● 04.11.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 11/04/2023: FreeBSD 13.2 is Out and Alyssa Rosenzweig Leaves Collabora

Posted in News Roundup at 12:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• Named after the multi-instrumentalist Eric Allan Dolphy Jr., WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy”‘s high notes are riffed on by WordPress’s Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, in this 53rd episode of the WordPress Briefing.

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we will be discussing Tor and Mullvad teaming up to bring you a new privacy oriented browser. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks.

• 25 years of Mozilla, Twitter’s token open source efforts make us grateful for Mastodon, 3D printing faces a familiar open source challenge, and two (more) potential ways to help solve the FOSS funding problem.

• Listen now (45 min) | USB Flash Drive Bombs, the Great Apple Store Robbery, Google’s war on staplers… and Computer History!

Graphics Stack

• Today is my last day at Collabora and my last day leading the Panfrost driver.

• It’s been a wild ride.

• In 2017, I began work on the chai driver for Mali T (Midgard). chai would later be merged into Lyude Paul’s and Connor Abbott’s BiOpenly project for Mali G (Bifrost) to form Panfrost.

• In 2019, I joined Collabora to accelerate work on the driver stack. The initial goal was to run GNOME on a Mali-T860 Chromebook.

• Huge success.

• [...]

• I’m still alive. I plan to continue working on Mesa drivers for a long time, including the common infrastructure upon which Panfrost relies. And I’ll still send the odd Panfrost patch now and then. That said, my focus will shift.

• I’m not ready to announce what’s in store yet… but maybe you can read between the lines!

• This driver provides Xorg support for the Neomagic chipsets that were commonly used in laptops in the second half of the 1990′s.

Applications

• RedNotebook is a modern desktop journal. It lets you format, tag and search your entries. You can also add pictures, links and customizable templates, spell check your notes, and export to plain text, HTML, Latex or PDF. RedNotebook is Free Software under the GPL.

Instructionals/Technical

• Do you want to copy a symbolic (soft) link instead of a file using the cp command under Linux? Try passing the -a (--archive) to copy and preserve all soft (symbolic) links. The cp command is a naturally used file copying under Linux and it comes with a few rules for copying symbolic links.

• Nano Text Editor is a command line utility to create files. It was the first release in 1999 to replace the older Pico Editor.

• Learn how to easily enable system tray icons in the GNOME desktop environment to make it more productive and efficient.

• This article will explain how to build Python from the source code on Ubuntu 22.04.

• As a Debian desktop user, you might have grown accustomed to using the default Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) version as your go-to web browser. However, an alternative offers unique features and improvements, such as Microsoft Edge.

• The XanMod kernel is a general-purpose Linux kernel built with custom settings and new features to deliver a stable, responsive, and smooth desktop experience. Debian desktop users may prefer this custom kernel for various reasons, including performance enhancements, gaming capabilities, and support for the latest hardware.

• In Linux, databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, DB2, and Cassandra can be managed using Database Management Commands. They allow users to create and delete databases, modify tables, execute SQL statements, back up and restore databases, and export and import data.

• Debian Linux is a popular and widely used distribution that uses Debian packages (.deb) as its primary package format. However, in certain situations, a Debian user may need to install RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) packages on their system.

• In Linux, system initialization commands are used for starting and stopping system services, configuring kernel parameters, managing system services, and scheduling tasks. As part of the startup process, they ensure that all necessary services are run. Using these commands can improve system performance, automate tasks, and ensure reliable system operation.

• This article selects 100 awesome command-line interface (CLI) apps. The compilation mostly reflects software our volunteers use as their daily drivers.

• In Linux, printer commands are used to manage printers and print jobs, to control the printer daemon and queue, to set printer options, and to display printer information.

• Beekeeper Studio is a modern, open-source, cross-platform SQL editor and database management tool that offers a powerful and user-friendly interface for database administrators, developers, and sysadmins.

• Linux has text editors that allow users to edit plain text files. Any individual who works with code or scripts needs to know how to use them. You can choose from a wide variety of text editors on Linux, from lightweight and simple to powerful and highly customizable.

