● 08.15.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Leftover Links 15/08/2023: Chinese Sanctions, OpenAI Bankrupcy Expected by 2024

Posted in News Roundup at 6:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

• The transition of this blog into a FreeBSD and retrocomputing site was mostly an accident! But in keeping with this theme, I’ve decided to start a new series dedicated to showcasing some of my favourite software from the past. I still think there’s a lot we can learn from these tools.

• Be prepared to find Christmas decor near the school supplies this year: The holiday shopping season is creeping earlier and earlier.

• Why it matters: The traditional holiday shopping season ended with COVID, which pushed more deals online and caused retailers to spread out demand.

Science

• Born on August 14, 1910, Prof. Nüzhet Gökdoğan was one of the country’s first woman scientists.

• Verdict: Partly true

• China’s increasing investment in Laos in recent years has led to a Mandarin learning boom.

• Qiao’s repatriation highlights the Chinese Communist Party’s ‘long-arm’ cross-border law enforcement operations.

Education

• The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is often framed as a question of presidential powers and what a president’s authority truly entails.

• With every new decision of the Supreme Court, the idea of the institution not being impartial, along with it going against the voice of the people, is cemented deeper and deeper.

Hardware

• Remember my letter-salad post talking about the various PC hardware bus interfaces between ISA and PCI?

• Between ISA and PCI, PCs had EISA and VLB

• I’m surprised I didn’t make a comment about TLAs and ETLAs there; ETLAs being extended three-letter abbreviations. Technically they’re only acronyms if you pronounce them as words, like laser or COVID. Otherwise, they’re initialisms. TL;DR, etc.

• ALFA Network HaLow-U is an 802.11ah WiFi HaLow USB adapter based on the Newracom NRC7292 chipset and NXP i.MX 6 processor that works both in access point (AP) and client (STA) modes. It delivers long-range WiFi up to one kilometer in the 900 MHz frequency ISM bands and is mostly useful for IP cameras and high-end sensors. The ecosystem around WiFi HaLow (802.11ah) is expanding slowly, but surely, and we previously covered a mini PCIe card, a WiFi HaLow development board, and a gateway kit to extend the range of IP cameras, and also ALFA Network’s AHPI7292S Raspberry Pi HAT that found its way into RAKWireless WisGate Connect gateway.

• Intel should get the biggest slice of CHIPS Act funding as it conducts its R&D in the US, reckons CEO Pat Gelsinger.

• In a statement, the firm said the growth had been achieved under initiatives pushed by the current government which has been in power since 2014.

• The rate of growth has put India second in the ranks of countries where mobiles are made, the first being China.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Around 16 percent of Finland’s nurses considered a change of profession during the coronavirus pandemic, a recent university study shows.

• Agencies saw a governmentwide decrease in improper payments last year, after a surge of them at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Nationwide probe is expected to go on for one year and may extend back to offenses committed over 20-years.

• The inspection of over 400 fur farms will begin next month.

• Just add stuff to it.

• This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two years ago, parents around the world likely looked at China with a bit of jealousy: the country had instituted a strict three-hour-per-week limit for children playing video games.

• This comes after Indonesia paused some imports when lumpy skin disease was detected in some cattle.

• Hundreds of South Korean activists gathered on Saturday in Seoul, South Korea, in public protest following reports earlier this week that Japan will begin releasing radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

• On Friday, Tokyo Electric Power Company found leaks in a hose used at the Fukushima nuclear power plant to transfer nuclear-contaminated wastewater.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

• With security schema, Splunk and collaborators aim to transform alert telemetry from cacophony to chorus with one taxonomy across vendors and tools.

Security

• One of the biggest challenges for blockchain developers is objectively assessing their security posture and measuring how it progresses. To address this issue, a working group of Web3 security experts, led by Trail of Bits CEO Dan Guido, met earlier this year to create a simple test for profiling the security of blockchain teams.

• The US government’s CSRB will conduct a review of cloud security to provide recommendations on improving identity management and authentication.

• Vulnerabilities in CyberPower and Dataprobe power management products could be exploited in data center attacks, including to cause damage and for spying.

• The Linux community patched Zenbleed for all AMD Ryzen processors with Zen 2 cores last month, but the Steam Deck and its custom Zen 2 SoC were forgotten until this weekend.

