● 09.11.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 11/09/2023: Zenwalk Current 2023 and Kodi “Omega” Alpha 3

Posted in News Roundup at 11:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• This week brought us news about new major releases of the Linux Lite and Manjaro distributions, some exciting changes for the upcoming Fedora Asahi KDE Remix distribution for Apple Silicon, the first Release Candidate of the upcoming Linux 6.6 kernel, as well as more goodies for Linux gamers and for hardware support.

• On top of that, fans of the KDE Plasma desktop and KDE apps got a new KDE Frameworks release, and LibreOffice 7.5 users have a new update to install. Below, you can read this week’s hottest news and access all the distro and package downloads in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for September 10th, 2023.

Desktop/Laptop

• Frustrated by the constraints of your current operating system? It’s time for a change. Welcome to a world of endless possibilities with Linux — an open-source powerhouse that can revolutionize your computing experience.

• Whether you’re a tech enthusiast seeking new horizons or simply looking for a reliable, customizable, and free operating system, Linux has something extraordinary to offer.

• Let’s dive into the realm of Linux and discover how this versatile operating system can empower you to take control of your digital life.

• Found an old article of mine online. I think this might have been the first review of a machine preinstalled with Linux from a major manufacturer in the UK.

• EXCLUSIVE

• Linux’s growing popularity gets a boost as Dell entrusts its latest high-end workstation to the OS.

• A sure sign of Linux’s growing popularity is that vendors are starting to offer it as a pre-installed OS. Until recently, this has largely been confined to specialist Linux system builders such as Penguin Computing, Digital Networks UK or the large US company VA Linux Computing. Now, though, mainstream corporate vendors are starting to preload Linux and Dell is one of the first to deliver.

• The Precision Workstation 420 is a high-end workstation system. The midi-tower case can be opened without tools and internal components, such as the PSU and drive cage, can be released with latches and swung out on hinges for access to thei840-based motherboard. This supports dual Pentium III processors running at up to 1GHz and up to four RIMMs; the review machine had two 64MB modules for 128MB of dual-channel RDRAM.

Audiocasts/Shows

• **icon-naming-utils** , **icu4c** , **id3lib** , **imagemagick** from the

• shasum -a256=995b892827707b3e786b3db0391ce2ebb8ced51ca572c565bc0dcc90b5bdc867

• Brent’s new Framework laptop has been torn apart and put back together again. We’ll find out if it’s up to his standards. Plus, we’re kicking off a new build.

Instructionals/Technical

• In this post, we will cover how to create a virtual machine in Proxmox VE using the web interface (UI).

• Sending key presses to another device using software that emulates a keyboard, but isn’t a physical keyboard, is a fascinating concept. We understand that in the Linux/Unix environment and with Python, this can be accomplished through low-level programming. But can the R programming language achieve the same feat? If it can, then how does it work?

• In Linux, there are multiple tools for task scheduling, and one of the well-known options that you might have heard of is the cron job.

• At some point, you’re going to need to connect to a MySQL 8 database remotely to manage your databases. Jack Wallen shows you how to make this possible.

• In this blog post, we will show you how to use variables in Ansible playbook.

• Have many extensions installed on your GNOME desktop? Here’s a new tool to help managing them with a more efficient way.

• Telegram is a cross-platform messaging app that you can use almost on any device.

• Telegram Desktop can be installed on Ubuntu 23.04 by using flatpak, snap or using the source code.

• It’s worth mentioning that Telegram Desktop is the web version of Telegram, which means there may

• Learn step-by-step: Install VMware Workstation Player on Debian 12 (Bookworm) with our comprehensive guide.

• Here’s a fairly simple pair of configurations to enable httpd to serve web pages with relayd acting as a reverse proxy.

• The main purpose of relayd here is to control access to certain parts of a web site. In this example, both httpd and relayd are on the same host.

• SQLite is a robust database management system known for its efficiency and versatility. It offers a streamlined, serverless solution for various applications, making it a popular choice for developers. This guide focuses on how to install SQLite 3 on Fedora Linux, a task that can enhance your development projects significantly.

• Seeking a dependable video conversion solution? HandBrake is your answer. This guide will detail the steps to install HandBrake on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish and Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa. Renowned for its comprehensive suite of features, HandBrake is an essential tool for casual users and professionals navigating the realm of video transcoding.

• The comm command on Linux systems can compare file or directory contents and display the differences in a clear and useful way. Think of “comm” not so much as a reference to “compare” as to “common,” since the command writes to standard output both the lines that are common and the lines that are unique in each of the files or directories.

