● 03.21.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 21/3/2022: LibrePlanet Closes

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

GNU/Linux

• This week has been really slow in Linux news and releases. We only got a brand new kernel, namely Linux 5.17, which will soon arrive in the stable repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions, as well as the final release of the long-anticipated Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 5 distro.

• On top of that, I take a look at the Shotcut video editor as the Flatpak app of this week. You can enjoy this and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for March 20th, 2022, below!

Kernel Space

• Asahi Linux has released its first public alpha build for users on Apple M1, M1 Pro, or M1 Max devices.

• The distribution is based on the ARM build of Arch Linux, and arrives with a KDE Plasma desktop and a ton of caveats.

• Users will need at least 53GB of spare storage as the installer downloads up to 4GB of data depending on if users want a Plasma desktop, or want a minimal installation, or even purely a UEFI environment that then allows for other operating systems such as OpenBSD to be installed.

• As usual, Linus Torvalds made an announcement of the release and general availability of Linux 5.17.

• Linus Torvalds has released version 5.17 of the Linux kernel.

• “So we had an extra week of at the end of this release cycle, and I’m happy to report that it was very calm indeed,” Torvalds wrote in his weekly state of the kernel post. “We could probably have skipped it with not a lot of downside, but we did get a few last-minute reverts and fixes in and avoid some brown-paper bugs that would otherwise have been stable fodder, so it’s all good,” he added.

• Linux Kernel 5.17 is released with better hardware support and core module improvements. Here’s a quick summary of the new features with download and installation details.

• Linux 5.17 is here, after a week of unexpected delay to fix Spectre exploits. While there aren’t any massive changes here, there are a few smaller tweaks and important improvements for those running some specific systems.

• Let’s take a look at what’s new!

Applications

• This article takes a look at common port numbers and their associated services, and which transport protocol they use.

• One of the many fundamental things to know as a server administrator is the function and port number used by some common services. Just as the IP address identifies the computer, the network port identifies the application or service running on the computer.

• I’m sure you’ve heard the term “port” before, but what does it mean in the world of computers?

Instructionals/Technical

• In this article we will learn How to Display Linux System Information Using Macchina. Macchina is a basic system information fetcher. It is similar to Neofetch but with a focus on performance and minimalism also it is faster than Neofetch. Macchina is an Italian word for Machine. Macchina is free and open source program written in Rust programming language. It supports Linux, macOS, BSD.

• The objective of this tutorial is to show the reader a quick-start method of testing a microphone on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.

• This can be done inside of the GUI or you can record a short audio from the command line in order to test the microphone. Follow along with our steps below as we take you through both methods.

• NumPy is a Python library, which supports large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices. It also offers a wide set of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. The objective of this short guide is to install NumPy on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux.

• In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to install ClamAV on Ubuntu 22.04. ClamAV is an open source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware, adwares, rootkits and other malicious threats.

• If you have an NVIDIA GPU installed on your computer, installing the NVIDIA GPU drivers is the first thing you would want to do after installing Debian 11 on your computer.

• In this article, I will show you how to install NVIDIA drivers on Debian 11. So, let’s get started.

• With PHP 8.x version stream out, it is important for Linux users such as those under AlmaLinux to quickly adapt to this new version change due to the feature improvements associated with it.

• PHP 8.x boasts of remarkable features and feature improvements such as Union Types, JIT (Just in Time) compiler support, the NullSafe Operator, Named Arguments, Attributes, Match Expression, Constructor Property Promotion, Throw Expression, and Inheritance with Private Methods.

• AlmaLinux being a free, open-source, and community-supported Linux distribution makes it a perfect candidate for PHP 8.x installation. This open-source server-side scripting language has a lot of contributive footprint in generating dynamic web pages towards the creation of performant web applications.

• Hello, friends. Although a few years ago, having a Microsoft product on Linux sounded crazy, the truth is that more and more applications are coming to our favorite operating system. Today, we’ll show you how to install Microsoft PowerShell on Fedora 35.

