● 07.10.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 09/07/2023: GNU/Linux Client Side Usage Growing, Linux 6.5 Release Candidate Out

Posted in News Roundup at 12:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Linux has a long history that dates back more than 30 years. However, it has never been as popular among regular computer users as other operating systems such as Microsft’s Windows or Apple’s macOS.

• Of course, for many years, Linux has emerged as a dominant force in the realm of server operating systems. Due to its exceptional performance, stability, reliability, and security, it has been widely adopted in server/cloud/IoT environments.

• However, these days, Linux is no longer limited to these environments alone; it is rapidly gaining momentum as an operating system of choice for many desktop users, especially developers.

• And the most recent figures confirm this, giving all advocates of Linux and open source in general reason to rejoice.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Welcome to This Week in Linux, the news show from the TuxDigital Network that keeps you up to date with what’s going on in the Linux and Open Source world. I’m Michael Tunnell and this week is slammed with news.

Kernel Space

• The two-week merge window, which opened with the release of Linux kernel 6.4 on June 25th, 2023, is now officially closed and the first Release Candidate is available for download for those of you who want to get an early taste of the next major release, Linux kernel 6.5.

• The final release of Linux kernel 6.5 is expected at the end of August or early September 2023, which depends on how many Release Candidate (RC) milestones Linus Torvalds will announce until then. It will be out on August 27th if there will be only seven RCs or on September 3rd if eight RCs are announced.

• Linus has released 6.5-rc1 and closed the merge window for this release.

• Linux kernel overseer Linus Torvalds has delivered the first release candidate for version 6.5 of the kernel, but warned this release may not go smoothly.

• Torvalds’s headline assessment of rc1 is “none of it looks hugely unusual.”

• “The biggest single mention probably goes to what wasn’t merged, with the bcachefs pull request resulting in a long thread (we didn’t hit a hundred emails yet, but it’s not far away).”

• Intel is reportedly building audio drivers for Linux for its upcoming Lunar Lake CPUs that will arrive next year.

Applications

• LibreCAD is a free Open Source personal CAD application for Windows, Apple and Linux. LibreCAD is a comprehensive, 2D CAD application that you can download and install for free. There is a large base of satisfied LibreCAD users worldwide, and it is available in more than 20 languages and for all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, …). It can read DXF and DWG files and can write DXF, PDF and SVG files. You can download, install and distribute LibreCAD freely, with no fear of copyright infringement.

• LibreCAD is a feature-packed and mature 2D-CAD application with some really great advantages…

• Sticky notes are small, colorful pieces of paper that can be stuck on any surface. They are a simple yet effective tool for jotting down important information, reminders, and ideas. Sticky notes are widely used in offices, schools, homes, and other places where people need to keep track of things.

• This article recommends the finest free and open source graphical news aggregators.

• I have just released version 0.4 of CapyPDF. You can get it either via Github or PyPI. The target of this release was to be able to create a pure Python script that can be used to generate PDF slides to be used in presentations. It does not read any input, just always produces the same hardcoded output, but since the point of this was to create a working backend, that does not really matter.

Instructionals/Technical

• Is your machine running Debian but you don’t know which version exactly you are running?

• The release of Linux Kernel 6.4 marks another milestone in the world of Linux. As one of the most vital components of the Linux operating system, the kernel has undergone significant advancements and improvements in this release. Let’s take a closer look at what makes Linux Kernel 6.4 stand out.

• Unraveling the mystery of exit codes in Linux. Learn what are the exit codes and why and how they are used.

• Managing NGINX configurations is an essential skill in the realm of Linux system administration. One frequent operation is the deactivation of IPv6. This guide offers in-depth insights to assist you in smoothly disabling IPv6 in NGINX on a Linux system. Additionally, we will address a common issue related to the curveball nameserver resolver.

• Following this guide will demonstrate how to install Linux Kernel 6.4 on Linux Mint 21 or the older stable maintained release Linux Mint 20, utilizing the Ubuntu Mainline kernel installer for the latest kernel version.

• SmartCTL: A critical utility for modern Linux systems, designed to serve as an interface to the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) system embedded in the current hard disk drives and solid-state drives.

• Let’s face it: errors and disruptions in our digital workflow can be frustrating. But with the right guidance, we can turn these obstacles into learning experiences. One such hitch is the infamous ‘Curl 6: Could Not Resolve Host’ error in Linux systems.

