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Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom
URL: http://techrights.org
Updated: 1 hour 52 min ago

IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 31, 2023

2 hours 19 min ago

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IPFS Mirrors table#ipfs-table tr:nth-child(even) { background-color:#efefef; border-bottom: 2px solid #aaa; } CID Description Object type  QmNidhAMYqCV1CdCfqefCumw7sZkX6i84JbmWyKN34mRVg IRC log for #boycottnovell
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(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)  QmdNiHNqedxgG1MPC8xHQP5q51sdLZtHff5WdtZTe7kbX9 IRC log for #techbytes
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Bulletin for Yesterday

Local copy | CID (IPFS): QmZjKTQkXEAPfBEY76e1SGVHsMwytpPPn1a8p7edRrF2LX

Linus Tech (Illiteracy) Tips, LTT, Buys Phoronix Media

Saturday 1st of April 2023 01:38:10 AM

Summary: Phoronix Media is being acquired by a larger company; the site will not change though

Linus Gabriel Sebastian, founder of Linus Tech Tips (LTT), has just announced the transfer of Phoronix Media (best known for Phoronix.com and PTS) to his company based in Canada.

“Readers of the site won’t be affected. They can still get a spoonful of Microsoft chaff along with plenty of (other) ads.”“Phoronix.com and PTS are a strategic addition to our growing portfolio,” remarked Yvonne Ho, who will oversee the operations to ensure the benchmarks always include ClearLinux and articles habitually include a Microsoft distro that only Microsoft uses.

Michael Larabel could not be reached for comment. He has been busy this past month trying to figure out new and innovative ways to block all the ad blockers. Mr. Sebastian insists that evading ads is nothing short of piracy.

Readers of the site won’t be affected. They can still get a spoonful of Microsoft chaff along with plenty of (other) ads. █

Decided to Quit Debian and Use WSL Instead (Best of Both Worlds)

Saturday 1st of April 2023 01:13:23 AM

Summary: Today starts a journey to a “better” experience, which lets Microsoft audit the kernel and leverage telemetry to improve my Debian experience

THIS is a hard post to write. Today, April 1, I’m beginning my migration. I will report on it later today, explaining how it all went along. Maybe I’ll change my mind.

“Thankfully I already have some Microsoft MVPs like Hayden Barnes helping my migration.”Having used GNU/Linux since my teenage years I’ve decided that it’s just too boring. I’ve not rebooted Debian since January when I first installed it (only the post-install reboot) and I am beginning to wonder if there’s a bootkit somewhere inside my system. Thank God, Microsoft made “secure” boot to do this for me. As it turns out, Debian 11 is not good anymore. Vista 11 has WSL, which reinvents Cygwin, dating back to 1995. So why on Earth use only GNU/Linux? Best of both worlds, right? Anything else would be an act of bigotry and intolerance.

Thankfully I already have some Microsoft MVPs like Hayden Barnes helping my migration. They kept coming to our IRC network for years, advocating WSL. I give up! They have a point! █

Microsoft Has Laid Off Lennart Poettering and Hired Elon Musk

Saturday 1st of April 2023 12:46:14 AM

Microsoft hires Elon Musk to oversee layoffs, algorithm decides to fire Poettering

Summary: Poettering gets rehired by IBM; IBM and Microsoft announce merger, putting Poettering back into his former position

MICROSOFT is going through some truly tough times. There are layoffs every week, the company is unable to hide it by compelling staff to sign NDAs (the press finds out eventually), and tens of thousands of puff pieces about a chaffbot cannot distract the public entirely… from the real crisis.

“As a result, the first person to go is Lennart Poettering, who quietly defected from IBM to Microsoft only months ago.”Microsoft has just announced, in its Friday shareholders meeting, that it has convinced Elon Musk to join Microsoft’s Board of Directors and spend some time carrying out duties at Microsoft, at least at a part-time capacity, focusing on “AI”.

“Musk has demonstrated solid track record running companies that suffer deep losses,” the company said in its meeting minutes, “not only convincing a lot of staff to leave voluntarily but also laying off a significant proportion without paying severance.”

“IBM has meanwhile signalled that it is willing to rehire Mr. Poettering, but discussions are still ongoing about the IBM/Microsoft merger, which dates back to 2011.”An anonymous source told us that OpenAI has unveiled a new algorithm for HR. As a result, the first person to go is Lennart Poettering, who quietly defected from IBM to Microsoft only months ago. Poettering insists that it was not a defection, it was just a matter of wearing the correct badge after more than a decade of work, which some deemed sabotage.

IBM has meanwhile signalled that it is willing to rehire Mr. Poettering, but discussions are still ongoing about the IBM/Microsoft merger, which dates back to 2011. The discussions are already more than a decade old and Bill Gates is losing interest in them. █

Links 31/03/2023: Ruby 3.2.2 and Linux Lite 6.4

Friday 31st of March 2023 04:38:09 PM

Contents

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

Links 31/03/2023: Devices and Games, Mostly Leftovers

Friday 31st of March 2023 12:21:10 PM

Contents
  • GNU/Linux
    • Desktop/Laptop
      • [Repeat/important] Free Desktop ☛ 2023 X.Org Board of Directors Elections timeline extended, request for nominations

        Nominees shall be required to be current members of the X.Org Foundation, and submit a personal statement of up to 200 words that will be provided to prospective voters. The collected statements, along with the statement of contribution to the X.Org Foundation in the member’s account page on http://members.x.org, will be made available to all voters to help them make their voting decisions.

        Nominations, membership applications or renewals and completed personal statements must be received no later than 23:59 UTC on April 2nd, 2023

    • Instructionals/Technical
      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Ansible Semaphore on Debian 11

        Ansible Semaphore is an open-source web UI for Ansible playbooks. It enables the deployment using Ansible automation via a web browser. In this tutorial, you will install the Ansible Semaphore on a Debian 11 server.

      • How to update NodeJS and NPM to their latest versions?

        Node.js and NPM (Node Package Manager) both are popular and widely used tools among the developer’s community. On one side where nodejs is a JavaScript run-time environment, NPM is its package manager to install various libraries and packages for it, easily.

      • TecAdmin ☛ Iptables: Common Firewall Rules and Commands

        Iptables is a powerful firewall utility that is used to secure Linux systems from unauthorized network traffic. It is a command-line tool that provides a flexible and customizable way to configure and manage firewall rules. In this article, we will cover the essentials of Iptables, including some of the most common firewall rules and commands.

      • TecAdmin ☛ Preventing SQL injection attacks with prepared statements in MySQL

        SQL injection attacks are one of the most common security threats that web applications face today. These attacks occur when malicious actors use specially crafted input to manipulate database queries and gain unauthorized access to sensitive data.

      • ChartCSS ☛ Charts.css

        The web uses HTML for structure, CSS for styling and JS for functionality [sic]. When displaying data the same rules apply – we should use HTML to structure the data, and CSS to style the structural HTML elements.

        With a few simple CSS classes applied on the container element you can turn your entire table of data into a visually appealing chart. The framework is developer-friendly making it easy to customize every element with simple CSS selectors.

    • Games
    • Desktop Environments/WMs
      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
        • David Revoy ☛ Krita courses at Activdesign

          I gave courses for Activdesign, a French CG school teaching design, video-game and web-dev. It’s a school using Free/Libre software, that’s so cool!. That’s also why I accepted to teach for them.

          [...]

          I taught remotely from my desk at home with my mic and webcam. Because even if the school is located in France, it was too far away from my home to go weekly over there. To give you and idea, it’s easily located at more than a 6h train distance.

          The school used their own Jitsi server for the visio, and Jitsi rooms were integrated around a larger central hub managed by Mattermost. Thanks to a cool setup proposed by the school, I was able to launch a Jitsi meeting directly from Mattermost chat with a button. Everything was smooth, I was impressed how easy it was for teachers and students to use that. Bravo. The Jitsi room was always ready 5 minutes before the course. I had a webcam view on the classroom, but it was also possible for the students to attends from their home (or anywhere with Internet).

          I recorded the sessions with OBS also for offering a possibility to get a replay in case someone miss a course. The school gave me a sFTP access to upload the courses. I’m sure I’ll have requests here on the blog to ask me to share these files or upload the replays: but I don’t want that. I don’t want the raw recordings of the session I made to go public even if ActivDesign gave me authorisation to do it. It’s mainly because it’s very long (15h! 2.7GiB) and it’s in French.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems
    • Devices/Embedded
      • Stacey on IoT ☛ The Homey bridge is a simple (but sweet) home hub [Ed: What exactly makes a hub "smart"?]

        This week, customers in the U.S. can spend $69 for the Homey Bridge, a smart home hub designed and sold in Europe, and now available for the first time here in the U.S.

        [...]

        The Homey Bridge competes with DIY hubs from SmartThings/Aeotec, Hubitat, Aqara and more. But in a week of testing, I found several things that make it a good option, thanks to its European origins and the addition of IR. It’s also worth noting that this particular product is the entry-level Homey device, and most users will end up paying a $2.99 per month subscription when they add it to their home. More on that in a bit.

      • Stacey on IoT ☛ Podcast: What the heck is an IoT hyperscaler? [Ed: More surveillance basically]

        With this week’s show I feel like we’re singing the same old tune. Philips Hue maker Signify is delaying its implementation of Matter while it waits for others to implement features it needs.

    • Open Hardware/Modding
      • Raspberry Pi ☛ Raspberry Pi Pico Game Boy Interceptor | The MagPi #128

        The RP2040 microcontroller-based Game Boy Interceptor came about when just such a tournament was being planned, “and, of course, they wanted to stream the contestants’ gameplay,” relates fellow Tetris fan Sebastian Staacks. “Streaming would not be a problem with a modified Game Boy or a modern Game Boy clone such as the Analogue Pocket,” says Sebastian, “but it would mean contestants would be forced to use the same platform in order to compete.” This change just wouldn’t fly: “the contestants always played their favourite Game Boy model and, in a contest, would want to use the model on which they trained their muscle memory.”

      • Hackaday ☛ Could 1080p Video Output From The RP2040 Be Possible?

        Modern microcontrollers often have specs comparable with or exceeding early gaming consoles. However, where they tend to fall short is in the video department, due to their lack of dedicated graphics hardware. With some nifty coding, though, great things can be achieved  — as demonstrated by [TEC_IST]’s project that gets the RP2040 outputting 1080p video over HDMI.

      • Hackaday ☛ Foldable PCB Becomes Tiny Rover

        Typically, when you’re putting electronics in a robot, you install the various controller PCBs into the robot’s chassis. But what if the PCB itself was the chassis? [Carl Bugeja’s] latest design explores just that idea.

      • Stargirl Flowers ☛ A reply to Josef Průša

        Yesterday, Prusa Research announced their latest 3D printer: the Original Prusa MK4, a fantastic follow-up to the award winning MK3 which is a favorite among hobbyists and professionals alike. At the same time, founder Josef Průša shared a post lamenting the state of open source hardware in 2023. Josef shares his experience over the last ten years with open hardware and his frustrations around the lack of reciprocity among fellow 3D printer manufacturers. At the end, Josef shares that he’s chosen not to open source the electronics for the MK4 yet1 and calls for the establishment and adoption of a new, highly restrictive license.

        Josef adds that he wants to have a conversation, so this post is my reply. I deeply respect Josef, his company, and all of the work they’ve done within the open source community, but I disagree with him on this matter. The rest of the post is opinion and it’s given from someone with a different perspective- I fully expect many people to disagree with both me and Josef! I welcome feedback, but please treat me, Josef, and each other with respect. For what it’s worth, I own a Prusa MINI+ and I plan on buying the MK4 when kits are available.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
    • SaaS/Back End/Databases
      • Dylan Paulus ☛ Postgres: The Graph Database You Didn’t Know You Had

        PostgreSQL (Postgres), is a powerful relational database that can store a wide range of data types and data structures. When it comes to storing graph data structures we might reach for a database marketed for that use case like Neo4J or Dgraph. Hold your horses! While Postgres is not generally thought of when working with graph data structures, it is perfectly capable to store and query graph data efficiently.

    • Education
      • Rlang ☛ Introduction to Deep Learning with R workshop

        Description: The purpose of this workshop is to offer an introductory understanding of deep learning, regardless of your prior experience. It is important to note that this workshop is tailored to those who are absolute beginners in the field. We therefore begin with few necessary fundamental concepts, after which we cover the basics of deep learning, including topics such as what is actually being learned in deep learning, what makes it “deep,” and why it is such a popular field. We will also cover how you can estimate deep learning models in R using the neuralnet package. You should attend this workshop if you heard about deep learning and would like to know more about it.

    • Programming/Development
      • TecAdmin ☛ How to Prevent SQL-injection in PHP using Prepared Statements

        SQL injection is a common form of attack that targets web applications that use SQL databases. In this type of attack, attackers exploit vulnerabilities in the application code to inject malicious SQL statements that can compromise the database and potentially expose sensitive information.

      • TecAdmin ☛ How to Validate Email Addresses in Python (Using Regular Expressions)

        Validating email addresses is a crucial step in ensuring that your applications accept only correctly formatted email addresses. A well-formed email address not only ensures proper communication but also helps prevent spam and security risks.

  • Leftovers
    • Hackaday ☛ Upgraded Plasma Thruster Is Smaller, More Powerful

      When [Jay Bowles] demoed his first-generation ion thruster on Plasma Channel, the resulting video picked up millions of views and got hobbyists and professionals alike talking. While ionic lifters are nothing new, this robust multi-stage thruster looked (and sounded) more like a miniature jet engine than anything that had come before it. Optimizations would need to be made if there was even a chance to put the high-voltage powerplant to use, but [Jay] was clearly onto something.

    • CyberRisk Alliance LLC ☛ Chinese hackers tied to novel Linux malware

      “The capabilities offered by Mlofe are relatively simple, but may enable adversaries to conduct their attacks under the radar. These implants were not widely seen, showing that the attackers are likely limiting its usage to high value targets,” said Exatrack.

    • Scheerpost ☛ Patrick Lawrence: French Streets and American Sofas

      You might be Brazilian or Malian or Singaporean, it is remarkable the world over to watch the French explode into the streets of dozens of cities and towns to protest the imperial president residing in Élysée Palace.

    • Science
      • SparkFun Electronics ☛ “Women’s Work” and the Hidden History of Computer Science and Engineering

        For decades, the history of computer science and engineering has largely been told as a story of male geniuses and their groundbreaking innovations. Names like Alan Turing, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs have become synonymous with the field, while the contributions of women have often been overlooked or outright ignored. However, the reality is that women have played a significant role in the development of computer technology since its earliest days.

        From pioneering storing data in binary patterns through weaving, to incredible contributions to the Apollo Moon Missions, women and the work traditionally done by them have been at the forefront of many of the field’s most important breakthroughs. Yet their stories remain largely untold, a hidden history that deserves to be recognized and celebrated.

      • Hackaday ☛ Huygens’ Telescopes Weren’t Very Good, Now We Think We Know Why

        [Christiaan Huygens] was a pretty decent mathematician and scientist by the standards of the 17th century. However, the telescopes he built were considered to be relatively poor in quality for the period. Now, as reported by Science News, we may know why. The well-known Huygens may have needed corrective glasses all along.

      • Science Alert ☛ This Surprisingly Simple Shape Solves a Longstanding Mathematical Problem

        Is that it?

      • Science Alert ☛ A Look at The Proton’s Inner Structure Shows How Its Mass Isn’t The Same as Its Size

        Where do you draw the line?

    • Education
    • Hardware
      • Hackaday ☛ Cold War Military Telephones Now Usable Thanks To DIY Switch Build

        The TA-1042 is the most badass looking telephone you’ll ever see. It’s a digital military telephone from the 1980s, but sadly non-functional unless it’s hooked up to the military phone switches it was designed to work with. These days, they’re really only useful as a heavy object to throw at somebody… that is, unless you had the suitable supporting hardware. As it turns out, [Nick] and [Rob] were able to whip up exactly that.

      • Hackaday ☛ Clever Test Rig Clarifies Capacitor Rules-of-Thumb

        If you’ve done any amount of electronic design work, you’ll be familiar with the need for decoupling capacitors. Sometimes a chip’s datasheet will tell you exactly what kind of caps to place where, but quite often you’ll have to rely on experience and rules of thumb. For example, you might have heard that you should put 100 µF across the power supply pins and 100 nF close to each chip. But how close is “close”? And can that bigger cap really sit anywhere? [James Wilson] has been doing research to get some firm answers to those questions, and wrote down his findings in a fascinating blog post.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
    • Proprietary
      • Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft confirms it’s testing ads in Bing Chat [Ed: Bing has layoffs, Bing rapidly loses market share, Bing is no business model]

        Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s modern life, search and devices group, wrote in a Wednesday blog post that the company is “exploring placing ads in the chat experience.” Revenue from those ads, the executive added, will be shared with publishers.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ Now-patched Azure vulnerability opened the door to remote code execution

        Dubbed “Super FabriXss,” the vulnerability was demonstrated at BlueHat IL 2023, showing how they could escalate a reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability in Azure Service Fabric Explorer. The demonstration showed how an unauthenticated Remote Code Execution could abuse the metrics tab and enable a specific option in the console, the ‘Cluster Type’ toggle.

        Orca describes Super FabriXss as a dangerous cross-site scripting or XXS vulnerability that affects Azure Service Fabric Explorer. The vulnerability enables unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute code on a container hosted on a Service Fabric node.

