● 07.20.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 20/07/2023: MySQL 8.1 and WordPress 6.3 Release Candidate 1

Posted in News Roundup at 4:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• The highly-anticipated Framework Laptop 16 is now available for pre-order, bringing desktop PC-level customization to a portable device. The sleek notebook is powered by the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs and offers a remarkable degree of upgradability and repairability.

Kernel Space

• The Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) framework can be used to create a “stacked” filesystem, where the FUSE piece adds specialized functionality (e.g. reporting different file metadata) atop an underlying kernel filesystem. The performance of such filesystems leaves a lot to be desired, however, so the FUSE BPF filesystem has been proposed to try to improve the performance to be close to that of the underlying native filesystem. It came up in the context of a session on FUSE passthrough earlier in the 2023 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management and BPF Summit, but the details of FUSE BPF were more fully described by Daniel Rosenberg in a combined filesystem and BPF session on the final day of the summit.

• Rosenberg said that he wanted to introduce the filesystem, describe its current status, and discuss some of the open questions with regard to future plans for it. The goal is for a stacked FUSE filesystem to come as close to the native filesystem’s performance as the FUSE BPF developers can get. In addition, they want to keep “all of the nice ease-of-use of FUSE”, with its “defined entry points”; the idea is to keep the interface “similar to what you would see from the FUSE daemon”.

• The transition to folios has transformed the memory-management subsystem in a number of ways, but has also resulted in a lot of code churn that has not been welcomed by all developers. As this work proceeds, though, some of the benefits from it are beginning to become clear. One example may well be in the handling of anonymous memory, as can be seen in a pair of patch sets from Ryan Roberts.

• The initial Linux kernel release used 4KB pages on systems whose total memory size was measured in megabytes — and a rather small number of megabytes at that. Since then, installed-memory sizes have grown by a few orders of magnitude or so, but the 4KB page size remains mostly unchanged. So the kernel has to manage far more pages than it once did; that leads to more memory used for tracking, longer lists to scan, and more page faults to handle. In many ways, a 4KB page size is far too small for contemporary systems.

• Over the years, the kernel has developed a number of deferred-execution mechanisms to take care of work that cannot be done immediately. For many (or most) needs, the workqueue subsystem is the tool that developers reach for first. Workqueues took their current form over a dozen years ago, but that does not mean that there are not improvements to be made. Two sets of patches from Tejun Heo show the pressures being felt by the workqueue subsystem and the solutions that are being tried — with varying degrees of success.

• In normal usage, each subsystem creates its own workqueue (with alloc_workqueue()) to hold work items. When kernel code needs to defer a task, it can fill in a work_struct structure with the address of a function to call and some data to pass to that call. That structure can be passed, along with the target workqueue, to a function like queue_work(), and the workqueue mechanism will call the function at some future time. The call is made in process context, meaning that work items can block if need be. There is, of course, a long list of variants to queue_work(), and a number of ways in which workqueues themselves can be created, but the core functionality — call a function in process at a later time — remains the same.

• Linus Torvalds released 6.5-rc1 and closed the merge window for this development cycle on July 9. By that point, 11,730 non-merge changesets had been pulled into the mainline for 6.5; over 7,700 of those were pulled after the first-half merge-window summary was written. The second half of the merge window saw a lot of code coming into the mainline and a long list of significant changes.

• In the first of two combined BPF and filesystem sessions at the 2023 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management and BPF Summit, Hou Tao introduced his BPF iterators for filesystem information. Iterators for BPF are a relatively recent addition to the BPF landscape; they help BPF programs step through kernel data structures in a loop-like manner, but without running afoul of the BPF verifier, which is notoriously hard to convince about loops.

• In his remote presentation, Tao began with a quick overview of BPF iterators. They allow users to write a special type of BPF program that can step through kernel data structures in ways that would normally be handled with loops; instead, the BPF program contains callbacks that are made from the kernel in response to user-space reads of pinned BPF files. The callback is made for each new kernel object encountered in the data structure; the code in the callback can then present information from the object to user space in whatever format the developer wants.