• PuTTY is a popular, open-source SSH (Secure Shell) and telnet client that provides a simple and efficient way to remotely access and manage network devices and servers. Originally developed for the Windows platform, PuTTY is now available on a wide range of operating systems, including Debian Linux.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to easily configure Elasticsearch HTTPS Connection. In order to sent encrypted data from Filebeat to Elasticsearch, you need to enable SSL/TLS mutual communication between them.

• Learn about editing text files in the Linux terminal using the beginner friendly Nano editor in the second last chapter of this series.

• New to the Linux Operating System? Struggling to Zip and Unzip files and directories in Linux? Well, worry not. This guide will provide you with a step-by-step tutorial to compress and decompress files in Linux. To compress and decompress a file in Linux, you can use the “tar” and the “Zip” package. However, this guide will focus mainly on the zip package.

• Warning!: many things can be set with DDT4ALL, theoretically also nasty things that might damage the vehicle.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Brightness Controller on Linux Mint 21.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Graylog on Fedora 37. Are you struggling to manage and analyze logs from various sources on your Fedora 37 system?

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Scrot on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Have you ever wanted to take a quick screenshot of your Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system without the hassle of navigating through menus and options?

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to configure PHP-FPM on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

• The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE. This is the third release of the stable/13 branch.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Updated to 112.0.

• Microsoft Edge is a browser from Microsoft that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. Updated to 112.0.1722.34.

• Slimjet is built on top of the Chromium open-source project on which Google Chrome is also based. It enjoys the same speed and reliablity provided by the underlying blink engine as Google Chrome. However, many additional features and options have been added in Slimjet to make it more powerful, intelligent and customizable than Chrome.

• ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is a free office suite that combines text, spreadsheet and presentation editors allowing to create, view and edit documents stored on your Windows/Linux PC or Mac without an Internet connection. It is fully compatible with Office Open XML formats: .docx, .xlsx, .pptx. Updated to version 7.3.3.

Fedora Family / IBM

• End dates are coming for CentOS Stream 8 and CentOS Linux 7 We’ve got an important message for Developers, Administrators, and Users. Time flies when you’re building RPMs… …and install images… and containers… and cloud images… and so much more!

• It’s no secret that the Fedora Websites and Apps Team has been hard at work. For over a year, we have been overhauling Fedora’s website architecture, design, and content management. During this time, we’ve collaborated with the Fedora Design, Marketing , and Infrastructure teams. We’ve also worked with members of each official Edition’s team. It’s been a pleasure to build web pages that reflect the hard work of these teams while also showcasing the vibrancy of the Fedora community. Timed with the launch of Fedora Linux 38, the community also gets the new Fedora Websites 3.0 release.

• CentOS Linux was discontinued in December 2020. Then, Red Hat launched the Convert2RHEL utility tool to migrate to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instance. This tool also supports conversions from other RHEL-like derivatives (e.g., Oracle Linux) to RHEL. In this article, we will demonstrate how to convert a CentOS instance to a RHEL instance using this tool.

• In this series of articles, we will demonstrate how to use Git, Argo CD, and Red Hat OpenShift GitOps to build a continuous delivery cycle that automatically synchronizes and deploys different solutions. In this article, we will discuss the single sign-on for Red Hat solutions.

• In the world of Kubernetes, where simplicity is tied to complexity, sometimes you can deploy your application with flexible horizontal auto-scaling, out-of-the-box load balancing, distributed management of components, and centralized control of multiple applications. However, with great power comes great responsibilities and complexity.

• To help us solve this complexity and take accountability for our newfound power, strategies have been developed for Kubernetes. In this article, we will take a closer look at continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). These systems usually work with a high level of abstraction to help us solve four common issues: version control, change logging, consistency of deployments, and rollback functionality. One of the most popular approaches to this abstraction layer is called GitOps.

