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● Links 23/05/2023: Systemd Free Changes

Posted in News Roundup at 12:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Notebook Check ☛ Lemur Pro: System76 refreshes Linux laptop with Intel Raptor Lake-U series processors

• System76 has refreshed the Lemur Pro, its 14.1-inch laptop that can be configured with Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Perhaps expectedly, System76 has moved the Lemur Pro onto Intel Raptor Lake-U processors, having offered the Core i5-1235U and Core i7-1255U since last July. In their place are the Core i5-1335U and Core i7-1355U, which contain higher CPU and GPU clock speeds than their predecessors.

Linux Magazine

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Compiling coreboot firmware

• Coreboot lets you build your own custom firmware while learning more about Linux.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Reverse engineering a BLE clock

• What do you do when all your Bluetooth clocks show slightly different times? With some reverse engineering, you can write a Python program to synchronize your clocks.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Graphical web browsing from the terminal

• This Chromium port can run inside any console, with minimal resources, and is a great tool for making old computers really useful – and learning programming along the way.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Efficiently manage files with nnn

• If you’re a Linux lover, you’ll know the command line is the slickest and most efficient way to interact with the system. Free yourself from point-and-click with the nnn command-line file manager.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Espanso: Text expander and more

• Espanso is a cross-platform text expander that can do far more than simply replace text modules.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Meet Open Data Institute’s Lisa Allen

• The Open Data Institute’s Lisa Allen explains why open data matters and what it will take for more widespread adoption.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Who’s Driving?

• I happen to be writing this column on a day when the US Senate is conducting hearings on artificial intelligence (AI) and, specifically, whether a need exists for greater regulation.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ FOSSPicks

• With the demise of Twitter API access to the beautiful open source client, Harpy, Graham has spent the month on fosstodon.org, hoping Harpy’s developer brings their skills to the Fediverse.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ On the DVD

• Xubuntu 23.04 and Fedora Workstation 38

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Prying the lid off of government data

• The open data movement extends the ideals of open source to government data and, ultimately, all the world’s knowledge.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Creating custom ISO images

• If you are looking to customize your Linux distribution, we show you three graphical front ends for creating bootable ISO images.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Circuit simulation with hardware description languages

• Designing field-programmable gate arrays is only half the job: The hardest part is the simulation, but Linux is the best place to tackle certain challenges.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ News

• In the news: New Release of Br OS Includes ChatGPT Integration, Command-Line Only Peropesis 2.1, TUXEDO Computers Announces InfinityBook Pro 14, Linux Kernel 6.3 Release Includes Interesting Features, Fedora 38 Released with New Features, LXQt 1.3 Released with Bug Fixes, 4MLinux 42.0 Now Ready for Prime Time

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Linux Voice

• This month in Linux Voice.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Migrating social media data with the data transfer project

• The Data Transfer Project wants to make it easier to move your data between social media sites.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Build your own Slackware repository

• If you deploy software packages to several computers, the standard Slackware tools lack efficiency. We show you how to create a custom repository to automatically install and upgrade software for multiple systems.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Control your backup NAS from the desktop

• To be able to power up and shut down his NAS and check the current status without getting out of his chair, Mike Schilli programs a graphical interface that sends a Magic Packet in this month’s column.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ One-stop solutions for Linux

• Linux users can now experience what Windows and macOS users have enjoyed for decades: hardware, software, and services bundled together. We look at six of these one-stop solutions for Linux.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Considering FOSS Databases

• There are many FOSS databases available inexpensively today, and they might serve new projects well.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Make a camera for lenticular photography

• You can take lenticular images with a homemade camera to re-create the “wiggle” pictures of your childhood.

=> ↺ Linux Magazine ☛ Managing open data with CKAN

• CKAN, a versatile data management system, lets you build a portal to share your open data.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 230

• Graphing pings in the terminal, streaming playstation games to your Linux machine, finding secrets and sensitive information in your repos, keeping your FOSS Android apps bang up to date, whether programming students should be using Linux, and loads more.

Applications

=> ↺ OSTechNix ☛ Informant – A Command Line Arch Linux News Reader

• Stay informed and up-to-date with Arch Linux News using Informant utility. Get the latest updates, important announcements, and news items directly in your terminal.

• Informant is an Arch Linux News reader designed to also be used as a pacman hook. When installed and configured as a pacman hook, Informant automatically retrieves the latest news from the Arch Linux website and displays it during system updates or package installations. This ensures that users are informed about any critical information that may affect their system or require specific actions.

=> ↺ Net2 ☛ Best Partition Managers for Linux Users

• Linux partition managers are robust tools that empower users to create, adjust, and oversee various partitions on their Linux-based systems.

=> ↺ Linux Links ☛ MusicPod – music, podcast and internet radio player

• MusicPod is an example of a project that’s in a very early stage of development. It’s a music, radio and podcast player wrapped up in a graphical user interface.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ TecAdmin ☛ Setting Up a Port Forwarding Using Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW)

• Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) is a popular and user-friendly command-line interface designed to facilitate firewall management on Ubuntu and other Linux systems. While UFW is typically used to manage inbound and outbound traffic at the port level, it also supports more complex tasks like setting up port forwarding, also known as port mapping.

=> ↺ Kifarunix ☛ Easy Way to Install Kubernetes Dashboard on Ubuntu 22.04/20.04

• This step-by-step guide provides an easy way to install Kubernetes dashboard on Ubuntu 22.04/20.04. Installing Kubernetes Dashboard on Ubuntu 22.04/20.04 is a simple process that allows you to manage and monitor your Kubernetes clusters efficiently.

=> ↺ Dante Catalfamo ☛ Dynamic Tracing on OpenBSD 7.3

• A couple years ago a new device silently entered the OpenBSD source tree.

• The dt(4) device first appearing in OpenBSD 6.7 with very sparse information. In the releases since, it’s gained quite a bit of functionality and now has tools to manipulate it properly.

• The documentation has gotten better over the last couple years, but there isn’t much info about how to leverage it to do anything useful.

=> ↺ ID Root ☛ How To Install Percona on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Percona on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Percona Server is a powerful and reliable open-source database management system that provides high performance, scalability, and security for enterprise-level applications.

=> ↺ SUSE’s Corporate Blog ☛ Container Security – How to Quickly Install NeuVector 5 on OpenShift 4

• NeuVector is a container security platform that provides comprehensive security for containerized applications allowing you to not only prevent attacks but also to actively protect your applications from unknown vulnerabilities by implementing behavioral-based Zero-Trust security policies.

=> ↺ Smooth Transitions: Rolling Updates and Autoscaling in Kubernetes

• In today’s rapidly evolving software development industry, Kubernetes has emerged as a leading platform for container orchestration. Kubernetes is an open-source system that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It allows developers to easily manage and deploy their applications across multiple servers in a consistent and reliable manner.

=> ↺ Resource Management: Implementing Limits and Quotas in Kubernetes

• The rapid growth of cloud-native applications has revolutionized the way organizations develop and deploy software. Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration platform, has emerged as a popular choice for managing these applications due to its scalability and flexibility. However, managing resources in Kubernetes can be challenging without proper resource management.

=> ↺ Expand Your Horizons: Using Out-of-Tree Volume Plugins with FlexVolume

• As the adoption of containerized environments continues to grow, there is an increasing need for flexible and scalable storage solutions. Kubernetes, a popular container orchestration platform, has come up with a solution to this problem through its FlexVolume driver.

=> ↺ Efficient Scaling: Mastering Horizontal Pod Autoscaling in Kubernetes

• As software development becomes more complex and modern applications require greater scalability, container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes have become increasingly popular among developers. Kubernetes provides a powerful platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

=> ↺ Unlocking Storage Potential: Understanding the Container Storage Interface

• Why Storage is Critical to Modern Computing In today’s digital age, data storage is a critical component of modern computing. From personal computer files to large-scale enterprise data centers, storing, accessing, and managing data is essential to business operations.

=> ↺ Kifarunix ☛ Step-by-Step Guide: How to Install Metrics Server on Kubernetes

• This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide on how to install Metrics server on Kubernetes. Kubernetes Metrics Server plays a vital role in monitoring your Kubernetes cluster by collecting resource utilization data, such as CPU and memory usage, from various components.

=> ↺ University of Toronto ☛ What I see as good options today for encrypted NFS

• The first option is to use IPsec for at least the NFS traffic between NFS servers and NFS clients. IPsec has the advantage that IPsec security policies will generally let you encrypt all NFS traffic and only the NFS traffic, so you don’t have to spend CPU cycles encrypting other traffic (if any). You’d most likely want to set up an IKE environment to establish IPsec keys between relevant machines and to authenticate them.

=> ↺ Jim Nielsen ☛ A Well Known URL For Your Personal Avatar

• The idea is: anybody that owns a domain can put their avatar in a well-known location.

=> ↺ Dante Catalfamo ☛ Dynamic Tracing on OpenBSD 7.3

• A couple years ago a new device silently entered the OpenBSD source tree.

• The dt(4) device first appearing in OpenBSD 6.7 with very sparse information. In the releases since, it’s gained quite a bit of functionality and now has tools to manipulate it properly.

=> ↺ Own HowTo ☛ How to check if file exists in bash

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if a file exists on your system in a bash function.

• We are going to write a simple function in bash that will check if a file exists, and then display a message, if the file exists or not.

=> ↺ UNIX Cop ☛ How to find out how much disk space is left using the terminal?

• Hello, friends. Many times we have to ask ourselves how much disk space is left. Well, although a silly question, we can answer it using the terminal, so it becomes essential for many sysadmins.

=> ↺ Own HowTo ☛ How to install xfce on Ubuntu 23.04

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install xfce on Ubuntu 23.04. Xfce is a very lightweight desktop environment that you can use on any low end computer or server.

• Because of its ‘lightweightness’ xfce is a great choice when it comes to choosing a desktop

=> ↺ Linuxiac ☛ How to Install Alpine Linux and Set up a Desktop Environment

• Ready for a lightweight and customizable Linux experience? Dive into our guide on installing Alpine Linux and setting up a desktop environment.

=> ↺ Own HowTo ☛ How to redirect www to non www traffic on Cloudflare

• In this tutorial you will learn how to redirect www traffic to non www with Cloudflare page rules. By using this method you can redirect www traffic to non www traffic without changing anything on your web server.

=> ↺ Own HowTo ☛ How to Setup Live Server on Visual Studio Code [Ed: Microsoft proprietary spyware (Visual Studio Code) is the wrong tool to work with. Try KATE instead.]

• In this tutorial you will learn how to create a local server on your computer to view HTML changes in real time, just like you would see if you uploaded the HTML file on a normal server. If you are into web development and work with HTML, CSS and Javascript

=> ↺ Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Microsoft Edge on Pop!_OS [Ed: This is Microsoft malware that steals all the passwords of users without their consent. It seems inane to help GNU/Linux user install such malware.]

• Microsoft Edge is a dynamic, innovative, and efficient web browser that is continually evolving. Initially released for Windows, Edge is now available on a wide range of platforms, including Linux.

=> ↺ FOSSLinux ☛ Creating a bootable Windows 10/11 USB on Linux

• Whether you’re setting up a dual-boot system or installing Windows on another machine, you might find yourself needing to create a bootable Windows USB stick using your Linux system. Though it might sound complex, the process is straightforward if you have the right tools and guidance.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Handbook ☛ How to Enable/Re-enable ‘Tab’ Key Auto-Completion in Ubuntu 22.04

• This feature is quite useful and available out-of-the-box for every user with home directory.

Games

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ What’s Black, White, And Red On 20 Sides?

• You won’t need to pack a full set of dice for your next game with this DIY Multifunctional Eink Gadget. [Sasa Karanović] brings us a fun device that combines a few essential aspects of tabletop gaming, D6, D12, and D20 dice rolling and a hero dashboard. While they have grand plans for a BLE networked future application, we admire the restraint to complete a V1 project before allowing scope-creep to run amok. Well played!

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ VKD3D-Proton v2.9 out now with multiple performance improvements

• Just before the weekend hit VKD3D-Proton v2.9 was release, giving some big improvements to the Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translation layer used in Proton on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Erra: Exordium is a 2D action adventure blending mythology and Dieselpunk

• Sumerian-Akkadian mythology blended together with Dieselpunk, certainly quite a unique setting in Erra: Exordium which released with Linux support recently. Along with Native Linux support, they said they’re also working to ensure it gets Steam Deck Verified.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Odencat announced surreal adventure Dream Channel Zero

• Odencat (Meg’s Monster, Bear’s Restaurant, Fishing Paradiso) and Fuming have announced Dream Channel Zero, a rather surreal sounding adventure about a boy who gets sucked into the world of a mysterious video game.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ D-Corp, the couch multiplayer game with cute robots gets a new versus mode

• Remember the couch multiplayer game D-Corp? On the top of its co-op campaign mode it now features a full-fledged versus mode called Arena.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Inspired by Japanese folklore, Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus looks gorgeous

• An upcoming 2.5D action platformer with some gorgeous visuals inspired by Japanese folklore? Sign me up, this sounds great but it’s a little while away yet.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Portal Reloaded team announced The Cooperative Update

• Currently available in Beta on Steam for you to test out, the Cooperative Update for Portal Reloaded sounds like a lot of fun. For those who haven’t played before: it’s a free, community made modification for Portal 2. Building on the original concepts in the game by giving you a third portal allowing you to travel between different timelines.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Make Tech Easier ☛ Top 12 GNOME Shell Extensions to Improve Your Desktop

• The GNOME Shell Extensions platform offers a simple and easy way to extend GNOME through simple applets. These are JavaScript programs that use the GNOME API to manipulate and add new features to the desktop. This article highlights some of the best shell extensions that you can install.

=> ↺ OMG! Linux ☛ GNOME Makes it Easier to Show Seconds, Weekday in Clock

• It’ll soon be less effort to customize the clock applet in GNOME Shell. No, no — don’t close this post yet!

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Systemd Free ☛ Venom Linux no systemd or elogind from scratch

• On our strict list “sysdfree strict list of distros without any part of systemd” there are complete distros that can run without systemd or elogind (Obarun, joborun, antiX), and by complete we mean thousands of packages to choose from, and are some minimal base systems that you will have to build yourself software…

=> ↺ Systemd Free ☛ New discussion board since wordpress comments limit us

• I propose that once an argument, idea, proposal has been made public it is not private property of the person/group that presented it. It belongs to all of us. Some who see it reasonable can further support it with rational arguments, some who see it as wrong can equally explain why. Not because it came from the person that brought it, but for its content alone.

=> ↺ Barry Kauler ☛ Multiple Sound Card Wizard improved text

• It seems that some people are not using the Multiple Sound Card Wizard (MSCW) as intended. It is essential to test the sound, as this sets levels and unmutes for both pulseaudio and alsa. If you skip this step, sound may not work. Hence, there is now more explanation on the window:

• …just a little change, but likely very helpful to newcomers.

• Sometimes, although “Test Sound” attempts to set levels, for some audio hardware it doesn’t work, and you have to go into “Configure…” and there is probably an extra level that can be brought up. So, “Test Sound” needs to produce an actual sound before you select it as the default device. 

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ OpenSUSE ☛ openSUSE.Asia Summit 2023 Announcement

• Chongqing, China, Selected for openSUSE.Asia Summit 2023 Chongqing has been accepted to host the openSUSE.Asia Summit 2023 and the openSUSE.Asia Summit will return to China for the second time, Chongqing is one of the four directly-administered municipalities of the PRC, located in southwest China, bordered by Sichuan, Yunnan…

• [...]

• openSUSE.Asia Summit 2023 will open a call for papers for potential speakers. and the openSUSE.Asia Summit 2023 logo competition will also be opened. The logo competition would be an opportunity for designers in Asia to compete with each other to showcase their skills and be a part of this activity. More details about the above information will be announced in the near future via news.opensuse.org.

Arch Family

=> ↺ DebugPoint ☛ Dive into the Top 5 Gorgeous Arch Linux Distributions

• Arch Linux offers a rolling release model, a powerful pacman package manager and thousands of applications via its repositories. It is popular because it allows you to create customized Linux distributions with a DIY approach. One of the advantages of this is the availability of various community-driven distros that provide pre-configured setups with visually appealing interfaces.

• Let’s explore some of the top beautiful Arch Linux distros that combine aesthetics with the power of Arch Linux’s base.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ 9to5Linux ☛ Fedora Onyx Approved as Immutable Fedora Linux 39 Spin with Budgie Desktop

• At the end of April 2023, Budgie Desktop developer and Solus maintainer Joshua Strobl proposed an official immutable / emerging variant of Fedora Linux with the Budgie desktop environment, complementing the Fedora Budgie Spin that was introduced with the Fedora Linux 38 release.