    • Security
      • HowTo Geek ☛ Ubuntu 18.04 Support Is About to End, but Not for Everyone [Ed: Canonical charging money for security patches. "My server got cracked because I was poor and didn't pay billionaire Mark Shuttleworth" may be worse than "I lost my blue tick thing in Twitter because I did not pay Elon Musk". Don't use Ubuntu if it resorts to upselling tactics (proprietary stuff) with security 'ransom' on top (risk breaking things by upgrading or pay us for more patches). "Try GNU/Linux... it's free... but then you need to start paying Mark Shuttleworth or risk breaking your workflow..."]

        Ubuntu is still one of the most popular Linux distributions, with a large install base across desktop PCs, servers, and embedded devices. Canonical is about to say goodbye to Ubuntu 18.04, unless you use Ubuntu Pro.

        Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, also known as “Bionic Beaver,” will reach the end of its promised five-year support window on May 31, 2023. After that point, it won’t receive critical security updates or updates to most apps in the default software repositories. Flatpak and Snap-based applications may continue to work, since they usually aren’t tied to specific OS releases, but they may start breaking in unexpected ways (if they haven’t already).

        Ubuntu 18.04 was released in April 2018, replacing 16.04 as the new Long Term Support (LTS) release. For people upgrading from 16.04 (Canonical recommends most people stick to the LTS versions), it switched from the defunct Unity desktop to GNOME Shell, reworked the login and lock screens, improved the Settings app, and more. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS also served as the base for countless other distributions, including official derivatives like Lubuntu 18.04 and third-party spins like elementary OS 5.0 Juno.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ Google researchers detail recently discovered campaigns targeting iOS, Android and Chrome [Ed: Spyware company warns us about... Spyware! (That's not its own)]

        Google LLC’s Threat Analysis Group today revealed the details of two recently discovered campaigns that use various unpatched or “zero-day” exploits against Android, iOS and Chrome. The first campaign was discovered in November and targeted victims through bit.ly links sent to users over SMS text messages in Italy, Malaysia and Kazakhstan.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ NVIDIA release details of security issues and release new drivers

        NVIDIA issued a new Security Bulletin, to advise you to update your GPU drivers due to multiple security issues discovered. This bulletin went out today with the email arriving in my inbox moments ago, so here’s the details of the issues that affect Linux.

    • Defence/Aggression
      • The Local SE ☛ Sweden launches census plan: ‘We have lost control of who lives in our country’

        Sweden’s government, together with the far-right Sweden Democrats, have announced plans for what they claim will be first national census in more than 30 years, with officials potentially checking up on apartments in ‘high risk areas’.

      • New York Times ☛ Days After Netanyahu Fires Him, Israel’s Defense Minister Is Still on the Job

        Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, was fired on Sunday, setting off unrest, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never formally confirmed his dismissal.

      • New York Times ☛ Finland Clears Last Hurdle to Join NATO, Reshaping Balance of Power

        Turkey’s Parliament approved Finland’s bid to join NATO, its final hurdle to membership in the military alliance.

      • Defence Web ☛ Red Sea/Gulf of Aden task force

        Recognising the importance of a secure maritime environment in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, a task force set up by the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in east Africa has set itself six responsibilities.

      • Defence Web ☛ Terrorism in Africa a concern for UN boss

        >No region in the world is immune to terrorism according to United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who told the UN Security Council (SC) this week the situation in Africa was “especially concerning”.

      • AntiWar ☛ The Pentagon’s Budget from Hell

        Originally posted at TomDispatch. Somehow, when it comes to Congress and the mainstream media, the true strangeness of the Pentagon budget always is missing in action.

      • AntiWar ☛ 20 Years Later: Confessions of a Conscientious Quitter

        It’s been 20 years since the lies and obfuscation that led to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

      • Federal News Network ☛ New FBI docs: Las Vegas mass shooter was angry at casinos

        FBI documents made public this week reveal the high-roller gambler who opened fire on concertgoers on the Las Vegas Strip had lost tens of thousands of dollars while gambling weeks earlier. One gambler told the FBI that gunman Stephen Paddock was very upset about how the casinos had treated him and other high-rollers. The new records don’t offer an official motive for the mass shooting but paint a detailed picture of Paddock’s final days before the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Mulkey says no contact with Griner since return from Russia

        LSU coach Kim Mulkey says she hasn’t spoken to Brittney Griner since the former Baylor star returned to the U.S. from a Russian prison. But Mulkey says she’s glad Griner is back and safe. Mulkey and Griner won a national title together at Baylor. Mulkey was criticized in September for not offering any words of support or encouragement for Griner, when she was still being held after her arrest on drug-related charges. Griner came out after her Baylor career and criticized her former coach, saying Mulkey forced her to keep her sexual orientation private.

      • Latvia ☛ Proposal to ban film subtitling in Russian tabled in parliament

        The Education, Culture and Science Committee of the Saeima will review a proposal to prohibit the use of Russian language in film subtitles, LSM’s Latvian language service reported.

      • New York Times ☛ 9 Soldiers Killed After Army Helicopters Collide Over Kentucky

        Two Black Hawk helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division collided on Wednesday night near Fort Campbell. The Army said it did not yet know a cause.

      • TruthOut ☛ Just 2 Days After Shooting, Republicans Vote to Loosen Gun Law in North Carolina
      • NBC ☛ Russia stops sharing information about nuclear forces with the U.S.

        Putin’s decision to put the tactical weapons in Belarus followed his repeated warnings that Moscow was ready to use “all available means” — a reference to its nuclear arsenal — to fend off attacks on Russian territory.

        Russian officials have issued a barrage of hawkish statements since their troops entered Ukraine, warning that the continuing western support for Ukraine raised the threat of a nuclear conflict.

      • VOA News ☛ Pakistani Taliban Kill 4 Police Officers, Injure 6

        A provincial police statement said that militants raided a security outpost in the area, injuring six security forces. It added that a nearby police station had quickly dispatched reinforcements to respond to the attack when their vehicle was blown up on the way by an “improvised explosive device.” The ensuing blast killed four officers.

      • Common Dreams ☛ No Motive Needed When Dehumanization Reigns

        “Chief Drake said it was too early to discuss a possible motive for the shooting, though he confirmed that the attack was targeted. The authorities were reviewing writings, and had made contact with the shooter’s father. . . .”

      • Meduza ☛ Putin signs decree on a spring military conscription drive larger than last year’s — Meduza

        President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the spring conscription campaign for mandatory military service. The draft will run from April 1 to July 15. The authorities plan to call up 147 thousand people for service — 12.5 thousand more people than during the spring conscription drive in 2022.

      • Common Dreams ☛ If Only We Loved Our Children as Much as Our Assault Weapons

        Most people, if asked, will say the welfare of their children is their highest priority. For many, however, the position they take on gun control, and particularly on banning assault weapons, suggests their highest priority is actually their guns. Week after week, the headlines blare as the young bodies, literally blown into pieces, are dispatched to the cold earth. Conservative politicians offer thoughts and prayers, usually followed by lies and misdirection. It’s not the guns, they insist. The secret to solving gun violence is treating mental illness, or hardening schools as potential targets, or maybe arming teachers and good guys with guns. Big guns, little guns. Black guns, blue guns. And always their answer is more guns not less.

      • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Freaking Cowards!’ Bowman Confronts GOP Colleague Face-to-Face on Gun Violence

        Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman vocally condemned his Republican colleagues in a hallway outside the House chamber on Wednesday, calling them “freaking cowards” and “gutless” for refusing to support basic control measures in the wake of the nation’s latest mass shooting—the 130th of the year.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Zelensky Says if He Loses Bakhmut, He Will Be Pushed To ‘Compromise’ With Russia

        The Ukrainian leader told AP his country will lose without US support.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Chinese Official Warns McCarthy Meeting With Taiwanese President Would Be ‘Provocation’

        A potential visit with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen “seriously violates the One China principle, harms China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” said one official.

      • Scheerpost ☛ America’s Remarkable Unwillingness to Support Its Veterans

        Andrea Mazzarino explores how so many of the American military personnel dispatched to fight it and the rest of the disastrous Global War on Terror have suffered until this very day, while this country largely turned its back, leaving them in the lurch.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘He was saving himself from a fascist law’ Meduza’s interview with lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, who stayed in contact with Alexey Moskalev as he fled house arrest for Belarus — Meduza

        On the night of March 29, the Belarusian authorities arrested Alexey Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest the previous day, shortly before he was to face trial for allegedly “discrediting” the Russian army. At the hearing, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to two years in prison, while ordering his sixth-grade daughter to be placed in state custody. Moskalev’s arrest was first reported by Russian independent media and later confirmed by the Belarusian Interior Ministry. His current location remains unclear. Meduza spoke with lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, who was in contact with Moskalev during his escape, about how the Russian and Belarusian intelligence services managed to find and detain him.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘The command came from the top’ Alexey Moskalev, whose daughter’s anti-war drawing sparked the ire of the Russian authorities, has been arrested in Minsk. Here’s what we know. — Meduza

        The Belarusian authorities have reportedly arrested Alexey Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest on March 28, just hours before a court convicted him of “discrediting” the Russian military. Lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, who stayed in contact with Moskalev after his escape, confirmed the news to the independent outlet Mediazona. Zakhvatov later wrote on Telegram: “I can’t get in touch with Alexey right now. He’s not answering his phone. I can’t confirm for certain, but based on indirect evidence, in all likelihood, it’s true. Very unfortunate.”

      • Meduza ☛ Ukrainian deputy prime minister says Kyiv stands ready to take back its deported orphans — Meduza

        Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says that Ukraine stands ready to take back its deported orphans. “As an official,” she said, “I am stating our official readiness to take back all of our orphaned children.”

      • The Nation ☛ After the Iraq Debacle, Why Does the National Security Establishment Remain Unshaken?

        In Warsaw last February, President Joe Biden condemned the lawless Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country—since World War II, nothing like that has happened.” One month later marked the 20th anniversary of the greatest US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam: America’s “war of choice” against Iraq, with 130,000 US soldiers invading the country to overthrow its government.

      • Meduza ☛ Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church cleric says ‘God will not forgive’ Zelensky for evicting monks from Kyiv Pechersk Lavra — Meduza

        Metropolitan Pavel, the head of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, where the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been headquartered since 1992, said in a YouTube video posted Wednesday that “God will not forgive” Volodymyr Zelensky or his family for evicting hundreds of monks from the monastery.

      • Meduza ☛ In reversal, Argentina’s Migration Service denies dozens of Russian citizens’ applications for stay extensions and residence permits — Meduza

        Argentina’s Migration Service has begun denying tourist stay extensions and residence permits to Russian citizens, Georgy Polin, the head of the consular section of the Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires, told TASS.

      • Meduza ☛ A border deal washed in tears Kyrgyzstan reached a landmark agreement with Uzbekistan, but its critics are behind bars — Meduza

        Thirty years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, one of the Fergana Valley’s border disputes is finally being laid to rest. In January, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan clinched a landmark demarcation deal, which officials hailed as a major turning point in bilateral relations. But what appears to be a victory for Bishkek and Tashkent feels less triumphant on the ground. Kyrgyzstan’s handover of the strategic Kempir-Abad reservoir — or the Andijan reservoir, as it is known in Uzbekistan — has been a particular point of discontent. More than 20 opponents of the land swap are in jail awaiting trial on felony charges of instigating “mass unrest.” And residents of villages near the reservoir fear losing their land — or ending up on the other side of the border. In a dispatch from the region, The Beet reports on the “Kempir-Abad case,” local anxieties, and the upside of the border deal. 

      • Meduza ☛ Wagner Group mercenary suspected of murdering senior while on leave in Russia — Meduza

        A convict pardoned after joining Wagner Group and serving in Ukraine was detained within a week of his return to Russia’s Kirov region, where he was taking his leave. According to the local media, he is suspected of having murdered an elderly woman.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting
    • Environment
    • Finance
      • Digital Music News ☛ Decentraland Real Estate Prices Plunged Nearly 90% in One Year

        Once a corporate darling in the metaverse frontier, Decentraland is a ghost town as investors abandon the metaverse. Decentraland was hailed in 2021 as one of the first instances of an actual metaverse for users (ignoring the existence of Second Life entirely).

      • Common Dreams ☛ US Minimum Wage Would Be $42 Today If It Rose as Much as Wall St. Bonuses: Analysis

        The federal minimum wage in the United States would be more than $42 an hour today if it rose at the same rate as the average Wall Street bonus over the past four decades, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies.

      • Michael West Media ☛ Spirits of Australia soothe pandemic hangover as Alan Joyce hosts hangar party for Qantas’ 100th

        The spirits of Australia will be flowing liberally tonight when Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and chair Richard Goyder wine and dine 1200 corporate elites and titanium frequent flyers at the airline’s belated 100th birthday bash. Michael Sainsbury checks out the race to succeed Joyce as CEO and the .

        The Qantas centennial, three years late because of Covid, is imaginatively dubbed the ‘Next 100′. It is paid for in part by the largesse of the Australian taxpayer which tipped in to the tune of $2.7 billion to save the Roo’s skin in Australia’s biggest Covid corporate bail-out. Qantas shows no sign of any inclination to pay it back, as well as a fair chunk of the $800 million pandemic era flight credits that its customers are struggling to use because Qantas makes them so hard to claim.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
      • CoryDoctorow ☛ We should ban TikTok(‘s surveillance)

        With the RESTRICT Act, Congress is proposing to continue Trump’s war on Tiktok, enacting a US ban on the Chinese-owned service. How will they do this? Congress isn’t clear. In practice, banning stuff on the internet is hard, especially if you don’t have a national firewall:

        [...]

        Which makes the RESTRICT Act an especially foolish project. If the Chinese state wants to procure data on Americans, it need not convince us to install Tiktok. It can simply plunk down a credit card with any of the many unregulated data-brokers who feed the American tech giants the dossiers that the NSA and local cops rely on.

      • Techdirt ☛ Senator Warner’s RESTRICT Act Is Designed To Create The Great Firewall Of America

        Earlier this month, we wrote about Mark Warner’s RESTRICT Act, mainly in the context of how it appeared to be kneejerk legislating in response to the moral panic around TikTok.

      • Common Dreams ☛ House Progressives Offer Biden ‘Bold Vision’ With Executive Action Agenda for 2023

        Outlining the steps that President Joe Biden can take now to deliver justice for the working people who helped elect him in 2020, the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday released its 2023 Executive Action Agenda to ensure that the president will “build on his record of progress.”

      • Nathaniel Borenstein ☛ How Fidelity Treats a former IBM Distinguished Engineer

        Today, I called them again, and spent 45 minutes on the phone to learn that it is now TOO LATE for me to take the lump sum, and I will have to record a trivial deposit every month for the rest of my life. This happened after I took every proper step to get my lump sum on time, and took most of those steps many times over many months. I also spent hours on the phone with Fidelity to achieve this outcome.

        This is the worst example of customer support I have ever seen in my life. If anyone at IBM is listening, perhaps you might look into what Fidelity is doing to your pensioners?

      • 37signals LLC ☛ America is never “getting to Denmark”

        It took moving back to Denmark to realize the folly of thinking America is ever going to “get there”. Whether on guns or healthcare or taxes or any other major policy position that’s so fiercely contested in the US. Despite growing up in this little Nordic country, I didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous, underpinning power of a homogenous culture to fasten all these planks of a socially-democratic state – until I returned after 15 years Over There. I do now.

      • uni Stanford ☛ Prepared Remarks on U.S. Legal Considerations for Children’s Online Safety Policy

        I was recently invited to a private workshop on children’s online safety policy, where I gave a short presentation about the U.S. legal context. Here are my prepared remarks. Note that they largely avoid giving my personal perspective on hotly-debated areas, such as the interaction between Section 230 and app design features, or proposals for age-verification requirements. It is an overview, not an op-ed, presented to an audience that, while it contained some tech policy experts, had many people who are new to these issues. I got asked by a few attendees to share my written remarks, and I’m glad to oblige.

      • EDRI ☛ Why chat control is so dangerous

        The EU Commission currently prepares a legislative package to fight sexual abuse of children. The draft is soon to be presented and in part covers the dissemination of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) via the internet. Additionally, the directive aims at targeting private and encrypted communication, such as that on messenger services. Critics declare this form of preemptive mass surveillance not only a threat to privacy, (cyber)security and the right to freedom of expression but as danger to democracy in general.

      • [Old] Patrick Breyer ☛ UN Human Rights Commissioner warns against chat control

        Specifically, the Human Rights Commissioner criticises the enisioned message screening on private smartphones (so-called “client-side scanning”) for undermining secure message encryption: “Client-side scanning also opens up new security challenges, making security breaches more likely. The screening process can also be manipulated, making it possible to artificially create false positive or false negative profiles. Even if, for current purposes, client-side screening is narrowly tailored, opening up devices for Government-mandated screening is likely to lead to future attempts to widen the scope of content that is the target of such measures. In particular, where the rule of law is weak and human rights are under threat, the impact of client-side screening could be much broader, for example it could be used to suppress political debate or to target opposition figures, journalists and human rights defenders. “

      • Pro Publica ☛ Repatriation Reform Bill Passes Illinois House of Representatives

        For more than 30 years, tribal nations have been asking the state of Illinois and its state-run institutions to return the remains of their ancestors for reburial within the state. For just as long, Illinois has made that nearly impossible.

        But now, legislation moving through the Illinois General Assembly would finally pave the way for the remains of thousands of Native Americans to be repatriated.

      • The Economist ☛ Alibaba breaks itself up in six

        Now a split is happening, though not at the behest of Beijing—at least not directly. On March 28th Alibaba announced that it would be creating six independent business units. Executives say this will yield a more agile overall business, by speeding up decision-making across smaller and more focused operations. The main unspoken goal may be to decentralise decision-making, not least by disassociating Alibaba further from its founder, who stepped away from day-to-day management in 2015 but has remained involved in strategic decisions.

