● 04.07.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 07/04/2023: PCLinuxOS Magazine and More

Posted in News Roundup at 1:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• Nextcloud + OpenBSD = <3, Understanding the Origins of DTrace, Bastille Templates for FreeBSD Jails, Initial support for guided disk encryption in the OpenBSD installer, Dynamic host configuration please, OpenBSD Storage Management tutorial at BSDCan 2023, Jan/Feb 2023 Column Out in the FreeBSD Journal, and more

Kernel Space

• I’ve decided to create this blog entry just to share Oracle Linux and UEK releases, how those are associated and which UEK releases are available on different OL versions. So, maybe, this article could be useless for many people who already know which UEK releases are available on each OL release.

Applications

• The image viewer being eyed up as a potential core app in future versions of the GNOME desktop is now available on Flathub.

Instructionals/Technical

• VirtualBox, a powerful and widely used open-source virtualization solution, has recently released its major update – VirtualBox 7.0.0 on October 10, 2022. This release brings a plethora of new features, enhancements, and fixes, making it even more robust and user-friendly.

• Managing user permissions is essential for ensuring that sensitive data is protected and that users have the appropriate level of access to shared resources. In this tutorial, we will explain how to give a user permission to a folder in Linux using the chmod, chown, and chgrp commands.

• The contents of the /etc/group file can seem cryptic at first. But all it contains is information on locally configured groups on a Linux system.

• Again, watching YouTube for graphics tips, I came across a video on the channel Logos by Nick where he shows us how to make a simple line art logo using some of the Path tools. His was a mountain, trees and water with the sun behind it, and it was really good!

• I decided to go a different direction, so I used a trace I made of tuxlink’s awesome Dobie from the wallpaper he gave us recently, and made something sort of similar. When you set up your page, make sure the setting “Scale Stroke Width” is turned off. That way, when you make your stroke width 5 pixels, and then resize something, the pixel width will stay 5, making things uniform. It’s much easier than going to Fill & Stroke and changing it with every line. Also, remember to use the command Path > Object to path on the objects that you draw, since we’re using path commands.

• In this part 3 of the series, I’ll illustrate how to add a keyboard layout, use the “Custom Command” plugin, edit images and customize your panel.

Games

• We are proud to announce that network-enabled Humongous Entertainment titles are now playable online! Anyone who has a copy of Backyard Football, Backyard Baseball 2001, and even Backyard Football 2002 (which was originally a LAN-only title) can download the latest daily build* of ScummVM and play online games against real people!

• This all became possible because the three developers from the Backyard Sports Online fork had joined the team and brought their services with them to the ScummVM. These are LittleToonCat, Jim “jibbodahibbo” Westerkamp and Sam “QuestionMonkey” Kupfer.

• Who doesn’t remember the classic 1991 Apogee Software game that brought the hero Duke Nukem to the world? Yes, Duke Nukem started out as a 2D platform game.

• Duke Nukem 1 was a famous original 16-color 320×200 ‘classic’ game released by Apogee Software in 1991 that launched the Duke Nukem series. The original Duke Nukem 1 was created by Todd Replogle (co-creator of the Duke Nukem series), John Carmack (of id Software), Scott Miller (founder of 3D Realms), Allen H. Blum III, George Broussard, and Jim Norwood.

Distributions and Operating Systems

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• g application for the command line. It helps keep track of events, appointments and daily tasks. It has lots of functionality, is lightweight, fast, reliable and portable (due to being text-file based). The PCLinuxOS repositories have ver. 4.6.0 (released in March 2020).

• Calcurse’s name is a combination of ‘calendar’ and ‘curses’ (the name of the library used to build the user interface). Calcurse is multi-platform. It is available on Linux, three BSD distributions and macOS (via the Homebrew project).

• Buttercup Password Manager is a modern and feature-rich open source password manager that was recently added to the PCLinuxOS repositories. Featuring 256 bit AES encrypted vaults, Buttercup provides a high level of security for your passwords and other sensitive information. In addition to the desktop program, mobile versions are available for iOS and Android, along with browser extensions for Firefox and Google Chrome.

