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● 07.21.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 21/07/2023: OpenSSH 9.3p2 and Game of Trees 0.91 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 9:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Applications

=> ↺ Neowin ☛ VirtualBox major update fixes TPM crashes, Windows 11 graphics bugs, Mac performance issues – Neowin

• Oracle has released today a major update for VirtualBox with the latest version 7.0.10. The changelog states there are general improvements related to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), as well as performance issue fixes in the VMM (Virtual Machine Manager) for macOS Ventura.

• On the Windows side of things, graphics bugs pertaining to Windows 11 guests are fixed, and a crash-fix related to TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 1.2 has also been added. Meanwhile, Linux kernel 6.5 and 6.4 support is here.

=> ↺ Make Use Of ☛ The 5 Best Tools to Create Your Own Linux Distribution

• Linux is an open-source kernel known for its flexibility and extensibility. Many people choose to create their own Linux distributions that specifically fit their needs.

• Let’s take a look at the best tools you can use to create your own Linux distribution. These tools are designed for you to customize your operating system, simplify package management, configuration, and many other important functions.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Stacey on IoT ☛ Life in the Roku smart home is pretty basic

• I’ve spent two weeks playing around with Roku’s smart home gear (which is Wyze hardware running a software overlay provided by Roku) and I can tell you it’s fine. If you’re the type of person who wants to experience the smart home circa 2013 with the addition of a services plan and an integration to your existing Roku TV, then this is the gear for you.

=> ↺ Make Use Of ☛ 7 Tips to Organize Files on Linux and Declutter Your PC

• On Linux, a file does not only refer to regular files but also to directories, pipes, network sockets, devices, etc. Actually, the phrase “Everything is a file” is a common principle on Linux. Left unchecked, files can clutter your system and reduce productivity.

• To improve your workflow and make it easy to navigate your PC, it is important to organize your files properly and be consistent and decisive in organizing files.

=> ↺ Linux on iPad: Installing and Using Linux on Your iPad

• As tablets become more powerful and versatile, users are searching for ways to extend their capabilities beyond their original operating systems. One popular request is the ability to install Linux on an iPad, enabling users to enjoy the benefits of a full-fledged desktop operating system on their tablet. In this article, we will explore the possibilities of running Linux on iPad devices, including the installation process and the benefits that come with it.

=> ↺ Beebom ☛ How to View and Manage Linux Command History | Beebom

• The power of commands is simply unmatched when it comes to the Linux terminal. But sometimes you need to type lengthy commands multiple times to get the task done. Retyping such commands is not feasible and could be a painstaking process. Therefore, in this article, we will demonstrate how to view and manage the Linux command history.

=> ↺ Network World ☛ Assigning sudo privilege to users on Linux

• The sudo command is a very important command on Linux systems. You might say that it allows users to run privileged commands without logging in as root, and that is true. However, the more important point is that it allows individuals to manage Linux systems – adding accounts, running updates, installing applications and backing up the system – without requiring these things be done using the root account. This is consistent with the policy that says root privilege should only be used as needed and that no one should simply log in as root and run all of their commands. Doing routine work using the root account is considered dangerous because any typos or commands run in the wrong location can have very serious consequences.

=> ↺ ZDNet ☛ How to copy and rename files from the Linux terminal window

• Copying and renaming files on Linux is a task that can be done from within a GUI, but sometimes you just want the speed and simplicity of doing it from the terminal window. Here’s how.

=> ↺ ZDNet ☛ How to create a simple Linux alias to run all of your upgrade commands with a single word | ZDNET

• That’s not too much to type. The only problem is that I have to wait for the previous command to stop before I can type the next. Or, I can combine them into one long command like this:

• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo snap refresh

• That combination means I don’t have to wait for one command to complete before typing the next.

=> ↺ Open Source For U ☛ Building a Private Cloud Using OpenStack

• OpenStack is a cloud computing platform that offers a suite of software tools for creating and maintaining both public and private clouds. It gives users the freedom to set up and control an unlimited number of virtual computers, networks, and storage devices. This short tutorial will show us how to set up a private cloud using OpenStack and launch a virtual machine over the deployed environment.

• OpenStack architecture contains several components like controller nodes, compute nodes, neutrons, block storage, and object storage. Here’s a brief description of these components (Figure 1).

Games

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Roguelite shooter Arcadegeddon hits Steam with Steam Deck support

• Arcadegeddon arrived on Steam recently from IllFonic after being an Epic Exclusive. It’s flashy ever-evolving co-op roguelite shooter and the developers plan to ensure it stays compatible with Linux / Steam Deck. Note: the developer provided a key to our Steam Curator.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ The Wandering Village gets a big Ocean Update and you can win a key

• The Wandering Village is a wonderful city-builder where you’re building on the back of a massive creature. Currently in Early Access, Stray Fawn Studio just released a big watery upgrade. With Native Linux support and a Steam Deck Verified status, it’s an easy choice to recommend from my own time spent enjoying the idea.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Starfox meets Vampire Survivors – Whisker Squadron: Survivor out August 21st

• Well that’s certainly one way to describe it. Whisker Squadron: Survivor is styled very much like the classic rail shooter Starfox but sprinkles in some elements popularised by Vampire Survivors.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Dolphin Emulator devs give up on Steam release

• After all the ruckus recently about the Dolphin Emulator for Wii and GameCube coming to Steam, and then being blocked – the team has now given up with the Steam release.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Keep an eye on Parkour Legends inspired by Olli Olli, Super Meat Boy and Celeste

• Love fast-paced challenges? Enter Grip are working on Parkour Legends, a fast-paced side-scrolling parkour platformer and it looks like a lot of fun. It will be available with full Native Linux support, and the developer told me via email they’ve been making sure it runs great on the Steam Deck as well.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Gravity Circuit released paying tribute to classic platformers like Mega Man

• Gravity Circuit, a side-scrolling platformer that turns the action up to 11 and builds upon the legacy of popular console titles from the 1980s and 1990s has been released, and it has a native Linux version.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ DebugPoint ☛ Install KDE Plasma Desktop in Linux Mint: An Experiment

• Linux Mint is the most popular and user-friendly Linux distribution known for its ease of use and stability. While the default Cinnamon desktop environment in Linux Mint provides a pleasant experience, some users may wish to explore alternative desktop environments to customize their Linux experience further. KDE Plasma, another well-known desktop environment, offers a modern and feature-rich interface.

• However, Linux Mint never officially offered KDE Plasma. But there is a way to install the KDE Plasma desktop on top of the Linux Mint base. Let’s give it a try.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Solus 4.4: A Refreshingly User-Friendly Linux Experience For All – Brumpost

• In the vast realm of technology, I’ve been steadfastly asserting for years that Linux is unjustly perceived as being overly complicated. With each successive release of major distributions like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Fedora, my conviction in this belief only strengthens.

• But it’s not just the well-known distributions that are advancing the cause of simplicity in the Linux ecosystem.

• Even the less prominent ones are contributing to making Linux accessible to everyone. In fact, some of the minor distributions take user-friendliness to unprecedented heights.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ OpenSUSE ☛ Tumbleweed Update Highlights Redis, HarfBuzz Changes

• This week’s openSUSE Tumbleweed updates had changes for harfbuzz, xterm, Redis, Audacity and more

• Snapshots have been rolling out consistently this week.

• The 20230718 snapshot updated two packages. Changes in the pentobi 23.1 update include a fix for an issue related to overwriting game files on Android and the zlib-ng-compat 2.1.3 had improvements and implemented updates to make the library more robust and efficient. The data compression optimizer package also dropped a patch that was no longer needed with the upstream changes.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ SDx Central ☛ Linux ‘clone wars’ have begun as Red Hat says it’s committed to open source

• In recent weeks there has been a disturbance in the “force” of the enterprise Linux landscape, having to do with clones (no this isn’t a Star Wars story…).

• Red Hat has long been one of the leading enterprise vendors for the Linux operating system. The company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux (commonly known as RHEL) has been tremendously successful bringing in billions of dollars to Red Hat and its parent IBM.

• Linux is open source, which means that source code should be open and shared, which is also true for Linux enterprise distributions like RHEL. The open nature has enabled a vibrant ecosystem of so-called “RHEL clones” over the years that have taken the open-source code binaries used to build RHEL and repackaged them as their own distributions. Among the many clones is Oracle Linux, which got its start in 2006.

• One of the most popular community approaches was the CentOS project, which Red Hat acquired in 2014. The CentOS project underwent a series of changes in 2021 with the debut of CentOS Stream, which caused some concern by users about how it could be used as a stable enterprise platform. Those changes led to the emergence of a series of new community distributions based on RHEL, including Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux.

Debian Family

=> ↺ FOSSLinux ☛ Debian vs. Ubuntu: 10 key differences you should know

• I remember when I first dipped my toes into the vast ocean of Linux distributions, two names constantly bobbed up: Debian and Ubuntu. As a Linux enthusiast and a long-time user of both Debian and Ubuntu, I’ve been privy to many lively debates on forums and during meet-ups on the virtues and pitfalls of these two distros. Today, I’ll attempt to cut through the chatter and provide a detailed comparison of Debian and Ubuntu, elucidating the 10 key differences that every aspiring or seasoned Linux user should know.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ OMG Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu 23.10 Swapping DejaVu for Noto Fonts

• In an effort to improve the quality and (marginally) reduce the number of fonts a standard Ubuntu install comes with, the plan is to ship the Noto fonts package by default. This package includes sans-serif and serif fonts that cover a swathe of latin and non-latin scripts.

• In current versions of Ubuntu the DejaVu fonts package is pre-installed and pre-configured to handle non-latin scripts. With this change Noto fonts will take over duties for cases where DejaVu would be used. The quality of Noto is said to be as good as and in some cases better than DejaVu.

• Let me stress one thing (lest the gatekeepers of the oFficIal uBuNTu cOmMuNiTy get their gills giddy in hope I’d not mention it): this motion does not affect the choice of default font for the desktop UI. That continues to be “Ubuntu” (side-note: a ‘classic’ version of the Ubuntu font can now be installed in 23.10 for those less keen on the updated edition).

