● 06.30.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 30/06/2023: Wikipedia Moves to CC 4.0, Twitter Usage Sags

Posted in News Roundup at 10:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• After building up their in-house manufacturing capabilities with their custom Thelio desktop and their Launch keyboards, System76 are now expanding into PC cases for everyone.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Why everyone is excited about the next Linux kernel, Valve’s big hire, and Red Hat’s clone war.

Applications

• The popularity of digital e-books has been accelerated by a number of dedicated portable e-book readers. The various Amazon Kindle are extremely popular devices which have enabled readers to conveniently access a huge library of books, magazines and newspapers on the move. What is particularly noteworthy is that Linux is the operating system that runs the devices.

• However, Linux is also an attractive way of reading e-books on a desktop computer or notebook. Linux has a good range of open source software which helps users to organize their e-book collection, catch up on a novel, or even to create and publish their own e-book.

• This article showcases CLI ebook readers. They are all written in Python and by the same developer. We only feature free and open source software here.

• This article features the finest self-hosted news aggregators. Only free and open source software is included here. Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style chart.

• Do you own a Corsair keyboard or mouse? Well you should take a look at ckb-next, which just had a new release bringing support for even more new hardware. Created by the community, this is not an official Corsair app. Like a lot of hardware vendors, they don’t have direct hardware support.

Instructionals/Technical

• Because no matter how good Figma is, it’s an intermediary abstraction, like Photoshop before it. If you’re working with the web, you’ll work faster without such an abstraction layer in the design process filtering the collaboration between programmer and designer.

• This tutorial will focus on how Git LFS works, how to use it, and its importance in storing large files. You will create a sample project to understand better how Git LFS works. Specifically, you’ll create a simple Python project that uses a large accident dataset from Kaggle. The dataset contains over 1.5 million accident cases spanning several years and covers most of the US accidents. Due to its size, storing the dataset directly in Git would be impractical and slow down the repository’s performance. Therefore, you’ll use Git LFS to store the dataset efficiently and make it easier to work with. Following this example, you’ll learn how to use Git LFS to manage large files in your Git repository and optimize your workflow for smoother collaboration with team members.

• PDF supports playing back video content since version 1.5. I could do the whole shtick and shpiel routine of “surely this is working technology as the specification is over 20 years old by now”. But you already know that it is not the case. Probably you came here just to see how badly broken things are. So here you go: [...]

• Unlike all my other Under-Engineered posts, this one is not a “how-to”. This is a “what’s-up”, so you can make a decision about whether or not you want to give <datalist> a shot.

• Velero is an open source tool to safely backup and restore, perform disaster recovery, and migrate Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes. Velero has two main components: a CLI, and a server-side Kubernetes deployment. Prerequisites Velero uses object storage to store backups and associated artifacts.

• Unbound is free and open-source DNS server software that can be used for validating, recursive, and caching DNS resolvers. In this guide, you will learn how to set up Private DNS Server with Unbound on a Debian 11 and Debian 12 server.

• Sensu is an open-source infrastructure and application monitoring system designed for container and non-container monitoring and multi-cloud infrastructure. In this tutorial, you will install Sensu Monitoring Solution on a Rocky Linux 9 server.

• OpenJDK 21, the next long-term support (LTS) release of Oracle’s standard Java implementation, is set to be launched on September 19, 2023. This release is packed with 15 finalized features, each designed to enhance the Java development experience.

• Minecraft, a leading game in the industry, utilizes the Minecraft Launcher as a gateway to its multifaceted environments. This article, penned by professionals with thorough gaming and technical acumen, will dissect the launcher, especially its recent version, and guide you through installing it on Manjaro Linux using the Arch User Repository (AUR).

• Heroic Games Launcher has carved its place among gaming platforms with its distinctive features and functionality. This guide focuses on installing Heroic Games Launcher via AUR on Manjaro Linux.

• Sublime Text Editor has unveiled its latest version, Sublime Text 4, which brings along a host of improvements and features over its predecessor, Sublime Text 3.

• Learn how to effectively view List Groups in Linux with this beginner’s guide. Master essential commands and techniques for user group management.

• Learn how to create and edit images using DragGAN. With StyleGAN3 and the DragGAN GUI, unleash your creativity and transform images with ease. Empower your visual storytelling today.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to browse to a folder that has spaces on its name.

• If you’re not sure how to view your SSH certificates, this article walks you through the steps on Linux, macOS and Windows.

• If your data center relies on VirtualBox and your virtual machines rely on USB, you’ve probably noticed that USB doesn’t work unless you enable it. Here’s how to do that.

Games

• Cassette Beasts is easily one of the best releases this year, and possibly one of the best creature / monster collecting games in modern times too. It’s also about to get bigger!

• Today the Steam Summer Sale 2023 is live once again, where a great many developers put up big discounts for their games. You know the drill right? Your wallet is already hiding from you.

• Dwarf Fortress from Bay 12 Games and Kitfox Games just had a big tech upgrade, and it sounds like their Native Linux release is coming quite soon.

• I’m currently keeping an eye on the SHARGE Disk, a really small M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure that can plug directly into the Steam Deck (and many other devices). Mentioned briefly in my recent news round-up, this device looks like it could be really useful.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• MakuluLinux Max is a new offering that opens the world of artificial intelligence to the Linux desktop. It raises the operating system to an experience not available anywhere else.

• It uses a tweaked Gnome Software Center that fully supports Flathub and Snaps. You can also use the installed Synaptic Package Manager.

• Max comes with Steam pre-installed. Additional gaming platforms are available from the Software Center.

• The MakuluLinux Max Desktop Manager lets you customize and theme your desktop. You can select from system layouts, constructing tools, special effects, cursors, icon sets, wallpaper management, and theme colors. All changes are almost instant; no scripts, no commands, and no reboot required.

• The Max OS also comes with the Constructor Tool that lets you recompile the operating system with all your changes back into an ISO to reinstall on other computers. This feature has been a staple in other MakuluLinux editions for the last few years.

• I have been keeping an eye out for an early release of Beta 2, but it is still early for this next phase. However, I can report that in the last few days, prior to publishing this review, Max Beta 1 received a series of patches and package upgrades that focused on adding more finesse and capabilities to the AI system.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• This week’s openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots are rolling out at a steady pace.

• The snapshots were not large, but consistent.

• Snapshot 20230628 provided a few small changes that focused on removing some obsolete mechanisms and cleaned up some aspects to help with the future direction of Python.

• Snapshot 20230627 was one of the bigger snapshots this week and it provided updates for gegl, kdump pipwire, strace and much more. The graphics package gegl brought version 0.4.46. The package provides some bug fixes and performance improvements and it re-enabled a deprecation warning. The kernel-crash dumping package kdump updated to version 1.9.2; this had enhancements like a rewrite of kdump-save and updates for other parts to ensure mounts are now entirely handled by dracut. An update of audio-compression package flac 1.4.3 improved the encoder speed for all presets, and it made significant improvements for the fastest presets as well as 24-bit and 32-bit inputs. Multimedia framework pipwire 0.3.72 fixed a critical bug that refused to update JACK clients, and there were some audio enhancements for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. Strace 6.4 and perl-Bootloader 1.4 were among several other packages updated in the snapshot.

