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● 08.14.23

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● Links 14/08/2023: GNU/Linux’s Firefox Problem and MX Linux Reviewed

Posted in News Roundup at 2:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Slashdot ☛ Should There Be an ‘Official’ Version of Linux? [Ed: There is already just one official version of Linux and it's at kernel.org]

Server

=> ↺ Kubernetes Blog ☛ Spotlight on SIG ContribEx

• Welcome to the world of Kubernetes and its vibrant contributor community! In this blog post, we’ll be shining a spotlight on the Special Interest Group for Contributor Experience (SIG ContribEx), an essential component of the Kubernetes project.

• SIG ContribEx in Kubernetes is responsible for developing and maintaining a healthy and productive community of contributors to the project. This involves identifying and addressing bottlenecks that may hinder the project’s growth and feature velocity, such as pull request latency and the number of open pull requests and issues.

• SIG ContribEx works to improve the overall contributor experience by creating and maintaining guidelines, tools, and processes that facilitate collaboration and communication among contributors. They also focus on community building and support, including outreach programs and mentorship initiatives to onboard and retain new contributors.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Open Source Security (Audio Show) ☛ Episode 388 – Video game vulnerabilities

• Josh and Kurt ask the question what is a vulnerability, but in the framing of video games. Security loves to categorize all bugs as security vulnerabilities or not security vulnerabilities. But the reality nothing is so simple. Everything is a question of risk, not vulnerability. The discussion about video games can help us to better have this discussion.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Linux Kernel From First Principles

• What to learn the internals of the Linux kernel? Version 6.5-rc5 has about 36 million lines of code in it, so good luck! [Seiya] has a different approach. Go back to the beginning and examine the 0.01 version of the kernel. Now you are talking about 10,000 lines and, removing comments and blanks, way less.

Applications

=> ↺ Linux Links ☛ 11 Best Free and Open Source Linux Fractal Tools

• Fractal-generating software is any computer program that generates images of fractals. Linux has a great selection of fractal software to choose from.

• To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 11 absorbing fractal tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to create their own unique images from computer generated art.

• The chart below offers our verdict. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion here.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Rick Carlino ☛ Exploring Text-Based Content on the Gemini Protocol

• Picture the web. Websites and all that, right? Now, imagine getting rid of CSS, Javascript, cookies, and nosy request headers. Replace HTML with something simpler that looks more like Markdown. What’s left is the Gemini protocol, and it’s slowly been building a user base in the last few years. If you’re old enough to remember Gopher, it’s kind of like that. Or Maybe the HTML 2.0 days of the web.

• With Gemini, what you see is cleaner and loads faster. It’s just the text, and you control how it looks. No CSS, no forms, only text-based content. For search engines and similar applications, there’s a text input query, but that’s about as complicated as it gets. It’s not trying to be the web, just a place for readable content.

=> ↺ Adriaan Roselli ☛ An alt Decision Tree Using Only :has()

• I use the CSS :has() pseudo-class to provide an interactive alt text decision tree (from the W3C WAI Tutorial) that uses no script. It is progressively enhanced, so browsers without support for :has() still get all the content.

=> ↺ [Repeat] nixCraft ☛ How to decode BASE64 string in Linux and Unix

• To decode a Base64 string in Linux, you must use the base64 command command. The syntax for decoding a Base64 string is as follows: [...]

=> ↺ HowTo Forge ☛ How To Save Traffic With Apache2′s mod_deflate

• In this tutorial, I will describe how to install and configure mod_deflate on an Apache2 web server. mod_deflate allows Apache2 to compress files and deliver them to clients (e.g. browsers) that can handle compressed content which most modern browsers do. With mod_deflate, you can compress HTML, text or XML files to approx. 20 – 30% of their original sizes, thus saving you server traffic and making your modem users happier.

• Compressing files causes a slightly higher load on the server, but in my experience, this is compensated by the fact that the clients’ connection times to your server decrease a lot. For example, a modem user that needed seven seconds to download an uncompressed HTML file might now only need two seconds for the same, but compressed file.

=> ↺ Setting up my cloud desktop

• With VNC up and running, I added the AWS Linux server to my Tailscale network so I can route all VNC traffic through that, instead of using the public IP (yep, have ufw restricting it). My Raspberry Pi can now talk with the AWS Linux server via tailscale (configured it to have a restricted one-way communication, to protect my home network). Neat.

=> ↺ The Ultimate Guide to MetaTrader 5 on Linux: Features, Benefits, and Installation

• MetaTrader 5 (MT5) is a popular online trading platform widely used by forex traders across the globe. It offers a wide range of features and tools to analyze the financial markets and execute trades with ease. While originally designed for Windows, it is now compatible with Linux operating systems as well, providing Linux users with access to this powerful trading platform.

