● 03.03.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 03/03/2023: NuTyX 23.02.1 and Linux 6.2.2

Posted in News Roundup at 9:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• We cover user groups that are running in Lithuania. This article forms part of our Linux Around The World series.

Audiocasts/Shows

• This week, Linux Out Loud chats about up-and-coming hardware using Linux. Welcome to episode 51 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.

• Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we spend a show inventing topics which need a whole other show to talk about, we reminisce about Google Plus, and: [00:01:36] Twitter Blue, Meta Verified: the social networks go premium.

Kernel Space

Applications

• In this guide, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of turning your Ubuntu system into a media center. We’ll cover everything from installing the necessary software to configuring your system for optimal performance. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a fully-functional media center that can stream all of your favorite content directly to your TV. So let’s get started!

• Have you ever wished you could access your Ubuntu desktop or server from another location, such as your home or office? With remote access tools, you can easily and securely connect to your Ubuntu system from anywhere in the world. In this article, we will guide you through the process of setting up and using remote access on Ubuntu. We’ll cover various tools such as VNC, TeamViewer, SSH, and RDP, and show you how to use them to control your Ubuntu system remotely.

Instructionals/Technical

• Server maintenance is an essential part of ensuring that your IT infrastructure runs smoothly and efficiently. By creating and following a regular maintenance checklist, you can ensure that your servers are operating optimally, reducing the risk of downtime and data loss.

• Laravel is a popular PHP web application framework that simplifies the process of building modern, scalable web applications. One of the key features of Laravel is its ability to handle background jobs through its queueing system.

• Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Forgejo on Debian 11. Forgejo is a fork of Gitea. It arose from the fact that Gitea was acquired by a company and this didn’t sit well with the community who preferred to make a fork.

• Are you a Linux user that’s been wanting to try out Slack? Or are you already a developer who loves Slack and wants to use the app on your Linux machine? Either way, Slack is a satisfactory collaboration software choice for many professionals.

• In this tutorial, you will install Vuls – an open-source and agent-less vulnerability scanner – on an Ubuntu 22.04 server. You will also set up Vuls by creating the configuration file and building Vuls databases via the command-line tools provided by Vuls.

• FFmpeg 6 is a highly anticipated release of the widely-used open-source multimedia framework. This major update brings many new features and improvements, making it a versatile command-line tool for processing and converting audio and video files.

• In recent years, the Linux community has seen an increase in the popularity of containerized software packaging formats, specifically Flatpak and Snap. These formats offer a range of benefits to developers, system administrators, and end-users alike, including increased flexibility, security, and ease of deployment.

• BalenaEtcher is a popular open-source tool for writing images to SD cards, USB drives, and other storage devices. It provides a user-friendly interface and a simple, three-step process for creating bootable media. Unlike many other image writing tools,

• PyroCMS is a popular open-source content management system (CMS) that is built on top of the Laravel PHP framework.

• The Snap packages has been around since Ubuntu 16.04. Just like the long-known deb format has its own commands to perform operations on .deb packages, there are commands dedicated to managing Snap packages as well. In this article we will learn how to perform basic management operations on Snap packages.

• Learn how to use the Cockpit GUI for your first container with this brief tutorial from expert Jack Wallen.

• The popular FFmpeg multimedia library announced the new major 6.0 release yesterday. Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 18.04.

• Python 3.7 is an earlier release of the Python programming language that more recent versions have surpassed. Nevertheless, it is still a reliable and well-respected release often used in various applications.

• Avidemux is a free, open-source video editing software popular among video editors, filmmakers, and hobbyists. It is a simple yet powerful tool that offers a range of video editing capabilities, including cutting, filtering, and encoding. With its user-friendly interface and extensive features, Avidemux has gained a significant following in the video editing community.

• Rust is a modern systems programming language designed to offer safe concurrency, high performance, and low-level control over computer hardware. It was created by Mozilla in 2010 and has since become increasingly popular, with a growing community of developers and an expanding ecosystem of libraries and tools.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• If you need help staying on top of your to-dos, make a note to check out Sticky Notes, a new productivity app that hit Flathub this week.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Welcome antiX and Noir linux to the strict list, with edition 22 antiX is fully functional and lighter than ever without a trace of elogind!

New Releases

• This version of NuTyX includes the latest software updates, bug fixes, and security patches. It’s a great way to keep your system up-to-date and running smoothly.

BSD

• TrueNAS SCALE might not be a distribution on the radar of most cloud native developers, but it should be.

Arch Family

• If you are a Linux enthusiast looking for a powerful and flexible operating system, then Arch Linux is worth considering. Arch Linux is known for its flexibility, customization options, and minimalistic design.

• However, setting up Arch Linux can be daunting, especially for beginners. That is why several Arch Linux-based distros are available that aim to make the installation and setup process easier and more user-friendly.

• In this list of best Arch Linux distros, we explore the best ones available and see how they fit common users with the above pointers.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Digital business is here to stay, whether this means improving internal workflows or directly delivering capabilities that enhance the customer experience through applications hosted across the hybrid cloud. Once these solutions are built and deployed, smooth operation becomes the goal.

• Learn about the unit files Quadlet supports and how to use them to deploy containers using Podman and systemd.

• Persisting Ansible fact data improves execution time, particularly when running different playbooks in sequence or targeting many hosts.

Debian Family

• One of the distinctive features of Debian is its conservative approach to including software in its repositories. Unlike other distributions, Debian does not rush to include the latest software versions, instead preferring to thoroughly test and evaluate each new release before adding it to its repos. This approach has several benefits, including enhanced stability, reliability, and security.

• On the other hand, however, this has its drawbacks. For example, if you use the distro as a desktop system, the versions of the applications and the desktop environments are not the most up-to-date. For example, the current stable version of Debian 11 relies on GNOME 3.38 and KDE Plasma 5.20. Given that these versions are far from the most up-to-date, it is expected that as a new stable release of the distribution approaches, one of the main topics to be how up-to-date the included software will be.

• The 2nd monthly Sparky project and donate report of the 2023…

Open Hardware/Modding

• YouTuber MadEDoctor decided to beat the shortage of Raspberry Pi 4 8GB by converting a 1GB model into the top of the line Pi

• The latest Unicorn from Pimoroni sees the Raspberry Pi Pico W controlling 1,024 RGB LEDs in a densely packed board.

