● 08.17.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 17/08/2023: Blender 3.6.2 and GNOME 45 Core Apps Update

Posted in News Roundup at 2:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• This was a most happy exercise. One, I got to dabble in something I’ve not done before. Successfully. Two, I learned that the Slimbooks offer a reasonable deal of flexibility and modularity when it comes to hardware replacements, which is excellent. Hint, the small 500GB disk can easily be replaced, for instance. Three, the whole thing was quick and painless. Four, the Slimbook Pro2 is now fresh and youthful, just like when I bought it. Fifth, if anything, this exercise vindicates my choice to go with the Spanish laptop maker. Sixth, now that this powerful laptop is back in the game, it also serves a new purpose, and that’s daily usage in the hands of a non-hardcore Linux user, ergo someone from the normies rank who loves Plasma for its beauty, precision and finesse.

• So, a great day by all measures. The Pro2 does not need to be sent to the great electronics refill as all too often happens with modern hardware. The battery replacement also proves my point that there’s no reason to discard perfectly usable gear just because “it’s old” and companies want to make a quick buck. Nope. I still have the old guard of laptops, some now in their fourteenth year, and working well. They might not be pretty or ultra-fast, but they are usable. There’s no need to waste money on pointless hardware upgrades. That ship has sailed around 2010-2011, and since the desktops and the laptops are more or less the same. Well, we’re done. Thanks to everyone who chimed in and tried to help. Now, off I go writing about something else…

Audiocasts/Shows

• A new version of gPodder, the open-source podcast client for Windows, macOS, and Linux, has been released.

• 4 Months of BSD, Self Hosted Calendar and address Book, Ban scanners IPs from OpenSMTP logs, Self-hosted git page, Bastille template example, Restrict nginx Access by Geographical Location on FreeBSD, and more.

• This week, Linux Out Loud chats about changes coming to the show. Welcome to episode 71 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.

Kernel Space

• Earlier this year, the BeagleBoard.org foundation announced the availability of a new development board, the BeaglePlay, centered around the Texas Instruments AM625 ARM64 processor.

Applications

• Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. Through it’s open architecture, Blender provides cross-platform interoperability, extensibility, an incredibly small footprint, and a tightly integrated workflow. Blender is one of the most popular Open Source 3D graphics application in the world.

• Web caches have become a vital mechanism for optimising the amount of data that is delivered in a given period of time. Good web caches also help to minimise latency, serving pages as quickly as possible. This helps to prevent the end user from becoming impatient having to wait for content to be delivered. Web caches optimise the data flow between client and server. They also help to converse bandwidth by caching frequently-delivered content. If you need to reduce server load and improve delivery speed of your content, it is definitely worth exploring the benefits offered by web cache software.

• To provide an insight into the quality of software available for Linux, we showcase 5 excellent open source web proxy tools. Some of the them are full-featured; a couple of them have very modest resource needs.

• Weblate is a free and open source software (FOSS) translation tool, with version control features. It’s used by many projects around the world, including LibreOffice, Fedora and openSUSE, to assist their communities with translating user interfaces, documentation, and other aspects of software.

• In today’s world, video conferencing has become an essential part of communication. Web Camera software provides a low-cost solution for those who do not have access to a webcam, without compromising on the quality of video and audio.

• Kvm/qemu support virtual ipmi devices which can be used to test ipmitool related commands on a virtual machine. These feature is barely documented, but is use able.

• There are two components, the ipmi device of kvm/qemu and a ipmi simulator which is part of the ipmitools package.

Instructionals/Technical

idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install G++ on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. G++, the C++ compiler of the GNU Compiler Collection, is your gateway to efficient and optimized code execution. As a cornerstone of software development, G++ compiles your C++ programs into executable files that run seamlessly on Ubuntu.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install AppImage on Debian 12. AppImage is a revolutionary packaging format that encapsulates applications and all their dependencies into a single executable file.

• Syntax errors are the bane of every programmer’s existence. In the realm of programming languages, even a tiny misplaced character can wreak havoc and bring your code to a screeching halt.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Redis on Debian 12. Redis isn’t just another database; it’s a powerful data structure server that supports various data types such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, and more. Beyond its versatility, Redis excels in scenarios where low-latency and high-throughput are critical.

linuxcapable

• With its vast and intricate file system, Linux offers users a comprehensive suite of commands to navigate and manage their data. Among the myriad tasks that users might encounter, identifying the oldest file in a directory tree is a unique challenge.

• Linux, renowned for its robustness and versatility, provides users with a plethora of commands to manage and navigate files and directories.

• Linux, with its intricate and multifaceted file system, offers users a vast array of commands and utilities to manage and navigate files and directories. Among these utilities, the find command stands out as an indispensable tool, especially when it comes to locating files based on their permissions.

