● 08.23.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Leftover Links 23/08/2023: India Attempt to Make History on the Moon

Posted in News Roundup at 8:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

• Opposition MP argued that the release was contrary to the ordinary course of events and stated, “We believe that he was released in anticipation of a potential future lawsuit against the mayor.”

• Now going to the store, whether it’s a Macy’s in a suburban mall or the neighborhood CVS — basically, all but the most luxury of retailers — is a battle that leaves consumers feeling defeated.

• Shoppers’ complaints abound. Vox spoke with customers across the country who bemoaned a dearth of employees in stores of all stripes. Equally aggravating: empty shelves, or only a register or two open at any given time.

• The FAA on Aug. 15 issued a temporary flight restriction (TFR) near Lahaina, Hawaii, which is set to end on Aug. 23, 2023. This means that drone pilots are prohibited from flying their drones in the restricted area without prior authorization from the FAA, specifically for the purposes of “providing a safe environment for fire fighting.”

• Now add a case of cat burglary — speaking very literally — and the meowing is getting so loud we can hear it from overseas. Yep, that’s right: Tesla is selling a cardboard cat bed in China that looks almost exactly like another cat bed sold by another company, called Hulumao, as spotted by the Taiwan-run news outlet Focus Taiwan.

• “Dear Mr. Elon Musk, although we don’t know each other, very thank you for promoting our product with Tesla logo on it and selling it in China,” the company wrote in an Instagram post. “Meanwhile, we are sure we have never manufactured this model for Tesla company in China nor licensed the design to you. There must be something misunderstood in this matter.”

Science

• For at least the last three weeks, hackers have been targeting major telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, forcing scientists to temporarily put ten observatories out of commission. Remote operations have also been shut down at a few others.

• NOIRLab has provided few further details about the matter, even to employees. The center declined to answer Science’s query on whether the incident was a ransomware attack, in which hackers demand money for the return of information or control of a facility. A NOIRLab spokesperson tells Science that the center’s information technology staff is “working around the clock to get the telescopes back into the sky.”

• India readied Wednesday to become the first nation to land a spacecraft on the Moon’s south pole, days after a Russian probe crashed in the same region.

• Coming on the heels of Russia’s lunar lander crash over the weekend, India is hoping to become on Wednesday the first nation to set down in the moon’s south polar region.

Hardware

• Today NVIDIA announced DLSS 3.5 further enhancing Ray Tracing and Half-Life 2 RTX was also announced. So let’s go over the details.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• When she was able to get to her feet, she asked the rider to walk her the 50 metres to her workplace, a nearby pharmacy, where her co-workers called an ambulance. Milton said she didn’t call the police because her memory of the man who hit her was so hazy.

• Russian health-care watchdog Roszdravnadzor told the daily Kommersant on August 22 that U.S pharmaceutical company MSD (Merck Corporation) will stop supplying Russia with the popular Zepatier hepatitis C medicine after its planned deliveries end in late 2024.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Google’s SGE and Bard give positive takes on historic evils like slavery, while offering controversial opinions on gun laws and other hot topics.

• We’re talking more about Machine Learning, but today we’re going back in time. Right now we’re in the information age, and many young people (myself included) can’t imagine a society before phones, constant data collection and the information economy.

• Spanning decades of innovative research and technological breakthroughs, there was a remarkable progression from Machine Learning’s early theoretical foundations to the transformative impact ML now has on modern society. The history of machine learning reflects humanity’s quest to create computers in our own image; to imbue machines with the ability to learn, adapt, and make intelligent decisions. This is a journey that has reshaped industries, redefined human-computer interaction, and ushered in an era of unprecedented possibilities.

• KAMAZ, the largest Russian manufacturer of trucks, buses, and vehicle engines, banned its employees from using Apple products for work-related tasks on August 21, through a decree signed by Director General Sergey Kogogin.

• Civil cases arising under federal law are generally filed in federal court: copyright cases, federal employment discrimination cases, cases against government agencies alleging violations of the U.S. Constitution, and more.

Windows TCO

• At the beginning of July, an Estonian healthcare institution notified CERT-EE of a [successful] cyber attack.

• “The file server of the hospital had been wiped of data relating to the day-to-day operations and administration of the institution, but the health records of patients remained intact,” RIA said.

• The ransomware group known as BlackCat and ALPHV has now taken credit for the attack and has started leaking files apparently taken from Seiko systems after the victim refused to respond to its extortion attempts.

• The cybercriminals claim to have stolen 2 Tb worth of files, including employee information, production technology details, video and audio recordings of management meetings, emails, and copies of passports belonging to employees and foreign visitors.

• Following initial reporting on HiatusRAT, the threat actor changed tactics and, in attacks observed in June 2023, shifted focus to performing reconnaissance against a US military procurement system and to targeting Taiwan-based organizations.

• Despite our prior reporting, this group continued with their operations nearly unabated; in a truly brazen move, they recompiled malware samples for different architectures that contained the previously identified C2 servers. The actor then hosted this newly compiled malware on different procured virtual private servers (VPSs). One of which was used almost exclusively to target entities across Taiwan, including commercial firms and at least one municipal government organization. We subsequently observed a different VPS node performing a data transfer with a U.S. military server used for contract proposals and submissions. Given that this website was associated with contract proposals, we suspect the threat actor could gather publicly available information about military requirements, or search for organizations involved in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB).

