● 12.30.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 30/12/2022: Ultimate Edition and a ‘Right To Repair’ Bill Scandal

Posted in News Roundup at 11:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• We kick off our Jellyfin January challenge and invite you to join us. Plus, Chris has some new hardware and our thoughts on the trouble at the Matrix foundation.

Applications

• A major update to HandBrake, a popular, cross-platform and open-source video transcoder (and then some), has been released.

• HandBrake 1.6.0 is a notable release as it is the first version of the app to support AV1 video encoding. AV1 is a new, open-source video codec that many hope will supplant H.264 as the go-to video standard in the future — momentum its inclusion here is sure to add to.

• Also new in this release is high bit depth and color depth support for many of HandBrake’s existing encoders and filters. Additionally, there are new 4K AV1 General, QSV, and MKV presets; renamed web presets; and VP8 presets removed (as VP8 is RIP).

Instructionals/Technical

• SSH (Secure Shell) is a protocol used to establish an encrypted connection with a remote machine using a client-server model: the ssh server runs on the machine we want to access remotely, while a client is used on the machines from which we want to connect. Thanks to sshfs, we can use an existing SSH connection to mount a remote directory in a secure way, without using additional services like NFS or Samba.

• It is easy to create a LUKS container and a partition within it, using the GUI on Linux. The application that enables this easily is the gnome-disk-utility. However, if you want to use the command line to set up a LUKS encrypted device, read on.

• Exercise appropriate caution before doing any of the below with appropriate safeguards as they can result in permanent data loss.

• If you’re working with Linux machines and want to manage a network, the bottom line is that you will need to get a handle on subnetting.

• Subnetting involves breaking down networks into much smaller networks. This helps improve routing efficiency and prevent network-wide threats from taking them down.

• Managing subnetting requires calculating the subnet mask, which demands that binary math be performed with the IP address. This is where the ipcalc command comes in.

• Mozilla Firefox is great: it’s free, open source software that works well, is updated often, and looks great on every Linux distro out there, regardless of desktop environment.

• But did you know you can make Firefox look more at home on the GNOME desktop?

• Yup, you can — all thanks to the Firefox GNOME Theme project!

• In this post I detail just how dramatic this theme is; how you can install it on your system; and mention few additional tweaks you can make to complete the transformation.

• Shopware Community Edition (CE) is a free and open-source e-commerce application. It is an alternative to another e-commerce application, Magento or Prestashop. Shopware is a very powerful and flexible application. It is built on a number of symphony framework components developed in PhpStorm through the core features and its plugins. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Shopware Community Edition (CE) on a fresh Ubuntu 22.04.

• Adding users in Linux using the graphical interface is an easy task. But what about the command line? There are many users who either have only CLI or prefer to use commands for adding a new user.

• We can use the adduser command to create new users. With adduser, not only the user itself is created, but also the other necessary settings are made, such as creating a home directory, assigning the user to a group, setting the login shell, etc. Although it a command line command, but the creation of the user is interactive.

• adduser is typical for all distributions based on Debian, RedHat, and other Linux. Let’s see how to install and use it.

• Although I don’t use Linux Mint nowadays, I must admit that your X-Apps are great. Simple, stable, and efficient, they are more than enough for everyone. However, the one I like is Pix. So, today you will learn how to install Pix (Linux Mint X-app) on Ubuntu 22.04.

• MX Linux is a Debian-based systemd-free distribution that primarily targets lightweight and older hardware. It became popular recently due to its unique native app tools, stability, active development and a nice community of users & devs. MX Linux currently features Xfce, KDE Plasma and Fluxbox for desktops. The Debian-stable base provides the ultimate stability. Moreover, it also provides a 32-bit installer for that older hardware.

• A simple tutorial shows how to install the popular lightweight distribution MX Linux as a standalone system, dual-boot and in VM.

Games

• Here’s my own take on a top list of games to check out for Steam Deck that were released in some form in 2022, or had a major update to improve them.

• Valve have released two small updates to the Steam Deck OS (SteamOS) and here’s what’s new and improved.

• Here’s an end of year 2022 round-up of some of the most-read articles on GamingOnLinux that I’ve picked out, just in case you missed any! As a reminder: you can follow the main article RSS feed, and every article category tag also has an RSS feed too!

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Although Linux has grown in popularity on the desktop, its real strength and power remain on the server front, where the OS is the sole leader. And, because the year is ending, we’ve compiled a list of the best server Linux distro releases in 2022.

• So, if you’re in the market for a reliable and high-performing Linux distro for your server, you’re in luck! There are many excellent options, and we’ve rounded up the top 5 in this list. Each of these distros has its strengths and features, making them stand out as the best choices for servers in 2022.

New Releases

• Vanilla OS’s maiden release is finally out, bringing a new way of computing with Linux distribution. It has been under development and followed by a closed beta for the last few months. And finally, the team officially released Vanilla OS 22.10 “Kinetic” as their first-ever release.

• Vanilla OS makes its much-anticipated maiden debut with its first release: Vanilla OS 22.10.

• Here’s what’s new.

• Previously, they had also announced that they would use the ‘Jade’ installer from the Crystal Linux team.

• But, they changed their mind and opted to build the ‘Vanilla Installer’ on top of their existing ‘Vanilla First Setup’ project.

• It was a huge educational tour for me, yes I have it installed. I modified Repostorm to convert software as well as make it build repositories, multiple at that.

Devices/Embedded

• If you’ve been pining (heh) for a souped-up, super-fast Linux tablet running on open source software, Pine64 have you covered.

• Today, Pine64 announced the PineTab2 – a successor to its original PineTab Linux tablet released in 2018.

