● 07.14.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 14/07/2023: Linux Mint 21.2 “Victoria” and Microsoft Blames ‘China’ for Microsoft Issues

Posted in News Roundup at 12:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• The first generation Star Labs Byte mini PC was announced more than a year ago on April 2022 and it was powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U Octo-Core processor with AMD Radeon graphics, supporting up to 64GB RAM and up to 6TB SSD storage.

• The Byte Mk II is powered by a 1.00GHz quad-core Intel “Alder Lake” N200 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.70GHz, 6MB smart cache, 6W TDP, 25W PL2, 4 cores, 4 threads, and Intel UHD graphics. It also comes with up to 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 RAM and up to 2TB M2 2280 SSD storage (expandable to up to 6TB).

• Every few years, people get excited that maybe this will be the year of the Linux desktop. Now, I can argue, and I have, that happened long ago. But when you’re talking about the traditional PC running a desktop Linux system such as Linux Mint, MX Linux, or Ubuntu, the numbers remain minute. In StatCounter’s latest desktop market share numbers, Linux has made it up to 3.08%.

Desktop/Laptop

• Only 32 years after Linus Torvalds sent his famous email announcing Linux to the world, Linux use has risen above 3%, all the way to 3.08% Now, ain’t that some phenomenal growth? At this rate we should hit the 10% mark sometime around 2091, just in time for the Linux Centennial Celebration.

• I’m kidding, of course, about the 10% by 2091 thing. For one thing, we probably won’t even be using operating systems then. For another, we will probably have been evicted from the planet long before then. A planet-wide eviction, I understand, is performed by shutting down the life support system, just so you know. You won’t be able to breath. It’ll be like drowning in air instead of water.

• But I digress. This article is about the rising use of Linux, not the coming apocalypse.

• Linux PC company System76 has been selling laptop and desktop computers that ship with Linux software for years. But up until recently the company had primarily been sourcing its PCs from third-party manufacturers and slapping its own branding and software on those systems.

Audiocasts/Shows

• First up in the news: Mint Monthly News, Steam Deck exceeds 10,000 games, Red Hat fights public opinion, new LibreBoot is out, Google whines about their new AI search, Peppermint OS upgrades to Bookworm, a new KaOS, First Amendment fails at Supremes, and Solus 4 is released

• In security and privacy, StackRot is here, and so is ProtonPass

• Then in our Wanderings, Moss makes money, Joe goes 3D, Bill mics up, and Majid thumbs his nose at inflation

• Download

• Hello and welcome to the 510th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts interview one of their own — Bill, NE4RD — about the K2BSA …

Graphics Stack

• It has taken about 15 years to get there, but there is mounting evidence that the Wayland display server may soon topple X11 as the most common way to get a GUI on Linux.

• We’ve reported on growing endorsement for Wayland recently. The team developing Linux for Apple Silicon Macs said they didn’t have the manpower to work on X.org support. A year ago, the developers of the Gtk toolkit used by many Linux apps and desktops said that the next version may drop support for X11. But this sort of thing feels to us like it’s trying to push users towards Wayland, rather than actually attracting anyone.

• One of the developers of the Budgie desktop, Campbell Jones, recently published a blog post with a wildly controversial title that made The Reg FOSS desk smile: “Wayland is pretty good, actually.” He lays out various benefits that Wayland brings to developers, and concludes…

• Wayland is a modern replacement for X11, which has been the default windowing system on Linux for decades. Wayland is a communication protocol and that defines the messaging between an X Window display server and client applications. The Wayland project provides client and server libraries that enable applications to use the protocol.

• The Wayland project was started by a Red Hat developer in 2008.

Instructionals/Technical

• Installing Arch Linux was always seen as an impossible step to take especially by newbie users, since you had to setup everything by yourself, as there was no installer included in the official system.

• The world of Pop!_OS is ripe with opportunities for customization and performance enhancements, a universe where the Liquorix Kernel shines brightly. This guide will walk you through the process of installing the Liquorix Kernel on Pop!_OS, a potential game-changer for your system.

• VMware Tools, also known as Open VMware Tools on Linux systems, offer a critical set of utilities designed to enhance the performance and usability of virtual machines, making them indispensable for Pop!_OS Linux users.

• In this step-by-step guide from Jack Wallen, learn how to access and modify the Linux hosts file to control the mapping of hostnames to IP addresses.

• In this TechRepublic How to Make Tech Work video, Jack Wallen shows how to access and modify the Linux hosts file to control the mapping of hostnames to IP addresses.

• LibreNMS is a monitoring tool that supports auto-discovery with multiple protocols, including SNMP, ARP, OSPF, and BGP. In this guide, I will show you how to install LibreNMS Monitoring Tool on your AlmaLinux 9 server. I will run LibreNMS with PHP-FPM, Nginx web server, and the MariaDB database.

• Are you getting the error “yay command not found” when trying to install a package on your system? This error means that yay is not installed on your system, or it could be corrupted and you can’t use it to install anything.

• Welcome to this exciting journey into a dimension of system performance and optimization, focusing on the XanMod Kernel and its potential benefits to Pop!_OS Linux users. The guide is designed to be an in-depth tutorial that will walk you through the step-by-step process of installing the XanMod Kernel on your Pop!_OS operating system.

