● 07.26.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 26/07/2023: More on This Week’s Microsoft Layoffs, WordPress 6.3 Almost Here

Posted in News Roundup at 5:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• We take a look at our new Web Interface, Generating HIGH quality images has never been this easy !

• Download as MP3 On this episode of Destination Linux (333), AlmaLinux is making some waves in the Enterprise Linux world. Linux desktop marketshare has broken a usage barrier. And we help out a mate from Australia with finding a silent keyboard.

• FULL SHOW NOTES ►► https://tuxdigital.com/podcasts/destination-linux/dl-333/

• On this episode of This Week in Linux (227) we have distro news from Solus, blendOS, Linux Mint and Slackware. Red Hat drama continues to build with their competitors making public statements and so this week I’ll give my reaction to their reactions of Red Hat’s actions.

• Repairing a Steam Deck, taking digital hoarding too far, Creating a magical LAN using the Internet.

Kernel Space

• stable: 6.4.6 2023-07-24stable: 6.3.13 [EOL] 2023-07-11longterm: 6.1.41 2023-07-24longterm: 5.15.122 2023-07-24longterm: 5.10.187 2023-07-24longterm: 5.4.250 2023-07-24

• Planning to upgrade or install Ubuntu 23.10 when it’s released in the autumn? If so, you can look forward to an experience powered by the Linux 6.5 kernel. While the Linux 6.5 kernel is yet to be released yet, the stars (or rather the release calendars) have aligned to make its inclusion in the “Mantic Minotaur” a dead-cert. Current daily builds of Ubuntu 23.10 include the Linux 6.3 kernel.

Graphics Stack

• NVIDIA have released another update to their Vulkan Beta driver series with 525.47.34 out now. So here’s what’s new and fixed.

Applications

• Inkscape is a Free and open source vector graphics editor for GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS.

• Since the gstreamer-full effort, it was possible to create a shared library which will embed the GStreamer framework in addition to its set of plugins.

• Within this effort, it was also possible to register the selected plugins/features automatically by calling the gst_init method in your application linking with gstreamer-full.

• This method was offering a gstreamer-full package with library, headers and pc files but it was not possible to embed GStreamer statically in your application and use it transparently.

• If you’re new to WebRTC, you must’ve heard that it’s a way to do video calls in your browser without needing to install an app. It’s pretty great!

• However, it uses a bunch of really arcane terminology because it builds upon older technologies such as RTP, RTCP, SDP, ICE, STUN, etc. To understand what WebRTC Signalling is, you must first understand these foundational technologies.

• Readers who are well-versed in this subject might find some of the explanations annoyingly simplistic to read. They will also notice that I am omitting a lot of of detail, leading to potentially misleading statements.

• I apologize in advance to these people. I am merely trying to avoid turning this post into a book. If you find a sub-heading too simplistic, please feel free to skip it.

• HandBeak is a video converter and transcode engine for macOS, Windows and Linux. It’s free and open source. I have used it several times for my videos it’s really easy to use has built-in preset library, supports multiple input sources and dozens of formats and quality options.

• macOS (Inel,

• Koodo Reader is a modern ebook manager and reader with sync and backup capacities for Windows, macOS, Linux and Web

• Klik is a PHP-based Information Pool System, also known as a social media website. It includes a complete login/registration system, user profile system, chat room, forum system, and blog/polls/event management system.

• Deskreen turns any device with a web browser into a secondary screen for your computer.

• mpv is a free (as in freedom) media player for the command line. It supports a wide variety of media file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types.

• MikeTeX is a cross-platform LaTeX/ TeX editor which a built-in package manager that allow the user to extend the core functionalities by downloading online packages.

• MiKTeX is a modern TeX distribution for Windows, Linux and macOS.

• LÖVE is an awesome framework you can use to make 2D games in Lua. It’s free, open-source, and works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS.

• Lynis is a battle-tested security tool for systems running Linux, macOS, or Unix-based operating system. It performs an extensive health scan of your systems to support system hardening and compliance testing. The project is open source software with the GPL license and available since 2007.

• pastel is a command-line tool to generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors. This tool supports a variety of color formats and color spaces.

• GIMP is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks. It is not designed to be used for drawing, though some artists and creators have used it in this way.

• LibreOffice is an open-source office suite alternative to commercial office suites such as Microsoft Office, Apple Office apps, and OnlyOffice.

• It is the successor to OpenOffice.org suite, the primary office suite for many Linux distros.

Instructionals/Technical

• This article will cover how to install the latest builds of Neovim on Ubuntu. We will be using the unstable PPA repository since it gets updated more often, this means we get new features and bug fixes faster.

• A Graphical User Interface, or GUI, is highly important for Apache Kafka administrators and developers. Having the ability to visualize and interact with topics or make changes quickly can save a significant amount of time. While Red Hat’s AMQ streams Operator is often considered a lightweight GUI, more advanced and detailed information can only be obtained using command-line tools such as kafka-consumer-groups.sh, kafka-acls.sh, etc.

• In the Bash shell, assignment operators are used to assign values to variables. They are essential tools in scripting and programming, providing a method to store and manipulate data. This article will take you through the fundamental assignment operators in Bash, along with examples of their usage.

• Uhm, salsa is not resolving:

• Quick reminder, that you can include a Mastodon or Matrix link to your AppStream file and that the link will then be displayed in your application page at apps.kde.org.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Clang on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Clang is a cutting-edge C, C++, and Objective-C compiler that offers fast performance, robust diagnostics, and extensive support for modern language features.

• The “Too many open files” error in Nginx typically occurs when the system has reached its limit for the maximum number of open file descriptors

• In the dynamic landscape of web development, phpMyAdmin remains a cornerstone for effective and efficient database management. Utilizing the power of PHP, this open-source tool is designed to handle administrative operations over MySQL and MariaDB via a user-friendly, web-based interface.

