● 08.16.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 16/08/2022: Deepin 23 Preview and Thunderbird 102 Upgrade Route

Posted in News Roundup at 5:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Server

• Docker has matured over the years to offer a range of solutions for developers working with containers. This can lead to some confusion, though, as developers need to choose which version of Docker to install.

• In this post, I look at which options are available for which operating systems and offer advice on what choice to make.

Videos/Shows

• It’s the London meetup live show special! Joe is joined by Alex and Gary to discuss how to accept that most people who use/connect to Linux machines don’t use it on the desktop.

• When we talk about the “Do One Thing And Do It Well”, which commonly gets described as just the Unix Philosophy, what do we actually mean by do on thing, well today I overly breakdown this phrase more than anyone asked for.

• In this video, we are looking at Voyager Live 22.04.1.1.

• Today we are looking at Voyager Live 22.04.1.1. It is based on Ubuntu 22.04, Linux Kernel 5.15, Gnome 42, and uses about 1.5GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

Kernel Space

• I reported emails from Muthukrishnan, about Realtek wifi not working, and I made a configure change to the kernel…

Instructionals/Technical

• For a good reason, Linux Mint is one of the most popular Linux distributions. It’s stable, relatively easy to use, and has a good selection of default applications. If you’re new to Linux Mint, here are 10 things you should do after installing it.

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

• VeraCrypt is a free and open-source utility for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). The software can create a virtual encrypted disk that works just like a regular disk but within a file. It can also encrypt a partition the entire storage device with pre-boot authentication.

• VeraCrypt is a fork of the discontinued TrueCrypt project. Many security improvements have been implemented and concerns within the TrueCrypt code audits have been addressed. VeraCrypt includes optimizations to the original cryptographic hash functions and ciphers, which boost performance on modern CPUs.

• In this tutorial, we will install Brightness-Controller on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• Brightness-Controller is a popular brightness application used to control screen brightness. It’s a graphical user interface that help us to control screen brightness.

• In this tutorial, we will illustrate how to install Blender 3D on Ubuntu systems.

• Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software tool set used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D-printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, and, formerly, video games. Blender’s features include 3D modelling, UV mapping, texturing, digital drawing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animation, match moving, rendering, motion graphics, video editing, and compositing.

• In this guide, we will show you how to install Audacity in Ubuntu systems.

• Audacity is a free, open source, cross-platform audio software. It is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.

• In addition to recording audio from multiple sources, Audacity can be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out.

• In this guide, we will show you how to install Valentina in Ubuntu systems.

• Valentina is an open source pattern drafting software tool, designed to be the foundation of a new stack of open source tools to remake the garment industry. The main idea of the software package for creating clothing patterns is in combining new technologies with old methods of designing of patterns. The main feature is the work with parametric patterns. So it’s for creating clothing patterns distributed according to the open-source software model.

• PlayOnLinux is an excellent program that makes installing Windows video games and Windows programs easy on Linux. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can install Windows apps on Linux Mint with it.

• This article shows how to set up the dnf-automatic service to apply updates automatically on a Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux system.

• One central part of keeping Linux servers secure is installing security updates on time. Therefore, keeping the system up to date is one of the most critical tasks for Linux administrators.

• One of the most common approaches used by Linux system administrators is manually installing security updates. However, the problem with this approach is that it cannot ensure consistent regularity.

• In other words, if the administrator forgets or is prevented for some reason from performing this action, it can lead to serious security threats.

• Remote desktop (or screen sharing) is an operating system feature that allows users to connect to another computer in a distant physical location and interact with that computer as if it were local.

• The remote desktop feature is useful if you need to access your computer from a remote location, if you want to provide remote support to someone else, for certain work requirements, etc.

• In this article we’ll go step-by-step in enabling the remote desktop feature (or screen sharing) on an Ubuntu remote computer running either 22.04 or 20.04, and we’ll look at how to connect to them.

• We will look at other remote desktop methods and technologies that work for Ubuntu. We have already written detailed tutorials on these methods, so we’ll provide an overview of each one, and link to their corresponding article.

• As a Raspberry Pi user, performing the internet speed test is extremely useful as this will help you monitor the performance of your internet connection. If your internet is running slow, then it might be the case that the internet service provider isn’t providing you the required speed or there is some other issue.

• If you are unsure about that, follow this article, where you will find the two most straightforward command line applications to check the internet speed on your Raspberry Pi.

• Since Raspberry Pi OS is a Linux-based operating system, you will perform most of your tasks through the terminal, including installing applications. There are different methods you can use to install an application, and this blog will provide you with the detail of each method that helps you in installing applications from different sources, so let’s begin discussing them.

• Today we are looking at how to install Friday Night Funkin on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

Games

• Valve has confirmed that they are (again) increasing the amount of people that will be invited to purchase a Steam Deck.

• THQ Nordic, 3D Realms and  Slipgate Ironworks recently revealed Tempest Rising an upcoming classic RTS and after watching the trailer I absolutely need this.

• Probably one of the best spaceship building sandbox games around, Avorion has just grown tremendously with the Into The Rift DLC out now.

• Following from the successful Kickstarter campaign in 2020, Caligari Games have announced their Burton-style point and click adventure will release on September 15.

• Heroic Games Launcher enables you to download games on Linux and Steam Deck from both the Epic Store and GOG. A big new release version 2.4.0 is out now with some massive new features.

• Kitsune Zero is being released on September 12 as a paid DLC for the free platformer Super Bernie World. This will act as a prequel to the upcoming standalone game Kitsune Tails.

