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● 07.28.22

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● Links 28/07/2022: Ventoy Expansions

Posted in News Roundup at 11:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ It’s Time to Stop Dual-Booting Linux and Windows

• If you plan on using Linux on a PC all of the time, instead of constantly switching back and forth between Windows, one of the best Linux laptops might be worth considering. Deleting Windows entirely from a PC that shipped with Windows also works, but computers built for Linux often have fewer driver problems. The Dell XPS 13 Plus is now certified for Ubuntu 22.04 (and optionally ships with it), and HP just released the ‘Dev One’ in partnership with System76, the developer of Pop!_OS Linux.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to install PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 22.04?

• Ubuntu 22.04 includes by default PHP 8.1 which is one of the most recent versions of this language. And if I want PHP 7.4 in Ubuntu 22.04, how do I do it? Well, this post is to help you with that.

=> ↺ How to add mods to Stardew Valley on the Steam Deck – WIN.gg

• Looking to play Stardew Valley with mods on your Steam Deck? It’s possible! Here’s how to add onto the classic farming sim.

=> ↺ How to Use the arping Command on Linux

• The Linux arping command is like ping, but for local networks only. Its advantage is it operates at a lower networking level, sometimes getting responses when ping cannot. Here’s how to use it.

=> ↺ How to upload files and Images with Python Django

• Django is a free and open-source, Python-based web framework that follows the model–template–views architectural pattern. Django advertises itself as “the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines” and “Django makes it easier to build better Web apps more quickly and with less code”. Django is known for the speed at which you can develop apps without compromising on robustness.

• Django makes it easy for us to perform file uploads because it provides built-in library and methods that help to upload a file to the server.

=> ↺ How to install Project+ v2.29 on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Project+ v2.29 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

=> ↺ How to Install ModSecurity 3 + OWASP with Nginx on Rocky Linux 9 – LinuxCapable

• ModSecurity, often referred to as Modsec, is a free, open-source web application firewall (WAF). ModSecurity was created as a module for the Apache HTTP Server. However, since its early days, the WAF has grown and now covers an array of HyperText Transfer Protocol request and response filtering capabilities for various platforms such as Microsoft IIS, Nginx, and Apache. ModSecurity’s primary role is to provide protection for web applications by filtering incoming traffic and blocking malicious requests. The WAF can also be configured to monitor traffic for certain types of activity, such as SQL injection attacks, and generate alerts when such activity is detected. In addition to its security benefits, ModSecurity can improve web performance by caching rules and eliminating the need to repeatedly process the same request.

=> ↺ How to Install Sails.js Framework with Nginx on Rocky Linux 9 – LinuxCapable

• Sails.js is a robust Javascript framework that makes it easy to build enterprise-grade Node.js applications. It resembles the MVC architecture of frameworks like Ruby on Rails but with improved support for the more data-oriented modern style of web development. Additionally, Sails.js is compatible with a wide range of front-end technologies, including Angular, React, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. This makes it ideal for developing complex web applications that must run on multiple platforms. With its robust features and easy-to-use API, Sails.js is the perfect tool for building high-quality Node.js applications.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Sails.js on Rocky Linux 9 and access the web-based interface by installing and configuring an Nginx reverse proxy setup.

=> ↺ How to Search and Replace Text in Nano Editor

• As you grow and mature your computing skills and prowess under the Linux ecosystem, you soon find yourself comfortable with the productivity status associated with the Linux command-line environment.

• The fact is true, especially for users seeking to master Linux administration footprints. The nano editor is an important file editing tool for such users. It even makes more sense to use nano editor server environments where GUI is not available.

• Nano text editor is not as advanced as the likes of vim editor but it qualifies as the perfect starting point before Linux users can transition to those other text editors.

• This article will walk us through searching and replacing text on a file opened under the nano text editor in Linux systems.

=> ↺ How to Install Joomla with Apache and free Let’s Encrypt SSL on Alma Linux 8

• Joomla is a free, open-source, and one of the most popular Content Management systems. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Joomla CMS with Apache and Let’s Encrypt SSL on Alma Linux 8.

=> ↺ How to Change Default User Home Directory in Linux

• Before we can jump into changing the default user home directory on a Linux operating system environment, we should brief through some theoretical and practical information related to the Linux home directory.

• By definition, Linux is a multi-user operating system, which creates the need for a universal directory called the Home directory where different OS users can store and create personalized/user-centered files and directories.

• These files and directories are only accessible to the homeowner (currently logged-in user). Therefore, each time a new user is created on a Linux environment, the user is associated with a unique home directory accessible only to that user.

• On the other hand, the existence of these universal directories also permits a universal user (other than the homeowner) to have access to them. This user is known as root and can access all homeowner directories within a Linux system.

=> ↺ How To Install Google Chrome on Linux Mint 21 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Google Chrome on Linux Mint 21. For those of you who didn’t know, Google Chrome is a well-known, secure, and efficient web browser. It is also considered the fastest and most stable web browser. Chrome has a ton of features that make browsing the web a better experience and also Chrome is synced with your Google account, so your bookmarks and passwords will be available on all your devices.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of a Google Chrome web browser on a Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa).

=> ↺ OpenShot Video Editing Part 1: Getting Started

• This is the first part of beginner’s video editing tutorial with OpenShot. OpenShot is a small, user friendly, fast, multiplatform yet full-featured video editor alternative to Movie Maker. In this part, we will begin everything including installing the program, running it, and getting started to the user interface. Finally, this tutorial is intended mainly for school teachers. Now let’s practice!

=> ↺ Linux CLI in 60 Seconds – apt – Invidious

• Linux Commands in 60 Seconds is a YouTube shorts series that teaches you simple examples of common Linux commands. In this video, the apt command is shown.

=> ↺ What is Dash Shell in Linux?

• What is Dash Shell in Linux?

• Dash is one of the least known names when you think about shell family. But Dash is not meant to replace your current shell and works under the hood.

• You must have many questions related to Dash such as what is its use case, how it’s different from your regular shell, and so on. So let’s dive deep into Dash.

=> ↺ How to Create Multiple Files and Directories at Once in a Linux Terminal

• If you are using Linux, then you know how to use the mkdir command to create a directory, and for files, we use the touch command, which creates an empty file in a second without using any command line editor.

• Both commands are handy to use, but how do I use this command to create multiple files and directories at once? Because it’s easy to create multiple files of 10 directories or files, but if someone asks you to create 100 files, you cannot easily do it until you find this article.

Games

=> ↺ Steam Deck Beta gets Firefox as Flatpak, mentions “future controller hardware revisions”

• Valve has released a new SteamOS Beta update for Steam Deck and it finally sorts out the Firefox situation, along with hints of hardware changes, or a new controller coming?

=> ↺ The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow has some real fancy pixel-art

• Gimme! The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is an upcoming adventure from developer Cloak and Dagger Games with publishing from Wadjet Eye Games and it instantly grabbed my attention.

=> ↺ September will bring the melee focused Steam Bash Bash event

• Valve has announced that the Steam Bash Bash event will be going live between September 19 and September 26. This particular event is more of a violent one with the focus on hack and slash, spectacle fighters and whatever games focus on some form of melee fighting hence the bash bash.

=> ↺ Hobo Cat Adventures features dark humour and souls-like combat – now on Linux

• Here’s one missed from earlier in July, the colourful 3D platformer Hobo Cat Adventures gained Native Linux support. Looks pretty great too with some dark humour and apparently souls-like combat (in other words, difficult).

=> ↺ Terminal-based game inspired by Pokémon gets a big upgrade with audio

• Pokete is a game we introduced you too recently that’s inspired by Pokémon but you play it in a terminal. A new release is out bringing some nice advancements.

=> ↺ VRChat adds Easy Anti-Cheat, community not happy but Linux and Steam Deck work fine

• Despite the name, VRChat is not a VR-only space and it’s incredibly popular. Recently though, they added in Easy Anti-Cheat and the community is currently very unhappy with it.

=> ↺ Cancelled space sim Limit Theory opens up the source code

• Limit Theory was a once very promising looking space sim that was funded on Kickstarter. Sadly the developer cancelled it but now as promised they’ve opened up the source code. Most of the code is under the “The Unlicense”, which is OSI approved so it is properly open source too.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Ventoy Multiboot USB Creator Adds Support for Fedora CoreOS, More Than 940 ISOs

•  The big news in Ventoy 1.0.79 is support for Fedora CoreOS, a minimal Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat after they acquired the CoreOS Linux project back in January 2018. This bumps the total officially supported ISOs to more than 940.

• The Ventoy 1.0.79 release also comes with several bug fixes to address a bug that occurred when Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based distributions used an external kickstart file, a bug that made the VTOY_LINUX_REMOUNT option to have no effect in openSUSE Linux, as well as a bug that broke the autosel option.

