06.05.23

Links 05/06/2023: Debian 12 Almost Ready, Hong Kong ‘Cannot’ Remember Tiananmen Massacre

Posted in News Roundup at 3:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini Links 05/06/2023: New Ship in Cosmic Voyage, Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

Posted in News Roundup at 3:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • but when the world needed him most, he vanished

        hi, so im an asshole. ive replied to a few of the emails that have dripped through in the past two and a half years of inactivity, but not all of them. there were a surprising number. i guess people were reading my dumb blog after all lol. im sorry to anyone whose email wasnt replied to. im an asshole.

      • living in the batman pod and eating the batman bugs

        as ive described, im gonna be including some of my letterboxd reviews where they appear to fit into the theme of this blog, and this is definitely one such post. it deals with the legacy of trumpism (and centrist reactions to that legacy) in the biden era, an era this blog has wholly failed to describe due to my absence, and, in the end, sort of sets the stakes for the discussions that this blog will end up covering in the next few years.

      • First post on smol.pub!

        Just what is says on the tin, it’s my first time posting on here! If I’m honest it’s pretty much my first time that I can really recall ever writing in this kind of format, so I’m new to it all.

        I don’t know who, if anyone, will be reading this, but if you’re reading right now then hello! My name is Claire, or Mr. Pinkvampyr if you prefer, I’m not sure what I’ll be writing here but it’ll probably mostly just be about my life, the things I’m into, maybe a little bit about activism, and since I’ve started learning to code, some updates on that as well!

      • 🔤SpellBinding: YIJLOVA Wordo: HIKED
      • Anticipating Stockholm Marathon, Kitchen stuff, Recording of TKey talk, Media computer, TKey Hackathon, Lund Linux Conference.

        Evening, electrons!

        When I start writing this my short working week is over. Tomorrow, Friday, is a day off, remember? Productive day today, but nothing really fancy going on. Still mostly splitting up repos. Things are slowly moving into place. But of course other things turn up and has to be prioritized.

        Been coughing and feeling a little under the weather but it’s cleared up now. This, however, meant I missed the last longsword practice for the semester! There will probably be some sparring in a park during the summer, but I tend to be in my cottage a lot, so it’s kind of hard to go 120 km by bus just to fence a little… But then again. Yeah, very much a luxary problem. I can always do solo drills on the lawn…

    • Technical

      • Text wrapping a mail or new message

        It’s surprisingly hard to get this right. I feel like I need this in order to use `ed` as the editor for `tin`, my current news client.

      • Aggregators Tilt East

        UI design is hard; fairness is hard. Fair UI design? No chance.

        I was doing my usual afternoon walk today and thinking about traffic lights and their influence on walking patterns.

        Specifically: I think I have identified that there is a bias in my route.

      • Short Post: The Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

        Stack Overflow’s volunteer mod team is on strike from moderation activity as a result of Stack Overflow’s failure to allow robust moderation of machine-generated submissions.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • New ship in Cosmic Voyage – Lantashi Dance

          One of my favorite Gemini capsules, filled with different sci-fi stories (from different authors), is Cosmic Voyage! I’ve decided to try my hand at writing some fiction in this shared universe, and asked to join :) I’ve always loved reading other people’s fiction. You get to *inside* them, and share in their imaginations. It’s really cool.

          Writing for the universe is interesting. You get a login to a Linux server. The instructions are on the site on how to join up. I’m still working on figuring everything out on there, but I was able to create a ship, and submit a log.

        • emotional allocation

          I put more into my e-mails and online exchanges (usually IRC, and also M.P) these days when I am not fish-frying my emotions to grease and grime via logging every day. No need for me to desensitize my writing chops or my emotional form(s) of expression. Straight forward exchanges and sincere comraderie. There’s where it’s at! :)

        • Odyssey

          I am tired of WordPress blog which I used on and off for 7 years or so. Never liked the interface. But some good photography blogs kept me there.

          I am tired of my Tumblr (it is not blogging) that I have been using on and of for 7 years or so. What kept me there ? So easy to share my photos and some other photographers . It is a dump.

      • Programming

        • Declaratively manage your Qubes OS

          As a recent Qubes OS user, but also a NixOS user, I want to be able to reproduce my system configuration instead of fiddling with files everywhere by hand and being clueless about what I changed since the installation time.

          Fortunately, Qubes OS is managed internally with Salt Stack (it’s similar to Ansible if you didn’t know about Salt), so we can leverage salt to modify dom0 or Qubes templates/VMs.

