● 03.31.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 31/03/2023: Ubuntu 23.04 Beta, Donald Trump Indicted, and Finland’s NATO Bid Progresses

Posted in News Roundup at 1:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Now is the perfect time to migrate to Linux. Here’s why.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Wireguard VPN Server with Unbound on OpenBSD, Auditing for OpenZFS Storage Performance, OpenBSD 7.2 on a Thinkpad X201, Practical Guides to fzf, Replacing postfix with dma, and more

• What we’re liking about GNOME 44, how Microsoft’s Linux distro is trying to attract more users, and we bust a CentOS myth.

Kernel Space

• The kernel’s direct map makes all of a system’s physical memory available to the kernel within its address space — on 64-bit systems, at least. This seemingly simple feature has proved to be hard to maintain, in the face of the requirements faced by current systems, while keeping good performance. The latest attempt to address this issue is this patch set from Mike Rapoport adding more direct-map awareness to the kernel’s page allocator.

• BPF programs destined to be loaded into the kernel are generally written in C but, increasingly, the environment in which those programs run differs significantly from the C environment. The BPF virtual machine and associated verifier make a growing set of checks in an attempt to make BPF code safe to run. The proposed addition of an iterator mechanism to BPF highlights the kind of features that are being added — as well as the constraints placed on programmers by BPF.

• One of the many checks performed by the BPF verifier at program-load time is to convince itself that the program will terminate within a reasonable period of time, a process that involves simulating the program’s execution. This constraint has made supporting loops in BPF programs challenging since the beginning; it has only been possible to use loops since the 5.3 release. Even with that addition, convincing the verifier that a loop will terminate can be a challenge; this annoyance has led to, among other things, the addition of features like bpf_loop(), which puts the looping logic for some simple cases into the kernel’s C code.

• Not all problems are readily addressable by a simple function like bpf_loop(), though. Many loops in BPF programs are simply iterating through a set of objects, and BPF developers would like easier ways to do that. While numerous languages have some sort of built-in notion of iteration over a set, C does not. As noted above, though, BPF is not really C; this patch set from Andrii Nakryiko reiterates (so to speak) that point by adding an iteration mechanism to the BPF virtual machine.

• The ublk subsystem enables the creation of user-space block drivers that communicate with the kernel using io_uring. Drivers implemented this way show some promise with regard to performance, but there is a bottleneck in the way: copying data between the kernel and the user-space driver’s address space. It is thus not surprising that there is interest in implementing zero-copy I/O for ublk. The mailing lists have recently seen three different proposals for how this could be done.

Applications

• Electronic circuit simulation uses mathematical models to replicate the behavior of an actual electronic device or circuit. Simulation software allows for modeling of circuit operation and is an invaluable analysis tool.

• This roundup only includes software with a graphical user interface. Circuit simulation backends are covered in this roundup. And software that offers electronic design automation are also covered in a separate roundup.

• We include software which acts as a simulation backend. We also include software with a GUI that lets you use these backends. Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style chart.

• We are thrilled to release DNSdist 1.8.0 today! This 1.8.0 release contains a significant amount of changes since the last major release, 1.7.0, which was released a bit over a year ago. We try to stick to a major release every six months, but this one took a bit longer than expected.

Instructionals/Technical

• As a newbie to Bitbucket, navigating the platform and using its basic commands can be overwhelming. However, with some guidance, you can quickly become proficient in using Bitbucket.

• You can install LXD pure-container hypervisor on Debian 11 Linux to run an unmodified version of Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Alpine, Arch and many other Linux distro. You can mimic AWS or different cloud instance types with LXD for testing and deployment purposes on your development machine. You can also run a GUI app such as Firefox completely isolated using LXD for security or privacy reasons. Let us see how to set up and use LXD on the Debian Linux 11 server or desktop.

• $ awk -niord '{printf RT?$0chr("0x"substr(RT,2)):$0}' RS=%..

• VPN or Virtual Private Network is an encrypted path between a device and a network over the internet. VPNs ensure the security of transmitted data by providing encrypted channels for data flow.

• Linux has tons of commands that simplify tasks and make work more efficient. Rm is a helpful command for quickly deleting files, links, directories, etc.

• Ansible is an open-source software platform for configuring and managing computers. It combines multi-node software deployment, ad hoc task execution, and configuration management. Ansible works over SSH and requires no software or daemons to be installed on remote nodes.

• What is an SSL certificate? SSL certificate is a digital certificate that validates the identity of a website and establishes an encrypted connection. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security protocol that allows encrypted communication between web server and client.

• Sometimes when restoring a multi-schema database from a backup file, you may want to exclude one or more schemas, for one reason or the other.

• Founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon on 23 April 2006, Spotify is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider.

• Welcome to the world of the Opera Browser, a modern, sleek, and feature-rich web browser designed to make your online experience efficient and enjoyable. As a Manjaro user, you may be considering making Opera your default browser, and for good reason!