• The user interface has a polished, well designed look to it, making Buttercup Password Manager very easy to navigate and use. Each vault opens up in a separate tab, allowing you to easily switch between them. Creating a new vault is as simple as clicking on the + button in the upper toolbar.

• Most of the time, the sage advice around the PCLinuxOS forum is to NOT install software from outside of the official PCLinuxOS repository. It’s a trivial task to run into what is dis-affectionately called “dependency hell.” You also lack a full listing of changes made to your system, so installing even one “unofficial” piece of software could break 10 other working programs, or even render your installation unusable (or even unbootable).

• If things do “go South” for your installation, good luck trying to figure out exactly what went wrong, since you have no idea what changes were made to your system. Plus, unless you install software from a trusted source, you could unknowingly install malware, spyware, viruses, ransomware, cryptomining software, credential stealing software, etc. Sometimes, it can be difficult to know exactly who to trust.

• Personally, I’ve avoided the new AI chatbots like the dog tries to avoid fleas. AI chatbots are definitely in their infancy, and should only improve as time goes on. But we also need some controls on these chabots. In more extreme views, I sometimes have visions of an AI monstrosity like Skynet in the Terminator movies. Unless their use is restricted and their abilities rolled out more slowly to give people a chance to get use to their capabilities, the line of truth could very easily be more easily blurred and/or obliterated.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The history of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is one that mirrors the fortunes of the British home computer industry, one of an early 8-bit boom followed by a sharp decline as manufacturers failed to capitalise on the next generation of 16-bit machines. The grey ZX Spectrum on [Keri Szafir]’s bench is one that encapsulates that decline perfectly, being one of the first models produced under the ownership of Amstrad after Sir Clive’s company foundered. Amstrad made many improvements to the Spectrum, but as she demonstrates, there are still some fixes needed.

• Learn from and be inspired by CoderDojo and Code Club volunteers who shared practical tools and ideas at the Clubs Conference 2023.

• This week’s podcast is focused on IoT infrastructure, with our first conversation explaining the upcoming 6G cellular connectivity standard. After that, we discuss sales of IoT connectivity chips and modules, and the leaders in each category before moving on to low-power wide area network news from Unabiz, which is open sourcing the code for Sigfox.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

• We want Qt Desktop Days to provide concrete, applicable insights that relate to desktop software development mainly – but not exclusively – with Qt, because we know there’s a lot of it out there.

• The “Invalid Host header” error is a common issue encountered by developers working with Vue.js applications. This error occurs when the development server receives a request with an unrecognized or mismatched host header.

• You might not know Jordan Harband’s name, but if you’ve developed a JavaScript application, there’s a good chance you’ve relied on a package he maintains.

• Harband is a software engineer who currently maintains hundreds of widely used open source packages in the JavaScript npm package registry. One of those packages alone is downloaded millions of times per week, with nearly 1.6 billion all-time downloads.

• Open source software is increasingly foundational to corporate IT environments, and that growing importance has come with heightened expectations for open source maintainers. But for the individuals like Harband who keep open source software afloat, maintaining their projects is both personally fulfilling and a serious struggle.

Python

• Machine Learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that enables computers to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. It involves the use of statistical algorithms and models to analyze and identify patterns in data, which are then used to make predictions or decisions. Python has become one of the most popular programming languages for implementing machine learning algorithms, thanks to its simplicity, flexibility, and robust libraries like NumPy, Pandas, and Scikit-learn.

• AutoML, short for Automated Machine Learning, has emerged as a game-changing technology that is democratizing Machine Learning by making it more accessible and less time-consuming for non-experts. AutoML platforms use advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to automate many of the complex tasks involved in building Machine Learning models, allowing developers to focus on more strategic tasks.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Check out how you can ensure that proper arguments are passed to your bash scripts.

Standards/Consortia

• Activating a device’s Sabbath mode is usually not a straightforward affair. It usually requires a very specific, non-obvious, and convoluted set of button presses that must occur in a sequence specified in the dusty corners of an instruction manual.