• In this guide, we will show you how to install Liquorix Kernel on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Liquorix kernel is a distro kernel replacement built using the best configuration and kernel sources for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads. It features custom settings and new features and is built to provide a responsive and smooth desktop experience, especially for new hardware. Liquorix Kernel is popular amongst Linux Gaming, streaming, and ultra-low latency requirements and often boasts the latest Linux Kernels.

• MongoDB is a NoSQL database manager well known by many developers around the world. Therefore, tools are developed to be able to use it and take full advantage of it. Today, you will learn how to install one of them because after this tutorial you will be able to install Mongoku on Debian 11.

• The Linux kernel is the core Ubuntu Linux, as well as all other Linux distributions. In this tutorial you will learn how to remove old kernels from Ubuntu Linux system.

• Like the rest of the system components, the Linux kernel also gets updated every once in a while. When the kernel is updated on Ubuntu, the operating system will keep some old kernels lying around, in case there is a problem with a new kernel and you need to revert to an older one.

• This is a nice feature, although the old kernels can take up storage space. In this tutorial, we will show you how to view the old kernels installed on your Ubuntu system, and also how to remove them.

• A directory tree on a Linux system is a way to see all of the directory and sub directories in a provided filesystem path. In this tutorial you will learn how to print directory tree in Linux terminal and GUI.

• This type of overview can be difficult to achieve in GUI file browsers or by simply changing directories on the command line. But there are a few tools in Linux that give us a birds eye view of how our directories and their contents are structured.

• In this tutorial, you will see various ways to print a directory tree using command line or GUI on a Linux system.

• When it comes to FTP clients, there’s no shortage of choices available on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. Variety is nice, but it makes it a little more challenging to select the very best tool for the job. We hope to make that decision easier for you in this tutorial as we look at some of the most popular FTP clients available and compare their features.

• Selecting an FTP client can depend on many factors, especially since some only support basic FTP functionality and other clients may support additional protocols such as SFTP, SMB, AFP, DAV, SSH, FTPS, NFS, etc. Whatever your requirements may be, you will be able to make an informed decision after reading our breakdown of the different software.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install various types of FTP clients on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.

• Eclipse is a free Java IDE that can be installed on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. It is currently one of the most popular Java integrated development environments available.

• In this tutorial, we will take you through the step by step instructions to install the Eclipse Java IDE on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish as well as the Java prerequisites, via command line. Then, you can use it to import your current Java projects or develop new ones.

• Google Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers and is available across many different devices. It can also run on Ubuntu 22.04, although Mozilla Firefox is the default web browser and comes preinstalled with the distro.

• Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu 22.04 is pretty easy, but not as straightforward as you might think. Since Chrome is a closed source web browser, it can’t be installed from the default package repositories. Don’t worry, you will see how to get it installed in a few short steps.

• In this tutorial, we cover the step by step instructions to install Google Chrome on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, keep it up to date, and set it as your default web browser.

• The vanilla flavor of Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish sports the GNOME desktop environment, or no GUI at all in the case of a server install. If you would like to change things up and install Xfce instead, the GUI can be downloaded and installed directly from Ubuntu’s package repositories.

• This can be done whether you are switching from GNOME to Xfce, or you currently are running command line interface only and wish to install a graphical desktop environment. Xfce is a great choice that comes with a minimal design to keep your Ubuntu 22.04 system running fast.

• We have two choices for installation, either the normal Xfce desktop environment, or the Xubuntu desktop, which is just Xfce with a custom theme and curated applications handpicked by the Xubuntu team.

• In this tutorial, we will go through the step by step instructions to install the Xfce GUI desktop environment on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.

• Rust is a popular, fast, memory-safe, and memory-efficient programming language. It is an excellent choice for performance-intensive applications, including operating systems, databases, game engines, and many more. It is considered a modern equivalent of the C/C++ programming languages due to its performance and low-level control of hardware and memory.