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (intel-microcode, lxc, and zabbix), Fedora (clamav), SUSE (python-configobj), and Ubuntu (clamav).

• Microsoft has fought to position itself as a global leader for cybersecurity, but it’s also battling its own cybersecurity demons and taking fire from the US Congress.

• Tesla has disclosed a data breach impacting 75,000 people, but it’s a result of a whistleblower leak, not a malicious cyberattack.

• The data of 75,753 individuals was compromised in a Tesla hack—and an insider job is apparently to blame. Tesla identified and filed lawsuits against two former employees over the cyber breach, resulting in the seizure of their electronic devices.

• A critical-severity vulnerability in the Ivanti Sentry (formerly MobileIron Sentry) product exposes sensitive API data and configurations.

• Australian lender Latitude Financial said the recent ransomware attack has cost it AU$76 million (roughly US$50 million).

• A Brazilian hacker claims former president Bolsonaro asked him to hack into the voting system ahead of the 2022 election.

• Juniper Networks has released Junos OS updates to address J-Web vulnerabilities that can be combined to achieve unauthenticated, remote code execution.

• Energy One is the biggest supplier of 24/7 operational energy services in Australia and the second largest in Europe. It has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, apart from those in other countries.

• The company said it had informed the authorities who needed to be kept in the loop, both in Australia and the UK.

• {loadposition sam08}”Key lines of the ongoing inquiry and response include securing Energy One’s systems, establishing whether or what personal information and/or customer-facing systems have been affected, and the initial point of entry,” the statement said.

• Bugs emerged earlier this month in Intel and AMD processors that affect both client and server processors over multiple generations. Fortunately, the bugs were found some time ago and researchers kept it quiet while fixes were developed.

• Google researchers found the Intel bug known as Downfall (CVE-2022-40982) and reported it to Intel more than a year ago, so both parties had plenty of time to work things out. The Downfall bug exploits a flaw in the “Gather” instruction that affected Intel CPUs use to grab information from multiple places in a system’s memory. A Google researcher created a proof-of-concept exploit that could steal encryption keys and other kinds of data from other users on a given server

• Wholesale energy software software provider Energy One reported on Friday a cyberattack had affected “certain corporate systems” in Australia and the UK. In a statement, the company said analysis is underway to identify which systems have been affected.

• Energy One is currently trying to establish whether customer-facing systems have been affected, and what personal information was compromised, if any. The company is also trying to determine the initial point of entry.

• Every software supply chain attack, in which hackers corrupt a legitimate application to push out their malware to hundreds or potentially thousands of victims, represents a disturbing new outbreak of a cybersecurity scourge. But when that supply chain attack is pulled off by a mysterious group of hackers, abusing a Microsoft trusted software model to make their malware pose as legitimate, it represents a dangerous and potentially new adversary worth watching.

• Today, researchers on the Threat Hunter Team at Broadcom-owned security firm Symantec revealed that they’d detected a supply chain attack carried out by a hacker group that they’ve newly named CarderBee.

• Companies handling health data are fending off more cyberattacks each year, and those that do get hacked are facing costly litigation at rapidly rising rates, a Bloomberg Law analysis found.

• The monthly average of new class actions filed over health data breaches so far this year is nearly double the rate from 2022, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of 557 complaints filed against companies in federal courts over the last five years.

• Google has announced an update set to be introduced in Chrome 117. This new feature aims to proactively inform users when an extension they have installed is no longer available on the Chrome Web Store. The move comes as part of the tech giant’s ongoing commitment to enhance security measures within its browser platform.

• The feature, called the “Safety Check,” is designed to address three specific scenarios. First, it will alert users if an extension has been unpublished by its developer. Second, it will notify users if an extension has been removed due to a violation of Chrome Web Store policies. Lastly, the Safety Check will come into play when an extension is flagged as potential malware.

• The University of Minnesota confirms that it has contacted law enforcement and is investigating a claimed data breach that officials became aware of just a month ago.

• U of M spokesman Jake Ricker released a statement to KARE 11 saying on July 21 school administrators became aware that an “unauthorized party” claimed to possess sensitive data reportedly taken from the institution’s computer systems. Ricker says an investigation was launched as soon as the claim was discovered, local law enforcement was contacted and state and federal regulators were also notified.

• In large metropolitan areas, tourists are often easy to spot because they’re far more inclined than locals to gaze upward at the surrounding skyscrapers. Security experts say this same tourist dynamic is a dead giveaway in virtually all computer intrusions that lead to devastating attacks like data theft and ransomware, and that more organizations should set simple virtual tripwires that sound the alarm when authorized users and devices are spotted exhibiting this behavior.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• With a population of 66 million, Facebook owner Meta counts more than 50 million users in the country, the government said. Within that, the government says more than 300,000 people have fallen prey to scams on the platform promising large financial returns.

• We’ve seen various dodgy adverts on Facebook offering discounts of up to 90%. These ads lead to copycat websites that phish for your personal information and bank details.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Meta Platforms on Tuesday asked a court in Norway to stop a fine that the country’s data regulator has imposed on the owner of Facebook and Instagram for breaching user privacy, in a case that could have wider European implications.

• Since Aug. 14, Meta Platforms has been fined 1 million crowns ($94,313) per day for harvesting user data and using it to target advertising at them, called behavioural advertising, a practice common to Big Tech.

