● 08.19.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 19/08/2023: New Wine, Linux-Hostile ‘Linus Tech Tips’ Collapsing

Posted in News Roundup at 6:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Star Labs, a UK-based hardware company, has introduced the StarLite 5, their latest Linux tablet. This 12.5-inch 2-in-1 device boasts a high-resolution 2880 x 1920 LED-backlit display with 300 nits brightness, 10-point touch support, and 16:10 aspect ratio.

• The tablet is powered by an Intel Alder Lake N200 (1.0GHz quad-core) processor, coupled with 16GB of 4800MHz LPDDR5 RAM and storage options of 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB Gen 3 PCIe SSD.

• One of the standout features of the StarLite 5 is its support for a range of operating systems, making it a versatile choice for users. It’s compatible with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, elementary OS 6.1, Linux Mint 21, Manjaro 21.3.7, MX Linux 21.1, Zorin OS 16.1, and Windows 11 22H1.

Applications

• OpenPGP is the most widely used email encryption standard. Whether you are using an email client or a web-based email solution, you can encrypt your email with OpenPGP.

• There are very few email applications that have PGP encryption enabled by default. Fortunately, there are some good open source encryption applications available for Linux that are simple to use. We make the following recommendations captured in a legendary LinuxLinks chart.

• Linux Task Manager is one of the essential tools that help you to find out the details of resource usage (CPU/RAM) by any particular software or even the system itself.

• SSH, or Secure Shell, is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. It’s a vital part of modern server management, providing secure remote access to systems. SSH clients, applications that leverage SSH protocol, are an essential tool for system administrators, developers, and IT professionals. In the world of Linux, where remote server management is common, choosing the right SSH client can be crucial. This article will explore the 8 best SSH clients available for Linux.

• Arch Linux stands out as a lightweight, flexible, and independently developed GNU/Linux distribution with a distinct character.

• If you’ve ever had to transfer a file from one computer to another over the Internet, with minimal fuss, there are a few options. You could use scp or rsync if you have SSH access. You could use Firefox Send, or Dropbox, or iCloud Drive, or Google Drive, and upload from one computer, and download on the other.

• But what if you just want to zap a file from point A to point B? Or what if—like me—you want to see how fast you can get an individual file from one place to another over the public Internet?

• Updog is a powerful and reliable tool for file transfer over the internet. It has been designed as a secure and trustworthy alternative to Python’s SimpleHTTPServer. With Updog, you can effortlessly upload and download files using the widely recognized and secure HTTP/S protocols for data exchange.

• MiroTalk SFU is an innovative and highly versatile solution for all your video conferencing needs. With its powerful open-source architecture, you can easily host and manage your own web-based video conferences, without having to worry about the hassle and expense of relying on third-party services.

• 🎒 Lark × (GPT-4 + DALL·E + Whisper) = your professional assistant 🚀

• OverCASE is a cross-platform integrated CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) system designed to streamline the software development process.

• [...]

• The project is released under the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3).

• VNote is a note-taking application that is available to users for free. It is an open-source platform that is based on Qt, with a focus on Markdown. The platform is designed to provide users with an excellent editing experience while taking notes.

• Freeturn is an amazing open source portfolio and CRM that offers a variety of features for individual freelance developers. It is built on two powerful frameworks, Django and Wagtail, which work together to provide an intuitive and seamless experience for users. With Freeturn, you can easily showcase your skills, experience

• SMD or Spotify Music Downloader is an open-source desktop app that enables you to download Spotify music for free. It also offers a Telegram bot client, and a Desktop CLI edition.

• The app is written using Python, so it can run on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Instructionals/Technical

• Bluestacks is one of the top most recommended Android Emulators currently available in the emulator market that supports all major Android-based applications or games.

• Got a Ubuntu PC or Server and want to use it as remote download server? This is the step by step guide shows you how to do the job using Transmission Daemon.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to disable IPv6 on Debian 12. IPv6, a successor to IPv4, offers extensive address space, routing efficiency, and enhanced security. Despite these merits, IPv6 adoption can introduce challenges. Its potential impact on website performance and SEO requires diligent consideration.

• In the dynamic world of Linux systems and development, encountering errors is not uncommon. One particularly vexing error that often leaves Linux users scratching their heads is the infamous “Cannot Execute Binary File: Exec Format Error.”

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kitematic on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Kitematic, a powerful tool for managing Docker containers, simplifies the containerization process by providing a user-friendly interface.

• CockroachDB is an open-source distributed and scalable SQL database for cloud applications. This guide shows you how to install and create a CockroachDB cluster on multiple AlmaLinux 9 servers.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenLDAP on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenLDAP is a lightweight directory service protocol that facilitates communication between client applications and a directory server, allowing centralized storage of user data, authentication, and access control.

