● 04.13.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 13/04/2023: Stable Kernels and Alyssa Goes to Dyson

Posted in News Roundup at 1:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• The PineTab2 is a tablet with a Rockchip RK3566 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 processor, a 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel touchscreen display, and a detachable keyboard. Unlike most tablets with those kind of specs though, it’s not designed to run Android. Instead it will ship with a custom build of Arch Linux, and users are welcome to flash their own operating systems.

• First unveiled late last year, the PineTab2 is also just one of two new tablets from Pine64. The company’s new PineTab-V looks virtually identical on the outside. But under the hood it has a RISC-V processor rather than an ARM-based chip. Unfortunately there’s not much you can actually do with the RISC-V model yet, so the company is positioning it as a device for developers (and maybe for optimistic early adopters). Both tablets are now available for pre-order for $159 and up.

• Over time Linux has had a lot of popularity all due to the advantages that different distros bring to the table, the best among all is security and privacy. All thanks to them these OS are able to secure your data from malware and other attacks.

• There is one Linux distribution to rule them all, but it’s not the one you think it is.

• [...]

• Throughout those years, I’ve used desktop operating systems that focused on ease of use, efficiency, security, and so many more ideas. I’ve also landed on one or two OSes that I deemed to be the “best of” for many categories. But there is one operating system that never fails to show off exactly what a desktop should be. That platform is Zorin OS.

• Zorin OS is as functional as it is beautiful. It makes those who’ve never used Linux feel perfectly at home, all the while showing them just how elegant a desktop operating system can be. More than that, Zorin OS is highly functional out of the box.

Server

• Getting data to Splunk can be challenging. Syslog is still the most important data source, and it can provide you with hard-to-solve problems (for example, like high volume, non-compliant messages, unreliable network protocol (UDP), and more). The syslog-ng Premium Edition (PE) and syslog-ng Store Box (SSB) by One Identity can make these challenges manageable.

• Serverless and Kubernetes are hot topics in the software industry. Serverless is a software architecture design that allows you to run your applications on servers without managing the underlying infrastructure running the application. In other words, you don’t have to provision, maintain and scale the host servers to run your

Audiocasts/Shows

• This week, Linux Out Loud chats about whether or not Linux Hardware OEM’s are a ripoff. Welcome to episode 58 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon.

• On this episode of This Week in Linux, Bloomberg launches and Open Source funding initiative, Docker rolls back their blunder for Free Teams on Docker Hub, Debian releases survey results on the usage of money in Debian, System76 teases in-house built laptop, and we discuss whether or not it is time to stop recommending Solus.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Just a quick post to sum up all the new features and things to watch for in zink for 23.1: [...]

• [...]

• Has anyone else heard that Alyssa is going to Dyson to work on some new vaccuum tech? This is upending everything I thought I knew, but the source seems credible.

Instructionals/Technical

• proceed with caution:  only recommend it to be applied to filesystems that are for backup purpose (of which another copy exist).

• Welcome to our blog post about Shebang Linux!

• In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the Linux directory structure, highlighting the significance of each directory and providing practical examples of their usage. We will cover essential directories like /bin, /sbin, /etc, /home, /opt, /tmp, /usr, and /var. By the end of this guide, you will have a solid understanding of the Linux file system and its organization, empowering you to navigate and manage your files with confidence.

• $ alias pkexec="pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true"

• What is Kate Editor? Kate is a popular text editor developed by KDE (K Desktop Environment) for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Here we learn the commands to install Kate on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 LTS Linux.

• When it comes to virtualization, QEMU is miles ahead of VirtualBox and VMware with its near-native performance and rich feature set. It uses Linux KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) to create virtual environments on a host computer.

• Have you ever tried dual-booting Linux alongside Windows and ended up in a time travel experiment gone wrong? You fire up Windows in the daytime and suddenly, the clock is telling you it’s already night.

• This is a recurring annoyance with almost all Windows-Linux dual-boot systems. Let’s learn why this happens and how to fix this wacky time issue and get back to the present date and time.