• AMD Linux security engineer Borislav Petkov issued a new patch towards fixing the Zen 1-exclusive “Divide by zero” bug, showcasing both the willingness to revisit “explored” issues and the difficulty in security mitigation.

• Generative AI’s security vulnerabilities — and how we get ahead of them — are about to become the tech and policy world’s top priorities after this past weekend’s largest security test of large language models revealed just how diverse the problems already are.

• In the wake of recent vulnerabilities and high-profile attacks, there is growing concern regarding vulnerabilities present in Microsoft’s software and increasing intensity focused on the question of Microsoft’s culpability.

• Since the beginning of the modern internet, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have been a scourge. The first known example of a major DDoS attack happened in 1996 when prominent New York commercial internet provider Panix suffered an attack that knocked its servers offline for several days. In the years since then, the size and scope of DDoS attacks have grown, alongside a significant increase in their frequency.

• The NSA discovered the intrusion in 2020—we don’t know how—and alerted the Japanese. The Washington Post has the story:

• US authorities have announced charges against a Polish national who allegedly operated the LolekHosted.net bulletproof hosting service.

• Having got on a bit of a roll with dismantling plane hacking in the media with the MH370 documentary critique…

• How could I criticise possibly the best action movie series of all time? Well, it’s to help dispel myths about hacking planes.

• Ford says a critical vulnerability in the TI Wi-Fi driver of the SYNC 3 infotainment system on certain vehicle models does not pose a safety risk.

• Several vulnerabilities discovered in Iagona ScrutisWeb ATM fleet monitoring software could be exploited to remotely hack ATMs.

• Secureworks Inc. is laying off 15% of its workforce in a bid to improve profitability and redirect more resources to its flagship cybersecurity product suite. The company disclosed the move in a regulatory filing released today.

• The names Downfall, Inception, Meltdown and Spectre might evoke the names of Bond villains, but they describe something almost as insidious: They are all central processing unit-based security vulnerabilities that have been uncovered in the past several years.

• Poor cybersecurity is a risk to the interconnected digital systems on which we all increasingly rely, while improved security is an opportunity to build trust and advantage by enabling further digital transformation.

• In September 2022, an Intel471 report highlighted the increased likelihood of Monti being a rebrand of Conti based on their identical initial network access methods.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (samba), Red Hat (.NET 6.0, .NET 7.0, rh-dotnet60-dotnet, rust, rust-toolset-1.66-rust, and rust-toolset:rhel8), and SUSE (kernel and opensuse-welcome).

• Massachusetts health officials are warning over 134,000 individuals who are currently or were previously enrolled in certain state programs that their personal information has been involved in a recent third-party data security breach. The breach is part of a worldwide incident that involves a file-transfer software program called “MOVEit.”

• UMass Chan Medical School first became aware of the vulnerability in MOVEit on June 1. On July 27, UMass Chan discovered that some of the files contained information belonging to individuals who received services from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. This includes programs such as MassHealth, the State Supplement Program, Family Resource Centers, the Executive Office of Elder Affairs, and Aging Services Access Points. The affected individuals are a subset of current or recent participants in these programs.

• Sensitive information — including Social Security numbers, birthdays and addresses — for current and former patients at Coastal Orthopedics may have been compromised after an attacker hacked into the company’s system. The company detected suspicious activity on its network around June 11, prompting an investigation, according to a press release. Although the investigation is ongoing, Coastal Orthopedics determined that “certain files and folders within the network were taken without authorization.”

• Fox5 in D.C. reports Prince George’s County Public Schools revealed Monday its network experienced a cyber attack.

• [...]

• As of yesterday, then, there was no mention of whether this might be a ransomware incident or if there has been any ransom demand received.

• Prince George’s County Public Schools revealed Monday its network experienced a cyber attack.

• The school district says an estimated 4,500 user accounts were impacted out of 180,000.

• The Discord.io custom invite service has temporarily shut down after suffering a data breach exposing the information of 760,000 members.

• Discord.io is not an official Discord site but a third-party service allowing server owners to create custom invites to their channels. Most of the community was built around the service’s Discord server, with over 14,000 members.

• Yesterday, a person known as ‘Akhirah’ began offering the Discord.io database for sale on the new Breached hacking forums. As proof of the theft, the threat actor shared four user records from the database.

