● 04.24.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 24/04/2023: Shotwell 0.32.0 and Linux 6.3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 2:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Server

• Before Kubernetes v1.8 (!), typos, mis-indentations or minor errors in YAMLs could have catastrophic consequences (e.g. a typo like forgetting the trailing s in replica: 1000 could cause an outage, because the value would be ignored and missing, forcing a reset of replicas back to 1). This was solved back then by fetching the OpenAPI v2 in kubectl and using it to verify that fields were correct and present before applying. Unfortunately, at that time, Custom Resource Definitions didn’t exist, and the code was written under that assumption. When CRDs were later introduced, the lack of flexibility in the validation code forced some hard decisions in the way CRDs exposed their schema, leaving us in a cycle of bad validation causing bad OpenAPI and vice-versa. With the new OpenAPI v3 and Server Field Validation being GA in 1.27, we’ve now solved both of these problems.

• Server Side Field Validation offers resource validation on create, update and patch requests to the apiserver and was added to Kubernetes in v1.25, beta in v1.26 and is now GA in v1.27. It provides all the functionality of kubectl validate on the server side.

• OpenAPI is a standard, language agnostic interface for discovering the set of operations and types that a Kubernetes cluster supports. OpenAPI V3 is the latest standard of the OpenAPI and is an improvement upon OpenAPI V2 which has been supported since Kubernetes 1.5. OpenAPI V3 support was added in Kubernetes in v1.23, moved to beta in v1.24 and is now GA in v1.27.

Kernel Space

• Highlights of Linux kernel 6.3 include a new DRM accelerated driver for Intel VPU (Versatile Processing Unit) that supports VPU IP 2.7 integrated into 14th Generation Intel “Meteor Lake” client CPUs, Rust code support for x86_64 user-mode Linux, AES-SHA2-based encryption for the NFS file system, and support for AMD’s “automatic IBRS” feature.

• Also new in the Linux 6.3 kernel is support for the “ZBB” bit-manipulation extension for RISC-V kernels, support for kernel address-space layout randomization and relocation for the LoongArch architecture, full support for BPF trampolines on RISC-V and IMB Z (s390x) systems, support for Hyper-V extended hypercalls for KVM (x86), and support for ARM SME (Scalable Matrix Extension) 2 instructions.

• Linux 6.3 has arrived after a push that project boss Linus Torvalds characterized as “a nice, controlled release cycle” that required the seven release candidates he prefers and was supported by helpful developer behavior.

• “It happens,” he added, but also didn’t rule out “something nasty couldn’t have been lurking all these weeks.” Torvalds therefore urged real-world testing to make sure this release really is ready for prime-time consumption.

• Holidays and travel are often the cause of delays to kernel releases. Easter didn’t slow development this time around.

• Linux 6.2 was released about two months ago with faster mitigation of the Retbleed speculative execution attack on x86-64 and ARM processors, the Runtime Verification (RV) tool, optional power savings with improved RCU locking (mainly for Android and Chrome OS), and faster file and directory creation with exFAT, and many other changes.

• Cleaned up new drivers for ath12k, aw88395, and peb2466, and new devicetree files for aarch64 qcom devices. Adjusted for changes amdgpu, xhci-rcar, qcom-q6v5-pas; for undeprecation of sp8870, av7110, and Budget dvb cards; for the upstream removal of mga, r128, tm6000, cpia2, and r8188eu; for reformatting of documentation files; for drivers moved into accelerator/; for wording changes in build scripts; for separate precompiled BPF files. Ported the fix for the deblobbed i915 driver.

• Following the Linux Kernel 6.3 RC1 release a month back, Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 6.3, which is immediately available for download. Feature-wise, it’s a moderate release and brings the usual CPU, GPU, networking and security fixes. Overall nothing critical stands out during the RC phase, and it’s evident from Linus’s note.

• That being said, let’s give you the key highlights of this release.

Applications

• Shotwell 0.32.0 is here to introduce support for new image formats, including AVIF, WebP, JPEG-XL, CR3, as well as more variants of HEIF/HVEC. It also introduces the ability to manually tag people in images, and the devs note the fact that automatic detection and recognition of people can now be enabled during compile time.

• The graphical user interface has been updated as well in this release to add support for HiDPI displays for the image viewer, support for multiple accounts for publishing services, and simpler handling of hierarchical tags.

