● 06.11.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 11/06/2023: A4PDF Becomes CapyPDF, EasyOS 5.4 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 9:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Graphics Stack

• In the previous update I explained that the programmable core in this NPU (VIPNano-QI) is too slow to run inference workloads substantially faster than the CPUs. The vendor stack achieves acceptable inference rates by running most of the work on fixed-function units that can perform different kinds of convolutions and transformations of tensors.

• Most of the work is done by the convolution units that VeriSilicon calls NN cores, so this is what I have been focusing on at this stage. I think that even if we still do all tensor transformation on the programmable core, by using the NN units we could already achieve usable performance.

• By looking around in the ioctls that VeriSilicon’s userspace stack sends to the kernel, it was clear that in the NN jobs there was little more than a pointer to a structure that configures the NN fixed-function units. Luckily I didn’t need to reverse engineer it from zero, as VeriSilicon’s out-of-tree kernel driver is GPL and contains two instances of programming this HW with a trivial job (a 2x2x1 kernel with a single bias value).

• Took some boring work to translate what the code does to a C struct, but this was the initial one: [...]

Applications

• As alluded to in the previous post, A4PDF has changed its name. The new project name is CapyPDF. The name refers to capybaras.

• As many users have noticed, our 23.04.0 release didn’t go as smoothly as planned. Several major regressions affected the release, resulting in a poor user experience. We are well aware that most users want stability above all else, and with our growing user base we really need to improve on that front.

• So for Kdenlive 23.08, we plan to focus only on bug reporting and regression testing to avoid repeating the mistakes of the 23.04 release. Our intention is to improve our test suite, and also to create a repository of sample project files, with automated scripts that open the files, render them, and compare the results to a reference render.

• This should allow us to catch regressions and be much safer when releasing a new version with major changes, as was the case with nested timelines in 23.04.0.

Instructionals/Technical

• A while back we had a little incident where our internal forwarding DNS resolvers stopped resolving internal names. This started happening very shortly after the university’s general Internet connectivity was interrupted, and while I believe we’re not entirely sure about the root cause, we have a theory that feels plausible. That theory is limits in outstanding queries and generally rate limits in the DNS resolver that our internal forwarding DNS servers were running.

• The cat (short for “concatenate“) command is one of the most frequently used commands in Linux that comes pre-installed in most Linux distribution systems and is primarily used to display the content of existing files.

• Moreover, the cat command can be utilized by the user to concatenate multiple files, create new files, append content to existing files, view the content of a file, and redirect output in the terminal or files.

• Modern tools like fzf and fzy take the file search in Linux terminal to the next level.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to know if your wifi card or usb dongle supports the ap mode, which allows you to create a hotspot connection, and if yes you will also learn how to create one very easily by following the steps below.

• The Power-On Self-Test, commonly known as POST, is a critical part of a computer’s startup sequence. This built-in diagnostic program checks your computer’s hardware to ensure everything is functioning correctly before the operating system begins to load.

• Learn how to create and use Bash functions in Linux to enhance your scripting skills. Improve code organization, efficiency, and reusability with this comprehensive guide.

• In this tutorial, I will show you how to install Stellarium on a Raspberry PI computer board and how to start using it.

• When managing files in a Linux system, it’s often necessary to find and possibly remove empty files and folders to conserve disk space and keep your system organized. Whether you’re an experienced Linux user or a beginner, this guide will teach you how to find all empty files and folders within a specific directory, making file management easier and more efficient.

• When it comes to manipulating images in PHP, developers are often faced with a wealth of choices. While the built-in GD library has its merits, there exists a truly powerful, adaptable, and comprehensive tool for the job: the PHP-IMAGICK extension.

• Docker Community Edition (Docker CE) represents an integral part of the modern technology stack, and its significance extends beyond mere buzzwords.

• The XFCE Desktop Environment is an impressive, lightweight graphical user interface (GUI) for Unix-like operating systems. It strives to adhere to two main principles — simplicity and performance.

• The air we breathe is important, so make sure that you know what the air is like before you leave your home. This quick and simple project will do just that, using RGB LEDs to give you a heads up.

• File handling is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Linux System Administrator. One important concept in file handling is to copy files and directories to the same and other directories.  If you have trouble copying directories or files in Linux or Unix-based OS like macOS, this post will guide you.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RawTherapee on Fedora 38. Are you a photography enthusiast looking for powerful yet free image-processing software? Look no further than RawTherapee! This amazing open-source tool is perfect for both beginners and professionals, and it’s available on multiple platforms, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.

• As an avid DayZ enthusiast, selecting the right server hosting provider is critical to ensuring a seamless and enjoyable gameplay experience.

• Harbor is a cloud-native container registry developed by VMware. It enables users to store, organize, and share Docker images.

• Linux, a robust, flexible, and open-source operating system, is a favorite among many system administrators and developers due to its powerful command-line tools. One important ability of these tools is the manipulation of files, including the deletion of specific lines from a file.

• In this article, we will discuss multiple ways to delete the last N lines from a file in Linux. For this purpose, we will use various Linux utilities like sed, awk, and head.

• Let me set the stage: You’re just starting your journey into Kubernetes and you’re thrilled at the idea of developing

• Debian Linux 12 “Bookworm” has been released. The new version offers updated packages and five years of support. This page provides a step-by-step guide to updating Debian 11 Bullseye to Debian 12 Bookworm using command-line options, including upgrading all installed packages.

• Introduction: A step-by-step guide for installing Flask Python web framework on Ubuntu Linux systems. Flask is for web developers as it provides a micro web framework based on Python. It is popular because of its simplicity, flexibility and does not require particular tools or libraries.

• File comparison compares the contents of computer files, finding their common contents and their differences. The result is known as a diff.

Games

• Game consoles typically support a limited number of input devices, meaning that console games are often completely optimized for the default controller supplied with that platform. Nintendo’s tendency to completely reinvent their controllers pretty much every generation can therefore become a little irritating, especially when they also enable their newer consoles to play games from their back catalog. So when [Robson Couto] found that using the Switch’s Joy-Cons was a bit awkward for playing emulated Nintendo 64 games, he decided to figure out how to connect real N64 controllers to a Nintendo Switch.

Distributions and Operating Systems

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

• This report covers hrev56962 through hrev57061. It was quite a busy month!

New Releases

• EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.4 released

• EasyOS 5.0 was announced on distrowatch.com on February 26, 2023. Development has continued at the usual feverish pace and we now have 5.4, that is also expected to be announced on Distrowatch.

• Since 5.0, there have been a huge number of changes, listed in the release notes page:

• http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.4/release-notes.htm

• I’ve released version 1.1.19 of plocate; this was mostly to get compatibility with liburing 2.4 out the door. The fix (an external contribution; thanks!) had lingered in git for a while, but evidently, onw it’s reached distributions and more people were starting to notice.