=> ↺ Ubuntu ☛ Introducing Ubuntu’s new HPC community team

• The High-Performance Computing (HPC) community team is the latest engineering team to join the Ubuntu project. What exactly is HPC? It is a multidisciplinary field that uses supercomputers, and high-performance clusters to solve advanced computational problems. The term “HPC” itself is commonly used to refer to computational science, also known as scientific computing. HPC also involves implementing several programming paradigms such as parallel computing, distributed computing, and grid computing; the list goes on.

• So why does Ubuntu need an HPC team? Well… it’s because HPC is everywhere around you! HPC is used to…

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ SolidWAN CN9131 is a compact SD-WAN appliance powered by a Marvell OCTEON CN9131 SoC

• SolidRun provides support for Debian, Ubuntu, and OpenWrt operating systems. More details about the SoM and software can be found on the documentation website, including some instructions to use the DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit). But note the website feels fairly slow and I had a few 500 HTTP errors when browsing the documentation. Hopefully, it’s just a transient issue.

• The SolidWAN CN9131 is the first Marvell-based hardware part of the SolidWAN family, but the company had previously launched the SolidWAN Single LX2162 and SolidWAN Dual LX2160 based on the NXP LayerScape 12-core and 16-core Arm Cortex-A72 processors previously. We don’t have pricing information for the new SolidWAN CN9131, but it should be an entry-level solution compared to the NXP models since it lacks 25GbE and 100GbE interfaces and comes with fewer cores. Additional information may be found on the product page and the press release.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Open Source OLED Nametag is Full of Features

• Ever wanted a sweet OLED nametag with fancy features like daylight readability, automatic brightness adjustment, GIF animation support, all-day runtime, easy web interface, and more? [TobleMiner]’s OLED Nametag is the project you want to keep an eye on in that case.

• It’s still an early prototype, but the feature list looks great and works with a variety of OLED modules that are easily available. The enclosure can be 3D printed, and while there is very little spare room inside the housing, [TobleMiner] has clearly made the most of all available space. Some PCB fab houses offer component placement these days, and the board is designed with exactly that in mind.

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ Banana Pi BPI-KVM – A KVM over IP solution based on Rockchip RK3568 SoC

• The Banana Pi BPI-KVM device allows both remote control through the KVM ports and local control with HDMI output and two USB ports for a keyboard and a mouse. We are not told much about software, but Banana Pi mentions a partnership with IKAS Industries to provide a total solution. IKAS provides industrial solutions such as an AI-powered Smart Manufacturing System, so I’m assuming Banana Pi is working on the board design, and IKAS will provide the OS for the BPI-KVM and the software that runs on the host/server. You’d have thought they would have modified open-source software like PiKVM, but we’ll see. Only time will tell.

=> ↺ Stacey on IoT ☛ Zigbee bulbs: Replace them with Matter or stay with Zigbee?

• On a recent Internet of Things Podcast episode we took a voicemail from Michael on our podcast hotline. Michael has invested in Zigbee lights up to this point and he’s heard about some challenges that still face Matter devices some challenges that still face Matter devices. So the question really is, what Zigbee bulbs would be the best additions for his current smart home as opposed to buying Matter bulbs right now. He wants either tunable white or RGB color bulbs.

=> ↺ Linux Gizmos ☛ SolidRun Introduces Fanless Compact SD-WAN Appliance with OCTEON Quad-core SoC

• SolidRun launched today a new SD-WAN appliance built around the Marvell OCTEON CN9131 System-on-Chip designed for intelligent networking applications. Some of the key features of the SOLIDWAN CN9131 are its multiple ethernet ports and wide expansion ports.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Murena Fairphone 4 is now available in the USA ?? – with deGoogled and privacy-safe /e/OS

• Unleash the power of privacy with the Murena Fairphone 4! This remarkable device is a fusion of unparalleled repairability and privacy, designed to cater to the discerning tech enthusiast.

• The Murena Fairphone 4 stands as a fortress against data intrusion, ensuring that no data is sent to Google, no user logs are collected, and trackers in your apps are cut off.

• This isn’t just a phone, it’s a commitment to a long-term relationship. The Murena Fairphone 4 is built to last, ensuring you’ll enjoy its features and benefits for years to come.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi ☛ A giant slice of Raspberry Pi

• I built mine for the Grand Discoveries event at the Grand Arcade shopping centre, home to the Raspberry Pi Store. Grand Discoveries is an exhibition that will celebrate the iconic discoveries and inventions made here in Cambridge. The giant Pi is going into a glass display case, so space was limited, which means I can’t claim it is the biggest Raspberry Pi out there (boooo!). But at six times normal size, I think it’s the first big Raspberry Pi Model 4B.

=> ↺ SparkFun Electronics ☛ Tech For Good

• We’re switching things up today with a post that highlights some of the resourceful and inspirational projects we’ve seen on Hackster lately.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Giant Raspberry Pi 4 Blinks Giant 3D-Printed LED

• Makers in the Raspberry Pi community have been known to have some big ideas but this is arguably one of the biggest projects we’ve seen involving the Pi 4. Tony Roberts has created what is possibly the physically biggest Raspberry Pi 4 and detailed the creation process in a post recently shared to the official Raspberry Pi blog. This large-scale Pi is intended to go on display soon and even features a flashing LED—the first project most makers tackle with the classic SBC.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ 8 Ways to Fix System UI Isn’t Responding Error in Android

=> ↺ Deccan Herald ☛ Truecaller brings AI call screening feature to Android phones in India | Deccan Herald

=> ↺ Geeky Gadgets ☛ How to fix a frozen Android Phone – Geeky Gadgets

=> ↺ Google Chrome keeps crashing on Android? Here’s why and how to fix

=> ↺ KDAB ☛ Reverse Engineering Android Apps

• Reverse engineering in general is a tricky business and sometimes not very orthodox. So, why bother to write this article?

• Well, sometimes reverse engineering is also for something good. It started when my wife dusted off her watch. We had a huge unpleasant surprise when we found that the companion app is not available anymore on Google Play! The watch is completely useless without the companion app, as you can’t even set the time on it… Because I hate to throw away a perfectly working watch I decided to create an app for it myself.

• My first instinct was to find an older phone with the app still alive and to use a BLE sniffer to reverse engineer the BLE protocol. But I didn’t find the application installed on any old phones. I found the application online but the application cannot be used anymore as it was using some online services which are offline now…

• Next obvious step was to decompile the application to get the communication protocol and also the algorithms behind the sleep & activities. This is how our story begins ;-).

=> ↺ Neowin ☛ MEmu Android Emulator 9.0.3 – Neowin

=> ↺ Lifewire ☛ 7 Ways to Fix a Blurry Screen on an Android Phone or Tablet

=> ↺ SlashGear ☛ The 5 Best Android Apps For Astronomy

=> ↺ SlashGear ☛ These 10 Popular Android Apps Are Quickly Draining Your Phone’s Battery

=> ↺ SlashGear ☛ How To Delete Picsart Video Files On Android

=> ↺ Make Use Of ☛ How to Change the Brightness of the Flashlight on Android

=> ↺ You Can Let Google Know What You Think About Android 14

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Work Profile Android: Google updates Work profile behaviour with Android 14 – Times of India

=> ↺ SamMobile ☛ Android 14 will be third and final big update for some Galaxy devices – SamMobile

=> ↺ 9to5Google ☛ Google Messages web app now supports direct reply [U: Android tablets]

=> ↺ The Sun ☛ Android owners urged to delete two Chinese spyware apps that could be lurking in your device TODAY | The US Sun

=> ↺ Computer World ☛ A whole new kind of Android browser multitasking power | Computerworld

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Undeadly ☛ OpenSSH 9.3p2 released

• “We’ve just made an OpenSSH release to fix a remotely exploitable RCE vulnerability in ssh-agent’s PKCS#11 support (CVE-2023-38408). Details at https://openssh.com/releasenotes.html#9.3p2

=> ↺ Bruno Rodrigues ☛ Reproducible data science with Nix, part 2 — running {targets} pipelines with Nix

• This is the second post in a series of posts about Nix. Disclaimer: I’m a super beginner with Nix. So this series of blog posts is more akin to notes that I’m taking while learning than a super detailed tutorial. So if you’re a Nix expert and read something stupid in here, that’s normal. This post is going to focus on R (obviously) but the ideas are applicable to any programming language.

• So in part 1 I explained what Nix was and how you could use it to build reproducible development environments. Now, let’s go into more details and actually set up some environments and run a {targets} pipeline using it.

=> ↺ CBC ☛ What is the fediverse and why does Threads want to join?

• The fediverse — a combination of the words federation and universe — is a loose collective of decentralized servers that operate using open source standards. Unlike traditional social networks, the fediverse allows users to connect and communicate with others seamlessly across multiple platforms.

• Proponents say it’s similar to the early days of the internet, when Big Tech hadn’t yet created social media sites that rely on advertising and use algorithms to keep you scrolling on their platforms.

=> ↺ Ted Unangst ☛ azorius 0.1

• My philosophy is that (nearly) everyone can and should host their own microblog, but I’m less convinced that’s true for a link site. You’re more likely to have an interesting all feed with a diverse group of users, but that quickly turns to noise with microblogs beyond even the most modest size. Working to make it more useful for many users at a time.

FSF

=> ↺ FSF ☛ The next round of FSF board candidate discussions will start on July 24

• According to the board process outline, eligible discussion participants are current associate members who were already members (or donated a comparable amount) between 2018-01-19 and 2022-10-19.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Daniel Lemire ☛ Fast decoding of base32 strings

• For the most parts, these base64 techniques are applicable to base32. Base32 works in the following manner: you use 8 ASCII characters to encode 5 bytes. Each ASCII characters carries 5 bits of information: it can be one of 32 characters. For reference, base64 uses 64 different ASCII characters so each character carries more information. However, base64 requires using both upper case and lower case letters and other special characters, so it is less portable. Base32 can be case invariant.

=> ↺ Adriaan Zhang ☛ Normal Probability Plots for Dummies

• Now, here’s the trick. We can use some math to determine the expected z-score of the nth element. For example, we might say that the expected z-score of the 50th element in a sample of 100 normally distributed values is 0. Using this, we can create a plot of our points, where the x-axis is the expected z-score, and the y-axis is the actual z-score.

