Desktop/Laptop

• 10 Best Linux Apps for Chromebook

  One of the reasons users miss their previous operating system whenever they migrate to a new platform is the absence of their favorite applications. New Chromebook users are not excepted from this phenomenon and it doesn’t even have to be that way. Why? Because it is possible to run Linux applications on a Chromebook.

  If you don’t already know how to go about preparing your Chromebook to have Linux applications installed on it then check out my article on how to install Linux apps on your Chromebook. Once you go through the steps your options are virtually limitless.

  Here is our list of the best Linux apps for your Chromebook listed in alphabetic order. Most, if not all of them, are a must-have for a Chromebook productivity boost.

Server

• 7 questions to ask an employer before taking a sysadmin job

  Where you work and what you do is one of the most significant decisions that you will make in your lifetime. This decision will impact almost every facet of your daily life. It directly correlates to the resources you have, how you spend your time, and your general disposition. These decisions cannot be taken lightly and must be weighed out carefully. Much like a game of chess, you want to have good strategies to make the right move in order to succeed. During my transition from the military, I had a very eye-opening experience, and it is one that I want to be able to share with other young professionals; however, these experiences can benefit everyone if applied. Here are some of the most important things to learn about a position when exploring new career options.

  [...]

  This question is near and dear to me. Let me explain why. My first position post-military was a fantastic one. I had good pay, flexible hours, and an excellent supporting team. So imagine my confusion when, by the end of my first year, half of the original group was gone. Only one had been fired, and for good reason, but everyone else was leaving voluntarily. I was a senior tech in 18 months. This was partly because I have an affinity for learning new technology, but it was also partially because those other techs were leaving for greener pastures.

  The more time I spent there, the more I saw the issues they were facing. The local team was great, and to this day was one of the best groups of people that I have worked with. However, the upper management for that particular product was very disconnected from the daily work going on, and the expectations grew while the resources we had at our disposal continued to dwindle. This situation was a major red flag and was eventually a part of my decision to leave. My point here is this: If the team you are joining has no one with more than three years of experience, you should most likely avoid that position.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Late Night Linux – Episode 79

  It’s almost Christmas so it’s time to look back at 2019 and talk about some of the news stories that shaped the year.

• Stephen Michael Kellat: Early 2019 Summation & 2020 Predictions

  I had an opportunity to listen to a year-end wrap up in the most recent episode of Late Night Linux while at the gym. I encourage you, the reader, to listen to their summation. Mr. Ressington noted that an upcoming episode would deal with reviewing predictions for the year.

• Tails + Virtualization | Choose Linux 25

  Ultimate privacy in Distrohoppers, and the best ways to run other operating systems within your current Linux distro.

Kernel Space

• Explained! Why Your Distribution Still Using an ‘Outdated’ Linux Kernel?

  Check your Linux kernel version. Chances are that you’ll find that the kernel version your system is using has already reached end of life (EOL) as listed on Linux Kernel website.

  End of life means a software won’t get bug fixes and support anymore.

  That poses some valid questions. Why is my Linux distribution using a kernel that has reached end of life? Is this not a security risk? Is my system safe?

  Let me explain all these questions in this article.

Benchmarks

• Intel Gallium3D Driver Performance Is Looking Good With The Core i9 9900KS

  With Mesa 20.0 expected to ship the “Iris” Gallium3D driver as the default Intel OpenGL Linux driver for Broadwell hardware and newer, I’ve been ramping up my testing of this open-source driver in recent weeks. For adding to the various generations of CPUs tested, here are some numbers of the latest code when using the UHD Graphics 630 off the high-end Core i9 9900KS processor.

  Similar to our findings on other processors from Broadwell through Ice Lake, the Intel Gallium3D driver is rocking! Besides OpenGL 4.6, the performance for this new driver is generally far better off than the classic “i965″ OpenGL driver in Mesa.