Jens Georg: Shotwell 0.32.0Hello everyone, as “teased” over on discourse, April 22nd saw the release of Shotwell’s new stable version, 0.32.0.New features include:More image formats: AVIF, CR3, HEIF/HVEC, JPEG XL & WebPSome initial geographical data handling (The map display will likely return in 33)Multiple libraries and settings that are isolated from each otherSupport of more than one account for publishing servicesManual tagging of personsAutomatic detection and recognition of persons can be enabled during compile timeHiDPI support for the image viewerSimpler handling of hierarchical tagsThe new version should pop up on flathub soon, and if you were subscribing to the GNOME nightly version, I would also recommend to switch to the flathub version, the GNOME nightly version will start to become quite unstable soonish.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Easy up to the current release, 5.2.2, does not support Norwegian “no” translation. Forum member ‘tallboy’ asked about this, and I replied here: [...]

Reviews

• Paranoia, as a general rule, is not a good thing. Yet, somehow, when it comes to Linux, the word takes on a shade of meaning that seems less, well, paranoid – more about security and privacy than tin hats and radio waves from the ether.

• In this, it’s not so much about looking under the bed to see if some nefarious government agency is spying on us. Rather, we want to keep our systems safe from the prying algorithms of corporate capitalism; stop the avalanche of spam that overwhelms so many others; and protect ourselves from the chance that some hacker with time on her hands would get a giggle from taking over our machine.

• Hence, the varied and assorted Linux distros and apps designed to safeguard privacy and security, be it the Tor Browser or Qubes OS. The latter project describes itself as a “Free and open-source, security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing.”

• Which, after a week or so of playing with Qubes, I can say, “Damn right it is!”

• It takes a lot for a distro to impress me, and I’m hardly Qube’s target audience – a freelance writer whose Internet privacy was compromised years ago with my first AOL e-mail address. But the distro both fascinated and transfixed me, and one bit of progress in making it work made me want to move to the next bit, and then the next and the next. I don’t know that I’d ever use Qubes as my daily driver, but I’m glad it’s there if I do need it for that purpose.

• The caveat here – and it’s a big one: Qubes is not for the faint of heart. It’s complicated and demanding, and it needs to be run in just such a way or you won’t be able to use it effectively. This is not because, like some interesting projects (EasyOS comes to mind), that it’s a work in progress. It isn’t. Qubes is just that hard-wired and focused on security. How many other distros require user permission to get a USB mouse to work?

Fedora Family / IBM

• Flathub is a software distribution platform for Linux that provides an extensive collection of Flatpak applications – containerized, distro-agnostic software packages that run on various Linux distributions.

• In recent years, it has gained popularity among Linux users as a one-stop shop for discovering, installing, and updating Flatpak apps. Flathub offers 2,000 apps from over 1,500 collaborators, averaging 700,000 downloads daily from different categories, including productivity, gaming, education, and multimedia.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Well, then I installed Ubuntu 23.04 on my old Lenovo laptop (tangent: it was running 22.04 LTS and I didn’t have the patience to upgrade it to Ubuntu 22.10, and then upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04 – I know, I’m lazy).

• Turns out, there are still a few post-install tweaks I like to make — a few are specific to this release (well, GNOME 44 more so; I did them after installing Fedora 38 too).

• I share my “to dos” below but be sure to drop your pertinent post-installation procedures down in le commentz section — there might be some nifty tricks I’ve missed!

Devices/Embedded

• Makeblock Ultimate 2.0 is an educational robot kit that can be used to easily create up to 10 different types of robots. An Arduino-compatible Mega 2560 MCU board serves as the main controller and there are over 550 mechanical parts and electronic modules. The robot can drive up to 4 encoder and stepping motors, control up to 10 servo motors to work simultaneously, and can also be connected to Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards for more complex projects.

• If you aren’t part of that world, you may be making the mistake of thinking that art galleries are full of boring paintings for stuffy socialites. In reality, there are all kinds of different art galleries and some of them have some pretty interesting pieces.

• I’ve cobbled a quick overview of the build here, but if you’d like to make one, follow Gizmo’s detailed Instructables post.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

• This may seem efficient, because you are doing more work in one go, but it’s not. It’s actually the opposite. It is more efficient to fix only one thing per git commit. Choose one aspect, or one “parameter”, and change only that. Then, see what happens, learn about the effects of your change, and then move on to the next parameter. Thus “Parametric Progress”.

• The diagram below illustrates how this may seem counter-intuitive. If you change many things at once (left side in the diagram), it may seem like you are taking shortcuts, and thus arriving at the goal faster. And Parametric Progress (right side) may seem like making detours.

