● 12.29.21

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 29/12/2021: Linux 5.17 Work and 2021 Roundups

Posted in News Roundup at 4:40 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• We do our best to predict what will happen in 2022, and own up to what we thought might happen in 2021.

Kernel Space

• The MSM Direct Rendering Manager driver providing the open-source kernel display/graphics support for Qualcomm Adreno hardware has ready its batch of changes for DRM-Next to appear in Linux 5.17.

• The MSM DRM driver updates for Linux 5.17 includes support for the Qualcomm Adreno 506. The Adreno 506 is an aging Qualcomm 5xx design used by the Snapdragon 450, 625, 626, and 632 SoCs. There was previously some A506 display preparations in Linux 5.16 while now for 5.17 the support appears to be ready to go in full. Separately, this pull request also includes DisplayPort support introduced for Snapdragon SC7280 Chromebook boards.

• Intel open-source engineers have prepared “PFRUT” support for Platform Firmware Runtime Updates for allowing (U)EFI capsule updates to be performed on capable systems without rebooting the system in order to eliminate downtime.

• Intel has worked on PFRUT that is now part of the ACPI specification for allowing platform firmware components to be updated on-the-fly without the need to restart the system. The intent of this is for servers where they need to be “available 100% of the time” and other cases where downtime must be kept to an aboslute minimum. This “pfr_update” driver set for Linux 5.17 introduction seems to be primarily geared for being able to update system firmware in cases of critical bugs or security issues in a timely manner while not introducing any new downtime.

Benchmarks

• This is definitely great news for AMD Ryzen APU notebook owners and it looks like it is definitely worth upgrading to the latest Linux 5.16 Kernel as there are only gains to be made. There are benchmarks that don’t see a huge performance jump but they also don’t have a performance regression over the previous Linux Kernels so overall, it’s a win-win situation for Ryzen owners. A stable release of the Linux 5.16 Kernel is expected to be released on the 9th of January.

• Gaming performance may differ between Windows and Linux so the choice of OS will likely depend on whether the desired games have ‘native’ versions or are supported by an appropriate compatibility layer.

• However, increasing the memory appears to improve gaming performance on AMD mini PCs with notable FPS increments especially under Windows whereas no perceptible improvements were observed on Intel mini PCs. Whether these findings justify the extra expense of purchasing more memory is debatable. However, if you have it available it makes sense to use it.

Instructionals/Technical

• Cockpit is a free remote server manager that is lightweight and easy to use for GNU/Linux servers. Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers intended for people new to Linux to the experts such as sysadmins. Cockpit makes Linux discoverable, allowing anyone using the software to perform tasks such as start containers, administer storage, configure networks, and inspect logs.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install or enable Cockpit on CentOS 8 Stream.

• Rust is an open-source programming language that focuses on speed, memory safety, and parallelism. Developers use Rust to create a wide range of new software applications, such as game engines, operating systems, file systems, browser components, and simulation engines for virtual reality. Rust is syntactically similar to C++ but can guarantee memory safety by using a borrow checker for validating references.

• For users, especially developers wanting to try out Rust Programming language, you will know how to install Rust Programming Language on CentOS 8 Stream.

• I recently noticed that my Arch Linux desktop system will not update/upgrade to the latest version. I thought there wasn’t any new updates yet. I visited Arch Linux website and noticed that there are plenty of updates are already available. But, whenever I try to update my Arch Linux system, I keep getting the following message every time.

• Git is a mature, actively maintained open source project initially developed in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the famous Linux operating system kernel creator. Git is designed for developers that need a pretty straightforward version control system. Most software is collaborative efforts and sometimes can have hundreds of people with commits working on software development projects. It is essential to track these commits customarily done in branches in most projects before being merged into the master for release. It is easy to review and track down any incorrect commits and revert, leading to a much easier development if anything goes wrong.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Git on CentOS 8 Stream in various methods.

• The PowerTools repository is a container that contains many packages, libraries, and developer tools for either creating from source or installing applications. Most repositories rely on the PowerTools to be enabled, including the most popular Extra packages for the Enterprise Linux repository.

• In the following tutorial, you will quickly install the EPEL repository and enable PowerTools on your CentOS 8 Stream system.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a free and open-source document database designed for ease of application development and scaling. It is classified as a NoSQL database and thus it stores data in flexible, JSON-like documents, meaning fields can vary from document to document and data structure can be changed over time.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database program on a Fedora 35.

• NGINX is a web server with excellent performance and low memory footprint. NGINX can also be used as a reverse proxy (FastCGI, Apache, uWSGI), as a proxy for mail protocols (IMAP, POP3) and as a load balancer.

• In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to install WordPress on AlmaLinux with a LEMP stack.

• AlmaLinux is a relatively new Linux distro – an alternative to the old CentOS. It’s an RHEL clone, a downstream build, run by the community, and it’s free. You can easily migrate from CentOS to AlmaLinux using their tools. You can already get an AlmaLinux VPS at some hosting providers like Linode and Vultr.

• Apache, also known as Apache HTTP server, has been one of the most widely used web server applications globally for the past few decades. It is a free and open-source web application software maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. Apache provides some powerful features with dynamically loadable modules, easy integration with other software, and handling of static files, among other popular features.