Leftovers

• Prison is an institution where fundamental human rights are often treated as negotiable, rather than inalienable. These conditions are exacerbated for those living with a disability. Without video communication options, there are very limited options for those who are deaf and want to communicate with sign language. As the COVID-19 pandemic escalated, phone calls became essential for those in prison, which created a major disadvantage for deaf people who did not have access to the proper technology to make this possible. The importance of this accommodation is underscored by the fact that many convicts are incarcerated without anyone fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). With the new rule in place, the deaf and hard-of-hearing community in correctional facilities will have the opportunity to communicate using sign language.

• According to Ombudsperson Terry Schuster his office forwarded five such complaints to the Department of Corrections’ Special Investigations Division for formal investigation. In email to The Appeal, Schuster wrote that “several people” in the RHU had “alleged incidents” that “suggested a pattern” of security staff misconduct.

• The only time I visited Milan, I emerged from a narrow street onto the Piazza del Duomo. As soon as I saw the ornate cathedral presiding over the open square, I started laughing—so much I couldn’t stop. The sight was so overwhelming, absurd even, that I couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds at a time without bursting into a nervous, incredulous chuckle. I felt like I was looking at something forbidden, scandalous even. Over the course of my stay, I walked by it, next to it, behind it, and across it. I even paid to go inside.

• In Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1983, a Black soldier was a rare sight. What could he be doing? As a member of the occupying British Army, he was there for the same reason that five Black American civil rights activists were: because of “the Troubles,” the latest manifestation of the 800-year conflict between Ireland and Britain. But in the end, the soldier and the activists were on opposite sides.

Education

• Prisoners in Washington State are renewing their fight to democratize education amid new restrictions threatening their decade-old program.

Hardware

• Hackaday readers might know [Victor Scheinman] as the pioneer who built some of the first practical robot arms. But what was a kid like that doing in high school? Thanks to a film about the 1958 New York City Science Fair, we know he was building a voice-activated typewriter. Don’t believe it? Watch it yourself below, thanks to [David Hoffman].

• When it comes to professional medium format analog cameras, the Mamiya RB67 is among the most well-known and loved, ever since its introduction in 1970. Featuring not only support for 120 and 220 mm film options, but also a folding and ‘chimney’ style view finder and a highly modular body, these are just some reasons that have made it into a popular – if costly – reflex system camera even today. This is one reason why [Anthony Kouttron] chose to purchase and attempt to repair a broken camera, in the hopes of not only saving a lot of money, but also to save one of those amazing cameras from the scrap heap.

• The bane of 3D printing is what people commonly call bed leveling. The name is a bit of a misnomer since you aren’t actually getting the bed level but making the bed and the print head parallel. Many modern printers probe the bed at different points using their own nozzle, a contact probe, or a non-contact probe and develop a model of where the bed is at various points. It then moves the head up and down to maintain a constant distance between the head and the bed, so you don’t have to fix any irregularities. [YGK3D] shows off the Beacon surface scanner, which is technically a non-contact probe, to do this, but it is very different from the normal inductive or capacitive probes, as you can see in the video below. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see it print because [YGK3D] mounted it too low to get the nozzle down on the bed. However, it did scan the bed, and you can learn a lot about how the device works in the video. If you want to see one actually printing, watch the second, very purple video from [Dre Duvenage].

• The federal government is moving forward with sweeping new regulations to make portable generators safer, citing the increasing number of deaths they cause and the failure of manufacturers to protect consumers.

• On Wednesday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted unanimously to advance a proposal that would require portable generators to emit less carbon monoxide and to shut off automatically when the deadly gas reaches a certain level. The invisible and odorless gas emitted by the devices claims an average of 85 lives a year, making generators one of the deadliest consumer products the CPSC regulates.

• Much like vinyl records, tube amplifiers are still prized for their perceived sound qualities, even though both technologies have been largely replaced otherwise. The major drawback to designing around vacuum tubes, if you can find them at all, is often driving them with the large voltages they often require to heat them to the proper temperatures. There are a small handful of old tubes that need an impressively low voltage to work, though, and [J.G.] has put a few of them to work in this battery-powered audio tube amplifier.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday vetoed legislation pass by congressional Republicans and corporate Democrats to stop the federal government from protecting public health and the planet, blocking a resolution passed by both chambers last month to gut water protections.