• Modern Linux systems use systemd to manage daemons and system settings. Systemd is a service manager and initialization system, which took over from SysvInit

• In this tutorial, we will explain how to install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9 OS. If you ever doubt what Grafana is and what it is used for, we are here to explain it to you.

• As a Manjaro Linux user, you may have encountered Visual Studio Code—a popular and feature-rich source code editor. But have you ever wondered if there’s a more privacy-focused alternative? Introducing VSCodium, a free, open-source, and community-driven fork of Visual Studio Code.

• As a Manjaro Linux user, you might wonder why Discord has become such a popular platform, especially among gamers and those transitioning to Linux gaming systems. This introduction will highlight the key aspects that make Discord an essential tool for Linux gamers and provide a detailed overview of its benefits.

• OpenRGB offers a variety of advantages for Manjaro Linux users looking to manage their RGB devices seamlessly. By utilizing the AUR and command line terminal, you can unlock the full potential of your RGB hardware.

WINE or Emulation

Wine stable release 7.0.2 is now available for Linux FreeBSD and macOSThe Wine stable release 7.0.2 is now available. What’s new in this release: Various bug fixesThe source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• Six weeks ago we announced D-Installer 0.7 and a lot has happened since then. The most important news is that we just released a new prototype with version 0.8, integrating several exciting new features we will go through in this post. But this prototype is not only important because of those features, but also because it will be the last D-Installer release! Fear not, we are not abandoning the project… quite the opposite.

• We want to consolidate D-Installer in the following months from the experimental project it currently is into a solid alternative for installing several Linux distributions. And the name was perceived by some people as an obstacle for that. So we will change it to an already decided alternative starting with the next prototype.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Streamlit integrates with Python code and offers a low barrier of entry to visualizing application data in sophisticated ways.

• Red Hat Developer has many labs that you can easily access through your web browser. The Developer Sandbox for Red Hat OpenShift lets you experiment with building and deploying cloud-native applications in a real OpenShift environment using only your web browser.

• With an integrated development environment (IDE) called Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces (formerly Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces), the Developer Sandbox is a playground for developers looking to explore Kubernetes-based application platforms. This article provides a step-by-step guide to getting started with the Developer Sandbox, where you can, for example, dive into the process of creating a Camel integration through a web-based interface.

• You can now try Camel K in the Developer Sandbox for Red Hat OpenShift, an OpenShift environment you can access for a free, hands-on experience in building and deploying cloud-native applications quickly. This article will guide you to the Developer Sandbox and through a Camel K integration in a fully web-based experience—no local installs needed.

• If you are unfamiliar with Camel K, it is a subproject of Apache Camel, which many know as the Swiss Army knife of integration. Camel K simplifies the process of running cloud-native integration flows in Kubernetes environments.

• Many organizations and developers implement microservices with varied languages and frameworks, but they usually forget the existence of purpose-built technologies such as Apache Camel, packed with hundreds of connectors and out-of-the-box patterns to resolve typical and challenging integration scenarios, such as content-based routing, splitting or data aggregation, protocol bridging, data transformation, and so on.

Debian Family

• The coroner’s report is now available for the suicide of Richard Rothwell. The full report is further down. There appear to be two key points: Rothwell was stressed about an imminent tax audit and Rothwell was alone at the time he decided to commit suicide.

• Other observations include the fact he left notes (only one in four suicide victims does so) and alcohol was involved. The Debian Day volunteer suicide victim Frans Pop also left a number of notes/emails.

• Rothwell worked for approximately 20 years as a school teacher. During this time, he explored solutions for using GNU/Linux and free software in education.

• Between 2004 and 2006, Rothwell gave a series of conference presentations about his work. This is one of the papers he has published at the time. Through the Schoolforge UK project, he shared his work publicly under open source licenses.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Ubuntu 23.04 will be one of the few Ubuntu releases to include some of the latest and greatest GNU/Linux technologies and software. For example, it comes with the recently released GNOME 44 desktop environment for the Ubuntu Desktop edition, which comes with an updated Ubuntu font, and it’s powered by the latest Linux 6.2 kernel series for top-notch hardware support.

• The Ubuntu Desktop edition also includes a brand-new installer that has been in development for the past year and it’s written entirely in Google’s Flutter UI SDK. The new installer is pretty much identical in functionality to the old installer from previous Ubuntu releases with the exception that it doesn’t yet support ZFS installations.

• Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 23.04 Beta has been released. With the codename Lunar Lobster, Lubuntu 23.04 will be the 24th release of Lubuntu, the tenth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

• This beta build arrives in advance of the final stable release of Ubuntu 23.04, which is due out April 20. It’s purpose: to let folks like you and I try it out early to find bugs, breakages, and report any show-stopping quirks.

