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Trump’s Social Media Business Is a Mess Mother Jones – Mother Jones

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Donald Trumps plan to exact revenge on Big Techand make billions by launching his own social media empire and taking it publicwas always going to be a long shot. And while its not yet dead, the obstacles are mounting.

For starters, Trump Media & Technology Group is reportedly not making payments to vendors. Last week,Fox Business reported that RightForge, an internet hosting company that markets itself as friendly to conservative customers who cant find hosting elsewhere, has not been paid since March. Thats no small matter; RightForge is reportedly providing much of the technical underpinning of the TruthSocial platformand the company is apparently owed as much as $1.6 million. A representative for TMTG did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones, but it would notbe altogether surprising if TruthSocial is facing a cash crunch. Making money running a social media business is, at best, a dicey proposition. Twitter, which has more than 230 million users, managed to lose $270 million last quarter. TruthSocial has perhaps 2 million active users (Trump himself has 3.9 million total followers).

But the plan was never to have TruthSocial pull itself up by its bootstraps, making its way on whatever revenue it could scrape together. From the beginningthe nascent media business was announced last SeptemberTrumps goal has been to take the whole operation to the stock market, where (theoretically) huge sums of money can be raised from investors. But Trumps toxic post-January 6 reputation has made that more difficult; in the wake of the insurrection, a number of financial institutions cut ties with him, closing his bank accounts and swearing off any more lending. With no big banks to back an IPO, Trump turned to something called a SPACa special purpose acquisition company, or a blank-check companyto take TMTG public. The idea is to merge his company with a company that is already public, but has no business to speak of. That would short-circuit the need to have a lengthy IPO. But it also offers a lot of opportunities for the deal to run into trouble, which is what appears to be happening now.

Last September, Trump announced TMTG would merge with Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), a SPAC company that had gone public and was looking for a partner. After the proposed deal was revealed, DWACs share price rocketed above $97. It has since fallen below $30, where it currently sits. The deal, which caused such excitement initially, was supposed to happen quickly. Like most SPACs, DWAC has rules in its organizing charter that make it clear that the companys founders have to find a merger partner expeditiously, or else give back the money they raised from investors. The deadline for DWAC to make its merger with TMTG happen is Sept. 8.

DWACs founders have asked investors to approve an extension of that deadlineand on Sept. 6, shareholders will be able to vote to give the company another year to complete the deal. There is no guarantee that investors will approve the deadline extensionalthough most would likely lose money if the company was forced to shutter itself and return the funds it had raised in its IPO.

Even if shareholders go along with the founders request, the SEC filing in which DWAC asked its shareholders to extend the deadline is full of even more pitfalls that have to be negotiated.

For starters, as the document makes clear, the Sept. 6 vote will only extend DWACs ability to merge with TMTGTMTG also has to approve an extension. And then there are the PIPE investors. As part of the SPAC process, big-time financial playerssuch as hedge funds, private-equity firms, or bankscan make large investments known as PIPE investments. In the case of DWAC, PIPE investors put in $1 billion, which would be made available to the new company following the merger. But, according to DWACs message to shareholders, those PIPE investors can start pulling their money out on Sept. 22 if the merger hasnt happened. If any of these funders have gotten cold feet, they might be able to just walk away.

The biggest thing holding the merger up right now is the fact that DWAC is under investigation by multiple federal regulators. Another one of the rules of SPACs is that when the founders of the SPAC took the business public, it was supposed to be a truly blank company. There wasnt supposed to be any coordination ahead of time with a venture like TMTG to cook up a scheme to bring the two companies together. Those discussions and that agreement were supposed to happen only after DWAC went public on Sept. 23, 2021. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are investigating the possibility that there were indeed discussions between Trumps camp and DWAC before DWAC went public. Both companies have denied any wrongdoing.

As long as that investigation drags on, DWAC told investors, the merger probably isnt happening.

But thats not all! Along with all those grim possibilities for ways that various groups could sink the whole deal, DWAC also warned investors that Trumps waning popularity might make it difficult for any deal to ever happen.

The success of the Business Combination depends in part on the popularity of TMTGs brand and the reputation and popularity of its Chairman, President Donald J. Trump, DWACs most recent filings says. The value of TMTGs brand may diminish if the popularity of President Trump were to suffer. Adverse reactions to publicity relating to President Trump, or the loss of his services, could adversely affect TMTGs revenues, results of operations and its ability to maintain or generate a consumer base, as well as the outcome of the proposed Business combination.

