● 05.02.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 02/05/2023: Many More Layoffs and Failing Banks

Posted in News Roundup at 12:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 227

• How and why the Free Software Foundation should be reformed, checking your Python code incredibly quickly, Will’s Telegram bot, FOSS surround sound, upscaling photos, and loads more.

=> ↺ Destination Linux 321: Fedora Linux 38 Review & NVIDIA AI Guardrails

=> ↺ Destination Linux 321: Fedora Linux 38 Review & NVIDIA AI Guardrails

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we will be taking Fedora 38 for a test drive and giving our opinion on the latest release from the fine folks at Fedora. Then we take a look at AI guardrails . . . an open source project from Nvidia. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install and Use Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack?

• Download the extension pack and open VirtualBox. Go to File – Tools – Extension Pack Manager and install it. Use extra features for VMs such as RDP support.

=> ↺ Flatpak Installer works with fscrypt v2

• I posted this morning about fixing the initrd to work with fscrypt v2:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202305/fscrypt-v2-working-in-initrd.html

• The Flatpak Installer, Flapi, has now been modified to work with fscrypt v2, see commit:

• https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/42f921c56cc577678bdfffffa74bf6df47535afa

• This is so great, the Flatpaks are working without any issues. They are now run just like AppImages, in an encrypted folder, and they are also, like AppImages, able to save under /files

=> ↺ How NFS v3 servers and clients re-synchronize locks after reboots

• NFS (v3) is usually described as ‘stateless’, by which we mean that the NFS clients hold all of the state and in theory all the server does is answer all of their requests one by one (the actual reality is more messy). However, NFS (v3) locks are obviously not stateless, in that the server and all of the NFS clients have to agree on what is and isn’t locked (and by who). This creates a need to re-synchronize this state if something unfortunate happens to either a NFS client or the NFS server, so you don’t get stuck locks and other problems. The NFS v3 locking protocol opted to take a relatively brute force approach to the problem.

=> ↺ 8 Uniq Command Examples [Remove Duplicate Lines in Linux]

• As Linux users, we interact with various types of files on a regular basis. One of the most common file types on any computer system is a plain text file. Oftentimes, it is a very common requirement to find the required text in these files.

• However, this simple task quickly becomes annoying if the file contains duplicate entries. In such cases, we can use the uniq command to filter duplicate text efficiently.

=> ↺ How to Install FreeIPA Client on RHEL | Rocky Linux | AlmaLinux

=> ↺ How to Install Yarn on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

• As we dive into modern web development, one tool stands out as an essential ally for JavaScript developers: the Yarn package manager. Yarn, an open-source project, was born in 2016 as a collaboration between Facebook, Google, Exponent, and Tilde.

=> ↺ How to Set Up WireGuard VPN and WireGuard-UI with Docker

• Learn how to set up your own WireGuard VPN server and easily manage it via the web-based WireGuard-UI using Docker Compose.

=> ↺ How to Install Xfce on Debian 10

• In this tutorial you will learn how to install xfce desktop environment on debian 10. Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment that uses very low resources to deliver a fast and stable user experience. Xfce is a great choice when it comes to choosing a desktop environment to use

=> ↺ How to install pip3 on Debian 11

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install pip3 on Debian 11. Pip3 is a package manager that allows you to install and uninstall python packages. Installing pip3 on Debian 11 is as simple as installing any other software on Linux.

=> ↺ How to upload files to a remote system over SSH

• Uploading files to a remote system over SSH is an essential skill for managing servers and remote systems. Securely transferring files is made easy with two popular command-line tools: SCP (Secure Copy) and SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol). Both tools use the secure and encrypted SSH protocol to ensure the safe transfer of data between local and remote systems.

=> ↺ How to install Burp suite on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• Burp Suite developed by PortSwigger is a freemium web application vulnerability scanner and penetration testing tool. Apart from the community edition, it is also available in professional and enterprise editions.  Of course, compared to the paid editions, the community one has fewer features.

=> ↺ How to Install OBS Studio on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

• Open Broadcaster Software Studio (OBS Studio) is a feature-rich, open-source software that has gained immense popularity among content creators, streamers, and video professionals worldwide. The key reasons behind OBS Studio’s success include the following: In this guide, we will explore installing OBS Studio on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.

=> ↺ How to Install Node.js on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

• Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that enables developers to run JavaScript code on the server side. Built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, Node.js is designed to be lightweight, fast, and efficient.

=> ↺ How to Install Transmission on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

• BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing protocol that allows users to download and share large files efficiently. Among the many BitTorrent clients available today, Transmission stands out as a popular, lightweight, and user-friendly choice. It has been widely praised for its simplicity, ease of use, and minimal resource consumption.

=> ↺ How to Install Slack on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

• As effective communication and collaboration are integral to the success of modern organizations, Slack has emerged as a powerful platform, transforming how teams communicate and work together. Catering to businesses, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations worldwide, Slack provides a comprehensive solution for communication and project management needs.

=> ↺ How to Install 7-Zip on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

• 7-Zip is a highly efficient and versatile open-source file archiver, designed to manage various archive formats. As an Ubuntu user, you may prefer to use 7-Zip over traditional archive formats like zip, rar, and tar for several reasons.

Games

Mike Blumenkrantz: AddendumPlease File ResponsiblyThe other day I posted about new efforts to create a compendium of games that work with zink. Initial feedback has been good, and thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.I realized too late that I needed to be more explicit about what feedback I wanted, however.There are three tickets open, one for each type of problem:This ticket is for games that work without any issuesThis ticket is for games with bad perfThis ticket is for games with issues

=> ↺ Ukraine Is Now Using Steam Decks to Control Machine Gun Turrets

• A crowdfunding campaign led to the development of a turret controlled by a video game console.

=> ↺ Steam Deck in Japan Stores: 80~100 Units Sold in 2 Days

• So today I went back to Edion next to Osaka-Namba after my visit from a few days ago (on Saturday) where I covered the actual launch on the day.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Top 10 Lightweight Linux Distros: Your Best Options in 2023

• Lightweight Linux distributions are gaining popularity as they offer an excellent way to breathe new life into older hardware or provide a snappier experience on modern systems. These distros are designed to be resource-efficient, requiring minimal system resources while still delivering a full-featured and responsive user experience.

BSD

=> ↺ VM owners can now override the boot kernel

• Dave Voutila (dv@) has added another feature to virtualisation on OpenBSD. Thanks to the following commit, it is now possible for the owners of virtual machines to override the boot kernel: [...]

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ My First Day at SUSE

• Today is a day full of excitement for me – my first as CEO of SUSE. It’s a real honor. From my first days in the industry, the SUSE name has been synonymous with openness, innovation, and excellence. I’ve always rated and admired people I’ve met who work here. SUSE has always been a pioneer.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Daniel Pocock: Jock Zonfrillo, MasterChef & Debian Day Volunteer Suicide

• When I heard the news about the death of Jock Zonfrillo, I couldn’t help both relating to the circumstances and also relating it to the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide.

• Zonfrillo’s cause of death has not been declared and on the one hand, I want to avoid speculating about why he died but on the other hand, there is a stark similarity here: Zonfrillo died on the day the new series of MasterChef was to commence, while Frans Pop resigned to commit suicide on the night before Debian Day.

• The similarities don’t stop there. Both MasterChef and Debian involve having a very public profile for one’s work.

• Only the coroner can tell us what was on Zonfrillo’s mind in the lead up to his death.

• Yet I could relate to his situation for other reasons. Zonfrillo and I were almost neighbours. A Melbourne real-estate guide interviewed him in his home. A lot of University of Melbourne students have lived in houses just like this. Mine was just around the corner. News reports tell us he died at a property in Lygon Street. They don’t specify if he was at home or at one of the numerous restaurants and bars in the lower section of the street.

=> ↺ Sparky news 2023/04

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Linux Mint 21.2 Makes Tooltips & Notifications More Colourful

• In his latest monthly update, Linux Mint’s lead developer details work done to improve the look of tooltips, making them more consistent between apps and within the Cinnamon desktop. Right now, in Linux Mint 21.1 and earlier, the appearance of tooltips will differ depending on the app toolkit.

• Keen to harmonise the aesthetic, Linux Mint 21.2 colours tooltips based on the system’s chosen accent colour. Since Mint’s default accent colour is blue tooltips will default, in the next update of the distro, to this, as pictured here…

=> ↺ How to install ExpressVPN on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 LTS

• To access the internet safely and visit websites that are not allowed by your webmaster, VPN software comes in handy. It works by encrypting internet traffic and routing it through remote servers. There are dozens of VPN services available on the Internet some are free and others paid. Ofcourse the paid one will have fast servers. Out of a number of paid VPNs, ExpressVPN is one of the popular ones that is available for Linux systems as well as for Windows, macOS, browsers, smartphones, routers, and other devices.

=> ↺ How to install software on Linux using Snap (and why you should)

• I’m a firm believer in using the right tools for the right job. Because I use Linux as my primary operating system, that means I sometimes use open-source software and sometimes use proprietary. For example, I use the LibreOffice office suite (open source) but also use Spotify and Slack (both are proprietary). Very often, to install proprietary software, I have to turn to one of the universal package managers, Snap and/or Flatpak. And, as a Pop!_OS user, I have both installed, so I don’t have to miss out on any piece of software I need or want.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Pro becomes available on the AWS EC2 console

• Ubuntu Pro is now available in a subscription-included model on Amazon Web Services (AWS), allowing users to launch Ubuntu Pro on-demand instances and purchase Ubuntu Pro Compute Savings Plans from the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) console.

=> ↺ Accelerating the adoption of AI in banking with MLOps

• There is rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the finance sector. AI in banking is reshaping client experiences, including communication with financial service providers (for example, chat bots). Banks are exploring ways to use AI/ML to handle the high volume of loan applications and to improve their underwriting process. AI/ML technologies are also transforming the operations of financial institutions, providing significant cost savings by automating processes, using predictive analytics for better product offerings, and providing more effective risk and fraud management processes and regulatory compliance.

• While AI/ML offer significant opportunities for banking and financial institutions, there are several challenges that these institutions face when implementing these technologies at scale including data quality issues, compliance with relevant regulations and standards, AI/ML model explainability, bias and fairness, AI/ML model governance and management.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 785

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 785 for the week of April 23 – 29, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

=> ↺ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 785

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Converting My X201 ThinkPad into a Slabtop

• I found that the possible replacement screens weren’t worth the cost/hassle to swap out. And setting the laptop aside, docked with external peripherals sounded fine in theory – but then I would be missing out on the X201′s amazing classic keyboard…

• Then I thought to myself, “Why not just remove the display entirely?”

• So that’s what I did.

=> ↺ A PCB shaker perfect for a maker

• There are a few approaches to making your own PCBs at home, and perhaps one of the most interesting yet potentially tedious methods involves making a UV-resistant mask and then etching away the non-copper areas with an acid bath. This etching step requires constantly moving the acid across the board’s surfaces for up to 30 minutes at a time, which is why Earl Daniel Villanueva made a small machine to handle this automatically.