• In the tutorial, you will learn how to install and configure Apache (HTTPD) on openSUSE Leap 15 with a free TLS/SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.

• PGAdmin is a web-based GUI tool used to interact with the Postgres database sessions, both locally and remote servers as well. It is an open-source, powerful, and feature-rich graphical user interface (GUI) administration and management tool for the PostgreSQL database. It provides a powerful user interface that enables you to easily create, manage, maintain and use database objects, by both beginners and experienced Postgres users alike.

• pgAdmin 4 supports PostgreSQL 9.2 or later, and runs on Unix and its variants such as Linux, Mac OS X as well as Windows operating systems.

• In this article, we will learn how to install pgadmin 4 on Debian 11 server. This guide assumes that you already have Postgres 9.2 installed and set up. If not checkout How to Install and Configure Postgres 14 on Debian 11

• Software development is moving to better milestones thanks to Google’s effort in creating open-source UI software applications like Flutter. Flutter’s footprints are applicable in the development of numerous cross-platform applications by referencing a single codebase.

• So whether your apps target Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android users or those used to web platforms, Flutter will natively compile and build the perfect app for your target audience.

• EmulationStation is a frontend for emulators that gives a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to access all favorite games. It is the frontend for the widely known RetroPie projects that comes pre-configured with more than 30 different emulators for distinct platforms.

• In this article guide, we shall cover the installation process of the EmulationStation on your Linux OS.

• Sometimes you may want to install Debian desktop or server on a virtual machine. However, you may have realized that communication between the host and the VM machine doesn’t exist. Luckily, many distributions now carry the open-source VM tools that can be used for many of the most popular Virtual Machine products such as VMware.

• In the following small tutorial, you will learn how to install these tools on your Debian 10 Buster or Debian 11 Bullseye server or desktop environment.

• If you are looking for a database for analyzing time series data, TimescaleDB might be the best option. TimescaleDB is based on PostgreSQL, but is tuned for speed and scalability when it comes to analyze time series data. It is an open source and free database system provided by the PostgreSQL developers. This database system is very useful when using a real-time monitoring system and a system that requires time series data. In this article we will learn how to install and configure TimescaleDB with PostgreSQL on Ubuntu 20.04.

• LXD is described as the next-generation container and virtual machine manager that offers an immersive for Linux systems running inside containers or as virtual machines.

• It provides images for an inordinate number of Linux distributions with support for a wide selection of storage backends and network types. It also provides the option of installing the images on an individual PC/laptop and even on a cloud instance.

• LXD allows you to manage containers and VMs using three ways. You can leverage the lxc client or command-line tool, a REST API, or even third-party integrations.

• Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install the Exa command on Ubuntu 20.04. This command adds functionality to another command known throughout Linux as ls So, let’s get started.

• Today we are looking at how to install Kdenlive 18.12 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• In this video, we are looking at how to install MEGAsync on Elementary OS 6.0.

• SuperSlicer is an open-source fork of the PrusaSlicer application. It works quickly and efficiently and can help you get the most out of your 3D printer. Here’s how to use SuperSlicer on your Linux PC.

• SuperSlicer is an open-source fork of the PrusaSlicer application. It works quickly and efficiently and can help you get the most out of your 3D printer.

Games

• As is customary every year for us here at Boiling Steam, we got together to list our game picks of 2021 on Linux. Note that most of these games are available on Steam and as such, will likely be on sale during the Steam Winter Sale. If it is, we will add a link to the Steam store page and mention the percentage off (we’ll also let you know if there’s a native Linux version available).

Devices/Embedded

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• With year two of the COVID era drawing to a close, here is a look back on some of the most interesting open source developments of 2021. Let’s hope the new Omicron wave of working from home creates some amazing new projects — and ends soon.

Funding

• Brian Lunduke, the “Linux Sucks” guy who was once known as “The Linux Tycoon” (a moniker he swears wasn’t his idea), has come up with a way to harness the non-fungible token craze for the good of Linux and open source.

• With tongue only partly in cheek, he announced on The Lunduke Journal of Technology on Monday that he has launched a “Tux on Tour” campaign to raise money for Linux and open source projects.

Programming/Development

• Most of my readers are probably aware of the Y2038 issue by now. If not, it refers to 3:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038, when 32-bit time_t will overflow. The Linux kernel has internally switched to 64-bit timekeeping several years ago, and Alpine made the jump to 64-bit time_t with the release of Alpine 3.13.

• In the GNU/Linux world, the GNU libc started to support 64-bit time_t in version 2.34. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the approach they have used to support 64-bit time_t is technically deficient, following in the footsteps of other never-fully-completed transitions.

Perl/Raku

• The Dancer Core Team has done our best to look at this every which way and cover all potential issues and use cases, but we’re sure to have missed something here or there. So take a look and let us know. Your feedback is welcome – please add comments, feedback, and suggestions on the issue.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Zsh is particularly powerful when you need some good old expansions. It supports common ones used by Bash too, and add many flags and modifiers on top. It comes in handy to manipulate quickly your commands without writing boring shell scripts.