=> ↺ Top 10 32-Bit Linux Distributions in 2022 [Compared]

• A list of ten 32-bit Linux distributions which is still going strong and can easily be adopted for older hardware that supports i686.

=> ↺ It’s Time to Ditch 32-Bit Linux for 64-Bit

•  We have plenty of Linux distributions tailored for 32-bit systems.

• So, why do I want to discourage using 32-bit and upgrade to 64-bit Linux instead?

• There are a couple of reasons, and one of the biggest reasons came to the spotlight this week.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Fedora ditches ‘No Rights Reserved’ software over patent concerns

• The Fedora Project has announced that it will no longer permit Creative Commons ‘No Rights Reserved’ aka CC0-licensed code in its Linux distro or the Fedora Registry.

• Fedora is a Linux distribution, developed and maintained by the Fedora Project, with sponsorship support from Red Hat and other parties.

• The decision to ditch CC0-licensed open source software stems from the fact it could, in the future, pose patent issues.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Review of SunFounder TS7-Pro 7-inch touchscreen display for Raspberry Pi 4

•  SunFounder TS7-Pro is a 7-inch touchscreen display designed for Raspberry Pi 4 board and the company sent us one review sample for evaluation. SunFounder has a wide range of Raspberry Pi and Arduino accessories designed for makers, and the TS7-Pro 7 is their latest offering that’s optimized to work with Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 3.

• Adding a touchscreen display to a Raspberry Pi may be a bit messy with the display or other accessories such as cameras and/or 2.5-inch drive spread on the table, but the TS7-Pro display simplifies all that with a neater assembly. Let’s start the review with an unboxing

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ 7.9-inch ultrawide HDMI display works with Raspberry Pi SBC

•  If you are looking for an ultrawide display to show information on your PC or Raspberry Pi, there’s a 7.9-inch IPS display with 1280×400 resolution that may meet your requirements.

• The display is powered through a USB port and outputs video through an HDMI 1.4 input port, so it should work with any hardware equipped with HDMI input and a USB port.

=> ↺ SolidRun presents SolidWAN devices with ports dedicated Ethernet SFP support

• Yesterday, SolidRun introduced the SolidWAN system-level solutions for software-defined wide area networks. The new products consist of two network devices based on the LX2160A System on Chip (SoC) from NXP.

• The SolidWAN LX2160A and the SolidWAN Dual LX2160A offer similar features. The first device features a sixteen-core NXP LX2160A SoC while the dual version offers up to 32-cores for increased performance. According to the datasheet, both models can run on Debian, Ubuntu, OpenWrt and they offer AES acceleration and virtualization support. 

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ DIY Retrograde Clock Is 3D Printed

• Retrograde clocks are unique, in that they eschew the normal fully-circular movement for the hands. Instead, the hands merely sweep out a segment of a circular arc, before jumping back to their start position to begin again. They’re pretty rare to find, but [Jamie Matthews] decided he had to have one. Thusly, he elected to build his own!

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ 4 Simple Ways to Recover Deleted Phone Numbers on Android – Make Tech Easier

=> ↺ New Android Games: Best New Android Games This Week – Droid Gamers

=> ↺ Millions of Android devices infected with wallet-draining malware | TechRadar

=> ↺ Delete these 36 malicious apps from your Android phone right now

=> ↺ Google Says It’ll Crush The Worst Ads On Android

=> ↺ Opinion: Firefox for Android needs best-in-class ad-blocking and privacy protections to compete – gHacks Tech News

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ LibreOffice vs OpenOffice: What’s the Difference?

•  LibreOffice and OpenOffice are two popular open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office.

• Any of them can be recommended if you are looking for an open-source office suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and a few other programs.

• However, to make the best of an office suite, you should know the differences between them to decide what’s best for you.

• Should you use LibreOffice or OpenOffice? What are the differences? Here, I explore more about that.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

=> ↺ 4 Best Free and Open Source C Static Site Generators

•  LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.

• While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

• There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Nature and University of California expand open-access pact

• The University of California system has reached an open-access agreement with the Nature journals, growing UC’s transformative series of publisher pacts but also showing its persistent cost-based limits.

• UC’s new arrangement expands a relationship first reached in 2020 with Springer Nature by adding the company’s prestigious Nature family of journals to the open-access options available to UC authors.

• The 2020 agreement led to a tripling of open-access articles by UC authors publishing in the journals that Springer Nature made eligible for it, the company said in its announcement of the expansion.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Young people’s projects for a sustainable future

• This post has been adapted from an article in issue 19 of Hello World magazine, which explores the interaction between technology and sustainability.

=> ↺ What we learnt from the CSTA 2022 Annual Conference

• From experience, being connected to a community of fellow computing educators is really important, especially given that some members of the community may be the only computing educator in their school, district, or country. These professional connections enable educators to share and learn from each other, develop their practice, and importantly reduce any feelings of isolation.

=> ↺ The Plausibly Deniable DataBase (PDDB): It’s Real Now! « bunnie’s blog

• Earlier I described the Plausibly Deniable DataBase (PDDB). It’s a filesystem (like FAT or ext4), combined with plausibly deniable full disk encryption (similar to LUKS or VeraCrypt) in a “batteries included” fashion. Plausible deniability aims to make it difficult to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that additional secrets exist on the disk, even in the face of forensic evidence.

=> ↺ Use this nifty Unix tool to process text on Linux

• Unix has always excelled at processing text, and Linux is no different. And the tools to work with and transform text files still exist on all Linux systems.

• Like other computer systems, early Unix printed on paper, using a typewriter-style printing device. These printers provided limited formatting options, but with clever application of Unix tools, you could prepare professional-looking documents.

• One such tool was the pr tool, to prepare text documents for printing. Let’s explore how to use standard Unix tools, such as the pr processor and the fmt text formatter, to prepare text files for printing on a typewriter-style printer.

=> ↺ A Brief Introduction To Dockerfile

• In this guide, we will see a brief introduction to Dockerfile and how to use Dockerfile to automate the process of building custom docker images.

Python

=> ↺ The limits of Python vectorization as a performance technique

• Vectorization in Python, as implemented by NumPy, can give you faster operations by using fast, low-level code to operate on bulk data. And Pandas builds on NumPy to provide similarly fast functionality. But vectorization isn’t a magic bullet that will solve all your problems: sometimes it will come at the cost of higher memory usage, sometimes the operation you need isn’t supported, and sometimes it’s just not relevant.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ 30 Ways to Validate Configuration Files or Scripts in Linux

• Configuration syntax checking and/or testing is a key step to perform after making changes to an application’s or service’s configuration file or even after running updates. This helps to reduce the chances of the service failing to restart due to configuration errors.

• Several applications/programs or service daemons ship with commands to check configuration files for syntax correctness. We have put together a list of common applications and services on Linux systems and how to test or validate their configuration files.

Leftovers

=> ↺ You Can Build A Giant 7-Segment Display Of Your Very Own

• Sometimes you need to display a number nice and large, making it easily readable at a good distance. [Lewis] has just the thing for that: a big expandable 7-segment display.

=> ↺ Simple Universal Modem Helps Save And Load Data From Tape

• Back in the early days of the home computer revolution, data was commonly saved on tape. Even better, those tapes would make an almighty racket if you played them on a stereo, because the data was stored in an audio format.  The Simple Universal Modem from [Anders Nielsen] is built to work in a similar way, turning data into audio and vice versa.

=> ↺ Pulling Punches

• As a mode of recommendation, the newspaper fiction review has less to recommend it than ever before. Space limitations, personal considerations, and editorial preferences combine to force it to assume a somewhat gaunt profile: What many readers encounter are cautious judgments affixed to a skeletal summary, leaving little opening for the decisive and expansive claims on a reader’s attention that make a piece of criticism valuable on its own, or even simply viral. Limited in terms of space and energy, the newspaper review also faces a raft of online competition better suited to the digital age—sites like Amazon and Goodreads that aggregate and quantify consumer-oriented opinion—as well as those longer essay reviews or works of literary criticism that appear in general-interest or so-called little magazines and tend to situate the given book in a political, intellectual, or aesthetic context.

=> ↺ Biden Should Remove Cuba from the Infamous State Sponsors of Terrorism List

• Being on this list subjects Cuba to a series of devastating international financial restrictions. It is illegal for U.S. banks to process transactions to Cuba, but U.S. sanctions also have an unlawful extraterritorial reach.  Fearful of getting in the crosshairs of U.S. regulations, most Western banks have also stopped processing transactions involving Cuba or have implemented new layers of compliance. This has hampered everything from imports to humanitarian aid to development assistance, and has sparked a new European campaign to challenge their banks’ compliance with U.S. sanctions.

