● 10.17.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 17/10/2022: Linux 6.1 RC1

Posted in News Roundup at 3:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Welcome to this week’s Linux Weekly Roundup.

• We had a peaceful week in the world of Linux releases, with Bluestar Linux 6.0.1 and Pisi Linux 2.3.1

Server

• Let’s say you want to self-host a Gemini capsule and a weblog. Maybe you’ll use a Raspberry Pi or VPS server. Typically, you’d install (or get a pre-installed) operating system, like Debian/Ubuntu. You might then apt install a webserver like nginx, and pip3 install a Gemini server like JetForce.

Audiocasts/Shows

• The Unix/Linux command syntax found in man pages gives you a quick introduction to the command in question. the syntax convention is simple but is hard to decipher if the command syntax was not formally introduced.

• Josh and Kurt talk about ineffective security from the past we still use today. There has been a great deal of progress in the last few decades bringing us amazing products like the Flipper Zero, cameras that can peer inside locks, and even software defined radio. A great deal of security relies on people not having easy access to these cheap devices. What does this mean for the future of security?

• People have been asking me to cover Hyprland for a very long time so it’s about time that I actually do so, and while I could focus on the individual implementation specifics, considering it’s beta software it seems like a better idea to focus on the concepts

Kernel Space

• The two-week merge window that opened with the release of Linux kernel 6.0 on October 2nd is now officially closed and it’s time to get an early taste of the next major release, Linux kernel 6.1.

• The first Release Candidate (RC) of Linux kernel 6.1 is out now and ready for testers, early adopters, and bleeding-edge users who want to get a glimpse of what’s about to be included in the final release, which is expected in early or mid-December 2022.

• Linus has released 6.1-rc1 and closed the merge window for this development cycle.

Graphics Stack

• So what you need is to get a new set of Linux Kernel Firmware blobs and upack that in /lib/firmware. The tarball from 2022-10-12 worked well for me.

Instructionals/Technical

• Being conscious about your actions and decisions that could make your Linux environment more secure, is becoming more and more important. When you download a Linux ISO image file to create a bootable live environment to test a Linux distribution and eventually install it on your production machine, it is important to be sure about its authenticity and integrity. In this article, as part of my Linux Mint tutorial series, I want to explain how to verify the integrity and authenticity of your Linux Mint ISO image file as a good start for your secure Linux Mint journey.

• I’ve released a new tool to manage lockfiles for Arch Linux packages that can’t use a lockfile from the official upstream release. It integrates closely with other Arch Linux tooling like updpkgsums that’s already used to pin the content of build inputs in PKGBUILD.

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Krita on Linux Mint 21.

• Because our servers have different amounts of swap configured, I’m going to look at both how much swap space has been left free and how much swap space has been used. The simpler number is the amount of remaining (free) swap space. Over the past 30 days, three of our compute servers used all of their swap space, our primary login server ran down to only 13.5 MBytes free, and our test virtualization server got as low as 214 Mbytes free. Everything else always had at least 512 Mbytes free. A potentially more interesting number is the average amount of free swap space over the last 30 days, which will factor out short term spikes in swap space usage. Here, nothing had less than 550 Mbytes of swap free, even the compute servers. Looking at the standard deviation of free swap over time suggests that many of our servers don’t vary much in their swap usage.

• This small one liner lets you generate an OpenSSL self signed certificate with both a common name and a Subject Alternative Name (SAN). Most guides online require you to specify a separate config file but this guide uses a bash trick (process substitution) to pass such a config file to OpenSSL via the command line. If you are using OpenSSL 1.1.1 or higher, there now finally is a built in command line option which I’ll also cover.

• Best of all, Netdata provides all the data it collects in an elegant interface with easy-to-read graphs. It even has support for displaying all of its data in real time.

• You can even use this metric tool to identify what software on your Raspberry Pi is causing high memory usage or consuming too much CPU time.

• Over the following few sections, we will show you how to install and run the latest version of Netdata on your Raspberry Pi.

• The customary 0% to 100% measure is really a measure of how much of the machine you’re using and how much you have left. If you’re at 75% CPU utilization, you’re using three quarters the machine and have a quarter of it left (more or less). This is a perfectly fine measure and often what you care about, but it’s not the only measure. Another measure is what the Linux ‘top’ command tells you, which is how much CPU you’re using, or to put it another way, how many CPUs you’re using. How much CPU you’re using is generally going to be a better view into how much work is being done by various things, without having to mentally re-scale a 0% to 100% number to account for things like how 10% of a 4-CPU machine is a lot less work being done than 10% of a 112-CPU machine.

