● 04.29.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 29/04/2023: DDD 3.4.0 RC2 and Valgrind 3.21.0

Posted in News Roundup at 8:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Server

• Kubernetes v1.26 introduced a new, alpha-level feature forStatefulSets that controls the ordinal numbering of Pod replicas. As of Kubernetes v1.27, this feature is now beta. Ordinals can start from arbitrary non-negative numbers. This blog post will discuss how this feature can be used.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Have you noticed there is a podcast for everything? That’s all about to change. Our thoughts on why the podcast market is going bust this year. Special Guest: Michael Tunnell.

• Listen now (24 min) | The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast – April 27, 2023

Applications

• As a system administrator, it’s essential to have a solid understanding of various Linux performance commands to monitor, optimize, and troubleshoot your systems. These commands provide valuable insights into resource usage, system processes, and overall performance, helping you maintain a stable and efficient environment.

Instructionals/Technical

• In this guide, we’ll share valuable Tmux and SSH tips to help you improve your remote development experience. From session management and customization to advanced features and security, we’ve got you covered.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MySQL on Fedora 38. Before we get started, let’s briefly go over what MySQL is. MySQL is a free, open-source database management system.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP on Fedora 38. With the release of PHP 8, developers can now enjoy the latest features and improvements that come with it.

• This guide explains how to add, delete and grant sudo privileges to users in Fedora 38 desktop and server editions.

• Linux offers a variety of ways to install and manage applications, and one increasingly popular method is the use of AppImages. AppImages provide a simple, portable, and self-contained approach to application distribution, making it easy for users to run applications on their Linux systems without complex installation processes.

• Ubuntu is a versatile Linux distribution that supports a wide range of applications, including Java-based software. JAR files, or Java Archive files, contain compiled Java code and are a common way to distribute Java applications.

• Ubuntu is a widely used and user-friendly Linux distribution, but sometimes you may encounter issues when trying to install new software. One such issue is the “file not supported” error, which can be frustrating and prevent you from installing the software you need.

Games

• More improvements come to the stable version of Godot 4 with the 4.0.3 patch release. Here’s the first release candidate to test the changes before they go live.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• KDE neon has long had Docker images so you can run the latest KDE software without the faff of an operating system install. We’ve just moved the host for these into the KDE Invent server.

• https://invent.kde.org/neon/docker-images/container_registry

• You can get the neondocker script to run them

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from April 21 to April 28.

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• SUSECON 23 Registration is LIVE!! SUSECON 23 is being held at the beautiful Westin Grand Munich, 20-22 June. I visited this venue just a few weeks ago. It is a beautiful location and situated a short distance from the heart of Munich.

Open Hardware/Modding

• For those aged 65 and over, falls can be one of the most serious health concerns they face either due to lower mobility or decreasing overall coordination.

• Tweaking the Raspberry Pi Pico’s pinout to squeeze in more GPIO pins, Olimex’s RP2040-PICO30 is designed to meet the needs for a retro computing project.

• This Raspberry Pi retro-style TV box is 3D printed with wood filament and looks as cool as it is functional.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• OnePlus’ first attempt at a tablet makes a strong case for iPad users to make the move to Android. Does it stick the landing?

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• The LibreOffice Conference is the annual gathering of the community, our end-users, developers, and everyone interested in free office software.

FSF

• Release candidate 3.4.0-rc2 is available. The build process of DDD is streamlined and updated to current versions of the toolchain. The interfaces to inferior debuggers (GDB and remake) and to Gnuplot are updated.

• We are pleased to announce a new release of Valgrind, version 3.21.0, available from https://valgrind.org/downloads/current.html.

• valgrind now provides gdb python commands. These GDB front end commands provide a better integration in the GDB command line interface, so as to use for example GDB auto-completion, command specific help, searching for a command or command help matching a regexp, … For relevant monitor commands, GDB will evaluate arguments to make the use of monitor commands easier.

Licensing / Legal

• To start, what is GPL (General Public License)? By definition, open source software (OSS) is, well, open. But just because some code is public does not automatically mean it can be used for commercial purposes without permission. OSS licenses define acceptable use of the particular library – permissive licenses (ex. MIT, BSD, Apache) means you actually can legally use that code for whatever, including commercial reasons, but non-permissive licenses such as GPL mean that you cannot without consent.

• Check out my latest article. Hot off the presses (and 100% human-written).