• Proxmox is an open-source type 1 hypervisor based on Debian. It’s primarily meant to run on bare metal hardware, but you can also install it within an operating system.

• Let’s take a look at how you can install Proxmox on a Linux server. For this guide, we’ll demonstrate installation on a rack server, but you can install Proxmox on a workstation or laptop hardware as well.

• Ubuntu 22.04, a powerful Linux distribution, provides an exceptional user experience out of the box. However, you may need to install additional codecs for various audio and video formats to enjoy seamless multimedia playback. In this guide, we will walk you through installing multimedia codecs on your Ubuntu 22.04 system, ensuring you can enjoy your favorite media content without any hiccups.

• Learn how to install and manage Flatpaks and Snaps on Pop!_OS, streamlining your software management and enhancing your Linux experience. Explore this comprehensive guide for step-by-step instructions!

• GitHub Desktop is a powerful and user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) client for managing Git repositories, making it easy for developers and teams to collaborate on projects.

• Opera browser is a feature-rich, secure, and innovative web browser that offers an excellent alternative to the default Firefox ESR version that comes pre-installed on Debian systems.

• The Vivaldi browser is a powerful and feature-rich alternative to the default Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) version that comes pre-installed on Debian distributions. It is developed by Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by the former CEO of Opera Software.

• Rust is a modern, high-performance programming language that focuses on safety, concurrency, and efficiency. Designed by Graydon Hoare and sponsored by Mozilla Research, Rust has been gaining traction for its ability to prevent many common programming errors and improve overall software quality.

• The Liquorix kernel is a custom Linux kernel designed to provide an improved user experience for desktop users, with a focus on multimedia, gaming, and real-time applications. Built upon the Zen kernel, the Liquorix kernel comes with various tweaks and enhancements aimed at improving system performance and responsiveness.

• The GNU Bash shell, an acronym for GNU Bourne-Again Shell, is a Unix shell and command-line interpreter used in most Linux distributions and macOS. It has become the de facto standard for shell scripting and is widely used by developers and system administrators.

• There are many images we can use in Docker, but there may be times we need to create our own images. Images that we need to manipulate to suit our needs.

• Google’s ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex have diagnostic tools to let you learn about your battery’s health, CPU usage, and memory usage.

• This simple tutorial is going to show you how to check MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512 file hash in Ubuntu and most other Linux systems. After downloading a file from the web, it’s important to verify the file integrity.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Grsync on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

• In this post, you will learn how to install httrack on Ubuntu 22.04 this tool can be of great use to you in numerous instances. According to the project website: HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The biggest change in digiKam 8.0 is the fact that the software was ported to the latest Qt 6 open-source application framework for a more modern and future-proof experience. However, the app continues to be compatible with Qt 5 API.

• Image support was greatly improved in this release by adding JPEG-XL, WebP, and AVIF export settings everywhere, the ability to convert to lossless JPEG-XL, WebP, and AVIF images while importing from your camera, JPEG-XL; WebP, and AVIF converters in the Batch Queue Manager, as well as support for JPEG-XL, HEIF, WebP, and AVIF formats as lossless images to store versioned images in the editor.

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• After implementing the feature that allows the users to comment on specific lines in the changes of a request, we also introduced the possibility to notify about them. However, there was a corner case which caused the notifications to fail, so our reference server did not send any web notifications or emails during the Easter holidays (from 6th to 11th April).

Fedora Family / IBM

• By cutting unnecessary processes, you can realize near-real-time container startup, critical in cars and other time-sensitive applications.

Debian Family

• The arm64 is a new architecture supported by SparkyLinux. The arm64 images are almost the same as armhf ones, but uses the Linux kernel and packages from the arm64 repos.

• A new service is available on the FAI project websitehttps://fai-project.org/FAIme

• Build your own customized installation ISO for Ubuntu!

• Contributing to Debian is part of Freexian’s mission. This article covers the latest achievements of Freexian and their collaborators. All of this is made possible by organizations subscribing to ourLong Term Support contracts andconsulting services.