• React is an open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It allows developers to create reusable UI components and efficiently update the view in response to changes in data. Red Hat OpenShift enables developers to build, deploy, run, and manage a wide variety of applications, including frontend and the ones made with React. React applications use the Node.js runtime to run the application.

• This article will help you get started with ReactJS apps on OpenShift.

• The tech world is abuzz with promising, disruptive services that are poised to dramatically change the way businesses operate. From automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to predictive analytics, chief information officers have countless opportunities to improve business processes and help increase the productivity of their workforces.

• Digital transformation refers to the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes to how the business operates and delivers value to customers. It is a strategic process of utilizing technology to fundamentally improve business processes, customer experiences, and overall performance. One Gartner report reveals that 56 percent of CEOs say that revenue growth came as a direct result of digital improvements.

• Once upon a time, you could be an expert generalist in managing IT infrastructure. Today? Not so much. Modern digital environments encompass so many constituent services and specializations that it’s impossible for any individual to truly master them all.

• Consider the variables when planning and executing your AAP or Tower upgrade and learn what makes sense for your scenario.

Debian Family

Gunnar Wolf ☛ Gunnar Wolf: Twenty yearsTwenty years… A seemingly big, very round number, at least for me.I can recall several very well-known songs mentioning this timespan:«It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play», sang four youth idols in 1967 for whom said timespan was not-quite-but-almost their full lifes so far.

• For over 15 years, I’ve hardly made any updates to my website, and it remains low on my priority list. So I made a radical decision to replace it entirely with my blog. The content of the website has been reduced to just two additional pages.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The PineTab2 and PineTab-V pre-orders begin on April 13th. Both tablets feature a 1200×800 10.1” IPS LCD panel with wide viewing angles, a sturdy metal metal chassis, two USB-C ports (1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 with charging), a digital video out port, a front 2MPx and rear 5MPx camera as well as a 6000mAh […]

• The board ships with 8 MB of QSPI flash, supports USB-C or LiPo battery power, is offered in the familiar Feather form factor, and the built-in RFM95 module supports 433 MHz, 868MHz, and 915MHz frequencies, selectable by firmware, for global coverage.

• Distributed computing project uses RP2040-powered microcontrollers.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Zabbix, a provider of open-source monitoring, has opened a new office in Mexico, reports Labs of Latvia. This is the Latvian company’s fourth international office.

Events

• Vivek Nigam presented on RPKI invalids at INNOG 6, held in Delhi, India from 22 to 26 March 2023.

• The Fedora Design Team discovered this first-hand hosting the very first Creative Freedom Summit in January, 2023. Using open source tools for running a virtual conference can be quite effective.

• In this article, I’ll share with you some of the background of our conference, why using open source tools to run the conference itself was important to us, and the specific tools and configurations we use to make it all work! We’ll also talk about what worked really well, and what room remains for improvement at our next summit in 2024!

• The Creative Freedom Summit was an idea Marie Nordin came up with coming out of reviewing talk submissions for Flock, the annual Fedora users and contributors conference. For the last Flock in August 2022, she received a lot of talk submissions relating to design and creativity in open source – far more than we could possibly accept! With so many great ideas for open source design related talks out there, she wondered if there would be space for a separate open source creativity conference, focused on creatives who use open source tools to create their work.

• Marie brought this idea to the Fedora Design Team in the fall of 2022 and we started planning the conference, which took place January 17- 19, 2023. Since it was our first time running a new conference like this, we decided to start out with invited speakers based on some of the talk submissions and our own personal network of open source creatives. Almost every speaker we invited ended up giving a talk, so we didn’t have room to accept submissions. This is something we will need to figure out next year, so we don’t have an open source CFP (Call for Papers) management tool for that to tell you about, yet!

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• Firefox 113 looks like an interesting release that will bring support for animated AV1 images (AVIS), a more secure password generator that now includes special characters too, and an enhanced Picture-in-Picture feature that lets you rewind, check the video duration, and more easily enable the full-screen mode.

