● 07.25.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 25/07/2023: Government of Norway Breached Due to Using Microsoft

Posted in News Roundup at 7:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Applications

=> ↺ LWN ☛ Inkscape 1.3 released

• Version 1.3 of the Inkscape drawing editor has been released. “”With version 1.3 of Inkscape, you’ll find improved performance, several new features, and a solid set of improvements to a few existing ones””. Changes include a new shape-builder tool, a “document resources” dialog for the management of drawings, a new pattern editor, and more.

=> ↺ Linux Links ☛ 6 Best Free and Open Source Graphical Audio Grabbers

• If you are not sure what the position is for the country you live in, please check your local copyright law to make sure that you are on the right side of the law before using the software featured in this two page article.

• To some extent, it may seem a bit of a chore to rip CDs. Streaming services like Spotify and Google Play Music offer access to a huge library of music in a convenient form, and without having to rip your CD collection. However, if you already have a large CD collection, it is still desirable to be able to convert your CDs to enjoy on mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and portable MP3 players.

• Our recommendations are captured in the chart below. All are free and open source software.

=> ↺ Qt ☛ FFmpeg + Android

• Qt 6.5 released a new Multimedia backend using the FFmpeg library.

• That feature finally arrived at Qt for Android in Qt 6.5.2! But what does it mean for Qt for Android to have the new FFmpeg multimedia backend? What does it provide?

• This blog post will help to clear up these questions!

• A core functionality of the new multimedia backend is, of course, the playback of video files.

• Using FFmpeg multimedia backend adds three main advantages for the playback of video files…

=> ↺ FOSSLinux ☛ Top 5 free slideshow makers for Fedora Linux users

• Hello FOSSLinux readers! Today, we’ll delve into the realm of slideshow makers available for Fedora Linux. We’re not just talking about any slideshow makers, though; we’re talking about 100% free, fully open-source tools.

• And here’s a little spoiler: We’re not limiting ourselves to the usual graphical user interface (GUI) applications. Oh no, we’re also going to delve into the powerful world of command-line tools. So, buckle up and get ready for an exciting journey!

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Medium ☛ 🖱️ Navigating in Darkness: Mastering Mouse on Linux Black Screen! 💻🌑

• If you’re a Linux user, especially those familiar with Red Hat distributions, you may have encountered situations where you find yourself staring at a black screen with no visible graphical interface. Don’t panic! While a black screen can be intimidating, it’s usually not a cause for concern. In this blog, we’ll explore how to use the mouse effectively in a black screen environment in Red Hat Linux.

=> ↺ How to Make the Switch From Windows to Linux – The Tech Edvocate

• Making the switch from Windows to Linux is a significant decision for many users, as it involves leaving behind familiar tools and adopting a new platform. However, with the potential benefits of improved performance, better security, and increased customization capabilities, it’s certainly worth considering. In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of migrating from Windows to Linux and provide helpful tips for a smooth transition.

=> ↺ Make Use Of ☛ How to Fix the “Error Splicing File: File Too Large” Error in Linux

• “Error splicing file: file too large” is an extremely confusing error to encounter—especially if it happens when you’re moving a file to a drive that has more than enough space.

• Despite what you might expect, it doesn’t involve the amount of space available on your drive. Luckily, this frustrating error is easy to resolve.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Grab Your ‘Scope’s Screen From The Command Line

• Many of us have oscilloscopes and other instruments with built-in digital interfaces, but how many of us use them? [Andrej Radović] has a Tektronix TDS2022 which can print its screen to any of its various interfaces, and he set about automating the process of acquisition with a Bash script.

=> ↺ TecAdmin ☛ Writing Your First buildspec.yml File

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a highly popular suite of cloud services, and AWS CodeBuild is one of the essential tools in its arsenal. A key component in AWS CodeBuild projects is the buildspec.yml file, which provides a sequence of instructions necessary for building and testing your software.

=> ↺ TecAdmin ☛ Writing Your First appspec.yml File

• The appspec.yml file, a cornerstone of AWS CodeDeploy, is an essential element for deploying applications on AWS instances. Whether you’re an experienced AWS user or someone just starting out, understanding how to write your first appspec.yml file is vital to the deployment process.

=> ↺ Linux Handbook ☛ Proxmox Series #2: Creating a Linux Virtual Machine

• In the first part of the Proxmox series, I showed you how to install the Proxmox hypervisor. In this chapter, I will give you an overview of how to use Proxmox, including creating and using virtual machines.

=> ↺ Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Recovering from a lost disk: how I setup, backup, and restore dev machines

• Last Wednesday just before 3pm, I went pack up my laptop to get ready to drive 7 hours to visit my family in Ohio. Fedora had some updates to apply and when it went to come back on after those, I saw the words no one wants to see:

• Default Boot Device Missing or Boot Failed.Insert Recovery Media and Hit any key

Games

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Morrowind engine replacement OpenMW v0.48 out now with shaders

• Bringing with it some pretty fancy new features, the Morrowind engine replacement OpenMW version 0.48.0 is out now. An exciting release for bringing some modern stuff to this RPG classic.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Airships: Conquer the Skies gets a DLC adding in captains and governors

• Have you played Airships: Conquer the Skies? It’s a game about building fearsome airships and land vehicles to give you the edge in massive aerial battles.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Xenonauts 2 is looking good on desktop Linux and Steam Deck

• The invasion continues. Xenonauts 2 is now in Early Access from Goldhawk Interactive and Hooded Horse and I’ve taken a look to see how it runs on desktop Linux and Steam Deck. Note: key provided by the publisher.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Tencent to get a majority stake in Dying Light dev Techland

• Here’s a bit of industry news for you. Techland, developer of Dying Light, have announced some “exciting news” about the future of their studio.

=> ↺ GamingOnLinux ☛ Fanatical’s Diamond Collection Brutal Edition has some good game picks

• Fanatical have released another bundle and it’s a good one for those of you who love action. The Diamond Collection Brutal Edition build your own bundle is here. Read on for desktop Linux and Steam Deck compatibility.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ DOOM On IPhone OS, On Android

• So you want to play some games from the early days of 32-bit iPhone OS that no longer run on recent OS versions? [Hikari-no-yume] wrote a sweet high-level emulator, touchHLE, to do so on modern iOS phones. But maybe you don’t have an iPhone? [Ciciplusplus] has your back. He ported the iPhone OS emulator, written in Rust, to Android, and then ported a version of DOOM that runs on iPhone OS to go with it.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Akademy 2023 is over, let’s see what comes next

• In my previous blog post I mentioned Akademy wasn’t completely over for me, I still had to hold an online training about the KDE Stack even though I left Thessaloniki already.

• I had a few participants. Surprisingly some of them (but not all) were more experienced KDE developers than I expected. Since the training is more meant for people who want to get a feel on how to get around our stack I was a bit anxious they wouldn’t get bored… From the feedback I got immediately after the training it looks like it was well received even by the more experienced people. Apparently everybody learned quite a bit and had fun in the process. I’ll thus call it a success.

=> ↺ Nate Graham ☛ Akademy 2023

• As you may have seen from other posts on https://planet.kde.org, KDE’s annual Akademy conference is over and people are starting to blog about their thoughts on it!

• This is my fifth Akademy, and my third one attending in person. As always, it was great to meet up with colleagues and old friends in real life! A kind of magic happens when a bunch of technically adept people with strong social relationships gather together in a room. There was a lot of it on display this year, even despite the punishing heat and spotty Wi-Fi performance!

=> ↺ Carl Schwan ☛ Akademy 2023

• Last week, I went to Akademy, the yearly KDE conference, in Thessaloniki. This is now my third in-person Akademy and fifth Akademy in total. As always, this is the occasion to meet old and new friends, learn about what others are hacking on and enjoy good food.

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

=> ↺ Mailing list ARChives ☛ Re: amd microcode

• Since AMD is too busy twiddling their fingers with the firmware solutions, we are setting DE_CFG bit 9 on all the models that we think have the bug.

• Two fixes for the same problem, if you get lucky.

=> ↺ Undeadly ☛ Theo de Raadt on Zenbleed

• The buzzword bug of the week is Zenbleed, which affects various AMD processors and is explained in more detail here.

• On OpenBSD, the latest -current snapshots already have the fixes, and errata patches will go out for the supported releases (7.2 and 7.3) shortly.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Fedora Magazine ☛ Get ready to Flock to Fedora

• Hello Fedora friends! In just about a week, we will kick off Flock to Fedora — our annual contributor conference. I hope you’re as excited as I am! For the last three years, we’ve run this as a virtual event — we stayed cozy at home with Nest. Now, we’re back to in-person, and I can’t wait to see so many of you again as we flock together to meet in Cork, Ireland.

• Flock is different from other conferences — it’s not a showcase or sales pitch, and it’s not a corporate event where we stand up for or root for the companies we work for or are fans of. Of course, we are grateful for our sponsors and our employers, but in Fedora in general — and especially at Flock! — that’s not what things are about. We come together in a positive spirit to collaborate and build. We’re a community of people, and friendship is a cornerstone value. Fedora is our community, and Flock is where we come together.

• This year, we’re combining forces with our friends at the CentOS Project: CentOS Connect will be co-located with Flock. CentOS is a different kind of project, but the same approach applies: this is about community. I know there are a lot of strong feelings around Red Hat and CentOS and rebuilds and downstreams lately. Fedora doesn’t control any of that, but it affects us — so, I’m sure we’ll talk about it. (We even have a session related to the topic.) As we talk, though, let’s all keep in mind the spirit of our projects: working together collaboratively to build a better world with free and open source software for everyone.

Debian Family

=> ↺ [Repeat] Daniel Pocock ☛ Italy visa & residence permit: Albanian Outreachy, Wikimedia & Debian tighten control over woman

• At the time of the Debian Bug Squashing Party (BSP) in early 2018, the Albanian woman told me she was learning Italian and she wanted to spend the summer working as a waitress in Italy. Some cousins were already there and she hoped to live closer to them. In subsequent conversations with this woman, she reminded me of her search for employment in Italy to qualify for a residence permit. Even after working there on a temporary permit in the holiday season, she really wanted to find an ongoing job to qualify for residence.

=> ↺ LWN ☛ Debian adds RISC-V as an official architecture [LWN.net]

• The Debian project is now supporting 64-bit RISC-V systems as an official architecture.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu ☛ Why do you also need confidential computing for your private datacenter?

• As the adoption of confidential computing gains momentum, a question we often get asked is: why would I need confidential computing in my private data center? However, while it is true that confidential computing has often been associated with addressing security concerns in public cloud environments, its value proposition extends well beyond that.

=> ↺ Ubuntu ☛ Why and how to use Rust on Ubuntu

• Rust has been the language most loved by developers for the last 8 years and it is seeing increased adoption by software companies of all sizes. However, its many high-level rules and abstractions create a steep initial learning curve which can leave the impression that Rust is the preserve of a select few but this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Let’s examine why Rust is often a great choice and take a look at how to get started with it on Ubuntu.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Stacey on IoT ☛ Podcast: Why Roku wants a smart home OS

• This week we learned a bit more about streaming provider Roku’s plans to build a smart home operating system. This is in addition to all of the new smart home devices the company has developed using Wyze hardware. Because Kevin Tofel is on vacation,

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ UNO R4 Stars: Meet Gustavo Silveira

• The launch of the Arduino UNO R4 marks a huge leap forward for our community. For us, it’s also the chance to celebrate the people who bring our ecosystem to life with their bright ideas, radiant enthusiasm, and shining insight.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Raspberry Pi Shoos Away Birds Without Hurting Them

• DevMiser is using a Raspberry Pi to keep birds away without hurting them by waving a dowel rod back and forth when they’re detected.