• LabPlot is a FREE, open source and cross-platform Data Visualization and Analysis software accessible to everyone. Download LabPlot now at https://labplot.kde.org/download/. In this short video you’ll learn how to import data from SQL databases.

• Why do you want to remove a user in Linux?

• Automation is the heart of modern IT infrastructure management, and Ansible is a powerful automation tool that simplifies the automation of complex tasks. Whether you’re managing a single server or a large-scale data center, Ansible can save you time and effort.

• Obsidian is note-taking app, that allows you to write your notes easily on your computer.

• Obsidian is free for personal use. However, if you are going to use it commercially you need to switch to the paid plan.

• The GNOME desktop environment is the default GUI for Ubuntu systems. However, if you’re running Ubuntu Server or one of the other flavors of Ubuntu such as Kubuntu or Lubuntu, then you won’t have GNOME installed by default. Follow along with us below to get GNOME installed on Ubuntu.

• There are commands to create user in Linux, delete user, add a user to group, and see logged in user…

• Are you getting the following error when trying to login to the MySQL root on an Ubuntu system or other Linux distribution? We’ll show you how to clear it up in a matter of seconds. ERROR 1698 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’ Explanation: This error is caused by the auth_socket plugin.

• Julia is a high-level, high-performance programming language specifically designed for folks interested in technical and scientific computing. It was designed to fulfill the need for a language blending Python’s user-friendliness and dynamic scripting with the speed of C and Fortran.

• This tutorial will take you on a step by step procedure explaining how to install and configure the latest version Magento 2 in Debian 9.2 release, in order to create a free online shopping store.

WINE or Emulation

Games

• Sabrent has released a new Steam Deck Dock with a compelling M.2 storage expansion option at a similar cost to the boring official dock.

• We are back with our usual monthly update!

• Half-Life is an award-winning first-person shooter from 1998. One of the many things setting it apart is a fluid player movement system. You can gradually build up speed in the air by turning left and right, and if you jump as soon as you hit the ground, you keep all of that speed.

• These techniques, called strafing and bunny-hopping, unlocked a whole new dimension to the game, and spawned a big community of mappers and players. There are hundreds of custom maps with challenging obstacles designed to test one’s movement skills, and thousands of players competing to finish them as fast as possible.

• The main hubs for these maps and records are Xtreme-Jumps1 and Cosy-Climbing. They are centered around Counter-Strike 1.6, which has similar movement mechanics to Half-Life, but paced slower with a jump-speed limit and some tweaks to the acceleration.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The Bundle Editor is an extension of the Bundle Creator, designed to enable artists to modify existing bundles. Often, when downloading a bundle, we find ourselves drawn to specific brushes and realize that a portion—ranging from 10% to 50%—will likely go unused. In such instances, the ability to trim down bundle sizes by removing unnecessary brushes offers the potential to significantly save on disk space.

• As mentioned last week, I am still looking for a super awesome team lead for a super amazing project involving KDE and Snaps. Time is running out and well the KDE world will be a better a better place if this project goes through! I would like to clarify, this is a paid position! A current KDE developer would be ideal as it is a small team so your time will be split managing and coding alike. If you or anyone you know might be interested please contact me ASAP!

• On to snappy things I have achieved this week:

• Most 23.04.3 is done, I am just testing them now. New applications: kmymoney ( Thanks Carlos! ), kde-dev-utils, and kxstitch ( Thanks Jeremy! )

• With that said, I have seen on the internets –candidate channel apps being promoted. Please use this channel with utmost care as they are being tested and could quite possibly be very broken!

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The GNOME fans are excited as GNOME 45 makes its way to the beta phase, bringing an array of enhancements, tweaks, and new features. This release promises a smoother user experience and marks a significant shift in its core components and functionalities.

• As GNOME 45 enters the beta phase, the UI, feature, and API freezes take effect. The beta phase is set to continue until September 2, when the release candidate is expected. Finally, you can expect the official GNOME 45 release on September 20, 2023.

• Let’s dive into the highlights of what you can expect from GNOME 45.

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from August 11 to August 18.

• (well, not exactly everywhere …)

• This is not an easy post for me to write, being a bit of a criticism / “you can do better” note for organisers of conferences that cater to a global community.

• It’s not easy because most of the conferences I attend are community driven, and I have helped organise community conferences in the past. It is a thankless job, a labour of love, and you mostly do not get to enjoy the fruits of that labour as others do.

