● 07.13.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 12/07/2023: Microsoft Layoffs in California This Week and KPhotoAlbum 5.11.0 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 12:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• fwupd 1.9.3 Linux firmware updating utility is now available for download with support for new devices, as well as new features, improvements, and multiple bug fixes.

Audiocasts/Shows

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we discuss the changing of the tech environment going on lock down. Then we discuss Fedora thinking about ethical telemetry. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and much more on Destination Linux.

• FULL SHOW NOTES ►► https://tuxdigital.com/podcasts/destination-linux/dl-331/

• Making a NixOS configuration for non-technical family members, taking a Steam Deck on an aeroplane, and publishing a GNOME extension.

Kernel Space

• Earlier today, renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of Linux kernel 6.3.13 as the thirteenth maintenance update to the Linux 6.3 kernel series, an update that brings quite a lot of changes (481 files changed, 4919 insertions, and 2870 deletions).

• However, Greg Kroah-Hartman also marked the Linux kernel 6.3 series as EOL (End of Life) on the kernel.org website, noting the fact that Linux kernel 6.3.13 is the last update in the series and urging users to upgrade their Linux systems to the latest Linux 6.4 kernel as soon as possible.

Applications

• An open-source file manager is a software tool that allows users to manage their files and folders in a convenient and efficient way. Open-source file managers are built on the principles of transparency and collaboration, and their code is available to anyone who wants to use, modify, or improve it.

• A lightweight, cross-platform file manager with a dual-pane interface…

• [...]

• muCommander is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License

• Fellow fans of the bleeding edge may be interested to hear that canary builds of GNOME Web (aka Epiphany) are once again available.

• This article selects our pick of the available eBook web apps. We only explore free and open source software here.

Instructionals/Technical

• This series covers the end-to-end process of creating an instance on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. This 3-part series includes:

• phpBB in the Context of Other Forum Software Compared to other forum software, phpBB offers a unique blend of features that sets it apart: The Power of phpBB on Debian Debian, known for its stability and security, serves as an excellent platform for hosting phpBB.

• If you are thinking that installation of Metasploit framework is limited to the terminal, you must check out this article to learn how to install Metasploit with the GUI method on Linux. Rapid7 and the open-source community manage the widely used penetration testing framework, Metasploit.

• In our previous article, we explored how to use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to create an instance in Google Compute Engine. We saw how Ansible Automation Platform can streamline the process of deploying instances in GCP, making it more efficient and less error-prone.

• In this article, we’ll explore how to simplify the process of creating Instances in GCP by using workflow templates with Ansible Automation Platform. Workflow templates can help us to standardize the process of creating VMs and reduce the amount of manual intervention required.

• In our previous article we have demonstrated a working prototype of Host Identity Based Virtual Private Service or HIP-VPLS. Back then we used the Mininet framework. Here we are going to demonstrate how to deploy this system on a real hardware. We are going to use NanoPi R2S as the platform for HIP-VPLS. Just a reminder. Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) provide means for building Layer 2 communication on top of an existing IP network. VPLS can be built using various approaches. However, when building a production-grade VPLS solution one needs to have a clear picture of how such aspects as security, mobility, and L2 issues will be solved.

• This series covers the end-to-end process of creating an instance on GCP using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. This 3-part series includes:

• Part 2: How to create a GCP instance using Ansible Automation

• Slackware 15.0 is a stable release of Slackware, and it is based on kernel 5.15.19, the new version comes also with KDE and XFCE Desktop environment.

• Slackware was founded on 1993, and it’s the oldest Linux distro.

• Several users have said that their Chromium-based browsers are not rendering pages on some Linux distros.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Django on Fedora 38. For those of you who didn’t know, Django is a powerful and popular Python-based web framework that simplifies the process of building robust web applications.

• To install Crack Attack on OpenSUSE, Fedora, and Debian, you can follow these general steps: For Fedora, use the following command instead: Note: If you encounter any errors during the build process, it may be due to missing dependencies.

• Guide on the various ways of adding a user to a user group in Fedora Linux and how to list all the groups in the system and remove the users from a user group.

• ZSH command not found nvm error in Mac can be fixed by installing the nvm through brew and adding the path zshrc file.

• In the vast landscape of Linux, there exist tools that, once mastered, can unlock a new level of productivity and understanding. One such tool is cURL, a command-line utility designed for data transfer across a multitude of protocols.

• In the realm of UNIX and Linux-based systems, the wget command stands as a powerful utility for downloading files from the internet. Its versatility allows it to handle a variety of tasks, from downloading single files to mirroring entire websites. This guide aims to provide an in-depth exploration of wget’s full potential.