=> ↺ Arduino ☛ Small PoV display uses CD drive motor for high-speed rotation

• An Arduino Nano board controls the LEDs, while an ESP8266 ESP-01 module tells it what image to show based on time and weather data pulled from the internet via Wi-Fi®. Those mount onto a custom circular PCB spun by a small CD drive motor. Because that PCB spins, it would have been difficult to run wires for power. So this takes advantage of wireless power transfer through coils on that primary PCB and a secondary PCB underneath that exists purely for that purpose.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi ☛ Raspberry Pi Camera Module: More on video capture

• We met libcamera-vid at the end of last month’s Camera Module tutorial, and found out how to record a short video clip. Like libcamera-still, libcamera-vid has many more options for controlling the resolution, frame rate, and other aspects of the video that we capture, and we’ll discover some of those in this tutorial.

=> ↺ Purism ☛ Stay Safe from BMC Tampering

• Through June and July, AMI MegaRAC BMC firmware has been in the news owing to high-severity vulnerabilities that have existed for years but only recently come to light.  Server hardware widely contains BMCs, and compromising one can give near-total control over the server.  Many vendors shipped this firmware with their own branding.

• But what exactly is a BMC, and what can we do to stay secure?

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Nail, Meet KiCad

• You know the old saying. When all you have open is KiCad, everything looks like a PCB. That was certainly true for [Evan], who needed to replace a 2.5D small part recently and turned to PCBs to get the job done.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Retro Gadgets: The Real Desktop Computer

• People argue about the first use of the computer desktop metaphor. Apple claims it. Xerox probably started it. Yet, when I think of computer desktops, I think of the NOVAL 760. Not a household name, to be sure, but a big ad spread in a June 1977 Byte magazine was proud to introduce it. At $2995, we doubt many were sold, but the selling point was… well… it was built into a “handsome wood desk, designed to compliment any decor.” The desk folded down when you were not using the computer, and the keyboard recessed into a drawer.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android Smartphones To Gain “SMS Via Satellite” Feature: Which Brands Will Be The First To Receive? – Gizbot News

=> ↺ Android Central ☛ Sony’s PS5 handheld sure looks like an Android tablet with DualSense attachments | Android Central

=> ↺ Giz China ☛ Tricks to free up space on your Android smartphone – Gizchina.com

=> ↺ PC Mag ☛ Decade-Old Android KitKat OS Shipped Off to Google Graveyard | PCMag

=> ↺ XDA ☛ Google is ending support for Android 4.4 KitKat

=> ↺ Android Authority ☛ Android KitKat reaches end as Google Play services discontinues support

=> ↺ 9to5Google ☛ Google Play services ending support for Android 4.4 KitKat

=> ↺ Android Authority ☛ The best cheap Android tablet gets a 26% price cut – Android Authority

=> ↺ 9to5Google ☛ [Fixed] Android apps continuously crashing for some Pixel owners

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Licensing / Legal

=> ↺ [Old] The Original Sin of Free Software

• Because of Stallman’s original sin, there is no accepted structure within the FOSS world wherein such obligation to share changes can be enforced by the originator of a piece of software. The DSG, in fact, specifically requires this as a precondition for inclusion in its repositories.

• This means that improvements in software, bug-fixes, security-patches and the like, remain the absolute property of the person who has made them, despite the fact that they are, in Newton’s words, “standing on the shoulders” of those who came before. The originator of the software, in other words, is someone who can count herself lucky to be afforded the “exposure” which may come from the future sale of her works by a more powerful entity. The entire function of FOSS is for developers to provide the fruits of their labour, either without recompense or for fractional recompense, to others.

• The individual programmer has the rights afforded them by the 4Fs and the OSD, but those rights are inherently solitary. What possibility can there be to enforce those rights, limited as they may be, against the powerhouses of our gilded age? What economic rights accrue to our developers, the people who, in Stallman’s conception, are the origin point of the FOSS movement?

=> ↺ MWL ☛ Enterprise Ebook Licensing

• I deferred implementing this for years, despite the occasional request. Then I saw Julia Evans’ income graphs, where enterprise licensing is a big chunk of her income. Somewhat amusingly, my annual income reports inspired her to post this. Be generous with information about how you run your creative business, people will build on it and you can stealborrow their improvements.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Warner Losh ☛ Some Hints For Splitting Commits

• Sometimes in a code review, the commentators suggest that commits be broken up into smaller pieces. Here are a few of the collected tricks I have learned over the years. They are presented as ‘editing the current tip of the tree’ for simplicity. However, you can apply them to rebasing as well using the ‘edit’ action. The last section offers a strategy when you need to recombine the commits.

=> ↺ 37signals LLC ☛ Clear the barnacles

• The hardest part about this is not to wait until it’s too much, until the drag is actually there. Keep your mind below carrying capacity, such that there’s room for serendipity, at all times.

=> ↺ Earthly ☛ Rust Lifetimes: A Complete Guide to Ownership and Borrowing

• Rust is a programming language that uses ownership and borrowing to address memory management issues while prioritizing both performance and memory safety. The approach is based on the concept of lifetimes, where the lifetime system tracks the lifespan of every value, ensuring that references do not outlive their intended lifetime and preventing issues, such as dangling pointers/references and memory leaks.

• Unfortunately, Rust’s lifetimes can be difficult to understand, but they’re essential to Rust’s design, and they enable you to write secure and high-performing code while avoiding common memory-related problems found in other languages. In this article, you’ll learn all about lifetimes and the concepts of ownership, borrowing, and resource management in Rust.

=> ↺ Ted Unangst ☛ dodging the go loop trap

• One of the traps in go is the reuse of loop variables, confounding novices and even catching the unwary expert. It’s so bad they may even change the language to fix it.

• It’s never much bothered me, personally or particularly, but it did recently bite me, and I reflected on why that may be. Because I avoid a particular idiom that’s common to many instances of the bug.

=> ↺ Collabora ☛ A weekend for developers

• With Black Valley in Norway, and Akademy in Greece, this weekend’s plans are all set or computer enthusiasts! Collabora is proud to sponsor both of these events as a chance for communities to come together and strengthen their bonds.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ APNIC ☛ The joy of TXT

• Guest Post: How are DNS TXT records really used?

Leftovers

=> ↺ David Revoy ☛ I’ve decided to give up on my blog’s commenting system

• I have had this blog for almost 20 years, long before social media like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter existed. For a long time, my comment system was the only way I could get feedback on what I was painting and writing. And over the years you have posted 13,007 messages on 978 posts on my blog. Thank you very much!

• Unfortunately, the amount of spam, attacks and hateful comments has also increased. For years I protected the humble commenting system of my PluXML blog system with honeypots, home-made captchas and services like Akismet. I also spent a lot of time moderating, but it started to ruin the little time I had offline during holidays, conferences and book signings.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ How Duck Tape Became Famous

• If you hack things in the real world, you probably have one or more rolls of duck tape. Outside of the cute brand name, many people think that duck tape is a malapropism, but in truth it is the type of cloth traditionally used in our favorite tape: cotton duck. However, as we’ll see, it’s not entirely wrong to call it duct tape either. Whatever you call it, a cloth material has an adhesive backing and is coated with something like polyethylene.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Driver indicted for killing S’porean flight attendant in drink driving accident in Taiwan

• The United Airlines flight attendant, whose name was given only as Anuar, was in his 30s to 40s.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 11 dead after school gym roof collapses in northeastern China

• Eleven people died after the roof of a school gym collapsed in northeastern China, state media reported Monday. The collapse in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province was caused by construction workers illegally placing perlite — a form of volcanic glass — on the building’s roof, state news agency Xinhua said.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ China Gym Roof Collapse Claims at Least 11 Lives

• A building contractor improperly stored material on the gym’s roof, official media reported. Most of the victims were children.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Pilbara Minerals ‘throttle jammed wide open’ on lithium

• Australian lithium miner Pilbara Minerals has posted a strong June quarter, with a $656 million increase in cash to $3.3 billion despite volatile prices.

• Lithium is rapidly becoming a global industry in the race for supplies to meet record demand for electric cars and clean energy equipment.

Science

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Fluxonium Qubit Retains Information For 1.43 Milliseconds – 10x Longer Than Before

• We’re getting closer.

Education

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ Supreme Court decision on affirmative action raises concerns about diversity in higher education

• The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that affirmative action in college and university admissions is unconstitutional after hearing lawsuits brought against the University of North Carolina and Harvard University by Students for Fair Admissions. 

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ Advisory report begins integration of generative AI at U-M

• The report is available to the public at a website created by the committee and Information and Technology Services to guide how faculty, staff and students can responsibly and effectively use GenAI in their daily lives.

• U-M also has announced it will release its own suite of university-hosted GenAI services that are focused on providing safe and equitable access to AI tools for all members of the U-M community. They are expected to be released before students return to campus this fall.

Hardware

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Lisa Su Swats Down Samsung Foundry Rumors: We Work With TSMC

• The head of AMD would like to keep working with TSMC, but considers all options.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ AMD to Substantially Increase Microcode Size For Future CPUs

• AMD’s upcoming Zen 5-based processors to increase microcode size by three times.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Seagate Faces Class Action Lawsuits After Violating US Sanctions by Selling to Huawei

• Seagate has had a class action lawsuit filed against it for allegedly misleading its investors about its sanctions-violating sales to Huawei.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Asus Reportedly Preps ROG NUC To Replace Intel NUC Extreme

• Bits and Chips reports that Asus’ upcoming ROG NUC will feature Meteor Lake processors paired with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Taking Mechanical Keyboard Sounds To The Next Level

• When it comes to mechanical keyboards, there’s no end to the amount of customization that can be done. The size and layout of the keyboard is the first thing to figure out, and then switches, keycaps, and then a bunch of other customizations inside the keyboard like the mounting plate and whether or not to add foam strips and other sound- and vibration-deadening features. Of course some prefer to go the other direction with it as well, omitting the foam and installing keys with a more noticeable click, and still others go even further than that by building a separate machine to make their keyboard activity as disruptive as it could possibly be.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Asus agrees to keep Intel’s NUC mini-PC brand alive

• Taiwanese laptop computer maker ASUSTek Computer Inc. has agreed to take up the mantle of Intel Corp.’s Next Unit of Compute systems, signing an agreement with the chipmaker to design, manufacture, sell and support future generations of the product.

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ A New Kind of Quantum Computer Could Be Built on The Strange Physics of Sound Waves

• Here’s the pitch.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ After Exit, Intel Passes NUC Baton to Asus via New License Agreement

• Asus will take Intel NUC systems forward.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ 2,200 Forgotten Vintage Computers Are Being Liberated From a Barn in Massachusetts

• The NABU Network was an obscure, forgotten part of Canadian tech history—until the day the internet noticed that thousands of NABU machines were being sold on eBay at rock-bottom prices.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ 2023 Hackaday Prize: A Smart Powermeter That You Actually Want

• [Jon] wanted to keep track of his home power use, but didn’t want to have to push his data up to some cloud service that’s just going to leave him high and dry in the future. So he went completely DIY.

=> ↺ Mailing list ARChives ☛ Zenbleed

• OpenBSD does not use the AVX instructions to the same extent that Linux and Microsoft do, so this is not as important.

• On Linux, glibc has AVX-based optimizations for simple functions (string and memory copies) which will store secrets into the register file which can be extracted trivially, so the impact on glibc-based systems is HUGE.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ AMD ‘Zenbleed’ Bug Leaks Data From Ryzen, EPYC CPUs: Most Patches Coming Q4 (Updated)

• Tavis Ormandy, a researcher with Google Information Security, posted today about a new vulnerability he independently found in AMD’s Zen 2 processors. The ‘Zenbleed’ vulnerability spans the entire Zen 2 product stack, including AMD’s EPYC data center processors and the Ryzen 3000/4000/5000 CPUs, allowing the theft of protected information from the CPU, such as encryption keys and user logins. The attack does not require physical access to the computer or server and can even be executed via javascript on a webpage.