Instructionals/Technical

• Flatpak

• Fedora 30 Mate Desktop post-install

• How to Compare Content of Two Files in Linux With vimdiff Tool

• How to Play Games on Your Chromebook

• How to Install and Configure KVM on Debian 10 (Buster)

• How to Install Tomcat 9 on CentOS/RHEL 8

• How to install OpenOffice on Ubuntu 19.10

• 10 Linux command tutorials for beginners and experts

• Mouse cursor pointer on guest VM is not working properly

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Plasma 5 + KDE Applications Matured Rather Well

    Most KDE users are probably happy with the current state of the Plasma desktop and the state of the KDE applications. There’s certainly less bugs in recent releases, KWin and the overall desktop is in better standing (though still improvements to be made such as showcased by the likes of KWin low-latency) with reliable Wayland support, and most would probably agree that the work out of this open-source project matured rather well in recent years with their focus on enhancing usability and other areas.

  • digiKam 7.0.0-beta1 is released

    Dear digiKam fans and users,

    Just in time to get you into the holiday spirit, we are now proud to release digiKam 7.0.0-beta1 today. This first version start the test stages for next 7.x series planing while next year. Have a look at some of the highlights listed below, to discover all those changes in detail.

    Deep-Learning Powered Faces Management

    While many years, digiKam has provided an important feature dedicated to detect and recognized faces in photo. The algorithms used in background (not based on deep learning) was older and unchanged since the first revision including this feature (digiKam 2.0.0). It was not enough powerful to facilitate the faces management workflow automatically.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Zidoo M9 Mini PC Review – Part 1: Unboxing & Teardown

    Over the years, Zidoo has made TV boxes for the consumer market, and digital signage players for businesses.

• New Releases

  • The all-new Feren OS is finally here

    As always, it’s easy to update to the December 2019 Snapshot. To update to the December 2019 Snapshot open up Update Manager, hit ‘Refresh’, let it check for new updates and then update everything.

    However, for Feren OS Classic users, an optional step was introduced in this snapshot to transform your installation into a Feren OS installation. However, that change is for later in this article.

    For Feren OS Next Release Candidate 2 users, you’ll roll automatically onto Feren OS, however you’ll be missing some packages introduced in the final version. You’ll want to install these packages after updating everything: gamemode fonts-emojione

    [...]

    Now if you’re out of the loop you may be wondering what ‘Feren OS Classic’ is. Feren OS Classic, for those not yet informed, is the new name for Feren OS with Cinnamon (aka the original Feren OS and the only Feren OS version until this snapshot). Since calling both the Cinnamon and Plasma Feren OS versions ‘Feren OS’ was confusing I decided to rename the older version of Feren OS to this more appropriate name.

• Slackware Family

  • New ISOs for Slackware Live (liveslak-1.3.4)

    I have uploaded a set of fresh Slackware Live Edition ISO images. They are based on the liveslak scripts version 1.3.4.

Devices/Embedded

• Top 10 Raspberry Pi articles of 2019

  Since its introduction, the Raspberry Pi has been one of the hottest topics on Opensource.com. This trend continued in 2019 with an impressive list of over 30 articles about various Raspberry Pi projects. The top 10 articles are covered below, but if you are a true Raspberry Pi aficionado, I encourage you to check out out our entire selection of Raspberry Pi articles.

• ‘Banana Pi BPI-F2S’ SBC With Linux 4.19 Launched At $58

  A new industrial grade single board computer dubbed the Banana Pi BPI-F2S has been launched and is now available for purchase at $58.

  This SBC has been specially made for industrial, IoT, and smart audio applications and is powered by SunPlus SP7021 “Plus1” processor with four Cortex-A7 cores at 1.0 GHz. It has one ARM9 real-time core, one 8051 I/O core to handle I/Os, and a built-in 128/512MB DDR3 RAM.

• This Business Card Runs Linux And Costs Less Than $3

  Although George has seen electronic business cards before that includes features such as emulating USB flash drives, blinkenlights, or even wireless transceivers, he has never seen one running Linux. He also noted that electronic business cards have limited functions.

  George’s business card is a “complete, minimal ARM computer running my customized Linux firmware built with Buildroot.”