• In this blog, you will learn the step-by-step procedure for installing and configuring an RDP server using XRDP on your Ubuntu 22.04.

• get familiar with the cp command for copying files and directories in the Linux command line.

• Parted is a renowned command-line utility designed to facilitate the management of hard disk partitions in a user-friendly manner.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• We’re happy to announce the new release 5.11.0 of KPhotoAlbum, the KDE photo management program!

• Most notably, this release can be built against Exiv2 0.28, which introduced some breaking changes. Older versions are still supported as before.

• Other things that have been changed and fixed (as listed in the ChangeLog) are…

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• SUSE is reconsidering the change of course it made at the beginning of last year: it is launching its own RHEL-compatible distro, or as it puts it, a fork of RHEL.

• The company’s recently appointed CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen has made his first big announcement: that the German enterprise Linux vendor will launch its own Red Hat Enterprise Linux compatible distro soon.

• In the announcement, a quote from Linux pro Greg Kurtzer reveals with whom SUSE is working: Kurtzer is the founder and CEO of CIQ, the company that sponsors Rocky Linux. The announcement comes soon after the claims from the Rocky Linux project that it has found a way around the new restrictions on Red Hat sharing the RHEL source code. It also, of course, follows even more closely upon Oracle’s chutzpah-laden article on this subject.

• SUSE, the company behind Rancher and SUSE Enterprise Linux, has announced it will invest $10 million to fork publicly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and develop a RHEL-compatible distribution.

• Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, CEO of SUSE, says, “For decades, collaboration and shared success have been the building blocks of our open-source community. We have a responsibility to defend these values.”

• He then speaks to the investment SUSE has committed to this effort by saying, “This investment will preserve the flow of innovation for years to come and ensures that customers and community alike are not subjected to vendor lock-in and have genuine choice tomorrow as well as today.”

• This all started when Red Hat declared that CentOS Stream would be the sole repository for public RHEL source code. However, with CentOS Stream being a rolling release distribution, it’s not exactly suitable for business needs.

• Who would have expected at the beginning of the year that this summer would be so “hot” for the open-source community?

• But after Red Hat, to eliminate the competition in the face of Alma and Rocky, announced last month the limiting of access to their source code, the news hasn’t stopped pouring in.

• Two weeks ago, SUSE was the first company to disagree with Red Hat’s decision publicly. Now, they come out with unexpected news that is literally about to shake the Linux world, with the potential to redraw the map of the Enterprise Linux segment.

• First came AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. Then Oracle. Now SUSE is coming after Red Hat for changing the rules on RHEL source code. What’s next? Microsoft RHEL!?

• For over 25 years, open source has revolutionized our world. From the growth of Linux to virtualization, to the move to the cloud, and more – many, if not most major advances in technology have had open source innovation as a driving force. For me, it’s obvious why.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Oracle has waded into the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code furor in a stunning turn of events, claiming it’s “committed to Linux freedom”.

• Oracle’s words will doubtless cause users who remember OpenSolaris to raise an eyebrow or two. Organizations dealing with the pain arising from Oracle’s changes around Java licensing – the introduction of the Java SE Universal Subscription – will also be taken aback by the company’s championing of open and free principles.

• Since Oracle has weighed in about Red Hat’s source changes, it’s time to take a look at the history of Oracle Linux. That takes us back to 2006, the world of enterprise computing, and into new markets. Specifically, Java and middleware.

• In the early days of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Oracle was a boon for Red Hat. Being able to run Oracle’s stack on RHEL meant Red Hat could expand with existing customers, and opened doors to business for Red Hat that wouldn’t have been open in the first place.

• Heading into 2006, Red Hat was doing pretty well for a company that sold free software. Its annual revenue for FY2006 was $278.3 million, growth of 53% from FY2005. (Note: Red Hat’s fiscal year 2006 started in March 2005 and ran through February 2006. As part of IBM, its fiscal year is now tied to the calendar year.)

• Now, it’s Oracle’s turn to jump into the Red Hat open-source Linux code kerfuffle.

• I can’t belive its been more than a year since my last composefs blog. So much has changed, yet the goal is the same. However, finally things are starting to settling down, so I think it is time to do an update on the current state.

• This is the latest in our monthly series summarizing the past month on the Community Blog. Please leave a comment below to let us know what you think.

• Week 27 (July 4th – July 10th) # Packit now correctly reloads upstream specfile after running pre-sync action. (packit#2006)

Debian Family

• In my last blog, I looked at the way some extraordinary women were excluded from Outreachy & Debian internships.

• Many people simply assumed that there was only one explanation for the Albanian woman dining with the Debian leader, Chris Lamb, two months before the award of Outreachy internships.