=> ↺ Linux Gizmos ☛ MSI officially launches new line of compact Mini PC Series

• MSI has recently launched its Mini PC line-up, catering to a diverse range of industries such as SMBs, medical facilities, kiosks, and various commercial settings. These mini PCs are powered by the latest Intel Core processors, ensuring they can handle high-demanding applications with ease.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Restoring The Cheapest TRS-80 At The Swap Meet

• We don’t know if you’ve looked into it recently, but the prices for vintage computers are through the roof right now. These classic machines are going through something of a renaissance at the moment, with even relatively commonplace computers commanding several hundred dollars if they’re in good condition. For those looking to start a collection without breaking the bank, you may need to accept some specimens that have seen better days.

=> ↺ Yahoo News ☛ Germany earmarks 20 billion euros in subsidies for chip industry

• Germany plans to invest around 20 billion euros ($22.15 billion) in the semiconductor industry in the coming years, the economy ministry said on Tuesday, amid growing alarm over supply chain fragility and dependence on South Korea and Taiwan for chips.

• The country was able to attract global chipmakers to set up factories by offering subsidies under the EU Chips Act that aims to double the bloc’s share of global chip output to 20% by 2030.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Japan must abandon its reckless proposal to discharge Fukushima waste water into the ocean

• Japan’s plan to discharge over a million tonnes of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific is hazardous and irresponsible, and could have serious repercussions on the environment, human health, the regional economy, and diplomatic relations.

=> ↺ TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Minneapolis backs off arrests for psychedelic plant use

• Mayor Jacob Frey on Friday ordered police to stop using taxpayer dollars to enforce most laws against hallucinogenic plants.

=> ↺ [Old] Titanium dioxide: E171 no longer considered safe when used as a food additive

• Prof Maged Younes, Chair of EFSA’s expert Panel on Food Additives and Flavourings (FAF), said: “Taking into account all available scientific studies and data, the Panel concluded that titanium dioxide can no longer be considered safe as a food additive . A critical element in reaching this conclusion is that we could not exclude genotoxicity concerns after consumption of titanium dioxide particles. After oral ingestion, the absorption of titanium dioxide particles is low, however they can accumulate in the body”.

=> ↺ [Old] European Union: Titanium Dioxide Banned as a Food Additive in the EU

• The European Commission is banning titanium dioxide (E171) as a food additive in the EU, starting with a six-month phasing out period as of February 7, 2022, until August 7, 2022, after which a full ban applies. Following the publication of Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/63 in the EU’s Official Journal (OJ) on January 18, 2022, Annex II and III to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 on food additives will be amended accordingly. The Regulation also includes a commitment to review the necessity to maintain or delete titanium dioxide (E171) from the EU list of food additives for exclusive use as a color in medicinal products. On November 30, 2021, the Commission had already published Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/2090 in the OJ, denying the authorization of titanium dioxide (E171) as a feed additive for all animal species.

=> ↺ COVID-19 as an “ethnically targeted” bioweapon: RFK Jr. embraces antisemitism and racism

• By any measure one might like to use, the last couple of weeks have not been good for longtime antivax activist turned Democratic Presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. It should be no surprise to anyone familiar with RFK Jr. just how far into the bonkers conspiracy theories he went. (At least, other than timing, it wasn’t a surprise to me, given that I’ve covered his antivaccine pseudoscience and conspiracy theories since 2005.) In brief, a funny story about a fart-filled argument at an RFK Jr. press event a couple of weeks ago quickly turned dark, with reports the weekend before last relating how RFK Jr. had echoed an antisemitic and racist conspiracy theory about how COVID-19 might have been “ethnically targeted”at Caucasians and Blacks, while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese, in brief a bioweapon. Amazingly, the wingnuts running the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, to which RFK Jr. had been invited to testify before the kerfuffle over his racist and antisemitic conspiracy mongering hit the news, did not disinvite him, leading to quite the spectacle in which he repeatedly denied saying what he is on videotape in the New York Post as having said and once again denied being antivax.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Who’s been smoking what?

• When the ABC broke the story in March that the Legalise Cannabis Party had made it onto the list of approved organisations where JobSeeker recipients could volunteer to meet their JobSeeker mutual obligations, Rex Patrick thought he’d use FOI to get to the bottom of it. The FOI results have left him wondering, who’s been smoking what?

• What sneaky tricks were used by the Legalise Cannabis NSW Party to get past the guardians at Centrelink and have their organisation listed as an approved organisation for JobSeeker volunteers?

=> ↺ Jon Udell ☛ Is there an early warning system for RSI?

• My RSI (repetitive strain injury) struggles began 25 years ago, after an intensive push to build and ship the BYTE magazine website. The tendons in both wrists became badly inflamed, and I spent a couple of months in rehab: anti-inflammatory meds, alternating heat and ice, stretching.

=> ↺ NYPost ☛ Listeria outbreak kills three adults in Washington state, health department confirms

• People outside the high-risk groups rarely display symptoms, the CDC stated.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Former Iranian Welfare Official Warns Of Looming ‘Catastrophe’ Over Malnutrition

• A former official from Iran’s Ministry of Social Welfare has issued a stark warning about a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” after fresh data showed more than half of all Iranians are suffering from malnutrition.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Syria to Receive People With Chronic Diseases From Rebel Areas

• Last week, the Health Ministry said it was “following with great concern” the health conditions of people in northern Syria.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ A Mystery in the E.R.? Ask Dr. Chatbot for a Diagnosis. [Ed: Why does NYTimes teach and promote self harm? How much does Microsoft pay for this chaff campaign?]

• At a medical school in Boston, instructors are using ChatGPT in training exercises to help teach students how to think like doctors.

=> ↺ TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi has full FDA approval now and that means Medicare will pay for it

• U.S. officials granted full approval to a closely watched Alzheimer’s drug on Thursday, clearing the way for Medicare and other insurance plans to begin covering the treatment for people with the brain-robbing disease.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ FDA Makes Alzheimer’s Drug Leqembi Widely Accessible

• The F.D.A. gave full approval to the drug, but added a black-box warning about safety risks. Medicare said it would cover most of the high cost.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Despite U.S. Ban on Chlorpyrifos, U.S. Has Slowed Global Ban Efforts

• On his first day in office, President Joe Biden announced that his administration planned to scrutinize a Trump-era decision to allow the continued use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that can damage children’s brains. And with great fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency went on to ban the use of the chemical on food.

• “Ending the use of chlorpyrifos on food will help to ensure children, farmworkers, and all people are protected from the potentially dangerous consequences of this pesticide,” the head of the EPA, Michael Regan, said in his announcement of the decision in August 2021. “EPA will follow the science and put health and safety first.”

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Using the “right” social networks

• One thing it didn’t achieve? The downfall of Facebook. All it achieved was social isolation. This has been a bitter pill for me to swallow.

=> ↺ CoryDoctorow ☛ Autoenshittification

• Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare – but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

• Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

=> ↺ The Hill ☛ Microsoft hack exposing government emails could have accessed other types of files: researchers

• “The full impact of this incident is much larger than we initially understood it to be. We believe this event will have long lasting implications on our trust of the cloud and the core components that support it, above all, the identity layer which is the basic fabric of everything we do in cloud.” Tamari said.

• “At this stage, it is hard to determine the full extent of the incident as there were millions of applications that were potentially vulnerable, both Microsoft apps and customer apps, and the majority of them lack the sufficient logs to determine if they were compromised or not,” he added.

=> ↺ Bleeping Computer ☛ Lazarus hackers hijack Microsoft IIS servers to spread malware

=> ↺ Bleeping Computer ☛ Microsoft Sharepoint outage caused by use of wrong TLS certificate

Windows TCO

=> ↺ Ministries hit by cyber-attacks [Ed: Microsoft TCO for sure]

• The Norwegian Government Security and Service Organisation (DSS) has detected a cyber-attack on the ICT platform used by 12 ministries. The matter is currently being investigated by the police.

• “We are taking this incident very seriously. The Norwegian Government Security and Service Organisation (DSS) is cooperating closely with the National Security Authority (NSM) and the police. They have implemented a number of measures in response to the attack, and we are following the situation very closely,” says Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Sigbjørn Gjelsvik.

• The Minister of Local Government and Regional Development will brief the Storting’s Extended Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee (DUUFK) on the matter.

=> ↺ Reuters ☛ Norway government ministries hit by cyber attack

• Twelve Norwegian government ministries have been hit by a cyber attack, the Norwegian government said on Monday, the latest attack to hit the public sector of Europe’s largest gas supplier and NATO’s northernmost member.

Privatisation/Privateering

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Outsourcing and privatisation of Government is a bad think mkay?

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Industry titans join forces in the newly formed Ultra Ethernet Consortium

• Leading cloud service, semiconductor and system providers joined forces today to launch the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, a new consortium for industrywide cooperation to build a complete Ethernet-based communication stack architecture for high-performance networking.

Security

=> ↺ IT Jungle ☛ Serious New IBM i Vulns Exposed by Silent Signal – More On the Way

• Two new vulnerabilities in core components of the IBM i operating system were disclosed by IBM last week, including one that impacts Performance Tools and another in Facsimile Support for i. Both vulnerabilities were discovered by Silent Signal, the Hungarian firm that discovered the recent DDM vulnerability, and both are considered high risk flaws that should be patched immediately.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Researchers Find ‘Backdoor’ in Encrypted Police and Military Radios

• The TETRA standard is used in radios worldwide. Security researchers have found multiple vulnerabilities in the underlying cryptography and its implementation, including issues that allow for the decryption of traffic.

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

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (webkit2gtk), Fedora (curl, dotnet6.0, dotnet7.0, ghostscript, kernel-headers, kernel-tools, libopenmpt, openssh, and samba), Mageia (virtualbox), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk and java-11-openjdk), and Scientific Linux (java-1.8.0-openjdk and java-11-openjdk).

=> ↺ LWN ☛ Zenbleed: an AMD Zen 2 speculative vulnerability

• Tavis Ormandy reports on a vulnerability that he has found in “”all Zen 2 class processors”” from AMD. (Wayback Machine link as the original site is overloaded.) It can allow local attackers to recover data used in string operations; “”If you remove the first word from the string ‘hello world’, what should the result be? This is the story of how we discovered that the answer could be your root password!”” The report has lots of details, including an exploit; AMD has released a microcode update to address the problem.

=> ↺ LWN ☛ Stable kernels to address Zenbleed released

• Greg Kroah-Hartman has released six new stable kernels to address the Zenbleed vulnerability for AMD processors: 6.4.6, 6.1.41, 5.15.122, 5.10.187, 5.4.250, and 4.19.289.

=> ↺ Bloomberg ☛ Company Bought by Experian Needn’t Report Pre-Sale Data Breach

• Court Ventures Inc. properly beat a suit alleging it failed to notify victims of a security breach that it became aware of only after its sale to Experian Data Corp., a California appellate court ruled.

• Former owners of computerized data containing personal information aren’t required to provide notice of a breach under the California Consumer Records Act, Justice Thomas A. Delaney of the California Court of Appeals said Friday.

=> ↺ Information Security Media Group, Corporation ☛ Law Firm Hack Affects Victims of an Earlier Breach Again

• A global law firm is notifying nearly 153,000 individuals of a hacking incident that compromised several client files. The files contained sensitive personal information and affects vision care patients who had been victims of a breach three years ago.

• Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe on July 20 reported the data breach to several state regulators, including the attorneys general of Maine and California, as well as a HIPAA breach to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ Umbreon Unplugged: Unraveling the Sequel to Failures

• On June 23, DataBreaches published the first of a series of interviews with Pepijn Van der Stap, aka “Umbreon.” Van der Stap, 21, was arrested in January and remains in detention, awaiting trial on charges that include hacking, data exfiltration, extortion, sale of stolen data, and money laundering.

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ More plastic surgery patients have their nude photos and information leaked

• An unknown party or parties who created a leak site with nude photos and medical records of a well-known plastic surgeon’s patients have uploaded more of his patients’ photos and records.

• In what was their third update to the leak site since June 5, those responsible wrote that they have changed their strategy. Before publishing any more of Dr. Gary Motykie’s patients’ data, the patients will reportedly be given a chance to pay $2500 to get their data deleted and not made public.

• They also note that the price for closing the website and deleting all data is $800 000, which they claim is “4-5 months of Gary’s clinic work.” In an email to DataBreaches, they claim that they did not — and do not — lock target’s systems. The price is for deleting data that they exfiltrated.

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ Pointed to a phishing campaign targeting the healthcare sector, Microsoft leaps into action to … not even investigate?!

• Within minutes, we received an email receipt from Microsoft.

• Less than 1 minute later, we received an email that the case had been closed because they couldn’t validate it so no action was taken.

• Seriously, Microsoft? Did anyone actually READ the report I submitted, or did you just have some AI determination that what I filled in for time of incident or something could not be verified?

• Are you seriously interested in stopping abuse, Microsoft? If so, why didn’t you provide a phone number to call or a way to reach back out to make sure that you looked at the report and took action or directed it to the proper recipient?

• DataBreaches also sent an email to an FBI agent and someone at HHS who are both involved in cybercrime issues to alert them to the situation. Maybe they’ll have better luck with Microsoft getting the blob taken down and the blob owner confirmed and investigated.

• If anyone has a contact at Microsoft, the case number was SIR15482152. MSFT can call me at the phone number provided or the one listed on this website if they need additional details to what I provided in the notes or narrative with the URL.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Bill Limiting Data Broker Sales To Law Enforcement Moves Forward

• The Supreme Court made it clear in 2018 with its Carpenter decision: gathering historical cell site location info in bulk was impermissible under the Fourth Amendment. If law enforcement wanted to engage in third-party-enabled long term tracking of suspects via this info, it needed to get a warrant first.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ More Suicide Resource Orgs Found To Be Monetizing Sensitive User Data

• Last February, a report in Politico found that Crisis Text Line, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit support options for the suicidal, had been monetizing user data. More specifically, the nonprofit was collecting all sorts of data on “customer interactions” (ranging from the frequency certain words are used, to the type of distress users are experiencing), then sharing that data with their for profit partner.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Singapore-Indonesia QR payment link to be ready by end-2023: Bank Indonesia

• The authorities from both sides are working towards a year-end launch in Singapore and Indonesia.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Does Sam Altman Know What He’s Creating?

• In 2020, OpenAI provided funding to UBI Charitable, a nonprofit that supports cash-payment pilot programs, untethered to employment, in cities across America—the largest universal-basic-income experiment in the world, Altman told me. In 2021, he unveiled Worldcoin, a for-profit project that aims to securely distribute payments—like Venmo or PayPal, but with an eye toward the technological future—first through creating a global ID by scanning everyone’s iris with a five-pound silver sphere called the Orb. It seemed to me like a bet that we’re heading toward a world where AI has made it all but impossible to verify people’s identity and much of the population requires regular UBI payments to survive. Altman more or less granted that to be true, but said that Worldcoin is not just for UBI.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Sam Altman’s biometrics-based cryptocurrency Worldcoin is now live

• Worldcoin is unique among cryptocurrencies for using a proof of personhood (also known as PoP) credential issued by a custom biometric imaging device called the Orb. The device features a wide angle camera and a telephoto camera that capture a high resolution image of the human iris, and process it into a unique digital identifier.

• The cryptocurrency has been under testing in countries such as Chile, Norway, Indonesia, Kenya, Sudan, and Ghana for the past three years. By the end of the year, Worldcoin expects to make 1,500 orbs available in 35 cities across 20 countries to continue onboarding new users for free. Worldcoin has recorded over 2 million registrations since it started doing beta tests, with 40,000 individuals signing up for a verified World ID every week.

=> ↺ Zimbabwe ☛ Instagram and Messenger’s new parental controls allow parents to see how their kids use the apps

• We have talked about this a lot. The smartphone presents a very useful tool for the child still in school but at the same time a potent time-wasting tool. You know that kids need smartphones and you know that they have to be on social media. You can fight this but it’s a losing battle.

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s Creepy Vision for Iris-Scanning ‘Global Digital Currency’, Begins Rollout

• On Monday, Worldcoin announced it has officially begun rolling out its “World ID” decentralized identity protocol and its “WLD” cryptocurrency tokens. In the 35 cities where Worldcoin is available, users can submit their iris scan to a local “orb” device and receive a share of WLD “simply for being human.” The company has reportedly already verified two million volunteers’ World ID’s at orbs across 30 different countries since the company was founded in 2019, though many in developing countries have complained they never actually received any currency in exchange for forking over their eyeprints.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Brazil president signs order tightening civilian access to firearms

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced that he signed an executive order on Friday tightening gun laws, stating that only the police and army should be well-armed. The aim of the executive order is to slow Brazil’s rise in civilian gun ownership, reversing the policies of his right-wing predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ EC criticises Lithuania for failing to transpose laws on child suspects

• The European Commission has criticised Lithuania, Estonia, and Slovenia for failing to properly transpose directives relating to the rights of child suspects into national law.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ The Scientists Who Understood Their Obligation to Humanity

• Nuclear experts demanded limits on the atomic bomb. AI developers should follow that example.

=> ↺ Spiegel ☛ A Warlord and His Smugglers: Khalifa Haftar and His Role in The Deadly Shipwreck Off Greece

• Who sent the overcrowded refugee boat to its tragic end in the Mediterranean in early June? Greek authorities have arrested nine Egyptians, but the real culprits appear to be men with apparent links to Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan warlord the EU has been courting for months.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Is Hollywood Still Afraid of the Truth About the Atomic Bomb?: Greg Mitchell on “Oppenheimer”

• The movie Oppenheimer about J. Robert Oppenheimer — the “father of the atomic bomb” — focuses on Oppenheimer’s conflicted feelings about the weapons of mass destruction he helped unleash on the world, and how officials ignored those concerns after World War II as the Cold War started an arms race. Journalist Greg Mitchell says that while the film is well made and worth seeing, “the omissions are quite serious.” He says there is little mention of the dangers of radiation and no focus on the impact of the bomb on its victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film also does not question the necessity of using the bomb in the first place, upholding the “official narrative … that has held sway since 1945,” says Mitchell. Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and the author of numerous books, including The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He was editor of Nuclear Times magazine from 1982 to 1986 and has written about this new film for Mother Jones and on his Substack, and in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined “’Oppenheimer’ is here. Is Hollywood still afraid of the truth about the atomic bomb?”

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ House and Senate Set Up for Fight Over How Much Military Aid to Give Taiwan

• Senate appropriators granted $113 million in Foreign Military Financing for Taiwan while House appropriators granted $500 million.

=> ↺ NDTV ☛ TikTok Offers Text-Based Posts To Challenge Twitter, Instagram

• But unlike Facebook’s parent company, it has chosen to integrate its new text-only feature into its app rather than launch a separate product, as Meta did with Threads.

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ Somalia: Al-Shabab Islamist kills dozens in attack on army

• A suicide bomber has killed between 20 and 30 soldiers and injured nearly 60 more in an attack on a military academy in Mogadishu. Al-Qaeda-affiliate al-Shabab has been trying to topple Somalia’s government since 2007.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Increasingly unable to defend their skies’ The latest drone attack on Moscow came within blocks of key military facilities. Here’s what we know. — Meduza

• Early in the morning of July 24, Moscow was hit by the latest in a series of drone attacks. According to the city’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, “drone strikes” hit two non-residential buildings at about 4:00 a.m.

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ China’s cyber interference and transnational crime groups in Southeast Asia

• The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of engagement with criminal organisations and proxies to achieve its strategic objectives.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ China fumes over Taiwan presidential hopeful

• Vice President Lai Ching-te is polling higher than his rivals ahead of elections but he’s reviled by China.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ South Korean authorities probing parcel containing ‘unknown gas’ sent from Taiwan

• The Taipei Mission in South Korea said it found such parcels originated from China.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ What We Can Still Learn From J. Robert Oppenheimer

• “We believe,” he wrote in 1945, “that the safety of this nation—as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power—cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess.”

War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ 10-year-old boy killed in Russian attack on Kostiantynivka in Donetsk region, seven others injured — Meduza

• Russian forces attacked the city of Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region with cluster munitions fired from Smerch multiple rocket launcher systems, reports Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration.

Environment

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Heat Divide Leaves Low-Income Workers Among the Most Vulnerable

• Europe’s latest heat wave has highlighted the inequities between those who can afford to shelter from the heat and those who can’t.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ NZ ‘first’ to ban thin plastic bags from supermarkets

• New Zealand will become the first country to ban the thin plastic bags that supermarket customers use to collect their fruit and vegetables.

• The ban comes into effect on Saturday and will extend to straws and silverware as the government expands a campaign against single-use plastics it started in 2019 when it banned the thicker plastic shopping bags customers used to carry grocery items. 

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ The Climate Crisis Is Most Detrimental to the Black Community

• As the only key to being insulated from the worst aspects of climate change in its current form is through financial stability, the economic fragility that has been a hallmark of this community due to systemic racism makes it most susceptible to feeling the effects of climate change more than any other group.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ Compostable Plastic Is Garbage

• Sure, these products could be better than regular old plastic. Right now, they’re not.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Europe Heat Wave: What to Know About Temperatures in Italy, Greece and Spain

• Meteorologists said that temperatures in the southern part of the continent had matched or broken records in some places this week, while others are experiencing storms. Here’s what to know.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania sends firefighters to Greece

• Lithuania will send a team of 25 firefighters to Greece to help combat forest fires, the government decided on Wednesday.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Is it Safe to Travel During Europe’s Heat Wave? Here’s What to Know

• The top tourist destinations of Italy, Spain and Greece are sweltering this summer. Travelers can take precautionary measures to protect themselves.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ New Jersey Sues Over Congestion Pricing in N.Y.C.

• In its complaint, the state said it was challenging the Federal Highway Administration’s “decision to rubber-stamp” its approval of the plan.

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ College of Engineering receives $7.5M to advance nuclear energy

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires extensive data about how new reactors will operate over time — up to 20 years. Companies must show that reactor parts can survive radiation and other stresses. Test reactors are slow and expensive, and these days are not very available.

• As an alternative, the U-M team will shoot atomic nuclei at the material — a technique known as ion irradiation — to create a predictive tool that advanced reactor companies can use to show how well their core materials can withstand decades’ worth of radiation damage.

=> ↺ Breach Media ☛ Canada’s trains are key to a sustainable future

• But Canada’s vast passenger rail network once held the possibility of a bright future: affordable, environmentally friendly, mass public transit.

• When did we stop dreaming about a future of train travel? And how do we get it back?

• “The oldest route, the newest train, the Canadian stainless steel streamliner. The shining symbol of a new era of travel comfort and pleasure within the borders of Canada. Step aboard for a preview visit.”

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Murray-Darling Basin plan cannot be delivered on time

• A 12-year plan to restore Australia’s largest and most complex river system to a sustainable level cannot be delivered on time.