• One key requirement when using comm is that the content to be compared must be in sorted order. However, there are ways that you can get away with comparing content that isn’t sorted. Some examples of how to do this will be presented in this post.

WINE or Emulation

• Linux today have matured to the point where majority of activities commonly done by computer users can be achieved easily, especially considering most people are primarily using the computer to access internet applications. Even when it comes to gaming, thanks to Steam’s effort in Proton and Steam Deck, Linux is now a pretty viable platform for those who who are not playing competitive games.

Games

• The idea is simple: if you have a game downloaded on another PC and you’re both on the same local network, then Steam can download game data from that PC, avoiding the need to download the game over public [Internet]. Using this method you can reduce your [Internet] usage and enjoy faster download times.

• Readers of a certain age no doubt remember the Atari 2600 — released in 1977, the 8-bit system helped establish the ground rules for gaming consoles as we know them today, all while sporting a swanky faux wood front panel designed to make the system look at home in contemporary living rooms.

• Historically, video game preservation efforts usually cover two types of games. The most common are very old or “retro” games from the 16-bit era or earlier, which are trapped on cartridges until they’re liberated via downloadable ROMs. The other are games that rely on a live service, like Enter the Matrix’s now unplugged servers or whatever games you can only get by downloading them via Nintendo’s Wii Shop Channel, which shut down in 2019.

• But time keeps marching on and a more recent era of games now needs to be attended to if we still want those games to be accessible: indies from the late aughts to mid twenty-teens. That’s right. Fez, an icon of the era and indie games scene, is now more than a decade old. And while we don’t think of this type of work until we need it, Fez, which most PC players booted on Windows 7 when it first came out, is not going to magically run on your Windows 11 machine today without some maintenance.

• The person doing that maintenance, as well as making sure that about 70 of the best known indie games from the same era keep running, is Ethan Lee. He’s not as well known as Fez’s developer Phil Fish, who was also the subject of the documentary Indie Game: The Movie, but this week Lee started publicly marketing the service he’s been quietly providing for over 11 years: maintenance of older games.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Introducing the 11 Amazing Linux Operating System Software for 2023, a comprehensive list of the most advanced and innovative Linux operating systems available in the coming year. As technology continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, Linux stands out as a highly flexible and efficient solution for users seeking cutting-edge features and robust security. With this collection, you will discover a wide range of Linux distributions that cater to different needs, including enterprise environments, gaming enthusiasts, privacy-conscious users, and more. Stay ahead of the curve and explore the exciting possibilities that these Linux operating systems have to offer in 2023.

New Releases

• Zenwalk Current is the rolling release of Zenwalk GNU Linux.

• Current status seems stable enough for an ISO to be published, so here we go

• As usual this edition provides a complete package rebuild from upstream Slackware and Zenwalk specific packages.

• The desktop has been updated to use latest Adwaita themes featuring a unified look for GTK4, GTK3, GTK2 and QT applications.

• On application side, this release introduces Syncthing for realtime folder synchronization with any device from Linux, Android to IOS and Windows (think about it as an Open Source private OneDrive).

• The desktop is built upon the latest stable XFCE environment with the one of a kind original “dock centric” Zenwalk layout. Flatpak package management is installed by default and ready to use.

• Time for the next milestone release for Kodi 21 “Omega”. Slightly delayed this time around compared to what we were striving for, however we are happy to announce the arrival of Alpha 3.

• This is a major release, so, as you’d expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we’d really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across.

• Last month, we released OSMC’s July update, with support for our new flagship device, Vero V which will be launched very soon.

• Since then, we’ve been working hard on a number of bug fixes and improvements for all platforms.

BSD

• Next up in our reports from the p2k23 hackathon is one from Jeremy Evans (jeremy@). Jeremy writes: [...]

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• Two weeks ago, DistroWatch reported that Mageia 9 had been released.

• Back then, I was swamped with work and, even when the Mageia notifier displayed the announcement a week later, I could not perform the upgrade.

• Well, that, and the fact that I normally prefer to do clean installs.

• However, I do not have the time I need to perform a clean install right now, so I decided, rather adventurously, to do the upgrade.

• Yes, this can mean that, if something goes terribly wrong, I might actually end up doing the clean install to fix the problem, which defeats the purpose.  And there are things that can go wrong: the printer-scanner, Steam, my personal configurations…

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• Richard Brown, a long-time contributor to the openSUSE project, shared some results from a recent contributor survey.