• In this guide, we will take a look at the mkdir command which is used to create a directory. We will also discuss some of the practical examples of it that will help beginners to operate the Linux system confidently.

• As Linux users, we use files and directories on a regular basis. Files allow us to store important data whereas directories allow us to organize files in a proper way. In addition to this, we often create a hierarchical directory structure to organize the contents in a better way.

• In this article I’m putting together my quotes, thoughts and notes on the idea that Frameworks harm the maintainability of the software you build in that framework. I’m proposing that Frameworks:

• are harming maintainability, but not deliberate.

• have different goals than you or your team.

• make trade-offs that harm maintainability of the projects built in them.

• are designed to take your project hostage.

• offer some their benefits, and don’t harm maintainability, when used in a decoupled fashion.

• Special Note: Credit needs to be given to user Achraf JEDAY for putting these instructions together on Stack Overflow (although his comments were targeting an older version of Ruby). This post is more for my own personal notes than anything else.

• I find myself constantly running into small issues when trying to setup existing Jekyll projects on new Linux systems. I could use something like Docker, but that just seems so beefy and slow to me. So here is a step-by-step way (and foolproof from my own testing) to get Jekyll running smoothly in no time!

Games

• Humble has two big bundles you might be interested in taking a look at. First is the yearly Days of the Devs Bundle and a Paradox Interactive Bundle you can build yourself.

• GB Operator excites the collector in me, giving you a small device to plug into your PC or Steam Deck, allowing you to play real Game Boy cartridges.

• Two bits of big NVIDIA news for you today one confirmed and one not so confirmed, which concerns a double-cancellation with the RTX 4080 12GB and a 4090 Ti / Titan.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• I might have attacked the overall Linux desktop experience in favor of macOS a little harshly in this post, but it’s a simple reflection of a individual who has used both extensively. I still work with multiple Linux machines daily. I still like using Linux.

• I just don’t love it.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• I like to tinker with systems, push their limits, see how to misuse them and have fun doing unusual setups.

• However, since I mostly switched all my computers to NixOS, there is a statement that repeats again and again in my head: NixOS is boring

Reviews

• There are all sorts of reasons I will review an open source operating system. Sometimes I’ll encounter a distribution doing something interesting that I want to share. Other times I will write about a Linux distribution just because it is popular and I suspect many people will be affected by its features and bugs. Other times I believe a project is doing something remarkably well, such as being unusually easy to set up or offering improved stability. There are also projects I will explore simply because they have such amazingly lofty goals that there is no realistic expectation they will succeed and I just want to observe the spectacle of the developers’ reach exceeding their grasp. Which brings me to the topic of ravynOS.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Lubuntu is the official flavour of Ubuntu Linux, featuring the super lightweight LXQt desktop. This Ubuntu flavour is popular for its performance in older hardware and, of course, in newer ones. Since there are few LXQt and Ubuntu-based distros out there, it is considered one of the best lightweight distro to choose from.

• Lubuntu 22.10 is based on Ubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu. Here’s a brief overview of the new features and enhancements of Lubuntu 22.10, which brings the new LXQt desktop with tweaks, enhancements and additional features.

Devices/Embedded

•  Ukama is an open-source hardware solution enabling users to create their own private 4G LTE cellular data networking with a range of up to 1km, and compatible with the “Citizens Broadband Radio Service” (CBRS) radio band for private networks.

• The hardware above (nodes, amplifier, and TRX module) runs UkamaOS Linux distribution described as a “Cloud-native and micro-services OS for Nodes”. The OS includes a carrier-grade LTE stack (closed binary) for both home and tower nodes, an embedded and distributed 4G/LTE core, and open interfaces via REST APIs.

• Watch this TedEd lesson by Henry Richardson, directed by Anna Benner, to learn about the US Power Grid and the 7,300+ plants that comprise it and how renewable energy factors in.

• This past week, Beelink released the GTR6 mini PC which is built around the powerful Ryzen 6900HX processor from AMD. The GTR6 is enabled with Wi-Fi6, Bluetooth 5.2, one 2.5GbE LAN port and up to 64GB DDR5.

