● 07.18.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 18/07/2023: Meson 1.2 and More Microsoft Layoffs, Amazon Layoffs

Posted in News Roundup at 8:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Linux is now a little more than three 3 per cent of the desktop OS market, excluding the just over four per cent that is ChromeOS. Which is also Linux, but the wrong kind of Linux.

• Web server statistics aggregator Statcounter announced last week that as of June 2023, Linux accounts for 3 per cent of desktop operating system use. However, this is still surpassed by ChromeOS, which means that desktop Linux has less than half of the desktop Linux market. If you feel that this is a bit weird, we agree with you.

Audiocasts/Shows

• After a lot of work, a lot of testing and some downtime and then a lot more work and many sleepless nights and then a lot more work… Our 4K A.I Text to Image generator is ready for use. It is currently only available to our Patreon Members of rank tier “Major” and above.

• FULL SHOW NOTES ►► https://tuxdigital.com/podcasts/destination-linux/dl-332/

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re putting the BlendOS immutable operating system to the test.

• Canonical takes control of LXD and it’s a little bit messy, Fedora might implement opt-out telemetry, and Félim sneaks in a mini KDE Korner. Plus more fallout from the RHEL source code restriction drama including surprising moves from SUSE and Oracle, and a sensible submissive solution from Alma.

Graphics Stack

• NVIDIA 535.86.05 is here a little over a month after the NVIDIA 535.54.03 release to further improve Wayland support by addressing a video memory leak that occurred when turning off a connected monitor when using certain Wayland compositors.

• This release also improves support for OpenGL and Vulkan apps by addressing a bug that caused excessive memory consumption when switching to a virtual console from X when these apps were running, as well as a bug that caused corruption and a regression causing a system hang when running certain Vulkan apps with sync-to-vblank enabled.

Applications

• Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. Through it’s open architecture, Blender provides cross-platform interoperability, extensibility, an incredibly small footprint, and a tightly integrated workflow. Blender is one of the most popular Open Source 3D graphics application in the world.

• Coming three months after VirtualBox 7.0.8, the new release adds initial support for the Linux 6.4 kernel series for both guests and hosts, initial support for the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel series only for hosts, initial support for Indirect Branch Tracking for hosts, and initial support for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.3 kernels for guests and hosts.

• Also for Linux Guest Additions, the VirtualBox 7.0.10 release introduces general improvements in the installer area, fixes an issue when the reloading of the vboxvideo module caused a kernel panic in some guest machines, and fixes an issue when kernel modules were rebuilt during each boot when guests without X11 installed.

• There are numerous tools to browse genomes. While there’s considerable overlap in functionality, each software offers unique features or data.

Instructionals/Technical

• Telegram—a name widely recognized within the sphere of modern digital communication. Lauded for its security measures, open-source status, and user-friendly interface, Telegram has become a top choice for those in search of a versatile communication platform. .

• Guest Post: The new record type will add an additional layer of cryptographic security to ensure the reliability of root zone data.

• Last Updated on July 17, 2023 by Prabha How To Install Grub Customizer On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS And Linux Distros. Grub Customizer is a software package that allows the user to customize the Grub boot menu.

• Last Updated on July 17, 2023 by Prabha How To Install Canon Printer Driver In Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Canon Printer is one of the most widely used printers right now. Due to its increasing usage, Canon started to provide support for Linux users too.

• When managing files and directories in a Linux environment, you may sometimes need to compare two directories for various reasons such as checking differences in files, syncing directories, or verifying backups. Linux provides powerful utilities like ‘diff’ and ‘rsync’ to help with this task.

• Fedora, being one of the most popular Linux distributions, sees regular updates and versions released by its developer community. As a user, it’s important to keep track of the version you’re using, be it for software compatibility, troubleshooting, or simply staying updated with the latest features. Fortunately, Fedora offers easy ways to check your system’s version, both through the graphical user interface (GUI) and the command line.

• In the Linux world, the ‘ifconfig’ command is a tried-and-true utility for network interface configuration, used by many to display or manipulate network interface parameters. However, with the advent of more modern tools like ‘ip’, ‘ifconfig’ might not come pre-installed on some Linux distributions, leaving some users perplexed when they try to use it.

• In the realm of server management, Cockpit has emerged as a game-changer. This user-friendly, open-source software offers a tangible solution for sysadmins, developers, and even tech-savvy individuals to manage and monitor servers. Some noteworthy features include: Cockpit presents many advantages, especially when compared with other server management tools.

• In Linux, every process that runs on your system is assigned a unique Process ID (PID), and it’s associated with a Parent Process ID (PPID) that identifies the process that started it. Understanding these concepts and knowing how to retrieve these IDs can significantly aid in effective process management, from monitoring system activities to debugging issues.