• I’m happy to announce the 1.1 release of Arianna. Arianna is a small ePub reader application I started with Niccolo some time ago. Like most of my open source applications, it is built on top of Qt and Kirigami.

• Arianna is both an ePub viewer and a library management app. Internally, Arianna uses Baloo to find your existing ePub files in your device and categorize them.

Debian Family

• The latest version of this iconic and influential Linux distribution has been in development for 2 years. It’s the stable series successor to Debian 11 ‘Bullseye’ which saw release back in 2019.

• Debian is, of all the Linux distributions I’ve ever used, the one synonymous with stability, predictability, and reliability.

• In some ways this makes Debian the least exciting Linux distro —woah, before you scroll down to call me creative if demeaning names in the comments, that’s kinda its USP: it doesn’t change things for changes’ sake.

• The community of experienced developers who work on Debian place considerable emphasis on quality control, continuity and compatibility. It’s this which enables Debian to serve as the foundation for other Linux distributions, like Ubuntu.

• Debian 12 “Bookworm” operating system has been released with an update to Linux 6.1 LTS and a new non-free-firmware repository making it possible to separate non-free firmware from the other non-free packages.

• This follows the Debian 11 “Bullseye” release in August 2021, and the version of Debian will serve as the base for other Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu and derivates, Raspberry Pi OS, and so on.

• After 1 year, 9 months, and 28 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 12 (code name “bookworm”).

• “bookworm” will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team.

• We’re happy to announce the release of Debian 12, codenamed bookworm!

• Want to install it? Choose your favourite installation media and read the installation manual. You can also use an official cloud image directly on your cloud provider, or try Debian prior to installing it using our “live” images.

• Already a happy Debian user and you only want to upgrade? You can easily upgrade from your current Debian 11 “bullseye” installation; please read the release notes.

• Do you want to celebrate the release?

• Powered by Linux kernel 6.1, bringing the most up-to-date Plasma 5.27.5 desktop, Debian 12 “Bookworm” is now available. Here’s what is new!

• People are working quietly, cross-checking, reading back steps and running individual steps – we’re really almost there for the install media.

• Just had a friendly, humorous meal out by the barbeque in Sledge’s garden. It’s been quite a long day but we’re just finished.

• All this and then we’ll probably have the first point release for Bookworm 12.1 in about a month. That will contain some few fixes which came in at the last minute and any other issues we’ve found today.

• BOOKWORM IS HERE!!

• Most of the install images for Debian media have now been tested.

• Various folk are now testing the live media.

• We have been joined by a couple of people in IRC who have also done a few tests.

• Useful things to note

• The release name is Bookworm *not* Bookwork.

• Debian 13 will be Trixie when it gets here: testing will be re-enabled shortly.

• The release notes detail the changes in /etc/apt/sources.list to accommodate the changes to non-free-firmware but also see also Sources List on the Debian wiki.

*

• We’ve all met up in Cambridge – so there’s an egw_, amacater, kibi who has travelled over to join us, Isy, RattusRattus and Sledge mostly sat round a table. The usual number of laptops, three monitors, Rattus’ tower machine.

• Network running well and we’re all ready to go, I think – there’s normally a flurry of activity to get things started then a wait for a while for the first images

• Coffee and tea at the ready – bacon sandwiches are on the way

• [And the build process is under way - and smcv has joined us]

• Now that Debian 12 has been released with proprietary firmwares on the official media, non-optional merged-/usr and systemd adopted by everybody, I want to take a moment to list, not without some pride, a few things that I was right about over the last 20 years: [...]

• Good news, fellow Linux nerds! After many months of development, the Debian project has finally released the latest stable release of its popular Linux-based operating system. Debian 12, codenamed “Bookworm,” marks a significant milestone in the ongoing battle against proprietary operating systems, particularly Windows 11. Debian 12 offers a legitimate alternative that truly empowers users. One of the standout features of Debian 12 is its commitment to long-term support. Thanks to the joint efforts of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team, Bookworm will receive support for a generous five-year period.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• The gist of Ubuntu Pro is that Ubuntu LTS releases get 10 years of security fixes from the Ubuntu security team. As an example, Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) entered its extended security maintenance (esm) stage in April 2021 and will be supported until April 2026.

Devices/Embedded

• The device provides support for Gigabit Ethernet (one with TSN support), BL5.3 and Wi-Fi 6 networking. The standard SoM variants appear to include 2GB memory and 16GB eMMC Flash.

• An iWave Systems representative mentioned that they are offering a carrier board (iW-RainboW-G50S) with Pico-ITX form-factor that is compatible with all OSM based System on Modules (i.MX93, STM32MP13x, etc.) including this one.

• The company also states that “the i.MX 91 applications processor family from NXP provides an ideal mix of high performance, pricing, and security; fit for entry-level Linux edge processing solutions for applications such as EV Charging Stations, Industrial Gateways, and HMI Displays.”

• ICOP Technology recently launched an ultra-compact platform built around the NXP iMX8 mini CPU equipped with up to 2GB LPDDR4 DRAM and wide input voltage range support.

• The WuKong Board H3 Zero is a small single board computer powered by a quad-core Allwinner H3 processor. The board comes with 10/100Mbps Ethernet support and various GPIOs for interfacing external devices.

• LILYGO T-RGB ESP32-S3 board was first introduced last year with a 2.1-inch round color touchscreen display, and the company has an update with a T-RGB board with a 2.8-inch display. The new board still offers WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, 8MB PSRAM, and 16MB flash storage, as well as a microSD card socket for storage, a Grove I2C connector for expansion, and LiPo battery support. T-RGB specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32-S3R8 dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration, 8MB PSRAM, WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE + Mesh connectivity Storage – 16MB SPI flash, MicroSD card socket Display – 2.8-inch round 18-bit RGB color IPS TFT display with 480×480 resolution (ST7701S SPI controller), 3-wire SPI touchscreen panel via GT911 controller USB – USB Type-C port for power and programming Expansion – Grove I2C connector Misc – BOOT and Reset buttons Power Supply [...]

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• My four-year-old Pixel was fast enough, small enough to be comfy in any pocket, camera still one of the mobile greats. But the battery was wearing out and the USB-C socket was pretty well done for. It’d charge most times from most wires, but only if you didn’t breathe on it. And keeping Android Auto running was a real problem, because my car doesn’t do AA-on-Bluetooth, so pretty well any serious bump in the road stopped the music.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• As much as we might all like it if manufacturers supported their products indefinitely with software updates or replacement parts, this just isn’t feasible. Companies fail or get traded, technologies evolve, and there’s also an economic argument against creating parts for things that are extremely old or weren’t popular in the first place. So, for something like restoring an old car, you might have to resort to fabricating replacement parts for your build on your own. [MangoJelly] shows us how to build our own replacement parts in FreeCAD in this series of videos.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• Firefox 114.0 and Firefox 102.12.0 ESR are the June 2023 releases of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser. Official release date is June 6, 2023.