• Not that many people were able to buy the PineTab. Major supply chain disruptions owing to the pandemic (and the ensuring knock-on effects thereof) made it nigh-on-impossible for Pine64 to source the components and manufacturing slots needed to produce it.

• But forget all that; that’s old news.

• In this review of Khadas VIM1S SBC, we’ll install Ubuntu 22.04, and report our experience testing the performance such as memory speed and eMMC flash performance, and 3D graphics capabilities.

• Just like Khadas VIM4 and Edge2, the Khadas VIM1S SBC ships with the OOWOW firmware that allows easy installation of operating systems by downloading the images, and flashing them directly to the eMMC flash. You need just to connect a monitor and a USB keyboard and have an Internet connection through either LAN or Wi-Fi. Let’s start by installing Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM1S together.

• If no OS is installed, OOWOW will boot automatically, but if there’s already another OS installed, you can press and hold the Function button, press the Reset button, and release the Function button. After a few seconds, the OOWOW Wizard as shown in the picture below should show up. If an Ethernet cable is not connected, we can select Network to configure Wi-Fi as the installation process requires downloading an image from Khadas servers.

• This review looks at the BrosTrend Linux USB WiFi Adapter AC1200 (AC3L). Unlike most Wi-Fi sellers, BrosTrend provide Linux support for Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros. Their Wi-Fi adapter chipsets and drivers are developed by Realtek.

• The AC3L retails for around £36 ($41). You get the Wi-Fi adapter, 2 omni-directional Wi-Fi antenna with a gain of 5dBi, a USB 3.0 cradle with 5 foot USB extension cable. There’s a CD with driver and manual (not for Linux systems), and a quick installation guide (paper).

• The XM22AL5S is Xiaomi’s first Mini PC featuring the i5 1240 processor (12-Cores/16-Threads). The device is equipped with one 2.5GbE LAN port, 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 2x HDMI ports, an active cooling system and WiFi6/Bluetooth 5.3.

Open Hardware/Modding

• If you were ever looking for a small relaxing evening project that you could then use day-to-day, you gotta consider the Pico Hat Pad kit by [Natalie the Nerd]. It fits squarely within the Pi Pico form-factor, giving you two buttons, one rotary encoder and two individually addressable LEDs to play with. Initially, this macropad was intended as an under-$20 device that’s also a soldering practice kit, and [Natalie] has knocked it out of the park.

• A KVM is a great tool for administering a number of different computers without cluttering one’s desk with extra peripherals, or for having to re-connect the keyboard, video, and mouse to each new machine as needed. For local administration this can save a ton of time and headache. For remote administration, though, a virtual KVM is needed, and although these solutions are pricey it’s possible to build one around a Raspberry Pi for a fraction of the cost. This one adds even more functionality by also switching the ATX signals from the motherboard and simplifying cable management to boot.

Leftovers

• I’m really not a big fan of these “best of” lists, but of all the new arts entertainment (or edutainment as KRS-One would say) I consumed this past year, here’s what helped me most in wading through the radioactive waste of 2022.

• I do not and have never used a smartphone.

• Before you continue reading, I’d like you to stop and ponder that for a moment. Think about how much of your everyday life is now integrated into this machine.

• However, the poinsettia was still largely unknown in the United States. But all that changed in the early 1900s.

• German emigrant Albert Ecke started a commercial orchard in California in 1909, the Ecke Family Ranch, to cultivate the plant. He started sending free poinsettias to decorate on-air broadcast sets of television studios for the holidays. His plan paid off, and millions began to associate poinsettias with Christmas.

• A Twitter spat that misogynist social media personality Andrew Tate started with 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg over his masculinity led Romanian authorities to arrest him and his brother, Tristan, for human trafficking and rape on Thursday, according to local media and police.

• Tate taunted Thunberg on Twitter about the carbon emissions of his 33 cars, to which Thunberg replied with a joke about “small dick energy” that racked up millions of likes. Tate then posted a humiliating 2-minute video of himself smoking a cigar in a robe and insisting that he was not at all owned by the teenager. The video prominently featured two boxes of pizza from a local shop, which reportedly tipped off authorities to his whereabouts.

• Rumours had swirled online that police had been tipped off to Mr Tate’s presence in the country after he posted a video taking aim at the environmental activist Greta Thunberg. However, this is not believed to be the case.

• In the footage he posted, he was handed a pizza box from a local restaurant, which some users suggested had inadvertently revealed his location to officers.

• We quickly discovered a few interesting characteristics of net send that could be used for some silliness. For one, the alert dialog that opened up stole keyboard focus and was generally disruptive. You could spam as many net send commands as you wanted and the alerts would just pile up on a user’s screen, with no clear way to dismiss them all. We took advantage of this by mashing up and enter as well as writing batch scripts to render our friends’ computers useless. Eventually a tense truce was called, when we found out that receiving a net send message while playing the hidden copy of Unreal Tournament GOTY we had installed on the school network would temporarily take the player out of the game for just long enough to be killed in a critical moment.

• The most creative exploit we came up with for net send was on students (and teachers) who weren’t yet aware of the feature. We had the ability to open an official windows alert on anyone’s machine, and at a glance it wasn’t obvious these messages were coming from another computer on the network. We started sending messages like “Critical Error: Please Restart Your Computer Immediately” and would watch with glee as our victim sighed deeply before restarting their computer.

• United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday beseeched humanity to “make 2023 a year when peace is restored to our lives, our homes, and our world,” a message that came as dozens of wars and armed conflicts rage around the world.

• Brett Wilkins reports on the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres’ poignant and urgent New Year’s address.