• Discord has earned its badge as the “Swiss Army Knife” of gaming and streaming chat clients. It excels in versatility, allowing users to connect, collaborate, and coordinate with ease, while also offering a myriad of additional features.

• In the world of Linux, understanding file timestamps is crucial for effective file management. Every file in a Linux system has three timestamps associated with it: atime (Access), mtime (Modify), and ctime (Change). These timestamps offer valuable information about when a file was last accessed, modified, or changed. However, their roles and differences can sometimes be confusing.

• 7-Zip, a prodigious name in the realm of file archiving, stands tall with its extensive feature set and superior performance. This powerful software tool is open-source, granting developers and enthusiasts access to its core, fostering a constant cycle of innovation and refinement.

• Node.js is quite popular among developers and Linux users. The capability of providing JavaScript functionalities outside the web browser using Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine opens the door for many possibilities.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RubyMine on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, RubyMine is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) specifically designed for Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications.

• How to fix the “Updating from such a repository can’t be done securely” error in Linux You might have encountered this error while trying to run the apt update or the apt upgrade command.

• In Ubuntu, as in other Linux distributions, the swap file is an essential component of the system’s memory management. It acts as a virtual memory layer, allowing the system to utilize hard disk space as a form of RAM when physical memory is full.

• In Linux, managing files and directories is a daily task. Occasionally, you may need to create files of a particular size for various reasons, such as testing disk usage, simulating file sizes for applications, or even benchmarking storage performance. The ‘fallocate’ command is a built-in Linux utility designed for this purpose, and it can efficiently create files of a specific size.

• Hey Debian Users, are you looking for a comprehensive guide for installing the latest stable version of Debian 12?

• This blog will unfold the journey of upgrading your already installed Debian 11 to Debian 12 (codenamed “Bookworm”).

• Wondering, how to install Graylog on your Ubuntu 22.04 or Ubuntu 20.04?

• Now that you landed on this guide, I assume that you want to install the Pure-FTPd server on Ubuntu 22.04 or Ubuntu 20.04.

• Sometimes, the goal is to not only access the terminal of a server from another machine but to gain full control…

• Familiar with Maltego Kali Linux Welcome you, I am glad you are here continue reading my notes on Penetration Testing Tutorial…

• Introduction openSUSE Leap is a robust and reliable Linux distribution, built from the same source code used to build SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) making it binary compatible with one of the most trusted operating systems to run mission critical workloads.

• Linux networking can be confusing due to the wide range of technology stacks and tools in use, in addition to the complexity of the surrounding network environment. The configuration of bridges, bonds, VRFs or routes can be done programmatically, declaratively, manually or with automated with tools like ifupdown, ifupdown2, ifupdown-ng, iproute2, NetworkManager, systemd-networkd and others. Each of these tools use different formats and locations to store their configuration files. Netplan, a utility for easily configuring networking on a Linux system, is designed to unify and standardise how administrators interact with these underlying technologies. Starting from a YAML description of the required network interfaces and what each should be configured to do, Netplan will generate all the necessary configuration for your chosen tool.

• In this article, we will provide an overview of how Ubuntu uses Netplan to manage Linux networking in a unified way. By creating a common interface across two disparate technology stacks, IT administrators benefit from a unified experience across both desktops and servers whilst retaining the unique advantages of the underlying tech.

• After the Google Chrome 114 update in May, many users reported graphics and display issues in rendering many websites. That includes Chrome’s own settings and other native windows.

• Here’s how to fix it.

• Linux Mint 21.2 “Victoria” is recently released with the latest packages and updates. If you are running Linux Mint 21.1, here’s how you can upgrade to this latest version.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• As mentioned previously on this blog, I took a break from my vacations for the past couple of days. I attended Akademy 2023 over the week-end and I’m now typing this during my trip back home.

• [...]

• We started the day with a nice keynote about the Libre Space Foundation. It was very interesting and inspiring to see how open source can go into space. The project started in 2011 and despite all the regulation required they managed to get their first satellite in orbit in 2017. This is not a small feat. Of course, everything they produce is free and reusable by others. It was nice to touch upon some of their more specific constraints which impact quite a bit the cycles for producing software and hardware.

• This was followed by a session about the KDE Goals. All three current community goals were covered.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Traffic in the EasyOS section of the Puppy Forum has increased, looks like time to create sub-categories. Well, for now just the one.

• I asked rockedge (Erik), who hosts the forum, if there could be a new “Containers and VMs” sub-category under “EasyOS” and he has done it, moving many existing threads into the new sub-category: [...]