• cURL, an open-source command-line tool, is widely recognized for its ability to transfer data over a network. Among the various HTTP request methods it supports, POST is particularly significant as it facilitates data transmission to a server.

• A reverse proxy is a highly recommended method for exposing an application server to the internet. Application servers, such as those running Node.js applications or a minimal built-in web server with Flask, often bind to localhost with a TCP port.

• In the ever-evolving landscape of the internet, the importance of URL redirection cannot be overstated. When the structure of a website changes, the URLs often change as well.

• For users and administrators of Linux, mastering the built-in commands is vital to unlocking the full power of this operating system. In our focus today is the wall command. Known as the broadcast message command, wall is a crucial tool allowing communication to all users logged into a Linux system at once.

• For those who prefer light theme, there’s an extension now to make all the GNOME Shell components to be light! Ubuntu so far has light and dark mode options available in the ‘Appearance’ settings page.

• While most screen mirroring apps do a good job of casting your phone’s display on a bigger screen, not many of them let you control your phone from another device. If you mirror your phone on a TV, you cannot use the remote controller to navigate through different apps. You still have to rely on your phone for that. PCs, on the other hand, offer more control options. Previously, we talked about how you can control your phone using a Windows PC. Now, let’s take a look at how you can mirror and control your Android phone from an Ubuntu (Linux) desktop.

• If you’re someone who prefers to interact with computers in a language other than English, then keyboard layouts are a lifesaver for you. Most probably, you’d like to set your native language as your system’s primary input language.

• Even if you’re used to typing in English, there are chances that you might not fancy the default QWERTY keyboard layout. Perhaps you’re one of those people who own keyboards with unconventional layouts.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• DebConf22 and the GNOME conference, GUADEC 2022 both took place during the same week from 20 to 25 July 2022.

• [...]

• The two women closest to Lamb in Brazil are also pictured in Mexico at the GUADEC women’s dinner. Given that DebConf was so much closer to their country in adjacent Kosovo, how did they go to Mexico? One of them works for GNOME so she has a legitimate reason to be in Mexico.

• GUADEC 2022 was the last GUADEC for Neil McGovern as Executive Director. We already wrote about the manner in which GNOME parted ways with McGovern. Given the murkiness about his departure and the GUADEC day trip to the city of Tequila, we feel the funding of Albanian women needs careful scrutiny.

• Therefore, as both conferences were on the same week, we wanted to ask where was Chris Lamb? The former Debian leader is completely absent from the DebConf22 schedule. Querying his username finds nothing. Did he skip DebConf and travel to Mexico to attend the sending off of his friend Neil McGovern, along with the Albanian friends?

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from June 30 to July 07.

• [...]

• Arjan says

• This week Dan Yeaw released Gaphor 2.19.1. The simple modeling tool has received a lot of small improvements and bug fixes. Parts of the UI have been updated to use new GTK 4 elements. Information Flow for Associations has been added, and Object Flows can now connect to Join/Fork Nodes. Get your copy from Gaphor’s download page or directly from Flathub.

• If you follow me on Mastodon, you’ve probably heard that I’ve added Mastodon-powered comments to this here blog. If you missed it, check it out!

• Read on to dive into my process, the first few iterations of how I did it, and what my hopes are for the future. There are lots of links to the source code on GitHub if you want to follow along, as well. Oh, and throughout this post I’ll be referring to “Mastodon” comments, but technically any Fediverse account that uses ActivityPub can comment on my blog by replying to the the associated Mastodon post—and I do directly use the Mastodon API to get those replies and associated data from my own instance.

• Since the release of 44.0 in March, aside from some fixes (like adding support for authentication HTTP headers in OpenTripPlanner plugin, as now needed by the Finnish Digitransit service) there has also been some changes on the surface in Maps.

• First, Jakub Steiner has contributed with a refresh of icons used for transportation modes, and the various mode of public transit.

• There’s unfortunately not a lot to talk about for the past two weeks as I have been really absorbed with finals at my university. However, while preparing for the finals, we got the PR to add from_bytes constructor for zbus::Message merged. This means that we can now construct zbus::Message from raw GDBusMessage bytes and vice versa, which is critical for porting Bustle from GDBus to zbus.

• If you are looking for a Software Engineer with strong skills in C, C++, Rust and JavaScript, with a strong FLOSS background, I am available to hire.

