● 01.31.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 31/01/2023: elementary OS 7

Posted in News Roundup at 12:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Devices like the Steam Deck, Ayaneo 2, and even the Nintendo Switch have taken the world by storm in recent years. Portable handheld consoles open up a new world of experience. While Nintendo has been making handhelds for years, the first two offer PC gaming on the go, complete with good performance, excellent battery life, and the ability to do so much more with the software.

• However, the Steam Deck has a leg-up over the Ayaneo 2 in one big department: the operating system. It’s so much easier to do whatever you want on SteamOS, a fork of Arch Linux, not to mention the reduced overhead. On the one hand, this decreases the cost since there’s no need to shell out for a software license for its distribution. However, there are disadvantages to using Linux, such as the requirement for the Proton compatibility layer to ensure that games built for Windows are still playable.

Instructionals/Technical

• DokuWiki is an open-source wiki application written in PHP programming language.

Games

• The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, now known simply as MAME, started off as a project to emulate various arcade games. The project is still adding new games to its library, but the framework around MAME makes it capable of emulating pretty much any older computer. The computer doesn’t even need to be a gaming-specific machine as the latest batch of retro hardware they’ve added support for is a number of calculators from the 90s and early 00s including a few classics from Texas Instruments.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• If a user is visually impaired or blind, they may rely on sound prompts or other interactions (like Braille) to read and communicate.

• How can they use a Linux distribution?

• Well, in general, accessibility software help make it possible.

• I focus on listing some of the best options here. Before that, there are some essential pointers to note before you try/recommend Linux for visually challenged users.

• Called BharOS, the new operating system is an Android open source project, developed by incubated JandK Operations Private Limited.

• Unlike Android, it does not have default Google apps or services and IIT Madras says the operating system can be installed on commercial off-the-shelf handsets.

• According to IIT Madras, BhasrOS provides a secure environment for users and is a significant contribution towards Atmanirbhar Bharat, a phrase coined by by Indian PM Narendra Modi and his government, which translates to ‘self-reliant India’, in relation to the country’s economic development plans.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Red Hat and Oracle announced jointly Tuesday that they have partnered to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, broadening Oracle’s available public cloud options and creating a measure of détente between two long-standing competitors.

• The announcement couched the news as step one in a broader partnership between Red Hat and Oracle, but provided details mostly of the OCI integration. RHEL will be available on Oracle’s VMs, ranging in size from 1 to 80 CPU cores and from 1GB of memory up to 1024GB. Initial support will be limited to the newer OCI virtual machine shapes, which use AMD, Intel and Arm processors.

• Try Event-Driven Ansible, a new open source project in developer preview that helps you create event-driven automation scenarios across IT domains.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Dubbed “Victoria,” Linux Mint 21.2 will arrive at the end of June 2023 in the same format as before, supporting the Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE desktop environments. Most notably here, the Xfce edition will be based on the latest Xfce 4.18 desktop environment.

• As for the new features to expect in Linux Mint 21.2, the developers shared the fact that they are working on various login screen (Slick Greeter) improvements like support for multiple keyboard layouts via a new indicator in the top-right corner of the screen.

• Built on top of the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) operating system series, elementary OS 7 is here to introduce a much-improved AppCenter that promises to make it easier than ever to find, install, and update all the apps that you need for your daily work routine.

• AppCenter in elementary OS 7 also received improved app sideloading, support for alternative stores like Flathub, better navigation with support for two-finger swipe gestures to navigate back, improved application descriptions and screenshots, automatic Flatpak updates, offline updates, as well as support for Web Apps.

Devices/Embedded

• The Digi ConnectCore MP1 is an industrial embedded System-on-Module  platform which integrates the STM32MP157C microprocessor and a 3D GPU (Vivante – OpenGL ES) 2.0.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The Open Source Initiative, the organization that decides what is or is not an open source license, are thinking about making some changes to how it handles its license review process, and they’re looking for community input before putting any new policies in place.

• Back in 2020, OSI established a License Review Working Group which was tasked with the job of examining and improving the organization’s license review process, which is how OSI decides whether a license receives its seal of approval as an OSI approved open source license.

• But FOSS is in the most danger. The underlying assumption of the regulation is that cybersecurity exists in the digital market like fire resistance does in that for soft furnishings. Putting regulatory cost burdens on a part of the market with no revenue and no gatekeeping on its distribution channels cannot work; there are no prices to increase to absorb compliance costs and no tap to turn off to keep the stuff off the market.

• And FOSS can’t be outlawed. To re-engineer infrastructure and applications to exclude it would be unthinkably expensive and undoubtedly vastly destabilizing for cybersecurity resilience. To allow grandfathering – allowing pre-regulatory software components to continue to be used but demand compliance if new or updated – would freeze the sector to death. And what “cybersecurity framework” would catch the sort of errors that currently only appear after intensive analysis by the few teams of good and bad hats who are already fully employed for better or worse on a tiny percentage of extant software.s

• We feel the current proposal misses a major opportunity. At a high level the ‘essential cybersecurity requirements’ are not unreasonable, but the compliance overhead can range from tough to impossible for small, or cash-strapped developers. The CRA could bring support to open-source developers maintaining the critical foundations of our digital society. But instead of introducing incentives for integrators or financial support via the CRA, the current proposal will overload small developers with compliance work.

• We would love to be wrong about most of our analysis. So if you believe the situation to be less grim than we portray it to be, please talk to me so I can update this overview. However, if you share our concerns, this is what you can do: [...]

