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● 07.23.23

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● Links 23/07/2023: Microsoft 360 Breach is Universal After All

Posted in News Roundup at 3:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Server

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ Zerocode: Automated API, Kafka and Micro-services testing has never been so easy (Free program)

• Zerocode is a community-developed, free, open source, microservices API automation and load testing framework built using JUnit core runners for Http REST, SOAP, Security, Database, Kafka and much more. Zerocode Open Source enables you to create, change, orchestrate and maintain your automated test cases declaratively with absolute ease.

=> ↺ The New Stack ☛ 2023-07-22 [Older] Deploy a Docker Swarm on Rocky Linux

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Apple M2 MacBook Air Beat By AMD-Powered Gaming Handheld in Linux Benchmarks

• Phoronix compares AMD’s Zen 4 processors against Apple’s M2-based MacBook Air in Linux benchmarks.

Applications

=> ↺ 9to5Linux ☛ Shotwell 0.32.2 Image Viewer Adds Support for HEIF Files with .HIF Extension

• The most significant change in Shotwell 0.32.2 is support for HEIF image files with the .HIF extension. If you have a device that outputs such files, you’ll want to update to this new Shotwell version to be able to see them on your GNU/Linux box, that if Shotwell is your default image viewer app.

• This release also improves support for the Flatpak sandboxed universal package format when using the “send to” functionality to send image files to another app or device. This change applies to those who have Shotwell installed as a Flatpak app from Flathub or their distro’s repositories.

=> ↺ It’s FOSS ☛ Gyroflow: An Open-Source App to Stabilize Video Footage

• A free and open-source app to smoothen your videos with stabilization? Sounds impressive! Let’s check it out!

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ Aliza MS: free open-source DICOM viewer (Free app)

• Aliza MS is a free open-source DICOM viewer with a dozen of clinical-ready features.

• It is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Because it is primarily written in C++ and C, It has a good performance even in working with large files and data sets.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ Alacritty: Modern OpenGL terminal emulator (Free program)

• Alacritty is a modern terminal emulator that comes with sensible defaults, but allows for extensive configuration. By integrating with other applications, rather than reimplementing their functionality, it manages to provide a flexible set of features with high performance. The supported platforms currently consist of BSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ OpenAudible: Audiobook Manager for Audible Users (Free program)

• OpenAudible is a cross-platform desktop application for downloading and managing your Audible audiobooks.

• It enables you to download and view all your Audible books in one location, on all your Mac (universal binary for Intel and M1), Windows 64bit, and Linux computers. Automatically organize your books as an HTML library.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ JFTP: The Universal FTP Client (Free program)

• JFTP is an intuitive, easy to use, graphical FTP client software for transferring files securely over the Internet. JFTP works on many operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ Dust3D: 3D modeling software to create low poly 3D models for video games, 3D printing (Free program)

• Dust3D is a cross-platform 3D modeling software that makes it easy to create low poly 3D models for video games, 3D printing, and more.

• Dust3D is licensed under the MIT License – see the LICENSE file for details.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ OpenSCAD: Solid 3D CAD Modeller for Programmers (Free program)

• OpenSCAD is a software for creating solid 3D CAD objects. It is free software and available for Linux/UNIX, MS Windows and macOS.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ DocFetcher: File Search Tool (Free software)

• DocFetcher is an Open Source desktop search application: It allows you to search the contents of files on your computer. — You can think of it as Google for your local files. The application runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X, and is made available under the Eclipse Public License.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ LaunchMenu: open-source cross-platform launcher (Free software)

• LaunchMenu is an free, open source, cross-platform utility application which brings utilities (applets) to your fingertips. It intends to increase your productivity through it’s keyboard-centric design, meanwhile also being extremely customisable with advanced theming and applet settings.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ 7-Zip: a file archiver with a high compression ratio. (Free app)

• 7-Zip is free software with open source. The most of the code is under the GNU LGPL license. Some parts of the code are under the BSD 3-clause License. Also there is unRAR license restriction for some parts of the code. Read 7-Zip License information.

=> ↺ Medevel ☛ Blender: Open-source free 3D modeling (Free program)

• Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline-modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking and video editing.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ TecAdmin ☛ How to Allow GET and POST Methods Only in Nginx

• The world of web server management comes with its fair share of security concerns. Among these is the need to restrict access to certain HTTP methods on your server to prevent potential unauthorized actions.

=> ↺ OSNote ☛ Install CubeCart on Debian Linux

• In this guide, you’ll learn how to install and configure the latest version of the CubeCart e-commerce platform on Debian to create a free online store.

=> ↺ OSNote ☛ Install osCommece on Debian Linux

• This tutorial will guide you on installing and configuring the osCommerce platform on Debian to create a free online shopping store.

=> ↺ The New Stack ☛ Deploy a Docker Swarm on Rocky Linux

• You may have heard recently that  has, in my opinion, gone against the heart and soul of open source.

=> ↺ Fixing the “sudo apt-get: command not found” Issue in Linux 2023

• apt-get command is used to manage package in Ubuntu and other Debian based distribution.

=> ↺ OSNote ☛ Install ProjectSend on Debian

• ProjectSend is a flexible, web-based, free and open source client file sharing platform written in the PHP programming language. The advantage of the platform is that it is a self-hosted application that can be deployed in your own Linux environment with Apache web servers, PHP programming language interpreter and MariaDB database management system…

=> ↺ OSNote ☛ Install MediaWiki on Debian

• In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure the MediaWiki platform in Debian Linux to create online wiki websites.

=> ↺ A Comprehensive Guide to SNMP Enumeration in Kali Linux: Using snmpwalk and snmpenum

=> ↺ OSNote ☛ How to Setup Zabbix and integrate it into Grafana

• Zabbix is an open-source monitoring tool for network services, hardware, servers, and applications. Designed to track and monitor the status of your system and servers.

=> ↺ ID Root ☛ How To Install Transmission on Debian 12

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Transmission on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, Transmission is designed to offer a user-friendly experience while maintaining essential features for efficient torrenting.

=> ↺ ID Root ☛ How To Install BalenaEtcher on Debian 12

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install BalenaEtcher on Debian 12. BalenaEtcher is a cross-platform application built with Electron, empowering users to flash disk images effectively. Unlike conventional methods, which can be cumbersome and prone to errors, BalenaEtcher simplifies the process with its intuitive interface and robust features.

=> ↺ Own HowTo ☛ How to Install visual studio code on Arch Linux [Ed: This is proprietary spyware from Microsoft; use something like Kate instead.]

• Visual studio code it’s an essential tool when it comes to coding.

• Visual studio code supports rpm and debian based distros, but not Arch Linux. Even though you could download the source code and run vscode binary file manually.

