● 07.01.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 01/07/2023: PostgreSQL 16 Beta 2 and EasyOS 5.4.5

Posted in News Roundup at 8:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Linux Magazine

• The current RawTherapee version finally adds selective image editing, among other long-desired features, to help it compete with king of the hill, darktable.

• Audacity is a free, open source, easy-to-use, multitrack audio recording and editing tool perfect for podcasts.

• The most terminal pager offers a feature-rich, better organized alternative to less.

• In kernel news: Rust in Linux; and Compiler and Kernel Frenemies.

• Instead of the coach determining the team lineup, an algorithm selects the players based on their strengths for Mike Schilli’s amateur soccer team.

• NetBox is a single source of information on your network where you can store all those important details that used to get lost.

• The Reddit blackout is big in the news as I write this column.

• The Fyne toolkit offers a simple way to build native apps that work across multiple platforms. We show you how to build a to-do list app to demonstrate Fyne’s power.

• We look at a broadcast video system network that uses Python code to control a video router and check out another program that creates a scoreboard.

• The next-generation laptop from TUXEDO is faster and lighter than previous business models.

• Updates on technologies, trends, and tools

• Linux Mint 21.1 and openSUSE Leap 15.5

• The command-line fdupes tool helps you find duplicate folders and directories.

• Earlier technologies have persisted despite government regulations – so will AI.

• If you use Linux, you already have most of the tools you need to get in the podcast game. Just plan carefully and take it a step at a time.

• Once you get your podcast operation up and running, you might decide you want a real mixer and some higher-end software. We’ll introduce you to Ardour and get you started with some basic audio hardware.

• This month Graham looks at wallabag, Read It Later, killport, F3D, Tenacity, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, botany, and more!

• This month in Linux Voice and Elvie.

• Rüben Rúdríguez discusses Trisquel, a free Linux distro that has been in continuous development for the past 16 years.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Welcome to the 508th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack.

Applications

• Festival is a graphical music player for local album collections. It’s written in Rust and published under an open source license.

• Hyper is one of our most highly rated terminal emulators. It’s an Electron-based terminal built on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• June 2023 updates to the largest compilation of recommended free and open source software available for Linux.

• This article spotlights alternative tools to awk, software specialized for textual data manipulation.

• Opal is a small utility that’s designed to do one thing — listen to relaxing background music. It’s written in Java.

Instructionals/Technical

• CPU cores are essential for effectively processing data and carrying out computations in the world of computers.

• From apt-add-repository to Software & Updates tool, here are several ways to remove software repositories from Ubuntu.

• Learn how to create a new systemd service on Linux with this step-by-step guide.

• Linux Kernel 6.4 was released a few days ago. Ubuntu users can now install it from Kernel Mainline PPA.

• A simple guide to fix the no suitable archive manager found error in Linux distributions, including Arch Linux. The “No Suitable Archive Manager Found” error can be frustrating when extracting or opening compressed files on your computer.

• Bash, an acronym for Bourne Again SHell, is a command-line interpreter that provides a multi-functional interface for users to interact with operating systems. One of the most versatile built-in commands in Bash is the read command.

• In the realm of Bash scripting, understanding the built-in commands and their functionalities is crucial. One such command, the wait command, plays a pivotal role in managing process execution. This command pauses the current shell’s execution until specified jobs have completed, and then returns the exit status of the command it was waiting for.>

• Looking to run Windows-only software on Ubuntu? Wine is your friend. Learn to install Wine in Ubuntu Linux.

• There is discussion of a couple of flatpaks here, and failure to register with flathub.org:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=9038

• There is a fault in Flapi; if failed to register with flathub.org, Flapi should not have then been allowed to download and install apps. Federico was getting the failure, then continued to download apps, which then did not work.

• For most project members, it is probably not feasible to download a ZIP file of all the project files every time a new feature gets updated or added. To solve this, Linus Torvalds created Git in 2005. It is a free and open-source version control software that makes collaborating on projects effortless. In this article, we will walk you through the process of installing Git on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) and earlier releases.

• systemd is the service manager for a lot of well-known Linux distributions. A service is a unit of a program that typically runs in the background. Services, by nature, automatically start up as soon as the system boots up and can run unattended.

• If you need to create an auto-starting task or program that executes every time you boot or reboot your system, you can consider creating a new service. Let’s learn how to create a new, custom systemd service on Linux.

• In this tutorial, we are going to explain in step-by-step detail how to install Icinga 2 on Ubuntu 22.04 Icinga is a free and open-source monitoring tool used for sending alerts when failures occur on the servers.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install CentOS stream 9 on your machine.

• Instead of hopping to Linux Mint, why not just Install the Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop in Ubuntu and enjoy the best of both worlds?

• In this guide, you will learn how to set up Nginx FastCGI cache on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa LTS. The FastCGI cache is an integral component when optimizing your web server’s performance. Nginx, renowned for its efficiency and scalability, can be further bolstered by configuring its FastCGI cache.

• Python is a versatile and widely-used programming language. This article sheds light on Python 3.9 and guides you through its installation on Debian 12 Bookworm, Debian 11 Bullseye, and Debian 10 Buster by downloading the Python 3.9 archive, as repositories seldom host this version owing to its age.

• Grub Customizer, a powerful tool designed for managing and customizing the GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) and BURG bootloaders, enables you to take charge of your system’s startup process. >

• In this TechRepublic How to Make Tech Work video, Jack Wallen shows how to stop and remove all Docker containers at once with just two simple commands.