• Unzipping files, especially in the Linux environment, is a routine task. With the frequent use of .gz and .tgz files, understanding the nuances of these file types and the tools used to manage them is crucial.

• Shotcut is a widely recognized open-source video editing software. This guide is tailored to provide clear instructions on how to install Shotcut on various Debian versions, namely Debian 13 Trixie, Debian 12 Bookworm, Debian 11 Bullseye, and Debian 10 Buster.

• Linux offers a plethora of commands to help users navigate and manipulate their systems. One such command is the source command, which is often used but not always fully understood. This guide will delve deep into the source command, exploring its purpose, syntax, and practical applications.

• Until now, most organizations have followed the traditional path of API management: manual configuration and management of APIs. Discrepancies or gaps between teams can result in deployment delays, confusion regarding versions, and a lack of standardization, all of which contribute to reduced productivity and hindered delivery.

• This article will demonstrate how to implement a basic operator using Java Operator SDK, Quarkus, and Fabric8 Kubernetes client. Operators are Kubernetes extensions that use custom resources to manage applications and their components. Operators follow Kubernetes principles, such as the control loop.

• If you come from a windows operating system, I’m sure that you tried at least once to copy paste on the terminal using the CTRL + C & CTRL + V shortcut.

• groupadd command is used to add or create group in Linux.

• KeePassXC, the popular free open-source password manager, released version 2.7.6 today! This is a new maintenance release with bug-fixes and minor improvements. According to the release note, the release improve the drag’n’drop behavior.

• Flatsweep is an app that allows you to delete files that Flatpak leaves on your computer when you uninstall a flatpak app.

• Sharing folder option allows you to share files from the host system to the virtual machine, and from the virtual machine to the host system.

• Dart, a prominent programming language, is developed and maintained by tech titan Google. Google’s Flutter leverages Dart as its language, empowering developers to develop cross-platform applications from a single codebase.

• Are you a perfect user in Linux or need one more user for your Linux system/server.

• In this article, we will cover setting up a Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) Server, which sends and receives mail to and from the Internet. We will also set up the ability to forward email across our servers. We will set up Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) and Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) services to allow for local mail to be sent and received from the SMTP server to our client.

• In today’s digital world, every user of information technology desires to enhance the security of their computer to secure their digital assets.

• You have likely encountered situations where a website or server requests you to set a strong password that adheres to their defined policy.

• File compression is a common practice in Linux, where its users shrink files and directories using tools like Gzip to free up storage space…

• Are you trying to locate files with specific file permissions for different purposes, such as security auditing?

• One of the hallmarks of the Ubuntu experience is the Unity-like Dash, providing quick access to your favorite apps. However, some users prefer the more traditional dock interface, reminiscent of systems like macOS. Ubuntu 22.04 offers the flexibility to customize your interface to align with your preferences.

• In the realm of web development and networking, optimizing performance is paramount. One of the key strategies in achieving this is through the utilization of the Keep-Alive mechanism.

WINE or Emulation

• CrossOver 23 includes an update to Wine 8.0.1, bringing with it over 5,000 changes that offer improvements to a variety of applications. This release also includes an update to Wine Mono 7.4.0, vkd3d 1.8, DXVK 1.10.3 and MoltenVK 1.2.3.

• I ain’t much of a modern gamer — as evidenced by the lack of hardcore gaming content on this blog! But CodeWeavers sent over a press release to tell me about CrossOver 23, the latest update to their commercial version of Wine for Linux, ChromeOS & macOS (don’t read “commercial version of Wine” and be angry: CodeWeavers are major contributors to the Wine Project). Naturally there’s some stuff in CrossOver 23 guaranteed to appeal to Linux gamers.

Games

• Between 2023-08-09 and 2023-08-16 there were 18 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 232 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 7.8 % of total…

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• After two weeks of bug fixing, it is already time for the second 5.2 beta! In addition to the changes that 5.2 brings, we have fixed the following bugs in this second beta…

• A fresh list of stunning KDE Plasma themes for your awesome KDE desktop. KDE Plasma is a popular and highly customizable desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems. One of the key features that users love about KDE Plasma is its ability to transform its appearance using themes.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• It’s been a few months since I last reviewed the state of GNOME core apps. For GNOME 45, we have implemented the changes proposed in the “Imminent Core App Changes” section of that blog post…

• GNOME 45 beta will be released imminently with the above changes. Testing the release and reporting bugs is much appreciated.

• We are also looking for volunteers interested in helping implement future core app changes. Specifically, improvements are required for Music to remain in core, and improvements are required for Geary to enter core. We’re also not quite sure what to do with Contacts. If you’re interested in any of these projects, consider getting involved.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Forum member icake has created these for EasyOS:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=95296#p95296

• That’s great!

