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● 06.23.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 23/06/2023: SDL 2.28.0 Released, IBM Angers the Community

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

GNU/Linux

Server

=> ↺ Unix Men ☛ Optimizing Web Performance with Linux: Tools and Techniques [Ed: This is webspam disguised as article about “Linux” (see links there)]

=> ↺ Unix Men ☛ Optimizing Web Performance with Linux: Tools and Techniques [Ed: This is webspam disguised as article about “Linux” (see links there)]

Applications

=> ↺ Linux Links ☛ Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Apple Calculator

• In 2020, Apple began the Apple silicon transition, using self-designed, 64-bit ARM-based Apple M1 processors on new Mac computers. Maybe it’s the perfect time to move away from the proprietary world of Apple, and embrace the open source Linux scene.

• Apple’s Calculator app lets users perform basic arithmetic calculations with the standard calculator. With the scientific calculator you can also perform exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions.

• Apple Calculator is propriety software and not available for Linux. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ OSTechNix ☛ How To Remove Old Unused Linux Kernels

• Each installed Linux kernel occupies a significant amount of disk space. Over time, as you update your kernel to newer versions, older kernels can accumulate on your system, taking up valuable disk space. By removing old kernels, you can free up disk space, allowing for more efficient utilization and preventing potential storage shortages. In this guide, we will learn how to find and remove old unused Kernels in Linux operating systems.

=> ↺ HowTo Geek ☛ What Is the AUR in Arch Linux, and Should You Use It?

• The AUR is one of the jewels in the crown of Arch Linux, providing thousands of additional software packages. But is this user-driven repository safe to use, or should you avoid it?

• [...]

• The AUR (Arch User Repository) is a community driven software repository that provides upwards of 85,000 software packages to Arch Linux users. Unlike other Arch repositories such as the core, extra, and multilib repositories, the AUR doesn’t host ready-to-install packages. In fact, it doesn’t host binary files or packaged software at all.

• The AUR hosts package build files, called PKGBUILDs. These are shell scripts that are run by the Arch makepkg tool. When makepkg runs, it looks for a file called “PKGBUILD.” If it finds one, it opens it and follows the instructions inside it to create a software package archive on your computer. If you’re familiar with compiling on the command line, a PKGBUILD file and makepkg work together in a similar fashion to a MAKEFILE and the make utility.

• The PKGBUILD instructions download source code files and other files that are required to create the package archive. The pacman tool is called automatically to install the software from the package archive.

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Styling OPML and RSS with XSLT to XHTML

• I do the same thing with my feeds. I normally see JavaScript libraries recommended, but it seems heavy and a bit redundant when our browsers can literally render it however we want for us, for free: [...]

=> ↺ Darek Kay ☛ Style your RSS feed

• RSS is not dead. It is not mainstream, but it’s still a thriving protocol, especially among tech users. However, many people do not know what RSS feeds are or how to use them. Most browsers render RSS as raw XML files, which doesn’t help users understand what it’s all about: [...]

• In this post, I’ll explain how to style RSS feeds and educate readers at the same time.

=> ↺ APNIC ☛ A further update on IPv6 extension headers

• Following the publication of RFC 7872 in 2016, a number of research teams have been looking at the nature of network and host behaviours in discarding IPv6 packets with various extension headers (EH). The findings reported in RFC 7872 were a significant level of packet loss (‘significant’ being above 10% in all cases) for IPv6 packets that contained extension headers that carried Destination Options (DST), Hop-by-Hop Options (HBH) and Fragmentation Controls (Frag).

=> ↺ HowTo Forge ☛ How to Set up a Bastion Server with Warpgate on Debian

• A Bastion Server refers to a computer/machine/server that is designed and configured specifically to withstand attacks on computer networks. The functionality of the Bastion Server is similar to a proxy or load balancer for applications. It allows you to access computers or servers that are located in DMZ networks.

=> ↺ Cloudbooklet ☛ How to Open Port in Linux: Simple Step-by-Step Guide

• Learn how to open port in linux with step-by-step instructions. Discover the essential commands and configurations to enable smooth communication and enhance network connectivity on your Linux system

=> ↺ TecAdmin ☛ Understanding the LD_LIBRARY_PATH Environment Variable

• In the world of Linux, environment variables play a crucial role in determining the behavior of various processes in the system. One such environment variable is LD_LIBRARY_PATH. This article aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable in Linux.

=> ↺ HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Passbolt CE Password Manager on AlmaLinux 9

• Passbolt is a free and open-source password manager based on PHP, MySQL, and OpenPGP. It is a self-hosted application server, you can install it on your server. This tutorial will show you how to install Passbolt Password Manager with a MariaDB database server and Nginx web server on an AlmaLinux 9 server.

=> ↺ HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Prometheus and Node Exporter on AlmaLinux 9

• Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting platform. In this guide, we’ll go over the installation of Prometheus and Node Exporter step-by-step on AlmaLinux 9 servers.

=> ↺ HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install LEMP Stack (Nginx, PHP and MariaDB) on Debian 12

• The LEMP software stack is a group of open-source software that enables a server to host dynamic websites and apps written in PHP. It is an acronym for Linux, Nginx (pronounced as Engine-X), MySQL, and PHP.

=> ↺ Linux Capable ☛ How to Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in Linux

• Linux, with its unfathomable capabilities, has etched itself into the hearts of developers and system administrators. One of the quintessential elements in sculpting a resilient Linux environment is understanding the usage of environment variables, particularly LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

=> ↺ Own HowTo ☛ How to setup SMTP email on Ghost

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to configure SMTP on Ghost.

• Ghost is a content management system that you can use to manage content on your blog. In order to send emails from Ghost, one needs to configure emails manually on the config.production.json.

=> ↺ Linux Capable ☛ How to Monitor Memory Usage with Smem in Linux

• In the sophisticated world of Linux, efficient memory management is paramount for optimizing system performance. Smem is a robust memory reporting tool that arms you with the vital ability to keep an eagle eye on memory usage.

=> ↺ TechRepublic ☛ How to start, stop, and restart services in Linux

• Controlling services in Linux doesn’t have to be a confounding experience. Here’s how the process works and why it is often seen as an overly complicated task.

=> ↺ Fedora Magazine ☛ Fedora Magazine: How to use Testing Farm outside of RHEL

• Continuous integration in public projects is widely used. But it has limitations such as the size of the resources and the execution time. For instance, when you use GitHub actions free tier, you are limited to agents with 2cpu and 7GiB of memory and a total execution time of 2000 minutes per month. Similar limitations are used by other CI providers like Azure Pipelines or Travis CI. The mentioned CI systems are popular. But for some use cases, free tier is not enough. Fortunately, for community projects which are maintained or co-maintained by Red Hat or Fedora/CentOS projects, there is Testing Farm.

Games

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Vampire Survivors is getting a co-op mode

• Thought you were over your Vampire Survivors fix? Think again, they’re adding in a whole new local co-op mode for the entire game.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Classic LucasArts games emulator DREAMM adds early Linux support

• Want a way to play classic LucasArts games on Linux? While some ways already exist like ScummVM, another is DREAMM and it now has early Linux support.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Fanatical has another Steam Deck game bundle plus you could win a Steam Deck

• Fanatical are offering up some Summer treats. Not only do they have a bundle of games that work on Steam Deck but you can also enter to win a Steam Deck and a whole bunch more with it.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 confirmed for a Steam release

• I have to admit I am a little bit excited by this. Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 is now confirmed to be coming to Steam. So we could be playing classic Metal Gear on Linux desktop and Steam Deck with Proton very soon.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Classic open source FPS Xonotic 0.8.6 released with new game modes

• Xonotic 0.8.6 is an essential upgrade for anyone playing this classic free and open source arena shooter, due to a security issue but there’s also plenty of new features and additions.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ SDL 2.28.0 released and goes into maintenance mode, now focusing on SDL 3

• SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware used by a great many companies and SDL 2 is now pretty much finished.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ IPFire Official Blog ☛ IPFire Location is now available on Debian & Fedora

• IPFire Location is a geo location database which will tell you in which country a host on the Internet is located. It will also tell you in which Autonomous System (AS) this host is. In IPFire we use this information to make better decisions about which connections to block and we use it to collect metrics, etc.

• But it is not only IPFire which benefits from this data. This is something we designed into the project from the very beginning when we launched it as a very lightweight library that is also very portable. So far, one of the many other users of our location database is the Tor project, but the list is getting longer and longer

BSD

=> ↺ DragonFly BSD Digest ☛ More HAMMER2 offline support

• You can now create, delete, and snapshot PFS on HAMMER2 even when the drive isn’t mounted; Tomohiro has added offline support.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ LWN ☛ AlmaLinux’s response to Red Hat’s policy change [Ed: See the comments]

• The AlmaLinux organization has posted a message describing the impact of Red Hat’s decision to stop releasing the source to the RHEL distribution and how AlmaLinux will respond.

=> ↺ Web Pro News ☛ Red Hat Takes Aim at Rocky Linux & AlmaLinux, Restricts RHEL Code Access

• CentOS started out as a downstream, RHEL-compatible community enterprise distro. The project eventually joined Red Hat but remained independent. In 2020, however, Red Hat killed CentOS and announced CentOS Stream, a replacement option that is upstream of RHEL instead of downstream as the original CentOS was.

• CentOS creator Gregory Kurtzer created Rocky Linux in response, and CloudLinux created AlmaLinux, both of which are RHEL-compatible downstream distros that fill the same role as the original CentOS.

• Since Red Hat has no control over Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux, it appears the company is taking aim at them by restricting RHEL source code access to CentOS Stream. This will make it more difficult for Rocky and Alma to maintain the 1:1 compatibility they currently have with RHEL.

=> ↺ Adam Young: RHEL, Rocky, and CentOS

• When talking about Rocky Linux or other distros based on RHEL, I don’t think that it is a good idea to paint any one person as the bad guy or that they are the bad guy or operating in bad faith. I do not think this is the case with any of the people behind Rocky.

• I was in sales at Red Hat during this time, and I winced when I heard the announcement. While Stream was and is a great step forward, closing off the Open But unsupported CentOS option was bad for Red Hat’s business. Instead of walking into an organization built around Yum and RPM, and the tools that managed them, we’d end up waling into organizations built around apt and .deb.

• As A Linux guy, I don’t care. As Red Hat employee, I did.

=> ↺ Jeff Geerling ☛ Dear Red Hat: Are you dumb?

• So at this point, I have to say: fool me once, Red Hat—shame on you. Fool me twice?

• At this point I’m determining whether I want to continue supporting just Fedora, or just dropping all support for RHEL and RHEL-like distributions on my open source projects. It’s not worth the hassle if I’m not even sure projects like Rocky or Alma Linux can fill in the gap left by CentOS’s demise for users like me.