• The upcoming Firefox release also appears to introduce a feature that was initially planned for Firefox 112, namely the ability for Linux and macOS users to use FIDO2 / WebAuthn authenticators over USB with support for fully passwordless logins.

GNU Projects

• We’re pleased to announce the release of MediaGoblin 0.12.1. See the release notes for full details and upgrading instructions.

• This patch release fixes a number of Python dependency issues, allows us to support newer autoconf versions, fixes a few small bugs and improves the documentation. Support for Debian Bookwork, Ubuntu 22.04 and Fedora 36 is notably missing from this release, but will be addressed in the upcoming version 0.13.0.

• Thanks go to Olivier Mehani, Elisei Roca, Jgart, Dan Helfman and Peter Horvath for their contributions in this release. Since our last release, long-time MediaGoblin user and contributor Olivier has joined me as co-maintainer on the project. Thanks for all your help Olivier!

• To join us and help improve MediaGoblin, please visit our getting involved page.

Programming/Development

• Meson 1.1.0 was released on 10 April 2023

• I think one of the most powerful ideas in business—or any kind of organization really—is the distinction between fixing things vs. building pipelines. I used to think about fixing things. You work a company. You see a problem. You talk to the right people, make the correction, and you move on.

Standards/Consortia

• Back in January I mentioned a device at our local Australia Post, sold under the obviously reputable As Seen on TV brand. It was like stepping through a time warp.

Leftovers

• As luxury cars become rolling supercomputers, designers are wondering how big is too big.

Education

• The peak body for Australian universities has called for a budget boost for tertiary institutions to make them more competitive globally, ahead of a wide-ranging review of the sector.

Hardware

• STMicro ST87M01 is a compact, low-power, programmable LTE Cat NB2 (NB-IoT) industrial cellular module with GNSS geo-location capability for “massive IoT” deployments and asset tracking applications. STMicro already had several LPWAN solutions such as the STM32WL LoRa SoC, a Wi-SUN transceiver, a few SigFox chips, and a bunch of proprietary sub-GHz chips, but no cellular IoT solutions of their own although the STM32 microcontroller can be found in many third-party solutions.

• Another analyst firm, IDC, put the drop at 29%, with shipments for the period coming in at 56.1 million units.

• Canalys said notebook shipments suffered a decline of 34% to 41.8 million units, with desktop PC shipments fell by 28% to 12.1 million units.

• Apple loses 40% of sales year-over-year, market share drops too.

• TrendForce research suggests that gaming monitors saw demand for gaming monitors drop by 13% in 2022, but predicts it will come back in 2023.

• Samsung has announced a noteworthy cut in memory production, due to low market demand and to get rid of excess inventory.

• In my continuing series about this 1991 Am386 motherboard I got working, over the long weekend I got around to tinkering with a 512 MiB IDE disk-on-module (DOM) storage device. DOMs are small, solid-state drives that connect directly to the IDE bus, negating the need for cables, adaptors, or converters.

• This is my first time using a DOM, because they’ve never been the most cost-effective solution per MiB. But I’m already in love with the form factor, and when you’re dealing with an ancient machine that only works with lower-capacity devices, why not give it a try?

• Join me if you’d like as I walk through another “live blog” attempting to get this thing working. Spoiler: DOS is fine, but the BIOS isn’t!

• List of all the Am386 posts thus far

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The summer before your first year of college produces myriad feelings. On one hand, you’re focused on cherishing the last moments of your pre-college years, trying to enjoy the rest of your time in a hometown that might seem a little bit less like home when you come back to it.

• Parents were extorted 100 million won (S$100,700) or risk having their children reported to police for drug-taking.

• But the vast majority of the complaints are dismissed or thrown out for technical reasons.

• How often have you been “exhausted by excessive demands on energy, strength, or resources in the workplace” over the past year? Month? Week? That’s precisely how psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, credited with coining the term “burnout” in 1974, described how he felt during a stressful time in his own job.

