● 08.18.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Leftover Links 18/08/2023: IBM Working for Microsoft

Posted in News Roundup at 9:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

=> ↺ Terence Eden ☛ Introducing Open Ideas

• I’ve launched Open Ideas Ltd. It’s a bespoke computing consultancy focused on open technologies. Here’s a brief run-down of what I offer: [...]

=> ↺ Tedium ☛ [Repeat] The Hamster Wheel Scales

• Publishing two massive newsletters twice a week worked well for years, but I don’t have the boundless energy I did when I was in my mid-20s and could publish 10 or 15 short blog posts a day. And honestly, this new approach I’m taking is working for me. I’m optimistic that it will continue to do so.

• We need to be willing to shift gears, even if it means making decisions that are technically less. A story that floated up from YouTube-land this week makes me realize that this is not just a problem for individuals.

=> ↺ SparkFun Electronics ☛ Bobby on 12 Years at SparkFun

• SparkFun is 20 years old this year! We’re lucky enough to have a bunch of employees that have been around for over 10 of those years, and we wanted to share their reflections on their time here with you. Today you’ll be hearing from Bobby Chan!

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Can’t Hear the Dialogue in Your Streaming Show? You’re Not Alone.

• The issue is complex because of myriad factors at play. In big movie productions, professional sound mixers calibrate audio levels for traditional theaters with robust speaker systems capable of delivering a wide range of sound, from spoken words to loud gunshots. But when you stream that content through an app on a TV, smartphone or tablet, the audio has been “down mixed,” or compressed, to carry the sounds through tiny, relatively weak speakers, said Marina Killion, an audio engineer at the media production company Optimus.

• It doesn’t help that TVs keep getting thinner and more minimal in design. To emphasize the picture, many modern flat-screen TVs hide their speakers, blasting sound away from the viewer’s ears, Mr. Lewis said.

=> ↺ BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Facebook Fading, 70% Indian Youth Prefer YouTube, WhatsApp Over Other Platforms: Report

• The Bharat Lab – a think tank launched by Rediffusion and the University of Lucknow to track consumer insights from India’s Tier 2 and 3 markets and hinterland villages – has released a report titled ‘Apna Time Aa Gaya,’ a study on how the youth in India kill their time versus how they fill their time. This report is the result of research on media consumption habits conducted amongst 1100 college-going students in the towns and villages of India during August 2023.

Science

=> ↺ Nature ☛ Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty

• To get a better sense of how researchers are currently interacting with the site formerly known as Twitter, Nature reached out to more than 170,000 scientists who were, or still are, users; nearly 9,200 responded. More than half reported that they have reduced the time they spend on the platform in the past six months and just under 7% have stopped using it altogether. Roughly 46% have joined other social-media platforms, such as Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads and TikTok.

=> ↺ uni Michigan ☛ U-M gets $9.7M to help forecast harmful space weather

• “On Earth, the magnetic field deflects most of those energetic particles, but space instruments and astronauts traveling to the moon and Mars don’t have that protection,” she said.

• The most dangerous torrents of particles could kill astronauts exposed during a spacewalk and damage the electronics on space instruments, which are impossible to fix. But the harm can be prevented if the astronauts stay inside and the instruments are switched off while the particles pass by.

Education

=> ↺ The Hindu ☛ Computer lab set up at BC welfare residential college for girls in Keesara

• Confederation of Indian Industry- Telangana facilitated the project. The computer lab will be useful for 700 girl students pursuing graduation, CII-TS said in a release on Thursday. KFRC chairman V. Bhujang Rao, MJPTBCWREIS Secretary Mallaiah Bhattu and CII-TS CSR and Sustainability Panel co-convenor V.Prabhakar inaugurated the lab.

=> ↺ New Statesman ☛ Universities are making us stupid

• They view the university as an extension of the market state, micromanaged by central government while competing for staff and students in the global economy. This managerial class is transforming universities into soulless corporations disconnected from the rest of Britain. And their philistine mindset reduces learning to market utility, committed as it is to churning out graduates who will serve the interests of City firms and the non-governmental organisation (NGO) industry.

• All this reflects an anti-intellectual outlook that undermines the purpose of universities as a self-governing guild, committed to pursuing truth, nurturing character and fostering the civic duties on which our democracy depends. The war on the traditional notion of a university has hollowed out the esprit de corps that once defined British higher education.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Helsinki drops out of top 100 uni list after error correction

• “Of course, this is first and foremost the result of the significant cuts to universities’ funding between 2016 and 2019. In the case of the University of Helsinki, this meant a fifth of our funding or almost 100 million euros,” Remes told the paper.

Hardware

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Foxconn Produces Over Half of Nvidia AI Hardware: Report

• Foxconn heavily capitalizes on AI servers, according to media reports.

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ BOXER-6406-ADN Alder Lake-N fanless embedded computer supports 9V-36V DC input

• AAEON BOXER-6406-ADN is a compact fanless embedded computer powered by the popular Intel Alder Lake-N family of processors with their the Processor N50, Processor N200, or Intel Atom x7211E SoC.

=> ↺ CNX Software ☛ SONOFF MINIR4M – A Matter-compatible WiFi Smart Switch

• SONOFF MINI Extreme (MINIR4M) is the first Matter-certified home automation device from the company and appears to be based on the same hardware design as the SONOFF MINI Extreme (MINIR4) ESP32 WiFi smart switch that we reviewed last March and is still working fine in my bedroom. Support for the Matter protocol means better interoperability with other brands of Matter-certified products, so you should be able to use the MINIR4M wireless switch with a Samsung Matter-certified Smart Home gateway instead, as well as Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and other apps besides the eWelink mobile app. The main visual difference I see between the MINIR4 and MINIR4M is the color with Orange referring to WiFi support and Green to Matter support.

=> ↺ [Repeat] Dedoimedo ☛ Slimbook Pro2 battery replacement – It’s alive, it’s alive!

• To make the whole misfortune of an inflated battery less unfortunate, the Slimbook team decided to surprise me and send me a brand new battery pack along with the Executive. This is splendid, because we’re talking roughly 150 Euros worth of kit. This also meant I couldn’t not attempt to replace the battery.

=> ↺ Djalel Oukid ☛ Unboxing and First Impressions of the Linux-Powered InfinityBook Pro 16 Gen8 from TUXEDO Computers

• The touchpad is a spacious precision glass surface with integrated buttons, offering multi-gesture and scroll functions. It boasts a unique feature – a double tap on the upper right corner deactivates its right half. Despite not being perfectly centered, It’s one of the best trackpads I’ve experienced.

=> ↺ University of Toronto ☛ A pointless review of my (current) favorite mouse, the Contour optical mouse

• The Contour (Optical) mouse is an ergonomic mouse that has three old fashioned mouse buttons on the top (like the HP 3 button mouse I once reviewed), plus a scroll wheel and a rocker button on the side where your thumb rests (well, the scroll wheel is above and the rocker button below; my thumb naturally rests comfortably between them). Because the scroll wheel has to be on the thumb side, the mouse comes in right and left handed versions, and also in three different sizes. The ‘ergonomic’ bit is mostly that the back of the mouse is comfortably shaped for my palm and the front mouse button area slopes down to one side (to the right on a right handed mouse).

=> ↺ The Drone Girl ☛ Oreo is officially obsessed with drones

• Oreo is officially obsessed with drones. While publicity stunts are just that, this one stands out purely because the Oreo fandom over drone delivery has gotten more over-the-top than it already was.

=> ↺ David Rosenthal ☛ Optical Media Durability Update

• Four years ago I repeated the mind-numbing process of feeding 45 disks through the reader and verifying their checksums. Three years ago I did it again, and then again two years ago, and then again a year ago.

• It is time again for this annual chore, and yet again this year every single MD5 was successfully verified. Below the fold, the details. [...]

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ The Desperate Hunt for the A.I. Boom’s Most Indispensable Prize

• In particular, Mr. Paoli needs a type of chip known as a graphics processing unit, or GPU, because it is the fastest and most efficient way to run the calculations that allow cutting-edge A.I. companies to analyze enormous amounts of data.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

Axios ☛ Most young adults view moderate alcohol drinking as unhealthy, poll saysData: Gallup; Graphic: Rahul Mukherjee/AxiosMore than half of young adults in the U.S. see even moderate drinking — one or two drinks a day — as unhealthy, new Gallup polling found.Why it matters: Views on alcohol and drugs are shifting rapidly, especially among millennials and Gen Z. Americans overall now see booze as more harmful than marijuana.By the numbers: A record-high 39% of Americans believe moderate drinking is detrimental to health, up 11 points since 2018.Among 18- to 34-year-olds, there was an 18-point jump — the biggest among any age group.50% of Americans polled said alcohol makes no difference for health, and 10% said it is good for health.Between the lines: Women are more likely than men to perceive moderate drinking as unhealthy.

