● 02.06.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 06/02/2023: Escuelas Linux 8.0 and Many Political Issues

Posted in News Roundup at 9:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• Making Home Assistant easier to configure, scoring music with FOSS, protecting yourself against phishing, 3 very different distro releases, traffic shaping and QoS, and more.

Kernel Space

Applications

• Comprehensive guide on some of the best Ethereum wallets that you can use on your Linux and its distros such as Ubuntu that works best for you.

Instructionals/Technical

• Archives are a common way of storing and transferring multiple files in Linux. However, extensive archives can be difficult to manage and transfer, especially if they exceed a certain size limit. One solution to this problem is to split the large archives into multiple smaller files, each with a specified size limit.

• Java is a popular object-oriented programming language that has been widely used for developing a variety of applications, from desktop to mobile and web. One of the most basic concepts in Java programming is printing to the console. This is where the System.out.println() method comes into play.

• The split command in Linux is a useful tool for splitting large files into smaller parts. This is useful when dealing with large files that are too big to be transferred or managed easily.

• balenaEtcher is a user-friendly and efficient tool widely used for creating bootable USB drives and SD cards and works well on Linux Mint-based distributions. Its popularity stems from its ease of use, reliability, and robust features that simplify creating bootable media.

• Brave is a free, open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. that offers a faster, more secure, and private browsing experience compared to traditional browsers like Firefox. Whether you are browsing the web for work or leisure, Brave Browser provides the tools you need to stay protected online.

• Ubuntu Kylin is a popular Chinese-specific edition of the Ubuntu operating system that features the Kylin Desktop Environment. This unique desktop environment has been specifically designed for the needs of the Chinese community, offering a smooth and seamless computing experience.

• All the major Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, etc use the systemd init system today for managing and controlling various services while the system is running. In this guide, we explain the systemd commands you can use to manage systemd services using systemctl.

• The Documentation Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the Writer Guide and Calc Guide release 7.5, narrowing the time gap between the software release date and the Guides’ release date.

• Linux kernel has an integrated firewall named netfilter, but you manipulate it through command lines such as the good old iptables, or nftables which will eventually superseed iptables.

• The text color works in Bootstrap by using several classes, such as “text-primary”, “text-info”, “text-light”, “text-dark”, “text-danger”, and more.

• This is on the zombie process and also the causes and the procedure to kill these processes also the ways to identify them using simple commands

• DPKG, also known as Debian Package Manager, is a package management system used in Debian and Debian-based Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others. The package manager is responsible for managing the installation, removal, and upgrade of software packages.

• Introduction If you’re using a Linux-based operating system, you’ve probably heard of the DPKG package manager. DPKG is a powerful tool that helps you install, update, and manage packages (or software) on your system.

• If you’re familiar with the Linux operating system, you’ve probably heard of Yum. Yum is a package manager that makes it easy to install and manage software on your Linux machine. It’s a powerful tool that can help you automate software installations, keep your system up to date, and even resolve dependencies between packages.

• Introduction dpkg is a package manager that is used in Debian-based Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, to manage software packages. A package manager is a tool that helps you to install, remove, and manage the packages or software installed on your system.

• Introduction When it comes to managing packages in a Linux system, there are multiple package managers available, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. One of the most widely used package managers is apt, which is used by many popular Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• KDE’s Plasma desktop environment, once considered something of a resource hog, has more features than ever and is Linux’s most configurable desktop, yet it’s as easy on resources as relatively lightweight desktops such as Xfce.

• No surprise, given that I recently wrote that it was a “slow month” for my Free Software activities, that I skipped FOSDEM too. My recurring memory of the event is cold, sleet, snow, miserable weather and a cold draft across the KDE booth – and returning from the event with a hangover and recharged, nonetheless, by seeing how the whole Free Software world hangs together.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Older versions of the utility give you with a simple toolbar icon that you click on to enable Caffeine (to prevent your system from sleeping, or a screensaver from kicking in), and click on again to disable.

• But the latest version integrates with the Quick Settings menu introduced in GNOME 43. It adds a “Caffeine” pod option that, like other Quick Settings pods, you can click on to enable/disable instantly.

• There’s also a new sub-menu with one-click timers for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 30 mins, plus ‘infinite’ (which is default option)

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Esuealas Linux is a distribution aimed at the education sector, from preschool to high school, and includes a collection of educational software. This distribution can be installed on either 32-bit or 64-bit hardware and is based on Bohdi Linux.

