● 03.21.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 20/03/2023: Curl 8.0.0/1 and CloudStack 4.18.0.0 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 12:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• The Dreamcast is probably best known as the swansong of Sega’s ambitions as a gaming console manufacturer, but perhaps lesser known is the fact that you can run Linux on it. In a deep-dive by [Cameron Kaiser] over at the Old VCR blog, it is demonstrated what it takes to make this feat even work in 2023, and what one can expect from a system with a 200 MHz HItachi SuperH SH-4 CPU, 16 MB of RAM and the luxuries of VGA and network interfaces.

• What’s interesting about Dreamcast Linux is that it was among the first times that Linux got put on a gaming console, even if it wasn’t entirely official or remotely supported by Sega. In fact, the fact that it works at all has its roots firmly in an exploit that was discovered shortly after the Dreamcast’s release. While Dreamcast discs are generally in a format called GD-ROM (Gigabyte Disc), early on it also supported the MIL-CD standard, which was Sega’s ill-fated attempt at creating multimedia CDs with MIL-CDs.

• Not only did MIL-CDs flop in the market, the support form in Dreamcast units also provided a juicy exploit via the firmware that handles detecting and switching between GD-ROM and the much more constrained, audio-only MIL-CD mode. Later Dreamcast models dropped MIL-CD support and will thus also not boot Dreamcast Linux, which is an important gotcha to keep in mind when dragging out a Dreamcast for some Linux action.

Desktop/Laptop

• If you’re looking for a tiny laptop that’s barely larger than your smartphone and runs Linux, MNT has just the device for you.

• The MNT Pocket Reform is a full-fledged laptop in a tiny form factor that could serve as your new on-the-go hardware. Sure, it’s tiny and the keyboard is small enough to be problematic for larger hands, but having a Linux laptop in your pocket (granted a larger pocket) has plenty of upsides.

• The MNT Pocket Reform includes an ARM Cortex-A53 CPU at 1.8 GHz, 8 GB of DDR4 RAM, 128 GB eMMC flash memory, an NVMe SSD slot (for up to 2 TB), full disk encryption (via LUKS), Vivante GC7000UL GPU, H.264/H.265 video decoder, Cortext-M7 Realtime core, HiFi4 Audio DSP, a mechanical keyboard with RGB backlighting, a micro-optical trackball, a 7″ full HD+ (1920 x 1200 px) display, Wi-Fi 802.11c, Bluetooth 5.0, MicroSD card slot, and an optional M.2 key B WWAN slot for 4G/5G/LTE.

• For the uninitiated, the Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer that runs the Linux operating system. It can be either operated as a desktop computer or as an embedded system (i.e., a custom electronic device), or both. Historically, computer systems were either general-purpose computers or embedded systems. General-purpose computers required too much hardware, too many chips, and too much power to work inside an electronic device. However, as manufacturers packed more and more functionality into less and less space using less and less power, eventually it became possible to have a computer that was small, cheap, powerful, and not especially power-hungry.

• Liliputing.com has an update about the System76 Meerkat, which they describe as “a compact desktop computer with support for up to 64GB of RAM, up to two storage devices (for as much as 16TB of total storage), and up to an Intel Core i7 mobile processor. It’s basically a rebranded Intel NUC.” (Escept that System76 offers a choice of Pop!_OS or Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.)

• The Kubuntu Focus Team announces the second generation of the powerful Focus XE laptop. This ultra-portable and affordable laptop is a great choice for developers, creators, and those who are looking for the best out-of-the-box Linux experience but don’t need the power, complexity, or expense of a dedicated GPU.

• This generation features the i7-1260P CPU, which provides a 16% and 60% boost in single and multi-core Geekbench 5 scores. In real life, this translates into very snappy performance and the ability to handle large, multi-process tasks with speed and ease. Other highlights of this laptop are the numerous high-speed audio and data ports, include Thunderbolt 4, and the capacity to attach multiple 4K displays. Customers can tailor their system with up to 64GB of high-speed 3200Mhz Dual-Channel RAM, up to 2TB of 7,450 MBps NVMe storage, and optional no-cost disk encryption. They are shipping now and the base model starts at $895.

Server

• The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® CloudStack® v4.18.

• Apache CloudStack 4.18.0.0 is a 4.18 LTS release with 300+ new features, improvements, and bug fixes since 4.17, including 19 major new features.

• Oracle today added a virtual nodes capability to Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes to make it simpler for IT teams to add additional capacity as needed. In addition, Oracle is extending the life cycle management tools it provides for the platform to include the ability to manage third-party add-ons such

• As indicated in my blog DevOps Use Cases for AI-Assisted Kubernetes, an AI-assisted Kubernetes orchestrator has a number of different use cases to optimize cloud costs for DevOps, DevSecOps and SRE.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Will is annoyed with calculators, Félim adds GUIs to his ropey Python, Graham attempts to tune a Piano, and Joe dreams of playing darts without the maths. Plus your feedback about robot vacuums, guitar cables, Arch, why we don’t talk about Fedora, KDE wins, and more.

• The story of an open-source hero who became a villain.

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we will be discussing our adventures at the Southern California Linux Expo, SCaLE 20x, and sharing some behind the scenes interviews you don’t want to miss! Then we talk about a popular VPN going fully open source. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!

Applications

• Stable Diffusion web UI provides a browser interface for Stable Diffusion, a latent text-to-image diffusion model capable of generating photo-realistic images given any text input.

Instructionals/Technical

• You might already be aware of the popular NPM (Node Package Manager) used as a package manager for Node, while NPX (Node Package eXecute), introduced in NPM version 5.2.0 (on August 10, 2017), an NPM package runner, is quite unpopular.

