● 08.14.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 14/08/2022: Wine 7.15 and Haiku Activity Report

Posted in News Roundup at 2:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Russian company Prombit has unveiled the BITBLAZE Titan BM15 Arm Linux Laptop equipped with Baikal-M1 octa-core Arm Cortex-A57 processor manufactured by TSMC, up to 128GB RAM, SSD storage, and a 15.6-inch Full HD display.

• Baikal-M1, also called Baikal-M, was already found in desktop PCs and All-in-One Arm Linux computers launched last year for the Russian government and businesses, but I think it’s the first time it shows up in a laptop.

Server

• This year’s Red Hat Summit gathering in early May provided an opportunity to step back from the enterprise computing treadmill and assess the long-term implications of where network innovation is headed.

• Along with news surrounding an edge platform opportunity with General Motors Corp. and the latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, this year’s gathering in Boston offered a glimpse into the computing future.

• DevOps can force developers to work outside their comfort zone and create frustration, but the right Kubernetes training and tools can ease the burden.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Welcome to Hardware Addicts, a proud member of the TuxDigital Network. Hardware Addicts is the podcast that focuses on the physical components that powers our technology world.

• In this episode, we’re going to be talking nanotechnology and how little robot armies can be used in the future to extend all of our lives. Then we head to Camera Corner where Wendy will discuss anti-forgery signatures on a camera.

• Are you in the market for job in FOSS well the Linux Foundation does a yearly report on this field and it seems as though it should be getting much easier this year and going forward

Kernel Space

• Virtual memory is a way of representing your memory that’s abstracted from the physical memory on your machine. It makes use of both your RAM and your storage space, whether that’s on a traditional hard drive or an SSD.

• In Linux, this is done at the kernel and hardware levels. The CPU has a piece of hardware called a Memory Management Unit (MMU) that translates physical memory addresses into virtual ones. These addresses are independent of where they physically reside on the machine. These address spaces are known as “pages” and they could be in RAM or on your hard drive or SSD. The OS sees these addresses as one big pool of memory, known as an “address space.”

• Virtual memory takes advantage of the fact that not all of the memory that’s being used in theory is being used all of the time. Programs in memory are broken down into pages and the parts that the kernel deems as unnecessary are “swapped out,” or moved to the hard drive. When they’re needed, they can be “swapped in,” or brought back into RAM.

• The space used for virtual memory on a drive is known as “backing store,” or “swap space.” In the Windows world, it’s usually implemented as a file, known as a “swap file.” It’s also possible to do this in Linux, but it’s much more common to use a dedicated disk partition.

• However one larger problem remains (for performance) which is the lack of atomic CLOEXEC when opening pipes or sockets. Linux has pipe2 and accept4. I wasn’t able to find any good equivalent on macOS, and hence most of the time we are limited to serializing some requests that could otherwise run in parallel.

Instructionals/Technical

• Are you annoyed about the comment color in vim? The dark blue color of the comment is often hard to read.

• In this tutorial, we learn how to change the comment color in Vim. There are few methods we can use to look vim comment very readable.

• APT checks the health of all the packages, and dependencies of the package before installing it. APT fetches packages from one or more repositories. A repository (package source) is basically a network server. The term “package” refers to an individual file with a .deb extension that contains either all or part of an application. The normal installation comes with default repositories configured, but these contain only a few packages out of an ocean of free software available.

• In this tutorial, we learn how to add the package repository to Debian.

• I recently wanted to send someone a video of a program doing some interesting things in a single X11 window. Recording the whole desktop is easy (some readers may remember my post on Aeschylus which does just that) but it will include irrelevant (and possibly unwanted) parts of the screen, leading to unnecessarily large files. I couldn’t immediately find a tool which did what I wanted on OpenBSD [1] but through a combination of xwininfo, FFmpeg, and hk I was able to put together exactly what I needed in short order. Even better, I was able to easily post-process the video to shrink its file size, speed it up, and contort it to the dimension requirements of various platforms. Here’s a video straight out of the little script I put together: [...]

• And it got me thinking about what you can and can’t do — what you do and don’t have control over.

• We run these training systems with SELinux enabled (I wouldn’t, but my colleague likes it :-), and that’s the reason I aborted the lab: I couldn’t tell students how to solve the cause other than by disabling SELinux entirely, but there wasn’t enough time for that.

• This is an interesting question, thanks for asking it, Jeremy. I do have some history with the IndieWeb, and some opinions, so let’s dive in.

• The short answer to the question is a resounding no, and it all boils down to the fact that the IndieWeb is really complicated to implement, so it will only ever appeal to developers.