Open Hardware/Modding

• When sizing replacement A/C units, remember that in the United States manufacturers only reported the ASHRAE BTU cooling capacity until 2017 (this is a nice explanation). The old LG was a 11,000 BTU unit (LP1111WXR) using R-401A which I bought off-the-rack from Home Depot and installed and insulated the duct myself, suitable to cool the volume of a medium-sized bedroom. Or, a medium sized bedroom with a whole bunch of computers in it. Fortunately the heat doesn’t end in my corner of sunny So Cal until around November, so when I went shopping Home Depot still had a selection of portable A/Cs in stock even this “late” in the season. Although the new one I selected (an LG LP0721WSR) says it’s “only” 7,000 BTU, that’s actually using U.S. Department of Energy standards, which is the newer measurement. Convert it back to ASHRAE BTUs and it’s a 12,000 BTU unit per LG’s spec sheet — but full tilt pulls “just” 970W as opposed to the 1200W of the old unit, and is about 75% the size. The difference is not only better technology but the greater efficiency of R-32, requiring 40% less refrigerant for the same cooling and having almost 13% greater cooling capacity. Unlike vintage computers and vintage nerds, vintage air conditioning units just don’t age well. (* A note here: Home Depot and LG are not sponsors. I’m just a customer telling you what I bought.)

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• Also: A Pi Phone, Ox64, better battery life for the Librem 5 and verification on Flathub beta.

• Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo has taken its first steps into the tablet market, announcing the launch of its Pad Air tablet — yes, the name does ring a bell — in the Australian market on Monday.

• The company said in a statement the device — to be sold for $379 and available for purchase from 27 October — would round out its offerings which include smartphones, wearable and hearable devices.

• It described the tablet as “extremely light”, adding that it “features a gorgeous two-tone metal splicing design and comes equipped with the new ColorOS for Pad, improving the user experience with smart and smooth interactions”.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• In this guide, we take a look at the 32 most used Firefox add-ons to enhance your productivity in Linux desktops.

• Despite having lost its market share and popularity over the years to other browsers such as Google Chrome and Safari, Firefox still enjoys significant patronage from users who use it for one reason or another.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• Database Replication is an approach where multiple instances of a database are configured for a server, such that data written to one database is replicated and stored in other database instances as well.

• The data is replicated from the Primary database to the Standby or Secondary databases. The standby database could either be a Hot Standby Database or a Warm Standby database depending on whether it accepts connection before the primary database goes down or not.

• One of my favorite Postgres features is Full Text Search (FTS). Search is a common requirement of applications. Well-known search engines like Solr and ElasticSearch are often a first choice, but with Postgres in your stack you’ve got a great chance for Pareto improvement at low complexity cost.

• Many projects function just fine with Postgres Full Text Search and other built-in extensions like trigram search (pg_trgm). GitLab’s blog has a great article on their use of Trigram indices to speed up search.

Programming/Development

• To illustrate the idea of simple linear regression, we will use a very straightforward dataset. The average heights and weights of American women will be imported. There are 15 observations in the dataset. You want to determine whether weights and heights are positively connected.

• The decision between R Vs Python ultimately comes down to:

• 1. The goals of your mission are: Statistical evaluation or application

• 2. The time you have available

• 3. The most popular tool in your business or sector

• This is a simple sync.Locker implementation in Go for learning purposes. This is not a lock to be used seriously.

• Throughout my career of designing and developing software I have run into this exact issue far too often. The major issue with getting sucked into a black-hole of “featurism” is there is no single person to blame. It probably seems easy to place all the responsibility on PMs or team leaders, but even if they are the ones adding excessive complexity to a given project, it is the role of developers and designers to speak up. It requires a team effort. Therefore, the whole team needs to be on-guard to avoid it.

• I’ve been playing around with some examples to better understand how Go’s memory model behaves on concurrent programs. I’m going to try and explain what I’ve learned regarding operation ordering on multi-core CPUs.

• The example I’m going to show is an extension of the Message Passing example written by Russ Cox in his Hardware Model post. After reading it I wanted to experiment with this behavior and see it for myself. This is the result.

• IF ELSE- ELSE IF Statement in R, A developer’s best tool when trying to return output based on a condition is an if-else statement. The syntax in R is: [...]

Python

• I am excited to announce that IndieWeb Utils is now in v0.3.1. This update is the culmination of months of work from project contributors. Before I get any further, I want to note a special thank you to James, Tantek and Angelo for their collaboration in this project. Their contributions, code reviews, and suggestions have greatly enhanced this library.

• I have worked on numerous projects that involve finding all of the URLs in the sitemaps associated with a website. For example, one of the first steps the IndieWeb Search crawler takes when it starts crawling a website is to find all of the URLs in all of the sitemaps. Separately, I have written scripts that validate the status codes of all the URLs in a sitemap.