• The information in this article is basic knowledge you need to know when dealing with Docker and running containers. I have covered some of this already, but I want to make sure we cover it and it you understand it.

• This simple tutorial is going to show beginners how to install the latest stable Battle for Wesnoth (so far 1.16.8) via PPA in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Mint 20/21.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install KDE Plasma Desktop on Fedora 37.

• How To Count The Number Of Lines In A File In Linux There are several ways to count the number of lines in a file in Linux based operating system. There are several commands in Linux for different tasks.

• In today’s digital age, security is a top priority for any website or online platform.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Bitwarden on Rocky Linux 9.

• Build a golden image for your RHEL homelab with Image Builder

• A firewall is a critical aspect of security for a Linux system. It acts as a barrier between a computer system and the internet, protecting the computer from unwanted incoming traffic.

• In this article, let us learn what are ansible roles and how to use Ansible roles to create a structured project and distribute them. Next we will move on to discuss the advantages of using ansible roles over standard playbooks. Finally, we will see how to create Ansible roles and different methods to import roles in the playbook.

• Laravel is a popular PHP framework used to build web applications. One of the essential features of Laravel is its debugging functionality, which helps developers identify and fix issues in their code. In this article, we will discuss how to enable debug mode in Laravel for specific environments.

• While making system updates, I have encountered the error debconf-DbDriver ‘config’ config.dat is locked by another process, which doesn’t conflict with any programme, but it’s not looking good to print every time, so I have decided to fix it up and suppress the error message.

• Managing user access and privileges is a critical aspect of ensuring the security and stability of any Linux system. In this article, we explore the concept of sudo, its importance in Linux Mint, and some common use cases.

• Zoom is a leading video conferencing platform transforming how businesses, organizations, and individuals communicate and collaborate. By offering a range of features and capabilities, Zoom has become a go-to solution for remote work, online education, and virtual events.

• As a Linux Mint user, you may be interested in exploring the Chromium browser, and this article is here to help.

• In today’s digital landscape, protecting your system from unauthorized access is essential. Fail2Ban is an open-source security tool that can help. It automatically scans log files for suspicious behavior and bans offending IP addresses, preventing further unauthorized access attempts.

• If you’ve a Telegram group, it might be interesting the ability of https://t.me/redken_bot for adding a calendar ical that automates publishing each day the events in the agenda for the day.

• If you did read Python and iCalendar ICS processing, part of the basis in that article are part of the bot and are easily used:

• For configuring, only a few simple steps are required:

• Have a calendar ICS/webcal accessible (for example a public Google Calendar one) Have a Telegram group where we do want to publish the events Add @redken_bot to the group Specify the URL del calendar and the name Let’s see some screenshoots of the process for you to check how easily it can be achieved.

Games

• The first of many, Godot 4.0.1 comes with important fixes and usability improvements to Godot 4.0. Multiple crashes, bugs, and smaller annoyances have been addressed in this patch release, and we recommend all Godot 4 users to update.

• Over the years, people assumed gaming was unsuitable for college students. They thought it was a distraction hindering learners from focusing on their studies. However, this unfair judgment suppressed the many benefits it could add to the educational sector.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• The Linux operating system is a powerful, flexible, secure, and reliable platform that can serve just about any purpose you need. From server to desktop, IoT to containers, embedded systems, and much more… Linux can be anything you want it to be.

• You may not even realize how prevalent the open-source operating system is. It’s literally everywhere. Your car, your fridge, your cloud account, your social networking account, your bank, Netflix, Spotify, Twitter… just about every network service you use depends on Linux.

• [...]

• One of the biggest reasons for this is that it’s not easy for the average consumer to head to Best Buy, Target, or Walmart, and buy a new PC or laptop with Linux pre-installed. Sure, there are plenty of companies that offer Linux systems (such as System76, Dell, Lenovo, Purism, Slimbook, Tuxedo Computers, Vikings, Ubuntushop.be, and Juno Computers), but consumers can be turned off by the higher prices of those systems. That’s fine, because Linux can be installed on most modern (and even older) computers, and it’s actually quite easy.

• Another reason for this is choice. For users who are already familiar with Linux, choice is a big selling point because it means there are so many options to choose from (on just about every front).

Fedora Family / IBM

• It’s finally happened.

• I bought a brand new desktop computer on August 2014, almost 9 years ago.

• It had an Intel Haswell processor (i5-4690s), 8 GiB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 760. I later duplicated the amount of RAM to 16 GiB (precise date unknown), replaced the GPU with a GTX 1070 in November 2016 and upgraded the CPU to an i7-4770K in October 2017. Since then, no more upgrades. It’s been my main personal (non-work) computer for the last few years.

• Fedora 38 beta is here and it looks to once again prove this Linux desktop is ready for users of all kinds.

• The AlmaLinux OS Foundation, the nonprofit that stewards the community owned and governed open source CentOS Linux replacement AlmaLinux, today announced its two newest sponsors, OpenLogic by Perforce and Hawk Host, Inc.

Debian Family

• Tails is a privacy and strongly security-focused Linux distribution designed to be run on a live USB drive, allowing users to boot the operating system on any computer while leaving no trace of their activity on the host computer.

• The distro routes all internet traffic through the Tor network, providing a high level of anonymity and including a wide range of privacy and security tools such as the PGP email client, the Electrum Bitcoin wallet, and the VeraCrypt disk encryption software.