• Under the new rules, tech firms won’t be able to target kids with advertising. There are rules about targeting people on what’s deemed sensitive information: religion, race and the like. The EU will also have much more power to force tech companies to remove certain content, content that could be related to terrorism, but also hate speech and scams.

• If companies don’t comply, they stand to pay a fine of up to 6% of their global revenue, which for Meta could be a handsome $7 billion. If the company in question breaks the rule numerous times, it could be kicked out of the EU. The EU has said the days are over, or will be over, when Big Tech companies act like “they are too big to care.”

• In the United States, the major tech companies all spy on their users and just hand the data over to the government. Sometimes a warrant is involved, but when it is, the Constitution is increasingly seen as little more than a formality, and the tech companies almost never fight being served and often hand over more data than the warrant even asks for.

• That’s why I’ve stopped using Google Search. DuckDuckGo tracks you too.

• (It’s hosted on Microsoft Azure, it queries Microsoft Bing, there’s tracking code in the improving duckduckgo script, and they encourage you to talk about your privacy with friends……..on Facebook! They even provide a link to Facebook.)

• License plate scanners aren’t new. Neither is using them for bulk surveillance. What’s new is that AI is being used on the data, identifying “suspicious” vehicle behavior: [...]

• The previously unreported case is a window into the evolution of AI-powered policing, and a harbinger of the constitutional issues that will inevitably accompany it. Typically, Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology is used to search for plates linked to specific crimes. But in this case it was used to examine the driving patterns of anyone passing one of Westchester County’s 480 cameras over a two-year period. Zayas’ lawyer Ben Gold contested the AI-gathered evidence against his client, decrying it as “dragnet surveillance.”

• And he had the data to back it up. A FOIA he filed with the Westchester police revealed that the ALPR system was scanning over 16 million license plates a week, across 480 ALPR cameras. Of those systems, 434 were stationary, attached to poles and signs, while the remaining 46 were mobile, attached to police vehicles. The AI was not just looking at license plates either. It had also been taking notes on vehicles’ make, model and color — useful when a plate number for a suspect vehicle isn’t visible or is unknown.

• I noticed while I was playing with the Tor Browser last night, that the “Safer” setting, starts disabling some features that aren’t widely used while just browsing the Web. It leaves JavaScript on (but only for HTTPS sites), but it starts disabling some of the crappy features that you often don’t need.

• If you look at the monthly Mozilla security updates, a lot of them address High and Critical CVEs that WASM itself adds to the browser.

• That’s why I set javascript.options.wasm to False in all my browsers in about:config, so even sites I allow to run JavaScript can’t load WASM blobs on me.

• I just want to pay my phone bill, not risk having executables sent down the hatch.

• In the heart of New York City, a watershed moment for protecting users against unfettered government surveillance is unfolding at the sixth session of negotiations to formulate the UN Cybercrime Convention. Delegates from Member States have convened at UN Headquarters for talks this week and next that will shape the digital and fair trial rights of billions. EFF and our allies will be actively engaged throughout the talks, participating in lobbying efforts and delivering presentations. Despite repeated civil society objections, the zero draft of the Convention is looking less like a cybercrime treaty and more like an expansive global surveillance pact.

• Over the next 10 days, more than 145 representatives of Member States of the United Nations will invest 60 hours in deliberations, aiming for consensus on most provisions. Focused parallel meetings, coined “informals,” will tackle the most contentious issues. These meetings are often closed to civil society and other multi-stakeholders, sidestepping important input from human and digital rights defenders about crucial interpretations of the draft treaty text. The outcome of these discussions could potentially shape the most controversial treaty powers and definitions, underscoring the urgency for multi-stakeholder observation. It is critical that states allow external observers to participate in these informals over the next two weeks.

• The following articles in the zero draft, released in June, are the focus of our main concerns about Chapter V,  which deals with cross border surveillance and the extent to which Member States must assist each other and collaborate in surveillance on each other’s behalf. We will also deal with other articles (24 and 17) in the proposed treaty as they are relevant to the international cooperation on surveillance chapter.

Confidentiality

• In cryptography, there is a gold rule that states to not develop your own algorithm because… it will be probably weak and broken! They are strong algorithms (like AES) that do a great job so why reinvent the wheel? However, there are projects that try to develop new algorithms.

Defence/Aggression

• Another 12 were injured in attacks on an area controlled by a powerful ethnic army.

• More than 200 extrajudicial killings of former Afghan government officials and security forces have taken place since the Taliban took over the country two years ago, according to a UN report released on August 22.

• Amnesty International has called on Iranian authorities to allow the commemoration of the first anniversary of those killed during “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022 amid a campaign by security forces marked by “harassment and intimidation” against victims’ families “to enforce silence and impunity.”

• China said Monday it had lodged complaints over a statement released at a first-of-its-kind summit of the leaders of the United States, South Korea and Japan in which they criticised Beijing’s “aggressive behaviour”.

• Photos of Arwa Sheikh Ali’s cheek after his arrest showed wounds including triangular marks and lines. The police denied the accusations and said the shapes had been made by an officer’s shoelaces.

• In 2026, we will celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial, and also the fifth anniversary of the January 6th uprising. Curators diligently preserved detritus from the Capitol attack, including photos of a wooden gallows.