• Both men and women look at the DebConf19 photos and reach the same conclusion. People assume it is simply an inappropriate romance. In fact, they may all be wrong.

• There are at least two other explanations.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• FastCP is a modern, fast, and secure control panel to run multiple PHP websites on an Ubuntu server.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

• OK, it’s a clickbait headline. While it’s true that Carlos Santana will speak at this year’s ATO, it won’t be the Carlos Santana whose performed at Woodstock and who’s still putting out great albums nearly 55 years later.

• The Carlos Santana who will speak at this year’s All Things Open is pretty cool though. He’s a senior Kubernetes Solutions Architect at AWS, leading Amazon EKS Solutions in the Worldwide Application Modernization. He also comes to the table with plenty of speaking experience before a wide range of audiences, and has more than 20 years of experience in distributed systems, open source, containers, serverless, and devops. Also, he is a CNCF Ambassador and contributor to CNCF projects Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Crossplane, and Knative.

• As a first session, we wanted to introduce folks to the basics of open culture – how our licenses work, and how they can be harnessed by cultural heritage institutions or GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) to responsibly share the world’s cultural heritage.

Programming/Development

Python

• In Python, the os.rename() function is utilized to change the names of both files and directories. Using this function, we can also change the file extension.

Java

• To remove the element from a collection, the iterator finds the targeted data in the collection and then the “remove()” method removes that data element.

Leftovers

• Museums must pay for added security and the conservation of precious paintings. Now they are suing eco-activists for damages, and authorities are bringing serious charges.

Education

• All major demographic groups, led by Republicans, are less confident in higher education than they were just a few years ago, according to a Gallup poll out Tuesday.

• Driving the news: Just 36% of Americans said they have confidence in higher education. Trust in major U.S. institutions overall has dropped.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Someone I spend my life with has worked remote, every day, for the last six months. I won’t name her specifically, but you can guess.

• Now let’s imagine, hypothetically, why this might be. Was she sick with COVID this whole time? Does she work for a forward-thinking company that recognised office space as a huge and wasteful operational expense that could be put towards salaries and extra workers? Did she get a special arrangement from her manager? Does she enjoy listening to me on client calls while she tries to listen in on hers?

• From late 2021 to early 2022, humans transmitted the coronavirus to white-tailed deer more than 100 times, research suggests.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Tech company Microsoft (MSFT 1.65%) initiated a round of layoffs on Monday, just after the company’s new fiscal year started. The news is interesting following a surge in the prices of many tech stocks, evidenced by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite’s 31 % year to date gain. Microsoft’s gains have been even stronger, with shares rising an incredible 39%. Could Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs suggest that hype in the sector has gone too far?

• In yet another round of cost-cutting, Microsoft laid off 276 employees Monday evening as the company enters a new fiscal year.

• Chinese hackers exploited a flaw in Microsoft’s cloud email service to gain access to the email accounts of U.S. government employees, the technology giant has confirmed.

• The hacking group, tracked as Storm-0558, compromised approximately 25 email accounts, including government agencies, as well as related consumer accounts linked to individuals associated with these organizations, according to Microsoft. “Storm” is a nickname used by Microsoft to track hacking groups that are new, emerging or “in development.”

• Microsoft announced a new round of layoffs yesterday (July 10), adding to the 10,000 jobs cut at the start of the year.

• Several prominent tech firms, including Sumo Logic, Intel, and Microsoft, have recently informed the EDD of their intention to lay off employees. There will be a total of seventy-nine layoffs at Sumo Logic in Redwood City, twenty-one at Intel in Santa Clara, and two at Microsoft in Mountain View. Most of these layoffs were announced this week, but they had actually been planned for some time before that. According to the EDD entries, all layoffs were described as permanent.

• In a statement sent to iTWire on Wednesday, a CMA spokesperson said: “We stand ready to consider any proposals from Microsoft to restructure the transaction in a way that would address the concerns set out in our Final Report.

• “In order to be able to prioritise work on these proposals, Microsoft and Activision have agreed with the CMA that a stay of litigation in the UK would be in the public interest and all parties have made a joint submission to the Competition Appeal Tribunal to this effect.”

• The CMA announcement followed a decision by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco which said the FTC had not shown that Microsoft’s merger with Activision would harm competition for gaming.

• Her decision means 38 jurisdictions have green-lighted the deal, which has an 18 July deadline for closing.

• The court’s temporary restraining order prohibiting Microsoft from closing the transaction is set to expire on Friday unless a federal appeals court grants an emergency stay.

