Desktop/Laptop

• Chrome OS Tops macOS as 2nd Most Popular OS

  First, let’s get real. Neither one – macOS or Chrome OS – is knocking on Windows’ door. Windows has a market share of 80.5 percent, according to market data firm IDC and a report at GeekWire. That doesn’t leave much room for any other platform.

  [...]

  We’ve talked about it before here at Make Tech Easier. First, there was a laptop shortage. There was such a rush for remote work and remote learning that many households were clamoring for laptops. There is also a growing chip shortage.

  So why were people turning to Chrome OS? For one, Chromebooks are around the same price as a cheap PC and much cheaper than macOS. With the economy struggling last year and no one knowing that the pandemic would still be going on a year later, it’s not surprising that people were looking for quick and cheap.

  Aside from that – there was a shortage. Who’s to say buyers didn’t look to Windows first, come up empty, then settle on Chrome?

• Behind the Scenes of System76: Sales Team

  The System76 Behind the Scenes series aims to give readers an inside look at the people behind our mission. This week, we spoke with VP of Sales Sam Mondlick about the challenges of conducting business during a pandemic, and how long it’ll take the Sales Team to make a certain blog author a millionaire.

  [...]

  A lot of the team members have a background in Linux as users. That’s what we tend to typically hire and bring on. They are apt in review and understanding, and helping customers that have specific tasks and needs within the Linux environment.

• HP ZBook Studio G7 Aims To Attract Linux Developers, Data Scientists

  The HP ZBook Studio G7 aims to attract Linux developers and data scientists by not only offering a powerful hardware combination and by pre-loading Ubuntu 20.04 LTS but in also shipping a variety of tools and other software packages pre-configured for a modern developer and data scientist workload. We have been testing the HP ZBook Studio G7 for the better part of two months for this Linux-loaded mobile workstation and in this article is a look at this new HP device along with plenty of benchmarks, including Windows vs. Linux performance tests and more.

  [...]

  It was back in December that HP announced they would begin preloading Ubuntu 20.04 on select laptops. Unlike many laptop vendors simply loading a stock Ubuntu LTS and calling it a day or possibly changing the background and a few other cosmetic changes, the “Z by HP Data Science Software” pre-install contains much more… In fact, over 40GB worth of extras.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.12 Hooks In LED Support To The TTY Layer – Phoronix

  There is an interesting change with the TTY/serial changes for the in-development Linux 5.12 kernel.

  With Linux 5.12 there is TTY LED support with new code added to the TTY core code and the kernel’s LED layer. What is LED support around TTYs for with the Linux kernel? It’s about allowing possible triggers. With the TTY triggers support, it’s possible to configure the LEDs so that the TTY statistics will be periodically checked and if changed will cause the LED to flash once… Basically to be able to create flashing arbitrary LEDs on TTY activity. It could lead to some interesting use-cases with hobbyists and more.

• F2FS With Linux 5.12 Lets You Configure The Zstd/LZ4 Compression Ratio – Phoronix

  Jaegeuk Kim sent in the F2FS changes this week for the Linux 5.12 merge window. Most exciting is configurable compression ratio for its file-system compression rather than sticking to just the default compression level. When mounting a F2FS file-system with the “compress_algorithm” mount option, “:level” can be appended to the option where “level” is the compression level desired. This allows for squeezing more space out of F2FS file-systems with a higher compression ratio for LZ4 or Zstd.

• Graphics Stack

  • Mike Blumenkrantz: Roadmapping

    Zink’s in a tough spot right now in master. GL 4.6 is available, but there’s still plenty of things that won’t work, e.g., running anything at 60fps.

  • NVIDIA Launching “CMP” Cards For Professional Mining, Limits RTX 3060 Mining Potential – Phoronix

    NVIDIA is launching the CMP – the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor — that will be a line of hardware focused on professional mining with an emphasis on Ethereum.

    NVIDIA CMP products will not support graphics but are NVIDIA GPUs optimized for the best mining performance and efficiency. These initial mining-only cards are to be the NVIDIA CMP 30HX, 40HX, 50HX, and 90HX products with Ethereum hash rates from 26 MH/s to 86 MH/s and power consumption between 125 Watts and 320 Watts. The NVIDIA CMP mining cards will debut this quarter for the low-end SKUs and next quarter for the higher-end 50HX and 90HX hardware.

Applications

• APT 2.2 released

  APT 2.2.0 marks the freeze of the 2.1 development series and the start of the 2.2 stable series.

  Let’s have a look at what changed compared to 2.2. Many of you who run Debian testing or unstable, or Ubuntu groovy or hirsute will already have seen most of those changes.

• NetworkManager 1.30 Adds Support for WPA3 Enterprise 192-Bit Mode, New Ethtool Offload Features

  NetworkManager 1.30 has been released today as the latest version of one of the most popular network connection management tools for Linux-based operating systems.

  As expected, NetworkManager 1.30 is a major release that adds many great new features and improvements, including support for WPA3 Enterprise Suite-B 192 bit mode, support for handling Veth devices, a new “ipv4.dhcp-client-id=ipv6-duid” option for RFC4361, as well as new ethtool offload features.

Instructionals/Technical

• Josef Strzibny: systemd user services and systemctl –user

  Most users are familiar with the system-wide systemd services managed by the systemctl command. But systemd services can be made for and entirely controlled by regular unprivileged users.

  Regular services on Fedora and other systems with systemd as an init system, are usually found at /etc/systemd/system/ and managed with the root privileges. Think your packaged NGINX web server or the PostgreSQL database. We usually make our own, too, to run our long-running applications.

• Hacking and Bricking the EE Opsrey 2 Mini

  Of course it’s running Linux, there’s a couple of test points internally which bring out the serial console, but after finding those and logging in I discovered it’s running ADB on port 5555 quite happily available without authentication both via wifi and the USB port. So if you have physical or local network access, instant root shell. Well done, folks. And then I bricked it before I could do anything more interesting.

• Linux 101: How to use cron – TechRepublic

  For the admins who are new to Linux, I want to introduce you to the cron tool. What is cron? Simply stated, cron allows you to create scheduled jobs on a Linux system. Say, for instance, you have a backup script, called backup.sh. You’ve placed that script in /usr/local/bin, so it can be executed globally and you want to make sure the backup happens at either a specific time of day or regularly on a certain day of the week.

