● 05.19.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 19/05/2023: Newer Laptops With GNU/Linux Preinstalled

Posted in News Roundup at 9:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• The Kubuntu Focus M2 Gen 5 is a laptop with a 15.6 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel IPS LCD display featuring a 240 Hz refresh rate, an Intel Core i9-13900HX processor with 24 cores and 32 threads, and a choice of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 or RTX 4070 graphics.

• It’s also the latest in a line of laptops from the Kubuntu Focus team that ships with the Kubuntu software, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. The new 5th-gen Kubuntu Focus M2 laptop is now available for purchase for $1895 and up.

Applications

• Ahome computer makes an ideal appliance to store and stream music. The purpose of a music server is to deliver tracks when requested by a client. The server can deliver music to machines over a local area network as well as computers connected over the internet.

• Linux is widely recognized as an ideal operating system to serve web pages. But the server capabilities of Linux extend far beyond merely providing HTTP servers.

• There is a wide range of multimedia software available for Linux which turns your machine into a jukebox. There are even dedicated Linux distributions that turn your computer into a music server. This article identifies the best free software which enables your Linux machine to act as a music server, distributing digital tracks over a network. Such software supports popular audio formats such as FLAC, OGG Vorbis, and MP3.

Instructionals/Technical

• Do you have a static site generator?

• If so, how do you handle the date and time for when your posts are published?

• BGP is the Internet’s de facto routing protocol – but relatively few have a deep understanding of its vulnerabilities. Delving into threats posed by misconfigurations and hijacks, Lefteris Manassakis discusses BGP and the importance of mitigation, monitoring, and detection with ARTEMIS and Code BGP.

• why? because it would be a shame to put all those intel Macs to the trash not particularly big fan of the aluminum bodies (uses loads of energy to make also not healthy to be touched daily)…

• Hello, friends. Many newbies want to start with Docker, but it turns out that due to inexperience they do not manage to do the right process and have some errors when using it.

• Booting up your Linux system only to be greeted with a ‘Missing Operating System’ error can be daunting. However, it’s often fixable with the right approach. This error is typically indicative of issues with the bootloader or the Master Boot Record (MBR).

• The filesystem consistency check (fsck) is an essential utility for any Linux user or administrator. This command-line tool checks and repairs inconsistencies in filesystems, which can occur due to unexpected shutdowns, system crashes, or power failures.

• Jack Wallen demonstrates how to scan container images for vulnerabilities and dependencies with the new Docker Scout feature.

• Introduction What is Kubernetes? Kubernetes is an open-source platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It was originally designed by Google and is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Kubernetes enables developers to focus on writing code, rather than dealing with infrastructure, by abstracting away complexity.

• Introduction Definition of Distributed Power in the Context of Kubernetes Distributed power refers to the ability to distribute workloads across multiple machines or nodes, enabling a cluster of servers to function as a single system. In the context of Kubernetes, distributed power is achieved through container orchestration.

• This article spotlights alternative tools to cp, a tool for copying files and directories.

• A BSOD isn’t necessarily the end, as you can continue after a crash with Linux if you use BugCheck2Linux.

Retro or Emulation

• This being a long weekend in Sweden, I decided to see if I could make some progress with the tosemu project.

• First a quick recap. Tosemu is what Wine is for Windows, but for TOS from the Atari ST series of computers. I.e. not an emulator, but rather, a translation layer re-implementing the OS APIs.

• An event at a local GameStop celebrating the release became an opportunity to come together – and find sweet nostalgia.

Games

• Fancy upgrading the resolution of your Steam Deck screen? Well it seems FX Technology also known as F(x)tec are planning to offer Steam Deck screen upgrades under the Deck HD brand.

• Prison Architect is officially done. The final update has rolled out with The Sunset Update, as Paradox Interactive and Double Eleven have said they’re finished with it.

• A fresh May upgrade for Proton Experimental has arrived giving us a few tweaks to improve some select games. Here’s what’s new in the May 17th upgrade.

• In the latest Steam Beta Client for desktop, Valve has made an attempt to improve the experience for NVIDIA GPU owners on Linux. Since the New Big Picture Mode landed, it has been pretty rough for NVIDIA users and that’s being kind. It’s sluggish as heck but now perhaps for some a bit better.

• Update 17:09 UTC: they said in a new Twitter post, that they’re now going to be adding specific settings just for the Steam Deck:

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Recently I read KDE Plasma is NOT a Desktop Environment (via), which maintains that it’s more like an environment construction kit, out of which one could build multiple environments. I have some reactions to this, and also I have some opinions on what a desktop environment even is on a modern Linux system (opinions which may count as a bit heretical).

• XFCE is a lightweight free, open-source desktop environment that can be installed as an alternative to Ubuntu’s default desktop environment.

• This environment has become a popular alternative, even leading to a derivative of Ubuntu that goes by the name “Xubuntu” which uses XFCE as the default desktop.

• By default, Ubuntu uses a customized version of the GNOME desktop. Unfortunately, while a reasonably aesthetic graphical interface, it isn’t quite as fast.

• Over the following steps, we will show you how to install the XFCE desktop environment to your Ubuntu device. You can even install this desktop environment to Ubuntu Server if you want.

• For the uninitiated, PipeWire is a multimedia framework capable of handling audio and video streams on Linux systems, serving as a replacement for older technologies like PulseAudio and JACK.

• An increasing number of desktop Linux distributions use PipeWire as their default audio stack. This includes “big players” like Fedora Workstation and Ubuntu.

• In this post I share a quick overview of the latest release.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• Although Rocky Linux 9.2 emerged on Tuesday, one of the architectures wasn’t ppc64le – the release was held back. [...]

• Based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 release, both AlmaLinux OS 9.2 (codenamed “Turquoise Kodkod”) and Rocky Linux 9.2 bring pretty much the same new features and improvements implemented by Red Hat in their upstream release.

Fedora Family / IBM

• This is the third post in a series covering details about the journey of the Fedora Websites and Apps community Initiative, those who were involved in making it a grand success, and what lies ahead down the road for the team. If you have not already, read the previous post before delving into this one.

• Around April 2022, I shifted my focus to rewriting our team documentation. I aimed to maintain high codebase standards for our websites and applications while ensuring a clear understanding of our team processes. This would ensure that the team’s work could continue even after completing the community initiative. We actively participated in community events such as Fedora Linux Release Parties and Nest With Fedora, where we shared updates on our projects and discussed special team initiatives. Ashlyn Knox and Onuralp Sezer went the extra mile by organizing interactive workshops during these events, both personally and on behalf of the team. Their efforts aimed to onboard new members and educate the community about the latest developments in web technologies. Meanwhile, Ojong Enow and Subhangi Choudhary diligently pushed forward with their assignments as we neared the completion of our cohort.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• The public sector is investing heavily on artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives. Deloitte AI Institute reported that 60% of government AI and data analytics investments aim to directly impact real-time operational decisions and outcomes by 2024. From automating redundant tasks to increasing the quality of services offered to citizens, public sector institutions have a wide range of applications where they could implement AI.