=> ↺ nixCraft ☛ Setting up VSCode for Ansible Lightspeed AI in Ubuntu 22.04 desktop [Ed: Proprietary Microsoft spyware and vendor lock-in]

• Red Hat launched the Ansible Lightspeed Code Assistant Generative AI with IBM Watson Code Assistant in May 2023. This preview is now available to all Ansible users, allowing them to explore the technology, provide feedback to Red Hat, and further train the AI model. In this brief blog post, I will share my personal experience with installing and utilizing Ansible Lightspeed AI to create playbooks in VSCode using Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS desktop.

=> ↺ Own HowTo ☛ How to fix “The list of sources could not be read” error on Debian

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to fix the error “E: The list of sources could not be read” on Debian

• This error indicates that one or multiple sources are not readable by the system, thus they can’t be used to update your system.

=> ↺ Pablo Iranzo Gómez: Upgrade Debian from buster to bullseye

• I had two Raspberry Pi systems running Raspbian and they were failing to find updates for newer packages. As Debian stable was upgraded too, moving from buster to bullseye the packages failed to get the newer ones.

• Warning

• Beware as this procedure might upgrade the system but might no render a bootable Raspberry Pi

• A way to fix it is, to first, change references, if any, to the old codename version by running:

=> ↺ Vitux ☛ How to Install and Configure Cacti Monitoring Server on Ubuntu 22.04

• Cacti is a free and powerful network monitoring and graphing tool for Linux. It is a frontend tool for RRDtool used to poll services at predetermined intervals and graph the resulting data.

=> ↺ SCP Command in Linux: Copying Files Securely via SSH Explained

• How to transfer file and directory? how to copy files and directory?

=> ↺ Linux Handbook ☛ Find a Directory in Linux

• Here are various ways you can use the find command to look for directories with specific parameters.

=> ↺ Linux Handbook ☛ Find a Directory in Linux

• In Linux, you create multiple files and directories and frequently navigate in between but there are times when the number of directories is so huge that finding it is next to impossible.

=> ↺ OSTechNix ☛ How To Restrict Su Command To Authorized Users In Linux

• The su command is a powerful tool that can be used to switch to another user’s account. However, it can also be used by bad persons to gain unauthorized access to your system. By restricting the use of the su command, you can help to protect your Linux system from unauthorized access.

=> ↺ TecMint ☛ Ebook: Introducing LFCS Certification Preparation eBook

• For years, certifications in the Information Technology world have helped job candidates demonstrate their skills to potential employers.

• In the Linux world, this is as true as in any other area, with businesses primarily looking for certified candidates to fill available vacancies. In other words, certifications are a proven way of gaining an advantage when applying for a job.

=> ↺ University of Toronto ☛ I’m not going to accurately remember our past views and thoughts

• One reasonable work-around for this is to do an end of service writeup of systems and then remember to check it later. This writeup will reflect and perhaps explicitly include our attitudes and views as of the end of the system’s life, while it’s still vivid in our minds and our attitudes probably haven’t shifted. If our attitudes have shifted, we’re likely to be conscious of that and the shift itself is worth writing about in the end of service writeup, because it means that we had some sort of realization after shutting down the system and getting just a little bit of distance from it.

WINE or Emulation

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Wine 8.13 is out now with plenty of bug fixes

• The latest release in the continuous cycle of development of the Windows compatibility layer Wine is out with Wine 8.13 bringing plenty of fixes and a few new features. Reminder: once a year a new stable release is made with the next being Wine 9.0, and Wine is just one part of what allows Steam Play Proton to play some of the biggest games around on Linux desktop and Steam Deck.

Distributions and Operating Systems

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

=> ↺ Beta News ☛ Mageia 9 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is shaping the future of Linux

• Today, the developers behind Mageia 9 unveil the first release candidate (RC1) of the operating system, marking a significant milestone since the beta 2 release in May. The journey from the beta stage has been nothing short of impressive, as it includes efforts to rectify stubborn issues, roll out vital security fixes, and keep everything updated.

• Mageia 9′s standout features make it a robust choice for Linux users. Its powerful core built around the Kernel 6.4.3, combined with glib 2.36 and gcc 12.3.0, gives this release candidate a solid foundation. The rpm 4.18.0 packaging system ensures smooth software management.

=> ↺ The release of rc1 brings Mageia 9 stable even more closer to reality

• We are proud to announce the first release candidate of Mageia 9. Since the release of beta 2 in May 2023 the Mageia team has worked to solve a number of stubborn issues and provide security fixes and new updates.

Slackware Family

=> ↺ Unicorn Media ☛ FOSS Week in Review: Slackware Turns 30, Mageia 9 Coming Soon, & LibreOffice 7.5.5

• Yes, the official name of this column is Friday FOSS Week in Review, although we no longer include the day in the headline. And yes, today is Saturday, not Friday.

• So why, I hear you ask, is this column being posted a day late?

=> ↺ Slashdot ☛ 2023-07-22 Slackware Linux Distribution Turns 30 Years Old

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Jeff Geerling ☛ Clearing up FUD surrounding Red Hat’s actions

• From my conversations with folks in the Ansible business unit (an engineer and community team lead), it doesn’t sound like I have much to worry about. For now.

• The difficulty is the precedent.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Linux Gizmos ☛ New LimeSDR XTRX comes in MiniPCIe form factor

• This week Lime Microsystems launched the LimeSDR XTRX which is a compact and powerful software-defined radio (SDR) board in a mini PCIe form factor. At its core, the board features an AMD Artix 7 FPGA and the Lime Microsystems LMS7002M RF transceiver to serve as a platform for developing logic-intensive digital and RF designs.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Andrew Hutchings ☛ Amiga 3000: Restoration Part 3

• My Amiga 3000 is now in pretty good working condition, but my work is not done. In this part I’ll continue the restoration, whilst I also start to upgrade the machine.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Raspberry Pi BMO Plays Games and Accepts Voice Commands

• It’s Raspberry Pi time — come on and grab your friends! One part of the Pi community we love to see is the side that gets into prop making. Makers have shown over the years some serious creativity when it comes to bringing things into the real world from their favorite media franchises like this Die Hard RFID reader or this Simpson’s TV replica. Today we’re sharing another cool prop creation from a maker known as Goguigo_Tatolino over at Reddit. Using our favorite SBC, he’s created a custom BMO game system that doubles as a functional desktop.

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ Channel your inner Bruce Lee with this DIY reflex coach

• This is a compact unit, so the enclosure is 3D-printable and can be mounted to a wall or tree. Inside the housing there is a massive PCB, complete with cobra head artwork. That PCB contains an Arduino UNO Rev3 board, a 16×2 character LCD screen, and a small piezo buzzer. Adafruit NeoPixels illuminate the buttons, indicating which one you should strike at any given moment. Those buttons are actually capacitive touch pads, so you don’t have to hit them hard— even a light tap will register.

