● 06.19.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 19/06/2022: Tor 0.4.7.8 and KDE Qt5 Patch Collection

Posted in News Roundup at 8:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast.

Audiocasts/Shows

• On this episode of This Week in Linux: KDE Plasma 5.25 Released, K9 Mail Joins Thunderbird, Firefox Translations Add-on, MakuluLinux Shift Released, SpiralLinux Project, Amberol Music Player, GNOME Recieves $10K from Microsoft FOSS Fund, Steam NextFest, all that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

Applications

• Slack is arguably the most popular team messaging/collaboration application out there.

• While it is not an open-source solution, it is available for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS.

• Rocket.Chat, on the other hand, is one of the best open-source Slack alternatives. It is also available across all major platforms.

• We at It’s FOSS use Rocket.Chat (Self-hosted) for internal team communication. But, we have also had a fair share of experiences with Slack.

Instructionals/Technical

• Rsync is a Linux-based tool that can be used to sync files between remote and local servers. Rsync has many options that can help you define the connections you make. From deciding the type of shell that should be used to files that should be excluded in a transfer, Rsync gives you the power to shape the transfer specifications.

• Depending on the options you set when installing Arch Linux, you may have just installed with the root account active, or only one user with sudo permission may require adding more users with this permission. This can be done quickly and easily and is often preferred over root access.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn to add a user to the sudoers group on Arch Linux using the command line terminal.

• The Google PageSpeed module, also known as mod_PageSpeed, is an open-source Apache HTTP or Nginx server-level package with modules that helps optimize your site using various filters to pages that optimize server stylesheets, JavaScript, and HTML files and images through caching and rewriting among the top features.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install Nginx with Google Pagespeed on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa with optimal setups to increase your website speed server-side.

• If you are an editor and editing images is part of your daily life, then you should try the ImageMagick tool.

• ImageMagick is a free and open-source tool to edit, create, compose or convert digital images into another format. It supports over 200 formats, including PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, HEIC, SVG, PDF, DPX, EXR, and TIFF.

• Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused internet browser that sets itself apart from other browsers by automatically blocking online advertisements and website trackers in its default settings.

• Brave claims that its browser puts less strain on your computer’s performance than Google Chrome. Even with multiple tabs open at once, the new Brave Software uses 66% less memory and has 50 million more active users than before – a growth of 2X in 5 years!

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Brave Browser on Linux Mint 20 LTS release series using the command line terminal to install the stable version, and optional beta or development builds.

• I’ve been working with Portainer for some time now and it has very quickly risen to the top of my favorite container management tools. And, like all good projects, Portainer frequently releases updates to the platform. However, the one thing you can’t do is simply log in to your Portainer instance, and click an upgrade button. Since Portainer is deployed as a container itself, you have to go through a few hoops to deploy the latest version.

• Flatpak is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. Flatpak offers a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system.

• Flatpak can be used by all types of desktop environments and aims to be as agnostic as possible regarding how applications are built.

• Flatpak runtimes and applications are built as OCI images and are distributed with the Fedora registry

• Flatpaks are a new way of deploying applications.

• Flatpak is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. Flatpak offers a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system.

• Flatpak can be used by all types of desktop environments and aims to be as agnostic as possible regarding how applications are built.

• In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to install Flatpak on Ubuntu 22.04.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install qBittorrent on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, qBittorrent is a cross-platform free and open-source BitTorrent client. The qBittorrent project aims to provide an open-source software alternative to µTorrent. qBittorrent is available for Linux, Windows, macOS, and FreeBSD.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the qBittorrent open-source BitTorrent client on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• This is a complex tale I will attempt to make simple(ish). I’ve (re)learned more than I cared to about the details of pipes, signals, and certain system calls – and the solution is still elusive.