• The war in Ukraine is now in its 11th month, and Russia unleashed a new bombardment this week of cities across the country, including the capital Kyiv. This comes as both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin have expressed a willingness to negotiate an end to the war — but their positions remain so far apart that there are no real hopes of peace talks, says longtime antiwar activist, author and international relations scholar Gilbert Achcar. “For now, both sides are just probably betting on being able to achieve more on the ground and not really serious about a ceasefire and negotiations under the present conditions,” he says.

• Barbara Ehrenreich was every good thing that was said about her, and more. The visionary author and activist, who died in 2022 at age 81, was, as her September New York Times obituary reminded us, America’s great “explorer of prosperity’s dark side.” With Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (1989), Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream (2005), Ehrenreich developed a fact-based critique of contemporary capitalism that was brilliantly researched and appropriately acerbic—as were the articles, essays, speeches, and media appearances that made her not just a tireless reporter but also a vital social commentator.

• Soviet and Russian composer Eduard Artemyev passed away at 86 years old.

• The modern TV news studio is a masterpiece of live video and CGI, as networks vie for the flashiest presentation. BBC News in London is no exception, and embraced the future in 2013 to the extent of replacing its flesh-and-blood camera operators with robotic cameras. On the face of it this made sense; it was cheaper, and newsroom cameras are most likely to record as set range of very similar shots. A decade later they’re to be retired in a victory for humans, as the corporation tires of the stream of viral fails leaving presenters scrambling to catch up.

• There’s no shortage of different types of folding or portable chairs, but designer [Jorge Penadés] built a backpack chair that will go the long haul.

• Perhaps we’re not alone in having a penchant for gummy sweets, but we have to admit to never following the train of thought shared by [Lost Art Press]. Upon finding that a hide glue ingredient was raw gelatin obtained from a confectionery company, they stored away the knowledge and eventually tried making some glue using Haribo Goldbears from a gas station.

• The projects featured on these pages frequently rule the air, the ground, the rails, and even the waves, but very rarely do they rule the deep. Building a submarine is hard, and thus it’s a challenge not taken on by all but the most courageous of builders. This hasn’t discouraged [Timo] though, who has embarked on the construction of what is shaping up to be a very nice underwater ROV build.

Science

• it’s a strange world getting stranger each day viruses coming out of the closet păthos rising from marshes to posit terror, and help us throw it all away.

• on the planet with the only known life in the universe, humans are fading artificial beings are persuading and the mad piper is playing his fife.

Hardware

• [PWalsh] was using his lasercutter to cut acrylic, expecting the cuts to have a pleasantly smooth edge. Alas, the edges turned out to be wobbly and sandpaper-like, not smooth in the slightnest. Bummer! Internet suggested a stepper motor swap, but not much in the way of insights – and that would’ve been a royal pain for sure. How would you approach debugging such a problem? Well, [PWalsh] didn’t want to swap crucial components willy-nilly, going the scientific way instead, and breaks it down for us.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The U.S. Justice Department is suing one of the largest U.S. drug distributors for failing to report suspicious orders of prescription opioids, saying the company’s “years of repeated violations” contributed to the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic.

• In a civil lawsuit filed Thursday, the department alleges that AmerisourceBergen and two subsidiaries violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to report “at least hundreds of thousands” of suspicious orders for prescription painkillers to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

• The department is seeking potentially billions of dollars in penalties.

• The pharmaceutical industry and its Republican allies in Congress are openly signaling their plans obstruct at every turn as the Biden administration looks to begin implementing a recently passed law that will allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time in its history.

• It is easy and appropriate to target the private health insurance companies who earn excessive profits from the Medicare Trust Fund through Medicare Advantage plans, especially given the well-documented evidence of overcharging and fraud.

• But it is essential that we remember that it has been the U.S. Congress and the Executive Office that promoted the privatization of Medicare, to varying degrees, since it was first signed into law by President Johnson in 1965 and enacted the following year.

• Pretending that you’re actually fixing the world’s privacy and national security issues by banning TikTok is just so very hot right now. Numerous states have passed new rules banning TikTok on government employee devices. And Marco Rubio has proposed a federal law that would ban TikTok unless ByteDance is willing to sell the popular app to an American company (presumably GOP-aligned Oracle).

• The blockage came on the same day that Indiana’s attorney general sued TikTok, claiming the video-sharing platform misleads its users, particularly children, about the level of inappropriate content and security of consumer information.

• The Biden administration on Thursday filed suit against one of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical distributors, AmerisourceBergen, and two of its subsidiaries for allegedly violating federal law and contributing to the opioid epidemic.

• As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to churn, Medicare spending on testing for the virus continued to increase in 2022 and is outpacing the two prior years.

• Through Oct. 31, Medicare had spent $2 billion on COVID-19 tests in 2022, an amount that will surpass last year’s total as claims are filed, according to new data provided to ProPublica by CareSet, a research organization that works to make the health care system more transparent.

• Nearly two years after a leading U.S. consumer advocacy group sounded the alarm on the matter, House Democrats released a report Thursday showing the Food and Drug Administration and pharma giant Biogen “inappropriately collaborated” prior to the controversial approval of a new $28,000-per-year Alzheimer’s drug of questionable efficacy.

Security

• KrebsOnSecurity turns 13 years old today. That’s a crazy long time for an independent media outlet these days, but then again I’m bound to keep doing this as long as they keep letting me. Heck, I’ve been doing this so long I briefly forgot which birthday this was!

Privacy/Surveillance

• About 20 minutes later, the “NHS-NoReply” number messaged: “Please accept our sincere apologies for the previous text message sent. This has been sent in error. Our message to you should have read We wish you a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

• Unfortunately, San Francisco took a wrong turn in 2022. Over objections of many community groups, the Board of Supervisors passed temporary legislation allowing police to get live access to private security cameras to address any crime, no matter how minor. We’ll be back in 2024, when the ordinance sunsets, to demand that the city not restart this surveillance program.

