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Posted in News Roundup at 8:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
↺ You can now HEAR how bad Windows sucks on the Steam Deck. (Plus other Steam Deck News) – Invidious
Without the Deck UI, the Steam Deck is just a boring handheld PC. But for all those masochists who love inferior user experiences, the Windows audio driver is now available!
There are two ways for a server serial console to work in the x86 world. The first way is for all of the various consoles of Linux and the programs that use them to be explicitly pointed to a serial port, and for them to be prepared to work through the limited features of a serial port console instead of the video console. This means that the server BIOS, the bootloader, the Linux kernel, the init system, the OS installer, the OS recovery mode, and so on and so forth all have to support configuring a serial connection and being used over serial.
I learned recently that PGP keys can be used for SSH authentication. This is quite convenient because if you’re already managing a PGP key to sign git commits (hint: you should probably be doing this), then you’ll have one less key to manage. As a bonus, if you’ve added your PGP public key to Github you can immediately use a subkey with authentication privileges to pull and push to your repositories over SSH.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) celebrated its 20th anniversary days before RHEL 9 was released. See how some of our top authors evolved from “what’s this?” to power users.
One of Git’s primary strengths is its ability to “fork” work into different branches.
If you’re the only person using a repository, the benefits are modest, but once you start working with many other contributors, branching is essential. Git’s branching mechanism allows multiple people to work on a project, and even on the same file, at the same time. Users can introduce different features, independent of one another, and then merge the changes back to a main branch later. A branch created specifically for one purpose, such as adding a new feature or fixing a known bug, is sometimes called a topic branch.
Once you start working with branches, it’s helpful to know how to manage them. Here are the most common tasks developers do with Git branches in the real world.
In Linux, a process is an instance of a running service, application, or script. When you execute a command, application, or program, a process is established for it. Each process has a unique process id connected with a particular user and group. If any processes use excessive amounts of resources or become unresponsive, it may be necessary to terminate them. In this scenario, the kill command may be used to terminate the process without restarting the server.
In this article, we will demonstrate how to terminate Linux processes.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine(KVM) is a virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as a hypervisor. It is the leading open source virtualisation technology for Linux. It installs natively on all Linux distributions and turns underlying physical servers into hypervisors so that they can host multiple, isolated virtual machines (VMs). KVM comes with no licenses, type-1 hypervisor capabilities and a variety of performance extensions which makes it an ideal candidate for virtualisation and cloud infrastructure implementation.
Vim is a powerful editor that, at worst, will only feel fast. When you blaze through your work in Vim efficiently, you will feel higher than anyone.
But for that to happen, you need to master the navigation in Vim. Let me share a few tricks with you.
As Linux users continue to skillfully nurture and grow their user experience, they soon realize that they become more performant and productive while in the Linux command-line environment.
The Linux OS environment exposes its users to terminal-based tools like Curl for a non-interactive download and upload of targeted network/internet-based files, which is similar to the Wget utility and both share some similarities in their implementation and functionalities.
Software Engineering vacancies at Canonical are numerous, with over 100 vacancies in this hugely important operational area for a software company. The new gaming specific role’s full title is ‘Software Engineer – Ubuntu Gaming Experience’.
I only arrived back on the Linux desktop recently in the context of games, thanks to all the work Valve and Wine have put into Windows compatibility (though I’ve since switched back to Fedora Workstation). Otherwise it’s FreeBSD and NetBSD, the former because the tooling is awesome and I prefer OpenZFS, and the latter because I still harbour a soft spot for its clean design and community.
If you adore hectic racing games, death-defying first person shooters, entertaining arcade classics, or nervy tower defense games, this article might not up your street. Here we’re covering turn-based strategy games that require intelligence, and the ability to come up with an innovative plan that will leave the competition mesmerized. As the title indicates, we are covering a genre where players take turns when playing, strategically seeking to outsmart the enemy.
Many of the biggest computer games concentrate on explosion-filled genres. But there is a place for high quality turn-based strategy games. It’s a neglected genre in the mainstream, yet contains many marvelous titles. The genre might conjure thoughts of board games with dice and individualized pieces. But, now, they can use the latest technology to make more realistic and immersive experiences.
There are a vast range of open source games in this field. Turn-based strategy games lend themselves remarkably to open source development. This genre doesn’t need armies of artwork or computer modelling. Games of this type also have fairly modest system requirements, and gives gamers time to get to grips with the controls even if it can take many hours to learn all of the intricacies. You can sit back, strategize, and take a breath, considering all options before making a move. So if you’re looking for a change of pace, check out the following games.
CURRENT doesn’t get official security or errata notices, so users must follow developments via the commit logs and mailing list, creating obvious downsides to running it in production. This doesn’t stop large organizations such as Netflix using systems based on CURRENT in production—but doing so responsibly means having an experienced team capable of catching and mitigating issues in CURRENT before they reach the production stack.
