-- Leo's gemini proxy

-- Connecting to gemini.techrights.org:1965...

-- Connected

-- Sending request

-- Meta line: 20 text/gemini;lang=en-GB


● 12.25.22


Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 25/12/2022: Ruby 3.2.0 Released


Posted in News Roundup at 8:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz


GNU/Linux


↺ Season’s Greetings from LinuxLinks – LinuxLinks


Everyone involved at LinuxLinks wishes you all a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. 2022 has been another immensely challenging year for the world (particularly Ukraine). Let’s hope that peace prevails soon.


We have many exciting projects on the horizon in the new year. For example, we plan to massively ramp up the number of articles about hardware running on Linux. But rest assured, we will continue to focus on recommending the best free and open source software. After all, that’s our raison d’etre.


Server


↺ Europe Gets an Exascale Supercomputer – IEEE Spectrum


FRONTIER, THE WORLD’S FIRST exascale supercomputer—or at least the first one that’s been made public—is coming online soon for general scientific use at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Another such machine, Aurora, is seemingly on track to be completed any day at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Now Europe’s getting up to speed. Through a €500 million pan-European effort, an exascale supercomputer called JUPITER (Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research) will be installed sometime in 2023 at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, in Germany.


Audiocasts/Shows


↺ Linux BS Is Everywhere | I Am Tired Of It


↺ What Linux Distro Is Right For You? | No BS


↺ Void Linux – Stability Focused Linux Distro


↺ Linux Independents | Best Of 2022


↺ 3 Linux Distros That Will STOP Your Distro Hopping


↺ XeroLinux – One Of The Best Gets Better | Fantastic Arch Spin


↺ “Linux Is Hard To Use” – It’s 2022 Stop The BS Already


↺ Best Gnome Linux Distros Of 2022


↺ ExTix Linux Deepin – Amazing Linux Distro | Perfect Form & Function


↺ Linux Distros Tracking You – From Deepin to Astra Linux | What’s The Truth


↺ New To Linux? | Want To Try Linux? | Watch Before You Try!


↺ Linux & BSD Out Of The Box Perfection


Instructionals/Technical


↺ Handling numbers in Vim when they have a dash in front of them


I wanted to copy and duplicate in order to make ‘machine-2′, ‘machine-3′, and so on entries, so I copied that first line and hit Ctrl-A to increment the machine number, which didn’t work because Vim, by default, saw the ‘-1′ as a negative number and duly incremented it to ’0′. Visually selecting the number before using Ctrl-A isn’t really a great solution for this particular case, because I want to do it repeatedly to create different numbers; at best I’d be repeatedly selecting shorter and shorter columns and incrementing them by one.


↺ Can Your Spam-eater Manage to Catch Seventy-one Percent Like This Other Service?


Measuring the effect of what you do is important. Equally important is knowing what is the measure of your actions.


A question turned up on IRC that had me thinking.


Do you have a percentage of the spam traffic you catch on your MXes? The reason I ask is I lust learned that fastmail.com claim they catch 71% of all incoming spam. Also a rate of false positives would be nice to have, but that’s likely harder to measure.


↺ The systemd journal is primarily time-based


However, on deeper examination I realized that this goes deeper than just what ‘journalctl -b-1′ will report is the boot before the current one (or even earlier boots). If your system boots with a bad time in the past and then corrects the time, ‘journalctl -r’ will stop abruptly at a log line where the time began to be stepped to the correct value, like this (in reversed order): [...]


↺ Comprehensive guide to Defining Application Routing in Kubernetes Cluster – Earthly Blog


When you’re getting started with Kubernetes, setting up the proper routing can be a challenge. There are a lot of moving parts and understanding how IP address get assigned and what they point to can be confusing at first.


In this article, you will learn what an Ingress is, and its usefulness when routing in Kubernetes. You will also be introduced to Service and how they differ from an Ingress. We’ll start by covering these two essential pieces of Kubernetes before doing a deeper dive into how you can use them to set up effective routing.


For this article, you will use an NGINX image on Docker Hub. You will learn how to make deployments and create services for the NGINX image and use Ingress to forward requests from a domain name to your application. You will also learn how to use Ingress to configure multiple paths for a particular domain and also run your application on HTTPS.


