● 08.14.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 14/08/2023: IPFire Release and Loads of HowTos

Posted in News Roundup at 12:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Indian mythology is rich beyond measure in tales of gods, demons, and humans doing battle. Deception, alliances, betrayal, supernatural weaponry, and devastating consequences tangle with morality and greed. If you think that sounds like today’s global technology maelstrom, that’s forgivable.

• So when the Indian Ministry of Defence announced that it would be ditching Microsoft Windows in favor of “locally developed” open source Maya OS to increase security, it’s fair to see this as part of the great cycle of conflict between FOSS and proprietary systems. Such decisions are never purely pragmatic, even though that’s frequently the justification, and when policy rather than practicality has the upper hand, the results can be excitingly mixed.

Audiocasts/Shows

• We’re trying out Rhino Linux—a unique take on rolling Ubuntu with AUR-like powers and other surprises.

• On this episode of This Week in Linux (229), we’re going to take a look at a new rolling release distro based on Ubuntu. Linux Mint will soon be living on the EDGE. AMD is experiencing some INCEPTION and Intel is meeting their DOWNFALL.

• **glibc** , all of the **glib** packages, **gmime** , **gmm** , and **gmp**

• from the **l** software series of Slackware**, **and musings about the

• usefulness of errors.

• shasum -a256=2b4cf08853929c94d417df2b21c31d5d38ed8953d691b8b956953c035108c4d1

Applications

• Want to learn more about the hardware your Linux device uses? Inspector is a new GTK4/libdawaita app that lets you do just that.

Instructionals/Technical

• Securing passwords is a critical aspect of maintaining data integrity in PostgreSQL. In order to access a database, users must authenticate themselves by providing a valid username and password. While there are several methods for storing and managing passwords securely, hardcoding passwords within code is never recommended.

• PostgreSQL is one of the most popular open-source relational database management systems (RDBMS) used in the industry today. It is known for its robustness, reliability, and scalability, making it a preferred choice of many enterprise applications.

• I used to rely on ifupdown to bring up my iptables firewall automatically using a config like this in /etc/network/interfaces: [...]

• In today’s digital age, businesses require software and applications that are tailored to their needs. User experience customization is a crucial aspect of the software development process that ensures that the end-users interact with the application in a way that is intuitive, efficient, and productive.

• PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source relational database management system that has been gaining popularity among developers and data analysts. It is known for its robustness, reliability, and flexibility. With features such as transactional integrity, concurrency control, and extensibility, PostgreSQL is a top choice for many organizations in need of a high-performance database.

• PostgreSQL is a powerful and versatile open-source relational database management system that has gained popularity in the tech industry due to its advanced features, scalability, and reliability. It was first released in 1989 by the University of California, Berkeley, and has since become one of the most widely used databases in the world.

• Gnome Boxes is an app that allows you to create virtual machines on Linux Mint. Gnome Boxes is like Virtualbox. Gnome Boxes has less features and is less customizable than virtualbox. However, it is way simpler to use, and you can run a virtual machine without having technical knowledge.

• You don’t need to reboot a Linux server, they are not running only 2-3 weeks even years without interruption.

• fdisk command in Linux is used to create and delete partitions in Linux of Hardisk.

• Mostly, A Linux system administrator installs rpm packages on Linux by using yum command, but you can use rpm command in Linux […]

• If you’re a fan of Ubuntu 22.04, the popular Linux distro with its slick user-friendly interface and powerful features, you might be wondering how to keep tabs on your system’s memory usage to keep things running smoothly.

• Learn how to install the Seafile server using Docker Compose for seamless file synchronization across all your devices.

• In the realm of Linux command-line utilities, the Bc command stands out as a versatile and powerful tool for performing advanced mathematical calculations. Often referred to as a sophisticated arbitrary precision calculator, Bc offers a host of features that can elevate your number-crunching tasks to a whole new level.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Samba on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Samba is a powerful and versatile open-source software that allows seamless file and printer sharing between Linux and Windows systems.

Games

• Want to play an improved version of famed futuristic racing game wipEout on Ubuntu? Chances are you do as this game is considered something of a classic. A bona-fide hit on PlayStation when released (it also came to DOS and the Sega Saturn) its success spawned a slew of sequels and imitators on gaming systems that followed.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Plasma 6 release day is getting closer… and we still have no wallpaper to use! But we’re going to change that with your help and this contest! We are calling on all artists to submit their original wallpaper designs and compete for the chance to win a brand-new laptop (see below). The contest will be open for three months, starting now!