• As Ubuntu 23.04 is a short-term release (supported for just 9 months) there aren’t reams of revolutionary changes present in this released, which is codenamed the “Lunar Lobster”.

Devices/Embedded

• This month, OrangePi launched a new variant of the Orange Pi 5 Single Board Computer based on the Octa-core Rockchip RK3588S 64-bit processor. The Orange Pi 5B supports 8K@60fps video output, Gigabit Ethernet and it can be configured with up to 256GB eMMC storage.

• The new Orange Pi 5B features the same Rockchip processor with Big.Little architecture as the Orange Pi 5 SBC launched last year.

• The product page doesn’t include OS images for this board, but it’s mentioned that it will support OrangePi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, etc. The Orange Pi Wiki page can be found here, but it doesn’t include documentation for this SBC as of publication date.

Open Hardware/Modding

• During Arduino Day 2023, we announced the new UNO R4 and we are now looking for contributors from the community to help support the portability of libraries and open source projects based on an AVR Arduino boards such as the UNO R3, Mega, Leonardo, and Nano.

• While their popularity seems to be waning as LCD and OLED TVs grow in size and shrink in price, projectors can still be a good choice for home theaters.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• At the end of 2022, Paulus Schoutsen declared 2023 “the year of voice” for Home Assistant, the popular open-source home-automation project that he founded nine years ago. The project’s goal this year is to let users control their home with voice commands in their own language, using offline processing instead of sending data to the cloud. Offline voice control has been the holy grail of open-source home-automation systems for years. Several projects have tried and failed. But with Rhasspy’s developer Mike Hansen spearheading Home Assistant’s voice efforts, this time things could be different.

• Science fiction shows and movies have sold us on the idea of spaceships and homes we can talk to. In recent years, voice control at home has become possible thanks to the so-called “smart speakers” from Google, Amazon, and Apple. However, there’s nothing smart about these devices: their intelligence is almost completely in the cloud, where the user’s voice recordings are processed and translated into sentences and meaning.

• This is a complex and computationally intensive task, and these companies make us believe that their services are required to be able to use voice control. Of course this comes with downsides: users don’t have any control over what’s happening with their voice recordings, which is a big privacy risk. But, fundamentally, the problem lies even deeper. It just makes no sense for users to have their voices make a long detour through the internet just to turn on a light in the same room.

• This week sees the start of a new Rust tutorial series and takes a look at blendOS Linux distro.

• I shared last month the details of the new OSI website, hosted on WordPress.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

PostgreSQL ☛ pg_dumpbinary v2.10 releasedZurich, Switzerland – March 30th, 2023pg_dumpbinarypg_dumpbinary is a program used to dump a PostgreSQL database with data dumped in binary format. The resulting dump must be restored using pg_restorebinary that is provided with this tool.pg_dumpbinary v2.10 was released today, it adds a new option to the pg_dumpbinary command:-C, –compress-level 0-9 : speed of the gzip compression using the specified digit, between 1 and 9, default to 6. Setting it to 0 disable the compression.

• YottaDB r1.38 is a minor release that includes functionality needed at short notice by a customer. A MUPIP REPLICATE option provides for a replication stream to include updates made by triggers on the source instance. $ZPEEK() and ^%PEEKBYNAME() provide direct access to an additional process-private structure.

Licensing / Legal

• The concept of copyleft is compelling in a lot of ways, at least for those who want to promote software freedom in the world. Bradley Kuhn is certainly one of those people and has long been working on various aspects of copyleft licensing and compliance, along with software freedom. He came to Everything Open 2023 to talk about copyleft, some of its history—and flaws—and to look toward the future of copyleft.

• Kuhn began by saying that he spends much of his time these days thinking about the enforcement of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1; “it turns out that those are the most widely used copyleft licenses in the world”, thus they are the most frequently violated. It is sometimes painful to be looking at license text written in 1991 and 1993 as we move through 2023, but that is what he has to do. Outside of work, though, he has time to think about what sort of copyleft license he would draft if he were to do so. He was just out of high school when GPLv2 was released, so he did not participate in that process at all.

Programming/Development

• Last weekend I had a conversation with an undergraduate student new to computer science, who was reading CLRS. “I wish” they said, “that all the pseudocode in my algorithms textbook was just written in Python.” “Ah” I said, “but textbook authors sometimes want their work to endure beyond a decade.” “But Python’s been around for a long time” came the reply, “and it’s very readable, and you can’t execute pseudocode anyway so what’s the harm?

• Now that Qt Creator 10 has been released, it’s time to highlight the CMake changes.

Leftovers

• Han was removed from under the rubble of an 11-story apartment building destroyed by the February 6 earthquakes. Suffering from a broken foot and being severely dehydrated, the cat is currently under treatment.

• There’s a Marvel veteran among Disney’s 7,000 job casualties.

