● 06.06.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 06/06/2023: OpenSUSE Plans for Leap

Posted in News Roundup at 9:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Server

Audiocasts/Shows

• FULL SHOW NOTES ►► https://tuxdigital.com/podcasts/destination-linux/dl-326/

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we discuss the concept of Immutable OS, what is it and do you need it? Then we discuss why it’s time for you to RISE for RISC-V. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those […]

• The future of containerised applications and immutable desktops looks more and more like the present, what looks like the Steam Deck moment for audio production, open source voice assistants suddenly seem possible, and more.

Applications

• Copr is a build-system for anyone in the Fedora community. It hosts thousands of projects for various purposes and audiences. Some of them should never be installed by anyone, some are already being transitioned to the official Fedora Linux repositories, and the rest is somewhere in between. Copr gives you the opportunity to install 3rd party software that is not available in Fedora Linux repositories, try nightly versions of your dependencies, use patched builds of your favorite tools to support some non-standard use-cases, and just experiment freely.

• Resonance is an intuitive music player application written in Rust (with a smattering of Python), built with a clean user interface using GTK4 / Libadwaita.

Instructionals/Technical

• Here is a short guide explaining how to install OpenBSD in Qubes OS, as an HVM VM (fully virtualized, not integrated).

• In a conventional call to execve(2), the argv argument is a pointer to an array that will become the executed program’s argv, with the array terminated with a NULL element (in the grand C fashion, there is no explicit ‘length’ parameter passed). The first (0th) element of this array is the nominal name of the program and the remainder are the command line arguments. Since all programs have some name, this array is normally at least one element long. However, the execve(2) interface (plus C) allows for two additional variations on the value of argv here.

• Compression is a very commonly performed operation by users to save disk space as well as reduce time and bandwidth while transferring large amounts of data over the network using gzip utility.

• gzip stands for the GNU zip and it is a very popular compression and decompression utility. One of the primary reasons for its popularity is its high compression ratio and speed, which means the compressed data remains the same after decompressing.

• In programming languages, Loops are essential components and are used when you want to repeat code over and over again until a specified condition is met.

• In Bash scripting, loops play much the same role and are used to automate repetitive tasks just like in programming languages.

• Bash (Bourne Again Shell) is a command-line program that accepts commands provided and executes them. It takes Linux commands directly typed into it interactively from a keyboard or from a shell script file.

• Bash is used in Linux and Mac systems to run the system and it is the default shell in a majority of modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux to mention a few.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Flatpak on Fedora 38. For those of you who didn’t know, Flatpak is a universal package manager designed to work seamlessly across various Linux distributions. It enables users to install, update, and run software applications in an isolated environment, known as a sandbox.

• Discover how to change directories in Linux using the powerful cd command. Master absolute and relative paths, and navigate the file system effortlessly.

• Although Nvidia has theoretically had full support for Wayland since they released their drivers in late 2021, the road hasn’t necessarily been smooth.

• Vim is one of the most popular and influential command-line text editors.

• Intro As Linux system administrators, we continuously delve into the boundless ocean of Linux commands to manage and control systems with precision. Some commands are pretty standard and widely known. However, a few lesser-known Linux power commands can make life significantly easier for sysadmins.

• Kubernetes has become the dominant container orchestration system for deploying and managing containerized applications. It provides a wide range of features and functionalities that enable DevOps teams to deploy, scale, and manage applications easily.

• Blogging has become an important tool for businesses and individuals to reach their audience. It’s an effective way to share ideas, market products, and connect with people.

• In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies need to be agile and responsive to changing market needs. One way to achieve this is by leveraging cloud computing and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings.

• Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It has become increasingly popular in modern software development due to its ability to automate the deployment and management of scalable, distributed systems.

• Building and launching applications has become a complex process in today’s digital world. The rise of containerization has made it easier to package an application and its dependencies into a single container that can run on any platform.

• Docker is a powerful containerization technology that allows developers to bundle their applications and dependencies into portable containers that can be run anywhere, regardless of the underlying hardware or operating system.

• Docker has revolutionized the way modern software is developed and deployed. It is a containerization platform that allows developers to package their applications along with their dependencies into a single, portable unit called a Docker image.

• Docker Containers have revolutionized the way we deploy and manage applications. Unlike traditional Virtual Machines that require a full-fledged operating system and consume heavy resources, Docker Containers enable us to package applications into portable, lightweight, and self-sufficient units that can run anywhere.