• Bottles is easily the most simple way to manage installing and running Windows games and apps on Linux outside of Steam. A new release is out now with plenty of useful tweaks.

• News has been doing the rounds for a little bit about Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) suddenly not working after system updates for some users, turns out it’s an issue with glibc.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• We wonder what the crew from the Enterprise would think of 21st century Earthlings giving up Gnome, KDE, or Xfce for the official desktop environment of Star Fleet.

• I’m not going to ask why they’re in 2022. I would say that it was some kind of side track from Star Trek: Picard, where an aged Picard visits Earth in 2024, but Wesley is still a teen wearing a Star Trek uniform, so it couldn’t be that. For some reason, they beam into my home office in rural North Carolina — Picard, Wesley Crusher, and of course Data.

• About the same time they are materializing, I hit the blue button on Facebook and send a post that reads: “Picard would find it silly that we’re doing this. Data would find it fascinating, being more Vulcan than the Vulcans. Young Wesley would get into it, question perceptible changes which would be obvious, until he joined the New Age.” The post links to an article by Brian Lunduke, the ‘Linux Sucks’ dude, who’s an okay guy as long as he’s not talking politics, if you catch my drift.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Akademy is KDE’s yearly community event, this year it happens between October 1st and October 7th in my city comarca [one of the reasons of why it’s happening is that our Mr. President tricked me into helping organize it [*]]

• You don’t need to be a “KDE expert” to join, if you’re remotely involved or interested in KDE you should really attend if you can (in person if possible, for me online really doesn’t work for conferences), and not only the weekend of talks, but the whole week!

• I still remember 2007 when our back-then-newbie Mr. President asked me “should I really go to Akademy? All the week? is it really worth it?” and i said “as many days as you can”, and I guess we made a good enough impression to convince him to stay around and even want to do all the paper work that involves being in the KDE eV board

Distributions and Operating Systems

• I was recently perusing the Retro Computing Forum when I stumbled across a mention of Collapse OS. If your anxiety levels have not already been maxed out during the last few years of climate breakdown, psychological warfare, pandemic, and actual warmongering, accompanied by supply chain breakdowns, initially in technology and exacerbated by overconsumption and spivcoin, now also in commodities and exacerbated by many of those other factors (particularly the warmongering), then perhaps focusing on societal and civilisational collapse isn’t going to improve your mood or your outlook. Unusually, then, after my last, rather negative post on such topics, may I be the one to introduce some constructive input and perhaps even some slight optimism?

• If I understand the motivations behind Collapse OS correctly, it is meant to provide a modest computing environment that can work on well-understood, commonplace, easily repaired and readily sourced hardware, with the software providing the environment itself being maintainable on the target hardware, as opposed to being cross-built on more powerful hardware and then deployed to simpler, less capable hardware. The envisaged scenario for its adoption is a world where powerful new hardware is no longer produced or readily available and where people must scavenge and “make do” with the hardware already produced. Although civilisation may have brought about its own collapse, the consolation is that so much hardware will have been strewn across the planet for a variety of purposes that even after semiconductor fabrication and sophisticated manufacturing have ceased, there will remain a bounty of hardware usable for people’s computational needs (whatever they may be).

Reviews

• For about three years of my life, Elementary OS was my go-to operating system. The only thing that dragged me away from that Linux distribution was the purchase of my first System76 hardware (a beautiful Leopard Extreme). Since that initial purchase, I’ve since stuck with System76 desktops (the Thelio is, in my opinion, the finest desktop computer on the market). Because I use the System76 hardware, its Pop! OS just makes perfect sense.

• However, there are days when I miss the elegance and simplicity of the Elementary OS desktop distribution. Elementary OS is as elegant a desktop OS as you’ll ever find. With the slightest inspiration taken from the MacOS interface, Elementary OS uses the Pantheon desktop to create an interface (Figure 1) that absolutely anyone can use.

• [...]

• In other words, if you’re new to Linux, Elementary OS is hard to beat. If Linux has been your jam for years, you might find Elementary OS a bit limiting. Either way, however, it’s hard to top this Linux distribution for beauty and ease of use.

New Releases

• Deepin is the top Linux distribution from China, devoted to providing a beautiful, easy-to-use, safe, and reliable operating system for global users. (Global Ranking)

• Deepin 23 Preview is a staged version of deepin 23, which includes three main features: brand-new repositories, atomic updates, and a self-developed package format. Please note that it cannot be upgraded from deepin 20 directly at present.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• For a good reason, Linux Mint is one of the most popular Linux distributions. It’s stable, relatively easy to use, and has a good selection of default applications. If you’re new to Linux Mint, here are 10 things you should do after installing it.

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 748 for the week of August 7 – 13, 2022.

Devices/Embedded

• The BOXER-8220AI Series from AAEON integrates the latest NVIDIA SoCs including the recent Jetson AGX Orin. The company has also announced a partnership with Cogniteam to develop ready-to-build robotic solutions for customers.

• The BOXER-8220AI series includes four products based on NVIDIA SoCs. In this case, the BOXER-8221AI (4GB LPDDR4 RAM Jetson Nano), the BOXER-8251AI (8GB LPDDR4 Jetson Xavier NX), the BOXER-8240AI (32GB LPDDR4x Jetson AGX Xavier) and the BOXER-8641AI(32GB LPDDR5x Jetson AGX Orin).

Open Hardware/Modding

• Over the years we’ve seen a lot of Raspberry Pi boards pushed into service as media players. In fact, second to emulating old game consoles, that’s probably the Pi’s most common vocation when it comes to DIY builds. But despite the popularity of this particular use case, it seems like each one has had to reinvent the wheel.

