● 05.10.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 10/05/2023: WordPress Turns 20 and GCC 12.3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 1:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• I’ve had a long running mystery where my home desktop would lock up if it got cold, where as time developed it seemed that getting too cold was down not much below 68 F (which is hardly cold, at least for Canadians). Back in December of last year I had the idea of ‘replacing’ the case front panel with just a stand-alone ATX chassis power switch. I hesitated for a bit, but the situation was getting more irritating this past winter and stand-alone ATX chassis power switches are not expensive items. Finally at one point I carried through with this plan (possibly when I had to open up the case after forgetting a critical step in software disk shuffling). Somewhat to my surprise, this relatively simple change seems to have fixed all of the problems.

• As Gauer mentions, this idea might seem a bit extravagant and wasteful, considering that there are many who can hardly afford one computer, let alone several. He mentions that relatively powerful computers are quite inexpensive these days, especially on the second-hand market, but I’d also like to add that a separate physical computer might not even be necessary. If you are strapped for cash or simply don’t want another thing in your life, a separate user account with a different set of programs installed and a different look and feel on the same physical computer might also work.

• Over the past few years, the mainstream Linux distributions significantly improved all its components, making it a compelling choice for new or old laptops. Thanks to their customizability, low resource requirements, and vast community support, they have become a go-to choice for many laptop users.

• However, with so many Linux distributions available, choosing the right one can be daunting. In this article, we will explore the top Linux distributions optimized for laptops.

Server

• Cloud-based Linux solutions offer the inherent security and stability of Linux, along with the well-known flexibility of cloud computing. This article will explore why using Linux in the cloud is beneficial for e-commerce stores, along with some potential challenges you may encounter, to equip you with the knowledge you need to make an informed decision.

• According to a list compiled by E2E and published in partnership with the Independent newspaper, Netcraft is amongst the 100 fastest growing technology companies in the UK.

• The E2E Tech 100 showcases companies that are excelling, experiencing consistent growth, and creating an impact not just in their own sector, but also on a nationwide or global scale.

• Netcraft appear in the Tech 100 table, based on independent research and data analysis by Experian.

Benchmarks

• In my last blog post, I described a bit of my previous work on the rustgem project, and after that, as I had finished the VGEM features, I sent a RFC to the mailing list. Although I still need to work on some rustgem feedback, I started to explore more of the KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) and its properties.

• I talked to my mentor Melissa Wen, one of the VKMS maintainers, and she proposed implementing plane rotation capabilities to VKMS. The VKMS (Virtual Kernel Mode Setting) is a software-only KMS driver that is quite useful for testing and running X (or similar compositors) on headless machines. It sounded like a great idea, as I would like to explore a bit more of the KMS side of things.

• In order to have an image on a display, we need to go through the whole Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) Display Pipeline. The pipeline has a couple of different objects, such as framebuffers, planes, and CRTCs, and the relationship between them can be quite complicated. If you are interested in the KMS Display Pipeline, I recommend reading the great KMS documentation. But here we are focused in only one of those abstractions, the plane.

Instructionals/Technical

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PostgreSQL on Fedora 38. Are you looking for a powerful open-source relational database management system that can handle large amounts of data with ease? Look no further than PostgreSQL!

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to read the users input on bash script and then do something with the input.

• To read users input in bash we need to use the read command as shown in the example below

• In this script we are using echo command to

• If you have run an IPFS client you’ll notice how much it clogs your computer. Or maybe you don’t, if you are very rich and have a really powerful computer, but still, it’s not something suitable to be run on the entire world, and on web pages, and servers, and mobile devices. I imagine there may be a lot of unoptimized code and technical debt responsible for these and other problems, but the DHT is certainly the biggest part of it. IPFS can open up to 1000 connections by default and suck up all your bandwidth – and that’s just for exchanging keys with other DHT peers.

• Even if you’re in the “client” mode and limit your connections you’ll still get overwhelmed by connections that do stuff I don’t understand – and it makes no sense to run an IPFS node as a client, that defeats the entire purpose of making every person host files they have and content-addressability in general, centralizes the network and brings back the dichotomy client/server that IPFS was created to replace.