• After dedicating first two weeks of work to libipuz, it was time to shift our focus to the UI part of the Application.

• Discussion

• To create the PlayAnswer widget, we had two choices: either inherit from the PlayGrid or design a container that includes a PlayGrid as its child. Ultimately, we decided to go with inheriting from the PlayGrid.

• I’ve recently been contributing to Flathub and updating my own website a bit, and I found myself wanting to recolor SVGs for light and dark style support. Let’s look at some examples: [...]

Distributions and Operating Systems

• In a significant development, Rudra Saraswat, the renowned developer of blendOS and maintainer of Ubuntu Unity, has made a groundbreaking announcement. On July 6, Saraswat unveiled blendOS v3 “Bhatura”, marking yet another major update to this Immutable Linux distribution.

Reviews

• Crystal Linux is a young, rolling release Linux distribution which is based on Arch. The distribution has a focus on desktop usage and features the Onyx desktop, a customized version of GNOME with a Windows-like panel and layout. The other key feature the Crystal Linux website mentions is Timeshift, which is available for making optional filesystem snapshots.

• I downloaded the sole edition of Crystal which is 1.7GB in size. The live media was able to boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes and quickly loads the GNOME (Onyx) desktop. A panel is placed along the bottom of the display which holds the application menu, task switcher, and system tray. The desktop has a dark, purple theme.

Fedora Family / IBM

• For the uninitiated, as iTWire outlined on 27 June, the second stage is when the person who made the original statement issues a “clarification” to provide the actual meaning of the original statement.

• The third stage is when friendly tech writers are invited, or else spontaneously decide, to exonerate the company for its move and blame it on some other entity (the government, the private sector, goblins, the Australian Labor Party, AI, the Loch Ness monster, the Abominable Snowman etc).

• Open source writer Steven Vaughan-Nichols has taken up cudgels for Red Hat, blaming IBM, which now owns the Linux firm, for the changes in access to RHEL source code.

• There has been, once again, turmoil and drama in FOSS spheres. First, Red Hat did a trick with their open source code, so that if anyone who uses their GPL rights to share the Red Hat code, loses their subscription. (Well, that’s how I understood it. Please give it a read yourself to make sure.)

• It’s a complicated matter, where complicated opinions bubble on top, at least for me. I do not comment on it since I just do not know enough. I’ve never used RHEL for anything, anyway.

• But it has certainly affected the user trust.

• Now, Fedora got recently a proposal to add opt-out telemetry.

• Considering Fedora and Red Hat are tied to each other on some level, it again has affected the user trust. Mainly negatively.

• Gaining trust is hard, losing it is easy. And it does seem this has been quite a blow to Red Hat and Fedora, but maybe it shows positively in other ways. Who knows.

• I shared my opinions on their forum, but yes, I’m cynical enough to think my voice doesn’t really matter. I could’ve been less “sharp-tongued” about it in those posts, but dude im just so tired.

• My personal feelings on the matter is that I hope all goes well, but I will try other distro offerings in the meanwhile and see how it goes. I am tired of worrying over such things anyway, so it’s easier for me to move.

• “All we need to do is stop talking and we instantly look better by comparison.”

• I’m spending some time every week working in the rpmlint project.

• Every component described above is open-source and auditable. For completeness: it’s not an integral part of the stack, but we use a self-hosted instance of Metabase, an open-core business intelligence platform, to visualise the data stored in the PostgreSQL database. The Endless OS Foundation team has access to Metabase, and thence to the data stored by Azafea; nobody else has access to the raw data. Metabase allows us to make read-only charts and dashboards visible to the public. Here is a visualisation of the total RAM in Endless OS users’ machines in the past 24 hours at the time of writing, rounded to the nearest half-gigabyte (or rather, for my fellow pedants, gibibyte), taken from this event. You can see the live chart here. And if you mouse over one of the segments in the live chart, you can infer from the totals that there are somewhere north of 17,000 computers running Endless OS 4 or newer. (This is an underestimate of our total user count because it only considers the computers in use in a particular 24-hour window, which have not opted out of metrics, and which are not part of the ~20% of systems running an older OS version.)

• it isn’t a contest. Just enjoy the ride.