=> ↺ AlmaLinux Official ☛ Impact of RHEL changes to AlmaLinux

• This change means that we, as builders of a RHEL clone, will now be responsible for following the licensing and agreements that are in place around Red Hat’s interfaces, in addition to following the licenses included in the software sources. Unfortunately the way we understand it today, Red Hat’s user interface agreements indicate that re-publishing sources acquired through the customer portal would be a violation of those agreements.

=> ↺ Rocky Linux ☛ Rocky Linux Expresses Confidence Despite Red Hat’s Announcement

• Rocky Linux, a prominent community-driven open-source distribution of Enterprise Linux (EL), remains confident in its ability to continue as a bug-for-bug compatible and freely available alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), despite changes in accessibility. Red Hat’s announcement yesterday states that the sources for RHEL will no longer be accessible from git.centos.org. While this decision does change the automation we use for building Rocky Linux, we have already created a short term mitigation and are developing the longer term strategy. There will be no disruption or change for any Rocky Linux users, collaborators, or partners.

=> ↺ Ask Noah Show 339 – Episode 339: Matt Hicks

• Matt Hicks the CEO of Red Hat joins the Ask Noah Show to discuss his hands on approach in his leadership role!

=> ↺ Silcon Republic ☛ Automation can feel like you have ‘an expert sitting next to you’

• Red Hat’s Mark Swinson breaks down one of the company’s latest additions to its automation capabilities for developers.

=> ↺ Red Hat Official ☛ RHEL: Behind the scenes of a simple backport

• Bug fixes and security updates are essential components of the value of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscription. These ensure that you, as a RHEL subscriber, have access to the latest essential updates so your systems remain protected and refreshed. And it’s all possible thanks to Red Hat’s practice of backporting patches.

• A “backport” is when a critical fix from a new version of software is applied to an old but supported version. Not all operating systems or distributions can manage that workload, but stability and security is important to Red Hat. When Red Hat backports a patch, you benefit from important security updates and bug fixes without the need of upgrading to, and testing, a new version of the software.

=> ↺ Red Hat Official ☛ Confidential computing: 5 support technologies to explore

• This article is the last in a six-part series (see my previous blog) presenting various usage models for Confidential Computing, a set of technologies designed to protect data in use. In this article, I explore interesting support technologies under active development in the confidential computing community.

=> ↺ Red Hat Official ☛ Compiler – Ready To Launch

• Launching a new product should be cause for celebration. All too often in the tech industry, launch day is a source of worry, and in the worst cases, scrambling panic. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

• What can we learn from the gaming industry’s frequent launches? Why is it so difficult to get launch day right? And why aren’t companies better prepared for the problems they know are coming?

=> ↺ Red Hat Official ☛ Green opportunity in telco: Transform from the packet networking to computing by IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network)

• This past spring, the IOWN Global Forum held its Annual Member Meeting in Osaka, Japan. The event kicked off with a video message from the Prime Minister of Japan, KISHIDA Fumio, during which he said that ”IOWN can be a key to resolve common global issues, and the government of Japan will provide firm support for it.” This was a great endorsement.

• The goal for this year’s meeting was set by Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, President and Chairperson of IOWN Global Forum, who shared that establishing a ”Vision to Reality” was the main objective.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Daniel Pocock ☛ 7,000 spam messages & Debian Day Volunteer Suicide

• In 2022, Software in the Public Interest, Inc filed an opposition against the Debian trademark registration in Switzerland. As a basis for their application, they claim that Debian is a well known trademark under the Paris Convention. To justify this claim, they submitted the following list of companies exploiting Frans Pop & Debian. How many of these companies have a Modern Slavery Policy?

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Linux Mint 21.2 gets a Beta release

• Linux Mint 21.2 is getting close to release now with a Beta available for testing across their Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce desktop environments. Probably one of my favourite Linux distributions, because they’ve been going a long time now and have a real focus on the normal desktop user experience. 

=> ↺ Ubuntu ☛ Kubeflow vs MLFlow: which one to choose?

• Data scientists and machine learning engineers are often looking for tools that could ease their work. Kubeflow and MLFlow are two of the most popular open-source tools in the machine learning operations (MLOps) space. They are often considered when kickstarting a new AI/ML initiative, so comparisons between them are not surprising. 

• This blog covers a very controversial topic, answering a question that many people from the industry have: Kubeflow vs MLFlow: Which one is better? 

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ This converted RC car uses a Portenta H7 to drive itself

• After selecting the “RC Pro Shredder” as the platform, Ellis implemented a VNH5019 Motor Driver Carrier, a servo motor to steer, and a Portenta H7 + Vision Shield along with a 1.5” OLED module. After 3D printing a small custom frame to hold the components in the correct orientation, nearly 300 images were collected of double-ringed markers on the floor. These samples were then uploaded to Edge Impulse and labeled with bounding boxes before a FOMO-based object detection model was trained.

=> ↺ Linux Gizmos ☛ Arduino Portenta C33 starts at $64.00

• The Portenta C33 is a compact module based on an ARM Cortex M33 microcontroller from Renesas Electronics. Featuring integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, as well as several I/Os, the Portenta C33 offers a viable solution for a wide range of applications, including IoT gateways and remote control systems.

=> ↺ WhichUK ☛ Can this laptop finally make tech sustainable?

• Framework’s laptops look to solve this. Almost every key component is replaceable – from critical internals such as the screen, speakers, battery and motherboard to things like the keyboard and individual USB ports. So if your laptop is faulty, you damage it or you simply want to upgrade, you don’t have to compromise cost-effectiveness over eco-friendliness. That’s the theory, anyway.

=> ↺ University of Toronto ☛ I don’t expect to see competitive RISC-V servers any time soon

• Obviously if RISC-V is going to take over in datacenters, there need to be RISC-V servers that people can buy, including off the shelf. This is especially the case for non-cloud datacenter usage of servers; only the cloud players and a few other big places design and manufacture their own servers. These servers need suitable good RISC-V CPUs and chipsets (either as systems on a chip or separately). Apart from performance, these systems need multi-socket support, lots of PCIE lanes, ECC with large modern RAM standards, and so on. Given that moving to RISC-V will make people’s life harder, these servers and their CPUs need to be unambiguously better than the x86 (and ARM) server systems available at the same time. Given that domination has a lead time these servers need to be available in quantity and proven quality before that five (or ten) year deadline, probably years before.

=> ↺ [Old] Wired ☛ NYPD Intelligence Op Targets Dot-Matrix Graffiti Bike

• Though they’d never seen him use the bike, the police arrested Kinberg on criminal mischief charges prior to the convention start, during an interview on Broadway Avenue with MSNBC’s Ron Reagan. The arrest took place on a spot where, two days earlier, Kinberg had printed out the water-soluble message, “America is a free speech zone” during an interview with MSNBC’s Countdown With Keith Olbermann.

=> ↺ [Old] Wired ☛ Cops Put Brakes on Bike Protest

• Two days before a yearlong project to create a Wi-Fi-enabled bicycle-mounted dot-matrix printer could spray anti-Bush messages in chalk on city streets, it came to a grinding halt.

• On Saturday, New York City police confiscated the gadgetry-laden bike following the arrest of its inventor, who had just concluded an interview with MSNBC.

• Joshua Kinberg, the 25-year-old creator of Bikes Against Bush, was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and criminal possession of graffiti instruments, according to Sgt. Mary Christine Doherty of the New York City Police Department. He was held for 24 hours and was released on Sunday morning without bail.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Raspberry Pi Turns Truck into Giant Dot Matrix Printer

• The printing process works by dropping splotches of water onto the road while the truck is driven. The water is dropped carefully to shape letters and form custom messages. The system is mounted to the back of the truck and controlled from inside the cabin using a web interface. As a message is parsed, a series of tubes direct water into position and activate precisely to create shapes much like a dot matrix printer.

• The Raspberry Pi is responsible for running the web interface, accepting user input for new messages and sending the command to trigger the water-based printing system. In this case, Ryder has opted to use a Raspberry Pi 4 but you could get away with using an older model like a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ or maybe even a Raspberry Pi Zero.

• In the video, Ryder breaks down the design and assembly process for the project which relies on several hoses and valves. Solenoids are used to release the water when directed by the Raspberry Pi. A bucket of water is in the back of the truck connected to the printer system making it easy to refill.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi ☛ The Raspberry Pi Foundation and edX: A new way to learn about teaching computing

• We’ve joined the partner network of edX to bring our high-quality online training to many more educators worldwide and enable them to teach learners about computing.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Raspberry Pi Turns Truck into Giant Dot Matrix Printer

• Ryder Damen is using a Raspberry Pi to print custom messages on the road with water while driving around.

=> ↺ Xinnor, ScaleFlux squish the RAID rebuild

• The host server had a dual-socket Xeon Gold 6342 CPU with 48 cores and 512GB of DRAM. It ran Ubuntu 22.

• [...]

• An Aerospike certification tool (ACT) was downloaded from GitHub and it generated a workload for the test and monitored the tail latency. The essential latency goal was that at most 5 percent of transactions exceed 1 millisecond.

• [...]

• This all looks remarkable. RAID rebuilds normally are lengthy affairs, particularly with disk drives and particularly with high-capacity devices. ScaleFlux CSD 3000 series SSDs run the capacity gamut from 3,2TB through 3.84TB, 6.4TB, 7.68TB to 15.36TB. It would be interesting to see the test repeated with the 15.36TB drives, with the rebuild taking 12 hours assuming a linear progression. You could rebuild faster by setting the Xinnor Reconstruction priority differently.

=> ↺ NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Edge AI Computing System

• IBASE Technology a renowned global manufacturer of embedded boards and systems, announced the launch of its latest EC3500 edge AI computing system designed for AI applications in smart retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation sectors. Based on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 32GB / Jetson AGX Orin 64GB, the EC3500 is equipped with either an 8-core or a 12-core NVIDIA Arm Cortex A78AE v8.2 64-bit processor, delivering unparalleled processing power capable of handling the most demanding AI workloads with ease.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Ian Betteridge ☛ Meta and Mastodon – What’s really on people’s minds?

• It’s a weird own goal for various Mastodon admins who are running a decentralized social network based on interoperable protocols to pledge that they won’t interoperate with services from existing social networks if built on the same open protocols.

• It’s not even the hypocrisy, it’s just dumb and undermines the entire point of interoperable protocols.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Tor ☛ New release: Tor Browser 12.5

• Tor Browser 12.5 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and our distribution directory. Many of the features in this release were made possible thanks to two projects:

• Since 2021 we’ve provided digital security training to hundreds of journalists and human rights defenders in Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico alongside Guardian Project and Tails. During these workshops we documented pain points with our applications’ user experience, and returned to validate potential solutions with Tor Browser Alpha in follow-up trips.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ InfoWorld ☛ 3 great Git alternatives: Fossil, Mercurial, and Subversion

• Git started life as version control software developed to manage the source code for the Linux kernel. It’s since become the default, go-to tool for managing source codebases for just about every open source project—and many closed-source ones, too.