      • The Hill ☛ Roku to cut another 200 jobs

        The filing states that Roku expects most of the charges will be taken on in the first quarter of fiscal 2023, and the layoffs will be “substantially” completed by the end of the second quarter of the fiscal year.

        ABC News reported that Roku previously laid off 200 workers in the fall.

      • ACLU ☛ Here’s How New Mexico is Leading the Way for Voting Rights

        Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy, and protecting that right is one of the central obligations of our government. Due to partisan gridlock in Congress, the federal government has not acted to restore some of the original protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). Following the Supreme Court decisions in Shelby v. Holder and Brnovich v. DNC that weakened the vital voting rights law, the federal government has yet to pass federal legislation to protect the right to vote.

      • CS Monitor ☛ Autumn of the patriarchs? Strong leaders face popular pushback.

        Strong leaders with autocratic tendencies have flourished in recent years, but fears about where they are taking their countries have prompted pushback.

      • uni Michigan ☛ U-M seeks actions by court, labor board against striking GEO

        The university has filed a complaint in Washtenaw County Circuit Court alleging breach of contract by the Graduate Employees’ Organization for striking, and asked the court to order strikers to return to work.

      • CS Monitor ☛ Trump indicted in first ever criminal case against a former US president

        Donald Trump has been indicted on charges involving payments in 2016 to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president.

      • The Age AU ☛ Donald Trump arrest LIVE updates: Former US president charged over alleged Stormy Daniels payments

        It is the first-ever criminal case against a former US president and will have huge implications over the 2024 election.

      • The Age AU ☛ How Donald Trump came to be indicted on criminal charges

        A look at the hush-money probe, grand jury process and possible ramifications for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

      • Common Dreams ☛ The US War Drum Against China Sounds Like: Tik.Tok.

        Last Thursday, a Congressional hearing took place where the TikTok CEO was grilled for five hours on the grounds of “security concerns.” This was days after the FBI and DOJ launched an investigation on the Chinese-owned American company.Isn’t it ironic that while the US government is putting TikTok under the magnifying glass, it’s turning a blind eye to its own surveillance programs on the American people?

      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Orbán: The EU has abandoned the two goals it was created for: peace and prosperity
      • CS Monitor ☛ Labor strikes are rising – and winning pay hikes

        At a time of high inflation, pushing household budgets to the limit, workers are speaking up through union action – and the boosts won by employees have been sizable.

      • Digital Music News ☛ Senate Vote On TikTok Ban Bill Blocked Over Free Speech Concerns Amid Continued Bipartisan Scrutiny

        As TikTok grapples with continued user-data criticism and regulatory scrutiny, a Senate vote to ban the controversial video-sharing platform has been blocked. This newest development in the long-running push to prohibit TikTok in the U.S.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Karma: Happy Trump’s First Indictment Day
      • The Nation ☛ Donald Trump Has Been Indicted. Don’t Get Your Hopes Up.

        Late Thursday evening, a Manhattan grand jury voted to bring charges against former president Donald Trump in connection with hush-money payments to actress Stormy Daniels. The specific charges are not yet known, though Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will likely announce them in the near future.

      • Common Dreams ☛ New York Grand Jury Votes to Indict Donald Trump: Reports
      • Federal News Network ☛ Donald Trump indicted; 1st ex-president charged with crime

        A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. It’s the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president and a jolt to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024. The indictment was confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Trump’s legal worries extend far beyond charges in New York

        The hush money case in New York that has led to criminal charges against Donald Trump is just one of a number of investigations that could pose legal problems for the former president. A lawyer for Trump confirmed Thursday that he was told the former president had been indicted on charges involving payments made during the 2016 campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. Trump faces a string of other inquiries as he campaigns for another term in 2024.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Kansas moves to help survivors pursue child sex abuse claims

        Abuse survivors and advocates who’ve pushed to make it easier in Kansas to prosecute abusers or file lawsuits decades later have achieved a breakthrough in the Legislature, where a proposal has advanced quickly. The bill would eliminate limits on how long prosecutors have to file charges against suspects for any of a dozen violent sexual offenses against children. It also would give abuse survivors more time to file lawsuits seeking monetary damages. The Senate approved it unanimously Wednesday and the House could vote on it next week. Reports of abuse by clergy across the U.S. have spurred interest in making it easier to pursue criminal prosecutions or lawsuits.

      • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk Tried to Meet With F.T.C. Chair About Twitter but Was Rebuffed

        Mr. Musk requested a meeting with Lina Khan, the chair of the F.T.C., which has been investigating Twitter’s privacy and data practices.

      • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungary is the only EU country not invited to Summit for Democracy

        U.S. Ambassador David Pressman met Hungarian journalists on Wednesday where he also touched on the topic of U.S. President Joe Biden’s upcoming Summit for Democracy to which Hungary wasn’t invited. Hungary was the only EU country that did not receive an invitation to the event in Washington.

        The Hungarian Foreign Ministry earlier commented on the missing invite with the following explanation: “Joe Biden does not invite Donald Trump’s friends. Hungary disagrees with President Biden’s policies on war, migration, and gender. On these issues, we agree with President Trump.”

      • Common Dreams ☛ Trump Is Running to Lead a Fascist Nation—Not This One

        Last Saturday, at the first rally of his presidential campaign, in Waco, Texas, Donald Trump talked about the likely criminal cases being prepared against him as if they were being prepared against his supporters.

      • TruthOut ☛ Ginni Thomas Raised Nearly $600,000 in Anonymous Funds for Right-Wing Group
      • Common Dreams ☛ Tlaib Blasts Republicans as ‘Servants’ of Big Oil After House Passes Pro-Polluter Bill

        Climate campaigners and congressional Democrats on Thursday called out House Republicans for approving energy legislation that would, as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib warned, “put polluters over people” by “further poisoning of our air and water.”

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
        • The Economist ☛ The Kremlin escalates its war on truth

          ON MARCH 29TH Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, disappeared during a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-biggest city. The following day Russian security services came clean: they had arrested him on charges of espionage. That Mr Gershkovich, an American citizen, is accredited to report in Russia seems to have made little difference. The arrest is likely to exacerbate the already-terrible relations between Russia and America.

        • TruthOut ☛ Anti-Abortion Bills Like Kansas’s Are Designed to Spread Misinformation
    • Censorship/Free Speech
      • VOA News ☛ Breaking Down the Trump Indictment

        Along with Cohen, a key player in the effort was David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc. (AMI), the company that at the time published the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer.

        A longtime Trump friend, Pecker had offered “to help deal with negative stories about [Trump’s] relationships with women” by identifying stories that could be bought and then suppressed. The practice is known in the publishing industry as “catch and kill.”

        In August 2016, AMI agreed to pay former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. The story was shelved.

      • NBC ☛ Russian dad whose teen drew anti-war picture flees jail and exposes cracks in Putin’s crackdown on dissent

        Her father was first investigated after school officials told police that Maria had drawn a picture during an art class that depicted missiles flying over a mother and a child, as well as Russian and Ukrainian flags with the words “No to war” and “Glory to Ukraine.”

        The draconian law used in the case was introduced just days into the invasion, criminalizing any criticism of the Russian army as President Vladimir Putin sought to stamp out dissent at home.

      • Vice Media Group ☛ Missouri Reps Just Voted to Completely Defund the State’s Public Libraries

        Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

      • Meduza ☛ 63-year-old man gets seven year prison sentence for posting about war — Meduza

        A Moscow district court sentenced 63-year-old Mikhail Simonov to seven years in prison after finding him guilty of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army motivated by political hatred.

      • Techdirt ☛ Appeals Court Reverses Awful Decision Finding That Holding Up A Sign Telling Drivers There Are Cops Ahead Is Not Free Speech

        Officer Richard Gasparino of the Stamford, Connecticut police department couldn’t stand to have his “revenue diverted.” So, he arrested Michael Friend for the imaginary crime of holding up a sign warning motorists there was a sting operation in progress further up the road.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
      • Federal News Network ☛ Russia arrests Wall Street Journal reporter on spying charge

        Russia’s security service has arrested an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal on espionage charges. It’s the first time a U.S. correspondent has been detained on spying accusations since the Cold War. The newspaper denied the allegations and demanded his release. Thirty-one-year-old Evan Gershkovich was detained in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, about 1,670 kilometers (1,035 miles) east of Moscow. Russia’s Federal Security Service accused him of trying to obtain classified information. Known by the acronym FSB, the service is the top domestic security agency and main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

      • Meduza ☛ FSB arrests Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg — Meduza

        The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced Thursday that it has arrested U.S. citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on suspicion of spying for the American government.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Press Freedom Advocates ‘Alarmed’ as Russia Detains US Journalist on Espionage Charges
      • Michael West Media ☛ Julian Assange – when “quiet diplomacy” means diddly squat

        Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has all but confirmed in Parliament the government is doing nothing to bring the world’s foremost political prisoner home. What’s the scam with “quiet diplomacy”?

        Despite claiming the government is deploying “quiet diplomacy” to urge the US to free Julian Assange, and despite the government committing to a $368b spend on submarines – the biggest transfer of public money in Australia’s history – to US and UK weapons makers, there is no evidence whatsoever that our elected representatives have even muttered one word on the matter.

      • VOA News ☛ Suspected North Korean Spies Impersonating VOA, Other Reporters Online

        Experts on nuclear security policy and weapons proliferation were contacted by suspected North Korean hackers posing as Voice of America journalists, according to a threat intelligence group, which says this is part of a recent pattern of impersonating reporters from major news organizations.

        The online spies were attempting to gather intelligence about the stance of international officials toward the Pyongyang government of Kim Jong Un, according to a report issued by Mandiant, an American cybersecurity firm and subsidiary of Google.

      • NBC ☛ Russia arrests U.S. journalist on espionage charges; Moscow court orders he be detained for 2 months

        Evan Gershkovich was detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on suspicion of “espionage in the interests of the American government,” the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement, which was reported by state media.

        The FSB accused Gershkovich of collecting “information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

    • Civil Rights/Policing
      • AccessNow ☛ To defend democracy, stand up for civil society

        As governments, businesses, and civil society organizations gather for the 2nd U.S. Summit for Democracy, our message is clear: to defend democracy in the digital age, states must stand up for civil society, online and off.

      • Federal News Network ☛ How 3 agency leaders try to mitigate burnout, stress for federal employees

        Work-life balance is one area in particular where agencies are starting to see signs of stagnation among their employees.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Rapidly Melting Glaciers Threaten Collapse of Crucial Ocean Circulation Systems

        Normally, dense water flows toward the ocean floor and helps transport heat and and vital nutrients through the planet’s oceans. The circulation helps support marine ecosystems and the stability of ice shelves.

      • EFF ☛ Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.4
      • Scheerpost ☛ America’s Slavery-Ridden Origin Story: Facing the Uncomfortable Reality

        Writer Dionne Ford dives deep into her ancestry and confronts the complexities of being a Black woman in America with the blood of both the enslaved and the enslaver.

      • The Nation ☛ The West Coast Think Tank Helping to Orchestrate DeSantis’s War on the Woke

        It was the latest stop on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “where woke goes to die” tour. The focus was on higher education—specifically: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at Florida universities. The roundtable event featured speakers like Christopher Rufo, the lead architect of the GOP’s crusade against critical race theory who is now helping to mastermind the ideological makeover of Florida’s New College. The gathering followed the by-now-standard script of education-themed right-wing grievance: DEI initiatives are a scam orchestrated by the “woke mob,” and Florida is not about to submit to them—not if the governor and his brain trust have anything to say about it.

      • The Nation ☛ It’s Been a Year. Why Hasn’t Biden Freed Eyvin Hernandez?

        On March 18, 2022, Eyvin Hernandez, a dedicated Los Angeles public defender, flew to Colombia for a much-needed vacation. In Medellín, he befriended a woman and agreed to accompany her to Cucuta, a town on the Colombia-Venezuela border. Near Cucuta, things took a bad turn. Having unintentionally crossed into Venezuela, Eyvin and his companion were cornered near the border by armed men, who asked them for money they didn’t have before handcuffing and hooding them, throwing them into the back of a pickup truck, and transporting them to a detention facility.

      • New York Times ☛ Vatican Repudiates ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ Used as Justification for Colonization

        Indigenous communities have long called on the Vatican rescind the concept, which had been used over the centuries to seize land from people in the Americas, Africa and elsewhere.

      • New York Times ☛ Under the Taliban, Afghanistan Is Trying to Make Due With Less

        In a time of famine and money shortages, meals are a rallying point — and a topic of worry — during a season of change in Afghanistan.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Minor League Baseball Players Poised to More Than Double Pay With First Union Contract

        Major League Baseball and recently unionized minor league players working for MLB team affiliates reached a tentative deal Wednesday on a historic first collective bargaining agreement.

      • Federal News Network ☛ How California reparations proposals could become law

        California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force is preparing to send its recommendations to lawmakers. But there’s still a long road ahead to get any reparations plans approved by the state Legislature. Lawmakers who are members of the task force may introduce reparations legislation in January. It usually takes months for bills to get passed by both the state Senate and Assembly before reaching the governor’s desk. Questions remain, including where the money would come from for the state to implement the task force’s recommendations. Economists advising the task force estimated the state could owe more than $800 billion for discrimination in policing and housing loans.

      • The Nation ☛ Howard Schultz’s Union-Busting Paternalism

        Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, briefly touted as a dark-horse Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, found himself at a less obliging juncture of federal power this Wednesday, as he delivered testimony on the coffee giant’s union-busting track record before the US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Members of the Starbucks Union thronged the corridors outside the Dirksen Building hearing room, anticipating that the company might finally be held to public account, and be shamed into launching good-faith negotiations for a collective-bargaining agreement. Organizers greeted one another with loud and cheerful “good mornings,” seemingly out of professional habit, but the real message for the occasion was emblazoned on the backs of their T-shirts: “Partners? Prove It—We ARE Starbucks.”

      • Scheerpost ☛ Starbucks’ Howard Schultz Called Before Senate

        Starbucks projects the image of an employee-friendly company, but its workers have been exposing the contradiction between the company’s words and its actions. On March 29, they’ll get some help from the U.S. Senate’s HELP Committee, chaired by Bernie Sanders.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Ex-Starbucks Worker Jaysin Saxton Describes Being Fired After He Helped Organize Union

        We speak with Jaysin Saxton, one of the witnesses who testified at the Senate hearing Wednesday on Starbucks’ union-busting record. Saxton was a former Starbucks shift manager, fired after leading the union drive at a store in Augusta, Georgia. He tells Democracy Now! he and fellow workers were motivated to organize their store to address the “insane” working conditions, including understaffing and inconsistent schedules. “There’s no stability in how much you’re earning and how many hours you’re getting, so you can’t afford to pay your bills, and you have to choose between gas and food,” says Saxton.

      • TruthOut ☛ Former Starbucks Worker Describes Being Fired After He Helped Organize Union
      • Common Dreams ☛ Exonerated Central Park 5 Member Reacts to Trump Indictment With One-Word Statement

        Yusef Salaam, one of the five New York teens wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park, issued a brief statement following Thursday’s criminal indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump—who called for bringing back the state’s death penalty to execute the defendants and never apologized after they were cleared.

      • Meduza ☛ Single father Alexey Moskalev, whose daughter’s anti-war drawing drew the wrath of Russian law enforcement, is apprehended in Minsk — Meduza

        Police in Minsk have reportedly apprehended Alexey Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest on March 28, hours before a court sentenced him to two years in prison for repeatedly “discrediting” Russia’s military in posts on social media. Russian officials charged Moskalev after months of harassment that began when his then 12-year-old daughter Masha (now 13) submitted an anti-war drawing to her art class. On March 1, police arrested Alexey and transferred Masha to state custody.

      • Meduza ☛ Masha Moskaleva’s estranged mother plans to collect her daughter from state custody — Meduza

        Olga Sitchikhina, Masha Moskaleva’s daughter, plans to remove her daughter from the juvenile shelter where child welfare authorities sent her after her father, Alexey Moskalev, was accused of repeatedly “discrediting” the army. On March 28, Moskalev was sentenced to two years in prison.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘Everything will be okay, and we’ll be together’ Masha Moskaleva, the Russian middle-schooler whose anti-war drawing provoked a police backlash that landed her in an orphanage, wrote a letter to her father on the day of his prison sentencing — Meduza

        The Moskalev family has been in trouble with the Russian authorities since April 2022, when then sixth-grader Masha Moskaleva drew an anti-war picture in her school art class. Federal Security Service agents interrogated Masha multiple times. Her father, Alexey Moskalev, who has been raising Masha alone, was beaten, fined, and later place under house arrest by the Russian authorities. Earlier this month, Masha was removed from her father’s care and placed in a state shelter. On March 28, Alexey was sentenced to two years in prison, though he wasn’t in the courtroom to hear the verdict — he’d escaped house arrest hours earlier. On March 29, however, Belarusian officials apprehended and arrested him in Minsk.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Bernie Sanders vs. Howard Schultz: Longtime Starbucks CEO Grilled on Company’s Union-Busting Tactics

        Just weeks after the National Labor Relations Board accused Starbucks of engaging in “egregious and widespread misconduct” to prevent employees from unionizing, the company’s longtime CEO Howard Schultz appeared before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday to answer questions. Committee Chair Bernie Sanders of Vermont grilled Schultz on the company’s union-busting record and demanded an end to retaliation against workers. Since 2021, nearly 300 Starbucks locations have voted to unionize, but the company has responded by firing many organizers and shuttering unionized stores, among other tactics. Schultz is worth over $3 billion and has led Starbucks for much of its history, most recently as interim CEO for the last year as a permanent replacement was found. He stepped down on March 20. We feature excerpts from the hearing.

