubuntu Focus Ir14 is a compact notebook with a 14 inch FHD+ display, a 45-watt Intel Core i5-12450H processor, a Thunderbolt 4 port with support for 40 Gbps data transfer speeds and support for up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of storage.

• The 3 pound notebook is also the latest in a line of Kubuntu Focus notebooks that ship with the Ubuntu-based Kubuntu GNU/Linux distribution and the KDE Plasma user interface. It’s available now for $895 and up.

• For that price you get a notebook with 8GB of DDR4-3200 memory and 250GB of solid state storage, but both are user upgradeable. Or you can configure the system with up to 64GB of RAM and up to two 2TB SSDs before ordering.

• Kubuntu Focus also offers an option to have full disk encryption enabled or disabled before the laptop ships.

=> ↺ TUXEDO unveils next-gen InfinityBook Pro 14: A powerful, ultra-mobile Linux laptop

• TUXEDO has announced the latest generation of its popular InfinityBook Pro 14, an ultra-mobile yet powerful business laptop featuring a 16:10 3K display, massive 99 Wh battery, and full Linux support.

• The new 8th generation InfinityBook Pro 14 boasts a combination of an ultra-light and slim magnesium body, a high-end processor, and the maximum battery capacity allowed for airplane carry-on. This combination ensures maximum mobility and strong performance for business, multimedia, and even image and video editing on a premium 14-inch high-resolution display.

=> ↺ TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen8 Linux Ultrabook : Pre-Order Now

• TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen8 Linux Ultrabook is now available for Pre-order. Powered by an Intel Core i7-13700H CPU processor, you will see the massive high-end specs that are more than enough to be the powerful Linux ultrabook. You will find the beautiful InfinityBook Pro 14 with a 14-inch 90Hz 2880×1800 pixels resolution display (16:10 aspect ratio), 400 nits brightness, and full sRGB color space coverage.

Applications

=> ↺ Play God in the Linux Terminal With Conway’s Game of Life

• If you spend a lot of time working with the Linux terminal, you may already have delusions of divine power—especially if you’re logged in as root.

• Take some time out from raining frogs on your users with this classic cellular automata simulation, and sit back as evolution takes its course.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Responsive Yearly Calendar with Flexbox

• The wrapper which holds all the calendars uses flex-wrap. This means there’s no need to set explicit breakpoints – if there’s no horizontal space, the calendar will move to the next row.

=> ↺ Of Sun Ray laptops, MIPS and getting root on them

• I like Sun Ray laptops. They make surprisingly useful thin clients. Here, going from right to left, I’m playing Quake on my Solaris UltraBook IIi while it serves a Sun Ray session via Sun Ray Server Software (SRSS) to my silver Sun Ray 2N in the middle, and on my Accutech Gobi on the left I’m root.

=> ↺ Improving my interactive jq workflow with ijq, bash and tmux

• I’m a big fan of ijq and how it allows me to explore JSON data interactively with jq expressions. With a small script I have improved my workflow by being able to capture the jq expression from ijq and use it easily on the command line.

=> ↺ More notes on Linux’s /proc/locks and NFS as of Ubuntu 22.04

• About a year ago, when we were still running our NFS fileservers, I investigated /proc/locks a bit (it’s documented in the proc(5) manual page). Since then we’ve upgraded our fileservers to Ubuntu 22.04 (which uses Ubuntu’s ’5.15.0′ kernel), and there’s some things that are a bit different now, especially on NFS servers.

=> ↺ How To Install Nginx on Fedora 38

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nginx on Fedora 38. Are you looking for a powerful and efficient web server to serve your website or application on Fedora 37? Look no further than Nginx! Nginx (pronounced “engine x”) is a high-performance web server that is known for its speed and reliability.

=> ↺ Securing an Ubuntu Linux server with SELinux

• Ubuntu uses AppArmor by default. It’s a great system that does roughly what SELinux claims to do. However, if you wish to use SELinux instead, you’ll need to disable AppArmor. To disable AppArmor on Ubuntu Server, do the following.

• First, SSH into your Ubuntu server system (or physically sit at it and use the terminal). Once you’ve logged into the terminal, use the systemctl disable command to disable AppArmor from your Ubuntu system.

=> ↺ How to upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04

• Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster has just been released, and it brings some exciting new features to the table. The fresh Linux kernel, Gnome Shell 44, completely revamped installer, new file-picker features, and more make this upgrade well worth considering. This guide will help you make the switch to 23.04 and explore all the new features it has to offer.

=> ↺ How to install Cockpit for Linux | TechTarget

• Linux admins will need to use some of these commands to install Cockpit and configure firewalls. Admins can also connect to one or more servers through Cockpit via these steps.

=> ↺ Microsoft Edge & Brave browsers not loading pages or crashing (‘Error code: SIGILL’) on Fedora & other Linux distros (workaround inside)

=> ↺ No, You Don’t Need Microsoft Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and Here’s Why

• The short answer is no, you don’t. But if you wanted to know why, read on as we explore why you don’t need WSL.

Games

=> ↺ Joe Russo & ‘Fortnite’s Donald Mustard Weigh In on the Future of Storytelling, Gaming & Entertainment [Exclusive]

• MUSTARD: OK, so this is something I can – I won’t tell you what, but I can talk about. Do you know what motion capture is? You see the suits and the balls… I was in one of our studios maybe two weeks ago, and I was shooting a scene. So I had a bunch of actors in mocap suits in an actual space, and the scene I was shooting happened to be in a space about the exact size of the mocap area, but I was shooting it through– I mean, I had an iPad, but I had it on like a camera rig. So I had actual actors acting out this scene, but I am looking at it through an iPad that I’m holding as a camera.

• It was one of the most surreal experiences, the most Holodeck experiences I’ve ever had because what I’m seeing is literally… I’m in this space that’s all rendering real-time. It’s all near photoreal, right? And I’m just walking around this space, and it was like this augmented reality, but I could, through my lens, I don’t see them in their mocap suits, I see the characters that they’re playing, and I’m in the space, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m gonna move around behind this wall,” and, “Oh, that’s cool, that dish is in the way and I’m gonna shoot through it,” and I can then give them direction as they’re moving around.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Martín Abente Lahaye: Flatseal 2.0

• To celebrate Flatseal reaching 800,000 downloads on Flathub, a new release is out! Flatseal 2.0 comes with improved visuals powered by GTK 4 and Libadwaita and, with that, a few quality of life improvements and bug fixes.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ BlendOS 2 is Here to Solve all Your Linux Problems – Gizchina.com

• Rudra Saraswat, the developer behind BlendOS has released the second version. He calls this version BlendOS 2 Avial. This release happens to be the second largest release of this unique unchangeable GNU / Linux distribution. The BlendOS works by blending multiple Linux distributions to work as one. It blends Arch Linux, Fedora Linux and Ubuntu to work as one big operating system. The BlendOS 2 is released now, and it promises support for Android apps out of the box.