• Judges for the competition will be selected from the KDE Visual Design Group and other esteemed community members. Wallpapers will be judged based on artistic merit, originality, and adherence to the design themes mentioned earlier. At the end of the submission period, six finalists will be selected for a second round.

• Artists who make it to this stage will receive a small prize (e.g. a KDE t-shirt!) and actionable feedback from the judges. The artists will be able to upload different variations addressing the feedback. This stage will take between one and three weeks. At the end of it, a winner will be selected and announced. The winner will get a Framework Laptop 13!

• I often encourage people to submit bug reports when they complain about this or that on Reddit or comments here or wherever. This works as long as their problem is actually a bug.

• But many problems are not bugs. They could be user error, a misunderstanding of the software’s scope or capabilities, a request for something impossible, a long rant about how the software sucks, or a request for help recovering the picture of their kawaii catgirl waifu that they just lost in Krita.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Among the many new features in GNOME 45 is keyboard backlight control from the Quick Settings menu.

• GIMP’s Windows installer now supports ARM 64-bit architecture.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Forum member Maybe asked about this:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=96278#p96278

• I have recompiled the ‘redshift’ package in OpenEmbedded and modified the recipe to install ‘redshift.pot’.

New Releases

• The next Core Update is available for testing: IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 178 which includes kernel and microcode fixes to mitigate vulnerabilities in Intel and AMD processors.

• IPFire is not directly affected by any of these attacks as the firewall never executes untrusted code. All programs on IPFire come from our package management system which signs all updates. However, it might be possible for an attacker to inject any code remotely by some undiscovered vulnerability and using these CPU vulnerabilities might allow the attacker to create more damage. Therefore, we recommend to install this update as soon as possible and to reboot your firewall.

BSD

• Mark your calendars! The November 2023 FreeBSD Vendor Summit will take place November 2-3, 2023 at the NetApp Campus in San Jose, CA. The Vendor Summit will feature a single track of talks on both days.  More details on the schedule and travel information will be available soon.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• PCLinuxOS users: [root@AMD64 tex]# kwrite /opt/VirtualBox/src/vboxhost/vboxnetflt/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.c Change line 50 to:#if RTLNX_VER_MIN(6,4,10)Save the file Run[root@AMD64 tex]# /sbin/vboxconfig *Fixed* Reference: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/21796

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• A non-profit called the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA) has been formed by Oracle, SUSE, CIQ, and other organizations that make Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS rebuilds.

• The OpenELA homepage opens with some strong, even confrontational words: “No subscriptions. No passwords. No barriers. Freeloaders welcome.” That’s a reference to the drama around RHEL and the recently erected paywall around its source code.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Industrializing ML is about applying Software Engineering best practices to the whole AI modeling process since its first line of code. It is about Data Scientists focusing on math and stats at the same time that the AI artifact is casted as a software product aiming production environments. This is different from MLOps, which is commonly positioned as a mere wrapping activity that happens after and separated from AI modeling and before production. In the whole Industrialization practice, MLOps is a subset activity that happens in between, but quite apart, from both Data Scientists‘ work and the infrastructure. Industrializing Machine Learning contains MLOps, plus other concepts that are even more important.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• As things stand now, Canonical seems to be going full-steam ahead for integrating Flutter-based elements into Ubuntu.

• After the relatively recent release of Ubuntu 23.04, which saw the introduction of a Flutter-based installer, we now have another important utility of Ubuntu receiving the Flutter treatment; a new software store app.

• No, the software center is not going anywhere for now. Instead, Ubuntu will have a new store that will aim to act as an evolution of the classic software center and the community-built Flutter store.

• When I was searching for a WiFi HaLow USB adapter, I did not expect to find a Linux-powered device, but that’s what the HaLow-U is since it runs OpenWrt on an NXP i.MX 6 processor and is configurable with the LuCi web interface based on the documentation provided on the Rokland website which does not seems specific to WiFi HaLow because they are using 802.11an at 5.825 GHz… ALFA Network has a documentation website, but the new USB adapter is nowhere to be found at the time of writing.