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ Clem Mayer created a handheld BASIC computer badge with the Arduino UNO Rev3

• Although we recently launched the new 32-bit Arduino UNO R4, Clem Mayer wanted to honor its 8-bit predecessor by making something special using the Rev3. Drawing on old hardware designs, the ZX-81 is an 8-bit computer based on the Z80 processor which has 1KB of RAM and 1KB of EEPROM available for the user to utilize within the operating environment — typically a BASIC interpreter shell. Similarly, Mayer wanted to have one ATmega328P run the TinyBASIC interpreter while a secondary ATmega328P would handle the external keyboard and display due to resource constraints.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ DebugPoint ☛ 4 Ways to Install Latest Firefox on Debian Stable [Tutorial]

• Firefox is one of the most popular web browsers, known for its speed, security features, and customizability. If you are using Debian Stable and want to enjoy Firefox’s latest features and security enhancements, this guide will walk you through the installation process.

Education

=> ↺ A brief history of computers

• Recently I’ve been learning about the history of computers. I find it to be incredibly interesting. I’d like to write a post about it to summarize and comment on what I’ve learned.

• I’m a little hesitant though. I’m no expert on this stuff. I’m largely learning about it all for the first time. So then, take all of this with a grain of salt.[1] It’s more of a conversation starter than a finished product. If you want something authoritative, I’d recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

FSFE

=> ↺ FSFE ☛ 2023-07-19 [Older] Cyber Resilience Act & Free Software: Parliament waters down its own position

=> ↺ FSFE ☛ 2023-07-19 [Older] EU Parliament intends to widen participation in the Interoperable Europe Board

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Mutex without lock, Queue without push: cancel safety in lilos

• I’m trying to do something kind of unusual with lilos: in addition to almost all the APIs being safe-in-the-Rust sense, I’m also attempting to create an entire system API that is cancel-safe. I’ve written a lot about Rust’s async feature and its notion of cancellation recently, such as my suggestion for reframing how we think about async/await.

• My thoughts on this actually stem from my early work on lilos, where I started beating the drum of cancel-safety back in 2020. My notion of what it means to be cancel-safe has gotten more nuanced since then, and I’ve recently made the latest batch of changes to try to help applications built on lilos be more robust by default.

• So, wanna nerd out about async API design and robustness? I know you do.

=> ↺ [Old] The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

• If you’re a security practitioner, teaching yourself how to [cr]ack is also part of the “[Cr]acking is Cool” dumb idea. Think about it for a couple of minutes: teaching yourself a bunch of exploits and how to use them means you’re investing your time in learning a bunch of tools and techniques that are going to go stale as soon as everyone has patched that particular hole. It means you’ve made part of your professional skill-set dependent on “Penetrate and Patch” and you’re going to have to be part of the arms-race if you want that skill-set to remain relevant and up-to-date. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to learn how to design security systems that are [cr]ack-proof than to learn how to identify security systems that are dumb?

• My prediction is that the “[Cr]acking is Cool” dumb idea will be a dead idea in the next 10 years. I’d like to fantasize that it will be replaced with its opposite idea, “Good Engineering is Cool” but so far there is no sign that’s likely to happen.

=> ↺ Rlang ☛ Happy Pi Approximation Day

• The R computer language carries 15 or 16 digits. That seems like enough. A NASA engineer says he can’t think of a practical application that would require more than 15 digits of π . π appears in many areas of math besides geometry and trigonometry. It is hidden away in statistics where the probability density function formula of the normal curve has a √(2π) term in the denominator to get the integral equal to 1, and elsewhere in other branches of math.

=> ↺ Ruud van Asseldonk ☛ An algorithm for shuffling playlists

• It is a common observation that for shuffling playlists, humans don’t want an actual shuffle, because that might play the same artist twice in a row, which doesn’t feel random. This topic has been discussed by others, including famously by Spotify, which in turn references Martin Fiedler’s algorithm. However, neither algorithm is optimal, in the sense that they might play an artist consecutively in cases where this was possible to avoid. I’ve been thinking about this for Musium, the music player that I am building. In this post I want to outline an algorithm that is optimal in the above sense.

=> ↺ Evan Hahn ☛ Play a jingle on Git commits

• When you complete a challenge in a video game, you usually hear a congratulatory sound effect. This is cute and I like it.

• What if you could hear a little jingle when you make Git commits?

=> ↺ Fernando Borretti ☛ Type Systems for Memory Safety

• Manual memory management and memory safety used to be incompatible. But it is possible to design programming languages and type systems that provide memory safety at compile time, combining the safety of high-level languages with the performance and low-level control of languages like C.

=> ↺ Geshan ☛ How to undo a git rebase, a beginner’s guide with an easy example

• Git is the most popular distributed version control system. It is very powerful and valuable too. Git Rebase is done when the main (master) branch has moved ahead and you need to apply the changes from the main branch to your branch while maintaining the history. In this post, you will learn how to undo a git-rebase. Let’s get started!

Python

=> ↺ Seth Michael Larson ☛ Security Developer-in-Residence – Weekly Report #4

• Ever since the 3.11.0 release of Python, all Python release tarballs are signed using Sigstore. You can read this page for more information about Sigstore signatures and how to verify the signatures using the Python Sigstore client.

=> ↺ TecAdmin ☛ Python Program to Scan Port Range

• Port scanning is a useful technique for exploring network systems and gathering information about the services they offer. Often, security professionals and system administrators use port scanning for diagnosing network problems, auditing network security, or discovering vulnerabilities.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ TecAdmin ☛ Bash Script to Scan Port Range

• Network administrators and security experts often need to scan ports to identify open or closed services and evaluate the security of their networks. While there are robust tools like nmap for this purpose, sometimes you might need to create a custom solution that fits your specific requirements.

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ The Conversation ☛ Horizon Europe: how the UK’s delay in rejoining EU funding scheme is damaging scientific research

• Until 2020, the UK was a full member of the Horizon programme –- and net beneficiary, meaning it got more money from the scheme than it put in to join. Brexit changed that. Being outside the EU means the UK must negotiate to become an associate member of Horizon Europe – which has many but not all the benefits of full membership.

• There are ongoing negotiations between the EU and UK over associate membership, which has support from the scientific community. However, the current protracted delay in this process is causing significant damage to UK science and research.

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Scientists Have Just Mapped Our Body’s Organs in Exquisite Detail

• A consortium of scientists has just published an atlas of remarkable images of three human organs, each vital in their own way, showing how cell types are arranged and interact.

• The result: Glittering, kaleidoscopic blueprints lit up by fluorescent dyes that reveal new intimacies about our bodies and reshape our understanding of human biology and disease like never before.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ The Moment A Bullet Turns Into A Flashlight, Caught On Film

• [The Slo Mo Guys] caught something fascinating while filming some firearms at 82,000 frames per second: a visible emission of light immediately preceding a bullet impact. The moment it occurs is pictured above, but if you’d like to jump directly to the point in the video where this occurs, it all starts at [8:18].