• In the digital world, personalizing your environment is key, and GNOME Tweaks Tool is a powerful ally for Linux users. Part of the GNOME desktop environment, this user-friendly utility allows you to modify your system’s appearance and behavior, moving beyond standard settings to customize themes, fonts, extensions, and window behaviors.

• Ready to revamp your Ubuntu experience? Learn how to install KDE Plasma on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and embrace a whole new level of functionality.

• In Linux Mint, there is a tool called Backup Tool, this tool allows you to backup files that are located in the home directory of your system, it also allows you to backup the current list of the softwares.

• In the latest build of ONLYOFFICE Doc, it has brought up the option to use ChatGPT on the platform, so let’s learn how to enable ChatGPT on ONLYOFFICE Docs. ONLYOFFICE Docs is an open-source office suite package that includes collaborative editors for text documents, sheets, and presentations, together with the form creator and PDF viewer.

• The command line is a powerful tool in the hands of a Linux user. However, the default shell, known as Bash, can sometimes lack the features or user-friendliness that some users desire. Enter Zsh: a shell designed to be interactive, user-friendly, and highly customizable. With features such as spell correction, improved auto completions, and a rich set of options for customizing its behavior, Zsh has gained popularity among developers and system administrators alike.

• When you finally start working with the Linux command line, you’ll find numerous ways to make the process more efficient. By running two or more commands at once, you’ll not have to wait until one finishes to start the next.

• MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) that is widely used for managing and organizing structured (or tabular) data, and to manage this data, you need to have basic knowledge of SQL queries.

• Firewalld, an innovation in firewall solutions, emerges as a beacon of security for Debian users, promising dynamic and versatile system defense. It transcends the traditional static nature of firewall management, offering a fresh perspective on system protection.

• Veritas Cluster Server upgrade can be done smoothly by using the Install Bundles feature.

• To create a file in Linux is easier than eating ice-cream.

• In the vast world of computing, security plays a fundamental role in ensuring the protection of data, systems, and operations. SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) stands as a formidable solution that fortifies Linux-based systems with an extra layer of security.

• Whether you’re an experienced developer or a beginner trying to establish a secure connection between your computer and a remote Linux server, PuTTY is a tool you can rely on. Let’s delve into understanding how to utilize PuTTY to Secure Shell (SSH) into a Linux machine from a Windows operating system.

• Introduction to PuTTY

• PuTTY is an open-source, free SSH client for Windows. It enables users to remotely access computers over networks and run commands as if they were sitting in front of the terminal. It’s a versatile tool that’s widely used in network administration, software development, and other IT-related professions.

• MakeMKV stands as a beacon in the sea of digital tools, specializing in video format conversion. It serves as an essential bridge, allowing media to traverse from proprietary and often encrypted formats into a set of versatile MKV files.

• Ubuntu, a widely recognized and well-reputed open-source operating system, allows users to customize and augment their computing experience through its vast array of software packages. These packages are neatly organized into different repositories, each designed to cater to various software licensing and maintenance needs.

• Using Wireshark filter ip address and port inside network

• PHP is a programming language executed on the server and is mainly used for creating websites and web applications. It can be easily incorporated into a Debian server to create dynamic websites and content management systems (CMS).

• Tired of flashing USB drives for every ISO? Get started with Ventoy and get the ability to easily boot from ISOs.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• A big thank you goes out to the Ubuntu Community for making my attendance to the KDE Akademy 2023! This was a very successful conference for me. I had very positive feedback for my speech on “A million reasons why snaps are important. I also had a productive BoF on snapping KDE applications. Most importantly I got to catch up with many old and new friends and got to put faces to the new. There were so many great talks and BoFs, but one of my favorites was the Goals as all three compliment each other. The keynote was amazing, I had no idea open source has made its way into space! How cool is that!?! Despite the high temperatures ( something I am used to, but not that humidity! ) I had a wonderful time and was able to visit many cool sites in Greece. What an amazing place.

• This year, I was finally able to participate in-person at Akademy. Apart from meeting some familiar faces from the Plasma Spring in May this year, I also met lots of new people.

• When waiting for the plane in Frankfurt, a group of KDE people formed. Meaning, we had a get-together even before the Akademy had started ;). On the plane to Thessaloniki, I made a merge requests to fix a Kickoff crash due to a KRunner change. Once that was done, everything was in place for the talks!

• On Saturday, I talked once again with Nico and also Volker about KF6. This included topics like the remaining challenges, the estimated timeline for KF6 and some practical porting advice. I also gave a talk about KRunner. This was the conference talk of mine that I gave alone, meaning I was a bit nervous 😅. The title was “KRunner: Past, Present, and Future” and it focused on porting, new features and future plans for KF6. Thanks to everyone who was listening to the talk, both in person and online!

Distributions and Operating Systems

• I received an email from Rick C, asking if anything can be done to make the mouse pointer more visible.

• There is the Pcur PET package, in the “noarch” repository, installable via PKGget, which is a big collection of mouse cursor themes. Some have larger mouse pointer, but can’t say that I like them.

• I took a fresh look at the subject, and have created a PET package with two programs, SXC, Simple Xcursor Creator, and SXS, Simple Xcursor selector. The PET is here: [...]

BSD

• Embrace the power of FreeBSD! 🌞📚 Unleash its potential with our captivating summer collection.

