● 07.05.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 05/07/2023: Twitter Death Spiral, CLAs Cautioned Against

Posted in News Roundup at 12:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Applications

• Linux has a rich collection of commands, and while many of them are powerful and useful for various tasks, there are also some funny and whimsical commands that you can try out for amusement.

• You might be aware of the command ls command, which is used frequently to view the contents of a directory but because of miss-typing sometimes you would result in ‘sl‘.

• It is time to share a list of the best free and open-source software I found during the year 2023. Some of these programs may not be new in that they weren’t released for the first time in 2023, but they are new and have been helpful to me. It is in the spirit of sharing that I’m writing this article hoping you find some of these programs useful as well.

• To begin, you may want to search for the program using your distribution’s package manager, like so:

• Whether you’re a Networking administrator, an IT professional, or an individual, understanding and managing your Internet traffic is essential for optimizing performance, ensuring security, and maintaining control over your online activities. With Sniffnet Network Monitoring Tool, you can effortlessly track and analyze your data flow, gaining valuable insights into your network’s behavior. From visualizing bandwidth consumption to detecting potential security threats, Sniffnet provides a complete solution that empowers you to take charge of your online experience. In this guide, we will discuss what is Sniffnet, and its features, how to install Sniffnet in Linux and Unix, and finally how to monitor your Internet traffic using Sniffnet.

Instructionals/Technical

• I wanted to know how and if common screen readers expose the <article> element.

• Here are my results: [...]

• In classical networking, we are used to the opposite of this. It’s typical for networking teams to discuss almost every aspect of network design, such as a hostname formatting schema or IP address allocation rules and so on, until they can repeat those rules blindfolded. The reason is that with infrastructure design and deployment we implicitly weigh our time and effort differently than with software development.

• In Linux, there are commands and then there are shell built-ins. Linux purists refrain from calling them commands or shell built-in commands.

Games

• Skullgirls 2nd Encore from Hidden Variable Studios and Autumn Games is having some community issues lately, with it getting review-bombed after a recent update.

• Ahead of the upcoming release of Quantum: Recharged, the latest in the series of retro remakes from Atari and SneakyBox, a new trailer is live now.

• The latest Humble Choice seems to have a pretty nice set of headline games, so here’s what to expect for July 2023 and what compatibility you’ll see on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

• OpenMW is a modern free and open source game engine for Morrowind, and it’s really getting close to a release of version 0.48 now with another Release Candidate ready for more testing. The whole point of OpenMW is to get Morrowind working nicely on modern platforms, with a whole bunch of improvements to how it looks and feels.

• Between 2023-06-25 and 2023-07-02 there were 108 new games validated for the Steam Deck.

• Want another free game? If you have Amazon Prime you can now claim a free copy of Prey from Arkane Studios / Bethesda Softworks with their GOG partnership.

• If you love your turn-based tactical RPGs with an interesting story to follow, anything perhaps like Final Fantasy Tactics and the like you’ll want to take a look at Arcadian Atlas. The team just recently announced that it’s going to release on July 27th, this is along with Native Linux support following their Kickstarter back in 2016.

• You may have noticed the website acting up a little lately, well that’s because it’s well into its teens now. Happy Birthday to GamingOnLinux, the tiny little site I thought no one would visit but here we are 14 years later. Now we see around a million visitors a month, and I still can’t quite believe it.

• Easily one of my favourite game packs made with OpenRA is Command & Conquer – Combined Arms, bundling together the Allies, Soviets, Nod, GDI and the Scrin. A new release is out in v0.91 expanding the content a fair bit.

• Half-Life Alyx NoVR is really coming together and a fresh update is out now to make the experience even better for those without a VR kit. I will say that it’s still one of my favourite experiences ever in gaming with the Valve Index, but given how Half-Life is a much loved series, more people deserve to be able to play it. These modders are a dedicated bunch that’s for sure!

• Samurai Survivors is another in the somewhat long list now of bullet-hell horde styled games, that exploded thanks to Vampire Survivors. It has Linux support and now it’s Steam Deck Verified too. Released back in April, I’m not sure how I entirely missed it given my absolute love of these simple games that really sucker you in.

• 7 Days to Die has surged in popularity thanks to a huge new upgrade coming amount, with developer The Fun Pimps bringing some pretty surprising stuff to the game.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Endless OS contains an optional anonymous telemetry system, where installations of the OS collect usage data and periodically send it back to us at Endless OS Foundation. Although the system is open-source, has existed in various forms for close to a decade, and individual pieces of it are documented, I don’t think we’ve ever written much about how it all fits together. So here I will try to correct that by describing the current incarnation of this system in its entirety, and why we have it.