• For some time now, I have been using NNCP to back up my files. These backups are sent to my backup system, which effectively does this to process them (each ZFS send is piped to a shell script that winds up running this):

• Today you will learn how to install Glassfish server on Ubuntu / Debian

• GlassFish is a fully open-source reference implementation of JAVA EE application server which can be used for developing and deploying Java based applications. It supports Enterprise,JavaBeans, JPA,JSF, JSP/Servlet,JMS, RMI and many other Java-Based Technologies. It also provides us with a Web Based Panel and a CLI-Based administration console which allows easier configuration and management of our deployed applications.

• In my previous article, I covered some basic ways we could modify our Nginx configuration in order to achieve better performance. Let’s expand upon that today. I am using this as reference.

• Selenium is a versatile tool that can be used for automating browser-based tests. It has a wide range of features that make it an ideal choice for automating tests. Selenium can be used to automate tests for web applications and web services. Selenium supports a number of programming languages, including Java, C#, Python, and Ruby.

• This makes it possible to write tests in the language that you are most comfortable with. In addition, Selenium has a large user community that provides support and help when needed.

• In this blog post, you will learn to set up a Selenium environment on an Ubuntu system. Also provides you with a few examples of Selenium scripts written in Python.

• To motivate why it makes sense to look at rsync, I present three scenarios for which I have come to appreciate rsync: DokuWiki transfers, Software deployment and Backups.

• For in-depth information on Curve25519, including the choice of curve equation, the choice of prime number used for Fp, and the exact details of key exchange I can recommend the author’s paper and also this technical analysis. Most of these details are streamlining of the concepts listed on this page to keep the exchange mechanism secure and performant, and should not fundamentally conflict with what’s explained here.

• The HPLIP (HPLinux Imaging and Printing) project—initiated and led by HP Inc. (HP)—aims to ease Linux systems’ ability to interact with HP‘s inkjet and laser printers with full printing, scanning, and faxing support. As of 2021 the supplied printer-drivers support a total of 3,088 HP printer models; many of these for low-end models are free and open-source (FOSS), licensed under MIT, BSD, and GPL licenses, but others (including all color laser MFC printers on the market for years) require proprietary binary blobs (“plug-ins”). The project intends that HPLIP work in combination with CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) and SANE to perform printing and scanning respectively. HPOJ, the HP OfficeJet Linux driver to get HP‘s OfficeJet printers to run with Linux, ceased development as of 13 March 2006 with the advent of HPLIP.

• It was drawn to my attention yesterday, a post from Berto, that guess-fstype failed:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=60034#p60034

• /bin/guess_fstype is a symlink to /bin/busybox. That symlink should not be there. guess_fstype was deprecated a very long time ago.

• Kdenlive (acronym for KDE Non-Linear Video Editor) is a free and open-source video editing software based on the MLT Framework, KDE and Qt. The project was started by Jason Wood in 2002, and is now maintained by a small team of developers.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install pgAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, pgAdmin is a most popular and feature rich and open source PostgreSQL administration and development platform that runs on Linux, Unix, macOS, and Windows.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the pgAdmin4 on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

• In this guide, we will install kicad on Ubuntu 22.04 system

• KiCad is a free software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware. It features an integrated environment for schematic capture, PCB layout, manufacturing file viewing, SPICE simulation, and engineering calculation. Tools exist within the package to create bill of materials, artwork, Gerber files, and 3D models of the PCB and its components.

• Package management in Ubuntu makes it fairly easy to install, upgrade, or remove applications from the system. But some pieces of software contain multiple configuration folders and require a bit of work.

• One such software that is often used in Ubuntu is the MySQL Server. We can not utilize the usual process of apt purge to completely uninstall the MySQL server from the system. We need to follow certain steps to make sure that we completely remove MySQL and all its components from the Ubuntu system.

• Note: Make sure that you backup all your MySQL Server databases before proceeding further. After compelling this process all the files and folders associated with MySQL Server will be deleted so if you want to keep your databases you need to create a backup first. To completely remove MySQL Server and all its dependencies from your system follow the steps given below in the same succession.

• Alma Linux is a community enterprise Linux operating system. It is created by CloudLinux Team, who provide services for shared hosting and already have their own commercial Linux distribution, CloudLinux OS.