=> ↺ MetaTrader for Linux: The Ultimate Guide to Forex Trading on Linux

• Forex trading has become increasingly popular in recent years, and many traders rely on MetaTrader, a leading platform for accessing global forex markets. While MetaTrader is primarily designed for Windows operating system, there is also a solution available for Linux users.

=> ↺ Medium ☛ How To Use Stable Diffusion 2 For Free— Day 10 of #30daysofAI

• These install steps assume that the computer being used is running Windows (≥ Windows 10) or directly on an up to date Linux distro like Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Make Use Of ☛ How to Create a Windows Virtual Machine in Linux With KVM

• Running a Windows virtual machine alongside Linux has its benefits. With a Windows virtual machine set up, you don’t have to wrap your head around compatibility layers or look for open-source alternatives to your favorite Windows apps. Additionally, if you’re a developer, it becomes easy to test your software on multiple operating systems.

• Kernel-based Virtual Machine, or KVM is your best bet when it comes to setting up a Windows virtual machine on Linux. But how do you go about creating a new KVM and installing Windows on it?

Distributions and Operating Systems

Reviews

=> ↺ Distro Watch ☛ Review: MX Linux 23

• MX Linux does a great job of presenting the user with all the benefits of Debian’s Stable branch (long-term support, stable packages, large repositories of software, and great hardware support) while improving on the experience. On top of Debian’s solid base, MX has added a faster, more user friendly system installer, enough applications to cover a wide range of use cases without overly crowding the application menu, and provided lots of friendly tools and documentation.

• Not many Linux distributions provide great documentation and fewer include their documentation on the install media. This alone makes MX Linux stand out. The MX Tools though are what really make this distribution shine. There is a lot of useful functionality packed into the MX Tools collection, particularly the custom package installer which works across multiple repositories (including backports) and portable packages (Flatpaks).

• Not only did MX Linux work well with my hardware, it worked quickly, was stable, and I can’t think of a single time I saw an error message during my trial. A lot of this smooth running was probably a credit to MX’s parent, Debian, but MX also ships with a lot of custom tools and they all worked well for me too.

• Some people might find the vertical desktop panel unusual. Personally, I like it as it reduces my mouse movement, especially if I switch window buttons to the left side of the windows. People who don’t like the panel placement can move it to a more conventional horizontal orientation with a couple of mouse clicks.

• I’m of the opinion MX Linux is one of the most capable, friendly, reliable desktop distributions currently available. It runs on a wide range of hardware, from older computers to more modern machines. It offers an experience which improves from its parent on multiple fronts without introducing any problems. Some of the tools and the installer might be a little overwhelming for a complete Linux newcomer, I’m not sure I’d say MX Linux is an ideal first distribution. However, I would recommend it for most people for just about any desktop experience.

BSD

=> ↺ Brian Callahan ☛ Can mold be used as the OpenBSD system linker?

• Recently, I taught the mold linker how to find shared libraries on OpenBSD. This was the last puzzle piece needed to get mold working on OpenBSD. Testing on some simple applications, like oksh, produced working executables.

• I would like to go a bit further and push mold to its limits. I want to know what would happen if mold was the only linker on our system.

=> ↺ Karl Levik ☛ Enforcing Fail2ban bans with PF

• In the process of configuring my FreeBSD VPS, the time had finally come to attempt configuring Fail2ban1,2 properly. I already had it up and running, but the bans weren’t actually being enforced because – to my surprise – it was trying to use iptables, which is a Linux firewall that doesn’t even exist for FreeBSD!

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ IT Wire ☛ Linux now ‘de-facto standard’ for running business-critical workloads’

• Vojtěch Pavlík, SUSE’s newly appointed general manager of Business-Critical Linux, said on Thursday that it would be difficult to find any hyperscaler who did not offer Linux for the enterprise or one that did not run their own services on Linux.

• Pavlik’s comments come in the wake of some ructions in open source business circles, with Red Hat announcing a move in June to restrict access to the source code of its enterprise Linux distribution only to paying customers.

• In response to this, SUSE chief technology and product officer Dr Thomas Di Giacomo said on Thursday that his company had formed the Open Enterprise Linux Association along with Oracle and CIQ, the last-named being the company that is behind Rocky Linux, an RHEL clone.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Pine64 ☛ Quick update: What’s going on?

