● 02.26.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 26/2/2022: Wine 7.3 and Some Linux Gadget Reviews

Posted in News Roundup at 3:32 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Late last year, we reviewed Slimbook’s KDE Slimbook, a special version of the Spanish’ Linux OEM’s 15″ laptop made in collaboration with the KDE project. I found it to be an excellent laptop, which left little to be desired for anyone in the market for a laptop of that size. It came with tons of power, unobtrusive fans, a great design, and a fair price tag.

• That being said – personally, I prefer smaller laptops. The KDE Slimbook’s 15 inches is just a bit too wide for me to be comfortable, and I’d much rather have something in the area of 13-14 inches. Luckily, Slimbook has an offering in this segment too: the Slimbook Executive. I’ve been using and testing one for the last few months, and I can confidently say the KDE Slimbook was not a fluke.

Server

• On Friday, AlmaLinux released a new ISO.

• If you’re already running AlmaLinux 8.5 on x86 or Arm machines, this doesn’t affect you. You’re still running the distribution’s latest and greatest, and will be until the next minor point upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (don’t worry, we at FOSS Force will keep you informed). But if you’re still running CentOS (or something else) on your PowerPC or IBM Power Systems boxes because there’s no CentOS replacement for the Power architecture, you can now switch them to AlmaLinux.

Instructionals/Technical

• During the pre-internet days of Unix, what we see on a computer screen today, a terminal was an electronic or electromechanical hardware-based device like electromechanical teleprinters or teletypewriters (TeleTYpewriter abbreviated as TTY). The teletype was a name for the old paper printing terminals that were plugged into the mainframe computers at that time.

• These devices/terminals/teletypes were used as a medium to enter and display data from a computer device. Computers were connected to these devices/terminals/teletypes via serial links. These terminals were big. There was an exact number corresponding to each teletype and referred to by its device file, such as /dev/ttyN. The system would read this file to interpret what is entered from the teletype and write to the same file to print for that teletype. An example of such a device is the Teletype Model 33 ASR.

• The ASR-33 teletype was a standard interactive device at that time. It was noisy and a little slow to print on large yellow-colored papers in uppercase format only.

• This tutorial will explain in step by step how to record a computer screen (also known as screencasting or screen recording) using OBS Studio program. The program is available on Ubuntu GNU/Linux and all other operating systems as well. This will result in a video with a select file format like mp4 or mkv with your voice recorded in. Optionally, we include the setup so you can also record two way voices, both input and output, to record a video conference session with many participants, for example. We will explain it from installing the software to finishing the video.

• Whenever you do a login, logout, or attempt to log in, everything gets recorded on your system, and there is a specific command that you can use to find out who has logged into your Linux system.

• In this article, you will see a binary file that is responsible for maintaining records and how to read the binary file using the “utmpdump“ utility.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WordPress on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, WordPress is a simple content management system based on PHP and MariaDB. It is also a open-source software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app. WordPress has many features that simplify the setup and customization of a website or blog, which is part of what makes it so popular.

• 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 WordPress on a Fedora 35.

• This tutorial will take you through updating a server managed by ISPConfig from Debian 10 (buster) to Debian 11 (bullseye). This guide works for both single- and multiserver setups. Just repeat the same steps on every server.

• Be aware that the update process may cause some downtime.

• The Firefox browser was developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It can be found on nearly all Linux distributions as a primary or secondary web browser, and it’s even used for some educational institutions! By default, Firefox is not natively installed on Manjaro anymore but can be installed still non the less from the Arch User Repository.

• The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some sort of wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date easily while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install the Firefox browser on Manjaro 21 Linux, including Firefox beta, Firefox nightly, and Firefox ESR for those interested in alternative version choices.

• Fetian ePass 2003 is a USB token targeting standard PKI user cases. It supports RSA up to 2048. It has a CCID interface and is supported by the open source CCID driver. So it’s much easier to use in Linux. In this article I’m taking a note on how I use the card with opensc and openssl on Fedora.

• Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Chatwoot on Ubuntu 20.04. The installation of this application allows us to have our real-time chat server through many services. All from a comfortable web interface.

• The Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) is known to be one of the most excellent aesthetic-looking desktop environments created by the developers of Deepin Linux. It is often regarded too as the most beautiful desktop on Linux. For users of Fedora, this can be easily installed and be an optional choice for those that like to hop between desktops.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Deepin Desktop (DDE) on Manjaro Linux 21.

• Yet Another Yaourt, short of yay, is a modern AUR helper written in the GO language for managing your Manjaro Linux distribution packages. It makes it easier to install, update, or remove with just one command, which will free up time spent on their system for most users.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Yay, which will make things much more accessible than using Pacman commands. Things like updating AUR packages are not supported, for example, so installing Yay can be pretty essential on how you interact with your Manjaro system.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install git and yay AUR helper on Manjaro Linux 21.

• If you know the PID of a process, here’s how to get the process name in Linux command line.

• Let’s learn the commands and steps involved in installing and using DBeaver on Debian 11 Bullseye with the help of the terminal.

• DBeaver is an open-source community tool to help the user in administrating different databases. It is a small in size tool that admins and developers can use to access databases to analyze data or manage the respective database. The tool is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. A plug-in for Eclipse is also available.

• Users can manage various databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, MS Access, Teradata, Firebird, Apache Hive, Phoenix, or Presto. However, a large number of other databases are available. The tool displays this in the open dialog.

• This guide explains how to configure the Task Switcher in the KDE Plasma desktop.

Wine or Emulation

• More work has been done on the Windows compatibility layer Wine in development version 7.3 that’s out now.

• This is the compatibility layer that allows you to run games and applications developed for Windows – on Linux (plus also macOS and BSD). It’s a major part of what makes up Steam Play Proton and enables a ton of games to work on the Steam Deck. Once a year or so, a new stable release is made.

Games

• Steam Deck goes on sale February 25, and begins shipping three days later. Use this helpful guide to determine the model that’s best for you, and take a deep dive into the system’s specs, expected battery life, and game compatibility.

• The Steam Deck is easily one of the most anticipated pieces of PC gaming tech since… well, maybe ever? The promise of carrying the entirety of your Steam library wherever you go on this bulky but well-designed and relatively powerful handheld gaming device is massively alluring, especially to those of us who continuously fatten our backlog with each passing Steam sale. And after a couple of weeks of gaming on Valve’s ambitious handheld PC I can say that a lot of the time it does live up to that hype, but right now, trying to review the Steam Deck is like hitting a moving target. For one thing, whether or not specific games work at a level you’ll find acceptable, or at all, is a case-by-case basis. Additionally, I’ve found myself confronted with technical dead ends far too often for a device that starts at $400 and only goes up from there, but it’s already showing signs of improvement as Valve and various games roll out rapid-fire patches leading up to launch. In other words, the Steam Deck experience I had when I first booted it up a few weeks back is not the same as the constantly improving one I have in front of me today, and it’ll likely get significantly better soon.

• What was once our list of the “best Chromebook games” has a new look, a new title. Because in an age of cloud gaming, Stadia and compatibility with Android apps and browser games and Steam – all compatible with Chromebooks now – what really is a Chromebook game? Chromebooks have become extremely robust, and we want our list to reflect that.

• Running some errands and doing some guild battles in Albion Online on the go, or in bed? Why not. Albion Online is getting gamepad support real soon. In a fresh announcement the developer announced that testing will open up on March 2.

• Support will not only include the Steam Deck but also “a wide range of standard PC and console controllers” which is fantastic. I can imagine that opening the game up to a much bigger audience. This is only the start though, it will take time for them to optimize the experience for gamepads for a full proper release of it later.

• Along with the release of the Steam Deck, Valve also announce a new upcoming game in the Portal universe named Aperture Desk Job that will release March 1. To keep expectations in check, it’s not Portal 3 or even close to it but it does expand the universe.

• It’s basically a mini-game to celebrate the Steam Deck release, and it will require a gamepad to play too.

• Curious to know when exactly you’ll get a Steam Deck? A lot of people asked and so Valve has given a little more info. While the Steam Deck has now released, it could still be a little while before you get your hands on a unit even if you’re in the Q1 slot.

• As a reminder: when Valve send you an email to invite you to actually make the purchase, you have 72 hours to go through with it or you entirely lose your place and it goes to the next person.

• I love a good game that you can immerse yourself in for hours, but I don’t always have the luxury of ignoring daily tasks to disappear into a video game. Still, I do love a fun challenge from time to time, and two of my favourite applications to launch when my computer gets busy doing something that I need to wait on are games from the KDE Games package: KBlocks and Kolf.

• My favorite video game involves blocks falling from the sky, and ideally landing in rows which magically disappear when blocks are contiguous. KBlocks is one implementation of that format, and it’s a good one. It’s got responsive block rotation with Left and Right Arrow, adjustable faster fall with the Down Arrow, instant fall with Spacebar, There are a few different levels of difficulty to control how quickly blocks fall.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Well, I know I said Plasma 5.24 was a smooth release, and it mostly has been! But nonetheless all of you have found various bugs afflicting your varied and diverse use cases, and we’ve been working hard to fix them this week. Some very important multi-monitor fixes and long-term improvements also landed which should be welcome for people with often-docked laptops.

Distributions

Debian Family

• Earlier this month, American cybersecurity firm SentinelOne released a report on discovering a hacker group called ModifiedElephant, which has been operational for over a decade and allegedly planted incriminating evidence on personal devices of Indian journalists, human rights activists, academics and lawyers. But is there an operating system (OS) that can help keep journalists safe when navigating the internet and communicating with sources? Can it help activists, journalists remain anonymous when they go online? What about politicians worried about cyber-espionage from rival interests?