• Digital cameras work by letting light through a lens onto a sensor composed of photosites, each with a photodiode that outputs a signal relative to the brightness of the light. Modern digital camera sensors have millions of photosites, each of which contains a microscopic photodiode. The number of pixels in the captured image is equal to the number of photodiodes. To demonstrate that concept, Electromechanical Productions used an Arduino to build “the worst digital camera of all time ever.”

• Photodiodes alone can’t detect color, only brightness. Professional and consumer digital cameras incorporate color filters and algorithms to interpolate color. But in this case, the picture is black and white. This “camera” doesn’t utilize color filters and doesn’t even have a lens. It also only has a resolution of 8 x 6 — 48 pixels in total. Each of those photosites is a simple photoresistor, which is a component with a variable resistance proportional to the intensity of the light that hits it.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• The list of updates arriving with this year’s version of Android is likely to be familiar if you’ve been keeping up with Android 13’s beta releases. There’s the ability to customize non-Google app icons to match your homescreen wallpaper that we saw in Android 13’s first developer preview, a new permission to cut down on notification spam, and a new option to limit which of your photos and videos an app can access.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Android 13 has just been released rolling out to Google Pixel devices initially, and later to other devices from Samsung Galaxy, Asus, HMD (Nokia phones), iQOO, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo, Xiaomi and more. Google also pushed Android 13 source code to AOSP (The Android Open Source Project).

• Most of the changes to the new version of the Android operating system were introduced with the first Android 13 developer preview – released in February 2022 – adding privacy, security, and productivity improvements, and even some hidden gems such as virtualization enabling Pixel 6 to run Linux and Windows 11, although the feature was mostly implemented for security reasons and running third-party code such as DRM or crypto outside of the Android OS.

• The FOSSEPS Critical Software study was launched in November 2021 to identify (and suggest ways to fix) the critical software in use at European Public Services. The study team led by Deloitte (supported by Inno3, a specialist open source company from Paris), received 21 responses from survey questionnaires sent to over 191 European public services. Separately, 13 open source sustainability and security experts were also interviewed. The authors write that the low response-rate from public services “reflects the complexity of the subject, rather than a lack of effort or enthusiasm”. “It emerged that public services do not have adequate technology tools to establish open source software dependencies.”

• The researchers compiled a list of 30 critical software, open source projects. Examples include Curl, software for interacting with web content, M2crypto, a Python wrapper for OpenSSL, and Libxml2, a library for parsing XML documents. Development of these projects involve about a handful of developers or less. These projects have a low ‘bus factor”; there are high risks for information and capabilities not being shared among team members in case “they get his by a bus”.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• More than a month and a half after the release of Thunderbird 102, the development team behind the popular Mozilla Thunderbird open-source email, news, calendar, and chat client opened the upgrade path from the previous stable series, Thunderbird 91. Now Thunderbird 91 users can finally upgrade to Thunderbird 102. To be more accurate, if you’re running Thunderbird 91.12.0, open the About Thunderbird dialog from the Help menu or by clicking on the small (i) icon next to the version number in the main window and upgrade to Thunderbird 102.1.2.

Programming/Development

• Have you ever been stuck or gone blank trying to solve a problem related to something that you just learned from YouTube or Google tutorials? You seem to understand every line of the code, but without the tutorial, you find yourself in a difficult position. If you have looked at problem-solving in HackerRank or LeetCode, you can relate to how an aspiring programmer feels seeing those challenges for the first time. Everything seems out of the box! Being unable to apply what you learned from a tutorial might make you doubt your knowledge and abilities as you begin to understand the basics of the programming language you’re learning.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• $ awk ‘{a+=$0}END{print a}’ file Read all lines using decimal marker as point, then add all them up and outputs the result.

Standards/Consortia

• eBooks provide a great way to read books, magazines, and other content on the go. Readers can enjoy eBooks to pass the time during long flights and train rides. The most popular eBook file format is the EPUB file, short for “electronic publication.” EPUB files are supported across a variety of eReaders and are effectively the standard for eBook publication today.

• The EPUB file format is an open standard based on XHTML for content and XML for metadata, contained in a zip file archive. And because everything is based on open standards, we can use common tools to create or examine EPUB files. Let’s explore an EPUB file to learn more about it. A guide to tips and tricks for C programming, published earlier this year on Opensource.com, is available in PDF or EPUB format.

• Because EPUB files are XHTML content and XML metadata in a zip file, you can start with the unzip command to examine the EPUB from the command line:

• This EPUB contains a lot of files, but much of this is content. To understand how an EPUB file is put together, follow the process flow of an eBook reader:

Leftovers

• As the clock turned to the year 2000, ESPN put out its rankings of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. The list was objectionable on several fronts: Babe Ruth ahead of Muhammad Ali? Secretariat—yes, the horse—ahead of Oscar Robertson? Ahead of Lawrence Taylor? But the worst part about the list was that it was a sausage fest. There were five women in the top 50, with Chris Evert squeaking in at number 50. Of the five, only two were Black women, the highest ranked being track-and-field legend Jackie Joyner-Kersee at 23. This arid landscape was the sports world that Serena Williams audaciously set out to rule.

• We’ve seen plenty of custom keyboards here on Hackaday. Seriously, like more than we can count. But custom mice? Those are far more elusive. Though we wouldn’t be surprised to see that change should this excellent example from [Tyler Richard] catch on.

• I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples. The temperatures, in the high 80s, along with the oppressive humidity, have emptied the park of all but a handful of visitors. My shirt is matted with sweat.