• Anne Barela’s Floppy Thumb Drive project houses the Adafruit PyPortal internet display in a 3D-printed enclosure that looks like a 3.5-inch floppy disk, just a bit thicker. The computer-in-a-floppy-disk project runs CircuitPython code to list the first 12 files stored in the flash and can display photos or animations, play audio, or execute scripts.

• A call upon the industry to engage more — not less! — in ASM cobalt mining.

• If you use Arduino IDE frequently, the default interface can feel monotonous and boring. You can add more variety by customizing your Arduino IDE with different background themes, colors, and font schemes. As the following steps illustrate, it’s actually very easy to personalize your Arduino IDE experience.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Open source software is software that is released under a license that allows companies the right to use, study, change, and distribute the software for any purpose. Open source software can also be developed in a public manner.

Events

• SCALE or the Southern California Linux Expo is an annual conference that takes place in the Los Angeles area. SCALE 19x (July 2022) was the first event since the period that shall not be named.

• SUSECON is entering it’s second decade of providing awesome technical content, and while the online editions of SUSECON have been amazing, we are excited to get back to our roots — bringing people together to learn, to share, and to come away knowing much more than when we arrived.

Programming/Development

• In this series, we’ll be bringing you a variety of career stories from people working with Qt.

Python

• Brief: Write a Python program to add two numbers. It provides a step-by-step guide on how to write a program that prompts the user to enter two numbers, adds them together, and displays the result. Python is a popular programming language known for its simplicity and ease of use.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Shell scripting is a powerful tool for DevOps automation. It allows you to automate repetitive tasks, manage and configure your infrastructure, and streamline your deployment processes. However, writing effective shell scripts requires following best practices and using certain techniques to make your code efficient, modular, and maintainable.

Leftovers

• Entrepreneurs and innovators gathered at Stanford on Feb. 23 for APARC’s conference on social tech futures. Keynote speaker YOSHIKI, leader of rock bands The Last Rockstars and X Japan, encouraged members of the Stanford community to pursue their dreams and make a positive impact.

• Indian Minister of State Jitendra Singh Wednesday urged G20 member states to adopt strict anti-corruption stances in advance of the group’s 2023 New Delhi summit.

• The first time I experienced heartbreak, I was 13 years old. But let me be clear — it wasn’t because my crush overlooked the rumor I started about us on our middle school’s Instagram confession page.

• When Bridget Grant, the narrator of Gwendoline Riley’s new novel My Phantoms, was a child, her favored state was a dissociated one. She speaks with her mother as if from a script, presenting a series of prompts—about her mother’s childhood, her school uniform, her divorce—to which the other can quickly provide “the right answer, an approved answer.” Whenever Bridget and her sister Michelle are forced to spend time with their father, they learn “to sort of fade out of the moment” when he goes off on one of his comic routines, as if averting their eyes from a wild animal’s challenge.

• The most recent episode of the PBS genealogy docuseries Finding Your Roots focused, in part, on the previously untraced family tree branches of activist and scholar Angela Davis. If you are on social media and have even a passing interest in this sort of thing, you’ve probably already watched the clip of host Henry Louis Gates Jr. announcing to Davis that she is “descended from one of the 101 people who sailed on the Mayflower.” The camera catches Davis reeling from the revelations, and the clip went viral, launching a million Twitter hot takes. But the snippet provides just one piece of the story of Davis’s ancestry unearthed by the show. Only in watching the rest of the episode is it made clear that her connection to that 10th great-grandfather was made during the Jim Crow era, through a previously unknown white paternal grandfather who had been her Black grandmother’s long-time neighbor. The episode also reveals that Davis’s mother, who grew up in foster care and never knew either of her biological parents, was fathered by a white Alabama lawyer, state representative, and senator named John Austin Darden. Through Darden, the show uncovered another of Davis’s ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War and later enslaved at least six Black folks in Georgia.

• Cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the once-funny comic strip “Dilbert,” has finally gotten what he always wanted. For a long time now, Adams has acted like that kid in third grade who craves negative attention. Now he’s got it. Adams reportedly said…

• We’ve said many times that while woodworking is a bit outside our wheelhouse, we have immense respect for those with the skill and patience to turn dead trees into practical objects. Among such artisans, few are better known than the legendary Norm Abram — host of The New Yankee Workshop from 1989 to 2009 on PBS.

Education

• In this bonus “Dispatches from Project Censored,” Allison Butler and Nolan Higdon, two of the most acclaimed media literacy educators working today, offer no-nonsense tips for teens to protect themselves against surveillance. As technology floods into the classroom, teens often fall prey to invisible violations of their rights to privacy and free expression. These rights should not be left at the school’s doorstep, but today’s technology make snooping and spying in the classroom easier than ever. Butler and Higdon’s “Is Your Teacher Spying on You?” gives teens a primer for taking back their rights and protecting them into the future.

• Though states are seeking to reduce the teacher shortage, the problem only seems to be getting worse. Recently, the National Education Association reported that 55 percent of teachers are planning to leave the profession earlier than they planned. This means that, if current trends persist, the gap between the number of working teachers and the number of open positions will widen significantly by 2030. This is where Bernie Sanders, the new Senate Chair of Health, Education, and Labor, comes in.

Hardware

• Topton is selling a mini PC based on the Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N quad-core processor with 8GB LPDDR5 RAM for $156.44 and up depending on the selected SSD capacity. But despite its low price, the specifications are not too bad with dual 4K video output thanks to HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort interfaces, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity, four USB ports including one USB 3.0 port, and an audio jack.

• While bicycle gearboxes date back to at least the 1920s, they’re relatively unseen in bike racing. One exception is Honda’s race-winning mid-drive gearboxes, and [Alee Denham] gives us a look at what makes these unique drives tick.

• Early home PCs usually had a floppy disk and a simple hard drive controller. Later, IDE hard drives became the defacto standard. Of course, these days, you are more likely to find some version of SATA and — lately — NVME connectors. But a standard predating all of this was very common in high-end systems: SCSI. [RetroBytes] recently did a video on the bus which he calls the “USB of the 80s.”