Why might you want to run CURRENT? If you have a large modified code base, or are building a product based on FreeBSD, CURRENT gives you a look into the future of FreeBSD. Running CURRENT will help you understand changes that are happening in the FreeBSD Operating System and it gives you an opportunity to see how your stack performs with new features.
Using sudo program, we can elevate the ability of a normal user to run administrative tasks, without giving away the root user’s password in Linux operating systems. This guide explains how to add, delete and grant sudo privileges to users in Fedora 36 desktop and server editions.
I’ve divided this guide in three sections. The first section teaches you how to create a new user. In the second section, you’ll learn how to give sudo access to the existing user. And in the last section, you will know how to remove sudo access from a user. I’ve also provided example commands in each section, so you can understand it better.
First, we will start with giving sudo access to a new user.
Purpose of this team is to take care of day to day business regarding CentOS and Fedora Infrastructure and Fedora release engineering work.
The goal of this SIG is to help the folks working on Fedora’s bootloader stack to keep Fedora booting on systems which require Legacy BIOS to boot.
To help with this the SIG members will regularly test that Fedora N + 1 composes still boot on Legacy BIOS systems and members of the SIG will help with triaging and fixing Legacy BIOS boot bugs.
Now that FESCo has decided (1) that Fedora will keep supporting BIOS booting, the people working on Fedora’s bootloader stack will need help from the Fedora community to keep Fedora booting on systems which require Legacy BIOS to boot.
Ubuntu is the most popular Debian-based Linux distribution for desktops and servers.
And Manjaro Linux is an Arch-based distro tailored for desktops.
Both are entirely different when it comes to user experience and features.
However, one of the common grounds is the desktop environment when considering Manjaro’s GNOME edition with Ubuntu.
But, what exactly are the differences? Is the package manager on Manjaro better? Are software tools available on both Ubuntu and Manjaro?
Here, we shall look at the differences in both the Linux distributions at certain key points.
After two years of frustration and delays, Embedded World is finally back and KDAB will be there at the Qt booth, number 258 in Hall 4.
As usual we’ll be showing some great demos – updates to some golden oldies, and some brand new ones.
At first blush, it might seem like projects that make extensive use of computer vision or machine learning would need to be based on powerful computing platforms with plenty of clock cycles and memory to handle this type of application. While there is some truth to this, as the field progresses it becomes possible to experiment with these tools on low-power devices as well. Take this OpenCV project which is built entirely on an ESP32 for example.
When it comes to putting a flexible grip on a tool, you might reach for a self-fusing silicone tape or other similar product. However, [Potent Printables] has discovered you can easily create a flexible grip using a 3D-printing pen and some flex filament.
The 18-year-old suspected of targeting and fatally shooting 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, wrote in what are believed to be his online journals that he learned how to illegally modify his rifle by watching YouTube videos. The suspect appeared to link to the videos in Discord chat logs, and the videos were still available on YouTube as of Thursday evening — five days after the shooting.
As part of restoring my Amiga 1000 into the beautiful machine it once was, I wanted to be able to use the floppy drive without having to use a USB stick in the hole to eject it. And here my adventure starts…
I asked a friend who is great at 3D printing and we couldn’t find any stock 3D file to match. We also found it difficult to determine how the original button actually fitted to the clip.
But to give a tl;dr: The Pi does not perform swimmingly. But… I did get a single array of 60 hard drives—20TB Exos HDDs to be exact—working in a 45Drives Storinator XL60 chassis, controlled only through a single Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. Of course I had to rip out the Xeon guts and replace them with said Pi: [...]
Mozilla on Wednesday launched a Developer Preview program to solicit feedback on Firefox extensions that implement Manifest v3, a Google-backed revision of browser extension architecture.
Mozilla last year said it intended to support MV3 in Firefox extensions, though with some differences. Its implementation of the WebExtensions API in Firefox has now incorporated enough of MV3 plumbing that developers can set the appropriate browser flags and experiment with MV3 extensions in Firefox v101, now in beta and due for release at the end of May.
Google Chrome is expected to stop supporting extensions created under the old MV2 specification in about a year, June 2023. And given Chrome’s share of the browser market – about 64 per cent currently – extension developers will want to have updated their code by then and to have accounted for how MV3 works – or doesn’t – in different browsers.
I wanted to grab a CSV version of a JSON representation of an entityset in the Northwind OData service. Here’s how I converted the JSON structure into CSV with jq, and along the way, I talk about arrays, objects, iterators, object indices, variables, identity, array construction and format strings.
I’ve loved typing for decades. But I recently got with handwriting implements, and was astonished by how less manic I felt capturing rumination at that pace.
I think I’ve mentioned past love of writing little ditties on 3×5 cards, and it occurred to me perhaps I could cross that with this by handwriting to a 3×5, taking a photo of it on the phone, placing it in Google Drive, and making that available here by Drive’s URL mechanism.