• If anyone believes they are threatened by cyberattacks from malicious actors with considerable resources, including state and state-aligned entities, Tails OS could be their first step towards protecting their digital activities. Tails, which stands for The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is an open-source, security and privacy-focused operating system. It is based on Debian-based Linux distribution and was famously used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to speak to journalists and documentary filmmakers.

• Unlike Windows and Mac OS, Linux is not built by one single organisation. A Linux distribution or distro refers to an operating system made using the Linux kernel (the computer program at the core of the operating system) with other programs and applications, tailored towards a particular use case. The Linux kernel is also used for other popular operating systems including Ubuntu, Manjaro, Linux Mint and Pop!_OS.

• Tails works on a simple enough premise: it is designed to be booted off a flash drive every time you use it. Tails can be used to operate a computer and access the internet without compromising user identity and data. Since Tails runs separately from the OS installed on a computer and doesn’t make use of the computer’s hard drive. It also does not store any data, which can make it incredibly complicated and annoying to use for most people. In theory, it can offer protection to users even on a compromised system.

• Here’s a closer look at the Tails operating system, and how you can safely install it on any flash drive.

TrueNAS and Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Following on from my previous posts about upgrading TerraMaster NAS devices with Unraid and TrueNas, this post is about upgrading my TrueNAS Core installation to TrueNAS Scale.

• My main home server is Ubuntu Server, so I am more familiar with using Linux and Docker than I am with FreeBSD. I also like to try out new things.

• TrueNAS Scale is still in Beta, so it’s probably not the best thing to use for highly important data, but I am not too concerned as my backups are not essential.

• TrueNAS Scale has been in development for quite some time now and is now available in addition to iXsystems’ original TrueNAS software, which should be getting it’s own update to TrueNAS 13 relatively soon. TrueNAS Scale is Linux based as opposed to the original which ran on FreeBSD, and that increases the available tools to a user that wants better control over their networked storage devices.

Devices/Embedded

• The screen on the Android 11 Astro Slide phone slides up (hence the name) to reveal a full-sized keyboard in a format similar to a very small laptop.

• The full specifications for the device are available on Planet’s web site, but we include a summary below.

• Planet previously brought us the Cosmo Communicator and Gemini – both supported 4G plus WiFi and had a clam-shell style arrangement to access the keyboard – this of course meant that there was no screen visible when the device was closed.

• The Astro Slide fixes all that and also includes an update to 5G. Originally available as an Indegogo project, the Astro Slide is now available for direct purchase.

• In summary, we have a 5G dual-SIM device running Android 11 with the promise of support for Sailfish, Debian and Kali Linux. The Astro Slide has 2 USB-C ports and has provision for dual SIMs and an additional microSD card, it also supports eSIM. This is the perfect solution for those who want the portability of a pocket-sized device with the power and flexibility of a (budget) laptop, assuming they’re happy with a larger device that’s probably twice the thickness of their existing phone.

• The Raspberry Pi single-board computer debuted February 29, 2012. Since then, it’s become a worldwide phenomenon, powering a wide range of hobbyist projects and commercial products alike. Let’s take a look at what makes the Raspberry Pi series special—then and now.

• Codasip, the leader in processor design automation, today announced the L31 and L11, the latest in its range of low power embedded RISC-V processor cores optimized for customization. With the new cores, customers can more easily customize processor designs using Codasip Studio tools to support challenging tasks such as neural networks (AI/ML) even in the smallest, power-constrained applications – such as IoT edge.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• airyxOS is a FreeBSD, open-source desktop operating system that looks, feels, and promises to run like macOS. It also aims to run Mac apps, just like macOS.

• That sounds like an interesting proposition for desktop users who like Mac but don’t want to restrict themselves with Apple hardware. The AiryxOS website also says that developers “love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem.”

• The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) released its completed SD-RAN project to open source after years of development, giving a further boost to the global open RAN movement.

• Release of the SD-RAN project is the culmination of work commenced in 2020 with operators including China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom and AT&T to build and trial O-RAN Alliance-compliant open-source components to free mobile players from vendor lock in.

• Here are three ways to get the most out of open source in the cloud.

• VeraCrypt 1.25.9 includes fixes for the three supported operating systems Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Most changes apply only to the Windows version, including a fix for a BSOD that could happen on shutdown.

• A new project dubbed Neptune OS intends to put a Windows-NT-compatible personality on top of the seL4 microkernel.

• The project is still under development and doesn’t actually run anything yet, but is nonetheless an intriguing prospect.

• The secure embedded L4 microkernel – seL4 to its friends – is the fruit of microkernel operating system research that continued after the Mach generation, the latter being famously used inside macOS.

• After all that work, GTK3 worked “well enough” that it seemed ready for general consumption (or at least testing), so waddlesplash committed the necessary changes to HaikuPorts for Xlibe to be packaged, and then GTK3, and then finally the first GTK3 application: Inkscape. Already, GIMP has followed closely on its tail thanks to 3dEyes (with some quick fixes to Xlibe done by waddlesplash for it), and more GTK3 applications are sure to follow once the HaikuPorts team gets caught up to speed on things.

• You can find screenshots on the forums of both GIMP and Inkscape running on Haiku. With that, waddlesplash has deemed the “GTK3 porting adventure” complete, and has returned to development work on Haiku’s core for this coming month.

• CHIPS Alliance, the leading consortium advancing common and open source hardware for interfaces, processors and systems, today established the FOSS Flow For FPGA (F4PGA) Workgroup to drive open source tooling, IP and research efforts for FPGAs.

• [...]

• The initial F4PGA projects are focused around the free and open source FPGA toolchain formerly known as SymbiFlow, as well as the FPGA Interchange Format, which is designed to enable interoperability between open and closed source FPGA toolchains. CHIPS Alliance’s newest member Xilinx, now part of AMD, collaborated with Google and Antmicro to develop the Interchange Format definition and related tools to provide a development standard for the entire FPGA industry. The FPGA Interchange Format allows developers to quickly and easily move from one tool to another, lowering the barriers to entry for the entire supply chain – from FPGA vendors to academics and FPGA users.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• As I was looking over the latest releases from the WordPress theme directory this week, I came across one that caught my eye. Onia was clean and minimal while reserving its flourishes to bring attention to just a few elements across the page.

• Could this be one of those diamonds in the rough I am always looking for in the free theme directory?

• It had the potential, but it fell short. As I explored the theme, it felt like the author had spent 90% of their time designing an eye-catching front page. Diving into inner pages showed no attention to typography as the character count per line was pushing 150 and beyond, more than twice what it should be for comfortable reading.

• That is the sort of thing that is easy to address. I was more disappointed that Onia was not a block theme. All the elements were there. It did not do anything particularly complex, and there was no evident reason for it to be a classic theme.

Programming/Development

• NoSQL database vendor Couchbase is about to launch the third upgrade to its mobile database, with new features promising REST-based remote administration support for large multi-tenant edge applications.

• The future release will allow developers to embed lightweight data storage directly into applications on mobile and other “edge” devices such as those in IoT setups.

• The new system offers the advantage of giving developers a single, coherent database whether applications were hosted in the cloud or end-user or edge devices, one industry analyst said.

• In C++, the floor() function returns the value which is smaller than or equal to the specified value. For the programs in which we use the floor() function, we must include the <cmath>header file. This header file is declared at the start of every program. The specified decimal floor value is returned by this function. That return number always depends on the kind of value passed as an argument of the floor() function. We need a single value to calculate the floor value. The floor() function contains different parameters. For example, double, float, and long double. The data types of the declared variable are as given. We’ll go over the floor() method in detail with illustrations in this article.

• We utilize software DEV C++ to do the coding in C++. For running the code, first, we have to compile the code and then run that program. We compile and run the code separately or together. It all depends on us.

• The set class in the C++ set library, which should be included into the program for set work, does not have a member function for intersection. So, in order to obtain intersection of sets, the algorithm library, which has the set_intersection() function, has to be included into the program.

• The C++ algorithm library has a number of set_intersection overloaded functions. Only the simplest two are explained in this article. However, before the explanations start, the reader has to know the difference between output iterator, input iterator and forward iterator.

• The aim of this article is to give the similarities and differences between a set and a map. “vs” in the title means “versus”. First of all, what is a set? – A set in C++ is like the set in Mathematics. In C++, a set is a group of not necessarily unrelated values, but of the same type. The values of a set are called keys in C++.

• What then is a map? – A map is a set of key/value pairs. In C++, the keys are of the same type, and the values are also of the same type. There is multiset and there is multimap. A multiset is a set where the values are not unique; that is, there can be more than one of the same values. Do not forget that the values of the set are called keys in C++. In a map, some of the values may be the same, but the keys must be different (unique). In a multimap, there can be more than one key, which are the same.

• The title of this article is “Set vs Map in C++”. So, multiset and multimap are not considered in this article; only set and map are compared and contrasted.

• Each time a key is inserted into a set, the set is re-sorted. Note: a set in C++ can also have key/value pairs; and this is not a mathematical view of the set. – Still, in C++, a set can have key/value pairs. So, each time a key/value pair is inserted into a set, the set is re-sorted by keys. On the other hand, a map by definition consists of key/value pairs where the keys have no duplicate. With the map too, each time a key/value pair is inserted into the map, the map is re-sorted by keys. The set and the map are the same in this regard.