• Three managers were arrested on Monday by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service for breaching the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843).

• The three institutions are Hisense, an electronic goods dealership, Marwako Fast Foods and Agyabeng Akrasi and Co Limited, a law firm.

• Two others – Quick Credit and Investment Micro-Credit and Bemuah Royal Hospital, were asked to report to the CID by Tuesday morning at the latest for further interrogation.

• Norfolk and Suffolk constabularies have identified an issue relating to a very small percentage of responses to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for crime statistics, issued between April 2021 and March 2022.

• A technical issue has led to some raw data belonging to the constabularies being included within the files produced in response to the FOI requests in question. The data was hidden from anyone opening the files, but it should not have been included.

• United Bank, a financial services institution which provides banking services to Camden-Clark Physician Corporation, a physicians’ group practice located in Parkersburg, W.V. and Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital Corporation (collectively “Camden-Clark”), suffered a data security incident. This data security incident involved the compromise of a software product called MOVEit that is used by thousands of organizations around the world to transfer electronic data files.

Privacy/Surveillance

• A year-long project on protecting users’ data and privacy that analyzes the growing use of point-to-point messaging platforms in the United States and the implications their design and governing policies have for user privacy and free speech.

Defence/Aggression

• But is so far holding back on any immediate retaliatory moves such as restricting key technology exports.

• Prior to these reports, only twice has a Chinese research team publicly released details about malware emanating from American spy agencies; one instance was when 360 Core Security (Qihoo Security) named former CIA employee Joshua Adam Schulte as being the person who leaked material to WikiLeaks which the latter published under the name Vault 7.

• Secret service report heralds a more mature approach to bilateral ties with China, expert says.

• Human Rights Watch’s call to intervene to end spiraling violence by gangs in Haiti comes as the country awaits a response from the U.N. Security Council to its request for an international armed force to step in.

• During the intense conflict in the country’s Kurdish regions in the 1990s, villagers in Kars who protested against the practices of the security forces were confronted with gunfire, leading to the loss of 17 lives, including children.

• Charles McGonigal had a family, a house in the suburbs and an influential job as a counterintelligence leader in New York. Federal prosecutors suggest it wasn’t enough for him.

• President Biden will host Japan‘s prime minister and South Korea‘s president this week for his first-ever leaders summit at Camp David, with plans to announce joint military exercises — and a possible new crisis hotline between the three allies.

• Amid protests from Beijing, State Department official says there’s no need to ‘over torque’ the US visit.

• He reiterated that Taiwan is “not subordinate” to China.

• An outspoken critic of Beijing, Lai Ching-te aims to reassure voters and Washington that he will be a safe pair of hands if elected.

• Lai Ching-te, a frontrunner in January’s Taiwanese presidential election, arrives in New York on Saturday.

• Day by day, the People’s Liberation Army is turning up the pressure, deploying an ever-wider array of planes and ships.

• China on Sunday vowed “resolute and forceful measures” over a weekend trip by Taiwan Vice President William Lai to the United States it said it was closely monitoring.

• Taiwan will not be afraid nor back down in the face of authoritarian threats, the island’s vice president told supporters on a US visit that Beijing has condemned, while reiterating a willingness to talk to China.

• He has also reiterated a willingness to talk to China.

• China on Sunday vowed “resolute and forceful measures” over a weekend trip by Taiwan Vice President William Lai to the United States it said it was closely monitoring.

• A group calls on Laos to give details of repatriation of detained lawyer Lu Siwei, who may face the same fate.

• Washington is trying to instill a doctrine in its allies to jointly assume that China is a threat to the region.

• He gave the order as he visited key munitions factories on Friday and Saturday.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for a “drastic boost” in missile production during visits to key weapons factories, state media said Monday, as South Korea and the United States prepared for joint drills next week.

• N. Korean hackers reportedly continued to successfully target financial exchanges globally.

• Mr Kim also visited weapons factories where he called for more weapons to be built.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has dismissed his top general and called for stepping up war preparations “in an offensive way”, including boosting weapons production and conducting more drills, state media reported Thursday.

Russia and War in Ukraine

• At least 12 people were killed and dozens injured in an explosion and fire at a petrol station in Russia’s Caucasus republic of Dagestan, the emergency situations ministry said Tuesday. “More than 60 people were injured in the fire in Makhachkala, and 12 of them died,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.