• We’ll see, in this article, what we can do with Zsh expansions, and more specifically:

• How to use glob operators and globbing flags.

• What glob qualifiers we can use to expand filenames.

• How to expand the Zsh history and how to modify these expansions.

• How to expand parameters, using modifiers and flags.

Java

• One great thing about Linux and the open source community is that as soon as a vulnerability is detected, developers are hard at work releasing tools to mitigate the problem. Such is the case with the Log4j vulnerability.

Leftovers

• Horizon Worlds is a VR (virtual reality) social space and world building game created by Facebook. In early December, a beta tester wrote about being virtually groped by another Horizon Worlds user. A few weeks later, The Verge and other outlets published stories about the incident. However, their coverage omits key details from the victim’s account. As a result, it presents the assault as a failure of user operated moderation tools rather than the limits of top-down moderation. Nevertheless, this VR groping illustrates the difficulty of moderating VR, and the enduring value of tools that let users solve problems for themselves.

• That’s changed. Vanishingly small numbers of people still farm, and whatever relative security or independence citizens can attain is now based on the whim of fickle employers. Workers are supposed to gain “skills” which can produce profits for hedge-funders single-mindedly focused on “efficiency.” That means getting the “workforce” to do more for less.

• Kids in our downwardly-mobile society are encouraged to become “employable” and even at the collegiate level the idea of exploring the world of ideas, history and philosophy——still common through the mid-20th century —— is increasingly outmoded.

• This year, 2021, began with a huge sense of relief as Trump left office. We hoped to emerge from the ravages of COVID, pass a hefty Build Back Better (BBB) bill, and make significant cuts to the Pentagon budget. But, alas, we faced a January 6 white nationalist insurrection, two new COVID mutations, a sliced-and-diced BBB bill that didn’t pass, and a Pentagon budget that actually INCREASED!

• Before my long travel, I pack my suitcases, stuff them with some sand from our land, some scent from my mother’s kitchen and sounds of birds in the morning.

• And in my pockets, I put the four directions. My hands are the compass.

• This year, 2021, began with a huge sense of relief as Trump left office. We hoped to emerge from the ravages of COVID, pass a hefty Build Back Better (BBB) bill, and make significant cuts to the Pentagon budget. But, alas, we faced a January 6 white nationalist insurrection, two new COVID mutations, a sliced-and-diced BBB bill that didn’t pass, and a Pentagon budget that actually INCREASED!

• Legendary poet, singer, author and activist Patti Smith has been awarded a key to New York City. Smith’s music has inspired countless bands and helped earn her the title of the queen of punk. Her song “People Have the Power” has become an anthem at protests across the globe. Patti Smith has also been a longtime activist, performing regularly at antiwar rallies and political benefits. She gave an emotional acceptance speech during a ceremony Monday with outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. We also air a clip of her live performance with singer Michael Stipe at Democracy Now!’s 20th anniversary celebration in 2016.

• The Microsoft Bing search engine has quietly stopped accepting XML Sitemap pings over the holiday break. XML Sitemaps are a structured data format that contains a list of a website’s primary pages. Websites can proactively ping search engines when they publish changes to request that the search engine come and index their new pages.

• Sometime between December 14th and 22nd, Bing stopped accepting new ping submissions to its XML Sitemap Ping service. The API endpoint at bing.com/ping now returns an HTTP 410 Gone error message. The error message suggests deliberation and permanence (as opposed to an intermittent problem (HTTP 500) or an HTTP 404 Not Found).

Hardware

• When we talk about a “computer” today, we generally picture an electronic machine that can perform various kinds of mathematical operations, manage its program flow, move data from one place to another, and string all these functions together to perform some useful task. But once upon a time there were machines that could perform only a subset of these functions; these might be classified somewhere between computers and calculators.

• One such machine was the Elektronensaldierer ES 24, built in 1955 by German computer pioneer Heinz Nixdorf. Its name translates as “electronic balancer”, with “balance” in the accounting sense meaning the difference of assets and liabilities. Designed to interface with a punch card machine from French manufacturer Bull, it contained several hundred vacuum tubes and could be used to add and subtract numbers stored on those punch cards.

• [BuildXYZ] started by building a pintisserie, which is exactly what it sounds like — a rotating barbecue spit for a pinball machine’s guts that makes it a breeze to work on. This maintenance-friendliness reappears in the new cabinet design, where the circuit boards are screwed to a pair of drawers.

• No, you don’t have to play it flat. But you do have to clear off the top before pressing Start, because a pair of mini industrial linear actuators raise the back end by 5-7° depending on the setting. We were a little sad about the lack of plunger, but [BuildXYZ] is right — it would knock at your kneecaps. On the bright side, [BuildXYZ] reused the ‘free ball’ solenoid as the ball launcher, which is driven by that shiny metal button. Again, be sure to check it out after the break.

• All of the LEDs are connected to a NodeMCU ESP8266 by way of a 74AHCT125 level-shifter, though [Will] notes you could certainly use a different microcontroller with some tweaks to the code. As it stands, the user selects from various lighting patterns using two potentiometers and a button that have been mounted next to the panel. But if you were so inclined, it certainly wouldn’t take much to adapt the firmware so that the lighting effects could be triggered from the PC.