  So, how to get the card running? The bottom left corner of the business card has a USB port that can be plugged into a computer. Once the card has been inserted, it boots in about 6 seconds and shows up over USB as a flash drive and a virtual serial port that can be used to log into the card’s shell.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • YouTube tests ‘featured in this video’ section on Android

  • OnePlus 6/6T screen calibration allegedly botched up after Android 10 update

  • Report: Samsung Galaxy A10 was best-selling Android phone of Q3 2019

  • Android Auto 10 review: Google’s latest update tested

  • Thousands of Android users were ‘cheated’ by this app created by Indian techie: 15 things to know

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• MediaPipe is an Open Source Perception Pipeline Framework Developed by Google

  MediaPipe is an open-source perception pipeline framework introduced by Google, which helps to build multi-modal machine learning pipelines. A developer can build a prototype, without really getting into writing machine learning algorithms and models, by using existing components. This framework can be used for various vision & media processing applications (especially in VR) such as Object Detection, Face Detection, Hand Tacking, Multi-hand Tracking and Hair Segmentation. MediaPipe supports various hardware and operating system platforms such as Android, iOS & Linux by offering API’s in C++, Java, Objective-c, etc. And this framework also capable of utilizing GPU resources.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • libredwg-0.9.3 released

      This is another minor patch update, with some bugfixes from fuzzed DWG's. 
      Here are the compressed sources: 
        http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libredwg/libredwg-0.9.3.tar.gz   (9.8MB) 
        http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libredwg/libredwg-0.9.3.tar.xz   (3.7MB) 
      Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]: 
      
      http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libredwg/libredwg-0.9.3.tar.gz.sig
      
      
      http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libredwg/libredwg-0.9.3.tar.xz.sig
      
      Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth: 
      
      https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
      
      Here are more binaries: 
      
      https://github.com/LibreDWG/libredwg/releases/tag/0.9.3
      
      Here are the SHA256 checksums: 
      e53d4134208ee35fbf866171ee2052edd73bf339ab5b091acbc2769d8c20c43f  libredwg-0.9.3.tar.gz 
      62df9eb21e7b8f107e7b2eaf0e61ed54e7939ee10fd10b896a57d59319f09483  libredwg-0.9.3.tar.xz 
      [*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the 
      .sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file 
      and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this: 
        gpg --verify libredwg-0.9.3.tar.gz.sig 
      If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, 
      then run this command to import it: 
        gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys B4F63339E65D6414 
      and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command. 
      No messages in libredwg-0.9.3 released
      

    • The Hurd Microkernel Still Isn’t Ready But GNU Had A Great 2010s With GCC + Other Projects

      While the GNU Hurd microkernel is still woefully behind in hardware support and hasn’t even seen a new release in three years, at least a lot of the other GNU projects experienced a great decade — especially with the likes of the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Octave, GRUB, and other components critical to modern Linux systems.

      Out of our 1,000+ articles written on “GNU” matters in the 2010s, here is a look back at the most popular ones in reliving some of the most successful moments for some of the projects as well as other drama and issues that were overcome.

    • Upcoming GNUnet Talks

      There will be various talks in the next few months on GNUnet and related projects on both the Chaos Communication Congress (36C3) as well as FOSDEM.

      [...]

      In addition to these talks, we will be hosting a snack machine which accepts Taler for payment. The first of its kind! It will be filled with various goodies, including Swiss chocolates, books, and electronics. The machine will be located somewhere in the OIO assembly, and there will be a station at which you may exchange Euro for digital Euro for immediate use.

• Programming/Development

  • See the magic behind Quarkus, the cloud-native Java framework

    Our first DevNation Live regional event was held in Bengaluru, India in July. This free technology event focused on open source innovations, with sessions presented by elite Red Hat technologists.

    Quarkus is revolutionizing the way that we develop Java applications for the cloud-native era, and this tutorial, presented by Edson Yanaga, explains why. Yanaga looks at how Quarkus works and the techniques it uses to achieve its dramatic startup speed improvements. He also covers the Quarkus extension API, so you can see how to write your own extensions.

  • podlators 4.13

    podlators provides the utilities to convert Perl’s POD documentation syntax to text and man pages.