• More than 2,700 Seattle-area employees were affected by layoffs announced earlier this year, according to the report. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella announced in January that the company would make changes that would result in a reduction of 10,000 jobs across its workforce by the end of the third quarter of fiscal year 2023.

• Salesforce has announced average price rises of 9% across much of its range, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Industries, and Tableau – but all is perhaps not entirely what it seems.

• While there could be an element of truth in rumors that the CRM giant is doing this to tackle the current economic pressure, the company also noted that this is the first time it has raised prices in seven years – so many observers perhaps saw it coming.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

• The European Commission needs to extend its consultations, Expert Groups and other work to include and consider the fourth sector.

Linux Foundation

• In the vibrant world of open source communities, collaboration, innovation, and shared values are defining traits. One fascinating aspect that encapsulates these principles is using mascots and symbols. Mascots serve as narrative devices and symbols of a project’s mission, reflecting core values and fostering community spirit. This article delves into the stories behind mascots and symbols of open source projects, emphasizing their contribution to organizational symbolism. Each is crucial in embodying and conveying the project’s mission, values, and ethos, making abstract concepts relatable and engaging. The community’s involvement in their design process fosters a sense of identity and belonging while humanizing technology.

Security

• Microsoft Corp. today released software updates to quash 130 security bugs in its Windows operating systems and related software, including at least five flaws that are already seeing active exploitation. Meanwhile, Apple customers have their own zero-day woes again this month: On Monday, Apple issued (and then quickly pulled) an emergency update to fix a zero-day vulnerability that is being exploited on MacOS and iOS devices.

• “An attacker could create a specially crafted Microsoft Office document that enables them to perform remote code execution in the context of the victim. However, an attacker would have to convince the victim to open the malicious file.

• {loadposition sam08}”Upon completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take the appropriate action to help protect our customers. This might include providing a security update through our monthly release process or providing an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.”

• Microsoft also warned of a phishing campaign using Office zero-dat exploits to attack European and North American government and defence agencies.

• iTWire’s regular Patch Tuesday commentator Satnam Narang said: “Two security feature bypass zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Outlook (CVE-2023-35311) and Windows SmartScreen (CVE-2023-32049) were exploited in the wild by attackers.

• “Details about exploitation were not available at the time Patch Tuesday updates were released, but it appears that the attackers were able to use social engineering to convince a target to click on a malicious URL. In both instances, security warning prompts that are designed to help protect users were bypassed.”

• The White House confirmed that unclassified U.S. government email accounts were accessed in the raids by Chinese hackers.

• Former security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed has been arrested on charges related to the defrauding of decentralized crypto exchange Crema Finance.

• The phrase “Root of Trust” turns up at various points in discussions about verified boot and measured boot, and to a first approximation nobody is able to give you a coherent explanation of what it means[1].

• Apple has pulled its latest Rapid Security Response updates for iOS and macOS after users complained that they can no longer access websites.

• Software maker calls special attention to CVE-2023-29300, a deserialization of untrusted data bug with a CVSS severity score of 9.8/10.

• HCA Healthcare says the personal information of roughly 11 million patients was stolen in a data breach.

• The Washington Post has an article about popular printing services, and whether or not they read your documents and mine the data when you use them for printing:

• Ten years ago, a young man left a nice job, his girlfriend and his home with just his laptops. His fantastic story changed the world and the way we think about our internet privacy.

• Researchers at cybersecurity firm Wiz Inc. today detailed a newly discovered Python-based fileless malware that’s targeting cloud workloads. Dubbed “PyLoose,” the attack is said to be the first publicly documented Python-based fileless attack targeting cloud workloads in the wild.

• Experts call for improvements to space cybersecurity as sectors such as energy, agriculture and finance rely more on satellite networks.

• Signing code is very important to defend against supply chain attacks, but it’s also one of the most cumbersome to implement for internal development.

• ICS Patch Tuesday: Siemens and Schneider Electric release nine new security advisories and fix 50 vulnerabilities in their industrial products.

• The security firm pointed out that the other drivers — 32 of which were signed by WHCP — were rootkits. “Many of these rootkits were designed to stealthily monitor sensitive data sent over the Internet,” it said.

• “Upon discovering these malicious drivers, X-Ops immediately reported the issue to Microsoft, who resolved the issue in their most recent Patch Tuesday.

• Christopher Budd, director, threat research, Sophos X-Ops, said: “Since October last year, we’ve noticed a concerning rise in threat actors taking advantage of malicious signed drivers to carry out various cyber attacks, including [the use of] ransomware.