As much as some TruthSocial users say they love the platform, the reality is there just arent very many of them. While the platform has been busy since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, with Trump using it to blastout angry messages (and repost QAnon propaganda), it simply isnt a thriving site. There are huge problems with content moderation, with both accusations that the company uses the same shadow-banning tactics that Trump derided Twitter for allegedly using against conservatives (the company denies it does any type of shadow-banning) and huge quantities of violent content being posted freely. In fact, the platforms problems moderating all that violent content led to Google sayingTuesday that it would continue to exclude TruthSocial from its app store.

The big problem, which DWAC acknowledged in its discussion of risks, is that a lot of people just dont want anything to do with Trump or TruthSocial.

According to The Hill, only 30% of people surveyed would use a social media site associated with President Trump. In addition, according to a survey published in The New York Post, only 60% of Republicans would use such a platform, DWACs filing says. In order to be successful, TMTG will need millions of those people to register and regularly use TMTGs platform.

Originally posted here:

Trump's Social Media Business Is a Mess Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Here are Bay Area parks closing because of the heat wave – San Francisco Chronicle

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With temperatures and fire danger expected to soar over Labor Day weekend, officials prepared by ordering the states utilities to halt afternoon and evening shutdowns for routine maintenance, and closing dozens of popular parks, recreation and wilderness areas in the East Bay on Sunday and Monday, excluding picnickers and hikers.

Cal ISO, which oversees the states power grid, extended restrictions banning regular maintenance operations that would require shutdowns until Thursday. The restrictions apply from noon to 10 p.m. daily.

Among the 40 East Bay Regional Park District properties shutting for the two days are among those heavily used by picnickers and hikers Tilden, Wildcat Canyon, Anthony Chabot, Redwood, Sibley and Roberts.

The park districts fire chief ordered the parks most of them in the parched hills or eastern reaches of Alameda and Contra Costa counties because the risk of wildfires is expected to rise to dangerous levels as the temperatures climb as high as 110 degrees in some areas.

The cities or Walnut Creek and Concord have also closed their city open spaces Lime Ridge, Shell Ridge, Sugarloaf, Borges Ranch, Howe Homestead, and Acalanes Ridge in Walnut Creek and Lime Ridge and the open space areas within Newhall Community Park until Sept. 6 when the extreme heat warnings are expected to be lifted. The closures, which started Thursday, followed the recommendation of the Contra Costa Fire Protection District.

While the hotter, drier parks will be closed, all of the East Bay Regional Park Districts cooler shoreline parks will be open for those hoping to escape the heat. So will six swimming facilities.

Anthony Chabot (except for its campground)

Bishop Ranch

Black Diamond Mines

Briones Regional Park

Brushy Peak

Claremont Canyon

Contra Loma

Crockett Hills

Diablo Foothills

Dublin Hills

Five Canyons

Garin/ Dry Creek Pioneer

Huckleberry

Kennedy Grove

Lake Chabot

Las Trampas

Leona Canyon

Mission Peak

Morgan Territory

Nejedly Staging Area located in Carquinez Strait

Ohlone Wilderness

Pleasanton Ridge

Reinhardt Redwood

Roberts

Round Valley

Shadow Cliffs

Sibley

Sobrante Ridge

Sunol

Sycamore Valley

Tilden

Tilden Nature Area

Tilden Botanic Garden

Vargas Plateau

Waterbird

Wildcat Canyon

Antioch Oakley Shoreline

Ardenwood Historic Farm

Bay Point

Big Break

Carquinez Strait

Coyote Hills

Crown Beach

Dumbarton Quarry Campground

Hayward Shoreline

Judge John Sutter

Martin Luther King Jr.

McLaughlin East Shore State Park

Miller Knox

Oyster Bay

Point Isabel

Point Pinole

Radke Martinez

Castle Rock Pool

Cull Canyon

Don Castro

Lake Del Valle

Lake Temescal

Quarry Lakes

Michael Cabanatuan (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan

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Here are Bay Area parks closing because of the heat wave - San Francisco Chronicle

Keir Starmer insists he is a ‘proud trade unionist’ – The National

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SIR Keir Starmer has insisted he is a proud trade unionist.

The Labour leader has come under pressure from some backbenchers over his position on frontbenchers on picket lines.

In July, he sacked shadowminister for busses and local transport Sam Tarry after the MP joined an RMT picket line.

READ MORE:Scotlands brand opens up doors across sectors, business ambassador in America says

Other senior Labour figures, including shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar,took to picket lines over the summer despite Starmer's ruling that frontbenchers should stay away.

And, during theQ&A on BBC Radio 5 Live, in an exchange over the energy crisis, one callertold Starmer:The public is more left-wing than the Labour Party at the moment.

Asked about the sacking of Tarry during the interview, Starmersaid: Nobody has been fired for going on a picket line.

When it comes to those disputes, I completely understand why so many working people feel they need a wage increase.

Tarry was sacked from the front bench after attending a picket line

I completely understand what people are going through and I support the right to strike.