    In this release, I finally dropped support for Perl 5.6. Even CPAN testers have stopped testing this old of a version, and it isn’t available on Travis-CI, which means that support may well regress without me knowing about it. It felt like time.

    I considered bumping the required version high enough that I could use a few new features (use parent and the version argument to package), but I decided to be conservative since CPAN testers are still actively testing Perl 5.8, so I only bumped the required version to 5.8.

  • December 2019: OpenSMTPD and filters work, articles and goodies

    Following a discussion on our IRC channel (#OpenSMTPD @ irc.freenode.net), I made an improvement to filter-greylist which consists in detecting that a session was initiated by a local or authenticated user, and whitelisting the destination for messages.

    Not whitelisting destination doesn’t cause huge penalty with SPF-aware greylisting, but having destinations of local users whitelisted means that there’s no penalty at all for hosts from which we expect e-mails.

  • How to set up and use your brand-new Raspberry Pi

    If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you bagged yourself a brand-new Raspberry Pi for Christmas, and you’re wondering what you should do next.

  • Python

    • How the Zen of Python handles errors

      Handling “exceptional conditions” is one of the most debated issues in programming. That could be because the stakes are high: mishandled error values can bring down even the largest systems. Since “exception conditions,” by nature, are the least tested but occur with unpleasant frequency, correctly handling them can often distinguish a system that horror stories are told about to a system that “just works.”

      From Java’s checked exceptions through Erlang’s fault isolation to Haskell’s Maybe, different languages have remarkably different attitudes to error handling.

The Christian Right and Left Share the Same Faith But Couldn’t Be More Different

I didn’t know Christians could be Democrats until I got to college. Though affiliated with the relatively conservative Christian Reformed Church, my school had a small but vocal minority of leftist professors and students.

Remembering the Message of Christmas

On Wednesday, Christmas will be celebrated by millions of people across this country and across the world. Joy surrounds the holiday, with music in the air, lights on homes and lampposts, families gathering, presents exchanged and blessings shared.

In Defense of Nostalgia: a Christmas Story

School and childhood were complicated, and I got out of both as fast as I could. Aged fifteen – that seems quite young to me now – I found a labouring job in a boat shed along the Clyde. The days of good apprenticeships in the Glasgow shipyards, or anywhere else for that matter, were fading fast, and I settled for poor pay and prospects in a badly ventilated box buffing fibreglass boats.

The Soul Will Find a Way

At the start of the 1960s, my father Paul moved my mom Geneva, three older brothers, younger sister and me from Boston to rural Spartanburg County in upstate South Carolina. He’d fled the South in the 1940s, enlisting in the Navy. Twenty years later, he returned to an inheritance of eleven shotgun houses and a juke joint at the foot of a hill in a tiny, segregated, one-way-in one-way-out community called Freyline.

The Gift of Perspective

Our existence at any scale is indeed a cosmic gift, even more so when we consider its full range of operation.

Pope Offers Christmas Message of Hope to a Suffering World

Pope Francis offered a Christmas message of hope Wednesday against darkness that cloaks conflicts and relationships in large parts of the world from the Middle East to the Americas to Africa.

10 articles to become more data science savvy

When LinkedIn released its third annual Emerging Jobs report, engineers everywhere said, “Amen.” More than half the list consists of engineering roles, with new fields like robotics appearing for the first time.

But data science had a strong showing as well. The role shows 37% annual growth, topping that aspect of the Emerging Jobs list for the third year in a row.

Looking at the core skills a data scientist needs—including R, Python, and Apache Spark—it’s easy to find overlaps with open source. So, we’re not surprised that data science was one of the most popular topics at Opensource.com in 2019.

We saw a need for knowledge about diverse data science topics. And our community of authors delivered answers.

Health/Nutrition

• The Right to Healthy Food: Poisoned with Pesticides

  Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter addressed to three senior officials in Britain: John Gardiner, Under Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the British government; Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England; and Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security.