• The [2013-07-05 Fri] tweet from Seth Vidal, talking with another software engineer about the best tools for tracking cycling stats

• A decade ago we learned of the passing of Red Hat/Fedora Linux software engineer Seth Vidal on [2013-07-08 Mon]. I had the privilege of working with him in my time as a hobbyist contributor to Fedora and KDE and during my internship on Red Hat’s Community Architecture team while I was in University. Seth was very much one of those “bristly” Linux Sysadmin types but had a huge heart and was always honest and helpful and hopeful. I only got to meet with him and hack in person a few times at FUDCon and the like but I enjoyed talking with him online and I appreciated his mentorship.

• Like many deaths, of course it was normal life, and then suddenly it wasn’t. He died after a driver hit him while cycling and drove away without stopping.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Still based on the Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) long-term supported operating system series, powered by the long-term supported Linux 5.15 LTS kernel series, and featuring the Xfce 4.16 desktop environment series, Linux Lite 6.6 promises support for 22 new languages across many UI elements.

• Another interesting new feature in the upcoming Linux Lite 6.6 release is the implementation of an interactive AI Helper utility in Lite Welcome, based on OpenAI technologies.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• As a follow up to Wayland [1]:

• A difficult problem with Linux desktop systems (which includes phones and tablets) is restricting application access so that applications can’t mess with each other’s data or configuration but also allowing them to share data as needed. This has been mostly solved for Android but that involved giving up all “legacy” Linux apps. I think that we need to get phones capable of running a full desktop environment and having Android level security on phone apps and regular desktop apps. My interest in this is phones running Debian and derivatives such as PureOS. But everything I describe in this post should work equally well for all full featured Linux distributions for phones such as Arch, Gentoo, etc and phone based derivatives of those such as Manjaro. It may be slightly less applicable to distributions such as Alpine Linux and it’s phone derivative PostmarketOS, I would appreciate comments from contributors to PostmarketOS or Alpine Linux about this.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• Firefox 115 is out, which is also the new Extended Support Release base. A nice feature on Linux is a middle click on the new tab button will open a new tab with whatever URL is on the clipboard (on the other hand, middle click on an existing tab closes it, so the interface is a wee bit muddled here); a more questionable feature is a Mozilla-controlled extension blocklist by domain.

Programming/Development

• Welcome to the 40th post in the $R^4 series. This one will just be a very brief illustration of r2u use in what might be an unexpected place: Google Colab. Colab has a strong bent towards Jupyter and Python but has been supporting R compute kernels for some time (by changing what they call the ‘runtime’). And with a little exploration one can identify these are (currently, as of July 2023) running Ubuntu 20.04 aka ‘focal’.

JS

• Node.js is a powerful runtime environment that allows developers to build server-side applications using JavaScript. It is built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, providing a lightweight and efficient platform for creating scalable and high-performance web applications.

Leftovers

Science

• A solar storm forecast for Thursday is expected to give skygazers in 17 American states a chance to glimpse the Northern Lights, the colorful sky show that happens when solar wind hits the atmosphere. Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis, are most often seen in Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia, but an 11-year solar cycle that’s expected to peak in 2024 is making the lights visible in places farther to the south. The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks has forecast auroral activity Thursday in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Indiana, Maine and Maryland.

Hardware

• Being mute or speech-challenged can be a barrier, and [Raymond Li] has an interesting project to contribute to the 2023 Hackaday Prize: a pair of discreet chording keyboards that allow the user to emit live text-to-speech as quickly as one can manipulate them.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

Axios ☛ Now trending: “Plant-based” foods — and “vegan” is outFood makers are tripping over themselves to introduce new “plant-based” products — but many are shying away from the term “vegan,” which some perceive as having negative or off-putting connotations.Why it matters: The two terms aren’t always synonymous — “vegan” tends to refer to a lifestyle as well as a diet, in which all animal products, including honey, are avoided.But the semantic differences are critically important to marketers, as demand for animal-free foodstuffs balloons.Driving the news: Novel plant-based foods were out in full force at last week’s Summer Fancy Food Show at New York City’s Javits Center — a prominent showcase for new products — but many of the entrepreneurs behind them said they consciously avoided the “vegan” label.

• The US is a major importer of Mexico’s avocados, among many other foods. As farms in the US become increasingly strained, particularly due to drought in California, that dependence on Mexico is only increasing. In 2003, the US bought just 30% of Mexico’s avocado exports.

• New research exposes an underestimated risk of simultaneous global food supply shocks due to climate change.