• The list of pre-installed educational software is impressive, with the likes of TuxPaint, GCompris, TuxMath, Scratch, WxMaxima, Geogebra, Kalzium, and many more. Along with the educational software, you’ll also find standard packages such as LibreOffice, GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, and more.

New Releases

• The last release of Legacy OS was in 2014 and was based on Puppy Linux. It was intended to be a general-purpose lightweight distribution based on Puppy Linux with a complete set of applications, packages, media codecs, etc.

• The aim was to provide a complete operating system for older computers. However, the distro stopped releasing after 2014. Until now.

BSD

• KDE e.V. supports the KDE community, and has a staff of people to make that happen. Your contributions make that possible. I’ve been saying that for ages. But did you know that the FreeBSD Foundation supports theFreeBSDcommunity, and works on the same basis?

• Every few months, someone asks me not how to install a FreeBSD or NetBSD desktop, but whether it’s worth doing. Michał Sapka emailed with this most recent comment:

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has recognized Rachel Cassidy, SUSE’s SVP Global Channel & Alliances on its 2023 Channel Chiefs list.

• Every year, CRN honors the IT channel executives who work tirelessly to advance the channel agenda and deliver successful channel partner programs and strategies through the Channel Chiefs list. The 2023 Channel Chiefs have helped their solution provider partners and customers navigate an increasingly complex landscape of interconnected challenges and shifting industry dynamics. With the innovative strategies, programs, and partnerships of these Channel Chiefs in place, the solution provider community has continued to thrive.

• Back in 2012, I received a box of eight hundred openSUSE 12.1 promo DVDs, which I then set out to distribute to local Linux users’ groups, tech conferences, other SUSE crew in Australia, and so forth. I didn’t manage to shift all 800 DVDs at the time, and I recently rediscovered the remaining three hundred and eighty four while installing some new shelves. As openSUSE 12.1 went end of life in May 2013, it seemed likely the DVDs were now useless, but I couldn’t bring myself to toss them in landfill. Instead, given last week was Hack Week, I decided to use them foran art project.

Fedora Family / IBM

• “Even the most junior SRE on call starts having director authority.[..] There is a power in that relationship that SRE does have when they think something is in danger. And it’s a power we have to be careful not to misuse. But it’s important, because that’s our job.”

• This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

• A few days ago I posted about Fedora 38’s frame pointer change. I stated there that perf using only DWARF information produced inaccurate stack traces. But this isn’t true at all. After working on trying to reproduce those results (with the binutils developers who offered to help) I realised that I made a mistake on the DWARF (Fedora 37, pre-frame-pointer change) results, using:

• Streamline creating container instances with Red Hat OpenShift and Git

• It’s no longer enough to declare security is important for your organization. If that’s true, you’re also automating as much of your posture as possible – otherwise, you’re losing ground to cybercriminals and other threats.

• “If security is a priority for you – it is, isn’t it? – automating that security had better be a priority as well,” says Gordon Haff, technology advocate, Red Hat.

• Technology has been growing exponentially for years,doubling by various measuresevery two years. Industry experts predict digital transformation activities to exceed 3,700B by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.6 percent. Given this growth rate, business leaders must continuously improve leadership talent, strategic partnerships, and organizational capabilities.

Debian Family

• Synced with the software repositories of the Debian GNU/Linux 11.6 “Bullseye” release as of February 4th, 2023, the SparkyLinux 6.6 release is powered by Linux kernel 5.10.166 LTS, but it also offers support for the latest and greatest Linux 6.1 kernel series, which can be installed alongside Linux kernel 5.10 LTS from SparkyLinux’s unstable repos. On the other hand, the ARM images ship with Linux kernel 5.15.84.

• This release updates the SparkyLinux in-house built tool for creating live USB disks (sparky-live-usb-creator) with support for persistent storage. The devs note the fact that with this feature you’ll be able to use a SparkyLinux live system directly from a USB disk and save your work or installed packages on the bootable media.

• For over a year now, Fre(i)e Software GmbH (my company) is involved in Ubuntu Touch developmt. The development effort currently is handle by a mix of paid and voluntary developers/contributors under the umbrella of the UBports Foundation. We are approaching the official first release of Ubuntu Touch 20.04 with rapid pace.