• “We believed that attackers would continue to leverage this attack vector, and that has indeed been the case. Because drivers often communicate with the ‘core’ of the operating system and load before security software, when they are abused, they can be particularly effective at disabling security protections — especially when signed by a trusted authority.

• “Many of the malicious drivers we’ve discovered were specifically designed to target and ‘take out’ EDR products, leaving the affected systems vulnerable to a range of malicious activity.

• “Obtaining a signature for a malicious driver is difficult, so this technique is primarily used by advanced threat actors in targeted attacks.

• Microsoft disclosed today an unpatched zero-day security bug in multiple Windows and Office products exploited in the wild to gain remote code execution via malicious Office documents.

• Learn how a malicious driver exploits a loophole in the Windows operating system to run at kernel level.

• The hack, by a Chinese group that the company said was intent on conducting espionage, went undetected for a month.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Over 300 security researchers & academics warn against the measures in the EU’s proposed Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), citing harmful side-effects of large-scale scanning of online communications which would have a chilling effect on society and negatively affect democracies. The letter remains open for signatures.

• The country’s peak cyber security agency says TikTok’s ability to gather large amounts of user information was in part the reason for the app’s ban from government devices.

• Officials from the Australian Signals Directorate on Wednesday told a parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference through social media the app could form a picture of information about those with profiles on the platform.

• Last year, on 1 October 2022 the Government quietly announced that smart meter data would be collected in order to assess the bills reduction scheme following energy price hikes last year.

• In order to comply with data protection regimes, AI chatbots and associated machine learning applications will have to be capable of forgetting what they’ve learned.

• It’s not yet evident they can handle that requirement.

• Researchers affiliated with Australia’s National Science Agency (CSIRO’s Data61), and Australian National University – Dawen Zhang, Pamela Finckenberg-Broman, Thong Hoang, Shidong Pan, Zhenchang Xing, Mark Staples, and Xiwei Xu – recently issued a paper on the subject.

• Citing the “right to be forgotten” or right to erasure under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the academics argue that large language models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Flan-T5, Meta’s LLaMA, and Anthropic’s Claude, and the applications integrating these models (Microsoft Bing, GitHub Copilot, Google Bard, and third-party apps linked via API) will find compliance challenging because they process and store information in a way that’s different from search engines.

• It’s not just the EU’s GDPR that promises this limited right. The

Defence/Aggression

• New reporting shows how the Islamic State group has funded the Allied Democratic Forces for at least four years, leading to an escalating scale of brutality.

• A court in Almaty has sentenced several activists, including journalist Aigerim Tleuzhan, to sentences in a medium-security penal colony over their participation in the brief seizing of the Almaty airport during mass protests that rocked the country in January 2022.

• ato said China challenged its interests, security and values with its “ambitions and coercive policies”.

• The inquiry is looking at the risk posed to Australia’s democracy by social media.

Russia and War in Ukraine

• On Tuesday, July 11, the NATO summit started in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. At the center of discussions and decisions will be the question of supporting Ukraine and Ukraine’s path to membership in the alliance as well as strengthening the alliance’s capabilities and taking Sweden into the alliance.

• NATO leaders say they will allow Ukraine to join the alliance “when allies agree and conditions are met.” The plan emerged Tuesday at the annual NATO summit in Lithuania. It came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted the organization’s failure to set a timetable for his country as “absurd.” Although many NATO members have funneled arms and ammunition to Zelenskyy’s forces, there is no consensus among the 31 allies for admitting Ukraine into NATO’s ranks. Instead, alliance leaders decided to remove obstacles on Ukraine’s membership path so that it can join more quickly once the war with Russia is over.

• Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. News that the Biden administration is sending cluster munitions to Ukraine highlights the dangerous escalatory nature of wars. These are special bombs and artillery shells with hundreds of “bomblets” that disperse to kill or maim as many people as possible.

• The abortive rebellion in Russia by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Private Military Corporation (PMC) Wagner didn’t only leave Vladimir Putin wondering about his grip on power. Across the African continent, from the steaming jungles of the Central African Republic (CAR) to the deserts of Libya, presidents and generals were left wondering, panicking, even, about what would happen to the Wagner Group. This was in large part because Prigozhin’s band of mercenaries have become an integral part of many of the continent’s fighting forces. On June 26, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took to the state-funded broadcaster RT to reassure African leaders that they would not lose their fighting forces. “The governments of CAR and Mali have official contacts with our leadership. At their request, several hundred soldiers are working in CAR as instructors,” Lavrov said. “That work will continue.”

• The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Russian government failed to properly investigate the murder of politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015. The decision comes in response to a complaint filed by Nemtsov’s daughter, Zhanna Nemtsova.