Starmer said it is simply a question of roles.

I want to be the Labour prime minister. I dont think the role of the prime minister is (to) have a Cabinet meeting and then go on to a picket line.

Labour previouslysaid Tarryhad been dismissed because he had broken the code of collective responsibility among the Labour frontbench, which requires senior MPs to have their media appearances approved by party high command.

Starmer then denied Labours energy policy amounts to kicking the can down the road, but acknowledged that something will have to be done early next year to tackle the crisis in the longer term.

READ MORE:SNP 'anticipating early General Election' as candidacy applications open

The Labour leader was quizzed on his plans to tackle soaring energy bills going beyond the middle of next year.

One listener told him: The public is more left-wing than the Labour Party at the moment.

Starmer said: I dont accept that is kicking the can down the road.

He said his partys plan is meeting the concerns of millions of people.

He said he understands the scale of the challenge facing households, adding that many people listening and watching this will be saying I cant afford that'.

The Labour leader insisted he is a "proud trade unionist"

Pressed on his longer-term plans, he pointed to his partys call for a national mission on home insulation.

On the question of what we do long term, I am completely up for that challenge, he told the programme.

I accept the challenge that something has got to be done in April.

Of the Government, he said: I dont think we are approaching this in the right way, because we keep coming up with short-term answers.

The party haspitcheda six-month freeze on energy bills at the current 1971 price cap, funded in part by expanding the windfall tax on oil and gas profits.

Starmer also said during the policy launchthat scrapping the planned increases in the price cap would keep inflation down, seeing it peak at about 9% rather than the 13% the Bank of England is forecasting.

The Labour leader also said in August that his party would not go ahead with the 400 rebate on energy bills that the Government has promised all households in October, saying: Were not going to let the price go up in the first place and so thats how the 400 is catered for.

READ MORE:Nicola Sturgeon to chair emergency meeting over council strikes

The bit were not cancelling is the 650 to pensioners and those on Universal Credit, so that is targeted support we would keep.

Some experts and think tanks have warned that such a plan would prove inadequate to the scale of the cost-of-living crisis.

And, economists warned the plan could cost as much as the Covid furlough scheme if extended, while some on Labours left criticised Starmer rejection of calls for the nationalisation of energy firms in favour of handing them billions of pounds to make up for the difference between rising wholesale costs and what they charge customers.

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Keir Starmer insists he is a 'proud trade unionist' - The National

Open Source Code – Perseus Project

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Background and Purpose

In the earliest stages of the transition from a CD-Rom-based collection to the WWW site, it was clear that the nature and scope of the Perseus resource demanded a flexible, extensible, and powerful data management system. Written mostly in Perl, the production version of the on-line Perseus text management system evolved and grew over eight years, becoming a uniquely powerful platform, capable of ingesting heterogeneous source materials and performing a range of automatic services. With few precedents and examples to follow, however, the code behind this system reflected organic growth and experimentation, and became difficult to sustain, share, and modify. While all versions of the Perseus Digital Library system were designed to be open-source (third parties did make use of the HyperTalk, Tcl/TK and Perl code), each of the previous incarnations of Perseus were complex and difficult to document, which presented obstacles to new avenues of collaborative research and development.

As digital library systems matured in the early 00's, the project sought third party solutions for delivering resources. At the time, most digital libraries concentrated on locating objects and then left it to the users to make sense of what they had found. In contrast, Perseus had increasingly focused on giving users the tools to understand what the digital library gave them: the project depended upon a range of automatic linking, information extraction and visualization services that existing, largely catalog-oriented systems could not support. The project chose to build a new digital library system, designing it from the start to be interoperable, modular, and open-source.

Open-Source Services

The Perseus Hopper is an open-source project providing a suite of services for interacting with textual collections. While as a whole it provides an integrated reading environment, its individual services are designed to be modular and can be grouped into three different classes.

Linguistic support: The Hopper itself is language independent, but the code includes native support for Greek, Latin and Arabic. Given a source text in any one of those three languages (either a text bundled with the code release or a TEI-compliant XML text of the user's own), it provides services for automatic lemmatization (linking inflected word forms to the dictionary entries from which they're derived) and morphological analysis (identifying, for instance, that the Latin word amor is a singular masculine nominative noun). At a broader level, it also enables corpus research by automatically generating word and lemma frequency information for the entire collection of texts supplied to it.