• NGINX, a high-performance HTTP server, has become an industry favorite due to its stability, rich feature set, and efficient resource usage. Yet, leveraging its full potential often necessitates bespoke configurations. A key component of these configurations is the reuseport directive, a powerful tool capable of greatly improving your server’s performance.

• Process management is a crucial aspect of Linux administration, ensuring efficient resource utilization and system stability. Among the numerous tools available for process monitoring and control, the ‘ps’ command stands out as a powerful and versatile option.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kitty Terminal Emulator on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. In the Linux environment, a terminal emulator plays a crucial role in providing a command-line interface to interact with the system. Kitty Terminal Emulator offers a wide range of features and advantages that enhance productivity and customization options. …

• Linux is an incredibly versatile operating system, empowering users with robust features and granular control over their systems. However, its high level of flexibility can also make it a bit challenging, especially when it comes to certain tasks like force deleting directories. Maybe you’re dealing with stubborn folders that refuse to be deleted or directories protected by complex permissions. No matter the situation, having the know-how to force delete directories in Linux can be a valuable skill.

• TYPO3 is a free and open-source Enterprise-grade content management system. In this guide, I’ll show you how to install TYPO3 CMS on an AlmaLinux 9 step-by-step. We will install TYPO3 CMS with the Nginx web server, MariaDB database server, and PHP-FPM.

Games

• Between 2023-07-05 and 2023-07-12 there were 17 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Gnome on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, Gnome is a powerful desktop environment designed to provide an intuitive and efficient user experience. It offers a plethora of features and benefits that make it a preferred choice for many Debian users.

• Apparently, spellchecking was preventing some people from porting their applications to GTK 4. So I spent a little time today extracting Text Editor’s spellcheck engine into a library you can use in your GTK 4 application without having to write fun data-structures on your own.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• If you think modern Linux distros are too complicated, Haiku is an open-source OS that aspires to be as simple and elegant as its namesake Japanese poetry format. While it’s still in beta, if you have fond memories of BeOS, Haiku might be a promising alternative to desktop Linux.

• Haiku is an open-source reimplementation of BeOS. BeOS was developed by Be, Incorporated in the ’90s. The company was founded by Jean-Louis Gassée, who had headed the Mac group at Apple in the ’80s.

• BeOS was originally designed for the company’s short-lived BeBox machines, before being ported to Mac clones, then the Mac itself, and finally Intel-based PCs.

• BeOS was designed to work well with multimedia and to run as efficiently as possible. One forward-thinking element was its support for multiple processors when this was uncommon on desktop computers in the 1990s.

• BeOS’ multithreading allowed it to stay responsive even when running heavy graphics and video, which astonished a lot of observers, as seen in this promotional video from the late ’90s…

New Releases

• The Elive Team is pleased to announce the release of 3.8.34 Beta

• This new version includes: Nvidia drivers: Lots of improvements have been included, such as support for Optimus cards (Intel + Nvidia GPU laptops), OpenCL, video rendering, switching drivers in Live mode, and a better installation process. Graphical drivers: Much improved for compatibility and support for any performant application like Blender or DaVinci Resolve. Ctrl+Alt+Del: A special feature created by Elive has been added that runs some helpers to make the life of the user easier.

• Version 5.4.6 was released on July 6, 2023:

• [...]

• In the previous post, I mentioned KeePassXC password manager crashing with “illegal instruction” when tested on my Compaq Presario PC. The fix is to use v3.1 encryption instead of v4 — I think that this was already reported in the forum.

• So, 5.4.7 has the pre-created KeePassXC database now v3.1. One thing to remember: the pre-created database requires password “woofwoof” to open.

• There are various other improvements that didn’t get posted about in the blog. For example, thanks to madanadam for more Turkish translations.

• Linux Mint 21.2 was in public beta testing since June 21st, 2023, which gave the developers enough time to fix remaining issues and offer users a stable and rock-solid release. Just like previous releases, Victoria is available with the Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE desktop environments.

• This is the second installment in the Linux Mint 21 series, which means that it’s based on Canonical’s long-term supported Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) operating system series and it’s powered by the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel series, which will also be supported for a few years.

Fedora Family / IBM

• In a joint blog post published on 10 July, and headlined “Keep Linux Open and Free – We Can’t Afford Not To”, chief corporate architect Edward Screven and Oracle Linux Development chief Wim Coekaerts pointed out that by making it more difficult to obtain updated RHEL source code, Red Hat was directly attacking projects like Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux that have sprung up to fill the gap left by CentOS.

• Oracle is the second major company to make an official statement about the Red Hat move. The first, German open source vendor SUSE, said on 11 July that it would invest more than US$10 million (A$14.97 million) to fork the publicly available RHEL source code and make it available to world+dog with no restrictions.

• Peer-pods is a new Red Hat OpenShift feature that enables an OpenShift sandboxed container (OSC) running on a bare-metal deployment to run on OpenShift in a public cloud and on VMware. It’s not uncommon to want to run OpenShift in a virtual machine instead of on the bare-metal nodes. While it’s possible to run a virtual machine inside a virtual machine, it demands a whole new subset of support concerns when you do it in production. In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to solve this problem, using a combination of peer-pods and libvirt.

