Are you looking for a new PC build project that could cost as much as a new car? Do you have four RTX 3090s, or even Nvidia Quadros, kicking around with a Threadripper CPU? Or are you just able to spend up to $45,000 on someone who does building a deep-learning PC for you? Then System 76’s new Thelio Mega, which packs corporate power into a form factor that would be at home in your well, home, is for you.
System 76 is a bit of an oddity in the extreme high-end PC world. The company is a staunch advocate of open-source and the right to repair, meaning that all of their computers are actually free for you to build yourself, if you can understand their freely downloadable schematics and have all the right parts and tools. They also all pack Linux as their OS, because of course that’s how System 76 rolls. But if you don’t have the confidence or knowhow to build one of their systems from just its schematics, or just can’t get your hand on parts like RTX 3000 series cards, you can also pay the company to build your new system for you.
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, and Petros Koutoupis talk social media regulation and its relationship to journalism and the threat to Section 230.
Chris gets left out in the cold after a Home Assistant glitch, and Alex puts a big batch of USB hard drives to the test
Plus a great pick for you pack rats, feedback, and more.
Gatekeeping, tribalism and toxicity in the Linux community. We're tired of it and it's time to silence it. But WHY does it happen, and HOW do we DEAL with it?
The Linux 5.10 merge window is closing this weekend but there still is new code landing for this last complete kernel series of 2020.
The input subsystem updates were sent in on Friday morning and include some new drivers and other work. As previously reported, there is better support for newer Synaptics laptop touchpads with this kernel. There is Synaptics RMI4 F3A support for buttons on newer touchpads helping the likes of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen1 and P1 Gen2. There is also InterTouch now enabled for the ThinkPad P1/X1E Gen2 devices.
It's been a long and hard road to acceptance for AMD's Sensor Fusion Hub Linux driver. The first revision was submitted to the Linux kernel Mailing List in January 2020. It took eight revisions and a lot of effort before Jià â¢í Kosina finally accepted it into the hid.git#for-5.11 tree, almost guaranteeing that it will become a part of Linux 5.11.
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Sandeep Singh didn't give up. He submitted a fourth revision with fingers crossed on February 12th, 2020. Intel's Linux driver engineer Andy Shevchenko rejected it on the grounds that it had long list of issues and concluded that it would need "a bit of work".
Sandeep Singh sent a firth revision to the Linux Kernel Mailing List on the May 29th. Intel's Andy Shevchenko several additional objections and Sandeep Singh had to go back to the drawing-board.
It was sadly too late for squeezing into the current Linux 5.10 merge window but it looks like for Linux 5.11 in early 2021 the AMD Sensor Fusion Hub "SFH" driver will make its long awaited debut.
The AMD SFH driver is similar to the long-standing Intel ISH driver for supporting the sensor hub on modern laptops. The AMD SFH support is needed for laptops bearing gyroscopic sensors and other capabilities.
Back in January AMD finally published the Sensor Fusion Hub Linux driver for supporting the Ryzen laptops of recent years. With time the driver was revised to address various feedback but wasn't quick to get picked up for mainline and at times several weeks passing between code revisions.
For months now Intel's open-source Linux driver stack has been preparing for VRR support with Gen11/Gen12 graphics. We've seen user-space patches by Intel around VRR while now they are finally sending out their key Linux kernel driver patches with the i915 DRM code.
This kernel code is what's needed for actually enabling DisplayPort 1.4 Adaptive-Sync / Variable Refresh Rate on capable Intel graphics hardware with capable displays. The 11 patches add just under 300 lines of new code to their kernel driver in making the necessary VRR preparations and handling for this display feature.
Going back more than a year there have been Intel "i915" kernel graphics driver patches implementing integer mode scaling support while finally for Linux 5.11 in early 2021 the support will have landed.
Intel added integer mode scaling to their Windows graphics driver back in 2019 to provide better clarity when upscaling games (particularly pixel art type content) and other software. The Linux patches materialized in September 2019 for nearest-neighbor integer mode scaling and then seemingly forgotten about. The capability works with Gen11 / Ice Lake and newer.
Intel developer Manasi Navare has submitted a series of patches for the Linux kernel that brings support for variable refresh rates on Intel's latest graphics chips to the Linux kernels i915 driver. The feature is only enabled on Tiger Lake, Sapphire Rapids and newer Intel graphics chips.
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You do not need a special "Freesync" monitor to use adaptive vertical synchronization, Freesync is just a marketing term used by AMD. The DisplayPort specification has included variable refresh rate (VRR) as an option feature since DP 1.4 and there are many monitors with support for it that are not marketed as "Freesync" or "gaming" monitors. Monitors that are marketed as "Freesync" support the standard DisplayPort VRR protocol so you don't need to use a AMD graphics card to get the benefits of a Freesync monitor. You will soon be able to use one of the very latest Intel CPU's with integrated graphics or one of Intel's upcoming dedicated graphics cards with Freesync monitors on Linux.
Since picking up the Dell XPS 13 9310 for delivering Tiger Lake Linux benchmarks, most of the focus so far has been about the overall processor performance while in this article is our first deep dive into the Gen12 Xe Graphics performance on Linux with Intel's fully open-source graphics and compute stack. Here is a look at how the Tiger Lake Xe Graphics performance is with the Core i7-1165G7 ranging from OpenGL and Vulkan graphics tests to OpenCL, oneAPI Level Zero, and Vulkan compute tests.
Because life can be boring at times, people are often on a search for novelty. Luckily, with each passing year, many new sources of entertainment are produced. Several decades ago, television changed how people perceive entertainment: with a television, a person could be transported to a different place without ever leaving home. Since then, entertainment has been evolve quickly, with a rapidly increasing number of channels and expansion in types of programming that eventually culminated in video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. The entertainment industry has underwent many changes since the television became popularized, and at present, one format in particular has been rising in popularity: the podcast.
You can listen to a podcast while you cook, clean, or work; they can make your daily commute fly by, or help to pass the few minutes you have to spare here and there: there is a podcast for every person, every situation, and every time frame. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, there is a podcast that covers every topic, so whether you are interested in current events, science or science fiction, there is a podcast out there for you. That is why the podcast is quickly becoming a popular form of entertainment.
In this article, we will discuss the top five podcast players available for Ubuntu 20.04.
Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open source software in this series.
Some of the programs in this series are purely cosmetic, frivolous pieces of fun. Candy at their finest. But we also include some programs that aren’t purely decorative.
There’s a diverse range of programs included in this series. Programs such as eDEX-UI and Variety are actually highly practical programs. ASCIIQuarium has soothing and relaxing qualities for your desktop. Other programs included in this series (such as lolcat, cacafire) are included purely for their decorative qualities. And then there’s some really fun software that just raises a smile or two.
Hollywood is a 102 line script that occupies your console with tech geekery.
A light comic book repartee, right there, ha ha. So. Let's say you have a Linux desktop. What's the one thing missing? Apart from all the other things missing? Well, it's an integrated application launcher. Now, what I just said is incorrect. Because if you're using the Plasma desktop environment, you have Krunner, and you're all set like. Unity also has some elements of this goodness available.
If you're using other desktop environments, then there's isn't such functionality in the operating system really. And so Dedo reviews Ulauncher. Dedo gets emails. Emails say Dedo wrong. Dedo should review Albert. Dedo ponders and decides to blaze forth. After all, nailing down the formula for an omnipotent and actually useful desktop assistant is very hard. Often, it's a fad, a gimmick, an extra, but never something you embrace with heart and loin. Maychance Albert will convince us otherwise. To the cave.
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Going into this experiment, I have to say I didn't expect to be mindblown. Because I know how difficult it is to create a really useful helper software. Even the mega-giants out there, with their multi-billion-dollar budgets can't do it right. But even if we keep our goal modest, Linux desktop wise, Krunner remains well ahead of the game, both in functionality and system integration.
Albert is okay. It works reasonably well, and it's no slouch. But the magic is getting the advanced functionality right. The basics are too trivial - and too overdone to matter. Also, I find the lack of a simple extensions management option tiring. I don't want to go about the net, manually downloading Python scripts and such. I don't have the time or the mental strength to commit to something like that, especially since the benefits aren't that big. The, there were also actual bugs and issues - like the hotkey binding, Firefox bookmarks and no built-in translation. For now, Albert is worth testing and playing with, but I don't see it becoming an indispensable household software any time soon.
The line numbers shown in a text editor can greatly enhance a programmer’s experience writing and reading code. There are several text editors available for the Linux operating system, including the popular and powerful vi text editor, and these editors can be used to create and modify various file types. The vi editor provides three different types of line numbers: absolute, relative, and a hybrid combining features of absolute and relative. In this article, we will discuss method that can be used to change the line number type shown in the vi text editor.
Note: Linux Mint 20 is used to demonstrate all the methods discussed below.
The scope of this tutorial is to explain how we can edit and make changes to Network Configurations on RHEL/CentOS 8/7 from the command line only, and, more specifically how we can set up a Static IP address on network interfaces using system network-scripts, which is a must be configured to serve Internet-facing network services, and how to configure or change RHEL/CentOS system hostname.
Ansible file module is used to deal with the files, directories, and symlinks. You can create or remove files, symlinks or directories on the remote hosts using the Ansible file module. It is also used to change the file ownership, group and permissions.
Ansible file module performs all tasks on the remote hosts. So before changing the ownership and permissions of the files and directories, relevant user and group must exist on the remote hosts. Otherwise, playbook execution will fail. In this case, you should always check the user or group’s existence on the remote hosts then change the ownership or permissions.
Got network bandwidth? Are you sure? Find out with iftop.
I recently did a blog post series. showing how to get started with OpenShift OKD on Fedora CoreOS for DigitalOcean. For that series I wrote a script to do most of the heavy lifting because DigitalOcean isn’t a native supported platform by the OpenShift installer. Today I’ll show off how to get started in GCP, which is supported natively by the OpenShift installer. This makes it much easier to get started because most of the heavy lifting (including infrastructure bringup) is done by the installer itself. As always, when looking for more information in addition to what I’m showing here today refer to the existing documentation.
Jenkins is a free and open-source automation server that helps developers to build, test, and deploy their software. It is based on Java and provides over 1700 plugins that help to automate the repetitive tasks involved in the software development process. It supports multiple operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and can easily be distributed across multiple machines.
Explains how to install and set up Oracle MySQL server 8.x on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux, including new users and databases for your project.
In this guide, we are going to learn what is Cubic and how to create a custom Ubuntu live ISO image with Cubic application.
We recently had the chance to work on a customer project that involved the RaspberryPi Compute Module 3, with custom peripherals attached: a Microchip WILC1000 WiFi chip connected on SDIO, and a SGTL5000 audio codec connected over I2S/I2C. We take this opportunity to share some insights on how to introduce new hardware support on RaspberryPi platforms, by taking advantage of the Raspberry Pi specific Device Tree overlay mechanism.
Among the different concepts of an operating system, the most crucial one is access control, which specifies the level of access that is granted to each user of that operating system. The access control policies ensure that no user is allowed to perform those activities for which he has not been granted any privileges. The two most common types of users in any operating system are the root user (has administrative level privileges) and the guest user (only has a limited set of privileges).
There are various stories about Firefox not respecting user privacy. Some suggest certain settings to reduce the information Firefox sends out (such as this one from Mozilla). Over time, I have collected a lot of them into a user.js file. For those who do not know, a user.js file may be dropped into a Firefox profile directory as a convenient way to force certain settings every time Firefox starts up. This can reset changes made by the user during a previous session, but is also a convenient way to initialize desired settings in a fresh profile.
In an IRC discussion, Martyb suggested I share the settings I have collected. Below is a sample user.js that I sometimes use as a template for disabling many potential privacy and/or security holes in Firefox. Some, like HTML pings, are probably features that most privacy-minded individuals do not want (and may not have even known about). Others, like disabling cookies and/or javascript, can break how sites work (sometimes, amusingly, they only break the advertisements). Others, like disabling tracker protection, are double-edged in that disabling them exposes you to being tracked by known trackers, while enabling them might cause Firefox to phone home to get updated lists of known trackers. The comments in the user.js point out some, but definitely not all, of the potential pitfalls. The settings are definitely not set the way everybody should use them, but having them listed out at least provides a convenient starting point. I highly recommend against dropping them directly into your main Firefox profile, as they may undo changes you have made for yourself. Instead, either try them in a fresh profile and copy over things that work for you, or research the settings and only copy over the ones you want that will not break your browser.
Find LXD container disk size and how much space they are using when storage back end set to BTRFS.
Perl is a very popular high-level programming language. It is a scripting language, in fact, whose syntax resembles closely with C and C++. A Perl module is defined as a collection of related functions. It is very much similar to the concept of libraries is C++ and Java. This means that if you intend to run a function in Perl, you must have the respective module for that function installed on your system. That is why in this article, we will be learning the method of installing Perl modules on Debian 10.