• Bernardo Arévalo won Guatemala’s presidential vote. But observers fear meddling by courts and politicians in the leadup to his swearing-in early next year.

• There were up to 100,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But the war that broke out in 1979 and the onset of growing persecution pushed many out.

• [...]

• During its first stint in power from 1996-2001, the Taliban caused an international uproar after the militants announced that all Sikhs and Hindus in the country would be required to wear yellow badges.

• The Taliban prohibited Sikhs and Hindus from building new temples. They were also forced to pay a special tax called jizya, which was historically imposed by Muslim rulers on their non-Muslim subjects.

• The United States and Iran are in the process of orchestrating a deal that will result in the release of American hostages. They will reportedly be exchanged for the unfreezing of around $6 billion in Iranian assets held in South Korea, which will technically be reserved for humanitarian purchases, and the release of unspecified Iranian prisoners convicted of crimes in US courts. While the freedom of wrongfully detained US citizens should be celebrated, much of the controversy over this agreement has to do with the lack of a multilateral strategy to deter hostage-taking.

• In a 73-page report released on Monday, Human Rights Watch accused Saudi guards stationed on the border with Yemen of “widespread and systematic” attacks on migrants using remote mountain trails to cross the border on foot.

• HRW said the guards used explosive weapons to kill some migrants and shot at others from close range.

• “Saudi officials are killing hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers in this remote border area out of view of the rest of the world,” HRW researcher Nadia Hardman said in a statement.

• At least two civilians were killed when Russian air strikes hit an abandoned water pumping station in Syria’s rebel-held northwest, rescuers said Wednesday, amid a recent uptick in attacks by Damascus ally Moscow.

• “Discussions are planned to address prospects of cooperation in countering international terrorism and other matters pertaining to joint actions,” Russia said.

• Sauli Niinistö spoke on Tuesday at an annual gathering of Finnish diplomats and foreign policy leaders for the last time as Finnish president.

• Finland closed its border to Russian tourists last year, but many Russian citizens are availing of still-valid Schenhen visas to continue crossing into Finland.

• The leaders from the five-member group of nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are discussing expanding the club, which harbors ambitions of becoming a geopolitical alternative to Western-led forums.

• As a two-day BRICS summit gets underway in South Africa, we speak with author and analyst Vijay Prashad about whether the bloc — which comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — can meaningfully challenge U.S. and Western domination in world affairs by building an alternative forum for countries of the Global South.

• The American pharmaceutical company MSD (known in the U.S. as Merck) will stop supplying Russia with Zepatier, one of the most popular drugs to treat hepatitis C, after 2024, the newspaper Kommersant reported on Tuesday, citing Russia’s federal healthcare watchdog.

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

• Police in the Russian city of St. Petersburg have detained the director general of the company that organized an excursion into Moscow’s sewer tunnels for seven people, all of whom along with a guide died over the weekend following heavy rain.

• For the second time in the last two weeks, border guards have had to use a firearm to stop border offenders at the border of Latvia-Belarus, the State Border Guard said on August 22.

• Not all Lithuanians take heed of calls by the country’s institutions not to travel to Belarus. Many are tempted by offers of the Kelvita travel agency to rest in Belarusian sanatoriums.

• A new Kremlin-approved history textbook for Russian schoolchildren offers an unapologetically imperialistic view of Russia’s past while attempting to justify the current invasion of Ukraine, writes Taras Kuzio.

• Leaders of Brazil, India, China and South Africa addressed other topics, but Russia’s president, unable to attend in person because he is wanted for war crimes, put the war in Ukraine at center stage in the meeting.

• The Russian president reiterated his willingness to send shipments of up to 50,000 tons of grain for free to six African countries.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin will be notably absent when Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders from the BRICS group of emerging economies start a three-day summit in South Africa on August 22.

• Two European commissioners have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of returning “war, persecution, and illegal occupation” to Europe with the invasion of Ukraine.

• Lithuanian retired major and defence analyst Darius Antanaitis criticised Latvia’s defence and military development on LRT TV last week. In a rebuke to him, former Latvian Defence and Foreign Affairs Minister Artis Pabriks says the expert speaks without understanding Riga’s actions.

• Polish President Andrzej Duda said on August 22 that is Russia already in the process of shifting some short-range nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus, a move that Duda said will shift the security architecture of the region and the entire NATO military alliance.

• Polish authorities have issued dire warnings that the Suwalki Gap, on Poland’s northern border between Russia and Belarus, is under threat. Locals say that is just election-related fear-mongering.

• Polling uncovering Americans’ views of US aid to Ukraine should embolden US politicians to continue to advocate for Kyiv’s victory over the Russian invaders.

• It is time for a serious conversation on how to hold Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka accountable for his participation in Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, writes Katie LaRoque.

• A Russian drone attack hit Ukraine’s southern Odesa region on Wednesday, the local governor said, the latest strike on facilities used to export grain since the collapse of a deal allowing safe shipments through the Black Sea. The news comes as the Russian defence ministry said that air defence systems downed three drones that targeted the Moscow region.

• The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) took action on Friday to extend and redesignate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of Ukraine and Sudan due to ongoing armed conflicts in those countries.

• A panel set up by the culture minister has decided to reprimand Audrius Valotka, head of the State Language Inspectorate, over his public comments comparing Lithuania’s Polish-speaking districts with Russia’s occupation in Ukraine.