Programming/Development

• The first thing I noticed about being a manager was that I wasn’t sure whether anything I was doing was useful.

• There are subdivisions in the steps too. You can consider if what’s open needs closing, what’s doing needs to be done. But those are nuanced decisions that can easily trap you in indecision. The best process in this case is one that’s easy to grasp and do: Stop, status, selection, focus, finish, next.

• Effective product development teams have clear missions that are aligned with a broader overall product strategy. They are expected to act autonomously and empowered with the capability and support to do so. This typically requires the teams to be cross-disciplinary.

• As a seasoned tech professional, you may have spent years honing your technical skills and making valuable contributions as an individual contributor. However, as you progress in your career, you may begin to consider taking on a leadership role as a tech lead. But how do you navigate this transition from technical expert to team manager?

• GUI in Rust progresses with unprecedented speed – 3 months in Rust GUI-land is like 3 years in the mortal world. To put things in perspective, GUI moves so fast for the web that it’s even ahead of browsers. There are many possible reasons for this, from the cross-platform nature of Rust to the WebAssembly support, which provides easier distribution of software.

• In this post, I’ll review the current toolkit for GUI in Rust, and share some tips for building WebAssembly bundles. Due to the speed at which GUI in Rust moves, some tools I’ve outlined below may deprecate in the near future. So, at the risk of this post becoming obsolete before you’ve finished reading it, let’s dive into the most current GUI architecture for Rust that I’ve discovered thus far. The current t

• Over the past week, we ran our 2023 annual global C++ developer survey. Thank you to everyone who responded. As promised, here is a summary of the results…

• I agree that the argument sounds compelling, but I find it flawed. Before I proceed to put forward my arguments I want to make my own biases clear. Arguing against someone like Dave Farley is not something I take lightly. As far as I can tell, he’s worked on systems more impressive than any I can showcase. I also think he has more industry experience than I have.

• That doesn’t necessarily make him right, but on the other hand, why should you side with me, with my less impressive résumé?

• My objective is not to attack Dave Farley, or any other person for that matter. My agenda is the argument itself. I do, however, find it intellectually honest to cite sources, with the associated risk that my argument may look like a personal attack. To steelman my opponent, then, I’ll try to put my own biases on display. To the degree I’m aware of them.

• I prefer pull requests over pair and ensemble programming. I’ve tried all three, and I do admit that real-time collaboration has obvious advantages, but I find pairing or ensemble programming exhausting.

• TL;DR I’m seeking someone to take over maintenance of the the popular R package installr (github), due to a shift away from Windows OS. The package has been downloaded over 3.3 million times and has a current download rate of around 61k times a month.

• Our mission is to build one of the most powerful, beautiful, simple, and open web rendering engines in the world, and we are excited to announce the next step forward in that journey: the release of Babylon.js 6.0.

Leftovers

• Reel v real: A look at five stereotypes of women in K-dramas, and how most are like in real life.

• Fifty per cent of these hacks involved my cat, which may or may not be why they failed.

• My latest book, A Hacker’s Mind, is filled with stories about the rich and powerful hacking systems, but it was hard to find stories of the hacking by the less powerful. Here’s one I just found. An article on how layoffs at big companies work inadvertently suggests an employee hack to avoid being fired: [...]

• Star sellers can amass huge followings and eye-popping fortunes, through a format that mixes consumerism and entertainment. But competition is fierce, and the government is watching.

• Jerry Springer, the former Cincinnati mayor and longtime TV host whose tabloid talk show was known for outrageous arguments, thrown chairs and physical confrontations between sparring couples and homewreckers, has died, Bradley Singer, his manager, said Thursday. Springer was 79.

Science

• Something we’ve never seen before.

• Incredible!

• Always more to learn.

• New hope for millions.

• It’s different from loneliness.

• ICANN, the organization that regulates global domain name policy, and Verisign, the abusive monopolist that operates the .COM and .NET top-level domains, have quietly proposed enormous changes to global domain name policy in their recently published “Proposed Renewal of the Registry Agreement for .NET”, which is now open for public comment.

• Either by design, or unintentionally, they’ve proposed allowing any government in the world to cancel, redirect, or transfer to their control applicable domain names! This is an outrageous and dangerous proposal that must be stopped. While this proposal is currently only for .NET domain names, presumably they would want to also apply it to other extensions like .COM as those contracts come up for renewal.