• [...]

• If any of these issues trouble you, you might be curious about feasible alternatives to Git. They do exist, and many of them prosper in their own spaces because they offer features Git doesn’t have. In this article, we’ll look at three of the biggest Git alternatives: Fossil, Mercurial, and Subversion. We’ll cover their features and use cases and the projects they’re being used in right now.

=> ↺ Godot Engine ☛ Dev snapshot: Godot 4.1 beta 3

• We are getting confident in the state of Godot 4.1! To wrap things up here’s the last beta release, bringing more fixes to reported issues.

=> ↺ Positech Games ☛ What I learned from fixing a dumb bug in my graphics code

• If you are a coder working on real-time graphics stuff like games, and you have never used a graphics profiler, you need to fix that right away. They are amazing things. You might be familiar with general case profilers like vtune, but you really cannot beat a profiler made by the hardware vendor for your graphics card or chip. In this case, its the intel graphics monitor, which launches separate apps to capture frame traces, and then analyze them.

=> ↺ Ubuntu ☛ Adopting a low-ops approach with software operators

• A software operator can help resolve this paradox. In software operators, the automation is covered by source code, and the DevOps engineer or SRE can exercise control by defining and reviewing this code. Using software operators results in implementations that are testable and more reliable at runtime. Proven engineering methodologies ensure high-quality development leading to stable releases of operators – that is one way of implementing SRE. However, operating applications is not just about writing automation code: operating applications poses challenges when building solutions: [...]

=> ↺ IT Tavern ☛ Troubleshooting: Asking The Right Questions

• In this post, I want to present some simple questions on how to start any troubleshooting session. The main goal is to gather enough information to narrow down the root cause of the problem, let you grasp the impact of this incident and set a priority, and decide what the next steps of the actual troubleshooting work will look like.

• It should be clear that not all questions are needed for every session, but it can give you some ideas, and you can modify them to your needs. I bet I forgot some essential questions, so please let me know, and I’d be happy to add them to the post.

• The primary motivation for this post is work-related. I’ve just celebrated the 100th ticket with “It doesn’t work” with no further information that was forwarded to me, and I decided to write this post as a reference for the minimum of information any ticket should contain before it gets sent to the next level (besides restarting the device or checking DNS).

=> ↺ [Repeat] Buttondown ☛ Agile is people, the rest is commentary.

• I see this sentiment all over the net: everybody is making Agile too complicated; just follow the principles and do your best.

=> ↺ Jay Little ☛ Developer Brethren, its Time to Embrace Boring!

• Frankly, this situation pisses me off. Mostly because when these developers decide to change everything and rewrite their portion of my tech stack from scratch, it basically forces me to waste a ton of time, which could’ve been spent solving actual user problems, trying to adapt, rework or rewrite my code that depends upon their code. Nobody wins here.

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ Version 1.0.1 of NIMBLE released, fixing a bug in version 1.0.0 affecting certain models

• We’ve released the newest version of NIMBLE on CRAN and on our website. NIMBLE is a system for building and sharing analysis methods for statistical models, especially for hierarchical models and computationally-intensive methods (such as MCMC and SMC).

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ Several Key PerformanceAnalytics Functions From R Now In Python (special thanks to Vijay Vaidyanathan)

• So, thanks to my former boss, and head of direct indexing at BNY Mellon, Vijay Vaidyanathan, and his Coursera course [...]

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ Miami-Dade County Public Employee Salary Research – An Analysis in R, Python, and Julia

• This analysis was co-authored by data scientists, Scott Fisher and Douglas Davila-Pestana. Mr. Fisher developed the Python code for the […]

• The post Miami-Dade County Public Employee Salary Research – An Analysis in R, Python, and Julia first appeared on Remix Institute.

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ Unleashing the Power of Sampling in R: Exploring the Versatile sample() Function

• Sampling is a fundamental technique in data analysis and statistical modeling. It allows us to draw meaningful insights and make inferences about a larger population based on a representative subset.

=> ↺ Qt ☛ Qt Design Studio 4.2 Released

• We are happy to announce the release of Qt Design Studio 4.2.

=> ↺ LinuxTechLab ☛ The Symbiotic Relationship between DevOps and Linux

• In the sphere of software development, the marriage of DevOps and Linux is as harmonious as a ballet. Their perfectly coordinated dance, twirling in the rhythm of innovation, is an epitome of technical symbiosis. But what fuels this seamless performance? Let’s delve into the intricacies of this unique partnership and how it continues to redefine the world of software development. 

• Introduction to DevOps and Linux: Unpacking the Enigma 

Leftovers

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Titanic sub operator OceanGate was warned of safety concerns, documents show

• The company whose submersible vanished in the North Atlantic on a tourist dive to the wreck of the Titanic was repeatedly warned that there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way it was developed, documents show.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ More ships join search for missing Titanic sub amid fears of dwindling oxygen supply

• The race against time to find a submersible that disappeared on its way to the Titanic wreckage site entered a new phase of desperation on Thursday morning as the final hours of oxygen possibly left on board the tiny vessel ticked off the clock.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Rescuers cling to hope as ‘underwater noises’ are detected in Titanic sub search [Ed: This certainly make a lot of noise in the media, but they all died, and they likely deserved it]

• Rescuers searching for a missing tourist submersible near the wreck of the Titanic have detected “underwater noises” in the search area, the US Coast Guard said Wednesday, with oxygen for the five on board rapidly running out more than two days after they lost contact.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ I-95 Collapse in Philadelphia Didn’t Cause a Traffic Disaster, Data Shows

• When an overpass collapsed, politicians and experts predicted calamity for months. After less than a week, things returned “close to normal.”

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ ‘This World Can’t Tear Me Down’ rips into the animus of Nazis and establishments

• Italian cartoonist Michele Rech, otherwise known as Zerocalcare, is a household name in Italy as the country’s most prominent cartoonist.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Clash of the Titans

Science

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Scientists Are Hunting for Alien Objects in the Ocean, And They’ve Just Found Something

• A team including Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb may have just found a trace of an interstellar object, which Loeb believes could be alien in origin.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Archaeologists Discover World’s Oldest Neanderthal Cave Engravings

• The mysterious 57,000-year-old designs open up a new window into the lives and culture of our ancestors.

Education

=> ↺ Copenhagen Post ☛ The digital conundrum facing Danish education

• The education minister, Mattias Tesfaye, has taken a proactive stance and asked Styrelsen for Uddannelse og Kvalitet, Stuk, the agency for education and quality, to craft a set of guidelines on screen usage in schools.

• In a letter to the country’s public schools, Tesfaye wrote: ”Children’s screen use has been rising rapidly in recent years and more and more research is suggesting that it is not healthy,” according to Politiken.

• The guidelines could be developed for each stage of the educational system, contends Tesfaye, effectively adapting to the age-specific needs of the users.

Hardware

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Intel Discontinues Arc A770 Limited Edition GPU

• Intel has announced that the chipmaker has discontinued the Arc A770 Limited Edition gaming graphics card.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Intel to Operate Foundry and Manufacturing More Like a Separate Business [Ed: Way to hide financial LOSSES, like IBM with Kyndryl]

• Intel’s Internal Foundry Services and manufacturing business will report its own P&L, which will sell to both internal and external customers.

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ 8K TV box board features Amlogic S928X Cortex-A76/A55 SoC

• The “YB910_428_V1.0” is an Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 board designed for 8K TV boxes with up to 8GB RAM, an HDMI 2.1a port, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, optical S/PDIF, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a few USB 3.2/2.0 ports. We first started to see Amlogic S928X TV boxes from manufacturers such as SEI Robotics and SDMC last year, but those companies mostly cater to operators and I’ve yet to see any retail Amlogic S928X devices. The YB910 board could mean we are about to see some S928X devices for sale very soon.

=> ↺ WhichUK ☛ Will an SSD improve my laptop?

• Our tech experts explain how installing an SSD (solid state drive) can result in faster boot times, quicker application loading and improved responsiveness

=> ↺ System76 ☛ System76 Unveils a Powerful New Oryx Pro, Making It the Favorite Flagship Laptop For Engineers.

• One of the most notable features of the Oryx Pro is the 16:10 screen ratio. The extra vertical real estate provides more space to view code, documents, and other work-related content, making it easier for developers to multitask and streamline their workflow.

=> ↺ System76 ☛ Bonobo WS Laptop Returns: The Ultimate Powerhouse for Demanding Workloads

• Boasting 12TB of storage, the Bonobo WS has the highest max storage of all System76 laptops. With a 24-core Intel i9-13900HX processor, users can expect faster speeds and smoother performance for complex tasks like compiling and rendering.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Japan’s Fukushima wastewater plan is safe, says expert on Pacific islands panel

• The Fukushima nuclear plant operator is testing equipment to dilute the wastewater and pipe it out to sea.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ New survey peeks into sexual lives and satisfactions of Lithuanians

• Around three-fifths (59 percent) of Lithuanians would have sex more often if they had the choice, according to a survey published on Wednesday.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania’s Jewish community says it feels unsafe after MP’s anti-Semitic posts

• Recent anti-Semitic statements by MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis incite ethnic tensions and make Jewish people feel insecure, say Lithuania’s Jewish community representatives.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania considers banning e-cigarette sales outside pharmacies

• Lithuanian legislators have proposed the idea of confining sales of electronic cigarettes to pharmacies in an effort to discourage smoking among teenagers. The parliament has recently passed amendments, banning electronic cigarettes with added flavours.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Meat and milk consumption declined in Finland in 2022, says Luke

• MEAT CONSUMPTION continued to decline in Finland in 2022, reveal preliminary statistics released by Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Finns eating less meat and fish – higher prices likely to blame

• People in Finland devoured around 26 kg of cheese and 11 kg of eggs per capita last year.

=> ↺ WhichUK ☛ How to find cheap insect repellent that works

• Keep mosquitos, ticks and other biting insects at bay for less

=> ↺ WhichUK ☛ How to get rid of fruit flies and stop them coming back

• We reveal the common fruit fly mistakes you could be making – and what to do

• instead

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Evangelical leader hopes conference is ‘testosterone booster shot’ for anti-abortion 2024 candidates

• A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, some of the Republican Party’s most powerful evangelical Christian voices are gathering to celebrate a ruling that sent shockwaves through American politics. At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, GOP presidential candidates will be urged to keep pushing for stronger abortion restrictions, even as Democrats insist the issue will buoy them ahead of the 2024 election. Former President Donald Trump will give the keynote address Saturday night. Many of his Republican rivals are set to speak Friday, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Finland ranks as the seventh most expensive country in Europe

• According to an international price comparison, Finland has a cost of living that is over a quarter higher than the EU average. Alcohol, in particular, stands out as exceptionally expensive in Finland, with alcohol prices ranking as the third highest in Europe, trailing only Iceland and Norway.