• Fedora Onyx aims to offer Fedora Linux users yet another immutable/atomic desktop operating system in the style of Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, and Fedora Sericea, leveraging technologies like rpm-ostree, Podman, toolbx, and Flatpak.

=> ↺ Dell Extends Managed Services Reach to Red Hat OpenShift and K8s Storage

• Dell Technologies today announced it has extended its alliance with Red Hat to include an instance of Red Hat OpenShift delivered as a managed service.

=> ↺ Red Hat ☛ How to use OpenShift Data Science for fraud detection

• The problem of detecting fraudulent transactions is intriguing for a data scientist. However, the overhead from setting up the technologies around it can be cumbersome. This is where Red Hat OpenShift Data Science, along with Starburst and Intel OpenVino, come to the rescue. Now data scientists can focus on what they do best, model training and crafting; and OpenShift Data Science will do what we do best, providing the tools with the least overhead. 

=> ↺ How Kubernetes Adoption Fosters Cloud Resiliency

=> ↺ Fedora Infrastructure Status: Instablity [sic] with various services

• We are seeing instability and issues with various web applications. We are investigating the problem.

• Update: The problem database server has been identified and is being fixed.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Dear Ubuntu…

• But over the last few years, I’ve noticed that our relationship has slowly become one less of harmony and more of frustration. Like middle-aged spread, you became progressively more bloated, your moments of freezing became obvious and inconvenient, and the delays to open some indispensable pieces of software became too long to simply explain as the result of having other apps running in the background. Our once close relationship has become strained by endless waiting for Snap packaged applications to load, and by my USB peripherals mysteriously refusing to talk to applications they’ve been used with for years.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi ☛ Preparing young children for a digital world | Hello World #21

• Sway Grantham shares how educators can help young children explore technology to learn skills for a digital world, in an article from Hello World 21.

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ SparkFun “Datalogger IoT – 9DoF” no code platform supports over 50 Qwiic sensor modules

=> ↺ Adnan Hodzic: rpi-microk8s-bootstrap: Automate RPI device conversion into Kubernetes cluster nodes with Terraform

• Considering I’ve created my own private cloud in my home as part of: wp-k8s: WordPress on privately hosted Kubernetes cluster (Raspberry Pi 4 + Synology)…

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ Link.ONE LTE-M, NB-IoT, and LoRaWAN all-in-one LPWAN devkit is programmable with the Arduino IDE

• RAKwireless Link.ONE is an all-in-one LPWAN development kit programmable with the Arduino IDE and based on nRF52840 Cortex-M4F 2.4 GHz multi-protocol wireless microcontroller, Semtech SX1262 LoRa RF transceiver, and Quectel BG77 LTE-M and NB-IoT module and comprised of components from the company’s WisBlock IoT prototyping platform.

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ The Whimsy Artist is a little robot that both creates and destroys art

• Many people find the subjectivity of art to be frustrating, but that subjectivity is what makes art interesting. Banksy’s self-shredding art piece is a great example of this. The original painting sold at auction for $1.4 million — and then it shredded itself in front of everyone.

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ These projects from CMU incorporate the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense in clever ways

• With an array of onboard sensors, Bluetooth® Low Energy connectivity, and the ability to perform edge AI tasks thanks to its nRF52840 SoC, the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense is a great choice for a wide variety of embedded applications.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Robotic Arm Controlled With Muscle Movement via EMG Signals

• Ultimate Robotics is taking robotic arms to the next level with this EMG-controlled robot arm featuring an Arduino.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Gadget Bridge ☛ Top 7 Easy Methods to Increase Brightness Beyond Maximum on Android

=> ↺ Gadget Bridge ☛ Top 4 Ways to Download Pictures From Facebook to Your Android Phone

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Google: Google Contacts will now offer to notify Android users when it’s someone’s birthday – Times of India

=> ↺ Android Police ☛ Gboard might become easier to resize and reposition on Android

=> ↺ WCCF Tech ☛ Android 14 Will Make Tablets Even More Useful with a Long List of Physicals Keyboard Shortcuts Coming with the Update

=> ↺ Android Authority ☛ Physical keyboards could become more useful on Android 14 tablets

=> ↺ 9to5Google ☛ Gboard for Android preps an easier way to ‘Resize’

=> ↺ HowTo Geek ☛ The Dolphin Emulator Just Got Better on Android

=> ↺ Android Police ☛ Android 14 is working on a massive new list of physical keyboard shortcuts

=> ↺ The Sun ☛ I’m a tech expert – three Android apps to delete if you don’t want your bank emptied and private info stolen | The US Sun

=> ↺ Notebook Check ☛ iQOO Neo8 SoC revealed ahead of new Android smartphone’s launch – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ Make Use Of ☛ 8 Educational Apps for Android That Offer Smarter Ways to Learn

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ Success story: Fixing a limitation in LibreOffice Calc

• Ever heard the term “scratching your own itch”? Wiktionary describes it as “doing something out of motivation to solve a personal problem”. In the world of free and open source software development, this happens a lot! Anyone can contribute to FOSS projects like LibreOffice, and help to improve them.

• And that’s exactly what Rafael Lima did, with a long-standing limitation in LibreOffice. He rolled up his sleeves, got to work, and fixed it. Here’s what he had to say…

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Creative Commons ☛ Ivan Martinez — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 8

• “Open Access… is an amplification of the work that these institutions do” Ivan says in this episode. He also shares what unique challenges are faced by cultural heritage institutions in Mexico which has one of the longest copyright terms in the world: 100 years plus the lifetime of the creator or author…

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Last day for Hack CodeX hackathon registration

• May 22 is the last day to apply for the upcoming HackCodeX hackathon, which will take place June 3-5 and is being run by Helve.

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ Update to {TidyDensity}

• To effectively extract insights and communicate findings, you need powerful tools that simplify the process and present data in an engaging manner.

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ getSymbols Rebooted

• quantmod and getSymbols() have been a core part of the R/Finance ecosystem for over 15 years. We want to change some things, but they would break existing code. We can make these changes in the new ‘rfimport’ package instead.

=> ↺ Maira Canal: May Update: Finishing my Second Igalia CE

• After finishing up my first Igalia Coding Experience in January, I got the amazing opportunity to keep working in the DRI community by extending my Igalia CE to a second round. Huge thanks to Igalia for providing me with this opportunity!

• Another four months passed by and here I am completing another milestone with Igalia. Previously, in the last final reports, I described GSoC as “an experience to get a better understanding of what open source is” and the first round of the Igalia CE as “an opportunity for me to mature my knowledge of technical concepts”. My second round of the Igalia CE was a period for broadening my horizons.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Network Programming

• If you want a book on network programming, there are a few classic choices. [Comer’s] TCP/IP books are a great reference but sometimes is too low level. “Unix Networking Programming” by [Stevens] is the usual choice, but it is getting a little long in the tooth, as well. Now we have “Beej’s Guide to Network Programming Using Internet Sockets.” While the title doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, the content is right on and fresh. Best part? You can read it now in your browser or in PDF format.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Bringing The PIO To The FPGA

• We’ve seen some pretty incredible hacks using the Raspberry Pi 2040. However, one of the most exciting bits of hardware onboard is the Programmable I/O (PIO). Not content with it just being a part of RP2040-based projects, [Lawrie Griffiths] has been porting the PIO to Verilog so anyone can enjoy it.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ Rakulang ☛ Raku Programming Language Weekly 2023.21 Maxcinating

• Steve Roe was inspired by a fascinating discussion on the #raku-beginner IRC channel about the concept of the maximum and minimum possible values of empty lists, and why the Raku Programming Language handles them the way they are handled.

Standards/Consortia/Disability

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ Disability services navigator aims for fourth Paralympics

• Chuck Aoki, community access navigator with U-M’s Adaptive Sports & Fitness program, has competed in wheelchair rugby in three Summer Paralympics Games.

Leftovers

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Missing Malaysian climber’s jacket found on Mount Everest

• They are trying to trace the mobile phone belonging to Mr Hawari who went missing last week after reaching the summit.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Singaporean man among 40 arrested in Malaysia’s online gambling call centre raids

• The suspects have been operating a digital currency exchange and converting them into USDT crypto token.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Fatal Fire at Guyana Dormitory Was ‘Maliciously Set,’ Official Says

• Many of the 19 victims were schoolchildren. The fire service said it was still unclear who had set the building ablaze.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Ed Templeton’s Unsparing Photographic Diary of Skateboarding Life

• Templeton’s images, taken between 1995 and 2012, capture the intimacy and aimlessness of being on tour.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Finnish National Gallery to launch digital ticketing service

• The new online system aims to make visits to the museums smoother, and also to alleviate queues for the most popular exhibitions. In some cases, queues for Ateneum exhibitions have stretched around the block on Kaivokatu in downtown Helsinki.

• In a statement, the FNG said the service will be available from late autumn, adding that there will be no additional booking fee for advance ticket buyers.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Curious Case of the Transcendental Painting Group

• Every generation gets to rehabilitate at least one artistic style that its predecessors dismissed as terminally uncool. And now, with renewed pressure on art museums to consider movements from outside the putative canon (mostly white, mostly male, mostly of the West), the pendulum of public favor has begun to swing even faster. In recent years, prominent tastemakers have reversed their positions on historical scenes once viewed as unserious: The 2020 Whitney Museum blockbuster show “Vida Americana” hoped to elevate Mexican muralism from its provincial status by showing how the muralists influenced abstract painters like Jackson Pollock, who studied under them in Mexico. In 2022, the Metropolitan in New York and the Tate in London extended the same courtesy to Surrealism—which has always been a hit with the public, but considered lowbrow by critics—by refuting the usual Eurocentric narrative with an internationalist one that cast new light on this otherwise cliché-ridden movement. Now the art world has set its sights on the next early-20th-century style to be rescued from the wrong side of good taste: the short-lived and long-forgotten Transcendental Painting Group.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Jim Brown’s War Within Himself

• The alert came across my phone from The New York Times: “Jim Brown died at 87. An acclaimed football player, actor, and civil rights activist, he was accused of domestic violence.” It was a lot to take in. I had spent four years writing a book about his life called Jim Brown: Last Man Standing, from which much of this article stems. As part of that project, I stayed at Brown’s house in the West Hollywood Hills for a week, and despite his age and health, it was difficult to imagine him ever dying. The Times alert showcased a fool’s errand in its attempt to drill his life down to 20 words. Here he is being called a civil rights activist when he opposed much of the politics and many of the methods and tactics of the civil rights movement. He derided civil rights marches as “parades” in the 1950s and then again in 2016. That was when he engaged in an ugly, public feud with Representative John Lewis, whom Brown condemned for questioning Trump’s legitimacy. By that time, Brown supported Trump, a position that I argued made sense given his politics, which were both consistent and complicated. Brown supported Richard Nixon in 1968 and spoke at Huey Newton’s funeral in 1989. What is not complicated is his treatment of women. Again, to break that down to only “was accused of domestic violence” does both the history and the survivors an injustice. Brown’s life calls for more than genuflection or dismissal; it demands study.

Science

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Captivating Close-Ups Show Amazing Details Hiding in The Glare of The Sun

• Are you ready to feel small?

=> ↺ Brr ☛ Polar Night

• It’s been about six weeks since we left off, shortly after Sunset. We watched the sun descend in the sky and dip below the horizon. It was Nautical Twilight, and the sky was alive with vibrant colors: [...]

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Quantum Chemistry Happening Inside Your Eyes Protects Against Vision Loss

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ The Human Brain Shows a Weird Preference For Sounds From The Left

• And we don’t know why.

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Water Vapor Detected in The Solar System’s Asteroid Belt For First Time

• We finally have direct evidence.

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Billions to Face Potentially Deadly Heat by 2100, Scientists Warn

• We didn’t heed the warnings.

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Ultraviolet Light Reveals Hidden Bible Chapter Over 1,500 Years Later

• A passage unseen for a very long time.

Education

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Book Removals May Have Violated Students’ Rights, Education Department Says

• The U.S. Department of Education reached a settlement with a Georgia school district after launching an investigation into whether book removals created a hostile environment for students.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ North Carolina governor says GOP teacher pay, voucher plans a public education ‘disaster’

• Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is embarking on a campaign to beat back education and tax legislation from the Republican-controlled General Assembly. If passed, the GOP legislation would greatly expand private-school vouchers, make deeper income tax cuts and offer what he considers paltry teacher raises. Cooper made his case in a video statement released Monday and told The Associated Press he plans to hold public events over the coming days. He likened the pending legislation to a “state of emergency” for public education. With Republicans now holding veto-proof seat majorities in the House and Senate, Cooper is taking to his bully pulpit.

=> ↺ RTL ☛ Educators to be responsible for fewer children

• Petition 2707, which recently crossed the 4,500 signature threshold, demands that educators working in daycares and nurseries should not be required to look after as many children.

=> ↺ Telex (Hungary) ☛ 78 percent of Fidesz voters would raise teachers’ salaries, survey shows

• Teachers, students and parents have been protesting for months to draw attention to the problems of Hungarian public education, to fight for a wage increase for teachers and to express their displeasure with the draft of the so-called status law, which the government proposed in response to the first protests, and which the teachers and students are referring to as “the revenge law”. The proposed bill would further curb teachers’ autonomy, and it doesn’t address any of the issues because of which the protests started more than a year ago.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ New York Charter Schools Write Their Own Rules for When to Call 911 on Students Having a Mental Health Crisis

• In a panic, if she floors it, Marilyn Blanco can drive from her job at the Rikers Island jail complex to her son Ian’s school in Harlem in less than 18 minutes.

• Nine times since December, Blanco has made the drive because Ian’s school — Success Academy Harlem 2 — called 911 on her 8-year-old.

Hardware

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ The UK has unveiled a surprisingly tiny $1.2bn semiconductor plan

• The UK’s new support strategy for its homegrown semiconductor industry has surprised those who had been waiting almost two years with its unambitious nature.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Silicon Valley Chosen for $4 Billion Chip Research Center

• Anticipating federal subsidies, Applied Materials said it planned to invest up to $4 billion in the semiconductor project in Sunnyvale, Calif.

=> ↺ BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Apple Supplier Wistron To Shut iPhone Assembly In India

• The company is one of three global contract manufacturers to start assembling iPhones in India in 2017. But a leading media house said that Wistron’s struggle with component manufacturing and vendor-managed inventory holding was among the key reasons for the exit.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Building Circuits Flexibly

• You think of breadboards as being a flexible way to build things — one can easily add components and wires and also rip them up. But MIT researchers want to introduce an actual flexible breadboard called FlexBoard. The system is like a traditional breadboard, but it is literally flexible. If you want to affix your prototype to a glove or a ball, good luck with a traditional breadboard. FlexBoard makes it easy. You can see a short video below and a second video presentation about the system, also.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Smart Pants Sound Alarm When Your Fly Is Undone

• It’s always embarrassing to be told your fly is down. Even moreso when you realize it’s been that way since you returned from the bathroom an hour ago. [Guy Dupont] has built a device to solve this awkward issue once and for all. (Nitter)

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Handheld PC Looks Great

• [Bytewelder] fondly remembers the Palm III and Sharp HC-4500, so taking on the design of Decktility, a custom handheld cyberdeck , was a natural next step. The blog post goes into much detail about the design decisions and challenges throughout the project. The end result, though, looks great.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Salon ☛ Food prices are rising but farmers’ profits are still small — here’s why

• The UK needs healthy, nutritious and affordable food provided in a way that is fair to everyone involved. In a cost of living crisis, the media spotlight is going to fall on those in food poverty and on rising food prices.

• These are crucial issues to address, but to have any real impact, the discussion must extend even further to cover the systemic unfairness throughout the UK food supply system.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Collapse of This Texas Health Care Program Is Putting Women’s Lives in Danger

• Mondays are Access Esperanza’s busiest days. Some of the women who come seeking care may wait for a couple of hours but, CEO Patricio Gonzales said, “We do not turn away patients.” For his clients—most low-income and uninsured—waiting is worth it because the services are free.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Why Scientists Struggle to Fund Research on Predicting Outbreaks [Ed: Pro Publica must disclose it is taking bribes from Famous Criminal Bill Gates. Conflict of interest.]

• The outbreaks keep coming.