• In 2021, there was an estimated 5 immigrants per 1 000 people in the EU. Relative to the size of the resident population, Luxembourg recorded the highest rate of immigration in 2021 (almost 40 immigrants per 1 000 people), followed by Malta (35) and Cyprus (27). In contrast, Slovakia registered the lowest rate of immigration, with 1 immigrant per 1 000 people. This country was followed by Portugal and France, each with 5 immigrants per 1 000 people.

Hardware

• SONOFF TX Ultimate smart touch wall switch, also known as the SONOFF T5, is another wireless switch from the company with up to 3 gangs, RGB color edge lights around the 86x86mm switch, as well as support for gestures and custom covers. Gestures like swipe left or right are possible because the full area of the SONOFF T5 switch acts as a touch sensor, and the RGB LEDs around the device enable ambient lights in the room at night.

• Cincoze P1201 is a slim embedded computer based on an Atom x6000E Elkhart Lake processor and mostly designed for panel PC applications thanks to the company’s patented CDS (Convertible Display System) connector that allows the mini PC to slide into the back of a display for easy installation.

• ACEMAGICIAN T8PLUS is an ultra-compact mini PC based on the latest Intel Processor N95 “Alder Lake N-Series” processor with three HDMI video outputs and dual gigabit Ethernet ports. The 8.9 x 8.9 x 4.3mm computer ships with 8GB LPDDR5 memory, a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD, and is also equipped with three USB 3.0 ports, a WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 wireless module, and a 3.5mm audio jack, plus a Kensington lock slot.

• Korean semiconductor industry finds U.S. CHIPS funding requirements a threat to its trade secrets.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers structural changes in the host cell’s DNA, which provide a molecular explanation for long COVID, a new study suggests.

• Self-contained synthetic E. coli resistant to viral infection could prove invaluable to the biotechnology industry by increasing product consistency and reducing safety concerns.

• President Biden’s plans to sign a resolution ending the COVID national emergency has some House Democrats once again simmering over the White House’s communications.

• Why it matters: The latest flare-up of tensions threatens to reopen wounds created earlier this month over D.C. crime and immigration.

• Texas was home to six of the top 10 largest-growing counties in 2022, according to Census Bureau data out this morning.

• Why it matters: America’s shift in money, people and power to the Sun Belt — propelled by COVID — is continuing even as the pandemic eases.

• Driving the news: The largest gainer was Maricopa County, Ariz. (Phoenix). The other three entries on the top 10 growth counties list (numerically, as opposed to percentage growth) were in Florida — Polk, Lee and Hillsborough counties.

• Infection with multiple common viruses may be responsible for the cases that puzzled doctors last year.

• A federal judge in Texas ruled Thursday that employers can’t be required to cover specified preventive health care services under the Affordable Care Act.

• Why it matters: The ruling has major implications for the more than 150 million Americans on employer-sponsored health plans and could put millions on the hook financially for certain skin and lung cancer screenings, statins for heart disease, medications that prevent HIV and other services recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Axios ☛ How to reenroll for Medicaid as coverage cliff approachesMedicaid coverage may soon end for millions of Americans as a pandemic-era rule nears its end. The big picture: U.S. states will undergo a phased “unwinding” of coverage after years of Medicaid agencies being required under the COVID public health emergency to provide continuous Medicaid coverage to all enrollees, even if their eligibility changed.Between five and 14 million people across the nation could lose Medicaid coverage in the coming year, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates.Axios ☛ Minnesota train incident comes as rail safety under scrutinyResidents of a Minnesota town were under an evacuation order for at least seven hours Thursday after a train hauling ethanol and corn syrup derailed and caught fire, according to local officials.Why it matters: The derailment comes as Congress is weighing rail safety reforms stemming from a separate train derailment last month in East Palestine, Ohio, which prompted evacuations and lingering health concerns for residents.There were no injuries related to the Minnesota derailment, and the incident did not affect ground water in the area, the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office said.

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (xorg-server and xrdp), Fedora (mingw-python-certifi, mingw-python3, mingw-zstd, moodle, python-cairosvg, python-markdown-it-py, redis, xorg-x11-server, and yarnpkg), Slackware (mozilla and xorg), SUSE (grub2, ldb, samba, libmicrohttpd, python-Werkzeug, rubygem-rack, samba, sudo, testng, tomcat, webkit2gtk3, xorg-x11-server, xstream, and zstd), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-dell300x, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-gke, linux-gke-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, php-nette, and xorg-server, xorg-server-hwe-18.04, xwayland).

• The X.Org project has announced a vulnerability in its X server and Xwayland (CVE-2023-1393).

• The primary target of this spyware campaign were the unsuspecting users in Italy, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan.

• Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has discovered two highly-targeted mobile spyware campaigns that use zero-day exploits to deploy surveillance software against iPhone and Android smartphone users.

