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Links 18/1/2021: Weekly Summaries and Linux 5.11 RC4

  • GNU/Linux

    • Linux Weekly Roundup: Wine 6.0, Fedora i3 Spin, and More

      Here’s this week’s (ending Jan 17, 2021) roundup series, curated for you from the Linux and the open-source world on application updates, new releases, distribution updates, major news, and upcoming highlights. Have a look.

    • Linux Weekly Roundup #113

      We had a peaceful week in the world of Linux Releases and only KaOS 2021.01 and ArcoLinux 21.03.1 have been released to the end of this week. We look at them in the new week.

    • 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: January 17th, 2021

      Thank you everyone for following 9to5Linux on social media; we’re nearing 6K followers on Twitter and that’s only possible thanks to you guys! Thank you again to everyone who donated so far to help me keep this website alive for as long as possible.

      This week has been quite interesting despite the fact that no major releases were planned. We saw the launch of a new PinePhone Linux phone edition, the release of the Flatpak 1.10 and Wine 6.0 software, and much more.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Josh Bressers: Episode 254 – Right to Repair Security

        Josh and Kurt talk about the new right to repair rules in the EU. There’s a strange line between loving the idea of right to repair, but also being horrified as security people at the idea of a device being on the Internet for 30 years.

      • Linux Action News 172

        Impressive updates for some beloved open source projects, and AlmaLinux—a leading CentOS alternative—is born.

        Plus Google's surprise for Chromium users, and we go hands-on with Podman's docker-compose support.

      • KDE Roadmap for 2021, Nvidia now loves Wayland, and Epic Games Store on Linux - Linux News

        This time we have the KDE roadmap for the year, Nvidia preparing to better support Wayland and ray tracing on Linux, the death of Flash Player, and an open source epic games store client for Linux.

      • How to install ONLYOFFICE on Linux Mint 20.1

        In this video, we are looking at how to install ONLYOFFICE on Linux Mint 20.1.

      • LibreWolf Is A Web Browser For Privacy and Freedom

        LibreWolf is a fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom. Librewolf strips out all of the telemetry from Firefox and enables a bunch extra security settings out of the box. It has uBlock installed by default and it supports privacy conscious search engines.

      • AwesomeWM: So Long BSPWM, It's Been Fun

        I've been running BSPWM for the past year and it's a great window manager but I wanted a change so I've been convinced to try out AwesomeWM and I'm genuinely impressed, it's very different to what I've become used to but this is a really solid window manager experience.

    • Kernel Space

      • Corellium Posts Very Early Linux Port To Apple M1 Macs

        Apple-focused security/virtualization startup Corellium has posted a very primitive build of Linux for Apple M1 Mac devices.

        Corellium is one of several efforts working to bring bare metal Linux to Apple's new ARM based systems. This week the developers involved got the Linux kernel booting on M1 Macs but still is in early form. In fact, the initial build does not have working USB yet but that is said to be imminent. Obviously this is also only booting in console mode and any Apple M1 graphics support will be a long way out... It's probably unlikely seeing a satisfactory Linux desktop experience on Apple M1 hardware in 2021.

      • Linux M1 Chip Mac: Corellium Releases Early Beta of New OS for Download

        Linux is a developer-preferred operating system that differs from the more user-friendly OS in the world, which is the Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac. The operating system faced the trials of time, usability, and number of users, to which it did not falter, and remained to be one of the most preferred, being a kernel that eluded UNIX and its core code.

        The company that is known for creating a bug finder in Apple's operating system (and initially won a lawsuit against the Cupertino giant), Corellium, has developed a Linux OS that can run on the latest ARM-based chip. While macOS 11, also known as the "Big Sur," is the main OS, Apple's Mac also accommodates other OS like Windows and Linux on its platform.

        [...]

        Corellium's Linux for M1 Macs is called the "Linux Macho," which features the early beta stages of the operating system that aims to work on Apple'1 M1-powered Mac computers. This feature would allow users to use the robust powers of the Silicon chip to run Linux and perform or proceed to do their work or what's needed.

        The early beta download of the Linux Macho is available on Corellium's website and is recommended for advanced users who know how to manipulate both the macOS and Linux OS to make it work. Instructions are to follow from Corellium.

      • Linux 5.10.8 Kernel Released - Finally Fixes That Btrfs Performance Regression

        Linux 5.10.8 is out today as the latest stable release for the Linux 5.10 LTS series. Making this point release notable is that it finally addresses the 5.10 Btrfs performance regression.

        As noted back on Christmas, Linux 5.10 was seeing significant slowdowns on Btrfs. For simply unpacking a Linux kernel source .tar.zst file it could easily take multiple times longer on this stable kernel version.

        While patches for addressing this poor Btrfs behavior on Linux 5.10 were floating around since before the end of the year, it's taken until now to get them tested and queued up for mainline integration. Linux 5.11 meanwhile has a plethora of Btrfs improvements.

      • Better Microsoft Surface Support Is On The Way With Linux 5.12

        More improvements for Microsoft Surface laptops on Linux are set to land for Linux 5.12.

        The previously discussed work around Microsoft Surface System Aggregator Module handling that was developed through reverse engineering is now queued for introduction in Linux 5.12 once its merge window opens in February.

      • Kernel prepatch 5.11-rc4

        The 5.11-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for testing.

      • Linux 5.11-rc4 Released With NVIDIA RTX 30 Mode-Setting, Haswell GT1 Graphics Restored
      • Linux 5.11-rc4
        Things continue to look fairly normal for this release: 5.11-rc4 is
        solidly average in size, and nothing particularly scary stands out.
        
        

        In the diff itself, the new ampere modesetting support shows up fairly clearly - it's one of those hardware enablement things that should be entirely invisible to people who don't have that hardware, but it does end up being about a fifth of the whole rc4 patch.

        If you ignore that oddity, the rest looks pretty normal, with random patches all over, and a lot of it being quite small. All the usual suspects: drivers (gpu, sound, rdma, md, networking..) arch updates (arm64, risc-v, x86), fiesystems (ext4, nfs, btrfs), core networking, documentation and tooling. And just random fixes.

        The appended shortlog gives the details as usual..

        Linus
    • Applications

      • Youtubedl-gui: New Graphical YouTube Downloader based on Youtube-DL

        Youtubedl-gui is a simple new graphical interface for the popular command-line YouTube downloader youtube-dl.