=> ↺ BIGTREETECH Pad 7 7-inch 3D printer control display runs Klipper on Allwinner H616 SoM or Raspberry Pi CM4

• Yesterday, I wrote about the BBT Pi V1.2 Allwinner H616 SBC designed for 3D printers, but also mentioned I had received the Pad 7 from BIGTREETECH which is a software-compatible, but more complete solution with a 7-inch display and an Allwinner H616-powered CB1 system-on-module compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM4.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Google Chrome keeps reopening closed tabs on Android devices

=> ↺ Android Auto explored: Tips, tricks and everything you need to know

=> ↺ Best 7 Ways To Fix An Unresponsive Touchscreen On Android

=> ↺ Google issues urgent warning to Android phone owners – millions must check their model right now | The US Sun

=> ↺ BouldSpy Android Spyware: Iranian Government’s Alleged Tool for Spying on Minority Groups

=> ↺ Android’s May 2023 security patch prevents downgrades to infinitely old system app versions

=> ↺ YouTube for Android TV gets smooth in-video info pane animations

=> ↺ These Samsung phones will not get Android 14-based One UI 6.0!

=> ↺ Android 14 testing begins for Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi Pad 6

=> ↺ Best Android Phone of 2023 – CNET

=> ↺ 10 Best Fitness Apps for Android [2023] – TechPP

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Open Source Communities Need More Than Funding From Big Tech

=> ↺ Subtext 2.0 Released with FidoNet Support

• This is a major update to Subtext that represents many months of development, over 200 amendments, and many nights of testing and debugging. The largest change is the addition of FidoNet (FTN) support for distributed mail (Netmail) and message boards (Echomail) by way of a binkp hub.

=> ↺ Joe Brockmeier: SOSSA and CRA Spell Trouble for Open Source Software

• Even though I’m no longer writing full time, I do have a “bucket list” of publications I’d still like to write for, and Dark Reading has been one of those publications for many years. Happily for me, I get to cross that one off (though I’d do it again!) with this article, “SOSSA and CRA Spell Trouble for Open Source Software.”

• Short version: Some ill-considered legislation that’s coming in the wake of Log4Shell poses a threat to open source software, particularly the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).

Web Browsers/Web Servers

=> ↺ Firefox can now match on diacritics

• I’m not sure when the Firefox devs added this feature, but it’s already made my life so much better!

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ Doctrine – how to use LIKE with dbal prepared statements

• I’m just getting started with Symfony, so I’m blogging some of the weird things I’m finding.

Licensing / Legal

=> ↺ Learn new skills! Join the Month of LibreOffice, May 2023

• Want to expand your skillset and gain experience with UX, marketing, documentation, QA or translations? Join the Month of LibreOffice, May 2023!

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Under Linux, libSegFault and addr2line are underrated

• Thankfully, you can often get a useful message when you have a segmentation by linking with the libSegFault library under Linux.

=> ↺ ckBTC internals: event log

• The chain-key Bitcoin (ckBTC) project became publicly available on April 3, 2023. The ckBTC minter smart contract is the most novel part of the product responsible for converting Bitcoin to ckBTC tokens and back. This contract features several design choices that some developers might find insightful. This article describes how the ckBTC minter, which I will further refer to as “the minter”, organizes its storage.

=> ↺ You should be using hackdays to supercharge your roadmap

• Internal company hack days (or hack weeks) are a common thing in tech companies, but not universal. They should be universal, though. Hackdays help you get great new ideas that are both impactful and feasible. They’re probably the best thing you can do to improve your product and reshape your roadmap.

• Bold claim, so let’s unpack it.

=> ↺ Using Bazel to Improve Your Automated Test Suite

• If you’re looking to improve your automated test suite, you may want to consider Bazel, an open source software tool used to automate software builds and test software for large projects with multi language dependencies.

• In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Bazel to improve your automated test suite. You’ll create a Python project and write tests using pytest while using Bazel to run the test suite.

=> ↺ Generate web pages from Markdown with Docsify-This

• Are you interested in leveraging Markdown for online content without any website setup or build process? How about seamlessly embedding constraint-free Markdown or HTML into multiple platforms (such as a content management system or learning management system)? The open source project Docsify-This, built with Docsify.js, provides an easy way to publish, share, and reuse Markdown content.

=> ↺ Library of oneAPI-TBB version 2021.9.0 available for openSUSE Linux.

• Build version 2021.9.0 and update the latest version of the oneTBB is a flexible C++ library that simplifies the work of adding parallelism to complex applications, even if you are not a threading expert. The library lets you easily write parallel programs that take full advantage of the multi-core performance.

=> ↺ Library of oneAPI-DNN version 3.1 available for openSUSE Linux.

• Build and update 3.1 version of the oneAPI Deep Neural Network Library (oneDNN) is an open-source cross-platform performance library of basic building blocks for deep learning applications. oneDNN is part of oneAPI. The library is optimized for Intel(R) Architecture Processors, Intel Processor Graphics and Xe Architecture graphics.

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: RQuantLib 0.4.18 on CRAN: Maintenance

• A new release 0.4.18 of RQuantLib arrived at CRAN earlier today, and will be uploaded to Debian as well.

• QuantLib is a very comprehensice free/open-source library for quantitative finance; RQuantLib connects it to the R environment and language.

Python

=> ↺ How to Create a Python Virtual Environment on Ubuntu

• Python is one of the most popular and versatile programming languages in the world—powering tens of thousands of apps for Linux, Windows, and macOS.

• While Ubuntu releases prior to 23.04 were able to install Python packages with a single command, more recent versions require that you install Python packages in a virtual environment. Here’s one easy way to create and use a Python virtual environment on Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Remove Special Characters from String Python

• To remove special characters from the string in Python, the “isalnum()”, “replace()”, “translate()”, “filter()”, and “re.sub()” methods are used.

=> ↺ Pandas to LaTeX

• Pandas is a Python library and LaTeX is a high-quality preparation system. To convert the pandas to LaTeX, the “to_latex()” function is used.

=> ↺ Pandas Explode Multiple Columns

• The explode()” function is used for modifying or transforming each member of an array or element of list into rows and convert the element of the list to a row.

=> ↺ Python Call Static Method Within Class

• In Python, static methods can be invoked without an object and the “@staticmethod” decorator can be used for defining a static method.

=> ↺ Pandas Group by Quantile

• The “groupby.quantile()” function can be utilized for calculating the quartile by the group in Python by importing the “pandas” module for data analysis.

=> ↺ Goodbye to Flake8 and PyLint: faster linting with Ruff

• Flake8 and PyLint are commonly used, and very useful, linting tools: they can help you find potential bugs and other problems with your code, aka “lints”. But they can also be slow. And even if they’re fast on your computer, they may still be slow in your CI system (GitHub Actions, GitLab, or whatever else.)

=> ↺ Update: oledump.py Version 0.0.75

• This update brings an new plugin: plugin_vba_dir.py (there are no changes to oledump). This plugin parses the records found in the vba/dir stream to display project, references and modules information oledump_V0_0_75.zip (http)MD5: FB0F82B3B29883707A399B99C894EF08SHA256: D357E48D827822D15C9C22C0B5204924FBA9FC59104818C9824AD149FE6F6249

=> ↺ Overview of Content Published in April

Rust

=> ↺ Junichi Uekawa: May.

• May. Doing some rust stuff and maintenance of existing C++ code. Doing something that I can feel improves the codebase is nice.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Recreating A Non-Standard USB Cable

• USB is a well-defined standard for which there are a reasonable array of connectors for product designers to use in whatever their application is. Which of course means that so many manufacturers have resorted to using proprietary connectors, probably to ensure that replacements are suitably overpriced. [Teaching Tech] had this problem with a fancy in-car video device, but rather than admit defeat with a missing cable, he decided to create his own replacement from scratch.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Machine Vision Automates Trainspotting With Unique Full-Length Portraits

• As hobbies go, trainspotting is just as valid a choice as any — we don’t judge. But it does present certain logistical challenges, such as having to be in visual range of a train to be able to spot it. There’s also the fact that trains are very large objects, and they tend to move very fast. What’s a railfan to do?

=> ↺ Disappearing Act

• “Vocation” is a word I associate with the trades—a consequence, I think, of attending American public schools in the 1980s. There, “vocation” was deployed as a euphemism for skilled labor. The implication, as I understood it, was that to be a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, was a calling, perhaps divine. The work that was my fate—noodling about in front of a computer—was decidedly less sanctified.1

=> ↺ My Great-Great-Grandad, The Engineer Who Invented A Coffee Pot

• In the study of genealogy it’s common to find people who will go to great lengths involving tenuous cross-links to establish royalty or famous figures such as George Washington or William Shakespeare in their family tree. There’s no royal blood and little in the way of fame to be found in my family tree, but I do have someone I find extremely interesting. One of my great-great-grandfathers was a Scottish engineer called James R Napier, and though his Wikipedia entry hasn’t caught up with this contribution to 1840s technology, he was the inventor of the vacuum coffee pot.

=> ↺ 20 Memes to Get You Through May Day – Part 32

• Well, it’s May 1st – Happy May Day (Meme Day?) everyone! Where I live it has finally – finally – decided it might be Spring after all. My cat is sleeping in the sun, birds are singing in the trees… …you know what? Maybe everything is going to be alright. Maybe.

Science

=> ↺ Researchers use AI combined with MRI to decode human thoughts

• The results were published today in the Nature Journal under the title, “Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings.” The scientists explained how this is a non-invasive technique, the first of its kind that can recognize not just small sets of words or phrases but streams of words.

=> ↺ ESA’s Jupiter-bound Probe Hits Antenna Snag

• While the few minutes it takes for a spacecraft’s booster rocket to claw its way out of Earth’s gravity well might be the most obviously hazardous period of the mission, an incredible number of things still need to go right before anyone on the ground can truly relax. Space is about as unforgiving an environment as you can imagine, and once your carefully designed vehicle is on its way out to the black, there’s not a whole lot you can do to help it along if things don’t go according to plan.

=> ↺ Mysterious Surge of Activity Detected in The Brains of Dying People

• The last gasp.

=> ↺ Sloth Fur Is Crawling With Life-Forms That Could Help Us Fight Superbugs

• A hidden reserve of new antibiotics?

=> ↺ AI Experiment Decodes Brain Scans to Reveal Things People Are Thinking

• A radical step towards mind reading?

=> ↺ Researchers use AI combined with MRI to decode human thoughts

=> ↺ Ancient ‘Bear Bone’ Reveals a Hidden Truth About Native American Ancestry

• Not from a bear at all.

=> ↺ Mexico’s booming economy grew 1.1% in Q1

• The services sector continues boosting GDP, but after six consecutive quarters of growth, analysts warn the boom may be coming to an end.

=> ↺ Stunning NASA Animation Reveals The Monstrous Scale of Black Holes

• Wait for it…

=> ↺ Almost 20,000 Ancient Volcanoes Discovered at The Bottom of The Ocean

• “Incredible to think about.”

=> ↺ Alien Civilizations Could Map Earth Using Signals From Mobile Towers

• The second most powerful source of our planet’s radio leakage.

Education

=> ↺ ASSU council drops senator-elect Ivy Chen’s case

• The ASSU Constitutional Council has decided to dismiss senator-elect Ivy Chen’s case on campaign expenditure violations. She will remain a part of the 25th Undergraduate Senate.

=> ↺ The Closing of This School Is Bad News for America

• Guardian Angel School in Manhattan represents a national predicament.

Hardware

=> ↺ Thin Mini-ATX runs on Atom x6000E processors

• Last week, Avalue launched an Intel Atom motherboard optimized for industrial and commercial applications such as gaming, retail, digital signage, etc. The EMX-EHLP supports up to 4x 2.5GbE LAN ports, triple display, and flexible expansion slots.

=> ↺ 52 Floppy Pickup

• The conversation reminded me of one of my first jobs at Apple. I was hired to work as a QA tester with the engineering team that shipped Mac OS system software updates. The first release I worked on was Mac OS 7.5, which was released in 1994. By this time hard drives had become commonplace and the kind of floppy-swapping John described had become a lot less common for most users. But when it came to installing new software onto a Mac, some amount of removable media juggling was usually required.