• The treasurer warns the explosion in vaping is weighing on the budget as well as the health of Australians. The switch to vaping and black-market tobacco products is costing the government about $5 billion in lost taxes, according to numbers crunched by the Australian Association of Convenience Stores.

Proprietary

• Tech giants that have offices in Central and South Texas also have announced downsizing since the start of the new year: Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta have all said they would lay off employees.

• Better late than never, I guess, but Microsoft finally got around to fixing a five-year-old high-CPU usage bug in Mozilla Firefox.

• The bug, which is tied to Windows Defender’s Antimalware Service Executable process, has been known to produce high-CPU usage when running Firefox compared to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Fortunately, the issue looks like it is resolved at long last.

• If you are having trouble sending and receiving email via your Outlook.com account, you are not alone. Problems have started to surface following a recent policy change by Microsoft that means email attachments now eat into OneDrive storage limits — as we reported previously.

• Consumer finance company Latitude Financial is refusing to pay a ransom to cyber criminals after millions of customers had their personal records stolen.  Latitude Financial on Tuesday said it would not reward criminal behaviour, nor did it believe coughing up ransom money would see customers’ stolen information returned or destroyed.

• Here’s an experiment being run by undergraduate computer science students everywhere: Ask ChatGPT to generate phishing emails, and test whether these are better at persuading victims to respond or click on the link than the usual spam. It’s an interesting experiment, and the results are likely to vary wildly based on the details of the experiment.

• This week on Cyber we’re talking about Uber’s glitch screwing drivers, tenants in California unionizing to fight a giant investment firm, and what a public bank might look like.

Security

• It has become clearly apparent in recent years that cybercrime is on the rise. Online crime affects everyone, and Linux is no longer the exception.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Guest Post: Revisiting the adoption of Query Name Minimization for improved DNS security and privacy.

Defence/Aggression

• Putin’s plan to place nukes in Belarus has been widely interpreted as as an escalation in his ongoing nuclear saber-rattling tactics but it will also greatly strengthen the Russian dictator’s grip over the neighboring country.

• The U.S. and Philippines militaries launched their largest-ever joint exercises on Tuesday, a day after Chinese forces finished drills around Taiwan.

• Military bases won’t be US staging points for potential war over Taiwan, President Marcos tells Filipinos.

• Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania formed a united front at the United Nations on April 10 at the Resumed Sixth Committee Session on “Crimes against humanity” held in New York.

• Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has condemned China’s military drills in the Taiwan Strait, saying China did not demonstrate the “responsible” behavior of a major Asian nation. China’s air, land and sea drills that ended Monday were retaliation for Tsai’s meeting with the U.S. House Speaker on her tour of Taiwan’s official and unofficial allies. Tsai said she represented Taiwan in the world and she was expected to interact with its international friends. Taiwan is a self-ruled island that China claims as part of its own territory. As of Tuesday morning, Taiwan’s defense ministry said eight Chinese navy vessels were still in the waters surrounding the island.

• American and Filipino forces have launched their largest combat exercises in decades in waters across the disputed South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, where Washington has repeatedly warned China over its increasingly aggressive actions. The annual drills called Balikatan will run up to April 28 and involve more than 17,600 military personnel. It’s the latest display of American firepower in Asia, as the Biden administration strengthens an arc of alliances to better counter China, including in a possible confrontation over Taiwan. Meanwhile, the Philippine foreign and defense secretaries will meet their American counterparts in Washington to discuss the American military presence and proposed joint naval patrols. China has warned against the U.S. deployment in the region.

• A gunman opened fire at a bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday morning, killing four people and sending at least eight to the hospital before he was killed at the scene, Louisville Metro Police Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said. The shooter appears to be a former employee of the bank, he said.

• North Korea has been reacting angrily to a recent series of the allies’ joint military exercises.

• China’s military exercises have caused instability in Taiwan and the region, said Ms Tsai Ing-wen.

• South Korea has said its law forbids supplying weapons to countries engaged in conflict.