• It was about the interest and feasibility of replacing openSUSE Leap with a new community-built offering. Yes? A replacement to openSUSE Leap?

Arch Family

• Having a full Linux mobile or tablet device has always interested me, to have an alternative to Android and use Arch Linux everywhere. Realistically I won’t be able to give up Android on my phone, but what about tablet’s?

• Arch Linux in August 2023 # Staff # We would like to welcome Tomaz Canabrava (tcanabrava) as part of the Arch Linux Package Maintainer team.

• AURWeb # In AURWeb v6.2.7, we primarily focused on bug fixes while revamping Prometheus metrics. We introduced new measures like request tracking and cache-hit/miss ratios for search queries, enhancing our ability to make development decisions and aiding the AUR moderation team in identifying trends.

Debian Family

• Given that we now have consensus on moving forward by moving aliased files from / to /usr, we will also run into the problems that the file move moratorium was meant to prevent. The way forward is detecting them early and applying workarounds on a per-package basis. Said detection is now automated using the Debian Usr Merge Analysis Tool. As problems are reported to the bug tracking system, they are connected to the reports if properly usertagged. Bugs and patches for problem categories DEP17-P2 and DEP17-P6 have been filed.

• Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 6’s ISO is undergoing testing according to the Linux Mint Community website’s ISO Images page. Testing has been going on for six days so far with two sets of failures each for the 32-bit and 64-bit editions of LMDE 6; the third attempt to pass the tests is ongoing.

• LMDE 6, which is codenamed ‘Faye’, brings the latest changes from Linux Mint 21.2 and uses the newish Debian 12 as its base with a newer Linux 6.1 kernel. Some of the changes being inherited from Linux Mint 21.2 include improvements to the Cinnamon desktop through a feature called styles which gives you greater customizability of your theme and accent colours.

• One of the main differences between the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint and LMDE is the matter of lifespan. The main Linux Mint versions have been supported for five years, meanwhile, LMDE has been supported for just two years and you only have a short window to upgrade to the new version.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Discord is a popular communication app that many gamers swear by. If you’re new to Ubuntu and need to install Discord, we’ll show you how.

• We’re covering multiple ways to install Discord, so you can choose the most familiar method. Some users like to use the GUI while others are more comfortable on the command line. If you’re not sure which route to choose, you can always take the simplest approach, which is installing from the Software Store.

• An enjoyable trivia quiz about Ubuntu version numbers and codenames of past releases.

Open Hardware/Modding

• It’s the latter I find most interesting, because it has the allure of being rational. Frames per second per dollar is quantifiable, testable, and devoid of marketing or other influences, so it’s the one you should go with, right?

• This tutorial will show you how to use a Raspberry PI as email header analyzer with Python.

• The Orange Pi Zero 2W has been released as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W with more RAM options and a lower cost.

• This is about the stuff I have in my office that I could live without but wouldn’t want to. Not stuff like “a good chair” because a good chair is not optional. And not stuff like “paper”. This is the stuff that you might not have thought about already.

• The back scratcher at right cost me about $1 and brings me joy every time I use it. My back is itchy, it is distracting me from work, aha, I just grab the back scratcher off the hook and the problem is solved in ten seconds. Not only is it a sensual pleasure, but also I get the satisfaction of a job done efficiently and effectively.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Want to make a change in an open source project? Take the Nike approach and Just Do It. 👟

• Collabora continues to relentlessly shift the needle to make high-quality open-source software not just an aspiration, but an expectation. We’re pleased to announce an extension of our collaboration with Arm, providing more surety and capability for Panfrost.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• Two weeks ago, we released LibreOffice 7.6, our new major version of the office suite. And so far we’ve had 1,587,383 downloads! We hope all users are enjoying it, and the many new features.

• Some more stats: 31,519 impressions of the announcement tweet, with 690 likes and 231 reposts. Our Mastodon post had 293 likes and 272 reposts, while the New Features video on YouTube has had 17,339 views. (It’s also on PeerTube as well.)

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

• EUP has, since 2010, returned a surplus in most years. This followed a history of break-even/ loss-making, at one point requiring a loan from the University of Edinburgh (which was repaid in 2010, a stellar year for our publishing program, with several major publishing projects coming to fruition). The turnaround wasn’t quick; we had become a wholly-owned subsidiary company of the University of Edinburgh nine years previously, in 2001, granting us a large degree of independence – financially, strategically and editorially – which allowed us to make more commercial publishing decisions. A major strategic review followed, which led to several key decisions: [...]

Programming/Development

• According to a statement, the training and development programme for blind and sighted teachers entails 16 workshops throughout September.