• In 2022, Freexian polled Debian Developers about the usage of money in Debian. More than 200 Debian Developers graciously participated, providing useful and constructive answers. Roberto and Utkarsh have worked on reviewing this feedback and summarizing it in a report recently published and announced to the project.

• In preparation for DebConf 23, Stefano did some work on the DebConf website’s registration system. To support an expected large number of local registration requests, and a limited venue size, Stefano added a review system for registration requests.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Ubuntu software developer Canonical Ltd. today launched its machine learning operations toolkit Charmed Kubeflow on Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud marketplace. Charmed Kubeflow is available as a software application on AWS, making it simpler for companies to launch and manage machine learning workloads.

• In a few short weeks, Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS will reach the end of its three years of supported life provided by the Ubuntu Studio team. All users are urged to upgrade to 22.04 LTS at this time.

• This means that the Xfce, audio, video, graphics, photography, and publishing components of your system will no longer receive updates, plus we at Ubuntu Studio won’t support it after 28-April-2023, though your base packages from Ubuntu will continue to receive security updates from Ubuntu until 2025 since Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu Core continue to receive updates.

• Unfortunately, due to the change in desktop environment from Xfce to KDE’s Plasma Desktop, there is no supported in-place upgrade path. The only supported upgrade path is to back-up your /home/{user} folder and reinstall the operating system.

• Lubuntu 23.04,code-named “Lunar Lobster,” is the latest release of the popular lightweight Ubuntu variant. It is currently undergoing beta testing.

• Based on Ubuntu 23.04 and featuring the LXQt desktop 1.2, this release includes many updates to its components, including the PCManFM-Qt file manager, LXQt Panel, QTerminal, and LXQt power manager.

• It is set to release on April 20, 2023. Let’s take a look at what’s new in Lubuntu 23.04.

Open Hardware

• The Infinix Y1 HD ready LED Smart Linux TV is at a shocking 50% off at Rs 8,499 from its retail price of Rs 16,999. The TV is given a 4.5-star rating on Flipkart.

• Sony Semiconductor Solutions makes a minority stake in Raspberry Pi LTD, the trading arm which produces Raspberry Pi products.

• Based on its name, the DongshanPI-PicoW board/module aims to be an Arm Linux alternative to the Raspberry Pi Pico W with a SigmaStar SSD210 dual-core Cortex-A7 processor with 64MB RAM, an SSW101B USB WiFi 4 chip, plus a good amount of I/Os thanks to four 12-pin headers.

• Nordic Semi nRF54H20 is a 320 MHz multiprotocol wireless SoC with several Arm Cortex-M33 and RISC-V cores, support for Bluetooth 5.4 and greater with features like LE Audio and Bluetooth mesh, as well as Thread, Matter, and so on.

• The new board is almost the same as the T-Display-S3 board introduced last year, except for a display with higher resolution, more vibrant colors, and a wider viewing angle, plus a 3D antenna, and a few extra I/Os.

• In less than three years after the first Volla Phone, the young company Hallo Welt Systeme is launching the second generation of its rugged smartphone variant, the Volla Phone X23. The German-made open-source phone is available for pre-order now and is scheduled to ship in May.

• The combination of an extremely military-grade rugged and waterproof design and Volla OS, the company’s own Android operating system optimized for data protection, offers users double security.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• There is no doubt that Stack Overflow is the most popular resource for developers to get answers. However, some people may be looking for a self-hosted, open-source alternative for communities and developer teams. That’s where Scoold comes in – let us introduce you to it.

Licensing / Legal

• Most open source communities lack the resources to train generative AI algorithms effectively.

Programming/Development

• Our new analytics solution,Qt Insight, is growing and evolving with feedback from our customers and partners. Our newest release on the product provides a tool to assist you with A/B testing different software versions to identify components and UI elements that may work better than others, as well as ones that don’t necessarily have the impact you’d have hoped for.