=> ↺ [Old] The Verge ☛ Slot Machines Perfected Addictive Gaming. Now, Tech Wants Their Tricks

• But the expansion of gaming generally is the expansion of slot machines specifically — the modern casino typically earns 70 to 80 percent of its revenue from slots, a stratospheric rise from the 1970s when slots comprised 50 percent or less. New York, the latest state to introduce gaming, doesn’t even allow table games, and Pennsylvania, now the third-largest gaming state in the country after Nevada and New Jersey, only later allowed table games in an amendment to its legislation. And increasingly, the psychological and technical systems originally built for slot machines — including reward schedules and tracking systems — have found admirers in Silicon Valley.

=> ↺ The Dissenter ☛ ‘Problem Patients’: How Dialysis Corporations Deal With Sick People Who Challenge Their Malpractice

=> ↺ Axios ☛ All signs point to a late summer COVID wave

• If you’ve noticed a sudden rise in the number of people wearing masks while you’re out and about lately, here’s why: COVID-19 is on the upswing once again, according to closely watched metrics.

• Driving the news: The late summer spread comes as a new variant, EG.5, is now the dominant form in the U.S., per CDC estimates — though it’s unclear if that variant is directly responsible for the rising numbers.

=> ↺ Mexico News Daily ☛ Mérida Airport reports 105% growth in passengers since 2021

• The airport has continued its strong recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and is now the eighth busiest in Mexico.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Hong Kong’s population shows sudden uptick after years of mass emigration

• The government attributes gains to talent schemes and the lifting of COVID-19 curbs

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Long-term effects of Covid-19 symptoms extend beyond a year, new research shows

• In a comprehensive study shedding light on the trajectory of Covid-19 symptoms over an extended period, it has been revealed that the effects of long Covid can persist for at least a year after the acute phase of the illness has subsided.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Americans’ biggest fears: Opioids surge past guns in Axios-Ipsos poll

• The summertime rise in COVID cases and hospitalizations is making some Americans rethink if the pandemic is over, but it isn’t persuading them to start wearing masks again or test for the virus, according to the latest Axios-Ipsos American Health Index.

• The big picture: Economic and political turmoil, along with unease about developments like AI, have left many Americans numb to public health threats, though issues like the opioid crisis and shortage of cancer drugs are still registering.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ Ars Technica ☛ Windows feature that resets system clocks based on random data is wreaking havoc

• A few months ago, an engineer in a data center in Norway encountered some perplexing errors that caused a Windows server to suddenly reset its system clock to 55 days in the future. The engineer relied on the server to maintain a routing table that tracked cell phone numbers in real time as they moved from one carrier to the other. A jump of eight weeks had dire consequences because it caused numbers that had yet to be transferred to be listed as having already been moved and numbers that had already been transferred to be reported as pending.

• “With these updated routing tables, a lot of people were unable to make calls, as we didn’t have a correct state!” the engineer, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Simen, wrote in an email. “We would route incoming and outgoing calls to the wrong operators! This meant, e.g., children could not reach their parents and vice versa.”

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ NY Times Considering A Potentially Very Dumb Lawsuit Against OpenAI Because It Learned From NY Times Content

• A few weeks ago, the NY Times published a very nice profile piece about me, which starts off with the story of how I recently got pulled into a group chat with a bunch of Hollywood writers, directors, and actors, who were trying to understand how to deal with the rise of generative AI tools. The article recounted how my basic message was that most of the legal routes they were considering weren’t likely to be all that effective — especially thinking copyright will save them — but noting that they should be looking to look for ways to embrace the AI and do more with it themselves.

=> ↺ Newsweek ☛ Steve Jobs Unveils the iMac

• Another key decision was to base all of Apple’s new products on the speedy G3 PowerPC chip, allowing the company to boast that it made competing Pentium machines look snail-like. Apple has sold 500,000 desktop G3s, a key factor in giving the company, to Wall Street’s astonishment, not one but two profitable quarters, putting the company $100 million in the black for that period. “I don’t care how cool the computer is,” says Apple senior VP of worldwide sales Mitch Mandich. “If we’re losing money, this won’t work. Because you have to be viable.”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Driverless Car Gets Stuck in Wet Concrete in San Francisco

• The incident, previously reported by SFgate.com, happened just days after California regulators agreed to expand driverless taxi services in San Francisco, despite the safety concerns of local officials and community activists.

=> ↺ SFGate ☛ Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

• The company’s vehicles were hit hard by an onslaught of Outside Lands attendees last weekend; in North Beach, a slew of vehicles were unable to be re-routed because of “wireless connectivity issues,” while a viral TikTok clip showed a Cruise vehicle stuck on a key intersection just outside of Golden Gate Park.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Guy Who Uses AI to Post as a Voluptuous Influencer: “I Usually Just Call Myself Her Manager”

• But there’s one glaring thing that sets her apart from most other influencers: she doesn’t actually exist. Natalia’s entire likeness is the product of an AI image generator, a figment of the imagination of a machine learning algorithm. As such, everything about her feels comically exaggerated for the male gaze — her figure impossibly curvaceous, her hair preposterously lustrous, her outfits ludicrously crisp and revealing — and yet she’s picking up tens of thousands of adoring fans on social.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ IBM Consulting to help firms build generative AI applications with Microsoft

• IBM Corp. is partnering with Microsoft Corp. to lend its expertise to enterprises that are looking for ways to deploy generative artificial intelligence and improve their business processes.

=> ↺ The Economist ☛ AI is setting off a great scramble for data

• The two essential ingredients for an AI model are datasets, on which the system is trained, and processing power, through which the model detects relationships within and among those datasets. Those two ingredients are, to an extent, substitutes: a model can be improved either by ingesting more data or adding more processing power. The latter, however, is becoming difficult owing to a shortage of specialist AI chips, leading model-builders to be doubly focused on seeking out data.

• Demand for data is growing so fast that the stock of high-quality text available for training may be exhausted by 2026, reckons Epoch AI, a research outfit. The latest AI models from Google and Meta, two tech giants, are likely trained on over 1trn words. By comparison, the sum total of English words on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is about 4bn.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft’s AI travel writer advises foodies visiting Canada to fill up at Ottawa’s food bank

• The Microsoft guide seemed to think the food bank was a contender for a Michelin Star. In what is perhaps the biggest and most embarrassing AI goof yet, Microsoft advised vacationers to “Consider going into it on an empty stomach.” This sounded like a joke from a comedian who enthralls his fans with highly offensive humor.

• It’s worth noting that Microsoft laid off MSN journalists and editors in 2020 in a push to replace them with AI, but as BuzzFeed recently showed us, the time is not yet ripe to let AI loose on travel articles. It’s bland, repetitive and cliched, and as Microsoft just proved, it can’t tell the difference between a place where the privileged eat and a place where people go when they’ve hit rock bottom. Generative AI is still very flawed, but that’s nothing an editor couldn’t sort out in a few minutes.

Windows TCO

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Clorox cleans up IT security breach that soaked its biz ops

• The intrusion continues to disrupt “parts of the company’s business operations,” and it is “working diligently to respond to and address this issue, and is also coordinating with law enforcement,” according to the Form 8-K submission.

• The manufacturer has also hired third-party cybersecurity firms to help probe the mess and aid in the IT scrubbing efforts.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Bank Accidentally Lets People Withdraw Money From ATMs Even If They Don’t Have Any

• The bank also warned customers that any withdrawals made during the time of the glitch would later be posted to their accounts.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Free Cash in Ireland, at Least for a Moment, Thanks to a Bank Glitch

• Aside from the withdrawal glitch, customers said that the outage was especially frustrating given that the bank charged monthly fees to maintain the account — €6 for a personal use account — and called for a reimbursement.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Rapid7 Says ROI for Ransomware Remains High; Zero-Day Usage Expands

• The review is compiled from the observations of Rapid7’s researchers and its managed services teams. It finds there were more than 1500 ransomware victims worldwide in H1 2023. These included 526 LockBit victims, 212 Alphv/BlackCat victims, 178 ClOp victims, and 133 BianLian victims. The figures are compiled from leak site communications, public disclosures, and Rapid7 incident response data.

