● 04.11.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 11/04/2022: MX-21.1 “Wildflower” and OS/2 Nostalgia

Posted in News Roundup at 6:05 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

•  This week has been kinda slow in Linux news and releases, but we did got a new Firefox release with some Linux goodies, newer versions of the EndeavourOS and MX Linux distributions for our PCs, as well as a new Raspberry Pi OS release for our tiny single-board computers.

• On top of that, this week brought us a new fwupd release to keep our devices up-to-date and a new KDE Frameworks release with lots of cool improvements for our Plasma desktop installations. You can enjoy this and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for April 10th, 2022, below!

Instructionals/Technical

• The content below was created by pygsgallery.py which is included in my PicoPygments repository. It is inspired by this script which I found on this page. Most of the builtin styles don’t define a default text color; whenever pygsgallery.py encounters such a situation, it adds one that is the complement of the background color.

• The Unix philosophy is

• Write programs that do one thing and do it well.

• Write programs to work together.

• Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

• Many of these unix programs would later end up as wildly successful web companies. (This original observation comes from Chris Dixon back in 2014).

• Suppose, not hypothetically, that you have a Linux system where SSH logins are authenticated with passwords and then a MFA challenge. This is implemented the only sensible way, with a PAM module to do MFA, such as the one from Duo; you add this PAM module to your setup along side the existing PAM stuff used for SSH logins. This is all easy to set up and there’s plenty of documentation on it, but now you’d like to go the extra distance so that the login fails immediately if people get the password wrong, rather than going on to also do a (pointless) MFA challenge.

• There are two forms for these controls; the ‘historical’ and still very common single-word form that uses things like ‘required’ and ‘sufficient’, and the newer, more detailed and complicated syntax. There are two descriptions of the meanings of the historical single-word forms in pam.conf; the somewhat informal main description, and then the potentially more explicit version that restates them in terms of the newer and more detailed syntax. All of this makes for a system that can be hard to understand and follow.

• Both of these use at least one option that is entirely redundant, and the second can cause ssh to fail to connect if you happen to be using password authentication. However, they seem to still persist in various articles about ssh port forwarding. I myself was using the first variation until just recently, and I figured I would write this up to inform others who might be still using these solutions.

• Teletypes may have killed a lot of forests by emitting every line to hard copy instead of a screen, but there’s something to be said for the permanence of paper, especially when people hang onto it for some reason. While getting duff units to build a functional Silent 700 Model 765 ASR teletype, which will of course be a future article, one of them was more interesting for what else it came with: a set of teletype transcripts of several users logging onto The Source, one of the earliest online services, and a complete photocopy of the service’s user manual. So get out your copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, start blasting “In The Flesh,” and let’s head back to 1979 and 1980 when these transcripts were printed. We’ll talk a little bit about the service generally and then log on exactly as these people did — because the Silent 700 transcripts indeed show exactly what transpired and how they used them.

• Vi/vim text editor is popular for Linux users because of its many unique features. Developers and regular users use its many features, one of which is that Vi can enable/disable its line number. The line number is the essential feature of Vi text editors, primarily for programming.

• Since the editor in Vim/vi has many commands that use the line number for navigation, this is the reason the line number is even more critical for Vim/Vi. Knowing just the number of a specific line, you can quickly move the cursor on it. Now, we will discuss this feature on how to enable/disable line numbering in Vi.

• VPC is a virtual private cloud in public cloud like GCP (Google Cloud Platform) and AWS. In simple terms, VPC is a dedicated private network for your project in google cloud platform. It provides networking for virtual machines, containers and app engine.

• In this guide, we will learn how to create customize VPC network in GCP (Google Cloud Platform) step by step. Without any further delay, let’s jump into steps.

• Blizzard makes some extremely popular PC games, and their Battle.net application is how gamers install those games on their systems and keep them up to date. The only problem is that Blizzard has neglected the Linux community by never porting their Battle.net application over to it. Fortunately, most of the games still work pretty well on Linux if you are using Wine. We’ll show you how to install Wine and run Battle.net on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish in this tutorial.

• Before getting started, it’s a good idea to make sure that your system has the latest graphics drivers installed. This will make the games run smoother and save you a possible headache later on.

• FirewallD is software that provides the system firewall feature to protect Fedora users from unwanted access by disabling and enabling ports, services, or protocols. However, for users that are used to an interface such as Graphical User Interface (GUI), then the command line may seem difficult at first glance because there’s no visual representation and who are not comfortable learning the command line terminal to the possibility of having an unsecured system.

