● 03.23.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 23/03/2023: Linux 6.2.8 and XWayland 23.1.0

Posted in News Roundup at 5:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Kubuntu Focus XE Gen 2 is an ultra-portable 14-inch Full HD (1920×1080 @ 60 Hz) laptop that promises exceptional performance with the 28 W TDP 12th Gen Intel “Alder Lake” Core i7-1260P processor with 12 cores, 16 threads, 18 MB cache, and up to 4.7 GHz boost clock frequency, or the Core i5-1240P processor with 12 cores, 16 threads, 12 MB cache, and up to 4.4 GHz boost clock frequency.

• Both processors come with Iris Xe graphics, which promise up to 3 times faster graphics than 10th Gen Intel GPUs. Kubuntu Focus XE Gen 2 also features up to 64GB dual-channel DDR4 3200 MHz RAM and up to 2TB SSD NVMe M.2 storage with full encryption and Kubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS pre-installed.

• TUXEDO Control Center 2.0 is the culmination of almost two years of work and introduces major changes like new Keyboard Backlight and Webcam modules to let you control the keyboard illumination of your TUXEDO laptop, as well as for changing various settings of your TUXEDO laptop’s built-in webcam.

• In more detail, the Keyboard Backlight module will allow you to fully control the backlight brightness and the backlight color of the keyboard. For laptops that have multicolor keyboard illumination, you can also adjust each backlight area individually.

Server

• When it first started out, there was a lot of press about systemd and its ability to speed up boot time. That feature had a mostly-universal appeal (it’s less important to those who don’t reboot), so in many ways, that’s the reputation it still has today. And while it’s true that systemd is the thing that launches services in parallel during startup, there’s a lot more to it than that. Here are three things you may not have realized systemd could do but should be taking advantage. Get more tips from our new downloadable eBook, A pragmatic guide to systemd.

• Kubernetes has become the go-to container orchestration tool for deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications. While Kubernetes offers many benefits, it also introduces new security challenges that must be addressed.

• In the realm of modern computing, large clusters of computers are becoming increasingly important for organizations of all kinds, including scientific research institutions, financial firms, and e-commerce companies.

• In today’s digital age, where applications run the world, scalability and performance are crucial for businesses. Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration system, has emerged as a popular platform to manage large, complex applications.

• Backslash Security emerged from stealth today to provide IT teams with a visual tool that identifies workflows in cloud-native code that could lead to a security breach. Fresh from raising $8 million in funding, Backslash Security CEO Shahar Man says the company’s namesake tool provides a lightweight approach to mapping

• As indicated in the article Cloud Automation in 2021 – the new normal in the tech industry, an AI-assisted Kubernetes orchestrator can serve many use cases to optimize cloud costs for DevOps, DevSecOps and site reliability engineering (SRE). This blog describes SRE-specific use cases for an AI-assisted Kubernetes orchestrator.

• High availability, scalability, and capacity planning are crucial aspects of any modern IT infrastructure.

• In today’s world of technology, downtime can lead to significant financial losses for businesses. It is essential to ensure high availability of services to provide seamless and uninterrupted services to customers.

Audiocasts/Shows

• First up in the news: Meet Ubuntu Flatpak Remix, KDE Plasma 6 Begins, No Peeking, Vanilla goes to Debian, LibreOffice 7.4.6, Nitrux goes “sh”, Elementary updates, DuckDuckGo goes AI on Wikipedia, Debian gets new APT, Proton joins the fight against censorship, Firefox 111 features, Kali 2023.1 released, and Wine 8.4 with old Wayland released.

• In security and privacy, Brave needs no permission to do Google, NordVPN open sources code;

• Then in our Wanderings, we are posting no Bills this episode,

• In our Innards section, Joe talks ffmpeg

• Download

• This video gives an overview of GCompris, a free open source educational program aimed at children 2-10 with 180+ activities, including some that will keep adults busy and available in many languages.

Kernel Space

• The Yocto Project is an open source umbrella project which gathers all needed tools to build full Linux distributions for a wide variety of devices. As the interest for Yocto grew since its first steps, its size and number of use cases increased consequentially.

Graphics Stack

• This blog introduces a new tool to make it easy to stream wayland windows and screens to existing applications running under Xwayland that don’t have native pipewire support in an easy-to-use manner than retains full user control throughout.

• On my Plasma wayland session right now if I use the screen share function in Discord, I’m presented with the following.

• It doesn’t work

• I have no windows listed, even though I clearly have windows open. The full screen shares are blank. The same will be true in MS Teams, Slack, Zoom as well as any other Xwayland apps that involve screencasts.

• Linux enthusiasts – and by reading developer blogs you’re definitely in this camp – will understand why this is and probably know some technique to avoid this involving changing my setup or workflow in some way to work round things on a per-app basis.

• For our wider userbase this isn’t enough. Wayland is a technical detail and we want any switch has to be as transparent as possible for as many apps as possible for all cases – including cases we haven’t thought of.