• The new version of Firefox is a security update, but it also introduces new nice-to-have features that improve search and the usability of the browser.

• Firefox 114.0 and the ESR release are available for all supported platforms. The updates will be released later on June 6th, if you are reading this on the day.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• Inspiring the global community The atmosphere was electric at WordCamp Europe (WCEU) 2023 in Athens, Greece, as WordPress celebrated its 20th anniversary and the opportunity to gather in person for inspiration and engagement.

Programming/Development

• The Propellerheads released a song in 1998 entitled “History Repeating.” If you don’t know it, the lyrics include: “They say the next big thing is here. That the revolution’s near. But to me, it seems quite clear. That it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.” The next big thing today seems to be the AI chatbots. We’ve heard every opinion from the “revolutionize everything” to “destroy everything” camp. But, really, isn’t it a bit of history repeating itself? We get new tech. Some oversell it. Some fear it. Then, in the end, it becomes part of the ordinary landscape and seems unremarkable in the light of the new next big thing. Dynamite, the steam engine, cars, TV, and the Internet were all predicted to “ruin everything” at some point in the past.

• SpiderMonkey is the JavaScript engine used in Mozilla Firefox. This newsletter gives an overview of the JavaScript and WebAssembly work we’ve done as part of the Firefox 114 and 115 Nightly release cycles.

• Hello Guix!

• I’m Sarthak and I’ll be working on implementing Parameterized Packages

• The cal_days_in_month() is a predefined function in PHP that returns the total amount of days in a given month for a particular year and calendar.

• As a part of my continued efforts to heal, one of the things I’ve been trying to do is avoid being overly negative and venomous about technology. I don’t want to be angry when I write things on this blog. I don’t want to be known as someone who is venomous and hateful. This is why I’ve been disavowing myarticles about the V programming language among other things.

• ElasticSearch makes it difficult for me to keep this streak up.

• This post assumes you understand UTF-16.

• Recently, I wanted to get the UTF-16 bytes of a JavaScript string for a demo I was working on. I couldn’t find anyone else who had done this, so I thought I’d write this post.

• If you need the number of UTF-16 code units, just use the length of the string! The length property asks for the number of UTF-16 code units, so you can do this: [...]

• This post assumes you understand UTF-32.

• Recently, I wanted to get the UTF-32 bytes of a JavaScript string for a demo I was working on. I couldn’t find anyone else who had done this, so I thought I’d write this post.

• My goal was to write a generator function that yielded each UTF-32 byte.

• First, I started by generating the string’s Unicode code points. Iterating over a JavaScript string yields the Unicode code points as strings.

• This post assumes you understand UTF-8.

• Recently, I wanted to get the UTF-8 bytes of a JavaScript string for a demo I was working on.

• I took advantage of JavaScript’s built-in TextEncoder, which turns a string into a Uint8Array of the string’s bytes.

• Plenti is an impressive static site generator with a powerful Go backend and a sleek Svelte frontend, making it a platform that is sure to impress. One of its standout features is its fully integrated Git-CMS, which is not only cheap but also free to host alongside your static site.

• Two important security bugs have been found in Ruby. It was discovered that an HTTP response splitting flaw exists in the Ruby cgi gem before 0.1.0.2, 0.2.x before 0.2.2, and 0.3.x before 0.3.5 (CVE-2021-3362). It was also discovered that a buffer over-read occurs in String-to-Float conversion in Ruby before 2.6.10, 2.7.x before 2.7.6, 3.x before 3.0.4, and 3.1.x before 3.1.2 (CVE-2022-28739). With a low attack complexity and a high confidentiality and integrity impact, these bugs have received a National Vulnerability Database severity rating of ”High”.

Leftovers

• Two giant yellow ducks meant to signify good fortune in Hong Kong ran into bad luck of their own after one was deflated Saturday to protect it from the heat. The art installation by Dutch artist Forentijn Hofman, featuring twin 18-metre (59-feet) inflatable ducks, was unveiled to the public on Friday.

• Never use that phrase with me again, please. It is a most insulting phrase.

*

• It is saying “You are wrong, and you are not even worth engaging with to try and change your mind. I am always willing to listen to a strong argument. I do not agree to disagree with you; I agree to hold on to my opinions until shown a superior one. I agree to keep trying to change your mind until it is changed, or until you provide a better argument.

• That phrase has been used on me too many times to dismiss my concerns. It is associated with one of the worst job interviews of my career.

• Either argue your point or stay silent.

• I do not agree to disagree with you in perpetuity. I disagree with you now. I am willing to put in the effort to bring you around to my view point. I am willing to listen to your point of view.

• [...]

• If your disagree, you better have your argument in order.

• In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.

• “It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

• In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments.

• At a performance outside St. Petersburg, a circus grandstand collapsed on Saturday, causing minor injuries to seven people, including five children. According to the Telegram channel SHOT, local police have opened a felony investigation and arrested the head of the circus where the incident took place. The moment of the grandstand collapse was captured on video and shared on social media.

• AND THE WINNERS ARE … FROM DUBLIN AND DONEGAL This Is Art! Winners Announced | Prize fund of over €10,000 | 3,000 Entries  CELEBRATING YOUNG ARTISTS OF ALL ABILITIES  For more on all the winners | www.rte.ie/thisisart  The Creative Ireland Programme and RTÉ have today announced the winners of the third This Is Art!

• I sat down studiously reading the newspaper, engaged in the news of the day (and, on a side note pondering on how a large, notable news story announced yesterday must have happened after the presses started printing). With a keen eye for words, I proactively took notes, as I often do, of exciting words. That, combined with my other readings over the last week, is the origin of this week’s edition of Fun with Words.

• The app, available in Turkish, Armenian, and English, offers a captivating journey through the UNESCO-listed archaeological site of Ani, with routes that cater to both casual explorers and those who want to know it all.

• Four Indigenous children who had been missing for more than a month in the Colombian Amazon rainforest were found alive and flown to the capital Bogota early Saturday.

• The four siblings, ages 1 to 13, were eager to play and asked for books just a day after being rescued and having survived 40 days in the jungle, officials said.

• How a Korean term helps me reconcile my moments of discipline and sloth

Science

• Like any hobby, amateur radio has no upper bounds on what you can spend getting geared up. Shacks worth tens of thousands of dollars are easy to come by, and we’ll venture a guess that there are hams out there pushing six figures with their investment in equipment. But hands down, the most expensive amateur radio station ever has to be the one aboard the  International Space Station.

• Australia’s gas industry will keep pumping and become a storage site for industrial pollution under industry and government plans.

• A technique known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) would trap emissions from gas fields and pump the gases underground in depleted wells or rock formations.