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

06.04.23

Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

Posted in News Roundup at 8:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Wayland and the Old Computer Challenge

Posted in News Roundup at 8:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Hybrid Shadows – Watched, Scouting Mission

        I’ve been working on my Hybrid Shadows – my Sci-fi, Transhuman story. I’ve actually had a couple people ask me about this story lately, and I really appreciate the interest! I love the story, and have much more written in a very, very rough form, including the ending. This one isn’t so light-hearted like Lantashi’s Dance, so takes more effort for me to write.

        I have a short scene ready to go (Scouting Mission), and will publish a much longer scene in a few days after I have a change to clean it up.

      • I Hate Vacuum Cleaners

        This might seem a bit absurd or hyperbolic but I think that vacuum cleaners are the archetype for the over-engineering which we see in literally everything today it seems. It’s a simple problem really: floors get dusty and dirty and the grim has to be periodically removed, but it is not a fun task so we want a device that gets the job done quickly and effectively.

        Now, there are a few very simple devices that have existed since time immemorial. There’s the broom, the mop, and dustpan-and-brush. Brilliantly simple with no moving parts, no batteries nor power source needed, nothing that can really go wrong. The only caveat is that they only really work on smooth surfaces, and so, I hear you say, what about carpet! And its a very good point, vacuum cleaners are much better at cleaning carpet, and my answer that is simple: don’t have carpet. Just get a rug instead, which can be patted down outside, or cleaned like every other piece of fabric you own. Vacuum cleaners are a solution to a problem that does not need to exist! They’re temperamental, noisy, energy-intensive, and most of all wholly unnecessary.

      • Mr. Lucky

        We play two games of Yahtzee a week with my in-laws. My mother-in-law won the second game today, but I absolutely cleaned up in the first game. Four Yahtzees, including one on the first roll. Everyone was cursing me. It was unbelievable, definitely the highest score I’ve ever had.

      • littered letters

        I went through the Trash on Google Drive and pCloud, and I found heaps of old PDFs and .txt docs from the past 5+ years. I just made a big folder called “WRITE SHIT” and stored them on Proton Drive and my local machine.

        Some of it is ok, most isn’t. Some are 30K word “offline” journals, some are short “personal experience essays”. One reads like a small dissertation. And a few are poems, haikus.

      • Implications

        When I write something in English or think and dream in English, this is often a perplexing issue that confuses me and makes it challenging for me to fully immerse myself in the “Anglo Zone.” Or in the “Latin Zone,” for that matter.

      • Siege Perilous? 🏎

        Say you’re a driver in F1. You get offered a seat at the front running team. But your team mate will be someone highly rated. Maybe it’s Hamilton or Verstappen. The sort of driver who breaks records. This is your chance to be in the best car, to finish ahead of everyone… except one person. You might win a few races here and there, but a lot of the time you’re going to be beaten, and even made to look a bit rubbish.

    • Technical

      • Wayland – Only the Future or Already the Present

        It is believed that Wayland is going to be the future of display managers for Linux. So I recently tried it out and am happy to report that it may not only be the future, but is already very usable in many circumstances.

        Before discussing my switch to Wayland though, it is worth talking about what I have been using until now. In the last (at least) year I have been daily-driving Xmonad (which obviously uses the X11 display server). It is great, and I love it and I would certainly return to it if I didn’t think Wayland was already ready for me. Of course, I had my own Xmonad configuration (which is actually pretty minimal) including xmobar for the status bar. Though recently I had some issues with xmobar crashing (which was solved by switching away from xmobar obviously) and also longer startup times (30+ seconds) for some applications (which was actually the fault of xdg-desktop-portal-gnome and which was not fixed by switching to Wayland, but I found another fix for that in the meantime). So I decided to take a look at the future of Linux display system.

      • The Old Computer Challenge V3

        Hi! It’s that time of the year when I announce a new Old Computer Challenge :)

        If you don’t know about it, it’s a weird challenge I’ve did twice in the past 3 years that consists into limiting my computer performance using old hardware, or by limiting Internet access to 60 minutes a day.

      • The Old Computer Challenge V3

        I want this challenge to be accessible. The first one wasn’t easy for many because it required to use an old machine, but many readers didn’t have a spare old computer (weird right? :P). The second one with Internet time limitation was hard to setup.

        This one is a bit back to the roots: let’s use a SLOW computer for 7 days.

      • Re: The Gemini Protocol Seen by This HTTP Client Person

        One thing to note, Daniel Stenberg has explicitly stated several times that as long as the code is up to cURL’s coding standards, he’s more than willing to add Gemini support to cURL. I’m sure he also has more than his fair share of criticisms of HTTP and any other internet protocol cURL already supports too.