• And, if you are a non-Englisch native speaker, we’d like to ask you for help… Read below.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, today named Regis Paquette, VP Global Alliances and Channels, to its 2023 Channel Chiefs list. This is Regis’ third time appearing on the list. This list identifies top IT channel vendor executives who have helped their solution provider partners and customers navigate an increasingly complex landscape of interconnected challenges and shifting industry dynamics with innovative strategies, programs, and partnerships. “I am honored to once again be included among CRN’s list of leading Channel Chiefs. Our partnerships are everything,” said Regis Paquette, Vice President Global Alliances and Channels at Canonical. “We have built out an amazing global team to address endless opportunities with distributors and VARs around the world. I look forward to continued channel and reseller program growth, and supporting our partners with additional tools for success, including new enablement resources.”

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 773 for the week of January 29 – February 4, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

• The publisher of Ubuntu makes a move to collaborate within the media and entertainment industry.

• Canonical has joined the Academy Software Foundation to help promote and advocate for the use of open source software in the media and film industries.

Devices/Embedded

Open Hardware/Modding

• Similarly to all electronic computers, the Raspberry PI computer boards need a stable power supply in order to work correctly.

• The breakout board for the Librem 5 is a great way for hardware hackers to add functionality to your phone. When attached, you’ll have nicely exposed programmable pins.

• The vast majority of automated, CNC-controlled machine tools utilize a kinematic motion system that is (not coincidentally) the easiest for people to wrap their heads around. This is your standard Cartesian layout, in which the tool head rides on linear rails along two or three axes.

• After the successful launch of the new Project Hub at the end of last year, we are ready for a new challenge and the opportunity for you to be rewarded for your awesome work.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• I’m going to be having some fun on the Fediverse over the next few days/weeks. If you’re comfortable doing so, please join in, as the more people who take part, the better.

• Well, I have a fair number of followers onMastodon, around 20,000 last time I checked. So I thought it would be fun to pose some questions to the fediverse, as polls. Then I could compile the results and see what kind of wonderful folk we have on the fedi.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• Forum member Caramel suggested some improvements for the ‘firefox-skel-ask’ PET. This is in the menu at “Internet -> Download latest Firefox”. I have improved the script to be truly multi-language.

• The PET has been uploaded, as well as others that I was tardy in updating online:

• Back from holiday in Brisbane, gradually catching up with the backlog.

Programming/Development

• Last weekend, at FOSDEM 2023, I watched a Lightning Talk by Frank Vanbever titled “Lua for the Lazy C developer”. I had recently suggested at work that we should be using Lua to script the behavior of some systems which are written in Go, so the talk strongly resonated with me.

• Lua is an ideal scripting language for embedding into other programs because it is small and provides excellent bindings in both directions – Lua code can call native code, and vice versa.

• Looking like this: Lots of people walked around the conference this year with sarcastic or otherwise amusing messages scrolling or blinking on them.

• Protocol Buffersare a popular choice forserializing structured datadue to their compact size, fast processing speed, language independence, and compatibility.

• Partly to celebrate moteus controllers being back in stock and partly because a lot of important work has backed up, we’ve just released a new firmware version for moteus (2023-02-01) that has a little bit of something for everyone.

Perl / Raku

• The past week it became known to the Raku Community that Ben Davies (Kaiepi / @Mrofnet) passed away suddenly at home in the early hours of January 14, 2023 with his father Eric. Ben has worked on MoarVM, NQP and Rakudo since 2017.

Python

• Tutorial on how to perform the bubble sorting in Python using a logic that works by repeating the adjacent elements if they are not in the correct order.

• Practical tutorial on matrix multiplication with the help of NumPy library to perform the multiplication operations on a matrix in a Python application.

• In this article, we discovered that we can easily generate random numbers from the uniform distribution using the NumPy library’s random module.

Standards/Consortia

• Stanford student co-founds wearable augmented reality device startup that transcribes live captions for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people.

Leftovers

• Residents near the site of a train derailment that sparked a massive fire in East Palestine, Ohio, were urged to evacuate immediately Sunday night due to the risk of an explosion, authorities said.

• How can the international community help? What will the impact be for a region already reeling from a decade-long war and refugee crisis?