• The kdevops kernel-testing framework has come up at several earlier summits, including in two separate sessions at last year’s event. Testing kernel filesystems and the block layer, not to mention lots of other kernel subsystems, has become increasingly important over time. So it was no surprise that Luis Chamberlain led a combined storage and filesystem session at the 2023 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management and BPF Summit to talk more about testing, the resources needed for it, and what can be done to improve it. It was the final session for this year’s summit, so this article completes our coverage.

Applications

• VirtualBox, the renowned virtualization software, continues to evolve, offering users unparalleled versatility and functionality in managing virtual machines.

• Oracle has recently released VirtualBox 7.0.10, a minor update to its powerful virtualization software in the 7.0 series. Packed with bug fixes, it promises to enhance the virtualization experience for users across various platforms.

• So, let’s take a closer look at what VirtualBox 7.0.10 offers and how Debian 12 users can make the most of this new release.

• When it comes to web penetration testing, an essential aspect of the reconnaissance stage is the discovery of subdomains. Before diving into the actual pentesting, it’s crucial to enumerate subdomains to gain a better understanding of the project’s scope.

• You never know what interesting domains you might stumble upon that could uncover significant vulnerabilities. Here we’ll explore some fantastic free Linux tools that can assist you in this subdomain enumeration process. So let’s dive in and discover these resources that can enhance your web security assessment capabilities.

• Mind mapping is a fairly free flowing concept. This means you need software that is versatile, and can adapt to your requirements. Your idea of a neat and tidy mind map might be another person’s idea of bamboozling. A map can concentrate very complex content in a small space such as a piece of paper. It helps to use both sides of your brain: the logical side and also the creative side. It’s a technique to help organize the way you think and stimulate your creativity: It can help you by developing, sorting and helping to memorize your ideas.

• Mind mapping software therefore offers an excellent way of capturing your thoughts in a structured way, brainstorming new ideas. Move away from simple lists, and use this software to link ideas in different ways. By thinking creatively, not linearly, we can seize on our big ideas.

• In more advanced forms, mind mapping software can also be used to describe complex structures and concepts so an entire team can better understand them.

• Here’s our rating for the open source software featured in this article.

Instructionals/Technical

• Flatpaks are a distribution-agnostic way to install applications onto your Linux computer. But if your distribution already has a native way to install applications, why would you ever bother to use Flatpaks?

• One of the key benefits of Linux distros is their package management systems. Package managers on Linux allow you to automate software installation and get the job done with just a few commands.

• Unlike other package managers, Snap has good dependency management attributes. But there is a caveat, Snap packages tend to be very bulky and consume a lot of disk space. Fortunately, it’s easy to clean up Snap packages on Linux.

• Chromebooks, known for their lightweight design and cloud-centric approach, have gained immense popularity due to their user-friendly interface and seamless integration with Google applications. However, some users crave more advanced software and need the ability to perform complex tasks that go beyond the confines of Chrome OS. This is where Linux comes in, opening the doors to a wide variety of software, development tools, and customization options.

• Linux systems use a number of file system types – such as Ext, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, JFS, XFS, ZFS, XFS, ReiserFS and btrfs. Fortunately, there are a number of commands that can look at your file systems and report on the type of each of them. This post covers seven ways to display this information.

• To begin, the file system types that are used on Linux systems are described below.

Games

• The popular FPS Battlebit Remastered is set to introduce a new anti-cheat, and the development team has finally put Linux players at ease.

• For weeks now, Battlebit Remastered has been prepping to push an update that moves the game from Easy Anti-Cheat to FACEIT, an anti-cheat software best known in Counter-Strike circles.

• The move would have ended support for the Battlebit Remastered on the Steam Deck and Linux, which irritated fans. After the announcement, there was no clear messaging from the Battlebit Remastered team, leaving Linux players in the lurch.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• A new development version of GIMP recently released, and it’s a fairly notably one for a couple of reasons. 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).

• One of the things I’ve done this cycle leading up to GNOME 45 is some rework on how we process *.syscap files. In particular, I wanted to really push the GListModel interface in GTK 4.

• That is a tall order at first sight because Sysprof capture files easily have hundreds of thousands of data frames. To create an object for each would be an enormous amount of overhead.

• However, GListModel allows you to create objects on demand, which means you only need to create them as necessary.

