● 04.24.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 24/04/2023: Kdenlive 23.04.0 and Red Hat To Lay Off Over 700 Employees

Posted in News Roundup at 10:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• This has been a tremendous week with lots of goodies for everyone, starting with the new major Proton 8.0 release of Linux gaming and continuing with the highly anticipated Fedora Linux 38 and Ubuntu 23.04 releases.

• Linux kernel 6.3 also arrived this week and will soon land in your distro’s repositories, KDE fans got a new major KDE Gear release, KaOS Linux users celebrated the distro’s 10th anniversary with a preview of KDE Plasma 6, and Solus Linux users can keep using their favorite distro without the fear of it being abandoned.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Listen now (0 sec) | The Death of Computer Magazines, A.I. taking away jobs, Tech Layoffs, and iOS Sideloading.

• Listen now (0 sec) | Listener questions! All hour! So much nerdiness it makes my head explode!

Kernel Space

• Based on the recently released Linux 6.3 kernel, the GNU Linux-libre 6.3 kernel is here to clean up newly added drivers for ath12k, aw88395, and peb2466, as well as new devicetree files for AArch64 qcom devices.

• It also adjusts the kernel for various new changes included in the AMDGPU, R-Car xHCI, and qcom-q6v5-pas drivers, for the un-deprecation of the sp8870 and av7110 drivers, as well as Budget DVB cards, and for the removal of the MGA, R128, tm6000, cpia2, and r8188eu drivers.

Applications

• The biggest one? We of this update Shotwell now supports more image formats. This includes AVIF and HEIF/HVEC/HEIC (which will be familiar to iPhone users), as well as JPEG XL, CR3, and the increasingly ubiquitous WebP.

• Audacity 3.3 comes seven months after the Audacity 3.2 series and introduces a new Shelf Filter effect that can be set for High-shelf or Low-shelf, adds real-time capabilities to more built-in effects, including Bass & Treble, Distortion, Phaser, Reverb, and Wahwah effects, and implements an experimental Beats and Bar feature.

• It also adds a new ruler called Linear (dB), which goes from 0 dBFS to -∞ dBFS and better reflects the volume as shown in the recording/playback meters, adds a “Delete” button to the Cut/Copy/Paste toolbar, and slightly improves the Zooming behavior.

• Hello, friends. Many organizations and teams still use Jabber/XMPP servers for their internal communications. To take advantage of it, you need a stable and secure client. Today, we will meet Dino, which is a Modern XMPP Chat Client.

• Want to read web articles or study materials quicker? If you do, you might want to try a speed reading app.

Instructionals/Technical

• If you’re not a REST expert, you probably use the same HTTP codes over and over in your responses, mostly 200, 404, and 500. If using authentication, you might perhaps add 401 and 403; if using redirects 301 and 302, that might be all. But the range of possible status codes is much broader than that and can improve semantics a lot. While many discussions about REST focus on entities and methods, using the correct response status codes can make your API stand out.

• Being a network administrator requires deep knowledge of remote login protocols such as rlogin, telnet, and ssh. The one I will discuss in this article is ssh.

• SSH is a secure remote protocol that is used to work remotely on other machines or transfer data between computers using SCP (Secure Copy) command. But, what is OpenSSH, and how to install it in your Linux distribution?

• MimiPenguin is a free and open source, simple yet powerful Shell/Python script used to dump the login credentials (usernames and passwords) from the current Linux desktop user and it has been tested on various Linux distributions.

• Additionally, it supports applications such as VSFTPd (active FTP client connections), Apache2 (active/old HTTP BASIC AUTH sessions but this requires Gcore), and OpenSSH-server (active SSH connections with sudo command usage).

• With the release of RHEL 8, you get to experience what the real product will be like and test some of its functionalities. If you are eager to test RHEL 8 you can signup for free and download RHEL 8.

• You can review our RHEL 8 installation tutorials on the links below.

• Rust (commonly known as Rust-Lang) is a relatively new, open-source practical systems programming language that runs extremely fast, prevents segfaults, and guarantees thread safety. It is a safe and concurrent language developed by Mozilla and backed by LLVM.