  How do you do this? You invoke cron.

• Redirection Commands and Keyboard Tricks with Linux Commands

  This article will talk about the coolest feature of the command line, which is called I/O redirection. The I/O stands for input/output. With this facility, you may redirect the input and output of commands and connect multiple commands to make a powerful command known as pipelines.

  The output of a program is of two types. First, you have the result of the program which contains the data program produces. Secondly, there are status and error messages that instruct you how the program is getting along. If you look at the command Is, you will see that it delivers results and error messages on your screen.

• How to install Opera browser on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout

  Opera browser for Linux will be one of the best choices after Mozilla Firefox to use on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS because of its speed, interface, and easy to install method, which we discuss here.

  Although almost all Linux operating systems come with open-source Mozilla Firefox as a default browser, however, if you are not happy with it then try out Opera. It is not only one of the oldest ones but quite popular during its peak time. The developers behind it also offer a dedicated gaming browser called Opera GX.

• How to install BalenaEtcher on Ubuntu 20.04

  Here’s how to install BalenaEtcher quickly and conveniently. With it you can create pen drives and memory cards to boot from various systems. Learn how to Install BalenaEtcher on Ubuntu.

  BalenaEtcher is a free and open source utility used to flash image files, such as .iso or .img files, as well as compressed folders to create SD cards and USB flash drives.

• 10 ways to generate a random password on Linux | FOSS Linux

  You can generate a random password on a Linux platform without even stretching your brain muscles. Most, if not all, of these password-generation techniques we will assess in this article require that you have a strong basis or familiarity with the Linux command-line interface.

• How to install Olive Video Editor on Linux Mint 20.1 – YouTube

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

• How to check the speed of your ssh connection – Webleit.info

  Have you ever wondered what is the speed of your ssh connection. For example you are connected to a server in Dubai but you live in London and now you want to know what is the speed if you need to scp something. Well the solution to this problem is called PV.

• How to stop a package from being updated in ubuntu apt with apt-mark

  Apt-mark is a command line tool that can help you choose which applications to be updated disabled or halted. You can set various settings for a package, such as
  marking a package as being automatically/manually installed or changing dpkg selections such as hold, install, deinstall and purge.

• How To Limit Battery Charging (Set A Charge Threshold) For ASUS Laptops On Linux

  Newer ASUS laptops support limiting the battery charge level, which helps prolong battery life. This article explains how to set a battery charge threshold for ASUS laptops on Linux.

  Battery lifespan is affected by age, high temperatures, the number of charge cycles, and the amount of time at full charge. A battery charge threshold reduces the amount of time at full charge (100%), and thus improves battery health / life.

  ASUS laptops support setting a charge threshold starting with Linux 5.4. The kernel WMI method to set the charge threshold does not provide a way to specify a battery, assuming it’s the first battery (BAT0). However, for some newer ASUS laptops, the primary battery is not called BAT0, but BATT (e.g. Zenbook UM431DA) and BAT1 (e.g. ASUS TUF Gaming FX706II). [Edit] And There’s also BATC.

• Create a custom wordlist (password generator dump file) using Crunch – Webleit.info

  Crunch is a great linux tool used for generating passwords. You can tell him what combination you need and it will generate it. If you need all the password combinations containing 6 digits and for example “abcde1234!” it will generate a file with all of them. The output from crunch can be sent to the screen, file, or to another program.

• How To Install a Let’s Encrypt SSL Certbot for Apache and Ubuntu 20.04

  Certbot is part of EFF’s effort to encrypt the entire Internet. Secure communication over the Web relies on HTTPS, which requires the use of a digital certificate that lets browsers verify the identity of web servers (e.g., is that really google.com?). Web servers obtain their certificates from trusted third parties called certificate authorities (CAs). Certbot is an easy-to-use client that fetches a certificate from Let’s Encrypt—an open certificate authority launched by the EFF, Mozilla, and others—and deploys it to a web server.

• How to Install VLC 3.0.12 via PPA in Ubuntu 20.04 / 18.04 / 20.10 | UbuntuHandbook

  For those prefer installing app via apt method, there’s now an Ubuntu PPA that contains the latest VLC 3.0.12 deb packages.

  VLC 3.0.12 was released a few weeks ago. It features native Apple Silicon support, RIST protocol, YouTube & Vocaroo scripts updates, and various bug-fixes.

• How to Configure Logitech Keyboard Lighting in Linux – Make Tech Easier

  Logitech makes some of the most popular keyboards, but they still don’t seem to support the Linux side of things properly. It might be unofficial and not supporting all keyboards under the sun, but the g810-led project can probably help you control your Logitech keyboard’s lighting, making it useful instead of looking like a disco ball.

• How to generate a random password in linux using /dev/random – Webleit.info

  In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/random, /dev/urandom and /dev/arandom are special files that serve as pseudorandom number generators. They allow access to environmental noise collected from device drivers and other sources.

• How to: Base64 decode on Linux

  Do you share messages using the Base64 encoding tool due to privacy? Want to learn how you can decode these messages natively on your Linux system? If so, this guide is for you! Follow along as we go over ways to decode Base64 messages on Linux!

  [...]

  To start the installation of Basez on Linux, open up a terminal window on the desktop. The terminal window can be opened on most desktop environments by pressing the Ctrl + Alt + T keyboard combination.

  Once the terminal window is open on the desktop, follow the command-line installation instructions for Basez down below that correspond with the Linux operating system you currently use.

• Unzip GZ File: How to Open GZ Files on Windows & Linux (CMD Guide)

  Archives are compressed files that allow you to store other types of files into smaller containers. It makes it possible to reduce the overall file size so that you can upload it online or transfer it on removable storage devices with a limited storage capacity.

  Popular archive file types include ZIP and RAR. But there are many others and each has its own characteristics.

• How to Install IntelliJ IDEA on Ubuntu 20.04

  IntelliJ IDEA is an popular integrated development environment for the Java application’s. It is developed by JetBrains. IntelliJ IDEA is must friendlier to beginners thanks to its ease of code completion and inspection. Basically, It also provides intelligent coding assistance for many other languages such as SQL, JPQL, HTML, JavaScript, etc.

  IntelliJ IDEA community and ultimate versions are available as snappy package. Which allows you to install it quickly with single command.

  This tutorial will help you to install IntelliJ IDEA on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux system.