Fedora Family / IBM

• A lot has changed since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7) was released in 2014. At that time, less than 10% of American employees worked remotely, even one day per week. Now, nearly a decade later, remote work is standard for people across many industries. For example, 58% of job holders in the United States are able to work remotely at least once per week.

• With its rather sudden onset, this shift to remote work presented a large number of new and immediate challenges for IT organizations. A continually expanding selection of collaboration tools—including instant messaging, video conferencing, file sharing and enterprise social networks—required constant support and maintenance. Remote endpoints located outside of enterprise firewalls needed new, automated technologies to protect sensitive data and minimize the risk of security breaches. At the same time, expanded use of unsecured and unvetted personal devices to access company assets contributed to security vulnerabilities that organizations needed to find and fix. In the process of responding to these complex challenges, many teams were forced to delay and revise their plans to migrate from RHEL 7.

• Every user of Rocky Linux is valued and their contributions matter. From software engineers to IT professionals and hobbyists, together, we are all part of the Linux and open source community. The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation was established based on our shared vision that open source software should remain stable, accessible to all, and managed by the community.

• This commitment is ingrained in everything we do. Since the inception of the Rocky project, we have prioritized reproducibility, transparency in decision-making, and that no single vendor or company can ever hold the project hostage. When we first started, we discussed our model and mission, and we decided not to bisect the Enterprise Linux community. Instead, in the spirit of open source principles and standards, we created something compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). By adhering to this approach, we adhere to a single standard for Enterprise Linux and align ourselves with the original goals of CentOS.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• As before, 3 snaps are showcased across 4 categories: ‘featured’, ‘development’, ‘games’, and ‘sever’. The presentation of these is much improved here, with more prominence given to app icons, and more clarify around publisher and status (e.g., verified, community, none, etc).

• If I had a complaint it’s that the 3 snaps showcased are the same ones as before – and those have been the same 3 showcased for (in some cases) years. Showing identifiable/higher quality apps does make sense but some sort of rotation or variance would give people a reason to visit more often.

• In Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises,” there is a memorable exchange between the author and the main character, Mike. When asked how he went bankrupt, Mike responds with a concise yet profound answer: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

• Complying with US government security standards such as FIPS, FedRAMP, and DISA-STIG is essential for federal agencies and any business that deploys systems and services for U.S. government use. However, maintaining a compliant IT ecosystem is a major undertaking, as each regulation brings a host of specialised requirements. And dealing with the never-ending stream of security vulnerabilities that require patching only adds to this task.

• The operating system is the cornerstone of a successful compliance strategy, since it provides the foundation for cryptography, system hardening, and managing security vulnerabilities. Modern organisations need a reliable operating system that can not only power their workloads, but also enable their security and compliance strategies – and Ubuntu is uniquely positioned to fulfil that role.

Open Hardware/Modding

• My beautiful shortboard Commodore 64C has been my main 8-bit computer of late, owing to the plethora of awesome hardware expansions and options available for it. Also because my 264-family machines are in various stages of repair right now; a topic for another time. But the Commodore 128 is my favourite 8-bit computer of all time, and I’d like to use it for more things.

• The interior system was specifically designed for easy access to all components. The removable lid provides room to tinker from multiple angles. Tool-optional thumb screws hold the lid and GPU brace in place. The 2.5” storage drives are hot-swappable when users configure Nebula with the SATA backplane upgrade and motherboard with hot-swap support.

• Spencer uses his passion for computing and digital making in his classroom and Code Club to teach computer science to his students in Birmingham, UK.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Freedom GPT can generate text, translate languages, and answer questions even when offline. If you’re a privacy nut you’ll love having all conversations with it being stored locally on your computer.

• Freedom GPT is open source and users can actually choose which open source model to use. The tech-head will appreciate that but if all you are after is offline use, then I’d say do not fret too much about which open-source model to use.

• For those that may want to know, Freedom GPT leverages Stanford’s Alpaca models.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Purism

• Most companies abandon hardware soon after launch, but we have a different approach with the Librem 5. With every upgrade to PureOS we push on the Librem 5, the more the device can do and the more efficient it gets.

• PureOS 10.3 packs in a lot of new goodies. The User interface Phosh continues to grow up with Gnome; in PureOS 10.3 Phosh has a new dropdown.You also get a new menu on a long power button press. Easily power off, Lock or take a screenshot. Swipe up to dismiss.

• Under the hood, WiFI hotspot now inhibits suspend. Emergency info settings got some love. Mobile Settings→Lockscreen→Emergency InfoApps now honor the feedback level for notifications. Mobile Settings→Feedback

• As Purism approaches shipping parity (estimated in early July) for the popular, revolutionary, Librem 5 phone, we wanted to extend a heartfelt thanks to all the supporters who understood the immense challenges with creating a non-android OS–PureOS–and the tens-of-millions it would take to compete against Google and Apple. With the continued support of those early adopters who have seen the Librem 5 go from a development kit, to early versions without battery enhancing kernel updates, to the latest PureOS 10.3 where all the phones shipped within the past 2.5 years get 20+ hours battery life, to the latest batches of Librem 5 phones that run PureOS 10.3 by default, it has been quite a harrowing journey to invent and innovate such a powerful freedom respecting secure phone that is the Librem 5 running PureOS 10.3.

• Purism is proud to be able to offer a celebration sale on the Librem 5 phone running the latest PureOS for $200 off for a limited time with the public coupon code of “CelebrateLibrem5”. Ordering now with this coupon will get this deep discount applied and will be ready to ship to you in August, 2023.

• The Librem 5 is the device that started the revolution of using the mainline Linux kernel and utilizing completely free software with the entire software stack released in the open. Purism is unrelenting in its dedication to civil liberties, free software, investing in software innovations, and pushing the industry forward. This sale is a way to publicly celebrate these immense accomplishments made with PureOS, the free software ecosystem, and of course the original hardware design that gets better with age, the Librem 5.

• I just published the 41st revision of my self-published book Ansible for DevOps, which has sold 87,234 copies as of this writing across LeanPub, Amazon (Kindle and paperback), and iBooks.

• There are multiples of that number of eBooks downloaded, as I’ve never DMCA’ed the sites that re-host the book illegally. I just… provide new and better versions. People who download the illegal copies know they can come to me for the best reading experience. Plus, I provide free updates forever for anyone who’s purchased or gotten the book free on LeanPub.

