Links 23/11/2023: Binance Trouble and More EPO Patents Thrown Out
Contents
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Leftovers
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Hardware
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CNX Software ☛ STMicro STM32WL3 sub-GHz wireless MCU targets smart metering, smart building, and industrial monitoring
STMicroelectronics STM32WL3 is an Arm Cortex-M0+ low-power, long-range, multi-protocol wireless microcontroller working in sub-GHz ISM frequency bands, namely 413MHz – 479MHz, 826MHz – 958MHz, and soon 169MHz (2024) for protocols such as wireless M-Bus (mode N) and Wize.
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CNX Software ☛ iKOOLCORE R2 mini PC and router review – Part 1: Specs, unboxing, teardown, and first boot
iKOOLCORE R2 is an defective chip maker Intel Alder-Lake-N mini PC and network appliance (router/firewall/gateway) that comes with four 2.5GbE ports, up to 16GB RAM, NVMe storage, and the usual HDMI and USB ports, and offered with either Processor N95 or Core i3-N305 SoC.
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Hackaday ☛ PicoGUS: For All Your ISA Sound Card Needs
Sound cards used to be a big part of gaming machines in the 90s and 2000s but have largely gone extinct in the wake of powerful CPUs doing the sound themselves. Sound cards were expensive back then and, because the good ones weren’t very common, are expensive still for the retro gamer. But if you don’t need the real thing, [polpo] has you covered with his RP2040-based ISA sound card.
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CNX Software ☛ Theengs Bridge BLE to MQTT gateway supports Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Jeedom, NodeRed, and more
The Theengs Bridge is a new WiFi & Ethernet BLE to MQTT gateway running the open-source OpenMQTTGateway firmware, compatible with a range of sensors, and supporting Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Jeedom, NodeRed, and other MQTT-compatible systems.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Reason ☛ Arizona Restaurant Owner Sues Over Costly Cage-Free Egg Mandate
The Arizona Department of Agriculture says all eggs sold must be cage-free, a power that according to the lawsuit belongs to the state legislature.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Silicon Angle ☛ Meta opens up data from Instagram and Facebook (Farcebook) for researchers [Ed: More misleading revisionism and spin as in practice Facebook did the opposite]
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MIT Technology Review ☛ Meta is giving researchers more access to Facebook (Farcebook) and Instagram data
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Techdirt ☛ FBI Director Admits Agency Rarely Has Probable Cause When It Performs Backdoor Searches Of NSA Collections
After years of continuous, unrepentant abuse of surveillance powers, the FBI is facing the real possibility of seeing Section 702 curtailed, if not scuttled entirely.
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Techdirt ☛ Illinois City Decides To Blow Tax Dollars On Operating A Storefront For Private Security Camera Company
The thin blue line between cops and cop-friendly tech continues to be erased, mostly by cops. No longer content to underserve the public, law enforcement agencies are welcoming the warm embrace of consumer surveillance products in hopes of adding private tech to their publicly-funded surveillance mesh networks.
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Defence/Aggression
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ADF ☛ Malian Citizens Suffer Amid Army, Extremist and Mercenary Attacks
In September, terrorists fired three rockets at a ferry on the Niger River, killing 49 people. Witnesses said the victims, all civilians, drowned or were burned to death. The terrorists reportedly were members of the al-Qaida-linked group known as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (JNIM).
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ADF ☛ A Year After Peace Agreement, Suffering Continues in Tigray
More than one year after a peace deal was signed to end the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the regional capital of Mekelle once again is bustling. Schoolchildren hurry through the streets, three-wheeled taxis jostle for position and Edaga-Seni, the city’s outdoor market, is full of vendors hawking their wares.
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ADF ☛ In Burkina Faso, ‘A New Town or Village Comes Under Siege Every Day’
Insurgents killed about 100 people, mostly children and the elderly, in the northern Burkina Faso village of Zaongo in early November. A local prosecutor said the assailants were unknown, but rebel groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group (IS) operate in the area.
