● 08.16.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 16/08/2023: Kubernetes 1.28 and Debian Turns 30

Posted in News Roundup at 10:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Server

• Announcing the release of Kubernetes v1.28 Planternetes, the second release of 2023!

• This release consists of 45 enhancements. Of those enhancements, 19 are entering Alpha, 14 have graduated to Beta, and 12 have graduated to Stable.

• On behalf of Kubernetes SIG Release, I am very excited to introduce the Kubernetes community-owned software repositories for Debian and RPM packages: pkgs.k8s.io! The new package repositories are replacement for the Google-hosted package repositories (apt.kubernetes.io and yum.kubernetes.io) that we’ve been using since Kubernetes v1.5.

• This blog post contains information about these new package repositories, what does it mean to you as an end user, and how to migrate to the new repositories.

Applications

• The next minor version of OpenZFS is nearly ready, and ZFSBootMenu makes it easy to boot Linux from it, via a clever workaround.

• The advanced OpenZFS filesystem is getting close to its next release, version 2.2, with release candidate 3 (around this time last year, OpenZFS 2.1 got to rc8, so it might be a little while yet). Version 2.2 will improve support for Linux containers, with support for overlay filesystems (sometimes also called union filesystems), support for Linux 6.3 IDmapped mounts (which are explained in this talk), and delegation of dataset namespaces to containers.

• Block cloning should improve the efficiency of marking identical blocks as shared by different files, or even parts of the same file. The new BLAKE3 algorithm can be used to generate ZFS checksums, which is also used in the new CdC Veilid P2P tool we recently covered, and management of the disk cache has been improved.

• In 2020, Apple began the Apple silicon transition, using self-designed, 64-bit ARM-based Apple M1 processors on new Mac computers. Maybe it’s the perfect time to move away from the proprietary world of Apple, and embrace the open source Linux scene.

• Help Viewer is a WebKit based HTML viewer for macOS aimed at displaying help files and other documentation.

• Help Viewer is proprietary software and not available for Linux. We recommend the best free and open source software.

• IRC is a good way of engaging with the Linux community. Being able to tap into the wealth of knowledge of individuals logged into IRC enables users to engage directly with developers and other users of distributions and applications. IRC is not just limited to obtaining and giving technical support to others; it can be used for many other activities.

• To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled an updated list of 9 praiseworthy graphical IRC clients. Our findings are captured in the ratings chart below in the classic LinuxLinks-style

• On any given day, I will open, use, and close a terminal on the Linux desktop a number of times. In the morning, I’ll open a terminal and run an update/upgrade on my machine. Then, throughout the day, I’ll open the terminal to take care of other tasks.

• I could do this process the traditional way by either navigating through the desktop menu and opening a terminal or adding a launcher for my terminal of choice in the Ubuntu Budgie dock. Either way, it’s a simple process that doesn’t require much thought or effort.

Instructionals/Technical

• ISPConfig 3 is an open-source web hosting control panel for Linux machines. It is a free alternative to popular control panels like cPanel, DirectAdmin, or Plesk.

Games

• Valve has released a new Beta version of the Steam client for desktop and Steam Deck, plus an expansion to add in Indonesian language support.

• Enjoy comics and visual novels? How about super heroes? You should take a look at the recently released Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain which looks great. This comes from the same team who created Arcade Spirits, which was also pretty good!

• Did you enjoy Unforeseen Incidents from Backwoods Entertainment? They’ve revealed their new title We Stay Behind, a single-player third-person mystery between dreams and reality. It’s currently funding on Kickstarter, and they’ve again teamed up with Application Systems Heidelberg for the publishing and marketing.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• It’s your chance to let your imagination run wild and create artwork that captures the essence of innovation and community that KDE is known for.

• As a token of our appreciation, the winning artist will receive a brand-new Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition, powered by a 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1340P processor. This laptop boasts a modular design, allowing you to effortlessly disassemble and rebuild it, offering the freedom to replace or upgrade crucial components at your convenience.

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

• In case you don’t already know, Pixelfed is a media sharing oriented solution that federates with Fediverse using the ActivityPub . And I like it also because it is based on PHP. This makes it quite simple to be hosted on OpenBSD. And here’s how I do this.

• The vnet (network subsystem virtualization infrastructure) on FreeBSD is both a blessing and a curse. For me, it isn’t working well with IPv6. I’ve hit issues with pf (since solved, I’m sure). It’s a useful feature but can be confusing. It helps to have lots of time to think about it and what you’re doing.

• I’m ready to downsize. I’m going to replace knew with r730-03. The former has 20 5TB drives. I don’t need all that space now. I’ll settle for 12TB instead.

• I regularly see people reporting high memory usage on OpenBSD when looking at some monitoring program output.