Open Hardware/Modding

• While Microsoft and Apple don’t release the source code for their operating systems, a good estimate is that it takes around 50 million lines of code to run these software behemoths. The Linux kernel alone holds around 30 million lines, with systemd containing over one million lines on its own, which doesn’t include estimates for the desktop environment or other parts of a standard installation. But millions of lines of code, or even hundreds of thousands, aren’t necessary for building a fully functioning operating system. This one sets up a complete OS in exactly 2000 lines of code.

• The ability to change direction without turning is the specialty of omnidirectional wheels, which [maker.moekoe] used to their full potential on a pair of ESP32-controlled robots. Video after the break.

• Insight into a project and resources to teach data literacy and data science skills to primary school learners, from a research team in Scotland.

• To sum it up: Raspberry Pi is currently a ‘Strategic Member’ of RISC-V International, and they are working on multiple custom silicon designs—we’ve already seen their RP3A0 SiP chip and the RP2040, and they surely have more in the pipeline. Eben said currently there are no plans to move the Raspberry Pi SBC to RISC-V due to the lack of high-performance ‘A-class’ cores, but “never say never” when it comes to RISC-V architecture finding its way into a future Pi microcontroller.

• YouTuber Jeff Geerling recently flew over to the UK to sit down with Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton for a chat about shortages, predictions, the Raspberry Pi Pico and other hot topics. The short of it is that stock levels are improving, close to Upton’s 2022 prediction and that we are now seeing better stock levels than 2022 as Raspberry Pi slowly catches up with the backlog. Upton explained the reasoning behind prioritizing OEM customers over consumers, and addresses some of the negativity that was levied on Raspberry Pi by a minority of the passionate and vocal community.

• The video starts with Geerling candidly explaining that his trip to the UK was not funded by Raspberry Pi, rather it was funded via sponsorship and Patreon supporters. With that out of the way Geerling covers a series of topics with Upton, and we’ve been through the video and pulled out the key points, with timestamps for you to listen to.

• Tristam used a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for this project, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use a Raspberry Pi 4 B in its place. To test the configuration, Tristam connected his Raspberry Pi to a Ubiquiti AC long-range wireless access point using the Pi’s onboard Wi-Fi support. Although this worked for his demonstration, you could easily connect the Pi to the internet using other sources like an Ethernet connection.

• The senior care facility where Hayden works already had a system for tracking each resident room with a PIR (passive infrared) sensor. But that system was no longer functional and wasn’t serving any purpose. Instead of buying a whole new system, Hayden chose to tap into the existing sensors. To do that, they used five Arduino Mega 2560 boards to create hub units. Those hubs were spread around the building and each one monitors the PIR sensors from a handful of rooms.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• The malware-infected AllWinner and RockChip-powered Android TV models are still available to purchase on Amazon.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• Recently, I came across a post in one of my Facebook groups. This group is primarily women who juggle their job in the tech space while raising children. The post asked if people used multiple emails to limit exposure to account breaches and if so, they wanted advice on setting it up. First, I was surprised people cared enough to plan ahead for data breaches. I was also surprised at the responses, and I didn’t realize how much time people spend organizing their emails and online accounts.

Programming/Development

• [FOSS] doesn’t exist in vacuum, it floats around the capitalist world. The dominant and usual reasoning for doing just about anything usually has economic determinants. Very common and logical. Not only do we have teams, we know and have hierarchical organizations, layers and ranks among individuals organized within them, large and small ones, some progressively deteriorating and some progressively expanding and “developing” into larger ones. Some have a history of a snow ball converting to an avalanche and some of a huge ball of snow deteriorating into dust and snow balls or golf sized ice rocks.

• The new hub, Lineaje says, should help software producers and sellers be compliant with Executive Order 14028, which takes effect in September 2023, and which requires them to deliver SBOMs and linked attestation artifacts to customers.

• SBOM360 Hub is a unified exchange that enables organizations to access and evaluate vendors’ SBOMs.

Perl / Raku

• I act like an old timer (I’ve been around linux for 25 years and I’m cranky about new tech that is not easily maintained and upgraded) yet somehow I don’t know perl. How did that happen?

• I discovered this state when I decided to move from the heroically packaged yet seemingly upstream un-mainatined opendmarc package to authentication_milter.

• It’s written in perl. And, alas, not in debian.

Python

• Pytorch is a machine-learning library developed by Meta and is based on the Torch library.

• You can use this library on your Raspberry Pi for natural language processing and computer vision.

• Best of all, you can get decent performance from PyTorch with the Raspberry Pi, especially if you are using newer releases such as the Pi 4.

• The only requirement of running Pytorch on your device is that you must be running a 64-bit operating system.

• The “pandas” offers multiple useful functions/methods for performing complex calculations on data and the “rolling()” function is one of them.

• “String Slicing”, “reversed()” function, “for” loop, “join()” method, or “List Comprehension” can be used to reverse the string in Python.

• The “math.trunc()” method of the “math” module in Python is used to truncate the fractional or decimal part of the given floating-point number.

• The “pop()” method, “slicing” method or the “del” statement is used in Python to remove/pop the last element or specific element from the given list.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Scripting languages have long been the linchpin of system administration, and amongst them, the Bourne-Again SHell (Bash) is one of the most renowned and widely used. Bash, an integral part of Unix and Linux systems, offers a robust environment for administrators and developers to interact with the system, automate tasks, manage files, and control processes./blockquote>

Standards/Consortia

• Discover 12 common network protocols, including IP and BGP, and learn about their functions and importance in networking.

Leftovers

• This is probably one of the longest hiatuses I’ve taken from updating this blog. Over the years the frequency of my articles has indeed been decreasing, but I typically managed to write at least a couple of pieces per month. I’m surely stating the obvious, but for an article to appear here, three main conditions have to be fulfilled: [...]

• In all my years of reading English, I’ve never found a font which slants backwards. I’m used to italics so there’s no reason it should seem weird. And yet… it’s like the uncanny valley of fonts. Something in my brain just screams “WRONG”.

Education

• On a family trip to the Jersey Shore in the summer of 2021, Sophia’s go-to meal was the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. The buns were toasty, the chicken was crispy and the fries didn’t spill from the bag.

• Sophia was entering her sophomore year in prep school, but her parents were already thinking ahead to college. They paid to enroll her in an online service called Scholar Launch, whose programs start at $3,500. Scholar Launch, which started in 2019, connects high school students with mentors who work with them on research papers that can be published and enhance their college applications.