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• The world of computing is full of intricate systems designed to serve specific needs. One such specialized technology is the Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). Acting as a keystone of many high-demand applications, an RTOS facilitates tasks requiring precise, reliable, and efficient operations, keeping the wheels of our digital world spinning smoothly.

Fedora Family / IBM

• On June 6, we shipped the latest feature update to the OpenJDK containers with a number of new features…

• This release also includes the most recent Critical Patch Update (CPU) versions of OpenJDK 8, 11, and 17 (8u372, 11.0.19, and 17.0.7, respectively), which we independently shipped in April.

• The next OpenJDK CPU is scheduled for July 18, 2023. We’ll ship updated containers shortly afterward. As usual, those container updates will be solely for the updated OpenJDK and will not contain changes to the container scripts themselves. Our next container feature update is planned for August.

• We do all our planning in the open on the Red Hat Issue Tracker. If there’s something you’d like to see, get in touch, either by leaving a comment or (for an image change) filing an issue.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Linux Mint 21.2 is here, and the distro’s fans can’t resist rejoicing. The Ubuntu-based OS, complete with its three officially-supported desktop environments, is here to stay, given its long-term support and glorious enhancements.

• If you have been thinking of switching over from Windows to Linux or feel like an upgrade was long overdue, it’s time to check out Linux Mint 21.2 “Victoria” today.

• Linux Mint 21.2, “Victoria,” is now available for general usage. This latest release includes a number of improvements, including a brand new take on the Greeter, which now has support for multiple keyboard layouts so you can easily switch.

• As well, the touchpad was given some significant love such that tap-to-click is now automatically detected and enabled in the login screen. Users can also now configure the virtual keyboard.

• The Pix image viewer has also been re-based on gThumb 3.12.2 with a new UI that includes header bars and buttons, in place of toolbars and menubars. Along with the UI change, there have been 168 total new features for this one app alone.

• List of best apps that you should have installed on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the latest stable version of Ubuntu released on April 21,2022. List Of Useful Apps For Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 1.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• One of the returning questions I received recently: why contribute to the syslog-ng upstream? I guess it is a question many open-source projects receive regularly. There are many generic answers. Here I would like to focus more on syslog-ng, focusing on various parts of it.

• Tailwind is a utility-first CSS framework that provides a set of pre-defined CSS classes, making it easy to create responsive and customizable UI components. Tailwind Packages are pre-built sets of styles and components that are designed to work with Tailwind CSS, making it easier to build complex interfaces quickly.

• Tailwind

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 27, 2023 – pgEdge, Inc. today announced support for multiple Postgres versions in pgEdge Distributed PostgreSQL, including the recently released PostgreSQL 16 Beta 1. pgEdge Distributed PostgreSQL is a fully distributed database optimized for the network edge and is both open (with source code available) and fully based on standard PostgreSQL. By allowing read and write traffic to be managed at multiple nodes on the network, pgEdge reduces data latency, addresses data residency and provides for ultra-high availability, which now includes zero downtime maintenance.

• This section summarizes what has been added to, deprecated in, and removed from MySQL 8.1. A companion section lists MySQL server options and variables that have been added, deprecated, or removed in MySQL 8.1; see Section 1.4, “Server and Status Variables and Options Added, Deprecated, or Removed in MySQL 8.1”.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• WordPress 6.3 RC1 is ready for download and testing. Reaching this part of the release cycle is a key milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for final release, additional testing and use by the community can only make it better.

FSF

Programming/Development

Python

• Python is a high-level, versatile, and powerful programming language that is popular for its readability and efficient code structure. This language uses a variety of operators, such as arithmetic, assignment, comparison, logical, and bitwise, to perform common mathematical and logical operations.

• Comparison operators in Python are used to compare two values and determine their relationship. These operators evaluate expressions and return a Boolean value (True or False) based on the comparison result.

• Python, like other programming languages, employs Boolean logic, which is one of the foundations of computer science. This logic allows us to make decisions based on conditions. In Python, these are made possible by Boolean operators. This article will delve deep into the world of Python’s Boolean operators.

Leftovers

• An Australian sailor rescued with his dog after more than two months adrift in the Pacific Ocean arrived in Mexico Tuesday declaring “I am so grateful. I’m alive.”