      • Democracy Now ☛ “The Tale” Filmmaker Jennifer Fox on Surviving Childhood Sexual Abuse & Finally Naming Her Abuser

        We speak with writer and filmmaker Jennifer Fox, whose 2018 movie The Tale dealt with childhood sexual abuse. She has now come forward to name her abuser. The film is a narrative memoir based in part on Fox’s own life experience about being abused by a coach as a young girl. While the main character is named Fox, the name of the abusive coach was fictionalized. Now Fox has revealed the man who abused her as Ted Nash, the legendary Olympic rower and coach who died in 2021. Nash took part in 11 Olympic teams as a rower or coach, and USRowing, the national governing body for the sport, is now investigating the allegations. Fox recently revealed Nash’s name to The New York Times and tells Democracy Now!, in her first broadcast interview since the story, that he began abusing her when she was 13. She says her inner voice told her she could not rest until she publicly named Nash. “It’s very important to bring this other story out to the world now and to show this other part of the man that people put on a pedestal and made into a god,” says Fox, who adds that more women may still come forward about Nash. “It’s a very important act to stand up to power in this way, for me and for others.”

      • RTL ☛ Vatican rejects doctrine used to justify colonial abuse

        The Catholic Church took a fresh step Thursday in acknowledging abuse endured by Indigenous peoples with the Vatican formally rejecting 15th-century papal edicts that empowered Europeans to colonise non-Christian lands.

      • The Hill ☛ Religious freedom for all means sacred Indigenous sites, too

        The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently heard arguments about how the federal government will violate First Amendment religious rights of the appellant Apache Stronghold — a Native grassroots community group — if the mine is allowed to move forward. Numerous religious and legal scholars have argued that the government’s actions will impose a substantial burden on Apache religious freedom and exercise. Religious scholar Thomas Berg has called this case “the most important Native American religious liberty case in 15 years.”

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
      • Techdirt ☛ Colorado Eyes Killing State Law Prohibiting Community Broadband Networks

        U.S. telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast spent millions of dollars and several decades quite literally buying shitty, protectionist laws in around twenty states that either ban or heavily hamstring towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. Even in instances and areas where AT&T and Comcast have repeatedly refused to upgrade their networks.

    • Monopolies
      • Silicon Angle ☛ UK watchdog launches deeper probe into $61B Broadcom-VMware merger

        The U.K.’s antitrust regulator said today it will launch a deeper investigation into Broadcom Inc.’s proposed $61 billion acquisition of VMware Inc., a move that seemingly dashes any prospect of the merger being completed with minimal fuss.

      • Trademarks
      • Copyrights
        • Hackaday ☛ 2022 Supercon: Jac And Ralf Explore The Secrets Of The Digital Compact Cassette

          During the 1990s, music was almost invariably stored on CDs or cassette tapes. When the new millennium came around, physical formats became obsolete as music moved first to MP3 files, and later to network streams. But a few years before that big transition, there were several attempts at replacing the aging cassette and CD formats with something more modern. You might remember the likes of MiniDisc and Super Audio CD, but there were a few other contenders around.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ CD Projekt’s Legal Pressure Pushes GOG-Games to The Dark Web

          GOG-Games.com switched to the dark web this week. The videogame piracy site took this drastic action following legal pressure from game company CD Projekt, known for The Witcher series. The Polish company also owns the game distribution service GOG, which explains why GOG-Games is considered a prime enforcement target.

  • Gemini* and Gopher
    • Personal
      • Spiritual Quandary

        Syd got me a deck of tarot cards back when we were dating.

        She was interested in those sorts of things like astrology and tarot, it didn’t command her life like with some people, but nevertheless she enjoyed it. She always said it was more of a mindfulness exercise for her. I hadn’t ever really been exposed to that sort of stuff, sure I knew my zodiac sign, but not much besides that. Syd showed me her deck of cards and did a few readings every now and then, especially when she or I were stressed. I didn’t put much credence into it for a while, not until I had a big falling out with my best friend and I borrowed Syd’s deck to do some readings for myself. When I centered around the question of my future with this friend, one of the cards I pulled was The Lovers, but inverted; the other cards all passing along a similar message of not having a friendship with this person into the future. It’s been a few years now and despite a few attempts to reach out to this friend, I haven’t really spoken to them since. It kinda spooked me by how accurate the cards and the meanings behind them directly followed what the question at hand.

      • Doing and being in books

        In my town public library, they must discard older
        books. They don’t have many of my favorites. I want
        children who explore, adventure, discover, imagine,
        learn, misunderstand, and live actively in books.

        King Shabazz goes with Tony Polito to find spring
        in Lucille Clifton’s (1992) The Boy Who Didn’t
        Believe in Spring. They get in trouble for going
        too far. In Donald Crews’ (1992) Shortcut, the kids
        go a dangerous way. One of them easily could’ve
        been killed. They never go that way again; they
        never tell.

IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 30, 2023

Friday 31st of March 2023 07:21:14 AM

Also available via the Gemini protocol at:

Over HTTP:

#techrights log as HTML5

#boycottnovell log as HTML5

#boycottnovell-social log as HTML5

#techbytes log as HTML5

#techrights log as text

#boycottnovell log as text

#boycottnovell-social log as text

#techbytes log as text

Enter the IRC channels now

IPFS Mirrors table#ipfs-table tr:nth-child(even) { background-color:#efefef; border-bottom: 2px solid #aaa; } CID Description Object type  Qmf856EwmjK7CQLUAnHkd4EgHkCQjQwADRY9GofSVgWbaF IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as HTML)  QmWMDtjXHxdnLn6wBbHcFP624RF5EUFSsDVviexP4y76Ga IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)  QmVkbUgSANv8adujKvKy4eUiJVZ8S2gSkQx7yxF776Kp9z IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as HTML)  Qmeah7JgLYmTQ3iiby3kWmLq3MXSDpNHoNQ9Nu3UJEztHA IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)  QmSgioPTv8gJcVMVZZY8xjRSuG3HBU1JLgsQCifAvNYmZp IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as HTML)  Qmbst3tqkdKpd5Jjto6KKfgzTAau156963VG2qM3HmZdQv IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)  QmbvsS5fcxFst13tGmPftJkNTwb9Niqcar2HUQkAcRRkuy IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as HTML)  QmZafMWCLy9buFzkpxaUxAdFPoM5jBpCEK1G3pytL5Q2Df IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)

Bulletin for Yesterday

Local copy | CID (IPFS): QmZz4PybmqwxQvJ6383XsbijS6b7BRGW5rSKMTvsLRtRae

Links 31/03/2023: Ubuntu 23.04 Beta, Donald Trump Indicted, and Finland’s NATO Bid Progresses

Friday 31st of March 2023 06:22:08 AM

Contents
  • GNU/Linux
    • Desktop/Laptop
    • Audiocasts/Shows
      • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ BSD Now 500: Guarding the Wire

        Wireguard VPN Server with Unbound on OpenBSD, Auditing for OpenZFS Storage Performance, OpenBSD 7.2 on a Thinkpad X201, Practical Guides to fzf, Replacing postfix with dma, and more

      • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Linux Action News 286

        What we’re liking about GNOME 44, how Microsoft’s Linux distro is trying to attract more users, and we bust a CentOS myth.

    • Kernel Space
      • LWN ☛ Reducing direct-map fragmentation with __GFP_UNMAPPED

        The kernel’s direct map makes all of a system’s physical memory available to the kernel within its address space — on 64-bit systems, at least. This seemingly simple feature has proved to be hard to maintain, in the face of the requirements faced by current systems, while keeping good performance. The latest attempt to address this issue is this patch set from Mike Rapoport adding more direct-map awareness to the kernel’s page allocator.

      • LWN ☛ Generic iterators for BPF

        BPF programs destined to be loaded into the kernel are generally written in C but, increasingly, the environment in which those programs run differs significantly from the C environment. The BPF virtual machine and associated verifier make a growing set of checks in an attempt to make BPF code safe to run. The proposed addition of an iterator mechanism to BPF highlights the kind of features that are being added — as well as the constraints placed on programmers by BPF.

        One of the many checks performed by the BPF verifier at program-load time is to convince itself that the program will terminate within a reasonable period of time, a process that involves simulating the program’s execution. This constraint has made supporting loops in BPF programs challenging since the beginning; it has only been possible to use loops since the 5.3 release. Even with that addition, convincing the verifier that a loop will terminate can be a challenge; this annoyance has led to, among other things, the addition of features like bpf_loop(), which puts the looping logic for some simple cases into the kernel’s C code.

        Not all problems are readily addressable by a simple function like bpf_loop(), though. Many loops in BPF programs are simply iterating through a set of objects, and BPF developers would like easier ways to do that. While numerous languages have some sort of built-in notion of iteration over a set, C does not. As noted above, though, BPF is not really C; this patch set from Andrii Nakryiko reiterates (so to speak) that point by adding an iteration mechanism to the BPF virtual machine.

      • LWN ☛ Zero-copy I/O for ublk, three different ways

        The ublk subsystem enables the creation of user-space block drivers that communicate with the kernel using io_uring. Drivers implemented this way show some promise with regard to performance, but there is a bottleneck in the way: copying data between the kernel and the user-space driver’s address space. It is thus not surprising that there is interest in implementing zero-copy I/O for ublk. The mailing lists have recently seen three different proposals for how this could be done.

    • Applications
      • Linux Links ☛ 6 Best Free and Open Source GUI Electronic Circuit Simulators

        Electronic circuit simulation uses mathematical models to replicate the behavior of an actual electronic device or circuit. Simulation software allows for modeling of circuit operation and is an invaluable analysis tool.

        This roundup only includes software with a graphical user interface. Circuit simulation backends are covered in this roundup. And software that offers electronic design automation are also covered in a separate roundup.

        We include software which acts as a simulation backend. We also include software with a GUI that lets you use these backends. Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style chart.

      • PowerDNS ☛ PowerDNS DNSdist 1.8.0 Released

        We are thrilled to release DNSdist 1.8.0 today! This 1.8.0 release contains a significant amount of changes since the last major release, 1.7.0, which was released a bit over a year ago. We try to stick to a major release every six months, but this one took a bit longer than expected.

    • Instructionals/Technical
      • Bitbucket for Newbies: Mastering Basic Commands and Collaborating on Code

        As a newbie to Bitbucket, navigating the platform and using its basic commands can be overwhelming. However, with some guidance, you can quickly become proficient in using Bitbucket.

      • nixCraft ☛ How To Install LXD on Debian 11 Linux

        You can install LXD pure-container hypervisor on Debian 11 Linux to run an unmodified version of Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Alpine, Arch and many other Linux distro. You can mimic AWS or different cloud instance types with LXD for testing and deployment purposes on your development machine. You can also run a GUI app such as Firefox completely isolated using LXD for security or privacy reasons. Let us see how to set up and use LXD on the Debian Linux 11 server or desktop.

      • urldecode with AWK

        $ awk -niord '{printf RT?$0chr("0x"substr(RT,2)):$0}' RS=%..

        Fast and simple awk urldecoder!
        Note: Parameter -n is specific to GNU awk

      • Vitux ☛ How to Verify if OpenVPN Protocol is Installed on Ubuntu

        VPN or Virtual Private Network is an encrypted path between a device and a network over the internet. VPNs ensure the security of transmitted data by providing encrypted channels for data flow.

      • Vitux ☛ How to Delete Files on Linux

        Linux has tons of commands that simplify tasks and make work more efficient. Rm is a helpful command for quickly deleting files, links, directories, etc.

      • Vitux ☛ How to Install Ansible on Rocky Linux 9

        Ansible is an open-source software platform for configuring and managing computers. It combines multi-node software deployment, ad hoc task execution, and configuration management. Ansible works over SSH and requires no software or daemons to be installed on remote nodes.

      • Vitux ☛ How to generate CA-signed SSL certificates for a Website

        What is an SSL certificate? SSL certificate is a digital certificate that validates the identity of a website and establishes an encrypted connection. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security protocol that allows encrypted communication between web server and client.

      • TecMint ☛ How To Exclude a Schema While Restoring a PostgreSQL Database

        Sometimes when restoring a multi-schema database from a backup file, you may want to exclude one or more schemas, for one reason or the other.

      • TecMint ☛ How to Install Spotify on Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint

        Founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon on 23 April 2006, Spotify is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Opera Browser on Manjaro Linux

        Welcome to the world of the Opera Browser, a modern, sleek, and feature-rich web browser designed to make your online experience efficient and enjoyable. As a Manjaro user, you may be considering making Opera your default browser, and for good reason!

      • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Run a Script Before Shutdown Under Systemd

        Modern Linux systems use systemd to manage daemons and system settings. Systemd is a service manager and initialization system, which took over from SysvInit

      • Linux Cloud VPS ☛ How to Install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9

        In this tutorial, we will explain how to install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9 OS. If you ever doubt what Grafana is and what it is used for, we are here to explain it to you.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install VSCodium on Manjaro Linux

        As a Manjaro Linux user, you may have encountered Visual Studio Code—a popular and feature-rich source code editor. But have you ever wondered if there’s a more privacy-focused alternative? Introducing VSCodium, a free, open-source, and community-driven fork of Visual Studio Code.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Discord on Manjaro Linux

        As a Manjaro Linux user, you might wonder why Discord has become such a popular platform, especially among gamers and those transitioning to Linux gaming systems. This introduction will highlight the key aspects that make Discord an essential tool for Linux gamers and provide a detailed overview of its benefits.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install OpenRGB on Manjaro Linux

        OpenRGB offers a variety of advantages for Manjaro Linux users looking to manage their RGB devices seamlessly. By utilizing the AUR and command line terminal, you can unlock the full potential of your RGB hardware.

    • WINE or Emulation
  • Distributions and Operating Systems
  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
    • LWN ☛ Hopes and promises for open-source voice assistants

      At the end of 2022, Paulus Schoutsen declared 2023 “the year of voice” for Home Assistant, the popular open-source home-automation project that he founded nine years ago. The project’s goal this year is to let users control their home with voice commands in their own language, using offline processing instead of sending data to the cloud. Offline voice control has been the holy grail of open-source home-automation systems for years. Several projects have tried and failed. But with Rhasspy’s developer Mike Hansen spearheading Home Assistant’s voice efforts, this time things could be different.

      Science fiction shows and movies have sold us on the idea of spaceships and homes we can talk to. In recent years, voice control at home has become possible thanks to the so-called “smart speakers” from Google, Amazon, and Apple. However, there’s nothing smart about these devices: their intelligence is almost completely in the cloud, where the user’s voice recordings are processed and translated into sentences and meaning.

      This is a complex and computationally intensive task, and these companies make us believe that their services are required to be able to use voice control. Of course this comes with downsides: users don’t have any control over what’s happening with their voice recordings, which is a big privacy risk. But, fundamentally, the problem lies even deeper. It just makes no sense for users to have their voices make a long detour through the internet just to turn on a light in the same room.

    • It’s FOSS ☛ FOSS Weekly #23.13: New blendOS Linux Distro, New Rust Series, Ubuntu Cinnamon and More

      This week sees the start of a new Rust tutorial series and takes a look at blendOS Linux distro.

    • OSI Blog ☛ Open Source Approved License® registry project underway with help of intern, Giulia Dellanoce [Ed: But OSI continues to shill Microsoft proprietary software, GPL violations, and openwashing. OSI has become a self-harming sham, attacking its very own mission while bagging bribes from Microsoft.]

      I shared last month the details of the new OSI website, hosted on WordPress.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases
      • PostgreSQL ☛ pg_dumpbinary v2.10 released

        Zurich, Switzerland – March 30th, 2023

        pg_dumpbinary

        pg_dumpbinary is a program used to dump a PostgreSQL database with
        data dumped in binary format. The resulting dump must be restored
        using pg_restorebinary that is provided with this tool.

        pg_dumpbinary v2.10 was released today, it adds a new option to the pg_dumpbinary command:

        • -C, –compress-level 0-9 : speed of the gzip compression using the specified
          digit, between 1 and 9, default to 6. Setting it
          to 0 disable the compression.
      • YottaDB ☛ YottaDB r1.38 Released

        YottaDB r1.38 is a minor release that includes functionality needed at short notice by a customer. A MUPIP REPLICATE option provides for a replication stream to include updates made by triggers on the source instance. $ZPEEK() and ^%PEEKBYNAME() provide direct access to an additional process-private structure.

    • Licensing / Legal
      • LWN ☛ Jumping the licensing shark [Ed: GPL opportunists who slander the GPL's author for salaries like $250,000 per year]

        The concept of copyleft is compelling in a lot of ways, at least for those who want to promote software freedom in the world. Bradley Kuhn is certainly one of those people and has long been working on various aspects of copyleft licensing and compliance, along with software freedom. He came to Everything Open 2023 to talk about copyleft, some of its history—and flaws—and to look toward the future of copyleft.

        Kuhn began by saying that he spends much of his time these days thinking about the enforcement of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1; “it turns out that those are the most widely used copyleft licenses in the world”, thus they are the most frequently violated. It is sometimes painful to be looking at license text written in 1991 and 1993 as we move through 2023, but that is what he has to do. Outside of work, though, he has time to think about what sort of copyleft license he would draft if he were to do so. He was just out of high school when GPLv2 was released, so he did not participate in that process at all.