• AlmaLinux OS is designed to be 1:1 binary compatible with RHEL and pre-Stream CentOS.

• The AlmaLinux OS is governed by The AlmaLinux OS Foundation, which is a 501(c)(6) non-profit created for the benefit of the AlmaLinux OS community.

• It is now gaining popularity mainly among private business and organizations and can be a successor of CentOS Linux. In this article, we’ll try to give a brief discussion over Alma Linux and everything you need to know about it.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Go on Fedora 36. For those of you who didn’t know, Go is an open-source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software. Go language is similar to C, but with garbage collection, memory safety, and structural typing. It is an original product of Google Engineering.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Go programming language on a Fedora 36.

• We are going to learn the difference between DNF and YUM package managers in this article. But first, let’s take a look at what both these YUM and DNF are.

• In this article we’ll show you how to use FFMPEG to extract raw audio from a video file, and also how to re-encode audio using different ffmpeg audio encoders.

• Have you ever felt like streaming websites are way too bloated and you just want to watch your streams in peace, well you’re in luck because StreamLink is here to save the day.

WINE or Emulation

• The Windows compatibility layer that allows you to run various applications and games on Linux (and forms part of Steam Play Proton) has a new development release out with Wine 7.11. Once a year or so, a new stable release is made but the development versions are usually fine to use.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• I want to personally extend my gratitude to the Commercial users of Qt for beta testing Qt 5.15.5 for the rest of us.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• A curated list of 10 super awesome application launcher(s) for Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Linux distributions with examples.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Debian Family

• There have been two headline suicides in Debian: the suicide of the founder, Ian Murdock and the Frans Pop suicide that appears to have been planned for the anniversary of Debian’s founding, Debian Day.

• The significance of Frans’ actions can not be understated. His life and death intertwined with the project itself. This raises the most serious questions: have there been other suicides or incidents of self harm? What impact does a suicide like that have on organization culture? Even though it was hidden on debian-private, everybody knew something about it.

• Therefore, there is a strong case for having a fresh look at other deaths even though doing so may cause some pain for their friends and family.

Devices/Embedded

•  MediaTek released a System on Module (SoM) that integrates their latest Genio 1200 AIoT (MT8395) System on Chip showcased last month. The LEC-MTK-I1200 features 8-cores (4x Cortex-A78/4x A55), 5-cores Arm Mali-G57 GPU and an APU system (5 TOPS). For quick prototyping, ADLINK has also designed a development board compatible with the LEC-MTK-I1200.

• The LEC-MTK-I1200 comes in a SMARC 2.1 factor form and combines four Arm Cortex-A78 (up to 2.2GHz) and four Arm Cortex-A55 (up to 2.0GHz). The SoM can be configured to have four or eight GB of LPPDR4X and up to 256GB of UFS storage (32GB standard).

Open Hardware/Modding

• I’m doing a year-long project to reverse engineer the output and functionality of a VIC-20′s video chip, and create a drop-in replacement. At the start of this project (a few days ago), I only actually know how to do a percentage of the things I’ll need to complete this project. Writing a long series on how things work as I learn will help the project along. Plus, maybe having all of this information in one place would be nice, right?

• Two-factor authentication is becoming the norm for many applications and services, and security concerns around phone porting hacks are leading to a phaseout of SMS-based systems. Amidst that backdrop, [Josh] developed his own authentication device by the name of Good USB.

• IKEA make a lot of different lamps, including useful motion-sensitive models that can click on when you walk past. [Andrew Menadue] trialed one as a night light, but it was far too bright for the task. It also would come on during the day time, wasting its precious battery life when it wasn’t needed. Thus, in order to mold the lamp to its new purpose, hacking ensued.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

Tor

• As stated in the announcement (link above), we strongly recommend that everyone upgrades to 0.4.7.8. Packages are being updated and released for OS distributions so keep an eye out! Our beloved packagers are hard at work!