• These figures should be seen as conservative. [...]

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ Cuba Ransomware Deploys New Tools: Targets Critical Infrastructure Sector in the U.S. and IT Integrator in Latin America

• Cuba ransomware is currently into the fourth year of its operation and shows no sign of slowing down. In the first half of 2023 alone, the operators behind Cuba ransomware were the perpetrators of several high-profile attacks across disparate industries.

Security

=> ↺ LWN ☛ Security updates for Thursday

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (open-vm-tools, openjdk-11, and openssh), Fedora (librsvg2, llhttp, opensc, and rust), Oracle (.NET 6.0, .NET 7.0, iperf3, microcode_ctl, postgresql:10, and python-requests), SUSE (openssl-1_0_0, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, postgresql12, and postgresql15), and Ubuntu (ceph, haproxy, heat, libpod, and postgresql-12, postgresql-14, postgresql-15).

=> ↺ Help Net Security ☛ Findlargedir: Find all “blackhole” directories with a huge amount of filesystem entries – Help Net Security

• Findlargedir helps quickly identify “black hole” directories on any filesystem having more than 100k entries in a single flat structure.

=> ↺ Dark Reading ☛ LinkedIn Suffers ‘Significant’ Wave of Account Hacks

• Users report losing access to their accounts, with some being pressured into paying a ransom to get back in or else face permanent account deletion.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Malicious QR code hacking campaign is targeting Microsoft credentials

• QR codes are arguably one of the most ubiquitous technologies of the third decade of the 21st century, following the lead from China, where they’ve mostly replaced cash in everyday transactions. The convenience of scanning a QR code is well-documented, but not as well-documented is what happens when the QR code is malicious.

=> ↺ Help Net Security ☛ Phishers use QR codes to target companies in various industries – Help Net Security

• A phishing campaign using QR codes has been detected targeting various industries to acquire Microsoft credentials.

=> ↺ Jefferson Health warns Cherry Hill hospital patients of potential data breach

• Some patients at Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital are being advised to keep an eye on their credit reports due to a potential data breach.

• The hospital started notifying select patients this week that their private data may have been compromised after a backup hard drive went missing from a DEXA scan machine, which is used to measure bone density.

=> ↺ BlackBerry ☛ Cuba Ransomware Deploys New Tools: Targets Critical Infrastructure Sector in the U.S. and IT Integrator in Latin America

• BlackBerry has discovered and documented new tools used by the Cuba ransomware threat group.

• Cuba ransomware is currently into the fourth year of its operation and shows no sign of slowing down. In the first half of 2023 alone, the operators behind Cuba ransomware were the perpetrators of several high-profile attacks across disparate industries.

=> ↺ Compliance: National Credit Union Administration issues letter on cyber incident reporting notification requirements

• NCUA issued a Letter to Credit Unions (23-CU-07) on the cyber incident notification requirements that go into effect Sept. 1. Credit unions will be required to notify the NCUA no later than 72 hours after the credit union reasonably believes it has experienced a reportable cyber incident or has received a notification from a third party regarding a reportable cyber incident.

=> ↺ TheBusiness Times ☛ ShopBack fined S$74,400 for data breach of over a million users

• The data breach incident happened on Sep 9, 2020 when a malicious threat actor accessed Ecommerce Enablers’ storage server with a key inadvertently leaked by a senior member of the company’s software engineering team.

• The threat actor then proceeded to extract close to 1.5 million email addresses, 840,210 names, 447,076 mobile numbers, 299,381 bank account numbers. There were also misappropriation of 378,531 instances of credit card information including partial credit card numbers and expiry dates.

=> ↺ NYC Finance Department Sent Every Employee Their Colleagues’ Personal Info

• The city Department of Finance inadvertently emailed a roster of all of its staff — containing home addresses, cell numbers and personal email addresses — to the agency’s roughly 1,800 employees in a botched test of its emergency notification system, THE CITY has learned.

• The snafu was accompanied by automated calls to agency employees that were mistakenly made around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, rather than at the planned time of 10 a.m. They featured a brief recording saying the calls were a test of the emergency notification system.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ PowerShell? More like PowerHell: Microsoft won’t fix flaws in package gallery ripe for supply chain attacks

• Yet despite the IT goliath apparently confirming the existence of the flaws – and telling the Aqua team twice that fixes were in place and the issues had been resolved – as of today the bugs are still reproducible, it’s claimed. The Aqua trio say they’ve made a proof-of-concept exploit for two of the three security issues.

• The Windows giant did not immediately respond to The Register’s inquiries, and we will update this story if or when we hear back.

=> ↺ Neowin ☛ Microsoft fails to fix major PowerShell Gallery security flaws even after claiming it did

• AquaSec explains in its report that there are three major flaws in PSGallery, centered around deception and forgery.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Chrome 116 Patches 26 Vulnerabilities

• Google has released Chrome 116 with patches for 26 vulnerabilities and plans to ship weekly security updates for the popular web browser.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Google Releases Security Key Implementation Resilient to Quantum Attacks

• Google has released the first quantum-resilient FIDO2 security key implementation as part of its OpenSK project.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Ivanti Patches Critical Vulnerability in Avalanche Enterprise MDM Solution

• Ivanti has patched critical- and high-severity vulnerabilities with the latest release of Avalanche, its enterprise mobile device management solution.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Cleaning Products Giant Clorox Takes Systems Offline Following Cyberattack [Ed: Windows TCO]

• Cleaning products manufacturer and marketer Clorox Company has taken certain systems offline after falling victim to a cyberattack.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Krebs On Security ☛ Karma Catches Up to Global Phishing Service 16Shop

• You’ve probably never heard of “16Shop,” but there’s a good chance someone using it has tried to phish you.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ YouTube Ads May Have Led to Online Tracking of Children, Research Says

• On Thursday, two United States senators sent a letter to the F.T.C., urging it to investigate whether Google and YouTube had violated COPPA, citing Adalytics and reporting by The New York Times. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said they were concerned that the company may have tracked children and served them targeted ads without parental consent, facilitating “the vast collection and distribution” of children’s data.

• “This behavior by YouTube and Google is estimated to have impacted hundreds of thousands, to potentially millions, of children across the United States,” the senators wrote.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ China May Have A New Submarine Tracking Technology

• Submarines have always been about stealth; that’s always been the whole point of putting them underwater. Tracking them can be difficult, even to this day, but China may have a new technique to help in this endeavour, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ 2023 Cyberdeck Contest: A Toddler’s Cyberdeck

• [Josh] has a child and what do children like more than stuffing random things into their mouths? Pushing buttons, twiddling knobs, and yanking things of course! So [Josh] did what any self-respecting hacker would do and built his little man a custom cyberdeck.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ Crisis in Niger threatens security across the Sahel and beyond

• The coup leaders then turned against the prevailing international engagement efforts in the country. In late 2021, they invited the Russian Wagner mercenary group to provide security assistance and asked the French to leave. The result has been greater domestic insecurity. Wagner has occupied France’s former bases and conducted operations with scant regard for civilian lives. One of its top priorities has been to secure access to Mali’s economic resources, chiefly minerals.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Calls on US to Declassify Documents on Chile’s 1973 Coup

• “In Chile as well, a similar request was made … that aims to declassify documents from the Nixon administration, particularly certain testimonies from the CIA director. This is to attain a clearer understanding of what transpired and how the United States was involved in the planning of the civil and military coup, and the subsequent years that followed,” Vallejo said. “This is very important for our history.”

=> ↺ Greece ☛ Migrant arrivals by sea double in first eight months of 2023

• These figures have raised reasonable concern that the number of dead and missing may even exceed the dismal record of 793 in 2015, a year with over a million arrivals.

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ Church asylum in Germany defended: Deportation of Syrian refugee stopped

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ France installs floating barrier on English Channel, such buoys with saw blades in Texas could violate laws

=> ↺ NPR ☛ China makes it harder for its Muslim citizens to go to Mecca, or anywhere else

• China runs state-approved tours to Mecca, but that was not an option for the pilgrims NPR contacted. The waiting list for the limited number of Hajj spots Saudi Arabia allocates to Muslims in China is now at least five years long, said the pilgrims. Moreover, China forbids its public sector employees from completing the Hajj, regardless of their age. Employees risk losing their retirement pensions and other state-managed benefits if they go anyways.