• Russia unleashed a fresh wave of drone attacks on grain export facilities in southern Ukraine, damaging installations and causing fires at grain silos, the military and regional officials said on August 23.

• Czech authorities have seized property in Prague belonging to the daughter and son-in-law of Boris Obnosov, CEO of the Russian defense company Tactical Missiles Corporation and the country’s chief rocket scientist, over Ukraine-linked sanctions.

• A stadium in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Daghestan named after Yelena Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic pole-vault champion for Russia, has been renamed after the athlete said she is “a person of the world.”

• The First Court of Appeals of Common Jurisdiction in Moscow has rejected an appeal filed by well-known Ukrainian human rights defender Maksym Butkevych against a 13-year prison sentence he was handed by Russia-imposed authorities in Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in March.

• The World Court will hear Russia’s objections to its jurisdiction in a genocide case brought by Ukraine in hearings starting on September 18, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said on August 22.

• American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.

• The Kremlin said the attacks were carried out from the air on an important shipping route, which could raise tensions even further.

• Russian independent news outlet iStories spoke to three former Russian officers whose consciences would not let them fight in Ukraine. They described why they joined Russia’s Armed Forces and what it took to get out again once they were swept up in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the mobilization that followed. The three former officers spoke on condition of anonymity, though their identities are known to iStories’ editorial staff. Meduza shares an abridged English version of their stories, by agreement with iStories.

• A Voronezh court has sentenced a 38-year-old man named Vladimir Zaklyazminsky to 12 days in prison and fined him 35,000 rubles ($369) for disorderly conduct and “discrediting” the Russian army after he ripped out patches containing pro-war symbols from the clothes of children in temporary accommodation centers.

• The world’s largest pizza chain—Domino’s—announced that it’s closing 142 stores across Russia, via DP Eurasia, its franchise holder in the country.

• The government will urge the Saeima to amend the Immigration Law, providing that those Russian citizens who have not passed the Latvian language exam until September 1 will have the opportunity to apply for a temporary residence permit for two years during which the exam is to be set, Minister for Interior Māris Kučinskis told Latvian Television on August 23 after the government meeting.

• After spending more than a decade in prison following his conviction in the United States, Viktor Bout is once again a free man in Russia, following the December prisoner exchange with incarcerated American basketball star Brittney Griner. As he restarts his life and business interests, Bout has cast his eyes back on Africa.

• There was no surprise when military junta leaders in Niger reached out to Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group for help just days after overthrowing a democratically elected government and suspending the country’s constitution. Experts say Russia’s presence in Africa is focused on promoting autocracy and instability. Niger is simply the latest example.

• The fate and whereabouts of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, have remained largely shrouded from public view since he led a short-lived mutiny in June.

• Vladimir Putin gave a video address to participants in the BRICS business forum, which is taking place on August 22 in Johannesburg, South Africa, ahead of the main BRICS summit for member countries.

• Since entering the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2018, Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries have ruthlessly exploited the country’s natural resources, most recently turning to logging to fund the organization and to fuel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

• In St. Petersburg, the authorities have arrested Alexander Kim, the CEO of the tour company Sputnik, responsible for organizing an underground guided tour that led to several deaths in Moscow last weekend.

• Air-defense systems downed two UAVs in the Moscow suburbs the night of August 22. The mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin and the region’s governor Andrey Vorobyov wrote about the nighttime drone attacks on Telegram.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• General Sergey Surovikin has been relieved of his post as a Commander-in-chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, writes journalist Alexei Venediktov, the former head of radio station Echo of Moscow, citing an order from the Russian president.

• Venediktov adds that, according to the presidential order, Surovikin will remain employed by the Defense Ministry.

• The order has not been officially published.

• A prominent Russian journalist says General Sergei Surovikin, former commander of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, has been dismissed as head of the country’s aerospace forces.

• Getting reliable information about healthcare to everyone who needs it in a timely way is surely a goal we can all agree on. However, it’s still very far from being a reality. Around the world — especially, but by no means exclusively in the Global South — clinicians and healthcare workers, patients and carers, struggle to access accurate and up-to-date information. One small but mighty organization, Healthcare Information for All (HIFA), is trying to change this, by “convening all relevant stakeholders to address this complex challenge”. They’re now seeking to expand those stakeholders through a global consultation survey, open to all, being launched today to coincide with the IFLA conference in Amsterdam. Learn more, including how you can get involved, in this interview with their Global Coordinator, Neil Pakenham-Walsh, who will also be speaking at the conference.

Environment

• The first tropical storm to hit Southern California in nearly 100 years, Hilary, has already caused major flooding and is now moving on, spurring a state of emergency declaration in Nevada ahead of its impact. The effects of the storm are causing widespread hardship, including at Burning Man—an annual gathering in the desert for wealthy clientele that includes tech CEOs and celebrities who call themselves “Burners.”

• An in-depth scientific analysis published Tuesday now bears this out, finding fire seasons of this severity are at least seven times more likely to occur as a result of humanity burning fossil fuels.

• The study by the World Weather Attribution group also found that over the year, fire-prone conditions were 50 percent more intense as a result of global warming.

• Wildfires, flooding, algae blooms – many tourists in Europe and further afield experienced extreme conditions this summer. What might the future hold? Researchers have already begun studying what climate change might have in store for the tourism industry’s future.

