● 04.01.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 01/04/2023: Bloomberg Places Stake in Free Software, Microsoft Banned and Slammed for Antitrust Abuses

Posted in News Roundup at 7:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage…

Applications

• Blender 3.5, the popular 3D creation software, was released few days ago. Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu users.

• Alchemy is an impressive, open-source file converter built on the reliable Electron and React. It offers a variety of operations, including the ability to merge files into a PDF. Its features include an elegantly simple, drag-and-drop interface for converting and merging files, as well as the option to merge multiple

• EazyLoader is a free open-source Flask (Python) – based app that you can self-host on your computer or server to download YouTube, Instagram, or SlideShare presentation PDF/ PPTX files.

• For those seeking to handle more complex PDF tasks, premium software or online services with a wider range of features are often the go-to. However, this post presents the most comprehensive list of free and open-source alternatives available.

Instructionals/Technical

• In the world of Linux, the dd command is a powerful and flexible tool that has become an essential utility for system administrators and advanced users alike.

• The dd command is a powerful utility in the Unix and Linux world that allows users to perform various data manipulation tasks, such as copying, converting, and writing data to different storage mediums. Its versatility and performance make it a favorite tool among system administrators and advanced users.

• The cp command is a powerful and versatile tool in the Linux environment, allowing users to copy files and directories with ease. This article will provide a comprehensive guide to mastering the cp command, covering its syntax, options, and practical examples that will enable you to copy files like a pro in no time.

• In our tutorial, we will install OpenVPN on a Rocky Linux 9 server and configure it to be accessible from a client machine, and create a VPN connection between them to redirect all the traffic from the client through the OpenVPN server.

• Bottles is an open-source, feature-rich application that allows Linux users to manage and create Windows-compatible environments effortlessly. It leverages Wine, a compatibility layer, to run Windows applications on Unix-based operating systems such as Manjaro Linux.

• LinuxQQ is a comprehensive and user-oriented instant messaging client designed explicitly for Linux users. Its increasing popularity, particularly among the Chinese-speaking community, can be attributed to its robust features and seamless integration with various Linux distributions, including Manjaro Linux.

• RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) specifically designed for R, a widely-used programming language for statistical computing and data analysis. RStudio provides a user-friendly interface and a wide array of tools, making working with R more efficient and enjoyable.

• This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of installing and configuring Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04. We will cover a comparison between SELinux and AppArmor, along with important prerequisites, and various configuration options to ensure your system is secure.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install local software packages (.DEB) in Debian and its derivatives such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint using three different command line tools and they are dpkg…

• Whether it’s for an SSH Ubuntu server or because your mouse stopped working, learning how to use Linux shutdown commands on the command line works wonders for everybody. Here we show you how to master the shutdown command to quickly shut down your PC.

• SSHFS is a handy tool for mounting remote file systems over SSH connections. In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of installing and using SSHFS on Ubuntu, from setting up SSH to mounting remote file systems and managing permissions.

• Working on different Node.js projects and the version of dependencies required by them; you may often need to switch between different versions of the Node Package Manager (NPM). However, for beginners, it can be a tricky task but don’t worry.

• Every network interface has a unique MAC address, set by the manufacturer. It’s how network connections identify connection endpoints. On Linux, you can permanently change a MAC address if you want.

WINE or Emulation

• The Wine development release 8.5 is now available.

• What’s new in this release: – Bundled vkd3d upgraded to version 1.7. – Better error reporting in the IDL compiler. – Support for shared Wow64 Classes registry key. – More cleanups in IME support. – Support for configuring a WinRT dark theme. – Various bug fixes.

• The source is available at:

• https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/8.x/wine-8.5.tar.xz

• Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

• https://www.winehq.org/download

• You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation

• You can also get the current source directly from the git repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details.

• Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

Games

• Yes. It’s about DOOM. And, no. The reviewer didn’t have working sound on Linux.

• We are back with our prediction game that’s been going on since 2021! In 2021 we had a lot of great insights about where the future was headed, in 2022 not as much…

• The ScummVM project, a free and open-source software project that allows users to play classic point-and-click adventure games on modern systems, has announced a major breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence gaming.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• I am not 100% sure what to think about Plasma 5.27. In a way, it feels like a non-release. Yes, there are some improvements, and some new features, but nothing major that I could see. The differences are tiny, say if I compare to Plasma 5.24, which I explored quite extensively lately. The bulk of it works fine, the bulk remains unchanged, and so I am not sure the latest KDE bundle really warrants its own version. But that’s a small technicality complaint really.

• What I didn’t like was a handful of application problems that shouldn’t be there. Welcome Center, Discover, Kate, they all had unnecessary niggles. In particular, Welcome Center does not feel complete. Some baseline ergonomics could also be better. Stability was decent, performance great. If you’re a Plasma person, then you should definitely explore. But some Plasma editions are simply better than the rest. Today, here, we have an average offering. If you want the best this desktop environment can offer, I’d say, for now, 5.24 is what you want. Anyway, see you soon.

• Since the last last summary post two month ago a lot has happened around KDE Itinerary again, ranging from supporting more travel document and ticket types to better guidance to the right spot on a train station platform.

• Platform section highlighting

• The train station map can now also highlight platform sections, next to the platform itself. Depending on the level of detail of the available information in the OSM map data, the train schedule, seat reservation and the vehicle layout we can use that to much more precisely indicate where on the platform you need to go.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from March 24 to March 31.