• Dazzling intricacies of brain structure are revealed every day, but one of the most obvious aspects of brain wiring eludes neuroscientists. The nervous system is cross-wired, so that the left side of the brain controls the right half of the body and vice versa. Every doctor relies upon this fact in performing neurological exams, but when I asked my doctor last week why this should be, all I got was a shrug. So I asked Catherine Carr, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. “No good answer,” she replied. I was surprised — such a fundamental aspect of how our brain and body are wired together, and no one knew why?

• Nothing that we know of stops the right side of the brain from connecting with the right side of the body. That wiring scheme would seem much simpler and less prone to errors. In the embryonic brain, the crossing of the wires across the midline — an imaginary line dividing the right and left halves of the body — requires a kind of molecular “traffic cop” to somehow direct the growing nerve fibers to the right spot on the opposite side of the body. Far simpler just to keep things on the same side.

• Video chats like Zoom and FaceTime are great ways to stay in touch with loved ones—so great, in fact, that parrots are catching on.

• A new study from researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with scientists from MIT and the University of Glasgow, investigated what happened when a group of domesticated birds were taught to call one another on tablets and smartphones.

Hardware

• Patch notes for AMD’s new AGESA 1.0.7.0 firmware update, suggest the Ryzen 7000 burnout was not only affected by unsafe SoC voltages but bugs in the chip’s temperature control mechanism.

• The U.S. is seeking decoupling of international supply chains by abusing export control and forcing some countries to practice trade protectionism against China.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• It is not known how many have packed up their bags and left Shanghai, but demand for international flights had surged.

• Japan also ended random-testing of passengers from China for Covid-19.

• “I’m so OCD.” “If you’re a little OCD like me.” How many times have I heard this? More times than I can count. Saying these phrases is discrediting everything a person with OCD goes through on a daily basis.

• The doctor will see you now.

• One in three showed the signs.

• This is creepy.

• “It shows a possible way forward.”

• It doesn’t just slice and dice.

• Data from the study point to a temporal correlation between social media use, school stress, and firearms.

• The EU Wednesday released a draft of its proposed overhaul of drug manufacturing laws. The changes have caused controversy among manufacturers, with some stating they will leave the region if the laws take effect.

• Professor Denis Rancourt follows up his previous appearance on the Jerm Warfare podcast where he discussed how the data showed there was no new viral outbreak in 2020. In this episode Prof Rancourt discusses his research on the potential link between the roll-out of Covid “vaccines” and increases in all-cause mortality.

• Long school closures have put public education — and Randi Weingarten, the leader of a major teachers’ union — on the defensive.

• A court in the Netherlands ruled that a man who fathered at least 550 children in the past 16 years had lied to prospective mothers and fertility clinics.

• “I don’t see why it cannot be applied to more complex organisms,” said the study’s senior author.

• You have to see through this.

• An unthinkable calamity.

• A surge of interest in traditional faiths offers an alternate vision to an imposed set of “civilizational” values by the ruling party.

• Women’s breasts become less dense with age. Cancer may be more likely in breast tissue that is persistently denser over time, a new study suggests.

• The president said his health is fine, barring COVID, but acknowledged he’d had a drop in blood pressure Sunday and a “temporary blackout.”

Proprietary

• Stanford and Georgetown have a new report on the security risks of AI—particularly adversarial machine learning—based on a workshop they held on the topic.

• While not perfectly elastic in the economic sense, where there is a linear relationship between price and volume, we have always contended that the relationship between the price of IT infrastructure and its cost are reasonably elastic.

• File system paths on Windows are stranger than you might think. On any Unix-derived system, a path is an admirably simple thing: if it starts with a /, it’s a path. Not so on Windows, which serves up a bewildering variety of schemes for composing a path.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• An Office of the Director of National Intelligence report shows that U.S. person queries of Section 702 data declined 96% in 2022.

Defence/Aggression

• To protect its interests in the South China Sea, the Philippines must delicately balance its relationship with China and the United States.

• The Chinese vessels carried out ‘dangerous maneuvers’ near the disputed Ayungin Shoal, says Philippine Coast Guard.

• Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda says he and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have agreed on the gradual deployment of the German brigade in Lithuania.

• Aynsley Genga is a JURIST Staff Correspondent in Kenya.   It has been nearly two weeks since war erupted in Sudan, one of Kenya’s neighboring countries.

• Colorado Governor Jared Polis Friday signed four gun control bills into law, resulting in a rigid tightening of gun legislation in the state.