• On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo unveiled a key new plank in the work-in-progress known as American industrial policy. After a decades-long trade regime that permitted private oligopolies to decide where and how to produce semiconductors, the Commerce Department launched a $39 billion incentives program to give grants, loans, and other financial support to businesses and nonprofits to build chip fabrication facilities in America.

• A major Russian company is testdriving Arm-based PCs.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Spurred by a statewide organizing effort by Our Revolution, the city council of Newark, New Jersey on Wednesday passed a resolution officially declaring support for legislation to expand Medicare to all U.S. residents, guaranteeing healthcare as a right.

• US lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives Tuesday introduced legislation to expand railway safety precautions following the derailment of a train carrying toxic materials in East Palestine, Ohio.

• UNICEF says it is prepared to provide support and assistance to Iran to help solve a growing crisis over a mysterious wave of illness that has put scores of schoolchildren in hospital and sparked speculation of a plot to force the closure of girls’ schools amid a wave of unrest following the death of a young woman while in police custody for allegedly wearing a head scarf improperly.

• Some people might look in a grocery store’s dumpster and see garbage. But others are starting to see dollar signs.  New facilities are popping up in the US to help tackle food waste using a process called anaerobic digestion, which uses microbes to break down organic materials. Divert, a company working to address food waste,…

• China reacted to the FBI’s claim of a leak in a lab in Wuhan by calling on “the U.S. to respect science and facts.”

• Protesters marched for over two hours from Madrid Health Service Human Resources Directorate to Puerta del Sol square, where the regional government headquarters is.

• Researchers find that an increased heart rate can induce anxiety in mice, given the right context.

• Cooking continues to be the leading cause of residential fires, with almost a third of all building fires in Finland starting from cooking. According to the Finnish National Rescue Association, approximately 900 fires per year are caused by cooking. To raise awareness and prevent such fires, the association has released a guide to safe stove use, detailing the hazards of the kitchen and how to avoid them.

• A recent study by the University of Turku’s Child Psychiatry Research Center and the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland has found that the number of new psychiatric diagnoses among young people increased by almost a fifth after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The diagnoses increased especially among girls, teenagers, and in the Helsinki metropolitan area, where restrictions and COVID-19 infection rates were higher than in other parts of the country. Eating disorders, depression, and anxiety diagnoses increased the most during the study period.

Proprietary

• A New York Times reporter has a creepy experience

• Among the most read stories in the NYTimes in the last few weeks was the one by tech reporter Kevin Roose about his unsettling experience with Bing, the updated search engine by Microsoft. Initially delighted by its capabilities and speed, he changed his mind after discovering that Bing’s Open AI Chatbot was creepy. After a brief, getting acquainted period involving online searches and basic questions about AI capabilities, Roose began to get personal. Posing his questions as hypotheticals, he put the bot on the couch, probing its inner life. He asked about his analysand’s desires, fears and animosities. After some resistance, Sydney (the bot’s emerging alter ego) opened up, and out poured a surprising series of confessions and professions.

Security

• They generate a lot of business around games.

• Troy Hunt is collecting examples of dumb password rules.

• There are some pretty bad disasters out there.

• My worst experiences are with sites that have artificial complexity requirements that cause my personal password-generation systems to fail. Some of the systems on the list are even worse: when they fail they don’t tell you why, so you just have to guess until you get it right.

• A reporter used an AI synthesis of his own voice to fool the voice authentication system for Lloyd’s Bank.

• [Note: MPS’s phrase “encryption event” appeared to be a ridiculous — and dare we say, sleazy– attempt not to call it a “ransomware attack.” The district still has not described it as ransomware attack.]

• A man who was convicted of fraudulently obtaining the personal data of millions of South Africans is a wanted man after he skipped his sentencing.

• Karabo Phungula failed to appear in the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court, sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court, for his sentencing on Wednesday.

• It was the second time that he missed a scheduled court appearance in the case, in which he was accused of fraudulently obtaining a trove of personal and business data from data services firm, Experian, in 2020.

• Phungula, the founder of Hi-Pixel Communications, was convicted in October last year. On 14 February, he failed to appear in court for sentencing, citing ill health.

• College of the Desert has begun alerting the approximately 800 people who may be affected by a possible data breach during a malware attack last summer.

• The malware attack occurred in early July. The attack took down the school’s phone and online services for nearly the entire month.

• This week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the agency responsible for HIPAA enforcement, announced the formation of three new divisions within the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”). The new divisions – Enforcement, Policy, and Strategic Planning – are intended to enhance focus and efficiency in conducting HIPAA compliance reviews, developing policies related to HIPAA and health privacy, promulgating regulations, providing technical assistance, and educating the public about health privacy and cybersecurity requirements.

• High street retailer WHSmith has reported it has been the target of a cyber attack with hackers accessing company data.

• The company said information regarding current and former employees had also been accessed by hackers during the security breach.

• Bosses of the established retailer said the situation does not impact its trading activities and stressed that the brand’s website, customer accounts and customer databases were all safe, as they were operated on a separate system.

• If the victim of a cyberattack cannot determine whether data was accessed or acquired, should that increase the damages sought by plaintiffs in a class action suit? Or should it get the suit tossed out because the plaintiffs can’t prove any theft of their data?

• Kelly Mehorter reports about a class action lawsuit filed against Lubbock Heart and Surgical Hospital over a 2022 breach. The hospital notified 23,379 patients about a July incident in September 2022, but then updated their report in December 2022. The updated report frankly admitted, “Our investigation could not determine whether the unauthorized party did, in fact, access or copy any files but was unable to rule it out.”

• The Little Rock School District is continuing to seek an attorney general’s opinion on the legality of holding private school board meetings when reacting to a cyber- or ransomware attack on a district’s electronic information systems.

• Little Rock Superintendent Jermall Wright sent a lengthy letter in January to the attorney general’s office asking how to appropriately balance a school board’s obligations for disclosure under state law with the risk of harm to students and employees that public discussion of a cyberattack could pose.

• Eric Walker, staff attorney for the 21,000-student Little Rock district that experienced a cyberattack late last year, said this week that the matter is pending.

• A doctor has been suspended from clinical duties and reported to the police on suspicion of accessing medical records without their subject’s consent.