• If your business has multiple personal computers in the network which need to print, then we need a device called a print server. Print server act intermediate between PC and printers which accept print jobs from PC and send them to respective printers.

• CUPS is the primary mechanism in the Unix-like operating system for printing and print services. It can allow a computer to act as a Print server.

• In this tutorial, we learn how to set up CUPS print server on Ubuntu 22.04.

WINE or Emulation

• Wine is a compatibility layer that aims to let you run games and applications designed for Windows on Linux and a new release version 7.15 is out now. This is the compatibility layer that allows you to run various Windows applications and games on Linux (and forms part of Steam Play Proton). Once a year or so, a new stable release is made but the development versions are usually fine to use.

Games

• With Spider-Man Remastered now available on Steam after previously being PlayStation exclusive, I took it for a spin on Steam Deck and Linux desktop.

• Need more games to fill up your library? Humble Bundle have put up another one that looks pretty good with the Tactical Combat Bundle. So here’s what to expect on Linux desktop and Steam Deck.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GNOME is one of the most popular graphical desktop environments on Linux. Practically every distribution has a release featuring GNOME. Imagine the impact then, when the GNOME developers shook things up—to put it mildly—with GNOME 40. It changed the desktop paradigm from a vertical one to a horizontal one and changed the look, feel, and functionality of, amongst other things, the dock, the activities view, and workplaces.

• Releases 41 and 42 were much smaller in impact, concentrating on polishing the interface and ironing out wrinkles that remained after the iconoclastic changes to GNOME 40. GNOME 43 is more of the same. Don’t expect major changes this time round.

• That’s not to say it is inconsequential. There are the expected subtle cosmetic touches, with more applications adopting a deeper integration with the libadwaita theming engine. But there’s also new functionality, including the Files file browser being enhanced. It is now adaptive and will give a better user experience on mobile devices.

• Although GNOME 43 beta is available, it won’t be rolled out to the public until its actual launch date of September 21, 2022. Fedora 37 is slated to use GNOME 43. Ubuntu 22.10 probably won’t. Rolling distributions based on Arch such as Garuda Linux, Manjaro Linux, and EndeavourOS will pick it up shortly after its release date.

• Although this isn’t the finished product, looking at the beta is still worthwhile. Even if small changes may still be made between now and the launch date, all the big elements are already in place. The release candidate build is the one when the portcullis drops and no more changes can be made. This is slated for September 3, 2022.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• As is now the usual way of things, the monthly Activity Report is hereby combined with my Contract Report.

• This report covers hrev56236 to hrev56320.

Open Hardware/Modding

• In the olden days of computing, software flow control with control codes XON and XOFF was a necessary feature that dumb terminals needed to support. When a terminal received more data than it could display, there needed to be a way for the terminal to tell the remote host to pause sending more data. The control code 19 was chosen for this. The control code 17 was chosen to tell the remote host to resume transmission of data.

• Dmytro Panin is at it again, creating a teeny system monitor for his MacBook from scratch with help from our favorite microcontroller, the Raspberry Pi Pico. This plug-and-play system monitor (opens in new tab) lets him keep a close eye on resource usage without having to close any windows or launch any third-party programs.

• The device is Pico-powered and plugs right into the MacBook to function. It has a display screen that showcases a custom GUI featuring four bar graphs that update in real-time to show the performance of different components, including the CPU, GPU, memory, and SSD usage. It makes it possible to see how hard your PC is running at a glance.

Leftovers

• With digital music making a clean sweep in the 1990s over almost all listening media, it’s a surprise to find that there’s one area in which an analog hold-out is still very much alive and kicking. We’re talking not of a vinyl resurgence here but of FM radio, which has managed to effectively hold off its digital competition for a few decades now. Twenty years ago its days seemed numbered though, and in Europe the first generation of DAB digital radios looked ready to conquer the airwaves. Among them was a true oddity and one of Psion’s last significant consumer products, the WaveFinder USB DAB radio receiver. [Backofficeshow] has one, and has given it a teardown for our entertainment. He describes it as the first consumer SDR product which may be a little hyperbolic, but nevertheless, it’s an interesting look at what would become one of computing’s backwaters.

• Norms, in a society or culture, are the accepted ways of behavior we grow up observing and learning in our everyday lives. Norms are rarely backed up by laws, though when norms are grossly violated, calls for legislation may ensue.