        The tool is quite simple to use, just paste the video URL, select audio quality and format, video resolution and format, and click download! And of course, there’s an option to change the destination folder of your downloads.

        Once you click download, a small dialog will pop up with the process bar.

      • Chafa 1.6.0: Wider

        Here’s another one from the terminal graphics extravaganza dept: Chafa 1.6.0 brings fullwidth character support, so in addition to the usual block elements and ASCII art, you now get some mean CJK art too. Or grab as many fonts as you can and combine all of the Unicode into one big glorious mess. Chafa can efficiently distinguish between thousands of symbols, so it also runs fast enough for animations — up to a point.

        Since some users want this in environments where it’s not practical to build from source or even to have nice things like GLib, I’ve started adding statically linked builds. These are pretty bare-bones (fewer image loaders, no man page), so look to your steadfast distribution first.

        Speaking of distributions, a big thank you to the packagers. Special thanks go to Florian Viehweger for getting in touch re. adding it to OpenBSD ports, and Mo Zhou (Debian), Michael Vetter (openSUSE), Herby Gillot (MacPorts), @chenrui and Carlo Cabrera (Homebrew) for getting 1.6 out there before I could even finish this post.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Easily rename your Git default branch from master to main

        You might say, "I'm all for not using master in master-slave technical relationships, but this is clearly an instance of master-copy, not master-slave."

      • How to get IP Address in Linux using Command terminal - Linux Shout

        To connect some local running server application via browser, access FTP server, and many other times we require to know our system Ip address. Thus, if you are running some Linux operating system then here is the way to check out your current IP Address using the command terminal.

      • How To Use NMAP

        Nmap (or Nmapper) is a free and open-source network scanner used for analysis, security audits, and network exploration. You use it to discover hosts and services on a computer network by sending packets and analyzing the responses all in an easy-to-use manner. Let us take a look at how to use Nmap.

      • How to get the best Arch Linux servers to update your system | Arcolinux.com

        You may have seen me struggle with the Arch Linux servers in one of my videos.

        Time to dive into the application reflector. Read all about it on your own computer.

        Type reflector –help in the terminal and read more.

        Servers speed and service all depend on your own network, your isp, your country’s policy (port blocking) and the servers around you.

        As a result we have now several aliases to get the best servers out there.

      • How to Install Terraform on Ubuntu 20.04

        Terraform is an infrastructure as a code platform developed by HashiCorp. You can simply write code in the human-readable format following HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) and deploy it to get the infrastructure in the cloud. Terraform is supported in many cloud providers like Google, Amazon, Alibaba, etc.

        Here in this article, we are going to install the latest version of terraform on Ubuntu. We are performing terraform installation on Ubuntu 20.04 however you can do the same procedure on all Linux platforms.

        Also, learn how to use terraform with simple example by launch an ec2 instance and create s3 bucket.

      • Operator integration testing for Operator Lifecycle Manager - Red Hat Developer

        Operators are one of the ways to package, deploy, and manage application distribution on Red Hat OpenShift. After a developer creates an Operator, the next step is to get the Operator published on OperatorHub.io. Doing this allows users to install and deploy the Operator in their OpenShift clusters. The Operator is installed, updated, and the management lifecycle is handled by the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM).

      • Deploy your own Matrix server on Fedora CoreOS - Fedora Magazine

        Today it is very common for open source projects to distribute their software via container images. But how can these containers be run securely in production? This article explains how to deploy a Matrix server on Fedora CoreOS.

      • Set up a minimal server on a Raspberry Pi | Opensource.com

        Recently, the microSD (secure digital) card in my Raspberry Pi stopped working. It had been in constant use as a server for almost two years, and this provided a good opportunity to start fresh and correct a few problems. After its initial installation, it began experiencing disk problems and the official Raspberry Pi operating system (OS) received a significant update (and was renamed from Raspbian to Raspberry Pi OS). So I acquired a new microSD card and preceded to rebuild.

        Although this Raspberry Pi 3 Model B isn't the latest hardware, it is still adequate for running a minimal server for various services. I think my original installation used the full operating system image that includes the graphical user interface and a lot of other software packages unnecessary for my needs.

        This step-by-step guide shows how I set up my Raspberry Pi with the most minimal configuration to conserve precious system resources.

      • How to kill all user sessions on Linux using shell script

        There are multiple ways to automate the system administrator task on Linux.

        It drastically reduces human efforts and saves reasonable time.

        shell script is one of the methods to automate frequent jobs.

        For a scenario, you want to run a weekly job or EOD job to populate some data for reporting purposes.

        To do so, you need to kill all ssh sessions that are currently accessing the application on the system before beginning the job.

      • How to install GSnap in Audacity on a Chromebook - VST Plugins

        Today we are looking at how to install GSnap, a free VST plugin, in Audacity on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

        If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!

      • How to Install GitLab on Debian 10 (Buster)

        GitLab is a free and opensource front-end Git repository that features a Wiki and an issue tracking feature. It allows you to host Git repositories on your own server and setup DevOps platform. In this guide, we are going to install GitLab CE (Community Edition) on Debian 10 (Buster) system.

      • Unix Tutorial - Annual Digest - 2020

        Wow, 2020 just flew by! With one lockdown after another, most of the year was spent working from home and checking local government websites for guidance around when schools and after-schools would re-open.

        I didn’t blog as much as I hoped but stayed sane and otherwise productive - so can’t complain much about 2020.

      • How to install ShellCheck on FreeBSD to analysis scripts - nixCraft

        ShellCheck is easy to use, free, and open-source static analysis tool that automatically finds bugs in your shell scripts. If you write shell scripts for automation or containers, you need this tool. Let us see how to install and use ShellCheck on the FreeBSD development Unix server.The post How to install ShellCheck on FreeBSD to analysis scripts appeared first on nixCraft.

      • How to Install and Configure Squid Proxy on Linux System

        Squid proxy server is an open-source proxy server for Linux distributions. You can install the Squid proxy server on your network to pass all your bandwidth through the proxy server. Now, you may ask why you would use the Squid proxy server? Here is the answer, the Squid allows you to connect your computers without an active internet connection through the proxy server.

        You can also enable the DNS cache, web cache, memory cache, and other internet caching to faster load the web pages. You can see that the Squid proxy server can enable caching, increase your server’s efficiency, improve the network performance, reduce bandwidth usages, and make your server secure.