• Plankton may be small, but they are mighty. These organisms play a crucial role in maintaining the health of our oceans.

• When programming, we often need constant variables that are used within a single function. For example, you may want to look up characters from a table.

Rust

• Seriously. The title of this article violates the new Rust Trademark Policy. It’s insane.

Leftovers

• Kılıçdaroğlu, presidential candidate of the Nation Alliance met with Oğan, presidential candidate of the Ancestral Alliance today who made a call yesterday to all four candidates to come together and talk about election safety.

• Urfi Çetinkaya who is believed to be connected to drug trafficking in Turkey and the Mediterranean since long was caught in Sarıyer, İstanbul in a police operation.

• The contractor has been charged with “killing and injuring multiple people with eventual intent.”

• This excellent short film is a darkly humorous journey into one possible near-future. We all hope it never happens this way, but of course the best way to guard against it is to be aware of the danger. I hope you all watch and share – especially with any fence-sitters or ostriches of your acquaintance.

• The guidelines include advice warning tourists to beware of pickpockets.

Science

• “If you look for where computation can happen you naturally look at environmental conditions, energy, and what things are built out of,” said one scientist.

Hardware

• Intel has exited another non-core business. The chipmaker will sell its server building business to MiTAC.

• The stern warnings issued by China ahead of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s tour of the United States and Central America have highlighted the threat that intensifying Chinese pressure poses to the island’s security and stability.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• About 30 per cent of 100 listed companies in Japan’s restaurant industry have suspended some egg dishes in their menus.

• The coalition government in Berlin had big plans to legalize the possession and sale of cannabis in Germany. But the government was never as enthusiastic about the issue as it let on, and the plans it unveiled on Wednesday are very limited in scope compared to legalization efforts in the United States.

• Cooperating FBI witness “Microchip’s” claim to be new to Twitter in July 2015 is surprising given the expertise with which he exploited the site starting in November 2015.

• Twelve environmental groups Tuesday joined to sue the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and EPA Administrator Michael Regan over pollution guidelines set forth earlier this year.

Proprietary

• The Biden administration wants stronger measures to test the safety of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT before they are publicly released.

• BAPCo®, a non-profit consortium of leading PC hardware manufacturers, add Linux and Chrome support to the CrossMark® v1.0.1.95 benchmark, a cross-architecture performance benchmark using common and relevant workloads. Supporting the most popular operating systems – including Windows, Android, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, and macOS – CrossMark® is based on widely used open-source applications to assess system performance scores in the areas of Productivity, Creativity, and Responsiveness.

Security

• Google Cloud wants to help improve the security of the most widely used open-source software, and to do so it’s making its Assured Open Source Software service generally available for Java and Python ecosystems.

• In the face of growing risks from open-source software dependencies, Google Cloud is releasing its Assured Open Source Software (Assured OSS) service for Java and Python ecosystems at no cost.

• A critical vulnerability in Fortinet’s FortiPresence data analytics solution leads to remote, unauthenticated access to Redis and MongoDB instances.

• Media player maker Kodi has started rebuilding its user forum after hackers stole databases containing user posts, messages, and login credentials.

• A Windows zero-day tracked as CVE-2023-28252 and fixed by Microsoft with its April Patch Tuesday updates has been exploited in Nokoyawa ransomware attacks.

• Microsoft and Citizen Lab release information on the activities, malware and victims of Israeli spyware vendor QuaDream.

• Several high-impact remotely exploitable vulnerabilities were recently discovered in the popular Chromium free and open-source web browser.

• [...]

• Many of the vulnerabilities have been rated by the National Vulnerability Database as having a critical or high severity, and have a high confidentiality, integrity and availability impact.

• The FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations, worrying that the combination power-data port can be used to inject malware onto the devices: [...]

• 3CX has confirmed previous reports that the recently disclosed supply chain attack was likely conducted by North Korean hackers.