• June was the second sunniest month since records began in this European country, the National Meteorological Service said.

• Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India—Rukmini Kamble, 69, has a unique way of identifying how severe a heat wave is. “I look at the number of painkillers and paracetamol tablets I take in the months of extreme heat,” she told me. She now takes two painkillers every day. During the heat waves last year, she took at least one pill a day to bring down or prevent fever while she worked.

• Desalination requires tons of energy. One company is testing a hack to make it greener.

• More than 2 million children gave birth in Turkey since 2001, and 21 thousand of them were younger than 15 said MP Sevda Karaca in her speech at the parliament and added that there are around 5 million child workers in the country.

• The head of the U.N. nuclear agency is in Japan to meet with government leaders and see final preparations for the release of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. Japan hopes the visit by International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Mariano Grossi will give credibility to the contentious plan. Grossi will meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida later Tuesday to submit IAEA’s final report on the water release. The report is expected  to say that the water sampling, testing and monitoring plans fulfill international requirements. The plant operator is expected to get a permit for releasing the water in the coming days, though when it will start doing so is undecided.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency’s final report declared the treated water from the destroyed nuclear plant had met its safety standards. Critics continue to demand more transparency.

• China’s customs authority on Friday said it would ban food imports from 10 Japanese prefectures over Tokyo’s plan to release treated nuclear wastewater into the ocean. Japan’s planned, decades-long discharge of accumulated water from the devastated Fukushima nuclear facility has been approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as meeting global standards.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Evernote has eliminated most of its workforce. In a joint statement with SFGateBending Spoons, the Milan-based app developer that bought the company last November, said Friday that it has laid off nearly all Evernote employees in the United States and Chile. Bending Spoons plans to move most of the company’s remaining operations to Europe. The layoffs come less than six months after the company was founded Cut 129 jobs in Evernote because the app has been “unprofitable for years”. Bending Spoons hasn’t shared exactly how many employees have been affected by this latest round of layoffs. Scan for Linkedin reveals Some software engineers who have worked with Evernote for a few years lost their jobs on Friday.

• Web 2.0-era personal productivity app maker Evernote Corp., acquired by Italian technology company Bending Spoons S.p.A. in November, has laid off most of its staff in the U.S. and Chile and has relocated the remaining staff to Italy.

• In a statement from Bending Spoons Chief Executive Officer Luca Ferrari reported July 7 by SFGate, most of Evernote’s operations will be moved to Europe because of the “significant boost in operational efficiency that will come as a consequence of centralizing operations in Europe.

• ” The exact number of employees laid off in the closure of the Bay Area and Chile offices was not disclosed, but the company had previously laid off 129 employees at the beginning of the year. According to SFGate, affected workers were primarily engineering and information technology employees.

Security

• In this report, we describe a discovered remote code execution vulnerability in neural language processing systems. These systems, currently in active use by major social media networks including but not limited to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, allow for the crafting of a carefully selected message that allows successful attackers to gain control over the target victim.

• Attackers could leverage the new StackRot vulnerability in the Linux kernel to facilitate privilege escalation in targeted hosts, The Hacker News reports.

• Linux versions 6.1 to 6.4 are affected by the use-after-free flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-3269, which originated from the maple tree data structure that replaced red-black tree for virtual memory area management and storage, said Peking University security researcher Ruihan Li.

• On July 4, the Luigi Vanvitelli hospital in Italy posted a notice on its homepage that it had been the victim of a ransomware attack on July 1 and was investigating it. There has been no update since then.

• There is no respite for the Italian “gooses that lay golden eggs”, the hospitals that do not seem to suffer a respite. And after ASL1 Abruzzo, now it’s the turn of the Luigi Vanvitelli university hospital in Naples.

• The hackers criminals have hit the hospital with a type cyber attack ransomware. The incident was disclosed by the national cybersecurity agency, which sent a team of experts to support the hospital in managing the attack and restoring the compromised systems.

Defence/Aggression

• The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) dismissed India’s objections regarding the legitimacy of arbitration to address the ongoing Indus River disputes between India and Pakistan on Thursday. Consequently, the court has reinstated a previously stalled procedure that had been impeded for a considerable number of years.

• Hong Kong marked the third anniversary of the enactment of its national security law last month. While the government said that the Beijing-imposed legislation, enacted in June 2020, would only impact a minority of people, dozens of opposition figures and residents have been arrested for alleged national security offences.