• The problem is that these conferences end up inadvertently excluding members who live in, for lack of a better phrase, the Global South.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• So last time I posted I was able to say that I got the client side for OpenVPN on Haiku working but not the server but I am proud to say that now both the server and client work extremely well now on Haiku I was able to get the server from not working to working and was able to get the latency for the entire VPN operation down from 1000ms average to anywhere between 2ms to 9ms (that’s a caveat as that is without blocking which will be discussed later). I had a check in my tun_read() function wrong where I wanted any side that is non-blocking to send a signal to the other side’s condition variable that something is now in their queue but had it backwards with a not statement in there. The simplest mistakes slip the mind huh :p Anyway, the server also follows suit with the faster latency so now that the read and write functions are basically complete, lets get on with what I was dealing with for the past 2ish weeks.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• SUSE, the German Linux vendor and acquirer of enterprise tools like Rancher and NeuVector, has had its fair share of owners since it was founded in 1992. There was Novell, which acquired it in 2003. Then Novell itself was acquired by The Attachmate Group in 2011. Then Attachmate and Micro Focus merged in 2014, only to sell off SUSE to private equity firm EQT Partners in 2018, which then took it public with an IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the heady days of summer 2021. And now, EQT Partners is taking SUSE private once again.

• An investment firm plans to take SUSE SA private to advance the open-source software maker’s long-term growth strategy. SUSE announced the plan on Thursday. The proposed deal values the company at about €2.6 billion, significantly higher than its market capitalization before the transaction’s announcement. Germany-based SUSE develops a popular Linux distribution of the same name.

• Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

• Since the last weekly review, we have ‘only’ delivered six snapshots (0811…0816). Snapshot 0817 is still hanging in QA and is thus not part of today’s review.

• The most relevant changes delivered in the aforementioned snapshots are: [...]

Fedora Family / IBM

• Red Hat Inc.’s announcement last month that it would impose restrictions on the availability of source code for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system created a stir among developers and Linux users who have relied on no-cost alternatives AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, which were built to be “bug-for-bug compatible” with RHEL.

Devices/Embedded

• You’ve probably heard the old saying that if it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck… So when is a keyboard a mouse? When software makes it quack like a mouse — that is, if mice quacked. [Blackle Mori] took a cheap USB keypad and, using the libevdev Linux system, made it impersonate a mouse.

• Boardcon EM3568-AV CAM SBC is powered by a Rockchip RK3568 SoC and comes with four AHD (analog high-definition) camera connectors and two SATA 3.0 ports to store video data on hard drives. The SBC is also equipped with up to 8GB RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, supports MIPI DSI, LVDS, and eDP displays, and features a video composite output, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, WIFi 4 connectivity, an optional 4G LTE module, a few USB ports, and several connectors for expansion.

• We were told that the internet would dematerialize society and decrease energy use. Contrary to this projection, it has become a massive infrastructure and a rapidly growing energy consumer. In this series of articles, Low-tech Magazine examines the reasons behind the ever-expanding resource use of digital communication and what we can do about it. The internet isn’t an autonomous being. Its growing energy use results from decisions made by software developers, web designers, marketeers, publishers, and internet users. By placing communications in a historical context and with the development of its lightweight, off-the-grid, and solar powered website, Low-tech Magazine challenges our high-tech approach to sustainability and highlights the possibilities of alternative solutions.

Open Hardware/Modding

• People living in small towns and rural areas may not realize it, but pickpocketing is a genuine issue in big cities. Real-life pickpockets aren’t magic like those in movies, but they can pull an item like a wallet from your pocket without you noticing — it is surprisingly easy to do.

• Most people leave their phones on their chargers overnight, but sometimes you end up at 5% halfway through the day and need to top off your battery. Fast charging is very convenient in such circumstances, but it may be damaging your smartphone’s battery and reducing its capacity over time.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

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

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

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

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

Mozilla

• There are a lot of web browsers and they all have their own unique features, their own look and feel…

• Earlier this week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it will develop rules to prevent “misuse and abuse” of people’s sensitive information by placing restrictions on data sharing by data brokers. This is a much-needed step to advance privacy, give people more control over their data, and shed light on a notoriously murky industry.

Programming/Development

• Hi!

• Let me start this status update with an announcement: from 2023-08-28 to 2023-10-01 (!), I will be on leave, so I will have reduced availability. Don’t be surprised if I miss some e-mails, and feel free to ping me again (more generally, please do ping me if I forget about a discussion — that also tends to happen when I’m not on leave). During that time, I will be traveling to Korea and Japan. If you live there and want to say hello, please reach out!

• This month, Rose has continued working on wlroots frame scheduling. After a fair amount of discussion, she’s found a pretty nice API design. She still needs to address and cleanup a few things, but that merge request is on a good track! I’ve also merged a new API to embed a compositor inside a Wayland client, and sent patches to remove some cases where we were waiting for a reply from Xwayland in a blocking fashion.

• Hello!As often, these are some thoughts without any grand announcements to accompany them.