Hardware

• NVIDIA has today revealed multiple models of the GeForce RTX 4060. One model launches soon, the others months later in July. NVIDIA are positioning these cards as the “Ultimate Graphics Cards for 1080p Gaming”.

• Badminton is not a sport that most of us think about often, and extremely rarely outside of every four years at the summer Olympics and maybe at the odd cookout or beach party here or there. But the fact that it’s a little bit unique made it the prime inspiration for this new heat shield design, which might see a space flight and test as early as a year from now.

• Many Hackaday readers will be familiar with the term “core memory”, likely thanks to its close association with the Apollo Guidance Computer. But knowing that the technology existed at one point and actually understanding how it worked is another thing entirely. It’s a bit like electronic equivalent to the butter churn — you’ve heard of it, you could probably even identify an image of one — but should somebody hand you one and ask you to operate it, the result probably won’t be too appetizing.

• Every hacker is familiar with those teeny little tactile buttons that are so enjoyable to click over and over again. [ROBO HUB] has built a giant version as a tribute, and it works just like the real thing!

• Typically, when we want to build something with a DC motor, we might grab a bunch of AAs, or a single lithium cell at the very least. Electric toothbrushes often run on more humble power sources, like a single NiMH battery. They’re designed to get useful motion out of just 1.2V, and [Marian Hryntsiv] has taken a look at what makes them tick.

• LTE networks have taken over from older technologies like GSM in much of the world. Outfitted with the right hardware, like a software defined radio, and the right software, it’s theoretically possible to sniff some of this data for yourself. The LTESniffer project was built to do just this.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• More American exceptionalism: cops maintaining order in hosptials.

• For well over a century, the oil and gas industry has drilled holes across California in search of black gold and a lucrative payday. But with production falling steadily, the time has come to clean up many of the nearly quarter-million wells scattered from downtown Los Angeles to western Kern County and across the state.

• The bill for that work, however, will vastly exceed all the industry’s future profits in the state, according to a first-of-its-kind study published Thursday and shared with ProPublica.

• Could better ventilation have prevented covid from becoming a pandemic that killed millions of people?

• During the worst of the pandemic, outdoor recreation surged as people took up pursuits to escape isolation

• Young Chinese travelers are hitting the road after three years of covid restrictions, and their approach is all about speed, thrift, and fun.

• Last December, Gianforte banned TikTok on state government electronic devices. On Wednesday, he added that the ban would expand to include “all social media applications that collect and provide users’ personal information or data to a foreign adversary, or a person or entity located within a country designated as a foreign adversary.”

• The app is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance and is accused by a wide swathe of US politicians of being under the tutelage of the Chinese government and a tool of espionage by Beijing, something the company furiously denies.

• It is troubling to think of TikTok preying on a teen’s weakness by providing content that equates fatigue or discoordination with ADHD for example.

• The superpopular app can serve up a stream of anxiety and despair to teens. TikTok says it’s making improvements but now faces a flood of lawsuits after multiple deaths.

• Although prolonged isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic definitely made the problem worse, it predates the past three years.

• A new review in the Journal of the American Medical Association found marked increases in pediatric mortality in 2020 and 2021, rising 11% and 8% in those years, mostly among teenagers and largely among males.

• TikTok’s algorithm is once again facing backlash for the impact it has on teenagers’ mental health. A mother has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that the app’s algorithm contributed to her son’s suicide. The teenager’s account remains active on the app, and his “For You” feed is full of videos about depression, hopelessness, and suicide. Despite TikTok’s attempts to improve the safety of its users, it continues to serve up a stream of anxiety and despair to teenagers.

• The app’s success lies in its algorithm, which delivers a carousel of user-created content that keeps people glued to their screens. TikTok’s algorithm was designed by a team of engineers in China, but it is now maintained by teams based in North America, Europe, and Asia. However, former employees claim that executives and engineers in Beijing still hold the keys to the algorithm.

• Research has shown that social media has a correlation with depression, self-harm, and suicide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that nearly 1 in 4 teenagers said they seriously considered suicide in 2021, nearly double the level a decade earlier. Many authorities blame social media for this trend.

• In short, the TikTok trend challenges teens to take about a dozen Benadryl to trigger a hallucinations.

• Air. It’s everywhere. It’s invisible. And frequently it’s so full of germs and particles that some call air “the new poop.”

• Many Americans can’t get the medications they need.

Proprietary

• Microsoft said changes made by “local telecom operators” in China have blocked calls into the country on Skype, the tech giant’s internet communications service.

• RFA’s Mandarin Service reported on overseas Skype calls failing to work in China on Tuesday.

• The software maker this week is rolling out what it calls system-preferred authentication for MFA, which will present individuals signing in with the most secure method and then alternatives if that method is unavailable.

• It’s highly unusual for any American website to write about the downsides posed by using Microsoft’s innumerable products.

• Twitter on Thursday sent a letter to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, accusing the tech giant of improperly using the social media company’s data.

• In the letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times, Twitter said Microsoft had violated an agreement over its data and had declined to pay for that usage. In some cases, the letter said, Microsoft had used more Twitter data than it was supposed to. Microsoft also shared the Twitter data with government agencies without permission, the letter said.

• Twitter Inc has alleged that Microsoft Corp violated an agreement over using the social media company’s data, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Thursday.

• Twitter owner Elon Musk’s lawyer leveled accusations of “unauthorized” usage of Twitter’s data by Microsoft, including sharing data with government agencies without permission in some cases.

• In the letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro asked the tech giant to conduct an audit of its use of Twitter’s content. The letter was first reported by the New York Times.

• Six ex-Twitter workers are suing the biz in the US for allegedly not paying them their obligatory severance payouts. The sextet also reckons bird site owner Elon Musk never had much intention of paying his bills.

• [...]

• “It is clear that neither Musk nor X Holdings ever intended to comply with that obligation. As to employee obligations specifically, Musk proceeded in line with the principle on which he generally operates: that keeping his contractual promises is optional,” the lawsuit asserts.

• The civil suit levels 14 charges total against Musk and company, including claims of fraud, contract violations, multiple violations of state and federal WARN acts, and breach of its merger agreement.

• Layoffs “affected workers across teams, including marketing…

• More layoffs could be on their way at big tech firms as bosses prepare to tighten on the “laptop generation,” according to Gene Munster.

• In an interview with Insider, Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said companies weren’t done with their efforts to slash headcount, despite a drastic wave of layoffs in recent months.

• The investor, who expects layoffs to be announced as soon as next-quarter earnings, believes both Microsoft and Google are the two top candidates to make further cuts to their workforce even though they’re riding an AI boom.