• In this article, we will explore how to get started with the Rust programming language by installing the Rust compiler on Ubuntu.

• As we all know that Latex is a very high-profile standard file formatting system that allows us to style our files in different formats. It came up with many of the “\” commands to perform many operations. One of those commands is \sqrt.

• It can be used to take the root of any value. In today’s discussion, we will be taking a cube root of some of the values. We will be starting our today’s article with the launch of Ubuntu’s shell with the “Ctrl+Alt+T”.

• Make sure you have latex and its editor texmaker already configured at your end. Start the texmaker editor to create latex code files and use them in the other formats.

• Different sorts of arrow characters are accessible by the standard in LaTeX. To signify or refer in a certain direction, oriented signs are utilized. These are commonly acknowledged as directional indicators. Thus, we have decided to implement this article to create double arrows in Latex documents.

• Let’s start with the opening of the Linux terminal shell. Use “Ctrl+Alt+T” for that. Ensure you have texmaker editor for Latex and Latex itself installed on the Ubuntu 20.04 system. Let’s open the texmaker Latex editor using the “texmaker” command in the Linux shell. It will open in a few seconds on your screen.

• Backslash “\” is used to indicate special instructions in several scripting languages. The backslash is a unique character or instruction in LaTeX. With the parameter as radicand, the sqrt instruction outputs the square root sign. Therefore, we have decided to demonstrate some methods to show the square root in an expression within the latex documents.

• Let’s make a start with the opening of the latex editor, i.e., texmaker. For this, you need to open the Ubuntu shell first with the “Ctrl+Alt+T” shortcut key. After opening the shell, write “texmaker” in the shell if you have already installed it on your system.

• It will start the latex texmaker tool on your Ubuntu screen.

Distributions

Reviews

• Pardus is a Debian-based Linux distribution based on Debian’s Stable branch. It is developed by the Turkish Academic Network and Information Center. Pardus 21.1 is basically Debian 11.2 with a lot of customization to provide a Linux desktop for corporate environments that meets the needs of various Turkish governmental agencies.

• In some ways, Pardus is like Ubuntu. The two distributions are based on different branches of Debian, Stable for Pardus and Unstable for Ubuntu, but the basic idea is similar. Both provide their own package repositories instead of relying on Debian’s repositories with additional extra packages like some based-on distributions do, and both provide many configuration changes and a level of polish.

• Pardus 21.1 has three versions available for download. Two of these versions are for desktop editions. One features Xfce and the other features GNOME. The third download is for servers. This review looks at the Xfce desktop version, which is the version predominantly featured on the Pardus homepage (the Xfce ISO can be downloaded directly from the homepage, but the other versions are alternate downloads that require a few extra clicks to download).

• Mabox Linux is a Manjaro Linux re-spin with a lightweight Openbox window manager, ready to use with pre-configured themes and utilities. We review the distribution in this post.

Debian Family

• The Linux Mint project has announced the availability of LMDE 5 codenamed Elsie. It aims to offer the same functionality as Linux Mint 20.3 but it’s built on top of Debian rather than Ubuntu. While you can use LMDE 5 if you like, the primary purpose of the project is to ensure the continuation of the Linux Mint project if anything should ever happen to Ubuntu in the future.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

FSF

• Today marked the second of two days of events and talks for the Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) annual conference, LibrePlanet. This year’s theme is “Living Liberation,” and the talks and activities were centered around how to live a more liberated life in a world increasingly filled with technology.

• To start the conference off, outreach and communications coordinator, Devin Ulibarri, gave opening remarks, and introduced the day’s events, in addition to mentioning measures taken by the FSF tech team to resolve Saturday’s technical difficulties, which included an added audio-only stream for users with low bandwidth and improvements made to how the “low-res” stream is generated.

• Just like yesterday, there were many talks covering a variety of different topics, and there is much to be said about all of them. Here are some of our highlights.