Licensing / Legal

• Black logos for the Wikimedia Foundation and Creative Commons, side by side. We are thrilled to announce that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects have now adopted version 4.0 of the Creative Commons BY-SA license! The project first began using version 3.0 of the CC licenses in 2009 following a community process, having previously used the GNU Free Documentation License.

Programming/Development

• This page is a placeholder for material related to the second edition of The AWK Programming Language. The first edition was written by Al Aho, Brian Kernighan and Peter Weinberger in 1988. Awk has evolved since then, there are multiple implementations, and of course the computing world has changed enormously. The new edition of the Awk book reflects some of those changes.

• The book will be available by the end of September. In the meantime, we will add material that we hope will be of interest — historical documents, bits of code, and occasional essays on Awk and related topics.

• This might be an acceptable implementation, but what if you want do it using few instructions? You can do it on recent Intel and AMD processors with support for AVX-512 instructions. You go from the general-purpose register to a mask register, to a 512-bit AVX-512 register, you apply a shuffle (vpermb), you go back to a mask register and finally back to a general-purpose register.

• Almost 200 commits adding Nix, Winget, and much more…

• This release took almost 2 months (!), and I hope the wait was worth it!

• Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Standards/Consortia

• In the middle of the 00s I used to feel like our FOSS battles were pretty much over. The “downhill battle” era. The “year of the Linux desktop”. Fewer and fewer .doc and .swf files littering our drives.

• Anything they would write, we in the FOSS world could clone better; and we also had our own ideas and our own apps which were pure fire magic. Compilers, wikis, milters, httpd, rsync, blender, gigs of .oggs—we had it all.

Leftovers

• “Cool, which AI did you use for this?”, “his work is definitely AI”, “this is AI art and I find it disheartening”… Here is a sample of the comments I am getting more and more about my art.

• And this is not fine.

Science

• Published in PNAS Nexus, the study takes a fresh look at what are known in game theory as “zero-determinant strategies” developed by renowned scientists William Press, now at the University of Texas at Austin, and the late Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

• Zero-determinant strategies dictate that “extortionists” control situations to their advantage by becoming less and less cooperative—though just cooperative enough to keep the other party engaged—and by never being the first to concede when there’s a stalemate. Theoretically, they will always outperform their opponent by demanding and receiving a larger share of what’s at stake.

• But the Dartmouth paper uses mathematical models of interactions to uncover an “Achilles heel” to these seemingly uncrackable scenarios, said senior author Feng Fu, an associate professor of mathematics. Fu and first author Xingru Chen, who received her Ph.D. in mathematics from Dartmouth in 2021, discovered an “unbending strategy” in which resistance to being steamrolled not only causes an extortionist to ultimately lose more than their opponent but can result in a more equal outcome as the overbearing party compromises in a scramble to get the best payoff.

• I want you to imagine a Sudoku puzzle. A blank grid with the occasional number thrown in. By understanding the rules of the grid, we can determine what the rest of the numbers should be. Using some rather basic logic, it’s possible to reconstruct incredibly complex information from just a few starting points.

• Don’t believe me? I think the “Miracle Sudoku” illustrates my analogy nicely.

• Now, imagine that the grid isn’t filled with numbers. It is filled with science. Oh, and the grid is a multidimensional representation of every scientific theorem known. And we only know a few of the rules. And they seem contradictory.

• What happens if an AI reads every scientific paper, understands how they link together, and can figure out where our knowledge has gaps?

Education

• The court’s six conservative justices put an emphatic, if unsurprising, end to decades of affirmative action practices that have helped raise the profile of Black and Hispanic students on American college campuses — particularly at the nation’s most elite schools — but has been mired in controversy for much of that time, with critics contending that racial preferences, even when used for good motives, amount to another form of discrimination.

• The justices broke six to three along conservative-liberal lines in the decision, which came after years of ring-wing antipathy to “affirmative action” programs that have sought diversity in school admissions and business and government hiring.

• Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that while affirmative action was “well-intentioned and implemented in good faith,” it cannot last forever, and amounted to unconstitutional discrimination against others.

• “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote.

Hardware

• Some 50 years ago, at the Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) of renowned photocopier company Xerox, a revolutionary approach to local digital networks was born. On 22 May 1973, Bob Metcalf authored a memo that described ‘X-Wire’, a 3Mbps common bus office network system.

• There are very few networking technologies from the early 70s that have proven to be so resilient (TCP/IP is the only other major networking technology from that era that I can recall), so it’s worth looking at Ethernet a little closer in order to see why it has enjoyed such an unusual longevity.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Helsinki University virology researcher Lorna Culverwell discovered the species Culex modestu, making it the 44th mosquito variety found in Finland to date.

• It was also the northernmost spotting of the species in Europe, according to the university, which added that the blood-sucker has also been seen in Russia’s Leningrad Province and in Skåne, Sweden.

• The origin of the videos is unknown but some think they keep viewers watching content for longer. TikTok’s algorithm appears to prioritize videos that have a longer retention time, meaning the longer a video is watched the more overall views it is likely to get.

• The idea is that if a viewer gets bored with one clip, they might turn their attention to the other. Others just put the new trend down to mindless escapism.

• The ubiquitous ingredient, found in sweet drinks and chewing gums, is “possibly carcinogenic to humans” according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the WHO’s cancer research department.

• The prevalence of loneliness has more than tripled between 2016 and 2022, according to a recent study from the University of Turku. The sharpest increase has been observed among those under 30 years old.

• In 2022, one in five Finns reported feeling lonely. The experience of loneliness alarmingly intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictive measures, and the trend seems to have persisted even after the lifting of the restrictions.

• The actor caught COVID a couple of days before filming. The director Wes Anderson still found a role for him to play, sort of.

• For example, the IARC determined the herbicide glyphosate, manufactured by Monsanto, was likely causing cancer in humans, leading to numerous lawsuits and dozens of bans on the chemical around the world.

• The largest manufacturer of aspartame is Nutrasweet, which Monsanto purchased for $2.7 billion ($7.6 billion adjusted for inflation) in 1985. Monsanto sold the company in 2000, after growing it into one of the world’s most popular artificial sweeteners.

• From his earliest days, when he left investment banking and drew on copious corporate support to put himself in the House, Rumsfeld could be shameless about mixing his political career with his personal enrichment. After becoming president of pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle & Co. in 1977, Rumsfeld briefly dipped back into . . . let’s call it “public service,” joining Reagan’s transition team in 1980. By that point, he had already pledged to “call in his markers” to get stalled FDA approval for aspartame, an artificial sweetener discovered by the company that had earlier been the subject of government accusations of fraudulent lab testing practices.

• By sheer coincidence, Reagan’s FDA commissioner appointee quickly approved aspartame, before leaving the FDA a little more than a year later to work for Searle’s public relations agency. Aspartame is today the most widely used artificial sweetener in the world, found in more than six thousand products, from candy and cereal to condiments and “diet” sodas. This, despite serious concerns about its safety, the existence of ongoing research linking the substance to a variety of illnesses, including cancer, with the most recent such study published in April this year.