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• And that something was MongoDB. MongoDB happily took our Python dictionaries, stored them away somewhere, and sometimes even gave them back later. No hand-crafted SQL strings littering our Python codebase, and everything still worked.

• It was like a veil had been lifted. “What was with all the ceremony, SQL? My controllers are so lean now, and my schema is whatever I want it to be.” We paused just long enough to take a sip of our Spicy Maya Mocha from Coupa Cafe. “I mean, so what if none of my writes are ever actually confirmed by my new database? These are just hamster-likes and wristwatch-enthusiast-pokes! We can lose a few and still get to our Series B.”

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• The developers of ONLYOFFICE Docs released a new version of their collaborative office suite with plenty of new features and improvements for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and fillable forms. Let’s take a deep look at what’s new in this release.

• The functionality of fillable forms, which were introduced in version 7.0, has been significantly enhanced in the latest release. The most important improvement is that now you can create and manage various user roles to simplify the process of field filling. By assigning different roles, you allow other users to visually identify which fields they should fill out depending on their role.

Programming/Development

• What might “something sensible to do” be? I suggest making a list of issues that could be considered safety issues (including UB) and finding ways of preventing them within the framework of P2687R0. That’s what I plan to do.

• And anyway, what is “the overarching software community”? To the best of my knowledge, no experts from the ISO C++ standards committee were consulted.

• Version 0.83 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated): [...]

Leftovers

• Much of the Northern Hemisphere is currently in the middle of winter, so what better way to brighten a potentially gloomy day than to put this charming, minimalist weather display on your desk.

• As the smartphone has eaten ever more of the gadgets with which we once surrounded ourselves, it’s with some sadness that we note the calculator becoming a less common sight. It’s with pleasure then that we bring you [Nekopla]’s keychain calculator, not least because it’s a little more than a conventional model. This is a calculator which uses Reverse Polish Notation, or RPN.

• I used to love the way words clinked together to make sense. Images didn’t really get a look-in once I’d learned how to read. It was like I’d cracked the code and was in. I liked reading both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers. And if information wasn’t enough, I also liked cadence. Life in my early teens was ‘dreich’ — Scots for dreary or bleak — and overripe language was fun. Hard news, of course, didn’t like it, but some documentaries that I watched did. As a result, I began to play around with cameras as well as words. Not quite with the same application as some people I knew — I wasn’t a technician — and the first ever camera I took abroad, a small vintage 8mm cine camera, was stolen. (Years later, I was robbed of a larger one on Ibiza but vowed not to leave the island until I got it back, which, thanks to the admirable efforts of others, I got back.) I wrote occasional features and the odd play but grew to see cameras not just as artful expressions but also as very useful portals through which to grab information and analyse it. In time, I felt, one slow pan in a conflict zone, or even a gallery or sitting room, was worth more than a page of notes.

• Today I find myself writing again, as if attempting to complete a full-circle. It’s not what I was expecting. At a time when everyone now is filming, I am headed back in the opposite direction. Even in the deliberately discursive style of this Letter, I feel writing more direct today. I don’t even have to spend a whole year trying to raise funds for the damned thing, not like I did with documentaries. Writing cuts to the chase, which is ironic. I have one good friend who regularly sends me long articles from small journals and I like to devour each one. This is written information from the fringes. As for me, I used to say I wrote with a camera. Well, now I am filming with a pen. I also like what Gloria Steinem said: ‘As a profession, freelance writing is notoriously insecure. That’s the first argument in its favour. For many reasons, a few of them rational, the thought of knowing exactly what next year’s accomplishments, routine, income, and vacation will be — or even what time I have to get up tomorrow morning — has always depressed me.’ Just as Orson Welles wasn’t so wrong when he said filmmaking was two per cent moviemaking and ninety-eight per cent hustling for money.

• Everyone knows that Television was instrumental in creating New York’s punk scene —  that CBGB’s would not have existed as a venue without their intervention — but ever since their debut Marquee Moon came out in 1977, critics wondered if there was anything punk about the band at all. Maybe that’s why, for all the classic punk records released in the late seventies, this is the one that seems as relevant and modern today as it was then; it is not dated by slogans, fashions or sounds.

• If we back up a couple of years to the Neon Boys (the pre-Television trio consisting of Verlaine, Richard Hell and Billy Ficca), well, yes, it sure sounds like they were inventing punk rock. But they soon evolved. Punk bands played short and played fast. Television’s first single, “Little Johnny Jewel,” recorded while Richard Hell was still in the band, runs nine minutes and was broken up over two sides of a 7” single.

• We’ve written a few stories lately about DoNotPay, the “robot lawyer” service whose gimmick of an automated AI-driven tool that would help users deal with challenges like getting out of parking tickets or cancelling subscription services that are difficult to get out of sounds like a really enticing idea. But there have long been questions about the service. While we’ve seen a bunch of truly impressive AI-generation tools in the last year or so, for years many companies claiming to offer AI-powered services often seemed to be doing little more than finding someone to hack together a complicated spreadsheet that the marketing folks would labels as “artificial intelligence.” It’s unclear how sophisticated DoNotPay’s technology actually is, though as guest poster Kathryn Tewson discovered last week, it sure seemed sketchy.

• The truck carrying the sensor arrived in Perth on Jan. 16. On Friday, nearly two weeks later, the authorities called an emergency news conference to alert the public that the capsule had disappeared somewhere along the 1,400-kilometer, or 870-mile, journey.