• The prolonged fight began in early 2022 with the threat of dueling ballot measures on whether to strengthen or weaken the surveillance control ordinance.  A coalition came together, and the measures were withdrawn. Then the fight shifted to a new proposed ordinance to authorize a specific surveillance ordinance. The bill would allow police to request live access from the owner of any private security camera for up to 24 hours after an alleged crime, as well as during any “significant events.”

• The SFPD’s proposal allowed the police to access thousands of private surveillance cameras,including those outside of residences and businesses, as well as the massive surveillance camera networks of the many Business Improvement Districts and Community Benefit Districts in various neighborhoods around the city. Before the new legislation, police could only request historical footage from these cameras. But this new proposal gave police the power to live monitor “significant events”—defined to include any “large or high-profile event,” implicating people exercising their First Amendment rights during protests or religious gatherings. The concern was far from hypothetical: EFF and the ACLU of Northern California sued the city after SFPD accessed a business district’s camera network to monitor protests for 8 days following the police murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020.

• NSO Group isn’t the only phone malware firm to draw international attention. Sure, NSO’s decision to sell to human rights abusers and aid/abet surveillance of journalists, lawyers, government critics, and political leaders drew the most attention, but there were others. And all of these malware purveyors seem to have sprung from the same source: spies whose last employer was the Israeli government.

Defence/Aggression

• On the morning of December 29, the Russian army launched another round of shelling attacks on Ukraine. Air raid alerts were issued for all of Ukraine’s regions. Before the shelling began, Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovich reported that Russia was expected to fire about 100 missiles over multiple waves. His colleague Mykhailo Podolyak later said that the country had actually been targeted by 120 missiles, though after the shelling stopped, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that the total number of missiles was 69. According to Mykolaiv Regional Governor Vitalii Kim, in addition to missiles, Russia also used Iranian drones to attack Ukraine’s territory. The previous massive shelling attack against Ukraine occurred on December 16.

• Russia is rejecting the 10-step peace plan proposed by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview to the state-run RIA Novosti. In his own words,

• What to make of the Final Report of the US House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol (hereafter “the report”)?

• Let’s start with the good news – the discovery, telling, and re-telling of some basic truths. The report shows beyond serious doubt that the wannabe fascist strongman  Donald Trump was the “the central cause” of the insurrection. “None of the events of Jan. 6,” the committee rightly found, “would have happened without him.”

• What I find so hopelessly frustrating about the January 6th inquiry is this. Yes, it is no doubt true that Trump, his cohorts and a sizable amount, if not the entire Republican Party is corrupt, quite likely criminal in nature as well but definitely complicit in corruption and in the defense of Trump and his actions. Yes, Trump and his cohorts should be tried and punished in that so rare of things, a just and fair manner, and we as a nation should be able to put this whole affair, the Trump era that is, behind us

• Yes, the American democratic experiment is at stake as we so often hear these days. But the threat to our democracy is from both sides of the aisle (oh the irony) and a “turning point”, as they also like to say, may have been reached (really?). But will prosecuting a number of the January 6th rioters or even the “Orange One” himself bring much real satisfaction and save our democracy? I think not.

• In an effort to fill in what they say are critical gaps in the U.S. House select committee’s report on the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, faith leaders are pushing the corporate media and the American public to confront the role Christian nationalism played in the insurrection, warning that ignoring the link could make similar violence more likely in the future.

• The most surprising thing about the final report of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol isn’t the mountain of evidence of Donald Trump’s criminality that it contains nor the criminal referrals it makes to the Justice Department, but its readability. According to The New York Times, at least a half dozen publishing houses are releasing their own editions of the 845-page tome. On a December 22 broadcast, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell nailed it when he remarked, “This is the way a great novelist would lay out this story.”

• In the run-up to the two-year anniversary of January 6th (J6), the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has released a new report highlighting some troubling realities regarding Donald Trump’s failed insurrection. Unfortunately, it falls short in exposing the extent of the threat of rising white supremacy in America. At a whopping 814 pages, the report is incredibly thorough in documenting what happened on J6 and Trump’s role in stoking a failed coup. The report blames “one man” for the insurrection, emphasizing a “multi-part conspiracy” on the former president’s part to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.” Those who’ve paid close attention to news reporting in the wake of the J6 attack are unlikely to be surprised by any of the committee’s major findings. Some of the most detailed scholarship on this matter (see here and here) has already sketched out the story of J6, which is reinforced in this report, including the following:

• One of the recommendations from the J6 committee is that Trump should be prosecuted for his actions in relation to the insurrection and failed coup. As the report states:

• Investment behemoth BlackRock was accused Thursday of what author Naomi Klein termed “disaster capitalism” after war-ravaged Ukraine’s president announced he would work with the firm to coordinate foreign investment in the country’s reconstruction.

• The American republic morphed well over a century ago into an empire of many endless wars. With U.S. troops still in Syria, Iraq, Somalia and numerous African countries, with over 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and a war budget of roughly one trillion dollars a year, it’s no surprise that one of our main exports is weapons and that arms merchants call the shots in Washington. Presidents come and go, but the wars don’t: they drag on. And when a president does manage to extract the country from one of these military quagmires, as Biden did in Afghanistan, he gets nothing but grief.