Leftovers

• I use YouTube as a video hosting service because it’s largely predictable and it’s the evil I know. I’m starting to try to reduce my dependencies on large centralized systems like YouTube and one of the ways I want to do this is by hosting my own video.

• A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on the imbalance of communications success between callers and callees. The latter have all kinds of ways not to return calls, emails, and other portals of the so-called communications technological revolution.

• A flag is a great tool to show your loyalty to a country, a sports team or even a philosophical movement. But there’s not so much you can actually do with a flag: you can either hang it somewhere, or wave it around to attact others to your cause. [Mellow] found that waving quickly becomes tiresome, and decided to design a machine that automates this task for him.

Education

• Why do we miss new technology waves? Two reasons that stop us from continuous learning: [...]

Hardware

• Someone bootstrapping a machine with the intent to upgrade will need a much larger power supply and cooling system from the outset, which will price out more people. That sucks.

• Ever wanted a good, good look at the insides of a 1950s radio, along with fantastic commentary on the internals and the purpose of various components? Then don’t miss [Adam Wilson]’s repair and restoration of a 1956 Philips 353A, a task made easier by a digitized copy of the service manual. [Adam] provides loads of great pictures, as well as tips on what it takes to bring vintage electronics back to life. What’s not to like?

• You’d think that now that the 2022 Cyberdeck Contest is wrapped up, we’d stop writing about it. Sorry, but no — there were so many great entries that we just can’t help but keep focusing on them. And this wearable hybrid interface cyberdeck has a look we love so much that we can’t resist spotlighting it.

• In the world of hardware hacking, you sometimes spend a ridiculous amount of time debugging a problem, only to find a simple solution that was right in front of you the whole time. [Zack Freedman] got a good dose of this while building the Optigon V2, a modified Epson Moverio wearable display he uses as a teleprompter in all his videos. He prefers having the teleprompter over his left eye only, but the newer version of the Moverio would shut off both sides if one is disconnected, so [Zack] needed a workaround.

• Computers are, after all, frighteningly complex state machines. Quite of bit of the software we write can be modeled as a state machine, too. A great technological achievement by humans? Turns out, state machines exist in some of nature’s tiniest natural computers, according to biologists studying Euplotes eurystomus, a kind of water-dwelling eukaryote. This single-cell organism uses fourteen protolegs known as cirri that move in a particular gait, in response to certain stimuli.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

Proprietary

• I often use the AWS Command Line Interface to create or modify AWS assets, typically in the context of a bash shell script. I’ve found that I frequently need to extract information from one aws operation in order to complete another one.

• What follows are some of what I’ve learned in that filtering operation.

• “Attackers who are able to get their hands on multiple messages can use the leaked ECB info to figure out the encrypted contents,” WithSecure consultant and security researcher Harry Sintonen explained. “More emails make this process easier and more accurate, so it’s something attackers can perform after getting their hands on e-mail archives stolen during a data breach, or by breaking into someone’s email account, e-mail server, or gaining access to backups.”

• Distributor Baker & Taylor spent over two weeks with their operations offline after they were targeted in a ransomware attack around August 20, 2022, crippling their ability to process orders. Their sys­tems were restored in September, with a statement saying, [...]

Security

• OpenSSL 3.0.1 leaks memory in ssl3_setup_write_buffer(), seems to be fixed in 3.0.5. The issue manifests at least in stunnel and keepalived on CentOS 9. In addition I learned the hard way that running a not so recent VirtualBox version on Debian bullseye let to dh parameter generation crashing in libcrypto in bn_sqr8x_internal().

• A recent rabbit hole I went down. The actual bug in openssl was nailed down and documented by Quentin Armitage on GitHub in keepalived My bugreport with all back and forth in the RedHat Bugzilla is #2128412.

• Application Mode is designed to offer native-like experiences in a manner that causes the website to be launched in a separate browser window, while also displaying the website’s favicon and hiding the address bar.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Hardly noticed by the general public, the Advocate General (AG) of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has issued an opinion, aiming to limit one of the last potential avenues for users to enforce their privacy rights under the GDPR. According to the AG, Europeans would hardly get compensations for GDPR violations – although the GDPR explicitly foresees a claim for non-material damages. The final judgment will be issued by the CJEU in the next months.