• We always enjoy [Thomas Sanladerer’s] 3D printing videos. But his latest isn’t only about 3D printing. He shows how he uses a DLP printer — which has UV light, after all — to expose PC board blanks with great results. Honestly, once we heard the idea, we immediately saw how that could work it is surprising more people aren’t taking advantage of their DLP printers like that. Of course, [Thomas] does his usual thorough treatment of the topic.

• Really, this isn’t exactly 3D printing even though it uses a 3D printer. Exposing boards with UV light and artwork is an old process that has been around for years, usually using transparency film and a UV light source. With a printer, you can create artwork digitally and the UV light source is already there.

• We liked his test strip method for dialing in the exposure time. Reminded us of our old darkroom days. He also tried using resin as a resist on a bare copper board but that didn’t seem to work as well as you would hope.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The reason I support vaccine mandates is that all policies are in a vacuum. It may very well be a violation of certain freedom to mandate vaccines and in a socialist utopia on our horizon we would not have a profit making machine that creates pandemics nor would we have an authoritarian state to mandate treatment for them by profit-making companies. But in our world, where our immediate choices are capitalism with vaccines and capitalism without vaccines I’ll take the former.

• Our lives aren’t free under the current tyranny of the employer-employee relationship, according to Mr. Wolff. He’s correct. What’s one more unfreedom to add to the list when it saves the lives of the working class?

• By the time Cheryl Cosey learned she had COVID-19, she had gone three days without dialysis — a day and a half more than she usually waited between appointments. She worried how much longer she could wait before going without her life-saving treatments would kill her.

• The 58-year-old Cosey was a dialysis technician for years before she herself was diagnosed with end-stage renal disease. After that, she usually took a medical transport van to a dialysis facility three days a week. There, she sat with other patients for hours in the same kind of cushioned chairs where she’d prepped her own patients, connected to machines that drew out their blood, filtered it for toxins, then pumped it back into their fatigued bodies.

• Americans who want to buy the safest chicken and turkey have had little to go on beyond brand names and labels.

• But those don’t tell the whole story, as we learned from the readers who’ve used our Chicken Checker app.

• As the U.S. military continues construction of a controversial new base at Henoko Bay, Okinawa, the recent discovery of extreme levels of highly toxic “forever chemicals” in local waterways and groundwater has renewed long-standing opposition to the American occupation of large portions of the Japanese archipelago.

• “Imagine the uproar if China were responsible for this PFOS contamination. But since the U.S. is to blame, it will be swept under the rug.”

• On Friday, December 24, I went to Aliamanu Military Reservation at Red Hill housing area which is located above the entryway into the main tunnel that leads into the U.S. Navy’s deep, massive, leaking 80-year-old Red Hill underground jet fuel storage tanks complex. These tanks are only 100 feet above the main aquifer of drinking water for 400,000, half the population of the island of O’ahu, Hawai’i.

• Workers’ rights advocates accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of putting business interests ahead of public health Tuesday after the agency released new guidelines for asymptomatic Americans with Covid-19, while experts expressed concern that the guidance will result in confusion and more transmission of the disease.

• The CDC announced late Monday that instead of isolating at home for 10 days, people who contract the coronavirus will be advised to isolate for five days immediately after testing positive. If the person is asymptomatic after five days f, they may return to work, school, and other activities but should wear a mask everywhere, including at home if they live with others, for five more days.

• The latest push by the U.S. government to encourage Americans to get vaccinated against Covid-19 took on a “dark and dystopian” appearance, healthcare advocates said Tuesday, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an ad warning those who are hospitalized could face exorbitant medical bills.

• “Only in the United States could the government run a public health campaign centered on fears of large, unexpected medical bills,” tweeted Sarah Kliff, a health policy reporter for the New York Times.

• First, note that mutations are, to some degree, expected of a virus. As the novel coronavirus began to lose battle after battle to human immune systems and due to human ingenuity (vaccines), the “survivor” viruses tended to be the ones that mutated to effectively ward off human efforts at immunity. Those survivors then pass those traits to the offspring viruses it creates through replication. Thanks to genetic technology, researchers have been able to study those mutant strains and learn about SARS-CoV-2′s “family tree,” so to speak — that is, the relationship between all the variants that stemmed from one another.

• Here’s where it gets weird. There is a big gap in the omicron variant’s timeline.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

• The dangerous activity, known as “the penny challenge”, began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• In August, Apple made a startling announcement: the company would be installing scanning software on all of its devices, which would inspect users’ private photos in iCloud and iMessage.

• This scanning software, intended to protect children online, effectively abandoned Apple’s once-famous commitment to security and privacy. Apple has historically been a champion of encryption, a feature that would have been undermined by its proposed scanning software. But after years of pressure from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad, it appears that Apple was ready to cave and provide a backdoor to users’ private data, at least when it comes to photos stored on their phones.

• At EFF, we called out the danger of this plan the same day it was made public. There is simply no way to apply something like “client-side scanning” and still meet promises to users regarding privacy.