• The BlendOS 2 comes with the WayDroid project which allows for support of Android apps. The WayDroid project is an open-source container-based solution which allows users to run the full Android operating system inside Linux. This makes it a lot easier to install Android apps from popular stores like Aurora or F-Droid. The best part is that users can use these apps together with native Linux apps. With BlendOS 2, Android app developers can also be able test the apps in Android Studio using WayDroid. So, developers will no longer need the help of an extra heavy Android emulator.

Reviews

=> ↺ Fedora 37 Workstation quick review

• What did we learn here today? Not much. Did I review Fedora 37? Not per se. Then again, yes. I mean, you interact with the operating system in some way, and if that initial interaction is mostly frustrating and difficult, then there’s no point going on. I found myself wasting mouse clicks, and my eyes tingling from sub-optimal UI settings, be it colors, font choice, or else. I realized I was doing a pointless ritual of undoing Gnome defaults to get a classic desktop scheme. That’s just unnecessary.

• Fedora also comes in other guises, including Plasma. Perhaps there, I could discover the wonders of its tech stack. And usually, Fedora has a lot of decent, new stuff. But there’s no LTS, it’s all short-lived bleeding-edge tech, and you also need to hunt for proprietary stuff if you wanna do conventional fun. All in all, it makes no sense for everyday usage, especially if you want peace and quiet.

• And yes, Fedora has become quite stable in the last few years, and there’s no real feeling of “beta” about it anymore, but even so, I don’t want to be upgrading my operating system, pretty much ever, let alone every few months. Then, for a given distro, overall usability, efficiency and performance will be closely tied to the choice of the desktop environment, so the conclusion there is quite obvious. Anyway, I vowed a couple of years back to stop doing distro reviews for the sake of it, and focus on my fun factor. There was little of it to be had today, so I cut the review short. I think I’ll have a look at Fedora 38 Plasma soon, but I don’t think I will try the stock Gnome release any time soon. That venue will have a consistent outcome for me, alas. Take care, fellow Tuxers, see you around.

New Releases

=> ↺ Nitrux 2.8.0 Brings a Host of System Improvements and Android Support

• Nitrux is a desktop-focused Linux distribution based on the Debian unstable branch, featuring a heavily modified KDE Plasma desktop environment called NX Desktop, the MauiKit application framework, and a unique approach to package management.

• That means there will be no conventional package manager here. Instead, all the apps you need can be installed as Flatpak packages, AppImages, or inside Distrobox containers.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ How a little tech startup in the Triangle took on Microsoft … and won

• “How is that possible, that one of the world’s biggest technology companies … loses the product of the year to a company with 50 employees in the tobacco fields of North Carolina?”

• Heading into 1998, the software provider Red Hat was little known outside a core of coders and computer geeks.

• The 5-year-old company worked out of nondescript offices in Durham where it employed fewer than 40 people. Local press was rare, let alone national attention. Its unique approach to software, called open source, was niche, arcane and not obviously profitable. How do you build a business off a free code?

=> ↺ Red Hat layoffs prompt calls to unionize, CEO responds • The Register

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian “bookworm” release on June 10 [LWN.net]

• For those who are waiting for the upcoming Debian “bookworm” release, the date has now been set: it’s coming out on June 10. The full-freeze date for the distribution will be May 24.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu 23.10 Codename Revealed as “Mantic Minotaur”

• As per Launchpad, home of Ubuntu development, Ubuntu 23.10 is codenamed “Mantic Minotaur”.

• This Machiavellian mandate may manifest as a milestone worthy of …Nope, I’m running out of words beginning with M — but what does it mean?

• Well, ‘Mantic‘ is an adjective relating to divination or prophecy.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 23.10 “Mantic Minotaur” Release Schedule

• Ubuntu 23.10 “Mantic Minotaur” Release Schedule

• Ubuntu 23.10, “Mantic Minotaur”, will be the next version of Ubuntu that is slated for release later on October 12th of this year (2023). It is the last interim release before the next Long Term Support release, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS has reached End-Of-Life

• This means that the Xfce, audio, video, graphics, photography, and publishing components of your system will no longer receive updates, plus we at Ubuntu Studio will no longer support it after today, 28-April-2023, though your base packages from Ubuntu will continue to receive security updates from Ubuntu until 2025 since Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu Core continue to receive updates.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Pico GameBoy Cable Sniffer Emulates Pokémon Trading

• Breadcodes is using a Raspberry Pi Pico to emulate Game Boy functions for Pokémon and can even print images to an original Game Boy Printer.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android Circuit: Galaxy S24 Leak, OnePlus Pad Pricing, Google Teases Pixel 7a Power

=> ↺ 7 Best Procreate Alternatives For Android Phones

=> ↺ Dimensity 9200+ GeekBench 6 score breaks Android record – gets a launch date – Gizchina.com

=> ↺ Why you should use MagSafe on Android before your phone is even compatible

=> ↺ Nothing Phone (1) to get early access to Android 14 Beta 1 – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Material You in Android 14 getting bolder ‘Fidelity’ colors

=> ↺ How to Remove Bloatware From Your Android Phone With Universal Android Debloater

=> ↺ How to Reset Google TV or Android TV (Soft – Hard Reset)

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Data@Mozilla: Never Look at the Data: Why did we start getting so many pings from Korea?

• Something happened on January 5, 2023. All of a sudden we abruptly started receiving a number of pings from Firefox Desktop clients in Korea equal to two times the size of the entire Korean Firefox Desktop population.

• What happened? How did we notice it? What did we do about it?

=> ↺ Chris H-C: Never Look at the Data: Why did we start getting so many pings from Korea?

• As little as it needed solving for the sake of business needs, it still needs solving for the sake of my curiosity. 

• :chutten

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ CloudNativePG 1.20.0, 1.19.2 and 1.18.4 Released!

• The CloudNativePG Community has announced version 1.20.0, a new minor release of the CloudNativePG Operator, which introduces support fordeclarative role management, allowing you to manage PostgreSQL users and groups via configuration, and declarative hibernation, which enables you to shut down all running pods in a PostgreSQL cluster and keep only the persistent volumes.