Contextualized reading: Since the Hopper is the underlying code base for the Perseus Digital Library, it reflects that same emphasis on being an integrated reading environment: much of its power derives not simply from isolated textual services, but in the knowledge that emerges from the interaction of texts themselves. Users can take advantage of this contextualization with the Greco-Roman and Arabic texts provided, or specify themselves the higher-level relationship between their own texts (e.g., that document X is a translation of document Y) in order to create a reading environment where passages in a source text are accompanied by secondary resources such as translations and commentaries. Contextualized reading also intersects with linguistic support -- since dictionaries are also supported as "secondary" resources, a reader can find not simply what dictionary entry a word in a source text is derived from, but also a definition of what that word means. The library environment also includes an architecture for soliciting user contributions in the form of "voting" -- this is implemented online in the Perseus Digital Library in the form of user votes for morphological forms, but can be extended as well to accommodate other varieties of annotation.

Searching: Users can not only read passages from texts, but use a suite of search tools to find what they are looking for, in any of the languages the Hopper supports. These search tools include word and phrase searches, in individual texts or collections. These searches include the option to search all possible inflections of a word, making them extremely powerful for morphologically rich languages like Greek, Latin and Arabic (e.g., a lemmatized search for the root form sum would also find documents containing the inflected forms est and sunt). For Classical texts, which have a well-adopted citation scheme, users can navigate a text by typing canonical abbreviations (e.g., Thuc. 1.24). The Hopper also provides functionality to search and browse the tagged named entities (places, people, dates, and date ranges) in a corpus, and includes an architecture for presenting archaeological artifact and image data, which is separate from the reading environment.

Extensibility

The code base itself invites two varieties of extensibility. On the one hand, while the code is bundled with a collection of Greco-Roman and Arabic texts around which it has grown, users are able to include their own TEI-compliant XML texts as part of the reading environment and enable the same services for those texts as those that are available online for Perseus' open-source editions. As an API, the Perseus hopper also includes a number of Java classes for interacting with texts outside of a reading environment -- one can, for instance, use the linguistic services such as automatic lemmatization or morphological analysis as standalone tools for analyzing not simply the bundled Perseus texts, but any text of their own as well.

On the other hand, the Java code itself is also designed with modularity and extensibility in mind. An example of this is the variety of classes (all ultimately inherited from CorpusProcessor) to cycle through an entire collection of texts and perform some operation on each one. The workflow to build the library environment relies on these classes to calculate word and lemma statistics for the corpus at large, to map citations between texts, and to index them all in order to make them searchable later. These classes are easily extensible for any task that requires iterating through an entire collection of texts. The hopper source code also includes a number of services for managing named entities such as people and places, and has served as the foundation for visualization projects, plotting that data both geographically on a map and historically on a timeline. In terms of modularity, the hopper also includes a number of low-level classes for manipulating text -- from finding all possible lemmas for a given Latin form to delimiting an accented Greek word.

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Open Source Code - Perseus Project

Google Expands Bug Bounties to Its Open Source Projects – DARKReading

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Google plans topay out cash rewards for information on vulnerabilities discovered in any of its open source projects as part of anongoing effort to improve the security of open source code.

The newOpen Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program (OSS VRP), which extends Google's existing Vulnerability Rewards Program, was announced in a blog post published today.

Google will payresearchers up to $31,337 for information on vulnerabilities in open source software projects particularly those managed by Google that impact the firm's software and services. Google's goal is to secure its own software supply chain, but because many non-Google developers use the company's open source software such as the Go programming language and Angular Web framework the initiative promises to help secure the wider open source ecosystem as well.

At first, Google will focus on the most widely used and critical projects, says Francis Perron, open source security technical program manager at Google.

"We want to offer a high-quality bug-hunting experience, so we picked projects which had enough maturity in their response and their processes to test this program," he says. "Broadening the scope will happen after we compile enough data internally, and make sure we can scale up without harming the projects, and the researchers."

Securing the software supply chain has become a major effort of technology firms and the policymakers. In January, the Biden administration met with technology companies and open source organizations to find ways to promote secure coding, find more vulnerabilities, and speed patching of open source projects.

Last year, Google pledged to spend $10 billion over five years, supporting efforts by the OpenSSF, adding a cybersecurity advisory group, and bolstering its Invisible Security zero trust initiative.

"Governments and businesses are at a watershed moment in addressing cybersecurity," Kent Walker, president of global affairs for Google and its parent company Alphabet, said in the 2021 announcement of the company's $10 billion pledge. "Cyberattacks are increasingly endangering valuable data and critical infrastructure. While we welcome increased measures to reinforce cybersecurity, governments and companies are both facing key challenges."

Over the past decade, Google has paid out more than $38 million in rewards to researchers who have submitted 13,000 vulnerabilities to the company, as part of its Vulnerability Rewards Program.

Google has already offered bounties for bugs in its Chrome browser and the Android mobile operating system, both of whose base code are managed as open source projects. The company paid out $2.9 million to 119 researchers for their reports of vulnerabilities in Android, with the highest reward hitting $157,000. Similarly, the company paid $3.3 million to 115 researchers for finding bugs in Chrome in 2021.