Education

• A few years back, the “Varsity Blues” scandal made front-page news. Rich parents, desperate to ensure that their offspring were accepted by an elite university, paid huge sums of money to an entrepreneur who promised “side door” admissions. Over the course of nearly a decade, athletic records were faked, bribes were paid to university staffers, and hired experts took the SAT instead of the students. To the public, the perp-walk treatment received by these parents and those who abetted them was a justified comeuppance for those who cheated the system.

Hardware

• Many of the hardware orientated hackers among us will likely have been following along with the story of [Stephen Hawes] and the Lumen pick-and-place project but kind of waiting a bit for the project to mature some more before maybe taking the plunge and ordering a kit. One reason for this might be that whilst the basic machine design is there and working, the tape feeders did need a fair bit of work, and a lack of usable feeders does not make a great PnP machine. [Stephen] has been working on a newer design that addresses some of the identified shortcomings, and has started documenting his progress (video, embedded below) along the way.

• Love it or hate it, TrackPoint can be a powerful tool. Love it or hate it, the idea of moving the mouse without removing your hands from the keys has an appeal. [Alon Swartz] incorporated one into his custom wired split mechanical keyboard and wrote a helpful guide on how to do it yourself.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Brittney Griner, the American basketball star sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia on charges of narcotics possession and trafficking, has challenged her conviction.

• With its economic and military might, America is hard to beat on technological wonders, space exploration, and top-notch universities. But when it comes to health, a fundamental prerequisite to a fulfilling life, the US isn’t delivering and hasn’t been for a long time. Researchers now find that the big picture of health failings is even graver than we already knew.

Security

• Networking giant Cisco has said it has either fixed or will fix bugs revealed in its products by security firm Rapid7, details of which the latter firm released on 11 August.

• In a blog post, Rapid7′s Jake Baines said the company has found vulnerabilities and non-security issues affecting Cisco Adaptive Security Software, Adaptive Security Device Manager and FirePOWER Services Software for ASA.

• Baines described Cisco ASA Software as a “core operating system for the Cisco ASA Family”, adding that Cisco ASA was widely deployed as enterprise-class firewalls that also support VPN, IPS, and many other features.

• But Sick Codes isn’t just jailbreaking tractors to get them to run Doom. According to a report from Wired, he also devised and presented a new jailbreak that gave him root access to the tractor’s system. This exploit could potentially help farmers bypass software blocks that prevent them from repairing the tractor themselves, something John Deere has come under fire for in the past.

• As noted by Wired, Sick Codes was able to obtain “1.5 GB worth of logs” that dealers could use to identify and diagnose problems. But he also found a way to gain root access by soldering controllers directly to the tractor’s circuit board. Unfortunately, gaining root access isn’t all that simple without the right equipment, but Sick Codes told Wired “it would be possible to develop a tool based on the vulnerabilities to more easily execute the jailbreak.”

• After years of controversy in the US over the “right to repair” the equipment one purchases, the movement seems to have reached a turning point. The White House issued an executive order last year directing the Federal Trade Commission to increase enforcement efforts over practices like voiding warranties for outside repair. That, combined with New York state passing its own right-to-repair law and creative activist pressure, has generated unprecedented momentum for the movement.

• The project took months to develop, according to Sick Codes. It targeted a John Deere tractor 4240 touchscreen controller with an Arm-compatible NXP I.MX 6 system-on-chip running Wind River Linux 8. There were also devices running Windows CE.

Privacy/Surveillance

• San Francisco’s ordinance requires police to get the Board of Supervisors’ permission before acquiring or borrowing surveillance technology. But the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) obtained no such permission before officers monitored the Union Square Business Improvement District’s network of more than 300 cameras for eight days during the protests.

• The EFF and ACLU represent three Black and Latinx activists who organized and participated in the protests and say the police’s illegal spying chills their willingness and ability to attend or organize future demonstrations.

• Their brief asks the California Court of Appeal First Appellate District to overturn a San Francisco Superior Court judge’s ruling in the city’s favor. The lower court erroneously found that because SFPD had monitored a few business district cameras once before for a 24-hour period during the 2019 Pride Parade, it was fine for them–under a “grace period” subsection of the ordinance–to use the entire 300-camera network for eight days during the 2020 George Floyd protests without the Board’s permission.

• Ring wants to bring you a cop show without most of the cops — “America’s Funniest Home Videos” but all the footage has been recorded by Amazon’s home surveillance products. Here’s Deadline’s inadvertently cheery reporting of Ring’s new charm offensive: one it hopes will win hearts, minds, and market share by showing America just what sort of wacky footage can be gathered with always-on cameras.

• European lawmakers wanted answers after months of investigations and reporting made it clear exploit developer NSO Group was involved with some seriously shady customers. Facing lawsuits, sanctions, and the Israeli government’s belated attempt to ensure NSO didn’t continue to generate bad press in perpetuity, the EU began asking questions.

• In his piece, “Did Edward Snowden Draw His Main Inspiration from Ayn Rand?” Tucker makes the case for Snowden being a machine man that breaks bad and goes all wrench.

Defence/Aggression

• A review of Truth Social postings by Rolling Stone shows Trump supporters have spent the past week doxxing both Judge Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge who approved the Mar-a-Lago warrant, and an FBI agent involved in preparing the request, as well as their families. The information includes their purported home addresses, phone numbers, places of worship, private offices, and similar information about the men’s families and junior employees.