• In 2020, It’s Time to Make Universal Health Care a Human Right

  I don’t know about you, but everyone I know these days is struggling with something: with their health or the health of a loved one, with their finances or their career, with an addiction or a relationship — even with the nature of existence itself. That’s life, right? True, but something more is fueling these struggles, something harder to define, something that makes already difficult problems feel impossible to bear. Most of us put on a brave face each morning and attempt to be cheerful, but an undercurrent of vague worry pulses through our surface interactions; a shared common sense that things aren’t right in the world, our communities, ourselves.

Defence/Aggression

• Behind the Scenes of One Middle East Investigation I’ll Never Forget

  Film directors are not the only ones who have to cut stories from their work. When The Independent still existed in paper form, I would lose track of the number of times a foreign editor would call me with the familiar plea: “Bob, can we keep this to 500 words?” Or: “Will this hold till next week?” A website means I can write 1,500 words – and it can “hold” for a mere hour.

• Evo Morales Says He Is ‘Absolutely Convinced’ US Led Coup in Bolivia to Exploit Lithium Reserves

  “It was a national and international coup d’etat… it’s a coup against lithium.”

• Another Christmas on Death Row

• Forever War Is Over: If You Want It..

  So this is Christmas, and what have we done? Another year over, and a new one just began.

• Time For a New Christmas Truce

• Dozens killed in ‘barbaric’ militant attack in Burkina Faso

  Jihadi militants attacked a town in northern Burkina Faso and killed at least 35 civilians, the West African country’s president said late Tuesday.

  Fighting between security forces and militants in the town of Arbinda also left 80 militants dead as well as seven soldiers, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said.

  According to a military statement, the jihadis assaulted the town in the country’s northern Sahel region after a failed attempt to attack a military detachment in Soum province earlier on Tuesday. The military succeeded in seizing a large number of weapons and motorbikes from the militants.

Environment

• Scott Morrison’s Burning Moment

  Like Morrison, like Trump writes Darren Lewin-Hill.

• This Turkish Chef Is Fighting Climate Change With the Help of Syrian Refugees

  From her office window in Mardin, a city in southeastern Turkey, chef Ebru Baybara Demir gazes out over the arid plains of upper Mesopotamia, a flat gold-and-green expanse stretching beyond the horizon to the Syrian border just 20 miles (32 kilometers) away.

• Energy

  • President Trump’s Baseless Attacks on Wind Power

    Wind power is far more ecofriendly than burning fossil fuels and, more importantly, has the possibility of freeing the U.S. from the economic dependency on fossil fuels.

Finance

• ‘Just About Cruelty’: Sanders and Tlaib Rip Trump ‘Holiday Menu’ of Gifts for the Rich and Nutrition Cuts for the Poor

  “Two years after passing a $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and large corporations, the Trump administration plans to strip 3.7 million people of their nutrition benefits.”

• Bloomberg Says Explosive Report on His Campaign’s Use of Prison Labor Is ‘Fundamentally Accurate’

  “It’s honestly one of the most evil things we’ve ever seen from a presidential campaign, and hopefully Bloomberg’s campaign will end with him paying out unimaginable sums to the people he exploited. In a just world it would.”

• Top 1.0% of Earners See Wages Up 157.8% Since 1979

  This disparity in wage growth reflects a sharp long-term rise in the share of total wages earned by those in the top 1.0% and 0.1%.

• 5 Ways to Stop Corporations From Ruining the Future of Work

  Workers need a voice. Government needs a responsible role. We deserve a forward-looking and open industrial policy. And the rules of the game need to be fair. We should all be able to steer the direction of technological change and influence how new technologies affect our lives. 

• The Westfield Guarantee: We’ll Help You Shop Till You Drop… Or Get Crushed By A Crowd

  Westfield has long captured the true spirit of Christmas… helping you rack up enormous debt on a whole pile of crap you didn’t need throughout the year, and likely won’t need next year either.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Green Party Is Not the Democrats’ Problem

  Although it is a constant refrain from Democratic leaders and commentators, the Green Party is not why the Democrats lost to Bush and Trump.

• The Early Warning Signs of Boris

  There is a new day in British politics, or so we’re told. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just got his Brexit deal through the House of Commons. He has revealed part of his agenda for government after winning a historic election.