• It’s just passed 5 years since I arrived in Santiago de Compostela, without much of a plan, and here I am. Summer a bit milder than last year which is great as I have got really back into cycling again. Compostela apparently has the highest ratio of tourists to locals at the moment in all Spain – 1.3 visitors for every resident, its very noticeable if you go to the old town. Meanwhile in the UK even Conservative news outlets now recommend leaving. I personally miss UK life but what I really miss is the UK of 2013, before the last decade of Conservative-led self destruction.

Leftovers

• On Tuesday I talked about what I’d love to have in my bag, in addition to what I currently cart around to coffee shops and work:

• My daily carry in 2023

• I mentioned I was interesed in e-readers:

• Speaking of books, I’m reconsidering my stance on e-readers. I tried also using my iPad Mini as a daily reader, but its middling battery and weight lead me to reconsider. I’m thinking probably a mid-sized Kobo with enough resolution and storage for manga as well as books. I tend to have a few books going at the same time, so having one reader is brilliant.

• I just saw another one of these appear in Sydney. Or should I say heard, because its engine and tyre noise could be perceived from a block away before I saw it park.

• I’ve thought a bit about learning a skill. How to progress. What the next steps are. This is probably because I’ve moved away from what I thought I used to be, career wise, to something else, and now I’m trying to determine what I will do when I grow up.

Science

• Chandrayaan-3′s lander is scheduled to attempt a touchdown on Aug 23.

Education

• The scene outside Fairfield Court Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia, at 7:40 last Thursday morning was so festive that one might have assumed it was the first day of school. Upbeat music blared from a speaker on the sidewalk. Sgt. Edward R. Gore II, the school’s “climate and culture specialist,” the district’s term for its school resource officers, opened his arms to the kindergartners and first graders who came running toward him, as well as to some who wavered. Also on hand to greet children and parents was the principal, Angela Wright.

• But in fact, the first day of school was receding in the distance: Fairfield Court was one of two local schools that had started the year on July 24, as part of a hotly contested trial: adding 20 days to the customary 180, to help make up ground lost after Richmond kept schools closed to in-person learning for 18 months during the pandemic. Families had only six weeks of summer vacation — closer to the European norm than the American one — before kids returned, and Wright and her staff were doing everything they could to make early-August school seem welcoming. Thus, the daily embraces and music, with a track list chosen by Gore.

Hardware

• There are many well-known physical constants, but it always interests us when someone can approximately measure them using equipment you probably have. We could pretend it is because we want to help kids do science projects, but who are we really kidding? It is just the cool factor. [Stoppi] shows us several neat ways to measure Planck’s constant (German language, Google Translate link) using things like LEDs, solar cells, and common test equipment. If you don’t want to translate the web page, you can also see the setup and the math behind it in the video below.

• Igor highlighted a quality control issue with AMD’s new Radeon Pro W7600 single-slot graphics card, which can cause the screen to blackout under heavy use.

• AMD launches Radeon GPU Detective (RGD) v1.0 software to analyze GPU crashes.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The “Eris” variant has been detected in 48 countries to date. However, it does not lead to an increased rate of complications.

• Plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden allege that federal pressure to remove and suppress COVID-19 material on Facebook and Twitter violates the First Amendment.

• Eris – the most recent “Covid variant” – is supposedly causing spikes in cases all over the world. The story goes that England, Ireland and US are all being hit hard, it’s reached Australia too.

• States, cities and counties across the country — led by California — are setting up “clean air centers,” where residents can find respite from wildfire smoke and other airborne pollutants.

• Kit Knightly A few days ago YouTube amended their Covid19 Misinformation policy, changing it so it now applies to all things medical. The original policy was put in place in the early days of the pandemic, May 2020, and outlawed content in the video sharing platform that “contradicted the WHO or local health authorities” concerning…”

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• While AWS ECS and EKS serve a similar purpose, they have several fundamental differences. Here’s what you should know.

• Windows 11 users will soon be able to remove more of the bloatware that gets preinstalled with Microsoft’s operating system.

Security

• The ‘LabRat’ cryptomining and proxyjacking operation relies on signature-based tools and stealthy cross-platform malware, and abuses TryCloudflare to hide its C&Cs.

• Although Linux offers security advantages, users must remain vigilant against various forms of malware and cyberattacks.

• “Variants of CL0p were initially only found on Windows systems, but the gang also developed a Linux variant toward the end of 2022, reflecting the diversity of endpoint operating systems used by modern businesses. In an interesting, flawed technical glitch, security researchers noted that the Linux version’s encryption is easily reversible using a simple decryptor.”

• “auDA was alerted to an alleged data breach this afternoon,” the organisation said in a statement.

• Weekly cybersecurity news roundup that provides a summary of noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar for the week of August 14, 2023.

• Jenkins has announced patches for high and medium-severity vulnerabilities impacting several of the open source automation tool’s plugins.

• Several major companies have published advisories in response to the Downfall vulnerability affecting Intel CPUs.