=> ↺ Variety ☛ TikTok Banned on New York City Government-Owned Smartphones Over Security Concerns

• In June, TikTok hired former longtime Disney communications chief Zenia Mucha in the newly formed role of chief brand and communications officer. She is responsible for TikTok’s global marketing and communications strategies.

=> ↺ Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Estonian MFA recommends avoiding crowds in Sweden

• SVT reported that the head of SäPo attended the Swedish government’s Thursday sitting in connection with the threat level rising. In addition to SäPo, the Swedish armed forces have also raised their level of readiness.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ New York City Bans TikTok on Government-Owned Devices

• Jonah Allon, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams, said in a statement that the city’s Cyber Command determined that the app “posed a security threat to the city’s technical networks.” City agencies must remove the app within 30 days and employees will lose access to TikTok and its website from city-owned devices and networks.

=> ↺ [Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ New York City Bans TikTok From All Government Devices as Security Concerns Persist

• On Wednesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ administration issued a ban on short-form video social app TikTok from all government devices, requiring all city employees and departments to remove the app from government-issued phones and computers immediately within 30 days. NYC Cyber Command, an entity focusing on cyber threats for the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, recommended the ban following a recent security review.

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ NYC Bans TikTok on City Devices

• The New York City ban is particularly notable, in part because the city NYC is home to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, two of the app’s most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill. The lawmakers, who have a combined 1.2 million TikTok followers, have opposed recent efforts to ban the app nationally, with Ocasio-Cortez describing the effort as “unprecedented.” In fact, Bowman was one of several lawmakers who went to bat for the app during a rally in D.C. earlier this year featuring prominent creators from around the country. It was later learned TikTok paid for the creators’ travel expenses.

=> ↺ ADF ☛ Mali Violence Out of Control Under Junta Rule

• Mali is a longtime battleground for terrorist groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which is linked to al-Qaida, and the Islamic State Greater Sahel (ISGS). The two groups have attacked civilians, security forces and each another for years.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Texas woman charged with threatening judge overseeing Trump election interference case

• According to the indictment, Abigail Jo Shry called the chambers of US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan on August 5. She allegedly stated “you are in our sights, we want to kill you” and “we want to kill Sheila Jackson Lee.” After threatening to kill Chutkan and Sheila Jackson Lee, Shry allegedly stated “if Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly…” Shry then threatened to “kill all democrats in Washington DC” as well as “all people in the LGBTQ community.”

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Why Nuclear Bombs Can’t Set The World On Fire

• Before the first atomic bomb was detonated, there were some fears that a fission bomb could “ignite the atmosphere.” Yes, if you’ve just watched Oppenheimer, read about the Manhattan Project, or looked into atomic weapons at all, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Physicists determined the risk was “near zero,” proceeded ahead with the Trinity test, and the world lived to see another day.

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ Crisis in Niger threatens security across the Sahel and beyond

• In recent years, domestic developments in Niger—indeed, across North Africa’s Sahel region—scarcely attracted attention from the wider world, except in Paris, where French policymakers still took an interest in Francophone Africa. But the military coup …

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ The United States and its allies must be ready to deter a two-front war and nuclear attacks in East Asia

• This report highlights two emerging and interrelated deterrence challenges in East Asia with grave risks to US national security: 1) Horizontal escalation of a conflict with China or North Korea into simultaneous conflict; 2) Vertical escalation to a limited nuclear attack by either or both adversaries to avoid conceding.

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Putin must not be allowed to turn the Black Sea into a Russian lake

• Western countries must take urgent action to prevent Vladimir Putin from turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake, warns Melinda Haring.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Lukashenka Says Putin Not Pushing Belarus To Join War In Ukraine

• Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka said Russian President Vladimir Putin is not trying to push Belarus into joining the war in Ukraine and vowed that Minsk’s forces would never take part in the war unless Ukrainian troops crossed the border into Belarus.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Putin, Raisi Hold Call, Discuss Possible Iranian Membership Of BRICS

• Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi have discussed Iran’s possible future membership in the BRICS grouping of emerging economies.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ In Defeating the August 1991 Coup, Russians Won—and Then Lost—Democracy

• Moscow, Russia—I will never forget the evening after the August coup in Moscow. The people around the White House, who spent three days in the “living ring” of defenders of the young Russian democracy, were beautiful. Never since have I seen so many soulful people together. They were very different people, students, aspiring entrepreneurs, workers, nurses, professors, Muscovites and those who came from other regions of the country. Most of them were young. They realized that history and their lives depended not only on the leaders, the military, and officials—but also on themselves. This was the most important outcome of those days’ events. People had changed. They did not agree that someone else would decide how they should live. And they definitely did not want to return to what they had seen before Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika—the control of society by the Communist party and the special services, the inability to speak freely and implement their life plans, isolation from the world, fear reminiscent of Stalin’s repressions. People wanted to go forward, they wanted to become free citizens of a modern free country.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Airlines operating direct flights to Russia expect disruptions as airline IT giant SITA gets ready to leave Russian market — Meduza

• Airlines operating direct flights between Russia and other countries will likely run into turbulence come fall.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Ukraine’s National Guard: Azov Brigade replenished and active, ‘meeting goals’ in Luhansk region — Meduza

• Azov Brigade, the Ukrainian formation that defended Mariupol in the spring of 2022, has been replenished and returned to the front, said the Ukrainian National Guard’s Colonel Mykola Urshalovich in a press briefing.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Latvia sends troops to guard Belarus border

• The Latvian defence ministry is sending troops to help guard the country’s border with Belarus, Reuters reported on Tuesday. This follows announcements from Poland and Lithuania about increasing measures to secure the Belarus border.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Lithuania Closes Two Border Checkpoints With Belarus Amid Rising Tensions

• Lithuania has decided to temporarily close two of its six border checkpoints with Belarus amid growing tensions, officials said.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Belarus Auctions Off Former Would-Be Presidential Candidate Viktar Babaryka’s Belongings

• Belarusian authorities have put on auction possessions belonging to jailed former would-be Belarusian presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Minsk Shuts Down Opposition Belarusian Popular Front Party

• The Supreme Court of Belarus on August 14 shut down the opposition Belarusian Popular Front Party (PBNF) amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Belarusian opposition organise rally in Vilnius 3 years after rigged presidential election

• Belarusian opposition activists are staging a march in Vilnius on Wednesday to mark the third anniversary of Belarus’ disputed presidential election that sparked mass protests in the country.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Son Of Former Would-Be Belarusian Presidential Candidate Sentenced To Eight Years

• The son of jailed Belarusian presidential hopeful Viktar Babaryka has been convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison on charges that he and other activists rejected as trumped up.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Authorities In Minsk Sell Opposition Leader Tsikhanouskaya’s Apartment In Auction

• Authorities in Minsk have sold a two-bedroom apartment belonging to opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya and her husband, jailed blogger and former would-be presidential candidate, Syarhey Tsikhanouski.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ I remember his look. The story of a soldier and a migrant

• In the summer of 2021, hundreds of people started crossing the Lithuanian border from Belarus every day. As a result, Lithuania reinforced its border protection, building a metal fence and a barbed-wire barrier and assigning troops to help the border guards.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Warning shot fired in apprehension of illegal border crossers

• This week, on August 8 a Latvian border guard used a firearm, firing warning shots, to detain a group of eight immigrants for illegally crossing the Latvia-Belarus border, according to information posted on the State Border Guard’s website.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Poland to send additional 2,000 troops to Belarus border

• Poland will send an additional 2,000 troops to reinforce its eastern border with neighbouring Belarus, a deputy interior minister said Wednesday, as a record number of migrants try to cross.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Poland To Send Additional 2,000 Troops To Belarusian Border

• Poland will send an additional 2,000 troops to reinforce its eastern border with neighboring Belarus, a deputy interior minister said on August 9, as a record number of migrants try to cross.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuanian border post with Belarus reopens after stand-off over stranded migrant