        Also, in this post I’m mostly just going to discuss Daniel Stenberg’s original post and not the responses to it. Shockingly, almost of the responses were measured, well-written, and acknowledged the real issues Daniel addressed, like I’m attempting to do here.

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 5:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Martijn Braam ☛ Developers are lazy, thus Flatpak

      So the thing Flatpak is supposed to fix for me as developer is that I don’t need to care about distributions anymore. I can bolt on whatever dependencies I want to my app and it’s dealt with. I also don’t need to worry about having software in distributions, if it’s in Flatpak it’s everywhere. Flatpak gives me that unified base to work on and everything will be perfect. World hunger will be solved. Finally piece on earth.

      Sadly there’s reality. The reality is to get away from the evil distributions the Flatpak creators have made… another distribution. It is not a particularly good distribution, it doesn’t have a decent package manager. It doesn’t have a system that makes it easy to do packaging. The developer interface is painfully shoehorned into Github workflows and it adds all the downsides of containerisation.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Arduino ☛ Celebrate World Bicycle Day with these Arduino-powered bike projects

        Cycling is a great way to spend time outdoors while simultaneously getting exercise and even as a mode of efficient transportation. And in the last few years due to the recent proliferation of e-bikes on the market and the pandemic, there has been an explosion in the number of people wanting to use bikes on a regular basis. A few people have gone a step further and have taken it upon themselves to create devices that make this experience safer, more convenient, or more fun. For this year’s World Bicycle Day, let’s celebrate these makers and how they were able to creatively embed Arduino products into their designs for a better cycling experience.

      • Linux Gizmos ☛ Axiomtek unveils dev kit for NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX SoM

        Last month, Axiomtek launched a palm-sized AI developer kit compatible with the NVIDIA platform to deliver up to 21 TOPs of AI computing performance and reduce product development time.

      • Andrew Hutchings ☛ Retro addons: Big box o’ SCSI part 1

        An oddity popped up recently which I ended up acquiring. An external box with 4 interesting SCSI devices inside and a SCSI card for a RiscPC. Time to dive in and see what we have…

      • Hackaday ☛ Software Driving Hardware

        We were talking about [Christopher Barnatt]’s very insightful analysis of what the future holds for the Raspberry Pi single board computers on the Podcast. On the one hand, they’re becoming such competent computers that they are beginning to compete with lightweight desktop machines, instead of just being a hacker curiosity.

      • Linux Gizmos ☛ PiBeam is an IR transceiver based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU

        Kickstarter recently featured a compact USB infrared transceiver based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. The PiBeam can be used to remotely control electronics such as laptops, TVs, etc. or it can be used as a Python-based learning platform.

      • Linux Gizmos ☛ Milk-V Duo is a $9.00 RISC-V tiny embedded computer

        The Milk-V Duo is a small RISC-V embedded platform capable of running Linux and RTOS. The low-cost device features up to 26x GPIOs, optional 10/100Mbps Ethernet support and integrated with a H.264/H.265 video compression encoder and ISP.

  • Leftovers

    • Hackaday ☛ The Glitch That Brought Down Japan’s Lunar Lander

      When a computer crashes, it usually doesn’t leave debris. But when a computer happens to be descending towards the lunar surface and glitches out, that’s a very different story. Turns out that’s what happened on April 26th, as the Japanese Hakuto-R Lunar lander made its mark on the Moon…by crashing into it. [Scott Manley] dove in to try and understand the software bug that caused an otherwise flawless mission to go splat.

    • Science

    • Education

      • Scheerpost ☛ The End of Community College?

        In the wake of the pandemic, we must demand a new deal for the community college that fulfills its democratic potential.

    • Hardware

      • Hackaday ☛ The Apple Silicon That Never Was

        Over Apple’s decades-long history, they have been quick to adapt to new processor technology when they see an opportunity. Their switch from PowerPC to Intel in the early 2000s made Apple machines more accessible to the wider PC world who was already accustomed to using x86 processors, and a decade earlier they moved from Motorola 68000 processors to take advantage of the scalability, power-per-watt, and performance of the PowerPC platform. They’ve recently made the switch to their own in-house silicon, but this wasn’t the first time they attempted to design their own chips from the ground up rather than using chips from other companies like Motorola or Intel.

      • Hackaday ☛ ADATA SSD Gets Liquid Cooling, But Not Everyone’s Convinced

        Solid-state drives (SSDs) were a step change in performance when it came to computer storage. They offered incredibly fast seek times by virtue of dispensing with solid rust for silicon instead. Now, some companies have started pushing the limits to the extent that their drives supposedly need liquid cooling, as reported by The Register.