• However, you can install the FirewallD GUI. This sleek and simple design program is a perfect match for those who want easy access to what’s going on in their system without having too many bells and whistles to distract them from maintaining security.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install and enable FirewallD and install FirewallD GUI on Fedora 36 Linux using the command line terminal.

• Rocky Linux, as many know, is a downstream version of RHEL, which often means it is incredibly stable but usually has very outdated packages in terms of features and not security updates. Currently, Rocky Linux features kernel 4.18, but some users may require a more recent kernel for purposes of better hardware compatibility, among many other things.

• ELREPO has both Linux Kernel Mainline LTS versions. The mainline version is the most recent stable release of the Linux Kernel, and the current LTS Kernel they are supporting is 5.4.

• The following tutorial will show you how to import the ELRepo kernel repository and install 5.17 or with the alternative 5.4 LTS kernel on Rocky Linux 8 Workstation or Server using the command line terminal.

• GCC, better known as The GNU Compiler Collection, is a set of compilers and development tools. Front ends such as C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D. GCC is open-source and is widely used as it was the original compiler for GNU and is currently used to compile the Linux Kernel along with many other projects.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install GCC on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish desktop or headless server using the command line terminal with alternative installation options and handy hints to switch between GCC Compiler versions.

• Java is a general-purpose, class-based, object-oriented multipurpose programming language that is popular due to the design of having lesser implementation dependencies, meaning that the compiled Java code can be run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation. Java is also fast, secure, and reliable, therefore. It is widely used for developing Java applications in laptops, data centers, game consoles, scientific supercomputers, cell phones, etc.

• The tutorial will look at installing the OpenJDK version instead of the default Oracle JDK. The difference between these two is licensing. OpenJDK is an entirely free, open-source Java with a GNU General Public License, and Oracle JDK requires a commercial license under the Oracle Binary Code License Agreement. Other differences are release schedules and other factors that come into play; however, performance is the same.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install OpenJDK 8 LTS or better known as Java 8 LTS, on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish with the standard APT installation from Ubuntu’s repository along with the PPA version, which may suit some users better. The tutorial will also demonstrate how to switch Java alternative default versions.

• Rebooting essentially means restarting the system you are using. As we all know, while using any computer, there are many reasons you might want to restart or reboot it. Rebooting allows your system to reset. The temporary memory gets cleared and the system starts again. Rebooting can be done either through hardware or software. In this article, we will be discussing how you can reboot your computer through Ansible.

• As you may know, Ansible can be used to control your system and its resources. So, Ansible can be used to control the computer on which it is installed. So, among carrying out other basic functions, you can also use it to reboot your system. For this, you can use the Ansible reboot module.

• This tutorial explains how to install Debian and Windows with dual boot.

• This article is useful for Windows users or a clean disk to install both systems.

• The tutorial gives optional instructions to prepare a Windows disk space to add Debian Linux and covers the Linux posterior installation to support dual boot. It does not cover the Windows installation process but instructions to make your Windows support adding Debian if you do not have an additional free disk for Linux.

Distributions

• One defining trait of Unix is that, in principle, everything is a file. This simplicity in design means that the same tools and APIs can be used for all sorts of things – managing physical devices like keyboards and mice (devfs), accessing kernel and process information (procfs), and of course your run-of-the-mill normal files. Yet, as surface area grew, syscalls and other APIs grew into implementations.

• Plan9 is one implementation that tried to generalize the Unix principle of “everything as a file” to everything, including things like computing and network resources. It was designed at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson (Unix, B, UTF-8, grep, and Go) and Rob Pike (Unix, UTF-8, Go) and others who worked on Unix. The OS has two design philosophies: (1) a simple messaging-oriented file system protocol (9P), and (2) a per-process name space.

New Releases

•  The MX development team has released MX-21.1 with Debian 11.3 as a base OS, and this is the first release after the EOL (END OF LIFE CYCLE) of Linux kernel 5.14, where you can find the 5.16 kernel in XFCE AHS editions.

• Compared to other MX variants, you will still find the 5.10 Linux kernel to use in their mainline editions for the sake of stability. And this is the first release where you can test Debian 11 (Buster) without the systemd service.

Debian Family

• Today the official Raspberry Pi blog released a post detailing changes from the latest update to Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye. The biggest change is in the user account creation process which will no longer feature a default username, adding an extra layer of security for users by providing them an opportunity to create a custom username from the start.