• Also, I will repeat it here, the security issue is categorized as a Denial of Service so it is not affecting the security of the host machine running “tor”. Nevertheless, again, we strongly encourage you to upgrade.

Education

• There is a vast difference between knowledge and expertise. Knowledge lets you deduce the right thing to do; expertise makes the right thing a reflex, hardly requiring conscious thought at all.

• This book has a lot of knowledge in it, but it is mainly about expertise. It is going to try to teach you the things about Unix development that Unix experts know, but aren’t aware that they know. It is therefore less about technicalia and more about shared culture than most Unix books — both explicit and implicit culture, both conscious and unconscious traditions. It is not a ‘how-to’ book, it is a ‘why-to’ book.

• The why-to has great practical importance, because far too much software is poorly designed. Much of it suffers from bloat, is exceedingly hard to maintain, and is too difficult to port to new platforms or extend in ways the original programmers didn’t anticipate. These problems are symptoms of bad design. We hope that readers of this book will learn something of what Unix has to teach about good design.

• This book is divided into four parts: Context, Design, Tools, and Community. The first part (Context) is philosophy and history, to help provide foundation and motivation for what follows. The second part (Design) unfolds the principles of the Unix philosophy into more specific advice about design and implementation. The third part (Tools) focuses on the software Unix provides for helping you solve problems. The fourth part (Community) is about the human-to-human transactions and agreements that make the Unix culture so effective at what it does.

Programming/Development

• A useful mental model for reasoning about behavior change is the Transtheoretical model – sometimes also known as the “Stages of Change” model.

• I had been working on an old laptop that struggled with resource-intensive tasks. My way around that had been to switch from the laptop to my less-readily-accessible desktop for stuff that needed more oomph. Because two devices means two different package libraries, I had thought I was being smart by having my R library in Dropbox: point R to the right location, and tada!, the packages are always stable across the two machines. Plus, in case of catastrophic failure, it’s easy to start again. Right? Wrong! So, so very wrong!

Python

• There are two sides of this; what we’re going to do about our own scripts that are still using Python 2, and what will happen with our users and their scripts. For our own scripts, they could could be rewritten to Python 3 or changed to use a different Python interpreter path in their #! line, including PyPy. Since we’re in control of them and the timing of any use of an operating system without Python 2, we’re at least not going to be blindsided. My tentative guess at our endgame for our own scripts is that we’d probably use PyPy, although we might opt to move them to Python 3 instead.

Java

• One of the types of software that’s important for a web developer is the web framework. A framework “is a code library that makes a developer’s life easier when building reliable, scalable, and maintainable web applications” by providing reusable code or extensions for common operations. By saving development time, developers can concentrate on application logic rather than mundane elements.

• A web framework offers the developer a choice about how to solve a specific problem. By using a framework, a developer lets the framework control portions of their application. While it’s perfectly possible to code a web application without using a framework, it’s more practical to use one.

• This article examines the best Java microframeworks. Micro means the framework is small, with little or no tools and libraries. Microframeworks are designed with extensibility in mind. They provide an essential set of features and rely on extensions to do the rest. Microframeworks have the advantage of making no or fewer decisions for you, making it easy to start development.

• When it comes to web development, there are a wide range of Java microframeworks to choose from. The choice actually helps you find the right tool for the job. Here’s our pick of the finest open source microframeworks.

Standards/Consortia

• No technology other than RSS has had more think pieces written proclaiming the death of RSS (2006, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013) and the rebirth of RSS (2009, 2010, 2011, 2018, 2018, 2019).

• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a protocol that lets you subscribe to website updates – e.g., new blog posts, podcasts, or anything else. Today, most podcasts are distributed via RSS.

Leftovers

• On May 9th I was at a job interview on the other side of town, near the university. The weather was nice and I had a lot of time on my hands. I decided to do something fun with it! Both on the way there and on the way home I photographed some e-scooters I found.

• Far from all of them! Many were parked right next to bicycles in places where bicycles should be parked. To limit the amount of pictures somewhat I decided that those weren’t very interesting. Instead I shot those that “stood out” so to speak. Parked on bike lanes, right outside restaurants, next to bicycles that were also mis-parked, by bus stops, and more.