=> ↺ PGConf NYC 2023 – Call for Speakers and Sponsors

• PGConf NYC 2023 (October 3 – 5, 2023, New York City) is packed with user stories and best practices for how to use PostgreSQL. Join us in New York City and connect with other developers, DBAs, administrators, decisions makers, and contributors to the open source PostgreSQL community!

• The call for papers open until June 12, 2023! We want to hear your PostgreSQL stories.

PostgreSQL ☛ credcheck v1.1 releasedPostgreSQL credcheck extensionThe credcheck PostgreSQL extension provides few general credential checks, which will be evaluated during the user creation, during the password change and user renaming. By using this extension, we can define a set of rules: [...]allow a specific set of credentialsreject a certain type of credentials

Licensing / Legal

=> ↺ Fixing our Self Defeating Licence Compatibility Problems in Open Source

• The first thing to note is that Open Source incompatible licence combination isn’t as easy as simply combining the code under a single licence: You have to preserve the essential elements of both licences in the code which is combined (although not necessarily the whole project), so for an Apache-2/GPLv2 combination, you’ll need a note on the files saying they follow the stronger Apache patent termination and indemnity even if they’re otherwise GPLv2. However, as long as you’re careful the combination works for either of two reasons: because the Apache-2 restrictions aren’t material additional restrictions under the GPLv2 preamble or because no-one was actually harmed in the making of the combination (or both).

• One can see from the above that similar arguments can be applied to various other supposedly incompatible licence combinations (exercise for the reader: try it with BSD-4-Clause and GPLv2). One final point that should be made is that licences and contracts are also all about what was in the minds of the parties, so for open source licences on community code, the norms and practices of the community matter in addition to what the licence actually says and what courts have made of it. In the final analysis, if the community norm of, say, a GPLv2 project is to accept Apache-2 code allowing for the stronger patent and indemnity clauses, then that will become the understood basis for interpreting the GPLv2 licence in that community.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Health of the KDE community (2023 Update)

• These stats include all the extragear, plasma, frameworks and release service repository as well as most of the KDE websites and a few KDE playground projects I had on my hard drive. For example, it doesn’t includes most of the unmaintained projects (e.g. kdepimlibs, koffice, plasma-mediacenter, …). Also important to note, is that this doesn’t include translations at all, since they are stored in SVN and added in the tarballs during the releasing process.

• I also removed manually all the scripted commits and I merged the contributions from “Laurent Montel” with “Montel Laurent” as well as the one from various contributors whose name changed.

=> ↺ Give Your App a Cross-Functional Future with Qt

• Hey, you! Looking to build a high-performing and future-proof application that you can extend to desktop, mobile, and web? Want to cut down on development time, and make use of a tech ecosystem that offers a lot more beyond the initial development and design tools?

=> ↺ Kids’ coding languages

• Explore kids’ coding languages like ScratchJr, Scratch and Python. Start kids on graphical languages to help them grasp the basics of programming.

=> ↺ Lesser Known IRB Features

• While poking around in IRB and looking at the autocompletion results, I found some functions that I didn’t recognize and decided to take a look at what they do. I found some pretty interesting stuff.

• It looks like some of these commands have been added recently to come up to par with pry, and others have been kicking around for a while and just flying under the radar.

=> ↺ Testing Rails Components That Require Cache

• If you’re in the default testing environment your rails cache is ActiveSupport::Cache::NullStore which will always succeed but it doesn’t actually store or return anything.

• There’s an almost completely undocumented method called with_local_cache on NullStore that lets you run a block with a MemoryStore instead of a NullStore for the duration of the block. This happens because it prepends the ActiveSupport::Cache::Strategy::LocalCache class. This lets you test one or two things that require caching without enabling it on all tests and slowing everything down.

Leftovers

=> ↺ When we ‘do good,’ is it for ourselves or others?

• When we “do good,” is it for ourselves or for others? Etymologically, it can be both, our language columnist writes.

=> ↺ Jerry Springer, politician-turned-TV ringmaster, dies at 79

• Jerry Springer, the onetime mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show featured a three-ring circus of dysfunctional families willing to bare all on weekday afternoons including brawls, obscenities and blurred images of nudity, died Thursday at 79.

=> ↺ France razes Mayotte slum after attempted migrant expulsion

• French authorities on Thursday razed a makeshift settlement on the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte after overnight unrest sparked by government plans to clear slums and send illegal migrants back to the neighbouring Comoros.

=> ↺ US takes new steps to reduce migrant arrivals ahead of possible spike in illegal crossings

• The United States will ramp up deportations while also expanding legal pathways for would-be migrants as it braces for a possible spike in illegal border crossings when COVID-19 restrictions are set to end next month, US officials said on Thursday.

Hardware

=> ↺ The Beginning Of The Bottom For Intel’s Datacenter Business

• Intel can talk all it wants about how it beat its own expectations or those of Wall Street, but the fact remains that the first quarter of 2023 was downright ugly for the chip designer and maker.

=> ↺ Intel Posts Largest Loss in Its History as Sales Plunge 36%

• Intel’s Q1 sales beat expectations, but the company loses $2.8 billion.

=> ↺ Microsoft-branded mice and keyboards are going away after 40 years

• Microsoft-made mice and keyboards aren’t going away, but the Microsoft brand name is. The company told The Verge that it will stop selling Microsoft-branded keyboards, mice, and other accessories following a series of layoffs that affected its hardware division. The company will refocus its efforts on higher-end Surface-branded keyboards and mice, which represent just a tiny fraction of all the accessories Microsoft currently sells.

=> ↺ Microsoft’s mice, keyboards, and webcams are being discontinued in favor of Surface accessories

• Microsoft will no longer manufacture mice, keyboards, and webcams that are Microsoft-branded. Instead, Microsoft is now focusing on its Surface-branded PC accessories, which include mice, keyboards, pens, and more. It brings an end to the legacy of Microsoft-branded PC hardware after the company first launched its first mouse in 1983 and bundled it with Microsoft Word and Notepad.

• [...]

• While Microsoft will still manufacture Surface-branded keyboards and mice, these are typically sold at premium price points, and it’s not clear whether any low-cost Microsoft-branded accessories will now make their way over to the Surface line or not.

=> ↺ AMD Shares Fix for Ryzen Burnout Failures, New BIOSes Coming (Updated)

• AMD has issued a second statement on the Ryzen 7000 burnout issues, citing that it will cap certain voltages to prevent the issue.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ APN Podcast: Why is Finland so relaxed about kids using smartphones?