Devices/Embedded

• It’s time to report on code flowing upstream again: Following up on our report for Linux 5.19, 6.0 and 6.1 this summarizes the progress on mainline support for the Librem 5 phone and its development kit during the 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 development cycles.

• It’s crucial to describe our boards correctly and we constantly improve that description based on specifications, driver code and the hardware. During the last weeks and months we’ve improved power consumption and completed selfie-camera support among other things…

Open Hardware/Modding

• smolOS (pronounced small OS) is an open-source, lightweight MicroPython program that implements a POSIX-style (Linux-like) command line interface for the ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller. Krzysztof Jankowski (w84death) designed smolOS to be easy to use, allowing the listing and removing of files and also including the smolEDitor which, as its name implies, is a simple text editor. There are currently eight commands with the familiar ls, cat, and rm, plus ed to launch the text editor, welcome to show the welcome screen above, cls to clear the screen, mhz to set the processor speed to 80 or 160 MHz, and info to display some hardware and software information. The project looks to be a work in progress, and the developer highlights the editor is at the alpha stage of development, so more features may be implemented over time by Krzysztof himself or by the community of developers.

• Debugging a Raspberry Pi Pico is straightforward enough; it simply involves hooking up something up to the USB and SWD pins. [Mark Stevens] whipped up the PicoDebugger to make this job easier than ever before.

• When miniature LCD TVs arrived on the market they were an object of desire, far from the reach of tech-obsessed youngsters. Now in the age of smartphones they’re a historical curiosity, but with the onward march of technology you can have one for not a lot. [Taylor Galbraith] shows us how, with an ESP32 and an LCD we rather like because of its CRT-like rounded corners.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Take a look at China’s first open source OS and learn about the origins of btrfs filesystem among other things in this newsletter.

• More community powered tutorials are coming to Linux Handbook.

• Panel is an open-source Python library that lets you easily build powerful tools, dashboards, and complex applications entirely in Python. It has a batteries-included philosophy, putting the PyData ecosystem, powerful data tables and much more at your fingertips.

• High-level reactive APIs and lower-level callback based APIs ensure you can

• Navoki Notes is an exceptional proof of concept note-taking app with a wide range of features that make it stand out from other note-taking apps on the market.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• We are delighted to announce the Beta1 release of pg_cirrus. This automated tool streamlines the process of setting up a 3-node cluster, making it significantly easier for users to set up and manage high availability in PostgreSQL.

• We understand that configuring a PostgreSQL cluster can be a complex and time-consuming task, which is why we have designed pg_cirrus to help make the process faster and more efficient.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• JuzaWeb CMS is a Laravel-based Content Management System (CMS) developed by the Juzaweb Team. It is designed to simplify the development workflow for developers and make content management easy for users. This CMS is gaining popularity among developers because of its flexibility, user-friendly interface, and powerful features.

• Outstatic CMS is a content management system built with Next.js.

• Are you looking for a powerful and user-friendly CMS built with Laravel 10? Look no further than Laravel Starter, a modular starter application project built with Laravel 10 that can help you build your website quickly and easily.

Programming/Development

• When you’re working with PHP, one powerful feature you might not be aware of is the ability to disable certain built-in functions.

Rust

• Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust!

Leftovers

Hardware

• When first starting an electronics project, it’s not uncommon to dive right in to getting the core parts of the project working. Breadboarding the project usually involves working with a benchtop power supply of some sort, but when it comes to finalizing the project the actual power supply is often glossed over. It’s not a glamorous part of a project or the part most of us want to be working with, but it’s critical to making sure projects don’t turn up with mysterious issues in the future. We can look to some others’ work to simplify this part of our projects, though, like this power supply from [hesam.moshiri].

• We’ve taken ICs apart before, but if they are in an epoxy package, it requires some lab gear and a lot of safety. Typically, you’ll heat the part and use fuming nitric acid (nasty stuff) in a cavity milled into the part to remove the epoxy over the die. While [100dollarhacker] doesn’t provide much detail, he appears to have used a Tesla coil to do it — no hot acid required.

• A second research firm estimated shipments could reach 10 million units, but provided no details to back up this conclusion.

• According to the China Securities Journal, Huawei was reported to have raised its 2023 mobile shipment target to 40 million units in July, from 30 million at the start of the year. However, there was no mention of 5G phones.

• The research firms told Reuters that Huawei had announced in March that it had made breakthroughs in electronic design automation tools for chips produced at and above 14nm.

• Citing their own industry sources, these firms said they believed Huawei’s EDA software could be used with SMIC’s N+1 manufacturing process to make 7nm chips.

• SMIC was blocked by the US from buying EUV machines from Dutch firm ASML; such machines are needed to make 7nm chips.

• However, some analysts said there were indications SMIC had somehow managed to produce 7nm chips by tweaking simpler DUV machines it could still purchase freely from ASML.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Join Reason on YouTube and Facebook Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern for a discussion about lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic with Institute for Progress founder Alec Stapp.

• “Lab leak” has too many meanings.

• Over 30 per cent of Hong Kong students have “binge gamed,” experts have said, adding that research shows a correlation between online gaming addiction and poor mental health.

• The much-anticipated rebound post COVID lockdowns has so far failed to materialize.