↺ How to Work with YAML in Python – Earthly Blog


If you’ve ever worked with Docker or Kubernetes, you’ll have likely used YAML files. From configuring an application’s services in Docker to defining Kubernetes objects like pods, services, and more—YAML is used for them all.


If you’d like to learn how to work with YAML in the Python programming language, then this tutorial is for you. This tutorial will cover creating, writing, reading, and modifying YAML in Python.


Games


↺ Tea Tea Deluxe Version 1.2.0


Last night I published an update to my OpenTTD NewGRF called Tea Tea Deluxe. Version 1.2.0, downloadable from the “Check online content” menu in the game.


[...]


I’ve played the game with these changes for a couple of weeks now, and the improvements are very enjoyable. The production rates for the farms is now a little bit higher. Increased from 8 to 12, compared to 15 for coal, which actually makes tea leaves somewhat competitive. They start out at a higher value than coal but drop off radically, whereas coal loses value very slowly. For short distances tea leaves are more valuable, for medium to long distances coal is the winner. For the longest distances, when value of any cargo has dropped to the lowest point at 12% of its maximum, tea leaves are quite superior. I didn’t intend to make it this way, but it’s how it turned out.


↺ thibault’s Blog • Lichess – Scala 3 • lichess.org


Lichess gets a big upgrade. It doesn’t go as planned. Lichess is a 100% open-source/free-software chess website, used by millions of players to play billions of games.


↺ Best Steam Deck Games Released in the Past Week – 2022-12-25 Christmas Edition – Boiling Steam


Merry Christmas! Between 2022-12-18 and 2022-12-25 there were 122 new games validated for the Steam Deck. We use many different features to get to that Best Steam Deck Games list, such as popularity, ratings, and more.


Desktop Environments/WMs


GNOME Desktop/GTK


↺ Display Wireless Mouse/Keyboard Battery Percentage on Ubuntu 22.04 Panel | UbuntuHandbook


Got wireless mouse, keyboard, or controller connect to your PC? You can have a glance at the battery level of them in top-bar of Ubuntu 22.04|22.10, Fedora 36/37, Arch/Manjaro with GNOME desktop!


This can be done via a Gnome Shell extension based on upower power management daemon.


Distributions and Operating Systems


New Releases


↺ Manjaro Linux 22.0 “Sikaris” Released With Linux Kernel 6.1 | Itsubuntu.com


Manjaro Linux 22.0 “Sikaris” is now available for download. The latest version of Manjaro is powered by Linux Kernel 6.1. Some of the new features that you will find on Manjaro Linux 22.0 is Xfce 4.18 desktop environment and Linux Kernel 6.1. Manjaro Linux 22.0 is available for download from the official website of Manjaro.


BSD


↺ ‘OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems’ status – Michael W Lucas


I just finished indexing the manuscript. That’s normally a hard day’s work, but this being the week before a major holiday I was unable to get a full day to dedicate to the task. I wound up spending about two hard man-days on the task, because context switching in and out of indexing has a higher cost than any other task my brain runs.


Fedora Family / IBM


↺ Partner success: Highlights from our partner success stories in 2022


The Red Hat partner ecosystem is an integral part of how Red Hat develops and delivers business and technical value to customers. It provides a community to solve customer challenges, build integrated solutions and establish and grow deep relationships—all built around Red Hat’s enterprise open source solutions.


Here we highlight seven partner success stories from 2022, covering everything from 5G telecommunications through manufacturing and financial services.


Grab a cup of holiday cheer and read on to learn how Red Hat and Red Hat’s partners might be able to help your organization in the coming year.


↺ A year in review: Red Hat Training’s most popular courses of 2022


Throughout 2022, Red Hat Training and Certification continued to update our training course catalog to keep pace with changes in Red Hat technology and industry trends. With options for self-paced, live virtual and in-person classroom training, opportunities to sharpen your skill set abound. Check out our top five most visited training courses and resources of 2022.


Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications


↺ Google To Enable “Find My Device” For Android Smartphones Reveals Play Services Update


↺ Clean Up Your Phone By Deleting Your Android Web Browser’s Cookies, Cache – CNET


↺ How to drag and drop between apps on Android tablets | Android Central


↺ How to Create Shortcuts to Anything on Your Android Phone’s Home Screen


↺ How To Set Up a New Android Phone – Tech Advisor


↺ Android 14 will natively integrate Health Connect functions


↺ Scrcpy gets its clipboard mojo back with Android 13 devices


↺ ColorOS 13 (Android 13) is now available for these Oppo phones


↺ More Pixel features are coming to other Android 13 devices


↺ iQOO 11, FASTEST Android chipset phone in India set to launch on Jan 10 | Mobile News


↺ Forget Galaxy S23 — Google Pixel 7a could be the best Android phone in 2023 | Tom’s Guide


↺ 5 essential apps to download to your new Android phone or tablet | Metro News


↺ The Best Android Games Sales and Deals – Christmas 2022 – Droid Gamers


↺ The Google Pixel 7 Pro is Android Police’s 2022 smartphone of the year


Free, Libre, and Open Source Software


↺ open…: Where to find me on Mastodon


Since Elon Musk is trying to ban any mention of Mastodon on Twitter, I thought I’d just make it as easy as possible to find me on the former. I’m at


https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody


I look forward to meeting lots of you there, where we can discuss the continuing and inevitable decline of Twitter under Musk.


↺ More counter.social “private account” bypasses – Xe Iaso


counter.social is a social network built on the open source software Mastodon. For various reasons, counter.social is one of the few Mastodon servers that does not federate to the larger community, and as such has implemented unique account security features that allows it to differentiate itself from other Mastodon instances. It also has an embedded stream of CNN and other news sites.


Programming/Development


↺ Ruby 3.2.0 Released


We are pleased to announce the release of Ruby 3.2.0. Ruby 3.2 adds many features and performance improvements.


WASI based WebAssembly support


This is an initial port of WASI based WebAssembly support. This enables a CRuby binary to be available on a Web browser, a Serverless Edge environment, or other kinds of WebAssembly/WASI embedders. Currently this port passes basic and bootstrap test suites not using the Thread API.


↺ 5 Raspberry Pi tutorials to inspire DIY creativity | Opensource.com


‘Tis the season for holiday pies and tasty treats, so why not talk about every open source enthusiast’s favorite hardware delight: the Raspberry Pi. This year, Opensource.com contributors put in work on how to use the Pi for all sorts of cool projects and use cases. (Did you see the one about creating your own holiday light display with ping pong balls?) From business solutions to just-for-fun projects, these articles will show you a brand new way to use the Raspberry Pi in your life.


↺ OLS Regression in R – Data Science Tutorials


OLS Regression in R, OLS Regression is a statistical method used for modeling in the R programming language.


Additionally, the examination of linear relationships between a response variable is done using it.


A straight line can be used to represent the relationship between the two variables if it is linear.


↺ Designing Accessible Research with R/Shiny – Data For Good, R programming


R/Shiny is quite versatile from a developer’s perspective, and at Appsilon, we try our best to stretch those limits even further. That is what we did for the Future Forests application. Which, at first glance, doesn’t even appear to be an R/Shiny application.


↺ Credit Card Fraud Detection in R – Data Science Tutorials


Credit Card Fraud Detection in R, We will learn how to perform credit card detection in this R project.


We’ll go over a variety of methods, including Gradient Boosting Classifiers, Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, and Artificial Neural Networks.


We will use the Card Transactions dataset, which includes both fraudulent and legitimate transactions, to carry out credit card fraud detection.


↺ a rp2040 eInk specialty driver board


“this board is sorta like a trinkey (https://www.adafruit.com/?q=trinkey&sort=BestMatch) – it’s a dedicated RP2040 board just for driving eInk displays with common 24-pin connectors. could be handy for folks who want to make USB-powered eInk displays without needing a feather + eInk wing (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4224) there’s a STEMMA QT port for expansion in case one wants to add GPIO or sensors. to be honest, i’m mostly designing this for myself to make it easier for me to quickly test and evaluate eInk panel samples in Arduino or CircuitPython!”


↺ Software Rewrites


The other day, Elon Musk and George Hotz mentioned that Twitter would probably need a full rewrite to get to the place where it could reliably and quickly ship new features. There was a lot of pushback from the infrastructure side – many developers who either maintain legacy software for a living or were the ones who originally wrote it. Two laws often cited –


Chesteron’s Fence – Don’t take down a fence until you know why it was put up.