• The documents included information about nuclear weapons, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reported. Trump said in a statement Friday the nuclear weapons issue was a “hoax,” his commonly used description about information he didn’t want to go public. He suggested the FBI planted the evidence, the Post said. He, of course, gave no details. So, who believes him?

• The existence of the documents was uncovered during the search even though an unidentified Trump lawyer signed a written declaration stating that “all material marked as classified” had been returned to the government, The New York Times reported Saturday.

• They were successful in scaring off the pirates and avoiding yet another heist in the waters off Campeche’s coast. Pirate attacks on oil platforms and vessels in the Gulf of Mexico are relatively common, with thieves often getting away with equipment, tools and other valuable items.

• Since the end of July, Zaporizhzhia has been the target of a number of military strikes, with both Moscow and Kyiv accusing each other of being behind the shelling.

• The fighting at the plant was the subject of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council last Thursday.

• Ukraine has accused Russia of using the plant as a base for possible attacks and for storing weapons.

• What I learned was, aside from a kind of comical level of incompetence, was the impunity with which Taliban officials believe that they can operate. I was threatened and held against all conventions of human rights and international law. People who I came in contact with were later detained and interrogated. My driver was held incommunicado for three days. He was beaten up, deprived of sleep. His phone and his car were kept, though were given back to him after about a week. But … even the manager of the guesthouse where I stayed was threatened. He was told, we can come and shut you down whenever we want. So there is this undercurrent of violence, and we’ve been hearing for the past year some terrible stories about arbitrary detentions and beatings. A lot of people are still in prison and in hiding. And a lot of people have fled over land borders.

• The team then modelled how the resulting cooling of the planet and other effects like changing rainfall would affect yields of major crops and marine fisheries in every country.

• In the smallest scenario, around 27 million people would be killed by the blasts and 255 million people would starve in the second year after the war. Without accounting for other consequences like ruined infrastructure or radioactive contamination, available calories would decrease by 8 per cent on average globally.

• The largest scenario would directly kill 360 million people and leave more than 5 billion people without enough to eat. Nuclear-armed countries at higher latitudes in the northern hemisphere – including the US, UK, France, Russia and China – would experience some of the largest calorie reductions in all scenarios, with cooling having a greater impact on agriculture there than in the tropics.

• A study published Monday in the journal Nature Food projects that a full-scale nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia would spark a catastrophic global famine, with potentially as many as five billion people dying of starvation in the years immediately after the war’s conclusion.

• Led by climate scientists at Rutgers University, the study examines six nuclear war scenarios: a conflagration involving the U.S., its allies, and Russia and five smaller-scale nuclear conflicts between India and Pakistan.

• The Moscow-installed authorities in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region have proposed declaring a ceasefire around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). Both Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling near the plant, prompting international calls to demilitarize the surrounding area.

• Ukrainian forces have reportedly destroyed a military headquarters in Popasna belonging to Russia’s Wagner Group after a pro-Kremlin journalist revealed its location. Luhansk Governor Serhiy Hayday confirmed that Ukraine was behind the strike on Monday, August 15:

• Russia’s military command is relocating to the left bank of the Dnipro River, according to Natalia Gumenyuk, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command. As a result, Russia will no longer have command centers in the city of Kherson.

• Nancy Pelosi shakes hands with Vice President of the Legislative Yuan Tsai Chi-chang in Taipei. Office of U.S. House Speaker, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Huáyǔ Think Tank (华语智库) Editor’…

• Nancy Pelosi meeting with the Vice President of the Legislative Yuan Tsai Chi-chang in Taipei. Office of U.S. House Speaker, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Míng Jīnwéi (明金维) Editor’s Note:…

• “Leaders in both parties,” Post columnist Josh Rogin reports, “understand that the United States has a duty and an interest in … pushing back against America’s adversaries in both Europe and Asia.” The United States showed that it could take on both China and Russia at the same time, he adds. The Senate voted 95-1 to add Sweden and Finland to NATO. The Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act enjoys bipartisan support. And politicians in both parties scrambled to give the Pentagon even more money than it asked for.

• Cold War is America’s comfort zone. We won the last one. We wear the white hats. It’s democracy against authoritarianism. And we’ve got the biggest and best military. Who could object?

• I find nothing strange in Joe Biden, at 79 (going on 80), being the oldest president in our history and possibly planning to run again in 2024. After all, who wouldn’t want to end up in the record books? Were he to be nominated and then beat the also-aging Donald Trump, or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, or even Fox News’s eternally popular Tucker Carlson, he would occupy the White House until he was 86.

• When President Joe Biden announced on August 31, 2021, that the war in Afghanistan had ended, he also emphasized that the U.S. use of force in the region would continue.

• The American military is now having trouble recruiting enough soldiers. According to the New York Times, its ranks are short thousands of entry-level troops and it’s on track to face the worst recruitment crisis since the Vietnam War ended, not long after the draft was eliminated.

• Joe Lombardo is the co-coordinator of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and has been an organizer in the anti-war movement and a labor activist for decades. He is a cofounder and lead organizer for Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace, a local anti-war group based near Albany, New York, a member of the Troy Area Labor Council, and former staff person of the Vietnam era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC). He is the author of many articles and a frequent radio and TV commentator.

• We focus here on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. His responses below of are exactly as he provided.

Environment

• In six key battleground states that played a decisive role in the 2020 presidential race, Republican candidates who have openly embraced former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” have won nearly two-thirds of the GOP nominating contests for positions with power over state and federal elections, a potentially seismic threat to democracy.