• Victoria has cancelled hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games due to money woes.

• The state of Victoria cited budget issues in deciding not to stage the multisports competition, originally known as the British Empire Games, raising questions about the event’s fading prestige.

• The Australian state of Victoria pulled out of hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games on Tuesday citing major cost blow-outs, leaving organisers fuming as they scrambled to keep the multi-sport event afloat.

Education

• California is currently considering two media literacy bills, both of which have sailed through the California State Assembly and are being reviewed by the Senate Education Committee.  The first, Assembly Bill 873, authored by Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, requires teaching media literacy in K-12 schools throughout the Golden State.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found on Tuesday that International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules that force female athletes to suppress their testosterone levels are discriminatory.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Despite these impressive numbers, Microsoft is still engaging in layoffs. Only yesterday, news emerged about just over 1,000 employees losing their jobs in the last week alone…

• Microsoft has reportedly reduced its workforce further by 1,000 over the past week, mostly in sales and customer services teams. According to a report in Insider, citing sources, the new layoffs are beyond the 10,000 jobs that the tech giant planned to eliminate earlier this year.

• Microsoft has reportedly reduced its workforce further by 1,000 over the past week, mostly in sales and customer services teams.

• According to a report in Insider, citing sources, the new layoffs are beyond the 10,000 jobs that the tech giant planned to eliminate earlier this year.

• It’s, however, a regular exercise for Microsoft to make changes at the start of a new fiscal year, which began July 1, the report noted.

Linux Foundation

• The Linux Foundation announced plans for what they call the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) which brings industry leaders together to optimize Ethernet standards for both AI and high-performance…

Security

• Join us for a conversation with new OpenSSF General Manager, Omkhar Arasaratnam, veteran cybersecurity and technical risk management executive with more than 25 years of experience leading global organizations. In this Q&A, Omkhar covers everything from the challenges he foresees in his role to what he thinks is the most important factor to keep in mind that affects the future of the open source community.

• In a bid to shrink the attack surface of its army of employees, and thus boost security, Google is taking an experimental approach: cutting some of their workstations off from the internet.

• The Chocolate Factory has seen fit to sever staffers’ links to the outside electronic world, admittedly on a small scale, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC. Roughly 2,500 Googlers were selected for the internet air-gap trial, and then following some feedback the search giant adjusted it so that people can opt out and others can volunteer.

• The Register was able to confirm the pilot program with Google, which told us it was being limited to fewer than two percent of workstations. Those who choose to participate will have their general internet access removed along with root privileges on their individual boxes if they had that.

• I was gonna write an rant about the potential probabilistic model checking, then realized I needed to look at projects besides PRISM and STORM. Then I checked out simpy and saw it had a Defense of Design (DoD):

• This document explains why SimPy is designed the way it is and how its design evolved over time.

• Today, I noticed the following URL on our “first seen URLs” page:

• While the majority of SOC analysts consider their tools effective, they express concerns about missing important security events.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (bind9, libapache2-mod-auth-openidc, and python-django), Fedora (nodejs18 and redis), Red Hat (python3.9 and webkit2gtk3), Scientific Linux (bind and kernel), SUSE (cni, cni-plugins, cups-filters, curl, dbus-1, ImageMagick, kernel, libheif, and python-requests), and Ubuntu (bind9, connman, curl, libwebp, and yajl).

• Tampa General Hospital in Florida was hit by a cyberattack during three weeks in May, according to a statement issued by the hospital earlier today. The incident, discovered on May 31, affected approximately 1.2 million patients.

• The attack occurred on June 12, and the university has still not fully recovered from it, as the “online outages” update of July 17 reports.

• Earlier this week, DataBreaches reported that two plastic surgery practices in California had both suffered cyberattacks. When the doctors did not pay ransom demands, attackers leaked nude patient pictures and patient info. One attack was by AlphV (BlackCat) on Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery. The other attack was by an unnamed group or individual on Gary Motykie, MD. The style of the leak site and contact methods for the Motykie leak site were not familiar to DataBreaches, and a spokesperson for AlphV told DataBreaches that they were not responsible for the Motykie attack or leak site.

• Norwegian mining and recycling giant TOMRA says it has isolated tech systems as it deals with an “extensive cyberattack.”