• Back in the days, C was somewhere between your best option or your only real option for doing certain sorts of programming. If you were writing a Unix program, for example, for quite a while C was your only real choice (then later you could consider C++). The people who came to C often found some of its virtues to be attractive, but they weren’t necessarily strongly committed to it; they’d picked C as an expedient choice.

• Meanwhile, there are people who looked at C and felt (and often still feel) that it was very much the language for them (out of those available at the time). They feel strongly drawn to C’s virtues, often explicitly in contrast to other languages, and today they may still program in C out of choice. If and when they switch languages they often pick languages that are as close to the virtues of C (as each person sees them) as possible.

• Why would you want to build a custom Linux kernel (well, a rootfs, kernel, and a bootloader)? There are two reasons: [...]

• There were two kinds of image map technology; of those who used image maps, most probably only remember the newer client-side image maps. However, there was also an older image map technology which is now almost forgotten, in the form of server-side image maps.

• Client-side image maps. The newer client-side image maps allowed arbitrary polygons to be defined over an image. This had the advantage that browsers could tab through the various polygons to be activated for accessibility purposes, and didn’t require server-side processing. It was fairly common to see client-side image maps being used for navigation purposes, over a single image with a number of different page titles written on it. It was also fairly common for it to be used in conjunction with framesets, using the target attribute on an area element.

• I’m going to show you a couple of handy tricks that I use to help Git “Do What I mean”.

Leftovers

• In the history of my column, I’ve bombarded you with many numbers about the sizes and distances of the stars and planets in our night sky. The numbers can get so enormous that it’s impossible to truly grasp their enormousness. I still struggle with these figures and have been into amateur astronomy my entire life.

• I used to blog a lot more. There are a lot of reasons for that, perhaps the biggest one is the standards I hold myself to. Ever since my articles started getting viral and being mentioned in the news, writing on my blog is not a light activity anymore. I want to change that.

• We are currently witnessing the most fragmented environment for social networks since the dawn of Twitter and Facebook. The two reasons are: Twitter is in decay, and decentralized alternatives are alive and thriving. This is good and bad. Good because, hey, we’re finally decentralizing this space! Bad because it’s unclear (at least that’s how I’ve been feeling) where to publish your content.

• A fine of £242 has been implemented across two Instagram-famous photography spots within the popular Italian town, which are now marked as red zones or “no waiting” areas, according to The Independent.

• Thanks to its adorable houses – beautiful in both shape and colour, glamorous boutiques, and restaurants with some of the most stunning decors, Portofino has become a very popular destination among Instagram enthusiasts. The crowd flow tends to get out of control as people get busy looking for the “perfect shot.”

• The voicemail might be dead, but the quick little audio note is thriving.

• Why it matters: People can increasingly drop quippy or professional self-recorded files on apps for work, dating and other personal comms, which many senders and recipients feel builds better connections.

• Bed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday and said it plans to liquidate, adding that it will reverse course if it finds a last-minute buyer.

• Why it matters: Bed Bath & Beyond has been in distress for years, having failed to reinvent itself in the digital age despite efforts to declutter its stores and remake its coupon strategy.

Science

• This is a Retropost. I wrote it contemporaneously – but was only allowed to publish it a year later.

• Today I took part in “A Phase 2/3, Randomized, Observer-blind, Active-controlled, Multicenter Study to Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of Omicron Variant Vaccines in Comparison with mRNA-1273 (Prototype) Booster Vaccine”.

Hardware

• He didn’t notice this message popping up on the screen because the printer is a fair distance away from the computer, and I guess the message was disappearing before he had a chance to look at it. I tried a different cable I brought along — my cable had the same problem. I also brought my laptop which allowed me to see what would happen in the Linux kernel log when the printer was plugged in: [...]

• To be able to start up this LXC container again, it will be necessary to remove the lock. By examining the configuration file for the LXC container with the id of 107, we can observe the lock status and an additional entry for the vzdump backup utility: [...]

• There’s no reason for cramped c: drives when SSDs are too cheap and games are so big.

• The country’s electronics industry had record exports in FY2023, but long-term challenges persist.

• China is dominating the global race for future power, with the country establishing a significant lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains, according to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). The report, called the Critical Technology Tracker, examines 44 critical technologies spanning defence, space, robotics, energy, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• If the regulation is implemented, it will be the first time the federal government has limited carbon emissions from existing power plants, which generate 25 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases.