Gall’s Law – you cannot design a complex system from scratch


↺ Notes from Ryan Dahl on Shop Talk Show


Deno is trying to alleviate the problem of choice in today’s JavaScript. With features like a standard library, a native test runner, and built-in typescript support, Deno is trying to combat the problem of too much unnecessary choice that runs rampant in the world of Node.


↺ Always use feenableexcept() when doing floating point math


A small post that documents something that almost no one appears to know. And if you do anything with floating point, you do need to know.


↺ LoRa: Field Testing Antennas – News – SparkFun Electronics


It turned out to be quite and adventure (a bear even made an appearance!) to reach the outer limits of testing the range of a LoRa signal. Any of the configurations mentioned in this blog would work with the following tutorial if you’d like to play along.


↺ SparkFun Vacation – News – SparkFun Electronics


This is a bit of a different week for us because we are in the middle of Hanukkah and the Christmas Holiday is this Sunday, so we are off spending time with our families and enjoying some us time. We don’t have any new products this Friday, but we’d like to remind you of our closures this weekend and next as well as take a look at some of our more recent new products that you may have missed!


↺ Monorepo Build Tools – Earthly Blog


In the software development world, there is a growing trend of using monorepos to manage codebases. A monorepo is a single repository that contains the code of many interrelated but distinct projects. While monorepos have their benefits, they also come with their own set of challenges. And guess what? The challenges are primarily around tooling. In this article, I’ll compare some of the most popular monorepo build tools on the market and see how they stack up against each other.


[...]


Things get more complex when code repositories contain multiple partially-independent pieces of software. For example, if a repo has tens or hundreds of services, many services likely depend on each other. Still, changes to one do not necessarily mean all others need to be retested, rebuilt, or redeployed. This is why monorepos build tools, to do a good job, need to track project dependencies.


↺ R-Ladies Cologne – Our first year in the books!


Thank you all for a fantastic year at R-Ladies Cologne!


We had a series of great events which gave us the chance to meet so many wonderful and kindhearted people across the globe. This is one thing that always makes me so thankful to be part of the community


↺ Export in Bananen in Tonnen von 1994-2005 (Banana exports in tonnes from 1994-2005) – Pachá


↺ 2022-04 Constructive Solid Geometry and Function Representation in R | Stat Tech


The HyperFun Project provides a language and interpreter for describing 3D scenes using Function Representation and Constructive Solid Geometry. This document describes the R package ‘hyperfun’, which provides an interface to the HyperFun language and interpreter.


↺ {drawCell} – R package and Shiny app for drawing cell structures – R programming


Are you a life sciences educator looking to engage students with interactivity or a student needing to draw and label cells? Are you a researcher looking to offload the tedium of data visualization? There’s an R solution for you: drawCell! This tool provides a convenient, engaging solution for educators and researchers alike.


↺ gcc problem in Kirkstone-series


First bootup of EasyOS Kirkstone-series, looking good.


Leftovers


↺ Blinky Project Is 6502s All The Way Down


Virtually any platform you might find yourself programming on has some simple method of running a delay. [Joey Shepard] got rather creative on a recent project, though, relying on a rather silly nesting method that we’re calling 6502s All The Way Down.


↺ The Newborn King


↺ Bridges, Buses and Barbed Wire


Science


↺ ESnet Launches Next-Generation Network to Enhance Collaborative Science – News Center


Today, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) formally unveiled ESnet6, the newest generation of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) high-performance network dedicated to science. The hybrid in person and virtual event was held at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and live-streamed on streaming.lbl.gov. “ESnet6 represents a transformational change in the way networks are built for research, with improved capacity, resiliency, and flexibility,” said ESnet Executive Director Inder Monga. “Together, these new capabilities make it faster, easier, and more efficient for scientists around the world to conduct and collaborate on ground-breaking research.” For more than 35 years, ESnet – headquartered at Berkeley Lab – has served as the “data circulatory system” for the DOE, connecting all of its national laboratories, tens of thousands of DOE-funded researchers, and DOE’s premier scientific instruments and supercomputing centers. This interconnected system enables data to move quickly between sites and collaborators, accelerating time to discovery.


↺ Amazing Robotic Sculpture Balances Itself on One Corner – IEEE Spectrum


The Balancing Cube is a robotic sculpture that can stand on any of its corners. Pendulum-like modules, located on the inner faces of the cube, constantly adjust their positions to shift the structure’s center of gravity and keep it balanced. The cube remains stable even if you poke it. But not too hard!