• Michigan Medicine launched the Program for Equity in Adolescent & Child Health in February to combat health inequities and develop interventions to improve outcomes for patients across Michigan and the United States. The program was initially proposed before the COVID-19 pandemic, but its establishment was delayed until July 2022 due to insufficient funding.

• On Tuesday, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held an oversight hearing on “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” a peer-reviewed paper that played an influential role in shaping the early public debate about the origin of Covid-19. The paper was published in the journal Nature Medicine in March 2020 and came out firmly in favor of a natural origin for the virus, with its five prominent authors writing that “we do not believe any type of laboratory scenario is plausible” in explaining the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

• As long as someone places Michal Kaliszan’s hands on a keyboard and a mouse, he has enough strength and dexterity to use a computer. Once his hands are there, the 40-year-old software developer at Blackberry can start his workday. But for anything else—”personal care, activities, and daily living”—he needs someone’s help.

• A New Zealand prosecutor says tourists received no health and safety warnings before they landed on the country’s most active volcano ahead of a 2019 eruption that killed 22 people. There were 47 people on White Island when superheated steam erupted, and most of the 25 who survived had severe burns. Prosecutor Kristy McDonald told the court as a trial opened Tuesday that the eruption at the popular tourist destination was not predictable but was foreseeable. The island’s owners, their management company and two tour operators are on trial in Auckland District Court for allegedly failing to adequately protect tourists and staff.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• The technological sector is still experiencing hard times. Reportedly, Microsoft layoffs a number of employees from its customer service, support, and sales team.

• The chair of the Federal Trade Commission defended her aggressive legal strategy toward the country’s biggest technology companies Thursday as House Republicans charged that the agency has become overzealous and politicized under President Joe Biden.

Security

• Multiple hardcoded accounts on the Technicolor TG670 DSL gateway router can be used to completely take over the impacted devices.

• Microsoft says a Chinese cyberespionage group tracked as Storm-0558 has used forged authentication tokens to access government emails.

• Dan Guido, CEO In March, I joined the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee (TAC), helping the regulatory agency navigate the complexities of cybersecurity risks, particularly in emerging technologies like AI and blockchain. During the committee’s first meeting,

• Citrix has patched a critical-severity vulnerability in Secure Access client for Ubuntu that could lead to remote code execution (RCE).

• Fortinet patches a critical-severity vulnerability in FortiOS and FortiProxy that could lead to remote code execution.

• SAP on July 2023 Security Patch Day released 16 new security notes, including one addressing a critical vulnerability in ECC and S/4HANA (IS-OIL).

• The need for cyber resilience arises from the growing realization that traditional security measures are no longer enough to protect systems, data, and the network from compromise.

• National security adviser downplays a hack on Microsoft-hosted government email servers.

• Microsoft has revoked signed drivers used for post-exploitation activity, in many cases by Chinese cybercriminals.

• U.S. officials say state-backed Chinese hackers foiled Microsoft’s cloud-based security and hacked the email of officials at multiple U.S. agencies that deal with China ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing last month. The surgical, targeted espionage accessed the mailboxes of a small number of individuals at an unspecified number of U.S. agencies and was discovered by the State Department. Officials said none of the breached systems were classified. The hack was disclosed late Tuesday by Microsoft, which said email accounts were haced at about 25 organizations globally beginning in mid-May. A U.S. official said the number of U.S. organizations impacted was in the single digits.

• Our summits are a unique gathering that brings together attendees from diverse projects, united by a shared vision of advancing the Reproducible Builds effort. During this enriching event, participants will have the opportunity to engage in discussions, establish connections and exchange ideas to drive progress in this vital field. Our aim is to create an inclusive space that fosters collaboration, innovation and problem-solving. We are thrilled to host the seventh edition of this exciting event, following the success of previous summits in various iconic locations around the world, including Venice, Marrakesh, Paris, Berlin and Athens.

• Crowdsourced cybersecurity startup Bugcrowd Inc. has today released a new report that found hackers are more skeptical than Silicon Valley investors when it comes to artificial intelligence.

• The email account of US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was among a slew of accounts breached at both the State and Commerce Departments by attackers, claimed to be from China, who gained access through a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

• A statement from Dragos said Rockwell had analysed a novel exploit capability affecting select modules in ControlLogix EtherNet/IP communication module models, 1756-EN2, 1756-EN3 (CVE-2023-3595), and 1756-EN4 (CVE-2023-3596). The exploit was attributed to a state actor.

• Rockwell, one of the bigger providers of providers of industrial automation and digital transformation technologies, reported the two vulnerabilities to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

• Dragos said it had worked in advance of the disclosure “to co-ordinate and help assess the extent of the threat”.

• Today is Microsoft’s July 2023 Patch Tuesday, with security updates for 132 flaws, including six actively exploited and thirty-seven remote code execution vulnerabilities.

• A Chinese hacking group focused on espionage utilized a flaw in a Microsoft authentication system to target the U.S. government.

• Chinese-based hackers seeking intelligence information breached the email accounts of a number of US government agencies, computer giant Microsoft said. “The threat actor Microsoft links to this incident is an adversary based in China that Microsoft calls Storm-0558,” the company said in a blog post late Tuesday.