• Lithuania’s Medininkai border checkpoint reopened on Sunday evening after a Pakistani citizen travelling with forged documents was allowed back into Belarus, a spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service (VSAT) has told BNS.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Border guard sends extra forces to Latvia-Belarus border

• As of Tuesday, August 15, the State Border Guard shall mobilize extra border guards in the service for guarding the eastern border, taking into account the rapidly rising hybrid war threat on the Latvian–Belarusian border.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Latvia Beefs Up Belarus Border Protection Following 96 Illegal Crossing Attempts

• The Latvian border guard service said on August 15 it had requested army and police assistance to guard the border with Belarus after registering 96 attempts to cross the border illegally in a 24-hour period.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Belarus Shuts Down Opposition United Civil Party As Civil Society Crackdown Continues

• Amid an intense crackdown on dissent, Belarus’s Supreme Court ordered the closure of the longstanding opposition United Civil Party, the Vyasna rights group said on August 15.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania hands in note to Belarus over launch of Astravyets NPP’s 2nd unit

• Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry has handed in a diplomatic note to Minsk following the launch of the second unit of the Astravyets nuclear power plant, located some 50km from Vilnius.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Poland Says Belarusian Helicopters Violated Its Airspace, Orders More Soldiers To Border

• The Polish Defense Ministry says two Belarusian military helicopters that were conducting training exercises near the border violated Poland’s airspace on August 1.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Poland sends more troops to border, Lithuania will not ‘reveal measures’

• Poland has decided to send additional troops to the Belarusian border after two military helicopters violated the country’s airspace. Meanwhile, Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anušauskas said the country would not reveal the measures it would take at the border.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuanian parents face child abduction charges after trying to take three kids to Belarus

• Lithuanian officers on Tuesday detained parents who had kidnapped their children and were trying to flee the country. The operation involved a wild car chase and forged documents that the couple – members of an extreme anti-government and conspiracist movement – tried to use to get past the border guards.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania-based Belarusian NGO to be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

• Our Home, a Belarusian human rights NGO operating in Lithuania, will be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the organisation said on Monday.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Four bust through Latvia-Belarus border fence Sunday

• On Sunday, August 6, by cutting the wire in the permanent fence structure, the Belarusian authorities helped four men to enter Latvia illegally, the State Border Guard said on Monday.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Poland To Send Additional Troops To Belarusian Border

• Poland’s Defense Ministry has agreed to send additional troops to the border with Belarus following a request from the border-guard service, state-run news agency PAP reported on August 8.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Oligarch supplies raw materials to Belarusian factory via Lithuania – LRT Investigation

• Alexander Moshensky, a Belarusian oligarch close to the country’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko, has devised a scheme to pay less tax in Europe, supply raw materials to a factory in Belarus, and rack up tax-free profits in the tax haven of Seychelles, the LRT Investigation Team and its partners have found.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Baltic states and Poland mark Lukashenko’s “massive electoral fraud”

• The Foreign Ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland issued a joint statement August 9 marking three years since Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko clung onto power via rigged presidential elections.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ U.S. Expands Sanctions Targeting Belarusian State Entities On ‘Election’ Anniversary

• The United States issued new sanctions against several Belarusian entities and individuals on August 9, the third anniversary of the 2020 presidential election that kept authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka in power.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Despite warnings and ‘recruitment’ attempts, Lithuanians keep travelling to Belarus – official

• Nearly a quarter of a million Lithuanians have travelled to Belarus over the first six months of this year, even as Vilnius-Minsk relations remain hostile and the Lithuanian government has advised citizens against going to the country.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Anger and frustration as Lithuania moves to close Belarus border checkpoints

• Lithuania’s plans to close down the Šumskas checkpoint on its border with Belarus is causing frustration and concern among travellers.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ LTV looks at past, present and future of Latvian eastern border

• Over the years, the construction of Latvia’s eastern border infrastructure has gained the reputation of ‘not the most successful project’. Criminal proceedings have been brought in this context, the deadlines have been pushed forward many times, and in the middle of all, there has been a hybrid war developed by the Belarusian regime. When will the eastern border finally be ready?

Environment

=> ↺ Teen Vogue ☛ Held v. Montana: First US Youth Climate Lawsuit Supports Right to Clean Environment

• This legal strategy is being attempted in other states facing devastation from the climate crisis, including Hawaii, where 14 Hawaiian young people are suing the state and its Department of Transportation, as previously covered by Teen Vogue. Last week, it was reported that the case will go to trial in summer 2024. The youth in the Hawaii and Montana cases are represented by the same nonprofit, Our Children’s Trust, founded “to sue on behalf of children’s right to a safe climate,” reported Grist.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Planet Is Only Getting Hotter

• And if nature taking aim at us weren’t enough, it seems that we’ve declared war on ourselves. Not just in places like Ukraine or Sudan, where the death tolls are in the thousands, but closer to home, too, where Americans are madly over-armed with nearly 400 million guns. I’m thinking about our cities and towns, highways and byways, schools and synagogues. After all, according to the Gun Violence Archive, such weaponry has killed more than 24,000 people so far this year alone (and that’s already more than the number of civilians killed in Ukraine and Sudan combined).

• It’s as if we are at war, but the enemy is us.

=> ↺ [Old] Ohio State University ☛ 36. “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us”

• During the War of 1812, the United States Navy defeated the British Navy in the Battle of Lake Erie. Master Commandant Oliver Perry wrote to Major General William Henry Harrison, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Kelly’s parody of this famous battle report perfectly summarizes mankind’s tendency to create our own problems. In this case, we have only ourselves to blame for the pollution and destruction of our environment.

=> ↺ [Repeat] New York Times ☛ As Dead Dolphins Wash Ashore, Ukraine Builds a Case of Ecocide Against Russia

• Currently, four specific acts — genocide, crimes against humanity, aggression and war crimes — are recognized as international crimes. Ukraine would like to add a fifth — ecocide — and it is setting out to build its case against Russia. The autopsy of the porpoise was part of that effort.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Texas’ Methane Waste Accelerates Climate Change While Squandering State Revenue

• In terms of greenhouse effect, methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. But the harm caused by the unnecessary waste of methane goes beyond climate destruction; it also costs Texas hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue, makes people sick and deprives the energy market of gas stocks that could power the state’s entire residential grid, with capacity to spare.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Deadly gas station fire in Makhachkala kills 35 and injures 75 more as fuel tanks detonate State flags are flying at half-staff across Dagestan in mourning for the victims — Meduza

• A catastrophic gas station fire broke out around 9:50 p.m. on Monday night on the outskirts of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. Engulfing a total area of 600 square meters (close to 6,500 square feet), the flames triggered explosions, setting off two of the eight fuel storage tanks on site.

=> ↺ DeSmog ☛ As EU Weans Itself From Russian Energy, U.S. Shale Gas Industry Pushes New LNG Export Plant in Pennsylvania

• When Zulene Mayfield testifies next week against plans to build a $6.8 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in her Pennsylvania hometown, she will be facing off against some of the most powerful fossil fuel interests in the United States.

• As co-founder of the community group Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, Mayfield has spent years fighting to protect her majority Black and low-income city from the pollution spewed by the nearby Covanta waste-to-energy facility — the country’s largest waste incinerator. 

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Comoros citizens save stranded whale calf

• A whale calf was stranded on August 13 near the Moroni port in Comoros. Locals mobilised on a grand scale to rescue the 10-tonne creature, keeping it alive until it was free to swim away. A livestreamed video shows the impressive rescue effort.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Water managers warn that stretches of the Rio Grande will dry up without more rain

• Due to a higher-than-normal irrigation demand and lower than expected natural river flow, the conservancy district began releasing water on July 17 from the San Juan-Chama Project, which brings water from the Colorado River Basin into the Rio Grande Basin via a system of diversion dams, tunnels, channels and other infrastructure. About 40% of the current irrigation supply is from project storage releases, with the rest from natural river flow.

• Irrigation district officials expect water from the project to run out before Aug. 23, leaving them to rely solely on natural flows to continue making water deliveries through the fall.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Facebook “Tagging” = Communication with the Tagged Person, for Purposes of Restraining Order

• I have argued that criminal harassment laws and similar court orders may sometimes permissibly restrict unwanted speech to a person—”communications with a protected person,” in the court’s words—but not speech about a person (unless it’s otherwise constitutionally unprotected, for instance is libel or a true threat of illegal conduct). This decision, as I read it, essentially treats tagging as speech to a person, since the same post could have just mentioned Boes’s then-wife without tagging her, and the function of the tagging appears to have been precisely to make it more likely that Boes will receive notification of the message.