• The National Credit Union Administration is requiring all federally insured credit unions to report cyber incidents within 72 hours of discovery.

• CISA has published a cyber defense plan outlining strategies to help critical infrastructure organizations reduce the risks associated with RMM software.

• Exploitation of a Citrix ShareFile vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-24489 has spiked as CISA added it to its ‘must patch’ catalog.

• ecurity researchers at ESET s.r.o. today warned of a new mass-spreading phishing campaign actively targeting Zimbra account user credentials. First detected in April, the ongoing campaign is targeting a variety of small and medium businesses and governmental entities.

• A cybersecurity company has detected a phishing campaign that uses malicious QR codes to try to steal organizations’ data. Cofense Inc., the Virginia-based email security provider that spotted the campaign, detailed its findings in a Wednesday blog post.

• The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has determined that hackers are actively launching cyberattacks against deployments of Citrix Systems Inc.’s ShareFile platform. According to CISA officials, the cyberattacks are exploiting a ShareFile vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-24489 that was publicly detailed last month.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• Interesting research: “An Empirical Study & Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs“:

Privacy/Surveillance

• Tech companies are confronting a challenge: how to balance asking users for more data in order to deliver new AI features without scaring away privacy-conscious businesses and consumers.

• Why it matters: Consumers consistently tell pollsters they want transparency about when AI is used and trained. But when companies provide such detail, it’s often written in legalese and buried in fine print that is often being rewritten to give tech companies more rights.

Defence/Aggression

• The Chief Minister of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, announced Tuesday the withdrawal of cases filed against students during 2022 anti-Agnipath protests.

• Former President Trump on Thursday canceled a press conference he’d scheduled for next week at which he said he’d present a report that would lead to his “complete EXONERATION” in his Georgia election interference case.

• Several hundred trucks bound for the Gulf states have been trapped at the border between Syria and Jordan since early August because of a new Saudi law affecting cargo vehicles apparently aimed at stemming the flow of the drug Captagon.

• U.S. officials say Chinese and Russian spy agencies are trying to steal technology from private American space companies and preparing cyberattacks that could disable satellites in a conflict.

• Belarus would use nuclear weapons in case of “aggression”, the country’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday. Russia sent tactical nukes to Belarus in June. However, it’s unclear if they have already been transported to the country.

• The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) called for an immediate end to the recent violence in Libya’s capital Tripoli Tuesday.

• The accusation is the latest example of a propaganda drive to track down spies.

• As Egyptians mark the 10th anniversary of the Rabaa massacre, we speak with human rights advocate Hossam Bahgat about how the mass killing shaped the country in the ensuing years. On August 14, 2013, Egyptian security forces opened fire on a sit-in where tens of thousands of people had camped out in Cairo to protest the ouster of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 900 protesters were killed, but no one has been held responsible over the past 10 years. The minister of defense at the time, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has since risen to the presidency, ruling Egypt for nearly a decade as a close U.S. ally while jailing tens of thousands of political prisoners. “The massacre established a new normal” and inaugurated “a decade of shame,” says Bahgat, founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which has obtained a leaked copy of a government report on the massacre that implicated Egyptian authorities in the mass killing and found most victims were civilians.

• Armenia is calling on the United Nations Security Council to address a worsening humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan home to ethnic Armenians that has been under a blockade for eight months. Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought multiple wars over the territory since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most recently in 2020. Azerbaijan closed the only road into the region in December, severely restricting the movement of food, medicine and other supplies for the roughly 120,000 people living there. “We cannot accept a new Armenian genocide in 2023,” says Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Argentine lawyer who served as the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. He issued a report earlier this month on the blockade. We also speak with Anna Ohanyan, professor of political science and international relations at Stonehill College, who says Azerbaijan is relying on “the use of hunger as a weapon” in order not to engage politically with the largely self-governing region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

• A senior UN official told the United Nations Security Council on August 16 that the delivery of humanitarian relief to Nagorno-Karabakh by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) must be allowed to resume through any available routes.

• North-western Nigeria has become increasingly violent. This is due to the activities of militias, known locally as “bandits”. These are loosely organised armed groups, reportedly over 120 factions with 28 to 2,500 members. They are now deadlier than the well-known Boko Haram, which operates in north-eastern Nigeria. >

• African-led peace operations have been vital tools for managing Africa’s complex array of security challenges, though continued reform is needed to intervene more decisively in the continent’s most devastating conflicts.

• International press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the release of nine Afghan journalists arbitrarily arrested by Taliban security forces this month.

• “…Carrillo also asks for the investigation of each one of the officials and police personnel who were in charge of the security of the presidential candidate…”

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

• The Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin notified Muscovites about a drone attack that took place in downtown Moscow around 4 a.m. local time on Friday morning. According to the official, the UAV’s remnants fell near the Expocentre convention space without causing major damage or injuries to people.