• I think this person, a “transparent person” for most people around him, is amazing. It’s easy to tell by his appearance, his smell and his accent that he had a very hard life, but he’s very grateful for what he has, puts his son’s future above all else, and treats the people around him like people. I wish I had his strength.

Science

• With all things in life, one must seek to achieve balance. That may sound a little like New Age woo-woo, but if you think it’s not literally true, just try tolerating a washing machine with a single comforter on spin cycle, or driving a few miles on unbalanced tires.

Education

• Cecelia Lewis did not want to share her story.

• In fact, she just wanted all of this to go away.

Hardware

• It would appear that, sometimes, miracles happen. A few days ago, an update graced the website of Insteon, a company whose abrupt shuttering we covered in detail two months ago. An entity described as “small group of passionate Insteon users” has bought what was left of the company, and is working on getting the infrastructure back up. Previously, there was no sign of life from the company’s APIs. Now, Insteon hubs are coming back to life — or perhaps, they’re Inste-online again.

• If you own a camper or RV, you might think twice when taking it out after giving gasoline prices a look. Towing all that extra weight and wind drag along can really eat into your fuel efficiency. [Drew] decided to keep the camper but take gasoline out of the equation by building a teardrop trailer he pulls behind his bike.

• Whether you’re a modular synth enthusiast or simply love the idea of rad electronic jams, we can all get behind the idea of crazy electronic instruments with buttons, dials, and patch cables galore. The Doodlestation is a wonderful example of that, built by [Love Hulten].

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The GOP-packed Iowa Supreme Court on Friday dealt a serious blow to abortion rights in the state amid heightened fears about the future of reproductive freedom nationwide.

• “This law imposes medically unjustified obstacles for Iowans… and will effectively put abortion out of reach for many.”

• I tested positive for COVID-19 this morning.

• My first symptoms were on Thursday night, when I woke up in the middle of the night with a minor sore throat and a headache. I managed to sleep through the rest of the night, but the symptoms had not improved by morning. I took naproxen and pseudoephedrine when I woke up, which helped.

• Throughout the day on Friday I began to feel worse and worse, culminating in a fever and severe chills that evening. I had gone on a strenuous cycling trip Thursday evening, and at first I attributed my symptoms to heat sickness from the exercise. However, even plenty of water and Gatorade, as well as staying in our air-conditioned house all day, did not make my symptoms improve. I also began to develop a mild cough, which manifested as a tickle in my throat.

• Imagine waking up to a headline that reads, “Atlanta Demolished by Nuclear Bomb,” and learning that the city’s 498,715 residents were dead. The shock to our society would be unimaginable. And yet, we just learned that the American health system killed more people than that in the last two years alone and hardly anyone noticed. The fact that we’ve also wasted more than a trillion dollars barely merits an afterthought.

Security

• While patching desktops has some universal aspects across systems, there are specific Linux best practices that Linux administrators need to know. Here are eight important ones.

• From Nmap to Wireshark to Jok3r, these open source automated pen testing tools help companies determine how successful their security strategies are at protecting their networks.

• Firefox turns on cookie tracking protection by default, while the axe finally falls on IE

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

Privacy/Surveillance

• Angry bank customers who traveled to a city in central China to retrieve their savings from troubled rural banks have been stopped by a health app on their cellphone.

• Chinese residents are required to have the health app, which displays a code indicating their health status, including possible exposure to COVID-19. A green code is required to use public transportation and to enter locations such as offices, restaurants and malls. But some depositors at the banks in central Henan province said their codes were turned red to stop them.

• The incident has started a national debate on how a tool designed for public health was appropriated by political forces to tamp down controversy.

• China’s digital yuan can now be used for wealth management products and bank loans. This move by China’s central bank extends the use of the digital currency beyond the purchase of consumer goods.

• The e-CNY is currently being used in more than 20 cities throughout China. Although the e-CNY is still in its pilot stages, the scope of the trial has been gradually expanded since its debut in 2020.