• A social media star with regular appearances on German television, Judge Andreas Müller is unabashed in backing legal marijuana, whether he’s sitting on the bench or playing himself in a music video.

• There’s an outbreak in the animal kingdom.

• A study suggests that pitcher plants tailor the smells they produce to woo particular kinds of insects.

Proprietary

• I mean, how many competent, dedicated, militant “savers” out there, buy a phone that is twice as expensive as a comparable Android at any “tier” and then signs up for a Savings Account that stops working if they get rid of the stupid iPhone?

• The results revealed that a whopping 87 per cent of teenagers own an iPhone. Moreover, 88 per cent of teens are prepping to replace their current phone with an iPhone. iPhone‌ ownership among teenagers has more than doubled over the last ten years. For comparison, only 40 per cent of teens in the US owned an iPhone back in 2012.

• Now, CIRP (Consumer Intelligence Research Partners) has conducted a new survey that reveals how quickly Apple users upgrade their iPhones in relation to different age groups. To those unaware, CIRP is a market research company known for conducting surveys on different aspects of the smartphone space. CIRP’s recently-conducted survey comprises feedback from 500 US-based Apple users who purchased an iPhone in Q1 of 2023.

• AI’s development has also come with glaring flaws that lead to fake news, deepfakes, and weaponization, sometimes with so much confidence, in what the industry calls “hallucinations.”

• We may look on our time as the moment civilization was transformed as it was by fire, agriculture and electricity. In 2023, we learned that a machine taught itself how to speak to humans like a peer. Which is to say, with creativity, truth, error and lies. The technology, known as a chatbot, is only one of the recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence — machines that can teach themselves superhuman skills. We explored what’s coming next at Google, a leader in this new world. CEO Sundar Pichai told us AI will be as good or as evil as human nature allows. The revolution, he says, is coming faster than you know.

Security

• The “unauthorized access” that prompted the Guam Memorial Hospital to shut down its network in March is now being investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to an acceptance letter addressed to a whistleblower who is only identified as “Leaky Leaks.”

• The acceptance letter, dated April 18, notified the whistleblower that the HHS Office for Civil Rights for the Pacific region was in receipt of the complaint.

• According to the letter, the complaint alleged that GMH “violated the federal Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information and/or the Security Standards for Protection of Electronic Protected Health information” during the course of its response to the electronic breach.

• Gary Bowser, the hacking group member who was convicted for creating and selling circumvention devices enabling users to play illegal backups on Switch and 3DS, has been released from prison early.

• [...]

• In order to pay off Nintendo fully under this agreement, Bowser would have to earn at least $40 million before taxes. Given that Bowser is 53 years old, TorrentFreak suggests this will mean Bowser is unlikely to ever fully clear his debt and will likely be paying Nintendo for the rest of his life.

• In June 2022 a transcript of Bowser’s sentencing was received by Axios, in which Nintendo lawyer Ajay Singh reportedly said the sentencing was a “unique opportunity” to send a message about piracy.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Not everyone is happy about the test warning, which will sound on Sunday at 3 p.m.

• he UK will conduct its first test of a new emergency alert service on Sunday, with millions of mobile phones set to emit a loud alarm and vibrate at 3 p.m. (1400 GMT).

• [...]

• For others, the alert has prompted serious concerns about privacy. Refuge, an organization that helps women and children suffering domestic abuse, is advising survivors of abuse to turn off the service, out of concern that hidden phones within their homes could sound off.

Defence/Aggression

• The longer the corporate state erodes the social bonds that knit us to society and give us a sense of purpose and meaning the more inevitable an authoritarian state and a Christianized fascism becomes.

• The Ukrainian military has established positions on the east bank of the Dnipro in the Kherson region, reports American think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in its latest assessment of the Russian offensive campaign in Ukraine. The assessment cites geolocated footage from Russian “war bloggers.”

• Sappers in Russia’s Belgorod region found an aerial bomb not far from the spot where ammunition exploded after falling from an Su-34 aircraft, said regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

• The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is expelling a number of German diplomats in what it calls a “mirror” action to a previously unannounced move by Berlin as relations between the two counties continue to deteriorate.

• More than 3,000 people were evacuated from their homes on April 22 in the Russian city of Belgorod after Defense Ministry explosives technicians discovered an aerial bomb on a city street, the region’s governor said.

• Lithuania has disconnected all of its connections to the Russian electricity grid for the first time.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a law on April 21 that prohibits naming geographical sites in Ukraine after Russian figures or historical events and dates associated with Russian aggression.