• Optimize performance, boost security, and expand your tech horizons. Level up your skills as you sip on your summer cocktail or simply take a break from a heavy year.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• We’re super happy and excited to announce the new logo for this year’s Ubuntu Summit:

• The Ubuntu Summit this year is held in Riga, Latvia, November 3-5 2023. This event is focused on the Linux and open-source ecosystem. It is a great opportunity for the broad and diverse open-source community to meet and showcase what the future of open source looks like.

• The concept behind the logo was to have a design which reflected the different cities we would have the Summit in. I found the freedom monument in RIGA, this very nicely matched one of our core values of Freedom, it also had 3 stars which matched our Circle of Friends 3 heads. The next task was to arrange the stars and the heads so they mirrored each other. Let’s hope the next city is as visually kind to us!

• “The granite and copper monument in the center of Riga symbolizes Latvian statehood, national unity, independence and freedom. The monument was funded entirely by donations from residents and constructed as a memorial to those who fell in Latvia’s struggle for independence.”

• “I was in another meeting at the time,” Graham said, “but I wanted to see whether a cropped version of the monument’s hands would work. So I fired up GIMP, dropped the previous logo and a statue image into background layers, and started sketching. I don’t think anyone in the meeting noticed…”

• Canonical delivers Real-time Ubuntu on Intel Core processors with TSN and Intel TCC support.   London, 26 July 2023: Canonical today announced the availability of Real-time Ubuntu optimised on Intel Core processors.

• Canonical Ltd. and Intel Corp. today announced a technical collaboration focused on a new, enterprise-focused release of Ubuntu that launched earlier this year. The release is known as Real-time Ubuntu.

Open Hardware/Modding

• There was a point in time, excruciatingly brief, in which desktop computers often had a large “TURBO” button on their front panel. Some even featured an LED display that would indicate the current CPU frequency, providing visual conformation that your machine had leaped to a blistering 66 MHz.

• Flipper Zero portable multi-tool for pentesters and hardware hackers has now gotten an app “store” with currently around 100 free and open-source apps available through the device’s Android or iOS app. I missed it at the time, but the Flipper Zero launched on Kickstarter in July 2020 and was massively popular with close to 5 million dollars raised from almost 38,000 backers. The tool looks like a toy but it allows hacking with GPIOs and short-range wireless protocols such as Bluetooth, RFID, NFC, and infrared.

• I have a lot of RISC-V and Arm hardware. How do my latest 3 RISC-V purchases stand up against each other and the stalwart Raspberry Pi 4B? Let’s find out!

• The similarities between these boards are striking. All have 4 cores and all except the HiFive board have 8GB of RAM (HiFive Unmatched has 16GB). All have some kind of flash-based storage: The Raspberry Pi and Sipeed Lichee are using external SanDisk SSDs connected by USB 3. The HiFive Unmatched and VisionFive 2 have NVMe drives (I hope all SBCs provide an NVMe slot going forward).

• Since I mainly use these for compiling Fedora packages, I tested compiling qemu using identical configurations. I built it a few times to warm up and then timed the last build, on otherwise unloaded machines. Here are the results:

• AAEON UP 7000 is an x86 single board computer with a layout similar to the Raspberry Pi 4 but based on a more powerful Intel Processor N50, N97, or N100 Alder Lake-N SoC with Gigabit Ethernet, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, HDMI 1.4 video output, and a 40-pin GPIO header. Not to be confused with the larger UP Squared Pro 7000 also powered by an Alder Lake-N processor, the UP 7000 is an update to the UP 4000 SBC with an Intel Apollo Lake processor introduced just last year.

• ArtronShop RP2 Nano board features the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller in the Arduino Nano form factor in a way that’s much cheaper than the official Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect board. That’s possible because Thailand-based AtronShop did not include all the bells and whistles such as WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, sensors, and used a smaller flash. So the RP2 Nano basically offers the same I/Os and features as the Arduino Nano, but the Microchip ATmega328 8-bit AVR microcontroller gives place to the more powerful Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ MCU plus 2MB flash, and the board also adds an extra Grove connector for expansion.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• This newsletter brings the announcement of the new Proxmox tutorial series and a good deal on DevOps eBooks.

• Escape the tyranny of the corporate owned cloud! Free your files from Google and Microsoft as we show you how to set up and run your own open source office – create, edit, share and save your files and documents running on your own systems using Nextcloud…

Events

• The SUSE community gathered in Munich to reimagine the customer process and meet the new CEO.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• WordPress 6.3 RC2 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

• One of the C dynamic memory allocation functions is realloc. Given a pointer, realloc will resize the memory block it points to. This sounds like a simple and useful mechanism to do memory management. But realloc has various gotchas that Valgrind Memcheck can check for to ensure you use the function correctly. Memory blocks should exist and have not yet been freed, blocks can be moved when resized, on failure to resize the memory block might leak, and what happens when a block is reduced to zero size might be undefined.

Python

• In Python, the “pandas.merge()” method of the “pandas” module is utilized to merge the multiple columns of two Pandas DataFrame.

• Python, one of the world’s most popular programming languages, supports a wide range of operators, including arithmetic, comparison, assignment, bitwise, and logical operators. In this article, we’ll focus on Python’s logical operators, exploring their usage and significance in coding various logical operations. What are Logical Operators?

• In Python, the “write()”, “CSV”, “to_csv()”, and the “savetxt()” methods are utilized to create a CSV file from the input list.

• The “DataFrame.sum()” method or “DataFrame.eval()” method is used to add all the columns or specified columns of Pandas DataFrame in Python.

• In Python, “df.loc[]”, “df.query()”, and the “df.isin()” methods are used to select the rows of Pandas DataFrame that fall within the specified dates.

• The “pd.reset_index()” method of the “pandas” module is used to remove/drop the single or multiple indexes of the Pandas DataFrame.