• A price comparison coordinated by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, reveals that the price level for alcohol in Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Ireland is even four times higher than in Hungary, the cheapest country in Europe.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ AI Is an Existential Threat to Itself

• Generative-AI programs may eventually consume material that was created by other machines—with disastrous consequences.

=> ↺ MIT Technology Review ☛ The iPad was meant to revolutionize accessibility. What happened?

• In December 2022, a few months after learning that he’d won an Iowa Arts Fellowship to attend the MFA program at the University of Iowa, David James “DJ” Savarese sat for a televised interview with a local news station.

=> ↺ [Repeat] The Register UK ☛ Microsoft rethinks death sentence for Windows Mail and Calendar apps

• Microsoft intends to shut down its at-times-maligned Mail and Calendar apps, fold their capabilities into a new Outlook for Windows, and use the opportunity to – unsurprisingly – bring in more AI.

• However, when this will happen is now in flux.

=> ↺ The Drone Girl ☛ Skydio, Flyability: more drones focus on Remote ID compliance

• Even though Flyability is known for making drones that fly indoors, even it’s seeking to become Remote ID compliant. Today, the Swiss drone maker released a new version of its Elios 3 drone that is compliant with FAA regulation on UAS Remote Identification.

• That’s despite the fact that its drones are designed to fly in indoor spaces (which are not under FAA regulation). But the company says it doesn’t want its drones restricted to indoor use. In fact, its Elios 3 drone has seen significant use cases outdoors, including inspecting and mapping of pipe racks offshore and on land, as well as radiation surveying of radioactive waste structures. The Elios 3 launched last May as the world’s first collision-tolerant drone equipped with a LiDAR sensor for indoor 3D mapping.

=> ↺ Franz Dill ☛ Marc Andreessen: Why AI Will Save the World

• First, a short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts. It is owned by people and controlled by people, like any other technology.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Lawyers who cited fake cases hallucinated by ChatGPT must pay

• Yes, you got that right: the lawyers asked ChatGPT for examples of past cases to include in their legal filings, the bot just made up some previous proceedings, and the attorneys slotted those in to help make their argument and submitted it all as usual. That is not going to fly.

Security

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Reddit Chaos Continues as Hackers Demand $4.5M Ransom, Communities Still Dark

• As the Reddit blackout chaos continues, a hacker group has claimed responsibility for the February 2023 hack. The BlackCat ransomware group says they were behind the attack, stealing 80GB of data from the company. Now the group is asking for $4.5 million dollars and a rollback of the planned API changes.

=> ↺ Hectic Geek ☛ Secure Your Business and Gain Customer Trust with SSL Certificate Management

• Data breaches and cyber threats are rising, so safeguarding sensitive information and customer trust is vital for businesses.

=> ↺ WhichUK ☛ Holidaymakers warned about the dangers posed by ATM scammers

• Follow these tips to stay safe when withdrawing cash abroad

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Chinese malware accidentally infects networked storage • The Register

• Malware intended to spread on USB drives is unintentionally infecting networked storage devices, according to infosec vendor Checkpoint.

• The software nasty comes from a group called Camaro Dragon that Checkpoint’s researchers on Thursday suggested conduct campaigns similar to those run by China’s Mustang Panda and LuminousMoth attack gangs.

• Checkpoint regards Camaro Dragon as most interested in Asian targets – its code includes features designed to hide it from SmadAV, an antivirus solution popular in the region.

=> ↺ SANS ☛ Word Document with an Online Attached Template, (Fri, Jun 23rd)

• It has been a while since I spotted such kind of document. Yesterday, I found a Word document (SHA256:5070e8a3fdaf3027170ade066eaf7f8e384c1cd25ce58af9155627975f97d156)

=> ↺ TechRadar ☛ Linux servers are being infected with a dangerous new malware [Ed: The problem here is truly awful passwords, not Linux at all]

=> ↺ TechRadar ☛ Linux servers are being infected with a dangerous new malware [Ed: The problem here is truly awful passwords, not Linux at all]

• Cybersecurity firm AhnLab’s Security Emergency response Center (ASEC) has uncovered an attack against, “inadequately managed” Linux SSH servers whereby malware is being installed and spread.

• Most notable has been the installation of a Tsunami DDoS Bot, but ShellBot, XMRig CoinMiner, and Log Cleaner malware have also all been spotted.

• Because Tsunami’s source code is publicly available, it has been used in numerous attacks against IoT devices and is often seen deployed alongside Mirai and Gafgyt, though Tsunami attacks on Linux servers are just as common.

=> ↺ LWN ☛ Security updates for Thursday [LWN.net]

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (avahi, hsqldb, hsqldb1.8.0, minidlna, trafficserver, and xmltooling), Oracle (.NET 6.0, .NET 7.0, 18, c-ares, firefox, kernel, less, libtiff, libvirt, python, python3.11, texlive, and thunderbird), Red Hat (c-ares, kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, less, libtiff, libvirt, openssl, and postgresql), Slackware (bind and kernel), SUSE (bluez, curl, geoipupdate, kernel, netty, netty-tcnative, ntp, open-vm-tools, php8, python-reportlab, rustup, Salt, salt, terraform-provider-aws, terraform-provider-null, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (bind9, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, and linux-ibm).

=> ↺ Two apprehended in CoWin portal data leak case

• In a major breakthrough, the Delhi Police Special Cell has apprehended a man and a juvenile from Bihar in connection with the alleged data leak from the CoWin portal, the Centre’s official platform for Covid-19 vaccination registration and certification.

• According to police sources, the adult man, whose identity has been withheld pending further investigation, is suspected of being involved in the unauthorised sharing of sensitive vaccination data on the encrypted messaging app, Telegram.

• The sources have revealed that the man, believed to be in his late twenties, allegedly gained access to the portal.

=> ↺ The Texas Tribune ☛ Stephen F. Austin State University students grow anxious about falling behind as school reels from cyberattack last week

• More than a week after Stephen F. Austin State University was hit with a cyberattack, leaders at the public university in the East Texas Pineywoods are still working to fully restore email and other online services for the 11,600-student campus.

• University spokesperson Graham Garner confirmed Tuesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the incident, which occurred about 10 days ago, but did not provide any additional details. In a statement, a spokesperson for the FBI Dallas field office confirmed the investigation but declined to provide more information about the investigation.

• While the university has restored access to the internet and the university’s online teaching portal, students and faculty say the hack has caused serious disruptions, especially for students taking summer courses.

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ Confused about the drama with the new BreachForums? Reading this will either help you or make your head spin.

• Over the past week, DataBreaches has been contacted by a few journalists who have been somewhat understandably confused about the situation with the original BreachForums and a new forum calling itself BreachForums. And from reading news reports this week, I see that some journalists are making errors, so this post is as much for those wishing to report on BreachForums as much as to provide an update as to what has evolved into a bit of a soap opera.

=> ↺ Krebs On Security ☛ SMS Phishers Harvested Phone Numbers, Shipment Data from UPS Tracking Tool

• The United Parcel Service (UPS) says fraudsters have been harvesting phone numbers and other information from its online shipment tracking tool in Canada to send highly targeted SMS phishing (a.k.a. “smishing”) messages that spoofed UPS and other top brands. The missives addressed recipients by name, included details about recent orders, and warned that those orders wouldn’t be shipped unless the customer paid an added delivery fee.

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ Law enforcement seizes domains owned by “Pompompurin” and one currently owned by DataBreaches

• When the owner of Breached.vc was arrested in March, people expected to see Conor Fitzpatrick’s BreachForums site seized by authorities. Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t, and Baphomet, the forum’s administrator, was able to post messages on the site explaining what was going on and that he was taking the site down for fear it had been compromised. For months, the site was empty except for a warning posted by Baphomet not to trust any site claiming to be them. But when a new forum also called BreachForums opened, more warnings appeared on breached.vc. But who was posting them? Was it law enforcement or someone who still had access to the domain?

• [...]

• DataBreaches does not know when the warrant for seizure was first written or authorized, but in any event, not all domains seized today were related to BreachForums and DataBreaches hopes the government recognizes the over-reach and corrects it. Tomorrow, DataBreaches will contact the USAO or court and ask about trying to get breaches.net un-seized. DataBreaches makes no predictions as to how this will go.

• [...]

• Why the government decided to seize the domains now has not been revealed by the government. There has been no press release today by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, DOJ Main, or the FBI. Perhaps they will issue one tomorrow that explains why they delayed for three months and first seized domains now.

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ Google announces $20 million investment for cyber clinics [Ed: Google also puts back doors in things, so don't be misled. Google is a Gulag and a lab of NSA et al.]

• The announcement dovetails with growing interest in Congress to invest in the next generation of the cyber workforce.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ EDRI ☛ Open letter: Improvements to the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation

• EDRi has signed an open letter organised by consumer and civil society organisations to welcome the intention of the European Commission to improve the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation. We call on the Commission to ensure that the draft Regulation improves the efficiency of enforcement and ensures data subjects can exercise their rights in a fair, effective, and affordable manner.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Yet Another Synthetic Moral Panic over Privacy

• Episode 463 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

=> ↺ Stacey on IoT ☛ Smart gate locks are still barred from the market

• On a recent Internet of Things podcast episode, we took a voicemail from Greg on our podcast hotline. Greg’s property has a fence in the back so it’s not close to the house.. He uses HomeKit today but is planning to add a Hubitat hub as well for Z-Wave support.

=> ↺ EDRI ☛ Open letter: EU Lawmakers must uphold human rights to privacy and free expression in the Political Ads Regulation

• EDRi and 26 civil society organisations, voice our deep concern regarding the worrying developments related to the Regulation on the Targeting and Transparency of Political Advertising.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Apple is plotting the death of the password

• Apple’s newest software updates—iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma—will automatically assign users unique passkeys, tied to their Apple IDs, that can replace individual passwords in accounts across the [Internet].

=> ↺ DroidGazzette ☛ Here’s why cops in this nation ask Android users to disable Emergency SOS feature

• This problem with accidental Emergency SOS calls has crossed the Atlantic and is now a problem in the U.K. which is quite ironic since we had mentioned the Beatles earlier in this article. According to the BBC, the U.K.’s 999 switchboards (the emergency number is the country is 999) are getting inundated with calls. The National Police Chiefs Council blames this on an Android update that added the Emergency SOS feature that has devices calling 999 after the power button is pressed five or more times.”Nationally, all emergency services are currently experiencing record high 999 call volumes,” says the Council. “There’s a few reasons for this, but one we think is having a significant impact is an update to Android smartphones.” The update the U.K. police are talking about is the one that released the final version of Android 13 to Android device users last August.