• In today’s fast-paced and dynamic world of software development, containerization has become an essential practice for managing applications. Containerization allows developers to create and deploy applications more quickly, efficiently, and securely.

• When managing a Linux system, you may frequently come across timestamps recorded in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Understanding and converting these timestamps to your local time can be essential, particularly when troubleshooting system events or running time-specific commands.

• Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn the basics of the dig and nslookup commands on Linux. These commands, although simple, are part of powerful network utilities. Introduction to dig and nslookup commands The tools for querying network actions are important for testing solutions and troubleshooting in everyday system use.

Games

• Diablo 4 is just about to release for everyone, and after blasting through the Early Access I’ve been thoroughly impressed by how it runs on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

• Quasimorph is a classic turn-based roguelike with an ‘extraction’ twist: you deploy into each mission with your clone, level up and collect equipment, then finish the mission to extract with your clone and loot.

• After being in development for 5 years, TailQuest Defense is finally here as one of the most ambitious early Godot Engine games. Starting off when Godot 2.0 was fresh, you can read a brief bit of their history here.

• With a minimalist art style and a more casual setting, Lueur and the Dim Settlers is a genuine little delight to play for those after a city-builder with survival elements but there’s a more relaxed game mode too. Mentioned here on GOL recently, there’s now a demo available for you to give it a try and I think this one is truly worth some of your time.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• The struggle continues, it is not over till we say it is over.

• The reasons which code will change without a version number shift, in this case nearly abandoned and complete projects, are to be speculated upon. Till now it didn’t seem to be a need for such maneuvering. So why such snicky way of changing code without bumping a version number? Because it has already been audited? The version has. … You draw your own conclusions on this one, we just brand it a “new low” for systemd crap pumped out at an alarming rate to trully be audited for security.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• The following kernel updates are available for PCLinuxOS. kernel-5.4.245-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-5.10.182-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-5.15.115-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-6.1.32-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-6.3.6-pclos1-1-1pclos2023

• A Bittorrent client with a polished Qt5 user interface. It aims to be as fast as possible and to provide multi-OS, unicode support.

• Open source, cross platform password manager that sync passwords but also allows accessing passwords offline.

• Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers and also allows one to share files with other dropbox users.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• We’d like to announce that the openSUSE Release team plans to work on openSUSE Leap 15.6.

• openSUSE Leap 15.6 is expected to be released in early June 2024 and would reach its end of life by the end of the year 2025.

• This decision was based on recent discussions at SUSE Labs and openSUSE Conference, and it reflects recent changes, progress on individual projects, and our new distribution architect.

• This will also enable us to provide SUSE customers with an updated Package HUB module, as both SLES 15 SP5 and Leap 15.6 would be considered a feature release based on our tick-tock release model.

Fedora Family / IBM

• However, the downside is that “we are pivoting away from work we had been doing on desktop applications and will cease shipping LibreOffice as part of RHEL starting in a future RHEL version. This also limits our ability to maintain it in future versions of Fedora”.

• Red Hat was acquired by IBM in 2018 for a sum of about US$34 billion.

• Less than 18 months later, the company killed off CentOS, a distribution that contained everything in RHEL minus the trademarks, which made it usable by all and sundry without payment.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 790 for the week of May 28 – June 3, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

• This could be very interesting and exciting. Canonical has confirmed they’re working towards an immutable version of Ubuntu for desktop users based on all the work they’ve done with Ubuntu Core.

• Do you have a revolutionary project that’s pushing the boundaries of the open source landscape?

• Are you an inspiring community leader who’s building a sustainable coalition for the future?

Devices/Embedded

• The company GEEKOM launched today two mini-PCs built around the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 AMD processors. The AS 6 supports DDR5 memory, 8K video output, up to 2TB of storage and multiple I/O ports.

• Do you have the Killswitch case for your Steam Deck? Well dbrand have come up with their own universal mount so you can strap anything you want to the back of it.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Data security and end user privacy requires focusing on the operating system (OS) that supports smartphones, tablet PCs, connected products, IoT/IIoT devices, wearable tech, and PCs.

• [...]

• Intrusive app and social media developers, plus nation-state hackers, know that one of the largest gateways to the smartphone or PC end user is through the operating system which means that Google, Apple, and Microsoft are selling access to their OS end users to intrusive app and social media developers worldwide.