Leftovers

• Okay, now we’re getting back to the plan. Two weeks ago we featured an excerpt from the audiobook of Red Team Blues, Cory Doctorow’s new (and excellent) novel, and promised that we’d soon be joined by Cory himself. And now, we deliver! Listen to this week’s episode for a long and far-reaching conversation between Mike and Cory about the book and it’s themes and subjects, plus plenty of interesting tangents.

• Peter Handke’s latest novel, The Fruit Thief, translated by Krishna Winston, begins with a man going out for a walk. He is waylaid from the first step: Walking barefoot on the grass, he gets stung by a bee. The sting opens up a flood of thoughts—about the weather, a broken shoelace, the anatomy of bees, and whether bee stings are a cosmic sign. He declares, “Suddenly I felt fine about setting out without any map at all.” From there, the narrator begins a strange, sometimes inscrutable journey through provincial towns and fields, across rivers and into darkened woods. He is ostensibly in pursuit of a mysterious woman (the fruit thief), yet all the while our narrator keeps cogitating, describing, elaborating—even though it is unclear whether he wishes (or cares) if his purpose is understood.

• Many of the Austrian writer’s protagonists are wanderers, and for the author, the work of noticing is a lonely struggle between the isolated self and the murky outside world. Language is the bridge: necessary for articulating what we observe and feel, but also fundamentally vulnerable to collapse. Handke subjects the words he uses to a microscopic examination: There is often a stunning ability to shift between abstractions (say, what it feels like to have a “successful day”) and the precisely sensory (say, a meditation on the sound of stepping on a manhole cover). Although they’re often detached in tone, this steady accumulation of impressions asks readers to question how attuned to their surroundings, and their sentences, they really are. The level of detail that The Fruit Thief’s narrator musters in his attempt to put the world around him into words creates a contradiction: Individual moments are exacting in their detail, but the world itself is vague, as if struggling under the weight of its elaboration. It can lead a skeptical reader to wonder whether the narrator—and, by extension, Handke too—is sometimes missing the forest for all the carefully described trees.

• [PyottDesign] recently wrapped up a personal project to create himself a custom AR/VR headset that could function as an AR (augmented reality) platform, and make it easier to develop new applications in a headset that could do everything he needed. He succeeded wonderfully, and published a video showcase of the finished project.

• We all lead digital lives, and we work in and on files of one sort or another. And sometimes we get attached to them. That long manifesto you poured your heart into, but nonetheless probably shouldn’t see the light of day? Love letters from former flames? Your first favorite video game that you can’t play any more, but it just sits there eating up drive space?

Ruben Schade ☛ Twitter renaming to XJust kidding, I’m not going to post about that. Instead, here are a list of words that don’t have the letter X in them:Grilled cheese sandwichesDisenfranchisementExtreme

Education

• Test scores are plummeting while tens of billions in federal aid flows to schools. A visit to a recent education technology convention provides a glimpse of the frenzy to profit from the recovery e…

Hardware

• You might expect Bell Labs would have state-of-the-art computers, and they did. But it is jarring to realize just how little that was in 1973, fifty years ago. If you started work at Bell’s Holmdel Computing Center back then, you might have watched one of the orientation videos below. Your first clue about how far things have come might be the reference to the IBM 370/165, which had “3 million bytes of core, 2 million of which are available for programmer use.” Even our laptops today have at least 8 gigabytes of RAM. There were at least two other smaller IBM 370s, too. Plenty of 029 card punches are visible.

• Samsung and Apple phones develop more faults than some other brands – we reveal the most common problems, and how to fix them

• As the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as a lock that can’t be picked. However, it seems like there are plenty of examples of car manufacturers that refuse to add these metaphorical locks to their cars at all — especially when it comes to securing the electronic systems of vehicles. Plenty of modern cars are essentially begging to be attacked as a result of such poor practices as unencrypted CAN busses and easily spoofed wireless keyfobs. But even if your car comes from a manufacturer that takes basic security precautions, you still might want to check out this project from the University of Michigan that is attempting to add another layer of security to cars.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The picture has changed as more evidence emerges, but we might never get a clear answer.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Language learning technology’s (aka “AI”) introduction into journalism has been a blistering mess. And not just because the technology is undercooked (which it is), but because the folks in charge of most major media outlets are incompetent cheapskates who simply see the tech as a way to cut corners, wage war on labor, and automate all of the clickbait attention economy’s very worst impulses.

• When I began to read about the generative AI revolution, I realized there was an opportunity to combine two aspects of my life I never thought I could merge. While I’m not working on the cloud or security, I work as a sex and intimacy educator, helping people embrace love, vulnerability and connection.

• The Microsoft Corp.-owned company’s layoffs affected workers based at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, its offices in Mountain View and San Francisco, and some who worked from home but reported to its corporate base, according to a letter sent to state and local officials June 21.

• Microsoft has come in for criticism from industry figures even as it obfuscated about the incident, said to be perpetrated by attackers from China, most recently denying a detailed technical post about the breach by cloud security firm Wiz, after having given its blessing to the post.

• Microsoft today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter 2023, posting an almost across-the-board revenue and profit increase. Exceptions include personal computing and more specifically, Xbox hardware and Windows activations.

Linux Foundation

• The TODO Group community has launched the second release of the OSPO Definition. This new version updates the traditional OSPO definition to be more inclusive and reflects the reality of OSPOs expanding outside purely the corporate sector and into the public sector. The 2.0 version:

Security

• The Moscow City Court has sentenced Ilya Sachkov, the head of a leading Russian cybersecurity company, to 14 years in prison on a high treason charge.

• Seems that there is a deliberate backdoor in the twenty-year-old TErrestrial Trunked RAdio (TETRA) standard used by police forces around the world.