War in Ukraine

• On July 9 and 10 the Speakers of the Parliaments of the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine will be meeting in Rīga, Latvia, where political and practical assistance to Ukraine, including support on its path to the European Union and NATO, will be discussed ahead of the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius later in the week.

• President Joe Biden leaves on Sunday for Europe, where he’ll spend time in three nations tending to alliances that have been tested by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The first stop is London, where Biden will meet on Monday with King Charles III for the first time since he was crowned. Next is the centerpiece of the trip, the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Alliance leaders will debate the war and revise plans for dealing with Russian aggression. The final stop is in Helsinki, where Biden is expected to celebrate the expanding alliance, with Finland as the newest member of NATO.

• President Volodymyr Zelensky brought home from Turkey on Saturday five former commanders of Ukraine’s garrison in Mariupol, a highly symbolic achievement that Russia said violated a prisoner exchange deal engineered last year. Read our live blog for all the latest developments on the war in Ukraine. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

• Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov welcomed a US decision to send cluster bombs to Kyiv, saying it would help to liberate Ukrainian territory but promised the munitions would not be used in Russia. The US announced on Friday it would supply Ukraine with widely banned cluster munitions for its counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces.

• The US announced Friday it would provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, despite a Thursday plea from Human Rights Watch (HRW) for both Russia and Ukraine to cease their use of the deadly weapons.

• Latvia’s long-serving foreign minister, known for his tough line on neighboring Russia and strong support for Ukraine, was sworn in on July 8 as the Baltic nation’s president for a four-year term.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 8 said he has brought home from Turkey five commanders taken prisoner by Russia during the brutal struggle in the city of Mariupol early in the war that culminated with a long, bloody holdout at the Azovstal steel plant.

• At least eight civilians were killed in Russian artillery shelling in the eastern Ukrainian town of Lyman, local officials said on July 8, as the conflict entered its 500th day.

• Discussions will focus on the two countries’ relationship and economic ties as well as international matters such as the war in Ukraine.

• Even after so much loss, Ukrainian war veterans plan to return to the front.

• The departure of Russian fencers who object to their country’s invasion of Ukraine has created a stir at home and left their sporting futures in question.

• Supporting Ukraine and clarifying its relationship with the alliance will be a dominant theme at an upcoming summit. But NATO’s efforts to strengthen its own defenses along its eastern flank will also be key.

• President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine shared a video of a trip to Snake Island in the Black Sea, a symbol of his country’s fierce resistance, as Russian shelling in the east killed at least seven.

• The Turkish president also said he would work to help extend the Black Sea grain deal for longer intervals after meeting with Ukraine’s leader.

• On July 8, Azovstal commanders returned to Ukraine from Turkey. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Turkey and Ukraine of breaking the terms of the agreement that freed the commanders from Russian captivity.

• Belgorod’s regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov says Ukrainian troops shelled the municipality of Shebekino with Grad multiple rocket launcher systems on June 8. The shelling reportedly caused several fires. No one was injured. According to the regional authorities, they have suspended the return of evacuees to Shebekino as a result of the reported attack.

• On the morning of July 8, Russian forces shelled the city of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, reports regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

• Anthony Albanese will fly out of Perth bound for Europe and security talks as Ukraine marks the 500-day anniversary of war with Russia.

• The prime minister will get down to business on Monday in Berlin, where he will meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

• The departure of hundreds of Russian Wagner troops from the Central African Republic is part of a rotation of forces rather a withdrawal, a spokesperson for the C.A.R. presidency said on July 8.

• Russian fighter jets have “harassed” American drones over Syria for the third day in a row this week, the U.S. military said on July 8.

• Up to 500 Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed to compete as neutrals at the Asian Games in China later this year, organizers said on July 8.

• Mercenary fighters of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group are preparing to move to Belarus under the terms of a deal that defused their mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, a senior commander of the group was quoted as saying.

• Russia has requested a new meeting of the UN Security Council for July 11 to discuss last September’s explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, a senior Russian diplomat at the United Nations said on July 8.

• NATO has turned Vilnius into a fortress defended by advanced weaponry to protect U.S. President Joe Biden and other alliance leaders meeting next week only 32 kilometers from Lithuania’s razor-wire topped border fence with Russian ally Belarus.