• The idea that complex social problems are amenable to cheap technical solutions is the siren song of the software salesman and has lured many a gullible government department on to the rocks. Where ministers buy the idea of a magical software ‘solution’, as the industry likes to call its products, the outcomes are often disappointing and sometimes disastrous81 . And the very idea that we can replace police officers, social workers and teachers by ordering Facebook to watch our children and grandchildren more closely is a non-starter. The kids left Facebook years ago for Instagram; they’re now headed via Snapchat to TikTok, and to an assortment of gaming platforms.

• Finally, universal human rights set the boundaries for state action. Pervasive surveillance, without warrant or suspicion, is contrary to human-rights law, just like torture. Arguments in its favour must be treated with great suspicion and cannot be conceded on utilitarian grounds. Agencies tasked with defending the rules-based international order should defend the basic rights of their own citizens, including the rights of children, rather than seek to undermine them. The rule of law must take precedence over ‘national security’. We must maintain a moral advantage over competing authoritarian states, not just a military and technological advantage. End-to-end encryption must therefore remain available for moral reasons. It must also remain for very good cybersecurity reasons – as Levy and Robinson conceded in their earlier paper82 , and as we discussed in “Bugs in our pockets”83

• A 270-page Franklin dossier was released in September following Freedom of Information Act requests by the Detroit Free Press and other news media outlets after the singer’s 2018 death. It shows that the Detroit music star was very much on the FBI’s radar, largely because of her associations with Davis and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

• The Franklin document, compiled over four decades and heavily redacted in places, includes FBI investigations into matters unrelated to racial-justice pursuits, such as online music-piracy claims and death threats against the singer.

• The company’s so-called RPlate can be equipped with GPS and allows users, including employers, to track a vehicle’s location and mileage.

• That capability has raised eyebrows among privacy advocates, but Reviver has said that it doesn’t share data with the California Department of Motor Vehicles or law enforcement.

• The digital plates will be able to display different emergency messages, such as if a vehicle is stolen, or if there’s a local Amber Alert. The plates will also have built-in tracking abilities to help locate stolen cars. Wilson said drivers with privacy concerns will be able to disable the feature on their personal vehicles.g

• He has reviewed numerous tracking apps and devices, though not AirTags. He says that he doesn’t trust such devices and that he wouldn’t use AirTags. Devices can be lost or forgotten, he says, and batteries can run out. (Apple says an AirTag’s battery is good for more than a year.)

• “These tracking technologies give people a false sense of security,” says Mr. Ellenbogen.

• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) paused its use of artificial intelligence and facial recognition software in 2020 after technology from Clearview AI (one of the RCMP’s contractors) was deemed illegal as mass surveillance by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. As Maura Forrest reports for Politico, the RCMP is keen to resume using the technology. They’re also cagey about the technologies they rely upon and the extent to which they plan to use these surveillance systems in the future. That’s bad news for privacy — and democracy.

• A MWM investigation revealed that FinTech companies in Australia are scraping and selling users’ sensitive banking data. The problem is more widespread than that, reports Callum Foote.

• Cybercrimes are at record levels. And banks are now no longer automatically repaying customers who have been defrauded. It’s time to read the fine print because there is another way that customers are being screwed over.

• Jill Berry is the CEO and co-founder of Adatree, an Open Banking technology platform founded to remove barriers for companies wanting to share data according to the Consumer Data Right (CDR) regulations set out by the Australian Information Commisioner.

• She says: “In banking, the practice of scraping means giving a third party your login credentials, allowing it to log into your account on your behalf without your knowledge to scrape your data.”

Defence/Aggression

• Yet, examining these motivations offers important and actionable insights into the factors that perpetuate the conflict in Somalia or block efforts to resolve it.

• During the investigation, police officers had discovered research on her mobile phone about weapons, shooting and martyrs, reports franceinfo. However, in police custody, the teenager had stated that she condemned the murder of Samuel Paty.

• A deadly shooting at a Russian military training ground in the Belgorod region has killed 11 and injured 15, according to official sources. Unconfirmed reports by witnesses say the number of casualties may be as much as twice that. The incident allegedly occurred when Russian officers made derogatory remarks about Allah to volunteers of Tajik origin. Official reports say there were two shooters, both of whom were killed. A witness says a third shooter escaped. The incident occurred against the backdrop of frequent shelling in Belgorod and complaints from soldiers about conditions at the training ground and on the front lines.

• On October 16, the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the arrest of several people who were allegedly preparing “acts of terrorism and sabotage” on instructions from “the opposition in exile” and ByPol.

• The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced that it would pay $100,000 for handing Igor Strelkov (Girkin) over to Ukrainian captivity.