Education

=> ↺ Reuters ☛ Attorneys on alert for cybersecurity threats: New York’s new CLE training requirement

• Even if your state does not require cybersecurity training, improving your knowledge on cybersecurity and cybercrime is a good idea for all attorneys and other occupations too. You can meet your obligations, prevent a cybercrime, protect yourself, your organization, and your clients. When a cybercrime occurs, no one is happy and sometimes significant sums of money are stolen. Next events can include malpractice complaints, litigation, and damage to business and peace of mind.

Hardware

=> ↺ Tedium ☛ Floppy Flop

• Today in Tedium: There’s this common plot line that often comes up with tech startups. A person has an idea, and it’s got enough potential that they decide it’s worth following through. The problem is, sometimes that idea needs money, and that money has influence attached. Try as they might to look for money from other sources, they ultimately have to go with professional investors who do this for a living, often known as venture capitalists. They seem friendly enough, but ultimately their money shapes your trajectory. It gives you a runway, perhaps of a couple of years, but it only goes so far, and if things don’t work out, they might put the squeeze on you, and suddenly, your vision might become compromised. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s a common story, and one that dates to Silicon Valley’s earliest years. With that in mind, today’s Tedium talks about a startup that gave us something important—but also, thanks to that knotty VC influence, compromised its founder’s vision. (That founder quickly went on to bigger and better things.) — Ernie @ Tedium

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ 2023 Cyberdeck Contest: Crosberry Pi Loves Lo-Fi Hip Hop

• As far as we can tell, the only real selling point that any portable record player offered was, well, its portability. To be clear, the sound is never that great. But perhaps a selling point for this crowd is that they usually come in hinged cases with handles, and you know what that means — cyberdeck that thing!

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ RFID Emulator + E-paper Badge Can Be Programmed With Sound

• In a way, an e-paper display makes an excellent foundation for a reprogrammable RFID card. The display only needs power during a refresh, and 125 kHz RFID tags are passive in the sense that the power for the RFID transaction comes from the reader itself. [Georgi Gerganov] has put those together in the GGtag, an open-source project for a 3.52″ e-paper badge with a trick or two up its sleeve.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Closing In On A PC Enabled PSVR2

• When the PlayStation VR2 headset was released, people wondered whether it would be possible to get the headset to work as a PC VR headset. That would mean being able to plug it into a PC and have it work as a VR headset, instead of it only working on a PS5 as Sony intended.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Mapping The Depths With An Autonomous Solar Boat

• Ever look out at a pond, stream, or river, and wonder how deep it is? For large bodies of water that are considered navigable, it’s easy enough to pull up a chart and find out. But what if there’s no public data for the area you’re interested in?

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ 19-Year-Old Girl Sent to Jail for Self-Managed Abortion in Nebraska

• Far right lawmakers have been ramping up the criminalization of abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ S. Korea mulls downgrading Covid-19 health risk, lifting all remaining mask mandates

• The country, though, is seeing a surge in Covid-19 cases, which could affect the government’s decision.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis’s Vaccine Turnabout

• Once a vaccine advocate, the Florida governor lost his enthusiasm for the shot before the Delta wave sent Covid hospitalizations and deaths soaring. It’s a grim chapter he now leaves out of his rosy retelling of his pandemic response.

=> ↺ Bridge Michigan ☛ University of Michigan campus gun ban upheld by Court of Appeals

• The Friday ruling reaffirmed the court’s previous ruling in 2017. It stems from a 2015 lawsuit filed by Joshua Wade, an Ann Arbor gun rights advocate who openly carried his gun at the Pioneer High School choice concert in March 2015. The incident caused the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education to ban all weapons from campus, The Detroit Free Press reported.

• Wade’s lawsuit challenged a similar ban at U-M, which bans all firearms on campus unless carried by law enforcement or the military.

=> ↺ Treat gun violence as a public health crisis and let’s get to work | Opinion

• The current spate of gun violence is not isolated to Memphis and the Midsouth. It is an epidemic throughout the United States. Bickering about needing more guns or fewer guns has not proven fruitful to reduce the increasing number of shooting deaths. A different approach is needed. Perhaps we should treat this epidemic like we have treated other epidemics – as a public health problem.

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Spanish Study Reveals Secrets to Superagers’ Long Lives And Sharp Minds

• “We are now closer to solving one of the biggest unanswered questions about superagers: whether they are truly resistant to age-related memory decline or they have coping mechanisms that help them overcome this decline better than their peers,” says lead author Marta Garo-Pascual, a neuroscience graduate student at the Queen Sofia Foundation Alzheimer Centre in Madrid.

• Superagers are a rare breed of elders aged 80 or older whose memory rivals those 20 or 30 years younger.

=> ↺ Terence Eden ☛ Let’s track footballers’ heart rates!!

• My employer’s pitch is simple – livestream the cardiac rhythms of football players back to their coaches. If Ted Lasso can see that Jamie Tartt is faltering, substitute him.

• In a sense, it is no different than the tech that’s used in Formula 1 racing. Team engineers can see the motor’s exact RPM, temperature, and wear. Every facet of the car’s performance is analysed to extract marginal gains in performance. And, incidentally, to prevent catastrophe.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ Chris Ferris ☛ Incident Response in AWS

• I envision this class as a way to help folks working in incident response prepare for and respond to an AWS compromise. It’s not intended to teach you how to set everything up, although I will refer to blog posts and IaC artifacts where appropriate. We cover the services from the perspective of why you need them, when to use them, and the cost/efficacy tradeoffs involved.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Redditors Invented a Fake Word and an AI Site Published an Article Thinking It Was Real

• Recently, dedicated perusers of the “World of Warcraft” subreddit realized that a shoddy gaming website called Zleague was ruthlessly scraping threads from the forum for content and regurgitating them in AI-generated news articles with little to no editing or oversight, and bylines credited to seemingly fake authors.

• And thus, a trap was laid. On Thursday, a thread that now has over 2,000 upvotes was posted expressing excitement over the arrival of “Glorbo” to the game. Wouldn’t it be great, the user suggested, if “some major bot operated news websites” published articles about this?

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ In U.S., Regulating A.I. Is in Its ‘Early Days’

• The answer is that it is not very meaningful yet. The United States is only at the beginning of what is likely to be a long and difficult path toward the creation of A.I. rules, lawmakers and policy experts said. While there have been hearings, meetings with top tech executives at the White House and speeches to introduce A.I. bills, it is too soon to predict even the roughest sketches of regulations to protect consumers and contain the risks that the technology poses to jobs, the spread of disinformation and security.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ How Do the White House’s A.I. Commitments Stack Up?

• Overall, the White House’s deal with A.I. companies seems more symbolic than substantive. There is no enforcement mechanism to make sure companies follow these commitments, and many of them reflect precautions that A.I. companies are already taking.

• Still, it’s a reasonable first step. And agreeing to follow these rules shows that the A.I. companies have learned from the failures of earlier tech companies, which waited to engage with the government until they got into trouble. In Washington, at least where tech regulation is concerned, it pays to show up early.