• I thought that Elon Musk’s ventures would collapse around the privately held SpaceX but it now seems more likely to collapse around the publicly held Tesla – which remains unable to achieve volume and is losing money on every vehicle manufactured. This is especially true when electric vehicles get less eco subsidy and the cost of electricity has increased. Now that the astro-turfing has failed, Elon Musk is trying to peg Tesla’s worthless stock to other Silicon Valley turds, like Twitter which lost 15% of its value when it banned Donald Trump. Elon Musk – who requires adult supervision when using Twitter – may try to escape a $1 billion exit clause after establishing that the majority of Twitter accounts and Tweets are astro-turfed. You can’t scam an honest man. However, some scams look really obvious to other scammers.

• Jeff Bezos – who self-identifies as an astronaut – is diversifying out of Amazon. You should do the same because Amazon is going out of business. Amazon is running out of staff to exploit – staff who are violent or urinate in bottles to achieve unrealistic deadlines. Amazon has fired more than 20 million staff; mostly for performance which is acceptable in similar roles at other companies. If you’re stupid enough sell on Amazon, you don’t want to be too good or too bad. If you’re drop-shipping from China and using Amazon hosting then expect to be cut out of the loop by Amazon’s full time Chinese negotiators. Likewise, if you’ve been banned from selling on Amazon then expect to pay a quasi-para-legal more than $1000 to file your appeal – which will be read by a member of staff who is paid less than $15 to read your appeal in less than four minutes.

• More information is trickling out about why the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida this week. According to a Thursday night report in the Washington Post, agents were searching for “classified documents related to nuclear weapons,” among other highly-sensitive materials.

• Trump is under federal investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it unlawful to spy for another country or mishandle U.S. defense information, including sharing it with people not authorized to receive it, a search warrant shows.

• As president, Trump sometimes shared information, regardless of its sensitivity. Early in his presidency, he spontaneously gave highly classified information to Russia’s foreign minister about a planned Islamic State operation while he was in the Oval Office, U.S. officials said at the time.

• Mr. Garland said he had personally approved the search after the failure of “less intrusive” attempts to retrieve material taken from the White House by Mr. Trump.

• Mr. Garland provided no details. But the person briefed on the matter said investigators had been concerned about material from what the government calls “special access programs,” a designation that is typically reserved for extremely sensitive operations carried out by the United States abroad or for closely held technologies and capabilities.

• “It was a chaotic exit,” this source said. “Everyone piled everything — staff, the White House movers — into the moving trucks. When they got to Mar-a-Lago, they piled everything there in this storage room, except for things like the first lady’s clothes. Everything in a box went there.”

Education

• Zhora told Reuters in an interview that Microsoft, Amazon and Google had offered pro bono cloud computing services to the Ukrainian government as it moves its data out of the country, away from the destruction wreaked by Russian bombs and missiles.

• Some of Ukraine’s data archives are being held within data centers across “multiple [European] countries,” he added, without elaborating.

• Barring intervention, continued lack of clarity around plagiarism will make it more difficult for south Asian students and researchers – who are already underrepresented in global publications – to participate more in cross-border collaborations, Professor McCulloch warned.

Hardware

• Though it is largely forgotten today, the Intel 80286 was for a while in the 1980s the processor of choice and designated successor to the 8086 in the world of PCs. It brought a new mode that could address up to 16 Mb of memory, and a welcome speed boost over machines using an 8086 or 8088. As with many microprocessors, it has a few undocumented features, and it’s a couple of these that [rep lodsb] takes a look at. Along the way we learn a bit about the 286, and about why Intel had some of these undocumented instructions in the first place.

• It is easy to not think much about common tools like screwdrivers and wrenches. But not for [Torque Test Channel]. The channel does a lot of testing of tools and in the video, below, they test a new wrench that is, oddly enough, laser cut instead of forged like the usual wrench.

• I was struck by reading our writeup of the Zenit in Electronics contest – an annual event in the Slovak Republic – that it’s kind of like a decathlon for electronic engineers and/or hardware hackers. It’s a contest, in which students compete presumably initially on a local level, and then up to 32 at the national level. There’s a straight-up knowledge test, a complex problem to solve, and then a practical component where the students must actually fabricate a working device themselves, given a schematic and maybe some help. Reading through the past writeups, you get the feeling that it’s both a showcase for the best of the best, but also an encouragement for those new to the art. It’s full-stack hardware hacking, and it looks like a combination of hard work and a lot of fun.