• I have added them to the “oe-kirkstone” repository, installable via PKGget. You can also get them directly:

• http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/packages/pet/pet_packages-kirkstone/

New Releases

• This is the release announcement for IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 178 which is a release that addresses the latest vulnerabilities in Intel and AMD processors called Downfall, Inception and Phantom as well as a bug in Hyper-V which caused IPFire to freeze at boot.

• Before we start talking about the changes in detail, we would like to ask for your support. We put a lot of effort into building and testing this update and could not do any of this without you. Please, if you can, donate to the project helping us to put more resources to bring you more and better updates. It is very much appreciated by all of us here!

Debian Family

• Debian, the renowned open-source operating system, has recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. This milestone is not just a testament to the longevity of the project but also to its enduring relevance and the community’s unwavering commitment.

• The Debian Project was officially founded by Ian Murdock 30 years ago, on August 16, 1993. The Debian Community celebrates its birthday, Debian Day, on this day each year. And we celebrate with them, as they are one of the organizations supporting the LibreOffice project since day one.

• Debian, the universal operating system that has stood the test of time, is celebrating its 30th birthday. From its humble beginnings in the early days of the FOSS community to its current global presence, Debian has embodied the spirit of collaboration and innovation that defines the open-source movement.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS, released on August 10, 2023, marks another significant step in the evolution of this popular Linux distribution. Building upon the solid foundation of Ubuntu 22.04, this new LTS release offers several desktop enhancements, bug fixes, and performance optimizations to provide users with an even more refined and optimized computing experience.

• Here are the key features introduced in Ubuntu 22.04.3 and how it differs from Ubuntu 22.04.

• Former IT Director and Systems Administrator Aaron Prisk shares his experiences migrating a Pennsylvanian school district to Ubuntu.

Open Hardware/Modding

• While many users get them confused, microcontroller development boards and single-board computers are very different things. Single-board computers can run full operating systems, like your desktop PC or laptop does. Microcontroller development boards, like those from Arduino, are usually limited to simpler firmware. But as microcontrollers become more powerful, the line gets blurrier.

• Banana Pi Banana Digital Signage is an operating system designed for digital signage installations on the Banana Pi

• I recently dropped in on one of the Vintage Computer Festival events, and it made me think about why people — including myself — are fascinated with old computer technology. In my case, I lived through a lot of it, and many of the people milling around at VCF did too, so it could just be nostalgia. But there were also young people there.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• You get a free book that explains how the CPU works underneath among other usual Linux tips and tutorials in this edition of the FOSS Weekly.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• In the realm of modern computing, the client-server model stands as the fundamental architecture for numerous applications, with web servers serving as a cornerstone. This model underpins how data and services are exchanged between different devices and systems.

• The evolution of web servers has played a pivotal role in shaping the internet as we know it today.

• Kubernetes is increasingly becoming an important component in CI/CD pipelines. Here’s what you need to know.

• In today’s digital age, web servers play a fundamental role in delivering the content we access daily on the internet. The seamless experience of browsing a website often conceals the intricate workings of the underlying web server architecture.

• The Apache HTTP Server, commonly known as Apache, is a foundational component of the modern internet.

• The digital realm that we navigate today is underpinned by a complex network of web servers, each playing a pivotal role in delivering content swiftly and seamlessly to users worldwide. At the heart of this intricate web infrastructure lies the Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache.

Chromium

• For the past several years, more than 90% of Chrome users’ navigations have been to HTTPS sites, across all major platforms. Thankfully, that means that most traffic is encrypted and authenticated, and thus safe from network attackers. However, a stubborn 5-10% of traffic has remained on HTTP, allowing attackers to eavesdrop on or change that data. Chrome shows a warning in the address bar when a connection to a site is not secure, but we believe this is insufficient: not only do many people not notice that warning, but by the time someone notices the warning, the damage may already have been done.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• Hi folks!

• We’re hosting a Postgres track at SoCal Linux Expo again. Come join us in sunny Pasadena!

• PostgreSQL(at)SCaLE is a PostgreSQL two day, two track event that takes place on Thursday-Friday March 14-15, 2024, in Pasadena, California, at the Pasadena Convention Center as part of SCaLE 21x. The full SCaLE conference runs from March 14-17, 2024.

• The CFP is currently open through November 1, 2023.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• The University of Utah is a public research university in Salt Lake City, USA. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education and was established in 1850.

• The University of Utah’s School of Computing, founded as the Computer Science Department in 1965, has a long and distinguished record of high impact research. The university has provided large, automated testbeds since around the year 2000, funded by the National Science Foundation.