• Use Let’s Encrypt and Certbot to secure Raspberry PI-hosted websites automatically

  In this post I will show you how to install and configure Certbot on Raspberry PI with Apache to get your Let’s Encrypt free certificates working and renewed without manual intervention. This can be useful to enhance secuity for your self hosted websites, like WordPress hosting on RPI, phpBB hosting on RPI or a simple LAMP server on RPI. Please remember that webpage published on internet need a public IP address (check my introduction to No-IP DUC installation).

  Let’s Encrypt and Certbot are 2 different pieces on securing your website. While Let’s Encrypt works as Certification Authority. certbot works to issue and renew certificates automatically before their expiration. More details on how a certification process works can be found in my introduction to Self Signed Certificate tutorial.

• Regex basics

  In my team we run “masterclasses” every couple of weeks, where someone in the team presents a topic to the rest of the team.

  This article is basically the content of the class on regular expressions (otherwise known as regex) I gave recently.

  It’s an introduction to the basics of regular expressions. There are many like it, but this is mine.

• Fonts Use | Inkscape

  After learning Open & Save, now we will learn about Fonts, before we learn about Making Text later. This Part III of the tutorial for students series discusses what are fonts, how we use fonts, and to get them to design & illustrate with Inkscape on computer. You will learn from here font families like Sans Serif Mono as well as their styles Bold Italic Regular aside from basic knowledge about fonts across operating systems with examples and pictures included. Happy learning and let’s go!

• GNU Linux bash – how to get quick nice overview over harddisks partitions filesystems disk usage

• Creating XDG custom url scheme handler | KageSenshi’s Log

  If you develop system tools or desktop software on Linux that also have an accompanying web application, you might want to have a way for the web application to launch the tool with some parameters specified through a web based link. For example, a link with dnf://inkscape as url, might be used to launch Gnome Software, and display the description of Inkscape, so that user may choose to install it or not.

  In Linux, registering a custom URL handler can be done using XDG desktop file, of which it is configured to open x-scheme-handler MimeType.

• How to install PHP 8 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server – Linux Shout

  PHP doesn’t need to introduction to those who are in the software development field. Well, for those who don’t know about it, PHP is an open-source scripting language PHP for web development and widely used for creating dynamic web pages. IT came into existence in 1994 and since then it has been developing to perform more complex operations and that’s the reason why it is considered a standard for dynamic web content.

  Unlike other script languages, the websites are generated on the server-side and then sent to the web browser. This has the advantage that the client – in this case, the browser – does not have to bring any special plug-ins.

Games

• Godot Showcase – Hive Time developer Cheeseness talks about his experience

  My name is Cheese, and I’m an Australian independent game developer/Linux porter/freelance generalist based in the small island of Tasmania. I’ve been making games in some form or another for over thirty years now.

  I like to contribute to Free/Open Source Software projects when I have time, and release my own work under F/OSS and open culture licences when appropriate. I’ve even made some small contributions to Godot itself.

  I enjoy photography, playing guitar, and long, long walks in the wilderness.

• Mutropolis is a sci-fi adventure where you revisit Earth in the year 5000

  Set in the year 5000 when we’re all living on Mars after some kind of great disaster on Earth, it’s time to go back and discover what’s still left. Note: key provided by the publisher.

  “It is the year 5000, and the greatest achievements in human history are forgotten. The pyramids, the Mona Lisa, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air – forgotten.

  Forgotten by everyone except Henry Dijon and his ragtag team of archaeologists. They left Mars to dig up lost treasures on the wild and inhospitable Planet Earth. Life is sweet, until Henry’s professor is kidnapped, and thing start to get… weird.”

  [...]

  For the Linux version, for now you’re going to need to play it in windowed mode due to a fullscreen bug with the Visionaire Studio game engine. However, a fix for that should be coming within the next week or so. Alternatively it may work okay in Proton if no fullscreen bugs you enough.

• Dungeon crawler Ultimate ADOM – Caverns of Chaos is out in Early Access

  Ready for another game that makes you stay up all night for one more run? Ultimate ADOM – Caverns of Chaos is now out in Early Access on the Steam store. Creating a follow-up to a much loved roguelike ADOM is no easy task but with the original team involved, they certainly know what they’re doing.

  [...]

  It’s supported on Linux and is 15% off until February 25.

• Learning Factory is like Factorio with lots of cats and plenty of automation | GamingOnLinux

  Combining the ideas found in Machine Learning with automation and Factorio styled conveyor belts everywhere, Learning Factory from Luden.io has entered Early Access.

  This is from the same developer who created while True: learn(), a popular and positively rated puzzle/simulation that also deals with Machine Learning to try and understand your cat. Seems Luden.io have a bit of a theme here, as Learning Factory is all about a certain genius building a factory on Mars to try and work through understanding cats. Yep.

• Open-world, turn-based RPG ‘Relic Space’ gets a trailer and release window | GamingOnLinux

  It’s not exactly clear if the Linux build will be available on day 1 of Early Access or a little later. Will keep you posted.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Matthias Clasen: GTK happenings

    GTK 4.2 is due out in March – it will not be an enormous release, just incremental improvements. But besides the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, there are a few things that are worth calling out indvidually.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Mabox 21.02 Foltest is here

    I am pleased to announce a new release of Mabox Linux 21.02 Foltest.
    Mabox is a distribution based on Manjaro, with a preconfigured lightweight Openbox window manager and several specially developed programs and tools. Works great even on weaker computers.
    Mabox 21.02 Foltest is equipped with the latest 5.10 LTS kernel, of course you can easily install other kernels and decide which one to run at boot time.
    The installer offers the option of choosing free or proprietary drivers – when booting, select the free or non-free option.
    This release includes a number of fixes, new/updated packages and new features.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • All openSUSE Services in Provo database center now support IPv6

    Today we reached a new milestone: all openSUSE services around the world now support IPv6 natively. The last set of machines in Provo are equipped with IPv6 addresses since today. IPv6 was missing for those machines since the renumbering, which was needed because of the carve out of SUSE from Micro Focus. A big thank you goes out to one of our providers, who now reserved and routed a whole /50-IPv6 network for us.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Getting started with the OpenShift Platform Developer learning path

    When I started as a Red Hat consultant a few years ago, I had limited prior knowledge of containers. I was excited to learn about Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform but also intimidated by all its functionality. The Red Hat OpenShift Platform Developer learning path was very helpful in my journey, and this post will outline some of these resources to help you get started.