Programming/Development

• i love shell programming, but i don’t love the languages that are currently out there. sh doesn’t have a modern feel and is pretty limited. bash is powerful, but has so many complex rules and gotchas that i still find myself referencing the man page after scripting for almost 10 years. zsh is pretty much the same as bash, but with more features. i’ve read up on the “nu” shell, while it’s very different than existing shells, it introduces complexity in very different ways that i can’t agree with. i like the direction the fish shell takes, but i still think a simpler solution can be achieved.

• There’s been quite a few posts going around from people sharing their self hosting setups. Here’s my setup, but since I’m still somewhat new to self hosting I’ll also add a few of my recommendations for those interested in joining in on the fun.

• One of the most useful features in the Go programming language is contexts. Context provides versatile features for applications such as sharing data, caller cancellations, deadlines, etc. Context are so useful that many libraries in the go ecosystem use them. You will also find them in applications that interact with remote servers, databases, API calls and more.

• For this article, we will provide a beginner introduction to the context package in Go and how to use context for various use cases.

• Like many other programming languages, the C language came up with many in-built functions. These functions have been added within the C language to perform different functions at different levels.

• One of the functions is the “ftell()” function of the C filing concept. This function is most probably used to read the existing file location of the provided stream relative to the file’s beginning. Upon shifting the document pointer to the last location of the document, this method is being rummage-sale to retrieve the overall size of the dataset. The present location is returned in long format, and the document can contain over 32767 bytes of information. Thus, we have decided to cover the C ftell() in Ubuntu 20.04 system.

• Start with Ubuntu’s terminal launch, i.e., Ctrl+Alt+T. We have to make a new text file in the home folder of our Ubuntu system. Make use of touch instruction to do so. Go towards the home folder of your Linux system and open the newly created file by double-tapping on it. Add some text data in it, save and close it.

• You can see we have created the file.txt file and added the below-shown data in it. We will be utilizing this file in our near-to-come examples.

• Decision-making is a critical factor when building a non-trivial program. Like most programming languages, Rust provides us with the if and if-else statements construct to implement decisions in our programs.

• The crux of this article is to help you understand how to implement and work with conditional statements in Rust.

• It wasn’t after disconnecting from the problem and spending some time away from the computer that it came to me and I figured it out.

• What’s that? You don’t have the time to disconnect and then come back to it, because you’re being timed, and they’re coming to check in on you soon? Too bad! Good luck figuring out where you went wrong.

• That. That right there is where the time goes.

Perl/Raku

• On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m very happy to announce the March 2022 release of Rakudo #154. Rakudo is an implementation of the Raku1 language.

Python

• Python has often been touted as a “batteries included” language because of its rich standard library that provides access to numerous utility modules and is distributed with the language itself. But those libraries need maintenance, of course, and that is provided by the Python core development team. Over the years, it has become clear that some of the modules are not really being maintained any longer and they probably are not really needed by most Python users—either because better alternatives exist or because they address extremely niche use cases. A long-running project to start the removal of those modules has recently been approved.

Leftovers

• I just watched the new-ish Planet of the Apes trilogy with my son. He loved them and so did I. I saw the second film a few years back and remember thinking it was just an incredible piece of filmmaking. The cinematography was brilliant, as was the acting, pacing, and the classic betrayal story. Now that I’ve finally seen the third I can say without reservation that it’s one of the better trilogies of the 21st century. Matt Reeves contributions on 2 and 3 are a marvel.

Science

• Is blockchain going to revolutionize the world? Should activists join, ignore, or shun the cryptoverse? The answers are: perhaps, and: it doesn’t really matter. This isn’t a cop out – it’s just that these are the wrong questions for assessing the revolutionary potential of a technology. This technological discussion is in fact, political.

Hardware

• Like many of us, [Paul] enjoys occasionally hitching up his tow-behind camper and heading out to the wilderness to get away from it all at his favorite campsite. Unlike the vast majority of those who share his passion for the outdoors, though, [Paul] is hitching his camper up to a bicycle. Both the camper and the bike are custom built from the ground up, and this video shows us a little more details on [Paul]’s preferred mode of transportation.