• A 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria early on Monday, killing more than 2,300 people as they slept, leveling buildings and sending tremors that were felt as far away as Greenland. Hours later, a second earthquake of magnitude 7.6 struck the same region. Follow FRANCE 24′s liveblog for the latest developments.

• The Latin Catholic Church in İskenderun, and the 17th century Yeni Cami mosque in Malatya are among those damaged.

• At least 1.762 people lost their lives, 12.068 were injured, and 5.606 buildings collapsed.

• Minister of Education announced school closures for the whole country until February 13.

• 1517 Fund posted an interesting question on their Twitter account…

• A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked wide swaths of Turkey and neighboring Syria on Monday, killing more than 2,300 people and injuring thousands more as it toppled hundreds of buildings and trapped residents under mounds of rubble or pancaked floors.

• CNN’s Scott McLean shows harrowing video on the ground in Syria after a powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, leaving thousands of people killed or injured.

• More than 1,300 people are dead after an earthquake hit southern Turkey. CNN meteorologist Karen Maginnis explains why the region is susceptible to earthquakes and why this one is so consequential.

• A steady stream of injured were flowing into an overwhelmed hospital in the town of Darkush, in rebel-held northwestern Syria on Monday, after a deadly earthquake struck the region.

• February 07, 2023 12:22 AM

• The propellers of both engines went into “feather in the base leg of descending”.

• Around 2.5 million more people visited Finland’s museums last year than in 2021. The five most popular museums were all in Helsinki.

• In 2022, nearly 1,000 nurses requested authorities to withdraw their licenses as they left the profession.

Science

• Less than 15% of the 92 million tons of clothing and other textiles discarded annually are recycled. Woven-in labels made with inexpensive photonic fibers, developed by a team led by U-M, could change that.

Hardware

• YouTube videos and blogs don’t ever prepare me with a sense of scale. Wandering around an Osaka computer store with Clara made us realise just how gargantuan so many modern computer cases are, even ones billed as being smaller.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Britain faces its largest ever strike by health workers on Monday as tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance workers walk out in an escalating pay dispute which the health minister said would place further strain on the National Health Service (NHS).

• Employees are constantly reminded of an impending recession, inflation, and continued public health concerns, which can impact employee mental health.

• The whole gang’s here.

• A mysterious twist.

Security

• It may be helpful to detect these requests. Many use unique host names. This will make detecting the request in DNS logs easy even if TLS is not intercepted.

• A critical vulnerability affecting wireless communications base stations from Baicells can be exploited to cause disruption or take complete control of data and voice traffic.

• Did you know: “Disable JavaScript” as a browser feature was born out of an exasperation with plugging security holes?

• I didn’t. But then I watched “A Hipster History of CORS”and the speaker, Devdatta Akhawe, references the history of the feature as outlined in the bookJavaScript: The Definitive Guide.

• Security in JavaScript in those early days was WDD: whack-a-mole driven development.

• Hackers are targeting a two-year-old VMware server software vulnerability in a ransomware campaign aimed at extorting thousands of companies around the world, Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency warned on Saturday (Feb. 4).

• Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare was forced to cancel procedures and divert patients after taking systems offline following a Thursday night cyberattack.

• Unpatched and unprotected VMware ESXi servers worldwide have been targeted in a ransomware attack exploiting a vulnerability patched in 2021.

• Episode 441 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

Privacy/Surveillance

• After reading supposedly secure messages for five months, authorities then arrested the alleged owners and some users of Exclu.

• More than 450 cybersecurity-related mergers and acquisitions were announced in 2022, according to an analysis conducted by SecurityWeek

• The postSecurityWeek Analysis: Over 450 Cybersecurity M&A Deals Announced in 2022appeared first onSecurityWeek.

• Instant Checkmate and TruthFinder have disclosed data breaches affecting a total of more than 20 million users.

Defence/Aggression

• In recent years, the international security environment has evolved in a way that lays greater emphasis on information gathering and analysis. This is largely due to the proliferation of digital technologies and the internet, which have made it easier for individuals, organisations, and governments to access, share, and disseminate information.

• As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the one-year mark, an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians have faith in their country’s victory and reject the idea of a compromise peace with the Kremlin, writes Mariia Zolkina.

