● 08.30.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 30/08/2023: Calamares Releases and Portfolio 1.0.0

Posted in News Roundup at 8:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• SHOW NOTES ►► https://tuxdigital.com/podcasts/destination-linux/dl-337/

• On this episode of Destination Linux (337), we discuss a piece of Linux hardware that’s got all of us drooling. Then we’re going to discuss some changes coming to KDE that will finally make Michael happy. And we have a special birthday to celebrate.

Kernel Space

Applications

• Our Machine Learning in Linux series focuses on apps that make it easy to experiment with machine learning. All the apps covered in the series can be self-hosted.

• ImaginAIry is Python-based software for generating Stable Diffusion images. It’s primarily designed for the command-line but there’s a web frontend in development.

• This is free and open source software.

• The software utility cron also known as cron job is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like computer operating systems.

• Tor Browser 12.5.3 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

• This release updates Firefox to 102.15.0esr, including bug fixes, stability improvements and important security updates. We also backported the Android-specific security updates from Firefox 117.

• We are pleased to announce an affiliate partnership with ZOOM-Platform, a supplier of DRM-free games. If you use a link from this website (or from our Wiki), the ScummVM project will receive a small amount of money to be used for web hosting and other expenses.

Instructionals/Technical

• Seamlessly create a live USB with Linux Mint on Windows and Linux by following this guide.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Power Tab Editor on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Power Tab Editor is a music notation software specialized in creating guitar and bass tablatures, as well as sheet music with detailed playback capabilities.

• This year I started publishing a syslog-ng tutorial series both on my blog and on YouTube: https://peter.czanik.hu/posts/syslog-ng-tutorial-toc/ And while the series was praised as the best possible introduction to syslog-ng, viewers also mentioned that one interesting element is missing from it: namely, it does not tell users how to develop a syslog-ng configuration.

• This year I started publishing a syslog-ng tutorial series both on my blog and on YouTube: https://peter.czanik.hu/posts/syslog-ng-tutorial-toc/ And while the series was praised as the best possible introduction to syslog-ng, viewers also mentioned that one interesting element is missing from it: namely, it does not tell users how to develop a syslog-ng configuration.

• Like everything else on Linux, terminal can also be customized to fit your preferences.

• To change the design of terminal, you don’t have to download an extension or theme to do it.

• In this tutorial, we show you how to install the latest version of Oracle Linux 7 on a dedicated hardware server or on a private virtual machine by using the DVD ISO image or a bootable Oracle Linux USB.

• In this tutorial, we will learn how to install the latest graphical version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on a dedicated hardware server or on a virtual machine in a private or public cloud using the DVD ISO image or a bootable RHEL USB.

• Apache Guacamole is a free and open-source remote desktop gateway that allows you to connect to your computer/server remotely using different protocols such as SSH, RDP, and VNC. Apache Guacamole is maintained by Apache Software Foundation, and licensed with Apache License 2.0.

• If you’re in a rush and want to fix this problem quickly, just run the below command: However, I recommend you read the entire article to understand the main reason for this issue and become an informed Linux user.

• Don’t you want to see the screen of your Linux machine? Either you don’t work anymore?

• The Linux command line is a powerful tool that gives you complete control over your system. But to unleash its full potential, you must understand the environment in which it operates. One crucial component of this environment is the PATH variable. It’s like a guide that directs the system to where it can find the programs you’re asking it to run. In this article, we will delve into what the PATH variable is, why it’s important, and how to modify it to suit your needs.

• While working on the Oracle Ksplice team, we have to adapt our code base to handle new features either in the Linux Kernel or user space programs so that we can continue to provide live patching to our customers. One of those features was UBSan (UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer) and the idea of this blog post is to share the investigation work that has been done as part of adding support for it in Ksplice for the Linux kernel.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• After a long pause, there are two new Calamares releases. Calamares is a Linux System Installer, and I was the maintainer for five years before resigning that role. Nobody has stepped up to take the role over, although Anke and Evan contribute regularly helping users and adding bits and pieces. So, I got some prodding to do new releases and did so.

• There is a 3.2.62 release, dating back to april 2023. That was the very last 3.2 series release, and just picked up translations from Transifex. After that, translations were switched to the 3.3 branch. Since there are no real 3.3 releases yet, there is little testing of the translation workflow yet.

