● 06.26.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 26/06/2023: Libreboot 20230625 and GNU Linux-Libre 6.4

Posted in News Roundup at 11:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• This week we got some pretty good news as Linux 6.4 finally arrived after two months of development with improved support for our hardware, the KDE Project pushed another hefty update to Plasma 5.27 LTS users, and Nitrux devs finally announced an upgrade tool that will also perform backups and rollbacks.

• On top of that, System76 refreshed two of its Linux laptops with the latest generation of Intel Core CPUs and other goodies, Linux Mint 21.2 entered public beta testing, and Ubuntu 23.10 got a newer kernel. Read the hottest news of this week and get access to all the distro and package downloads in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for June 25th, 2023, below.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Josh and Kurt talk about the incredible Reddit debacle. At the center of it all is an API. What does it mean to be using an API and how does this relate itself back to our own risk. Many of us rely on APIs for countless things, and if a company decides to cut off that API somehow, it could create a mess.

• Chris tears into two old PCs, and builds a surprisingly powerful multi-monitor Wayland workstation.

• **ebook-tools** , **editorconfig** , **eigen3** , **elfutils** , **enchant** ,

• **esound** , **espeak-ng** , **exiv2** , **expat** from Slackware software

• series **l**.

• shasum -a256=c9c07a477a7f4e5f9df54131dd63018e2cebdf2b26ad910e133b01f63f069c9f

Kernel Space

• Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 6.4 today. After a calm testing window following the first release candidate, Kernel 6.4 is now ready to be downloaded. If you are a distro maintainer or early adopter, you can get the source and start using this mainline Kernel version.

• The key highlights of this release are the initial support for Apple M2 SoC, the latest additions for CPU and GPU lineups and usual Kernel module updates.

• “Most of the stuff in my mailbox the last week has been about upcoming things for 6.5, and I already have 15 pull requests pending,” he wrote, adding “I appreciate all you proactive people.”

• The everlasting Linux Kernel has gotten yet another update, and this one includes some quality of life changes, a few upgrades to the file system of the OS, and additional support for Rust code in the kernel. In addition to this, the update also kept up with housekeeping by adding drivers for the latest hardware, such as Wi-Fi drivers for various Realtek modems.

• This release offers many improvements, such as initial Apple M2 silicon support, storage enhancements, better sensor monitoring, and more.

• Even though this is not a major upgrade for regular users, it caters to a specific group of users who want to take advantage of the better hardware/software support on offer.

• Linux 6.4 has just been released by Linus Torvalds on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): Hmm.

• After 2 months of solid development, Linux 6.4 kernel is now officially available to download. Announcing the release of the latest Linux kernel on (where else?) the official Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), Linux founder Linus Torvalds writes [...]

Applications

• Music education is a field of study connected with the learning and teaching of music. We recommend the best open source educational apps.

• Homey is a powerful yet easy-to-use home server dashboard that offers a range of impressive features and capabilities. The layout of the dashboard is based on the design of Homer, which serves as an inspiration for Homey.

Instructionals/Technical

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Wireshark on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Wireshark is a powerful and widely-used network protocol analyzer that allows network administrators and security professionals to capture and analyze network traffic.

• Are you tired of your Ubuntu updating automatically without your consent and want to stop it then here is the solution for you. In this post, we will discuss on the method to disable automatic updates in Ubuntu.

• As OpenJDK 17 has been released, it’s crucial for developers and system administrators to be acquainted with its new features and enhancements. Following this guide will demonstrate how to install OpenJDK 17 on Debian 12 Bookworm or Debian 11 Bullseye directly from your Debian default repository.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP, the widely used scripting language for web development, plays a crucial role in creating dynamic and interactive websites.

• The Bash shell, which is often used as the default shell in most Linux distributions, supports various commands and features that assist in data manipulation. Among these features, Base64 encoding and decoding are two of the most frequently used, due to their widespread usage in programming, web development, and data science.

• Veritas Cluster Server, commonly known as VCS, is used by organizations around the world to host their mission-critical applications and ensure always-on high availability for their hosted applications.

• You need to restart the network service in Alpine Linux using “/etc/init.d/networking restart” command to activate the network configuration defined in the /etc/network/interfaces config file. Do not run this command over an ssh-based session.

• There are thousands of tools, utilities, and programs that come pre-installed on a Linux system.

• Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers in the world, and it has many features that make it a great choice for users of all levels. However, if you use Ubuntu as your operating system, you may need some help figuring out how to Install Chrome. Fortunately, the process is relatively easy and straightforward.

• A lot of talk and discussion happens anytime a hardware manufacturer releases a new line of faster, more powerful, or more efficient computers. It’s easy to see better and better specifications and assume that’s where all the progress is made. But without improved software and algorithms, often the full potential of the hardware can’t be realized. That’s the reason for the creation of io_uring, an improved system call interface in the Linux kernel. It’s also where [chompie] went to look for exploits.

• The reason for looking here, in a part of the kernel [chompie] had only recently learned about, was twofold. First, because it’s a place where user space applications interact with the kernel, and second because it’s relatively new and that means more opportunities to find bugs. The exploit involves taking advantage of a complicated asynchronous buffer system, specifically at a location where the code confuses a memory location being used by the kernel with one which is supposed to be used for user space.

• In the fall of 1998 I joined the AFCERT. I became acquainted with the amazing book TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols by W. Richard Stevens. About a year later I exchanged emails with Mr. Stevens. Here is the last exchange, as forwarded from my AFCERT email address to my home email.

• If the person reading your documentation is in a green-field environment, it’s true that the RFC 1918 address ranges are harmless. They can freely use any of them they want, including the ones your documentation. However, if the person reading your documentation isn’t in such a green-field environment, some RFC 1918 address ranges may already be in use and routed in their environment; these are, in practice, ‘public’ IP ranges, just public inside their networks instead of public to the entire Internet. If your documentation’s RFC 1918 ranges overlap with RFC 1918 ranges already in use, they’ll get more or less the same problems as if they’d used public IPs.

• So if you take the cost of the machine (~$2,220) and divide by the hours spent on it you can tell we have broken sub dollar range. For context if you spend $40 at a bar for 5 hours you got $8 an hour of socializing. I’m currently working at ~90 cents/hour of entertainment value on my computer which seems like I got my money’s worth.