• It supports zero-cost abstractions, move semantics, guaranteed memory safety, threads without data races, trait-based generics, and pattern matching. It also supports type inference, minimal runtime as well as efficient C bindings.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kubernetes on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Are you interested in setting up a robust and scalable container orchestration system on your Ubuntu 22.04 machine? Then you should definitely consider Kubernetes! Kubernetes is an open-source platform designed to automate container deployment, scaling, and management.

• In this post, you will learn how to create and remove Linux Symlinks.

• Bash, or the Bourne-Again Shell, is a popular command-line interpreter for Unix-based systems. It provides users with powerful tools to automate tasks, manipulate files, and interact with other programs. One of the essential aspects of writing efficient Bash scripts is creating and using functions that accept arguments.

• In this guide, we will discuss the importance of GPG keys, how to identify expired keys in Linux package management systems, and the methods to update and maintain your system’s keyring to ensure a secure and seamless software repository experience.

• In this article, we will review Pop!_OS on a variety of hardware configurations, examining its compatibility, performance, and overall user experience. We will cover everything from entry-level laptops to high-performance desktop systems, as well as discuss any potential issues or limitations that may arise.

• In this article, we will guide you through the process of installing the Deepin DE on your Ubuntu system. We will cover everything from adding the necessary repositories to configuring your new desktop environment, ensuring a smooth transition.

• In this guide, we will explore several solutions to fix the “Failed to download repository information” issue in Ubuntu, allowing you to update your system’s packages and maintain a secure and up-to-date software environment.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• We are excited to announce the availability of the latest Kdenlive 23.04.0 version. This is a very special milestone for us as this marks the first release since the start of our successful fundraising. Kdenlive is an open source project, and as such we try to be as transparent as possible on how the development is going and where the money from the campaign is going. A detailed transparency report will be published in the next days.

• The big highlight in today’s release is the support for nested timelines. This allows you to open several timeline tabs to work on different sequences of your project. These sequences can then be assembled to create a final project. Another addition is the support of the Whisper speech to text engine, in addition of the already supported VOSK back-end. This brings an improved accuracy, support for many languages, and the possibility to translate to english on the fly. And we also finally fixed a longstanding issue that caused the Kdenlive UI to show texts in english instead of the requested language.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• KaOS, the independent rolling distribution built from scratch, has released its latest version, KaOS 2023.04, with a new experimental Plasma 6 ISO. This release features many updated components of the system, including KDE Gear (22.12.2) and Frameworks (5.105.0), all built on Qt 5.15.9+.

BSD

• Great stuff! This moves us closer to having a fully functional wscons console on virtual machines in those specific environments too. We will be watching further development closely.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Following parent company IBM announcing thousands of layoffs in 2023, Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks told employees Monday that approximately 4 percent of its global workforce will be laid off.

• The Raleigh, N.C.-based open-source software superstar has approximately 19,000 employees across the globe, according to its website, which means around 760 employees will be let go.

• “We will reduce the associate base of Red Hat over the next few weeks,” said CEO Matt Hicks in a letter to employees, according to multiple reports. Hicks said the decision is “now appropriate to ensure Red Hat’s ability to compete in a new environment,” adding that his leadership team was “truly hoping” layoffs could be avoided.

• Red Hat’s CEO said the layoffs will focus on general and administrative positions, while sales and engineering positions would not be affected. Employees in certain countries will be notified Monday, although others will be told over the course of Red Hat’s current fiscal second quarter.

Devices/Embedded

• As I checked out Linux 6.3 changelog earlier this morning, I noticed the EmbedFire LubanCat 2 SBC in the Rockchip section, and having never heard of the EmbedFire company or LubanCat single board computers, I decided to have a closer look.

• EmbedFire is a company based in China, more exactly in DongGuan, that makes a range of LubanCat single board computers based on Rockchip RK3566 or RK3568 processors, some of which partially follow Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi 3/4 Model B form factors, while others come with custom designs.