• Here is a list of schools in West Michigan that have announced a change in schedule this week due to the heat and humidity. Most schools in Kent and Ottawa counties are expected to welcome their students for the first day of school this week.

• Over a 141 million people in the U.S. were under heat alerts overnight as a dangerous heat dome lingered over a major swath of the Midwest, South and Southwest.

• The big picture: The heat dome is setting records for its intensity since at least 1950 and comes in a summer that’s been notable for its historic high temperatures.

Energy/Transportation

• Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit in Virginia to try to keep the state in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The Southern Environmental Law Center filed the long-promised lawsuit in Fairfax County Circuit Court on Monday. The initiative is an effort by mid-Atlantic and Northeast states to reduce power plants’ carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system. The lawsuit argues that Virginia’s State Air Pollution Control Board and the Department of Environmental Quality lacked the authority to withdraw. The administration of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin disagrees. Youngkin has made leaving the compact a priority, citing its impact on the cost of electricity.

• When I set out to ride my bicycle from Ontario to my home in Rhode Island, I knew very little about the Erie Canal.

• I didn’t know that it was considered an engineering feat when it was completed in 1825, or that it changed the economy of the region by allowing faster transportation of goods from Buffalo to New York City.

• What I do know is that I love to travel by bike. I love the pace that cycling allows. In a way, it’s not too different from the pace of the motorized boats that replaced the original barges, which were towed by mules.

Wildlife/Nature

• Ecuadorian voters have overwhelmingly supported a ban on future oil extraction in a biodiverse section of the Amazon’s Yasuní National Park — a historic referendum result that will protect Indigenous Yasuní land from development. We speak with Helena Gualinga, a youth Kichwa Sarayaku environmental activist from Ecuador who has fought against oil drilling all her life and says the results of the vote not only set a “crucial precedent” as the first time a country has voted by democratic ballot initiative on resource extraction in the Amazon, but also demonstrates that “Ecuador is a country that is committed to protecting the Amazon rainforest and to protecting Indigenous peoples.”

Overpopulation

• [...] Kyrgyzstan stopped providing irrigation water to Kazakhstan in August as supplies in reservoirs dropped to as low as a tenth of their usual volume.

Finance

• The Government transferred a record £14.3bn to the Bank of England last month as increases in interest rates lumbered the Treasury with heavy losses from quantitative easing (QE).

• The Treasury delivered the single largest state transfer to the Bank on record in July to meet the shortfall from the monetary stimulus programme put in place after the global financial crisis.

• Losses on the Bank of England’s quantitative easing measures have cost the taxpayer almost £30bn in the past 11 months, according to the Office for National Statistics.

• [...]

• The Bank of England’s own projections show the taxpayer will need to transfer about £220bn to the Bank in the seven years to 2030 alone.

• But many say the hike, which doesn’t apply to government workers, still isn’t enough.

• Dell Technologies Inc., one of the tech giants with a significant presence in Massachusetts, is eliminating jobs among its sales teams without offering any indication on the local impact of the cuts.

• The Round Rock, Texas–based laptop maker (NYSE: DELL), whose local workforce is composed of many former EMC Corp. workers, confirmed in a statement to the Business Journal Tuesday that “some members” of its sales staff will leave the company.

• “We’re always assessing our business to remain competitive and ensure we’re set up to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners,” the statement reads. “We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we’ll support those impacted as they transition to their next opportunity.”

• SSD prices are insanely low right now—but manufacturers focused on bottom line have built computers designed to prevent consumers from leveraging this trend.

• Domestic crypto unicorn CoinDCX has fired 12% of its workforce or 71 employees amidst global tech layoffs. The company has cited “dwindling macroeconomic conditions coupled with higher TDS (tax deducted at source) on domestic exchanges” as the reasons behind this decision.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• “In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors,” Adam Grant wrote in The New York Times. “What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?”

• Grant makes a persuasive case for picking our leaders randomly from a pool of candidates by pointing to research by Alexander Haslam, another psychologist, who’s run experiments that show that better decisions are made when the group leader is chosen by lottery essentially versus if the group leader is chosen for their leadership skills or if elected by their peers

• If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?

• People expect leaders chosen at random to be less effective than those picked systematically. But in multiple experiments led by the psychologist Alexander Haslam, the opposite held true. Groups actually made smarter decisions when leaders were chosen at random than when they were elected by a group or chosen based on leadership skill.

• While the British chip designer has has filed to become a public traded company once again, it will likely remain under majority control of Japanese parent SoftBank.

• In a statement today, Arm did not reveal the number of shares it will list nor the price it expects them to go on sale at. References to these figures were left blank in the official filing.

• Given the ubiquitous nature of Arm technology, Arm Holdings’s valuation is estimated to fall between $60 and $70 billion. Though initial ambitions aimed to raise up to $10 billion, SoftBank’s choice to retain a larger portion of Arm might adjust this figure. Arm Holdings is currently owned by SoftBank, a Japanese investment conglomerate, which intends to capitalize on Arm’s strengths in traditional markets as well as in the expanding AI computing sector.

• Arm Holdings Limited (“Arm”) today announced that it has publicly filed a registration statement on Form F-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) relating to the proposed initial public offering of American depositary shares (“ADS”) representing its ordinary shares. Arm has applied to list the ADSs on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “ARM”. The number of ADSs to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have yet to be determined.