Applications

• It’s not uncommon for people interested in Linux to access multiple PCs. Hardware comes in different shapes and sizes. They may be notebooks, tablets, home servers, media boxes, even single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi. Some of the devices may be headless (i.e. with no monitor attached). Regardless, with multiple devices, a convenient way to access them all from a central location is with remote desktop software. Our recommended remote desktop client under Ubuntu is Remmina. By default, Ubuntu comes with this client already installed. Remmina has support for VNC and RDP protocols.

• As you’d expect with Linux, there are always other open source alternatives. In this article, we’ll take a brief look at RustDesk.

Instructionals/Technical

• When you try to install any package from the repository, it will give you the most recent version, but you can also ask the repository to provide a specific version of the application.

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

• In this tutorial, we will show you the easy way to clear Apt Cache in Ubuntu, Debian, and Linux Mint. apt (Advanced Package Tool) is a command-line package manager used in Debian-based Linux distributions?

• This guide explains about error handling in Ansible Playbooks and how to handle different errors when running playbooks in Ansible in Linux.

• Canonical has implemented a staged roll-out for some Ubuntu package updates.

• I find that rather annoying at times, e.g. when preparing the laptop for traveling.

• So for my memory and for the benefit of others: [...]

• A customer of mine runs dedicated servers inside a foreign data-center, remote hands only. In such an environment you might need a disk replacement because you need bigger or faster disks, though also a disk might (start to) fail and you need a replacement. One has to be prepared for such a scenario, but fully wiping your used disk then might not always be an option, especially once disks (start to) fail. On the other hand you don’t want to end up with (partial) data on your disk handed over to someone unexpected.

• By encrypting the data on your disks upfront you can prevent against this scenario. But if you have a fleet of servers you might not want to manually jump on servers during boot and unlock crypto volumes manually. It’s especially annoying if it’s about the root filesystem where a solution like dropbear-initramfs needs to be used for remote access during initramfs boot stage. So my task for the customer was to adjust encrypted LUKS devices such that no one needs to manually unlock the encrypted device during server boot (with some specific assumptions about possible attack vectors one has to live with, see the disclaimer at the end).

Games

• Between 2023-03-15 and 2023-03-22 there were 20 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 174 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 11.5 % of total…

• A batch of foreign game titles is about to hit the world’s largest mobile gaming market.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• This blog introduces a new tool to make it easy to stream wayland windows and screens to existing applications running under Xwayland that don’t have native pipewire support in an easy-to-use manner than retains full user control throughout.

• On my Plasma wayland session right now if I use the screen share function in Discord, I’m presented with the following.

• It doesn’t work

• I have no windows listed, even though I clearly have windows open. The full screen shares are blank. The same will be true in MS Teams, Slack, Zoom as well as any other Xwayland apps that involve screencasts.

• The Kubuntu Focus team has released yet another device that focuses on the Kubuntu distribution and offers plenty of power.

• This second-generation laptop sports an Intel i7-1260P CPU (12 cores/16 threads), that offers a 16% and 60% boost in single and multi-core Geekbench 5 scores, which means enough performance to handle large, multi-process tasks. As for graphics, the XE Gen 2 ships with Intel IRIS Xe 96 or 80 EU, and the battery reportedly gives you 8 hours of power.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GNOME 44 includes a number of core improvements spanning eye-catching new features through to more subtle enhancements and lower-level buffs. Last year’s GNOME 43 release was quite the instalment and everything shipping here, in GNOME 44 continue steadfast in the same direction.

• I took readers through the best GNOME 44 features on my other Linux blog a couple of weeks ago. If you read that post — thank you 🙏 — you’ll be clued up on the core changes. If you didn’t read it, don’t worry: I’m about to run through most of the changes again.

• Version 44 of the GNOME desktop environment has been released. “This release brings a grid view in the file chooser, improved settings panels for Device Security, Accessibility, etc, and refined quick settings in the shell. The Software and Files apps have seen improvements, and a whole slew of new apps has joined the GNOME Circle”. See the release notes for details.

• One thing I genuinely hated about GNOME has finally been solved with the GNOME 44 release. It includes some big improvements and new features.

• As dumb as it sounds, one of the most important new features is the added grid view for the file picker. Honestly, I still can’t believe it took this long but it’s finally in. You can now actually see proper previews of images. As they said in the release announcement that for years GNOME users have been requesting it. Apps will need to use GTK4 though, so hopefully plenty will.

• Keeping the trend of releasing a new major version every six months, GNOME 44, named “Kuala Lumpur,” is now available, bringing another dose of user experience improvements.

• As a leading desktop environment, the open-source community eagerly anticipates its new releases. So, let’s see what’s new in it without further ado.

• The GNOME Project has announced the release of version 44 of its flagship Linux desktop. The new version includes tweaked settings and enhanced apps.

• The latest version, codenamed “Kuala Lumpur,” comes six months after what the official release notes described as “hard work.”

• By bumping up the version number, the developers stressed that GNOME 44 includes some major changes.

• The GNOME Project has announced the release of GNOME 44 for Linux desktops. This update is codenamed Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. This name was picked to show recognition to the organizers of the GNOME.Asia 2022 event. With this update, the developers have improved the Settings app, the quick settings menu, and streamlined the Software app.