Science

• It’s been decades since the intersection of forensic science and criminal justice first became a pop culture phenomenon, popularized by countless TV shows, movies and books. But the public’s growing awareness of forensic techniques obscures a far more complex field that’s chock full of bogus science — and the people who champion it, often for profit.

• For years, ProPublica has reported on these dubious techniques as they’ve wormed their way into every corner of our real-life criminal justice system.

• …that was the question I asked my Dad, a radio engineer for many decades, who worked at the biggest AM station in St. Louis, KMOX. The station is approaching its centennial in 2025, as are—some YouTube commenters argue—its primary audience!

Education

• Built after Poland regained independence at the end of the First World War, by 1923 half of Europe was sending telegrams to the USA via the Transatlantic Radiotelegraphic Broadcasting Centre in Warsaw.

• Consisting of 10 massive 126-metre-tall tower, the radio station’s transmitter was powerful enough to reach both North and South America.

Hardware

• Aluminium cans are all around us, and are one of readily recyclable. While you can turn them into more cans, [Burls Art] had other ideas. Instead, he turned roughly 1000 cans into a custom aluminium guitar.

• While ultrasonic cleaning might sound a bit like the “sonic shower” from Star Trek, this is actually one case where the futuristic-sounding technology predates its use in Sci-Fi. Ultrasonic cleaners have been around since the 50s and are used to clean all sorts of oddly-shaped or specialty objects by creating cavitation within a liquid that allows the surface of the object to be scoured. With the right equipment, these cleaning devices are fairly straightforward to build as well.

• Spectrometry is a well-known technique or, more correctly, a set of techniques. We usually think of it as the analysis of light to determine what chemicals are producing it. For example, you can tell what elements are in a star or an incandescent based on the spectrum of light they emit. But you can also do spectroscopy with other ranges of electromagnetic radiation. [Applied Science] shows how to make an RF spectroscope. You can see the video below.

• The unique look of early desktop computer systems remains popular with a certain segment of geekdom, so it’s no great surprise when we occasionally see a modern hacker or maker unceremoniously chuck 40+ year old electronics from a vintage machine just to reuse its plastic carcass. We try not to pass judgement, but it does sting to see literal museum pieces turned into glorified Raspberry Pi enclosures.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• I need to vent, because we need better ventilation.

• The World Health Organization now recommends masking “for anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space.”  But few of us know the quality of ventilation in our spaces.

• Once again, the GOP supermajority/Freedom Caucus is taking a run at criminalizing doctors who provide medical aid to a dying patient, enabling that person to end his or her own suffering, and life, with a self-administered medication prescribed by the physician. SB 210 is the bullet that ends the statutory approach to medical aid in dying set out in the Montana Supreme Court’s 2009 Baxterdecision.

• Despite its detractors, we know that over the intervening 14 years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Baxter v. State,[1] Montanans suffering from horrible and debilitating life-ending illnesses have successfully sought and have obtained medical aid in dying from various compassionate physicians in this State.

• US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says he believes 13 is too young for children to be on social media platforms, because although sites allow children of that age to join, kids are still “developing their identity.”

• Meta, Twitter, and a host of other social media giants currently allow 13-year-olds to join their platforms.

• “I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early … It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children,” Murthy said on “CNN Newsroom.”

• Over a three-year period, the students — who were all 12 or 13 years old when the research began — reported their social media behavior and underwent annual fMRI imaging of their brains to see their neural responses to an onscreen display of positive and negative social feedback, such as a happy or angry face.

• During that period, the students who reported checking their social media more regularly showed greater neural sensitivity in parts of the brain like the amygdala, Telzer said. Those who checked their social media less frequently saw less sensitivity in those areas on the fMRI.

• It is not clear whether the neural changes resulted in behavioral changes, like increased anxiety or addictive behaviors, Telzer said.

• Here’s one of many indicators about how broken the United States health care system is: Guns seem to be easier and cheaper to access than treatment for the wounds they cause. A survivor of the recent mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, California, reportedly said to Gov. Gavin Newsom that he needed to keep his hospital stay as short as possible in order to avoid a massive medical bill. Meanwhile, the suspected perpetrator seemed to have had few obstacles in his quest to legally obtain a semi-automatic weapon to commit deadly violence.

• Americans are at the whim of a bewildering patchwork of employer-based private insurance plans, individual health plans via a government-run online marketplace, or government-run health care (for those lucky enough to be eligible). The coverage and costs of plans vary dramatically so that even if one has health insurance there is rarely a guarantee that there will be no out-of-pocket costs associated with accessing care.

Security

• Chainalysis reports that worldwide ransomware payments were down in 2022.

Privacy/Surveillance

• When it was passed in 2015, the California Electronic Communications Act (CalECPA) was heralded as a major achievement for digital privacy, because it required law enforcement to obtain a warrant in most cases before searching a suspect’s data, be it on a personal device or on the cloud. But the law also contained a landmark transparency measure: the legislature ordered the California  Department of Justice (CADOJ) to publish a regularly updated dataset of these search warrants on its website.