      • Save a copy of all debian packages in the form in which they are installed and configured on your system
      • Install Kubernetes Dashboard

        Dashboard is a web-based Kubernetes user interface.

      • Pulling changes from GitHub to Git - The Linux Juggernaut [Ed: Careful not to conflate Microsoft proprietary software with Git, which is Free software. Git is not GitHub.]

        In our previous article, we demonstrated how we would push our git repositories from our local system out to GitHub. In this article, we will demonstrate how we would actually make changes in a file within a repository on GitHub and then pull the changes/updates to our local machine.

      • Fixing git/github merge conflicts - The Linux Juggernaut

        In our previous article on the git version control system, we explained how we could modify our files in repositories in our GitHub account and then pull the changes from GitHub to the git repositories on our local system and keep the files in synchronization. Now, what if we modified the same piece of information in a file on GitHub as well as within our local git repository? In this article, we will demonstrate how we would proceed if we modified the same information in a file on GitHub as well as locally within our git repository.

      • How To Install Ubuntu Mate On The Raspberry PI 400

        In this guide I will show you how to install Ubuntu Mate on the Raspberry PI 400.

        [...]

        Raspberry PI Imager is available for Windows, MacOS, Ubuntu and Raspberry PI OS.

        If you are using Windows open Windows Explorer and double click on the downloaded file (called something like imager_n where n is the verson number).

        When the installer pops up click “Install” and then click “Finish”. Raspberry PI Imager should start automatically but if it doesn’t you can find it by clicking on the Windows start menu and searching for “Imager”.

        If you are using Ubuntu, the downloaded file can be found in the “Downloads” folder. Open the file manager and click on the downloaded Raspberry PI imager file and you will be able to install the application as you would any other .deb file.

      • List of Commands to get Linux system info using terminal - Linux Shout

        In Linux, we can use the command terminal to check various system hardware configurations and information such as CPU, Memory, hard disk, etc., and here are those to use…

        Although there are tools that can display Linux system info graphically, however, here we are going to use the inbuilt commands.

        The question of how a system is equipped and how it performs in harsh everyday life is not only of theoretical interest. Lot’s of time to solve a problem we need to know hardware and its utilization to remove some bottleneck. Thus, if you are new to Linux systems or running any cloud server where you want to know about the system load, the network interface, and type of processor and chipset, or what hardware is actually in the system? Then here some top commands to follow…

      • How to Install and Use Yarn on Ubuntu 20.04 - LinuxBuz

        Yarn is an open-source dependency manager for javascript developed by Facebook. It is an alternative to the popular npm package manager. Yarn provides an easier way to automate the process of installing, updating, configuring, and removing packages from the system. Yarn is faster because it caches every package it downloads. So you don't need to download it again.

      • How to Install Cockpit in Debian 10 – Linux Hint

        Cockpit is an open-source and free remote server management software that is sponsored by Red Hat. This software has a simple, web-based interface for managing the administrative tasks of a Linux-based server through a web browser. Cockpit can run on several Linux-based operating distributions, including Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and more.

        Cockpit gives you a real-time report of the CPU, RAM, and disk utilization of your system. Using this application, you can perform server tasks management remotely, such as creating user accounts, configuring the network, managing services, monitoring the system, managing the firewall, configuring OpenVPN, and more. Cockpit supports the Openshift cluster and Kubernetes. You can also measure your system performance and update your system using the Cockpit tool.

      • How to Check Version and Update Fedora Linux Kernel – Linux Hint

        For any operating system, the kernel is at the core. Linux is the kernel, rather than the entire operating system, of any Linux distribution. The kernel is responsible for interacting between the hardware of the computer and the software.

        The Linux kernel is regularly updated to offer the best possible experience. This guide shows you how to check the version and update the kernel of Fedora.

      • How to Run Google Chrome OS from a USB Drive – Linux Hint

        Google Chrome OS is based on the open-source Chromium OS. It is a browser-based operating system. You will only have the Google Chrome web browser installed on it. You can install Chrome web apps or extensions from the Chrome Web Store and add more functionality to the operating system. Sadly, the Google Chrome OS is not publicly available for download, and only the source code of Chromium OS is publicly available. So, you can’t run the Google Chrome OS or Chromium OS directly on your computer.

        Luckily, a few Chromium OS-based operating systems are available that you can download and install on your computer. The most popular one is Neverware’s CloudReady OS.

        This article will show you how to make a Live bootable USB thumb drive of Neverware’s CloudReady OS and run it from the USB thumb drive. So, let’s get started.

      • Postgresql service failed because the control process exited with an error code

        PostgreSQL is a free and open-source, community-driven, standard-compliant, and most popular object-relational database management system. It is used by popular IT companies like Uber, Netflix, Instagram, Spotify, etc.

        Recently I installed PostgreSQL and getting an error while running daemon. This is mainly because PostgreSQL not getting sufficient permission to create the folder required to store database information.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Wine Developers Are Working On A New Linux Kernel Sync API To Succeed ESYNC/FSYNC

        While there is the prior "ESYNC" and "FSYNC" work pursued by Wine for the Linux kernel, it appears Wine developers are back to the drawing board in coming up with a Linux kernel implementation for Wine synchronization primitives that will address all their needs and match the Windows behavior well.

        CodeWeavers developer Zebediah Figura sent out a lengthy mailing list post on Sunday night outlining the current state and objectives of coming up with kernel-based Wine synchronization primitives. While the ESYNC/FSYNC patches were successful in improving the performance of many Windows games running on Linux, they are still working towards a more all encompassing solution and to match the behavior well for Windows and with optimal speed.

    • Distributions

      • This New Linux OS Sure Looks Like It Was Designed By Apple
        Despite loving Linux, I’m not willing to use a Linux-powered mobile operating system unless it looks and feels fantastic. It’s why I’m not enamored with Ubuntu Touch. It’s why I’m less than enthusiastic about ARM-based variants of popular distros like Manjaro and KDE Neon, despite wishing them success. Call me silly, call me selfish, but they’re just not flashy enough.

        More importantly, there’s not a mobile Linux OS in existence that screams “hey, I’m tablet-first design!”

