● 07.21.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 21/07/2022: LibreOffice 7.3.5, Microsoft Teams Goes Offline Again, Dell Has Many Puff Pieces

Posted in News Roundup at 9:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

•  Using digital signage to interact with consumers and staff is a popular and productive strategy. Linux-based digital signage is one of the most common digital signage systems on the market today. It has numerous benefits, but Linux-based digital signage also has certain drawbacks that you should address before making a purchase. Here’s an overview of the pros and cons.

• We cover events and user groups that are running in the US state of Arkansas. This article forms part of our Linux Around The World series.

Desktop/Laptop

•  In celebration of 10 years of partnership, Dell and Canonical announced today that starting from August, developers will be able to purchase Dell’s flagship XPS 13 Plus laptop with the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS operating system preinstalled.

• But the great news I want to share with you today is that existing Dell XPS 13 Plus owners will be able to install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS starting today. Dell and Canonical ensure users that they will enjoy the same hardware-optimized experience that will ship with the new Developer Edition next month.

• Earlier this year, HP made waves in the Linux community by partnering with System76 on a developer-focused laptop. Called “Dev One,” the notebook comes pre-loaded with the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS. This new HP machine is quite impressive, as you can read in our review.

• Of course, seasoned Linux veterans were already familiar with a different major computer manufacturer selling a Linux-based developer machine. Yes, Dell has been releasing XPS “Developer Edition” models for many years — these computers come with Canonical’s Ubuntu pre-installed. Dell’s XPS 13 in particular has been lauded by professional reviewers and consumers alike thanks to its balance of power and elegance.

• Next month, you will be able to buy the latest XPS “Developer Edition” from Dell in the USA, Canada, and parts of Europe. You see, starting in August, the company will begin selling the Dell XPS Plus 13 Developer Edition which is certified for (and comes with) Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS. The laptop is powered by Intel’s latest 12th-gen Core processors and can be configured with up to 32GB of 5,200 MHz LPDDR5 memory. For storage, you get a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD standard. Fans of media will appreciate the quad-speaker setup and optional 4K+ OLED display.

• Canonical has announced that the new Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition has been officially certified to run Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. The Developer Edition laptop will be available from August with Ubuntu pre-installed, and owners of the current XPS 13 Plus can also install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS today and receive the same experience as the Developer Edition will get.

• Ubuntu certification means that all the components in the computer will work well with Ubuntu out of the box. As a certified device, the Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition will receive specific software and drivers that don’t typically come with Ubuntu – as long as they are required. These devices may also run a different Linux kernel to ensure the best performance.

• Canonical and Dell are jointly announcing that the new Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition laptop has been officially certified for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

• Beginning next month consumers can order the new Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition laptop pre-loaded with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Or already those with the latest edition Dell XPS 13 can load Ubuntu 22.04 on it and receive the same “hardware-optimized experience.” The HWE OEM kernel with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS makes use of Linux 5.17 over the default 5.15 kernel as one of the primary changes.

• I’ve loved Dell’s Linux laptop for developers, the Dell XPS 13 since the first unit rolled out from the factory gate. Now, the latest Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition will soon be rolling out the door with Ubuntu 22.04 Long Term Support (LTS). I can’t wait. The first will arrive on August 23rd.

• This means, of course, Canonical and Dell officially have been certified for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. So if you already have a current XPS 13 Plus, you can install Ubuntu 22.04 and automatically receive the same hardware-optimized experience that will ship with the new Developer Edition.

• Canonical is excited to announce the new Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition has been officially certified for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

• Starting from August, developers can buy Dell’s flagship XPS 13-inch laptop with the latest version of Canonical’s desktop Linux preinstalled. Also, from today current XPS 13 Plus owners can install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and automatically receive the same hardware-optimised experience that will ship with the new Developer Edition.

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS brings new features, performance and stability improvements backed by up to 10 years of software updates.

• Ten years after launching a pioneering combination of Linux preinstalled on a commercial laptop with Project Sputnik, Dell and Canonical announced that the XPS 13 Plus is the first OEM PC certified for Ubuntu 22.04 Long-Term Support (LTS). That makes this a straightforward route to having a PC that just works without worrying about whether or not each component is ready to work with Linux.

• Linux-equipped Developer Edition models of the laptop were already available, with prices starting at $1,289.00, but currently ship with the older 20.04 LTS software. Long-term support releases deliver what it says on the tin, with the end of standard support for this version scheduled in 2027 and the end of life in 2032. Certified devices are lab tested to check the compatibility of each component, which means your device gets the specific drivers installed that will make all of its features work properly.

• Dell is extending its love for Linux to the Dell XPS 13 Plus. The Developer Edition of the laptop has been Ubuntu 22.04 LTS-certified, Canonical announced today. That means the laptop will be sold starting in August with the latest version of Ubuntu, and owners of the XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition can download Ubuntu 22.04 LTS today (even if they bought it with Windows 11) for guaranteed performance.

• The XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition is the first 22.04 LTS-certified laptop, joining only some Raspberry Pi devices in certification. However, Dell has been certifying some of its XPS laptops, as well as other machines, for Ubuntu for generations. HP and Lenovo also have Ubuntu-certified systems.

• Dell has been selling some of the best Linux laptops for over a decade now, and right on the heels of the HP Dev One, Dell is releasing an updated Linux variant of the premium XPS 13 Plus.

• Dell was already selling an XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition, which was largely unchanged from the Windows-powered XPS 13 Plus that arrived earlier this year, except that it comes with Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS instead of Windows. Starting this August, Dell will ship the XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition with a newer Ubuntu 22.04 LTS software experience, and people who already bought the Developer Edition will receive the same optimized update.

• Dell and Canonical have announced that the Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition is the first laptop to be certified for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Long Term Support). This is the latest LTS release of Ubuntu, following version 20.04, which is what the Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition currently ships with.

• Starting in August, you’ll be able to buy the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS out of the box. If you’ve already bought a Dell XPS 13 Plus with Ubuntu 20.04, you can install the upgrade to 22.04 manually right now, and when the new optimized experience starts rolling out, you’ll get it automatically.

• Ubuntu certification essentially means that devices have been tested and all of the features work as expected with Ubuntu. Certification is based on LTS releases, and that means you’ll get support for up to 10 years, as long as you stay on the same version of Ubuntu. While installing Ubuntu 22.04 right now should work fine, the hardware optimizations coming in August should make the experience a bit better.

• The Dell XPS 13 Plus is a thin and light laptop with a 13.4 inch display and a 28-watt, 12th-gen Intel Core processor. It also features an updated design that gives the laptop a distinctive look. And like most recent Dell XPS 13 series notebooks, it’s available with a choice of Windows or Ubuntu Linux software pre-installed.

• When the Dell XPS 13 Plus first went on sale in April the company offered a Developer Edition model that shipped with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. But starting in August it will ship with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, although customers who already have the laptop will be able to install a fully supported version of the latest version of the popular GNU/Linux distribution starting today.

• Ubuntu is one of the common choices among both beginners and manufacturers shipping Linux-powered laptops. You may know that Canonical (Ubuntu’s parent company) has partnered with HP, Lenovo, and Dell to bring Linux laptops to the market. The Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition is the new addition to Dell’s popular lineup of Linux computers.

• The XPS 13 Plus DE is the first laptop to ship with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Long-Term Release), which was released recently. For starters, the original XPS 13 Plus was announced in April this year at CES 2022 and has gathered a lot of attention, thanks to its eerie and futuristic design.

• Ten years after releasing a groundbreaking suite of Linux pre-installed on a commercial laptop Sputnik ProjectDell and Canonical announced that XPS 13 Plus It is the first OEM computer A certified For Ubuntu 22.04 Long-Term Support (LTS). This makes this a straightforward path to just owning a working PC without worrying about whether or not every component is Linux ready.

• Developer Edition models of the Linux-equipped laptop were already available, with prices starting at 1,289.00 USD, but currently shipped with older 20.04 LTS software. Long-term support releases deliver what they say on the box, with the end of standard support for this release scheduled in 2027 and end of life in 2032. Certified devices are lab tested for compatibility of each component, which means your device gets specific drivers installed that make all of its features work properly.

• The company’s boldly redesigned XPS 13 Plus is also now certified for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. This means anyone who purchased the laptop with Windows 11 can install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on it themselves and still benefit from the same hardware-optimisations that the pre-installed version offers.

• “By bringing the enhanced performance and power management features of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to our most advanced premium laptop, Dell and Canonical reinforce our joint commitment to continue delivering the best computing experience for developers using Ubuntu,” Jaewook Woo, Product Manager at Dell Technologies says.

• Out for a new laptop and perhaps the HP Dev One didn’t take your fancy? Well now the Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition has been properly certified for Ubuntu 22.04.

• Canonical announced the update today on their blog, noting that the roll-out will begin in August for those who want the up to date experience on solid hardware. As Canonical also showed, this is the first mainstream hardware to be certified for Ubuntu 22.04.