• Those programs may be not reporting what you think. The memory usage can be accounted in different ways.

• Most of the time, the file system cache stored in-memory is added to memory usage, which lead to think about a high memory consumption.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Although it’s not long after job cuts at Red Hat, the company’s team in Mexico is looking for a developer to work on the Linux bootloader stack.

• The role has been open for a couple of weeks, but if you fancy your chances, it’s worth a go. Red Hat software engineer director Christan Schaller tweeted the role last week.

• As we reported over a year ago, there was a proposal to drop legacy BIOS boot support from Fedora. It proved to be wildly controversial, and it did not in fact happen. Amid the many, many comments in various places, it emerged that many hypervisors still default to BIOS booting, with UEFI boot support a non-default option, including Reg FOSS desk favorite VirtualBox. Even in VirtualBox 7.0, the manual calls its EFI support “experimental”: [...]

• I’ve been blogging about my recent switch to openSUSE Leap and the collapse of Fedora due to “de-prioritization” by Red Hat, and Fedora basically falling into a gradual state of abandonment and bitrot.

• Here’s what an IBM Red Hat employee says will happen now that Red Hat has divested itself from LibreOffice. As you can see, desktop Bluetooth and a lot of other things are now effectively abandoned and nobody cares what they do on your Fedora desktop anymore.

Debian Family

• Believe it or not, it’s been 30 years since the late Ian Murdock announced the Debian Project on August 16th, 1993, and the initial release of Debian GNU/Linux a month later on September 15th, in an attempt to develop the “Universal Operating System.”

• Now, 30 years later, Debian is being used by millions of users around the world, either directly by using the Debian GNU/Linux operating system or by using one of its numerous derivatives, such as the very popular Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

• In the dynamic realm of today’s technology world, where trends change faster than the blink of an eye, staying relevant for three decades is a feat achieved by a rare few.

• Debian, the venerable and iconic open-source operating system, stands proudly among this elite group as it celebrates its 30th birthday.

• Debian… ok, I know, Debian/GNU Linux is an operating system that emerged from the brilliance of a passionate software developer, Ian Murdock, on August 16th, 1993.

• Today, 30 years later, it is no exaggeration to say that it is the most respected Linux distribution, deservedly so. In all that time, Debian has released 17 major and 123 minor releases, establishing itself as a bastion of predictability, security, and reliability.

• Today is the thirtieth anniversary of Debian. The number one thing on our minds should be the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide.

• On Friday, 13 August 2010, people on the Ubuntu payroll began a new push for DEP-5. Barely 48 hours later and Frans Pop decided enough was enough. Pop’s resignation email to debian-private reads like a suicide note.

• I previously looked at how Debian made a release dedication to Ian Murdock after his suicide but there was no equivalent dedication to Frans Pop.

• Why did they not experience the same treatment?

• Within hours of the bad news, Mark Shuttleworth had sent an email to debian-private suggesting that it remain private.

• The arguments made by Shuttleworth may be correct but this still feels wrong.

• Shuttleworth admits that his business model poses a danger to Debian volunteers.

• His participation in debian-private suggests he has a duty of care to all volunteers, whether they are his employees or not.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Date: 6-8 September 2023

• Location: Cartagena, Colombia

• For those looking for a streamlined, lightweight command line interface for Docker on Mac, look no further. Multipass is a flexible tool that makes it easy to create and run Ubuntu VMs on any platform, and it comes with built-in tools that make running applications like Docker feel native on platforms such as macOS.

Devices/Embedded

• For software, MYIR states that the MYC-YM62X CPU Module supports the Linux operating system (based on the official kernel 5.10.168), and they will provide peripheral drivers to accelerate software development.

• The company provides Linux 5.10.168 for the module with all drivers and source code, as well as Yocto Linux images with or without GUI, and two demo applications, namely a charging pile program with Modbus communication, IEC104 platform communication protocol and a charging demonstration interface, and an “Engineering Machinery Scenarios” demo using four cameras and displaying them in mosaic form on the display. Both demos leverage the company’s MeasyHMI V2.0 graphical framework based on Qt 5. As a side note, the TI AM625 SoC is also found in the BeaglePlay SBC so software support might be indirectly available there as well.

• ADLINK recently announced the availability of the COM-HPC-cRLS  Computer-on-Module built around the latest 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs. Some of the key features include its DDR5 memory support, PCIe Gen5, dual 2.5GbE with TSN and quad-displays.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The customer experience should always be the focus at all stages of development of an open source project. A developer makes many decisions when embarking on a project. What to write? What language? What framework/toolkits/libraries? What license? Lots of questions which all need careful consideration. From the end-user’s perspective.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• I have the birthday of curl remembered and I often repeat that it was started on March 20 1998. But that’s just the first time we shipped a version of the tool using the name curl. The tool, the code and the idea started before.