• If you’re looking for a Linux-based handheld PC these days, there are plenty of off-the-shelf kits you can purchase. But if you’ve got the parts, desire and skill why not build something like the Blackberry Pi yourself?

• The device you see here started out as a Gameboy-inspired build, but maker IMBalENce had always wanted to create a cyberdeck-style device.

• After gathering up the spare parts and laying out a plan, the Blackberry Pi was born. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero W — which likely would have been replaced by a Pi Zero 2W were it not for supply constraints.

• Power is provided by a 2500mAh battery. An Adafruit 1000C PowerBoost charger keeps it topped off and a small 5V fan is installed atop a rear-facing vent just exhaust any unwanted heat (even if there’s not likely to be much). A Raspberry Pi camera NoIR v2.1 captures video and still images and the 3.5-inch 320 x 240 pixel LCD handles video output.

Devices/Embedded

• ArmSoM claims Debian 11 and buildroot support with OS images and some documentation to get started provided in a Wiki. But there’s something odd on the bottom side of the board… I can see a “Bpi” (Banana Pi) logo, and the ArmSoM-p2 pro is actually the same board as the Banana BPI-P2 Pro introduced earlier this year.

• Further to this, they point out to SinoVoip (Banana Pi) store on Aliexpress to purchase the ArmSoM-p2 pro board, so I’d assume ArmSoM is either a subsidiary of Banana Pi or contracted by them to design some of their boards. Another interesting RK3308 board to point out, especially if you’d like an even smaller form factor, is the Radxa RockPi S SBC that was first unveiled in 2019 and is still sold today.

Open Hardware/Modding

• SneakyPackets has created a Pico-powered pellet smoker hopper monitor complete with a handy web app for status information.

• This week we make a big announcement about the podcast and newsletter. Get ready! Then we talk about the issues with Matter and who’s to blame. We lay out the challenges that both we and The Verge have highlighted with Thread credentialing, and talk about uneven device support.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

• Join us on 12th September 2023 in Marylebone, London, for a day of talks on the World’s Most Advanced Open Source Database coupled with the usual valuable hallway track. This event is aimed at all users and developers of PostgreSQL and is your chance to meet and exchange ideas and knowledge with like-minded database fanatics in London.

Programming/Development

• Welcome to the 41th post in the $R^4 series. This post draws on joint experiments first started by Grant building on the lovely work Eitsupi as part of our Rocker Project. In short, r2u is an ideal match for Codesspaces, a Microsoft/GitHub service to run code ‘locally but in the cloud’ via browser or Visual Studio Code. This posts co-serves as the README.md in the .devcontainer directory as well as a vignette for r2u.

Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

• I got some spam earlier this week from a vendor inviting me to their tech conference in the US. Fronting this event was the company’s shareholder-in-chief, who’ll be giving a keynote presentation about nuanced, hyperdisruptive paradigm synergies, or something.

• Wait… what?

• Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to have three legs?

• Tripods, and stools with three legs, are amazing. They passively balance, something that two and four legs can’t do. I’m typing this on a coffee shop table right now that’s rocking back and forward because one of the legs is too short.

Education

Hardware

• Kontron K3931-N mITX is a  mini-ITX motherboard based on an Intel Core i3 or Processor Alder Lake N-Series processor designed for fanless industrial applications with features like TSN and wide 8V to 34V DC input, but still only operating in the 0 to 60°C temperature range. The motherboard supports up to 32GB DDR5 memory, SATA, M.2 NVMe and/or M.2 SATA storage, up to triple display setups, and offers dual Ethernet (GbE + 2.5GbE), plenty of USB interfaces,  five serial interfaces, as well as expansion through M.2 sockets, a PCIe slot, and a GPIO header.

• I designed and printed a “terrain” base for my 3D castle in OpenSCAD. The castle was the first thing I designed and printed on our (then new) office 3D printer. I use it as a test bed if I want to try something new, and this time I wanted to try procedurally generating a model.

• I’ve released the OpenSCAD source for the terrain generator under the name Zarchscape.

• Following decision to withdraw from PC business, Intel EOLs six NUC models in one month.

• The globe’s biggest semiconductor fab, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, has committed €3.5 billion (A$5.88 billion) towards setting up a chip factory in Dresden, Germany.