• With GNOME 44, four of the panels in the Settings app have been updated, these include Device Security, Accessibility, Sound, and Mouse & Touchpad. In the Mouse & Touchpad panel, for example, there are now videos that demonstrate the available options. This should make options easier to understand for users. In the Sound settings also, the volume level control has now been moved to a separate window making it easier for users to access output and input controls.

• GNOME 44 is now available for public use as you can download it from the official website of GNOME. In recognition of the work done by the organizers of GNOME.Asia Summit 2022 conference, GNOME 44  was awarded the Code-named “Kuala Lumpur”.

• There are many great desktop environments for Linux, such as Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, and MATE to name a few. With that said, only one can be the best, and that is obviously GNOME. Look, folks, there’s a reason Canonical uses it as the default DE for Ubuntu — it’s that good. If you are a GNOME fan, I have some extremely exciting news. You see, as of today, GNOME 44 is officially here! Named “Kuala Lumpur,” this version of the desktop environment is loaded with new features.

• It’s worth noting I couldn’t find a way to re-activate an app running in the background—if I close the Discord window (and it’s enabled to close to the tray), it shows up in this list, but clicking it doesn’t allow re-opening the Discord window. So either I missed something (let me know in the comments!), or this is not supported.

• GNOME serves as the default desktop environment for countless Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu and Fedora. GNOME 44 has now been released, with changes that will show up in upcoming Linux distro updates.

• GNOME 44 has been under development for the past six months, and most of the work has gone into the Settings app. It’s no easy task to organize all of the options, toggles, and links needed for a desktop PC — as we’ve learned from Windows 10/11 and macOS Ventura. The accessibility panel has been redesigned to be more clear, and new options have been added for keyboard features, over-amplification for audio, and making the scrollbars always visible.

• The GNOME Project is proud to announce the release of GNOME 44, ‘Kuala Lumpur’.

• This release brings a grid view in the file chooser, improved settings panels for Device Security, Accessibility, etc, and refined quick settings in the shell. The Software and Files apps have seen improvements, and a whole slew of new apps has joined the GNOME Circle 74.

• To learn more about the changes in GNOME 44, you can read the release notes.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Fedora Family / IBM

• As Michael Scott and his parkour-aspiring colleagues show, it’s one thing to simply mirror principles. But being able to quickly and effectively pivot and adapt priorities based on real-time feedback and need is an entirely different – and much more challenging – matter.

• Teams have been working with components of agile since the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was introduced 22 years ago. By now, most organizations have taken steps toward team agility – even if (as in the example above) they are just throwing out terms like scrum, Kanban, and sprints.

• The main focus of this article is to demonstrate how to instrument React applications to make them observable. For a good overview of observability and OpenTelemetry, please take a look at the article, Observability in 2022: Why it matters and how OpenTelemetry can help.

Debian Family

Bits from Debian: New Debian Developers and Maintainers (January and February 2023)The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:Sahil Dhiman (sahil)Jakub Ružička (jru)The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:Josenilson Ferreira da SilvaIleana DumitrescuDouglas KosovicIsrael GaladimaTimothy PearsonBlake LeeVasyl GelloJoachim ZobelAmin BandaliCongratulations!

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• In 2010, with the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Canonical decided to paint Ubuntu purple, replacing the brown theme it used before. It also took the redesign as an opportunity to include a new font simply called Ubuntu Font. While the sans-serif font is ideal for desktops and mobile, the font was picked for other uses too by other companies and projects thanks to its open license.

• Thirteen years after its release, Canonical is now working on an updated version of Ubuntu Font which it hopes to include in Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster”, which is due next month. To ensure that the font is ready, Canonical is calling on the community to download the updated font and look out for any problems and report back with screenshots.

• Ubuntu developers want to ship a new revision of its iconic typeface in next month’s Ubuntu 23.04 release but aren’t 100% certain if it is 100% ready for mainstream deployment yet.

• Hence the need for community feedback.

• Since its introduction back in 2010 the Ubuntu font has taken on a life of its own, extending far beyond the confines of the desktop it was made for. I regularly see the Ubuntu font being used in all kinds of content, from magazine ads to bus stop ads, websites and social media clips, through to the occasional TV commercial or two!

Devices/Embedded

• Orange Pi 5B is a variant of the Rockchip RK3588S powered Orange Pi 5 SBC with up to 256GB eMMC flash and a soldered-on wireless module offering WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, at the cost of losing the M.2 2242 socket and 16MB QSPI NOR flash found in the original board.

• The board still comes with HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4 (USB-C), and MIPI DSI display connectors, three camera connectors, a Gigabit Ethernet interface, a few USB ports, and a 26-pin GPIO header for expansion.

• Shenzhen Xunlong Software provides Orange Pi OS (Android), Orange Pi OS (Arch), Debian 11, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Android 12 images. Some of the images (Ubuntu/Debian) are developed in collaboration with Armbian where the company pays for the integration and maintenance of the images. Right now, neither the Orange Pi nor Armbian websites have images for the Orange Pi 5B, but you’ll find images for the earlier Orange Pi 5.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The challenge Pest monitoring is essential for the proper management of any vineyard as it allows for the early detection and management of any potential pest infestations. By regularly monitoring the vineyard, growers can identify pests at early stages and take action to prevent further damage.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Threaded online conversations are a relatively new form of communication that can improve knowledge transfer and availability, but they can also stray from the original intent. Online technical conversations in open source communities using Slack or one of the several open source alternatives experience these benefits and drawbacks.