• Up until last year, CADOJ was doing a pretty good job at uploading this data to its OpenJustice website, where it hosts a number of public datasets related to criminal justice. Advocacy groups and journalists used it to better understand the digital search landscape and hold law enforcement accountable. For example, the Palm Springs Desert Sun analyzed the data and found that San Bernardino County law enforcement agencies were by a large margin filing more electronic search warrants than any other jurisdiction in the state. The Markup also published a piece highlighting a troubling discrepancy between the number of search warrants based on geolocation (a.k.a.geofence warrants) self-reported by Google and the number of search warrants disclosed by agencies to the California Department of Justice.

• But then, last summer, CADOJ accidentally exposed the personal data of 192,000 people who had applied for a concealed carry weapons permit. Among the various actions it took in response, CADOJ suspended its OpenJustice website. Over the next several months, other datasets–such as data about use of force, jail deaths, complaints against officers, and threats to reproductive health providers–returned to the website.

• If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.

Defence/Aggression

• The Russian Defense Ministry has prepared a bill that, if passed, will limit the number of banks Russian soldiers can use to receive their salaries and benefit payments, according to RBC.

• At this time of intense debate within academia over race, gender, inequality, and our vanishing democracy, one might expect serious engagement with the moral and ethical implications of university-conducted war research. Yet, despite a massive increase in Pentagon support for military-oriented campus research, no such debate exists. Ever since many universities suspended their ties with the Department of Defense in the 1960s and ’70s—often in response to impassioned anti-war protests—concern over such ties has largely disappeared. But now, with the military expanding its footprint on campus and an ever-increasing share of the nation’s resources being devoted to war preparation, it is time to end this silence and start a rigorous debate on the ethics of university-conducted military research.

• There are currently only two Jewish heads of state in the world. The first, not surprisingly, leads Israel. The second is Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.

• They don’t get along.

• Kentucky Senator Rand Paul did something that too few people in Washington have been willing to consider since the debate about how to meet the debt obligations of the United States has intensified with the Republican takeover of the US House.

• Unnamed U.S. officials on Sunday confirmed suspicions that Israel was behind the weekend drone attack on a purported military facility in the Iranian city of Isfahan, heightening concerns that the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is gearing up for a broader assault on Iran as international nuclear talks remain at a standstill.

• Like many of the January 6 insurrectionists who have been arrested, DePape appears to have no interest in backing down from the Donald Trump-fueled conspiracy theories that led to his violence. Instead, the chilling audio hints at a man who feels confident in his false accusations and supported in his belief that the Trumpist agenda must be forced upon America through violence.

• DePape appears delusional in many regards, but he is, sadly, right about one thing: His pro-violence views have a lot of support from Republicans, both politicians and voters. While he took it to the next level, DePape was only acting on a correct interpretation of Trump’s implicit message: Since Democrats can’t be beaten at the ballot box, power must be seized through violence. It’s a view that, while they often avoid saying out loud, is widely backed by the rest of the GOP. The party, after all, has gone out of its way to reaffirm support for Trump in the wake of the deadly riot he unleashed on the Capitol two years ago.

• “The attacks carried out against civilians by terrorist groups, the battle for influence among them and the violent activities conducted by community militias remain a chilling daily reality, as do the attacks against the Malian Defense and Security Forces and against MINUSMA,” the UN peacekeeping force, he said.

• Guterres said in the report to the UN Security Council that “going forward, military operations to combat the extremist groups will continue to be a crucial component for the restoration of security.”

• In central Mali, he said, the extremists are capitalizing on intercommunal conflicts to expand their influence and secure new recruits.

• In Ukraine, which accuses Iran of supplying hundreds of drones to Russia to attack civilian targets in Ukrainian cities far from the front, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy linked the incident directly to the war there.

• Full Disclosure: We couldn’t watch the entire video of the savage beating to death of Tyre Nichols by five armed thugs of the state, all twice his size, all seized by “a wild, punishing violence” as they screamed a barrage of orders to their prostrate victim. What struck us: The “wolf-pack” pathology as they clustered afterwards, like homicidal football players, to revel in their total dehumanization of a kind, young, “damn near perfect” father, skateboarder, photographer, and, yes, human being.

• It’s rare to see a cop charged with murder. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was not only charged but convicted (!) of murder after kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for nearly 10 minutes, and for three minutes after another officer told Chauvin he could no longer detect Floyd’s pulse.

• Candace Owens is leading the fake news charge that George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose rather than by police murder. There is a lot of money to be made from peddling such a narrative. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be said to this audience but such a claim has already been proven false by Dr. Baker of Hennepin County through examination. Baker stated Floyd’s cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”

• Liberals of course have their own ideology. The rush to call George Floyd a hero and prove his great character, while certainly preferable to Owens’ sick response to death, are also avoiding the political question. If there were drugs in Mr. Floyd’s system, even if this wasn’t the cause of death, why should the police be called at all?

• A coalition of more than 1,300 climate and racial justice groups from across the United States on Monday joined a call for an independent investigation into the police killing of forest defender Manuel Paez Terán earlier this month, and demanded the resignation of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens.

• Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro has applied for a six-month visitor visa to remain in the United States amid worsening legal troubles in his home country.

• Croatian President Zoran Milanovic became the latest critic to condemn the decision of Western countries, including the United States, to send dozens of tanks to Ukraine to help fight the war against Russia, warning that continued military escalation will not help bring the conflict to an end.

• Are America’s national interests best served by our stance on the Ukraine-Russia war? It is striking that within the Democratic Party, with its long tradition of anti-war activism, there are no prominent voices raising this question.

• The FSB has arrested three eighth-grade students who allegedly sabotaged the railway by damaging the tracks near Moscow.