• Intel and Lenovo team up to advance laptops hardware and software in Shanghai.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Ohio showed how abortion is weakening the Republican Party’s position in the nation’s largest metro areas.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Security in current AI models was an afterthought in their training as data scientists amassed breathtakingly complex collections of images and text.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• The Online Safety Bill is due to pass in the autumn. Aimed at protecting children, it lays down strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply.

• One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement by the platforms they are sent on, if there is deemed to be a national security or child protection risk.

• The NSPCC children’s charity has described encrypted messaging apps as the “front line” of where child abuse images are shared, but it is also seen as an essential security tool for activists, journalists and politicians.

• AdLoad malware has been observed delivering a new payload that enlists macOS systems into a residential proxy botnet.

Defence/Aggression

• The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali on Sunday said it had brought forward its withdrawal from a base in the north of the country due to deteriorating security conditions.

• Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) separatists attacked a convoy carrying Chinese engineers to the Beijing-financed Gwadar Port in Pakistan’s southwest on Sunday, the group said.

• AMLO says his security cabinet supports releasing Vallarta to conclude his court proceedings outside prison, but lower courts ruled otherwise.

• Ecuador transferred a powerful gang leader, accused of threatening a presidential candidate before he was slain, to a maximum security prison via a massive military and police operation on Saturday, officials said.

• Armenia has asked the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting regarding the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Azerbaijan’s mostly Armenian-populated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

• Prosecutors said the killer — who taped the “Family Feud” episode in 2019 and got divorced two years later — even went on Google to research how to pull off the February slaying, including how to force open a window with a crowbar and police response time.

• India Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah presented three landmark bills in India’s Parliament on Friday. The three bills would significantly shift Indian criminal law away from British colonial-era laws. The first of the three newly-introduced bills is the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which seeks to replace the Indian Penal Code of 1860.

• Early in our history, firearms laws were everywhere.

• The Hong Kong government has said it “strongly rejects and disapproves” of a new US policy to limit investment in Chinese technology.

• China on Friday said it had recently uncovered a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “case of espionage” involving a Chinese national named Zeng who provided “core secret information” for money.

• The agreement involves enhanced cooperation and intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies in the UK and Turkey on the issue of illegal migration.

• “Turkey has long enjoyed impunity and the international community’s silence for targeting non-Turkish nationals outside its territories on the pretense of targeting terrorists,” said Aarif Abraham, the director of the Accountability Unit, a human rights NGO in the UK.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Both the state attorney general and the state legislature declined to defend the law in court after the ACLU of Arizona and news media organizations sued to overturn it.

Environment

• The millions of Americans who migrated to the Sunbelt over the past decade are now stuck in the middle of this summer’s brutal and record-breaking heat wave.

• Why it matters: The country’s fastest-growing region is enduring some of the highest temperatures in the U.S., threatening the health of some of America’s most vulnerable people and billions in economic activity.

Energy/Transportation

• Several days ago, I posted some thoughts about alcohol stove design:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202308/some-thoughts-about-alcohol-stove-design.html

• So, considered testing with the combined Speedster burner and Packafeather adjustable stove. Also, I wondered how close the windshield could be to the pot and still draw the fumes upward ok.

• So, I constructed an aluminium windshield tube, with brackets inside to hold a grill, on which the pot will sit. The gap between pot and innner-side of windhield is only 5mm (using my TOAKS 1000ml titanium pot). The aluminium sheet is 0.5mm thick.

• FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been sent to jail after a bail hearing in New York City. Federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued the order Friday, saying there was probable cause that Bankman-Fried had tried to tamper with two key witnesses against him and maybe others. Bankman-Fried was taken from a courtroom in handcuffs. Prosecutors had pushed for his incarceration. His lawyers insisted he shouldn’t be jailed for trying to protect his reputation. The 31-year-old onetime crypto whiz had been living at his parent’s California home since his December extradition from the Bahamas. He was staying at home to comply with a $250 million bail package severely restricting his internet and phone usage.

• Wisk Aero, owned by Boeing, entered a financial and technological partnership with Archer Aviation and dropped a lawsuit claiming theft of trade secrets.

Wildlife/Nature

• Authorities in Hawaii are still searching for survivors of this week’s destructive wildfires, which killed at least 93 and injured dozens of others on Maui Island. Officials expect the death toll to rise.