Open Hardware/Modding

• For years it was a given that it was impossible to run a Linux based operating system on a less powerful computer whose architecture lacked a memory management unit. There were projects such as uCLinux which sought to provide some tidbits to low computing power Linux users, but ultimately they came to naught. It is achievable after a fashion though, by using the limited architecture to emulate a more powerful one. It’s been done on AVR chips emulating ARM, on ARM chips, and now someone’s done it on an ESP32-C3 microcontroller, a RISC-V part running a RISC-V emulator. What’s going on?

• Reddit user [nomoreimfull] posted code for a dynamic WiFi beacon to r/arduino.  The simple, but clever, sketch is preloaded with some rather familiar lyrics and is configured to Rickroll wireless LAN users via the broadcast SSID (service set identifier) of an ESP32 WiFi radio.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

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Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• One of the oft-repeated benefits of Mastodon is that it’s decentralized. If some billionaire takes over your instance, you can just move to another one whereas with Twitter, you’re stuck.

• That’s cool. And different than Twitter. But is it really that different?

• It seems like the biggest question in that scenario is: how long will the Mastodon instance, which suffered a hostile takeover, remain alive?

• Because if you can’t get your content out. Or if its URLs don’t stay alive for very long, you’re pretty much in the same boat as you are with Twitter — at least as I understand it.

• Researchers who use the University of Michigan’s Finding Aids site for descriptions and other information about archival collections are in for a new, improved user experience. The library’s homegrown system has been replaced with ArcLight, an open-source system widely used by academic libraries and archives. [...]

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• I am honored to yet again receive a peer bonus award from Google. This is a Google program for which persons like me can be nominated by Googlers and as a result receive grants.

Mozilla

• Mozilla is working on a new usability feature in its open source Firefox web browser that can automate interactions with so-called Cookie banners on websites.

• Most websites on the Internet display cookie banners to users. Certain regulations, like the GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, by the European Union, require that sites get consent for placing cookies and data on user devices.

Licensing / Legal

• I try to teach them about the philosophy of free software and the movement behind it and how they are basically advocating for the same principals I fight for and I see the pride in their eyes.

• I, now, am seeing the motto of our movement. I now see “free software, free society” in practice and I see it by my own eyes how free software, its philosophy, and programs built under free licenses are actually working and taken in action to help people fight for their rights and freedom and let me tell you something, I’ve never been more proud of myself and every single person in this community.

Programming/Development

• Two months ago, I was a guest on the Maintainable podcast. The first question the host Robby Russell asks is “What are a few characteristics of well-maintained software?”. This is such a great question, and I thought I would expand a bit on my answer from the show.

• That software is well-maintained only matters if you need to change it. If you never have to change it, it doesn’t matter how it is done, as long as it works. However, in pretty much all cases you do need to change it. For me, well-maintained means that it is easy to change. And for the software to be easy to change, it must first be easy to understand. These are the characteristics that most help me understand how a program works: [...]

• If packages specified the exact version of every one of their dependencies, there would be no dependency resolution problem. There would however be constant dependency integration problems.

• You’re writing an application that depends on libraries A and B. Library A depends on Foo v1.0.2, library B depends on Foo v1.0.3. Now you have a dependency conflict1. The brute-force solution is to vendor one of A and B and adjust their dependencies. And you may have to do this recursively. Then you miss out on improvements, security fixes, etc.

• The position of the vertex is based on Hermite data at the intersections of the cell edges and the isosurface. At each intersection, we know the position – which is somewhere on the cell edge – and the normal of the isosurface. Using the position and normal, we solve a Quadratic Error Function to find the position of the vertex.

• We all agree. Okay, yes, maybe we won’t agree on what exactly is worthwhile to learn – I’m sure I can find someone out there saying one must never try CSS – but I do think the majority of you would nod if I’d say one should learn more good things. Good, proven languages; best practices; great tools.

• Lately, though, I’ve been wondering: what about the bad things? Haven’t I learned a lot too from doing the big no-nos, from engaging in bad practices, by doing the opposite of what I once thought was The Right Way?

• GitLab surveyed more than 5,000 IT leaders, CISOs, and developers in industries including financial services, automotive, healthcare, telecommunications, and technology on their successes, challenges, and main priorities for DevSecOps implementation, in its annual Global DevSecOps survey – Security Without Sacrifices.