    • Programming/Development
      • Andrew Helwer ☛ Pseudocode Showdown

        Last weekend I had a conversation with an undergraduate student new to computer science, who was reading CLRS. “I wish” they said, “that all the pseudocode in my algorithms textbook was just written in Python.” “Ah” I said, “but textbook authors sometimes want their work to endure beyond a decade.” “But Python’s been around for a long time” came the reply, “and it’s very readable, and you can’t execute pseudocode anyway so what’s the harm?

      • Qt ☛ Qt Creator 10 – CMake update

        Now that Qt Creator 10 has been released, it’s time to highlight the CMake changes.

  • Leftovers
  • Gemini* and Gopher
    • Personal
      • Walking on the Katy Trail

        Took a lunch walk today with my wife and youngest son (who brought his
        bike, so he got a walk/ride experience). We drove down to Mokane and
        hopped on the Katy Trail. Walked for two miles total then came home.
        Gorgeous spring day. The trees aren’t leafed out yet, but the farmer’s
        fields are covered in soft greens and purples. Some nice bulb flowers
        budding early as well. One piece of creek that we crossed over was
        bubbling with clear water, but no fish visible. Sunny and 68F with a
        light, cool breeze, it was hard to beat.

      • I bought some books

        I usually read just Science Fiction and Fantasy for fun, or some language study books here and there, but over the past couple of years I’ve been feeling inspired by the sort of character developing advice I’ve been seeing in content I read online.

        I’ve completed a first pass of both books, but I’ve only just started to go back over them and make notes. While I read them, I did record a few quick notes here and there, but really just a few thinking points. I’ll probably post more on these two texts over the next couple of weeks.

      • On lazyness and growing up…

        While wife and son are visiting the in-laws for a week i have time to visit the pub again… bartender, do you have Grasovka in stock? Yes? Great!

        Turning in the general direction to the next patron i start to ramble…

        The biggest bane in my life always was my lazyness… but a particular kind of lazyness: If there is a deadline, a release date or an emergency i am hyper productive, i work from 05:00 – 22:00, eat, sleep and jump out of bed fresh as the morning just to head straight to work. But on the other hand… routine work is killing me. Give me a straight good workday without emergencies or big catastrophes and i am doing the bare minimum or even less to just get by. Just today my boss told me “Mr. ralfwause, i am absolutely glad you work here and i hope you will work here in 20 years from now, but sometimes… sometimes i have this urge to simply shoot you…”.

      • Testing midnight.sh

        There seems to be conditions under which “midnight.sh” does not work… in particular, the server often seems to answer that there is no content, especially when I’m sending only one line as a reply.

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

Translating the Lies of António Campinos (EPO)

Friday 31st of March 2023 01:40:22 AM

Summary: António Campinos has read a lousy script full of holes and some of the more notorious EPO talking points; we respond below

THE Benoît Battistelli era did not truly end. Another terrible liar, whose English isn’t that good (their native tongue is French), said the above. Our remarks below, preceded by timestamps:

0:06: Yes, Tony, global uncertainty like “tactical” nukes being deployed to Belarus, which you at the EPO funded. When the general public found out that the EPO had worked with and paid Belarus you just started shouting out the “F” word at staff! Like a true grown-up…

0:11: Tell us more about inventors, Tony. What did you invent?

0:17: A “record number of applications” when you openly advertise lenience and expansion of scope, e.g. “Hey Hi” (AI, software patents in new clothing)

0:25: “Up 2.5%” after a year of lockdowns

0:30: I count Europe (a continent) like a country to make it sound good when only 1 in 3 applications in the ‘European’ Patent Office is in fact European (in origin)

0:35: Growth in requests for monopolies (inside and across Europe) comes from outside Europe, so the ‘European’ Patent Office is increasingly granting European monopolies to firms that are not European

0:43 I measure “growth” in China in terms of %, year-to-year, because in relative terms (relative to the whole) not many patent applications come from China

0:50: I cannot tell the difference between patents (monopolies) and inventions, but I never invented anything, so I just read this script regardless

1:00: At 50 (not yet!) I celebrate “tremendous growth” when the number of employees is in fact decreasing, as does the calibre

1:11: I compare the present to the early 1970s to make it seem like an incredible growth (national patent offices had existed already and there was no EU)

1:20: I don’t say “software patents”, I just use some other words

1:30: I say “double-digit growth” when measuring only how many monopolies the EPO granted (lenience, pressure on examiners to meet “quotas” and “targets”), nothing economic and nothing to do with national patent offices, foreign patent offices etc.

1:37: This is 1contradicted by what Campinos said earlier because over time fewer and fewer patent applicants (relative to the whole) are European

1:40: 60% of the top 10 applicants are not European (and about 66% of the applications are not European either)

1:52: “Computer technology” does not sound like “software patents,” right?

2:00: I cannot even pronounce “sustainable” (at least I don’t say it like I say “focus”; that always, consistently sounds like “fuck yous”)

2:10 Now I read out the greenwashing part of the script they gave me because patents save the planet!!

2:50 I’ve just spent about a minute (20% of the talk) greenwashing, so let’s talk about “inclusive”

2:52 Monopolies are about social justice and helping women… or something

3:10 Now I pretend that the EPO is good for SMEs. After all, 80% of the applications come from large international businesses, so let’s twist the statistics a little…

3:17: “SMARTER FUTURE”… let’s start with some buzzwords now. Wow, “fourth industrial revolution!” Amazing stuff!! Also habitual cover for software patents…

3:32: Yes, “digital technologies” just means software patents

3:37: “Computer technology”… yes, software patents again. Up 11% in one year!

3:48: Inclusive and sustainable. We’re back to marketing…

3:53: A patent system that is a) illegal b) unconstitutional c) harmful to Europe d) initiated in violation of several conventions e) damaging to the EU’s legitimacy, i.e. a risk to the union

4:00: The “first of June” is in “just a few weeks” (9 is “few”)

4:09: First European Patent with “unitary effect” might be one of hundreds of thousands of European Patents that are legally invalid and, once challenged in court, the entire system will simply crash down because it’s illegal and was never tested in a high court before

4:20: I keep lying about how a system stacked against SMEs is in fact good for Europe because I’m backed by UPC lobbyists

4:35: I mention “US and China” as role models for Europe even though those are countries, not a collection of dozens of countries with many different cultures, languages etc.

4:39: “Game changer for innovation in Europe” is a lie. It’s game changer for litigation in Europe (more lawsuits and bigger lawsuits with vastly higher fees).

[Meme] Too Many Fake European Patents? So Start Fake European Courts for Patents.

Friday 31st of March 2023 12:35:26 AM

EPO going down the toilet in pursuit of short-term profits

Summary: António Campinos, who sent EPO money to Belarus, insists that the EPO is doing well; nothing could be further from the truth and EPO corruption is actively threatening the EU (or its legitimacy)

Thomas Magenheim-Hörmann in RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland About Declining Quality and Declining Validity of European Patents (for EPO and Illegal Kangaroo Courts)

Friday 31st of March 2023 12:17:01 AM

Summary: Companies are not celebrating the “production line” culture fostered by EPO management, which is neither qualified for the job nor wants to adhere to the law (it's intentionally inflating a bubble)

Days ago the EPO delivered its annual “results” propaganda and released a video of a figurine-like António Campinos talking to the camera (clearly not qualified for this job), telling a bunch of lies like Benoît Battistelli used to do, misusing statistics to promote European software patents (typical buzzwords) and pretend the EPO had been doing well. The propaganda was of course propagated instantly to patent extremists’ platforms like Watchtroll and JUVE. However, some in German media [1, 2] are more sceptical, so the EPO’s staff union retained copied of the printed versions and moreover released translations of an article published by Thomas Magenheim-Hörmann 3 days ago. His articles about the EPO go a long way back (he’s no stranger to the issues) and his latest was translated as follows into English (there are other languages):

RND – RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland

Corporations voice sharp criticism

Quarrel about the European Patent Office: Is examination becoming increasingly lax?

The authority puts mass before class and increasingly examines patent applications sloppily. An industry initiative criticises this. A patent examiner at the office unpacks anonymously.

Munich. The European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich is presenting a record balance sheet. Exactly 193,460 applications for inventions were received there in 2022, an increase of 2.5 percent and thus more than ever before. Green technologies in particular are being registered, says Antonio Campinos. “The continuing upswing in this field is helping to advance the energy transition,” explains the EPO boss.

At the national level, China stands out with a good 15 per cent increase to 19,041 applications, making it the number four patent power. German inventors, in second place globally behind the USA, on the other hand, are weakening statistically with a drop of almost 5 per cent to 24,684 applications for protection. That could cause concern – or you have a view of things like Beat Weibel.

He is head of patents at Siemens. His company ranks sixth worldwide in last year’s EPO company statistics with 1,735 applications and is thus Germany’s most active. “It’s not about applying for as many patents as possible, but as good ones as possible,” he explains his philosophy. EPO’s is a different one. “Everything there seems to be geared towards granting a patent quickly and as efficiently as possible,” Weibel criticises.

Initiative calls for more quality and transparency in patent granting

It is not an isolated view. Last autumn, the Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) was founded, to which 19 other signatories such as Bayer and Deutsche Telekom or Nokia, Vodafone and Qualcomm belong. They demand a change of course from the EPO and a return to quality and transparency in patent research and patent granting. Many patent attorneys, as evidenced by blog entries, as well as the Federation of German Industries (BDI) have joined the concentrated industry criticism. “Excellent initiative, much appreciated,” says BDI head Siegfried Russwurm in praise of the IPQC. The quality of patents is decisive for their value and legal validity.

EPO critics see evidence of declining examination quality at the office. From 2015 to 2021, the grant rate for patent applications rose from 61.5 to over 70 per cent, the IPQC determined with the help of the BDI. This means that examiners are granting more and more patents than they are rejecting them. What is growing in parallel is the revocation rate, from 41 to 46 percent. Those who challenge a granted epa patent are increasingly successful, which often jeopardises investments based on these patents.

“Together with their own experience, this seems to the IPQC members to be a good indication that a comprehensive examination of patents is apparently no longer sufficiently possible,” concludes Weibel and sees this as the result of a practice that emphasises throughput. It does not fit in with Siemens’ own experience with patent specifications. “Especially in the digital world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand and patent inventions,” says Weibel. That’s why in-house patent attorneys are taking longer and longer to draft patents, while EPO examiners have less and less time. “A gap is opening up,” criticises the manager.

Auditor unpacks: “There is pressure for us to produce more and more”.

There is pressure for us to produce more and more, so the quality goes down,” he says, wishing to remain anonymous. Criticism from the staff is not welcome at the office and has so far been “completely ignored”. In 2015, he had three days to examine a patent. “Now it’s less than two days,” he reveals. A points system, which is decisive for promotion and thus better pay, promotes the granting of patents. Rejections have to be justified in detail and those affected have to be invited for a discussion. This costs time in which one cannot examine and collect points. “We have to close our eyes and grant patents in case of doubt,” complains the patent examiner.

In February, representatives of Epa and IPQC met for the first time to talk. The EPO has denied the accusations, reports Weibel, and believes he knows why the office is relying on more and more patents in a shorter time. It can cost up to 10,000 euros for an applicant to turn an invention into a patent. More patents increase the Office’s income, which benefits the 39 European countries that support it financially.

Patent statistics

As in previous years, the USA leads the European Patent Office’s national ranking of applications in 2022, ahead of Germany, Japan and China. But the trends are very different. Inventors from the USA filed a good 48,000 patents, 3 percent more than their German colleagues, who filed 24,684, almost 5 percent fewer. Japanese inventors stagnated at a good 21,500 applications. The largest increase came from China, with a rise of over 15 per cent to a good 19,000 IP applications. Among the 25 largest patent nations, the decline was strongest in Germany. At the company level, Siemens is the most innovative German corporation with 1,735 applications in the previous year, ahead of BASF with 1,401 patent applications and Bosch with 1,214. On a global scale, however, the controversial Chinese corporation Huawei dominates with over 4,500 patent applications, followed by LG from South Korea and Qualcomm from the USA. On a global scale, Siemens is in sixth place, BASF in eighth and Bosch in eleventh. The fields of technology with the highest number of applications are digital communication and medical technology, each with around 16,000 requests for protection.

“But it is also about innovation in European industry,” says Weibel. This is especially true for the European Unitary Patent, which will come into force in June.

Maximising revenues should not be the main focus, the Siemens patent chief warns. If the EPO does not change course, his company will increasingly apply to national patent offices such as the German or the US patent office. They are more responsive to their own needs. The EPO, on the other hand, served more Asian companies that rely on mass instead of class.

Particularly applications from the patent boom country China are not of a noticeably lower quality than those of Western companies, counters the EPO. Fewer applications from Germany are due to the fact that typical German inventor domains such as mechanical engineering or combustion technology are generally no longer growth areas and German inventors do not have as much to offer in highly innovative areas such as digital communication. For the time being, EPO does not want to comment on the IPQC’s accusations and refers to ongoing talks. A new meeting between industry and the office is planned for April or May. It could redefine the relationship between the Office and its Western customers.

This is the sort of journalism we’re meant to see but seldom see because few corporations and magnates dominate more and more of the press amid consolidation of power and wealth. █

Links 30/03/2023: HowTos and Political News

Thursday 30th of March 2023 11:31:00 PM

Contents

Links 30/03/2023: LibreOffice 7.5.2 and Linux 6.2.9

Thursday 30th of March 2023 02:54:30 PM

Contents
  • GNU/Linux
    • Server
      • Kubernetes Blog ☛ Kubernetes Validating Admission Policies: A Practical Example

        Admission control is an important part of the Kubernetes control plane, with several internal features depending on the ability to approve or change an API object as it is submitted to the server. It is also useful for an administrator to be able to define business logic, or policies, regarding what objects can be admitted into a cluster. To better support that use case, Kubernetes introduced external admission control in v1.7.

        In addition to countless custom, internal implementations, many open source projects and commercial solutions implement admission controllers with user-specified policy, including Kyverno and Open Policy Agent’s Gatekeeper.

        While admission controllers for policy have seen adoption, there are blockers for their widespread use. Webhook infrastructure must be maintained as a production service, with all that entails. The failure case of an admission control webhook must either be closed, reducing the availability of the cluster; or open, negating the use of the feature for policy enforcement. The network hop and evaluation time makes admission control a notable component of latency when dealing with, for example, pods being spun up to respond to a network request in a “serverless” environment.

    • Audiocasts/Shows
      • Linux in the Ham Shack ☛ LHS Episode #502: Blown Away

        Welcome to the 502nd episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics episode, the hosts take on a variety of topics including: ham radio during tornado season, operators…

    • Kernel Space
      • LWN ☛ Linux 6.2.9 I'm announcing the release of the 6.2.9 kernel. All users of the 6.2 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 6.2.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-6.2.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s... thanks, greg k-h
      • LWN ☛ 6.1.22
      • LWN ☛ Linux 5.15.105
      • LWN ☛ Linux 5.4.239
    • Applications
      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Blender 3.5 is out now with fancy new hair

        Continuing to show how great open source is, the Blender team have released Blender 3.5 with some really fancy new features. Blender is used across many different industries from games to films and more.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ OBS Studio 29.1 Beta 1 brings AV1 / HEVC over RTMP

        The team working on the free and open source video recording and livestreaming software OBS Studio, have released the first Beta for version 29.1 with a big new feature.

    • Instructionals/Technical
      • How to Install and Configure GlusterFS on AlmaLinux

        GlusterFS is a distributed file system that provides scalable and highly available network storage solutions. It aggregates disk storage resources from multiple servers into a single global namespace. GlusterFS allows you to easily create a virtual pool of storage that you can use for various applications.

      • It’s FOSS ☛ Linux Terminal Basics #7: Copy Files and Directories in Linux

        Learn how to copy files and directories in Linux using the command line in this part of the Terminal Basics series.

      • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Move Your Home Folder to Another Partition in Linux

        If you have accepted the default option of using the entire disk while installing Ubuntu, or if your computer came with Ubuntu preinstalled, you are likely to have a Home folder in the same partition as all of your system files. Under any normal circumstances, this would be fine.

      • Nikhil Marathe ☛ Remote Dbus Notifications over SSH

        notify-send uses the Desktop Notification spec that relies on DBus to propagate a request to show a notification. This is a widely supported standard in the Linux ecosystem powering all notifications, regardless of which desktop environment you use.

        However my simple approach doesn’t work as soon as I’m logged into a remote machine. At my current job, I’m nearly always logged into a remote machine.

        Fortunately, because of how DBus is implemented, it turns out to be trivial to have a remote notify-send execution show a local desktop notification! Here is how.

      • DJ Adams ☛ Learning from community solutions on Exercism

        There’s a relatively new jq track on Exercism, and I’ve been working through some of the exercises. There are at least a couple of features that appeal to me; one is the ability to easily write and submit solutions from the command line (see Working Locally) and the other is the community solutions that are available to you after you submit your own first solution.

        As well as the direct benefit of practice, I’ve learned and been reminded of aspects of jq while looking through the community solutions. So I thought I’d write some of them up here, because writing will also help me remember.

        I’ll start with some simple observations.

      • University of Toronto ☛ The case of the very wrong email Content-Transfer-Encoding

        The MIME Content-Transfer-Encoding header is supposed to tell you the encoding of the MIME part in question, including the implicit top level part of the email. Typical values are things like ’7bit’, ’8bit’, ‘quoted-printable’, or ‘base64′. Needless to say, this email’s C-T-E is complete garbage, and a picky email client would say that it couldn’t decode the message because it doesn’t understand the ‘amazonses.com’ encoding.