• Yesterday, the Tails Project announced the general availability of Tails 5.11 with yet another dose of updates and novelties. So, let’s have a look at them.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• A new build of Ubuntu Touch is scheduled for release on March 24, 2023. It will bring a number of bug fixes and usability improvements. Ubuntu Touch OTA-25 will also be the final version of the operating system that’s based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS “Xenial Xerus”.

• Future builds are expected to be based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS “Focal Fossa”. Release candidates of the newer version have been available for a few months.

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 779 for the week of March 12 – 18, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 779 for the week of March 12 – 18, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

• Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” is released on Thursday April 20, 2023. As a short-term release, Lunar gets 9 months of ongoing updates, security patches, and critical fixes. That might not sound very long but Ubuntu 23.10 arrives 6 months after and users will be encouraged to upgrade to that. Details out of the way.

• Canonical is committed to enabling Ubuntu users to leverage the strong run-time confidentiality and integrity guarantees that confidential computing provides. That is why we are happy to announce we have joined the confidential computing consortium, a project community at the Linux Foundation that is focused on accelerating the adoption of confidential computing and driving cross-industry collaboration around relevant open source software, standards and tools.

• At Canonical we are actively involved in several automotive consortiums as we believe that open source technology will be the driving force behind next generation of vehicles.

• Canonical announced last year that they would be going ‘all in on the gaming experience on Ubuntu’; when they began by working on a new Steam snap.

• It has been in ‘Early Access’ for some time, undergoing various development phases.

• But, with a recent announcement, it is now closer to a stable release than ever.

• Allow me to guide you through this.

Devices/Embedded

• At Embedded World this week, companies are showing off embedded chips with more of everything: more memory, more performance, more accelerators, more software options, more cloud integrations, and yes, more security.

• The NanoPi R6C is a compact embedded board powered by the Rockchip RK3588S System-on-Chip. This new open-source IoT device from FriendlyElec features 2x RJ45 LAN ports, 1x HDMI port, and multiple storage peripherals. The new NanoPi R6C Single Board computer features the same Octa-core processor seen on the NanoPi R6S launched in October 2022.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The Purism Librem 5 isn’t like most other smartphones. It runs traditional desktop Linux, shrunken down to fit in a mobile form factor. And as with any personal computer, there are certain things you want to do right after taking it out of the box.

• The Librem 5 ships with encrypted internal storage. This is great since the phone is marketed as a private device like other Purism hardware. But the default password is the same for every Purism customer. That means you need to change this right away to have a degree of privacy.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Google Analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, allowing website owners to gain insights into the behavior of their users.

• Open source companies are, for the purpose of the list below, defined as companies that make significant use of open source software. As you’ll see in the list, many of the companies also use proprietary software.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• Daniel Stenberg observes the 25th anniversary of the curl project.

• Exactly one month since the previous release, we are happy to give you curl 8.0.0 released on curl’s official 25th birthday. This a major version number bump but without any ground-breaking changes or fireworks.

• Right. I said in the 8.0.0 blog post that it might be a good release. It was. Apart form the little bug that caused it to crash in several test cases. So now we shipped curl 8.0.1, which is almost identical apart from a single commit that was reverted.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• Should content on a personal site be edited, or should it be a snapshot in time? Here’s my thoughts…

• So I read this post by Manu Moreale yesterday, where he was talking about retrospectively editing posts, and why he thinks it’s a bad idea:

• I dislike the concept of editing old content on personal sites. And the motivation is related to my love for simple, straight to the point, chronologically organised personal blogs. I believe a personal blog can and should be a representation of who you are at different points in time.

GNU Projects

• GIMP is again a Google Summer of Code mentor organization in 2023

• Version 9.2 of the GNU coreutils collection — the home of common tools like cp, mv, ls, rm, and more — is out. The changes are mostly minor; numerous bugs have been fixes and a few new command-line options have been added.

*

Programming/Development

• Hi all!

• In the past week or so I’ve focused on a NPotM: go-imap, an IMAP library for Go. “But Simon, a New Project of the Month is supposed to be new!” Right, right, the NPotM is a lie… But only a half-lie: I’m rewriting it from scratch. go-imap was one of the first Go projects I’ve written, and I couldn’t recite the IMAP4rev1 RFC by heart at the time. This is just a roundabout way to say that mistakes were made. IMAP extensions — a lot of which provide important functionality — were designed to be implemented out-of-tree in separate Go modules. However many extensions change the behavior of existing commands, so trying to design a modular system is a fool’s errand which only results in a more complicated API. Go channels were (ab)overused in the public API. The internals were not designed with goroutine safety in mind, so races were ducktaped after the fact. It’s not possible to run multiple IMAP commands concurrently: each time a command is sent, the caller gets to twiddle their thumbs until the reply comes back before sending a new one, paying the full price of the roundtrip. The parser has a weird intermediate representation based on interface{} Go values. Many functions and types are exported in the public API but really shouldn’t be.

• Query strings are a way to pass data between different pages or components of a web application.

Perl / Raku

• Andrew Shitov comes with exciting news: thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Perl and Raku Foundation, it has been possible to halve the ticket price to The Raku Conference 2023 on August 3-4 in Rīga, Latvia at the same location as the 2019 conference (Twitter, Mastodon).

Python

• The “getattr()” function, “__members__” attribute, or the Enum class method are used to convert the string to Enum in Python.

• Use the “returncode” attribute, “communicate()”, or the “check_output” method to get the return code from a process in Python subprocess execution.

• The “re.match()”, “re.search()”, “re.findall()”, and “re.finditer()” methods of the “re” module are used for extracting substring using regex in Python.