• The Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, has proclaimed the AUKUS submarine program is a national building endeavour when, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Rex Patrick pulls apart the Admiral’s claim.

• The agriculture ministers of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia have inquired with the European Commission over potentially expanding the range of products that fall under so-called exceptional safeguard measures.

• The son of President Vladimir Putin’s longtime spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told Russian media he fought in Ukraine as a member of the mercenary Wagner group.

• Sources say the unit takes heads as trophies to strike fear into the hearts of the junta’s enemies.

• The son of Tajik Constitutional Court Judge Asror Sharifzoda died along with at least one other person in a multivehicle incident around 9 p.m. on April 22 in the capital, Dushanbe.

• Ukraine says its military has fended off dozens of Russian attacks over the past day, as Kyiv’s Western allies discussed fortifying its air defenses ahead of a spring counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces.

• The populist leaders of Serbia and Hungary observed a Serbian military exercise on April 22, an event seen as a display of lethal firepower amid the war in Ukraine and tensions in the Balkans.

• A Russian aircraft flew from Moscow to Berlin on April 22 with special diplomatic clearance, an air force spokesman told the dpa news agency.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pressed the need for tightening sanctions on Russia to bring an early end to the 14-month invasion, as a rumor spread that Ukrainian troops had crossed a key strategic river in the south.

• China’s ambassador to France has sparked anger in Eastern Europe and “consternation” in Paris after questioning the sovereignty of post-Soviet countries.

• The Group of Seven (G7) leading economic powers called on April 23 for the “extension, full implementation, and expansion” of a critical deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, the group’s agriculture ministers said.

• Two rival generals have sparked a war that has buried hopes for a peaceful and democratic fresh start in Sudan. The activists who once brought down the dictatorship are now fearing for the future – and for their lives.

• Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on April 22 he did not want to “please anyone” with his views about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after provoking criticism in the West for suggesting Kyiv shared the blame for the war.

• Initial turnout was paltry early on April 23 in extraordinary local elections in four municipalities in northern Kosovo with ethnic Serb majorities where local mayors resigned in November 2022 to protest a cross-border dispute over vehicle registrations.

• Russian-origin fertilizer that Latvia seized due to European Union sanctions is being sent to Kenya by the United Nations World Food Program, Latvia’s Foreign Ministry said.

• Armenia has approved a draft amendment to the law on military service that would allow women to serve in the country’s armed forces on a voluntary basis.

• When the Montevideo Maru sank in the South China Sea during World War II, it was carrying hundreds of prisoners, most of them Australian.

• Valentyn is a Ukrainian soldier tasked with moving injured troops — and dead bodies — away from the front lines. He described the relentless work of responding to casualties under fire.

• The expertise of economic officials who continue to work in the government has helped President Vladimir Putin largely keep the economy afloat in the face of Western sanctions.

• Ukraine’s defense minister reported the first U.S.-made Patriot air-defense battery had arrived this week, but secret documents show Kyiv was still waiting for tanks and ammo for its coming counteroffensive.

• Even before its two leading generals went to war last week, “everyone wanted a chunk of Sudan,” an expert said of the strategically located country rich in natural resources.

• President Biden announced that diplomatic personnel, who had been stuck in the midst of a brutal war for more than a week, were evacuated from the capital, Khartoum.

• The action late Friday was the latest in a series of steps by Ukraine to distance itself from a long legacy of Russian domination.

• Despite the Finnish Stockmann halting exports to stores in Russia, the Russian Stockmann still has naming rights for its department stores until the end of 2028.

• The international community should not stop trying to end violent conflicts, but future efforts must consider who matters for peace and who does not.

• The use of a firearm must be a last resort, not the first one.

• Indian police arrested Sunday a firebrand Sikh separatist after a month-long manhunt that sparked protests and vandalism among the diaspora in Britain, Canada and the United States.

• Yoon had said the Taiwan issue is not simply between China and Taiwan, but a global matter.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Parallels between Brazil’s January 8, 2023, coup attempt and the January 6, 2021, US Capitol incursion placed US media outlets with close relations to the Democratic Party, such as the Times, in a difficult position. Criticizing the Lula administration could appear to offer tacit support to the Republican Party, in alliance with its preferred outlets like Fox News, which ran an election-season documentary (9/22/22) warning about the transformation of Brazil into a colony of its largest commercial trading partner, China, if Bolsonaro was not reelected.

Environment

• New reports show that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than anticipated, and other disasters loom.