• We always attempt to meet in person at least twice a year. For reasons that ought to be obvious to everyone, this wasn’t possible these past few years, but now that travel is once again viable we’re returning to a bi-annual meetup schedule. We always meet at FOSDEM in February followed by a meeting halfway through the calendar year. While FOSDEM primarily serves the function of interacting with the broader Linux community and members of other projects as well as product announcements, the second yearly meetup aims at evaluating the project’s progress, identifying issues, and creating a roadmap for the coming months. This year we’re holding the second meetup in Warsaw. TL, Ayufan, Lukasz, and I will be having lunch in Hala Gwardii on Sunday, August 20th at noon. The place offers a wide variety of foods from around the world and is a short walk from Ratusz Arsenał metro station. You can also reach the place easily from every corner of Warsaw via all the public transport the city has to offer. So if you’re in Warsaw or can travel to see us on this date, then consider yourself invited. We’ll be keeping an eye on the #offtopic chat on the 19th so let us know when you’ve arrived and one of us will let you know where we’re sitting. Looking forward to seeing you there!

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Portable 1990s POS Will Strain Your Back

• [JR] over at [Tech Throwback] got ahold of an unusual piece of gear recently — a portable Point of Sale (POS) credit card machine from the late 1990s (video, embedded below the break ). Today these machines can be just a small accessory that works in conjunction with your smart phone, but only the most dedicated merchants would lug this behemoth around. The unit is basically a Motorola bag phone, a credit card scanner, a receipt printer, a lead-acid battery, and a couple of PCBs crammed into a custom carrying case

=> ↺ Andrew Hutchings ☛ Amiga 4000 Restoration x2: Part 6

• We are on part 6 of what I originally hoped would be a 3 part series. There has been some progress since last time on several fronts. As well as some setbacks. Let’s get into it.

=> ↺ Doug Brown ☛ Upgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 6: PWM backlight

• In the previous post in this series (here are links to parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), I really got the Chumby to start looking like a Chumby. The display was alive! But getting the LCD controller working was really only one puzzle piece when it came to the display. The backlight needed more work so that I could control the brightness, and the touchscreen controller is a completely nonstandard design that is specific to the Chumby.

=> ↺ Linux Gizmos ☛ NUC board comes with dual 2.5GbE and M.2 expansion options

• The MU03 by GlobalAmerican is a small embedded board with NUC form-factor featuring the Intel Celeron J6412 System-on-Chip. The board targets applications including retail, industrial automation and surveillance.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Stuffing A 32-Pin Chip Into A 28-Pin Socket

• What’s the difference between a 64k ROM in a 28-pin DIP and a 128k ROM in a 32-pin DIP? Aside from the obvious answers of “64k” and “four pins,” it turns out that these two chips have a lot in common, enough so that it only takes a little bodging to make them interchangeable — more or less.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ OS News ☛ Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

• There’s no denying that the browser is the single-most important application on any operating system, whether that be on desktops and laptops or on mobile devices. Without a capable, fast, and solid browser, the usefulness of an operating system decreases exponentially, to the point where I’m quite sure virtually nobody’s going to use an operating system for regular, normal use if it doesn’t have a browser. Having an at least somewhat useable browser is what elevates an operating system from a hobby toy to something you could use for more than 10 minutes as a fun novelty.

• The problem here is that making a capable browser is actually incredibly hard, as the browser has become a hugely capable platform all of its own. Undertaking the mammoth task of building a browser from scratch is not something a lot of people are interested in – save for the crazy ones – made worse by the fact that competing with the three remaining browser engines is basically futile due to market consolidation and monopolisation. Chrome and its various derivatives are vastly dominant, followed by Safari on iOS, if only because you can’t use anything else on iOS. And then there’s Firefox, trailing far behind as a distant third – and falling.

• This is the environment desktop Linux distributions find themselves in. For the longest time now, desktop Linux has relied virtually exclusively on shipping Firefox – and the Mozilla suite before that – as their browser, with some users opting to download Chrome post-install. While both GNOME and KDE nominally invest in their own two browsers, GNOME Web and Falkon, their uptake is limited and releases few and far between. For instance, none of the major Linux distributions ship GNOME Web as their default browser, and it lacks many of the features users come to expect from a browser. Falkon, meanwhile, is updated only sporadically, often going years between releases. Worse yet, Falkon uses Chromium through QtWebEngine, and GNOME Web uses WebKit (which are updated separately from the browser, so browser releases are not always a solid metric!), so both are dependent on the goodwill of two of the most ruthless corporations in the world, Google and Apple respectively.

• Even Firefox itself, even though it’s clearly the browser of choice of distributions and Linux users alike, does not consider Linux a first-tier platform. Firefox is first and foremost a Windows browser, followed by macOS second, and Linux third. The love the Linux world has for Firefox is not reciprocated by Mozilla in the same way, and this shows in various places where issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the Linux side for years or longer.

=> ↺ Does Desktop Linux Have a Firefox Problem?

• OS News’ managing editor calls Firefox “the single most important desktop Linux application,” shipping in most distros (with some users later opting for a post-installation download of Chrome).

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ Supabase Inc ☛ Supavisor: Scaling Postgres to 1 Million Connections

• One of the most widely-discussed shortcomings of Postgres is its connection system. Every Postgres connection has a reasonably high memory footprint, and determining the maximum number of connections your database can handle is a bit of an art.