• On Wayland, a surface is the basic primitive used to build what users refer to as a “window”. Wayland clients define their contents by attaching buffers to surfaces. This turns the contents of the buffer into the current surface contents. Wayland clients are free to attach a new buffer to a surface anytime. When a Wayland compositor like Mutter starts working on a new output frame, it picks the latest available buffer for each visible surface. This is called “mailbox semantics” (the buffers are metaphorical letters falling into a mailbox, the visible “letter” is the last one on top).

• With hardware accelerated drawing, a client normally attaches a new buffer to a surface right after it finished calling OpenGL/Vulkan/<insert your favourite drawing API> APIs to define the contents of the buffer. When the compositor processes the protocol requests attaching the buffer to the surface, the GPU generally hasn’t finished drawing to the buffer yet.

• Since the contents of the compositor’s output frame depend on the contents of each visible surface, the former cannot complete before the GPU finishes drawing to each of the picked surface buffers (and subsequently to the compositor’s own output buffer, in the general case).

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Linux is a powerful and customizable operating system that can cater to any type of user, from developers to gamers. However, not all users need a high-end operating system that demands powerful hardware specs to run smoothly. Lightweight Linux distributions are ideal for users with low-powered systems or machines with limited hardware resources. These distros use minimal memory and processing power, making them fast and reliable.

• In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the 6 best lightweight Linux distros that are great for running on older hardware or low-powered machines.

Fedora Family / IBM

• EuroLinux Desktop is a modern operating system that combines the look and functionality of both Windows and macOS with the reliability and security of server-based Linux distributions.

• Do advanced Linux disk usage diagnostics with this sysadmin tool

• 4 ways upskilling helps to retain and attract IT talent

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Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• The Ubuntu Team announced the Beta release of the Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” today! Ubuntu 23.04 is a short team release with 9 months support! The final stable release will be available in next few weeks.

• Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu operating system, is gearing up for the release of Ubuntu 23.04, codenamed ‘Lunar Lobster,’ scheduled for April 20. So, with the final release just around the corner, users eagerly await to see what new features and improvements will be included in the final release.

• In this article, we will take a closer look at the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 release based on our impressions of the just-released ‘Lunar Lobster’ Beta and explore some exciting new features and enhancements set to be included.

• So, if you’re a Ubuntu fan or just curious about what this latest version has to offer, read on to discover more!

• Canonical has released Ubuntu 23.04 Beta today. It is available in the usual flavors, including Ubuntu Desktop and Server, Kubuntu, MATE, Studio, Unity, and the recently promoted Ubuntu Cinnamon.

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi is a good starting point whenever you want to build an app, device, or project for the IoT marketplace. This credit card-sized device has changed the very concept of personal computing, and supports prototyping of every kind of new developer idea. It does have a few limitations though. Despite the excellent specs of the Raspberry Pi 4, this single-board computer lacks important capabilities as an embedded engineering device.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Modern digital infrastructure relies on innumerable open source dependencies developed and maintained primarily by volunteers: The open source community is what makes the web work. Participating in these communities allows large organizations to help shape the latest and best technologies available.

• [...]

• When the first FOSS Contributor Fund was launched, documentation was published to encourage other companies to follow suit. In the four years since, numerous institutions including Microsoft, Johns Hopkins University, Salesforce, Sentry, Zeiss, and others have launched programs inspired by the original FOSS Fund. Such funds seek to have a direct impact on the sustainability and security of critical digital infrastructure.

• In January of 2023, inspired by Indeed’s original initiative, Bloomberg launched its first round of employee voting for its inaugural FOSS Contributor Fund, a partnership between the company’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO) and its Corporate Philanthropy department.

Events

• I know I’ve mentioned it before, but SCaLE conference is getting better each year. SCaLE is probably the best conference in North America that has a strong focus on the community and it is always a cause of joy to see such a diverse audience and attendees under the same roof and under the same sentiment of belonging. The success of the conference -the one that has made possible twenty editions of it-  doesn’t come free, there’s an enthusiastic group of incredible people behind it. Kudos and lot of recognition to each of them.

• If I was asked to describe this year’s experience in SCaLE with a single word, I would say that is “Chances”. I’m going to go deeper into this ahead, but this conference made me wonder several times “what are the chances of this happening?”. One of the advantages of attending a nerds conference is that you may find someone who would actually calculate it. It reminds me of that Sheldon quote that reads “was that rhetoric or would you like me to do the math?”  LOL

• Due to COVID pandemic (and probably other strong reasons), this year’s SCaLE was just eight months apart from last edition. It may not sound like a big deal but there are some factors that made a big difference: not the usual twelve months for planning, sunny hot summer weather versus rainy chilly winter weather and the chance of venue as well, this year the conference returned to Pasadena.

• This time I arrived early enough to attend the conference from day one. Thursday is usually used for community events like Kubernetes Community Day, CEPH Day, PostgreSQL day, workshops,  etc. Since my flight landed at 6:00am I was able to practically use most of the day in the Kubernetes community day.

Programming/Development

• The truth is that answering these questions is a very subjective matter and different people or different companies might give very different answers.

• In this article, I’ll try to give you my take, based on my opinion and personal experience.

• I hated writing in high school. It wasn’t objective like my favorite subjects, math and science. It also didn’t help that we had to write about old, hard-to-understand literature like Shakespeare. But my perspective on writing changed once I started working full-time as a software engineer.

• On the other end is when we go rogue. We find some “requirement” that might be useful (but no one really asked for), or some new approach or technology that’s interesting or “hot”, and then spend the entire sprint in our coding cave joyfully building it out. Will it actually help the project? Err…maybe? Regardless though, it’ll be fun, because we love nothing more than smooth sailing – not being beholden to the ideas, thoughts, or reservations of others (well, that is, until they see our 4k-line pull request!).