• While anyone can download Ubuntu (and other distributions) and attempt to run them on various devices, the point of the official certification is so that Canonical can ensure “that all of the components in a certified computer work as expected, so the user can be sure of the best experience out of the box”. Of course, buying one with Linux pre-loaded like this also shows there’s a market for more.

Instructionals/Technical

• When I write documentation for a project, I often write the Readme file and Install instructions in plain text. I don’t need to use markup languages like HTML or Markdown to describe what a project does or how to compile it. But maintaining this documentation can be a pain. If I need to update the middle of a sentence in my Readme text file, I need to reformat the text so I don’t end up with a really long or short line in the middle of my other text that’s otherwise formatted to 75 columns. Some editors include a feature that will automatically reformat text to fill paragraphs, but not all do. That’s where the Linux fmt command comes to the rescue.

• This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install VirtualBox 6.1.36 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Linux Mint.

• Virtualbox is an open-source application for running operating systems virtually in our base system and this application is available for multiple operating systems (ie) Windows, Linux, and macOS.

• It has a large number of features, high-performing software used at the enterprise level, and is licensed under the General Public License (GPL). It is developed by a community based on a dedicated company.

• You can use phpMyAdmin to manage your MySQL databases on a VPS. It’s an excellent tool for browsing, editing, creating, and dropping tables, as well as modifying columns and data. You don’t need to SSH into remote machines or load up some new terminal window to execute a few SQL queries every time you want to run some database queries. Instead, you can use a program like phpMyAdmin and keep everything in one place.

• This blog will show you how to install and set up phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04 server.

• The Go Toolset package delivers the Go language with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) support for cryptographic modules and the Delve debugger to Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers. We introduced this package a few years ago. Now we also provide Go Toolset in container images. This article illustrates how these images support modern Go development.

• SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) is a file transfer protocol that provides secure access to a remote computer. Think of it as a tunnel provider, whenever you want to connect remotely, you use SFTP protocol to ensure your connection is secure from eavesdropping, we use Secure Shell (SSH) for that.

• FTP protocol is a client/server protocol that transfers files over the internet. FTP clients are used to sending and retrieving files to and from servers storing files and also responding to the clients’ needs.

• To get started with the installation, make sure ssh is installed, then set up sftp user group, configure ssh service, and lastly connect via sftp service.

• This tutorial will show you how to install Telegram on Ubuntu Linux. Telegram is a free program for text and video calls, as well as group chat, file sharing, and more features. The Telegram application on Ubuntu will also synchronize with your other devices, such as a phone.

• We can define a graphics card as a hardware expansion that directly feeds a display device like your computer or laptop monitor with resultantly generated images provide.

• A graphics card is also unofficially identified by many other names like display adapter, display card, video adaptor, video card, VGA card, GPU, and graphics adapter.

• However, we should not confuse the graphics processing unit (GPU) and the graphics card. GPU is at the core of a graphics card and is primarily responsible for all graphical computations. Any graphics card’s minimal/basic functionality is initiating a simple display output.

• However, the integrated graphics processor of other graphics cards lessens the computation strain of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) by undertaking additional processing tasks.

• If you have had sufficient exposure to the world of software engineering, a WAR file; also known as Web application ARchive or Web Application Resource file, should not be a new concept. However, for those of us running into this concept for the first time, a proper introduction to this file archiving terminology is needed.

• The Linux operating system is basically a file system and without these files’ formats and structures, the definition of this operating system environment would be incomplete.

• In other words, files are the central units of the Linux operating system architecture. The Linux filesystem stores OS-associated files and directories. Filesystems are also evident in USB and hard disk drives and a properly configured network can also permit the sharing of these filesystems among different machines.

• This article seeks to expose us to the mount and umount commands primarily used in attaching and detaching file systems from various mount points.

• “Ubuntu releases periodical updates, and the current version you are using is likely not the latest release. Most systems retain the Ubuntu version installed when it got booted, but it’s advisable to upgrade Ubuntu to get the latest fixes for bugs and new tools.

• That said, if you are looking for the quickest way to upgrade Ubuntu, the command line is the solution. We will cover upgrading Ubuntu via the command line.”

• In this guide, we will show you how to install NixNote on Ubuntu systems.

• NixNote is an free, open source program designed to help you take notes and stay organized.

• With NixNote, you can create text notes, attach files or images, and enen synchronize with Evernote so you can have your notes wherever you go.

• All Linux users are well aware of how a root account is important to manage administrative tasks like creating users and adding users into a sudo group to perform other important system administrative tasks on behalf of root users.

• If you are a single user, you may have created a normal user for other purposes and also been added to the sudo group by the installer or manually for administrative tasks, but for some reason, you have self-removed your account from the sudo group and lost root access.

• Later, you discover that you don’t even know the root password to revert the changes, and you’re now stuck with your system where you don’t know the password for your root accoun

• Angular is a popular, open-source web application framework for building mobile and desktop apps. It was developed in 2009 by Google to help developers design complex applications from scratch without having expert knowledge of coding languages like C# or Java. It can take up valuable time when you want something simple with little functionality at first, but it grows as your project develops over time. Angular can be used for web, mobile, and desktop apps, making it a versatile tool for developers. Additionally, Angular has a large community of users and developers who maintain and contribute to the codebase, ensuring it remains up-to-date and reliable. While it may have a steep learning curve, Angular is a robust framework that can help you build sophisticated web applications.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install AngularJS on Rocky Linux 9 using the command line terminal using the NodeSource repositories as the source for NodeJS and NPM.

• Linux PAM is a powerful API that comes with several merits. First, it provides a standard authentication scheme that is useable across various applications. It also provides unbeatable flexibility for application developers and system administrators alike. Finally, Linux PAM enables the development of programs without necessarily creating their respective authentication protocols.

• Like any typical authentication protocol, using PAM relies on understanding an array of concepts. The PAM components you should internalize and master include the control groups and control flags.

•  Whenever you hit the apt upgrade command on your Ubuntu or other Debian-based distribution, it will update the existing package and application to the latest release.

• You might not have a problem updating the packages to their latest release. But let me remind you, “How many times did you break your packages after updating the system?”

Games

• Valve put up a bit of a notice / warning recently, one for those of you experiencing a heat wave and trying to game on the Steam Deck might want to keep a note of. Plus a new Steam Deck Beta update.

• Avorion – Into The Rift is a pretty big sounding expansion to the space sandbox game that will arrive in August. This is the second expansion, following on from Black Market released back in 2020. For those who haven’t played it, Avorion is a massive space exploration game where you build your ships block by block. Think a little Minecraft in space, plus a touch of Eve Online and you sort of get some of the idea.

• Love games like Hollow Knight, Ori and Celeste? Well, you’re going to want to take a look at Nara: Facing Fire as it takes inspiration from all of them.

• The O3D Foundation, who oversee the free and open source Open 3D Engine, have announced that Epic Games are now officially one of their supporters. Epic Games has joined as a Premier member joining the likes of Adobe, AWS, Intel, Microsoft and others in supporting their mission to produce a AAA FOSS game engine.

• Ready for more beat ‘em up action? Pulling No Punches from developer BrainDead Broccoli is confirmed to be launching on August 10 along with Native Linux support.

• Square One Games Inc., Black Isle Studios and Interplay Entertainment are back with another classic revived. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II is now available with Native Linux support.

• I’m not entirely sure when this went live but it appears that Epic Games have finally released a full proper download of Unreal Engine for Linux developers. Seems a lot of people noticed only today, although the page mentions the build was released Jul 12 – 2022, with GOL getting messages about it everywhere so it seems like a fair few find this quite exciting.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

•  This article suggests several traditional things to do after we finished the installation of Kubuntu 22.04 with KDE Plasma 5.24. We have collected for you recommended printers, software applications, games, browser addons, adjustments, widgets and shortcuts to add, and several more. We hope this helps. Happy friendly computing!

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

•  We test drive the openSUSE MicroOS, which is the Adaptable Linux Platform (ALP) – an atomic, transactional Linux operating system.

Red Hat / IBM

• IBM has launched a Db2 operator for Kubernetes running on AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), while promising the same would be available for Azure AKS is targeted for the second half of 2022.

• The Big Blue stalwart database counts Bank of America, Natwest Group and Tesco among its users. But, despite large chunks of the western economies relying on the aging database, IBM does not like to shout about it.

• Between the pandemic effect, hustle culture, and work pressures, burnout has become commonplace. Robert Half research found that four in ten U.S. workers feel more burned out now than they did a year ago, impacting more than just their professional performance. Surveys have found that 66 percent of professionals skip at least one meal daily due to being too busy or stressed at work. Many cite their work stress levels as negatively impacting their relationships.

• Leaders should go beyond quick fixes and strive to radically improve employee well-being. Identifying the root cause of burnout is one of the first steps toward improving the employee experience – and it often boils down to re-evaluating workplace culture.

• As The Great Resignation continues, maybe you’ve been thinking about making a change in your professional life. Hiring a career coach could be the right move for you.

• Career coaches can offer valuable guidance as you look to change jobs. They can also help make the process more efficient and far less time-consuming.

• Here are five reasons you may want to engage the services of a career coach.