Devices/Embedded

Open Hardware/Modding

• This may look like a normal robot lawnmower, the sort that trundles mindlessly around suburban lawns all over the country, but OpenMower is more than that, thanks to the clever use of two Raspberry Pi boards. The brainchild of German tech entrepreneur Clemens Elflein, and reported on by Hackster, OpenMower upgrades the internals of a standard robot mower to make it smarter using a Raspberry Pi 4, and the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico.

• Many circuits, such as a computer power supply or a phone charger, require a stable voltage reference, but it’s harder than you might expect to keep a voltage stable when the temperature changes. One integrated circuit that does this is the LM185.1 I looked at the die of this chip and found some interesting features. The same silicon die is used for three different integrated circuits, using tiny internal fuses to change its functionality. The chip uses a special circuit called the bandgap reference to keep the voltage stable even if the temperature changes. In this blog post, I’ll discuss the circuitry of the LM185 and its implementation in silicon.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• The TI OMAP – Open Multimedia Application Platform – series powered some of the most influential devices over the years, smartphones, tablets and even smartwatches.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

• It’s actually a combination of the following options: [...]

Programming/Development

• The past few years have seen various attempts within computing, programming and hacker communities to apply ‘degrowth’ principles to their work – i.e. sketching out ways to de-couple digital technology from the growth-focused imperatives of capitalist societies. These efforts have so far progressed in a piecemeal manner, led by assorted groups with broad interests around ‘radically sustainable computing’ (Heikkilä 2021). The hope, of course, is that these initial developments might signal the beginnings of mainstream change.

• One area of interest involves what has been labelled ‘Collapse Informatics’. This explores ‘preparedness’ approaches to computing – i.e. building systems in the abundant present that might later prove durable during subsequent times of scarcity. Allied to this is the notion of ‘Permacomputing’, advocating the application of permaculture principles to the digital domain. Here, interests centre on developing ways in which computing can be sustained through practices of re-use, repair, maintenance and non-waste. Crucially, permacomputing stresses the need to develop digital technologies that are drastically less reliant on artificial energy, and designed in ways that acknowledge their interdependence with natural systems.

• This post shows how to use rjags R package to perform Bayesian MCMC estimation with multiple linear regression example. This is an easy tool for Bayesian analysis for us only if we understand the meaning of hyper-parameters of various prior distributions and use them without hesitation. \(\blacksquare\)

Leftovers

• Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok – you name it, they are all concerned with the bottom line. If they do react to Ahmed and others of his ilk who mouth such sanctimonious rantings, it is because they want to appear to be good corporate citizens.

• They are not intent on driving people away; they know that numbers are what guarantee their profits. But they also know that mass movement of people is rare, unless someone comes up with a competing site. Given the scale at which they operate, such sites are unlikely to be built now. Humans beings are still very much creatures of habit.

• It’s yet another year, it’s already April, and I haven’t written anything here for a long time. Sorry for that. Life kept my busy, but that’s a lame excuse I guess.

• Lately, I’ve been playing with OS/2 again. Last time I used OS/2 was back in the 90s, when I had installed it as my only operating system on my PC. I think this was around 1995, and I was using OS2 Warp 3 then. Some friends of mine were running a computer shop, and a single boxed version of OS/2 was collecting dust on the top shelf behind the counter. I could not resist, so I gave it a try.

• I can’t recall a lot of the software I used, besides the gopher client and a web browser (I’m pretty sure it was the IBM Web Explorer at that time). I also remember spending quite some time trying to find a driver for my graphics card. OS/2 performed so much better on my PC than Windows. And also, it provided both Win 3.11 and DOS at the same time. I really loved that system.

• A year later, in late 1996, I switched operating system to Linux, and I never looked back since then. So I never saw or used Warp 4.52, IBMs last release of OS/2. My bank was still using OS/2 everywhere, but that must have been one of my last thoughts about OS/2.

• I surely never heard about eComStation (The successor of OS/2 Warp 4.52). And neither about ArcaOS, which is the latest version of the OS/2 based system, with its latest release published just before christmas in 2021.

• Date of Expiration is such an amazing module in spite of the tech theme. A module with a map this quality, encounter tables this rich, and cross-references this thorough… one of the top adventures I’ve ever ran.