• An independent assessment of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has shown there is no pathway to deliver it by June 2024.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Ukraine says unit 4 at Zaporizhzhia NPP put into ‘hot shutdown’ state, claims it could lead to accident — Meduza

• Ukrainian state-run company Energoatom says that power unit No. 4 of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), which is controlled by Russian troops, has been put into a “hot shutdown” state as of July 24.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Call for fed target to join race to build offshore wind

• Entering the global race for offshore wind requires the federal government to set targets for energy generation or developers will not bother with Australia.

• The warning was issued by Flotation Energy, developer of the 1.5 gigawatt Seadragon project, at an industry conference in Melbourne on Tuesday.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ End of Nigerian Fuel Subsidy Fuels Crippling Inflation

• In his first two months in office, President Bola Tinubu has ripped the Band-Aid off Nigeria’s ailing economy. Time will tell if it can heal, but for now, Nigerians are feeling the pain.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Congress is investigating Ford’s new EV battery deal with China

• Two separate congressional committees announced investigations into Ford’s new EV partnership with Chinese battery company CATL on Friday (July 21), airing concerns that a new manufacturing plant in Michigan could avoid restrictions on Chinese-made EV components.

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ The Wrong-Apartment Problem

• Why a good economy feels so bad

=> ↺ Four arrests in farmers’ protest against electricity cut-outs in Urfa

• While four farmers were arrested following the protest against the electricity distribution company DEDAŞ in Viranşehir, Urfa, five were released on condition of judicial control.

=> ↺ H2 View ☛ Everfuel offers update on hydrogen trailer fleet

• Denmark’s Everfuel has said it will redeploy two hydrogen trailers while its remaining fleet undergo repairs and inspection.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ The Revelator ☛ Small But Mighty: Why Antarctic Krill Are Worth Fighting For

Overpopulation

=> ↺ New Statesman ☛ “We don’t want to run out of water”: tackling the UK’s drought problem

• The UK’s water infrastructure was not designed to interconnect regionally or nationally, unlike electricity or gas. The lack of a national water grid means that highly populated areas, such as cities, are more prone to drought as demand tends to exceed supply. London and the south-east are also the driest parts of the country.

=> ↺ Lusaka ZM ☛ Eastern Water Losing Half Of Its Water

• Eastern Water and Sanitation Company is grappling with a major challenge as it loses nearly half of the water it generates before reaching its intended customers. The alarming water loss has been attributed to the state of dilapidated infrastructure, as reported by the company’s Public Relations Officer, Moses Nsunge.

• In a recent interview with ZNBC News in Chipata, Mr. Nsunge shed light on the concerning situation. He revealed that the company is experiencing substantial water losses due to the deteriorating condition of its water infrastructure, leading to a direct impact on the hours of water supply to customers.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ How Trump could slow the U.S. EV transition

• A Trump-led Treasury Department could take a more restrictive view of how many EV models qualify for consumer purchase subsidies up to $7,500.

Finance

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ How Small Wealthy Suburbs Contribute to Regional Housing Problems

• By Paul G. Lewis, Arizona State University and Nicholas J. Marantz, University of California, Irvine / The Conversation The odd headlines about little towns in the San Francisco Bay Area just keep coming. First Woodside, a tiny suburb where several Silicon Valley CEOs have lived, tried to declare itself a mountain lion habitat to evade a new […]

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ A year later, Sri Lanka’s tentative economic recovery eludes the poor

• Food, healthcare and house rental costs are high and still increasing.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Can Biden Still Forgive Student Debt?

• Biden wants to use the Higher Education Act of 1965 to forgive student loans. But that plan has major issues.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Why Title Lenders Are Excluded From Chapter 13 Proceedings in Georgia

• Christina Cooper remembers it was a muggy summer night when she came to terms with a painful reality.

• Bill collectors were after her for medical bills, and she owed several thousand dollars on her furniture. Weighing most heavily, though, was the $2,700 debt to Savannah, Georgia-based TitleMax, the nation’s largest title lender, which lends money at triple-digit annual interest rates in exchange for a customer’s car title. In Georgia, these “title pawns,” as they are known, are allowed to carry much higher interest rates than traditional loans, and defaulting on them means the company can repossess the car, a vital lifeline for rural families like Cooper’s.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ How We Measured the Title Lending Industry in Georgia

• When The Current and ProPublica began investigating the title lending industry in Georgia, we faced a daunting question: How do we measure an industry that nobody is tracking?

• Title lenders provide quick cash in exchange for a car title as collateral. Many consumer advocates see the practice as predatory — title pawns, as they are known in Georgia, typically carry high interest rates, and borrowers can lose their car if they default. More than 30 states ban high-interest title lending entirely, but the industry is widespread in Georgia.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Inquiry calls for shake-up of insolvency laws

• Australia’s corporate insolvency system is too complex, hard to access and unnecessarily costly and needs a major overhaul.

• That is the conclusion of a long-running inquiry into the system by the federal parliament’s corporations and financial services committee released on Wednesday.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Hospices in AZ, CA, NV, TX to Receive Extra Scrutiny Over Fraud Concerns

• Last week, regulators rolled out enhanced oversight for new hospices in Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which pays for most of American hospice care, announced that this change was spurred by “numerous reports of hospice fraud, waste, and abuse” and “serious concerns about market oversaturation.”

• In November, ProPublica and The New Yorker highlighted that the four states were overrun with for-profit hospices, many of them sharing the same addresses and owners. Some of these hospices obtained licenses only to sell them to other entrepreneurs. Others appeared to be billing Medicare for “phantom” — that is, nonexistent — patients. Some did both. The government’s own data revealed a pattern of rapid hospice growth in the four states, far outstripping the demand for services.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ While the Planet Burns: Billionaires Are Busy Hunkering Down for the Apocalypse

• Dr. Strangelove’s big mistake was going into government work when he could have made much more money in the private sector doing the same job of making the apocalypse palatable. Strangelove—the eponymous antihero of Stanley Kubrick’s lacerating and immortal 1964 film—is a satirical embodiment of the mad logic of nuclear brinkmanship codified under the rules of mutual assured destruction. A former Nazi who can’t quite control his atavistic urge to shoot up a “Sieg Heil!” salute to the American president he sees as his new Führer, Strangelove (played as a nervously giggling psycho by Peter Sellers) develops a devilishly twisted solution as humanity faces extinction. This crisis is a result of a preemptive attack on Russia launched by the rogue Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden), which triggers a Soviet doomsday device.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Union wants super profits tax to pay for social housing

• A construction union has launched a national campaign for a “super profits” tax on Australia’s richest companies to build more affordable homes.

• CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith said the economy-wide tax could raise $290 billion over the next decade, comfortably funding the investment required to close the social and affordable housing gap.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Why Capitalism Is Leaving the US in Search of Profit

• By Richard Wolff / CounterPunch Early U.S. capitalism was centered in New England. After some time, the pursuit of profit led many capitalists to leave that area and move production to New York and the mid-Atlantic states. Much of New England was left with abandoned factory buildings and depressed towns evident to this day. Eventually […]

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Relief for renters as market starts to lose steam

• Renters have regained some optimism as the ultra-competitive market starts to cool.

• Weekly confidence levels tracked by ANZ and Roy Morgan have surged 7.9 points for those renting, helping to push the overall consumer index up 2.6 points.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Tech Firms Once Powered New York’s Economy. Now They’re Scaling Back.

• For much of the last two decades, including during the pandemic, technology companies were a bright spot in New York’s economy, adding thousands of high-paying jobs and expanding into millions of square feet of office space.

• Their growth buoyed tax revenue, set up New York as a credible rival to the San Francisco Bay Area — and provided jobs that helped the city absorb layoffs in other sectors during the pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis.

• Now, the technology industry is pulling back hard, clouding the city’s economic future.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong pro-Beijing lawmaker says nat. security police questioned her for nearly 3 hours over wanted relative in US

• Pro-Beijing lawmaker Eunice Yung, the daughter-in-law of the wanted overseas activist Elmer Yuen, has had her home searched and was later questioned by national security police for nearly three hours on Monday, she has told the press at the Legislative Council. /blockquote>

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Finnish Right-Wing Party Leader Apologizes After Racist Posts Surface

• Riikka Purra, who leads the nationalist Finns party, was the second member of her faction to come under fire for offensive comments since the government was formed a month ago.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Son and daughter of wanted self-exiled activist Elmer Yuen questioned by Hong Kong police – reports

• Hong Kong national security police have questioned Derek and Mimi Yuen – the son and eldest daughter of wanted self-exiled activist Elmer Yuen – according to local media citing sources on Monday.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Threads’ daily active user base has reportedly declined by 70%

• The number of daily active users on Meta Platforms Inc.’s Threads app has reportedly dropped by 70% in just 10 days. The Wall Street Journal reported the decline today, citing data from market intelligence company Sensor Tower Inc. The company estimates that Threads had 13 million active daily users this past Monday.

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Mastodon Has a Child Abuse Material Problem, Like Every Other Major Web Platform

• A new report suggests that the lax content moderation policies of Mastodon and other decentralized social media platforms have led to a proliferation of child sexual abuse material. Stanford’s Internet Observatory published new research Monday that shows that such decentralized sites have serious shortcomings when it comes to “child safety infrastructure.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t make them all that different from a majority of platforms on the normal [Internet].

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Elon Musk’s ‘War’ On Possibly Imaginary Scrapers Now A Lawsuit, Which Might Actually Work

• Elon Musk seems infatuated with bots and scrapers as the root of all his problems at Twitter. Given his propensity to fire engineers who tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, it’s not difficult to believe that engineers afraid to tell Musk the truth are conveniently blaming “scraping” on the variety of problems that Twitter has had since Musk’s YOLO leadership style at Twitter has knocked out some fundamental tools that kept the site reliable in the before times.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Stanford researchers sound alarm on Mastodon’s significant child sexual abuse material problem

• This is not a problem only found on decentralized platforms, of course, but the researchers said having fewer tools to moderate than centralized platforms has created a cesspit of pedophilia activity that is particularly bad in Japan, where CSAM content is sold in both the Japanese and English language. Still, they said that all over Mastodon, the proliferation of CSAM is right now “disturbingly prevalent.”

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ Who will govern artificial intelligence?

• Instead, the new Pugwash movement would focus largely on connecting relevant actors, aligning on necessary measures and ensuring that they are implemented broadly. Institutions will be vital to this effort. But what kind of institutions are needed and can realistically be established or empowered to meet the AI challenge quickly?

=> ↺ arXiv ☛ International Institutions for Advanced AI

• International institutions may have an important role to play in ensuring advanced AI systems benefit humanity. International collaborations can unlock AI’s ability to further sustainable development, and coordination of regulatory efforts can reduce obstacles to innovation and the spread of benefits. Conversely, the potential dangerous capabilities of powerful and general-purpose AI systems create global externalities in their development and deployment, and international efforts to further responsible AI practices could help manage the risks they pose. This paper identifies a set of governance functions that could be performed at an international level to address these challenges, ranging from supporting access to frontier AI systems to setting international safety standards. It groups these functions into four institutional models that exhibit internal synergies and have precedents in existing organizations: 1) a Commission on Frontier AI that facilitates expert consensus on opportunities and risks from advanced AI, 2) an Advanced AI Governance Organization that sets international standards to manage global threats from advanced models, supports their implementation, and possibly monitors compliance with a future governance regime, 3) a Frontier AI Collaborative that promotes access to cutting-edge AI, and 4) an AI Safety Project that brings together leading researchers and engineers to further AI safety research. We explore the utility of these models and identify open questions about their viability.