• I’ve been writing about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his antivaccine activities for a very long time now. Indeed, the few really longtime readers still left here know that my very first post for this blog that went viral was about RFK Jr. The year was 2005, and, to their eternal shame, both Salon.com and Rolling Stone simultaneously published an article by RFK Jr. entitled Deadly Immunity, and my deconstruction of his version of his version of I like to call the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, which posited that in 2000 the CDC met in an Atlanta suburb to “cover up” the evidence that the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal was the cause of the “autism epidemic.” It was nonsense, of course, based on a misrepresentation of how in epidemiological studies seemingly “positive” associations disappear when confounders are properly taken into account.

• Noting that progressives in Congress recently helped lead the White House to the brink of implementing far-reaching reforms to Medicare Advantage and bringing relief to taxpayers who for years have been overpaying insurers that run the program, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday criticized the Biden administration’s plan to delay making changes to the system following aggressive lobbying by the insurance industry.

• “Is the food okay?”

Proprietary

• This isn’t like the cool AI everyone’s getting caught up with these days, but we’re sure it will make a fun party gimmick nonetheless.

• Microsoft will pay more than $3.3 million to settle charges from two federal agencies its subsidiaries violated sanctions laws and export controls across their dealings in four sanctioned countries and Ukraine’s Crimea region, which is under Russian control.

• Samsung employees are in hot water after they reportedly leaked sensitive confidential company information to OpenAI’s ChatGPT on at least three separate occasions. The leaks highlight both the widespread popularity of the popular new AI chatbot for professionals and the often-overlooked ability of OpenAI to suck up sensitive data from its millions of willing users.

Security

• Web applications are a wide world that is currently the object of numerous cyberattacks, mostly seeking to compromise the information directly in the clients that use them.

• Trellix researchers have shared the details of a Royal ransomware attack on one of its customers, revealing insight into the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed by one of the world’s most active and dangerous ransomware operations.

• Royal ransomware was first detected in January of 2022 but the group ramped up its activity from September onwards. It has since become a widespread and dangerous threat and the subject of warnings from US authorities.

• [...]

• Royal used these privileges to run a PowerShell command and launch the PowerSploit post-exploitation framework via Cobalt Strike’s service on port 11925. In this case, it downloaded and executed the PowerView module.

• LastPass attacks began with a hacked employee’s home computer. The investigation now reveals the password manager company’s data vault was compromised, according to an article on TechRepublic. The password manager’s company has released two security bulletins, one for LastPass users and another one for business administrators. Hopefully, most of you reading this were like me, and ditched LastPass altogether after they severely limited the “free accounts,” which included deleting all of my data from LastPass and porting everything over to BitWarden. We covered the move from LastPass to BitWarden, as well as the whole LastPass money-grab, in the April 2021 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine.

Privacy/Surveillance

• A leak of alleged customers’ targets — a list that included journalists, human rights activists, religious leaders, government critics, and political figures — turned a trickle of news about Israel-based NSO Group into a steady stream of harrowing revelations.

• Cities and counties across the country have banned government use of face surveillance technology, and many more are weighing proposals to do so. From Boston to San Francisco, Jackson, Mississippi to Minneapolis, elected officials and activists know that face surveillance gives police the power to track us wherever we go. It also disproportionately impacts people of color, turns us all into perpetual suspects, increases the likelihood of being falsely arrested, and chills people’s willingness to participate in first amendment protected activities. Even Amazon, known for operating one of the largest video surveillance networks in the history of the world, extended its moratorium on selling face recognition to police.

• Russia’s fighting a war in Ukraine and a war at home. As residents express their displeasure with their government, the government’s cameras and facial recognition AI are going into overdrive to ensure Putin and his pals control the narrative.