When I started to self-host some of the online services I depend on, this was a natural first target. It’s a service that is close to my heart, but it’s also one that would help me in the whole self-hosting process; I could use it as a place to hold my Kubernetes configurations and other self-hosting related code.
Thankfully, the quality of free and open source web based git repositories is really high. Here is a short list of the choices available: [...]
Erlang/OTP 25 is a new major release with new features, improvements as well as a few incompatibilities.
I wrote my first programs in PHP today (with a lot of help from the [Internet]). It’s always exciting to learn something new. I am getting excited because I like knowing how my programming logic — how instructions combine to do something — applies to different languages. It’s cool seeing what features a language does have, doesn’t have, and implements differently from those that I already know. For instance, I learned today that PHP doesn’t have an explicit “dictionary” data structure. Instead, you can create a dictionary-like object using an array. (Whereas in Python array and dictionary are explicit and different.)
What I really want, though, is a solution that lets me diff two pieces of text that aren’t yet files. Copy/paste some text into pane 1, copy/paste some text into pane 2, and hit the big red “DIFF” button.
C is a well-known programming language, popular with experienced and new programmers alike. Source code written in C uses standard English terms, so it’s considered human-readable. However, computers only understand binary code. To convert code into machine language, you use a tool called a compiler.
A very common compiler is GCC (GNU C Compiler). The compilation process involves several intermediate steps and adjacent tools.
For programmers, Bash enables you to efficiently search for particular keywords or phrases by reading each line separately. Bash can also be used for reading files for a variety of reasons, like shell scripting, searching, text processing, building processes, logging data, and automating administrative tasks. When you’re done with this article, you’ll be able to use Bash to read files line by line, use custom delimiters, assign variables, and more.
They’re coming for me!
So I abandoned that idea for something else; something I hadn’t done in fifteen years or so. I started using a third-party software. Micro.blog is an application I had tried in the past, but it hadn’t quite clicked. This time I vowed to really dig in, and it turns out I do really like the service. There are plenty of templates, which you can customize yourself (I did not do that because it seemed too complex) and you can also insert your own CSS (which I did do to a complex degree). It’s sometimes a bit hard to follow how you are to do things, but overall I quite like it.
Earlier this year, Cendyne published A Deep Dive into Ed25519 Signatures, which covered some of the different types of digital signature algorithms, but mostly delved into the Ed25519 algorithm. Truth in advertising.
This got me thinking, “Why isn’t there a better comparison of different elliptic curve signature algorithms available online?”
The Logitech Z906 is a well-rounded 5.1 surround sound system. It’s capable of putting out 1000W in peak power, and can decode Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks as you’d expect. It’s intended to be used as the heart of a home cinema system and used with a central command console. However, [zarpli] figured out the device’s serial secrets and can now run the device in a standalone manner.
Modeling a railroad is hard. Railroads are large, linear pieces of civil engineering. So many modelers are drawn to the smallest scale they can use. Recently a new scale, named T, at 1:450 has been pushing this barrier. But fitting a reliable mechanical drive mechanism and MCU board in a package this size is a challenge. In practice, even more of a problem is getting reliable electrical contact through a metal wheel on metal track (about the worst possible design for a contact).
It isn’t for everyone, but if you work much with computers at a low level, you’ll probably sooner or later entertain the idea of creating your own CPU. There was a time when that was a giant undertaking, but with today’s tools and FPGAs it is… well, not easy, but certainly easier. If you have the urge to try your own, you might have a look at [Simply Explained’s] video series called “Building Scott’s CPU.”
The mainboard I’m definitely excited about, especially the potential for power savings. However, for ~$450 which is half the price of the laptop, I have a much harder time justifying that purchase. I was hoping for an AMD or and ARM mainboard because I would be very interested in either of those.
People online have been speculating that the reliance on thunderbolt 4 is preventing framework from selling an AMD mainboard, even thought it’s just an implementation of USB4 and the new AMD CPUs support USB4.
Back at the start of February 2022, at what in retrospect was the peak of the Omicron surge, with over 2,500 deaths per day in the United States from the infection, Ashish Jha, then the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and now the White House Covid czar, told The New York Times’ David Leonhardt, “I don’t actually care about infections. I care about hospitalizations and deaths and long-term complications.”
There is nothing quite so humbling as being completely responsible for the wellbeing of another person. Your time is no longer completely our own, and if you want to survive the Parenthood Game, it’s no longer your company’s either.
The widely accepted idea of a cost-of-living crisis does not begin to capture the gravity of what may lie ahead. António Guterres, the un secretary general, warned on May 18th that the coming months threaten “the spectre of a global food shortage” that could last for years. The high cost of staple foods has already raised the number of people who cannot be sure of getting enough to eat by 440m, to 1.6bn. Nearly 250m are on the brink of famine. If, as is likely, the war drags on and supplies from Russia and Ukraine are limited, hundreds of millions more people could fall into poverty. Political unrest will spread, children will be stunted and people will starve.