• [Peng Zhihui] seems to have found some spare time and energy to crack out another sweet robot build, this time it’s a much smaller, and cuter emoji-bot (Original GitHub Link,) with the usual production-ready levels of attention to detail. With a lot of fine details in the 3D printed models, this is one for SLS printing in nylon, but that can be done for a reasonable outlay, in China at least. The electronics package consists of a few full custom, and tiny, PCBs designed with Altium Designer, with off-the-shelf modules for the circular LCD and camera. The main board hosts an STM32F405 and deals with the display and SD card, The reason for this choice of STM32 was due to the requirement for connecting to an external USB3300 high-speed USB PHY. There is a sensor PCB which handles the gesture sensor, a USB hub, MPU6050 9-axis sensor, and also the USB camera module. This board attaches to the USB-C connector in the base, via a FFC cable, allowing the robot to rotate on its base.

• Keeping tabs on the night sky is an enjoyable way to stay connected to the stars, and astronomy can be accessible to most people with a low entry point for DIY telescopes. For those who live in areas with too much light pollution, though, cost is not the only issue facing amateur astronomers. Luckily there are more ways to observe the night sky, like with this open source software package from [elanorlutz] which keeps tabs on all known asteroids.

• The classic arcade game Cyclone has attracted many players, along with their coins, thanks to its simple yet addictive gameplay. In its most basic form it consists of a light racing around a circular track, which the player then has to stop at exactly the right place. Arduino enthusiast [mircemk] made a home version of this game, which allows addicts to keep playing forever without running out of quarters.

• It’s amazing when a skilled hacker reverse-engineers a proprietary format and shares the nitty-gritty with everyone. Today is a day when we get one such write-up – about MemoryStick. It is one of those proprietary formats, a staple of Sony equipment, these SD-card-like storage devices were evidently designed to help pad Sony’s pockets, as we can see from the tight lock-in and inflated prices. As such, this format has always remained unapproachable to hackers. No more – [Dmitry Grinberg] is here with an extensive breakdown of MemoryStick protocol and internals.

• [David Lovett] aka Usagi Electric has spent the last several months dissecting a Centurion minicomputer from 1980. His latest update reveals that the restoration has hit several snags, and bootstrapping this old blue beast is going to be a challenge.

• The Chinese city of Shenzhen – widely billed as the tech manufacturing capital of the world – has relaxed its COVID-19 restrictions in ways the city government expects will allow industrial production to resume.

• A Sunday announcement details a new regime that requires a negative COVID-19 test result from the previous 48 hours to access newly reopened public transport services, shops, and public spaces. Such venues will operate at 50 per cent capacity for the next week.

• The rules were introduced after the week-long lockdown ordered on March 13 eased earlier than expected after sending a shiver across the tech world’s supply chain. Shenzhen is a hub for both manufacturing and logistics.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

• Unsurprisingly, I was disappointed in the upgrade.

• Students are also working to find vulnerabilities in Russian systems that others can use to launch direct attacks. [Cracking] is not taught by the department, but Professor Afonin said his students were learning fast.

• “Not all our people are highly qualified, like second- or first-year students, but they can do things that nobody else can,” he said. “We taught them how to study, how to study quickly, how to get new knowledge and skills in a very short period of time, and how to use them. I’m really proud of them.”

• Microsoft’s hurried backpedal over advertisements in File Explorer has industry watchers concerned.

• The Windows Insider Team has form when it comes to accidental emissions. There was the surprise rollout of 20H1 in 2019, for example, and the bundling of a bug that wiped the data of some users with the October 2018 Update of Windows 10 remains seared in the memories of many.

• However, Microsoft’s statement regarding the furor over ads in File Explorer leaves more than one elephant lurking in the corner of the room.

• Josh and Kurt talk about Microsoft accidentally letting us find out about ads in file explorer. Changing your clocks sucks. And touch on some of the security implications of the Russian invasion and sanctions. There are a lot of security lessons we can all learn. Mostly what not to do.