Python

• Jupyter notebook or IPython kernel comes with various magic commands. Complex tasks can easily be completed using these magic commands in very little time and effort and the number of ways available to perform the same job. The preferred consideration factors are speed and code performance to do a similar task. You want to time your code to achieve these factors in most cases. In the Python and Jupyter notebook environment, the “timeit” command similar to the UNIX “time” command provides you some extra help to measure the time execution of your code.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• One of the things that I have always loved about Unix and then Linux is how it allows me to connect a series of commands together with pipes and get a lot of work done without a lot of effort. I can generate the output that I need in the form that I need it. It’s not just the existence of the pipes themselves, but the flexibility of the Linux commands. You can run commands, select portions of the output, sort the results or match on specific strings and you can pare the results down to just what you want to see.

• In this post, we’re going to look at a couple commands that demonstrate the power of the pipe and how easily you can get commands to work together.

Rust

• Rust is designed to compete with C and C++. In this tutorial, we will explore the steps to install and start using RUST on Debian 11 Bullseye Linux.

• C and C++ have been the most popular programming languages ​​for developing operating systems and performance-critical applications. However, there is also another popular player known as Rust that has positioned itself in the programming language market between low-level languages ​​like C/C++ and highly abstract languages ​​like C# and Java.

Java

• A java method is also known as a function and it can be either predefined or user-defined. Both types of methods are used to perform different functionalities, like calculations, etc. The major difference between both these method types is that a predefined method is already defined method in any programming language and ready to use anywhere in the program while a user-defined method is defined by the user/programmer as and when required. This write-up will provide a detailed understanding of the following concepts regarding Java Methods.

Standards/Consortia

• The Common Standard was one of the key deliverables of an ePI project run by EMA, national competent authorities (NCAs) and the European Commission (EC) in 2021. A follow-on pilot project supported by the EU’s funding programme EU4Health will now focus on developing tools and guidance to pilot the use of ePI prior to implementation.

• EMA stated that it will publish regular progress updates and will share the results with patients, healthcare professionals, academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

Leftovers

• As the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) is locked out and mired in a protracted bargaining process with a group of billionaire owners, it might be instructive to look back at one of the sport’s first organized labor struggles for some valuable lessons on work, solidarity, inclusion, and class consciousness.

• Almost since its inception, Techdirt has been run on a custom content management system that we’ve built, expanded, and maintained ourselves. Once upon a time this had its advantages, but lately it’s been an obstacle to developing the new features and improvements we’d like to add for our readers. So for the past two years we’ve been working on a huge project: migrating the entire site, and its history of over 75,000 posts and millions of comments, to WordPress — and now we’re ready to make the switch. We’ve worked hard to ensure the transition is as seamless as possible, but there will be a few changes, and those of you with accounts will need to reset your passwords. This post outlines what’s going to happen during the transition this weekend, and what you can expect to see when the site changes some time this Sunday evening.

• It is hard to ignore the buzz around massive language models like GPT-3. These are not your typical natural language processing (NLP) engines that power enterprise chatbots or call centers. This is a dramatic step forward, one that makes traditional NLP output look like a simple parroting back of trained answers.

• GPT-3 can generate its own articles. It can provide nuanced summaries across millions of words of text. And since code is essentially language, there are now GPT-3-created software elements, including fully developed applications. It is the closest thing we have to date that resembles the “all-knowing supercomputer” trope from mid-20th century science fiction: the thing one could actually pose a verbal question to and receive a nuanced answer.

• A drift trike is a small sturdy tricycle with a powered front wheel and rear wheels with low friction so that you can drift. They’re fun but there are tons of them. Nowadays, if you want to make your own drift trike that stands out, you have to put your own spin on it. And in terms of extra spin, what better way to do it,than to use ice for the wheels. [Sam Barker] started by breaking down an old used BMX bike. A front-wheel hub motor wasn’t available so he had to make some modifications to use his rear-wheel one as a front wheel. After tweaking the seat to put more weight on the front wheel for better traction, it was time to get started on wheels.

Science

• Finding unmarked graves in neglected cemeteries has always been a challenge.

• Now a Richmond research team has created a relatively inexpensive method to simplify the search using a drone — an increasingly favorite tool of archaeologists — and standard mapping software for water movement or hydrology.

• As detailed in a newly published article in an international journal, the team successfully tested the method in East End Cemetery, a historic Black cemetery located on the eastern border of Richmond and Henrico County within a complex of private and public graveyards that includes the city’s Oakwood Cemetery.

Hardware

• Thin clients were once thought by some to be the future of computing. These relatively low-power machines would rely on large server farms to handle the bulk of their processing and storage, serving only as a convenient local way for users to get access to the network. They never quite caught on, but [Jan Weber] found an old example and set about repurposing it as a NAS.

• The Fujitsu Futro S900 was built up to 2013, and only had one SATA port from the factory. [Jan] wanted to add another as this would make the device more useful as a network attached storage server.

• Allen Wu, chairman and CEO of Arm’s Chinese joint-venture Arm China, thinks the collapse of Nvidia’s attempt to buy Arm will be better for the worldwide technology industry – and for China.

• In an interview with Xiamen-based JW Insights published at the weekend, Wu highlighted that Arm’s fate will affect all of its licensees and manufacturers associated with it in the supply chain. He therefore welcomed the plan devised by Arm’s owner, Japan’s SoftBank, to float the processor design house on the stock market because that will apparently safeguard its independence and future.

• Services will be phased out by 2030 with support continuing for five years

• Analysts have warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may cause trouble down the line for chipmakers, which are still now caught up in a component supply crunch that’s affecting product shipments.

• TrendForce this month warned that Ukraine supplies 70 per cent of the world’s neon – a noble gas used primarily in the lithography stages of semiconductor production.

• Just when Dell thought it was getting on top of the knotty PC supply chain, the outlook is deteriorating again with the backlog swelling and no relief from pressure due to freight charges – the same dynamics that are at play in its server and storage division.

• The industry-wide shortfall of semiconductors and “global logistics challenges” for good and services is continuing to be felt in “just about every industry,” said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman at Dell and co-chief operating officer.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Rejecting pressure to terminate the program in its entirety, the Biden administration on Thursday announced it is redesigning a Trump-era experiment that physicians and progressive lawmakers have criticized as a scheme to fully privatize Medicare.

• “This dangerous experiment must be stopped before it further harms the health of vulnerable seniors.”

• In the public debate over Medicare for All, the first casualty is always the truth about costs, savings, and taxes. And the recent struggle in California over a proposed statewide single-payer health care bill, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act, has been no exception. Scouring the media coverage of the bill, also known as AB 1400, you would find a multitude of statistics and figures, but nowhere would you find this simple fact: Under the current system, health care in California will cost an estimated $517 billion in 2022. Many articles have quoted the California Republican party’s objection that AB 1400 would cost $400 billion annually. Given the alternative, that sounds like a deal!

• 1. Training/preparation for the apocalypse. Preview of primitive postmodernity as the trend for 2020s, each decade has a new aesthetic style associated with it. Preview of the fictional apocalypse to come. The fictional exercise that preceded it, fully anticipated it to the last detail. Foreshadows what we must learn in order to be “prepared” for the apocalypse that promises to arrive. Is it the planet taking revenge? We’re supposed to believe, no. Is the capitalist lifestyle worldwide unsustainable? Again, no. Apocalypse is built into capitalism, and we must see it through to the end, treat each disruption, even this one, as inevitable.

• 2. AI/algorithms/surveillance in new configuration. What does surveillance mean now? Self-surveillance, the principle of universal quarantine, free citizens exercising voluntary lockdown (no need for martial law in the U.S. or anywhere else). Global pandemic/global terrorism follow exactly the same script, untraceable “lone wolves/mutated viruses” that know no national boundaries and must be kept out at all costs.

• The U.S. agency responsible for protecting consumers announced this week that it intends to recommend new mandatory rules to make portable generators safer, saying manufacturers have not voluntarily done enough to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning deaths caused by their products.

• The announcement, part of a 104-page staff report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, is a key step toward regulating gas-powered generators, which can emit as much carbon monoxide as 450 cars and which kill an average of 80 people in the U.S. each year.

• Three Democratic U.S. representatives introduced a bill last week that would require the Environmental Protection Agency to create a pilot program for air monitoring in communities overburdened with pollution. The program would have a $100 million annual budget over five years to allow local agencies to monitor the air quality in neighborhoods, block by block.

• As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on and enters its third year, every so often I think that I’ve seen all the examples of bad science, silly analogies, and general conspiracy mongering from COVID-19 contrarians, antimaskers, anti-“lockdown” advocates, and antivaxxers that there are. Every so often, I’m wrong, too. Enter Marc Girardot. As strange as it seems, I didn’t recall having heard of Girardot before, but apparently he’s a tech guy with an MBA and a masters in Economics and Business who’s worked for Cisco, Booz Allen and Air Liquide, which makes him exactly the sort of guy whose takes on COVID-19 I want to hear. (Yes, that was sarcasm.) Girard describes himself as a “seasoned strategy consultant trained in the scientific method with experience.” Like far too many tech guys with no discernible serious expertise in public health, virology, infectious disease, molecular biology, or other relevant disciplines to comment on COVID-19, public health, and vaccines, Girard nonetheless does not let a little thing like his lack of relevant expertise stop him, as evidenced by his Substack (where all the quacks now go), Covid Myth Buster Series, which, he brags, debunks “the COVID narrative, with observation, facts, data, and rigorous scientific method.”

• The report, which will have a summary for policymakers that the conference will review line by line, will cover economic, food security, biosphere, health and mental health impacts of the climate crisis. The summary will be published on February 28.