• TOMRA has multiple divisions that focus on areas including waste and recycling solutions, metal sorting systems, mining machine systems and food sorting equipment. It turned over $1.2 billion in calendar 2022.

Defence/Aggression

• Turkey takes advantage of its new leverage.

• Testimonies sent to the International Criminal Court detail accusations of torture and abuse committed against hundreds of victims before and after the elections in 2021.

• Fierce fighting has erupted in the city of Omdurman, across the Nile from the capital, Khartoum, in a desperate battle to control supply routes.

• Nelson Mandela is revered worldwide and celebrated on July 18, his birthday. But at home, a younger generation is disillusioned with the country, his party and the anti-apartheid leader, too.

Environment

• Republicans are moving away from climate change skepticism, instead promoting tree planting as a solution that won’t infringe on energy production. Environmental scientists have called the idea a distraction from cutting emissions from fossil fuels.

• Across North America, Europe and Asia, hundreds of millions of people endured blistering conditions. The U.S. special envoy for climate change called it “a threat to all of humankind.”

• The past few weeks have him even more worried than usual.

• Acequias, a network of water channels created by the Moors over 1,000 years ago, are being excavated and brought back to life to adapt to the crises of climate change.

• The extreme heat wave choking China has become a talking point for John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, in his meetings with officials in Beijing.

• Record highs are being set in the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia on Tuesday, in an example of simultaneous, compounding extreme weather and climate events — which scientists have been warning of for some time.

• Why it matters: The heat waves pose an immediate risk to public health, economic output, and is a sign that climate change impacts are escalating faster than expected in some parts of the globe.

• In case you hadn’t noticed—and how could you not?—there have been more than 500 (yes, 500-plus!) wildfires burning across the vast reaches of Canada, an unheard-of number, and more than half of them completely out of (human) control in a record-shattering fire season. That’s been true for seemingly endless weeks now with no end in sight. (And, by the way, elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, Siberia is having its own possibly record fire season.) If you didn’t notice any of this, though, I have a possible explanation. Perhaps the vast clouds of smoke from those fires that recently gave the skies of Chicago and Detroit, New York and Washington, D.C., the worst air quality on the planet blurred your vision.

Energy/Transportation

• The global aviation industry has a massive climate problem, and many are looking to Norway for a possible solution. The country wants all short-haul flights to be conducted with electric planes as early as 2040. But doubts persist about whether the technology will be ready.

• I led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Obama, and I understand why it hasn’t stepped up to address the threat of climate change.

• Over the next ten years, EUR 509.8 million will be invested in the Latvian electricity transmission system, of which EUR 135.8 million will be financed by European Union funds, said AS “High Voltage Network” (Augstsprieguma tīkls) on July 18.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 18 Jul 2023 Today, the EU and Uruguay have decided to step up their cooperation in pursuing the clean energy transition.

• European Commission Statement Brussels, 18 Jul 2023 The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and European Commission EVP Dombrovskis met in Brussels…

• In the fast-moving world of battery research, scientists are constantly on the lookout for innovative materials with the right properties to help improve energy storage. Meanwhile, batteries are in greater demand than ever as production of EVs and renewable energy projects ramp up to new heights.

• Australia’s longest and shortest-serving energy ministers have moved to soothe investor fears about governments taking control of clean power assets and community concerns about the changing landscape.

• Market intervention can be good for business and communities, Victoria’s long-serving minister Lily D’Ambrosio told energy leaders and financiers at an energy summit on Wednesday.

• Despite reports that 400 square kilometers could be affected by an oil spill in the Gulf of Campeche, Pemex says there is only a small leak.

Wildlife/Nature

• As a scorching heatwave sweeps across the country, wildfires are erupting from the northwest to the southeast. Fires in Çanakkale and Diyarbakır have yet to be contained.

• Thousands of people have been forced to flee settlements and seaside resorts as fire crews fight multiple blazes roaring across dry hillsides.

Finance

• Profits plunged at Goldman Sachs (GS) during the second quarter as the Wall Street giant struggled with its core businesses of dealmaking and trading while taking nearly $1 billion in impairment charges on consumer and commercial real estate holdings.