=> ↺ NYOB ☛ TeleSign secretly profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

• Today, noyb filed a complaint against TeleSign, a US company which profiled millions of phone users. TeleSign generates a “reputation score” and sells its services to various clients like TikTok, Microsoft or Salesforce. TeleSign secretly received the mobile phone data from BICS, a Belgian company that provides interconnection services for many mobile phone companies.

=> ↺ NYOB ☛ Advertising company Criteo fined € 40 Million for GDPR infringements

• The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) fined Criteo, a major online advertisement and tracking company in Europe, €40 million for violating the GDPR. This decision is based on complaints filed by noyb and Privacy International in December 2018. The CNIL found that the company failed to comply with data subject rights under the GDPR and could not prove that they obtained valid consent.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ Army has a critical role in defence strategic review’s ‘integrated force’

• We tend to look for winners and losers in any Australian government announcement, and the defence strategic review (DSR) is no exception.

=> ↺ Defence Web ☛ Pratt & Whitney to build engine factory in Morocco

• Pratt & Whitney will launch an affiliate, Pratt & Whitney Maroc (PWM), in Casablanca, to manufacture detailed static and structural machined parts for various engine models.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Cuban President Holds Meeting With His Serbian Counterpart

• “…Díaz-Canel will develop an intense work agenda during his visit to Serbia…”

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Bomb Blast Kills Three People in Police Vehicle in NE Kenya

• “…the victims are two policemen and an engineer…”

=> ↺ Bruce Schneier ☛ AI as Sensemaking for Public Comments

• To help democracy scale better in the face of growing, increasingly interconnected populations—as well as the wide availability of AI language tools that can generate reams of text at the click of a button—the US will need to leverage AI’s capability to rapidly digest, interpret and summarize this content.

=> ↺ Greece ☛ The Taliban government [sic] runs on WhatsApp. There’s just one problem.

• There was just one problem: WhatsApp had blocked his account to comply with U.S. sanctions.

=> ↺ Counter Punch ☛ Daniel Ellsberg: Master of War, Champion of Peacexs

• Ellsberg’s second speech, at the 1962 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor commencement, was delivered by Secretary of State Robert McNamara. The Secretary urged a policy of deterrence whereby the US and Soviets agreed to nuke only military targets and to spare the cities and their populations. This seemed to favor the Americans. Khrushchev raged that “it was deceptive to the American people because bases in the United States were in or near large cities.” As far as the First Secretary was concerned, the speech was saying to him,“that McNamara was somehow trying to make nuclear war seem less bloody and therefore more acceptable,” and said Khrushchev, “To get the population used to the idea that nuclear war will take place.”

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ US Military Personnel Receiving Unsolicited, Suspicious Smartwatches

• The U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is urging military personnel to be on the lookout for unsolicited, suspicious smartwatches in the mail, warning that the devices could be rigged with malware.

=> ↺ CBC ☛ Most Canadians don’t know about the bombing of Air India, the worst terrorist attack in Canada’s history: poll

• The flight from Montreal to London exploded off the Irish coast, making the bombing the deadliest terrorist incident in Canada’s history.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ At Least Two Dead In Hungarian Military Helicopter Crash In Croatia

• A Hungarian military helicopter crashed on June 21 during a training mission in neighboring Croatia, killing at least two people on board, the country’s Defense Ministry said.

=> ↺ AntiWar ☛ US Media Blind to American War Carnage

• On the first day of March 2022, visitors to The New York Times homepage saw a headline across the top of their screens in huge capital letters: ROCKET BARRAGE KILLS CIVILIANS It was the kind of breaking-news banner headline that could have referred to countless US missile attacks and other military assaults…

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Counter Punch ☛ Daniel Ellsberg: The Establishment’s Whistleblower

• The Nixon administration was mustard keen to bang up Ellsberg for what would have been 115 years, and Russo for 35. The charges, absurd reading then as they are now, were for conspiracy, espionage, and larceny. Central to this particularly vicious effort on the part of President Richard Nixon and his inner circle was the release of the Pentagon Papers, a government document running into 7,000 pages that was much at odds with public statements made by respective presidential administrations on US involvement in the Indo-China War. Both men had been analysts and researchers at the RAND Corporation, with the former tasked with nuclear wargaming scenarios. Russo had aided Ellsberg in the mammoth task of copying the papers.

• The treatment dished out by the US national security state was very much the blueprint for what is taking place against the WikiLeaks founder. Initial indictment, followed by further grand jury hearings, followed by another round of indictments. As Sheinbaum remarked, the absurdity of the charges was self-evident. “Conspiracy against whom?” he asked. “The American people to whom the documents belonged in the first place? The press to whom the Pentagon Papers were given – not sold – so that they could better inform the people on how a succession of administrations had deceived them and wasted this country’s lives, resources, and honor?”

Environment

=> ↺ International Business Times ☛ Himalayan glaciers could lose up to 80% of their ice due to global warming: Report

• “The glaciers of the Hindu Kush Himalaya are a major component of the Earth system. With two billion people in Asia reliant on the water that glaciers and snow here hold, the consequences of losing this cryosphere are too vast to contemplate,” said Izabella Kozol, Icimod’s deputy director general.

• The melting of glaciers will increase the threat of flash floods, avalanches, and droughts. Last year, Pakistan witnessed deadly floods as a result of the severe heatwave that caused the melting of glaciers and record monsoon rains. Multiple experts blamed climate change for the damage witnessed by the South Asian nation.

=> ↺ TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Tropical Storm Bret grows stronger as eastern Caribbean islands prepare for heavy flooding

• Tropical Storm Bret is growing stronger as it takes aim at islands in the eastern Caribbean that are bracing for torrential rainfall, landslides and flooding. Bret had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph) on Wednesday night and was moving westward across the Atlantic Ocean at 16 mph (26 kph). The storm was located some 290 miles (465 kilometers) east of Barbados and is expected to grow stronger before lashing several eastern Caribbean islands late Thursday at near hurricane strength. Tropical storm warnings were issued for St. Lucia, Dominica and the French Caribbean island of Martinique as officials in the region urged people to prepare.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Crematorium fills up as heatwave scorches northern Indian town

• A major hospital in Uttar Pradesh recorded at least 80 deaths since June 15 as temperatures soared.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ The Panama Canal is restricting large ships because of drought

• Starting Sunday (June 25), container ships in the Panama Canal will be limited to a depth of 43.5 feet or 13.3 meters.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ How ESG investing can better serve sustainable development

• 2022 revealed several roadblocks preventing ESG from contributing to sustainable development. To change course, more clarity and agreement from both private data providers and from regulators is necessary.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ An Unexpected Upset In EV Charging Standards

• Last November, Tesla open-sourced parts of its charging infrastructure, not-so-humbly unveiling it as the North American Charging Standard (NACS). It’s finally taking off with a number of manufacturers signing on.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ A green transition that leaves no one behind [Ed: Typical greenwashing from career politicians]

• European Commission News Brussels, 21 Jun 2023 A world leaders’ open letter on the occasion of the Paris Summit for a new global financial pact

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Fire Breaks Out At Romanian Refinery On Black Sea Coast

• A blast followed by a fire occurred on June 21 at Romania’s largest oil refinery, Petromidia, located on the Black Sea coast, Romanian emergency services were quoted by local media ​as saying.

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ Four electric buses a step toward cleaner campus fleet

• The set, manufactured by New Flyer, includes three 40-foot electric buses and one 60-foot articulated electric bus. The buses will be put into regular service this fall.

=> ↺ ACM ☛ Keeping [Attackers] Off the Electrical Grid

• Today, commercial OT networks in the U.S. that strictly follow the NIST guidelines are more secure, but according to Fuhr, new attack vectors are being opened by the numerous “smart” electric meters rolled out in recent years which, on the positive side, allow grid operators to manage power more efficiently, but on the negative side form new vulnerabilities in the OT control infrastructure.

• “The proliferation of smart meters and grid-controlled home automation devices is outside the scope of our current research project, and realistically a variety of network configurations are used so there is no single answer, but to employ an overused phrase, the attack surface is certainly increasing,” said Fuhr.

=> ↺ Kev Quirk ☛ Getting Ready for Winter

• Even though it’s the middle of summer, we had 2 tonnes of fire wood delivered yesterday. We’re obviously not using our fire at the moment, but when it comes to the long, harsh Welsh winters, you need all the firewood you can get.

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Scoot was one of the worst airlines I’ve flown

• But while the Scoot planes we flew were spotless, and some of the cabin crew were great, it wasn’t “budget SIA”. I could nitpick dozens of things, but four things stood out.

=> ↺ El País ☛ Binance: The last great [cryptocurrency]fraud

• Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform in the United States. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued both for illegal trading on the stock market. As Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine says, there are two ways to be illegal in this business: one is technical, and the other is stealing.

• All [cryptocurrency] trades have been technically illegal in the U.S. since the SEC decided that most [cryptocurrency] assets are not commodities, which are tangible consumer goods such as oil or grain. Instead, they are securities: financial products that represent an interest in a company such as bills, bonds or stocks. Under U.S. law, securities are subject to certain obligations and regulations that commodities are not. For example, they must be registered and authorized by the SEC.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Will The Lilium Jet Work? A Deep-Dive Into The Physics Behind EVTOL Aircraft

• The Lilium Jet is a proposed eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft that the German company Lilium GmbH has claimed it will bring to the market ‘soon’, which would made it the first eVTOL aircraft in the world to enter into commercial service. As anyone who has any experience with VTOL knows, it’s a tricky subject to engineer, let alone when you want to do it fully electric. In a deep-dive video on the Lilium Jet and eVTOL in general, [John Lou] goes through the physics behind VTOL take-off, landing and flight, as well as range and general performance.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Why didn’t the deer cross the road in Latvia?

• The total length of the Latvian State road network is 20 000 kilometers, but overall there are around 70 000 kilometers of different roads in the country. More than 200 road accidents with forest animals were reported last year and many are likely unreported. There are no specially installed animal passes, Latvian Television’s “Vides fakti” reported.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ All it takes is one spark – high risk of forest fires throughout Finland

• When a forest fire warning is in force, it is forbidden to start an open fire in or near a forest.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Warm waters prompt fishing permit suspensions

• The sale of fishing permits has been suspended for two sites where water temperatures have risen to critically high levels, especially for salmon.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Colorado River water rights: Supreme Court rules against Navajo Nation

• The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the Navajo Nation Thursday in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The Navajo interpreted an 1868 treaty as ensuring a sufficient supply of water to its community, but the court disagreed.

Finance

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Tipping Gets ‘More in Your Face,’ and Not Everyone Likes It

• It seems to be a point of pride for most Australians that we’re not like the U.S., where the minimum wage is so low for many restaurant workers that consumers are effectively required to subsidize their pay through tips. (The minimum wage here is 21.38 Australian dollars, or $14.34 — about double that of the U.S.)