• If the distribution is really normal, the resulting points will fall on a straight line. Any deviations may tell you information about the true distribution, such as its skewness.

=> ↺ Daniel Janus ☛ A visual tree iterator in Rust

• My adventure with learning Rust continues. As a quick recap from the previous post, I’m writing a tree viewer. I have now completed another major milestone, which is to rewrite the tree-printing function to use an iterator. (Rationale: it makes the code more reusable – I can, for instance, easily implement a tree-drawing view for Cursive with it.)

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ How to subset list objects in R

• If you’re an aspiring data scientist or R programmer, you must be familiar with the powerful data structure called “lists.” Lists in R are collections of elements that can contain various data types such as vectors, matrices, data frames, or even other lists. They offer great flexibility and are widely used in many real-world scenarios.

• In this blog post, we will explore one of the essential skills in working with lists: subsetting. Subsetting allows you to extract specific elements or portions of a list, helping you access and manipulate data efficiently. So, let’s dive into the world of list subsetting and learn some useful techniques along the way!

=> ↺ SparkFun Electronics ☛ What is Correction Data?

• The GNSS works by utilizing a constellation of satellites that continuously transmit signals containing information about their locations and the time the signals were transmitted. Receivers on the ground or in vehicles receive these signals and use the timing and location information to calculate their own positions through a process called trilateration.

• Trilateration involves measuring the time it takes for the signals from multiple satellites to reach the receiver. By knowing the speed of light, the receiver can calculate the distance to each satellite based on the time delay. Using GPS, you need to know the distance to three satellites to pinpoint a location, and a fourth to account for clock errors.

=> ↺ Undeadly ☛ Game of Trees 0.91 released

• Version 0.91 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated): [...]

=> ↺ Game Of Trees ☛ Game of Trees Comparison to other version control systems

• A unique feature of Got is its multi-process model working behind the scenes, tailored to interfaces provided by the OpenBSD kernel. Processes with an inherent attack surface, such as those talking to the network or parsing the data in repositories, run in a separate address space and with as little capabilities as possible. The OpenBSD version of Got provides the strongest protections by using pledge and unveil in combination. For example, unveil enforces read-only access to repositories while the Got server is serving fetches. The Got client main process restricts itself to the repository directory (read-only or read-write as appropriate), the /tmp directory, and the work tree. Processes speaking the network protocol have no direct filesystem access at all. All processes are pledged as tightly as possible to restrict the available system calls to those required for regular operation. The -portable version of Got uses Capsicum on FreeBSD and Landlock on Linux to restrict filesystem access during network access and parsing of repository data, but does not restrict the main process (yet?).

Leftovers

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Extreme potty training: Dad in China dangles girl by ankles through flat window

• He was reportedly punishing the girl for wetting herself instead of using the toilet.

=> ↺ André Staltz ☛ Google shattered human connection

• To start with my main point: Google popularized the habit of taking things out of context. Google allowed users to cut several steps in their discovery journey, creating a more direct sense of “information at your fingertips”, which was a common mantra at the time (thank you, Bill Gates, twice). This is not new information, we’ve always known that Google made information retrieval easier. The problem is that making something easy has a dark side, because whatever was hard to do is not going to be done at all anymore. In specific, Google eliminated the need to connect with communities online if all you wanted was the knowledge produced by that community. And connecting with people and communities – in the style we still practiced in the 90s – is time consuming, often hard.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ RIP Kevin Mitnick: Former most-wanted hacker dies at 59

• “We’ve lost a true pioneer of the digital world, Kevin Mitnick,” said Chris Wysopal, a former member of the L0pht team and today an infosec CTO. “His ingenuity challenged systems, incited dialogues, and pushed boundaries in cybersecurity. He will remain a testament to the uncharted power of curiosity.”

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ Kevin Mitnick, the world’s most famous hacker dead at 59

• According to the announcement from KnowBe4, where Kevin was part owner and a close friend of KnowBe4’s founder Stu Sjouwerman, Kevin battled the cancer for 14 months.

Science

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Scientists Surprised by DNA in Worms That Control Hosts’ Brains

• “What we found, which was very surprising, was that both hairworm genomes were missing about 30 percent of a set of genes that are expected to be present across basically all groups of animals,” said Tauana Cunha, a postdoctoral researcher at Chicago’s Field Museum and lead author of the study, in a statement about the findings.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ On the Map, Nothing. On the Ground, a Hidden Maya City.

• The work has been revolutionized over the last decade by lidar, a technology that uses airborne lasers to pierce dense vegetation and reveal the ancient structures and human-altered landscapes beneath. But in the end, it still comes down to arduous treks.

=> ↺ Adriaan Zhang ☛ Taking Pictures of Cosmic Rays

• A blogpost? In this economy?! Yes, that’s right. Today, we’re going to be looking at how you can use an unmodified digital camera to detect cosmic rays and other charged particles.

Education

=> ↺ uni Stanford ☛ Sources refused to participate in Stanford investigation of president after they weren’t guaranteed anonymity

• The report, at 95 pages in length, contained a number of unflattering details about Tessier-Lavigne’s lab, including the conclusion that at least four papers with Tessier-Lavigne as principal author contained significant manipulation of research data and that Tessier-Lavigne had repeatedly failed to correct the scientific record for two decades. Its findings prompted Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation, who had been serving in his position since 2016. Still, the investigation had previously unreported limitations.

=> ↺ BBC ☛ How to spot an AI cheater

• How can AI detect another AI? The short answer is pattern recognition. The longer answer is that checkers use unique identifiers that differentiate human writing from computer-generated text. “Perplexity” and “Burstiness” are perhaps the two key metrics in AI text-sleuthing. When these two are both low, the theory is that the text is AI-written.

Hardware

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm Talk With US Officials About China Market

• CEOs from the largest chip makers in the US have met with top US gov officials about the impending array of new export restrictions.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ North Korea arrests three merchants for selling smuggled memory cards

• With less smuggling these days, the easily concealable SD cards can bring huge profits.

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ Arm: “Panfrost is now the GPU driver for the Linux community”

• Arm is now saying that “in effect, Panfrost is now the GPU driver for the Linux community” after having extended and expanded the collaboration with Collabora for the development of the open-source Panfrost driver for Arm Mali GPUs, following their first official collaboration in the fall of 2020.

• Arm goes even as far as to claim that “through the Arm and Collabora partnership, device manufacturers can confidently choose SoCs containing a Mali GPU regardless of the software operating system (OS) and graphics middleware… delivering a high-quality open-source Linux implementation which can be used in their products”. Collabora confirmed the new partnership saying Arm was instrumental in getting Vulkan support in Panfrost alongside the existing OpenGL and OpenGL ES implementations.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Space Tourism Could Have a Sex Problem And We’re Not Ready For It

• Considering that space travel is no longer reserved for professional astronauts, the various motivations of space tourists and upcoming spacecraft developments, we concluded that in-space sex will probably happen within the next ten years.

• The real concern is not the sexual interactions themselves, but rather if they lead to human conception in space. Early orbital space tourism flights are expected to last for days to weeks, so only the early stages of human reproduction could happen in space.

=> ↺ The Conversation ☛ Sex in space: why it’s worrying that the space tourism sector hasn’t considered the consequences

• Limited experiments on mouse embryos, which include one that used a mini incubator on a satellite, have shown changes in embryo viability after they were exposed to space. Knowledge of the impact on human reproduction is effectively zero, but we can assume that there will be effects.

• Therefore, there is an unknown potential for developmental abnormalities in human embryos conceived in space. Additionally, there could be an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy in weightlessness conditions (when the embryo attaches outside the uterus, for example in the fallopian tubes).

• Even if space tourists use contraception, we can’t be sure it will be as effective outside planet Earth. There have been no studies on how contraceptives will be affected by space environments.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Overlooked Reason Our Health Care System Crushes Patients

• This is also the story of a medical system that didn’t think my patient was worth a $12 medication to prevent any of this from happening.

• This patient’s story is a result of the space between the care that providers want to give and the care that the patient actually receives. That space is full of barriers — tasks, paperwork, bureaucracy. Each is a point where someone can say no. This can be called the administrative burden of health care. It’s composed of work that is almost always boring but sometimes causes tremendous and unnecessary human suffering.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Maternal Mortality Is Rising, and Pro-Lifers Don’t Care

• I would respect abortion opponents more if they acknowledged that they expect women to endure whatever suffering comes their way due to their impregnation by some man, who, let’s not forget, suffers nothing. I wish they would just admit that having a child when your life is not in a good place might mean a lifetime of poverty and violence and struggle—not just for the mother, but for the child too. Crucial as they are, diapers are just the beginning of what children need to thrive. When that baby is toilet-trained (and seriously, Bill Lee, how many toddlers are trained by the age of 2?), she will still need clothes and shoes and healthy food and a safe and stable place to live in a safe and stable community. Where are the so-called pro-lifers when that cute little innocent baby is 10 or 12 or 20? Where are they if she gets pregnant herself?

=> ↺ NBC ☛ 18-year-old Nebraska woman sentenced to 90 days in jail for burning fetus after abortion

• Norfolk police detective opened an investigation into the abortion following a tip, according to an arrest affidavit. Police secured a search warrant to gain access to Facebook messages between the two, in which prosecutors say the women discussed terminating the pregnancy and destroying the evidence. Police then found the burned fetal remains buried in a field north of Norfolk.

• In one of the Facebook messages, Jessica Burgess instructed her daughter on how to take the pills to end the pregnancy, according to court records. In another, Celeste Burgess wrote, “I will finally be able to wear jeans,” according to the documents.

=> ↺ NPR ☛ Denied abortion for a doomed pregnancy, she tells Texas court: ‘There was no mercy’

• Eight attorneys represented the patients and doctors challenging the law. On the other side of the room, two attorneys represented defendant Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Judge Jessica Mangrum, elected as a Democratic judicial candidate in 2020, presided.

• Paxton, currently suspended, faces an impeachment trial in September over allegations of bribery and abuse of power.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Biden Administration Moves to Ban Funding for Wuhan Lab

• A memo said an official suspension of funding to the lab, which has not received any U.S. money since 2020, was necessary to “mitigate any potential public health risk.”