      • SequoiaPGP ☛ Pretty graphics for the Web of Trust

        Many software projects sign their prebuilt software or source code. These signatures can be verified to establish the authenticity of the work. This can happen in the form of detached signatures for files or signatures on version control objects, such as signed git commits and tags and establishes a verifiable link between a certificate and a public artifact. To rely on the signatures, we need to also authenticate the certificates that made them. A WoT makes it easier to verify these certificates.

        A notable similar application (and inspiration) to what is described in this article is wotmate which provides visual graphs for the Linux Kernel’s pgpkeys project.

    • Games
    • Desktop Environments/WMs
      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
        • My work in KDE for March 2023

          Another month in the year, another collection of bugfixes and features I contributed to KDE!

          Documentation Improvements
  • Distributions and Operating Systems
  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
    • [Old] Sébastien Wilmet ☛ Sébastien Wilmet: gedit on the Microsoft Store [Ed: Wasting one's time on Microsoft DRM and surveillance]
    • Earthly ☛ Nix Turns 20. What the Hell Is It?

      I tend to describe it as a build system that pretends to be a package manager or the other way around. If you take Make, the grandfather of all build systems, Make has this nice interface where you just describe everything that you want to be built. You describe your dependencies, and then you build that…and it’s nice; it’s declarative.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers
      • Mozilla
        • OpenSource.com ☛ 6 steps to reduce the carbon footprint of your website

          According to Mozilla, Information Communications Technology (ICT) is expected to emit more carbon by 2025 than any single country besides China, India, and the United States. We tend not to think of the physical scale of the internet, but it is a massive machine. It is critical that we consider the energy that is consumed to both run the internet and allow for its exponential growth.

          It is estimated that today digital technology uses between 5-9% of global electricity. This estimate is particularly concerning as only a quarter of our electricity comes from renewable resources. There is an increasing demand for electrical infrastructure as fossil fuels transition out of consumer and industrial uses.

          There are also carbon implications for building and disposing of digital devices. Electronics are not generally designed for longevity, repair, or recycling. Digital tools consume rare minerals and water, and e-waste is a growing problem.

          I will explore these aspects of web sustainability and others in this article. While my focus is on Drupal, these general principles apply to most of the web, particularly open source tools and ways to leverage the work of these communities. Likewise, I will also provide practical steps that people can take to reduce the environmental footprint of their sites.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra
      • LibreOffice 7.5.2 Community available for download

        LibreOffice 7.5.2 Community, the second minor release of the LibreOffice 7.5 line, the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop productivity, is available from from our download page for Windows (Intel/AMD and ARM processors), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel processors), and Linux.

      • 9to5Linux ☛ LibreOffice 7.5.2 Open-Source Office Suite Is Out with 96 Bug Fixes, Download Now

        The LibreOffice 7.5.2 point release is here almost a month after the LibreOffice 7.5.1 point release to address a total of 96 bugs that have been reported by users or discovered by the LibreOffice developers in the LibreOffice 7.5 series.

        LibreOffice 7.5.2 is available for download right from the official website as binary installers for DEB or RPM-based GNU/Linux distributions, as well as a source tarball for system integrators and those who want to compile it from sources.

    • FSF
    • Programming/Development
      • Volodymyr Gubarkov ☛ AWK technical notes

        In the previous article Fascination with AWK we discussed why AWK is great for prototyping and is often the best alternative to the shell and Python. In this article I want to show you some interesting technical facts I learned about AWK.

      • Vice Media Group ☛ The Open Letter to Stop ‘Dangerous’ AI Race Is a Huge Mess

        More than 30,000 people—including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, politician Andrew Yang, and a few leading AI researchers—have signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

        The letter immediately caused a furor as signatories walked back their positions, some notable signatories turned out to be fake, and many more AI researchers and experts vocally disagreed with the letter’s proposal and approach.

      • Computer World ☛ Tech big wigs: Hit the brakes on AI rollouts

        The missive also warns of political disruptions “especially to democracy” from AI: chatbots acting as humans could flood social media and other networks with propaganda and untruths. And it warned that AI could “automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones.”

        The letter called on civic leaders — not the technology community — to take charge of decisions around the breadth of AI deployments.

      • LLVM Project ☛ Adding a new target/object backend to LLVM JITLink

        Our code often relies on external dependencies. For example, even a simple hello-world program written in C depends on the C stdlib for the printf function. These external dependencies are expressed as symbolic references, which I will henceforth refer to as just symbols. Symbols are names of data or functions that have unknown addresses and are resolved or fixed up during the linking process.

      • Qt ☛ Qt Creator 10 released
  • Leftovers
    • The Nation ☛ Theodora Smiley Lacey, Civil Rights Activist
    • The Nation ☛ Christianity’s Place in the Left and the Right

      The purpose of David Hollinger’s new book, Christianity’s American Fate, is twofold. Hollinger, the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History emeritus at UC Berkeley, first seeks to explain how Christianity in the United States became synonymous, in large measure, with conservative white evangelicalism. He then seeks to offer explanations for the decline of mainline liberal Protestantism’s influence on American culture and society.

    • The Nation ☛ A Portrait of Leonard Cohen as a Young Artist

      One legend about Leonard Cohen goes like this: It’s the early 1970s, and the Canadian musician and poet is performing in Jerusalem. As was his custom at the time, he and his band are on a tremendous amount of mescaline. He feels self-conscious and fears the music isn’t reaching its full potential. Standing before the microphone, he confesses his doubts to the audience and offers a refund. “You know, some nights one is raised off the ground,” he says, “and some nights you just can’t get off the ground.” He takes a break backstage, where he is struck by a sudden impulse: He needs a shave. Standing before the mirror, he takes a razor to his face and begins the process with irrepressible joy, then performs the rest of the set, rejuvenated and with a slight razor burn. (This scene was caught on tape by Tony Palmer for his 1974 documentary, Bird on a Wire.)

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Hygraph raises $30M for its content federation platform Hygraph GmbH, a startup helping companies manage content assets such as product listings and marketing copy, today announced that it has raised $30 million in funding. The Series B round was led by One Peak. Berlin-based Hygraph said that it will use the capital to speed up product development initiatives.

    • The Nation ☛ Disability Is Always Someone Else’s Problem

      In the United States, children with severe disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities, face an ignominious juncture around age 20. Aging out of school is referred to as “the cliff,” as students go abruptly from the structure and services provided in school into… nothingness as adults. During our son’s last Individual Education Plan (special needs) meeting, we argued for funding for his Covid makeup year (an additional year offered to some special needs students turning 21 in New York). The Department of Education representative refused, then actually laughed when I described what it was like living at home full-time with Jason, diagnosed with autism and intellectual disability. The representative apologized later, saying only that he was surprised it was “that bad.”1

    • Science
      • Greece ☛ Elusive ‘einstein’ solves a long-standing math problem

        In less poetic terms, an einstein is an “aperiodic monotile,” a shape that tiles a plane, or an infinite two-dimensional flat surface, but only in a nonrepeating pattern. (The term “einstein” comes from the German “ein stein,” or “one stone” – more loosely, “one tile” or “one shape.”) Your typical wallpaper or tiled floor is part of an infinite pattern that repeats periodically; when shifted, or “translated,” the pattern can be exactly superimposed on itself. An aperiodic tiling displays no such “translational symmetry,” and mathematicians have long sought a single shape that could tile the plane in such a fashion. This is known as the einstein problem.

      • Hackaday ☛ Biohybrid Implant Patches Broken Nerves With Stem Cells

        Neural interfaces have made great strides in recent years, but still suffer from poor longevity and resolution. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a biohybrid implant to improve the situation.

      • Vice Media Group ☛ Scientists: Stonehenge Is Not a Calendar, It’s Something More Mysterious

        A researcher recently claimed to have solved the mystery of Stonehenge’s purpose, but new work claims to debunk the explanation that it’s a calendar.

    • Education
      • Idiomdrottning ☛ Zettelkasten

        Searching: I love the saying “A short pencil beats a long memory”, but there’s something that beats even a pencil since it can help you if you forget where you wrote it down. That’s right! Good old Ctrl-F! Their crusty old paper boxes can’t grep this.♥

        First of all, searching can help us do editing and linking more effectively. That’s the key benefit. Searching can also help us find connections that we didn’t even know about. A great index or linking system can make us find specific cards that we have deliberately referenced. Searching can make us find things that we had forgotten about entirely.

      • Meduza ☛ STEM students protest school’s decision to require Chinese study for graduation — Meduza

        The student council of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (“MFTI”) has launched a petition protesting the new requirement that all students must study Chinese to graduate.

      • Robin Schroer ☛ Active Onboarding

        Having recently changed jobs, I had the pleasure of onboarding for the first time in four years again, definitely a change of pace. Being quite senior at this point, I have been worrying a bit about how to join a new organisation and perform on my level, not having benefited from working directly on the ground for a long time, thus lacking direct technical experience and also social legitimacy.

    • Hardware
      • Hackaday ☛ MOSFET Heater Is Its Own Thermostat

        While we might all be quick to grab a microcontroller and an appropriate sensor to solve some problem, gather data about a system, or control another piece of technology, there are some downsides with this method. Software has a lot of failure modes, and relying on it without any backups or redundancy can lead to problems. Often, a much more reliable way to solve a simple problem is with hardware. This heating circuit, for example, uses a MOSFET as a heating element and as its own temperature control.

      • Hackaday ☛ Stripped Clock Wheel Gets A New Set Of Teeth, The Hard Way

        If there’s one thing we’ve learned from [Chris] at Clickspring, it’s that a clockmaker will stop at nothing to make a clock not only work perfectly, but look good doing it. That includes measures as extreme as this complete re-toothing of a wheel from a clock. Is re-toothing even a word?

      • Hackaday ☛ The BLE Datalogging Scale Of A Thousand Uses

        Whether you’re making coffee or beer or complex chemicals, weighing your ingredients carefully and tracking them is key to getting good results. [Tech Dregs] decided to build a logging scale that would work seamlessly with his smartphone, and shared the design on YouTube.

      • Hackaday ☛ Generating Instead Of Storing Meshes

        The 64kB is a category in the demoscene where the total executable size must be less than 65,536 bytes, and at that size, storing vertexes, edges, and normal maps is a waste of space. [Ctrl-Alt-Test] is a French Demoscene group that has been doing incredible animations for the last 13 years. They’ve written an excellent guide on how they’ve been procedurally generating the meshes in their demos.

      • Hackaday ☛ Compose Any Song With Twelve Buttons

        Limitations placed on any creative process often paradoxically create an environment in which creativity flourishes. A simple overview of modern pop, rock, or country music illustrates this principle quite readily. A bulk of these songs are built around a very small subset of music theory, often varying no more than the key or the lyrics. Somehow, almost all modern popular music exists within this tiny realm. [DeckerEgo] may have had this idea in mind when he created this tiny MIDI device which allows the creation of complex musical scores using a keyboard with only 12 buttons.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
      • CNN ☛ Children and teens are more likely to die by guns than anything else

        Firearms accounted for nearly 19% of childhood deaths (ages 1-18) in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wonder database. Nearly 3,600 children died in gun-related incidents that year. That’s about five children lost for every 100,000 children in the United States. In no other comparable country are firearms within the top four causes of mortality among children, according to a KFF analysis.

      • New York Times ☛ Pope Francis Is in Hospital and Will Stay for Several Days

        The Vatican said the 86-year-old pontiff was taken to a hospital in Rome, where he was being treated for a respiratory infection.

    • Proprietary
      • Data Breaches ☛ Ransomware crooks are exploiting IBM file exchange bug with a 9.8 severity

        The IBM Aspera Faspex is a centralized file-exchange application that large organizations use to transfer large files or large volumes of files at very high speeds. Rather than relying on TCP-based technologies such as FTP to move files, Aspera uses IBM’s proprietary FASP—short for Fast, Adaptive, and Secure Protocol—to better utilize available network bandwidth. The product also provides fine-grained management that makes it easy for users to send files to a list of recipients in distribution lists or shared inboxes or workgroups, giving transfers a workflow that’s similar to email.

    • Pseudo-Open Source
      • Openwashing
        • OpenSource.com ☛ The open source way of raising a family

          As a rebellious teenager in the 80s, “because I said so” was a phrase I heard all too often at home. I wasn’t really a rebel. I just wanted to be heard and seen as a person starting to articulate their thoughts and emotions.

          The feeling I had of not being heard or listened to led me to believe that it’s important to raise kids who are not afraid to speak up, but who can also learn to adapt. Listening to them and collaborating with kids can also help them be creative and, eventually, allow them to be part of a successful organization.

    • Security
      • India Times ☛ Misconfigurations are the most common modus operandi for hacks, says study

        Misconfigurations are the most common modus operandi for hacks, says study “As we analyze the hacking landscape from 2019 to 2022, it’s evident that the most prevalent forms of cyber attacks were misconfigurations and data breaches. Additionally, Ransomware remains a persistent threat, leveraging weak credentials to gain access to valuable data which can then be held for ransom. Other types of hacks, such as Social Engineering, Cyber Espionage, Insider Threats, Supply Chain Attacks, and Spear Phishing, pose significant risks to organizations and must be taken into consideration as part of a comprehensive security strategy,” adds Tyagi.

      • OSI Blog ☛ Why the European Commission must consult the Open Source communities
      • X.Org Security Advisory: CVE-2023-1393: X.Org Server Overlay Window Use-After-Free X.Org Security Advisory: March 29, 2023 X.Org Server Overlay Window Use-After-Free ========================================== This issue can lead to local privileges elevation on systems where the X server is running privileged and remote code execution for ssh X forwarding sessions. ZDI-CAN-19866/CVE-2023-1393: X.Org Server Overlay Window Use-After-Free Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability If a client explicitly destroys the compositor overlay window (aka COW), the Xserver would leave a dangling pointer to that window in the CompScreen structure, which will trigger a use-after-free later. Patches ------- Patch for this issue have been committed to the xorg server git repository. xorg-server 21.1.8 will be released shortly and will include this patch. - commit 26ef545b3 - composite: Fix use-after-free of the COW (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commit/26ef545b3) ZDI-CAN-19866/CVE-2023-1393 If a client explicitly destroys the compositor overlay window (aka COW), we would leave a dangling pointer to that window in the CompScreen structure, which will trigger a use-after-free later. Make sure to clear the CompScreen pointer to the COW when the latter gets destroyed explicitly by the client.
      • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
      • Privacy/Surveillance
        • Site36 ☛ EU data hamsters: Atos manager moves to client after trouble with biometric flagship

          Agnès Diallo now oversees biometric databases sold to the EU by her former employer. Interesting to see how she deals with claims for compensation against Atos.

          [...]

          Last week, Agnès Diallo took office as the new director of the Tallinn-based Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems (eu-LISA). The EU has thus once again given an important post to a highly-paid employee of the French software giant Atos: in 2019, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had already appointed the then Atos CEO Thierry Breton as Commissioner for Industry and Internal Market.

          At Atos, Diallo held various management positions, most recently for the executive board. There she was responsible, among other things, for „improving the sales processes“ of the group of companies. In this context, she already worked together with eu-LISA, the agency confirmed in response to a question from „nd“.

        • Silicon Angle ☛ Despite backlash, US police are still using Clearview AI face recognition software The majority of Americans have always been somewhat uncomfortable about their police forces tracking their faces, but today the BBC reported that one of the most well-known firms in this regard is going stronger than ever. In what seems like a surprising admission given the controversy surrounding face recognition technology, Clearview AI Inc.

        • [Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ Amazon opens developer access to its Sidewalk wireless network

          The network, which Amazon says covers more than 90% of the U.S. population, provides internet access for connected devices. Currently, only a relatively limited number of devices can use Sidewalk. Amazon now hopes to change by making the network more widely accessible to developers and hardware makers.

        • Vice Media Group ☛ The DEA Bought Customer Data from Rogue Employees Instead of Getting a Warrant

          For years the DEA has used paid informants inside airline, bus, and parcel companies to bypass needing to get a warrant. A pair of bipartisan Senators now want the DOJ to put an end to it.

        • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Victory for migrants as judge rules immigration exemption is incompatible with GDPR

          A High Court judge has agreed with Open Rights Group and the3million that the immigration exemption in the UK Data Protection Act 2018 is incompatible with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

        • CS Monitor ☛ Can public trust endure in India amid high surveillance?

          In India, the increased digitization of services has led to greater government surveillance and false arrests, activists say. The authorities say the surveillance is needed to curb rising crime.

    • Defence/Aggression
    • Environment
      • Energy/Transportation
        • TruthOut ☛ AOC Says GOP Energy Bill May as Well Have Been Written Entirely by Big Oil
        • JURIST ☛ EU adopts legislation to phase out new carbon-emitting cars by 2035

          EU ministers Tuesday adopted legislation to phase out sales of new carbon-emitting cars and vans by 2035. The approved law amends Regulation 2019/631 and sets higher standards for reducing carbon emissions.

        • LRT ☛ Lithuania welcomes limits on Russian gas

          Lithuania welcomes the decision to allow EU’s member states to limit imports of natural gas from Russia, said Deputy Energy Minister Albinas Zananavičius.

        • Latvia ☛ Funding available for electric school buses in Latvia

          The Central Finance and Contracting Agency (CFLA) has launched an additional call for municipalities to use the financing of the Recovery Fund for the purchase of electric cars for school transport. The fund still has €3.7 million available for this purpose, the CFLA said March 29.