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Perth Mint probed over money laundering compliance

• A powerful parliamentary inquiry will examine multiple controversies facing the Perth Mint.

• The inquiry, set up by WA Liberal senator Dean Smith, will investigate the mint’s compliance with money laundering and terror laws.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Warner Bros Discovery Merger Gets Dumber As Layoffs Continue And Company Licenses Streaming Content To… Netflix

• By now we’ve well established that the series of mergers that began with AT&T’s doomed acquisition of Time Warner and ended with Time Warner’s subsequent spin off and fusion with Discovery was some of the dumbest, most pointless “business” exercises ever conceived by man.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ 30% of America’s homeless population is in California

• A new study is busting myths about homelessness in California.

=> ↺ Breach Media ☛ Toronto police are squatting on land meant for affordable housing

• Under John Tory, Toronto’s police ducked austerity and blocked housing. Under Mark Saunders, the force would be emboldened

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Asia stocks subdued, Powell testimony fails to surprise

• Asian shares are off to a tentative start after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell stuck to his recent hawkish tone as investors assess the future rate policy path from the Fed.

• MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was marginally lower at 522.93 in early trade on Thursday.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Competition watchdog inspects Latvia’s food prices

• Elsewhere in the world, food prices are declining, but tn the Baltic States they are growing. According to the Central Statistical Bureau, prices for food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by nearly 18% during the year. Representatives of the Competition Council (KP) said during the meeting of the Saeima Submissions Committee on June 21 that they are examining food prices in supermarkets.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Latvia’s producer prices up 4.6% in May

• Data published on June 21 by the Central Statistical Bureau show that in May 2023, compared to May 2022, the level of producer prices in the Latvian industry increased by 4.6 %.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Live Nation Shareholders Vote Against $139 Million Pay Package for CEO Michael Rapino

• Amid tense scrutiny over its ticketing practices, Live Nation shareholders have voted ‘no’ on the proposed $139 million pay package for CEO Michael Rapino.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ CBC ☛ Canadians will no longer have access to news content on Facebook and Instagram, Meta says

• Now that the bill has received royal assent, the Department of Canadian Heritage will draft regulations specifying the application of the act and provide guidance on implementing it. It should take six month for Bill C-18 to come into force.

• “A free and independent press is fundamental to our democracy,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement. “It levels the playing field by putting the power of big tech in check and ensuring that even our smallest news business can benefit through this regime and receive fair compensation for their work.”

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Google Backs Creation of Cybersecurity Clinics With $20 Million Donation

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai pledged $20 million in donations on Thursday to support and expand the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics to introduce thousands of students to potential careers in cybersecurity, while also helping defend small government offices, rural hospitals and nonprofits from hacking.

• b Pichai said the new initiative addresses both the rising number of cyberattacks — up 38% globally in 2022 – and the lack of candidates trained to stop them.

=> ↺ Interesting Engineering ☛ Musk meets Modi and hints at ‘significant’ Tesla investment in India

• Tesla’s decision to enter one of the biggest markets for electric vehicles has been on hold for the past year after the company and officials in India could not come to an agreement over the sourcing of vehicles. The latter insisted that the cars be made locally, while Tesla wanted to export cars to the market first to test demand.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Let’s make something uplifting’ Why Russia’s liberal creatives seek grants from an institute that pours money into online Kremlin propaganda

• IID was founded in 2015 to “establish dialogue between stakeholders in the Internet ecosystem and the government.” The initiative had come from the information scientist Sergey Plugotarenko (head of Russia’s Association for Electronic Communication, or RAEC, who is also on the board of the pro-Putin All-Russia People’s Front) and his longtime colleague Sergey Grebennikov, who then headed ROTsIT, an organization claiming to “develop and disseminate Internet technologies serving the interests of Russian citizens.” Thanks to their history of good relations with the government, “the two Sergeys” (as others sometimes called them behind their backs) secured the support of Vyacheslav Volodin, who was then first deputy chief of staff in the Kremlin. Volodin gave the green light, and IID was launched, with the intent that it would consult the government on “Internet-related questions.”

=> ↺ Robert Reich ☛ Does the Constitution Ban Trump from Running Again? Donald Trump…

• Donald Trump should not be allowed on the ballot.

• Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anyone who has held public office and taken an oath to protect the Constitution from holding office again if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Trump Trial Setting Could Provide Conservative Jury Pool

• If Judge Aileen Cannon sticks to her initial decision to hold the trial in Fort Pierce, Fla., the jury would be drawn largely from counties that Donald Trump won handily in his previous campaigns.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Biden rolls out the red carpet for Indian PM Modi’s White House visit

• US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to deepen defense and technology cooperation between their countries during Modi’s official visit to the White House, despite lingering concerns about human rights in India.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Indian Dissidents Have Had It With America Praising Modi

• To support the defenders of India’s embattled democracy, just tell the truth.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Modi’s Visit to the US Whitewashes India’s Far-Right Violence

• On Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in New York ahead of his first official state visit to the United States in almost a decade. The trip will include a dinner with President Joe Biden, a congressional address, and an invitation-only event to speak to the Indian-American diaspora.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Why Does Ro Khanna Want Modi to Address Congress?

• On June 22, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be in Washington, D.C., for his first official state visit. And US political elites are busy preparing for his fete. The prime minister will address a joint session of Congress and attend a state dinner in his honor at the White House. This will only be President Joe Biden’s third state dinner. Just a few years ago—from 2005 to 2014—the US barred Modi from entering the country because of his alleged role as Gujarat’s chief minister in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which nearly 2,000 Indians, most of whom were Muslim, were murdered.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Dangerous Reality of Modi’s India

• Mr. Modi’s version of India is no less skewed than Donald Trump’s of the United States, even if Mr. Modi has been more successful at getting the media and global elite to buy into it.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Modi’s State Visit: Biden Embraces Indian Leader Despite Rights Crackdown

• President Joe Biden is hosting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a four-day state visit this week amid growing concerns about the Indian leader’s human rights record. Modi has been prime minister since 2014, during which time he has cracked down on dissent, curtailed the free press, targeted Muslims and other minorities and pushed an aggressive form of Hindu nationalism that violates the pluralistic vision of modern India’s founders. For years, Modi was banned from even entering the United States over his role in anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that left over 1,000 dead in Gujarat, where Modi was the chief minister. Despite criticism of the state visit from some progressive lawmakers, the White House sees India as a key partner in countering Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region. We go to Mumbai to speak with Rana Ayyub, Indian journalist and global opinions writer for The Washington Post.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Why Pakistan army is targeting Imran Khan’s party

• Who’s responsible for the May 9 riots in Pakistan? Some Pakistanis say the army’s furor at former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party is misdirected.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Pentagon documents leak suspect Teixeira pleads not guilty in US court

• An Air National Guardsman accused of leaking US military secrets pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to six federal counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense, a court filing showed.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ US airman suspected of leaking classified documents pleads not guilty in federal court

• Jack Teixeira, the US airman suspected of leaking classified government documents, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday before a federal judge in a Massachusetts courtroom. Teixeira is charged with six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Arrives in France

• “with regret we have learned of the unfortunate explosion that occurred this afternoon in the center of Paris…”

=> ↺ American Oversight ☛ Congress Cites Records Obtained by American Oversight that Show Durham Investigation’s Politicization

=> ↺ American Oversight ☛ In the Records: A Trump Political Appointee’s Involvement in the Durham Investigation

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ EU-US joint statement following the EU-US Ministerial on Justice and Home Affairs

• European Commission Statement Stockholm, 21 Jun 2023 1. On 21 June 2023, the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union hosted the EU-US Ministerial Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs in Stockholm.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Brazilian President Meets With Pope Francis

• After his visit to Italy, Lula da Silva will leave for Paris to attend the summit on a new global financial pact.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Sierra Leone opposition party protests Electoral Commission

• Opposition-led protests broke out in Sierra Leone on Wednesday amid growing tensions surrounding the country’s presidential elections, set to take place next weekend, according to local JURIST sources. In support of the All People’s Congress, Sierra Leone’s leading opposition party, protesters in the capital city of Freetown demonstrated against the country’s election authorities.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong gov’t blames pandemic for the city’s drop in international competitiveness rankings

• Hong Kong has been ranked seventh in competitiveness among 64 economic entities, falling two places from year, according to the latest report by Switzerland’s International Institute for Management Development (IMD).

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ The Hunter Biden Plea Deal Leaves House Republicans in a Pickle

• The White House can now point out that it let the legal process take its course, which is what has happened.

=> ↺ Spiegel ☛ “The Final Battle”: A Trip through Trump’s America

• Former U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking another term in the White House. A trip through Republican-controlled states reveals just how radically America has already changed. Can the country survive a second Trump tenure?

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Trump Seems to Be Afraid, Very Afraid

• That was the big revelation of his interview with Fox’s Bret Baier.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Should Joe Biden Pardon Donald Trump?

• According to Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, if the President “wants to deliver on his promise to heal the country, he could do so with one action.”

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Trump is discussing his criminal case openly. Can he do that?

• In his first televised interview since his indictment for hoarding classified documents, former President Donald Trump discussed the case with Fox News host Bret Baier. Speaking publicly about a legal case is unusual and risky, according to legal experts.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ House Censures Adam Schiff Over His Role Investigating Trump

• The move by the G.O.P.-led House was the first in what could be a series of votes seeking to punish those whom Republicans have deemed enemies of the party.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Former F.B.I. Analyst Goes to Prison for Taking Classified Documents

• Like former President Trump, the former analyst was accused of violating the Espionage Act, taking home hundreds of classified documents and being unhelpful.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ The Gaps Between Media and Reality

• Readers share examples of media portrayals that are at odds with their own life experiences.

=> ↺ NPR ☛ Googling ‘abortion clinic near me’? The top result is often an anti-abortion clinic

• When people are looking for abortion services, they often turn to Google, searching a phrase like “abortion clinic near me” or “planned parenthood.”

• Yet the ads they’ll see at the top of the Google search results are often not abortion providers at all, but instead misleading ads for anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” — facilities that use various tactics to dissuade or delay pregnant people from getting an abortion.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Malaysia Says It Will Take Legal Action Against Meta Over Harmful Content on Facebook

• The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission said Facebook has recently been plagued by a “a significant volume of undesirable content” relating to sensitive issues on race, religion and royalty as well as defamation, impersonation, online gambling and scam advertisements.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Zhenya Berkovich is being prosecuted on terrorism-related charges. But the Internet is up in arms because she calls herself a ‘directoress.’ Why do Russian feminists use ‘feminitives’?