=> ↺ Squeeze Over A Minute Of Movie Filming Onto A 35mm Still Cartridge

• There’s an allure to shooting film in the digital age which isn’t quite satisfied by digital filters for your smartphone camera. Aside from the technical challenge of working with a medium limited in sensitivity compared to its electronic replacement there are aesthetic reasons for wanting to shoot with particular lenses not found on any modern cameras. Sadly though, movie film in formats such as Super 8 is expensive to buy and even more expensive to develop.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Cocoa Press Chocolate 3D Printer Offered As DIY Kit

• Ultimately, the goal of Hackaday is to shine a light on the incredible projects coming from the hardware hacking community. In the vast majority of cases, said projects end up being one-off creations — a clever solution that solved a specific problem for the creator, which may or may not be directly applicable to anyone else. But occasionally, perhaps one in every few thousand projects, we see an idea that’s compelling enough to become a commercial product.

=> ↺ EPA’s Whack-a-Mole “Forever Chemicals” Posture Is an Intolerable Failure

• To great applause, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month proposed “maximum contamination levels” in drinking water for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals. This was the first such action that EPA had taken in more than 30 years on any drinking contaminant.

=> ↺ ‘To Save the NHS,’ Nurses Strike in Half of English Hospitals

• Nurses and other National Health Service workers walked off the job in half of England’s medical facilities on Sunday night amid an ongoing fight for higher pay and better patient safety in the United Kingdom.

=> ↺ Burnout

• I’m going to take the time I need to rest. I enjoy the company of wonderful colleagues at SourceHut, who have been happy to pick up some of the slack. I have established a formal group of maintainers for Hare and given them my blessing to work without seeking my approval. My projects will remain healthy as I take a leave. See you soon.

=> ↺ Australia to ban recreational vaping in major public health move

• “Just like they did with smoking… ‘Big Tobacco’ has taken another addictive product, wrapped it in shiny packaging and added sweet flavours to create a new generation of nicotine addicts,” Mr Butler said in a speech announcing reforms on Tuesday.

=> ↺ As new data shows kids in a mental health crisis, parents ask, where is the help for kids?

• Last year, a report from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy warned of a growing mental health crisis among young people. The report, issued during the coronavirus pandemic, cited statistics including a 50%-plus-increase in emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls and a doubling of anxiety and depression symptoms reported across genders.

• On Thursday, a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention painted an even starker picture: According to the agency, the number of high school female students seriously considering suicide jumped from 24% in 2019 to 30% in 2021.

=> ↺ Surgeon general warns 13 is too young for children to be on social media

• Murthy believes this can cause adolescents to have a “distorted’ sense of self during their crucial developmental years.

• “I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early,” Murthy said on CNN. “It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children.”

=> ↺ Our Chicago: TikTok’s CEO to testify before Congress and how social media impacts kids’ wellbeing

• “What it showed is that there are actual brain changes in kids who spend a lot of time checking their social media. And, so, what we know is that the brain is literally in the biggest growth phase, that it’s in in it’s lifetime after infancy in teenage years. So, what we’re doing with our brains, and how we’re programming the pathways, and the neural pathways those changes are absolutely critical at this time. And, so, when you’re engaging in a certain activity, those are the pathways that are going to grow. Those are the certain patterns that we’re laying down for the future,” Cicchetti said.

=> ↺ ProtocolKills.com: An old quack narrative reborn for COVID-19

• A couple of months ago, I was wandering around the downtown of a nearby town where I had just gotten my hair cut, when I saw this in a shop near the barbershop, a photo featuring a website called ProtocolKills.com:

Proprietary

=> ↺ BIG jobs cuts ahead! After announcing 3900 layoffs in January, IBM plans to replace 7800 jobs with Artificial Intelligence

• According to CEO Arvind Krishna, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM.N) anticipates pausing employment hiring as approximately 7,800 positions may be eliminated by artificial intelligence (AI) in the upcoming years.

=> ↺ Key U.S. Marshals computers still down 10 weeks after breach

• A key law enforcement computer network has been down for 10 weeks, the victim of a ransomware attack that has frustrated efforts by senior officials to get the system back up and running — raising concerns about how to secure critical crime-fighting operations.

=> ↺ Russian right-wing political party maxes out server with high turnout for Minecraft May Day rally to honor late founder, firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky — Meduza

• A Minecraft May Day rally, organized by Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) by the virtual monument to the party’s founder Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has gathered 12,000 players, according to the party’s spokesman Alexander Dyupin.

=> ↺ Twitter Technical Glitch Is Logging Users Out of the Website

• Multiple users said they were unable to log in to Twitter on the web with their username and password. In some cases, even after a Twitter user was able to successfully log back in, the website was kicking them out shortly afterward.

=> ↺ Twitter is randomly logging out users. You’re welcome.

• Twitter is not dead yet, it’s just randomly logging out a number of its users. After reporting earlier today that Twitter was experiencing a bug that was allowing people to edit their bios to briefly regain their Verified checkmarks, the Twitter website this afternoon has begun to forcefully log out users at random. There are a number of complaints about the problem on Twitter itself, indicating that at least some are able to get back in after being booted from the site.

• The issue appears to be impacting desktop users at this time who are using Twitter via the web. Some claim they’re being logged out repeatedly.

=> ↺ Twitter Will Introduce Per-Article Charging Option to Publishers in May, Says Elon Musk

• Other details about the upcoming feature remain unclear, such as the percentage of each transaction that Twitter will take as commission. There is also no official launch date revealed or clarification about which accounts and media outlets will be able to qualify for the feature.

=> ↺ Nest Hub 2nd Gen updates to Google’s Fuchsia operating system

• After years of development on its own from-scratch, not-Linux operating system, Google officially launched Fuchsia in 2021 by way of an update for the original Nest Hub smart display. Despite changing out the entire underlying system, the core smart display experience remained relatively unchanged. Last year, the larger Nest Hub Max followed a similar upgrade path, picking up Fuchsia without making the change obvious to the everyday smart display owner.

=> ↺ Chromebook expiration date, repair issues ‘bad for people and planet’

• In a report on Tuesday, titled “Chromebook Churn,” US PIRG contends that Chromebooks don’t last as long as they should, because Google stops providing updates after five to eight years and because device repairability is hindered by the scarcity of spare parts and repair-thwarting designs.

=> ↺ Chromebooks’ ‘Short’ Lifespan Costs Schools Billions of Dollars, Report Finds

• Chromebooks’ “short” lifespans are “saddling schools with additional costs,” concludes a report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.

• “Across the 48.1 million K-12 public school students in the U.S., doubling the lifespan of Chromebooks could result in $1.8 billion dollars in savings for taxpayers, assuming no additional maintenance costs,” according to the report, published April 18.

=> ↺ Chromebooks in schools are breaking quickly, report calls on Google to extend lifespans

• A new report titled “Chromebook Churn” from the US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund has found that the millions of Chromebooks that flooded schools in recent years are breaking quickly with difficult repairs that lead to e-waste and higher costs.

• As COVID-19 hit and turned many schools to remote learning, Chromebooks were heralded as an affordable, easy-to-use option that many schools invested in. In 2020, the ChromeOS market saw massive growth, even outpacing that of macOS.

• But, according to the US PIRG’s report, these machines are starting to break quickly, with repair options that make it difficult to keep Chromebooks going.

=> ↺ Response to Lars Albertsson’s “Volvo Cars and digital race”

• I would argue relying too much on external software vendors and not seeing software as a first-class citizen is the root cause. But Volvo Cars is wisely moving away from that model by bringing software developers in-house. Google and Apple partner with vendors for commodities. Software and data just happen to be too key to treat it that way. As I argued in a previous post, the automotive industry needs to own their data and set up to make it to the mobility-driven phase.

• Having someone from software-only companies tell Volvo how to do software is not that different from having someone from Foxconn coming to Cupertino telling Apple how to do hardware. Personally, I approach Volvo from a position of respect and will do my best for it to achieve its vision. And I’m not alone. There’s a whole army of us.

• Having done this for more than 2 decades, I don’t buy the argument that “it’s rocket science, you do cars, pay us to do it for you”.

=> ↺ Phoenix Labs Lays Off 9% of Employees and Reduces Projects,Focusing on Dauntless and Fae Farm

• Dauntless and Fae Farm developer Phoenix Labs is the latest studio to be hit by a round of layoffs. In addition to the job cuts, the team is also reducing their in production lineup.

• In statements provided to GamesIndustry.biz, a Phoenix Labs confirmed the cuts, saying that they had “evaluated all ongoing development projects” and decided to “focus on fewer development projects”. They emphasize that this decision should help improve success for Fae Farm, which was recently pushed to late 2023, as well as Dauntless.

=> ↺ SAS to close some international offices, making selective hires in prepping for stock offering

• SAS will be closing several international offices affecting some 250 employees and is hiring to fill positions “critical to our business” given the “possibility of a recession ahead of us,” according to an executive for the privately held software company. The moves are made as part of a plan to offer a limited number of shares in a public offering next year, according to a statement provided to WRAL TechWire.

• The update on happenings at the company came in response to an inquiry about layoffs and office closings after WRAL TechWire received tips that cost-cutting measures were underway.

=> ↺ Disney, Amazon, META: Firms across the US slash jobs

• US companies from Amazon.com Inc and Walt Disney Co to Wall Street heavyweights Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley are slashing thousands of jobs as they look to rein in costs in anticipation of an economic downturn.

• For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

• Some companies such as Amazon and Meta Platforms have announced a second round of layoffs as rapid interest rate hikes by global central banks to tame inflation have weighed on consumer and corporate spending.

• Here are some of the job cuts by major American companies announced in recent months.

Security

=> ↺ German IT services company Bitmarck knocked offline following cyberattack

=> ↺ T-Mobile discloses second data breach of 2023 and its 8th since 2018

=> ↺ Enforce Zero Trust in Microsoft 365 – Part 1: Setting the basics

• This first blog post is part of a series of blog posts related to the implementation of Zero Trust approach in Microsoft 365.

=> ↺ At RSA Conference, tales of real-world cyberattacks and warnings of fearsome new threats

• The challenges of securing organizations haven’t changed much in the past year, and that means there’s still a lot more that needs to be done – especially as generative artificial intelligence and chatbots will require new tactics to fight attackers. That’s according to two panels that presented at last week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco.

=> ↺ Bruce Schneier’s plan to reinvent democracy

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ How countries around the world, including India, use Digital IDs for banking?

• Digital identity has simplified the way individuals interact with new banking products and services. With the help of digital identity solutions like Digilocker and Decentro, financial institutions can build new-age banking products that offer personalized experiences, enhanced security protocols, and encryption standards.

=> ↺ Brace Yourself for the 2024 Deepfake Election

• It’s not a question of whether AI-generated content is going to start playing a role in politics, because it’s already happening. AI-generated images and videos featuring president Joe Biden and Donald Trump have started spreading around the internet. Republicans recently used AI to generate an attack ad against Biden. The question is, what will happen when anyone can open their laptop and, with minimal effort, quickly create a convincing deepfake of a politician?

• There are plenty of ways to generate AI images from text, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. It’s easy to generate a clone of someone’s voice with an AI program like the one offered by ElevenLabs. Convincing deepfake videos are still difficult to produce, but Ajder says that might not be the case within a year or so.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ The “Location Off” switch on your phone is a lie.