• The teachers are equipped with tactile tools, with the Tanks Coding App also used to empower teachers, to help them introduce visually-impaired learners to the world of coding.

• The approach is to use physical activities, such as games and pen-and-paper exercises, to enhance 21 century skills, such as problem-solving, strategy, communication, computational thinking and group work, say the organisations.

• Bona Africa is a collaborative project between non-profit coding skills development organisation Tangible Africa and the Bona uBuntu Eastern Cape non-profit programme.

• Professor Jean Greyling, Tangible Africa founder and head of the department and associate professor at the Nelson Mandela University Computing Sciences Department, saysfunds were raised through a crowd-sourcing drive to support the development of the Bona Africa tools.

• widely used by (currently) 1096 other packages on CRAN, downloaded 30.5 million / vignette) by Conrad and myself has been cited 552 times according

• This release brings bugfix upstream release 12.6.4. Conrad prepared this a few days ago; it takes me the usual day or so to run reverse-dependency check against the by-now almost 1100 CRAN packages using RcppArmadillo. And this time, CRAN thought it had found two issues when I submitted and it took two more days til we were all clear about those two being false positives (as can, and does, happen). So today it reached CRAN.

• Am I changing my mind about enough things? I don’t know. But it is definitely worthwhile to once in a while examine your beliefs about how to develop software. In many of the above cases, it took somebody else to show me, or convince me, of other ways of working. My conclusion is that collaboration and pair programming is important for spreading good ideas.

• In the wonderful book The AWK Programming Language by Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan, there are a few pages at the end of chapter 7 that present a simplified version of the Make utility – written in a single page of AWK code.

• What about the second line, though? Did software development become “bloated, overengineered, and slow”?

• Let’s start with that first adjective – bloated. It comes up again and again in various comments on the internet: software has become bloated, which is used to mean that software uses too much memory, it’s slow, inefficient, and, actually, why do we need all that crap.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Suppose that you’re writing Bourne shell code that involves using some commands in a subshell to capture some information into a shell variable, ‘AVAR=$(….)’, but you accidentally write it with a space after the ‘=’. Then you will get something like this: [...]

Standards/Consortia

• The specification adopts two specific media types as representation indicators, also considering the most used standards at the moment, for data transport, namely JSON and XML; resulting in two registered media types: [...]

Leftovers

• Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the level of sending HTML email, so if you receive Computers Are Bad by email and want the benefit of the pictures, consider reading this online instead (the link is at the top of the email).

• In the aftermath of a nuclear attack, United States military and government policy focuses on one key goal: retaliation. Nuclear policy has long been based on the concept of a credible deterrent, often referred to as mutually assured destruction. It is surprising to some that the technical history of the Cold War is so deeply intertwined with the history of telecommunications technology, but it’s obvious in this context: a fundamental part of the nuclear deterrent is a robust, nationwide communications system. For destruction to be mutually assured, we must have confidence that the national command authority will be able to order a nuclear strike under all post-attack conditions.

• About 500 of you subscribe by email. A few thousand of you subscribe by RSS. Even more come via links from social media.

• Whether it’s distance, pandemics, or both that separate you from your elderly loved ones, what’s the best idea for communicating with them so they don’t suffer from loneliness on top of issues like dementia? We’d say it’s probably something like [Stefan Baur]’s Grannophone.

• Once in a while, we see projects that could easily pass for commercial products. This is one of those projects: a (surprisingly) low-cost DIY macro pad from [Josh R] that was designed to be a cheaper alternative to the various stream decks out there. Between the carbon fiber top plate and the crystal-clear acrylic keycaps, this is quite the elegant solution.

• Although new VGA-equipped monitors can still be bought, the old standard is definitely on its way out by now, being replaced by high-speed digital interfaces like HDMI and DisplayPort. It therefore makes sense to prepare for a VGA-less future, as [Yeo Kheng Meng] is doing. He designed an 8-bit ISA display card with an HDMI output that enables even the very first generation of PCs to talk to a modern monitor.

Science

• What have we missed?

• Ancient material turned into a supercapacitor.

Hardware

• SMLIGHT SLZB-06M is a Zigbee 3.0 to Ethernet, PoE, USB, or WiFi adapter designed to work with multi-vendor software systems such as Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant ZHA. This will let you integrate any supported Zigbee devices into smart home automation systems like Home Assistant, OpenHub, or HomeSeer. The SLZB-06M is a variant of the SLZB-06 Zigbee PoE adapter introduced last year with the main difference being the Zigbee chip as the new model is equipped with Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 microcontroller instead of Texas Instruments СС2652Р.

