Last month, I appeared before the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs to discuss Bill S-210, a bill that aims to limit minors’ access to pornography sites by implementing age verification and website blocking requirements. I warned that face recognition technologies, which are often used for age verification, raise serious privacy risks and that website blocking would have negative consequences for freedom of expression. Further, I emphasized how incredibly broadly the bill is drafted. While the Senators were focused on some well-known pornography sites, widely used sites and services such as Twitter or Reddit are also captured by the bill, raising the possibility of age verification to send a tweet or read a Reddit…
Anarcat’s “procmail considered harmful” post
convinced me to get my act together and finally migrate my venerable procmail based setup to sieve.
My setup was nontrivial, so I migrated with an intermediate step in which sieve
scripts would by default pipe everything to procmail, which allowed me to
slowly move rules from procmailrc to sieve until nothing remained in
procmailrc.
Here’s what I did.
Literature review
has a guide quite aligned with current Debian, and could be a starting point to
get an idea of the work to do.
https://wiki.dovecot.org/HowTo/PostfixDovecotLMTP is way more terse, but
more aligned with my intentions. Reading the former helped me in understanding
the latter.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5228 has the full Sieve syntax.
https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/sieve/pigeonhole_sieve_interpreter/
has the list of Sieve features supported by Dovecot.
https://doc.dovecot.org/settings/pigeonhole/ has the reference on Dovecot’s
sieve implementation.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dovecot/pigeonhole/master/doc/rfc/spec-bosch-sieve-extprograms.txt
is…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.enricozini.org/blog/2022/debian/migrating-from-procmail-to-sieve
A campaign of censorship against Russian state-backed media sources has been led by the European Union and embraced by tech companies, social media platforms and cable television providers.
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/04/cens-m04.html
There may be many good reasons to ban Russian state-sponsored media propaganda from a site or a pay TV service. But there is definitely one very bad reason to: because random governments ask you to. And, yet, that’s exactly what Meta/Facebook has done. Former UK politician Nick Clegg, who was recently promoted into the top circle of Meta execs and given full control over policy decisions, posted on Twitter (yes, the Facebook exec was posting on Twitter) that the company had decided to restrict access to Russian state-sponsored propaganda outfits RT and Sputnik because the company had “received requests from a number of Governments and the EU.”
We have received requests from a number of Governments…
Back in December, we wrote about how the major book publishers had teamed up to sue the state of Maryland over a fairly tame law concerning ebooks and libraries. As we’ve been detailing, over the last few years, the big book publishers have been working overtime to abuse copyright law to destroy libraries. Whereas, historically, a library could just buy a book like anyone else, and then lend it out, with ebooks, the publishers demand ridiculous prices for libraries and then put nonsensical restrictions on how libraries can lend out those ebooks. This is because publishers hate libraries — and, while they want to insist to you that copying a digital file is “theft,” they will…
TL;DR: procmail is a security liability and has been abandoned
upstream for the last two decades. If you are still using it, you
should probably drop everything and at least remove its SUID
flag. There are plenty of alternatives to chose from, and conversion
is a one-time, acceptable trade-off. Procmail is unmaintained procmail is unmaintained. The “Final release”, according to
Wikipedia, dates back to September 10, 2001 (3.22). That release
was shipped in Debian since then, all the way back from Debian 3.0 “woody”, twenty years ago. Debian also ships 25 uploads on top of this, with 3.22-21 shipping the “3.23pre” release that has been rumored since at least the November
2001, according to debian/changelog at least: procmail (3.22-1) unstable; urgency=low * New…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://anarc.at/blog/2022-03-02-procmail-considered-harmful/
Automated enforcement may ease the burden on law enforcement agencies and direct more officers towards serious crime, but nearly every device given that job has tended to perform poorly. Red light and speed enforcement cameras often get things wrong while simultaneously depriving falsely accused drivers of the opportunity to confront their accusers. And, because cities directly benefit from issued tickets, city officials have tinkered with things like yellow light timing to increase the number of tickets handed out.
Another entry in the law enforcement tech field — ShotSpotter — uses mics and sensors to detect noises suspected to be gunshots and issues alerts to law enforcement officers. Like the tech listed above, ShotSpotter is sometimes wrong. It’s…
TL;DR: procmail is a security liability and has been abandoned
upstream for the last two decades. If you are still using it, you
should probably drop everything and at least remove its SUID
flag. There are plenty of alternatives to chose from, and conversion
is a one-time, acceptable trade-off. Procmail is unmaintained procmail is unmaintained. The “Final release”, according to
Wikipedia, dates back to September 10, 2001 (3.22). That release
was shipped in Debian since then, all the way back from Debian 3.0 “woody”, twenty years ago. Debian also ships 25 uploads on top of this, with 3.22-21 shipping the “3.23pre” release that has been rumored since at least the November
2001, according to debian/changelog at least: procmail (3.22-1) unstable; urgency=low * New…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://anarc.at/blog/2022-03-02-procmail-considered-harmful/
The Free Software Foundation has announced that Zoë Kooyman will be the
organization’s new executive director.Kooyman was appointed by the FSF board following a careful selection process that included a review by a FSF staff committee and evaluation criteria such as management, fundraising, business and finance, legal, and technical skills. She succeeds John Sullivan, who served as executive director for twelve years.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/886490/
Genode OS continues to be developed as an innovative open-source operating system framework. Genode developers closed out February by issuing the Genode OS Framework 22.02 release with many new features and improvements…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Genode-OS-22.02
If you’ve accessed the MDN website today, you probably noticed that it looks quite different. We hope it’s a good different. Let us explain!
MDN has undergone many changes in its sixteen-year history from its early beginning as a wiki to the recent migration of a static site backed by GitHub. During that time MDN grew organically, with over 45,000 contributors and numerous developers and designers. It’s no surprise that the user experience became somewhat inconsistent throughout the website.
In mid-2021 we started to think about modernizing MDN’s design, to create a clean and inviting website that makes navigating our 44,000 articles as easy as possible. We wanted to create a more holistic experience for our users, with…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/03/a-new-year-a-new-mdn/