• The hackers took aim at specific email accounts in the State and Commerce Departments, officials said.

Privacy/Surveillance

• As iTWire reported on Tuesday, Google is taking pains to hide its latest intentions, shifting the text detailing it from web page to web page.

• The company also appears to have scrubbed a link to the page that originally hosted details of its plan from the Internet Archive. The archive, run by technologist Brewster Kahle, crawls the Web periodically and stores versions of Web pages with the date specified.

• As Google has not made any public statement about the lawsuit, iTWire has contacted the company for its take.

• Contacted for comment, Ryan Clarkson, managing partner of Clarkson Law Firm, said in a statement: “We have only recently learned that Google has been taking everything ever created or shared online by millions of Internet users, including all our personal information, creative works, and professional works, and using all of that data to train and build commercial AI products.

• Using video chats would also raise questions about data security, as the privacy of callers needs to be insured, according to an expert in the field.

Defence/Aggression

• Syrians in Turkey do not want to go home. They may not have the choice.

• A child was reportedly among those killed in the bombing. No group has claimed responsibility for the attck so far.

• “The Secretary-General expresses his deepest condolences to the family of the fallen peacekeeper…”

War in Ukraine

• European Commission Statement Brussels, 12 Jul 2023 Since day one of the invasion, the European Union and its G7 partners have stood shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine.

• After hackers posted on social networks what they claim to be sensitive details of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania’s intelligence service says the incident is under investigation.

• Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu says his country’s prosperity and security can only be guaranteed through its eventual membership in the European Union and through “intensified, accelerated cooperation with NATO,” amid discussion on whether the current policy of neutrality is insufficient.

• Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are being detained across Russia and the Ukrainian territories it occupies, in centers ranging from brand-new wings in Russian prisons to clammy basements. Most have no status under Russian law. An Associated Press investigation also found that Russia is making plans to hold potentially thousands more. A Russian government document obtained by the AP dating to January outlined plans to create 25 new prison colonies and six other detention centers in occupied Ukraine by 2026. In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in May that would make it easier for Russia to deport Ukrainians who resist Russian occupation deep into Russia indefinitely, which has already happened in multiple cases documented by the AP.

• Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are detained in a network of formal and informal prisons across Russia and the territories it occupies, where they endure routine torture, psychological abuse and even slave labor. And a document obtained by The Associated Press shows that Russia plans to build dozens of new prisons. The AP spoke with dozens of people, including 20 former detainees, ex-prisoners of war, the families of more than a dozen civilians in detention, two Ukrainian intelligence officials and a government negotiator. Their accounts, as well as satellite imagery, social media, government documents and copies of letters delivered by the Red Cross, confirm a widescale Russian system of detention and abuse of civilians that goes directly against the Geneva Conventions.

• Experts are warning that rice production across South and Southeast Asia is likely to suffer with the world heading into an El Nino. Climate change is causing stronger El Ninos, which alter global weather patterns and heat up an already warming planet. Thirsty crops like rice are particularly vulnerable, especially when they are rainfed and not irrigated. Experts say this will worsen food insecurity at a time when supplies of grain and fertilizer are recovering from disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine. Global demand is soaring, while yields globally have been stagnating for decades because of climate change and limits to productivity gains.

• Russian forces unleashed a barrage of self-exploding Iranian-made Shahed drones early Thursday morning, according to the Kyiv City Administration. Nearly ten drones were identified and shot down, the municipal authorities wrote on Telegram. Explosions were heard in different parts of the city, and debris from intercepted drones fell on five districts of the Ukrainian capital. Some buildings were damaged, and two people hospitalized with shrapnel wounds.

• So far, Ukraine’s month-long “counter-offensive” has been a very costly failure. Attacks on Russian forces in the southern province of Zaporozhe have yet to achieve any significant strategic success, and the same is true all along the line of contact.

• President Biden declared Ukraine cannot join NATO until the Kremlin’s invasion of the country has ended.

• Yermak and Landsbergis dove into the first day of the NATO Summit and leaders’ commitments to Ukraine.

• >

• Atlantic Council experts decode the summit’s implications for Ukraine’s membership, NATO’s approach to China, and more.

• Russia will regard Western F-16 fighter jets sent to Ukraine as a “nuclear” threat because of their capacity to carry atomic weapons, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday. Lavrov’s words came as air strikes on Kyiv killed one person and wounded at least four others, authorities said on Thursday, with explosions heard across the Ukrainian capital in the third night of attacks.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed fresh pledges of weapons and ammunition to fight Russia’s invasion along with longer-term security commitments from the West on Wednesday even as he expressed disappointment over the lack of a clear path for his country to join NATO as the alliance wrapped up its annual summit.

• US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said NATO’s ‘commitment to Ukraine will not weaken’ as he vowed to continue supporting the embattled country. French President Emmanuel Macron earlier echoed Biden’s comments, pointing out that Russia was “politically and militarily fragile”, while Ukraine had the lasting support of its allies.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed new security commitments from the G7 countries in Vilnius on Wednesday, but warned that these could not be a substitute for his country’s eventual membership in NATO.

• It is important to keep people’s faith and hope alive in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and to prepare for the reconstruction of the country, Olena Zelenska, the spouse of President Volodymyr Zelensky, said while visiting Vilnius.