• A long-range Chinese combat drone capable of carrying a large weapons payload has circled Taiwan, the island’s defence ministry said Friday. Democratic Taiwan lives under constant threat of an attack by Beijing, which views the island as part of its territory.

• A long-range Chinese combat drone capable of carrying a large weapons payload has circled Taiwan, the island’s defence ministry said Friday.

• Opposition politicians criticized Minister Soylu, saying his remarks show that the ruling party is aware that it will lose the elections.

• A C-130 evacuation plane, which was headed to Wadi Seidna Air Base in Sudan for evacuation of citizens of Turkey, came under small arms fire. The plane landed safely.

• The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader says her country would stage more provocative displays of its military might in response to a new U.S.-South Korean agreement to intensify nuclear deterrence to counter the North’s nuclear threat, which she insists shows their “extreme” hostility toward Pyongyang. Kim Yo Jong also lobbed personal insults toward U.S. President Joe Biden. After a summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday, Biden had warned that any North Korean nuclear attack on the United States or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 28 Apr 2023 Today Moldova starts its path towards joining the EU Civil Protection Mechanism – a European solidarity initiative designed to support countries in times of crisis and disaster.

• The US will work alongside South Korea to develop a strategic nuclear policy and frequently station nuclear weapon-armed submarines on the peninsula, according to an agreement announced by the White House marking the first visit of the new South Korean president to the US.

• Paraguay’s presidential election Sunday could create regional ripples as top candidates diverge on whether to keep recognizing Taiwan or look to China.

• Nicholas Eftimiades analyzes the potential benefits to US national security offered by allied integration as part of Forward Defense’s series on “Harnessing Allied Space Capabilities.”

• Efforts at CISA and the Department of Energy are both meant to encourage the practice of building in better security protections.

• Yoon condemns North Korea before joint session of Congress

• Prosecutors claim that Jack Teixeira, the guardsman accused of leaking classified documents, kept an arsenal of weapons and made violent remarks on social media. The Air Force has suspended the commander and the administrative commander of his squadron.

• Geography has long been a strong driver of Australia’s national security and economic planning, the oft-noted tyranny of distance a blessing and curse. And while technology and globalisation have made the world much ‘smaller’, geography …

• He faced off with North Korean troops, helped prepare for the Trump-Kim summit and witnessed some of the most ​hair-raising — and ​bizarre — moments ​on the world’s most heavily armed border.

• The Caribbean’s “first” industrial-scale green hydrogen geothermal project is set to get underway following a new agreement.

• Africans make up just 5 percent of immigrants in the United States but represent the fastest-growing immigrant group. For many of them, America is the land of opportunity. But the reality is sometimes more difficult, as Africans are confronted with various challenges. These include a form of racism against them – somewhat ironically, from the African American community. FRANCE 24′s correspondent Fanny Allard went to Washington, as well as the states of Maryland and Virginia, to meet some of these men and women who have made a new life for themselves in the United States.

• How a country takes care of its citizens living abroad in a crisis can reveal much about its priorities and values. The chaos in Sudan is shining such a spotlight on nations from China to Germany to the United States.

• A bus convoy carrying about 300 people was the first U.S.-organized evacuation effort of Americans other than diplomats since fighting broke out nearly two weeks ago in the northeast African nation.

• Fighting raged in Sudan on Friday, despite rival forces agreeing to extend a truce aimed to stem nearly two weeks of warfare that has killed hundreds and caused widespread destruction.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• The three defendants were remanded into custody earlier this month on suspicion of publishing confidential information on social media.

Environment

• The April temperatures, over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some places, come on top of a long-running drought that has depleted reservoirs and dried up fields.

• According to a new UN report, progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is not going well.

• Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott says he will veto a bill passed that aims to help the state reduce greenhouse gas emissions

• For this month’s Someone to Know profile, we spoke to M.B.A. students who help their peers track down climate-focused jobs.

• As global warming threatens the two main varieties, coffee growers in Uganda are betting on a type that can stand up to heat, drought and pests.

Energy/Transportation

• The California Air Resources Board passed a rule to cut down on greenhouse gas and smog emissions from diesel trains. Some champion the rule, but others say the requirements are too steep for an industry that already helps the state and nation emit less.

• As the country’s oldest power station closed, experts warn that the country needs a clearer strategy to manage its exit from coal power.