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• EPYC is AMD’s flagship mainstream server microprocessors and supports 1-way and 2-way multiprocessing. The first generation was originally announced back in May 2017: At time being, it replaced the previous Opteron server family with the introduction of the Zen microarchitecture for the mainstream market.

Fedora Family / IBM

• However, some of the companies he cited as offering support to Red Hat have little connection to open source, like Josh Amishav, founder and chief executive of the data breach monitoring firm, Breachsense.

• Another company, venture capital firm, TSVC Management, was also quoted, with its general partner Spencer Greene attempting to play down the importance of the GNU Project as it was founded 40 years ago.

• In lieu of what IBM/Red Hat has done with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source, distributions like AlmaLinux have been forced to make changes to how they build their operating systems.

• Packit is an open-source project aiming to ease the integration of your project with Fedora Linux, CentOS Stream, and other distributions. Projects that use Packit usually build RPM packages. This article will introduce new features. The new user onboarding process is available here.

Debian Family

• This is the July update of Sparky rolling iso images which works on Linux kernel 6.3, and provides updated packages from Debian ‘trixie’ and Sparky ‘sisters’ testing repos.

• I uploaded sgt-puzzles to unstable. This brought in the new upstream version previously in experimental. I incorporated an updated German translation from Helge Kreutzmann, and made translation updates less tricky to do.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• On Sunday Linux Mint announced the release of Linux Mint 21.2 across all three of its mainstream editions. Like other releases in the 21.x series, this release will be supported until 2027.

• The full version of this issue is available here.

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 796 for the week of July 9 – 15, 2023.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The standard Raspberry Pi computers have been in short supply for a while now, so much so that people are going to great lengths to find replacements. Whether it’s migrating to alternative single-board computers or finding clones of the Pi that are “close enough”, there are solutions out there. This method of building a full-size Raspberry Pi with all of the bells and whistles using the much-less-in-demand Pi Zero also stands out as a clever solution.

• At the dawn of the Space Race, when computers were something that took up whole rooms, satellites and probes had to rely on analog electronics to read from their various sensors and transmit the resulting data to the ground. But it wasn’t long before humanity’s space ambitions outgrew these early systems, which lead to vast advancements in space-bound digital computers in support of NASA’s Gemini and Apollo programs. Today, building a spacecraft without an onboard computer (or even multiple redundant computers) is unheard of. Even the smallest of CubeSats is likely running Linux on a multi-core system.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• OffSec is an American international company working in information security, penetration testing and digital forensics. Operating from around 2007, the company has created multiple open source projects, advanced security courses, the ExploitDB vulnerability database, and the popular Kali Linux. It has recently released the Kali Purple platform, a dedicated platform for cyber defence analysts and a platform for security services.

• One of the most irritating things about WordPress is whenever I start a firefox session, WordPress asks for cookie selection. I make my choices but it’s not persistent. The next session the same thing happens again. It does keep my identity but for some unknown reason doesn’t respect the Cookie selection. I usually use Firefox ESR (102.13.0esr-1) on Testing.

• Also, for more than a week I have found debdelta not working as it should. To give a brief history, the idea of debdelta is to save bandwidth, whether it 100 kbps or 1 mbit or whatever, the moment you give debdelta-upgrade it will try to see if there is a delta of the debs that you want to upgrade. The sequence is as follows or at least that is what I do –

GNU Projects

• Though not stable (i.e. expect bugs) this release gives us our best look yet at how what the stable GIMP 3.0 release will comprise of when it’s released later this year (a release candidate of GIMP 3.0 draws close, for those interested).

• First up, devs say GIMP’s GTK3 port is now “officially done”.

• If you’ve paid any attention to GIMP’s development efforts in the past few years you’ll know that porting the app to GTK3 has been a real fear. For devs, it must be such a relief to see all those blood (not literal, I hope), sweat, and tears pay off.

Programming/Development

• We are pleased to announce the GNU Shepherd version 0.10.2, a bug-fix release of the new 0.10.x series, representing 28 commits over 7 weeks.

• The 0.10.x series is a major overhaul towards 1.0, addressing shortcomings and providing new features that help comprehend system state.

• Added support for the Metrowerks Embedded ARM and Metrowerks Embedded PowerPC toolchains (https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/reference-manual/CWMCUKINCMPREF.pdf).

Leftovers

• Aside from derailing her into talking about pancakes for a few minutes (cough), I asked if she’d been nervous, and if so she’d hid it well.