• In a previous blog post I discussed how we can compute rank dependent utility in R.

Python

• The permutations() method of the itertools package can be used to find all possible permutations of a list in Python along with a limit on the tuple size.

• The Python Time.sleep() method can be used to delay the execution of the code for a set interval by passing milliseconds after dividing them by 1000.

Java

• I took out all the comments and did a little reformatting, but this is the entire class. Just around 150 lines managing one nullable field.

• Take a minute to read or skim it before moving on.

Rust

• A while ago at $work, we had a performance issue with one of our core Python libraries.

• This particular library forms the backbone of our 3D processing pipeline. It’s a rather big and complex library which uses NumPy and other scientific Python packages to do a wide range of mathematical and geometrical operations.

• Our system also has to work on-prem with limited CPU resources, and while at first it performed well, as the number of concurrent physical users grew we started running into problems and our system struggled to keep up with the load.

Standards/Consortia

• Hi all! I don’t have much new to say about the ongoing chaos at Twitter or the impending death of the free API tier. I’d just like to draw your attention to this page that shows Twitter employees’ posts here on this forum, in chronological order, descending.

• Before December, a large number of employees posted here regularly on a wide range of topics. Over the last few months, only a single Twitter employee has posted here consistently, and only about the Ads API. A couple others have posted once or twice, but not recently.

Leftovers

• In the early 1990s, two Russian artists named Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid took the unusual step of hiring a market research firm. Their brief was simple. Understand what Americans desire most in a work of art.

• Over 11 days the researchers at Marttila & Kiley Inc. asked 1,001 US citizens a series of survey questions.

• What’s your favourite colour? Do you prefer sharp angles or soft curves? Do you like smooth canvases or thick brushstrokes? Would you rather figures that are nude or clothed? Should they be at leisure or working? Indoors or outside? In what kind of landscape?

• I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that you, like me, have a large pile (or digital equivalent) of books or articles you’ve been meaning to get around to reading, plus maybe a long queue of podcast episodes to which you’d love to listen, if only you had the time. It’s the archetypal “first-world problem”, I know. But one worth reflecting on – because it’s a microcosm of a broader mistake that makes it more stressful than in needs to be to build a fulfilling and productive life: the problem of Too Many Needles.

• It’s amusing to reflect that at an earlier stage in the history of the web, information overload was widely held to be a temporary issue. Yes, true, for the time being we were getting deluged by a zillion irrelevant blog posts, emails and news updates. But that wouldn’t last, because soon we’d have better technology for finding what we wanted, while disregarding the rest. The real trouble, according to the leading techno-optimist Clay Shirky, wasn’t information overload, but “filter failure”. We needed – and we’d eventually get – more sophisticated ways to filter the wheat from the online chaff. And then we’d no longer feel overwhelmed.

• A question I’ve never been able to answer to my satisfaction: how do you manage people who are nice but can’t do the work?

Science

• Modification on a high-resolution fluorescent microscopy technique allow researchers to track the precise movements of motor proteins.

• And you thought to be an uncomplaining bunch.

• Think of a number…

• A history finally recognized.

• “We never thought that explosions could be this aspherical.”

• Are we looking at this the wrong way?

• It also repels heat and lasts for centuries.

Education

• A Pennsylvania school district violated the First Amendment rights of an after-school satanist club by banning its members from gathering for regular meetings on school grounds, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued in a complaint filed Thursday.

Hardware

• Japan follows the U.S. and the Netherlands with curbs against China’s semiconductor sector.

• To say that semiconductor technology is part of the fabric of modern society is not an overstatement—it underpins everything from our cars to our phones to our home appliances.

• STMicro STLINK-V3PWR is a new in-circuit debugging and programming probe made for STM32 microcontrollers and that is said to provide accurate power measurement. The probe is especially useful for battery power IoT and wireless applications and is able to measure current values from nanoamps up to ~500mA with up to ±0.5% accuracy. The STLINK-V3PWR can also power the target over a single USB cable up to 2A.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Lithuanian lawmakers have voted down plans to establish state-owned pharmacies that would operate in hospitals. The proposals were initiated by a group of opposition MPs.

• Australians with private health cover are set to be slogged by premium price hikes as many toss-up whether to downgrade or cancel their insurance because of cost of living pressures. Health insurance premiums are expected to rise by an average of 2.9 per cent this year, according to comparison service iSelect.

• Denmark’s health ministry has agreed with regional health boards and the representative body for the country’s pharmaceutical industry to limit the price on medicines for the next two years.

• In the first two years of the pandemic, Ramsey County lost a greater share of its population than every Minnesota county except one.

• The Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID), a large database launched in 2008 to collect and share the genome information of influenza viruses, is a key tool for scientific cooperation at the international level.

• The first case of C. purpureum infecting a person has doctors warning of a rising tide of fungus spurred by climate change and urbanization.

• The recent crackdown on corn-based moonshine comes amid food shortages.

• Residents within a 0.8-kilometer radius of the derailment were evacuated in the middle of the night.

• Treatment can be life changing.

• One of the most important changes Americans experienced with the onset of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was that a large suite of preventive services and treatments—from contraceptives to heart monitoring to mammograms—had to be covered in full by insurance policies. But a new ruling could change that.

• The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday filed a lawsuit against Norfolk Southern Railway over the February 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The DOJ claims that Norfolk Southern released harmful pollutants into the area surrounding the derailment site, potentially exposing nearby residents to significant health issues.