• Two critical vulnerabilities in SAP Diagnostics Agent allow attackers to execute malicious commands on all monitored systems.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• “The FBI concluded there was nothing, no evidence of any access from the outside, and that it was likely the same employee that was purported to be a hero for catching it, was actually banging on his keyboard.”

Privacy/Surveillance

• There’s a knock at your door. It’s the police. They say they are investigating a crime and would like to ask a few questions. It’s alarming, but you want to help, so you let them in.

• The Supreme Court’s decision came after four plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Google and its South Korean unit.

• European lawmakers must ensure patients have control over their private medical records by adding an ‘opt-in’ consent requirement for the secondary use of health data under the proposed European Health Data Space (EHDS).

• Suppose that you assigned everyone an 19 digit number.

Defence/Aggression

• Ukrainian workers in Lithuania have one year to learn the basics of Lithuanian. The government says they will not be left to fend for themselves and language courses will be made more widely available this summer.

• Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis on Wednesday urged Western countries not to repeat the mistakes made with Russia when dealing with China.

• The share of Americans who describe China as an “enemy” has jumped from 25% to 38% in a year, a new survey says.

• The junta has approved an increase of nearly U.S.$1 billion on defense spending.

• UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk Tuesday condemned an airstrike by Myanmar fighter jets in the country’s Sagaing region, a stronghold for opposition to the country’s military-backed government. “I am horrified by reports of today’s airstrikes by Myanmar fighter jets on a community hall in the Sagaing region,” said Türk.

• The US Supreme Court Tuesday declined to block the execution of an inmate in Florida. With no listed dissents, the court denied Louis Gaskin’s petition for a grant to stay his upcoming execution.

• Florida has executed a man known as the “ninja killer” for the 1989 slayings of a couple visiting the state from New Jersey. The governor’s office says Louis Bernard Gaskin was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection. He was convicted of killing Robert and Georgette Sturmfels at their Flagler County winter home on Florida’s northeastern coast. Gaskin was dubbed the “ninja killer” because he wore all-black ninja clothing during the crimes.

• James Bond first appeared 70 years ago today, playing roulette at three o’clock in the morning, in former British naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming’s debut novel, Casino Royale.

• Poland’s leading role in the European response to Russia’s Ukraine invasion is fueling talk of a eastward shift in Europe’s geopolitical center of gravity with the Polish-Ukrainian alliance set to become increasingly influential.

• While escalation is not inevitable, it’s still a risk having any U.S. boots on the ground.

• Cold wars don’t begin with a starting pistol. They grind into action. We are no longer waiting for one. We are there.

• Classified Pentagon documents leaked onto several Discord servers. What’s in them and how did this happen?

• The Kremlin called the footage “horrible” but said it needed to be verified.

• The U.N. mission monitoring human rights in Ukraine said it was “appalled” by the video, which appeared to record the beheading of a Ukrainian soldier by Russian troops.

• The Yellow Medicine County Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint Wednesday against William Edward Schindler, 26, of Granite Falls, who allegedly fired a .40-caliber pistol at officers entering the residence to execute a search warrant.

• Taiwan said the ban could add “less than one hour” of extra travel time to the affected flights.

• Taiwan’s transport ministry said Wednesday China has set up a brief no-fly zone north of the island for April 16 due to “space activities”.

• Tuesday’s attack in the Sagaing area was the deadliest in a recent string of military air attacks.

• The move came in retaliation for a landmine and drone attack on troops by local militias.

• The threat of new attacks has prevented villagers from collecting the dead and injured.

• Those unaware of Dan Ellsberg’s 2002 Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers may think the leak of the Pentagon Papers was Dan’s first unauthorized disclosure. Not so. Arguably, his first such leak, in March 1968, was even more consequential.

• Poland will introduce a temporary 200-meter (656 feet) exclusion zone around its Swinoujscie Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal starting on April 13, the interior minister said, citing concerns about Russian espionage.

• INM Director Francisco Garduño and the agency’s Chihuahua commissioner face “criminal conduct” charges for alleged failure in their duties.

• The purchase, valued at more than 203 million pesos, will be used to fight cartels, according to documents obtained by the newspaper Milenio.