• This only serves to encourage barbarity – like freezing Afghanistan’s $7 billion in the bank, while Afghans starve due to the U.S. having bombed their country back almost to the stone age. Afghans need their funds. They have an absolute moral right to them, as most of the world recognizes, because famine kills them in greater numbers without those monies. Indeed, after the U.S. military departure, reparations would have seemed to be in order. But no. Washington just stole their money and walked away.

• That the world hasn’t been the same since the ignition of the Atomic Age in the 1940s is certainly an understatement, yet the public’s awareness of how the nuclear industry operates has always been dismally low. Secrecy has played a part — especially in relation to bomb-making activities — but so too has the establishment news media, which focuses on individual events and sidelines institutional factors. So an accident is news (if it’s not covered up), but not the regular practices or misguided motivations that led to it, even though they were ultimately responsible.

• The word “dialogic” refers to the logic of dialogue. Dialogue is more than just two people talking “at” each other – you know, throwing opinions around like candy. “Dialogue” refers to an exchange of ideas. Opinions just come and go. But in dialogue, ideas address each other. Underlying each statement in a dialogue is the (often unspoken) question, “why do you think what you just said is so, or even meaningful, to either of us?” It is the fact that participants can answer that question as their exchange proceeds that drives each dialogue to new and more insightful ideas (about whatever they are talking about). The ethics of that question provide inclusion in mutual reasoning and the building of thought; it enables each participant to reach into the universe of the other, which makes both bigger. It brings people together. The luxury of throwing around opinion-candy leaves one isolated in what just tastes good personally.

• Crime is not an opinion. And neither is police brutality. Both are forms of social violence for which the gnawing question silently lurks: “why are you doing this?” Though it asks for reasons, the act of violence never goes beyond its raw existence. It simply violates. Period. Whatever the robber is responding to in his past, or in his situation, the meaning of the theft is performative, nothing else. When a cop gives a command, and responds to disobedience with violence, its performativity is its reality. It simply exists. Indeed, if the cop had a warrant, he would simply serve it. But when the cop shoots a person, he is by-passing that “detail.” No warrants are served, and no messages are given. The relevance of any message (such as for justice) would have already died under the force of that violence. When somebody dies, it is too late to make a “message” relevant to them. Only the “fear component” of law enforcement is left, lying around on the ground for others to see.

• With this clarion call born of principle and necessity, a respected Rabbi and leader of the American Jewish community of the early 1930’s called for an absolute boycott of German goods as the “duty of all self-respecting Jews.”

• He urged the boycott not because German’s were white, or Christian, or blonde haired and blue eyed. And few if any in the United States accused him of any such mindless targeted hate. The boycott, which was fundamentally rooted in human rights, was necessary in an effort to try to stem the growing odium and bloodletting sure and soon to follow.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s surprise visit to Washington on December 21 was hailed as “historic.” It came 300 days after the Russian invasion and at a critical time for the continuation of robust United States aid and support. While Zelensky got much of what he asked for in terms of military equipment (Patriot air defense system) and cash ($850 million in security assistance), a holiday season perspective offers a different focus on the visit. While accepting that Zelensky told the Congress, “Your money is not charity. It is an investment in global security and democracy,” one should wonder about the presents given by the U.S. Congress (and taxpayer) in the spirit of the holiday season.

• All Christmas presents given to children are investments in one way or another. As for giving during Hanukkhah, gifts are exchanged each of the eight days and nights, and often “Hanukkah Gelt (money)” is given to children as are books and educational material.

• The war in Ukraine is having growing negative effects on women and girl’s health and well-being. They encompass not only gender-based violence, but include all aspects of women’s and girl’s lives. Access to basic services and life-saving sexual and reproductive health care have been drastically disrupted.

• Since the 2013 Maidan revolution, also known as “dignity revolution,” Ukrainian women have been increasingly engaged in the political, social, and economic affairs of the country. This engagement has led to an increase in women’s political participation, manifested by gains in parliamentary seats and in village and regional councils. As a result, Ukraine has ratified or joined most international agreements on gender equality.

• Moving through the fog of perma-war, pestilence, puritanism and greed into the bright, blinding light of a brand new year that’s looking to be worse—much worse!—I will fear no evil, as I continue along the Bonobo Way of peace, love, equality, ecology and good sex.

• At least, that’s what I keep telling myself as I pop the bubbly for a “Happy Nude Rear,” kick up my heels and say “Howdeeeee 2023!”

• The deal is for Volcano anti-tank mine-laying systems.

• As Kyiv prepares to persecute the souls of its own people, it seems we are about to witness just how inhumane this project has been from the outset.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech.  The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved, including parody accounts.  The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other […]

Environment

• Special-purpose diesel, known as “blue” diesel, has a lower excise tax and is intended for farmers who use tractors to till fields and fishermen. However, the cheaper fuel is frequently purchased and used for other purposes.

• 2:00 am. Boink! My eyes pop open. It’s Christmas Eve, but it’s not that I just heard Santa wandering through the house. It’s far more banal: gotta use the bathroom. I crawl out of bed, step bare-assed into… oh my God… a learning experience.

• On January 1, the moment he is sworn in as president of Brazil for a second time, Lula da Silva will become perhaps the most important person in the worldwide effort to confront the climate emergency. Usually, the obstacles to slowing global warming are somewhat dispersed: wasteful electric utilities in rich nations; multiple oil giants, ranging from Chevron to Saudi Arabia’s national producer; even individual consumers who persist in buying gas-guzzling SUVs. No one person or single government can challenge them all at the same time.

• NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded. Furthermore, according to CareOurEarth.com, this past year experienced: “Record-Breaking Heatwaves Around the World.”