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ADF ☛ Ethnic Militias in Niger Drive Brutal Cycles of Violence
The rise of ethnic militias in recent years threatens conflict-ridden western Niger, near the tri-border area with Burkina Faso and Mali. Two groups in particular,
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YLE ☛ Finland preparing further shutdowns on eastern border
Although there is no clear timetable on when the government may announce the decision, Yle understands that as of Tuesday afternoon the cabinet had not yet met to discuss the issue.
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The Straits Times ☛ South Korea boosts military surveillance after North claims spy satellite launch
North Korea said it placed its first spy satellite in orbit on Nov 21 and vowed to launch more.
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RFA ☛ S Korea suspends inter-Korean military deal, resumes surveillance
The countermeasure move comes after the North’s satellite launch, breaching a U.N. ban.
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YLE ☛ Deputy justice chancellor rejects government border shutdown proposal over migrants' rights concerns
The deputy justice chancellor found the interior ministry's proposal did not address the rights of migrants. Later, the interior minister said work on a new version of the proposal was underway.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Canadian claims he was used by Ottawa for intelligence gathering in China
A Sino-Canadian row reared its head on Monday after one of two Canadians jailed by China for nearly three years claimed he was unwittingly used for intelligence gathering and is seeking compensation from Ottawa. Beijing’s 2018 to 2021 detentions of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig had plunged bilateral relations into a deep freeze.
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France24 ☛ Sweden mulls laws allowing govt to deport immigrants for ‘shortcomings in lifestyle’
Sweden said Tuesday it wanted to introduce new requirements that would allow the deportation of asylum-seekers and immigrants for substance abuse, association with criminal groups or statements threatening Swedish values.
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CS Monitor ☛ Letter from Manama: Israel-Hamas war stumps the experts
A think tank gathered the cream of Middle East security and diplomatic society, but nobody could answer the questions raised by the Israel-Hamas war.
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Latvia ☛ WATCH: Rīga Security Forum discussion 'Nuclear arsenal and China'
The fourth in a new season of geopolitical discussions under the 'Rīga Security Forum' banner was published online November 21.
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Environment
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YLE ☛ Young women in Finland are the most concerned about climate change, survey finds
Many people say they are ready to save on energy, eat a vegetarian diet and buy fewer items to combat climate change, but young women worry the most.
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Energy/Transportation
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YLE ☛ Olkiluoto nuclear reactor repairs delayed
Teollisuuden Voima had stated that the repairs might take until around midday on Tuesday, but that was found to be an under-estimate.
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YLE ☛ Olkiluoto 3 restarts electricity production
The system shut down automatically on Sunday evening, following the detection of a fault in the facility's turbine system.
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H2 View ☛ Scale-up in deployment of hydrogen projects required to meet MENA Net Zero targets
Only three hydrogen production projects in the MENA region have reached the construction stage despite optimistic government targets, according to MEED (Middle East Business Intelligence).
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Vice Media Group ☛ Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, Who Crafted a Responsible Image, Is Pleading Guilty to Breaking Anti-Money Laundering Laws
The deal with multiple U.S. federal agencies will end a years-long, multi-agency investigation into the firm.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Crypto exchange Binance to pay $4.3B in fines and CEO ‘CZ’ to step down
Updated: Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, today agreed to pay the U.S. government $4.3 billion to settle charges for breaking sanctions and money transmitting laws. -
Security Week ☛ Tor Network Removes Risky Relays Associated With Cryptocurrency Scheme
The Tor network has removed many relays associated with a cryptocurrency scheme, citing risk to integrity and users.
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Finance
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YLE ☛ Unemployment up, job vacancies down during October
There were 28,000 more people out of work in October this year compared to the same month last year, as Finland's unemployment rate ticked up to 6.8 percent.