• Think about it. To join their network, you are literally logging in with your carrier account, which is (most likely) tied to your identity and also has your payment method attached. Maybe you were clever and got a prepaid card with cash, but that’s another step. But consider what happens next: If you are communicating with the network, your phone and the cell tower quickly become aware of how much time it takes for a message to go back and forth between them. Say, a few hundred nanoseconds. It doesn’t take much math, because the amount of time is consistent for the distance you add, to establish a radius for how far away you are. Add in two or three weaker towers in the area that aren’t as preferable when your phone is looking for a better signal, and the carrier’s got a pretty good idea of where you are.

• Which, is also why buying prepaid with cash is overrated. All they have to do is look at where you are between 9PM and 5AM for most days, and they’ll have a pretty good idea of where you live. What’s the point of paying with cash if they can easily find your home address?

=> ↺ Big Brother Awards: Reprimand for digital coercion

=> ↺ Facial Recognition Powers ‘Automated Apartheid’ in Israel, Report Says

• The Israeli government is using computer vision to monitor Palestinian travel across checkpoints, according to the report.

=> ↺ The STOP CSAM Act Is An Anti-Encryption Stalking Horse

• Recently, I wrote for Lawfare about Sen. Dick Durbin’s new STOP CSAM Act bill, S.1199. The bill text is available here. There are a lot of moving parts in this bill, which is 133 pages long. (Mike valiantly tries to cover them here.) I am far from done with reading and analyzing the bill language, but already I can spot a couple of places where the bill would threaten encryption, so those are what I’ll discuss today.

=> ↺ Cops Raid Swedish VPN Provider Only To Find Out There’s No ‘There’ There

• There are few things I enjoy writing about more than cops who feel waving around a piece of paper will ensure they can get what they want. I’ve handled a few of these stories before, most of them centered on Signal, the little messaging service that could — one that does not collect user data and would rather exit the marketplace than subject itself to encryption-breaking government mandates.

=> ↺ The King Of Video Doorbells – Reolink Video Doorbell Review

• The Reolink Video Doorbell features good image quality, person detection, PoE, motion zones, RTSP, Home Assistant integration and more!

=> ↺ Public Knowledge Urges Congress To Oppose Bill Threatening Encryption, User Privacy, and Free Expression Online

• Recently, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and others reintroduced the “EARN IT Act” to increase the liability of platforms with respect to unlawful child abuse material.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Estonian volunteers supply Ukrainians with racing drones

• FPV drones, also known as racing drones, are agile and aerobatic. They are solely controlled by the image captured by an onboard camera. Traditional drones are operated from the pilot’s perspective on the ground, in contrast to this. The “AK” reports that these drones are now being used as kamikaze drones in Ukraine because they are harder to detect and destroy.

• A charged FPV drone cannot fly very far, only a few kilometers, and usually another observation drone follows it and monitors the outcome.

=> ↺ John Pilger: The Coming War

• In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on ‘the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists’ to discuss the ‘rapid crumbling of capitalism’ and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, […]

=> ↺ Gun Violence: A Week of Response to the Weak Republican Response to Mass Shootings in the USA

=> ↺ Russian opposition convenes in Berlin, signs joint declaration of political goals. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation abstains. — Meduza

• Members of Russia’s political opposition convened in Berlin, signing a joint “Declaration of Russia’s Democratic Forces.”

=> ↺ British Defense Ministry: Russia has constructed one of the world’s ‘most extensive systems of military defensive works’ — Meduza

• The British Ministry of Defense reported in its latest intelligence update that Russia has constructed one of the world’s “most extensive systems of military defensive works.” The ministry says that Russia has constructed a multi-layered defensive zone on the northern border of annexed Crimea and dug hundreds of kilometers of trenches in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions bordering Ukraine.

=> ↺ Want to “run”? TikTok tutors teach Chinese how to sneak into the U.S. from Mexico

• Social media videos detail every aspect of the journey from paperwork to the crossing of turbulent rivers

=> ↺ Finland and U.S. negotiate bilateral agreement that would allow U.S. troop deployment on Finnish territory — Meduza

• Following Finland’s accession to NATO, Helsinki and Washington have been negotiating a bilateral agreement that would allow the U.S. to use Finnish military bases, writes the publication Helsingin Sanomat.

=> ↺ The Idolatry of Gun Worship

• In the aftermath of the horrific Nashville school shooting that took the lives of three adults and three little children, Tony Perkins president of the Family Research Council, refused to find fault in America’s obsession with guns. Instead, he posited prayer being the only solution to the crisis of mass shootings.

=> ↺ ‘Moscow wasn’t built in a day either’ Meet the ‘beautiful girls’ hired out of school to be the faces of Russia’s new pro-Kremlin TV stations in occupied Ukraine — Meduza

• Russian media agencies first started cropping up in Ukraine’s occupied territories in 2014, and they’ve only proliferated since Moscow’s full-scale invasion last year. Most of these outlets take the form of TV channels, in part because television broadcasting works more reliably in conflict zones than Internet access. The networks employ the same style and repeat the same narratives as Russia’s federal media back home; programming aims to convince viewers that the Russian army’s actions are good and just, whereas the Ukrainian army is behaving destructively and nonsensically. The independent outlet Verstka Media recently published an investigation into the people running these channels and the locals working for them. Meduza is publishing an abridged translation of the story.

=> ↺ Paraguay’s presidential election was also a victory for Taiwan

• Santiago Peña, Paraguay’s conservative former finance minister, won the Paraguayan presidential election on Sunday (April 30), in a victory for the country’s dominant Colorado Party. He beat opposition lawmaker Efraín Alegre by more than 15 points.

=> ↺ Washington’s Egregious Deceptions About the Russia-Ukraine War

• All governments produce deceptive propaganda about aspects of their foreign policy. However, Joe Biden’s administration seems intent on setting some kind of record for both the number of falsehoods and their brazenness. Three of them stand out with respect to the latter feature. Falsehood: The world is united in opposing Russia and supporting Ukraine.

=> ↺ 🔴 Live: Ukrainian forces shell village in Russian border region, governor says

• Ukrainian forces shelled a village in the Russian Bryansk region bordering Ukraine early on Tuesday, the local governor said in a social media post, a day after an explosion derailed a freight train in the region.

=> ↺ Fuel security! What fuel security? A government security blunder

• According to Defence Minister Richard Marles, securing Australia’s fuel supply is of the utmost strategic importance. And it it is one of the reasons we ‘have to’ buy $368 billion worth of submarines. Yet, our fuel reserves are dwindling, so what’s the scam?

• Defence Minister Richard Marles spent Sunday morning on ABC’s Insiders responding to David Speers’s questions on the Strategic Defence Review and, in particular, the reduction in our strategic warning times and the risks our nation faces over the next three years

=> ↺ Ukrainian Forces Repel More Attacks In Bakhmut As Russians Step Up Shelling In South

• Russian forces launched more unsuccessful attacks on Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut over the past day, Kyiv said on May 2, as the protracted battle for the city in the eastern Donetsk Province extended into another month and Russia escalated the shelling of southern Ukrainian regions.

=> ↺ Zelensky advisor Podolyak says Russia has changed tactics in hopes of hastening Ukrainian counteroffensive — Meduza

• The Russian military has changed its approach to missile strikes on Ukraine and is now targeting civilian structures, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said on Monday.

=> ↺ The Giant Sucking Sound of War and US Militarism

• America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, “without the gods.”

=> ↺ Twenty Years After George W. Bush’s Infamous ‘Mission Accomplished’ Claim

• Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush landed in a twin-engine Navy jet on an aircraft carrier, strode across the deck in a bulky flight suit and proceeded to give a televised victory speech under a huge red-white-and-blue banner announcing “Mission Accomplished.” For Bush, the optics on May 1, 2003 could hardly have been more triumphant. From the USS Abraham Lincoln, he delivered a stirring coda, proclaiming that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” just six weeks after the United States led the invasion of that country.

=> ↺ U.S. Speaker Stresses Support For Kyiv, Tells Russian Reporter Moscow Must Pull Out Of Ukraine

• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican-California) said on May 1 that the United States will continue to support Ukraine after a Russian journalist suggested McCarthy doesn’t support continuing the supply of U.S. weapons.

=> ↺ U.S. Says 20,000 Russians Killed In Ukraine War Since December

• The White House estimates that since December Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties, including more than 20,000 killed.

=> ↺ Explosion Derails Russian Freight Train Traveling North Of Ukrainian Border

• Russian officials said an explosion was to blame for a freight train derailing not far from the border with Ukraine.

=> ↺ Three Killed In Latest Russian Missile Barrage To Hit Ukraine, Zelenskiy Says

• Russia hit Ukraine with a nighttime barrage of 18 missiles, killing two people in Pavlohrad and a 14-year-old boy in the Chernihiv region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on May 1.

=> ↺ Power transmission pole blown up in Russia’s Leningrad region — Meduza

• Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko reported Monday that a power transmission pole in the region’s Gatchinsky District was blown up just after midnight on the night of April 30–May 1. A second explosive device was found at another transmission pole, he said, but bomb technicians managed to de-mine it.

=> ↺ Russia carries out overnight missile attack on Ukraine — Meduza

• Russian troops carried out a missile attack on Ukraine on the night of April 30–May 1. According to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Russia launched a total of 18 missiles, 15 of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.

=> ↺ Railroad explosion in Russia’s Bryansk region causes cargo locomotive to derail — Meduza

• An explosive device was detonated on railroad tracks in Russia’s Bryansk Region, which borders Ukraine, Governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday.

=> ↺ Steppe fire spreads into town, leaves 13 homeless in Siberia — Meduza

• Several houses and a local store caught fire in Borzya, a town in Zabaykalsky Krai in the Russian Far East, reports Russia’s Emergencies Ministry (“MChS”).

=> ↺ Private satellites spotted a new Chinese military blimp

• After a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over the US earlier this year provoked an international incident, open-source intelligence analysts went blimp hunting.

=> ↺ From war to words: Sudanese rival generals agree to talk peace

• The United Nations said the warring Sudanese militias agreed to meet for negotiations to obtain a stable cease-fire. Despite both parties agreeing to a humanitarian cease-fire extended to 72 hours, fighting raged in the capital Khartoum.

=> ↺ To stop the fighting in Sudan, take away the generals’ money

• It is not enough to simply call for a ceasefire and a return to negotiations because those outcomes could reestablish the fraught balance of power.

• /blockquote>

=> ↺ More than 800,000 people could soon flee Sudan, UN says

• The fighting raging in Sudan could spur more than 800,000 people to flee into neighbouring countries, the United Nations warned Monday. The UN refugee agency UNHCR said that it was now working with a planning figure of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the violence that erupted in Sudan on April 15.

=> ↺ Israeli air strikes kill one soldier, put Syria’s Aleppo airport out of service

• Israeli air strikes targeted the international airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo early Tuesday, killing one Syrian soldier and putting the airport out of commission, state media said.

=> ↺ Israeli Attack On Syria’s Aleppo Airport

• Aleppo international airport has been put out of service.

=> ↺ Syrian President Hails China’s Peacemaking Role in Mideast

• President Al-Assad also pointed out that Syria looks forward to strengthening cooperation with China in various fields within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

=> ↺ Israeli Attack Puts Syria’s Aleppo Airport Out of Service, One Soldier Killed -State Media

• CAIRO (Reuters) – An Israeli attack late on Monday killed one soldier, wounded 7 others including two civilians and put Aleppo International…

=> ↺ Iran Says Diplomatic Missions Resume Operations in Saudi Arabia

• The two countries had carried out good coordination in a humanitarian issue in their first steps toward the resumption of the bilateral diplomatic activities.