• To read the pickle file in python, use the “load()” method from the pickle package or alternatively use the “read_pickle()” method from the pandas package.

• In today’s society, in which technological advances surround us, one of the important priorities is cybersecurity.

• Telnet is a client/server application protocol that uses TCP/IP for connection.

Java

• Distributed maps provide a way for applications to store and access data in a distributed environment, where the data is automatically distributed across multiple nodes in a cluster.

Standards/Consortia

• Remember how in the previous blog post it was said that creating text in PDF would be “just a matter of setting some parameters”?

• Well let’s start by creating the main text in two justified columns.

Leftovers

• The state railways VR says that traffic will return to near normal just as soon as a new contract deal is struck.

Education

• Senate Bill 83 is drawing harsh criticism from labor unions, who worry this could turn educators away from Ohio A massive higher education bill that would prohibit university staff and employees from striking was introduced last week and is already drawing harsh criticism from labor unions.

• THE MATHS SKILLS of primary school pupils have declined in the past two decades in part because of the insufficient vocabularies of pupils, indicates a report published by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (Karvi).

Hardware

• I am one of those people that hate losing features in devices even when it’s a feature I do not even use. An example would be the removal of the headphone jack in premium smartphones.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Latvia is the least happy of the three Baltic states, according to the 2023 edition of the World Happiness Report.

• President Biden on Monday signed a bill unanimously passed by Congress that requires the declassification of information on the origins of COVID-19.

• U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday signed a bill that requires Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify information related to the origins of COVID-19, the White House said.

• Michael Edenfield’s doctor calls him the Incredible Shrinking Man.  Between Thanksgiving 2021 and Christmas 2022, the 49-year-old aviation worker shed 129 pounds. Also gone: his sleep apnea machine, his high-blood-pressure medication, and a diuretic pill he had used to alleviate fluid retention in his legs.

• The four-month delay in making public the leak of radioactive water has sparked concerns about public safety and transparency.

• The Danish government has implemented an emergency plan to improve the country’s health system, which is currently under strain. But what exactly are the problems facing Denmark’s health service and what is being done about it?

Proprietary

• A number of folk have complained to Microsoft about halved NVMe SSD performance after the latest Windows 11 Moments update.

Security

• Linux is an open-source operating system that powers millions of devices, from smartphones and laptops to web servers and data centers.

• The Center for Internet Security (CIS) is a non-profit organization that focuses on enhancing the cybersecurity posture of public and private organizations

• Phishing kits are not new, they are plenty in the wild, and my honeypot collects many samples daily. Usually, a phishing kit will collect credentials and send them to a compromised server (WordPress is generally an excellent target to host this kind of malicious code).

• Also stolen were Medicare card and passport details, though this was 1% and 4% respectively of the total data theft, Latitude said.

• {loadposition sam08}The breach is now being investigated by the Australian Federal Police.

• Dish Network stated it reinstated the ability customers of its Boost Mobile brand to access account information as it provided an update on its bid to recover from a cyberattack in February.

• The operator last week explained Boost Mobile subscribers can pay their bills online, at stores and through apps.

• Dish Network remains tight-lipped on the details of the attack:

• Brett Callow, a threat analyst at anti-virus software company Emsisoft, told Mobile World Live (MWL) a lack of detail from Dish Network about the attack makes it hard to interpret what happened.

• In this post we introduce Dark Cat, Anubis and Keyhole, three IcedID VNC backdoor variants NVISO observed. We’ll follow by exposing common TTPs before revealing information leaked through the attackers’ clipboard data.

• Cryptocurrency ATM maker General Bytes discloses a security incident resulting in the theft of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto-coins.

• A new breach involving data from nine million AT&T customers is a fresh reminder that your mobile provider likely collects and shares a great deal of information about where you go and what you do with your mobile device — unless and until you affirmatively opt out of this data collection. Here’s a primer on why you might want to do that, and how.

• Certain questions might be coming to mind right now, like “What the heck is CPNI?” And, ‘If it’s so ‘customer proprietary,’ why is AT&T sharing it with marketers?” Also maybe, “What can I do about it?” Read on for answers to all three questions.

• Hitachi Energy has blamed a data breach affecting employees on the recent exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere solution.

• NBA is notifying individuals that their information was stolen in a data breach at a third-party mailing services provider.

• Cybercriminals are abusing the Adobe Acrobat Sign service in a campaign distributing the RedLine information stealer malware.

• Conor Brian Fitzpatrick of New York was arrested and charged last week for allegedly running the popular cybercrime forum BreachForums.

• After dealing with the financial effects of COVID-19, hospitals are facing a new threat: lawsuits following cyberattacks.

• Since January, four lawsuits have been filed against both Howard Memorial Hospital of Nashville and against the Mena Hospital Commission, which operates as the Mena Regional Health System. The lawsuits allege the hospitals were negligent in failing to prevent hackers from stealing tens of thousands of patient records and their financial information.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, imagemagick, sox, thunderbird, and xapian-core), Fedora (chromium, containernetworking-plugins, guile-gnutls, mingw-python-OWSLib, pack, pypy3.7, sudo, thunderbird, tigervnc, and vim), Mageia (apache, epiphany, heimdal, jasper, libde265, libtpms, liferea, mysql-connector-c++, perl-HTML-StripScripts, protobuf, ruby-git, sqlite3, woodstox-core, and xfig), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (firefox, nss, and openssl), SUSE (apache2, docker, drbd, kernel, and oracleasm), and Ubuntu (curl, python2.7, python3.10, python3.5, python3.6, python3.8, and vim).