• While there’s a lot of talk about how getting privacy legislation right is hard (it is), or that doing it wrong could pose many problems (it could), that should never derail attention from the real reason the U.S. has no federal privacy law in 2023: Congress is blisteringly, comically corrupt. And with numerous, deep-pocketed industries lobbying it in unison, quality federal privacy law never had a chance.

• There’s something about some government agencies that make them revolt against the notion of checks and balances. Some federal agencies have extra privileges that make it much, much easier. A large number of agencies can issue their own subpoenas, demanding data, recordings, and other information from their targets — self-issued documents that bypass the court system entirely.

Defence/Aggression

• McCarthy has become the highest-level US official to meet with a Taiwanese president on US soil since the 1979 diplomatic shift.

• Collateral damage?  Deserving and worthy of their punishment?  The exclusion and banishment of Russian and Belarusian athletes has become the acceptable prejudice of many governments and a slew of sporting bodies.  After the invasion of Ukraine in February last year, a number banded together to find ways to punish Russia, […]

• The resolution presented by Azerbaijan on behalf of Non-Aligned countries noted the impact of sanctions on key rights related to life, health, and freedom from hunger. It was predictably rejected by the US and its allies.

• We speak with award-winning journalist and author Jeff Sharlet, who has spent the last decade reporting on the growing threat of fascism across the United States. In his new book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, Sharlet says the language of “civil war” has become central to right-wing rhetoric, mainstreamed by former President Donald Trump, Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans.

• Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), has appointed Archpriest Dimitry Vasilenkov, a cleric of the St. Petersburg bishopric, in charge of the ROC military clergy deployed in Ukraine.

• The Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), a group whose members say they are Russians who fight for Ukraine, that it has “paid another visit” to the Bryansk region, according to a post on the group’s Telegram channel.

• Vladimir Kara-Murza’s lawyer, Maria Eismont, told reporters at a Moscow municipal court that a prosecutor asked for a 25 year prison sentence for the opposition policitican.

• The Federal Security Service (“FSB”) has arrested a 16-year-old boy in Russia’s Kemerovo region, in connection with an alleged railway sabotage incident in the area.

• Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said Thursday that the FSB’s border service prevented an attempt by a “Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group” to cross into Russian territory.

• Federal Security Service (FSB) officers in Russia’s Omsk region have begun summoning residents who left the country during mobilization for questioning, the independent outlet iStories reported on Thursday.

• For the first time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have released footage of a Ukrainian strike on Russian territory, according to the German outlet Bild.

• In Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region, a large screen has reportedly been set up on the border with Belarus and is being used to show footage from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

• Over the course of nearly a year of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, by publication iStories’ count, almost 8,000 volunteers and mercenaries in private military companies fighting for Russia have been killed.

• The State Duma voted to return a bill from 2018 to consideration in a second reading. The draft legislation, if passed, would change the current procedure for conscription for mandatory military service.

• A Nevada man has been arrested and charged with murder after allegedly telling police he intentionally rammed his car into a group of volunteers feeding unhoused people in Reno on Monday evening, killing one woman and critically injuring two others.

• Israeli forces conducted violent raids on the Al Aqsa Mosque compound two nights in a row, beating worshipers and forcing Palestinians out of the holy site in order to make way for Jewish pilgrims on Passover.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• The controversy began in 2015 when Coons sent emails to colleagues regarding the hiring of a candidate for a position in the philosophy department. At the time, Coons believed the candidate did not meet the qualifications for the position. In 2019, having been hired, the person helped the department secure a $1.6 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. In response, Wilson reported, Coons “expressed his view that the Koch money corrupted the hiring process in the department” and Coons has continued to “occasionally raise these concerns in emails to colleagues.” As Wilson noted, the Koch Foundation was known at the time to have “used its funding to influence academia.” Nevertheless, colleagues in the philosophy department did not side with Coons, and he was shunned by his department.

Environment

• Dozens of colorful banners were dropped across the United Kingdom on Thursday to invite people to London later this month for a four-day peaceful protest outside Parliament demanding action on the climate emergency to ensure “a future that is safe and fair.”