• Say a community member posts a question or shares an idea to start a conversation. As in any conversation, sometimes things can get off track. While not all diversions from the prompt are unhelpful, there are times when a comment can be unproductive—and sometimes even hurtful.

• Black Lantern Security introduces Badsecrets, an open source tool for identifying known or weak cryptographic secrets across multiple platforms.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• We’re committing $30M to build Mozilla.ai: A startup — and a community — building a trustworthy, independent, and open-source AI ecosystem. We’re only three months into 2023, and it’s already clear what one of the biggest stories of the year is: AI.

• Over the past 20 years, I’ve focused on consumer-driven businesses. From factories making jeans (at Levi’s) to the largest retailer/company (Walmart) to early years of social-driven commerce (at ModCloth), getting to what drives consumer behavior is where I love to spend my time.

FSFE

• The main debate happens around the Cyber Resilience Act. We will therefore discuss the risks and solutions using this Act as an example.

• While we welcome the discussion on more cyber security we doubt that the introduction of liability alone will lead to more cyber security. Especially in Free Software, far-reaching security measures are already in place. Those measures differ from those of proprietary software.

• The proposal to exclude Free Software “outside the course of a commercial activity” would fail to address a large part of software that will not be covered but is deployed. At the same time smaller and non-profit projects would be harmed as they would have to bear major costs.

Programming/Development

• Hi everyone! It’s two days after the March 20 TLA+ workshop, which means it’s time to start getting feedback and revising things for the May 15th workshop. At some point I want to talk about my “workshop technology” I use, but that’ll take some time to write up, so maybe next week? We’ll see.

• (If you’re on the fence about the workshop: attendees can share specs they write after the class and I give them feedback. So not only are you learning TLA+, you get help applying it to your job!)

• Anyway, here’s a software engineering idea I’ve been playing with but haven’t tried in practice yet, so I don’t know how well it works. Constraint solving1 has this technique called “channeling constraints”, where you represent data in multiple connected ways. Like if you’re constraint solving a schedule, you have two possible representations of “which talk is in slot T and room R” (in MiniZinc): [...]

• Every data science project needs a data validation step. It’s a crucial part, especially when feeding data into machine learning models. You don’t want errors or unexpected behaviors in a production environment.

• Lunduke-is-Sick-Edition

• If you are using Flutter on Linux, and you installed Google Chrome using Flapak, you may face the problem when installing and running Flutter:

• Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):

• [✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.7.7, on Manjaro Linux 5.15.102-1-MANJARO, locale en_US.UTF-8)

• Amazing. I posted in December 20, 2022, compiling the packages for the Kirkstone-series in OpenEmbedded, on an Acer Ryzen5 laptop, and it took 4 days and 3 hours to compile 1,620 packages:

• Qt for MCUs 2.2.4 LTS (Long-Term Support) has been released and is available for download. As a patch release, Qt for MCUs 2.2.4 LTS provides bug fixes and other improvements, and maintains source compatibility with Qt for MCUs 2.2.x. It does not add any new functionality.

Python

• Using your Raspberry PI for automated controls allows you to keep control of many devices or conditions with a low power consumption device. Understanding how

Leftovers

• Nearly 1,000 people lost their lives after Rönesans Rezidans collapsed into rubble in the February quakes.

• The contractor denied any fault, saying that his son also died in the building that collapsed in the February earthquakes.

Science

• We’ve never been able to do this before.

Hardware

• The story of how the “Atari Democrats” came to shape the way politics and technology work together, for good and bad.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Petri dish chicken just got a step closer to your dinner plate.

• This would explain a lot.

• More than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants during protests around the world since 2015,

• Please enjoy your stay.

• Officials are investigating an explosion and fire at a chemical plant in suburban Houston that injured one person. It is not immediately known what caused Wednesday’s blast at the plant in the city of Pasadena. But officials say the fire occurred as liquified natural gas was being transferred from a tanker truck to a storage tank. Crews later extinguished the blaze. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez says the injured person was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition. The facility is owned by INEOS Phenol and produces Cumene, used to make various things including pesticides and cleaning products.

• A bipartisan consensus that Congress should act to toughen regulations on railroads is emerging in the U.S. Senate. The Senate Commerce Committee is examining a fiery hazardous train derailment last month on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Republicans and Democrats on the committee peppered Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw with questions Wednesday on what enhanced safety measures he would support. Shaw offered support for some safety enhancements but declined to endorse several key parts of the bipartisan Railway Safety Act of 2023. The bill includes requirements that trains have crews of at least two people, expands the classification for highly hazardous flammable trains and increases fines for safety violations.

• With a historically small pool of potential recruits, DoD wants to help more potential service members qualify.

• A tragic irony.

• The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday night it’s stepping up efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking across the Southern border with the launch of a major new, multi-agency operation.