Finance

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Vox’s Student Loan ‘Expert’ Is Paid by Debt Collectors

• A Vox piece insisted that “student debt forgiveness isn’t happening”–but didn’t disclose the author’s ties to the student loan industry.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ TikTok’s Music Division Reportedly Grapples With U.S. Layoffs Following Streaming Service Launch

• About one month after TikTok Music became available in nations including Brazil and Indonesia, the division behind the streaming service’s music offerings is reportedly grappling with layoffs. Word of TikTok’s music-side personnel cutbacks, including across its TikTok Music streaming service and its SoundOn distribution platform, entered the media spotlight in a report from Billboard.

=> ↺ Biden’s Approval on the Economy Stagnates

• AP-NORC Poll: “Only 36% of U.S. adults approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, slightly lower than the 42% who approve of his overall performance, according to the new poll.”

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ India’s digital public goods diplomacy scores wins around the world

• India Stack is based on the payment, identity, and data services India developed to power its own citizen-facing services. India’s population recently topped 1.4 billion, meaning India Stack is proven to operate at a scale that can meet the needs of any other nation. India Stack also powers impressive services: the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has brought electronic payments and banking services to even the country’s smallest merchants.

• In May 2022 India launched an initiative to share India Stack with other nations – an act of altruism, but also a strategy to spread Indian influence around the world.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ China’s dilemma in trying to manage debt crisis

• Beijing is caught between rolling out more stimulus to prop up the Chinese economy, or pulling back government incentives that fueled the real estate bubble — and risking a deeper economic slowdown that could create social unrest, experts say.

=> ↺ Public employees stage one-day strike over government’s low raise proposal

• As the government’s offer failed to meet their expectations, members of the KESK union confederation carried out a one-day work stoppage across the country.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Pressure Grows on Clarence Thomas to Resign as ProPublica Exposes More Undisclosed Lavish Trips, Gifts

• In the wake of ProPublica’s bombshell report detailing even more lavish gifts from right-wing billionaires to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, five House Democrats are calling on the Justice Department to investigate Thomas under the Ethics in Government Act for accepting the series of gifts from wealthy benefactors without following disclosure laws. Federal judges are required to disclose gifts worth more than $1,000 — including travel. ProPublica’s report documents Justice Thomas accepting 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, 12 VIP passes to sporting events and eight helicopter flights, all paid for by wealthy patrons. We speak with co-author of the ProPublica investigation Brett Murphy about the process of revealing these lavish gifts and why even other judges consider it “an unprecedented amount of largesse for a justice to be accepting, let alone accepting and not disclosing.”

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents

• At one point, we had a functioning Constitutional Republic. Sure, it wasn’t an actual democracy — the Electoral College still elected our president — but it seemed to function about as well as any major nation’s government does, if not better on most occasions.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ We Don’t Need a New Twitter

• It’s time to move beyond the flawed idea of a global conversation platform.

=> ↺ Marcy Wheeler ☛ Death by Tweet: “User Attribution Is Important”

• User attribution is important. Especially with a guy who has the ability to murder by tweet. And that’s why DOJ would need to know every account or person or device that had an association with Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ U.S. Steel bids may put cherished ticker symbol “X” in play

• A flurry of takeover bids for industrial icon U.S. Steel could mean its long-held ticker symbol, “X,” may become available.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Rudy Giuliani faces RICO charge similar to one he used against mobsters

• Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani is facing the same law that once propelled him into the spotlight.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Free Hong Kong newspaper Sky Post to axe print edition next month in response to ‘market development’

• Sky Post, one of Hong Kong’s free Chinese-language newspapers, will stop its printed version next month as it focuses on its online version. Sky Post made the announcement in a Facebook post in Chinese on Wednesday…

=> ↺ [Old] Salve J Nilsen ☛ NIS2 and CRA – EU LAWS that may kill Open Source?

• Of course, these laws aren’t finished yet. NIS2 has to be implemented in local law, and the CRA is (as of this writing) still a work in progress. While the situation may still change, I believe there are a couple things Open Source communities can do to prepare already now.

• Ensure supply-chain security procedures are in place and all issues resolved.

• Create easy-to-find-and-use documentation directed at business managers that are forced to be introduced to their new Open Source colleagues.

• Clarify project adoption and takeover procedures so the ones with a bus-factor of zero get a chance to be revived.

• and more…

• I’ve summarized some of my thoughts on this in the presentation I gave at the Perl Toolchain Summit 2023 in Lyon, France, on April 27th 2023, embedded below.

=> ↺ The Hindu ☛ ‘Majority of Muslims in India have converted from Hinduism’: Ghulam Nabi Azad

• DPAP chairman Ghulam Nabi Azad said a majority of Indian Muslims have converted from Hinduism, adding that an example of this can be found in the Kashmir Valley where a majority of Kashmiri Pandits converted to Islam.

• Asserting that religion should not used to get political mileage, Mr. Azad said whoever takes refuge in religion in politics is weak.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Taliban Bans Political Parties In Afghanistan After Declaring Them Un-Islamic

• “Political parties are banned completely, we will not permit any political party to operate in the country,” Abdul Hakim Sharaee, the Taliban’s de facto justice minister, said during a news conference on August 16, one day after the Taliban marked two years of rule since international troops withdrew from the country.

• “Political parties have no justification in Islamic Shari’a law and they are not in the best interest of our nation,” he added, claiming political parties have been the main factor causing turmoil in Afghanistan for decades.

=> ↺ CoryDoctorow ☛ When parties fail, movements step up

• The Nader and Perot campaigns were doomed from the outset, in other words. Either candidate could have been far more popular than the D and R on the ballot, and they still would have lost. It’s how the deck is stacked, and to unstack it, reformers would need to take charge of at least one – and probably both – of the parties.

• But that’s not cause for surrender – it’s a call to action. In an interview with Seymour Hersh, Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal) sets out another locus of power, one with the potential to deliver control over the party to its base: social movements: [...]

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The Global South’s BRICS Play Should Not Be Dismissed

• The multiple failures of the US-led world order to substantially support two core requirements of Global South states—economic development and safeguarding sovereignty—are creating a demand for alternative structures for ordering the world. The BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are two major responses to these failures. They are bringing the East and the South together in rooms in which Washington and its core allies are not exactly welcome—even when they invite themselves.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Supo: Sweden security warnings not affecting terror threat level in Finland

• Authorities in Sweden have raised their alert level in response to increased anti-Sweden propaganda in radical islamist channels after several protests at which the Quran was burned.

• Supo says there is no similar propaganda aimed at Finland, so the threat remains unchanged. The agency said that it is following the situation closely, however.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ ‘AI-written history’ of Maui wildfire becomes Amazon bestseller, fuels conspiracies

• One reviewer assessed the title as “inaccurate and insensitive… smells of AI, even before the smoke clears (literally).” Another described it as “a sloppily put together fake book,” and claimed it was “generated by ChatGPT artificial ‘intelligence’,” adding: “Nothing of any value is contained within these pages.”

• Bizarrely, a book about the book has a 2.5-star rating, at time of writing.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Belarusian National Archive Employees Detained As Wave Of Dismissals Continues

• Belarusian National Security Committee officials detained at least seven employees of the National Historical Archive on August 16, including the deputy director of science and department heads, for undisclosed reasons.

=> ↺ Director and model detained after fashion shoot at mosque released

• Director B.K. had shared the photos taken inside and outside the mosque under the title “The Magic of Contrasts.” The court released E.C., the individual photographed at Kocatepe Mosque, and B.K., the director who shared the content, on probation.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Gazprom Unit Blocks Move To Approve Extension Of Russian Broadcaster’s Trademark

• The board of directors of the shuttered independent Russian broadcaster Ekho Moskvy have voted down a proposal to extend the radio station’s trademark. [...]

=> ↺ Gannett ☛ ‘Don’t be evil’: Russia fines Google, says it promotes fake news about Ukraine war: Live updates

• Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY. Google shut down its Russian business in May 2022, a few months after President Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, saying Moscow’s seizure of Google’s bank account in Russia made it “untenable” to pay employees and vendors. YouTube, owned by Google, has continued to operate there.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russia Fines Google For Not Deleting ‘Fake Information’ About War In Ukraine

• Russia on August 17 fined Alphabet’s Google 3 million rubles ($31,845) for not deleting what it said was fake information about what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, the TASS news agency reported. [...]