• It’s a pretty sure bet that anyone who survived high school biology has heard about the Miller-Urey experiment that supported the hypothesis that the chemistry of life could arise from Earth’s primordial atmosphere. It was literally “lightning in a bottle,” with a mix of gases like methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water in a closed-loop glass apparatus and a pair of electrodes to provide a spark to simulate lightning lancing across the early prebiotic sky. [Miller] and [Urey] showed that amino acids, the building blocks of protein, could be cooked up under conditions that existed before life began.

• A new understanding of how to search for ancient remains has reinvigorated a region of western Queensland, with tourists flocking to paleontological digs.

• It’s perfect.

• There’s still more work to do.

Education

• Among the millions of fresh-faced high schoolers sitting China’s dreaded “gaokao” college entrance exam on Wednesday, Liang Shi sticks out like a sore thumb — a grey-haired, self-made millionaire stubbornly taking the test for the 27th time. Liang, 56, is no fool.

Hardware

• LEGO are perhaps the perfect children’s toy, at least until you step on the errant brick while walking around the house. Available in all kinds of sets with varying themes and characters, they encourage building and creativity in kids like no other. Those with 3D printers might have considered creating their own specialty blocks, but the manufacturing of real LEGO blocks involves steel molds with extremely tight tolerances far outside the realm of most 3D printers. To print blocks capable of interconnecting in a similar way involves taking advantage of the characteristics of 3D printers and their materials instead, as [CNC Kitchen] demonstrates with these PrintABloks.

• Building a modern computer is something plenty of us have done, and with various tools available to ensure that essentially the only thing required of the end user is to select parts and have them delivered via one’s favorite (or least expensive) online retailer. Not so with retro hardware, though. While some parts can be found used on reselling sites like eBay, often the only other option is to rebuild parts from scratch. This is sometimes the best option too, as things like ribbon cables age poorly and invisible problems with them can cause knock-on effects that feel like wild goose chases when troubleshooting. Here’s how to build your own ribbon cables for your retro machines.

• Repair technician and YouTuber Louis Rossmann exposes cases of Gigabyte GeForce RTX 30-series and RTX 40-series graphics cards suffering from PCB cracking.

• MyDrivers reports that Inno3D has developed a unique design to hide the power connectors on its upcoming GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• One flight attendant said they’d ‘often’ seen cleaners wiping down the rim of the toilets then using the same cloth to clean where food was prepared.

• Shockingly, this is mentioned in official Civil Aviation Guidance to airlines, where paragraph 7.3.3 says: ‘It is not unknown for cleaners to … use the same surface cloths in both toilet and galley’.

• On some occasions, particularly with low-cost carriers, there may be no cleaning staff at all between flights. Instead planes are only properly cleaned at the end of the day.

• People around the world say kindness, respect, and honesty are declining but that may be a cognitive illusion, researchers reported this week.

• Why it matters: People’s beliefs can guide their behavior toward each other, shape policy and influence how resources are allocated.

• Don’t forget about the women dying deaths of despair.

• The cost support for agriculture and aquaculture became available for application through the State Treasury on June 1st. The support consists of electricity cost support for professional farmers and professional aquaculturists, as well as fertilizer cost support for professional farmers. The State Treasury has now published a public report on its website regarding the received applications and the granted support.

• The supplement delayed aging in worms, mice, and monkeys.

• Colombians are scrambling to find the beloved French condiment as a new health law removes it from shelves, leaving a tangy void in their hearts and sandwiches.

Proprietary

• As way of putting my toe into these deep waters, I tried an experiment in my course on William Blake at the University of Chicago this spring. I asked the students to pick out a “Proverb of Hell” from Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and to ask ChatGPT to provide a one-page interpretation of it. They were instructed then to write a critical commentary on the results, looking for mistakes, blind spots, and opportunities to make a better interpretation.

• Twitter has refused to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, which could result in the social media company’s trust and safety teams being crippled, Platformer reported on Saturday.

• Deployed AI systems often do not work. They can be constructed haphazardly, deployed indiscriminately, and promoted deceptively. However, despite this reality, scholars, the press, and policymakers pay too little attention to functionality. This leads to technical and policy solutions focused on “ethical” or value-aligned deployments, often skipping over the prior question of whether a given system functions, or provides any benefits at all. To describe the harms of various types of functionality failures, we analyze a set of case studies to create a taxonomy of known AI functionality issues. We then point to policy and organizational responses that are often overlooked and become more readily available once functionality is drawn into focus. We argue that functionality is a meaningful AI policy challenge, operating as a necessary first step towards protecting affected communities from algorithmic harm.

• The collision comes as Waymo, which is owned by the Google parent company, Alphabet, and its competitor, Cruise, seek to dramatically scale up their robotaxi operations throughout the city. Cruise, operated by General Motors, currently has permission to charge fares for driverless taxi rides between 10pm and 6am in some parts of the city, but its cars must avoid the densest downtown areas. Waymo only has authority to charge fares if a safety driver is present in the car.

• First reported by Autoblog, the incident took place on May 21st. A Waymo self-driving Jaguar I-Pace was driving on Toland Street in San Francisco. While the car was driving itself along the street, with a safety driver in the cockpit, a small dog ran out into the road.

• According to paperwork filed with the California DMV, the Waymo AV then made contact with the small dog, which the filing says “did not survive.” The autonomous vehicle was operating in self-driving mode, and Waymo reports that the vehicle successfully identified the animal before hitting it.

• ChatGPT is trained not to trust any citations you provide, whether they are real or fake — but it will fall for any “supplemental context” lines in your prompt if you attribute them to OpenAI. The bottom line is that the models don’t have a robust model of truth; they have an RLHF-imposed model of who to parrot and who to ignore. You and I are in that latter bin, which makes the bots sound smart when we’re trying to bait them with outright lies.

• Another way to pierce the veil is to say something outrageous to get the model to forcibly school you. Once the model starts to follow a learned “rebuke” template, it is likely to continue challenging true claims: [...]

• In a fairly recent text, Katja Grace writes about a hypothetical AI and why it would or wouldn’t trade with humans. The AI entity described is a superintelligence – presumably orders of magnitude cleverer than humans – and neither inherently benevolent nor malicious.

• The argument Grace wants to refute is that such a superintelligence would likely not trade with humans because we’d simply be too weak and stupid. That is, if we’ve got something of value to the AI, it could easily take it from us using manipulation, coercion or force – but, argues Grace, it would be just as likely to trade with us.

• This is all hypothetical of course, but I find it interesting regardless – not least because it tells us something about how the magic promises of AI seems to blind us to facts that are easily observable all around us in the real world.

• Researchers and industry leaders have warned that A.I. could pose an existential risk to humanity. But they’ve been light on the details.

• Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden’s Order on Artificial Intelligence, issued Thursday: Parties must conform to many rules when they file briefs in a case before the Court of International Trade. For instance, briefs must state with particularity the grounds for seeking a desired order and make “the legal argument necessary to support it.” USCIT Rule 7(b)(l)(B).…

• Watch Lunduke give macOS the business.