• Welcome to Suntember! I saw a few people mention this on Mastodon, and I thought it was a great idea.

• [...]

• We’re starting this series here with this gorgeous Sun SPARCStation 5 which has taken pride of place under the monitor on my retrocomputing table. I took it outside for some better SUN light. AAAAAAAAAAH! Thank you.

• [...]

• I’ve had a proper history of this beautiful box in my drafts folder for a while; I’ve been waiting on some better lighting kit to detail the internals properly. In the meantime I want to show this specific connector located on the back in the first slot: [...]

• When you think of electric motors, you usually think of magnets. But magnets are heavy, and good magnets can pose problems when you need lots of them. A technology called SESM (separately excited synchronous motors) requires no magnets, but now ZF — a German company — claims to have a different scheme using inductive excitation. Motors that employ SESM tend to be larger and require a direct current to turn the rotor. This DC is often supplied by slip rings or an AC induction with a rectifier. The innovation here is that the inductive excitation is built completely into the shaft, which the company claims makes the motor both compact and powerful.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• After the total number of visits dropped in June and July by around 10 per cent, Similarweb claims ChatGPT’s downward trajectory seems to have eased up in August. Despite experiencing a 3 per cent drop worldwide, the AI bot saw a 0.4 per cent increase in the United States.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

• IBM makes plans with Meta’s Llama 2. Plus, why open source may or may not be a differentiator in generative AI.

Security

• Teams that compete in the DARPA-led challenge will be able to win for prizes worth a total of more than $25 million.

• One of Myanmar’s biggest and most powerful ethnic minority militias arrested and repatriated more than 1,200 Chinese nationals allegedly involved in criminal online scam operations.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (frr, kernel, libraw, mutt, and open-vm-tools), Fedora (cjose, pypy, vim, wireshark, and xrdp), Gentoo (apache), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable, clamav, ghostscript, librsvg, libtiff, openssl, poppler, postgresql, python-pypdf2, and unrar), Red Hat (flac), SUSE (firefox, geoipupdate, icu73_2, libssh2_org, rekor, skopeo, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.2, linux-ibm, linux-oracle, linux-starfive, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gkeop-5.15, and opendmarc).

• Hinds County is still experiencing computer issues following a cyberattack. The tax collector’s office will remain closed on Monday. The Circuit Clerk Office has also canceled jury duty for the week.

• Hinds County Administrator, Kenny Wayne Jones said in a statement, “Our systems and networks are being assessed, the process is intricate and time-consuming.”

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• In our rapidly evolving lives, the credibility of documents, images, and videos online has emerged as a concern. The pandemic and recent elections have helped highlight this issue. In the case of elections, one area that stands out to me is concerns over voter roll integrity, a pillar of our democratic process.

• As we grapple with these issues, it is important to explore what a solution might look like that balances the associated privacy concerns. Is it possible to provide assurance of integrity and transparency while also providing accommodations for privacy and accountability?

Privacy/Surveillance

• Now, some employees of government agencies said they have received directives not to use Apple iPhones for work. Internet users in China also have been circulating accounts and screenshots said to contain notices to government employees and state-owned businesses ordering or urging them to adopt domestic brands of cellphones and computers for their work.

Defence/Aggression

• The Nixon administration deployed a variety of policies and covert operations to maximize pressure on the Chilean government. This included a C.I.A.-funded anti-government propaganda media campaign; blocking loans to Chile from multilateral financial institutions; offering secret funds to foment strikes; and assuring the Chilean military it would have full U.S. support should it move to oust Mr. Allende.

• This September marks fifty years since the violent overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Allende’s Popular Unity (UP) government sparked widespread interest across the world.

• The family of a Swedish EU diplomat held captive in Iran for more than 500 days called on September 10 for his immediate release, as he marked his birthday in a Tehran prison. [...]

• “This is not random, aberrant behavior,” Ms. Edwards said. “This is orchestrated as part of state policy to intimidate, instill fear or punish to extract information and confessions.”

• Citing the arrest order, NRK said the suspect had allegedly been caught conducting illegal signal surveillance in a rental car near the Norwegian prime minister’s office and the defense ministry.

• The federal government is poised to release a new cybersecurity strategy, which follows last year’s criminal intrusions into Australia’s health and telecommunications sectors and recent revelations that the US government is hunting Chinese malware that could disrupt ]…]

• Air strikes in the Quoro market area of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, killed at least 40 civilians and injured at least 50 more. The market “massacre,” with the highest death toll since the beginning of the war in Sudan, was reported by the Resistance Committee, a local activist group providing humanitarian aid to victims of the war.