• As CentOS 7 reaches end of life, many enterprises are considering their options for an enterprise-grade, downstream Linux distribution on which to run their production applications. Rocky Linux has emerged as a strong alternative that, like CentOS, is 100% compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• The Linux Mint team are gearing up for another major release with Linux Mint 21 now available in Beta to download.

• This is their next long-term support release, so you’ll be able to continue running it until 2027 thanks to it being based upon Ubuntu 22.04. You will get Linux Kernel 5.15 and depending on which edition you go for Cinnamon 5.4, MATE 1.26 or Xfce 4.16.

Devices/Embedded

• Last month at Embedded World 2022, Forlinx presented the OK6254-C Single Board Computer (SBC) compatible with a System-on-Module powered by the newest quad-core Sitara AM625 processor from Texas Instruments. This SBC offers 8GB of eMMC, triple displays ,dual LAN ports, and optional cellular connectivity.

• This Raspberry Pi email server tutorial will take you through the steps on how to set up your very own email server that is both low cost and relatively versatile.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• LibreOffice 7.3.5 Community, the fifth minor release of the LibreOffice 7.3 family, targeted at personal productivity users, is available for download from https://www.libreoffice.org/download. Users of previous versions of LibreOffice should update immediately, as this is now the release suggested for deployment ction environments.

• The LibreOffice 7.3 family offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, starting with native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats in the areas of security and robustness – to superior support for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files.

•  LibreOffice 7.3.5 is here five weeks after LibreOffice 7.3.4 to address more bugs and further improve compatibility with proprietary document formats, such as DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX files.

• A total of 83 bugs were addressed in this update, and you can check out the RC1 and RC2 changelogs for details on these bug fixes, which should strengthen the LibreOffice 7.3 office suite series and offer users an extra layer of stability and reliability.

Programming/Development

• You may need to convert or modify a string to uppercase at some point. All lower case letters will be changed to capital letters. To transform a string or character to uppercase in R, use the toupper() method. This method is used to convert full strings to uppercase format. When we call the toupper() method, the return value is in string format and has been transformed to uppercase. If there isn’t one, the values are turned into a string. When we set this to a value that is not a string, the toupper() function does not affect the initial string values. For different case scenarios, you could use toupper() and other methods on the String to transform String to uppercase. In this topic, we will explore how to alter the case of a string to uppercase.

• “The string allows you to access the series’ values as strings and implement a variety of methods on them. The str_contains() method is used to see if a string of a Sequence or Index contains a pattern or regex. If a provided pattern or regex is included inside a string of a Sequence or Index, the method returns a boolean Sequence or Index. This function is sensitive to cases by default. We can also utilize the contains methods with the select command. In R, there is a method called contains(). The string is an object method used to determine whether the string object includes the supplied string object and gives a Boolean response of True or False. In this article, we will explore more about the string contains() method in R language through various instances.”

• “A Data Frame will frequently contain columns that aren’t relevant to your investigation. To make it easier to emphasize the remaining columns, such columns must be removed from the Data set. By supplying label names and related axes or by directly defining index or column names, the columns can be eliminated. Labels on multiple stages can be removed using a multi-index by designating the level.

• In R, you may occasionally need to eliminate one or multiple specified columns from a data frame. Fortunately, there is some built-in method from the R module that makes that simple. Dropping columns from a data set is simply a method of removing unnecessary columns from the data frame. In this post, we will look at various distinct methods for removing columns by title from a Data set in R.”

• In this R tutorial, we will discuss with() and within() functions performed on the data frame.

• Let’s create a data frame with four rows and five columns.

• For those who have been paying attention to the Game of Trees development list, there has been a lot going on with got(1). Apologies here at undeadly for having missed some release announcements!

• Teams require some kind of process to coordinate work and ensure that the output of many focuses on a singular goal. Within the software industry, this has taken the form of teams following a methodology such as Agile. In industries from pharmaceutical to manufacturing, Lean is the philosophy followed to ensure that a process is adhered to. The difficulty with a process is that it’s prescriptive. It’s designed in such a way that you stay on the tracks that it provides. If you do, you achieve the prescribed benefits and ultimately a form of success. That doesn’t give much room for paradigm-level shifts in work behavior.

• In early 2020, one such shift hit the global workplace in the form of COVID-19. Many companies self-enforced a remote strategy as people were forced to adapt to working from home. Years later, that flexibility is here to stay. This disruptor has brought new challenges in how we facilitate our process, and the ceremonies associated with it. The engagement paradigm of trying to bring people together on a problem, and to keep them attentive, productive, and happy is challenging when your interaction medium is limited to the screenspace a person is using. Engagement through a camera lens masks the environmental conditions that could also be hampering participation, from suboptimal work space conditions to barking dogs, crying kids, or noisy neighbors. When you throw in the natural distractions that working on a computer can bring (instant messaging, emails, social media, cat memes, and more) the conditions for collaboration, innovation, and problem solving tends to suffer. Combining all of those elements gives you a perfect storm, especially when you ask a human to concentrate on just one topic for a prolonged period of time.

Perl / Raku

• “PERL substr() function is mainly used to cut the particular portion of the main string. This function can also be used for replacing the portion of the main string with another string. Different ways to cut or cut and replace a particular portion of the string have been shown in this tutorial by using the PERL script.”

• “The join() is a built-in function of PERL that is used to create a string value by combining multiple string values or the array values with a specific string value. The joining string value will be added between two values of the array. Different uses of the join() function have been shown in this tutorial.”

• “PERL glob() function is mainly used to retrieve all content or the particular content of a directory. The regular expression pattern can be used with this function to match the particular files and folders of a directory. Different symbols are used to define the pattern that will be used to retrieve the content of the current directory or the specific directory. The uses of the glob() function without pattern and with the pattern have been shown in this tutorial.”

Python

• If you plan on using files in your Python script, you will likely want to check whether the file exists before performing any file operations. Luckily, checking if a file exists is straightforward in Python, thanks to the pathlib and os modules.

Java

• Oracle Java Development Kit 6 and 7 support ends this week, leaving a sizable chunk of developers looking at their options.

• Around 15 percent of Java developers still use JDK 7, according to a survey by JRebel, which produces its own code development environment. That being the case, around a million developers could end up without software patches and security updates, potentially risking reliability, security, and productivity.

• Java SE 7 was the first release of the popular development environment since Oracle inherited the object-oriented language via the $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Leftovers

• What is it about a certain sort of authoress that triggers a reader’s instinct for self-identification? Enough ink has been spilled on the topic of women who think they are Joan Didion to slouch us all the way towards Bethlehem and back. Eve Babitz, too, has become an eidolon for a certain set of bookish women who long to strip down to their skivvies for a game of chess with Marcel Duchamp. It seems to me that Cookie Mueller, who shares with Didion a talent for capturing a cultural scene, and with Babitz a life lived at the center of the party, is the latest writer to be elevated to this kind of type. Though Mueller is perhaps best known for starring in the early films of John Waters—and especially the infamous sex scene in Pink Flamingos involving a ménage à trois with a chicken—the publication of her collected stories and articles, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, is sure to bring her writing to the fore.

• The Garage publishing house in Moscow has released a new Russian-language translation of historian Dan Healey’s 2001 book, “Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent,” about the homosexual subcultures of St. Petersburg and Moscow and the ambiguous attitude of the late Tsarist regime and revolutionary rulers toward gay men and lesbians. The only previous translation was published in 2008, and Healey says this version is missing the voice he intended (though the troubled edition didn’t stop the book from becoming Russia’s most detailed biographical study of local queer culture from the era). Meduza spoke to Healey about how he’s studied the history of queer people in a country where it’s still safest not to mention them at all.

• A Jack-In-The-Box is scary enough the first time. However, if you’ve seen the clown pop out before, it fails to have the same impact. [Franklinstein] decided that swapping out the clown for an alternative payload would deliver the fright he was after.

Science

• When we think of a typical four stroke internal combustion engine, we think of metal. And for any type of longevity or performance, that’s certainly the right choice. But [Integza] wanted to see what happens inside a 4 stroke engine, and it wasn’t enough to see it from a transparent cylinder head. No, he wanted to see it in the cylinder itself. Thanks to advances in material sciences, he got his wish as seen in the video below the break.

Hardware

• Roller coasters are not only great fun to ride, they’re also fascinating pieces of engineering. Building your own full-size coaster is sadly beyond most people’s means, so the average enthusiast will have to settle for simulation or modelling of their own designs. [Jon Mendenhall] is one of those who specialize in building model roller coasters and simulating their motion in intricate detail. His latest project is a scale model of VelociCoaster, a Jurassic Park-themed ride in Universal’s Islands of Adventure, that simulates the coaster’s ride without using any moving parts.

• If you can buy something off the shelf, there’s a good chance that someone has tried to 3D print their own version. [Daniel Norée] did just that with skateboard trucks, whipping up a design of his own.

• Sometimes you need to know the temperature of something from a ways away. That might be a smoker, a barbecue, or even a rabbit hutch. This project from [Discreet Mayor] might just be what you’re looking for.