      • Hackaday ☛ An Almost Invisible Desktop

        When you’re putting together a computer workstation, what would you say is the cleanest setup? Wireless mouse and keyboard? Super-discrete cable management? How about no visible keeb, no visible mouse, and no obvious display?

      • Tedium ☛ Manufactured Gloss

        Our continuing journey to write a Tedium glossary takes us through the manufacturing process—and the weird products it sometimes led to.

        Let’s face it—Tedium would not exist without the manufacturing process. Manufacturing leads to stuff that is then sold. That stuff leads to things that I can write about. In many ways, I come at the tail end of the supply chain, with the goal of attempting to explain it all to you, the reader. (One plus side of this approach: I don’t need a factory.) But as I continue on my glossary of terms, I wanted to lean in on objects that were created, the materials they use, and the way that they generally make the world a little bit better. Today’s Tedium opens up the glossary once again. May it soon be filled with many more terms.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Rolling Stone ☛ Meet the Folks Lining Up for Elon Musk’s Brain Implant

        The scientific community has expressed frank skepticism about a lot of this, with some experts saying Musk has little to no reason for such optimism. What’s more, the corporate culture at Neuralink, which has lost several founding members, is reportedly plagued by a “culture of blame” and unrealistic deadlines imposed by Musk. They have stiff competition from rivals in the space, including Blackrock Neurotech, backed by billionaire and former Musk business partner Peter Thiel, which claims it has already implanted their chips in more than 30 people’s brains. On top of all that, Neuralink has faced at least two federal probes from regulators, one of them tied to whistleblowers’ claims that rushed testing led to the “needless suffering” of 1,500 animals — and deaths of over a dozen — in experiments since 2018. Neuralink has denied that they acted improperly with any animals, yet still, in some corners of the internet, it’s is less known for pioneering neuroscience than as the Musk company that allegedly tortured a bunch of monkeys.

      • NPR ☛ Doctors rally to defend abortion provider Caitlin Bernard after she was censured

        Hundreds of Indiana doctors are coming to the defense of Caitlin Bernard, the obstetrician/gynecologist who was recently punished by a state licensing board for talking publicly about providing an abortion for a 10-year-old rape victim.

        In public statements, doctors across a range of specialties are speaking out against the board’s decision, and warning that it could have dangerous implications for public health.

      • Hackaday ☛ Bike Rides Played Back Via Aircraft Altitude Indicator

        Any good bike ride should have a big climb to push your fitness, and a nice descent for the joy of careening down at high speed. [Glen Akins] has been recording his altitude during his mountain biking expeditions, and has now built a way to play them back on an aircraft altitude indicator.

    • Proprietary

      • [Repeat] The Atlantic ☛ AI Doomerism Is a Decoy

        But many of the experts I spoke with were skeptical of how much AI will progress from its current abilities, and they were adamant that it need not advance at all to hurt people—indeed, many applications already do. The divide, then, is not over whether AI is harmful, but which harm is most concerning—a future AI cataclysm only its architects are warning about and claim they can uniquely avert, or a more quotidian violence that governments, researchers, and the public have long been living through and fighting against—as well as who is at risk and how best to prevent that harm.

      • Windows TCO

    • Defence/Aggression

      • New York Times ☛ Serbia Protests After Mass Shootings Demand Social Changes

        The protests, which have gathered momentum since two massacres in May, are denouncing a “culture of violence” and the increasingly authoritarian rule of the country’s leader.

      • France24 ☛ Tens of thousands in Belgrade stage fifth anti-government protest since mass shootings

        Tens of thousands gathered on Saturday for the fifth anti-government protest this month in Serbia’s capital Belgrade after two back-to-back shootings that killed 18 people, half of them children.

      • France24 ☛ Israeli soldiers, Egyptian border guard killed in rare exchange of deadly fire

        A gunbattle involving an Egyptian border guard in southern Israel along the border left three Israeli soldiers and the Egyptian officer dead Saturday, officials said. It was a rare instance of deadly violence along the frontier.

      • France24 ☛ Lebanon says will send investigators to France after Beirut’s envoy accused of rape

        Lebanon’s foreign ministry said Saturday it would send an investigation team to Paris following reports that Beirut’s ambassador to France, Rami Adwan, has been accused of rape and intentional violence.

      • Scheerpost ☛ American Police are Basically Untouchable. How Did It Get This Bad?

        To understand where US law enforcement’s impunity comes from, we have to look at the historic role of police in maintaining a racial and class-based order.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Florida police arrest man, search for 2 others in Memorial Day beach shooting

        Police in Florida have arrested one man and announced arrest warrants for two others believed to be the gunmen who opened fire along a crowded beachside promenade on Memorial Day. The shooting wounded nine people and sent others scrambling for cover. The Hollywood Police Department on Saturday said authorities have arrested suspect Jordan Burton and obtained arrest warrants for Ariel Cardahn Paul and Lionel JeanCharles Jr. The suspects will be charged with one count of attempted murder in the first degree, eight counts of attempted murder in the second degree and one count of carrying a concealed firearm.