• One of the critics of the rhetoric of recognition exemplified by the feminitives is the American philosopher Nancy Fraser. She does not believe that inclusive language is enough to solve society’s structural problems. “We are facing,” she writes, “a new constellation in the grammar of political claims-making — and one that is disturbing on two counts.” [...]

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Turkish journalist Sedef Kabaş facing new trial for ‘insulting’ President Erdoğan

• During the June 22 hearing, which a CPJ representative attended, Kabaş’s lawyers asked to take the case to another court after the current one denied their plea to either dismiss the case or acquit the journalist; the court delayed the second hearing in her case until November 16, 2023, to give Kabaş’s lawyers time to justify that request.

• Kabaş was arrested for the same charge over her on-air comments in January 2022. She was found guilty and sentenced to two years and four months in prison, but was released pending appeal on March 11, 2022.

• Insulting Turkey’s president can carry a prison sentence of up to four years, with an added penalty if the insult was made in public, according to Article 299 of the Turkish penal code.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Reddit Tells Mods That Protesting By Changing Sub To NSFW Violates The Rules

• The enshittification of Reddit continues. Yesterday we wrote about the next move from protesting mods to switch their subs to NSFW, which strips those subreddits of ads, and how Reddit was experimenting with removing the mods who did that. For what it’s worth, just a few days ago, Reddit insisted in a comment that it wasn’t “threatening” mods with removal, and then just days later it literally did remove the mods, so nice going Reddit comms: you’ve completely fucked over whatever credibility you might have had.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Germany domestic intelligence agency reports extremist crime at record high

• German Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser and President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) Thomas Haldenwang unveiled the BfV’s annual report on Tuesday, highlighting the increasing threat of extremism in Germany as the number of crimes committed by political extremists reached a record high in 2022.

=> ↺ Primary school staff suspended in İstanbul after ‘rainbow decorations’

• The suspension of the teachers came after a tweet by the former mayor of Ankara. İstanbul LGBTI+ Pride Week Committee has expressed support for the affected teachers.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Volunteer Yale Psych Prof’s Nonrenewal for Publicly Diagnosing Trump & Dershowitz Doesn’t Violate Conn. Law,

• holds the Second Circuit.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Can a Florida School District Ban a Children’s Book About Gay Penguins?

• The answer’s more complicated than you might think.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Scaling trust on the web

• The Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web’s report captures analysis of the systems gaps and critical opportunities that will define how the next generation of online spaces will be constructed.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Europe’s best-selling newspaper is cutting jobs and looking ahead to AI

• A wave of job cuts hitting German tabloid Bild, Europe’s best-selling newspaper, are just a taste of what’s to come as even print publications prioritize digital media and embrace artificial intelligence.

• [...]

• In a memo to staff first reported by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine on June 19, Bild’s parent company, Axel Springer, shared plans for a reorganization that will involve the loss of some 200 roles. Bild, which currently employs about 1,000 people, will discontinue the publishing of six of its 18 regional editions, and close two-thirds of its regional offices.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Prosecutor Seeks 19-Year Sentence For Daghestani Journalist, Co-Defendants Charged With Financing Terrorism

• A Russian prosecutor on June 22 asked for a 19-year sentence for reporter Abdulmumin Gadzhiyev and his two co-defendants from the North Caucasus region and Daghestan on charges of financing terrorism that the three men and their supporters reject as politically motivated. [...]

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Russia court rejects US journalist’s appeal for release ahead of espionage trial

• The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the newspaper that employs Gershkovich, also commented on the court’s ruling. They said, “Although the outcome was expected, it is no less an outrage that his detention continues to be upheld. Evan has been wrongfully detained for more than 12 weeks for nothing more than doing his job as a journalist. We continue to demand his immediate release.”

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Haitian television station owner disappears days after brief abduction of his journalist wife

• The Committee to Protect Journalists on Thursday called on Haitian authorities to investigate the reported kidnapping of Pierre-Louis Opont, the president of Haiti’s independent Télé Pluriel channel 44, and the brief abduction of his journalist wife Marie Lucie Bonhomme.

• The disappearance of Opont on Tuesday, June 20, came days after Bonhomme, a veteran reporter for Haiti’s radio station Vision 2000, was abducted from her home for several hours, according to news reports and Bonhomme.

=> ↺ New Eastern Europe ☛ “Justice is the best prevention”

• On February 25th 2018, the bodies of Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were found in their home in Veľká Mača, not far from Bratislava. The murder shocked the country, sparking the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism and leading to a political crisis that would culminate on March 15th with the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico.

• On May 19th, the entrepreneur Márian Kočner, the suspected mastermind behind the killing, was acquitted by the Special Criminal Court. As the country approaches parliamentary elections later this year, we discussed the current situation in Slovakia with Matt Sarnecki, the director of the related film called “The Killing of a Journalist”.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Reporters Convicted of ‘Trespass’ for Doing Their Jobs

• The guilty verdict came the same day the Justice Department blasted Minneapolis for harassing the press.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘The damage has already been done’: Hong Kong journalist Bao Choy on winning a battle but not the war

• After leaving Hong Kong’s top court on a warm June morning, Bao Choy was overwhelmed by a mixture of jubilation and sadness.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court finds government is not obligated to secure Navajo Tribe water access

• In writing the 5-4 majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh rested on a strict reading of the treaty. The court found that while there is express language regarding water rights via groundwater, rivers, streams, lakes and springs, there was no language regarding the government’s duty to secure water for the tribe. Ultimately, the court held that the 1868 treaty “contained no ‘rights-creating or duty-imposing’ language that imposed a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe.”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Protecting Marine Life Also Benefits the People Nearby, Study Finds

• Protecting coastal areas of the ocean from fishing, mining and other human activity can also help people living nearby, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Nature Sustainability.

• People living close to these areas had better food security and greater household wealth, the study found. The region studied is the Mesoamerican coral reef system, which stretches just off Central America’s eastern coast for about 600 miles from Mexico south to Honduras.

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ Abolish Frontex: Criticism of mentioning activists in Europol’s “Trend Report” on Terrorism

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ 50 Years Later, the UpStairs Lounge Fire Is More Important to Remember Than Ever

• Fifty years ago, on June 24, 1973, an arsonist set the UpStairs Lounge, a queer nightclub in New Orleans’ French Quarter, ablaze. When the flames cleared, 32 people were dead and another 15 were injured. The attack would stand as the largest act of mass murder against the LGBTQ+ community until the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

=> ↺ Counter Punch ☛ Ted Kaczynski We Hardly Knew Ye

• However, even with those legendary stats and all the hyped-up true crime mythology that comes with them, at the end of another crowded news day, Ted Kaczynski was still just another number in America’s perpetually swelling human zoo and after the world took a moment to spit on his grave with the cameras rolling, they gleefully returned to their business-as-usual of masturbating to celebrity car crash footage while setting the rainforest on fire. Maybe I’m the sick one here, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to join them back in the daily grind. Something about leaving that broken old man hanging in his cell gives me a dull ache in the pit of my heart.

• I won’t sit here and try to pretend that Ted Kaczynski was some kind of folk hero. He was a killer and most of his victims were just innocent civilians. So, why then should I mourn the death of such a ghastly creature? If I had to answer this vexing question in the simplest of terms, I would say that it’s because Ted was a fellow outsider and in spite of all his many sins, he was also right about far more things than any truly evil person ever could be. Burn me at the stake if you must but I feel that this lonesome bastard has at the very least earned himself the right to one obituary that acknowledges the uncomfortable fact that he was indeed a human being.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Student Monitoring Tools Should Not Flag LGBTQ+ Keywords

• But in practice, these flags don’t work very well—many of the terms flagged by these student monitoring applications are often ambiguous, implicating whole swathes of the net that contain benign content. Worse still, these tools can alert teachers or parents to content that indicates something highly personal about the student—like the phrase “am I gay”—in a context that implies such a phrase is dangerous. Numerous reports show that the regular flagging of LGBTQ+ content creates a harmful atmosphere for students, some of whom have been outed because of it. This is particularly problematic when school personnel or family members do not understand or support a queer identity. 

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Blood-Quantum Laws Are Splintering My Tribe

• The rules were supposed to preserve my community. Instead they are slowly cutting people out of it.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Iranian Hackers Release Documents Reportedly Showing Raisi Approved Funds To Suppress Unrest

• A group of hackers has reportedly leaked government documents suggesting Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi approved the use of at least 100 trillion Iranian rials ($200 million) to put down protests during the recent nationwide unrest.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Waiting for the Justices

• We’re covering the coming affirmative action ruling, the search for a submersible and Hunter Biden.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Hunter Biden: President’s Son Takes Plea Deal on Tax & Gun Charges, But Legal Trouble May Not Be Over

• Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, is pleading guilty to federal tax offenses and a separate felony gun charge for which he is avoiding prosecution, according to a plea agreement with the Justice Department announced Tuesday. The deal caps a multiyear probe by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware. As a result, Hunter Biden is unlikely to spend any time behind bars despite the sweeping investigation into his personal and business conduct that Republicans have attempted to portray as unethical influence peddling directly implicating the president in corruption. But is this the end of Hunter Biden’s legal trouble? We speak with The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein about the plea deal, as well as what other evidence the FBI may have about Hunter Biden.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ It’s Official: The DOJ Stalled the Investigation Into Donald Trump

• On Monday morning, The Washington Post published a devastating story about attempts by leadership at the Department of Justice—including, most notably, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Chris Wray—to avoid prosecuting Donald Trump. The story exposes how the DOJ quashed efforts to aggressively pursue Trump and other politically connected Republicans for their roles in attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and instead adopted a more “cautious” approach aimed at avoiding the appearance of partisanship. Garland, it would seem, cared more about appearing fair (to Republicans) than seeking justice against the Republicans who tried to overthrow the government.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Let’s Stop Casually Comparing Donald Trump to Eugene Debs

• Donald Trump is in a world of legal trouble, and that’s inspired widespread speculation about whether the frequently indicted former president could end up running for a second term from a prison cell.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Kurdish Prisoner Reportedly Executed In Iran

• Human rights groups say Hayman Mostafaei, a Kurdish prisoner, was executed in the early hours of June 21 at the Sanandaj Central Prison in western Iran.