• A common solution is connection pooling. Supabase currently offers pgbouncer which is single-threaded, making it difficult to scale. We’ve seen some novel ways to scale pgbouncer, but we have a few other goals in mind for our platform.

• And so we’ve built Supavisor, a Postgres connection pooler that can handle millions of connections.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ University of Toronto ☛ The tangled problems of asking for people’s ‘(full) legal name’

• One response to my entry on the problems with ‘first’ and ‘last’ name data fields is that one should make forms that (only) ask for someone’s legally recognized name, which should be unambiguous and complete. While superficially appealing, this is a terrible minefield that you should never step into unless you absolutely have to, which is generally because you are legally required to collect this information.

=> ↺ Roman Kashitsyn ☛ Flat in-order binary trees

• This article is an in-depth guide to the flat in-order representation of binary trees. We derive efficient operations to navigate these trees, such as finding the tree root and computing the parent and children for each node. We then use this flat representation to implement a novel efficient data structure: extensible segment trees.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Frederico Bittencourt ☛ Bash one liners

• I have a graveyard of one-time-use bash one-liners that become either aliases or get wrapped by shell functions in my .zshrc file. I often justify the effort of polishing them and adding to my dotfiles with the excuse that they will be used again in the future. Even if they are never used again, they serve as a library of examples. For every new command, there is always an old one that did a similar thing.

• More importantly, these bash one-liners are really fun to write. What once started as a thought to build a new command line application, was first challenged with a “could it be a simple bash script?” and then finally it was reduced to “could I write it one line?”. It’s like my own personal code golf challenge, where I keep trying to make the line smaller and smaller.

Leftovers

=> ↺ MIT Technology Review ☛ Next slide, please: A brief history of the corporate presentation

• Before PowerPoint [sic], and long before digital projectors, 35-millimeter film slides were king. Bigger, clearer, and less expensive to produce than 16-millimeter film, and more colorful and higher-resolution than video, slides were the only medium for the kinds of high-impact presentations given by CEOs and top brass at annual meetings for stockholders, employees, and salespeople. Known in the business as “multi-image” shows, these presentations required a small army of producers, photographers, and live production staff to pull off. First the entire show had to be written, storyboarded, and scored. Images were selected from a library, photo shoots arranged, animations and special effects produced. A white-gloved technician developed, mounted, and dusted each slide before dropping it into the carousel. Thousands of cues were programmed into the show control computers—then tested, and tested again. Because computers crash. Projector bulbs burn out. Slide carousels get jammed.

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Creativity under legacy constraints

• There’s a unique kind of creativity that comes from working within a set of limitations or constraints. I know I have more fun when I don’t use cheats, and try out old things with a new twist. What’s the smallest financially viable SimCity 3000 town I can build? What are the fewest number of lines I can write a Sudoku game in with Pascal, or Perl?

Science

=> ↺ Brr ☛ Snowdrifts

• A remarkable amount of blown snow buildup after just a few short days!

Education

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-11 [Older] Japanese universities losing battle with foreign rivals

Hardware

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-08 [Older] Taiwan’s TSMC to build semiconductor factory in Germany

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Update Your Chinese Radio Without The Pain

• The new hotness in cheap radios this year has been the Quansheng UV-K5, a Chinese handheld transceiver with significant RF abilities and easy modding. The amateur radio community have seized upon it with glee and already reverse-engineered much of the firmware, but flashing the thing has always required a minor effort. Now thanks to the work of [whosmatt], it can be flashed with little more than a web browser and a serial cable.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Making Things Square In Three Dimensions

• Measure twice, cut once is excellent advice when building anything, from carpentry to metalworking. While this adage will certainly save a lot of headache, mistakes, and wasted material, it will only get you part of the way to constructing something that is true and square, whether that’s building a shelf, a piece of furniture, or an entire house. [PliskinAJ] demonstrates a few techniques to making things like this as square as possible, in all three dimensions.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Eliminating Charge-Carrier Trapping In Organic Semiconductors

• For organic semiconductors like the very common organic light-emitting diode (OLED), the issue of degradation due to contaminants that act as charge traps is a major problem. During the development of OLEDs, this was very pronounced in the difference between the different colors and the bandgap which they operated in. Due to blue OLEDs especially being sensitive to these charge traps, it still is the OLED type that degrades the quickest as contaminants like oxygen affect it the strongest. Recent research published in Nature Materials from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research by Oskar Sachnik and colleagues (press release) may however have found a way to shield the electron-carrying parts of organic semiconductors from such contaminants.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-05 [Older] Food waste: Is forcing supermarkets to donate the way to go?