• A spokesman for North District Hospital said in a statement published on Tuesday night that they discovered the breach after a member of staff reported that she suspected her medical records had been accessed improperly.

• It said an investigation had found that a doctor had accessed the medical records of 29 individuals – including patients and healthcare staff – through the hospital’s Clinical Management System without their consent.

• After discovering in December that an organized crime group had obtained thousands of replacement Texas driver licenses, state public safety officials waited more than two months to publicly reveal the breach and start notifying those swept up in the operation.

• The criminal effort, disclosed to lawmakers Monday by Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw, targeted at least 3,000 Texans with Asian surnames, whose replacement licenses were then sent to Chinese nationals in the country illegally.

• In a refreshingly straightforward breach disclosure, Sentara Health in Virginia reports that on December 19, an anonymous individual called their Compliance Hotline to alert them that while searching for something online, the called had stumbled across an exposed file with patients’ Medicare billing information. Sentara quickly verified the caller’s report and determined that the file had been uploaded to Adobe Acrobat’s site by an employee of a Sentara business associate, Coronis Health. The employee uploaded the billing remittance file on October 17.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• People hoping to take advantage of a Hong Kong scheme to give away half a million free airline tickets faced hours-long online queues on Wednesday, as the Asian financial hub bids to woo tourists back.

• Check out our video on how to avoid potential scams when donating

Privacy/Surveillance

• To settle the complaint, BetterHelp has agreed to pay $7.8 million to partially refund consumers whose data has been compromised.

• As a safety precaution, the tech company sometimes bans users because the company has discovered that they “are likely to travel” with another person who has already been banned.

Confidentiality

• Back in January, we noted that T-Mobile had recently revealed it had been hacked eight times over the last five years. But a new report by security expert Brian Krebs suggests it could be far worse than that. According to Krebs, hackers are making a compelling case that they’ve managed to compromise the wireless giant’s network and internal systems 100 times in just 2022 alone:

Defence/Aggression

• In 2022 as a whole, at least 188 people were injured in attacks against refugees, 21 of them children. Police have identified suspects for many of the crimes

• Having used arms control to gain unilateral advantage over Russia, the cost to the U.S. and NATO in getting Moscow back to the negotiating table will be high.

• Hungary has further delayed a vote on ratifying Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession bids, according to an updated schedule published on March 2 on the National Assembly’s website.

• A delegation of Hungarian lawmakers plans to visit Sweden on March 7 to discuss the Nordic country’s bid to join NATO, a Swedish parliament spokesperson said on March 2.

• Russian volunteers are searching through graveyards, archives and the internet to determine how many of the country’s soldiers have actually died in Ukraine. A database they helped build provides some astonishing insights.

• “My country has been the target of 927 unilateral coercive measures and other criminal and illegal, direct and indirect, provisions,” the Boliviarian Foreign Affairs Minister recalled.

• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia wouldn’t test new nuclear weapons unless America did it first.

• THE FINNISH PARLIAMENT on Wednesday reiterated its overwhelming support for joining Nato.

• Members of the Parliament voted 184 for and 7 against a government bill regarding the membership, with one lawmaker casting a blank vote and seven being absent from the vote. President Sauli Niinistö has announced his intention to approve the national legislation without delay after the vote in the Parliament.

• The Biden administration today issued its vision for beefing up the nation’s collective cybersecurity posture, including calls for legislation establishing liability for software products and services that are sold with little regard for security. The White House’s new national cybersecurity strategy also envisions a more active role by cloud providers and the U.S. military in disrupting cybercriminal infrastructure, and it names China as the single biggest cyber threat to U.S. interests.

• Nowadays, few things are as hazardous to one’s reputational health as suggesting that Ukraine should make territorial concessions to Russia. The vehemence with which mainstream commentators reject such suggestions is awesome to behold.

• Yet if we truly care about the Ukrainian people, we should at least be able to have a civil conversation about territorial concessions. In the quest to end this calamitous war – which has cost so many lives and could cost many, many more – no stone should be left unturned.

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged his Russian counterpart to end the Ukraine war on the sidelines of G20 talks on Thursday, in their first face-to-face contact since the invasion.

• Violence against South Sudanese civilians increased sharply at the end of last year according to the United Nations (UN) mission in the world’s youngest country. The latest quarterly brief compiled by UNMISS shows the number of civilians “harmed” was up 87% – without giving actual numbers- for last October/December compared to the same period…

• The death in Mali of three Senegalese peacekeepers and wounds suffered by another five is condemned by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which called for swift response from the West African country’s transitional government. The peacekeepers, part of MINUSMA, were attacked by unnamed assailants near Songobia, south-west of Bandiagara, late in February.

• Businesses are increasingly witnessing the impact of protest movements and civil unrest on their operations, a trend that is forecast to grow according to insurance company Allianz Global.

• In methods strongly reminiscent of the West’s first colonial era of the 17th and 18th centuries – inescapably linked to the era of genocidal slavery – Russia’s Wagner Group is blazing an increasingly murderous trail in Africa for loot, strategic resources and geopolitical influence, according to a new report.

• The US has approved the sale to Taiwan of US$619 million in munitions for F-16 fighter jets, the Pentagon announced Wednesday, in a move likely to anger Beijing. The package includes 100 AGM-88B High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM), 200 AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles(AMRAAM), and launchers and dummy missiles for training…

• The latest report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, is comprehensive and devastating.

• The special rapporteur catalogues widespread, serious abuses, noting that the Taliban authorities have “normalized” the systematic violation of the rights of women and girls. He also suggests that their “discriminatory denial of women and girls’ fundamental human rights may amount to gender persecution, a crime against humanity.” The arbitrary detention of women protesters is highlighted, as well as edicts that have shut women and girls out of secondary and higher education, most jobs, and even the use of public parks.

• The special rapporteur describes a country under the Taliban in which there is “very little tolerance for difference, and none for dissent.” Journalists are increasingly subject to surveillance, intimidation, violence, and detention.

• Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov is calling on federal authorities to respond with “maximum severity” to the armed group that led a brief incursion from Ukraine into Russia’s Bryansk region on Thursday.