• Russia launched a third consecutive day of drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions, killing at least one person, wounding several others, and causing material damage despite air defenses succeeding in destroying almost all incoming projectiles.

• The NATO-Ukraine Council held its first meeting on Wednesday as the two-day NATO summit concludes in Vilnius.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked Lithuania for the support displayed during the NATO summit in Vilnius.

• When Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky returned from a visit to Turkey last weekend, he did not board the plane alone. Joining him were five former Azov commanders, captured by Russia in the 2022 siege of Mariupol and later handed over to Turkey in a prisoner exchange. Their return to Ukraine was a major diplomatic win for Ukraine and a slap in the face for Russia, who has since accused Turkey of violating the terms of the deal to score points with the West.

• Russian Major General Ivan Popov, the commander of the units currently involved in the fighting in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, says he was instantly dismissed after complaining to Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov about the abysmal situation of the Russian troops at the front.

• Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin said that he and CIA counterpart William Burns had discussed Ukraine in a phone call last month, TASS said on July 12.

• Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova praised the recent French decision to send Ukraine long-range missiles at a forum in Washington on July 12 and said any other county that has this type of missile should also send them to Ukraine’s front lines.

• Despite failing to receive a detailed plan or timeline to join NATO, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says the military alliance’s members have made the country’s path to joining the alliance “shorter” and “absolutely irreversible” at a summit in Vilnius.

• The G7 guarantees will allow Ukraine to “build an army that can defend itself,” said Amanda Slote, the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for Europe.

• “It’s unprecedented and absurd when a time frame is not set either for the invitation or for Ukraine’s membership,” President Zelensky stated.

• Russia on July 12 launched more kamikaze drones on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities for a second day in a row, while shelling of other cities and towns in eastern Ukraine caused death and injuries.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine “removed any doubts and ambiguities about whether Ukraine will be in NATO” during the alliance’s two-day summit in Vilnius that ended on July 12.

• The alliance added Sweden, laid out new ambitions for itself and offered long-term support for Ukraine, promising membership someday. But Kyiv wanted more.

• Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov has said that Ukraine and 11 countries signed a memorandum regarding the training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets.

• The United States and other major industrialized nations are pledging long-term security assistance for Ukraine as it continues to fight Russia’s invasion. At the annual NATO summit, G7 countries began laying the groundwork for member nations to negotiate individual security agreements with Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the commitments will be a bridge toward eventual NATO membership for his country. He is desperate for Ukraine to become a NATO member so it can take advantage of the alliance’s security guarantees. But membership for Ukraine has remained elusive at the summit, held this year in Lithuania. Zelenskyy and Biden met separately as well.

• During a major summit in Lithuania, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine is “closer than ever” to joining NATO, but the military alliance is resisting calls to give Kyiv a timeline to membership. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is attending the NATO summit and is meeting with President Biden and other world leaders. This comes as a number of nations have announced new military assistance for Ukraine. “The main condition for Ukraine membership [to NATO] is an end to this war,” says Andreas Zumach, defense correspondent for the left-wing German daily Die Tageszeitung. We also speak with CodePink’s Medea Benjamin, who has just returned from a visit to Ukraine, where she says people are “being fed a daily diet of irrational expectations” by the government about how Ukrainian forces are winning the war. The truth, she says, is “there is a stalemate on the ground,” and calls for countries to come to the negotiation table.

• July 12 is the final day of the 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius, and by all appearances, Ukraine will not receive an official invitation to join the alliance, no matter how much Zelensky accuses it of displaying “weakness.” At the same time, it’s not clear what other options Russia has for escalation short of using nuclear weapons; it’s already killed thousands of civilians and destroyed massive amounts of infrastructure. So what is NATO afraid of? Meduza spoke to political scientist Kimberly Marten, an expert on the history of Russia-NATO relations and a professor at Barnard College and Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, to find out.

• Ukraine’s president wanted firmer commitments about when his country could join, but NATO’s 31 members did make some new pledges to draw Kyiv closer to the alliance.

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to a new willingness for countries to pay for their own defense.

• After the siege of Mariupol by Russian forces in the spring of 2022, the Russian authorities took prisoner thousands of people who had been involved in the defense of the city’s Azovstal factory or associated with the Azov Brigade, a part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Now, 24 of those people have been transferred from the Russian-occupied Donetsk to Rostov-on-Don, in Russia proper, where they’re standing trial on charges of “forcibly seizing power” and “participating in a terrorist organization.” Photos from the court proceedings show the defendants looking emaciated and pale. The multiple Ukrainian and Western human rights organizations that have condemned the trial say Russia is violating — not for the first time — the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

• The president, in a speech at Vilnius University, insisted that the alliance’s unity would hold. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine stressed his gratitude for NATO’s military support. Back in Kyiv, Russia targeted the capital for a third night in a row.

• The Baltic countries got Russia right when much of the West got it wrong.

• The G7 countries have announced security guarantees for Ukraine and promised to provide ongoing military support, reported Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a joint briefing with U.S. president Joe Biden and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

• Concluding a NATO summit focused on the war in Ukraine and other fast-changing challenges, President Biden vowed that the alliance would oppose Russian aggression for as long as needed.