• The Nordic, Baltic countries and Poland said on Tuesday that they expect Sweden’s membership of NATO to increase security in the Baltic Sea region.

• On June 23-25, during the Wagner Group rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russians withdrew 100 billion rubles (around $1.1 billion) from the banks, reports Russia’s Central Bank.

• At today’s NATO summit in Lithuania, member countries are expected to debate Ukraine’s request to join the military alliance, which would provide additional military support for its war with Russia. Opponents to Ukrainian membership, however, warn that such a move would needlessly escalate what Russia sees as a proxy war with the United States against NATO encroachment on its western border.

• Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) introduced an amendment to the NDAA to block the provision of cluster munitions.

• France has decided to give Ukraine SCALP missiles (the French name for Storm Shadow), which have a range of at least 250 kilometers (around 155 miles).

• Former Russian inmates who received amnesty in exchange for fighting with Wagner Group in Ukraine have started committing new crimes back at home, according to the independent Russian news site Verstka. Journalists from the outlet examined public records to learn what new criminal cases have been opened against the ex-convicts in recent months. Meanwhile, the Russian authorities are doing their best to remove the offenders’ new charges from public records. On top of that, the fact that they received amnesty means the maximum sentences these Wagner veterans can receive are lighter than the ones repeat offenders would ordinarily get. Meduza summarizes Verstka’s findings.

• Our map is based exclusively on previously published open-source photos and videos, most of them posted by eyewitnesses on social media. We collect reports already available publicly and determine their geolocation markers, adding only the photos and videos that clear this process.

• President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Vilnius on July 11 for the 2023 summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Among other topics at the annual summit, leaders discussed Ukraine’s bid to join the organization.

• A recent RomCom cyber operation has been targeting NATO Summit guests and other entities supporting Ukraine.

• The chance of open U.S.-Russia conflict really would increase if Ukraine were admitted to NATO.

• The 2023 NATO summit failed to deliver on hopes for a clear commitment on future Ukrainian membership, leaving many in Ukraine deeply frustrated by the apparent lack of urgency among the country’s allies, writes Peter Dickinson.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t get his biggest wish: a timeline for Ukrainian membership in NATO. Our experts are here to decode the communiqué and its ramifications.

• NATO leaders gathered Wednesday to launch a highly symbolic new forum for ties with Ukraine, after committing to provide the country with more military assistance for fighting Russia but only vague assurances of future membership.

• Atlantic Council experts decode what the communiqué says about Ukraine’s membership, NATO’s approach to China, and more.

• Ukraine said Wednesday it had shot down 11 Russian drones overnight in a second consecutive night of attacks on the capital Kyiv, as NATO leaders prepared to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Vilnius.

• Along with seeking a compromise for Ukraine’s entry into NATO, leaders at the Vilnius summit are on a quest to bolster the Alliance’s eastern front.

• The NATO-Ukraine Council is holding its first meeting as the NATO summit continues in Vilnius on Wednesday.

• Ukraine has made impressive progress in implementing the reforms needed to join the European Union, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Vilnius on Wednesday.

• Speaking at a public event in central Vilnius on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Lithuania for its “very courageous” stance on Kyiv’s bid to join NATO, saying the two countries are already allies.

• On Tuesday afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Lithuania for the first time since the start of the large-scale Russian invasion.

• As NATO leaders start their two-day summit in Vilnius on Tuesday, billboards at six intersections in the Lithuanian capital show two Ukrainian soldiers sitting on the beach under an umbrella, looking at the destroyed Crimean bridge.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is due to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the final day of a NATO summit in Lithuania that stopped short of offering Ukraine a clear path to membership as Western powers prepare to announce a security arrangement for Kyiv.

• Russia launched more kamikaze drones on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities for a second day in a row, but most of them were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, the military and regional officials said early on July 12.

• Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya says she aims to voice her country’s position on specific issues such as the transfer of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarusian territory while attending the NATO summit in Vilnius.

• Ukraine’s future is inside NATO, but the military alliance will extend an invitation to Kyiv only when “members agree and conditions are met,” NATO leaders said in a declaration that disappointed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the first day of their summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

• Russian forces continue to “significantly reduce the enemy’s offensive potential,” Sergey Shoigu said.

• Previously, Ukrainian President Zelensky stated that it was “absurd” for the Alliance not to set an invitation date for his country.

• “Do you really think that NATO is not at war with Russia?,” she stated, noting that NATO supplies weapons, fighters, advisors, and intelligence data to Ukraine.

• Most countries have agreed that cluster bombs should have no place in modern warfare.

• As the U.S. prepares to share cluster munitions with Ukraine for use against Russian troops, the ethics of a controversial weapon (banned by more than half of nations) have come under scrutiny.