• The sweetener is now used in 6,000 products, from crisps such as Walkers prawn cocktail, to soft drinks including Diet Coke and Robinson’s fruit squash, chewing gums such as Orbit, and vitamins pills and medicines. Yet the science on which it was given approval was “biased, inconclusive, and incompetent”. “There is compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market.”

• On the day of his inauguration as president in 1981, with Mr Rumsfeld on his transition team, Ronald Reagan personally wrote an executive order suspending the head of the US Food and Drug Administration’s powers on aspartame, Mr Williams further claimed. One month later Mr Reagan appointed a new head of the regulatory authority, Arthur Hayes, who granted a licence for the sweetener.

• “The history of aspartame’s approval is littered with examples showing that if key decision makers found against aspartame’s safety, they were discredited or replaced by industry sympathisers, who were recompensed with lucrative jobs.”

• The upcoming July ruling from the WHO group, the International Agency on Cancer Research (IARC), will list aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” According to the report, the assessment considers all published evidence, but does not account for the amount a person can safely consume.

• Los Angeles Times staff writer Russ Mitchell filed a worrying report about the state of driverless cars in his state, and how badly they’ve been handing specific safety situations. I knew driverless cars had issues, but strap in for this.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• A feature dubbed Crash Detection, which was introduced in the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro and the latest Apple watches last year, is designed to alert the authorities if it detects sudden and forceful movements. The idea is to help somebody out in the case of an emergency such as a mountain bike crash or car collision.

• But as it turns out, the devices were a little too eager to call the authorities after Bonnaroo festivalgoers triggered the feature seemingly just by dancing, as local news station WKRN reported over the weekend. If the user doesn’t react to an on-screen Emergency Call prompt for 20 seconds — tough to notice in the chaos of a concert — the device contacts emergency services by itself, and even shares live location data.

• “The GMP servers are under attack by several hundred IP addresses owned by Microsoft Corporation,” he wrote. “We do not know if this is made with malice by Microsoft, if it is some sort of mistake, or if [it is one] of their cloud customers … running the attack. The attack targets the GMP repo, with thousands of identical requests. The requests are cleverly chosen as to cause heavy system load.

• “We’re firewalling off all of Microsoft’s IP addresses as an emergency response.”

• Hinton warned that the risks of AI should be taken seriously.

• “I think it’s important that people understand that this is not science fiction, this is not just fearmongering,” he insisted. “It is a real risk that we must think about, and we need to figure out in advance how to deal with it.”

• A group of 697 people read 220 tweets written by other humans and by the artificial intelligence model GPT-3, the precursor to the current global success ChatGPT. First, they had to guess which tweets were true and which were false and then decide whether they were written by a person or a machine. GPT-3 won on both counts: it lied better than humans in tweets and also lied to pretend that it was a human who was writing. “GPT-3 is able to inform and misinform us better,” conclude the authors of a new study that was published in the journal Science Advances.

• The messages sent to subreddit moderators by the Reddit employee account ModCodeofConduct were seen by The Verge. The messages did not include any mention of punishment if the subs didn’t comply beyond “further action,” but the threat seemed to be the company’s end of the line. The company tried to cite Rule 4 of its Moderator Code of Conduct for the violations, but that stipulation applies more to moderators remaining active in their own communities, not about whether those communities are private or not.

• On Tuesday, Reddit asked mods for reopening plans in the next two days, but now that the deadline looms, the site is squeezing mods even harder than before. The company reportedly told moderators that the privatized subs were “not going to continue” and that the communities “will not remain private beyond the time frame we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here.”

Windows TCO

• According to a note in the Windows Health Dashboard, some users – including those running Windows Server 2022 – were unable to open Microsoft or third party software, such as Outlook and other Office programs. It only affected 32-bit apps running on 64-bit Windows running Trellix’s Endpoint Security software.

• A Whitworth University student is asking a federal judge to approve a class action against the school for damages stemming from a ransomware attack discovered in July 2022 that affected more than 65,500 people.

• The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Spokane, alleges Whitworth was negligent in allowing a still-unidentified attacker to access health, financial and personal data of past and present students, staff and faculty. It was filed by Patrick Loyola, identified in court documents as a student at the time of the attack. The university initially reported the incident as a “sophisticated security issue” in August before informing the Washington attorney general’s office in October that a ransomware attack had occurred.

• The federal lawsuit cites a recent report to the attorney general’s office in Maine, which has data breach reporting laws similar to those in Washington. In that April filing, Whitworth acknowledged the number of affected people was 65,593, a number confirmed by a university spokeswoman on Friday.

• The 2022 cyberattack on the 21,000-student Little Rock School District’s data networks cost the capital city system almost $692,000, according to records obtained from the district.

• As much as $242,349.37 of that total went toward the purchase of hard-to-trace cryptocurrency — bitcoins — from Digital Mint, which is a self-described “cash-to-cryptocurrency provider.” The cryptocurrency was demanded by the attackers as their price to exit from the district’s operations.

Security

• Nikita Kislitsin, formerly the head of network security for one of Russia’s top cybersecurity firms, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan in response to 10-year-old hacking charges from the U.S. Department of Justice. Experts say Kislitsin’s prosecution could soon put the Kazakhstan government in a sticky diplomatic position, as the Kremlin is already signaling that it intends to block his extradition to the United States.

• The attackers released nearly 700 files associated with the attack.

• Do you think you’re good at creating passwords?

Privacy/Surveillance

• Microsoft and OpenAI were sued on Wednesday by sixteen pseudonymous individuals who claim the companies’ AI products based on ChatGPT collected and divulged their personal information without adequate notice or consent.

• The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Francisco, California, alleges the two businesses ignored the legal means of obtaining data for their AI models and chose to gather it without paying for it.

• On Wednesday, OpenAI and Microsoft were sued in a class action lawsuit seeking $3 billion in damages for allegedly stealing “vast amounts of private information” from [Internet] users without consent in order to train ChatGPT.

• This lawsuit, which was filed on June 28 in federal court in San Francisco, CA, and includes sixteen anonymous plaintiffs, claimed that OpenAI secretly “scraped 300 billion words from the [Internet]” without registering as a data broker or obtaining consent. Microsoft is OpenAI’s main customer and corporate partner, licensing AI technology from the company for billions of dollars.

• EDRi has argued many times that technology is not a silver bullet and cannot be used to resolve complex societal problems. The IMCO opinion adopted today rejects measures that would undermine end-to-end encryption and requires that technologies must be sufficiently effective. As stipulated by the Court of Justice, IMCO MEPs say that tools must be able to distinguish between lawful and unlawful content without the need for independent human assessment. In practice, this would mean that many scanning tools cannot be used.

• What also stands out in the opinion is the proposed deletion of the grooming detection from the scanning rules. As EDRi and child rights specialists have warned, such technologies are not fit for purpose, with the Committee proposing safety by-design measures instead.