• Over 17,600 Philippine and American soldiers are joining their largest annual war games this month, which is happening against the backdrop of China’s rising military aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

• “The occurrence of fatalities among children caused by firearms has reached an unprecedented level…”

• The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate and tireless campaigner against South African apartheid, once observed: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

• While we were being distracted by the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war – and Washington’s increasing involvement in the war – tremendous developments in the Middle East have all but ended decades of US meddling in the region. Peace is breaking out in the Middle East and Washington is not at all happy about it!

• Žygimantas Pavilionis, chairman of the Lithuanian parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, on Monday joined politicians from other countries who criticised French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent statement on Taiwan after his visit to China.

• A proposal to pay tribute to the father of the Second Polish Republic, Józef Piłsudski, in a Lithuanian town remains controversial even after the two nations seem to have long buried historical feuds.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Lithuania has made progress in encouraging people to become whistleblowers, say experts from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. However, they call for a more systematic collection of statistics on whether specific measures have been successful.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

• The Northern Territory has the critical minerals our nation, and the world, need—and the NT government is working hard to support their exploration and development.

Wildlife/Nature

• An oil spill has effectively put life on hold in a coastal region of the Philippines. As clean-up stretches on, cooperation is critical to keep fishing communities above water.

• After aliens banish humans to Antarctica, scientists develop a new breed of children who are super-adapted to frigid conditions in Tom Rob Smith’s dystopian novel “Cold People.”

• The European Commission is threatening to sue Latvia in the Court of the European Union as a result of failing to protect protected black alder trees, reports the Latvian Radio program “Open files”.

• Hundreds of people have been forced to flee as a wildfire destroyed dozens of homes in a South Korean coastal city. Strong winds are fueling the flames in Gangneung. Officials say more than 2,300 firefighters and 300 vehicles have been dispatched to fight the blaze that started Tuesday on a mountain in the central part of the eastern coastal city. It isn’t immediate clear how long it may take firefighters to bring the flames under control. The strong winds are making it difficult to deploy water-dropping aircraft. Firefighters on the ground are spraying water toward homes and trying to keep the fire from spreading to more populated parts of the city.

• A judge blocked bullfights at the 153-year-old Spring and Peace Fair on Sunday, hours before the first matador events were due to begin.

Overpopulation

• On Tuesday morning, the Daugava water level near Daugavpils decreased to 7.46 meters above the station zero mark, thereby canceling the orange alert of potential floods announced on April 6, according to information on the website of Daugavpils municipality on April 11.

• The water level of the Daugava near the city of Daugavpils has reached the highest mark this spring, while the water levels upstream continue to decrease gradually, according to data from the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center (LVĢMC).

• Residents of upmarket Polanco say private water vendors are charging them more than in other neighborhoods because of its wealthy reputation.

Finance

• The treasurer has defended his decision to push ahead with his predecessor’s plan to axe a tax offset that saved low and middle income earners up to $1500 a year.

• Switzerland’s parliament is opening a special session to scrutinize the state-imposed takeover of Swiss bank Credit Suisse by rival UBS

• This year, the construction sector will not experience rapid growth, and will not recover from last year’s drop of 11%. Experts surveyed by Latvian Radio on April 11 predicted a moderate recession for the construction sector this year.

• Here are our experts’ top takeaways from meetings with central bankers and finance ministers.

• “From this moment on, financial and banking institutions will accept U.S. dollar cash deposits in bank accounts…”

• Growth in the market for used clothing might outpace fast fashion as more consumers become aware of the environmental, social, and economic benefits of thrift shopping.

• Essential aged care, child care, hospitality, postal and freight workers are being priced out of the rental market across Australia with the average employee forced to spend around two thirds of their income on housing.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• How Republican super-majorities in state legislatures are undermining the democratic process.

• The video garnered more than 400,000 views in just four days on Twitter and Facebook.

• Elon Musk’s impulsive reactions to competitive products or opinions he dislikes are having an outsized impact on the media industry, which represents some of Twitter’s most hyper-engaged users.

• Why it matters: Musk has forced news companies to choose between their commercial interests and their values. Until now, business needs have won out, but the industry is beginning to reach a breaking point.