• Armbian launched in May their latest Linux distribution “Armbian 23.05 Suni” with various updates for the Debian community. Similarly, DietPi v8.18 has provided enhancements for the Quartz64 SBC and PiHole support for the RISC-V architecture.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

• I needed to create a few plots by using the Civil Liberties and Political Rights scores from the Freedom Index. However, the data provided in Excel format was not in an easy to use presentation. This blog post shows how I reshaped the data to make it easier to work with.

• There is an excellent post, Cleaning Freedom House indicators, by Marta Kolczynska that I used as reference. The post is four years old, so here I am using some updated functions and I tried to make some steps more general.

• I had a bit of an epiphany today. I’m not frustrated at my computers for not doing what I want, or for behaving unexpectedly, or for having increasingly-hostile interfaces and design. I’m frustrated at the people who designed them, made them, and/or signed off on them.

• Version 0.89 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated): [...]

• Let’s compare how Go and Rust represent units of time! Specifically, we’ll look at how they represent durations of time for things like thread sleeps. For this, we’ll look primarily at the standard library; other libraries may do it differently, but this is a somewhat “blessed” path, and the world of libraries is so vast. The standard libraries also are more likely to represent idiomatic usage.

• Balancing Agility and Discipline talks a lot about the contrast between agile development and plan-driven development. We will briefly look at the contrast at the end of this article, but first an insight that I think is much more fundamental.

• In this article, you’ll learn about the basics of building Go using Bazel and Gazelle. You’ll learn how to prepare a workspace, run, and test it; and how to develop a basic application using Bazel. To follow along, you must be familiar with the basics of Golang and how the Golang build process works. You also need to have the latest version of Go installed on your system.

• Lisp’s unusual syntax is connected to its expressive power. How? Not because of “homoiconicity”, a word that has no meaning but leaves people somewhat impressed, because it sounds fanciful and mathematical. It’s because of uniformity.

• It’s early Tuesday morning, and I am again in the metro, going to a location in Prague I have never been to before. People are quiet on the train, thinking about their lives. I saw just a few people not looking at their phones. Have we become humanity addicted to some shiny devices and so-called “technologies”? That could be another topic. Now, I am going to the second day of DevOpsDays2023 Prague.

• The hotel welcomes me with many tobacco smokers outside and a strange facade. I am in the right place because I saw familiar faces and heard someone talking about Jenkins.

• I took the elevator to the conference area and headed to the registration. A lovely girl said hello to me after I got my welcome pack. I said hello back. I told myself something was wrong. See, sweet girls never say hello to me like that.

• Then I remembered I am in a friendly company because DevOps is not only about technologies but also about the mindset of being nice to others.

• I met a few great people I worked with and then went to the conference room. I expected more attendees. The room was 80% full. It may be too early.

• I was just on time for the first speaker.

Leftovers

• My university experience was dominated by Usenet. It was where nerds went to socialise. I bought and sold computer equipment, published terrible poetry, and learned about LGBT matters. I lurked in the comp.lang.* hierarchy until I was confident enough to ask my Prolog questions without making it look like I was asking for help with my university assignments.

• And then, one day, I just stopped.

• There are three main reasons that I remember.

Science

• It really isn’t necessary, but there is some geek cred to learning pi to some bizarre number of digits. One way to do that is via a piem — a mnemonic device that is easy to remember and gives you the digits. Don’t know any? [Roni Bandini] has you covered with the PiemPi machine. It prints a random piem on a thermal printer and calculates each digit on the fly. You can watch the machine in action in the video below.

Education

• “I am part of the team that has taking over organising CamJam from Mike Horne and Tim Richardson,” Brian tells us. “[They] organised the last couple of CamJams before 2020. Early this year, I had realized that it had been over three years since the last CamJam and I decided to it was time for CamJam to return, and the only way it would happen is if I organised it. So, I pitched the idea to hold the jam at Cambridge’s Makespace to both Mike, Tim, and Makespace. Luckily, everyone thought it was a great idea.”

• It’s often said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In my quest for the ‘just right’ words to articulate my thoughts, I found this saying to be glaringly accurate. The ticking clock became a dull backdrop to my cerebral scavenger hunt. My concentration started to drift and instead of zeroing in on my research proposal, I found myself fixated on, of all things, the color scheme of my desktop environment.