• When I was but a wee Techdirt boy, the FBI was telling cop shops that had borrowed or obtained Stingray devices they’d best not talk about it in court or it would be their NDA’ed ass on the line. In 2015, documents the FBI hoped no one would see (and actually told local cops they couldn’t release) showed the FBI was forcing Stingray users to drop cases, rather than discuss this repurposed war gear in court.

Defence/Aggression

• Europol, the EU agency for law enforcement, has estimated that 90% of those who cross the EU’s external borders illegally do so with the assistance of migrant smugglers, either for the whole journey or for part of it. “It is difficult to arrive at exact figures on the irregular flows, given their hidden nature,” the European Parliament stated in a 2021 report.

• While there is no doubt that human smugglers, also called migrant smugglers, run thriving businesses, the report added that it’s also worth noting the majority of non-EU immigrants migrate to the EU via legal channels.

• TikTok’s means of breaking into the e-commerce market in the United States is still developing. It launched TikTok Shop in November 2022, but the platform has yet to gain significant traction. TikTok is also experimenting with something it calls ‘Trendy Beat’ in the U.K. Products are sold and shipped by a Singapore-based company owned by ByteDance. TechCrunch spotted a trademark application for the ‘Trendy Beat’ feature in the United States, so this is likely an extension of the U.K. test.

• Today, there’s a similar awakening among the scientists and researchers behind advancements in artificial intelligence. If AI really poses an extinction threat to humankind — as many in the field claim — many experts in the field are examining how efforts to limit the spread of nuclear warheads might control the rampant spread of AI.

• Already, OpenAI, the world’s leading AI lab, has called for the formation of “something like” an International Atomic Energy Agency — the global nuclear watchdog — but for AI. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has since backed the idea, and rarely a day goes by in Washington without one elected official or another expressing a need for stricter AI regulation.

• Many states in Africa are contending with multidimensional insecurity. This includes violent extremism, terrorism, insurgency, banditry, communal clashes, sea piracy, separatist violence, kidnapping and oil theft. Non-state actors have entered the scene as security providers.

• As a coordinator of observations of organised crime in central Africa at the Institute for Security Studies based in Dakar, Senegal, I believe the recent events in Russia could have three implications for African countries that depend on non-state armed groups for security. These are: rebellion, increased human rights abuses and insubordination to state military authorities.

• According to human rights organizations and Sudanese medical resource, 2800 people were killed in the Sudan´s conflict and almost 3 million have fled the war.

• Canada, Britain, Sweden, and Ukraine are to move to the International Court of Justice in their bid to hold Iran accountable for the downing of an airliner by Iranian forces in 2020, they said on June 29.

• Global security has deteriorated over the past year, primarily driven by the impact of the war in Ukraine, which has resulted in the world moving towards possible nuclear conflict for the first time in more than half a century, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

War in Ukraine

• Senior Russian general Sergey Surovikin has been detained, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing knowledgable sources.

• The circumstances surrounding Gen. Sergei Surovikin’s status are still very murky. U.S. officials cautioned that the intelligence reports were not conclusive and could not provide further details.

• The armed insurrection led, and then abruptly abandoned, by the mercenary tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin has baffled not only the general public but even government insiders in Russia. Speculations about Prigozhin’s aims, their rationality, and what prevented the coup from culminating in any tangible gains run the gamut from the common-sensical to the outlandish. Experts are nevertheless coming to a consensus that, despite Prigozhin’s provisional retreat to Belarus, the failed insurrection will not be fruitless in the long run. On the contrary, many believe that its real consequences are yet to be seen, and that they will develop over time as Russia’s governing elites learn their lessons from Prigozhin’s surprise operation. Meduza’s analyst Petr Sapozhnikov breaks down what we know about the mutiny, what we can only conjecture, and what opportunities Russia’s malcontent elites might glean from Prigozhin’s mutiny-turned-reconnaissance-mission.

• In the wake of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “march of justice,” General of the Army Sergey Surovikin may possibly have been arrested and questioned by the Russian authorities. The general has not appeared in public since June 24, when he addressed the Wagner fighters, urging them to stop the mutiny. According to Financial Times and its sources, it’s still unclear whether Surovikin is being handled as a witness or an immediate party to the Prigozhin conspiracy.

• After a few hours of high drama in southwestern Russia last Saturday, featuring a paramilitary leader, 4,000 to 6,000 followers, and a small column of trucks and other military vehicles driving north toward Moscow, let us keep our heads when all about us are losing theirs and blaming […]

• The Russian military still suffers from poor communication, coordination and leadership, but most of all, analysts say, from a morale-sapping lack of accountability.

• A two-day summit of European Union leaders dominated by talk of the Ukraine war and boosting defenses continued overnight on June 29-30 with a statement reiterating commitments “to provide sustainable military support to Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

• Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, in a surprise visit to Ukraine, assured President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of his strong support for Kyiv’s “courageous” fight against the Russian invasion.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 29 Jun 2023 The EU-NATO Task Force has now presented a final assessment report, which maps out the current security challenges and identifies four key sectors of cross-cutting importance: energy, transport, digital infrastructure and space.

• The European Union has assembled a new support package meant to mitigate the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on Moldova and “bring the country closer” to the 27-member bloc, the European Commission has announced.

• Zelensky informed Duda and Naused of the “active actions” of the Ukrainian military at the front.

• An indifferent response to a warlord’s march on Moscow heralds the dawning realization that Russia has no good way out in Ukraine.

• The Russian leader tried to project business as usual, even as the circumstances surrounding General Sergei Surovikin were still very murky.

• President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made highly choreographed appearances in an effort to project power and control, and U.S. officials suggested Gen. Sergei Surovikin was probably being held.

• With Russia a pariah in the West since its invasion of Ukraine, this usually prestigious event is underway with far fewer international participants.

• Ukrainian combat medics share their stories of war, more than a year after the invasion began.

• After the Wagner Group’s aborted mutiny in Russia, the Biden administration has imposed new sanctions on companies accused of profiting from the activities of the Wagner Group in Africa. This comes as Russian military police raided Wagner mercenary bases in Syria. Meanwhile, in Belarus, where Wagner Group leader Prigozhin is now exiled, The New York Times is reporting on construction of a new military base for Wagner fighters given the option of relocating there after the failed uprising. We speak with political scientist Kimberly Marten, who has been studying the Wagner Group for years and says that despite recent events, Russia’s war in Ukraine and its presence in other countries is unlikely to be affected. “Wagner itself does not exist as an entity,” she says, describing it as a “contracting mechanism” for the Russian military and not truly independent from the government. “It would be really easy for the Kremlin to just put in place some other individual as the titular CEO of all these various companies.”

• In its daily intelligence update on Thursday, the U.K. Defense Ministry said that the loss of the Il-22M aircraft that was shot down by Wagner Group fighters during Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny on Saturday will likely have a “negative impact on Russian air and land operations” in the war in Ukraine.