• Republicans itching to probe the pandemic response are already struggling to separate vaccine-related questions that could yield lessons learned from ones that echo theories experts say are debunked by reams of data.

• The increased conflict between parents has led to a rise in the number of children and young people seeking help from Ensi- ja turvakotien liitto’s (ETKL) divorce services. According to experts, parents and professionals should pay more attention to young people in divorced families.

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Fedora (firefox), Oracle (kernel, kernel-container, and nss), and SUSE (curl, dpdk, drbd, go1.18, kernel, openstack-cinder, openstack-glance, openstack-neutron-gbp, openstack-nova, python-oslo.utils, oracleasm, python3, slirp4netns, and xen).

• Ransomware and data related attacks are the top cybersecurity threats to the transport sector in the EU, ENISA says.

• Spain needs more transparency over the Pegasus spyware hacking scandal, a European Parliament committee said.

• Many of the most successful cybercriminals are shrewd; they want good ROI, but they don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel to get it.

• Privacy Commissioner Michael Harvey has stepped away from further involvement in his office’s investigation into the 2021 cyber attack on the health care system.

• Revelations about government seeking a court ruling on a potential conflict of interest with Harvey was a topic during question period in the House of Assembly yesterday.

• Harvey is a former assistant deputy minister of health and was on the board of the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information before being appointed as Privacy Commissioner.

• CISA announces adding more experts to its Cybersecurity Advisory Committee and updating the Cybersecurity Performance Goals.

• M7 Group’s Czech and Slovak operator Skylink has fallen the victim of a hacker attack.

• In a note published on the Skylink CZ’s Facebook page, the operator said: “We apologise, currently we have reported a system outage (web, customer zone) due to a hacker attack. We are working intensively on the repair. We thank you for your understanding”.

• McDonald’s Korea was given a fine of 696 million won (US$532,110) on Wednesday after the personal data of 4.87 million customers was leaked to hackers due to the firm’s lax data management.

• The Personal Information Protection Commission handed out the fine to the Korean branch of the American fast food chain, along with a financial penalty of about 10 million won for the data breach.

• Guenevere Chen, an associate professor in the UTSA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently published a paper on USENIX Security 2023 that demonstrates a novel inaudible voice trojan attack to exploit vulnerabilities of smart device microphones and voice assistants — like Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa or Amazon’s Echo and Microsoft Cortana — and provide defense mechanisms for users.

• Nearly 50,000 documents containing personal information of special education students who live in New York City and attend public school there were recently found

• Former Colorado GOP Senate candidate Robert “Eli” Bremer is livid over the Air Force’s failure to notify him about the branch’s improper release of his military records, which he first learned about from a reporter who was covering the latest developments in the problematic story for the Defense Department.

• Speaking to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, Bremer, a former Olympian who sought the GOP nomination for Senate in Colorado last year, said he was first notified about the incident by a Politico reporter who sought comment from him about the Air Force’s admission that it had leaked his records to Due Diligence Group, a Democratic Party-aligned research firm.

• Not all ransomware groups wield crypto-locking malware. Some have adopted other strategies. Take BianLian. After security researchers released a free decryptor for its malware, instead of encrypting files, the group chose to steal them and demand ransom solely for their safe return.

• Thousands of employees in the Massachusetts cannabis industry received an official email last week about a major data breach: the name, home and email address, phone number and date of birth of every cannabis worker in the state had been made public in an “inadvertent release of agency documents” by the state’s own Cannabis Control Commission. Along with the names and personal information, the dataset included a list of former employees and the specific reasons they were no longer associated with the marijuana company, including alleged violations of company policy.

• Hacktivist are increasingly turning towards targeting operational technology in critical infrastructure systems.

• Google says it has suspended the app for the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo after malware was found in versions of the app. The move comes just weeks after Chinese security researchers published an analysis suggesting the popular e-commerce app sought to seize total control over affected devices by exploiting multiple security vulnerabilities in a variety of Android-based smartphones.

• The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.

• Cisco Talos researchers found two high-severity vulnerabilities in WellinTech’s KingHistorian industrial data historian software.

• The popular cybercrime forum BreachForums is being shut down following the arrest of Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, who is accused of running the website.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Since 2018, we sought data on e-surveillance from MHA,which was denied for national security reasons. On appeal, it was held that data is periodically destroyed and subsequently the CIC held that information wasn’t maintained at all. Delhi HC issued notice on our petition challenging the CIC order.

• In “Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs,” Kerry Howley searches for hidden links among whistle-blowers, conspiracy theorists, targets of the surveillance state, and the rest of us.

Defence/Aggression

• More than a year after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is getting a helping hand from the IMF.

• Two officials have been temporarily suspended from their duties in connection with suspected unfair food procurement practises for the National Armed Forces (NBS). They are the head of the procurement commission and the official responsible for the procurement on the part of the NBS, the Minister for Defense Ināra Mūrniece (National Alliance) said in an interview on Latvian Television March 22.

• Although Russian knowledge is one of the most demanded in Latvia’s labour market, the past year’s events in Ukraine have made adjustments in this respect. Under public pressure, the Russian-language requirement is disappearing from job advertisements, Latvian Radio reported on March 22.