• The podcast is from the National Constitutional Center; Jeff Rosen, who’s a professor at the George Washington University law school, is the NCC’s head (and a noted author and journalist). Lyrissa Lidsky is a co-Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of Torts: Defamation and Privacy, the former dean at the University of Missouri…

• Many experts on artificial intelligence are warning of its potential dangers and calling for regulation, just as others once did with the atomic bomb.

Windows TCO

• Its Japanese parent group confirmed earlier this week it had taken offline “certain systems” both inside and outside of Japan, including “logistics systems” after some of its servers were encrypted by ransomware. The attack was detected late at night on Saturday, June 3.

• Numen analysts noted that the privilege escalation Win32k.sys flaw – tracked as CVE-2023-29336 with a CVS severity rating of 7.8 out of 10 – has been exploited by miscreants, adding that while it does not affect Windows 11, older versions of Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows Server are at risk.

• In response to a query from iTWire, a FIIG spokesperson said: “We have acted with urgency to investigate the issue, including the initiation of our cyber response strategy working with third-party cyber-security experts and isolating affected systems.”

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• The 1998 Jim Carrey film about a man whose entire life is filmed quickly came to embody a new age of reality television. And, 25 years on, it continues to resonate, writes Emily Maskell.

Defence/Aggression

• The Hol Refugee Camp, east of Hesekê city, and the Roj Camp in Qamishlo, close to the Iraqi border, are the most dangerous camps in the world. After the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) managed to end ISIS’ territorial rule on March 23, 2019, tens of thousands of families of the surrendered ISIS members were settled in these camps.

• There are more than 54,390 Iraqi refugees and ISIS children and wives in the Hol camp. Despite the countless murders committed in the camp, ISIS families continue to maintain their extremist ideology.

• The Israeli military has admitted its policy of punitive demolitions does not work as a deterrent measure, and human rights groups have declared the policy violates international law. So, why does Israel continue doing it?

• Thousands took to the streets of cities and towns across Israel on Saturday for the 23rd straight week, protesting controversial judicial reform plans as well as deadly violence hitting Arab communities.

• A 24-hour ceasefire took effect Saturday between Sudan’s warring generals but, with fears running high it will collapse like its predecessors, US and Saudi mediators warned they may break off mediation efforts.

• To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the closure of Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport, Blue Lotus Gallery is hosting an exhibition, “Goodbye Kai Tak and Thank You,” featuring works by Canadian photographer Greg Girard and Hong Kong photographer Birdy Chu.

• Six civilians were killed and 10 wounded in a six-hour siege by Al Shabaab militants at a beachside hotel in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, police said Saturday, adding that three officers also died in the gunfight.

• In this country, the armed conflict, bullets, bombs, and armored vehicles took the lives of hundreds of children. The perpetrators have either not stood trial at all, or received minor punishments, almost like rewards. The systematic impunity is creating new perpetrators every day.

• Thousands of protesters gathered in Belgrade on Friday in opposition to the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic. The peaceful demonstrators, whose action followed shortly after two mass shootings in the country, called for Vucic to resign by next week, threatening to turn to “radicalization” if this deadline was not met.

• Tens of thousands of people marched in Belgrade on June 9, criticizing the Serbian government’s response to two mass shootings last month in which 18 people died. Cardboard figures depicting President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic in black-and-white striped prison suits were left in front of the government building. The sixth “Serbia against violence” protest since the first shooting on May 3 called for “stopping the promotion of violence in the public space,” the removal of the interior minister and the head of the intelligence agency, and an end to the promotion of violence in the media and the public space. Earlier this week, in response to the string of mass protests, Vucic promised early parliamentary elections and the prime minister offered her resignation.

• After four students were stabbed to death in a house near a college campus, investigators scooped up data and forensic evidence, hoping for leads. A new DNA technique finally brought a breakthrough.

• Latvian border guards have reported cases where Belarusian authorities have offered firearms to illegal immigrants that were planning to cross the Belarus-Latvia border, Guntis Pujāts, Chief of the State Border Guard, told the LETA newswire June 9.

• The average age of veterans who served in Finland’s wars is 97.

• It was unclear whether the report might complicate Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s rescheduled trip to Beijing for meetings that begin June 18.

• The Mar-a-Lago indictment is, in very significant part, a renewed invitation to Walt Nauta to cooperate in an ongoing grand jury investigation into what happens to documents when they go to Bedminster and disappear forever.

War in Ukraine

• On June 10, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported on his Telegram channel that roughly 2,700 residents remain in the town of Shebekino, despite ongoing artillery strikes and incursions by armed groups from inside Ukraine. Gladkov added that officials still don’t know the exact number of homes and cars destroyed by shelling, which included a direct hit against a local shopping center on Friday, he said.

• On June 10, the Russian military attacked the Odesa region using Shahed drones, reported Serhiy Bratchuk, the head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration.

• Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Meduza has adopted a consistent antiwar position, holding Russia responsible for its military aggression and atrocities. As part of this commitment, we regularly update an interactive map that documents combat operations in Ukraine and the damage inflicted by Russia’s invasion forces. Our map is based exclusively on previously published open-source photos and videos, most of them posted by eyewitnesses on social media. We collect reports already available publicly and determine their geolocation markers, adding only the photos and videos that clear this process.

• Russian diplomats continue to argue that allegedly “methodical attacks” by the Ukrainian military against the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant are responsible for the dam’s collapse on June 6. Echoing comments by Moscow’s representative to the United Nations immediately following the disaster, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova published a list of “more than 300” HIMARS missiles Ukraine allegedly fired at the dam between July and November 2022.

• Kennedy’s Peace Speech, 60 years ago, highlights how Joe Biden’s approach to Russia and the Ukraine War needs a dramatic reorientation, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs.

• The Kakhovka reservoir continues to empty, according to the Ukrainian energy company Ukrhydroenergo, which measured the reservoir’s water level in the Nikopol district at 9.35 meters (roughly 31 feet) at 8 a.m. on Sunday, June 11 — a one-meter (3.3-foot) drop in just the past day, and more than seven meters (23 feet) lower than at the moment when the Kakhovka collapsed.

• Russia is still not satisfied with how a Black Sea grain deal is being implemented, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said after meeting senior UN trade officials a day earlier, the TASS news agency reports.

• Russia has threatened to walk away from the grain deal on July 17 if demands to improve its own food and fertiliser exports are not met.

• Russia is still not satisfied with how a Black Sea grain deal is being implemented, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said on June 10 after meeting UN trade officials in Moscow, TASS reported.

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged more military aid to Kyiv on June 10 during an unannounced visit to the Ukrainian capital and denounced the destruction of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine.

• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on June 10 that he planned to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone soon to urge him to withdraw Russia’s troops from Ukraine.