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ Denmark: Quran burned at Iraqi embassy in Copenhagen

• Nearly a thousand protesters gathered in Baghdad and attempted to march to the Danish embassy in the heavily fortified Green Zone, but were blocked by security forces. Denmark’s diplomatic staff are said to have left the embassy on Saturday.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Why the US “Rules-Based Order” Needs Rethinking

• Over the past decade, the geopolitical landscape shifted beneath the feet of the United States. The end of the Cold War, the unipolar moment in which the US was the unquestioned hegemon of the world, is over. Thirty years later, that moment is a distant memory, as the dollar steadily declines as a share of global currency reserves, traditional US allies forge trade agreements with US adversaries, and a rising Global South seeks new rules for trade, development, and security.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Clarence Thomas Justice?

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ ‘Democratic miracle’ as enrolments reach record highs

• A record number of Australians are enrolled to vote ahead of the upcoming referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament.

• The estimated national enrolment rate is 97.5 per cent, up from 97.1 per cent at the end of 2022, the Australian Electoral Commission says.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Pence Campaign Struggles

• Republican voters are snubbing Mike Pence, Though he’s on the right, tried and true. It’s really unusual to punish someone For not taking part in a coup.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Support for Japanese Cabinet plummets to 28% in just two months

• Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is considering a Cabinet reshuffle in September to halt the decline, according to some reports.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Mandatory Media Literacy Education Could Be Coming to California Schools Soon

• But Will It Lead to Media Literacy Education or Corporate Indoctrination?

=> ↺ AntiWar ☛ The Military Dangers of AI Are Not Hallucinations

• Originally posted at TomDispatch. I give myself credit for being significantly ahead of my time. I first came across artificial intelligence (AI) in 1968 when I was just 24 years old and, from the beginning, I sensed its deep dangers.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russian authorities reportedly order state-run TV stations not to cover Moscow drone attacks — Meduza

• The Russian authorities prohibited employees of multiple TV stations from covering the drone attacks that hit Moscow on Monday morning, the independent news site The Insider has reported, citing knowledgeable sources.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Putin’s ‘fear dictatorship’ Political scientist Daniel Treisman on the state of Russia’s autocracy — Meduza

• In April 2022, economist Sergei Guriev and political scientist Daniel Treisman published a book titled Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century focused on modern autocracies and what they call “spin dictatorships,” which base their authority on manipulation and propaganda. The book was submitted for publication prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While Guriev and Treisman long categorized Vladimir Putin as a “spin dictator,” they warn in this book that the Russian president has grown increasingly reliant on force, morphing into a “fear dictator.” Meduza special correspondent Margarita Liutova spoke to Professor Treisman to learn more about how Putin’s regime has changed in recent years — and what the future might have in store for Russia.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Iranian Rapper Yasin Reportedly Moved To Psychiatric Center

• A rapper from Kermanshah Province — a northwestern region with a significant Kurdish population and the focus of a government crackdown against dissent — recently released an audio message from prison in which he maintained his innocence and expressed frustration at his detention. He also claimed that the judge had denied him access to his chosen lawyer.

=> ↺ ICC ☛ Iran’s Morality Police Resurface, Reigniting Protests

• An Iranian police spokesman confirmed this statement, saying the morality police must deal with “those who, unfortunately, ignore the consequences of not wearing the proper hijab and insist on disobeying the norms. If they disobey the orders of the police force, legal action will be taken, and they will be referred to the judicial system.” Women viewed in breach of the hijab requirements can be arrested and sent to “reeducation facilities.”

• Businesses and trade unions are also at risk since, legally, they cannot hire or serve anyone not following Iran’s compulsory veiling laws. If they are non-compliant, they face high fines.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ A major Iranian e-commerce company was shut down by the morality police

• The Iranian government shut down the Tehran office of Digikala, one of Iran’s leading e-commerce companies, after it allegedly published pictures online showing female employees without headscarves.

=> ↺ Associated Press ☛ Iran targets e-commerce giant over photos of female employees without headscarves in new crackdown

• The move appears to be part of a new campaign launched last week to impose the Islamic dress code nearly a year after the morality police largely melted away in the face of widespread protests.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Travis Scott Faces Legal Action Over Egyptian Show as Live Nation Says Nothing Is Canceled

• Travis Scott faces legal action over his planned performance at the Pyramids of Giza as the Egyptian Musicians Syndicate attempts to cancel the event.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Kazakh Journalist Freed After 20 Days In Jail On Libel Charge

• Well-known Kazakh journalist Amangeldy Batyrbekov was released from jail late on July 23 after serving a 20-day term he was handed after a court in the southern town of Saryaghash found him guilty of publishing false information about lawmaker Bolatbek Nazhmetdinuly.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 3 months’ jail for first person tried under national anthem law over use of protest song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’

• A 27-year-old man who replaced China’s national anthem with protest song Glory to Hong Kong in an online video has been sentenced to three months in prison after being convicted of insulting the national anthem.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Rahul Gandhi appeals to India’s top court over defamation conviction

• Mr Modi’s government has been widely accused of using India’s defamation law to silence critics.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Patrick Zaki, Student and Rights Advocate, Is Jailed by Egypt

• The case of Patrick Zaki, who had been studying in Italy and was convicted of spreading “fake news,” prompted an outpouring of support in two countries.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Nigeria stoning over blasphemy accusations prompts religious freedom concerns

• A man was stoned to death Monday in northwest Nigeria after being accused of blasphemy, raising concerns about escalating threats to religious freedom in the region.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Egypt authorities free human rights researcher and lawyer after presidential pardons

• Egyptian authorities released human rights researcher Patrick George Zaki and human rights lawyer Mohamed el-Baqeron Thursday, one day after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi granted pardons to both men. These pardons came after Zaki’s conviction on charges of disseminating false information, which resulted in a three-year prison sentence.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Attitude overhaul the key to improving women’s safety

• It can be as simple as asking a question but for many Australians sexual consent is confusing, misunderstood or ignored. 

• Advocates argue it’s not just community attitudes that need to change to improve outcomes for sexual assault survivors but powerful players in the criminal justice system too, such as police officers, judges and defence lawyers.

=> ↺ Internet Society ☛ The Real Impact of Internet Shutdowns

• The  NetLoss calculator is a new tool that estimates the economic cost of Internet shutdowns.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Iranian Institute Shut For Including Protests, Critical Poems In Exam

• The Gaj educational institute, a provider of supplemental educational materials and university entrance exam books in Iran, has been shut down after reports that one of its exams being used by schools included mentions of protests that have rocked the country and poems critical of the regime.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan’s #MeToo scandals push Tsai to revamp law before election

• Wave of high-profile #MeToo cases have ensnared at least 10 people linked to DPP in recent months.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Gov’t-funded broadcaster axes Hong Kong LGBT+ radio show after 17 years

• Government-funded broadcaster RTHK will suspend a LGBTQ-related radio programme next month after 17 years, the host of the programme has said on its official Facebook page.  We Are Family was launched in 2006 to promote diversity and integration, according to the broadcaster’s website and was the first show of its kind.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ ‘You can’t say whatever you want – there’s no freedom’

• International students from Taiwan give the low-down on studying in Hong Kong under the national security law

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ UK police shouldn’t have stopped French publisher under anti-terror laws, an independent review says

• A report critical of British police says officers should not have used counter-terrorism laws to detain a French publisher in London earlier this year. Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said Friday that officers should not have have used anti-terror powers to determine if the man had been involved in violent demonstrations in France. Ernest Moret was going to the London Book Fair on April 17 when he was stopped by border officers at St. Pancras Station, questioned for nearly five hours and then arrested and held overnight for refusing to provide his phone passcode.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Navalny sent to isolation (again) ahead of hearing in new ‘extremism’ case — Meduza

• Imprisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny has been sent to an isolation cell for the 17th time, reports his lawyer Vadim Kobzev.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ KL music festival cancelled after The 1975 singer slams Malaysia govt over anti-LGBTQ laws

• The frontman of the British band also kissed his male bandmate onstage.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Malaysia Halts Festival After Kiss Between The 1975 Members

• The episode comes as rights groups have warned of growing intolerance against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the country, where homosexuality is a crime.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Malaysian Government Cancels Good Vibes Festival After Matty Healy On-Stage Protest

• Healy publicly criticized the Malaysian government while on stage, using profanity in his speech against the government’s stance on homosexuality. Healy then kissed bass player Ross MacDonald on stage—with video of the incident uploaded to social media. As soon as those videos went viral, a backlash was sparked online.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Federal court rejects Trump presidential immunity defense in defamation lawsuit

• A US federal court in New York rejected on Thursday former President Donald Trump’s late claim of absolute presidential immunity to fend off a defamation lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Prison Ministry Group Sues Indiana Jail for Banning Amazon Books

• The lawsuit claims the ban has no “legitimate penological justification”

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Biden Says the U.S. Is Open to a Prisoner Swap to Free Evan Gershkovich

• The president confirmed that a ‘process is underway’ during a news conference in Finland.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Chris Hedges: Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats

• The failure by journalists to mount a campaign to free Julian Assange, or expose the vicious smear campaign against him, is one more catastrophic and self-defeating blunder by the news media.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ CIA-Linked Security Company Targeted Former Ecuador President Who Granted Assange Asylum

• Spanish newspaper El País reported that UC Global director David Morales instructed his employees to collect information from Correa’s 2018 meetings with Latin American leaders that included the “former presidents of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay—Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff, and José Mujica.”

• Morales’ objective was to obtain information about Correa that he could share with then-President Lenín Moreno, who succeeded Correa and turned against the platform that had convinced Correa to support him.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Meduza is hiring a news editor for its English-language edition — Meduza

• Meduza seeks a news editor to join the publication’s English-language edition. The news editor will be required to translate feature-length reporting and breaking news coverage to help bring Meduza’s journalism to a global audience. Candidates must have native-level fluency in English and extremely strong Russian-language skills.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Thanks a Million… Times 10

• This independent news site’s articles and art have been viewed more than 10 million times since its inception.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Federal Court Says Anyone Can Be A Journalist While Upholding The Right To Record Police Officers

• Police officers are quick to argue that anything people do in public doesn’t have an expectation of privacy. They have also been quick to argue (until precedent made it mostly futile) that anything they do in public shouldn’t be documented, recorded, and disseminated.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Press Gazette ☛ NI police viewed journalist’s call records to ‘find whistleblower’

• Police in Northern Ireland monitored the phone activity of a journalist who was one of two wrongfully arrested over material that appeared in a documentary about a Troubles massacre, it has been revealed.

• Belfast-based Barry McCaffrey said it was “shocking” to discover the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) had been used by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to access his phone records and data in 2013.

=> ↺ Haaretz ☛ Why Doesn’t the West Care About the Middle East’s Christians?

• In his new book “The Last Supper: The Plight of Christians in Arab Lands,” Danish journalist Klaus Wivel delves into these thorny issues. Wivel, who has decades of experience covering the region for the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen, has written a deeply reported, nuanced and compelling account of Christians in the West Bank and Gaza, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq.

• “The Last Supper” refers to Christianity’s long and ancient history in the Middle East, but focuses more on the tumultuous decades since the Second World War and, in particular, Christians’ lives and struggles today.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Roles That You, a Digitally Scanned Background Actor, Will Soon Be Performing

• Hey, that’s your blurry face right behind digitally de-aged Tom Hanks in the opening credits of the newest chatbot-written Nora Ephron movie! And you never even had to show up to set wearing a polyester-blend suit on a ninety-degree summer day, and you never will again. Save that business attire for non-acting-related job interviews (which you’ll have to take a lot more of now).

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Labour mobility: Commission decides to refer ITALY to the Court of Justice of the European Union for maintaining discrimination of foreign lecturers

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 14 Jul 2023 Today, the European Commission decided to refer Italy to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to end discrimination of foreign lecturers.