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ After Freedom Of Speech Opening, Uzbekistan Is Now Binge-Arresting And Imprisoning Bloggers

• His case was one of 10 highlighted in a June report by the Berlin-based nonprofit the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights called Uzbekistan: President’s Broken Promises Put Journalists And Bloggers At Risk.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Belarus Sentences Woman To Six Years In Prison For Online Comments

• The Minsk City Court has sentenced Natallya Petrovich, a 68-year-old Belarusian citizen, to six years in prison and fined her 3,000 Belarusian rubles ($1,183) for comments she made online about officials. [...]

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Twitter Now Throttling Traffic to Sites Elon Musk Doesn’t Like

• Twitter — sorry, uh, X — owner Elon Musk is making it more difficult to access content via external links on the social media platform by literally slowing the speed with which users get redirected.

• The sites that are affected are unsurprisingly X’s competitors and reputable news sources that Musk has a personal bone to pick with, including the New York Times, Reuters, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Substack, the Washington Post reports.

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ Sweden raises terror threat level after Quran burnings

• Von Essen stressed the attack threat posed by “violent Islamist actors” has increased, but the alert level was not raised due to any knowledge of a specific plan.

• “Sweden has gone from being considered a legitimate target for terrorist attacks to being considered a prioritized target,” she said.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Sweden Raises Terror Threat to Second Highest Level

• For the first time in seven years, the threat has shifted from the third to the fourth level on a five-point scale, now categorized as “high.” However, intelligence services (Säpo) rejected the existence of specific suspicions and instead referred to a comprehensive analysis.

• “We have found that the situation regarding the threat of an attack on Sweden has worsened and this threat will persist for a considerable time,” stated Charlotte von Essen, head of Säpo.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ ‘I Feel Suffocated’: Taliban Intensifies Clampdown On Music In Afghanistan

• Residents who spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi said the morality police have also started searching vehicles and homes as they seek to enforce the ban, which has been widely condemned.

• “When the Taliban stops us at security checkpoints, they first look at the car’s audio system to see what we are listening to,” said Khalil Ahmad, a resident of Herat, adding that the militants confiscate MP3 players and thumb drives containing music.

=> ↺ Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ Young Saudis Are Still Being Sentenced to Death Despite Supposed Legal Reforms

• The nine young men on death row are all Shi’a Muslims, and all but one are accused of participating in anti-government protests and committing “terrorist” acts. Their prosecution and death sentences partly followed the very old playbook of Saudi criminal trials. Court documents show that the authorities sentenced these young men to death after grossly unfair trials. The only evidence the court presented against them was their confessions, which all of them claimed were extracted from them by torture and deception.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Diary of a Belarusian journalist in Latvia, Part 2

• Once, when I – a Belarusian refugee in Latvia – was on a train from Rīga to Tukums, which has become my home in the two years I have lived in Latvia, an elderly woman approached me in the carriage. Dressed simply, with a flowery scarf on her head, she reminded me of my paternal grandmother, who was born in the Voronezh region. She came over and tried to ask me something… in English.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Belarusian Ex-Journalist Not Released After Serving Jail Term

• Former Belarusian journalist Ihar Karney was not released from jail after he served his 10-day term on July 27.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Kansas to Probe Police Raid on Local Newspaper; Co-Publisher Dies from Stress Day After Raid

• The Kansas Bureau of Investigations has launched a probe into the shocking police raid on the newsroom of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher and co-owner, Eric Meyer. Last week, police seized computers, hard drives, servers and phones. Eric Meyer lived with his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who was co-publisher of the family-owned newspaper. She died one day after the raids. We get an update from Sherman Smith, editor-in-chief of the nonprofit news outlet the Kansas Reflector, who was speaking to Joan Meyer on the phone as the raid was underway. “If the police in Marion County are allowed to get away with this, it becomes open season on journalists everywhere in Kansas,” says Smith. He discusses the reported dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who accused it of illegally obtaining information about a drunk driving incident, and how the paper had also been actively investigating Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody over sexual misconduct charges at a previous job in Kansas City. Details about that investigation were on a computer seized in the raid.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Belarus’s Supreme Court Rejects Journalists’ Appeals Against Lengthy Prison Terms

• Belarus’s Supreme Court rejected appeals filed by Maryna Zolatava, the chief editor of the Tut.by news website, and its former director-general, Lyudmila Chekina, against the 12-year prison sentences they were handed on charges supporters and human rights watchdogs call politically motivated.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ Caroline Kennedy Says US Open to Assange Plea Deal

• The U.S. ambassador to Australia told a Sydney newspaper that “there absolutely could be a resolution” of the case just weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Australia that the pr…

=> ↺ Mint Press News ☛ The True Cost of Julian Assange’s Persecution: An Exclusive Interview with Stella Assange

• Lowkey catches up with legal expert and human rights defender Stella Assange to talk about her battle to free her husband Julian, the world’s most famous political prisoner.

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

• The failure of 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.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Review: Ithaka Chronicles the Fight To Save Julian Assange

• “If he goes down, so will journalism,” Assange’s father John Shipton says in the documentary.

=> ↺ Press Gazette ☛ Is freelance journalism becoming unviable?

• While our old friend the internet has blessed us with more platforms to publish journalism than ever before, it has also made the reality of freelancing increasingly perilous. Rates are often pitiful, and the well-paying titles once thought of as reliable are falling like cliff faces into the sea. In 2023, is being a ‘freelance journalist’ basically a hobby?

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Defiant Marion County Record hits newsstands following police raid

• Meyer, 69, said he was determined to keep the Marion County Record going. His father worked at the paper from 1948, purchased it in 1998, and gave it to his wife and son in 2005, the year before he died. Meyer returned home to Marion three years ago to run the paper, leaving his job as an associate professor of journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

• “The last thing we want to do is to have people believe that we stopped publishing,” Meyer said, after giving an impromptu press conference to the small scrum of reporters who had appeared in his newsroom. “If we hadn’t been able to figure out how to get the computers together, Phyllis and I and everybody else would be handwriting Post-it notes and putting them on doors around town.”

=> ↺ Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas Reporters’ Shield Law, passed by huge majorities, should have prevented raid on Marion paper

• I’ve just retired from a 50-year career in the newspaper industry, spent as a reporter, editor and publisher at five daily newspapers in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota, and capped off by 14 years as executive director of the Kansas Press Association.

• Nothing I’ve experienced in those five decades even closely parallels what happened last week in Marion. While the newspaper’s equipment was rightfully returned on Wednesday, I am absolutely dumbfounded by what transpired there.

• We don’t live in Cuba, North Korea or Russia, but the tactics used in Marion — purportedly in an identity theft case — are evocative of how armed thugs in those countries operate when they are trying to suppress alternative voices to the government.

=> ↺ ANF News ☛ Journalist Akkaya faces up to 15 years in prison

• Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment against journalist Remzi Akkaya, who was detained within the scope of the investigation carried out in 21 provinces based in Diyarbakır, upon the statements of public witness Ümit Akbıyık. The prosecutor is demanding a sentence of between 7 years, 6 months and 15 years in prison for the journalist.

=> ↺ The Scotsman ☛ UK Government accused of ‘rolling out red carpet’ for Saudi Prince who ‘authorised murder’ of Jamal Khashoggi

• The Liberal Democrats condemned any potential visit with its foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran saying: “It beggars belief that Rishi Sunak is rolling out the red carpet for Mohammed bin Salman.

• “This man – who authorised the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi and presides over a dismal human rights record – should not be receiving a warm welcome from the UK government.

• “It sends a signal to MBS (Mohammed bin Salman) that he can continue acting with impunity and we and our allies will do nothing about it.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Emmett Till All Over Again: Six White Mississippi Cops Plead Guilty To Beating, Torturing Two Black Men

• The more things change, etc. We’ll never fully reject this country’s racist history if we insist on stocking our police departments with racists. The horrific events described here do not exist in a vacuum. The officers who felt comfortable doing these things felt comfortable for several reasons.

