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● 05.31.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 31/05/2023: Librem Server v2, curl 8.1.2, and Kali Linux 2023.2 Release

Posted in News Roundup at 5:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ NVIDIA driver 535.43.02 Beta for Linux updates Wayland support, new Vulkan extensions

• NVIDIA has released the 535.43.02 Beta driver for Linux today, bringing with it support for multiple newer Vulkan extensions and extends Wayland support further.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Linux Handbook ☛ Run Linux Commands Inside Containers With Docker Compose

• There are two ways you can run Linux commands inside Docker containers: you use the Docker exec command to run it from outside the container or you enter the running container first and then run the command like you do it in a regular Linux terminal.

=> ↺ Linux Cloud VPS ☛ How to Install XWiki on AlmaLinux 9

• XWiki is a free and open-source wiki platform software written in Java. It was initially released in 2003 under an LGPL license. XWiki runs on a servlet container like Tomcat, JBoss, Jetty, etc. It enables you to deploy a simple web platform. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install XWiki on AlmaLinux 9.

=> ↺ OSTechNix ☛ Ultimate Guide To Dual Booting Windows And Ubuntu: Seamless Multi-Operating System Setup

• This step-by-step guide will take you through the process of installing Ubuntu alongside Windows operating system. Dual booting Windows and Ubuntu opens up a world of possibilities for users seeking to embrace the strengths of both operating systems. With this approach, users can seamlessly switch between Windows and Ubuntu, enjoying the benefits of Windows and Ubuntu.

Games

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Valheim devs clarify stance on modding including a clear no to paid mods

• Iron Gate mentioned recently they’ve been getting many questions on their stance of modding Valheim, so they wrote a post to give their thoughts including the subject of paid mods.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Do some drifting with a cruise ship in Summer Trip Cruise

• Summer Trip Cruise looks like a fun little game, giving you control of a cruise ship that you need to keep afloat while avoiding various obstacles with on-screen controls. In a way, the idea looks little like Frick Inc. 

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ The Outlast Trials manages to sell over 500K in the first week

• The Outlast Trials released from Red Barrels on May 18th was something a bit special, with it Steam Deck Verified and working great on desktop Linux with Proton.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart hits Steam on July 29th as Sony continue their PC expansion

• Sony PlayStation, Insomniac Games and Nixxes Software are bringing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to Steam as Sony continue bringing more console games to PC.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Settlement-building strategy game Circle of Kerzoven is up on Kickstarter

• Made with Godot Engine with full Native Linux support planned, Circle of Kerzoven is an upcoming settlement-building strategy game with some heavy simulation going on.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ Kali Linux ☛ Kali Linux 2023.2 Release (Hyper-V & PipeWire)

• Quick off the mark from previous 10 year anniversary, Kali Linux 2023.2 is now here. It is ready for immediate download or upgrading if you have an existing Kali Linux installation.

• The changelog highlights over the last few weeks since March’s release of 2023.1 is: [...]

=> ↺ 9to5Linux ☛ Kali Linux 2023.2 Brings PipeWire Support to Xfce Edition, Overhauls i3 Desktop

• Kali Linux 2023.2 ethical hacking and penetration testing distro is now available for download with PipeWire support to the Xfce edition and overhauled i3 desktop.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ OpenSUSE ☛ AlmaLinux Contributes to OpenQA Project, Adds Additional Architectures Support, New Features

• Open-source projects and contributions have brought remarkable advancements in technology by enabling communication and collaboration among people worldwide.

• One such example of this is the openQA testing tool, which has collectively benefited the Linux ecosystem.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ SparkFun Electronics ☛ SparkFun Reflects on 20 Years

• As SparkFun reaches a significant milestone – its 20th anniversary – we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the journey that brought us here. We owe our success not only to the remarkable products and services we offer but also to the dedicated employees who have been with us through it all.

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ Upgrade your sewing machine for CNC embroidery

• For this to work, the machine needs to be able to move an embroidery hoop in two axes on a plane perpendicular to the sewing needle. To do that, SpaceForOne used hardware similar to what you’d see on a 3D printer. The structure is aluminum extrusion and the axes ride on linear rails. Stepper motors move the axes and an Arduino Uno board controls those using a GRBL-compatible CNC shield that accepts standard G-code created in whatever software the user prefers.

=> ↺ Andrew Hutchings ☛ Retro Restoration: Acorn JP150 Bubble Jet Printer

• A couple of years ago I acquired an Acorn A3010 which I restored in this blog. Along with the machine came an Acorn branded monitor (which I have donated) and an Acorn JP150 printer. Today I have finally turned my attention to this printer.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi ☛ Refurbished vending machine

• If you can think of it, “you can probably do it on a Raspberry Pi,” believes 17-year-old Fady Faheem, who saw a broken vending machine for sale online and decided to give it a tech upgrade. Fady wanted to use his tech chops to benefit his community in Fort Worth, Texas, and the refurbished vending machine seemed an ideal gift to his local church – “the best place I knew” – which could do some micro fundraising too. The project has kick-started his career: “If I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be where I am today, working as a software engineer at 17.”

=> ↺ OMG! Linux ☛ Purism Unveil New $2999 Librem Server V2

• Librem Server v2 isn’t cheap at $2999 USD, and the servers aren’t touting the very latest tech either, being built around 9th Gen Core CPUs which are more than a few years old.

• But like all of Purism’s hardware, cost isn’t the USP — open source compatibility, security, and privacy are

• Purism say the Librem Server v2 is “the most secure server on the market”. This is because the device ships with Intel Management Engine disabled, and runs PureBoot, their homespun value-add of Coreboot.

=> ↺ Purism ☛ Introducing the Librem Server v2

• The new Librem Server features a 9th generation Intel Core i7 processor with 8 Cores and 12MB of cache. It can get up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM. It also features 6 USB 3.2 ports, a slim optical disk drive, 2 internal drive bays, and 4 “hot-swap” 3.5 SATA 3.0 bays directly accessible from the front panel.

• We’ve taken some of the best server hardware and hardened it with PureBoot, our fully-auditable secure boot process that replaces the existing BIOS with coreboot, disables the Intel Management Engine, and adds tamper detection for the BIOS, kernel, and all files related to the boot process using keys fully in the owner’s control. Combined with our Librem Key at boot time, tamper detection is foolproof with an LED (designed to be bright enough to view over a security camera) that continually blinks red if the BIOS is tampered with.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Spyware discovered in 101 Android apps downloaded 421M times – SiliconANGLE

=> ↺ The Sun ☛ Google warns all Android users to turn on extra feature before hackers attack – click blue button now | The US Sun

=> ↺ ZDNet ☛ How to force-close apps from the Notification Shade in Android 13 | ZDNET

=> ↺ Pocket Lint ☛ How to screen record on Android phones

=> ↺ Do you know about this price tracking feature on your Android? | Fox News

=> ↺ 9 Ways to Fix Split Screen Not Working on Android Devices – Guiding Tech

=> ↺ How to activate and use an eSIM on Android | Trusted Reviews

=> ↺ Forbes ☛ Google Issues Android TV Security Warning

=> ↺ SamMobile ☛ Android 14 One UI 6.0 update tracker for Samsung Galaxy phones – SamMobile

=> ↺ Android Police ☛ Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra is the most popular high-end Android phone of 2023 so far

=> ↺ SamMobile ☛ Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra was best-selling high-end Android phone in Q1 2023 – SamMobile

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Using WordPress for a self-hosted blog

• While I long since moved off WordPress for my own blog, I’ve mentioned that I still maintain various installs for others. This has prompted a few of you to ask if it’s worth it for a personal blog.

• I’d say so. If you’re not tempted by static site generators, or prefer running server-side software (as I keep being tempted back to), it works fine. There are so many benefits to hosting your own material if you can, regardless of what you use. In the words of my late mum: stop worrying about the chisel, and get carving!