• Samira Gozaine, the director of Panama’s National Migration Institute, held a press conference with Security Minister Juan Manuel Pino on Friday, explaining plans to increase border control and surveillance on land and in the air.

• Just over 20 years ago, Spanish naval personnel operating in the Arabian Sea intercepted a merchant ship sailing from North Korea to the port of Aden.

• The governor of New Mexico is asking the U.S. Justice Department to deploy more federal agents to the state in the aftermath of the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Thursday sent a letter to the U.S. attorney general to request aid in efforts to stem gun violence and human trafficking. The governor says she has repeatedly requested federal law enforcement deployments since June 2022. A separate emergency health order taps into $750,000 to shore up public safety.

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

Environment

• The ongoing question on Metaculus about Antarctic sea ice has had its community median prediction move quite distinctly the past few days, where it’s now at 85 % after having spent some time above 95 %.

• A broad consensus exists, of course, on how to slow the climactic changes that are beginning to wreak havoc like this: Replace the fossil fuels that currently power much of the world with a wide variety of carbon-free sources. In fact, the federal government approved one such project, a geothermal energy initiative in the Nevada desert a mile outside of Gerlach, last year. The exploratory project, funded by an international renewable energy company called Ormat Technologies, aims to find out whether geothermal — which taps naturally occurring heat under Earth’s surface to produce clean energy — is commercially viable in the Nevada desert.

• Edwin Gakunga is a student at the Kenya School of Law and a JURIST Assistant Editor. He files this dispatch from Nairobi.  The bustling heart of Nairobi, Kenya, was the stage last week of a historic event—the inaugural Africa Climate Summit (ACS), held from September 4th to 6th.

• The rains have flooded low-lying areas and blocked roads.

Energy/Transportation

• At least in theory. The extraction of lithium can, depending on the methods used, emit vast amounts of CO2, contaminate groundwater with dangerous heavy metals, and guzzle tons of fossil fuels. Its environmental toll shouldn’t be overlooked in the rush to green transportation infrastructure.

• Nearly 200,000 heat pumps were sold in Finland last year, up by more than half from the previous year. The rush for installations was driven by higher energy prices – partly triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – as well as state subsidies for replacing oil boilers and climate concerns, according to Jussi Hirvonen, executive director of the Finnish Heat Pump Association.

Finance

• Authorities are scrambling to resolve ‘overconcentration of talent’ amid students’ preference for medical school.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Man, I wish politics were boring, but that is never going to happen. The only way a party can improve their popularity is by being seen as different and in some way better, so we will always have parties saying exactly that: That the others are wrong and that they are better.

• However, in many cases there is actually a right and a wrong way to engage with a problem, so what will happen if one side wants to become popular with the worse solution? Well, lies, propaganda and disinformation of course!

• UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Olivier De Schutter cited poverty on Friday as the “root cause” of violence and instability in Ecuador. De Schutter urged Ecuador’s leaders to continue their efforts to fight back against the drug-related crime that has engulfed the region.

• The President of Republika Srpska (RS) Milorad Dodik, claimed on Thursday that he instructed police to arrest and deport High Representative Christian Schmidt upon his entry to RS territory. Reuters reported that these statements were made at a press conference with Bosnia and Herzegovina Security Minister Nenad Nešić, who supports Dodik’s actions.

• President Joe Biden says his visit to Vietnam to showcase stronger ties with Hanoi isn’t about trying to start a “cold war” with China. He says it’s part of a broader effort to provide global stability by building U.S. relationships throughout Asia at a time of tensions with Beijing. Biden said at a news conference Sunday in Vietnam that his efforts are not about “containing China.” The American president came to Hanoi as Vietnam was elevating the United States to its highest diplomatic status, comprehensive strategic partner. That’s evidence of how far the relationship has evolved from what Biden referred to as the “bitter past” of the Vietnam War.

• President Biden and the Vietnamese leader Nguyen Phu Trong marked a new phase in the U.S.-Vietnam relationship amid China’s mounting ambitions. “The United States is a Pacific nation, and we’re not going anywhere,” Mr. Biden said.

• Visiting Hanoi, the president cemented a new strategic partnership that puts the memories of the past behind them and focuses on mutual concerns over Beijing’s assertiveness in the region.

• Any signs of coercion or military aggression is not good for business, said Ms Hsiao Bi-khim.