With its Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program (OSS VRP), Google is creating a standard framework to reward researchers who find issues in the open source software projects maintained by the company.

Google will allow submissions for "[a]ll up-to-date versions of open source software (including repository settings) stored in the public repositories of Google-owned GitHub organizations," the company stated in its blog post. In addition, the company has focused on rewards for several critical projects, including the Go programming language, the Angular Web framework, and its nascent operating system for connected devices, Fuchsia.

The company currently asks for submissions of vulnerabilities that affect the supply chain, design issues that could result in vulnerabilities in Google's products, and security weaknesses such as compromised credentials, weak passwords, or insecure installation configurations. As part of its focus on the supply chain, the company will reward researchers who submit vulnerabilities to third-party open source projects on which Google's software depends.

"This program focuses on Google-produced open source projects, and the proposed short list of flagship projects listed includes projects also driven by Google," says Google's Perron. "The rules also include the 'Standard' tier, which does incorporate a vast amount of projects."

The company plans to pay researchers anywhere from $100 to $31,337 a special number because it spells out "eleet," or elite, in hackerspeak with the higher payouts going to more severe, or more creative, vulnerabilities.

With the additional bounty programs, some vulnerabilities rewards may overlap with other programs. Google pledged to work with researchers to submit their vulnerability reports to the right programs to maximize their payout, the company said.

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Google Expands Bug Bounties to Its Open Source Projects - DARKReading

F-22 test demonstrates first use of third-party software on fifth-gen fighter – Flightglobal

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For the first time, a fifth-generation combat aircraft has flight-tested onboard software originating from a third-party developer.

The US Air Force (USAF) Air Combat Command (ACC) said on 29 August that test pilots and engineers achieved the milestone on a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.

The USAF describes the moment as ushering in a new era in Department of Defense software capability development.

The flight, from Edwards AFB in California, represents the first ever instance of third-party software running on an advanced, fifth-generation fighter, and the first in-flight use of open-source container orchestration software on any fighter aircraft, the USAF says.

Open-source refers to software in which the original source code is made available for distribution and modification. In practice, it allows third-party developers to create new applications for the original platform.

Due to security concerns and the highly-technical nature of their operations, the USAF notes, fifth-generation fighters have historically been unavailable for third-party software integration.

However, the Pentagon in recent years undertook a broad effort to open its long-life-cycle platforms, such as aircraft, to third-party developers a concept known as a modular open systems approach (MOSA).

The initiative will require thousands of systems acquired by the sprawling Department of Defenseprocurement system to better work together and be more flexible. A major goal behind MOSA is to enable cheap and rapid integration of new systems to existing platforms. Such a capability is viewed as vital in potential future conflicts.

The US Army has also made MOSA a priority in its Future Vertical Lift initiative to develop the services next generation of helicopters.

The goal of the open-source push is to rapidly discover and iterate on combat capabilities and stay relevant with cutting-edge technology, and affordablyaccelerate change in delivering combat air force capabilities as an enterprise, says General Mark Kelly of the ACC.

The USAF team used an open-source architecture known as Open Systems Enclave (OSE), which allowed the combining of government-owned software with existing hardware already aboard F-22s.

This breakthrough fundamentally changes how we can deliver combat capability to the warfighter, says Major Allen Black, F-22 test pilot and project co-lead.

The USAF says the feat demonstrates thatnew technologies can be integrated with existing platforms inless than 60 days.

Weve proven the ability to rapidly evaluate and integrate next-generation technologies developed by experts in government, industry and academia at a lower cost with software portability across defence platforms, Black says.

The USAF has now issued a formal requirement for the establishment of OSE on its F-22s.

Broadly, the service describes the open-source initiative as transforming its software development and acquisition strategy, enabling a future where apps are rapidly developed, matured and delivered to the warfighter at the push of a button.

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F-22 test demonstrates first use of third-party software on fifth-gen fighter - Flightglobal

How to Find the Best Nmap Scan for Penetration Testing Initiatives – EC-Council

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Setting up a pentesting Nmap is easy since this tool works on a wide range of operating systems and is easily customized to meet the specific needs of any environment. Still, if you have never used such a tool before, exploring its functionality is important to get the most out of it.

In older versions of the tool, you would need to be comfortable using the command line interface (CLI) to control scans and other functions. However, you can now use Zenmap, an add-on that offers a graphical user interface (GUI) so anyone can use it easily.

However, you decide to interact with the tool, you first need to define the ports you would like it to scan. This does not require a specific list but a range of ports youd like to check. You can also scan all ports on your network, which would take far too long in most environments. Instead, most developers divide known ports into ranges and schedule each group for scanning incrementally.