    While we’re going to focus on the Red Hat OpenShift Platform Developer learning path, you should know that there are two major Red Hat OpenShift learning paths. Both paths are relevant for delivery teams, consultants, and solution architects

  • Introducing the technology preview of IBM API Hub on IBM Developer

    Developers have always been on the front lines of digital transformation, but the past year has given rise to a new urgency to become a digital business.

    With developers having trillions of programmable endpoints available to be connected to and to realize new capabilities, the role of APIs in open hybrid cloud work is poised to grow exponentially. An IDC FutureScape report about Worldwide Developer and DevOps 2021 predictions stated that in the next few years, the “reuse of third-party code in new apps and digital solutions” will double by 2024.

    Access to trusted, secure API-enabled services and the data allow you to innovate with velocity and transform and modernize your hybrid cloud solutions.

  • Fedora Community Blog: Fedora Community Outreach Revamp Update #4

    As of January 2021 the Revamp is now a Fedora Objective! With the Fedora Council approving the objective after community feedback, the Revamp becomes a medium-term goal of the Council. The co-leads of the Revamp, Mariana Balla and Sumantro Mukherjee, are Council members through the completion of the objective. We will provide updates on the Community Outreach Revamp at the regular Council meetings. More details about the Community Outreach Revamp as an Objective can be found on the wiki page.

  • Cockpit Project: Cockpit 238

    Cockpit is the modern Linux admin interface. We release regularly.

    Here are the release notes from Cockpit version 238.

  • Red Hat Summit 2021 Preview | IT Pro

    On April 27-28, the first of three online conferences that will all wear the Red Hat Summit 2021 banner will be held.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Hands-On with Ubuntu Unity 20.10 on the Raspberry Pi 4

    If you are one of those die-hard Unity desktop users and own a Raspberry Pi 4 computer, the Ubuntu Unity distribution comes with a Raspberry Pi flavor optimized for the Raspberry Pi 4 model (and probably the newer Raspberry Pi 400 too), but also reported to “work” on older models like the Raspberry Pi 3 and 3+.

    Being based on Ubuntu’s Raspberry Pi flavor, Ubuntu Unity features the same first-time installation/configuration wizard, which asks the user to choose a language for the system, a keyboard layout, connect to a Wi-Fi network, choose a location, and set up a default user.

  • Ubuntu EKS Platform Images for k8s 1.19

    Following the GA of Kubernetes 1.19 support in AWS, EKS-optimized Ubuntu images for 1.19 nodegroups have been released. The ami-id of this image for each region can be found on the official site for Ubuntu EKS images.

    Like the 1.18 platform amis, these images are minimized 20.04 Focal Fossa server cloud images that include a couple of extra customized utilities for interacting with EKS, namely the kubectl-eks snap, which simply pins kubectl to a platform version-appropriate channel, as well as pinned versions of cni and auth tools.

    These packages are all pinned because, although unattended-upgrades is enabled for EKS-optimized Ubuntu images, the recommended upgrade path for kubernetes compatibility is via launching the latest ami, rather than trying to update in place.

Devices/Embedded

• Tiny module combines i.MX8M Mini and rich I/O

  ICOP’s NX8MM-D168 is a 35 x 55mm Linux-friendly module featuring the i.MX8M Mini, 2GB LPDDR4 as well eMMC, GbE, 2xUSB, MIPI-DSI and -CSI, PCIe, UART, SPI, I2C and PWM. The module provides a 168-pin board-to-board connector.

  ICOP Technology has released its NX8MM-D168 based on NXP’s i.MX8M Mini SoC. The 1.6GHz NX8MM-D168 runs Yocto Linux and Android 9 on the i.MX8M Mini. NXP’s Cortex-A53-based i.MX8M Mini uses a more advanced 14LPC FinFET process than the i.MX8M but doesn’t share its support for HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.0. The NX8MM-D168 board uses 168-pin board-to-board connector for configurable I/O expansion and has soldered-on LPDDR4 and eMMC.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino Blog » This bin will sort your trash and recyclables automatically

    Often you might see a recycling bin next to a trash can, and notice that someone else has thrown their waste into the wrong container. To help with this conundrum, the team of Shalin Jain, Viraj Singh, Edward Chen, and Joshua Kim created a double-sided container that sorts things automatically.

  • This program can tell if you paid attention to text

    An Arduino board reads the EEG directly and passes data along to the computer, which then highlights text green for “paid attention,” and red for “not paying attention.”

  • Arduino Blog » Going hands-on with STEM during the pandemic

    The last year has clearly been challenging for educators around the world due to the pandemic. Yet despite these difficult times, educators and students haven’t stopped getting hands-on and experimenting with STEM.

    But how is it possible to create a systematic environment for student ideas through scientific observation when the science lab is no longer accessible?

    It’s down to creativity and innovation, which haven’t been put on hold even during a pandemic. Teachers have had to adapt quickly to this fast-changing environment, and technologies like Arduino have supported this adaptation, providing educators with flexible tools to keep experimenting from home.

  • Arduino Blog » Play Simon and the piano on this glowing geodesic dome

    An Arduino Uno controls the system’s programmable LED and sound output, while IR sensors with 74LS151 multiplexers allow for interaction. The dome features several modes, which include creating colorful patterns at the touch of each triangle, producing music, and even playing the classic game of Simon. You can see it in action below!

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • First preview of Android 12

    Every day, Android apps help billions of people work, play, communicate, and create on a wide range of devices from phones and laptops to tablets, TVs, and cars. As more people come to rely on the experiences you build, their expectations can rise just as fast. It’s one of the reasons we share Android releases with you early: your feedback helps us build a better platform for your apps and all of the people who use them. Today, we’re releasing the first Developer Preview of Android 12, the next version of Android, for your testing and feedback.

    With each version, we’re working to make the OS smarter, easier to use, and better performing, with privacy and security at the core. In Android 12 we’re also working to give you new tools for building great experiences for users. Starting with things like compatible media transcoding, which helps your app to work with the latest video formats if you don’t already support them, and easier copy/paste of rich content into your apps, like images and videos. We’re also adding privacy protections and optimizing performance to keep your apps responsive.