• Microsoft’s first round of layoffs in January hit 10,000 workers, while Google’s impacted around 12,000. Munster believes these cuts, which he said were “representative of what the topline is doing,” have been modest compared with those made by rivals such as Meta.

• During the times when several global tech giants are carrying out mass layoffs, top Silicon Valley companies are reportedly looking to hire lower-paid tech workers from foreign countries.

• Mo Gawdat, who held the position of chief business officer for Google’s clandestine research-and-development arm X, said that he is fearful of a future scenario in which AI decides it needs to destroy the human race, though that day is still “a bit far away.”

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• While Tiles predate AirTags, Apple introduced a wider spectrum of trackers by integrating it within its Find My network (not to be confused with Android’s own Find My Device network). However, both networks work similarly to integrate a range of device peripherals such as earbuds and smartwatches. Tiles had a smaller network of users, but iPhones created a billion plus device network for AirTags to function in. Tile recently announced it will work with Amazon’s Sidewalk network, which means that there will be three major networks of location trackers. They’re also open to third-party developers; even more devices will be built with trackers in them in the future. We’ve seen some improvements in detection since the AirTag was released, but a world in which survivors of stalking and abuse need to download a separate app for every type of physical scanner is not a solution that scales well. We are glad two of the major players are taking steps to right this wrong.

• During the 2023 Google I/O Keynote, Google announced that Android will launch Bluetooth Tracker detection for devices that may be “following” you that you aren’t aware of. This is a big improvement beyond the subpar Tracker Detect app provided by Apple in response to Android users being susceptible to AirTag tracking without any tools to discover them. This also covers other devices such as Tile’s trackers. This was announced in tandem with Google’s Find My Device network expanding in ways similar to Apple’s Find My network AirTags expansion AirTags, but this time with safety measures.

• The draft, Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers, contains two major details: a proposed Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) protocol for a respectful tracker to alert people about when it’s lost, and a collection of best practices. It looks at the present situation, where there are small trackers like Tile and AirTags, as well as considerations for other scenarios, like a bicycle, which is physically large enough that it’s unlikely to be used for spying. It also describes an alert protocol for non-Bluetooth trackers including those that use GPS, Wi-Fi, cellular location, and so on. Abuses from small Bluetooth trackers are a current concern, but the draft helpfully opens up the discussion to all trackers. In 2022, we published an investigation of a GPS tracker that a supporter found in a car they owned. Had this device been able to alert the car owner, it would have saved a lot of trouble and worry.

• Privacy fears should never stand in the way of healthcare. That’s why this common-sense bill will require businesses and non-governmental organizations to act responsibly with personal information concerning reproductive health care. Specifically, it restricts them from collecting, using, retaining, or disclosing reproductive health information that isn’t essential to providing the service someone asks them for.

• The fine, which is to be levied by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) against Zuckercorp, remains unknown as the DPC has yet to publish its decision in the case. Unnamed sources speaking to Bloomberg said they expect it to eclipse the €746 million ($805 million) fine data protection officials from Luxembourg charged to Amazon in 2021 for similar violations of the GDPR.

• Along with ordering the reportedly record fine, the DPC’s forthcoming decision will also block all of Facebook’s data transfers from the EU to the US based on agreements questioned by the EU’s top court, Bloomberg’s sources said.

• Our personal data and the ways private companies harvest and monetize it plays an increasingly powerful role in modern life. Corporate databases are vast, interconnected, and opaque. The movement and use of our data is difficult to understand, let alone trace.

Defence/Aggression

• A new study tallies the cost of US war-fomenting in the Middle East. The numbers get big fast.

• Demining projects in conflict ravaged Somalia received a million dollar lift from the Japanese government this month (May). The support will, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) said, go to its humanitarian mine action to promote peace and safety in Somalia project.

• In the name of Sophocles’ “sweetest mockery,” we salute the heroic Joe Flood, aka “Red Bike Guy,” who took it upon himself to stage a one-man (and bike) counter-protest when a phalanx of Patriot Front Nazis came to D.C. in their copycat khakis and face masks to spew white supremacist bile. With no dissenters in sight, Flood felt “a duty” to heckle them, from “You wear Walmart khakis” to “Your mom hates you.” Beleaguered America rejoiced. Twitter: “From the ashes, a hero rises.”

• How America’s divide-and-rule strategy in the middle east backfired.

• BBC News Russian has called attention to advertisements posted by a state-funded institution called Zhilishnik, which is involved in the maintenance of residential buildings. The ads seek “security guards” in several Moscow neighborhoods.

• Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that Ukraine’s Armed Forces were advancing in certain areas in the battle for Bakhmut.

• Andrey Medvedev, who identifies himself as a former Wagner Group commander, has decided to return to Russia after unsuccessfully seeking asylum in Norway.

• The independent news outlet iStories has discovered in open-access form the results of a poll commissioned by the Russian government and surveying the opinions of students and employees across more than 500 colleges.

• Thirty-two years ago, in the spring of 1991, I first came to New York, to attend the Glasnost in Two Cultures conference of women writers in Russia and North America. It was my first real trip abroad. Going to America at the time was like going to the moon for Soviet people. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis.

• As Ukraine prepares a counteroffensive to reclaim more territory from Russian occupation, it’s still struggling with a thorny question: how to deal with collaborators? There are those who willingly served the Russians in their occupational administrations and took part in repressions against Ukrainians. Others helped the Russian armed forces. But there are also those whose guilt is much harder to assess: teachers, lower-level public servants and police officers.

• Ukraine’s armed forces are braced for the country’s much-touted counteroffensive. Near the southern frontline in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, an intensive ground assault training programme is currently taking place. FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris Trent, Johan Bodin and Dmytro Kovalchuk went to meet the troops poised to try and break through Russia’s defensive lines.

• Air raid alerts sounded throughout Ukraine early on Friday, with some areas later reporting explosions and officials saying anti-aircraft units were in action in several regions. The alerts extended to all regions of the country for about an hour from 2 am.

• South Africa’s relations with the US are in a crisis, and there is no clear path out of the mess. South Africa’s increasing lean towards Russia since the invasion of Ukraine has infuriated the West.

• Leaders from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies are meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expected to join the group in person on Sunday.

• The United States and the rest of the “Group of Seven” major economies are on Friday set to unveil new sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine. The sanctions will aim to disrupt Moscow’s ability to get the materials it needs for the battlefield and close loopholes to evade sanctions.

• China’s special envoy Li Hui told Ukraine “there is no panacea to resolve the crisis” as he repeated calls for Kyiv and Moscow to engage in talks to end the war, Beijing said on Thursday.

• World leaders landed Thursday for a Group of Seven meeting in Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic bomb attack, with Russia’s war in Ukraine expected to be high on the agenda.