• Russian State Duma deputy and former army commander Andrey Gurulev confirmed on a talk show Wednesday that Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov, a commander of the country’s 144th Motorized Rifle Division, was killed in Ukraine.

• President Joe Biden’s decision to give cluster munitions to Ukraine triggered widespread concern and protests, given that the bombs—which break up into smaller-sized bomblets that indiscriminately blanket the target area and invariably result in the slaughter of civilians—are widely considered to be in a can. Even close allies like Canada and the UK bristled at the move to provide Kyiv with arms that are banned by over 100 nations.

• They are tough, agile and saving lives.

• Australia’s decision to provide a further 30 Bushmaster vehicles has been welcomed by Ukraine’s ambassador Vasyl Myroshnychenko.

• Last seen in Khabarovsk, Kim Tae Sung appears to be latest case of North Korean seeking to escape

• Russia’s most famous icon — the Trinity by Andrei Rublev — was officially transferred to the use of Russia’s Orthodox Church for a period of 49 years, despite protests from Russia’s museum community.

• Russian authorities have tightened entry requirements at the Vartius border crossing point in Kuhmo since Monday.

• A Russian lawmaker says that Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who has not been seen in public since a short-lived mutiny, has been “taking a rest.”

• The parents of Evan Gershkovich, the American reporter jailed in Russia, said in a broadcast interview that President Biden had promised to do “whatever it takes” to secure his release.

• Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that Wagner Group has finished handing over its weapons and military equipment, “as planned.”

• At a plenary meeting of Russia’s State Duma on Wednesday, legislator Vladimir Isakov proposed displaying ruined NATO military equipment in Moscow to mark the anniversary of World War II’s Battle of Prokhorovka.

• Sergey Naryshkin, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has told TASS that he spoke with CIA Director William Burns by phone in late June.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin isn’t just the founder of the Wagner Group mercenary organization, and he’s not only the man who staged an armed rebellion last weekend. Prigozhin is also a billionaire who owns a variety of businesses — a fact that Vladimir Putin emphasized on Tuesday, June 27, when telling a group of Defense Ministry officers about Prigozhin’s vast earnings on state catering contracts. Journalists from the news outlet Bumaga in St. Petersburg, where most of Prigozhin’s assets are based, spoke to the billionaire’s local business partners to find out what is now happening with his non-mercenary companies. Meduza shares the following English-language adaptation of Bumaga’s story.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted rebellion went on for less than 24 hours when, at his command, Wagner mercenaries stopped their “march of justice” and left Rostov-on-Don — the only city they managed to occupy. What can we make of all this? Meduza asked its readers to explain what they think really happened on June 24, how they feel about it, and what they expect to happen next.

Environment

• Parts of Vermont experienced their worst flooding this week in nearly a century after two months’ worth of rain fell over the course of 48 hours. Nearly 100 people have been rescued, and locals are deeply concerned for the unhoused residents. “The state has really been hammered,” says journalist David Goodman in Waterbury. The host of the public affairs podcast and radio show The Vermont Conversation explains how the town adapted to flooding caused by Hurricane Irene, and calls for the state to adapt rather than simply replace damaged infrastructure: “​​In a climate changed world, that doesn’t work.”

• Kit Knightly The buzz in the Climate Change news is that the five hottest days in the last 100,000 years all happened last week, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

• The North Atlantic ocean is getting less frigid, with 2023 shaping up to be the warmest year on record.

• Basements and train tunnels constantly leak heat, causing the land to sink and straining building foundations. Scientists call it “underground climate change.”

• An “extremely dangerous” heat wave is ramping up from Florida to California, and is poised to topple records and threaten public health.

• The big picture: The extreme heat has prompted the National Weather Service to issue heat alerts for more than 86 million people, according to heat.gov, with the hottest temperatures destined for the Southwest.

• We take a closer look at the impact of the massive heat dome in Texas, where extreme heat is bearing down on some of the state’s most vulnerable populations, including workers and prisoners. At least three people have died after working in triple-digit heat, just as Republican Governor Greg Abbott signs into law a new measure that overrides mandatory water breaks for workers. Meanwhile, 32 people have been reported to have died in Texas prisons, most of which lack air conditioning and are prone to increased rates of heat-induced cardiac events. We are joined on Democracy Now! by Steven Monacelli in Dallas, who is The Texas Observer’s special investigative correspondent. His recent piece is headlined “Texans Die from Heat After Governor Bans Mandatory Water Breaks.”

• Researchers suggest that strategies to cope with higher temperatures aren’t keeping pace with global warming.

Energy/Transportation

• Kuwait and Riyadh rejected Iran’s rights in Al Dorra oilfield, insisting that the “resources are jointly owned by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait only.”

Finance

• Cirrus Logic says that it is laying off 5% of its global workforce. The company says that this reduction is due to trouble with a product release and overall market conditions. That product was originally set to come out this fall, but will no longer come to market as expected.

• According to Navi technologies’ draft IPO paper, the company had 4,680 employees as of December 31, 2021

• Walking through China’s cities, you will quickly notice the absence of large slums or pervasive homelessness common to the rest of the world.

• “Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy,” wrote the New York Times Editorial Board in a July 7 opinion piece, “the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money.”