Aside from defining a range of ports to scan, you should also tell it what information you want it to collect from each port. The depth of a scan can range from limited to deep, collecting basic information like whether or not a port is open or more detailed information, such as what devices, operating systems, and services are interacting with those ports.

Because this tool allows you to discover very in-depth information about ports, including the version of services active on a given port, its a powerful tool for revealing vulnerabilities in your network. Whats important is that you know what youre scanning for to make sure you manage resources wisely and garner valuable information in the process.

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How to Find the Best Nmap Scan for Penetration Testing Initiatives - EC-Council

Legal options running out for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

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Julian Assange has been detained at London's high-security Belmarsh Prison, one of the UK'stoughest detention centers,since 2019. The WikiLeaks founder has long since completed his original 50-week sentencefor skipping bail in 2012. But he has remained in custody ever since, in extremely harsh conditions, in what is essentially detention pending deportation.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed the judicial extradition order in June. Assange has one lastchanceto beallowed to appealthe judicial order, to the High Court in London. A ruling is expected next month.If his request is rejectedAssange will be extradited to the United States within four weeks.

If the judges deny her husband the chance to launch another round of appeals, Assange's wife and lawyer, Stella, fears the worst. "Julian's life depends on him winning this," she said, in an interview with DW. "Julian is clinically depressed. If he is extradited, and placed in the type of isolation that the US government says it reserves the right to place him in, then he will commit suicide."

Assange's Australian family are also very worried. Speaking to Sky Australia last week, his father, John Shipton, described Assange's health as "very worrying and becoming dire now."

"His health is in decline," Assange's brother Gabriel confirmed in the same interview. "He's in a very, very precarious situation It really is heartbreaking to see Julian, this gentle genius, in a maximum-security prison alongside the most violent criminals in the United Kingdom."

The family has appealed to the new Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, asking him to intercede on behalf of his compatriot. During his election campaign, Albanese had declared, "Enough is enough," indicating that the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder must come to an end.

However, Assange's father and brother have said no progress has been made since the new prime minister took office, and that so far they have been unable to make an appointment with the prime minister to discuss the issue. In a recent public statement, Albanese pointed out that negotiations like these must be conducted quietly and diplomatically, behind the scenes.

According toStella Assange, the High Court must allow further appeals against an earlier decision made by the same court. The principal bone of contention, however, is the formal interpretation of the extradition treaty between the UK and the US.

In the first instance, a district court judge also took the prisoner's state of health into account, and ruled against extradition. The more senior judges, however, did not accept this argument as decisive.

There are other aspects of Assange's case that have been ignored to date, despite the best efforts of his lawyers. For example: the question of whether Assange's right to freedom of expression and the protection of journalistic work ought not, in fact, to prevent extradition. Or whether the US made the request for political reasons.

"Ultimately, once the domestic remedies have been exhausted, he can then appeal to the European Court of Human Rights," said Stella Assange. However, it remains unclear whether the British judges would be prepared to wait for an ECHR ruling.

Assange's two sons, now 3 and 5 years old, have only ever known their father as a prisoner

That's because the British government is set on a collision course with the European Convention on Human Rights. A draft bill submitted to the British Parliament at the end of June proposes to reduce protection for refugees. Instead of going through the asylum process in Britain, migrants would be sent to Rwanda to apply for asylum there. If the Tory hard-liner Liz Truss moves into Downing Street in September, Assange has little hope of a successful political intervention.

Once a week, Stella Assange is allowed to visit her husband in Belmarsh with their children for an hour. The two boys, now 3 and 5 years old, have only ever known their father as a prisoner.

Every family visit resembles an obstacle course even the children are thoroughly searched. "They check inside their mouth, behind their ears, in their hair, under their feet; they have to go through the dogs that sniff them from head to toe, and they understand this is a place where their father is not allowed to leave," said Stella Assange.

Ultimately, though, she said this fight is not just for her husband's life, but forpress freedom in Europe. "Is it permissible for a foreign power to reach into the European space and limit what the press can publish?" she asked. "Think about if China were to do the same thing and prosecute a journalist in Germany on the same principle, because that journalist exposed Chinese crimes."

But an extradition treaty like the one between the UK and the US exists only between friendly nations, where there is in fact trust in each other's democratic justice system. And where, it appears, geopolitical factors weigh heavier than the fate of a single man.

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Legal options running out for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Help Us Stop the Extradition of Julian Assange! – a Community …

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Priti Patel approves Assange's Extradition. This is a dark day for Press freedom and for British democracy.

Stella Assange: 'We are going to fight this, we are going to use every appeal avenue. I am going to spend every waking hour fighting for Julian until he is free."