• We’re used to laptop computers featuring flip-up screens; this article is being written on one and it’s probable you’re reading it on another one. But there’s another laptop form factor that has gained legions of fans ever since the days of the TRS-80 Model 100, the flat slab with no hinge and both keyboard and display on its upper surface. It’s surfaced most recently in the DevTerm, which inspired [0x17] to have a go at building his own. Instead of starting from scratch though, he’s chosen to use the shell of an Amstrad NC100 from the 1990s.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The approach clearly has problems: harassment, misinformation about topics like public health, and false descriptions of legitimate elections run rampant. But even if content moderation were implemented perfectly, it would still miss a whole host of issues that are often portrayed as moderation problems but really are not. To address those non-speech issues, we need a new strategy: treat social media companies as potential polluters of the social fabric, and directly measure and mitigate the effects their choices have on human populations. That means establishing a policy framework—perhaps through something akin to an Environmental Protection Agency or Food and Drug Administration for social media—that can be used to identify and evaluate the societal harms generated by these platforms. If those harms persist, that group could be endowed with the ability to enforce those policies. But to transcend the limitations of content moderation, such regulation would have to be motivated by clear evidence and be able to have a demonstrable impact on the problems it purports to solve.

Proprietary

• More people are on to this scheme than ever. Wondering why they should throw out a computer that’s plenty fast, during a dead economy where they could be the next layoff (and even if they aren’t, their landlord, utility companies, and the grocery store want ~11% more money this year), just so that Microsoft and Intel can stick it to them again.

• When Zoom issued an update, the updater function would install the new package after checking that it had been cryptographically signed by Zoom. But a bug in how the checking method was implemented meant that giving the updater any file with the same name as Zoom’s signing certificate would be enough to pass the test — so an attacker could substitute any kind of malware program and have it be run by the updater with elevated privilege.

• The result is a privilege escalation attack, which assumes an attacker has already gained initial access to the target system and then employs an exploit to gain a higher level of access. In this case, the attacker begins with a restricted user account but escalates into the most powerful user type — known as a “superuser” or “root” — allowing them to add, remove, or modify any files on the machine.

Security

• Eclypsium researchers criticized Microsoft for its response to the discovery of three new bootloader vulnerabilities that could be exploited to gain control of systems during the boot process.

• During a DEF CON 30 session Friday, security platform provider Eclypsium’s researchers delved into the vulnerabilities, which were disclosed in Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday release this week.

• The three vulnerabilities exist in third-party bootloaders: Eurosoft Ltd. (CVE-2022-34301); New Horizon Datasys, Inc. (CVE-2022-34302); and Kidan’s CryptoPro Secure Disk for BitLocker (CVE-2022-34303).

• If exploited, threat actors could bypass Secure Boot, a security protocol used by OEMs and operating system vendors to ensure bootloaders and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) drivers are authenticated through valid digital signatures. Bypassing the Secure Boot checks would allow threat actors to commit attacks, such as modifying the OS, disabling security controls and installing backdoors.

• During a Black Hat 2022 session, researchers showed how expectations of cyber war may differ from the reality.

• Researchers with Palo Alto Networks took the stage at Black Hat to explain how configurations and system privileges in Kubernetes clusters can allow container escape and takeover.

• Researchers with Google’s Threat Analysis Group say the ecosystem of surveillance vendors is far larger than just NSO Group, and some vendors are sharing or trading exploits.

• Docker containers have root privileges by default — a known security issue for several years. Now Docker’s rootless mode separates containers from underlying infrastructure.

• This site generally doesn’t cover or announce new types of ransomware, but this one targets the healthcare sector, so….

• A new zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-37042 has been exploited since at least June to hack over 1,000 Zimbra email servers.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• The term zero trust is a security model, also known as “perimeterless security” that has been known for a long time and that was e.g. implemented internally at Google in 2009 in a project called BeyondCorp. In recent years, mainly due to the high amount of IT security problems we all are facing, the term gained renewed focus and popularity when cybersecurity researchers at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released their Zero Trust Architecture publication (PDF).

• Zero trust is a valuable model that provides many improvements and benefits to the security model of both small and large companies. However, as with so many other terms and concepts, the big corporate hype machine is in the process of hijacking the concept by rebranding their services and turning zero trust into something that it is not.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Today, noyb lodged 226 GDPR complaints with 18 authorities against websites that use the popular cookie banner software (“OneTrust”) with deceptive settings. Following a first batch of complaints in May 2021 many websites using OneTrust have adapted their settings and added “reject” buttons. OneTrust also changed the standard settings to be more GDPR compliant. However, there are still many websites that do not comply.

• A 41-year-old woman is facing felony charges in Nebraska for allegedly helping her teenage daughter illegally abort a pregnancy, and the case highlights how law enforcement can make use of online communications in the post-Roe v. Wade era.