• NOTE: The following is “back-story” to yesterday’s post, which I was tempted to title “All You Ever Wanted to Know About the Attack on Iraq and Now Want to Forget.” I do encourage you to give that posting a look before reading what follows. The attack was launched 20 years ago today.

• In March of 2003, the United States launched an illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

• On March 14, A Russian jet collided with a US drone, leading to the downing of the drone in the Black Sea.

• The Chinese leader left Russia on Wednesday after three days of talks with the Russian president. Atlantic Council experts share their insights on the state of the so-called no-limits partnership.

• Following Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to Moscow, we reached out to our experts for a look beyond the talking points.

• President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia falsely claimed the material had a “nuclear component.” Many armies, including Russia’s, use it in weapons.

• He is expected to meet with Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, on Thursday, according to a Kensington Palace statement shared with Polish and British news media.

• Six weeks ago, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report claiming that President Joe Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline last September. The $11-billion pipeline was set to double the volume of natural gas delivered from Russia to Germany. While the story gained attention in Germany and Western Europe, it faced a near media blackout in the United States.

• Irina Zherebkina, who spent the first year of the war under bombardment in Kharkiv, still believes that peace must be imagined into being.

Environment

• In part 1 of this commentary, Prachi Sukhatankar discusses the need for federal agencies to build a climate intelligence foundation, along with the benefits and challenges of such an undertaking.

Energy/Transportation

• This week’s summit between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin was a highly choreographed affair, aimed at showcasing deep and enduring solidarity between the two countries.

• The Lithuanian energy company Ignitis Group has come up with ambitious investment plans in Latvia. In the coming years, it plans to invest at least €700 million in solar and wind energy production. Ignitis also aims to create the largest car charging network in the Baltic States, Latvian Television reported on March 21.

Overpopulation

• To mark World Water Day, the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness has called for updated laws that enshrine citizens’ access to clean water.

Finance

Axios ☛ Why everybody’s talking about deposit insuranceWalk into any bank branch in America, and you will likely see a sign that says, in big letters, “FDIC” — that would be the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — and “each depositor insured to at least $250,000.”The “at least” part is taking on new meaning as a banking crisis unfurls.

• French President Emmanuel Macron is stubbornly resisting growing discontent on the streets of France. He said on Wednesday that the pension bill he pushed through without a vote in parliament to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 must be implemented by the end of the year. After his interview broadcast on national television, critics attacked Macron describing him as “self-satisfied,” “out of touch” and “offensive.” He said the bill will “continue its democratic path” as the Constitutional Council needs to review it in the coming weeks. It was the first time that Macron spoke publicly since his government forced the pension bill through parliament last week.

• The moss spores arrived like an interloper, stealing slowly into the kitchen during the damp onset of spring. By the time Jenny Odell had discovered their entry, the moss had sprouted in her apartment, marking its tender terrain in a planter near the sill.

• Since the Paris Agreement in 2016, the biggest banks that fund the fossil fuel industry seem to have minimally decreased their support, and in some cases are actually increasing their funding.

• Virgin Orbit (VORB) is currently negotiating with Matthew Brown, a private investor, to win a $200 million capital infusion that would give Brown control of the company, Reuters first reported today (March 22).

• The Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate by another quarter-percentage point on Wednesday (March 22), signaling confidence that recent panic in the banking sector will be contained.

• National anti-corruption agency the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) said March 22 it has asked the Prosecutor’s Office to launch prosecutions against two former officials of the State Revenue Service, Latvia’s tax collection body.

• The Federal Reserve extended its year-long fight against high inflation by raising its key interest rate by a quarter-point despite concerns that higher borrowing rates could worsen the turmoil that has gripped the banking system. Fed Chair Jerome Powell sought to reassure Americans that it is safe to leave money in their banks, two weeks after a rush of depositors pulled funds from Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed in the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history. Signature Bank fell soon afterward. “We have the tools to protect depositors when there’s a threat of serious harm to the economy or to the financial system,” Powell said. “Depositors should assume that their deposits are safe.”

• Results of the population survey conducted by the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (CSB) show that 7.8 % of the population suffered from severe material and social deprivation in 2022 (2.5 percentage points more than in 2021 when the figure was 5.3%).

• Latvian Post (Latvijas pasts, LP), the national state-owned postal service plans to reduce the number of its mail departments this year, said Marcis Vilcāns, Chairman of the company’s board of directors, in an interview to Latvian Television on March 22.

• The most serious issue Pakistan’s economy is currently dealing with is price increases or inflation. Life has become miserable for the average person as a result of the ongoing increase in the cost of necessities like food, fuel, and medicine.

• Stocks fell sharply after the Federal Reserve said it doesn’t expect to cut rates anytime soon despite Wall Street’s hopes. But it also indicated the end may be near for its economy-crunching hikes to interest rates. The S&P 500 fell 1.6% for its first drop in three days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 530 points. Some of the sharpest drops came again from the banking industry, where investors are worried about the possibility of customers yanking their cash to cause more collapses. Treasury yields sank again to continue their remarkable slide for the month so far.