• Multiple high-impact security issues have been discovered in Thunderbird, which could result in denial of service (DoS) attacks leading to server crashes and loss of access, the execution of arbitrary code, or spoofing attacks. These findings include a vulnerability involving the incorrect code generation during JIT compilation (CVE-2023-25751), and high-severity memory safety bugs present in Thunderbird 102.8 (CVE-2023-28176).

• The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), once the go-to financial institution for early-stage technology businesses and startups, is being exploited by cybercriminals. In this blog post, we discuss some of the tactics and techniques Netcraft has already detected criminals using to exploit SVB’s collapse – either directly or indirectly – as a lure.

• As the flurry of COVID-themed attacks proved, cybercriminals waste no time in exploiting the attention such stories generate. Criminals often exploit current news stories, or specific times of year (like tax reporting) to make their scam seem more relevant to victims.

• Seven years ago I created a password manager. And a few days ago I pushed out the last release for it, notifying users that nothing else will come now. Yes, with the previous release being from 2019, this might have been obvious. Now it’s official however, PfP: Pain-free Passwords is no longer being developed.

• The overall number of zero-day vulnerabilities discovered in the wild last year declined compared to numbers in 2021.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Later today, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage will vote on a government-backed motion that would compel Google and Facebook to disclose private third-party communications dating back years that could sweep in the private communications of thousands of Canadians. The motion, which is obvious retribution for opposing Bill C-18, is a stunning attack on the privacy of Canadians and could have a chilling effect on public participation. H

• Users are reporting being able to access conversations that seem to be from other people in their own histories.

• Just over one year ago, ten young Black men were charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to GBH in Greater Manchester. The prosecution arguing the case said that they were part of a gang and linked them to the killing of a man they framed as revenge for the death of their friend.

Defence/Aggression

• Earlier, the Russian Defence Ministry said a fighter jet was scrambled over the Baltic Sea after two US B52s flew in the direction of the Russian border.

• Angola has ordered Aksungur medium-altitude, long endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), becoming the first confirmed African nation to do so. Production of the aircraft has started, according to TAI (TUSAS) General Manager for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Omer Yildiz.

• America readied itself Monday ahead of the possible historic indictment of Donald Trump over a hush-money case, with the former president calling for mass demonstrations if he is charged.

• The Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial hits its 40th day and finally, after weeks of delays, objections, and hail-Mary attempts for a mistrial, the defense is poised to launch its case-in-chief.

• Russia plans to hold an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council in early April on what it says is “the real situation” of Ukrainian children taken to Russia. The issue has gained the spotlight following the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes related to their abduction. Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told a news conference Monday that Russia planned the council meeting long before Friday’s announcement by the ICC.

• Police have charged the first Australian veteran for an alleged murder in Afghanistan three years after a war crimes investigation found 19 Australian special forces soldiers could face charges. A police statement says former Special Air Service Regiment trooper Oliver Schulz, was arrested Monday in New South Wales state and charged with the war crime of murder. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison if convicted.

• Bolton says the Bush administration’s biggest error in Iraq was failing to invade Iran too. That’s madness.

• On the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War, it is essential to reflect on the 20 lies that led to one of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions in American history. In 2013, author and journalist Glenn Greenwald compiled a list of the “20 lies about the Iraq War,” which remains just as relevant today.

• The Russian Investigative Committee Monday announced that Russia has opened a criminal case against the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding its arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin. The committee claims that the ICC’s decision was “unlawful” and that Putin holds immunity to the warrant.

• Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Penny Wong Monday announced that Australia is imposing sanctions against Iran over the country’s human rights violations amid ongoing protests against the death of Mahsa Amini.

• European ministers agreed to add eight Iranians and one of the Tehran government’s most powerful bodies to EU sanctions lists, alleging human rights violations.

• European Union member states have agreed to supply 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition to Ukraine, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said while attending a meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels.

• On March 20, 2003, U.S. troops entered Iraq to “liberate” this country from President Saddam Hussein, whom Washington accused of holding mass destruction weapons.

• They waved banners “Stop the war provoked by the U.S. and NATO” and “Freedom, Truth, Resistance.”

Environment

• Devastating climate impacts are hitting faster than expected as the world teeters on reaching the 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit in a little over a decade, the UN said Monday.

• Scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report insist there are multiple, feasible, and effective options currently available to slow the pace of climate change.

• But we must act now.

• The latest United Nations scientific synthesis report on climate change, released yesterday, warns that significant additional global warming is already locked in and catastrophic climate impacts are rapidly becoming more likely.

Energy/Transportation

• Canadian Pacific’s US $31 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern has been approved after two years of scrutiny by U.S. authorities.

• The Dutch Government has today (March 20) revealed intentions to establish large-scale offshore hydrogen production by 2031.

• One of Europe’s most fossil fuel-intensive energy companies transformed completely in little more than a decade by doubling down on offshore wind.

• Svante Axelsson, the man tasked with coordinating Sweden’s green industrial transformation, in an interview with The Local warned of a “new, increasing risk”, from politicians and others driving an agenda opposed to flagship green projects and sceptical of the urgent need to reduce emissions.

• The state-owned firm Gasum has continued to buy natural gas from Russia, arguing that it is obliged by a long-term contract to pay anyway.

Wildlife/Nature

• The shipment from Angola was declared to be carrying peanuts.

Overpopulation

• “We will see more people dying from the disease than from hunger and malnutrition combined if we do not act now,” WHO Representative Makik said.

Finance

• Two days before the US Federal Reserve meets, economists still lack consensus on whether the Fed will hike interest rates.