• But they have uncanny powers.

Finance

• The Labor Department is officially undoing changes made to help combat inflation in the 1980s.

• The UK has been in the grip of high inflation for over a year. Its consumer price index rose by 7.9 percent in the 12 months to June.

• US inflation moved up by 0.2% from June to July, a moderate pace that economists had expected. On a 12-month basis, the consumer price index moved up by 3.2% versus 3% the month prior, according to data from the US Labor Department.

• Stocks are opening lower on Wall Street, keeping the market on track for its second losing week in a row. The early weakness Friday came after the government reported a slight increase in inflation in wholesale prices last month, indicating that the Federal Reserve’s work on bringing inflation to heel isn’t done. The S&P 500 was down 0.4% in the first few minutes of trading. The Dow was off 30 points, just less than 0.1%. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.6%. Big tech companies were among the biggest losers in the early going. Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices fell 2.5%.

• Wholesale prices in the United States picked up slightly in July yet still suggested that inflationary pressures have eased this year since reaching alarming heights in 2022. The producer price index — which measures inflation before it hits consumers— rose 0.8% last month from July 2022. The latest figure followed a 0.2% year-over-year increase in June, which had been the smallest annual rise since August 2020. On a month-to-month basis, producer prices rose 0.3% from June to July, up from no change from May to June. The producer price figures can provide an early sign of how fast consumer inflation will rise in the coming months.

• The Bank of Mexico’s governing board decided unanimously to maintain the high interest rate in order to put downward pressure on inflation.

• Expanding the federal deficit risks exacerbating inflation, regardless of the long-run cost savings wise energy investments could bring.

• Domestic worker unions in Hong Kong have urged authorities to raise their minimum monthly wage to more than HK$6,000, citing their contributions to society and rising inflation.

• “Sadly, the days of shredding civil rights in exchange for ten private-jet flights are over,” the Justice told donors.

• The hit to China’s cereal crops comes as consumers worldwide face tightening food supplies.

• Global fast-food chains in India are under pressure to trim costs while keeping customers satisfied.

• There is growing pressure on the country to rapidly increase its stockpile.

• Inflation in the United States rose in July after 12 straight months of declines, boosted by costlier housing. But excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose just 0.2% from June, matching the smallest monthly increase in nearly two years. The inflation figure the government reported Thursday showed that consumer prices increased 3.2% from a year earlier. That was up from a 3% annual rise in June, which was the lowest rate in more than two years. The July inflation figure remained far below last year’s peak of 9.1%, though still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

Censorship/Free Speech

• India’s Supreme Court took a firm stance on Thursday in response to the unfolding economic boycott targeting Muslims in the troubled regions of Nuh and Gurugram within Haryana, terming it ‘unacceptable.’ Concurrently, the Court suggested the establishment of a committee, led by the Director General of Police (DGP), to investigate cases…

• Speaker of Parliament Jussi Halla-aho (Finns) took a strong stance against the media and left-wing parties in his endorsement speech.

• “The material challenged in the plaintiff’s complaint cannot be understood by a reasonable person as anything but substantially, if not literally, true.”

• Following the government-mandated shutdown of the Good Vibes Festival in Malaysia, organizers are seeking legal action against The 1975 and Matty Healy. Matty Healy took to the stage on July 21 to criticize the organizers for inviting the band to a country that has strict laws against homosexuality.

• Iran’s judiciary has announced the release on bail of Shaker Buri more than a week after the Instagram satirist and humorist went missing after visiting an intelligence office of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the southwestern city of Abadan.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Jailed Kazakh journalist Duman Mukhammedkarim, who has been on a hunger strike since July 5, will not be transferred from a pretrial detention center in Taldyqorghan to Almaty despite ongoing protests by his supporters.

• The search of Marion County Record’s office led to the seizure of computers, servers and cellphones of reporters and editors.

Civil Rights/Policing

• TV viewers across the U.S. will see fewer new scripted shows, a trend that could continue well into next year if the walkouts continue.

• Fans are worried as the 39th season of the historic game show “Jeopardy!” comes to a close on July 28th, with the fate of the 40th season still unclear.

• After a U.S. request that Mexico review a miners’ strike in Zacatecas, officials said it pre-dates the USMCA and will be handled domestically.