=> ↺ DeSmog ☛ Campaigners Warn of Loopholes in Laws to Curb Antibiotics on UK Farms After ‘Biased’ Industry Consultation

• Proposed laws to curb antibiotic use on UK farms drafted after closed-door meetings with industry contain loopholes that could undermine the fight against deadly drug resistant bacteria, campaigners have warned.

• The government published the draft legislation, designed to replace European Union rules post-Brexit, following consultations with pharmaceutical, veterinary medicine and farming lobby groups, according to Freedom of Information requests filed by DeSmog. 

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ European Health Union: EU steps up action to prevent shortages of antibiotics for next winter

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 17 Jul 2023 The European Commission, the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are today issuing recommendations for actions to avoid shortages of key antibiotics used to treat respiratory infections for European patients in the next winter season.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Shorter alcohol sale hours cut Lithuania’s male mortality, study suggest

• The decision to introduce shorter alcohol sale hours in Lithuania has led to a drop in male deaths on Sundays and Mondays, according to a study by Daumantas Stumbrys, a senior researcher at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Experimental drug slows progression of early Alzheimer’s disease by 60%, study finds

• Eli Lilly’s experimental drug donanemab slowed the progression of Alzheimer’s by 60% for patients in the earliest stages of the brain-wasting disease, according to trial data presented at a medical meeting on Monday.

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Neuroscientists Reveal 5 Things They Do to Keep Their Brains Healthy

• Inside tips from actual brain scientists!

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hongkongers should stare at smokers lighting up in prohibited areas, says health chief

• Hong Kong’s health chief has urged Hongkongers to stare at people who light up areas where smoking is banned.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Reinventing the E.R. for America’s Mental-Health Crisis

• EmPATH units are advancing a radically new approach to psychiatric emergencies. It seems to be working.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Huw Edwards Identified as Anchor Suspended by the BBC

• The wife of Huw Edwards, one of the BBC’s most prominent figures, said in a statement that her husband suffered from mental health issues. The police said there was no evidence of a crime.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Racism and Sexism Underlie Higher Maternal Death Rates for Black Women, U.N. Says

• Black women in Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States are more likely than their white counterparts to report denial of medication or physical and verbal abuse in health care settings.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Substance Abuse Is Climbing Among Seniors

• Many aging baby boomers have long histories with drugs, cannabis and alcohol. “The field wasn’t ready for that,” said one expert.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ Zimbabwe ☛ Threads daily users drop by 50%, time spent in the app falls by 71%, not quite the Twitter killer huh?

• We expected some people to try it out and leave but this level of decline is higher than we thought it would be after just a week. I would argue that if the Threads experience was compelling, the decline would not have been as bad. It is clear that Threads was rushed to take advantage of some PR troubles Twitter was/is facing.

=> ↺ 37signals LLC ☛ There’s no rebound in sight for unprofitable SaaS

• But it also means that there’s probably a lot more pain in the pipeline for unprofitable software startups, almost all of which are now SaaS, which raised money in the late go-go days. If a company raised a wallop of cash in 2021, they’re soon coming up on that 18-month anniversary when it’s supposed to be all spent. Now that runway has likely been extended by early cost-cutting, but those cuts won’t last forever, and when fresh capital is inevitable needed, it’ll be murder on the cap tables. Potential victims here include ClickUp, Airtable, and Notion. All who raised hundreds of millions at the peak of the market at insane valuations that’ll be extremely difficult to live up to.

=> ↺ Mozilla ☛ How to make trustworthy AI? Lower the barriers for developers

• Nolano, one of the winning startups at Mozilla’s Responsible AI Challenge, wants to make it easier to create AI apps. 

=> ↺ Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd ☛ End of IT Jobs? Indian Tech Giants – Infosys, TCS Q1 FY24 Results Raise Questions

=> ↺ The Unexpected Layoffs: 50 Employees Let Go from Activision Blizzard’s Esports Division [Ed: Microsoft says it wants to buy you and then...]

• In the midst of Microsoft’s impending takeover of Activision Blizzard, the gaming industry is abuzz with news of significant changes within the company’s esports division. Recently, approximately 50 employees were laid off from the division, raising concerns about the future of its beloved Overwatch League (OWL) and its city-based franchise system.

=> ↺ India ☛ More Layoffs At Microsoft As Company Goes Beyond Initial Plans

• Microsoft has reportedly reduced its workforce further by 1,000 over the past week, mostly in sales and customer services teams.

=> ↺ Microsoft Layoffs Over 1,000 Jobs Amid Restructuring

• Microsoft has additionally diminished the worker headcount by 1,000 throughout the last week. A report guaranteed that the most recent Microsoft layoffs are notwithstanding the 10,000 Job cuts that the organization declared recently. Last week, the tech goliath affirmed that it’s dispensing with unexpected positions.

=> ↺ Activision Job Cuts: Activision cuts jobs amid Microsoft takeover deal: Divisions affected, number of employees and more

• Microsoft is yet to seal the deal to take over Call of Duty maker Activision which was announced in early 2022. According to a report by Verge, the gaming studio has reportedly laid off around 50 employees from its esports division amid the acquisition turmoil. The report also mentioned that the sacked employees have already been informed about the layoffs. As per the report, Activision Blizzard is also planning major changes to the Overwatch League (OWL).The franchise’s city-based tournament format may also come to an end.

Windows TCO

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ US China envoy hit through Microsoft cloud breach: report

• Citing “people familiar with the matter”, the newspaper said on Thursday, apart from envoy Nicholas Burns, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, had his email account accessed as well.

• The sources said the account of Secretary of State Antony Blinken was not breached and the focus of the attack appeared to be senior officials responsible for managing US-China ties.

=> ↺ NBC ☛ China-linked [attackers] accessed email of U.S. ambassador, officials say

• Last week, officials confirmed that [attackers] based in China broke into email accounts of the State and Commerce departments, but they did not say how many people were affected. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that it learned of the hacking campaign in mid-June and that the campaign lasted around a month.

=> ↺ Rolling Stone ☛ [Attackers] in China Breach Emails of U.S. Ambassador: Report

• Although the infiltration is reportedly limited to unclassified emails, the Biden adminstration believes hackers could have gained insight into U.S. planning ahead of Blinken’s trip to China in June and internal communications regarding U.S. policies, CNN reported.

• The breach appeared to hone in on a select number of senior officials managing the U.S.-China relationship, and took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft’s cloud-computing environment that has since been fixed, per WSJ.

Security

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ HCA Healthcare breach compromises 11M patients’ personal data

• Hospital operator HCA Healthcare Inc. has experienced a data breach that compromised 11 million patients’ personal information. The company disclosed the hack on Monday. The disclosure comes a few days after reports emerged that hackers had posted a portion of the stolen data on a known cybercrime forum.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Unmasking suspected North Korean hackers’ tricks

• By impersonating journalists, they tried to gain information from experts through phishing attacks

=> ↺ Hacker News ☛ New P2PInfect Worm Targeting Redis Servers on Linux and Windows Systems

• Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new cloud targeting, peer-to-peer (P2P) worm called P2PInfect that targets vulnerable Redis instances for follow-on exploitation.

• “P2PInfect exploits Redis servers running on both Linux and Windows Operating Systems making it more scalable and potent than other worms,” Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers William Gamazo and Nathaniel Quist said. “This worm is also written in Rust, a highly scalable and cloud-friendly programming language.”

• [...]

• A notable characteristic of the worm is its ability to infects vulnerable Redis instances by exploiting a critical Lua sandbox escape vulnerability, CVE-2022-0543 (CVSS score: 10.0), which has been previously exploited to deliver multiple malware families such as Muhstik, Redigo, and HeadCrab over the past year.

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

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium), Fedora (sysstat), Gentoo (openssh), Mageia (firefox/nss, kernel, kernel-linus, maven, mingw-nsis, mutt/neomutt, php, qt4/qtsvg5, and texlive), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, and kpatch-patch), Slackware (curl and openssh), SUSE (curl, grafana, kernel, mariadb, MozillaFirefox, MozillaFirefox-branding-SLE, poppler, python-Flask, python310, samba, SUSE Manager Client Tools, and texlive), and Ubuntu (curl, ecdsautils, and samba).

=> ↺ Kevin David Mitnick

• Kevin David Mitnick, 59, died peacefully on Sunday, July 16, 2023, after valiantly battling pancreatic cancer for more than a year. Kevin is survived by his beloved wife, Kimberley Mitnick, who remained by his side throughout their 14-month ordeal. Kimberley is pregnant with their first child. Kevin was ecstatic about this new chapter in his and Kimberley’s life together, which has now been sadly cut short.

• Kevin was preceded in death by his devoted mother, Shelly Jaffe, and his loving grandmother, Reba Vartanian, his father, Alan Mitnick, and his half-brother, Adam Mitnick.

=> ↺ InfoSecurity Magazine ☛ Estee Lauder Breached by Two Ransomware Groups

• Estee Lauder has become the latest big name to suffer an apparently serious ransomware breach, after two groups claimed to have compromised the firm.

• The cosmetics giant was posted to the leak site of both the Alphv/BlackCat and Clop ransomware gangs, according to security researchers on Twitter. Researcher Dominic Alvieri was just one of many citing the news.

=> ↺ Thunderbird ☛ K-9 Mail Collaborates With OSTIF, 7ASecurity On Security Audit

• Our journey to transform K-9 Mail to Thunderbird for Android involves more than just improving the user interface and adding new features. K-9 Mail is already an important part of the open source ecosystem on Android, and because it lays the foundation for the future of Thunderbird on Android, we believe it’s important to invest in the security health of the software.

• To that end, we recently enjoyed a collaboration with the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF) and 7ASecurity on an extensive security audit of K-9 Mail.

• A team of six auditors at 7ASecurity worked diligently to identify and address any potential security or stability issues found in K-9 Mail. The audit focused specifically on threat modeling, fuzzing (a technique that simulates real-world scenarios where software might encounter unexpected or malicious inputs), and our software supply chain.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Plaintiff’s Being a Possibly Vexatious Litigant May Be Basis for Denying Pseudonymity,

• even when plaintiff’s lawsuit was connected to her having been allegedly sexually assaulted, which has often (but not always) been seen as a basis for allowing pseudonymity.