• These banking restrictions and Trump-era sanctions, together with the economic fallout from COVID-19, have led to a severe humanitarian and economic crisis for the very Cuban people the administration claims to support. They are also a major cause of the recent increase in migration of Cubans that has become a major political liability for the Biden administration.

=> ↺ Opinion | Biden Should Remove Cuba from the Infamous State Sponsors of Terrorism List

• As the Cuban government celebrates the July 26 Day of the National Rebellion–a public holiday commemorating the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks that is considered the precursor to the 1959 revolution–U.S. groups are calling on the Biden administration to stop its cruel sanctions that are creating such hardship for the Cuban people. In particular, they are pushing President Biden to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

=> ↺ 10 Years On, London’s Olympic Legacy Is in Shambles

• It was all so innocent then. Back in 2012, London was a city filled with Olympic dreams. There was frivolity. There was a measure of national unity. There were many pints. No one had yet heard the word “Brexit.” And the London mayor, a clownish lad by the name of Boris Johnson, was several years away from leading a crisis-ridden British political system down the sewer. He was too busy getting stuck on a zip line. As everyone laughed, they did not realize that 10 years later, the joke would be on them.

Science

=> ↺ Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The 2001 Hispanic Engineer of the Year Award

• In 2001, I had the honor of being named Hispanic Engineer of the Year by Great Minds in Stem (GMiS), – one of the proudest moments in my career. GMiS is an organization dedicated to ensuring that Hispanic students of all ages are inspired to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). For 33 years, GMiS has recognized the achievements of the top engineers and scientists in the US Hispanic community that have been nominated in more than 20 categories in industry, government, academia and the military. Winners receive their awards at a gala event that serves as the climax of the annual GMiS conference.

• A few weeks ago I received an email announcing that the 2022 GMIS conference will take place in October in Pasadena. A few days later a childhood friend sent me an article about the great Afro-Cuban singer Celia Cruz, whose music I’ve been listening to since growing up in Havana and who like me left Cuba in 1960. It reminded me that when we were asked to pick the walk-in music we wanted played as we approached the podium to receive our award and give our acceptance speech, I picked a song by Celia Cruz. Finally, earlier this year I signed up to 23andMe which confirmed that my DNA is 99.7% Ashkenazi Jewish, not surprising given my parents background.

Hardware

=> ↺ Tiny Arcade Uses Tiny CRT

• Restoring vintage electronics is a difficult hobby to tackle. Even the most practical builds often have to use some form of modern technology to work properly, or many different versions of the machine need to be disassembled to get a single working version. Either way, in the end someone will be deeply hurt by the destruction of anything antique, except perhaps with [Marco]’s recent tiny arcade with a unique CRT display.

=> ↺ Hackaday Prize 2022: Repairing A Vintage Laptop With Modern Components

• Laptop computers may be ubiquitous today, but there was a time when they were the exclusive preserve of rich businesspeople. Back in the early ’90s, the significant added cost of portability was something that few were willing to pay. As a result, not many laptops from those days survive; for those that do, keeping them running can be quite a challenge due to their compact construction and use of non-standard components.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Depression may not stem from a “chemical imbalance” after all — suggesting the problem is social

• Now, a new study has undermined the aforementioned “serotonin hypothesis” — namely that, as the American Psychiatric Association puts it, “differences in certain chemicals in the brain may contribute to symptoms of depression.” That hypothesis motivated the pharmaceutical industry’s drug formulations, and indeed, underpins the chemistry of their anti-depressant drugs (particularly SSRIs, or selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors), which were marketed to correct said imbalance. Neurologically speaking, these kinds of drugs perpetuate the presence of serotonin, a neurotransmitter with a wide variety of functions, in the brain; specifically, a “reuptake inhibitor” prevents the serotonin from being reabsorbed as quickly as it might naturally, meaning more of it circulates for longer.

=> ↺ US’s Reactive Polio Strategy Could Be Silently Putting Many at Risk

=> ↺ Traditional Medicine in the Modern World

• Of the over 476 million indigenous people in the world today; an estimated 42 million live in the Americas. They represent thousands of different cultures and ethnic groups whose survival is due, in part, to the efficacy of their traditional health practices.

• Indigenous peoples in this region have, over several centuries, developed a complex series of practices as well as an understanding of the human body. During several trips to the region, I was able to see the use of traditional medicine among the population of the Andean countries.

=> ↺ CDC Confirms Massive Racial Disparities in Overdose Deaths

=> ↺ Opinion | Asbestos Has Been a Problem for Decades — Will This Congress Do Something?

• For decades we have known there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.

Proprietary

=> ↺ New ChromeOS Productivity Features Help Chromebook Compete

• The tech world has become obsessed with productivity – it’s quite the buzzword. Google is joining the trend with new ChromeOS features, including quite a few that will lead to greater productivity. Many video-editing features are being added as well.

=> ↺ US, Ukraine sign pact to expand cooperation in cyberspace

• CISA signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Ukrainian State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine (SSSCIP) amid the eastern European country’s ongoing war with Russia, an aggressor in the digital realm that has attacked both Ukrainian and American cyber networks and infrastructure in the past.

• The cooperation pact bolsters information sharing on cyber incidents and creates pathways between the two agencies to share key data on critical infrastructure. It also authorizes joint exercises and training sessions between the two agencies.

=> ↺ Ransomware attacks enabled by malicious insiders warns Gigamon

• Nearly one-third of organisations have suffered a ransomware attack enabled by a malicious insider, a threat seen as commonly as the accidental insider (35%), according to a new report from cloud visibility and analytics company Gigamon.

=> ↺ Government Should Incentivize Information Sharing for Ransomware Attacks, Experts Say

• The Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act passed in March does not cover private companies who do not operate in the critical infrastructure sectors and does not include safe harbor and shield laws that would encourage private companies to engage in the process.

• Oftentimes, companies will avoid interacting with law enforcement to avoid the stigma associated with being a victim of a cyberattack and out of fear of being held liable by regulators and investors, said Trent Teyema, senior fellow at technology policy university collaborative GeoTech Center.

=> ↺ CosmicStrand: a UEFI rootkit

• Since UEFI firmware is embedded in a chip on the motherboard and not written to the hard drive, it is immune to any hard drive manipulations. Therefore, it is very difficult to get rid of UEFI-based malware: even wiping the drive and reinstalling the operating system will not touch UEFI. For this same reason, not all security solutions can detect malware hidden in UEFI. Simply put, once malware has made its way into the firmware, it is there to stay.

=> ↺ Chinese UEFI Rootkit Found on Gigabyte and Asus Motherboards

• Security researchers with Kaspersky have analyzed a UEFI firmware rootkit that appears to target specific motherboard models from Gigabyte and Asus.

=> ↺ CosmicStrand: the discovery of a sophisticated UEFI firmware rootkit

• Rootkits are malware implants which burrow themselves in the deepest corners of the operating system. Although on paper they may seem attractive to attackers, creating them poses significant technical challenges and the slightest programming error has the potential to completely crash the victim machine. In our APT predictions for 2022, we noted that despite these risks, we expected more attackers to reach the sophistication level required to develop such tools. One of the main draws towards malware nested in such low levels of the operating system is that it is extremely difficult to detect and, in the case of firmware rootkits, will ensure a computer remains in an infected state even if the operating system is reinstalled or the user replaces the machine’s hard drive entirely.

• In this report, we present a UEFI firmware rootkit that we called CosmicStrand and attribute to an unknown Chinese-speaking threat actor. One of our industry partners, Qihoo360, published a blog post about an early variant of this malware family in 2017.

=> ↺ Jul 25, 2022 New CosmicStrand UEFI Rootkit Variant Found By Dennis Fisher

• Earlier this year, Kasperksy identified anoother UEFI rootkit called MoonBounce that was used against one known victim.

=> ↺ New UFEI Rootkit

• Both links have lots of technical details; the second contains a list of previously discovered UFEI rootkits. Also relevant are the NSA’s capabilities—now a decade old—in this area.

=> ↺ Discovery of new UEFI rootkit exposes an ugly truth: The attacks are invisible to us

• Researchers have unpacked a major cybersecurity find—a malicious UEFI-based rootkit used in the wild since 2016 to ensure computers remained infected even if an operating system is reinstalled or a hard drive is completely replaced.

• The firmware compromises the UEFI, the low-level and highly opaque chain of firmware required to boot up nearly every modern computer. As the software that bridges a PC’s device firmware with its operating system, the UEFI—short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface—is an OS in its own right. It’s located in an SPI-connected flash storage chip soldered onto the computer motherboard, making it difficult to inspect or patch the code. Because it’s the first thing to run when a computer is turned on, it influences the OS, security apps, and all other software that follows.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Gmail’s new look is now rolling out to everyone

• The changes are a part of Google’s overall new approach to the Workspace suite (including Docs, Sheets, etc.) that’s supposed to provide a more unified style and new AI-powered features like the Gmail search improvements that were just announced.