• Google TAG discovered two “distinct, limited, and highly targeted” campaigns aimed at users of Android, iOS, and Chrome on mobile devices. The campaigns used zero-day and n-day exploits, taking advantage of the period between when vendors release vulnerability fixes and when hardware manufacturers update end-user devices with those patches, creating exploits for unpatched platforms.

• The Dutch national railway, NS, has warned about 780,000 customers that their personal data may be involved in a data breach.The train operator works closely with market research firm Blauw. External parties gained access to personal data at via a software supplier for that company. For example, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers or names of train passengers who participated in a satisfaction survey may have been leaked.

• “Depending on the study in which the customer participated, this may concern personal data such as name, e-mail address and telephone number. It does not concern financial data or passwords,” the NS said.

• The LockBit ransomware group has leaked data it stole from Washington County Sheriff’s Office in northeastern Florida.

• Security video captures a thief breaking into a Sherman Oaks dental office and stealing hundreds of files containing patients’ personal information on Thursday.

• The break-in happened at Riverside Dental located on the 12900 block of Riverside Drive just after 3 a.m.

• Surveillance cameras captured the thief entering the office through a broken back window. As he finds the room where medical records are stored on a shelf, he’s seen quickly grabbing large piles of folders and stuffing them into a bag.

• Almost a month after attending a concert at Cornell University featuring Beach Bunny — a popular alternative rock band — on Jan. 28, several Ithaca College students’ credit and debit card information was breached and varying amounts of money were stolen.

• On Feb. 24, Information Technology at Cornell University released a security alert informing students that Cornell’s ticketing software partner and vendor, AudienceView, experienced a platform breach that affected ticket buyers beginning in February and some buyers are still losing money because of the breach.

• Happening now: A number of hospitals are filing breach notices this week that appear to be linked to a breach at Adelanto HealthCare Ventures (AHCV) in 2021. The hospitals are all owned by Universal Health Services LLC (UHS).

• In August 2022, DataBreaches reported a ransomware attack on Atlantic Dialysis Management Services (ADMS) by Snatch Team. DataBreaches first learned of the breach in June 2022, when Snatch Team named ADMS on their leak site. Between then and August 16, when DataBreaches reported on the incident, ADMS ignored requests from this site for information about their response to the attack. Even after Snatch Team started leaking data and DataBreaches contacted ADMS again, they did not reply. DataBreaches’ reporting in August 2022 included examples of what had been leaked by then and questioned some of the claims ADMS made in their press release of August 5. DataBreaches reported, in part:

• By Henrik Brodin, Lead Security Engineer, Research The aCropalypse is upon us! Last week, news about CVE-2023-21036, nicknamed the “aCropalypse,” spread across Twitter and other media, and I quickly realized that the underlying flaw could be detected by our tool, PolyTracker.

• The majority of digital medical devices (53%) in the US, as well as internet-connected tools in hospitals, are at risk of cyberattack, according to a 2022 FBI report.

• “We have a security team, we do our own pentesting, we’ve got software scanners, we got a CSO … Nonetheless, they outsmarted us.”

• Eleven nations agreed on Thursday to responsible use of commercial spyware. Israel, a key spyware exporter, is not part of the deal.

• As mentioned in our recent blog post, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS ‘Bionic Beaver‘ will reach the end of the standard five-year maintenance window on 31 May 2023.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• A glitch in seemingly all motherboard software has been found that allows AMD’s locked Ryzen 7 5800X3D to be overclocked well beyond its capabilities.

• Guest Post: New tool helps to identify potentially malicious domain name registrations.

Defence/Aggression

• Ahead of moving into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) contingent was told they would be on the ground to help “a country in turmoil”.

• The vessel caught fire near the southern island province of Basilan, the coast guard said. The cause of the accident was under investigation.

• A White House spokesman said the man would be in violation of several U.N. Security Council resolutions.

• Turkey’s parliament has ratified Finland’s application to join NATO, lifting the last hurdle to the Nordic country’s long-delayed accession into the Western military alliance. All 276 lawmakers present voted in favor of Finland’s bid Thursday, days after Hungary’s parliament also endorsed Helsinki’s accession. Alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago, Finland and Sweden abandoned their decades-long policy of nonalignment and applied to join the alliance.

• Turkey’s parliament on Thursday approved Finland’s NATO membership, clearing the way for the Nordic country to join the alliance.

• Why it matters: Finland’s NATO membership, once official, will more than double the length of the alliance’s borders with Russia — dramatically changing the security landscape in Europe.

• The authorities identified eight suspects and said government workers and private security workers had done nothing to help migrants flee the blaze at a detention center in Ciudad Juárez.

• As Beijing keeps a watchful eye, Taiwan’s leader delivers a speech in the US to a private audience.