• Twitter’s ex-CEO Parag Agrawal and two other former executives accused the social media company in a lawsuit Monday of failing to reimburse them for more than $1 million in legal expenses.

• Among the many things Jeff Gerth misunderstood about the press coverage about the Russian investigation is why Peter Strzok would watch it — all of it — closely.

• After a week pockmarked by sealed hearings, disrupted testimony, and at least one report of possible juror harassment, a new week in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial begins Tuesday with a major question: will any of the defendants testify before time runs out?

Censorship/Free Speech

• The spectre of Operation Choke Point 2.0 has just been raised in a recent House Financial Services Committee meeting. But what was Operation Choke Point 1.0? And why should we be concerned about this latest attempt to debank “disfavoured individuals,” anyway? Find out all the details in this edition of The Corbett Report podcast.

• Plus: Dueling court decisions on an abortion drug, an update from Riley Gaines, and more…

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• For the foreseeable future, The Daily does not plan to publish anonymous Op-Eds or Letters to the Editor, with a few clear-cut exceptions.

Civil Rights/Policing

• A 13-day strike by the Graduate Employees’ Organization will continue after a judge ruled the university did not prove the work stoppage has caused “irreparable harm” to the institution.

• Indian law students are reporting for JURIST on law-related developments in and affecting India. This dispatch is from Nakul Rai Khurana, a law student at Jindal Global Law School.

• A university student from Gabon and a refugee from Syria were killed within two weeks. All suspects related to the death of the former have been released from detention.

• 14 years ago Münevver Karabulut was killed brutally, chopped to pieces, and thrown into the garbage. The verdict, coming from a wealthy family, was reported to have killed himself in prison in 2014. Karabulut’s family wants the grave to be opened to find out if he did not actually escape prison.

• One of the twin snake statues on the gate of Galatasaray High School has been missing for weeks. The school is located on the popular tourist area of İstiklal Avenue, where hundreds of thousands of people walk by daily.

• Two prominent Chinese human rights lawyers, including one who had called for leader Xi Jinping to resign, have been jailed for over a decade, an advocacy group and one of the men’s wives said Monday. Xu Zhiyong and fellow campaigner Ding Jiaxi were convicted of “subversion of state power” following closed-door trials.

• “I think the extent and the egregiousness of the parking that I was investigating really surprised me,” the researcher said.

• A senior lawmaker has split from Australia’s opposition party leadership by supporting a proposal to create a so-called Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Australians are expected to vote in a referendum this year on whether to create the elected group to advocate Indigenous interests to Parliament. Julian Leeser resigned as the conservative Liberal Party’s shadow attorney-general and shadow minister for Indigenous Australians on Tuesday so he could advocate for creating the Voice. As a member of the Shadow Cabinet, Leeser had been obliged to oppose the constitutional change. He said he still supports his party and its leaders.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The Bombay High Court has directed MeitY to file its response within one week on why the IT Amendment Rules, 2023 should not be stayed, and also describe the factual background that necessitated the issuance of the amendments.

• I just went to a corporate blog that showed nothing but a blank screen, followed by a single bouncing line reassuring me it was “loading your website experience”.

• A “website experience”!? And this whole time I was expecting to just read something! Maybe my blog has remained niche this whole time because it lacks a sufficient “website experience”.

• PrettyGoodPing now allows you to track domain name expiration dates in addition to TLS/SSL certification expiration.

Monopolies

• South Korea’s antitrust regulator has fined Alphabet’s Google 42.1 billion won (S$42 million) for blocking the release of mobile video games on a competitor’s platform.

Patents

• On April 4, 2023, less than a month after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the USPTO granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 6,839,417, owned and asserted by Buffalo Patents, LLC.

Software Patents

• On April 7, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 10,341,661, owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

Trademarks

• By my count, we’ve now had 48 Section 2(d) decisions this year, 4 of which resulted in reversals. Here’s the latest one. How do you think it came out?

• 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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