• The Flux Research Group conducts research in operating systems, networking, security, and virtualization. The group consists of three faculty and over two dozen research staff, graduate students, and undergrads.

FSF

Programming/Development

• PDF’s drawing model inherits from PostScript, which was originally designed in the early 80s. It works and is really nice but the one glaring hole it has is missing transparency support. The original PDF spec from 1993 has no transparency support either, it was added in version 1.4 that came out mere 8 years later in 2001.

• RPMs of PHP version 8.2.9 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 36 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php82 repository for EL 7.

• RPMs of PHP version 8.1.22 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 36 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php81 repository for EL 7.

• RPMs of PHP version 8.0.30 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 36 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php80 repository for EL 7.

Perl / Raku

• I’ve been maintaining a number of Perl software packages recently. There’s SReview, my video review and transcoding system of which I split offMedia::Convert a while back; and as of about a year ago, I’ve also addedPtLink, an RSS aggregator (with future plans for more than just that).

• All these come with extensive test suites which can help me ensure that things continue to work properly when I play with things; and all of these are hosted on salsa.debian.org, Debian’s gitlab instance. Since we’re there anyway, I configured GitLab CI/CD to run a full test suite of all the software, so that I can’t forget, and also so that I know sooner rather than later when things start breaking.

Python

• Taking a hands-on low-level approach to learning AI has been incredibly rewarding. I wanted to create an achievable task that would motivate me to learn the tools and get practical experience training and using large language models. Just at the point when I was starting to spin up GPU instances, Llama2 was released to the public. So I elected to start with that model. As I mentioned, I’m interested in exploring how sex-positive AI can help human connection in positive ways. For that reason, I suspected that Llama2 might not produce good results without training: some of Meta’s safety goals run counter to what I’m trying to explore. I suspected that there might be more attention paid to safety in the chat variants of Llama2 rather than the text generation variants, and working against that might be challenging for a first project, so I started with Llama-2-13b as a base.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• There are occassions where data needs to cleaned prior to use. One example came to me while reviewing passwords submitted to one of my DShield honeypots. There appeared to be duplicate passwords, even when I attempted to export unique values from the command line.

Rust

• Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust!

Leftovers

• Wikiquote: March 30

• There’s no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.

• I needed that.

• Welcome to the inaugural post in my Ethics category! I’m not sure if I’ll retroactively re-tag older posts, but this is topic I care deeply about, and one in which I want to contribute more thoughts. Thanks again for taking the time to read my posts.

• I’ve noticed a worrying movement among independent authors, podcasters, and videographers. There comes a point where their audience size eclipses even those of traditional media, which fills me with more optimism and hope than I expected. Yet despite this, they continue to operate as though they’re a scrappy upstart.

Education

• It isn’t what you might think.

• Teachers are leaving jobs in growing numbers, mainly because of pandemic-era burnout, low pay, and the intrusion of politics into classrooms. A disproportionately high number of those leaving the profession are teachers of color.

Hardware

• Following the second successful fusion ignition on the U.S.’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the U.S. invests $112M additional greenbacks on fusion-related supercomputing efforts.

• U.S. president signs executive order to prohibit American companies to invest in Chinese AI, semiconductor, and quantum computing companies.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The author discusses “The End Is Only a Beginning,” his story from the latest issue of the magazine.

• Since the pandemic devastated downtowns, night mayors have relied on the power of persuasion to help cities regrow their nightlife in ways that respect all parties.

• Since the end of a pandemic-era policy that barred states from removing people from Medicaid, Texas has dropped over half a million people from the program, more than any other state.

• The company blames much of its problems on the Teamsters trucking union’s “intransigence,” while the Teamsters say Yellow is delinquent on benefit payments.

• Yellow, which was lent $700 million in U.S. pandemic relief, failed after being a laggard for years in a part of the industry where rivals are doing well.

• Similar to the “Age Appropriate Design Code” (AADC) legislation that became law last year, California’s latest effort to regulate online speech comes in the form of SB 680, a bill by Sen. Nancy Skinner targeting the designs, algorithms, and features of online services that host user-created content, with a specific focus on preventing harm or addiction risks to children.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• A new version to the free (but not open-source) WPS Office is available for Linux. It’s been an age since I last mentioned WPS Office on this blog. The main reason for this is I don’t use office software (and if I even need to, LibreOffice suffices). But I am not everyone; WPS Office has its fans – so this post for is for them, and for those interested in alternative Linux office suites.