      • JingOS arrives as China’s first Linux Distro, offers iPadOS-like features and functions

        JingOS was built with the idea of improving the functionality and productivity of a tablet overall. So, the team behind the new operating system took inspiration from the Cupertino based giant’s iPadOS platform to offer a simple/clean, yet productive and efficient UI design that can ensure that your tablets are a mini computer that one can work on, on the go. JingOS is not only a tablet OS but a full function Linux distro.

      • Reviews

        • Trisquel 9 Review: Freedom Vehicle

          Here is my review of Trisquel 9.0 Etiona the newly released computer operating system. It is the successor of Flidas and now based on Ubuntu 18.04. It brings the latest improvements by excellently keeping its user friendliness from the family of most secure operating systems on earth. As always, I choose the Regular Edition, with MATE Desktop choice, to report this to you. We will see what’s new in this release and why I call it Software Freedom Vehicle now continuing Successful Freedom in the past. With Etiona, everyone can see that Free Software as well as copyleft are already practical and now we can see that even clearer than before. Let's go!

        • Review: CRUX 3.6.1, NuTyX 20.12.0

          Coming into the new year I decided I wanted to simplify things a bit and explore a distribution that didn't have as many features and distractions. I decided to kick off my week with CRUX, an independent distribution with a keep it simple (KIS) approach. CRUX runs on x86_64 computers exclusively and the latest version, 3.6, appears to be focused almost entirely on package upgrades rather than new features.

          CRUX runs the classic SysV init software on top of version 5.4 of the Linux kernel. Shortly after CRUX 3.6 was released the project published a minor update to fix a package issue. According to the documentation it is recommended that people do not attempt to upgrade to CRUX 3.6.1 from an earlier version...

      • Gentoo Family

        • Gentoo Saw Total Commits Rise By 42% In 2020, Great Progress On Wayland - Phoronix

          The pandemic didn't adversely impact the Gentoo Linux project's operations with seeing the overall number of commits grow by nearly 42% last year within the Gentoo repository. Gentoo also saw commits from 333 unique authors in 2020, up from 333 the year prior. Plus they've made other improvements too for this technical-minded Linux distribution too during 2020.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • 10 ways to get started with open source in 2021

        Opensource.com exists to educate the world about everything open source, from new tools and frameworks to scaling communities. We aim to make open source more accessible to anyone who wants to use or contribute to it.

        Getting started in open source can be hard, so we regularly share tips and advice on how you can get involved. If you want to learn Python, help fight COVID-19, or join the Kubernetes community, we've got you covered.

        To help you begin, we curated the 10 most popular articles on getting started in open source we published in 2020. We hope they'll inspire you to learn something new in 2021.

      • Programming/Development

        • C++ Standard Conversions

          There are two entity types in C++, the fundamental types and the compound types. The fundamental types are the scalar types. The compound types are the rest of the entity types. Conversion can take place from one entity type to another appropriate type.

          [...]

          The output is 2, 2, meaning that the program has returned the square root of 5 as 2 and the square root of 8 also as 2. So, the first two statements in the main() function have floored the answers of the square root of 5 and the square root of 8. This article does not discuss flooring or ceiling in C++. Rather, this article discusses the conversion of one C++ type to another appropriate C++ type; indicating any approximation in value made, loss of precision, or constraint added or removed. Basic knowledge of C++ is a prerequisite to understand this article.

        • Project Tour: Hashistack (Terraform, Consul, Nomad on AWS)

          I've always wanted to be able to set up a full consul, nomad, vault, etc. environment (along with hosted applications) with a single "terraform apply." I've spent a few weekends on this now and wanted to give a small tour, although it's still a work in progress.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Introspective labeling

            IRC is a good place to find answers. Often I find the questions found there to be even more enlightening.

  • Leftovers

    • Goodbye, Google (2021)

      A few years ago I posted "Goodbye, Google" as a guide to eliminating all traces of Google from your life. At the time I remarked "one overlarge, overbearing tech behemoth is much like another." Well, that's no longer true -- I now consider Google to be far more dangerous and abusive than Microsoft. So here, long overdue, is an updated list of alternatives to help you break your dependence on Google services. As always, suggestions are welcome.

    • Science

      • Quantum [Internet] signals beamed between drones a kilometre apart

        Motorised devices on each drone moved to ensure that the receivers and transmitters always lined up, and photons were focused and steered through the relay drone by a short piece of fibre-optic cable. The state of each photon was measured at the ground station and the results proved that the photons remained entangled.

      • It’s time to tidy up space

        The best idea, though, is to attack the problem at its roots. The littering of space is an example of the “tragedy of the commons”, in which no charge is made for the use of a resource that is owned collectively. So why not charge the beneficiaries for the right to put something into orbit and keep it there? The longer an object stays up, the more the satellite owner pays. The more popular (and hence crowded) the orbit chosen, the more expensive it would be to add a satellite to it.

      • COVID data analyst Rebekah Jones says she is turning herself in to police

        The Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirmed it has an active arrest warrant for Jones. Spokeswoman Jessica Cary could not provide details about any charges against Jones before she was booked.

        Jones lost her job in May after creating a widely-praised state dashboard tracking COVID-19 cases, deaths, testing and other data. She claimed she was fired because she refused to manipulate data to support the state’s plans to ease lockdown restrictions.

      • Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data analyst Rebekah Jones

        The scientist tweeted Saturday that her arrest warrant is tied to documents she received or downloaded from state sources while at the Department of Health. Jones said she and her attorney were not told what she’s being prosecuted for, just that she faces one criminal charge.

      • Ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones 'turning herself in' to face new charge

        Rebekah Jones, the fired Florida Department of Health data scientist-turned-whistleblower, said Saturday she will be "turning herself in" to Florida police on Sunday after a warrant was issued for her arrest.

        Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger confirmed there is an active arrest warrant for Jones.

      • Ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones plans to surrender

        It's unclear what exact charge she might face. Jones said on Twitter that “the warrant was based on a lie" and noted a state agent told her the arrest warrant is unrelated to the December raid.

      • [Old] Officials Said They Were Investigating ‘Unauthorized Access to a Department of Health Messaging System’

        Jones said in a tweet that the incident happened at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning. She wrote: “At 8:30 am this morning, state police came into my house and took all my hardware and tech. They were serving a warrant on my computer after DOH filed a complaint. They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids..”