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Lead Exposure in Childhood Linked to Future Crimes, Study Finds

• As a neurotoxin, lead has also been implicated in mental and developmental problems, including lowering IQ. A new review suggests early-life lead exposure may be leading to increased risks of criminal behavior much later in life.

• “Policy action to prevent lead exposure is of utmost importance,” environmental health scientist Maria Jose Talayero and colleagues from the George Washington University write in their paper.

• “Our research shows an excess risk for criminal behavior in adulthood exists when an individual is exposed to lead in utero or during childhood.”

=> ↺ The ABIM acted against COVID-19 antivax quacks…or did it?

• [Orac note: Yes, Orac decided to be lazy and continue recharging his Tarial cells last week. He did, however, update and expand this recent post about the ABIM and COVID-19 misinformation from a certain not-so-secret-other blog for your edification, as his contemplation of all data led him to things that he missed a week ago that led him to change the emphasis and add more about Dr. Paul Marik. Regular Insolence will resume this week.]

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-10 [Older] Netherlands: Cocaine seized by customs in record 8-ton haul

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-09 [Older] WHO identifies new coronavirus ‘variant of interest’

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ ‘The Open Source Licensing War is Over’ [Ed: Mac Asay's propaganda is promoted by Slasdot; Asay tried working for Microsoft and brought Microsoft to the OSI. He's not technical and he works for proprietary software firms (those firms also sponsor these articles of his (paid placements).]

=> ↺ Matt Rickard ☛ My Everyday LLM Uses

• How do I use LLMs in my personal life? I’ve found A few rote tasks useful for outside of coding or professional work.

Windows TCO

=> ↺ [Repeat] Conneticut Post ☛ Ransomware attack [sic] continues to disrupt 2 CT hospital systems

• In a statement earlier this week, Nina Kruse, ECHN’s vice president for communications and public affairs, said, “Prospect Medical Holdings Inc. recently experienced a data security incident that has disrupted our operations. Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists.”

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ UK Electoral Commission had an unpatched Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerability

• You have have read about the hack of the Electoral Commission recently. In this piece we take a look at what happened, show they were running Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook Web App (OWA) facing the internet, and the unpatched [sic] vulnerability that presented.

=> ↺ Dark Reading ☛ EvilProxy Cyberattack Flood Targets Execs via Microsoft 365

• A campaign sent 120,000 phishing emails in three months, circumventing MFA to compromise cloud accounts of high-level executives at global organizations

Security

=> ↺ Press Release – August 9, 2023 – Governor Hochul Announces Nation-Leading Cybersecurity Strategy | Department of Financial Services [Ed: After watering-down Right to Repair to make it toothless?]

• Governor Kathy Hochul today announced New York’s first-ever statewide cybersecurity strategy aimed at protecting the State’s digital infrastructure from today’s cyber threats. The Strategy articulates, for the first-time, a set of high-level objectives for cybersecurity and resilience across New York. It clarifies agency roles and responsibilities, outlines how existing and planned initiatives and investments knit together into a unified approach, and reiterates the State’s commitment to providing services, advice, and assistance to county and local governments. New York State’s cybersecurity strategy provides public and private stakeholders with a roadmap for cyber risk mitigation and outlines a plan to protect critical infrastructure, networks, data, and technology systems.

=> ↺ Kevin Beaumont ☛ UK Electoral Commission had an unpatched Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerability [Ed: Even a fully patched Microsoft Exchange Server is not secure; Microsoft can intentionally seat for 3 months on unpatched holes while fully aware those are being exploited, as happened before]

• You have have read about the hack of the Electoral Commission recently. In this piece we take a look at what happened, show they were running Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook Web App (OWA) facing the internet, and the unpatched vulnerability that presented.

• The Electoral Commission ran Microsoft Exchange Server on IP 167.98.206.41 (found by TechCrunch) — this was online until later in 2022, at which point it dropped offline. According to the Electoral Commission’s advisory, they became aware of the incident in October 2022.

=> ↺ Reuters ☛ US cyber body to review cloud computing safety, Microsoft breach

• A U.S. cyber safety body will review issues relating to cloud-based identity and authentication infrastructure that will include an assessment of a recent Microsoft (MSFT.O) breach that led to the theft of emails from U.S. government agencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Friday.

• The review by the Cyber Safety Review Board will look at the malicious targeting of cloud computing environments, the DHS said in a statement.

=> ↺ TechCrunch ☛ How the FBI goes after DDoS cyberattackers

• In 2016, hackers using a network of compromised internet-connected devices — vulnerable security cameras and routers — knocked some of the then biggest websites on the internet offline for several hours. Twitter, Reddit, GitHub and Spotify all went down intermittently that day, victims of what was at the time one of the largest distributed denial-of-service attacks in history.