Hardware

• There are a huge number of products available in the modern world that come with network connectivity now, when perhaps they might be better off with out it. Kitchen appliances like refrigerators are the classic example, but things like lightbulbs, toys, thermostats, and door locks can all be found with some sort of Internet connectivity. Perhaps for the worse, too, if the security of these devices isn’t taken seriously, as they can all be vectors for attacks. Even things like this Rigol oscilloscope and its companion web app can be targets.

• We live in a world where most of us take the transistor for granted. Within arm’s length of most people reading this, there are likely over ten billion of them sending electrons in every direction. But the transistor was not the first technology to come around to make the computer a possibility, but if you go to the lengths of building something with an alternative, like this vacuum tube computer, you may appreciate them just a tiny bit more.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• It just struck me the other day that, in less than a year and a half, I will have been at this blogging thing for two whole decades. I’ve been writing for SBM for over fifteen and a half years, having started my first blog more than three years before that and having been active on Usenet countering quackery and antivaccine pseudoscience for five or six years before that. (Yes, I’ve been at this in one form or another since the late 1990s.) I was reminded by a recent spate of laudatory (or at least very unskeptical) stories about Neko Health last week touting their “lofty promise of preventative healthcare via full-body scans backed by AI software” of the very first time that I actually put my then relatively recent turn to combatting dubious medicine into action with respect to a medical fad that had been going on for quite some time, that of whole body scans for preventative healthcare.

• In a sign that the pandemic really is over, the total number of Americans dying each day is no longer historically abnormal.

• Diane Ragone’s research and promotion of a long-ignored Hawaiian staple has, quite literally, born fruit – with big implications for food security.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Linux Foundation

• The Information Systems Authority of the Government of Estonia (RIA) and the Open Voice Network (OVON), an open source association of the Linux Foundation, today announced an agreement to test and demonstrate interoperability of voice assistants across different technological platforms – a first for the voice industry.

• The demonstration will use specifications developed by the Open Voice Network, and allow users of the Estonia RIA’s new citizen assistant for government services, Bürokratt, to connect to and directly interact with third-party voice assistants and independent digital services. RIA leaders expect this, in time, to enable service providers and citizens/users to enjoy wide-ranging, standardized, and secure communications between agents and solutions.

Security

• While silos pose significant dangers to an enterprise’s cybersecurity posture, consolidation serves as a powerful solution to overcome these risks, offering improved visibility, efficiency, incident response capabilities, and risk management.

• Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, the owner of the infamous cybercrime website BreachForums, has pleaded guilty in a US court.

• A stealthy Linux malware called AVrecon has been infecting over 70,000 small office/home office (SOHO) routers, creating a botnet primarily aimed at stealing bandwidth and operating as a hidden residential proxy service.

• Whenever you buy something, you receive the product of a massive collaboration, not just one company. That shirt started as raw materials at cotton farms that passed through logistics providers to get to manufacturers, who sent it through more trucking companies to land at a retailer. Just as physical products pass through this supply chain, so does software.

• The number of entities impacted by the MOVEit hack — either directly or indirectly — reportedly exceeds 340 organizations and 18 million individuals.

• Adobe patches critical code execution vulnerability in ColdFusion for which a proof-of-concept (PoC) blog exists.

• “Importantly, our investigations showed that this information was not confidential in nature.

• “We notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre of the incident, and our internal investigation and remediation actions are now complete.”

• Cl0P did not provide any further details about the quantum of data stolen, if any.

• It is unclear whether Cl0p attacked Fortescue through the secure managed file transfer software MOVEit Transfer or through some other vector.

• The magazine said confidential information from the German Federal Office for Information Security or BSI had also been uploaded to the database.

• Der Spiegel said it had verified that the names on the leaked list were authentic. “Twenty accounts alone lead to the Cyber Command of the USA, part of the American military and a hub for offensive and defensive hacking operations,” the report said.

• Man in the middle attack is the most popular and dangerous attack in Local Area Network.

Privacy/Surveillance

• For more than a decade now, app makers, phone makers, wireless companies — and pretty much everybody else — has been collecting and monetizing your daily movement habits. There’s genuinely no reason most of these companies (like, say, your light bulb maker) need this information, but because the U.S. is too corrupt to pass a real privacy law, they collect it and sell access to it because they can.

• As you almost certainly know, earlier this month, Meta released Threads, its Twitter-like microblogging service. There are rumors that the company rushed the launch, pushing it up a few weeks to try to capitalize on the latest nonsense at Twitter. And, it seemed to work (to some extent) in that the company was able to quickly scale to 100 million signups in just a few days. Of course, it had help. This was all piggybacked on the Instagram social graph, which has over 2 billion users.

Defence/Aggression

• The representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Mali confirmed that the firm commitment of the mission to the Malian people remains the same: it aims to achieve peace, security, and reconciliation, as it has been doing for ten years.