=> ↺ Ireland to appoint new commissioners to data privacy regulator

• The Irish government on Wednesday said it will appoint two additional commissioners to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, lead regulator in Europe for tech giants Alphabet Inc’s Google, Meta Platforms unit Facebook, Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Twitter Inc).

• Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said the appointments will support existing commissioner Helen Dixon and improve the commission’s ability to handle an increased workload and increasingly complex investigative requirements.

• Ireland regulates a number of large U.S. internet giants because their European Union headquarters are in the country, but its DPC has been criticised for long, plodding investigations into big tech multinationals. Pressure has been building for a pan-European approach to data and privacy protection.

=> ↺ University Of Chicago Researchers Think They’ve Built A Better Pre-Crime Mousetrap

• Here are just two of the many things the Securities and Exchange Commission forbids investment companies from putting in their marketing literature:

=> ↺ Following airplanes and drones: Frontex wants helicopters for border surveillance

• The EU border agency wants to repeat a failed tender to procure rotary-wing aircraft. These could be used in areas where there is a lack of runways. The scenarios fit a Greek border river where many dead bodies wash up.

=> ↺ Two GCHQ Employees Suggest The Solution To CSAM Distribution Is… More Client-Side Scanning

• The font of not-great ideas continues to overflow at Lawfare. To be fair, this often-overflowing font is due to its contributors, which are current and former members of spy agencies that have violated rights, broken laws, and otherwise done what they can to make internet communications less secure.

=> ↺ ‘Critical’ Online Privacy Protections for Children Advance to Senate Floor Vote

• A key U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday took what one leading child advocate called “an important step toward creating a safer and less exploitative internet for children and teens.”

• “We are hopeful that lawmakers are ready to do what’s needed to protect young people from the unacceptable risks they face online every day in this country.”

=> ↺ T-Mobile Strikes $500 Million Settlement For Continued Sloppy Data Practices

• T-Mobile hasn’t been what you’d call competent when it comes to protecting its customers’ data. The company has been hacked several different times over the last few years, with hackers going so far as to ridicule the company’s lousy security practices.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ ‘He was shot by his own’: A Russian soldier was killed by friendly fire. Pro-Kremlin media covered up his identity and blamed Ukrainian forces for his death. — Meduza

• In the early days of the February invasion, pro-Kremlin Russian news outlets shared a story about a Russian soldier who had sacrificed himself to save a young woman in Kharkiv. The woman, the reports alleged, took cover along with her mother and the “unknown soldier” after being fired upon by Ukrainian troops. However, both the woman, 29-year-old Karolina Perlifon, and another Russian soldier who survived the attack said it was Russian troops who opened fire on the civilians and their comrades-in-arms. Though pro-Kremlin propagandists never revealed the name of the soldier who was killed, journalists from the independent Russian media project Verstka managed to uncover his story. With permission, Meduza published the investigation in Russian, with minor edits. The following translation has been further edited and abridged for length and clarity. 

=> ↺ Remember When it Wasn’t Normal to Punch Flight Attendants?

• This is an important statement in any society, but especially for our democracy.

• Unfortunately, far too few of our leaders – or even our neighbors – are making statements like this. As a result, we’re normalizing the use of violence more and more.

=> ↺ Trump Calls for the Execution of Drug Dealers in DC Rally Speech

=> ↺ House Hearing Exposes Gun Industry’s Profiting ‘Off the Blood of Innocent Americans’

• Firearm companies have raked in over $1 billion from selling AR-15-style rifles over the past decade, a U.S. congressional committee revealed in a report ahead of a Wednesday hearing, prompting calls from Democratic lawmakers and gun control advocates for a renewed assault weapons ban.

• “The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless.”

=> ↺ Report: Cassidy Hutchinson Is Cooperating With the DOJ’s Jan. 6 Trump Inquiry

=> ↺ Merrick Garland’s January 6 Investigation Appears to Be Zeroing In on Trump

=> ↺ Trump Is A Criminal. Pence Is A Coward.

• It had to happen: Because of the January 6 select committee’s disciplined, scripted, riveting rollout of evidence that twice-impeached Donald Trump schemed to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the media now talks about it like it’s a hot new reality-TV show. Last Thursday’s tick-tock of the 187 minutes of violence at the capitol, during which Trump either did nothing or egged on the crowd, wasn’t the “series finale,” we’re told, but a “season finale” designed to keep us tuning in to this hit show when it returns in the fall.

=> ↺ ‘This Is Big News’: DOJ Investigating Trump in Criminal Probe of Jan. 6 Attack

• The U.S. Department of Justice is directly investigating Donald Trump’s actions as part of a criminal probe into the January 6 attack on the Capitol, news welcomed by lawmakers and watchdogs who have accused the DOJ of dragging its feet despite having a strong case for prosecuting the former president.

• The Washington Post reported late Tuesday that “prosecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury—including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence—have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won.”

=> ↺ Sanders Warns That ‘Like Trump, Bolsonaro Is Attempting to Undermine Democracy in Brazil’

• U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders warned after meeting with Brazilian civil society leaders on Tuesday that the Latin American country’s far-right leader, President Jair Bolsonaro, appears poised to replicate Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the democratic process in a bid to stay in power as he trails in the polls to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

• “Like Trump, Bolsonaro is attempting to undermine democracy in Brazil, the largest country in Latin America,” Sanders (I-Vt.) told the Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor. “It is important that the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress stand for democracy and support the results of the upcoming election. The enemies of democracy are working together across borders, and supporters of democracy must do the same.”

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Russia’s open-data regression Freedom of information rights arrived late in Russia. In the decade since Putin returned to office, they’ve deteriorated. — Meduza

• According to estimates from the project To Be Exact, at least 10 Russian government agencies have removed data from open sources since the war began. Retrieving a record from the Unified State Register of Real Estate now requires permission from the property owner, and Russia’s Finance Ministry plans to allow over 1,300 companies not to publish any information about themselves in the public domain — “to counter sanctions,” according to officials. Since 2012, the Moscow-based nonprofit Information Culture has been one of the main organizations advocating for information transparency in Russia. Its director and cofounder, Ivan Begtin, told Meduza about the decline of open data policies in Russia.

Environment

=> ↺ Republicans Shouldn’t Get a Pass on Climate

• Manchin deserves all this condemnation and more, but it is bizarre that his Republican counterparts haven’t faced this intensity of criticism, even though they are at least as culpable. Search the news stories and public statements cited above, and countless others from the same time frame, and you’ll find that Republicans’ role in blocking Build Back Better is rarely even mentioned—and certainly not identified as the principal reason climate legislation routinely dies on Capitol Hill.

• Manchin is only one senator. His opposition to Build Back Better mattered only because all 50 Republican senators stood in lockstep against climate action, just as their party has done for 30 years.

• And yet, today’s Republicans pay no political price for torching the planet. In a democracy, elected officials are free to vote for or against whatever they please, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be held accountable for their choices. But most political observers, journalists, and even political adversaries simply accept the GOP’s climate obstructionism as an immutable fact of life, not worth calling out or wasting energy on.

=> ↺ ‘What The Hell Are We Waiting For?’ Democrats Urge Climate Emergency Declaration

• Progressive leaders in Congress and activists on Wednesday came together to call on U.S. President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency, which would give his administration more resources to take on the global crisis.

• “It couldn’t be clearer that the climate crisis is here and needs to be addressed urgently,” said Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who kicked off the event a day her district endured extreme heat.

=> ↺ Barbados Resists Climate Colonialism in an Effort to Survive the Costs of Global Warming

• Late on May 31, 2018, five days after she was sworn in as prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley and her top advisers gathered in the windowless anteroom of her administrative office in Bridgetown, the capital, for a call that could determine the fate of her island nation. The group settled into uncomfortable straight-backed chairs around a small mahogany table, staring at framed posters of Barbados’ windmills and sugar cane fields. Mottley, who was then 52, can appear mischievous in the moments before her bluntest declarations, but on this evening her steely side showed. She placed her personal cellphone on speaker and dialed a number in Washington for the International Monetary Fund. As arranged, Christine Lagarde, the managing director, answered.

Energy

=> ↺ Down With Petroleum Tyranny—or We Can Expect the Worst

• Now consider this: In 2020, oil accounted for more global energy consumption than any other source—approximately 30 percent—and the EIA projects that, on our present course, it will remain the world’s number-one source of energy, possibly until as late as 2050. Because it’s such a carbon-intensive fuel (though less so than coal), oil was responsible for 34 percent of global carbon emissions in 2020 and that share is projected to rise to 37 percent by 2040. At that point, oil combustion will be responsible for the release of 14.7 million metric tons of heat-trapping GHGs into the atmosphere, ensuring even higher average world temperatures.