• Though if we talk about network equipment or phones – that all goes out the window. I revamp those way before they reach the end of their life. So maybe there is no chance of understanding how I retire technology and replace it.

• The issue is that domain verification using the DNS, while extremely important to the web’s security, is done in many different ways by different providers (some better than others). For example, here’s a real problem that occurs if you try to query twitter.com for its TXT records (shortened for readability).

• Here’s something that I’ve come to strongly believe as a system administrator: if a program uses a configuration file (or several), it should have an obvious command line way to find out where it expects to find that configuration file.

Games

• Between 2023-06-18 and 2023-06-25 there were 155 new games validated for the Steam Deck. Here’s a quick pick of the most interesting ones: Steam Deck Verified FUGA: MELODIES OF STEEL 2 Released on 10 May, 2023, developed by CyberConnect2, self-published.

• Brotato is something just a little bit special isn’t it? Blobfish have managed to craft something that really stands out in a sea of twin-stick bullet-hell vampire survivor-likes that keep flowing. Note: this was a personal purchase.

• A rather nice looking Proton Experimental update went live on June 24th, so here’s a run over what to expect on Steam Deck and Linux desktop. This is the version of Proton that Valve update regularly, before rolling out changes to the main versions of Proton. See more about Proton here.

• Two bits of Wine news here for you as not only has the latest Wine development release been made with Wine 8.11 but vkd3d 1.8 is out now too. Once a year a new stable release is made with the next being Wine 9.0, and Wine is just one part of what allows Steam Play Proton to play some of the biggest games around on Linux desktop and Steam Deck.

• Ready to jump on into a decaying steampunk world full of puzzles, platform challenges, and quirky characters? Then Dros might be something for you.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Like plenty of other KDE folks, I’m going to Akademy. See you there!

• Like in past years, I have applied my Awesome Kolourpaint Skills to the banner. I thought the person looked overly serious, so I’ve given them a big smile. And blue eyes, to match my own.

• I’m not giving any talks except for KDE e.V. board presentations (which will probably be mostly Aleix and Lydia). This also means I’m not getting a haircut for this conference. Such is the weight of tradition.

• This is the release schedule the release team agreed on

• https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_23.08_Schedule

• After ten years of dating, me and tecsiederp got finally married.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• Libreboot provides boot firmware for supported x86/ARM machines, starting a bootloader that then loads your operating system. It replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware on x86 machines, and provides an improved configuration on ARM-based chromebooks supported (U-Boot bootloader, instead of Google’s depthcharge bootloader). On x86 machines, the GRUB and SeaBIOS coreboot payloads are officially supported, provided in varying configurations per machine. It provides an automated build system for the configuration and installation of coreboot ROM images, making coreboot easier to use for non-technical people. You can find the list of supported hardware in the Libreboot documentation.

• This new release, Libreboot 20230625, released today 25 June 2023, is a new stable release of Libreboot. The previous stable release was Libreboot 20220710, released on 10 July 2022.

Gentoo Family

• gentoo_update (Github repo) is a tool that automatically updates Gentoo Linux.

• Gentoo Linux gives users maximum flexibility and control over the system. A great example of this is the OS upgrade process. Users have a large selection of different command utilities and a bunch of configuration options to choose from to tailor the upgrade process to their needs. Here is the list of some tools that are commonly used during an upgrade:

• Hello all,

• This is my week 4 report on Modern C porting of Gentoo’s packages.

• Well nothing interesting to report this week, just following my proposal and focused on -Wimplicit-int type of bug for the first half of the week while moving to -Wimplicit-function-declaration.

• However, if you follow my PRs on github [1], you will notice that it happens I fix/send patches bugs that are not per my proposal’s timeline. This happens because of multiple reasons, sometimes I randomly come across a bug that is requires some rather easy patch, some other times I come across a package that is not in the tracker listing bug and send in a patch. I’ve informed my mentor (Sam) about such situation, and he acknowledged me taking bugs at random and diverting from my proposal workflow sometimes.

• This article is a summary of all the changes made on Automated Gentoo System Updater project during week 4 of GSoC.

Fedora Family / IBM

• The expected release of Nobara 38, based on Fedora 38, is finally here, bringing an array of user-friendly fixes and feature enhancements. Nobara Project, a modified version of Fedora Linux, aims to address common issues users face and provide a seamless gaming, streaming, and content creation experience out of the box. With a range of additional packages and customizations, Nobara 38 takes Fedora to new heights.

• The announcement comes in the wake of the changes Red Hat made in December 2020, when it killed off CentOS, which for a long time had served as a means whereby people could use RHEL without the costs of support. It was merely RHEL without the trademarks, the only thing which was copyrighted [sic].

• This article demonstrates how to deploy gaming applications in a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. The minikube cluster is the best single node cluster for a personal POC. For this article, we will use a minikube cluster and Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 and a restricted set of privileges in the cluster to deploy the application in Kubernetes. Automation and orchestration are a rock solid combination that yield more promising results.

• Red Hat OpenShift is a Kubernetes-based app-dev platform that enables developers to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and services for developers, operations teams, and IT organizations to streamline application development and delivery.

• Red Hat OpenShift version 4.13, the latest release, introduces several new features and enhancements that help organizations accelerate their digital transformation journey. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key features of OpenShift 4.13.

Debian Family

• < update-info. Something is corrupting my /usr/share/info/dir entry.

• I’ve found mutt-alias.info.gz and muttrc-mode.info.gz seems to cause the problematic entries. They seem to declare iso-8859-1 and that seems to cause some kind of corruption.

• Then I found there’s a bug 1024997 and then it was fixed in experimental.

• So this fix didn’t get in to bookworm.

• After holding the domain copyninja.info for almost 15 years, I finally let it expire and bought a new domain, copyninja.in. With this move, I also bid goodbye to my VPS, which I had been using for over 12 years on DigitalOcean. This particular VPS was initially set up with Debian Wheezy (7) and had been upgraded over the years to successive Debian versions and finally was running Debian Bullseye (11).

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• The Tor Browser, based on the Extended Support Release of Mozilla’s Firefox, provides a way to connect to the Tor network. It makes an effort to provide – but does not guarantee – anonymity. It does so by: making the user’s internet traffic appear to come from a different IP address, thus obscuring the user’s location; preventing someone watching your local traffic (e.g. your ISP) from seeing or limiting your website visits; and routing connections through multiple relays.