• Since the sudden death of its president, Idriss Déby in 2021, Chad has fallen into a deep crisis, which in turn has jeopardized security in a region that was already suffering the effects of interethnic warfare.

War in Ukraine

• The Kremlin meant business when it threatened to seize the Russian operations of foreign companies in retaliation for sanctions linked to its war in Ukraine.

• The arrival of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus does not fundamentally change the security situation in the region, assures the Lithuanian defence minister.

• Russia has halted a breakthrough wartime deal that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed people into poverty. A Kremlin spokesman announced Monday that Russia would suspend the Black Sea Grain Initiative until its demands to get its own agricultural shipments to the world are met. While Russia has complained that restrictions on shipping and insurance have hampered its agricultural exports, it has been shipping record amounts of wheat. It’s the end of an accord that the U.N. and Turkey brokered to allow food to leave the Black Sea region after Russia invaded its neighbor.

• During the prelude to the NATO summit in Vilnius, there was extensive speculation about whether Ukraine would be given a clear path to membership in the alliance, with a specific timeline.

• The NATO summit in Lithuania this week served only to underscore the utter hypocrisy of western leaders in pursuing their proxy war in Ukraine to “weaken” Russia and oust its president, Vladimir Putin.

• On July 14, Foreign Policy published its biweekly “It’s Debatable” column featuring Scowcroft Center Vice President and Senior Director Matthew Kroenig and Emma Ashford assessing the latest news in international affairs.

• The last ship under the UN- and Turkey-brokered deal to export grain and fertilizer from Ukraine by sea has left Odesa. Atlantic Council experts explain what to expect next.

• The Western powers are now more united with the Baltic nations than ever before. After months of diplomatic delays, Sweden can now join NATO—a genuine triumph for the Biden administration. This development has enormous geostrategic implications for the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Ahmed Charai is a Moroccan publisher and an Atlantic Council Board Director.

• A Russian overnight strike damaged port infrastructure facilities in Ukraine’s Odesa, Kyiv’s military said on Tuesday, hours after Moscow refused to extend a deal to allow grain export from the region.

• Thousands of children were kidnapped and deported to Russia shortly after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year. Some are returning home to Ukraine, where they are given counselling and therapy sessions to deal with their harrowing war experiences. FRANCE 24 met a group of repatriated children who have been reunited with their Ukrainian guardians and relatives.

• The European Union hosted Latin American and Caribbean leaders Monday at a long-awaited summit to soothe strained ties, but found themselves divided over how to address Russia’s war in Ukraine.

• Russia on Monday halted a breakthrough wartime deal on Monday that allowed grain to flow from Ukrainian ports to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where hunger is a growing threat. Western leaders and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres quickly denounced the move. Overnight from Sunday to Monday, explosions attributed to Ukraine damaged the Kerch bridge, which links southern Russia with occupied Crimea.

• The Bank of Lithuania raised 105,600 euros for Ukraine by selling commemorative coins and last week transferred the money to a special account opened by the Ukrainian national bank.

• Russia launched a fresh wave of drone strikes early on July 18 on southern Ukraine, damaging infrastructure in the Black Sea port of Odesa, regional officials and the military reported, as Moscow said it repelled a Ukrainian drone attack on the illegally annexed region of Crimea.

• U.S. President Joe Biden will host a Vatican envoy to discuss the war in Ukraine, the White House said on July 17.

• A third group of mercenaries from Russia’s private Wagner group has arrived in the eastern Mahilyou region of Belarus, the Belaruski Hajun group said on July 17.

• “Despite the statement made today, I believe that Russian president wants the continuation of this humanitarian bridge,” Erdogan said.

• Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said damage caused to a major rail and road bridge linking Russia with the Crimean Peninsula will be completely repaired by November 1, while President Vladimir Putin vowed “a response” to the attack, which killed two people.

• Russian diplomat Zakharova said the attack was carried out by Ukraine with the support of the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

• After the United States delivered cluster bombs to support Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid intensifying fighting, threatened retaliation if Ukraine uses them. The bombs have been condemned for their threat to civilians.

• Moscow, which has repeatedly complained that the U.N.-brokered agreement is one-sided in Ukraine’s favor, said it could return to the deal if its demands were met.

• Russia has halted a wartime deal that allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. As hunger is already a growing problem in these regions, the move poses further challenges to global food security.

• Russia accused Ukraine of hitting the Kerch Strait Bridge for the second time in 10 months, saying that two maritime drones had struck the bridge, an essential supply line for Russian troops.

• The Kremlin terminated an agreement that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain by sea despite a wartime blockade, a deal seen as essential to keeping global food prices stable.