=> ↺ NYPost ☛ Fran Drescher defends smiling ‘selfie’ with Kim Kardashian ahead of strike announcement: ‘It was absolute work’

• Fran Drescher, head of the SAG-AFTRA union, defended herself for attending a publicity event in Italy over the weekend while contract negotiations crumble.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Unionized workers are stepping in to save America’s oldest craft brewery

• In 1993, there were just 446 breweries in the US. Three decades later, there are 9,709. Driving that astronomical growth was the proliferation of microbreweries—small outfits that make and sell craft beers—whose ranks swelled more than tenfold in the same period.

• US craft beer sales hit $26.8 billion in 2021, an 8% annual increase, with the sector making up about 27% of the $100 billion domestic beer market.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Kansas Cops Have ‘Waged War on Motorists’ by Subjecting Them to Pretextual Traffic Stops, a Federal Judge Says

• A cop pulls you over for a minor traffic violation. After giving you a warning or a ticket, he says, “Drive safe!” and starts walking away. But he immediately turns around and walks toward your car again, saying, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

• That maneuver, known as the “Kansas Two-Step,” is aimed at evading the Fourth Amendment’s constraints on searches and seizures. Police are not supposed to continue detaining you after the ostensible purpose of the stop has been accomplished unless they reasonably suspect you are involved in criminal activity. The two-step is designed to extend the encounter by making it notionally voluntary, giving the officer a chance to elicit incriminating information, ask for permission to search your car, and/or walk a drug-sniffing dog around the vehicle.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ SAK: Finnish government plans violate international labour laws

• Such a weakening of employees’ protection against dismissal goes against international agreements, according to Anu-Tuija Lehto, Legal Adviser to the Central Association of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK).

• Under current Finnish law, an employer cannot terminate an employment contract without a “valid and compelling reason”.

=> ↺ El País ☛ Ohio investigates why a police dog was deployed on a surrendering truck driver

• Several Ohio agencies are investigating why an officer allowed his police dog to attack a truck driver who was surrendering with his hands raised, despite State Highway Patrol troopers urging the officer to hold the dog back.

=> ↺ Common Dreams ☛ The Feminist Agenda Will Kill Us All: Barbie Is Woke and Right-Wing Heads Are Exploding

• In case you’ve been hiding in your cave, Barbie the (very pink) movie has opened – “She can do anything, he’s just Ken” – to a flood of press, praise, profits and horror on the part of grown-ass men bleating about a “man-hating… alienating, dangerous and perverse film” and “woke propaganda fest” that by playfully positing the existence of a patriarchy serves as an insidious “Trojan horse” that will doom us all, also turn us all gay. Well, duh. Ken: “Sublime!”

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Author’s shock, tears, disbelief at Miles Franklin win

• When Shankari Chandran got the call to say she had won the Miles Franklin, judge Richard Neville had to repeat the message four times.

• “My brain just couldn’t quite understand what he was saying to me,” the author told AAP.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ What the War on Terror Has to Do With the Rise in Mass Migration

• Seeking news coverage about the Adriana, the boat crowded with some 700 people migrating to Europe to seek a better life that sank in mid-June off the coast of Greece, I googled “migrant ship” and got 483,000 search results in one second. Most of the people aboard the Adriana had drowned in the Mediterranean, among them about 100 children.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “Immensely Invisible”: Immigrant Women in ICE Jails Face Sexual Abuse Despite Reforms, Report Reveals

• A damning new investigation by journalists Maria Hinojosa and Zeba Warsi examines how immigration officials have failed to properly address complaints of sexual abuse from people held in detention centers. The report from Futuro Investigates and Latino USA details how women in jails run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have been sexually abused, often in a medical setting when they are at their most vulnerable. It comes more than a decade after Hinojosa’s report for PBS Frontline about sexual abuse in ICE detention. But allegations of abuse have continued. “If you complain, you are going to be threatened,” says Hinojosa, who notes there is still “constant coercion” in detention, despite earlier claims of reform.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ India PM Modi calls Manipur sexual assault ‘shameful’, after viral video of naked women paraded

• Videos on social media purport to show two women paraded naked and assaulted on a street.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Viral Video of Sexual Assault in India Renews Attention on Manipur

• The attack on two women in the state of Manipur led to the first public comments from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however indirect, about the monthslong violence in the state.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ India’s Manipur has spent months on the brink of war. Is there hope?

• A relief camp for displaced children in India’s violence-wracked Manipur state shows the challenges of keeping hope alive amid crisis.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Ralph Nader: The Cost of Re-Enforcing Political Monocultures

• In nature, monocultures are not so resilient to predators or other ravages that exploit their inherent vulnerabilities. Farmers have known this characteristic of monocultures forever.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Sexual consent advocates demand pornography regulations

• It can be as simple as asking a question, but for many Australians sexual consent is confusing, misunderstood or completely ignored. 

• A parliamentary committee is examining inconsistencies in consent laws across jurisdictions, the effectiveness of directions to juries about consent, impacts of existing laws on the survivor experience of the justice system, and adequacy of education programs.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ First languages court between a dock and a hard place

• Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and Western Australia are being denied access to justice due to a shortage of interpreters in the court system, an investigation has found.

• Aboriginal defendants are spending more time in detention than necessary and pleading guilty to charges they don’t understand, according to the investigation by ABC Radio National program The Law Report.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ California hotel employees started the largest ever hospitality strike in US history

• Thousands of hotel workers walked off their jobs in Southern California on Sunday (July 2), in a labor action the United Here Local 11 union has dubbed the biggest strike in the history of the US hospitality industry.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ What Does It Take to Win a Strike?

• Half a century ago, long before the Internet, I got a job in a huge semiconductor plant. In Silicon Valley’s factories, we tried to organize a union, arguing that this industry sat at the heart of the US economy. If the workers in it had a strong union, we believed, we could use our power to change the world. Perhaps the industry thought so too: From the start, its titans were committed to keeping the workers in their factories unorganized. When Robert Noyce, cofounder of Intel, famously declared, “Remaining non-union is an essential for survival for most of our companies,” we knew he was talking about us.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “We Demand Respect”: Actors Join Writers on Strike, Grinding Film & TV Production to a Halt

• Television and film actors are going on strike after a breakdown in negotiations between the SAG-AFTRA union and Hollywood studios. More than 160,000 members of the union are taking part in the first major actors’ strike since 1980. This also marks the first time since 1960 that actors and screenwriters have been on strike at the same time, with members of the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines since early May. Both unions say pay has not kept up in the streaming age, with even hit shows and movies no longer a guarantee of stable income. The major studios are also pushing for adoption of artificial intelligence tools that could include scanning the likeness of actors to be reused in perpetuity. “There seems to be a concerted effort by these companies to try to break the entertainment unions,” says Shaan Sharma, a Los Angeles Local board member of SAG-AFTRA and a member of the negotiating committee.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ India dispatch: Delhi High Court suffers a lawyers’ strike

• Indian law students are reporting for JURIST on law-related developments in and affecting India. This dispatch is from Nakul Rai Khurana, a law student at Jindal Global Law School.

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Businessman linked to contract saga ‘disappears’ abroad

• A businessman under scrutiny over several government contracts has left the country, prompting a “please explain” from the prime minister.

• John Margerison was ordered to produce evidence and appear before parliament to answer questions.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Connecticut State Troopers Apparently Tried To Bury Biased Stop Data By Falsifying 26,000 Traffic Tickets

• Biased policing is just the way things are done. Decades of targeting minorities for being minorities has resulted in tons of garbage data now being used to justify “smarter” policing guided by AI that has been fed nothing but garbage.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “Chaos & Violence”: NYC to Pay $13M to Those Attacked by Police in 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests

• In a landmark $13 million settlement, New York City has agreed to pay 1,300 people attacked by police while protesting the Minnesota police murder of George Floyd in 2020. Sow v. City of New York yielded the largest total payout to protesters in a class-action suit in U.S. history, totaling about $10,000 per person. The suit focused on how police violated protesters’ civil and constitutional rights by making mass arrests and using excessive force that included improper use of pepper spray and using a tactic called kettling to trap and arrest protesters before a curfew went into effect. The case used a video analysis tool developed by SITU Research that can quickly analyze massive amounts of police body-camera video, aerial footage and social media videos. “The settlement is historic and incredibly important,” says civil rights attorney and co-counsel for the plaintiffs Gideon Oliver. “It’s also in some ways only as important as what we make it mean.” We also speak with Dara Pluchino, a social worker and plaintiff in the case, who describes her experience being kettled. “Once the curfew hit, then that is when chaos occurred and violence occurred.”

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ The Intercept Reveals Border Patrol Is Caging Migrants Outdoors in Deadly Arizona Heat

• As a record-breaking heat wave continues in Arizona, reporters with The Intercept say they have observed U.S. Border Patrol holding about 50 migrants inside a chain-link pen in the Sonoran Desert, at the Ajo Border Patrol Station. This comes as the group Humane Borders reports the bodies of at least 13 people were found over the past month in the Sonoran Desert where many migrants cross. “You really can’t overstate how deadly this ecosystem is,” says reporter Ryan Devereaux, who describes the well-funded border agencies’ lack of support for border crossers. Roland Gutierrez, Democratic state senator running against Ted Cruz for Senate, says, “We need to revamp the whole system.”

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Chasing Clicks Through Ad Money, Media Does PR for Amazon While Ignoring Human Costs of ‘Prime Day Deals’

• This year, like every year, Amazon workers’ attempts to draw attention to their exploitative conditions were largely drowned out by hundreds of fawning PR press releases thinly disguised as articles about how “consumers” could “take advantage” of “amazing deals” offered by Amazon on “Prime Day.”

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ DOJ Threatens to Sue Texas Gov. Abbott for Installing Barrels Wrapped in Razor Wire in Rio Grande

• The U.S. Justice Department is threatening to sue the state of Texas after Republican Governor Greg Abbott installed barrels wrapped in razor wire in the Rio Grande in an attempt to block migrants from crossing the river. This comes just after a whistleblower state trooper at the Texas Department of Public Safety recently protested the state’s inhumane policies in a letter to superiors. “What’s happening at the border in Texas right now is criminal,” says Democratic Texas Senator Roland Gutierrez. “There’s state crimes, there’s federal crimes, and there’s international crimes.”

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.9

• Learn more about the latest happenings by reading the full newsletter here, or you can listen to the audio version below!

=> ↺ EFF ☛ The NDAA is No Place for Sweeping Internet Legislation Like the STOP CSAM Act

• As we’ve written before, the STOP CSAM Act would create new criminal and civil claims against online providers based on broad terms and low standards, and will undermine digital security for all internet users. It does three main things:  

• Taken together, these provisions greatly endanger encrypted communications and protections that ensure platforms can operate. It harms internet users who rely on intermediaries to speak online—that is, all of us.

• This bill introduces the same misleading “encryption exception” found in the EARN IT Act, which we’ve written about at length. The exception purports to protect online platforms from liability for offering encrypted services, but it specifically allows the use of encryption to be introduced as evidence of the facilitation of illegal material. 

=> ↺ Project Censored ☛ Police Accountability / Global Women for Peace United Against NATO Conference – The Project Censored Show

• Notes: Taya Graham and Stephen Janis are on the staff of the Real News Network, and the co-hosts of its Police Accountability Report. Ann Wright had a 29-year career in the US Army, retiring at the rank of colonel. She then worked in the US diplomatic corps, but resigned in protest of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

=> ↺ Columbus Ohio ☛ Circleville police dog mauled unarmed Black man as he surrendered to officers, video shows

• Rose, who has been released from jail, told the Dispatch that he couldn’t talk about why he didn’t initially stop. About the video, he said, “I’m just glad that it was recorded. What you saw is what, pretty much, happened.”