Energy/Transportation

• The demise of Silicon Valley Bank last month triggered plenty of angst among solar energy developers. Before it collapsed, SBV claimed it had “financed or helped finance 62 percent of community solar projects in America,” according to Washington Post business reporter Evan Halper. At first, it wasn’t clear who might fill that gap. MAGA politicians took great delight in the disruption of what they tediously referred to as the “woke” economy. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) typically tweeted this non sequitur: “So these SVB guys spend all their time funding woke garbage—‘climate change solutions’—rather than actual banking.” Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, the vampirish mastermind of Donald Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban, asked all too rhetorically how much time and money that bank had spent on what he called equity, diversity, and climate “scams.”

• President Biden’s own statements predicting the end of Nord Stream, preliminary to  the devastating attack on its infrastructure, point to the necessity of determining whether or not the president was speaking from his singularly informed position of the Chief Executive, as Hersh indicated.

• To avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis, the world must stop building new coal plants and shut down existing ones at nearly five times the current rate.

• A UK government agency has provided billions of pounds worth of financial support to the high-carbon aviation sector since the Paris climate agreement was adopted in 2015, DeSmog analysis shows.

• UK Export Finance (UKEF) has effectively subsidised new airports, aircraft, and maintenance, despite stating that the oil-dependent industry is unlikely to begin cutting emissions “materially” until the 2030s.

• As a carpenter for a contractor company, Cullen Boudreaux worked in oil refineries throughout Louisiana. “I think a lot of regular people don’t realize how dangerous it really is,” he said of his experience in the oil and gas industry. Boudreaux described a time when he halted work on a project because he smelled a leak, but said that other times he was worried he would lose his job if he called out safety hazards.

• For five years, he chased after contract jobs at different plants. Some lasted a year and a half and others were two or three months long. Last year, Boudreaux was forced out of the industry after a back injury. “I was tired of the layoffs and the inconsistency of pay and looking for work and stuff like that,” he said. He recently took a job as a manager at a restaurant in New Orleans.

Wildlife/Nature

Finance

• The Supreme Court is gearing up to weigh in on the ongoing student loan debt debate prompted by President Joe Biden’s sweeping debt cancellation plan that would help over 35 million Americans.

• A trio of progressive U.S. lawmakers on Thursday reintroduced legislation that advocates say would slash the nation’s child poverty rate by nearly two-thirds.

• After several tech giants including Amazon, Meta and Microsoft fired thousands in India, Mr Agarwal is not interested in working with big tech for now. He is instead hoping to build on his experience at Twitter to set up a policy consulting firm.

• Guests of the Walt Disney World Resort may use Microsoft Edge to plan their trips, drive in a Ford or General Motors vehicle to the parks (or board a Boeing 747 to fly to Orlando), and post vacation photos to Facebook. Aside from this, The Walt Disney Company has no real affiliation with companies like Microsoft, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Boeing, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook. But in 2023, there is an undeniable tie that binds them, and it’s an unfortunate one.

• “A citywide project that tracked Chicago’s air pollution using more than a hundred low-cost air quality sensors ended last week after the tech company Microsoft, which led the project, quietly announced to its users that it was shuttering the program,” reports MuckRock. “Microsoft’s air quality monitoring program, called Project Eclipse, began in July 2021 when it placed air sensors atop bus shelters across the city in partnership with the city of Chicago, the advertising firm JCDecaux, which designs the city’s bus shelters, Chicago’s Environmental Law and Policy Center and… community organizations. For almost two years, the sensors delivered one of the few detailed pictures of how air pollution varies by neighborhood in the U.S.” In a statement from the company, which just laid off thousands of workers: “Microsoft said it decided to close its air quality initiative after its research arm, which ‘continuously evaluates research projects to determine directions and future investment,’ had decided now was ‘a natural point to conclude the work.’”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Russian authorities have decided the reduce the number of election polling stations available to voters. In Moscow, ahead of the mayoral election planned for September, officials are slashing the number of municipal polling locations by almost 40 percent, as confirmed by Tsentrizberkom (“TsIK”), Russia’s state election authority. In other regions, the reduction is less stark, reaching about 10 percent.

• In Chicago on Tuesday, hope won out over cynicism.