• With CO2 emissions from oil use continuing to rise, there’s zero chance of staying within that 1.5 degrees Celsius limit or of preventing the catastrophic warming of this planet, with all it portends. Think of it this way: The stunning heat waves experienced so far this year from China to India, Europe to the Horn of Africa, and this country to Brazil are only a mild foretaste of our future.

=> ↺ Economist: Estonia’s electricity price increase inexplicably large

• Recent figures indicate that Estonia saw the fastest spike in electricity prices in the EU last month, but the historical relationship of prices paid by Estonian consumers to prices on the Nord Pool exchange indicate that the increase in electricity prices in Estonia is nonetheless inexplicably large, Bank of Estonia economist Kaspar Oja said Wednesday.

=> ↺ Opinion | Will Civilization Collapse Because It’s Running Out of Oil?

• Will civilization collapse because it’s running out of oil? That question was debated hotly almost 20 years ago; today, not so much. Judging by Google searches, interest in “peak oil” surged around 2003 (the year my book The Party’s Over was published), peaked around 2005, and drifted until around 2010 before dropping off dramatically.

=> ↺ The Enduring Tyranny of Oil

• For some perspective on this, recall that, in those pre-fracking days at the start of the century, many experts were convinced that world petroleum output would hit a daily peak of perhaps 90 million barrels in 2010, dropping to 70 or 80 million barrels by the end of that decade. In other words, we would have little choice but to begin converting our transportation systems to electricity, pronto. That would have caused a lot of disruption at first, but by now we would be well on our way to a green-energy future, with far less carbon emissions and a slowing pace of global warming.

• Now, compare those hopeful scenarios to the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). At the moment, world oil production is hoveringat around 100 million barrels daily and is projected to reach 109 million barrels by 2030, 117 million by 2040, and a jaw-dropping 126 million by 2050. So much, in other words, for “peak oil” and a swift transition to green energy.

=> ↺ Why Coal Power is Dying and the Supreme Court Can’t Save It

• But while some specific threats to the industry have subsided, that doesn’t mean coal-fired power plants will make a comeback.

• As an economist, I analyze the coal industry, including power plant construction and retirement plans. I see three main reasons U.S. coal plants will continue to close down.

=> ↺ Probing CAN Bus For EV Battery Info

• The widespread adoption of the CAN bus (and OBD-II) in automobiles was largely a way of standardizing the maintenance of increasingly complicated engines and their needs to meet modern emissions standards. While that might sound a little dry on the surface, the existence and standardization of this communications bus in essentially all passenger vehicles for three decades has led to some interesting side effects, like it’s usage in this project to display some extra information about an electric car’s battery.

=> ↺ Tory-Linked Climate Denial Group’s New Advisor Called Environmentalism ‘Satan’s Trick’

• A charity with ties to senior Conservative MPs has appointed a professor who said protecting the environment was an “innovation of the Devil” and has dismissed the science of human-caused climate change.

• Samuele Furfari, a former EU energy advisor, this month joined the “academic advisory council” of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s main climate science denial group, which has ties to several of the politicians who ran to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson. 

=> ↺ Biden’s New Low-Income Solar Power Program Hailed as ‘Vital’ for People and Planet

• The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a new initiative to bring solar power to low-income families across the U.S.

• “Deploying community solar is a vital move to protect both our climate and the millions of households most vulnerable to utility shutoffs and dirty energy price spikes.”

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Communal landowners refute claim that monarch butterflies are endangered

• But residents of El Rosario, who are paid by the government to protect the monarchs’ overwintering ground, refute that claim. Instead, they insist that problems threatening the butterflies exist along the insects’ migratory routes in the United States and Canada, a factor that was included in the announcement from IUCN. However, IUCN did also mention in that press release that legal and illegal logging has already destroyed “substantial areas” of the butterflies’ winter shelter in Mexico and California.

=> ↺ Climate change killing elephants, says Kenya

• Kenya’s Wildlife and Tourism ministry says that climate change is now a bigger threat to elephant conservation than poaching.

=> ↺ How Outdoor Enthusiasts Can Help Scientific Research About Climate and Wildlife

=> ↺ One Major Way We Can Reduce the Suffering of Animals Raised for Food

• This method “requires farmers to cut off airflow and heat their barns to 104 degrees Fahrenheit until the animals die from heatstroke,” states an article in Sentient Media. The “plus” means that, in addition to shutting down the ventilation system during VSD+, the barns are also exposed to extreme heat, humidity, and carbon dioxide (CO2) to suffocate the animals and bake them alive.

• Highly pathogenic avian influenza is a recurring phenomenon in the poultry and egg industries. The current outbreak in the U.S., which began in February, has antecedents in 2015, 2006, and 2003. Low pathogenic avian flu outbreaks in chicken and turkey flocks are routine events involving the mass culling of millions of birds.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Alarm as Earth hits ‘Overshoot Day’ Thursday

• It would take 1.75 Earths to provide for the world’s population in a sustainable way, according to the measure, which was created by researchers in the early 1990s.

• Global Footprint Network said Earth Overshoot Day has fallen ever sooner over the last 50 years.

=> ↺ Pakistan’s Minister of Health: Populate the World with Muslims

• A report on the Pakistani Health Minister’s plan is here: “An ‘out of Pakistan’ solution for population control—produce kids in non-Muslim nations,” by Akansha Sengupta, The Print, July 20, 2022: [...]

=> ↺ An ‘out of Pakistan’ solution for population control—produce kids in non-Muslim nations

• Minister of Health and PPP member Abdul Qadir Patel Monday offered an ‘out of Pakistan’ solution to the population problem—couples wanting more kids should leave the country and add to the Muslim population in nations where they are in minority.

=> ↺ Hundreds of Thousands of Incarcerated People Are in Danger Amid Scorching Heat

Finance

=> ↺ How the Treasury Department Could Prevent Mass Starvation with No Cost to the Taxpayers

=> ↺ Michael Hudson – The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism

=> ↺ I left the last two apartments in tears

• Even having a steady job and savings are irrelevant for someone if they are gypsy: when it comes to looking for a place to rent, they have such a disadvantage from the outset that they need much more perseverance and resilience than average in order to succeed. It is against the law to exclude someone from the pool of potential tenants solely on the basis of the color of their skin, but these are not situations where the law is easily enforced. The Equal Treatment Authority has been shut down, and the ombudsman receives one or two complaints a year.

=> ↺ Progressives Slam Senate Passage of $76 Billion ‘Corporate Giveaway’

• The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed sweeping bipartisan legislation that Sen. Bernie Sanders and progressive advocacy groups decried as a massive giveaway to corporations such as Intel, whose CEO has been lobbying aggressively in support of the bill’s subsidies for the profitable microchip industry.

• “Congress should be ashamed to pass this corporate giveaway after a year of complete failure to do anything whatsoever for needy American families.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Inflation Is Not an Excuse to Withhold Support for Needed Tax Reforms and Investments

• In recent months, a number of policymakers have cited inflation concerns as the source of their opposition to budget reconciliation proposals that would raise taxes progressively and boost federal spending on public investments and social insurance. (Many of these proposals were once collected together and named the Build Back Better Act (BBBA), but since negotiations over the full BBBA faltered there has been no single name for the shifting permutations of tax and spending changes that are under debate.)

=> ↺ Opinion | The Corporate Narrative on Inflation Is Bogus

• Republicans believe their laser focus on inflation in the midterms will override voter anger over the attempted coup, four years of Trumpism, multiple regressive Supreme Court rulings especially on reproductive rights, school shootings and other mass shootings, and GOP state attacks on voting, public education, and LGBTQ+ rights. But only if we, and the Democratic Party leadership, let them get away with it.

=> ↺ Opinion | Myths and Reality as US Oligarchs Devour Economy

• Oligarchs of the dominate economic class in the United States continue to pour billions of dollars into the pockets of politicians. The drift towards oligarchy was propelled in 1976 with the Supreme Court’s Buckley v. Valeo decision. It continued in 1978 with the Bellotti v. Bank of Boston decision and culminated with the dreadful Citizens United v. FEC decision in 2010. Politicians were deemed legally for sale to the highest bidder.

=> ↺ Schumer Pushed to Stop Defending ‘Greedy Monopolies’ and Hold Votes on Big Tech Bills

• In the streets of the nation’s capital and on its cable television networks, progressives are demanding that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately schedule votes on a pair of antitrust bills designed to rein in Big Tech’s growing power—something he promised to do by “early summer.”

• “Schumer has a choice: Side with greedy monopolies or the American people.”