• Goldman’s investment banking revenue declined 20% from a year ago and trading dropped 14%. That and the impairment charges helped drag earnings down 58%, to $1.2 billion.

• It was the firm’s lowest quarterly profit since early 2020.

• Kabeer Biswas, CEO, Dunzo

• Layoffs imminent: Quick commerce platform Dunzo, which is backed by Reliance Retail, has mandated cutting costs by around 30-40% internally, sources told ETtech. This will involve cutting more roles, sources told us.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• In a reversal, the department said it could no longer argue that Donald Trump was acting in his official capacity when he insulted the writer E. Jean Carroll.

• The Department of Justice said in a court filing on Tuesday it can no longer conclude former President Trump was acting within the scope of office when he denied a writer’s rape accusations and made allegedly defamatory remarks about her in 2019.

• Why it matters: Trump previously attempted to delay proceedings for E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit over his remarks by arguing that he should be granted immunity because he made the comments at issue while speaking to the media as president.

• MD Lawson Muncaster said they are thinking about the “next chapter of City AM’s story”.

Censorship/Free Speech

• There aren’t many sites with “tech” in their names that provide this much discussion on the First Amendment implications of vanity plate laws. Maybe it’s just us.

• A plan to change Hong Kong’s laws related to its flag aimed to make residents “consciously respect and love” the symbol of the city, a government official has said as the amendment bill was officially tabled at the legislature.

• A professional e-sports player has been suspended from competing for three years after allegedly using “sensitive wording“ in his gaming account name, according the Esports Association of Hong Kong, China (ESAHK).

• Former Uttar Pradesh legislator and Senior Samajwadi Party member Azam Khan was sentenced to two years imprisonment Saturday by a Rampur court in a hate speech case filed during the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign. Khan has faced significant legal challenges in the past six months, with three convictions, one acquittal and various ongoing cases.

• Hundreds of journalists and rights activists marched to the parliament in Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska on July 18 to protest possible amendments to the criminal code of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s majority Serb entity that they say that would criminalize defamation and stifle free speech.

• In 1943, as the end of World War II was nowhere in sight and when patriotic national unity around the defeat of fascist aggression from Germany and Japan was at its height, the US Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that the free speech rights contained in the First Amendment barred public schools from forcing students to salute the American flag at assembly every morning. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” wrote Justice Robert Jackson for the court.

• The law surrounding vanity license plates is unsettled, to vastly understate the reality. There’s no consensus across states, much less federal jurisdictions. Every government seems to have its own idea about what’s offensive and what isn’t, as well as its own take on whether a personalized plate is government speech or merely the expression of the person who acquired the plate.

• There I was sitting in the movie theatre trying to watch “Sound of Freedom,” when I heard the sound of an air horn.

• Rumors are swirling about Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, who has not made a public appearance in three weeks amid a series of high-level diplomatic meetings. Questions about his disappearance have been widely censored on Chinese social media.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Published by Open Rights Group – Open Rights is a non-profit company limited by Guarantee, registered in England and Wales no. 05581537.

• New York City wants to fly highly impractical surveillance tech to let people know about emergencies and extreme weather.

• After Charlamagne Tha God sought to have a 2001 sexual assault lawsuit against him tossed for lack of evidence, the rapper and radio personality faces renewed legal attack from the now lawyered-up rape accuser.

• Nearly 10 months after Iran’s so-called “morality police” disappeared from the streets during mass protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian police announced July 16 that they had resumed patrols targeting “immoral clothing.” Amateur videos and first-hand reports from our Observers in Iran indicate that the patrols had resumed in the days before the announcement. But with many Iranian women having gotten used to going out with their heads uncovered in recent months, it remains unclear whether the patrols will be able to stop them.

• On Thursday, the UK High Court overturned a 2022 law that allowed businesses to hire temporary agency workers to fill staffing gaps because of strike action. The law repealed trade union laws that restricted employment businesses from hiring temporary agency workers to fill positions.

• “Ted Lasso” star Jason Sudekis, Rosario Dawson and other top movie and TV actors have joined picket lines alongside screenwriters. It happened Friday on the first full day of a walkout that has become Hollywood’s biggest labor fight in decades. A day after the dispute brought production to a standstill across the entertainment industry, Sudeikis was among the picketers outside NBC in New York pressing for progress following the breakdown of contract talks with studios and streaming services. Dawson is star of the film “Rent” and the “Star Wars” TV series “Ahsoka” She joined picketers outside Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California.

