Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

“Hardhats vs. Hippies”: How the Media Misrepresents the Debate Over the Green New Deal

A recent Politicoarticle about the Green New Deal resolution put forward in February by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) features many grumblings from blue-collar union members about the potential economic disruption and the loss of jobs—even though the resolution calls for union rights and a federal jobs guarantee for workers. The article opens with Robbie Hunter, the president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, which represents 450,000 construction workers and apprentices, who is leading a union-led advocacy campaign called #BlueCollarRevolution. A drastic shift away from oil industry jobs in California, Hunter contends, could “export our jobs, while doing nothing for the end game, which is the environmental."

Trump Says ICE Will Start Removing “Millions of Illegal Aliens.” Here’s What’s Actually Happening.

On Monday evening, one day before officially launching his reelection bid, President Donald Trump tweeted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon begin “the process of removing” millions of undocumented immigrants from the country. Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into […]

Slimbook, the Spanish Linux computer company, just unveiled a brand-new all-in-one Linux PC called the "Apollo". It has a 23.6 inch IPS LED display with a 1920x1080 resolution. #Linux #Hardware #desktop

https://slimbook.es/en/apollo-aio-en

Raw Data: Suicide Rates Among Men and Women

Axios reports today on “Generation Z’s suicide epidemic.” Among the older half of Generation Z, suicide is the “highest it’s been since at least 1999.” That’s true, and among girls it’s the highest it’s ever been. But among boys it’s not quite at its peak from the late 80s and early 90s—though it will get […]

Two new Earth-like planets discovered near Teegarden's Star

An international research team has discovered two new Earth-like planets near one of our closest stars. Teegarden's Star is about 12.5 light years away and is one of the smallest known stars.

New study shows how environmental disruptions affected ancient societies

A new study shows that over the past 10,000 years, humanity has experienced a number of foundational transitions, or 'bottlenecks.' During these periods of transition, the advance or decline of societies was related to energy availability in the form of a benign climate and other factors.

New insight from Great Barrier Reef coral provides correction factor to climate records

Newly developed geological techniques help uncover the most accurate and high-resolution climate records to date, according to a new study. The research finds that the standard practice of using modern and fossil coral to measure sea-surface temperatures may not be as straightforward as originally thought. By combining high-resolution microscopic techniques and geochemical modeling, researchers are using the formational history of Porites coral skeletons to fine-tune the records used to make global climate predictions.

Think you're entitled to privacy on Facebook? Think again. https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/PRIV_14418.html?campaign_id=122&instance_id=10302&segment_id=14418&user_id=3593d0a3aec76354dafb17a2c0249e69&regi_id=91658101 #privacy

Leaving microbes out of climate change conversation has major consequences, experts warn

Leading microbiologists have issued a warning, saying that not including microbes -- the support system of the biosphere -- in the climate change equation will have major negative flow-on effects.

Certbot's Website Gets a Refresh

Certbot has a brand new website! Today we’ve launched a major update that will help Certbot’s users get started even more quickly and easily.

Certbot is a free, open source software tool for enabling HTTPS on manually-administered websites, by automatically deploying Let’s Encrypt certificates. Since we introduced it in 2016, Certbot has helped over a million users enable encryption on their sites, and we think this update will better meet the needs of the next million, and beyond.

Certbot is part of EFF’s larger effort to encrypt the entire Internet. Websites need to use HTTPS to secure the web. Along with our browser add-on, HTTPS Everywhere, Certbot aims to build a network that is more structurally private, safe, and protected against censorship.

This change is the culmination of a year’s work in understanding how users interact with the Certbot tool and information around it. Last year, the Certbot team ran user studies to identify areas of confusion—from questions users had when getting started to common mistakes that were often made. These findings led to changes in both the instructions for interacting with the command-line tool, and in how users get the full range of information necessary to set up HTTPS.

The new site will make it clearer what the best steps are for all users, whether that’s understanding the prerequisites to running Certbot, getting clear steps to install and run it, or figuring out how to get HTTPS in their setup without using Certbot at all.

Over a year ago, Let’s Encrypt hit 50 million active users—and counting. We hope this update will help us expand on that peak, and make unencrypted websites a thing of the past.

Security Bulletin: "Netflix has identified several TCP networking vulnerabilities in FreeBSD and Linux kernels.

The vulnerabilities specifically relate to the minimum segment size (MSS) and TCP Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) capabilities. The most serious, dubbed “SACK Panic,” allows a remotely-triggered kernel panic on recent Linux kernels."

#linux #FreeBSD #networking #security More here: https://github.com/Netflix/security-bulletins/blob/master/advisories/third-party/2019-001.md

Lovely... https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/fbi-dont-trust-https-or-padlock-on-1/

The Lofgren-Amash Amendment Would Check Warrantless Surveillance

The NSA has used Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to justify collecting and storing millions of Americans’ online communications. Now, the House of Representatives has a chance to pull the plug on funding for Section 702 unless the government agrees to limit the reach of that program.