• According to a Washington Post analysis published Monday, 54 of 87 Republican nominees for key posts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have denied the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

• As the fifth and final round of talks for an international treaty to protect the high seas began at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Monday, conservationists across the globe warned world leaders that this may be the “last chance” for a necessarily ambitious agreement.

• “Negotiators must know that the world is watching as they decide the future of our blue planet.”

• The Inflation Reduction Act is being hailed by the mainstream climate movement, Congress members, and the media as the most important climate bill in U.S. history. That’s a pretty low bar, and it says more about our government’s long record of failure on climate than it does about whether this law can prevent dangerous temperature increases in coming decades.

Energy

• The average price of electricity in Estonia is to increase to €479.02 per megawatt-hour on Tuesday, according to Nord Pool’s day-ahead prices* for August 16. This will mark the record second highest daily average electricity price in Estonia to date.

• Those minds and scores of other people are getting organized into what has the makings of its own industry. Influential skeptics are recording more podcasts to try to poke holes in pro-[cryptocurrency] arguments. Think tanks are beginning to devote more resources to doubting the future of [cryptocurrency]. In June, they gathered signatures for a letter to Congress criticizing the potential of the technology.

• Recent U.S. sanctions against [cryptocurrency]currency mixer Tornado Cash have sparked a debate within the [cryptocurrency] community on whether the ban compromises users’ ability to operate anonymously.

• Earlier this week, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Tornado Cash for helping hackers launder over $7 billion worth of virtual currency. The agency said the mixer service allowed cyber criminal groups, including North Korean-backed hackers, to use its platform to launder the proceeds of cyber crimes.

• Bella Kumar arrived at George Washington University excited by the school’s reputation as a prestigious research institution. But after seeing a presentation on the university’s Regulatory Studies Center and its deep ties to fossil fuel interests, Kumar was shocked.

Wildlife/Nature

Finance

• As progressive lawmakers renewed calls for protecting Social Security from GOP attacks, Data for Progress on Monday pointed to polling that shows about 80% of U.S. voters across partisan divides support boosting benefits.

• “While Democrats have a plan to protect and enhance Social Security, Republicans have shared their plans to privatize, cut, and even end this program!”

• Advocates and progressive lawmakers on Sunday celebrated the 87th birthday of Social Security—one of the most popular and successful federal programs in U.S. history—and warned that its modest benefits remain under serious threat as Republicans openly signal their desire to gut the New Deal mainstay, a move that would hurl millions into poverty.

• “Let’s expand Social Security and scrap the cap.”

• Starbucks management on Monday demanded a temporary suspension of all mail-in union elections at its U.S. stores, alleging that National Labor Relations Board personnel and union officials “secretly colluded” to influence the outcome of a contest at a shop in Overland Park, Kansas.

• “Starbucks is simultaneously claiming to stand for voter protections, and then asking that all elections be suspended nationwide.”

• Elon Musk hates government subsidies. That’s what he says, right? He claims that we should “just delete them all,” and that “the federal budget deficit is insane.” Of course, the world’s richest man (for now) has received many billions in government subsidies for his companies. Indeed, you could argue that his success was very much predicated on getting so much in subsidies to pump up his companies when they were in trouble otherwise.

• In keeping with this “the economy is terrible” theme, the Washington Post had a piece a few weeks back telling us that a record number of people report holding two full-time jobs. As the Post article explained, they need to work two full-time jobs to make ends meet because inflation is so bad. It seems this story has now migrated to Marketplace radio.

• There are two problems with this story about workers being forced to work two jobs to make ends meet. The first is that wages for workers at the bottom have actually substantially outpaced inflation over the last few years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory workers in the hotel and restaurant industry was more than 5.0 percent higher in July than it was three years ago. However bad things might be for low-paid workers today, it was worse in the recent past.

• Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s Republican governor, faced intense criticism Monday as the poorest U.S. state ended participation in a federal rent assistance program that helped shield tens of thousands of people facing eviction during the economic upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic.

• “Our leaders should be helping lift people out of poverty, not entrenching it further.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• After the government sought to push the code through in 2021, Facebook went nuclear and simply restricted publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content.

• In order to get the social network to back down, the government was forced to introduce the following amendments: [...]

• Correspondent Ksenia Soldatova and cameraman Dmitri Timofeyev were removed from a Tallinn-bound train at Jõhvi in eastern Estonia by the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) on Friday, news portal Delfi reported.

• With regional elections fast approaching, Russian authorities have opened nine criminal cases and 51 misdemeanor investigations against independent candidates and perceived rivals, the Net Freedoms Project reported on Monday, August 15.

• Yaroslav Varenik, a journalist from Arkhangelsk, was denied entry to into Estonia by border guards after they could not confirm his hostel reservation. Varenik reported the incident on his social networks. “I’m hitchhiking to St. Petersburg because I was banned from entering Estonia and had my visa revoked,” Varenik wrote. In the certificate issued to the journalist (of which Meduza has a copy), Varenik was informed that, “the conditions and purpose of stay were not justified.”

• Such consternation, in a country that tolerates secret trials only revealed by accident, raids upon journalists and the headquarters of the national broadcaster, full-throated prosecutions of whistleblowers, the torture-tinged indefinite detention of refugees, and brazen immunities for intelligence officers engaged in alleged criminal activity.

• Such consternation, in a country that mandates data retention by telecommunication companies for up to two years and disruptive warrants in violation of privacy, a country that gives government ministers, notably immigration ministers, God-like powers (in a secular sense, revolting) to determine the fate of individuals and, most unappealingly for believers in natural justice, rejects a bill of rights or a human rights charter.  With these monstrous realities, Morrison’s conduct and his shady actions indicate an almost mild consistency.