Formatting a drive is necessary whenever you are trying to erase data on a drive or partition or to create a new partition. Before formatting a partition or drive, it is strongly recommended to make sure that there is nothing important there, as formatting may erase the data for good.
In this article, we will explain how to set up a VPN server using OpenVPN with two remote clients (a Linux box and a Windows machine) on an RHEL/CentOS 8/7 box.
In this tutorial, we are going to set up a Kubernetes cluster with two Ubuntu 20.04 servers. Learn how to set up for master and worker nodes.
While you are working on new Linux distribution, you might not know which Linux version is installed on your system. Sometimes, you need to meet a few system requirements while running an application on your system. However, different ways are available to check the Version of installed Linux distribution. Linux Mint 20 is the most growing Linux distribution and has a number of available graphical user interfaces that may vary from one user to the other. Hence, each user may also have a different running procedure. For this purpose, the recommended solution is to access and open the terminal command-line application.
PPA is popularly known as Personal Package Archives, it provide Ubuntu users to get new and updated software regularly. Some are officials and provided by Ubuntu developers.
If you have not logged in as a root user for a long time and have not saved the login information anywhere, there is a chance that you may lose access to the credentials for your system. It is not an unusual occurrence, but rather, a common issue, which most Linux users have probably encountered before. If this happens, you can easily change or reset the password via the command-line or the GUI (Graphical User Interface).
But what do you do if the root password must be modified or reset?
This article shows you how to change the root password for your Linux Mint 20 system via three different methods.
Use Keycloak's authentication service provider interface to develop a custom MobileAuthenticator class that you can run in your JBoss EAP container.
At any given time, multiple users can operate a single computer system. However, with such shared systems, a system administrator must take the proper security measures so that one user cannot breach the privacy of another by, for example, applying an access control mechanism that specifies the privileges of each user.
At times, a change in user privileges might be necessary. For example, a user might need his or her privileges extended for a certain task, or a ability of a certain user to access the system may have to be revoked entirely. In such scenarios, it is important for the system administrator to have complete knowledge of all users of the system.
In this article, we explore the methods used to list the users of a Linux system. Both graphical user interface (GUI)-based methods and command line interface (CLI)-based methods can be used for this task; however, this article focuses on four terminal-based methods.
If you always wanted to have a fully functional Terminal on your iPhone or iPad, now you can. Today the new iSH Shell app was officially released on the App Store to let iOS users locally interact with a Linux shell environment.
The iSH project started a few months ago with a beta app, but now the developer was able to release it on the App Store for everyone. iSH Shell runs on usermode x86 emulation, and it uses syscall translation so it can run locally on iOS.
PDF is the most frequently used file format all over the world. This file format is not only used for personal documents but also for professional documents. At times, you might have multiple inter-related PDF files, and you wish to integrate them all as a single PDF file. Therefore, today we will be explaining to you the different methods of merging PDF files on the command line.
By itself, Docker makes great use of filesystem space. Because each container only holds the changes from the images, a little bit of image bloat doesn’t directly impact the server adversely. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t worry about bloat at all. Not only should we not waste space without reason, images that are too big cause other problems that you need to be aware of.
The most important consideration is attack surface. Every program that you have on your image is a potential hole for a hacker to exploit. Keeping unneeded software off of your container is the easiest first step to maintaining secure containers.
However, in more general terms, everything on your container will wind up needing maintenance at some point. The more software you have installed, the more maintenance you will be subject to. You might think, “If I don’t use it, how does it cause maintenance issues?” Well, most software is written by a software team, not just a single individual. I have noticed that, if something is available to use, some member of the team will eventually find an excuse to use it. So, the more software that you leave on your container, the more tools your team will eventually make use of. Additionally, those team members may not even remember to document which operating system tools they are using. Therefore, it is best to start off with the most minimal set of tools you can, and then only add when absolutely necessary. Then your team will think twice before adding something, and— more importantly—it will be added explicitly to your Dockerfile, which makes it easier to spot.
Logical Volume Management or LVM is a framework of the Linux operating system that has been introduced for the easier management of physical storage devices. The concept of logical volume management is very much similar to the concept of virtualization, i.e. you can create as many virtual storage volumes on top of a single storage device as you want. The logical storage volumes thus created can be expanded or shrunk according to your growing or reducing storage needs.
In any computer system, you have got tons of different files. Some of them are system files that are there since the very beginning, whereas some of them are user files that you create on your own as per your needs. However, when there is a large bulk of files, and you only wish to search for a particular file or set of files for any specific task, then the process of looking for that file or files manually can be extremely tedious as you have to go to each and every directory in search of that file or files that you need. And even then, it is not assured that you will be effectively able to find all those files.
Thankfully, our operating systems these days are efficient enough that they present us with different ways in which we can automate this task and make it more speedy. Like other operating systems, Linux also enables us to search for files automatically via terminal commands. Therefore, today, our discussion will revolve around exploring the different methods of searching for files on Linux from the command line.
Fancy sailing the seas and becoming king of the pirates? We're not talking about One Piece but Civilization VI with the latest major free update out now.
Inspired by the classic Sid Meier's Pirates!, this freshly included game mode sees 1-4 players take on the role of a Pirate King. Across 60 turns, each player will go around pillaging cities, ships, build a big fleet, collect Relics to power up and attempt to become the true king. You lose by having nothing left, you win by having the most points at the end. It totally changes the gameplay, much like the Red Death battle royale mode did.
You're not alone either with four AI civilizations (Spain, Netherlands, England, and France) fighting to control the map, as well as Buccaneers, this scenario's version of Barbarians.
Klei Entertainment continue expanding their incredible looking survival game Don't Starve Together, with the Return of Them: Forgotten Knowledge update out now along with a Halloween event.
This is the online version of Don't Starve that you can play with friends, and it's been going through something of an evolution. Return of Them is a series of big updates, each expanding the game in different ways and Return of Them: Forgotten Knowledge continues that trend.
Ziggurat 2 from Milkstone Studios has arrived in Early Access, letting you jump into the shoes of a mage and blast through some freaky creatures with all sorts of wands and staffs in gorgeous first-person action. What's awesome is how Milkstone decided to support Linux right away too, so we have it from day-1.
If you've not played the original, fear not as you don't need to. It's a firmly standalone game, and thanks to the mechanics and progression it's real easy to get into and enjoy. Exactly like the original, it's a first-person dungeon crawling rogue-lite FPS that relies on speed and skill to progress through various rooms of enemies.
The story here is that the Ziggurat housed various dangerous creatures, some of which couldn't be destroyed so they were locked away. The Ziggurat was mostly destroyed during some sort of civil war between mages, and so tons of these creatures escaped. It's up to you to travel around and deal with them as best you can across various quests.
In motion, GONNER2 is almost mesmerising in how the world flows around with colourful tiles flowing in and connecting up that follows your movements. Honestly, the design work alone on it totally deserves an award. Gameplay though? Well, it's a rather challenging platformer with roguelike elements, where you play as the "largely misunderstood and altruistic Ikk". It's absolutely hectic, quite confusing initially as it dumps you into the world but you soon get the hang of it thanks to the simple to grasp controls.
GONNER2 rewards speed. Go fast, shoot fast, take down as many enemies as you can in a short space of time and keep on jumping and running while trying not to lose your head. You build up a combination as you keep on taking enemies down, which will boost up your score.
"Roguelike" is a well-known genre of videogame: Spelunky 2, Noita, Hades, Demons Ate My Neighbors, Caves of Qud, Stoneshard, and Atomicrops are all relatively recent examples. But have you ever wondered where the name actually originated—or more to the point, wished you had a chance to actually play the ancient progenitor that started it all? Now you can, and on Steam no less, thanks to today's launch of the original Rogue, developed by Epyx and released all the way back in 1980.
They Bleed Pixels, a fiendishly difficult action platformer inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and classic horror recently released on the Nintendo Switch which gave the PC version a nice tech upgrade too.
While technically this has been out for a while, as the itch.io release of They Bleed Pixels back in June had all the upgrades it wasn't updated everywhere else. As of this week though, it's now live on Steam too. Much like the recent 64bit upgrade to Quadrilateral Cowboy, this tech upgrade was done by game porter Ethan Lee.
So what's new? Much improved and expanded gamepad support including hot-plugging, additional pad support, PS4 and Switch glyphs are now supported and the icons will correctly switch on-screen, the cut-scenes have been improved to fade properly, 64bit support Linux and macOS, checkpoint save/load optimizations and plenty of bug fixes.
The weekend is just about here and if you're stuck for something to do, why not try out the cyberpunk adventure Quadrilateral Cowboy with the latest update.
"Quadrilateral Cowboy is a single-player adventure in a cyberpunk world. Tread lightly through security systems with your hacking deck and grey-market equipment. With top-of-the-line hardware like this, it means just one thing: you answer only to the highest bidder."
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Wonderful to see more Linux games get updated to continue working far into the future with all that 64bit goodness. Ports done by Ethan Lee are always great.
After a three day event to show off new games for Stadia, along with three special demos now live you would think Google was having a good time. Unfortunately for them, one developer derailed it all.
For a quick recap of the Stadia event you can see day 1 here with PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle, day 2 here with the HUMANKIND demo and as for day 3: you can now play a free demo of the upcoming Immortals Fenyx Rising free, they announced a new exclusive 'First on Stadia' title Young Souls and the strategy game Phoenix Point is coming to Stadia in 2021. Additionally, they expanded their invite system so that if you do invite a friend to Stadia, they will get two months of Stadia Pro free and if they continue with it you then get a month free too. See the Stadia community post for all the info on that.
I know it is often confusing especially if you have never used either of them but got them as recommendations for usage. Hence, to help you make a decision, I thought of compiling a list of differences (and similarities) between KDE Neon and Kubuntu.
Let’s start with getting to know the similarities and then proceed with the differences.
This transparency could mean many things, though it most frequently refers to the technology itself: the code or, in the case of hardware, the designs. We could also apply it to the overall architecture of a system. We could think about the decision making, practices, and policies of whomever is designing and/or making the technology. These are all valuable in some of the same ways, including that they allow us to make a conscious choice about what we are supporting.
When we choose to use a piece of technology, we are supporting those who produce it. This could be because we are directly paying for it, however our support is not limited to direct financial contributions. In some cases this is because of things hidden within a technology: tracking mechanisms or backdoors that could allow companies or governments access to what we’re doing. When creating different types of files on a computer, these files can contain metadata that says what software was used to make it. This is an implicit endorsement, and you can also explicitly endorse a technology by talking about that or how you use it. In this, you have a right (not just a duty) to be aware of what you’re supporting. This includes, for example, organizational practices and whether a given company relies on abusive labor policies, indentured servitude, or slave labor.
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Not only does this empower those making choices about what technologies to use, but it empowers others down the line, who rely on those choices. It also respects the people involved in the processes of making these technologies. By acknowledging their role in bringing our tools to life, we are respecting their labor. By holding companies accountable for their practices and policies, we are respecting their lives.
Topics covered include the GNOME desktop and a range of other topics that are GNOME specific and general to the free software and tech communities. The summit brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a place for users, developers, leaders, governments and businesses to discuss present technology and future developments.
(( As a small interlude, I've assembled a page with my statistics about my GNOME contributions (number of git commits in the different modules). Numbers can tell a story, and the story is probably useful for the gedit crowdfunding ;-) )).
I write this blog post to talk more about gedit, its philosophy for the user experience (the external aspects) and trends in its code development (the internals). I will also relate on an improvement to a plugin, to allow new use-cases. To finish with a list of possible topics to talk about the next time: other recent work already done (or in progress), the future work that will be done, and some other future possible tasks (if time permits); heh, this is an endless software project after all, like many.
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If you count the check-boxes, it's the same number before and after. But with the new preferences, it's more powerful! Before, the configuration was a list (a set of flags). Now, it is a two-dimensional matrix (a table), with the whitespace character type on one dimension and its location in the text on the other dimension. Note that the way this is presented to the user doesn't look like a matrix or table, it has been a little abstracted away.
New use-cases that are now possible: basically, draw only unwanted whitespaces. Examples of unwanted whitespaces: all kinds of trailing spaces on a line (git doesn't like them), plus possibly tabulations if the indentation/alignment needs to be done with spaces. Note that such a configuration still allows the non-breaking spaces to be drawn at all locations, to distinguish them from normal spaces (since everybody will agree that this is a good thing, there is no configuration for it, it is always enabled when the plugin is enabled).
This functionality is easily available to other applications, I've implemented the new preferences widget in the Tepl library. The drawing of the little symbols in the text area is implemented in GtkSourceView, where I've implemented the new API with the matrix several years ago.
Both Linux and BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) are free, open-source, and based on Unix. Both systems also use many of the same applications and strive towards the same goal – developing the most stable and reliable operating system.