• Pushed into a shrinking corner of the devastated city, the Ukrainian military is determined to hold out for strategic reasons, even as allies question the cost.

• The additional documents also suggest the breach of American intelligence agencies could contain far more material than previously believed.

• The US-China rivalry is no longer confined to the halls of power, but has spilled decisively over into the American public consciousness. And putting that genie back into the bottle is getting harder by the year, as new survey results from the the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center suggest.

• The United States is warning Mali’s military government that it would be “irresponsible” for the United Nations to continue deploying its more than 15,000 peacekeepers unless it ends restrictions including on operating reconnaissance drones. The U.S. also is calling for the western African nation to carry out political commitments toward peace and elections in March 2024. The warning came Wednesday as the U.N. Security Council considers three options proposed by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for the Mali peacekeeping mission’s future: Increase its size, reduce its footprint, or withdraw troops and police and turn it into a political mission.

• North Korea fired an “unspecified ballistic missile” Thursday, Seoul’s military said, prompting Japan to issue a warning to residents of the northern Hokkaido region telling them to take shelter

• Japan said the projectile had fallen in the sea to the east of North Korea.

• Saudi Arabia hosted landmark delegations from Iran and Syria on Wednesday as Gulf countries prepare for re-establishing diplomatic ties after years of bitter divisions.

• In Ukraine, remembering does more than honor those lost in the war. It charts a path forward to a future free of Russia.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

• Buying a gas car in 10 years will be about as difficult as buying a sedan today.

• Last year I purchased an e-bike upgrade kit for my mother in law. We decided to install it on a bicycle she originally bought back in the 80s, which I fixed and refurbished a couple of years ago and used until September 2022 when I bought myself a Dutch Cortina U4.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 12 Apr 2023 The European Commission has approved, under EU State aid rules, a €158 million Polish measure to support LOTOS Green H2 sp. z o.o, a special purpose vehicle ultimately owned by PKN Orlen SA, in the production of renewable hydrogen to be used in the refinery production processes.

• The Ministry of Climate and Energy (KEM) will start work on arranging access for the joint use of the Paldiski LNG terminal in Estonia with a view to strengthening the security of Latvia’s natural gas supply, the KEM said in a statement on April 12.

• South Asian countries are being subjected to the consequences of China and Russia’s efforts to expand their influence in the region. In this complex geopolitical context, expanded US and G7 clean energy efforts are needed.

• The idea to harmonise rail gauges across Europe came from the EU Commission.

• The UK invested £23bn in new low carbon investment in 2022 encompassing hydrogen, renewables, carbon capture and storage, nuclear, sustainable materials, energy storage, electrified transport and clean heat.

• Russia’s government has approved the sale of Shell’s former 27.5 percent stake in the Sakhalin-2 energy project to Russian energy firm Novatek for 94.8 billion rubles ($1.16 billion).

• Lithuanian Deputy Finance Minister Gediminas Norkūnas, who holds shares in Ignitis Group, placed himself in a conflict-of-interest situation when taking decisions on the state-controlled energy group’s activities, the Chief Official Ethics Commission (VTEK) ruled on Wednesday.

Wildlife/Nature

• European Commission Questions and answers Brussels, 11 Apr 2023 What is the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) and what is the EU proposing for the next IOTC session in May?

• The plan has raised concerns among conservationists.

• Calls to sacrifice a shared resource raise questions of justice. One California farm region facing the possibility of having to fallow land wonders whether that’s fair.

• The number of wild boar killed by the Hong Kong government has tripled in a year, after officials launched a scheme to euthanise the animals when they encroach on urban areas.

Overpopulation

• India will soon eclipse China to become the world’s most populous country, but the number of Indian women in the workforce has been shrinking. When women participate in the labor market, they contribute to the economy and their family’s income, experts say.

• “…this decline has been progressively increasing since 2011…”

Finance

• Overall consumer price gains cooled last month, though underlying measures continued to show sticky inflation pressure, according to government data released on Wednesday.