• The IPCC in August last year released a comprehensive report on the physical science basis of climate change that influenced the Glasgow climate summit in November. The physics community was clear on what is happening so far and expected to happen in the coming decades, especially on the melting of glaciers and rise in sea levels, Taalas said.

Integrity/Availability

• I spoke to him from his home in Helsinki and he explained that when early programmers built the Unix system, which many programs run on, they used a code with a time limit.

• Spyderbat has appointed Linux and Unix expert Hal Pomeranz to its Advisory Board.

Proprietary

• In other words, installing Windows 11 Pro will now, just like 11 Home, also require a Microsoft Account and thus an internet connection. You didn’t think pro users would be safe from big tech’s data hunger, now, did you?

• The components may play a pivotal role in upcoming efforts to sanction the invading country, but it’s unclear if those efforts will actually work.

• U.S chipmaker Nvidia Corp said on Friday it was investigating a potential cyberattack, following a news report that said the attack may have had taken parts of its business offline for two days.

• A malicious network intrusion caused outages in Nvidia’s email systems and developer tools over the last two days, the Telegraph reported earlier on Friday, but said it was unclear if any data was stolen or deleted.

• There’s reason to believe more is coming. “U.S. authorities have warned for months about the potential collateral damage of a Russian military incursion into Ukraine,” CIODive reported. The new cyber activity could ricochet through multinational businesses, supply chains and key infrastructure facilities, like transportation, energy and healthcare.”

• A kernel panic, which is also called a stop error or the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) in the Windows world, happens when an operating system can’t figure out how to fix a low-level error. The error is thought to be more serious than a simple app that won’t work. It could also harm the system or your data.

• In layman’s terms, a kernel panic is simply a safety measure taken by an operating system to lower the risk of hardware damage. For example, when your device has a major system error, the kernel sends a signal to shut down the device and then shows error codes that tell you what exactly happened.

• From the user’s perspective, all it means is that one minute you’re working as normal, and the next, your computer is restarting, and you’ve lost everything you’ve done since you last saved.

Security

• Simon Davis: I actually started my marketing career with RoboForm back in 2006 in a junior position. A few years later I went to work at a Fortune 500 company and then a dog-related tech startup before coming back to RoboForm in 2015. I now head up the marketing team.

• The story of Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) leaking the Social Security Numbers of hundreds of thousands of current and former teachers and administrators could have been a relatively small story of yet another botched government technology implementation — there are plenty of those every year. But then Missouri Governor Mike Parson insisted that the reporter who reported on the flaw was a hacker and demanded he be prosecuted. After a months’ long investigation, prosecutors declined to press charges, but Parson doubled down and insisted that he would “protect state data and prevent unauthorized hacks.”

• ESET dubbed the nasty Win32/KillDisk.NCV. It’s understood the code not only wipes files from the drive, it also nukes the MBR, making booting and recovery difficult or impossible thereafter.

Privacy/Surveillance

• The Phoenix Police Department wants drones and it wants them now. And, according to this report by the Phoenix New Times, it’s going to get them.

• That approach of scraping facial images from public sites is highly controversial, and has led to considerable pushback across the spectrum. Early on, Twitter, Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn all told the company to stop harvesting photos from their services. In June 2020, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), an independent European body that contributes to the consistent application of data protection rules throughout the European Union, wrote:

• Private messages, voicemails, internet browsing, passwords and location data—this is the type of private phone data that is being monitored in real time, unbeknownst to hundreds of thousands of people around the world being tracked by consumer-grade spyware.

• There is a massive network of stalkerware apps that is harvesting the private data of at least 400,000 people through consumer-grade spyware apps that share a major security flaw, according to TechCrunch security editor Zack Whittaker’s report this week.

• The stalkerware app network investigated by TechCrunch presents itself as a collection of white-label Android spyware apps that each have custom branding and identical websites claiming U.S. corporate ownership, but are, according to TechCrunch’s investigation, really controlled by a Vietnam-based company called 1Byte.

• The UK says it will force social media companies to introduce ID verification tools in order to curb online abuse as part of its upcoming Online Safety Bill.

• The plans — which are not yet law — would essentially split platforms like Twitter and Facebook into segregated communities, with “verified” individuals able to opt out of all interactions with non-verified users. Critics say the policy will do little to stop online abuse, though, as many trolls are happy to harass people using their own names.

• A relevant example of this dynamic has been supplied by the same Tory politician spearheading the new policies: Nadine Dorries, the UK’s Secretary of State. Dorries once threatened a journalist on Twitter that if he tried to contact her adult children for a story, she would “nail your balls to the floor… using your own front teeth.”

• Mostly active in the jurisdiction of the Central and West Jutland Police, and across Instagram, the accused is a self-confessed [cracker] who experienced an “intoxicating high” accessing an estimated 18,000 intimate photos and 500+ videos of 500 women.

• He has pleaded guilty to [cracking], but not guilty to the other charges, which include rape, attempted rape, possession of child pornography, distributing images and unlawful coercion. It is alleged that via Snapchat and Skype, he threatened the women to perform and film sexual acts.

• The Canadian government’s move to freeze the bank accounts of vaccine mandate protesters has brought into focus how much control governments can have over the financial system, leading to renewed interest in the privacy benefits of cryptocurrencies.

• Truckers who have dubbed themselves the “Freedom Convoy” first started demonstrating last month over a rule requiring truckers returning from the United States to show proof of vaccination. The protests then morphed into more general protests against vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to use the government’s financial surveillance infrastructure to hit back.

Defence/Aggression

• Now that war has come, the question of who to blame must be fairly addressed; for to answer it is to suggest the contours of a possible resolution.

• First of all, Russia has made a grave and deadly misstep. The invasion occurred at the very moment when it appeared to have attracted maximum attention to its legitimate grievances against NATO and the U.S., and when several Western European states were suing for peace. French president Emmanuel Macron’s shuttle diplomacy – conducted it appears, without U.S. sanction – was creating momentum for a settlement that might forever (or nearly so) deny Ukraine membership in NATO (a key Russian demand), plus provide added security guarantees. Other countries too were pressing for resolution of the conflict in order to protect their national, economic interests.

• Moscow’s military intervention is wrong. Unlike its interventions, while it was the capital of the Soviet Union—interventions which were often in support of anti-colonial struggles for national liberation—this intervention in Ukraine is just twenty-first-century imperialism. Like Washington’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and its insinuation into dozens of nations around the world under the guise of a war on terror, Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine is a forceful attempt to impose its will on a government it has no use for, but whose land and resources it hopes to control.

• It can be argued that the ever-deepening intrusion of US influence and investments combined with the growing military links between the Pentagon and Kyiv’s Defense ministry is proof of Washington’s ongoing strategy to encircle Russia. The proof of this campaign is in every map detailing NATO expansion since the end of the Soviet Union. Furthering that argument, it can also be said that Russia has every right to do whatever it can to prevent its enemy from incorporating Ukraine into its military alliance that masquerades as a defense agreement. In terms of what used to be called superpower politics, Russia is merely playing the superpower game. After its diplomatic demands were rejected time and time again, it has raised the stakes by attacking.

• Opponents of diplomacy and advocates of military action frequently support their position by reference to the Munich Agreement. For example, politicians opposing any concessions to Russia regarding NATO membership for Ukraine often cite the Munich Agreement. Appeasement is sometimes a bad policy, but there is another more fundamental lesson to be learned from the Munich Agreement. It concerns the dangers of ignoring the security interests of a major power.

• The Soviet Union was not invited to participate in the discussions that led to the Munich Agreement. The failure to invite the Soviet Union was a serious insult because (a) the Soviet Union was an ally of both France and Czechoslovakia, (b) Stalin and his foreign minister Maxim Litvinov had been trying to build an anti-fascist alliance for at least four years, and (c) the fate of Czechoslovakia had profound security implications for the Soviet Union.

• Global disarmament advocates warned Thursday that the nightmare scenario they’ve been working for years to prevent—a catastrophic nuclear war—became more likely this week after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a massive assault on Ukraine and threatened any nation that attempts to impede the invasion with consequences “never seen” in history.

• “A single tactical nuclear weapon could kill hundreds of thousands in a large city instantly and injure many, many more.”

• Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday rebuked and reportedly “disauthorized” his vice president for condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Reuters reported that Bolsonaro—who met last week in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin——suggested Vice President Hamilton Mourão’s comments on Ukraine should not be considered as official.

• + Can we roll the tape back for a sec? Did Biden say, he’s “convinced Putin will invade” or that he’s “convinced Putin to invade?”

• + Chunk by chunk, Putin reconstructs the old Tsarist empire giving the US the excuse to cite “Russian expansionism” as justification for another massive build-up of the kind of big ticket transcontinental weaponry that had gone out of fashion during the Global War on Terror. It’s a win-win scenario for the two super powers & a blank check for weapons contractors. NATO, however, is exposed as an impotent entity, which should serve as a timely warning to any other nations seeking to join it. Tough luck for those caught in the crossfire, per usual.

• For all that the Russian President Vladimir Putin is staking his faith (if not his political survival) on the efficacy of his military’s combined arms to carry out his Soviet risorgimento, a recounting of Russia’s battles and wars in the last two hundred years would suggest that many of its campaigns have ended in ways not projected when earlier tsars and commissars unleashed the dogs of war.

• The 1904 Russo-Japanese War

• There was a near universal understanding among diplomats and political leaders at the time that any attempt to expand NATO was foolish, an unwarranted provocation against Russia that would obliterate the ties and bonds that happily emerged at the end of the Cold War.