Programming/Development

• I have studied lambda calculus at university a lot – our first year CS course was functional programming, there was a second year logic course where lambda expressions were used as proofs of mathematical statements represented as types, there was a fourth year CS course which taught different programming paradigms (including functional programming) by just implementing an interpreter for a basic language in that paradigm… it’s kinda becoming second nature to me at this point. Given that I’ve done this so often, I figured I should make a lambda calculus interpreter in Rust to become more familiar with how to use it.I’ve been working on my programming language for a couple of months now, in fits and starts1. In the original post, I laid out my plan for it, and after creating the parser the next step was writing a formatter. I thought this would be a nice intermediate step after writing the parser, something easy to exercise the code without being as complicated as the interpreter.

• Well… It was hard, even with the shortcuts I took.

• Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.

• The question and my initial tweet on the subject prompted an interesting discussion with Shriram Krishnamurthi and other folks.

• So here’s a slightly more thought out exploration.

Python

• I was recently nerd sniped into writing a Python version of a simple although real exercise. As part of that nerd snipe, I decided to write my Python using type hints (which I’ve been tempted by for some time). This is my first time really trying to use type hints, and I did it without the benefit of reading any ‘quick introduction to Python type hints’ articles; I worked from vague memories of seeing the syntax and reading the documentation for the standard library’s typing module. I checked my type hints with mypy, without doing anything particularly fancy.

Leftovers

Science

• Fusion is hot right now – so hot that the US Department of Energy is dumping another $112 million into a dozen supercomputing projects to advance progress on further clean energy breakthroughs.

• The Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program combines the DoE’s existing Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) programs with the goal of solving complex fusion energy problems using supercomputing resources, including exascale systems.

• Using electrodes, computer models and brain scans, researchers previously have been able to decode and reconstruct individual words and entire thoughts from people’s brain activity (SN: 11/15/22; SN: 5/1/23).

• The new study, published August 15 in PLOS Biology, adds music into the mix, showing that songs can also be decoded from brain activity and revealing how different brain areas pick up an array of acoustical elements. The finding could eventually help improve devices that allow communication from people with paralysis or other conditions that limit one’s ability to speak.

• The first flight of a new spacecraft produced by the Russian state space agency Roskosmos has been postponed to 2028, according to Russian media reports quoting chief designer Vladimir Kozhevnikov.

• Nations around the world are looking to unlock the Moon’s economic, scientific and geopolitical value.

• Why it matters: The Moon could be valuable high ground for the United States, China and other established space powers that see it as a crucial place to further assert dominance in space.

Education

• Indeed, while young people today are learning first-hand what it means to be at the epicenter of politically charged culture wars, test scores indicate that students are not learning how to succeed in social studies, math and reading.

• Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.

Hardware

• For some reason it’s really hard or impossible to find which sensor is in which model camera which seems like an obvious spec to list since it’s the most important component of the camera. Some of the major sensor differences between these two cameras: [...]

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

Covid

• I‘ve just retrieved today’s data from ONS to assess the risk of dying after COVID-19 spread to the population in 2019, seeing that people my age group die a lot more.

• No one knows exactly how to get them back.

• More Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments.

• Addiction is affecting the family relationships, mental health and finances of most adults in the U.S., according to a new KFF poll.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Windows TCO

• Israeli threat intelligence company Hudson Rock has identified credentials associated with cybercrime forums on roughly 120,000 computers infected with information stealers.

• The systems were discovered during the analysis of a database of more than 14.5 million machines infected with info-stealers, many of which belong to hackers, Hudson Rock says.

Security

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• The paper noted that in a contextualized setting human solving time slows down to 22 seconds, indicating that in this more natural setting, AI bots are faster than humans at solving the puzzle.

Privacy/Surveillance

• The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) is calling on free and open source software (FOSS) contributors to stop using Zoom video conferencing in light of the software maker’s terms-of-service scandal.

• Back in March, Zoom quietly changed its fine print to include a clause in section 10.4 that assigned the video-chat biz perpetual, royalty-free rights to use “customer content” to train machine learning models.

• The announcement comes following years of heated questions surrounding personal data security in the US, especially around major controversies like Cambridge Analytica accessing Facebook data and other breaches. China and the EU both have stricter data privacy regulations than the US, which has raised questions about US policy and led to some changes to accommodate US trade with the EU. Congress has also paid more attention to data privacy issues, with TikTok’s CEO recently testifying before the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, though Congress has yet to pass major data security legislation.

• You can now test your websites in multiple Tor browser versions as well as access onion links.

• It’s a stupid way to run a technological revolution. We should not have to rely on the benevolence of for-profit corporations to protect our rights. It’s not their job, and it shouldn’t be.