• Federal Reserve officials have a difficult path ahead of them. They still have work to do to bring inflation down, but their efforts have been complicated by the events of the past few weeks. The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the ongoing stress in the regional banking sector….

• The public financial institution has stopped receiving remittances entirely to instead focus on government social programs.

• The economy grew 3.5% in February compared to 2022, thanks in part to strong gains in the manufacturing sector, says INEGI.

• The organization measures Turkey’s inflation at 57,7 percent for 2022 and forecasts the inflation to remain in the 40 percent range for 2023 and 2024.

• Homebuyers aren’t putting as much money down as they were at the height of the housing frenzy.

• After a lag, the work-from-home revolution is finally starting to show up in the data for office building rental rates.

• Senators Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Rick Scott (R-Fl.) have introduced a bill which would bar members of Congress from collecting taxpayer-funded pensions if they are convicted of felonies related to their official duties.

• Why it matters: It comes as Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is under local and federal investigation for lying about key parts of his biography and campaign — including his resume, ancestry and education.

• The Federal Reserve raised its target interest rate by a quarter-percentage point Wednesday while acknowledging that problems in the banking system triggered by its previous rate increases are likely to weigh on the economy.

• Prices in Britain reversed a recent downward trend, rising 10.4 percent over the year through February.

• What’s worse: More inflation or more turmoil?

• Also, China and Russia grow closer and the U.S. waits for news of a possible Donald Trump indictment.

• Finavia, the Finnish airport operator, reported substantial revenue growth in 2022, despite the pandemic-related challenges. However, due to the low passenger volumes at the regional airports and the low level of transfer travel at Helsinki Airport, the company’s overall result for the financial year remained negative.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The global community has experienced significant disruption, since 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic. The isolationist economic policies of several powerful Western nations, who drifted away from their erstwhile global approach during Covid-pandemic, compounded its profound impact on the global economy.

• Tomb and urn images shed light on the intricacies of Etruscan and Roman civilisation at least 2 000 years ago, reviving it for modern times. By ALEX WHITING A 2 500-year-old Etruscan tomb in the Italian city of Tarquinia has walls covered in paintings of brightly coloured dancers and musicians.

• China is everywhere in global politics. China is “ubiquitous,” a retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo of China’s PLA told in a conversation with TIME magazine. On March 10, in an agreement brokered by Beijing, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to normalize relations, after seven years of bitter rivalry in a deal that sidelined the U.S.

• Watch all the games live across RTÉ and Virgin Media Television from Saturday 25th March  WATCH OUR PROMO: https://youtu.be/np-FPszQAUA  Kicking off on Saturday 25th March, the 2023 TikTok Six Nations coverage will see all games equally aired across RTÉ2, RTÉ Player, RTÉ Radio 1 and Virgin Media for what promises to be an explosive championship.

• The Manhattan District Attorney faces huge legal and political challenges, but the former President’s antics could help the prosecution’s case.

• For audiences in China, Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia this week was a show of strength and a testament to Beijing’s bid for global leadership, writes “The Washington Post” reviewing the Chinese press about the visit.

• The U.S. government’s threat to ban TikTok takes aim at what has become the most popular smartphone app in the country.

• Lawmakers plan to press TikTok CEO Shou Chew on issues related to child exploitation, teen mental health and its connection to China.

• When TikTok chief Shou Zi Chew testifies at the US Congress tomorrow (Mar. 23), he will try to dismantle any and all notions about the app sharing US user data with the Chinese government.

• TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will tell lawmakers Thursday that banning the app in the U.S. would hurt American businesses and the country’s economy, according to newly released remarks prepared for his testimony before Congress.

• Rep. Jamaal Bowman on Wednesday decried government efforts to ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok as “racist.” During a press conference outside the Capitol Building, Bowman (D-NY), flanked by dozens of social media influencers, as well as Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), urged lawmakers and the public to “not be racist towards…

• In his first appearance before Congress, TikTok CEO Shou Chew will make the case that the company’s U.S. operations aren’t swayed by China.

• A federal appeals court has directed a lawyer for Donald Trump to turn over to prosecutors documents in the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified documents at his Florida estate. The order from the three-judge panel was sealed and none of the parties are mentioned by name. But the details appear to correspond with a closed-door dispute before a lower court judge over whether M. Evan Corcoran could be forced to provide documents or give grand jury testimony in the Justice Department special counsel probe into whether Trump mishandled top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago.

• Behind the gilded doors of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump and his advisers are preparing for several different potential scenarios related to a possible indictment from the Manhattan grand jury probing a hush money scheme.

• As the public awaits a possible indictment of the former President by a New York grand jury, Amy Davidson Sorkin examines the strange particulars of the case.

• SILJA PAAVOLA, the chairperson of the Finnish Union of Practical Nurses (Super), has rejected the claim that employees with inadequate Finnish skills are a burden that is driving professionals away from the nursing sector.

• Research revealed that long sick leaves due to psychiatric sleep disorders have quadrupled in Finland from 2010 to 2022. Last year alone, over 9,000 Finnish citizens received sickness allowance due to psychiatric sleep disorders. These disorders are more common among women, particularly those aged between 35 and 54, and have been increasing rapidly over the past decade.