• Australia has imposed fresh sanctions against Russia and Russian entities as well as an export ban on machinery and related parts.  The new financial sanctions target 21 entities including subsidiaries of the state-owned atomic energy corporation Rosatom, the Russian entity which took over a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, the nation’s largest petroleum and gold companies…

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is jetting to Japan as world leaders gather in Hiroshima for a major summit. Although not a part of the G7 – which consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States – Australia has been invited to attend the meeting. Mr Albanese said he was honoured to […]

• Ukraine on May 18 marked the 79th anniversary of Stalin-era deportations of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia.

• The Russian parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, on May 18 approved in the final reading a bill legalizing elections planned for later this year on Ukrainian territories that Moscow took over in its ongoing invasion.

• Veteran Russian rock musician Boris Grebenshchikov, who currently resides out of Russia, has been charged with discrediting Russian armed forces involved in Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

• Russia’s oil revenues have suffered a marked decline since Western countries slapped a price cap on Russian crude as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Treasury Department said on May 18.

• The prosecution has asked a court in Russia’s Ural city of Yekaterinburg to fine the city’s former mayor and outspoken Kremlin critic Yevgeny Roizman, for “repetitively discrediting the armed forces” involved in the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

• “The two sides exchanged views on the political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis and China-Ukraine relations.”

• Police in Russia have searched the homes of several politicians and a journalist who allegedly have ties with fugitive former lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, who currently resides in Ukraine.

• Ukraine is marking the 79th anniversary of Stalin-era deportations of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia.

• For months, Western allies have shipped billions of dollars worth of weapons systems and ammunition to Ukraine with an urgency to get the supplies to Kyiv in time for an anticipated spring counteroffensive

• The Pentagon has overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by at least $3 billion

• The current leader of the Group of Seven, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, invited eight other countries to this weekend’s G-7 summit. On the agenda are China’s growing assertiveness, the war in Ukraine, and strides toward a nuclear-free world.

• Ukrainian officials did not claim responsibility for a train derailment on the occupied peninsula, but it was the latest in a series of explosions hitting the railways and supply lines of Russia’s war machine.

• The Biden administration has been under bipartisan pressure to explain how it intended to continue sending weapons to Ukraine quickly without asking Congress for more money.

• The combined power of Ukrainian valor and American technology may be even greater than we recognize.

• The Pentagon overcounted the value of weapons and other military aid it sent to Ukraine by “at least $3 billion,” Defense Department officials said Thursday.

• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Saudi Arabia Thursday to attend an Arab League summit, 12 years after he was shunned for ordering a violent crackdown that left entire cities destroyed and tens of thousands of civilians dead.

• The versatile and lightweight American warplane is seen by many of Ukraine’s allies as an important deterrent against Russia.

• President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was preparing to make the audacious trip halfway around the world as his country moves toward a counteroffensive against Russian forces.

• In a battered Ukrainian city, the war has stolen the normal experiences of teenage life. The youths mostly use humor to deal with the ferocity of the fighting around them.

• At least three more Supreme Court judges, in addition to the chief justice, have been implicated in a growing bribery case, prosecutors say.

• The leaders are expected to hold their first talks on a common regulatory approach to generative artificial intelligence.

• The railway’s operator suggested that the derailment, the latest attack in a Russian-occupied region, may have been an act of sabotage. There was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian authorities.

• Just under half of the Russian citizens who have taken the national Latvian language proficiency test have passed so far, the State Educational Content Centrer (VISC) reported on May 18.

• For anyone seeking to make sense of Russia’s war in Ukraine, viewing French public intellectual Bernard Henri-Lévy’s new feature-length documentary “Slava Ukraini” (“Glory to Ukraine”) isn’t an option. It’s a must.

• While Russia relies on the brute force of artillery bombardments and human wave tactics, Ukraine is waging an innovative form of warfare that utilizes a range of highly creative tech solutions, writes Mykhailo Fedorov.

• Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year galvanised the West against not only the Kremlin, but also other rivals, especially an increasingly assertive China.

• Ukraine’s full integration into the institutions of the Western world is the only way to end the threat of ongoing Russian aggression and secure a sustainable peace in Europe, write Stephen Nix and Zachary Popovich.

• British journalist Philip Short has written a long, in-depth biography of Vladimir Putin. The timing of its publication was rather fortuitous, having been released just a few months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Traffic along the section of railway between Simferopol and Sevastopol has been suspended, according to Oleg Kryuchkov, an advisor to the head of Russia’s government in Crimea.

• The German publication ZEIT Online has launched a program called The World Talks, aimed at facilitating dialogue between thousands of people around the world, creating “a space for worldwide debate that brings people together who would never otherwise meet.”

• A misdemeanor case has been opened at a Moscow district court against Boris Grebenshchikov, a legendary rock musician, Aquarium lead singer, and pioneer of eclectic world-music-inspired songwriting.

• Pope Francis plans to send envoys to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine to discuss a ceasefire, reports the Vatican news site Il Sismografo.

• In Yekaterinburg, the city’s former mayor Evgeny Roizman is on trial for allegedly “discrediting” the Russian armed forces. Until his arrest on August 24, 2022, Roizman was one of the few remaining opposition politicians still free in Russia, while openly condemning the invasion of Ukraine. The prosecution didn’t ask for a real prison term for the former mayor, petitioning instead for a fine of 260,000 rubles (about $3,200 in today’s money). During the final court hearing today, Roizman addressed the court. Meduza has transcribed his allocution. Our abridged translation preserves the community-based argument Roizman was just beginning to advance before being cut short by the judge.

• To believe Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin, the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive is already happening, even though the evidence of this reversal comes mostly from Bakhmut. There, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) appear to be conducting a localized (and somewhat belated) offensive, aimed at unblocking the semi-surrounded quarters of the city. After seeing some initial success, this operation has now ground to a halt. Nevertheless, a larger counteroffensive is very likely to unfold in the coming days. According to reports from Kyiv, 20 AFU and National Guard brigades have been formed, trained, and fully armed for this purpose. Open sources don’t let us determine where exactly Ukrainian forces plan to strike or what their strategy is likeliest to be. And yet, it is the shape of this operation that will determine the outcome of the war’s current phase. Meduza’s military analysts propose four possible scenarios for Ukraine’s imminent counteroffensive.

• Prosecutors have requested a 260,000-ruble ($3,250) fine for former Yekaterinburg Mayor and war critic Evgeny Roizman, who faces charges of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army.

• Russian law enforcement officers raided the homes of people in five of the country’s regions on Thursday morning in connection with the ongoing case against former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, who left Russia after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and currently lives in Ukraine.