• The latest blunder follows a litany of recent errors elsewhere in the forces: Police Service in Northern Ireland (PSNI) last week confirmed it unwittingly exposed a spreadsheet containing details of serving police officers; and this week Cumbria constabulary said it mistakenly published the names, salaries and allowances for all officers and staff online.

• The details emerged as companies face fresh challenges with the rise of generative AI. People want to know what corporations are doing with information provided by users. And users are likewise curious about what they can do with the content generated by AI. Microsoft addresses these issues in a new clause titled “AI Services” in its terms of service.

Defence/Aggression

• Authorities in the US state of Georgia have indicted a famous Floridian and his loyal associates on counts including theft of data, software, and personal information.

• The celebrity defendant, a 77-year-old whose career has spanned real estate development, reality television, wagering, and a four-year term as president of the United States, was one of 19 people named in a 98-page indictment that lists [PDF] 41 counts and details “a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election.”

• In a recent interview with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service on the 15th anniversary of the war, Littell said the West was slow to react in the past to Russian aggression but has now belatedly “woken up.” He explained why there is no other choice than defeating the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine if change is ever to come to that country.

• “He had not only taken steps in acquiring those items and materials that are commonly used in improvised explosive devices, but that he had also taken steps to start putting potential devices together,” Maguire said.

• The investigation began when the FBI became aware of the teen’s alleged communication with Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad (KTJ), a foreign terrorist organization affiliated with al Qaeda. Over a period of weeks, the FBI identified the teen and conducted an investigation, which included surveillance.

• Deeper structural causes include the weakness of democratic institutions, the historical strength of militaries and the failure of economic development to deliver improvements for the majority of the population.

• Members of the Malian armed forces and Russian Wagner Group mercenaries reportedly are sowing terror and committing “grave human rights abuses.”

• Several Malian Soldiers died when they were ambushed by terrorists linked to the Islamic State group (IS) in the northeast Ménaka region, near the Nigerien border, in early August. The Soldiers were in a convoy headed for Niger nine days after that country’s military coup.

• Three Bulgarian nationals suspected of spying for Russia in the U.K. have been arrested and charged as part of a major national security investigation, the BBC reported on August 15.

• Three Bulgarian nationals have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia amid a major national security investigation conducted by the U.K., reports BBC News.

• Britain’s counterterrorism unit arrested the five on suspicion of spying on British intelligence, the authorities said following a BBC report that three of the same people had been accused of spying for Russia.

• The UK’s Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday that they have charged two men and a woman with ‘identity document offences.’ The Met’s statement came after the BBC reported the group was accused of spying for Russia.

• Police in Istanbul reportedly detained a woman on April 14 who was allegedly involved in the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Ankara, Andrei Karlov, in 2016.

• Denis Sharonov, the former agriculture and consumer market manager of Russia’s Komi Republic, fled to the U.S. and requested political asylum after he “started getting signals” that it would be dangerous for him to remain in Russia, the TV network RTVI reported on Tuesday, citing the minister himself.

War in Ukraine

• A week after a Moscow court added another 19 years to Alexey Navalny’s prison time (for various supposed “extremist” crimes), his associates published an essay written in his name titled “My Fear and Loathing.” In the manifesto, as it soon became known in the news media and on social networks, Navalny argued that the root of many of Russia’s most fundamental problems today can be found in the 1990s — specifically in the compromises and expediencies liberals then embraced at the expense of democracy. Navalny also criticized multiple individuals by name and warned that figures in Russia’s contemporary opposition are repeating their predecessors’ mistakes. The text sparked a discussion among Russian liberals about the legacy of the 1990s and whether Navalny has the right to castigate that era’s politicians and public figures when his allies today have sometimes exhibited questionable judgment. Many even question whether Navalny even wrote the essay. Meduza collected some of the reactions to the 1990s Manifesto.

• Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development has unveiled a new draft of its telecommunications strategy until 2030. Among other things, the document proposes expanding the military’s ability to control civilian wireless networks, including a right to disable them if a state of emergency is declared.

• State JSC “Latvian Railways” (LDz) could be involved in the transport of Ukrainian grain by rail in the autumn of this year, said Board Chairman Rinalds Pļavnieks in an interview with Latvian Radio on August 15.

• I am not a big fan of Federal Government disaster relief. Too much of the time the money never gets to those who need it most, and too often Washington’s armies of disaster “experts” are more interested in pushing people around than helping them.

• Hawaii officials worked painstakingly to identify the 99 people confirmed killed in wildfires that ravaged Maui and expected to release the first names Tuesday, even as teams intensified the search for more dead in neighborhoods reduced to ash.

• Recent drone attacks in Moscow and on Russian shipping in the Black Sea are an indication that Ukraine is becoming increasingly bold as it seeks to strike back in what is the world’s first ever drone war, writes Marcel Plichta.