• Something that has proven to be quite divisive in the Linux community for KDE Plasma users is single or double-click to open something, as Plasma 6 will default to double-click.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• I am happy to announce the release of Portfolio 1.0.0! This new release is the first step in the modernization process to GTK 4 and Libadwaita. It’s also a continuation to my efforts of bringing a minimalist file manager to the mobile Linux community, with a few important bug fixes.

• As a starting point for the modernization process, this new version of Portfolio preserves the exact same design, in a GTK 4 flavor. A few reasons for that.

• First, although I wish everyone was distributing applications using Flatpak, I want to reduce friction for the mobile Linux distributions, by sticking to currently available APIs. Second, I want to spend more time experimenting with newer Libadwaita widgets, specially with the ones from the upcoming 1.4 release, as these could require redesigning a few aspects of Portfolio’s graphical interface.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• AntiX Linux is a lightweight, Debian-based distribution that is fast and suitable for older hardware and modern systems. It is known for its minimal resource usage and ability to run on computers with limited RAM and processing power.

• Relying on the lightweight IceWM for its flagship desktop environment, antiX is an excellent choice for all advanced Linux users looking for a systemd-free Linux distribution to tailor to their needs.

• Released ten months after the previous 22 version, antiX 23 brings some exciting changes, so let’s look at them.

• If you’re one to favor choice, versatility, and independence from the systemd behemoth, then you’re in for a treat. Say hello to antiX-23 (Arditi del Popolo), a new release based on Debian Bookworm that stands as a powerful testament to the open-source community’s flexibility.

• With its myriad flavors and options, this Linux distro invites you to experience computing on your own terms. The new release adds some in-house spices like zzzFM/IceWM as the default desktop and the IceWM Control Centre. Plus, the Onboard virtual keyboard and magnus screen magnifier are now standard.

BSD

• The FreeBSD Project is proud to have participated in the Google Summer of Code program since its inception in 2005. As we near the completion of the 2023 season, the Foundation asked a few of our GSoC students to share more about themselves and their experience working with the Project.

• The FreeBSD Project is proud to have participated in the Google Summer of Code program since its inception in 2005.

Debian Family

• And nothing changes: rediscovered from past Andrew at his first Cambridge BBQ and almost the first blog post here: [...]

• I’ve already described in brief how I built a mirror that currently mirrors Debian and Ubuntu on a daily basis. That was relatively straightforward given that I know how to install Debian and configure a basic system without a GUI and the ftpsync scripts are well maintained, I can pull some archives and get one pushed to me such that I’ve always got up to date copies of Debian and Ubuntu.

• I wanted to do something similar using Rocky Linux to pull in archives for Almalinux, Rocky Linux, CentOS, CentOS Stream and (optionally) Fedora.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Explore Ubuntu Pro’s role in the AWS Shared Responsibility Model plus walk through a real-world example to install your own Mastodon server on Ubuntu Pro

• Deploying your application on a public cloud offers numerous benefits, including improved time to market, elastic capacity, and improved baseline security compared to on-premises solutions. However, this does not guarantee better security coverage for your application and data. For this reason, the major cloud providers provide a Shared Responsibility Model, which outlines the distribution of security responsibilities between the cloud service provider and its customers.

• In this blog post we will examine the synergy between Ubuntu Pro and the AWS Shared Responsibility Model. We will then present a practical example by installing a Mastodon Server to illustrate how Ubuntu Pro’s features effectively safeguard your application.

• Yesterday, I wrote a little about the applications I’ve seen crash on my Ubuntu Linux laptop over the last six months.

• Some people questioned why I use Microsoft Edge as my primary web browser on Ubuntu. I thought I’d write up why, and how a couple of the built-in features are appealing to me.

• Google Chrome is a web browser, most used widely in the world.

• When the stakes are high and national security is on the line, every decision matters. Just ask the team at New Mexico State University’s Physical Science Laboratory (PSL).