• Let’s stare directly at the elephant in the room: usage metrics – telemetry, analytics, or whatever other terms one might like to use – is something that free software community members are often opposed to, with some good justification. A lot has changed in the 10 years since the first commit on this project in September 2013. The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal and other similar events have raised public awareness of the potential for abuse of personal data, and there have been massive regulatory improvements in this space, too. Of course, I have my own opinions about data collection, which you can probably guess from my having spent most of my adult life working on free software! When I joined Endless, I wasn’t comfortable with previous incarnations of our metrics system, but after it was reworked into the form described below, I am confident that it strikes a good balance.

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

• A new tool for creating flexible, route based site to site virtual private networks (site-to-site VPNs) is entering its call for testing phase on OpenBSD-current.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• Staying up-to-date with the latest trends, tools and industry knowledge is crucial for open-source developers and IT professionals like system administrators.

• Online resources provide valuable information, but there is no substitute for the immersive and collaborative experience of attending conferences.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• In recent years, using containers has revolutionized the whole software industry’s approach to building software. Nowadays, technologies like Docker and Podman have become the industry standard.

• However, the ability to run Linux containers using LXC/LXD has been supported as a core feature of Linux since 2008.

• Canonical has taken complete control of the LXD project and will now manage everything related to it.

• Even though they have been involved since the inception of LXD, they have now decided to take a more direct approach.

• Many organizations seem to be tightening their grip on open-source projects. Even Red Hat did something similar recently.

• With PEARC23 just around the corner, now is a great time to get in touch with Canonical on all things HPC. Meet our team at the conference in Portland, Oregon on 23-27 July.

Devices/Embedded

• The Nitrogen8M Plus SMARC from Laird Connectivity is a high-performance embedded computing module featuring a Quad-core Arm-A53 along with a 2.3 TOPS NPU for machine learning inference and onboard Image Signal Processor (ISP).

• The product page indicates that the Nitrogen8M Plus features the NXP i.MX 8M Plus with the following architecture: [...]

Open Hardware/Modding

• Heard earlier this week that Don Lancaster, best known to us retrocomputing denizens as the man who developed the TV Typewriter, died at the age of 83 on June 7. That’s my copy of one of his classic books (after the TV Typewriter Cookbook) for building a TVT 6 5/8 on anything with a 6800 bus like the 6502 and, yes, the 6800. This was a CPU-driven display that uses lines on the address bus to control the image: you lost 36K out of your addressing range as any address stored to or read there would be passed to the display interface, but gained an entire viewing screen in exchange. Even a barebones 1K KIM-1 could display a 32×16 text screen at $0200 to $03ff and it could be built out of just a handful of chips: [...]

• This looks like an awesome machine, but not only for its design and technical capabilities, but what it represents. This is my attempt to explain why, followed by a review of Jan Beta’s… review!

• Disclaimer: the Roboat is tiny, so only mice will be able to physically set sail. You could enjoy it vicariously by watching the sailing mouse, but Roboat can most definitely not hold your weight.

• There is no shame in taking advantage of a voice assistant device, like an Amazon Echo with Alexa. Those devices are useful and can add real convenience to your life.

• Massimo Banzi and the Arduino Pro team will be crossing the Channel soon for a short tour of Southern England, touching base with long-time partners and meeting many new Arduino fans!

• Arduino’s latest boards retain the same Uno form factor but upgrade the CPU and provide Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access via an ESP32-S3 co-processor

• Based on the Renesas RA4M1 microcontroller, the new Arduino UNO R4 boasts 16x the RAM, 8x the flash, and a much faster CPU compared to the previous UNO R3.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• PS: Security scanners and other tools could adopt various heuristics to detect this sort of situation and reduce false positives, but ultimately they’re only heuristics, which means they’ll always be incomplete and sometimes may be wrong. Dealing with this in the web server is the better way.

Mozilla

• Initially planned for Firefox 114, the Cookie Banner Reduction and Quick Actions in address bar features are once again present in the beta version of Firefox 116. Both features are implemented in the Privacy & Security panel in Firefox’s Settings.