• With the Senate returning from its long summer recess, the minority leader circulated a note from the congressional doctor saying an examination and tests showed no signs of a stroke or seizure.

• US President Joe Biden hailed closer ties with Vietnam on Sunday as the two countries struck a deal to deepen cooperation, including on semiconductors, but said he was not aiming to contain China.

• A BenarNews reporter traveled with a select group during a Philippine resupply mission to Ayungin Shoal.

• Congress, the presidency, the FBI, the judiciary, the media, colleges and universities, big business, churches, scientists, technology companies, labor unions, public health leaders. What do all these institutions have in common? Answer: Americans don’t trust them any more.

• As Donald Trump and his inner circle potentially face indictments over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Fox News is also in legal hot water for amplifying the same unfounded claims about election fraud. Dominion Voting Systems, which makes voting machines, has sued the conservative cable news outlet for $1.6 billion in a defamation suit that has exposed how top hosts and executives knew they were spreading misinformation but continued to push the conspiracy theories on air. “Fox News, despite its corporate name, is not in fact a news organization,”

• The US Congress is heading back into session, and they are hitting the ground running on AI. We’re going to be hearing a lot about various plans and positions on AI regulation in the coming weeks, kicking off with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s first AI Insight Forum on Wednesday. This and planned future forums will bring together some of the top people in AI to discuss the risks and opportunities posed by advances in this technology and how Congress might write legislation to address them.

• This newsletter will break down what exactly these forums are and aren’t, and what might come out of them. The forums will be closed to the public and press, so I chatted with people at one company—Hugging Face—that did get the invite about what they are expecting and what their priorities are heading into the discussions.

• New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is opening an investigation into disproportionately harsh punishment of Native American children by Gallup-McKinley County Schools.

• New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica reported in December that Native students are expelled from the state’s public schools at a much higher rate than other children, and that Gallup-McKinley, with the largest Native student population of any public school district in the U.S., is largely responsible.

• The slow-mo wave of fascism engulfing Florida – book bans, more guns, no drag, cheerleading for slavery – took a big goose-step forward with the latest incursion of a snarling horde of swastika-swathed Nazis screaming “White Power!” and “Did you thank Hitler today?” DeSantis has stayed silent but busy: He moved to ban abortion, chose a fanatic to guard state ethics, snubbed Biden, assailed a black man, and launched a vicious ad vowing to execute migrants. And it has t-shirts! They’re still tweaking the swastikas.

• DaVinci’s notebook — the real one, not the band — was full of wonderous inventions, though many were not actually built and probably weren’t even practical with the materials available at the time (or even now). [How To Make Everything] took one of the Master’s drawings from 1478 of a sawmill and tried to replicate it. How did he do? You can see for yourself in the video below.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• I know how to reach them. Hopkins knows. It’s through art and satire.

• Facts don’t work on this crowd. You can send them all the carefully researched articles, documentaries, and books on the topic you can find to straighten them out, but they won’t be convinced; they are not even able to read them. Their minds have been closed and certain doors are bolted shut.

• However, through narrative, an author can get inside readers’ minds and show them a new perspective. Satire, subtle satire, is particularly effective because it first lures brainwashed readers in by reconstructing the skewed reality that they are used to and then slowly introduces a few details that can dispel the illusion.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The Fifth Circuit was right to rule it was illegal for the federal government to coerce social media firms, but wrong to uphold a Texas law requiring those firms to post material they prefer to keep out.

• He hasn’t made X a “digital town square.” He’s made it his personal playpen.

• Now the government is proposing amendments to a law that could result in detention and fines for “wearing clothing or bearing symbols in public that are detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people and hurt the feelings of Chinese people.” What could be construed as an offense wasn’t specified.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Misogynist ideology, beyond individual criminal behaviour, has fuelled violence against women worldwide.

• The regime has given up hope of regaining popular support. Instead it is relying on a narrowing base of ever more extreme loyalists. “We’re moving ever further from democracy to dictatorship,” says one Iranian academic. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, no longer aspires to lead an Islamic Republic, says another; he merely hopes to run an Islamic government. Meanwhile the government has alienated and radicalised reformists by closing their media outlets and booting out university professors, appointing religious singers in their stead.

• Afghanistan is undergoing an unprecedented dark time economically, financially, socially and culturally. It has become a pariah and gender-apartheid state with a massive humanitarian crisis.

• Specifically, he had gone to the University of Pennsyvania Museum, to take back the Killer Whale Dagger named Keet Gwalaa. This is a two foot long dagger that was forged by Tlingit people in the 18th century from meteorite steel.