Web Browsers/Web Servers

=> ↺ Daniel Stenberg ☛ The Gemini protocol seen by this HTTP client person

• There is again a pull-request submitted to the curl project to bring support for the Gemini protocol. It seems like a worthwhile effort that I support, even if it is also a lot of work involved and it might take some time before it reaches the state in which it can be merged. A previous attempt at doing this was abandoned a while ago.

• This renewed interest made me take a fresh tour through the current Gemini protocol spec and I decided to write down some observations for you. So here I am. These are comments based on my reading of the 0.16.1 version of the protocol spec. I have implemented Internet application protocols client side for some thirty years. I have not actually implemented the Gemini protocol.

=> ↺ Jim Nielsen ☛ Browser Defaults We Throw Away

• I think there are a few browser-related features that, collectively, we simply ignore. They’re built-in to the browser for our use, and yet it has become an almost knee-jerk reaction to immediately override them.

=> ↺ Daniel Stenberg ☛ curl 8.1.2 ate one too

• This is the second follow-up patch release in the 8.1.x series due to regressions and bugs that are too annoying to leave lingering around.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ [Old] [Repeat] Jason W Comeau ☛ Clever Code Considered Harmful

• This is important to keep in mind if you’re building an open-source tool, but it’s even more important if you’re working in a production codebase with other humans. Especially ones that have less experience than you.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Quitting Time

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Simple Cubes Show Off AI-Driven Runtime Changes In VR

• AR and VR developer [Skarredghost] got pretty excited about a virtual blue cube, and for a very good reason. It marked a successful prototype of an augmented reality experience in which the logic underlying the cube as a virtual object was changed by AI in response to verbal direction by the user. Saying “make it blue” did indeed turn the cube blue! (After a little thinking time, of course.)

=> ↺ Anders Borch ☛ Combine.social as an Org

• I have some ambitions about where I want to take combine.social over time. It starts with taking the old toottail repository and moving it into a Github organization.

• I want to make it easier to adopt combine.social into your workflow, to trust that the code does what it says it does and nothing else. I already created a privacy policy specifically to mitigate any privacy concerns.

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Spreadsheets as a knowledge base and mental map

• Back in February I talked about how I mentally map things, and admitted I was using spreadsheets more. A few of you asked if I could provide some examples, so that’s what I’m (finally!) getting to here. I use LibreOffice, but other graphical spreadsheets have equivalent functionality.

• In summary, I tend to think of things in terms of matrices. Turns out, a spreadsheet is a giant, beautiful, flexible canvas upon which to build them! I can can fill out, sort, filter, and search for things using this glorified database, and change things easily.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The First Street Baptist Church in America: Jesus Had 2 Dads

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Better Than Reality

• Ever since I read media scholar Julie Turnock’s The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light & Magic and the Rendering of Realism, I haven’t been able to watch a movie or TV show that contains special effects without focusing on the wrong things. Instead of dragons or landscapes from the past, I see particles everywhere: fog and dust and mist and dirt and shrapnel and rain. These digital details are meant to provide the texture of reality, but now I see them as a constant blanket of static coating the action. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, so if you enjoy admiring the realism of elven villages, don’t read this book.

Education

=> ↺ Rachel ☛ Feedback: I try to answer “how to become a systems engineer”

• I got some anonymous feedback a while back asking if I could do an article on how to become a systems engineer. I’m not entirely sure that I can, and part of that is the ambiguity in the request. To me, a “systems engineer” is a Real Engineer with actual certification and responsibilities to generally not be a clown. That’s so far from the industry I work in that it’s not even funny any more.

=> ↺ CER ☛ The information won’t just sink in: Helping teachers provide technology-assisted data literacy instruction in social studies

• Last year, Tammy Shreiner and I published an article in the British Journal of Educational Technology, “The information won’t just sink in: Helping teachers provide technology-assisted data literacy instruction in social studies.” (I haven’t been able to blog much the last year while starting up PCAS, so please excuse my tardiness in sharing this story.) The journal version of the paper is here, and our final submitted version (not paywalled) is available here.

=> ↺ Stacey on IoT ☛ My five big takeaways from this week’s big smart home event

• I’m currently in Dallas for the Parks Associates Connections conference, where it’s clear that the smart home industry is laser-focused on five big topics. And while the mood here is fairly grim with regards to the short term, it is optimistic when it comes to the long term.

• The five big topics of conversation both onstage and offstage have been smart energy, senior living, the Matter smart home interoperability standard, generative AI, and privacy. Smart energy and senior living offer the greatest hope for service revenue while Matter and generative AI have provoked both confusion and disappointment. The vibe around privacy, meanwhile, has been one of begrudging acceptance. Yes, this is something the industry needs to care about.

=> ↺ Jon Udell ☛ Ed Iacobucci on DayJet, from IT Conversations

• There’s much more to say about Descript, which by the way deployed a significant upgrade in the middle of my project, but for now I’ll just say: Thank you! It’s a brilliant piece of software that enabled me to revisit one of my most treasured conversations and bring it to life in a way that people can now search for and read, as well as hear, with maximum fidelity. DayJet folded in 2008; it was a remarkable tale of innovation; here’s hoping Ed’s dream will come true.

=> ↺ Telex (Hungary) ☛ Opposition MEP to request that EC make education reform in Hungary condition for EU funds

• • Anna Donáth, Momentum MEP said at the party’s campaign launching press conference in front of the cordons at the Prime Minister’s office.

Hardware

=> ↺ Devever ☛ Modern CPUs have a backstage cast

• If you take someone with intermediate knowledge of computing in the right areas, and ask them how an x86 machine boots, they’ll probably start telling you about how the CPU first comes up in real mode and starts executing code from the 8086 reset vector of FFFF:FFF0. This understanding of how an x86 machine boots has remained remarkably persistent, as far as I can tell because this basic narrative about the boot process has been handed down from website to website, generation to generation, largely unchanged.

• It’s also a pack of lies and hasn’t reflected the true nature of the boot process for some time. It’s true the 8086 reset vector is still used, but only because it’s a standard “ABI” for the CPU to transfer control to the BIOS (whether legacy PC BIOS or UEFI BIOS). In reality an awful lot happens before this reset vector starts executing.1 Aside from people having vaguely heard about the Intel Management Engine, this modern reality of the boot process remains largely unknown. It doesn’t help that neither Intel nor AMD have really gone out of their way to actually document what the modern boot process looks like, and large parts of this process are handled by vendor-supplied mystery firmware blobs, which may as well be boxes with “???” written in them. Mainly we have the substantial assistance of assorted reverse engineers and security researchers to thank for the fact that we even have a decent picture of what the modoern x86 boot process actually looks like for both Intel and AMD. I could write a whole article about that process — but instead, I’d like to focus on something else.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Supercon 2022: [Jorvon Moss] Gives His Robots A Soul

• How do you approach your robot designs? Maybe, you do it from a ‘oh, I have these cool parts’ position, or from a ‘I want to make a platform on wheels for my experiments’ perspective. In that case, consider that there’s a different side to robot building – one where you account for your robot’s influence on what other people around feel about them, and can get your creations the attention they deserve. [Jorvon ‘Odd-Jayy’ Moss]’s robots are catchy in a way that many robot designs aren’t, and they routinely go viral online. What are his secrets to success? A combination of an art background, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration, and a trove of self-taught electronics skills helped him develop a standout approach to robot building.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Now That Snail Mail Has Pretty Much Been Rendered Obsolete, Congress Is Finally Getting Serious About Terminating Postal Surveillance

• For as long as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has had scanners, the government has been able to obtain information about senders and recipients. Under the Third Party Doctrine, information shared with third parties (in this case, shared with the government directly) is the government’s to have. No warrant needed.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Ultimate Garage Door Control Does The Job Brilliantly

• [Stephen Carey] had previously relied on an Insteon garage door controller, only to have it perform poorly and fail at integrating with Alexa properly. Thus, he did what any good hacker would do, and built his own system instead.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Pretty Small Robot Is Capable, Nonetheless

• When science fiction authors imagined robots in the 20th century, many of them were huge imposing steel automatons. [Shane]’s designs for the Pretty Small Robot are quite contrary to that, being tiny in stature and cute in affect.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Eating Disorder Helpline Disables Chatbot for ‘Harmful’ Responses After Firing Human Staff

• After NEDA workers decided to unionize in early May, executives announced that on June 1, it would be ending the helpline after twenty years and instead positioning its wellness chatbot Tessa as the main support system available through NEDA. A helpline worker described the move as union busting, and the union representing the fired workers said that “a chatbot is no substitute for human empathy, and we believe this decision will cause irreparable harm to the eating disorders community.”