Linux Foundation

Security

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• Considering the global turbulence from destabilizing events such as physical conflicts, freak weather and pandemics, financial wealth has never been more critical for a nation and its citizens so that daily life can continue. Money is needed for daily necessities such as food, medication, appropriate clothing and fuel. When faced with unexpected events such as retrenchment and newly detected health issues, citizens would also have to tap on the monetary buffer that should have been built up during less challenging times.

• There is a new wave of infections spreading throughout the world that has nothing to do with COVID or, for that matter, any other physical disease. Called multifactor authentication fatigue, it’s highly contagious and spreads through the deception of determined hackers who want to steal users’ account details.

Defence/Aggression

• Paul Dibb’s critique of my Australian Foreign Affairs essay, ‘Target Australia: Is the alliance making us less safe?’, falls into three broad categories: the first is about China’s plans to strike Australia…

• At the end of June, 2023, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup attempt quickly began and quickly ended. Officials in the political West were quick to diagnose the weakness in Putin’s government and the vulnerability in Russia’s forces in Ukraine. Neither diagnosis turned out to be true.

• Topics covered include affirmative action, legacy preferences, the student loan forgiveness decision, refugee policy, indictments against Trump, Vladimir Putin, political ignorance, and more.

• Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić cultivates a modest image, but his vision of a “Serbian World” has deep implications for peace in the Balkans. The West continues to view him as a negotiating partner even as he seems to take a page out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook.

• New York City becomes the latest to ban TikTok from all government devices as security concerns over the platform’s Chinese ownership persist.

• The ban extends to some of the popular accounts run by the city.

• For a long while now, we’ve pointed out how the privacy hyperventilation over singular threats like TikTok are a huge distraction from the fact Congress is simply too corrupt to pass even a baseline privacy law for the internet era. Or regulate the massive number of dodgy data brokers that buy, sell, and trade in vast troves of consumer data without much in the way of competent oversight.

War in Ukraine

• After Latvian authorities warned about attempts to recruit people to join the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) says no similar cases have been reported in the country. However, the agency claims to have observed “a coordinated information attack”.

• The Lithuanian government on Wednesday decided to close the Tverečius and Šumskas checkpoints on the country’s border with Belarus as of Friday in response to the potential threats posed by the presence of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus.

• Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has been registered as “an educational organization” in the Asipovichy district in the eastern Belarusian region of Mahilyou.

• On August 18, Lithuania will temporarily close two crossing points on its border with Belarus, Deputy Transportation and Communications Minister Agnė Vaiciukevičiūtė said Wednesday. The closures will leave four open crossing points between the two countries.

• An new LLC with the name “Wagner Group” has been registered as an “educational” organization in the Belarusian Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the Telegram channel Rotonda reported on Wednesday.

• In response to the threat posed by Wagner mercenaries in Belarus, Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service (VSAT) plans to deploy more officers on the country’s border with Belarus.

• Lithuania’s Interior Ministry has drafted amendments on the detention of migrants after the Constitutional Court ruled in June that the detention of migrants for six months without trial was unconstitutional.

• LRT English Newsletter – August 4, 2023

• The notice came a few days after two helicopters bearing Belarusian flags violated Polish airspace.

• Around 100 Wagner troops have recently arrived in Belarus near the so-called Suwałki Gap. With Warsaw claiming the troops could assault NATO member states of Poland and Lithuania, military experts say such rhetoric is harmful.

• As thousands of Wagner troops arrive in Belarus, neighbouring Poland and Lithuania have seemingly taken different approaches to contain what is increasingly named by officials as an emerging threat.

• Wagner mercenaries have started moving towards the Suwalki Gap near Grodno in Belarus, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday.

• With the mercenary group Wagner in Belarus, various scenarios, including provocation against neighboring countries, cannot be excluded, but the abilities of Wagner should not be overestimated, the new Latvian ambassador to NATO Māris Riekstiņš said on Latvian Television on July 28.

• The Belarusian Defense Ministry said the country’s special operations units were jointly training with Wagner at a military range near the city of Brest.

• Wagner troops are not yet in Belarus but NATO will be ready for it, the alliance’s chief Jens Stoltenberg says.

• Verdict: False

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 16 Aug 2023 Today, the European Commission decided to register a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) entitled ‘Preservation and development of Ukrainian culture, education, language, and traditions in EU states’.

• On Friday, August 25, a Ukrainian short-film festival “Smile, Ukrainian!” will take place at the K.Suns cinema in Rīga, the organizers informed.

• President Biden wrote in the New York Times in June 2022 that the United States was arming Ukraine to “fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

• Ukraine will not be able to operate US-built F-16 fighter jets this coming autumn and winter, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian television late on Wednesday. Ukraine has repeatedly asked its Western allies to supply the country with F-16s, which President Volodymyr Zelensky said would be a signal that Russia’s invasion would end in defeat.