Energy/Transportation

• Amid the energy revolution frenzy and talk of superpower status for Australia, one Brisbane-based company is getting on with the job. Redflow boss Tim Harris is shipping batteries to California as industrial and business customers cry out for fire-safe, industrial-strength energy storage.

• Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has resumed support for Russian cards, including Visas and Mastercards issued by Russian banks, report online publication Kod Durova, economic news agency Prime, and the Telegram channel Mash.

Wildlife/Nature

Axios ☛ Armadillo invasion: Why the creatures are rapidly moving northWatch out, northerners: The armadillos are coming.What’s happening: The scaly critters have slowly but steadily expanded north from Texas for over a hundred years. Now their movement is rapidly accelerating.Armadillo sightings in North Carolina are on the rise and the state’s Wildlife Resources Commission is trying to determine the extent of their range, Axios Raleigh co-author Zachery Eanes reports.

Finance

• A Republican proposal led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would take Medicaid coverage away from people who do not meet new work-reporting requirements. The McCarthy proposal would apply to all states, but in practice it would heavily impact people covered by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion. Of this group, more than 10 million people in Medicaid expansion states would be at significant risk of losing coverage under the McCarthy proposal. This group would be subject to the new Medicaid requirement, and they are not part of a group that states could readily identify in existing data sources and exclude from burdensome reporting. The McCarthy proposal could jeopardize coverage for millions more, by prompting some states to drop the ACA Medicaid expansion or dissuading states that have not yet taken the expansion from adopting it.

• The Reserve Bank will get the missing ingredient it needs to make its next interest rate decision this week.

• Alphabet Inc chief executive Sundar Pichai earned about $US226 million ($A338 million) in total compensation last year – more than 800 times the median employee’s pay, a company securities filing shows.

• Sundar Pichai, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Alphabet is one of the most highly compensated professionals in the world. In 2022, the 50-year-old tech leader took away a whopping $226 million in compensation, which included $218 million in stock awards. Sundar Pichai’s salary is a sensitive topic in the tech world which is reeling under massive layoffs and cost cutting.

• New Zealand leaders are playing down fears the lure of Australian citizenship could bring about a fresh brain drain.

• As the Fed fights inflation with a wary eye on the 1970s, some are arguing that Arthur Burns, the Fed chair at the time, gets too bad a rap.

• The walkout by federal public servants was spurred by inflation and the government’s return-to-office program.

• A self-styled “anti-bank” poached good customers from the federal loan system. When pandemic relief made that harder, it sued the government.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova reported that the U.S. has denied visas to members of the Russian media who were planning to accompany Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov on a trip to New York.

• Nikolay Borstov, a State Duma deputy with the United Russia party, has died at the age of 77, reports Lipetsk governor Igor Artamanov.

• French cosmetics juggernaut L’Oréal pounced on Aesop – Australia’s big skincare success story – in a record $4bn deal this year. Michael West tells the story of one man who took particular notice, and his fight to expose the use of toxic chemicals in beauty products.

• John Costello, a New York advertising executive turned anti-chemicals activist, has long railed against L’Oréal’s use of micro-plastics and cancer-causing chemicals in make-up and hair care products.

• Experts warned Sunday that the practice of Twitter adding official blue check marks to high-profile users on the social media platform without their consent could be a violation of FTC guidelines meant to prevent fraud.

• Few states better showcase this agrarian socialism than Texas, where the agricultural worker played a pivotal part in the state Socialist Party, and a German immigrant family by the name of Meitzen — who fled their homeland after the failed 1848 revolution — formed part of the “radical glue,” historian Thomas Alter II writes, “that held the [farmer-labor] coalition together.” Otto Meitzen, his son E. O., and his grandson E. R. — as well as their spouses — forged a multigenerational radicalism in the Lone Star State; E.O.’s political activity stretched from the Greenback and Populist movements of the late 1800s all the way through the height of the Socialist Party in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Along with land reform and labor rights, these Texas Socialists promoted radical positions like women’s suffrage and support for the Mexican Revolution while bumping up against the nascent Jim Crow regime.

• Jacobin contributor Yaseen Al-Sheikh sat down with Alter to discuss his recently released book, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas, and the forgotten tales of the Texas Socialist Party, which flourished until state-sponsored suppression came down upon them.