Hardware

• There’s an apocryphal quote floating around the internet that “640K ought to be enough memory for anybody” but it does seem unlikely that this was ever actually said by any famous computer moguls of the 1980s. What is true, however, is that in general more computer memory tends to be better than less. In fact, this was the basis for the Macintosh 512k in the 1980s, whose main feature was that it was essentially the same machine as the Macintosh 128k, but with quadruple the memory as its predecessor. If you have yet to upgrade to the 512k, though, it might be best to take a look at this memory upgrade instead.

• When we think about 3D printing, our mind often jumps to hot nozzles squirting out molten plastic. Other popular techniques include flashing bright light into resin, or using lasers to fuse together metal powders. All these techniques are great at producing parts with complicated geometries at desktop scales.

• The early bird may get the worm, but [Stephen Chasey’s] birds only get to eat if they are smart. He’s created a vending machine for bird feeding. While this is a classic and simple exercise for a microcontroller, [Stephen’s] design is all op amps and 555 timers. The feeder comes on when it detects a warm body and waits for something to drop through a hole. Birds don’t have coins, so the hole will accept anything that will trigger the IR sensor within. In response, it dispenses a few peanuts. Rodents and squirrels won’t figure out the machinery, and so they can’t pilfer the peanuts meant for the pigeons — or other birds, even if they don’t start with the letter P.

• If you’re a child of the ’80s or ’90s, chances are you’ve spent hours tracing out intricate patterns using the pens and gears of a Spirograph kit. Simple as those parts may be, they’re actually a very clever technique for plotting mathematical functions called hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. [Craig] has spent some time analyzing these functions, and realized you can also implement them with analog circuits. He used this knowledge to design a device called Op Art which generates Spirograph shapes on your oscilloscope using just a handful of op amps.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• But with temperatures in the Los Angeles area topping out around 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) most days right now, and the area’s famously blue skies hidden by a blanket of cloud, it all adds to the impression that the weather is just not being very Californian this year.

• The Northern Territory government has lowered the number of poker machines allowed across the region as it continues to acknowledge the significant harm caused by problem gambling.

• The cap on gaming machines in community venues has been reduced from 1699 to 1659, excluding machines at the NT’s two casinos which are covered by separate agreements.

• The Sackler family, the billionaire owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, have secured immunity from all current and future civil litigation related to their role in fueling the opioid epidemic. The legal shield was granted last week by a federal appeals court in exchange for the family agreeing to pay up to $6 billion to thousands of plaintiffs in various lawsuits that are now suspended as part of the deal. While the Sacklers appear safe from further civil litigation, they could — and should — be criminally charged, says Ed Bisch, who lost his son Eddie to an OxyContin-related overdose in 2001 at age 18. “Fines without any prosecutions, there is no deterrent. They look at it as the cost of doing business,” says Bisch. We also speak to Christopher Glazek, the investigative reporter who was the first to publicly report how the Sackler family had significantly profited from selling OxyContin while fully aware that the highly addictive drug was directly fueling the opioid epidemic in America. “The Sacklers lied about how addictive the drug was, in order to convince doctors and patients that it wasn’t dangerous,” says Glazek.

Proprietary

• Developers are starting to talk about the software-defined car.

• The Chinese government will seek to initiate artificial intelligence regulations in its country, billionaire businessman Elon Musk says after meeting with officials during his recent trip to China.

• Musk did not elaborate further and made his remarks in a Twitter Space with Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr on Monday.

• Thousands of Microsoft Outlook users reported issues with accessing and using the email platform Monday morning. Microsoft 365 outage and problem reports peaked at almost 18,000 shortly after 11 a.m. ET Monday morning, according to outage tracker Downdetector.

• An ex-Microsoft employee took to LinkedIn and revealed that he has been looking for a new job since he got laid off but even after applying to more than 1,000 places, he could not secure any position.

• Microsoft’s purchase of Xandr from AT&T in late 2021 might have looked like an embrace of third-party ad tech.

• But while parts of the Xandr tech are considered valuable by Microsoft, the future of Xandr as an SSP integrated with thousands of outside publishers is in doubt.

• Since completing the acquisition in June of last year, Microsoft Advertising has shifted its focus to first-party products and integrations to win and secure key accounts, such as Netflix, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of recent changes within the group.