• The survey, commissioned by GitLab and conducted by Savanta, reveals that: [...]

• I like Rstudio for many reasons. Outside the personal, Rstudio allows you to write both R + Python = Rython in the same script. Apart from that, the editor’s level of complexity is well-balanced, not functionality-overkill like some, nor too simplistic like some others. In this post I share how to save time with snippets (easy in Rstudio). Snippets save time by reducing the amount of typing required, it’s the most convenient way to program copy-pasting into the machine’s memory.

Leftovers

• The paper noted that both Wolt and Foodora are often unaware of who is actually transporting the deliveries and under what conditions.

Would you like to see Budapest from the 29th floor? Now, you can!

• EDM, short for Electronic Dance Music, is a broad term that encompasses a range of electronic music genres, primarily created for dancing at nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It’s produced using a combination of digital and analogue equipment, often featuring synthesizers, drum machines, and processed samples. The sound is typically precise, full, and loud.

Science

• It’s reviewing more than 650 suspicious incidents.

• Incredible.

• 33.2 percent of sunlight converted into electricity.

Education

• Normalize ending meetings early.

• If you have scheduled a 1-hour meeting but you are done with your agenda after 30 minutes, there is no need to scramble to think about more things to say. No one will judge you (hopefully) if you just end the meeting at that point and make a more productive use of the remaining time.

• [...]

• Larry Page, Google founder, famously wrote a memo on effective meetings. It contains the sentence:

• “Attendance in meetings is not a badge of honor.”

• I used spaced repetition briefly during my last year of university, but after that I filed it under “Great idea, I should do that again some day.”

• I picked it up again about three months ago when three different unlikely things coincided to push me in that direction.

Hardware

• As the world of computing and communication draws ever closer to a quantum future, researchers are faced with many of the similar challenges encountered with classical computing and the associated semiconductor hurdles. For the use of entangled photon pairs, for example, it was already possible to perform the entanglement using miniaturized photonic structures, but these still required a bulky external laser source. In a recently demonstrated first, a team of researchers have created a fully on-chip integrated laser source with photonic circuitry that can perform all of these tasks without external modules.

• Tape robots are typically used in places that store vast amounts of data – think film studios and government archives. If you’ve seen the 1995 cult movie Hackers, you might remember a scene where the main character hacks into a TV station and reprograms their tape ‘bot to load a series he wanted to watch. It’s this scene that inspired [Nathan] over at [Midwest Cyberpunk] to make his own tape robot that loads VHS tapes.

• Easy PCB fabrication in China has revolutionised electronic construction at our level, but there are still times when it makes sense to etch your own boards. It’s a messy business that can also be a slow one, but at least a project from [earldanielph] takes away one chore. It agitates the etchant solution round the board, by moving the tank backwards and forwards on the drawer of an old optical drive.

• Our friend [Fran Blanche] recently recorded what it was like to participate in an energetic round table at the recently held Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) East. Fran joined well known personalities [Jeri Ellsworth], [Adrian Black] of Adrian’s Digital Basement, and Usagi Electric creator [Dave Lovett] with yours truly moderating.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Friday’s ruling on the use of mifepristone will help ease the time, travel and cost associated with medication abortions.

• Despite recent improvements, “the level of key air pollutants in many European countries remain stubbornly above World Health Organization” (WHO) guidelines, particularly in central-eastern Europe and Italy, said the EEA after a study in over 30 countries, including the 27 members of the European Union.

• The report did not cover the major industrial nations of Russia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, suggesting the overall death tolls for the continent could be higher.

• Worried about blood clots? Read this.

• Air pollution still causes more than 1,200 premature deaths a year in under 18′s across Europe and increases the risk of chronic disease later in life, the EU environmental agency said Monday.

• A legal dispute in Montana could drastically curb the government’s use of aerial fire retardant to combat wildfires

Proprietary

• Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, cybercriminals have turned their eyes towards Estonia, Friday’s “Aktuaalne kaamera” reported.

• Hospitals, ministries, and the police have all been targeted.