• The Tor Browser and associated onion services are often used by journalists, human rights advocates, and others in adversarial environments where the threat model goes beyond marketers. Criminals may do so too, but as the Tor Project argues, they have better options.

• Sticky sessions became popular when we stored the state on the upstream node, not the database. I’ll use the example of a simplified e-commerce shop to explain further.

• The basic foundations of a small e-commerce site can consist of a web application and a database.

• Welcome to Version 6 of this website. As promised a few months ago, I decided to take this website, which has been using the Pelican static site generator since 2014, and rewrite it to use the Zola static site generator. This was a pretty painless process; I wrote some Python scripts to take all the Pelican markdown and convert it to Zola format1 and to generate redirects for all the old URLs.

PostgreSQL

• We are pleased to announce the release of version 3.0 of the PL/Haskell extension. This extension allows users to write PostgreSQL functions in the Haskell functional programming language. Instructions can be found here.

• Version 3.0 adds the ability to execute untrusted code which allows for greater flexibility of functionality.

• We are pleased to announce registrations are now open for PGCloud Conference London! The 1-day conference is completely free of charge and you can register to attend via the event website:

• https://pgcloudconferencelondon.splashthat.com/

• Join us in London on 10th August for a day of learning how to optimise, manage and scale PostgreSQL in a cloud environment.

• Random numbers are crucial in various aspects of database management and analysis. For example, in databases, random numbers are fundamental to generate the test data, select random records, distribute the workloads, and enhance the data security. This tutorial explores the different techniques to generate random numbers in PostgreSQL, ranging from basic functions to more advanced […]

• Practical tutorial on how to implement the case-insensitive searches in the PostgreSQL databases using the citext data type and by changing the collation.

• Comprehensive tutorial on understanding the role of the work_mem parameter in PostgreSQL, its effects on the database engine and operations, and more.

• Comprehensive tutorial on how how to create and work with the Common Table Expressions in PostgreSQL using the PostgreSQL WITH keyword using various techniques.

• Practical tutorial on how to work with PostgreSQL variables and how to to define, reference, and use these variables in a PL/SQL block using various examples.

• Tutorial on switching users in PostgreSQL using the command-line and graphical user interface methods to manage the databases and perform administrative tasks.

• Compehensive tutorial on the fundamental methods to switch the databases in the PostgreSQL server using the PSQL utility, SET command, and connection clients.

• Tutorial on the role of extensions in PostgreSQL and how to install and view the installed extensions in PostgreSQL server using various commands and methods.

• Practical tutorial on the fundamentals of working with the row_number() function in PostgreSQL to assign a unique integer value to each row in the result set.

• Guide on the various methods and techniques that we can use to reset a user password in PostgreSQL server using the PSQL utility, pgAdmin, and editing password.

• Practical guide on on how we can work with the NOT NOLL constraint in PostgreSQL and how to drop or remove an existing NOT NULL constraint from a given column.

• Simple guide on what the “Postgres relation does not exist” error means, the possible causes, and the potential solutions or techniques to resolve this error.

• How to work with rank() function in PostgreSQL to fetch the rank of a given row from a result set based on the defined conditions and create complex queries.

GNU Projects

• Based on the recently released Linux 6.4 kernel, the GNU Linux-libre 6.4 kernel is here to clean up newly added op-tee, rtl8710b, qcom cloud AI, and Bluetooth NXP protocol drivers, clean up blob names in qcom AArch64 DTS files, and adjust deblobbing for x86 microcode docs, x86 Android tablets, and QAT crypto drivers.

• In addition to removing proprietary code from various drivers, the GNU Linux-libre 6.4 kernel comes with all the new features and improvements that have been included in the upstream Linux 6.4 kernel series but doesn’t ship with non-free components as the upstream kernel.

Programming/Development

• For a user who only uses one C++ standard library, such as libc++, there are typically three compatibility goals, each with increasing compatibility requirements:

• Can the program, built with a specific version of libc++, work with an upgraded libc++ shared object (DSO)?

• Can an executable and its DSOs be compiled with different versions of libc++ headers?

• Can two relocatable object files, compiled with different versions of libc++ headers, be linked into the same executable or DSO?

• “We’re going to build a component library — which are like a bunch of LEGOs — so designers/developers can just pick a prefabricated component off the shelf and build with consistency and coherence.”

• It’s a nice thought, if you don’t think about it too much. But I recently read Christian Heilmann talking about “componentisation without big picture planning” and it hit me like a ton of LEGO bricks: [...]

• Software creates value by solving problems. But effectively solving problems is hard. How can we get better at it?

• Today I want to talk about one of the most common ways that I see things fall apart. This has caused tests, production-load-bearing bash scripts, and normal application code to be unresponsive at best and randomly break at worst. It’s when people use time as a synchronization mechanism.

• At work-work, we try to stick to the forefront of C++ language development: C++20 all the time, C++23 as it shows up and is available in compilers. It’s a weird mix sometimes with a codebase that has a lengthy history.

• A while back I bumped into a for loop, tried to be clever and then hit limitations of Clang – and those limitations are sometimes relevant for KDE code that lands in FreeBSD, which is why I’m writing about it.

Perl / Raku

• This is not going to be a tutorial, but I’ll show you my favorite Raku features. There are many more, and these are not necessarily the biggest ones.

• In general Raku has everything the typical scripting language has. Functions, Classes, Exceptions, typical data types (like lists and dicts / hash maps), modules, and all the usual control flow. An abundance of those. In all forms and colors. One interesting thing that is unusual is the type system: you don’t need to type anything, and by default you get dynamic typing, but you can, and then the (byte code) compiler will check the types for you.

R

• Whereas the direction of main effects can be interpreted from the sign of the estimate, the interpretation of interaction effects often requires plots. This task is facilitated by the R package sjPlot (Lüdecke, 2022).

• To assess whether convergence warnings render the results invalid, or on the contrary, the results can be deemed valid in spite of the warnings, Bates et al. (2023) suggest refitting models affected by convergence warnings with a variety of optimizers.