But, despite all the similarities, these are two distinct operating systems with plenty of differences. Keeping this in mind, we have put together a detailed read going over 10 key differences between Linux vs. BSD to give you a better understanding of the two systems.
Pop!_OS 20.10 is the result of fine-tuning features released in version 20.04. Continue on to see what we’ve added!
This addition also includes a new library for repository management, which adds features such as the ability to change the default system repository mirrors, reset mirrors to defaults, and change the names of your repositories.
Some of the package updates in the snapshots include newer versions of Node.js, OpenSSL, Mesa, Apparmor, ImageMagick and AutoYaST.
The latest snapshot, 20201021, is trending stable at a 98 rating on the Tumbleweed snapshot reviewer. This snapshot updated Mozilla Thunderbird to version 78.3.3 and improved support for encrypting with subkeys with OpenPGP. The new email client version also added support for wayland mode/autodetection in a startup wrapper. The security kernel module Apparmor added missing permissions to several profiles and abstractions. The 5.9 version of ethtool arrived in the snapshot and improved compatibility between system call ioctl and netlink output. The Linux Kernel updated to 5.8.15 and fixed a close proximity Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure, CVE-2020-12352, that could allow a remote attacker in adjacent range to use the flaw to leak small portions of stack memory by sending specially crafted Bluetooth AMP Packets. Node.js 14.14.0 had some bug fixes and a few changes like the behaviour of a new fs.rm method that follows the UNIX rm command. The update of the ruby2.7 package to 2.7.2 turned off deprecation warnings by default.
During this week, we have only released 3 snapshots (1019, 1021, and 1022). a bunch of snapshots has been tested and discarded due to some bugs we, and surely either you, did not want to see on your machines. But as usual; lesser snapshots do not mean less change, as things just cumulate until we feel confident to send a snapshot out again.
That’s right. The Open Build Service Connector is built around bookmarks of packages and projects. Bookmarks can be used to browse a project, its packages and its files. Additionally, you can view the configured repositories and adjust project paths and architectures.
Individual packages or whole projects can be checked out directly from within Visual Studio Code to the file system similarly as one would do via osc. OBS’ version control is seamlessly integrated into Visual Studio Code’s Source Control module and can be used in a comparable fashion to the git extension.
openSUSE Chairman and MicroOS Release Engineer Richard Brown presented OpenSUSE's minimal MicroOS Linux distribution as a potential desktop operating system at the openSUSE+LibreOffice Virtual Conference 2020 last week in a half an hour long presentation. MicroOS is a minimal Linux distribution primarily made for cloud services, IoT devices, containers and those types of use-cases. It could potentially also be used as a light desktop system similar to ChromeOS and an alpha version of MicroOS for Desktop is available. There are some problems to be solved on the road to a stable release as Richard Brown explains.
Only two parts of the guidelines state any sort of limit on company associates, she clarified. The first is that projects use an Open Source Initiative-approved license. The second is that if an associate is asked to sign a third-party contributor agreement, they should check with Red Hat’s legal team.
The Australia and New Zealand Banking Corporation (ANZ) in October last year turned to Red Hat for help to bring its internet banking proof of concept to life.
The bank wanted to modernise its internet banking platform that had passed its end of life and required extended support for some years. Deciding on a Red Hat OpenShift platform, tech area lead for ANZ's digital arm Raghavendra Bhat said the bank wanted to not constrain itself to a cloud-only solution.
ANZ has now migrated 30% of its traffic to the platform and within the first hour of go-live, it processed around AU$2.9 billion worth of payments.
Speaking with media on Wednesday, Bhat said the bank's expectation is to complete about 80% of the traffic transition onto the new platform by November, with complete transition by March. He said there has been no "cookie-cutter approach" for how it has lifted and shifted the old system onto the new one.
Red Hat is integrating its Ansible automation platform and Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.
“We've known people use Ansible and OpenShift and Kubernetes together for years,” Red Hat senior manager Richard Henshall told The Register. “But here we get a bona fide integration between the two.” Typical uses would be to automate deploying system updates, configuring load balancers, or scaling server resources.
The integration is in technical preview. “We’ve got the initial plumbing working, so it’s exposed through Advanced Cluster Management (ACM),” said Henshall, referring to the company’s tool for controlling OpenShift clusters and applications.
Today I tested the Unity 3D version 2020 on Linux Fedora 32.Maybe it would be better to integrate Unity 3D or Unity Hub in Fedora repo just like other useful software like Blender 3D, GIMP.It will improve the user experience and attract new users and developers for this distro.I download the AppImage from Unity website and I run with these commands...
There's a famous sticker featured on many laptop lids; it goes something like this: "the 'cloud' is just somebody else's computer."
There's a lot of truth to that sentiment, but it's not exactly technically accurate. In fact, cloud computing isn't just somebody else's computer; it's somebody else's hundreds and thousands of computers.
Years ago, "the cloud" did indeed just refer to the simplified graphic in a flowchart, so the illustrator didn't have to try to accurately depict the multiple networks that comprise the World Wide Web. Now, however, the cloud isn't just describing traffic or small-time remote file storage offers. The cloud of today is a platform of interconnected computational nodes working together to keep containerized Linux images, each running a distinct service (or "microservice" in developer lingo), functioning as applications distributed over the whole world.
Red Hat is heading to NodeConf Remote 2020 with IBM to demonstrate a few of our favorite production-quality tools and solutions, all designed to help developers maintain their productivity while successfully navigating the vast and rapidly-changing cloud-native landscape.
Attend our conference talks and workshops, or talk with an expert during the virtual booth crawl and get a look at our latest workflows for building cloud-native JavaScript solutions on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. Our open source experts can show you how to integrate JavaScript and Node.js with other technologies like authentication, distributed data caching and streaming, or business automation.
Fedora 33 will manage to ship on-time per its back-up target date of next week Tuesday.
While Fedora 33 wasn't ready to ship this Tuesday per its "preferred" target date, Fedora 33 has been cleared by to ship next week on its "Final Target date #1" for this major update to the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.
A new version of ABRT Analytics (formerly known as FAF) has just been released. From the user’s point of view, you will probably find the following changes the most noticable...
As cited previously, a new business operating environment - whether from an increasingly demanding customer ecosystem or as a result of external events - has necessitated new approaches to understand challenges, adapt, focus, and formulate the new normal. In addition to shifts in the ways consumers interact with banks, internal cultural reluctance to change can be an obstacle. Banking organizations have recognized the need for new operational approaches, but also have often been cautious in light of inherent risks - especially when combining a cloud, data center and on-premises model.
The crew at iXsystems this week not only released TrueNAS 12.0 as their convergence of TrueNAS and FreeNAS, but they have also put out an alpha build of TrueNAS SCALE as their new Linux-based offering.
Today, GitLab released the version 13.5 with several new features. Also Salsa got some changes applied to it.
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It's been way over two years since we started to use Google Compute Engine (GCE) for Salsa. Since then, all the jobs running on the shared runners run within a n1-standard-1 instance, providing a fresh set of one vCPU and 3.75GB of RAM for each and every build.
GCE supports several new instance types, featuring better and faster CPUs, including current AMD EPICs. However, as it turns out, GCE does not support any single vCPU instances for any of those types. So jobs in the future will use n2d-standard-2 for the time being, provinding two vCPUs and 8GB of RAM..
Ubuntu, a popular open-source operating system (OS), has garnered a huge community around it. The OS has been around for quite some time and has gone through numerous changes and updates. Since Ubuntu has a Linux kernel at its core, it adheres to the same philosophy as Linux. For example, everything needs to be free, with open-source availability. Thus, it is extremely secure and reliable. Furthermore, it is well-known for its stability, and it is improved with each update.
Ubuntu combines the fantastic .deb Debian package with an exceptionally stable desktop environment to produce a system that works fantastically well. In addition, because it has one of the largest communities, developers usually produce Linux-based software for Ubuntu first to cater to the large community.
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Since Ubuntu Touch is built upon Ubuntu, it uses the same color scheme as and a similar layout to Ubuntu Desktop. Unlike Android and iOS, Ubuntu Touch does not make much use of buttons; the only two buttons it uses are the power button and the volume button. Furthermore, Ubuntu Touch does not have a centralized home location to return to after clicking the home button and instead uses an applications launcher, which stores all the installed applications.
We have tested Ubuntu 20.10 installation via an external NVMe drive connected using USB 3. We can confirm that this is possible and much simpler than previously indicated. The Ubuntu 20.10 image for Raspberry Pi 4 can be directly written to a USB drive using Balena Etcher or Raspberry Pi Imager. To boot from USB the Raspberry Pi 4 will need be configured using Raspberry Pi OS as per our guide.
Ubuntu 20.10 is available to download now. Here are the steps on how to upgrade your current Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa to Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla.
Ubuntu 20.10 aka Groovy Gorilla finally released by Canonical bringing the latest and greatest Free Libre Open Source Software technology to worldwide computer users. What's new in this release is that it's the first time Ubuntu Desktop available for Raspberry Pi – the world most popular ARM-based computers. Now here's list of Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi download links, as well as Official Flavors from Kubuntu to Ubuntu Budgie with Checksums included. Simply click and download. Happy downloading!
Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla is now available for the download. For your information, Ubuntu 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ is a short-term release version with 9 months of security updates and critical fixes.
Along with Ubuntu 20.10, all the flavours are also available for the download from the respective official website. One of the interesting part of the Ubuntu 20.10 release is it’s desktop support for the Raspberry Pi4 (4GB + 8GB models).
Ubuntu has announced the latest release of its Linux-based operating system, codenamed Groovy Gorilla.
Ubuntu 20.10 is the first Ubuntu release to feature desktop images for the Raspberry Pi 4.
“The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 5.8 based Linux kernel, and our default toolchain has moved to gcc 10 with glibc 2.32. Additionally, there is now a desktop variant of the Raspberry Pi image for Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and 8GB,” the Ubuntu release team said in its announcement.
Ubuntu Desktop 20.10 introduces GNOME 3.38, which the Ubuntu team said comes with significant performance improvements and a more responsive user experience.
Codenamed “Groovy Gorilla”, 20.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.
The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 5.8 based Linux kernel, and our default toolchain has moved to gcc 10 with glibc 2.32. Additionally, there is now a desktop variant of the Raspberry Pi image for Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and 8GB.
Ubuntu Desktop 20.10 introduces GNOME 3.38, the fastest release yet with significant performance improvements delivering a more responsive experience. Additionally, the desktop installer includes the ability to connect to Active Directory domains.
The Kubuntu community are delighted to announce the release of Kubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla. For this release Kubuntu ships with Plasma 5.19.5 and Applications 20.08. The desktop carries the fresh new look and gorgeous wallpaper design selected by the KDE Visual Design Group.
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Dolphin, KDE’s file explorer, for example, adds previews for more types of files and improvements to the way long names are summarized, allowing you to better see what each file is or does.
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For those of you into photography, KDE’s professional photo management application, digiKam has just released its version 7.0.0. The highlight here is the smart face recognition feature that uses deep-learning to match faces to names and even recognizes pets.
If it is the night sky you like photographing, you must try the new version of KStars. Apart from letting you explore the Universe and identify stars from your desktop and mobile phone, new features include more ways to calibrate your telescope and get the perfect shot of heavenly bodies.
The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 20.10, code-named “Groovy Gorilla”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 28th release. This release is a regular release, and as such it is supported for nine months until July 2021.
Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a complete list of changes and known issues.
You can download Ubuntu Studio 20.10 from our download page.
Yesterday, Canonical announced the release of the new non-LTS Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla” with Linux kernel 5.8, GNOME 3.38, optimized desktop image for Raspberry Pi 4, and nine months of support until July 2021.
Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 20.10 has been released! With the codename Groovy Gorilla, Lubuntu 20.10 is the 19th release of Lubuntu, the fifth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.
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Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, the last supported release with LXDE, will be supported until April 2021 and Lubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2023. For both of these releases, we are limiting changes to critical fixes and underlying system changes shipped with all other Ubuntu flavors.
Canonical has released Ubuntu 20.10 with optimised Raspberry Pi images for desktop and server, in support of learners, inventors, educators and entrepreneurs, bringing the world’s most open platform to the world’s most accessible hardware.
The Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4 join a very long list of x86 and ARM devices certified with Ubuntu, the operating system (OS) best known for its public cloud and desktop offerings. Dell, HP and Lenovo all certify PCs with Ubuntu Desktop, which is also the most widely used OS on the AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google, IBM and Oracle clouds.
Ubuntu 20.10 also includes LXD 4.6 and MicroK8s 1.19 for resilient micro clouds, small clusters of servers providing VMs and Kubernetes on demand at the edge, for remote office, branch office, warehouse and distribution oriented infrastructure.
Canonical has announced the release of Ubuntu 20.10, aka ‘Groovy Gorilla’. The big news in this release is a newly optimized stack that brings Ubuntu Desktop and Server to the Raspberry Pi range. Since the launch of the Raspberry Pi 4 in 2019, the diminutive computer line has been increasingly sympathetic to being used as a desktop alternative, and the arrival of a tailored version of the biggest Linux GUI (Android excluded, of course) is a significant step on that road.