• United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres added his condolences to those of senior South African defence ministry and national defence force personnel on the death of a SA Air Force (SAAF) flight engineer when the Oryx he was crew on came under fire in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sunday (5 February).

• The United States has reported over 3,500 deaths from gun violence since the start of this year with more than 50 mass shootings recorded, according to Gun Violence Archive.

• How much of Shell’s record US $40 billion profit was due to the Ukraine war and freezing Russia out of the market? If you apply the “excess deaths” methodology we became familiar with during covid, comparing profit against a running average of the previous five years, we get a figure of about $25 billion “excess…

• The reshuffle plans come in the midst of a corruption scandal around the Ministry of Defense.

• The Chinese balloon that floated over US airspace last week before being shot down by a US military jet Saturday has raised questions of international law on both the US and Chinese sides.

• Lithuanians donated over one million euros in one hour for radars for Ukraine. An IT company then matched the sum. Over 6 million euros were raised during the first week of the Radarom! campaign.

• Su Mon Htet was treating wounded pro-democracy guerillas when she was hit.

• The leader of Russia’s Republic of Tyva in Siberia, Vladislav Khovalyg, has sent his representatives to parts of Ukraine’s Russia-occupied Donetsk region after a group of Tyvan men mobilized to fight with the Russian armed forces invading Ukraine complained of ill treatment.

• A noted sociologist in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, Iskander Yasaveyev, has been sentenced to three days in jail on a charge of inciting hatred because of an analysis he wrote about Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

• The war is intensifying in a string of villages on the eastern front, where doctors struggle to handle an influx of gruesome injuries and soldiers fret about a Russian army sending waves of new conscripts.

• Russia is deploying hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers, in small groups, to probe for vulnerabilities in Ukrainian defensive lines.

• On February 6, Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, took part in the meeting of the General Affairs Council of the European Union in Brussels, which examined the priorities of the Swedish Presidency and made preparations for the special European Council on 9-10 February.

• The Citizenship and Migration Affairs Office (PMLP) has decided to withdraw ‘National Bolshevik’ Beness Aijo’s Latvian citizenship, LETA reported on February 6.  In a separate case, the legitimacy of Russian billionaire Pyotr Aven’s Latvian citizenship is also being examined by one of Latvia’s security services.

• Hybrid warfare refers to the use of a mixture of conventional and unconventional military tactics and techniques in order to achieve strategic objectives. This type of warfare has become increasingly prevalent in recent years and has been utilized by numerous actors, including state and non-state actors.

• The visit of Anthony Blinken US Secretary of State to China comes after the official Chinese announcement of the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Russia within the framework of the US administration’s continuation during the current year of its strategy to confront Chinese military and economic influence in the Indo-Pacific region…

• After $67 billion and more than 20 years, the F-22 finally won a dogfight against an unarmed, nearly immobile opponent.

• Plus: The French face “le wokisme,” a Tennessee “eyelash specialist license” would require 300 hours education, and more…

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Tunisia’s Mobile ID program is opaque and risks undermining users’ data protection and privacy. The government must share details of the program to foster trust and transparency.

Environment

• The Global Warming Policy Foundation recently started a campaigning platform highlighting what it calls the “costs of net zero”.

Energy/Transportation

• The project includes a 5 MW power purchase agreement with SaskPower.

• Insurance, finance and other services for Russian oil shipments will be banned if oil sells for more than US$60 a barrel.

• The new management of FTX is pressuring hundreds of politicians and political organizations to return millions of dollars donated by the crypto platform or its founders before it went bankrupt last year.

• A year ago, crypto successfully scraped and scrapped to get a foot in the door in Washington. But in the wake of crypto’s winter, and FTX’s spectacular collapse, that door has now slammed shut.

• Why it matters:Gaining legitimacy in Washington has been an essential part of the industry’s push into the mainstream. But a series of recent announcements from the Biden administration suggest there’s a crackdown ahead.

Wildlife/Nature

• Officials say a polar bear that killed a young mother and her baby Jan. 17 in western Alaska was likely an older animal in poor physical condition. However tests have come back negative for pathogens that affect the brain and cause aggressive behavior. A state wildlife veterinarian collected and examined samples from the bear’s head a day after it was killed. The results of analysis indicate it was an adult male and in poor health. Standard tests conducted on tissues are negative for rabies, toxoplasmosis, distemper and avian influenza. State and federal wildlife officials say there is no definitive explanation as to why the bear was in poor condition.