• After intense lobbying by insurers, U.S. health officials say changes to reduce overbilling in Medicare Advantage will be phased in over three years.

• In a statement, he announced his departure from Walter Reed Military Medical Center and urged those suffering from mental health challenges to seek help as he did.

• The cause of the incident is unconfirmed until laboratory tests are concluded. But some farmers allege it is linked to aerial fumigation.

• More than a fifth or 22% of Latvia’s population is at least 64 years old; the proportion of working-age population tends to fall, according to the results of the last census. With the population ageing, geriatric care is becoming a profession of the future, but currently, young healthcare experts are not that interested, Latvian Radio reported March 31.

• The Defense Department wants to expand its budget for mental health care, and the services are starting new programs to prevent harmful behavior.

• Originally posted at TomDispatch. It’s the military from hell – and, no, I don’t mean the Russian army, though, it certainly qualifies. Few now doubt that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal (and not just because of those Ukrainian children his forces exported to Russia for adoption).

• What are chemical pollutants doing to our bodies? It’s a question that’s been on my mind this week, for a few reasons. Last week, people in Philadelphia cleared grocery shelves of bottled…

Proprietary

• Italy’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) Friday issued a statement banning further use of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chat platform, within the country.

• Italy is temporarily blocking the artificial intelligence software ChatGPT in the wake of a data breach as it investigates a possible violation of stringent European Union data protection rules. The government’s privacy watchdog said Friday that it’s taking provisional action “until ChatGPT respects privacy.”

• Italy’s Data Protection Authority on Friday temporarily banned OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot and launched a probe over a suspected breach of the artificial intelligence application’s data collection rules.

Security

• A security audit is an essential part of maintaining the security and integrity of your Linux server. Regular audits help identify potential vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and deviations from security best practices.

• X-Frame-Options HTTP security headers (not just) in order to prevent phishing pages, which overlay a fake login prompt over a legitimate website, from functioning correctly. Or, to be more specific, to prevent them from dynamically loading a legitimate page in an iframe under the fake login prompt, since this makes such phishing websites look much less like a legitimate login page and thus much less effective.

• / Researchers discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Azure platform that allowed users to access private data from Office 365 applications like Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive.

• Chinese hacking group linked previously to attacks on U.S. state government computers is still “highly active”

• Communications and IT company Lumen Technologies fell victim to two cyberattacks that led to data theft.

• Documents show that Russian IT company NTC Vulkan was requested to develop offensive tools for government-backed hacking group Sandworm.

• The company’s researchers said analysis of the binary had shown that a backdoored version of ffmpeg.dll was among the files that were dropped during installation.

• “We have a security team, we do our own pentesting, we’ve got software scanners, we got a CSO … Nonetheless, they outsmarted us.”

• Several cybersecurity companies have published blog posts, advisories and tools to help organizations that may have been hit by the 3CX supply chain attack.

• A high-severity vulnerability in Azure Service Fabric Explorer could have allowed a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code.

• The FDA is asking medical device manufacturers to provide cybersecurity-related information when submitting an application for a new product.

• Fairwinds this week added an Automated Fix Pull Requests (PRs) capability to its commercial platforms that identifies and automatically remediates Kubernetes misconfigurations.

• El Universal newspaper reported that an officer who worked in Sedena’s IT department was detained in connection with the “Guacamaya” hack.

• Report tracks activities of ‘APT43’ since 2018, elevates status to ‘named threat actor’

• Authorities are hunting down a [cr]acker who has threatened to release the personal data of 55 million Thais if the government agency allegedly involved in the leakage of information fails to meet a ransom demand by April 5.

• The Food and Drug Administration will now require medical devices meet specific cybersecurity guidelines after years of concerns that a growing number of internet-connected products used by hospitals and healthcare providers could be hit by hacks and ransomware attacks.

• Fake extortionists are piggybacking on data breaches and ransomware incidents, threatening U.S. companies with publishing or selling allegedly stolen data unless they get paid.

• DataBreaches probably sounds like a broken record after six years of calls for more transparency in breach notifications. Sadly, the situation has gotten worse in the past year. Not only do entities fail to admit they suffered a ransomware attack, but they fail to inform patients if the patient’s protected health information was leaked or is freely available on the internet.

• Yesterday, the Institute for Liver Health LLC, doing business as Arizona Clinical Trials and Arizona Liver Health (“ALH”) issued a press release about a “data security incident.” Their statement indicates that they had no idea they had been attacked until law enforcement contacted them on January 30 to tell them that their name had shown up “in a part of the internet used by criminals as an entity whose information may have been taken by a criminal.”

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

• The vulnerability could let attackers hijack network traffic; iOS, Linux, and Android devices may be affected.

• The cybersecurity researchers at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 have discovered a new strain of Cylance Ransomware, which has already claimed several victims. Researchers noticed it early Friday morning, and further probing revealed that it is targeting Linux and Windows devices.

Privacy/Surveillance

• A Swedish government inquiry into the payment system has called for the state to launch its own digital ID and a new type of basic, low-risk bank account to help the estimated 1m people with no, or limited, access to digital payments.

• the positive: Okay let’s ALWAYS focus on the positive first: data, the web, free flow of information has given mankind new abilities: online learning-from-each-other (“social learning” one of said to be strong points of humans vs animals) better decision making…

• Police cite the 2019 protest movement, saying they need to ‘safeguard national security.’

Defence/Aggression

• North Carolina lawmakers Wednesday overrode Governor Roy Cooper’s veto on a bill that would allow residents to buy a handgun without a permit.