• Several reasons might explain the differing response, including the fact that no American troops have been committed to the fight.

• Some are brought against their will. Others are encouraged in subtler ways. But the over-all efforts seem aimed at the erasure of the Ukrainian people.

• On Sunday, Russia also reported the downing of Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in Kursk.

• The Russian defense ministry confirmed that it had intercepted a commercial vessel, an escalation that Russia had promised would happen after backing out of a trade deal with Ukraine.

• Ukraine’s charge d’affaires in Armenia, Oleksandr Senchenko, has died in an apparent drowning incident at the high-altitude Lake Sevan in the country’s east on August 13, Armenian officials said.

• Romanian officials said the NATO member nation’s navy had sent a team of specialized divers and a helicopter to search for stray mines along the Black Sea coast after an explosion shook the embankment near the resort town of Costinesti.

• Russia’s military made good on its threats to enforce its blockade of Ukraine, adding to the tensions in an increasingly active theater of war.

• In an account provided to The Times, a Russian soldier describes his commanders’ casual disregard for the lives of inmates like him, and how they are pressured to re-enlist.

• By Peter Catterall Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu will visit Russia and Belarus this week, his ministry said on Monday, as relations between Beijing and Moscow flourish with high-level visits and phone calls. Ties have remained warm in recent years, with China refusing to speak out against Russia’s widely condemned invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.

• Ivan Korolyov, a 26-year-old Russian army lieutenant who took part in the war in Ukraine, has applied for asylum in Lithuania after being detained at Vilnius bus station, TV3 News reported on Friday.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on August 14 said he visited troops in the Donetsk region on the front line of the war against Russia.

• The U.S. Defense Department on August 14 announced a new package of security assistance for Ukraine as it continues to battle against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

• A citizen journalist and nurse, Iryna Danylovych, who in 2021 was sentenced to seven years in prison by Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine’s Moscow-annexed Crimea, has been transferred to a penal colony in the Russian region of Stavropol Krai.

• The torture rooms in the battered Ukrainian city of Kupiansk have been empty for months. But Moscow’s advancing forces are just five miles away.

• Col. Doug Macgregor, an ex-Pentagon advisor

• Ukraine’s deputy defence minister said Monday that the Ukrainian military pushed Russian forces out of pockets of territory along front lines in the east and south of the country. The news came as President Volodymyr Zelensky paid a visit to troops near the eastern front.

• Less than a week after a CNN poll found a majority of Americans oppose sending more money to Ukraine, the Biden administration announced that it will be seeking another $24 billion in funding. If approved, the total amount spent by the US since 2022 on its proxy war against Russia will reach about $137 billion.

• The current deputy head of the Russian Security Council imagined a conversation between two fictional Finns about the country’s decision to join Nato.

• Mr Kim calls it a “longstanding strategic relationship”.

• Fugitive Russian lawmaker Vladislav Zhivitsa announced at a press conference in Warsaw on August 13 the launch of a movement for the independence of his native Smolensk region from the Russian Federation.

• Forty-five diplomats and employees of the Russian Embassy in Chisinau left Moldova on August 14 after the Moldovan government last month ordered the drastic reduction of Moscow’s diplomatic presence there.

• Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski announced Monday that the Internal Security Agency arrested two Russians on espionage charges. The Internal Security Agency alleges that the Russians distributed Wagner Group propaganda in Krakow and Warsaw.

Environment

• At least 58 people were killed, nine of them in a temple collapse, and many more were feared missing after intense rains caused floods and landslides in India, officials said Monday.

• A climate science debate is simmering over how much of 2023′s record warmth is due to human-caused factors, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, and the role of other influences.

• Law students from the European Union are reporting for JURIST on law-related events in and affecting the European Union and its member states. Jacky-Long Mouthuy is a law student at Maastricht University. He files this dispatch from Maastricht, Netherlands.

• The Inflation Reduction Act let me break up with fossil fuels.

• A Montana state judge ruled Monday that a provision of state law is unconstitutional because it violates “the right to a clean and healthful environment,” a fundamental right enshrined in Montana’s Constitution.

• A Montana judge sided with young environmental activists who said state agencies violated their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development.

• The court found that young people have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and that the state must consider potential climate damage when approving projects.