“In this release, we celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s commitment to put open computing in the hands of people all over the world,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO at Canonical. “We are honored to support that initiative by optimizing Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi, whether for personal use, educational purposes, or as a foundation for their next business venture.”
Ubuntu 20.10 can also run on RP 2 and 3 variants but only with 4GB RAM and above – if you go lower than that, you’ll probably get a smooth installation but a glitchy experience. You’ll also see improved support for 2-in-1 devices with on-screen keyboard modes, and more devices of all form-factors now support fingerprint readers under Linux.
Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, just released Ubuntu 20.10. This "Groovy Gorilla" is a short-term release (STR) that's only supported for 9 months. If you want an Ubuntu to use in production you want the long-term support (LTS) Ubuntu 20.04. But, the new Ubuntu does come with one new feature that Raspberry Pi users will appreciate. It's the first version to come with optimized Raspberry Pi images for the desktop, server, and the cloud. Yes, the cloud. Stick with me. Here's how it works.
First, Ubuntu 20.10 is built on top of the Linux 5.8 kernel. For the desktop, it now uses the GNOME 3.38 release. It also comes with the latest and greatest open-source desktop programs such as the Firefox 81 web browser, the Thunderbird 73 e-mail client, and the LibreOffice 7.0.2 office suite. For Ubuntu workers in a primarily Windows shop, you can now install Ubuntu with Active Directory (AD) integration. Oh, and you can now run the full desktop on the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4.
The Ubuntu OpenStack team at Canonical is pleased to announce the general availability of OpenStack Victoria on Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) via the Ubuntu Cloud Archive.
This year, AfricaCom becomes a virtual event as part of the new Virtual Africa Tech Festival – the largest and most influential tech and telecoms event on the continent. Canonical and Ubuntu will be joining as a Lead Stream Sponsor, introducing the Digital Infrastructure Investment stream of sessions and exhibits with a speaker session by Mark Shuttleworth – Canonical’s founder and CEO.
Historically Desktop / Server, only configured LUKS full disk encryption with an LVM layer. Thus ones root ext4 filesystem was an LVM volume, on an VG group, on LUKS, on a GPT partition.
The upcoming Ubuntu Core 20 has full disk encryption with TPM support. In that configuration ext4 filesystem is created directly on the LUKS volume which is directly on a GPT partitition.
For the upcoming HH 21.04 release, I want to change Desktop/Server, to also install in a similar fashion. Specifically such that by default, we simply use ext4+LUKS without LVM.
It seems to me that despite having LVM layer, it’s not actually used or appreciated much.
Would you be ok with having full-disk encryption without LVM by default?
An early proposal by Ubuntu/Canonical developer Dimitri John Ledkov is proposing full disk encryption by default without LVM. With Ubuntu Core 20 there is going to be support for TPM-backed full disk encryption created directly on the LUKS volume and in turn directly on a GPT partition without LVM. For Ubuntu 21.04, the developers are looking at changing the Ubuntu desktop/server installers to potentially allow similar EXT4 encryption directly atop LUKS without LVM.
Last year, SolidRun introduced ClearFog CX LX2X networking single board computer offering up to 100GbE via NXP LX2160A 16-core Cortex-A72 communication processor that followed ClearFog CX 8K ARMADA 8040 networking board launched the year before.
The Israeli company is now working on two ClearFog CX CN9K networking SBC’s powered by CEx7 CN913x system-on-module featuring Marvell Octeon TX2 CN913x quad-core Cortex-A72 processor and offering multi-gigabit Ethernet with various 10Gbps, 5Gbps, and Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Today we are thrilled to announce the Turing Pi V2. We’ve been collecting a massive amount of information, synthesizing all of it in product variations, and thinking about what steps we should do next. Today we are going to announce only some of the fundamental details about the V2. We are still working on checking some of the hypotheses, but believe me, the other parts of the announcement will be exciting too. We will disclose more closer to opening orders.
After we released the original 7 nodes Turing Pi, we had many questions. What to do next, how to increase the product’s value, what compute modules to choose, how many nodes, etc. We decided to determine the minimal cluster block size with options to connect hard drives and extension boards. The cluster block should be a self-sustained base node and with ample scope of scale. Next, we wanted the minimum cluster blocks to have an option to connect and form cluster federations and, at the same time, be cost-efficient and easy to scale. The speed of scale should be higher than connecting regular computers on the network and cheaper than the typical server hardware. Another thing, the minimum cluster units should be compact enough, mobile, energy-efficient, cost-effective, and easy to maintain. This is one of the key differences between server racks and everything related to them.
Turing Pi is a compact ARM cluster that provides a secure and scalable compute in the edge. It is designed to make web-scale edge computing easier for developers. Turing Pi cluster architecture allows you to migrate and sync web apps with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of the edge infrastructure and improves reliability.
Most joysticks sit on your desktop, allowing you to control flight sims and other such games with a bit more realism than a keyboard and mouse. YouTuber Tom Stanton, however, decided to take things to the next level by creating one that pivots from the floor out of aluminum extrusion and 3D-printed parts.
CrowdSec is a new security project designed to protect servers, services, containers, or virtual machines exposed on the internet with a server-side agent. It was inspired by Fail2Ban and aims to be a modernized, collaborative version of that intrusion-prevention framework.
CrowdSec is free and open source (under an MIT License), with the source code available on GitHub. It is currently is available for Linux, with ports to macOS and Windows on the roadmap.
A push notification is the message that pops up on your mobile iOS or Android, and sometimes on your desktop or a web browser. It's often used by application publishers and authors to notify the end-user's device about certain event.
It looks like SMS text message and local mobile alerts, but they are application oriented only appears to user who use the application.
Users can stop any push notification anytime from their mobile settings in the notifications section. However, they are essential for many applications so the user should be selective when selecting the app.
Push technology (server push) are technical term for internet-based communication that occurs when a server notifies the client about certain transaction (notification).
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data. In a nutshell, it is the study of website visitor behavior. It is the process of using online data to transform a organization from faith-based to data driven.
This type of software helps you generate a holistic view of your business by turning customer interactions into actionable insights. Using reports and dashboards, web analytics software lets you sort, sift and share real-time information to help identify opportunities and issues. Keeping track of web visitors, analyzing traffic sources, measuring sales and conversions are just some of the possibilities.
Google Analytics is an excellent well known free service that lets webmasters and site owners access web analytics data. The web service generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and sources. It helps marketers and is the most widely used website statistics service. But the biggest downside with Google Analytics is that your data is controlled and used for Google’s own purposes, not just by you. It is also not an open source solution, with a webmaster or site owner being denied access to the raw data.
There are also many other remote-hosted web analytics services that are well-designed and comprehensive. However, if you want an open source solution where the software is hosted on your own server, there are some good alternatives. Having the software installed on your server means that you retain full control over your data, with the possibility of integrating that data into your own system. This solution might, for example, be important to people who do not want to give Google (or another organization) the invitation to control a large portion of their online activity, or who want to be fully in control of visitor privacy.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled the following list of open source web analytics software.
Also announced at the Open Infrastructure Summit was the OpenStack Victoria open source cloud platform, with improved integration with Kubernetes and enhanced IPv6 support. / In a keynote at the event, Thierry Carrez, vice president of engineering at the Open Infrastructure Foundation, said his personal definition for cloud native is applications designed to run on programmable infrastructure. "Cloud native requires programmable infrastructure, and open infrastructure provides an open source solution for that," Carrez said. "So cloud native and open infrastructure really go together like bread and butter."
The writing was on the wall two years ago. The OpenStack Foundation was going to cover more than just the OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud. Today, that metamorphosis is complete. The Foundation now covers a wide variety of open-source cloud and container technologies as the Open Infrastructure Foundation.
October is here! If you contribute to Open Source projects, you might know that October is the month of Hacktoberfest. DigitalOcean teams up with different partners each year to send a t-shirt (or plant a tree on your behalf) for anyone who makes four GitHub Pull Requests in October. And guess what? TeleIRC is a participating project for you to get your Hacktoberfest t-shirt or tree!
This post identifies specific tasks the TeleIRC team identified as “good first issues” for Hacktoberfest hackers. They are in order of least difficult to most difficult. Golang developers especially are encouraged to participate!
Following a great virtual ELC & Open Source Summit North America last June/July, Collabora will be attending their European counterparts, Open Source Summit Europe & Embedded Linux Conference Europe, which take place next week, from October 26 to October 29.
"The 4-day event is dedicated to everything open source and will showcase a program of 250+ talks (conference session, tutorials, BoFs and keynotes) across tracks covering Linux Systems, IoT, AI, Cloud & Cloud Native, OS Dependability, OS Databases, Diversity & Inclusion, OS Leadership, Open Source Program Office Management (TODO) and the Embedded Linux Conference."
Collaborans will once again be actively participating in the week's activities with no less than 8 presentations on topics including fuzzing Linux drivers with syzkaller, efficient syscall emulation on Linux, demystifying Linux kernel initcalls, creating Debian-based embedded systems in the Cloud using debos, simplifying and reusing your driver's code with regmaps, the new Futux2() system call, and the state of Linux gaming. You can find the details for all of these presentations below.
Mozilla has announced that Mozilla WebThings is being “spun out” as an independent open source project. It means that WebThings is no longer going to be a direct project from Mozilla.
The company says that it’s winding down its direct investment in WebThings. This transition will happen to stabilize the WebThings gateways around the world. Now, WebThings is getting an independent domain and will work on the web of things, independent of Mozilla.
Firefox on Fedora which sits in the updates [F32][F31] right now comes with enabled OpenH264 Cisco decoder for video playback and fdk-aac-free used for audio decoding.
It’s implemented by GMP (Gecko Media Plugin) API so the OpenH264 is not used through ffmpeg library but Firefox sandboxed interface, the same as Firefox uses for Widevine CDM plugin.
The OpenH264 GMP video playback is a fallback solution when system ffmpeg is missing and internal ffvpx library can’t decode the stream, so ffmpeg from RPM Fusion is always a better alternative if you can install it.
The video streams are decoded by system wide OpenH264 2.1.1 which is shipped by Fedora as mozilla-openh264 rpm package. Even if Mozilla OpenH264 (1.8.1) plugin is installed in your profile and claimed at about:plugins page, the Fedora system one is used.
LibreOffice 7.1 is being developed by our worldwide community, and is due to be released in early February 2021 -- see the release notes describing the new features here.
In order to find, report and triage bugs, the LibreOffice QA team is organizing the first Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 7.1 on Monday October 26 , 20 20 . Tests will be performed on the first Alpha version. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), macOS and Windows, and can be installed and run in parallel along with the production version.
Texts in shapes is frequently used in LibreOffice. LibreOffice already supports rotation of the text in shape for years. But some users prefer to use camera rotation to rotate text in shape.
35 years ago, our sister organisation, the Free Software Foundation, was founded to work for users' freedoms to use, study, share, and improve software with the introductory line that "Our work will not be finished until every computer user is able to do all of their digital tasks in complete freedom". That is a promise that holds true even after thirty-five years of working for software freedom and inspiring countless people and many organisations to take a stand for user freedoms. The FSFE's President, Matthias Kirschner, recorded a congratulatory speech in which he reflected on the importance the FSF and our movement have had and continue to have over the years.
GNU Parallel 20201022 ('Samuel Paty') has been released. It is available for download at: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/parallel/
Please help spreading GNU Parallel by making a testimonial video like Juan Sierra Pons: http://www.elsotanillo.net/wp-content/uploads/GnuParallel_JuanSierraPons.mp4 It does not have to be as detailed as Juan's. It is perfectly fine if you just say your name, and what field you are using GNU Parallel for.
After the Commission's previous Open Source Strategy expired in 2017, we have waited three years for a new one. Instead of the hoped-for major step, which would reflect current developments around the debates on digital sovereignty and state of the art administration, the Commission has presented only a fig leaf. The benefits of Free Software are fully emphasised and the Commission is ambitious in its future use of Free Software. But concrete goals are rare, and a clear commitment to the use of Free Software is lacking. A failure of the strategy is foreseeable at this stage as the objectives are ambitious but the measures merely establish the status quo. Therefore, we call upon the Commission to present and implement concrete measures and activities in the coming weeks and months.
In the case of the 34 Nature-branded journals, the first step is a “read and publish” deal with Germany’s Max Planck institutes, allowing affiliated researchers to both access the journals and to publish in them open access. The OA fee that Max Planck will pay is based on a cost of €9,500 (€£8,600) per article. The publisher, Springer Nature, says that it is in discussions to allow authors worldwide to publish open access in Nature journals from next year.
The UK alone spends more than €£25 million on OA journal publishing annually, but the proportion that goes to large commercial publishers for OA in hybrid journals has increased year-on-year. The average cost for publishing in hybrid journals also continues to increase steadily.