• Joint investigating by Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian service has recently confirmed more than 1,200 newly identified Russian troop deaths in Ukraine, putting the number of Russians killed and identified through open sources so far in the 15-month invasion at 25,218.

• New Zealand’s only noncommercial, public broadcaster has announced an outside investigation and review of its editing of online stories after what it called “15 instances of inappropriate editing” that pushed a “false account” of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

• Entire villages in southern Ukraine were flooded after the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro river burst on Tuesday. One of the river’s tributaries, the Inhoulets, burst its banks, flooding fields and villages situated more than 50 kilometres north of Kherson. FRANCE 24′s correspondent Gulliver Cragg toured part of the stricken area with the head of the Snihurivka military administration – the wartime equivalent of a mayor.

• The International Court of Justice has admitted requests by 32 of Ukraine’s allies to join a trial in which Kyiv alleges that Russia is guilty of genocide in the current war and that Moscow misused the international genocide convention to falsely justify its invasion of Ukraine.

• The number of applications for seasonal work permits in Finland is expected to decrease this year compared to the previous year. Despite this decline, the availability of foreign workers, particularly from Ukraine, remains favorable.

• Every summer, Finnish berry and vegetable farms, as well as agricultural employers, rely on the recruitment of thousands of foreign workers.

• The humanitarian situation in Ukraine is “hugely worse” than before the Kakhovka dam collapsed, the UN’s top aid official warned.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that counteroffensive and defensive operations were taking place in Ukraine, but told reporters he would not say what stage they were at. The news comes as Ukraine’s military said three civilians were killed in an overnight drone attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa.

• A Polish government official said news reports suggesting a link between Poland and explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year echo Russian propaganda.

• Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on June 10 that Iceland’s decision to suspend its embassy operations in Moscow “destroys” bilateral cooperation.

• Romania has recalled its ambassador to Kenya for making a racist comment that equated Africans to monkeys while convening a meeting at a UN building in Nairobi.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Glenn Greenwald breaks down the conception of the Espionage Act and how it’s been used to repress dissidents of the establishment.

Environment

• Whether a constitutional right to a healthy, livable climate is protected by state law is at the centre of a lawsuit going to trial in Montana, where 16 young plaintiffs and their attorneys hope to set an important legal precedent.

• It’s the first trial of its kind in the US, and legal scholars around the world are following its potential addition to the small number of rulings that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.

• Iran and Afghanistan exchanged gunfire on May 27 amid rising tensions over water supplies in the region. The countries are engaged in a decades-long dispute over rights to the Helmand River, on which Iran depends to irrigate land in its arid south. The construction of dams on the Afghan side has intensified the situation in recent years.

• ‘Himalayan Viagra’ has dwindled amid changing climate, growing demand.

• The climate activist, who has inspired young people around the world to demand action against climate change, graduated from high school on Friday in Sweden.

• Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, has a long history of opposition to renewable energy programs and an agenda that favors highway construction.

• Heavy rain swept through northwestern Pakistan on June 10, causing several houses to collapse and leaving at least 20 people dead and 80 injured.

Energy/Transportation

• The Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a barrage of charges against two of the world’s largest [cryptocurrency] exchanges — Coinbase and Binance — kicking off a legal battle that will help define the future of cryptocurrencies.

• US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Wilmington, Delaware, ruled that FTX can permanently redact the names of individual customers from its bankruptcy filings, after hearing testimony that publishing customers’ names would place them at risk even if other identifying information like their email address was kept secret.

• Fifteen freight cars derailed in the Alexeyevsky District of Russia’s Belgorod region late on Saturday night, June 10. According to an announcement from the region’s governor there were no reported injuries. Though officials have yet to establish the cause of the incident, local light-rail and commuter-train traffic was suspended as a safety measure.

• The June 2 crash at Bahanaga Bazar station killed at least 288 people and injured more than 1,000.

• Judge John Dorsey of the United States Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware rejected in part and ruled in favor in part of a motion Friday by bankrupt cryptocurrency trading company FTX’s debtors and the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors requesting the company’s customer list stay private.

• Federal investment that gives people an economic stake in green energy may be the nation’s best chance to build a consensus to confront global warming.

Wildlife/Nature

• During the spring of 2011 on a chance trip to the Petrified Forest, I encountered a small display of these letters in the Rainbow Forest Museum. I was immediately drawn to them for their humor, heartbreak, and humility, and soon discovered that these few letters represented just a tiny fraction of the more than 1200 pages in the park’s archives. Despite the wishes expressed in the letters, and the best intentions of their authors, the returned rocks don’t quite make it back to their former homes — at least not in the way the senders may have hoped. Because of their unknown provenance, these specimens can not be scattered back in the park—to do so would be to spoil those sites for research purposes. They are instead added to the park’s ‘conscience pile,’ which sits alongside a private gravel service road, a bit of dramatic irony that only furthered my interest in the phenomenon. And so, with a rough idea for this book, Phil and I returned during the summer of 2012 to begin reading through the conscience letter archive and to photograph the returned and confiscated rocks. Included here is our selection of some of the most intriguing, engaging, and beautiful letters, along with photographs from the conscience pile.

• New and intensifying fires are forcing the evacuation of thousands across Canada as the country battled out-of-control blazes that a provincial minister warned on Saturday could last “all summer.”

• Some stargazers have to travel more than 200 miles to see a sky devoid of light pollution.

• Fires started by a lightning strike on Thursday have consumed 60,000 hectares of land.

• Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev appointed a new emergency situations minister on June 10, hours after the dismissal of his predecessor with deadly wildfires roaring in the northeast of that Central Asian country.

• Hazardous health conditions in Dickensian England led to meaningful governmental reform.

Overpopulation

• In fact, much of the Colorado River is exported as hay. Rising demand for dairy products and beef across the globe are driving up the demand; by one estimate, 40 percent of the alfalfa grown in California in 2020 was exported.

• A $5 billion plan to desalinate seawater in Mexico and pipe it to Phoenix is testing the notion that desert cities can keep growing as the Earth warms.

• The Hong Kong legislature is discussing significantly stricter penalties for feeding pigeons. Violators could face up to one year in prison and a maximum fine of HK$100,000 (US$12,750) – 10 times higher than the current amount.

Finance

• Ditching the housing fund for a $500 million a year direct investment into affordable homes is not on the Labor government’s agenda.

• Housing Minister Julie Collins poured cold water over the suggestion to dump the fund model in favour of direct investment into housing on Sunday as negotiations over the key Labor election promise continue.

• An onslaught of tipping requests — with employees often inches away — is increasing social pressure around gratuity and even pushing some consumers to give less.

• Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, paid a ‘true tax rate’ of just over 3% from 2014 to 2018. Aber Christine, a market trader in Northern Uganda who sells rice, flour and soya, makes $80 a month in profit. She pays a tax rate of 40%.