Created by Raffaello D’Andrea, Sebastian Trimpe, and Matt Donovan at ETH Zurich, the contraption is half art and half technology. They got their inspiration from a Cirque du Soleil performance in which acrobats use their bodies to support each other and balance together in seemingly impossible positions.


↺ HKU Mechanical Engineering team develops new microscale 3D printer for multi-level anticounterfeiting labels – All News – Media – HKU


Counterfeiting threatens the global economy and security. According to the report issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2020, the value of global counterfeit and pirated products is estimated between US$ 1.7 and 4.5 trillion a year. Despite enormous efforts, conventional anticounterfeiting approaches such as QR codes can be easily fabricated due to limited data encryption capacity on a planar space. How can we increase the encryption density in a limited space? The team led by Dr Ji Tae Kim from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has developed a high-precision 3D printing method that can produce new polarisation-encoded 3D anticounterfeiting labels. This new 3D label can encrypt more digital information than a traditional 2D label. The work has been published in Nano Letters in an article entitled “Three-Dimensional Printing of Dipeptides with Spatioselective Programming of Crystallinity for Multilevel Anticounterfeiting”.


Education


↺ School Librarians Are in the Crosshairs of Right-Wing Book Banners and Censors


Hardware


↺ A Hacker’s Christmas Story


Twas the night before Christmas, and because I decided to make everyone’s presents myself this year, I’m still working like mad to get everything done before the big deadline. Why do I do this to myself? Well, partly because I enjoy the process.


↺ Spotify Player Brings Back Physical Media


Digital music has made keeping all your tunes with you a lot more convenient, but have we lost something with dematerialization? [Jordi Parra] felt that there was something lacking with the digital music experience and designed a Spotify player with a tactile interface.


↺ Drone Rescue Uses VHS Tape And Careful Planning


If you regularly fly your drones outdoors, you’ve probably worried about getting your pride and joy stuck in a big tree at some point. But flying indoors doesn’t guarantee you’ll be safe either, as [Scott Williamson] found out. He once got his tiny 65 mm Mobula 6HD quadcopter stuck in a roof beam at an indoor sports complex, and had to set about a daring rescue.


↺ The Spit-Detecting USB Flash Drive Is Nearly Here


Regular readers may recall that security researcher and general open source hardware fanatic [Walker] has been planning a rather unusual flash drive for some time — one that will only show its contents if the user makes sure to lick their fingers before plugging it in. We’re pleased to report that theory has recently given way to real hardware, and the Ovrdrive “self-destructing” flash drive is now a step closer to reality.


↺ Non-Replaceable Battery? Not If This Proposed EU Law Passes!


A disturbing trend in consumer electronics has been a steady disappearance of replaceable batteries on our devices. Finding a mobile phone with a swapable battery is a struggle, and many other devices follow the trend by sealing in a Li-Po cell. The result is an ever-shorter life for electronics, and a greater problem with devices going to recycling or worse still, landfill. Hope is at hand though, thanks to a proposed European Union law that would if passed make batteries in appliances “designed so that consumers can easily remove and replace them themselves“.


↺ A Dungeon Master With A Thermal Printer


The thermal printer is ubiquitous in today’s world, mostly found whenever we have to get a receipt from somewhere. They’re cheap, fast, and easy to use. Not only that, though, but as [Daniel] found out, they’re also pretty straightforward to re-program and use for other things than a three-foot-long receipt from a drug store. He’s adapted them to serve as a key tool of the dungeon master in his D&D games.


Health/Nutrition/Agriculture


↺ Jetsons-style robots are invading Chicago-area hospitals, amid worker shortage


It’s not polite to stare. Especially in the hospital.


But nearly everyone who passes Moxi the robot at Elmhurst Hospital can’t help but goggle at it, as it slowly rolls through hallways and corridors. The robot is roughly human-shaped, stands about 5 feet tall and, perhaps most strikingly, has big blue eyes, reminiscent of circles on a Lite Brite screen, that occasionally blink.


“That’s technology these days,” said David Crisp, of Westchester, laughing, as he waited for an appointment with his mother at the hospital on a recent day. He sat there as the robot rolled up to the infusion center door, delivering medication to a nurse. “These are the times.”