=> ↺ NBC ☛ Foodborne illness outbreaks at restaurants are often linked to sick workers, CDC finds

• Sick employees are major contributors to the spread of foodborne illnesses at restaurants and other food establishments, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Tuesday.

• From 2017 to 2019, the report found, around 40% of foodborne illness outbreaks with known causes were at least partly associated with food contamination by a sick or infectious worker. In 2017, for instance, Chipotle attributed a norovirus outbreak at its restaurant in Sterling, Virginia, to an employee who came to work while ill.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ DIY 3D Printed Rain Gauge Connects To Home Assistant

• Measuring local rainfall has real practical uses, especially in agriculture, but most of us will have to admit that it’s at least partly about drawing cool graphs on a screen. Whatever your motivation, you can build this open source electronic rain gauge designed by [Sebastian] of Smart Solutions for Home, and integrate it with Home Assistant.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Maryland Cops Can’t Seem To Understand Why Marijuana Legalization Means They Can’t Search Cars Just Because They Smell Marijuana

• Everyone likes an easy day at the office. Cops are no exception. They like easy excuses to disregard the Fourth Amendment. Pretextual stops are how cop business has been done for years. Any missing tail light or (subjectively) too dark window tint is enough to initiate a traffic stop and apply pressure on drivers to submit to a so-called “consensual” search of their car.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Hackaday Prize 2023: EyeBREAK Could Be A Breakthrough

• For those with strokes or other debilitating conditions, control over one’s eyelid can be one of the last remaining motor functions. Inspired by [Jeremiah Denton] blinking in Morse code on a televised interview, [MBW] designed an ESP32-based device to decode blinks into words.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ A Deeper Look At The Surgeon General’s Report On Kids & Social Media: It’s Not What You Heard

• We had just recently written about the American Psychological Association’s very thorough and detailed report going through much of the research about the impact of social media on the mental health of kids. That report was careful, and nuanced, and basically said that there is little evidence that social media is inherently bad for kids. It noted that studies suggested social media actually seems to be beneficial for many kids, and in the cases where it’s harmful, there are often other, extenuating circumstances. It had many recommendations, focused mainly on better educating children about how to use social media appropriately, rather than any sort of moral panic about it (of course, as we noted, the media still misrepresented the study and claimed it “warned of social media’s potential harm to kids.”)

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Growers nervous over drier conditions for winter crops

• Australia’s winter crop is on target to exceed last year’s planting but overall production could be significantly lower than last year, a Rabobank report shows.

• In its annual Australian winter crop outlook the agribank forecasts 23.48 million hectares will be planted this year, up 0.3 per cent on last year.

Proprietary

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Why an Octopus-like Creature Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I.

• Comparing an A.I. language model to a Shoggoth, @TetraspaceWest said, wasn’t necessarily implying that it was evil or sentient, just that its true nature might be unknowable.

• “I was also thinking about how Lovecraft’s most powerful entities are dangerous — not because they don’t like humans, but because they’re indifferent and their priorities are totally alien to us and don’t involve humans, which is what I think will be true about possible future powerful A.I.”

• The Shoggoth image caught on, as A.I. chatbots grew popular and users began to notice that some of them seemed to be doing strange, inexplicable things their creators hadn’t intended. In February, when Bing’s chatbot became unhinged and tried to break up my marriage, an A.I. researcher I know congratulated me on “glimpsing the Shoggoth.” A fellow A.I. journalist joked that when it came to fine-tuning Bing, Microsoft had forgotten to put on its smiley-face mask.

=> ↺ NVISO Labs ☛ Transforming search sentences to query Elastic SIEM with OpenAI API

• The primary task of a security analyst or threat hunter is to ask the right questions and then translate them into SIEM query languages, like SPL for Splunk, KQL for Sentinel, and DSL for Elastic. These questions are designed to provide answers about what actually happened. For example: “Identify failed login attempts, Search for a specific user’s login activities, Identify suspicious process creation, Monitor changes to registry keys, Detect user account lockouts, etc.”

• The answers to these questions will likely lead to even more questions. Analysts will keep interrogating the SIEM until they get a clear answer. This allows them to piece together a timeline of all the activities and explain whether it is a false positive or an actual incident. To do this, the analysts need to know a bunch of things. First, they need to be familiar with several types of attacks. Next, they need to understand the infrastructure (cloud systems, on-premises, applications, etc.). And on top of all that, they must learn how to use these SIEM tools effectively.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Perhaps GPT Is Not Ready For The Supreme Court

• Over the last few months, we’ve written a bunch about DoNotPay, the company run by Joshua Browder, claiming that it is the “world’s first robot lawyer” — that is until people take him to court for various things, at which point he says the term is just meant to be for marketing, and not to be taken seriously.

Windows TCO

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Personal Information of 9 Million Individuals Stolen in MCNA Ransomware Attack

• The data breach, which occurred between February 26 and March 7, impacted both current and former members of certain state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs, the company says in the notification letter, a copy of which was submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

• During the incident, an unauthorized party accessed multiple systems within MCNA’s network, infected them with malware, and stole personal information stored on them.

=> ↺ ABC ☛ Worst cyberattack in Greece disrupts high school exams, causes political spat

• It said the distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks aimed at overwhelming the platform occurred for a second consecutive day Tuesday. The attack involved computers from 114 countries, causing outages and delays in high school exams but failing to incapacitate the system, the ministry said.

Security

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Bruce Schneier ☛ Brute-Forcing a Fingerprint Reader

• Depending on the model, the attack takes between 40 minutes and 14 hours.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ EU’s Proposed Cyber Resilience Act Raises Concerns for Open Source and Cybersecurity

• EFF welcomes the intention of the legislation, but the proposed law will penalize open source developers who receive any amount of monetary compensation for their work. It will also require manufacturers to report actively exploited, unpatched vulnerabilities to regulators. This requirement risks exposing the knowledge and exploitation of those vulnerabilities to a larger audience, furthering the harms this legislation is intended to mitigate.

• Open source software serves as the backbone of the modern internet. Contributions from developers working on open source projects such as Linux and Apache, to name just two, are freely used and incorporated into products distributed to billions of people worldwide. This is only possible through revenue streams which reward developers for their work, including individual donations, foundation grants, and sponsorships. This ecosystem of development and funding is an integral part of the functioning and securing of today’s software-driven world.

• The CRA imposes liabilities for commercial activity which bring vulnerable products to market. Though recital 10 of the proposed law exempts not-for-profit open source contributors from what is considered “commercial activity” and thus liability, the exemption defines commercial activity much too broadly. Any open source developer soliciting donations or charging for support services for their software is not exempted and thus liable for damages if their product inadvertently contains a vulnerability which is then incorporated into a product, even if they themselves did not produce that product. Typically, open source contributors and developers write software and make it available as an act of good-will and gratitude to others who have done the same. This would pose a risk to such developers if they receive even a tip for their work. Smaller organizations which produce open source code to the public benefit may have their entire operation legally challenged simply for lacking funds to cover their risks. This will push developers and organizations to abandon these projects altogether, damaging open source as a whole.