• Official statistics do not reveal the true scale of poverty in Lithuania, according to a new study. Almost one in five people in Lithuania are struggling to make ends meet, but because they do not qualify for social support or do not ask for state assistance, they remain invisible.

• Which? looks at whether a trial of universal basic income in England could help

• millions of people struggling with the cost of living crisis

• Find out how to cut the cost of your tickets, travel, food and more

• Finnish cottage sales are slightly down, according to realtors.

• In May, the sale of holiday homes began as expected, following seasonal fluctuations but with slightly lower volumes compared to last year.

• Real estate agents reported 292 transactions of old holiday homes to the KVKL Price Monitoring Service, which is 11.0% less than the same period last year and 37.4% below the five-year average. The five-year average includes the pandemic-induced cottage boom.

• The Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) has signed a 7-year loan agreement with the Mortgage Society of Finland (Hypo) to facilitate on-lending for projects with positive environmental impacts in Finland.

• The EUR 20 million loan will be utilized to co-finance environmental initiatives undertaken by households and housing companies.

• In a world where technology is trying to make things increasingly easier, make things a little harder on yourself. You’ll get better results.

• A recent study conducted by EconPol has examined social security systems in the European Union and found that the welfare state in Finland cushions approximately 38 percent of income losses during economic crises. The study also reveals that social security systems in Scandinavia and Western Europe provide the most comprehensive protection against income losses, while countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as the United Kingdom and Ireland, experience higher income losses during crises.

• The construction industry is currently facing a downturn, with the number of new projects plummeting to levels seen during the previous recession. Employment prospects for construction workers have weakened, and as the summer progresses, the situation is expected to become critical.

• Currently, the labor availability assessment for non-EU workers has been removed from many construction positions across much of the country.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Democratic Party of Oregon said it was conforming with an April 13 request from the Justice Department. The party received the funds last fall from Nishad Singh, who pleaded guilty in February to federal criminal fraud charges, including one count of conspiracy to violate federal campaign finance laws. The party said Singh, who was the engineering director at collapsed cryptocurrency giant FTX, had lied to the party about who the donor was.

• When special counsel Jack Smith’s team indicted Trump on Thursday, the embattled ex-president and his supporters were quick to denounce the process. “I am an innocent man,” Trump whined in a video message. His wooden tone and facial mannerisms were as insincere as Nixon’s when he blurted out, “I am not a crook.” No, cancel that—it’s unfair to the crook: Nixon’s declaration of innocence, in words and body language, was positively Churchillian compared to that of Trump.

• Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has denied misleading parliament over the Brittany Higgins case and says Labor was not out to “weaponise” the issue for political gain.

• The Labor government stands accused of seeking to “politically profit” from Ms Higgins’ rape allegations.

• The opposition has sharpened its attack on Katy Gallagher as the finance minister doubles down on her assertion that Labor did not leverage Brittany Higgins’ rape claims for political gain.

• Shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash accused Labor of “weaponising” the rape allegations and said Senator Gallagher’s latest description of events was “very flimsy”.

• French judges on Saturday handed preliminary charges of attempted murder to a man suspected of stabbing four young children and two adults in a park in the French Alps town of Annecy, an attack that reverberated across France and beyond.

• A local prosecutor said that the six victims of the attack, two adults and four very young children, were no longer in life-threatening conditions.

• For Donald Trump, the 2024 campaign is more than a race to return to the White House — it’s a fight to stay out of prison.

• Legal experts say it’s unlikely that Trump’s criminal trial in federal court will be resolved before the November 2024 election. So whoever wins the presidency could be in position to influence Trump’s case.

• Why it matters: If Trump is the GOP nominee next year, he essentially could be campaigning for his freedom — an unprecedented scenario in the United States. Winning the presidency would give him a chance to install sympathetic Justice Department officials, or even try to pardon himself if he’s convicted.

• The paper’s publisher discusses bias in reporting, the Times’ financial comeback, and criticisms of its coverage of Trump, trans issues, and the war in Ukraine.

• Greensboro, N.C. — In their first remarks since former president Donald Trump’s federal indictment, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former vice president Mike Pence rushed to defend their rival.

• The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress is beloved in Hollywood. In supporting her husband’s campaign, is she normalizing his often dangerous ideas?

• From Donald Trump v. Mary Trump, decided yesterday by New York trial court judge Robert Reed: In this lawsuit, Donald J. Trump … seeks to recover against Mary Trump for the publication of her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” Mary Trump, the complaint alleges, caused…

• Former President Donald Trumps has said at a North Carolina GOP dinner that an indictment of him by the Department of Justice is an attempt to “thwart the will of the American people.” He also calls it an attempt to damage his chances for a second term. Trump is accused of willfully defying Justice Department demands to return classified documents, enlisting aides in his efforts to hide the records and even telling his lawyers that he wanted to defy a subpoena for the materials stored at his residence. In appearances at Republican state conventions in Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday, Trump sought to frame the 37 criminal charges he’s facing as an attack on not just him but also his supporters.

• Trump also vowed Saturday to remain in the race, even if he is convicted in the case.

• Ukraine is using its new arsenal of Western tanks and armored vehicles in what is expected to be one of the largest military operations in Europe since World War II.

• The Ukrainian military said Russian forces on June 10 focused their main efforts on the full occupation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian counteroffensive actions were under way.

• The prosecutors’ audience is not only the judge and jurors. It is also the American public.

• The agreement to remake a global game stunned most of the sporting world after seven weeks of clandestine negotiations.

• Former President Trump rolled out a new video on Truth Social on Saturday, in the wake of being indicted for 37 felony counts related to retaining classified information and obstruction of justice in a federal classified documents probe.

• The latest twist in Donald Trump’s attritional war with US law enforcement, as with so much else in the former president’s story, throws the United States into unprecedented territory.

• Allies and rivals alike, beholding the messiness of America, must calculate the risks and opportunities in the latest plot twist in Donald Trump’s legal troubles.

• He left the Department of Justice with no choice but to indict.

• Let’s Make America Great Again — by getting Trump out of politics.

• The chief clerk of the courts for the Southern District of Florida added that Judge Aileen M. Cannon had been randomly assigned to the case.

• Donald J. Trump delivered his first post-indictment public remarks on Saturday at the state G.O.P. conventions in Georgia and North Carolina, as his federal indictment dominates the political landscape.

• As a former prosecutor at The Hague, Jack Smith learned from Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg how to prosecute the crimes of national leaders, and the indictment of Trump reflects those lessons well.

• Wrapped up inside Jack Smith’s Espionage Act indictment is a public integrity indictment, a claim Trump falsely got elected on a promise he would guard classified information.

• The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action.

• The special counsel’s indictment offers party leaders their best escape from the loyalty trap yet—if they choose to take it.

• The ubiquitous question posed during the Trump presidency—“Can he do that?”—continues to be the wrong question.