• Russia launched missile attacks on multiple Ukrainian cities on Wednesday night. According to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, the Russian military sent a total of 30 cruise missiles, 29 of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses. According to Kyiv City Military Administration head Serhii Popko, the attack marked Russia’s ninth one on the city since the start of May.

• An army captain, he led the operation that tracked down the Communist guerrilla who had helped lead the Cuban revolution and was trying to foment one in Bolivia.

• The man had been sentenced to death for possessing less than 3.5 pounds of cannabis, a punishment that human rights groups condemned as grossly excessive.

• According to an annual death penalty report by Amnesty International, 2022 saw the highest number of recorded executions since 2017, primarily due to increases in just a handful of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

• In the vast and growing world of gaming, views like these have become easy to come across, both within some games themselves and on social media services and other sites, like Discord and Steam, used by many gamers.

• Gun violence has surged ahead of the opioid crisis as Americans’ top public health concern, according to the latest edition of the Axios-Ipsos American Health Index.

• The Center for Policy and Research has just published a new report titled “American Torturers: FBI and CIA Abuses at Dark Sites and Guantánamo,” which compiles a series of 40 drawings by Guantánamo Bay prisoner Abu Zubaydah that chronicle the horrific torture he endured since 2002 in CIA dark sites and at Guantánamo Bay, where he has been detained without charge since 2006. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has issued a new call for the United States to release him immediately. We speak with one of his attorneys, Mark Denbeaux, and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed the Bush-era torture program and was the only official jailed in connection to it.

• Calls are growing for the Justice Department to investigate Donald Trump’s attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for allegedly plotting to sell presidential pardons during the Trump administration, after his former employee Noelle Dunphy filed a $10 million lawsuit against Giuliani accusing him of sexual assault and other misconduct. The complaint alleges Giuliani “asked Ms. Dunphy if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split.” Dunphy is not the first person to publicly reveal this scheme; CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou has previously divulged that he was among those asked to pay up in return for a clean slate. “This lawsuit is the first that I heard that money was supposed to be split with President Trump,” he tells Democracy Now! Kiriakou, who did not ultimately get a pardon, says he was told by a Giuliani aide not to bother with a formal application and that it would be handled informally. “It was all supposed to be hush-hush,” he says.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Continuing a series of posts about recumbent trikes. When you see “bent riders” cycling along, the thought that does come to mind is what will happen if a foot falls off the pedal and hits the ground …ouch!

• I posted about the 320E-Solar solar-powered electric recumbent trike here: [...]

• I have ordered one, and have received an email asking how I bought it.

Environment

• As much talk about nuclear war instills fears of the world ending for many, climate disaster ominously looms in the background, eating away at the environment around us.

• Louisiana legislators have received a revised sunny revenue forecast with just three weeks left for them to craft and pass a budget

Energy/Transportation

• An industry group that’s called Canada’s federal climate targets “unachievable” and referred to opponents of oil and gas expansion as “climate alarmists” has received nearly $1.23 million in taxpayer money from the British Columbia government.

• The First Nations LNG Alliance is among the country’s loudest advocates for projects that can export billions of cubic feet per day of liquified natural gas from Canadian shores to foreign markets. It counts among its affiliate members LNG Canada, a $40 billion gas export project on B.C.’s northwest coast led by Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and Korea Gas.

• There is no noisier, whingier bunch of lobbyists in Australia than APPEA, the town criers for multinational oil and gas corporations, but why have their own financial reports vanished? What’s the scam?

• On any given week you will find the Samantha McCulloch, chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA) preaching to governments from the page one pulpits of the AFR, The Australian and whoever else is listening, sermonising about the pitfalls of taxes and regulations for her members such as Exxon, Shell, Santos and Chevron.

Wildlife/Nature

Overpopulation

• Decades-old agreements over water use among the federal government, states and Native American tribes resulted in an unintended overallocation of water. More water is allocated along rivers, streams and canals than the river actually produces, said Robert Medler, manager of government affairs for Arizona with Western Growers, a producer advocacy group. This is especially true with a worsening multiyear drought.

• About 80% of the Colorado River goes toward agriculture, which means farmers will be among the first to take cuts.

• The consensus emerging among these states and the Biden administration aims to conserve about 13 percent of their allocation of river water over the next three years and protect the nation’s largest reservoirs, which provide drinking water and hydropower for tens of millions of people.

• But thorny issues remain that could complicate a deal. The parties are trying to work through them before a key deadline at the end of the month, according to several current and former state and federal officials familiar with the situation.

• While the taps are running dry and reservoirs are disappearing in Arizona, a corporate farm from Saudi Arabia is pumping massive amounts of groundwater to grow alfalfa for cows back in the Middle East. Now, after years of inaction, Arizonans are pointing the finger at what they see as a foreign invader slurping up the last gulps of a diminishing water supply.

• There are many stories, and almost all of them end the same way.

Finance

• OK, it’s spring selling season, the famously best times of the year to sell a home, because that’s when prices rise and sales rise due to hot demand from home buyers who were hiding out in the winter. But this year?

• But Americans are notoriously unprepared for retirement. A Vanguard study from 2021 showed that among its plan participants, the average account balance was $141,542. The median balance was just $35,345.

• Has the US still not worked out that there are some parties it can’t push around, and OPEC might be one of them?

• How US ham-handed use of force and misreadings of key players’ interests, allowed China to suddenly take a leadershp role in the Middle East

• In a strongly worded New York Times op-ed, professor Michael McConnell of Stanford’s Hoover Institution makes the following correct legal observations:

• On the latest round of the Republicans’ dangerous game.

• From Africa to Southeast Asia and Latin America, from Russia and China to India, Iran and Saudi Arabia, countries are mapping their course for a flight from the US dollar.

• Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) told Axios he doesn’t view Democrats’ discharge petition to force a clean debt ceiling increase as a “real strategy,” given GOP opposition.

• Progressive lawmakers are increasingly anxious about debt ceiling talks after President Biden agreed to have his office negotiate directly with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s.

• Why it matters: Left-wing opposition to an eventual deal could further complicate the already tenuous vote math on both sides of the aisle.

• It is hard to regulate “lower-tier” amateur football competitions, the city’s football association chair told RTHK on Wednesday, one day after news of a match fixing scandal emerged.

• Muldrow said several of the suspects are professional baseball coaches and players, with the majority based in Puerto Rico.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Michael talks about Scomocchio’s new lobbyist role at the American think tank, Center for a New American Society.

• Former Erdoğan allies who joined forces with the main opposition party gained over 30 seats in the parliament, far exceeding their actual popular support.