=> ↺ Richard Wolff: Fed Rate Hikes Are “Body Blow” to Workers Reeling from Pandemic, Growing Inequality

• We speak with Marxist economist Richard Wolff about how experts forecast another economic recession in the United States, with inflation at a historic high and a federal minimum wage that hasn’t changed for 13 years. The Federal Reserve plan to combat rising inflation by raising interest rates delivers a “body blow to a working class” already suffering from decades of upward wealth redistribution and a pandemic, says Wolff, emeritus professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst and visiting professor at The New School. His latest book is “The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.”

=> ↺ Economist Jayati Ghosh: Global Debt Crisis Is Perfect Storm of Unrest, Economic Disaster, Starvation

• We look at the looming possibility of a global recession amid rising inflation, the pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine. World financial institutions and wealthier countries should take stronger actions such as writing off debts that are crippling developing nations, says Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “This is just completely lack of political will. It’s not because we don’t know what to do.” Her piece in The Guardian is headlined “There is a global debt crisis coming — and it won’t stop at Sri Lanka,” and she also discusses other countries on the brink of an economic collapse, including Pakistan, Nepal, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Panama and Argentina.

=> ↺ Ellen Brown: Interest Rate Hikes Will Not Save Us From Inflation

• Ellen Brown argues that tather than making money harder to get, the U.S. government needs to focus on the other side of the demand vs. supply inflation equation.

=> ↺ With Latest Rate Hike, Progressive Critics Say Fed ‘Making a Big Mistake’

• The U.S. Federal Reserve is on the verge of causing a disastrous surge in unemployment, progressives said Wednesday after the nation’s central bank raised interest rates for the second consecutive month—doubling down on its dogmatic quest to reduce prices even as slowing wage growth offers more evidence that inflation is being driven by corporate profiteering and supply chain issues rather than excess demand.

• “Our country’s lowest-paid, most vulnerable workers have endured too much already to be sacrificed in pursuit of severe rate hikes.”

=> ↺ ‘Racism—Pure and Simple’: Buffett Lender Redlined Philly-Area Homebuyers, Says DOJ

• The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that a mortgage company owned by billionaire businessman Warren Buffett engaged in an illegal “pattern or practice of lending discrimination” by “redlining” in the Philadelphia area, and will pay $20 million in a settlement agreement.

• “The complaint also alleges that Trident’s employees exchanged emails where they referred to neighborhoods of color as ‘ghettos’ and made racist jokes.”

=> ↺ Fed Rate Hikes Are “Body Blow” to Workers Reeling From Pandemic

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Microsoft says it caught an Austrian spyware group using previously unknown Windows exploits

• The new information about Microsoft’s tracking and mitigation of DSIRF / KNOTWEED’s exploits was published at the same time as a written testimony document submitted to the hearing on “Combatting the Threats to U.S. National Security from the Proliferation of Foreign Commercial Spyware,” held July 27th.

=> ↺ Meta revenue drops $28.8 billion in second quarter

• Meta Platforms met expectations but saw its total revenues fall in the second quarter amid a downturn in the economy and increased competition for digital advertisers.

• Total revenue for Meta was $28.8 billion in the second quarter ending June 30, according to the earnings report released Wednesday, down 1 percent from the second quarter in 2021.

• The social media and tech company also reported total costs and expenses of $20.4 billion, a 22 percent increase year over year.

=> ↺ False Accusations Against Linux Security Continue

• When we read articles on the Internet, we need to become more aware that we are literally being bombarded by a nuclear firestorm of lies. These lies are designed to brainwash and manipulate us into supporting multinational corporations that are not at all interested in protecting us. Instead, the writers of these false articles are hired to protect corporations like Microsoft and maximize their quarterly profits by producing a wave of propaganda. We this in mind, let’s first look at the Skidmap Malware claim.

=> ↺ US Senate approves $52 billion for chipmakers—but not designers

• While $2 billion of the direct assistance funds is already earmarked for legacy programs—specifically, technologies that the Department of Defense wants to produce within the US—the other $50 billion is generally available for the development of additional domestic silicon manufacturing in the country.

• The big winners, should the CHIPS Act be signed into law, will be companies like Intel, who either already have chip fabrication facilities in the US or are planning to build them—but other chip companies, particularly those that take a lead role in chip design but don’t manufacture products themselves, warn that the bill doesn’t go far enough in helping the US silicon industry.

=> ↺ Mark Zuckerberg: “Many Teams Are Going to Shrink” at Meta Amid Revenue Decline

• The company also saw net income fall by 36 percent, landing at $6.7 billion for the second quarter, while total costs and expenses rose by 22 percent to hit $20.5 billion. And as the social media giant faces heated competition from rivals like TikTok, daily active users across Meta’s family of apps were in the low single digits; Meta’s flagship social platform, Facebook, saw a modest 3 percent increase during the second quarter.

=> ↺ Facebook reports drop in revenue for the first time

• Zuckerberg said the company had seen “engagement trends” that were “stronger than we anticipated” on Facebook, thanks largely to an increase in the consumption of videos. He said that Reels, the company’s short-form video format aimed at TikTok, is monetizing faster than Stories did after the company copied that format from Snapchat several years ago. In the long run, the company expects Reels to be a revenue driver, but for now the company is prioritizing Reels and not making much money from them.

=> ↺ Texas Republican Seeks to Limit HIV Medication Access After Winning Abortion Ban

=> ↺ Woman Targeted by Gaetz Raises $300K (and Counting) for Abortion Rights

• In the less than 72 hours since being publicly ridiculed by right-wing Rep. Matt Gaetz, political strategist and college student Olivia Julianna had raised over $300,000 as of Wednesday for abortion funds that offer direct financial assistance to people who need abortion care.

• “This is absolutely the most insane amount of donations we have had thus far from individuals, especially in such a short frame of time,” Olivia, who goes by her first and middle names publicly, told The Washington Post Wednesday. “On a broader scale, this highlights the extreme power of social media mobilization, and it shows Republican politicians that their cheap attacks and political theater will no longer be tolerated.”

=> ↺ ‘To run away is to humiliate yourself’: Former Moscow lawmaker Yulia Galyamina on what it will take to build a democratic Russia — Meduza

• As the war in Ukraine has raged on, the Russian authorities haven’t let up on their quest to stamp out what’s left of the country’s domestic opposition. In just the last month, Moscow municipal deputy Alexey Gorinov has been sentenced to seven years in prison for calling the war in Ukraine a war; Helga Pirogova, a municipal deputy from Novosibirsk, has been forced to leave the country under threat of criminal prosecution, and Moscow opposition figure Ilya Yashin has been sent to jail on criminal charges of spreading “fake news” for speaking truthfully about Russian atrocities against civilians in Bucha. For insight into where Russia’s democratic opposition went wrong — and what it needs to do now — Meduza turned to activist and former Moscow deputy Yulia Galyamina.

=> ↺ ‘We’ll Believe It When We See It Pass,’ Skeptics Say of Schumer-Manchin Deal

• While Democratic leaders on Wednesday celebrated a surprise budget reconciliation deal with Sen. Joe Manchin on new climate and tax policies, progressive campaigners had a range of responses, from cautious optimism, to skepticism, to outright concern.

=> ↺ A Pelosi Visit to Taiwan Could Inflame Tensions Between U.S. & China, with Little Benefit to Taiwanese

• China warned that there could be serious consequences, including a military response, if U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follows through on plans to visit Taiwan in August, according to the Financial Times. If the trip happens, Pelosi would become the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. “The question is: Is this signal just intended to really stick it to China very quickly, without actually benefiting Taiwan, or is it something that should be best not done?” says Taiwanese American journalist Brian Hioe.

=> ↺ Orbán’s speech in Transylvania – a video summary

• “The world owes us a debt, and we will make sure to get it from them.” The Prime Minister spoke about war, race, Europe, utility price cuts and his vision of the future in his speech over the weekend. Here’s Telex’s video summary of the main points. (English subtitles available.)

=> ↺ CPAC Welcoming Orbán at Dallas Summit Days After ‘Pure Nazi’ Speech

• With right-wing officials suggesting there is not yet enough evidence of Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orbán’s racist views despite his recent speech which has drawn comparisons to Nazi propaganda, the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the U.S. is moving forward with plans to host the prime minister next week.

• “Let’s listen to the man speak,” Matt Schlapp, chair of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), said Tuesday, ahead of the group’s summit scheduled to take place in Dallas next week. “We’ll see what he says.”

=> ↺ Progressive Champion Mandela Barnes Emerges as Dem to Take on Ron Johnson in Wisconsin

• The Democratic primary field in the race to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin shrank for a second time in less than a week on Wednesday as Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry announced he would end his campaign, leaving progressive Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes as the frontrunner.

• Barnes received key endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in recent days, and on Monday fellow progressive candidate Tom Nelson said he was throwing his support behind the lieutenant governor after his campaign ran out of money.