• “…Two members of the boat’s crew are missing and several were injured due to the collision of the ship with the boat…”

• Dozens of trucks have parked in protest near Aqtau, the capital of Kazakhstan’s western region of Manghystau, as drivers rally against a recent 28 percent hike in the price of gasoline.

• The House passed a resolution that will reimpose tariffs on solar panels from China, while the EPA sits on applications for carbon capture technology that may soon be mandatory.

• We must stop seeing nuclear waste as a dangerous problem and instead recognize it as a safe byproduct of carbon-free power.

• One of the world’s largest energy producers continues to beat profit expectations with renewable energy, even as oil and gas prices make historic gains.

• While state control of resources in Latin America regularly raises the alarms of investors, Chile’s strong institutions and previous success create a positive outlook for its ability to deliver.

• The five Central Asian states can make a meaningful contribution to mitigating the world’s energy and food deficits, but this will require determination by local governments and the commitment of Western government and business partners.

Wildlife/Nature

• In spring, a gardener’s fancy turns to thoughts of creating a perfect garden. But one person’s perfection is another’s jungle.

• Nayarit’s Isla Isabel National Park is an Eden-like paradise where the local fauna roams freely and you’ll make memories to last a lifetime.

• The most ambitious genetics project to date dives into the genes of nearly every living mammal, including humans, for insight into life itself.

• The New York State Senate Tuesday passed the Tropical Deforestation-Free Procurement Act, a bill aimed at protecting tropical rainforests and human rights in other countries through state government relations with contractors.

• Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday decreed six new Indigenous reserves, the first after a dearth of such expansion under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

• Some things keep us up at night such as the horrifying thought that if they eliminate all this carbon stuff, 20,000 years from now they won’t be able to carbon date our sorry bones.

• Yuliana Bedolla, director of the Island Ecology and Conservation Group, won for work protecting seabird colonies on Mexico’s Pacific islands.

• The Jingu Gaien is a rare green space in central Tokyo. Real estate interests and the city want to redevelop the area and build a pair of highrise towers in the park-like space. Opponents liken this to building skyscrapers in New York’s Central Park. The flashpoint has been trees, green space, and who controls a public area that has been encroached on over the years. Also at issue is the fate of more than 100 ginko trees that line an avenue and provide a colorful cascade of falling leaves each autumn. The area is also home to a historic baseball stadium that hosted Babe Ruth in 1934.

• The Nature Conservation Agency (DAP) will carry out extensive brown bear monitoring in Latvia. The main aim of the monitoring will be to explore the unique process of returning to the territory after being eliminated completely, Jānis Ozoliņš, lead researcher of the Latvian National Forest Science Institute ‘Silava’ told Latvian Radio on April 28.

• The cash strapped Ähtäri Zoo has decided to keep the animals while it looks for partners for its panda protection programme.

Overpopulation

• Political advisers proposed that single, unmarried women should have access to egg freezing, IVF treatment.

Finance

• Tourists are flocking to Zibo for its promise of a low-cost, value-for-money experience.

• In the face of a catastrophic default, the House Speaker has pitted his most extreme members against the President.

• Law students from the European Union are reporting for JURIST on law-related events in and affecting the European Union and its member states. Tara O’Sullivan is a law student at Maastricht University. She files this dispatch from Maastricht, Netherlands.  The EU has taken steps forward in the battle to irradicate the gender pay gap.

• UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Steve Barclay Thursday welcomed a High Court decision which found that the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) strike scheduled for May 2 is illegal. The decision comes only a few days after Barclay announced he would take legal action to prevent the strike.

• China accused a panel of UN experts of making unfounded claims Friday after they accused Beijing of forcing hundreds of thousands of Tibetans into programmes that threaten their cultural identity and could lead to forced labour.

• Anna’s opinion article in The Guardian

• When the iron curtain was swept away on that miraculous night of 9 November 1989, it exposed some of the deepest differences between geographical neighbours the world has ever recorded. The 13:1 GDP per capita gap between Poland and soon-to-be united Germany was twice that between the US and Mexico.

• Amazon is still growing—but not as fast as it did last year. And that has everything to do with the decelerating US economy.

• The Federal Reserve’s internal review of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank points the blame at nearly everyone involved in the second largest bank failure in US history.

• The State Police have detained eight persons suspected of attempting to defraud European Union funds for rural development worth €2.5 million, the police said on April 28.

• Data published on April 28 by the Central Statistical Bureau show that in March 2023, compared to March 2022, the level of construction costs in Latvia increased by 10.9 %.