• In this TechRepublic How to Make Tech Work video, Jack Wallen shows how to stop and remove all Docker containers at once with just two simple commands.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• We’re about halfway through year! This update is a bit smaller than usual, and more focused on applications than Plasma. This isn’t for lack of time or trying, but I tried to deliberately clear out my backlog. That goal didn’t really pan out, but I’ll be trying again next month.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• Newcomers are recommended to read the 5.4 announcement:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202306/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-54-released.html

• Release notes for 5.4.5 here:

• https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.4.5/release-notes.htm

• KaOS 2023.06 comes a little over two months after the KaOS 2023.04 snapshot, which celebrated the project’s 10th anniversary by offering users a dedicated ISO image with an early preview of the upcoming KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment series.

• This new ISO release continues this tradition to offer adventurous users a new KDE Plasma 6 preview ISO image. However, once again, the devs warn users that this ISO is not installable as the Calamares graphical installer is not yet ready for Qt 6/Plasma 6 and that there are only a few apps built against the Qt 6 framework.

• Read on

SUSE/OpenSUSE

Dominique Leuenberger ☛ openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2023/26Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,We have just finished week 26, meaning half of the year is over. This week was a ‘super fast’ one for Tumbleweed: in the 7 days since the last review we published 9 snapshots. Go figure! The 9 snapshots covered this week are 0621…0629.The most relevant changes that were delivered during this week were:IceWM 3.4.0Node.JS 20.3.1AppArmor 3.1.6PHP 8.2.7firewalls 2.0.0strace 6.4transactional-update 4.3.0As you come to expect, staging projects are filled up and the following few things are being worked on and tested: [...]

• SUSE has issued an official statement in response to the growing concern in Open Source circles due to Red Hat’s actions. Here’s what they said.

• During June, NemoMobile made significant strides in its development and community engagement. A talk about NemoMobile was presented at DevConf, allowing attendees to interact with the platform at the mobile Linux stand. A demo showcased the integration of GPS and Bluetooth OBD2. In addition, Michal took the initiative to work on repackaging NemoMobile for openSUSE.

Fedora Family / IBM

Michael Meeks: 2023-06-30 Friday Also read RedHat Open Source commitment. I have a number of thoughts:First what we do: Collabora Online source is open – our releases are tags in a public git repo, which we also link from help->about – that helps us support people better, and makes everything super transparent.But – I have huge sympathy with this sentiment; emphasis mine:“The generally accepted position that these free rebuilds are just funnels churning out RHEL experts and turning into sales just isn’t reality. I wish we lived in that world, but it’s not how it actually plays out”.

• Ultramarine Linux 38 is a Fedora-based Linux distro that offers a slew of features and software ideal for Linux newcomers.

• The developers market Ultramarine Linux 38 as a personal workstation tailor-made for Windows dropouts. If you plan to switch to Linux and want an experience similar to Windows to avoid a culture shock, this may be the distribution for you.

• Maintaining the kernel of an enterprise distro is not only hard work, it also involves conflicting goals.

• A talk by Red Hat Principal Kernel Engineer Jiří Benc at this year’s DevConf.cz event covered some of the inherent contradictions in keeping an enterprise distro’s kernel on its feet. Or at least on somebody – or something’s – feet, as its title hinted: “CentOS Frankenkernel: Append Your Limb.”

• The Register reports from Jiří Benc’s DevConf.cz talk on the making of the CentOS Stream kernel.

• Excuse my tone this time because my heart doesn’t want RHEL to be inaccessible to hobbyists. The free RHEL developer license is just whataboutism and dilutes the enthusiasm felt by the broader hobbyists’ and tinkerers’ community compared to when true RHEL clones existed.

• This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

• Red Hat has announced the RHEL 7 will gain four years of extended support as organizations are saying they need more time to upgrade. Organizations are grappling with the shift to work from home.

Debian Family

• Apart from including the updated packages from Debian 12, the new Peppermint OS release comes with various improvements and refreshed artwork, including updated branding, a new theme for the Plymouth boot splash screen, as well as new Marawaita themes and Tela icons.

• On top of that, the Welcome screen and Peppermint Hub have been updated to remove or add new features based on user feedback, Kumo received a simplified GUI and it now uses the Lua programming language, and the neofetch was adjusted to use the basic output without a logo.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• It’s been a while coming, but the beta of Linux Mint 21.2, codenamed “Victoria”, is here with a new version of the Cinnamon desktop among other updated features to enjoy.

• The news is spread across no fewer than nine pages, with separate announcements, lists of known bugs, and features lists for each desktop. Download links can be found in the respective beta announcement pages.

• Linux Mint is one of the most heavily recommended Linux distros available, especially for users switching from Windows. Does Linux Mint live up to that reputation? Is it an equally good option for Mac users? How does it stack up for more experienced Linux users?

• In this entry in our Linux Distro Reviews series, we’re taking a deep dive into Linux Mint and answering those questions.

• Today, Ubuntu-maker Canonical announces a comprehensive redesign of its Snapcraft.io platform. The online store, known for its collection of “snaps” — software packages designed for Linux distributions — has taken a major leap forward, moving away from its long-standing user interface and style. The redesign project, which Snapcraft.io embarked upon after numerous years of maintaining a consistent aesthetic, has been executed with the aim of modernizing the overall look and feel of the platform.

• Starting with Ubuntu 24.04, there will be a version of the desktop constructed entirely of snap packages, also known as snaps. This project is currently known as Ubuntu Core Desktop.

• But how does using a Snap-only version of the Ubuntu desktop impact you? What changes should you expect, and should you dive in right away or hold on to the traditional Ubuntu desktop a while longer?