• Creating compelling and engaging content for social media can be a challenge for universities. That’s where Deanna Stevens Ulrich comes in. Stevens Ulrich is the associate director of digital content for Kent State’s social media platforms.

• The world is apparently descending into chaos. With events such as the recent collapse of SVB bank adding to the problems allegedly caused by the pseudopandemic and the war in Ukraine, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Only a few years ago it was widely recognised that, by nearly every measure, global life outcomes were all improving.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) said March 21 it has launched a show titled “Current Time Baltics” on its Russian-language television and digital network Current Time which it described as “a critical part of RFE/RL’s strategy to counter Russian malign influence across Europe by providing new Russian-language audiences with trusted news and information.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• President Erdoğan’s former lawyer had sued Nazan Özcan over an article on bianet. The article did not contain “libel” and “defamation,” according to the prosecutor.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Stella Assange and Kevin Gosztola join Stefania Maurizi for a live panel discussion of the surveillance, monitoring, and control that has oppressed Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for more than 10 years.

Civil Rights/Policing

• In the race for Hamilton Centre, ‘Defund’ activist faced the same cop who’d ‘comically’ charged her with assault

• Workers across 100 Starbucks stores will strike today (Mar. 22) to welcome new CEO Laxman Narasimhan, and remind him of where his priorities should lie.

• Eight people were caught trying to cross into Turkey. They were allegedly tortured by border guards and two of them were killed.

Monopolies

Patents

• Members of SACEPO Working Party on Rules discussed latest changes

Copyrights

• The U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa this week has begun to place the spotlight on the mounting tensions over digital policy. For months, Canadian officials have not only been dismissive of the issue, but – as this week’s fishing expedition into Google and Facebook demonstrates – have not shied away from making the issue front and centre.

• Marc Anthony Thompson, with the musical collective Chocolate Genius, produced some of the great confessional songs of the nineties. But critics seemed eager to define the project by what it wasn’t.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• “Monsters” are creatures that don’t have a stat line (str, dex etc), just HD, AC, and attacks.

• First of all, if you have the same creature in your monster manual, that’s always going to be better. Use that.

• Otherwise, use the “oHD” header based on their original HD in the table below to find the correct row for them. Their AC is going to be 18 minus their 1e AC.

• Their ability modifier (sans proficiency) for both constitution and their main attacking ability is listed under “mod”. Halve that for their other four abilities, if needed.

Technical

• It struck me recently that a large portion of the tech that I get a lot of use out of is not what most would consider a typical current mainstream consumer device. I’m a tech geek but I am also very frugal. There are a few exceptions but generally I don’t spend much in terms of money on the tech I play with relative to the utility I get out of it. Some of it is downright dirt cheap in absolute terms as well.

• Not everything is second hand but I use the term scavenge to include not only used devices but also closeouts, liquidated out of production products and the like as well. I’m quite proud of how much use I put all this stuff to that many would consider obsolete or worthless. Here’s a rundown of the stuff I use regularly and some details about how much it cost, where it came from and what I use it for.

• [...]

• We’ll start with what I’m typing this gemlog post on. A black and white Palm PDA, released in 2001 plus a small and surprisingly nice folding keyboard that you can dock it in. I paid $40 for it along with a charge/sync dock a couple years ago and $12 for the keyboard and used it a lot for about a year. I don’t use it quite as much now but still use it regularly for certain things that it is well suited for. It is also quite easy to keep using it sporadically due to the offline and self-contained nature of the device. No updates to keep up with, insanely long battery life, simple mature software etc. Main things I still use it for are writing, managing grocery shopping lists, playing games and just generally fiddling around becuase its fun and reliable and the display looks really nice in bright outdoor light with no backlight. Really the killer feature for me that means I won’t be getting rid of it any time soon if ever is the combo of the sunlight readable display, amazing battery life and nice portable folding keyboard. I really love putting it in that keyboard and sitting out on the porch to write gemlog posts on a nice day.

• I had an interesting conversation about what gives us that ‘dopamine hit’ when we buy a new piece of tech. New in this context is ‘new to me’ as many pieces of tech I buy are used/refurbished and many years old. The person I was talking to just bought a new Ipad and I was helping them set it up. Because I’m not very familiar with how to use Apple’s handheld devices I was looking up all the different features the tablet had and was bouncing all these ideas I had for how they could integrated the new device into their day-to-day workflow.

• The owner of the actual device was much less enthusiastic about digging into the device’s capabilities and just wanted to start downloading apps and get on with it. We started talking about what gets us excited when we get a new device. For them it was the moment of the purchase. The second they have the device in their hands, the rush is gone and it’s just another thing they have. There are definitely spikes over the next couple of days while they get used to the new thing, but overall it’s mostly just one huge dopamine spike and that’s it.

Programming

• I received an email from Andy Weidenbaum today, thanking me for writing a post about embedding Lua code into an executable [1] which helped him in his project [2]. On the plus side, it’s nice that a post of mine was able to help him. On the non-plus side, I wrote that post *ten years ago tomorrow!*

• 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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