=> ↺ Krebs On Security ☛ Discord Admins Hacked by Malicious Bookmarks

• A number of Discord communities focused on cryptocurrency have been hacked this past month after their administrators were tricked into running malicious Javascript code disguised as a Web browser bookmark.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Video ☛ Tesla Had a Massive Data Leak

=> ↺ Patrick Breyer ☛ Data Retention: Red Line Against Storage of Citizens’ IP Addresses

• On 15 and 16 May the judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union heard the French government, several French NGOs, the European Data Protection Supervisor and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity in a case whose outcome will significantly strengthen or weaken, respectively the privacy of more than 447 million EU citizen’s activities on the Internet. (See case C‑470/21)

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ Section 702 data led to State Department warnings about North Korean IT scams, official says

• The revelation about the 2022 scheme comes as the State Department joins the intelligence community, the Justice Department, and the White House in pushing for Congress to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before its sunset at the end of this year.

• While other officials have focused primarily on the surveillance tool’s importance in combatting nation-state threats, Brett Holmgren, the State Department’s assistant secretary for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, emphasized how crucial the tool is to diplomatic efforts.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ The FBI as advanced persistent threat – and what to do about it

• Consider a repeat offender: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Last week, the FBI was caught using its power to hoover up communications without a warrant, ostensibly to monitor foreign threats, to plunder the privacy of many thousands of US citizens whose revulsion at a brutal killing of a Black man by white cops marked them as activists.

• This is nothing new. Search for “FBI abuse of powers” – replacing FBI with other state agencies to taste – and you’ll be scrolling for a year. It’s actually quite cheering that democracies still have safeguards to bring this stuff to light, and yet it keeps happening. If you live in a part of the world where such protection is diluted or absent, you won’t need telling how bad it can get.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ FTC Gives Fertility App $200k Wrist Slap For Sharing Sensitive Medical Info

• We’ve mentioned for years how there’s now an absolute ocean of telecoms, services, apps, and other companies that are busy collecting all manner of sensitive location, health, mental health, browsing, and sexual preference data, then selling access to it to a massive array of dodgy and poorly regulated data brokers. Despite this, we consistently refuse to pass any sort of competent internet privacy law or competently regulate said brokers.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ To Save the News, We Must Ban Surveillance Advertising

• The ad-tech industry is incredibly profitable, raking in hundreds of billions of dollars every year by spying on us. These companies have tendrils that reach into our apps, our televisions, and our cars, as well as most websites. Their hunger for our data is insatiable. Worse still, a whole secondary industry of “brokers” has cropped up that offers to buy our purchase records, our location data, our purchase histories, even our medical and court records. This data is continuously ingested by the ad-tech industry to ensure that the nonconsensual dossiers of private, sensitive, potentially compromising data that these companies compile on us are as up-to-date as possible. 

• Commercial surveillance is a three-step process:

• This data-gathering and processing is the source of innumerable societal harms: it fuels employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and is a pipeline for predatory scams. The data also finds its way into others’ hands, including the military, law enforcement, and hostile foreign powers. Insiders at large companies exploit data for their own benefit. It’s this data that lets scam artists find vulnerable targets and lets stalkers track their victims. 

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Federal Judge Makes History in Holding That Border Searches of Cell Phones Require a Warrant

• EFF is thrilled about this decision, given that we have been advocating for a warrant for border searches of electronic devices in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade. If the case is appealed to the Second Circuit, we urge the appellate court to affirm this landmark decision.

• U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) asserts broad authority to conduct warrantless, and often suspicionless, device searches at the border, which includes ports of entry at the land borders, international airports, and seaports.

• For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, allowing not only warrantless but also often suspicionless searches of luggage and other items crossing the border.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ The FBI’s Constant Abuse Of Section 702 Surveillance May Finally Take This Tool Away From The NSA

• The FBI has fucked around and now it’s on a collision course with Finding Out. The NSA likes its Section 702 collection — an upstream collection authorized to gather communications in bulk from foreigners as well as US persons communicating with foreigners.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Secret Bookshelf Door Uses Hidden Fingerprint Scanner

• What is it that compels us about a secret door? It’s almost as if the door itself and the promise of mystery is more exciting than whatever could lay beyond. In any case, [Scott Monaghan] is a lover of the form, and built his own secret door hidden in a bookshelf, as all good secret doors should be.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ France24 ☛ How new EU sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards could backfire

• The European Union levied new sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards last week over a brutal crackdown on protesters. But some experts question the effectiveness of sanctions, saying they risk pushing Tehran closer to other sanctioned states, namely Russia and China. Instead, they advocate the creation of a special task force similar to the one hunting down Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs.

=> ↺ [Repeat] MIT Technology Review ☛ The future of TikTok bans

• Recently, I drove from Washington, DC, to New York and passed through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey on the way while scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Crossing all those state lines got me thinking about Montana and its recent ban on TikTok, the massive social media app owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Blindman’s Bluff

• America’s Continuing Quest to Hide Torture.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ The Grayzone Debates National Endowment for Democracy on Group’s CIA Ties

• The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) contacted The Grayzone to dispute our characterization of their organization as a CIA cutout. Listen to our highly revealing conversation with the NED’s communications director.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Meduza’s sources close to Putin administration say Moscow drone attack was ‘predictable’ and damage ‘not terrible’ — Meduza

• Two sources close to the Putin administration have told Meduza that Tuesday morning’s drone attack on Moscow and the Moscow region was “predictable” after the smaller drone attack that hit the Kremlin on May 3.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Drone attack in Moscow and the Moscow region Eyewitness footage — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Almost greater than most’: A required ideological curriculum is about to be thrust upon Russia’s colleges. Here’s the syllabus for Russia’s future ‘patriotic intelligentsia.’ — Meduza

• A new curricular module called “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” will soon become a graduation requirement in Russia’s colleges and universities. Russia’s Higher Education Ministry has forwarded the course guidelines to schools, expecting that students will take 72 hours of instruction in the new subject, starting next fall. The syllabus was designed under the immediate supervision of the Kremlin’s inner “political bloc,” headed by Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko, with the apparent aim of reshaping Russia’s undergraduates into a “patriotic intelligentsia,” in the words of the program description itself. Among the learning objectives of the course, the guidelines name a “developed sense of civic responsibility and patriotism” that students should acquire, together with a sense of belonging to the so-called “Russian civilization.” Meduza has reviewed the curriculum guidelines published on an official Federal Education Standards website. Here’s the gist of how the Kremlin wants young Russians to think.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Debt Deal Raises Military Spending & OKs WV Pipeline While Introducing New Work Rules for Food Stamps

• President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are urging lawmakers to support a deal to suspend the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025, in order to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt for the first time in history. The two leaders reached a tentative agreement over the Memorial Day long weekend, but it must still be approved by Congress before a June 5 deadline, when the government is expected to run out of money to pay its bills. Both progressive lawmakers and members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus have expressed some opposition to the deal, which calls for nondefense discretionary spending to remain mostly flat while boosting military spending by about 3%. New work requirements would be established for some recipients of federal aid programs, and it cuts funding to the IRS and lifts a moratorium on student loan payments in place since the pandemic. The deal also speeds up the approval and construction of the proposed $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. We speak with Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and a former policy adviser to Senator Elizabeth Warren.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “King: A Life”: New Bio Details Extensive FBI Spying & How MLK’s Criticism of Malcolm X Was Fabricated

• We speak in depth with journalist Jonathan Eig about his new book, King: A Life, the first major biography of the civil rights leader in more than 35 years, which draws on unredacted FBI files, as well as the files of the personal aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to show how Johnson and others partnered in the FBI’s surveillance of King and efforts to destroy him, led by director J. Edgar Hoover. Eig also interviewed more than 200 people, including many who knew King closely, like the singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. The book has also drawn attention for its revelation that King was less critical of Malcolm X than previously thought.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Chinese barge likely plundered WWII shipwreck: Malaysia

• Malaysia’s maritime agency says a detained Chinese barge likely plundered two World War II British shipwrecks in the South China Sea after discovering 100 old artillery shells on it.