Pollution killed 9 million people globally in 2019, accounting for one in six deaths, an analysis suggests.
Rich Fuller at the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution in Switzerland and his colleagues first assessed the impact of pollution on premature deaths in 2015, similarly finding it caused 9 million fatalities.
To uncover how pollution-related deaths may have changed, the team repeated the analysis for 2019, using data from the ongoing Global Burden of Diseases Study.
Gates is certain he knows better. But his failure to anticipate a crisis of supply, and his refusal to engage those who predicted it, have complicated the carefully maintained image of an all-knowing, saintly mega-philanthropist. COVAX presents a high-stakes demonstration of Gates’s deepest ideological commitments, not just to intellectual [sic] property [sic] rights [sic] but also to the conflation of these rights with an imaginary free market in pharmaceuticals—an industry dominated by companies whose power derives from politically constructed and politically imposed monopolies. Gates has been tacitly and explicitly defending the legitimacy of knowledge monopolies since his first Gerald Ford–era missives against open-source software hobbyists. He was on the side of these monopolies during the miserable depths of the 1990s African AIDS crisis. He’s still there today, defending the status quo and running effective interference for those profiting by the billions from their control of Covid-19 vaccines.
When I became eligible for Medicare I had to make the choice between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage (MA), the version of Medicare run by for-profit insurance companies. At first glance, it was a no-brainer: Compared to Traditional Medicare, MA offered additional coverage such as vision, hearing, and dental, with a cap on out-of-pocket expenses. I took the bait and signed up for MA, but soon discovered this was a big mistake.
The Field-Programmable Gate Array-Accelerated XGBoost Inference for Data Centers using High-Level-Synthesis (FAXID) approach is a hardware-based implementation of the ransomware-detecting XGBoost algorithm.
The researchers found FAXID was up to 65.8 times faster than software running XGBoost on a central processing unit, and 5.3 times faster than graphic processing unit-based deployment.
Galleon Systems’ GPS NTP time server had a command injection vulnerability in the firmware of their NTS GPS device which could allow total control of the device through the web management interface.
Locks that use Bluetooth Low Energy to authenticate keys are vulnerable to remote unlocking. The research focused on Teslas, but the exploit is generalizable.
Millions of digital locks worldwide, including on Tesla (TSLA.O) cars, can be remotely unlocked by hackers exploiting a vulnerability in Bluetooth technology, a cybersecurity firm said on Tuesday.
A simple device can trick any Bluetooth lock into unlocking, from anywhere in the world.
Growing up in the Southern California suburbs, government surveillance never worried me. But my Syrian-American parents were more cautious. They would often warn me against talking about politics over the phone—in case Big Brother was snooping.
Clearview’s facial recognition AI business model has always been “fuck everything.” The company scraped the open web of all the data it could find, working its way towards a 100 billion image database that alchemizes social media posts into “intel” gold for Clearview.
↺ TikTok reportedly plans a ‘major push’ into gaming and games livestreamers could play with viewers
The outlet’s sources indicate the plan is for ad-supported games that draw from the library of its parent company, ByteDance, which could boost revenue and increase the amount of time people spend on the TikTok app — if that’s even possible.
Even the vice-president at Uniphore admits the limitations of the technology. “There is no real objective way to measure people’s emotions,” he said. “You could be smiling and nodding, and in fact, you’re thinking about your vacation next week.”
Emotion AI has also consistently come under fire for the serious ethical concerns it raises. In 2019, the AI Now Institute called for a ban on the use of emotion AI in significant decisions such as hiring and when judging student performance. In 2021, the Brookings Institution called for it to be banned for use by law enforcement.
But four years later, it hasn’t taken over the market – most people have simply forgotten about it. Numerous reports claim the dating app practically doesn’t function. Facebook’s own data suggest not many people use the service – about 300,000 in New York, compare with the claimed 3 million Bumble users in New York.
As an online dating technology researcher, I had an eye on Facebook Dating since its announcement. But as I never heard anything about its market success, it took me a while to look into it. Now, I think I have a good idea why the app failed.
Anyone lucky enough to get an F-150 Lightning in the next few months will find that one of the features they may have opted for is missing: the ability to unlock and control the electric truck using a phone. According to screenshots of Special Service Message notices and in-app messages posted to the Lightning Owners’ Forum, Ford will be rolling out support for its Phone as a Key system in “late summer 2022” via a software update instead of shipping it with the truck at launch.
Ford’s Phone as a Key system lets you use its FordPass app to unlock and start your vehicle, as well as control various things like the windows, lights, and front trunk. What makes the delay slightly puzzling is that this isn’t new tech from Ford — the company introduced it on a few 2020 Lincoln models, and it’s also available in its other battery EV, the Mustang Mach-E.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s top election official, faced an onslaught of threats after the 2020 presidential election for refusing to overturn results that showed Joe Biden had won the state. In those hectic weeks, she says she also received an especially disturbing piece of information: President Donald Trump suggested in a White House meeting that she should be arrested for treason and executed.