• Intelligence gathering by Russians has chiefly been carried out by individuals under diplomatic cover, according to the Security and Intelligence Service.

• Why Russia and Ukraine are fighting for a city with little strategic value.

• Turkey was set on Thursday to become the final Nato nation to approve Finland’s membership of the US-led defence alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• President Tsai Ing-wen’s trip comes as US tensions with China are nearing a boiling point, and Taiwan is hustling to hang on to its allies in Latin America.

• Azerbaijan has denounced comments by a senior Iranian military commander who said members of the Islamic State militant group had fought for Azerbaijan and were still based in the country.

• Since 2000, Taiwan has been a top target of misinformation campaigns largely propagated by the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies.

• Vladimir Putin’s latest bout of nuclear saber-rattling is a clear indication of Russia’s growing desperation as the invasion of Ukraine continues to unravel amid mounting military losses, writes Peter Dickinson.

• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s visit to China this week is both significant and symbolic—just a week after Xi Jinping met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to demonstrate not only his strategic shortfalls, but his persistent bluster. His latest announcement that he will deploy tactical (non-strategic) nuclear weapons to Belarus is but another example of fear-mongering…

• The people responsible for Australia’s security are fully aware of the Iranian regime’s activities targeting Australians, at home and abroad.

• The Pentagon said the injuries were diagnosed during routine screenings in the days after the strikes by Iranian-backed militants.

• Seemingly unprovoked air raid occurred in an area with no fighting, residents say.

• Convincing disgruntled wives to stay with their families amid harsh economic slump seems key thrust of program

• A court in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Crimea has sentenced a military serviceman to nine years in prison for desertion.

• The United States has imposed sanctions on a Slovakian man who allegedly worked as a broker for Russia in its efforts to purchase arms and munitions from North Korea to support its war on Ukraine.

• The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has rejected Iran’s bid to unblock nearly $2 billion in assets belonging to its central bank that were frozen by the United States over alleged terrorist attacks.

• In a historic shift, Finland has been accepted as a full Nato member by all 30 countries in the alliance. Meanwhile neighbouring Sweden still awaits its green light.

• Ankara’s approval is the only remaining obstacle to Finnish membership in the military alliance.

• On March 29, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, Andris Pelšs, welcomed the State Secretaries (senior civil servants, not to be confused with U.S.-style Secretaries of State) from the Foreign Ministries of the Baltic States and Nordic countries (Nordic-Baltic Eight, NB8) to their annual meeting in Rīga organised this year by Latvia as the coordinator of cooperation in the NB8 format, according to a release from the ministry.

• A satellite operated by NASA and NOAA bares how Russia’s drones and missiles knocked out the nation’s power.

• “Together we must be vigilant against threats to our values,” the British monarch said to German lawmakers.

• Ukrainian commanders said that Russia exhausted all its reserves on the eastern city, though soldiers said the cost in lives had been steep.

Environment

• Much of California and the midwestern United States just had some of the wettest winter weather on record, per data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

• Israel’s experience of addressing climate change as a national security challenge is also an approach that bears sharing with its regional partners.

• Vanuatu championed push for ICJ opinion after Pacific islands law students advanced the idea.

Energy/Transportation

• Anadolu Agency used the term “to officially grant a nuclear facility status” while reporting that President Erdoğan said “Putin may visit Turkey on April 27 for the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant opening.”

• The pace of the energy transition has, to this point, depended on low-cost Chinese production. But the supply chains that have driven clean tech deployment jeopardize US national security and must be remade.

• Private jet flights and emissions have soared in Europe since the pandemic.

• New Which? research finds trains up to three times more expensive than flying, while airline taxes are reduced

Wildlife/Nature

• At the end of this year, at the Salaspils National Botanical Garden, a new environmental education center, “Botania”, is opening its doors. It will allow everyone to explore the plant world and gain knowledge about nature conservation and biodiversity issues, Latvian Television reported on March 30.

Finance

Axios ☛ In the wake of SVB collapse, the White House is calling for new rules for regional banksThe Biden administration urged regulators on Thursday afternoon to update regulations on regional banks, including some that were loosened during the Trump era.Why it matters: The White House and others have blamed looser regulations for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank earlier this month.“Unfortunately, Trump Administration regulators weakened many important common-sense requirements and supervision for large regional banks like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose recent failure led to contagion throughout the banking system,” a White House official said on a call with reporters Thursday afternoon.“The goal here is to make sure that this does not happen again,” the official said.

• The last time so few mortgages were drawn was in 2003, the Bank of Finland said.

• New financial disclosure requirements enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will go into effect on April 1, 2023 for most companies, removing a common loophole used by corporate executives to sell company stock.

• The most recent (Spring 2023) “Payment Radar” report from the Latvian central bank (Latvijas Banka, LB) suggests that the ratio between non-cash and cash payments in Latvia was 67% to 33% in February 2023.