• Donald Trump’s indictment for criminal behavior has no precedent in American history. How could a functioning democracy choose such a man as President?

• The weekend Donald Trump wrongly claimed he’d be “arrested” within a few days, as his incitements to supporters to get violent kept coming, I found myself thinking about the best and most disturbing nonfiction book I’d recently read: Jeff Sharlet’s The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War. It’s both perfect and impossible to describe. As the Washington Post review put it: “At the time, the storming of the US Capitol felt unbelievable. Reading ‘The Undertow,’ it feels inevitable.” This amazing book makes all of it into tragic sense.1

• Influential Democratic lawmakers have called for immediate investigations and vowed to create stricter ethics rules following a ProPublica report that revealed Justice Clarence Thomas has, for decades, failed to disclose luxury trips he received from a real estate magnate and conservative megadonor.

• Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee — influential for its role in vetting and confirming Supreme Court nominees — said his panel is calling for an “enforceable code of conduct” for justices. “The ProPublica report is a call to action, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will act,” Durbin said.

• In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

• If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

• A year after the Justice Department shut down the Trump-era program, scrutiny of academics’ foreign ties still chills collaborations.

• Progressives on Thursday urged congressional Democrats to immediately push for investigations and impeachment proceedings after bombshell reporting by ProPublica revealed that right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been taking luxury trips funded by a billionaire Republican megadonor for more than 20 years without formally disclosing them—a likely violation of federal law.

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be impeached by the U.S. House in the wake of ProPublica reporting that exposed the judge’s billionaire-funded luxury vacations.

• Justin Jones, the Democratic Tennessee lawmaker who was expelled from the state Legislature on Thursday, said he was trying to protect all children from the scourge of gun violence—including the children of the Republican colleagues who subsequently voted to oust him—while vowing to keep fighting for gun control.

• Lawmakers from 35 states on Thursday signed a letter condemning the Tennessee Republican Party as it prepared to expel three Democratic representatives who joined a protest demanding gun control legislation in the State Capitol, with the letter accusing the state GOP of racist and “anti-democratic” conduct.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

Censorship/Free Speech

• The Russian rock star and Nochnye Snaipery lead singer Diana Arbenina has become the subject of a complaint directed to the State Prosecutor’s office. Its author is Vitaly Borodin, head of the Federal Security and Anti-Corruption Project, who already has a reputation for initiating prosecution cases against the independent Russian media.

• Elon Musk has repeatedly referred to himself as a “free speech absolutist” and promised that on his Twitter even his “worst critics” would be welcome.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Following espionage charges against jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested last week in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s Federal Security Service opened an apparently related case against a married couple from the nearby industrial city of Nizhny Tagil, home to the Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod. The circumstances of these latter arrests suggest that the FSB is building a treason investigation that intersects at least in part with the prosecution of Evan Gershkovich.

• Congressional action has finally sprung for the jailed WikiLeaks founder.

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent the last four years locked up at the Belmarsh high-security prison in London, where he has been fighting extradition to the United States on espionage charges. He faces up to 175 years in prison if convicted. This week, amid growing concerns about Assange’s health, Reporters Without Borders attempted to become the first NGO to visit with Assange since his arrest four years ago. Despite being given approval, RSF representatives, including our guest, RSF secretary-general and executive director Christophe Deloire, were denied entry.

• We speak with Joshua Yaffa, a close friend of Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter who has been jailed in Russia since his arrest last week, when he was accused of trying to obtain state secrets related to the Russian military — days after the United States indicted a Russian man in Brazil on espionage charges. Gershkovich’s parents left the Soviet Union for the United States before he was born, and he has reported in Russia since 2017. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Press freedom groups have denounced his arrest and urged Russia to immediately release him. Yaffa is The New Yorker’s Moscow correspondent, where his recent piece is titled “The Unimaginable Horror of a Friend’s Arrest in Moscow.” We are also joined by Christophe Deloire, secretary-general and executive director of Reporters Without Borders, which has called Gershkovich a “Russian state hostage.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• For several years, Tufts has admitted more students can it can house, despite student grievances regarding the consequences for campus housing options. Other universities that over-enrolled students during the COVID-19 pandemic are now faced with the challenge of  housing students arriving on campus after having deferred admission earlier in the pandemic.