• Russian drones pounded grain storage facilities and ports along the Danube River as a loaded container ship set sail along a temporary shipping corridor established by Ukraine. Earlier, Kyiv said its forces had entrenched themselves on the outskirts of Urozhaine after recapturing the settlement in the eastern Donetsk region from Russian forces.

• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) posted a video on Tuesday showing Russian Navy personnel boarding a Palau-flagged cargo vessel traveling to Izmail, Ukraine in the Black Sea. This comes amid Ukraine’s announcement of a humanitarian corridor to allow ships stuck in Ukrainian ports to leave the Black Sea.

• Lithuanians pride themselves on purportedly having a special insight into the workings of the Russian soul and, by extension, the Russian state. “I told you so” was uttered many a time following Moscow’s attack on Ukraine last year – but is this kind of boastfulness justified?

• Lithuania will fund a standard school architectural project for Ukraine, which will cost the state 500,000 euros, the cabinet decided on Wednesday.

• Ukrainian forces claimed success on the southeastern front, saying a small village had been liberated from Russian troops amid a weeks-long counteroffensive that has worried some of Kyiv’s Western backers.

• The U.S. Treasury Department on August 16 announced that it has imposed sanctions on three entities it accused of being tied to arms deals between North Korea and Russia.

• The Russian Defense Ministry also confirmed that Ukraine has lost up to 250 troops in the Donetsk direction over the past 24 hours.

• The circumstance under which the equipment fell into Russian hands are still unclear.

• The animals are dying in droves in the Black Sea, and Ukrainian officials are documenting the deaths, hoping to prosecute Russia for the war’s ecological toll.

• The announcement came on the same day that a cargo ship stranded in the Odesa port became the first to venture into the turbulent waters of the Black Sea despite Moscow’s threats to treat vessels in the area as hostile.

• Kyiv is aiming to resume traffic to its seaports despite Russia’s threats to ships moving to and from Ukraine.

• Russian drones hit the ports of Reni and Izmail and damaged warehouses used to export grain, Ukrainian officials said.

• An Odesa court has begun hearing a case against Oleksiy Levchenko, a rescue worker from Kherson who’s charged with collaboration. According to investigators, Levchenko voluntarily defected to the Russian side during Kherson’s occupation, becoming one of the leaders of the city’s rescue service after his supervisor fled to Kyiv. The prosecution’s main evidence is a document from the Russian administration that says Levchenko willingly applied for a position in the occupation government. Journalists from the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda spoke to Levchenko’s wife and his lawyer about his work during the occupation and the ongoing case against him.

• Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar has announced that the Ukrainian army has liberated the village of Urozhaine in the Donetsk region of the country. “Our defenders are fortifying their new positions. The offensive is continuing,” Maliar wrote on Telegram.

• U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. First Lady Dr. Jill Biden meet with U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Russell Driggers, 502nd Air Base Wing, Joint Base San Antonio-Texas, commander, left, and U.S. Air Fo…

• The comments were made by Stian Jenssen, chief of staff for NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

• Valery Fadeyev, the chairman of Russia’s Human Rights Council, said Wednesday that children who don’t know Russian should not be enrolled in ordinary schools and should instead study the language at “specialized centers.”

• Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and top officials in Kyiv have slammed comments by a top NATO official speculating that ceding territory to Russia in exchange for NATO membership could be a way to end the war between the two countries.

• The former agriculture minister of Russia’s northern Komi Republic, Denis Sharonov, has fled to the United States to avoid conscription to the war in Ukraine.

• The destruction wrought by the blasting of a Ukraine dam is vast and long-lasting. In two cities more than 100 miles apart, residents deploy different coping mechanisms to endure an event that has transformed their lives.

• Ukraine’s deputy defense minister said Kyiv’s forces had recaptured the village of Urozhaine, a small step in its grinding campaign to break through Russian defenses in the south.

• Following the request of Economics Minister Ilze Indriksone (National Alliance), the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) has on August 16 published a list of businesses that continue to export to Russia and Belarus.

• News reports say U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone with American citizen Paul Whelan, who has been held in Russian prisons for more than four years.

• A former top FBI counterintelligence agent pleaded guilty to charges related to his work for notorious Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, changing his plea after federal prosecutors filed reduced charges of conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Russia by working for the billionaire industrialist.

• Yelena Romanova (aka Blinova), an opposition activist from Russia’s Republic of Chuvashia in the Volga region, has fled the country after being sentenced in April to two years of correctional work and docked 10 percent of her salary.

• The military takeover could force the Pentagon to withdraw 1,100 American troops and close drone bases in the West African country.