• The State Revenue Service (VID) has asked for prosecution in a beauty sector business for the so-called “envelope wages”, or unaccounted-for cash payments worth €2.6 million, the VID said March 30.

• Three years into the pandemic, hybrid work has become the new norm for remote workers.

• Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse has rippled across evert major banking hub except for China’s. This is because of China’s unique banking structure which emphases heavy state oversight and control while minimizing cross border connections with advanced economies

• With most avenues for Western partnership indefinitely closed and Russian economic dependency on China growing rapidly, Putin’s talk of “economic sovereignty” is starting to sound very hollow, writes Diane Francis.

• The accounts were opened in the name of Sergei P. Roldugin, a concert cellist nicknamed “Putin’s wallet.”

• President Emmanuel Macron of France presented conservation proposals after an exceptionally dry winter. But his government is still dogged by pension protests.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Dr. Julian Gewirtz and Chris Backemeyer join us to provide unique insights from a US perspective on the potential implications of China’s growing presence in the Middle East and its efforts to replace US dominance on global governance, as well as the priorities of the US in the MENA region.

• The Israeli government must understand that there is a need to dissociate between the nuclear issue, which has only a diplomatic solution, and Iranian malign activities.

• Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, blocked an attempt by a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers to fast-track a US ban on TikTok, the mega-popular social media app used by more than 150 million Americans

• Donald Trump has become the first former president in the US to face criminal charges after a five-year investigation, according to a scoop from the New York Times.

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• As Donald Trump fought his way to victory in the 2016 presidential campaign, key allies tried to smooth his bumpy path by paying off two women who had been thinking of going public with allegations of extramarital encounters with the Republican. The payoffs are now believed to be at the center of a grand jury investigation that could lead to the first-ever criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president. The cast of key characters in the saga include a porn actor, a one-time Trump loyalist who turned on his boss and Manhattan’s first-term district attorney.

• In the first criminal case against a former president, Donald Trump has been indicted on charges involving payments made during his 2016 campaign. The charges center on payments made to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. Prosecutors in New York investigated money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep the women from going public with claims that they had sexual encounters with him.

• As Donald Trump fought his way to victory in the 2016 presidential campaign, key allies tried to smooth his bumpy path by paying off two women who had been thinking of going public with allegations of extramarital encounters…

• Former president Trump’s indictment this week is just one of several legal challenges bearing down on the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate.

• A grand jury in New York on Thursday indicted former President Trump on charges related to an illegal hush money payment in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels who alleged they had an affair, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has confirmed.

• Why it matters: Trump, who is running for president in 2024 and facing multiple criminal probes, is the first president in U.S. history — sitting or former — to face criminal charges. The indictment over a payment during his first run for president is sure to ripple through his latest campaign.

• Also, an American journalist arrested in Russia and a Chinese billionaire’s downfall.

• NYT reports that Trump has been indicted. CNN has confirmed. A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever…

• Most of the complaint charging suspected Russian spy Sergey Cherkasov relies on evidence obtained after Cherkasov was arrested in Brazil. Where it doesn’t, it nods to far more that the US Intelligence Community might know.

• With both the NDP and UCP moving to the right, voters have fewer choices in Alberta’s 2023 election

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• The former president returned to a tense political landscape in which he is under investigation for spreading election misinformation and for inspiring the Jan. 8 attack in the capital.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Lithuania is one of few countries that retain a full ban on pornography. Sexting has been assumed to fall under the category, but a recent court case has cleared up the regulation.

• A court in Moscow has sentenced a 63-year-old man to seven years in prison for two online posts last year condemning Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The newspaper said it “vehemently denies the allegations” against Evan Gershkovich, an American, and the White House called his detention “unacceptable.”

• Russian authorities on Thursday said they had detained an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal on espionage charges.

• Driving the news: Evan Gershkovich is the first U.S. journalist to be detained in an espionage case since the Cold War, the Committee to Protect Journalists told Axios.

• Sun publisher Dominic Carter explains why the future is bright in his part of the media.

• Sun publisher Dominic Carter says digital growth is outpacing print decline at the title.

• Greig does not believe Boris Johnson was behind his firing from the Daily Mail.

Civil Rights/Policing

• “My top priority will be prisons. I will work to prevent deaths in prisons from being normalized as suicides,” said Asya Gezer, who lost her sister in suspicious circumstances after being sexually assaulted and tortured in prison.

• Songül İlker, seriously ill prisoner Ekim Polat’s mother, called on the Ministries of Justice and Health: “Do not let my son die in prison. He needs to be in the hospital for treatment.”

• Pınar Selek, an academician and sociologist, was acquitted four times but is now put on trial for the fifth time with same accusations. She will be following tomorrow’s hearing at Human Rights Association in Paris but dozens from France and other countries will be at the courthouse in İstanbul to be in solidarity with her.