=> ↺ Sudan’s double crises

• Sudan is in the grip of two interrelated crises. One is grounded in the long-standing struggle between forces of authoritarianism and those demanding pro-democratic transformation of their country. T

=> ↺ Thousands Flee to Sudan’s Main Seaport, Seeking Ships to Safety

• Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, has been overwhelmed by people fleeing the violence and scrambling to join an evacuation to Saudi Arabia.

=> ↺ Suspected IS group leader ‘neutralised’ by Turkish agents in Syria, Erdogan says

• The suspected leader of the Islamic State group has been killed in Syria in an operation carried out by Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday.

=> ↺ Russian Defense Ministry says overnight attack which injured more than 30 civilians in Pavlohrad targeted Ukraine’s ‘military-industrial facilities’ — Meduza

• Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the overnight missile strike was aimed at Ukraine’s “military-industrial facilities.” The attack was carried out by “high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons,” according to a statement released by Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

=> ↺ Biden Meets Marcos in Washington Amid Tensions With China

• The Filipino leader’s four-day visit is meant to send a message to China amid conflict over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

=> ↺ U.S.-Philippines Alliance Grows With Biden and Marcos Meeting: What to Know

• President Biden met President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines at the White House, a sign of strengthening ties between the two countries. Here’s what you need to know.

=> ↺ McCarthy Offers to Host Netanyahu in Washington After Biden Refuses

• The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, made the informal invitation during a visit to the Israeli Parliament, which came after President Biden had declined to invite the Israeli leader to Washington.

=> ↺ Japan’s prime minister is visiting Africa in an attempt to counter China’s influence

• Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida held talks with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on April 30, on the first leg of a weeklong tour of Africa. The trip comes as the Japanese government looks to strengthen ties with the global south, ahead of hosting the annual G7 conference in Hiroshima this month.

=> ↺ Will Australia’s defence relationship with Korea be a casualty of the DSR?

• The government’s decisions to shrink or cancel previous choices on the acquisition of armour may well be appropriate to Australia’s changing strategic circumstances. Fast, agile, easily deployable and long range, armour is not.

=> ↺ US strategy and force posture for an era of nuclear tripolarity

• Keir Lieber and Daryl Press lay out a vision for the future of US nuclear doctrine and strategy under the condition of nuclear tripolarity.

=> ↺ Big challenges ahead implementing Defence review recommendations

• The reaction to the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) has largely focused on the recommendations to re-allocate defence funding…

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ After Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Daniel Ellsberg Reflects on Leaking Pentagon Papers & His Legacy

• We spend the hour with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who recently announced that he has been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer with only months left to live. Ellsberg, who turned 92 on April 7, may be the world’s most famous whistleblower. In 1971, The New York Times began publishing excerpts of the Pentagon Papers — 7,000 pages of top-secret documents outlining the secret history of the Vietnam War. The Times exposé was based on documents secretly photocopied by Ellsberg and Anthony Russo while they worked as Pentagon consultants at the RAND Corporation. The leak ultimately helped to take down President Nixon, turn public sentiment against the War in Vietnam and lead to a major victory for press freedom. The Nixon administration went to extraordinary lengths to silence and punish Ellsberg, including breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. But the government’s misconduct led to charges against him and Russo being dismissed. Over the past five decades, Ellsberg has remained a leading critic of U.S. militarism and U.S. nuclear weapons policy, as well as a prominent advocate for other whistleblowers. “Why in the world are we in this position, time after time, of fighting against the self-determination or the nationalism of other countries, and taking on those murderous tasks as opposed to dealing with problems at home?” says Ellsberg in an in-depth interview with Democracy Now!

=> ↺ Daniel Ellsberg Warns Risk of Nuclear War Is Rising as Tension Mounts over Ukraine & Taiwan

• As we continue our in-depth conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, the famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower talks about his lifelong antiwar activism and responds to the more recent leak of Pentagon documents about the war in Ukraine. Ellsberg also reflects on the many people who inspired him and says others who look up to his example should know that the sacrifices for building a better world are worth it. “It can work,” he says. Ellsberg, who was recently diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and given just months to live, spoke to Democracy Now! last week from his home in Berkeley, California.

Environment

=> ↺ Spiking sea temperatures raise climate change worries

• Since mid-March, the world’s oceans have been hotter than at anytime since at least 1982, raising concerns among some climate experts about accelerated warming.

=> ↺ Texas has the most clean energy of any state waiting to be hooked up to the grid

• More clean energy projects are planned in the US than its grid can handle.

=> ↺ 163,000 tonnes of waste burnt in 2022, 50% could have been avoided

• 30% of misplaced waste is of organic nature, 16% is paper and cardboard, and plastics are responsible for 15%. This means that residual waste should be reducible by more than 50%, which is only possible through correct recycling, says SIDOR president and Luxembourg City alderman Patrick Goldschmidt.

=> ↺ India’s worsening struggle with heat waves will leave one gainer

• India is bracing for an alarming increase in the number of summer heat waves in coming years, putting lives at risk and leaving the economy scorched. But there is one group that could gain from this torrid scenario: power companies.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Is nuclear power attractive or risky? In Minnesota, it’s both.

• In Minnesota legislature, climate change has revived Democrats’ interest in nuclear power. But a radioactive leak has rekindled public concerns about safety.

=> ↺ Blocked Train Crossings Draw Calls for Action

• Within 48 hours of an investigation about children having to crawl under parked trains to get to school in an Indiana suburb, residents packed a public meeting to demand solutions, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a safety advisory, a bipartisan group of Indiana lawmakers sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation pleading for change and Norfolk Southern’s CEO, Alan Shaw, got involved.

• The investigation, a partnership between ProPublica and InvestigateTV, detailed the challenges communities face when they are besieged by trains that can block railroad crossings for hours or even days. The piece featured videos and photos of children climbing over and crawling under trains operated by Norfolk Southern; the images were rebroadcast by news outlets across America and beyond. Hundreds of readers reached out to ProPublica about their own experiences with blocked crossings, caused by trains from various companies.

=> ↺ US Supreme Court Puts Chevron Doctrine ‘Squarely In the Crosshairs’

• The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a challenge to a nearly 40-year administrative law precedent under which judges defer to federal agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous statutes—a case that legal experts warn could result in judicial power grabs and the gutting of environmental and other regulations.

=> ↺ Here’s How the ‘Jet-Owning Oligarchy’ Harms Both Planet and Workers

• Research published Monday details how the working class is paying the price, in more ways than one, for the “jet-owning oligarchy” to hop around the globe in their personal luxury planes.

=> ↺ Federal Lawsuit Aims to Protect Texas From ‘Exploding Rockets’ of Elon Musk

• In the wake of a SpaceX explosion that coated coastal Texas in ash, environmental organizations on Monday filed a federal lawsuit intended to safeguard local wildlife from more “exploding rockets” and ensure residents’ access to regional beaches and parks.

=> ↺ Oil Company Gave $200K to Group Accusing Pipeline Opponents of Taking Secret Money

• A First Nations advocacy group whose leader has accused pipeline protesters of being beholden to hidden financial interests has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from one of Canada’s top oil and gas producers, newly reviewed corporate documents reveal. 

• Stephen Buffalo, CEO of the Alberta-based Indian Resource Council, is one of the most outspoken Indigenous voices in favor of oil and gas expansion, testifying several times to Canada’s federal government and appearing frequently in mainstream media outlets.

=> ↺ Chinese truckmaker to build EV manufacturing plant in Mexico

• Beijing-based Foton says it plans to build a second manufacturing plant in Mexico, allowing it to produce electric vehicles in the country.

=> ↺ Chinese electric vehicle brands expand to global markets

• Chinese electric car exporters are starting to compete with global brands in their home markets. They bring fast-developing technology and low prices that Tesla’s chief financial officer says “are scary.” BYD Auto is the biggest-selling Chinese electric brand. It opened a dealership in Japan in February. NIO, a maker of premium-priced SUVs, exports to Europe. The ruling Communist Party has made China the biggest EV market with the help of dollars in subsidies. The ruling party wants to make China a creator of renewable energy and other profitable technologies. Other Chinese EV exporters include Geely Group’s Zeekr and Ora, a unit of SUV maker Great Wall Motors.

=> ↺ Schneider Electric to invest US $72.5M in Mexico energy services

• The company seeks to meet growing demand for consistent electricity supply, a must-have for nearshoring businesses in Mexico.

=> ↺ China’s wind industrial policy “succeeded” – but at what cost?

• China has the world’s largest wind energy market in terms of generation and capacity. But China’s emergence as the world’s leading player in wind has been costly.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Around 500 species deemed endangered in Latvia

• Approximately 500 species have been identified as endangered in the Latvian Red Book (a book listing endangered species) renewal project from the 1,500 species evaluated, Latvian Radio reported on May 2.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Saudi alfalfa sparks tension in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert

• In an arid pocket of Arizona’s rural southwest, thirsty tufts of alfalfa are guzzling unlimited amounts of groundwater — only to become fodder for dairy cows some 8,000 miles east.

• This Sonoran Desert field of green, cultivated by a Saudi Arabian dairy giant, has become a flashpoint among residents, who resent the Middle Eastern company’s unbridled — and steeply discounted — usage of a dwindling regional resource.

=> ↺ What Sound Can Tell Us About Our Changing World

Finance

=> ↺ After bank failures, raising deposit insurance has benefits – and risks

• Recent bank failures have raised questions about whether to expand insurance for depositors – but also about how to instill prudent behavior by banks.

=> ↺ Hollywood writers go on strike for first time in 15 years

• The Writers Guild of America has called for the first strike in 15 years after negotiations for a labor deal with Hollywood studios broke down ahead of the current deal’s expiration on Monday.

• Why it matters: A work stoppage threatens to cripple Hollywood’s already-messy transition to the streaming era.

• Details: The strike will begin at 12:01am on Tuesday local time, with writers taking to the picket line. During that time, all WGA members will immediately cease any and all writing duties, though they may perform other duties like producing or directing.

=> ↺ Keshub Mahindra, Billionaire Indian Industrialist, Dies at 99

• He expanded a family steel and jeep business into an international leviathan, but his career was stained by a conviction in the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

=> ↺ Colorado to Mandate Audit of Halfway Houses

• Colorado’s halfway houses will get an independent financial audit for the first time in 20 years, after a ProPublica investigation found a lack of oversight contributes to a system where more people end up incarcerated than rehabilitated.

• A new state law directs Colorado’s Division of Criminal Justice to hire a third-party auditor to evaluate the finances of halfway houses every five years, including the costs imposed on residents of the facilities. The findings of the first audits will be presented to lawmakers by July 1, 2025.

=> ↺ Yellen Gives Hard Deadline for GOP to End Economic Hostage Situation

• After months of taking “extraordinary measures” to prevent a first-ever U.S. default, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday warned that “our best estimate is that we will be unable to continue to satisfy all of the government’s obligations by early June, and potentially as early as June 1, if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt limit before that time.”

=> ↺ Republican Debt Ceiling Plan Would Screw Up Multiple Bipartisan Broadband Initiatives They Previously Claimed To Support

• The GOP is currently trying to hold the global economy hostage by using the debt ceiling debate as a bludgeon. Mostly to implement budget cuts nobody likes (like major budget cuts at the VA, or cuts to vast swaths of the country’s already faltering social safety net). If it goes badly, economists warn the net result could be global economic chaos and a completely avoidable recession. No biggie.

=> ↺ Deregulating Banks Is Dangerous

• As First Republic Bank is sold to JPMorgan, the Federal Reserve relearns some important lessons.