=> ↺ [Repeat] Old VCR ☛ Apple’s Interactive Television Box: hacking the Set Top Box System 7.1 in ROM

• The AITB/STB was Apple’s attempt to get into the early set-top box market of the 1990s. The dominance of the Apple TV today is a late phenomenon; Apple was in no position to launch such a product on their own in that era, though with the recent introduction of their QuickTime multimedia framework in 1991, they were a strong candidate for a technology partner. Apple forged an alliance with Oracle and parallel computing vendor nCube (Larry Ellison then being its single biggest stockholder), with Apple developing the front end client box and nCube boxes running Oracle Media Server handling the back end. All of this was to occur using MPEG-1 video with QuickTime as the playback system, specifically selected because of MPEG-1′s bitrate of 1.5Mbit/sec and enough to run over a T1/E1 line. Plus, hardware decoders for the format already existed, meaning the device wouldn’t have to rely on the CPU for smooth playback.

Windows TCO

=> ↺ The Record ☛ ‘It feels like a digital hurricane’: Coastal Mississippi county recovering from ransomware attack [Ed: Windows TCO]

• “From there, they systematically went through and locked out everybody’s personal office computer. It was a highly coordinated attack and it also appears that after they encrypted all three servers, they went through each department looking at each individual computer to see what was the best data in there,” he said.

• “So it was not just an automated attack. It definitely appears that there was a process and highly efficient one at that. Once they got behind the gate, that was it.”

Security

=> ↺ Dark Reading ☛ Microsoft 365 Breach Risk Widens to Millions of Azure AD Apps

• China-linked APT actors could have single-hop access to the gamut of Microsoft cloud services and apps, including SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive, among many others.

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ Azure breach: Microsoft okays Wiz post on continued danger, then denies it

• The company is mentioned in that same post as having checked the content for technical accuracy. Shir Tamari, a researcher from cloud security firm Wiz, said very clearly: “..we want to thank the Microsoft team for working closely with us on this blog and helping us ensure it is technically accurate.”

• Microsoft’s obfuscation was made to the CIA-funded site, The Record. The software giant has not put out any official post on this. While some others have pointed out the company’s double-speak on the issue, no American tech site has written it up and focused on the fact that Microsoft is saying one thing now, having said precisely the opposite earlier.

• The Record quotes a Microsoft spokesperson as saying: “Many of the claims made in this blog are speculative and not evidence-based. We’ve also recently expanded security logging availability, making it free for more customers by default, to help enterprises manage an increasingly complex threat landscape.”

=> ↺ Dark Reading ☛ Meet the Finalists for the 2023 Pwnie Awards

• Hosts Sophia d’Antoine and Ian Roos presented the list at Summercon in Brooklyn, where they also handed out a surprise Lifetime Achievement Award.

=> ↺ Linux Kernel DoS, Privilege Escalation Bugs Fixed

• Multiple significant security vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel, including a remotely exploitable null pointer dereference flaw in the networking protocol (CVE-2023-3338), use-after-free vulnerabilities in kernel’s netfilter subsystem in net/netfilter/nf_tables_api.c (CVE-2023-3390) and nft_chain_lookup_byid() (CVE-2023-31248), and an out-of-bounds read/write vulnerability (CVE-2023-35001). These bugs are easy to exploit and pose a severe risk to your system’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability. As a result, they have received a National Vulnerability Database severity rating of ”High”.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Root, On An Amazon Echo Dot

• The Amazon Echo has become an indispensable device for many people unconcerned by its privacy implications. It’s easy to forget that it’s not quite a new product anymore, with the oldest examples now long in the tooth enough to no longer receive security updates. A surprise is that far from being mere clients to Amazon cloud services, they in fact run a version of Android. This makes old dots interesting to experimenters, but first is it possible to gain root access? [Daniel B] has managed it, on a second-generation Echo Dot.

Confidentiality

=> ↺ Jan Piet Mens ☛ Adieu OpenDNSSEC, bienvenido Knot-DNS!

• And now? I’m satisfied. The new Knot signer is performing well, and the lack of surprises to date is refreshing. It is of course early days, but I’m confident for the future.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ UN experts condemn UK Illegal Migration Bill as it receives Royal Assent

• Experts from the United Nations (UN) Friday condemned the UK Illegal Migration Bill for its failure to follow international human rights standards. The experts urged the UK government to stop the implementation of the bill, which received Royal Assent and became domestic law in the UK on Saturday, July 21.

• The Illegal Migration Bill, introduced by Home Secretary Suella Braverman in March 2023, underwent three readings in each house between April and July. On July 18, the House of Lords backed down on their amendments, allowing the bill to progress to Royal Assent. Now that it has become law, the legislation deems that anyone who arrives in the UK “illegally” cannot claim asylum and will be detained and removed to their home country or another country where they may be able to claim asylum.

=> ↺ Gannett ☛ The military ordered big steps to stop extremism. Two years later, it shows no results

• More than two years ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin launched a sweeping initiative − triggered by the Jan. 6 insurrection − to root out the threat of extremism across the United States armed forces.

• But today, the military has almost nothing to show for its efforts, a USA TODAY investigation has found. Most steps in the process are stalled or inactive, and the reforms experts said were most important haven’t happened.

=> ↺ ME Forum ☛ Florence Bergeaud-Blackler on the Muslim-Led Riots That Left France in Flames

• The Strategy for Islamic Action Outside the Islamic World, a document published in Qatar in 2000 and signed by the Islamic World Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ICESCO), was inspired by the French branch of the MB. The document outlines measures to be taken regarding Muslim education in a non-Muslim society. The MB eschews assimilation, prioritizes “Islamic ethics” in lieu of the West’s secular values, and instructs Muslims to act in accordance with Sharia based on “ordering the good and prohibiting the evil.”

• Since the promotion of secularism in national education is seen by most French as a way of preserving national unity and avoiding religious strife, the MB’s strategy is rendered “inadmissible” in France. The French prefer religious practice to be exercised in the private sphere, with worn symbols permitted, provided they do not infringe on public security. The MB, however, demands tolerance for their intolerance of the French ideal of assimilating young Muslims for the public good. This is the method used to subvert the principle of tolerance.

=> ↺ VOA News ☛ Al-Shabab Imposes Blockade on Baidoa Town in Somalia

• Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has condemned the militant group al-Shabab for imposing a weeklong blockade on the southwestern town of Baidoa. Authorities say the Islamist group has cut off supplies in and out of the area, worsening hunger caused by record drought and insecurity.

• Al-Shabaab set up the blockade Tuesday, cutting off transport to and from Baidoa, the capital of South West state.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Drone attack on ammunition depot in annexed Crimea prompts evacuation and temporary railway closure — Meduza

• A drone attack launched by Ukraine on the Krasnohvardiiske region of annexed Crimea caused an ammunition depot to detonate, reports Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of annexed Crimea.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Yevgeny Prigozhin registers ‘real estate management’ company in Belarus — Meduza

• Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has registered a company in Belarus called Concord Management and Consulting, reports the Belarusian outlet Reform.by.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Oppenheimer’s Deadly Legacy of Nuclear Terror

• For every second you sit in the air conditioned theater with a warm buttery popcorn bucket in your lap, 18 people dead in the blink of an eye. Thanks to Oppenheimer.