• We’ve noted for years how U.S. telecom giants aren’t particularly competent when it comes to wandering outside of their core competencies (building and running networks, lobbying the government to hamstring competitors). As government pampered regional monopolies who haven’t had to try particularly hard for decades, stuff like competition, innovation, adaptation, and creativity are often alien constructs.

Defence/Aggression

• Brooklyn Center, Minn.—It was a typical Sunday afternoon, and Daunte Wright was driving with his girlfriend, Alayna Albrecht-Payton, in this Minneapolis suburb to get his white Buick LaCrosse cleaned. The 20-year-old Black man had just left his parents’ house after his mother, Katie Bryant, gave him $50 for gas and a car wash.

• I don’t care what kinds of excuses are made by the cop or cops who fired shots, one of which tore away this young girl’s life as her horrified mother had to watch and desperately try to save her. There is simply no possible justification for firing police guns in a crowded store.

• I cannot even bear to try and imagine the agony her family is now suffering, especially listening to the tired police excuses and lame platitudes that always accompany such all too frequent monstrous acts by America’s centurions.

• The Los Angeles Police Department released video footage Monday showing the moment when an officer fatally shot 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta while firing three rifle rounds at an assault suspect inside a Burlington Coat Factory store in North Hollywood.

• Orellana-Peralta was with her mother trying on clothes in a Burlington dressing room on Thursday when she was shot and killed by an officer whose name has yet to be released by the LAPD. Police said Monday that a bullet bounced off the floor and went through the wall of the dressing room.

• In early 2019, a whistleblower revealed some ugliness emanating from the United Arab Emirates: former NSA analysts working for a private company hired to perform counterterrorism work for the government were spying on journalists, activists, and the occasional American citizen on behalf of their royal benefactors.

• A United Nations special envoy on Tuesday raised alarm about the safety of civilians in war-torn Yemen given escalating violence, including airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition.

• “Airstrikes on Sanaa have resulted in loss of civilian lives, and damaged civilian infrastructure and residential areas.”

• We are all far too accustomed to the crude tone and tenor of public discourse. Many media experts will tell you that there is an emphasis on sound bites and clickbait — the more odd and ostentatious the better. That’s nothing new.

• In that ocntext, one may be almost tempted to dismiss Fox News host Jesse Watters and his comments offered up at the expense of Dr. Anthony Fauci as one of the latest examples of such crudeness in our culture war.

• Around 30 women gathered near a mosque in the centre of Kabul and marched a few hundred metres chanting “justice, justice” before they were stopped by Taliban forces, an AFP correspondent saw.

• The Taliban also tried to prevent journalists from covering the march, organised against the “mysterious murders of young people, particularly the country’s former soldiers”, according to social media invitations.

• Taliban fighters briefly detained a group of reporters and confiscated equipment from some photographers, deleting images from their cameras before returning them.

Environment

• President Biden was right when he said global warming is an existential threat. That’s why it’s so disappointing that his administration produced auto-pollution rules that are a speed bump on the road to the climate precipice, right when we need a U-turn.

• In an interview published in The Washington Post Magazine on Monday, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said it is “strange” that some consider U.S. President Joe Biden a climate leader even as his administration fails to take the ambitious steps necessary to tackle the intensifying planetary crisis.

• When asked whether she is “inspired” by Biden or other world leaders, Thunberg pointed out that “the U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure” under the current administration.

• “Before this year, Russia was rather skeptical about climate change and the role of people in climate change,” reports Tatiana Lanshina. “But this year, the official rhetoric actually changed a bit.”

• One reason for that shift in rhetoric was the very real impact of climate change on Russia over the last year. Flames consumed huge stretches of Siberian forest over the summer in what turned out to be a record year for wildfires. Flooding in southern agricultural regions disrupted farming which, combined with droughts elsewhere, has threatened the country’s food security.

Energy

• Conservationists and impacted communities celebrated Tuesday after a South African court blocked Shell’s seismic exploration for oil and gas along the country’s Wild Coast, which critics argued endangered marine life and the livelihoods of local fishers.

• “The case has huge significance in that it shows that no matter how big a company is, it ignores local communities at its peril.”

Finance

• Although questions remain about the deaths of six workers at the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., we do know one thing: While extreme weather events are rare (although becoming increasingly less so), safety problems at Amazon are terribly common. Its facilities are massive, the pace of the order fulfillment process is punishing, and many buildings are not climate-controlled. Turnover and injury rates are high. According to OSHA data from 2020, for every 200,000 hours worked at an Amazon warehouse in the United States, there were 5.9 serious accidents, which is close to double the rate of non-Amazon warehouses—higher than construction, coal mining, and most manufacturing. A 2020 study by Reveal, based on three years of weekly data, found that the Edwardsville warehouse had an injury rate of 9.5 in 2018 and 6.6 in 2019.

• One of Philadelphia’s biggest unions has endorsed Paul Prescod, a progressive Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania’s 8th Senate District, joining a growing list of working-class advocates backing the campaign of the educator and longtime labor movement organizer.