Energy/Transportation

• Continuing the alcohol stove project:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202308/experiments-with-an-alcohol-stove.html

• Well well, I found a tin exactly the right size, at the local Coles supermarket. It is 700g “Milo Pro”:

*

• I used to drink Milo as a child. Have transferred it into a jar, now looks like will have to get into drinking it again. As a hot drink in the evening will be nice.

• The Milo tin dimensions are perfect. The tin is slightly higher than the aluminium construction, but that is exactly what I want. Serendipitous!

• Armed with stones, two taxi drivers smashed the windows of a vehicle on July 27 in Cancun, the famous Mexican seaside resort, because they thought its driver worked for Uber. This is not an isolated incident: in Cancun, taxi drivers regularly attack alleged Uber drivers or their customers, even though the ride-sharing service has been legal for several months. In their view, Uber is a threat to their business.

• Reports from news agencies said at least 25 people were killed and 66 injured. The fire in the Dagestan region caused multiple explosions, one report said.

• The US affiliate of crypto giant Binance has launched a spate of layoffs since regulators last week accused it of violating securities laws and sought asset freezes, dismissals and suspensions. Two people with knowledge of the employees said the social media post.

Wildlife/Nature

• Photos can say a million words. In terms of light pollution, they can speak on how dark skies can change lives. It astounds us to think about how just one snapshot can power a movement for conservation efforts by showing how practical and awe-inspiring dark sky-friendly lighting can be.

• The Marcos administration has suspended the projects, pending an environmental review.

Finance

• The founder of Custodia Bank discusses the future of bitcoin and banking.

• The currency weakened as far as 102 to the dollar, adding to concerns of inflation and prompting the Russian Central Bank to move quickly to consider raising rates.

• Nate Silver isn’t just the polling guru who famously forecasted the states that would elect—and reelect—Barack Obama as president in 2008 and 2012 with stunning accuracy. (He called each of the 50 states in 2012 and 49 of them four years earlier.) He’s also a founder who sold his media business, only to leave a decade later as more than half of his team got the boot. Now that he’s regrouping for the next challenge, he has some advice to share to founders considering whether to sell their own startups.

• FiveThirtyEight.com, named after the number of votes in the Electoral College, was founded in 2008 by Silver as a data-driven news site that covered politics, economics, and sports—or, in other words, a blog. It grew out of Silver’s election forecasting, initially anonymously, as a blogger for the progressive site Daily Kos. With a background in sports data, inspired by the groundbreaking work of analyst Bill James, Silver’s political prognostications earned him a reputation as a digital oracle of sorts. Bill Simmons, the former ESPN writer and podcaster who founded The Ringer and later sold it to Spotify, used to refer to Silver as a “witch” when he had him on as a guest.

• A new national emergency declaration will allow for the creation of an outbound investment screening system targeting Americans’ investments in China.

• By Aurélia End President Joe Biden on Wednesday moved to restrict US investment in Chinese technology during a multi-state tour of the Southwest to tout his push to revive American manufacturing after decades of decline.

• ‘Model’ real estate developer Country Garden misses interest payments on US$ bonds, causing its stock to plummet.

• The executive order will ban some American investments in China’s microchip, A.I. and quantum technology sectors.

• The new limits, aimed at preventing American help to Beijing as it modernizes its military, escalate a conflict between the world’s two largest economies.

• Beijing on Thursday vowed to “safeguard” its interests against a new US policy to restrict investment in Chinese technology, accusing Washington of disrupting global supply chains.

• America’s banks have become more reluctant to lend money to businesses and households — an intended side effect of the Fed’s rate-hiking campaign.

• Why it matters: New research shows that phenomenon playing out to an extraordinary degree. Making credit more expensive and harder to get will weigh on economic activity and quell inflation.

• Cybersecurity firm NCC Group is making job layoffs for the second time in six months.

• Headquartered in Manchester, with more than 35 offices across the globe, NCC Group employs more than 2,000 people, according to its website.

• The cuts are affecting its UK workforce as well as staff in North America, the group confirmed to CRN.

• “As set out earlier this year, we have a renewed global strategy in response to changing market dynamics and client demands,” said an NCC Group spokesperson.

• With declining users and competitors on the rise, could the creator of ChatGPT really be on the way to bankruptcy?