• William Hibbitts is JURIST’s Deputy Editorial Director. He files this report from Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Yesterday, March 30, the Mass Casualty Commission investigating the 2020 Nova Scotia spree shooting released its final report, marking the culmination of a prolonged investigation into Canada’s worst mass shooting and the RCMP’s ignominious response to it.

• Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry has handed over a diplomatic note of protest to Minsk, demanding that it immediately halt the operation of Astravyets nuclear power plant, located some 50km from Vilnius, until all nuclear safety issues identified by international missions are resolved.

• Portugal and Romania took over the NATO Baltic air policing mission from Poland and France on Thursday, the Lithuanian Defence Ministry reported.

• After decades of staying out of military alliances, Finland and neighbouring Sweden announced bids to join Nato in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Here are five things to know about the two countries’ membership bids.

• Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg called for a ‘rapid conclusion’ of Sweden’s stalled Nato ratification process, as he said that on Friday that Finland would formally become a member of the defence alliance within days.

• A number of leaders and decision makers reacted to the Turkish legislature’s vote to ratify Finland’s Nato membership bid late on Thursday night.

• The Pentagon said the injuries were diagnosed during routine screenings in the days after the strikes by Iranian-backed militants.

• Finland’s entry into the military alliance after Turkey formally signed off is a significant defeat for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

• Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, said his country would “be a strong and capable ally, committed to the security of the alliance.”

• Parliamentary elections on Sunday are extremely tight among the three biggest parties, with the prime minister’s Social Democrats in a tough fight to lead the next government.

• Finland’s Prime Minister praised the Finnish people and the political leadership for their cooperation throughout the Nato application process.

• Once the acceptance letters from all 30 member states are in Washington, Nato’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will send an official invitation letter to Finland.

• “Finland will formally join our Alliance in the coming days,” NATO Secretary Stoltenberg said.

• Because of the conflict in Ukraine, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus said, “a third world war loomed on the horizon with nuclear fires.”

• The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for President Vladimir V. Putin could thrust his allies into domestic and foreign legal disputes, experts say.

• A gruesome video which surfaced earlier this year of bodies seemingly dumped into a fire and burnt in Mozambique by soldiers is still being investigated after drawing widespread condemnation.

• The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat is stepping up the region’s resolve to fight money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation finance.

• THE GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY of Turkey on Thursday voted 276–0 in favour of ratifying the Finnish bid to accede to Nato, inducing a series of satisfied comments from policy makers in Finland.

• The ratification is set to be next approved by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

• Turkey’s parliament on Thursday ratified Finland’s application to join NATO, lifting the last hurdle in the way of the Nordic country’s long-delayed accession into the Western military alliance.

• When Russian troops left Kherson, they took with them 2,500 Ukrainian convicts from local prisons. For some, it was the start of a bewildering, five-country journey highlighting the war’s absurdity.

• Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen arrived in New York Wednesday for a visit that has triggered threats of reprisal by China if she meets with House speaker Kevin McCarthy — and US warnings for Beijing not to overreact.

• Taiwan ex-president Ma Ying-jeou on Thursday called for maintaining exchanges with China as he met with a Beijing official during a historic mainland visit, a trip Taipei’s ruling party has called “regrettable”. Ma’s visit is the first trip to the mainland by a former or current leader of Taiwan in over seven decades.

• Far-right members of the Austrian Parliament Thursday walked out of the legislature during a live video speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in protest of Vienna’s support of Ukraine in the war.

• As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus in the upcoming Olympic Games is not acceptable, the head of the Latvian Olympic Committee (LOC) Žoržs Tikmers said after the organization’s general assembly on March 30, reprted the LETA newswire.

• Ukraine on March 31 marked one year since Russian forces withdrew from Bucha, leaving behind hundreds of bodies of murdered civilians on the streets of the commuter town near the capital in what Kyiv said was a massacre and a Russian war crime.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday called for Bucha to become a “symbol of justice” on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s withdrawal from the town now synonymous with war crimes allegations. His visit to the martyred town came after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Russia could place intercontinental nuclear missiles in his country, “if necessary”.

• The White House has urged Russia to conduct itself professionally when it assumes its scheduled UN Security Council presidency next month.

• Ukraine has been preparing to launch a spring counteroffensive to recapture territory seized by Russians and is hoping to repeat the success of its counterattacks last September. Despite the supply of Western arms, including battle tanks, Ukrainian forces will have to change their tactics if they hope to achieve a breakthrough, according to historian and retired army officer Michel Goya.

• Police in the North Kazakhstan region say they are investigating a group in the regional capital, Petropavl, called the People’s Council.

• The Kosovo Specialist Chambers in the Hague Friday announced the trial of four former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) members is due to begin Monday. The former Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGoK), Hashim Thaçi is amongst those who will stand trial.

• Wimbledon lifted its ban on Russian and Belarusian players on Friday and will allow them to compete in the grasscourt Grand Slam this year as “neutral” athletes in a climbdown from the stance it took after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

• Wimbledon will allow Russian and Belarusian players to compete as “neutral” athletes in the grasscourt Grand Slam this year.

• Ukraine has condemned the decision to allow Russian and Belarusian tennis players to compete at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

• To build a multipolar world, Russia will create conditions to counter any neo-colonial ambitions.

• German companies have long been active in Hungary. But now, Viktor Orbán is trying to force some of them to leave. And when they do, his closest allies stand to profit.

• UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk Thursday expressed alarm at the continued erosion of the rule of law in Guatemala.

• Aynsley Genga is a JURIST Staff Correspondent in Kenya. Anti-government demonstrations were held across Kenya both Monday and Thursday this week after a call by Azimio opposition party leader Raila Odinga. These have been just about all that everyone has been talking about. The whole week seemed like a movie.