• As one of the world’s most endangered birds returns to its ancestral skies, partners work to eliminate a persistent threat on the ground.

• Wait, what?!

• The earliest evidence of its kind.

Finance

• In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, conversations around workplace burnout and mental health are coming to the forefront.

• Israel-based digital entertainment company Playtika offered to acquire Rovio at 9.05 euros per share last month.

• Dell Technologies Inc. disclosed in a regulatory filing today that it plans to let go about 5% of its workforce, or about 6,650 employees.

• FTX wants that money back by Feb. 28, warning recipients that making a donation to a third-party charity “does not prevent the FTX Debtors from seeking recovery from the recipient or any subsequent transferee.”

• PC shipments are plungingdue to a tough economy and the pandemic recovery, and that’s proving to be especially painful for Dell. The company islaying offabout five percent of its workforce, or roughly 6,650 employees, to cope with a “challenging global economic environment.”

• French President Emmanuel Macron’s government faces a crunch week of defending its contested pension reform, with fireworks expected in parliament and mass strikes and demonstrations planned on the streets.

• Danish online supermarket Nemlig.com has reached an agreement for working terms for its drivers with the trade union 3F Transport.

• Staff on board Denmark’s trains are subjected to both physical and verbal abuse when at work, rail employees said in a survey.

• THE BOARD of the Industrial Union on Sunday showed a green light to new two-year collective bargaining agreements in the technology and parts of the chemical industry.

• Lithuania’s commercial banks are making excessive profits due to interest rate hikes. The central bank governor says the windfall profits could be taxed away, while the finance minister proposes to spend the money on defence.

• The Reserve Bank is expected to take the cash rate to its highest point in over a decade, as its past hikes start to bite households. The RBA board is widely anticipated to announce a 25 basis point rise when it meets on Tuesday, taking the cash rate to 3.35 per cent. RateCity says this […]

• Gov. Greg Abbott has already announced that he’d sign the bill if passed.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Opposition groups in the Lithuanian parliament, Seimas, have collected signatures to set up a temporary commission to look into whether someone leaked information about an investigation against a conservative MP.

• With the album »Time Out of Mind« Bob Dylan catapulted himself back into the limelight in 1997. Now a remix of the album is released, showing its significance – and unleashing its full musical power.

• I’ve always been a super-Googler, coping with uncertainty by trying to learn as much as I can about whatever might be coming. That included my father’s throat cancer. Initially I focused on the purely medical.

• A highly diverse company — Palestinians, Arab countries, retired military, the US, which has its own interests in the Middle East, and even the Israelis themselves, is opposing the most radical right-wing government in Israeli history.

• There is something quite unsettling about Joe Biden, the US president:  in a long political career, there has never been a war he didn’t like.  He voted for Bush’s Iraq war, and extended the Afghan war by multiplying US force levels.  When Vice-President, he supported Obama’s bombings in Yemen (at the behest of Saudi Arabia)…

• Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen in a raid on a West Bank refugee camp on Monday, according to Israeli security officials.

• Seizing a controlling majority in Hong Kong’s legislature was seen as a potential “lethal constitutional weapon” against the government, prosecutors argued in a high-profile national security case involving 47 pro-democracy figures. The closely-watched trial of 16 Hong Kong democrats who denied the charge of conspiracy to commit subversion began on Monday….

• If you ask the average Harry Potter fan how to visit Hogwarts, they will likely tell you to purchase a ticket to a Universal Studios Theme Park, where you can stroll through Diagon Alley, explore a real-life replica of Hogwarts castle and have a drink at the Leaky Cauldron.

• The acquirers said they want to “monetise and modernise these iconic legacy brands”.

• The BBC has apologised after a report on the Today programme suggested the Manchester Evening News is “just rammed with clickbait and sensationalism”. The Radio 4 discussion on 23 January was pegged on The Mill, a local journalism newsletter hosted on Substack covering the Greater Manchester area.

• Chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos told staff GB News is entering “phase three” of its development.

• Sultan Hassan was “seriously defamed” by articles on three publishers’ websites, the High Court heard.