• The iOS Instagram and Facebook app render all third party links and ads within their app using a custom in-app browser. This causes various risks for the user, with the host app being able to track every single interaction with external websites, from all form inputs like passwords and addresses, to every single tap.

• [...]

• In the mean-time, everything published in this post is correct: the Instagram app is executing and injecting JavaScript code into third party websites, rendered inside their in-app browser, which exposes a big risk for the user. Also, there is no way to opt-out of the custom in-app browser.

• Nicole did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. But several others responded to the original tweet with their own experiences of targeted marketing after purchases at other large chain stores. Some shared stories of receiving these types of packages in the wake of miscarriages.

• According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple and Facebook discussed “revenue-sharing arrangements, including a potential ad-free, subscription version of Facebook”.

Confidentiality

• Stefan Sperling (stsp@) has committed support for RAID 1C [mirroring and encryption] boot to -current on the amd64 platform: [...]

Defence/Aggression

• The Sahel, a vast, poorly governed stretch to the south of the Sahara desert, is now the world’s terrorism hotspot, accounting for more than a third of all terrorism deaths in 2021. It is home to Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, or jnim), a coalition affiliated to al-Qaeda. Last year it was the world’s fastest-growing jihadist organisation, measured by the increase in the tally of attacks and deaths.

• In charting the of the expansion of Da’esh expansion across Iraq, Syria and through areas of Africa that until recently had been largely spared from attacks, Mr. Voronkov attributed their success in part to a decentralized structure focused around a “general directorate of provinces” and associated “offices”.

• These operate in both Iraq and Syria, as well as outside the core conflict zone – notably in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Lake Chad Basin.

• Better understanding and monitoring, including through global and regional cooperation, are vital to counter the threat.

• Since the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday, researchers who track extremism have sounded the alarm about an escalation of violent rhetoric from the far-right, including talk of another “civil war” and threats against federal law enforcement.

• By Thursday, an attempted attack on an FBI field office in Cincinnati appeared to underscore the real danger behind those threats, particularly given a digital trail of ominous posts that were left under the name of the suspect.

• Now, five months later, repeated shelling inside the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant complex over the past seven days has stirred new concerns, with Ukrainian and Western officials warning that the attacks heighten the risk of a nuclear accident.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Pokalchuk took to Facebook on August 4 to disavow the report, explaining that Amnesty’s global branch had effectively sidelined the Amnesty Ukraine team and proceeded with publication without their input or consent. She resigned the following day, writing, “Although unwillingly, the organization created material that sounds like support for Russian narratives. Seeking to protect civilians, the study has instead become a tool of Russian propaganda.”

Environment

• After a Wixom chrome plater released hexavalent chromium into sewers that lead to the Huron River, locals and activists are calling for tighter regulation to prevent future spills, if not an outright ban on nonessential uses of the toxic metal.

• Water in the river has dropped to “exceptionally low” levels in some areas, disrupting shipping on the country’s most important inland waterway, German officials told CNN on Friday.

• A lack of rainfall in recent months means that cargo ships are now carrying lighter loads, transport costs are soaring, and economic and power supply risks are worsening.

• Climate researchers often use the situation in the Arctic as a bellwether for the impacts of global warming because the region is particularly sensitive to even small shifts in global surface temperatures. As a result, changes there typically play out more rapidly compared to elsewhere on Earth. What happens in the Arctic also has enormous implications for the rest of the globe, since melting ice sheets contribute to rising sea levels.

• In the new study, the researchers focused on the area inside the Arctic Circle, an imaginary demarcation approximately 66 degrees north of the equator. The scientists used data from the past 43 years to observe changes within this region, which includes parts of Russia, Norway, Sweden and Finland, most of Greenland and the northernmost reaches of Canada and Alaska.

Energy

• In the second quarter, Exxon made US$18 billion, Shell and Chevron close to $12 billion each and BP $8.5 billion—much higher than their record first-quarter profits.

• In war there are winners and losers. One U.S. gas company profiteering off the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is America’s largest Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exporter, Cheniere Energy.

• But where does Luxembourg’s electricity actually come from? This article draws a distinction between, firstly, the electricity produced in Luxembourg, and, secondly, what is consumed in Luxembourg. The latter includes energy imported from other countries such as Germany and Belgium.

• The country is yet to face another rise in energy costs. After gas suppliers announced potential increases of up to 80% in autumn, electricity may go up by 35%.