• I was comparing Date of Expiration, Ruins of the Grendleroot, and Scarlet Citadel. DoE has everything spelled out and ready to run, is super blorby and tight and also really well organized. Scarlet Citadel, I was so hyped for (I posted that photo of me holding up the book) but the book is so verbose and has plenty of real really handwavy “DM decides” sections.

• I ended up really liking both seasons of Anita’s feminist video game show that she did with McIntosh. I was watching the episodes as they were released and they helped me get back into gaming with her encouragement to both enjoy and criticize media, which helped me to enjoy the good parts of these these disturbing games.

• I was surprised that I liked them as much since I had thought (I wasn’t a crowdfunding backer); her first show (about tropes generally, not just games) was basic and overly 101 and “doesn’t everyone know this?” (Gamergate showed how very, very wrong I was about that, and now I think that show was good since those “101” basic points was not was universally agreed-upon and known as I believed.)

• But tonight I’m rewatching (I also saw it when it first came out) this breadtube essay on Blazing Saddles and I’m thinking how much more successful Anita’s points would’ve been conveyed with a similar formula: absolutely gush over a piece of classic media and use it to explain points in a positive way. People like liking things and like hearing why the movie or game is good, actually, and how groundbreaking it was and how it illuminated the kyriachal structures.

Hardware

• Teaching people efficiently isn’t limited to transmitting material from one head to another — it’s also about conveying the principles that got us there. [Mara Bos] shows us a toolkit (Twitter, nitter link) that you can arm your students with, creating a small playground where, given a set of constraints, they can invent and figure communication protocols out on their own.

• If you want to build your own rover, there’s plenty of cheap RC trucks out there that will provide a serviceable chassis to work with. Looking to go airborne with a custom drone? Thanks to the immense popularity of first-person view (FPV) flying, you’ll find a nearly infinite variety of affordable fixed wing and quadcopter platforms out there to chose from. But when it comes to robotic watercraft, the turn-key options aren’t nearly as plentiful; the toys are all too small, and the commercial options are priced for entities that have an R&D budget to burn. For amateur aquatic explorers, creativity is the name of the game.

• [Advanced Tinkering] needed a source of fresh ozone for some future chemistry related projects, and since buying an off-the-shelf unit would be, well, just plain boring, it was obvious what to do (Video, embedded below).

• [Avian]’s dad got a new ham radio transceiver with a 3.5 mm jack, and his pile-of-cables got him a headphone cable from Bose headphones. He built a DB9 to 3.5 mm adapter with that one – and it failed to let data through, outputting distorted garbage of a waveform instead. With a function generator and an oscilloscope, [Avian] plotted the frequency response of the cable, which turned out to be quite far from a straight line. What was up?

• Cleaning robots are great and all, but they don’t really excel when it comes to speed. If your room looks like a pigsty and your Tinder date is arriving in twenty minutes, you’ll need more than a Roomba to make a good impression. [Luis Marx] ran into this exact problem and decided to solve it by building the world’s fastest cleaning robot (video, embedded below).

• By our very nature, hackers tend to get on the bandwagon of new technology pretty quickly. When something gee-whiz comes along, it’s folks like us who try it out, even if that means climbing steep learning curves or putting together odd bits of technology rather than waiting for the slicker products that will come out if the new thing takes off. But building your own television receiver in 1933 was probably pushing the envelope for even the earliest of adopters.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The district attorney of Starr County, Texas on Sunday said he would drop a murder charge against Lizelle Herrera, a woman who was arrested on Thursday for allegedly causing “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.”

• “In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her,” said District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez in a statement, adding that her case was “not a criminal matter.”

• Public health experts on Sunday warned that the U.S. public may not be getting a full, accurate picture of their risk of contracting the coronavirus—and their need to take precautions like masking in public indoor spaces—as a number of high-profile Covid-19 cases were reported on Capitol Hill several weeks after mitigation efforts were largely dropped in cities across the country.

• At least 67 people who attended the annual Gridiron Club dinner last weekend—more than 10% of the guests—have now tested positive for Covid-19, including Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

• Since Wednesday 2022-03-30, at least 16 samples of a specific Excel file have been submitted to VirusTotal.

• These malicious Excel files are distributed as email attachments.

• In early 2021 the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF) called for companies to bid to provide it with Systems Applications and Products (SAP) software. Companies made their bids and ZIMDEF picked one, Tano Digital Solutions, and thought that would be the end of that.