• A citizen’s initiative is trying to get stricter rules banning smartphone usage during the school day. The APN podcast explores the issue.

=> ↺ The long and winding history of the war on abortion drugs

• Along with the stethoscope and camembert cheese, mifepristone may be one of France’s greatest inventions. It’s one of two drugs taken for medical abortions, along with misoprostol, and has been making headlines in the US, where a Texas judge issued a ruling to ban it nationwide. FRANCE 24 takes a look at the history of these two drugs.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Lyft plans to lay off 26% of its staff in the latest big tech downsizing

• Lyft, one of the largest ride-sharing companies in the US, plans to lay off 26% of its staff, or 1,072 employees.

=> ↺ Nordstrom lays off tech workers in bid to ‘remain agile and operate more efficiently’

• Digital sales decreased in the fourth quarter by 13.1% compared to the same period in 2021 due to the elimination of store fulfillment for Nordstrom Rack digital orders and the sunsetting of Trunk Club, the company said in an earnings release.

=> ↺ Clubhouse ‘says goodbye’ to half of its staff in mass layoffs

• Social audio app Clubhouse has laid off more than half of its staff in the latest wave of new layoffs in the tech industry.

• The audio-only app came to prominence in early 2021, seeing a surge in users amid the Covid pandemic as people across the world got accustomed to remote online work.

=> ↺ Clubhouse to Lay Off More Than 50 Percent of Staff

• Clubhouse, the once-buzzy live audio app that has seen usage decline compared to its pandemic heyday, is laying off more than half of its staffers as the company’s co-founders seek to pare the organization back to a “smaller, product-focused team.”

=> ↺ Amazon begins another round of layoffs, with employees in Singapore not spared

• Amazon.com Inc. has initiated a process of laying off employees in its cloud services division.

• This action is expected to impact 9,000 employees globally, including those in the Singapore office.

• According to Bloomberg’s report, Amazon Web Services (AWS) personnel in the US, Canada and Costa Rica whose jobs were informed about their job termination on Wednesday (26 Apr).

• Although AWS is the most profitable unit in Amazon, it is currently experiencing a slowdown in growth as corporate customers seek to reduce expenses. During the pandemic, the unit significantly increased its headcount due to the high demand for digital services at the time.

=> ↺ Tech giants aren’t just cutting thousands of jobs — they’re making them extinct

• Companies from Meta to Microsoft to Salesforce have cut jobs in recent months, often in the pursuit of efficiency and increased profit margins. By some estimates, more than 250,000 tech workers have been laid off since the start of 2022.

=> ↺ UK banks suffer service outage

• Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and TSB Bank locked out of their accounts

• Thousands of customers of four UK banks are having problems logging on via the companies’ websites and mobile apps.

• The banks, Lloyds Banking Group subsidiaries Lloyds Bank, Halifax Bank and Bank of Scotland and also TSB Bank, which was previously a subsidiary of Lloyds, started having issues early on Friday morning.

=> ↺ Amazon’s stock dips on uncertainty over AWS cloud growth

• Shares of Amazon.com Inc. initially popped in extended trading as the company reported a solid first-quarter earnings beat, but investor sentiment rapidly cooled as company executives raised concerns over the growth of Amazon Web Services Inc., its cloud computing subsidiary, and the stock ended the day down more than 2%.

=> ↺ ‘Cautious’ Orgs’ Cloud Cost Optimization Efforts Dent AWS Revenue

• On Thursday, the world’s largest public cloud computing provider reported revenue growth of 16%, which, while slightly more than analysts expected, still lagged previous quarters. In the fourth quarter of 2022, as a comparison, AWS revenue saw sales gains of 20%. The first-quarter 2023 figure – $21.35 billion – dipped, and also fell below the same period’s cloud sales numbers over at Microsoft, AWS’ biggest rival.

• Earlier this week, Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud group – which houses Azure – showed 27% revenue growth for a total of nearly $22.1 billion. However, because Microsoft does not share Azure data, specifically, it’s hard to say how much of those gains came from the division. Meantime, Google Cloud remains in third place. It reported $7.4 billion in revenue this week but the percentage increase – 27.5% – soared past both Azure and AWS.

• Meantime, Amazon executives on April 27 said the seeming slowdown at AWS ties to cloud cost optimization rather than to any direct spending cuts. And the company insisted that, instead of focusing on short-term results, leaders remain intent on long-term outcomes.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Friday [LWN.net]

• Security updates have been issued by Fedora (git, libpcap, php-laminas-diactoros2, php-nyholm-psr7, tcpdump, and xen), Oracle (cloud-init), Scientific Linux (kernel), SUSE (conmon, docker, glib2, glibc, libmicrohttpd, libX11, liferea, python3, qemu, rubygem-actionview-5_1, s390-tools, stellarium, vim, and xen), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4 and openssl-ibmca).

=> ↺ UK school hit by ransomware attack

• Hardenhuish School in Wiltshire says it hopes at least some systems will be back online next week

• A school in Wiltshire was hit by a ransomware attack last weekend. Hardenhuish School, a mixed secondary academy in Chippenham, sent texts to parents and guardians of its 1,623 pupils notifying them of the attack.

• “As far as we can tell at this point, no personal data has been compromised, although our forensic specialists are at the early stages of their investigation and will update us as the situation unfolds,” the text said, according to the Wiltshire Times.

=> ↺ Man Sentenced for Stealing Over 712 Bitcoin Subject to Forfeiture

• According to court documents, Gary James Harmon, 31, of Cleveland, perpetrated a scheme to steal cryptocurrency that was the subject of pending criminal forfeiture proceedings in the case of Larry Dean Harmon, Gary Harmon’s brother. In February 2020, Larry Harmon was arrested for his operation of Helix, a darknet-based cryptocurrency money laundering service, known as a “mixer” or “tumbler.” Helix laundered over 350,000 bitcoin – valued at over $300 million at the time of the transactions – on behalf of customers, with the largest volume coming from darknet markets. Law enforcement seized various assets, including a cryptocurrency storage device containing Larry Harmon’s illegal proceeds generated through the operation of Helix, which were subject to forfeiture in the criminal case. However, law enforcement was initially unable to recover bitcoin stored on the device due to the device’s additional security features.

=> ↺ The cyber police exposed an attacker in the sale of databases with personal data of citizens of Ukraine and the EU

• In total, the databases contained personal information of more than 300 million people, citizens of Ukraine and EU countries.