• French president Emmanuel Macron narrowly survived a no-confidence vote on Monday (March 20) in the National Assembly, less than a week after his government forced through an unpopular pension reform bill that raised the French retirement age from 62 to 64.

• The French government has survived two no-confidence votes, meaning the retirement age will rise, causing another round of violent protests.

• Parliament adopted a divisive pension bill Monday raising the retirement age in France from 62 to 64, after lawmakers in the lower chamber rejected two no-confidence votes against the government.

• Protests erupted across France on Monday night, hours after the government adopted deeply unpopular pension reforms after surviving two no-confidence votes. Opposition lawmakers have vowed to continue their fight against the new law.

• French President Emmanuel Macron Monday survived a vote of no confidence by a slim margin of nine votes.

• UBS sealed a deal for Credit Suisse for $3.2 billion over the weekend. That’s 60% less than what the bank was worth when markets closed on Friday (Mar. 17). With a fallout of that size, it’s no surprise that the rescue created many losers—among them, Credit Suisse’s largest shareholders.

• A key element of Credit Suisse’s “rescue” was a Swiss regulator’s decision to declare $26 billion of the bank’s bonds worthless. Other central banks are scrambling to distance themselves.

• Jittery markers don’t feel reassured by UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse.

• French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Monday faces two motions of no confidence in the National Assembly lower house, after forcing through an unpopular pension reform last week without a vote.

• UBS agreed to buy rival Swiss bank Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.23 billion) in stock and agreed to assume up to 5 billion francs ($5.4 billion) in losses, in a shotgun merger engineered by Swiss authorities to avoid more market-shaking turmoil in global banking.

• The International Monetary Fund has approved a nearly $3 billion bailout program for Sri Lanka over four years to help salvage the country’s bankrupt economy.

• The board’s approval would catalyse financial support from other development partners.

• The number of home sales in Denmark fell over the last three months to the lowest level since the start of 2013, when the country was still emerging from a protracted housing slump.

• It has been a bad couple of weeks for banks in the U.S. and Europe. In an interview, Eurogroup head Paschal Donohoe discusses the possible dangers facing the euro area and why he remains confident.

• What if we had public banks that prioritized the greater good, rather than private banks prone to taking profit-chasing risks?

• With household budgets set to come under more pressure in the next few weeks, find out what you can do to prepare your finances

• Who didn’t see this coming?

• The gutting of federal regulations is partially to blame for the bank’s crisis. But so is a belief, prevalent in the finance and tech worlds, that profits will come forever, and that there is little need to plan for a rainy day.

• Liquidity fears in the banking sector might also jeopardize the future of otherwise solvent banks, the DIW economist Fratzscher warned.

• The fate of Signature Bank, whose collapse earlier this month marked the third largest bank failure in US history, has now been decided.

• The Finance Ministry’s working group on behalf of the government will consider imposing an excess profits tax on banks and on the energy sector companies, according to the government representatives’ statements on March 20 after the coalition meeting.

• The monetary-policy challenge that the Fed faces now cannot be overestimated.

• It is difficult for central banks to balance controlling inflation with preserving financial stability amid a banking crisis, but that is no excuse not to try.

• Debt limits are not the norm in public finance. But countries that have adopted them do not let them cause economic chaos.

• As inflation soars, officials will enforce controls on 23 items with fines and jail time.

• Here’s the roundup of the week in Swedish politics, in the latest edition of The Local’s Politics in Sweden column.

• Economists are warning the housing crisis in Queensland could be made worse if the government move forward with their plan to cap rental prices in the state.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Following the ban on TikTok by the UK government, the BBC is considering a TikTok ban for its employees. The BBC issued new guidance to its employees that told staff to delete the app from their work phones unless they use it for editorial or marketing reasons.

• Victoria Liberal Party leader John Pesutto Monday said MP Moira Deeming’s presence at an anti-trans rally with neo-Nazi ties on Saturday is grounds for expulsion from the party.

• As we mark the 20th anniversary of EDRi, the European Digital Rights network, it’s an apt moment to reflect on the story of digital rights in Europe so far, and to ask the question: how can we better equip Europe for the human rights challenges of the digital age?

• If Donald Trump’s prediction pans out, he’ll be arrested tomorrow (Mar. 21).

• The shocking announcement that China had brought together bitter rivals Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia to resume diplomatic relations in a deal negotiated in Beijing is a stunning defeat for America, threatening the basis of our Middle Eastern and world diplomatic power, writes Thomas Lifson at “The American Thinker”.

• The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Vladimir Putin can only be seen as a publicity stunt by the Anglo-Saxon clique, with the US leading from the rear, notes M.K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Ambassador and prominent international observer.

• The conventional wisdom on financial markets holds that as long as China declines to make the yuan fully convertible, it will not be able to rival the dollar or euro as a global currency, notes Bloomberg. China’s influence over the Russian market just got a lot more intense.

• The story of the Chinese Automatic Drifting Balloon (ADB) violating the U.S. airspace in late January–early February 2023 will be a symbolic marker for a new phase of deterioration in the US-China relations.

• A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s effort to keep key evidence out of his civil rape trial next month. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan ruled Monday that misogynistic remarks Trump made about women in 2005 when he apparently didn’t realize he was being recorded can be played for a jury that will hear quarter-century-old rape allegations made by a former magazine columnist.

• Former President Donald Trump’s calls for protests before his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters. Even some of Trump’s most ardent loyalists are dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap. The ambivalence raises questions about whether Trump still has the power to mobilize far-right supporters the way he did more than two years ago before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It also suggests the hundreds of convictions and long prison sentences that followed the Capitol riot may have dampened the desire for repeat mass unrest.