War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Correspondent for Russian state news agency RIA Novosti killed in Ukraine, three other reporters injured — Meduza

• Rostislav Zhuravlev, a “war correspondent” for Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, was killed in Ukraine, reports the agency.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Drone hits Crimean ammunition depot as strikes kill, wound civilians and journalists in Ukraine

• A Ukrainian drone has hit an ammunition depot in central Crimea, sparking an explosion. The Kremlin-appointed head of the territory that Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014 said there were no immediate reports of casualties but authorities were evacuating civilians in a five-kilometer (three-mile) radius of the blast site. The Ukrainian military appeared to confirm it had launched the drone strike, claiming through its press service that it had destroyed an oil depot and Russian arms warehouses. Elsewhere Saturday, Ukrainian officials reported at least 10 civilians killed in 24 hours, and the Russian defense ministry said a Russian journalist was killed and three others wounded by artillery fire in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Russia attacks Odesa hours before Putin, Lukashenko summit

• The Ukrainian port city of Odesa came under renewed Russian missile attack early Sunday, just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin was due to hold a summit with his staunch ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Russia says West ‘responsible for death of Russian journalist’ in Ukraine

• Moscow on Saturday said the West is “responsible” for the death of a Russian war correspondent killed in Ukrainian shelling in the southern Zaporizhzhia region on Saturday. Earlier, the Russia-installed leader of Crimea said a Ukrainian drone attack on the peninsula had caused the “detonation” of an ammunition depot, leading to the evacuation of those living within 5km of the site.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China delivering ‘kind of military equipment’ to Russia, says French diplomat

• French President Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic advisor said China was delivering items to Russia that could be used as military equipment that in turn could be used in its war in Ukraine.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Putin claims Poland has territorial aspirations in Ukraine and Belarus as Wagner troop movements intensify near Poland-Belarus border

• Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Poland’s leadership of seeking to capture Ukranian land and potentially invade Belarus in a televised address on Friday. Putin said that NATO would form a task force that would enter the Ukraine War and then that Poland would take historically Polish lands in Western Ukraine and perhaps Belarus as well.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ UN Secretary-General condemns Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports

• The UN Secretary-General António Guterres released a statement on Thursday condemning the Russian attacks against ports in Odesa and other Ukrainian Black Sea ports. The attacks on civilian infrastructure may be a violation of international humanitarian law.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Russia foreign affairs ministry imposes travel restrictions on UK diplomats over Ukraine support

• The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday that it will impose travel restrictions on British diplomats, prohibiting them to travel outside of a 75-mile radius of the British Embassy in Moscow or the British Consulate in Yekaterinburg without advanced notice.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian Missile Strikes On Odesa Kill One, Wound 19, Damage Orthodox Cathedral

• One person was killed and 19 wounded, including four children, in fresh Russian missile strikes on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said on July 23.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Bulgaria Approves Shipment Of Soviet-Era Armored Vehicles, Other Support For Ukraine

• The Bulgarian parliament voted to send additional military and technical support to Ukraine, including some 100 Soviet-era armored vehicles from the NATO country’s reserves.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russia Says Military Correspondent Killed In Shelling In Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya

• A Russian military correspondent for the state-run RIA Novosti news agency was killed during shelling in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhya region, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on July 22.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Kyiv Strikes Occupied Crimea, Suspending Bridge Traffic, As Russian Shelling Kills Seven

• Ukrainian troops struck an oil depot and an ammunition warehouse of the Russian Army in Russian-annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian military’s communications department confirmed in a statement on July 22.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Zelensky and Erdogan Discuss Collapsed Ukraine Grain Deal

• The Ukrainian leader said he had spoken with the NATO chief and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a key mediator between Russia and Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began last February.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ U.S.-Sanctioned Russian Millionaire Found Dead In His Office

• Millionaire Russian businessman Anton Cherepennikov, 40, founder of the ICS Holding technology conglomerate and who was subject to U.S. sanctions, was found dead in his Moscow office.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Prigozhin Registers ‘Real Estate’ Firm In Belarusian Village, Site Of Reported Tent Camp

• Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has registered a “real estate management” firm in Belarus following his aborted mutiny against Russia’s military leadership last month.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Poland Summons Russian Ambassador On Putin ‘Provocative’ Comments

• Poland’s Foreign Ministry on July 22 issued an “urgent” summons to the Russian ambassador to protest what Warsaw termed “provocative declarations” by President Vladimir Putin.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ 1 Dead in Odesa as Russia Strikes Cathedral and Apartment Buildings

• Russia has renewed its attacks on the port city after it pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal last week.

Environment

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Venezuela’s Oil Industry Is Broken. Now It’s Breaking the Environment.

• The state-owned oil company has struggled to maintain minimal production for export to other countries, as well as domestic consumption. But to do so it has sacrificed basic maintenance and relied on increasingly shoddy equipment that has led to a growing environmental toll, environmental activists say.

=> ↺ [Repeat] Gizmodo ☛ Mosquitos Are Moving to Higher Elevations—and So Is Malaria

• Researchers have documented the insects making their homes in higher places that are typically too cool for them, from the tropical highlands of South America to the mountainous but populous regions of eastern Africa. A recent Georgetown University study found them moving upward in sub-Saharan Africa at the rate of 21 feet per year.

• “The link between climate change and expansion or change in mosquito distributions is real,” said Doug Norris, a specialist in mosquitoes at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ ‘I wasn’t sentenced to be cooked’: Heat desperation in a Texas prison

• Politicians in Texas denied air conditioning for prisons in May. Now temperatures of 100 F and higher are killing incarcerated people.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Interesting Engineering ☛ Stellantis’ new battery system can provide smaller and cheaper EVs

• This was made possible thanks to a project from a team of 25 researchers from automaker Stellantis, CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), and Saft called Intelligent Battery Integrated System (IBIS) marks a major break from electrical energy conversion systems currently used in most of the EVs around the world.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Dutton’s Nuclear Folly: Small Modular Reactors a political mirage

• As Peter Dutton talks up nuclear power, it is not surprising to see Andrew Liveris shifting his pitch from a ‘gas led recovery’ to a call for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) to be considered for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. Dutton is engaged in politics, Liveris in fantasy. Rex Patrick reports on the nuclear distraction.

• Small modular reactors (SMRs) are nuclear powered reactors with an electrical power output of less than 300 megawatts (MW).

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ G20 fails to reach agreement on cutting fossil fuels

• The G20 major economies meeting in India have failed to reach consensus on phasing down fossil fuels following objections by some producer countries.