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BIA Net ☛ Minister indicates a once-a-year increase in the minimum wage
Arguing that ther will be a decline in inflation next year, the Minister of Labor and Social Security Vedat Işıkhan said ther will be no need for a second rise in 2024.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Steam's regional price hikes of up to 4298% could spur exodus from Argentina and Turkey gamers
In an attempt to prevent abuse, Steam changed its pricing policy from pesos and lira to USD in Argentina and Turkey, resulting in dramatic price increases well outside the comfort zone of legitimate gamers in these regions.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Reason ☛ Settlement and Apology as to Restriction on Holding "God Bless the Homeless Vets" Sign by City Hall
From the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): A Georgia city apologized and paid up to settle a lawsuit about its officer's arrest of a veteran for holding a sign that said "God Bless the Homeless Vets" outside of its city hall.
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Citizen Lab ☛ Chinese censorship following the death of Li Keqiang
As part of our ongoing project monitoring changes to Chinese search censorship, we tracked changes to censorship following Li Keqiang’s death across seven Internet platforms: Baidu, Baidu Zhidao, Bilibili, Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Bing, Jingdong, Sogou, and Weibo. We found that some keyword combinations in search queries triggers hard censorship whereas others trigger soft censorship. Our results demonstrate China’s ongoing efforts to push state-sanctioned narratives concerning politically sensitive topics, impacting the integrity of the online information environment.
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Techdirt ☛ Congrats To Elon Musk: I Didn’t Think You Had It In You To File A Lawsuit This Stupid. But, You Crazy Bastard, You Did It!
So, yesterday we covered Elon Musk’s ridiculous censorial threat to sue Media Matters “the split second the court opens on Monday.” Of course, as we noted, you can file lawsuits 24/7. And yet, as the courts opened on Monday, there was nothing. As mentioned in the original post, I was away from internet access for most of Monday, and when I finally got back online I was told there was still no lawsuit.
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Project Censored ☛ The Project Censored Newsletter - November 2023
Highlighting the year’s most significant independent journalism—including reports on toxic chemicals, climate disinformation, and union victories—State of the Free Press 2024 illuminates issues and raises voices that the establishment press have obscured or throttled.
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Reason ☛ Ron DeSantis Rediscovers the First Amendment's Protections for Anonymous Speech
The Florida governor is attacking Republican primary rival Nikki Haley over her awful idea to police online speech, but the timing is awkward.
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Reason ☛ Trump Gag Order Raises Unsettled Constitutional Questions
A D.C. Circuit judge says the government’s defense of the order gives short shrift to "the First Amendment’s vigorous protection of political speech."
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Silicon Angle ☛ X files lawsuit against Media Matters over advertising and antisemitism accusations
Elon Musk’s social control media platform, X Corp., is suing the left-leaning pressure group Media Matters after a report that stated X allowed antisemitic posts next to advertising. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Texas on Monday, claims that Media Matters “manipulated” data in what X says is an attempt to “destroy” his company.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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France24 ☛ French Senate debates compensation for gay men jailed under homophobic laws
An estimated 60,000 gay men were convicted by French courts between 1942 and 1982 under homophobic laws that were repealed just four decades ago. On Wednesday, French senators will discuss a bill acknowledging France’s role in the persecution of homosexuals and offering compensation to those still alive, mirroring steps taken elsewhere in Europe.
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Reason ☛ Probation Condition Banning "Hostile Contact" with Police Is Unconstitutionally Vague
From today's decision in State v. Shreve, written by Judge Erik Price and joined by Chief Judge Rebecca Glasgow and Judge Bernard Veljacic: In March 2022, Shreve attended a party at a hotel. Around 4:00 a.m., he got into a physical altercation with another individual at the hotel. A hotel security guard intervened.
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Reason ☛ Goodbye to Detroit's Asset Forfeiture Racket
Wayne County was seizing cars and using its less-fortunate residents as piggy banks.