Defence submissions to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel have just been filed, arguing why the US extradition of #Assange must be blocked. A decision is expected from Priti Patel in the coming days.

Priti Patel must now decide whether or not to extradite Assange.UKs Home Secretary Priti Patel must now decide whether or not to approve the extradition. Julian's defence has until May 17th to submit it's arguments to Priti Patel, who will then have 2 weeks to make her decision.

UK Supreme Court refuses permission to appeal in Assange extradition.The case will soon move to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to decide on the extradition.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is facing a 175-year sentence for publishing truthful information in the public interest.

Julian Assange is currently being detained in UK prison - his third anniversary in Belmarsh is coming 11 April 2021.

For over 7 years, the US government has been fighting to extradite Julian Assange so he can be prosecuted in US courts for publishing their secrets which include evidence of war crimes.

In January this year, Julian Assange lost his appeal at the UK High Courts and it looks more likely than ever that he will be extradited

We cannot let that happen - if Julian Assange is convicted, his prosecution will carry long reaching and troubling consequences for journalism around the world

Your rights are at risk. Assanges right to publish is our right to know. We must stop Julian Assange being extradited to the USA.

Julian Assange is being sought by the current US administration for publishing US government documents which exposed war crimes and human rights abuses. The politically motivated charges represent an unprecedented attack on press freedom and the publics right to know seeking to criminalise basic journalistic activity.

If convicted Julian Assange faces a sentence of 175 years, likely to be spent in extreme isolation.

We cant fight this without your support. Please donate to help us prevent Julian Assanges Extradition to the USA.

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US charges against Assange pose a huge threat, one that could criminalise the critical work of investigative journalists & their ability to protect their sources.-- The NUJ

The only thing standing between an Assange prosecution and a major threat to global media freedom is Britain. It is urgent that it defend the principles at risk.-- Human Rights Watch

Were Julian Assange to be extradited or subjected to any other transfer to the USA, Britain would be in breach of its obligations under international law. -- Massimo Moratti, Amnesty International

The right of Mr. Assange to personal liberty should be restored -- The UN working group on abritrary detention

Julian Assange shouldnt be the subject of a grand jury hearing, he should be given a medal. Hes contributing to democracy.-- Noam Chomsky, academic and activist

Assange must NEVER be extradited to the USA. Its a serious threat to him personally and freedoms we usually honor, such as press freedom, freedom of expression and FOI. -- Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International

Julian Assanges potential extradition has human rights implications that reach far beyond his individual case. -- Dunja Mijatovi, Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe

The case is a huge scandal and represents the failure of Western rule of law. If Julian Assange is convicted, it will be a death sentence for freedom of the press. -- Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture; Human Rights Chair, Geneva Academy

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Web3 Growth Stymied By Scarcity Of Programmers – Forbes

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Developer shortage stands in the way of decentralized, blockchain-centric internet bliss.

Advocates of Web3, a catch-all term widely used to incorporate concepts of decentralized networks, cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-powered applications, have a grand vision for the future of the Internet and global finance.

One thing that stands in the way: a lack of people to make it happen.

At the end of last year, when bitcoin and a handful of other cryptocurrencies reached their highest values, about 18,500 developers each month were contributing to open-source Web3 projects, according to a report published by crypto-focused investment firm Electric Capital.

Electric Capital

That number is at an all-time high and growing faster than everwith roughly 60% of Web3 developers entering the industry in 2021writes Electric Capital partner Maria Shen, but it is a speck of the global total of software engineers, which stood at 31.1 million in the first quarter of 2022, according to developer analytics company SlashData.

Facebook, Amazon.com and Googlethe largest companies of todays internet, dubbed Web2 by cryptophiles, have over 20,000 software developers each, according to various estimates. But theyre outnumbered by the staff at companies like JPMorgan and Citigroup, both of which say they employ over 30,000 on projects for their financial-services businesses.

Crypto insiders might shrug at this juxtaposition, replying we are still earlyone of the industrys favorite refrainsbut some see this chasm as a major impediment to the realization of Web3s promises.

When Citigroup reportedly employs 30,000 developers, but there are only several thousand active monthly blockchain developers, this developer gap feels insurmountable, says Jay McCarthy, cofounder and chief technology officer at blockchain development firm Reach.

"Blockchain has extreme potential, but if we dont get more developers building out their dreams, that potential will never be realized," echoes Chris Swenor, CEO of Reach and McCarthys cofounder.

They identified a high barrier to entry as a primary reason for the shortage. Not only does blockchain development often require knowledge of specialized programming languages like Solidity or Rust, used for implementing smart contracts on Ethereum and Solana, but fundamentally it's a brand new technology that requires behavioral change, says Swenor.