↺ Big Pharma’s Obscene Profits, Not Striking Nurses, Are Killing the NHS


Monopoly pricing and corporate greed are destroying healthcare systems in the UK and globally.


↺ Lawsuits Against Plastic Industry Could Exceed $20 Billion in Damages by 2030


↺ Marijuana Law Reached Peak Absurdity in 2022


Proprietary


↺ Zeno’s Paradox and Why Modern Technology is Rubbish


How true is that! If you’ve worked on any project, you know how easy it is to get most of the way there. And how difficult it is to get all of the way there.


Security


↺ LastPass says hackers stole customers’ password vaults


In an updated blog post on its disclosure, LastPass CEO Karim Toubba said the intruders took a copy of a backup of customer vault data by using cloud storage keys stolen from a LastPass employee. The cache of customer password vaults is stored in a “proprietary binary format” that contains both unencrypted and encrypted vault data, but technical and security details of this proprietary format weren’t specified. The unencrypted data includes vault-stored web addresses. It’s not clear how recent the stolen backups are.


LastPass said customers’ password vaults are encrypted and can only be unlocked with the customers’ master password, which is only known to the customer. But the company warned that the cybercriminals behind the intrusion “may attempt to use brute force to guess your master password and decrypt the copies of vault data they took.”


↺ LastPass Admits Hackers Stole Customers’ Password Vaults


In one sense this is a triumph for secure password managers. Even if we get hacked, the hackers can’t access your passwords. That’s true for LastPass. But they did get hacked, badly, so for LastPass this seems devastating. It’s a second-order disaster for an attacker to steal customer’s encrypted vaults, but it’s still a disaster. Anyone who uses LastPass who hasn’t spent today moving to something else [...] either hasn’t heard about this breach or is an idiot.


Privacy/Surveillance


↺ EFF’s Threat Lab Sharpens Its Knives: 2022 in Review


Here we highlight some of the achievements that made 2022 such an eventful year for Threat Lab.


Our Atlas of Surveillance project surpassed a major milestone, documenting over 10,000 instances of police tech programs across the US. Shining a light on these programs was bittersweet, reminding us that this transparency also reveals just how expansive and widespread advanced technologies employed by police departments across the country have become. A collaborative effort between EFF and the University of Nevada Reno’s Reynolds School of Journalism crowdsourced thousands of distinct mini-research tasks to students to achieve this milestone.


Cell-site simulators are one such technology employed by law enforcement. Sometimes called “Stingrays,” these devices use a small, mobile transceiver to masquerade as a cellphone tower, tricking phones into connecting to it instead of the legitimate tower, and allowing location tracking and even potentially interception of communications from everyone in a certain area—not just those suspected of a crime. Alongside Threat Lab’s efforts to reveal cell-site simulators (CSSs), dozens of FOIA requests were issued to California police departments in 2018 to reveal the extent of their usage of CSSs. As a result, EFF learned that San Bernardino County law enforcement officials were improperly sealing search warrant records involving the use of CSSs indefinitely. In October, we asked the Supreme Court of California to review the case, arguing that sealing these records in perpetuity violates the public’s right to access court records and effectively prevents the public from raising important questions regarding the scope and overreach of law enforcement use of invasive technologies.


↺ Pivotal Year for the Metaverse and Extended Reality: 2022 in Review


Visions for the metaverse include ways for people to work, socialize, and interact using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies (collectively called Extended Reality or XR). While Meta has attempted to claim the term metaverse for its own, this area has also become a research focus for Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and Tiktok’s parent company ByteDance among others, all of whom have launched or announced plans to launch XR hardware or services in the near future. This next generation of devices will be more sophisticated than today’s gadgets, which means their data collection capabilities will likewise increase along with new and substantial risks to our human rights and fundamental freedoms.


There’s no single definitive understanding of what a “Metaverse” or “Metaverse(s)” might be. In its ambiguity, the term has become a placeholder for many things, often reflecting the interests of the person using it. Some, like Apple, have avoided the term entirely for their XR products. The major point of overlap in describing a “metaverse,” however, is the idea of additional virtual environments connected to the internet becoming important parts of our day-to-day lives in the real world.