• How naive we were. The war industry did not intend to shrink its power or its profits. It set out almost immediately to recruit the former Communist Bloc countries into the European Union and NATO. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia were forced to reconfigure their militaries, often through hefty loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware.

• The Ukrainian government warned Friday that radiation near the Chernoybl nuclear power plant has “exceeded” control levels, a day after the Russian military took control of the area during its ongoing invasion, which has reached the capital of Kyiv.

• “We are in an unprecedented situation, with, for the first time, a war happening in a region where there are operating nuclear reactors.”

• The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine is already causing enormous suffering.

• Allegations on Friday that Russian forces have used cluster munitions in its ongoing assault on Ukraine elicited sharp condemnation Friday from critics of the indiscriminate weapons.

• The International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munition Coalition (ICBL-CMC) expressed alarm in a statement about “the threat of further harm to civilians including humanitarian mine action partners.”

• Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arberry, Daunte Wright, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Rekia Boyd, and many other Black people were slaughtered by government agents in the United States.

• No US president – including former president Barack Obama – condemned that systemic pattern of “premeditated war.”

• The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has shocked the West and many ordinary Russians. But for those who understand the Russian establishment and its view of Russia’s vital interests, it should not have come as a complete surprise.

• In response to Russia’s  invasion of Ukraine, a growing chorus of pundits and policy analysts have been advocating for large increases in America’s enormous budget for national defense, on top of the $778 billion Congress has authorized for Fiscal Year 2022. These calls are both misguided and counterproductive.

• In certain ways, Europe has taken the lead in confronting climate change, including Germany’s decision to phase out coal burning power plants, as well as France’s announcement to invest $35 billion in nuclear and renewable energy.

• For the first time in its 70-year history, NATO announced Friday that it has activated parts of its 40,000-troop Response Force and laid out plans to bolster its eastern flank with soldiers as well as air and naval support as Russia continued its assault on Ukraine.

• In a joint message, NATO heads of state characterized the moves as “preventive, proportionate, and non-escalatory” and vowed to “make all deployments necessary to ensure strong and credible deterrence and defense across the Alliance, now and in the future.”

• Amnesty International declared Friday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has been marked by indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and strikes on protected objects such as hospitals” that may amount to war crimes.

• “The Russian military has shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives.”

• The United States will directly sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and members of the Russian national security team, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced Friday.

• The Biden administration’s move comes after E.U. ambassadors agreed to freeze Putin and Lavrov’s assets in Europe in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

• Just before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale military assault on Ukraine, which has drawn accusations of potential war crimes and received global condemnation, the United States hit Somalia with the latest drone attack in its 15-year war against the impoverished nation.

• “The ongoing horrors of a protracted war matter as much as the fresh horrors of a new one.”

• The very word “jingoism” comes from an anti-Russian song sung in British music halls during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78:

• I expect the EU and NATO Allies will do as much for Ukraine (regarding Russia) as their predecessors did for Poland in 1939-1945. I’m sure Putin thinks the same. Stalin starved Ukrainians to death (~3M) between 1932-1933. Hitler, between 1941-1944, shot (mainly) and gassed (also) Ukrainian Jews (mainly), many civilians (in reprisals, or just to clear territory, often herded onto buildings set on fire with escapees machine gunned, see the movie ‘Come and See’), antifascist partisans (shot on capture), and starved Soviet war prisoners to death, for a total of at least 1.6M (battle field deaths of soldiers not included).

• So neither the German Nazis nor the Communist Russians are remembered too fondly as “liberators” (the Nazis in 1941, from the Russians/NKVD; the Red Army in 1943-1945, from the Nazi SS and Order Police and Ukrainian fascist partisans). Only for Jews were the Soviets better than the Nazi’s in the Ukraine, but still far from “good” (especially if they were suspected by the NKVD of being Polish intelligentsia or having any “political” past; and some of those Ukrainian Jews of 1945+ had somehow survived both the Holodomor as well as the Holocaust-by-bullets, but there weren’t too many Jews left in Ukraine).

• People must reject the binary and refuse to allow themselves to be sucked into an imperialist struggle where the exploited classes are pitted against one another for the sake of state power and the enrichment of the elite.

• Most Western leftists have so far avoided critiquing Russian activity in Ukraine. This is due to the overwhelming degree of criticism that Russia receives in Western media. Levying further critique at the Russian state risks giving legitimacy to NATO activity.

• As I read accounts of the Russian invasion in other papers, the sullen brown landscape of Central New York emerged slowly into the muted light of day.

• I was as a reluctant as the morning, but when the time came an hour later, I climbed one of those icy hills to the Cornell campus to teach my morning class, this one devoted to Handel’s first London opera, Rinaldo.  Why bother with such escapist nonsense, however beautiful and thrilling?

• Russian forces closed in on and reportedly entered the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv—a city of three million people—on Friday as the nation’s president warned he could soon be the target of an assassination attempt.

• “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address to the nation, accusing Russia of bombing the capital without regard for civilian life.

• Donald Trump still has the capacity to shock even seasoned observers of American politics. And he did just that when he responded to Russian aggression toward Ukraine by praising Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tactical “genius.” Displaying his unique brand of international solidarity, Trump joined a right-wing radio show on Tuesday and hailed Putin’s announcement that he would send Russian troops into Ukraine as “peacekeepers.”

• I was born into Vladimir Putin’s Russia, only a month-and-a-half after Yeltsin named him as his successor. All my childhood I was taught how war was bad, war was destruction, war was death. I would attend my school’s annual World War II Victory Day celebrations and lay flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Red Square. In choir, I would learn songs about the devastation of war. At home, I had a former war reporter father, who still carries the scars on and within himself. Meanwhile, the first and the second Chechen wars, alongside the 2008 invasion of Georgia, unfolded and went unnoticed by my young self. I couldn’t see the blatant hypocrisy then. Well, I sure do now. Young Russians of my generation see right through Putin and his excuses for invading a sovereign state make no sense to us. His regime makes no sense to us.

• What does the US believe and in turn, not understand about the world? The answer is a lot. Nearly 50 years ago David Halberstram’s Best and the Brightest and Frances Fitzgerald’s Fire in the Lake described the myopic view of US foreign policy. It was a vision that was built on a set of assumptions about the world that began in 1945.

• Since 1945 the US has been the leader of the democratic free world. But it has also been the leader in supporting a set of international laws and norms that define its world view. This is a view that is committed to the United Nations and a framework of international law that accepts several principles. One, dating back to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, use of force to resolve international disputes is illegal. Two, that sovereign state borders are to be respected. Three, international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Court are the instruments to resolve disputes of any kind. Finally, states are supposed to be honest and genuine, recognizing the above principles and committed to good faith efforts to conduct themselves as members of the international community.

• After decades of hearing US politicians boastingly describe the US as the “exceptional nation,” justifying its repeated violation of international law with invasions of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, El Salvador, and “regime change interventions in a host of other countries, because it could, all the while telling the rest of the nations of the world that they had to strictly obey the “rules-based order” of international relations, that countries do not invade or violate the borders of other countries, suddenly there is another nation that has decided it is “exceptional.”

• Vladimir Putin’s Russia has simply flaunted international law and launched an all-out war on Ukraine, a nation (the largest in Europe geographically) bordering it in eastern Europe.

• Russian military activity near Ukraine’s nuclear sites have raised alarm, as triggering any of the volatile reactors around the country could cause nuclear catastrophe for the entire European continent. Russian troops have seized the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and have reportedly taken staff hostage, raising fear that any disturbance could rerelease deadly radiation that has been sealed off for years. As Ukraine relies on nuclear power for 50% of its electricity, shutting down active nuclear reactors would alleviate the potential for nuclear catastrophe at the cost of leaving many deprived of electricity during the war. “This is the first time that we’ve ever seen a war zone in a location where there are operating nuclear power plants,” says Linda Pentz Gunter, international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “Any manner of situations could lead to a catastrophic meltdown.”

• A systemic ecological mobilization at a fast pace, with necessary sacrifices, has been needed to avoid further climate catastrophes. Today, we have mobilization for war based on militarist managerialism. As various nations attempt to shift out of the fossil fuel era, many in the West have been simultaneously preoccupied by expanding militarist approaches to foreign policy defined by: (a) permanent war economies, continually producing weapons systems, (b) membership in or cooperation with military alliances, and (c) foreign policy based on the extension of military power, war games, and provocations which help rationalize counter-moves on the other side. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the culmination of this failed logic, but the problem is that the provocateurs on either side will never admit their culpability in the cycle of violence. Russia’s invasion is grist for the NATO cheerleaders. NATO expansion is grist for the Russian militarists. Every NATO provocation strengthens the Russian militarist paradigm. Every Russian border incursion confirms the NATO military managerialists’ view of the world.

• Addicted to Militarism and Oil

• Putin’s argument is that Ukraine and Russia belonged to the same nation. “From the very first steps they began to build their statehood on the denial of everything that unites us. They tried to distort the consciousness, the historical memory of millions of people, entire generations [of Russians] living in Ukraine.”

• By prioritizing the national bonds of Ukraine and Russia, Putin separated the liberal ideal of nation-states, that is that each nation has a state and each state has a nation. For Putin, Russia and Ukraine are one nation; the Ukrainian state is an artificial creation.