• Mpox, the virus formerly known as monkeypox, last year crossed borders with unprecedented speed to infect nearly 90,000 people. In the past year, Ebola killed at least 55 in Uganda, and a related, equally deadly virus called Marburg emerged in two countries that have never seen it before. Now, scientists are worried that a dangerous bird flu that’s been jumping to mammals could mutate and spread among humans.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ The Scientist Who Studied Bats and Could Prevent an Outbreak

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ How Studying Bats Can Help Predict and Prevent the Next Pandemic

• Dressed head-to-toe in protective gear, Peggy Eby crawled on her hands and knees under a fig tree, searching for bat droppings and fruit with telltale fang marks.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Covid Has Left Deep Wounds in America’s Rural Communities

• By the time my research brought me to the town of Derby Line, Vt., in late summer 2021, opposition to Covid public health measures had hardened, just like the late summer dirt roads of the three-county area of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. School board meetings had become battlegrounds for debates on masking. Yet signs calling for a kidney donor for a local resident also peppered this remote outpost on the Canadian border.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ EPA Press Conference Addresses Climate Impacts to Children’s Health

• As climate changes in the United States, so does the health of the country’s children.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ OSHA Plans to Reform “Star” Workplace Safety Program

• The federal government is planning to reform a workplace safety program that was scrutinized in a recent ProPublica investigation.

• The Star Program recognizes workplaces with strong safety programs and rewards them by curtailing the number of times government regulators show up randomly. It is based on the theory that motivating companies to adhere to best practices on their own is more effective than punishing them when they fall short.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Medical AI’s weaponization

• Machine learning can bring us cancer diagnoses with greater speed and precision than any individual doctor — but it could also bring us another pandemic at the hands of a relatively low-skilled programmer.

• Why it matters: The health field is generating some of the most exciting artificial intelligence innovation, but AI can also weaponize modern medicine against the same people it sets out to cure.

• Driving the news: The World Health Organization is warning about the risks of bias, misinformation and privacy breaches in the deployment of large language models in healthcare.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Steep increase in sick leave among municipal sector employees

• The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (Työterveyslaitos) highlights a concerning trend of increased sick leave among municipal sector employees in 2022. Regardless of occupation, gender, or age group, sickness absences rose, with the likely cause being the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• According to the Kunta10 study conducted by Työterveyslaitos, which has been monitoring sickness absences among employees in the municipal sector since 2000, the average number of sick leave days taken by municipal employees in 2022 was 20.7 days.

=> ↺ MIT Technology Review ☛ Brain waves can tell us how much pain someone is in

• Brain signals can be used to detect how much pain a person is experiencing, which could overhaul how we treat certain chronic pain conditions, a new study has suggested.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ How Art Can Improve Your Mental Health

• Drawing, music and writing can elevate your mood. Here are some easy ways to welcome them into your life.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ What Is ‘Permissive Parenting’?

=> ↺ NYPost ☛ ‘Consumers are gambling their money’ on stem cell treatments, scientists warn

• “Companies that sell untested and unproven health promises are little more than modern snake-oil salesmen,” said the lead author of a new study.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ The Most Common Symptoms for Seasonal Allergies, Food Allergies & More

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ New Nasal Spray to Reverse Fentanyl and Other Opioid Overdoses Gets FDA Approval

• U.S. health regulators have approved a new nasal spray to reverse overdoses due to fentanyl and other powerful opioids

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Lawsuit Targets Ambulance Company for Paramedic Accused of Sexually Assaulting 2 Elderly Women

• A lawsuit has been filed against medical transport provider American Medical Response West, saying the ambulance company’s lax oversight allowed a paramedic to sexually assault two women in their 80s while en route to a hospital

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Hospital building in Latvia found to pose potential health risks

• The Ombudsman has identified significant shortcomings in the Ādaži municipal hospital’s accessibility for people with disabilities, including even certain elements that potentially pose risks to human health, the Ombudsman’s office said on May 22.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ 1 in 5 U.S. Seniors Now Skip Meds Because of Cost

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Study: Finns’ quality of life has declined, suicidal thoughts become more common in recent years

• WORKING-AGE PEOPLE in Finland are experiencing more and more psychological distress, reveals a study conducted by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).

• The comprehensive public health study found that a fifth of 20–64-year-olds are experiencing psychological distress, representing a noticeable increase from four years earlier – one of six percentage points to almost 19 per cent for men and seven points to 20 per cent for women.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ 76th World Health Assembly Kicks Off

• “…a program budget for the next two years will be established, alongside critical deliberations relating to sustainable financing…”

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong alleges attempts to ‘disrupt’ organ donation as city sees nearly 3,000 ‘invalid’ withdrawals from register

• The Hong Kong government has alleged that a small group of people filed applications to withdraw from the Centralised Organ Donation Register (CODR) with an aim of “disrupting the representativeness” of the system.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Higher dose of vitamin D in early childhood may reduce psychiatric symptoms in school-age children, finds study

• A new study conducted by Finnish researchers has shed light on the potential benefits of higher vitamin D intake in reducing psychiatric symptoms during school-age years. The study, which is part of the Vitamin D Intervention in Infants (VIDI) clinical trial, aimed to examine the impact of increased vitamin D3 supplementation on children’s mental health outcomes.

• The research focused on children who were randomly assigned to two groups: one group received the standard daily dose of 10 micrograms of vitamin D3, while the other group received a triple dose of 30 micrograms. The supplementation was administered from the age of two weeks to two years.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ South Africans Blame City as Cholera Cases Rise

=> ↺ Antivax physician Dr. Rashid Buttar “died suddenly” and antivaxxers are contorting reality to blame vaccines

• A couple of days ago, I came across a Tweet by Sayer Ji, who, some of you might remember, was husband to Dr. Kelly Brogan, the anti psychiatry, antivax physician and germ theory denier who rose to greater prominence after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, to the point where she was named one of the Disinformation Dozen. The two of them ultimately divorced, but both continued down their previous paths of spreading misinformation. In any event, I must admit to my shock over seeing that Sayer Ji announce the death of Dr. Rashid Buttar:

Proprietary

=> ↺ Bruce Schneier ☛ Google Is Not Deleting Old YouTube Videos

• Google has backtracked on its plan to delete inactive YouTube videos-at least for now. Of course, it could change its mind anytime it wants.

• It would be nice if this would get people to think about the vulnerabilities inherent in letting a for-profit monopoly decide what of human creativity is worth saving.

=> ↺ Zimbabwe ☛ Gmail will be deleting inactive accounts, here’s how you save your account

• I know I’m not the only one with multiple Gmail accounts. I have used these accounts for different things over the years and one in particular has been my go-to for free trial sign-ups on the net. Can’t have my main Gmail flooded with promotional material, drowning out the important stuff.

=> ↺ MIT Technology Review ☛ How to preserve your digital memories

• I recently published a short story about new policies recently announced by Google and Twitter that allow the companies to remove inactive accounts.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Aspiring LinkedIn Influencer Praises Hitler As ‘Action Taker,’ Then Apologizes, Deletes Account [Ed: Deloitte staff and respect for Hitler in Microsoft account. Deloitte works closely with Microsoft and Microsoft employs actual nazis.]

• Networking went disastrously wrong for a risk advisor working for Deloitte, the consulting giant, after he fulsomely praised the Nazi leader.

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Twitter bug restoring deleted tweets for hundreds of clueless users

• A bug in Twitter is apparently restoring deleted tweets and retweets for hundreds of users who have no clue about it and the micro-blogging platform was yet to admit the issue and issue a fix, the media reported on Monday.

• Users are reporting that tweets they mass-deleted are reappearing on their profiles, reports The Verge.

=> ↺ The Verge ☛ A Twitter bug is restoring deleted tweets and retweets — including my own

• For me, the issue is trivial. It’s just a few old retweets. But it points to a larger problem. Twitter is still an important tool for activists, whistleblowers, and protestors around the world. There’s a reason Turkey is forcing the company to block certain tweets during its ongoing elections. Twitter still matters. But if you are, say, a political dissenter in an authoritarian country, then the ability to delete your own tweets could be crucial to your freedom. For all Musk’s talk about free speech, the company doesn’t seem to care about this.

=> ↺ [Old] The Verge ☛ Twitter has been storing your ‘deleted’ DMs for years

• It turns out that despite showing that the message was deleted, Twitter still stores all those DMs dating back years. Folks can access this simply by downloading the archived data on their account from Twitter. Saini confirms that even messages sent to and from deleted or suspended accounts are still accessible.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Apparently Elon Doesn’t Think He Needs To Pay Rent Because SF Is A ‘Shithole’; So Why Should We Pay For Twitter?

• It’s no secret that Twitter isn’t paying many of its bills, including the rent for its headquarters. That was rumored last fall, but became much more clear when the landlords sued the company in January.

=> ↺ Microsoft’s healthcare AI subsidiary Nuance undergoing layoffs: Report

• Speech-recognition company Nuance Communications, acquired by Microsoft for $19.7 billion, is undergoing layoffs as it focuses on its healthcare business.

• Nuance CEO Mark Benjamin notified employees about the job cuts in an internal memo, without detailing the number of staffers or departments affected, according to the Boston Globe.

• “We continue to see macroeconomic pressures affect our industries, as well as market shifts that are evolving our customers’ needs,” Benjamin wrote in the email.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Meta AI open-sources tools for self-supervised training of speech recognition models

• Meta Platforms Inc.’s artificial intelligence research team today said it has open-sourced a new project called Massively Multilingual Speech, which aims to overcome the challenges of creating accurate and reliable speech recognition models.

=> ↺ MIT Technology Review ☛ Meta’s new AI models can recognize and produce speech for more than 1,000 languages [Ed: Of course it's outsourced to proprietary software of Microsoft]

• Meta has built AI models that can recognize and produce speech for more than 1,000 languages—a tenfold increase on what’s currently available. It’s a significant step toward preserving languages that are at risk of disappearing, the company says. Meta is releasing its models to the public via the code hosting service GitHub.

Security

=> ↺ Qubes Canary 035

• We have published Qubes Canary 035. The text of this canary and its accompanying cryptographic signatures are reproduced below. For an explanation of this announcement and instructions for authenticating this canary, please see the end of this announcement.

• [...]

• You can also verify the signatures directly from this announcement in addition to or instead of verifying the files from the qubes-secpack. Simply copy and paste the Qubes Canary 035 text into a plain text file and do the same for both signature files. Then, perform the same authentication steps as listed above, substituting the filenames above with the names of the files you just created.

=> ↺ Krebs On Security ☛ Interview With a Crypto Scam Investment Spammer

• Social networks are constantly battling inauthentic bot accounts that send direct messages to users promoting scam cryptocurrency investment platforms. What follows is an interview with a Russian hacker responsible for a series of aggressive crypto spam campaigns that recently prompted several large Mastodon communities to temporarily halt new registrations. According to the hacker, their spam software has been in private use until the last few weeks, when it was released as open source code.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ GAO Tells Federal Agencies to Fully Implement Key Cloud Security Practices [Ed: Clown security is a mistake and anathema to real security]

• GAO report underlines the need for federal agencies to fully implement key cloud security practices.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Food Distributor Sysco Says Cyberattack Exposed 126,000 Individuals

• Food distributor Sysco Corporation says the personal information of over 126,000 individuals was compromised in a recent cyberattack.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Dish Ransomware Attack Impacted Nearly 300,000 People

• Satellite TV giant Dish Network says the recent ransomware attack impacted nearly 300,000 people and its notification suggests a ransom has been paid.

=> ↺ TechRadar ☛ Windows 11 is so broken that even Microsoft can’t fix it

• Microsoft has just made a pretty remarkable admission, essentially conceding that it doesn’t have a solution for some Windows 11 problems.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Samsung Smartphone Users Warned of Actively Exploited Vulnerability

• Samsung smartphone users warned about CVE-2023-21492, an ASLR bypass vulnerability exploited in the wild, likely by a spyware vendor.

=> ↺ SANS ☛ Probes for recent ABUS Security Camera Vulnerability: Attackers keep an eye on everything., (Mon, May 22nd)

• ABUS is usually better known for its “old-fashioned” mechanical locks. But as part of its b “Industry Solution” portfolio of products, ABUS is offering some more high-tech solutions, like, for example, network-connected cameras.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Introducing Four-Step Authentication

• Two-step authentication is just too much of a security risk.

=> ↺ Qt ☛ Security advisory: Qt SVG

• A recent buffer overflow issue in Qt SVG has been reported and has been assigned the CVE id CVE-2023-32763.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Man Scammed by Deepfake Video and Audio Imitating His Friend

• A deepfake scam in China has increased fears that artificial intelligence will allow hackers to easily obtain financial information. Hackers using advanced AI software reportedly convinced a man in northern China to transfer money to his friend, but instead directed it to a fraudulent account.

Privacy/Surveillance and Unions

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ FBI Used Section 702 Surveillance Powers To Spy On Protesters, Crime Victims, And Political Party Donors

• For as long as the FBI has had access to NSA collections under its Section 702 authority, the FBI has abused this access. Section 702 allows the NSA to collect content and communications via “upstream” channels. It’s a powerful dragnet and one that is supposed to be foreign-facing, so as not to violate the rights of Americans whose communications might be swept up in the data haul.

=> ↺ Marcy Wheeler ☛ A Modest Proposal to Fix FBI’s FISA 702 Woes

• My Modest Proposal to fix the FISA 702 impasse is to require the FBI to obtain probable cause warrants for the target of surveillance — possibly from the FISA court — for data they want to search.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ ProPublica Partner Sues Mississippi County for Blocking Access to Search Warrants

• The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal has sued Mississippi’s Union County, asking a judge to order that search warrants in its county-level justice court be made open for public inspection.

• The lawsuit comes after an investigation last year by the Daily Journal and ProPublica found that almost two-thirds of Mississippi’s justice courts obstruct access to search warrants and to the affidavits used by police to obtain them.

=> ↺ SCMP ☛ Parents in China told to delete encrypted messaging apps from kids’ phones to prevent inadvertent role in online scams

• Kids fooled into chatting with them may be regarded as assisting internet crimes, the posts say, urging that parents delete such apps

=> ↺ Wired ☛ The UK’s Secretive Web Surveillance Program Is Ramping Up

• Particularly controversial was the creation of so-called [Internet] connection records (ICRs). Under the law, [Internet] providers and phone companies can be ordered—with a senior judge approving the decision—to store people’s browsing histories for 12 months.

• An ICR isn’t a list of every page online you visit, but may nonetheless reveal a significant amount of information about your online activities. ICRs can include that you visited Wired.com but not that you read this individual article, for instance. An ICR can also be your IP address, a customer number, the date and time the information was accessed, and the amount of data being transferred. The UK government says an [Internet] connection record could indicate when, for example, the travel app EasyJet is accessed on someone’s phone, but not how the app was used.

=> ↺ Wired ☛ Our Data, Ourselves

• In the information age, we all have a data shadow. We leave data everywhere we go. It’s not just our bank accounts and stock portfolios, or our itemized bills, listing every credit card purchase and telephone call we make. It’s automatic road-toll collection systems, supermarket affinity cards, ATMs and so on. It’s also our lives. […]

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ What the record-breaking $1.3 billion Meta fine means for the US-EU clash over spying programs

• European regulators hit Meta with a $1.3 billion fine on Monday, the largest ever brought under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation law and comes alongside orders that Meta must stop future transatlantic data transfers to the U.S. within five months.

• The order has the potential to radically reshape Facebook’s business in Europe and throws into question the future of billions of data transfers made daily between U.S. companies and European counterparts, potentially leading the global tech industry toward a regime of data localization that closes off global trade and raises new security concerns.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Meta Fined Record $1.3 Billion and Ordered to Stop Sending European User Data to US

• The European Union slapped Meta with a record $1.3 billion privacy fine and ordered it to stop transferring user data across the Atlantic.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Meta fined €1.2B in the EU for moving users’ data to the US

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Meta’s new record-setting EU fine is nearly as big as its last six combined

• Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) for breaking Europe’s stringent data privacy laws. In its May 22 ruling, the DPC found that Meta had violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing to protect European Facebook users’ personal data…

• The latest ruling found that Meta had violated the terms of a court case between Facebook Ireland and the DPC in 2020, which effectively struck down the open transfer of personal data between the EU and the US over documented cases of surveillance by American intelligence services.

• To mitigate that ruling and continue moving data back and forth between servers, Meta has been using standard contractual clauses (SCC), data protection guardrails pre-approved by European regulators.

• However, the DPC found that Meta’s use of SCCs “did not address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of European Facebook users, cutting off Meta’s last avenue for data-sharing and raising the possibility that the company will be forced to cordon off the data of European Facebook users.