• Ukrainian President Zelenskyy expressed impatience at the absence of a clear timeline for Ukraine’s entry to NATO. The tension was eased by Turkey withdrawing objections to Sweden’s accession, a decision praised by President Joe Biden.

• NATO leaders said there would be a periodic review of Ukraine’s progress toward reaching the alliance’s standards on democracy and military integration. President Volodymyr Zelensky called for a firmer timeline before arriving in Lithuania for NATO’s summit.

• Lawmakers in both parties are mounting a longshot effort to block the Biden administration’s plan to send cluster munitions to Ukraine to assist in repelling Russia’s invasion.

• The alliance firmed up its plans to include Ukraine eventually, but gave no timetable, siding with President Biden and frustrating some East European members.

• The United States already has plans for its limited stock of long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems.

• As Ukrainian troops inch forward in the counteroffensive, they are occupying positions abandoned by enemy troops. Says one: “It’s not very pleasant.”

• Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky in a tweet on Tuesday slammed NATO members’ unwillingness to offer Ukraine a timetable for membership as “unprecedented and absurd.”

• Why it matters: Zelensky didn’t name President Biden directly, but the U.S. and Germany are leading the resistance to any definitive statements at this week’s summit in Vilnius that Ukraine will soon be a member.

• At today’s NATO summit in Lithuania, member countries are expected to debate Ukraine’s request to join the military alliance, which would provide additional military support for its war with Russia. Opponents to Ukrainian membership, however, warn that such a move would needlessly escalate what Russia sees as a proxy war with the United States against NATO encroachment on its western border. For more, we speak to journalist Katrina vanden Heuvel, whose recent piece for The Guardian, co-authored with James Carden, is headlined “Now is not the time for Ukraine to join NATO.”

• On January 14, 2020, Vera Pekhteleva, a 23-year-old college student from Kemerovo, was murdered. On the day of her death, she went to pick up her belongings from the home of her ex-boyfriend, Vladislav Kanyus; the couple had broken up two months earlier. But that day, Pekhteleva didn’t left his apartment alive. According to case materials, she sustained more than 100 injuries. According to her uncle, her first injuries came 12 hours before her eventual death.

• Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Tuesday that Russia’s forces in Ukraine will begin using cluster munitions in response to Washington’s decision to supply the weapons to Kyiv.

• In response to news that the Russian Federation today vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution to renew cross-border aid to northwest Syria for nine months [...]

• Only a trilateral British, French, and German nuclear umbrella, combined with a US umbrella, all under the command and control of NATO, will be a credible deterrent for Russia.

• On June 4, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the kingpin of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, called for an all-out coup against the Russian Federation. This was a short-lived attempt, a mere “24 hours that shook the Kremlin.” A

• A number of houses in the small village of Krivtsovo near Moscow were on fire over an area of 3,200 square meters early on July 12, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said.

• The United States is “deeply disappointed” by Russia’s “inhumane veto” against the UN renewal of Turkish delivered aid to Syria, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on July 11.

• Serbian lawmakers voted on July 11 to dismiss Economy Minister Rade Basta, who advocated for the introduction of sanctions against Russia, saying that Serbia is paying a heavy price for not introducing them.

• The United States has sanctioned Aleksandar Vulin, director of Serbia’s security agency, for allegedly using his position to further Russian and criminal agendas, including arms dealing and drug trafficking.

• Russia’s Investigative Committee says a suspect in the killing of Stanislav Rzhitsky, deputy chief of the department for mobilization in Krasnodar, has been detained.

• The two people believed to have entered Finland illegally from Russia have since applied for asylum.

• Long seen as an in-house disrupter in NATO, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey could be trying to repair relations with the Biden administration, partly by scaling back close ties with Russia.

• Dueling resolutions failed after Russian- and U.S.-led opposition, cutting off a cross-border lifeline from Turkey to more than four million people.

Environment

Wildlife/Nature

Finance

• JPMorgan Chase plans to lay off 63 employees in Jersey City, New Jersey, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) issued on Tuesday.

• The job cuts will take place in September, according to the notice.

• The total workforce of JPMorgan, the largest U.S. lender, stood at 296,877 at the end of the first quarter, up 8% from a year earlier, according to a filing.

• An Indian senior engineer with Qualcomm, who was laid off recently has sought help finding a new job in the US before he runs out of time granted by his H1B visa.

• Tushar Trehon, a former senior performance managing engineer with the multinational chip manufacturing company, took to LinkedIn recently after failing to secure a job.