• Einar Laagriküll, deputy director general of the Ministry of Interior’s Information Technology and Development Center (SMIT), described this year as “intense”.

• The whistleblower complaint, as described in the news report, raises a number of issues and questions. If entities take networks offline proactively at signs of what might be a cyberattack, isn’t that generally considered a smart move? There have been many entities that have taken their networks offline in response to what might be a cyberattack. Is there anything unique about the GMH situation that merits a whistleblower complaint? If so, it’s not obvious yet.

• The real significance of this technology is not in any specific application, but rather in the unprecedented transparency it offers to any use case. AI enables us to view an entire body of information on a subject and ask targeted questions, providing unparalleled insight and understanding.

• This article serves as an intro to the concept and my own capture of interesting applications.

• As the special Science section in this issue makes clear, the field’s progress is precipitate and its promise immense. That brings clear and present dangers which need addressing. But in the specific context of GPT-4, the LLM du jour, and its generative ilk, talk of existential risks seems rather absurd. They produce prose, poetry and code; they generate images, sound and video; they make predictions based on patterns. It is easy to see that those capabilities bring with them a huge capacity for mischief. It is hard to imagine them underpinning “the power to control civilisation”, or to “replace us”, as hyperbolic critics warn.

• Microsoft appears to be making significant layoffs across Australia and New Zealand as the global economy heads south.

• A post this morning by Daniel Larsen, principal customer experience engineer at Microsoft’s local FastTrack for Azure team based in New Zealand, said that entire team had been laid off.

• “After seven wonderful years at Microsoft I, along with the rest of the FastTrack for Azure NZ team, have been laid off as Microsoft cuts costs globally,” Larsen wrote.

• “While this is disappointing, it’s also an opportunity to reset and try something new.”

• Larsen described five other affected employees as “world class engineers experienced in deploying large and complex Azure workloads”.

• A quarter into record layoffs, investors in U.S. tech giants will scrutinize if the cost cuts boosted profits to their satisfaction, while the companies emphasize how artificial intelligence will be their next growth driver.

• This comes from an article called “Back To Life”, and it’s about the state of the world, and where the global economy sits as a result. In that regard, it also cites other expected and upcoming events. For example, it also claims that POTUS Biden will announce a second presidential run.

• [...]

• Now, as Florian Mueller notes in response to this quote, they are not claiming they have insider or advance knowledge of CMA’s decision.

Security

• The podcast is on a hiatus for a little while due to some personal matters, but that creates an opportunity to remaster some fun old episodes. These shows are REALLY hard to listen to at the current quality (tools and talent has come a long way in the last few years).

Defence/Aggression

• Jury selection is set to begin in the federal death penalty trial of a truck driver accused of shooting to death 11 Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history

• The European Union and five countries in eastern Europe at are loggerheads over the tariff-free import of grain from Ukraine. The five countries say that the removal of tariffs has affected their internal markets and their farmers

• Nikolay Choles, the son of Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, confirmed during an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda that he fought in Ukraine as part of Wagner Group

• Several dozen people held a protest in Paris, demanding that France sanction Svetlana Maniovich, whom Alexey Navalny’s team have outed as the wife of Russia’s deputy defense minister, Timur Ivanov. The journalist Denis Kataev posted photos and videos from the action.

• Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to “reciprocate” Germany’s expulsion of Russian diplomats, which the agency called “Berlin’s hostile actions.” The agency also reports that it intends to reduce the maximum number of employees at German diplomatic missions in Russia.

• The Ukrainian defense officials believed they could use Kurdish forces to wage a proxy war against Russia in Syria.

• Journalist, author and filmmaker John Pilger, who has spent decades studying governments’ nefariousness, tells Katie Halper how to spot propaganda.

Environment

• As activists mark Earth Day this Saturday, it feels like the climate coverage in the first months of 2023 has been dominated by extreme weather events including droughts, fires and floods, and by images of angry protesters demanding action. But some initiatives offer a glimmer of hope and possible ways to tackle climate emergencies.