• Overnight air strikes killed at least three people in western Ukraine’s Volyn region, the regional governor said early on Tuesday, as more strikes were reported in the neighbouring Lviv region. The attacks came a day after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was pictured visiting troops in the eastern frontline region of Donetsk. Follow our live blog for the latest updates. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

• UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine Denise Brown said in a statement Monday that Russia’s “indiscriminate attacks” in the past week have left many civilians, including children, in south Ukraine injured and frustrated humanitarian efforts.

• A Moscow court on August 15 ordered retired intelligence Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, an ardent supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, to pay a 40,000 rubles fine ($400) for discrediting Russian armed forces.

• A court in Russia’s Volga city of Samara has issued an arrest warrant for Sergei Podsytnik on a charge of distributing false news about Russia’s armed forces involved in Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

• Russia’s central bank on August 15 raised its key interest rate to 12 percent as the ruble fell sharply amid Western sanctions imposed over Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

• Police in the western Belarusian city of Brest have detained Ina Kalatskaya, the mother of noted activist Tsikhan Klyukach, who is currently fighting alongside Ukrainian armed forces against invading Russian troops.

• Police in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Daghestan have searched the apartment of Svetlana Anokhina, a self-exiled rights defender who is under investigation over her posts on Instagram that are critical of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

• The office of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea says Russian-imposed authorities in the region have detained 180 citizens, including 117 Crimean Tatars, for politically motivated reasons.

• The United Nations has confirmed the deaths of 9,444 civilians in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

• A second Kyrgyz citizen, who was part of the private Wagner mercenary group, has been detained on a charge of taking part in Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, relatives and several sources told RFE/RL.

• With the third-largest interest rate increase in a decade to shore up the ruble, Moscow’s policymakers are pursuing the conflicting goals of paying for the war against Ukraine and taming inflation.

• The country’s central bank raised interest rates 3.5 percentage points to stem rising prices and a weakening ruble. The move came after the national currency briefly fell below a key level with the U.S. dollar.

• Facing a growing mental health crisis among soldiers, Ukraine’s therapists and doctors use a variety of treatments, but the need far outstrips the available care.

• Ukrainian Foreign Ministry representative Oleg Nikolenko commented Tuesday on an earlier statement from NATO official Stian Jenssen in which the latter suggested Ukraine might ultimately have to cede part of its territory to Russia in exchange for joining the transatlantic alliance.

• Officials said more than three dozen missiles were fired in the strikes that were far from the front lines in the east and south.

• A 40-mile channel, best known outside shipping circles as a magnet for bird watchers, is now a crucial route allowing Ukrainian grain to reach the sea, protected by a NATO umbrella.

• Behind the thousands of troops fighting the counteroffensive are engineers and technicians who perform an essential, and often dangerous, job.

• The Indispensable Nation thesis originates not in the universal condition of mankind and the nation-states into which it has been partitioned.

Environment

• Then again, neither is anything else. The long lag time between fertility reduction and population stabilization is a key reason we need to address excessive human numbers sooner rather than later.

• Although devastating wildfires rage each year around the Mediterranean, heat waves bring temperatures above 40 degrees (104°F) and droughts are commonplace, southern European countries such as Spain, Greece and Italy are once again seeing record numbers of tourists this summer.

• That was the stunning ruling from a judge who delivered a landmark decision on Monday. It compels Montana, a major coal and gas producing state, to consider climate change when deciding whether to approve or renew fossil fuel projects.

• The state Constitution guarantees residents “the right to a clean and healthful environment.” In a lawsuit, Held v. Montana, 16 young people argued that the government had violated that right by enabling rampant development of fossil fuels, contributing to climate change and polluting the state.

• Attorneys for Montana argued the state’s emissions were too small to make much difference in climate change.

• Seeley rejected the argument, saying essentially that every ton of greenhouse gas counts toward global warming and each ton makes the plaintiff’s lives worse as wildfires in Montana get worse and streams dry up from drought.

• The judge also said the state can do something about it — deny permits for fossil fuel projects if their approval would result in “unconstitutional levels of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions.”

• Seeley rejected the argument, saying essentially that every ton of greenhouse gas counts toward global warming and each ton makes the plaintiff’s lives worse as wildfires in Montana get worse and streams dry up from drought.

• The judge also said the state can do something about it — deny permits for fossil fuel projects if their approval would result in “unconstitutional levels of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions.”

• In her decision, Judge Kathy Seeley of Montana’s 1st Judicial District Court, based in Helena, ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana. She declared that the state violated their constitutional rights to equal protection, dignity, liberty, health and safety, and public trust—all of which, she determined, are predicated on their right to a clean and healthful environment.