• Scientists and campaigners are exasperated by international bodies’ foot-dragging on action to curb global warming even as extreme weather from China to the United States underlines the climate change facing the world.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ G-20 ministers fail to reach consensus on fossil fuels, Russia

• The lack of consensus adds to sluggish progress on climate diplomacy ahead of key meetings in 2023. 

=> ↺ Barry Kauler ☛ More recumbent solar-powered trikes

• I posted about a young couple riding 11,000km around Australia on recumbent trikes, one of them solar powered. They were Azub trikes, and the solar panels were added by the young couple. The link also has information about a ready-made solar-powered recumbent trike, the Motrike/Trikexplor 320E-Solar: [...]

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Privatization of Water Is a Scam

• Since 1989, water charges have increased by 40 percent in real terms. Companies seem to have a profit margin of 38 percent, a very high percentage for a no-competition, low-risk business whose raw material virtually falls out of thin air.

• Some 2.4 billion liters of water are lost every day to leaks due to poor infrastructure. Despite the population growing by nearly ten million, no new reservoirs have been built. Water companies are required to provide clean water but have actually increased contamination by dumping sewage into rivers. Unplugged leaks and sewage dumping increase profits, dividends, and performance-related executive pay.

Finance

=> ↺ Yahoo News ☛ The stock market is overbought and due for a correction, says strategist

• The broadening of the stock market rally is raising optimism that a soft landing for the economy is increasingly possible despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes. That is driving some on Wall Street to believe stocks will move even higher this year.

• However, one trader says he’s “not buying it.”

• “The broadening out is more a result of the mega caps going up insanely versus a real broadening of the economy,” says Gareth Soloway, chief market strategist at Inthemoneystocks.com, a technical analysis platform.

=> ↺ UK inflation and interest rates high – how do other economies compare?

• For all the talk of low inflation, prices in the UK are 7.9% higher than a year ago. In the European Union, that rate is 5.5%, and in the United States it is as low as 3%.

• Britain experienced some of the worst evidence of the price shocks affecting rich nations – energy and food costs fueled by last year’s war in Ukraine and post-pandemic shortages of labour.

• Like the EU, the UK is buying more energy – but the effects of the fall in wholesale gas prices are taking longer to show in our inflation figures.

• This is because energy support introduced later and price movements will take some time to reflect in the range of domestic bills here.

• But so-called “core” inflation, a measure that strips out energy and food, is near its highest rate in 30 years. This suggests that there is still robust spending on non-essentials and treats, as some use savings during pandemics or due to wage hikes.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Inflation results key to Reserve Bank rates decision

• An expected easing in the cost of living may not be enough to stop the Reserve Bank raising interest rates.

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release its latest quarterly and monthly consumer price index data on Wednesday, a little under a week out from the next RBA board meeting.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Pressured by Biden, A.I. Companies Agree to Guardrails on New Tools

• Seven leading A.I. companies in the United States have agreed to voluntary safeguards on the technology’s development, the White House announced on Friday, pledging to manage the risks of the new tools even as they compete over the potential of artificial intelligence.

• The seven companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — formally made their commitment to new standards for safety, security and trust at a meeting with President Biden at the White House on Friday afternoon.

=> ↺ New Statesman ☛ Twitter is breaking our politics

• This behaviour is hardly unusual on Twitter, where social media is at its purest and rawest. But you can see it too in Facebook groups and subreddits, and no doubt soon enough on Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, too. If you know that, every time you press a particular button, people will cheer, you’re going to keep pressing that button.

• Conversely, if every time you press it, another group of people boo, you’re naturally going to move towards the first group and away from the second. This, I suspect, is why some bits of the internet – and some of the debates it contains – have an unnerving ability to take sensible, rational people who have slightly different opinions, and turn them into mortal enemies who would be genuinely happy to see their opponents dead. Fight a culture war too long, and you can no longer see when you’ve gone round the bend.

=> ↺ Frontpage Magazine ☛ Examining the Dangerous Targeting of Amy Mek by a Muslim GOP Candidate

• However, this exchange did not go without criticism from an Islamic supremacist. Shukri Abdullahi Abdirahman, a former controversial Republican House candidate who vied for the party nomination in Minnesota’s 5th District, took issue with Musk’s comment on one of Amy’s tweets. Accusing her of Islamophobia, Shukri, a sharia-adherent Somali migrant, unleashed a torrent of incendiary and potentially harmful accusations. With what appears to be a deliberate intent to fuel anger, she potentially incited her more fanatical followers to consider enacting a Sharia punishment on Amy Mek.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Microsoft’s Dublin DC power plant gets the, er, green light

• Microsoft’s ongoing reliance on fossil fuels for its datacenters reminds us of its earlier sustainability pledge, in which it vowed to be “100 percent” powered by renewable energy sources by 2025, and to be “carbon negative” by 2030.

• We’ve reached out to the folks at Redmond for more information into how exactly a natural gas power plant fits into those goals, but had not heard back at the time of publication. If we had to guess, Microsoft will have to resort to some kind of spreadsheet sustainability tactic, such as purchasing renewable energy credits in another location as an offset for the emissions generated by the Dublin plant.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ DOJ Vows to Sue If Texas Gov. Abbott Doesn’t Remove Floating Barrier From Rio Grande

• Texas’ actions “violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties.”

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Indigenous Children’s ‘Miracle’ Survival Has Backdrop of Colombian Violence

• It is not surprising that the children whose plane crashed in the Amazon hid from the uniformed men rescuing them

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Pearson issues call to arms as support for voice falls

• Prominent Indigenous elder Noel Pearson has issued a call to arms for supporters of the voice, saying more work needs to be done, with the referendum’s success in doubt. 

• Support for constitutionally enshrining an Indigenous advisory body has been tracking downwards according to numerous polls.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Twitter to change logo and bid adieu to ‘all the birds’

• Elon Musk says he is looking to change Twitter’s logo, tweeting “and soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”.

• “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow,” the social media platform’s billionaire owner said in a tweet on Sunday.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ NPR ☛ VP Harris says Florida’s new Black history curriculum replaces ‘history with lies’

• “It is not only misleading, it is false and pushing propaganda,” she said Friday in Jacksonville, Fla. “Pushing propaganda on our children.”

• Harris also criticized Florida’s new standards for requiring high schools to teach that African Americans were perpetrators in some racially motivated massacres. She described these lessons as efforts by “extremists” to replace “history with lies.”

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ NPR ☛ Protesters try to storm Baghdad’s Green Zone over Quran and flag burning in Denmark

• Security forces pushed back protesters, who blocked the Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone, preventing them from reaching the Danish Embassy.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Protesters try to storm Baghdad’s Green Zone over the burning of Quran and Iraqi flag in Denmark

• Hundreds of protesters have attempted to storm Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and the seat of Iraq’s government following reports of the burning of a Quran carried out by a ultranationalist group in front of the Iraqi Embassy in Copenhagen. They were pushed back by security forces, who blocked the Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone, preventing them from reaching the Danish Embassy early Saturday. The attempted storming comes two days after protesters angered by the planned burning of the Islamic holy book in Sweden stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Protesters try to storm Baghdad’s Green Zone over the burning of Quran and Iraqi flag in Denmark

• Tensions flared again in Iraq Saturday over a series of recent protests in Europe involving desecration of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, which have sparked a debate over the balance between freedom of speech and religious sensitivities.