• Cookie Banner Reduction is disabled by default, but, when enabled, it tries to automatically reject cookie requests on cookie banners on supported websites. On the other hand, the Quick Actions feature is enabled by default and will let you perform various actions directly from the comfort of the address bar.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• I am from Germany, and have been living in Munich since moving here for my studies in computer science about 12 years ago.

• I am a free and open source software enthusiast.

• Before coming to TDF, I was working for the City (administration) of Munich, first being part of their Linux client team – and since 2018 with the main focus on LibreOffice development. I am also a member of the LibreOffice Engineering Steering Committee (ESC).

• Besides my involvement in LibreOffice, I have also contributed a few changes to other open source projects – mostly fixes for issues that I ran into myself as a user. The possibility to do this is certainly one of the many benefits of open source software.

• Besides being an open source software developer, I’m involved in a Christian church and like meeting friends, sports and reading.

Licensing / Legal

• A contributor license agreement, or CLA, usually (but not always) includes an important clause: a copyright assignment. These agreements are provided by upstream maintainers to contributors to open source software projects, and they demand a signature before the contributor’s work is incorporated into the upstream project. The copyright assignment clause that is usually included serves to offer the upstream maintainers more rights over the contributor’s work than the contributor was offered by upstream, generally in the form of ownership or effective ownership over the contributor’s copyright and the right to license it in any manner they choose in the future, including proprietary distributions.

Programming/Development

• In this previous post, this previous post, and this previous post, I showed how to expand a polynomial with symbolic parameters. In the first two posts, I used the R package caracas, a wrapper of SymPy, and in the third post I used Julia.

• Now I’ve found a pure R solution, with the help of the spray package, and it is very fast. That’s what I’m going to demonstrate here, with the same example I treated with Julia.

• Dependency resolution is something programmers usually take for granted. Be it cargo, npm, or whatever package manager you use, no one is actually surprised when this black-box figures out, all by itself, the specific set of packages that should be installed.

• In the previous post, I showed how to expand a polynomial with symbolic parameters with the help of the spray package. As I said, it has one problem: it doesn’t preserve the rational numbers in the polynomial expression.

• I’m going to provide a solution here which overcomes this problem, with the help of the Ryacas package. In fact I provide a solution with the packages Ryacas and partitions, and then I improve it with the help of the spray package.

• And you may ask yourself: how do I efficiently compute a range aggregation on this data, e.g. finding the max value for indices 1 through 4?

Python

• At this point we’ve been running our ZFS based NFS fileserver environment for about fifteen years, starting with Solaris 10 and evolving over time to the current Ubuntu 22.04 based servers. Over that time we’ve managed the various iterations of the same basic thing primarily through a local set of programs (all with names starting in ‘san’, despite the fact that we don’t have a SAN any more). These programs have always been written in Python. They started out as Python 2 programs on Solaris and then OmniOS, and were moved to Python 3 when we moved to our Linux based fileservers. Naturally, we have version control history for the Python code of these tools that goes all the way back to the first versions in 2008.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• There are all kinds of use cases for the sleep command, including helping you with alarms, timing user output, or simulating delays when testing software. It can also help when coordinating multiple services.

• In this article, you’ll learn more about the sleep command, how it works, and what you can do with it. You’ll also learn about a few alternatives for when its functionality isn’t quite what you need.

Leftovers

• Low-quality, AI-generated content farms designed to rake in cash via programmatic advertising revenue are cropping up at an alarming rate. And unfortunately, according to a new report by misinformation tracking company NewsGuard, their business model is working.

Education

• The students’ issue with Inbar? In an episode of his podcast Two Psychologists Four Beers, Inbar mildly criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements as used by university administrations to screen potential hires. He described DEI statements as compelled speech and empty “value signaling.”

• “It is not clear what good they do,” said Inbar.

• The lawsuit compares the DEI-statement requirement to Red Scare–era loyalty oaths that asked people to affirm that they were not members of the Communist Party. It calls the statements “a thinly veiled attempt to ensure dogmatic conformity throughout the university system.”

Hardware

• There was a time when buying a new radio was something many hams could never afford to do. Then came the super cheap — and super controversial — VHF and UHF radios from China. But as they say, you get what you pay for. The often oddly named handhelds like Baofeng and Wouxun are sometimes odd to work with and may have questionable RF outputs. A new radio has a less tongue-twisting English name and many improved features for about $50 — the Talkpod A36Plus and [Josh] shows us how they work in a video that you can see below.