• Data of business tendency surveys published on April 28 by the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) show that in April 2023 business environment has worsened in all business sectors.

• Calendar-adjusted data (at constant prices) published on April 28 by the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) show that, compared to March 2022, in March 2023 total retail trade turnover decreased by 9.0 %.

• Why does the richest country in the world have so much poverty? Matthew Desmond argues that ending poverty in the United States is a moral choice.

• The budget deal contained a series of hard-fought wins for the governor, but left her without a grand policy achievement to trumpet.

• The federal budget was in surplus in the past year due to higher revenues and lower expenses, new figures show. The underlying cash balance for the 12 months to March was $1.034 billion. Economist Chris Richardson, from Rich Insights, told AAP while it was “wafer thin”, it represented a $204 billion turnaround in 25 months.

• Set out for a two minute walk in any small country town around Australia and you’re likely to return two hours later. The people of Kimba, in South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, are hoping the charm of a close-knit community where everyone is up for a chat will help attract their first GP in three years.

• The Federal Reserve detailed serious management oversights by the executives of Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed six weeks and sent financial markets reeling. In a hotly anticipated report on Friday, the Fed, SVB’s primary regulator, revealed its findings after a review of what caused the bank to fail on March 10.

• The Federal Reserve released hundreds of pages documenting how bank supervision and regulation failed to prevent the lender’s collapse. The F.D.I.C. released a separate report on Signature Bank.

• A day after nearly 1,100 people were laid off, the struggling company told its remaining workers to prepare for a series of changes.

• The speaker’s all-carrots, no-sticks approach of empowering hard-right Republicans carries risks, and any negotiation with President Biden on the debt ceiling is likely to test them.

• Craig Coyner’s descent onto the streets of Bend, Ore., came after decades spent fighting as a lawyer and politician for those on the edge of society.

• Private equity firms make loads of money when their schemes succeed and lose very little when they fail.

• A business owner’s personal story can bolster trust in a brand, experts say. But what happens when they share hardships like homelessness, addiction or incarceration in company marketing?

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• As a million outlets have reported, 21 months after Merrick Garland set up a framework that could obtain a for waiver executive privilege for January 6 without violating DOJ contact guidelines, 15 months after all January 6 investigations had converged on Mike Pence, over a year after investigators won precedents that made it possible…

• Richard Sharp stepped down after an investigation concluded that he failed to disclose his involvement in arranging a loan for the former prime minister, Boris Johnson.

• BBC Chairman Richard Sharp resigned on Friday after an independent report found he breached rules for public appointments in relation to a loan for then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

• As EU ambassadors to London gather to discuss the future of the relationship, here are six ambitious but realistic ideas for cooperation.

• Pope Francis, starting a trip to Hungary, on Friday pointedly warned of the dangers of rising nationalism in Europe and told the Budapest government that accepting migrants along with the rest of the continent would be a true sign of Christianity.

• Canada and the United States have agreed to share more information on the smuggling of guns and drugs across their shared border

• By Doina ChiacuWASHINGTON (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday he was worried about the future of American democracy…

• Observers warn Beijing that there will be no stability as long as the junta is in power.

• Despite some friction, Colombia’s conference on Venezuela highlighted the potential for Washington and Bogotá to work together.

• The release of the White House’s review of the chaotic 2021 troop withdrawal showed once again that the realities of Afghanistan and US partisan politics take precedence over President Biden’s desire to permanently disentangle Washington from Afghanistan.

• Francis wants to “re-embrace” Hungarian Christians, but some worry that the visit gives political cover to the country’s leader, who is on the opposite side of nearly every issue important to the pontiff.

• The former vice president faces many challenges in his potential presidential run, perhaps none bigger than his complicated relationship with his old boss.

• The Justice Department has been gathering evidence about whether the former president and his allies solicited donations with claims of election fraud they knew to be false.

• An entrepreneur said a rival olive oil start-up ripped off his big idea.

• Hong Kong’s recovery after years of protests, crackdowns, and pandemic restrictions is underway, but residents are conflicted about the true state of the city. Many feel the city’s openness and liberties are permanently gone under Chinese rule.

• The chief justice knows which branch of government reigns supreme.

• France’s foreign minister on Friday urged Azerbaijan to restore “unhindered movement” through the Lachin corridor, the only land link between Armenia and the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Yes, Fox will get a write off for their massive settlement with Dominion. That is okay, but maybe the structure of our tax code should be rethought.