• [...]

• Yet because layoffs have affected every part of Microsoft, there are fewer people to handle support tickets.

• Due to the layoffs and restructuring, there are also “more demands” on the Xandr group now, said one Microsoft Advertising employee who’s been with AppNexus since 2015. Those demands come from internal stakeholders such as Microsoft Azure, Bing and other high-priority units in the company.

Windows TCO

• At the time of writing, the Outlook email service has been in trouble since 1830 ET (2230 UTC).

• An earlier incident took out multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• First off, let’s just clear one thing up: the headline is a Simpson’s reference, not a dog whistle aimed at unions and/or the Jewish population of Israel.

• Microsoft will pay $20m (£16m) to US federal regulators after it was found to have illegally collected data on children who had started Xbox accounts.

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached a settlement with the company on Monday, which also includes increased protections for child gamers.

• Among other violations, the FTC found that Microsoft failed to inform parents about its data collection policies.

• Microsoft will pay a fine of $20 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console.

• The agency charged that Microsoft gathered the data without notifying parents or obtaining their consent, and that it also illegally held onto the data. Those actions violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the FTC stated.

• The pedantic will note that these books aren’t truly free. You must make an account somewhere to get them. And–yes, that’s true. I’m a business. Giving me money requires making an account somewhere. Meet me in a dark alley and slip me $20 and I’ll hand over a brown paper bag containing a book, sure, but online commerce requires accounts. For what it’s worth, my store’s privacy policy is the one I would like other retailers to use, and you can delete accounts in my store.

Defence/Aggression

• “More, important preparatory work on expanding the Paks nuclear plant will soon be underway, and the amended contractual framework will ensure faster progress while fully respecting safety rules”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said, according to the Hungarian State News Agency, MTI.

• The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department doesn’t have a great track record. In addition to the usual stuff expected from law enforcement agencies (biased policing, zero accountability, civil rights abuses, excessive force deployment), the LASD has been home to deputy gangs pretty much since its inception.

War in Ukraine

• Ukraine’s Operational Command South has confirmed that an explosion on Tuesday morning destroyed the Nova Kakhovka dam, which guards the Kherson region’s coastal cities against a reservoir with water levels currently at a 30-year high. In a statement on Facebook, the Ukrainian military accused Russian occupation forces of blowing up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. The loss of the dam is expected to unleash flood waters downstream and exacerbate Ukraine’s energy shortages after months of Russian missile strikes targeting power generation and grid facilities across the country.

• On Monday June 5, the Council of the European Union announced sanctions against nine Russian citizens who it says are responsible for the sentencing and subsequent imprisonment of opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza. On April 17, a Moscow court sentenced Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison.

• Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate reports that Andrey Stesev, a colonel in the Russian Army, was killed in the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, in the early hours of June 5. The agency posted a military ID bearing that name.

• Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said during a livestream on Russian social media network VKontakte that regional authorities “cannot enter” the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka.

• Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar said on Telegram Monday that Ukraine’s military has begun conducting “offensive actions in several areas.”

• Russia’s Defense Ministry and the pro-war Telegram channels are circulating combat footage from Velyka Novosilka, claiming that it heralds nothing less than the start of a large-scale Ukrainian counteroffensive. But is this really true? Meduza’s military analysts take a close look at the evidence, the “known unknowns,” and what plausible scenarios might arise in the balance.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Trolling was named after the fishing practice in which anglers bait hooks and pull them on lines through the water. Online, the bait was a bit of bad info, and a “‘good’ troll,” according to AFU, was “obviously facetious/sarcastic to anyone who has a sense of humor and some intelligence.” But because of pomposity or because people were gullible or stupid, they’d leap to correct a poster who’d spoken in jest. So they were reeled in and informed that they’d “lost.” They’d been trolled. They weren’t worthy company.

• In 1993, AOL began providing Usenet access to its subscribers, and tens of thousands of newbies were dumped onto the electronic bulletin board in what became known as “Eternal September.” Trolling became meaner. It became even more of an “insider’s game,” says the user experience designer Michele Tepper, an AFU alumna and author of the first academic paper on trolling. (It would mutate later, of course, into something else—something dark—and the whole web would become its playing field.) But newcomers to AFU were offered “survival guides” and warned against arguing with Mikkelson, a legend, in particular.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

• An environmental group has mounted a legal challenge to federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek after she did not accept calls to consider the impact of global warming when assessing three coalmine applications in NSW and Queensland.