Leftovers

• However, while “gamification” might be new, the introduction of game mechanics into the labor process predates the proliferation of touch screens and the web by decades. Back in 1979, Michael Burawoy wrote of “The Labor Process as a Game,” describing how workers would turn their factory jobs into games to pass the time and make their jobs more endurable. Burawoy cites Donald Roy, who describes how the introduction of piecemeal rates — in which factory workers were paid based on output, not by a standard daily wage — began an implicit competition among workers not based on quotas or outputs but scores and results. The workers in question could exercise their workplace skills, like dexterity and stamina, and a degree of uncertainty and luck added to the level of excitement. “It is not so much the monetary incentive that concretely coordinates the interests of management and worker but rather the play of the game itself,” Burawoy writes, in a statement that has only become more prophetic with time.

• In response to an article today in the Sunday Independent headlined ‘RTÉ scandal: Whistleblower claims broadcaster gave ‘kickbacks’ of €50m to ad agencies’, RTÉ says: [...]

Science

• Well therein lies the problem – the whole premise that scientific data needs to win over the masses to be true is flawed. Science is science, and objective data that can be reliably reproduced is true whether people believe it or not. Vaccines have been studied rigorously, and there is no reproducible data that it causes autism, as RFK Jr. believes.

• What RFK Jr. does have is the power of the word. He is a skilled politician and orator who knows how to make an argument. Trained as a lawyer, debate is his bread and butter.

• The studies he relies on to show vaccines are not safe, are not effective, or cause conditions such as autism are either flawed or downright fraudulent. In fact, the original study that had linked vaccines to autism is widely debunked. Its data was made up.

• However, by participating in a debate, Dr. Hotez, a renowned scientist who was part of a research team nominated for a Nobel prize, would suddenly give this merchant of misinformation legitimacy. It would be a spectacle, and any chance to present real scientific evidence would be drowned out by the fake news peddled by RFK Jr.

• Small pieces can be a big problem.

• Shining in the distant darkness.

• Ghostly rings.

• The sea is full of horror.

• 200 years ago, it woke up.

• Are we about to hear the Universe’s background hum?

• Evidence is overwhelming that there is a significant average difference between male and female athletic performance.

• The most recent report of the World Economic Forum paints a rather dim picture of gender inequality worldwide. According to current research, it will take 132 years to close the global gender gap. Alicia Lui from the initiative Women in Sports Empowered Hong Kong (WISE) works with youth to approach this problem in Hong Kong and agreed to share a few valuable insights with Pressenza contributor, Chris Hoellriegl.

Education

• I draw from my fellow gloom-sayers as need be, all of whom have valuable points. The far-flung empire of some 3,000 US colleges and universities surely faces a severe trial. But what follows is less data analysis than it is cultural observation. I am an anthropologist most interested in the ways that people shape and are shaped by primary institutions, such as the family and education.

• We are witnessing the transition from “college is for everybody” to “college is unnecessary and often useless.” Going to college “to be able to get a better job” is likely to fade away as the primary reason students attend. And the institutions themselves—universities and colleges of various types—will have to accept a much less prominent role in our social and economic systems. They are in danger of becoming cultural relics.

• In four years, the number of students graduating from high schools across the country will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession. Traumatized by uncertainty and unemployment, people decided to stop having kids during that period. But even as we climbed out of the recession, the birth rate kept dropping, and we are now starting to see the consequences on campuses everywhere. Classes will shrink, year after year, for most of the next two decades. People in the higher education industry call it “the enrollment cliff.”

Hardware

• My dear friend and fellow Baltic state fan Michael Dexter ran a fun poll that ended yesterday, with the options of end-of-life date, five years, ten years, twenty years, and never, stay current! I put myself down for twenty years, which turned out to be the most popular answer.

• Today, M5Stack launched a limited edition of the M5Stack Core host which is based on the Espressif ESP32 chipset.

• Over the last five to ten years, smart watches have become fairly ubiquitous, with the Apple Watch being among the most prominent of them. Not everyone wants or needs all of the capabilities of these devices, though; plenty are still opting for simpler devices which only have a few functions built into them. [Josh] has been working on one of these devices but takes a major design cue from their smart counterparts with the addition of gesture controls for the watch built into the wristband instead of relying on a more traditional button interface.

• Blender is a professional-grade 3D-rendering platform and much more, but it suffers sometimes from the just-too-perfect images that rendering produces. You can tell, somehow. So just how do you make a perfectly rendered scene look a little more realistic? If you’re [sirrandalot], you take a photograph. But not by taking a picture of your monitor with a camera. Instead, he’s simulating a colour film camera in extraordinary levels of detail within Blender itself.

• Is it really a dystopian future if the robots are radio-controlled? That’s what came to mind reading this article on a police robot out of Singapore, complete with a breathless headline invoking Black Mirror, which is now apparently the standard by which all dystopias are to be judged. Granted, the episode with the robo-dogs was pretty terrifying, but it seems like the Singapore Police Force has a way to go before getting to that level. The bot, which has been fielded at Changi Airport after extensive testing and seems to be completely remote-controlled, is little more than a beefy telepresence robot. At 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) tall, the bot isn’t terribly imposing, although it apparently has a mast that can be jacked up another couple of feet, plus there are lights, sirens, and speakers that can get the message across. Plus cameras, of course; there are always cameras. The idea is to provide extra eyes to supplement foot patrols, plus the potential to cordon off an incident until meatspace officers arrive. The buzzword game here is weak, though; there’s no mention of AI or machine learning at all. We have a feeling that when the robots finally rise up, ones like this will be left serving the drinks.

• Topcon is offering a soft router powered by an Intel Whiskey Lake or Comet Lake processor up to the Core i7-10510U quad-core/octa-thread processor with either eight 2.5GbE RJ45 ports or four 2.5GbE RJ45 ports and two 10GbE SFP+ cages.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• In 2020, ventilation and filtration were recommended by experts in public health, building science and HVAC engineering. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)’s official position is that their own standard is “not meant for infection control” and that standard ventilation levels are “significantly lower than levels recommended” for our current challenges. Under pressure from the White House, ASHRAE has approved a new indoor air quality standard that is, in fact, even more aggressive than many of the recommendations heretofore.

• Broadly speaking, to reduce airborne infections, experts recommend that schools introduce outdoor air, use in-room portable HEPA filters and upgrade HVAC filters. Healthy air in schools is a long-term solution with broad health benefits, which can be key to managing allergies, asthma, and preventing airborne infections. With increased wildfires as a result of climate extremes, air filtration becomes an essential tool in classroom resilience. No matter the contaminant, cleaner air has been linked to improved cognitive function and academic performance.