• As officials in Moscow threaten to replace the democratically elected Ukrainian government and Russian forces appear set to overpower Ukrainian defenses, is this the end of an independent Ukraine? We speak with Ukrainian peace activist Nina Potarska, who fled the country after Russian troops entered Ukraine on Thursday, even as her 11-year-old daughter with COVID-19 had to stay behind. She is participating in CodePink’s international emergency online rally on Saturday to advocate against war and against NATO membership for Ukraine. “I feel that my country now is like a battlefield for all other countries’ ambition,” says Potarska. “We want to be in peace.”

• As the Russian army advances on Kyiv and threatens to topple the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian officials have banned men ages 18 to 60 from leaving the country to potentially be drafted into defense forces and have directed residents to use Molotov cocktails against the approaching Russian troops. We get an update from Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk in Kyiv, who says Ukrainians are showing great resilience against a much greater force invading their country. “The Ukrainian army is really deterring this mighty force on its own,” she says.

• Hundreds of anti-war protesters were detained in Russia on Friday following over 1,800 arrests the previous day, as Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a brutal and long-anticipated invasion of Ukraine.

• “It was important for me to show that Putin’s decision is not the people’s decision.”

• The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, who has reported on Russia for decades, says many observers were “shocked” that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, calling it an “indefensible” decision. President Biden ordered strong sanctions on Russia in response, but he has also heeded critics’ warnings not to send troops to Ukraine in order to avoid a world war. Vanden Heuvel says that it’s vital that instead of further military escalation, there be a “diplomatic escalation” to resolve the crisis and end the war.

• I was in Eastern Europe in 1989, reporting on the revolutions that overthrew the ossified communist dictatorships that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a time of hope. NATO, with the breakup of the Soviet empire, became obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to Washington and Europe to build a new security pact that would include Russia. Secretary of State James Baker in the Reagan administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured the Soviet leader that if Germany was unified NATO would not be extended beyond the new borders. The commitment not to expand NATO, also made by Great Britain and France, appeared to herald a new global order. We saw the peace dividend dangled before us, the promise that the massive expenditures on weapons that characterized the Cold War would be converted into expenditures on social programs and infrastructures that had long been neglected to feed the insatiable appetite of the military.

• Since Russia attacked Ukraine on Thursday morning, Ukrainian citizens have been fleeing in masses – among others – towards Hungary. Mostly Hungarians living in the Transcarpathian region are expected to arrive in the country, but it is likely that many Ukrainian refugees will also be crossing the border here. In this article, we gathered the most useful information for those looking for refuge in Hungary. Translation by Andrea Horváth Kávai

• Although the EU agencies can now cooperate more closely with selected third countries, there have hardly been any formats for the political and strategic agreement of border police measures outside the Schengen area. Austria has now created facts for South Eastern Europe.

• Early in the morning on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of a “special military operation” on Ukrainian territory — in reality, he started a full-scale war against Ukraine. Several days earlier, Russian women began posting on social media that their sons, currently doing their mandatory military service in the Russian army, had been sent to the Ukrainian border and subsequently gone silent. Meduza spoke with some of the soldiers’ relatives to learn about their whereabouts.

• Russian forces overcame Ukrainian military resistance and captured the plant on Thursday, according to Ukrainian presidential office adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. In a statement to Reuters, Podolyak described the capturing of Chernobyl as “a totally pointless attack by the Russians” that makes it “impossible to say the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is safe.” He added that “this is one of the most serious threats in Europe today,” a statement echoed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he tweeted that “our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated.”

• By contrast, a Russian security source told the wire service that Russia seized the reactor to send NATO the message that it should not intervene in the conflict. Not everyone bought this explanation; for instance, Harvard professor and former Obama official Juliette Kayyem speculated on Twitter that Chernobyl was captured simply because it is “the shortest route from Russia to Kyiv.”

• In its interim order, the Bench asked the government to re-open the educational institutions, which were hit by the agitation, and restrained students from wearing religious attire till the court issues the final order. “The institution did not have any rule on hijab-wearing since no one used to wear it to the classroom in the last 35 years. The students who came with the demand had the backing of outside forces,” the principal of a college said.

• The 2015 deal restricts the purity to which Iran can enrich uranium to 3.67%, far below the roughly 90% that is weapons-grade or the 20% Iran reached before the deal. Iran is now enriching to various levels, the highest being around 60%.

• Germany has said that all collaboration with Russia on education and research is being “halted immediately”, amid growing condemnation of its invasion of Ukraine.

• The German Ministry of Education and Research said that the Russian attack was “a grave breach of international law with no justification whatsoever. There must be serious consequences.

• In the summer of 2017, Bakari Henderson, a 22-year-old American student, was beaten to death on the Greek holiday island of Zakynthos. The men convicted in Mr. Henderson’s case were initially charged with murder, but a court instead found them guilty of assault and most have served their sentences and been released.

• On Wednesday, a court began in earnest to retry the case, again on murder charges, after the defense requested a delay on Monday. The retrial comes after a prosecutor deemed the assault convictions and subsequent sentences too lenient.

• “We’re starting from the very beginning, a blank slate,” said Christos Kaklamanis, the lawyer representing the family. “They all face murder charges.”

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Sean Penn is on the ground in Ukraine filming a documentary about Russia’s invasion, Vice Studios confirmed. The Oscar-winning actor appeared at a press briefing Thursday in the Ukraine capital of Kyiv listening to government officials speak about the crisis.

• The doc is a Vice Studios production in association with Vice World News and Endeavor Content.

Environment

• Along with agriculture fertilizers, mining operations, and climate change, de-icing salts contribute to a growing salinity problem in freshwater lakes. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that government regulations that set thresholds on ionized chloride from human pollutants fail to sufficiently protect critical freshwater zooplankton species. In the absence of these microscopic grazing organisms, algae proliferate and starve the whole ecosystem of oxygen, and the whole food chain falls apart.

• “It’s becoming increasingly clear that we need to develop new chloride thresholds, new water quality guidelines that really do protect our freshwater ecosystems from changes due to elevated salinity,” Dr. Bill Hintz asserted.

• “The Russian Federation military is pushing beyond the previously established contact line, with their heavy military presence compounding soil, water, and air risks,” Kristina Hook, assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University, who studies environmental fallout of conflict in Ukraine wrote in an email to Motherboard. “As of the time of this writing, it is also being reported that the Russian military has seized the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a factor that some Ukrainians refer to as holding Europe hostage.”

• Outside of Chernobyl, experts fear Russian bombings in the Donbas region, a Russian-occupied separatist region in the eastern part of the nation, could lead to lasting environmental damage.

• “The east of Ukraine is heavily industrial, full of chemical factories, run-down mines and thermal power plants. The potential for an environmental catastrophe to add to the horrific humanitarian crisis is enormous,” said Richard Pearshouse, head of crisis and environment at Amnesty International in Geneva.

• Greenpeace reports that data from the National Sea Ice Data Center shows that this year Antarctic sea ice will reach the lowest extent on satellite record. Preliminary measurements show the sea ice around the continent has surpassed the previous record minimum set, in March 2017, of 2.1 million square kilometers, dropping to 1.98 million square kilometers on Sunday 20 February.

• Consider us at the edge of the sort of epochal change not seen for centuries, even millennia. By the middle of this century, we will be living under such radically altered circumstances that the present decade, the 2020s, will undoubtedly seem like another era entirely, akin perhaps to the Middle Ages. And I’m not talking about the future development of flying cars, cryogenics, or even as-yet-unimaginable versions of space travel.

• After leading the world for the past 75 years, the United States is ever so fitfully losing its grip on global hegemony. As Washington’s power begins to fade, the liberal international system it created by founding the United Nations in 1945 is facing potentially fatal challenges.

• After more than 180 years of Western global dominion, leadership is beginning to move from West to East, where Beijing is likely to become the epicenter of a new world order that could indeed rupture longstanding Western traditions of law and human rights.

• Factory farms have suddenly arisen out of nowhere, e.g., in Iowa “the state’s number of concentrated animal feed operations, known as CAFOs, grew from 722 in 2001 to more than 10,000 in 2017, according to a study on the industry by two retired University of Iowa professors.” (Source: Environmentalists Make Long-Shot Attempt to Ban New Factory Farms, Pew Trust, February 19, 2021).

• The first sentence of the Pew Trust article reads; “Iowa has a poop problem.”

Energy

• The fossil fuel industry has gone to great lengths to paint itself as an environmental champion working hard to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It can’t be trusted.

• The American Petroleum Institute (API) is taking advantage of the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to push for pro-oil policies at home.

• In a Twitter thread published Wednesday around 9 p.m., just a few hours before Russia began its invasion, the lobbying group, which represents hundreds of corporations from across the oil and gas industry, published a series of infographics with tips for policies it believes will “ensure energy security at home and abroad.”

• The U.S. agency responsible for protecting consumers announced this week that it intends to recommend new mandatory rules to make portable generators safer, saying manufacturers have not voluntarily done enough to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning deaths caused by their products.

• The announcement, part of a 104-page staff report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), is a key step toward regulating gas-powered generators, which can emit as much carbon monoxide as 450 cars and which kill an average of 80 people in the U.S. each year.

• The commission’s move comes more than two decades after U.S. regulators identified the deadly risks posed by portable generators and two months after an NBC News, ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation found that federal efforts to make portable generators safer have been stymied by a statutory process that empowers manufacturers to regulate themselves, resulting in limited safety upgrades and continued deaths.

• Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger just a few days ago raged against Bitcoin, calling it a “climate crisis.”

• “A single ledger entry in Bitcoin consumes enough energy to power your house for almost a day. That’s a climate crisis. That’s not okay,” he told Bloomberg in an interview last week.