  • Android 12 Developer Preview Released

    The first public developer preview is out today of Android 12.

  • Huge Android 12 leak reveals the biggest features coming to your phone | Express.co.uk

  • Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite 5G is now receiving stable Android 11 update (still based on MIUI 12) – GSMArena.com news

  • This limited-time sale drops the Nokia 8.3 5G Android phone to its lowest ever price | Android Central

  • Realme GT 5G is a new Android phone with Snapdragon 888 coming next month | TechRadar

  • Apple M1 MacBooks will soon be able to run Android apps, as well as iOS | TechRadar

  • At last! Apple TV is coming to Chromecast and Android TVs from Sony & TCL | T3

  • Android app downloaded a billion times from Google Play Store poses serious risk | Express.co.uk

  • Qualys powers Android and iOS devices with VDMR

  • What To Look For In An Android-Based Bitcoin Trading App?

  • KEYENCE and StayLinked Expand Partnership with Support for Keyence BT-A700 Android Mobile Computer

  • The 5 best password managers for Android

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Ingvar Hagelund: Free Software and Open Source: Get involved

  Contributing to Free Software using Open Source methodics may look like intimidating deep expert work. But it doesn’t have to be that. Most Free Software communities are friendly to newcomers, and welcome all kind of contributions.

  [...]

  Bugs in components delivered by a Linux distribution (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, SuSE, etc), should be reported through their bug reporting interface. Remember to search for the bug before posting yet another duplicate bug. Perhaps a workaround already exists.

  So the next time something strange happens to your haproxy, nginx, varnish, or your firefox browser crashes or has unexpected behaviour, collect data from your logs, and open a bug report.

• Events

  • Motherboards + Beer: Virtual Event Addressing Coreboot / Open-Source Firmware Prospects – Phoronix

    Consulting firm 3mdeb that specializes in embedded systems with an emphasis on open-source firmware solutions like Coreboot is hosting an interesting virtual event later today.

    Engineers with 3mdeb have worked on open-source AMD firmware efforts, porting FWUPD from Linux to BSDs, Coreboot POWER activities, and more.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Armen Zambrano: Making pip installations faster with wheel

      Upon some investigation, I noticed that the package wheel was not being installed. After making some changes, I can now guarantee that our development environment installs it by default and it’s given us about 40–50% speed gain.

    • Expanding Mozilla’s Boards

      I’m delighted to share that the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation Boards are each welcoming a new member.

      Wambui Kinya is Vice President of Partner Engineering at Andela, a Lagos-based global talent network that connects companies with vetted, remote engineers from Africa and other emerging markets. Andela’s vision is a world where the most talented people can build a career commensurate with their ability – not their race, gender, or geography. Wambui joins the Mozilla Foundation Board and you can read more from her, here, on why she is joining. Motivated by the intersection of Africa, technology and social impact, Wambui has led business development and technology delivery, digital technology implementation, and marketing enablement across Africa, the United States, Europe and South America. In 2020 she was selected as one of the “Top 30 Most Influential Women” by CIO East Africa.

    • Why I’m Joining Mozilla’s Board of Directors

      Like many of us I suspect, I have long been a fairly passive “end-user” of the internet. In my daily life, I’ve merrily skipped along it to simplify and accelerate my life, to be entertained, to connect with far-flung friends and family, and to navigate my daily life. In my career in Silicon Valley, I’ve happily used it as a trusty building block to help build many consumer technologies and brands – in roles leading turnarounds and transformations at market-creating companies like eBay, PayPal, Skype, Airbnb, and most recently as CEO of Willow Innovations Inc.

    • Why I’m Joining Mozilla’s Board of Directors – The Mozilla Blog

      My introduction to Mozilla was when Firefox was first launched. I was starting my career as a software developer in Boston, MA at the time. My experience was Firefox was a far superior browser. I was also deeply fascinated by the notion that, as an open community, we could build and evolve a product for greater good.

      You have probably deduced from this, that I am also old enough that growing up in my native country, Kenya, most of my formative years were under the policies of “poverty reduction programs” dictated and enforced by countries and institutions in the northern hemisphere. My firsthand experience of many of these programs was observing my mother, a phenomenal environmental engineer and academic, work tirelessly to try to convince donor organizations to be more inclusive of the communities they sought to serve and benefit.

      This drive to have greater inclusion and representation was deepened over ten years of being a woman and person of color in technology in corporate America. I will spare you the heartache of recounting my experiences of being the first or the only one. But I must also acknowledge, I was fortunate enough to have leaders who wanted to help me succeed and grow. As my professional exposure became more global, I felt an urgency to have more representation and greater voice from Africa.

      [...]

      This is why I have joined the Mozilla board. I am truly honored and look forward to contributing but also learning alongside you.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • Understanding open source databases

    Oracle purchased MySQL in the process of acquiring Sun Microsystems in 2009, effectively recognizing the power of the open source model. They continue to both develop and support the database. Users can choose either the free edition, known as the community edition, and more advanced editions that include extra features desirable for larger companies. Backups, extra security, and cluster management are available for a fee.

    Oracle also purchased BerkeleyDB, a set of key-value database libraries that are often compiled into programs. They allow developers to offload the job of maintaining data structures.

• FSF

  • LibrePlanet 2021: Empowering Users

    LibrePlanet is the annual conference hosted by the Free Software Foundation. LibrePlanet provides an opportunity for community activists, domain experts, and people seeking solutions for themselves to come together in order to discuss current issues in technology and ethics. The theme for LibrePlanet 2021 is Empowering Users.

    Over our thirty-five years of campaigning for freedom, the Free Software Foundation has seen countless people start to adopt free “as in freedom” software as a tool to affect meaningful change in their communities. When users have the freedom to study, change, share, and contribute to the software that they depend on, they are empowered to take charge of their own digital lives.

• Public Services/Government

  • Role of digital-ready in a future EU interoperability policy? Participate in the public consultations!

    The EIF is setting 47 recommendations to set-up interoperable EU public services. It refers to “better legislation for smoother implementation” under the title legal interoperability and recommends to

    “Ensure that legislation is screened by means of ‘interoperability checks’, to identify any barriers to interoperability. When drafting legislation to establish a European public service, seek to make it consistent with relevant legislation, perform a ‘digital check’ and consider data protection requirements.” (EIF section 3.3)

• Programming/Development

  • Mike Gran: Guile Potluck 2021

    In celebration of the (slightly belated) 10-year anniversary of Guile v2.0, we’re having another Guile Potluck! The Guile Potluck is a randomly annual event to give people a chance to show off their Guile projects and skills. Think of it as a game jam, but, not constrained to games.