• On the sunny winter morning of January 29, a group of Indian Americans dressed in white polo shirts and black trousers gathered at a softball field in Scottsdale, Ariz., to practice yoga. On blue tarpaulin sheets and yoga mats, the group of 40-odd people, including men, women, and children, performed 108 Surya Namaskar, or sun salutations, in the next three hours.

• Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Wednesday made his state the first in the U.S. to restrict interstate travel for abortion care by signing legislation that aims to prevent minors from traveling to obtain an abortion without parental consent.

Monopolies

Patents

• Matt Jones (47), who has joined international commercial law firm RPC as a partner, moves after nine years as a partner at patent boutique, EIP. His addition will strengthen the RPC patent practice, as well as contributing to its IP capacities in general.

Trademarks

• If there is one aspect of trademark law that should be the most understandable for business leaders and their lawyers, if not for the general public, it’s that you generally cannot get trademarks on purely descriptive terms. Yes, you can name your product Coca-Cola and get a trademark on that term, but you cannot get a trademark on “cola” or “soda” and threaten or sue everyone else who uses it to describe their own products. Simple, right?

Copyrights

• Internet providers WideOpenWest and Grande Communications will have to defend themselves against filmmakers’ piracy liability claims. In two separate lawsuits, filmmakers accused the companies of turning a blind eye to piracy. The ISPs characterized the filmmakers as copyright trolls and requested dismissals, but the allegations failed to convince the courts.

• After being founded in 2012, the popularity of French pirate download site Zone-Telechargement soon attracted interest from the authorities. In 2016, with the platform recently crowned the 11th most-visited site in France, two friends were arrested on suspicion of being the site’s founders. Seven years later, a court has now handed both men custodial sentences.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Light is physically the same as sound except higher pitched (too high for ears).

• Green, the colloquial name for waveforms near 570 terahertz, is more treble (a.k.a. colder) than red/orange/yellow, but more bass (a.k.a. warmer) than blue.

• The seven colors of the rainbow starting with red is like the seven big keys on a piano starting on A4, except one trillion times higher frequency (ten to the power of twelve).

• Earlier this week I finished reading “The Black Fleet Crisis”, a trilogy of Star Wars novels by Michael P. Kube-McDowell. Part of the Legends canon, the series consists of the books “Before the War”, “Shield of Lies”, and “Tyrant’s Test”.

• The story takes place in 9 ABY, or nine years after the Battle of Yavin featured in the original “Star Wars film. The leader of the isolationist Yevetha visits the center of galactic government in Coruscant, ostensibly to broker a political alliance with Princess Leia and the New Republic, but he has much more sinister plans in mind. Luke Skywalker embarks on a quest with a strange woman who promises that he will learn about the mother he never knew. Meanwhile, Lando Calrissian investigates a mysterious vagabond starship and discovers the secret of its origins.

Technical

• I hate machine learning so much, to the point that I’m almost willing to consider bad arguments against them! But ideally let’s stick to good arguments against them, and see how far we can get.

• I started hating ML from a gut feeling first, and had to come up with arguments and reasons later. Feels over reals. I think most people work this way without being aware of it. What the thinker thinks, the prover will prove.

• I’ve had Void as a second boot option for months now, and before that I had a fairly long running VM. I’ve been interested in moving to Void for a while for a couple of reasons, but the biggest would be that I wanted a distro based on Musl libc.

• I already made this particular jump on one machine, the Raspberry Pi 4 which runs this gemlog, my Gitea instance and an Apache server. It’s been rock solid and I haven’t had to do anything other than install updates since the first week I brought it up. I haven’t had that kind of stability in a long time.

Internet/Gemini

• The last three weeks have been exceptionally busy and exhausting, as we’ve been throwing birthday parties for family and friends, coming down and recovering from a flu, and dealing with a teething baby. Every now and then I get a good night’s sleep and manage to be productive, but that happens more seldom than I’d like…

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