• Responding to Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who remarked that Chechnya deserves to be an independent state, Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov posted a Telegram video with sharp criticisms of “certain incompetent European politicians.”

• The Russian consulate in Lithuania has denied a citizen’s application for a new Russian passport, reports the independent outlet Verstka, citing the applicant herself.

• Biden said “No” when asked if the US would send F-16s to Ukraine, but the US previously ruled out providing other arms it eventually sent.

• Russia’s Interior Ministry issued more than 5.4 million foreign passports in 2022, according to its website.

• A court in Russia’s Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug has sentenced a 20-year-old man named Vladislav Borisenko to 12 years in prison on terrorism charges for allegedly taking part in an arson attack at a military enlistment office in May, according to TASS. The case reportedly marks the first time anybody in Russia has been convicted of terrorism for setting fire to one of the offices.

• The Russian Culture Ministry has ordered Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery to bring its exhibits “into accordance with [Russia’s] moral and spiritual values,” The Moscow Times reported on Tuesday, citing a letter addressed to the museum by ministry official Natalia Chechel.

• There is enormous relief in Kyiv that, after months of hesitation, the West is now willing to supply main battle tanks. But can the Leopard 2s supplied by Germany and its allies really turn the tide on the battlefield?

• How great is the risk for the West after the decision to send tanks to Ukraine? In an interview, Russia expert and former U.S. government adviser Angela Stent discusses German weapons deliveries to Kyiv and the mistakes made in dealing with Moscow.

Environment

• More than two dozen members of Congress have called on top U.S. climate diplomat John Kerry to push the United Arab Emirates to replace Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as president-designate of the United Nations COP28 meeting set to begin this November.

• For the first time, the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) has published consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions data for all Finnish municipalities and regions. The emissions per capita vary considerably between different municipalities and regions. As a result of the consumption of imported goods, a significant portion of emissions is also directed abroad.

Energy/Transportation

• Powering the world with renewable energy will take a lot of raw materials. The good news is, when it comes to aluminum, steel, and rare-earth metals, there’s plenty to go around, according to a new analysis.

• Duke Energy could save customers money by swiftly shutting down its coal plants and replacing them with a mix of solar and energy storage, a report found.

• U-M startup BlueConduit, which helped accelerate the removal of dangerous lead pipes in Flint has joined a White House partnership aimed at replacing all of the nation’s lead service lines in a decade.

• I awoke on December 13 to news about what could be the most significant scientific breakthrough since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first Covid vaccine for emergency use two years ago. This time, however, the achievement had nothing to do with that ongoing public health crisis. Instead, as The New York Times and CNN alerted me that morning, at stake was a new technology that could potentially solve the worst dilemma humanity faces: climate change and the desperate overheating of our planet. Net-energy-gain fusion, a long-sought-after panacea for all that’s wrong with traditional nuclear-fission energy (read accidents, radioactive waste), had finally been achieved at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

• Now the city is inching closer to a decision regarding one of its primary car-related eyesores in the city: Bispeengbuen, the six-lane road that slices through the heart of the city from Nørrebro past the Lakes to Ørestads Boulevard in Amager.

• A majority of City Hall is in favour of plans to submerge parts of the contentious stretch of road underground and replace the current concrete monstrosity with green areas on the surface.

• Top Canadian oil and gas companies are moving “aggressively” to cut their greenhouse gas emissions domestically so that they can sell more of their climate-warming products abroad.

• That was the message delivered by the sector’s most powerful trade and lobby group at a recent resources industry conference in British Columbia, that achieving “net-zero” at home is crucial for opening up foreign markets.

Wildlife/Nature

• The dodo bird was big, flightless, and pretty good eating. All that helps explain why it went extinct around 1662, just 150 years after European sailing ships found Mauritius, the island in the Indian Ocean where the bird once lived.

Finance

• Starting on Wednesday, the walkout will affect about 50 companies across the country for three days.

• Sunday, no less a New York City icon than the Empire State Building rubbed salt into a few million local wounds by lighting up in Eagle green and white for the NFC champs.

• France’s eight major trade unions united for the first time in 12 years to combat government proposals to raise the retirement age to 64.

• “What is the common vision to guide the Global South out of this crisis?” asked the Progressive International. “What is the plan to win it?”

• Delegates to the Havana Congress on the New International Economic Order—a gathering organized by the Progressive International and attended by more than 50 scholars and policymakers from 26 countries across all six inhabited continents—agreed over the weekend on a declaration that outlines a “common vision” for building an egalitarian and sustainable society out of the wreckage of five decades of neoliberal capitalism.

• A coalition of progressive advocacy groups on Monday launched a campaign urging every member of Congress to pledge to “never vote to cut Social Security or Medicare under any circumstances,” an effort that comes as House Republicans are weighing attacks on the two programs as part of their sweeping austerity spree.

• Energy justice campaigners on Monday called for “a permanent ban” on energy shutoffs by utilities as they released a report showing that major power companies have shut off millions of struggling customers’ electricity and heat due to missed payments—while raking in record profits and spending billions of dollars on executive compensation, shareholder dividends, and stock buybacks.

• Janine Jackson interviewed Mother Jones‘ Michael Mechanic about defunding the IRS for the January 27, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• After 15 raucous votes spanning almost two weeks, Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-California, was elected House Speaker on January 7. The vote was 216-212, a party-line vote with six Republicans voting present. From the beginning, former President Donald Trump pressured his 20 super-supporters, mostly in the Republicans’ “rightwing” Freedom Caucus, to back McCarthy. They refused until several behind-the-scenes deals, and a new “rules package” governing House operations, were negotiated.