• The early days of FDM 3D printing were wild and wooly. Getting plastic to stick to your build plate was a challenge. Blue tape and hairspray-coated glass were kings for a long time. Over time, better coatings have appeared and many people use spring steel covered in some kind of PEI. There seem to be fewer choices when it comes to resin printers, though. We recently had a chance to try three different build surfaces on two different printers: a Nova3D Bene4 and an Anycubic Photon M3. We learned a lot.

• They say that if you have a lathe, you have every other machine tool too. To some degree, that’s true — you can make almost anything on a lathe, including another lathe, and even parts best made on other machine tools can usually be made on a lathe in a pinch. But after seeing this lathe attachment for a DIY electric discharge machining tool, we might be inclined to see the EDM as the one machine tool to rule them all.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Ms. Schwartz is a journo-pusher. She begins by quoting a nurse with two small children who says, “I should have gone back on medication sooner in the pandemic than I did.” According to Schwartz the nurse “weaned herself off in time for her first pregnancy” –implying, but not saying that it was easy.  When postpartum depression set in, the nurse went to a talk therapist who taught mindfulness and meditation.  “After a complicated second birth,” Schwartz goes on, “she decided she needed more than just talk… She turned to Prozac again. Now, she said, ‘I’m a different person.’”

• Schwartz informs us that “millions of Americans… started or restarted psychiatric medication during Covid’s long and dreary run” but can’t be more specific because, she says matter-of-factly, “Tracking exactly which pills Americans are swallowing these days is difficult because much of this information is privately held.”

• A new 988 suicide and crisis hotline launched Saturday that people can call, text or chat. The three-digit shortcut phases out the 1-800-273-TALK number. Until now, the 988 lifeline was only available in some parts of the United States. We speak with Congressmember Jamie Raskin, who helped introduce legislation that provides funding for states to implement the rollout. His son Tommy tragically died by suicide at the age of 25 in December 2020 after a battle with depression. “We’re living in a very tough time … with COVID-19, with the opioid crisis, with gun violence, with the civil division and polarization,” notes Rep. Raskin. “These things have made it very rough on young people. The surgeon general has declared a national mental health emergency.”

Proprietary

• So what exactly has the EU done? The Council of the European Union said the bloc has reached a “provisional agreement” on a new landmark regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. The agreement’s text is not final, so it’s not clear what will ultimately be included. An EU official told me “the text will be ready in time for the confirmation of the provisional agreement by ambassadors of EU member states at one of the Coreper meetings, not before September.”

• The outage appears to be global, but Microsoft is perhaps a little fortunate that the incident struck when the working day was all but over in the US, and in the dark of the European night. Most of the reaction The Register can find is therefore from the Asia-Pacific region, where businesses such as an Australian horse-racing organization have been disrupted.

• According to Downdetector.com, there were more than 4,800 cases of customers reporting troubles with Microsoft Teams.

• Microsoft said it has decided not to implement a policy to ban developers from selling open source software on Windows Store. The policy to ban commercial open source apps was set to go into effect from July 16. Microsoft has now removes the mention of open source software from its…

• Google has internally announced a hiring freeze that will remain in place for two weeks. According to a report from The Information, Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s senior vice president, sent out an email to inform workers about the decision. This follows Google’s announcement of a hiring slowdown that will last until the end of this year.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• Brendan Carr, the commissioner of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), called on the CEOs of Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores. In a letter dated June 24, 2022, Carr told Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai that “TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.”

• An official said that passengers would barely notice they were being checked as they walked to the exit. Foreigners travelling to Britain would have to submit biometric details through a smartphone app as part of the new Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) scheme, ministers said.

• Perhaps the most well-known rule about passports is that you can not smile in your photograph.

• The Times reported that this would be made possible through the use of facial recognition technology. Foreigners arriving in Britain would have to submit biometric details through a smartphone app as part of the new Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme, the paper reported.

• But as Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyst Fergus Ryan has observed, it’s not about where the data are stored, but who has access.

• We’ve highlighted for years the problems with the data protection regime in the EU, mainly the GDPR, but other aspects as well. The underlying idea — that people have a right to have their data protected — may seem sound and logical, but in practice it’s generally been a total mess*, that has likely caused much more harm than its solved. We recently wrote about the surprising news that the EU’s top data protection official was finally admitting that the GDPR really hasn’t worked out the way anyone expected, which was so surprising since it’s become important for EU “data protection” experts to prop up the myth that the GDPR has been a success.

• Given the seemingly endless privacy scandals that now engulf the tech and telecom sectors on a near-daily basis, many consumers have flocked to virtual private networks (VPN) to protect and encrypt their data. One study found that VPN use quadrupled between 2016 and 2018 as consumers rushed to protect data in the wake of scandals, breaches, and hacks.

Defence/Aggression

• Writing on behalf of About Face, a network of post-9/11 veterans and active duty service members, the 31-year-old former Army captain lamented the fact that neither major party had fielded an “anti-war candidate.” According to DeBarros, who served in Afghanistan, there was no forgiving Biden for the enormous harm resulting from his initial support for open-ended warfare in the Middle East. “Many of us,” she wrote, “deployed under the Obama-Biden administration—where despite all their promises to end occupations—we witnessed their devastating expansion of militarism instead.”

• On the other hand, President Trump was “doubling down on those wars, by dropping record-breaking numbers of bombs on Afghanistan and beyond,” negotiating the largest arms deal in US history, and expanding “terrifying state violence” at home, directed at police brutality protesters. Even if Biden beat Trump, DeBarros predicted, “the realities of war and militarism” would remain pretty much the same. Anti-war veterans and the larger peace movement would still need to organize against ever-increasing Pentagon budgets and new opportunities to project U.S. military force around the globe, to the detriment of social programs and the fight against climate change.

• In the 18 months since the insurrection, Republican lawmakers have tried to whitewash the insurrection through a series of contradictory talking points. Republicans have alternately downplayed the attack by calling it “a peaceful protest,” claimed it was violent but that the violence was carried out solely by nonexistent “antifa” at the Capitol or federal informants, or that Democrats were to blame for failing to adequately defend the Capitol against the protesters they variously claim weren’t violent or a threat.

• Before the phone migration, Secret Service employees were supposed to manually back up their text messages. If any employees skipped that step, their texts would have been permanently deleted when their phones got wiped during the migration.

• A security official who requested anonymity because he is not allowed to speak with media told VOA’s Somali Service that al-Shabab first attacked a Liyu police camp in Aato town; a local Bakool region official confirmed the al-Shabab then carried out a second attack on Yeed, where militants again entered a Liyu police encampment.

• The attackers unleashed a campaign of summary executions of ethnic Amhara, while also looting and burning homes, in claims corroborated by satellite imagery which showed evidence of fires breaking out in the area, Amnesty said.

• Democracy advocates on Wednesday welcomed as important progress the introduction of legislation to reform and modernize the Electoral Count Act, a 19th-century law that former President Donald Trump attempted to invoke in his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

• “January 6 was a warning, and one that cannot be ignored. Failure to act is not an option and imperils the country’s future.”

• Ahead of the eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, we speak with Congressmember Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee, and get an update on how the Secret Service has only provided a single text exchange from the insurrection and may have purged the messages after oversight officials requested them. “We want all of the evidence, we’re determined to get all of the evidence, but the picture is very clear at this point about what happened. This was an organized hit against American democracy in order to overturn a presidential election,” says Raskin. The committee will hold its eighth hearing on Thursday.

• We speak to Maryland Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin, member of the House January 6 select committee, about the pro-Trump Republican who won Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary in the state and helped organized buses to the insurrection. Dan Cox is the latest in a slate of Republicans across the U.S. to advance in the party after supporting Trump’s election lies. If elected, Cox has vowed to conduct a forensic audit of the 2020 election. He also wants to ban abortion in Maryland and end what he describes as “sexual indoctrination” in schools. “He obviously speaks to an extreme-right faction in our state that has swallowed Trumpist indoctrination,” says Raskin. “You could not have a purer distillation of dangerous extremist ideology than what is propounded by Dan Cox.”

• A U.S. House of Representatives panel probing the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census on Wednesday released a memorandum underscoring that the failed effort was politically motivated.

• “The documents ultimately obtained by the committee… shed additional light on the depth of partisan manipulation in the 2020 census.”

• Two words describe Donald Trump’s legacy regarding America’s role in the world: discontinuity and disarray. If the Trump presidency had a signature, it was this: No one quite knew what he was going to do next.

• In light of all the chaos, death and destruction which the United States has wreaked on the region over the past two decades, many in the region — and even at the table — might have wondered whether this pronouncement should be viewed as a promise or a threat.

• More importantly, it is remarkable that whoever wrote these words (presumably Tony Blinken and/or Jake Sullivan) did not grasp how insulting they were to the nine leaders to whom they were, at least formally, addressed and to their countries.

• Progressives this week decried the Biden administration’s approval of a nearly $1 billion weapons support deal with the United Arab Emirates—a move that came days after an Abu Dhabi court controversially sentenced a Virginia civil rights lawyer to three years in prison.