Benson, a Democrat, revealed the alleged remark for the first time in an interview with NBC News. She said she learned of it from a source familiar with Trump’s White House meeting.
Gabriele Tilmann, senior public prosecutor in Munich, has warned against automatically inferring religious motives when perpetrators of violence shout “Allahu Akbar”. Referring to the attack in Würzburg, she said: “During the attack, the man shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’. But even that does not necessarily point to an Islamist background,” she told the magazine Der Spiegel.
Guitar technician Eden Galindo’s first thought had been that the sound system was exploding, but Hughes said he knew instantly the venue was under attack.
“Being from a desert community in California, I know the sound of gunshots,” Hughes told the trial of Salah Abdeslam, the only suspected surviving member of the squad that killed 130 people at several locations on Nov. 13, 2015.
At that time AMLO, by virtue of Mexico serving as president pro tempore, presided over a summit meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean states (CELAC). He proposed building “in the Western Hemisphere something similar to what was the economic community that gave rise to the current European Union.”
Two days later, AMLO included Diaz-Canel in a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mexican independence. Praising Cuba’s dignity in resisting U.S. aggression, he called for an end to the blockade.
I recognized that lots of people are angry and frustrated over the mass murdering jackass who killed ten people at a Buffalo grocery store last weekend. I’m angry and frustrated about it as well. But, the problem with anger and frustration is that it often leads people to lash out in irrational ways, and to “do something” even if that “something” is counterproductive and destructive. In this case, we’ve already seen politicians and the media trying to drive the conversation away from larger issues around racism, mental health, law enforcement, social safety nets and more… and look for something to blame.
After weeks of defending the Azovstal steel plant as Ukraine’s last stronghold in Mariupol, soldiers from the Azov Battalion began leaving the site on May 16. The troops were evacuated into Russian-controlled territory as part of what Kyiv describes as an ongoing “rescue operation.” However, officials in Russia and the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) have cast doubt on the possibility of swapping these soldiers in a prisoner exchange, calling instead for Azov troops to face a “tribunal” and even capital punishment.
↺ Nina Khrushcheva: Talks to End War in Ukraine Are Collapsing as U.S. Seeks Regime Change in Moscow
As the United Nations warns about the devastating global impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, talks to negotiate a peace settlement appear to have collapsed. Russian President Vladimir Putin appears determined to push forward despite a more resilient Ukrainian defense than expected, as both sides seem to be fixated on gaining military and territorial victories. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to pour millions of dollars in weapons into Ukraine. “It does seem that the United States thinks that Ukraine should be supported in its war effort, not its negotiation effort, until the very end,” says Nina Khrushcheva, professor at The New School and the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. She also speaks about the current climate of civil society within Russia and the faulty intelligence that led Putin to decide to invade Ukraine.
The white supremacist who shot 10 people dead in Buffalo, New York, was able to buy an assault rifle months after New York state police took him into custody for making a threat about committing violence. The gun store owner who sold the weapon says a background check showed a clean record. We look at how background checks alone are not enough to prevent gun violence, as both mass shootings and weapons sales have skyrocketed in recent years without more legislation at the federal level. Multiple bills proposing harsher gun restrictions have been blocked by filibusters in Congress. “Our demand is that we renew an assault weapons ban at the federal level and also that we restrict the production of high-capacity magazines or large-capacity magazines,” says Kris Brown, president of Brady, one of the oldest gun violence prevention organizations in the U.S.
When a tragedy happens, lawsuits tend to follow. This is no exception. And while it’s understandable that grieving survivors often seek justice — whether it’s closure or compensation — through the legal system, the legal system is not there to provide solace. It’s there to determine whether anyone was legally culpable for the death.
The People’s Liberation Army is firing at dummy US warships in the Uighur region. The ability to deliver a sensitive first strike to enemy fleets is being tested.
On Thursday, the second court hearing of 21-year-old Russian Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin took place in Kyiv. Shishimarin is the first Russian soldier to face formal charges for war crimes in Ukraine. He is accused of murdering a 62-year-old man in the Sumy region named Oleksandr Shelipov. According to prosecutors, on February 28, Shishimarin and four other Russian servicemen ended up in the village of Chupakhivka after their convoy was attacked and dispersed. The soldiers then fired on and commandeered a private vehicle. While driving away, they saw a civilian with a bicycle who was speaking on a cell phone. On orders from his commanding officer, Shishimarin shot the man using his assault rifle. Not long thereafter, Ukrainian troops captured the sergeant and later charged him with violating the laws and customs of warfare, as well as committing a premeditated murder. Under these statutes, Shishimarin faces between 10 years in prison and life imprisonment.
Jake Johnson reports on the ex-president’s incredible slip.
Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday inadvertently condemned “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq” as he delivered remarks criticizing Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
“Nothing will erase the memory of war criminal George W. Bush laughing—yes, laughing—about his grievously apt slip of the tongue.”