=> ↺ NYOB ☛ noyb win: € 1.2 billion fine against Meta over EU-US data transfers

• noyb win: € 1.2 billion fine against Meta over EU-US data transfers

• Facebook must stop further transfers of European personal data to the United States, given that Facebook is subject to US surveillance laws (like FISA 702 and EO 12.333).

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Meta Slapped With ‘Unprecedented’ $1.3 Billion EU Fine Over Data Transfers: ‘Serious Infringements Have Far-Reaching Consequences’

• Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has officially slapped Facebook and Instagram parent Meta with a record €1.2 billion fine ($1.30 billion at the current exchange rate) over allegedly unlawful user-data transfers.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Meta hit with record €1.2 billion fine for violating EU rules on transferring data

• Facebook owner Meta has been fined a record 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for transferring EU user data to the United States in breach of a previous court ruling, Ireland’s regulator announced on Monday.

=> ↺ OpenRightsGroup ☛ Meta fine: ORG warns that DPDI Bill could allow laundering of EU citizens’ data

• Open Rights Group has warned that the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill could allow Meta to get around the suspension of data transfers from Europe to the United States, which was imposed by Ireland’s data protector regulator today.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Meta Fined $1.3 Billion for Violating E.U. Data Privacy Rules

• The Facebook owner said it would appeal an order to stop sending data about European Union users to the United States.

• [...]

• The penalty, announced by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, is potentially one of the most consequential in the five years since the European Union enacted the landmark data privacy law known as the General Data Protection Regulation. Regulators said the company failed to comply with a 2020 decision by the European Union’s highest court that Facebook data shipped across the Atlantic was not sufficiently protected from American spy agencies.

=> ↺ India Times ☛ EU fines Meta $1.3 billion over data transfers to US

• Monday’s decision is the latest round in a long—running saga that eventually saw Facebook and thousands of other companies plunged into a legal vacuum. In 2020, the EU’s top court annulled an EU-US pact regulating transatlantic data flows over fears citizens’ data wasn’t safe once it arrived on US servers.

=> ↺ The Dissenter ☛ US Labor Agency Rejects Starbucks’ Effort To Obtain Records Of Worker Communications With Media

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ US Labor Agency Rejects Starbucks’ Effort To Obtain Records of Worker Communications With Media

• A judge for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined it was unlawful for Starbucks to request records of communications between unionized workers and news media organizations.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ “Salt” the South! Young Socialists Are Needed to Help Organize the Auto Industry.

• In a stunning victory last week, workers at Blue Bird bus manufacturing in Fort Valley, Ga., voted 697 to 435 in favor of forming a union with the United Steelworkers of America.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Newly Public FISC Opinion is The Best Evidence For Why Congress Must End Section 702

• The opinion recounts how for years the FBI illegally accessed a database containing communications obtained under Section 702 and other FISA authorities more than 278,000 times, including searching for communications of people arrested at protests of police violence and people who donated to a congressional candidate. Section 702 authorizes the surveillance of communications between people overseas. But when a person on U.S. soil is in contact with one of these surveillance targets, that leaves their side of the exchange sitting in a database and vulnerable to these warrantless FBI searches. As the opinion says, “Notwithstanding this foreign directed targeting, the extent to which Section 702 acquisitions involve U.S. persons should be understood to be substantial in the aggregate.”

• The pervasiveness of the FBI’s failure to comply with even the most modest reforms designed to limit the agency’s surveillance powers reveals two problems that Congress must address as it considers the Administration’s request to reauthorize Section 702.

• First, the FBI is incapable of policing itself when it comes to trawling through the communications of Americans without a warrant. “There is a point at which it would be untenable to base findings of sufficiency untenable on long promised, but still unrealized, improvements in how FBI queries Section 702 information,” the court wrote. “That point is now.” The FBI simply cannot help but violate the law.

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ Facebook parent Meta fined €1.2b for personal data transfers to US

• Last month, the EDPB told the Irish Data Protection Authority to amend its draft decision and impose a fine on Meta IE.

• The statement said: “Given the seriousness of the infringement, the EDPB found that the starting point for calculation of the fine should be between 20% and 100% of the applicable legal maximum.

• “The EDPB also instructed the IE DPA to order Meta IE to bring processing operations into compliance with Chapter V GDPR, by ceasing the unlawful processing, including storage, in the US of personal data of European users transferred in violation of the GDPR, within six months after notification of the IE SA’s final decision.”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Mexican Official, Alejandro Encinas, Victim of Pegasus Spyware Attack

• While looking into abuses by the armed forces, the country’s top human rights official was targeted with Pegasus, the world’s most notorious spyware, The Times found.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Of course Meta is building a Twitter competitor

• Elon Musk’s controversial takeover of Twitter in October 2022 has energized a legion of new challengers—and users searching for a replacement app either out of protest against Musk’s tenure or as insurance in case Twitter’s service degrades.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Instagram Prepping Twitter Clone, Likely Launching This Year

• The uncertainty surrounding the now Musk-owned Twitter has prompted Instagram to begin work on a competitor.  The new app is expected to launch sometime this year, likely as soon as the summer.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ 10 Years After Snowden: Some Things Are Better, Some We’re Still Fighting For

• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) On May 20, 2013, a young government contractor with an EFF sticker on his laptop disembarked a plane in Hong Kong carrying with him evidence confirming, among other things…

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Hiroshima Survivor Slams G7 Leaders for Embracing War & Rejecting Nuclear Disarmament

• The G7 summit wrapped up Sunday in Hiroshima, where much of the summit focused on the war in Ukraine and China. While in Japan, President Biden and other world leaders paid tribute to the victims of the world’s first nuclear attack — the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 — laying wreaths at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and planting a tree. But President Biden did not issue an apology for the attack, which killed an estimated 140,000 people and seriously injured another 100,000. For more, we speak with Setsuko Thurlow, who survived the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 and devoted her life to nuclear disarmament. In 2017, she was chosen to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

=> ↺ Defence Web ☛ ISS: Wheels come off South Africa’s hollow version of non-alignment

• Following United States (US) Ambassador Reuben Brigety’s accusations that South Africa supplied arms to Russia, attention has rightfully focused on the credibility of the allegations and the impact on South Africa’s economy and relations with the US. For a seasoned diplomat like Brigety, these remarks were not likely to have been miscalculated.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Case Of Russian Teen Accused Of Burning Koran To Be Investigated In Chechnya

• The case of a Russian teenager accused of publicly burning a Koran in the southwestern region of Volgograd will be investigated in the Russian region of Chechnya, where most residents are Muslim.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Biden Sees Coming ‘Thaw’ With China, Even as He Rallies Allies Against Beijing

• During the Group of 7 meeting that just wrapped up, President Biden forged a consensus approach toward China despite tensions between the major powers over their approach.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Latvia, Estonia agree on joint airspace protection

• Latvia and Estonia will jointly purchase anti-air defense systems IRIS-T, creating a new “Livonia Shield” for Latvian and Estonian airspace protection, Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Murniece (National Alliance) and Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said at a press conference Sunday, May 21.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Clashes, air strikes reported as Sudan ceasefire officially begins

• Witnesses in the Sudanese capital reported clashes and air strikes minutes after a one-week humanitarian ceasefire took effect Monday night, with the smell of smoke still lingering after gunfire and explosions rocked Khartoum throughout the day.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ After 12 Years, Syria Joins the Arab League

• Washington, D.C.—Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad took part last week in an Arab League summit in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. This step brought to an end the suspension that the League’s most powerful members had long insisted on, as part of the regime-change campaign that—working closely with Washington—they had pursued against Assad since 2011.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ French territory of Mayotte begins demolition of vast shantytown

• Authorities on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte on Monday began demolishing homes in a large slum in an operation against sub-standard housing and illegal migration, AFP journalists saw.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Head Of Successor To Russian Rights Group Memorial Placed In Pretrial Detention

• Aleksandr Chernyshov, the chief of the Memorial human right group’s successor entity, the Center of Historic Memory, has been detained in the Russian city of Perm on a charge of “attempted smuggling of cultural artifacts.”

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Navalny Placed In Russian Solitary For 16th Time In Nine Months

• Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny has been placed in a punitive solitary confinement for the 16th time since August 2022.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ G7 Becomes Incubator of Destructive Initiatives: Russia

• Not a single member of the G7 can boast a clean reputation in terms of respecting international rights and freedoms, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry said.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Former KGB officer on trial for incitement: LTV’s De Facto

• Last week, court proceedings started for Andris Strautmanis, former official of the Soviet-time Committee for State Security (KGB) and Latvian Security Police. He was detained two years ago in the espionage case of politician Jānis Ādamsons, Latvian Television’s broadcast De Facto reported on May 22.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Family of suicidal Black teen killed by police in Nevada agrees to $2M settlement, more training

• The parents of a suicidal Black teenager who was fatally shot by police in Sparks, Nevada have agreed to a $2 million settlement with the city. The deal also includes more crisis intervention and mental health training for police officers. Miciah Lee, 18, had no criminal history and was not wanted for any crime. But he had a long history of mental illness and drug abuse when a white officer shot him five times while sitting in his car with a handgun between his legs in January 2020. Their lawyer says she’s hopeful the new police training will help make sure “a tragedy like this will not occur again.”

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Federal agents, prosecutors going after machine-gun conversion devices in Tennessee

• Federal law enforcement officials say 26 people in Tennessee have been recently convicted or face charges for possessing “switches,” devices that convert semi-automatic firearms into a machine guns. Kevin Ritz is the U.S. attorney in West Tennessee. He said federal investigators and local law enforcement officers in Memphis and Jackson have been trying to slow down the proliferation of switches as they work to stem a growing wave of gun violence. Seven of the 15 people who have been convicted of machine gun possession or other firearms-related crime have already received prison sentences of up to more 8 1/2 years.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Fire Guts Manila’s Historic Post Office Building

• Built in 1926, the structure is one of the Philippine capital’s most recognizable landmarks. The cause of the fire was unclear on Monday.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Sinn Fein Surges in Local Elections, Highlighting Northern Ireland’s Divide

• As the party climbs, its rivals, the Democratic Unionists, are stalled, which means any compromise that could revive its power-sharing national government may remain elusive.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Nashville Parents Ask: Must a Mass Shooter’s Writings Be Made Public?

• The lack of information about what motivated a deadly attack on a Christian school has led to a protracted legal fight over releasing the shooter’s handwritten journals.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ He Freed an Innocent Man From Prison. It Ruined His Life.

• Jay Salpeter cracked a high-profile case to help exonerate Martin Tankleff. It was a blessing and a curse. For both of them.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ SFPD Obtained Live Access to Business Camera Network in Anticipation of Tyre Nichols Protest

• On January 27, 2023, an SFPD commander reached out to the USBID with a 12-hour live monitoring request for the 450 cameras in its network, citing “potential civil unrest” in anticipation of the release of body camera footage of Tyre Nichols’ killing by members of the Memphis Police Department. Reporting in the San Francisco Standard suggests that the SFPD may not have ended up engaging in live monitoring, but simply requesting this access before a protest can chill First Amendment activity. This act also indicates the SFPD is interpreting the ordinance too broadly. The policy states: “SFPD is prohibited from accessing, requesting, or monitoring any surveillance camera live feed during First Amendment activities unless there are exigent circumstances or for placement of police personnel due to crowd sizes or other issues creating imminent public safety hazards.” But the SFPD has not shown that, when they obtained live access, there were any imminent hazards or exigent circumstances.

• The SFPD was able to seek live monitoring as a result of the controversial September 2022 temporary ordinance that authorized police to receive live access to non-city security cameras for a host of reasons, including to monitor so-called “significant events.” This temporary camera ordinance, which passed as a 15-month pilot, was vigorously opposed by community and civil liberties organizations, including EFF; members of the city’s civilian oversight Police Commission; and four members of the Board of Supervisors. San Francisco’s landmark 2019 privacy law forbade the SFPD from using non-city surveillance cameras, or any other surveillance technology, absent permission from the city’s Board of Supervisors via an ordinance. The department delayed seeking such permission for nearly three years.

• This is not the first time that the SFPD has obtained live access to non-city cameras concerning First Amendment-protected activity. EFF and ACLU of Northern California have an ongoing lawsuit against the SFPD, Williams v. City and County of San Francisco, for gaining live access to these same cameras for over a week to surveil protests against the police murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. The SFPD’s continued push for live access to business district camera networks creates a dangerous precedent that puts all people participating in peaceful protest at risk of surveillance. 

=> ↺ EFF ☛ EFF to Court: California’s Public Records Law Must Remain a Check on Police Use of Drones

• Every second of every drone video should not be categorically exempt from public records laws as an investigatory record. This is the argument of an amicus letter filed in California state court last week by EFF, the First Amendment Coalition, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

• The case centers around a journalist who requested drone flight videos created by the Chula Vista Police Department, under the California Public Records Act (CPRA). The department touts its program as one of the first in the country to use drones as first responders to emergency calls for police service, and the city has advocated for other law enforcement to create similar programs. EFF has previously raised alarm that the relative cheapness of deploying drones—compared to helicopters or on-the-ground policing—encourages more surveillance.

• In denying the public records request, the city claimed the videos were categorically exempt from disclosure under the CPRA because they are investigatory records. After the requester sued, the trial court agreed with Chula Vista and ruled that it would be unduly burdensome to require the city to review the video footage and release redacted versions. The requester has asked the California Court of Appeal to reverse the trial court’s decision.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Israeli Extremists Storm al-Aqsa Mosque Complex

• The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that dozens of Israeli squatters, with Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir at their head, stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque complex early on Sunday morning from the Moroccan Gate.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ When “Suicide Watch” Becomes a Death Sentence

• When Anthony Gay was booked into the Peoria County jail in Illinois in 2022, after a conviction for “possession of a firearm by a felon,” he was placed in a so-called rubber cell, a freezing solitary confinement space with a hole in the floor for a toilet. Being left alone in these conditions triggered feelings of abandonment, a result of his borderline personality disorder and the PTSD he suffers from spending decades in solitary confinement during a previous incarceration.1Support for this article was provided by the Alicia Patterson Foundation.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Imperial Protectionism: US Foreign Policy for the Middle Class

• What does a “foreign policy for the middle class” of the United States entail?  President Joe Biden’s national security adviser is rather vague about this. 

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ WSJ Worries Debt Limit Fight Could Jeopardize Military Contractors’ Profit

• The Wall Street Journal hand-wrings about the area of the discretionary budget that appears least likely to face cuts.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ What Are Rules For?

• Edward Said once noted that when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, it wasn’t just with warships and cannons. Indeed, Said writes, the “French expedition was accompanied by a whole team of scientists whose job it was to survey Egypt as it had never been surveyed before”—resulting in the production of a 24-volume compendium of diagrams and drawings purporting to represent the entirety of Egyptian history. The critical detail here is that the attempt to rule a society imagined to be in the thrall of disorder required that same society to be turned into an object of “scientific” inquiry capable of being comprehended, surveyed, and ordered according to the categories of Enlightenment thought.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Holding G20 Meetings in Kashmir Fuels Ecocide and Advances India’s Occupation

• India’s decision to host a series of G20 summit tourism meetings in the Srinagar district of Indian-administered Kashmir represents yet another attempt to normalize its military occupation of the disputed Himalayan region. The planned agenda, including discussions on energy transition, environment, climate sustainability, and proposals for increased tourism, reeks of hypocrisy. By hosting G20 meetings in the contested territory, India not only legitimizes and advances its occupation but also shamelessly perpetuates the exploitation of the region’s abundant natural resources, putting its delicate ecology in jeopardy.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Ban Assault Weapons NOW!

War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russia announces defeat of pro-Ukrainian fighters in Belgorod region, saying 70 ‘invaders’ were killed — Meduza

• The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday afternoon that the “Ukrainian formations” that entered the Belgorod region on Monday have been “blocked and defeated.”