This trend has been evident since Springer Nature launched its leading OA journals, Nature Communications and Scientific Reports. In 2018 alone, these journals received more than €£1.6 million from 30 UK research-intensive institutions. In 2019, Elsevier launched 100 new OA journals and the humanities publisher IEEE launched 13.
Upstream LLVM/Clang now supports making use of the vector math library found within the GNU C Library.
Clang 12 will allow for vectorization using libmvec via the -fvec-lib=libmvec compiler option.
Frama-C is a giant modular system for writing formal proofs of C code. For months I’ve been on-and-off trying to see if we could use it to do useful proofs for any parts of the projects we write, like qemu, libvirt, libguestfs, nbdkit etc. I got side-tracked at first with this frama-c tutorial which is fine, but I got stuck trying to make the GUI work.
Of course this is a contrived example, but readers will hopefully agree it's representative of the construct.
If you’ve read the first article in this series, you’ll know what full stack tracing is and why you definitely want it. This time, we’ll show you how to setup full stack tracing on your Linux system. There are two steps – first get everything configured to capture a trace, and then view and interpret the trace.
Setup full stack tracing with a bit of kernel help
To capture a trace, we’ll be using LTTng (Linux tracing toolkit next generation) in our examples. LTTng captures tracepoints with minimal overhead. This is something you definitely want, as too much extra CPU introduced by tracing can change the system’s behavior, even causing it to fail unpredictably. Another factor in LTTng’s favor is that it’s well supported by the open source community.
LTTng was designed to record kernel level events. However, you’ll also want to use its user space tracepoints to capture application level events. That will give you consistent visibility, regardless of where execution moves throughout the software stack. User space tracepoints is critical to the setup of full stack tracing as it lets you integrate application, Qt, and kernel tracepoints together in a single view.
Firebird Project is happy to announce general availability of Firebird 3.0.7 — the latest point release in the Firebird 3.0 series.This sub-release offers many bug fixes and also adds a few improvements, please refer to the Release Notes for the full list of changes.Binary kits for Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Android platforms are immediately available for download.All users of Firebird v3.0.6 are
In PHP object-oriented programming, we have the self keyword and $this variable that is used for different purposes. The self keyword represents current and static members of the class. While the $this variable represents current object and non-static members of the class. More about these are discussed in this article.
Even with so many other system-level languages to choose from, C remains the popular choice. Many key projects—such as the Linux kernel and the Python runtime—still use C, and they will likely do so indefinitely. For some fields of computing, like embedded programming, C is a must. And there has never been a better time to learn C. Resources abound, from books to guided courses. Here we’ll look at four major online course offerings for learning C programming, each aimed at different levels of user and offering different approaches. For instance, one combines learning C with learning Linux, while another teaches C and C++ together.
In the C language, the rand() function is used for Pseudo Number Generator(PRNG). The random numbers generated by the rand() function are not truly random. It is a sequence that repeats periodically, but the period is so large that we can ignore it. The rand() function works by remembering a seed value that is used to compute the next random number and the next new seed. In this article, we are going to discuss in detail how random numbers can be generated using the rand() function. So, let’s get started!
This tweet from Jim Manico really has me thinking about why we like to consider security bugs special. There are a lot of tools on the market today to scan your github repos, containers, operating systems, web pages … pick something, for security vulnerabilities. I’ve written a very very long series about these scanners and why they’re generally terrible today but will get better, but only if we demand it. I’m now wondering why we want to consider security special. Why do we have an entire industry focused just on security bugs?
Let’s change the conversation a little bit. Rather than focus on security bugs, let’s ask the question: Which bugs in a given project should we care about?
There are of course bugs an attacker could use to compromise your system. There are also bugs that could result in data loss. Or bugs that could bring everything down. What about a bug that uses 10% more CPU? Every piece of software has bugs. All bugs are equal, but some bugs are more equal than others.
We are at a time in software history where we have decided security bugs are more equal than other bugs. This has created entire industries around scanning just for security problems. Unfortunately the end goal isn’t always to fix problems, the goal is often to find problems, so problems are found (a LOT of problems). I think this is a pretty typical case of perverse incentives. You will always find what you measure. The pendulum will swing back in time, maybe we can help it swing a little faster.
The answer comes down to two words: Security and Reliability. As a bonus, less work on your part.
It's surprising to find that there are modules on CPAN that aren't using ppport.h that could stand to benefit from it.
ppport.h is a file that is part of the Devel::PPPort distribution. As you know, Perl has evolved over the years, adding new features, and new API for XS writers to use. Some of that is to support the new features, and some to make tasks easier to accomplish. ppport.h implements portions of the API that people have found desirable to have when a module gets installed in a Perl that was released before that API element was created. You can write your module using the latest API, and have it automatically work on old Perls, simply by #including ppport.h in your XS code. ppport.h generally provides support for an API element as is reasonably practicable, with many supported to 5.03007.
Importantly, but often overlooked, ppport.h can override buggy early Perl implementations of an API element. By using it, you get fixed, proper behavior. That sure beats trying to reproduce a reported problem in your module that only happens in some ancient Perl, and then try to come up with a workaround in an area you aren't familiar with.
This is especially important if your XS code interacts with Unicode in any way. Early versions of the Unicode standard and early Perls allowed things that we now know are potential attack vectors. Right now, someone could be using your module to hack into systems, so you are actually being negligent if you don't use ppport.h.
If your XS code has preprocessor #if statements that check for the existence of functions, macros, etc, that are only in later perls, you can generally avoid that by simply using ppport.h
Do you have gaps in your Python learning path? If you're like me, you may have followed a completely random route to learn Python. This week on the show, David Amos is here to talk about the release of the Real Python book, "Python Basics: A Practical Introduction to Python 3". The book is designed not only to get beginners up to speed but also to help fill in the gaps many intermediate learners may still have.
In this article, we will take a look at how we can use the TextBlob library for sentiment analysis. We will also go through an example of how to analyze tweet sentiments.
Here you will learn how to carry out two tests for equality of variances in Python: Bartlett's test and Levene's Test
We can use Python for performing various operations on file and directories, i.e., check the existence of files, verify the existence of directories, and remove the files and directories. Python provides a built-in operating system (OS) module for this purpose. By using the OS module, we can access the system files, directories, and we can delete them as well. Therefore, to perform any operation on file or directory, first, we need to import the OS module. In this article, we will learn to delete the file by using Python.
Python provides a built-in operating system (OS) module that can be used to access OS files and directories. Any computer user often finds the need to check whether a file exists in a system. For example, suppose you are working on a file system and want to make sure that a file is available before performing any major operations on it. If you attempt to navigate or open a non-existent file, then this would cause an error. This article shows you how to use various Python file-checking mechanisms.
BritBox, the U.K. content-focused streaming service launched by BBC Studios and ITV, has promoted Emily Powers to executive vp and head of Britbox North America.
That follows the North American streamer announcing that Britbox president and CEO Soumya Sriraman will step down at the end of October. Powers, who has been helping oversee the upcoming launch of BritBox in Australia, most recently served as senior vp and commercial head and now adds editorial and creative control of the core North American business to her responsibilities.
In less than four years, the Trump administration has mounted more than 150 attacks on science. “The harms and costs of the Trump administration’s attacks on science are staggering,” says the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a U.S. science-advocacy group. Nature, the prestigious British science journal, recently cataloged many of Trump’s assaults on science, saying some of the damage “could be permanent.”
The sudden move to remote education by universities this year has forced the inevitable: the move to an online education. While most universities won’t be fully remote, having course materials online was already becoming the norm before the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year it has become mandatory for millions of educators and students. As academia recovers from this crisis, and hopefully prepares for the next one, the choices we make will send us down one of two paths. We can move towards a future of online education which replicates the artificial scarcity of traditional publishing, or take a path which fosters an abundance of free materials by embracing the principles of open access and open education.
The well-worn, hefty, out-of-date textbook you may have bought some years ago was likely obsolete the moment you had a reliable computer and an Internet connection. Traditional textbook publishers already know this, and tout that they have embraced the digital era and have ebooks and e-rentals available—sometimes even at a discount. Despite some state laws discouraging the practice, publishers try to bundle their digital textbooks into “online learning systems,” often at the expense of the student. However, the costs and time needed to copy and send thousands of the digital textbooks themselves is trivial compared to their physical equivalent.€
"The current administration's response has exposed serious flaws in the country's ability to combat large scale public health challenges."
So do we intensify the current system of farming or is there a better way? Much criticism has been levelled at alternative approaches to conventional farming, for example – that they can’t produce enough food for 10 billion people by 2050, they’re not always climate friendly, and consumers reject the cost of sustainable food.
Writing in a new book, Transformation of our food systems, published by sustainable development organisation Biovision and German farming charity Foundation on Future Farming, scientists and food security experts refute these criticisms. Agroecology – a farming philosophy and approach that works for nature and people – they say, can nourish the world, fight climate change and help solve the global food security crisis.
It’s time for our elected officials to pass enforceable workplace protections like those in the HEROES Act to make sure workers are able to stay safe, maintain social distance, and access paid sick leave.
The ruling called the Covid-19 outbreak at the notorious lockup "the worst epidemiological disaster in California correctional history."
In lieu of a plan for the virus, the president keeps assuring audiences that "only" older people will die.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many were shocked to see woman, children and migrants—including many pre-trial and pre-hearing—who had never been convicted of anything crammed into overcrowded lock-ups that might as well have been petri dishes for community spread of the disease. By the middle of October, close to 150,000 residents and almost 30,000 staff and workers had tested positive. 1,122 detainees and 42 staff had died according to the Behind Bars Covid Data Project of UCLA.€
For many Americans, there’s never been a better time to reconsider the entire system. Years of work by abolitionists like Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, Mariame Kaba and organizations like Critical Resistance are paying off.
An arbitration court in the Sverdlovsk region has fined the Ural Instrument Making Plant 500,000 rubles ($6,500) for manufacturing faulty equipment after federal regulators discovered violations of licensing requirements in the production, maintenance, and circulation of medical devices.€
If we really want to stem the spread of the coronavirus as winter looms and we wait for a vaccine, here’s an idea: The government should pay bars, many restaurants and event venues to close for some months.
Russian lawmaker Valery Gartung, the deputy head of the “Just Russia” faction in the State Duma, announced on Facebook on October 21 that he has tested positive for COVID-19, though he has no symptoms of the illness. Gartung is one of 40,000 people participating in the Stage III trials of “Sputnik V,” Russia’s first registered vaccine against the coronavirus. “Now I’ve tested positive, which means I definitely got the placebo,” he told the news outlet RBC.
Fighting — and adapting to — the coronavirus in Illinois has been costly. So far, state agencies have spent more than $1.6 billion in federal and state COVID-19 funding since late March, buying everything from face masks to Subway sandwiches.
Last Friday, the United States recorded 70,000 cases of SARS-CoV-2, the largest single-day tally since the end of July. Meanwhile, the president of the United States is trashing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, saying, “People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.”
A new study by researchers at Columbia University estimates that between 130,000 and 210,000 deaths from coronavirus in the United States could have been avoided, placing much of the blame for those deaths on the “abject failure” of the Trump administration.
The Helsinki-based company said that the [crackers] who [copied] the data made attempts to extort money in exchange for its return.
The Council of the European Union has imposed sanctions on two Russian citizens and a military intelligence center due to cyberattacks targeting Germany’s parliament in 2015 and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2018.€ This was announced in the latest volume of the Official Journal of the European Union. The United Kingdom announced plans to enforce these sanctions, as well.€
Cross-Site Scripting, commonly known as XSS, is a type of vulnerability in which attackers remotely inject custom scripts on web pages. It commonly occurs in sites where data input parameters are improperly sanitized.
Sanitization of inputs is the process of cleansing of the inputs, so the data inserted is not used to find or exploit security holes in a website or server.
Vulnerable sites are either unsanitized or very poorly and incompletely sanitized. It is an indirect attack. The payload is indirectly sent to the victim. The malicious code is inserted on the website by the attacker, and then it becomes a part of it. Whenever the user (victim) visits the webpage, the malicious code is moved to the browser. Hence, the user is unaware of anything happening.
Google Chrome stable channel users are receiving an update that rings along multiple security fixes. Update v86.0.4240.111 includes a fix for zero-day vulnerability CVE-2020-15999 discovered by a member in Google's Project Zero team. This new zero-day vulnerability is reported to be a memory bug in the FreeType font rendering library. This was spotted being abused by a threat actor. Chrome users are recommended to install this latest update by going into the Help section.
The tech giant has confirmed via a blog post that it has updated the Chrome stable channel to 86.0.4240.111 for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. This update will roll out for all users in the coming week. Chrome users can update to the latest version via the integrated update function inside the browser itself. Hit the three dots on the top right corner of the browser window and select Help > About Google Chrome. Here it will show you of any pending update, and after installation, it will ask you to relaunch the browser to finish the updating process.