• The U.S. State Department’s approval of the $980.4 million agreement for “upgrades and sustainment” of the UAE’s fleet of Boeing C-17 Globemaster III military transport planes was announced Tuesday, two days after the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court sentenced Asim Ghafoor to three years behind bars, a fine of over $816,000, and deportation upon completion of his sentence for alleged money laundering and tax evasion.

• For a U.S. president, it’s all in a day’s work.

• Let us look carefully at each of these situations, to better understand U.S. hypocrisy, dishonesty and disdain for diplomacy.

• 24-year-old Felix Redka lives with his family in Sumy, Ukraine, near the Russia border. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Redka’s job was arranging Russian comedians’ shows in Ukraine; he would also perform himself. In late March 2022, when there were still Russian troops stationed in his town, Redka and two other comedians arranged a standup comedy show in a Sumy bomb shelter. These days, he spends his time touring around the country, trying to give his compatriots some catharsis as Russia continues to shell Ukrainian cities. Redka spoke to Meduza about what it takes to make a grieving country laugh — and what Ukrainians think about Russians who fail to speak out against the war.

• We speak with Congressmember Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, after a man was arrested on suspicion of hate crime after neighbors said he allegedly pointed a gun at her home and threatened to kill her. He was found outside of her home last Saturday night with a .40-caliber handgun yelling “Go back to India. I’m going to kill you,” and has since been released from jail as prosecutors say they lack evidence to bring a hate crime case against him, though his weapons have been seized. Jayapal is the first Indian American woman to serve in the House of Representatives. “We need to take away the tools from people who just find it too easy these days to express their hatred, their white supremacy, their racism in violent ways,” says Japayal, who blames the violence against her in part on former President Trump’s boosting of right-wing extremism.

• On Tuesday, 17 Democratic lawmakers, almost all women, were arrested outside the Supreme Court while protesting the court’s recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade. We speak with Congressmember Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who was one of several Democratic House members who has shared her personal experience of getting an abortion, about what a post-Roe America looks like. “Abortion and the right to make decisions about our own bodies is so innately tied to our ability to control everything in our lives,” says Jayapal. She argues Congress should be prepared to pass national legislation protecting other critical precedents that are now vulnerable to the ultra-conservative Supreme Court, like the right to contraception and marriage equality.

• The insistence that there is a noble way of fighting war, one less bloody and brutal…

• Allegations that MI5 officers and sections of the media sought to bring down Britain’s Labour government in the 1960s and 70s have resurfaced, raising fresh questions about plots that remain hidden…

• The Senate could vote on ratifying Sweden and Finland’s memberships as soon as next week

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

Environment

• It’s currently spawning season for female blue crabs, which leave mangrove forests when there is a full or new moon to deposit their eggs in the Gulf of Mexico. However, houses in new residential estates in the Riviera Veracruzana are blocking the path to the sea for some crabs.

• Increased intensity and frequency (America, for example, had two heatwaves a year in the 1960s and six in the 2010s) is bad enough. Increased simultaneity may be worse. Heatwaves damage agriculture. Simultaneous disruption of plantings or harvests in different places could create crises that cannot be dealt with by moving produce around the globe, because there is little to move.

• The latest heatwaves have also emphasised how built environments are designed for a bygone climate. To use Britain, again, as an example, parts of the rail network came close to paralysis because the rails on British track beds are optimised to be stress-free at 27°C. Temperatures in the high thirties are outside their comfort zone. Rails can be changed as societies adapt to rising temperatures. But the cost and disruption of upgrading all the infrastructure that will need it, from houses to hospitals to fire brigades, will be immense. Even in rich countries, governments struggle to commit the necessary resources, as America’s is showing with its beleaguered “Build Back Better” package.

• Certain things we can stipulate: 1) That the senator from West Virginia is corrupt and a liar. He makes no bones about voting to support the industry that gave him his fortune; and he has broken multiple promises to his colleagues that he would, in the end, support Biden’s signature initiative, Build Back Better. 2) That Manchin’s refusal to support any climate change legislation in BBB is the height of irresponsibility.

• But is he the devil incarnate? “It seems odd,” says Bill Clinton’s former Chief of Staff and Obama whisperer John Podesta, “that Manchin would choose as his legacy to be the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity.” Sunrise Movement Executive Director Varshini Prakash writes: “This is nothing short of a death sentence.” Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action says: “He talked about his grandchildren. It turns out that’s all bullshit.” “Manchin is a modern-day villain,” says Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, “who…is willing to see the world burn as long as it benefits his near-term investment portfolio.” “Mr. Manchin’s grandchildren” writes U.C Santa Barbara Professor Leah Stoke in the NYTimes, “will grow up knowing that his legacy is climate destruction.” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said: “This is our last chance to prevent the most catastrophic…effects of climate change.”

• A leading opponent of climate action in parliament accepted a £2,000 gift from a businessman in the aviation industry, highlighting concerns over the influence of high-carbon interests on British politics.

• Wycombe MP Steve Baker – who leads an anti-net zero grouping in parliament – attended the Conservative Party’s summer ball last month with a ticket paid for by aviation fuel executive Christopher Harborne, according to the latest register of interests.

• In the face of climate catastrophe, the 2028 Olympics steam ahead unconcerned that they are making the crisis in Los Angeles County worse.

• Climate campaigners expressed frustration Wednesday after U.S. President Joe Biden announced new climate actions but refused to declare a national emergency, despite mounting public and political pressure.

• “This week’s apocalyptic heatwaves make it clear that these steps are overdue and way too small.”

• Just before U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech at a shuttered coal plant, nine U.S. senators on Wednesday demanded that he stop weighing his options and urgently declare a climate emergency.

• “Declare this crisis the national emergency that it is.”

• The White House faced backlash from climate advocates on Wednesday after it confirmed that President Joe Biden won’t be declaring a climate emergency during his speech at a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts, remarks that will come as swaths of the Northern Hemisphere are grappling with punishing heatwaves and wildfires.

• Following reports that Biden was considering declaring a national climate emergency as soon as Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday that the move is not, in fact, coming this week—if at all.

• By Celina Scott-Buechler, Common Dreams. Originally published on Common Dreams.

• Over the past few years, fossil fuel combustion has been responsible for approximately 73 percent of the United States’s greenhouse gas emissions and 89 percent of the world’s emissions. As these emissions have accumulated in the atmosphere, they have increased global average temperatures by more than 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times — almost 10 percent — and with them the intensity and frequency of costly natural disasters. In 2020 alone, the United States spent $145 billion on disaster recovery — more than the federal government spent on transportation that year. While taxpayers have been forced to pick up the tab for the climate crisis, fossil fuel companies have continued to prosper. In 2021, leading fossil fuel companies made $205 billion in profits, of which their executives pocketed $394 million.

Energy

• Tesla already reported vehicle shipment numbers for the second quarter, and now its full Q2 2022 financial report (pdf) reveals it’s dealing with inflation and the overall economic downturn, combined with a plunge in prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In the letter to investors, Tesla execs reveal the company has sold 75 percent of its Bitcoin holdings, adding $936 million in cash to its balance sheet.

• Last year, Tesla made a $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin and announced that it would accept Bitcoin as payment. Tesla started accepting Bitcoin in late March, then abruptly reversed itself in May, just 49 days later.

• The permit that greenlit the Mountain Valley Pipeline is about to expire. This means Mountain  Valley is again seeking an extension from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). This wouldn’t even be the first time that Mountain Valley needed an extension, as FERC already granted a two-year extension in 2020 (FERC recently faced sharp questioning in federal court  for its handling of that review). On April 9, FERC approved the pipeline to bore under hundreds  of streams, but not before it obtains other necessary permits. FERC should not give Mountain  Valley any more bites at the apple. Prolonging this boondoggle would be unlawful because the  Mountain Valley Pipeline is not needed and its construction would lead to significant  environmental impacts that have been repeatedly ignored by FERC.

• Pressure from progressive advocacy groups and lawmakers bore fruit on Wednesday when the U.S. Postal Service announced that it would be making 40% of its new delivery vehicles electric, up from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s initial plan to electrify just 10% of the mail agency’s aging fleet.

• “The agency’s original plan for a fleet of 90% fossil fuel trucks should have never been a consideration.”

Wildlife/Nature

• The Sacramento Bee misinformed its readers about logging occurring in Yosemite National Park, and the current Washburn fire near the Mariposa giant sequoia grove (“Did thinning help the Yosemite forest survive the Washburn fire?”, July 17, 2022). First, the Bee’s article repeatedly conveys the notion that the so-called “thinning” occurring in Yosemite National Park’s forests pertains to “brush” and “small trees” the size of “Christmas trees”, and that only a “few larger logs” are being removed. That is inaccurate. I have been to the locations in the Merced giant sequoia grove, and Yosemite Valley, where “thinning” is occurring, and it is commercial logging that includes widespread removal of mature trees. In many areas the logging is so intensive that few, if any, trees remain. I communicated this to the Bee, and sent photos documenting this logging.