    To participate, on or before Mar 6, send an email to guile-user@gnu.org with Potluck in the subject line. Please include instructions on how to find your entry, which could be anything you like.

  • Python

    • Reading from MySQL data with BLOBs dumped to CSV – Mike Kaganski’s blog

      As part of my recent work in upgrading our partner & customer ticketing system to make things sweeter for all our users I have been assigned a task involving importing data from a CSV that was generated using MySQL’s SELECT … INTO OUTFILE . The problem was that the source table contained BLOB fields.

      The resulting CSV was quite non-standard. MySQL simply does not allow to produce CSVs conforming to RFC 4180: it would not escape double quotes by duplicating them, but would use a dedicated escapement symbol (backslash \ by default); and when using that escapement symbol, it will escape byte 0×00 as two characters: \0 (backslash + character “0”). This needs a non-standard processing – e.g., Python’s csv module can’t restore the binary from such a file, no matter which encoding (like latin_1) you use to read file (Python’s csv module only works with files opened in text mode), or which settings you pass to reader. MySQL may be instructed to not use the escapement symbol (using FIELDS ESCAPED BY ”), and then zero bytes will be output as is, but then the double quotes (byte 0×22) inside all fields (including blobs) will be completely not escaped, making the CSV invalid and unreadable. MySQL should just duplicate double-quotes in this case, and it would work out of the box… But for now, I needed to read from the file with escaping by \ and all the quirks.

    • Understanding Standard Deviation With Python

      Standard deviation is a way to measure the variation of data. It is also calculated as the square root of the variance, which is used to quantify the same thing. We just take the square root because the way variance is calculated involves squaring some values.

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • mkws – Static Site Generation With The Shell
      

      Today I’m looking at something a little different. Rarely (or ever?) do I take a look at static website generators on here, but mkws is a bit of a special case.

      mkws is a static site generator (SSG) created by Adrian Emil Grigore, written in nothing but the good old shell. No, not BASH, but sh. Well technically it includes a couple of minimal binaries, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

      So what does mkws promise? The home site’s tagline simply reads – “A small, no bloat, minimalist static site generator using sh as a templating language.”
      And honestly, that sums it up as well as anything. mkws strives to be minimal, sane and yet thanks to the power of sh and standard Unix-y tools, very extensible and modifiable.

Charming

The Music We Made in Lockdown

Creativity blooms in solitude, or so we believe in our weakness for the trope of the artist as a singular figure tapping the magic well of inspiration to make works of art. James Joyce, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, said he needed only three things to be equipped to write: silence, exile, and cunning—the first, an attribute of solitude; the second, a means to achieve it; and the third, a tool for its exploitation.

Education

• Teacher Unions: We Want to Reopen Schools as Well, But We Need Vaccines & Resources to Do It Safely

  As school districts across the U.S. debate how to safely bring children into the classroom, we speak with two leaders of the teachers’ union movement on what’s at stake as schools reopen. Stacy Davis Gates, executive vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says years of underfunding and privatization have left many school districts ill-equipped to meet the needs of students, as well as educators. “It’s not just the context of opening schools. It’s reopening schools safely with the resources that are necessary to keep people safe,” she tells Democracy Now! We also speak with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who says when a clear safety program is in place, a majority of teachers are on board with returning to in-class instruction. “The people who are in school trust it and trust that they’re going to be safe,” Weingarten says.

Health/Nutrition

• Opinion | Universal Healthcare for Less! CBO Scores Medicare for All

  The bottom line of the CBO analysis—that universal coverage can be affordably achieved even as benefits are expanded and cost sharing all but eliminated.

• In Some States, Child Care Workers Won’t Get the Covid Vaccine for Months

  Initially, the state of Rhode Island told child care providers and early-childhood educators like Mary Varr that they would be eligible for the Covid vaccine alongside all other educators in the state. It made sense to Varr that they would come after health care workers and those working and living in long-term care facilities but ahead of the general population.

• New York AG Sues Amazon Over ‘Flagrant Disregard’ for Worker Safety During Pandemic

  “We won’t let corporate bullies put hardworking New Yorkers in harm’s way,” said the state attorney general, Letitia James.

• Opinion | Why Politicians and Doctors Keep Ignoring the Medical Research on Vitamin D and Covid

  Most experts—scientists and doctors—have not taken Vitamin D seriously, despite the growing evidence, because it is made in the mystical touch of sun on skin rather than by white-coated technicians in a laboratory.

• Whistleblowing Farmer Alleges Perdue Terminated Contract After He Exposed ‘Sickly Chicks,’ Filthy Production

  The following was originally published as part of The Dissenter newsletter.An agribusiness whistleblower alleges he was terminated in August 2020 from his contract with Perdue after he revealed animal abuse and poor sanitation to the media and public.

• Misuse of the VAERS database by antivaxxers continues, cardiac edition

  As the vaccines for COVID-19 continue to roll out and tens of millions more doses get into tens of millions more arms, I’m coming to the reluctant conclusion that I could, if I so desired, do nothing but blog about the antivaccine misinformation about these particular vaccines being spread by antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his organization Children’s Health Defense through its online house organ The Defender. When last I visited RFK Jr. and his antivaccine disinformation machine, he was deceptively using the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database to impute causation when there is not yet evidence of it to the reports of adverse events reported there. That time, he was trying to imply that the deaths reported to VAERS had been caused by COVID-19 vaccines, with, of course, plausible deniability that that’s what he was doing. Unsurprisingly, he soon followed up with another post that used updated figures for adverse events reported to VAERS in the same deceptive way. (They were just larger, because a wider range of dates were included.) It’s basically the same article, with the same obligatory cut-and-pasted anecdotes of specific cases of death after the vaccines that were probably not related. A computer could generate these posts, at least until yesterday, when RFK Jr. decided to drill down with an article entitled What VAERS Data Reveal About Cardiac-Related Reactions to COVID Vaccines. It’s the same schtick, just about one subtype of adverse event.

• Written Description: How can policymakers overcome the hurdles to scaling up antibody manufacturing?