• The Environment Council of Central Queensland has filed in the Federal Court seeking a judicial review of Ms Plibersek’s decisions, claiming she has refused to accept the global warming risk associated with proposals.

• Millions of diesel generators could switch off across Australia if work sites, councils and isolated communities opt for a new hydrogen “power bank”.

• Governments may want to export hydrogen to Asia over the next decade but a Brisbane-based startup says it has technology ready to go now for local use by farms, mines and eco-tourism operators or remote mobile phone towers and water treatment plants.

• Here at Hackaday we really like to feature projects that push the limits of what’s possible, or ones that feature some new and exciting technology that nobody has ever seen before. So what’s so exciting about this single-voltage linear power supply? Honestly, nothing — until you start looking at its thermally compensated current limiting circuit.

• Three trains, with more than 2,200 people onboard, were involved in the crash in Odisha State, the deadliest such disaster in decades. The death toll approached 300.

• The cause of the problem, which prompted widespread travel delays starting Sunday, had still not been determined.

Finance

• Conservative activists Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips used the nonprofit True the Vote to enrich themselves, according to a complaint filed to the IRS.

• On Monday, the nonprofit watchdog group Campaign for Accountability called for an investigation into True the Vote, which has made repeated false claims about voter fraud in elections. The complaint said True the Vote may have violated state and federal law when the charity used donations to issue loans to Engelbrecht, its founder, and lucrative contracts to Gregg Phillips, a longtime director. The organization also failed to disclose the payments to insiders in its tax returns, including excessive legal bills paid to its general counsel at the time, who filed election-related lawsuits in four states, the complaint said.

• President Joe Biden on Saturday signed a debt ceiling deal into law that averts a catastrophic default by the United States through January 1, 2025, hailing it as a “big win” for the country. Critics say the agreement protects wealthy corporations and tax dodgers while imposing new cuts on key social programs and expanding work requirements for some recipients of food stamps. The legislation has also been called a “dirty deal” by climate activists because it rolls back environmental regulations and fast-tracks the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia, a pet project of powerful Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. “The working class of this country was deeply harmed by this bill,” says investigative journalist David Sirota of The Lever. He also faults Democratic leaders for not raising the debt ceiling after the midterm elections, when the party still had control of Congress. “What you see is a picture of a party that wanted this outcome,” says Sirota.

• Veterans are almost three times as likely to end up on the street but three times less likely to ask for help, a new report has found.

• In the past year, almost 6000 or 5.3 per cent of Australia’s half a million veterans were on the streets, a rate almost three times higher than the general population.

• Mortgage holders have been slugged with another 0.25 percentage point interest rate rise.

• The Reserve Bank board has opted to keep pressure on borrowers as it grapples with still-high inflation.

• The first multi-employer bargaining case will be brought to the industrial umpire under new federal laws allowing workers from different businesses to band together to negotiate higher pay rises.

• Unions representing workers at 20 different early childhood education employers across NSW, the ACT and Victoria will bring their case before the Fair Work Commission on Tuesday – the first day the new laws come into effect.

• The Reserve Bank board is set to make another tough interest rate decision in the fight against persistent but tempering inflation.

• Board members will weigh up strong but somewhat unreliable monthly inflation data – which came in at 6.8 per cent in April, up from 6.3 per cent in March – as well as signs of an easing but still robust jobs market.

• Council rate hikes could be different across rural, regional and city areas under proposed changes, but it will be up to the NSW government to bring local funding up to speed with the rest of Australia.

• NSW local government leaders have long been calling for an overhaul of the rate pegging system, which sets an annual limit on increased income from ratepayers.

• The man allegedly duped more than 400 people into revealing their banking details and stole more than one million euros from them.

• Due to a substantial increase in construction costs, the affordable rental housing project announced last year has been cut from 700 to 467 apartments. In planning other similar programs, calls are made to reduce the fragmentation of housing policy, Latvian Radio reported on June 4.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• But Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times. The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said.

• That performance is unlikely to improve anytime soon, according to the documents and seven current and former Twitter employees.

• Prior to taking the post, Yaccarino had worked for four years as head of NBCUniversal Media LLC’s advertising and partnership team. Back in December, Musk polled Twitter users, asking them if he should stay or go, and 57.5% said he should go. That he did, later explaining he’d like to hire a new CEO so he can concentrate on Tesla Inc. and other ventures.