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russian authorities open criminal case in connection with Belgorod region incursion — Meduza

• Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case under six articles in the Russian Criminal Code in connection with the incursion of Ukrainian “saboteurs” into the Belgorod region on Monday.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Belgorod governor says elderly woman died while evacuating amid Monday’s incursion — Meduza

• Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said that a woman in her 80s died while in the process of evacuating from the region’s Grayvoron district, which armed “Ukrainian saboteurs” reportedly entered on Monday.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Belgorod governor: ‘A majority of the population has left’ the Grayvoron area — Meduza

• Residents of the Grayvoron district, in Russia’s Belgorod region, have reportedly decided to leave the region. The local authorities say that “Ukrainian saboteurs” infiltrated the area on May 22.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘The Legion is returning home’ What we know about the latest reported incursion into Russia by pro-Ukrainian ‘partisans’ — Meduza

• Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, announced on Monday that a “Ukrainian military sabotage and reconnaissance group” had entered the region’s Grayvoron district from Ukraine. “Russian military forces as well as the border service, the Russian National Guard, and the FSB, are taking the necessary steps to eliminate the enemy,” he wrote on Telegram.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Belgorod governor reports incursion into region by ‘Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group’ — Meduza

• Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, announced Monday that a “Ukrainian military sabotage and reconnaissance group” had entered the region’s Grayvoronsky district.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russia’s Belgorod region imposes counterterrorism restrictions in response to incursion by pro-Ukrainian groups — Meduza

• Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has announced the imposition of a “counterterrorism operation regime” in the region, a step that he said will allow him to take “special measures” and impose “temporary restrictions.”

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Mykhailo Podolyak and Ukraine’s military intelligence comment on events in Belgorod region, as casualty count rises — Meduza

• Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reports that three people were injured and had to be hospitalized as a result of shelling in Grayvoron, a town in the Belgorod region.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ One year without Iryna The father of one of the thousands of Ukrainian civilians in Russian captivity refuses to lose hope — Meduza

• More than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians are currently in Russian captivity, according to Ukraine’s Security Service. These prisoners aren’t allowed to communicate with their loved ones or their lawyers, and most of them haven’t even been charged with any crimes. Iryna Gorobtsova was abducted by Russian forces from the home where she grew up in Kherson. She’s now spent a year in a Crimean prison, with virtually no contact with the outside world. Journalists from the independent outlet iStories spoke to her father. In English, Meduza is publishing an excerpt of his account.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Line Between Support for Ukraine and War With Russia Just Gets Thinner

• On the eastern wall of the Kremlin, Spasskaya Tower rises high above the old gray paving stones of Red Square. Beneath its hipped roof are the “Kremlin Chimes,” a 500-year-old clock with four broad 20-foot faces. In the darkened, early morning hours of May 3, the hands registered 2:27 when the first drone appeared, quickly speeding in high above the yellow and white sign warning that the area was a “No Drone Zone,” in Russian and English. A split-second later, it exploded a few feet above the green dome of the Kremlin’s Old Senate Palace. Sixteen minutes later, a second drone coming from another direction set off a bright flash and crashed into the convex roof near a pole bearing a fluttering Russian flag. Security officers could be seen ducking as they scrambled up a ladder to check out the earlier damage.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Volunteers aid war effort on Ukraine’s front lines

• Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, volunteers across the country have mobilised to help the military effort and civilians in need. But none have a story quite like this one: that of a volunteer from Mariupol who helped evacuate hundreds of civilians in the most perilous of conditions. Since then, he and his growing team of volunteers have been criss-crossing the worst hotspots in the conflict zone to help people stranded in bomb-blasted towns and cities. FRANCE 24 caught up with him amid the ruins in southern Ukraine.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ ‘In the Rearview’: Polish filmmaker brings Ukrainian refugees’ plight to Cannes

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has effectively knocked out the country’s film industry, resulting in a starkly diminished presence at the Cannes Film Festival this year – though the war is still very much part of the Cannes conversation. Maciek Hamela’s documentary “In the Rearview”, about the evacuation of Ukrainian refugees, has ensured that Ukraine’s plight is represented on the big screen too. FRANCE 24 spoke to the Polish director about filming in a warzone and giving a voice to those displaced by war.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Russia indicts ICC prosecutor and judge that issued Putin arrest warrant

• The Russian Investigative Committee (RIC) announced on Sunday charges in absentia of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Khan Karim Asad Ahmad and Judge Rosario Salvatore Aitala.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Ukraine denies Russian accusations of attacking border region of Belgorod

• Russian forces targeted the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro overnight with missiles and attack drones, wounding at least eight people, Ukraine’s army said on Monday. Kyiv has denied involvement in an attack in the Russian border region of Belgorod that Moscow blamed on Ukrainian “sabotage”.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Moldova pro-EU rally attracts over 75,000 amid fears of Russian destabilization efforts

• A pro-government rally in the Moldovan capital Chisinau attracted over 75,000 people Sunday in support of the country’s movement toward better relations with the European Union (EU) and Western Europe. The rally comes amid Moldova’s accelerated application to join the European Union, announced on March 3, and alleged Russian attempts to undermine Moldovan democracy.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Driving to Russia becoming more challenging: Changes to motor liability insurance policies

• Driving to Russia and Belarus from Finland will become significantly more challenging starting in June, as the international Green Card agreements on motor liability insurance expire. Finnish motorists will no longer be able to use their Finnish motor liability insurance policy in Russia and Belarus, and instead, they will be required to obtain a local insurance policy valid in those countries.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Geopolitical implications of NATO enlargement: Case of Finland

• The security environment across the Atlantic is turning unpredictable and complex with a resurgent Russia, NATO increasing its military presence in Eastern Europe, and the EU imposing financial sanctions on Russia. It has become the need of the hour for the EU as well as NATO as security actors to enhance their collective defence capabilities and move towards greater cooperation. This was made visible in the signing of their joint declaration on January 10, 2023 which reiterated the Union’s commitment to NATO Treaty Article 5.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Moscow Says G7 Nuclear Rhetoric Intended to Pressure Russia, China

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ US Says Russia’s Wagner Group Seeking to Transit Material Acquisitions Through Mali

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ NATO Parliamentary Assembly labels Russia actions in Ukraine as potential genocide

• NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly passed a declaration Monday stating that Russia’s forced deportation of children from occupied regions of Ukraine potentially amounts to genocide.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania’s LNG terminal to boost anti-drone protection

• Additional anti-drone protection will be installed around Lithuania’s LNG terminal in Klaipėda amid increased security concerns due to the Ukraine war, the state-owned manager of the facility says.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Russian spy network in Lithuania exposed – LRT Investigation

• After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a number of Russian spies operating under diplomatic cover have been expelled from Lithuania. The LRT Investigation Team, together with international partners, has analysed the Russian intelligence network in Europe, revealing the identities and activities of spies who operated in Lithuania for several years.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ ‘Healers’ get fines over glorification of Russia’s war

• Representatives of the “DVS Urantija” organization which describes itself as a healing center have been fined thousands for justification and glorification of the war launched by Russia in Ukraine, as well as national and ethnic hatred, the prosecutor’s office said May 22.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ U.S. Says Russia’s Wagner Group Is Seeking To Transit Military Equipment Through Mali

• The U.S. State Department said on May 22 that the Russian mercenary group Wagner is trying to obscure its efforts to buy military equipment from foreign nations for use in Ukraine.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Siberian Actors Demand Removal Of ‘Illegal’ Pro-War Banner From Theater

• Actors in the Siberian city of Irkutsk have asked authorities to remove a large banner with the letter “Z” — a sign of support for Russia’s war against Ukraine — from the theater’s facade, after the banner was pelted with rotten eggs and a green liquid known as “zelyonka.”

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Governor Of Russia’s Belgorod Says Ukrainian ‘Sabotage Group’ Crossed Border

• The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said May 22 that a Ukrainian army “sabotage group” had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district, which borders Ukraine.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Two Weeks at the Front in Ukraine

• In the trenches in the Donbas, infantrymen face unrelenting horrors, from missiles to grenades to helicopter fire.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian Soldier Who Quit Military Following Ukraine Deployment Gets Three Years Behind Bars

• A Russian contract soldier who resigned from the military after serving one month in Ukraine has been sentenced to three years in prison following an appeal.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Wagner Chief Prigozhin Says His Troops Will Leave Ukraine’s Bakhmut By June 1

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of Russia’s Wagner private mercenary group, says his troops will leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut between May 25 and June 1.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Biden’s Shift on F-16s for Ukraine Came After Months of Internal Debate

• President Joe Biden’s decision to allow allies to train Ukrainian forces on how to operate F-16 fighter jets — and eventually to provide the aircraft themselves — seemed like an abrupt change in position but was in fact one that came after months of internal debate and quiet talks with allies

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ UN Concerned by Lack of Grain Ships Going to One Ukrainian Port

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Russia claims Bakhmut, yet hope remains within the city walls

• Russia claims it has control of Ukraine’s eastern city of Bakhmut, after a grinding nine-month conflict. Top Ukrainian military leaders say the battle is not over, but Ukrainian officials acknowledge they now control only a small part of Bakhmut.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ What Bakhmut Looks Like Now

• Drone footage taken by The New York Times captured the scorched buildings, destroyed schools and cratered parks that now define the city in eastern Ukraine.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ With Bakhmut in Ruins, Ukraine Shifts Focus

• Also, a deal to protect the Colorado River. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Russia Claims Bakhmut, but Some See a Pyrrhic Victory

• A top Ukrainian official essentially acknowledged that the devastated city had been lost. Thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers died there, but the cost for Moscow was especially steep, experts say.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ With Bakhmut in Ruins, Ukraine Shifts Focus to City’s Outskirts

• Ukraine’s top military commander concedes that only a small contingent of troops is still defending Bakhmut, site of the war’s deadliest battle.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Why Bakhmut? It’s a Question Older Than the Ukraine War.

• The twists and turns of a war are rarely easy to predict. In Ukraine, they landed on a city in the east that few had ever heard of. And then the whole world watched for months.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Fighting Reported in Russia’s Belgorod Region, Near the Border With Ukraine

• The local Russian governor blamed a Ukrainian sabotage group, while Kyiv’s military intelligence agency said “opposition-minded citizens of Russia” were responsible.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Zelensky wraps up another fruitful trip and Russia claims a big win in Ukraine.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ We deserve to know if something was generated by AI

• LLMs haven’t reached their saturation point yet, but there are still a lot of places where you expect to see them. Chat bots on websites? Would not be shocking to have it powered by an LLM. Emails from your sales rep? Probably written by ChatGPT. And recruiter emails? At the best of times they often felt robotic, so why would they be written by humans anymore?

Environment

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Eliane Brum Is in the Reforesting Vanguard

• Fifty minutes into our video call, the Brazilian writer and journalist Eliane Brum picks up her laptop to show me the view of the Amazon rain forest from her balcony. “This is where I watched the forest burning for an entire night,” she says, referring to the fires that blazed last summer. Brum describes it as one of the worst experiences of her life, a “holocaust of lives” in which millions of nonhuman beings died in “excruciating pain.” She says that she felt something of this pain in her own body, all while knowing full well that nobody in the administration of then–Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro would do anything to help. Then, briefly, Brum recounts one detail of the fire’s aftermath: “Only the gray butterflies can survive in a burned, deforested landscape.”1

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ A researcher used her baby’s used diapers to build a greener home

• Used baby diapers once headed to the landfill could now have a more environmentally friendly second life.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Typhoon Mawar Heads Toward Guam

• Forecasters said the storm is strengthening as it approaches the Mariana Islands. A typhoon warning is now in effect for Guam and the nearby island of Rota.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Guam braces for hit from Typhoon Mawar as storm heads toward the Pacific US territory

• Guam’s governor is urging residents to stay home and is warning the island could take a direct hit from Typhoon Mawar. The storm is strengthening on its path toward the U.S. territory in the Pacific. The National Weather Service says if Guam doesn’t take a direct hit, the typhoon will get very close. It’s expected to arrive as a Category 4 storm. It could hit the southern part of Guam midday local time Wednesday. It could be the biggest hit to Guam in two decades. Officials say it could cause extensive damage. Residents are preparing, and emergency shelters are opening.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ ‘Mother Nature has no mercy’: Man gets stuck waist-deep in Alaska mud flats, drowns as tide comes in

• A man walking on tidal mud flats with friends in an Alaska estuary got stuck up to his waist in the quicksand-like silt and drowned as the tide came in before frantic rescuers could extract him. Authorities say 20-year-old Zachary Porter, of Lake Bluff, Illinois, was submerged Sunday evening as the tide came in. His body was recovered Monday. The accident was the latest tragedy at Turnagain Arm, a 48-mile-long glacier-carved estuary that travels southeast from Anchorage. The estuary’s dangerous mud flats have claimed at least three other lives over the years, and many more have been rescued.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Opening Remarks by EVP Timmermans at the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety in the European Parliament 22-05-2023

• European Commission Speech Brussels, 22 May 2023 The climate and biodiversity crises are here. They are bad for our citizens, they are bad for our farmers, they are bad for the economic outlook of our businesses.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Opening Remarks by EVP Timmermans at the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Parliament 22-05-2023

• European Commission Speech Brussels, 22 May 2023 Without improving biodiversity and getting to stronger and more resilient ecosystems, it will simply not be possible to guarantee that food production prospers, or bioeconomy and farmers livelihoods, let alone reach climate neutrality.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ European Green Deal: EU and Republic of Korea launch Green Partnership to deepen cooperation on climate action, clean energy and environmental protection

• European Commission Press release Seoul, 22 May 2023 Today, the EU and the Republic of Korea have established a Green Partnership with the aim of strengthening bilateral cooperation and exchanging best practices on climate action, clean and fair energy transition, protection of the environment, and other fields of the green transition.

=> ↺ H2 View ☛ Green Partnership established between the EU and Republic of Korea

• The EU and the Republic of Korea have launched a Green Partnership to establish cooperation on climate action, clean energy and environmental protection.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Climate economy pact ushers in new era for Aussie firms

• Australian companies will get their hands on massive tax breaks for joining the clean economy, without having to move to the United States.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ UN working group faults Vietnam for arbitrary detention of climate activist

• Dang Dinh Bach plans to go on hunger strike next month.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Climate activists block access to UPM pulp plant, demand end to greenwashing

• The protest by the Finnish branch of Extinction Rebellion began at 9am on Monday morning outside the forestry firm’s plant near the city of Kouvola.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Deal Is Reached to Keep Colorado River From Going Dry, for Now

• The agreement on cuts, aided by a wet winter and $1.2 billion in federal payments, expires at the end of 2026.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Book Review: in ‘Brave the Wild River,’ the True Story of 2 Scientists Who Explored the Grand Canyon

• Long before climate change threatened the very existence of the Colorado River, two women botanists set off with a group of amateur boatmen to record the plants that lived along what was then the most dangerous river in the world

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Alert Level Is Raised in Central Mexico as Volcano Spews Smoke and Ash

• Officials were preparing evacuation routes and shelters around the volcano, Popocatépetl, and some schools and parks were closed to minimize exposure to falling ash.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Finland terminates pipeline contract with Russian state-owned supplier

• Gas imports into Finland via a Russian pipeline was suspended by Russia’s Gazprom Export last year following a dispute over the currency used for payments.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ China’s Sinopec signs agreement to enter retail fuel market in crisis-hit Sri Lanka

• Chinese petroleum giant Sinopec has signed an agreement with Sri Lanka to enter its retail fuel market. Monday’s agreement comes as the crisis-stricken Indian Ocean island nation struggles to resolve a worsening energy crisis amid unprecedented economic upheaval. The contract would enable Sinopec to import, store, distribute and sell petroleum products in Sri Lanka, which has been facing a fuel shortage for more than a year. China has been looking to consolidate investments in Sri Lanka’s ports and energy sector. The island nation’s immediate neighbor, India, considers Sri Lanka its strategic backyard and has raised security concerns about the Chinese investment push.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ To Find Europe’s Best Bike Routes, a Cycling Writer Asked the Crowd

• The longtime sports journalist Claude Droussent discusses his new guidebook to cycling in Europe, which uses data from the fitness app Strava, and the growing role bicycles play in worldwide travel.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Is India’s Jet Airways finally dead?

• India’s Jet Airways, grounded for nearly four years now, seems to be at the end of its rope.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Big Oil veteran Exxon wants to become part of Big Shovel

• ExxonMobil, a company feeding the very fossil fuel habit that the world is trying to kick, is now getting into the business of extracting another geological resource: lithium.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ EU Cohesion Policy: Inauguration of the renovated metro line in Budapest

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 22 May 2023 Today, the renovated M3 or ‘blue’ metro line in Budapest, Hungary, was inaugurated and opened to passengers.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Floods: EU mobilises emergency equipment to assist Italian authorities

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 22 May 2023 Following a new request for assistance from Italy, the EU has mobilised offers of pumping equipment from Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Poland, Romania….