    • Education

      • Please Stop Comparing Things to “1984”

        Perhaps if they’d read to the end and actually seen Winston captured, brainwashed, embracing the figurehead of a totalitarian regime, they might have seen themselves in the text in a way that would have opened their eyes to their own folly. It’s hard to say. Poisonous ideas, like viruses, travel quickly and are not easily eradicated. But even those of us who do not find ourselves in this seditious camp can reflect on our own failures, both in our understanding of America’s legacy and our own participation in its most violent acts. We can seek out texts that are true windows and allow them to move us, to change us, to make us reconsider our place in the world and our role in the march toward justice. We can smash our own paperweight, the one we’ve filled with the myths we’ve told ourselves about America’s greatness, its rightness, its inability to fall prey to humanity’s worst inclinations, and expose those myths as false and insufficient for the task ahead. “How small,” we’ll say as we see their shattered remains strewn about the floor, “how small they always were.”

      • Can We Develop Herd Immunity to Internet Propaganda?

        Internet propaganda is becoming an industrialized commodity, warns Phil Howard, the director of the Oxford Internet Institute and author of many books on disinformation. In an interview, he calls for greater transparency and regulation of the industry.

      • Giving kids no autonomy at all has become a parenting norm — and the pandemic is worsening the trend

        The belief that children must be attended—or even attended to—at all times by their parents or a direct proxy came to dominate America's child-rearing philosophy from the last decade of the 20th century forward. My style, which revolves around limiting kids' independence only to the extent necessary to protect them from risks that are both serious and fairly likely to materialize, is now known as "free-range parenting" in the United States, despite the fact that much of the world—including the majority in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, France, and Israel—just calls it "parenting."

      • Treating public schools like businesses is only making them worse

        NCLB is the legal mechanism that required schools to treat students as receptacles of information, much like computers, to be trained in regurgitating information. Input and output became the guiding dynamic of the classroom. NCLB increased the level of sorting, segregating, and ranking of students by tying test scores to funding.

        This method of classifying people has an ugly history in eugenics and has historically been used in advancing a white supremacist agenda. NCLB further established the American education system as a factory Unfortunately, its main product has proven to be what I call Educational Trauma.

    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Citrix Is in Talks to Buy Vista’s Wrike for $2 Billion-Plus

          Citrix Systems Inc. is in advanced talks to buy the work-management platform company Wrike Inc. for more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

          A deal for Wrike, owned by the technology-focused buyout firm Vista Equity Partners, could be reached as soon as this week, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information was private. It would be the largest acquisition to date for Citrix.

          The deal isn’t finalized and talks could still fall apart.

        • Security

          • Windows Finger command abused by phishing to download malware

            Attackers are using the normally harmless Windows Finger command to download and install a malicious backdoor on victims' devices.

            The 'Finger' command is a utility that originated in Linux/Unix operating systems that allows a local user to retrieve a list of users on a remote machine or information about a particular remote user. In addition to Linux, Windows includes a finger.exe command that performs the same functionality.

          • Security Auditing Tools For Ubuntu

            Malware, where aren’t thou found? Well, even our wonderful Ubuntu can be infected. So what can we do about it? Hope and pray we keep our system safe and better yet, audit our systems regularly for malwares and rootkits. There are 4 system auditors for Ubuntu that we will review - lynis, rkhunter, chkrootkit, and clamav.

            [...]

            Oddly enough, there aren’t many tools to scan for malware out there for Linux. Why? I’m not sure. However, these 4 tools are more than enough to detect malwares, rootkits, and viruses.

          • New coalition aims to combat growing wave of ransomware attacks [iophk: Windows TCO]

            The California-based nonprofit aims to produce recommendations that will help governments and the private sector tackle the scourge of ransomware attacks.

            [Attackers] have increasingly used these types of attacks -- which involve accessing and encrypting the victim’s network and demanding payment to allow access again -- to hit major targets, with city governments in Atlanta, Baltimore and New Orleans severely impaired by ransomware attacks over the past two years.

            More recently, hospitals have become a target during the COVID-19 pandemic, with cyber criminals seeing vulnerable hospitals as easy targets more likely to pay a quick ransom as health care systems struggle to keep up with coronavirus cases. In some instances, the cyberattacks have been blamed for deaths due to delayed care.

          • This tiny shortcut can completely crash your Windows 10 device

            A zero-day exploit has been discovered that can crash your Windows 10 device – and, even more worrying, can be delivered inside a seemingly harmless shortcut file. The vulnerability can corrupt any NTFS-formatted hard drive and even be exploited by standard and low privilege user accounts.

            Security researcher Jonas Lykkegaard referenced the vulnerability on Twitter last week and had previously drawn attention to the issue on two previous occasions last year. Despite this, the NTFS vulnerability remains unpatched.

            There are various ways to trigger the vulnerability that involve trying to access the $i30 NTFS attribute on a folder in a particular way. One such exploit involves the creation of a Windows shortcut file that has its icon location set to C:\:$i30:$bitmap. Bleeping Computer found that this triggered the vulnerability even if users did not attempt to click on the file in question. Windows Explorer’s attempts to access the icon path in the background would be enough to corrupt the NTFS hard drive.

          • This Easily-Exploitable Windows 10 NTFS Bug Can Instantly Corrupt Your Hard Drives

            Jonas says that this Windows 10 bug isn't new and has been around since the release of Windows 10 April 2018 Update, and remains exploitable on the latest versions, as well. BleepingComputer shared that the problematic command includes $i30 string, a Windows NTFS Index Attribute associated with directories.

            [...]

            After running the command, Windows 10 will start displaying prompts to restart the device and repair the corrupted drive. Apparently, the issue also impacts some Windows XP versions and similar NTFS bugs have been known for years but are yet to be addressed by the Windows maker.

          • Nidhi Razdan, Phishing, And Three Hard Lessons

            Nidhi Razdan, a career journalist, became a victim of an elaborate phishing attack that made her quit her 21-year-old job and part with many of her personal details.

          • Windows 10 bug corrupts your hard drive on seeing this file's icon

            An unpatched zero-day in Microsoft Windows 10 allows attackers to corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive with a one-line€ command.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Revisiting the Indonesian Massacres of 1965-1966

        Two new books look at different aspects of that grim history, both of them building on connections their authors developed with Indonesians who made it through that grueling period. Historian John Roosa’s meticulously researched Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of 1965-1966 in Indonesia focuses on events leading up to and during the months of slaughter, with extensive testimony from survivor interviews which Roosa and a team of Indonesian researchers conducted over several decades. In The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World, journalist Vincent Bevins shows connections between the Indonesian killings and brutal crackdowns the U.S. government has supported elsewhere in the world.