Josh and Kurt talk about change. Specifically we discuss how the past was a terrible place. Never believe anyone who tells you it was better. Part of a career now is learning how to learn. The things you learn today won’t be useful skills in a few years. The future is is always better than the past. Even in 2020.
Josh and Kurt have a chat with Larry Cashdollar. The three of us go way back. Larry has done some amazing things and he tells us all about it!
Josh and Kurt talk about Network Time Security (NTS) how it works and what it means for the world (probably not very much). We also talk about Singapore’s Cybersecurity Labelling Scheme (CLS). It probably won’t do a lot in the short term, but we hope it’s a beacon of hope for the future.
EFF, joined by several leading civil liberties and immigrant rights organizations, recently filed a comment calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to withdraw a proposed rule that would exponentially expand biometrics collection from both U.S. citizens and noncitizens who apply for immigration benefits and would allow DHS to mandate the collection of face data, iris scans, palm prints, voice prints, and DNA. DHS received more than 5,000 comments in response to the proposed rule, and five U.S. Senators also demanded that DHS abandon the proposal.€ € € €
DHS’s biometrics database is already the second largest in the world. It contains biometrics from more than 260 million people. If DHS’s proposed rule takes effect, DHS estimates that it would nearly double the number of people added to that database each year, to over 6 million people. And, equally important, the rule would expand both the types of biometrics DHS collects and how DHS uses them.€ €
Imagine learning that you were wiretapped by law enforcement, but couldn’t get any information about why. That’s what happened to retired California Highway Patrol officer Miguel Guerrero, and EFF sued on his behalf to get more information about the surveillance. This week, a California appeals court ruled in his case that people who are targets of wiretaps are entitled to inspect the wiretap materials, including the order application and intercepted communications, if a judge finds that such access would be in the interests of justice. This is a huge victory for transparency and accountability in California courts.
This case arose from the grossly disproportionate volume of wiretaps issued by the Riverside County Superior Court in 2014 and 2015. In those years, wiretaps from that single, suburban county accounted for almost twice as many wiretaps as were issued in the rest of California combined, and almost one-fifth of all state and federal wiretaps issued nationwide. After journalists exposed Riverside County’s massive surveillance campaign, watchdog groups and even a federal judge warned that the sheer scale of the wiretaps suggested that the applications and authorizations violated federal law.
Staff at the Federal Trade Commission support bringing a case, which could be filed in the coming weeks, the person said. A final decision about suing the company rests with the five-member commission. The commission met Thursday to discuss the case, according to the person, who declined to be named because the investigation is confidential.
The FTC has been investigating whether Facebook violated antitrust laws for more than year, including whether its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were designed to eliminate emerging competitive threats. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg was questioned by FTC officials in August as part of the investigation. A nationwide group of state attorneys general led by New York are also investigating the company.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning have both paid a tremendous price for revealing U.S. and allied war crimes while the planners and perpetrators face no consequences.
MAS won by such a wide margin that it even surprised many of its supporters in Bolivia and around the world. According to official exit polls, Arce and his vice-presidential candidate David Choquehuanca won 52.4 percent of the vote compared to centre-right candidate Carlos Mesa, who garnered only 31.5 percent.
In order to win in the first round, a candidate must secure more than 40 percent and a margin of at least 10 percent over the nearest rival to avoid a second round runoff. Arce won by an astonishing 20 percent.
The story of Lisa's life reads like the script of a horror movie.
Correlation is not causation, but if you gear yourself up like you're going to war, chances are you're going to treat the people you're supposed to serve as enemy combatants.
During the afternoon of Thursday, October 22, businessman and former politician Anatoly Bykov was arrested in Krasnoyarsk, reports Interfax.
Mass protests against police brutality continue in Nigeria after security forces shot and killed 12 peaceful protesters in Lagos this week. Video widely shared on social media shows security forces firing directly into a crowd of demonstrators in Lagos singing the country’s national anthem. Authorities have imposed a curfew to clamp down on the growing demonstrations, which started as a demand to disband the notorious police unit known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS, but which have since grown into a wider movement against police brutality and official impunity. “We are asking for justice. We are asking for our lives to be preserved, not to be killed arbitrarily by these officers of state,” says lawyer and human rights activist Aderonke Ige, who has taken part in the protests. We also speak with Omoyele Sowore, who says young people in the streets are also confronting other systemic issues. “They are fighting against police brutality, but they are also fighting against army brutality, they are fighting against unemployment, they are fighting against the incompetence and indifference of the regime that has been in power,” he says.
As fighting continues between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, we look at the roots of the conflict that has already killed at least 700 people since fighting began in late September and which threatens to escalate despite two ceasefire attempts brokered by Russia. Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians, was the site of a bloody conflict in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This latest spike in violence is the worst since the 1990s and holds the risk of spiraling into a regional war, with Turkey openly supporting Azerbaijan while Russia has a mutual defense pact with Armenia. “You enter into the capital, Stepanakert, and the lights are off. The city is in complete darkness, and everyone is in bunkers and shelters,” says reporter Roubina Margossian, who has been reporting from the region. We also speak with UC Berkeley professor Stephan Astourian, author of the forthcoming book “At the Crossroads of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict: History, Territory, Nationalisms.”
Mass protests against police brutality continue in Nigeria after security forces shot and killed 12 peaceful protesters in Lagos this week. Video widely shared on social media shows security forces firing directly into a crowd of demonstrators in Lagos singing the country’s national anthem. Authorities have imposed a curfew to clamp down on the growing demonstrations, which started as a demand to disband the notorious police unit known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS, but which have since grown into a wider movement against police brutality and official impunity. “We are asking for justice. We are asking for our lives to be preserved, not to be killed arbitrarily,” says lawyer and human rights activist Aderonke Ige, who has taken part in the protests. We also speak with Omoyele Sowore, who says young people in the streets are also confronting other systemic issues. “They are fighting against police brutality, but they are also fighting against army brutality, they are fighting against unemployment, they are fighting against the incompetence and indifference of the regime that has been in power,” he says.
Jerry and I had been living together for about 4 years. After the guilty verdict and contempt sentences the judge threw the defendants immediately into jail, and Anita Hoffman, Tasha Dellinger and I burned judges robes at a press conference underneath a huge banner — “We Are All Outlaws In the Eyes of America”— and helped organize a large protest. I spoke alongside attorney Bill Kunstler at Santa Barbara the day the citizens of that town burned down the Bank of America. So we were there, even if invisibly, as women often are.
Although the actors were great, Sorkin failed to reflect the essence of many of the characters. He showed Jerry as a violence-provoking buffoon, one who let a female FBI agent get close to him in the midst of what we had put our hearts and souls into for much of the year. The only woman that was next to him the whole time was me. And I knew Jerry’s faults as well as anyone which is finally why I left him. But I also knew his strengths. He had tremendous courage. Not Rambo courage. It was ridiculous to see him in the film talking about molotov cocktails. He couldn’t even make a smoothie. But he was brave. He stood up 3 times to the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). All times in costume. First as a revolutionary war hero with tri-corner hat and all, then as an international guerrilla, and finally as Santa Claus. (It was Xmas time, and the headlines read HUAC BARS SANTA.) Many times bravery involves being able to put yourself out there, even if you are scared, to be outspoken and fight for what you think is right. Jerry had been a journalist and knew how to work the media to expand the movement. He developed theatrical politics and was a creative, brilliant tactician of protest. He helped lead the earlier protests against the war. It was largely his vision, as the Project Director, that guided the 1967 attempt to SHUT DOWN the Pentagon through both levitation and huge civil disobedience action against the war where 800 of us were arrested.
The Iraq War Logs published by WikiLeaks revealed 15,000 civilian deaths that were previously unknown. They also exposed torture that the United States military instructed officers to ignore.
“In our release of these 400,000 documents about the Iraq War, the intimate detail of that war from the U.S. perspective,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hoped to correct some of the attacks on the truth that occurred “before the war, during the war, and which [had] continued on since the war officially concluded.”
Eric Schmidt said regulation should be directed toward "the excesses in the social-networking space."
"Covid-19 has placed unprecedented strain on the multilateral system and cruelly exposed its failings.€ A fresh approach is urgently needed in 2021 with an unrelenting focus on justice and equality."
Air pollution by tiny particles is among the world’s worst health risks. In South Asia, poor air is as bad as it gets.
These kinds of disasters are becoming increasingly costly and impossible to ignore. Yet even as the American public becomes progressively more worried about the climate crisis, a shrinking but vocal slice of the country continues to dismiss these concerns, impeding efforts to address the monumental global€ challenge.
Without the abundant rainfall brought by the weather events, dams in Taiwan are seeing alarmingly low water levels at a time when water use is growing due to heightened hygiene awareness amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The factors driving the extreme nature of these fires are three-fold: persistent climate patterns in the western U.S. are creating sustained periods of hot, dry weather that is conducive to fire; warm conditions are drying out fuels, creating explosive conditions when ignition occurs; and a growing number of homes and other structures in flammable forests and shrublands is increasing the danger of fires for human health and safety.
The conflagrations this summer are not unexpected; fire and climate scientists have been predicting their likelihood for a number of years. Yet, the intensity, size and speed of recent fires and the weather conditions that they have created have surprised even the scientific community – in California, for example, the Creek Fire spawned tornado-like conditions.
This is the first time in recorded history that the Laptev Sea has not yet started freezing this late into October.
"Too often we are told doing the right thing for the environment requires sacrifice and costs more. But we can actually make a better economy and save people money and a byproduct will be to cut emissions."
Standing at the site of a long-abandoned, multimillion dollar industrial park in November 2016, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers urged residents in southeastern Kentucky’s Bell County to envision the tourism potential for miles of open land.
Joined by Matt Bevin, then Kentucky’s governor, and local politicians, Rogers pointed to the expanse of forestlands and mountaintops in the distance as he unveiled a $12.5 million federal grant for the Appalachian Wildlife Center. Rogers, a Republican who represents the state’s Appalachian region, had helped secure the money through the Abandoned Mine Land Pilot Program, a federal initiative designed to foster economic development around former coal mine sites in Kentucky and other states.
Research suggests our species has far exceeded its fair share of the planetary bounty, and Brown is right to call for the global population to peak. It is high time others joined the chorus—not only other environmentalists, but those concerned with international development and human rights.
When these programs expire, millions of these workers and their families will be financially devastated.
Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, a friend of President Vladimir Putin, has been the main outside contractor for the Moscow authorities during the ten years that Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has been in charge of the city, reports a new joint investigation from the investigative site Proekt and business magazine Forbes.€
The journalists had been combing through leaks comprising 2,121 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) between 2000 and 2017. The relevant amount in terms of transactions: somewhere in the order of $2 trillion. It was awfully good of the banks themselves to be filing such reports with the US Treasury. But such matters are mere formalities; there is no incentive for the bank in question to stop trading with a shady client, despite what is suspected in the report. The point is to merely keep an account of it.
The criteria for an SAR are not sharply defined. Matthew Collin of the Brookings Institute suggests a few: unclear sources and ill-defined beneficiaries; a nexus with a jurisdiction historically noted for financial crime and irregularity. Another “common sign of suspicion is one in which a client attempts to avoid attention from the authorities by making several deposits below $10,000, which is the automatic reporting threshold.”
The candidates are expected to address Covid-19, climate change, and national security, among other topics.
That was J.R. de Vera, one of two directors of UNITE-HERE!’s independent expenditure campaign to elect Biden and Harris in Reno, Nevada. UNITE-HERE! is a union representing 300,000 workers in the hospitality industry — that world of hotels and bars, restaurants and caterers. Ninety percent of its members are now laid off because of Trump’s bungling of the Covid-19 pandemic and many are glad for the chance to help get him out of the White House.
“So some of you will want to stay in your hotel rooms and make phone calls today,” JR continues. Fifty faces fall in the 50 little Zoom boxes on my laptop screen. Canvassers would much rather be talking to voters at their doors than calling them on a phone bank. Still, here in the burning, smoking West, the union is as committed to its own people’s health and safety as it is to dragging Donald Trump out of office. So, for many of them, phone calls it will be.
"This is one of our most important calls in the lead-up to Election Day."
The development came after former President Barack Obama released an ad urging South Carolinians to vote for "my friend Jaime Harrison."
I know, I know: Trumpists have decided that part of the culture war they need to create for the election is that "big tech" is somehow "censoring conservatives." The narrative is complete bullshit, but the Trump cultists are so deeply bought into it that they'll make themselves look absolutely ridiculous to further it. The latest is that a bunch of Republican officials apparently don't understand Twitter and, in trying to continue this anti-tech culture war, instead demonstrated to the world that they can't read.
For decades now, the Democratic political establishment has overseen the betrayal of progressive and working-class hopes and interests.