• Many of us will have found dusty forgotten pieces of electronics and nursed them back to health, but we were captivated by [Don]’s tale of electronic revival. Instead of perhaps a forgotten computer or television, his barn find was a Heathkit linear amplifier for radio amateurs. In that huge box underneath an impressive layer of grime were a pair of huge tubes, along with all the power supply components to give them the 2 kV they need. It should have been good for a kilowatt when new, can it be made to go on air again?

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The last spate of local malaria transmission in the US took place 20 years ago. Now circumstances are different: These cases are happening amid rising rates of other insect-borne infections nationwide, and smack in the middle of a heat and wildfire wave that together make climate change’s health risks undeniable. It’s reasonable to wonder whether the US is at risk for becoming a malaria hot spot again.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• A new scam is going around on Telegram! One that preys on your friends and then you. It is in fact, a worm. An automated attack that takes over your account with the objective to spread and take over more accounts.

• More than 338,000 FortiGate firewalls are still unpatched and vulnerable to CVE-2023-27997, a critical bug Fortinet fixed last month that’s being exploited in the wild.

• This is according to infosec outfit Bishop Fox, which has developed an example exploit for achieving remote code execution via the hole. Successful exploitation of the pre-authentication vulnerability can allow an intruder to take over the network equipment. Bishop Fox warned: “You should patch yours now.”

Windows TCO

• Cross-party MPs in the Health and Social Care Committee published a report today entitled Digital Transformation in the NHS, which looked at barriers for the national health service to achieve its “top priority” of digitally transforming its operations. The report features conclusions based on several oral sessions held during the inquiry period, which launched in May 2022 and looked at the current use of digital technology, as well as exploring what needed to change in the NHS to deliver improvements for patients.

• The committee also looked at the digital transformation of health and records, interoperability across primary, secondary and social care, and legacy IT systems in the health service. Digital health inequalities, and how to educate patients on the potential benefits of digital healthcare, were also discussed.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• Sweden’s privacy protection agency, the IMY, said it had examined the use of Google Analytics by the firms following a complaint by the Austrian data privacy group noyb (none of your business) which has filed dozens of complaints against Google across Europe.

• [NOYB] asserted that the use of Google Analytics for web statistics by the companies resulted in the transfer of European data to the United States in violation of the EU’s data protection regulation, the GDPR.

• The GDPR allows for six legal basis to process personal data. In the case Meta v Bundeskartellamt, the CJEU has today ruled on all of them – further clarifying the interpretation of the GDPR. The CJEU has largely closed the doors for Meta to use personal data beyond what is strictly necessary to provide the core products (such as messaging or sharing content) – all other processing (like advertisement and sharing personal data) requires freely given and fair consent by users.

• This first statement is based on the live stream of the judgment and the press release of the CJEU and will be updated once the full text of the judgment is available.

• “My data must belong to myself – this is the central power balance question in the information age. However, the enforcement of data protection law against global internet corporations suffers from procrastination and industry-friendliness, especially in Ireland. We urgently need to take action here. However, the EU Commission does not want to introduce deadlines to speed up proceedings. Reducing the participation rights of victims of data protection violations and scandals is not an acceptable way to speed up proceedings! We need enforcement reform to strengthen citizens’ rights against corporations, not to weaken them.”

• In the Council of the EU – the forum in which representatives from each of the EU’s twenty-seven Member States come together to discuss and negotiate on EU laws and policies – a clear split has emerged between those countries that want to protect human rights and the security of digital communications on the one hand, and those who are gambling it away on the false promise of a quick technological solution on the other.

• Google has had a policy in place for some time now that allows the company to collect data from its users and use that data for “business purposes.” That includes for “research and development,” which has long included for building out and improving Google Translate.

• Now, in the latest update to its policy, Google is including its AI models in what it can use data from you for. That also includes using the data to train Bard and Cloud AI “products.”

• Today the EU Justice Commissioner Reynders has issued a proposal to fix the (lack of) cooperation between some Data Protection Authorities (DPAs). Currently the GDPR only tells DPAs to cooperate, but lacks the details about how this cooperation should work. Unfortunately, the Commission proposal seems to be technically and materially flawed and rather strips citizens of existing rights than ensuring their enforcement. Ideally, a new Regulation could follow established high level principles for cross-country procedures – leading to less interference with national procedures and more legal certainty.

• Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, who has sued in court for more than 10 years against the clickstream logging, celebrates today’s ECJ ruling against the U.S. Internet company Meta as a breakthrough for online privacy: [...]