• Taiwan’s Executive Yuan approved draft amendments to several laws against sexual harassment on Thursday amid a recent surge in high-profile allegations of sexual harassment on the island.

• Read our latest update on issues affecting migrants’ digital rights. Surveillance over saving lives Last month, we were struck by the horrific news of hundreds of refugees drowning off the coast of Greece. Under the watch of Greek and other European coastal guards, 750 people lost their lives as their boats sank.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The process for Members to change the APNIC By-laws has been made easier.

Monopolies

Patents

• On July 18, 2023, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Causam Enterprises Inc. holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 10,396,592 unpatentable.

• People accuse me of unfairly bashing Elon Musk, but I’ve always highlighted the things he’s done that I thought were smart as well, and a big one was his decision nearly a decade ago to free all of Tesla’s patents. The company put out a blog post, saying that anyone could use its patents, and that Tesla would never initiate a patent lawsuit. We’ve been happy to see him continue to stand by this position over the years.

• In decision T 438/19 Technical Board of Appeal 3.3.03 has ex officio (!) referred three questions of law to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (now handled as G 1/23) in order to resolve a perceived divergence in the case law.

Copyrights

• Look, we were not kind when Genius first accused Google of copying lyrics from its site. The only interesting bit was the cleverness with which Genius figured out Google had copied the lyrics from its site, by sneakily adding in curved or non-curved apostrophes to see if the same ones showed up in Google’s version of the lyrics.

Gemini* and Gopher

Politics and World Events

• I’m not going to comment on the debate; this one has been rehashed ad nauseum in every social circle that I’ve known.

Technology and Free Software

• I’ve been running Systemd-free distros for the past few years.

• When I first got into Linux in 2016, it seemed like all the “cool” Linux people used Systemd-free distros and hated on Systemd, but now it seems like this group is not held in the same esteem as they once were. More frequently I hear people more so making fun of this mentality and seeing it as overly dogmatic. By the time I had started using Linux Systemd was already ubiquitous so I ended up learning it in the process of learning how to use Linux.

• When I first tried out Void, I remember trying to start sshd and being utterly baffled when I got the message “command not found: systemctl” since on every other distro I had used, that was the way you started things. It wasn’t until then that I finally understood really what Systemd was.

• I really like Void, it’s certainly a bit less polished than others like Arch, and I wish there was a more standardized package naming convention, but nevertheless I find myself switching back to it every few months whenever I leave. It uses runit, its own init system which is probably as close to bare bones as you can get. Each “service” is made up of a directory with at least a shell script to start it, with additional scripts for other functionality. To enable a “service” you sym-link it to /var/run/runit and to disable a service you delete the sym-link. If all you are doing is enabling a few daemons like ssh and tlp, this makes the process very easy.

• It feels like the web has really changed a lot over the past decades, but innovation in web browser workflows has been stagnant by comparison. For the most part everyone is still just doing the address bar and horizontal tab list at the top of their screen, and it’s only been fairly recently that some browsers like Vivaldi and even Edge have started experimenting beyond that.

• I gave Vivaldi a try yesterday and really liked it. I had it set up with a vertical tab bar on the left and a side panel with various bookmarks at the right, a setup that I think makes a lot of sense since I can sometimes end up with dozens of tabs. Hardly any websites make full use of the available screen width anyway. I almost stuck with Vivaldi, but a couple obscure bugs with keyboard shortcuts had me coming back to Firefox in the end.

• A perlrun(1) optimization would be the -l switch, which removes newlines from the input, and puts them back on for the output:

• [...]

• Next, there are five forks. “sort | uniq -c | sort -n” can be replaced with tally(1), which will be a little bit faster, or 158% by one random benchmark. tally(1) got itself written because “sort | uniq -c | sort -n” came up a lot when doing log searches.

• I get the impression that whoever’s designing this OS has a mild hatred for people who use multiple monitors. When full screening a window on one monitor, it completely hides the menu bar on the other for instance.

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