      • The Hindu ☛ ‘Love Jihad’ cases uncovered during missing person investigations: Fadnavis

        Mr. Fadnavis, who is also the State Home Minister, said that the detection rate for missing person complaints in the western State ranged from 90% to 95%.

        “There are instances where we found that false promises were made or false identity was used, with even married persons trying to mislead women. Cases of ‘love jihad’ have also come forward in large numbers,” he said.

      • France24 ☛ Le Pen’s far right served as mouthpiece for the Kremlin, says French parliamentary report

        Dogged by accusations of proximity to the Kremlin, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party had hoped to clear its name by setting up a parliamentary inquiry to investigate foreign interference in French politics. But a draft report on the committee’s findings, which was leaked to the press this week, shows the move backfired spectacularly, finding instead that Le Pen’s policy stances sometimes echo the “official language of Putin’s regime”.

      • [Repeat] BIA Net ☛ Two witnesses of Dersim massacre pass away

        Eşliye Çiçe (Fecire Erol) from the Zimek (Çığırlı) village of Hozat, Tunceli and Necef Duman from Hopik in the same village who had witnessed the Dersim massacre (Tertele) have lost their lives.

        94 year old Duman had survived the massacre by staying under the dead body of her mother Besi who was killed by a firing squad, the Mezopotamya Agency reported.

      • [Repeat] France24 ☛ Erdogan backs Kurdish Islamist party – and women pay the price

        “This is the women’s last vote,” she said slowly and emphatically in English. “Maybe we will lose our voting rights. They will change everything. We will be like Iran because of Huda-Par.”

        That night, not long after Erdogan vowed in his victory speech “to be here until I’m in my grave”, the middle-aged woman at the polling station kept calling and texting to ensure she was not quoted or identified. Her fears over the stakes of the election for Turkish women was as strong as her certainty that retribution against opposition supporters, especially Kurds, would be severe.

      • The Hindu ☛ M.P. government suspends recognition of school caught in ‘compulsory hijab’ row

        The Madhya Pradesh government on Friday suspended the recognition of the Damoh school that is at the centre of a controversy over allegations of non-Muslim students wearing hijab.

      • VOA News ☛ British Teen in Terrorism Case to Serve at Least 6 Years

        “It is clear that you are someone who developed an entrenched Islamist extremist mindset, extreme anti-Western views and that you intended to commit terrorist acts both in the U.K. and overseas,” the judge said.

        King could be out in five years. He has already spent 367 days in prison, which will be taken into account and deducted from the length of time he has to serve.

      • Foreign Policy ☛ Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Against Forced Russian Citizenship

        The catalyst is a new decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 27, which states that Ukrainians residing in the illegally annexed territories of Ukraine who have not received Russian citizenship are considered foreigners or stateless individuals. Foreign citizens will have “the right” to reside on these territories until July 2024. No deadline for their registration is given. Disturbingly, they may be deported if they “present a threat to national security.”

        Aggressive decrees such as these are just the latest stage of Russia’s “passportization.” Before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last February, Russia had used this foreign-policy tool in the breakaway states of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria, as well as Ukraine’s Donbas region.

      • Gannett ☛ An Iowa girl asked Warren Buffett about climate change. He blew the answer.

        Isn’t there a point where a corporation and its investors have amassed so much wealth that they should be able to recognize there are other goals besides money that desperately need to be pursued?

      • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Russia, a country of perpetual war

        Mobilisation is the only method allowing Russian state to work. As mobilisation is a reaction to a crisis or a challenge, Russia always needs crises. Its state management just can not work without them. The Russian society has not learned how to substitute wars with other challenges that would be serious enough to mobilise the society. Since war is the most obvious crisis, Russia cannot afford years of peaceful life. It needs war. Otherwise, its ineffectiveness spirals the country down to economic and innovative degradation.

        This is why Putin always needed wars. He started with the war in Chechnya eliminating hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens, then he continued with Georgia, depriving it of 20% of its territory. He contributed to the war in Syria. He authorised the Wagner Group military operations in Africa. He needs wars because he runs Russia, even if he may not realise it.