• An outsized share of American workers don’t take all their available paid time off, according to a Pew Research Center survey out Wednesday morning.

• Why it matters: The results run counter to the idea that people are trying to work less or are less willing to work hard.

• Seven California Highway Patrol officers and a nurse were charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death in police custody of Edward Bronstein, officials in the state announced Wednesday.

• The big picture: Californian authorities last year released video of the 38 year old who died on March 31, 2020 after screaming “I can’t breathe” while being restrained by officers who were trying to take a blood sample.

• Recent threats to some of the nation’s oldest Chinatowns in Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York City have raised concerns about displacement for Asian Americans who see Chinatown as both a symbol of their resilience and a place to protect in the wake of anti-Asian hate.

• Why it matters: Chinatowns have served as an ethnic and cultural marker since Chinese immigrants first arrived in the U.S. But many are decreasing in size — or completely disappearing — amid urban development and gentrification as cities look to maximize profit in their downtown centers.

• Preparations for the tournament were thrown into disarray when a governor asked Indonesia’s sports ministry to bar Israel’s team from participating.

• In an ad campaign aimed at British men between 18 and 35, the Dutch capital threatens fines for visitors who are looking for a “messy night.”

• The far-reaching proposal covers diversity training, faculty performance reviews, graduation requirements, the enrollment of Chinese students, and more.

• One in five individuals in senior positions at listed Finnish companies has been convicted of a crime.

• The strike was cancelled late on Wednesday night after a deal was reached on pay.

• The Appellate Court of Maryland Tuesday reinstated the conviction of Adnan Syed for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee and remanded the case.

• The California Reparations Task Force Wednesday convened for a two-day public comment period to decide how reparations to Black Californians should be paid.

• Hanoi also rejects U.N. criticism over arbitrary arrest of 9 activists

Monopolies

• Procompetitive behavior by a business benefits consumers but may harm rival businesses.

• An Indian tribunal has upheld a $162 million fine imposed on Google by the country’s fair trade regulator for abusing its Android dominance to promote its payment service.

Trademarks

• The Board has affirmed the first 15 Section 2(e)(1) refusals that it reviewed this year. Here are three more. At least one was reversed. How do you think these three cases came out? [Results in first comment].

Copyrights

• This form of folk art from 17th- and 18th-century Pennsylvania was designed for private, domestic pleasures.

• Fair warning, I’m going to wade into the whole AI/ChatGPT discussion. It’s been discussed to death, but I’m going to jump in anyway. Feel free to click away if you’re already sick of the topic.  I’m going to use “ChatGPT” as a stand-in for ML/AI-driven writing tools, even though it’s not the only one on the market and there’s certainly more to come.

• Anyway, it seems like ChatGPT is poised to automate away a lot of writing work, and we’re in for tools that are going to produce a whole lot of content of varying quality and accuracy whether we like that prospect or not.

• Last week in Rīga and Daugavpils the State Police detained people involved in the distribution of illegal television, including the broadcasting of banned Russian propaganda channels, the police said on March 29.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Took a lunch walk today with my wife and youngest son (who brought his bike, so he got a walk/ride experience). We drove down to Mokane and hopped on the Katy Trail. Walked for two miles total then came home. Gorgeous spring day. The trees aren’t leafed out yet, but the farmer’s fields are covered in soft greens and purples. Some nice bulb flowers budding early as well. One piece of creek that we crossed over was bubbling with clear water, but no fish visible. Sunny and 68F with a light, cool breeze, it was hard to beat.

• I usually read just Science Fiction and Fantasy for fun, or some language study books here and there, but over the past couple of years I’ve been feeling inspired by the sort of character developing advice I’ve been seeing in content I read online.

• I’ve completed a first pass of both books, but I’ve only just started to go back over them and make notes. While I read them, I did record a few quick notes here and there, but really just a few thinking points. I’ll probably post more on these two texts over the next couple of weeks.

• While wife and son are visiting the in-laws for a week i have time to visit the pub again… bartender, do you have Grasovka in stock? Yes? Great!

• Turning in the general direction to the next patron i start to ramble…

• The biggest bane in my life always was my lazyness… but a particular kind of lazyness: If there is a deadline, a release date or an emergency i am hyper productive, i work from 05:00 – 22:00, eat, sleep and jump out of bed fresh as the morning just to head straight to work. But on the other hand… routine work is killing me. Give me a straight good workday without emergencies or big catastrophes and i am doing the bare minimum or even less to just get by. Just today my boss told me “Mr. ralfwause, i am absolutely glad you work here and i hope you will work here in 20 years from now, but sometimes… sometimes i have this urge to simply shoot you…”.

• There seems to be conditions under which “midnight.sh” does not work… in particular, the server often seems to answer that there is no content, especially when I’m sending only one line as a reply.

• 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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