=> ↺ Democrats Introduce Bill to Place 18-Year Term Limits on Supreme Court Justices

=> ↺ Crisis in Haiti, Again

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Facebook and Instagram are going to show even more posts from accounts you don’t follow

• The push, which Zuckerberg calls building the “Discovery Engine,” is a radical departure from Facebook and Instagram’s historical focus on showing posts from a user’s social graph, or list of friends. The shift is intended to compete with TikTok’s heavy use of AI to serve up videos regardless of where they come from. That approach has quickly made TikTok one of the most used apps in the world and spawned a whole new creator economy.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ WSWS readers, workers and students denounce “disciplining” of Dr Berger and SEP Twitter lock

• Dr David Berger, a respected Australian physician and dedicated zero-COVID advocate who is being threatened with deregistration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) over his social media condemnations of the government’s “let it rip” coronavirus policies.

• The campaign to restore the SEP_Australia’s Twitter account was a success and after nearly a week of being locked out, the account was restored late last night. While Twitter admits the video did not violate any rules, it fails to explain why it censored the SEP or why it took so long to restore the account.

=> ↺ Not Without My Daughter: Could the film be made today?

• The film is based on the true story of Betty Mahmoody’s escape from Iran in 1986.

=> ↺ Christian Killed after Open-Air Event in Uganda

• Robert Bwenje had accompanied Assistant Pastor Ambrose Mugisha of Elim Pentecostal Church in Nyamiringa village, Kapeke Sub-County, Kiboga District, to an open-air debate about Christianity and Islam in Sirimula village, Kyankwanzi District on July 6.

• Following the debate, eight Muslims including two women put their faith in Christ, said Pastor Mugisha, 25.

• “This angered the Muslims, but they could not attack us because we had tight security from the police,” he said.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ The U.S. Is “Close To Getting Its Hands On Julian Assange:” an Interview With John Pilger

• It is a dangerous, unpredictable time. Since the Home Secretary signed the extradition order, a provisional appeal has been filed by Julian’s lawyers. ‘Provisional’ is part of the tortuous process of appeal. The lawyers must submit what are known as ‘perfected grounds of appeal’ in the next few weeks, then the US and the Home Secretary file their responses. Only after that does it go to a judge (not sitting in a court) to decide whether or not he will accept it. It may sound meticulous but, having observed it, it looks to me like a finely spun blanket of obfuscation over a profoundly biased system.

• Until the High Court hearing last year, I believed the country’s senior judges would reject the US appeal and reclaim something of the mythologized notion of British justice if only for the system’s survival, which partly depends on ‘face’ within the arcane reaches of the British establishment. This show of ‘independence’ in support of justice has happened in the past. In Julian’s case, the facts are surely too outrageous — no properly constituted court would even consider it — yet I was wrong. The decision by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales last October that the US in effect had the right to fabricate and belatedly introduce ‘assurances’ that had not even been part of previous due process was quite shocking. There was no justice, no process; the guile and ruthlessness of US power was on show. Might is right.

=> ↺ Humanizing Julian Assange

• It didn’t bother me more than when I perceived it for myself while watching Judy Woodruff of th PBS NewsHour interview Assange from London’s Ecuadoraian embassy  in August of 2016 — just months before the election that resulted in Trump getting elected as president under a cloud of controversy that enveloped both candidates: His sexual scandals; Her handling of emails.

• Judy and I go back a long way; she has long been one of my favorite newsreaders and interviewers on the nation’s only network that is calm and rational and mostly balanced; paid by “viewers like you” and corporations, like the DNC. And though she never crossed the line, it was clear that she didn’t trust Assange and seemed to be openly questioning how he received the first batch of emails from the DNC that he’d already published on Wikileaks. He begins by chiding the senior journalist for calling a “leak” of material a “hack,” which was the line that the Obama administration was pushing through the MSM. This may be a moment when the media posture toward Assange began to change, and it’s valuable to watch this rare and revealing footage:

=> ↺ US Lawmakers Want to Bar Using Espionage Act to Target Journalists

• A trio of congressional lawmakers reintroduced the Espionage Reform Act on Wednesday to prevent reporters from being prosecuted for publishing classified information—a common journalistic practice used to expose government wrongdoing.

• “Journalists should never be prosecuted by the government for what they publish. Especially when politicians abuse the law to keep the public in the dark.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Some California Communities Lack Access to Safe Drinking Water: Report

• “We’re talking about almost 400 water systems who are failing to provide safe, drinking water to their customers,” said Michael Tilden, Acting California State Auditor. “That’s significant.”

=> ↺ Iranian Ministry Announces Ban On The Presence Of Women In Advertising

• Iran’s Guidance Ministry has told advertising agencies that under the government’s tightening of the so-called hijab and chastity law, women are now prohibited from appearing in advertisements.

• The ministry sent a letter to agencies over the weekend following the release of a promotional video by the Domino ice-cream company that featured an actress wearing a sweater donning additional layers of clothing while images of ice cream flash across the screen.

=> ↺ What it’s like being a woman in Afghanistan today: ‘death in slow motion’

• She was escaping threats of a forced marriage with a local Taliban fighter in her district in northern Afghanistan and relocating to another country. “One of their commanders who was only being referred to as ‘maulavi’ [a title given to a religious leader] demanded that my parents marry me to him. They wanted to control and punish me for my work against them,” F.J. said, referring to her reporting critical of the Taliban’s treatment of women and minorities.

• “When I refused, they were offended and at first threatened to kill my parents, but then they threaten to kidnap me,” she told NPR, speaking from the location where she is in hiding.

=> ↺ Afghanistan: Taliban’s ‘suffocating crackdown’ destroying lives of women and girls – new report

• Since they took control of the country in August 2021, the Taliban have violated women’s and girls’ rights to education, work and free movement; decimated the system of protection and support for those fleeing domestic violence; detained women and girls for minor violations of discriminatory rules; and contributed to a surge in the rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan.

• The report, Death in Slow Motion: Women and Girls Under Taliban Rule, also reveals how women who peacefully protested against these oppressive rules have been threatened, arrested, detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared.

=> ↺ Afghanistan: Death in slow motion: Women and girls under Taliban rule

• In less than a year, the Taliban have decimated the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. They have violated women’s and girls’ rights to education, work and free movement; demolished the system of support for women and girls fleeing domestic violence; arbitrarily detained women and girls for infractions of the Taliban’s discriminatory rules; and contributed to a surge in the rates of child, early and forced marriage. Women who peacefully protested against these restrictions and policies have been harassed, threatened, arrested, forcibly disappeared, arbitrarily detained and tortured.

=> ↺ Amnesty International report finds Afghan women are being tortured under the Taliban’s rule

• They interviewed 90 women and 11 girls aged between 14 and 74 years of age across Afghanistan.

• Among them were women detained for protesting who described torture at the hands of Taliban guards, including beatings and threats of death.

=> ↺ ‘Death In Slow Motion’: Amnesty Report Documents Taliban’s ‘Suffocating Crackdown’ On Women, Girls

• Amnesty said Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis has deprived women and girls of education and job prospects. The report documented cases of forced marriages of women and girls to Taliban members — under pressure by the Taliban member or by the women’s families.

=> ↺ Amnesty: Taliban crackdown on rights is ‘suffocating’ women

• The Taliban seized Kabul as U.S. and NATO forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan, ending a nearly 20-year war against the Taliban’s insurgency. The world has refused to recognize the Taliban’s rule, demanding it respect human rights and show tolerance for other groups. The U.S. and its allies have cut off billions in development funds that kept the government afloat, as well as froze billions in Afghan national assets.

=> ↺ For wrongfully convicted Black men, exoneration can be just as traumatizing as prison

• “And you’re dropped into society so damaged that you don’t know how to fit in,” he added. “That’s the part of these exonerations that people don’t realize. They think you’re fine because you’re finally free, and you look, on the outside, like you’re fine. But you’re not. On the inside, you’re spinning. You’re lost and struggling with so much. It’s hard.”

=> ↺ ‘Beyond Unacceptable’: Progressives Rip Senate Republicans for Blocking Birth Control Bill

• Democratic U.S. lawmakers and reproductive freedom advocates on Wednesday denounced Senate Republicans for blocking proposed legislation that would safeguard access to contraception as GOP-led states enact total abortion bans in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s reversal.

• “These extremists are pulling back the curtain to reveal just how out of touch they are with Americans. Voters won’t forget it come November.”

=> ↺ ‘Privacy Is the Entry Point for Our Civil and Basic Rights’

• Janine Jackson: The anticipated—but still devastating—Dobbs decision aims to take reproductive health care out of the hands of countless people, and it’s already having that effect. But one might think as terrible as that is, at least a person can go online to learn how to get to the nearest abortion access point, or order pills from Canada. 