If you don’t want such a person as your neighbor, why would you want him as your President where he’d have exponentially more power to harm you and your family?
On Thursday, October 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the annual Valdai Discussion Club via video link. He talked for about forty minutes and covered a wide range of topics, including the coronavirus pandemic, the post-Cold War order, and the existential trials and tribulations of our times. Here’s what he said, in brief.
We have arrived at a moment in which two worlds are colliding and a history of the present is poised at a point when “possibilities are either realized or rejected but never disappear completely.”[1] First, there are the harsh and crumbling worlds of neoliberal globalization and its mobilizing passions that fuel different strands of fascism across the globe, including the United States.[2] Power is now enamored of amassing profits and capital and is increasingly addicted to a politics of white nationalism and racial cleansing. Second, there are growing counter movements, especially among young people, with their search for a new politics that can rethink, reclaim and reinvent a new understanding of democratic socialism, untainted by capitalism. [3] What is not in doubt is that something sinister and horrifying is happening to liberal democracies all over the globe. The global thrust towards democratization that emerged after World War II is giving way once again to authoritarian tyrannies. As alarming as the signs may be, the public cannot look away and allow the terrors of the unforeseen to be given free rein. For those who believe in democratic socialism we cannot allow the power of dreams and militant hopes to turn into ashes.
We now live in a world that resembles a dystopian novel. The COVID-19 crisis created a surrealist nightmare that floods our screens and media with images of fear. We can no longer shake hands, embrace our friends, use public transportation, sit in a coffee shop, or walk down the street without experiencing anxiety and fear. What must be acknowledged is that the pandemic is more than a medical concept. It also refers to ideological and political plagues that emerged as a result of the irresponsible response of the U.S. and other countries such as Brazil, the United Kingdom, and India to the Covid-19 crisis. Marked by inept leadership rooted in a distrust of science and reason and a blind allegiance to market forces, what emerged over time was unimaginable suffering, massive deaths, and a further legitimation of lies and right-wing violence. The horror of the pandemic often blinds us to the fact that anti-democratic economic and political forces that have prioritized profits over human needs have grinded away at the social order for the last forty years.
Dante Alighieri has words for Donald J. Trump from the other side of death.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that he helped ensure opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s medical evacuation to Germany personally.
There are other reasons why a coup is unlikely. Namely, most of the politically active public believe that they live in an exceptional democracy. This conviction is held despite the abysmal candidate choices they are given and the obscene mountains of money backing them. Surely, the ruling elites would not want to disabuse a quiescent citizenry of this delusion by allowing the naked coercive state to be exposed.
Symmetry of the two-party duopoly
It’s worth noting that this is the second major, national-level lawsuit Governor Bullock has won against Trump’s corrupt appointees in the last three weeks. Prior to the latest victory, Bullock had€ won his suit against the illegitimate actions of William Perry Pendley€ as head of the Bureau of Land Management that oversees millions of acres of public lands. As Federal Judge Brian Morris wrote in his ruling, Pendley “served unlawfully as the Acting BLM Director for 424 days” and enjoined him from exercising the authority of the agency’s director.
While it’s nothing short of incredible that it took a Montana governor to fight and win these huge national issues, it’s worth remembering that it’s not just the lawsuits, but the effect of these victories, that deliver long-term and wide-reaching actions.
Rem Em emigrated from Cambodia in 2002 to help take care of a grandchild with leukemia. Twelve years later, she became a U.S. citizen. It was one of the proudest moments of her life.
Ever since, she’s made sure to vote, even though the native Khmer speaker isn’t fluent in English. She talks to her family, other Cambodian immigrants in her South Philadelphia neighborhood and community groups about the candidates and the races. Before she votes, she studies what her preferred candidate’s name looks like in English, noting as well the shapes that form the word “VOTE.”
The 100,000-member MLK Labor Council, an AFL-CIO regional body of labor groups representing more than 150 unions in the Seattle, Washington, area, passed a resolution Wednesday that calls for a general strike if President Donald Trump does not respect the outcome of the November 3 election.
In the rush to respond swiftly to the pandemic, every state has changed something about its voting process. If you plan on voting in person, your polling place may be different, and you’ll have to follow safety protocols. If you vote by mail, you’ll want to send in or drop off your ballot earlier than you normally would — ideally as soon as possible.
But chances are it won’t significantly change your ability to vote and have your vote count. Despite worries around primary elections, the major problems have been isolated to a small number of counties in places that consistently have election issues, virus or not. For a snapshot of your state’s election administration performance, compared with other states, check out MIT’s Elections Performance Index. This database tracks how each state performed in the last election. Where yours ranked in the past could help you start to understand what things could be like in 2020.
How bad could tonight’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden be, really, compared to the last one? Remember that hot mess back in late September? Much of the news media, myself included, waxed ominous in the preamble about what would happen if Biden was unable to keep his cool in the face of the inevitable Trumpian onslaught.
Donald Trump is terrified of accountability. That’s why he walked out of a critical interview with Lesley Stahl for CBS News’ 60 Minutes€ on Tuesday, and that’s why he’s been attacking the moderator of tonight’s final presidential debate, veteran NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker.
In 1990, the oil baron and philanthropist Robert Hefner III sent a representative to Germany to purchase a section of the recently dismantled Berlin Wall. The portion he eventually acquired consists of three panels weighing 8,818 pounds, which stand 12 feet tall and 16 feet wide. Hefner and his wife, MeiLi, loaned the panels to the University of Virginia in 2014, where they stand today in a glass display case in the middle of campus. “The installation serves as the centerpiece of a year-long celebration of that unforgettable day, November 9, 1989,” writes John Kelly in the Fall 2014 edition of the university’s arts magazine, “when the whole world looked on to witness the power of the human spirit to triumph over oppression and to celebrate those unalienable rights which Thomas Jefferson so famously championed and cherished.”
Everyone should have a plan to vote this year, but people should also have a plan for what comes after that.
Evgeny Prigozhin, the Russian catering oligarch who allegedly owns a private military company and an Internet troll empire, wants to become an elected politician and he plans to use the “Rodina” party as his ticket into the State Duma, two sources close to the Putin administration and one person inside Prigozhin’s own inner circle told Meduza. Asked about his own political ambitions, however, Prigozhin denies any wish to become a federal lawmaker, and he even has a special message for the people reading this very article.
"An outrageous 5-3 ruling that puts Alabama voters at risk."
The Democratic nominee holds a significant lead over the GOP incumbent among those who voted outside the major parties last time around.
Anyone with the slightest common sense can see that Iran would be much better off with Biden, who is likely to try to re-implement the 2015 nuclear deal.
"Note that this is the same administration who has twice in the last 12 months nearly gone to war with Iran."
"Now 225,000 dead Americans, virus spread raging, millions out of work, an economy spiraling down, and Trump today says he'd do the same things all over again."
A majority of American voters don’t believe President Donald Trump deserves to win reelection in this year’s presidential race, according to a poll published this week.
Offering no explanation for their ruling, the five conservative justices who hold the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Alabama state officials Wednesday night in a decision banning curbside voting in the state.
Assuming he doesn’t chicken out, Donald Trump will take part in his second 2020 presidential debate tonight. His opponents will be Joe Biden, his own record, the notion of truth, and any sense of decency.
QAnon may be losing some of its online platforms—but the conspiracy theory is increasingly being enabled by the Republican Party.
President Donald Trump posted a full-length video of his “60 Minutes” interview with CBS News’s Lesley Stahl on Thursday, following through on a promise he made the day before.
At a news conference Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe alleged that Iranian intelligence used the hacked information for a recent campaign of emails that purported to be from the white nationalist group the Proud Boys, which were sent to intimidate Florida Democratic voters. They added that Russia was also working to influence the election.
The two intelligence officials said that Iran's intention wasn't entirely clear but that one goal was to sow chaos and undermine confidence in the election. Both officials said it would hurt the Trump campaign if a white nationalist group was exposed as having sought to bully Democrats.
A security researcher claims he [cracked] President Donald Trump’s Twitter account earlier this month, guessing that his password was “maga2020!” and possibly posting a tweet where Trump appeared to take a satirical article seriously. Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant and magazine Vrij Nederland reported the news earlier today, citing screenshots and interviews with the researcher, Victor Gevers.
But when reached for comment, both Twitter and the White House vigorously denied the claim.
The alleged break-in was done by Victor Gevers, a security researcher who's uncovered vulnerabilities and unsecured databases before. He told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that he logged into the president’s account last Friday in order to test whether it was secure. And according to him, it wasn’t.
According to Gevers, two days after he rang the alarm, was contacted by the Secret Service, who thanked him for bringing the issue to their attention. Two-step verification was then implemented on Trump’s Twitter account.
On the night of 27 June, at least 61 people died in a shipwreck on a lake in Van, a Turkish province bordering Iran. The victims were asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan, and the wreck shed light on a dangerous and often overlooked migration route used by people trying to move west from the border to major cities, such as Ankara and Istanbul, or further beyond to Europe.
Turkey hosts the largest refugee population in the world, around four million people. A significant majority – 3.6 million – are Syrians. Afghans are the second largest group, but since 2018 they have been arriving irregularly in Turkey and then departing for Greece in larger numbers than any other nationality.
Driven by worsening conflict in their country and an economic crisis in Iran, the number of Afghans apprehended for irregularly entering Turkey increased from 45,000 in 2017 to more than 200,000 in 2019. At the same time, the number of Afghans arriving in Greece by sea from Turkey increased from just over 3,400 to nearly 24,000.
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told the City of Vallejo that its practice of blocking people and deleting comments on social media because it doesn't like their messages is illegal under the First Amendment, and demanded that it stop engaging in such viewpoint discrimination, unblock all members of the public, and let them post comments.In a letter today to Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan and the city council written on behalf of Open Vallejo, an independent news organization, and the Vallejo community at large, EFF said that when the government creates a social media page and uses it to speak to the public about its policies and positions, the page becomes a government forum. Under the First Amendment, the public has a right to receive and comment on messages in the forum. Blocking or deleting users’ comments based on the viewpoints expressed is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.“Courts have made clear that government officials, even the president of the United States, can’t delete or block comments because they dislike the viewpoints conveyed,” said Naomi Gilens, Frank Stanton Legal Fellow at EFF. “Doing so is unconstitutional. We’ve asked that all official social media pages of Vallejo officials and pages of all city offices and departments unblock all members of the public and allow them to post comments."Open Vallejo discovered the practice of deleting comments and blocking users during an investigation of the social media practices of council members, other city officials, and the City of Vallejo itself.EFF sided with members of the public blocked by President Trump on Twitter who sued him and members of his communications team in July 2017. We filed an amicus brief arguing that it’s common practice for government offices large and small to use social media to communicate to and with the public. All members of the public, regardless of whether government officials dislike their posts or tweets, have a right to receive and comment on government messages, some of which may deal with safety directions during fires, earthquakes, or other emergencies.The district court agreed, ruling that President Trump’s practice violates the First Amendment. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Two other federal Courts of Appeals have ruled in separate cases that viewpoint discrimination on government social media pages is illegal.We urge Vallejo to bring its social media practices in line with the Constitution, and have requested that city officials respond to our demand by Nov. 6.For the letter:https://www.eff.org/document/city-vallejo-demand-letterFor more on social media and the First Amendment:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/when-officials-tweet-about-government-business-they-dont-get-pick-and-choose-who
Elsewhere, governments have also used social media companies to go beyond the law, often without public debate. In London the Metropolitan Police requests that they take down legal, but troubling, posts. In June France’s Constitutional Council struck down a deal between the government and the tech companies because it curbed free speech—an initiative that is sure to be revisited after Mr Paty’s murder. Citing Western precedents, more authoritarian governments in countries such as Singapore expect the tech firms to restrict “fake news”—potentially including irksome criticism from opponents.
This might not matter were the networks less dominant. If people could switch as easily as they change breakfast cereal, they could avoid rules they dislike. But switching is like giving up your mobile-phone number: it cuts you off from your friends. Social networks have also become so central to distributing news and opinion that they are, says Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, a “town square”. If you want to be part of the conversation you have no choice but to be there, soapbox in hand.
Very few people in law enforcement want to be told the truth. Fortunately for them, those that speak to and for law enforcement are similarly uninterested in speaking the truth. The man at the top of the law enforcement food chain -- Attorney General Bill Barr -- has turned his second tour at the head of the DOJ into a bullhorn for the airing of law enforcement grievances. He encourages their unwillingness to comprehend the damage they've done has led directly to the animosity they're now experiencing. He reflects their unearned outrage, allowing them to feel their anger is righteous.
"This administration doesn't seem content to stop until it has fully trampled on the rights, autonomy, and dignity of women and girls everywhere."
"Senate Republicans who claim this was never about gutting healthcare are lying to you and Donald Trump just proved it."
"Republicans refuse to listen or care, putting their insatiable quest for power ahead of the people they vowed to serve and the Constitution they swore to uphold."