Why has the American far right adopted an anti-American conspiracy theory as its rallying cry?
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story. The author is CCNow’s deputy director.
More than 120 civil society groups from around the world on Thursday warned that nations have only six months left to meet a collective commitment made at last year’s United Nations Climate Conference to end public financing of fossil fuels.
“The world must immediately stop all new fossil fuel investments to meet the survival target for many vulnerable and poor communities, island nations, and fragile ecosystems.”
While cheering U.S. House Democrats for passing a bill aimed at curbing Big Oil profiteering, progressive politicians and activists on Thursday pushed Congress to go even further and pass legislation imposing a windfall tax on fossil fuel corporations raking in record profits at the expense of consumers and the climate.
“Enhanced investigatory powers won’t be enough to stem Big Oil’s greed and stop its exploitation. The House must move rapidly to tax the fossil fuel industry’s record windfall profits.”
Ever since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in late 2008, central banks have kept real interest rates close to, and for much of the time below, zero. Around the beginning of this year it started to become obvious that the end of the era of “free money” was approaching, and that interest rates were going to go up. That real interest rates haven’t yet risen much above zero is because of the rampant monopolization of the US economy; companies with market power have seized on the supply chain crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine to raise prices and thus the inflation rate.
The Australian Financial Review has repeated claims by oil and gas peak body APPEA that their industry is a $500 billion benefit to the economy. In reality, ABS data shows the total oil and gas industry’s value is $33.8 billion.
The oil and gas industry is largely foreign-owned so outside of salaries paid in Australia most benefits of the industry’s activities go offshore. This is especially true given the extremely minimal tax paid by the industry, paying zero income tax and minimal amounts of PRRT on vast revenues.
If all industries made the same claim, it would add up to 15X the actual value of the Australian economy according to economist Mark Ogge.
People who put their hard-earned cash into a tumbling cryptocurrency unit that is at the heart of the latest sharp decline in digital coins may be regretting they did not read a recent paper by Canadian financial technology scholar Ryan Clements demonstrating why it was bound to fail.
In fact, all investors who have piled into any crypto assets since the end of 2020 and have not already sold may be feeling remorse for failing to take Clements’s comments in my last column on cryptocurrency as a word to the wise. Most will be deeply under water: In other words, their investments will be worth a lot less than they paid for them.
Ameresco has contracted LS Energy Solutions to supply a 6 MW/6 MWh lithium-ion battery storage system to be paired with an existing 18 MW solar PV system at the Fort Detrick Army Garrison in Maryland.
The system will be microgrid-ready and is expected to come online in early 2023. The system has a 20-year operating lifetime, according to LS Energy.
In a historic milestone, Chile has finalized a draft of its first-ever democratically written constitution to replace the one created under the U.S.-backed neoliberal dictator Augusto Pinochet. The new constitution is expected to enshrine a wide range of human rights and social programs, including free universal access to healthcare, higher education, reproductive rights, as well as more robust environmental safeguards and policies to promote gender and racial equity. It will also for the first time recognize Chile’s Indigenous peoples and offer restitution for historically Indigenous lands, but does not include a measure to nationalize parts of the country’s mining industry. “It has been a demand of social movements, of the civil society in Chile for decades,” says Pablo Abufom, member of Chile’s “Solidaridad” movement.
When their astronomical wealth gains are taken into account, dozens of the top billionaires in the United States paid an average federal tax rate of just 4.8% from 2013 to 2018—a significantly higher rate than the nation’s average taxpayer.
“As long as we fail to tax their main source of income—the growth in their fortunes—many billionaires will continue to live largely tax-free lives.”
But it’s probably naive to assume that social media platforms — and companies, in general — have only the most altruistic motives. After all, these are tech companies that profit off of the same users. The question is not whether or not these companies have the right intent in pursuing voter outreach strategies; the real question is whether these voter outreach efforts are truly working.
We’ve seen signs of a looming splinternet for years. And while Internet shutdowns and clashing country approaches to Internet regulation aren’t new, recent geopolitical events have led us closer than ever to a tipping point.
We must protect the Internet now, or there won’t be one to save in the future.
Here’s a quick reminder of what is a splinternet and why most people don’t want it: it’s the opposite of the Internet. A splinternet is the idea that the open, globally connected Internet we all use splits into a bunch of isolated networks controlled by governments and corporations.
I find this an extremely conflicted situation. How come the CEO seconds a motion of confidence in the Chair when the CEO himself is mentioned in the objection? If tomorrow the CEO is not in a good working relationship with another Board Chair, then what? Would there be another no confidence vote?
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the leader of House Democrats’ campaign arm tasked with protecting incumbents, has come under fire this week after declaring his intention to run against first-term progressive Rep. Mondaire Jones in a newly redrawn New York congressional district—a move that critics have slammed as cowardly and potentially harmful to the party’s efforts to keep control of Congress.
Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), announced his plan to mount a primary challenge against Jones less than an hour after a New York court released a draft of the state’s new congressional districts, which are expected to be made official on Friday.
However, that claim about Costco hiking its prices is false. In the GOP’s rush to get in a jab at President Joe Biden, they spread fake news from a source whose Twitter bio reads, “Wendy’s Fry Cook – I like to make memes – PARODY.”
All of this was easily predictable for, well, basically anyone. The already Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security last month announced the even more Orwellian-named Disinformation Governance Board, with no details, no explanation, and no nothing, other than naming a somewhat controversial researcher to lead it. We called out just how ridiculous the whole thing was at the time, for a variety of reasons, but just to recap:
A Meta executive told employees on Thursday that they are prohibited from talking about abortion on Workplace, an internal version of Facebook, citing “an increased risk” that the company is seen as a “hostile work environment.”
The Christian girl had apparently challenged a group of Muslim students spreading Islamic propaganda, thereby rousing their ire in a nation where Christians are being purged in a genocide (and where just two days ago 29 other Christians were hacked to death by Muslims).
In future, the Berlin police may not transmit data on assaults to victim support institutions and counselling centres – because of data protection. This is what the data protection commissioner of the Berlin law enforcement agencies has decreed, as reported by the newspaper Berliner Zeitung. His reasoning in a memo seems absurd: “In order to prevent re-identification”, the information transmitted must not describe the crime, nor the place, for example the street, the time of the crime or the age of those involved. A note obtained by the Berliner Zeitung states that any reference to a person must be prevented: “The reference to a person includes all information that refers to a person. Every description of human behaviour or human characteristics has a reference to a person. The description of a crime therefore relates to a person.
Israel will not pursue a criminal investigation into the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, whose death earlier this month sparked global outrage.
The development was reported Thursday by both Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post.
An MI5 spy used his status to terrorise his partner before moving abroad to continue intelligence work while under investigation, the BBC has found.
Prosecutors had claimed she helped her husband “buy” from the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority in Iraq to use as an IS slave, but the court said the facts had not been proven.
Messing had allegedly posted make-up tutorials online before converting to Islam. The teenager’s father had only discovered his daughter’s radicalisation after her disappearance, when he came across photos of her in a niqab.
Deborah Emmanuel Yakubu was fatally beaten and burned on May 12. She was accused of sending blasphemous messages to a group chat after refusing to date a Muslim boy.
A purported video of her killing showed an angry mob vandalizing cars and other targets while shouting “Allah akbar” as Yakubu’s apparent body is burned underneath a pile of objects.
A 35-year-old Pakistani man belonging to the minority Ahmadi community has been stabbed to death by a religious fanatic over his faith in the country’s Punjab province, the police said on Wednesday.
Pakistan’s Parliament in 1974 declared the Ahmadi community as non-Muslims. A decade later, they were banned from calling themselves Muslims. They are banned from preaching and from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage.
The latest incident took place in Okara district, some 130 km from here, on Tuesday. Abdul Salam, a member of the minority Ahmadi community, was brutally stabbed to death by “religious fanatic” Hafiz Ali Raza apparently because of his faith, senior police officer Muhammad Saddique told PTI.
A video of a Nigerian policeman supporting the lynching of Deborah Samuel, a female student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto State, by her colleagues over alleged blasphemy has been obtained by SaharaReporters.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers ordered all female presenters on TV channels to cover their faces on air, the country’s biggest media outlet said Thursday.
The order came in a statement from the Taliban’s Virtue and Vice Ministry, tasked with enforcing the group’s rulings, as well as from the Information and Culture Ministry, the TOLOnews channel said on Twitter. The statement called the order “final and non-negotiable,” the channel said.
The statement was sent to the Moby Group, which owns TOLOnews and several other TV and radio networks, and the tweet said it was being applied to other Afghan media as well.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, broke with the House Democratic leadership on Thursday and endorsed Jessica Cisneros, a human rights attorney looking to unseat anti-abortion Rep. Henry Cuellar in Texas’ 28th District.
“At a time when our reproductive freedoms are under attack by an extremist Supreme Court, we must elect pro-choice candidates that will fight to make sure abortion remains the law of the land,” Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement to Politico just days out from next Tuesday’s primary runoff.
On March 10, two workers at a construction site in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, were straddling a steel beam 15 feet in the air while cutting one of its edges when the beam fell to the ground, sending the workers plunging to the first floor alongside it.
Three years ago, we helped write a report for RootsAction.org targeting 15 corporate Democrats in Congress who deserved to be “primaried.” We called the report “Bad Blues.” A common reaction back then was that those establishment pols were too strong and entrenched to be defeated.
Last summer, the Supreme Court finally applied some common sense to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The government has long read this law to apply to pretty much any computer access it (or federal court litigants) doesn’t like, jeopardizing the livelihood of security researchers, app developers, and anyone who might access a system in ways the owner did not expect.