• Luthuania has denied an asylum request from Olga Karach, a Belarusian human rights advocate who currently lives in the country.

• In a press conference in Vilnius on Friday, Belarusian exiles spoke out against the growing hostility toward Belarusians in the country.

• Democracy in the West is “rule not by the majority, but by the minority,” says the chair of Russia’s Central Election Commission Ella Pamfilova. She adds that Russia doesn’t need democracy in the Westerns sense of the word.

• Authorities in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region summoned a nine-year-old and a 10-year-old for questioning as witnesses in a criminal case against their mother, lawyer Lidia Prudovskaya, who is charged with “discrediting” the Russian army.

• The Russian Orthodox Church’s diocese in the town of Velikiye Luki announced Friday that it will investigate the actions of a priest who blessed a new statue of Joseph Stalin at the monument’s opening ceremony earlier this week.

• A Moscow judge has granted a request from the Russian Justice Ministry to dissolve Sakharov Center, one of the country’s oldest human rights organizations.

• As the war drags on, Russian soldiers are continuing to abduct and torture civilians in Ukraine’s occupied territories. One of these civilians is Leonid Popov, a 22-year-old Melitopol resident diagnosed with schizophrenia. On April 24, 2023, after being detained and tortured by occupation authorities multiple times, Leonid disappeared from his home. After three months of imprisonment and abuse, he was transferred to a hospital ward, where he was treated for emaciation. Then, on August 2, Russian forces told Leonid’s dad that he was being released — but hours later, soldiers abducted him again. Leonid’s mom recently told her son’s story to journalists from the independent outlet iStories. Meduza is sharing an abridged, English-language adaptation of her account.

• Russia’s Justice Ministry has updated its register of “foreign agents” to include, among others, Ukrainian SSR-born Israeli writer Linor Goralik.

• Pro-Kremlin political analyst Aleksandr Dugin, often seen as a spiritual influencer of President Vladimir Putin, has suggested that Tajik migrants consider embracing the Russian language and Orthodox faith

• This measure will enable Ukrainians in the US to live and work here legally until April 19, 2025. It’s a step in the right direction, but Congress still needs to pass an adjustment act giving them permanent residency.

• Ukraine and neighbouring Romania signed an agreement Friday to work together to boost Kyiv’s export of grain through Romania after Moscow broke off a key wartime shipping agreement that allowed safe passage through the Black Sea.

• Sanctioned businessman Eugene Shvidler lost his attempt on Friday to overturn UK-imposed sanctions at London’s High Court. In their Friday ruling, the court found the sanctions imposed on Shvidler following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to be lawful, disagreeing with his position that they were disproportionate and discriminatory.

• Ukrainian air defense shot down 15 out of 17 Iranian Shahed drones that Russia used in its latest overnight attack on Ukraine, the military said on August 19, as Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that it had downed a Ukrainian missile over Moscow-occupied Crimea.

• Ukraine and Russia have lost a staggering number of troops as Kyiv’s counteroffensive drags on. A lack of rapid medical care has added to the toll.

• The Hong Kong-flagged container ship operated by a German firm left the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea on the evening of August 16, several hours after leaving the southern port of Odesa.

• Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that its air defenses intercepted the drone, which then fell onto an exhibition center. Around 20 drones have targeted the Moscow region since early July, according to the ministry.

• The option of “alternative service” vanished after martial law was declared last year. But some have refused to serve, and now face jail time and skepticism about their motives.

• Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has interrogated two children — a 9-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy — while investigating a criminal case related to their mother’s alleged defamation of the Russian military.

• Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk soccer club will play its home Champions League games in Germany this season at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg.

• Romania has become a key transit point for Ukrainian grain exports since Moscow scrapped a deal allowing safe passage for vessels on the Black Sea.

• The Biden administration on August 18 announced a major expansion of temporary legal status for Ukrainians living in the United States, granting a reprieve for those who fled Russia’s invasion.

• The Ukrainian military says its forces continue to advance in the areas near the cities of Melitopol and Berdyansk after making gains on the southeastern front in their attempt to drive toward the Sea of Azov and cut off Russia’s land bridge to Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

• Latvia’s State Security Service (VDD) said August 18 it had detained an individual on suspicion of spying for Russia.

• Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry says it has limited the authority of Interpol, the world’s leading international law enforcement organization.

• The Basmansky district court of Moscow said on August 18 that the co-chairman of the Golos movement, Grigory Melkonyants, has been ordered into pretrial detention until October 17 on a charge of “running an undesirable organization,” which carries a sentence of up to six years in prison.

• Russia has banned entry to 20 Moldovan officials following Moldova’s “unfriendly” decision to expel 45 Russian diplomats and employees of the Russian Embassy.