"There's a number of alternatives that... go well beyond packing," Biden asserted. "The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football."
The city of Portland, Oregon is still in the midst of anti-police brutality protests stemming from the killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. Federal officers arrived in Portland in July, making their presence known by engaging some extremely questionable tactics.
The Muscular Dystrophy Association is bringing back its signature event: the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Running from 1954 to 2014, the show, which could last as long as 23.5 hours, defined the genre. Crying mothers and disabled children were trotted out along with a variety of entertainers and celebrities to convince an audience of millions to donate. And they raised a lot of money to search for a cure—an estimated $2 billion, according to Time magazine. In 1989, NPR’s Scott Simon described it as “the largest single-day, private fundraising effort in the world.”
With the likely imminent confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, the Republicans will succeed in entrenching a solid 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court for many years to come. Already, questions have arisen as to how Democrats should respond. There has been much discussion of blunting the impact of this ideological coup through the expedient of court-packing.
Janine Jackson interviewed True North Research’s Lisa Graves about what’s behind the Amy Coney Barrett nomination for the October 16, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
By suspending the treaty, Finland is following in the footsteps of countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The concern is that suspects extradited at the request of authorities in the semi-autonomous city could be transferred to and convicted in the not independent court system of Mainland China.
Protesters against police brutality say that on Tuesday night in Lagos men in army fatigues closed in on them and shot at them while they sang the national anthem, something the army denies as "fake news".
The irony struck a chord across the world. South African comedian Trevor Noah said: "Just like we've seen in the US, the police in Nigeria are responding to protests about police brutality with more police brutality.
Back in 2015, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a Broadband for All pledge the state proclaimed would invest $500 million to ensure statewide broadband access by 2018. The effort was to be funded largely by legal settlements struck with banks after the last recession, with dollar-per-dollar matching pledges by companies promising to deliver speeds of at least 100 Mbps down, 25 Mbps up across the state.
You might think that Congress has more important issues on its hands, with a pandemic still going on, issues around disinformation and the election, massive fires still burning in parts of the US, a record number of hurricanes pounding the south... but it appears that Congress thinks the most pressing issue is gutting Section 230. As you'll recall, right after FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly made some generally straightforward statements about how the 1st Amendment wouldn't let the government interfere with social media platforms, Trump informed O'Rielly that his nomination to stay at the FCC had been rescinded.
As was expected following Ajit Pai's announcement that the FCC would be moving forward with the rulemaking process to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Act in response to a petition from NTIA -- instigated by the President's unconstitutional executive order, which came about because Twitter suggested people research the facts,following Trump tweeting blatant disinformation regarding elections and ballots -- the FCC's General Counsel Tom Johnson has released the FCC's legal explanation for how it could possibly have authority here.
Minecraft players have been able to play without a Microsoft account for the past six years that the company has owned the game, but that will change in 2021, the official Minecraft blog announced yesterday. Players who own the original version of the game and do not switch to a Microsoft account will be unable to play.
The game has existed in two separately developed versions since its 2011 launch on consoles. Previously, the original Minecraft: Java Edition used Mojang accounts, while Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, the name for the console and Windows store version of the game, used Microsoft accounts. After this change, the accounts will be the same, but there’s still no crossplay: you still won’t be able to play with friends using the other version of the game.
But today, TikTok is announcing that it will give you at least a vague idea of why your video is gone, by naming the specific policy it fell afoul of. That’s pretty similar to how other companies do it.
As before, you’ll be able to submit an appeal. Maybe you’ll have some idea what you’re appealing now. TikTok says it’s been experimenting with these notifications for a few months, and that appeals have actually gone down by 14 percent. (I guess they did know what they’d done.)
The appeals court upheld a lower-court ruling ordering the companies to comply with Assembly Bill 5, which took effect in January and would force the companies to reclassify their drivers as employees -- and provide the benefits that status confers.
In a much-anticipated lawsuit, the agency accused Google of locking up deals with giant partners like Apple and throttling competition through exclusive business contracts and agreements.
Google’s deals with Apple, mobile carriers and other handset makers to make its search engine the default option for users accounted for most of its dominant market share in search, the agency said, a figure that it put at around 80 percent.
Hogan Gidley was temporarily suspended after he tweeted about receiving an envelope in the mail addressed to someone named Daniel. He attached a screenshot of the envelope marked “Your Official Ballot.”
An opposition was filed and eventually withdrawn against the patent. However, the Opposition Division decided to go ahead with the opposition proceedings nevertheless, which it is allowed to do if it is likely that the patent will be limited or revoked even "without further assistance from the opponent(s)" (see the EPO Guidelines for Examination, Part D-VII, 5.2 and 5.3). The patent was eventually revoked for violation of Art. 53(c) EPC. The patentee appealed.
The Board of Appeal first underscores that independent claim 1 does not contain any feature explicitly involving a method of treatment by surgery. However, the Board explains (by reference to the Enlarged Board's decision in G 1/07) that Art. 53(c) EPC also excludes the granting of patents that involves such a step even implicitly. If a surgical method of treatment is an essential feature of the invention (whether implicitly or explicitly), the invention is excluded from being patentable under Art. 53(c) EPC.
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This decision must be traced back to the Enlarged Board of Appeal's ruling in G 1/07 (Treatment by surgery/MEDI-PHYSICS), directly referred to in the decision. G 1/07 enshrined the principle that a method, which "encompasses an invasive step representing a substantial physical intervention on the body which requires professional medical expertise to be carried out and which entails a substantial health risk even when carried out with the required professional care and expertise", is not patentable under Art. 53(c) EPC. G 1/07 also set forth that this issue cannot be solved by simply omitting the surgical treatment step from the claim, when it remains an essential feature that is necessary to carry out the invention.
Two aspects still distinguish the decision at hand from G 1/07.
First, the patent claim in the decision at hand differs from the one at stake in G 1/07 in that the step of treatment by surgery was at no point explicitly mentioned in the patent claim. Only the subsequent claim interpretation performed by the Board showed that the claim necessarily encompasses that step. The exclusion from patentability thus cannot be circumvented by hiding the problematic feature in the description, since the claims are always interpreted by reference to the description.
“The members of parliament we contacted seem to be receptive, some of them already know the issues that we have raised. I have the impression that the key political group to convince will be the liberals of FDP. That is the opposition party whose support is needed to get the required 2/3 majority for ratification of the UPCA.”
In your objections to the speedy ratification procedure in Germany, you have pointed at the importance of four EPO cases pending before the Federal Constitutional Court. Could you explain why the outcome of these cases is relevant? “The EPO decisions to administer the Unitary Patent cannot be brought to court. This is in direct violation of the rule of law principle, which is enshrined in Art 2 TFEU and in most national constitutions. This principle is heavily debated at EU level at the moment because of two problematic countries (Poland and Hungary).
For patent applicants, it means they cannot sue the EPO for a refusal to grant. There were amendments in 2012 by a member of the Green party of the European Parliament to make the EPO responsible for acts concerning the UPC, but those amendments were not adopted.
For others, it means there is no possibility to bring the EPO to court for maladministration. When FFII Spain opposed the Amazon One Click Gift patent back in 2012, our Spanish representative was refused a live translation in Spanish, the EPO only providing a choice between three languages. We looked at bringing the EPO to court for language discrimination, but came to the conclusion that the EPO had diplomatic immunity, and cannot be brought to court for maladministration.
Both parties appealed the Board's decision in IPR-106, Snyders on the grounds that the '601 patent anticipated claims 1, 2, 6, and 8 of the '782 patent and St. Jude on the ground that claim 28 of the '782 patent was not anticipated by the '601 patent. Snyders argued that the Board had made three errors of claim construction, but the Federal Circuit's decision found that one of these was in error and was sufficient for the panel to reverse the Board's anticipation determination. The construed term was "how the frame is sized and shaped," which Snyders argued was incorrect because "it covers frames sized and shaped for installation with the native valve removed, rather than only with the troubled native valve remaining in place." With regard to this limitation the Board found that "'[t]he claim language does not require the frame be sized and shaped for insertion into a damaged heart valve,' but 'only that the frame is sized and shaped for insertion in a position between the upstream region and the downstream region.'" This was error in the panel's view because the Board did not consider the further disclosure in the '601 patent that the native valve was required to be replaced, which the challenged '782 patent claims expressly did not require. The panel opinion found support for the argument that structural features of the claimed artificial valve was consistent with this lack of a requirement for native valve removal in the plain meaning of the claim language, as well as express disclosure to that effect in the '782 specification. Specifically, the specification disclosed that "the frame is sized and shaped for insertion between the plurality of cusps C of the damaged heart valve in a position between an upstream region and a downstream region" (emphasis in opinion). The significance for the Court was that this language indicated that the term "sized and shaped" "is not meant to refer only to placement in a position between the upstream and downstream regions, but also to fitting between the cusps of the intact native valve." This interpretation is consistent, according to the opinion, with further disclosure in the '782 specification of the benefit of not needing to remove the native heart valve as an improvement over the prior art and in particular the deficiencies in the '601 patent in this regard. Because the '601 patent does not meet the "size and shape" limitation as construed by the Federal Circuit, the panel reversed the Board's determination that the '782 patent claims were invalid for anticipation.
Turning to St. Jude's grounds for appeal, the panel first addressed the argument that the Board had erred in not finding the '601 patent anticipated claim 28, directed to a system for inserting the claimed heart valve. The panel rejected St. Jude's argument (related to whether the '601 patent disclosed the "manipulator" recited in claim 28 of the '782 patent) because "[c]laim 28 contains exactly the same 'sized and shaped' limitation for the valve as does claim 1, requiring a valve meeting that limitation (among others) in combination with an instrument used to install the valve." Accordingly, claim 28 is not anticipated by the '601 patent for the same reason the Court held that claims 1, 2, 6, and 8 of the '782 patent were not, and affirmed the Board's decision on that basis. The Court also rejected St. Jude's argument that the Board erred in not finding claims 1, 2, 6, 8, and 28 of the '782 patent invalid for obviousness over the asserted art. The Court's basis for this decision was that the grounds for the Board's decision were a factual determination regarding "whether a skilled artisan would be motivated to make the proposed combination to arrive at the claimed invention." And the panel held that St. Jude had not satisfied its burden to show that the Board did not have substantial evidence supporting its decision. Because the Federal Circuit must give deference to factual determinations of the Board, unless an appellant can show a lack of substantial evidence, the Court affirmed the Board's decision that the cited references did not render obvious the challenged claims of the '782 patent.
Pandemics may have long-term consequences. One such early outbreak, the sixth century Plague of Justinian, severely weakened both the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire, which in turn contributed a century later to the rapid expansion of Islam. The death toll from the Black Death of the 14th century decimated the agricultural working population in Europe and hastened the demise of feudalism.
The coronavirus will hopefully not come anywhere close to the baleful effect of these pandemics. But even after the medical and economic damage of the coronavirus is ultimately brought under control, harmful side effects may linger, even, perhaps, for IP. In particular, in tandem with the deterioration of public trust over the course of the pandemic, the status of the certification mark might be impaired.
I know-- few of us rely on certification marks for our livelihood. When was the last time that you filed an application for a certification mark? “Can’t remember”. When was the last time that you saw an advertisement for the owner of a certification mark? — “Can’t remember”, much less when you last heard a radio advertisement for a certification mark? — “Can’t remember”. But certification marks play an essential role in enabling consumers to rely on the mark as a badge of safety and standards, sparing us from the transaction cost in trying to verify the certification function by other, less efficient means.
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A central part of this culture of trust is certification, embodied in a certification mark. Should the public come out of the pandemic with a further diminished sense of trust, to the extent that the view ultimately takes hold that certification is not feasible, then the certification mark will have no raison d’etre. It is against this background that this Kat understood the felt need by UL to advertise itself.
While the music industry's war on stream-ripping sites -- sites that have perfectly legitimate and legal uses -- continues, it's true that this is a war in which one side has almost universally surrendered. Facing legal opposition with well-funded industry groups, most stream-ripping sites simply close up shop when staring down litigation. But Russia-based FLVTO.biz has been an exception. We first wrote about the site's decision to defend itself back in early 2019. At that point, the owner of the site, Tofig Kurbanov, had successfully argued in a Florida court that the United States legal system had no jurisdiction over his site, given that it operates in Russia and makes no effort to entice American patronage.
New research into the effects of the French anti-piracy law Hadopi shows that its introduction failed to significantly increase box-office revenue. It did, however, cause a shift in people's movie preferences. The interest of moviegoers in U.S. films increased, at the expense of other content, including French productions.
In January 2019, Finland's National Bureau of Investigation seized logging data from F-Secure's FREEDOME VPN service to investigate an alleged crime. After a prolonged legal process, the Helsinki Court of Appeal has now ruled that the seizure of the logs was illegal. As a result, all of the seized logs must be destroyed.