• Hundreds of protesters attempted to storm Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and the seat of Iraq’s government, early Saturday following reports that an ultranationalist group burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Iraqi Embassy in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

=> ↺ Morning Star News ☛ Christians in Pakistan Flee Homes after Blasphemy Accusation

• Muslim crowds including members of Islamic extremist groups blocked the main Sargodha-Faisalabad highway for hours on Sunday (July 16) after mosque announcements urged people in Sargodha to protest posters allegedly bearing derogatory caricatures and comments about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and his wife Aisha, that were pasted on mosque walls.

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ Iraq: Anger erupts over reported Quran burning in Copenhagen

• Facing hundreds of protesters on Saturday, the security forces blocked the bridges leading to the area. Officers used batons and tear gas to repel a small group of demonstrators who managed to break into the Green Zone, news agency AFP reported.

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ How much blasphemy [sic] is allowed in Europe?

• Freedom of expression and media freedom are firmly anchored in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. It is considered important for democratic societies to be able to tolerate a variety of opinions, even if these may offend religious sensibilities.

• However, this repeatedly raises the question of the extent to which critical or mocking statements about people’s religious [sic] beliefs are acceptable, and how a society should deal with them. Below is a summary of some of the provocations that have been made against religious communities, and how blasphemy is dealt with in Europe.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ They Checked Out Pride Books in Protest. It Backfired.

• The San Diego residents who sent the email to the Rancho Peñasquitos Library, Amy M. Vance and Martha Martin, did not respond to requests for comment. City officials said they have not heard since from the library patrons.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ FAIR ☛ Projects to Shift Media Further Rightward Get Kid Glove Treatment From Centrist Press Journal

• The piece says: “Campus Reform and the College Fix are among several organizations that help connect a pool of fresh, young journalists with right-leaning views—such as Walker—to jobs in conservative media.”

• The story unquestioningly echoes the right-wing critique of corporate media: [...]

=> ↺ Meeting Nadezda Azhgikhina, a prominent dissident Russian journalist: On Fetisov Journalism Awards and journalism

• “We get a comprehensive picture of today’s world, with all diversities and details that are usually far from mainstream media, we see faces and hear voices of people from all parts of the globe,” Azhgikhina says about the award.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Mexico News Daily ☛ How to solve Mexico’s worker shortage: give them what they need

• Many of Mexico’s employers have wondered lately how to fill countless jobs gone vacant. Sarah DeVries offers them some simple solutions.

=> ↺ CBS ☛ New York City reaches $13.7 million settlement for police response to protests over killing of George Floyd

• Dara Pluchino said she was at a peaceful protest in the Bronx, when the NYPD used a crowd-control technique called “kettling” just before curfews kicked in.

• “So when the curfew hit, then mass arrests and violence occurred where police were batoning, were using pepper spray,” Pluchino said.

=> ↺ Morning Star News ☛ New Christian in Uganda Slain for Leaving Islam

• About two weeks after a 22-year-old Muslim in eastern Uganda put his faith in Christ, villagers on Saturday (July 8) killed him for leaving Islam, sources said.

=> ↺ Salem Web Network ☛ Muslims Again Break Up Worship of Church in Indonesia

• The disruption was the second in two months suffered by the Mawar Sharon Church (Gereja Mawar Sharon, GMS) congregation as it met in a café in Setia village, Binjai Kota Sub-District, Binjai, near the provincial capital, Medan.

• After demonstrations against the church, a hijab-clad Muslim woman led the disruption of the service, a video on social media shows. Standing next to a police officer, she is seen loudly refusing to allow Christians to worship.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Sex Workers Want Rights, Not Rescue

• The real villain in the overwhelming majority of these cases is poverty, which is a problem we cannot arrest our way out of. The solution to child sexual exploitation is sex education and access to services, shelters, and community support for people running away from abusive homes. Instead of doing those things, we keep investing in criminalization, suppression, and incarceration, despite overwhelming evidence that these policies don’t help victims.

• According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ office on trafficking, nearly 90 percent of the federal government’s $24 million “trafficking prevention” budget was used to arrest consensual adult sex workers rather than to detect traffickers or assist victims. No one is more committed to ending violence and exploitation in the sex industry than adult consensual sex workers, which is why we advocate for the decriminalization of sex work.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Report finds only 2 percent of human rights defenders in Bangladesh feel safe

• It ultimately found that the overwhelming majority (86 percent) of human rights activists face a myriad of challenges, with 62 percent claiming the overall environment of their work is “very unsafe” or “unsafe.” Additionally, 42.3 percent noted that threats, intimidation and persecution came from sources connected to the state, including law enforcement, state intelligence agencies and government officials.

• This intimidation resulted in 28.6 percent of respondents scaling down their work as a result, while 10.7 percent felt compelled to leave their areas. Further, many of these threats went unreported by victims (36 percent) due to a lack of trust in the legal system (20.5 percent), fear of retribution (20.5 percent) or the absence of proper investigations (17.8 percent).

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Young Arab and Black Men Jailed and Fined in France’s Riot Trials

• Fast-track trials deliver hefty sentences for petty crimes committed during riots sparked by police killing teenager

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ People’s Summit in Brussels Calls for Respect of Democracy and Self-Determination

• Over 1,000 people participated in the People’s Summit that brought together the people of Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Drunk Russian man damages four cars in Phuket, stopped by police with taser

• The man allegedly hurled threats at the officers in Russian and was uncooperative.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Young People Should Oppose the Kids Online Safety Act

• Next week, Congress plans to move a bill forward that is opposed by dozens of organizations, digital rights protectors, LGBTQ+ activists, and human rights defenders: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). As we’ve written before, KOSA would lead to censorship and privacy invasions for all social media users.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Unified Patents ☛ Fortress IP entity Neo Wireless ’366 cellular patent prior art

• Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on U.S. Patent 8,467,366, owned by Neo Wireless, LLC, an NPE and Fortress IP entity. The ‘366 patent generally relates to a method and apparatus in a multi-carrier cellular wireless network with random access to improve receiving reliability and reduce interference of uplink signals of a random access, while improving the detection performance of a base station receiver by employing specifically configured ranging signals.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Are Pirate Streaming Apps Dangerous? Using Free Tools is One Way to Find Out

• Over the past several years, anti-piracy messaging has moved away from “think of the creators” and firmly towards “think of your safety.” What’s missing from most reports is practical information that might help people to understand and then accept the risks beyond simple blind faith. The good news is that conducting your own research is possible and completely free.

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