• One of the many ironies about “decentralized, trustless” cryptocurrencies is that they are neither decentralized nor trustless. Since in practice you can neither buy nor sell real goods using them, you need to trust an exchange to convert fiat to cryptocurrency and vice versa. Exchanges range from those you definitely shouldn’t trust, such as Binance, through somewhat less sketchy ones such as Kraken (now being investigated for sanctions busting) to Coinbase, which presents itself as a properly regulated, US based exchange that is totally trustworthy.

• A common saying among those who are into their crypto is that “the real innovation isn’t Bitcoin, but the Blockchain”. Blockchains are increasingly popular. At some point using a blockchain stopped being called just ‘blockchain technology’ and started to be called “web3″. The implication being that blockchains have such wide applicability that they will come to displace the existing web as we know it now.

• Industry experts expect demand for lithium from U.S. car manufacturers to increase tenfold by 2030. By then, they predict the U.S. will need 300,000 metric tons of lithium per year to make green vehicles and a wealth of electronic appliances. Currently, however, the U.S. has just one active lithium mine. Earlier this year, the Energy Department authorized $2.9 billion to boost battery production and President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to encourage U.S. production of lithium and other minerals like nickel and cobalt used in batteries and solar panels.

Wildlife/Nature

• Chronic wasting disease has been detected in just one white-tailed deer on the Blackfeet reservation, but once it’s present, it’s impossible to eradicate, according to wildlife managers. The disease is already forcing tribal members to alter or abandon traditional practices like brain tanning, said Souta Calling Last, a Blackfeet researcher and executive director of the nonprofit cultural and educational organization Indigenous Vision.

• Calling Last also worries the spread of chronic wasting disease will prevent tribal members from eating wild game. Some families depend on meat from the deer, elk or moose they can hunt several months out of the year.

• That’s where the dogs come in. Calling Last received a $75,000 federal grant to run a yearlong study to train dogs to sniff out chronic wasting disease and toxic waste that might otherwise be ingested by people who hunt wild game and gather traditional plants. The project aims to protect tribal members’ health by letting them know where the disease has been detected and where toxic waste has been found in order to preserve safe spaces to conduct traditional practices.

Finance

• Following House Democrats’ passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday, progressives applauded the most significant changes to the federal tax code since 2017, when Republicans’ highly regressive and deeply unpopular Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enthusiastically welcomed by corporations and the wealthy.

• “We should use this win as an opportunity to revitalize the fight for economic justice and equality, and continue demanding more.”

• While welcoming House Democrats’ passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday, advocates for universal healthcare, child care, paid family leave, and home and community-based services stressed that greater investments in care infrastructure are needed to improve working households’ economic wellbeing.

• “The work to lift up struggling families is unfinished as our care infrastructure remains in crisis.”

• It’s estimated that the US sees a recession every 6-10 years. Additionally, our national deficit is around $2.2 trillion and the last major decrease it saw was when President Bill Clinton was in office.

• Notably, the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t attract a single Republican vote in the Senate. (And at least one Democratic senator—Kyrsten Sinema—made sure its tax provisions wouldn’t raise tax rates on rich individuals.) Why?

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• “I’m back.”

• That’s what Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the crucial battleground state’s open U.S. Senate seat, said immediately after Friday night’s rally in Erie—his first major campaign event since suffering a stroke in May.

• One of the most consequen­tial outcomes of this redis­trict­ing cycle has been the continu­ing decrease in the number of compet­it­ive congres­sional districts. Under new maps, there are just 30 districts that Joe Biden won by less than eight percent­age points in 2020 and, like­wise, just 30 districts that Donald Trump won by less than eight points.

• Tamas Menczer, state secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised an important issue on his social media page after Taiwan rejected China’s ‘one country, two systems’ plan for the island. The state secretary implied that Hungary does not recognize two, but only ‘one China’.

• “Peace has been the focus of Hungarian foreign policy for many months. Peace is the only solution to the war next door and the suffering and economic issues it causes. We are concerned that security crises and tensions are also occurring in other parts of the world. In the current situation, we do not want to see two of the world’s major powers in conflict with each other, even if the conflict is geographically far away from us. We sincerely hope that the situation around Taiwan will not escalate and that the world’s major powers will return to cooperation based on mutual respect and trust as soon as possible. Hungarian foreign policy will remain consistent with the “one China” principle,”- the state secretary posted on Facebook.

• Formed in 2013, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is in charge of creating and enforcing policies surrounding online content, user data, and digital security. The CAC later created a magazine that, according to China Media Project senior researcher, Stella Chen, typically includes regulatory announcements and research on [Internet] policy. The magazine was initially called New Media before it was rebranded as China Cyberspace earlier this year.