• A well-known tech personality says the advice from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, to switch off mobiles once a day, may not be all that needs to be done to improve one’s chances of avoiding security issues on devices.

• Urgh.

• This could revolutionize the way we treat depression.

• Compared to the previous year’s Jāņi holiday, the traffic situation has improved slightly, but the number of drunk drivers caught is still unforgivably high, Arturs Smilga, deputy chief of the State Police Transport Safety Administration, told Latvian Radio June 26.

• The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded two days of hearings Friday on the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, OH in February. In an unusual move, the NTSB chose to hold the public hearings in East Palestine, rather than Washington DC.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Over 140 major brands are paying for ads that end up on unreliable AI-written sites, likely without their knowledge. Ninety percent of the ads from major brands found on these AI-generated news sites were served by Google, in violation of the company’s own policies. The practice threatens to hasten the arrival of a glitchy, spammy internet that is overrun by AI-generated content, as well as wasting massive amounts of ad money.

• For a monk seeking to move us beyond narrative, Forall tells a terrifying story. His monastery is called MAPLE, which stands for the “Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth.” The residents there meditate on their breath and on metta, or loving-kindness, an emanation of joy to all creatures. They meditate in order to achieve inner clarity. And they meditate on AI and existential risk in general—life’s violent, early, and unnecessary end.

• Does it matter what a monk in a remote Vermont monastery thinks about AI? A number of important researchers think it does. Forall provides spiritual advice to AI thinkers, and hosts talks and “awakening” retreats for researchers and developers, including employees of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Apple. Roughly 50 tech types have done retreats at MAPLE in the past few years. Forall recently visited Tom Gruber, one of the inventors of Siri, at his home in Maui for a week of dharma dinners and snorkeling among the octopuses and neon fish.

• O’Connor, aged 24, pleaded guilty to a series of cybercrimes, including carrying out a SIM-swapping attack targeting a TikTok account with millions of followers. The [breach] resulted in unauthorised access to the backend of Twitter, compromising the accounts of prominent individuals such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and over 100 other notable users.

Windows TCO

• But the crunch wasn’t the result of a massive accident or the latest wave of patients infected by a new coronavirus variant. The influx was the direct result of a ransomware attack, a costly and unfortunately now common form of cybercrime in which [crackers] lock down their victims’ files and demand a ransom, often millions of dollars, to unlock them.

• Research from non-profit Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe organisation suggests cost of digital transformation is going up for ‘unfair’ reasons

Security

• The Sweetwater Union High School District has confirmed a hack was the cause of a days-long system outage at their facilities, saying the personal information of employees, students, and families was accessed and taken.

• The update comes four months after the incident. On Friday afternoon, the Sweetwater Union High School District sent out a release about a security incident that left students and staff without email and internet access for days in February.

• “First of all, it hasn’t even been sent to us employees,” said Katina Rondeau, a teacher in the district.

• Credit cards issued by the bank have been declined and direct debits have not been going through.

• In a statement, the bank said: “We are aware some customers are experiencing intermittent difficulties accessing some of our services and we are urgently working to resolve these issues.

Privacy/Surveillance

• TikTok has finally admitted that it improperly stored American data in China, despite suggesting otherwise. These ByteDance-owned company is the world’s fastest growing social media app. But in a letter on Thursday,

Confidentiality

• A cryptosystem is incoherent if its implementation is distributed by the same entity which it purports to secure against.

• It is inherent to the model of the web platform that the code which implements a client-side web application is distributed by the given website. Thus the client-side code is always distributed by the operator of the web server.

• In other words, web-based “E2E” applications claim to secure against malice on the part of the server operator using encryption implemented in client-side JavaScript, but this is obviously not true, since if the server operator was malicious, they could just push different client-side JavaScript. (Conversely, entities other than the server operator are secured against via use of TLS, so there is no additional benefit to “E2E” if you trust the server operator.)

Defence/Aggression

• Tensions are currently at their highest since 2004, KFOR commanders say, with ethnic Albanians claiming municipal administrations in Serb-majority flashpoint towns in Kosovo’s north, and Serbia holding three Kosovo policemen that were arrested mid-June.

• Bangkok, for the first time, extradited Thai citizens to show its commitment to ending human smuggling.

• North Korea held mass rallies in Pyongyang where people shouted slogans vowing a “war of revenge” to destroy the United States, as it marked the 73rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, state media reported on Monday.

• About 120,000 working people and students took part in the rallies held across the capital on Sunday.

• Authorities in Cyprus, in cooperation with Israeli and U.S. intelligence services, thwarted a terrorist attack on Jewish and Israeli citizens on the island, media in Cyprus and Israel reported on June 25.

• In a statement to the press on Saturday, the UN Security Council called for fighting to stop in Sudan in the name of civilian protection.

• On June 8, The Wall Street Journal broke the spectacular story that China had “reached a secret agreement” with Cuba to build a new spy base on Cuba, just a hundred miles from Florida. The timing of the story was right. The story, it turns out, was not. The timing was suspiciously perfect.

• Violence in the occupied West Bank persisted Saturday with Israelis attacking Palestinian residents and a Palestinian shooter killed by Israeli forces at a checkpoint, officials on both sides said.

War in Ukraine

• Though Prigozhin’s coup lasted less than 24 hours, it’s likely to have major consequences for Putin’s system of power into the foreseeable future. The only major concern for Putin’s elites is for their leader to keep the levers of control securely in their hands. Amnesty for Prigozhin, announced after Putin called him a “traitor” and a “renegade,” indicates serious problems with the attribute they most value in their leader. Maxim Trudolyubov, editor of Meduza’s Ideas column, sums up a historic day.

• The rebellious mercenary soldiers who briefly took over a Russian military headquarters on an ominous march toward Moscow are gone. But the short-lived revolt has weakened President Vladimir Putin just as his forces are facing a fierce counteroffensive in Ukraine. Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner troops have been some of Russia’s most effective fighters in Ukraine. Their aborted takeover of the capital has also left their fate uncertain. Under terms of the agreement that ended the crisis, Prigozhin will go into exile in Belarus but will not face prosecution. Neither Putin nor Prigozhin has been heard from since the deal was announced Saturday night.