• European Commission Statement Japan, 19 May 2023 Quotes from President von der Leyen at the first session of the G7 Summit, “Towards an International Community characterised by Cooperation, not Division and Co…

• The CRTC last week released the first three of at least nine planned consultations on the implementation of Bill C-11 (I was out of the country teaching an intensive course so playing catch-up right now). The consultations focus on the broad structure of the regulatory framework, registration requirements, and transitions from the current system of exemptions to one of regulations. The timeline to participate in this consultation is extremely tight with comments due as early as June 12th for two of the consultations and June 27th for the larger regulatory framework one. As the title of this post suggests, the CRTC is adopting an approach of shoot first, aim later. The consultations suggest that there is little interest in hearing from anyone outside of the legacy groups that have long dominated CRTC hearings. Indeed, by moving forward with incredibly tight timelines, without the government’s promised policy directive, and without support for newer groups to back their participation, the documents leave the distinct impression that the Commission had surrendered its independence and already made up its mind on how to implement Bill C-11.

• What to make of the consultation and the emerging regulatory framework for Internet streaming services? This post provides 11 thoughts on the Bill C-11 CRTC consultation. It is by no means comprehensive, but it highlights some of my initial concerns.

• Philadelphia, Pa.—For all its historic import, Tuesday’s nomination of Cherelle Parker as the Democratic nominee to be this city’s 100th mayor was a validation of the political status quo. While it seems a virtual certainty—given the overwhelmingly Democratic character of the electorate here—that Parker will be elected this November as the first woman and fourth African American to hold this office, it’s just as certain that there won’t be much else that’ll be different.

• A group of TikTok creators have sued to block a recently signed law that bans the app’s operation in Montana. The suit, filed last night and announced today, alleges that Montana’s SB 419 is an unconstitutional and overly broad infringement of their right to speech.

• “Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing what it believes should be the United States’ foreign policy or its national security interests, nor may Montana ban an entire forum for communication based on its perceptions that some speech shared through that forum, though protected by the First Amendment, is dangerous,” says the suit, filed by law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. “Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes.”

• And he said the Montana Department of Justice will seek punishment if this law is ignored — though individual TikTok users won’t be penalized and nor will anyone carrying out law enforcement, national security, and security research activities, or “essential government uses permitted by the governor on the information technology system of the state.”

• The legislation states the fines will be “$10,000 for each discrete violation and is liable for an additional $10,000 each day thereafter that the violation continues.” TikTok is also banned from operating in Montana.

• Under the Montana law, tech companies, not everyday users of TikTok, could be penalized. For instance, Apple and Google, which operate app stores on phones and devices, could be subjected to fines up to $10,000 a day for letting people download TikTok.

• Representatives from Apple and Google have not commented on the law, but cybersecurity experts say there are a few ways the companies could comply.

• The governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, signed a bill on Wednesday to ban TikTok from operating inside the state, the most extreme prohibition of the app in the nation and one that will almost certainly be challenged in court. The ban will take effect on Jan. 1.

• Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a law that will make Montana the first state to ban TikTok in the US, following a series of escalations against the video-sharing app.

• A spokeswoman for the state attorney general said that his office had “expected a legal challenge” and was “fully prepared to defend the law.”

• Users of the popular social media site were less than pleased by the ban, enacted over fears that sensitive user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government.

• Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill banning TikTok from the state into law on Wednesday, making Montana the first state within the US to ban the popular social media app. The new law expands upon a December 2022 ban within the state, which prohibited any Montana government employees from using TikTok.

• Plus: Americans are increasingly changing religions, court pauses rejection of “free” preventative care mandate, and more…

• “Constitutional originalists” and “fiscally conservative” Republican governors sure are having a moment these days throwing away millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars on totally unconstitutional laws that take away people’s 1st Amendment rights. It’s quite uncanny. Florida’s Ron DeSantis seems to be taking the lead here, where it seems like every other day or so he’s losing cases in court, and then turning around and passing even more ridiculously unconstitutional bills.

• It’s already bad news for Elon Musk that advertisers have been abandoning the site in droves. But, Musk keeps trying to claim that it’s worth it so long as users are using the site more. Unfortunately for him, it appears that many users are either leaving or posting a lot less. A new study from the Pew Research Center has lots of bad news for Musk.

• Five TikTok content creators have filed a lawsuit to overturn a planned ban on the video sharing app in Montana. They argued in a legal complaint filed in federal court in Missoula on Wednesday that the law is an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights.

• Five TikTok content creators have filed a lawsuit to overturn a planned ban on the video sharing app in Montana

• With rising concerns over China’s overreach, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has signed a first-of-its-kind law banning TikTok. The state has 200,000 TikTok users and 6,000 businesses that use the platform for video sharing in Montana.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Generative A.I. is now available to anyone, and it’s increasingly capable of fooling people with text, audio, images and videos that seem to be conceived and captured by humans. The risk of societal gullibility has set off concerns about disinformation, job loss, discrimination, privacy and broad dystopia.

• For entrepreneurs like Mr. Doronichev, it has also become a business opportunity. More than a dozen companies now offer tools to identify whether something was made with artificial intelligence, with names like Sensity AI (deepfake detection), Fictitious.AI (plagiarism detection) and Originality.AI (also plagiarism).

Censorship/Free Speech

• The decisions in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh are great news for a free and vibrant internet, which inevitably depends on services that host our speech. The court in Gonzalez declined to address the scope of 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), which generally protects users and online services from lawsuits based on content created by others. Section 230 is an essential part of the legal architecture that enables everyone to connect, share ideas, and advocate for change without needing immense resources or technical expertise. By avoiding addressing Section 230, the Supreme Court avoided weakening it.

• In Taamneh, the Supreme Court rejected a legal theory that would have made online services liable under the federal Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act on the theory that members of terrorist organizations or their supporters simply used these services like we all do: to create and share content. The decision is another win for users’ online speech, as it avoids an outcome where providers censor far more content than they do already, or even prohibit certain topics or users entirely when they could later be held liable for aiding or abetting their user’s wrongful acts.

• Given the potential for both decisions to have disastrous consequences for users’ free expression, EFF is pleased that the Supreme Court left existing legal protections for online speech legal in place.

• “Children in a democracy must not be taught that books are dangerous,” asserted PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel. “The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution.”

• Last year, we discussed two insane rulings coming out of Denmark stating that a newspaper’s depiction of a statue of The Little Mermaid in cartoon form was somehow copyright infringement. If you’re not familiar with the case, you may be surprised to learn that this is not Disney being Disney. Instead, it is the estate of Edvard Eriksen, creator of Denmark’s bronzed statue of the character from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, which annoyingly polices anything remotely like the statue should it pop up elsewhere. In this case, the paper, Berlingske, depicted the statue in a cartoon as a zombie, and also in a photograph wearing a COVID mask. Erikson’s estate sued and, as mentioned, both won its initial trial and then won again on appeal.