• The Chinese government has introduced the e-CNY as Bejing has cracked down on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, seeking instead to provide a government-sanctioned and controlled digital alternative.

• The social media giant gathers data from crisis pregnancy centers through a tracking tool that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account.

• It had the same dumb wording (“be a voice for the community”), only accompanied with google’s awful “Alegria art” too. Also had the same “bait”, a crisp fresh-from-the-bank $1 bill with a promise of like $20 in google play credit—the assholes couldn’t even cough up cash for that sweet sweet data.

• Anyway, it came with a form letter explaining how excited I should be to be a “voice for my community!” and all that. What an opportunity! And to prove just how real this all was, there was a crisp, new $1 bill attached to the bottom of the page, and a promise of $5 after finishing the packet (wowwy!). A Nielsen Buck, straight from the Federal Reserve.

• And then there’s Google. The online giant has the most popular search engine and most-used, web-based email service in the world. Part of US company Alphabet Inc., Google regularly boasts about how carefully it protects users’ data. But it has also had some noteworthy run-ins with authoritarian leaders.

Defence/Aggression

• The chants of “We are Hamas” and “Death to Israel,” at CAIR sponsored events, are proof that CAIR is still clinging to its Palestinian terrorist roots. CAIR may claim that it is a Muslim advocacy group that wishes to combat discrimination, but time after time, Israel – or more appropriately Israel’s annihilation – is what the organization cares most about. Fighting discrimination is just a veil to conceal CAIR’s sinister reality.

• All of this is no longer science fiction and must be addressed soon. The time to legally empower LAWS to employ lethal force is prior to a conflict, not in the heat of battle. At the institutional level, the Department of Defense (and its counterparts in US-allied nations) must craft an operational framework for LAWS, as well as offer strategic guidance, to ensure their ethical application in the future. Autonomous systems must be tested thoroughly in the most demanding of scenarios, the results must be evaluated at the granular level, and an expected error rate must be calculated. As a baseline, LAWS should pose less risk of error than a human operator.

• The German military’s Earth observation program costs around €800 million. The foreign secret service also uses it, but is getting its own spy system under the name Georg.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• A Justice Department lawyer revealed Thursday that transcripts of the 1,000 interviews conducted as part of the House January 6 committee’s investigation into the Capitol attack will be made public in September. It would be an unprecedented release of documents that could shed new light on the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

• The revelation came during a pretrial hearing for former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and four other members of the far-right group who were charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with their alleged role in planning and participating in the Capitol siege.

• “The City has not voluntarily released any information to a member of the public,” the city’s lawyer, Cynthia Trevino, who works for the private law firm Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech, wrote in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The city wrote the letter asking Paxton for a determination about what information it is required to release to the public, which is standard practice in Texas. Paxton’s office will eventually rule which of the city’s arguments have merit and will determine which, if any, public records it is required to release.

• The maneuver has been used repeatedly by Texas law enforcement agencies to claim they’re not required to turn over the requested information because a criminal case is still pending, even though the suspect is dead.

• The loophole was established in the 1990s to protect people who were wrongfully accused or whose cases were dismissed, said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

• “It is meant to protect the innocent,” Shannon said, but in some cases “it is being used and misused in a way that was never intended.”

Environment

Energy

• We’re consuming way too much energy. By now people should start understanding that “shifting over to green power” is kind of a joke. So far the world hasn’t really started transitioning at any meaningful scale. Yes, new solar and wind plants are built every day. There are however some problems we tend to ignore: [...]

• All the latest headlines about President Joe Biden’s July trip to Saudi Arabia focus on a deal to push down gas prices. In reality, he is making a much more sinister and dangerous calculation than most realize: He is reportedly planning to offer the dictators in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—where all but two of the 9/11 terrorists came from—a defense pact that commits American lives to defend their regimes. What could go right?