Devices/Embedded

• The Indiedroid Nova is a single board computer with the same form factor as the popular Raspberry Pi 4B and powered by the Rockchip RK3588S SoC. This SBC supports up to 16GB of RAM and offers 8K video capability.

• The Indiedroid Nova is equipped with the Rockchip RK3588S System-on-Chip (SoC) similarly as the NanoPi R6C and the Khadas Edge 2.

• The latest updates section of the product page mentions that the board supports Armbian, Ubuntu, Debian and it might officially support DietPi in the near future. For more information, refer to the Indiedroid wiki pages.

Open Hardware/Modding

• There’s now a microATX motherboard and workstation for native RISC-V development based on the SOPHON SG2042 64-core RISC-V C920 processor with up to 128GB DDR4 memory, various SATA and M.2 NVMe interfaces for storage, three PCIe x16 slot for expansion and more. I remember a few years ago, there was a lot of talk about making a workstation for native Arm development instead of relying on x86 machines, cross-compilation, and emulation. So we got hardware like the HoneyComb LX2K, Ampere eMAG, and more recently the ADLINK Ampere Altra Dev Kit to achieve this goal.

• A wholly AI-designed RISC-V CPU was created from scratch in five hours and booted Linux, performing on par with an i486.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• You might have already read my blog titled ‘Running PostmarketOS on my phone’. After running pmOS on phone, my mind kept talking “run Debian”. So I started preparing for that.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• In the June 2023 survey we received responses from 1,106,671,903 sites across 255,487,423 domains and 12,106,503 web-facing computers. This reflects a loss of 2.7 million sites, 16.0 million domains, and an increase of 69,309 web-facing computers.

Mozilla

• Apart from being the new ESR series, which will slowly replace the Firefox 102 ESR series, Firefox 115 is here to introduce hardware-accelerated video decoding for Intel GPUs on Linux systems using the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) open-source application programming interface that allows apps to use hardware video acceleration capabilities.

• Another cool new feature for Linux users in the Firefox 115 release is the ability to open links or search for text that has been copied on your clipboard by middle-clicking on the New Tab button. This is a productivity feature as you no longer have to open a new tab and paste the copied text or link you want to search/open.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the second beta release of PostgreSQL 16 is now available for download. This release contains previews of all features that will be available when PostgreSQL 16 is made generally available, though some details of the release can change during the beta period.

• The founders of FerretDB, an Open Source document database using PostgreSQL as the database backend, is working with different stakeholders on developing a standard for document databases, the same way as SQL was created as a standard for relational databases in the 1980s, with the objective of reducing the risk of vendor lock-in for users.

Programming/Development

• Today we’re going to explain the versioning system we’re using to release new features to the SCM/CI integration. Versioning the Workflow Configuration We are introducing the versioning as a way to release new features in the SCM/CI without breaking existing user’s configuration. Those features are going to be released under a MAJOR.MINOR version scheme.

• We started working on libblockdev 3.0 nearly four years ago and definitely thought it would be ready way sooner than now. The difference between 3.0 and our legacy 2.x-branch is 997 commits and 205 files changed with 29382 insertions(+) and 17565 deletions(-).

• Many thanks to all contributors that made this release possible.

• And now I guess I should start working on libblockdev 4. See you in a few years.

Python

• The “math.inf”, “np.inf”, “float()” function, and “decimal” modules are utilized to represent positive and negative infinity values in Python.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Bash scripting is a crucial skill for developers, system administrators, and anyone else who needs to automate tasks on Unix or Linux systems. Occasionally, you’ll need to use a single quote (‘) within a string in a bash script.

• Bash, short for Bourne Again SHell, is the default command-line interpreter for many Linux distributions and MacOS. It provides a way for users to interact with these operating systems by executing commands. However, bash also includes a number of special characters that have unique meanings.

Standards/Consortia

• This month marks the 20th anniversary of the effort that became the Atom feed format. It all began on June 16, 2003,

Leftovers

Science

• For the first time we’re seeing the Milky Way in ghost vision.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• When last we encountered evidence-based medicine (EBM) maven and critic of oncology clinical trials and FDA licensure of chemotherapeutic agents turned COVID-19 contrarian, antimasker, and anti-COVID vaccine advocate Dr. Vinay Prasad, he was defending longtime antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., saying, in essence, that he agrees with most of of RFK Jr.‘s positions, especially about big pharma, regulatory capture, and and corruption other than his peskily embarrassing (to him) belief that childhood vaccines cause autism. (That, and he was also denying yet again that he was antivaccine.) As you might recall, what struck me about Dr. Prasad’s post was how much he bent over backwards to portray RFK Jr. as “reasonable” other than a couple of bizarre ideas—his pesky adherence to the the discredited idea that vaccines cause autism again!—even someone as someone who could be persuaded that, for instance, vaccines don’t cause autism and the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine is safe with some well-designed placebo-controlled clinical trials and an expanded vaccine safety monitoring system.

• The French Senate approved new legislation on Thursday requiring social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram to implement mandatory age verification systems and obtain explicit parental consent for users aged 15 and below. The move comes amid a growing international crackdown on the platforms lack of privacy protections for users.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Windows TCO

• Additionally, the ransomware group said it would delay the data leak by 24 hours if it were paid US$5000.

• Commenting on the incident, Lior Yaari, chief executive and co-founder of Grip Security, an Israeli cyber security start-up that provides SaaS visibility, governance and data security, said: “This breach is a great example of why machine identities are just as important as employee identities. Data is everywhere and accessed from anywhere by anybody.