• A former CIA director has warned the leader of a failed Russian revolt to “be very careful around open windows.” Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, retired Gen. David Petraeus seemingly was referencing the number of prominent Russians who have died in unclear circumstances since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Among those who have died was the chairman of the board of Russia’s largest private oil company, which criticized Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. He fell out of a hospital window in September of last year. Yevgeny Prigozhin has harshly criticized how the Russian military has conducted the war.

• If the truth be told, we are getting sick and tired of the little piss-ant who runs the cease-pool of corruption, tyranny, delusion and death called Ukraine.

• Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made his first public appearance since a mercenary uprising demanded his ouster, inspecting troops in Ukraine Monday in a video released by his ministry. He’s the first of three powerful Russian leaders whose diverging interests led to the Wagner Group occupying a Russian city and marching on the capital to be…

• For perhaps the first time in more than a year, events outside Ukraine have captured everyone’s attention for days.

• The short-lived Wagner mutiny was over in less than two days but it will have a long-lasting consequences for Russia, for a weakened Vladimir Putin, and for the already faltering invasion of Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

• Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has visited a command post for Russian forces in Ukraine, state media reported on Monday, marking his first TV appearance since the Wagner paramilitary group’s failed uprising. Wagner mercenaries headed back to their base on Sunday after Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow their leader to avoid treason charges and accept exile in neighbouring Belarus.

• In a case that remains murky, a former Belarusian fighter in Ukraine has been found dead in an apartment in Vilnius. The one suspected of murder is his comrade; both had allegedly turned to psychologists upon return from combat.

• Dozens of Lithuanians went to fight in Ukraine; many more joined the aid effort. Like Ukrainian refugees and those who survived repressions, some of them will likely face psychological issues when they return home. What can you do if you suspect yourself, or your loved ones, suffering from trauma?

• Ukrainian forces have retaken 130 square kilometers in the south since the start of Kyiv’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said early on June 26.

• Japan’s military is constitutionally limited to defence and has not fought since World War II.

• The European Fencing Confederation (EFC) has suspended the member federations of Russia and Belarus over those countries’ joint instigation of the war in Ukraine.

• The British Defense Ministry reported on June 25 that Ukraine’s military is making “gradual but steady tactical progress” in Russian-held parts of the country.

• Russia said on June 25 that it had repelled new offensives by Ukrainian forces in four areas on the front line, a day after Ukraine claimed “progress” in the east of the country.

• The five-week courses in Britain teach Ukrainians military skills, such as weapons handling and first aid.

• The group played an outsize role in the campaign to take Bakhmut, Moscow’s one major battlefield victory this year. The loss of the mercenary army could hurt Russia’s ambitions in the Ukraine war.

• Australia will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes”, as the federal government unveils an additional $110 million assistance package.

• The package responds to Ukraine’s requests and will include 70 military vehicles, featuring 28 M113 personnel carriers, ammunition and $10m for a humanitarian fund which will support shelter, health services, clean water and sanitation.

• Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the paramilitary Wagner Group, has been driven to fury by a mismanaged war in Ukraine. He turned on his creator, before apparently reversing course.

• More than 17,000 Ukrainian recruits have been trained by Britain and other allies over the last year.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the failed coup in Russia is a direct consequence of President Vladimir Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine.

• Russian mercenaries, led by former Putin ally and Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, came within 200km of the capital Moscow and captured the city of Rostov, where Russian generals are overseeing the war against Ukraine.

• More vehicles and ammunition will be provided to Ukraine under a $110 million Australian assistance package.

• “This assistance will help Ukraine defend and support itself against Russia’s illegal, immoral and unprovoked invasion,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday.

• At least five people were killed in the latest shelling of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, late on June 24 and early June 25, Ukrainian officials said.

• Latvia’s security situation has not deteriorated following the Wagner rebellion in Russia and there is no direct threat to Latvia, said Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs and National Armed Forces Commander Leonīds Kalniņš in an interview with Latvian Television broadcast “Morning panorama” on June 26.

• There is no indication that the flow of refugees from Russia towards Latvia would have intensified following the Wagner rebellion, Interior Minister Māris Kučinskis said in an interview on the “Morning Panorama” program of Latvian Television on June 26.

• Almost 82 years to the day since Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union began what Russia calls the ‘Great Patriotic War’, a more modest invasion, orchestrated by one of Vladimir Putin’s close associates, claimed ‘patriotism’ …

• After Prigozhin’s mutiny, leaders and elites across Eurasia will now be closely tuned in to Moscow for further signs of weakness.

• Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin triggered a crisis in Russia on Saturday with an armed rebellion headed to Moscow. But by the following day, the 62-year-old mercenary leader appeared to have played all of his cards and now faces a negotiated exile in Belarus along with some of his troops.

• China on Sunday said it supported Russia in “protecting national stability”, in Beijing’s first official remarks on a short-lived armed uprising led by the head of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin.

• US spy agencies picked up signs days ago that mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was preparing to rise up against Russia’s defense establishment, US media reported on Saturday.

• Mystery continues to shroud the deal that saw Yevgeny Prigozhin call off his mercenary forces as they marched largely undeterred toward Moscow on Saturday.

• Most analysts agree China will watch and wait in response to a near civil war in its major ally.

• The Russian ruble opened at a near 15-month low against the dollar in early morning trade on June 26, responding for the first time to an aborted mutiny by heavily armed mercenaries over the weekend.

• China supports Russia in maintaining its national stability, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on June 25, a day after an aborted mutiny by the Wagner group of heavily armed mercenaries.

• The Wagner group is withdrawing from areas it overtook during an armed rebellion against the Russian military establishment after Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin halted an advance on the capital late Saturday. FRANCE 24′s former Moscow correspondent said the rebellion highlights “fractures” among different camps of Russia’s security establishment, including the security services, the military and private armies like Wagner.

• The greatest challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power fizzled out after the rebellious mercenary commander who ordered his troops to march on Moscow abruptly reached a deal with the Kremlin to go into exile and sounded the retreat.

• A top Russian diplomat flew to Beijing for talks with the Chinese government on June 25, just a day after a rebellion by a Russian mercenary commander fizzled out.