• “Each additional ton of GHGs [greenhouse gases] emitted into the atmosphere exacerbates impacts to the climate,” she wrote. “Plaintiffs’ injuries will grow increasingly severe and irreversible without science-based actions to address climate change.” For these reasons, she declared unconstitutional the state laws prohibiting Montana agencies from considering climate change or greenhouse gas emissions when permitting fossil fuel activities.

• “It’s one of the strongest decisions on climate change ever issued,” says Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University’s law school, which keeps a database of the more than 2,000 climate lawsuits that have been filed globally.

• In October 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter (recently renamed X), which had previously served as the leading social media platform for environmental discourse. Since then, reports a team of researchers in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution on August 15, there has been a mass exodus of environmental users on the platform—a phenomenon that could have serious implications for public communication surrounding topics like biodiversity, climate change, and natural disaster recovery.

• The flooding, triggered by heavy rains brought by Typhoon Khanun and a polar front, wreaked havoc in Primorye.

Energy/Transportation

• According to authorities, an investigation is underway and a criminal case has been opened over the incident.

• I’ve longed for a return to European travel, hopping almost immediately on a train, of course, once I finally got there, through those dark years of the pandemic.

• Tomorrow I get to shunt all of that melancholy, loss, and longing aside boarding the first of 20 trains (yes, that’s right, 20) which will bear me more than 3000 kilometres, all the way from here in Lisbon to Belgrade. I want this 40-day journey to be a grand return, and to enjoy the sheer pleasure of seeing the continent unfold at ground level.

• Reports from news agencies said at least 35 people were killed and 66 hospitalized in Dagestan, but there were no immediate reports of foul play or of a connection to the war in Ukraine.

• A “granfluencer” known as “our Filipino grandma” is among an army of US-based influencers being used by fossil fuel giants to promote major polluters to younger audiences, DeSmog can reveal.

• TikTok star Nora Capistrano Sangalang – known as “Mama Nora” or “Lola” – is best known for posting videos of her family and her insistence that her young fans are well fed.

Overpopulation

• There is growing pressure on groundwater in the region, Mahmoud says, but it’s also a complicated resource. How to manage groundwater depends on what sort of ground or rocks it’s stored in, how deep it’s stored, how it flows and how it’s connected to nearby surface water like rivers and lakes. It also depends on whether the groundwater comes from renewable sources.

• For instance, some groundwater in the Middle East has collected underground over thousands of years. This is called “fossil groundwater” and it’s hard to replenish. Like oil in the ground, it’s a single-use resource, experts say.

Finance

• I was thinking about which motor oil to use because Castrol advertised a decent rebate on Walmart’s web site, and I bought two five quart jugs of Edge Full Synthetic High Mileage for the Buick.

• I’ve been wanting to go to annual oil drain intervals, so I picked up a couple of FRAM Endurance Synthetic filters too. The box makes this outrageous claim of 25,000 mile oil changes, which I would never ever do. (Because I don’t want poo water and sludge in my engine, which you’d get at 25,000 mile intervals eventually with the best full synthetics and filters).

• There’s simply no way around needing to change your oil at least once a year, no matter how many miles you drive. 10,000 miles (which is what the Castrol oil says on the bottle) would be excessive considering I mostly city drive. I probably wouldn’t go past 8,000 or a year, personally.

• If some oil company was so confident in their product that they’d offer me a free engine tear down, rebuild, and de-gunking if their oil sludged my engine, I might be inclined to drive 10,000 miles like it says on the bottle, but of course they won’t, so you’re saving pennies and risking an engine to push it further.

• It hasn’t exactly been a peachy year for the layoffs in the tech industry. The tech workforce reductions have cost tens of thousands of employees their jobs, after the 2023 tech layoffs have been headlined by the conglomerates dubbed as the biggest fish in the sea – Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, just excluding Apple.

• The annual tech job cuts scored 202,000 in 2022, but have landslided to a staggering increase by 40 percent. 2023’s tech layoffs surmount to 226,000 as of now, with January being recorded as the highest-grosser with nearly 90,000 furloughs.

• Governments around the world have begun piloting central bank digital currencies. CBDCs are issued and backed by centralised financial authorities and have the potential to reshape the international financial system.

• “Most countries are ready to assert their sovereignty and defend their national interests, traditions, culture,” the Russian president said.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Threat detection and response firm SecureWorks is laying off roughly 15% of its staff, in the second round of firings announced by the company this year.

• The plans were announced in an SEC filing, with employees being notified starting August 14. In addition, the company revealed that it’s implementing “certain real estate‑related cost optimization actions”.

• Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s top three oil producers. Since the 1970s, Riyadh has agreed to sell its crude in dollars, helping maintain the greenback’s hegemonic status as the global reserve currency.