One prominent vision of this is the fictional OASIS from Ready Player One, a virtual society where people can play massively multiplayer online games (MMO) using VR gadgets. Another popular conception emphasizes spatial computing and AR devices, creating a shared “annotation” of virtual objects in the real world. Others, however, define the term metaverse as making the internet a reflection of the physical world to facilitate work, socializing, and commerce, perhaps supported by a metaverse “tax”. Visions of the metaverse often interact with another ambiguous term for the future iteration of the internet— Web3.


↺ FBI ‘doorman to social media censorship, surveillance’, reveal Twitter Files


Mentioning that FBI did not refute the previous claims about how it benefited from the social media platform, which had basically asserted that the FBI moderates the Twitter, journalist Matt Taibbi said on Twitter that the bureau shared a statement on Wednesday, saying: “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public…”


↺ Twitter Files 9.0 reveals a web of ‘social media surveillance, censorship’ by not just FBI, other agencies too


The latest and the ninth instalment of the ‘Twitter Files’ has uncovered a web of coordination between the tech giant and US government agencies. Releasing the latest instalment on Christmas eve, Substack writer Matt Taibbi claims that it goes beyond the FBI which was acting as the “doorman to a vast programme of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”


↺ New facial recognition technology scans your ear


In the post-COVID world of face coverings and heightened hygiene awareness, the need for new authentication methods that don’t require a person’s full face to be visible has arisen.


New research from the University of Georgia may soon have people using their ears to get into their devices rather than their face or thumbprint.


Defence/Aggression


↺ Trains (mostly), Planes and Automobiles Part 4


Having entirely unexpected cause to become acquainted with the subject, I learn that all main railway stations in Germany have their own police stations. At Bochum, you have to walk round the outside to find a door with a buzzer, which nobody answers.


↺ Sen. Lindsey Graham Says Ukraine War Will Only End If Putin Is ‘Taken Out’


The hawkish senator says the US should give Ukraine Gray Eagle drones to ‘kill tons of Russians’


Transparency/Investigative Reporting


↺ Inside Jihad Rehab, the ‘Islamophobic’ documentary the Left doesn’t want you to see


“Cancel culture has gone crazy in the US, but my hope is that the Bafta judges and other British people will judge it with an open mind and see it for what it is,” she tells me.


↺ santa tracking


As tends to be the case with such popular stories, the version we hear today is arms length from the truth. From contemporaneous reporting, it seems the facts go more like this: The phone number printed in the advertisement was correct, but one particularly child misdialed. Instead of getting Santa Claus, they got the desk phone of Col. Harry Shoup, at what was then called CONAD. Shoup was reportedly gruff and ended the call quickly, only later realizing (due to a joke made by another NORAD employee, placing an image of Santa on a map board) that they could turn the incident into a publicity coup. That they did, and over decades the story has become more and more embellished to the favor of NORAD.


Environment


Energy


↺ Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes


↺ Utrecht short-haul flight ban ‘will cut emissions by 15 per cent’


Staff at Utrecht University will only be allowed to take short-haul flights in very exceptional circumstances from 2023, and are being encouraged to use their grant funding to cover the difference if trains cost more.


Wildlife/Nature


↺ Stopping the Sixth Extinction


Finance


↺ The Perils of Pious Neoliberalism in the Austerity State


The International Labour Organisation’s Global Wage Report 2022–23 tracks the horrendous collapse of real wages for billions of people around the planet. The gaping distance between the incomes and wealth of 99% of the world’s population from the incomes and wealth of the billionaires and near-trillionaires who make […]


↺ Top 10 Inequality Victories of 2022


Champions of a more egalitarian society made important strides, building the power of workers while reducing the power of wealthy tax dodgers and greedy pharma execs.


AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics


↺ Short Links – Pete Warden’s blog


Years ago I used to write regular “Five Short Links” posts but I gave up as my Twitter account became a better place to share updates, notes, and things I found interesting from around the internet. Now that Twitter is Nazi-positive I’m giving up on it as a platform, so I’m going to try going back to occasional summary posts here instead.