• Russian air strikes on Syria’s northwest on June 25 killed at least seven people, including four civilians, in retaliation for deadly drone attacks blamed on rebel forces, a war monitor said.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin is to leave Russia for Belarus under an agreement announced by the Kremlin after the Wagner mercenary group leader abruptly ordered his forces to abandon their advance toward Moscow.

• The incident did not cause a major disorder in Russian society and people’s life in Moscow and beyond was barely affected.

• After spending years cultivating public apathy, the Russian president found his people indifferent to his fate.

• Australia has blocked Russia from building a new embassy in the capital Canberra.

• If you have a bead on what transpired in Russia from Friday through Saturday, you’re ahead of most folks.

• China said it supports Russia in maintaining its national stability.

• Russians with ties to the Kremlin expressed relief that the mercenary leader’s mutiny did not spark a civil war. But they agreed that Vladimir Putin had come off looking weak in a way that could be lasting.

• Official expressed firm belief that the armed rebellion in Russia would be ‘successfully put down’.

• A brief revolt by the leader of the Wagner mercenary group was a challenge to the authority of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the secretary of state said during TV appearances on Sunday.

• Australia’s top court has dismissed Russian efforts to retain a new embassy site in Canberra.

• The High Court threw out attempts by Russian officials to grant an injunction against recent federal laws terminating the lease on the site.

• Vladimir Putin averted a threat that came closer than anything else has to endangering his hold on power.

• Well, 24 hours later I feel no closer to understanding what just happened.

• The Russian Defense Ministry published a video Monday morning that purportedly shows Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu visiting a “forward command post of one of the ‘western’ grouping of troops.”

• Global stocks have slipped slightly and oil rose in early trade as investors considered an abortive weekend mutiny by Russian mercenaries that raised questions about stability and crude supply.

• Brent crude futures rose 1 per cent to $74.55 a barrel and US crude poked above $70, recouping a little of losses made last week. Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.2 per cent and Australia’s ASX 200 fell 0.3 per cent.

• Neither Vladimir V. Putin nor the leader of the Wagner mercenary group made public appearances on Sunday, a day after an armed rebellion shook the nation.

• Andrey Kartapolov, the head of the Russian State Duma’s Defense Committee, told the newspaper Vedomosti that Russia should adopt a bill to regulate the activities of private military companies.

• The strongman leader of Belarus, a dependable ally of Vladimir Putin’s, may see a chance to rebrand himself as a statesman.

• On the evening of June 24, as Wagner forces were just a few hundred kilometers outside of Moscow, Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that they would stop their advance and “retreat to their field camps according to the plan.” The Wagner Group founder explained that his “march” had reached a point “where bloodshed was possible.” This claim was not only vague, but also untrue — 13 Russian pilots had already been killed throughout the course of the rebellion.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner forces, appeared to have little popular support for his uprising. Still, some voices expressed criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Environment

• After the strange start to 2023, he says, the community, including climate scientists, “now appreciates, a little bit more than before, that spring matters.” Without it, water supplies, ecosystems, agriculture, and more get out of whack. “We got a little bit more complete and nuanced view of how all this works,” Bond says.

• Here’s what we learned from this year’s skipped spring: [...]

• In some of the nation’s most populous areas, hazardous storms can dump significantly more water than previously believed, new calculations show.

• Bangladesh, a river delta nation, is on the front line of climate change. Its coping strategies could offer lessons for the wider world.

• Over 50 million people in the southern U.S. were under heat advisories and many others were facing the threat of severe weather that spawned tornadoes and thunderstorms over the weekend and into Monday.

• More mining not less is needed to support the world’s climate change targets and avert a clean energy shortage, a global summit has been told.

• The shift to new energy systems is gaining momentum and unlike previous transformation it relies on critical minerals and rare earths, Resources Minister Madeleine King said on Monday at a mining symposium in Brisbane.

Energy/Transportation

• The demand from South Koreans travelling to China has also plunged.

Finance

• The U.S. Coast Guard declined Friday to provide a cost estimate for its efforts to locate the Titan, the submersible investigators say imploded not far from the world’s most famous shipwreck. The five people lost included a billionaire British businessman and a father and son from one of Pakistan’s most prominent families. The operator charged passengers $250,000 each to participate in the voyage.

• The U.S. Coast Guard announced Sunday it’s leading an investigation into last week’s deadly Titan submersible implosion en route to the Titanic wreck.

• The US Coast Guard said Sunday it had launched an investigation into the cause of the underwater implosion that destroyed the small submersible Titan, with the loss of all five people aboard during a dive to the Titanic wreck.

• While travel these days is much reduced I still end up in Dublin regularly enough (though less so now I’m not working directly with folk there), and have the occasional US trip. Given that I live and work in the UK, and thus get paid in GBP (£), this leads to the question of what to do about USD ($) and EUR (€) transaction. USD turns out to be easy; I still have a US account from when I lived there and keeping it active has, so far, not proved to be a problem.

• A national program is reducing day care fees to as low as 10 Canadian dollars, about $7.60, per day, a relief for families even as a surge in demand has created obstacles.

• Inflation continues to plague the economy even as the President woos foreign investors.

• Those who visit during holidays and weekends will have to pay the highest ticket prices.

• Paired with the right settings, ACT chief minister Andrew Barr says his territory’s rent cap model could be successfully replicated nationwide.

• Mr Barr presides over the only Australian jurisdiction with a rent cap policy, which has limited increases to inflation plus 10 per cent since 2019.

• What’s the scam with PwC flogging its government consulting operation to private equity mob Allegro Funds Management?

• The scam is that the scandal over selling government secrets has hurt PwC in a real way, there is pressure from the global partners over to exit to rehabilitate the brand, and they have found some private equity turnaround players in Allegro who will take on the risk of salvaging that $300m a year in government contracts.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• More than one-third of Australian IT leaders (35%) believe their existing IT infrastructure is not fully prepared for the demands of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, despite its widespread adoption across industries, according to the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey.

• I’ve previously written about the possible future of FOSS software and, in many of my texts, mumbled about the bleak future of the software business in general. I’ve thought about writing about this for a long time, but for various reasons deemed it uninteresting. Yet, I keep ruminating on it. Here are some unsorted thoughts, loosely linked together to form a whole. These are guesswork theories at best, but nevertheless, it seems a pattern is emerging from which conclusions might be drawn.