• Depending on the amount of data, the person involved asked for them from 500 to 2000 dollars.

• It was previously established that the buyers were also citizens of the aggressor country. The person involved received payment for the sale of databases to citizens of the Russian Federation using currencies prohibited on the territory of Ukraine.

=> ↺ TUSD’s Cyber Shutdown: District will need help, and millions of dollars, to rebound from ransomware attack

• • The Tucson Unified School District was hobbled by a ransomware attack in late January.

• 13 News’ Valerie Cavazos has been reporting on the attack from the beginning to find out how it happened, why it happened and what’s being done to prevent it from happening again.

=> ↺ Data breach could affect up to 100,000 patients at Queensway Carleton Hospital

• Health and personal information, home addresses and OHIP numbers of up to 100,000 patients at Queensway Carleton Hospital have been affected by a major data breach involving an Ottawa-based third-party software provider.

• The hospital sent out public notices of the breach Friday and is contacting patients individually. It has also notified the province’s privacy commissioner.

• Queensway Carleton Hospital said it stopped using the platform by the Canadian software company Aetonix Systems Inc. after learning in March that an authorized third party may have gained access to an “internal test environment” where personal health information of Canadians patients had been temporarily stored.

=> ↺ Microsoft: Cl0p Ransomware Exploited PaperCut Vulnerabilities Since April 13

• Microsoft says Cl0p ransomware operator has been exploiting a recently patched PaperCut vulnerability since April 13.

=> ↺ New ‘Atomic macOS Stealer’ Malware Offered for $1,000 Per Month

• A new piece of malware named Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS), offered for $1,000 per month, offers a wide range of data theft capabilities.

=> ↺ Google Obtains Court Order to Disrupt CryptBot Distribution

• Court grants Google a temporary restraining order to disrupt CryptBot information stealer’s distribution.

=> ↺ Chinese Cyberspies Delivered Malware via Legitimate Software Updates

• Chinese APT Evasive Panda has been observed targeting local members of an international NGO with the MgBot backdoor, delivered via legitimate software updates.

=> ↺ Report finds even cybersecurity VC funding fell off a cliff in the first quarter

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

=> ↺ Chinese hackers launch Linux variant of PingPull malware

=> ↺ Linux version of RTM Locker ransomware targets VMware ESXi servers

=> ↺ Malware threat report reveals risk on Mac compared to Windows and Linux

• So far this year we’ve seen a few reports about malware that’s affecting Macs. Now Elastic Security Labs has released its spring 2023 Global Threat Report. It offers a big-picture look at the state of malware including how often it’s impacting Mac vs Windows and Linux, the most common malware overall, the most common malware on Mac, and more.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Chinese ambassador says Astellas Pharma incident involved spying

• The case has increased friction between the two biggest economies in Asia.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Afghan Women Who Fought With U.S. Military Seek Legal Immigration Status

• Members of an all-female tactical combat unit in Afghanistan, who were evacuated during the United States withdrawal, are asking Congress to grant them permanent legal status.

=> ↺ What binds Colombian gangs to peace

• A renewed truce between rival gangs rests on a compassion for – and from – those seeking a way out of violence.

=> ↺ Philippines reports ‘confrontation’ with Chinese vessels in South China Sea

• The incident occurred as the Coast Guard undertook a week-long patrol in the strategic waterway.

=> ↺ Baltic, Nordic foreign ministers express support for Moldova

• Foreign ministers from the Baltic and Nordic countries arrived in Chişinău on Thursday, April 28, to express their support for Moldova’s security, resilience, and integration in the European Union.

=> ↺ Iran court issues $312.9M judgment against US over 2017 Tehran terrorist attack

• The 55th Branch of the Tehran Court of Justice Wednesday issued a $312.9 million judgment against the US over a 2017 terrorist attack in Tehran, according to state-affiliated outlet Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

=> ↺ Wrong door, wrong driveway: How US got to shoot first, ask later

• A series of high-profile shootings for seemingly mundane things – ringing the wrong doorbell, turning into the wrong driveway – reveals an on-edge society. This does not take place in a vacuum.

=> ↺ Myanmar’s western Chin state pummeled by junta’s air force in April

• The junta has dropped more than 80 bombs on the region this month, killing 19 people.

=> ↺ Russian court demands Finland reopen Allegro train line

• Finnish rail operator VR suspended passenger and freight traffic across the eastern border in March last year due to sanctions against Russia.

=> ↺ Interior Ministry: No law breach in Russian oligarch’s Finnish citizenship process

• Billionaire Gennady Timchenko, who has been close friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin for decades, obtained Finnish citizenship in 1999.

=> ↺ U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Russia’s Intelligence Agency for Detaining Americans

• The United States also announced sanctions on Iran’s intelligence services, seeking to punish foreign governments for detention of Americans by cutting off access to the international financial system.

=> ↺ The Conspiracy Beliefs Leading People to Leak

• In a conversation explaining to an undercover FBI Agent why he wanted to share information with Russia, a doctor alleged to have leaked medical records from Fort Bragg claimed that the Biden Administration hates Russia because Obama is was intimidated by Putin.

=> ↺ U.S. Women’s Basketball Star Griner Urges U.S. Detainees In Russia To ‘Stay Strong’

• U.S. women’s basketball star Brittney Griner urged U.S. detainees in Russia to stay strong in her first press conference since being released in a prisoner swap in December.

=> ↺ Brittney Griner on Gershkovich Arrest: ‘No One Should Be in Those Conditions’

• Griner, speaking to reporters as she prepares for her next basketball season in the W.N.B.A., said she would continue to fight for those considered wrongfully detained by Russia, like the journalist Evan Gershkovich.

Environment

=> ↺ Meet the Climate Hackers of Malawi

• On tiny farms they’re testing creative ideas to stay ahead of the cascading threats — heat and drought, cyclones and floods — transforming their world.

=> ↺ Greenpeace slams Hong Kong gov’t for ‘misleading’ public consultation result on artificial islands proposal

• Greenpeace has slammed the Hong Kong government for “attempting to mislead” people by claiming that the majority of residents who took part in a public consultation supported the administration’s artificial islands proposal.