Environment

Axios ☛ Under the heat dome, renewable energy sources are keeping Texans coolRenewable energy is helping to keep electricity costs from skyrocketing in Texas as the state sweats beneath a heat dome.The big picture: The heat dome is toppling records. Multiple locations in Texas set monthly and all-time temperature highs last week.And with air conditioners humming relentlessly, the state hit a new record for electricity usage on June 27.Meanwhile, Texas’ renewable energy production also climbed to new highs amid outages from a large number of fossil-fuel plants.

• The past three days have each broken or tied records as the Earth’s hottest day since at least 1979 and likely far longer, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, accessible via a University of Maine website.

• Why it matters: Daily temperature milestones are largely symbolic — but point to an alarming trend, scientists say.

• This story originally appeared in Capital & Main and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

• As chair of the key environmental committee in Pennsylvania’s newly Democratic House of Representatives, Greg Vitali was hopeful his committee could begin advancing meaningful climate policy after years of playing defense.

• The planet’s temperature spiked on Tuesday to its hottest day in decades and likely centuries, and Wednesday could become the third straight day Earth unofficially marks a record-breaking high. It’s the latest in a series of climate-change extremes that alarm but don’t surprise scientists.

• “…1.4 million deaths annually in the European region are attributable to environmental risk factors…”

• Researchers in the US reported that the Earth experienced the hottest day ever recorded by humans on July 3.

• TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger faced intensifying harassment as he did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts. A man who sent him a series of threatening emails was charged with third-degree harassment. The Des Moines station where he worked asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings. So on June 21, he announced that he was leaving KCCI — and his 18-year career in broadcast journalism altogether.

• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro met this weekend in preparation for a climate summit next month. The leaders called for action from all countries that share the Amazon biome.

• The globe set a record for the warmest June since at least 1940, new and emerging climate data shows, obliterating the previous milestone from 2019. Separately, the globe set new single day records for the hottest day yet measured, on July 3 and 4.

• Why it matters: The records are an indication of the influence that an El Niño event is having in the tropical Pacific Ocean, since it is amplifying the pace of human-caused climate change.

• Extreme heat is the engine of planetary chaos. We ignore it at our peril.

• Record-setting heat and hazardous air have already consumed much of the U.S. this summer, and the worst may be yet to come.

• The big picture: The effects of a warming climate are no longer happening in the background. They’re actively dictating and shaping our lives.

• It is “critical” for Washington and Beijing to keep working together on climate finance, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Saturday, urging deeper cooperation in addressing the “existential threat” of global warming.

• Three non-governmental organizations filed for a judicial review claim on Friday against the UK government over its revised climate change strategy. The organizations seek to challenge the lawfulness of the government’s new plans, claiming they are “inadequate” to address the threat of climate change.

• Previous cooperation on climate change between both countries has made possible global breakthroughs.

• Earth recorded its hottest day on record on Thursday, making it the fourth straight to set or tie the record for warmest day globally.

• Last month was the hottest June globally on record, with abnormally high temperatures recorded on both land and sea, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Thursday.

• After the planet set a record-high average temperature on Tuesday, Earth’s average temperature remained the same on Wednesday. With heat waves from Peru to Canada, climate experts caution against an ever-warming world.

• From north to south, temperatures are surging as greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and combine with effects from El Niño.

• A yearlong freeze in climate talks appears to be ending as the United States and China, the world’s biggest polluters, resume discussions.

• A​ ​debate over how fast to transition to clean energy ​is gaining urgency, as ​a proposed ​EPA ​emissions rule stirs concerns about electric grid reliability.

• Regulators reached a provisional deal on how quickly the transition to zero-emissions fuels should happen for cargo ships, which often burn particularly dirty oil.

Energy/Transportation

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 07 Jul 2023 The Commission welcomes the agreement reached today at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to revise its 2018 strategy on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships.

• The fundamental reality is that, for South Asia, cooperation on climate change is not a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have.

• Electric cars promise a clean energy transition amid the ongoing climate crisis. They rely on cobalt, a highly strategic mineral necessary for electric car batteries. It is found in particular in DR Congo, which has the largest cobalt reserves in the world. It is mined there at a colossal environmental and human cost involving child labour, water and air pollution, as well as corruption. As the auto industry battles it out, we went to meet the victims of the cobalt rush.