Overpopulation

• With the world “marching towards starvation,” said David Beasley, “the best thing we can do right now is end that damn war in Russia and Ukraine and get the port open” in Od…

Finance

• Led by the Poor People’s Campaign, advocacy groups and low-income individuals gathered in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to demand that policymakers “fight poverty, not the poor.”

• “Poverty is a policy choice and we will hold our leaders accountable.”

• For the United States and much of the rest of the world, the 1970s were a time of high oil prices, surging inflation, stock market swoons, political upheaval, and geopolitical tension. Add pandemic and climate change to the list, and it also sounds like a fair description of the world today, a half-century later.

• Several of the major central banks are stuck in a trap of their own making. This includes the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and others.The credit-based global financial system we have constructed and participated in over the past century has to continually grow or die.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The neofascist movements currently rising around the globe differ from the fascist movements of the 20th century. Fascism in the last century arose to break radical workers’ movements, many organized by the Communist Party. But the current neofascists, figures such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Narendra Modi in India, do not need to focus on destroying unions, which have already been decimated by globalization. Instead, they can directly channel the anger of the unemployed and underemployed towards minorities and the vulnerable.

• In cells built for adults, one-third are child migrants. Border authorities have resisted improving conditions for minors in crowded, freezing facilities.

• Since January 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed 412 bills and sent them to the Senate. Unfortunately, the Senate hasn’t acted. “What?” you say, “don’t the Democrats control both chambers of Congress?” Sure, by the barest of margins. Handcuffed by the filibuster, a Senate rule (not a federal law) requires 60 votes to pass legislation in what senators of yore called the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”

• As the January 6 committee hearings continue, many see the panel’s work as an investigation of an event that happened on a single day. To be sure, reconstructing the attack on the Capitol is crucial to the committee’s efforts. But it’s important to understand that the story of the attempt to overturn the will of the voters is still unfolding.

• U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders rallied with Jonathan Jackson and Delia Ramirez, a pair of progressive congressional candidates, in Chicago on Saturday.

• “We desperately need more leaders in the Congress who understand the need to stand up and fight against the corporate greed that is running rampant in this country.”

Misinformation/Disinformation

• Social media can be an effective tool to spread accurate information about COVID-19 and help guard against the pandemic’s spread. Its many platforms can also be used to disseminate false information about the disease, its origins and how to treat it.

• Hundreds of social media-driven myths about COVID-19 have been circulated and debunked since the pandemic began. This article, the second in a series, exposes some of the misinformation that has circulated, driving paranoia, mistrust of health officials and a lax attitude toward a disease that has killed 254,000 people on the African continent.

Censorship/Free Speech

• This wasn’t how things normally went on the platform. “You notice a pattern with YouTube, that when a video gets a certain number of views in the first hour, you have an idea of how well it’s going to do for the week based on that,” she says. “But sometimes, a video will just be doing amazing in the first hour or two, and then it just dips.”

• Khalek is just one of many left-wing media figures who have been negatively affected by the platform’s content moderation policies. Suppression, demonetization, outright removal of content: as the drive for tech censorship has grown, ostensibly to take aim at “misinformation” and online extremism, independent left-wing outlets have suffered all this and more, caught in the expansive net that overzealous, overworked, or automated YouTube censors have thrown at the content on their platforms.

• A number of the letter’s drafters were fired Thursday afternoon, according to an email sent by SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and seen by The Verge. News of the firing was first reported by The New York Times.

• The open letter asked that SpaceX’s leaders “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior” and “define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior.”

• The open letter, a draft of which was obtained by The Post, asked co-workers to sign on either by name or anonymously. It also appeared to provide a web platform for employees to confidentially submit stories of personal experiences at the company and encouraged workers to discuss the letter with their supervisors in upcoming meetings.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• A forensic examination on remains found in the Amazon confirmed they belonged to British journalist Dom Phillips. A second set of remains, believed to be those of Bruno Pereira, are still being analyzed.

• The UK has taken the next step towards extraditing Julian Assange to the US. This is a sad day for journalism.