• According to the social media company, it temporarily limited usage so “it could detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform.” It added that if the company would have given ana advance notice on these actions, the bots or bad actor would have altered their behaviour to evade detection.

Defence/Aggression

• The judge’s order, first reported by the Washington Post, puts limits on some executive agencies, including the department of health and human services and the FBI.

• They can not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

• The judge said warnings about risks to national security and criminal activity would be allowed.

• Donations for the family of a French policeman, who shot dead 17-year-old Nahel M last week (June 27), topped more than €1 million ((£860,000) on Monday. The amount was way more than what the victim’s kin received, totaling less than €200,000, The Guardian reported.

• The agency said there were 996,000 applications last year, 53% more than in 2021.

• A Sudanese political expert tells Anadolu Agency “Not even the Russian government controls them,” a passerby comments. “What shall we do now? This shows that this army is uncontrollable, that is very dangerous for us.”. According to him, in Africa, the Wagner group operates where there are raw materials, and controls the business.

• In the span of a few years, the Wagner group has established itself in various African countries in crisis, including Mali. It is said that the military government would have been willing to pay 10 million dollars a month to these mercenaries. But the regime is currently affected by international sanctions. Money is tight and Mali incurred debts to the Wager group. Various sources, however, give indications that the group has gained access to various gold mines in the country.

• The United States began in revolt against empire, answering the call of Thomas Paine: “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!”

Environment

• Global fossil-fuel subsidies doubled last year to $1.1 trillion, by far the highest number ever recorded, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, or IEA. The surge in financial support for oil and gas was largely a response to the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, which caused many countries to abruptly reconsider their dependence on Russian fossil fuel reserves. Experts say the subsidies could be difficult to unwind, if consumers become accustomed to having a cushion against high prices.

Overpopulation

• In addition to agricultural irrigation, water from Lake Eğirdir is also used to meet the drinking water needs of the city center.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• These companies have a market size that impacts the internal market (annual turnover in Europe of at least €7.5 billion in the last three financial years or fair market value of at least €75 billion in the last financial year and operations in at least 3 Member States) and have served more than 45 million monthly active end users and more than 10 000 yearly active business users in the EU during the last three years on a number of core platform services, such as search engines, social networking services and operating systems.

• We will now check their submissions and designate the gatekeepers for specific platform services by 6 September (within 45 working days from their submission).

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s letter is a huge blow to consumers’ rights and is a puzzling move considering that President Biden and his administration have repeatedly championed the right to repair and have specifically stated that they do not believe that right to repair laws pose cybersecurity concerns.

• You may (or may not) have noticed the impending arrival of Facebook Meta Instagram’s new social app. Well, it’s now officially coming out on the 6th of July, and it’s called Threads.

• The main rumour was that this new app would support ActivityPub, which is an open protocol that Mastodon is based on. This has led to all sorts of reactions. From people completely opposed to anything from Meta connecting to the Fediverse, and wanting to block it from their instance. To people that are excited about the potential of the new users that it would bring to the degenerated social network world.

• Evan Scrimshaw, who writes an engaging Substack primarily focused on Canadian politics, posted an interesting piece over the holiday weekend that linked the Toronto Raptors failure to resign guard Fred VanVleet and the reaction to Google and Facebook’s announcement that they plan to block news sharing or links as a result of Bill C-18. I liked the piece and it got me thinking about the parallels, leading to this post. Scrimshaw argues that the public commentary on both developments featured similar “I told you so’s”: those that argue the Raptors should have traded VanVleet at the trade deadline rather than risk losing him for nothing and those who now argue that Bill C-18 would invariably lead to Google and Facebook blocking news sharing or links. He makes the case that it is too early to conclude anything with respect to Bill C-18 and that the Internet companies and government are merely engaged in a very public negotiation that could well result in either or both seeking a compromise before the law takes effect.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Manipur is the latest addition to a long list of [Internet] shutdowns in India. According to Access Now, an [Internet] advocacy watchdog, India has topped the yearly count of [Internet] shutdowns across the world for five straight years.

• Since 2018, India has shut down the [Internet] more often than any other country in the world. One Access Now estimate says India was responsible for the most shutdowns in 2022 — with 84 out of 187 global shutdowns.

• He called on arts professionals to resist such changes and “fight against it – and win”.