=> ↺ GO Media ☛ Your Phone Isn’t Spying on You to Show You Ads (It’s Worse Than That)

• Your iPhone is not eavesdropping on your conversations to sell you things. It’s actually much worse.

=> ↺ A Third-Party Cookie Deadline Might Stick; LOL, They Named It PMax, Too.

• After Google Chrome first committed to third-party cookie deprecation, big advertisers and Google partners frankly didn’t expect the initial deadlines to remain. Google Ads and Chrome weren’t ready, not to mention needing the UK data regulator’s approval.

• [...]

• Google PMax is unique – who else has Gmail, Google Search, YouTube and Google Maps? But Microsoft PMax, alongside Meta’s Advantage Shopping Campaigns, Criteo’s Commerce Max and a burst of other ad products, package ad channels and machine-learning models into a black box. They call themselves “Max” and draft on PMax’s success while mucking up Google’s effort to shape sentiment about the product.

=> ↺ NBC ☛ NYC subway using AI to track fare evasion

• Surveillance software that uses artificial intelligence to spot people evading fares has been quietly rolled out to some of New York City’s subway stations and is poised to be introduced to more by the end of the year, according to public documents and government contracts obtained by NBC News.

• The system, which the city and its transit authority haven’t previously acknowledged by name, uses third-party software that its maker has touted as a way to engage law enforcement to help crack down on fare evasion.

=> ↺ The Telegraph UK ☛ Virgin Money shutters nearly a third of branches in shift to online banking

• However, the moves disproportionately hit elderly customers who seldom use [Internet] banking or shop online, as well as small businesses wishing to deposit cash.

=> ↺ MIT Technology Review ☛ Face recognition in the US is about to meet one of its biggest tests

• However, in Massachusetts there is hope for those who want to restrict police access to face recognition. The state’s lawmakers are currently thrashing out a bipartisan state bill that seeks to limit police use of the technology. Although it’s not a full ban, it would mean that only state police could use it, not all law enforcement agencies.

• The bill, which could come to a vote imminently, may represent an unsatisfying compromise, both to police who want more freedom to use the technology and to activists who want it completely banned. But it represents a vital test of the prevailing mood around police use of these controversial tools.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Norway is fining Meta $100,000 daily until it changes its ad policies

• Responding to the developments in Norway, Matt Pollard, a Meta spokesperson, said in a statement that Meta is grappling with a lack of regulatory clarity around data privacy in the EU. “We continue to constructively engage with the Irish DPC, our lead regulator in the EU, regarding our compliance with its decision. We will review the Norway DPA’s decision, and there is no immediate impact to our services,” Pollard said.

=> ↺ India Times ☛ TikTok allows Europe to access research software, with eye on EU online content rules

• TikTok, owned by Chinese technology conglomerate ByteDance, is one of 19 online platforms and search engines subject to tougher requirements that will kick in from August under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

• The company said it was still waiting for the European Commission to set out technical conditions for the application programming interface (API) for accessing its data but decided to go ahead anyway.

=> ↺ NYOB ☛ Unlawful Cookie Banners: Belgian DPA let news outlets buy themselves free from GDPR compliance

• Bought free from the GDPR. According to the terms of said settlement, the publishers agreed to paying € 10.000 – but weren’t ordered to comply with any of the obligations under the GDPR. In its decision, the Belgian DPA didn’t even bother to explain why the cases were settled and not followed by an order to comply.

• Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at noyb: “It seems that in Belgium you can just pay a fee to avoid compliance with the GDPR. This is not compliant with EU law, which requires proper enforcement of the law.”

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Amended Cooper Davis Act Is a Direct Threat to Encryption

• The bill, also called the Cooper Davis Act, laudably seeks to address the proliferation of illegally-made fentanyl and resulting overdose deaths in the United States. Unfortunately, the amended bill is still likely to result in a host of inaccurate reports to law enforcement by prodding Internet companies to trawl through users’ innocent conversations, including discussions about past drug use or treatment. This bill contains no warrant requirement, no required notice, and limited user protections, and deserves to be defeated on the Senate floor.

• Although the bill does not explicitly require providers to seek out illegal activity by users, it walks up to that line by requiring reporting when providers obtain actual knowledge of this activity, and creating criminal penalties for failure to do so. S.1080 is modeled on existing law that requires providers to report actual knowledge of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to a group called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a quasi-governmental entity that later forwards on some reports to law enforcement. 

• Companies base some of their reporting on matches found by comparing digital signatures of images to an existing database of previously removed CSAM. Notably, this new bill requires reporting directly to the DEA, and the content at issue (drug sales) is markedly harder and more subjective to identify. While actual CSAM is unprotected by the First Amendment, mere discussion of drug use is protected speech. Due to the liability they would face for failing to report, some companies may overreport using content-scanning tools that we know have large error rates in other contexts.   

=> ↺ EFF ☛ First Draft of UN Cybercrime Convention Drops Troubling Provisions, But Dangerous And Open-Ended Cross Border Surveillance Powers Are Still on the Table

• The convention, if approved, will result in the rewriting of criminal laws around the world dealing with law enforcement access to personal data across borders, the use of surveillance technologies by one country to spy on people in another country, and the extent to which countries can force one another to cooperate in, for instance, real-time interception of people’s communications. EFF and its international partners have been standing up for users since the convention was first proposed several years ago, calling for robust human rights protections, reviewing proposed convention language, submitting recommendations and opposing concerning provisions, and addressing Member States in person at negotiating sessions this year and last. With the release of this “zero draft,” Member States will start article-by-article negotiations to reach a consensus on a final draft during a two-week marathon session from August 21  through September 1. EFF will be there, continuing our push for robust human rights protections in the treaty.EFF and Privacy International have been poring over the zero draft, and have sent Member States our first set of amendments. But before we delve into the most concerning features of the text, here is a quick recap of how we got here.

• From the very start of the negotiations, EFF has opposed the draft convention as a whole, deeming it unnecessary. Despite our reservations, we’ve actively engaged in good faith at every stage of the negotiation process. We want to ensure that the proposed convention is specific and confined in its scope, and does not incorporate content-related offenses or authorize inherently arbitrary, excessive, or open-ended surveillance powers. Furthermore, any surveillance authorities—including those that are transnational—should be subject to appropriate limitations. 

• We fervently hope that the proposed convention won’t become an instrument for transnational repression, as has happened with other law enforcement cooperation mechanisms in the past. INTERPOL, for instance, is an intergovernmental organization of 193 countries that facilitates worldwide police cooperation. But Human Rights Watch has documented numerous allegations of how China, Bahrain, and other countries have abused INTERPOL’s Red Notice system, an international “wanted persons” list, to locate peaceful critics of government policies “for minor offenses and most importantly for political gain.” The  UN treaty shouldn’t give governments a legal basis to justify the use of open-ended surveillance powers for ill-defined crimes that could be exploited for political gain, petty crimes, or crimes that are inherently inconsistent with international human rights law—especially when this can lead to horrors such as torture or forced disappearances. We will keep advocating for heightened safeguards to restrict law enforcement’s misuse of surveillance powers. 

=> ↺ Mozilla ☛ Messaging Layer Security is now an internet standard

• Today, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is releasing the standard for Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, a novel standard of communication protocol for group messaging.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ Pro-Russian hacktivists increase focus on Western targets. The latest is OnlyFans.

• The group’s digital assaults coincide with attacks coming from a broader network of hackers aligned with Moscow seeking attention from taking down high-profile victims and strategic targets, many that support Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia.

=> ↺ Gannett ☛ Is America on the brink of tyranny? Trump’s plan if elected in 2024 should frighten us all.

• Trump’s plan would substitute loyalty to him for loyalty to the Constitution. This vision is simultaneously frightening and unsurprising. In 2019, he said, “I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.” And in December, Trump called for the “termination of … the Constitution.”

• In effect, he attempted to do exactly that in the run-up to the [insurrectino] at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by pressuring state officials to reverse President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, attempting to weaponize the Justice Department and bullying Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Climate Collapse Could Happen Fast

• In fact, a growing number of climate scientists now believe we may be careening toward so-called tipping points, where incremental steps along the same trajectory could push Earth’s systems into abrupt or irreversible change—leading to transformations that cannot be stopped even if emissions were suddenly halted. “The Earth may have left a ‘safe’ climate state beyond 1°C global warming,” Armstrong McKay and his co-authors concluded in Science last fall. If these thresholds are passed, some of global warming’s effects—like the thaw of permafrost or the loss of the world’s coral reefs—are likely to happen more quickly than expected. On the whole, however, the implications of blowing past these tipping points remain among climate change’s most consequential unknowns: We don’t really know when or how fast things will fall apart.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ The Islamic Republic exported its revolution to my country, Yemen. The international community must do more to stop this.

• Iran continues to play a major role in the continued smuggling of weapons and drugs to the Houthis in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2216, disrupting initiatives and efforts made by Gulf countries to de-escalate and restore the UN-sponsored truce, and standing as a stumbling block to efforts to end the war and bring about a comprehensive, just, and sustainable peace. Additionally, Iran disregards the heavy bill of losses and the complex economic and humanitarian conditions that Yemenis are experiencing due to the war triggered by the coup.

• Indeed, the Yemeni experience of Iranian influence since the emergence of the Houthis as an armed militia in 2003, which is supported directly by Iran, is strong evidence of the damage wrought by four decades of Iranian expansionist policies and hegemonic ambitions in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and now Yemen.

=> ↺ The Kent Stater ☛ Visiting Rwanda 30 years after genocide

• In 1994, armed militias within the Hutu power government of Rwanda committed genocide against the minority Tutsi during the Rwandan Civil War. An estimated one million people were killed in a span of about 100 days.

• Dr. Sarah Schmidt, assistant director for Global Education Initiatives and professor at Kent State, has been studying Rwanda for seven years while completing her doctoral degree. In collaboration with Pacifique Niyonzima, a genocide survivor and Kent State master’s graduate, they were able to build this program bringing students to Rwanda for the past seven years to teach other students about the history of Rwanda.