        Roosa’s first book, Pretext For Mass Murder, built on his research into the September 30 Movement, a short-lived group that killed six generals, an ill-fated maneuver which gave the military (known as the TNI) an excuse to systematically attack the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) throughout the archipelago. Buried Histories presents survivor accounts and information from Indonesian language primary sources and previous studies, most of them skimpy, about the scorched-earth campaign against the PKI. The book looks at orchestration of violence at the national and local levels, focusing extensively on case studies from four regions: Bali, Central Java, and two provinces on Sumatra.

      • Obscure Islamist Group Targets Turkish Military in Northwest Syria

        A small Islamist militant group has claimed responsibility for an attack on Turkish forces in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib.

        The Ansar Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Squadron said it was behind the attack Saturday that targeted a Turkish military outpost in the northern countryside of Idlib.

      • Tech scrambles to derail inauguration threats

        Tech companies are sharing more information with law enforcement in a frantic effort to prevent violence around the inauguration, after the government was caught flat-footed by the Capitol siege.

        Between the lines: Tech knows it will be held accountable for any further violence that turns out to have been planned online if it doesn't act to stop it.

      • The Growing Problem of Online Radicalization

        The fact that the insurrectionists filmed their crimes in real time, thus presenting clear proof of their misdeeds to the authorities, isn't just evidence of their limited intellectual capacities. It also demonstrates a certain loss of touch with reality among these self-proclaimed "patriots." Nourished by QAnon conspiracy narratives, fantasies of election fraud and Trump's unceasing stream of lies, they believed they were in the right and felt unassailable. As such, the events of Jan. 6 could also be seen as their arrival in a world where they don't feel at all at home: The real one.

        The fanatics on the front lines weren't the only ones who had one foot in the virtual world throughout that Wednesday. Hundreds of people in the crowd of supporters outside filmed what they saw on their mobile phones, posted selfies on social networks, sent pictures to friends and liked the images posted by others. The world became witness to the intoxicating narcissism of a mass of people who are constantly online and searching obsessively for clicks and likes. Trump's mob both inside and outside the Capitol were essentially an assault team made up of digital-world friends who had forgotten that they weren't in a video game, but at the seat of Congress, a place where the glass actually does break and people actually do die when shots are fired.

      • France says Iran is building nuclear weapon capacity, urgent to revive agreement

        Iran has been accelerating its breaches of the nuclear deal and earlier this month started pressing ahead with plans to enrich uranium to 20 percent fissile strength at its underground Fordow nuclear plant. That is the level Tehran achieved before striking the deal with world powers to contain its disputed nuclear ambitions.

        The Islamic Republic's breaches of the nuclear agreement since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018 (and subsequently imposed sanctions on Tehran) may complicate efforts by President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office on January 20, to rejoin the pact.

      • Uganda vote 'not 100% free, credible,' election observer says

        My impressions of this election is that not very many voters came out to vote. A majority of them stayed away. Remember there were 18 million, but we are thinking of about 12 million that showed up to vote. That means about seven million did not vote and tells you that either they had no one to vote or they decided to abscond for reasons best known to them. But most likely they didn't know who to vote for or they were even just making a statement that maybe they don't want to be caught in this political tide altogether.

      • Knife-wielding man arrested in northeast Calgary mosque

        Officers located and arrested the suspect. Investigators do not believe the incident was a hate crime.

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • [Old] Vienna's public transport users can get free museum and concert tickets

          The Austrian capital is unveiling a new app on 26 February that will reward car-free travel with free tickets to museums and concerts. A total of 1000 users will test Vienna's "Culture Token" app during a six-month trial period. The app will track the user's movements and calculate carbon savings. Once the user has stored up 20km of CO2 savings, they'll receive a token which they can exchange for a ticket to a concert, theatre or museum.

          There's no limit to the number of tokens a user can collect. But once the user reaches five, they'll have to use one token before acquiring more. Participating venues for the trial period include the Kunsthalle, Wien Museum, the Volkstheater, and the Konzerthaus. According to local media, if the app is a success, it will be rolled out to the wider public in autumn.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • After the Pandemic Subsides, We May See a Third Wave of the Arab Spring
      • Lindsey Graham Excoriated for Equating Trump Accountability With Divisive 'Vengeance'

        "How do you lecture about 'unity' and 'healing' after seeking to end American democracy?" asked one Democratic member of Congress in response.

      • Opinion | Denial of American Fascism Has Cost Us Dearly

        The inconvenient truths about fascism, like learning about the climate and health crises, could lead us to actually shift our beliefs and lives.

      • Opinion | One Group Who Knew All Along How Dangerous Trump Was: Mental Health Experts

        From the perspective of his psychopathology, Trump's coup attempt last week was wholly predictable.

      • 'A Jim Crow Relic That Must Be Abolished': Demand to End Filibuster Grows

        "Do Senate Democrats want to keep the filibuster or do they want to pass comprehensive democracy, anti-corruption, and voting rights legislation to realize the promise of a multi-racial democracy?" said one progressive organizer. "I don't see a way they can do both."

      • Biden inaugural guest is Venezuelan coup leader charged with inciting violent assault on gov’t building
      • Democrats Plan to Open Next Congress With Voting and Ethics Reforms
      • Biden Selects Former Defense, Finance and Fossil Fuel Lobbyist to Head the DNC
      • How the Left Got Where It Is in Venezuela

        The story of the shelving of participation in Venezuela’s revolutionary process is a little examined and little understood process. Yet it is crucially important. It was for the most part the work of middle cadres, in as much as they systematically undid the grassroots and organic structures in the Bolivarian movement and the PSUV party to protect their own power. This battle against organic structures was a gradual, iterative process. In effect, during the various election campaigns, organic structures of popular power took shape, including the Bolivarian circles formed before Chávez’s election, the 10-member groups that operated in the leadup to the referendum in 2004, and the party “battalions” formed in 2007. Unfortunately, after each of these organizational structures had achieved its short-term goals, the party cadres dissolved them, thereby blocking the formation of grassroots expressions of popular power, only to invent new ones when different tasks emerged.