• Russia’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to the new report.

• August 18, 2023 6:25 AM

• The UN Security Council on Thursday took up North Korea’s human rights record for the first time in six years.

• Is Russia’s future aligned with China? Many in Moscow think so, seeing the two countries’ visions aligning not just geopolitically, but also ideologically – though it may cost Russia considerably.

Environment

• Hurricane Hilary is churning off Mexico’s Pacific coast as a powerful Category 4 storm threatening to unleash torrential rains on the mudslide-prone border city of Tijuana before heading into Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years. Forecasters warn the storm could cause extreme flooding, mudslides and even tornadoes. No tropical storm has made landfall in Southern California since Sept. 25, 1939. The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Hillary strengthened rapidly early Friday then lost some steam in the afternoon, with sustained winds falling from 145 mph to 130 mph. Nevertheless, it is forecast to still be a hurricane when it nears Mexico’s Baja California peninsula on Saturday night and will probably approach California on Sunday as a tropical storm.

Wildlife/Nature

• Historic wildfires have forced over 50% of people living in Canada’s Northwest Territories to evacuate this week and are threatening multiple cities in British Columbia’s third-largest metropolitan area.

• Let’s start from the basics here: if you tax something, you will get less of it. That’s how taxes work. If you want less of something, you add a tax to it. In Canada, some very, very clueless politicians (pushed by the news media) passed a tax on Facebook and Google linking to news. Both companies have long made it clear that news is not a revenue driver for either company, so Canada’s decision to make it more expensive basically priced both companies out of the market, and both have announced a discontinuation of links to news for Canadian users.

• As more than two dozen climate liability lawsuits by state and local governments against fossil fuel companies continue to progress, a case brought by the city and county of Honolulu could become the first to put Big Oil on trial.

• On Thursday, the Hawaii Supreme Court heard arguments on an appeal by the defendants, which include oil majors such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, to dismiss the suit – a move that a trial court rejected in March 2022.

Finance

• Workers at Volkswagen’s Puebla plant have called off planned strike action after a successful dialogue with the company.

• More than 5,000 bank branches have closed since 2015

• Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios Visuals; Note: August data is month to date, as of Aug. 17.

• Rising interest rates have hammered tech-heavy growth stocks in the last few months.

• The housing market in China is in turmoil. But more and more women, facing a less equal society, are buying their own homes in search of security.

• Expect more strikes, fewer government services, and more tax increases to pay for pension obligations.

• Workers of a Turkey-based company had been on a strike in Tanzania for two weeks for their unpaid wages.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• At a time of heightened threats against the judiciary, some question the release of the names of the Georgia grand jurors who indicted Donald Trump.

• Republican presidential candidates are facing the distinct possibility that former President Trump will be absent from the debate stage next week, or he’ll throw a curveball into the mix.

• Driving the news: The New York Times reported on Friday that Trump plans to skip the Aug. 23 Republican primary debate and instead sit for an online interview with Tucker Carlson.

• Police Minister Bheki Cele says while there are still unacceptably high crime levels, violent crime levels are starting to show a decrease.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 18 Aug 2023 The European Commission and the High Representative have today adopted their 23rd annual report to the European Parliament and the Council on political and economic developments in the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR). This report covers developments in 2022.

• President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and President Yoon Suk Yeol set forward a common security agenda at Camp David. Atlantic Council experts share their insights on what’s next.

• President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea agreed Friday to expand security and economic ties at a historic summit at the U.S. presidential retreat of Camp David. Their meeting and agreement come at a time that all three countries are on an increasingly tense ledge in their relations with China and North Korea.

• While the former president’s name appeared nowhere in the communique issued by three leaders, one of the subtexts was the possibility that he could return to power in next year’s election and disrupt ties with America’s two closest allies in the Indo-Pacific region.

• Biden must get Tokyo and Seoul to commit to long-term unity in the face of security threats.

• In a historic summit Friday at Camp David, President Biden and his counterparts from South Korea and Japan announced they will strengthen military cooperation and turn this first-ever trilateral summit into an annual tradition.

• US President Joe Biden on Friday will announce new security cooperation at a first-of-a-kind three-way summit with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, hoping to send a message of strength to China which has already made clear its displeasure.

• North Korea was accused at the UN Security Council Thursday of spending heavily on its nuclear arms program while its people go hungry and lack basic necessities.

• The Southern African Development Community (SADC) this week marked its own day with chair Felix Tshisekedi pointing to “relatively stable peace and security” in the bloc’s 16 member states.

• An ex-Hong Kong district councillor standing trial in the city’s largest national security case has said that his views on voting down government funding differed from his political party. Lee Yue-shun, a member of the since-disbanded Civic Party, took to the witness stand on Friday as the trial entered its 109th day.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

Censorship/Free Speech

• By Jing Xuan Teng China put into force this week its newest regulations on artificial intelligence-generated content, a watered-downed version of stricter draft rules that seek to keep the country in the AI race while maintaining firm censorship on online content.