• The president is sounding more like a candidate every day, but Democrats are having a hard time communicating his successes and even settling on a calendar of their own.

• Ray McGinnis Canada’s Liberal government couldn’t justify invoking the Emergencies Act based on the existing definition in the legislation. So, it obtained a legal opinion to embellish parameters for declaring an emergency.

Censorship/Free Speech

• An episode of “The Simpsons” that includes a line about “forced labor camps” in mainland China has been pulled from Disney’s streaming platform in Hong Kong.

• Disney removed an episode of ‘”The Simpsons” from its streaming platform in Hong Kong that mentions “forced labor camps” in China, the Financial Times first reported Monday and Axios has confirmed.

• Six months after being stabbed, British author Salman Rushdie on Tuesday publishes his new novel “Victory City”, an “epic tale” of a 14th-century woman who defies a patriarchal world to rule a city.

• In his first interview since a near-fatal knife attack in August, the novelist talks with David Remnick about his recovery, and his new novel.

Civil Rights/Policing

• In France, nearly 125,000 women have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). The fight against this practice has led to the creation of psychological and surgical care over the last 40 years but the subject remains taboo. FRANCE 24 provides an overview of the situation on the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, February 6.

• About 51% of women in marginalized racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. and four other countries said they’d experienced racism or discrimination at their current workplace, according to a new survey released last week.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez and ISED Minister François-Philippe Champagne publicly released what amounts to a mandate letter to new CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides this morning. The letter contains many laudable goals and aspirations: a more timely, transparent, and inclusive commission, an emphasis on competition in telecom, and an affirmation of the importance of freedom of expression in broadcast. Yet what matters when it comes to the current government and communications issues is not what it says, but what it does. The letter may represent a tacit acknowledgement of the disaster that was the Ian Scott era – the ministers themselves note the waning public trust in the CRTC – but the problems go beyond its chair.

• Many Canadians started the new year with an unwelcome surprise as they learned that Canada had extended the term of copyright by additional 20 years with no mitigation measures or efforts to limit the harmful effects of the policy. That the extension did not get much attention was seemingly by design as the government buried it in a budget implementation bill and posted no news releases on it.Mark Swartzis a Scholarly Publishing Librarian at Queen’s University and has been an active participant in copyright reform issues for many years.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• I like Cory  Doctorow a lot, and tend to agree with him on most things, but this screed about Netflix changing its “family” settings is not one of them.

• He drills down hard on the “family” naming and grinds his ax on a variety of things he sees as “enshittification” (I had to double-check there were two t’s) of the service in its long and winding history from physical mailer of DVDs to streaming studio.

Monopolies

• Just leave your heart, and nationwide injunction, in San Francisco.

• Amazon’s influence over third-party sellers on its platform is substantial and spans continents, a new report says.

Patents

• The inventors here used conventional plant breeding to create a new form of petunia (Calibrachoa).  WinGen first obtained a plant patent (PP23,232); followed by a utility patent that was filed as a continuation-in-part (US9313959). The claims require two components (1) a particular petal phenotype and (2) a particular genotype…

• The countdown begins to the online award ceremony on 23 February, when the winners will be revealed.

• The EPO BoA says the choice of format now rests with individual boards, sparking outrage from attorneys who say in-person hearings are the ‘gold standard’

• On February 3, 2023, Unified filed a petition forinter partesreview (IPR) againstU.S. Patent 10,791,502, owned by Togail Technologies Ltd., anMagnetar Capitalentity. The ’502 patent relates to error-handling procedures for system information requests in communications and has been asserted against 3GPP devices.

• Just four months before the Unified Patent Court is set to open its doors, mixed IP firms Meissner Bolte and Santarelli have announced the launch of a new cooperation. It will function under the brand name ‘European Patent Litigators Network’ (EPLN).

Trademarks

• Attempts to register common slogans, internet memes, and informational material regularly hit the failure-to-function wall at the USPTO. But the Office has the burden of proof, and here its evidence fell short with regard to two refusals of the mark 100% THAT BITCH for certain clothing items, including t-shirts and baseball hats. The Board concluded that the evidence failed to show that the proposed mark is a common expression in such widespread use that it fails to function as a mark for the identified goods.In re Lizzo LLC, 23 USPQ2d 139 (TTAB 2023) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Peter W. Cataldo).