        The overall effect of this iterative process was to erode and eventually rout popular power, which came back weaker after every wave of demobilization. As a result, the above-mentioned tacit social contract was eventually consolidated, involving passive support for the government in elections in return for material well-being. The project underpinned by this arrangement was called “socialist” but in fact it had little to do with real socialist objectives. This is because a socialist project, to be meaningful and lasting, must turn on popular protagonism and the promotion of full human development.

      • Inside the Capitol Riot: What the Parler Videos Reveal

        The man’s smartphone camera pans the crowd on the east side of the U.S. Capitol. It’s smaller than what had amassed on the west side, but still an impressive sight. As he pans from atop the steps, he gives a front-line dispatch at 2:10 p.m., an hour after President Donald Trump had finished his remarks goading on the thousands of supporters who had come to Washington to protest the official certification of his electoral defeat.

        “The cops were shooting us for a while, then they stopped,” the man says, referring to an earlier series of flash-bang grenades. “We’re up on the Capitol. I think they’re going to breach the doors. It’s getting serious. Someone’s going to die today. It’s not good at all.”

      • Yes, Trump Can Be Convicted by the Senate After January 20
      • Why We Published More Than 500 Videos Taken by Parler Users of the Capitol Riot

        On Sunday, ProPublica published an interactive database that lets users sift through a trove of videos taken during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and uploaded to Parler, the social network popular among supporters of President Donald Trump that was dropped by its web host Amazon earlier this month. We also published an analysis piece about the videos by Alec MacGillis.

        Since Parler was terminated by Amazon for its inaction on posts that encouraged and incited violence, we want to explain why we are reviving a subset of this material and why we believe it’s in the public interest for people to see the events of Jan. 6 as documented by, and from the perspective of, Parler users.

      • Trump’s Twitter and Facebook bans are working

        In the wake of the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol that President Donald Trump heavily promoted on social media, platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and others finally moved to ban the president.

        The result? A sudden drop in the online spread of election misinformation.

        According to research by Zignal Labs, which the Washington Post reported on Saturday, online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent in the weeklong period following Twitter’s decision to ban Trump on January 8.

      • Political theorists have been worrying about mob rule for 2,000 years

        Political philosophers have been making these points for more than 2,000 years. Pre-modern theorists never tired of warning that, given the chance, the “many-headed monster” would trample the established order. Even liberal thinkers worried that democracy might give rise to “mobocracy”. They argued that the will of the people needed to be restrained by a combination of constitutional intricacy (individual rights, and checks and balances) and civic culture. The wiser among them added that the decay of such restraints could transform democracy into mob rule.

        The first great work of political philosophy, Plato’s “Republic”, was, in part, a meditation on the evils of mob rule. Plato regarded democracy as little more than mob rule by another name—perhaps without the violence, at least at first, but with the same lack of impulse control. He compared the citizens of democracies to shoppers who see a “coat of many colours” in a market and buy it only to discover that it falls apart when it has been worn a couple of times. He noted that democracies are hard-wired to test boundaries.

      • Police arrest Alexey Navalny upon arrival in Moscow. Russia’s authorities now must decide what to do with him.

        The Russian authorities followed through on their threat to arrest opposition figure Alexey Navalny on Sunday, January 17, taking him into police custody after he landed at Vnukovo International Airport.

      • Kremlin Critic Navalny Detained on Arrival in Moscow

        Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was detained upon his arrival in Moscow Sunday evening — his first time back in his home country since the Russian opposition politician was poisoned last August and evacuated for treatment abroad.

        Traveling from Germany, Navalny was detained by police in black masks while entering passport control at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.

        His lawyer, who was traveling with him, was not allowed to accompany him. Navalny managed to kiss his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, before being led away.

      • Don't Let the Capitol Riot Become a 9/11-Style Excuse for Authoritarianism

        After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, horrified Americans were ready to embrace virtually any proposal that promised to keep them safe. Government officials, for their part, were eager to curry favor with the fearful public and saw an opportunity to promote legislation and policies that had failed to win support in the past. The result was a surge of authoritarianism from which the U.S. has yet to recover. Now—with the public understandably concerned after the January 6 storming of the Capitol—we should brace ourselves for another wave of political responses that would, again, erode our liberty.

      • How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents

        And over the past 20 years, I’ve seen the extremely sad decline of all these communications companies into branding and financing bureaus, and this has impacted my own business, because I used to sell software, and now I sell services, because no one can buy my software anymore, because none of these telecommunications companies are technical companies anymore.

        I spend a lot of time thinking about that, why? Why is that going on? And why is it bad? And that brings me to the central question of this presentation.

        In any organization, in any company, in any group, any country and even any continent, what level of technical capability, do we need to retain? How technical do we need to stay to remain viable as a company or a country or a continent? And is there a point of no return?

        If you outsource too much? Is there a point where you cannot go back and relearn how actually making things work?

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • GitHub admits ‘significant mistakes were made’ in firing of Jewish employee

        The controversial firing came just two days after the employee warned colleagues in Washington DC to stay safe from Nazis — news first reported by Business Insider. He posted the message on January 6th, the day of the insurrection in Washington DC, as rioters associated with neo-Nazi organizations stormed the Capitol.

      • Big tech and censorship

        America needs to resolve its constitutional crisis through a political process, not censorship. And the world must seek a better way of dealing with speech online than allowing tech oligopolies to take control of fundamental liberties.â– 

      • [Old] Mastodon deplatformed me, but they don't want me using Gab either

        Todon.nl permanently deleted my account without warning, irreversibly deleting everything I'd uploaded and written to it. I had invested a lot of time into it. The ban was not based on my activity on Todon.nl. The deletion was the result of the admin finding my blog post on my personal website and associating my identity with the Todon.nl user account he recognized.

      • Lawsuit: Professor 'Disapproving Of Islam,' College Announces Decision [incl. Nicholas Damask]

        "I was explaining to the students that this were the justifications that they were using for terrorist acts," Damask said. "Al Qaeda would say where they get their example from. They would point to Mohammed and point to certain verses from the Quran. To relay this information to students shouldn't be controversial at all."