=> ↺ ‘Unbearable’: Spain swelters in ‘exceptionally high’ temperatures for April

• Spain’s national weather service said temperatures would “reach values typical of summer” across most of the country, with a high of 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) forecast Thursday for the southern Guadalquivir Valley.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Iran navy seizes tanker near Oman that was on way to Houston

• Iran’s navy has seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman amid wider tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program. Thursday’s seizure represents the latest-such capture in a waterway crucial for global energy supplies. The U.S. Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet identified the vessel as the Advantage Sweet. Satellite tracking data for the vessel from MarineTraffic.com showed it in the Gulf of Oman just north of Oman’s capital, Muscat, on Thursday afternoon. It had just come from Kuwait and listed its destination as Houston. Iran claimed the ship had run into another, causing Iranian sailors to go missing and get hurt. However, previous seizures dealt more with geopolitics.

=> ↺ China is leading the electric vehicle charge with 60% of worldwide sales

• By 2030, one in three new vehicles sold globally will be electric – cutting demand for oil

=> ↺ Iranian Forces Seize Marshall Islands-Flagged Oil Tanker In Gulf Of Oman

• Iranian forces have seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in international waters in the Gulf of Oman, the U.S. Navy and Iranian state media reported on April 27.

=> ↺ Australia closes oldest coal plant, pivots to renewables

• The government has pledged 82 per cent of the country’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030.

=> ↺ Electricity prices steadily dropping in Latvia

• In March, the average electricity price in Latvia decreased by 23% compared with February, to 87.77 euros per megawatt hour, reaching its lowest level since June 2021. At the same time, for the third consecutive month, more electricity is produced in Latvia than consumed – in March Latvia’s consumption was covered at 137% and some electricity was exported to neighboring countries, Latvian Radio reported April 28.

=> ↺ UK’s ‘first-ever’ national occupational standard for hydrogen developed

• UK industry stakeholders have collaborated to develop the country’s “first-ever” national occupational standard for the production, storage and transportation for hydrogen.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Bear population predicted to keep growing in Latvia

• The Nature Conservation Agency (DAP) will carry out extensive brown bear monitoring in Latvia. The main aim of the monitoring will be to explore the unique process of returning to the territory after being eliminated completely, Jānis Ozoliņš, lead researcher of the Latvian National Forest Science Institute ‘Silava’ told Latvian Radio on April 28.

=> ↺ India has saved the tiger from extinction, but rising human-wildlife conflict is a challenge

• A key factor of India’s success in saving the big cat was to leave them and their habitat alone.

=> ↺ Two-thirds of suitable elephant habitat in Asia lost in 3 centuries

• China and India lead the way in territory decline, a new study said.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ India tops population table. Will the economy follow?

• India’s population overtakes China’s, adding geopolitical weight. But job shortage presages economic challenges.

Finance

=> ↺ New York State Budget Deal Would Raise Minimum Wage and Change Bail Laws

• Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she and state lawmakers had reached an agreement on a $229 billion spending plan after weeks of contentious negotiations.

=> ↺ US appeals court rules Uber drivers subject to employment contract arbitration clauses

• The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Wednesday that Uber drivers are not exempt from laws requiring private arbitration of disputes. The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) allows federal courts to enforce private arbitration agreements commonly found in employment contracts.

=> ↺ India pushes trade in rupees to push exports amid global trade slowdown

• India, among the world’s fastest growing economies, has made using the rupee in international transactions a key part of its 2023 policy on foreign trade.

=> ↺ Akavan Erityisalat: Interns are being exploited as cheap labor

• Akavan Erityisalat, a Finnish trade union representing professionals in various fields, has raised concerns about the mistreatment of interns in the country. According to the union, interns are still being shamelessly used as cheap labor, with employers taking advantage of their vulnerable position to make them work for little or no pay. The union has called on both employers and higher education institutions to address the issue.

=> ↺ Alteryx delivers mixed earnings results as it plans to cut 11% of its staff

=> ↺ Intel posts its biggest-ever loss, but stock rises on signs of a turnaround

=> ↺ Mobileye tops earnings expectations, but stock plunges on lowered guidance

• Shares of chipmaker Mobileye Global Inc. dropped more than 21% today after it lowered its full-year guidance for 2023. The company released the revised projection alongside the financial results for its fiscal first quarter, which ended April 1. Mobileye topped both revenue and adjusted earnings per share expectations during the quarter.

=> ↺ Don’t Believe the Media Fearmongering About Spending Cuts

• In 2019, discretionary spending was $1.338 trillion—or some $320 billion less than what Republicans want that side of the budget to be.

=> ↺ Snap shares fall sharply on revenue and outlook miss

• Shares in Snap Inc. fell sharply in late trading after the company reported a revenue miss in its first-quarter results and gave an informal outlook below expectations.

=> ↺ Cloudflare shares plunge on lower-than-expected outlook amid economic uncertainty

• Shares in Cloudflare Inc. plunged nearly 25% in late trading after the content delivery network company issued a lower-than-expected outlook amid broader macroeconomic uncertainty in the economy.

=> ↺ The Real Debt Limit Fight Is Yet to Come

• Speaker Kevin McCarthy squeezed a debt ceiling increase out of reluctant House Republicans, but he will be hard-pressed to do it again when it counts.

=> ↺ Paraguay’s presidential election is a referendum on China’s dollar diplomacy in Latin America

• Paraguay, the landlocked South American country bordering Brazil and Argentina, is bracing for an upset in this Sunday’s presidential contest, with the country’s diplomatic relationship with Taiwan at stake.

=> ↺ Chinese police visiting Bain & Co’s Shanghai office is business as usual

• One of Bain & Co’s offices in China had some surprise visitors recently.

=> ↺ Majority of Finns Support Work-Based Immigration

• The percentage of people in Finland supporting the facilitation of immigration has gone up from 27 percent in 2019 to 55 percent this year.

=> ↺ Biden Faces His First Big Choice on Debt Limit

• After Republicans passed a bill that pairs spending cuts and fossil fuel support with raising the nation’s borrowing cap, the president must decide when and how to negotiate

=> ↺ Global food markets see lower costs. So why are prices still high?

• While global food markets have seen falling prices for a few months, consumers continue to struggle to buy basic needs. To cope, restaurants around the world have changed their menus, and some individuals turn to more affordable, vegetarian diets.

=> ↺ McCarthy defies expectations as debt bill passes. Now, the hard part.

• House Republicans have narrowly passed a sweeping $1.5 trillion debt ceiling package as they try to push President Joe Biden into negotiations on federal spending. Mr. Biden has threatened to veto the bill over the attached budget limits.