• The workers employed by the construction company Yapı Merkezi in a railway project in Tanzania, who haven’t received their wages for seven months, say that they will resume work if four months’ worth of salaries are paid and a promise of regular payments is made.

• The Emmy Awards have been postponed by almost four months, organizers said Thursday, as crippling strikes by Hollywood’s actors and writers drag on with no resolution in sight.

• Journalists at France’s sole dedicated Sunday newspaper announced on Tuesday they were halting one of the longest strikes in the recent history of French media, on the day a controversial editor aligned with the far right took up his post as editor in chief.

• Leaders of a Hollywood’s actors union voted Thursday to join screenwriters in the first joint strike in more than six decades, shutting down production across the entertainment industry after talks for a new contract with the studios and streaming services broke down.

• Hollywood actors on Wednesday anxiously awaited their union’s decision on whether to strike, right at the peak of the summer blockbuster season, as last-ditch talks with studios appeared to sour.

• Actors will join screenwriters in a combined strike that will have huge consequences for Hollywood. Leaders of SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents the actors, voted Thursday to strike after contract talks collapsed with the studios and streaming services that hire them. It’s the first time actors from film and television shows have gone on strike since 1980. And the first time both actors and writers have been on strike since 1960. Industry leaders expressed disappointment in a walkout they said comes at the worst possible time. The group representing studios and streaming services said early Thursday that the actors’ decision to end negotiations was their choice and will hurt thousands financially.

• Writers and studios are starting to talk again. They may script new bonds of honesty in business and appreciation for the unlimited range of human creativity.

• National World’s strategy is “rooted in actively exploring opportunities” for acquisitions.

• Atilla Güner, the presenter of the “Evening News” on Radio Sputnik, also announced that he was dismissed due to “downsizing.” “Many union members are being laid off at the moment,” Güner said.

• City workers in Los Angeles are going on strike today (Aug. 8) citing unfair labor practices, in a move that threatens to strangle or shut down many of the city’s operations.

• Although the actors and writers strikes have shut down nearly all Hollywood films from major production companies, some independent productions are being granted union waivers to continue. The move has proved confusing and divisive to those on picket lines.

• Soheila Mohammadi, an Iranian Kurdish political prisoner held at Urmia central prison in northwestern Iran, has gone on hunger strike and sewn her lips shut, a human rights watchdog said.

• Those who often visit the Kent Starbucks on Main Street may notice a change in the coffee shop decor. The pride flag which was displayed on the wall since June of 2022 has been taken down.

• In roughly three hundred and one days, I’ll be a college graduate. I’ll walk across the stage, shake the hand of the Dean and my academic career will come to an end. And I have no idea where I’ll go from there. Up until now, my life has been highly structured.

• An Etsy boycott initiated by UK-based sellers over its payment system has gotten the American company’s attention. Etsy addressed criticism of its policy in a blog post on Aug. 1, and promised to “substantially” decrease the amount of funds held in reserve.

• UPS workers have an impossible job in the Amazon age.

• As strikes explode across America, the coffee chain’s story holds a lesson on how to fight — and how the bosses fight dirty.

• Americans rely on delivery workers—and come August, hundreds of thousands of UPS workers could walk off the job.

• The Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) agreed to a “last-minute request” to work with a federal mediator in contract negotiations with film and TV studios yesterday (July 11). The deadline to reach a fair deal remains unchanged at 11:59pm Pacific Time today (July 12).

• “…today culminated the second stage of 48 hours in which the teachers were clear in expressing their disagreement…”

• Burhan Batur claims had been been subjected to torture, including being “hogtied.”

• In a shrinking business, actors on some shows are being guaranteed less money, an issue that’s helping to fuel the Hollywood strike.

• Since the streaming era, movies and television feel less special, labor conditions have plummeted, and turbulent mergers and layoffs call into question which legendary institutions will still stand in another ten or twenty years.

• Fox is expected to announce soon that television’s Emmys will be rescheduled to air in January next year due to strikes by writers and actors in the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday, citing a person familiar with the plans.

• With work stoppages under way or looming in a variety of industries, is the U.S. in the midst of a “hot labor summer”?

• E. Tammy Kim discusses today’s big stories of workers fighting back: the Hollywood strikes, the UPS tentative agreement, and the United Auto Workers’ expiring contract.