• We are now 53 years into the history of Earth Day, and it is perhaps a bit trite at this point to still be complaining about the commercialization of a holiday that celebrates cherishing what we already have. It is no longer the early aughts, after all, and irony is as dead as the Western Black Rhinoceros. But I’m not talking about the Earth Day sales and branded merchandise that annoyed me in my 20s. I’m not even talking about marketing that is explicitly misleading or underhanded. Instead, what I realized recently — and what has really sucked the last drop of enthusiasm out of this holiday for me — is that Earth Day is about branding. It’s how companies, organizations and even governments give themselves an appealing personality as “someone” who cares and is trying to help. This is the main thing Earth Day does and it got that way not because environmentalism lost … but because it won.

• Today is Earth Day. “Invest in our Planet“ is this year’s theme. This week also includes our national Tax Day when we fund our nation’s priorities. At this point in history our planet faces two existential threats: the threats of catastrophic climate change and of nuclear war. It is important to recognize their interconnectedness. Taking a closer look at our tax expenditures gives insight into our investment in our planet and all of its inhabitants.

• The Earth is burning, and our schools are crumbling. Investments in healthy, sustainable, green schools can help solve both problems.

• It’s both wonderful and odd that we have a thing called “Earth Day,” celebrated on April 22. This earth is what makes our very existence possible–do we really need a reminder to take care of it? Actually, we do, and we need an extra reminder that how we get our food supply is central to caring for the planet.

• Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international body of UN scientists, delivered a “final warning” to drastically cut global emissions in order to prevent the heating of the planet past 1.5 degrees Celsius. As the exponentially accelerating effects of the climate crisis have […]

• Join activist Keith Akers in a fascinating deep-dive interview on climate change and ecological sustainability. In his upcoming book, Embracing Limits, Akers asks tough questions about the impact of anthropogenic climate change and proposes a truly sustainable future with economic degrowth at its core.

• “We have the tools, the knowledge, and the solutions,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “But we must pick up the pace.”

• Growing up on a small farm in New England, my family was tied to the rhythms of the seasons and the land. We guided our calendar and lives by when to plant tomatoes, harvest corn, and seed the winter rye. The connection to the natural world felt timeless, and the land, ever enduring.

• Tens of thousands demonstrated with a defiant yet jubilant spirit in London on Saturday to mark the second day of ‘The Big One’ climate protests aimed at getting the U.K. government to finally take bold action on the planetary emergency of greenhouse gas emissions.

• The Earth Day message delivered to President Joe Biden outside the White House on Saturday was clear: do everything in your power to bring the age of fossil fuels to an end while rapidly escalating the renewable energy transition that holds the key to a more sustainable future.

Energy/Transportation

• Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek will decide this Friday whether to approve what could be Australia’s newest coal mine, but there will be no fanfare. Callum Foote reports on a government busy rolling out new fossil fuel projects despite the strong advice of international agencies.

• Tanya Plibersek surely has one of the trickiest jobs in government, making the case that the relatively young Labor government, although far more adept than the last mob, is a significantly better performer than the Coalition when it comes to energy, climate and the fossil fuel sector.

Wildlife/Nature

• Over 8,000 opponents of a new motorway in southern France demonstrated near the village of Saix on Saturday to prevent the project, building a wall of people and then one from actual cement blocks as they vowed to defend local farm land and biodiversity in the area.

Overpopulation

• When my son was born last spring, I found myself in a strange world, one in which parents—particularly moms—are expected to be perfect and completely in control of every detail of a child’s life. Whether it’s buying the most non-toxic diapers or deciding on the best baby-feeding philosophies, each with their own line of products, there is an obsessive culture of consumerist perfection about raising a child. Somehow, amidst an increasingly unstable social context, mothers are expected to ensure a child’s every moment is crafted with the expertise of a veteran Montessori preschool teacher, a pediatrician, and a consumer product expert all in one. At the back of our minds we know we can’t be all these things, but we still try.

Finance

• In early March 2023, President Joe Biden embedded in his proposed 2024 budget to Congress revenue increases through tax measures that the rich and corporations do not like. Like his predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, he doesn’t really mean what he says.