        • CS Monitor ☛ Looping China into the anti-corruption fight

          A U.S. charge that an American crypto-currency leader bribed Chinese officials might bring China into the global campaign against transnational corruption.

        • Common Dreams ☛ The Republican State AGs Doing the Dirty Work for Big Oil

          According to the nonpartisan National Association of Attorneys General, a state attorney general’s job is to represent the public interest—not private, special interests—by, among other things, “enforcing federal and state environmental laws.” Attorneys general (AGs) in the five states most vulnerable to climate change, however, are doing the exact opposite: Instead of defending their constituents, they are defending the fossil fuel industry.

        • Michael West Media ☛ Drowning or Waving? Will Beetaloo gas frackers survive Greens, Labor Safeguard deal?

          Monday’s emissions pact struck by Chris Bowen and Adam Bandt has hit shares in Beetaloo Basin gas frackers Empire and Tamboran. Yet confusion reigns. Bandt says the deal has “derailed” the Beetaloo and Barossa gas projects. The frackers say it’s business as usual. Callum Foote reports.

          Just a week after Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced moves to reform Australia’s monopoly share market operator, ASX, and improve the integrity of financial markets, a classic case of market integrity arose.

        • Vice Media Group ☛ Flying Is Worse Than Ever After Massive Airline Bailout, Consumer Watchdog Says

          The report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group analyzed Department of Transportation data on consumer complaints about airline travel and airline performance. The report found consumer complaints have quadrupled from 2019 to 2022, which was the worst year since 2001 (not including 2020 data). This doesn’t include data from December, when Southwest Airlines melted down and canceled a quarter of its flights during the Christmas travel period, because DOT received so many complaints that month it hasn’t been able to review and process the data yet.

          “In a nutshell, just about everything negative got worse in 2022: complaints, cancellations, delays, involuntary bumping and baggage handling,” the study’s author, Teresa Murray, wrote on PIRG’s website, “all while the number of air travelers for the full year of 2022 was below 2019 levels.”

        • Interesting Engineering ☛ European Union nations decide to ban ICE car sales as of 2035

          A historic regulation that will ensure that all new automobiles sold starting in 2035 must have zero emissions has been passed by member states of the European Union (EU), according to Reuters.

          Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania voted no, and Poland abstained.

        • Common Dreams ☛ The Last Winter of Gas in Europe

          While hundreds of activists blockade the European Gas Conference in Vienna to stop further climate chaos and poverty, we call on all movements and organizations to push back against the power of the fossil fuels industry. To end the cost of living crisis and avert climate chaos, we need to guarantee the rapid phase-out of fossil gas in Europe, and to build a new energy system for people and planet. Next winter needs to be the Last Winter of Gas in Europe.

        • The Nation ☛ Fossil Fuel Companies Are Donating Millions to Skew University Research

          In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its sixth assessment report, summarizing the current knowledge of the impacts and risks of climate change. “Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all,” reads the 2023 report. “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”

        • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Hungarian company to build biggest solar power plant in Bosnia-Herzegovina
      • Wildlife/Nature
    • Finance
      • Latvia ☛ E-commerce growth slows down in Latvia, say experts

        Although the volume of e-commerce in Latvia has been growing rapidly in the last three years, the pace has started to slow slightly in the last three months. Was the breakthrough in e-commerce a temporary boom during the Covid-19 pandemic time, or is Internet shopping to stay? Latvian Radio spoke to industry representatives on March 29.

      • Michael West Media ☛ ACTU pushing for 7 pct rise to minimum and award wages

        The annual minimum wage for Australia’s low paid workers should rise by seven per cent, the ACTU says. The union body made the recommendation in a submission to the Fair Work Commission’s national minimum wage review ahead of a decision in June this year.

      • TruthOut ☛ Vermont Dairy Workers Battle Corporate Greed and Demand “Milk With Dignity”
      • TruthOut ☛ Credit Suisse Helped Ultra Rich Americans Hide Over $700 Million From IRS
      • Common Dreams ☛ Credit Suisse Complicit in ‘Massive’ Conspiracy to Help Rich Americans Dodge Taxes: Senate Report

        The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday published the results of a two-year investigation showing that the scandal-plagued Swiss bank Credit Suisse has been complicit in a “massive, ongoing conspiracy” to help wealthy U.S. citizens dodge taxes.

      • Democracy Now ☛ “Bootstrapped”: Alissa Quart on Liberating Ourselves from the Myth of the American Dream

        We speak with journalist Alissa Quart, executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, about her new book, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, which examines myths about individualism and self-reliance that underpin the U.S. economy and the inequality it fosters. She says a focus on succeeding through hard work obscures the degree to which many rich and powerful people have benefited from social support, resulting in a cycle of “shame and blame” for those who fall short.

      • Marginalia ☛ Marginalia Search: 2 years, big news

        This grant is essentially the best-case scenario for funding this project. It’ll be able to remain independent, open-source, and non-profit.

        I won’t start in earnest for a few months as I’ve got loose ends to tie up before I can devote that sort of time. More details to come, but I’ll say as much as the first step is a tidying up of the sources and a move off my self-hosted git instance to an external git host yet to be decided.

      • David Rosenthal ☛ Two Great Reads

        This post is to flag two great posts by authors always worth reading, both related to the sad state of the venture capital industry upon which I have pontificated several times:

        Molly White’s The venture capitalist’s dilemma.

        Fais Khan’s Zero Knowledge Influencer: Are ZKPs Worth the Hype?.

        Each will reward your time. Below the fold I comment on both of them.

      • Robert Reich ☛ This One Thing Would Increase Wages By $300 Billion
      • New York Times ☛ Debt Talks Are Frozen as House Republicans Splinter Over a Fiscal Plan

        The struggles among Republicans to put forth a budget reflect the perilous path ahead for lawmakers who must broker a debt deal by the summer to avert a catastrophic default.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ US Ambassador: The Hungarian government has been bypassing parliament for 2,547 days, citing various emergencies
      • New Yorker ☛ If Alvin Bragg Indicts Donald Trump, What Will the Case Look Like?

        The trial could hinge on the “catch and kill” practices at the National Enquirer.

      • Mint Press News ☛ Chris Hedges: The Donald Trump Problem

        Donald Trump is not being targeted for the misdemeanors and serious felonies he appears to have committed but for discrediting and undermining the entrenched power of the ruling duopoly.

      • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Donald Trump’s Dumbass Russia Binder

        If you’re going to expose yourself and your assistants to Espionage Act prosecution, the binder full of Crossfire Hurricane documents that Trump has obsessed about ever since is one dumbass document to do so over.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Bowman, Sanders Lead Push for Biden to Probe Israel’s Use of US Arms Against Palestinians

        Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Sen. Bernie Sanders are circulating a letter this week urging the Biden administration to “undertake a shift in U.S. policy in recognition of the worsening violence, further annexation of land, and denial of Palestinian rights” by Israel.

      • The Nation ☛ Israeli Protesters Say They’re Defending Freedom. Palestinians Know Better.

        Following immense pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed his government’s plan to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court. The self-proclaimed pro-“democracy” camp, which was protesting the plan so that the court could be saved from the grips of the pro-government camp for whom the judiciary is laughably “too leftist,” has, for the moment, declared victory. But the pro-government camp also has reason to cheer; in exchange for his acquiescence to the delay, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was granted a long-sought “national guard,” which would function as his own private militia. 

      • New York Times ☛ Israeli Crisis Shows How Protests Can, and Can’t, Force Change

        What does it take for a mass movement to translate public anger into political results? Leverage.

      • Pro Publica ☛ The Legal and Medical Impact of Recent Abortion Restrictions

        Nine months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly 50 years of federal protection of abortion rights, the impact of the landmark ruling known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization continues to ripple across the nation.

      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Ukrainian politician about Hungary’s maverick politics: there must be some Russian blackmail behind it
      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ 1956 Hungarian refugee chemist awarded one of the highest American science honours
      • The Nation ☛ Gen Z and Baby Boomers Need to Work Together

        Following the 2022 midterm elections, Gen Z were largely credited by Democratic politicians and pundits for stopping the red wave. “Young voters cancel out every single vote of those over 65. Under 30 and under 40 were the only age group to go to the Democrats and they went overwhelmingly to the Democrats,” said the student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, Alan Zhang, in an interview with ABC News. “Without the youth vote, there was no firewall that stopped the red wave from taking over.” According to data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, about 27 percent of voters who cast a ballot during the 2022 midterm elections were under 30, making it the second-highest youth voter turnout in about 30 years.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Idaho Set to Become First State to Criminalize Minors Who Travel to Get Abortion Care

        Reproductive rights advocates and Democratic state lawmakers in Idaho on Wednesday condemned a Republican proposal to create a new crime in the state using the invented term “abortion trafficking,” which would criminalize people who help minors to obtain out-of-state abortion care.

      • TruthOut ☛ Idaho Poised to Pass First Bill Banning Interstate Travel for Abortion
      • Common Dreams ☛ Biden Veto Expected After 4 Senate Dems, Sinema Help GOP Gut Water Protections

        U.S. President Joe Biden’s vow to veto a Republican-led resolution that would gut his administration’s water protections did not stop four Democratic senators and one ex-Democrat from helping the GOP send the measure to his desk on Wednesday.

      • Mullvad VPN ☛ The European Commission Does Not Understand What Is Written In Its Own Chat Control Bill

        Ylva Johansson is the EU Commissioner in charge of the Chat Control Bill. In recent days she has taken part in several interviews in Swedish media and also spoken in front of EU parliament members.

        It’s obvious during the interviews that Ylva Johansson does not understand her own bill and what consequences it would have. She constantly repeats misleading and incorrect arguments. Above all, she continues to claim that it’s possible to scan end-to-end encrypted communication without breaking the encryption. It’s remarkable that the responsible EU Commissioner gets away with this, without tremendous criticism from media and members of the EU Parliament (we know, there are some speaking up, but it’s not enough).

        Here are some of her statements during the last week and our comments.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Banning TikTok Won’t Keep Us Safe: Julia Angwin Critiques Bipartisan Attack on Chinese Firm

        A bipartisan group of senators has introduced the RESTRICT Act, which would allow the federal government to potentially ban technology from countries the U.S. considers to be adversaries, including China. Last Thursday, congressmembers grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew during a five-hour hearing on the app’s ties to the Chinese government, its data practices and its effects on children’s mental health. Critics say this China-focused scrutiny largely ignores similar privacy concerns over the use of U.S.-owned apps and social media platforms. We hear more from Julia Angwin, an investigative journalist and contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, whose latest guest essay is titled “How to Fix the TikTok Problem.”

      • US Congress ☛ S.686 – RESTRICT Act 118th Congress (2023-2024)

        (6) software designed or used primarily for connecting with and communicating via the internet that is in use by greater than 1,000,000 persons in the United States at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered transaction is referred to the Secretary for review or the Secretary initiates review of the covered transaction, including— [...]

      • US Senate ☛ Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Tackle National Security Threats from Foreign Tech

        In addition to Sens. Warner and Thune, the legislation is co-sponsored by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Mitt Romney (R-UT).

      • The Guardian UK ☛ White House ‘very in favor’ of bill thought to target TikTok

        Also known as the Restrict Act, the measure would authorize the White House – through the commerce department – to review technologies which arrive from abroad. The commerce department could then move to ban those technologies or seek to force their sale, depending on any review’s findings.

      • Vice Media Group ☛ The ‘Insanely Broad’ RESTRICT Act Could Ban Much More Than Just TikTok

        The bill could have implications not just for social networks, but potentially security tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs) that consumers use to encrypt and route their traffic, one said. Although the intention of the bill is to target apps or services that pose a threat to national security, these critics worry it may have much wider implications for the First Amendment.

      • Washington Examiner ☛ Rand Paul hits the brakes on Hawley push to ban TikTok

        Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) has partnered with Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) on the RESTRICT Act, a White House-endorsed bill to address those concerns that has so far garnered 21 co-sponsors, 10 Democrats and 11 Republicans.

      • Techdirt ☛ As The Social Media Moral Panic Continues, People Keep Highlighting How Much Value It Actually Provides

        I know we’re deep, deep, deep into the moral panic about social media being uniquely awful, especially for kids. It’s driving all sorts of nonsense, including the false idea that we’re in a uniquely excessive period of depression, or that it’s been “proven” that social media makes kids feel bad. But… that’s not what the data actually show.

      • Common Dreams ☛ ‘I Don’t Like Censorship’: Omar Slams Proposed TikTok Ban as Hawley Aims to Fast-Track Passage

        Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday joined the ranks of progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups voicing opposition to proposals to ban TikTok as Republican Sen. Josh Hawley plans to force a vote on his bill sometime this week.

      • TruthOut ☛ China-Focused TikTok Scrutiny Ignores Similar Privacy Concerns in US-Owned Apps
      • NDTV ☛ All Techies Fired As Microsoft’s GitHub Sacks 142 India Staffers: Report

        Microsoft acquired GitHub for USD 7.5 billion in a stock deal on June 2, 2018.

      • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Electronic Arts to Lay Off 6 Percent of Workforce in Restructuring

        These actions are expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2023.

      • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Warner Music to Cut 270 Jobs Amid Push to “New Tech Initiatives”

        On Wednesday, newly-installed CEO Robert Kyncl told staff via an internal memo that “we’re reallocating resources towards new skills for artist and songwriter development and new tech initiatives.” About 6,200 employees worked at Warner Music as of last September, per its annual report.

      • NDTV ☛ Burger King Closes 26 Outlets In Michigan, Leaving Over 400 Employees Jobless

        Burger King fans in Michigan will soon have to find a new spot to satisfy their burger cravings. The fast-food chain is closing 26 restaurants across the state after EYM King, the Burger King franchisee in Michigan, failed to renew its deal with the company. As per Fox Business, the announcement was made recently, and The Daily Mail reports that the store closure began on March 17, 2023, and will continue throughout the next month of April. The franchisee cites “unforeseen business circumstances” for the closure and expects to shut down all 26 locations by April 15, 2023.

      • New York Times ☛ Trump Says the Justice System Has Been Weaponized. He Would Know.

        The former president is attempting to cast the investigations into his actions as politically motivated uses of the justice system. In office, he regularly sought to use government powers against his foes.

      • Variety ☛ Electronic Arts to Lay Off 800 Employees, 6% of Workforce

        The video game company, whose popular titles include “Madden NFL,” “EA Sports FIFA 23,” “Apex Legends” and “The Sims,” is restructuring to focus on “strategic priorities,” CEO Andrew Wilson said in a memo distributed to employees Wednesday. As part of the cost-cutting moves, EA will wind down certain projects, according to Wilson, although he didn’t specify which titles are getting axed.

      • The Economist ☛ Where have all the sacked tech workers gone?

        So far techies themselves have been mostly spared, observes Tim Herbert of the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a trade body. Instead, the axe has fallen mainly on business functions like sales and recruitment. These had grown steadily as a share of tech-industry employment in recent years, a telltale sign of bloat (see chart 2). Between the depths of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 and peak employment at the start of 2023, the tech sector added around 1m workers. Simply hiring such numbers required hiring plenty of recruiters; as a headhunting rule of thumb, one recruiter can hire 25 new employees a year. Many of those recruiters may now be surplus to requirements.

      • The Nation ☛ Mike Pence Is Running Against Mike Pence

        “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!”

      • TruthOut ☛ Federal Judge Says Mike Pence Must Testify in January 6 Probe
      • New York Times ☛ The Liberal Maverick Fighting Race-Based Affirmative Action

        For decades, Richard Kahlenberg has pushed for a class-conscious approach to college admissions. He may finally get his wish, but it comes at a personal cost.

      • CS Monitor ☛ Biden’s democracy summit 2.0: Ukraine war spurs globalized format

        Two years into President Biden’s signature initiative, successful democracies from around the world are co-hosting a second democracy summit. What lessons can they provide?

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
        • New York Times ☛ Trump’s Return to Fox News Gets a Cool Reception … on Fox News

          The network used to be a safe space for the former president. But Brian Kilmeade, Jason Chaffetz and others had tough words for his appearance on “Hannity,” his first Fox interview in months.

        • Sébastien Wilmet ☛ Sébastien Wilmet: Links to Harmful internet use articles

          I wanted to share the following two links. I’ve read some sections that
          interested me, and indeed it was very interesting and I learned new things.

          Harmful internet use – Part I: Internet addiction and problematic use
          Harmful internet use – Part II: Impact on culture and society

          Some notes

          It explains why I more or less refused a job related to developing video games
          (it was about adding some kind of addictive features to old/legacy video
          games). Some people are addicted to (stupid) video games where you need to
          connect daily to collect “presents” or points, I definitely didn’t want to
          “play this game”.
          It also explains well the reasons why I’m on no social networks. I totally
          deleted my Facebook account several years ago, which is a daunting task: very
          difficult to find where to delete the account, the need to confirm a ~dozen
          times by clicking on the small links (not the green or blue button), and then
          waiting a month without logging in again! Completely crazy.

    • Censorship/Free Speech
    • Freedom of Information
      • JURIST ☛ Burkina Faso suspends broadcasts from France 24 over Al Qaeda interview

        Burkina Faso Monday announced that it will suspend broadcasts from France 24, a French international news network, after the network aired an interview with the head of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The interview effectively classifies France 24 as a “communications agency for these terrorists,” according to Minister of Communication Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo.

      • The Nation ☛ Don’t Let the Texas Observer Shut Down

        Lewis Lapham once said of the late Molly Ivins, “She reminds us that dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.”