• “A little over a month ago, I was unfortunately impacted by a round of layoffs at Qualcomm,” Trehon wrote on LinkedIn. He had previously also worked with Microsoft Innovation Lab in Bengaluru, as per his LinkedIn profile, and added that he was laid off by Qualcomm within a year of being hired.

• Why it matters: The company is best known for its usd coin (USDC) cryptocurrency. Stablecoins have been one of the most successful segments of the crypto economy, enabling traders across the world to quickly close out positions without leaving blockchains or paying expensive fees to return to fiat.

• What they’re saying: “To maintain our strong balance sheet, Circle is redoubling its focus on core business activities and execution,” a statement from the firm said. To that end, it is reducing its financial exposure to what it calls “non-core activities.”

• The New York Times editorial board came to a shocking realization this week: we are living on borrowed money. That was the headline of an editorial it ran calling for deficit reduction.

• Over a third of respondents said that stress symptoms affected them “very often,” citing high workloads and low pay.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Government cannot deputize the private sector to act as a censor.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Conservativism is, in other words, the opposite of the rule of law, which is the idea that the law applies equally to all.

• The National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) reportedly raided the family home of fugitive pro-democracy activist Nathan Law on Tuesday. Law is accused of violating the National Security Law, which was passed on June 30, 2020.

• Hong Kong national security police have taken away the parents and brother of activist Nathan Law for questioning, according to several local media outlets citing sources. Law is among the eight self-exiled activists wanted by the Hong Kong national security police, with authorities offering a bounty of HK$1 million for each of the democrats.

• Hong Kong legal scholar Benny Tai’s roadmap detailing 10 steps to “mutual destruction” was “very wrong,” an ex-grassroots group chief has testified at a landmark national security trial relating to 47 pro-democracy figures.

• In March 2023, we sent an open letter to Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, to investigate discriminatory police practices in the wake of the conviction of ten young Black men, known as the Manchester 10.

• [...]

• We reiterate our call for the Greater Manchester Police to end racialised surveillance practices in policing as part of their review of Joint Enterprise.

Monopolies

Patents

• On July 7, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 10,474,705, owned and asserted by Ask Sydney, LLC, an NPE. The ‘705 patent relates to analyzing tags associated with a sequence of images presented to a user to guide a user to a current interest. The patent has been asserted against Google, Amazon.com Services, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and Snap.

Trademarks

• Professor J. Thomas McCarthy shares his thoughts (below) on the Supreme Court’s “Bad Spaniels” decision (pdf here), in the hope of stimulating discussion (in the comments) as to what readers think will be the impact of the case on the use of marks in “expressive” works. As you will recall, the Court vacated the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had deemed the “Bad Spaniels” dog toy immune to claims of infringement and dilution of various Jack Daniel’s trademarks. The Supreme Court, however, ruled that the Ninth Circuit was wrong in concluding that the toy was entitled to First Amendment protection under Rogers v. Grimaldi because of the humorous messaging on the toy. The Court held that (1) the Rogers test does not apply when the defendant uses the challenged matter as a mark, and (2) the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the noncommercial exemption to dilution claims was overbroad.

Copyrights

• YouTube’s recent transparency report shows the number of Content ID copyright system claims has reached a new high — 826 million claims in just six months. YouTube’s latest transparency report reveals that the number of Content ID system claims has hit a new high during the latter half of 2022.

• You may have seen some headlines recently about some authors filing lawsuits against OpenAI. The lawsuits (plural, though I’m confused why it’s separate attempts at filing a class action lawsuit, rather than a single one) began last week, when authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad sued OpenAI and various subsidiaries, claiming copyright infringement in how OpenAI trained its models. They got a lot more attention over the weekend when another class action lawsuit was filed against OpenAI with comedian Sarah Silverman as the lead plaintiff, along with Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey. The same day the same three plaintiffs (though with Kadrey now listed as the top plaintiff) also sued Meta, though the complaint is basically the same.

• Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3John Wick: Chapter 4′ tops the chart, followed by ‘Knights of the Zodiac’. ‘Fast X’ completes the top three.

• Anti-piracy company claims that online pirates make huge amounts of money is supposed to have negative connotations but for some it sounds more like an opportunity. There are drawbacks, of course, like not making any money at all or getting arrested. But what if there was a way to make a considerable amount of money from piracy, with almost zero risk?

• As part of our #20CC anniversary, last year we joined forces with Fine Acts to spark a global dialogue on what better sharing looks like in action. Our #BetterSharing collection of illustrations was the result — we gathered insights from 12 prominent open advocates around the world and tasked 12 renowned artists who embrace openness with transforming these perspectives into captivating visual pieces available under a CC license.

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