• The indictment said Bankman-Fried failed to disclose to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that his donations came from customer deposits via Alameda Research, his other company. He did this by directing his co-conspirator, Gary Wang, to alter FTX’ s computer code which gave Alameda improper unlimited access to customer deposits on FTX. The court filing reads: “Over time, Bankman-Fried directed that Alameda’s credit limit be raised so high that, in practice, Alameda was permitted to draw on FTX accounts funded by customer assets on an unlimited basis.”

• U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams told reporters last December that Bankman-Fried’s funds were “disguised to look like they were coming from wealthy co-conspirators, when in fact the contributions were funded by Alameda Research with stolen customer money.”

• The men allegedly earned thousands of dollars a month from paid viewers.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• The task of the new agency is to counter foreign sources of disinformation, not information generated inside Sweden. “We try to take action against malicious disinformation and propaganda coming from abroad that tries to change our view of reality, our voting behavior, our everyday decisions,” Magnus Hjort, the agency’s acting director general, told the German news outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Algeria has withdrawn the film “Barbie” from its cinemas for reportedly breaching morals, joining a growing number of Arab countries barring the global box office hit. Barbie, which has topped $1.2 billion in worldwide revenues, was released in Algeria on July 19 before cinemas removed it from their schedules on Sunday without explanation.

• Russia on Tuesday fined social media site Reddit for the first time for not deleting “banned content” that it said contained “fake” information about Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Russian news agency RIA reported on Tuesday, citing a Moscow court.

• Reddit joins a list of sites under scrutiny in Russia for failing to remove content that Moscow deems illegal, including Wikimedia, streaming service Twitch, and Google.

• The statement added that the decision to begin the talks has been prompted by financial and production issues, with the station feeling the economic impact of the Covid pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, rising inflation rates, and the procurement of rights to expensive sporting events.

• “Those dollars could be going to pay reporters for boots on the ground coverage, not paying legal fees for a lawsuit that appears designed to crush us,” she added.

• As politicians have grown more comfortable condemning media outlets they view as hostile — banning reporters from covering events, attacking them on social media, accusing them of being an “enemy of the people” — some public officials have started using the legal system as a way of hitting back. Former President Donald J. Trump has filed numerous unsuccessful defamation lawsuits against news organizations. Late last month a federal judge threw out his latest — a $475 million suit against CNN.

• 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.

• The bill has been criticised by several human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), Access Now and the Gulf Center for Human Rights, on the basis that the legislation jeopardises “digital rights, including freedom of expression and the right to information.” HRW stated that “Such vague provisions open the door for Jordan’s executive branch to punish individuals for exercising their right to freedom of expression, forcing the judges to convict citizens in most cases.”

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The raids effectively shut down the newspaper. They were apparently an act of retaliation brought on by local restaurant owner Kari Newell after a “confidential source” contacted the newspaper with “evidence that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and continued to use her vehicle without a driver’s license.”

• As the furor over police raiding the Marion County Record boils and bubbles, I want to take a step back and write about parts of the story that have been miscommunicated or missed altogether.

• This happens. Stories that spread nationally from a local dispute can get facts wrong or miss vital subtleties. The addition of social media to the mix means that news can become distorted in the game of telephone resulting from quickly skimmed headlines and half-read articles. But if we’re all going to be paying attention to a story about newspapers and newsgathering, it’s worth knowing what’s true, what’s false and what we just don’t know yet.

• We should all have the patience and fortitude, when facing a situation like this, to refrain from easy or simplistic attacks and assumptions.

• Law enforcement officers in Kansas raided the office of a local newspaper and a journalist’s home on Friday, prompting outrage over what First Amendment experts are calling a likely violation of federal law.

• The police department in Marion, Kansas — a town of about 2,000 — raided the Marion County Record under a search warrant signed by a county judge. Officers confiscated computers, cellphones, reporting materials and other items essential to the weekly paper’s operations.

• The small-town Kansas newspaper raided by police officers on Friday had been looking into allegations of misconduct against the local chief just months ago, according to the paper’s publisher, raising further concerns about the law enforcement officers’ motives.

• Elena Kostyuchenko is one of the finest and most intrepid Russian journalists working today. On day one of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kostyuchenko left for Ukraine to cover the war for Novaya Gazeta. Her reporting provided powerful testimony about the war crimes the Russian military committed against Ukraine’s civilian population. But in late March 2022, faced with the threat of criminal prosecution in Russia, Novaya Gazeta was forced to suspend publication. Kostyuchenko’s wartime dispatches were also removed from the newspaper’s website — and she hasn’t published a story since. Unable to return safely to Russia, Kostyuchenko moved to Germany and began experiencing health problems shortly afterwards. Instead of getting better, as she’d initially expected, her symptoms grew worse over time, until it became apparent that she might have been poisoned. Now, a new investigation from the independent outlet The Insider has revealed what most likely happened to her. In her own words, Elena Kostyuchenko recalls covering the 2022 invasion and surviving an apparent poisoning attempt, carried out in Europe.