• Credit Suisse said on Monday 61 billion Swiss francs ($68 billion) left the bank in the first quarter, shedding light on the scale of the bank run that caused the 167-year-old institution to crumble and forced its state-engineered rescue.

• The bank reported results for what is likely to be the last time, as its shotgun marriage with rival Swiss bank UBS , is expected to be completed soon.

• Internet technology management company GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, announced it is laying off 10% of its workforce—roughly 300 of its 3,000 employees—officials confirmed to Forbes, saying the move is part of a “budgetary realignment” intended to preserve the “health of our business in the short term”).

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Twitter users are pushing back against Elon Musk’s new pay-for-verification policy, with many journalists and celebrities opting to cancel their subscriptions instead of keeping their blue checks out of embarrassment.

• The President is scheduled to address the Congress of Taiwan and visit a technology company in Taichung.

• Thailand’s political scene has been largely divided between two camps, but Dr Sudarat Keyuraphan wants voters to have a third option.

• Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito of throwing a ‘tantrum’ in his written dissent to Friday night’s ruling over the abortion medication mifepristone and said the Court’s right-wing majority has become an ideological political force that must be checked by the two other branches of government.

• Though technology companies announced massive layoffs last year, 2023 is already much worse, as tech giants including Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce — as well as many smaller tech companies — announce sweeping jobs cuts.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Admittedly, Fox’s settlement with Dominion Voting Systems has benefits as well as drawbacks in establishing accountability for ill-motivated journalism. Yes, it’s the largest-ever payout to settle a media defamation lawsuit, and yes, it will help the subsequent libel claims against Fox for amplifying and validating the Big Lie. Most importantly, the discovery phase of the lawsuit was not muzzled (put under seal), so it is a matter of public record that Fox knew it was lying to its viewers regarding rigged voting machines flipping votes to Biden, and more. Still, the payout will not deter Fox from continuing its venomous, reckless and profitable practices, leaving us misinformed and divided.

• Foreign ministers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on Saturday hit back at comments made by China’s ambassador to France who said former Soviet republics have no “effective status” in international law.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The bill is blatantly unconstitutional, violating First Amendment restrictions on governmental endorsement of religion.

• The state of Alabama’s top early education official was forced out Friday by Gov. Kay Ivey over a teacher resource guide—one that promotes inclusion of various kinds of families and acknowledges the reality of racism in the nation’s history—the Republican leader denounced as too “woke.”

• On April 6, 2023, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023, that, besides seeking to regulate the online gaming sector, also gives the Press Information Bureau (PIB) the authority to identify fake or false or misleading online content with respect to any business of the Centre under Rule 3(1)(b)(v) of the 2023 Amendment Rules. What this means is that now, PIB has the power to take down any information that it deems fake—but that’s not all.

• The cherry on this ‘amendment fudge’ is the withdrawal of legal immunity, provided by Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000, to social media platforms and intermediaries in case they do not comply with PIB’s diktat. Section 79 clearly spells out that “an intermediary shall not be liable for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by him.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• New information surfaces following an autopsy.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Guest Post: Looking inside perfSONAR’s Lookup Service.

Monopolies

• “Numbering hegemonies” is a term I’ve come up with to describe a certain kind of artificial monopoly which is common in the IT industry, though by no means necessarily constrained to it.

• Broadly speaking, a numbering hegemony is an entity which exclusively controls the allocation of numbers in a namespace, and exploits the resulting monopoly to charge a pretty penny for allocations.

Copyrights

• Artists and labels are now leaning into the trend by releasing their own sped-up remixes of songs.

• The remixes will oftentimes see even more engagement than the original, according to the TikTok spokesperson. For example, In January, R&B star Miguel released an official sped-up version of his 2010 single, “Sure Thing,” which went viral on TikTok and made its way into the Billboard Top 20 at #15, over a decade after its release.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

• Reading StackOverflow, I ran into a command to generate a list of words picked randomly in a wordlist or in a manpage.

• I found the idea quite funny and challenged myself to make it a thing.

• It is also entirely wrong. I told ChatGPT I’m not satisfied with its answer, but it failed to come up with a different one, it just worded the same one differently.

• 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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