• It was the year of fires (everywhere, big fires), scorching heat (globally) floods (Pakistan! Europe, China) loss of potable water (especially France and Italy) nearly impassable commercial waterways (Danube, Po, Rhine, Mississippi) sunbaked droughts (US Southwest, Chile) sputtering water reservoirs (Lake Mead). In all, a mini-biblical-scale worldwide disaster scenario that conditioned people of the world for what to expect when global warming really cranks up bigtime.

• As I write, a bomb cyclone has turned much of the continental United States into an ice palace. In Wyoming the temperature dropped 40°, from 43° to 3°, in a half an hour, breaking all records. NBC reports 55 dead in a “once-in-a-lifetime” blizzard. The New York Times reports 29 people died in western New York state. The dead included, “people found trapped in their cars and those who had “cardiac-related events” while removing snow from driveways outside their homes and businesses I email my 82-year-old retired doctor friend in Woods Hole, “How are you doing?” after I look up the temperature there and see that it’s 15°. He’s doing fine. He sends pictures of snow in his front yard. He’s got an insulated house, heat pumps, and radiant floor heating– the comforts money can buy. Others are not so lucky.

• The article in the New York Times and NBC news report do not mention climate change. It’s hard to believe the subject never occurred to the reporters or their editors. So why not add a paragraph quoting a climate scientist on the subject. Were they concerned if they interviewed one saying, yes, these events are going to become more common, because of climate change they would need to interview another with an opposing opinion, and readers would lose interest. Or is there some other reason?

Energy

• While inside the terminal, they were approached by a BNA police officer. The video, captured by Robinson, showed the officer saying, “You and her need to leave or you’ll be arrested for trespassing.”

• Morrison couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

• “You said you’re going to arrest people for trespassing, for being at a ticket counter for a flight?” Morrison asked in the video.

• When Jennifer Granholm, U.S. Secretary of Energy, posthumously restored the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer this week, she revealed little that had not been known about the “father of the Atomic Bomb”, and more about the culture of secrecy that surrounds the history of nuclear weapons.

• Testimony in secret committee hearings about Oppenheimer’s loyalty to the United States, declassified after sixty years, attested to Oppenheimer’s patriotism, his singular contribution to the development of the fission bombs that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his ardent support for tactical nuclear weapons defending Europe against Soviet invasion.

• This is the eighth part in a series about Amtrak travels during summer 2022.

• Before leaving New Orleans, I made the long bike ride out to Chalmette, where in 1815 the last battle of the American Revolution (well, officially it was in the War of 1812) was fought between Andrew Jackson’s rabble-at-arms and British redcoats under the command of General Sir Edward Pakenham.

Wildlife/Nature

Finance

• The Russian Finance Ministry is working on a bill that would both “decriminalize” the illegal use of foreign software whose developers have left the Russian market and impose compulsory licensing on it, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

• On December 15,  the US Government Accountability Office released a report on the Internal Revenue Service’s failings in “providing customer service to taxpayers.”

• Are taxpayers “customers?” Let’s have a look at that idea.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Others have been banished for lesser offenses, including a half-dozen prominent journalists. Their ousters provoked howls of protest, including threatened sanctions by the EU, but now they’re back to tweeting. Not me. I’m still banned, and no one has come to my defense. Not even one of my 139 followers.

• Challenges for a Pink Tide Surging Over a Volatile US Hegemony

• 2023 marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine. This imperial fiat arrogates to the US the unilateral authority to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states in the Western Hemisphere and to exclude any other power from meddling in what is viewed as Washington’s backyard. Two centuries later, the doctrine faces a fragile future.

• Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is facing growing backlash from members of Congress and corporate watchdogs who say his department failed to take sufficient action in the lead-up to mass flight cancellations surrounding the Christmas holiday, a meltdown that has its roots in decades of airline consolidation, greed, and lax oversight.

• It’s been interesting to watch over the last few months as tons of people have migrated from Twitter to Mastodon (or similar compatible ActivityPub-based social media platforms). I’ve noticed, however, that some people keep running into the same issues and challenges as they discover that Mastodon is different than what they’re used to with Twitter. There are a few tips and tricks I’ve been sharing with various people that seemed pretty broadly applicable, so I figured it was worth doing a post laying them out.

• The corporate takeover of American politics started with a man and a memo you’ve probably never heard of.

• Global concerns about the new Israeli government—especially what it means for Palestinians—continued to grow Thursday as Benjamin Netanyahu took the oath of office to again serve as prime minister, this time leading the most far-right and religiously conservative coalition in the country’s history.

• Juan Cole reports on the deals the once-again Israeli prime minister made with the far-right to grab power.

• As part of his bargain with the fascist blocs of Religious Zionism and Jewish Power, according to the Israeli newspaper Arab 48, incoming Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke of an “exclusive Jewish right” to expand settlements inside Israel proper, in Galilee and the Negev, as well as to plant squatters in the Palestinian West Bank.

• As the year winds down, the courts have slammed the door in the face of election deniers one more time. Kari Lake, heir apparent to Trumpism’s refusal to accept ballot box defeats, sued Maricopa County in a Hail Mary effort to overturn the gubernatorial election result in Arizona. She argued that printer malfunctions and other Election Day problems added up to a deliberate effort to cheat her of victory and resulted in more than enough votes’ not being counted to materially alter the outcome.

• In interviews about Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), writer/director Rian Johnson name-checks Agatha Christie, whose classic whodunits have spawned a century of high-profile adaptations. Since most are period pieces—see Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express from 2017 and Death on the Nile from this past year—there was room to stake out fresh terrain.

• A year ago I wrote that we were “in a great fight for the future of American democracy. Nothing less.” As 2023 starts there is reason for hope.