• Do we have a shortage of female heroes in this country? Are virtuous women that scarce? Or is it simply that Women’s History Month, by eliminating women from the conversation who don’t fit the narrative of the State Department and the Pentagon, failed to achieve its goal?

• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez encouraged Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 31 to talk to the Ukrainian leadership and learn firsthand about Kyiv’s peace formula to help bring an end to Russia’s invasion.

• Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) says an Israeli attack in Syria on March 31 killed one of its officers in a sign of Israel’s increasing efforts to counter Tehran’s foothold in the country.

• The authoritarian ruler of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, has defended a Russian plan to place tactical nuclear weapons — including intercontinental ballistic missiles if necessary — on Belarusian territory, saying the country is coming under increased threats from the West.

• The leader of a U.S. neo-Nazi group wanted in the United States for allegedly fomenting violence at political rallies has been apprehended by Romanian authorities in Bucharest.

• David Lammy says China must be held accountable for human rights abuses.

• In July, Taiwan’s military will hold its first drill at a civilian airport, turning highway sections into runways.

• The United States is seeking to keep more than 1 million rounds of ammunition the U.S. Navy seized in December as it was in transit from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to militant groups in Yemen, the Justice Department said.

• Croatia on March 31 returned a second group of migrants to Bosnia-Herzegovina amid questions about where the migrants should be allowed to apply for asylum.

• As threats and arrests continue, the EU says ‘inclusive, transparent’ conditions are not in place for vote.

• A police official says they may not be deported to their home country.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• In a new integrity headache for the Andrews government, Ombudsman Deborah Glass says she will not engage with the Inspector who oversees her office.

Environment

• The International Seabed Authority is set to start accepting applications from companies that want to mine the ocean’s floor after the United Nations body spent two weeks debating standards for the new and controversial practice.

• The Marshall Islands Soccer Federation aims to draw interest in the sport — and to growing global warming events in the Pacific.

• April 01, 2023 5:00 AM

• The mass breeding was welcome because in recent years, the region has often resembled a desert.

• The UK Climate Change Committee Wednesday reported that Britain is “not adequately prepared” for the damaging effects of climate change. In its 2023 report to Parliament, the group found limited evidence of the implementation of adaptation needed at a national scale to mitigate the risks of climate change.

• The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Wednesday heard oral arguments in two cases in which the applicants are accusing their respective governments, France and Switzerland, of failing to take steps to prevent climate change.

Energy/Transportation

• The rate of inflation in countries using the euro slipped to 6.9 percent over the year through March, from 8.5 percent the previous month, but underlying price gains edged higher.

• A new report by National Energy Resources Australia (NERA) and Arup has suggested Australia’s hydrogen industry has the potential to generate AUD$40bn ($26.8bn) in domestic gross value added (GVA) by 2040.

• The geostrategic scramble to reduce supply-chain dependencies for critical minerals has overshadowed opportunities for Australia to use its resources to provide major benefits for the nation.

• Thanks to its central geographical position in the Mediterranean Sea and the advanced technological skills of Italian energy companies, Italy is playing a key role in the region through their strong energy diplomacy.

• Bitcoin’s price has soared since banks failed this month, but there’s little evidence that the surge is being driven by investors treating the virtual currency as a financial alternative.

• The Biden administration hopes its guidelines for up to $7,500 in tax credits will encourage automakers to reduce their reliance on China for batteries and raw materials.

• A court upheld a finding that Tesla wrongly fired a worker involved in labor organizing and that a Twitter post by Elon Musk was illegally anti-union.

• I’m lucky enough to be the proud owner of a 9.5kwh battery in my cellar. Its a GivEnergy battery (A UK company, although the actual battery is predictably made in China). Its AC-coupled, which means it sits on the ‘house’ side of the fusebox/consumer unit.

• As of April 1, the Rīga centralized heating company Rīgas siltums thermal energy tariff will be EUR 165.32 per megawatt-hour (MWh) (excluding VAT), which is 10% less compared to the current tariff, the company said March 31.

• Bed Bath & Beyond is offering $300 million of its stock in yet another attempt to keep itself afloat.

Wildlife/Nature

• For generations, people have fished for baby eels in the island’s estuaries. But they seem to be getting harder to find.

Overpopulation

• A tenth of people living in France in 2021 were born foreigners, national statistics agency INSEE said on Thursday, in its first study on immigration in a decade.

Finance

• Co-ops offer ‘an affordable and democratic alternative’ to the private housing market. But government restraint means they must fight for survival

• Inflation in the 20 countries using the euro slowed to 6.9 per cent in March – the lowest level in a year. Food costs are still on the rise but energy prices have fallen, making a sharp turnaround after months of punishing increases.

• The ruling class knows what’s coming: social instability caused by a combination of the climate crisis, banks failing, the soul-killing inequality of late-stage capitalism, and the impending dilution of the petrodollar.

• The Blackstone Tenants Union (BTU) in San Diego aims to fight evictions and rising rents since the corporate landlord ended a COVID-19 eviction pause.

• Keskuskauppakamari, one of Finland’s leading business organizations, has updated its verokiilalaskuri or tax wedge calculator to highlight the high cost of employing workers in Finland. The tax wedge is the difference between the total cost of labor to the employer and the net income received by the employee after taxes and other mandatory contributions have been deducted.

• “Transition to settlements in national currencies is the first step,” Alexander Babakov said.

• Even Bordeaux, known for its surrounding vineyards and conservative politics, has become a flashpoint. The City Hall’s charred doors attest to that.

• Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei reported its largest annual decline in profit on Friday (March 31), citing China’s strict pandemic restrictions and rising commodity prices for its drop in sales.

• Low income and under-employment are more common among people with disabilities compared to the rest of the population, according to a Statistics Finland report.

• Last year, 889 counterfeit units of money were detected in Latvia, which is 26.5% more than in 2021, according to “Payment radar” published by the Latvian central bank (Bank of Latvia) on March 31, LETA reported.

• Latvijas Banka (LB), the Latvian central bank published revised macroeconomic forecasts March 31, which came with the caveat that at the moment there is “persistently high uncertainty”.

• The Bank of Mexico’s key rate has now risen 725 basis points in the current tightening cycle, which began in June 2021.

• New data from the program’s trustees show that insolvency will hit a year sooner than previously expected, giving policy makers just a decade before automatic benefit cuts occur.

• Richard Branson’s rocket company is running out of fuel.

• Winners of the Hong Kong government’s mass plane ticket giveaway have said that while they were under no illusion that the flights being offered were indeed free, the fees they were asked to pay were steeper than they expected.

• France’s hard-left CGT union has elected its first woman leader, two CGT sources told Reuters on Friday.

• “The U.S. duty to compensate our country for the assets freezing shows the legitimacy of our demands,” the Irani Foreign Affairs Ministry stated.

• Once a corporate darling in the metaverse frontier, Decentraland is a ghost town as investors abandon the metaverse. Decentraland was hailed in 2021 as one of the first instances of an actual metaverse for users (ignoring the existence of Second Life entirely).

• Microsoft is shutting down its metaverse unit comprising 100 employees amidst broader layoffs. Microsoft has internally announced disbanding its Industrial Metaverse Core group, a division comprising around 100 employees focused on bringing the metaverse to industrial environments through software.

• Tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural imports may need to be reintroduced if an influx of products that is pushing down prices in EU markets cannot be stopped by other means, several prime ministers of eastern states said.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The debate over TikTok’s national security risk is lost on many young users, except if your mom is a technologist focused on global threats.

• Twitter won’t charge $1,000-a-month verification fees for its most prominent businesses and advertisers.

• The White House will not pay to have its staff’s official Twitter profiles continue to be verified, according to guidance issued to staffers via an email obtained by Axios.

• Why it matters: Official White House staffers rely on their verified accounts to inform the public on behalf of the administration. Verification, combined with the designated Twitter profiles, helped to ensure the public could trust those messages.

• “Staff may purchase Twitter Blue on their personal social media accounts using personal funds,” White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty wrote in an email Friday.

• Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Thursday that his office had contacted the attorney of former US President Donald Trump to coordinate his surrender following the first grand jury indictment of an ex-president in the country’s history.

• A jury just declared that the kind of disinformation that Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk are welcoming back on Twitter can be a crime.

• Trump wailed last night that his “indication” was a matter of free and fair elections. He’s right. It’s about one of at least six efforts he and his agents have made to cover-up that he cheated to win in 2016.

• With the media and judiciary already under attack, the Prime Minister’s main opponent was just banned from Parliament.

• Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, is changing the platform’s longstanding practice of verifying accounts. That has implications for a range of users.

Censorship/Free Speech

• As Russia works to shore up its image and rebuild its soft power after its invasion of Ukraine, it is strengthening cultural ties with friendly nations, including China.

• A self-exiled former speechwriter of Putin, Abbas Gallyamov, whose name appeared in Russia’s online registry of wanted persons last week, is suspected of discrediting Russia’s armed forces, a charge Russian authorities have been using to stifle any criticism of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

• It was “arrogant” and “irresponsible” for Hong Kong legal scholar Benny Tai, one of 47 pro-democracy figures prosecuted in the city’s largest national security case, to publish an article that threatened to force the authorities to respond to 2019 protesters’ five demands, a local court has heard.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The head of the Ak Youth association threatened the Kocaeli-based journalist Merve Dişli to “put you in your place.”

• Russia detained Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and accused him of espionage. The Journal and U.S. officials have vehemently denied the allegation.

• It’s painful and surreal to write these words: Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is being held by Russian authorities on espionage charges.

• Demands for Evan Gershkovich’s release also came from the leaders of dozens of news media and press freedom organizations, including The New York Times and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Here is what we’re covering:

• At least six Russian missiles hit the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv late on Thursday, local officials said, adding that emergency workers were assessing the damage and casualties. Earlier, Russia’s FSB security service detained a US reporter for the Wall Street Journal on spying charges, drawing immediate condemnation from the West and calls for his release.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The intimidation began after Nguyen Thi Ngoc Suong attended an appeals trial for other activists.

• Kazakh tycoon Qairat Boranbaev, whose daughter is the widow of the grandson of former President Nursultan Nazarbaev, has been sentenced to eight years in prison on corruption charges.

• A US appeals court says Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk violated federal labour law by tweeting employees of the electric vehicle maker would lose stock options if they joined a union.

• The officers being charged with injury rather than torture shows that the authorities indent to cover up the officers’ crimes, according to the head of the Diyarbakır Bar.

• The authorities were searching for more bodies in the St. Lawrence River of migrants believed to have been attempting to cross illegally into the United States.

• The proportion of children attending school increased at all levels in 2021

• During an expansion project for the Gaillard Center, a group of construction workers discovered the remains of 36 African descendants.