• The cable host has left Fox News. But his dark and outsize influence on the conservative movement — and on American politics — is hardly over.

• In 2020, Katie Sorensen posted a widely shared Instagram video in which she claimed that a couple tried to kidnap her two children at a Michaels craft store in Petaluma, Calif.

• The campaign aims at countering ‘reactionary thoughts’ promoted by South Korean media.

• Billionaire George Soros’s investments in the Indian technology and startup world are no protection against the Hindu right wing’s ire over his trenchant views against prime minister Narendra Modi and democracy in the country.

Censorship/Free Speech

• A top Japanese official has said the arrest of a Hong Kong student under the city’s national security law “undermined people’s trust in One Country, Two Systems,” after she allegedly posted pro-independence messages online whilst in Japan.

• The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) says evidence shows Kazakhstan has been limiting access to RFE/RL’s websites in the Central Asian country over the past seven months, a period that began just ahead of snap general elections.

• Other dissidents are also facing trouble renting in what appear to be coordinated tactics.

• We have written to the Chairperson of the Review Committee, i.e. the Chief Secretary of Manipur to review the order and consider on a day-to-day basis, whether the internet suspension needs to continue.

• The Hungarian writer’s fiction examines how silence—politically enforced or self-imposed—can warp and disfigure a life.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Marats Kasems, the editor of Sputnik Lithuania, was released on bail from a Latvian prison on Thursday. He is under suspicion of breaching EU sanctions placed against the Kremlin-controlled agency.

• Hasan Cemal, Cengiz Çandar, Umur Talu and İrfan Değirmenci, the journalist parliamentary candidates running in the May 14 elections believe that arresting of four journalists in Diyarbakır show that Erdoğan’s fear grows as the elections near.

• Politicians, journalists and lawyers were detained in a massive crackdown. Several suspects have been released.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The UN Security Council unanimously condemned on Thursday a Taliban administration ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations in Afghanistan and called on Taliban leaders to “swiftly reverse” a crackdown on the rights of women and girls.

• A Hong Kong university student who was convicted under the national security law, and denied a jail term reduction despite pleading guilty, has moved one step closer to appealing his sentence at the city’s top court.

• Iranian women are turning to social media to share their “before and after” photos online with the caption, “I was born in a religious family, but then I tore the family’s virtue apart.” Many of them are young girls who were brought up religiously under the influence of their families. But they say they’ve now found their own way, although sometimes in spite of psychological or even physical violence.

• Human Rights Watch Tuesday reported that Iran’s security forces repressing widespread protests have been using a series of unlawful measures against children within the country, which include killings, torture, sexual assaults and disappearances.

• The resolution, an uncommon display of consensus on the Council, called for the Taliban to end their prohibitions on women working and attending school after sixth grade.

• Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal has said that people who wielded “vigilante justice” against a taxi driver whose vehicle hit a crowd during the 2019 protests acted in a “lawless” manner.

• The UK government announced Thursday the introduction of new police powers to stop slow-walking protests, set to take effect on May 3, 2023.

• When it had a Democratic majority last year, the North Carolina Supreme Court voided the state’s legislative and congressional maps as illegal gerrymanders. Now the court has a Republican majority, and says the opposite.

• State leaders agree to eliminate a provision that requires judges to prescribe the “least restrictive” means to ensure defendants return to court.

• The Biden administration’s new immigration plan expects a post-pandemic surge of immigration from Central and South America. The plan will increase foreign migration centers, lift the number of refugees admitted, and more swiftly process asylum-seekers.

• A group of families of Iranian political prisoners killed in the 1980s and Baha’is have launched a campaign condemning the Intelligence Ministry for pressuring Baha’i families to bury their dead in the mass graves occupied by prisoners executed in the 1988 massacre.

• A woman in the central Iranian province of Kerman has been killed during a confrontation between her family and a group of individuals enforcing the mandatory hijab policy as tensions over the policy remain high.

• Beijing wants to control the flow of information and contact with foreign companies or individuals

• Kamile Wayit was apprehended after posting a video about the ‘white paper’ protests across China.

• Gonpo Kyi has held protests in Lhasa since last year despite threats of imprisonment.

• The charges will keep Thach Setha in jail longer, preventing him from campaigning in July election.