• In an interview last week, I informed the Bee that the John Muir Project’s lawsuit only asks Yosemite National Park to comply with their own 2017 Fire Management Plan, which prioritizes wildland fire and prescribed fire as the management approaches in 99% of the Park. Yosemite’s Fire Plan allows noncommercial thinning of small trees up to 6 inches in diameter, or up to 12 inches in diameter in a few locations, within this 99% if the Park deems it necessary in advance of fire. The lawsuit does not seek to change this, and only seeks to halt illegal commercial logging and clearcutting of mature trees in the Park.

Finance

• Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday introduced an amendment that would impose restrictions on the billions of dollars in federal subsidies and tax credits that Congress is poised to hand to the profitable U.S. microchip industry, which has been lobbying aggressively for the handouts.

• Sanders’ proposed changes to the CHIPS Act, which cleared a key procedural hurdle in the Senate Tuesday evening, would prohibit companies that receive subsidies under the bill from using the funds to buy back their own stock, offshore U.S. jobs, or crack down on unionization efforts. The senator argues that no-strings-attached giveaways to the microchip industry would amount to “corporate welfare.”

• Last week, Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, abruptly announced that he was getting out of the media business. In a statement, Akhmetov said that his media holding would transfer all of its licenses to the state and shutter its digital publications. The decision, he added, was driven by the new “anti-oligarch law” entering into force. “I have never been and am not going to be an oligarch,” he said. By relinquishing control over his media assets, Akhmetov no longer meets the legal definition of an oligarch set out in the law — allowing him to dodge the restrictions that come with it. Does Akhmetov’s departure from the media market mean the sun is setting on the era of oligarch-controlled media in Ukraine? Or does Akhmetov have an ulterior motive for giving up his media licenses? Journalist Konstantin Skorkin explains.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The House Energy and Commerce Committee vote on the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) is a significant step forward after years of delay in lawmakers taking action on a federal data privacy law, but there are still hang ups that could complicate the proposal moving forward.

• While the final text of the bill was not made public before the procedural vote, Senate aides told Reuters the legislation includes around US$54 billion (NT$1.61 trillion) in subsidies for U.S. semiconductor firms, in addition to a new, four-year 25% tax credit to get chipmakers to build plants in America. The tax credit is estimated to be worth around US$24 billion.

• Chipmakers from Asia and the U.S. have said that they would delay or cut U.S. investment if the overdue legislation failed to be passed. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said the speed of construction for its US$12 billion fab in Phoenix would be dependent on American subsidies, while Taiwan’s GlobalWafers Co. said it would only consider moving forward on a new US$5 billion plant in Sherman, Texas if it was able to secure subsidies.

• The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted to move ahead with a slimmed-down version of legislation to provide billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits for the semiconductor industry, hoping to ease a shortage that has disrupted production in industries from automobiles to electronics and high-tech weapons.

• The Senate backed by 64 to 34 a procedural measure setting the stage for potential votes to pass the legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives by the end of next week.

• “It would be easier for people to understand what could have happened on January 6th in D.C. if they knew what actually happened on November 10th in 1898 in Wilmington,” Cedric Harrison told me.

• Harrison leads Black heritage tours around Wilmington. It was on a different scale from January 6th. In 1898, bleeding bodies filled the rivers and the streets. Men drove through residential neighborhoods with guns—including a machine gun—firing bullets. Families ran away and hid in the cemetery and the swamps.

• On Monday night, The Rachel Maddow Show got hold of a memo written by Attorney General Merrick Garland that appears to throw cold water on the idea that Trump or his closest cronies will face any accountability before the midterm elections.

• Members of the rank-and-file group Unite All Workers for Democracy leafleted in support of one member, one vote. …

Misinformation/Disinformation

• Ofcom’s News Consumption in the U.K. 2021/22 report reveals that for the first time, Instagram is the most popular news source among teenagers, used by 29%. TikTok and YouTube are close behind, used by 28% of teenagers to follow news.

• BBC One and BBC Two — historically the most popular news sources among teens — have been knocked off top spot down to fifth place, below the ITV news cluster. Some 24% of teens 24% use these channels for news in 2022, compared to 45% five years ago.

• The proportion of teenagers using Instagram’s sister brand Facebook for news has decreased to 22% from 27% last year, and from 34% in 2018.

• Yih-Choung Teh, Ofcom’s group director for strategy and research, said in a statement that teenagers nowadays are “increasingly unlikely to pick up a newspaper or tune into TV news”, preferring to stay informed by “scrolling through their social feeds”.

• Ofcom’s latest report on news consumption in Britain outlined how a range of age groups consumed news differently and showed for the first time that Instagram was the most popular news source among teenagers.

Censorship/Free Speech

• A mob of classmates beat her to death after accusing her of blasphemy over a voice note she had shared on WhatsApp.

• Most sexually explicit and pornographic content is legal, and engaging with such content on social media platforms allows individuals to build communities and explore their identities. However, the moderation of sexual content has enabled social networks to become the arbiters of how people create and engage with nude content both offline and in the digital space. As a result of this flawed system, a crucial form of engagement for all kinds of users has been removed and the voices of people with less power have regularly been shut down.

• These companies position themselves as free speech extremists, often for the purpose of rushing to the defense of hateful speech, but even for them, speech around sexuality is beyond the pale.

• As private entities, these platforms have every right under U.S. law to censor lawful content, and the government can’t tell them what they must publish. But why position themselves as beacons of free speech while also hypocritically limiting content of a legal sexual nature and ignoring the importance of ensuring full access to free speech and expression?

• The Chinese government often seems like an unstoppable force of evil. Perhaps the word “seems” needs to be removed from the previous sentence. The government seems all too capable of keeping a few billion people in line, strongly suggesting it has obtained the oppression cheat codes.

• Macek discussed the work of Project Censored as part of a well-attended panel on “Agenda Cutting” sponsored by the Project’s German sister organization, the News Enlightenment Initiative. Also on the panel were Belorussian journalist and journalism professor Katja Artsiomenka, Munich University researcher Yosuke Buchmeier, and Deutsche Welle’s Head of News, Max Hofmann. The Initiative’s Dr. Hektor Haarkötter, a professor of communication at the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, moderated.

• In June of 2021, Nigerian authorities directed internet service providers in Nigeria to block access to Twitter after the platform flagged and removed a tweet from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari for violating its rules. The deleted tweet was seen by some as a threat of genocide; Twitter labeled it abusive. The Nigerian government’s rationale for the ban was vague. The Minister of Information and Culture claimed “persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”

• ECOWAS joined several cases challenging the Twitter ban,  including prominent Nigerian NGO Paradigm Initiative, Media Rights Agenda, the Centre For Journalism Innovation & Development, International Press Centre, Tap Initiative for Citizens Development and four journalists, represented by Media Defence. Along with Access Now and the Open Net Association, EFF filed a joint application to file as amicus curiae in the case against the ban, brought by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP). In the application, we argued that the suspension of Twitter was not based on any law or court order, nor was it clear what law was breached by the company. Additionally, the application explained the rights contained in several legal codes, including the Nigerian Constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). In their decision, the Court agreed, ruling that the suspension unlawfully infringed on freedom of expression and access to information and the media contrary to the ICCPR and ACHPR. The Court ordered the government to ensure that acts of unlawful suspensions don’t happen again in the future; contradicting laws and policies must thus be amended.

• The ban was lifted in January of this year after Twitter agreed to some conditions, including registering its operations in Nigeria. But the seven month-ban was particularly troublesome for the country: Twitter is one of the main outlets Nigerians have to criticize their government, and around 20% of the population have an account on the platform. It has played a large role in political discourse in the country: for example, in 2020, the platform was used by activists to organize the largest protests in a decade in the country, against police brutality.

• In a severe blow to free speech, the Indian government is reportedly gearing up to strip “larger platforms” such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, of immunity against third-party content posted on their websites. This would decisively tip the scales in favour of censorship and fundamentally alter the internet landscape to the detriment of people’s rights.

• Intermediaries — the platforms hosting the content — in major democracies have safe harbour protection, also known as an “immunity shield,” exempting them from liability for content posted by people who use their platforms. In India, such protection is granted under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, and has been reinforced by the Supreme Court’s landmark Shreya Singhal judgment.

• “The safe harbour regime is crucial to strengthening democracy — in India and across the globe. It prevents pre-censorship and over-censorship by platforms, and allows people to exercise their fundamental right to freedom of expression,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific Policy Director and Senior International Counsel at Access Now, “With digital authoritarianism on the rise in India, and people’s online freedom hanging in the balance, slashing this immunity would have disastrous consequences. This action is not an effort to rein in big tech, it is a blatant attack on human rights by intimidating the online ecosystem into compliance with censorship.”

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Kremlin-linked catering tycoon Evgeny Prigozhin has asked the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to conduct an audit of Meduza’s activities and designate the news outlet as an “undesirable organization.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• What the gilet jaunes protests in France could not achieve, a recently published exposé about ride-hailing unicorn Uber is apparently on the verge of doing: getting French President Emmanuel Macron to resign.