• Malaysian media reported that illegal salvage operators are believed to have targeted the HMS Repulse and the HMS Prince of Wales, which were sunk in 1941 by Japanese torpedoes days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

=> ↺ AntiWar ☛ Prophets of Doom: Kissinger and the ‘Intellectual’ Decline of the West

• It is unclear why 100-year-old Henry Kissinger has been elevated by Western intelligentsia to serve the role of the visionary in how the West should behave in response to the Russia-Ukraine war.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ From Ukraine to Sudan, Aid Workers Don’t Pick Sides

• Picking sides isn’t an option for humanitarian aid workers.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Drones Strike Moscow Civilian Areas, a First in Russia-Ukraine War

• At least eight drones were intercepted, the Kremlin said, but the foray raised questions about Russian air defenses.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ China foreign minister meets with Elon Musk in Beijing

• Strained US-Chinese relations require “mutual respect”, China’s foreign minister has said during a meeting with Elon Musk, reassuring the Tesla Ltd CEO that foreign companies are welcome.

War in Ukraine

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Opening remarks by Commissioner Lenarčič for CBRN Informal Ministerial

• European Commission Speech Brussels, 30 May 2023 Ladies and gentlemen,

• Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Mr. Klymenko [...]

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian Drone Attack Damages High-Rise Apartment Building In Kyiv

• At least one person was killed, several wounded, as Russia launched a fresh wave of drone attacks on Kyiv in the pre-dawn hours of May 30. According to authorities, 29 out of 31 Iranian-made drones were shot down by air defenses; however, falling debris caused fires in several districts of the Ukrainian capital, including a high-rise apartment block. Its upper floors were decimated, windows shattered throughout, and parked cars damaged below.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Lithuania Calls For Extra NATO Forces On Border

• Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda is urging a stronger NATO presence on the alliance’s eastern flank as Russia’s war on Ukraine continues.

=> ↺ AntiWar ☛ What We Saw and Heard in Crimea

• This is the second part of a three-part series on our recent trip to Russia. Read part one.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Ukraine Sent Poor, Untrained Men Into Bakhmut Meat Grinder to Save Better Forces for Counteroffensive

• One man told The Wall Street Journal that he had never held a gun before he was sent into the battle.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russia’s third wave of attacks on Kyiv in 24 hours leaves at least one dead — Meduza

• The Russian military launched the latest in a series of drone attacks on Kyiv on Monday night. Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported that a total of 31 Iranian-made Shahed “kamikaze” drones were used in the assault and that the city’s air defense forces managed to shoot down 29 of them.

=> ↺ AntiWar ☛ Libertarian Apologists for Ukraine’s Authoritarianism

• It should not come as a surprise that U.S. officials and members of the foreign policy establishment have falsely portrayed Ukraine as a noble democracy. Such deceptions in pursuit of assorted US foreign policy objectives around the globe are nothing new.

=> ↺ Mark Curtis ☛ Britain’s proxy war on Russia

• UK participation in the Ukraine conflict is far-reaching, involving military and intelligence support, arms supplies and information warfare. But as Ukraine makes gains on the battlefield, Whitehall sees the war not only as a way to defend Kyiv but to ensure the strategic defeat of its rival, Russia – a dangerous strategy.

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ Did Ukraine just win the war?

• As Ukraine’s ‘shaping’ activities continue across Russian-occupied Ukraine—and parts of Russian territory—ahead of its much-anticipated counteroffensive, the global political environment is gradually, but significantly, shifting in Ukraine’s favour.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine’s Diia platform sets the global gold standard for e-government

• Ukraine’s Diia app is widely seen as the world’s first next-generation e-government platform, and is credited with implementing what many see as a more human-centric government service model, writes Anatoly Motkin.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Russia’s new reality: Less Peter the Great, more Putin the Pariah

• The invasion of Ukraine has left Russia greatly diminished on the world stage and earned Putin a place in infamy alongside history’s greatest criminals. Instead of emulating Peter the Great, he has become Putin the Pariah, writes Peter Dickinson.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy honored with Atlantic Council Global Citizen Award in Kyiv

• KYIV, UKRAINE – May 30, 2023 – In recognition of his historic leadership during the Ukrainian people’s brave defense of their freedom, Atlantic Council Chairman John F.W. Rogers and President and CEO Frederick Kempe today presented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the Atlantic Council’s highest honor, its Global Citizen Award, a recognition conferred on unique individuals who contribute toward improving the state of the world.  

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ China is trading more with Russia—but so are many US allies and partners

• A number of countries have increased their trade with Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, including non-aligned countries and even some EU members.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Ukraine denies accusations of involvement in Moscow drone attacks

• Ukraine denied involvement in unprecedented drone attacks in Moscow on Tuesday that caused minor damage to buildings but no casualties. The Kremlin maintains the drones were Ukraine’s response to Russian strikes on its territory. A pre-dawn attack on Kyiv killed at least one person and injured four after falling debris hit an apartment building.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Taiwan’s volunteer soldiers fight for freedom and democracy – in Ukraine

• They say they are also gaining combat experience in case China invades their island

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian Governor Says Ukrainian Artillery Fire On Shelter In Belgorod Region Kills One

• One person was killed and two injured in the Belgorod region of Russia as a result of shelling of a temporary shelter for civilians, the governor of the region said on May 30.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ IMF To Enable $900 Million Disbursement To Ukraine

• An International Monetary Fund mission has completed its first review of a $15.6 billion loan program for Ukraine, and the country has met the required conditions, paving the way for a payout of around $900 million.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Bulgaria’s Top Court Rejects Russian’s Asylum Request

• Bulgaria’s Supreme Court has rejected a request for political asylum by 27-year-old Russian Aleksandr Stotsky, who fled Russia immediately after the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan’s US representative says Ukraine’s success against Russia will deter China from invading

• The greater the cost of Russia’s invasion, the less likely it is that China will take similar steps.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Taiwan’s rep in US on Ukraine lessons – and deterring China

• Our latest Monitor Breakfast: Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. talks of tensions with China, defensive preparations, and a Ukraine effect on attitudes.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Drone Attack Causes ‘Minor Damage’ In Moscow, Says Mayor

• A drone attack took place in Moscow on the morning of May 30, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russia Launches New Deadly Air Strikes On Kyiv; Drones Hit Moscow Buildings

• Russia launched a fresh wave of drone strikes on Kyiv on May 30 killing at least one person and wounding several others, but Ukrainian authorities said most of the drones were shot down by the capital’s air defenses, while Moscow was subjected to a rare drone attack that damaged several buildings.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Letter from Moscow: When war suddenly explodes over your roof

• In Moscow, it can be easy to ignore the devastating but faraway war in Ukraine. But that changes quickly when drones and anti-aircraft missiles start exploding in the skies overhead one morning.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Impact of the Moscow Drone Strike Is Psychological, Russian Military Commentators Say

• The Kremlin says the Defense Ministry responded well to the attack, but critics argue that the assault shows a lack of leadership from a government that promised only a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Moscow targeted in major drone attack

• Moscow came under attack from at least eight drones early Tuesday morning, Russian officials said, signaling that the Russian capital is no longer entirely shielded from the war in Ukraine.

• Driving the news: Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out the “terrorist attack,” but said all eight drones were shot down or had their systems jammed. Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky, claimed Ukraine was not “directly involved” but was “watching with pleasure.”