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was at the top of the agenda of a critical meeting of G20 foreign ministers this week in New Delhi. The issue has caused deep divisions within the G20, which includes 19 major economies and the European Union. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, spoke briefly on the sidelines of the summit on Thursday, though there was no diplomatic breakthrough between the two countries. The G20 meeting comes a week after China released a 12-point peace plan and as calls grow for a negotiated end to the fighting. To talk more about possible peace talks, we are joined by two guests: Vladislav Zubok, a Russian professor of international history at the London School of Economics, and Wolfgang Sporrer, a conflict manager and adjunct professor at the Hertie School in Berlin, who was head of human rights for the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission in Kyiv from 2014 to 2020.

• Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz reported Thursday that a Ukrainian military drone carried out a strike on the village of Sushany in the region’s Klimovsky District, causing a residential building to catch fire.

• While the world has been distracted, even amused, by the diplomatic tussle around China’s recent high-altitude balloon flights across North America, there are signs that Beijing and Washington are preparing for something so much more serious: armed conflict over Taiwan. Reviewing recent developments in the Asia-Pacific region raises a tried-and-true historical lesson that bears repeating at this dangerous moment in history: when nations prepare for war, they are far more likely to go to war.

• In The Guns of August, her magisterial account of another conflict nobody wanted, Barbara Tuchman attributed the start of World War I in 1914 to French and German plans already in place. “Appalled upon the brink,” she wrote, “the chiefs of state who would be ultimately responsible for their country’s fate attempted to back away, but the pull of military schedules dragged them forward.” In a similar fashion, Beijing and Washington have been making military, diplomatic, and semi-secretive moves that could drag us into a calamitous conflict that, once again, nobody wants.

• For nearly a year now, President Joe Biden has been trying to resolve the underlying ambiguity in previous U.S. policy toward that island by stating repeatedly that he would indeed defend it from any mainland attack.

• Seymour Hersh joins Aaron Maté to discuss his report on how the Biden administration bombed the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which blew up not only a vital Russian-German infrastructure project but a key off-ramp to peace in Ukraine.

• Two drones crashed on the territory of a Russian military base in Crimea on Wednesday night, the Telegram channels Baza and Astria reported Thursday.

• Tortuguita was killed by Georgia state police in a forest encampment in the outskirts of Atlanta on the morning of January 18th, 2023, in one of the highly militarized police raids that had become a regular feature of life for the forest-dwellers by then.  Tortuguita was 26 years old, and by all accounts was one of the folks anchoring the movement based in the woods that the mayor of Atlanta is still intent on turning into a huge police training camp, which folks have nicknamed “Cop City.”

• On February 16, a Guatemalan family contacted groups in southern Arizona about one of their family members who was lost in the Sonoran Desert after he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. They had his exact coordinates, they had a photo of him, and they had a photo of his ID. Martín (not his real name) had been walking for about six days with a small group of people but couldn’t continue because of chest pain. Around 9 p.m., volunteers from the Tucson-based Frontera Aid Collective—a search and rescue and humanitarian aid group founded about two years ago—got involved. One of its members, Taylor Leigh, contacted BORSTAR, the U.S. Border Patrol’s rescue, search, and trauma unit. Leigh hoped this unit could rescue the stranded man.

• According to Leigh, BORSTAR agent Hector Acuña told her she needed to contact the Guatemalan consulate because they couldn’t start a search until the consulate sent them the information. But the consulate was closed for the night. Another member of the Frontera Aid Collective, Scott Eichling, called BORSTAR again. Eichling said he wanted to make a report, and the dispatcher asked if this was about Martín. When Eichling said yes, according to the phone log, the dispatcher laughed and transferred him to Acuña, who told him they were “working on it.” When Eichling asked if they would start a search that night, Acuña said they would send someone in the morning. These were the first of more than 40 phone calls made by different people over two days. That night alone, humanitarian aid organizations called BORSTAR, the Three Points Police Department, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, and the Tohono O’odham Police Department.

• The Nuclear “War” in Ukraine May Not Be the One We Expect

• In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred American leaders and politicians warning that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein’s forecast remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks.

• Whether it’s a good idea or not, the decision has been made. We will be acquiring nuclear submarines. An important question follows; who will be responsible for keeping the reactors safe? Rex Patrick examines the issue after new information was released by Government under FOI.

• Thus far, the topic of nuclear safety has barely featured in public discussion about the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program.

• Speaking to the No2Nato meeting on Saturday, I had the challenge of telling a packed and highly motivated audience some things that they very much instinctively disagreed with, from a very different viewpoint to much of what they had heard from some excellent speakers all day.

• Only Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) voted against the resolution.

• The Ukraine conflict as catalyst: I wonder how many people who pay attention understood a year ago that Russia’s intervention and the West’s extravagant support for the Kyiv regime would prompt fundamental shifts in the global order such that the world is now a very different place […]

• Two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Jürgen Habermas, perhaps Germany’s leading public intellectual, published a commentary that triggered one of the country’s most ferocious political debates in decades.

• Regardless of whether the 84 percent enriched particles were accidental, this incident underscores the increased challenge in discerning Tehran’s nuclear intentions and the growing proliferation risk of Iran’s rapidly expanding nuclear program.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• With the radical transparency that has marked a long and principled life, Daniel Ellsberg – patriot, truth-teller, whistle-blower, anti-war and anti-nuclear activist – has announced he has inoperable pancreatic cancer; doctors say he has three to six months to live. As Ellsberg stressed his “joy and gratitude” for “a wonderful life,” many others offered moving tributes to “an American hero” and “a light for mankind.” “You made the world a better place,” said one. “What a life you lived.”

• Daniel Ellsberg, whose leaking of the Pentagon Papers and decades of anti-war activity have inspired generations of whistleblowers and activists, said Wednesday that he has terminal cancer, but that there’s “tons more” movement work for him to do before he’s gone.

Environment

• There is a conflict between ecocentric people struggling for freedom, and anthropocentric people threatening that freedom. This conflict, which happens beneath the surface of most media, constitutes a “secret war” for what the future of Earth will be.

• This secret war involves groups of people across the world using ecocidal pro-growth and inequitable family policies, as well as anthropocentric environmentalism, to quietly undo the progress that the world seemed to be making on multiple fronts: child equity, climate crisis mitigation, animal protection, as well as ensuring functional democracies. These groups involve many nonprofits that are knowingly undoing with one hand the success they claim to be making with the other. This last category of undoing—regarding our democracies—makes these family policies a secret war on freedom as well.