• “Companies which are able to secure employee and machine identities will be more secure than those that cannot.

• “The securing of identities beyond the enterprise border to your suppliers or partners is increasingly important.

• LockBit ransomware group claims to have hacked TSMC and is asking for a $70 million ransom, but the chip giant says only a supplier was breached.

• Weekly cybersecurity news roundup that provides a summary of noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar for the week of June 26, 2023.

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (docker-registry, flask, systemd, and trafficserver), Fedora (moodle, python-reportlab, suricata, and vim), Red Hat (go-toolset and golang, go-toolset-1.19 and go-toolset-1.19-golang, go-toolset:rhel8, open-vm-tools, python27:2.7, and python3), SUSE (buildah, chromium, gifsicle, libjxl, sqlite3, and xonotic), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-allwinner, linux-allwinner-5.19, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.19, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.19, linux-hwe-5.19, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-starfive, linux-starfive-5.19, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke, linux-gke-5.15, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, and linux-oem-6.1).

• An area hospital has been working for over a month now to resolve a cyberattack and progress is being made.

• Mountain View Hospital has managed to restore clinical functions for itself, Idaho Falls Community Hospital and its partner clinics. The IT team and other cybersecurity experts have now turned their attention to administrative functions.

• Even though much of the hospital’s functions have returned, it’s not clear when all operations will be fully restored following the cyberattack.

• At least 100,000 people could have had their data compromised by a hack of contractors at the Department of Health and Human Services, a department official said Thursday, making it the latest US government agency to be caught up in a sweeping cyberattack connected to Russian cybercriminals.

• HHS notified Congress of the breach on Tuesday and will update lawmakers as the investigation continues, the official said. Agencies are required to notify Congress of a data breach that involves the compromise of personal information of 100,000 or more people.

• Details of the 2021 breach that resulted in data being sold on a marketplace are included in the regulator’s decision. It reports that the breach involved Agape’s Online Drive and not FHG’s system. The personal data of 156,900 FHG customers (133,866 direct patients and 23,034 employees of FHG’s corporate clients) was accessed without authorization in the Incident, although the exact volume of exfiltrated personal data was unknown.

• SolarWinds Corporation, which suffered a major breach of its Orion software platform in December 2020, submitted a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on June 23rd, saying the enforcement staff of the SEC provided the company with a Wells Notice related to its investigation into the cyber incident.

• A Wells Notice is a letter the SEC generally issues to organizations or individuals when it is planning to take action against them.

• On April 18, DataBreaches reported that more details had emerged on the arrest of three men by Dutch police in January. The three were suspected of hacking and extorting victims in the Netherlands and elsewhere, obtaining and selling data online, and money laundering. A fourth person linked to the suspects known as “DataBox” had previously been arrested in November 2022 and had been detained with restrictions until the arrest of the other three in January. DataBox, whose real name is Erkan Sezgin, has subsequently been sentenced in a separate case, and may be facing other charges in connection with alleged crimes by the others.

• It’s the gut-wrenching question many hospital leaders have faced as healthcare systems have endured scores of ransomware attacks in recent years.

• Large health systems, including CommonSpirit Health, have encountered ransomware attacks, but experts say smaller hospitals and systems are increasingly at risk.

• Multiple remotely exploitable denial of service (DoS) and code execution vulnerabilities have been found in the VLC multimedia player and streamer. These bugs have been classified as ”high-severity” by the National Vulnerability Database due to their high confidentiality, integrity and availability impact.

• We have released the uri gem version 0.12.2, 0.10.3 that has a security fix for a ReDoS vulnerability.

• This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2023-36617.

• Multiple SQL injection vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Gentoo Soko that could lead to remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable systems. “These SQL injections happened despite the use of an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) library and prepared statements,” SonarSource researcher Thomas Chauchefoin said , adding they could result in RCE on Soko because of a “misconfiguration of the database.”

• A ransomware operation known as Akira has been seen encrypting VMware ESXi virtual machines using a Linux encryptor after a couple of months of targeting Windows systems.

• Wyman, who previously served as Washington state’s top election official, will step down as CISA’s top election security adviser.

• A Dozor-Teleport CJSC executive told ComNews that the company has been the victim of a cyberattack affecting its cloud infrastructure.

• Attackers exploit critical vulnerability in the Ultimate Member plugin to create administrative accounts on WordPress websites.

• Proton makes its open source Proton Pass password manager globally available for major browsers and mobile devices.

• Agentless Linux security with unmatched speed and reliability

• CISA adds 6 Samsung mobile device flaws to its known exploited vulnerabilities catalog and they have likely been exploited by a spyware vendor.

Privacy/Surveillance

• The Washington Post is reporting that the US is spying on the UN Secretary General.

• Lots of details about different conversations in the article, which are based on classified documents leaked on Discord by Jack Teixeira.

• Privacy laws serve as vital guardrails against the potential abuse of personal information in an increasingly interconnected world. As a nationwide organization dedicated to defending civil liberties, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recognizes the paramount importance of privacy in today’s digital age, and we firmly believe that transparency and accountability are necessary to protect all of our rights to privacy.

• Right now, Americans risk being tracked and surveilled without any notice every time we open an app, walk into a store carrying a phone, or do an online search. As Congress works to draft a comprehensive privacy law, states are trying to fill that critical gap by passing their own privacy legislation. In response to this evolving landscape of privacy laws, including the new Colorado Privacy Act that goes into effect on July 1, the ACLU has developed an updated and comprehensive privacy policy to adhere to the values we hold dear.