• Founded back in 1946 to support the United States’ space and rocket programs, PSL has been on the leading edge of defence-oriented applied science for over seven decades. But when the Department of Defense (DoD) rolled out new cybersecurity guidelines, PSL found itself at a crossroads.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

• As we reported in a previous blog post, almost the entire Bootlin engineering team was at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe in Prague in June.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• (I haven’t posted a lot in the past couple years, except for git-cinnabar announcements. This is going to be a long one, hold tight)

• This is quite the cryptic title, isn’t it? What is this all about? ELF (Executable and Linkable Format) is a file format used for binary files (e.g. executables, shared libraries, object files, and even core dumps) on some Unix systems (Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc.). A little over 12 years ago, I wrote a blog post about improving libxul startup I/O by hacking the ELF format. For context, libxul is the shared library, shipped with Firefox, that contains most of its code.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• Latin America is a growing area for free and open source software. The Latin American LibreOffice community announces the Fourth LibreOffice Latin America Congress, to be held at the Faculty of Engineering of the UNAM, Mexico City, on November 9th (Thursday) and 10th (Friday).

GNU Projects

• This is to announce coreutils-9.4, a stable release. This is a stabilization release coming about 19 weeks after the 9.3 release. See the NEWS below for a summary of changes. There have been 162 commits by 10 people in the 19 weeks since 9.3.   Andreas Schwab (1)      Jim Meyering (1)   Bernhard Voelker (3)    Paul Eggert (60)   Bruno Haible (11)       Pádraig Brady (80)   Dragan Simic (3)        Sylvestre Ledru (2)   Jaroslav Skarvada (1)   Ville Skyttä (1) Pádraig [on behalf of the coreutils maintainers] Here is the GNU coreutils home page:     http://gnu.org/s/coreutils/   http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v9.4 or run this command from a git-cloned coreutils directory:   git shortlog v9.3..v9.4   https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.4.tar.gz   (15MB)   https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.4.tar.xz   (5.8MB)   https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.4.tar.gz.sig   https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.4.tar.xz.sig   7dce42b8657e333ce38971d4ee512c4313b8f633  coreutils-9.4.tar.gz   X2ANkJOXOwr+JTk9m8GMRPIjJlf0yg2V6jHHAutmtzk=  coreutils-9.4.tar.gz   7effa305c3f4bc0d40d79f1854515ebf5f688a18  coreutils-9.4.tar.xz   6mE6TPRGEjJukXIBu7zfvTAd4h/8O1m25cB+BAsnXlI=  coreutils-9.4.tar.xz from coreutils-9.2 or OpenBSD’s cksum since 2007.   gpg –verify coreutils-9.4.tar.gz.sig   pub   rsa4096/0xDF6FD971306037D9 2011-09-23 [SC]         Key fingerprint = 6C37 DC12 121A 5006 BC1D  B804 DF6F D971 3060 37D9   uid                   [ unknown] Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com>   uid                   [ unknown] Pádraig Brady <pixelbeat@gnu.org>   gpg –locate-external-key P@draigBrady.com   gpg –recv-keys DF6FD971306037D9   wget -q -O- ‘https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=coreutils&download=1′ | gpg –import -   gpg –keyring gnu-keyring.gpg –verify coreutils-9.4.tar.gz.sig   Automake 1.16.5   Gnulib v0.1-6658-gbb5bb43a1e   Bison 3.8.2 * Noteworthy changes in release 9.4 (2023-08-29) [stable]   On GNU/Linux s390x and alpha, programs like ‘cp’ and ‘ls’ no longer   fail on files with inode numbers that do not fit into 32 bits.   [This bug was present in "the beginning".]   ‘b2sum –check’ will no longer read unallocated memory when   presented with malformed checksum lines.   [bug introduced in coreutils-9.2]   ‘cp –parents’ again succeeds when preserving mode for absolute directories.   Previously it would have failed with a “No such file or directory” error.   [bug introduced in coreutils-9.1]   ‘cp –sparse=never’ will avoid copy-on-write (reflinking) and copy offloading,   to ensure no holes present in the destination copy.   [bug introduced in coreutils-9.0]   cksum again diagnoses read errors in its default CRC32 mode.   ‘cksum –check’ now ensures filenames with a leading backslash character   are escaped appropriately in the status output.   This also applies to the standalone checksumming utilities.   [bug introduced in coreutils-8.25]   dd again supports more than two multipliers for numbers.   Previously numbers of the form ’1024x1024x32′ gave “invalid number” errors.   factor, numfmt, and tsort now diagnose read errors on the input.   ‘install –strip’ now supports installing to files with a leading hyphen.   Previously such file names would have caused the strip process to fail.   ls now shows symlinks specified on the command line that can’t be traversed.   Previously a “Too many levels of symbolic links” diagnostic was given.   pinky, uptime, users, and who no longer misbehave on 32-bit GNU/Linux   platforms like x86 and ARM where time_t was historically 32 bits.   Also see the new –enable-systemd option mentioned below.   ‘pr –length=1 –double-space’ no longer enters an infinite loop.   shred again operates on Solaris when built for 64 bits.   Previously it would have exited with a “getrandom: Invalid argument” error.   tac now handles short reads on its input.  Previously it may have exited   erroneously, especially with large input files with no separators.   ‘uptime’ no longer incorrectly prints “0 users” on OpenBSD,   and is being built again on FreeBSD and Haiku.   [bugs introduced in coreutils-9.2]   ‘wc -l’ and ‘cksum’ no longer crash with an “Illegal instruction” error   on x86 Linux kernels that disable XSAVE YMM.  This was seen on Xen VMs.   ‘cp -v’ and ‘mv -v’ will no longer output a message for each file skipped   due to -i, or -u.  Instead they only output this information with –debug.   I.e., ‘cp -u -v’ etc. will have the same verbosity as before coreutils-9.3.   ‘cksum -b’ no longer prints base64-encoded checksums.  Rather that   short option is reserved to better support emulation of the standalone   checksum utilities with cksum.   ‘mv dir x’ now complains differently if x/dir is a nonempty directory.   Previously it said “mv: cannot move ‘dir’ to ‘x/dir’: Directory not empty”,   where it was unclear whether ‘dir’ or ‘x/dir’ was the problem.   Now it says “mv: cannot overwrite ‘x/dir’: Directory not empty”.   Similarly for other renames where the destination must be the problem.   [problem introduced in coreutils-6.0] ** Improvements   cp, mv, and install now avoid copy_file_range on linux kernels before 5.3   irrespective of which kernel version coreutils is built against,   reinstating that behavior from coreutils-9.0.   comm, cut, join, od, and uniq will now exit immediately upon receiving a   write error, which is significant when reading large / unbounded inputs.   split now uses more tuned access patterns for its potentially large input.   This was seen to improve throughput by 5% when reading from SSD.   split now supports a configurable $TMPDIR for handling any temporary files.   tac now falls back to ‘/tmp’ if a configured $TMPDIR is unavailable.   ‘who -a’ now displays the boot time on Alpine Linux, OpenBSD,   Cygwin, Haiku, and some Android distributions   ‘uptime’ now succeeds on some Android distributions, and now counts   VM saved/sleep time on GNU (Linux, Hurd, kFreeBSD), NetBSD, OpenBSD,   Minix, and Cygwin.   On GNU/Linux platforms where utmp-format files have 32-bit timestamps,   pinky, uptime, and who can now work for times after the year 2038,   so long as systemd is installed, you configure with a new, experimental   option –enable-systemd, and you use the programs without file arguments.   (For example, with systemd ‘who /var/log/wtmp’ does not work because   systemd does not support the equivalent of /var/log/wtmp.)