• These are three of an estimated 100 million Americans who have amassed nearly $200 billion in collective medical debt — almost the size of Greece’s economy — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

• Asian stock markets are mixed after the Federal Reserve said its economists expect a “mild recession” this year.

• Annual inflation fell to 5 percent in March, the lowest mark in two years.

• Federal Reserve officials anticipated that the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was likely to weigh on inflation and the broader U.S. economy, with central bank staff forecasting a “mild recession” later this year, according to minutes of their last policy meeting in late March released on Wednesday.

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has slashed the growth outlook for cash-strapped Pakistan, forecasting the country’s fragile economy will grow just 0.5 percent this year, down from 6 percent in 2022.

• The price of postage stamps is poised to increase in July for the second time this year — the 17th rate change since 2000 — under a new proposal by the Postal Service.

• By setting aside part of their monthly income, 31% of the Baltic population have saved up to 5,000 euros, while 21% have saved more than that. In general, the highest rates of savings are among Estonians, but in Latvia there are more people who have no savings at all, according to Luminor Bank most recent survey of the population.

• Data published by the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) April 12 show that in March 2023, compared to March 2022, the average level of consumer prices in Latvia rose by 17.3 %.

• French unions have called on workers to walk off the job and join protest rallies on Thursday for a twelfth nationwide day of protests against a bill that will make the French work longer.

• The business-customer relationship oftentimes feels like a dysfunctional marriage. Both parties feel like the other party is taking them for granted. Nowhere is this more true than in our relationships with our Internet Service Providers and Internet Access Providers. On the customer’s side, we feel we are paying too much for what we are getting.

• Selling criminals’ ill-gotten property to benefit the state is not new. But France is trying something different: giving confiscated real estate directly to charity, to transform crime into public gain.

• Asian stocks struggled on Thursday, dragged by selling in Hong Kong tech shares, while the dollar was under pressure and short-dated bonds were firm as softening US inflation seemed to suggest the US rate hike cycle was nearing its end.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Last week’s election upended the ideological balance of the state’s Supreme Court, with big implications for abortion access, voting rights, and gerrymandering.

• The Reproductive Health to Reproductive Justice Teach In unites groups across Kent State’s campus to shine light on the current state of abortion rights in Ohio after the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

• As one of the most common abortion pills could be banned in Ohio in the near future, faculty and students came together to host the Reproductive Health and Reproductive Justice Teach In. Lizzy Laufkin, a senior human development and family studies major at Kent, said the event brought together different organizations to collaborate about Roe…

• Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) joined a chorus of outside progressive voices in calling for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to resign amid concerns that her medical absence is keeping Senate Democrats from confirming more judges.

• Senate Democrats will try to “temporarily” replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on the Senate Judiciary Committee as she recovers from shingles.

• The 89-year-old California Democrat, who has been absent from the Senate for more than a month after being diagnosed with shingles, said she would seek a temporary replacement on the powerful committee.

• U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is asking to be temporarily replaced on the Judiciary Committee while she recovers from a case of shingles. Her announcement Wednesday came shortly after two House Democrats called on her to resign because of her extended absence from Washington. The long-serving Democrat says complications have delayed her recovery and she has provided no date for her return to Washington. At 89, Feinstein is the oldest member of Congress. Her absence has complicated Democratic efforts to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominees for federal courts. Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Dean Phillips of Minnesota say she should step down.

• Elon Musk on Wednesday tweeted “Defund NPR” after the nonprofit media organization said it was suspending its use of Twitter over a new “government-funded” label on its account.

• The broadcaster said the label undermined its credibility “by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.”

• The fight has shown the difficult test and legally perilous road facing lawmakers or the White House if they try to enact a national ban on the social media service.

• Substack got an unexpected wave of momentum last week that threatens to upend the game for people who just want email to be email. What should indie newsletter publishers think of that?