  In our last post, we introduced some of the clinical evidence supporting the use of therapeutic antibodies against COVID-19—including Regeneron’s casirivimab and imdevimab and Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab—and analyzed the existing problems in the distribution and administration of those therapies. Even in just the last few weeks, further clinical evidence has supported the use of these technologies, leading the FDA to issue an additional emergency use authorization for Lilly’s bamlanivimab and etesevimab cocktail. In the near future, though, problems in administering our existing supply of these new drugs may give way to problems producing enough of them—a challenge that is also affecting the vaccine rollout. In this post, we consider the difficult manufacturing issues involved in the therapeutic antibody context (a subject we’ve previously explored regarding vaccines), and what might be done to address them.

  [...]

  So how does that investment happen? For one thing, policymakers can try to drive knowledge sharing between antibody manufacturers. In the vaccine space, knowledge transfer has emerged as a stumbling block to rapid scale-up, especially on a global scale, though there are other hurdles, especially for the novel mRNA vaccines, involving specialized ingredients and equipment. Knowledge sharing is likely a more important limiting factor for antibody manufacturing, since antibody manufacturing has been going on in some form for decades, and many manufacturers thus already possess the ingredients and equipment needed. Sharing knowledge would allow other manufacturers to increase the supply of existing antibodies, and could also allow for increased understanding and better manufacturing generally (including of other antibodies). Incentives or mandates for increased information sharing could increase innovation and efficiency in antibody manufacturing (and potentially biologic manufacturing more generally), with possible benefits beyond the pandemic. There are some indications that information sharing is happening: six companies involved in therapeutic antibody development sought and received DOJ permission to share development and manufacturing information in August (defusing antitrust concerns). Such collaborations should be lauded and pursued.

  More immediately, policymakers should seriously consider employing global purchasing initiatives for biologic therapies, akin to those of COVAX, the international consortium for global purchasing of vaccines. IAVI, the nonprofit famous for its work on securing and distributing HIV therapies in Africa and India, recently announced it was working on such an initiative in partnership with the Wellcome Trust for biologic therapies, like antibodies. IAVI’s initiative, Expanding Access to Monoclonal Antibody-based Products, seeks to expand access to antibody therapies, including those for COVID-19, to middle and low-income countries, an important component of global health equity. As noted in IAVI’s report, Asia and Africa constitute less than 20% of the global market for antibodies despite comprising more than half of the world’s population and their population’s persistent need for such treatments. At the same time, IAVI’s report is short on details about how to bring about such change, other than harmonizing a number of global regulatory pathways for antibody therapies’ approval that IAVI contends will lower prices by lowering manufacturing costs. Whether such cost savings will indeed be passed on to payers in the short run remains to be seen—but lowering manufacturing costs may give payers more leverage on prices both during this pandemic and the next one (or few).

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • Facebook’s Magma Gains Momentum Under The Linux Foundation

          Facebook recently moved its open-source project Magma into the Linux Foundation as a new top-level foundation. Why is Facebook contributing the project to the Linux Foundation? What impact will it have on the project? There are already many networking-related foundations within the Linux Foundation so why is Magma becoming a stand-alone foundation? I sat down with seasoned Open Source entrepreneur, Boris Renski, CEO of FreedomFi, to talk about the project. FreedomFi is one of the founding members of the new foundation.

        • DARPA, Linux Foundation Join Hands For US Government OPS Project To Advance 5G

          The Linux Foundation (LF) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have joined hands to create open source software that accelerates United States government technology research and development innovation.

        • DARPA starts a 5G open-source stack project with the Linux Foundation

          The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has begun a broad collaboration with the Linux Foundation, hoping to spur open-source development of technologies for use by the U.S. government that include secure 5G network software and applications.

          The US GOV OPS (Open Programmable, Secure) umbrella organization’s first project, OPS-5G, will focus on a software stack for 5G, the network edge and IoT. According to a newly established website about the project, OPS-5G will define and test an “end-to-end 5G stack” and include elements from multiple Linux Foundation projects, including LF Networking, LF Edge, Zephyr Project and Cloud Native Computing Foundation, along with other top-tier projects that call the Linux Foundation home.

          “The project formation encourages ecosystem players to support U.S. government initiatives to create the latest in technology software,” according to DARPA and the Linux Foundation. According to the two organizations, OPS-5G’s goal is to “create open source software and systems enabling secure end to end 5G and follow-on mobile networks” and address “feature velocity” in open-source software, mitigate security concerns such as large-scale botnets that leverage IoT devices, network slicing on “suspect gear” and “adaptive adversaries operating at scale.”

        • Linux Foundation offers free Node.js class

          Node.js isn’t a language, framework, or library. It’s an open-source JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, which lives in the programming intersection of all three. While often used for backend operations, it can be used with such frontend JavaScript frameworks as Angular, React, and Vue. It’s also wildly popular. Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, and PayPal, to name a few major corporate users, all work with it. StackOverflow developers love it more than any other developer toolkit. But one thing it’s not is easy to learn.

        • Free Introduction to Node.js Online Training Now Available

        • Interview with KubeCF project leaders Dieu Cao and Paul Warren

  • Security

    • Security updates for Thursday

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (mumble, openssl, php7.3, and webkit2gtk), openSUSE (jasper, php7, and screen), SUSE (bind, php7, and php72), and Ubuntu (bind9, openssl, openssl1.0, and webkit2gtk).

    • Google’s effort to mitigate memory-safety issues

      The Google Security Blog carries an announcement of a heightened effort to reimplement security-critical software in memory-safe languages.

    • Google Online Security Blog: Mitigating Memory Safety Issues in Open Source Software

      Memory-safety vulnerabilities have dominated the security field for years and often lead to issues that can be exploited to take over entire systems.
      A recent study found that “~70% of the vulnerabilities addressed through a security update each year continue to be memory safety issues.” Another analysis on security issues in the ubiquitous `curl` command line tool showed that 53 out of 95 bugs would have been completely prevented by using a memory-safe language.
      Software written in unsafe languages often contains hard-to-catch bugs that can result in severe security vulnerabilities, and we take these issues seriously at Google. That’s why we’re expanding our collaboration with the Internet Security Research Group to support the reimplementation of critical open-source software in memory-safe languages. We previously worked with the ISRG to help secure the Internet by making TLS certificates available to everyone for free, and we’re looking forward to continuing to work together on this new initiative.