• The independent outlet The Insider has published an investigation into a series of poisoning attacks targeting Russian journalists and activists in Europe. In October 2022, Elena Kostyuchenko, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and Meduza, was poisoned in Munich, and Irina Babloyan, who works for Ekho Moskvy, was poisoned in Tbilisi. In May 2023, Natalia Arno, the president of the Free Russian Foundation, showed symptoms of poisoning. While The Insider doesn’t usually publish materials about poisoning attacks until the perpetrators are identified, its journalists decided to make the information it has public, with the victim permission, in order to warn Russian activists who leave the country of the threat they might face abroad.

• The investigative news outlet The Insider has revealed alleged attempts to poison two Russian journalists and a civil activist who have fled the country.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Afghanistan’s Taliban government was set Tuesday to mark the second anniversary of their takeover of the country with a military parade in the movement’s birthplace, as well as other celebrations of their surge back to power, which has resulted in dramatic reversals on women’s rights.

• On August 15, 2021, when messages began to arrive about the Taliban’s impending arrival, Hussnia ran home from work. “I spent seven months cooped up and scared to death. I lost my baby. I was six months pregnant, it was a girl,” recalls the woman, who belongs to the Hazara community, a Shiite minority that is heavily discriminated against and persecuted by fundamentalists. She eventually fled with a brother and crossed the border into Pakistan concealed under a burqa. “Women lost their place in society overnight. Now they are only suitable for marriage and having children. They would have killed me because of my work,” says Hussnia, almost apologetically. The attorney spent six months in Islamabad, temporarily living in a hut, like other compatriots she had met in the city. In January 2023, she was among a group of prosecutors, judges and lawyers to be evacuated and taken in by Spain.

• “I am a woman. I would die before giving up my values,” roared a woman dressed in white from head to toe in Karaj, west of the capital Tehran. Brandishing her hair in a ponytail, she confronted a security officer threatening her with prison. “The era that we were scared of you has ended,” the woman proclaimed in a video posted on July 20 by Bisimchi Media, a Telegram channel allegedly linked to the security forces.

• Unsurprisingly, Bisimchi called for her arrest, with the channel reporting that she was arrested on the same day by security forces for “desecrating sanctities.”

• Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers mark the two-year anniversary of their takeover of the capital, Kabul, on August 15. The UN says 20 years of progress for Afghan women and girls have since been reversed with the situation returning to what it was before 2002, when the Taliban last held power.

• A Texas woman was awarded $1.2 billion in damages last week after she sued her former boyfriend and accused him of sending intimate images of her to her family, friends and co-workers from fake online accounts.

• But a recent survey [PDF] has many such executives admitting exactly that: they didn’t have the data and they just went with their gut. This is according to info from Envoy and Hanover Research, which surveyed over 1,156 senior executives (vice president or greater) and workplace managers in the US. According to their report, a whopping 80 percent of the execs say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy “differently” if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision.

• The report notes that “this is cause for concern — since individual biases and limited perspectives can turn out to be costly” and adds: [...]

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• X, the social media service formerly known as Twitter, slowed down access from its platform to rival sites such as Substack and Facebook, but on Tuesday began reversing an effort to restrict its users from quickly viewing news sites, according to a New York Times analysis.

• The slowness, known in tech parlance as “throttling,” initially affected rival social networks including Facebook, Bluesky and Instagram, as well as the newsletter site Substack and news outlets including Reuters and The New York Times, according to The Times’s analysis. The delay to load links from X was relatively minor — about 4.5 seconds — but still noticeable, according to the analysis. Several of the services that were throttled have faced the ire of X’s owner, Elon Musk.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• In the summer of 2021, DISH Network and Sling filed a copyright lawsuit against four unlicensed sports streaming sites, among them the popular SportsBay.org. After the plaintiffs named two alleged operators of the sites, this week a court in Texas held the pair liable for almost 2.5 million violations of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions and almost half a billion dollars in damages.

• Last month, Russian stream ripper FLVTO.biz filed an appeal of the $83 million verdict against it. A month later and the fight is over as funds run dry. The RIAA obtained a default judgment in their favor against FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com and its Russian operator more than two years ago.

• Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has submitted a motion to dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by several prominent music labels earlier this year. With a potential quarter billion dollars in damages at stake, X argues that the liability claims are insufficient to state a proper copyright infringement claim.

• In June, a multitude of National Music Publishers’ Association members filed a quarter-billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against Twitter/X. Now, the Elon Musk-owned social platform has officially moved to dismiss the complaint. Twitter, which kicked off a much-publicized rebrand around “X” last month, just recently submitted its motion to dismiss.

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