• The highway between Crimea and Ukraine’s Kherson region saw heavy congestion on Monday after an early morning explosion caused part of the bridge linking the peninsula to Russia to collapse.

• The July 17 Crimea bridge explosion was a joint operation between the Ukrainian Security Service and the Ukrainian Navy, according to a source close to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate who spoke to Meduza on condition of anonymity. This was previously reported by the Ukrainian outlets Ukrainska Pravda and RBC Ukraine.

• So how many American soldiers fight in Ukraine? The Biden bunch is careful not to reveal or refer to their presence, mercenary or otherwise, but the question keeps coming to mind.

• The attack on the Crimean bridge was a special operation of Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU) and the Naval Forces of Ukraine, report Ukrainian Pravda and RBC Ukraine, citing sources in Ukraine’s security services. According to the source, naval drones aided in the attack on the bridge.

• Monday’s strike was the second in less than a year to target the Kerch Strait Bridge, which holds strategic and symbolic importance for Russia.

• World War II has been an ideological battlefield in today’s war in Ukraine, and it is cropping up on the actual battlefield as well.

• Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that Kyiv can continue exporting grain through the Black Sea corridor, despite Russia’s purported withdrawal from the grain deal. The statement, which came during an interview with African journalists, was shared on Facebook by his press secretary Serhii Nykyforov.

• The city of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine has been spared the mayhem of the Russian invasion. But like other towns in the region, it is doing its part, and has become, in effect, a back office of the war effort.

• Videos posted on social media show Wagner troops being escorted by the Belarusian police, the New York Times reported on Sunday. Satellite images also show increased activity at the tent camp that may host the group following its short-lived mutiny in Russia.

• Despite the push from Vilnius to speed up the decoupling from the Russian-controlled power grid, the Baltic states will not be able to leave the network next year and ahead of schedule.

• An Su-25 military jet crashed into the Azov Sea in the southwestern region of Krasnodar Krai on July 17 while performing a training flight near the city of Yeisk, officials in Russia’s South Military District said, adding that the incident might have been caused by an engine malfunction.

• The chief of the opposition Communist Party in Moldova’s breakaway Transdniester region, Oleg Horjan, was killed at home on July 16, the leader of the Russian Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, said.

• Pro-Kremlin activists in the city of Astrakhan have unveiled a bust of Tsar Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible, on private land after the city’s administration refused to locate it on a public site.

• The vessels carrying Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) cannot dock in a Finnish port because the gas must be maintained at a temperature of -163 degrees Celsius.

• The troop movements are the private company’s biggest — and most public — showing since its failed rebellion in Russia last month.

• While Moscow has informed the parties of the deal about its objections, President Erdoğan expressed hope that he and Putin may solve the issue.

• Ukrainian forces are continuing their offensive in the Melitopol and Berdyansk areas of the southern Zaporizhzhya region while recapturing some territory in the eastern region of Donetsk, the Ukrainian military said early on July 17.

• Noted Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov says he was wounded by shrapnel while fighting alongside Ukrainian armed forces against Russian occupying troops in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region.

• Britain has sanctioned 14 Russian officials, including two government ministers, for what it says is their role in Russia’s forced relocation of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children since the start of Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

• Early on the morning of July 17, an explosion hit the Crimean Bridge (also known as the Kerch Bridge), killing a married couple from Russia’s Belgorod region and injuring their 14-year-old daughter. Moscow blamed the “Kyiv regime” for the attack, and the Russian Investigative Committee has opened a terrorism case concerning the blast. Bereg, an independent journalists’ cooperative, spoke with tourists who were on or near the bridge at the moment of the explosion and asked local residents what they think about the attack. With Bereg’s permission, Meduza has translated their responses.

• President of Russia Vladimir Putin held an open meeting with ministers and regional governors about the early-morning explosion on the bridge linking the occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia. The meeting was broadcast on state-owned television news network Russia 24 and on the Kremlin’s dedicated channel.

• Wagner Group’s main base is closing down, a Telegram channel linked to the paramilitary group reported on Monday. The channel posted a video of the Russian and Wagner Group flags being lowered at the base, which is located in Russia’s Krasnodar region.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

Environment

• Gail Bradbrook, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, went on trial in west London on Monday for breaking a window at the Department of Transport in October, 2019.

• Bradbrook has previously pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal damage for using a hammer and woodworking tool to crack the building’s glass frontage, which the prosecution valued at £27,500.