• I’ve long time used NextCloud and the floccus iOS App and Firefox plugin to store, manage and use my bookmarks. In reality, I don’t use the NC interface. I only use floccus ; and it works really well.

• In my journey to quit NextCloud, the only acceptable option to keep using floccus was getting a DAV self-hosted share. But, AFAIK, httpd(8) does not provide a DAV feature (yet?).

• I already use Baikal to self-host my calendars and addressbooks and it’s working great. So here’s a quick’n’dirty way to provide DAV using OpenBSD’s httpd(8) and sabre/dav.

• Our in-house Content Delivery Network (CDN) is deployed in multiple geographic locations. This lowers response time by reducing the distance that data must travel, through (inter)national cables and other networking infrastructure from your ISP and Internet backbones. Each caching data center that makes up our CDN, contains cache servers that remember previous responses to speed up delivery. Requests that have no matching cache entry yet, must be forwarded to a backend server in the application data center.

• If these backend servers are also deployed in multiple geographies, we lower the latency for requests that are missing from the cache, or that are uncachable. Operating multiple application data centers also reduces organizational risk from catastrophic damage or connectivity loss to a single data center. To achieve this redundancy, each application data center must contain all hardware, databases, and services required to handle the full worldwide volume of our backend traffic.

• If you have the need for more complex SSH configuration settings it would be better to put those in your .ssh/config . This keeps your alias list clean and readable. You can simply move (part of) those parameters to said file.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• We are pleased to announce the release of Alpine Linux 3.18.0, the first in the v3.18 stable series.

• Kernel modules are now signed. Verified modules are not enforced by default, so 3rd party modules with akms still works.

• All packages for ppc64le, x86, and x86_64 was linked with DT_RELR. This should have reduced size of compiled binares.

• Python pre-compiled files (pyc) are now shipped in separate packages. It is now possible to avoid install those and save space by doing apk add !pyc.

• If you’re a web content creator, Br OS might be a great option for you. Only in its 3rd year, this Brazilian-born Linux distribution, created by Anderson Marques, focuses on having an operating system ready to use from the moment of installation.

• With Br OS, users will enjoy image and video editing tools, security tools, trace hiding, and tools for publishing content even in countries with authoritarian governments.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Canonical has partnered with Intel to make a Chromium snap that boasts hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding. This bespoke build offers better performance and battery life than a “vanilla” build on Kaby Lake (7th Gen) and newer platforms when using VP8, VP9, and H.264 codecs.

• And since those codecs are pretty ubiquitous on the web, and none of us would sniff at extended battery life, sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?

Devices/Embedded

• Besides evaluation, the board looks to be especially suitable for digital signage as it’s rather thin and can be easily integrated into a display.

• On the software side, Rongpin claims support for Android 9. and Linux+Qt, but none of that appears to be available publicly. An Ubuntu 20.04 image should also be available, as I first found out about the DR4-S905/DR4-A311D SoM through a carrier board developed in Thailand called the “DragonEdge AI A311D” that’s supposed to run Ubuntu 20.04, but I was unable to obtain the image or documentation for that board either. It’s a pre-order, so that may explain it.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Booting to desktop. Full USB support and everything.

• Researchers from ETH Zürich and the University of Bologna developed a multi-chiplet Occamy processor to use for AI and high-performance computing workloads.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 55th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she looks back at the 20 years of WordPress and how the open source community made WordPress what it is today.

GNU Projects

Programming/Development

• I’ve posted in the past about analysing race results in R (most recently here). I ran the 2023 MK Marathon and wanted to have a look at the finishing times.

• This morning swephR version 0.3.1 made it unto CRAN and is now propagating to the mirrors. The goal of swephR is to provide an R interface to the Swiss Ephemeris (SE), a high precision ephemeris based upon the DE431 ephemeris from NASA’s JPL.

• The color vision deficiency emulation provided by R package colorspace was inaccurate for some highly-saturated colors due to a bug that was fixed in version 2.1-0. The (typically small) differences are illustrated for a range of palettes.

• With the 6.5.1 release, there will be one new change our users might notice. Qt WebEngine has previously forced the Qt Quick SceneGraph to use the OpenGL backend on Windows and macOS, even though the Qt defaults were using D3D11 and Metal respectively. With Qt 6.5.1 Qt WebEngine will now run with the Metal and D3D11 default QSG backends.