• It is understood several cities are being considered for the ENO’s new home, including Hull, Newcastle, Birmingham, Nottingham, Truro and Manchester.

• The Government has been accused of “cultural vandalism” over its approach to arts funding after diverting millions of pounds from some of the country’s most cherished venues, such as the National Theatre and Royal Opera House.

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

• Khomeini issued a decree the following year calling for the writer’s death, forcing the author into hiding – although he had been travelling freely for years before last summer’s stabbing.

• Filmmaker Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan, who is gearing up for the release of his upcoming film, 72 Hoorain, has been on the receiving end of incessant hate and threats. And trolls have now hit a new low as the filmmaker has received a barrage of death threats and abusive messages on his social media handle.

• Not just him, but his mother too received rape threats from haters.

• Just outside the airport, their vehicle was blocked by several cars and they were beaten by several unidentified masked assailants, who put guns to their heads and broke their equipment.

• The move gave police sweeping new powers, alarming democrats, civil society groups and trade partners, as such laws have been used broadly to silence and punish dissidents in China. However, the authorities say it has restored stability and peace to the city.

• British foreign minister James Cleverly said the UK government “will not tolerate any attempts by China to intimidate and silence individuals in the UK and overseas,” and “strongly [objected]” to the national security law.

• In a statement on Monday, the US State Department condemned the bounties, calling the extraterritorial application of the national security law a “dangerous precedent” for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

• Dozens of rights groups on Tuesday called on governments to suspend any remaining extradition treaties with China and Hong Kong after the city’s government issued arrest warrants and bounties for eight prominent figures in the overseas democracy movement on Monday, vowing to pursue them for the rest of their lives.

• “We urge governments to suspend the remaining extradition treaties that exist between democracies and the Hong Kong and Chinese governments and work towards coordinating an Interpol early warning system to protect Hong Kongers and other dissidents abroad,” an open letter dated July 4 and signed by more than 50 Hong Kong-linked civil society groups around the world said.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Both officials arrived Tuesday in Chechnya to attend the trial of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of two activists who have defied Chechen authorities. Outside the airport, their vehicle was blocked by several cars, and they were attacked by unidentified masked assailants who beat them with batons, pointed guns at their heads, and smashed their equipment.

• Based in Russia for almost six years, Mr. Gershkovich was first detained on March 29 during a reporting trip to the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Thursday would be his 100th day in detention.

• If convicted on the espionage charges, for which Russian prosecutors have offered no evidence, Mr. Gershkovich could face 20 years in a penal colony.

• Sinan Aygül, an investigative journalist who specializes in exposing corruption in the AKP municipality of Tatvan in the province of Bitlis, was the victim of a violent attack after his feature was published.

• Thanks to clear surveillance camera footage and massive public pressure, the attackers, Yücel Baysal, Tatvan mayor’s bodyguard, and police officer Engin Kaplan were arrested. They are accused of intentional bodily harm using a weapon.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Since the handover of power to the Taliban in August 2021, the Islamist terrorist group has issued more than 60 decrees prohibiting women from attending secondary schools and universities, for example, and from working in public sectors and for NGOs. They are no longer allowed to visit public parks, play sports or move around the country without a male escort. Women are forced into forced marriages and child marriages by the Taliban. Women’s rights activists are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and abducted.

• The Taliban is banning women’s beauty salons in Afghanistan, a government spokesman said on July 4. It’s the latest curb on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls, following edicts barring them from education, public spaces, and most forms of employment. [...]

• MacDonald said she and her union have put in for a grievance. Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 561 did not immediately respond to CBC News’ request for comment Monday.

• The ministry-issued letter, dated June 24, says it conveys a verbal order from the supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada. The ban targets the capital, Kabul, and all provinces, and gives salons throughout the country a month’s notice to wind down their businesses. After that period, they must close and submit a report about their closure. The letter doesn’t give reasons for the ban.

• In the dispute between the Navajo Nation and the Arizona Department of the Interior, the tribe was asking the federal government to assess the tribe’s water rights along the Colorado River and help create a plan to develop them for the 170,000 tribal members who live there.

• Instead, a 5-4 ruling released June 22, with conservative, Republican-appointed justices in the majority, said that the federal government “isn’t responsible for such actions” and “the treaties between the U.S. and the tribe didn’t explicitly require it,” the Colorado Sun reported.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Confidential computing is designed to protect applications and their data from theft or tampering by protecting them inside a secure enclave, or trusted execution environment (TEE). This uses hardware-based security mechanisms to prevent access from everything outside the enclave, including the host operating system and any other application code.