• Airports are slated to become more seamless and efficient, a new report finds, even as they get busier and larger to meet growing demand.

Defence/Aggression

• Two security forces members were killed when a man opened fire at Chisinau International Airport in Moldova after he was denied entry into the small southeastern European nation, authorities said on June 30.

• A Tajik national who allegedly fatally shot two security officers at Moldova’s main international airport is wanted in his native country in relation to the kidnapping of a local bank official, Tajik authorities said.

• Piracy and maritime crime continued to decline in the Gulf of Guinea last year, largely in response to heightened regional and international anti-piracy efforts, but this has pushed pirates into other criminal enterprises, such as oil theft and drug trafficking.

• The UN Security Council called on the parties to exercise maximum restraint and prevent any breaches of the ceasefire and the area of separation.

• China enacted legislation on Wednesday pertaining to international relations and strengthening its ability to impose “countermeasures” against foreign actors. The new law aims to deter sanctions against the nation and includes provisions outlining retaliatory measures against actions that could undermine China’s independence and national security.

• Vietnam denies it sent drones and critics see move as attempt to rally voters ahead of July 23 election.

• Traditional bonds of friendship unite Russia and Africa.

• Journalists from Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique will visit the Eurasian country to learn how their Russian colleagues work.

• Since the conflict in Sudan broke out in April, hundreds of rapes have been reported by civilians and NGOs, with women from ethnic minorities being particularly targeted. In mid-June, two extremely shocking videos emerged of rapes being carried out in North Khartoum. Our Observers condemn the systemic use of sexual violence in Darfur, where ethnic tensions are rife.

• The brazen but brief rebellion that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin launched in Russia at the weekend, and the deal he cut with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end it, clearly have large implications for Wagner in Africa. What these are, however, is harder to say.

• The UN Security Council on Friday ended a decade-old peacekeeping mission in Mali, whose military junta has aligned with Russia and demanded the withdrawal of the international force battling jihadists.

• Japan’s Defense Ministry said late on June 30 that it had spotted two Russian Navy ships in the waters near Taiwan and Japan’s Okinawa islands in the previous four days.

• July 01, 2023 1:20 PM

• Japan said it dispatched two vessels to monitor the Russian ships.

• Russia’s Justice Ministry has declared veteran rock musician Boris Grebenshchikov, who currently resides outside of Russia, a “foreign agent.”

War in Ukraine

• Masha Gessen and Joshua Yaffa on the aftermath of the “coup” by the Wagner Group leader, and what lies ahead for Vladimir Putin. Plus, Carrie Battan on the summer’s hottest ticket.

• The visit’s purpose was to discuss damage to the environment caused by the Russian invasion.

• Russia’s internal crisis creates a period of uncertainty that could affect events beyond Russia’s borders. The challenge for the U.S.: to balance its concerns with an openness to military and diplomatic opportunities.

• Xi Jinping needs Vladimir Putin to remain in power, and Russia to maintain stability, to help uphold the countries’ shared interests and to keep challenging the United States.

• Vasily Golubev, the governor of Russia’s Rostov region, whose capital city was briefly captured by Wagner Group forces on June 24, said Friday that he’s skeptical of reports that city residents supported the mercenaries.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s handling of a rebellion shows he remains firmly in control, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban told Axel Springer (Bild) in a rare interview. “When it is managed in 24 hours, it’s a signal of being strong,” Orban added.

• The Hungarian nationalist leader was referring to the Wagner paramilitary group’s recent rebellion, but he says he did not “see any major importance to that event.”  Orban, who has been criticized for his close ties with Putin said, “Russia operates differently than we do. But the structures in Russia are very stable. It’s based on the army, secret service, and police. It’s a military-oriented, minded country.”

• Belarus’s internationally isolated leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka has urged Belarusians not to “worry” about the presumed arrival of Wagner mercenaries after their aborted mutiny in Russia, as satellite imagery emerged of a tent camp springing up in the east.

• The Biden administration has taken pains to emphasize that it viewed the matter as an internal Russian affair.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt showed the possibility of a Russia after Vladimir Putin — and how pro-democracy forces may not be the ones that take over.

• The former CIA analyst dives into the complexities of assessing a country like Russia within the US government as he did briefing seven U.S. presidents.

• Experts say plotters’ most crucial task is to convince other soldiers and officers that success is assured. Plus, our columnist’s recommendations for reading up on coups, and modern Russia.

• Now that Yevgeny Prigozhin has left the battlefield, who will tell Russians the truth?

• CIA Director William Burns called Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin after last week’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in it, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported.

• President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered top military commanders on Friday to strengthen Ukraine’s northern military sector following the arrival of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group fighters in Belarus. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow would emerge from the aftermath of the Wagner mercenary group’s aborted rebellion “stronger” than before.

• Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced Friday they uncovered new evidence that Ukraine used banned landmines and other illegal artillery against Russian troops. In a news release published on their website, HRW reported that they found artillery rockets that they allege are Ukrainian.

• Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked the websites of RIA FAN, Politics Today, Economy Today, Neva News, and People’s News online media outlets for their ties to the rebellious leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, after his aborted armed march to Moscow last week.

• A court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on June 30 sentenced antiwar activist Aleksei Gashev to 10 years in prison for throwing Molotov cocktails at a military recruitment center in the city of Perm last year with his colleague Mikhail Sokolov.

• The Supreme Court of Norway has canceled the acquittal of Andrei Yakunin, the son of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s longtime confidants, who was found not guilty in December of violating a Norwegian law that bars Russian citizens from flying drones in the country.

• Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anušauskas, who is in Ukraine right now, has briefed his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov on Lithuania’s long-term plan to support the Ukrainian army and informed him about the latest support package.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will not attend the Vilnius NATO Summit if leaders do not show “courage” to start Ukraine’s accession process, his chief diplomatic advisor has said.

• Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the Kremlin’s staunchest ally in its war in Ukraine, said on June 30 that he was certain Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployed in his country would never be used.

• Ukraine’s top diplomat said Kyiv is fighting long-lasting prejudices and misunderstandings about the consequences of his war-torn country joining NATO — and criticized Germany’s former Chancellor Angela Merkel for blocking a membership bid 15 years ago.

• Russian and Ukrainian forces were battling throughout eastern and southern Ukraine as Kyiv asserted a possible shift in the strategic balance, while a U.S. report hinted at Ukrainian hopes for a possible endgame that could lead to peace talks in the 15-month-old full-scale Russian invasion.

• FM Lavrov explained that only 2.5 percent of over 32.5 million tons of Ukrainian grain have been exported to countries in need.

• First they were spirited off to camps, or evacuated from cities under siege. Then they were made into Russians without history or provenance.

• Ukrainian officials have tried to tamp down concerns while heralding their preparations, with President Volodymyr Zelensky nodding to plans for reinforcing the border.

• Avdiivka, Ukraine, once had a prewar population of about 30,000. By March, only around 1,700 people remained.

• Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov of Russia warned the Western countries helping Ukraine not to think that the Wagner group’s mutiny had undermined Moscow’s power.

• The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal addressed the UN Security Council on the role of US military aid to Ukraine in escalating the conflict with Russia and the real motives behind Washington’s support for Kiev’s proxy war.

• Russia’s Justice Ministry has added Boris Grebenshchikov, the lead singer of the rock group Aquarium, to its list of “foreign agents.” The Justice Ministry said Grebenshchikov was included for performing concerts abroad “in order to provide financial aid to Ukraine,” and for voicing his opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The ministry also said that the musician receives foreign sources of funding.

• The State Police in Rīga detained a man who distributed devices intended for the retransmission of banned Russian television channels, the police said on June 30.

• A deadly Russian missile strike on a cafe in Kramatorsk leaves a dozen dead and more injured. Post-mutiny, Wagner’s future in Africa is up in the air.

• Nearly a week after the Wagner Group rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the paramilitary group is continuing to recruit fighters to join the war against Ukraine, BBC News Russia reported on Friday. And according to journalists who called the company’s recruitment hotlines, new members sign contracts with Wagner Group itself, not with the Russian Defense Ministry.

• After launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army effectively leveled the city of Mariupol before capturing it and starting to replace the buildings it destroyed. While the pro-Kremlin media regularly reports on how the occupied city is “coming back to life,” the Russian Internet has filled with advertisements for real estate there. The St. Petersburg outlet Bumaga spoke to Russians who are seeking homes and apartments in the city. Meduza is publishing an abridged translation of Bumaga’s report.

• Between September 2021 and February 2022, Belgian photographer Aurélien Goubau made a series of trips to Murmansk, Russia. Knowing little about Russia, its politics, or its people, and inspired by a radio report he heard about the Znamya project, in which Russian scientists sought to light up the northern sky through giant mirrors in space in the 1990s, he set off to use Murmansk’s near-perpetual darkness as a metaphorical lens through which to explore the lives of the city’s inhabitants. And while his original intention was to discover contemporary Russia from a “naive perspective,” the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine both forced him to reckon with Russia’s realities and imbued his own Znamya project with new meaning. Nonetheless, Goubau says that his attitudes towards the people he photographed has not changed, even if his attitude to the country as a whole has.

• It’s been less than a week since Prigozhin launched his “march of justice,” leaving the frontlines in Ukraine, capturing Rostov, and parading toward Moscow, before abruptly turning around — all within the span of 24 hours. While the full impacts of the insurrection remain to be seen, the rebellion has raised many questions about Putin’s hold on power, whether his grip is as tight as was once thought, and what it all means for Russia’s war in Ukraine. In an interview with independent outlet Verstka, Russian historian Andrey Zubov explains how Prigozhin’s march demonstrated the lack of support for Putin among both the population and the elite, and the possibility for a quick change of hand in the Kremlin, making apt historical comparisons to other key moments in Russian history. Meduza in English is publishing an abridged translation of the interview.

• It was the 14th arrest stemming from the dismantling of what officials say was a plot to sabotage arms shipments to Ukraine.

• On Russian state media, the Ukrainian military is portrayed as completely outmatched and dependent on the West.

• Host and Nonresident Senior Fellow Alia Brahimi speaks with renowned Russia expert Mark Galeotti about the Wagner Group rebellion and what it means for Putin and beyond.

Environment

• The best parts of southern summers are becoming unbearable.

• Blistering heat has gripped the northern part of the country, leading to concerns about people’s health and the energy grid.

Energy/Transportation

• The mining industry’s angst about community resistance, sustainability and the need for automation to save workers’ lives are discussions the chemicals sector was having decades ago.

• Sanjeev Gandhi, CEO of chemicals and explosives giant Orica, says artificial intelligence (AI) may be new but the chemicals industry is far advanced.

• The UK’s Climate Innovation Forum named global PR agency Weber Shandwick as its “official communications partner,” despite the agency recently holding or continuing to hold contracts with at least eight oil and gas companies, an oil financier, and an industry lobby group.