• This has been a long time coming. Chrome has always preferred using ANGLE on Windows. Where Qt did offer ANGLE in Qt5 but defaulted to WGL (Windows OpenGL), since Qt6 the ANGLE backend has been removed from Qt Gui, and WebEngine required Chromium to run in WGL mode. This has caused many issues, due to buggy Windows OpenGL drivers, and due to not using the same backend as Chrome itself.

• If you’re already working with Python and looking to boost your AI projects, Mojo is definitely worth exploring read this article and try Mojo immediately.

• Environment variables are a fundamental aspect of software development, offering a flexible and powerful way to configure applications. By understanding how to work with environment variables in Java, you can create efficient, scalable, and robust programs.

• Dell Latitude E6400 with Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics was added, and included in the recent Libreboot 20230423 release. Today, experimental support is now available for variants with GPU: Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M. The Dell Latitude 6400 XFR (rugged variant) was also tested today (Intel graphics) and confirmed working in Libreboot 20230423.

• The Nvidia variants are not supported in Libreboot 20230423. Support is available in an experimental branch of Libreboot. 6400 XFR testing+photo provided, courtesy Mark Cornick (mcornick on Libreboot IRC).

Leftovers

• Enjoy soul classics made famous by Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, All Green, Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Bessie Smith and more.

• I mentioned casually in passing that I have houseplants. My peace lily has been troublesome; my other plants have grown and thrived. A friend mentioned in passing that peace lilies can be difficult plants to grow and thrive. The wisdom shared by my friend — the sort of serendipitious remark that stands out in your mind — provided me with a semblance of relief. It was not I who was the problem (Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero is now singing softly in my mind), with my forgetfulness interfering with watering schedules.

• Deep Transformation Network – Artists and Creatives Group, hosted by Christina Conklin and Michele Guieu Tuesday, May 16, 2023. 12:00 pm  to 1:15 pm PST – Online THE LINK TO THE EVENT IS HERE.

• Each and every Finn should know at least how to use e-mail, manage their own affairs in digital services, use passwords and identify themselves in services. This is reflected in the digital skills recommendations published by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. The recommendations have been published as part of the programme of the Digital Skills Week that begins today. The topic of the week is Digital Courage. Digital courage is needed in order to transition to primarily providing digital services.

• Online Exhibition opened March 13, 2023 Featured Artists Jodie Atherton (US), Christina Conklin (US), Alison Lee Cousland (Australia), Yvonne C Espinoza (US), Ries Faison (US), Diane Farris (US), Deborah Kennedy (US), Michele Guieu (US), Rosalind Lowry (Ireland), Peggy Rose (US), Susan Smith (US), Kim Tanzer (US), Marcela Villasenor (US), Karen Viola (US).

• The 25-year-old “Chrisley Knows Best” star was granted guardianship of her niece and younger brother after her parents reported to prison for tax evasion and bank fraud.

• The Deputy Chancellor of Justice noted that only about five percent masters-level economics courses at Aalto University are taught in Finnish.

• In her book, “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English,” Valerie Fridland argues that many maligned verbal tics play useful roles.

• Erin Ye reflects on productivity culture and the importance of taking it easy in this fourth installment of her column “Nonanswers.”

Science

• Researchers say the 7,000-year-old road, now sunken beneath the sea, was used by Neolithic people.

Education

• As schools struggle to find teachers, more governors are pushing for teacher pay increases. It’s not clear how far pay raises will go toward relieving the shortages. Some teachers say it’s too little, too late to fix problems that are years in the making.

Hardware

• Phison executive expects further 3D NAND production cuts, as producers lose billions in the first quarter.

• LOLIN S3 Mini is a tiny ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth IoT development board that follows the Wemos D1 Mini form factor and supports its equally tiny stackable shields to add relays, displays, sensors, and so on. Wemos/LOLIN introduced their first ESP32-S3 board last year with the LOLIN S3 board with plenty of I/Os and an affordable $7 price tag.  But I prefer the company’s Mini form factor because of its size and the ability to select add-on boards to easily add a range of features to your projects.>

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Fighting modern slavery takes courage. One couple is using every tool available – including education – to combat bonded labor in India’s mammoth sugar industry.