• Judiciary Committee Says New Testimony Could Lead to Second Impeachment of Trump

  Days after voting to impeach President Trump, lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee told a federal court that lawmakers are open to impeaching the president again.

• (Reflections On) Our Culture And The Arts

  The Morrison government’s recent failure to recognise the arts specifically in its reformed structure of ministries is really nothing new in principle – nor even surprising, given the political history of the arts in this country since the Whitlam era, writes Donald Richardson.

• We Let Scott Morrison Make Our Bed. Now He’s Lying In It, And So Are We

  The Prime Minister’s Hawaiian vacation may have been an ‘ill-timed smoko’, but it’s what we asked for, writes Joshua Dabelstein.

• Democrats Cave in Secret Budget Deal with Trump

  While attention was focused on the House of Representatives’ impeachment of Donald J. Trump, legislators from both parties were secretly huddling with White House aides to seal a $1.4 trillion budget deal to fund the government until next September. They were rushing to do this to avoid a partial government shutdown starting December 21, 2019.

• Bernie Sanders Has All the Right Enemies

  For the United States, oligarchy is the elephant—and donkey—in the room. Only one candidate for president is willing to name it.

• The UK’s Electoral System Failed

  First-past-the-post voting has been praised for promoting political stability, but it comes at the price of a government in which a minority can ride roughshod over the interests and preferences of more than half of the population.

• All I Want for Christmas Is the Truth

  Winter Solstice has passed. Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are upon us, and in the giving spirit of the season, Donald Trump has bestowed upon us a dollop of gibberish so elemental in its purity that birds tumbled from the trees for miles around.

• A President Who Ignores the Constitution Is a Colossal Threat—Even to His Own Party

  This should not be layers on layers of politics. This is about the sanctity and security of our Constitution. We cannot abide by a precedent that ignores the rule of law when our party is benefited. A president who ignores the Constitution and obstructs Congress is a colossal threat, even to the party he or she represents. Trump is counting on the support of his party in the Senate, but his safety net appears to be our party’s self-destruct button.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Russia Cuts Off Its Internet, With Mixed Results

  Russia yesterday completed a series of tests designed to make sure that its internet services could still work when isolated from the worldwide web.

  The tests, said to involve state-run institutions and security services, as well as all communications operators, message services and email providers, effectively turned Russia’s internet, RuNet, into the largest intranet in the world.

• [Older] Russia to Cut Internet Access Next Week

  Roskomnadzor, the country’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media, has introduced new tools to the RuNet, as the Russian-language internet is known, which will allow the agency to sever Russian web traffic in the case of a large-scale cyber attack. The upcoming test is meant to measure “the possibility of intercepting subscriber traffic and revealing information about the subscriber, blocking communication services,” according to a document that was posted to a well-known Russian Telegram channel concerning IT issues, and later verified by Open Media.

  Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law forces foreign web traffic to go through a series of government checkpoints.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Medical Opinion, Torture and Julian Assange

  On November 27 this year, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, delivered an address to the German Bundestag outlining his approach to understanding the mental health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. These comprised two parts, the initial stage covering his diplomatic asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy, the second dealing with his formal detention in the United Kingdom at the hands of the UK legal and judicial system. The conclusion was a recapitulation of previous findings: that Assange has been subjected to a prolonged, state-sponsored effort in torture, nothing less than a targeting of his being.

• Let 2020 Be the Year of a Truly Free Press

  We all have a responsibility to ensure that journalists are free to do their work, without threats of injury, imprisonment, or death.

Civil Rights/Policing

• White Nationalist Media Is Shaping US Immigration Policy

  Janine Jackson: That White House senior policy advisor and speechwriter Stephen Miller believes in white nationalism is evident: By their policy, ye shall know them. But we now have, as it were, the receipts.

• EFF at 36c3 (Chaos Communications Congress)

  Find EFF in Leipzig at the 36th year of one of the largest technology, security, and activism conferences in the world, Chaos Communication Congress. Learn how our team of lawyers, technologists, and activists are working to protect online rights, and connect with the larger international digital freedom community. We’ll be part of the About:Freedom Assembly in the Rights & Freedoms Cluster, floor 0 in the CCL building, just after exiting the tube from the central Glass Hall, alongside other groups protecting freedom of expression and human rights around the world. 