• Jordan will never be mistaken for a human rights haven. The State Department’s assessment of the kingdom of Jordan’s human rights environment is, at best, extremely dismal.

• In the latest iteration of Russia’s ongoing crackdown on dissent, a Moscow court on Friday ordered the detention of Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of independent election monitoring organization Golos.

• The Russian Justice Ministry on August 18 added seven more individuals to its foreign agents list, including prominent Kremlin critics Andrei Piontkovsky, Andrei Ilarionov, and Linor Goralik.

• Russia has banned entry to 54 British nationals, including Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and journalists from the BBC and other media outlets in response to U.K. sanctions against its citizens and enterprises, the Foreign Ministry said on August 18.

• Canada is imposing sanctions on 15 Russian individuals and three entities in what Ottawa said was a response to rising levels of human rights violations and violence faced by political opponents and critics in Russia.

• Hong Kong national security police have taken away a woman with reported links to a wanted activist and ex-lawmaker for questioning, according to local media – the latest move in authorities’ investigations of eight overseas pro-democracy figures issued with arrest warrants and HK1 million bounties.

• The head of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) says several members of the Pakistani human rights group have been detained as they attempted to reach the Supreme Court in Islamabad to demand that the state protects their rights and ensure their security.

• The Director General of the Swedish Security Service raised the nation’s terrorist threat level to its second-highest, according to a Thursday press release from the Security Service.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• At every stage of its proceedings against Julian Assange, the US Imperium has shown little by way of tempering its vengeful impulses./p>

• Olga Karach, head of the Nash Dom NGO (Our House) nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, was deemed a threat to national security and denied asylum in Lithuania.

• A Hong Kong court has suggested postponing the high-profile trial of pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai once again to December, when one of the handpicked judges is expected to have finished presiding over another landmark national security case involving 47 democrats.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, at the centre of a crisis that has rocked Senegal ahead of presidential elections, has been admitted to intensive care after launching a hunger strike, his lawyers said Thursday.

• Family members attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in July at the second-highest level on record — with 70% of them crossing illegally, according to new government data.

• Four Dallas police officers are under investigation after they were caught on video laughing about a disabled military veteran who urinated on himself when he was prohibited from using a restaurant bathroom.

• The three aspirants to lead the Broad Front for Mexico in 2024 debated national security and crime in Durango on Thursday night.

• A California appeals court has revived lawsuits from two men who allege Michael Jackson sexually abused them when they were boys. California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal finds Friday that the lawsuits of Wade Robson and James Safechuck should not have been dismissed by a lower court. The judges say the men can legally claim that workers for the two Jackson-owned corporations named as defendants in the cases had a responsibility to protect them. Attorneys for the estate of the late pop star say the allegations were untrue, and that it did not make legal sense for Jackson’s own employees to be expected to protect children from their boss.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Once upon a time, before the internet, there were attempts to combine magazines and catalogs together. The weird part? For a while, it worked!

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• As a writer of opinion pieces, sometimes you go hard in the paint and the result isn’t precisely what you expected. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about Netflix’s announced decision to dip its toe into the video game market. At that point, word had gotten out about it all, though that word can be summed up as vague and without any real specifics as to what any of it meant. As a result, because this was also the era of several other players starting to talk about video game streaming, a la Google’s Stadia product, there had been a bunch of speculation that Netflix was going to get into the game-streaming business as well. Instead, the whole thing turned out to be Netflix developing a few mobile device games that mostly dovetailed with other Netflix properties, such as Stranger Things. It was a big yawn and I wasn’t exactly kind to Netflix about the plan.

Monopolies

Trademarks

• The Board affirmed a failure-to-function refusal to register WHEN THERE ARE NINE, in standard character form, as a service mark for “providing educational scholarships.” The Board found that the proposed mark “would be perceived by consumers as a widely used phrase showing support of Justice Ginsburg and women in the legal profession and thus, merely informational in nature rather than a source-indicator of Applicant’s service.” In re Federal Bar Foundation, Serial No. 90525583 (August 16, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Wendy Boldt Cohen).

Copyrights

• The case centers around an image generated by an AI system called the Creativity Machine, which the system’s owner Stephen Thaler attempted to register with the U.S. Copyright Office. Dr. Thaler is the same individual who unsuccessfully attempted to protect and invention created by a separate machine that he had titled DABUS.

• In this case, Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the author and designated the work as created autonomously by the AI, with ownership transferring to himself as the owner and creator of the machine. The Copyright Office denied the registration application on the grounds that copyright law requires human authorship. Thaler challenged the rejection in court, but Judge Howell upheld the Copyright Office’s decision.

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