• Russia’s Federal Security Service has charged political analyst Boris Kagarlitsky with online calls for terrorism, his daughter Ksenia said.

• The patch is the latest to address issues associated with what cybersecurity firm Kaspersky called Operation Triangulation.

• A new security vulnerability has been discovered affecting Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Zen 2 processors that can be exploited to steal passwords and other sensitive data such as encryption keys. Google security researcher Travis Ormandy revealed the bug on his blog Monday, naming it “Zenbleed,” which has been filed as CVE-2023-20593.

• AMD has released microcode patches to address Zenbleed, a vulnerability in its Zen 2 CPUs that can allow an attacker to access sensitive information.

• Processor manufacturer AMD has issued an advisory about a cross-process information leak in some of its hardware, that it rates to be of medium severity, following the release of details of the flaw by Google Information Security researcher Tavis Ormandy.

• >

• The NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands has launched MCAD, the Maritime Cyber Attack Database.

• TETRA:BURST – vulnerabilities in widely used radio standard could threaten military and law enforcement communications, as well as ICS.

• As previously announced, support for Istio 1.16 has now officially ended.

• At this point we will no longer back-port fixes for security issues and critical bugs to 1.16, so we heartily encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of Istio (1.18.2) if you haven’t already.

• This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our July 25th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2023-003.

• This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.18.1 and 1.18.2.

• This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our July 25th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2023-003.

• This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.17.4 and 1.17.5.

• This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our July 25th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2023-003.

• This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.16.6 and 1.16.7.

Privacy/Surveillance

• For the first time in a long time, the Intelligence Community is facing an uphill battle to getting one of its most invasive surveillance powers renewed. Not even during the heyday of the Snowden leaks has the IC seen this much resistance to a clear reauthorization of its Section 702 program.

• Meta still faces a civil court action over its dealings with Cambridge Analytica in Australia.

• We’ve talked a lot about just how bad the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is. Yet some people (including people who, frankly, should know better) keep trying to tell me how well meaning it is. It’s not. It’s dangerous. But it has real momentum. A massive bipartisan group of Senators are co-sponsors of the bill.

• On 28 June, the parliamentary session’s final Senedd cross-party group (CPG) on digital rights and democracy, of which Open Rights Group (ORG) acts as secretariat, took place online with over 20 attendees tuning in to hear a follow-up to a previous group session on facial recognition technology.

Defence/Aggression

• Democratic presidents have a way of reaching out to undeserving Republicans….

• A police informant saw a “dry run” of Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination a week prior and a new witness at the scene says he was never interviewed by authorities, attorneys and Malcolm X’s family announced Tuesday.

• Why it matters Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and co-counsel Ray Hamlin alleged at a press conference more information they say points to efforts by the FBI to cover up a conspiracy to murder Malcolm X.

• Speaking at the press conference, Mustafa Hassan, 84, said he was a part of Malcolm X’s security detail at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on Feb. 21, 1965, the day he was assassinated.

• Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted Culpeper County, Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins for allegedly taking cash bribes and large campaign donations in exchange for appointing people “auxiliary deputy sheriffs” and allowing them to carry concealed firearms without a permit. Another sheriff, Chuck Jenkins (no relation) of Frederick County, Maryland, was also recently indicted for an alleged scheme that involved machine gun trafficking in exchange for political support in his re-election campaign.

• CIA Director William Burns says the spy agency is ‘making progress’ in China.

• Here Are Three Ways.

• While the United States, along with its allies, left Afghanistan in August 2021…

• In a groundbreaking investigation, renowned anthropologist Orisanmi Burton has blown the lid off a dark chapter…

• The truce that stopped the bloodshed in the Korean War turns 70 on Thursday and the two Koreas are marking the anniversary in starkly different ways, underscoring their deepening nuclear tensions. North Korea has invited delegations from China and Russia as it prepares to stage huge celebrations that are likely to be highlighted by a military parade in Pyongyang, where leader Kim Jong Un could showcase his most powerful missiles. The mood is more somber in South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol has invited dozens of foreign war veterans to honor the fallen soldiers of the 1950-53 conflict, which set the stage for decades of animosity among the Koreas and the United States.

• Defence and Military Veterans Minister Thandi Modise stands by her earlier statements that “nothing was loaded onto the Lady R” while the sanctioned Russian cargo vessel was alongside in Simon’s Town naval harbour in December.

War in Ukraine

• A video taken in Daugavpils has gained millions of views on TikTok – it shows an elderly woman carried upstairs to take a Latvian language exam. Russian propaganda channels have managed to use the material for their own purposes, Latvian Television reported July 25.

• Vladimir Putin is planning to go to China in October 2023 to take part in Beijing’s Belt and Road Forum, Russian state media reported on Tuesday, citing presidential aide Yury Ushakov.

• Russia Today editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite and erstwhile presidential candidate turned journalist, were both targets in a recent assassination plot, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service. On July 15, the FSB accused members of the Paragraph-88 neo-Nazi group of planning to murder Simonyan and Sobchak in exchange for 3 million rubles ($33,300) from Ukraine’s National Security Service. That same day, a Moscow court jailed seven suspects in the case, albeit on apparently unrelated charges of disorderly conduct. A few days later, the court jailed an eighth suspect. Three Paragraph-88 members are also accused of attacking Central Asian nationals in Moscow. For some reason, the court proceedings against these men have not once mentioned the reported plots against Simonyan or Sobchak. Journalists at Mediazona learned that the Russian authorities tortured the suspects before they came before a judge.