Programming/Development

Python

• The “ttest_ind()”, “ttest_1samp()”, and “ttest_rel()” methods of the “scipy.stats” module perform one sample, two samples or paired sample t-test in Python.

• The “oct()” function is used in Python to convert/transform the decimal, binary and hexadecimal values into octal values.

Leftovers

• Jonathan Becher

• This phenomenon happens when a manager cannot or will not communicate their goals clearly and succinctly. Subordinates repeatedly try to fulfill their manager’s expectations through multiple attempts of bringing them a rock (i.e., proposal, product, process, etc.). Each time, the rock isn’t quite right – with the manager producing another requirement. Eventually, the manager becomes satisfied or the subordinates wearily give up.

Education

• Sluggish growth in math scores for U.S. students began long before the pandemic, but the problem has snowballed into an education crisis.

• Five years ago, striking teachers occupied parts of the Education Ministry building and stayed there for several weeks. With the start of the new school year fast approaching, the teachers are again looking at industrial action to address staffing issues and low wages.

• After more than half a year of wage disputes, the parties have agreed on the proposal submitted by independent arbitrators at the end of July.

Hardware

• The product shortages and supply-chain delays of the global covid-19 pandemic are still fresh memories. Consumers and industry are concerned that the next geopolitical climate event may have a similar impact. Against a backdrop of evolving regulations, these conditions mean manufacturers want to be prepared against short supplies, concerned customers, and weakened margins.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• It’s legal in New York for adults 21 and older to possess cannabis, and they can smoke or vape it wherever smoking tobacco is allowed.