• The New York Times gained rare access to a military field hospital in eastern Ukraine, capturing the relentless toll of Russia’s war through the eyes of frontline combat medics and wounded soldiers.

• The bank executive was with a 34-year-old male friend named Andrei at the time of her fatal fall.

• Many Iranians wondered what it meant for the Islamic Republic’s future if Russian President Vladimir Putin was taken down.

• Ukraine’s military has claimed some “success” in fighting in the eastern Donetsk region, while concerns persist over the possibility of battles threatening catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.

• NATO’s promised security guarantees cannot be a substitute for Ukraine’s future membership of the Alliance, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday.

• Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anušauskas is visiting Ukraine on Friday.

• With the short-lived Wagner mutiny exposing Vladimir Putin’s weakness for all to see, the time has come for Ukraine’s Western partners to provide the country with everything it needs to secure victory, writes Taras Kuzio.

• The recent death of Daniel Ellsberg offers an opportunity to recall what leaking The Pentagon Papers accomplished and ask what it reveals about ending a war, including the one in Ukraine.

• The EU’s top diplomat warned Thursday that a “weaker” Russian President Vladimir Putin would pose a “greater danger” after the Wagner Group’s aborted rebellion sparked the largest political crisis in decades in the nuclear-armed country. At a summit in Brussels, EU leaders promised new long-term commitments to bolster Ukraine’s security.

• President Joe Biden rarely gives network interviews. When he sat down in studio with MSNBC on Thursday, it came at an especially busy time, with the Supreme Court having just overturned the use of affirmative action in college admissions and in the aftermath of a revolt in Russia. The nearly 20-minute conversation addressed those matters. But it also veered heavily into topics like criticism of the media and light-hearted discussion of the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny has failed. The mercenary leader has avoided criminal prosecution (for now, at least), but he was forced to “leave for Belarus,” as the Kremlin phrased it. It’s impossible to say reliably what he’ll do there or what happens next to Wagner Group’s thousands of warriors, many of whom have seen fierce battle in Ukraine. Meduza special correspondent Lilya Yapparova spoke to several mercenaries, soldiers, and experts for a better grasp of what’s in store for what is now the world’s most infamous private military company.

• The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) executive board on June 29 completed its first review of Ukraine’s $15.6 billion loan program, allowing Kyiv to immediately withdraw $890 million for budget support as it mounts a major offensive against Russia’s invasion.

• General Sergei Surovikin, deputy commander of the Russian group of forces fighting in Ukraine, is believed to have been detained days after mercenaries led by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a revolt inside Russia, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on June 29.

• His system of rule simply can’t go on much longer.

• The mercenary group is so deeply enmeshed in the Central African Republic and several other nations that it can’t be easily replaced, experts say.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin weathered the threat to his power last weekend, but international allies may be wondering now about his reliability.

• Telegram played a central role in Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt—and in so many other chaotic events that have defined recent history.

• Prigozhin’s revolt has exposed significant flaws in the Russian system—but won’t keep the Kremlin from responding with yet more repression.

• Staff writers Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols discuss the week’s events in Russia.

• The Russian ‘revolt’ that wasn’t, strengthens Putin’s hand.

• Lithuania’s Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė has instructed the State Border Guard Service (VSAT) to reinforce the screening of persons arriving from Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad region.

• The brief rebellion led against the Kremlin by the head of the Wagner mercenary forces in Russia last week sent shock waves across the world. This was no less true in Africa, where some countries have, over the last decade, turned to the Wagner group for security support.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

• Today we drove 8 hours (4 hours from my house to site, 4 hours back) to visit the solar farm for the first time since we actually started work, and only the second time ever. We visited the morning after we got planning permission, but that was about 9 months ago now, which is crazy but true. At last, stuff is actually happening, and I wanted to see it for myself!

• Bolivia has signed lithium agreements with Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom and China’s Citic Guoan Group, the South American country’s government said on June 29, as it looks to develop its huge but largely untapped resources of the battery metal.

Wildlife/Nature

• A previously unknown mosquito species, Culex modestus, has been found in Finland for the first time. This discovery marks the 44th mosquito species identified in the country and the northernmost observation of this particular species in Europe. Prior to this finding, similar species were observed in the Leningrad region of Russia and the Skåne region of Sweden, both further south than Finland.

Overpopulation

• The city’s disintegrating fortune reverberates throughout municipal life, down to the basic functions of government, like providing residents access to clean water. Highland Park is today enmeshed in a long-running lawsuit with the Great Lakes Water Authority, which supplies Detroit and other cities in eight counties and wants to collect over $24 million in unpaid water bills plus interest on the debt.

Finance

• We are happy to announce the publication on “Practical Offline Payments Using One-Time Passcodes” by The European Money and Finance Forum.

• Almost every major deal market metric was down sharply in the first half of 2023, according to preliminary data from Refinitiv.

• By the numbers: Global M&A hit $1.3 trillion year-to-date, which is down 38% over the same period in 2022 and not too much higher than the COVID shock era of first-half 2020.

• Cruise lines topped the market in the second quarter.

• Why it matters: The soaring sentiment buoying cruise operators suggests investors don’t expect the American consumer to pull back on spending.

• The latest: Earlier this week, Carnival Cruise reported that fiscal Q2 revenues doubled compared with last year, nearly hitting $5 billion — the highest level since 2019.

• Turns out how you feel about the economy likely comes down to your paycheck: If your wages are outpacing inflation, things look rosy — if not, well, that’s quite dispiriting, a new paper finds.

• Pirate Party MEP and digital freedom fighter Dr Patrick Breyer criticises yesterday’s draft bill by the EU Commission to introduce a “Digital Euro”:

• “The introduction of digital cash would be long overdue in the information age. Digital cash could be as anonymous and freely usable on the [Internet] as notes and coins. However, the ‘digital euro’ now proposed by the Commission does not deserve that name. Digital technology is to be misused to monitor, limit and control our finances to an extent never seen with cash.

• In an email sent to Niantic staff and later made public, Niantic CEO John Hanke confirmed that the company has “allowed our expenses to grow faster than revenue,” while recent games have not “delivered revenues” that match their investment.

• As a result, Hanke shared that Niantic will be closing its studio in LA, cancelling its upcoming game Marvel World Of Heroes, and shutting down NBA All-World — which only launched in January.

• In total, these changes will see “around 230” layoffs for workers. The company will also pivot to releasing fewer games with higher quality, along with a “more direct and results-based culture”.

• Explaining the cuts, Hanke pointed to a “tough market environment due to the overall global macroeconomic slowdown, as well as unique challenges in the mobile gaming and AR markets”.

• The ride-hailing cum food delivery business slashed 1,000 jobs or around 11% of its workforce earlier this month.

• Its CEO, Anthony Tan, cited the need to manage costs and keep the organisation trim to offer more affordable services in the medium term.