• The 83-minute nonfiction production depicts the struggle of the Uru Eu Wau Wau against reactionary Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, “the Trump of the Tropics,” and the hordes of non-Native invaders he incites to invade the Brazilian counterparts to US reservations for tribal nations. The Territory also deals with issues of the climate crisis, environmental racism, sovereignty and more. Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky shares producer credits. Premiering in the World Cinema competition at the Sundance Film Festival, The Territory is the only film to win both an Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Documentary Craft in 2022

• What is The Territory?

Misinformation/Disinformation

• The pro-democracy group Global Witness on Monday demanded to know how Facebook is, as it claims, “deeply committed to protecting election integrity” after the organization tested Facebook’s ability to detect misinformation about Brazil’s upcoming election—and found that none of the fake ads it submitted raised any red flags for the social media platform.

• Less than two months before Brazilians head to polls to vote in the presidential election, Global Witness submitted 10 Brazilian Portuguese-language ads to Facebook—telling users to vote on the wrong day, promoting voting methods that are not in use, and questioning the integrity of the election before it even takes place.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Instead, Iran announced in 2009, when the writer was well out of his 40s, that the ruling calling for the death of Rushdie was “still valid,” according to Al Jazeera.

• Renowned Indian British novelist Salman Rushdie is in critical condition and faces a long road to recovery after he survived an assassination attempt Friday morning in western New York. Rushdie is one of the most highly acclaimed writers in the world today and has lived underground for many years after facing systematic threats of assassination for his writing. We feature Rushdie in his own words, when he gave a rare speech in 2004 on the freedom of expression at an event hosted by PEN America. “Will we become our enemy or not? Will we become repressive as our enemy is repressive? Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant, or will we not?”

• For three decades, however, he has served as a target to those for whom change brings fear and resentment. In the “age of oversimplification” that results from this backlash, doubt, play and metaphor must bow before the party or religious line. Although radical Islamists have menaced his work and life, Sir Salman makes plain that no faith has a monopoly on hate. Free debate flourished among his Kashmiri Muslim family in post-independence India. He evokes “the blurring of boundaries between religious cultures in that old, truly secularist Bombay” with nostalgic affection—in contrast to India’s “bitter, stifled, censorious” present.

• Taylor is suing for general damages for mental and emotional suffering; punitive damages for what the lawsuit calls the “defendant’s willful, malicious, intentional, and deliberate acts”; and lost wages.

• With that season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, it truly felt that Rushdie had the last laugh on his would-be killers. But the fatwa had never been rescinded. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, successor to Khomeini, in fact has made clear that “the decision made about Salman Rushdie is still valid. As I have already said, this is a bullet for which there is a target. It has been shot. It will one day sooner or later hit the target.”

• Howard Jacobson censors his own work and says that his first novel would not be published in today’s climate.

• A reminder of how inaccessible the motion picture legacy might be — and how dependent it is on the whims of a corporate mogul — arrived on Aug. 2 when two related news items hit the entertainment trade sites with the force of mallet between the eyes: Batgirl, the latest entry in the DC Universe pipeline, a film that was basically in the can (to use the dated analog term), was not to receive a commercial release — either theatrical, streamed, or straight-to-video — but instead be peremptorily shelved (ditto) by its underwriters at Warner Bros. Discovery. The decision to entomb Batgirl — not to mention Scoob! Holiday Haunt, because no one does — was business, not personal. Taking a cue from the scheming Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’s The Producers (1967), Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav calculated that the $90 million production would be more profitable as a tax write-off than a revenue source. Rather than risk Batgirl becoming a hit on opening night, à la Springtime for Hitler, he decided to punch the delete key.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The Nicaraguan telecommunications agency issued a letter to Radio Dario on Friday, informing the independent broadcaster that its license was to be revoked.

• A copy of the letter, posted to social media by Radio Dario’s director and owner Anibal Toruno, alleged that an inspection of the station’s headquarters in the city of León, 90 kilometers from the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, found that the studios “do not correspond to those authorized by the license.”

• Toruno denied the allegations, telling VOA, “This decision is political.”

• Lawyers have filed a suit against the CIA, its director at the time Mike Pompeo and security firm UC Global for allegedly spying on WikiLeaks publisher and founder Julian Assange and his visitors while he was in the Ecuador embassy in London.

• During the announcement, made on 15 August in New York, the lawyers also alleged that the data on electronic devices used by staff at the embassy was copied and handed over to the CIA.

• The plaintiffs visited Assange while he was in the embassy, and said they had begun the action to protect their fundamental constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.

• The suit said all the plaintiffs had to surrender their electronic devices to employees of UC Global who then allegedly copied the information and provided it to the CIA.

• U.S. lawyers and journalists who visited WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange during his exile in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London filed suit Monday against the Central Intelligence Agency, former Director Mike Pompeo, a CIA-linked Spanish security firm, and its CEO, alleging unconstitutional searches and seizures of their electronic devices.

• “Recordings of our confidential conversations and the contents of our electronic devices were being delivered into the hands of the United States government.”