• People should be free to choose how cautious to be. Mask mandates, lockdowns, and closing schools won’t stop the virus.

• A federal judge compared Waylon Bailey’s Facebook jest to “falsely shouting fire in a theatre.”

• The Scandinavian country suffered fewer excess deaths and far less economic and social damage than other rich countries that had more restrictive pandemic policies.

Security

• Critics say the draft version of the global treaty backed by China and Russia could be used to persecute security researchers and activists.

• Multiple severe, remotely exploitable security vulnerabilities have been found in Chromium, including out-of-bounds memory access in V8, CSS, and Fonts ( CVE-2023-4427 , CVE-2023-4428 , and CVE-2023-4431 ), and use after frees in Loader and Vulkan ( CVE-2023-4429 and CVE-2023-4430 ). Because of the serious threat these bugs pose to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of impacted systems and their ease of exploitation, they have all received a National Vulnerability Database severity rating of ”High”.

• Two major security vulnerabilities were recently discovered in PHP. It was discovered that PHP incorrectly handled certain XML files ( CVE-2023-3823 ) and certain PHAR files ( CVE-2023-3824 ). Due to their ease of exploitation and the severe threat that these issues pose to impacted systems, these vulnerabilities have been rated by the National Vulnerability Database as High-Severity and Critical, respectively.

• The newly identified MMRat Android trojan has been targeting users in Southeast Asia to remotely control devices and perform bank fraud.

• U.S. officials say the FBI and its partners in Europe infiltrated and seized control of a major malware network that was used for more than 15 years to commit a gamut of online crimes including crippling ransomware attacks. They then remotely removed its malicious software agent — known as Qakbot — from thousands of infected computers. The operation was announced Tuesday in Los Angeles, where U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said the criminal network had facilitated about 40 ransomware attacks alone over 18 months that officials said Qakbot administrators about $58 million. “Nearly ever sector of the economy has been victimized by Qakbot,” he said.

• U.S. law enforcement announce the disruption of the notorious Qakbot cybercrime operation and the release of an auto-disinfection tool to 700,000 infected machines.

• The U.S. government today announced a coordinated crackdown against QakBot, a complex malware family used by multiple cybercrime groups to lay the groundwork for ransomware infections. The international law enforcement operation involved seizing control over the botnet’s online infrastructure, and quietly removing the Qakbot malware from tens of thousands of infected Microsoft Windows computer systems.

• A multinational task force headed by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Dutch Police has taken down Qakbot, a prolific malware and botnet operation that was named in May the most successful malware family reaching inboxes.

• A group of North Korean hackers group continues to threaten networks and businesses around the world, now with ever more sophisticated new attacks.

• “Operation Duck Hunt” also included authorities in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Latvia and the U.K.

Defence/Aggression

• Does the far-right extremism of the Trump era represent an eternal pattern in American politics or a new one?

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

• The trouble started in 2014. A US supported coup took out the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, with his eastern base, and replaced him with a West leaning president who was handpicked by the US.

• A Moscow court rejected a bid for the pretrial release of Igor Girkin, the former leader of Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine and the latest one-time Kremlin favorite finding himself in peril after criticizing President Vladimir Putin’s sputtering war effort in Ukraine.

• The White House on August 29 came close to declaring that the Kremlin was responsible for the death of Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a mysterious plane crash last week.

• The Holy See sought to calm an outcry over comments that some critics said were too close to President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine.

• The funeral of Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash last week, was held privately on Tuesday at a cemetery on the outskirts of his hometown St Petersburg, his press service said. The farewell to Prigozhin came as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba meets French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna in Paris.

• Poland and two Baltic states will close their borders with Belarus entirely if a “critical incident” involving Wagner mercenaries takes place, the Polish interior minister said on Monday (28 August), amid rising tensions on NATO’s eastern flank.

• The Wagner Group Commander’s funeral took place in great secrecy and without the journalists knowing the exact place of burial.

• The burial of the Wagner mercenary group boss, two months after his mutiny, was shrouded in misinformation, preventing a public display of support the Kremlin did not want to see.

• A woman who lives in Moura, a town in central Mali’s restive Mopti region, recalled the horrors inflicted on her when Malian soldiers and Russian Wagner Group mercenaries launched a five-day assault in March 2022. After days of slaughtering men, the Malian troops and Wagner fighters turned their attention to Moura’s women.