• The Belgorod region was shelled on October 16, setting off its air defense system. RIA Novosti correspondents report 16 explosions.

Environment

Energy

• I should probably call this article ‘How I managed to get planning permission granted for a solar farm after initially getting refused’. But I’m sure the algorithm will find it anyway…

• Its been a LONG time since the last update. Since then, we put in an application for planning permission and… got refused. This was pretty devastating, and I was fairly convinced that was the end. I’d close down the company, write off all the money already spent and spend my days grumpily complaining to people how the system was broken. Instead… we now have permission! and here is the epic story

• Most of the money for its operations comes from the Climate Emergency Fund, based in Los Angeles, which began with a foundational grant of $500,000 from Getty Oil heiress Aileen Getty. Filmmaker Adam McKay made a $4 million contribution and joined its board of directors last month.

• Since the soup incident on Friday, some critics have pointed out that Just Stop Oil accepts donations in cryptocurrency, which has a reputation for having a devastating impact on the environment.

• Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox examine what the increased interested in lithium batteries will mean for the planet and its people.

• So, if you are planning to follow the advice of energy experts here in Europe (and watch out, quite a few are not experts at all, just echo chambers) to reduce your electric energy consumption and save money, consider the following points (their idea is to unplug chargers you don’t use).

• Ebikes are slowly taking the place of many cars, especially for short trips. Most ebikes can take riders at least 16 kilometers (10 miles) without too much effort, at a cost that’s often a single-digit percentage of what the same trip would have been with an internal combustion engine. If you’re interested in dropping the costs of your ebike trips even further, or eliminating it entirely, take a look at this small ebike with integrated solar panels.

Wildlife/Nature

• Some of the world’s largest land animals demolished some of the area’s largest pumpkins this morning during the Oregon Zoo’s 24th annual Squishing of the Squash.

• “We gave our elephant family some extra-large pumpkins to stomp on and chomp on,” said Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo’s Asian elephant area. “First they destroyed them, then they enjoyed them.”

• [...] The Oregon Zoo explained that the event is a tradition dating back to 1999, when a local farmer “dropped off a prize-winning 828-pound pumpkin for the elephant family.”

Finance

• The Independent senator from Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, echoed his recent opinion piece for The Guardian in an NBC News interview, telling “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd that “what I think is Democrats should talk about the economy.”

• The renowned physician and author explores the links between trauma and illness in his new book, “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the UK’s University of Cambridge, argues that these proposed regulations – which, frankly, rely on technical solutions such as device-side message scanning and crime-hunting machine-learning algorithms in place of police, social workers, and teachers – lead to magical thinking and unsound policies.

• In a paper titled Chat Control or Child Protection?, to be distributed via ArXiv, Anderson offers a rebuttal to arguments advanced in July by UK government cyber and intelligence experts Ian Levy, technical director of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, and Crispin Robinson, technical director of cryptanalysis at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s equivalent to the NSA.

• The log referenced drafts of a 13 May email to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – the American regulator which enforces the law against market manipulation.

• On 10 October 2022, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, addresses the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties (LIBE) Committee about the proposed EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (2022/0155). The address follows months of criticism from civil liberties groups, data protection authorities and even governments due to the risks it poses to everyone’s privacy, security and free expression online.

• “An experienced public servant, Fetterman has an abundance of the kind of values and priorities that are needed to move the nation forward.”

• “If Herschel Walker can’t show up for a debate, he can’t be trusted to show up for Georgians in the U.S. Senate.”

• Last week, President Joe Biden—a driving force behind the 1994 crime bill which accelerated mass incarceration in America—announced a three-step plan for marijuana reform which began with a pardon for “all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents who committed the offense of simple possession of marijuana.” The pardon is a welcome development for those invested in dismantling the carceral state. But a closer look at the limits of the plan’s impact reveals that much more still must be done to achieve justice around the issue of marijuana laws.

• President Biden’s mass pardon may signal a shift in the federal approach to cannabis, but it won’t let anyone out of prison.

• Nations representing more than 80 percent of the global population and a like percentage of global gross domestic product are perfectly capable of seeing the Biden administration’s pointed provocations and do not approve.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• And here’s where two things are true: There apparently was a Russian troll operation that aimed at exacerbating divisions within American society. And Sarsour has long been one of those divisive voices, with an anti-Israel obsession that repeatedly crosses into antisemitism.

• “I think it’s really important from a very early age that we understand that there is no free good here. When we are using these services we are exchanging our data for that and if it’s proportionate and we’re happy with the way that data is safeguarded then that’s great.