      • War in Ukraine

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • San Fancisco ☛ What impact did Julian Assange and WikilLeaks have? Time for the news media to find out

        Never has the wrath and petulance of the American government been focused so relentlessly on a breach of official secrecy. The pursuit of Julian Assange is in its 14th year, as the U.S. continues trying to extradite him from London to stand trial for helping the world’s most powerful news organizations publish U.S. diplomatic and military intelligence in sweeping defiance of secrecy protocols. Assange, convicted of nothing, has been behind bars in Britain since 2019, when he was evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy where he had sheltered for seven years.

      • Michael West Media ☛ Julian Assange ignored in “press freedom roundtable” as spies cosy up to Big Media

        New documents show Julian Assange got little more than a mention at Mark Dreyfus’s media talkfest this year. Amid much talk about reform and transparency, the Government wants to draw our big media outlets into cozy secret relationships with Australia’s spies. Philip Dorling unpacks the Attorney-General’s Media Roundtable.

        In January, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus announced he was convening a national round table of “key stakeholders” to discuss press freedom.

    • Environment

      • [Repeat] RFA ☛ Vietnamese climate activist arrested for ‘tax evasion’

        Hong is the founder and executive director of CHANGE – a non-profit organization with the mission of inspiring the community and raising environmental awareness with the aim of protecting nature and wild animals, combating climate change, and promoting sustainable development.

        Based on her activism, climateheroes.org included her in their 2015 “Climate Heroes” list. Four years later, in 2019, she was voted among the Top 5 Ambassadors of Inspiration at the 2019 WeChoice Awards and was named the Green Warrior of the Year at the Elle Style Awards.

        Hoang Thi Minh Hong is the fifth activist in Vietnam to have been arrested on the charge of tax evasion.

      • [Repeat] Mexico News Daily ☛ What do cave experts have to say about the Maya Train project?

        At the same time, other researchers were mapping the region’s dry caves. As the various groups have compared their findings, they are discovering that the wet and dry caves are much more interconnected than previously suspected.

        Some experts even suspect that the caves of the southeast are entirely linked.

        “There’s only one cave in Quintana Roo,” says cave management specialist Peter Sprouse, who has been studying the area for years. “It’s just a case of connecting all the pieces.”

      • France24 ☛ Nations agree to draft landmark UN treaty against plastic pollution by end of 2023

        Global negotiators have agreed to craft an initial draft treaty to end plastic pollution, a preliminary but crucial step toward tackling one of the most lasting sources of human waste.

    • Finance

      • New York Times ☛ Biden Signs Fiscal Responsibility Act, Ending Debt-Limit Crisis

        Now that the bill is law, the nation will not risk running out of money to pay its obligations for two years.

      • Helsinki Times ☛ Construction in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area sees significant decline this year

        \

        The development of construction and real estate sector has been weak in the early part of 2023. The amount of construction in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area grew rapidly during the period of zero interest rates but is expected to decline significantly this year. The largest drop is in residential construction, but there is also a slight decrease in commercial construction. The rise in construction costs slowed down significantly in April, and there has been a significant increase in bidding activity.

      • WhichUK ☛ Food delivery apps charging double for some supermarket groceries

        Ordering groceries from Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats often costs more than buying direct from the same supermarket

      • Michael West Media ☛ Another nail-biter interest rate call looms

        Another close interest rate call is looming for the Reserve Bank amid persistent inflation and stagnant productivity growth.

        The RBA board is due to meet on Tuesday afternoon for the June cash rate call after lifting interest rates 11 times since May last year in a bid to stamp down rising prices.

      • Michael West Media ☛ Biden signs debt limit bill, avoiding US default

        US President Joe Biden has signed a bill that suspends the government’s debt ceiling, averting what would have been a first-ever default.

        The House of Representatives and the Senate passed the legislation this week after Biden and House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an agreement following tense negotiations.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • NDTV ☛ “Not The Easiest To Write”: Salman Rushdie To Author Book On Knife Attack

        British author Salman Rushdie has said that he is writing a book about the knife attack that took place on him last year in New York, as per a report in The Guardian. In a pre-recorded Zoom appearance at the Hay Literary Festival, he said, “I’m trying to write a book about the attack on me – what happened and what it means, not just about the attack, but around it.”

        The award-winning author added, “It will be a relatively short book, a couple of hundred pages. It’s not the easiest book in the world to write but it’s something I need to get past in order to do anything else. I can’t really start writing a novel that’s got nothing to do with this … So I just have to deal with it.”

      • [Repeat] RFA ☛ China’s young netizens share how they learned about 1989 Tiananmen Massacre

        Authorities have worked tirelessly to scrub the affair from history books, online discussions and the media. Every June, police descend on the homes of dissidents, placing them under house arrest and banning them from posting on the topic or speaking to the media.