• Bethlehem is Scarred by Brutal Israeli Occupation, While the World Acquieses

  Some seven weeks back I attended a colloquium presentation delivered by a member of the religion faculty at the university where I taught for 42 years. Known for his scholarship and excellent teaching skills, the presenter was reporting on the results of a trip he undertook last summer to study innovative techniques on the teaching of biblical Hebrew. Prior to his trip to Occupied Palestine, I shared a CP column I’d written summarizing Ilan Pappé’s tome under the title The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (71 Years Later Zionist Terrorism Is Alive and Well, April 19, 2019, CP) and another scholarly article about Israel’s brutal violation of human rights, its theft and desecration of Christian monuments and churches, and its outright hatred and demonization of Palestinians in general, and Christian Palestinians in particular.

  [...]

  The biblical narrative informs us that at the time of Christ’s birth Palestine was an extension of Augustus’ massive empire. Palestina/Falasteen was sandwiched between Egypt and Syria; the first served as Rome’s breadbasket, and the second as Rome’s eastern line of defense and the last stop of the ancient Silk Road and one of the conduits that fed the insatiable Roman treasury to maintain its stranglehold on its expansive Pax Romana Empire. Ironic it is that American, British, and European hegemonic interest in that same region are no different from Rome’s. And since 1917, the Brits, French, and later the Americans have been drawing and redrawing the boundaries of the oil-rich Near East; and “What we say, goes” is the new Anglo-Franco-Americana Pax Oleum Petra.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Dodging Bullets on the Path to a Decentralized Future: 2019 in Review

  The Internet’s decentralized nature has historically been its greatest super-power, granting it the ability to shrug off censors and spies and redistribute power away from corruptible gatekeepers out to the creators and innovators on its edges. But it’s only been in the last few years that the Net’s own corporate children—Google, Amazon, Facebook, and the rest—have started to defeat that innate ability to re-route around such choke-holds.

  In response, a movement to re-decentralize the Internet has sprung up online: networks of volunteers, communities, and small independent businesses working to develop new tools, and new ways of organizing online that might build a more resilient and equitable network.

• America Is Still in Desperate Need for a Fiber Broadband for Everyone Plan: Year in Review 2019

  Earlier this year, EFF noted that the United States is facing a high-speed broadband access crisis. For the foreseeable future, it appears that a supermajority of Americans will not have access to fiber to the home. Instead, it is cable monopolies or nothing at all.

  Government data indicates that this problem is particularly pronounced in low-income neighborhoods and rural markets. But this future is not set in stone. We support efforts to aggressively meet this challenge so that this generation can benefit from affordable, universally accessible, competitive high-speed broadband access. 

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Brexit: UK To Enter Transition Period On 31 January 2020

    On Friday 20 December the UK Parliament voted in favour of the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill which is the first step in implementation of the draft withdrawal agreement reached between the UK and EU in October this year. The process in the UK is expected to be completed in January 2020 and the EU Parliament is also expected to ratify the draft withdrawal agreement in January 2020 so that the UK will exit the EU on 31 January 2020 and will enter a transition period. During the transition period the UK will be treated as if it were a member of the EU and as a consequence the status quo as far as IP is concerned will be maintained. Although the future relationship between the UK and EU beyond the end of the transition period is still to be negotiated, there is now more certainty regarding the future as far as IP is concerned. Even in the case of no deal being reached between the UK and EU by the end of the transition period (a no-deal Brexit), the position as regards IP is unlikely to change. The transition period is currently expected to expire at the end of 31 December 2020.

    [...]

    Whatever form the UK’s exit from the EU takes, there will be no effect on how patents are obtained and enforced in the UK or any other states party to the European Patent Convention. All European Patent Attorneys at J A Kemp LLP will therefore be able to continue to represent clients at the European Patent Office (EPO) as in the past.

• Copyrights

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