• The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday, that the Hungarian PM’s statements “show pathological disregard for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people who are fighting Russian aggression, and they also show his political short-sightedness.” The statement points out that the “defeat of Ukraine in the war, which Viktor Orban indirectly calls for, would lead to a direct threat of Russian aggression against Hungary and Hungarians”.

• “Orbán should ‘ask himself whether he wants peace’. If the answer is yes, he should use his close ties with Moscow to persuade Moscow to stop its aggression against Ukraine and withdraw its troops,” the ministry’s statement reads.

• During a year-end press conference, Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov announced that he will never run for President of Russia, but noted that he has every right to do so.

• In 1942, as Nazi Germany began to send hundreds of thousands of Jews to killing centers, Brazilian police swooped into a port city in the South American country and arrested a wealthy landowner.

• To locals, he was Otto Uebele, a Brazilian manager of a prominent coffee trading company. He also served as honorary consul for Germany — and was an accused Nazi spy.

• While Zelensky hypnotizes Western governments into forking over vast sums to finance his war effort, he has appointed a literal hypnotist (and part-time sexologist multi-level marketer) to a high-level diplomatic position.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Influencers and celebrities on TikTok are showing off their weight loss with before-and-after pictures, giving credit to the medication. Elon Musk credited Ozempic for helping him lose 30 pounds. An ad for the drug even cites weight loss as a benefit of the drug, saying the average person loses 12 pounds.

• But enthusiasm for the drug has led to a lower supply of the drugs. The Food and Drug Administration lists Ozempic as “currently in shortage.” Some patients report switching to lower doses to help stretch the supply. >

Censorship/Free Speech

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a new law equating the black-and-orange-striped ribbon of St. George with state-protected “symbols of military glory.” Its public desecration may now lead to misdemeanor or even felony charges.

• Mikhail Lobanov, a professor in Moscow State University’s Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, was jailed for 15 days for non-compliance with police. The news was posted by a third party on Lobanov’s Telegram channel. Lobanov himself said that police beat him while searching his apartment.

• A short history of neo-Nazism in Ukraine in response to NewsGuard’s charge that Consortium News published false content about its extent.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• A journalist at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the state’s public television and radio news network, was fired from her position after reporting on abuses taking place at state-run psychiatric facilities—reporting that allegedly sparked threats from state health officials and pressure on the network to change its coverage of the state government.

• Shortly after, Taliban fighters stormed the paper’s office in Kabul, Rasoli said, and warned the staff “not to publish anything that is not in line with the group’s policies.”

• Rasoli said the Taliban were angry that the paper had used the term “suicide attackers” instead of “self-sacrificing.”

• The Taliban did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a federal law making activities classified as “sabotage” punishable by up to life in prison.

• What omnivores complain about is true

• Vegans are evangelical. Case in point: On the day I ate my last morsel of Parmigiano Reggiano, I was born again, and I wanted everybody to know that my animal-eating sins were washed away. It didn’t matter how many hot dogs, hamburgers, rashers of bacon, pounds of beef and chicken, cheese balls or ice cream cones I ate in my former life, I was now as guiltless as a new-born babe – even more so, since I didn’t drink milk. And in the glow of my conversion, I felt like my other sins were cleansed too. If Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were vegans, he’d have found a good night’s sleep and she’d have washed away that “damned spot.”

• + Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the US has increased by 700%, to the point that the US prison population is the largest in the world both per capita and in total numbers. As of 2019, there are an estimated 2.3 million people behind bars.

• It is that time of the year when generous people make donations to civic organizations that are the bedrock of our democratic society. Some are worthy charities. Others are advocates for change through advancing justice.

• Below are many nonprofit groups working for causes furthering environmental and consumer health and safety, economic well-being and peace.

• Nicky, why can’t you just smile and join the pride parade? I must hear this refrain at least ten times a day from people both inside and out of my community. With all the progress, with all the popular approval, why can’t I just be one of those happy Queers you see on TV? Why must I insist on being such a fucking bummer? And sometimes I wish it was that easy too. That I could just put on a pair of heels and embrace the simple pleasures of mainstream inclusion. The only problem is that I know way too much about the history of Western Civilization to pretend that progress isn’t a fucking trap.

• I can’t pretend that the globalized corporate culture that defines the collective West isn’t a moral desert defined by commercialism, conformity and assimilation. I can’t pretend that this culture isn’t the direct descendant of the White Anglo-Saxon Puritan culture that wiped out the pagan tribes who once revered my people for what made us unique, and I can’t pretend that being Queer isn’t defined by our long history of resistance to this culture and that allowing ourselves to be absorbed into it would be tantamount to genocide.

• Anti-government protests in Iran, launched in September following the death of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police, have passed their 100th day, even as demonstrators have been met with widespread arrests, brutal violence by police and executions. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports thousands of protesters have been arrested and more than 500 protesters have been killed so far, including 69 children. At least 26 more demonstrators are facing execution. As calls grow for the United States and the international community to respond to Iran’s brutal crackdown, President Biden has hinted attempts to restore the Iran nuclear deal may be dead. We’re joined by Hadi Ghaemi, executive director and founder of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, and Nahid Siamdoust, a former journalist who is now Middle East and media studies professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

• A Review of Bryan D. Palmer’s James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1928–38

• (This is an expanded version of Murray E.G. Smith’s presentation at “Historical Materialism 2022,” November 13, 2022, SOAS, University of London)

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Telecom and media giants are running a sleazy year-long smear campaign against Biden FCC nominee Gigi Sohn aimed at miring the agency in perpetual consumer protection gridlock. The attacks have been carefully seeded across the US press through various think tanks and nonprofits, and falsely accuse Sohn of everything from hating police to being an enemy of rural America. The lies are baseless, but have proven effective enough to stall Senate confirmation.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Netflix launched its advertising tier Nov. 3, at a lower price of $6.99 a month. The streamer has already begun taking measures to limit account sharing, by allowing users to move their profiles to new membership accounts, and The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 21 that a password crackdown will come in earnest in 2023.