• It is amazing the degree to which some people will engage in confirmation bias and believe absolute nonsense, even as the facts show the opposite is true. Over the past few months, we’ve gone through the various “Twitter Files” releases, and pointed out over and over again how the explanations people gave for them simply don’t match up with the underlying documents.

• Dr. Cornel West, in his first interview since deciding to enter the U.S. presidential race, explains why he is a candidate.

• David Sirota of The Lever talks about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s fundraising for his 2024 presidential bid could be hindered by a federal pay-to-play rule that restricts campaign contributions from financial executives to state officials who control pension investment decisions.

• Usually when we’re talking about companies engaging in astroturfing, it takes the form of companies or industry groups inputting comments supposedly from “the public” to support whatever thing they’re trying to accomplish. Utility groups creating a shell advocate organization to stifle reforms. Telecom companies employing astroturfers to smear an FCC nominee. Amazon cosplaying as a series of small businesses pretending to advocate against antitrust reforms. These are the types of things you think about when we talk about astroturfing.

• Antep MP of the Labour Party Sevda Karaca said before the hearing, “There are now those in the parliament who do not want women in their corridors. We know that this new Parliament wants to justify child abuse. We are here today. H.G.K. is not alone.”

• They are voting at higher rates than younger adults once did, helping the Democratic Party.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• A state-of-emergency address by Vladimir Putin was broadcast on the radio in three regions of southern Russia: Rostov, Belgorod, and Voronezh. Listeners heard Putin declare martial law in response to an alleged “incursion” of the Ukrainian armed forces into Russia.

• E.U. Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said the ability of a new generation of AI chatbots to create complex content and visuals in seconds raises “fresh challenges for the fight against disinformation.”

• She said she asked Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and other tech companies that have signed up to the 27-nation bloc’s voluntary agreement on combating disinformation to work to tackle the AI problem.

• A friend came to me asking for help. This friend’s Facebook account has been hacked. The hackers are now asking for money using the compromised account. This is particularly effective since this is an account that lots of people have interacted with for quite a while. So, friends and relatives are responding to requests for money. Since this is a “known” account, the request has more import. The hackers are benefitting since people are sending money.

• “Stack Overflow, Inc. has decreed a near-total prohibition on moderating AI-generated content… tacitly allowing the proliferation of incorrect information (“hallucinations”) and unfettered plagiarism on the Stack Exchange network,” reads an open letter written by the moderators, who are all volunteers elected by the community.

• “This poses a major threat to the integrity and trustworthiness of the platform and its content. Effective immediately, we are enacting a general moderation strike on Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network, in protest of this and other recent and upcoming changes to policy and the platform that are being forced upon us by Stack Overflow, Inc.”

• European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova told reporters on Monday that advanced AI tools including ChatGPT can effortlessly create complex, seemingly realistic content and visuals in a few seconds. Jourova also pointed out that people can use image generators to make realistic pictures of events that never took place.

• “Voice generation software can imitate the voice of a person based on a sample of a few seconds,” she added. In fact, Spotify is reportedly prepping to use the AI-trained voices of popular hosts with the help of similar technology.

• Jourova also warned of Russian disinformation, which is spreading like wildfire in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, she noted that machines did not have “any right” to freedom of speech. Jourova has asked the 44 signatories of the European Union’s code of practice against disinformation to help users identify AI-generated content. “The labelling should be done now — immediately,” she insisted.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Chambers was the public face of the downgrade. He defended it on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and MSNBC’s Morning Joe. And before long, he started receiving serious threats.

• One way to make yourself look good is to keep pointing out the faults of your predecessor. Like Elon Musk at Twitter, CNN’s CEO Chris Licht loves to denigrate the previous management of his company. With both Musk and Licht, this is clearly an attempt at covering up their own failures.1

• Those who have opted to stay face escalating risks, including arbitrary detention. American reporter Evan Gershkovich, who works for The Wall Street Journal, has been detained for over two months in Russia on espionage accusations that he and the U.S. government deny.

• At the risk of sounding biased, we suspect State of the Free Press 2024 may develop into the best volume yet in the Project’s venerable yearbook series. You’ll be able to judge for yourself in December when the book drops. Meanwhile, stay tuned in the coming months for more details and sneak peaks. And, if you’re wondering why the May newsletter is arriving at the very end of the month? Well, let’s just say we’ve been busy researching and writing!