• The Estonian Ministry of Justice proposes limiting the voting rights of residents holding a Russian or Belarusian passport, by excluding them from taking part in local elections.

• The mobilization of reinforcements at the border of Latvia–Belarus is a logical step, as the number of illegal border crossings has increased significantly, Interior Minister Māris Kučinskis (United List) said in an interview with Latvian Radio on August 16.

• The Baltic states and Poland are discussing possibilities for a complete closure of their borders with Belarus, Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaitė said on Wednesday.

• There are no grounds to change Lithuania’s existing policy toward the Belarusian diaspora, Speaker of the Lithuanian Seimas Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen.

• The Belarusian radio station Radio Mir can be picked up in the Lithuanian capital. Regulators believe it should be blocked, although admit they have no ways to do it.

• Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya says she understands Lithuania’s concerns as Vilnius is musing to close down the border with Belarus, but asks the country to leave a humanitarian corridor for Belarusians fleeing the Minsk regime’s repressions.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

• I thought maybe call this “Barry’s Milo Stove”, but just “Milo Stove” is enough; named after the Milo tin.

• This is post #2 of the Milo alcohol stove project. Previous post:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202308/milo-tin-for-alcohol-stove-project.html

• The stove will be built on the same principle as the Packafeather stove, with burner inside, covered with a tin that has a hole in the top for the flames to come out. Here is the Packafeather XL stove: [...]

Wildlife/Nature

• Construction on the Chinese-funded project in Xayaburi province stalled during the pandemic.

• Over 1,000 people remain missing a week after Hawaii’s historic wildfires, as state officials warn the death toll will continue to climb while search and recovery efforts continue.

• Tropical Storm Hilary formed Wednesday off the Southwestern coast of Mexico, and is poised to rapidly intensify into a powerful hurricane through Friday.

• Threat level: The storm has the potential to make a rare direct hit, in a weakened form, somewhere between the Baja Peninsula of California and San Diego.

Finance

• The rapid expansion came as exports have risen and tourists have flooded the country. But a drop in domestic consumption worried economists.

• A pandemic-era lifeline that the Trump administration predicted would turn a profit for the federal government failed to keep Yellow afloat.

• Co-working space company WeWork has been on the brink of illiquidity for a few years. The pandemic did it no favors, and despite a return to normalcy, the company hasn’t quite been able to pull its business out of the doldrums. Now, it warns that it may not be able to go on at all.

• Like the aftertaste of a bad meal belched up the following morning, calls for fiscal austerity are moving back up the economic agenda, even as inflation continues to decelerate from last year’s levels. The fall in inflation from a high of 9 percent in 2022 to just over 3 percent today (3.2 percent, to be precise) has vindicated the views of economists such as James Galbraith and Isabella Weber (among others), who argued that last year’s inflationary pressures were more a product of Covid-induced supply-side disruptions than an overheating surge stemming from Biden’s 2021 fiscal stimulus, or wage-driven inflation from low unemployment.

• Fewer mainland Chinese tourists were visiting Hong Kong mainly to shop compared to the pre-pandemic era, the city’s finance chief has said.

• A signature collection has been launched on the public initiative portal Manabalss.lv on the restriction on banks to raise Euribor rates on loans issued in the past, newswire LETA reported on August 16.

• Two Burmese banks had accounts with Sonali Bank totaling U.S. $1.1 million in deposits.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• A YouTube controversy around one of its largest channels reflects the complexity of maintaining editorial standards, or even integrity, when you’re producing with quantity in mind.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• A new study of COVID-19 narratives makes the very mistake it purports to correct.

Censorship/Free Speech

• On 24 May 2023, Open Rights Group (ORG) held an online roundtable to discuss proposals for the Online Safety Bill that ORG argues will amount to prior restraint. The Bill proposes that content deemed illegal under the legislation should be prevented from appearing on the platform, thus controlling expression and a form of censorship.

• Nikita Zhuravel, a Volgograd resident who was arrested for “offending the feelings of religious believers” in May after he burned a Quran, said he was assaulted by Adam Kadyrov, the son of Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov, in his pre-trial detention center. The allegation was reported by Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova on Wednesday.

• A Russian teenager arrested for publicly burning a Koran in the southwestern region of Volgograd and kept in pretrial detention in Chechnya says he was beaten in a jail cell by Adam Kadyrov, the 15-year-old son of Chechnya’s authoritarian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

• The Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office on August 16 recognized the Warsaw-registered group For A Free Russia, which assists Russian citizens who face persecution at home and seek asylum abroad, as “an undesirable organization.”

• Purra on Saturday began her keynote speech at the party conference of the populist right-wing party with a litany of pointed accusations at the press, declaring that the media has “fomented mass hysteria” by digging up old comments and presenting them outside their original context.