=> ↺ Off Guardian ☛ WATCH: Finding The Better Way

• In June of 2023, James Corbett delivered two presentations at The Better Way conference in Bath, England: “Between The Raindrops” on the topic “From Electrosmog to Nature’s Frequencies” and “The Limits of My Language” on the topic “From Thought Control to Free Thought.” This is the recording of those presentations. If you couldn’t afford the …

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America Is Well Underway

• We’re dechurching at a rapid clip.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Paul Singer Sets Fishing Record by Catching Two-Hundred-Pound Supreme Court Justice

• The billionaire revealed that the jurist was “much easier to catch” than he had anticipated.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Reddit Gave Its Moderators Freedom—And Power

• A series of recent protests reveal just how much the site depends on its moderators’ free labor.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Eighteen Belarusian Activists Handed Lengthy Prison Terms

• A court in Belarus has sentenced self-exiled opposition activist Vadzim Prakopyeu to 25 years in prison on multiple charges, including allegedly coordinating an attempted arson attack at the house of a pro-government lawmaker in June 2021.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Republika Srpska Assembly Votes To No Longer Publish Decisions Of Bosnia High Representative

• The National Assembly of the Republika Srpska has adopted changes in the law which imply that decisions by the high representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina will no longer be recognized.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Hun Sen likes proposal to build parks honoring his ‘win-win’ policy to end civil war

• But critics see it as a waste of money and suspect he will use the project to pump up image ahead of July vote.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Myanmar’s civilian death toll climbs amid soldier massacres, bloody clashes

• Killings are happening where fighting is fiercest.

=> ↺ Press Gazette ☛ Vice UK staff to strike for two days over redundancy terms

• Press Gazette understands 23 jobs at Vice are at risk of redundancy.

=> ↺ Press Gazette ☛ Census reveals total number of journalists and PRs: More than half female

• There are about 13,000 more PRs in England and Wales than there are journalists.

=> ↺ Press Gazette ☛ Lessons from ITV on how news outlets should cover their own crises

• What ITV, the BBC and The Guardian have done right – or wrong – in recent crises about themselves.

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ City Council bans traffic stops for minor traffic infractions, initiates the bidding process for unarmed crisis response team

• The Ann Arbor City Council met at Larcom City Hall Monday evening to pass the driving equality ordinance, which would prohibit police from conducting traffic stops for certain minor traffic violations including cracked windshields, cracked taillights or expired registration tags on its first read.

=> ↺ Shadowproof ☛ Protest Song Of The Week: ‘John Wayne Was a Nazi’ By Fucked Up & The Halluci Nation

• The song challenged the celebrated actor for his bigotry and role in helping to prop up an oppressive colonial system. It refers to his movies that often portrayed Wayne as a heroic cowboy fighting against the villainous Native Americans.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ SCOTUS Upheld ICWA But Questions Remain for Native American Families

• On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act. The decision, by a 7-2 vote, meant that the law will continue to require giving preference to placing adoptable Native American children with Native families.

• Kathryn Fort, director of the Indian Law Clinic at the Michigan State University College of Law, represented tribes who appealed after a federal judge in Texas declared ICWA unconstitutional in 2018. She’d spent months anticipating that the Supreme Court would make major changes to the law or even dismantle it.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Seven Pakistanis Arrested For Alleged Key Role In Migrant Ship That Sank Off Greece, Leaving 500 Missing

• Pakistani authorities said on June 21 that they have arrested seven alleged key figures in a human trafficking ring following last week’s sinking of an overcrowded smuggling vessel off Greece that left more than 500 migrants missing, including Pakistanis.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ New Zealand Immigration Minister Resigns, Conflicts of Interest

• “As Minister of Immigration, Michael made the decision to include telecommunications technicians on the immigration Green List…”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ A Superyacht Gave a Lifeline to 100 Migrants Thrown Into the Sea

• A $175 million vessel responded to a distress call and helped rescue survivors in one of the Mediterranean’s worst wrecks in decades, reflecting the new inequality of the seas.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ How Hopes of a Better Life Ended on a Migrant Ship Off Greece

• About two dozen of those on the fishing vessel that capsized off Greece came from Bandli, a community in northeastern Pakistan with a long history of young men chasing a brighter future abroad.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Immigration to Finland continues to be high – interest in studying in Finland is growing

• Finland has experienced a significant increase in immigration, primarily driven by individuals moving to the country for work or education with their families. Unlike other parts of Europe, Finland has not seen a surge in applications for international protection. These findings are highlighted in the Finnish Immigration Services’ latest report on immigration titled “Immigration to Finland.”

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Immigration hardliner Halla-aho elected as Finland’s Speaker of Parliament

• With new speakers and cabinet ministers sworn in, Finland’s new legislature and government will finally get down to work, nearly three months after the election.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ [Repeat] The Strategist ☛ Could Russia deliver on the threat to cut the US and Europe off from the [Internet]?

• Undersea cables, also known as submarine cables, are the physical infrastructure that connects the digital world. Hundreds of fibre-optic cables, some no thicker than garden hoses, are laid out across the ocean floor, enabling the real-time global transmission of data and communications signals. These cables facilitate around 99% of [Internet] traffic as well as the telephone calls, data transfers and other telecommunications that enable modern life to function. The first undersea telegraph cable was laid in 1858; today, there are almost 400, most of which are commercially owned and operated.

• While Medvedev’s threat may have just been sabre-rattling, if Russia followed through on it and cut undersea cables, the consequences would be immediate and widespread.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Reason ☛ It Takes 6 Clicks To Cancel Amazon Prime and the FTC’s New Lawsuit Says That’s Too Many

• The ideal number of clicks to cancel an online subscription may be four or five instead of six, but we don’t need government to make that decision.

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ FTC sues Amazon over ‘tricking people into Prime subscriptions’

• “Consumers had to first locate the cancellation flow, which Amazon made difficult.

• “Once they located the cancellation flow, they were redirected to multiple pages that presented several offers to continue the subscription at a discounted price, to simply turn off the auto-renew feature, or to decide not to cancel.

• “Only after clicking through these pages could consumers finally cancel the service.”

• The FTC also alleged that Amazon attempted to delay and hinder its investigation in multiple instances.

• Amazon has not yet issued any public statement about the FTC move.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ FTC Sues Amazon Over Tricking Users Into Signing Up for Prime

• The Commission alleges that Amazon Prime’s “manipulative” enrollment and “labyrinthine” cancellation processes are illegal.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ US Federal Trade Commission sues Amazon over deceptive subscription practices

• The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued retail platform Amazon.com Wednesday over allegations that Amazon deceived users into purchasing renewable subscriptions to its Prime service, which allows customers to save on delivery fees.

=> ↺ NPR ☛ FTC sues Amazon for ‘tricking and trapping’ people in Prime subscriptions

• Federal regulators have sued Amazon, alleging the company for years “tricked” people into buying Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel. \

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ FTC sues Amazon over Prime sign-up and cancellation interfaces

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Hearing Over Microsoft’s Takeover of Activision Blizzard Begins, With Bigwigs Set to Testify

• Microsoft’s $68.7 billion bid to acquire video game maker Activision Blizzard has arrived in court. An evidentiary hearing that pits both tech giants against the Federal Trade Commission began at 8:30 A.M. Pacific (11:30 A.M. Eastern) on Thursday morning. Big money and an industry-wide restructuring are at stake over the corporate merger— which has stoked pushback globally. In the first few hours of the proceedings, a minor bombshell has already dropped—an unsealed email that could undermine the arguments of the merger’s main opponent, Sony.

=> ↺ [Old] Time ☛ Why We Should All Be Worried About ‘Chokepoint Capitalism’

• Chokepoint Capitalism is the title of a new book co-authored by Doctorow, an [Internet] freedom activist, and Rebecca Giblin, a scholar at the University of Melbourne. The pair coined the term to describe what they say is the defining feature of the modern economy: corporations weaponizing their power to crush competition and lock in customers. The idea behind free market capitalism—that firms would compete fairly and thus drive prices down—has been corrupted in practice, Giblin and Doctorow argue. Chokepoint capitalism, they write, ultimately results in higher prices for customers and lower wages for workers. At the same time, the system diverts record profits to corporations, which they can reinvest to further cement their power.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Gannett is piling onto the antitrust claims against Google

• Gannett, the largest owner of newspapers in the US, is suing Google, alleging that the tech company’s dominance over the digital advertising market violates federal antitrust law.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ California enlisted the likes of Amazon, eBay, and Etsy to fight organized retail theft

• California Attorney General Rob Bonta is gathering a squad of sorts to fight organized retail theft.

Patents

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ InvestEU: EIF to facilitate up to €280 million in new financing to Czech and Slovakian SMEs and mid-caps by Komerční banka [Ed: But EU is ATTACKING SMEs. See what it did this month with the ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL Unified Patent Court]

• European Commission Press release Luxembourg, 21 Jun 2023

• European Investment Fund guarantees will support debt financing for about 6,500 micro [...]

Trademarks

=> ↺ TTAB Blog ☛ TTABlog Test: Is KOKOMO for Fresh Fruits Confusable With KOKOMO for Wine?

• The USPTO refused to register the mark KOKOMO for “Fresh fruits and vegetables; live plants, namely, live table grape vines; live plant material, namely, live table grape vine plant material; all of the foregoing excluding tomatoes and field corn, rye grass and perennial rye grass” in Class 31, finding confusion likely with the identical mark registered for “wine.” We know that when the marks are identical, a lesser degree of similarity between the involved goods is needed to support a likelihood of confusion refusal. How do you think this one came out? In re International Fruit Genetics, LLC, Serial No. 88711163 (June 15, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Cynthia C. Lynch).

Copyrights

=> ↺ Public Domain Review ☛ Specimens of Fancy Turning (1869)

• Thirty albumen silver prints of designs created through ornamental lathework.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ How Much Does Spotify Pay for 1 Million Streams? The Answer In 2023 Is Downright Depressing

• How much does Spotify pay for 1 million streams? The answer in 2023 is increasingly depressing — just ask Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth. If you’re wondering how much Spotify pays for a million streams, the answer has only gotten worse since we covered a significant spreadsheet of royalties way back in 2016.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ What to Do About Fake Drake Songs

• Generative A.I. has become very good at imitating famous pop stars. How should musicians respond?

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ RIAA Targets ‘AI Hub’ Discord Users Over Copyright Infringement

• ‘AI Hub’ is a rapidly growing Discord server where users share guides and AI models, including voice models of major musicians. The RIAA suggests that the server is dedicated to copyright infringement and wants it shut down. Through a DMCA subpoena, the anti-piracy group further asks Discord to disclose the identities of several users.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate IPTV: Police Target 13 Suspects, Seize 620K Euros in Cash/Crypto

• Italian police say they have targeted 13 people in Italy and Germany suspected of selling access to pirate IPTV services. Italian police units collaborated with their counterparts in Germany, with international judicial cooperation channels coordinated by Eurojust. Police say they seized over 620,000 euros in cash and crypto, and shut down 60 Telegram channels.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Megaupload Fugitive Arrested By Armed Police 11 Years After The Raid

• Since 2012, Kim Dotcom has been fighting extradition to the United States where he faces serious charges related to cloud storage site Megaupload. During that time, very little has been said about Megaupload graphic designer, Julius Bencko. A wanted man in the U.S., Bencko was arrested this month by armed police in the Czech Republic, who filmed the event and published it online.

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