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Verdict: False

Censorship/Free Speech

• The government’s online harms bill, led by Canadian Heritage, is likely to be introduced in the coming weeks. My series on why the department faces a significant credibility gap on the issue opened with a look at its misleading and secretive approach to the 2021 online harms consultation, including its decision to only disclose public submissions when compelled to do so by law and releasing a

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Sixteen of the suspects have been remanded in custody since June. The prosecutors have charged the suspects with “being a member of an illegal organization.”

• Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai has filed a legal bid against the government decision to reject any further work visa applications from an overseas counsel he had hired for his national security case. Lai, 75, who founded the defunct pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, faces a total of four charges under the Beijing-imposed [...]

• The US State Department Monday designated Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Evan Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained” in Russia. The new designation signals an escalation in US efforts to secure the release of Gershkovich as new reports circulate that Russian authorities are preventing US officials from speaking with the WSJ journalist.

Civil Rights/Policing

• It’s part of an effort by the administration to crack down on child labor.

• Although the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade cast a long shadow over reproductive rights, there were some victories to cheer in 2022. Among them was the culmination of a long, hard-fought campaign to sign the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act into law.

• BBP President Destici had said that TİP President Erkan Baş was “a leftover from Tito.”

• Dawn Ray’d is a UK anarchist black metal band that draws from the folk traditions of rebel music. On their latest album “To Know The Light,” the trio conveys a rousing anti-fascist message that balances the bleakness that black metal is known for with a sense of optimism.

• A joint statement issued Tuesday on behalf of three UN Special Rapporteurs joined previous condemnation in saying that the UK is failing to  “abide by its core obligations under international human rights law” over its approach to migrant children arriving in the country.

• A Texas judge’s injunction on the use of mifepristone has further eroded the country’s standing as a leader in reproductive rights.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• If the risks aren’t fully understood, LEO Internet could be a wasted once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

• I’ve been pondering what should happen to personal websites once the owner has passed, or otherwise “moved on”. Some time ago I stumbled across a blog by Kev Quirk, who wrote

• I thought it was a strange idea, to have a contingency plan for a personal site to survive its writer. Even a site such as my own, which (as sites go) would be trivial to host/mirror (since it’s static), who would want to do that? Why would they do that?

Monopolies

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 12 Apr 2023 The European Commission has informed Broadcom of its preliminary view that its proposed acquisition of VMware may restrict competition in the market for certain hardware components which interoperate with VMware’s virtualisation software.

Patents

• Gene Quinn is reporting that Chief Judge Moore has moved forward with proceedings to remove Judge Newman from the bench — filing a complaint under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act.

Trademarks

• By my count, the TTAB has affirmed 18 of the 19 appeals from Section 2(e)(1) mere descriptiveness (or disclaimer) refusals. How do you think these latest three appeals came out? Results will be found in the first comment.

Copyrights

• A sprawling poem about teeth, written by an eminent dentist, with fifty pages of erudite footnotes.

• Universal Music Group (UMG) is reportedly pushing Spotify, Apple Music, and others to remove AI-generated tracks – and cease allowing artificial intelligence models to analyze its artists’ music on streaming services altogether. The Financial Times just recently detailed the leading label’s reported effort to curb the streaming prevalence of AI-created works.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• I’m sure everyone felt helpless so many times. It’s a very common experience – seeing something wrong happening, which one can do nothing about. Only thing that can be done – watching and being sad about it. Well… so it seems sometimes. Fortunately that’s not the case!

• [...]

• I’m quite sure that many people, also Catholics, consider prayer as a mere conversation with myself.

Technical

• I just realized today that as of this month it’s been a year since I’ve replaced (nearly) every piece of software in my life with some free alternative. My computers all run Linux with minimal proprietary software (my laptop even runs coreboot), I replaced the smart TVs with little RaspberryPi/LibreELEC systems, and I run a custom FOSS OS (LineageOS) on a de-googled phone.

• It doesn’t fix everything. Of course, you know, we’re all humans with human struggles and problems in our lives. But it is one less thing to worry about. It feels good.

• 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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