• Perish the thought! The Republican dissenters won the right to actually see future proposed legislation packages a number of days before they are put to a vote! Imagine that! Members of the U.S. Congress will now have the right to read and review the legislation they are voting on! Readers here might think that my words are exaggerated. Not so. Contrary to popular belief, the often multi-thousand page pre-packaged legislation traditionally put together by the House Speaker is often quickly rammed through without most House members having seen it or having time to read it. Regardless, they follow their leader.

• “Of course,” the late P.J. O’Rourke wrote in Parliament of Whores, by way of explaining why government is boring, “politicians don’t tell the truth …. But neither do politicians tell huge, entertaining whoppers: ‘Why, send yours truly to Capitol Hill, and I’ll ship the swag home in boxcar lots. … There’ll be government jobs for your dog.  … Social Security checks will come in the mail not just when you retire at sixty-five but when you retire each night to bed. Vote for me, folks, and you’ll be farting through silk.’”

• O’Rourke seems to have actually preferred a more prosaic style of political falsehood: In 2016, the long-time Republican endorsed Hillary Clinton for president over whopper-prone Donald Trump, citing her “lies and empty promises.” She’s “wrong about absolutely everything,” he said, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”

• Coup attempts have gone viral this winter season in Latin America. The contagion spread first to Argentina, then Peru, and finally Brazil on January 8. In addition, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua continue to suffer from long-term US regime-change efforts.

• Coverage of this political pandemic by the US liberal press (i.e., the preponderance of mainstream media that endorse a Democrat for the presidency) reflects politically motivated agendas. Its spin on Brazil in particular reflects a trend among Democrats to greater acceptance of the security state.

• The address delivered annually by Russia’s president before the parliament may take place in late February, report both TASS and Ria Novosti, citing sources in the State Duma.

• We knew that Elon Musk had driven away tons of top advertisers, which is kind of a big deal, as the company has been desperate for revenue, if only to cover the interest payments Elon loaded the company with by using a $13 billion loan as part of his $44 billion purchase. Elon keeps talking about how much he’s cut costs, but killing off the revenue isn’t particularly helpful either. Earlier, we had noted that both Elon directly, and other internal reports, had suggested that ad revenue at the company had been sliced by a somewhat astounding 40%. Since then, we’ve seen that the company is desperately offering to give advertisers a $250k match if they promise to spend $250k.

• Fragmentation is a particular curse of the modern world. We live in a bewildering array of systems and networks, of groupings and cultures. In market society we are continually being sold one thing or another. The grabs for our attention and focus are seemingly infinite. There is not much to bring us together as people, especially around concepts about how we might create a better society.

• There seems to be some design in this. The very idea we might create a better society stands in challenge to business as usual. Since the 1980s, we have lived with the neoliberal ideas that the market rules, there is no alternative, and, as neoliberal icon and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families.

• I just want to share some back-of-the-envelope math. I’m increasingly convinced that Twitter (or at least the network neighborhoods that comprise my Twitter experience) is becoming a ghost town. Here’s why:

• There have been a bunch of stories about how one of Elon’s big “cost saving” techniques was to stop paying for basically anything, including rent.

• Twenty House Democrats on Monday pressed the Biden administration to immediately halt the flow of security funding to the Peruvian government over its vicious crackdown on protests against unelected President Dina Boluarte, who rose to power following the arrest of leftist President Pedro Castillo last month.

• Profiling New York Governor Kathy Hochul last year, I labeled her the “un-Cuomo.” Admirers and detractors alike gave her credit for a collegial approach to decision-making, pulling in legislators, sometimes even opponents, to confer about her next moves, in a way her disgraced predecessor Andrew Cuomo never did.

• By Ralph Nader It is showdown time. Senator Bernie Sanders, new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee versus Big Pharma. The self-described “democratic socialist” from a safe seat in Vermont has long been a Big Pharma nemesis.

• Trai observed in the paper that while in the past telecommunications and broadcasting served two distinct purposes, and as such were government by separate regulatory and licensing framework, it is no longer the case.

• “Today’s evolving digital technologies and ongoing deregulation are beginning to blur the boundaries that once separated these two functions, at least from the perspective of carriage of these services,” the sector regulator further observed.

• As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a pair of cases about online platform liability, it is also considering a separate pair of social media lawsuits that aim to push content moderation practices in the opposite direction, adding additional questions about the First Amendment and common carrier status to an already complicated issue.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• After its founder rejected some conspiracy content, the Conscious Life Expo once again takes a more suspicion-friendly approach.

Censorship/Free Speech

• China had just 2,600 nursing rooms in 2019, when 14.6 million babies were born that year.

• Since July, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the criminal group had been planning the assassination of New York-based journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who just two years ago had been the target of a foiled kidnapping attempt linked to Iranian intelligence operatives.

• An Yle poll in 2021 found that a majority of Finnish MPs did not want to change Finland’s law on the sanctity of religion, which includes the possibility of a six-month prison sentence for blasphemy.

• However, some MPs called for changes to the law based on freedom of speech concerns.

• The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Finland to change the criminal provision, arguing that it restricts freedom of expression.