=> ↺ First Republic likely headed for FDIC receivership, sources say; shares drop 40%

=> ↺ Corporations lay off thousands as US economy heads toward recession

• Corporations are continuing to announce thousands of layoffs as signs of a major downturn in the US economy are growing. On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported that the US gross domestic product rose by an anemic 1.1 percent annual rate in the first three months of 2023. This was a sharp decline from the 2.6 percent annual growth rate in the final quarter of 2022, and 3.2 in the previous quarter.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ “Lock Him Up!” Trump Calls on Congress to Halt the Criminal Investigation into Joe Biden

• After winning the 2016 election by calling, non-stop, to Lock her up!, Donald J Trump has asked Congress to intervene to end the criminal investigation into his opponent for mishandling classified information.

=> ↺ Armenian PM Meets French Foreign Minister Amid Rising Tensions Around Nagorno-Karabakh

• Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian met with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on April 27 in Yerevan after calling international attention to rising tensions with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

=> ↺ Azerbaijan accuses France of inaction on Nagorno-Karabakh as foreign minister visits

• Azerbaijan on Thursday rebuked Paris for failing to use its influence to help calm tensions in the South Caucasus as France’s top diplomat visited the region.

=> ↺ Vice News to ‘streamline’ with ‘painful but necessary’ job cuts

• There will be job cuts across the global news team at Vice News.

=> ↺ Disney sues Florida governor DeSantis over ‘relentless campaign to weaponize government power’

• Disney filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and state officials, accusing them of spearheading a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power” against the entertainment giant.

=> ↺ Kyiv Independent editor on how reader support trumped oligarch cash

• Kyiv Independent editor-in-chief Olga Rudenko gave the Cudlipp Lecture 2023.

=> ↺ Hugh Grant accuses Sun publisher of unlawful acts including ‘burglaries to order’

• Grant claimed The Sun is “making things as difficult as possible” for victims.

=> ↺ The media bet its future on Facebook. Did it learn from that mistake?

• BuzzFeed, the archetypal new media company of the 2010s, announced last week that it was shutting down its news division. In 2012, the small “web buzz” start-up started hiring reporters. The newsroom quickly multiplied in size, broke countless stories, and shaped other publishers’ coverage and business plans; later, its parent company diminished, BuzzFeed News would unionize, win a Pulitzer, then get dragged, with the rest of the company, through a disastrous last-ditch SPAC offering, followed by brutal layoffs.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ A torment for too long – Consumer watchdog takes ‘natural remedy’ telemarketer to court

• Finland’s Consumer Ombudsman wants a court ruling to interpret guidelines against aggressive and misleading marketing practices.

=> ↺ A Natural-History Museum for a Post-Truth Age

• The new Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History, in Manhattan, arrives at a fraught political, ecological, and cultural moment.

=> ↺ Tesla defense lawyers say Elon Musk’s past statements about autopilot safety could be deepfakes

• A California judge today said that Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk should be questioned under oath over his claims about the company’s autopilot safety, after Musk’s lawyers argued that those comments could be deepfakes.

=> ↺ Jewish Chronicle rapped over claim Iran vowed to ‘wipe Jews off face of Earth’

• The regulator said Iranian political leaders had instead called for Israel’s destruction.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Freedom to Write Index: China worst jailer of writers in 2022, NGO says

• China is the world’s largest jailer of writers, according to PEN America’s Freedom to Write Index 2022, released on Thursday. The free expression NGO counted 90 cases of writers behind bars, with six new cases added last year. It is the fourth consecutive year that China has topped the index.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Calls grow for British government to speak out against Hong Kong’s media crackdown

• The son of jailed pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai says officials should do more to support him.

=> ↺ Three Iranian Female Journalists Summoned Over Articles Amid Crackdown On Press

• Three prominent Tehran-based journalists — Saeedeh Shafiei, Mehrnoush Zarei, and Nasim Soltanbeigi — have been summoned separately to Evin’s Moghaddasi Courthouse on charges that their reporting produced “propaganda against the system.”

=> ↺ Bishkek Court Approves Ministry Request To Shut Down RFE/RL’s Operations In Kyrgyzstan

• A court has accepted a request from the Culture Ministry to shut down the operations of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Radio Azattyk — a decision the company called “outrageous” — over its refusal to remove a video on clashes along a disputed segment of the Kyrgyz-Tajik border.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ States Rights

• SCOTUS enforces the ideas of the Founders, and ignores the Reconstruction Amendments.

=> ↺ UK House of Commons passes Illegal Migration Bill amid controversy

• The Parliament of the United Kingdom Wednesday passed the controversial Illegal Migration Bill through the House of Commons, clearing all reading stages in the lower House of Parliament. Passing by 289 votes to 230, the bill will now move through several readings in the House of Lords.

=> ↺ Kazakh Artist Gets Seven Years In Prison On Terrorism Charges That He Rejects

• Kazakh artist Dauren Makin has been sentenced to seven years in prison on a charge of propagating terrorism that he and his supporters say is politically motivated.

=> ↺ British High Court ruling shortens planned nurses’ strike

• Britain’s High Court ruled Thursday that part of a strike by thousands of nurses planned for next week is illegal, handing a small victory to the government in its bitter dispute with public sector unions.

=> ↺ International Envoy Imposes Amendments To Bosnian Constitution To Spur Formation Of Government, Strengthen Elections

• The high representative of the international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Christian Schmidt, has imposed changes to the country’s constitution and the criminal laws of Bosnia’s entities to facilitate the formation of the new regional government and prevent election fraud.

=> ↺ Bereaved family of Hong Kong student says school failed to address years-long bullying, urges gov’t action

• A Hong Kong secondary school stands accused of downplaying a bullying case that allegedly led to a student suicide in February. The bereaved family of the 16-year-old urged the education authorities to look into school bullying and prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.

=> ↺ Activist known as ‘Onion Leaf Bae’ kept from meeting lawyer

• Online video showed the noodle vendor mocking a top government official.

=> ↺ Macron marks 175th anniversary of abolition of slavery in France

• French President Emmanuel Macron marked the 175th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in France on Thursday with a tribute to ex-slave Toussaint Louverture, father of Haiti’s independence and a “tireless fighter” for freedom, the Elysée presidential palace announced.

=> ↺ Lawmakers In Serb Entity Vote To Quit Bosnia’s Constitutional Court

• The parliament of Republika Srpska has voted to quit the ethnic Serb entity’s participation in the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina amid an ongoing dispute with the central government and the representatives of the international community over property rights.

Meeting unique needs: From sign language TV to teen pregnancy preventionProgress roundup: Meeting the needs of different sectors of society requires unique solutions, in Liberia, the UK, and a new U.S. national monument.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ The EU’s “Fair Share” Proposal Is a Threat to Net Neutrality Everywhere

• The European Commission has recently launched a public consultation on the future of broadband access, including whether large online platforms should pay broadband providers to upgrade their network capacity.