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Statement by the European Commission on the Polish law establishing a State Committee for the Examination of Russian Impacts on internal Security

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Pushkin monument gone from Rīga park

• The monument to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin has been collected from Kronvalda Park in Rīga, according to a Twitter entry by Rīga Vice-Mayor Linda Ozola on May 30.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ South Africa opposition party calls for arrest of Putin during upcoming BRICS conference

• South African opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) called Tuesday for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin should he enter the country for the upcoming BRICS Conference. Since March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has had an outstanding warrant for Putin’s arrest, which the DA now seeks to enforce.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuanian companies, state institutions come under cyber attacks

• A number of big Lithuanian companies and state institutions came under DDoS attacks on Tuesday. Some of the cyber attacks were carried out from Russia.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania blacklists 15 Russian officers for persecution of Kara-Murza

• Lithuania has added 15 Russian law enforcement officers responsible for the persecution of Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza to its list of undesirable persons, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Norway Says Beluga Whale With Apparent Russian-Made Harness Swims South To Sweden

• Norwegian authorities say a beluga whale, which was first spotted in Arctic Norway four years ago with an apparent Russian-made harness and alleged to have come from a Russian military facility, has been seen off Sweden’s coast nearly 2,000 kilometers to the south.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Pushkin Statue Removed From Latvian Park

• Authorities in Latvia’s capital, Riga, have moved a statue of 19th-century Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin from a downtown park to a warehouse, local media reported on May 30.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian Director, Writer Held In Detention Over Play

• A Moscow court on May 30 rejected requests by theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk have their pretrial detention changed to a different form of restraint such as house arrest.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Russian MFA Denounces NATO Forces Escalating Tensions In Kosovo

• “Those who are supposed to protect the local Serb majority from the arbitrariness of Kosovars have ended up siding with Pristina’s xenophobic aspirations,” Maria Zakharova said.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Russian Forces Shot Down Drones Heading Towards Moscow

• “It is quite clear that we are talking about Kiev’s response to our very effective attacks against one of its command centers,” Kremlin spokesman Peskov said.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Trial fence on Finland-Russia border nearing completion, one month behind schedule

• Finland ultimately plans to build a fence that will cover stretches totalling about 200 kilometres of the 1,300-km-long border with Russia.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Moscow Drone Attack: What We Know

• Russia’s Defense Ministry said that at least eight drones had targeted Moscow and the surrounding region.

=> ↺ ADF ☛ ‘A Malign Influence’: Russia’s Wagner Group Targets Civilians, Plunders Riches

• Despite promises of security, new data shows that when Wagner Group mercenaries enter a country violence comes with them. Civilian deaths are rising in the Central African Republic (CAR) where the group has operated since 2018, and Mali, where it has operated since late 2021.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Unjust on almost every possible count’ Philosopher Cécile Fabre on the moral criteria for war and whether Russia’s assault on Ukraine is comparable to the U.S. invasion of Iraq — Meduza

• For over a year, Russia’s leaders have been justifying their full-scale invasion of Ukraine by claiming that it’s part of an effort to “protect” their own citizens as well as the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas. They also frequently bring up the fact that the U.S. and NATO have invaded other countries before, saying this makes their criticisms of Russia’s actions hypocritical. French philosopher Cécile Fabre, an expert on military and political ethics and a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s All Souls College, spoke to Meduza about why these arguments fail to justify Russia’s war against Ukraine.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Shoigu says Russian troops hit another Patriot missile system in Kyiv ‘in recent days’ — Meduza

• Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Russian troops hit a U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system in Kyiv “in recent days,” the state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Putin administration instructs state-run media to emphasize authorities’ response to drone attacks and downplay some officials’ comments — Meduza

• Meduza has learned from sources within Russia’s state-run and pro-government media agencies how the Putin administration has instructed them to frame Tuesday morning’s drone attacks on Moscow and the Moscow region.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Eight Russian draftees receive prison sentences for desertion — Meduza

• A garrison military court sentenced eight draftees from Russia’s Kaliningrad region to long-term imprisonment for desertion. They reportedly fled a camp in the Luhansk region of Ukraine where they had been stationed by the Russian army. According to Mediazona, they were found guilty of desertion and not fulfilling orders during their period of mobilization.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Minor damage’ The aftermath of the the drone strikes on Moscow. In photos. — Meduza

• Three apartment buildings – on Leninsky prospekt and Profsoyuznaya street in Moscow, as well as on Atlasova Street in New Moscow – were struck by drones on May 30. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that several buildings in the city sustained “minor damage” as the result of the drone attack but that “nobody was seriously injured.” “All emergency services are at the affected sites. They’re investigating the circumstances of the incident,” he wrote on Telegram. He later added that two people sought medical care but that nobody required hospitalization. Some residents of the buildings which were hit by drones had to evacuate. A criminal case has been opened under Article 205 of the Criminal Code (an act of terrorism).

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Putin, Foreign Affairs Ministry call Moscow drone attacks ‘retaliatory’ ‘terrorist attacks’ — Meduza

• Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for a Tuesday morning drone attack on Moscow, calling the attack retaliation for a Russian strike on Ukraine’s military intelligence headquarters reportedly carried “two or three days ago.”

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Belgorod governor reports Ukrainian strike on evacuation shelter — Meduza

• Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, says that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have shelled a temporary civilian shelter for citizens evacuated from the Shebekinsky district.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Ukrainian woman detained in Moscow after trying to bring back children deported to Russia — Meduza

• A Ukrainian woman who came to Russia “on the orders of the Save Ukraine foundation” was detained in Moscow, reports Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. One of the news agency’s sources claims that the Save Ukraine foundation works with Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and that the detainee arrived in Russia to bring back orphans who had been deported from the occupied territories.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Ukrainian court sentences Wagner Group mercenary from Kazakhstan to nine years in prison — Meduza

• A Donetsk court sentenced a 23-year-old citizen of Kazakhstan to nine years in prison for fighting as a mercenary, reports the Ukrainian outlet Grati.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ The Dissenter ☛ Film Review: Reproducing FBI’s Interrogation Of Whistleblower Reality Winner

=> ↺ Salon ☛ Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira is nothing like Edward Snowden: He’s more like Donald Trump

• Another glaring, but overlooked, difference between Teixeira’s leaks and Snowden’s is the question of how each man viewed his actions. Teixeira bragged about breaking the rules, the sensitivity of what he had access to, and the “f**k ton of information” he possessed about U.S. intelligence on countries considered among America’s greatest enemies, such as Syria, Iran and China.

• Snowden, in contrast, was concerned about the U.S. breaking its own rules through mass domestic surveillance and bulk collection of Americans’ phone records — a concern later vindicated by an appeals court. Snowden did not boast about his disclosures or seek credit for them. That’s why he initially blew the whistle anonymously under the pseudonym “Citizenfour.”

• The most significant differences, however, are that Snowden made his disclosure to independent journalists who could vet the information, not to gamer buddies he was trying to impress, and that Snowden’s revelations were clearly in the public interest.

=> ↺ The Telegraph UK ☛ Cover-up row over ministers’ WhatsApps

• “It now appears that vital evidence has gone missing,” said Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader.

Environment

=> ↺ International Business Times ☛ Research reveals New York City could sink under its own weight in the near future

• A recent research article published in the Earth’s Science edition of Advancing Earth & Space Science suggested that New York City could sink under its own weight in the near future. The article published earlier this month shows how the island burdened by skyscrapers is subsiding by 2mm per year.

• The scientists have termed this research the most difficult task because the rate of this subsidence is comparatively new when measured against the urban load of buildings and people, which has been happening for a bigger period. Despite that, they have done thorough research comparing the surface geology of the place from different satellite image sources including GPS or the Global Positioning System and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Help ProPublica Report on Railroad Worker Safety

• To do this right, we need to hear from as many people who work in the system as possible. This means railroaders in all positions, managers and people familiar with the Federal Railroad Administration.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Fossil-fuel sponsors for sports and arts shown red card

• Fossil-fuel companies are being shown the red card on their sponsorships of sporting and arts events as industry bosses face pressure to ditch the lucrative deals under a voluntary code. 

• Leading environmental advocacy group the Climate Council will launch the code for sports clubs and arts institutions in response to pressure from athletes, artists, fans and punters for action to protect the planet.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Push for Indigenous inclusion in new energy economy

• The First Nations Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) is plugging into the booming renewable energy industry.

• Attracting delegates from industry and business, the organisation’s inaugural summit kicked off in Gladstone on Wednesday with a focus on Indigenous jobs and economic development.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ The Revelator ☛ Is Kelp the Next Ocean Hero? Only if We Can Protect It.