Copyrights

• The first time I ever heard a sample in a hip-hop song was in Jay-Z and Ye’s anthem, “N—– in Paris.” Just as the song reaches its peak, a clip from Will Ferrell’s satirical “Blades of Glory” (2007) interjects with the now-classic line, “It’s provocative … it gets the people going!”

• Like an empty pair of boots, I don’t have a footer in my blog. Which means I don’t have a copyright statement. A few of you have asked if it was a sign my blog theme was broken or incomplete.

• Getty Images Holdings Inc. is suing Stability AI Ltd., a generative artificial intelligence startup, for allegedly misusing its stock photos. The Verge reported the case today. Getty Images’ lawsuit, which was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, is the second the company has brought against Stability AI.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Curious stuff. But it made me think about elections. In many countries, no type of card would have overall control. Analysts would predict a coalition of “number on the front” cards would emerge, agreeing to ignore their differences on embossing. Meanwhile in the UK, the first-past-the-post voting system would mean a landslide win for embossed cards, with voters left to ponder whether tactical voting could be the only way to bring about more progressive card numbering.

• Last week I finished reading “Flying Blind” by Peter Robison. The book details the story of the Boeing 737 MAX, a passenger airliner that suffered two fatal crashes less than two years into service, and the changing culture of Boeing from the days of “The Incredibles” that built the 747 to the shareholder value-driven philosophy of today’s executives. The author–an investigative journalist with Bloomberg–has an evident left-wing bias, but his proclivities ultimately don’t distract too much from the harrowing tale of a company that put quarterly stock reports over safety and quality assurance. If you are interested in civil aviation or business ethics, I highly recommend this book. ISBN: 9780385546492.

• Reading back on my recent posts, I’ve definitely settled in to a pretty boring formula for these posts. Initially I thought it would be interesting to be upfront about how familiar I am with an artist before writing about an album, but it often feels more like a weak way of defending the opinion that I don’t think everyone needs to hear today’s album before they die. That’s not really an opinion that needs a lot of defending. The idea that there are 1001 albums that anyone needs to hear before they die is ridiculous. So I can probably cool it with the justifications.

Technical

• Linux kernel has an integrated firewall named netfilter, but you manipulate it through command lines such as the good old iptables, or nftables which will eventually superseed iptables.

• Today, I’ll share my experience in using nftables to manage my Linux home router, and my workstation.

• I won’t explain much in this blog post because I just want to introduce nftables and show what it looks like, and how to get started.

• I added comments in my configuration files, I hope it’s enough to get a grasp and make you curious to learn about nftables if you use Linux.

• My personal experience with the GhostPC (one day I will dedicate a gemlog to it) is doing globally well, but its very weakest points are correlated and are: the slow internet connection in conjunction with the web browser experience. So far I have been using the stock Firefox but it struggles a lot so I decided to try out a couple of alternatives.

• I believe that there are far too many blogs trying to sell us something. Often that something is the author. Those authors face the added challenges of attracting readers, guessing what they would like to read, offering exactly that and, on top of all that, selling what they want to sell them. Those authors can fear rejection, because, for them, rejection is failure. If I don’t fear rejection, if I don’t value my work at how others react to it then I am free, “as in free speech”.

• This is a very brief post announcing a fascinating discovery.

• It appears to be possible to use the cosine similarity approach powering explore2.marginalia.nu as a substitute for the link graph in an eigenvector-based ranking algorithm (i.e. PageRank).

• The original PageRank algorithm can be conceptualized as a simulation of where a random visitor would end up if they randomly clicked links on websites. With this model in mind, the modification replaces the link-clicking with using explore2 for navigation.

• my computer history is long and complex. i spent a good chunk of it just hanging around various communities doing nothing but lurk.

• over time i got more and more into doing more and more with less and less. i got to a point where i was spending 90% of my time in the terminal, with the only time i needed out of it was to use a web browser. i’m sure you’ve noticed how crazy the internet is with all it’s java-y stuff and everything, and terminal browsers just ain’t up for most of it.

• the thing with software that uses less, is for some reason it breeds a level of elitism. i’ve never had a desire to be ‘elite’ just a general desire to enjoy my computing time in ever more weird ways. things get more and more close to pushing an ideology i don’t enjoy the less lines of code people use and i don’t really understand why.

• 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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