• Dear Members of the European Parliament,

• We appreciate and applaud the goals of policy makers in both Europe and the United States to focus greater attention on the relationship between the software supply chain and cybersecurity. Our purpose today is to highlight an issue of ongoing concern to many of us who develop open source software without a profit motive: how to apportion the proposed new regulatory and liability burdens among the various economic actors engaging in software distribution in a manner that is both fair and equitable. We write to you as two non-profit developers and maintainers of some of the most well-known and widely adopted open source internet infrastructure software, each without shareholders and recognized as charities in respectively the Netherlands and the US.

• Parties involved in this complex content-based ecosystem, which is unlike anything else in industrial history, must be treated fairly – and be seen to be treated fairly – by policy makers. Without a fair allocation of burden, policy makers risk destroying the very open development and distribution system that enabled the creation and operation of the Internet they now seek to protect. Fairness demands that “Responsibility must be placed on the stakeholders most capable of taking action to prevent bad outcomes, not [..] on the open-source developer of a component that is integrated into a commercial product.” This quote, from the US Cyber Security Strategy, is fully consistent with the NLF and the Blue Guide. In contrast, the CRA moves away from the nuanced multifactor discussion of charitable activities in the Blue Guide and places the burden unconditionally on non-profit developers like us, merely because we seek to recover maintenance and development costs by providing charged-for technical support or consultancy services to businesses that implement or operate our software.

• We ask you not to undermine this funding model that has allowed us to distribute secure and stable open source internet infrastructure software for decades without the intent to make a profit and to consider the following amendment and justification.

• After agreeing to a $787.5-million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for promoting Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, Fox faces more challenges in-house and in court. Our political roundtable looks at the network’s future.

• Cyprus has cracked down on those named by the United States and Britain for allegedly helping Russian oligarchs bypass sanctions on Moscow because of the Ukraine war, an official said.

• Kyrgyzstan’s top hygienic expert has questioned Russia’s stated reasons for suddenly banning its dairy imports after calls emerged in that Central Asian country to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet imposed by Soviet authorities after the 1940s.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Under government pressure, Chinese scientists have retracted studies and withheld or deleted data. The censorship has stymied efforts to understand the virus.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

Civil Rights/Policing

• PSAC is not only pushing for a wage increase but also aiming to establish the right for workers — whose jobs can be done remotely — to choose whether they want to continue working remotely or return to the physical workplace. By fiat, Fortier demanded public sector workers return to the office at least two days a week by the end of March. “In-person work better supports collaboration, team spirit, innovation and a culture of belonging,” she said. Elsewhere, the government was more blunt, arguing that the ability to work remotely would “severely impact the Government’s ability to deliver services to Canadians and would limit its ability to effectively manage employees within the public service.” In other words, it’s about management’s control over the workforce under the guise of fostering a sense of community.

• As a candidate, Johnson backed away from the “Defund the Police” demand, and said he wouldn’t make cuts to the police department budget. But he also made clear his understanding that no amount of policing will result in true safety. The public safety section of Johnson’s campaign website lamented that “the failures of the past have been repeated over and over,” while stating that the road to lasting safety in Chicago “starts with reversing decades of underinvestment in our youth, mental health services, and victim support.”

• Johnson has promised to train two hundred new detectives and fill outstanding positions on the police force — but he’s also committed to ending no-knock warrants, canceling the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, erasing the police department’s “racist” gang database, and erecting a memorial to survivors of torture perpetrated by former police commander Jon Burge and his subordinates. He may not openly support defunding the police department now, but as of 2020, when he introduced a nonbinding resolution on the Cook County Board to redirect police funding to social services, he certainly grasped the overarching concept. “People are not feeling any safer, communities have not transformed by putting more money into the police,” he told WBEZ then.

Monopolies

Patents

Trademarks

Copyrights

• Movie production company Capstone Studios has obtained a DMCA subpoena that requires Internet provider CenturyLink to identify 150 alleged BitTorrent pirates. The targeted IP-addresses are suspected of sharing a copy of the movie “Fall”. While the DMCA shortcut is not undisputed, it appears to be rather effective, at least for now.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• In my quest to get a job in Canada, I decided to enroll for a short 3 month program online, which should get me a very smart certificate once completed. The first course of six was completed where I was pleasantly surprised with the content of the course, it’s delivery, and how much fun it was to take part in. Very keen for the remaining 5 courses and also very keen to land a job soon. It has been a year since my last paycheck, and have since applied for over 200-300 jobs that resulted in 2 callbacks only. Absolutely terrible stats for a person from Africa with a PhD in Chemistry and 5 years work experience. Can’t help but think that my mental health has taken a knock from this whole situation?