=> ↺ Scheerpost ☛ McCarthyism Is Back, and It’s Coming for the Peace Movement

=> ↺ Home raids and many detentions in Hakkari and Adana

• The police detained nearly thirty people, Peace Mothers among them, in Hakkari, its districts, and Adana.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ How Tennessee’s Justice System Allows Dangerous People to Keep Guns

• Michaela Carter felt like she was being hunted.

• She fled her family’s home on Nov. 15, 2021, and called 911 with her mother, pulling into the parking lot of a discount store in southeast Nashville, Tennessee, to await the police.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ What’s Happening With the Quran Burnings in Sweden

• The most recent to carry out such an act in the country, Salwan Momika, is an Iraqi immigrant to Sweden who describes himself on Facebook as a liberal atheist. But he has also expressed hard-line anti-Muslim views and said that he was seeking to draw attention to the mistreatment of Christian minorities by Islamist extremists in some Arab countries.

• “I am warning the Swedish people about the dangers of this book,” Mr. Momika said through a megaphone outside a mosque in Stockholm in late June — on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha — before setting a Quran ablaze. “They killed Christians and took their possessions; they killed atheists” because of the Quran’s teachings, Mr. Momika said.

=> ↺ Quillette ☛ The Aboriginal Voice to Parliament: Wrong in Principle, Disastrous in Practice

• Much of the support for the Voice stems from the belief that it’s the morally right thing to do. Yet, it deserves to be defeated. We should not make race the organizing principle of a new chapter of our Constitution. As Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has rightly noted, the proposal is “emotionally manipulative” and divisive. She comments, “I don’t want to see my family divided along the lines of race because we are a family of human beings, and that’s the bottom line.”

=> ↺ Computer World ☛ Zoom requires employees to get back to the office

• According to a report from Business Insider, Zoom is requiring employees who live near one of the company’s offices — a distance the company is defining as within 50 miles — to be physically present in the office twice a week.

=> ↺ BBC ☛ Pakistan: More than 100 arrested after churches burned

• The reports sparked outrage among the Muslim community, and the violence that ensued saw mobs attacking and looting private homes belonging to Christians.

• Police told the BBC Christian’s possessions were pulled into the streets and set on fire.

• [...]

• Videos on social media show protesters destroying Christian buildings while police appear to watch on.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Churches Burned As Mobs Attack Pakistan’s Christian Community

• Mobs in eastern Pakistan burned several churches and torched homes belonging to members of the Christian minority amid accusations of blasphemy. Officials said the August 16 rampage in the town of Jaranwala erupted after two Christians were accused of desecrating the Koran.

=> ↺ International Business Times ☛ Christian churches, homes set on fire in Pakistan over Quran desecration allegations

• The violence erupted after mosque announcements accused a Christian man and his sister of committing the act. The videos that have gone viral on social media showed people armed with batons and sticks attacking churches and setting the furniture and copies of the Bible on fire.

• The vandalised churches included the Salvation Army Church, United Presbyterian Church, Allied Foundation Church and Shehroonwala Church situated in the Isa Nagri area.

• The mob also demolished the house of the man accused of blasphemy, according to local media reports. The houses of several other Christians living in the area were also set on fire. Many families ran away from their houses, seeking shelter at their relatives’ houses.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ UN envoy calls for ICC investigation into Taliban for ‘gender apartheid’

• Brown underscored the deprivation of education and employment for Afghan girls and women as profoundly grave transgressions against the principles of humanity. Additionally, in a recent opinion piece for the Guardian, Brown underscored the accountability of the Taliban rulers for what he described as “a crime against humanity” and “nothing less than ‘gender apartheid.’”

• Brown emphasized that the restoration of educational aid to Afghanistan hinges upon the re-establishment of girls’ enrollment in schools and universities. He unveiled forthcoming initiatives, backed by the UN, intended to sponsor and financially support online learning opportunities tailored for girls. Simultaneously, Brown promised provisions will be put in place to extend educational assistance to Afghan girls forced to leave the nation, guaranteeing uninterrupted access to learning. Brown also urged Muslim countries to deploy a delegation to Kandahar, with the intent of persuading the leadership of the Taliban to rescind their ban on girls’ education and women’s employment, which he claims is not supported by the Quran.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Iran Detains Prominent Women’s Rights Activists As Anniversary Of Amini’s Death Nears

• Iranian security forces have detained nine prominent women’s rights activists in various cities in the northern province of Gilan as authorities continue a crackdown ahead of the first anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody for allegedly violating the country’s head scarf law.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.10

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

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Portland’s TA3M: Expanding the Scope of Their Work in PDX

• What have been some of the issues you’ve concentrated on and what were some of your early successes?

• Can you tell us about some of your current projects?

• What has your group learned in your popular education work?

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Streaming Providers Dead Set On Becoming The Shitty Traditional Cable TV Companies They Once Disrupted

• Every few months a media outlet will get a staffer to write an inane story about how if you subscribe to every streaming service in existence, you’ll unsurprisingly wind up paying almost as much as you’d pay for cable TV. The underlying message is usually that we haven’t actually made real progress and that gosh, you probably should have just stuck with your old cable TV subscription.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Microsoft to shut Xbox 360′s online store next year

• Xbox 360 Store and Xbox 360 Marketplace will be shut on July 29, 2024, and gamers using the old console will not be able to purchase and download new games, according to a post on Xbox’s website.

• Microsoft is, however, allowing users to play with their already purchased Xbox 360 games and older titles that are compatible with the console.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Amazon Now Punishes Merchants Who Ship Their Own Products

• The company claimed in a blog post on Monday that independent sellers want to keep coming to their site, saying merchants “keep choosing Amazon for the value we provide.” Yet sellers told Bloomberg they were blindsided when they received a notice saying they would be charged yet another fee for choosing to fulfill orders themselves, even as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Amazon for violating antitrust laws.

• “We’re sitting here waiting for the FTC to take action against Amazon for antitrust issues, and this fee shows Amazon is not scared at all,” Jason Boyce, whose Avenue7Media helps about 100 businesses sell products online, told the outlet.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Sexy Sandwiches: PornHub Goes After Kebab Shop Over Signs, Logos

• One of the common tests for whether something is trademark infringement is whether or not the public will be confused as to association between the infringer and another trademark owner. This typically comes down to several factors, such as the similarity within the uses and, importantly, whether the two entities compete in the same marketplace.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Recording Industry Forces Important Video Downloading Tool’s Website Offline

• When will the legacy entertainment industry get it through their thick skulls that recording content is legal. We’ve done this. We’ve done it at the highest level. Tools that have substantial non-infringing uses are legal.

=> ↺ TechSpot ☛ The Internet Archive reaches an agreement with publishers in digital book-lending case

• If accepted, the consent judgment will provide the Archive a chance to overturn Koeltl’s unfavorable decision in the appeal. The publishers defined the CDL service as a mass copyright infringement operation, but the Archive now says that its fight is “far from over.” The IA team firmly believes that libraries should be able to “own, preserve, and lend digital books” outside the limitations of temporary licensed access (i.e., copyright).

• The judge made factual and procedural errors, the Archive states, which will hopefully be corrected during the appeal. Internet Archive’s founder Brewster Kahle said that today there’s an “unprecedented” attack against libraries, from book bans to defunding or even “overzealous lawsuits” like the one brought by four major US publishers against his organization.

=> ↺ Creative Commons ☛ Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners

• On 27 July 2023 we hosted the first webinar in our new Open Culture Live series. In this session about the basics of Open Culture, we led a presentation that answers some of the key questions for beginners hoping to understand more about Creative Commons, and how we work closely with the cultural heritage sector to support the open sharing of digital collections. In this session we answered some basic questions including: [...]

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ File-Hosting Icon AnonFiles Throws in the Towel, Domain For Sale

• The popular file-hosting site AnonFiles.com has thrown in the towel. The site’s operators cite massive abuse by uploaders as the reason for the shutdown. AnonFiles tried to limit the problems though automated upload filters and filename restrictions but nothing helped. While the current team says its work is over, others are invited to buy the domain name and give it a shot themselves.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Manga Piracy Apps Stay Up on Google & Apple, Publisher Moves to Unmask Devs

• Back in June, a law firm acting for Japanese manga publisher Kadokawa sent copyright complaints to both Google and Apple listing five apps offering allegedly infringing manga content. For reasons that aren’t immediately clear, neither company took the apps down. With the assistance of a California court, Kadokawa now wants to identify the developers behind the apps.

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