=> ↺ H2 View ☛ Overcoming global challenges in making hydrogen happen

• Keeping up with China, reacting to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and ensuring the UK develops technology and policy to compete with rising competition were just some of the key takeaways…

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Power bills to surge despite budget tipping modest rise

• Power bills in at least three states will rise by more than double the amount estimated in the federal budget. In a stoush with Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes over the impending price hikes, Assistant Minister for Energy Jenny McAllister denied the timing was planned to avoid scrutiny of the federal budget by parliament.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ ‘Crunch time’ for integrity of Australian carbon market

• An improved savannah fire management method for earning carbon credits is a priority for federal Labor, along with the release of once-secret data to restore public confidence. “It really is crunch time,” Carbon Market Institute CEO John Connor said, as regulators and project managers met in Cairns for a two-day industry forum.

=> ↺ Mexico News Daily ☛ Government takes over Veracruz sections of Ferrosur railway

• The armed forces have occupied 120 km of tracks operated by Ferrosur since Friday morning, after AMLO decreed them to be of “public utility.”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Working From Home and Realizing What Matters

• Reduced commuting won’t raise G.D.P. So what?

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Diplomatic Wins at the Heart of China’s Ascendancy

• A photo Beijing released on March 6 of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign minister Wang Yi delivered a seismic shock in Washington. There he stood between Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban. They were awkwardly shaking hands on an agreement to reestablish mutual diplomatic ties. That picture should have brought to mind a 1993 photo of President Bill Clinton hosting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn as they agreed to the Oslo Accords. And that long-gone moment was itself an after-effect of the halo of invincibility the United States had gained in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overwhelming American victory in the 1991 Gulf War.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ The Thousand Year (Radioactive) Diamond Battery

• The Holy Grail of battery technology is a cell which lasts forever, a fit-and-forget device that never needs replacing. It may seem a pipe-dream, but University of Bristol researchers have come pretty close. The catch? Their battery lasts a very long time, but it generates micropower, and it’s radioactive.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Lusaka ZM ☛ Bulldozers clear way for mine in Lower Zambezi National Park

• Excavation for the vast open cast copper mine in the heart of the Lower Zambezi National Park has begun. The bulldozers’ move into Zambia’s pristine wildlife sanctuary and famous tourist attraction follows a decade-long fight by activists trying to stop the mining.

=> ↺ Enchanting encounter: Dolphins grace İstanbul’s Bosphorus

• The İstanbul and Çanakkale Straits, along with the Sea of Marmara, face challenges in the form of pollution and excessive fishing, endangering the delicate existence of dolphins.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Video: Younglings hatch in livestreamed storks’ nest

• On Sunday, May 21, the first younglings hatched in the nest of the white storks livestreamed by the electricity distribution network Sadales tīkls (ST), the company said.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Latvia’s beehive numbers are buzzing

• In 2020, there were more than 100,000 beehives on Latvian farms, according to Eurostat data published May 19, though the total number of beehives in the country is likely to be much higher – the Agricultural Census only records beehives on farms and not those kept by private apiarists.

=> ↺ Defence Web ☛ Work underway to fight wildlife crime – Creecy

• Government is working around the clock to fight wildlife crime and corruption, especially in the Kruger National Park, said Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister, Barbara Creecy.

=> ↺ The Revelator ☛ Why Tree-Planting Schemes Aren’t a Silver Bullet

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Drought will continue in Latvia this week

• Drought will continue in Latvia for a long time, according to forecasts by weatherman Toms Bricis.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ NPR ☛ Once ‘paradise,’ parched Colorado valley grapples with arsenic in water

• Now decades of climate change-driven drought, combined with the overpumping of aquifers, is making the valley desperately dry — and appears to be intensifying the levels of heavy metals in drinking water.

=> ↺ VOA News ☛ Group of Western US States Reach Deal to Stave Off Crisis on Drought-Stricken Colorado River

• The 2,334-kilometer river provides water to 40 million people in seven U.S. states, parts of Mexico and more than two dozen Native American tribes. It produces hydropower and supplies water to farms that grow most of the nation’s winter vegetables.

• In exchange for temporarily using less water, cities, irrigation districts and Native American tribes in the three states will be paid. The federal government plans to spend $1.2 billion, said Lauren Wodarski, a spokesperson to U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat.

=> ↺ RTL ☛ US states reach agreement to save dwindling Colorado River

• Under the proposal, the river basin’s states commit to save three million cubic acre feet (3.7 billion cubic meters) of water through the end of 2026, when new guidelines will be needed.

• “There are 40 million people, seven states, and 30 Tribal Nations who rely on the Colorado River Basin for basic services such as drinking water and electricity,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, in a statement lauding the deal that ends decades of squabbling.

• Of the water savings, 2.3 million acre feet would be compensated through funding from a 2022 law called the Inflation Reduction Act.

=> ↺ NBC ☛ Three states agree to reduce water usage so the Colorado River doesn’t go dry

• Three states — Arizona, California and Nevada — have agreed on a plan to conserve at least 3 million acre-feet of water by 2026 — roughly the equivalent to the amount of water it would take to fill 6 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

• The Biden administration, which helped broker the agreement, announced the consensus deal Monday in a news release.

=> ↺ USDOI ☛ Biden-Harris Administration Announces Historic Consensus System Conservation Proposal to Protect the Colorado River Basin

• “There are 40 million people, seven states, and 30 Tribal Nations who rely on the Colorado River Basin for basic services such as drinking water and electricity. Today’s announcement is a testament to the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to working with states, Tribes and communities throughout the West to find consensus solutions in the face of climate change and sustained drought,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “In particular I want to thank Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau and Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, who have led the discussions with Basin state commissioners, Tribes, irrigators, local communities, and valued stakeholders to reach this critical moment.”

Finance

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Qantas reports record profit, plans more flights

• Qantas expects there to be no let-up in travel demand as the company reports record profits on the back of high fares and a booming domestic market.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Athletes slam Paris 2024 Olympics over exorbitant ticket prices

• Athletes have joined the clamour of criticism at the high cost of tickets for the 2024 Paris Olympics, decried as undermining organisers’ promises of a Games accessible to all.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Biden and McCarthy Describe ‘Productive’ Debt Limit Talks, but No Deal Is Reached

• With the United States at risk of defaulting for the first time, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden met again but remained far apart on a deal.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Strike begins in private social service sector on Tuesday

• Half a dozen unions have announced strikes beginning this week and next, including Super, Tehy, Erto, Jyty, JHL and the Talentia Union of Professional Social Workers. The biggest disagreements are over salary increases.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Abolish Venture Capitalism

• Capitalists are desperate to look beyond the impending disintegration of humanity’s ecological niche and the unraveling of already threadbare social programs to imagine something more hopeful (and profitable). For those eager to usher in a better future, the private financing of technological innovation has long been a source of optimism. After all, it created Apple, Google, Facebook, and most of the rest of the American tech companies that have swept the world. But if you inspect it at all, the sheen rubs right off.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Debt ceiling talks enter make-or-break phase

• Ahead of their debt ceiling meeting Monday afternoon, neither President Biden nor House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) know whether the other side is willing to compromise at the 11th hour.

• Why it matters: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeated her warnings Sunday — which she had made in public and in private – that June 1 is a “hard deadline” to raise the debt ceiling.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ China’s record unemployment has some young people seeking simpler life

• In China, record-high unemployment has leaders urging youth to “struggle” in the name of national rejuvenation, but young job seekers are hoping for a more balanced lifestyle.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ China’s youth face dismal job prospects

• Young people tell similar stories as the juice runs out of the post-pandemic economy

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ China has hit back with a Micron ban months after the US blacklisted Huawei

• The tech war between the US and China is not ending anytime soon.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ China Tells Tech Manufacturers to Stop Using Micron Chips, Stepping Up Feud With United States

• China’s government told users of computer equipment deemed sensitive to stop buying products from the biggest U.S. memory chipmaker, Micron.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ The Two Decades That Created Our World’s First Mass Middle Class

• If we take on our rich, we can recreate that success.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China says US semiconductor giant Micron poses ‘major security risk’

• By Poornima Weerasekara US semiconductor giant Micron has failed a national security review, China’s cybersecurity watchdog said Sunday, telling operators of “critical information infrastructure” to stop buying its products.

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ China bans Micron memory sales to key infrastructure operators

• China’s cyberspace regulator has said it will block sales of memory chips by American firm Micron Technology to operators of key infrastructure.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ China bans US chip maker from critical infrastructure projects

• The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released a statement on Sunday announcing that the US-based chip maker Micron is banned from key infrastructure projects in China.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ China’s Micron chipmaker ban ramps up US trade tensions

• A move by Beijing to bar US firm Micron Technology Inc from selling memory chips to key domestic industries has ramped up tensions in an ongoing trade spat with Washington and lifted shares of firms that could benefit from the move.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ The golden age of liquidity comes to an end

• One of the Fed’s most notorious financial statistics is its “$400 emergency expense” question. This year, however, the answers to that question show something important.

• Why it matters: For the first time since the survey began, the proportion of Americans who say they would cover a $400 emergency expense completely using cash or its equivalent dropped from the previous year.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Josh Hawley Wants the Debt Ceiling Deal To Include a Massive Tax Hike on Americans

• Hawley might call them “tariffs on China,” but that’s obvious nonsense: Tariffs are paid by Americans.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Mykonos Building Boom Reveals ‘Wretched’ Side of Greece’s Recovery

• Investors are eager to cash in on soaring demand for luxury properties, but an attack on an archaeologist investigating building violations brought a darker underbelly to light.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Sound of France’s Pension Fury? The Saucepan.

• Protesters have been harassing the French government in clanky demonstrations that have gone viral in a country with no shortage of kitchenware.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Welfare Debate Stalling the Debt Talks

• Work requirements are popular, but there’s a thin line between motivation and punishment.

=> ↺ TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ No debt ceiling agreement in White House meeting, though Biden and McCarthy call talks productive

• President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy say they and their lead negotiators have had a productive meeting at the White House on the impasse over the government’s debt ceiling.

=> ↺ TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Debt ceiling explained: Why it’s a struggle in Washington and how the impasse could end

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ What Washington Doesn’t Understand about China

• With President Biden shuttling from the G-7 summit in Japan to debt-limit negotiations in Washington, our political roundtable looks at the state of U.S.-China relations.

=> ↺ NYPost ☛ Boomer Esiason slams Yankees’ numerous TV destinations as ‘money grab’

• Boomer Esiason has provided a voice for Yankees fans who are frustrated about not knowing where the next game will be on — and having to pay for at least four different platforms to watch their team.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ US Treasurys can still attract investors—even in a default

• Even if the US stops paying interest on its debt due to a self-inflicted crisis, investors may keep buying it.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ How Joe Biden could end the debt crisis with the 14th Amendment

• US president Joe Biden is due to resume talks today (May 22) with Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, over raising the debt ceiling, an arbitrary limit on issuing new debt.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Customs declarations e-system to be changed in Latvia

• According to the requirements of the European Union (EU) and in conformity with the standards of the World Customs Organization, a new system for writing up import customs declarations will be launched in Latvia, the State Revenue Service (VID) said Monday, May 22.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ India’s culling of its 2000-rupee notes is driving hoarders to realty and gold

• India has witnessed a spurt in demand for gold since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), last week, announced that the 2,000-rupee currency notes will be pulled out of circulation.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Yellen triples down on debt ceiling deadline

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned on Monday that the U.S. government is “highly likely” to run out of money as early as June 1.

• Why it matters: The date leaves President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy less than 10 days to find an agreement — and the votes — for a compromise to cut spending and raise the debt ceiling.

=> ↺ Is Us Job Market Treading in Shallow Water Overshadowed by Recession

• The grim economic rhetoric of recession has caused employee concerns about job risks and layoffs.

• James Morton, chief investment officer at Santa Lucia Asset Management, recently said that Americans should brace themselves for a near certain recession this year, despite recent optimism from the Biden administration.

• The effect of even a “mild” recession, that is widely forecast will hit the US job market later this year. It is expected to put around 1 million+ jobs at risk. The US job market is going to be surly affected even with mild recession.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Number of years worked by Russians since starting to receive pensions reached record high in 2022 — Meduza

• In 2022, the average amount of time Russian citizens had continued working after beginning to receive state pensions was 7.47 years, the outlet RBC reported, citing survey data from Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service. That’s the highest the figure has been since the authorities began releasing the data in 2011, when the average was six years. It’s also up from 2020, when Russians had worked 7.02 years since becoming pensioners on average.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Mauritania’s ruling party wins local and legislative polls ahead of presidential contest

• The ruling party in Mauritania scored a comfortable victory in last week’s legislative and local elections, according to official results on Sunday, a litmus test for the veteran head of state ahead of next year’s presidential poll.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Iran Dismisses Ali Shamkhani, Top National Security Official

• Ali Shamkhani was one of the most powerful men in Iran, but it was not enough to insulate him after a close associate was accused of selling information to Britain.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Biden seals 3 deals in Pacific islands as U.S. competes with China

• A U.S. diplomatic offensive to counter China’s growing clout in the Pacific Islands appears to be paying dividends, with three agreements sealed within 48 hours.

=> ↺ TikTok sues Montana after state bans app — True Story

• Greg Gianforte signed the law Wednesday expecting a legal fight.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ TikTok Sues Montana Over State Ban

• The Chinese-owned video app filed the lawsuit days after Montana’s governor signed the ban, which takes effect on Jan. 1, into law.

=> ↺ Hollywood Reporter ☛ TikTok’s Lawsuit Against Montana Is a Test Case Amid National Ban Debate

• On May 17, Montana became the first state to adopt a ban after Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill requiring app stores to stop carrying TikTok. Though users people who already have the app can continue using it, TikTok won’t be allowed to operate in the state starting in 2024. On top of concerns that the app promotes content harmful to children, lawmakers mostly pointed to national security risks because the app, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, is under the influence of China.

• A suit was widely expected to be filed in what could be seen as a test case of obstacles the government might face if it passes a national TikTok ban.

=> ↺ The Hill ☛ Montana is banning TikTok. But can the state enforce the law and fend off lawsuits?

• Proponents of the law in Montana claim the Chinese government could harvest U.S. user data from TikTok and use the platform to push pro-Beijing misinformation or messages to the public.

• That mirrors arguments made by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. Senate, as well as the heads of the FBI and the CIA, all of whom have said TikTok could pose a national security threat because its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance operates under Chinese law.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ TikTok Files Lawsuit to Overturn Montana’s 1st-In-Nation Ban on the Video Sharing App

• Social media company TikTok has filed a lawsuit to overturn Montana’s first-in-the-nation ban on the video sharing app

=> ↺ France24 ☛ TikTok files lawsuit to challenge Montana’s ban of the social media app

• Social media company TikTok Inc. filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to overturn Montana’s first-in-the-nation ban on the video sharing app, arguing the law is an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights and is based on “unfounded speculation” that the Chinese government could access users’ data.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ TikTok sued Montana over its statewide ban of the app

• Just days after Montana banned the app TikTok statewide, its maker is suing in federal court to get the controversial new law struck down. TikTok claims the Montana government violated its First Amendment right to free speech, as well as that of its users in the state.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ TikTok Sues Montana After State Bans App

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Introductory statement by President von der Leyen at the EU-Republic of Korea Summit

• European Commission Statement Seoul, 22 May 2023 Dear President Yoon,

• I am very pleased to be here in Seoul, and especially on a year in which we celebrate the 60th anniversary of our diplomatic relations.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Press statement by President von der Leyen at the joint press conference with President Michel and President Yoon following the EU-Republic of Korea Summit

• European Commission Statement Seoul, 22 May 2023 Commission President von der Leyen participated in the EU-Republic of Korea Summit in Seoul, together with European Council President Michel and President of the Republic of Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Joint statement European Union – Republic of Korea Summit 2023

• European Commission Statement Seoul, 22 May 2023 President of the European Council Charles Michel, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and President of the Republic of Korea Yoon Suk Yeol…

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Erdogan Is Endorsed by Sinan Ogan

• The support of Sinan Ogan gives the Turkish president a boost as he takes on the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Turkey’s third-place, far-right candidate endorses Erdogan ahead of runoff

• The third-placed contender in the Turkish presidential elections on Monday formally endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the second-round runoff vote to be held on May 28th.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Turkish Police Detain Turkmen Opposition Vlogger At Ashgabat’s Request, Colleagues Say

• Police in Istanbul have detained self-exiled opposition vlogger Farhat Meimankulyiev (aka Durdyiev) at the Turkmen Consulate’s request.

=> ↺ Third-placed candidate endorses Erdoğan in Turkey’s runoff vote

• Sinan Oğan will support the incumbent president in the decisive second round. Both the ruling and the opposition camps have been in touch with the right-wing candidate to get his support in the runoff vote to take place on Sunday.