• Despite smashing box office records and becoming a cultural phenomenon, “Barbie” is banned in a growing number of countries around the world.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The European office of the Politico news website says its reporter in Moscow, Eva Hartog, has left the country after being told her visa would not be extended.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The United Auto Workers (UAW) union is preparing to up the ante in its contract negotiations with the “Big Three” automakers—Ford, GM, and Stellantis—and will vote next week on authorizing strikes against the Detroit trio.

• Today is the 12th day of the strike by the construction workers from Turkey in the railway project in Tanzania while those who have left work, but whose unpaid wages and indemnities have not yet been paid are on a sit-in in front of the Yapı Merkezi Holding in İstanbul.

• Just two days after the Hollywood writers’ strike began on May 2, 2023, Deadline Hollywood tweeted, “Saturday Night Live fans, want to know what you are missing? Kieran Culkin and Jennifer Coolidge were set to host the final two episodes of the season before the writers strike forced an end to season 48 of the venerable NBC show.” In other words, how is this strike affecting consumers? Why are the underpaid, exploited writers deliberately standing in the way of your favorite shows?

• Two Hong Kong YouTubers have been charged with trespassing into two abandoned correctional facilities on Lantau Island. Kate Lam, 26 and Tam Wai-kin, 27 appeared at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• So, I’ve been procrastinating instead of jumping into the 100 Days To Offload bandwagon. This is something I’ve contemplated for a long time, so it is a bit ironic that I failed to get started. The idea is to just write, and that is what I intend to do from now on.

• Hopefully the 100 posts during a year means that I finally get into a habit of blogging. It’s been a very on and off thing for me, but I want it to be a part of my routine.

• As a part of this, I’ll probably expand a bit on what I cover in this blog. The title is Life of a Developer, and my life has been quite dramatic over the past couple of years, so I’ll try share a bit about that.

• If you’re a Techdirt reader, you’re surely familiar with Cory Doctorow: we’ve written about him often, he’s appeared on the podcast several times and, of course, he’s a prolific science fiction author whose books brilliantly engage with many of the subjects we cover. Next week, if all goes according to plan, Cory will be joining us on the podcast once again to talk about his latest novel, Red Team Blues — so if you haven’t read it yet, now’s the time! And today we’ve got a special podcast feature to get you started: a chapter-long excerpt from the audiobook, available to listen in full on this week’s episode.

• Riley Waggaman Some people are not fond of 5G, because its powerful radio waves (or whatever; I’m not a scientist) could be harnessed by our beloved governments to usher in Skynet, and to murder all the birds—or so some people claim. And so it is not surprising to your Moravia correspondent that some people expressed …

• The current and future economics of silicon chip fabrication.

• What are the issues behind sunspots, ionisation in the atmosphere and their effects on satellite communications and terrestrial infrastructure

Monopolies

• Cloud computing is driving business transformation across the United Kingdom, enabling companies of all sizes and government organizations to innovate…

Patents

• A profile of DABUS creator Dr Stephen Thaler, written by Tomas Weber and published by The Economist in April 2023, paints a picture of a rather isolated man – a septuagenarian, the product of a traumatic childhood, slightly paranoid, seemingly obsessed with his creation, and whose supportive wife seems resigned to the reality that he spends more time with his machines than he does with her.  To be clear, I have no way of knowing whether this is accurate.  I can only go on what is written in the article.

• Over the past two weeks, the Unified Patent Court has announced and sworn in the final 21 technically qualified judges. After three rounds of appointments, there are now 105 UPC judges who will render future judgments at the new court.

Trademarks

• Let me do a bit of throat-clearing at the top of this post. As a reminder, the general purpose of trademark laws around the world is to serve as a source-identifier for the public in those markets. In other words, allowing someone to trademark a unique identifier as to a source of a good or service allows the public to be confident that it knows who and from where a good or service is coming from. If you see a Pepsi logo on a can of soda, it’s a Pepsi. If you see something with the State Farm logo on it, it’s for State Farm’s insurance, and not some other company looking to fool you.

Copyrights

• SiriusXM (NASDAQ: SIRI) is facing a firmly worded lawsuit from SoundExchange, which says that the satellite radio giant “has unjustifiably withheld more than $150 million in royalties owed to artists and copyright owners.”

• The CC and Wikimedian communities overlap in many ways and share common values and activities dedicated to building and sustaining open culture and knowledge. As a part of the program, CC team members are leading four sessions, outlined below. Many Wikimania attendees are also part of CC’s Global Network and platforms for copyright, open education, and open culture, or support CC in other ways. We celebrate this global gathering of people all working with shared values to realize common goals. Tune in to Wikimania with us!

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