• A mother collapsed from hunger and exhaustion after walking two miles with her two young children to a food bank in South Shields, in the north east of England.

• On January 13, staff at the Hospitality and Hope centre in South Tyneside had to arrange for the family to be taken home and for emergency food support to be provided. The mother and partner are both working but had been going hungry so their children could eat.

Proprietary

• LinkedIn is the latest tech company to announce layoffs.

Security

• Several high-severity vulnerabilities have been found in the WebKitGTK web engine, including a use after free issue that may have been actively exploited (CVE-2023-28205).

• These bugs could result in the exposure of sensitive information and the execution of arbitrary code.

• It was recently discovered that PHP could be made to bypass password checking if a specially crafted input was provided (CVE-2023-0567).

• This flaw could possibly allow applications to accept any password as valid, contrary to expectations, potentially leading to the compromise of critical systems and sensitive information.

• The shopping cart malware known as Magecart is still one of the most popular tools in the attacker’s toolkit – and despite efforts to mitigate and eradicate its presence, it’s the unwanted gift that just keeps on giving.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Although the requirement for mandatory electronic identification (eID) cards has been dropped for a few months now, the receipt of identity documents in the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (PMLP) departments still take weeks. The service is still short-staffed, which has been a problem for years now, Latvian Radio reported on May 7.

• Arkansas and Utah have already passed restrictions and at least seven other states and Congress are considering similar age requirements.

• The Bangladesh government’s updated draft data protection bill is a welcome revision of its 2022 attempt to address the country’s lack of a comprehensive data protection law, but there is still room for constructive change to heighten regulatory certainty.

Defence/Aggression

• Temer Temel was attacked on Wednesday evening as he got out of his vehicle

• Republican gun fetishism has forced us to normalize mass shootings.

• Some of the dead and injured belonged to the same families. The Mendoza sisters, in elementary school, both died.

• As the city of Allen mourns victims, authorities examine racist social media posts that they say belonged to the gunman.

• The mass shooting at a shopping center in Allen, Texas, has exerted an unexpectedly raw and emotional force on the State Legislature.

• “About 5,598 families were displaced and are hosted at different sites…”

• The United Nations projects the number of refugees could rise to 860,000 in the next six months.

• On Monday night, a monument to Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan leader Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas was defaced in the town of Merkinė.

• Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Friday urged Burkina Faso’s authorities to ensure an independent and impartial inquiry into a massacre in the northern village of Karma that occurred on April 20. This reiterated an earlier call for an investigation by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

• The two sides seek to control areas in the capital before any possible negotiations, and they have no desire or motives to sit at any negotiating table.

• At least 452 civilian deaths in Myanmar’s Shan and Kayah states since coup.

• Israeli aircraft conducted strikes early Tuesday on Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said, and the group said three senior commanders were killed in the attacks.

• A crowd of a few hundred people targeted İstanbul Mayor İmamoğlu’s rally in Erzurum. The interior minister implied that the attack was “staged” by the opposition.

• Selma Ateş, sister of the assassinated ex-president of Grey Wolves, draws attention to the “network” around the murder, including politicians, parliamentarians, and bagmen, and asks, “What is the power that brings all of them together?”

• The justice minister criticized İstanbul Mayor İmamoğlu for his tone when speaking with the Erzurum governor.

• Ekrem İmamoğlu, İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor and the future Vice-President if the Nation Alliance wins the presidential elections, came to Konya despite threats made and addressed the meeting in the Anıt square.

• Many victims of the tragedy in the state of Kerala were children who were sightseeing on a boat that officials said was overcrowded.

• The military wing of Islamic Jihad — which Israel, the United States and many other Western countries classify as a terrorist organization — confirmed the deaths of its leaders.

• Serbia has increased police presence in schools across the country after two mass shootings last week left 17 dead and more than 20 wounded. The shootings happened within 48 hours.

• Democracy activists call for a boycott of Heiniken, Carlsberg and ThaiBev products.