• According to French media opposition leaders, incensed by revelations that Macron had backed and facilitated the rollout of the Silicon Valley darling in its heyday period from 2014 to 2016, are now calling for the president’s resignation.

• And yet, the big mystery at the heart of the whole story is why should “revelations” that have been known for years reemerge in such dramatic form today? Even more inexplicable is how an investigation of this scale could miss the actual story at the heart of the Uber phenomenon: the fact that Uber’s business model was patently suspect from the very beginning and should never have received the massive support from capital markets and the political and media establishment that it did.

• Let’s take a closer look at the details of the story but also at the media framing of the whole thing.

• The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was as predictable as it was shocking. Right-wing forces have spent years working to erase the right to abortion, and—for now—they have won.

• Abortion rights defenders on Wednesday were down but determined after a federal appeals court lifted an injunction on Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, allowing the draconian law to take immediate effect.

• “Patients… waiting for abortion care that was legal just this morning when they arrived now have lost their right to that medical care and control over their own bodies.”

• On July 8, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that directed the Department of Health and Human Services to take steps to protect and expand access to medical abortion and contraception while ensuring that patients are eligible to obtain emergency care. In addition, the order seeks to push back against threats posed by surveillance in states outlawing abortion by directing federal agencies to take additional actions to protect patient privacy. The order was in response to a two-week pressure campaign by leftists who were frustrated by the Democratic Party’s tepid response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling protecting abortion rights. Many threatened that they would not fund or vote for the Democratic Party unless leaders took action.

• The story of a ten-year-old child rape victim from Ohio who sought an abortion across the state line in Indiana caught fire in US media, and around the world, after President Joe Biden (7/8/22) brought it up in public remarks. Given the difficulty of defending a law and a culture that produces such a horrific situation, the right wing went into overdrive attacking the story’s veracity.

• While celebrating last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pointed to the millions of dollars in spending that state lawmakers approved during the 2021 legislative session to help pregnant women and new mothers.

• Among the measures he touted was a law that extended Medicaid health care coverage for pregnant women until six months after they give birth or miscarry, exceeding the federal government’s requirement that states provide at least two months of the benefit.

• Since then, it has become increasingly clear that our society does not confer rights and dignity on we the people — as seen in the slashing of school food programs, the denial of Medicaid expansion in states that need it most, attacks on Black, Brown, and Native bodies by the police and border patrol, as well as the Supreme Court’s recent decisions to put fossil-fuel companies ahead of the rest of us, guns above kids, and deny sovereignty to indigenous people and tribes, while failing to protect our voting rights and ending the constitutional right to abortion.

• For millions of us, the Dobbs v. Jackson decision on abortion means that life in America has just grown distinctly more dangerous. The seismic aftershocks of that ruling are already being felt across the country: 22 states have laws or constitutional amendments on the books now poised to severely limit access to abortion or ban it outright. Even before the Supremes issued their decision, states with more restrictiveabortion laws had higher maternal-mortality and infant-mortality rates. Now, experts are predicting at least a 21% increase in pregnancy-related deaths across the country.

• The experts’ statement was forceful and heartfelt. It accused Israel of depriving young Manasra “of his childhood, family environment, protection and all the rights he should have been guaranteed as a child.” It referred to the case as ‘haunting’, considering Manasra’s “deteriorating mental conditions”. The statement went further, declaring that “this case … is a stain on all of us as part of the international human rights community”.

• Condemning Israel for its ill-treatment of Palestinian children, whether those under siege in war-stricken Gaza, or under military occupation and apartheid in the rest of the occupied territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is commonplace.

• “We regret we failed to protect you.” This was part of a statement issued by United Nations human rights experts on July 14, urging the Israeli government to release Palestinian prisoner Ahmad Manasra. Only 13 years old at the time of his arrest and torture by Israeli forces, Manasra is now 20 years old. His case is a representation of Israel’s overall inhumane treatment of Palestinian children.

• Glenn Ivey, a corporate attorney and former top prosecutor in Prince George’s County, defeated his progressive opponent, former U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards, in the Democratic primary for Maryland’s 4th Congressional District thanks in large part to the millions of dollars that pro-Israel lobby groups invested to help him in Tuesday’s race.

• The United Democracy Project (UDP)—a super PAC launched in December by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as a way to legally shell out unlimited sums of money to directly influence elections and counter mounting criticism of Israeli apartheid from within the Democratic Party—spent almost $6 million to oppose Edwards, who served in the House for eight years as a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus before losing her 2016 Senate bid.

• The Carson case came from Maine, where areas with too few students to justify a public high school used public money to pay private schools to educate their students. Under its policy, Maine only allowed nonsectarian private schools or nearby public school districts to receive the funds. Parents who wished to send their students to religious schools argued that the policy discriminated based on religion. The court’s majority agreed, ruling that denying state support to students attending religious schools because their schools were religious violated the First Amendment’s protections on religious freedom.

• In the Kennedy case, the court chipped away at decades of rulings that deemed school employees leading prayer an unlawful establishment of religion because it entangled church and state in the act. In the court’s revised view, coach Joseph Kennedy possessed a First Amendment right to privately prayafter football games on the 50-yard line, permissible even if students joined him in praying.

• H.E. Ms. Faouzia Boumaiza Mebarki ChairpersonAd Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communication Technologies for Criminal Purposes

• Your Excellency,

• We, the undersigned, represent NGOs accredited to the Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communication Technologies for Criminal Purposes (hereafter, AHC). Thus far, many of us have participated in both the first and second sessions of the AHC, as well as the intersessionals, whether remotely or in-person. We have also provided our expertise through written and oral input. At this point, we write with regard to the question of hybrid participation, and the ability to make oral interventions during future substantive sessions.

• Take a break from hacking the Gibson to face off with your competition at the tables—and benefit EFF! Your buy-in is paired with a donation to support EFF’s mission to protect online privacy and free expression for all. Play for glory. Play for money. Play for the future of the web. Seating is limited, so reserve your spot today.

• Surrounded by the vistas of western Montana, the generals of the war against Starbucks baristas will gather on August 3 at a swanky Rocky Mountain resort for three days of discussing labor-management relations. Big Sky Resort is hosting the confab, and when attendees aren’t meeting, they can avail themselves of golf, guided trout fishing, luxurious dining, and spa treatments before retiring to their $600-a-night hotel suites.

• A potentially historic political shift is currently taking place within an unexpected group of Americans: evangelical Christians. In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, strains within the evangelical community, especially among people of color, have resulted in significant numbers of people defecting from the right and opening themselves to social justice stances on issues of race, immigration, climate and economic fairness. Should the trend escalate, it could send tremors that extend well beyond the religious community and reverberate throughout U.S. politics.

• Are Roman Catholics seeking to bring down American democracy? This might seem a strange question to pose during the presidency of Joe Biden, only the second Roman Catholic ever to govern the United States. Yet, try counting the number of times in the course of this Supreme Court term that Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett have clearly revealed themselves to be fundamentalist Catholics. Much ink was spilled during Barrett’s confirmation process over the likely consequences of the Catholic hyper-majority she would assure on SCOTUS. If we count the Catholic-baptized Gorsuch, the hyper-majority is undeniable: seven, in a court of nine. But the problem isn’t Catholicism itself (Sonia Sotomayor, after all, is one of those seven, and she practices the religion); it’s a nativist, nationalist, racist, sexist Catholic authoritarianism that now holds sway among the majority of lifetime appointees to the highest appellate authority in the republic.

• On July 18, Russian State Duma deputies introduced a bill that would put “denying family values and promoting non-traditional sexual orientations” on par with “inciting ethnic hatred and propagating pornography.” If the bill gets signed into law, it’s sure to do serious damage to Russia’s cultural sphere; it requires, for example, that the government stop granting distribution licenses to films that “promote the denial of family values.” On the print media front, things are looking just as bleak. Meduza literary critic Galina Yuzefovich explains how the proposed law could affect Russia’s publishing industry.

• Judicial immunity is one of a handful of absolute immunities. Like the name suggests, absolute immunity is a pretty tough shield to pierce. Every so often, someone will do something terrible enough to be stripped of immunity they assumed was absolute. But those cases are extremely rare.

• For a few years now, uninformed police officials have been making America stupider by pushing the narrative that fentanyl is so dangerous, simply being near it is possibly fatal. Ignoring the fact that drugs must be ingested in some form to do what they’re supposed to do, law enforcement agencies have repeatedly made absurd, completely false claims about the dangerousness of certain drugs merely existing in proximity of responding officers.

• The European Commission launched the Rule of Law procedure against Hungary at the end of April. At the end of June, the Hungarian government addressed EU concerns about the public procurement system, the independence of the investigating and prosecuting authorities, the fight against corruption and agricultural subsidies in a letter sent to the Commission. This week, Justice Minister Judit Varga submitted two bill proposals (which were, of course accepted) to the Hungarian Parliament.