• The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has said that these amendments are likely to exacerbate the persecution of the beleaguered religious minorities and minority sects.

• The HRCP Chairperson, Hina Jilani, in a statement issued from Lahore on Friday, said the enactment would further increase persecutions of the minorities.

• The Pakistan National Assembly unanimously passed the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act 2023 last week, enhancing the minimum punishment for those who insult the revered personalities of Islam from three to 10 years along with a fine of Rs 1 million. It also makes the charge of blasphemy an offence for which bail is not possible.

• This latest piece of legislation has left human rights activists alarmed, as they fear the laws would be misused to settle scores and further persecute religious minorities like Hindus and Christians in Pakistan.

• The move this week by Parliament to further strengthen the nation’s strict blasphemy laws, which are often used to settle personal scores or persecute minorities, has raised concerns among rights activists about the prospect of an increase in such persecution, particularly of religious minorities, including Christians.

• As Pakistani society has turned more conservative and religious in the past several decades, religion and display of religiosity in public life have become ever more pronounced.

• “Pakistan was to review its harsh blasphemy laws. It has made them even harsher…The National Assembly has unanimously passed an amendment to the laws that widens the net and makes punishment more stringent under these laws…. The blasphemy laws are often misused in Pakistan to settle personal scores. It is also used to persecute its small minorities.”

• Recently in Pakistan, however, an encouraging sign emerged: an interesting uproar on social media about a Christian female security officer who bravely stood up to a Muslim colleague threatening her with a false accusation of blasphemy.

• Indian American Muslim Council writes to Twitter CEO Elon Musk seeking the reversal of censorship of the BBC documentary critical of the Indian Prime Minister titled “India: The Modi Question”.

• In a two-page letter, the IAMC also sought Twitter to refuse all future compliance with media censorship requests from the Indian Government.

• Over the weekend, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting senior advisor Kanchan Gupta tweeted that both Twitter and YouTube had complied with orders passed down by the government, which has labeled the BBC documentary “hateful propaganda.” The documentary has also been apparently removed by the Internet Archive, although it’s not clear whether this was following a demand from the government or a copyright complaint from the original owner, and the Internet Archive didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

• Elon Musk is facing allegations of being complicit with state censorship after Twitter appeared to take sides with India’s government in a turbulent free speech fight over a documentary critical of the country’s prime minister.

• The fight revolves around a new documentary from the BBC that focuses on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delving into accusations that the politician allowed religious-based violence against Muslims. India is majority Hindu with a Muslim minority.

• Google-owned YouTube and Mr Musk’s Twitter have been receiving flak for complying with the Indian government’s demand to prevent users from sharing the documentary. It reports for the first time a British intelligence report that held Mr Modi “directly responsible” for the Gujarat riots in 2002, where potentially thousands of Muslims were massacred, when he was the state’s chief minister.

• This week, India made global headlines by banning a BBC documentary on its prime minister, Narendra Modi, which focused on his role in religious riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002 when he was the state’s chief minister. The broadcast ban included a directive to YouTube and Twitter under the country’s technology laws, demanding they take down links to the documentary, which a government advisor said the companies complied with.

• The adult content sharing platform OnlyFans is no longer accessible in Russia, according to multiple Russian Telegram channels and media outlets. The site is showing a 403 error, which suggests that it’s been blocked by its owners.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Attorneys and journalists, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living under political asylum in the Ecuador embassy, amended their lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for allegedly spying on them.

• Inspired by the narrative form of Homer’s Odyssey, Assange Odysseia tells the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and, with the help of witnesses, experts as well as political and cultural figures, sheds light on facts and events that are little known by the general public.

• Trump concedes that he consented to Woodward recording their conversations for the purpose of a book, and gave 19 interviews to the veteran journalist in 2019 and 2020, which Woodward included in his 2020 book “Rage.”

• But the former president is arguing the agreement doesn’t cover the inclusion of those audio files in “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook collection of the recordings published by Simon & Schuster Inc. last year.

• Tut.by drew the government’s ire for its coverage of the August 2020 contested presidential elections, when Lukashenko claimed victory and opposition candidates were detained or forced to flee. When demonstrations broke out across the country, authorities arrested scores of protesters and journalists.

• The government later branded Tut.by and other independent outlets as “extremist.” In May 2021, officials raided the newsroom, blocked access to its website and detained staff, including the editor-in chief Marina Zolatova and general director Lyudmila Chekina. A few months later, Tut.by was declared “extremist” and banned.

• The Supreme Court agreed with the circuit court in that while Eesti Ekspress journalists Sulev Vedler and Tarmo Vahter and their employer Delfi Meedia AS did disclose criminal investigation details without permissions from the prosecution, fining them was not justified in this case.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Denmark has been named the least corrupt country in the world for the fifth time in an annual index – but that does not mean the Nordic country is corruption free, according to a representative from the organisation behind the ranking.

• In a new report, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch calls on Kyiv to investigate the Ukrainian military’s “apparent use of thousands of [banned] rocket-fired antipersonnel landmines” in and around the city of Izyum. The findings are based on interviews with more than 100 people, including “witnesses to landmine use, victims of landmines, first responders, doctors, and Ukrainian deminers.” HRW also found copious physical evidence in and around Izyum showing the use of PFMs (anti-infantry high-explosive mines) — colloquially known as “butterfly mines” or “petal mines” — and observed blast signatures consistent with these weapons, which have reportedly maimed dozens of local civilians. Meduza summarizes the report’s key findings.