• New York State has finally passed a landmark “right to repair” bill proving American consumers some additional protection from repair monopolies. After some annoying delays created by lobbyists, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed the legislation on December 29.

Monopolies

• As they address tech monopolies, courts and enforcement agencies are beginning to acknowledge the interplay of user privacy and security concerns with antitrust, thanks in part to EFF’s advocacy. In February, we explained to a federal appeals court that Apple’s total control over apps on its mobile devices is not necessary to keep users safe, and in fact makes many users less safe.

• Antitrust cases against the tech giants still face serious obstacles from a judiciary that’s become increasingly hostile to claims of monopoly abuse. EFF’s brief was filed in Epic Games’s challenge to Apple’s restrictive App Store policies, which was thrown out by a district court and is now awaiting an appeals court ruling. The FTC’s challenge to Facebook (now Meta) over its history of acquiring potential competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp has faced similar obstacles. We’ve also seen some small but significant wins, including suits against legal research provider Westlaw and computer gaming giant Valve getting past their initial legal hurdles.

• It’s important that antitrust enforcers persist in their efforts because we can’t count on internet platforms and services that don’t face real competition to safeguard users’ rights. Sometimes they fail spectacularly. And even when they do a good job of protecting users, their protection is fickle, able to be stripped away with the whims of a mercurial CEO, or when cooperation with government surveillance suits their business interests.

Copyrights

• There are at least two issues with digital files that make a digital first sale rule problematic. First, it is difficult to transfer digital files without creating a copy in some way. If I want to sell you a song I legally purchased from iTunes, I will almost certainly create a copy when I give it to you. If I email it to you, I create a copy when I attach it to the email and you create a copy when you download it. If I burn it to a CD, I create a copy on the CD and you create a copy when you put it on your computer. Or if I put it on a flash drive, I create a copy when I put it on the drive, and you create a copy when if access it from the drive. I might be able to get around this by selling you my hard drive, but not only is that impractical, it’s also not clearly permitted by the law. The problem is that when you access the file, your computer still create a copy in some way, and that may still trigger infringement.

• Second, digital files are infinitely and perfectly copyable in a way that physical media are not. As such, it’s much harder to be sure the thing you’re transferring is, in fact, the original, or even what the original is. Even if I decide to sell you my iTunes songs by giving you my hard drive, it is difficult to ensure I didn’t create a copy for myself and stash it on my other hard drive. The first sale doctrine allows people to dispose of the works they have purchased, but does not permit them to keep a copy for themselves. So we have to be careful how to apply this doctrine to digital works.

• “First Sale” (also called the “exhaustion doctrine”) is the name in US copyright law for the idea that owners of copies of copyrighted works have the right to re-sell, lend, give away, or even destroy their personal copies of works. The copyright holder’s right to control the distribution of their work goes away after the “first sale” of the work. The “First Sale Doctrine” is codified in U.S. copyright law at 17 U.S.C. Section 109.

• In other areas of law, such as patent law, this principle is called the “exhaustion” principle.

• Protecting movies from piracy during their theatrical windows is an industry priority but week in and week out, ‘cammed’ copies stubbornly appear online. This summer several unusually good copies were linked to cinemas in the UK, where ‘camming’ can result in a prison sentence. Logically, camming should be incredibly rare, but that’s certainly not the case, far from it.

• The art world system includes artists, dealers, curators, collectors and critics. Artists make works sold by dealers, who sell with the help of museum curators and private collectors. And critics interpret and validate this art. But right now the role of the critic has become deeply insecure. At present, it’s almost impossible to make a living as a freelance critic. And the number of journalistic posts for critics is vanishingly small. Gentrification which transforms former down-and-out neighborhoods like Manhattan’s East Village, good places for writers and young artists, into trendy sites has transformed the entire art world. Young artists can no longer afford lofts, and art dealing has become much more expensive. The same is happening in many other cities. And so while in the mid-twentieth century there were important independent scholars, now it’s no longer possible to make a living from art writing.

• The value of many commodities is established by the marketplace. And so we don’t require critics to establish the value of raw materials or useful goods. But we do need critics to establish the value of the artifacts that are displayed to be sold in the art market. No one needs a painting- and there is no particular relation between the cost of art production and its exchange value. An enormous number of paintings are produced, and just a few of them have economic value. This present role of art criticism is a relatively new development associated with modernism. In the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt, Saenredam and Vermeer didn’t need art critics. And outside of Europe, often art worlds functioned without art criticism. The importance of art criticism in modernism and what comes after is in part a response to the very nature of this art. In this period, when radical aesthetic innovation is the norm, we need theorization provided by critics in order to identify what art matters. Without art critics, we wouldn’t know what to make of the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Robert Ryman or Sean Scully, who all rework tradition in ways that require articulation in order to be understood.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

• I own a Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pen, a fairly expensive pen but well worth the price for me. In two years I’ve only seen it clog once, after almost two straight months of no use–which if course was my own fault.

• Fountain pens tend to write better on certain types of paper than others. Glossy paper can interrupt the smooth flow of ink from the pen’s nib, and in extreme cases can cause the pen to either leak or clog. Coarse paper can transmit a scratchiness through a fountain pen that would otherwise be dampened by the rollerball in a ballpoint or gel pen. Other types of paper are prone to feathering (ink spreading along the surface of the paper) or bleeding (ink soaking through the paper and becoming visible on the other side).

• 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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