The House of Representatives must vote yes in order to make this important corrective. Amendment #24 offered by Representatives Lofgren (CA) and Amash (MI) would make sure that no money in next year’s budget would fund the warrantless surveillance of people residing in the United States. Specifically, their amendment would withhold money [PDF] intended to fund Section 702 unless the government commits not to knowingly collect the data of people communicating from within the U.S. to other U.S. residents, and who are not specifically communicating with a foreign surveillance target.

Section 702 allows the government to collect and store the communications of foreign intelligence targets outside of the U.S if a significant purpose is to collect “foreign intelligence” information.  Although the law contains some protections—for example, a prohibition on knowingly collecting communications between two U.S. citizens on U.S. soil—we have learned that the program actually does sweep up billions of communications involving people not explicitly targeted, including Americans. For example, a 2014 report by the Washington Post that reviewed of a “large cache of intercepted conversations” provided by Edward Snowden revealed that 9 out of 10 account holders “were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.”

The Lofgren-Amash amendment would require the government to acknowledge the protections in the law and to explicitly promise not to engage in “about collection,” the practice of collecting communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target. About collection has been one of the most controversial aspects of Section 702 surveillance, and although the government ended this practice in 2017, it has consisted claimed the right to restart it.

With a big fight looming later this year on whether Congress should renew another controversial national security law, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, we encourage the House of Representatives to vote Yes on the Lofgren-Amash Amendment to take a step toward reining in Section 702.

Scientists shocked by #Arctic #permafrost #thawing 70 years sooner than predicted | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/18/arctic-permafrost-canada-science-climate-crisis

#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

Teflon Toxin Safety Level Should Be 700 Times Lower Than Current EPA Guideline

New data suggests that the safety threshold for PFOA in drinking water should be as low as .1 parts per trillion, according to top U.S. toxicologist.

The post Teflon Toxin Safety Level Should Be 700 Times Lower Than Current EPA Guideline appeared first on The Intercept.

We Can’t Settle for Less Than Single Payer

In 1994, America was in the throes of healthcare reform. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was leading the Clinton administration’s grand effort to implement a system of “managed competition,” a proposal that would expand healthcare coverage by putting big insurance companies in the driver’s seat but regulate how that care was administered. Her failed proposal, while not perfect, was not that far off from the Obamacare we got 16 years later.

Here at In These Times, the office was divided. Some supported Clinton’s plan on the grounds that it was an improvement, while others thought it folly to settle for less than single payer.

John Judis, a founding editor at In These Times, wrote in March 1994:

I am [not convinced] that a Canadian-style plan could pass Congress … .

As Congress strips away the ungainly features of Clinton’s plan … the real danger is that what remains will more closely resemble the prim [Rep. Jim] Cooper [D-Tenn.] plan [known as Clinton Lite] … . Given that danger, liberals’ priority will probably be defending what the Clinton plan, for all its deficiencies, has in common with the Canadian system: a commitment to universal coverage and control of costs.

What will I do? I’ll have to demonstrate my altruism by defending the Clinton plan against its conservative rivals, even as I anticipate the prospect of my health insurance fees doubling.

Vicente Navarro, a professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins and author of Dangerous to Your Health: Capitalism in Health Care, took the opposite tack in January 1994:

The implementation of the Clinton "managed competition” proposal will put large insurance companies in command of the health care system. … The profitability of the insurance industry is based not only on selecting and screening patients, but on favoring those providers who consume the fewest resources, a strategy that frequently interferes with the quality of care. …

And this is why managed competition is favored by large insurance companies. None other than Bill Link, vice president of Prudential Insurance, has indicated that “for Prudential, the best-case scenario for reform—preferable even to the status quo—would be enactment of a managed-competition proposal.”

What we need is a single-payer system that, as in Canada, provides comprehensive and universal coverage without co-payments and deductibles, and also allows people to choose their providers. …

There is an urgent need to mobilize support for the single-payer proposal, both to move the debate to the left and to expand and strengthen the single-payer elements in the legislation that Congress may finally approve.

Now, 25 years later, we are faced with a field of Democratic primary candidates who run the gamut from Bernie Sanders’ wholehearted push for Medicare for All to Joe Biden’s dismissal of it. God willing, in another 25 years, we will be having a different discussion. Of course, the nature of that debate will depend on the results of the 2020 election.

Ocasio-Cortez Amendment Shifts Some of DEA’s Funding to Opioid Treatment, as House Democrats Push to Increase Agency’s Budget

House Democrats originally allocated $80 million more to the law enforcement agency than the Trump administration had even requested.

The post Ocasio-Cortez Amendment Shifts Some of DEA’s Funding to Opioid Treatment, as House Democrats Push to Increase Agency’s Budget appeared first on The Intercept.

'Hot spots' increase efficiency of solar desalination

Researchers showed they could boost the efficiency of their nanotechnology-enabled solar membrane desalination system by more than 50% simply by adding inexpensive plastic lenses to concentrate sunlight into 'hot spots.'

Fracking linked to higher radon levels in Ohio homes

A new study connects the proximity of fracking to higher household concentrations of radon gas, the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US.

Please Don’t Be Mad!