=> ↺ MAY 22: Countdown to Turkey runoff vote: Kılıçdaroğlu ramps up anti-refugee rhetoric

• As President Erdoğan and his rival Kılıçdaroğlu gear up for the runoff vote on May 28, we bring you updates on the aftermath of the parliamentary and presidential elections, along with the developments leading up to the decisive second round.

=> ↺ Turkey 2023 election results

• May 28 presidential runoff awaits as President Erdoğan and main rival Kılıçdaroğlu fall short of the 50% threshold. Meanwhile, Erdoğan’s ruling alliance secures parliamentary majority.

=> ↺ Overseas votes exceed one million in second round of Turkey’s presidential election

• The runoff sees an even higher turnout following a two-decade high overseas participation in the first round of elections.

=> ↺ Turkey can’t send all refugees back due to labor force needs, says foreign minister

• The minister stepped into the debate as refugees once again became a pressing issue ahead of the presidential runoff to take place on May 28.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ In Pakistan, populist Imran Khan faces the biggest challenge of his political career

• Imran Khan, Pakistan’s populist former prime minister, is facing the biggest test of his political career as he challenges the very same security establishment that accelerated his journey to power in the 2018 elections.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘What are they afraid of?’: Hong Kong security chief questions public concern over passing of city’s own security law

• Hong Kong will balance the protection of national security with upholding human rights when legislating the city’s own security law, the justice chief has said.

=> ↺ Akşener: ‘The problem is not Erdoğan, the problem is this freak system’

• “If we elect Kılıçdaroğlu as president, the executive and the parliament will lie in the hands of different forces. A check and balance system will function; the law will function,” said the leader of the second largest party in the Nation Alliance.

=> ↺ Election monitor responds to interior minister’s accusations

• Minister Soylu claimed the “Vote and Beyond” group as prohibited from being present at polling stations.

=> ↺ Oğan to declare position on second round at 5:00 pm

• The presidential candidate receiving 5,17% of the votes in the first round of the presidential race announced yesterday that they will be declaring their position for the second round of the presidential elections today at 5:00 pm.

=> ↺ Imam invites prayers to take arms on election night

• The imam of the Cebeci Mosque in Sultangazi, İstanbul invited the prayers to take arms on election night, May 28, in the second round of the presidential elections. One person protesting the imam was knocked about and expelled from the mosque.

=> ↺ Erdoğan vows swift reconstruction in quake-hit cities, urges high support in runoff

• Emphasizing that his government is working at full speed, Erdoğan outlined their ambitious goal of constructing 650,000 new homes, with 319,000 expected to be completed within a year.

=> ↺ Police detain, torture young people enjoying Kurdish music in İstanbul

• The HDP has condemned the degrading treatment of the individuals, including being forced to listen to the Ottoman march while restrained on the ground with handcuffs.

=> ↺ Police detain 19 in ‘Newroz’ investigation

• The detainees, which include HDP members, are accused of engaging in “terrorist propaganda.”

=> ↺ Interior minister draws condemnation after saying jailing lawyers will ‘finish off PKK’

• The Diyarbakır Bar has said Minister Soylu’s remarks were intended to criminalize lawyers and violated the presumption of innocence.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Iranian President Replaces Chief Of Powerful Security Council

• Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has removed Ali Shamkhani as the head of the powerful Supreme National Security Council and replaced him with Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a former chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who has been under Un and Western sanctions for more than a decade.

=> ↺ Mint Press News ☛ Led by China and India: The Global South Is Trying To Fix the UN

• As the world shifts away from Western dominance, China demands substantive reforms to the UN Security Council, challenging the archaic power structure and advocating for fair representation, signaling a crucial moment for global diplomacy and the future of the UN.

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ Australian funding for the Pacific brings together all tools of statecraft

• In a budget speech that focused on domestic priorities, Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s only international announcement was of a package allocating $1.9 billion to strengthening Australia’s relationships in the Pacific.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ E. Jean Carroll Seeks New Damages From Trump for Comments on CNN

• The former president’s repeated denials that he sexually abused Ms. Carroll “show the depth of his malice” and merit heavy damages, her lawyer wrote.

=> ↺ TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ E. Jean Carroll adds Trump’s post-verdict remarks to defamation case, seeks at least $10M

• An advice columnist who won a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation award against former President Donald Trump has filed an amendment to a second lawsuit against him, asking for another $10 million for remarks he made after the verdict.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Ralph Nader: Unstable Trump Double Down as the Odds Against Him Increase

• I have co-authored, with Mark Green, two books on Donald J. Trump, and I’ve thought a lot about the toll his presidency has taken on our country.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Prosecutors Sought Records on Trump’s Foreign Business Deals Since 2017

• The special counsel scrutinizing the former president’s handling of classified documents issued a subpoena to the Trump Organization seeking records related to seven countries.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ From Beyond the Death of Beyond Vietnam

• Remarks in New York City, May 21, 2023 About a year-and-a-half before I was born down in midtown, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech up at Riverside Church called Beyond Vietnam.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “A Cowardly Measure”: Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso Dissolves Parliament to Avoid Impeachment

• Ecuador’s conservative President Guillermo Lasso has dissolved the opposition-led National Assembly in a move widely seen as an effort to block efforts to impeach him, and came as the body held its first hearing into corruption and embezzlement allegations against Lasso. Lasso used a constitutional power that has never been used in Ecuador before, allowing him to rule by decree until new elections are held. That vote is likely to come in August, and Lasso told The Washington Post he does not plan to run again. For more on the political crisis in Ecuador, we speak with Andrés Arauz, the Ecuadorian politician and economist who ran against Lasso for president in 2021. He previously served as director of Ecuador’s Central Bank and then minister of knowledge and human talent under the administration of former leftist President Rafael Correa. He’s also a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Did Governor General Hurley ignore Covid protocols for his Future Leaders Foundation?

• Did Governor-General David Hurley and his top bureaucrat Paul Singer break their own Covid protocols to meet with the head of the mysterious Future Leaders Foundation, Chris Hartley? Jommy Tee and Ronni Salt report.

• Both Governor General David Hurley and his top bureaucrat Paul Singer had made the Governor-General’s Australian Future Leaders Program (GGAFLP or Gigaflop according to the spellchecker) their pet project since July 2020, and a secret top priority for the ensuing two years. They had been remarkably successful in convincing the Morrison government to part with $18 million to fund the foundation. The funding was subsequently rescinded by the Albanese government.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Democratic Party’s Dianne Feinstein Problem Has Become a Quagmire

• On Thursday May 11, Dianne Feinstein received a standing ovation when she returned to the Senate Judiciary Committee after an absence of nearly three months, during which she was recovering from a bout of shingles. Feinstein’s return gave Democrats a minimal 11-to-10 majority over Republicans on the committee, which was enough to break the gridlock caused by Feinstein’s nonattendance. At age 89, Feinstein is the oldest serving senator, and there are long-standing concerns—dating back as far as her 2018 decision to run for reelection—about her physical and mental fitness for her post.1

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ After Moscow car crash involving Aurus Senat, Telegram channels report vehicle linked to Patriarch Kirill — Meduza

• A car crash involving an Aurus Senat and a Volvo occurred in central Moscow on Monday morning. The Telegram channel Baza reported that one person was injured but that he refused hospitalization.

=> ↺ Telex (Hungary) ☛ Szijjártó clashed with German FM Baerbock – Politico

• Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock got into a heated exchange at a closed-door meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday, Politico reports, citing sources requesting anonymity.

=> ↺ Telex (Hungary) ☛ Orbán: Hungarian-Swedish political relations are dreadful

• “Political relations between Hungary and Sweden must improve before we approve the Nordic state’s application for NATO membership,” Orbán was quoted as saying at the Qatar Economic Forum by Reuters.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Stock market wobbles after AI-generated image of Pentagon explosion appears on verified Twitter accounts

• A fake image of the Pentagon on fire posted on Twitter today caused a brief dip in the U.S. stock market, which rebounded after officials had to explain that no such explosion had taken place.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Verified Twitter Accounts Spread AI-Generated Hoax of Pentagon Explosion

• An AI-generated image of a fake explosion near the Pentagon went viral thanks to blue-check Twitter accounts.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Off Guardian ☛ Sucharit Bhakdi & the prosecution of “thought crime”

• Eminent and influential “covid” skeptic Dr Sucharit Bhakdi is about to be prosecuted tomorrow, May 23, under German law for: having incited hatred against a religious group and attacked the human dignity of others by insulting and maliciously disparaging that religious group, while acting in concert in a manner likely to disturb the public peace…

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Race-Related Insulting Complaints to Supervisors in Public University and the First Amendment

• In Mitchell v. Univ. of N.C. Bd. of Governors, decided April 4 by the North Carolina Court of Appeal, Prof. Alvin Mitchell, “Associate Professor of Justice Studies in the Department of Social Sciences” at Winston-Salem State University, was fired in part based on a letter he sent to Department of Social Sciences co-chair…

=> ↺ RFA ☛ INTERVIEW: ‘It’s hard for those in power to tolerate any kind of satire’

• Hong Kong political cartoonist Zunzi says the axing of his column was due to political pressure

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Censorship at the American Psychological Association

• The publishing process in academic psychology journals isn’t typically known for its drama or intrigue. It’s true that there can be frustrations and challenges for aspiring authors.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘Uncle Roger’ comedian banned from Chinese social media after joking about Xi and surveillance

• A UK-based Malaysian comedian, best known for his “Uncle Roger” character, has been banned from at least three Chinese social media platforms after he published a stand-up video with jokes about surveillance and China’s leader Xi Jinping last week.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Happy 20th Birthday to the Streisand Effect

• The underlying lawsuit was filed May 20, 2003, and the Effect followed within a few weeks; Mike Masnick (Techdirt) has the details: Twenty years ago today, actress/singer Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for daring to photograph her coastal mansion as part of his (fascinating) project to photograph the entire west coast…

=> ↺ Press Gazette ☛ Why Guardian, TED and all publishers should stand with Cadwalladr on Banks legal fight

• Carole Cadwalladr has been ordered to pay £1.2m towards Arron Banks’s legal costs.

=> ↺ The Hill ☛ Supreme Court punts Section 230 debate back to Congress

• Expectations had run high that the justices would be the ones to significantly narrow the provision, known as Section 230, when the court agreed to directly take up the question of how far its protections reached.

• But the court resolved the cases against Twitter and Google on other grounds Thursday, leaving Section 230 unscathed until Congress acts or the high court takes up another case. And despite bipartisan criticism that the provision makes the tech industry unaccountable, lawmakers face a stalemate on how to reform it.

• So, barring a surprising legislative compromise, Section 230 is here to stay, and [Internet] companies are breathing a sigh of relief.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Rand Paul Loses The Plot: Says Gov’t Is Going To Use AI For Censorship

• There are, certainly, all sorts of questions about what is generally referred to today as AI, and what it will do, and if it needs to be regulated, but it would help if we had law makers who had the slightest clue what they were talking about.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Justice Ministry prepares amendment to proposed map ban that would require proof of intent to ‘dispute Russia’s territorial integrity’ — Meduza

• The Russian Justice Ministry has prepared an amendment to a draft law submitted to the State Duma in September that would ban maps that “dispute Russia’s territorial integrity.” Under the ministry’s changes, prosecutors would be required to prove that a map’s creator “knowingly distorted” Russia’s borders and intended to “dispute” its territory.

=> ↺ Project Censored ☛ April Newsletter 2023 – News

• This year 220 students from twelve college and university campuses across the US contributed to this collective effort to raise public awareness of important but under-reported social issues. In turn, these stories become candidates for inclusion in the Project’s acclaimed Top 25 “Censored” story list.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘You really are a terrorist’ How Russia’s FSB recruits former ISIS fighters — and tries to plant them in Ukrainian battalions — Meduza

• Story by Lilia Yapparova in collaboration with extremism and terrorism expert Vera Mironova.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russian authorities issue arrest warrant against actor Alexey Panin for posts celebrating Crimean bridge blast — Meduza

• Russia’s Interior Ministry has issued an arrest warrant against actor Alexey Panin, the independent outlet Verstka reported on Monday.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Belarus Said to Pardon Roman Protasevich, Activist Who Was Hauled Off a Ryanair Flight

• Roman Protasevich had been sentenced to eight years in prison. The details of his 2021 arrest drew international attention.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich, arrested after forced Ryanair landing in 2021, reportedly pardoned — Meduza

• Belarusian opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, who was sentenced to eight years in prison earlier this month, has been pardoned, according to the state-run news agency Belta.

=> ↺ Telex (Hungary) ☛ No imprisonment for defamatory or libellous articles in press, Hungarian Parliament votes

• On Tuesday, Hungarian Parliament voted in favour of Fidesz’s proposal to ease the penalties for defamatory or libellous statements pubished in the press. The proposal was adopted by 129 votes in favour and 57 against.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Can the Global South Build a New World Information Communication Order?

• It is remarkable how the media in a select few countries is able to set the record on matters around the world.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Masha Gessen Resigns from PEN America Board over Cancellation of Russian Writers Panel

• We speak with PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel about the resignation of journalist Masha Gessen from the free expression group’s board following the cancellation of a Russian writers panel at the recent PEN World Voices Festival after Ukrainian writers threatened to boycott. “It’s unfortunate,” Nossel says, but notes Gessen plans to remain a PEN member and work on its project to archive Russian independent media.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Journalists for Sale: Tucker, Teixeira and Taibbi (w/ Patrick Lawrence)

• ScheerPost’s own Max Jones and Diego Ramos are back with another video interview except this time it is under the official name for their show: Journalists for Sale.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Poisonings and break-ins Investigative journalists report multiple attacks abroad against Russian oppositionists in the months ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — Meduza

• In the past several years, and especially in the months leading up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the early days of the ensuing war, multiple Kremlin critics have complained of symptoms consistent with poisoning. Several more reported break-ins at their hotel rooms while traveling. The Russian independent news outlet Agentstvo suggested, in a recent report, that all of these events are related, and that the people who carried them out may be connected to Russian intelligence services. Meduza summarizes the report’s findings.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Uber suspended its DEI chief after she hosted events titled “Don’t Call Me Karen” [Ed: Truly evil, evil corporations -- doing illegal things on occasions -- hiding behind the veil of "DEI" (the EPO does this too)]

• Bo Young Lee, Uber’s chief of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), has been suspended after hosting an event about “the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience.”

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Austria Beefs Up Border Security, Demands Explanations From Hungary After People Smugglers’ Release

• Austria’s government on May 22 asked Hungary for explanations as it stepped up security along the countries’ shared border following Budapest’s decision to grant early release to convicted people smugglers.

=> ↺ Telex (Hungary) ☛ We let the smugglers go because Brussels won’t give us money – Rétvári

• Hungary had to make the decision to release several individuals convicted of smuggling migrants because Brussels isn’t contributing to the costs of border protection, but punishes Hungary when our prisons are overcrowded, Bence Rétvári told MTI (the Hungarian State News Agency).

=> ↺ Telex (Hungary) ☛ Filing complaint for challenging that father is male and mother is female not possible after all

• Parliament has approved Katalin Novák’s veto, removing the part of the law on complaints that allowed the lodging of a complaint against anyone “challenging the constitutionally recognised role of marriage and the family”. On Tuesday morning, the Parliament re-adopted the law without the part in question, with 147 votes in favour and 6 against.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Google’s Photo App Still Can’t Find Gorillas. And Neither Can Apple’s.