• Kyiv was targeted overnight by one of the most powerful Russian drone and missile strike in months, which killed and wounded civilians, as regional officials in Russia reported what they said was the largest Ukrainian drone attack since the start of the war.

• Two people were killed and two others wounded in an attack on Kyiv on Wednesday morning, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram, as debris from targets destroyed by air defences fell on several buildings in the Ukrainian capital. The news comes after Russian officials said Ukrainian drones swept across Russia in overnight attacks that destroyed military aircraft and disrupted air traffic. Follow our liveblog for all the latest developments. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

• The husband of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has continued doing business in Russia. With the country being one of the loudest Ukraine supporters, critics say the scandal damages not only the reputation of Kallas, but also of Estonia as a whole.

• Finland has finished inventorying its existing bomb shelters in a government effort prompted by neighboring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year and found it has 50,500 of them, its Interior Ministry said on August 29.

• Ukrainian authorities on August 29 said that Russia has handed over the bodies of 84 Ukrainian soldiers killed in action.

• Russia’s embassy in South Africa shared a map in a social media post that shows Crimea as part of Ukraine.

• The package includes AIM-9M missiles for air defense, mine detection systems, and Javelin missiles.

• Samuel Charap is asking Ukraine and its allies to consider how much worse the war could get.

• Resilience or stubbornness? It’s a matter of perspective. We talk to a Ukrainian artillery commander, a veteran of the yearslong conflict between Russia and Ukraine, during a break from the war.

• Shunned by the West over its war in Ukraine, Russia is looking to Africa to find new international partners. And, lacking colonial history on the continent, Moscow is finding a more welcoming audience.

• Only 1,400 people out of 11,000 have left the Kupiansk area since regional authorities issued evacuation orders this month, Ukrainian officials say.

• Ukraine’s Danube River ports have become key arteries for grain exports. But threats from Russia and costly delays have made some shippers rethink their operations in the Black Sea.

• Russians are advancing in the Northeast, toward Kupiansk, while Ukraine presses its offensive in the South, each hoping to force the other to redeploy its forces.

• The Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation announced a high treason charge on Monday against Robert Shonov, a former US consulate contract employee in Moscow. High treason carries a possible sentence of 12 to 20 years’ imprisonment. The charge falls under Article 275 of Russia’s Criminal Code.

• A dual German-Russian national has been arrested for shipping parts to be used in Russian Orlan-10 military drones, the Spiegel magazine reported on Tuesday. Some of the equipment worth 750,000 euros was shipped via Dubai and Lithuania.

• Lithuania’s authorities are making every effort to bring back home a baby girl who was taken by her father to Russia’s Kaliningrad, according to the prime minister.

• Details about the funeral for Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last week along with nine other people, were murky.

• At least three people died when a helicopter from Russia’s Federal Security Service crashed on August 29 in the Chelyabinsk region in the Far East of the country.

• The White House on August 29 said it was reassuring to see video footage of U.S. citizen Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine jailed in Russia over what the United States calls bogus espionage charges, and called on Moscow to release him immediately.

• The Czech Republic has launched an investigation against Raiffeisen Bank International due to its activities in Russia, Czech TV reported on August 29.

• The government is expected to publish a statement on racism this autumn. But does it agree what racism is?

• The Basmanny district court in Moscow has sentenced Ruslan Leviyev, the founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), and journalist Maikl Naki to 11 years in prison each in absentia.

• In footage posted by the state-owned network RT, he is shown in several settings, including in a cafeteria. Mr. Whelan has been largely out of sight since he was convicted by a Russian court in 2020.

• A Moscow court has extended for three months the pretrial detention of a former employee of a U.S. consulate in Russia who is being held on charges of illegally collaborating with foreigners in an action condemned by the United States.

• A German-Russian dual citizen has been arrested in Germany on allegations of violating the country’s foreign trade law multiple times by exporting electronic components to a company in Russia involved in the production of military materiel and accessories/

• On Tuesday, 29 August, the government tasked the responsible parties with speeding up infrastructure building on the Latvia–Belarus border, Latvian Television reports.

Environment

• Idalia rapidly intensified into a Category 3 major hurricane Wednesday as it moved over record-warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico as conditions continued to deteriorate across Florida.

• Threat level: “SHELTER IN PLACE!” said the National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay office online early Wednesday, noting the hurricane was strengthening ahead of its expected landfall as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm on Florida’s Big Bend coast Wednesday morning.