• Industrial decarbonization in the United States will be an important element in lowering global emissions. To limit the consequences of climate change, the United States must urgently advance a suite of efforts to guarantee the domestic and international industrial emissions reductions the world needs.

• The World Bank last week (June 29) approved $1.5bn in financing to help India promote low-carbon energy by scaling up renewable energy, developing green hydrogen and stimulating climate finance for low-carbon energy investments.

• Climate activists vow to keep fighting after a court dismissed their bid to stop a coal mine extension that would generate the equivalent of Australia’s total annual carbon dioxide emissions.

• Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action says the Land and Environment Court judgment in favour of Whitehaven’s Narrabri coal mine expansion in NSW was “out of step with community expectations”.

• China must ensure the renewable energy transition is ‘fair,’ authors say

• The US Department of Energy (DOE) on Wednesday (July 5) announced plans for a $1bn demand-side hydrogen initiative to support its Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs) programme.

• Progress roundup: In Australia, a research collaboration incorporated Indigenous expertise. In the U.S., engineers found a secret to harvesting energy from air – nanopores.

• 8th OPEC International Seminar in Vienna under the theme “Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Energy Transition.”

• Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, kicked off the Revolutionary War in earnest, which the Continental Army only finally won seven years later, in 1882.

• “Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Energy Transition”

• Hong Kong government said it was reviewing the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the the safety of Japan’s nuclear wastewater discharge plan, which was said to be “consistent with international safety standards” by the report.

• As regulated monopolies, utilities have the unique ability to force customers to fund their political activities through monthly bills.

• Alabama could be the buckle of a new manufacturing “battery belt” across the South. The economic activity is putting green energy in a new light.

Wildlife/Nature

• As concerns over wildfires and air quality mount, drones and laser shows offer an alternative to fireworks on July 4 and other holidays.

Overpopulation

• Minister of Energy and Water of Angola acknowledges progress in confronting the drought.

Finance

• Ireland has been “by far” the biggest casualty when it comes to the tech giants laying off staff, with 40% of the redundancies in the EU over the past three years.

• An analysis by the Dublin-based EU agency Eurofound, or the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, examined worldwide job cuts at Facebook parent Meta, Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google.

• “It is clear Ireland is by far the country most affected by big tech restructurings, which is not surprising since most of these tech companies’ European or EMEA headquarters are based there.”

• Job cuts at the largest US banks are on course to surpass 11,000 this year as Wall Street contends with the worst recruitment market since the financial crisis following a pandemic-era hiring binge.

• Citigroup this week became the latest big US bank to announce significant job cuts, telling investors that it planned to complete 5,000 redundancies by the end of the second quarter, mostly in investment banking and trading. That followed cuts affecting thousands of bankers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

• The redundancies come as executives try to unwind a recruitment spree that started as the economy rebounded in the aftermath of Covid-19. Banks dramatically increased their headcounts to cope with a deals and trading boom at a time when working from home was scrambling traditional ways of doing business.

• Commentators will run a fine-tooth comb through what Philip Lowe has to say next following the Reserve Bank’s decision to keep interest rates on hold this month.

• The central bank has been hiking rates to rein in inflation and in July kept them steady at 4.1 per cent.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The thrill-seekers jumped or flipped off the backs of speeding boats, only to break their necks on the wake and drown, according to Cpt. Jim Dennis of the Childersburg Rescue Squad.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• The case, which could alter how the government battles disinformation, is a flashpoint in a broader effort by conservatives to document what they contend is a liberal conspiracy to silence their views.

• The temporary injunction bars government agencies from suppressing free speech.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Is “intramural” professorial speech protected by the First Amendment?

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• In 2020 I first setup a Matrix [1] server. Matrix is a full featured instant messaging protocol which requires a less stringent definition of “instant”, messages being delayed for minutes aren’t that uncommon in my experience. Matrix is a federated service where the servers all store copies of the room data, so when you connect your client to it’s home server it gets all the messages that were published while you were offline, it is widely regarded as being IRC but without a need to be connected all the time.

• Matrix was designed for bridging with other protocols, the most well known of which is IRC.

• The most common Matrix server software is Synapse which is written in Python and uses a PostgreSQL database as it’s backend [2]. My tests have shown that a lightly loaded Synapse server with less than a dozen users and only one or two active users will have noticeable performance problems if the PostgreSQL database is stored on SATA hard drives. This seems like the type of software that wouldn’t have been developed before SSDs became commonly affordable.

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