• “I will be willing to take on the wealthy interests that are getting in the way of the future we deserve.”

• Republicans, along with some prominent right-wing Democrats, have been hammering the Biden administration over rising food and gas prices for months. In November, when the Labor Department announced that consumer prices had risen 6.2 percent from October 2020 to October 2021, the Republican National Committee tweeted, “Bidenflation is hurting working Americans all over the country.” Corporate media outlets are boosting this line of attack, from a viral CNN segment about a family that buys 12 gallons of milk a week to the downright false claims that inflation is being driven by the Covid-19 stimulus package that passed in March or by rising wages for the working class.

• Even more at risk are the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are the backbone of the productive economy, companies that need bank credit to survive. In 2020, 200,000 more U.S. businesses closed than in normal pre-pandemic years. SMEs targeted as “nonessential” were restricted in their ability to conduct business, while the large international corporations remained open. Raising interest rates on the surviving SMEs could be the final blow.

• Cut Demand or Increase Supply?

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• In July 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign released an ad titled “Role Models.” It starts off with what appear to be exterior shots of a single-family home in the rural Midwest and then of an inner-city rowhouse. Next we see children, representing numerous target demographics, watching TV inside dimly lit living rooms as candidate Donald Trump’s voice emanates from a bright screen. Some of his greatest hits ensue: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters, OK?

• It’s like incredible!” and “Blood coming out of her… wherever.” As the children’s innocent faces are illuminated by the on-screen Trump mid-sound-bite, we are meant to be aghast, worried about their moral development (and maybe also their eyesight). However, by the time “You can tell them to go [bleep] themselves” rolled around, I remember thinking to myself, “This is a terrible commercial, at least if it’s meant as an attack ad. Everyone I know has someone they want to tell to go fuck themselves. What stops us? We need the job, the favor, the reference, the free babysitting from the in-laws.” Trump—encased by wealth and shamelessness—needed none of those things. He was bound by nothing. For some, a vote for Trump was a chance to inhabit that boundlessness, to tell the rest of the world to go fuck ourselves.

• The year 2021 demanded every bit as much from progressives as the difficult years that preceded it. Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump only after the outgoing president urged on a coup attempt and was impeached for the second time. In the face of an ongoing pandemic and the economic uncertainty extending from it, Biden found himself struggling not just with Republicans but also with corporate-aligned “centrist” Democrats who were disinclined to govern boldly. That set the stage for a year that saw progress come slowly and presidential approval ratings decline. Progressives had to fight to keep the administration from missing historic opportunities, while at the same time they championed an urgent racial justice agenda that faced a growing backlash, defended abortion rights, and struggled to save the planet. It wasn’t an easy year, but these leaders fought the good fight—and gave us hope for 2022.  John Nichols1

• As rising coronavirus cases and the derailing of the Build Back Better bill dampened holiday cheer, the Biden administration made an announcement last week that inspired some hope for the new year. After sustained public pressure, it extended until May the moratorium on student loan repayments that was scheduled to end in January. With 89 percent of borrowers reporting that they are not “financially secure” enough to resume payments in the immediate future, the extension will provide vital relief.

• Russian police reportedly detained as many as five former activists from Alexey Navalny’s disbanded political network on Tuesday, December 28. According to various reports, arrests were carried out in the cities of Tomsk, Irkutsk, Arkhangelsk, Barnaul, and Saratov (though not all of the detentions have been confirmed). Following interrogations, investigators brought criminal charges against two of the detained activists — former regional coordinators Ksenia Fadeeva and Zakhar Sarapulov — for involvement in an extremist group and participation in a nonprofit organization that infringes on the rights of citizens. Both Fadeeva and Sarapulov were arraigned on Tuesday and placed under restrictions pending trial.

• The liberal press has covered this effort with Barton Gellman’s article in the Atlantic Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun, leading the charge. But as Gellman immediately notes, Trump’s attempt wouldn’t be an armed uprising.

• Nevertheless, violence like the January 6 offense on the Capitol could be repeated in the future by right-wing groups like the Oath Keepers, 1st Amendment Praetorian and the Proud Boys. There is no other word than “violence” to describe what happened. At a congressional hearing last week, four officers testified before congress that crowds of people, many wielding weapons, attacked and threatened them. Over one hundred were seriously wounded in protecting our nation’s Capitol.

• After leaving university, Claud had won a travelling fellowship from Queen’s College, Oxford, which he believed would give him just enough money, when supplemented by meagre journalistic earnings, to live in Berlin for a couple of years. But as Christmas approached at the end of the first year, he realised that he had miscalculated and, moreover, he had to feed not only himself but a dog left in his care by his girlfriend Berta who had gone to Vienna for the holiday period.

• “It was a horrible Christmas for the dog,” Claud wrote later in his memoir In Time of Trouble, “because just at that time I had run entirely out of money and was living chiefly on expectations of a cheque from the United States that never came. To begin with, the dog fed fairly well because the butcher round the corner always had a pile of scraps – offal, bacon rind and the like – which he gave me free when I bought meat for myself.”