• The first wave of gusty winds and thunderstorms struck Lithuania last night, with clouds and intense thunderstorms moving across the country from the south. Forecasters expect a second round of storms on Wednesday, with the first heavy precipitation after midday.

Finance

• The period of economic and political opening that transformed China over the past 50 years is now over, a growing number of experts say. What the next 50 years will look like isn’t yet clear.

• Staggeringly high government debt levels around the globe may stick — a huge shift from previous years that could come despite the warnings of economic damage this dynamic may cause.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Gina Raimondo, who is in China this week, has said banning TikTok could “lose every voter under 35, forever.”

• They are the first to return since the start of the pandemic three years ago.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Tier 1 ISPs play a unique role in the internet “stack,” because numerous other service providers depend on Tier 1 companies to serve their customers. As a result, Tier 1 providers can be especially powerful chokepoints—given their reach, their content policies can affect large swaths of the web. At the same time given their distant relationship to speakers, Tier 1 ISPs have little if any context to make good decisions about their speech.

• At EFF, we have long represented and assisted people from around the world—and across various political spectrums—facing censorship. That experience tells us that one of the most dangerous types of censorship happens at the site of a unique imbalance of power in the structures of the internet: when an internet service is both necessary for the web to function and simultaneously has no meaningful alternatives. That’s why EFF has long argued that we must “protect the stack” by saying no to infrastructure providers policing internet content. We’ve warned that endorsing censorship in one context can (and does) come back to bite us all when, inevitably, that same approach is used in another context. Pressure on basic infrastructure, as a tactic, will be re-used, inevitably, against unjustly marginalized speakers and forums. It already is.

• So we were concerned when we started hearing from multiple sources that Hurricane Electric, a Tier 1 ISP, is interfering with traffic. Confirmation of the details has been difficult, in part because Hurricane itself has refused to respond to our queries, but it appears that the company is partially denying service to a direct customer, a provider called Crunchbits, in order to disrupt traffic to a site that is several steps away in the stack. And it is justifying that action because activity on the site reportedly violates Hurricane’s “acceptable use policy”—even though Hurricane has no direct relationship with that site. Hurricane argues that the policy requires its direct customers to police their customers as well as themselves.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Two of the New York Times’ unions have sent cease-and-desist letters to management over its new policies that will see the Times monitoring its workers’ return to office via badge swipes, sources told Axios.

• Why it matters: Despite reaching a historic contract agreement with the union that represents most of its editorial workers in May, the company’s management continues to face a slew of contentious labor issues.

Monopolies

Trademarks

• I swear, with some of the trademark stories we cover, it ends up feeling like we should have Yakety Sax playing on loop in the background for the readers. That’s certainly my sense when it comes to The Day Before‘s trademark struggles as of late.

Copyrights

• Public Knowledge, iFixit ask the Copyright Office to allow people to repair commercial equipment, including soft serve ice cream machines like McDonald’s.

• In late November of 2022, Freeplay Music filed an over $17 million copyright infringement lawsuit against CNN, alleging the unauthorized use of about 115 works in some 280 of the network’s segments.

• Trying to determine exactly why Bryan Adams no longer has a presence in the all-encompassing music industry database AllMusic.

• 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. Rina Pantalony is the Dirctor of Copyright Services at Columbia University and is also on the advisory board of OCEAN, the Open Copyright Education Advisory Netowrk which advocates for open licensing around the world.

• We’ve talked a lot about questions regarding AI and copyright over the last few years, highlighting repeatedly that AI-created works cannot be covered by copyrights. No matter how many times we’ve pointed this out, some are still trying, and it was nice to see yet another court (not the first) again say that AI-created works get no copyright at all just recently.

• “Creative Commons likes to say we put the open in open educational resources,” Jennryn Wetzler, Creative Commons Director of Learning and Training shared. “We have six different licenses and two public domain tools that enable creators to legally share their copyrighted content much more flexibly than traditional, ‘all rights reserved’ copyright. They’re applied to over 2.5 billion works online and enable sharing, enable adaptation, and remix — and so much innovation and learning.”

• In late June, singer-songwriter and copyright-reform activist George Johnson urged the Copyright Office to initiate a study concerning the repeal of the Section 115 compulsory license. Now, the Office, citing changes already implemented under the MMA, has expressed the belief that a new inquiry would be “premature.”

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