↺ What Democrats Can Learn From the 2022 Midterms to Beat the GOP in 2024


↺ AOC Casts House Democrats’ Sole Vote Against Omnibus Spending Bill


↺ Right-wing Attempts to Eliminate Constitutional Protections are No Joke


But is his latest childish tantrum really something to be laughed off? Having skipped the “tragedy” phase and gone straight to “farce,” Trump is facing what is likely to become a politically terminal case of irrelevancy as new contenders for Mussolini’s crown, most notably but not only Ron DeSantis, emerge. The nascent fascist movement that has coalesced around Trump, and the varieties of extreme right menace that shade into it that are now expressed through the Republican Party, are no laughing matter. And while embarrassed silence or a quick change of subject might be Republicans’ default position when asked to comment on Trump’s increasing irrationality due to their fear of the Frankenstein monster they have let loose, eviscerating the Constitution is actually on their agenda.


To read this article, log in here or subscribe here. If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access hereIn order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.


Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda


↺ Idaho professor sues TikToker over allegations in the killing of 4 university students


The Moscow Police Department had previously called out what it described as misinformation “stoking community fears and spreading false facts” in the case. The department includes a “rumor control” section on its website under frequently asked questions about the case.


↺ Fake News, Echo Chambers & Polarization: How Bad Is Social Media?


Civil Rights/Policing


↺ The Taliban have banned women from working for NGOs in Afghanistan


The bans are the latest restrictive moves by Afghanistan’s new rulers against women’s rights and freedoms, coming just days after the Taliban banned female students from attending universities across the country.


Afghan women have since demonstrated in major cities against the ban — a rare sign of domestic protest since the Taliban seized power last year. The decision has also caused international outrage.


↺ Afghanistan: Taliban bans women from working for NGOs


Saturday’s order came in a letter from the Ministry of Economy to both national and international NGOs. It threatened to cancel the licence of any organisation that did not swiftly comply.


By way of explanation, it said women were breaking Sharia law by failing to wear the hijab.


↺ US slams Taliban for women’s NGO jobs ban in Afghanistan


“Women are central to humanitarian operations around the world,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday. “This decision could be devastating for the Afghan people.”


↺ How Iranian Women and Girls Use Powerful Images to Protest Oppression


↺ UN Experts: US Sanctions Violate Iranians’ Human Rights


Top United Nations experts wrote a letter to the United States government, emphasizing that its illegal unilateral sanctions on Iran violate the human rights of the Iranian people, calling for them to “be eased or lifted completely.”


↺ Cal Grad Student Worker Strike Ends With Deal Panned by Many Rank-and-File Union Members


↺ San Francisco Macy’s Workers Strike over ‘Totally Unacceptable’ Contract


↺ 2023 Military Budget Far Exceeds NLRB Funding for Workers


↺ Silence From Media as Twitter Suspends Palestinian Journalist


↺ Twitter Suspends Palestinian Journalist Arikat, and Media Response—Silence


In yet another demonstration of anti-Palestinianism in the U.S. mainstream, there is no outcry over Twitter’s arbitrary suspension of Said Arikat, longtime D.C. correspondent for Al-Quds newspaper.


↺ Online Hate Is Bigger Than Elon Musk


↺ Nearly 200 Rohingya Refugees Adrift at Sea Desperately Seek Rescue


↺ The Chris Hedges Report: “The Catholic Church Expelled Me for Supporting Women Joining the Priesthood”


Father Roy Bourgeois discusses his life of religion and activism.


↺ The Holidays are the Most Painful Time of the Year to be Behind Bars


Every holiday season, prisoners suffer spikes in suicides, violence, and depression. Eddie Conway, who spent 44 years locked up, explains what people on the outside can do to help.


↺ Let’s Challenge Abortion Stigma This Holiday


Monopolies


↺ Google to appeal India antitrust ruling on Android


About 97% of 600 million devices in India run on Android, according to Counterpoint Research estimates.


Copyrights


↺ EU: Complex Pirate IPTV Networks Underpin a Parallel Black Market


For rightsholders seeking to disrupt the pirate IPTV market, the European Commission’s Piracy Watch List is an opportunity to name specific services and focus attention. This year’s report does just that while also highlighting fundamental challenges. Pirate IPTV networks are international, technically complex, and inherently difficult to monitor. This potent mix underpins a “parallel black market.”


Gemini* and Gopher


Personal


↺ 🔤SpellBinding: BDIWNOL Wordo: SELAH


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

----------

Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.

-- Response ended

-- Page fetched on Sat Jun 1 09:48:46 2024