• Between the political and technological hurdles to achieving a global energy transition, the climate crisis can often feel deeply overwhelming. But articulating a solution to what is arguably the greatest potential catastrophe humanity has ever faced is no problem for ChatGPT—or at least, so the chatbot makes it seem.

• Climate organizations this week are calling out new legislation that would pour even more money into the “false solution” of carbon capture technology, which they warn is just a distraction by the fossil fuel industry that does nothing to address the climate crisis.

Energy/Transportation

• Over the past few years, Covid-19, climate change and Chinese economic coercion have catalysed rapid global economic, foreign relations and national security policy changes.

• A major power outage crippled several of Argentina’s provinces on Wednesday, including parts of Buenos Aires, plunging millions of people into darkness for at least two hours as summer temperatures soared, officials said.

• Last September, researchers in the UK launched a high-altitude weather balloon that released a few hundred grams of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, a potential scientific first in the solar geoengineering field, MIT Technology Review has learned. Solar geoengineering is the theory that humans can ease global warming by deliberately reflecting more sunlight into space.

• The UN is calling for a large effort to study solar geoengineering, but warns it’s too dangerous to implement immediately.

Wildlife/Nature

• The United States District Court for the District of Nevada Tuesday held that a county’s conditional permit regulations for housing exotic animals did not violate the US Constitution. Karl and Kayla Mitchell sued Nye County, Nevada, claiming that the conditions on their exotic animal permits were unconstitutional conditions and constituted a taking of property.

Finance

• The January data on consumer expenditures released yesterday had a lot of people freaking out. The story is that the Fed is going have to get out the big guns to really shoot inflation down.

• The restaurant manager refused a work permit because his salary was deemed too high to be believable has told The Local of the struggles he is facing as he battles to overturn the decision on appeal, while his lawyer has complained of his client’s ‘crazy’ treatment.

• Some 150,000 people who work in retail in Denmark will see their pay increase after trade unions and employers’ organisations came to a new agreement on working terms.

• AN AGREEMENT on the terms and conditions of employment for stevedores was reached on Wednesday.

• The breakthrough in the collective bargaining negotiations signals the end of a strike that had effectively suspended the loading and unloading of cargo ships at ports across Finland since 15 February, confirmed Ismo Kokko, the chairperson of the Finnish Transport Workers’ Union (AKT).

• When Donald Trump wanted to spend $2.5 billion in Pentagon money that Congress never appropriated to build his border wall, the Supreme Court of the United States, without explanation, acquiesced. Environmental groups had contended that under constitutional and federal law, the president couldn’t “irretrievably commit taxpayer funds” to a project that would wreak havoc across habitats and public lands along the Southwest border—let alone do so without Congress’s blessing. Hiding behind the shadow docket, the five conservative justices who sanctioned this scheme didn’t bother to put in writing why this disruption was justified. One year later, the same justices agreed to let Trump’s border construction continue undisturbed.

• In his appearance at the Robodebt Royal Commission yesterday, Stuart Robert wants us to believe that not only was he the one that finally put a stop to the illegalities of income averaging, but that he knew it was wrong all along. However, the pesky Westminster system stopped him from speaking out.

• A ventriloquist could not speak out of both sides of his mouth like former LNP Government Minister Stuart Robert. In his combative performance at the Robodebt hearings, Robert appeared to blame it all on the public service who kept advice from him for months. At one stage, he earned a rebuke from Commissioner Cathy Holmes when wanting to “put something” to the unflappable Senior Counsel Assisting, Justin Greggery, making it clear to Mr. Robert who was asking the questions.

• A coalition of 403 progressive advocacy groups on Thursday outlined conditions they say must be met for a pending Indo-Pacific trade pact to achieve important labor and environmental objectives and urged the White House to promote them during upcoming negotiations.

• Citing the “soaring cost of essentials” that have “pushed hardworking New Yorkers to the brink,” Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday proposed rules to strengthen enforcement of the state’s anti-price gouging law.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday that there are limits to a president’s immunity from lawsuits filed over their performing of official duties—namely, that immunity does not extend to allegations that former President Donald Trump incited violence leading up to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy picked a bad time to go all in with Tucker Carlson and Fox News, providing them “exclusive” and supposedly “unfettered” access to 44,000 hours of US Capitol video from the January 6 riot. For the last two weeks, we’ve been learning that Carlson, along with other marquee hosts like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, plus Fox News’s controlling owner Rupert Murdoch, all knew Trump and his minions were lying about 2020 election fraud, but kept featuring said minions, as well as the entire bogus fraud story, out of fear of losing audience and risking the firm’s toxically swollen stock price.

• Fascism in its different forms has always thrived on attacking teachers, schools, critical ideas, democratic values, and allegedly unpatriotic groups while stifling dissent in the alleged name of freedom. Ron DeSantis is a religious, political, and ideological demagogue whose view of power is as ruthless as it is opportunistic. He views academic freedom and freedom of speech as liabilities to be stamped out, not unlike what happened in Nazi Germany. He has weaponized the government to punish industries such as Disney who challenged his “don’t say gay” bill. The dangerous nature of this precedent should be clear, particularly regarding how it resonates with tactics used in repressive regimes in the past.[1] He has signed into law Bill 233 which requires Florida’s public colleges and universities to conduct annual surveys of students’ and faculty members’ beliefs in order “to determine the institutions’ levels of ‘intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity’.” One can only assume that those with views at odds with DeSantis’s view of history, politics, and authority will be labeled as “unpatriotic” and will be pressured to conform to his indoctrinating pedagogy and policies or lose their jobs. This is not unlike what happened in the witch hunts conducted during the McCarthy era by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s in which a number of faculty were fired for having alleged subversive views.[2] In addition, DeSantis’s banning ideas, and entire fields of study–such as gender and race studies– aims to turn learning at the college and university levels into a form of stupidity, one whose ultimate goal is to undercut the ability of young people to think critically, learn from history, and make power accountable.