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• According to Jon Schleuss, the president of the NewsGuild, corporate executives have eliminated 54% of the combined workforce of Gannett Co. since it merged with GateHouse Media four years ago to make a newspaper behemoth. Financing for the merger loaded up the new Gannett Co. with debt that led to hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts.

• A court ruled that “substantial and grave injustice” was done to Choy Yuk-ling, an investigative journalist who also goes by the name Bao Choy.

• The tragic murder of a reporter and environmentalist in the Amazon last year underscores the invisibility of many of the forest’s risks.

Civil Rights/Policing

• I cannot even begin to understand the unfettered amount of dumbshittery being passed off as legislating in the public’s interest by politicians far more performative than any drag queen I’ve had the pleasure of observing.

• An Australian jury found that Kathleen Folbigg had smothered her children. But scientists now say that they probably died from natural causes.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• For kids whose formative years fell in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when home computers ebbed with the widespread availability of portable screens, the practice of covertly spelunking into salacious corners of the Web—often while our parents weren’t home—was something like a rite of passage. Chat rooms like ChatRoulette or Omegle, the old Tumblr, and, of course, porn sites, offered a window into the most mysterious aspect of adult life: sex. In my case, poking around the Internet helped me realize that the range of possible self-expression and sexual desire was much bigger than what I was taught to believe in the classrooms and hallways of my suburban Ohio school.

• We’ve noted for years how broadband usage caps are a pointless, unnecessary cash grab by telecom monopolies looking to nickel-and-dime consumers who already pay too much for broadband.

• Would you believe it? We’ve got some more good news from the Supreme Court on Section 230. Remember that, before Gonzalez v. Google, a few of the Justices seemed to be begging for cases that would let them destroy Section 230. But then they (surprisingly) took the Gonzalez case, had to deal with many dozens of amici briefs explaining why 230 is so important, and seemed positively spooked when they actually realized that maybe this was more complex than they thought, leading them to punt on the issue.

Monopolies

Trademarks

• The Supreme Court on Monday said it will decide whether a California lawyer has the free speech right to trademark the phrase “Trump Too Small,” a reference to a taunt at the former president during the 2016 presidential campaign. In reviewing the case, the Supreme Court will revisit the constitutionality of restrictions on trademark registrations.

Copyrights

• Whether you work for a smaller newsroom seeking high quality, newsworthy photos that are free to use, or are part of a larger operation, like Propublica, that CC licenses all news to increase access and spread, CC licenses are free, powerful tools at your disposal.

• Yet, some journalists may not be aware of the potential and ease of these tools. Open Newswire and Creative Commons partnered to offer a practical primer on Creative Commons for journalism, and how to make the most of CC licenses. Enjoy!

• Music copyright, which became law in the United States in 1831, allows composers to establish the “metes and bounds” of their intellectual [sic] property [sic], just as mechanical inventors do in obtaining patents. But a patent is granted only after examiners have determined, by way of an investigation, that an invention is truly new and useful. A music copyright is more like a virtual rubber stamp that a musician gets automatically as soon as a song is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” If the song is a hit and the musician is sued—because “where there’s a hit, there’s a writ,” as an old adage goes—it is up to the courts to figure out how original the work is.

• Copyright makes it commercially viable to be an artist. But painters can’t claim ownership of a color, and songwriters can’t monopolize notes or, for that matter, common chord progressions, modes, or rhythms. A composer is entitled to own only a particular expression or arrangement of a musical idea, not the idea itself. (The concept of an arpeggio, or of counterpoint, cannot be copyrighted.) The question is how to legally separate the two. The law, which represents the Apollonian side of human experience—the rational, analytical, and intellectual—is a leaky sieve for containing the Dionysian elements of music: the irrational, abstract, and emotional parts.

• Canada’s ‘Notice and Notice’ regime requires ISPs to forward infringement notices to subscribers, typically those linked to the sharing of movies via BitTorrent. U.S. movie companies say that since Bell Canada failed to forward around 40,000 notices, they are now entitled to CAD$400m in damages. Bell’s response included allegations of copyright misuse, abuse of process, champerty and maintenance and unlawful means conspiracy. That hasn’t gone according to plan.

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