• UN Human Rights media spokesperson Jeremy Laurence Thursday issued a statement on the situation in Afghanistan, highlighting the UN’s “alarm” at the ongoing arbitrary arrests and detentions of civil society activists and media workers in Afghanistan…

• Latvian central bank economist Krista Kalnbērziņa takes a deep dive into gender inequality and its economic consequences in this piece from the central bank’s macroeconomics.lv website.

• Our police commissioner has no sense of irony. Remember the long-running struggle, during the 2019 disturbances, to persuade the police to obey the law which requires them to display an identifying number when on duty in uniform? Numbers are, however, now compulsory – not for police, but for demonstrators.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• RTÉ RADIO 1 TO CEASE BROADCASTING ON LONG WAVE   KEEP LISTENING TO RTÉ RADIO 1 | WWW.RTE.IE/KEEPLISTENING   RTÉ has today announced that RTÉ Radio 1 will cease broadcasting on Long Wave 252 (LW 252) from Friday 14th April 2023.

• Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne has worked hard to fashion himself as a future party leader based on boundless energy to sell Canada the world. Indeed, Champagne’s oft-repeated stories of cold calls that resulted in investments by companies such as Volkswagen and Moderna paint a picture of a minister jetting around the world in support of the Canadian economy. Unfortunately, Champagne’s record is also one of a minister less interested in what is actually happening at home.

Monopolies

• Alphabet’s Google Cloud has accused Microsoft of anti-competitive cloud computing practices and criticised imminent deals with several European cloud vendors, saying these do not solve broader concerns about its licensing terms.

• In Google Cloud’s first public comments on Microsoft and its European deals its Vice President Amit Zavery told Reuters the company has raised the issue with antitrust agencies and urged European Union antitrust regulators to take a closer look.

Patents

• After a long wait, the UK has once again confirmed its jurisdiction to calculate a FRAND rate between a patent holder and patent implementer. Earlier in March, judge James Mellor of the UK High Court finally handed down his decision in the case between patent holder InterDigital, and patent implementer Lenovo.

• SACEPO working party convenes to discuss recent advances and future developments in the EPO’s tools and documentation.

Trademarks

• The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled eight (8) oral hearings for the month of April 2023. Five of the hearings will be held via video conference; three will be held “in-person” in Alexandria, VA. Briefs and other papers for each case may be found at TTABVUE via the links provided.

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Copyrights

• In July of 2022, the IFPI celebrated an Italian court’s interim injunction against Cloudflare (NYSE: NET), which the industry representative accused of “making it possible for users to access copyright infringing websites.” Now, the IFPI has formally responded to a new decision upholding the injunction.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Book recommendation: The power of fun by Catherine Price. A serious and well-researched look at having True Fun (a state when playfulness, connection and flow happen).

• These are my personal takeaways after reading “Never split the difference” by Chris Voss. Note that the book contains much more knowledge wisdom and that these notes only contain points I personally found worth writing down. This is mainly for my own use, but you might find it helpful too.

• In essence: “Yup, sounds about right”. Don’t worry about it. Spend time having fun. I am very passionate about software engineering. I love to do it. But if I’m spending 40 hours building software, I certainly have 0 motivation to spend the few hours I have outside of work doing that…

• He found that clouds had a great freedom. No longer was he bound to the orbit of the Sun. He could now travel wherever he wanted whenever he wanted.

• Nighttime was not a blind spot for him anymore. That was something he hadn’t reflected on when he was the Sun, but now he found entertainment in obscuring the moon to make someone lose their way in the dark, or dispersing himself to reveal the starry night to a loving couple.

• As an analogy, let’s say you wanna get fit so you decide to take a walk. You decide to go to the park. Now, the intended destination of your walk is the park, and the purpose of the walk is to get fit.

• Russ has a post investigating the origins of the quote with other variants that make it clearer what Knizia meant.

• In my last post, a ridiculous 5 months ago, I was lamenting on not keeping up with my blogging because I didn’t have sufficient tooling to make it easy. What a terrible excuse.

• Over the holidays I made time to finish up some code to create an atom feed from my blog entries. Alas, my coding skills are a bit rusty these days and it took longer than expected but it’s there, and if you can read this, it works!

• So I decided to install Emacs on my writing PC for while I work on writing my gemlogs. This I felt was a good way to get a sense of what Emacs feels like basically by default, since I’ve installed a bunch of stuff on my other machines, since I want it to be an IDE. I expected it to work well, because, well, Emacs is an old piece of software! So.. let me talk through my Emacs setup on a virtual-terminal only PC.

• tfurrows wrote a phlog post yesterday[1] centred mostly around responding to severe weather advisories and warnings. Right at the end he mentions participating in “weather spotter / Skywarn training”, something provided by the US National Weather Service. This seems to basically be a program to “crowdsource” early detection of heavy weather (what did we call “crowdsourcing” before that became a term?). I would certainly be interested to read more about this experience!

Technical

• Let’s say your ISP don’t provide static IP and you want to self host your website, emails and stuff at home. Or you can’t setup a rDNS. Or your usual Internet access is down and you want to keep your server up using your smartphone connection sharing capabilities.

• tootik is a new social network thingy that speaks a tiny subset of ActivityPub and has a Gemini frontend.

Programming

• Designing the ISA and the simulator is fine and dandy but it does not beat running a custom CPU on real hardware. Unfortunately, I don’t have tens of thousands of euros to make a custom chip. The best I can do is to run it on an FPGA. An FPGA is a chip with a lot of logic gates that can be wired together to make any logic circuit. And our CPU is a logic circuit.

• What we need to do is to use a hardware description language such as Verilog or VHDL to describe the CPU. I choose to use Verilog as I prefer its more concise syntax but both languages can do the same things in a very similar manner.

• 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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