Security

• Elaborating further, Casswell wrote: Since certificate parsing happens prior to verification of the certificate signature, any process that parses an externally supplied certificate may thus be subject to a denial of service attack.

• “The infinite loop can also be reached when parsing crafted private keys as they can contain explicit elliptic curve parameters.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Importantly, they are constantly innovating and—check this out—they answer support requests. They’re responsive. They’re listening and they’re adjusting to what they think customers need.

• This is the Star Trek opposite of Google doing all these same services. For them, they build a cryptic UI, that people struggle to use, and they proceed to not change that UI for years and years. Best part of it? There’s no one to email. No one to call. It’s basically saying: [...]

• I have tried a bunch of different Smart Home products over the last few years and figured I would give an overview of which ones I liked, which ones I disliked, and how I would go about selecting good Smart Home products to buy.

Defence/Aggression

• This week marks the 11th anniversary of the war in Syria.

• While Ukrainian government websites were the target of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks shortly before the invasion, for example, a larger attack, possibly knocking out Ukraine’s power grid or other key infrastructure, hasn’t taken place.

• Stamos and his ilk can peddle their outrageous claims because nobody in the US tech media will call them out. No, if anyone did, they would lose access to “news stories” and also risk not being invited over for the occasional drink and junket. Where have all the good old British cynics gone?

Environment

• The Climate Council says that the Reef is currently being watched closely by scientists for another possible mass bleaching event, with temperatures up to 3°C higher than average in central parts of the reef – stressing that in recent weeks low-to-moderate bleaching has been recorded across parts of the reef,which has suffered three mass bleachings in just the past six years (2016, 2017, 2020).

• A British-US-Iranian national who’d been released from an Iranian prison just two days ago was back in jail Friday, his family said.

• Morad Tahbaz was released on furlough on the same day two other British dual nationals, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, were released and allowed to travel back to Britain.

• The rule would allow investors to judge how well a company is prepared for the future costs of a warming planet.

• The financial risks posed by a changing climate are real and expensive. Last year weather and fire disasters in the U.S. caused more than $145 billion in damages.

• How much do companies contribute to climate change and how are they impacted by it? Those questions are at the heart of a major announcement expected on Monday from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

• The country’s top financial regulator is expected to propose new disclosure rules that would require companies to report their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions as well as how climate change might affect their businesses.

• It’s part of a global push by regulators to acknowledge climate change as a risk to their economies and their financial systems.

• Some of the world’s best Coffea arabica is grown on the fertile slopes of Mount Kenya. This variety of the plant, which originated in the highlands of Ethiopia and Sudan, produces beans that are tastier (and more valuable) than those from its poor cousin, Coffea canephora (known as robusta), which often ends up in instant coffee granules. Arabica is also more finicky.

• Global warming may shrink the total area that is most suited to growing arabica beans by about half by 2050, according to a recent peer-reviewed paper. Rising temperatures may make some new places suitable for cultivating coffee, because they will raise the maximum altitude at which the crop can be grown, but such spots are relatively small and generally given over to other crops already. Overall “trends are mainly negative,” says Roman Grüter, one of the authors of the paper.

• Scientists expressed shock and alarm this weekend amid extreme high temperatures near both of the Earth’s poles—the latest signs of the accelerating planetary climate emergency.

• “This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system.”

• Uninhabitable in the literal meaning of human beings not being able to survive there.

• Such places could come into existence during this century, and perhaps sooner than even climate scientists currently fear, given that lethal combinations of heat and humidity have started to occur for brief periods of time. We are not talking about thinly populated or uninhabited desert locations. We are talking here of cities where tens and hundreds of thousands of people currently live.

Finance

• The biggest business in America is stealing and defrauding the federal government, Uncle Sam, and you the taxpayers. In terms of sheer stolen dollars, the total amount is greater than the annual sales of Amazon and Walmart over the past two years.