• An independent review says London police have lost the confidence of the public because of deep-seated racism, misogyny and homophobia. The report released Tuesday was commissioned after a young woman was raped and killed by a serving officer. The report says the Metropolitan Police Service, ust “change itself” or risk being broken up. The Metropolitan Police has more than 34,000 officers and is Britain’s biggest police force. The findings ratchet up the pressure for a major overhaul of the forcee after a series of scandals involving its treatment of women and minorities.

• Two new books, one new perspective.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch is engaged to former San Francisco police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith, his spokesperson has confirmed, which will mark the fifth marriage for the 92-year-old media mogul. Murdoch finalised his divorce from actress and model Jerry Hall in August.

• Rupert Murdoch has announced his engagement to 66-year-old former model and journalist Ann Lesley Smith, a fifth marriage he says will hopefully be his last.

• The media mogul got engaged seven months after divorcing his fourth wife. Are sudden, post-divorce engagements doomed to fail?

Censorship/Free Speech

• A former Hong Kong police officer has been sentenced to 10 months in jail after he was convicted under the colonial-era sedition law in connection with social media posts about the death of a marine officer.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday signed a law forbidding the spread of “false information” about volunteer forces fighting in service of Russia.

• Russia has declared the Institute for Statecraft of Great Britain an “undesirable” organization amid an ongoing crackdown on international and domestic NGOs, civil society, and independent journalists.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• An top ex-editor of the now-defunct digital newspaper Stand News has told a court that he considered moving the outlet’s data and operations abroad after Beijing implemented the national security law in 2020.

• Su Yutong, Vicky Xu and other reporters of Asian descent face an onslaught of abuse covering China critically.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Starbucks leadership is getting an earlier-than-expected shake-up.

• US criticism of India is rare due to the close economic ties between the 2 countries.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Guest Post: Addressing inaccuracies on sibling relations and their root causes in whois data.

• Guest Post: How Sibyl establishes measures for comparing routing protocol implementations.

Monopolies

• Roughly 10 weeks after announcing plans to lay off north of 18,000 employees, Amazon has revealed that it intends “to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks” – including roles at Twitch.

• Amazon will lay off 9,000 white-collar employees by the end of April, CEO Andy Jassy announced on Monday (March 20), on top of the 18,000 jobs the online retailers has cut since November.

• Amazon plans to eliminate 9000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy has told staff in a memo. The job cuts would mark the second largest round of lay-offs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the company said it would lay off in January.

Patents

• In recent years, there has been growing effort to link longstanding concerns about Canadian innovation with patents. The argument – which has crossed into Canada’s strategy around AI – posits that the road to an innovative economy is inextricably linked to a greater emphasis on intellectual property and in particular on patents. But what if the correlation between patents and innovation is weak at best? What if an emphasis on patents may actually be harmful to startups whose attention and resources is better placed elsewhere?

• The district court sided with the defendant Sage, dismissing the complaint for lack of eligibility. In a short opinion, the Federal Circuit has largely affirmed, but made an important caveat — that the district court held only that claims 1 and 31-33 are invalid.

• [W]e agree that the operative complaint asserted infringement of only claims 1 and 31–33 of each asserted patent, and because Sage did not file any counterclaim of its own (instead, it simply moved to dismiss Hantz’s complaint), we conclude that the ineligibility judgment should apply to only claims 1 and 31–33 of the asserted patents. We therefore vacate the district court’s judgment insofar as it held any claim other than claims 1 and 31–33 of each asserted patent ineligible and affirm in

• European Patent Office receives delegation from the Japan External Trade Organization

• JUVE Patent’s Ones to Watch in French patent litigation 2023: Guillaume Dubos, Loyer & Abello (Paris) Jules Fabre, Pinsent Masons (Paris) Lionel Martin, August Debouzy (Paris) Marta Mendes, Hoyng ROKH Monegier (Paris)   Guillaume Dubos: The face of generational change Stepping out of Michel Abello’s shadow, Guillaume Dubos is taking the lead…

• On March 16, 2023, less than three weeks after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the USPTO granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 10,153,886, owned and asserted by Atlas Global Technologies, LLC, an NPE and Acacia Research entity.

Software Patents

• A new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, was added seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,719,101, owned by Adnexus, Inc. The ‘101 patent generally relates to a method of creating online advertisements…

Trademarks

• In a whopping 163-page opinion, the Board granted a petition for cancellation of two registrations for the configuration of safety helmets, rejecting Petitioner Honeywell’s Section 2(e)(5) functionality claim but sustaining Honeywell’s claim of lack of acquired distinctiveness. The Board noted that “[t]he Respondent’s failure to comply with its discovery and disclosure obligations plays a pivotal role in our determination.” [This blog post will summarize the high points of the decision.]. Honeywell Safety Products USA, Inc. v. ERB Industries, Inc., Cancellation No. 92070774 (March 13, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Angela Lykos).

Copyrights

• Back in September of 2021, The Weeknd was named in a copyright infringement lawsuit over 2018’s “Call Out My Name.” Now, approximately 18 months later, the involved parties have settled.

• This summary from an anime dataset so beautifully captures the issues facing [computer] generated art:

• I also want to personally thank [the image board], as without their hardwork the generative quality from this model would not have been feasible without going to financially extreme lengths to acquiring the data to use for training.

• Hey, I’m doing a pause today to share with you where I am in process of the production of Episode 38 and also look back in the mirror of what happened so far since summer 2022, the last time I published an episode of Pepper&Carrot. I’ll try to explain all the process of what happened for me to take so much time on this one.