• He was clearly hitting out at power-guzzling GPUs and similar chips necessary for Bitcoin mining, which requires country-size amounts of electricity as the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce heard last month.

• We’ve all experienced power outages of some kind, be it a breaker tripping at an inconvenient time to a storm causing a lack of separation between a tree and a power line. The impact is generally localized and rarely is there a loss of life, though it can happen. But in the video below the break, [Brady] of Practical Engineering breaks down the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the largest power failure ever experienced in North America. Power was out for days in some cases, and almost 100 deaths were attributed to the loss of electricity.

• [Brady] goes into a good amount of detail regarding the monitoring systems, software simulation, and contingency planning that goes into operating a large scale power grid. The video explains how inductive loads cause reactance and how the effect exacerbated an already complex problem. Don’t know what inductive loads and reactance are? That’s okay, the video explains it quite well, and it gives an excellent basis for understanding AC electronics and even RF electronic theories surrounding inductance, capacitance, and reactance.

• So, what caused the actual outage? The complex cascade failure is explained step by step, and the video is certainly worth the watch, even if you’re already familiar with the event.

Finance

• Scientists, doctors, environmentalists, and others who know what they’re talking about, are saying that planet Earth is in such dire straits that the global economic system must change. And urgently. But paralysis tends to set in. Yet it’s not impossible. An unconditional, universal basic income is an achievable practical answer that would establish a solid basis for change. Moreover, after the nightmare of Bolsonaro’s cruel, destructive, democracy-trashing mandate, a new antifascist government in Brazil after the October elections could lead the way for the whole world, showing that it can be done.

• Their demands grew out of actions of the U.S. government’s Financial Control Board (FCB) which was created under the authority of the U.S. Congress’s PROMESA Act of 2016. The island’s government was bankrupt at the time and the FCB was charged with negotiating with creditors and implementing austerity in Puerto Rico.

• Labor unions participating in this most recent national strike included the Puerto Rican Workers’ Union, The Central Workers’ Federation, the United Auto Workers (for Treasury Department workers), the Electrical Workers’ Union, several teachers’ unions, the University Professors’ Union, and health workers’ unions. Unionized employees of the Highways and Transportation Authority took part also.

• You think serfdom’s too harsh a term? Well, rents in the U.S. have skyrocketed, as hikes “average up to 40 percent in some cities,” the Guardian reported February 16. And according to Zerohedge – recently and preposterously smeared as a Russian propaganda outlet by American so-called intelligence – on February 20, “rent increases put the Consumer Price Index to shame, soaring an average of 13.5 percent.” In Phoenix, rents jumped 25.3 percent, while numerous other Sunbelt cities exceeded 20 percent. That means all those would-be homebuyers, priced out of the market, now bleed their paychecks to predatory landlords. Lucky them.

• Meanwhile, the same publication noted earlier, on Feb. 15, that on-time rent collections have hit an historic low, 92 percent. That’s because people are broke. No more stimulus checks. Rents exploding through the roof. Inflation. Oh, and those jobs the bipartisan Scrooges want folks to grovel back to? Surprise! They don’t pay enough to live on. Who ever woulda thunk it? So when it’s time to cut down to blood and bone, people cut rent, not food.

• Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate who helped propel the right flank of the Republican Party into its current prominence, came to New York City with a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. She lost in court, but her offensive against the paper is a symptom of a growing political campaign against a crucial legal centerpiece of US press freedom.

• It is essential that now many more of us learn what work is our joy, what work makes us feel, subjectively, connected in spirit with others within that larger consciousness of interconnection. We will only be able to pry ourselves away from the seeming necessity of surrendering our wills to the values and purposes of the dominant neoliberal centralized and top-down reality, no matter how we oppose its militarism, racism, its inherent inhumanity, when the return to local, hands-on, face-to-face, the ordinary and common is known, subjectively and imaginatively, to have real joy in it. This is not a matter of surrendering to a freedom-limiting authority, but to the authority that makes austerity feel like abundance. Only restored imaginations can do this for us, transforming the feeling of deprivation into the sense that in doing our work we do holy work, connecting work. Holiness, then, is not an idea but a completely valid, and subjectively real experience of being part of the whole such that daily work, and commitments, loyalty, repetition, drudgery make a song, or a dance, not a “lifestyle.”

• Remember, you who take this on, society will attempt to void this experience of holy work, turn it back to deprivation and resentment. Only a constant activity of creative expression, of improvisational calling upon the creative spirit, can keep the countercultural project on the plane of connection and meaning.

• SWIFT, short for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is a Belgian member-run cooperative used by some 11,000 financial institutions and companies across 200 countries that facilitates trillions of dollars worth of financial transactions. Over 42 million messages are sent each day, allowing entities to communicate with each other and quickly and securely settle financial transactions. Disrupting this system, then, would bring Russia’s economy to a grinding halt.

• It struck me that fermented foods could be said to have anti-capitalist tendencies. They scale badly. They are temperamental and reject industrialisation. At the same time, fermented foods encourage social production (it’s a lot easier to make a batch of kimchi with a group of friends), and sharing (people who make their own ferments usually make too many and like to prosletyse by sharing jars of their handiwork).

• China has again cracked down on cryptocurrencies – this time with a Supreme People’s Court ruling that paves the way for criminal prosecution of those who conduct cryptocurrency transactions.

• The Thursday ruling by the court centers on “illegal fund raising.” In China that term refers to raising money by non-conventional means – such as peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding, or otherwise working on the fringes of the mainstream financial system.

• The new ruling expands the definition of illegal fundraising to include transactions in virtual currencies, meaning crypto-coin miners, traders, and speculators now face lengthy jail terms and substantial fines. It follows a warning issued last week that the metaverse – whatever it is – must not become a source of illegal fundraising.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Justice, like truth, is an absolute term.  But an absolute term with nuances! What we mean is that the process to arrive at justice must be objective and impartial, so as to facilitate  a just and equitable result.  Moreover, we must not amalgamate the concepts of “law” and “Justice”, which admittedly overlap.  In fact, they frequently mean different things and can even be opposites.  While Justice is a form of ethics, a metaphysical value related to truth, law is a man-made norm or “rule of the game” that always remains work-in-progress, by nature incomplete and time-bound, thus frequently opportunistic, obsolete, lagging behind the times.

• The vocation of the administration of Justice is to practice “fairness” and impartiality so as to strengthen what is good, redress wrongs and protect the oppressed.  In this sense, Justice (the outcome) cannot be neutral, and by necessity must be teleological.  What must be neutral is the methodology to arrive at and to enforce Justice even-handedly, uniformly, predictably.

• The protests have had different targets. Some people have come out into the streets to demonstrate against the authoritarian policies of national governments. Other mobilizations have focused on the pandemic and the state’s failure to address the ensuing health crisis. There have been demonstrations against higher food prices, a surcharge on public transportation, and corruption. Carrying over from earlier eras, communities have also fought back against corporate efforts to secure access to energy and other resources.

• “People are fed up,” notes Breno Bringel, a professor of sociology at the Institute of Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. “There’s an urgency during this time of pandemic: people can’t take it anymore.”

• The Morrison government has made its own modest contribution to sinking these assumptions. It is, after all, an election year. There is a schoolboy simplicity to the effort: scream various words such as “appeasement” often enough, and it will take hold. Reiterate the term “Manchurian Candidate”, and hope it cakes opponents.

• In the Australian Parliament, Prime Minister Scott Morrison demonstrated this month that accusation as politics without evidence governs his operating rationale. As he has done previously in attempting to paint the Labor opposition as stacked with pro-China stooges, he told the chamber that the Labor Deputy Opposition leader Richard Marles was a “Manchurian Candidate”.

• Update: While applause is warranted for President Biden’s nomination today of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and his rejection of J. Michelle Childs, one good appointment doesn’t resolve the decades-long failure of Democrats to develop an alternative legal theory to the bogus originalism/textualism theory concocted by the right-wing and to appoint judges schooled in such alternative theory who can do battle with the conservative originalists/textualists who now dominate the courts.

• Joe Biden has chosen Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Judge Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, only the fourth person of color, and the sixth woman among the 115 justices who’ve served throughout US history.

• Environmental justice advocates on Friday joined other progressive groups in applauding President Joe Biden’s history-making nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court—while noting that the current threats to climate action demand an expansion of the court as well.

• The Sunrise Movement praised Biden “for making a truly historic pick in Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson,” with executive director Varshini Prakash adding, “We are excited for Judge Brown Jackson to sit on the court—and look forward to seeing her vocal commitment to racial, social, and environmental justice.”

• This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

• President Joe Biden will nominate federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former public defender, to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to reports on Friday—a decision that drew immediate praise from progressives.

• NEW YORK – Tucker Carlson is the hottest media personality in America. Comfortably the most watched cable news show, Tucker Carlson Tonight is a ratings bonanza, with even former President Donald Trump said to be a keen viewer. Part of Carlson’s appeal is that he presents himself as a maverick outsider, someone who thinks outside the box and is not afraid to launch tirades against the powerful and criticize the government and its foreign policy. Certainly, he does surprise many people, covering subjects other cable news hosts do not touch. However, on closer inspection, this populist everyman persona is all a facade; Carlson himself has deep connections to the government and the national security state and works hard to obscure the real centers of power, channeling popular rage towards safer targets.