When Supreme Court member Justice Samuel Alito’s secret plan for canceling the constitutional right of women to end their pregnancies leaked out to the public, Republican politicos went ballistic! Over the leak, that is.
We had just discussed PlayStation Boss Jim Ryan’s somewhat bizarre email to his staff in the wake of the leaked SCOTUS draft opinion that signaled an end to Roe v. Wade being the law of the land. What started off as a reasonable request to respect the spectrum of opinions on a contentious social issue then devolved into an email largely about Ryan’s cats and his affinity for dogs. Yes, seriously.
In 2013, the Internet Society, in partnership with the Africa Top Level Domain (AfTLD) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), launched the Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum. The goal was to improve the technical and governance operation levels in African country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries and to foster Internet resilience.
As we’ve previously noted, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will dole out an historic $65 billion to shore up broadband access. $42 billion of that total will directly fund a Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program overseen by the NTIA. It’s a massive infusion of money, and much of it should have a genuine, productive impact on the nation’s longstanding broadband gaps.
Human rights and press freedom organizations in the U.K. and globally have called on the U.K. government to ensure its sanctions on Russia and Belarus protect digital rights.
A coalition of groups led by Access Now published a letter to Boris Johnson’s government and U.K. sanctions authorities on Friday, urgently requesting a new “general license” that enables U.K. businesses — and those with U.K. operations — to maintain services that help people access the internet in Russia and Belarus.
“In the face of rapidly escalating sanctions, many businesses have pulled out of Russia, leaving civil society and other democratic actors bereft of access to the global internet,” said Natalia Krapiva, Tech Legal Counsel at Access Now. “Despite Russian censorship and surveillance, the internet remains one of the last places for Russians to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas outside of President Putin’s grasp.”
Dear Rt Hon. Boris Johnson, Rt Hon Simon Clarke, The Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP, and Director Thomson,
The signatories to this letter deplore Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, condemn in the strongest possible terms the grave violations committed by Russian forces there, and appreciate efforts by the United Kingdom and other governments to respond with strong and targeted measures. However, we write to express our concerns about new sanctions that may interfere with the Russian people’s access to the internet, which will obstruct attempts to organize in opposition to the war, report openly and honestly on events in Russia, and access information about what is happening in Ukraine and abroad.
New measures implemented by the U.K. may impact business between companies operating in the U.K. and Russian telecommunications firms like TransTelekom, and carry the unintended consequence of disrupting internet access in Russia. There is also increasing pressure, internally and externally, on information and communications technology vendors like internet, telecommunications, and cloud service providers to voluntarily restrict or block access by users in Russia. Already, for example, tech companies are withdrawing paid applications and services, banning Russia entirely, and limiting services to civil society under vague justifications. These measures could unnecessarily facilitate further repression by the Russian government in Belarus, Ukraine, and beyond.
As said in my first post, I abandoned the idea to interview children younger than 9 years because it seems they are not necessarily aware that they are using the internet. But it turns out that some do have heard about the internet. My friend Anna, who has 9 younger siblings, tried to win some of her brothers and sisters for an interview with me. At the dinner table, this turned into a discussion and she sent me an incredibly funny video where two of her brothers and sisters, aged 5 and 6, discuss with her about the internet. I won’t share the video for privacy reasons — besides, the kids speak in the wondrous dialect of Vorarlberg, a region in western Austria, close to the border with Liechtenstein.
Janine Jackson interviewed Popular Information‘s Tesnim Zekeria about baby formula shortages for the May 13, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Earlier this month, former Megaupload executives Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk revealed that they had reached a deal with authorities to be charged in New Zealand, thereby avoiding extradition to the United States. According to charge sheets, each faces up to 10 years in prison for conspiring as part of an “organized criminal group.”
The Pakistani operator of popular torrent site MKVCage can be held personally liable for contributory copyright infringement in the US. The case in question was filed by the makers of the film Hellboy. US District Court Judge Seabright concludes that the use of US-based services invokes jurisdiction, even though a magistrate judge concluded otherwise.
Welcome to episode 31 of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. In this episode, we hear from Dr. Buhle Mbambo-Thata, University Librarian at the National University of Lesotho. Buhle is a distinguished librarian whose knowledge and expertise has been recognized with the following awards: the IFLA Medal for Distinguished Service to Libraries in Africa; the UNISA woman of the year award, as well as the Chancellor’s award for distinguished leadership. Her work spans international and continental work to advance the library sector as a key player in education and development.
In this episode, we hear from Martine Denoyelle, Curator & Project Manager Digital Prospective at the Institut national d’Histoire de l’art. After having spent part of her career at the Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities of the Louvre Museum, she was scientific advisor at the National Institute of Art History from 2008 to 2016, then in charge of the digital prospective mission responsible for the Images / Usages project. She has organized in Paris several events on Digital Art History and the actuality of Open GLAMs.
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