• After making such a move, can investors hope for a rebound in Grab’s business and share price?

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Open Rights Group has responded to an opinion piece in the Telegraph by the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman MP that claims that: “The government, tech experts, and wider industry partners have demonstrated that it is technically feasible to detect child sexual abuse in environments which utilise encryption whilst still strongly maintaining user privacy.” All the evidence shows that this claim does not stack up.

• Today, the Internal Market Committee in the European Parliament (IMCO) recommended some far-reaching amendments to the draft EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), also known as chat control proposal. The opinion is not binding for the lead Committee on Home Affairs (LIBE), but serves as a political orientation. Pirate Party MEP and shadow rapporteur in the lead Home Affairs Committee Patrick Breyer has a mixed view of the proposals:

• “The Internal Market Committee wants to pull out various poisonous fangs from the extreme proposal made by ‘Big Sister’ Johansson: The proposed deletion of mandatory age verification safeguards the right to anonymous communication, on which whistleblowers, among others, depend. The removal of appstore censorship for young people protects their right to free and protected communication.

• The worst case scenario for Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, the Canadian news sector, and the Canadian public has come to pass: Google has announced that it will block news links in Canada in response to the mandated payment for links approach established in Bill C-18. The decision, which the company says will be implemented before the law takes effect, will cover search, Google News, and Google Discover. The decision – which government seemingly tried to avoid with last minute discussions with Google executives after it became apparent that the risks of exit were real – will have lasting and enormously damaging consequences for Canadians and represents a remarkable own-goal by Rodriguez who has managed to take millions away from the news sector and left everyone in a far worse position than if he had done nothing at all.

• The damage caused by the government’s Bill C-18 continues to grow as Meta has started to cancel its existing agreements with Canadian publishers. The move should not come as a surprise since any deals that involve facilitating access to news content would bring the company into the legislative framework and mandate payments for links. Indeed, Meta said earlier this week that its 18 existing deals “did not have much of a future.” When this is coupled with a reported “impasse” between the government and Google over its approach to Bill C-18, the risks to the Canadian media sector look increasingly dire.

• This was entirely foreseeable, yet Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez never seemed to take the risks seriously. It raises the question of whether the government developed estimates of the cost of its legislation if Meta and Google chose to comply by stopping news sharing or linking. While there were estimates for the benefits of new deals that ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, did it conduct a risk assessment of the economic costs that would come from Internet companies exiting the news market in Canada?

• I don’t know how many times it needs to be said, but since so many are still insisting the opposite is true, I guess many more times: Twitter’s moderation policies were not driven by some anti-conservative bias, nor were they pushed by the government to block Trump or his supporters. We have, of course, discussed all this before, but now the Washington Post got its hands on a video recording of an internal Twitter meeting right before the January 6th attack on the Capitol, in which they discussed how to handle the growing calls for violence.

• The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful tools by jacking up the price on it to unsupportable levels — was about making Reddit more “democratic.”

• A quarter of Twitter users said they ‘are not very or not at all likely to be on Twitter a year from now.’

Censorship/Free Speech

• Despite profound criticism by civil society (ICCL, Amnesty, EDRi, BEUC) and hard push back in the Irish Parliament, Ireland has passed a law that will allow the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) to criminalize anyone sharing information about pending procedures. While the law is not clear and likely unconstitutional, it will be a tool to further put pressure on complainants when they speak up against the Irish DPC. The law was requested by the DPC and aims at silencing non-profits. Despite the passing of this “lex noyb”, noyb will not limit legitimate public speech about cases it is engaged in.

• A few dozen Iraqi protesters on Thursday briefly breached the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, an AFP photographer reported.

• In an application for the permit, one of the men, Salwan Momika, identified by Swedish media as an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden, said he wanted to express his opinion about the Quran by tearing it up and burning it. The police had granted a permit for the demonstration after a Swedish court ruled that banning it would impinge on the right to freedom of speech.

• A military court in Moscow sentenced blogger Roman Ushakov on June 29 to eight years in prison over his comments on Telegram on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. [...]

• Students from two Iranian universities have issued statements of protest following the brutal treatment of a student demonstrator by a security officer at Tehran’s Allameh University.

• The June 26 incident, during which a security officer violently struck a student’s head against stone steps, occurred in the context of a dispute over Iran’s strict dress code enforcement.

• Ilya Yashin was one of the few opposition politicians who chose to remain in Russia after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, despite the clear threat from the Russian authorities. He has openly opposed the war and has spoken publicly about war crimes committed by Russian soldiers — a decision that earned him an 8.5-year prison sentence for spreading “disinformation.” Even from behind bars, though, he’s continued speaking out against the invasion and speaking up for the rights of Russians. On Thursday, June 29, Yashin is turning 40. At Meduza’s request, he wrote about his memory of turning 30 in the Russia of 2013, as well as a message to his fellow citizens. We’re publishing a complete translation of Yashin’s short essay below.

• A crowd of supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr stayed inside the compound for about 15 minutes, then left as security forces deployed, an AFP photographer said.

• “Our constitution is the Koran,” read a message on leaflets carried by the protesters, and a message sprayed on the compound’s gate said “Yes, yes to the Koran”.

• Erdogan accuses Sweden of harboring what he calls “terrorists,” usually either Kurdish activists or supporters of a former ally turned rival of Erdogan’s, Fethullah Gulen. The president has also criticized comparable past demonstrations in Sweden that he deemed to be either anti-Turkey or anti-Islam or both.

• Russia has declared the Latvia-based Novaya Gazeta Europe newspaper an “undesirable” organization amid the government’s ongoing crackdown on civil society and independent organizations.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Hugh also revealed The Telegraph’s coverage of the Wagner rebellion in Russia drove record app subscriptions.

• Over a century after it was first published in 1888, the National Geographic magazine reportedly laid off the last of its staff writers on Wednesday. The magazine that brought the best of science and the natural world to readers in its iconic yellow-bordered monthly publication will also go off newsstands next year, the Washington Post reported.

• A total of 19 writers were let go by the publication as per reports and tweets by several editorial members.

• It remains among the most widely read magazines in America, at a time when magazines are no longer widely read. At the end of 2022, it had just under 1.8 million subscribers, according to the authoritative Alliance for Audited Media.

• National Geographic was launched by Washington’s National Geographic Society, a foundation formed by 33 academics, scientists and would-be adventurers, including Alexander Graham Bell. The magazine was initially sold to the public as a perk for joining the society. It grew into a stand-alone publication slowly but steadily, reaching 1 million subscribers by the 1930s.