• Nope, it’s never that simple. One company challenged the awarding of the tender to Tano and the High Court of Zimbabwe upheld it. Effectively ruling that the tender award was illegal.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• In the current version of macOS, Monterey, on every system update on a system containing an M1 chip, such as all the new shiny/fast ARM (“Apple Silicon”) macs, the update process phones home to Apple to obtain a special boot signature, known in Apple jargon as a “ticket”.

Defence/Aggression

• They were turned over to U.S. forces in Iraq and flown to the United States to face charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.

• Elsheikh is charged with the murders of American freelance journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig and suspected of the kidnapping of nearly 20 other Westerners.

• The attempted storming of the detention center for ISIS prisoners in Hesekê was supported by the Turkish state. According to the statements of a captured ISIS member, the preparations were made in the Turkish occupied zone in northern Syria.

Environment

Energy

• The world’s top climate scientists just delivered their rescue plan for humanity, directly to our governments. The Working Group III Report contribution to Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses on how to reduce further warming and follows the first two reports of the assessment, on the physical science and climate change impacts. It’s a thick report on climate solutions that can and must be put into action right now.

• Organizers of the “Coal Baron Blockade” protest which targeted right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s coal empire Saturday afternoon reported that state police almost immediately began arresting campaigners who assembled in Grant Town, West Virginia.

• “Sen. Joe Manchin’s policies hurt poor people and hurt our environment so deeply that activists are ready to put themselves on the line,” tweeted the Poor People’s Campaign, which joined grassroots group West Virginia Rising and other organizations in the blockade.

• In an earlier post I presented a naive model for estimating Dutch electrical solar power generation numbers. It turns out that the Dutch electrical power generation numbers are an even bigger mess than I appreciated.

• It appears that “everyone knows” that the numbers are confusing and incomplete but somehow just how incomplete the numbers are isn’t written down anywhere.

• So I’ll give it a shot.

• While there is growing awareness that the over-use of digital technologies is a contributing factor in environmental collapse, it nevertheless seems utterly impossible to change. How can I continue to function without a smartphone? How can I keep in contact with distant family and friends without Facebook? Any efforts to establish alternate climate-friendly ways of living over the next few decades therefore need to address this impasse … in short, how can affluent global North societies break their destructive cycle of mass over-consumption of digital technologies?

Wildlife/Nature

• A scientist from the University of the West of England says the electrical impulses mushrooms send out may be a form of communication used to talk to each other.

• Professor Andrew Adamatzky published his research yesterday in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Adamatzky put electrodes in soil that had mycelium, the “root” of the fungi, as well as into the fruiting body of the mushrooms themselves, which is the part that grows above the ground. He used enoki, caterpillar, split gill and ghost mushrooms, and analyzed the electrical activity each one gave off. He found evidence, he told The Guardian, of a mysterious mushroom language that could have as many as 50 words.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been widely condemned in many parts of the world, but a network of Facebook groups run by people with obscure motivations would like to change perceptions of the country’s leader.

• Rolling Stone interviewed more than 30 key figures inside and outside of Congress to understand how the most ambitious voting-rights bill in generations and the Democratic Party’s main policy response to the Jan. 6 insurrection ended in failure. The blame for this defeat, sources say, lies with multiple parties: Manchin either strung along his party for months with no intention of actually supporting the reforms or gave indications to his colleagues that he was on board only to reverse his position on multiple occasions. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, miscalculated that if they could flip Manchin, another swing vote, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, would follow his lead. As for the White House, these sources say, President Biden — despite saying as a candidate that “one of the first things I’ll do as president” is restore the Voting Rights Act — never seemed fully committed to passing voting-rights legislation. When Biden, who had vowed to run an “FDR-sized presidency,” did inject himself into the negotiations late in the fight, his contributions did more harm than good.

• Throughout the book Ibrahim emphasizes the widespread practice of enslaving the conquered Christians. Muslim accounts mention the preference for fair skinned women. This went on from the 7th through the 19th centuries. Over a three century period beginning in the mid-15th century about 3 million Slavs—Poles, Lithuanians, Russians and Ukrainians—were enslaved.

• Overall, Ibrahim has given a more complete account of the troubled history between Islam and Christianity than is generally available. His focus on how the combatants primarily viewed the struggle as a religious war is especially useful in a period when such phenomenon in the West is viewed through a secular lens, and it helps explain the views of contemporary jihadists. In a time when more general accounts are likely to narrowly focus on the Crusades and Western colonialism, Ibrahim’s important book explains the origins of both.