• Eight years after a controversy over Black people being mislabeled as gorillas by image analysis software — and despite big advances in computer vision — tech giants still fear repeating the mistake.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Mahsa Amini’s Family Accuses Iran’s Security Forces Of Vandalizing Her Grave

• The family of Mahsa Amini have blamed Iran’s security forces for vandalizing the grave of the young woman whose death while in police custody in September 2022 ignited nationwide protests.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ ‘Pay Your Writers:’ Students Heckle Warner Bros. CEO During Commencement Speech

• Students at Boston University’s graduation ceremony told David Zaslav to “shut up” and turned their backs on him during his speech.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Tajikistan Repatriates Dozens Of Women, Children From Syria

• Tajik authorities have repatriated 109 women and children, including five citizens of Kazakhstan, from Syria, where they had moved along with their husbands who joined the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in recent years.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ New Mexico Supreme Court Issues Opinion to Provides Guidance About Pretrial Detention

• The New Mexico Supreme Court has issued an opinion providing guidance to district courts in deciding pretrial detention requests from prosecutors

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuanian police use drones to catch children smoking

• In response to teenagers using drugs and dangerous liquid in e-cigarettes, police in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city, have started using drones in schools to spot the smokers.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ 9th Circuit rules US deportation law that fueled family separations is ‘neutral as to race’

• A federal appeals court has ruled that a U.S. deportation law that fueled family separations at the southern border is “neutral as to race,” striking down an unprecedented Nevada ruling that had determined it was racist and unconstitutional. Section 1326 of the Immigration and Nationality Act makes it a crime to return to the U.S. after deportation, removal or denied admission. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision is a blow for advocates who hoped to see major changes to the nation’s immigration system after U.S. Judge Miranda Du in 2021 dismissed an illegal reentry chargeagainst a Mexican immigrant. Du said Section 1326 violated the man’s constitutional rights and is discriminatory against Latinos. The Justice Department quickly appealed.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ DC PD’s Head Of Homeland Security Intelligence Allegedly Warned Proud Boys Leader Cops Were Looking For Him

• Cops keep letting us know who they really are. They can’t seem to help themselves.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ LA Sheriff’s Department Watchdog Orders Dozens Of Deputies To Answer Questions About Gang Affiliation

• For years, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has had a gang problem. And for just as many years, sheriff after elected sheriff have refused to address this problem. It’s not simply a matter of taking a hands-off approach to discipline. It’s been a matter of flat-out denial from sheriffs that deputies are forming gangs seemingly solely for the purpose of abusing rights of Los Angeles County residents.

=> ↺ The Washington Post ☛ Amazon employees plan to walk off the job as tech worker tension rises [Ed: Bezos-owned site]

• On Monday, some Amazon workers at the company’s Seattle headquarters announced internally their plans to walk off the job.

• In messages sent out via Slack and email, employee organizers urged their colleagues to walk out on May 31 — one week after the company’s annual shareholder meeting — in response to frustration over layoffs and the return-to-office mandate, as well as concerns about Amazon’s climate commitments.

=> ↺ Meta Efficiency Layoffs: Where Next for Big Tech in 2023?

• The downsizing of Meta comes as part of the company’s ‘year of efficiency’, a plan which aims to tackle declining value and an uncertain economic climate. However, a new research report from Trachet, highlights the very real cost that layoffs can have on a workforce with a staggering third (33%) of respondents stating they have seen their workplace’s headcount decrease and their workload increase in the last 12 months – seemingly causing a mass strain within the sector.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Jim Brown stood for those who stood against the establishment

• Jim Brown was the paragon of football running backs. But he saw himself as a man fighting for the freedom of those around him – including himself.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ The NAACP says Florida is unsafe for Black and LGBTQ Americans

• America’s leading civil rights organization says Florida is a dangerous place for Black and LGBTQ people. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had been considering issuing a travel advisory for the state since March, finally did so on May 20.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Minnesota Senate passes bill ensuring minimum wage and benefits for rideshare drivers

• The Minnesota Senate passed a bill mandating rideshare companies to provide their drivers a minimum wage and other benefits on Sunday in a narrow vote of 35-32. The bill requires that all drivers be compensated $1.45 per mile within the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and $0.34 per minute while transporting a rider.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Spain has ‘problem’ with racism, says football federation chief after Vinicius abuse scandal

• Spanish prosecutors on Monday opened an investigation over racist chants aimed at Real Madrid’s Brazilian forward Vinicius Junior during a weekend match, according to a judicial source. The probe came as the head of Spain’s football federation admitted that the country has a “problem” with racism.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Adidas Begins Unloading $1 Billion+ in Leftover Yeezy Shoes

• Adidas has resumed selling its unsold Yeezy shoes stock, with plans to dump the rest throughout May 2023.  The Germany sportswear company says it will sell the collection exclusively through the Adidas Yeezy website. “A significant amount will be donated to selected organizations working to combat discrimination and hate, including racism and antisemitism.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Rikosseuraamuslaitos introduces virtual reality-assisted rehabilitation for prisoners to practice everyday situations

• The Finnish Criminal Sanctions Agency (Rikosseuraamuslaitos) has been utilizing virtual reality (VR) programs as part of prisoner rehabilitation since 2019. Now, in collaboration with Virtual Dawn, the agency is launching virtual reality-assisted prisoner rehabilitation. These programs allow prisoners to practice situations they will encounter upon their release from prison.

• Previously, VR programs developed by the University of Tampere and the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) have been used.

=> ↺ ACLU ☛ Honoring the Past, Paving the Future: Enhancing Voter Registration

• Last week marks the 30th anniversary of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a landmark piece of legislation that has expanded access to the ballot for millions of Americans.

• Signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, the voting rights law strengthened American democracy. From enabling eligible voters to simultaneously register to vote when they apply for or renew a driver’s license, to offering voter registration opportunities via mail-in application opportunities, the NVRA helps make the promise of democracy real. The NVRA has been an amazing success. As of 2020, 160,000 million Americans have applied to get on the voter rolls through registration services the NVRA requires at departments of motor vehicles, disability offices, and public agencies across the country.

• Although we’ve made great progress in expanding access to voter registration, it is important to remember we still have so much work to do to expand voter registration access. In 2021, President Biden issued an executive order to increase access to voting, encouraging federal agencies to utilize an untapped provision of the NVRA that contemplates federal agencies providing voter registration services. Since this announcement, several federal agencies have made public commitments to increase access to voting information and expand voter registration opportunities.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ As Gov. DeSantis Preps White House Run, PEN America Sues Florida School District over Book Ban

• With Ron DeSantis expected to formally announce his run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination this week, we look at his controversial record as governor of Florida, which has been marked by attacks on LGBTQ rights, immigrants, public education, antiracism initiatives and more. The NAACP recently issued a travel advisory for Florida, deeming the state to be “openly hostile” to Black Americans and other minority groups. Meanwhile, PEN America, the book publishing company Penguin Random House and several authors and parents are suing the Pensacola, Florida, school board for banning books on race and LGBTQ issues from school libraries for violating the First Amendment. The censorship “runs counter to the very role and purpose of public schools in a democracy,” says Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America. We also speak with Kellie Carter Jackson, an associate professor of Africana studies at Wellesley College, who recently participated in a Florida teach-in to push back against DeSantis’s censorship. “We can’t discuss major events, major turning points, without talking about Black people, without talking about women, without talking about LGBTQ people,” she says.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis

• Two Peas in a (White Nationalist) Pod

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ How to Fight the Right’s Moral Panic Over Parental Rights

• Karin Cevasco was keeping a wary eye on the voting returns. For months ahead of this spring’s election, the school board of the southern New Hampshire town of Milford had been the site of intense acrimony. Conservative parents pushed to remove a gay-themed memoir from school libraries and demanded that bathrooms and locker rooms be segregated by sex, not gender identity, all in the name of parental rights. After the school board, dominated by conservatives, banned some students in the town’s middle and high schools from using urinals or shared spaces in locker rooms, more than 100 students walked out in protest.

=> ↺ Vox ☛ Florida is too dangerous to visit, civil rights groups warn

• It’s unclear whether the organizations’ advisories will have any real impact on tourism, which is one of Florida’s biggest industries. According to Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office, a record 37.9 million travelers visited Florida in the first quarter of 2023, up 6.7 percent from a year ago and mostly driven by people coming from other US states. Overseas travel has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but lawmakers hoping to change that are pouring $80 million into tourism campaigns next fiscal year, an increase of $30 million over this year.

=> ↺ ABC ☛ Plans to demolish Robb Elementary, hold cops accountable are moving forward: Officials

• The leaders of the small Texas community also said they’re close to finalizing an agreement that would allow city investigators access to police records to determine whether or not any law enforcement officers should be fired or disciplined for the failed response to the shooting on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Supreme Court Criticism

• Democrats used to criticize the Supreme Court respectfully. Increasingly, they see the court as irredeemable.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ E.U. Asks Greece to Investigate Video of Migrants Left at Sea

• Citing a report by The Times, a top E.U. official said the Greek authorities had been urged to investigate after footage showed the Greek Coast Guard leaving asylum seekers at sea.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Madeleine McCann Case: Portugal to Renew Search for Long-Missing British Girl

• The case of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann, who disappeared while vacationing with her family in Portugal, has drawn international attention for years.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ You Cannot Hear These 13 Women’s Stories and Believe the Anti-Abortion Narrative

• If this isn’t what anti-abortion groups want, why won’t they fix it?

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Andrew Tate Finds Romania Less Lawless Than He Hoped

• The online influencer, popular with young men, is facing charges of human trafficking and rape, after seeking out a place where “corruption is accessible to everybody.”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ A Movement to Make Workplaces ‘Menopause Friendly’

• What is a menopause-friendly workplace? Women in cities like New York may soon find out, as U.S. companies adopt practices that were already spreading in Britain.

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ Bosnian refugee camp Lipa: Dispute over „Austrian Guantanamo“

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Missing Links in Textbook History: Ethnic Studies

• This is the sixth in a series of columns exposing “Missing Links” in high school history textbooks. Previous columns have focused on Indigenous peoples, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the role of women in history. All I want is equality For my sister my brother my people […]

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality/Regulator

=> ↺ Public Knowledge ☛ Public Knowledge Welcomes Nomination of Anna Gomez as FCC Commissioner

• Today, President Joe Biden nominated Anna Gomez for Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. Ms. Gomez has spent the bulk of her career serving the public interest at the FCC and at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

=> ↺ Broadband Breakfast ☛ Biden Announces Anna Gomez as Nominee for Fifth FCC Commissioner

• President Joe Biden announced Monday his intention to nominate experienced telecommunications attorney Anna Gomez as commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.

• Democrat Gomez currently serves as a senior advisor for international information and communications policy in the State Department’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. She served as the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Deputy Administrator from 2009 to 2013 and spent over a decade in various positions at the FCC.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ RIP Gfycat, the First Site To Make Gifs Look Good (UPDATED)

• After months of issues, Gfycat appeared to be dead, with its TLS security certificate expired for days.

=> ↺ APNIC ☛ Network design: Dual ISP, DMZ, and the network edge — Part 1

• Guest Post: A detailed network design series about the network edge, dual ISPs, and BGP.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ From Past Lessons to Future Protections: EFF’s Advice to the EU Commission on Extended Reality Governance

• The term “metaverse” is elusive, and open to many interpretations. It has evolved into an umbrella term encompassing numerous concepts, often influenced by the perspectives of those utilizing it. Given this broad and vague scope that can even extend beyond Extended Reality (XR), our submission neither endorses nor critiques the EU Commission’s initiative.

• However, EFF strongly urges the EU Commission to consider historical digital rights lessons learned. People need principles that safeguard them from undue state and corporate overreach, which should be the focus of any measures introduced by the EU Commission about the metaverse.

• The metaverse does not need to be a single platform, nor does any metaverse need to be owned or controlled by a single entity. Instead, it is more beneficial to consider the metaverse as a generic term for a vast and interoperable network of different VR, AR, and “other services.”

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ U.S. Cable TV Subscriptions Fall To Lowest Total Since 1992

• Despite years of cable industry executives claiming that cord cutting (ditching traditional cable TV) was either a fiction or a fad, that wound up being… not true. Executive claims that cord cutting was finally slowing down and would soon effectively stop? Also, surprisingly, not true.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Latvian musicians break their way into streaming services

• As summer begins, the active concert season also begins for musicians, with town celebrations and festivals underways. Concerts remain Latvian musicians’ main source of income, but in recent years they also derive additional income from music listeners that use streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, Tidal, and others, Latvian Radio reported May 22.

=> ↺ Bryan Lunduke ☛ Why an iPhone makes a terrible general purpose computer

• (when Android makes a pretty good one)

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Lobbyists Descend On California To Scuttle Right To Repair Efforts

• While U.S. consumer protection is generally a hot mess, one promising bright spot continues to be the bipartisan traction seen on right to repair issues. For decades, tech giants across numerous sectors have attempted to monopolize repair, making it harder and more expensive to repair things you own due to repair center consolidation, annoying DRM, and hard to find manuals and tools.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “African Queens: Njinga”: Kellie Carter Jackson on Netflix Series & Teaching Black History

• As we speak with Professor Kellie Carter Jackson, who teaches Africana studies at Wellesley College and joined a teach-in in Florida over the weekend, we ask about the new Netflix documentary series African Queens: Njinga, which she is featured in and tells the story of the 17th century warrior queen who fought the Portuguese slave traders. The series is executive produced and narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith. Jackson calls it a “major contribution to understanding slavery and the slave trade” and notes it is “readily available” online “if students cannot get this in Florida in their classroom.”

Monopolies

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Microsoft defeats gamers’ bid to block $69 billion Activision deal in US court

• The private plaintiffs sued Microsoft in California federal court in December to enjoin the deal, which they called harmful to competition.

• US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco federal court said in a ruling issued late on Friday night that the video gamers had not shown they would be “irreparably harmed” if the merger were allowed to proceed before she rules on the merits of their case.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Telecoms Detail Their Dumb Plan To Force Tech Giants To Pay Them Billions For No Reason

• The EU is currently proposing a plan to tax Big Tech companies, and throw that money at Big Telecom companies. For no coherent reason.

Patents

=> ↺ Unified Patents ☛ $6,000 for Empire IP entity, IoT Innovations, prior art

• Unified added 3 new PATROLL contests, with a $2,000 cash prize for each, seeking prior art on the list below. The patents are owned by IoT Innovations, an NPE and entity of Empire IP LLC. The contests will end on July 16, 2023. Please visit PATROLL for more information or click on each link below.

=> ↺ Unified Patents ☛ USPTO’s new Catch-22 targets Unified Patents in standing requirement reforms

• In a recent op-ed in IAM, Unified’s General Counsel, Jonathan Stroud, explains the issues with the USPTO’s reform proposal, including how it singles out Unified and proposes restrictions that contradict the AIA and that have been rejected in subsequent failed legislative proposals.

Trademarks

=> ↺ TTAB Blog ☛ Ted Davis Outline: “Recent Developments in United States Trademark and Unfair Competition Law”

• Thank you, Ted Davis, for permitting me to post a link (here) to your article, “Recent Developments in United States Trademark and Unfair Competition Law.” This article is a companion to the Ted’s presentation at the 2023 Annual Meeting of INTA in Singapore.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ NetEase Cloud Music Announces Dolby Atmos Support, Touts Itself As the Leading Music Platform ‘Among China’s Vibrant Generation Z Community’

• As competition between China’s foremost streaming players continues to heat up, NetEase Cloud Music has announced support for Dolby Atmos “across its vast music library.”

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Marvel, Artist’s Estate Ask for Pre-Trial Wins in Superhero Copyright Fight

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Google Bans ‘Downloader’ App: TV Outfits Claim Browser Violates Injunction

• After almost seven years online and more than 50 million installs, Android app ‘Downloader’ has been removed from Google Play. A complaint filed by several TV companies claims that when a pirate site’s URL is entered into Downloader’s basic web browser, the pirate site appears, violating an injunction. The same companies won an injunction in 2022 that required every ISP in the U.S. to block the very same site – until Google and other tech giants prevented that happening.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ ‘More Than 600,000 Students and Teachers Use Z-Library’

• Pirate eBook repository Z-Library has shared some interesting data concluding that more than 600,000 students and scholars use the site. This is likely an underestimation, as the findings are based on email addresses. The United States is excluded from the analysis, Z-Library notes, due to the criminal prosecution of two alleged operators of the site

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Certified Anti-Piracy Coach Helps Piracy Addicts Go Legal

• With only a rapid heart rate, cold sweats, and acute anxiety for company, the cravings of acute piracy addiction leave a stark choice; call a therapist and beg for support, or gorge on pirated movies and TV shows, hurting the creators. A new campaign launched at the Cannes Film Festival aims to cure addicts using a certified anti-piracy coach offering legal content replacement therapy.

=> ↺ Creative Commons ☛ A look at CC’s Open Culture Roundtable in Lisbon

• Over the past decade, the open movement has made incredible strides in the cultural sector — take a look at some of the pioneers — yet it is still facing major barriers and challenges. But challenges are opportunities in disguise. In September last year, UNESCO declared culture a global public good at Mondiacult 2022. With the successes of the 2019 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources and 2021 Recommendation on Open Science, the world looks to UNESCO’s leadership to create the necessary international framework that would unlock the possibilities of equitable, ethical, and respectful sharing of cultural heritage in the digital age: a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Culture. For an explanation of useful terms related to open culture, take a look at the glossary developed by the CC open culture platform.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Workers of the Music World Are Uniting—and Winning

• In 2017, America’s most exciting punk band was scraping by. Downtown Boys, a Providence, R.I.-based act, had a cult following, a Coachella performance under their belt, and glowing reviews in every major music outlet.

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