• On Wednesday, June 28, the climate conference convened in London as part of London Climate Action Week, hosted by the UK-based global event organizer Climate Action in partnership with the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. The Climate Innovation Forum describes the UK’s net-zero transition as an “urgent existential imperative and a significant commercial opportunity.” Climate Action did not respond to a request for comment.

Wildlife/Nature

• Ignited in a brushy area due to energy transmission lines, the fire was contained by yesterday evening.

• The heat wave scorching much of the U.S., along with dangerously poor air quality from wildfire smoke, is giving Americans a preview of the compound climate disasters that experts fear will become increasingly common as the planet warms.

• Why it matters: Extreme heat and hazardous air quality are acute public health threats, and the heat has already proven deadly.

Finance

• For Indians, HDFC Bank is already a household name. Now, the rest of the world is going to take note, too.

• Some heat came off the U.S. economy in May, government data released on Friday showed: Consumer spending slowed, while a key inflation measure cooled.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• His family name, libertarian bent and support from the tech world, along with his views on censorship and vaccines, have given Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a foothold in the 2024 contest.

• On the day his country takes over the EU’s rotating presidency, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez arrived in Kyiv on July 1 for a visit to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and demonstrate the bloc’s ongoing support for Ukraine in the face of the 16-month Russian invasion.

Censorship/Free Speech

• A coordinated effort to associate online piracy with malware, identity theft and banking fraud, is well underway. As a result, legislation beyond copyright infringement is likely to play a key role in tackling piracy moving forward. The French government’s current plan for tackling online harms envisions state-operated domain blocking lists being injected directly into web browsers to prevent fraud. It’s a well-intentioned move but will not stop there.

• Update: Valéry RieB-Marchive of LeMagit contacted me after this was posted to say that their reporting was somewhat misleading. I asked him for another source or reference and he suggested that perhaps some of the best commentary on the topic of what the French are considering is this post by Vinton Cerf: Concerns over DNS Blocking.

• Mandatory age verification rules are entering force in Mississippi and Virginia. Mississippi has a population of barely 3 million people. Virginia has a population of over 8.6 million people. Like Utah (population over 3 million) back in May, one of the world’s most popular adult tube websites chose to block IP addresses from both of these states as a protest against age verification laws that may threaten data privacy and security.

• including when the requirement is imposed by antidiscrimination laws, for instance when such laws require web site designers who create opposite-sex wedding sites create same-sex wedding sites.

• Ten years after #BlackLivesMatter began on Twitter, more than a third of tweets with the hashtag have disappeared, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center.

• Fears spiked after Hong Kong adopted a new censorship law in October 2021.

• Watch the Q&A with Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Russell Brand on Thursday night at Westminster Central Hall in London.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Three years after Beijing imposed a national security law, journalists are still counting the cost

• As Chief Executive John Lee assures Hongkongers that press freedom is “in our pocket,” HKFP rounds up media industry incidents since the onset of the national security law.

Civil Rights/Policing

• More than half of Americans say they have experienced hate or harassment online, according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League, with a dramatic rise in incidents over the last 12 months, especially among teens.

• Why it matters: Experts say what happens online is causing significant real-world harm and also keeping large numbers of people from fully participating in an increasingly digital society.

• Two individuals, imprisoned for their alleged involvement in an attack on Turkey’s consulate in Erbil, have been on a hunger strike for 44 days, demanding an end to “torture and ill-treatment.”

• A revised law dramatically expanding China’s definition of espionage came into force on Saturday, giving Beijing more power than ever to punish what it deems threats to national security.

• This playbook has been used and reused, depending on the political winds of the time.

• This Wednesday, President Joe Biden showcased what’s sure to be a central theme in his reelection campaign with a speech in downtown Chicago hailing the signal achievements of his economic agenda and firmly repudiating the legacies of trickle-down economics. Speaking before a crowd of local and statewide political and business leaders at the city’s Old Post Office building, Biden announced his determination to ensure that the US economy grow “from the middle out and the bottom up rather than just top down”—an approach that marks “a fundamental break from the economic theory that’s failed America’s middle class for decades now.”

• It may take a while, but former President Trump has entertained the idea of returning to his happy place on Twitter, where he’s been absent for nearly 2 1/2 years, sources tell Axios.

• Why it matters: Trump still has nearly 87 million followers on Twitter, but hasn’t posted there since he was banned after the Jan. 6 riot in 2021. Now a growing number of Trump allies — and some close to his campaign — are expecting him to tweet again.

• The resident sued, alleging violations of his First Amendment rights. A federal district court ruled against him, a decision that was upheld by the 6th Circuit, which said that no law required the manager to operate a Facebook page and no government employees maintained it.In the second case, O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, two school district trustees continued to use the same Facebook and Twitter accounts they created to promote their campaigns after they were elected. They used the accounts to solicit public input about school board decisions and to communicate with parents about school safety.

• You don’t need to be some fortune teller to predict some of this stuff. A year ago, after he had announced his plans to buy Twitter (but before he tried to back out, and then was eventually forced to complete the purchase), we were horrified to see Elon Musk meet with the top EU’s Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, and give a full embrace of the EU’s Digital Services Act. As we noted at the time, there are some serious concerns about the free speech implications of the DSA, and someone who was actually committed to free speech would be calling those out, rather than claiming “it’s exactly aligned with my thinking.”

• A prominent Chinese financial journalist who has compared the country’s economic problems to the Great Depression has been banned from social media.

• Young people should learn to “eat bitterness,” says Xi Jinping.