=> ↺ Dark Reading ☛ EvilProxy Cyberattack Flood Targets Execs via Microsoft 365

• Attackers have unleashed an EvilProxy phishing campaign to target thousands of Microsoft 365 user accounts worldwide, sending a flood of 120,000 phishing emails to more than 100 organizations across the globe in the three-month period between March and June alone. The goal? To take over C-suite and other executive accounts, in order to mount further attacks deeper within the enterprise.

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ Cummins Behavioral Health Systems discovers cyberattack when it finds ransom note [Ed: A "victim of a cyberattack" means target of yet another Microsoft breach]

• Sometime between Feb. 2 and March 9 of this year, Cummins Behavioral Health Systems (CBHS) in Indiana became a victim of a cyberattack.

• CBHS is a private not-for-profit organization providing behavioral health services in Boone, Hendricks, Marion, Montgomery, Putnam, and surrounding counties in Central and West Central Indiana. It provides care to persons of all ages in a variety of office and community-based settings, including school-based services for students with mental health issues.

• CBHS discovered the incident when they found a ransom note in their environment on March 9. There was no encryption of data. CBHS does not name the attackers or say whether they paid the demanded ransom, but there’s no language about getting any assurances about deletion of data, so they probably didn’t pay.

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ One year later, Tift Regional Medical Center notifies patients of Hive attack

• In September 2022, DataBreaches broke the story of how Hive had attacked Tift Regional Medical Center in Georgia between July and August. The attack did not involve encryption of systems but Hive claimed to have exfiltrated about 1 TB of data, including files with protected health information.

• On October 14, Tift notified HHS of an incident. They used 500 as the number affected, which suggested that at that point, they had not yet determined exactly how many patients had been affected.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ NL Times ☛ 2023-08-12 [Older] Hospital employee suspended for leaking influencer’s newborn details on Facebook

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ 2023-08-07 [Older] Norway Fines Facebook Owner Meta Over Privacy Breaches

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ 2023-08-11 [Older] Twitter’s CEO Makes New Excuses for Musk’s Dumb ‘X’ Rebranding

=> ↺ John Gruber ☛ 2023-08-10 [Older] ★ Was Trump Using Twitter Direct Messages? (Please Let the Answer Be Yes.)

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ 2023-08-10 [Older] Twitter’s Office Auction: Here Are the 35 Oddest Pieces of Bird-Themed Junk for Sale

=> ↺ Counter Punch ☛ 2023-08-10 [Older] Peter Pan Man: Elon Musk’s Rebranding of Twitter

=> ↺ The Age AU ☛ 2023-08-10 [Older] Capitol riot probe obtained secret warrant for Trump’s Twitter account

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ 2023-08-09 [Older] You Can Now See Your Likes on Instagram Threads, Just Like on Twitter

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ 2023-08-09 [Older] Twitter Fined $350,000 for Delaying Search of Trump’s Account in Jan. 6 Prosecution

=> ↺ Engadget ☛ 2023-08-09 [Older] Twitter fined for belatedly complying with search warrant for Donald Trump’s account

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-08-08 [Older] “Fraying Bonds: The Erosion of U.S.-Africa Relations

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-05 [Older] Hiroshima: Atomic bomb survivors keep memory alive

=> ↺ Bridge Michigan ☛ Records: Michigan voting machines exchanged at mall, ‘manipulated’ in hotels

• Pro-Trump attorneys and a Michigan lawmaker enlisted a private investigator to collect 2020 voting machines that were later “manipulated” during testing in Oakland County hotels, according to newly disclosed allegations by a special prosecutor.

=> ↺ Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-08-08 [Older] Wagner-Backed Central African Leader Wins Right to Third Term

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-11 [Older] China courts Germany’s far-right populist AfD

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ Six people drowned in the English Channel: Last week was this year’s peak of crossings

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ You Ignore ‘Apartheid’ — Angry Scholars’ Letter to US Jews Is Signed by 750 Including Benny Morris

• So long as Jews and Palestinians don’t have equal rights, Israel risks “dictatorship,” says 750 academics in letter urging U.S. Jews to denounce “apartheid.”

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ What Young Americans Really Think About Guns

• 74% of young people say gun violence is a problem in the US. But they have little faith in the government to tackle it

War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ The BRICS Revolt: How Ukraine War Eroded U.S. Authority

• The proxy war in Ukraine has presented a grand opportunity for competitors of the U.S. — a chance to exploit longstanding resentments of American empire…

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Apparent drone strike causes explosion, damages apartment building in Belogorod — Meduza

• Residents of Belgorod reported hearing explosions in the city, and photos showing a damaged apartment building and car appeared on local social media pages on August 13.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russia fires warning shots at cargo ship in Black Sea — Meduza