• Yesterday, a group of concerned authors and activists filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Florida against Escambia County School District and School Board that asks for censored books to be returned to the school library.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• On Tuesday, May 16, an appeals court in Tunis sentenced Guesmi, a correspondent for the local independent radio station and news website Mosaique FM, to five years in prison on charges of disclosing national security information, according to a statement by Mosaique FM, news reports, and Mosaique FM reporter Hajer Tlili, a who spoke to CPJ. A lower court had previously sentenced him to one year in prison on the same charge.

• How to save the news from Big Tech: Four prescriptions from EFF.

• [...]

• This week on EFF’s Deeplinks blog, I kick off a new series on the abusive relationship between Big Tech and the news, analyzing four different dirty practices and proposing policy answers to all four: [...]

• The lawsuit alleges that the arrest is part of a pattern of retaliation against journalists by Atlanta police.

Civil Rights/Policing

• One Thursday afternoon in December, a father and two of his estranged children boarded a flight from Salt Lake City to Texas, beginning an effort to repair their fractured relationship.

• A family court official had ordered them to attend a reunification camp, Turning Points for Families Texas, to repair damage that the judge said the boys’ mother had inflicted by alienating them from their father.

• I happened to be at the Court when Chief Justice Roberts extended a welcome.

• [...] Does the announcement page support basic accessibility considerations (underlined links, captioned videos, valid markup, etc.)? [...]

• Did Commbank, ASIC regulators and senior journalists conspire to stub out the pesky bank victims advocate Geoff Shannon? A Lisa-Jane Roberts story of the stunning evidence which emerged in a Queensland court this week in Crown v Shannon.

• Earlier this week, Southport Magistrate’s Court heard the case of Crown v Shannon, in which the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) accused Geoffrey Shannon, who is known for helping bank victims through the Unhappy Banking advocacy group, of having acted as a director of the company Business and Personal Solutions (BAPS) while bankrupt.

• Breonna Taylor died on March 13, 2020, after Louisville police officers broke the door of her apartment off its hinges and fired dozens of bullets in her direction. Police claimed that they knocked before breaking down the door. But Taylor’s boyfriend said the couple heard no knock and thought their home was being invaded. The boyfriend said he grabbed a gun and fired a warning shot to stop the invasion. Police officers then fired 32 shots into the small apartment, at least six of which hit Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician who was pronounced dead at the scene. Her killing sparked a national outcry against police violence, as Taylor’s name became closely linked with that of George Floyd Jr., who was murdered on May 25, 2020, by a Minneapolis police officer.1

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Our long national wait for how the Supreme Court would rule regarding Section 230 is over, and the answer is… we need to keep waiting. The headlines note, correctly, that the court punted the matter. But there are other elements of the actual rulings that are kind of interesting and could bode well for the future of the internet and Section 230.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Automakers are increasingly obsessed with turning everything into a subscription service in a bid to boost quarterly returns. We’ve noted how BMW has embraced making heated seats and other features already in your car a subscription service, and Mercedes has been making better gas and EV engine performance something you have to pay extra for — even if your existing engine already technically supports it.

Monopolies

• The EU Parliament is looking to regulate AI. That, in itself, isn’t necessarily a bad idea. But the EU’s proposal — the AI Act — is pretty much bad all over, given that it’s vague, broad, and would allow pretty much any citizen of any EU nation to wield the government’s power to shut down services they personally don’t care for.

Trademarks

• A TTAB judge once told me that one can predict the outcome of a Section 2(d) case 95% of the time by just looking at the involved goods and services and the marks. Maybe he or she was referring to ex parte cases only. Anyway, let’s see how you do with the three oppositions summarized below. At least one of them was dismissed. Answer(s) in the first comment.

Copyrights

• Museums play an important role in sustainable development — they are in fact instrumental in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — and in supporting the well-being of the communities that they serve. As ICOM states, “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures, and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.”

• First, the Court’s focus on Warhol’s specific “use” of Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of Prince provides clarification on what the word “use” means as part of the fair use analysis, and narrows the scope of the opinion in ways that will allow for many future fair uses.

• The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has confirmed it was behind the recent disappearance of AtomoHD, a site that used to enjoy around 10 million visits each month. ACE notes that the site offered around 13,000 movies and 4,500 TV series but after deploying dozens of domains in a bid to stay visible, ‘Atom’ appears to have split for the last time.

• Generative AI is a revolutionary technology that’s expected to change society as we know it but, in parallel, copyright concerns persist. During a House Judiciary IP Subcommittee Hearing yesterday it was made clear that Congress doesn’t plan to overreact. Lawmakers hope to find the middle ground, but that could be easier said than done.

• In a 7-2 vote on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Andy Warhol infringed on photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s copyright when he created a series of silk screen images based on a photograph Goldsmith shot of the late musician Prince in 1981.

• The high-profile case, which pits an artist’s freedom to riff on existing works of art against the protection of an artist from copyright infringement, hinges on whether Warhol’s images of Prince transform Goldsmith’s photograph to a great enough degree to stave off claims of copyright infringement and therefore be considered as “fair use.” Under copyright law, fair use permits the unlicensed appropriation of copyright-protected works in specific circumstances, for example, in some non-commercial or educational cases.

• The justices considered whether the artist was free to use elements of a rock photographer’s portrait of the musician Prince.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• There’s two camps of those who grew up watching TV in the 1990s – those who thought FRIENDS was *the* show of that decade, and those who thought Seinfeld was *the* show of that decade. Yes. To each their own. My money is on Seinfeld. Also, people tend to have a love/hate relationship with Seinfeld – people either saw an episode or two and hated it, never watched it again, or saw it, loved it, saw every episode. I fall into the latter here, too.

• But, seeing a clip of Jerry Seinfeld on The Howard Stern Show just now, and seeing two rivaling egos in that interview (Howard Stern, one of the biggest/worst egos) and Seinfeld (perhaps equally so in terms of size, but not of ill character), and I think to myself “Seinfeld (the show) was likely one of the best shows FOR the world”. Not just *in* the world, but FOR the world.

Technical

• The concept of Virtual Reality had been around for decades, so when it started to graduate from fantasy to reality I took an active interest.

• Here’s what I’ve found.

• How do the rest of you people deal with the horror also known as this online world?

• Shouldn’t be the end of the world, but it’s wasting much of my morning to not be able to get past a vehicle registration page that has a county pull-down, but none of the counties in the pull-down are for the state I’ve already selected.

• And if I proceed by just selecting any county, I’m brought to a scary page about affirming everything I’ve input is correct, and I’m guilty of perjury if any of it isn’t, and their page is forcing me to create something that’s incorrect by construction.

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