• During the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, forested tracts and strips between fields have become the only shelter available to soldiers trying to hide from reconnaissance drones. For that reason, Ukraine’s forests have become sites of particularly intense fighting and targets for seemingly endless missile and artillery strikes. Since October 2022, a separate “forest front” has existed to the north of the Siverskyi Donets River near the city of Kreminna. Large forces from both Russia and Ukraine have faced off there, bombing and shelling the forest with every available type of weapon, from mine-clearing vehicles to powerful aerial bombs. At the same time, the Russian army continues its long-standing practice of mining practically every strip of forest in the northern Zaporizhzhia and southern Donetsk regions.

• Russia’s attack on Odesa on the night of July 22 was the largest to hit the city’s historic center since the start of the full-scale war, according to local authorities. The regional administration initially reported that at least 44 buildings were damaged, 25 of which were officially recognized architectural monuments. Later, Ukraine’s Culture Ministry revised the number to 29 monuments, including some that belong to the Historic Center of Odesa World Heritage Site and its buffer zone. The city’s massive Transfiguration Cathedral sustained the most serious damage. Meduza tells the story of the historic church, which was demolished by the Soviet government, rebuilt in independent Ukraine, and destroyed once again by Russia’s invasion.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 26 Jul 2023 The European Commission has approved a €5 billion (CZK 125 billion) Czech scheme to support large energy producers in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

• Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said July 25 that the Baltic states want to help send Ukraine’s grain around the world and will call on the European Commission for help in making it happen.

• Latvia-based Ukrainian artist Daria Kalashnikova has issued a call for stories about ‘freedom’ as part of her latest project, titled ‘The Salt of Freedom’.

• A surge of wounded soldiers has coincided with the major counteroffensive Ukraine launched in June to try to recapture its land from Russian forces. Surgeons at the Mechnikov Hospital, one of the country’s biggest, are busier now than perhaps at any other time since Russia invaded 17 months ago. Dozens of soldiers arrive through the night with bandaged limbs soaked in blood, faces blackened with shrapnel fragments and stunned eyes fixed on the ceiling, frozen in shock. After their surgeries, they are sent off to recover elsewhere to create space for the next nightly deluge. One doctor says: “We hold our own front line here.”

• North Korea rolled out the red carpet for Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, state media said Wednesday, with delegations from Moscow and Beijing set to attend Korean War anniversary events. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been steadfast in his support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

• The Ministry of Education, Science and Sport has announced that 350 Ukrainian students will receive partial state funding for their bachelor’s and master’s studies in Lithuania, as part of the continuation of aid to Ukrainian war refugees.

• The newly established NATO-Ukraine Council is set discuss Black Sea security at its inaugural meeting on July 26 in Brussels as Ukrainian and Russian forces are locked in fierce fighting in the eastern region of Kharkiv, where Moscow is attempting to mount an offensive.

• Ukrainian defenders fought off numerous Russian attacks over the past 24 hours in the eastern region of Kharkiv, where Moscow’s troops have been attempting to advance, the General Staff of the Ukrainian military said in its daily report on July 26.

• The U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on July 25 repeated U.S. warnings that Russia could use sea mines to blow up a ship and blame the attack on Ukraine.

• The Ukrainian army’s counteroffensve against Russia could fail because of dwindling supplies of artillery shells, prompting Washington to provide cluster bombs. Is Europe facing years of bloody trench warfare?

• I learned that Ukrainians have no interest in turning their victimization into an identity.

• Ukraine’s summer offensive to retake lost territory is going slowly. Military experts say Western allies need to consider the possibility of failure – and perhaps focus on the defense of Ukraine.

• Along the vast 600-mile front line, Russia is mostly playing defense. In the northeast, it is once again mounting fierce offensive operations.

• The United States announced additional security assistance for Ukraine valued at up to $400 million, the Pentagon said. The new U.S. aid for Ukraine includes air-defense munitions, armored vehicles, anti-armor weapons, and “other equipment to help Ukraine counter Russia’s ongoing war of aggression.”

• Odesa, a port city long beloved by travelers, had been largely spared the worst of the war, but that began changing this week.

• If the full Parliament approves the bill, Russian men as old as 30 will be subject to the country’s mandatory year of military service.

• The conflict in Ukraine has split apart millions of families. The story of Andrii Shapovalov and Tetiana Shapovalova reveals how a couple’s bond can become a casualty.

• A former U.S. Marine who last year was part of a prisoner swap between the United States and Russia has been injured while fighting in Ukraine, the State Department said on July 25.

• The package, which includes artillery, air defenses and mine-clearing equipment, will help replenish Ukrainian forces advance through dense Russian minefields and other defenses.

• Trevor Reed’s condition was not immediately clear. His decision to return to the region and volunteer to fight for Ukraine created some “exasperation” within the Biden administration, an administration official said.

• In order to renounce Russian as the second foreign language in Latvian schools, 350-400 teachers should be prepared within the next three years. The Ministry of Education and Science has developed a road map to achieve this goal, minister Anda Čakša told Latvian Radio on July 25.

• The Russian government has raised the duty on imported wine from 12.5 percent to 20 percent and banned the import of finished fish and seafood products from “unfriendly countries.”

• Moldova says it will limit the number of accredited diplomats from Russia who are allowed into the country.

• North Korea rolled out the red carpet for the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, state media said on July 26, with delegations from Moscow and Beijing set to attend Korean War anniversary events, the country’s first known foreign visitors since its pandemic border closure.

• Russian parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, on July 25 approved the final reading of a bill raising the maximum age for mandatory one-year military service for men to 30 from 27.

• A Russian fighter jet flew within a few meters of a U.S. drone over Syria and fired flares at it, striking the American aircraft and damaging its propeller, the U.S. military said on July 25.

• Serbian authorities have denied an extension of the temporary residence permit of Russian anti-war activist Vladimir Volokhonsky less than two weeks after temporarily denying entry to Peter Nikitin, the Russian national with whom Volokhonsky helped establish the Russian Democratic Society.