=> ↺ New Zealand Evaluates Interest Rate Risk After SV Bank Collapse

• “…New Zealand banks have relatively little interest rate risk, said the statement…”

=> ↺ First Republic’s failure may lead to other woes

• There’s hope this morning that the banking crisis might be over — at least for the time being. But the cause of the crisis hasn’t gone away, and the entire banking system is going to feel shaky for the foreseeable future.

=> ↺ Regulators Seize First Republic Bank and Sell It to JPMorgan Chase

• Plus: Twitter complies with a greater portion of government censorship requests, a judge allows an antitrust suit against Google to go forward, and more…

=> ↺ Regulators shutter First Republic Bank and sell it to JPMorgan

• Financial regulators have shut down First Republic Bank, a midsized financial institution that counts startups and venture capital firms among its clients. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., or FDIC, announced the move today. The FDIC is a government agency responsible for addressing bank failures and insuring client deposits against losses.

=> ↺ After First Republic Collapse, Is the Worst of the Banking Crisis Over?

• The bank’s rivals appear on firmer footing this time, in contrast with the widespread panic after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March.

=> ↺ Stock Market Today: Asia Shares Mixed on Holiday Mode Trade

• Asian shares are mixed with some markets closed or anticipating holidays and investors showing muted reaction to the latest U.S. banking failure

=> ↺ US regulators seize First Republic Bank, to be acquired by JPMorgan Chase

• US financial authorities have taken possession of California’s troubled First Republic Bank, which will be acquired by JPMorgan Chase, government regulators announced Monday in the latest banking failure.

=> ↺ Biden seeks emergency debt ceiling meeting with congressional leaders

• President Biden has called the four House and Senate leaders proposing a May 9 meeting on the debt ceiling, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

• Why it matters: The Department of the Treasury and Congressional Budget Office said Monday the U.S. may stop being able to pay off its debts as soon as early June – a startlingly short timeline to reach a resolution.

• /blockquote>

=> ↺ A Dutch Quest for Buried Nazi Treasure Comes Up Empty

• The release of a map sketched by a German soldier had touched off a gold rush in a tiny village, but an early-morning excavation failed to solve the mystery.

=> ↺ Woman Charged With 9 Murders in Series of Mysterious Deaths in Thailand

• The police said they found the suspect, 36, with cyanide after the sudden death of a friend with whom she was traveling.

=> ↺ Anger Over Pensions Law Fuels May Day Protests in France

• Protesters are still hoping to force the government to reverse its decision to raise the legal retirement age to 64 from 62.

=> ↺ This May Day, European Unions Have Reason for Hope

• May Day is an occasion for both celebration and dissent.

=> ↺ In Transylvania, Anyone With $200 Can Live Like a King. (Well, One Specific King.)

• Just don’t expect luxury at the Prince of Wales Guesthouse, where the surrounding forest is the main draw.

=> ↺ It Only Costs a Coffee per Month

• Problem is, it’s not just ACME Corp. that’s making this claim. It’s also a hundred other online sellers, all vying for that coffee every month. Anecdotally, here in the UK at least, that $5 seems to be increasing lately too, with the average being around $7 – $10 now.

• If you’re anything like me, you will have a number of these subscriptions. Here’s what I have off the top of my head (all prices are monthly): [...]

=> ↺ European, US companies continue layoffs amid recession fears

• Microsoft has announced its plan to lay off 10,000 jobs, roughly 5% of the total by the end of the third quarter.

=> ↺ Warren Says First Republic Collapse Shows Deregulation Boosted ‘Too Big to Fail’ Banks

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Monday that the latest government bailout of a failing Wall Street institution shows how much the financial system remains rigged in favor of powerful banks and that it is beyond time for Congress to step up with increased oversight and reforms.

=> ↺ Why did JPMorgan Chase buy First Republic out of receivership?

• You can ask why JPMorgan Chase agreed to buy the failed First Republic Bank out of regulatory receivership. But a better question might be, why not?

=> ↺ Bay Area tech layoff plans in 2023 already top the total for all of 2022

=> ↺ Spring 2023 Layoff Tracker: Morgan Stanley Reportedly Slashing 3,000 Employees

• Morgan Stanley is reportedly planning to cut as many as 3,000 employees over the next two months, multiple outlets reported Monday, making the investment banking giant the latest major U.S. company to reduce its head count in the second quarter of this year, following major cuts last week at Disney, Gap, Lyft and Dropbox.

=> ↺ Job Openings Near Two-Year Low as Layoffs Jump

• Construction, leisure and hospitality and healthcare cuts drove March increase in layoffs

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ No social network presence!

• I’ve recently deleted my Mastodon account. Mastodon was my only social network and I was using it since 2016 since it was first started. Mastodon, being a decentralized social network, was not my first presence on social networks. I remember when I was on MySpace, FriendFeed, Vine, Mastodon, Facebook, and Twitter.

=> ↺ Joe Tacopina Complains about Woke Jonathan Swift

• Given Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina’s complaint that he’s not in on the shared joke of Swift’s A Modest Proposal, I hope some nice mother in Florida with a sense of humor will make the Modest Proposal that Swift be banned under Ron DeSantis’ anti-woke censorship laws for being — as a canonical work of English culture — too woke.

=> ↺ Uzbekistan’s president wins referendum vote on extending powers — Meduza

• A referendum on extending the presidential term limit granted Uzbekistan’s president Shavkat Mirziyoyev the right to be reelected and remain in power, potentially until 2040.

=> ↺ Anti-Porn Lobbyists Pressure Reddit to Shut Down Its NSFW Communities

• The moderator pointed out that bills like FOSTA/SESTA—which NCOSE supported and which is largely considered a failure—drive sex workers further underground to one effect: causing more precarity to workers.

• “If they win, everyone loses, including themselves,” the mod said. “Likewise, in getting all the big, well-moderated porn sites taken down, these demented religious perverts will inevitably drive all porn underground into closed communities where there is no moderation or control whatsoever. It’s completely backwards. Big sites like Reddit are significantly safer and better moderated than the internet in general. Driving all porn underground is profoundly dangerous and stupid. These anti-sex religious groups are all alike: they’re all depraved, repressed perverts. Absolutely demented, brain-damaged imbeciles, absolutely self-defeating, too stupid to think two seconds in front of their faces.”

=> ↺ Pornhub Blocks All of Utah From Its Site

• In response to a new law that requires porn sites to verify users’ ages, Pornhub has completely disabled its websites for people located in Utah.

• As of today, anyone accessing Pornhub from a Utah-based IP address doesn’t see the Pornhub homepage, but instead is met with a video of Cherie DeVille, adult performer and member of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, explaining that they won’t be able to visit the site.

=> ↺ Sean McElwee’s Betting Against Democracy

• Even by Washington standards, the rapid rise and equally quick descent of Sean McElwee is a dizzying story. Within a few years, he went from being a rabble-rousing outsider to a supposed data wizard to an éminence gris whispering in the ears of Democratic Party leaders—to a pariah accused of betraying his political clients to feed a gambling habit. If the arc of his social career resembled the zigzags of a volatile stock during a period of frenzied trading, his ideological shifts were even more rapid. Within the same period, he went from being a libertarian to a supporter of Bernie Sanders to the popularizer of the slogan “Abolish ICE” to a centrist cautioning against progressive excess.

=> ↺ Progressive Caucus Chair Jayapal Endorses ‘Champion for Justice’ Barbara Lee for US Senate

• Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal on Monday endorsed Rep. Barbara Lee in California’s 2024 U.S. Senate race, calling the East Bay Democratic congresswoman “a champion for justice who has been a persistent progressive voice” in the House.

=> ↺ Artificial intelligence pioneer leaves Google and warns about technology’s future

• Hinton is worried that future versions of the technology pose a real threat to humanity.

• “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said in the interview. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

=> ↺ ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead

• Dr. Hinton’s journey from A.I. groundbreaker to doomsayer marks a remarkable moment for the technology industry at perhaps its most important inflection point in decades. Industry leaders believe the new A.I. systems could be as important as the introduction of the web browser in the early 1990s and could lead to breakthroughs in areas ranging from drug research to education.

• But gnawing at many industry insiders is a fear that they are releasing something dangerous into the wild. Generative A.I. can already be a tool for misinformation. Soon, it could be a risk to jobs. Somewhere down the line, tech’s biggest worriers say, it could be a risk to humanity.

=> ↺ Arm prepares for IPO

• CPU specialist Arm is moving ahead with its plan for an IPO after “regulatory challenges” prevented completion of the agreed acquisition of the company from SoftBank by GPU giant Nvidia.

• The US$40 million acquisition was agreed in September 2020, but the deal was opposed by regulators in the US and the EU.

=> ↺ Bill C-11: Why is YouTube mad at Canada?

• After many twists and turns, and over two-and-a-half years of review, the Canadian government has passed a new law that makes tech giants like YouTube and TikTok support Canadian cultural content.

• The law, dubbed Bill C-11, gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) broad authority to regulate these platforms, much like they already do with radio and television.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ National Security State Propaganda, the Fourth Estate’s Deadly Follies, and Why We Need a Truly Independent Press in Support of Human Rights and Freedom of Expression as we Celebrate Press Freedom Day – The Project Censored Show

• In the first half of this week’s show, Mickey and Project Censored intern Reagan Haynie speak with investigative reporter Alan MacLeod of MintPress News. MacLeod explains that a number of former high-ranking US military and security officials are now executives or board members in the video-game industry, notably with the firm that make the “Call of Duty” game, Activision. He also notes that game’s portrayals of assassinations of foreign leaders as normal, and concludes that games like these are carefully designed propaganda/recruitment devices.

=> ↺ Rupert Murdoch’s Settlement of the Dominion Case May Have Cost Him $787.5 Million, but It’s Still a Victory for Fake News

• To you and me, that sounds like a lot of money. But in Murdoch Land there’s a phrase for a sum like that. It’s called chump change. And yes, in this case the chumps are all of us. The whole rest of the world. Or, at least, those of us who wanted to see this trial bring Rupert Murdoch and everything he stands for to account. What does Murdoch stand for? The power to run a “news” network that can make up bogus facts every day and pass them off as reality.

=> ↺ “He is the most trusted voice in conservative media”: What comes next for Tucker Carlson?

• I’m personally relieved that Tucker is gone from Fox, mainly because his frat-boy persona has always turned my stomach, and his presence spreading far-right propaganda on a massive network meant that I actually had to pay careful attention to him. So, his departure (and the accompanying loss of his mass audience) is a huge relief. That said, it’s only temporary relief, because Tucker played a role at Fox that others before him willingly indulged–namely, mainstreaming far-right extremism and conspiracism. Glenn Beck specialized in it, Bill O’Reilly participated, as have many others, including some still on the roster. And none of that is going away at Fox. It will still normalize extremist conspiracism, it will still traffic in reckless disinformation, and it will continue to demonize all liberal Democrats as existential threats to the nation who deserve elimination. This will just be a blip in the network’s long-running assault on pluralistic democracy, which clearly is not ending anytime soon.

=> ↺ Political Propaganda Disguised As Local News Is Just So Hot Right Now

• For decades, academics have been trying to warn anybody who’d listen that the death of your local newspaper and the steady consolidation of local TV broadcasters has created either “news deserts,” or local news reporting that’s mostly just low-calorie puffery and simulacrum. Despite claims that the “internet would fix this,” fixing local news just wasn’t profitable enough, so the internet… didn’t.

=> ↺ When AI Chatbots Hallucinate

• Ensuring that chatbots aren’t serving false information to users has become one of the most important and tricky tasks in the tech industry.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Arresting Criticism: When Complaining About a Public Official Can Land You in Jail

• What if you lived in a country where you could be jailed for criticizing a public official? What if that country were the United States?