Finance

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Fidelity: Twitter is Now Only Worth a Third of What Elon Musk Paid for It

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ The Death Penalty for Homelessness

• You can measure the depth of a civilization by how it treats its poor, very young, elderly and mentally ill. By any such metric, ours here in the Exceptional Empire is barbaric. Take New York City mayor Eric Adams and his pronouncements on the homeless destitute.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Ralph Nader: Inverted Corporate Capitalism—Blocking Their Owner-Shareholders

• It is the season of annual shareholder meetings for giant corporations when CEOs go through the motions of elections for their Board of Directors and approval of other resolutions. People who own stock in General Motors (GM) receive the “GM Meeting Information” in an envelope emblazoned with this disingenuous message: […]

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Debt Deal Is a Tragedy

• Two men emerged from the Oval Office. One of them, President Joe Biden, said of the deal they’d just reached that it “reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone.”

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Asia stocks slump to monthly loss on weak China data

• Asia’s stockmarkets slid toward a second month of losses in a row on Wednesday as weak Chinese factory activity fed growing doubts about the post-pandemic recovery in the world’s second biggest economy.

• MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell one per cent in early trade and is down 2.4 per cent in a month where hopes for robust Chinese rebound have run dry.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Interest rate buffer intact despite ‘mortgage prison’

• The banking regulator is alert to mortgage stress as interest rates rise and borrowers face a looming deadline on cheap fixed-rate home loans, but won’t ease the rules.

• Refinancing a mortgage has hit the highest level in 20 years, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) chair John Lonsdale said on Wednesday.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Slow productivity growth risks inflation outlook: RBA

• The head of the Reserve Bank has issued a warning about weak productivity growth as it continues its fight against high inflation with interest rate hikes.

• Philip Lowe told a parliamentary committee that wages growth, in isolation, was not the problem.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Philip Lowe urges diversity on Reserve Bank board

• Populating the new monetary policy board solely with economists would be a backward step, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe says.

• The governor favours a diverse board that includes business people and labour market experts.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ The PwC scandal, the Big Four, and the real elephant in the room. What’s next?

• While PwC is struggling to contain what might be its very own Enron moment, the ATO, Treasury and the Senate are trying to figure out why nobody did anything about what everybody seemed to know. It’s now a scandal too big to go away, Kim Wingerei reports on what might be next.

• Fresh out of business school in Norway in 1980, this writer joined the illustrious Arthur Anderson, one of the then “Big 8” audit and consulting firms. At an internal meeting discussing proposed legislative changes to the tax benefits of limited partnerships, the local firm’s tax consulting partner was asked how it would affect some of our big clients. His answer was as succinct as it was cynical:

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ ACCC wary of market power in supermarket sector

• A lack of competition in the supermarket sector is making it easier for major players to charge shoppers more.

• The consumer watchdog has a close eye on the big supermarkets to make sure they aren’t using their market position to charge much higher prices for groceries.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Thousands of documents on PwC tax leak not released

• A key body involved in investigating the PwC tax advice scandal says there are thousands of documents relating to the matter that are yet to be released.

• Tax Practitioners Board chief executive Michael O’Neill told a Senate estimates hearing there might be thousands of documents relating to the confidentiality breach case that went beyond already publicly released emails.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ RBA governor ‘appalled’ by PwC leak revelations

• The Reserve Bank governor has labelled the confidentiality breach scandal embroiling PwC a disgrace and says the central bank will not sign new contracts with the firm until appropriate action has been taken.

• Philip Lowe also confirmed the bank has contracted the troubled consultancy giant to assist it in correcting staff underpayments.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ NYPost ☛ Biden sexual assault accuser Tara Reade feels ‘safe’ in Russia after fleeing over safety concerns

• “I felt safe and I felt heard and I felt respected,” Reade said of getting off the plane in Russia.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Tara Reade, Who Accused Biden of Assault, Says She Has Moved to Russia

• Years after accusing President Biden of sexual assault, Ms. Reade told a Russian outlet that she had moved in order to feel safe.

=> ↺ Michael Geist ☛ Extend the Deadline: My Submission to the CRTC on its Deeply Flawed Bill C-11 Consultations

• The CRTC’s Bill C-11 consultations are off to a rocky start with mounting concern over short deadlines that may limit public participation and reduce the quality of the submissions. A dozen groups have asked the Commission to extend the deadlines with more groups joining in the call. The deadline for comment on the extension ended yesterday and I navigated an exceptionally difficult consultation process (more on that shortly) to submit the comments posted below. I support the extension but argue that a better approach would be to wait until the government’s policy direction process is final and there is certainty on support for public interest group participation.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ AI CEOs Say AI Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Are Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This

• “I see this as a way for companies like Open AI to control the narrative and move public attention away from things like data consent, the legality of their systems, and the false and misleading information that they produce (and how all of these can impact our livelihoods). Essentially, it is a misdirection of public attention away from what matters towards that which suits their narrative and business model,” Luccioni added.

• “The whole thing looks to me like a media stunt, to try to grab the attention of the media, the public, and policymakers and focus everyone on the distraction of scifi scenarios,” Emily M. Bender a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington, told Motherboard. “This would seem to serve two purposes: it paints their tech as way more powerful and effective than it is and it takes the focus away from the actual harms being done, now, in the name of this technology. These include the pollution of the information ecosystem, the reinforcement and replication of biases at scale, exploitative labor practices and further gigification of the economy, enabling oppressive surveillance such as the ‘digital border wall’ and theft of data and creative work.”

=> ↺ MIT Technology Review ☛ How to talk about AI (even if you don’t know much about AI)

• Everyone is talking about AI, it seems. But if you feel overwhelmed or uncertain about what the hell people are talking about, don’t worry. I’ve got you.

• I asked some of the best AI journalists in the business to share their top tips on how to talk about AI with confidence. My colleagues and I spend our days obsessing over the tech, listening to AI folks and then translating what they say into clear, relatable language with important context. I’d say we know a thing or two about what we’re talking about.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Other Race

• Among the gamblers there’s excitement: Just who will face the next indictment? Will it be Trump, will it be Rudy Who finds himself in deeper doody?

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Ron DeSantis Is Flaunting His Résumé—Does Anyone Care?

• Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was planning to launch his presidential campaign as this issue of The Nation went to press, is accruing leadership credentials in a party that no longer exists. DeSantis has used his super­majority in the Florida Legislature to launch a head-spinning array of salvos in the right-wing culture wars—from an anti-trans surveillance regime in public schools and rolling book bans to an improbable assault on Disney as the avatar of all things woke.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Is It Sexist to Demand That Feinstein Resign?

• The drumbeat for Senator Dianne Feinstein to resign has reached a kind of dull fever pitch. Aside from the open secret of her cognitive decline, the California Democrat was “working from home” for three months straight due to shingles, holding up President Biden’s judicial nominees in Washington, D.C., at a time when women are dying like it’s 1973 all over again. Now Feinstein is back in the Senate, looking and sounding completely decrepit. There’s absolutely nothing feminist about defending her nonexistent “right” to remain in office, no matter what Kirsten Gillibrand tries to argue on CNN. Yet there is a double standard at work here, and leftist men in particular would do well to check themselves.1

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Soul-Crushing Misogyny Made Succession the Perfect Show for Our Time

• So Succession reached its finale, with both a bang and a whimper.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ NSW to ditch ‘one of most undemocratic’ voting schemes

• Controversial powers criticised for being one of the most undemocratic election systems in Australia are set to be ditched, the NSW government says.

• Businesses in the City of Sydney have had twice the voting power of ordinary residents in council elections since 2014.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Terence Eden ☛ MAS*H – War Is Heaven

• So now on to MAS*H. It’s hailed as a masterpiece of comedy. But, really, it’s an exercise in military propaganda.