He and McCarthy founded Reach in 2019, out of their Boston homes, for that very reason. The company, backed by creators of the Algorand blockchain, provides developers with a toolkit that helps them cut up to 85% of costs and time spent on the development of applications including decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), two key building blocks for most visions of Web3. We are trying to lower that barrier and simultaneously increase the ceiling of what is possible because people are willing to have more ambition and try to take on more if they have the support, McCarthy explains.

At a first glance, the gap between the demand and supply of programmers needed for an internet overhaul is apparent. Its hardly possible to name a Web3 or blockchain company that is not actively seeking developers. Just last month, popular employment website Indeed listed over 600 software engineer, software architect, full-stack and back-end developer jobs that had the words cryptocurrency, blockchain, bitcoin and ethereum in their descriptions. TrueUp, the tech jobs analytics platform, estimated 9,715 open crypto jobs at the beginning of summera third of them for software-engineering positions.

However, blockchain heavy hitters say they are faced with a different set of challenges.

Protocol Labs, an open-source research and development laboratory known for decentralized data storage projects such as InterPlanetary File System and Filecoin, is looking to hire about 50 software engineers but is not short on applicants, according to Dietrich Ayala, its ecosystem lead of browsers and platforms.

I think a better question would be, is there actually a shortage of developers or is there a shortage of developers who are able to think about what the next generation of internet will look like? And that's a more challenging task from a recruiting standpoint, says Ayala, who had previously spent over a decade at web pioneer Mozilla.

The mindset is especially important for companies working on the core technology of Web3blockchains that underpin applications like NFTs and decentralized marketplaces. Theres definitely a shortage of developers in general, according to John Wu, president of Ava Labs, the New York-based creator of the Avalanche blockchain, but we have to consider quality. The space is growing so fast, things are changing so quickly. What developers are doing today may not be what we need them to do six months from now.

Competitors agree. If you throw 100 engineers at a project versus 10, it doesn't mean that the project is going to grow 10 times faster, says Austin Federa, head of communications at Solana Labs, the company behind the Solana blockchain. Some Web3 organizations have the financial backing to scale to a thousand people if they wanted to, but we don't hire a ton of developers just because we can, he states. In Web3, people hire more developers when they have new problems for them to solve.

Backed by the likes of billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz and algorithmic investor Jump Trading, the 70-person company lacks neither resources nor developer interest. Solanas flagship Hacker Housessix-day gatherings for developers building blockchain-based applicationshave attracted more than 11,000 attendees in 18 cities this year. According to Federa, one of the goals of these events is to help the so-called Web2 developers who are interested in transitioning understand whether they are ready for the challenge. It's seen as riskier to go into Web3, I think, by a lot of developers. It's definitely a less cushy type of job to have.

Declining cryptocurrency prices, multi-billion dollar bankruptcies of some of the most trusted playersincluding Singapore-based hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and crypto brokerage Voyager Digitaland a wave of layoffs at established crypto firms, among them exchanges Coinbase and Gemini, have only added to the industrys woes.

In Ayalas experience of interviewing candidates, their biggest concern often boils down to industry risk: Will crypto as a whole succeed or fail? How bad are the recent levels of currency volatility?

It is no secret that Web3 firms are willing to pay handsome rewards for risk-taking. Crypto startups flush with cash from the latest bull marketa record $25 billion in venture capital funding in 2021, data from CB Insights shows, are offering average annual salaries of $150,000 for junior Solidity developers. The more experienced ones can rake in $400,000 or more, CoinDesk reported, whereas the national salary average for software engineers is roughly $97,000, according to Glassdoor. You will see salaries that make Web2 salaries look low, quite frankly, agrees Federa.

More than 60% of those working in Web3 take at least part of their salary in cryptocurrencies, according to a report by crypto tracking platform CoinMarketCap. Those already-hefty sums could quickly turn into fortunes with the next big price rally but can just as easily dissipate in a market downturn.

The good news is that the industry has historically managed to retain workers even through bear markets. Electric Capital estimates the number of monthly active blockchain developers has stayed flat at around 11,000 even as crypto prices fell more than 80% from their peak in 2018-2019.

But corporations like Google, Microsoft and Amazon are increasingly competing for the same talent pool: 81 of the top 100 public companies were using blockchain technology in the fall of 2021, according to Blockcdata. Among Forbes Blockchain 50 lists latest members, billion-dollar enterprises seriously implementing the technology, are Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the largest post-trade services organization in the world, auction house Sothebys, Boeing and Walmart, to name a few.

Ava Labs Wu is optimistic: not every Web2 company has figured out how Web3 can help them, he says. Recent news may have slightly decreased the inflow of new developers to Web3, but whoever has made the decision to come over, I dont really see them going back.

Link:
Web3 Growth Stymied By Scarcity Of Programmers - Forbes


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