• Incarcerated Georgians and their loved ones have struggled to stay in touch after the Georgia Department of Corrections began switching communications services from JPay to Securus, as the former merges its systems with the latter. This change was accompanied by the emergence of a more stringent and increasingly punitive prison communications policy.

• While the Georgia Department of Corrections’ (GDC) policy was written in 2018, it is only now being enforced, according to incarcerated people and their loved ones. Under the policy, people who wish to communicate with someone inside must submit an application and submit to government screening. Additionally, a prisoner may only have 12 people on this approved communications list.

• Women from across Afghanistan have been telling us about their daily lives under Taliban rule.

• On that December 13, 2022, the young woman was nevertheless determined to press charges against the man she had just separated from, and even to have an abortion. After staying with her mother in the Vienne department for a few days, she spoke out about the fear he caused her: harassment by text message, threats, an attempt to strangle her. Since she converted to Islam, Marvin J. has also been spreading the idea that the Qur’an allows a man to beat his wife…

• On December 26, the Iranian chess player participated in the World Rapid Chess Championship in Kazakhstan with her head uncovered, a silent protest that is a very serious offense in her native country. After the photos circled the world, she announced her intention to settle in Spain. Her story represents the cause of freedom that so many Iranian women are fighting for

• The five Memphis police officers charged on Thursday with murdering Tyre Nichols after he was stopped for an alleged traffic violation were not ordinary cops on the beat. They were members of an elite unit bearing the type of name usually given to a villainous secret society in a James Bond movie: SCORPION. As journalist Radley Balko, who specializes in writing about police abuse, noted in The New York Times, “The SCORPION program has all the markings of similar ‘elite’ police teams around the country, assembled for the broad purpose of fighting crime, which operate with far more leeway and less oversight than do regular police.” (The SCORPION unit was disbanded on Saturday).

• Video footage released Friday, taken from officers’ body cameras and a street surveillance camera, shows a different story. In the videos, police quickly yank Nichols from his car, shout obscenities and threats, and then pepper spray him. Nichols flees, and when police finally catch him a second time, officers kick him, hit him with a baton and repeatedly punch him in the head while he’s being restrained.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• The changes include new or reworked roles for a variety of top executives, including Maggy Chan, who joined from the BBC last month and will oversee global ad sales and partnerships; Mark Marshall, who will lead a centralized national sales team; Frank Comerford, who will lead local ad strategy; and Dan Lovinger, who leads a sales team dedicated to the Olympics.

Monopolies

• Ryan Davis at IP360 is reporting that Rep. Darryl Issa is the new chair of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. He was previously Chair 2015-2019.

Patents

Software Patents

• The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests.

• This month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is a great example of that. U.S. Patent No. 9,054,860 has been used by a company called Digital Verification Services, LLC, (DVS) to sue more than 50 companies that provide different types of e-signature software.

• There’s no evidence that the inventor of this patent, Leigh Rothschild, ever created his own e-signature software. But in patent law, that doesn’t matter. He acquired this patent in 2015, by adding a trivial, almost meaningless limitation to an application that the U.S. Patent Office had spent the previous seven years rejecting.

• You can’t learn much about how to verify digital identities from the patent owned by Digital Verification Services. But the breadth of work on actual digital verification can be gleaned by looking at the long list of companies and products that DVS has sued. In fact, DVS has sued more than 50 different companies. Some are large, like NASDAQ-listed DocuSign, but many more of its targets are small companies with less than 50 or even less than 10 employees. They stand accused of offering “hardware and/or software for digital signature services.”

Trademarks

• The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled six (6) oral hearings for the month of February 2023.

Copyrights

• In June 2022, the operators of pirate IPTV service Nitro TV were ordered to pay $100 million in damages to broadcaster DISH Network. To recover at least some of the millions made by the service, DISH obtained permission to seize and sell a house worth almost $1 million. After failing to participate in the original lawsuit, the defendants are now trying to defend their house.

• Online piracy lawsuits against individual file-sharers rarely make it to trial, but a case in Florida between Strike 3 Holdings and an alleged pirate is moving strongly in that direction. A recent order provides positive news for the rightsholder but that won’t prevent the defense from being able to use the term “copyright troll” in court.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• I always peeled from the stalk end until I visited Thrigby Hall, a zoo in Norfolk. A keeper gave a talk as she fed the gibbons, and said that it’s only humans who start at the stalk. We watched the gibbons start at the other end, and later I tried it. I’ve never gone back to the stalk end.

• It’s been a really long time since I last was this excited about an album! I’m about halfway and it’s pretty good. But there’s this little something in Ireland and Australasia, even in France, missing here…

• At first I was planning only a quick mention in the tinylog, but that doesn’t make justice to how much I appreciate these compilations. So let’s make a short summary of my favorite compilations and songs.

Technical

Internet/Gemini

• When I setup my Gemini server in the beginning of December of 2022, I used Agate with Ed25519 certificates. They are more modern than the ECDSA ones and are the ones you should use.

• But judging from my Agate log, a lot of requests fail, apparently because they don’t support this newer algorithm. While from a security standpoint this is not a big deal, because no sensitive data will be transfered, but I prefer current technology and don’t like abandonware.

• I’m not sure about my general feelings here. Do I want to be more inclusive or am I thinking about reaching more people too much and therefor emphasizing the performative aspect of publishing on the internet. I despise this.

• 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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