• Young home owners who bought during the COVID-19 pandemic are pulling back their spending sharply as interest rates rise and cost of living pressures persist.

• Commonwealth Bank of Australia head Matt Comyn has told a federal parliamentary inquiry many households are clearly feeling the strain, hauling in their discretionary spending and dipping into savings.

• The pound has tipped above $1.31 for the first time since April last year after wholesale inflation in the US came to a near standstill.

• Sterling has risen for a sixth session to a new 15-month high as it was also boosted by data showing the UK economy shrank by less than expected in May.

• US producer prices barely rose in June from a year earlier, gaining 0.1pc in the smallest advance since 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

• The double standard is glaring, further illuminated by the findings of the Robodebt Royal Commission. While the AFP dithered for years investigating the blue-chippers from PwC for selling state secrets to foreign corporations, it was as quick as a rat up a drainpipe when it came to sending out letters to Centrelink clients threatening them with prison sentences unless they paid their Robodebts. Michael West reports.

• This strike on Australia’s most vulnerable – the Robodebt scheme targeted 381,000 people to unlawfully recover more than $750m – was badged “Taskforce Integrity”.

• Government services minister Bill Shorten says Scott Morrison should be embarrassed by the robodebt royal commission but it is up to the former prime minister to decide if he should quit parliament.

• Mr Morrison is facing fresh calls for his resignation based on his role in the failed debt recovery scheme as uncovered by a royal commission into the government program.

• For all the attention placed on the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank, surprisingly little focus has been placed on what exactly sparked the fastest bank run in US history (SVB’s), which then triggered the collapse of Signature and First Republic.

• The bosses of Westpac and Commonwealth Bank are set to be be quizzed about their interest rates and approach to helping scammed customers.

• The federal parliament’s economics committee will hold a second day of hearings in Canberra on Thursday, having received evidence from ANZ and NAB on Wednesday.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Watch out for dodgy social media posts and fake competitions

Censorship/Free Speech

• The resolution was approved by 28 of the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council, including China, Ukraine and most African countries.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Incorporating newer research about post-adolescent brain development would help those sentenced under outdated, racist policies.

• Hong Kong’s “patriots-only” legislature has passed a bill which broadens the Department of Justice’s powers to appeal cases, including not-guilty verdicts in national security trials, at the city’s High Court. The Legislative Council (LegCo) passed the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill 2023 on Wednesday by a show of hands.

• The Hong Kong and Macau Work Office is charged with ‘maintaining national security’ in the city under a 2020 law

• Then in the second half of the program, Eleanor speaks with Jen Deerinwater. Drawing on their own life experiences, they discuss how bisexuality is widely misunderstood or dismissed, even by other queer people. Deerinwater also adds her observations about how bisexuality is treated within Native communities, and explains that the Native concept of “two-spirit” is about more than an individual’s sexual orientation.

• Last month, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Haaland v. Brackeen, delivering a landmark victory for tribal sovereignty, Native children, Native families, and the future of Native people. In a 7-2 decision by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court rejected all of the constitutional challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) — some on the merits and others for lack of standing.

• The ACLU submitted an amicus brief in the case, and has been following the issue closely because of the profound threat it poses to Indigenous communities, particularly federally recognized tribes in the United States. In light of this victory at the Supreme Court, we are now urging states to take action and introduce or strengthen existing state-level ICWA protections.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• The team behind Denuvo claims that its DRM does not hinder gaming performance as many gamers have claimed. To resolve this, Denuvo is building a new program that will allow reviewers to compare new games with and without the DRM installed.

Monopolies

• The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday said it would appeal a decision by a U.S. court to allow Microsoft to acquire gaming giant Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion.

• Case on the merits is still scheduled to begin August 2.

• And away we go. The ongoing saga that is Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard has been going on for months now, with a flurry of news and activity occurring over the past couple of those months as the deal sits before three major regulatory bodies in the EU, the UK, and here in America. If you’re keeping score at home, the EU has already approved the deal, the UK’s CMA blocked it pending Microsoft’s appeal, and the FTC filed an antitrust suit and requested a preliminary injunction barring the deal from going through until that litigation is complete.

Patents

• On August 4, 2022, the Japanese Patent Office found that the only claim of JP6968024 was obvious and also not novel in view of the known art. The JP ’024 patent is owned by InterDigital VC Holdings.

• Many have reacted to the first post on the conflicts between national laws and UPCA. The various questions raised lead me to provide some additional food for thought.

• On March 30, 2023, the Japanese Patent Office found that the original claims of JP6909818 were obvious in view of the known art. The JP ’818 patent is owned by GE Video Compression LLC (GEVC).

• On March 14, 2022, the Japanese Patent Office found that the original claims of JP6855419 were obvious in view of the known art. The JP ’419 is owned by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

• Diversity and inclusion in science and commercialization are integral to innovation, societal and economic growth. While progress has been made in increasing representation and inclusivity in STEM, there are complex factors at play that hinder a comprehensive understanding of the barriers faced by underrepresented groups in these fields. Today, I will focus on a challenging point later in the invention process: commercializing a scientific discovery. In a research study with Matt Marx, we characterize the gender dynamics of scientific commercialization in the full canon of scientific inquiry.

Copyrights

• A survey of the Smithsonian by the first curator of photography in the United States.

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