        After refusing to give in, the college launched an internal investigation into Damask's curriculum and came to a surprising conclusion. The test questions were explaining terrorism in context with major Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Damask was merely presenting the claims of these global terrorist organizations as to why they commit such acts, AZ Central reports.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Aggressions Against Journalists Increase in the US

        The U.S. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Friday warned about an increase in attacks on media professionals, following the violent takeover of the Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • “Guerrilla is the best place to fight sharia and capitalism”

        "I wanted a world where I could make my own decisions, go my own way and live according to my will. And I found it. A woman living under Sharia law is deprived of all her rights. We had to live under these Sharia laws. That's why I was married young and was subjected to oppression and violence. I was looking for a place where I could freely express my thoughts and live according to my own will. I was looking for a place where I could breathe, and I found it here with the guerrillas."

    • Monopolies

      • Opinion | Trump’s Social Media Ban May Be Justified, But That Doesn’t Mean Power of Big Tech Isn’t Dangerous

        Silicon Valley corporations are far from neutral moral arbiters, and have a history of abusing their power. Trump was and remains a menace, but we further empower these corporate giants at our peril.

      • Parler's Antitrust Lawsuit Over Amazon Deplatforming Has Tough Road Ahead

        Parler claims that Amazon had an incentive to conspire against its platform: Namely, Amazon recently signed a deal to provide web services for Twitter. To support its claim of unfair treatment, Parler notes that Twitter was not reprimanded or punished by Amazon for the hashtag #HangMikePence, which was trending the day before Parler's suspension. Parler asserts that Amazon's choice to suspend its hosting was "designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter."

      • Apple CEO Tim Cook Defends Decision to Remove Parler From App Store: "We Don’t Consider That Free Speech"

        Following the [attack], Apple suspended the conservative leaning social media platform Parler from its App Store, noting in a statement: "We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity. Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues."

      • Parler's website reappears online

        The website for the social media platform Parler reappeared on Sunday after Amazon last week suspended the site from its web hosting service.

      • Parler resurfaces on Sunday with an update message, but nothing else

        Amazon dropped Parler from its hosting platform earlier this month, saying in a letter it “cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others.” Parler was identified as a site where people who participated in the deadly January 6th assault on the Capitol had planned the attack.

        The site is now hosted by Epik, as CNN notes, a hosting company that also supports far-right sites such as Gab and 8chan. Amazon’s suspension followed Apple and Google removing Parler’s app from their respective app stores. Matze said even Parler’s lawyers had cut ties.

      • Warning over fake COVID-19 vaccines

        The notification warns that organised crime groups may be preparing to produce counterfeit vaccines, spread disinformation about vaccines and illegally refill vials. It also notes that some dark web markets already feature adverts for fake COVID-19 vaccines.

        In addition, the notification states: “Genuine COVID-19 vaccines will be highly valuable commodities and their supply chains (storage, transportation and delivery) will be at risk of being targeted by criminals seeking to obtain these pharmaceutical products.”

        All of these activities are considered a serious threat to public health.

        In October last year, the WHO issued a Medical Product Alert regarding three batches of the influenza vaccine Fluzone found in Mexico, which were not authorised by the manufacturer Sanofi Pastuer.

      • Copyrights

        • Issues in Sci-Hub Case ‘A Matter of Public Importance’ | SpicyIP

          In a great start to the Sci-Hub litigation (Elsevier, Wiley, and ACS vs Sci-Hub, LibGen – for background context, see the bottom of this post), Justice Midha at the Delhi High Court repeatedly pointed out that the issues in this case involved ‘a matter of public importance’, while saying he would not want to pass any orders in the law suit without hearing the various parties that wanted to get their views heard in the case, for the interim application as well as the suit. The publishers had asked for a blocking order to be passed today, against the ‘rogue websites’ citing the self-proclaimed ‘pirate’ nature of these websites, and that certain other jurisdictions had also passed these orders. For clarity – these jurisdictions are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Sweden. Regardless of those jurisdiction’s fair dealing exception, a central question in this case will no doubt be to determine whether this falls within India’s very explicit and arguably expansive research exception, along the lines of Nikhil’s earlier arguments (here onwards)– so it seems a positive step that those reasons were not taken as sufficient to throw in a quick blocking injunction.

          The Delhi Science Forum, and the Knowledge Commons, represented through Rohit Sharma, had filed an intervention application, and a group of various scientists, represented through Jawahar Raja had filed an impleadment application. The court therefore declined the plea for blocking the said websites today and ordered for the pleadings to be completed within the next 6 weeks, listing the matter for hearing after six weeks. The proceedings today otherwise mostly contained procedural and formal compliance issues, for which Sci-Hub received an extension of 2 weeks to fulfil, as well as the liberty to move an application for exemption from formal compliances, due to the peculiar nature of this case and Alexandra Elbakyan of Sci-Hub currently being in Russia. Senior counsel Gopal Sankaranarayan appeared on behalf of Sci-Hub, and senior counsel Amit Sibal appeared on behalf of the publishers.

        • A guide to the amended China Copyright Law

          On 11 November 2020, the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress of China passed the amendments to the China Copyright Law. The amended China Copyright Law will be effective as of 1 June 2021.

          The China Copyright Law has been amended to address the concerns of copyright holders, enhance copyright protection, align with international standards and implement the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances that entered into force this year.

          The current China Copyright Law has been enforced since 1991 and was amended in 2001 and 2010. After amendments, the China Copyright Law now consists of six chapters and 67 articles in total. The key amendments to the PRC Copyright Law include the following issues:

          Statutory damages for copyright infringement have been raised to RMB5 Million compared to RMB500,000 in the current Copyright Law. And punitive damages for copyright infringement are set out.

          According to the amendments to the Copyright Law, if the circumstances are serious for intentional infringement of the copyright or the rights related to the copyright, damages of one to five times the determined amount of loss or illegal income can be awarded.

        • How the MP3, Pirates and Apple Changed The Music Industry

          When German engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg first released the MP3 format in the early 90s, it started a chain of events that disrupted the music industry. The RIAA initially viewed digital music files as an opportunity, but when Napster came around they became a threat. Steve Jobs came to the rescue, but that was temporary. Streaming soon changed the entire business again and the disruption continues today.

        • TikTok Using DMCA to Take Down Reverse-Engineered Source Code

          Video social networking service Tiktok is using the DMCA to prevent the spread of source code related to the Android variant of its software. The coder who placed the source online says that he reverse-engineered the APK to show that the company's social media platform is a data collection engine and "legitimate spyware".



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day