• This is one of those unusual occasions, where a little while ago I intended to write a post advocating the precise opposite, but events have changed my mind.

• In little more than two years, Niger has exemplified the power of presidential security forces — and what can happen when that power is unchecked. In March 2021, Niger’s presidential guard quelled an attempted coup by elements of the military two days before the inauguration of President-elect Mohamed Bazoum.

• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “the duty of the international community is to classify the rebel militia as a terrorist group, and to provide the necessary support to the Sudanese government, which is playing its role in confronting this militia to protect its national, regional and international security.”

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocks news content from Canada on its platforms because of a new law that requires tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.

• Russian society has never undertaken an introspection of Czarist colonialism or Soviet crimes against humanity because the post-Soviet Russian Federation did not evolve into a genuinely post-imperial nation state. Instead, during Vladimir Putin’s nearly quarter of a century in power, a new generation of Russians have actively embraced the country’s imperial identity. This unreconstructed imperialism led directly to the current full-scale invasion of Ukraine and will remain a major threat to international security until it is acknowledged and addressed.

• The recent publication of a new history textbook for Russian schoolchildren highlights the continued dominance of unapologetically imperialistic thinking within the Russian establishment. “This isn’t a historical textbook, but a narrative of excuses for Russian and Soviet crimes, as well as an exhortation to young readers to accept these crimes, past and present, as their own,” commented Jade McGlynn, the British author of a new study of Russian memory politics.

Censorship/Free Speech

• From D.C. v. Casa Ruby, Inc., decided May 1 by D.C. trial judge Danya A. Dayson, but just posted on Westlaw: Therefore, specifically, as to each Third-Party board member Defendant, there must be factual allegations sufficient to support an inference or conclusion that the board member either intentionally, rather than negligently, inflicted harm on Casa Ruby…

• But analysts and opposition figures doubt they will heed his advice.

• U.S. District Judge Jerry W. Blackwell dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the posters constituted government speech and therefore did not fall under the First Amendment challenge.

• Former President Trump’s bail has been set at $200,000 in Georgia’s sweeping racketeering case, and he’s got new rules limiting his use of social media to intimidate any potential witnesses or co-defendants.

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• People who seek to endanger national security commonly engage in such acts under the pretext of “peaceful advocacy” and “artistic creations,” Hong Kong’s security chief has claimed in a response to a Danish sculptor who has demanded the return of a 1989 Tiananmen crackdown monument seized under the national security law.

• Hong Kong NGOs have been invited to submit proposals to operate and maintain a historic listed building, which has been home to arts and cultural venue Fringe Club for 40 years. In a 35-page project brief issued on Monday, the the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau said the potential operator should safeguard national security.

• Officials at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville have agreed to pay $80,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Maggie DeJong, a graduate art therapy student, claiming the university violated her First Amendment rights. The school ordered DeJong to have no contact, even “indirect communication,” with three students who complained that statements she posted on social media…

• Bosnian musician Goran Bregovic, who has been banned from performing in Moldova because of his outspoken pro-Moscow views, is due to perform at least twice in the coming months in NATO and EU member Romania, RFE/RL has learned.

• The debate around migration and asylum in Sweden – already fraught – became even more heated. This was not just a political debate. A fervour for collecting toys and clothes for refugee children began. Another fervour, for hunting down “fascists”, “racists” and enemies within began. These “fascists” and “racists” were often those Swedes who took a different position on Europe’s refugee crisis, and who tried to argue in terms of what the state could afford, whether there was a possibility of ethnic and religious conflicts stemming from migration, and so on. These attempts at nuance were not appreciated or even tolerated in public life during the middle part of the 2010s: to ask questions was, at least for a couple of years, essentially an admission of guilt.

• A Belarusian court on August 21 sentenced well-known businessman Pyotr Staratsitarau to five years in prison over his posts on Facebook that were critical of the government of authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The Kashmir Walla, one of the few remaining independent news outlets in Indian-controlled Kashmir, has been under pressure for some time. Its editor, Fahad Shah, who is a regular contributor to the Monitor, has been in jail for 18 months.

• Over the weekend, the Indian authorities blocked access in India to the paper’s website and social media accounts, effectively closing it down. At the same time, the staff’s office landlord evicted them.

Civil Rights/Policing

• A potential strike by U.S. auto workers in September would be a high-stakes problem for President Biden, who’s trying to balance his push for electric vehicles with his self-description as “the most pro-union president ever.”

• “This campaign has been all about trying to get a University of Michigan for everyone, where anyone could come here and thrive as a grad student, no matter their social identity or economic class,” said Fleischmann. “This contract doesn’t get us all the way there, but it gets us much closer.”

• Fifty-one EFF supporters and friends played in the charity tournament on Friday, August 11 in the Horseshoe Poker Room at the heart of the Las Vegas Strip.

• Before the tournament, Tarah and her father, professional poker player Mike Wheeler, hosted a poker clinic to teach basic strategy to those new to the game. Rookie players learned how to raise preflop, not go all-in on a draw, and many more tips that helped them throughout the tournament.

• Emcee Ohm-I kicked off this year’s tournament. The Seattle hacker and hip hop artist thanked everyone for coming, shared his experience playing poker on the N64, and announced that it was time to “Shuffle up and deal!”

• “These coercive policies seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,” Blinken said in a statement.