• The recent unclassified version of the defence strategic review (DSR) highlights Australia’s focus on acquiring cutting-edge technology for its military.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

• With investments of nearly EUR 2 million, the construction of a solar power plant has been launched in Ludza municipality on the border with the city of Zilupe. The “green” power plant is expected to provide at least 1300 households with electricity, Latvian Radio reported on May 8.

• The FTX founder, who has been charged with fraud, said the crypto exchange and its law firm had been acting against him and offering only the most incriminating evidence to prosecutors.

• The plant will export electricity to Vietnam and is the country’s latest power venture.

• Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has halted bitcoin withdrawals for the second time in a day, citing large volumes. “Our team is currently working on a fix and will reopen (bitcoin) withdrawals as soon as possible,” the company said in a tweet on Monday.

• Household energy bills are unlikely to fall below £2,000 for at least almost a year, new analysis shows.

• Cornwall Insight has forecast that the price cap on bills will remain above £2,000 until at least the first quarter of 2024.

Wildlife/Nature

• You suddenly find that you’re able to distinguish the pa-chip-chip-chip of an American goldfinch. Before you know it, you’re mimicking bird calls.

• “Rich nations need to understand that they have a debt to pay for emitting carbon dioxide, that’s why they should pay this debt…”

• You can set your watch by it. At 10 pm every night—11 pm in the Summer—the light display in the Shanghai central business district goes dark.

Finance

• Private equity is facing a wave of portfolio company bankruptcies, due to rising interest rates and slowing economic growth.

• What to know: The situation looks worse than it really is, at least in the short term.

• President Biden is offering a reasonable path to resolve the latest debt ceiling standoff. Are Republicans willing to take it?

• The Robodebt saga was not the Public Service’s finest moment. The recent release of the National Cabinet minutes confirms that the problems of secrecy, obfuscation and ignoring legal advice are widespread.

• Electricity bill subsidies, wage increases for aged-care workers and a slim surplus are all on the table for the federal budget.  Treasurer Jim Chalmers will announce a near $4 billion surplus forecast in his second budget on Tuesday night, along with smaller than initially forecast deficits each year over the next four years.

• Why “responsible” organizations are enabling G.O.P. extortion.

• The robbery was an unusual attempted heist in a country with famously low levels of crime.

• Congressional leaders will meet with President Joe Biden to try to avert a default on the national debt and ensuing harm for the U.S. economy.

• A Phoenix judge ordered the city to begin clearing tents in the Zone, an area that has as many as 1,100 people sleeping unsheltered on a given night.

• In Gowanus, a group of comedians raised money for medical-debt relief by walking a sodden red carpet, bedecked in upcycled garbage.

• According to data collected by Dun & Bradstreet, bankruptcy rates have been on the rise in Finland. However, there are signs of stabilization in some regions, such as Pohjanmaa, Lappi, and Etelä-Savo, where the number of bankruptcies decreased compared to the previous year. The cumulative number of bankruptcies in Finland began to deviate from previous years in June 2022, with a 26% increase from the previous year.

• 54% of companies hope for tax reductions by the government to improve Finland’s competitiveness and employment rates, according to a survey by the Chambers of Commerce. In addition to increasing local agreement, tax reduction was seen as the most popular option to improve Finland’s competitiveness and employment rates. When asked which tax reduction would help companies the most, 71% of companies responded that reducing labor taxes would. The survey received responses from 1560 Chamber of Commerce member companies.

• Higher mortgage rates and increased rental costs pinch finances

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• While Kurdish politicians up their rhetoric in favor of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, polls show strong support in three Kurdish-dominated provinces for the prime oppositional contender.

• Seven years ago Latvia signed the Istanbul Convention, but has still not ratified it. The case of the woman murdered in Jēkabpils in mid-April has led several non-governmental organizations to talk about it repeatedly, also claiming the responsibility of politicians for the tragedy. However, some parties represented in the Saeima do not intend to change their negative attitude toward it, Latvian Television’s De Facto reported on May 7.

• Washington’s centripetal forces affect journalists as much as politicians, creating narratives that are hard to break out of.

• Surges of migrants have shaped President Biden’s policies at the border in ways that few of his allies imagined when he was running for president.