• To go along with hideous levels of inflation, Walmart gives “Walmart+” to employees instead of a cost of living adjustment.

• The employees at the local Walmart all had to attend a meeting today where it was stated that all Walmart employees get “free” Walmart+, which basically is free delivery of any size order to your house and 5 cents off per gallon of gasoline at Walmart or Murphy gas stations.

• I guess it’s not nothing, but Walmart says that the Internal Revenue Code causes the “fair market value” of the Walmart+ subscription to be reported as taxable income.

• So congratulations. Instead of a raise you got another way to spend money at Walmart, and you owe the government another $15-20 when you file your taxes next year.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the story, not the sad, sudden death of Senator Kimberly Kitching. And certainly not the grotesque narrative being peddled by News Corp’s rabid propagandists. Manslaughter, that is, manslaughter by Labor senators Penny Wong, Katy Gallagher and Kristina Keneally.

• How low they are stooping. Kitching may well have been bullied, left distraught by the treatment of her colleagues. Politics is a nasty caper. It is also reasonable that this be covered by the media. But that is not the bigger story.

• That the ABC and commercial media followed the line being peddled by the political operatives of a foreign media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, only emboldened News Corp to amp up its venomous agenda to manslaughter. Bullying is widespread. It is a legitimate public interest story. Yet the politicisation of Kitching’s death, the political agendas and the unscrupulous electioneering by News Corp is the bigger public interest story.

• This religious ramp-up to war was the culmination of a decade-long effort to wrap Russia’s geopolitical ambitions in faith — specifically, the flowing vestments of the Russian Orthodox Church. Fusing religion, nationalism, a defense of conservative values that likens same-sex marriage to Nazism and a version of history that seeks to define Ukraine and other nearby nations as mere subsets of a greater “Russkiy mir” (Russian world), the partnership of Putin and Kirill laid the ideological and theological groundwork for the current invasion.

• But as explosions continue to rock Ukraine, some in the church are beginning to resist the religious appeals of Putin and Kirill, pushing back on efforts to recast naked Russian aggression as something that sounds a whole lot like a holy war.

• The partnership of Putin, 69, and Kirill, 75, began around 2012, when the politician was reelected for a third term. It was then that Putin began embracing the Russian Orthodox Church — not necessarily as a point of personal conversion so much as a mechanism for political gain, something foreign policy experts often call “soft power.”

Misinformation/Disinformation

• Brazil’s Supreme Court banned the fast-growing messaging app Telegram in the country on Friday, taking a drastic measure that showed the court plans to aggressively fight disinformation ahead of this year’s presidential elections.

• Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court judge, said he was blocking Telegram because the app had not fully responded to previous orders to remove the accounts of a prominent supporter of President Jair Bolsonaro. That supporter is being investigated for spreading disinformation and threatening Supreme Court judges.

• Disinformation in wartime is as old as war itself, but today war unfolds in the age of social media and digital diplomacy. That has given Russia — and its allies in China and elsewhere — powerful means to prop up the claim that the invasion is justified, exploiting disinformation to rally its citizens at home and to discredit its enemies abroad. Truth has simply become another front in Russia’s war.

• Digging deeper, I think I’m afraid of conflict. I don’t know why exactly, since I seem to act the same in conversations with friends and strangers alike. I usually “let it go” and stay silent when confronted with people passionately expressing contrary opinions.

• I don’t know if I ever mentioned the fact that I’m Russian. Even though I was not (yet) touched by the unfolding events (other than economically), it still feels like the life was put on halt. Which is why this capsule was silent.

• [...]

• In all this uncertainty, there were and still are so many unanswered questions. How do I continue writing a gemlog without addressing the current state of the world? If I do, how do I approach it? Will I be rejected for not fully abiding by the universal consensus? Will I be cancelled, ostracized or misunderstood for being Russian? As the higher powers are resurfacing this world, will we – the people – be able to stay united and human? Will our civilization live to meet the year 2023?