• In a surprise move, Recording Academy co-president Valeisha Butterfield Jones will leave the organization to return to Google, taking a new vice president role on the [Internet] giant’s diversity team.

• According to the suit filed earlier this year by Evans and fellow porn content creator Kelly Pierce, OnlyFans reportedly bribed Facebook employees to wrongfully place the actresses — who used OnlyFans competitor sites to sell their content — on a terrorism watchlist run by a consortium of internet companies, resulting in them being “shadowbanned” on Instagram and other social networks integral to the promotion of their content.

• OnlyFans squashed competitors in the online porn industry with the help of a bizarre scheme that bribed Meta employees to throw thousands of porn stars onto a terrorist watchlist, according to a group of explosive lawsuits.

• Adult performers who sold X-rated photos and videos on rival sites saw their Instagram accounts falsely tagged as containing terrorist content — crippling their ability to promote their business and devastating their incomes, according to the suits.

• The commission began posting online results from over 46,000 polling stations within hours of the polls closing on Tuesday, a move of radical transparency intended to ward off fears of potential vote rigging.

• But in the counting, things haven’t gone entirely to plan.

• The election commission’s decision to post the results online — allowing the news media to do the first, unofficial tally of the results — has proved to be problematic. Media organizations tallied in different sequences, leading to conflicting reports of who was ahead.

• For the first two centuries of U.S. history, outgoing presidents simply took their documents with them when they left the White House. The materials were considered their personal property.

• But for the past four decades, every presidential document — from notebook doodles to top-secret security plans — is supposed to go directly to the National Archives as the material is considered the property of the American people.

Misinformation/Disinformation

• The big picture: After the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday — finding 11 sets of classified documents — the former president made unsubstantiated claims that Obama also took records.

Censorship/Free Speech

• NetBlocks metrics confirm a nationwide disruption to internet service on multiple providers across Sierra Leone from the morning of Wednesday 10 August 2022. Internet was cut for two hours at noon, and then again overnight, amid reports of protests and clashes between the police and protesters in capital city Freetown and other areas. Authorities subsequently denounced an attempt to ‘overthrow’ the government and imposed a nationwide curfew.

• One of the most popular media player software and streaming media server VLC media player, developed by VideoLAN project, is banned in India. As per a report by MediaNama, VLC Media Player has been banned in India, but this happened nearly 2 months ago. However, if you have the software installed on your device, it should still be working. Meanwhile, neither the company nor the Indian government revealed any details about the ban.

• Shortly after posting the message, Rowling shared an image of a reply she had received, which read: “Don’t worry you are next.”

• The author initially tagged in Twitter’s support account, writing: “Any chance of some support?”

• Aziz responded to her post saying the stabber, Hadi Matar, was a “revolutionary Shia fighter.” He went on to threaten Rowling, saying: “Don’t worry you are next.”

• JK Rowling has said she is working with the police after receiving a potential threat from a Twitter user following her reaction tweet to Sir Salman Rushdie’s attack in New York.

• Booker-prize winning author, Ian McEwan, called it an “appalling attack” that “represents an assault on freedom of thought and speech”.

• “Salman has been an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world. He is a fiery and generous spirit, a man of immense talent and courage and he will not be deterred,” he added.

• Iran’s rulers bear responsibility for the attack against the British writer Salman Rushdie as the Islamic republic never repudiated a 1989 order issued by its founder calling for the novelist to be killed, activists and opponents charged Saturday.

• Earlier in the day, the man accused of attacking him Friday at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat center, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges.

• An attorney for Hadi Matar entered the plea on his behalf during an arraignment in western New York.

• Over a literary career spanning five decades, Sir Salman Rushdie has been no stranger to death threats arising due to the nature of his work.

• The novelist is one of the most celebrated and successful British authors of all time, with his second novel, Midnight’s Children, winning the illustrious Booker Prize in 1981.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Stella Assange, wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has accused the US of targeting a foreign journalist for exposing war crimes. She told DW that Assange’s life depends on his extradition order being dropped.

• The tug of war over the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US is entering its final stages, with London’s High Court set to make a final decision in September. His family is worried about his health.

• America seems to be significantly less free than the other countries in, for example, mass incarceration, excessive punitive punishments, criminalization of drugs, excessive power concentrated in the executive or the presidency, a militarized police, the prosecution of Assange and Snowden, and, of course, the death penalty.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Thirty-five EFF supporters and their friends played in the charity tournament on Friday, August 12 at Bally’s Poker Room. The tournament was kicked off by emcee Jen Easterly and EFF Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel Kurt Opsahl.