• Astrella—a software engineer and tech executive who has worked at Google, Slack, Patreon, Microsoft, and Github, as well as serving as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Chief Technology Officer—has challenged inequity in hiring and compensation in the tech industry and is a prominent and influential advocate for women and people of color in Silicon Valley.

• Kohno’s research focuses on identifying and fixing security flaws in existing and emerging technologies, and developing solutions to those risks before they endanger users and vulnerable populations. He has studied and raised awareness about security and privacy threats facing refugees in the U.S., activists in the Sudanese revolution, and medical device patients, among other understudied groups.

• “Erica and Yoshi are fearless and awe-inspiring pioneers and advocates for the idea that the creation, understanding, and control of technological innovations must not be the domain of a select few, but rather must include and support a diversity of creators, tinkerers, coders, and users,” said EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn. “They each bring a keen technical understanding, along with invaluable talent, a strong ethical grounding, and insights that will inform and help steer EFF’s mission to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all the people of the world.”

• At their annual reunion last month, Deborah Taylor Mapp and her former neighbors shared memories of growing up in the Norfolk, Virginia, neighborhood of Lamberts Point when it was a thriving middle-class Black community.

• Over dinner at the Sunset Grill, a local bar that was called Nell’s back in their day, they bragged about how the Lamberts Point teams dominated youth sports in Norfolk. They swapped stories of dancing around the maypole at a school festival and fishing and crabbing in the Elizabeth River.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Australia’s eSafety Commission Julie Inman Grant announced Friday that her office is going to mandate search engines to remove AI generated child sexual abuse material from search results. The announcement is in response to the growing threat and risk to children’s privacy and rights facilitated by AI and deepfakes.

• First, I figured my printer had official driver support for Windows machines only — no Mac, no Linux — just Windows! I and my wife use MacBooks and our kids have taken over our Windows laptops for their school/personal use. So every time we needed to print anything, we would save the file to a shared drive location on the intranet and then use one of the kids laptops to print it. That, sometimes, meant disturbing them while they are in an online class, doing their homework or maybe playing an online game. I’ve come to realize that, as they grow up, kids don’t take to letting parents interrupt their laptop usage every now and then very kindly 😅

Monopolies

• Microsoft was found by a federal judge to have repeatedly violated the nation’s antitrust laws. An appeals court upheld most of that decision but was skeptical of the government’s preferred remedy — breaking up the company.

• A judge will consider whether, as the Justice Department and a group of states argue, Google abused its power as a monopoly. It’s the first monopoly trial against a tech giant since the landmark proceedings against Microsoft more than 20 years ago.

• In the decades since, Google has amassed 90 percent of the search engine market in the United States and 91 percent globally, according to Similarweb, a data analysis firm.

• A trial to determine if Google abused its monopoly in online search, which begins on Tuesday, is set to lay bare how the [Internet] search giant cemented its power, featuring testimony from top tech executives, engineers, economists and academics.

• The trial will unfold in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where a core group of individuals will command the courtroom and direct the day-to-day legal strategies. Here are the key people to know in U.S. et al. v. Google: [...]

• Google doesn’t just become an offender by virtue of its near-monopoly on the search market. “It must act in a manner that produces anticompetitive effects in the defined markets,” Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in his opinion (pdf), which was unsealed on Aug. 3. “That is, a company with monopoly power acts unlawfully only when its conduct stifles competition.”

• To Google’s relief, Mehta narrowed the scope of the suit by dismissing some accusations, including a major allegation that Google rigged its search engine design to boost its own products over those of competitors like Amazon, OpenTable, Expedia, or eBay.

• One of the biggest modern inequalities in the system today is the inequality and unfairness of “Intellectual Property”, especially as it pertains to “digital works”.

• There’s no costs of producing copies. This should make digital works cheaper, but it usually doesn’t.

• There’s also no workers making the copies that even have a chance at a middle class life.

Copyrights

• Z-Library, which is commonly known as a pirate ebook repository, has opened up 11 physical book distribution points around the world. From the United States to South Sudan, there are Z-Points in every inhabited continent. The ultimate goal is to broaden the library’s scope to the physical realm, further promoting book sharing.

• Information obtained over the last four years shows that at least one major UK ISP has been providing rightsholders and/or their anti-piracy groups with information relating to subscribers’ consumption of pirated content. Legal documents issued by leading ISPs show that permission to track customers’ piracy activities and when considered necessary, share that information with anti-piracy groups, has already been obtained.

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