• You’ll find that the big bottle-neck was mainly at the step of the scenario.

• A federal judge has officially dismissed with prejudice a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Nickelback in 2020 over “Rockstar.” District Judge Robert Pitman just recently signed off on a final judgement in the years-old case, after Magistrate Judge Susan Hightower in February formally recommended that the complaint be dismissed with prejudice.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Actually, the sun has already set in this picture. I tried to make it out in time for the sunset proper, but I couldn’t get the kids stuffed in bed fast enough.

• Friday (March 25th) was the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, where the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would (if she accepted) bear Christ into the world. We celebrate it nine months before Christmas.

• Happy almost midpoint of Lent! Today is the veneration of the Holy Cross, which I think I wrote about last year.

• So, November of last year I thought, “Hey, I haven’t poked at Healthcare.gov in a while, maybe I’ll have a lookie-look.” I hop on the website and click some links, and find out that for people who earn a living there is still no affordable healthcare on healthcare.gov. I get it, someone out there thinks it’s the bees knees (in fact, I think I recall reading someone extolling the virtues of it on gopher!) but it ain’t this guy.

• Fine, no big deal. My healthshare and self-pay is working out pretty well. It’s a lot of work and expense, but it gets the job done.

• Then, a few days after that episode, I get a bill in the mail for a state healthcare plan for two of my kids. Nice… bamboozled! Tricked into signing up for something I don’t need or want. I don’t recall asking to sign up for that, but they did get really, really pushy about getting all my info before I could even browse, so it’s not terribly surprising.

• Since its inception, there’s been a question of which words should be excluded, because they are offensive. This can get out of hand – someone out there is offended by the same words that seem completely innocuous to an unsuspecting, well-meaning person.

• On the other hand, _not including_ words is perhaps equally offensive. These words exist, ugly or not, and who am I to decide that no one is allowed to acknowledge their existance…

• After much deliberation I decided to not edit words based on their offensiveness. These words exist, and pretending they don’t may make some people happy, but there is a price. Editing our history to eliminate unsightly periods can only lead to the eventual disaster of repeating these horrible mistakes. It’s better to own our terribleness in the past and do the best we can in the future. That requires honesty.

• Every once in a while I have a day where I’m just utterly brain-dead. Today’s one of those days. I just can’t muster up the energy to finish tasks and I get very easily distracted. Over the years I’ve learned different techniques for powering through those days.

• My brain-dead days are very often preceded by a couple of days of poor sleep (almost always self-induced). As a result, I can barely keep my eyes open all day and the urge to nap is overwhelming. However, I’ve learned that I have to power through and reject all naps. Though I may suffer during the day, staying awake will prevent my braindeadness from spreading into the next day.

• I find myself often inclined to go about things in a less-than honest way or in a way that conceals myself.

• I’m not entirely sure when this all started, part of me thinks I’ve always somewhat been like this, but I remember first noticing it one night when I was 12, slinking down the stairs. I realized I just instinctively was walking on the inside of the stair, where it had the most support, because it results in less creaking; and that I was making large, slow steps to try and create as little noise as possible. My parents never really enforced a strict bedtime so it wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong by getting a late night snack, but nevertheless I was hoping not a living soul would be aware of my being in the kitchen.

• I should have taken a mental wellness day today – especially as the weather was so nice – but I wasn’t in the mood to play hooky (strangely enough) so I just toughed it out instead. Apparently it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said “What does not kill me makes me stronger”. If that were the case with me I would have joined K-1 or UFC a long time ago.

• Lately, my mind has been feeling like I am walking through mud, just really slow, not clear and not really going anywhere…and that is where it’s at. I attribute this to being sick on and off for the past month. We’ll see how things are tomorrow.

Technical

• Do you remember when the power button became a suggestion? My old 8088 had a physical power button. It was spring-loaded, and when you pressed it, you physically disconnected (or connected, it was a toggle) the power from the motherboard. It was a jarring, brutal action that suddenly robbed the computer of its life force, without any warning. No time to save files or spin down disks. No time for anything. It was mankind’s ultimate dominance over machine.

• Offline computer use can work, or not. The best way to find out whether it works for you would be to drop your internet for a day or a weekend or whatever. Repeated, this should eventually reveal most of what, if anything, you are missing, besides the withdrawal symptoms. Most software should be fine, though if you’ve been offline for a while the very first thing to do after reconnecting is to check for security patches, especially if you actually need to entangle zero-day prone chunky chortleware with random interweb sites.

• Almost, because this text is being written on a computer.

• The first ice cream this year eaten, some 2 cubic meter of ground and stones moved and shaped to form of a miniature mountain on our garden, and 24 km on bikes ridden.

• I also made a few pictures with my film camera (results will be seen only when I finish the roll of the film).

Internet/Gemini

• As I wrote before, I try to send e-mails to people who can tell something about the Internet in the days of Gopher protocol popularity. Today I received an unexpected reply. Unexpected, because to my e-mail from almost a year ago. Fortunately, we operate in a small-net and by definition there is no rush here. Things moved quickly, and after a while we got a new story from the early nineties. And what’s more, the desire to write about further details. I recommend looking at [Authentic 1990s experiences] and d1337 writings.

• You shouldn’t put set pgp_decrypt_comman and so on, because you are using GPGME.

Programming

• People keep gently encouraging me to learn git. Most recently, a ham radio operator reached out about some ham radio software that I cobbled together, and asked if I would host it on github. He even went so far as to walk me through the steps. Seriously, that’s some kind of investment!

• 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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