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BIA Net ☛ Imprisoned for 31 years and 1 month; release blocked for the past 13 months
The release of Resul Baltacı, arrested in Batman in 1992 in connection with a PKK case and sentenced to life imprisonment who was subjected to torture during his first detention according to a ECtHR ruling, has been hindered for the past 13 months through arbitrary disciplinary penalties.
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RFERL ☛ Inmate Backs Up Claim Iranian Rapper Yasin Has Been Tortured, Faced Mock Execution In Prison
Ahmadreza Haeri, a political prisoner in Iran's Qezelhesar Prison, has backed up claims that fellow inmate rapper Saman Yasin had been tortured, saying the artist was put through a mock execution by prison guards even though his death sentence was quashed and a new trial ordered in his case.
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RFA ☛ Uyghur filmmaker tells court he was tortured into confession
Ikram Nurmehmet is accused of recruiting young men to join a Uyghur separatist group in Turkey.
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RFA ☛ Uyghur educator, poet confirmed to have died in prison in Xinjiang
Authorities told his relatives that he was not tortured, though they took his body directly to a cemetery for burial.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: Peering Asia 5.0
Che-Hoo Cheng chaired the presentations on day 2 of Peering Asia 5.0, held in Seoul, South Korea from 1 to 2 November 2023.
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APNIC ☛ JA4+ network fingerprinting
Guest Post: Powerful human and machine-readable network fingerprints for multiple protocols that improve threat-hunting and analysis.
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Monopolies
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Patents
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JUVE ☛ EPO revokes Moderna patent monopoly in vaccine dispute with BioNTech [Ed: Well, but only after falsely granting this ruinous monopoly, which seeks to profit from catastrophe]
Moderna had sued its Mainz-based competitor BioNTech in several countries, including Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland. The dispute revolves around Moderna’s two patents EP 3 590 949 B1 and EP 3 718 565 B1, which protect “ribonucleic acids containing n1-methyl-pseudouracils and uses thereof” and “respiratory virus vaccines” respectively.
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Unified Patents ☛ Accelerating mmWave 5G adoption substantially increases Device Licensing revenues
Increased throughput and lower latency facilitated by mmWave technology will result in faster handset upgrade cycles and enable new services which translates into improving 5G licensing opportunities. This can lead to billions in industry revenue through technology and patent monopoly licensing.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ The MPF Resurrection: Still Waiting for a Miracle?
I have been thinking about the potential rise in the use of means-plus-function (MPF) claims as a reaction to indefiniteness cases such as Williamson v. Citrix as well as pressure from other doctrines, including enablement, written description, and eligibility. But, my preliminary data show that the foretold rise has not yet come. As the chart above illustrates, MPF claims continue their descent into obscurity, with no sign from the preliminary data of rising from the grave any time soon.
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Copyrights
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Digital Music News ☛ Shakira’s Tax Evasion Battle — What Just Happened?
Colombian superstar Shakira is best known for hits like “Hips Don’t Lie,” and “Whenever, Wherever.” But the pop star has spent a lot of time in the headlines embroiled in a high-profile tax evasion lawsuit in Spain. Here’s a timeline of events leading up to Shakira’s settlement.
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Digital Music News ☛ Federal Judge Dismisses Black Sheep Unpaid-Royalties Lawsuit Against Universal Music Group
Back in January, Universal Music Group (UMG) was named in a class-action lawsuit for allegedly “withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties from artists.”
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Public Domain Review ☛ Coney Island at Night (1905)
Edison Studios film showing the lights of Luna Park and Dreamland during the peak of the famed New York amusement district.