=> ↺ Russian woman charged with ‘discrediting’ army after crossing out ‘don’t’ on sign reading ‘We don’t abandon our own’ — Meduza

• A pensioner in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai named Olga Shkiryatova has been fined for “discrediting” the Russian army after she allegedly wrote anti-war messages on “patriotic signs.”

=> ↺ Twitter Abruptly Stops Reporting On Gov’t Requests As Data Reveals Elon Obeys Gov’t Demands Way More Often Than Old Twitter

• To hear Elon and his biggest fans tell the story, pre-Elon Twitter was a hellhole of censorship often driven by government demands, and he had to take over the company to “bring free speech back.” As astute observers not easily misled by nonsense peddlers knew, however, in actuality, old Twitter was actually one of the most welcoming platforms to speech that other platforms refused to host, and was among the most aggressive at pushing back on government demands.

=> ↺ When Complaining About a Public Official Can Land You in Jail

• This piece waspublished in partnership with The Nation.

• What if you lived in a country where you could be jailed for criticizing a public official? What if that country were the United States?

• In May 2018, Bob Frese, a resident of Exeter, N.H., posted on his local newspaper’s Facebook page the allegation that the town’s police chief had “covered up for [a] dirty cop.” The next thing he knew, a warrant was out for his arrest. A detective at the Exeter police department concluded that Frese had violated New Hampshire’s criminal defamation statute, which makes it a crime to purposely communicate “to any person, orally or in writing, any information which [the speaker] knows to be false and knows will tend to expose any other living person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule.” The detective filed a criminal complaint against Frese and arrested him. After the arrest generated public controversy, the New Hampshire Department of Justice advised that the prosecution was groundless because there was no indication that Frese knowingly defamed the police chief; in fact, Frese genuinely believed what he said. The police department dropped the prosecution.

=> ↺ My Fediverse blocklists

• I maintain three blocklists for the Fediverse: [...]

• This post is an attempt to document how they are made, their differences, their intended use, and especially their caveats.

=> ↺ Hollywood is losing the battle for China

• Soft power is hard to measure, but data on viewing preferences can reveal which way it is trending. And our analysis of film reviews on Douban, a social network, suggests that in China’s domestic market, the scales are tipping in Mr Xi’s favour. During the past decade, Western cinema’s share of viewership in China appears to have declined.

=> ↺ In just 3 months, China’s internet censor has closed over 4,000 websites and removed 55 apps

• Cyberspace Administration of China bans a dozen personal media platforms using names similar to state media or major news portals

=> ↺ Accountability, free speech protesters clash over actions of College Republicans

• Two months after Kent State College Republicans hosted a screening for the documentary “What is a Woman?” March 20, protesters are demanding that they be held accountable for their actions.

=> ↺ Labor Day rallies in İstanbul lead to detentions

• Numerous people have been apprehended in Turkey’s metropolis while holding rallies, gatherings, and marches.

=> ↺ Diplomats visiting Xinjiang urged to speak with ‘a strong voice’ on behalf of China

• Representatives from Brazil, Nepal, Vietnam, Indonesia and Turkey urged to counter ‘anti-China fake news.’

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Media crackdown continues ahead of May 14 elections

• On April 29, Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued warrants against 49 people, just a few days after the apprehension of at least 128 individuals, including journalists, politicians, and lawyers, across 21 provinces.

=> ↺ Biden praised jailed journalist Evan Gershkovich for his courage; colleagues praised him for ‘simply doing his job’

• “Evan wanted to report in Russia to shed light on the darkness that you all escaped from years ago,” Biden said, addressing Gershkovich’s parents, Ella and Mikhail Gershkovich, who fled the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Their daughter, Danielle, also attended the dinner. “Absolute courage,” Biden added.

=> ↺ Vice Media preparing to file for bankruptcy

• Vice Media is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

• Why it matters: Vice was once considered one of the most successful news startups of all time when investors valued it at $5.7 billion in 2017. Now it’s struggling to sell itself for more than $1 billion.

=> ↺ Biden Hypocritically Slams Arrest of US Journalist in Russia But Pursues Assange

• The double standards of the U.S. government are on full display in the lead-up to World Press Freedom Day.

=> ↺ “Journalism is Not a Crime” – Dispatches from Project Censored: On Media and Politics

• May 3rd marks the 30th anniversary of Press Freedom Day, inaugurated in 1993 by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) with support from the United Nations (UNESCO). RSF’s original 1991 report provided a “round-up of journalists killed throughout the world” and laid the groundwork for what eventually became the Press Freedom Index, which now ranks freedom of the press in some 180 countries. Each year since 1993, this index is published on Press Freedom Day.

=> ↺ Scott Morrison’s secrecy fetish exposed by release of National Cabinet papers

• Secrecy has shrouded Scott Morrison’s National Cabinet. In an epic transparency battle, Rex Patrick has finally managed to blow open the vault, forcing the Government to hand over the agenda and minutes of the first 20 meetings of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s National Cabinet, from 15 March to 29 May 2020.

• MWM brings you the documents, providing a unique insight into national policy making in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

=> ↺ Journalist Sedat Yılmaz tortured in custody

• The journalist was left without food for 24 hours and suffered hearing loss after being hit in the head multiple times.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Supreme Court to hear major case on limiting the power of federal government, a long-term goal of legal conservatives

• The Supreme Court agreed Monday to reconsider long held precedent and decide whether to significantly scale back on the power of federal agencies in a case that can impact everything from how the government addresses everything from climate change to public health to immigration.

=> ↺ ‘A New Low, Even for You’: Outrage After Gov. Abbott Denigrates Texas Murder Victims

• Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sparked widespread outrage Sunday by derogatorily—and incorrectly—referring to five people killed in a Liberty County mass shooting two days earlier as “illegal immigrants.”

=> ↺ Labor unions cancel traditional May Day march in Hong Kong, citing security law

• The move comes after police haul in a pro-democracy labor unionist, who emerges ‘emotionally broken’

=> ↺ Curfew ordered in 9 neighborhoods of Mardin

• Curfew has been ordered in 9 rural neighborhoods and their villages of Nusaybin district this morning. The end date of the curfew is to be announced later.

=> ↺ Florida governor signs bill allowing death penalty for child rape, vowing Supreme Court showdown

• Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill Monday allowing Florida to impose the death penalty on those convicted of sexual battery against children younger than 12.

• Why it matters: The legislation is in direct violation of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, which found it unconstitutional for states to use capital punishment for a crime other than murder.

=> ↺ The Hard Question of Affirmative Action and Slavery

• If there were an affirmative action program for the descendants of enslaved people, would you consider that to be race-based?

=> ↺ New York’s Working Families Party Came Back From the Brink. Its Departing Leader Recalls the Battle.

• New York’s progressive Working Families Party celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018, but it almost didn’t live to see a 21st. That was the year a long-simmering feud with former Governor Andrew Cuomo boiled over, after the WFP endorsed Cynthia Nixon in her primary against Cuomo, and the outraged governor continued pulling public employees’ unions and others away from the party, which had always represented an alliance between labor, and other social and racial justice activist groups.

=> ↺ Hollywood writers go on strike after contract negotiations fail

• “The primary sticking points are ‘mandatory staffing,’ and ‘duration of employment’ — Guild proposals that would require a company to staff a show with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time, whether needed or not,” it said.

=> ↺ Why Are So Many Young People Joining Labor Unions?

• A growing number of young people are joining and forming labor unions. Some call them “Generation U.” The New York Times dubbed the phenomenon the “Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class.”1

=> ↺ This May Day, Let’s Celebrate the Campus Labor Movement

• Over the last few years, workers in the United States have propelled a resurgent wave of union organizing. With the approval of organized labor at its highest among young people, it’s no surprise that colleges and universities have been a linchpin of the movement. Across the country—from resident advisers at Columbia University to dining workers at William & Mary to undergraduates at Dartmouth and beyond—workers in higher education are demanding better pay and conditions as tuition and fees continue to skyrocket. To understand what’s at stake, we asked a few young organizers and student journalists to give an update on a few of these ongoing campus campaigns.

=> ↺ In Largest May Day Turnout Since Pandemic, Workers Around the World March for Better Conditions

• Workers from Japan to France took to the street on Monday for the largest May Day demonstrations since Covid-19 restrictions pushed people inside three years ago.

=> ↺ Survey: Nearly 75% of Chinese Americans report discrimination in past year

• Nearly three out of four Chinese Americans say they have experienced racial discrimination in the past 12 months, and two in three feel a need to stay vigilant about hate crimes or harassment, a new study says.

=> ↺ Hollywood Writers Strike Over Pay Disputes with Streaming Giants, AI Concerns

• One of the most interesting areas of dispute in the current negotiations is the role AI should or shouldn’t play in Hollywood’s writer’s rooms. In case you’ve missed it, new forms of automation are currently sweeping through the entertainment industry—leaving many creatives worried about how such shifts may displace or alter their roles. From deepfakes to AI-generated voices to screenwriting chatbots, new tools seem poised to disrupt the business in major ways. Some industry figures have suggested that TV and movies could soon be written largely by software—a development that has forced WGA to issue a response.

• To protect its members, WGA has sought to carve out distinct guardrails for the use of AI, which would make such content generation tools less of an active threat to writers’ livelihoods.

=> ↺ Two hospitals may have violated federal law in denying woman an emergency abortion, HHS says

• Farmer ended up traveling to an abortion clinic in Illinois for emergency treatment.

• “Fortunately, this patient survived. But she never should have gone through the terrifying ordeal she experienced in the first place,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “We want her, and every patient out there like her, to know that we will do everything we can to protect their lives and health, and to investigate and enforce the law to the fullest extent of our legal authority, in accordance with orders from the courts.”

=> ↺ Exploitation, Abuse, and Death: The Dark Side of Working in the Weed Industry

• There’s a memory that haunts Laura Bruneau, like a video playing over and over. She remembers the unremarkable “Have a good one” she gave her only child, Lorna McMurrey, as she dropped her off at the cannabis-processing facility in Holyoke, Mass., where she worked. It was January 4, 2022—the last day Bruneau saw her daughter conscious.1This article was copublished with The Shoestring, an independent news outlet in Western Massachusetts.

=> ↺ CUNY Needs a Raise

• “The Harvard of the proletariat.” That was the vision of CUNY that my masters supervisor sold me back in 2017: the vision that prompted me to leave Australia for New York City. Having heard the list of people who passed through CUNY as students or teachers—June Jordan, Assata Shakur, Audre Lorde, Frances Fox-Piven—I didn’t bother applying anywhere else in the city. The prospect of being part of a public, proudly working-class institution, whose mission was to educate the children of New York’s laboring families, was enough to sell me.

=> ↺ Top 12 May Day Songs

• For more than 150 years, May 1 has been an international day to celebrate and defend the rights of the working class. Here’s my stab at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people—a playlist for May Day.

=> ↺ Podcast Episode: Dr. Seuss Warned Us

• You can also find this episode on the Internet Archive.

=> ↺ Green Rationales for Harsher Immigration Policies Are Nothing New

• It’s not often that conservative lobbyists beat the drum for increased environmental oversight and regulation. But that’s what happened this month when the far-right Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), through its legal arm, filed a brief in federal court demanding that the Department of Homeland Security conduct an extensive environmental impact study examining, of all things, immigration policy.1

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Spatial Division Multiplexing — a new (subsea) cable paradigm

• Guest Post: How submarine cable transmission technologies are evolving to support more capacity over longer distances.