• And it’s even more complicated than that. Racism in Brazil is usually narrowly understood as being anti-Black. But prejudice against, and hatred of Indigenous peoples (around 900,000 in some 300 ethnic groups), isn’t considered as racially motivated but, it seems, as some other kind of hostility. So, when Lula introduced the Secretariat for Promotion of Racial Equality during his last mandate, it focused on people of “African descent” and ignored Indigenous peoples and also Asians, especially Chinese (250,000) and Japanese (2.1 million – the largest Japanese population outside Japan) people who also suffer from racism, as do immigrants from countries like Bolivia and Venezuela. The logic of this way of defining racism means that some groups are ignored and others are exempt. Hence, for example, reports of anti-Semitism are rare and Jews (about 120,000) lead an open religious life and are well integrated in all spheres of Brazilian society.

• After the horrors of Nazism, UNESCO published a document called “The Race Question”, drafted by a committee of white experts including Claude Lévi-Strauss, and revised by anthropologist Ashley Montagu after criticisms voiced by other experts, including Julian Huxley, Gunnar Myrdal, and Joseph Needham (and nary a woman in sight). The report muddied the waters further when the amended version, swapping ethnic group for race, came to the obfuscatory conclusion that, “it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of ethnic groups”, reserving race “for anthropological classification of groups showing definite combinations of physical (including physiological) traits in characteristic proportions”. And it declared that Brazil had an “exemplary situation” regarding race relations, and this “harmony” should be explored in further research. In fact, such “harmony” wasn’t all that far from what sociologist Gilberto Freyre fantasised in his book Casa-Grande e Senzala (The Grand House and Slave Quarters, 1933). It was “a near marvel of accommodation: of the slave to the master, of the black to the white, of the son to the father, of the woman to the husband”.

• The death of Christopher Robert Hensley while in custody of Fletcher, North Carolina, police has received little attention. PAR investigates the dangerous restraint police used during his arrest, a…

• While the case is nominally about who gets to decide whether newly drawn political district lines pass constitutional muster,  its particulars intersect with controversy over something called the “independent state legislature doctrine,” and therefore with disgraced former president Donald Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election using slates of fake alternate electors” to replace the real ones.

• If the Court gets this wrong, the Democratic Party line goes, state legislative majorities can just throw out presidential election results that don’t go their party’s way, and instead appoint presidential electors who support their preferred candidates.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Sean Middleton, director of strategy operations at Finley Engineering, said at a Fiber for Breakfast event Wednesday that utility pole operators must conduct a pole-ready analysis to understand the poles’ structural integrity and provide a high-level report of what the poles need to be ready for fiber builds. That includes whether the pole will withstand the weight and strain of additional equipment.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• The report notes that Netflix has been trying to transition its service from a library of shows which originated elsewhere, to a platform mostly fueled by its own original content. Their statement says they’re past the most “cash-intensive” part of that transformation, indicating the days of $15 billion budgets for programming may be passing.

• However, analysts response was more mixed. Some financial observers expressed relief about the results and argued that management was taking control of the company’s narrative again. Others warned that new business initiatives would take time to bear fruit and underlined the challenges for reaccelerating subscriber growth in mature and maturing markets — such as the U.S., Canada and Europe — meaning that investors should for now stay on the sidelines.

• After years of saying password sharing wasn’t really a big deal and was akin to free advertising, Netflix recently announced it would be cracking down on password sharing. It started with a new trial in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, where users were forced to pay an additional fee if they shared their password with users outside of their home.

Monopolies

• The relationship between tech giants and the Democratic party calls into question the motivation behind blocking legislation aimed at regulating social media.

Patents

• The U.S. pharmaceutical industry exercised its virtually unlimited pricing power to hike costs for patients again this month as Senate Democrats made progress toward a limited deal to regulate out-of-control prescription drug prices, which are forcing millions of people to ration their medication or go without it entirely.

• A new analysis released Wednesday by Patients for Affordable Drugs estimates that pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. have raised drug prices 1,186 times so far this year, further padding their bottom lines while intensifying the already overwhelming cost burden for patients.

• “We must put an end to drug corporations’ unfettered ability to dictate prices at the expense of patients.”

Copyrights

• A federal court in Virginia has granted a temporary restraining order that requires PayPal and Alipay to freeze the assets of VPN provider “VeePN”. The order was requested by several filmmakers, who accuse the VPN of promoting the piracy app Porcom Time, and advertising on notorious torrent site YTS.mx.

• After filing a copyright lawsuit in 2021, this April several Hollywood studios and Netflix won a broad injunction to shut down illegal streaming site PrimeWire. It will come as no surprise to learn that is more easily said than done. The MPA says that after the head of PrimeWire was chopped off by an injunction, a new site called HydraWire emerged to mock both Hollywood and the court.

• The solution for the end of the backend era is a newly imagined model of deal-making. The greatest hurdle in the coming years is access to data, so that talent representatives can assess the performance and value of a property. The cutting edge of making new deals includes a series of elaborately constructed performance bonuses that kick in over a period of years, plus longevity and award bonuses. Industry sources note that in this system, cancellation of a show after two or three seasons is the cruelest cut because bonus payments typically become significant from Season 4 on.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• The advantage of the current era is easier UI. Silents and boomers were overjoyed in the era of iPhone and Facebook since they were finally “let in”, and millennials and younger grew up in a Truman Show world where Insta and YouTube were as established and inescapable as TV, radio, roads, and grocery stores had been for us. It’s like that old story of what a fish thinks about water.

• (With plenty of individual exceptions in all directions because I’m talking cohort trends here; we have our pioneer elders, our non-nerdy peers, and people of all ages who wanna to see behind the curtain of how the tech world works.)

• Rob is asking themself the same question and comes to a similar conclusion that i do. what the frack do i want to do with my life? what is it that’s fulfilling and gives me meaning?

• [...]

• chances are, this has different roots. somewhere in the past. unless you dig deep you won’t be able to find out, but it doesn’t matter. during the time i was asking myself where to find that sign, i was in therapy for something else, but i brought up the topic and we talked about it for a while. the core essence of it all seemed to be, meanining is something you generate yourself, and there won’t be a sign, because you need to create it. my therapist urged me to take a leap of faith. into anything. back then i was sorta starting to paint miniatures. my way to stop playing computer games and waste my time on tv shows, as none of these seemed to make me happier. and painful as it was for me to go against anxiety, i went to a tabletop store and picked up a skirmisher i had never heard of before, but locally it has a community of 60 people. suffice to say, i am still painting those miniatures and i am still playing that game. not because there weren’t many other games that interested me or that i was hyped about. i stuck with that one game because i really wanted to see what will happen if i don’t give up.

• time and time again you hear people (successful people, famous people, medical practicioners, religious people) say that nothing comes easy or for free in life. when i stuck with one single tabletop for a year, and another year, for the first time in life i started to get what they meant by that. and that allowed me to move forward with the question. still got no clue about the right answer, but at least i stopped looking outwards.

• Recently I thought about decisions in general, and how I usually need motivation. But I think I actually need a positive state of mind, then I must make the decision and just stick to it. And so far, this works.

• It boils down to commodity and courage. In order to achieve the positive state of mind, I must get out of my comfort zone, and not fear changes. Fear, or lack of courage, is what stops a person from doing a change to their life style. Once the idea that there’s nothing to lose is understood, one can make decision freely, clear headed.

• I love our property in the summer. This is the second summer we have been on this property, and there is something magical about it. The flora grows up so much around the border, that our entire property disappears from outside view. My parents came out to visit, and couldnt find us at first, because all that is visible is a small unassuming driveway, and a wall of green.

• We set up chairs by the garden and talked about everything. Then I took them for a walk through the recently cleared field. Because we wanted to live as simply as possible when we moved here, I cleared the entire field with a Austrian scythe. I purchased it from a small company in the northeastern U.S. before we moved, had it fitted to my body, and learned how to keep the hand made blade peened and razor sharp. I’ve been cutting with the bush blade about 30 minutes a day, which is enough to keep our non forested area clear.

Technical

• I simultaneously want each instance to feel more like a tight-knit, local community (by showing the local timeline, and having each instance have their own style of moderation) while also making it even easier to use one account to follow your favorite Lemmy groups, Pixelfed posters, and fave people from all over, to like and boost posts.

• Best of both worlds.

• Your own “home” timeline which is a sprawling eclectic selection of all your own faves from all over, and a local timeline that’s what’s going on in your instance right now, maybe the latter doesn’t even show boosts.

• This list of four items are all my dreams for the relatively short-term horizon.

• Longer term, stuff like Bonfire’s attempt to revive visibility circles is interesting. Making social media a little more social and a lot less world-readable.

• After a long hiatus, I am back into both a reading (books… Gemini reading has still been daily) and a gaming kick. The reading was still going on a bit, just at a snail’s pace because I just could not get into the novel, The Scarlet Letter. I read this years ago and hated it and struggled to understand it, but wanted to try again. This time, the only thing I struggled to understand was the author’s intro, detailing some of his life and how he came to write the book. The plot, however, gave me little trouble this time around (from the comprehension perspective, at least… the plot itself is awful, hence the pace). I simply didn’t have the vocabulary when reading it all those years ago. Now I am reading a sci-fi novel and it is sucking me in, which is refreshing.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. 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

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