=> ↺ American Oversight ☛ Emails from Early 2021 Reveal State Leaders Being Informed of Fake Electoral Certificates

• On Jan. 8, 2021, Katerina Horska, then NARA’s director of legal affairs and policy, emailed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s chief counsel and the director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections: “For your awareness, we received today unofficial certificates from the Republican electors who were not appointed by the Governor,” she said. “I’ve attached a scan of what we received for your information. Because this did not come from the Michigan Secretary of State’s office, we will not be adding the documents to the Electoral College website.” Whitmer’s chief counsel, Mark Totten, acknowledged receipt the same day.

=> ↺ Jacobin Magazine ☛ Kurds Will Pay the Price for Sweden’s NATO Deal

• After months of brinkmanship, NATO chiefs have announced that Sweden will be allowed to join the alliance. The deal rewards Turkish demands for Sweden’s collaboration in its anti-Kurdish repression — and makes a mockery of NATO’s purported stand for freedom.

=> ↺ VOA News ☛ Taliban Hand in Smuggling of US Arms Clear, Despite Denials

• U.S. weapons seized by the Taliban following the August 2021 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan continue to show up outside the country.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ North Korea warns it may shoot down US spy planes violating its airspace

• US air surveillance assets conduct routine reconnaissance flights around the peninsula..

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ US Nuclear-Capable B-52 Bombers Fly to Korean Peninsula in Latest Provocation

• The bombers participated in a training exercise with US and South Korean fighter jets.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ North Korea threatens to shoot down US spy planes violating its airspace

• North Korea on Monday threatened to shoot down any US spy planes violating its airspace and condemned Washington’s plans to deploy a nuclear missile submarine near the Korean peninsula.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Global Sanctions Dashboard: Sanctions alone won’t stop the Wagner Group

• Existing sanctions against the Wagner Group, limitations around enforcing them, and what more Western allies can do to counter Wagner’s influence in Africa.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ North Korea denounces US move to bring ballistic missile submarine to peninsula

• North Korea claimed US reconnaissance planes recently violated its airspace near the east coast.

War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Car with Belarus plates found in sea near Carnikava, Latvia

• On Tuesday, a car with Belarus number plates was found in the sea near Carnikava, Latvia, close to the coast, Zemgale Regional Television observed.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russian shelling in Odesa damages Chinese consulate building — Meduza

• The Chinese Consulate-General building in Odesa was damaged during Russia’s overnight attack on the city, reports Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Everyone has to make some kind of sacrifice’ Facing another 20 years in prison for ‘extremism,’ Navalny’s courtroom speech urges others to fight the ‘unscrupulous evil’ of the Russian authorities — Meduza

• The state prosecutor is seeking to sentence Alexey Navalny to 20 years in a special regime colony on charges of “extremism.” The prosecutor also requested that the second defendant in the case, Daniel Kholodny, be sentenced to 10 years in a general regime colony. The proceedings took place behind closed doors, and journalists and observers were not permitted in the courtroom. The verdict will be announced on August 4. Meduza is publishing Navalny’s full courtroom speech in English.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ It’s Summer Vacation. Does the Media Know Where Clarence Thomas Is?

• Despite some excellent investigative journalism, the daily corporate media is still failing at the job of holding the justices to account. It should be making this story more political, not less. The conservative justices have anointed themselves as rulers, with veto power over everything from whether we address climate change to how many mass shootings we must endure to whether students are allowed to get the $10,000 of debt relief the president tried to give them. They’ve declared themselves the final authority on cultural issues, including whether women and pregnant people are allowed to have health care and what kinds. If they are going to dictate what kind of country we’re allowed to live in, then they shouldn’t be able to sit on a beach without a school of reporters in snorkel gear waiting in the surf to see whom they’re sharing a cabana with and what kinds of laws their influencers want to attack next.

Environment

=> ↺ The Age AU ☛ The hottest July in 120,000 years. What’s in store for Australia this summer?

• Professor Mann, of the University of Pennsylvania, said the extreme temperatures suggested models predicting the increase in the Earth’s average temperature as a result of carbon dioxide emissions have been proved correct.

• “The surface warming is almost precisely what was predicted by the models,” he said.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ The hellacious names of Italy’s heat waves are being chosen for good reason

• Earlier this summer, international outlets began tracking the anticyclone Cerberus, named for hell’s three-headed hound with Southern Europe in its jaws. Then came the anticyclone Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, steering citizens towards blazing temperatures. You may have also heard of the anticyclone Minos, the serpent-tailed judge who condemns sinners to the flames. As tourists fight the temptation to seek relief in the Trevi Fountain, some wags have rechristened Rome’s long-standing epithet: The eternal city is now the infernal city.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ [Older] Dangerous heat wave baking US Southwest brings triple digit temperatures, fire risk to California

• After a historically wet winter and a cloudy spring, California’s summer is in full swing. A heat wave that’s been scorching much of the U.S. Southwest is bringing triple digit temperatures and an increased risk of wildfires. Forecasters say blistering conditions Thursday will build throughout the weekend in the central and southern parts of California, where many residents should prepare for the hottest weather of the year. An excessive heat watch is in effect through Sunday for interior Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. This week across the U.S., more than 111 million people are under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ How heatwaves are deepening China’s addiction to coal

• China burns more coal every year than the rest of the world combined.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Electric scooter providers concerned about new safety requirements

• Electric scooter lease companies do not foresee a significant drop in the number of customers when the requirement to have a license comes into force. The industry is more concerned about the statutory obligation for leasing companies to introduce customer identity and age checks, LSM’s Latvian-language service reports Monday, July 17.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ IAEA chief in South Korea to allay Fukushima water dump concerns

• Mr Rafael Grossi’s arrival was met with protesters at Seoul’s Gimpo Airport.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ South Korea says it respects IAEA review of Japan’s Fukushima wastewater plan

• Seoul announced its own assessment after the IAEA gave the green light this week to Japan’s plan.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ South Korean doctors flee paediatrics as low birth rate bites

• South Korea’s birth rate fell to 0.78 in 2022, the world’s lowest.

Finance

=> ↺ The Economist ☛ Instant payments finally reach America with FedNow

• Most American bank transfers are cheap but processed in batches, often taking days to settle. Peer-to-peer networks, like Cash App, appear much quicker to customers but, beneath the surface, rely on the old system. Regulators have warned that funds held on such apps might not qualify for deposit insurance in the event of a failure. Credit cards, which offer juicy rewards at the cost of even juicier fees, also use existing rails. According to the San Francisco Fed, nearly a third of payments last year were made using plastic.

• Typically, Americans use different methods for different types of payment: a water bill is paid via bank transfer; $100 owed to a friend is sent through a payment app; a purchase on Amazon is made with a credit card. A single, real-time payments solution should improve the quality of all.

=> ↺ TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Bank of America hit with $250M in fines and refunds for ‘double-dipping’ fees and fake accounts

• Bank of America must reimburse customers more than $100 million and pay $150 million in fines for “double-dipping” on overdraft fees, withholding reward bonuses on credit cards and opening accounts without customer consent. It is one of the highest financial penalties in years against Bank of America, which has largely spent the last 15 years trying to clean up its reputation and market itself to the public as a bank focused on financial health and not on overdraft fee income.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ EU and Republic of Korea Digital Partnership: strengthening our economic resilience

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 30 Jun 2023 Today, the European Union and the Republic of Korea held the first Digital Partnership council in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

=> ↺ Boston Globe ☛ Seaport Hotel workers rally in support of union contract

• Servers, housemen, and bartenders who work at Seaport Hotel Boston rallied Thursday outside Fidelity Investment’s headquarters on Summer Street, in support of their efforts to unionize. UNITE HERE Local 26, which represents hotel workers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, filed a union election petition on behalf of waitstaff at the Seaport Hotel after more than 75 percent of banquet waiters were demoted to part-time status in October. That caused longtime workers to lose their benefits such as health insurance, paid time off, and 401(k)s. Seaport Hotel Boston workers say they want to reap the same benefits as other hospitality workers who work at unionized hotels in Seaport, such as Westin Waterfront, Renaissance, and Omni Seaport. UNITE HERE Local 26 members and leaders, State Senator Nick Collins, Boston City Council President Ed Flynn, and Boston City Councilor At-Large Ruthzee Louijeune, joined the workers at the rally…

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Canada maxes out its limit for work permits for H-1B visa holders in one day

• Approved applicants for the new programme will receive an open work permit of up to three years in duration, which means they will be able to work for almost any employer anywhere in Canada. Their spouses and dependants will also be eligible to apply for a temporary resident visa, with a work or study permit, as needed, the release said.

=> ↺ The open bar of hiring in Meta is over. Now middle managers will have to earn promotion

• Meta’s employment strategy may not be taught in business schools as the most accurate. During the last few years, Meta’s staff has been growing in an exaggerated way, giving the false impression of being an expanding company, when the only thing that really grew were the interests of middle managers.

=> ↺ Layoffs Continue in US: Cosmopolitan Publisher Hearst Magazines Lays Off 41 ‘Skilled Writers, Editors and Producers’

• Hearst Magazines, which has publications like Cosmopolitan, Elle, Seventeen, Harper’s Bazaar and Men’s Health under its umbrella, has sacked 41 “talented” union staffers due to “company restructuring”. The employees impacted by the layoffs were “skilled writers, editors, and producers.”

• “This morning, we were notified that Hearst Magazines has laid off 41 of our unit members. Due to ‘company restructuring’, we are losing talented people whose creativity and institutional knowledge is immeasurable,” Hearst Magazines Media Union said in a tweet on Friday. Microsoft Layoffs: Tech Giant Reportedly Lays Off 1,000 Employees, Mostly in Sales and Customer Service Teams in Fresh Round of Job Cuts.

=> ↺ AI Isn’t To Blame for Job Losses, an HSBC Report Shows

• A recent report from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) showed that economic conditions, not AI, are the real enemy employees must face in the workplace if they wish to keep their job.