• Donald J. Trump never showed up for the trial, nor did his lawyer call witnesses. Their case was simple: The writer E. Jean Carroll had made up her story.

• While the president argues that he is the one best positioned to stop his predecessor from returning to the White House, surveys indicate that he starts the 2024 race facing enormous challenges.

• The clashes in state capitals have faded, but the Republican push for stricter state election laws is organized and planning for the long term.

• Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has announced an early presidential election will be held in a move that follows recent constitutional amendments that extended the presidential term from five to seven years.

• The Paris police force and France’s interior minister faced questions and criticism Monday over why a march of around 600 neo-Nazis through the streets of the capital was authorised at the weekend.

• French President Emmanuel Macron led the traditional ceremony on Paris’ Champs-Elysees Monday, commemorating the day that marked the end of World War II in Europe in 1945.

• Chile’s far-right Republican Party finished in first place Sunday in a nationwide vote to choose the 50 members of a committee that will draft a replacement to the country’s dictatorship-era constitution, according to an official count.

• A US court heard closing arguments Monday in a closely watched civil trial that accuses ex-president Donald Trump of raping and defaming an American former magazine columnist.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Bulgarian Prosecutor Ivan Geshev was rebuked by a deputy for not quickly addressing media misinformation about a roadside explosion last week involving the nation’s top lawman.

Censorship/Free Speech

• No one disputes that George Berkeley was among Ireland’s greatest thinkers, but he was also an unapologetic slaver. Now, Trinity College Dublin is taking his name off one of its buildings.

• A controversial painting by Swiss artist Miriam Cahn on display at a Paris exhibition was vandalised with spray paint Sunday, the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum said.

• The charter will apply to all student discipline cases filed with the Office of Community Standards on or after May 2, while any case filed before then will continue to be processed under the Student Judicial Charter of 1997. According to the Committee of 12, which researched student discipline at Stanford in recent years and proposed the charter, the new charter has multiple tiers and includes fewer instances of criminalistic language.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Yle’s funding has become a topic of discussion during talks aimed at forming Finland’s next government.

• John Archibald, who has been a journalist in Birmingham, Ala., for years, was anxious about his son Ramsey’s decision to go into journalism. He needn’t have worried.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The writers and entertainment companies remain far apart on several key issues, including money, and the standoff could last for months.

• President Joe Biden is calling for a “fair deal” for Hollywood’s striking writers. He hosted a White House screening Monday of the the upcoming streaming series “American Born Chinese” to mark Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The president spoke ahead of the pilot’s screening before an overflow crowd of hundreds of community leaders, elected officials and cast members and producers from the show. In his first public comments on the strike, which hits the one-week mark Tuesday, Biden says, “I sincerely hope the writers strike in Hollywood gets resolved and the writers are given a fair deal they deserve as soon as possible.”

• Die Jim Crow Records, the first record company to work exclusively with musicians impacted by the United States prison system, has collaborated with another formerly incarcerated artist named EL BENTLY 448.

• Seeking asylum is one of the most fraught moments in an individual’s life. Now the U.S. requires asylum seekers to begin the process with a phone application that could exacerbate inequalities.

• New York City officials are casting a wide net as they scramble to house the influx of migrants. The Flatiron Building said no.

• Title 42, the rule used to immediately expel migrants, will end this week. U.S. officials expect illegal crossings to increase, placing additional strain on an already overtaxed system.

• “…This body is specifically designed to provide guidance and counsel to the Parliament…”

• The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Monday condemned the Taliban’s use of corporal punishment and the death penalty in Afghanistan. The UN says the Taliban imposed “lashings and other beatings, amputations and executions by shooting, beheading and hanging” between 2010 and 2021 before taking over Afghanistan’s government.

• Protesters angry about Jordan Neely’s death took over a busy Manhattan subway stop, with some of them jumping to the tracks near the electrified third rail.

• The leader of a major anti-abortion group has aligned herself with former President Donald Trump, just weeks after raising questions about his commitment to restricting access to the procedure. Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group says she had a “terrific” meeting with Trump Monday at his Florida home. Last month, Dannenfelser called Trump’s contention that abortion restrictions should be left up to individual states, not the federal government, a “morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate.” Republicans seeking their party’s 2024 presidential nomination have been navigating how to deal with calls for a national ban on abortion in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

• Editor’s Note: The following article contains discussions of sexual violence and assault. Chloe Wilson-Henline, one of the survivors featured in this article, serves as an opinion writer for The Kent Stater and KentWired.