• “We urge PRC authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies, both in Tibet and throughout other parts of the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

• A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board submitted a filing on Monday accusing Amazon of illegally calling the police on workers and other unlawful union-busting tactics during its effort to crush an organizing campaign at a warehouse near Albany, New York.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Guest Post: Exploring fairness in buffer allocation and packet scheduling.

• Raising the technical community’s concerns about the UN Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology’s recent comments.

• But ICANN, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) worry that recent articulations of the Compact suggest it should use a tripartite model for digital cooperation with three stakeholder groups: the private sector, governments, and civil society.

• That’s dangerous, ICANN and co argue, because technical stakeholders would lose their distinct voice.

• The WSIS and the follow-up WSIS+10 clearly affirmed the globally accepted multistakeholder model of Internet governance and determined the best way for further deployment and development of the Internet. While we are not in the position to directly influence internal UN Secretariat processes, we would like to raise awareness about the direction the GDC process is taking, and the risks involved in excluding the Internet technical community from its processes and discussions.

• Finally, we must emphasize the success of the Internet today, and over the 20 years since the start of the WSIS process. When WSIS concluded in 2005 there were one billion Internet users around the globe. Today, there are more than five billion users, yet the Internet continues to evolve and adapt to the needs of humanity, most recently in our response to the unprecedent challenge of the COVID pandemic. This success must be recognized as an important testament not only to the Internet as a technological platform, but also to the prevailing multistakeholder model by which it has been governed.

• I’m an official Old Person (I turned 52 last month). According to the AARP, that means that I am now officially entitled to complain that back in my day, things used to be better.

Monopolies

• Microsoft so desperately wants its $68.7 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard to happen that it’s willing to divest cloud streaming rights for the publisher’s games to France’s Ubisoft.

• The largest acquisition in tech history first surfaced in January 2022, but regulators were quick to tap the brakes over concerns that Microsoft, with its already well-developed credentials in cloud gaming, would have the market cornered if the deal went ahead as presented.

• Microsoft is still working to receive the required regulatory approvals for its planned Activision-Blizzard acquisition. Despite the fact that other regulators have already approved of Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion deal, the United Kingdom’s CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) has definitively rejected that proposal. In a bid to save its buyout attempt, however, Microsoft has submitted a revised acquisition plan to the CMA. According to the CMA, this new plan is “substantially different” from the one that came before it – in that now, Microsoft is willing to do away with cloud streaming exclusivity of Activision-Blizzard franchises by offloading the rights to competitor Ubisoft.

Patents

Trademarks

• Gregory Gregory, a New Jersey restaurant owner who doesn’t particularly care for tacos, is the last holdout against fast food giant Taco Bell’s legal bid to “liberate” the Taco Tuesday trademark.

• Gregory owns Gregory’s Restaurant & Bar, which has been slinging tacos under the Taco Tuesday banner since 1979, and has held the trademark for the phrase in New Jersey since 1982.

• And he’s not about to give it up without a fight.

• Writing as much as I do about trademark disputes and, more specifically, lawsuits, these are always the most frustrating ways for these disputes to end. I will spend some time examining a dispute, analyzing the merits on both sides, only to find that the suit is settled without any of the pertinent details of the settlement being disclosed publicly. But that’s just how it goes at times.

Copyrights

• This month, a federal judge weighed in on negotiations between the Internet Archive and the publishers suing it over its e-book lending library – and the decision was surprisingly sound.

• In a decision that could have major consequences for Hollywood studios — especially amid the ongoing strikes — a federal judge ruled Friday that AI-generated artwork can’t be copyrighted, per The Hollywood Reporter. United States District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell oversaw a lawsuit brought against the U.S. Copyright Office after it refused a copyright to Stephen Thaler for an AI-generated image he made with Creativity Machine, Thaler’s own AI system. In the recent ruling, Howell upheld the Copyright Office’s decision to reject Thaler’s copyright application.

• Howell said humans are an “essential part of a valid copyright claim” and “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.” She also cited past cases, including the famous “monkey selfie” case, in which photographer David Slater was sued for claiming copyright on an image a crested macaque took with Slater’s camera.

• Copyright issues have dogged AI since chatbot tech gained mass appeal, whether it’s accusations of entire novels being scraped to train ChatGPT or allegations that Microsoft and GitHub’s Copilot is pilfering code.

• But one thing is for sure after a ruling [PDF] by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia – AI-created works cannot be copyrighted.

• Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Sumona is the Vice President of Museum Programs at DAG where she has worked with museum collections and the institutions own collection to increase access to cultural heritage.

• Founded by Kim Dotcom in 2016, Bitcache was marketed as a groundbreaking blockchain microtransaction solution set to revolutionize a lot of very important crypto stuff; so invest now, before it’s too late. Last month Bitcache Limited was put into liquidation. According to Dotcom, the company collapsed because a lawyer sent an invoice for the work he did for the company.

• High school students are educated on a wide variety of topics, helping them to understand and become productive members of society. In Denmark, a new course was recently announced by local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance and publisher Gyldendal. With support from the government, the new curriculum educates young Danes on copyright and piracy.

• Metal band DragonForce has been fighting with YouTube’s broken copyright system for a week now. Here’s the latest. The band took to Twitter to protest a random YouTube user claiming ownership of their song, “Valley of the Damned.”

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