• The study contradicts the findings of the report Challenger, Gray, and Christmas (Challenger) published sometime in early June.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Stacey on IoT ☛ The White House details its IoT cybersecurity label plan

• The White House unveiled its plan for a U.S. Cyber Trust Mark that will certify that the IoT device marked with the label has met a set of security criteria developed to protect consumers’ networks and device data. The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark will be a voluntary program administered by the Federal Communications Commission, and the label should start appearing on devices in 2024.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Cybersecurity, privacy and fraud protection – extending the application date (Radio Equipment Directive delegated act) : Commission adoption

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Why Apple is threatening to remove iMessage from the UK market

• The UK government, helmed by Conservative Party Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is looking to update the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act (IPA). The updates would give the Home Office to power to unilaterally review and disable privacy features in personal messaging apps to assist with national security and law enforcement.

• Right now, the government needs to clear any decision to disable security features in messaging services with an independent oversight committee, giving tech companies the ability to appeal the decision.

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ Apple threat to pull Facetime, iMessage from UK if law changes made

• Under the proposed changes, London would require all security features to be cleared by the Home Office before being implemented. The government would also be able to have security features disabled, without informing the public.

=> ↺ BBC ☛ Apple slams UK surveillance-bill proposals

• The government is seeking to update the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016.

• It wants messaging services to clear security features with the Home Office before releasing them to customers.

• The act lets the Home Office demand security features are disabled, without telling the public. Under the update, this would have to be immediate.

=> ↺ The Telegraph UK ☛ Apple warns Suella Braverman over ‘snooper’s charter’ crackdown

• The Home Office is consulting on changes to the Investigatory Powers Act – dubbed the “Snoopers’ Charter” by critics – which was passed in 2016.

• The legislation allows the Home Office to issue encrypted messaging apps with notices forcing them to break the protections in cases where doing so could aid investigations such as into terrorism.

• The new proposals include stricter requirements for encrypted messaging apps to inform the Home Office before making changes to their apps, the ability to serve orders on companies based overseas even if they do not have a UK subsidiary, and to secretly force messaging apps to comply with a government order before seeking approval from a judge.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Economics Minister: Latvia could expand cooperation with South Korea

• Latvia could become a gateway to the European market for South Korea, Latvia’s Economics Minister Ilze Indriksone (National Alliance) said in an interview on Latvian Radio July 19.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ N. Korea not answering US attempts to discuss American soldier who crossed border

• North Korea wasn’t responding Thursday to U.S. attempts to discuss the American soldier who bolted across the heavily armed border and whose prospects for a quick release are unclear at a time of high military tensions and inactive communication channels.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ American soldier’s dash into North Korea leaves family members wondering why

• Family members of the U.S. Army private who sprinted across the border into North Korea say he may have felt overwhelmed as he faced legal troubles and his possible looming discharge from the military. Relatives described 23-year-old Pvt. Travis King as a quiet loner who did not drink or smoke and enjoyed reading the Bible. After growing up in southeast Wisconsin, he was excited about serving his country in South Korea. Now King’s family is struggling to understand what changed before he dashed into a country with a long history of holding Americans and using them as bargaining chips.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ N. Korea silent about its apparent detention of the US soldier who crossed border

• North Korea was silent about the highly unusual entry of an American soldier across the Koreas’ heavily fortified border although it test-fired short-range missiles Wednesday in its latest weapons display.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ How a US soldier made a mad dash into North Korea

• The bizarre odyssey has created a fresh problem for Washington in its dealings with Pyongyang.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ US says no news on soldier who ran into North Korea

• US officials have identified the soldier as Pte Second Class Travis King.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ An American soldier has crossed the North Korea border. But how?

• A slab of concrete and some raked gravel are all that separate the rival Koreas at Panmunjom, the world’s most heavily armed border. Few world leaders, and now an American soldier, have crossed the border. The incident could disrupt inter-Korean relations.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ North Korea Detains a U.S. Soldier: What to Know

• The soldier, Pvt. Travis T. King, was supposed to be on a plane to the United States, but instead he joined a group tour of the DMZ. Then he bolted for the border.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ NDTV ☛ Fake Video Led To Women Being Paraded Naked, Teen Brother Was Killed

• The trigger for the egregious act was allegedly a fake video.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Google Secretly Showing Newspapers an AI-Powered News Generator

• Media executives, however, were taken aback, describing the tech giant’s pitch as unsettling, telling the NYT that it “seemed to take for granted the effort that went into producing accurate and artful news stories.”

• Other publications have dived headfirst into using AI to generate news stories, with news including CNET, Gizmodo, and BuzzFeed publishing AI-generated articles that often turned out to be rife with errors and plagiarism.

• Journalists were appalled at the news.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Google Tests A.I. Tool That Is Able to Write News Articles

• But Google’s new tool is sure to spur anxiety, too, among journalists who have been writing their own articles for decades. Some news organizations, including The Associated Press, have long used A.I. to generate stories about matters including corporate earnings reports, but they remain a small fraction of the service’s articles compared with those generated by journalists.

=> ↺ NBC ☛ Google says AI tools are meant to help journalists, not replace them

• The company said on Twitter that it is working in partnership with news publishers to explore how AI tools can help journalists.

=> ↺ Taiwan News ☛ Taiwan’s chatbot developers should follow US regulatory developments closely

• The issue relating to hallucinations occurs when AI, specifically a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT, generates factually incorrect or nonsensical information that may look plausible, such as bibliographies of names and books that don’t exist and long lists of bogus legal citations. At least one U.S. attorney has already found out the hard way about the use of bogus legal citations.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ A look at how Beijing influences Chinese media, diaspora in Malaysia

• Subtle coercion through embassy keep Malaysian Chinese press mostly pro-Beijing, Asia Fact Check Lab found.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Hong Kong mulls relaxation of media impartiality rules for ‘patriotic’ content

• The move will pave the way for the airing of content made in mainland China.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Vietnam arrests former health teacher for ‘anti-state propaganda’

• Activist is latest to be detained under Article 117, used to silence dissent.

=> ↺ ABC ☛ Afroman pushes back against cop lawsuit over recent music video

• “The best thing I came up with was to write songs about my experience and try to sell them and make some money to pay for the destruction that they brought to my house,” the “Because I Got High” singer told ABC News Live.

• But now, he’s facing a court battle over that song’s music video, which features footage of the Aug. 21, 2022, incident taken from his security cameras, because the police say it ruined their officers’ reputations.

• Afroman, whose real name is Joseph Edgar Foreman, contends that he was in his right to express his frustration with what unfolded at his home in Winchester, Ohio.

=> ↺ The Independent UK ☛ Afroman sued by Ohio police for using raid footage in music video

• “My video footage is my property,” he argued, adding that he used the video footage to “raise money to pay for the damages” he claims were done to his home and possessions.

• At least three of the rapper’s music videos, posted on YouTube months after the raid, contain footage of the raid. These include “Why You Disconnecting My Camera”, “Will You Help Me Repair My Door” and “Lemon Pound Cake”.

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ Iraq expels Swedish ambassador over planned Quran burning

• The Swedish Foreign Ministry’s press office also said that Iraqi authorities should be protecting its diplomatic missions and staff.

• “The Iraqi authorities are responsible for the protection of diplomatic missions and their staff,” the Swedish Foreign Ministry said in a statement to the AFP news agency, adding that attacks on embassies and diplomats “constitute a serious violation of the Vienna Convention.”

=> ↺ RTL ☛ Iraq expels Sweden envoy as Koran stomped in Stockholm

• “The constitution states that a lot is needed to deny a person a permit for a public gathering so the day before yesterday we granted a permit for a private individual to protest,” Ola Osterling with the Stockholm police told AFP.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Vietnam arrests blogger who went missing in Thailand in April

• In a letter sent to the family this month, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security confirmed the arrest, saying he was in Vietnam’s custody and was charged with creating “propaganda against the state” in violation of Article 117 of the penal code, a vaguely written law that rights organizations have said is often used by Hanoi to silence dissent.

• Duong Thi Lu, Thai’s mother, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service that the document she received from authorities is the first news of her son that she has heard since he went missing on April 13 in what many believe to be an abduction.

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Tajikistan bans Pamir Daily News as ‘extremist organization’

• Since those protests, Tajik authorities have blocked internet in Gorno-Badakhshan, threatened media outlets with closure, harassed exiled journalists’ relatives, and imprisoned journalists Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva and Khushruz Jumayev in order to suppress coverage of events in the region, as CPJ has documented.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Myanmar’s junta says it will sue 2 banned media outlets

• Democratic Voice of Burma and Mizzima must pay broadcasting fees owed from before 2021 coup.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ CPJ Calls On Kazakh Authorities To Release Journalist Jailed For Defamation

• The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on authorities in Kazakhstan to release journalist Amangeldy Batyrbekov and reform the country’s laws to remove prison sentences for defamation.

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Mexican journalist Nelson Matus Peña killed in Acapulco

• “Mexican journalist Nelson Matus Peña’s brutal killing is all the more shocking given that his life was taken only one week after another reporter, Luis Martín Sánchez, was found dead in Nayarit,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “Sadly, Mexican authorities continue to prove ineffective at protecting journalists, who are frequently targeted by such attacks.”

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Imprisoned journalist Sherwan Sherwani given additional 4-year sentence in Iraqi Kurdistan

• Sherwani’s legal team plans to appeal the decision, according to Tartisi, who described the decision as “unjust and harsh.” Sherwani and Zebari were both sentenced on February 16, 2021, on charges of destabilizing the security and stability of the Kurdistan region.

=> ↺ VOA News ☛ EU Visa Rejections a Burden on Journalists, Media Groups Say

• Data from SchengenVisaInfo show the rate of Turkish citizens’ visa rejections at 15% last year. But the EFJ said the rate of visa rejections for Turkish citizens in 2023 has surged to 50 percent, affecting journalists.