Misinformation/Disinformation

• “The Russian efforts to sow divisions between the Poles and Ukrainians, particularly by means of exploiting historical issues, are as old as time,” said Stanislaw Zaryn, the spokesman for Poland’s security services.

• “Russia has redoubled them since the war began,” he said. “And they are more dangerous now because the war is going on and it can affect more people than before.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• At least four teachers across the country have recently been turned in to authorities by students or parents for engaging in anti-war speech, The Washington Post reported Sunday. In some cases, students have secretly recorded instructors, who made negative comments about the invasion, before contacting the police.

• Journalist Amber Athey contended that the United States is not a free democracy after she was fired from a radio station after she tweeted about Vice President Harris’ outfit at the State of the Union address.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Monday marks three years since his arrest and detention in the prison while the United States continues with legal moves to extradite him.

• The three-year anniversary of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest is spurring a renewed push for Australia to step up diplomatic efforts to secure his release.

• The 50-year-old Australian was dragged from London’s Ecuador Embassy on 11 April 2019 to face extradition to the United States on espionage charges over WikiLeaks’ release of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables.

• Ecuadorian authorities Friday raided the office of Swedish cyber security expert Ola Bini, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s friend, facing allegations of illegal access to computer systems of the South American country.

• Bini, the 39-year-old founder of the non-profit organization Center for Digital Autonomy (CAD) in Quito, is accused of trying to access information from the computers of state oil company Petroecuador and an intelligence office.

• Bini’s lawyer, Carlos Soria, told EFE that the raid by the police and agents from the prosecutor’s office was without any court orders.

• We’re not strictly anti-algorithm. Algorithms are like equations, right? They appear all over the place and do different things. But we’re very skeptical about the consequences of organizing the media ecosystem around engagement.

• You guys have said that algorithms as used by Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter produce and incentivize cheap conflicts.

• I don’t think it’s the algorithms that do that; it’s their business models. These artificial intelligences arise to maximally serve the business model. The thing that the business model needs is total monopolization of your attention. Then the way that they do that is by creating these addictive experiences that amplify the most engaging stuff.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Want an up-close look at what’s going right — at how much is still going wrong — in the ongoing struggle against America’s oligarchs? These days you can see both on the shores of Lake Erie. Just shuffle off, as a Great Depression-era standard once advised, to Buffalo.

• LaToya Brown-Clayton is struggling financially. The owner and operator of Connecting the Pieces, a family child care program in Hartford, Connecticut, Ms. Brown cares for children from infancy until they enter kindergarten, offering after-school care once they are older. Families from across the city flock to her, but still, she can barely pay the bills. She’s even considered driving for Door Dash to make ends meet.

• It should come as no surprise that Facebook, alongside many big tech companies, opposes anti-monopoly regulatory efforts, expanding antitrust rules, and strengthening privacy and user rights. But Facebook has taken its advocacy against congressional efforts to regulate the industry to new heights: it has now partnered with the weapons industry to scare Americans about China and Russia.

• These are all things that cement the state’s power and further its reach, while making citizens dependent on the state for survival. The statesmen always stipulate that they can strip citizens of these entitlements at their sole and absolute discretion, ensuring people who live under the authority of the state will have little choice but to bend the knee and accept any and all atrocities committed on them to avoid further incurring the wrath of the pampered narcissists who rule the world.

Monopolies

Patents

Software Patents

• On April 4, 2022, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued the public version of a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Fat Statz, LLC holding all of the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,757,066 unpatentable and denying the patent owner’s motion to amend. The ’066 patent is generally directed to a behavior management system that allows users to track and compare fitness and health-related data. The ‘066 patent was asserted against Samsung in early 2020.

• On March 24, 2022, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 9,674,132, owned by Linfo IP LLC, an NPE and subsidiary of Dynamic IP Deals, LLC. The ’132 patent generally relates to a user interface for managing emails and other message communications and are disclosed as solutions for reducing confusion and avoiding mistakes in communications when replying to a message with multiple recipients.

Copyrights

• Most pirate sites try not to grab the attention of rightsholders and anti-piracy groups. Spanish torrent site DonTorrent is clearly not on that list because it openly taunts the Motion Picture Association. The site lists MPA’s Chief of Global Content Protection Jan Van Voorn as the ‘official’ owner in its legal disclaimer.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

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