=> ↺ Changing sites for new stakeholders (aka: not us)

• Manton Reece microblogged about a phenomena to which every tired engineer and corporate officer worker can attest:

• This is not exactly a commentary on any specific platform, but you can just tell when the creators of a tool use their own stuff and engage with the community. The farther you get away from that, the less confidence users will have.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Spotify investigates issues after reports of outage

• Spotify Technology says it is investigating some issues with its web page following reports the audio streaming platform was down for thousands of users. There were more than 15,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Spotify, according to Downdetector…

Monopolies

=> ↺ Microsoft’s veiled threats to the UK over Activision reveal a lot

• Microsoft President Brad Smith is pissed with Britain. He thought his company’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision was a done deal, but Britain’s merger watchdog just blocked it.

• In a BBC radio interview, Smith pretty much threatened that Microsoft could pull back from investing in Britain, if Prime Minister Rishi Sunak does not step in to overrule this week’s judgement by the Competition and Markets Authority.

=> ↺ UK Watchdog Blocks Microsoft’s Acquisition Of Activision Blizzard

• Due to concerns over stifled competition in the cloud-computing gaming market, British regulators have blocked Microsoft’s purchase of leading video-game maker Activision Blizzard.

• The deal, which would have cost $69 billion, was set to be the biggest tech deal in history.

• The deal had already been scrutinized by regulators in the U.S. and Europe, as well as Sony. All were concerned that Microsoft would hold an unfair advantage in the developing cloud gaming market with control over popular franchises such as “Call of Duty,” “World of Warcraft” and “Candy Crush.”

Patents

=> ↺ Modernised legal texts are now the official versions

• The newly formatted versions of the EPO’s legal texts on new.epo.org are now the official versions of the texts. Following a one-month transition period, the older versions have now been removed from the website.

=> ↺ EPO and OAPI heads of office bilateral meeting

• EPO President and OAPI Director General meet to discuss validation agreement

Copyrights

=> ↺ Tyler, The Creator Puts Clause in His Will Prohibiting Posthumous Album Releases

• At his latest show, Tyler, The Creator reveals that he put a clause in his will prohibiting posthumous album releases after his death. Tyler, The Creator revealed during his show at LA’s El Rey Theatre on Wednesday night that he has a clause in his will prohibiting the release of any unheard music after his death.

=> ↺ Punctuation Personified (1824)

• Taking a child on a tour through punctuation, Mr. Stops introduces him to a cast of literal “characters”: admiring exclamation marks and militaristic semicolons.

=> ↺ Jean Baptiste Vérany’s Chromolithographs of Cephalopods (1851)

• In these images, Vérany’s realizes his ambition — to accurately render “the suppleness of the flesh, the grace of the contours, the transparency and the coloring” of cephalopods.

=> ↺ Safe Harbor & Authorization Liability: Australia’s Options to Reduce Piracy

• When tackling direct infringers becomes impractical, rightsholders can take legal action against entities that are indirectly involved. Intermediaries and service providers are obvious targets but tend to enjoy protection under so-called ‘safe harbor’ provisions. In Australia, digital platforms want these protections too, claiming they will boost anti-piracy cooperation. Rightsholders believe that cooperation is directly linked to a credible threat of liability.

=> ↺ Bungie Wins $12 Million in Damages From Veterancheats

• Game developer Bungie has won a default judgment against the Romanian operator of cheat seller Veterancheats, who failed to appear in court after being sued two years ago. A federal court in Washington awarded nearly $12 million in DMCA and copyright infringement damages for the various Destiny 2 hacks that were sold through the site.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Twilight and Sunrise 2023-04-28 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

• I went out early enough this morning, around 4:45am AKDT, to do some twlight and sunrise photography. It was an adventure, because I still didn’t have a clear idea of what would be the best vantage points. I had an idea, though, that the UAF skyline might look great in the purple twilight. So I found a few good spots in parking lots or along the side of the road.

=> ↺ fresh out the hospital

• My oh my, thank you to the messages via mutt and on M.p, all!

• Yes, I am out of a five day stay at a psyche hospital, was an easy time in there, made progress, started a new med, feeling MUCH better!

=> ↺ Guy Debord and the Spectacle

• Already at the outset, Debord modestly surmises the Comments will be welcomed by some fifty or sixty readers, half of which “will consist of people who devote themselves to main­taining the spectacular system of domination, and the other half of people who persist in doing quite the opposite.” Debord, taking notice of attentive and influential readers of a different persuasion than his, feels that he “cannot speek with complete freedom” or give away too much information.

=> ↺ What oppression?

• I read Mattes’ retort to Thi Nguyen and Strohl. He’s arguing it’s not intimacy, but oppression, that drives normativity around cultural appropriation. Undoubtedly, he’s right. But what is oppression?

• Honestly, it feels a bit vacuous, especially for such a topic. Cultural appropriation has a way of robbing you of your own essence. That it is tied to oppression is completely obvious and beside the point—it is oppression, and that is the reason why we even talk about it.

Politics

=> ↺ Kids Learned Macroeconomics

• Overhearing them playing: one of the trolls with a big nose and glasses was named Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan had a printing press and flooded Troll Town with money and soon that money became worthless. Alan retired and spent all of his time farting in the bathtub and writing his book “Turbulent Times”. Angry trolls got together and kicked him out of TrollTown with pitchforks.

Technical

=> ↺ Manjar-NO!

• Had another crazy week, guess that’s my life now. But more on that later, maybe.

• Let’s get into it…

• The release of Debian 12 is around the corner, the tentative date for the release is somewhere in June, I am guessing that it will probably happen at the end of June, Start July?

• [...]

• It’s because Debian 12 means a new MXLinux, namely MX-23, which is, to me, one of the most functional distros out there.

=> ↺ New server

• Well, almost. This is a VPS I had around for quite some time acting mostly as a VPN gateway so I can reach things at home when I’m elsewhere. Now I just made it host my gemini stuff. This machine now somewhat supersedes what I had on tilde.pink. I hope I won’t run into any issues and that I’ll be able to keep this thing up.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Again-member-ing

• I was doing some nosing around gemini spaces, and a few http spaces linked to from there, and wound up finding replies of mine to others that I honestly don’t remember writing.

• Yesterday my wife told me of our having visited with my brother back in November, and for the life of me I don’t remember doing that.

• 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.