• Turkey’s May 14 elections are looking uncertain for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid a sluggish economy, young Turks less enamoured with the ruling AKP and an opposition that is finally united. Support from conservative women, usually a pillar of his voting base, is also looking less robust ahead of the vote. FRANCE 24 reports.

• The former chief of police of Kazakhstan’s southern Almaty region, General Serik Kudebaev, who was recently extradited from Turkey, has been handed a 10-year prison term in a case related to the deadly mass unrest that rocked the country in January 2022.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Guest Post: Measuring route leak propagation with RIPE Atlas.

• When Ravi Yekkanti puts on his headset to go to work, he never knows what the day spent in virtual reality will bring. Who might he meet? Will a child’s voice accost him with a racist remark? Will a cartoon try to grab his genitals? He adjusts the extraterrestrial-looking goggles haloing his head as he…

• The Internet Society Elections Committee is pleased to announce the final results of the 2023 elections, the IETF selection for the Board of Trustees, and the Board of Trustees appointee.  Voting concluded on 14 April. The results were announced, and the challenge period was opened on 17 April.

Monopolies

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 28 Apr 2023 The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Renfe may have abused its dominant position in the Spanish passenger rail transport market by refusing to supply all its content and real-time data to rival ticketing platforms.

Patents

• 37 C.F.R. § 11.18(b) imposes crucial responsibilities on patent applicants, attorneys, and agents. Documents submitted to the USPTO implicitly certify that:

• On April 26, 2023, the PTAB issued a reexam certificate against U.S. Patent 9,386,094 cancelling all challenged claims. Owned and asserted by Lupercal, LLC, an NPE and IP Valuation Partners entity, the ’094 patent is generally directed to an image submission tool that can pre-process images prior to image upload based on pre-processing parameters received from a separate device.

• Machteld Hiemstra, who will rejoin the Amsterdam office of Simmons & Simmons on 1 May, has expertise in regulatory law and life sciences. She also focuses on supplementary protection certificates, and the intersection between patent law and medical product authorisation.

• At the end of March, a draft of the EU Commission’s proposals for regulating standard essential patents (SEPs) in Europe was leaked. The main cornerstones are the registration of SEPs, a third-party essentiality check and a FRAND determination before stakeholders can file patent lawsuits.

Copyrights

• SiriusXM (NASDAQ: SIRI) suffered advertising and subscriber revenue declines during Q1 2023 but achieved $233 million in net income for the quarter, according to a new earnings report.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Does anybody have a link to a list of 2d6 based role-playing games shorter than 30 pages? I often see them and nod and think that’s cool, and then I forget them and that’s not cool. I feel like collecting them on a wiki page or something like that. The page limit is there so I don’t have to list all the straight Traveller and Cepheus systems, to be honest. I like my games short, these days. The Traveller Book is 160 pages. Cepheus Engine V1 is 172 pages. So: I’m looking for shorter games!

Technical

• Back around November, Twitter lost a lot of its lustre. Almost all of that is attributable to the wealth-hemorrhaging man-child in charge, whether it was firing almost all the employees, or welcoming back white supremacists, or just generally being a gigantic asshole. Not that the previous guy was any better: Jack Dorsey was and is a terrible person, an absent CEO and disinterested Silicon Valley technik who’d rather go meditate overseas than stop the use of his site for genocide. (Imagine writing that in the late 90s; almost impossible then to see what the web would become.)

• [...]

• I started looking for alternatives. I think a lot of people did. While I knew people who upped and left once Musk took over (and power to them), I wasn’t until recently able to abandon the site that has meant so much to me from a poetry perspective. All the lit mags are there. A sizable minority of my peers have accounts. And so I started to spread out my online activities, trying a bunch of different things, but still coming back to Twitter, liking and RTing a few things a day instead of dozens, scaling back my activity while I looked at what else was possible.

• I am working on my weatherstation project now, and I’m going to finish it for real! Yesterday I was opening up the weather-vane to reverse-engineer the board it has and make sure what I already know is correct.

• I was able to get my picture and put it all back together; there was only one problem. The sensor no longer worked! It turns out that when I took the board out of the housing, I also pulled the cable a bit too hard and broke the connection to the board, whoops.

• I’m still trying to enable people to write their own generators. Myrkheim is another one of these small, special purpose generators written in a single file containing all the HTML, CSS, Javascript and random table data that it needs. You can edit it with a text editor and open the file with a browser. You don’t have to host it anywhere. You can send it to your friends by email and it’ll work.

• 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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