• Snoop Dogg is canceling his upcoming 30th-anniversary Hollywood Bowl show to stand in solidarity with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.  Previously the rapper postponed his plans to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his album Doggystyle with two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.

• “…the teachers will concentrate in the Plaza de la Dignidad…”

• “This contract sets a new standard in the labor movement and raises the bar for all workers,” Teamsters president said.

• “The overwhelmingly lucrative contract raises wages for all workers, creates more full-time jobs, and includes dozens of workplace protections and improvements.”

• UPS agreed on a contract with its 340,000-member union, preventing a potential nationwide logistics disruption. This “historic” and highly beneficial deal increases part-time starting pay and ensures safety improvements.

• Despite not being in the actors’ union, many content creators are passing up deals to promote films or TV shows because they don’t want to be barred from the guild or face online vitriol.

• Actors and writers are on strike because they were left behind by the streaming revolution and AI is poised to disrupt their professions.

• Negotiations between UPS and its unionized workers are set to resume Tuesday before their contract expires on July 31. If a new contract is not agreed upon, the workers will strike, slowing supply chains and possibly provoking government intervention.

• The “Harry Potter” actor, 33, was seen cradling his 4-month-old son as the couple joined other SAG-AFTRA union members striking in New York City on Friday.

• A preliminary deal was struck between a union representing theater workers on Broadway and a number of organizations representing management—including Disney theatrical, a major subsidiary of the media conglomerate—on Thursday (July 20).

• Tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes workers, in solidarity with striking actors and writers, are bracing for what could be a monthslong standoff with the studios.

• This late-night comedy writer just wants to be loved.

• People sympathetic with the strikers may be concerned, but the actors’ and writers’ unions say it’s OK to go to the movies and use streaming services.

• A conversation with Xochitl Gonzalez about who really broke the entertainment industry

• An allegedly psychic “Internet sleuth” alleged a professor was involved in the University of Idaho student murders; the professor sued; then the “sleuth” countersued.

• What led to the first double strike of actors and writers in more than 60 years? Both sides point to a business model under severe strain even before the pandemic and a breakdown in trust.

• Iranian authorities on August 13 arrested nine followers of the Baha’i faith over a host of corruption charges including money laundering and tax evasion, the Intelligence Ministry said.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• We spoke with Riana Pfefferkorn, research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, about encryption and protecting the Internet.

Monopolies

Patents

• ApoA1 is a key component of HDL, also known as “good cholesterol.” The founders of Therapin created a synthetic “fusion protean” of ApoA1 linked to the Fc portion of an antibody (the stem).  That fusion extends the half-life of injected HDL and allows it to be a better potential drug treatment. The claims require a specific linker protein of 10-40 amino acids between the ApoA1 and Fc portions. Theripion discovered that this longer linker improved cholesterol efflux activity compared to fusion proteins having shorter 2 amino acid linkers or no linker.  So the essence of the invention as claimed is an ApoA1-Fc fusion protein with an optimized 10-40 amino acid linker that enhances the fusion protein’s ability to remove cholesterol from cells as compared to a much shorter or absent amino acid linker.  To be clear, the prior art (including some work by the inventors here) had created ApoA1-Fc fusions, but with a short linkage. And, various types of connectors of the claimed length were also known.

• Panasonic said it had undertaken negotiations with the two Chinese companies for a number of years but had reached no resolution on the issue.

• The statement said: “Panasonic is a recognised technical contributor to the WCDMA and LTE standards and holds substantial SEPs resulting from its contributions.

• {loadposition sam08}”Through good-faith bilateral discussions, Panasonic has successfully concluded licences with companies that compete globally with Xiaomi and Oppo.

• “These licences enable Panasonic to sustain its global research initiatives to improve quality of life and to advance society, the foundational purposes that drive its corporate missions.”

• It said this was the first time it had found it necessary to launch actions over its cellular communications SEPs.

Copyrights

• Creative Artists Agency is prepping a round of layoffs to reduce staff numbers as the Hollywood strikes wear on. According to reports, around 60 people will be impacted across the agency. Layoffs are targeted for August 15, but could happen any time within the next few days as the news makes its rounds, sources report.

• In the pandemic emergency, Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive freely lent out digital scans of its library. Publishers sued. Owning a book means something different now.

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