• For example, the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, has declared his opposition to the “radical climate change movement.” As AG, Paxton has repeatedly sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For instance, in 2021 he joined other state AGs in a lawsuit that challenged the EPA’s authority to curb power plant carbon emissions. Although the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA upheld the agency’s authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, the decision significantly constrained its ability to do so. As Negin reported, “Paxton’s constituents are suffering from heat, drought, flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires, all exacerbated by climate change.” But the Texas AG has received more than $3.9 million in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry since 2002, according to OpenSecrets.

Wildlife/Nature

• The world is in the grips of a dangerous heat wave that has sent temperatures skyrocketing to deadly levels throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. Unless urgent action is taken to reduce carbon emissions, the United Nations says, Earth could pass a temperature threshold in the next decade when climate disasters are too extreme to adapt to. We speak with longtime climate journalist Jeff Goodell, author of the new book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, about how the climate crisis is raising temperatures, the toll such heat can have on the human body, and how “heat is the primary driver for this climate transformation we are undergoing right now,” fueling natural disasters such as floods, wildfires and more.

Finance

• Young Americans are piling the blame for their student debt balances on conservatives, according to a poll by Generation Lab provided exclusively to Axios.

• Why it matters: The high court’s recent decisions on education, including student loans and affirmative action, could drive young voters to the polls.

• Several pandemic-era safety net programs will be coming to an end at roughly the same time this fall, creating a major economic squeeze for millions of families.

• Why it matters: Scores of Americans will soon start facing bigger bills for student loan payments, child care, health care and food, deepening the impact of years of inflation.

• A Bengaluru based Chief Executive Officer (CEO) expressed shock after he received a whopping 3,000 resumes within two days for job openings in his private firm. He also expressed concern about the job market in India, which is currently facing the heat of layoffs in major companies.

• Cameo, the company behind the eponymous video-commissioning app, has undergone another round of layoffs, dropping the headcount of the startup to fewer than 50 employees.

• The move was described as a finance-related decision in an all-hands company meeting on Tuesday. This round of layoffs was said to ax “at least” 80 people, according to a pair of former employees involved in the layoffs who spoke with The Information. Cameo had around 400 employees before layoffs began in 2022.

• A representative for Cameo did not refute the details of the aforementioned report when responding to TheWrap’s request for comment. They provided a statement from the company’s CEO, Steven Galanis.

• Despite significant hikes in major interest rates by global central banks, inflation expectations continue to remain high across the world, according to the Economic Experts Survey (EES) for Q2 2023 conducted by the ifo Institute and the Swiss Economic Policy Institute. Although a mild decline in the anticipated inflation rate has been observed over the last three quarters, the change has been marginal, and the current average inflation expectation for 2023 stays at 7%.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• It seems to anger certain Elon Musk fans every time I mention it, but pre-Elon Twitter was generally doing okay. Not great. Not terrible. Just okay. It wasn’t printing cash like Meta or Google, but it had been steadily increasing revenue and was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over. There was a big paper loss in the 2nd quarter of 2020 due to a single noncash deferred tax asset, and many people see that giant loss and mistakenly think it showed the company was deep in the hole. However, you can tell it was nothing given that most analysts basically ignored that single big loss and focused on the underlying advertising and user numbers.

• “They love me. I ain’t gon lie it feel amazing to have all the attention and getting pay at the same time.”

• House Republicans are planning a vote this week on a resolution denouncing anti-semitism and defending Israel, Axios has learned.

• Why it matters: It is a direct response to comments from Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) over the weekend calling Israel a “racist” state.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• “The claims made on that tape is false. It is vile. And they put our they put our fellow Americans in danger,” Jean-Pierre told a reporter who asked during the daily White House press briefing if Kennedy’s comments had any place in the Democratic Party.

• A Democratic watchdog group has asked a U.S. House committee to rescind an invitation to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after the Democratic presidential candidate was filmed falsely suggesting COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. The Congressional Integrity Project sent a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, after the comments prompted accusations of antisemitism and racism. Jordan said through a spokesperson he will move forward with the hearing despite disagreeing with Kennedy’s comments. Kennedy said that his words were twisted and that he never suggested COVID-19 was targeted to spare Jews.

• His sister Kerry Kennedy criticized his remarks, and his brother Joseph Kennedy II said “they play on antisemitic myths and stoke mistrust of the Chinese.”

• As the 2024 US Presidential election approaches, digital information integrity experts are warning about the growing usage of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated material that might confuse or mislead voters.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Chinese Communist Party-owned media outlet Renminwang reported Monday that the Chinese Ministry of Public Security began another week of promoting its operation to target online rumors and encourage rational commenting on the internet.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The Importance of Independent Media and Critical Media Literacy Education

• This article will feature senior judges I have blogged about before, and explain how I expect the Assange case will be finally stitched up for extradition.