• Legal scholar and blogger Eric Segall puts forward several excellent suggestions.

• Conservatives who support the bill recognize the conflict between unannounced home invasions and the Second Amendment.

• Many abortion providers feel that the organization is too cautious and too corporate—forcing independent clinics to take the biggest risks.

• We revere the man and revile the strategy, but King knew what he was doing.

• The number of workplace accidents in the construction industry decreased slightly in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to a recent press release. However, the accident frequency rate increased due to a greater decline in the number of working hours than in the number of accidents.

• While the overall number of workplace accidents decreased by around one percent, the accident frequency rate increased in the construction industry because of the decline in the number of working hours.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The IP3 Awards, hosted annually by Public Knowledge, recognize individuals who have made significant contributions in the three areas of “IP”: Intellectual Property, Information Policy, and Internet Protocol.

• Let’s just say since 2019, mobile internet has just gone to the pits. Internet speeds plummeted and as if that was not enough, the stability of the internet connection itself took a big hit. And it’s not just that.

Monopolies

Patents

• Promoting sustainability throughout the IP world

• Finalists representing 12 countries to be honoured at ceremony on 4 July

Copyrights

• As Hartford-based stream-ripper Yout appeals the dismissal of its long-running lawsuit against the RIAA, the industry representative is firing back against the action’s “implausible claims” and urging the appellate court to affirm the prior rulings. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) just recently took aim at Yout’s appeal in a detail-oriented 60-page answering brief.

• Taylor Swift announced the release date for the next version of her re-recorded album, Speak Now. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will release on July 7. Swift made the announcement on stage during her Eras Tour stop in Nashville.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

Internet/Gemini

• Classes started up again recently and I’m taking the last university course I’ll ever have to take. There’s not a ton of offerings during spring/summer, but I saw an intro to AI course was being offered and I figured it would be a fun one to end things on.

• It’s pretty chill, even despite the condensed schedule that spring and summer classes at my school take on. I think that’s owing to it being a senior-level course (which I find tend to treat students more like adults) and the smallish class size which lets the lectures be very discussion focused. And the fact that it’s the only class I have to focus on doesn’t hurt at all.

• To perhaps get bogged down in the technical details, I think Gemini owes a lot of this to its thoughtful design. Specifically here by not having allegories for CSS or Javascript. All that’s left at that point is the text. There are no design or interactivity knobs to tune to make up for poor writing.

• But I believe it’s bigger than that. Gemini’s design eschews extensibility, and a lack of styling options or a client-side programming language are just 2 examples of this larger choice.

Programming

• I learnt about smolweb circa 2020 and lost all contact with it. Now after a chat with some friends at a Ruby irc, I discovered Gemini and fell in love. After a while I found here. So nice to meet you all

• Now I’m feeling a little motivated to evict python from this script, because there’s some friction in doing this task partly in bash and partly in python.

• Python isn’t the greatest scripting language for one-liners, and using the -c switch isn’t really useful any more beyond that. So for now this script (1) creates a tempfile, (2) dumps mostly hard-coded python into it (from a bash HEREDOC), (3) executes it, (4) captures the return code, (5) unconditionally removes the tempfile, and (6) exits the script if the return code was unsatisfactory. That’s…not great.

• But I haven’t written any zig in around 4 months, and never did it daily for any sustained period. So going through ziglings is supposed to refresh my memory and get my skills back up. With recent advancements in the tooling and standard library (in particular package management and TLS) I’m interested in starting to use it for small web applications.

• What I really noticed about going through ziglings is that I’m *flying* through this. I got through 50 in a day, and spent maybe 20 minutes today getting through another 20. That’s probably partly because I have some experience here already, but I know that the structure of this project (over 100 tasks) would push me towards prioritizing speed regardless. I barely read the comments (some of them are quite long), and I’m mostly kind of banging on it until the build is green. This is what concerns me.

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