        And with the student protesters now well into their 50s, and children born since the massacre being raised with virtually no knowledge of the event, the passage of time is helping the Communist Party erase memories.

      • VOA News ☛ US Sanctions Iranian Firm for Helping Government Censor Internet

        The U.S. imposed sanctions on an Iran-based technology firm Friday for its role in facilitating the Iranian government’s censorship of the internet as anti-government protests have swept the country since September.

        A firm known as Arvan Cloud, its co-founders Pouya Pirhosseinloo and Farhad Fatemi, and a United Arab Emirates-based firm were all sanctioned for helping to facilitate the Iranian government’s attempts to control and censor internet traffic.

      • NBC ☛ Arkansas librarians sue to block new law that could jail them over explicit books

        Arkansas is one of four states that recently passed laws that make it easier to prosecute librarians over sexually explicit books, a designation conservatives often use to target books with descriptions of gender identity and sexuality. On Friday, a coalition led by the Central Arkansas Library System, based in Little Rock, filed a federal lawsuit it hopes will set a precedent about the constitutionality of such laws.

      • [Repeat] RFERL ☛ Iranian Student Beaten Amid Fears That Growing Wave Of Attacks Is Related To Protests

        Meanwhile, it says there has also been an influx of people, thought to be security agents, “in civilian clothes roaming universities, taking pictures of students, and engaging with them” as officials try to enforce the hijab law.

      • New York Times ☛ Hong Kong Remembered June 4 Tiananmen Massacre, Until It Couldn’t

        With candlelight vigils to the victims of the 1989 crushed student uprising in Beijing now only a memory, the anniversary is also a reminder of the freedoms Hong Kong has lost.

      • Reason ☛ Libel Case Against Entertainers T.I. & Tiny (of VH1′s T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle) Can Go Forward

        From Peterson v. Harris, decided Friday by the California Court of Appeal, in an opinion by L.A. Superior Court Judge Audra Mori, joined by Justice Audrey Collins and L.A. Superior Court Judge Helen Zukin: In January 2021, plaintiff Sabrina Peterson posted a video and messages to her Instagram account accusing defendants…

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • New York Times ☛ Two Black Native Americans Were Arrested. The Law Sees Only One as Indian.

        A Supreme Court ruling barred Oklahoma from prosecuting crimes committed by Native Americans on tribal land, but some Black tribal members are still being prosecuted because they lack “Indian blood.”

      • Pro Publica ☛ How One Chicago Cop Got Out of 44 Traffic Tickets

        Each time he stood before a Chicago traffic court judge and told his story, the judge asked his name.

        “Jeffrey Kriv,” he’d say. That was true.

      • Scheerpost ☛ More Than 530 Anti-LGBTQ Bills Have Been Proposed Across the Country in 2023

        The U.S. soon could witness “the most substantial Pride celebrations in recent memory,” one bill tracker said.

      • [Repeat] Quartz ☛ Almost 5,000 scientists are unionizing at the NIH

        The National Institute of Health, the main US government agency working on health research, is the largest biomedical founder. It employs nearly 20,000 people across 27 institutes and centers, financing research in the full range of medical issues.

        It might also soon be home to a very large unionized workforce. Nature reports that nearly 5,000 fellows—early-career scientists including graduate students and post-doctorate researchers—have filed a petition to unionize in order to improve their work conditions, compensation, and benefits.

      • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Meta Is Trying, and Failing, to Crush Unions in Kenya

        Kenyan content moderators at Meta have been fighting for better compensation for workers forced to watch videos of murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing. Meta was initially unwilling to give in to these demands, but Kenyan courts are intervening on the side of workers.

      • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ She Lost Her Career, Family and Freedom. She’s Still Fighting to Change Iran.

        Last month, the prison authorities revoked Ms. Mohammadi’s telephone and visitation rights because of statements she had issued from prison condemning Iran’s human rights violations, which were posted on her Instagram page, her family said.

      • NPR ☛ Heart transplant recipient dies after being denied meds in jail; ACLU wants an inquiry

        “Dexter Barry’s disturbing, preventable death from medical neglect highlights a major flaw in how America treats its carceral system,” ACLU Florida told NPR in a statement. “We urge state officials to investigate Mr. Barry’s killing and pursue justice for his loved ones.”

      • Florida ☛ ‘My heart will be rejected’: Jacksonville man dies after missing doses in jail

        Barry told Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officer Jacob McKeon at least seven times that he needed to take his anti-rejection medications every day to survive, according to body camera footage that was reviewed by The Tributary. The next morning, according to the court transcript, Barry told Judge Gilbert Feltel the same.