Misinformation/Disinformation

• It’s becoming quite a theme: basically every industry is blaming the internet for anything wrong happening in their industry and the legacy media is more than willing to help out. The latest is the supposed “surge” in shoplifting and retail crime. You’ve probably seen the stories, and maybe the shaky video coverage of the big smash and grab runs at some big San Francisco stores. This is being leveraged by those retailers in a variety of ways, including in a push to roll back policing reforms, but also to attack the internet. We’ve talked about the problems of the INFORM Act, which is being pushed heavily by large retailers. If you read that letter (sent to Congressional leaders by a bunch of big retailers), it uses those stories of theft to say we need to pass new regulations about internet sales:

Censorship/Free Speech

• To be subservient to the Chinese government is to be in a constant state of (mandated) denial. The government has a narrative to project. No, that’s not an accurate depiction. The state has a narrative to enforce.

• It’s always fun to watch each new entrant into the social media market that rushes in claiming that it is the “true” supporter of “free speech” learn about the necessity of some level of content moderation. We watched it happen with Parler, the site set up by Trump benefactor Rebekah Mercer. And now we’re watching it happen with former Trump spokesperson Jason Miller — who is so supportive of “free speech” that he once sued a news org for reporting on something he didn’t want public (he lost badly and was told to pay legal fees). GETTR has already had some fun learning that content moderation is necessary (and not a necessary “evil” — just necessary). But now it’s gone up a level.

• In a ruling on Tuesday, December 28, Russia’s Supreme Court shut down the country’s oldest and most authoritative human rights organization — the “Memorial” International Historical Educational Charitable and Human Rights Society. The ruling granted a petition filed by the Attorney General’s Office, which maintains that International Memorial repeatedly violated Russia’s “foreign agent” legislation (without presenting convincing evidence to support this claim). Moscow prosecutors filed a similar lawsuit against Memorial’s human rights branch — the next hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, December 29. To find out what today’s ruling means for the future of International Memorial, Meduza spoke to the chairman of the organization’s board, Yan Rachinsky.

• In a ruling on Tuesday, Russia’s Supreme Court dissolved the “Memorial” International Historical Educational Charitable and Human Rights Society, granting a petition by the Attorney General’s Office, which argues that the organization repeatedly violated Russia’s laws on “foreign agents” by failing to disclose its “agent” status in content shared on social media.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The Council on Foreign Relations is usually regarded as a peak institution of the US ruling class. Its fellows design policy and its members, drawn from Wall Street, academia, and elite journalism, hobnob with government ministers and even the occasional president. But its star has fallen with the demise of the old WASP establishment and the replacement of its bipartisan deliberative style with the crude bombast of the present.

• As the future of reproductive rights in the United States is threatened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority and a wave of anti-choice laws passed by states across the nation, some Democrat-led states are taking proactive steps to safeguard the right to choose in ways that go above and beyond affirmative legislation.

• “In my mind, there should be no question where Vermont stands with regard to its core values and fundamental rights… they need to be enshrined in our state constitution.”

• I was born on Jan. 11, 1973, 11 days before Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion across the United States. As a self-described politically aware, adopted teenage girl, this was a chilling factoid for me. Phew, I always thought. Made it. Of course, it was also insignificant, because I was born, adopted and raised in New York, where abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy had been legalized in 1970, long before I was conceived.

• In a spectacular bit of self-ownership, the Dallas Police Department (DPD) took to Facebook to brag about stealing money from a person at Love Field Airport.

• “Senator Manchin is playing a Caesar or at least a King Herod in today’s Christmas story,” said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “He’s saying there’s no room in this democracy for the 140 million poor and low-income Americans, including the 700,000 West Virginians who’ve been locked into poverty and low wages under his watch. He wants to limit poor children’s lives just so he can hold on to his power and wealth. On Christmas Eve, doesn’t this indeed sound like Herod?”

• The Poor People’s Campaign has held numerous rallies and acts of civil disobedience over the past year in support of the Build Back Better Act, while acknowledging that the legislation would be just a first step towards a moral economy.

• This thesis flows from a neglected asymmetry between capitalists and laborers. The capitalist does not stand in the same relation to capital and the services of capital as a laborer does with respect to his laboring capacities and the services of these capacities. This distinction goes unacknowledged by neoclassical economists as well as economists of other persuasions. If this is because they have concluded that this is of no consequence, we offer some arguments to the contrary.

• There is irony in this thesis even as capitalism threatens to render laborers ‘useless,’ that is, replace them with intelligent machines faster than it creates new jobs. But this is not the place to address this irony.

• The death of Desmond Tutu has been a tragic loss to human rights, justice and development in Africa. Many words will be said in his honor. However, the best way to honor his memory is for leaders of industrialized countries to provide increased public health and socio-economic support to the African people to whom Desmond Tutu devoted his life and work.

• Mumia Abu-Jamal remembers South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died on Sunday at the age of 90. Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting to end apartheid in South Africa. In 2007, Tutu visited Mumia when he was still on death row. “His spirit reflected a giant,” says Abu-Jamal. “He struggled for change with his prophetic voice, his sweet humor, his deep love and his boundless sense of compassion.”