• Every level of education is under siege in Florida. Regarding public education, DeSantis intensifies and expands a policy of erasure and manufactured ignorance that is endemic to the GOP which provides the driving momentum for a nationwide banning of books and restrictions on teaching about race and gender in public schools. As Julianne Malveaux notes, “More than 1600 books have been banned in 138 school districts in 33 states so far, as the momentum for ignorance is increasing. Among the banned books – Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; and Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale.”[3] In addition, as Sarah Schwartz points out in Education Week: “Since January 2021, lawmakers in 44 states have introduced bills or other policies that would restrict how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an Education Week analysis. Eighteen states have imposed these bans.”[4]

• As the U.S. House Committee on Ethics announced an investigation into embattled Congressman George Santos, progressives on Thursday renewed calls for the New York Republican to be expelled from office over his elaborate lies and controversies.

• Sweden’s ‘racial ideology’ movement carried out more activities last year than in 2021, and viewed the Sweden Democrats as a party representing its interests to a greater degree, according to a new report from the Expo Foundation.

• When Chicago elected Harold Washington as its mayor in 1983, it was a transformational moment for not just the nation’s third-largest city but all America. Washington was the city’s first Black mayor. He was also a street-savvy political maverick who had broken with the city’s powerful Democratic machinery to beat incumbent Mayor Jane Byrne in a primary and then prevail in one of the most contentious general elections in the history of American urban politics. And he was a progressive who was willing to take on reactionary forces by building a multiethnic, multiracial rainbow coalition that challenged the conventional wisdom of American politics in an era of deep divisions and a narrow understanding of what was possible.

• “Nicaragua Frees Hundreds of Political Prisoners to the United States,” the New York Times (2/9/23) reported. In an unexpected move on February 9, the Nicaraguan government deported to the United States 222 people who were in prison, and moved to strip them of their citizenship. The prisoners had been convicted of various crimes, including terrorism, conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected government, requesting the United States to intervene in Nicaragua, economic damage and threatening the country’s stability, most relating to the violent coup attempt in 2018 and its aftermath.

• Nicaraguan political leader and historian Dora Maria Téllez is free! After 20 months of imprisonment in Managua’s brutal El Chipote prison, Tellez—a legendary figure in the Sandinista revolution jailed since before the country’s November 2021 elections—was one of 222 political prisoners who were released by the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo government on February 9 and immediately sent to Washington, D.C., on a charter flight after the United States agreed to provide asylum to the exiles.

• An annual report released Thursday by researchers in Sweden sounds the alarm about countries that are “undergoing autocratization” but also highlights how people around the world “have reclaimed democracy and stopped negative trends.”

• Americans have been paying taxes to disenfranchise themselves, as government agencies and subcontractors undertake a massive digital blacklisting project.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Their videos get huge amounts of clicks and profits on YouTube. And their vlogs show a Syria that has turned the page on years of civil war. But these so-called “apolitical” travel influencers are shown around the country by regime-sponsored guides that shape the narrative. One guide who appears in a number of travel vlogs even has family ties with the Syrian deputy minister of tourism.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Censorship is never innocent, made worse for its strained good intentions.  For those responsible for setting and policing such policies, the inner judge comes out, stomping on assumed meanings, interpreting and removing things to ensure the masses are not corrupted.

• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Monday urged Congress to vote against a piece of legislation that would ban TikTok in the US.

• Google has removed 13 URLs with IP addresses, directing to unlawfully published copyright-protected content, from its search system at the request of the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania (LRTK).

• Every day this week, the police visited Cathedral Square in Vilnius, where a destroyed Russian tank has turned into a scene of political battles. Pro-Russian people turn up there carrying flowers and candles, while Ukraine supporters throw them away, and fights break out.

• In January, a federal court dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit filed against Marilyn Manson (real name Brian Warner) by one Ashley Morgan Smithline, who last month admitted that she’d “spread publicly false accusations of abuse” after being “manipulated” by Evan Rachel Wood.

• A women’s rights group in Hong Kong is set to stage a march ahead of next Wednesday’s International Women’s Day, after the organiser said it had secured “verbal” approval from the police. The Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association said on Thursday that police had approved their application to organise a demonstration on Sunday to promote […]

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Mail Newspapers editor-in-chief Ted Verity said future growth would come from digital.

• Jeremy Paxman claimed there was “f**k all” coverage of Parliamentary debates.

• Claire Hodgson says her biggest priority is to keep Cosmo relevant.

• We digest two lawsuits targeting Google’s allegedly monopolistic ad practices and what they mean for publishers.

• Press Gazette’s monthly ranking of the top 50 news websites in the world, using Similarweb data.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Authorities tighten ‘stability maintenance’ protocols as Xi Jinping moves on the financial elite.

• Ayshemhan Abdulla is one of scores of Uyghurs punished by Chinese authorities for the ‘crime.’

• The June 2022 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court’s reactionary majority to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, which has enabled Republican lawmakers to prohibit or restrict abortion in more than half of the states, unleashed a life-threatening crisis and should be condemned as a violation of the country’s obligations under international law.

• Jewish-led peace groups on Wednesday called on the Biden administration to bar Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the U.S. ahead of a planned visit over his recent comments about the Palestinian town of Hawara, which was the target of a deadly rampage earlier this week by Israeli settlers.

• Rarely does the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations make an official remark expressing happiness over any UN proceeding concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

• Indeed, the Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour is “very happy that there was a very strong united message from the Security Council against the illegal, unilateral measure” undertaken by the Israeli government.

• On Sunday, Israeli settlers ransacked and torched Palestinian homes in Huwara, near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, killing at least one Palestinian resident and injuring dozens of others. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of backing a pogrom in Huwara. Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that Huwara needs to be “wiped out” and that the state of Israel should do it. In response, 22 Israeli international law experts sent a letter to Israel’s attorney general demanding an immediate investigation against Smotrich for potential war crimes. U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price also condemned Smotrich’s comments, though he framed the conflict as bilateral by referencing the need to condemn Palestinian “incitement to violence.” Meanwhile, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called on the U.S., as the Israeli government’s most powerful international ally, to take action to stop its violence. For more on this latest escalation of the Israeli occupation, we’re joined by Saddam Omar, a Huwara resident who witnessed the settler attacks, and Gideon Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist and columnist for Haaretz.