• After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent official visit to the western superpower, three US tech titans announced significant investments in India. For the development of Indian technology, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have pledged financial investments and technological collaboration.

• As part of the agreement, Infosys will collaborate closely with Danske Bank to expedite the bank’s technological transformation. Furthermore, Infosys will acquire Danske Bank’s IT centre in India, which currently employs over 1,400 professionals. This acquisition will enable Infosys to leverage the expertise of the existing workforce and expand its capabilities in providing cutting-edge IT solutions and services.

• Experts also said that cases of bribery for recruitment could have gone up during 2021-22, just like moonlighting, when tech talent witnessed accelerated demand and attrition rates hit record highs. During fiscal 2022, top four Indian IT service firms – TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCLTech – hired more than 220,000 people between them. A significant part of this number hired straight from campuses and staffing firms have no role to play in that recruitment.

• The Beijing-imposed national security law does not impact citizens’ freedom of assembly, Hong Kong’s justice minister Paul Lam claimed on Sunday. However, in his interview with iCable, he added that “more radical actions” such as blocking roads might not be a violation of the sweeping security legislation, they could violate other laws.

• The Biden administration notified Israel two weeks ago that it was reimposing a ban that prohibits U.S. taxpayer funding from being used in any research and development or scientific cooperation projects conducted in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to three U.S. and Israeli officials.

• Why it matters: The Biden administration’s decision reverses a Trump administration policy from late 2020 that allowed U.S. taxpayer funding to be used for science and technology projects in the settlements for the first time since 1967.

• Germany’s far-right AfD won its first district election Sunday, a further boost to the anti-immigration party as it surges to record highs in opinion polls.

• Guatemalans headed to the polls on Sunday in a hotly contested presidential election dominated by concerns over corruption, the exclusion of a leading candidate and the cost of living, with the vote set to result in a second round run-off in August.

• Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis won Greece’s national elections on Sunday with a clear majority, clinching a second term with what he called a “strong mandate” that would allow his party to govern alone.

• The National Assembly of Cambodia amended on Friday their election laws to impose criminal liability on citizens who disrupt the election in  July. Deputy Prime Minister of Cambodia Samdech Krolahom Sar Kheng stated that the amendment stipulates individuals must vote in order to be eligible to run for office.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• The IT firms Europe wants to harm work with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and/or Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade and hold clearances that make them privy to state secrets or permitted to work on weapons and other military equipment. A new criterion for existing sanctions means those companies can be cut off from the global financial system and otherwise made persona non grata for commercial and public entities with ties to the EU.

• Owners of platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok would face penalties worth up to 5 per cent of annual global turnover.

Censorship/Free Speech

• With book bannings surging nationwide over the past two years, the library and publishing associations are urging “all members of the book community” to affirm their commitment to the June 1953 declaration, which includes such propositions as ”It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.”

• In a surprising last-minute amendment to the otherwise innocuous “Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022″ from September 2022 the Irish Government added a provision that would allow the Irish DPC to declare almost all its procedures “confidential”. Section 26A would make most reporting about procedures or decisions by the DPC a crime. Speaking about outlandish claims by “big tech” or unfair procedures that often concern millions of users would equally become a crime. The Amendment has to be approved by the Irish Parliament on Wednesday.

• United States v. Hansen signals the Court is not willing to “strike down” laws that may, hypothetically, burden someone else’s speech rights.

• The Interplanetary File System provides technical resilience against censorship but, for those who offer IPFS gateways, pressure to self-censor is mounting. Reports indicate that major publishing companies are carpet-bombing these volunteers with tens of thousands of DMCA notices, despite being fully aware that they are not responsible for the content in question and cannot take it down. One gateway operator has already called it quits.

• Here’s a draft of my article, on the constitutionality of anti-BDS laws and other related matters, forthcoming in a symposium at The University of the Pacific Law Review.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• When governments become authoritarian, they inspire resistance. Techniques must then be developed to repel that resistance. Those techniques must then be concealed.

• In short: the worse a country is, the more secrets it has. We have a lot of secrets now.

• [...]

• What is conspiracy to obtain such information? We have a word for that. It’s called journalism.

• My government wants to put Julian Assange in jail for 175 years for practicing journalism. The government of this country, the U.K., is going to allow it to happen.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The company will first trial its online food deliveries in its home city of Tallinn, Estonia later this year.

• The Organization of American States (OAS) on Friday announced that it approved a resolution urging Nicaragua to “cease all human rights violations, release political prisoners, and respect religious freedom and freedom of expression, as well as the rule of law.” The resolution was led by the US, Canada, Chile and Costa Rica.

• Police in Sierra Leone fired tear gas at the main opposition party’s headquarters on Sunday evening, authorities said, as voters awaited the results of a fiercely fought general election.

• Supporters and party officials from the All Peoples’ Congress were sifting through polling data from the presidential vote when the military surrounded party headquarters.

• Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs announced an executive order on Friday that protects abortion rights within the state one year after the Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization decision. Abortion is generally legal before 15 weeks in Arizona under a law passed by former Governor Doug Ducey.

• The supreme leader of the Taliban released a message on June 25 claiming that his government has taken the necessary steps for the betterment of women’s lives in Afghanistan, where women are banned from public life and work and girls’ education is severely curtailed.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Adli Wahid mentored FIRST fellows at the 35th Annual FIRST Conference, held from 4 to 9 June in Montreal, Canada.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• A masked Lil Uzi Vert has opened the 2023 BET Awards on a platform suspended from the ceiling and jumped into a pyrotechnic-filled kickoff performance the quickly turned into a celebration of hip-hop’s early years. Then came a hip-hop history lesson: DJ Kid Capri walked the audience through a medley of the earliest days of New York City ’80s rap culture featuring The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” MC LYTE’s “Cha Cha Cha”, D-NICE’s “Call ME D-Nice” and Big Daddy Kane’s “Raw,” into a partial cover of “Just A Friend,” an homage to the late great Biz Markie. The show is being broadcast live from Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater.

• A bipartisan Congressional Songwriters Caucus has been reformed, with a focus on policies that support independent songwriters and intellectual property protections. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Congressman Ben Cline (R-VA) relaunched the caucus and will serve as co-chairs. To celebrate the event, both Congressmen welcomed songwriters and representatives from songwriter advocacy groups to Capitol Hill.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.