• A group of journalists and lawyers, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living under political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, sued the CIA and former CIA director Mike Pompeo. They allege that the agency under Pompeo spied on them in violation of their privacy rights.Undercover Global S.L., a private security company in Spain, and the company’s director David Morales are also named as defendants. UC Global ramped up surveillance against Assange and shared audio and video footage from the embassy with “American intelligence.” “The United States Constitution shields American citizens from US government overreach even when the activities take place in a foreign embassy in a foreign country. Visitors who are lawyers, journalists and doctors frequently carry confidential information in their devices,” declared Richard Roth, who is the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs. “They had a reasonable expectation that the security guards at the Ecuadorian embassy in London would not be US government spies charged with delivering copies of their electronics to the CIA,” Roth added. Two of the plaintiffs are attorneys who have represented Assange—Margaret Rather Kunstler, a civil rights activist and human rights attorney, and Deborah Hrbek, a media lawyer. The other two plaintiffs are journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz, who worked for Der Spiegel when the German media organization first partnered with WikiLeaks to publish documents on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

• The lawsuit comes around two months after United Kingdom Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the US extradition request against Assange. His legal team has submitted two separate appeals in the UK courts, yet it is increasingly evident that Assange could be flown to the US to face Espionage Act charges that civil liberties, human rights, and press freedom organizations around the world have condemned. According to the complaint [PDF] filed in a US court in the Southern District of New York, Glass, Goetz, Hrbek, and Kunstler, like all visitors, were required to “surrender” their electronic devices to UC Global employees hired by Ecuador to provide security for the embassy. What they did not know is that UC Global “copied the information stored on the devices” and allegedly shared the information with the CIA. Pompeo allegedly authorized and approved the action.Security required plaintiffs to leave their devices with them, which contained “confidential and privileged information about their sources or clients. This information was copied and allegedly shared with the CIA.

• Some news media commentators are finally coming to the realization that if the Espionage Act can be enforced against Assange for what he did, it can be enforced against anyone in the press for revealing damaging inside information about the national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Therefore, they are calling on the Justice Department to cease and desist from its prosecution of Assange.

• Of course, they are right, but the problem is that they don’t go far enough. Their mindsets reflect the customary acceptance of the status quo. The mindset is that we Americans simply have to accept the way things are and plead with the government to go easy on us.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Ammar is one of more than 100 teachers who worked with the British Council, in public-facing jobs, who have been left behind in Afghanistan. Many of them are women.

• Two members of the Brookville Police Department are suspended following allegations they arrested a man thought to be anti-police whom they did not want running for town board, which has oversight of the police department.

• Two Indiana officers were suspended after a stunning courtroom revelation that police thought a potential town council candidate was anti-police and arrested him, stopping him from running for office.

• Former detective Brett Hankison, who fired 10 shots through Taylor’s patio door even though he could not see who he was shooting at, is charged with two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law. Hankison, the only officer to face state charges in connection with the case, was acquitted in March on three counts of wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors.

• Not always. But often. Data from the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates somewhere between 31% and 58% of internships in the United States don’t pay. But internships are still considered a must-have for a well-rounded résumé (multiple years of experience for an entry-level job, anyone?) and are sometimes an academic requirement. Often, they mirror broader workforce inequities, raising questions about whose labor, time, and knowledge have value. While “blame the intern” quips still pop up on social media, unpaid internships are a legitimate labor issue.

• Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny reported that prison administrators at the high-security penal colony where he’s serving his sentence have moved him to a “special housing unit” (SHU), a solitary confinement cell with additional restrictions.

• We showed the questions of the Hungarian government’s April child protection referendum to foreign festival-goers at Sziget festival. Most of them believe it is important to inform children about sex-ed issues early on, and they also said it matters where the information comes from.

• In the space of less than a week, two federal courts have come down hard on prison systems for treating prisoners like meat suitable for nothing more than processing by the so-called justice system.

• Austin, Tex.—When Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion draft overturning Roe v. Wade leaked in early May, Austin City Council member José “Chito” Vela, a progressive, pro-abortion attorney, knew he had to act fast. For nine months, Texans had already been suffering under a “bounty hunter”–style six-week ban, considered the most restrictive abortion law in the country. After the demise of Roe, they would be subjected to a total “trigger ban” that carries stiff criminal penalties for Texas abortion providers, including a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison.

• Military commanders have the power to detain service members ahead of trial through a process known as pretrial confinement. Commanders consider whether the suspect may flee or reoffend and if less severe restrictions can keep the person out of trouble. An investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune into the Army’s use of pretrial confinement found that soldiers who were detained weren’t always the ones accused of the most serious crimes.

• Below are examples of how a soldier accused of sexual assault and another accused of drug offenses were treated differently.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• MarkMonitor has asked a Florida federal court to destroy or permanently seal documents discussing its anti-piracy systems. The information could be beneficial to “pro-piracy” forces, MarkMonitor fears. The documents are part of a now-settled lawsuit between record labels and ISP Bright House. Interestingly, the destruction request piqued the interest of another ISP: Cox.

Gemini* and Gopher

Politics

Technical

• I prefer to read long passages in Vim. So, I copy and paste from the Web into Vim.

• Sometimes, the plain text copy of an online document is difficult to read in Vim.

• Below are some advanced Vim commands to address specific issues.

• If you get unexpected results from running multiple commands, try running the commands in the order they appear here.

• In Vim, you can paste at the command line by pressing Ctrl-r and then + So, it is possible to copy and paste these commands without typing. Take care to include only one leading colon : in your commands.

Science

• On the surface, most plants really aren’t all that exciting, save for maybe the Venus flytrap. Sure, you can watch them grow in the long run, but for the most part, they’re just kind of there, quietly bringing peace and cleaner air. Day by day, they hardly move at all, although if you’re one of those people who likes to get the Sim into the pool and take the ladder away, you could always play the drought game just to watch it droop and come back to life a half hour later.

Internet/Gemini

• It’s been a while since I posted here! How is everyone doing? Lately I’ve been working on a gemini search engine.

• 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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