Censorship/Free Speech

• As in previous years, the report shows that intimidation and reprisals disproportionally affect certain populations and groups, including representatives of indigenous peoples, minorities or those who work on environment and climate change issues, as well as people who may suffer discrimination based on age, sexual orientation and gender.

• “The risks affecting women victims, as well as women human rights defenders and peace builders, who share testimony and cooperate with the UN remain daunting. We will continue to work to ensure that all can safely engage with the UN,” Brands Kehris stressed, as she presented the report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

• The report, entitled ‘Cooperation with the United Nations, its representatives and mechanisms in the field of human rights’ (A/HRC/51/47), including extensive annexes detailing cases country by country, can be accessed online.

• We’ve had a couple more data points over the past week demonstrating the dangers to democracy posed by the seemingly tight interplay between the world’s rising authoritarian leaders, social media and the billionaire oligarchs who seek to control it.

• This censorship extends to WeChat, the dominant messaging app with over 1.2 billion global users, the majority of whom live in China. Users soon realized that just posting a picture of the event, even in a private group chat, could cause their accounts to be permanently banned.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Similarly, we must point out the unacceptable lack of implementation of the recommendations made by the landmark Public Inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination and the exclusion of structured public consultation, including with our organisations, on proposed legal amendments relating to the safety of journalists and SLAPPs, which in the latter case fail to meet international standards. The process provides a historic opportunity for the Government of Malta to implement its obligations under international and European legal and policy frameworks to create an enabling environment for journalism and to protect journalists.

• Nils Melzer, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture reveals judicial, political, media cultures built to persecute and demonise Assange in his book The Trial of Julian Assange.

• Melzer’s evidence merits massive publicity.

• Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower behind The Pentagon Papers, judges Melzer’s book, “A harrowing account of how official secrecy, corruption and impunity suffocate the truth and poison the rule of law”.

• Direct quotes from Melzer will be recorded in inverted commas.

• This story of cruelty, “Who cares about due process?”, begins in the US.

• The engine driving the lynching of Julian is not here on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is in Langley, Virginia, located at a complex we will never be allowed to surround: the Central Intelligence Agency. It is driven by a secretive inner state, one where we do not count in the mad pursuit of empire and ruthless exploitation. Because the machine of this modern leviathan was exposed by Julian and WikiLeaks, the machine demands revenge.

• The United States has undergone a corporate coup-d’état in slow motion. It is no longer a functioning democracy. The real centers of power, in the corporate, military and national security sectors, were humiliated and embarrassed by WikiLeaks. Their war crimes, lies, conspiracies to crush the democratic aspirations of the vulnerable and the poor, and rampant corruption, here and around the globe, were laid bare in troves of leaked documents.

• We cannot fight on behalf of Julian unless we are clear about whom we are fighting against. It is far worse than a corrupt judiciary. The global billionaire class, who have orchestrated a social inequality rivaled by pharaonic Egypt, has internally seized all the levers of power and made us the most spied upon, monitored, watched and photographed population in human history. When the government watches you 24 hours a day, you cannot use the word liberty. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. Julian was long a target, of course, but when WikiLeaks published the documents known as Vault 7, which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses to monitor our phones, televisions and even cars, he — and journalism itself — was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any investigations into the inner workings of power that might hold the ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion and replace it with the cant fed to the mob.

• WikiLeaks was launched in 2006, and the Australian editor’s platform gained international attention four years later, following the publication of a trove of leaks provided by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst. The classified material, which included videos, suggested that the United States was hiding proof of war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

• Mr Assange’s wife Stella Assange said: “Julian has been imprisoned for almost four years in Britain’s harshest prison for his important work to end impunity for war crimes and bring about greater accountability by informing the public about the human cost of war.

• “He faces 175 years if he is extradited for his publishing work. Julian’s work embodies the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and he is paying for it with his freedom.

• The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son.

• The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, said Dechert “wrongfully disclosed this dossier first to Mr. Solomon’s employer, the Wall Street Journal, at its Washington DC bureau, and then to other media outlets in an attempt to malign and discredit him.” It said the campaign “effectively caused Mr. Solomon to be blackballed by the journalistic and publishing community.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• The Capitalist system has separated labor from ownership and reduced the workers to a condition of wage slavery. They throng the labor market eager and anxious to find a purchaser who will buy their labor power.

• Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) condemns the wanton and excessive force perpetrated by Iran’s security forces against demonstrators amid mass protests across the country. In light of increasing reports of arbitrary arrests, detention, torture, sexual violence, and killings of protestors and human rights defenders in Iran, PHR joins calls for an immediate, independent mechanism to investigate the human rights crisis and advance accountability.

• Now living in New York and hijab-free, Havva has been joining the protests – both on the street and on social media – in support of the women still in Iran who are now fighting for the right to live without hijab. “This is not about politics,” she says. “This is about women. This is our fight.”

• The Investigative Project on Terrorism caught up with her to talk about why, even though she no longer lives under the arm of the regime, this fight matters.

• Yet the protests have expanded well beyond the issue of women’s rights, into a more far-reaching contest, also fueled by economic grievances, between the aging religious leaders who rule the Islamic Republic and legions of citizens tired of their strict and intrusive rules, brutally enforced by militia.

• The protests “are a plea and cry for a type of personal autonomy that many of the young generation have come to see as normal … being able to walk in the street without being either harassed, or being arrested,” said Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian American political scientist at Columbia University in New York, who has twice been detained in Iran for lengthy periods.

• Video footage shot in Iran shows continued defiance, violent clashes, and security forces shooting live ammunition to disperse crowds – actions that protesting Iranians contacted for this article say have only hardened their resolve.

• Iranian security forces unlawfully killed at least 66 people, including children, and injured hundreds of others after firing live ammunition, metal pellets and teargas at protesters, bystanders and worshippers during a violent crackdown after Friday prayers on 30 September in Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchistan province, Amnesty International said today. Since then, another 16 people were killed in separate incidents in Zahedan amid an ongoing clampdown on protests. Evidence gathered from activists, victims’ families, eyewitness testimonies, and images and videos of the protests suggest the real death toll from Zahedan is likely to be higher.

• But apostasy is a crime in their native Iran, and Christians – even non-converts – are regularly subjected to discrimination and violence. Hassan’s brother-in-law was arrested, tortured, and ultimately died in prison for practicing his new religion. And so in 2018, after Iranian security forces raided their home, seizing their computer, passports, and Bible, Hassan and his family fled, escaping to Germany in the hopes of finding asylum there.

• The union victory follows a vote to unionize an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, in June. That effort was spearheaded by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Maryland, which is preparing to begin formal negotiations.

• Dubai-based Al-Arabiya assembles tweets from Iran about the prisoner uprising at Iran’s maximum-security prison, Evin, which led to the outbreak of a major fire on Saturday. The facility holds political prisoners, including foreigners. Interrogations there have routinely involved torture.

• My family never talked about his murder in my presence, and, to this day, I have not heard them discuss it since. It is almost as if it never happened. I wonder if our failure to discuss this is a coping mechanism; or, perhaps, an attempt to push the event into the back of our minds. We know there will never be anything resembling justice in the case; maybe it is easier to pretend like it never happened.  I only found out because my great-grandmother, a wizened old black woman whose face spoke of years of enduring the weight of patriarchy and white supremacy, accidently told me the story in the summer of 1992.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• Billion-dollar entertainment industry companies often complain about widespread copyright infringement. However, some independent creators deal with similar problems on their own. Extreme weather photographer Brandon Clement faces hundreds of thousands of rip-offs on Facebook, YouTube, and elsewhere, leading to billions of misappropriated views.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Whales are fish actually (and by “actually” I mean cladistically). And birds are reptiles (dinos specifically).

• And all of the “such and such isn’t a vegetable, it’s a [fruit/berry/leafy green/brassica cultivar/pair of corduroys]” is also wrong since vegetable is only a culinary term, not a cladistic term.

• And Frankenstein (the monster, not his eponymous creator) has been called that, at least since the 1927 play and the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein movie.

• Vegetable is only a culinary term, not a cladistic one, although in the latter realm it is often used as a 1:1 synonym to plants (which would mean that bananas grow on a vegetable and so do acorns).

Politics

• Imagine the venerable Adorno, sitting in his office in West Germany’s Frankfurt University (funded by imperialist powers such as the United States) writing a paper praising the thought of Karl Marx. If he wished to truly understand Marxism, he could have very well taken the four-hour train ride to Leipzig instead of writing papers!

• See, there’s a certain type of intellectual who criticizes the powers that be yet lives in a way that is dependent upon them. The tenured professor of philosophy who decries the gatekeeping of knowledge yet publishes her papers in a prestigious journal inaccessible to the public; the engineer who decries the military-industrial complex yet contracts for Lockheed Martin; and so on.

• 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

----------

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