• July 26, 2023 6:27 AM

• The two delegations will take part in celebration of 70th anniversary of “Victory Day” in Pyongyang.

• The Kremlin, which has moved quickly to take down parts of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s empire, may seek to use his troll farms to its advantage, analysts say.

• July 26, 2023 6:45 AM

• Chinese, Russian delegations visiting the reclusive state for first time since start of pandemic.

• ADF STAFF The Wagner Group’s recent rebellion against the Russian military is certain to spur changes to the mercenary organization that will affect its operations in Africa.

• The visits reflect Moscow’s ongoing efforts to strengthen ties with Asian allies, given its isolation from the West.

• Five days after leading a failed uprising against the Russian state, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his top Wagner Group officers sat face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin for a three-hour meeting on June 29. Despite having called his former close advisor a traitor and vowing harsh punishment, Putin reportedly gave immunity to Wagner personnel.

Environment

• To date, the climate migrations that have attracted federal policy attention in the United States generally have fallen under the category of “managed retreat.” Recall, for instance, the 2016 headlines announcing that Isle de Jean Charles, La., would receive $48 million in federal funds for a first-of-its-kind wholesale community resettlement project, or the Biden administration’s announcement last year that it had awarded $75 million to Indigenous communities in Alaska and Washington state to pack up and move. “Managed retreat,” or the planned relocation of vulnerable coastal communities to higher ground, is at once a proactive tactical move and an act of resignation—an acknowledgment that, in a warming world, some geographic communities are fated to disappear into the sea. But what should we make of this intense political fixation on managed retreat? And when climate migration policies prioritize the most extraordinary and poignant cases, who is left behind?

• Deadly wildfires burning across Europe, North America and North Africa have forced hundreds of people to evacuate as historic heat grips much of the Northern Hemisphere.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 26 Jul 2023 As several countries grapple with rapidly spreading wildfires, the EU steps in to reinforce firefighting efforts and provide much-needed support to the affected communities.

Wildlife/Nature

• Wildlife experts are preparing to lead dozens of whales back into deep waters after 52 died in a mass stranding event on a West Australian beach.

• Rescue efforts continue after the mammals stranded themselves at Cheynes Beach, 60km east of Albany in the state’s south.

• For hundreds of years, Icelanders have relied on the ocean for survival. This is perhaps not surprising as it’s an isolated island surrounded by ocean near the Arctic circle. But as the oceans warm and fisheries continue to be harvested unsustainably, Iceland has been looking for a way to make sure that the fish they do catch are put to the fullest use, for obvious things like food and for plenty of other novel uses as well as they work towards using 100% of their catch.

Finance

• “$7.25/hour, in 2023, is a poverty wage,” said the AFL-CIO.

• Once a week, a little past noon on Wednesdays, a line of cars forms outside the wrought-iron gates of the Carolands mansion, 20 miles south of downtown San Francisco. From the entrance, you can see the southeast facade of the 98-room Beaux Arts chateau, which was built a century ago by an heiress to the Pullman railroad-car fortune. Not visible from that vantage point is the stately reflecting pool, or the gardens, whose original designer took inspiration from Versailles.

• I was sitting just outside this splendor, idling in my rented Toyota Corolla, on a clear day last winter. Like the other people in the line of cars, I was about to enjoy a rare treat. Carolands is an architectural landmark, but it’s open only two hours a week. Would-be visitors apply a month in advance, hoping to win a lottery for tickets. Like most lotteries, this one has long odds. I had applied unsuccessfully for the three tours scheduled for February. Finally, I resorted to my journalist’s privilege: I emailed and called the director of the foundation that owns the estate, explaining that I was a reporter planning to be in the area for a few days. Could she help? Eventually, she called back and offered me a place on a tour.

• The BBC has admitted 4 July Nigel Farage headline was wrong.

• The parent of Snapchat has grappled with an ad slump and the challenges of being a smaller social media company in an intensely competitive environment.

• With hopes of a merger with MEI Pharma now sunk for good, Infinity Pharmaceuticals is jettisoning three-quarters of its staff and three board members to stay afloat while it scans the horizon for another financial life raft.

• The planned combination of MEI Pharma and Infinity had been in the works since February. Yet despite surviving the intervention of a surprise bidder at the last minute, MEI’s shareholders finally voted on the proposal on Sunday and scuppered the deal for good.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Reddit CEO’s insistence that the protests from Reddit would simply “pass” certainly hasn’t come to pass just yet. While increasing pressure from the company against protest mods has resulted in some backing down, many are continuing to engage in malicious compliance, making it clear they’re still protesting.

• The woebegone tenure of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is less a study in leadership than a series of reality-TV challenges. Can our contestant withstand the procedural hazings engineered by the House Freedom Caucus? Will he strike a provisional blow for decorum over the “let’s all look at a naked Hunter Biden” faction? And in our next episode: Is he going to get the keys to Doc Brown’s time machine and schedule votes to expunge Donald Trump’s two impeachments in the 116th and 117th Congresses?

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 campaign fired an aide this week who secretly created and shared a pro-DeSantis video that featured the candidate at the center of a Sonnenrad, an ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis and still used by some white supremacists.

• Driving the news: Nate Hochman, a speechwriter on the DeSantis campaign and a former writer for National Review, created the video on his own and shared it through a pro-DeSantis Twitter account, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Opposition politician Alexey Navalny wrote on social media that he considers the arrest of Igor Strelkov, the Telegram blogger and former FSB agent who was found guilty of shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, to be illegal.

• Human Rights Watch (HRW), along with 13 other human rights organizations such as Access Now and the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR), called on the Jordanian government on Monday to withdraw a proposed cybercrime law currently under discussion in Parliament.