• Before the tournament, Tarah and her father, professional poker player Mike Wheeler, hosted a poker clinic to teach Poker 101 to those new to the game. In a video promoting the event, Tarah describes how her father taught her the game as a child by using jelly beans as the currency of choice. The jelly bean-filled championship trophy pays homage to the spirit of teaching and the humble beginnings of a great player.

• “Off With Their Legs!,” a new original cartoon by the inimitable Mr. Fish, wonders if sycophancy will be enough to save Donald Trump this time.

• And this August, the right to repair is on the agenda DEF CON. On Saturday, August 13 at 10:00 AM, I will lead a panel of leading repair, legal and cybersecurity experts: Brazil Redux: Short Circuiting Tech-Enabled Dystopia with the Right to Repair.

• Joining me on the panel are: [...]

• Heavy gunfire could be heard in social media video of the rally, with Taliban men assaulting female protesters. They also violently prevented Afghan journalists from covering the rally.

• Taliban fighters chased protesters and beat them with the butts of their rifles.

• The big picture: Since the calamitous U.S. withdrawal from the country last year, the Taliban have wiped away rights women gained during the two decades the U.S. occupied the country.

• Taliban fighters beat women protesters and fired rounds into the air on Saturday, August 13 as they violently dispersed a rare rally in the Afghan capital, days ahead of the first anniversary of the hardline Islamists’ return to power in the country.

• Since seizing control on August 15 last year, the Taliban have rolled back the marginal gains made by women during two decades of US intervention in Afghanistan.

• “It was important because it’s nearly the first anniversary of the Taliban rule and we wanted to say that we don’t consent to this government,” said one young woman who spoke to NPR after the protest. She requested anonymity so she couldn’t be identified by Taliban authorities.

• “After a year of this government, there is no change in the situation. We are showing that we won’t stay silent,” she said. “It’s important to show the world that Afghans don’t accept this. We will stand against injustice.”

• As the women marched, Taliban security forces began grabbing the phones and cameras of Afghan journalists and male international correspondents. They grabbed the phone of a boy on a bicycle who tried to take a photo.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• [Flamingo-tech]’s Xiaomi air purifier has a neat safety feature: it will refuse to run if a filter needs replacement. Of course, by “neat” we mean “annoying”. Especially when the purifier sure seems to judge a filter to be useless much earlier than it should. Is your environment relatively clean, and the filter still has legs? Are you using a secondary pre-filter to extend the actual filter’s life? Tough! Time’s up. Not only is this inefficient, but it’s wasteful.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• Bungie has been permitted to seek overseas cooperation under the Hague Convention to obtain evidence on a Destiny 2 cheat seller. The developer filed a copyright lawsuit against the alleged operator of Lavicheats in 2021 but almost a year later progress is slow. In addition to conducting discovery in the US, Bungie has an eye on the UK but whether that will bear fruit is another question.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

• It is clear that the maker is catering to those who don’t want phones that vie for their attention. The frugalmatic review linked above notes that they have found a market in Jewish and Amish Americans who take unusual care in managing their relationship with communication technologies.

• The makers of this phone clearly paid a great deal of attention to small details of the user experience. For example, there are dedicated LEDs on the front of the phone that indicate from a distance when you have unread text messages (green light), when the phone is charging (blinking red light), or fully charged (solid red light). The T9 predictive text dictionary is very large. Emoji are easy to access.

• So I just beat Untitled Goose Game. Actually beat it this time, when I last played (when it came out) I did the regular “New Game+” tasks but didn’t do the timed tasks because a few of them are insanely difficult and annoying. This time, the back garden timed tasks were still a real bitch but I actually persevered!

• I did a little inventory for myself.

• I don’t have a solid definition of what constitutes a computer here, but I assume that all of these contain some part that works as a von Neumann machine.

Science

• On a shrugged-off afternoon of YouTube wandering, I came upon this: “Is There Life After Death?”

Internet/Gemini

• as much as i love the text-first culture of gemini, i’m a visual artist and there’s absolutely no reason not to put my work in my personal space. so here are some of my favorite works from the past two years, compressed into very reasonable sizes. fullsize images and more of my work can be seen on my tumblr, and zines on itch.io

Programming

• Now ZSH has been the default shell in MacOS for a while now but I’ve only recently started to switch, call me old fashioned.

• Kubeval is an important tool if you are writing YAML files on a daily basis. You should use it to validate your files before applying them to your cluster. In this tutorial, you will learn how to validate your YAML files using Kubeval and ValidKube which is a web tool that cleans YAML files.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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