• The first season is genuinely hilarious and, at times, moving. But there’s no disguising just how fun it makes war look.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Twitter to expand crowdsourced fact-checking tool after Pentagon explosion deepfake video

• The whole debacle was a testament to how realistic AI can create phony events and how such events can, in some way, even if just for a short time, rock the world. There has been a lot of talk in the last few years about the danger of deepfake technology in the age of information warfare. Recently, an image of the Pope dressed like a rap star went viral. Though harmless, it was so well done that one can only imagine the chaos this technology will cause now and in the near future.

=> ↺ The Hill ☛ Ocasio-Cortez says fake Twitter account impersonating her

• “FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on her official account Tuesday, referring to Twitter owner Elon Musk. “It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread. I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.”

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Man told by court to stay away from Brittany Higgins

• A man accused of making death threats online has been ordered to stay away from former political staffer Brittany Higgins and her fiance.

• David William Wonnocott, 49, appeared in a northern NSW court on Wednesday for the first time since his April arrest over social media threats of violence. 

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Journalists attacked, critical outlets investigated in Turkey election aftermath

• Turkish authorities should investigate multiple incidents of journalists being attacked or obstructed from reporting during the country’s recent election, and the media watchdog RTÜK should treat all outlets equally regardless of political stance, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

=> ↺ The Gray Zone ☛ British police detain journalist Kit Klarenberg, interrogate him about The Grayzone

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Employee Non-Compete Agreements Are Illegal, NLRB Lawyer Says

• The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued a memo on Tuesday stating that overly broad non-compete agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act by barring workers from opportunities to get new jobs. The memo is the latest of multiple governmental actions to address the problem of non-competes, including a proposed ruling by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year to ban them completely.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Takeover of Shasta County

• Mary Rickert opens her iPad, clicks on her hate-mail folder, and shows me some of the screeds she has received over the past three years. One begins: “I’d like to fuck Mary Rickert in the face with a brick.” Another has the subject line “Going, going, gone, dead woman walking.” She closes the folder, shudders, and says, “I have PTSD because of this, just from the insanity of it all. I have nightmares all the time. Watching the county just crumble is absolutely devastating for me… watching it being taken over by a far-right group.”1

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Are the Risk Managers Running Planned Parenthood?

• Jon Wiener: When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a lot of our friends immediately sent a check to Planned Parenthood—because Planned Parenthood is known to all as the organization that provides abortion services and defends abortion rights. But it turns out some of the affiliates are less willing to provide abortion services than others. And in many places, independent abortion clinics do a lot of the work, and face a lot of the threats from violent anti-abortion activists: for example, in Montana.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Body and Soul

• Arabesques, the first and only novel by the acclaimed Palestinian writer Anton Shammas, was originally translated into English 35 years ago, in 1988. It was a time of great turmoil and hope, with the Palestinian Intifada entering its second year, and it was also a time when the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian solidarity seemed to show more promise than they had at any other time. As though in confirmation, Shammas’s novel appeared, with its array of Israeli and Palestinian characters reflecting on one another and their relations in a wide range of locales. Perhaps most important, the novel managed to narrate the story of the Nakba in Hebrew to a Jewish Israeli public. When I read it back then, it represented a bold and promising departure suitable to the revolutionary times that Palestine was going through.1

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Republicans Attacked These Queer Students’ Lives. So They Fought Back.

• Kenzie Roller took a deep breath as they approached the stage microphone. It was Wednesday, March 29, and Roller, a high school senior from Louisville, Ky., had traveled to the state capitol in Frankfort so that they could be here, on this stage, to kick off the rally that they had spent the last 19 days planning. The message they had to share was as clear as day: Senate Bill 150—legislation that dramatically limits the rights of queer and trans youth in Kentucky—would harm them, their closest friends, and their entire community.

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ Racist killings in German city Hanau: Chaos in the police force

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Jefferson Parish Deputies May Have Violated Law in Eric Parsa’s Death, Feds Say

• The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana may have violated the civil rights of a 16-year-old autistic boy when deputies pinned him to the pavement, handcuffed and shackled, as officers sat on his back for more than nine minutes, according to a “statement of interest” filed this month by the Department of Justice as part of a civil rights lawsuit against JPSO.

• The teen, Eric Parsa, died on the scene in January 2020. The sheriff’s office has also recently faced a number of other lawsuits alleging wrongful death, excessive force and racial discrimination by deputies. The sheriff’s office was the subject of a yearlong investigation by ProPublica and WRKF and WWNO starting in 2021, which disclosed evidence of racial discrimination and violence by deputies; after the first story ran, the American Civil Liberties Union called on federal prosecutors to investigate the department.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Calls for tougher punishment after Iran executions

• Iranian Australians say they are at breaking point and fed up with government inaction as family members are executed, tortured and imprisoned back home.

• Australian-Iranian leaders want the government to step in and go harder against the theocratic and authoritarian regime, which has begun executing protesters.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ uni Stanford ☛ Here’s How the European Commission Proposal to Force Websites to Pay ISPs Violates Net Neutrality

• In a frontal assault on net neutrality, the European Commission wants to force websites and apps to pay fees to broadband companies like Telefonica, Orange and Deutsche Telekom, and it just closed its call for comments on the proposal.

• Network fees like this have never existed in the EU. They violate the EU’s net neutrality law, and, if put in place, would be a radical departure from how the internet has operated and flourished over the last 30 years.

• While reporting solid profits and telling their investors everything is going great, European internet service providers (ISPs) have seemingly convinced the European Commission that the normal rise in online traffic is overwhelming and that, without the government requiring online companies to pay them, they’ll be unable to roll out 5G and fiber fast enough to meet EU goals.

Monopolies

Trademarks

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi ☛ Hello World #21 out now: Focus on primary computing education

• Issue 21 of Hello World is filled with inspiration and practical ideas for teaching computing in primary school, for all educators.

Copyrights

=> ↺ [Old] USDOJ ☛ 1854. Copyright Infringement — First Sale Doctrine

• The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) & (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction.

• Further, the privileges created by the first sale principle do not “extend to any person who has acquired possession of the copy or phonorecord from the copyright owner, by rental, lease, loan, or otherwise, without acquiring ownership of it.” See 17 U.S.C. § 109(d). Most computer software is distributed through the use of licensing agreements. Under this distribution system, the copyright holder remains the “owner” of all distributed copies. For this reason, alleged infringers should not be able to establish that any copies of these works have been the subject of a first sale.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Flawless IPTV: Men Behind UK’s Largest Pirate Service Jailed For 30+ Years

• Five men behind pirate IPTV service ‘Flawless’ were sentenced to more than 30 years in prison today, after a private prosecution by the Premier League. A FACT test purchase in 2017 led to the involvement of four territorial police forces, three regional Trading Standards units, and the arrest of service kingpin, Mark Gould, in 2018. In less than two years, Flawless served over 50,000 UK households while generating millions in revenue.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ U.S. Govt Launches Consultation on Future Anti-Piracy Strategies

• The U.S. Government’s Patent and Trademark Office will host a public roundtable to discuss future anti-piracy and counterfeiting strategies. The agency notes that piracy causes billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy each year. No concrete proposals are mentioned but rightsholders will likely suggest pirate site blocking as an option.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Google Nixes ‘Downloader’ App From Store After DMCA Says Its Browser Can Get To Piracy Sites

• As anyone who reads this site regularly will know, DMCA abuse happens all the time. Typically you see this sort of thing resulting from clear attempts to hobble a competitor, or to silence content someone doesn’t want to see, or pure trolling for the purposes of producing mayhem. But we also see this kind of “abuse” stemming from entities, foreign and domestic, that simply don’t know the strictures under which DMCA and copyright law actually operate.

=> ↺ Creative Commons ☛ Kirsty von Gogh — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 17

• “Opening up cultural artifacts from African organizations might change how we’re represented in online spaces” says Kirsty von Gogh from Johannesburg. She also shares how increasing production of culturally, linguistically, and contextually aware and relevant content can ensure a more representative digital space for Africans, and how open licensing increases accessibility to this content.

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