• Remember Croaker in the Black Company books? I loved that aspect. But not everything that I like can be translated into a role-playing game, I fear.

• A while ago I listend to an Actual Play podcast about Band of Blades. I always wondered about the chronicler role. In that Actual Play, it seemed very underdeveloped – as if the player didn’t have enough time to actually think up cool stuff. Or as if some absolute minimum was good enough for some promised reward.

• I’ve been silently undergoing a transformation over the last month.

• These come in waves – one day I wake up and look back and realize that I hate what I am doing, and I can’t even imagine how I liked it in the first place. Not to mention I don’t understand it. And these days I don’t have to deal with it at all, so I wind up loafing around, depressed, until I emerge – as a different person.

• This has happened several times since my initial COVID-induced brainfog.

• I’ve always been a year-oriented person. I measure my life in years, rather than in moments or milestones, because I believe that years are a perfect measurement unit. Years make it easier for me to think and reflect about the way my life is shaking out.

• I haven’t felt quite right since 2020. 2020 was an important year of my life, and it had its special moments, but it was also the beginning of the end of the magic inside me: the Spirit of 2019. I often find myself recalling 2019 and feeling nostalgic about the things that made it special. I wish I could feel the same way again, but now things feel dull and boring.

• [..]

• However, all I managed to achieve was to fall into a loop of toxicity, negativity, and obsession. I restricted myself from doing too many things, most of them without any real reason whatsoever, to the point of them being absurd and even harmful to myself. The more I think about avoiding them at all costs, the more I fall into a bad mood, and cause myself more harm. I feel like I can’t escape this loop. It only gets stronger, as I add more things into the list and feel more strongly about them.

• In terms of productivity, I reached a point in which I can’t get myself to do anything anymore. I’m risking my school and job, because I simply have no energy nor motivation to do anything. I can’t get myself started on anything, and I’ve mostly stopped pursuing most of my projects and goals. I left everything unfinished, and I’m always in a state of disarray.

• I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve opened up a text editor to write something that I wanted to post here — some thought that I just feel like I absolutely need to get out into the world — and I completely lost steam after a paragraph or two. Or the times that I filled a document with my opinions and though, “you know, I ought to research this before writing about it”, and then abandoning the whole thing because I managed to make it homework. I guess I’m glad to have spared the world some of my half-baked opinions, at least.

Earth Day

• Happy Earth Day, to those who celebrate! I was able to spend some time outside, but now I’m dealing with allergy symptons. Not a big deal, just annoying. I got a chance to visit the wilderness park, hike on some of the trails, and play my guitar under a big oak tree.

• As I was playing, there were a couple of people that walked under the tree. It turned out that one of those people was my friend, Malia, who I haven’t seen for awhile and never seen in that context. It was nice that our paths crossed today. I felt connected.

• I wish I could have spent more time outdoors and participate in some of the Earth Day events around town, but allergies prevented that from happening. In lieu of going outside, I decided to use the tree planting simulator on SDF’s minecraft server.

Technical

• Ahh, my old friend. Welcome back.

• So before we blame linux, this is my fault. I created this problem for myself. This gemlog will be my documentation on how I actually went about resolving this!

• [...]

• So yeah. A rats nest. The ACTUAL problem was buried in that list. My PC speakers were setup to my DAC. Which meant they weren’t connected to my audio interface. So the speakers I bought specifically to help me mix my music became glorified PC speakers, total overkill. Now on serious mixing days I’d swap the cables out but I got lazy and stopped doing that, just mixing using my headphones. Enough was enough so I removed the redundant DAC from the setup, leaning on the audio interface to by my primary audio I/O device.

• But Wine didn’t like that.

• Now, this isn’t my first issue using my interface for things other than with my DAW. I wanted to use my actual XLR vocal microphone as my mic during meetings at work and this was not as smooth as I had hoped. I ended up having to remap the device leading to some just extra frustrations… I can post that setup later if people are interested. I’ll probably do it for my own posterity since I’ve forgotten exactly what I’ve done.

Internet/Gemini

• I’m giving gemini another shot despite almost certainly being pointless in terms of interactions with others. I’m simply going to accept that, and find value in the writing process, in creating posts in an orderly fashion, in possibly authoring some verbiage that somehow leads another back from whence we’ve come.

• For the past few days I’ve been working on an experimental chat program built entirely in Gemini.

• I’ll keep this introductory post brief, because the SourceHut project home page has plenty of info, and will be updated more than this gemlog post.

• 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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