      • Digital First Media ☛ Man cleared in hunters’ killings after 21 years in prison seeks $1M from state of Michigan

        He was released from prison — and a life sentence — earlier this year when authorities acknowledged that Titus’ trial lawyer in 2002 was never given a police file with details about another suspect. Thomas Dillon was an Ohio serial killer whose five victims between 1989 and 1992 were hunting, fishing or jogging.

        There is no dispute that the failure to produce the file violated Titus’ constitutional rights.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Open source software under threat from patent trolls …

          Companies from the open source community are warning that urgent action is needed to stop patent trolls. Unified Patents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Linux Foundation are coming together to highlight that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is considering changes to rules that will embolden patent trolls further…

      • Trademarks

        • Reason ☛ Urban Dictionary Definition Inadmissible in Trademark Case

          In Stay You, LLC v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, LP (S.D.N.Y.), plaintiff is claiming that defendant’s use of the phrase “Stay True Stay You” infringes plaintiff’s trademark “Stay You,” and the defendant is arguing (among other things) that “the Urban Dictionary definition of ‘Stay You” is strong evidence that the phrase is in common usage…

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Bulgarian ISPs Will Block Pirate Bay & Zamunda, But Not Before a Fight

          Early 2020 the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP) and IFPI launched legal action to compel local ISPs to block The Pirate Bay and Zamunda, Bulgaria’s most-visited pirate site. This week a Bulgarian court ordered local ISPs to block both sites, including all mirrors and proxies. The music groups say they’re pleased with the outcome but the details suggest that local ISPs were against the process right from the beginning.

        • Creative Commons ☛ Join CC at RightsCon: AI for a Better Internet and Open Journalism

          These sessions on artificial intelligence (AI) and open journalism will extend our work to support the public interest commons and a better internet for everyone, by following our strategy to support better sharing, sharing that is contextual, inclusive, just, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable. Both topics will also be part of the program at CC’s Global Summit during 3–6 Oct 2023 in Mexico City, now open for registration and session proposals!

Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

Posted in News Roundup at 5:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Rain and heat

        I was out weeding just after 8 this morning. Already in the mid 20s, crazy warm for this time of year. A quick breakfast, then back at it: mowing, filling the feeders, etc.

        Several more hours of running around, and then the rest of the day has been relaxing. Music practice, working on some future gemlog entries, watching Jays-Mets and the NHL finals.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: GHLYSUO Wordo: RISKY
      • All Day Outside

        On Saturday I went up to my parents’ for a family get together with my dad’s sister, my mom’s sister, and my mom’s aunt. I don’t much care for my mom’s side of the family and while I tried coming at them with an open mind and heart, it being a number of years since I’d last seen them, they proved to repeat the same negative traits that has pushed me away from them. My dad and his sister agreed so we ended up spending a lot of time together, hiding from my mom’s half. One of the things I did to stay busy away from the family was prepping an old metal horse trough to be turned into a raised planter box. I had to drill a few holes in the bottom for drainage and load it, as well as a bucket of composted horse manure, into the back of my car. I unloaded it all as soon as I got home that night.

    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Rosy Crow 1.1.3 Released

          Version 1.1.3 includes the following changes:
          * Implemented long-pressing on links to either copy or share their URLs
          * Widened pre-formatted blocks so that they fit the width of the rest of the page’s content
          * Fixed an issue where some capsules will always return an Invalid URL

          I also upgraded several dependencies to their most recent versions.

        • The Secular Internet

          I was reading Harvey Cox’s The Secular City the other day (secular in the sense of “contemporary”, “of the current era” rather than as in any sense of soulless and dry) and it struck me that what he writes about “city” is often even more true for “internet”. Obviously the internet didn’t exist in 1956 when the original lectures were developed but sometimes going back is just what you need to do to go forward. One section, “Anonymity”, in particular, was useful for me to read.

          The gist is that people who grew up very rurally (as I did) can have a hard time adapting to the city life, and internet life. He describes two kinds of relationships: one where you know someone thoroughly and another where someone is just a faceless nameless replacable radar blip.

        • NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

          I apologize in advance: this is going to read like an ad.

          I don’t want your money, and I don’t care where you spend your money; but some things do cost money; and then there are choices to be made, and some choices are better than others; and it would be useful to know which.

          I have an idea which. So, I will share.

          For web hosting, domain name management and email forwarding, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET (NFSN) is excellent.

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

Links 04/06/2023: Azure Outage Again (So Many!) and Tiananmen Massacre Censored

Posted in News Roundup at 12:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

06.03.23

Links 03/06/2023: Qubes OS 4.2.0 RC1 and elementaryOS Updates for May

Posted in News Roundup at 8:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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