• They came at dusk, wearing masks. They carried automatic rifles, pistols, knives and clubs. They swung chains. They hauled cans of petrol. They descended out of the Samarian hills bent on revenge, 400 riotous Israeli settlers. They came with the intent of making the villagers of Huwara pay for the deaths of two Israeli settlers, killed that morning on the road to the settlement of Har Bracha, a settlement built on lands seized from Palestinians in 1983. They came shouting slurs and “Death to the Arabs.” They came to make Huwara burn.

• The IDF knew they were coming. Shin Bet knew they were coming. Benjamin Netanyahu knew they were coming. None of them moved to stop the raid that was destined to happen, the mayhem and destruction members of Netanyahu’s own coalition government had called for. Hours before the raid, settler Davidi Ben-Zion demanded  “erasing Huwara today” and for showing “no mercy” to its villagers.

• Progressives expressed anger Thursday after U.S. President Joe Biden said that he would sign a Republican-authored resolution repealing criminal justice reforms recently approved by the elected leaders of the District of Columbia.

• Colorado lawmakers are considering two bills that would reform the way family courts in the state handle cases involving allegations of domestic abuse, saying ProPublica’s reporting on the issue has catalyzed efforts to change the state’s custody evaluation system.

• Rep. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat and the chair of the state House Judiciary Committee, praised ProPublica’s investigation, which found that four custody evaluators on the state-approved roster last year had been charged with harassment or domestic violence. In one case, the charges were dismissed. One case — that of psychologist Mark Kilmer — led to a conviction. In the two others, it is unclear how the charges were resolved.

• Stanford researchers suggested that Black children may be overreported as suspected child abuse victims, while white children may be underreported.

• The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and revoke the federal constitutional right to abortion continues to have life-altering and life-threatening consequences. With more than a dozen states banning abortion, a climate of fear and confusion has loomed over health care providers, abortion funds, helpers, and anyone seeking to end their pregnancy in recent months.

• Beyond exerting direct control over our bodies and our health, abortion bans and other criminal laws give prosecutors license to investigate, arrest, and prosecute people who provide necessary health care. In some instances, bans and laws can be used or misused to target patients and other people who help them get the care they need. In state legislative sessions across the nation, legislators continue to push for more ways to restrict abortion and criminalize those who provide abortion care.

• The ACLU has a long history of seeking transformational change in our criminal legal system and protecting people’s reproductive freedom. In this moment of crisis, we have brought together our expertise in both areas to launch the Abortion Criminal Defense Initiative (ACDI), which I am proud to lead.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• We must defend the Internet whenever there are threats, whether they come from a country, a corporation, or a misguided policy.

Monopolies

• The PR folks at Germany-based Nextcloud, the open source platform that allows individuals and organizations to host their own cloud, were working overtime on Wednesday issuing two major announcements. The first was that they’ve released a ready-for-prime-time SharePoint replacement, complete with migration services for their enterprise customers. The second was was that Nextcloud Office is now available to users of Deutsche Telekom’s MagentaCLOUD.

• While the suits at Microsoft and Google would scoff at the suggestion, neither of these announcements is good news for either company.

• A leaked 2020 policy document shows that Amazon had detailed plans for “proactively changing alcohol laws” to get better sales.

Patents

• Vaccine equity campaigners said Thursday that a new peer-reviewed study published in a major medical journal should put to rest the pharmaceutical industry’s “false narrative” that its own investments were responsible for the rapid development of mRNA vaccines to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

• For the time being, TCL may not sell devices in Germany that use a video coding method protected by a GE Video Compression patent, which is a member of the Access Advance patent pool.

• EPO staff and management express their sympathy for the victims

Software Patents

• On February 28, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 9,497,469, owned and asserted by Velos Media, an NPE.

• The patent imagines self-driving cars that will repossess themselves.

Trademarks

• A TTAB judge once told me that you can predict the outcome of a Section 2(d) case 95% of the time by just looking at the goods/services and the marks. Maybe he or she was referring to ex parte cases only, but let’s see how you do with the three oppositions summarized below. Answer(s) in the first comment.

• In his introduction, Ted Davis notes the decline in litigation under the Lanham Act, related state statutes, and the common law of unfair competition. In any event, a number of interesting cases have arisen involving the intersection of trademark law and the freedom of speech protection of the First Amendment, with the “Bad Spaniels” dogfight drawing the most attention as it heads to the Supreme Court. The Court will also be reviewing, in the Hetronic case, the nagging issue of the extraterritorial reach of the Lanham Act. The TRUMP TOO SMALL case may also make its way before the Court, the question being whether Section 2(c)’s requirement of consent is unconstitutional when applied to criticism of government public officials or public figures. Meanwhile, the failure-to-function refusal seems to be gaining in popularity at the TTAB, although not so much with trademark practitioners. And two Board decisions indicate that the once formidable claim of fraud on the USPTO is recovering from the near knock-out punch landed in 2009 by the CAFC’s Bose decision.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

Technical

• OK, everyone knows RST sucks compared to Markdown or even org-mode (and that’s a low bar since org-mode’s format sucks. Org-mode is a wonderful app that I love, but the app is good in spite of its format, not because of it), but they can’t help it since RST preceded Markdown by three years and org-mode by two. RST came out before these good formats and it was all they had to work with at the time.

Internet/Gemini

• Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder, is trying to launch Bluesky, a “decentralised Twitter” and people are wondering how it compares to Mastodon.

• I remember when Jack started to speak about “project bluesky” on Twitter, years ago. ActivityPub was a lot more niche and he ignored any message related to it. It definitely looked like a NIH syndrome as he could, at least, have started to discuss ActivityPub pros and cons. I was myself heavily invested in decentralised protocols (from blockchain to ActivityPub). It was my job to keep an eye on everything decentralised and really tried to understand what BlueSky was about.

• [...]

• If we don’t want to consider the hypothesis that “bluesky decentralisation” is simply cynical marketing fluff, I think we can safely assume that Jack Dorsey has hit his mental glass ceiling. He doesn’t get decentralisation. He doesn’t have the mental model to get it. He will probably never get it (he became a billionaire by “not getting it” so there’s no reason for him to change). The whole project is simply a billionaire throwing money at a few developers telling him what he expects to hear in order to get pay. A very-rich-man’s hobby.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

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