=> ↺ Pushing the Needle Forward – A Community Engagement Quarterly Report

• At the RIPE NCC, we tailor our engagement to the needs and abilities of each part of the community – all with the aim of making a meaningful impact on the Internet ecosystem. In this first in a series of quarterly reports, I look at the work we do in community engagement and how we measure outcomes and impact.

=> ↺ The FCC Is Supposed to Protect the Environment. It Doesn’t.

• In a mountainous forest in southwest Puerto Rico, workers cleared a patch to make room for a 120-foot cellphone tower intended for use by AT&T and T-Mobile. The site, as the tower company later acknowledged, destroyed some of the nesting habitat of the Puerto Rican nightjar, a tiny endangered songbird. Fewer than 2,000 are believed to be alive today.

• In the northwestern New Mexico desert, a company called Sacred Wind Communications, promising to bring broadband to remote Navajo communities, planted a cell tower near the legally protected Pictured Cliffs archaeological site, which contains thousands of centuries-old tribal rock carvings.

=> ↺ Op Amp Challenge: An Op-Amp Buck Regulator

• Switching regulators have delivered such convenience and efficiency compared to their linear siblings, that it’s now becoming rare to see an old-style three-terminal regulator. Modern designs have integrated to such an extent that for many of us the inner workings remain something of a mystery. It’s still possible to make switching regulators from first principles though, which is what [Aaron Lager] has done by designing a buck regulator from a quad op-amp IC,

=> ↺ Concerns about unfair competition among Latvia’s mobile providers

• The mobile provider sector has been fighting for influence in public procurement for several years now. Two of the most influential players in the market believe that procurements impose inappropriate and outdated requirements. In the meantime, the third company does not see any problems with the existing arrangements, Latvian Television reported on May 1.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Spotify Head Daniel Ek Receives Words of Support from Elon Musk Amid Long-Running App Store Crusade

• Musk just recently weighed in on Apple’s market presence and the operational implications thereof, responding to a tweet from Ek. Of course, the latter exec has for some time been speaking out against App Store fees and policies, and the Spotify co-founder last month traveled to Washington to lobby against “Apple’s stranglehold.”

Patents

=> ↺ Supreme Court Holds Over Two Patent Cases, Considers Two More on Patent Eligibility

• On May 1, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed its decisions from the April 28 conference. Among the three patent cases considered, the court denied certiorari for the pro se case of Wakefield v. Blackboard, while holding over the other two for reconsideration at a later conference. This development increases the likelihood of these two cases being heard by the court, although a grant of certiorari has not yet been announced.

• The held-over cases include: [...]

=> ↺ Velos Media video codec patent reexam granted

• On April 20, 2023, less than two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the USPTO granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,497,469, owned and asserted by Velos Media, an NPE. The ‘469 patent relates to a device for indicating information about a leading picture for decoding images at a random access point.

=> ↺ A stately, columnated bank building, bedecked in garish payday lender signs. When you hear “fintech,” think “unlicensed bank”

• In theory, patents are for novel, useful inventions that aren’t obvious “to a skilled practitioner of the art.” But as computers ate our society, grifters began to receive patents for “doing something we’ve done for centuries…with a computer.” “With a computer”: those three words had the power to cloud patent examiners’ minds.

• Patent trolls – who secure “with a computer” patents and then extract ransoms from people doing normal things on threat of a lawsuit – are an underappreciated form of “tech exceptionalism.” Normally, “tech exceptionalism” refers to bros who wave away things like privacy invasions by arguing that “with a computer” makes it all different.

=> ↺ Stupid Patent Of The Month: Trying To Get U.S. Patents On An AI Program

• Only people can get patents. There’s a good reason for that, which is that the patent grant—a temporary monopoly granted by the government—is supposed to be given out only to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” Just like monkeys can’t get a copyright on a photo,  because it doesn’t incentivize the monkey to take more photos, software can’t get patents, because it doesn’t respond to incentives. 

=> ↺ Professional Liability risks of filing in DOCX

• Carl Oppedahl has been focused on the USPTO’s electronic filing and docketing system for several decades. Most recently, he has been calling out the USPTO for “pants-on-fire lies” about the workability of the DOCX standard.  The PTO plans to institute a $400 surcharge for those who fail to use DOCX starting at the end of June 2023.

• Oppedahl is presenting two webinars on the topic, focusing on professional liability risks associated with the new process and some tips for reducing the risks…

Trademarks

=> ↺ Disappointing: Sweetgreen Changes Name Of Burrito Bowl, Bowing To Chipotle

• A few weeks back, we talked about a lawsuit Chipotle filed against Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain dedicated mostly to serving salads and grain bowls. The suit centered on Sweetgreen announcing a new menu item: a “Chipotle Burrito Bowl.” We found the entire suit quite odd, given that Sweetgreen’s menu item is named in a way that makes it purely descriptive. It’s a burrito bowl with chipotle flavoring. That isn’t the sort of thing that equates to trademark infringement and mostly serves to point out that Chipotle, the restaurant, did a terrible job naming itself if it wanted to trademark its business name. I concluded the post thusly:

=> ↺ TTAB Posts May 2023 Hearing Schedule

• The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled nine oral hearings for the month of May 2023. Four of the hearings will be held via video conference; five will be held “in-person” in Alexandria, VA. Briefs and other papers for each case may be found at TTABVUE via the links provided.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Ed Sheeran: Other Artists Are Cheering on Copyright Fight

• Ed Sheeran says he’s getting encouragement from other performers who also worry that they’ll be sued after they heard he is testifying against claims that he stole material from Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.”

=> ↺ After $1bn Piracy Loss, Cox Latest ISP to Face DMCA Subpoena Dilemma

• In 2005, the RIAA’s efforts to obtain file-sharers’ personal details using cheap DMCA subpoenas ended when a court declared that they only apply to ISPs that directly store, cache, or provide links to infringing material. Almost two decades later, movie studios known for their cash settlement model are obtaining subpoenas regardless. Their latest target is Cox Communications, because that makes complete sense.

=> ↺ CC’s #BetterSharing Collection | May: The Future Is Open

• Each month throughout 2023, we will be spotlighting a different CC-licensed illustration from the collection on our social media headers and the CC blog. For May, we’re excited to showcase “The Future Is Open” by Mumbai-based fashion and graphic designer, Preeti Singh. The piece, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, was inspired by a quote from Ebenezar Wikina, Founder, Policy Shapers, and Advocacy Coordinator, Foundation for Partnerships Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND Foundation):

=> ↺ Court Protects Redditors’ Right to Anonymous Speech in Piracy Case

• A California federal court has denied a request to compel Reddit to unmask several anonymous Redditors. Film companies say the users’ comments could serve as relevant evidence in a piracy liability case against Internet provider RCN. However, the court believes that the Redditors’ First Amendment right to anonymous speech outweighs the interest of rightsholders.

=> ↺ Internet radio station offers a classic Latvian playlist

• An internet radio station dubbed “Vecās Plates” (Old Records) was launched in April by Latvian Radio, offering a non-stop supply of around 1,000 classic cuts.

=> ↺ The Woodsy’s way: Music store in downtown Kent plays important role in local history

• Woodsy’s Music has been a staple in the Kent community for over 40 years, offering musicians and music lovers a vast array of musical instruments and accessories since 1972. The Woodsy’s team has played an important role in the history of downtown Kent.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Dream

• Unsettled. Woke up this morning and remembered my last dream (I often don’t). I’m in a house. I’m holding a rat, stroking it. (This part is fine.) A distant voice asking me if I want to hold [redacted]. I suddenly find myself stroking a different, red-eyed rat.

=> ↺ What a day for a post dream

• The Lankavatara Sutra likes covering that in the phrase “Mind Only”.

• But there are so many other descriptions that might lead to the necessary dissolution of the seeming individual “I”.

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: AUINOTD Wordo: CAPES

=> ↺ Indoor skydiving 🪂

• I went to an indoor skydiving place. You go into a cylinder with air blowing upwards really fast and you float in the air current. I had two flights of a minute each, and on the second one an instructor flew with me while they turned the wind speed up, and we went up surprisingly high. The flights weren’t really long enough to learn how to control myself in the air flow, beyond getting stable ebough that the instructor wasn’t holding you all the time. If you get good at it you can steer yourself around, flip onto your back, or even fly in a sitting position.

=> ↺ Can Perez win the championship? 🤔🏎️

• When one team has a dominant car, the only doubt about the championship is which of their drivers will win. And it’s usually obvious which is the stronger. So maybe we should just give Verstappen the championship trophy now.

• In the Schumacher years at Ferrari, or the Vettel years at Red Bull, or the Hamilton years at Mercedes, their team mates were stong enough to win races, but not to give them a serious challenge. The one exception was Nico Rosberg who beat Hamilton. But he knew that it had taken everything he had plus some luck, so he retired after that season.

• This year, Perez has made a strong start against Verstappen. They have two wins each. How will it play out?

=> ↺ Aloha

• Hello, I’m new here An occasional surfer, when the moon allows it, but it keeps me up all night. I’ll stick to beer for tonight. I hope everyone is having a good time.

=> ↺ Album #251: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Deja Vu

• My mother had a CSNY sticker on a bread bin. I grew up seeing it with no curiosity. It was a band she liked once. We sing along to Dr Hook in the car. Who cares about the other band?

• Now she’s gone and I know who that band was. Given the choice, I’d go back to ignorance and Dr Hook.

=> ↺ May 1st

• I didn’t have class today as it’s the first of May, so I’m going to practice singing on my own. There’s this tricky exercise I’m working on where you go down 3 notes in total, ascend 2 notes, then leap down to the lowest note in the phrase, then back up 1 to the note you skipped. I’ll illustrate it using parallagḗ (which are solfegé but for Byzantine music lol)

Technical

=> ↺ Morgan’s Gemlog: Generating STL Models

=> ↺ AI Ceiling

• The above might be seen as something of a pro-AI view. However, no reason would include the risk of yet another AI winter, warnings about bad actors abusing AI, a web that is flooded with output that is fed back to… oh, Spammerville? Yeah, you don’t want to go there. There may also be computational or other technological limits that the “not small” models soon or have already run into. How do small humans learn so much running on so little? What other problems could there be?

=> ↺ Package Management – Introduction

• As I’m working through one project, I’m frequently planning the next. I noticed that a number of my future ideas, fantasies as you will, all have one thing in common: packages. It doesn’t if it is a game idea or working on programming calendars[1] or Author Intrusion[2], they all need some form of package management.

=> ↺ struggling

• I have a system for remembering passwords. I don’t like password managers and I never let browsers save passwords. I just don’t trust these things, and I operate on the belief that everyone gets hacked eventually.

• My phone is pattern-locked and most apps are separately pin-locked. I’ve been using complicated passwords for at least 20 years. Not always “strong” because of repeating characters and lack of mixed case or symbols, but nothing easy to guess.

=> ↺ My Fediverse blocklists

• A large list of instances that I find worth suspending. After the first couple hundred entries (imported and then reviewed), I started collecting receipts. Since early 2023, every entry has documented reasons and receipts. I share these with multiple people in a collaborative document, but I don’t share it publicly due to risk of harassment.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Szczeżuja’s tinylo

• I’ve made a quick look into the small net. Everything is on its place. I read several articles, I felt calmness of Bongusta.

Programming

=> ↺ 02 May 2023

• Some time ago i found the book “Common Lisp: A gentle introduction to symbolic computation” at a flea market and a few nights ago i benefited from a sleepless night in the way that i started to read. So far it lives up to its name and offers a somehow friendly way to look into lisp.

• 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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