• “We call upon a number of diplomatic missions to rectify their prejudiced and discriminatory attitudes toward journalists from Turkey, as these biases obstruct reporters from fulfilling their professional responsibilities effectively,” EFJ Vice President Mustafa Kuleli said.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Time ☛ Grindr Employees Launch Union Drive Amid Tech Layoffs and Anti-LGBT Attacks

• Workers filed a unionization petition with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board Thursday and announced the campaign to management during a previously scheduled all-hands Zoom. Pro-union staff say they’ve signed up the vast majority of a proposed bargaining unit of around 100 employees, including cloud engineering, IT, design, marketing and quality assurance workers.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Two killed, hundreds arrested at anti-government protests in Kenya

• Police in Kenya opened fire amid opposition-organized protests on Wednesday against the rising cost of living, and health workers and witnesses said at least two people were shot dead and 26 others wounded.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Glenn Greenwald: France Descends Into Authoritarianism Following Protests

• By Glenn Greenwald / Rumble Following the recent protests against police in France, the French government has taken steps to implement increasingly repressive measures in the forms of mass surveillance and the rhetoric endorsement of online censorship.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Stranded in Tunisia, Migrants Wait for Death

• Tunisia has pushed African migrants to scorching no-man’s lands along its borders with little food and water. Under a deal with the European Union, Tunisia agreed to tighten border controls in exchange for aid.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Half a million S. Korean workers set for 2-week nationwide strike against President Yoon Suk-yeol

• The nationwide protests come amid growing opposition to Mr Yoon’s proposed labour reform measures.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Corks staying attached to an increasing number of beverage containers

• Consumers purchasing drink products may be surprised to find that the corks no longer come off completely from their jars or bottles. This change in packaging is a result of the new regulatory requirements that are now evident in the daily lives of Finns. At the same time, changes to waste management laws enable more versatile sorting options for a growing number of people.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Bad bosses face jail if SA industrial death laws pass

• Industrial manslaughter will become a criminal offence in South Australia under proposed new laws, with offenders facing a maximum 20-year jail term.

• The Labor government will introduce the changes to parliament this week.

=> ↺ Hollywood Reporter ☛ “F*** AI”: Chicago SAG-AFTRA Rally Draws Cross-Union Support

• Reidy was one of more than 1,000 SAG-AFTRA members and supporters who marched three-quarters of a mile from Millennium Park to Buckingham Fountain in downtown Chicago for a rally where guild leaders and representatives from other unions — including the Writers Guild of America, the Teamsters, the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Chicago Teachers Union — spoke in solidarity. The chairmen of labor committees in the Illinois legislature, Sen. Robert Peters and Rep. Marcus Evans, also spoke in support.

=> ↺ Hollywood Reporter ☛ All the Actors Strike Questions You Were Afraid to Ask

• According to the union, the two sides couldn’t reach an agreement on major topics like regulating the use of generative AI in entertainment, basic pay increases, and a proposal the union put forth to have TV and film casts share in subscriber revenue from streaming projects. But there are also many other, smaller concerns that both sides continue to bicker over, from a proposal to raise the cost incurred when meal breaks are delayed to whether performance-capture acting work (like when actor Andy Serkis transformed into Gollum for the Lord of the Rings trilogy) can be covered under a union contract. The studios, for their part, claim that SAG-AFTRA walked away from a deal that entailed more than $1 billion in compensation and benefits increases.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ He Caught a Burglar in the Act. But When Police Came, He Says They Tased Him Instead of the Intruder.

• Smith is an actor and filmmaker known for his appearances in The Purge and Snowfall. Smith had even been working on a documentary about police brutality when he had his own police encounter on October 13, 2021. According to the suit, when he entered his house around 12:30 a.m., he caught an intruder in the process of burglarizing his home. The intruder remained in the apartment while Smith called 911.

• LAPD officers arrived around 1:30 a.m. and entered through the back door of Smith’s apartment. According to the lawsuit, police “unholstered their taser guns, pointed them toward Mr. Smith, and screamed at Mr. Smith: ‘Get on the ground!’” Smith protested saying, “I live here, I called 911!” LAPD officers subsequently tased Smith, striking him in the chest and back. According to a Los Angeles Times interview with Smith, when police tased him, the intruder used the opportunity to escape.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Can I Watch ‘Barbenheimer’ Despite the Hollywood Strikes?

• “The question for all workers and consumers in any strike is: Which side are you on?” said Dan Cornfield, a professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University and a labor expert. When workers are striking, there are ways for consumers and members of the public to show their support. In some cases, people can march with the workers on the picket line. Or they can boycott.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Return Of ‘Morality Police’ To Iranian Streets Leaves Women Fearful But Defiant

• Mirghaffari described the decision to redeploy the morality police, coming after the monthslong protests had largely wound down, as a distraction aimed at creating “fear and terror” among the population.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Chinese police stop Tibetan Buddhist gathering, prevent lama from preaching

• “The authorities have erased and wiped out all the related photos and news of the Kalachakra teachings online,” said a Tibetan from inside western China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. “The authorities have also started interrogating those who have already shared news and photos about the Kalachakra.”

• The Kalachakra, which literally means “infinite wheel of time” in Sanskrit, is a sacred event where key Buddhist teachings are passed on to devotees. Only a very few qualified Tibetan Buddhist masters, including the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, can impart such teachings.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Porn Set Women Up From the Start

• But is feeling powerful enough? Stiffed, a recent podcast from the writer Jennifer Romolini, charts the history of Viva, the visionary feminist erotic magazine that helped inspire Minx, and that published Simone de Beauvoir, Lorraine O’Grady, and Erica Jong next to soft-focus images of naked men. At its best, Romolini argues, Viva managed to be a “bridge between feminism, activism, sexuality, and groundbreaking journalism.” And yet, as the fact that you may very well have never heard of Viva attests, the magazine failed. It failed because its publisher, the Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, presumed to know what women wanted to see without actually endeavoring to find out. It failed because sexual representation, for women, particularly straight women, has always been a bind—our desires are often informed by the same chauvinistic terrain we’re trying to transcend. Both Minx and Viva make one thing clear: Men have set the parameters of porn since the beginning.

=> ↺ NBC ☛ The Taliban use stun guns, fire hoses and gunfire to break up Afghan women protesting beauty salon ban

• The ruling came from the Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada — the latest curb on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls following edicts barring them from education, public spaces and most forms of employment.

=> ↺ DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ House Republicans Use Government Funding Bill to Make It Easier to Convict Poor People in Federal Court

• They could have frozen her bank account, seized her home and car with civil asset forfeiture, and left her with the public defender. Instead, they allowed her to use the proceeds of the crime, taxpayer money, to fund a private defense.

• There really are two Americas.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ NetChoice Challenges Yet Another Ridiculously Bad State Internet Law

• NetChoice has been quite busy the last few years suing to stop a wide variety of terrible state laws designed to mess up parts of the internet. It took on Florida’s social media content moderation law and won (twice). It took on Texas’ social media content moderation law and won at the district court, and absolutely ridiculously lost at the 5th Circuit (something that we now need to hope the Supreme Court will fix next term). It sued California over its Age Appropriate Design Code.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Netflix expects gradual ramp for paid sharing business impacts

• Although Netflix gained 5.9 million net subscribers globally in Q2 (including 1.2 million in the U.S. and Canada) on the back of the paid sharing rollout, it saw average revenue per member (or ARM, as Netflix terms ARPU) decline in nearly every region quarter over quarter. Total revenue of $8.2 billion was also slightly below expectations.

=> ↺ Android Police ☛ Say goodbye to your grandfathered YouTube Premium account

• Google is sending an email to those with cheaper plans to give the bad news

Monopolies

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Microsoft faces German rival’s EU antitrust complaint on its Teams, Office

• The complaint by Alfaview, based in Karlsruhe in south-western Germany, is similar to a 2020 complaint by Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack to the European Commission.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Feds want to rewrite rules for competition-crushing merger probes

• The FTC and DoJ have regularly updated their merger guidelines since the first set was published in 1968, reflecting thinking at the time. The rewritten guidelines are as follows, and reflect the administration’s desire for a bit more competition in established markets. In the agency’s words: [...]

=> ↺ [Old] The Daily Beast ☛ Sex, Deceit, and Scandal: The Ugly War Over Bob Ross’ Ghost

• He was also recently in federal court. Or, to be more precise, his eponymous company Bob Ross, Inc., was. Now run by the daughter of Bob’s original business partners—Annette and Walt Kowalski—Bob Ross, Inc., was defending itself against claims that it had made millions of dollars by illegally licensing Bob’s image over the last decade, expanding far beyond the company’s original core business of selling Bob Ross-themed paints and paint supplies.

• The broad contours of the case revolved around the nuances of intellectual [sic] property [sic] law and were nothing new in the world of legal bickering over celebrity estates. The details, on the other hand, resided in the land of the unbelievable—incorporating deathbed marriages, last-minute estate changes, CIA-style tape recordings, and even a real-life former CIA agent.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Matt Rickard ☛ Robots.txt for LLMs

• How can sites tell LLMs what data shouldn’t be included in a training corpus? But are the incentives there for both data creators and consumers?

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ New Project Uses AI To Turn Project Gutenberg Texts Into Free Audiobooks With Lifelike Voices — In 30 Seconds

• Project Gutenberg was started back in 1971 by the visionary Michael Hart, who sadly died at the age of 64 in 2011. His vision of providing digital versions of the world’s greatest literature has come a long way since Hart typed the text of the US Declaration of Independence into a Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University of Illinois. Today there are over 70,000 free ebooks on the Project Gutenberg site. There are also a few audiobook versions of titles in the collection. But producing them using volunteers has proved a slow process. That’s unfortunate at a time when more and more people are listening to audiobooks rather than reading texts. Microsoft saw an opportunity to help [sic] here by applying some of its AI technology: [...]

=> ↺ Creative Commons ☛ Update and Next Steps on CC’s AI Community Consultation

• From the community and beyond, we are seeing urgent demands for support in navigating AI’s implications for the commons.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Cheat Seller Appeals $3.6m DMCA Violation Loss Against Bungie

• The legal battle between game developer Bungie and cheat seller AimJunkies is far from over. In addition to unresolved copyright infringement claims, AimJunkies has just appealed the $4.4 million in damages and fees that were awarded in arbitration earlier this year.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ 70% of Russian Gamers Are Pirates Following Western Publisher Exodus

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the exodus of Western businesses from the country is having a profound effect on the videogame market, a new study has found. Seven out of ten video gamers said they’d pirated at least one game in 2022, with 51% admitting that they pirated more in the last year than they did previously. According to one estimate, Western publishers’ could see lost profits reach $300 million.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Victory! Embedded Links to Photos on Instagram Don’t Infringe Photographers’ Copyrights, Court Rules

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