• ‘There is a new word in Newspeak’, said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.’ George Orwell…

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Calling communist China a totalitarian regime was an “objective” description without any derogatory meaning, Hong Kong journalist-turned activist Gwyneth Ho testified in a national security trial relating to 47 pro-democracy figures.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Amid a widening crackdown on abortion access, 19 Republican attorneys general in states where abortion is illegal are demanding the right for local governments to access the private medical records of patients in order to see if they obtained abortions out of state. We speak to Tamarra Wieder, state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates in Louisville, Kentucky, where residents are crossing state lines to access abortion care due to the state’s near-total abortion ban. Wieder says the act of seeking healthcare “should not be turned against us,” adding that this latest attack on reproductive rights, if it is carried out, would set “a precedent of fear” that would “chill care.” She also discusses the Nebraska teenager who used abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, and the Texas women who are suing to overturn the state’s abortion ban, which put their lives in danger when they were unable to end their pregnancies, even when they were nonviable.

• UPS has reached a tentative contract agreement with its 340,000-person strong union, potentially averting a strike that threatened to disrupt logistics across the United States for businesses and households alike.

• The agreement was announced after UPS and the Teamsters came back to the negotiating table on Tuesday to talk over remaining sticking points in the largest private-sector contract in North America.

• Israeli doctors have declared a strike and more army reservists have asked to halt service in a backlash over the religious-nationalist government’s ratification of the first part of a judicial overhaul that critics say endangers democracy.

• With long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing his gravest domestic crisis, Israel’s military took its first known internal disciplinary action over the protests.

• Warning: The text might be mature and will have references to violence so if there are kids or you are sensitive, please excuse.

• Few days back, saw the videos and I cannot share the rage, shame and many conflicting emotions that were going through me. I almost didn’t want to share but couldn’t stop myself. The woman in the video were being palmed, fingered, nude, later reportedly raped and murdered. And there have been more than a few cases. The next day saw another video that showed beheaded heads, and Kukis being killed just next to their houses. I couldn’t imagine what those people must be feeling as the CM has been making partisan statements against them. One of the husbands of the Kuki women who had been paraded, fondled is an Army Officer in the Indian Army. The Meiteis even tried to burn his home but the Army intervened and didn’t let it get burnt.

• The CM’s own statement as shared before tells his inability to bring the situation out of crisis. In fact, his statement was dumb stating that the Internet shutdown was because there were more than 100 such cases. And it’s spreading to the nearby Northeast regions. Now Mizoram, the nearest neighbor is going through similar things where the Meitis are not dominant. The Mizos have told the Meitis to get out.

• Police violence is a pervasive issue across the country that has led to harassment, injuries, and deaths. Racial discrimination and excessive force disproportionately impact communities of color, which often have an outsized police presence. And although investigations have repeatedly exposed patterns of racism and unconstitutional policing within law enforcement departments, they are rarely held accountable.

• Images from recent protests against plans to reduce judicial oversight of the government, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

• Political turmoil that has been brewing for months reached a crescendo after Parliament passed a law aimed at curbing the power of the judiciary.

• UPS reached a tentative deal with its union on Tuesday, averting a much-feared strike.

• Let’s stipulate right away: Florida’s new guidelines for teaching African American history do not merely consist of the noxious, specious claim that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” There are 190 other “facts” included in the guidelines, and arguably none are as false and loathsome as that one (though a few come close).

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Last Tuesday I wrote a post about the ephemeral nature of online video, and my attempts to preserve stuff Clara and I care about.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Every major subscription streaming company has increased its prices in the past year in an effort to address Wall Street’s push for profits.

Monopolies

Patents

• A recent decision issued by the federal district court could impact medical use patents in Brazil. In an invalidity lawsuit filed by the Brazilian affiliate of Sun Pharma against Boehringer Ingelheim, Federal Judge Carvalho, sitting at the 9th Federal District Court in Rio de Janeiro, has granted a preliminary injunction…

• Mixed IP firm Eisenführ Speiser has strengthened its Munich office with the mixed litigation team of lawyer Philipp Rastemborski and patent attorney Florian Henke. While Rastemborski is set to join the firm on 1 August, Henke will join at a later point.

• Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Ramesh Varadharaj, was awarded $2,000 for his prior art submission on U.S. Patent 8,456,365, owned by Fractus, SA, an NPE.

• On July 17, 2023, just five weeks after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the USPTO granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,282,090, owned and asserted by Street Spirit IP LLC, an NPE and entity of Dynamic IP Deals.

• Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Dinesh Swamy, was awarded $2,000 for his prior art submission on U.S. Patent 7,233,684, owned by Monument Peak Ventures, an NPE and Dominion Harbor entity. The ‘684 patent generally relates to imaging methods that use affective information.

Trademarks

• Let me start this post with an anecdote. I’m in my 40s and have been a Chicago Cubs fan my entire life. If you know anything about baseball, then you know that means that for more than 30 years, my entire fandom was wrapped in an identify of losing, and I was also saddled with 7 more decades of historical losing on top of it. The point is that when 2016 came and the Cubs actually won the World Series, one not-insignificant part of my life was fundementally altered and I had to figure out how to live in a world where the unthinkable had suddenly happened.

• The Board overturned a refusal to register Duracell’s sound mark consisting of three musical notes for batteries, rejecting the Office’s position that the specimens of use (.mp3 files, example here) constituted mere advertising material. Instead, the Board ruled that transmission of the sound mark in retail locations where the goods are sold is “equivalent to” a display associated with the goods. In re Duracell U.S. Operations, Inc., Serial No. 90559208 (July 24, 2023) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Michael B. Adlin).

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