• Russia’s Defense Ministry reports that service members on the Vasily Bykov, a patrol vessel in the Black Sea Fleet, fired warning shots to stop the cargo ship the Sukra Okan in the Black Sea.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Germany reportedly to give Ukraine Luna NG reconnaissance ‘superdrones’ — Meduza

• Germany has ordered defense corporation Rheinmetall to supply Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU) with a Luna NG unmanned aerial reconnaissance system by the end of 2023, reports German tabloid Bild, citing its own sources of information.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Missile strike on Pokrovsk, in Donetsk, has killed 10, including two rescue workers — Meduza

• Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reports that Colonel Vitaly Kints, the head of a Donetsk fire rescue squad, has died in the hospital after receiving critical injuries from an August 7 missile strike on the city of Pokrovsk.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Ukrainian media says Crimea drone attack killed and injured dozens of Russian troops — Meduza

• Dozens of Russian soldiers were killed or injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian-annexed Crimea overnight on August 12, writes newspaper Ukrainian Pravda, citing sources in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Ukraine authorities say ‘Kadyrovites’ started a shootout near Mariupol, killing more than 10 people — Meduza

• The Mariupol city council reports that a shootout took place in the village of Urzuf, which Russia has annexed, in the Mariupol district of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, between soldiers from Chechnya and representatives of the local “commander’s office.” 

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Shelling in Kherson region kills civilians, including family of four — Meduza

• At least five people were killed by shelling in Shyroka Balka, a village outside of Kherson, on the morning of August 13, reports Ukraine Internal Affairs Minister Ihor Klymenko.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russia’s Defense Ministry reports multiple attempted drone attacks on Belgorod region and one on Kursk — Meduza

• Russia’s Defense Ministry says that Russian troops intercepted three attempts by Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia with drones on August 13.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Death toll rises after Russian shelling of Kherson in Ukraine

• The number of those killed by Russian forces has risen again to seven people, including an infant and a 12-year-old boy. They were killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said on Sunday.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Civilian Deaths Mount In Kherson Shelling; Kyiv Reports Gains In South

• At least seven civilians, including four members of one family, were killed by Russian shelling in southern Ukraine as fighting continued in both the south and east of the country, Kyiv said on August 13, amid reports of Ukrainian battlefield gains in the ongoing southern counteroffensive.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Russian Strikes Kill 7 in Ukrainian Region Under Ceaseless Shelling

• Ukrainian officials said two children and their parents were among the dead after the attacks on Sunday.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Yango prohibited from transferring personal data from Finland to Russia

• THE FINNISH Data Protection Authority has ordered Yandex and Ridetech International to suspend the transfer of personal data collected by Yango, the ride-hailing service of Yandex, from Finland to Russia.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Secret Police: One Department In Virginia Is Trying To Hide The Names Of Most Officers

Environment

=> ↺ Omicron Limited ☛ Atlantic collapse: Q&A with scientists behind controversial study predicting a colder Europe

• While AMOC was already known to be at its slowest in 1,600 years, the latest research ushers in a much closer time estimation for a collapse between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2057. If proven correct, this scenario could see temperatures drop by 5 to 10 degrees in Europe, with devastating consequences for life as we know it. The Conversation sat down with physicist Peter Ditlevsen and his sister, the statistician Susanne Ditlevsen, to unpack findings that have stirred controversy in some quarters.

=> ↺ International Business Times ☛ Cigarette butts are killing animals and polluting waters in the UK

• This summer, in just two weeks, 585 volunteers cleared around 58km of the river. In the 699 bags of rubbish that was collected, 71 per cent of recorded waste was plastic. But, records show that cigarette butts were the most numerous plastic items. Other plastic items that were found included drink lids and food wrappers.

• Following the litter results, Maria Herlihy urged the public to “Please – pick up your butts!”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ How Invasive Plants Caused the Maui Fires to Rage

• A sweeping series of plantation closures in Hawaii allowed highly flammable nonnative grasses to spread on idled lands, providing the fuel for huge blazes.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Typhoon Khanun Causes Emergencies in Russia’s Far East

• The floods affected 16 municipal districts, where 4,368 residential buildings, 5,654 household plots and 43 sections of roads remain submerged.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-11 [Older] FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried jailed after bail revoked

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ University proceeding with campus EV charger installations

• The first phase of the four-year project includes installing chargers in more than 100 spaces in parking structures and surface lots across campus. The chargers will be available to faculty, staff, students, visitors and U-M Fleet vehicles with appropriate parking permits during enforcement hours, and for public use during non-enforcement hours.

=> ↺ Connor Tumbleson ☛ The dangerous corium

• So how often have we accidentally produced corium?

Finance

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-09 [Older] China slips into deflation as post-COVID recovery stalls

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-08 [Older] Germany: Inflation sinks slightly in July

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-08 [Older] How Germany’s political leaders want to fix the economy

=> ↺ Michael West Media ☛ Insurance surges 50 per cent for high-risk properties

• Households living in areas where the risk of flooding looms large have endured up to a 50 per cent surge in insurance premiums.