    • Civil Rights/Policing
    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
      • Techdirt ☛ Biden FCC Makes Some Empty Noise About Cracking Down On Bullshit Cable & Broadband Fees

        The broadband and cable industry has long perfected the use of bullshit fees to jack up subscriber bills. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate — then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. They’ll then pretend they haven’t actually raised rates because the advertised rate remains inaccurately low.

    • Monopolies
      • Digital Music News ☛ The British Government May Force Google & Amazon Smart Speakers to Offer UK Radio Stations for Free

        Under draft legislation published today, the biggest broadcasters in the UK will receive additional privileges, like ensuring their on-demand services are easy to discover to encourage competition with global streaming giants. The draft Media Bill will enable new reforms to guarantee access to UK radio on smart speakers and require streaming services to provide subtitles, audio description, and signing to support those with disabilities.

        The new legislation will enable public service broadcasters (PSBs) like the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5, “to unleash their potential to grow, produce more top-quality British content and invest in new technologies to keep viewers tuning in amid fierce competition from subscription-based online platforms.”

      • Patents
        • How Litigation Finance Busts the Bank of Legal Trust

          The American legal system gives lawyers vast powers over private citizens. In the United States, there are no “loser pays” rules, no limits on lawyers’ ability to file complaints, and a summons requires a defendant to respond, or suffer a default judgment.

        • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Plausibility in G2/21: has the elephant left the room?

          The concept of plausibility has caused great controversy in European patent law in recent years. It was hoped that the decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO in G 2/21 would bring clarity.

      • Trademarks
        • JURIST ☛ Adidas withdraws trademark claim against Black Lives Matter

          Shoe manufacturer Adidas Wednesday reversed course and withdrew its claim against Black Lives Matter (BLM) alleging that the group’s logo violates Adidas’ trademark. Adidas filed the initial claim with the US Trademark Office on Monday.

      • Copyrights
        • Techdirt ☛ Winnie The Pooh Escapes Copyright Hell, Grabs Some Weapons, And Immediately Gets Kicked Out Of Hong Kong

          The life-plus-seventy-years sentence imposed on Winnie the Pooh by Cher’s ex-husband is finally over. Petitions for an early release went unheeded, forcing the butt naked childhood icon to perform tricks for the heirs of its creator’s estate until it was finally allowed to roam free — nearly 40 years after the bear’s sentence should have been commuted.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Z-Library Raises Tens of Thousands of Dollars to Keep its Pirate Library Running

          Pirate ebook repository Z-Library is still recovering from U.S. Government cracked carried out late last year. Two suspects were apprehended but the site itself remains online. According to its current operators, the enforcement action caused substantial damage so users are being asked to donate. They’re reportedly doing so en masse.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Meta’s Anti-Piracy Deal: How Facebook & Broadcasters Kill Live Pirate Streams

          Meta and Italian broadcaster RTI have just announced a multi-year partnership to prevent the TV company’s content from being pirated on platforms such as Facebook. The deal will see RTI and Meta collaborate on the implementation of systems to protect RTI content, including live TV broadcasts. Here’s how that’s likely to work.

  • Gemini* and Gopher
    • Personal

Links 30/03/2023: WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” and OpenMandriva ROME 23.03

Thursday 30th of March 2023 09:50:54 AM

Contents
  • GNU/Linux
    • Desktop/Laptop
    • Audiocasts/Shows
    • Applications
      • Ubuntubuzz ☛ Evolus Pencil – The Free Software UI/UX Designer and Diagram Drawing

        Evolus Pencil is a free/open source GUI prototyping and diagramming/flowcharting software from Vietnam. It is a cross-platform desktop application, can be fully used without registration nor subscribtion. It is very easy to use, powerful and snappy to make complex user interface mockups and it provides prebuilt elements (“stencils”) you can use by drag and drop. We overview Pencil here from its third generation version 3.1.1. Happy reading!

      • OpenSource.com ☛ 3 reasons my Linux team uses Penpot

        Working with Fedora exposes you to a lot of different open source software. A major Fedora website revamp started over a year ago, with the goal of improving design aesthetics, creating a style guide, planning the website strategy, and choosing the tech stack for delivering the Fedora Linux offerings website. From a design perspective, the team needed a tool to create mock-ups, a place to hold the asset libraries, and something suitable to hand off to developers once complete.

        Figma is a popular interface designing tool recommended by many, but it wasn’t deemed suitable because the company had recently imposed restrictions on their free plan. This concern arose before Adobe acquired Figma, so the decision not to use it was even more significant in retrospect!

        The team looked into Penpot and found that it matched everyone’s requirements. Penpot is the first open source design and prototyping platform for cross-domain teams. A team within Kaleidos creates Penpot. Kaleidos is a technology company started in 2011 that fully focuses on open source projects.

      • PowerDNS ☛ Security Advisory 2023-02 for PowerDNS Recursor up to and including 4.6.5, 4.7.4 and 4.8.3

        Hello, Today we have released PowerDNS Recursor 4.6.6, 4.7.5 and 4.8.4 due to a low severity security issue found. Please find the full text of the advisory below.

      • Mozilla ☛ Land your next job with these Firefox extensions

        As the saying goes, looking for a job is a job in itself. First, there’s all the writing that needs to be done. Then, it’s doing your homework to learn about the companies and the industries you’re applying and hopefully interviewing for.

    • Instructionals/Technical

Sirius is Britain’s Most Respected and Best Established Open Source Business, According to Sirius Itself, So Why Defraud the Staff?

Thursday 30th of March 2023 09:14:59 AM

Video download link | md5sum
Victims of Open Source Charlatans
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

http://techrights.org/videos/sirius-victims-speak-out.webm

Summary: Following today's part about the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ another video seemed to be well overdue (those installments used to be daily); the video above explains to relevance to Techrights and how workers feel about being cheated by a company that presents itself as “Open Source” even to some of the highest and most prestigious public institutions in the UK

IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Thursday 30th of March 2023 07:05:17 AM

Also available via the Gemini protocol at:

Over HTTP:

#techrights log as HTML5

#boycottnovell log as HTML5

#boycottnovell-social log as HTML5

#techbytes log as HTML5

#techrights log as text

#boycottnovell log as text

#boycottnovell-social log as text

#techbytes log as text

Enter the IRC channels now

IPFS Mirrors table#ipfs-table tr:nth-child(even) { background-color:#efefef; border-bottom: 2px solid #aaa; } CID Description Object type  QmXrVZqpm459kpJZSEBebSc5R8QTMRSziqxXN3UVsU6gan IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as HTML)  QmRAVreRgzjQgtxkSejKXBY4LYLzpVnkj9wBx8dwmMvDiV IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)  QmYYERPWy9wfbBMGdcpvAuV8YuFWrNXzm5qXhMikeZL7nG IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as HTML)  QmUFaiXoPj1cHtmoKPDJEfseT9ojoHKo6smAv3F9y4ubqX IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)  QmQrUCprEojZzsTLAgE8MEShgM8vtQ65DPt5recx7fMExJ IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as HTML)  Qmd3GtTKdsH8snyiio1QdXKNeyj56eCmDao5jHKsF3Uy4V IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)  QmTZ8o1fsV9qhr9QqsNaYkFwyRZdsRruYjHUae5nehFoPi IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as HTML)  Qmanh3kecqzdfyyQPdyTBivsninNr8w95hgww6UCmv5sbR IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)

Bulletin for Yesterday

Local copy | CID (IPFS): QmUrwP7MBt8inhtUu4Mvpm1u98tHfeRdavasm4yZqHa9Hf

[Meme] Waiting for Standard Life to Deal With Pension Fraud

Thursday 30th of March 2023 06:42:09 AM

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were concealed with the authoritative name of Standard Life, combined with official papers from Standard Life itself; why does Standard Life drag its heels when questioned about this matter since the start of this year?

Former Staff of Sirius Open Source Responds to Revelations About the Company’s Crimes

Thursday 30th of March 2023 06:20:42 AM

Previously/context:

  1. Sirius ‘Open Source’ and the Money Missing From the Pension
  2. Sirius Finished
  3. Sirius ‘Open Source’ Pensiongate: An Introduction
  4. When the Pension Vanishes
  5. Sirius ‘Open Source’ Pensiongate (Sirius Financial Crisis): Company May Have Squandered/Plundered the Pensions of Many People
  6. Sirius ‘Open Source’ Pensiongate: Pension Providers That Repeatedly Lie to the Clients and Don’t Respond to Messages
  7. NOW: Pensions Lies to Its Customers and Protects Abusers
  8. Sirius ‘Open Source’ Pensiongate: It’s Beginning to Look Like a Criminal Matter and Sirius is in Serious Trouble
  9. Sirius ‘Open Source’ Pensiongate: A Long Story Merits Many Videos
  10. An Update on Sirius ‘Open Source’ Pensiongate: It’s Looking Worse Than Ever

Summary: Crimes committed by the company that I left months ago are coming to light; today we share some reactions from other former staff (without naming anybody)

TODAY we take a look at the nature of the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’, what pension providers are saying, and what former colleagues say about the company upon realising that it is corrupt (spoiler: some aren’t even surprised).

We shall start with the pension providers, with focus on Standard Life (the other provider has not even responded yet!) as about 6 hours after I complained about it (and made this meme) Standard Life contacted me by E-mail to say: (days late already)

Dear Dr Schestowitz

Thank you for your email.

We are carefully considering the concerns you have raised. I’m sorry if the time this is taking is frustrating for you, but we believe it is appropriate given the situation.

I will be in touch with you again as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

███████████ ██████████

Complaint Consultant

This does not say anything concrete. It has been like this since March 7th and we’re soon in April. Sirius is running out of clients, i.e. out of revenue stream. How long must one wait? When it comes to Standard Life, the interactions over the telephone go back to January. Why does this take so long to progress? What does that tell us about the pensions/financial sector (Standard Life is a giant in this sector)?

About a month ago I said to the company, Sirius: “I spoke to numerous managers at Standard Life for 3 months. They reached the conclusion that myself and colleagues never had any money deposited there — money taken for “Pension” off of our salary, as per the payslips for 5+ years. This suggests pension fraud and an actual crime. I assume, moreover, that [wife] (as Director and spouse) was fully aware of this. In the name of journalistic integrity I must first ask you if this is patently false — a chance for you to comment in your defence. A lack of reply can be interpreted as implicit admission of guilt.”

“To paraphrase what you said in a call back in November, “it doesn’t look good.””

“The company is totally unable to defend itself, but will enforcement and prosecution follow?”There has been no response since. None. They know they’re guilty. Days later I wrote to say: “You did not respond. I assume you have nothing to say in your defense. My E-mails to [CEO] are bouncing, so I assume he wants nothing to do with the company anymore. A month ago you failed to provide a physical address for the company. Now it is moreover headless (the CEO left). [PA] is still based in the UK and E-mails to her are not bouncing, so I will assume she is best point of contact.”

Still no response. The company is totally unable to defend itself, but will enforcement and prosecution follow? If not, the same people can commit the same crimes again, without any consequences. Are we living in a state of anarchy where businesses and managers can defraud staff and then just refuse to even communicate? Are we living in a state of affairs where pension providers and police can just look the other way, even when presented with hard evidence of the crimes?

“You are choosing not to reply,” I said to them. “It does not improve matters. For neither of you. [PA] was fully aware of what had gone on because: 1) colleagues asked her about this pension (even years ago) and she did not get back with an answer. 2) she was at the company in the years of that pension scheme and she was involved in what seems to be deliberate embezzlement of funds, along with both [wife] and you.”

So at least 3 people in management are legally liable. Two of them are still in England, whereas one is ‘in hiding’ in the US. Hiding in some basement with a rib shirt on.

“So at least 3 people in management are legally liable. Two of them are still in England, whereas one is in hiding in the US.”When will authorities do something on this matter? How many hours on the phone are required for action? How many E-mails? So far we’re talking about 30 E-mails and 6 hours over the telephone. That’s just counting my own role, not colleagues’.

“I’ve already proceeded to legal consultation on this,” I told them. “If I receive no reply by Monday, we (myself and others who are impacted; I spoke to a lot of former staff) shall escalate and potentially file a class action lawsuit, pressing charges along criminal lines (possible extradition after warrant of arrest). The pension provider is also on the case, at the managers’ level. They’re very unhappy about what happened.”

This was a while ago. Notice the ultimatum: “You need to correct what has happened and we’re still open to a settlement/compromise to avoid another escalation (after Monday, 13th of March).”

Days passed since it first became clear that the company had committed a crime. The CEO vanished (left abruptly) and then deleted any connection he ever had with the company. Even a few days after the 13th of March. The company also finally (belatedly) removed us from its pages. There must be a bit of a panic, knowing they engaged in fraud for over 5 years and are finally being investigated for it.

“Days passed since it first became clear that the company had committed a crime. The CEO vanished (left abruptly) and then deleted any connection he ever had with the company.”“Our money was embezzled,” I told other victims. “[wife], [husband] and [PA] knew what they were doing. They never paid to Standard Life the money they specified in our payslips (management at Standard Life told me this). We need to sue the company while it still exists to hold them accountable. Some lawyers would agree to do this for a percent of the money awarded rather than per hour spent. Will you join us? I spoke to a lot of past staff.”

Depending on the outcome of the investigations (yes, plural), we’ll proceed sensibly. If the company cannot pay for its crimes, the pension provider/s will.

One other victim noted: “Have you got any details confirming it was embezzled [...] Shouldn’t we be able to make a claim against Standard Life / the IFA for never notifying us money was transferred or wasn’t being paid?”

“If the company cannot pay for its crimes, the pension provider/s will.”I still have everything on record (audio) and full names of two managers I spoke to. It’s rather well documented, not just what I made public. I am no expert when it comes to pension-related laws, but the other victim may be right. It may be possible to hold the pension provider accountable too. They never ever contacted us.

So anyway, the pension series might turn out to (at least!) have some educational value; all this time-wasting will turn into “making a point” at a time when people don’t trust financial institutions anyway. It might also become a class action lawsuit, in case stolen money can still be recovered (we’re taking about potentially 50,000 pounds or a lot more; it’s hard to assess until we know all the victims).

Having been in touch with other potential victims, it seems clear they’re rather disturbed by the discovery and very sympathetic towards other colleagues. Been a long time since we last spoke in some cases, but they’re still around and they still recall the Sirius pension. “I left Sirius a few months ago and the CEO left days ago,” I told them. “Turns out the company plundered people’s old pensions (2011), so this likely affects you as an employee.”

Back then we didn’t yet have it confirmed that the company committed crimes, but it seemed clear it was being verified and soon validated. I asked: “Did you have a pension with the company at the time? A bunch of us are grouping, as the company apparently committed a crime.”

“Having been in touch with other potential victims, it seems clear they’re rather disturbed by the discovery and very sympathetic towards other colleagues.”For the sake of privacy/confidentiality, I won’t name anybody here. But their responses are telling.

One of them said: “It has indeed been a long time! How are things with you? I’m still working remotely: turns out it’s a thing now :)”

Yes, working from home is definitely a thing now. Some of us still do that.

“I didn’t have a pension with Sirius,” a former colleague told me, as “I was only there [redacted] months or so and never got it arranged – but if they raided your pensions you definitely should chase it up. Good luck with your case!”

My wife and I both left when the company had gone rogue. I will continue to chase the pension’gate’ even if just to show how pension providers respond to such matters. Spending so much time on the telephone over 3 months is indicative of institutional failure far broader than Sirius itself.

“I’m shocked (although not totally surprised) to hear that,” another former colleague told me. “Are you talking about [boss]? I hadn’t realized they’d moved to America…”

“A lot of workers were so ‘ad hoc’ that they didn’t realise what was going on. Even their alleged “pension” was basically a fraud.”They didn’t. He’s hiding there after taking some cash from the Gates slush fund (under an NDA!) while tricking all staff to sign an employment contract they never saw before, joining a shell valued at one pound without being properly informed. This in itself is very likely illegal, as we noted here before. The former colleague told me: “I didn’t have a pension (nor even an employment contract!) so don’t have any skin in this game but keep me posted on how you get on.”

So even back then the company had staff with no “employment contract!”

“Sorry to hear that!” said another former colleague. “I honestly don’t remember. I’m currently traveling, but will check my docs and let you know tomorrow! Thanks for the heads up…”

A lot of workers were so ‘ad hoc’ that they didn’t realise what was going on. Even their alleged “pension” was basically a fraud.

We’ll keep abreast of any updates and publish them as deemed suitable. █

Among Users in the World’s Largest Population, Microsoft is the 1%

Thursday 30th of March 2023 01:37:00 AM

Edge developers recently laid off, too (the media barely mentioned this; it’s all about chaffbot hype)

Summary: A sobering look at India shows that Microsoft lost control of the country (Windows slipped to 16% market share while GNU/Linux grew a lot; Bing is minuscule [1, 2]; Edge fell to 1.01% and now approaches “decimal point” territories)

In One City Alone Microsoft Fired Almost 3,000 Workers This Year (We’re Still in March)

Thursday 30th of March 2023 01:07:24 AM

In Bill Gates-sponsored media [1, 2] this week:

Another Microsoft piece from a Microsoft mouthpiece (Bishop, a Microsoft Media Operative):

The media in India (where Microsoft has many layoffs too; GitHub has fired almost all of its Indian (as in India-based) staff):

Summary: You can tell a company isn’t doing well when amid mass layoffs it pays endless money to the media — not to actual workers — in order for this media to go crazy over buzzwords, chaffbots, and other vapourware (as if the company is a market leader and has a future for shareholders to look forward to, even if claims are exaggerated and there’s no business model)

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