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Public Domain Review ☛ Cliché-Verre and Friendship in 19th-Century France
In the 1850s, as photography took its first steps toward commercial reproducibility, a more intimate use for light-sensitive plates briefly bloomed. It had a few names: heliographic drawing, photographic autography, or, as it is best known today, cliché-verre. Miya Tokumitsu takes us to the towns and forests of France where a group of friends began making marks on photographic plates, and finds their camaraderie cohere in lyrical arrangements of topography and light.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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They're Going to Destroy Our Casual Joy
I remember enjoying Eric Clapton's music, but these days I read on the news that Eric Clapton shows in a video pics of children from Gaze, but not Israeli children. And now we have that actress, Susan Sarandon, I remember from the horrorshow movie "the Rocky Horror Picture Show". She sides the Palestinians, too.
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Reading All Of Shakespeare
Haven't actually done this. Got bogged down somewhere in the histories, which are very much rah-rah Britannia, to be expected when your patrons are Those Who Shall Be Amused and who when offended may Red Queen your head, though that term would not have been known to Shakespeare, unless we accept the hypothesis that Shakespeare (like, some would claim, Merlyn) travels backwards in time. There have been crazier hypothesises. Like, how could a common man write such uncommonly good plays, what happened to the originals (in Klingon), etc.
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Local tourist
Had the midterm Deutsch test this morning. Went well, was simple. After lunch had to do an errand for my 日本語の先生, and later was free. My Master's studying is lagging a bit, but my brain wasn't up to it today (been writing about this; will maybe publish it some day in the near future).
The weather was nice, it's been raining almost non-stop till around the end of last week, but since the weekend the sun has been out. So instead I went to one of the most touristy places in the city, and I stolled like a tourist -- looking around as if I'd never seen it before. I could take my time because I was alone. And I did take my time -- a walk that should normally take me ~1h took almost ~3h.
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Stargazing Log 2023-11-21 (publ. 2023-11-22)
The skies cleared up unexpectedly last Monday (November 20th) but I wasn't able to make it out due to tiredness and some other circumstances. I was very disappointed at this, since we have had very poor stargazing weather this last month. But fortunately God gave me another opportunity last evening (November 11th). I was able to make it out to the boat launch at about 9:30pm AKST. That was later in the evening than I would have liked, but we had a "Pie and Praise" service at our church just before that. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving service where we praised God for things he had done for us this year, and then afterwards ate lots of dessert.
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Politics and World Events
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Hamas and Geopolitics
In the last two years, Palestinian-Israeli conflict has disappeared from media headlines, after the beginning of Russia-Ukraine war. In 2020, The Abraham Accords have normalized relationship between UAE, Israel and Bahrain, followed by Sudan, Morocco, Oman, Jordan,... Saudi Arabia was the next country in the list. The rival of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, was a link with Hamas and Israel to help negotiations and to send funds to Gaza. An hypothesis is that Hamas has felt that without Saudi Arabia and all the Arabian countries, it would be difficult to «win». And between arabian government and the street, there is a strong difference of opinion on Palestinian. I don't think Hamas has thought that another Arabian Spring could happen with their attack, but they wanted perhaps to stop the Abraham Accords and their consequences. They need funds for their actions and to become invisible is their fear. The other hypothesis is to put the Palestine back in the Headlines and in the mind of chancelleries and diplomats. It may appear cynical to sacrifice thousands of people for that but in the mind of someone who has a deviant view of a religion, why not. Considering a recent interview in the New York Times (1), it seems to be the right hypothesis.
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[Re: Stop Using Encrypted Email] LARPers vs the state?
You’re saying that the only adversaries that matter are powerful ones, like state actors that are gonna put you in jail for whatever reason. But we also want to fight the corporations and the spammers and the ad profilers.
Truth is that with TLS and STS, only people who can see the emails are the email service providers. And in a world where the biggest email provider is also the biggest ad seller, maybe encrypting the body text is not a bad idea.
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Using iptables
On this page, I list basic iptables and ipset commands. I have been using `iptables` for many years and recently netfilter has replaced iptables in the linux kernel. I use the iptables command for netfilter, I only use ipv4 so for me, it is the same as before.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.