• Analysis from the Actuaries Institute has illustrated the severity of Australia’s insurance affordability crisis, with the median home premium experiencing its biggest jump in two decades.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ White House is fast-tracking executive order on artificial intelligence

• Prabhakar’s comments come amid a flurry of work on Capitol Hill and the White House to craft stronger AI guardrails.

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D.-N.Y., has begun convening a series of listening sessions aimed to educating lawmakers about the technology and laying the groundwork for a major legislative push to regulate AI.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ VOA News ☛ As Free Press Withers in El Salvador, Pro-Government Social Media Influencers Grow in Power

• “A news organization doing an investigation can’t compare to the sounding board that these influencers have because they flood your social media with the government’s narrative,” said Roberto Dubon, a communications strategist and congressional candidate for Bukele’s former party, FMLN. “What you have is an apparatus to spread their propaganda.”

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-08-08 [Older] Sweden Quran burnings: How the Kremlin benefits

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Kansas police’s raid of newspaper called ‘alarming abuse of authority’

• “It seems like one of the most aggressive police raids of a news organization or entity in quite some time,” said Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas. The breadth of the raid and the aggressiveness in which it was carried out seems to be “quite an alarming abuse of authority from the local police department,” Ms. Brett said.

• Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that the raid appeared to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, “and basic human decency.”

• “This looks like the latest example of American law enforcement officers treating the press in a manner previously associated with authoritarian regimes,” Mr. Stern said. “The anti-press rhetoric that’s become so pervasive in this country has become more than just talk and is creating a dangerous environment for journalists trying to do their jobs.”

=> ↺ The Dissenter ☛ ‘These Are Hitler Tactics’: Illegal Police Raids Effectively Shut Down Kansas Newspaper

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Kansas newspaper co-owner dies after police raids that raised First Amendment concerns

• A police department in Marion, Kansas, was accused Sunday of violating First Amendment protections after officers raided a local paper and the home of its co-owner.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ What to know about GEO’s pay demands: An in-depth analysis of graduate student pay

• Since 2017, the cost of living in Ann Arbor has increased from $30,128 to $38,838 according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a tool developed to estimate the minimum wage needed to support a person’s basic needs in a community. The salaries of most U-M graduate students have decreased in value due to inflation over the duration of the contract, going from $24,879 to $24,056. As a result, many U-M graduate students are earning $14,778 less than the minimum standards of living in Ann Arbor as calculated by the LWC.

=> ↺ Bridge Michigan ☛ Facial recognition technology under fire after false arrest of Detroit mother

• The lawsuit has sparked national interest in Detroit’s use of the controversial technology. It’s the third lawsuit filed alleging the technology led to the false arrest of a Detroit resident. Facial recognition is an automated process to find possible matches for a suspect’s photo from a database of images pulled from mugshots, surveillance cameras and social media.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ APNIC ☛ Visiting the submarine cable connecting Andaman and Nicobar Islands

• This cable system is designed, for the most part, with keeping a linear flow. The main long-distance cable connects Chennai to Port Blair with a 400Gbps capacity (2 x 200Gbps), then 200Gbps (2 x 100Gbps) from Port Blair onwards to seven islands. One branch connects Port Blair to Swaraj Dweep, Long Island, and Rangat in the North and the other branch connects Port Blair to Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Kamorta and Great Nicobar Islands.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Internet Archive’s Copyright Battle with Publishers Leads to Lending Restrictions

• The Internet Archive’s online book lending library will be severely limited to avoid copyright liability. The library and book publishers have agreed the terms of a judgment that leaves one crucial question open for the court. While restrictions are unavoidable, for now, the Internet Archive is eager to reverse the court’s liability ruling on appeal.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technology and Free Software

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Getting back online after summer

• Its been a few months since I last wrote anything…or really ready much on smolnet. With kids being up later and no school, the days longer so I don’t wind down as soon it seems like most of my hobbies and tech use in general drops off during the summer. Haven’t even turned on my ham radio since we had leaves on the trees. I did find Lemmy with all the Reddit nonsense going on (not that I’m really on that site much these days). But even Mastodon barely opened on my phone.

=> ↺ What if Gemini could be served on port 80?

• I’m by no means an expert and there must be a reason solderpunk chose Gemini to get its own port. But I’m also a web developer by day and a strong advocatee of “Progressive enhancement”.

• Many of us aren’t. Many of us don’t even care about and to some degree I feel like it is our own fault thave we didn’t convince them. A lot of people treat the web as something it should never have been: A painting that has to look the same on every device. Back then, people came up with phraes like “optimized for Netscape Navigator 4.x” or “best viewed at 1024×768″.

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