• During a program on TELE1, Yanardağ had descrbied Öcalan as “the longest-serving political prisoner in Turkey” and said, “If normal execution laws were in place, he should actually be released. But you are holding him hostage, bargaining with him. You are threatening through him.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• Few accounts of Abdullah’s legacy mentioned his four imprisoned daughters. By the time their father died, Princesses Sahar, Maha, Hala, and Jawaher had been held in captivity for approaching fifteen years, according to several people who stayed in touch with them via a cell-phone connection. The princesses had apparently been locked up soon after their mother, one of the King’s wives, fled to London to escape his control. They were held in the palace grounds in Jeddah, in heavily guarded buildings facing the Red Sea, where they said they were drugged, starved, and denied medical care. News of the princesses’ confinement broke in 2014, when Sahar and Jawaher contacted journalists. But the story drew no help from world leaders, and the princesses remained trapped inside the palace.

• France approved a new law Thursday requiring social media platforms like TikTok to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for those under 15 years in an effort to protect children online.

• TikTok is funding the user-filed lawsuit against the Montana ban on the social media app. Here’s the latest. A report from The New York Times confirms that five creators on the platform who sued the state over the ban are having their legal bills financed by TikTok.

• There are some fairly strict rules about communicating with government agency employees regarding some matter that they’re adjudicating, without making those communications public. We want whatever administrative state we have to have any attempts to influence outcomes to be public for all to see. That’s why agencies have rules regarding what’s known as “ex parte” communications, when someone tries to communicate with someone adjudicating some sort of dispute about that dispute.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Google says it plans to remove Canadian news links from its search results and other major products once Canada’s hotly contested Online News Act takes effect in the coming months. The bold show of force comes less than one week after Meta announced it would cut off Canadian users’ access to news links on Facebook and Instagram to protest the law. Big Tech is engaged in a high-stakes game of tech policy chicken with the Australian government. News organizations and millions of Canadian Internet users are caught in the middle of it.

• For years we’ve noted how cable companies routinely screw you over with all manner of bullshit fees. One Consumer Reports study found that roughly 25 percent of your cable bill is made up of completely nonsensical fees, designed to let companies advertise one rate, then sock you with a much higher bill. It’s estimated this false advertising nets the cable industry an extra $28 billion in additional revenue annually.

• DMG Media, which owns the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Mail Online, Metro, the i and the New Scientist, and the News Media Association, which represents news publishers across the UK, both mentioned the possibility of Apple paying for news in written submissions made to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee.

• Press Gazette asked three senior news industry sources whether their organisations would be pushing for Apple to be impelled to strike cash-for-content deals. Two said they would be, though one wasn’t sure it was “realistic”. The third did not indicate their publisher would target Apple, but said they thought it was a “possibility” that the tech giant could in the future be forced to pay for news.

• This week the Biden administration basically re-announced the $42.5 billion in broadband funding that will soon start flowing to the states to shore up U.S. broadband access. Despite press reports that this funding is somehow new, it came as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Monopolies

• Sony highly confidential information about its PlayStation business has just been revealed by mistake. As part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, Sony supplied a document from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan that includes redacted details on the margins Sony shares with publishers, its Call of Duty revenues, and even the cost of developing some of its games.

• It looks like someone redacted the documents with a black Sharpie — but when you scan them in, it’s easy to see some of the redactions. Oops.

• In his letter, Bitran wrote that his organization told the two parties of its disapproval in early May. Its primary point of concern was that the merger was “likely to result in a substantial prevention and/or lessening of competition with respect to gaming consoles and multigame subscription services.”

Patents

• On June 27, 2023, less than two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claim of U.S. Patent 7,685,436, owned by Lionra Technologies Ltd, an Atlantic IP entity. The ‘436 patent relates to a security processor and has been asserted against Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, and Cisco.

• In a technically complex infringement case, Barcelona Commercial Court no. 1 establishes ad hoc procedural rules for quantification of damages at the enforcement stage. This sheds light on the procedure applicable to follow-on damage quantification proceedings, which are a critical element of enforcement strategy.

• The Administrative Committee of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has unanimously decided to establish a section of the UPC’s Central Division in Milan, as a replacement for London.

• In March 2023, the UK High Court decided on FRAND licensing and terms in the telecommunication dispute between InterDigital and mobile device manufacturer Lenovo (case ID: [2023] EWHC 538 (Pat)).

Trademarks

• We’ve spent a good deal of time talking about burger chain In-N-Out’s habit for engaging in trademark tourism all over the globe. If you’re not familiar with how this works, the company will apply for a trademark in various countries, all of which typically have use requirements in order to maintain the mark, and then host a pop-up shop every few years in order to satisfy that requirement. At no point has In-N-Out ever had any real presence outside of the United States, and yet they hold trademarks in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. It is, to use the legal phrase, absolute bullshit.

Copyrights

• That blatant asymmetry is a great demonstration of how the enforcement system is tilted in favour of copyright companies, and against the general public who so often are framed as its enemies. It means that a constant drip of bogus takedowns can be used to wear down the goodwill and patience of online benefactors like James Stanley until they give up in frustration. We are all the poorer as a consequence.

• A new lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI is alleging that the buzzy Silicon Valley firm’s AI training practices violated the privacy and copyright of — well, of pretty much everyone who’s ever posted anything online.

• To train its powerful AI language models, OpenAI utilized an incredible amount of data scraped from various corners of the web. Although OpenAI doesn’t even know exactly what its systems are trained on, those datasets include everything from Wikipedia articles and famous novels to social media posts and incredibly niche erotica — and OpenAI didn’t ask permission for any of it.

• The class action suit, filed in California, alleges that failing to follow proper procurement guidelines, including seeking the consent of those who produced that content in the first place, amounts to straight-up data theft.

• Movie companies known for aggressively tracking down alleged pirates in pursuit of settlements have been denied permission to proceed in a reverse class action in Canada. A Federal Court judge said the plaintiffs’ plan, which envisaged using ISPs and the country’s notice-and-notice scheme to communicate with alleged BitTorrent pirates, would be illegal.

• A U.S. federal court in Arizona has sentenced a YouTube Content ID scammer to 70 months in prison, to be followed by three years of probation. Jose Teran was part of an operation that raked in over $24 million by falsely claiming ownership of unmonetized third-party music on the platform. The alleged leader of the scam will be sentenced in a few weeks.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• I have been spending a lot of time in meatspace, not by choice. Too much going on and I am just trying to survive. At least all of this is just temporary, just like everything. Even June, almost gone. Just temporary.

Technology and Free Software

• I tried again to install the network driver for my Thinkpad in ReactOS and – weirdly – it worked without any hassle. What did i do wrong the first time i tried to install various drivers? I have no idea, but nevertheless now i can go online. If i find time on the weekend i will create a backup image of the system in the current state and try to reinstall everything to find out what had gone wrong the last time… would be nice to know for the next time i have to setup the system.

• The only thing i am still missing is sound… but somehow i think this will also be fixable.

Programming

• This is the eleventh in a planned series of posts (well, twelfth if you count the announcement) where I’ll share my experience writing smolver, my Gemini server software, written in Swift.

• You can find the previous iterations below.

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