• With all the sex crimes revealed in Australia during 2021, we can’t help feeling Assange has been a scapegoat.

• Then again, we couldn’t help thinking there is nothing new here.

• A brief thought.

• British politicians will celebrate World Press Freedom Day next week by debating the safety of journalists and the importance of free expression with no sense of irony.

• “There still are two instances in the English judicial system to appeal to, but we must not lose sight of the fact that some kind of provisional or precautionary measure could be activated before the European Court of Human Rights,” he explained.

• Journalism organizations and human rights groups had called on Britain to refuse the extradition request. Mr. Assange’s lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in jail if he is convicted in the U.S., though American authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower than that.

• Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said Friday that extraditing Mr. Assange “would put him at great risk and sends a chilling message to journalists the world over.”

• “We are going to use every appeal avenue,” Stella Assange told a London press conference on Friday after the home secretary signed the extradition order, reports Joe Lauria.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Surveillance footage shows that police never tried to open a door to two classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in the 77 minutes between the time a gunman entered the rooms and massacred 21 people and officers finally stormed in and killed him, according to a law enforcement source close to the investigation.

• Investigators believe the 18-year-old gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at the school on May 24 could not have locked the door to the connected classrooms from the inside, according to the source.

• The High Court here today rejected leave for a lawsuit by a Malaysian woman who wants to be declared no longer a Muslim in order to be free to embrace Confucianism and Buddhism.

• This means the High Court will not proceed to hear her case. She has however filed an appeal immediately.

• Federal counsel Mohammad Sallehuddin Md Ali, who represented the attorney-general, confirmed that High Court judge Datuk Ahmad Kamal Md Shahid had dismissed the woman’s application for leave for judicial review.

• For two decades, a group of police analysts (myself included) have been warning about the corrosive effects of police militarization, which have been unfolding for more than 40 years. Through the Pentagon’s 1033 Program, the federal government has been dumping military weaponry, armored personnel carriers, even grenade launchers and drones, on police departments large and small. People of a certain age should reflect: You probably don’t recall police regularly hanging out with armored personnel carriers and automatic weapons when you were a kid. But sometime after this nation embarked on the War on Drugs, these scenes became normal.

• After Recode on Friday revealed an internal document from last year warns that “if we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the U.S. network by 2024,” critics of the online retail giant’s labor practices renewed calls for improvement.

• “I guess treating people like they’re expendable has consequences, who knew?”

• Paul Von Blum writes about dissent as a personal legacy, how it has defined his life and how it has influenced some of the 40,000 or more students he has had since he began teaching more than 50 years ago.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• There’s certainly some truth to the claims of these activists, and aspects of their proposed reforms could make an important difference to our online experiences. But in his new book Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future, Ben Tarnoff argues that those criticisms fail to identify the true problem with the [Internet]. Monopolization, surveillance, and any number of other issues are the product of a much deeper flaw in the system.

• I kept hoping the site would come back up! But it’s been dead for more than 10 days now, and I guess I better get used to it… If you are reading this, whoever made this, please, please bring it back!

Monopolies

• PI was granted permission to intervene in this case, one of the first successful applications to intervene before the Tribunal brought by a campaigning organisation. Our intervention in support of the CMA’s position argued that Meta could use GIPHY to further expand, and potentially abuse, its dominance in social media and messaging, as well as digital advertising markets at the expense of consumers and competitors.

• While the CAT judgment does not address directly concerns related to data exploitation, it recognises that the CMA correctly assessed the harm to competition which is caused by Meta acquisition of GIPHY. In 2021 the CMA noted how the merger would allow Meta to disadvantage its rivals, including by acquiring data on users’ behaviour and potentially requiring apps to return more users’ data to GIPHY.

Copyrights

• An amusing irony of working an anti-piracy job is that people immediately render themselves redundant when they’re 100% effective. With that scenario unlikely to ever raise its head, anti-piracy jobs are in abundance. Whether you prefer site-blocking, IPTV disruption, or just want camcording movie pirates brought to justice, there is no shortage of jobs in the UK right now.

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