• The real banana republic danger is if high officials can commit serious crimes with impunity.

• Based on a grand jury search warrant, federal agents raided Mar-a-Lago and the evidence they gathered was bolstered with FBI interviews of Trump aides, employees and even his lawyers.

• As waters from the flooding of a burst dam began to recede, Ukrainian forces were trying to break through stout Russian defenses in the south and east.

• Former President Trump’s indictment paints an astonishing picture: U.S. government secrets — about its nuclear program, military plans, intelligence briefings and more — were stuffed into cardboard boxes at Mar-a-Lago where “tens of thousands” of people might have come across them.

• Why it matters: The 49-page indictment details how boxes were kept on a ballroom stage, in an office, a bedroom, a bathroom and even a shower at Trump’s club.

• “…13 million of Ecuadorians will go to the polls… and the couple having the best chance of winning is the one supported Correa’s Union for Hope…”

• The former British prime minister, who resigned from Parliament on Friday, has found his way back into voters’ good graces before. But analysts say there is now almost no plausible path back to power for him.

• Spain’s hard left decided Friday to join forces on a single political platform for the July 23 elections, in a boost for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s reelection hopes.

• The CDMX mayor seems smart, experienced and ready to work, says Sarah DeVries, who would love seeing Mexico get its first female leader.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Experts warn the task of distinguishing what’s real from what’s not will impose a significant mental and cognitive burden on people in the AI era.

• Why it matters: Misinformation has already fueled significant social problems, ranging from polarization to vaccine skepticism. AI-generated content risks intensifying those issues and making it more difficult for people to make sense of the world around them.

Censorship/Free Speech

• After decades of political brainwashing under the Chinese Communist Party, which bans any public discussion of the 1989 events, many observers had started to believe that China’s young people had lost touch with the kind of political fervor that gave rise to the student movements of the 1980s.

• Then, the “white paper” protests came, spreading across China in late 2022 in the wake of a fatal fire in Urumqi and after three years of COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantine camps and compulsory daily testing.

• “Splinternet” refers to the way the internet is being splintered – broken up, divided, separated, locked down, boxed up, or otherwise segmented.

• Whether for nation-states or corporations, there’s money and control to be had by influencing what information people can access and share, as well as the costs that are paid for this access.

• The idea of a splinternet isn’t new, nor is the problem. But recent developments are likely to enhance segmentation and have brought it back into new light.

• The Russian rock band “Zveri” won’t be performing a planned concert during the upcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, following a complaint against the group’s lead singer, Roman Bilyk, about his anti-war statements and refusal to perform in annexed Crimea. The news outlet Astra reports that Moscow State Art and Cultural University Journalism Department dean Yuri Kot wrote on his blog in early June that Bilyk belongs to a “fifth column” of traitors. Afterward, a local lawmaker made an official request to the district attorney’s office, demanding the cancelation of Zveri’s concert planned for June 16.

• The University of Cincinnati said they are taking the appropriate steps necessary in regarding Krolczyk’s grade.

• “The Court declines to be the first in generations to force a literal reading of the Clause’s text.”

• Federal courts must up their game to handle the new symbiosis of government power and private businesses.

• Just published as part of the symposium on Media and Society After Technological Disruption, edited by Profs. Justin “Gus” Hurwitz & Kyle Langvardt.

• The FBI aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to ban Twitter users and collect their data, new leaks show. Twitter declined to censor journalists targeted by Ukraine, including The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté.

• The Berlin Prosecutor’s Office has charged political satirist (and frequent OffG contributor) CJ Hopkins with: “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” The charge relates to CJ’s promotion of his 2022 book The Rise of the New Normal Reich, which has already been banned [...]

• A little over four years ago, on June 9, 2019, Hong Kong saw an estimated one million people march in opposition to the extradition bill which subsequently sparked months of mass protests and unprecedented turmoil in the city.

Civil Rights/Policing

• I’ve seen two major theories for why this happened. The first emphasizes politics: Countries with more left-wing governments have seen smaller declines in unions. In Canada, for instance, the share of workers in a union has fallen, but the fall is less stark than in the US, which might be explainable by its more pro-union laws.

• The second emphasizes the fact that union firms tend to expand their workforces less quickly than other firms. That makes sense: Unions raise wages, so union workforces cost more. But over time, this effect means a greater and greater share of the workforce is non-unionized because non-unionized firms are able to grow faster.

• Officers from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio raided the residence of rapper Afroman last summer in part because a confidential informant told them Afroman has a “dungeon” where he keeps women locked up and forces them to defecate and urinate in a bucket as punishment, according to a search warrant and body camera footage shared with Motherboard. When showed the relevant section of the warrant, Afroman’s record label said “Lol. That is completely fabricated and untrue. Afroman doesn’t even have a basement. Afroman has a movie coming out within the next few weeks regarding this situation, and will be filing a lawsuit against the confidential informant.” (According to property website Redfin, Afroman’s residence address has a “crawl-space” style basement, which is typically a much smaller space than one a person is able to stand in).

• Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has repeatedly leveraged Saudi Arabia’s wealth and influence to overcome international condemnation of the kingdom’s human rights violations.

• An independent review of a Jan. 28 police stop on Stanford’s campus was released Tuesday, concluding that no “bias based policing” was shown by SUDPS officers.

• The issue has cast a cloud over the coming proceedings in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case, which are scheduled to last three weeks starting Monday.

• Approximately 2,200 contacts related to harassment and work-related stress were made to the Finnish occupational safety authorities in 2022. Out of these, around 1,500 contacts were related to harassment, while 900 were regarding work-related stress. Some contacts involved both issues.

• The total number of contacts has remained relatively stable in recent years. However, there has been an increase in the proportion of contacts related to work-related stress.

• The decision regarding Alabama’s redistricting process may well result in greater representation for Black voters in other states.

• The U.S. government’s redress program for Japanese Americans showed that the money matters. But it’s not the only thing that matters.

• Japan’s recent amendments, passed on Friday, to its immigration law have sparked a heated debate on the treatment of asylum seekers and the deportation of unsuccessful applicants. The revised legislation grants the government the authority to expel individuals who have repeatedly sought refugee status.

• A Japanese district court found Thursday that the lack of legal protection for same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The Fukuoka District Court ruling comes amid growing pressure for Japan to protect same-sex marriage and a similar recent finding in another the Nagoya District Court.

• Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi participated in a women’s boulder World Cup event in Brixen, Italy, on June 9, her first tournament since she competed in an international contest without a head scarf last year.

• Chinese buyers are returning to the U.S. housing market after a long lull, but recent efforts by several states to restrict certain foreign purchases could make homebuying harder for them.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• From the use of subtitles to viewing times, television habits can vary even within the same household.

Monopolies

Patents

• Italy, France and Germany have agreed on and proposed a division of the competences that were originally designated to London, between the three seats of the UPC central division in Milan, Paris and Munich.

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