=> ↺ ScheerPost Celebrates Norman Lear’s 100th Birthday

• The six-time Emmy Award winner, television legend and political activist adds another achievement to his already monumental history: a century of life.

=> ↺ Democrats Can’t Leave Pro-Choice Votes on the Table

• In the weeks following the Dobbs decision, national polls showed that a significant swath of registered voters are united over abortion rights as a priority. But perhaps most vitally, recent research makes it clear that the Roe reversal has brought to the fore a potential coalition of abortion rights supporters that, if successfully leveraged, could prove a powerful challenge to the anti-abortion movement.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ New Bill Would Ban U.S. Broadband Caps. Sort Of.

• With the midterms looming, Democrats are apparently once again embracing one of their favorite “strategies”: pushing bills they know have no chance of passing, that may not even do the thing they claim to do, in a bid to make it look like at least they’re “doing something.”

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ ITV Ad Revenue Drops 5 Percent in Second Quarter, Studios Unit Grows 16 Percent in First Half

• U.K. TV giant ITV reported better-than-expected first-half 2022 revenue on Thursday, including a gain of 6 percent in total external revenue and a 5 percent improvement in advertising revenue, but the latter declined in the second quarter amid difficult comparisons with the year-ago period.

=> ↺ Politicians Whining About Censorship Are All Just Trying To Dictate The Terms Of Debate

• So, we just had a post mocking the Democrats for whining about Hulu refusing their issue ads, and falsely calling it “censorship.” And now we have Republicans issuing a bullshit blustery threat letter to Google not to limit searches for sketchy fake abortion centers.

=> ↺ Hulu Blocking Democrats’ Ads Is No More ‘Censorship’ Than Social Media Removing Harassment

• What a terrible world it would be if Republicans and Democrats alike start pushing for 1st Amendment-violating demands on websites that they be compelled to carry speech they don’t want to. Over the last few years, we’ve seen mainly Republicans pushing for these kinds of “must carry” / “can’t moderate” rules in response to what they (without any actual evidence) believe is anti-conservative bias in moderation. The end result were some blatantly unconstitutional laws that have been mostly… ruled unconstitutional.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Nextcloud in the Wall Street Journal: Microsoft and cookies

• One could question whether offering some collaborative marketing was really meant to address such deep-rooted anti-competitive behavior, or if the goal was simply to let the complaint go away with some marketing dollars.

=> ↺ PC UEFI & Microsoft Monopoly

• The PC Hardware + Microsoft Windows 8 with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) will monopolise amd64 hardware. If you (or your OS project/supplier) make your own kernels for amd64, you will not be able to boot them (unless you buy a key from a company working with the monopoly, or possibly go to arcane efforts, a deterrent to free choice & supply).

=> ↺ FTC Sues to Block Meta’s Bid to Buy Virtual Reality Firm

• In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block Meta, formerly known as Facebook, from buying game developer Within in a bid to limit the company’s reach in the virtual reality market. The complaint advances relatively untested theories arguing that antitrust laws account for actions taken by a firm that isn’t yet a monopolist but is positioned to become one. The legal action potentially indicates a pivot from the agency toward limiting acquisitions by dominant firms in markets for growing technologies.

Patents

=> ↺ Sanders: Democrats’ Drug Pricing Plan “Goes Nowhere Near as Far as It Should”

=> ↺ GOP ‘Working Hand in Hand With Big Pharma’ to Kill Drug Price Reform Behind Closed Doors

• Republican lawmakers are working behind closed doors to convince the Senate parliamentarian—the chamber’s unelected rules arbiter—to tank Democrats’ watered-down but still potentially impactful proposal to require Medicare to negotiate the prices of a small number of prescription drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies.

• Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), a major beneficiary of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash, admitted as much in remarks to reporters on Tuesday, saying that he and his GOP colleagues are “going through line by line, literally, making objections” in private meetings with the Senate parliamentarian, who is tasked with offering advice on whether reconciliation provisions comply with chamber rules.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Girl Scouts Settle Trademark Suit With Scouts BSA

• For roughly the past four years, we have been following the trademark lawsuit brought by the Girl Scouts of America (GSA) against Scouts BSA, formerly the Boy Scouts of America. While these two organizations coexisted peacefully for many years thanks to BSA’s “girls have cooties” viewpoint, that changed when BSA suddenly started allowing girls to join and underwent the rebrand to Scouts BSA. That rebrand often times included putting “girl” and “scouts” next to each other in recruiting branding, the use of Girl Scout slogans, pictures of in-uniform Girl Scouts in BSA recruiting material, and on and on. GSA notably also provided real-world examples of the above causing confusion in the public.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Pirates Liberate Games From Battle.net To Send Message To Activision Blizzard

• Hacking, cracking, piracy group Blizzless Project has released special versions of Starcraft: Remastered, Warcraft III: Reforged, and Diablo II: Resurrected, enabling them to be played offline with no connection to Battle.net. In what appears to be a message to Activision Blizzard, the team suggests it will put right what the company has been doing wrong.

=> ↺ GeoComply Expands VPN ‘Piracy’ Detection By Blocking Residential IP-Addresses

• VPN detection service GeoComply helps rightsholders and streaming platforms ban so-called ‘geo pirates’, users who bypass geographical restrictions using online tools. Because some VPN providers use residential IP addresses to circumvent such restrictions, GeoComply is now blocking these as well. The company bills it as a revolutionary technology.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ SpellBinding: CEGUORH Wordo: OFFEN

Politics

=> ↺ Flexibility & Life

• To be able to withstand the punches life throws at you, being flexible is helpful, methinks. It allows you to focus on what matters to you, overlook what doesn’t, and dodge them punches like a pro. Not only that, but you can more easily experiment with things and try to find what works best. “If you don’t have the room to fail, you only have the room to remain” (if it almost rhymes it’s true, amirite?)

Technical

=> ↺ Cybersecurity sensationalism

• Cybersecurity is a hot field and while we’ve made leaps and bounds in the field, there’s also been a growing number of clickbait and sensationalist headlines making the rounds. Every “major” vulnerability now seems like it needs to be accompanied by a domain, logo and FAQ talking about how dangerous it is. Similarly, on a weekly basis news outlets mention some super sneaky cross platform rootkit undetected by all anti-virus vendors giving hackers full control of your system.

• [...]

• Recently, a cybersecurity “advisor” posted on twitter a screenshot of a supposed Discord scam where an image failing to load allows them to steal your discord token and bypass 2FA. There was only a screenshot, but no technical writeup or proof of concept. One should be skeptical because there are two major vulnerabilities implied here: the ability for an automated script to bypass 2FA to steal your token, and doing so via an image that would bypass Discord’s content security policy and/or electron sandboxing.

Science

=> ↺ We are One Species

• First, it should be uncontroversial to assert the antiracist principle, anchored in basic biology, that we are one species. There are observable differences in such things as skin color and hair texture, as well as some patterns in predisposition to disease based on ancestors’ geographic origins, but the idea of separate races was created by humans and is not found in nature.

• There are no known biologically based differences in intellectual, psychological, or moral attributes between human populations from different regions of the world. There is individual variation within any human population in a particular place (obviously, individuals in any society differ in a variety of traits). But there are no meaningful biologically based differences between populations in the way people are capable of thinking, feeling, or making decisions. We are one species. We are all basically the same animal.

=> ↺ Electrolytes, They’re What Dehydrated Hackaday Writers Crave!

• The oddly prophetic 2006 comedy film Idiocracy features an isotonic drink called Brawndo, whose marketing continuously refers to its electrolytes as a miraculous property. Brawndo is revealed in the film to be useless for agricultural irrigation, but yesterday perhaps a couple of Hackaday writers could have used a bottle or two. At the MCH hacker camp, the record heat of a Dutch summer under the influence of global warming caused us to become dehydrated, and thus necessitated a trip to the first aid post for some treatment. We’d done all the right things, staying in the shade, keeping as cool as we could, eating salty foods like crisps, and drinking plenty of liquids, so what had gone wrong?

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Digital Memory

• But this all begs the question, why do we need search? Is search good for the community?

• I myself am a datahoarder in some respects, and the thought of content being lost to time brings me no pleasure. However, I think it’s worth considering that an immortal, searchable archive of everything may not be an unequivocally good thing.

• [...]

• This state of affairs accurately describes the way that the internet currently functions. Regardless of who controls the internet or how decentralized platforms are, the fact that you can always dig back in time and find digital traces of everyone’s pasts means that we are constantly participating in an administrative surveillance state. (At least, each of our online identities are — what connection an online identity bears to your personal identity is a topic for another time.) The problem then, is not that a state or corporation controls the internet, but that the internet itself assumes the state form. Everything can and will be held against you in a court of law. Identities are not allowed to be changing and dynamic — if you change as a person, your only choice is to discard an identity and take up a new one.

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