• Mortgage interest rates are fuelling inflation.

• As consumer prices fall and other signs of weakness emerge, fears are growing that the world’s second-largest economy could be heading toward an extended slump.

• As China’s economy flashes indications of decline, the consequences pose perils for countries around the globe.

• Last week, US President Joe Biden called China a “ticking time bomb” after consumer prices fell there for the first time in two years, and gave an ominous warning about the potential for China to do “bad things” during difficult economic times.

• The sharply worded comments are the latest example of the president’s willingness to criticize China even as he tries to ease tensions.

• By Sébastien Ricci Concerns are mounting in China around Country Garden, a major property developer whose colossal debt raises fear of a bankruptcy that could spell wider economic turbulence, two years after the unravelling of its competitor Evergrande. Country Garden shares plunged by more than 16 percent in Hong Kong on Monday…

• Tech companies have laid off 226,000 employees so far this year, almost 40 per cent more than in 2022, a report showed on Tuesday. Although the tech industry has seen a shocking number of job cuts last year, 2023 has been much worse.

• Despite latest cutbacks, tech layoff pace slows dramatically

• Samfiru Tumarkin LLP is investigating reports that Ross Video is eliminating approximately nine per cent of its workforce.

• Several employees at the Ottawa-based supplier of live production solutions have contacted the firm — claiming that they were just notified of the layoff.

• Our experienced employment lawyers are following up with affected staff to better understand the situation.

• The company claims on its website that it employs a total workforce of more than 1,300 people.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) said Monday the Fulton County grand jury investigation into alleged efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results was a “pivot point” for the U.S. and Republicans.

• A legal tool normally reserved for the Mafia and organized crime could make former President Trump’s next potential indictment his most damaging.

• Why it matters: Georgia’s expansive racketeering law — known as RICO — gives prosecutors a powerful tool to pursue charges in their investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

• China’s plans to build a new embassy near the Tower of London have stalled following local opposition to what would be the biggest diplomatic compound in Britain. The borough of Tower Hamlets, the local government council responsible for the area, blocked the project in February, citing concerns about the increased risk of terror attacks, protests and traffic in an area visited by millions of tourists each year. Tower Hamlets says Chinese authorities had until Thursday to appeal the decision to the U.K. government but did not.

• It’s well known that China has the world’s largest navy and coastguard—the result of a tenfold increase in military spending since 1995—which it uses to advance its pugnacious revisionism.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• A media star with ties to the Chinese Embassy wears traditional dresses, sings folk songs and cooks Uyghur dishes.

• Beijing promotes alternative vision of Uyghur life amid international condemnation of rights abuses.

Censorship/Free Speech

• King Abdullah II of Jordan approved a bill Saturday to penalise a variety of online speech, including posts that contain content ‘promoting, instigating, aiding, or inciting immorality.” Such posts are punishable with fines or months in prison. Posts that demonstrate ‘contempt for religion’ or ‘undermining national unity’ are also prohibited.

• One of the 47 pro-democracy figures charged with conspiring to commit subversion had once ordered his social media managers not to use a popular protest slogan or to include messages of support for Hong Kong independence, his assistant has told a national security trial.

• Fans hoping to show solidarity and sing along to ‘Rainbow’ in ongoing crackdown on community under Xi Jinping.

• If the world’s best China experts can’t figure out what happened to one of the country’s most internationally recognizable officials, then imagine what else remains hidden behind the regime’s closed doors.

• Residents in Zhuozhou, which bore the brunt of the floods, say the authorities did not do enough.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• American officials have said that their Russian counterparts are blocking them from getting regular consular access to Mr. Gershkovich.

• U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy met with jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on August 14, a State Department spokesperson said, in her third such visit since his March detention on espionage charges he denies.

• A police department in Marion, Kansas, was accused Sunday of violating First Amendment protections after officers raided a local paper and the home of its owners.

• Jailed Australian journalist Cheng Lei yearns for her children and the country’s “psychedelic sunsets”, she said in a rare public letter marking three years since her mysterious arrest in China.

• Poignant message released ahead of the third anniversary of her imprisonment by Beijing.

• Australian journalist Cheng Lei has been detained in China since August 2020.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The two publishers are the only prospective bidders to so far confirm an interest.