Sometimes we cover works of extreme technological merit here at Hackaday, other times we cover interesting projects that while they might not lie at the bleeding edge are interesting enough that they deserve a wider audience. Sometimes though, we bring you something in this field simply because it amuses us and we think it will you too. Such is the case with [Bryan Lunduke]’s look at making a Linux desktop look like Windows 95. And lest you think that it might be yet another skin to make Windows users transition to Linux a bit easier, the aim and result is to make it look exactly like Microsoft’s mid-90s desktop.
Underneath it all is the relatively familiar xUbuntu…

With its ancient origins and enchanting presence, Stonehenge is easily among the most iconic monuments in the world. The structure’s reputation as a cultural heritage site and a major tourist attraction is only heightened by the mystery of what these giant stones meant to the people who erected them on the plains of Wiltshire, England, some 4,500 years ago. Now, a prominent researcher believes he has solved this long-standing riddle at last in new research that lays out exactly how Stonehenge likely worked. Timothy Darvill, professor of archaeology at Bournemouth University, suggests that Stonehenge is “a simple and elegant perpetual calendar based on the 365.25 solar days in a mean tropical year,” according to a research…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/93bgpd/scientist-reveals-how-stonehenge-likely-worked-at-long-last
The pandemic showed the dangers of understaffing at the nation’s hospitals.
Enlarge / A sample chiplet design, with the CPU dies made with a more advanced manufacturing process and the chipset and some other functions made on older, cheaper processes. (credit: Universal Chipset Interconnect Express)
Some of the CPU industry’s heaviest hitters—including Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Arm, TSMC, and Samsung—are banding together to define a new standard for chiplet-based processor designs. Dubbed Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe for short), the new standard seeks to define an open, interoperable standard for combining multiple silicon dies (or chiplets) into a single package.
Intel, AMD, and others are already designing or selling chiplet-based processors in some form—most of AMD’s Ryzen CPUs use chiplets, and Intel’s upcoming Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1837604
A number of U.S. lawmakers have called for a boycott targeting Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, but some of the same politicians are responsible for their states’ anti-BDS laws.
“Today I sent a letter to the Liquor Control Board urging them to remove Russian-sourced products from stores and cease selling them ASAP,” tweeted Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. “Pennsylvania stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.” “I urge you to remove Russian-sourced products from stores and cease selling them as quickly as possible as a small show of solidarity and support for the people of Ukraine, and an expression of our collective revulsion with the unprovoked actions of the Russian state,” reads Wolf’s letter to the Liquor Control…
“Minsk, Minsk, Minsk,” they cried after Russia recognized Donetsk and Luhansk. But those Western diplomats and pundits did not hear those of us in the anti-war, pro-peace and anti-imperialist movements who insisted that Minsk II was the only conceivable way out of the crisis!
There will be reams of words attempting to provide a coherent analysis of the manufactured crisis dramatically unfolding in Ukraine, which took another unanticipated turn when Russia extended recognition to the Peoples’ Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the territory referred to as the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.
I will not add to that mountain of ink because, for me, the story is relatively simple.
The post Why The Russian Federation Recognized Independence In The…

Workers at REI Co-Op’s flagship store in Manhattan voted overwhelmingly to unionize on Wednesday, becoming the first of the outdoor and camping retail chain’s 170 in the country to unionize. On Wednesday, 86 percent of the store’s workers voted to unionize with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, despite a company-led campaign to derail the union that included mandatory meetings and huddles, a pause on promotional opportunities, and a 25-minute union busting podcast featuring REI CEO Eric Artz. The final tally was 88 votes in favor of unionizing and 14 votes against. “A union is necessary for many of us to achieve more stability and security in our lives which could allow for us to…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3ab48n/rei-workers-in-nyc-vote-to-unionize-in-landslide-election
What’s New at GNU – FSF News: Publication of the FSF-funded white papers on questions around Copilot
A newly discovered document provides more evidence that Western governments broke their promise not to expand NATO eastward after German reunification.
Notes from a 1991 meeting between top US, British, French, and German officials confirm that there was a “general agreement that membership of NATO and security guarantees [are] unacceptable” for Central and Eastern Europe.
Germany’s diplomatic representative emphasized that the Soviet Union was promised in 1990 that “we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe” river, in eastern Germany.
The document, which was formerly classified as secret, comes from the British National Archives.
It was made widely known this February by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, but was actually first published by US political scientist Joshua Shifrinson in 2019.
The post…