• The Hong Kong government’s watchdog has found no evidence of maladministration by the Information Services Department (ISD), following an investigation into how the government PR wing handled unexplained media bans at an April press event.

• An anonymous but outspoken netizen recently dubbed the Hong Kong police, or perhaps just the national security specialists, our Gestapo-po. This seems very unfair. It is commonplace that some languages spring into use in particular circumstances. Discussions of music can hardly avoid Italian. The writers of restaurant menus instinctively reach for their French.

Civil Rights/Policing

• As we previously wrote, the January ruling set a crucial precedent. It was the first time an Ecuadorian court analyzed the issue of unauthorized access to a computer system, an act classified as an offense under Article 234 of Ecuador’s criminal code. Most importantly, the court resisted setting an expansive interpretation of what constitutes unauthorized access of computer systems, a move that could have seriously endangered the beneficial work of security researchers and the vital role they play for our privacy and security across information systems.

• The acquittal sentence makes three important facts clear. First, the evidence the prosecution presented was essentially unrelated to the charge of unauthorized access and did not prove the alleged criminal facts. Second, the only piece of evidence that was possibly related, the image of a telnet session showing a connection to a National Telecommunications Corporation (CNT) router, was not proof of criminal activity. And third, the prosecution didn’t present any evidence to prove the required threshold of malicious intent—necessary for the crime of unauthorized access. In short, the court refused to convict Bini based on stereotyped views of security experts intended to stoke fear that he was a danger to the public and state security.

• The alleged evidence presented to the court was mainly unrelated to the criminal offense levied against Bini. His visits to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his internet service contract, the amount of computer equipment he owned, and translations of private conversations held with various contacts through different messaging applications, were related to a strategy of fear mongering around a “hacker panic,” not evidence of a crime.

• On Friday, July 14, Amy Goodman moderated a wide-ranging panel on human rights in Venice, Italy, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The panel’s speakers included United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström and Eamon Gilmore, the European Union special representative for human rights. They discussed the U.S. sending cluster bombs to Ukraine, the war in Sudan, Palestine, as well as the role of civil society and the media in elevating human rights issues.

• Take a break from hacking the Gibson to face off with your competition at the tables—all while benefiting EFF! Your buy-in is paired with a donation to support EFF’s mission to protect online privacy and free expression for all. Play for money, and the future of the web! Seating is limited, so reserve your spot today.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The Kremlin’s domestic policy czar, First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko, is advocating a new plan to sell off tech giant Yandex’s remaining Russian assets, journalists at Meduza and The Bell have learned. Kiriyenko’s plan would transfer the enterprises to a consortium of businessmen with known ties to Yuri Kovalchuk, the billionaire known as “Vladimir Putin’s personal banker,” consolidating his control over the commanding heights of the Russian Internet and expanding the Kremlin’s influence over the industry. As Meduza and The Bell reported last month, the Yandex deal’s future became uncertain after the company’s board of directors opposed selling off the assets to individuals under Western sanctions, even though Vladimir Putin personally approved the list of buyers.

Monopolies

Patents

• The European Patent Office has had a busy few months. One of the office’s most recent opposition decisions, which relates to a patent for a new cancer treatment, has gone in favour of the patent holder, Compugen.

• On July 14, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,437,935, owned and asserted by Vision Works IP Corp., an NPE. The ’935 patent generally relates to a vehicle monitoring system for turning off an idling engine.

• A new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, was added seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,614,667, owned by Gametronics, an NPE and entity of Jeffrey M. Gross.

Trademarks

• Grocery chain Trader Joe’s is not a complete stranger to Techdirt’s pages, and not for good reasons. The company, in the past, has shown itself to be perfectly willing to abuse trademark law to stop anything it doesn’t like, such as a man reselling its goods across borders where the company has no stores (perfectly legal) or someone setting up a site selling parody goods that tangentially reference its branding (also legal). But now Trader Joe’s has joined a small club of companies that has tried to use trademark law to bully its own employee’s union.

Copyrights

• UK-based CDN company DataCamp has failed in its bid to have a $32.5 million lawsuit dismissed in the United States. According to a memorandum and opinion published July 14, plaintiff DISH Network has established a causal relationship between infringing IPTV services and the company’s profits. When the IPTV services profited, that attracted more pirates to DataCamp, the court found.

• A Prague court has ordered Czech file-sharing and hosting site Ulož.to to pay $46,000 in damages to local movie distributor CineMart. The file-sharing platform stood accused of unjust enrichment after one of its users uploaded a pirated film without permission. Uloz’s parent company describes the judgment as absurd and says it will appeal the decision.

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