• “The destruction of men in the West is the great story of the last 40 years,” declared conservative author and podcaster Ben Shapiro, during a recent appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored. Shapiro was holding forth before a sympathetic audience, so he laid into the lead talking points of the cult of aggrieved maleness: resisting on pseudo-biological principles the notion that trans women are women, and decrying the sorry state of masculinity in mainstream discourse in the wake of the twin disasters of the sexual revolution and modern feminism. “The patriarchy was so clever that they somehow convinced women that sexual liberation was the most wonderful thing for women,” Shapiro said, “But as it turns out, it actually backfired and it ended up destroying men.”

• Americans have been too quick to condemn the field of public health, overlooking its massive achievements in the 1900s and, yes, during the recent pandemic, too.

• Learn more about the latest happenings by reading the full newsletter here, or you can listen to the audio version below!

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• EFFector 35.8 | This Pride, Support LGBTQ+ Rights Both Online and offline

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• You need an account just to read tweets now, and you’ll have to pay for Twitter Blue “verified” access to see more than 600 posts per day.

Monopolies

• Google denies ad-fraud claims after a damning research report suggests it inflated video ad views, potentially misleading advertisers.

• The son of the judge presiding over the FTC vs Microsoft case works at Microsoft, posing a conflict of interest, according to an industry watchdog group.

• The Revolving Door Project, part of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, claims the employment of U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s son sets up a “clear risk of retaliation” from the company should Corley rule against it in the case. Corley oversaw arguments this week and is set to determine whether to grant the FTC’s request to pause Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

• [...]

• The watchdog sent a letter to Corley on Thursday, obtained by The Washington Post, that says Corley’s son’s employment may violate multiple rules laid out in the Code of Conduct U.S. judges follow. That includes a rule that judges should “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.” The Revolving Door Project warns that the conflict risks influencing the judge’s objectivity and could potentially reduce public trust in courts.

Patents

• On June 2, 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 claims of U.S. Patent 10,341,661, owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

• On June 29, 2023, less than one month 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 claims of U.S. Patent 11,522,756, owned and asserted by HyperX Networks, LLC. The ‘756 patent relates to zero-touch provisioning systems and methods, and had been asserted against Ciena.

• View district court litigations by HyperX.

• Generalisations are the foremost weapon of fascism; Drew DeVault embraces the ideology of those whom he claims to be against

• Design patents continue to rise in importance, but the underlying law full of eccentricities.  The crux of the issue lies in the manner patent law decisions are typically written. Most of precedential patent decisions are penned with a strong focus on utility patent doctrine, yet, surprisingly, the same patent doctrines of novelty, obviousness, definiteness, enablement, and written description are also applicable in the realm of design patents.

Trademarks

• The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled four (IV) oral hearings for the month of July 2023. The first and third hearings will be held in-person, the second and third via video conference. Briefs and other papers for each case may be found at TTABVUE via the links provided.

Copyrights

• Generative AI is a revolutionary technology that’s expected to change society as we know it but, in parallel, it raises many copyright infringement concerns. This week, book authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of using pirated books to train its ChatGPT models.

• A game developer recently had a game banned from Steam that featured AI-generated content, due to copyright issues with the source material the AI was trained by.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• The weather was just … gross, this morning. I woke up to it being cloudy and threating rain. The news last night warned of heavy rain and thunder, but when I left home in the AM it wasn’t really coming down. In my infinite wisdom I only took a small umbrella, and when I got out of the subway at my destination the rain had really started.

• my work has been taking me to near Dublin on and off over the last few months. i have managed to get some swims in between shifts or on days off. i am trying to get back to more regular running and swimming.

• on previous trips i swam at Portmarnock but this trip i went only a very little further north to Malahide; or rather High Rock. i prefer changing on rocks or pebbles.

• The ‘nb’ mention got me interested, and I immediately installed it. I’ve been looking for an easy note-taking solution, and this looks like a pretty good one!

• Apparently, it is 25K lines of bash… As long as it’s not Python I am in! (The only things that break on Linux are written in Python, if you haven’t noticed).

• Been drinking a lot of mineral water today. By god it’s so hot out. I think they should turn the Sun off for just a couple of days. We could really use a break from it. If I could sleep until Fall I would be very pleased

• Got a new job as a baker in a bakery I am under an apprenticeship for 5 years The pay is good but the work is hard Working till 5am every night 10+ hours

Politics and World Events

• I despise Capitalism and most other -isms (political systems that prefer A over B). But I believe that people are generally good, or if they are not, it is still wrong to opress them using violence or threats thereof.

Technology and Free Software

• Today, one of my Mastodon mutuals boosted a blog post by software developer Evan Todd. It’s a long and thoughtful piece about what we think we want, and the ways in which we deceive ourselves. For Todd, what he thought he wanted was a career in indie game development, and in a very particular, 2010s sort of way. This was after the point where people like Jonathan Blow, Ed McMillen, and others were able to get famous, quickly, by releasing small-studio games in an environment where there was (relatively) little competition. The years after “Indie Game: the Movie”, after certain game developers became, in certain circles, actual celebrities, and after a whole industry spun up around The Things You Were Supposed To Do (YouTube trailer, Early Access, twitch, social media, funding via Kickstarter). I know this because I was, in a very small way, adjacent to this sort of scene. I’m a game developer in maybe the loosest sense of the term. I don’t do it for a living. I never could. But I’ve written a little terminal-based puzzle game in C++ – that took me a couple of weeks – and I’ve written, and continue to write, a huge, sprawling, frustratingly incomplete game on my own time.

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