• World-renowned author, activist and professor Angela Davis talks about the prison abolition movement from her time as a Black Panther leader to today. In her tireless efforts as an abolitionist and a teacher, Davis continues to be a fierce advocate of education and the interconnected struggles of oppressed peoples. Davis talks about Indigenous genocide, Palestine, critical race theory and the role of independent media. “Democracy Now! helps us to place our own domestic issues and struggles within the context of global battles against fascism,” says Davis.

• World-renowned author, activist and professor Angela Davis talks about navigating the pandemic and an inadequate two-party political system during a time of racial uprising in the United States. She also talks about imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Biden presidential campaign and the protests that erupted from the police killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

• Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as “The Arch”.

• When South Africans woke up on the morning of 7 April, 2017 to protest against then President Jacob Zuma’s removal of the respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, Archbishop Tutuleft his Hermanus retirement home to join the protests. He was 86 years old at the time, and his health was frail. But protest was in his blood. In his view, no government was legitimate unless it represented all its people well.

• Today the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in Africa that could have been avoided. Having sufficient vaccines available to all will help curtail the coronavirus pandemic in Africa. And, by stalling the development of new mutations, in the rest of the world.

• Health problems in Africa still require considerable technical and financial assistance.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• With President Biden’s appointments of Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Gigi Sohn, a net neutrality pioneer, to staff the FCC’s leadership team, we can usher in a better era. Both appointees made clear their support for the 2015 Open Internet Order and belief that the FCC should begin a process to re-establish federal authority over broadband carriers, including network neutrality rules. More fights lie ahead when the new federal rules are established but let’s review what’s happened so far and what they mean for protecting your access to the Internet.

• At its core, the necessity for net neutrality protections rests on one simple fact: people don’t want their broadband provider to dictate their experience online. It’s a need that only grew during the pandemic.

• As the country rapidly transitions education, social activities, and jobs to rely on a persistent, open, and non-discriminatory connection to the world, views of access have shifted. Today, an eye-popping 76% of American Internet users consider internet service to be as important as water and electricity in their daily life. But unlike those utility services, internet access is subject to the whims of private carriers for a large number of American users.

• Pretty much every software update makes the client software buggier than before, but they’ve really been stepping on the hose with BitTorrent traffic.

• Much of the time, you can’t get any real bandwidth at all and you’re stuck downloading at 20-30 KB per second regardless of how fast everything else works. Direct downloads over HTTP(S) work just fine, but BitTorrent traffic is being throttled by some sort of QoS system.

• Throughout 2021, we have tried to respond to the various policy initiatives and projects launched by the Central and State governments with meaningful and privacy-respecting policy analysis. We have also utilized the Right to Information Act, 2005 to bring accountability in the working of every public authority.

Monopolies

Patents

• An unpatented Covid-19 vaccine developed by the Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, and the pharmaceutical firm Biological E. Limited received emergency-use authorization from Indian regulators on Tuesday—news that the jab’s creators hailed as a potential turning point in the push to broaden global vaccine access.

• “Our Texas Children’s Center does not plan to make money on this, it’s a gift to the world.”

• This month, the world could have been celebrating the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, vaccine apartheid and restricted production continue to fuel the spread of the coronavirus.

Trademarks

• The USPTO refused to register the proposed mark ZERO MEAT for “Testing, analysis and evaluation of the goods and services of others to determine conformity with certification standards; testing, analysis and evaluation of the food products of others to determine conformity with certification standards relating to animal, fish or poultry,” on the ground of mere descriptiveness. Applicant Equity argued that the proposed mark is a coined phrase, and that other terms like “contains no …”, or free of …” or “vegan” or “vegetarian” would be used to indicate the absence of animal, fish, or poultry content in foods. How do you think this came out? In re Equity IP Holdings, LLC, Serial No. 88517758 (December 16, 2021) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge George C. Pologeorgis).

• In an otherwise straightforward Section 2(d) analysis, the Board ruled that confusion is likely between Respondent’s registered marks MIRAGE BRANDS (standard form) and MIRAGE BRANDS & Design [BRANDS disclaimed], and Petitioner Mahender Sabhnani’s previously used and registered mark ROYAL MIRAGE & Design, all for perfume. Finding that “Respondent’s presence in the marketplace is considerably greater than that of Petitioner,” the Board saw “a circumstance of reverse confusion in which consumers exposed to Respondent’s marks for perfumes who encounter Petitioner’s mark for perfume are likely to believe mistakenly that Petitioner’s goods originate with Respondent.” Mahender Sabhnani v. Mirage Brands, LLC, 2021 USPQ2d 1241 (TTAB 2021) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Christopher Larkin).

Copyrights

• India’s largest newspaper publishing group has filed a complaint at the Delhi High Court against dozens of defendants said to have illegally offered its copyrighted publications via WhatsApp. The full case will be heard next year but in the interim, WhatsApp is required to take down or block the infringing groups.

• Movie industry startup White Rabbit allows people to pay for the films they watch on pirate sites. The service compensates filmmakers directly while sharing revenue pirate sites in the process. Add in a blockchain distribution model and it’s clear that the service is up with the times. Or is there such as thing as too much innovation?

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