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Some gender-neutral public toilets separated again amid mixed reaction

• Shyness, modesty, messiness, and a sense of insecurity are some of the reasons why people find gender-neutral toilets uncomfortable.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Decriminalizing Being Human

• ACLU attorney Melissa Camacho explains the gradual improvements to Los Angeles county’s barbaric jails after 50 years of fighting for better conditions.

=> ↺ Alleged torture of refugees by soldiers on parliamentary agenda

• In a video circulated on social media, several people in military outfits are seen torturing two individuals who are believed to be refugees.

=> ↺ Spiegel ☛ “An Irreparably Damaged Life”: CIA Kidnapping Victim Khaled el-Masri 20 Years On

• Almost two decades ago, the CIA abducted and tortured Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen whom the intelligence service mistakenly believed to be a terrorist. He is still suffering from the consequences today. Many questions about his case remain unanswered, also for the German government.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ John Kiriakou: The Murder of ‘Whitey’ BulgerJohn Kiriakou:

• The Bureau of Prison’s treatment of the former Mob boss, who was 89 at the time of his death, was at least incompetent and perhaps criminal.

=> ↺ ACLU ☛ The Illinois Supreme Court Cash Bail Ruling, Explained

• Under a landmark court ruling issued this week, Illinois will become the first state in the nation to abolish cash bail. The state supreme court upheld the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act, which abolishes cash bail and specifies procedures judges must use to impose pretrial detention. Here’s what you need to know, and what happens next.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ New York City to Pay $13 Million to George Floyd Protesters

• The city hall will pay US$9,950 to each of the citizens who filed a class action lawsuit for violation of constitutional rights against the Police.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ New State Laws Make It Harder to Sue Trucking Companies After Crashes

• The trucking industry is engaged in a concerted lobbying effort that critics say will make it harder for victims of crashes to sue the companies involved and limit the compensation plaintiffs can win. In the past three years alone, the industry has helped prompt new laws in seven states including Texas and Florida, which rank among the highest in the nation for fatal truck crashes.

• The industry says those new laws will help curb frivolous lawsuits and excessive payouts, but safety advocates say they instead shield trucking companies from legitimate liability after crashes and disincentivize the companies from working to prevent crashes in the first place.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ California Governor: Hey, Let’s Try To Save A Few Bucks By Making Cops Less Accountable

• We, as a nation, spend hundreds of billions every year to ensure law enforcement agencies are staffed well enough to provide, at best, semi-competent service. We spend billions every year on lawsuit settlements generated by officers who can’t even manage to provide semi-competent service without violating constitutional rights.

=> ↺ Spiegel ☛ A New Right Test Laboratory: The Onerous Abortion Laws of Paraguay

• The tiny country of Paraguay has become a place where the New Right is making its dark, dystopian vision a reality. International groups are active in the country in an effort to ensure that women carry all their babies to term, no matter how they got pregnant.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Lawsuit filed against Harvard challenging legacy admissions

• Activist groups filed a complaint on Monday with the US Department of Education against Harvard University, challenging its legacy admissions policy. The complaint comes days after the US Supreme Court rejected the use of race in college admissions, known as affirmative action, upending years of precedent.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ EU Court Withdraws Parliamentary Immunity From Catalan Leaders

• Puigdemont, Comin, and Ponsati are claimed by the Spanish authorities due to their participation in holding the 2017 pro-independence referendum.

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ Regents to consider bylaws change expanding Faculty Senate

• Public comments are being sought regarding proposed revisions to the Board of Regents’ Bylaws that would expand the membership of the Faculty Senate and Senate Assembly.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Vilnius Pride organisers demand changes: we keep marching but laws stay the same

• Organisers of this year’s Vilnius Pride aim to win not just the hearts, but also legal changes.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Thousands Protest In North Macedonia Against Proposed Gender-Equality, Identity Laws

• Thousands of people gathered in protest in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, against draft laws on gender equality and identity in a demonstration supported by the Catholic Church, the Islamic religious community, and other religious communities in the small Balkan nation.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Church and state have long since fused together’ Why Russian religious leaders’ efforts to restrict abortion may soon succeed — Meduza

• Last week, at a plenary session of the Russian State Duma, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko laid out his extremely regressive vision of what a woman’s life trajectory should look like. In Murashko’s view, women who pursue education and careers before having children are shirking their “responsibility” to their country and its future demographic success. The statements came amid a push by the ministry to restrict Russians’ access to medication abortion; according to the independent outlet Verstka, however, the real instigator of the initiative is the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia’s religious authorities have long opposed abortion in all forms, but they’ve achieved a new level of political influence since the start of the full-scale war as Moscow has abandoned even the pretense of a separation between church and state. Meduza summarizes Verstka’s report.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Using the “right” social networks

• For all the frustration I have with social networks, I chat and post to them regularly. For an introvert, short snippets of text give me an avenue to stay connected with people I care about, at my own pace, and on my own terms.

• Much of my blog from fifteen years ago was spent lamenting the rise of Facebook, a social network I loathed for what it represented, and for the bellend who founded it. My perceptions have changed little about either one, though the latter’s bumbling waste of money on the ill-conceived metaverse has been entertaining.

• Abstaining from that platform resulted in two things: [...]

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Telecom Stocks Plummet After Report Shows Many Cables Lined With Lead

• While the telecom industry did manage to successfully defang U.S. consumer protection regulators for the better part of the last decade, they’re still facing some notable headwinds. Broadband growth has dramatically slowed, their cable TV customers are leaving in droves, and while they are getting a ton of new subsidies via the infrastructure bill, a lot of that is going to very popular new publicly-owned competitors.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ A Driver’s License for the Internet

• Age verification laws are changing websites for both children and adults.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ A Ton Of Folks Don’t Know What ‘Right To Repair’ Is, But Strongly Support It Once They Do

• In just the last five years, the “right to repair” movement has shifted from nerdy niche to the mainstream, thanks in part to significant support from the Biden FTC and efforts in states like Minnesota and New York to pass new right to repair laws, making it easier and less expensive for consumers and independent repair shops to gain affordable access to manuals, tools, and replacement parts.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Faces Litigation From Essence Festival Over ‘Intentional Exploitation of Black Culture’

• Spotify is facing a lawsuit from the Essence Festival of Culture, alleging an ‘intentional exploitation of Black culture.’ The lawsuit claims that their intellectual property was used without permission by Spotify to promote an event which Spotify hosted “as if they were part of” the festival.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Psychic Theater

• “All art is propaganda,” says Walton Goggins in I’m a Virgo, Boots Riley’s new Amazon Prime Video series. Goggins plays the show’s villain, a billionaire comic book mogul named Jay Whittle, aka The Hero, who uses his money and tech to fund a one-man war for law and order. He’s Batman if Batman published DC Comics and used his empire to popularize and vindicate his own vigilante efforts. For him, art is propaganda, because it changes how people perceive the world and therefore how they move within it.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Public Knowledge ☛ IP3 Awards 2023 [Ed: Public Knowledge repeats the words "Intellectual Property"]

• It is with great pleasure that we extend this invitation to the 2023 IP3 Awards, a momentous occasion where we come together to recognize and honor remarkable individuals who have made significant contributions in the fields of Intellectual Property, Information Policy, and Internet Protocol.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ FTC Puts Challenge To Microsoft, Activision Deal On Hold

• Well, well, this may be a story that is starting to come to a close. With the EU having already approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the two remaining hurdles Microsoft had to jump through were with the UK’s CMA agency and the FTC here in the States. After a recent loss in court blocking a TRO to stop the deal from proceeding while the inquiry continues, the FTC made a bunch of noise about appealing that ruling and continuing forward with its own challenge in court. In the less than two weeks that has followed, several important things happened impacting the likely outcome of the regulatory challenges.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Japanese Media Spots The Trick After Latest In-N-Out Trademark Tourism Popup

• Finally! We’ve been covering famed burger chain In-N-Out’s longstanding bullshit tactic for retaining trademark rights all over the world by standing up popup locations briefly once every couple of years just to satisfy the requirements to use the mark in commerce. What is far too common in the coverage about lawsuits or threats of suits that the chain has lobbed at international businesses it feels are infringing on those mostly unused trademarks is any recognition in the press that this is pure trademark tourism. In fact, in many cases, the press coverage will include speculation about whether all of this means that In-N-Out is finally going international.

=> ↺ Vox ☛ Welcome to X, the wannabe “super app” formerly known as Twitter

• On July 23, Musk announced that Twitter would lose its iconic blue bird logo — and, eventually, the name “Twitter” — as his company rebrands to “X” and attempts to fulfill Musk’s super app vision. By Monday morning, the bird was indeed gone. In its place was the new X logo, which appears to come from a user’s suggestion that Musk embedded and tweeted from his own account. The X isn’t a custom design; rather, the company that was once worth $44 billion — but may now be worth as little as $15 billion — went with a slightly altered Unicode character. (Twitter did not respond to comment on the origins of the logo).

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Twitter’s rebranding is a meaningless publicity stunt

• Musk wants Twitter to resemble WeChat, the Tencent-owned super-app that dominates China’s mobile [Internet]. But any effort to build a super-app in the US would run head-first into prohibitive policies and large fees from Apple and Google, the two effective controllers of the mobile app economy. Musk would likely have to pay each tech giant 30% of any in-app revenues.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Twitter Ditches The Bird, Rebrands Around ‘X’

• Elon Musk re-purchased the X.com domain from PayPal in 2017 for an undisclosed sum. It sat unused until recently, where it now re-directs to Twitter.com. Musk has hinted that eventually, the Twitter.com domain will cease to exist and X.com will takeover—erasing the bluebird branding and one of the biggest social media presences on the web for good.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Elon May Have a Huge Issue Because Microsoft Owns the “X” Trademark

• And now, to add another layer of confusion to the seemingly shortsighted move, it appears that fellow Silicon Valley behemoth Microsoft actually owns the trademark to the letter — meaning that Musk could well face a serious legal struggle in the months or years ahead.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Have We Considered That Maybe Elon Musk Just Hated Twitter & The People Who Use It All Along?

• I wasn’t going to write about Elon changing Twitter’s name and branding to X, because… who cares? I’m not sure what the point is. But, a lot of people have been asking me my thoughts, and the more I was trying to parse it all out, the more confused I became. It basically only makes sense if Elon is trying to erase everything about Twitter, including the embarrassment that it’s caused since he took it over.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Federal Court Orders Canadian ISPs to Block Pirated MLB Live Streams

• Copyright holders have obtained a new piracy-blocking order at Canada’s Federal Court. The ‘dynamic’ injunction requires Internet providers to block access to unauthorized IPTV streams during the current Major League Baseball (MLB) season. This blocking action is limited to games featuring the Toronto Blue Jays and several selected events.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Vandal Burns Major Public Artwork by One of Italy’s Top Living Artists

• A man was detained in connection with the destruction of a monumental version of ‘Venus of the Rags’ by Michelangelo Pistoletto. City officials pledged the installation will rise again.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Pirates Visited Animedao 17m Times Last Month; They Will Visit No More

• Traffic data indicates that pirate anime site Animedao received around 55 million visits during the last three months. Early July the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and the Motion Picture Association went to court in the United States, hoping to find out more about its operators. That and other factors have caused the site to throw in the towel.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Text-to-Speech Model Can Do Music, Background Noises, And Sound Effects

• Bark is a universal text-to-audio model that can not only create realistic speech, it can incorporate music, background noises, and sound effects. It can even include non-speech sounds like laughter, sighs, throat clearings, and similar elements. But despite the fact that it can deliver such complex results, it’s important to understand some of the peculiarities.

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