• In a push for the adoption of confidential computing, the open source [sic] Certifier Framework provides a standardized, platform-agnostic API for building and operating confidential computing applications, which is paired with a policy evaluation server, the Certifier Service.

Monopolies

• A spokesperson at the European Commission said in an emailed statement: “We have received several complaints regarding Microsoft, including one by Slack about Microsoft’s conduct in relation to its Teams product, which we are assessing based on our standard procedures.”

• The EC refused to comment further at this time.

• To qualify as a gatekeeper under the EU’s definition, companies must have more 45 million active users monthly. They must also have at least a 75 billion euro market capitalization.

• If companies are confirmed to be gatekeepers, the DMA’s rules will require many changes by Apple. The company will, for instance, have to allow both third-party app stores and therefore also side-loading of apps on iPhones.

• Apple will also have to allow developers to use third-party payment systems, rather than be required to use Apple’s one.

• Users will have to be able to abandon Siri in favor of an alternative voice assistant, too.

• Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which came into force last November, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a €75 billion market capitalisation are considered gatekeepers providing a core platform service.

• Samsung and TikTok owner ByteDance also said they meet the EU thresholds, Breton said.

Patents

• Update: Sunday July 2nd: While production on the next Apple Silicon chip is cited as the reason for the delay, it may have an unintended joys consequence. Apple is working hard to push its mixed reality system to developers and consumers. Part of that will be bringing elements of the various operating systems closer together in hardware and software. This leads to a newly published Apple patent called “Visual Object Receptacle”: Jack Purcher reports:

• “While the patent figures look very outdated at this point in time, remember that this is a utility patent and not a design patent. So Apple’s patent figures simply convey the basic concepts of a 3D interface and not one that will be the end product. With Apple Vision Pro having been introduced, we’re now able to see Apple’s vision of a true 3D interface for a headset. Bringing some form of it to a future version of macOS could very well materialize in the future, hence Apple’s update.”

Copyrights

• In May 2023, Billboard made changes to how ‘fan packs’ count for album charts this summer. The new combinations of merch and albums must be a sweatshirt with an LP or a t-shirt with a CD or other physical album—with no bundled inclusives like tickets, meet-or-greet opportunities, or other non-tangible benefits like video game items or NFTs. The fan pack combo cannot be a physical merch item with a digital download—that does not count toward the charts.

• The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has booked a major victory by shutting down 2Embed, a popular video piracy library. The ‘piracy as a service’ vendor provided movies and series to hundreds of streaming sites, many of which have yet to recover. Meanwhile, the anti-piracy group is working with Vietnamese authorities to target other large piracy players in the region.

• With over 205 million visits per month, Zoro.to is almost certainly the world’s largest pirate site. During the next 24 hours alone, over six million people are expected to view the streaming platform but, for those that do, a surprise awaits. During the past few hours, Zoro.to began redirecting to a new domain with the site now sporting all-new branding. A staff member reports that the site has been “acquired” by a new team and everybody needs to calm down.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• Turns out this is not trivial, at least in the US. In the US mattresses are required to have a fire-retardant material, that is either not-organic or wool (wool is not vegan). My partner called a company and asked if they could make us a mattress without wool and they told her they would require a doctor’s note (!) for that.

• Sadly, in a fallen and cursed world, animals can be very dangerous, and their purposes often come into conflict with man’s needs. The general reality that animals are afraid of man, and try to avoid him, serves to reduce the aggressiveness of animals, which would assist man in the re-settlement of the earth, where he would often find himself out-numbered by the local animal population. This would also assist man in domesticating animals, even many that are, physically speaking, stronger and more powerful than himself.

• I am not sure where this came from. It may have been the case, although I doubt it. More likely — businesses got sued for making cheap plastic childrens’ sleepwear and mattresses that went up in flames, and, the cheapest way to fix that may be to soak the fabric in Tetrabromobisphenol A.

• If anything, there is legislation to remove flame retardants from sleepware and mattresses!

• You mean like the ability to lie, cheat, steal, kill, war, stockpile wealth so others can suffer and die without, etc…? Or did you mean things that so small a minority of the species are capable of doing/creating as to be negligent relative to the endless ongoing deluge of the aforementioned?

Technology and Free Software

Internet/Gemini

• * Hosting XMPP for your family * Konpeito Going Down * Bubble

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