Censorship/Free Speech

• Although it seems somewhat difficult to believe, the subject of Yuri He suffered censorship for a single word that at that time had become a sensitive issue for things that we will continue to tell in the note.

• The word that song was censored for was “earthquake”. And it is that on September 19, 1985 a strong telluric movement had hit the capital of the country, leaving a bad memory in the population.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Julian and Stella have asked that instead of sending gifts, please consider one of the following…

Civil Rights/Policing

• This is Bulgakov’s city. The one he was born in, where he was educated, first fell in love, became a doctor, and learned to write. His parents were Russian, deeply religious, highly educated. But Mikhail was from Kyiv, which conferred a distinct identity.

• Kyiv was its own place, 800 years older than Moscow. Older than Russia itself. And yet in many ways it was newer, too, open a vast array of influences. Kyiv was a crossroads, a meeting point on the ancient routes where goods and ideas were traded, not only between east and west, but from Scandinavia and the Ottomans.

• While #MeToo protests about narrow issues with media, forensic, and legal backing #NiUnaMenos is a movement of women who aren’t well off and who can’t pay lawyers, responding to extreme, generalised violence with more official obstructiveness than support. #NiUnaMenos has little echo outside Latin America. This isn’t so much a problem of language as indifference towards “other” women. And, no doubt, it’s far too radical for most #MeToo feminists for whom the aim’s a bigger slice of the system’s pie. For #NiUnaMenos, the pie is unfit for human consumption.

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• Migrant rights advocates on Sunday marked the second anniversary of a Trump-era tactic continued by the Biden administration to deport asylum-seekers under pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic by calling for an end to the harmful policy.

• “Asylum-seekers have found America’s golden doors shamefully slammed shut on them for two years too many.”

• Surveillance footage released on Friday by the Kenosha Unified School District shows a fight on March 4 between two students in the cafeteria at Lincoln Middle School. In the video, school district employees intervene, including a Kenosha Police Department officer working off-duty for the school district. The officer, Shawn Guetschow, has been an officer with the Kenosha police for four years, according to the department.

• The videoe shows Mr. Guetschow restraining the student and kneeling on her neck for at least 20 seconds. The girl’s name has not been released.

• The living wage is calculated by determining how much a person in a given municipality needs to earn per hour in order to meet the essential costs of living — and still be above the poverty line, with the chance of social mobility.

• That means “enough money to put aside to, let’s say, go to school, to get a better job, to get them to get a better income, or put aside money to start a business,” said Minh Nguyen with the Montreal think-tank Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS).

• The lawsuit alleges the city regularly receives complaints that officers “react with unjustifiable violence and false charges when a citizen speaks up or otherwise asserts his rights as an American citizen.”

• The suit also accuses officers of “using common charges like obstructing governmental operation, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest” against local citizens.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• The microwaves accidentally received a software update that brainwashed them. Not only do their displays show the word ‘steam oven’, they also show a series of functionalities that microwave ovens could only dream of having. Even resetting the appliances to their original factory settings doesn’t solve the issue.

• The monumental disaster took place on March 2nd. As explained by a spokesperson of parent company Electrolux to Dutch news outlet NU.nl:

• “An employee manually entered a wrong number, causing a faulty update to be rolled out. That has caused all microwave ovens of this type to stop working in the Benelux.”

Monopolies

• The campaign shows examples of situations where competitors agree to fix prices, divide markets, and rig bids – all of which are illegal activities.

• The Commission warns that the financial penalties for cartel conduct are significant ‒ individuals can be fined up to $500,000 and companies can be fined up to $10 million, three times the commercial gain, or 10% of turnover per year per breach.

Copyrights

• The operator of MP3Juices and YTMP3, two of the best-known YouTube downloaders, is taking action to protect these valuable brands. The sites have many copycats and competitors that use the brands’ keywords to attract search traffic. The operator wants this to stop and has asked Google to remove the ‘infringing’ sites from its search results.

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