• Hollywood’s twin strikes have so far cost California’s economy an estimated $3 billion. What would it take for the sides to reach agreement?

• One of the eight was tortured, as his photographs revealed. Two villagers are missing in Söğütlü village following an operation in the village by the soldiers, which followed an air bombardment in the rural areas. The detained villagers are expected to appear in court tomorrow.

• As a wheelchair user with multiple disabilities, travel is unpredictable at best and completely inaccessible at worst. In order to book my trips, I have to trust the accuracy of the websites run by hotels, airlines, car rental companies, and more to learn whether I can use their services (i.e., have the honor of paying them my hard-earned money.) The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires hotels to include enough of their accessibility features on their website that a person with a disability can judge whether their hotel would be safe and usable. Unfortunately, the features they include are often incomplete or inaccurate.

• A recent Starbucks win suggests conservatives may be fighting a losing war in dismantling America Inc.’s diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives.

• The protesters put forward a list of 15 demands, including the improvement of working conditions, the modernization of mining equipment, the hiring of extra workers, and enhanced vacations, disability, and financial benefits.

• Missing bodies, missing body parts, bodies piling up, bodies being handled by unqualified personnel, bribes to view bodies…These are just come of the ways in which the rights of deceased people and their families have been violated in South Africa’s State mortuaries.

• The move prompts warnings that the authorities are about to ‘shut the door’ on mass emigration, capital flight.

• Four men and six women are held in connection with the now-disbanded 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund for arrestees.

• China has been stepping up its oversight on what it deems espionage activities.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Guest Post: Measuring the structure of e-gov domain names.

• Your Internet friends don’t know you at all, even if they think they do.

• The Manipur High Court on Friday directed the government of that Indian state to selectively enable mobile internet services based on whitelisted phone numbers, addressing a controversial ban on internet access amid ethnic violence in the state. The court also urged the government to ensure mobile internet access for the public.

Monopolies

Patents

• Sara Burghart (45) began her career in 2006 at McDermott Will & Emery, where she initially worked in IT contract drafting. She first gained experience in patent disputes in an infringement case between McDermott client Document Security Systems (DSSI) and the European Central Bank.

• One-E-Way, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 22-2020 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 14, 2023) (nonprecedential) (Opinion by Chief Judge Moore, joined by Judges Lourie and Stoll).

• The district court sided with Apple on summary judgment, finding no infringement. On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed, holding that Apple’s accused Bluetooth products do not infringe One-E-Way’s patents.  Although the parties had agreed to the construction of the “unique user code” term, they disagreed over the construction-of-the-construction.  On appeal, the court treated this meta-construction effectively as a form of claim construction — looking for the ordinary meaning rather than a contract-like interpretation that would have looked more toward discerning the intent of the parties.

• In what will be seen as a welcome development to IP owners, the Brazilian Patent Office (BRPTO) is improving the system to record IP agreements. More specifically, on 11 July 2023, the BRPTO published Ordinances 26 and 27/2023, improving the guidelines for registration of technology transfer and franchise agreements.

Trademarks

• In this consolidated opposition proceeding involving, inter alia, Applicant Coulter Venture’s mark MONSTER LITE for weight lifting equipment, the parties served four expert reports: an initial report by Monster (“MEC”), a rebuttal report by Coulter, a sur-rebuttal report by MEC, and then a sur-sur-rebuttal report by Coulter. The Board granted MEC leave to serve its sur-rebuttal repor, but limited it to a critique of Coulter’s report. The Board then nixed Coulter’s sur-sur-rebuttal report, ruling that sur-sur-rebuttal reports are never permitted. Monster Energy Company v. Coulter Ventures, LLC, Oppositions Nos. 91233515 (parent), 91233516, 91233517, 91242202, and 91252191 (August 7, 2023) (Order by Katie Bukrinsky, Interlocutory Attorney).

Copyrights

• Back in April, songwriter organizations called on the Copyright Royalty Board to accelerate the finalization of the Phonorecords III ruling that it had handed down in July of 2022. Now, the three-judge CRB has officially issued its final determination for the five-year stretch at hand.

• A new report has uncovered how some of the biggest names in music applied for funding intended for small venues during the COVID pandemic. Here’s the latest. The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) was a grant intended to keep independent venues afloat during one of the worst downturns in recent history.

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