• WITH RUSSIA’S invasion of Ukraine in full swing, the West is scrambling to respond. That Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, can back his imperial ambitions with nuclear arms has taken a shooting war with NATO off the table. Economic retaliation is the weapon of choice. One obvious move would be to cut Russian banks’ access to SWIFT, a messaging network used by 11,000 banks in 200 countries to make cross-border payments. Some Western governments favour pressing the co-operatively owned SWIFT into cutting Russia off, but others do not. For now the measure remains off the list of sanctions outlined by the West. Why the reluctance?

• The Executive Board of the EBU made the decision following a recommendation earlier today by the Eurovision Song Contest’s governing body, the Reference Group, based on the rules of the event and the values of the EBU.

• The Reference Group recommendation was also supported by the EBU’s Television Committee.

• The Russian communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, explained in a statement that it is taking this measure a day after the US technology company restricted the official accounts of four Russian media: the Zvezda military television channel, the official RIA Nóvosti agency, the Lenta portal and the newspaper Gazeta.ru.

• “RossComNadzor announced that it started partially blocking Facebook/Meta, due to violations of freedom of expression,” reported journalist Christo Grozev.

• The state communications regulator of Russia said that Facebook ignored its demands to lift restrictions on four Russian media outlets on its platform, such as the Defence Ministry’s Zvezda TV, RIA news agency and websites, gazeta.ru and lenta.ru.

• In a statement on Twitter, Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said, “Yesterday, Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted to Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organisations. We refused. As a result, they have announced they will be restricting the use of our services.”

• It is difficult to ignore the news that will eventually or has already affected our lives. Several countries have imposed sanctions on Russia since the Russians started invading Ukraine. Sanctions affecting Russian banks, military exports, and oil refining.

Misinformation/Disinformation

• As the Kremlin’s forces unleash devastating firepower in Ukraine, some Russians living near the frontier are buying the government’s line portraying the invasion as righteous and necessary.

• It is a line obediently parroted by state media, and the campaign to convince the population appears to be working in some parts.

• Associated Press journalists around Ukraine and beyond are documenting military activity during Russia’s invasion. With disinformation rife and social media amplifying military claims and counterclaims, determining exactly what is happening is difficult. Here’s a look at what could be confirmed Friday.

Censorship/Free Speech

• As so-called “conservatives” (a decently large number of them appearing to actually be white supremacists and bigots engaged in harassment) complained Big Tech was slanted against them, a host of new services arrived to meet the sudden demand. Gab, Gettr, etc. hit the marketplace of ideas, promising freedom from the “censorship” of “liberal” social media platforms, ignoring evidence that indicated “conservatives” weren’t actually being “censored,” but rather extremists calling themselves “conservatives” were being booted for multiple violations of site policies.

• On Tuesday, the day after TRUTH Social was launched, self-described “serious internet clown” Matt Ortega tweeted that he might be “the first officially ‘cancelled’ Truth Social user,” while sharing an image suggesting that TRUTH had permanently banned his account for “community guidelines violations.”

• Ulikkal police have registered a case against Fr Antony Tharakkadavil of the Kunnoth Seminary under Section 153 of the IPC on a complaint that he made derogatory remarks against halal food and Prophet Mohammed during the speech made as part of the festival at Manikkadavu St Thomas Church.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• On February 4, the Jammu and Kashmir police charged Fahad Shah, editor in chief of The Kashmir Walla and a Nation contributor, with sedition. Under India’s anti-terrorism laws, Shah could face life in prison or the death sentence. While conviction rates on these cases are low, people have been incarcerated for up to 10 years without a trial. The rules allow authorities to designate anyone a terrorist without evidence and detain them indefinitely.

• In a statement released on Feb. 24, press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) highlighted that journalists are “prime targets” in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine.

• “There are journalists who fear retaliation—the information battlefield is very important for Moscow. Americans have said that there are journalists on the [Russian] ‘kill list’,” Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, told VICE World News.

• Nineteen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of criminal charges after fatally shooting two people and injuring another at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is getting into the business of being a persecuted conservative. On February 21, Rittenhouse went on Tucker Carlson Tonight to announce the creation of a fund to sue the media. “The Media Accountability Project,” according to Rittenhouse, will “help fundraise and hold the media accountable for the lies they said and deal with them in court.” His targets: The View’s Whoopi Goldberg and the Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur, as among those who called Rittenhouse a murderer.

• Some have argued it’s unlikely that Rittenhouse would win in court. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh pointed out, statements of pure opinion based on widely discussed facts generally qualify as protected speech under the First Amendment. Even though Rittenhouse was not found to be a murderer in the eyes of the law, I can still hold the opinion that he’s part of a horrifying trend empowering white vigilantism.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The former coach’s lawyers contend he was prevented from making a quiet prayer after each game, while school district officials content it delved into a melee in which crowds rushed the field and staff were threatened.

• “Almost Every City Has a George Floyd” – and a Milton Hall

• I almost never cease to be stunned by the white racist violence of the U.S.-American criminal justice system. Last fall we learned from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) that police violence killed more than 30,000 people – two people per day on average – between 1980 and 2018. Horrible enough in and of itself, the police state’s body count was very disproportionately Black and nonwhite. The IHME found that:

• The march, in Marty’s words, “was a response to a threat against unionization by the Klan, which would historically split up workers, black and white, threaten the leaders and essentially act on behalf of the corporate owners.” One of the key organizers of the march, Reverend Nelson Johnson, added that “it was absolutely necessary to have some expression of opposition to racism as manifest by the Klan in order to continue with the work of labor organizing in the textile industry and in order to continue with the work of uniting people from different racial backgrounds.” So, on November 3, 1979, the CWP organized a conference about the Klan and labor organizing, kicked off by the Death to the Klan march.

• Marty and her comrades would later find out that the Klan had worked with the Greensboro police, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent, and an FBI informant beforehand, which provided the Klan with the route of the march and encouraged them to carry arms while the police mandated that the protestors be unarmed. Before long, the Klan descended upon the march, at that point embedded in the predominantly black neighborhood Morningside, with no police in sight – in fact, a rank and file officer responding to an unrelated call in the neighborhood had been told to clear the area hours before the attack.

• The settlement, which did not involve a formal legal complaint and was signed last month, marks one of the first times that regulators have reached an agreement to change a social network’s moderation policies based on algorithmic bias issues. It resolves an investigation that the CCHR began in December 2018, shortly after Tumblr banned explicit sexual content and nudity — and enforced its rules with a comically inaccurate automated takedown system.

• Our society’s hatred of women is glaringly obvious, especially when it continually pushes the narrative that the woman somehow brought violence upon herself. Our leaders have perpetuated this stance and so have those wearing the uniform who are supposed to protect, not attack.

• Justine Ruszczyk Damond, an unarmed white dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia, was fatally shot in 2017 by Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor after she called 911 to report a possible rape. Noor testified he was startled by a loud bang and that he fired to protect his partner. He was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 12 1/2 years. The murder conviction was later overturned and Noor was resentenced on the manslaughter count to nearly five years in prison.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• There’s been an unfortunate movement in the US over the last few years to try to argue that social media should be considered “common carriers.” Mostly this is coming (somewhat ironically) from the Trumpian wing of grifting victims, who are trying to force websites to carry the speech of trolls and extremists claiming, (against all actual evidence) that there’s an “anti-conservative bias” in content moderation on various major websites.

• One billion Indian wireless services subscribers were active in December 2021 – the first time the nation has breached the nine-figure barrier. But that colossal number betrays a market that is still far from saturated by smartphones or ready for rich digital services.

• News that the nation topped the billion mark emerged in data [PDF] released last week by the nation’s Telecom Regulatory Authority, which revealed that on a single day in December last year 1,000,630,000 subscribers were active. The regulator counted 1.155 billion mobile subscriptions in the same month.

• By way of contrast, China’s big three carriers already boast more than 750 million 5G subscriptions and over one billion 4G accounts. India still has tens of millions of people on 2G networks, and its carriers are yet to operate a 5G network.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• It’s just no fun being a giant company aspiring to monopolize repair to boost revenues. On both the state and federal level, a flood of new bills are targeting companies’ efforts to monopolize repair by implementing obnoxious DRM, making repair tools and manuals hard to find, bullying independent repair shops (like Apple does), or forcing tractor owners to drive hundreds of miles just to get their tractor repaired (one of John Deere’s favorite pastimes). The Biden administration even just got done signing an executive order asking the FTC to tighten up its restrictions on the subject.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• In 2017, publishers Elsevier and American Chemical Society filed a copyright lawsuit against research sharing platform ResearchGate, claiming that 50 of their articles were made available without permission. A court in Germany has now prohibited ResearchGate from making those titles available but refused to award damages due to the plaintiffs’ failure to demonstrate acquisition rights.

• As part of the US Trade Representative’s annual Special 301 review, Peru has submitted a detailed update of its copyright enforcement plans and accomplishments. The Peruvian IP protection authority reports that it has teamed up with music industry group IFPI which will help to identify and block problematic sites, including stream-ripping services.

• A whole bunch of people wasted Tuesday talking about technical measures. What technical measures, you might ask? The ones vaguely alluded to in the DMCA. Subsection 512(i) conditions the safe harbors on platforms (more formally called “Online Service Providers,” or OSPs, for the purposes of the DMCA) “accommodat[ing] and [...] not interfer[ing] with standard technical measures.” The statute goes on to describe them in general terms as “technical measures [...] used by copyright owners to identify and protect copyrighted works” that meet a few other criteria, including that they don’t unduly burden OSPs.

• Like so many things in 2021, a few long-awaited copyright developments have spilled into 2022, with anticipated amendments to key provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act topping the list of legislation to watch.

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