    • U.S. Indicts North Korean Hackers in Theft of $200 Million

      The U.S. Justice Department today unsealed indictments against three men accused of working with the North Korean regime to carry out some of the most damaging cybercrime attacks over the past decade, including the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, the global WannaCry ransomware contagion of 2017, and the theft of roughly $200 million and attempted theft of more than $1.2 billion from banks and other victims worldwide.

    • SolarWinds: How Russian spies [cracked] the Justice, State, Treasury, Energy and Commerce Departments

      President Biden inherited a lot of intractable problems, but perhaps none is as disruptive as the cyber war between the United States and Russia simmering largely under the radar. Last March, with the coronavirus spreading uncontrollably across the United States, Russian cyber soldiers released their own contagion by sabotaging a tiny piece of computer code buried in a popular piece of software called “SolarWinds.” The hidden virus spread to 18,000 government and private computer networks by way of one of those software updates we all take for granted. The attack was unprecedented in audacity and scope. Russian spies went rummaging through the digital files of the U.S. departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Energy, and Commerce and for nine months had unfettered access to top-level communications, court documents, even nuclear secrets. And by all accounts, it’s still going on.

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • Windows and Linux servers targeted by new WatchDog botnet for almost two years [Ed: ZDNet now has a new piece of FUD, of course trashing or trash-talking Go again (because people can write even malicious software using any programming language) while naming “Linux” because malicious actors can crack unpatched (out of date) software that has nothing whatsoever to do with Linux]

        The latest of these threats is a botnet named WatchDog. Discovered by Unit42, a security division at Palo Alto Networks, this crypto-mining botnet has been active since January 2019.

        Written in the Go programming language, researchers say they’ve seen WatchDog infect both Windows and Linux systems.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • CBP Facial Recognition Program Has Gathered 50 Million Face Photos, Identified Fewer Than 300 Imposters

        The CBP and DHS have released their annual report [PDF] covering trade and travel. It touts the agencies’ successes in these areas but raises some questions about the use of facial recognition tech to make the nation safer.

      • Minneapolis, Minnesota Becomes The Latest Major City To Pass A Facial Recognition Ban

        Facial recognition bans are slowly becoming the status quo around the nation. Good.

      • 40+ Rights Groups Urge Biden to Halt Federal Use of ‘Dangerous’ Facial Recognition Technology

        “Facial recognition technology is a threat to civil rights and civil liberties when it works, and when it doesn’t.”

      • Spotify granted patent to use mic to infer emotional state, age, gender, and accent

        It’s important to note that this is just a patent at this point. Spotify hasn’t yet added this functionality to their popular music streaming app, but being granted the patent is definitely the first concrete step towards that. It’s hard to tell when exactly Spotify might start trying to utilize your phone’s microphone for more than just receiving voice commands. It’s not even clear yet if Spotify would try to make their app “always listening” a la Amazon Alexa or if the sentiment analysis will only happen incidentally to other uses of the mic. Whenever this new feature is rolled out, though, don’t be surprised to see an accompanying update to the Spotify privacy policy because it’s reasonable to assume they may want to sell this information to third parties to add to the real time ad tracking monolith.

      • Facebook’s Australian media ban is taking down official government pages

        The Facebook pages of many Australian government agencies seem to have been caught up in the social media network’s ban on news posts by users and media organizations in the country. Users on Twitter have reported that the pages of agencies like the Bureau of Meteorology, Department of Fire and Emergency Services Western Australia, and Queensland Health have no posts available.

      • Facebook to restrict news content in Australia in response to proposed law

        Facebook said Wednesday it will restrict news content in Australia over a proposed law that would require tech giants to pay publishers for it.

        Facebook’s update will restrict Australian publishers from sharing or posting content on the platform’s pages and limit Australian users from viewing or sharing international publishers’ links and posts.

        Facebook has been issuing warnings about the proposal, and the platform said it felt it had to restrict the content as it inches closer to becoming law.

      • Facebook Cuts Off News in Australia in Fight Over Payments

        The potential fallout from the spat goes far beyond Australia for Facebook and Google, whose dominance of global advertising has made it a target for watchdogs worldwide. Australia’s envisioned law could set a precedent with other countries that have watched the two [Internet] giants impact their news industries. While they oppose the measure in Australia, Google and Facebook have struck separate, voluntary agreements to pay publishers. Earlier Wednesday, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. — a supporter of the Australian proposal — said it had reached a deal with Google for the search giant to pay for journalism from the Wall Street Journal and its other newspapers.

      • Is today the day the Facebook starts MySpacing itself?

        Why go to Facebook when you can just go to directly to a news site, or the Bureau of Meteorology?

        Facebook is obviously only truly hurting itself, and just shows that it is an aggregator of content that you don’t really need in your life.

      • Facebook blocks Australians from viewing, sharing news content

        The Federal Government introduced the News Media and Digital Platforms Bargaining Code into Parliament in December, but has said recently that it would soften the law after Google had responded by signing deals with many publishers.

      • News Corporation cuts global three-year deal with Google

        It comes a day after Nine Entertainment announced a deal with Google which is said to be worth in excess of $30 million. This leaves only the ABC, SBS and Guardian Australia among the better-known media organs in Australia which are yet to announce deals with the online advertising behemoth. Seven News Media signed up on Monday.

        Before it signed up Seven, Google secured deals with Crikey, The Saturday Paper and Australian Community Media, publisher of The Canberra Times.

      • ‘Spy pixels in emails have become endemic’

        The use of “invisible” tracking tech in emails is now “endemic”, according to a messaging service that analysed its traffic at the BBC’s request.

        Hey’s review indicated that two-thirds of emails sent to its users’ personal accounts contained a “spy pixel”, even after excluding for spam.

      • How Media Companies Can Capitalize on Clubhouse App

        Social audio app Clubhouse has been buzzing in the tech world since the early days of the pandemic, but it became clear last week that Silicon Valley’s interest in the app has reached new heights.

        The Verge last Monday reported Mark Cuban is involved with building a platform called Fireside that will facilitate the broadcast of live conversation, like Clubhouse. On Wednesday, the NYT reported Facebook is in the early stages of building a Clubhouse competitor.

        These two reports follow Twitter’s recent contribution to the social audio field with Spaces, which allows Twitterers to engage in live conversation and began testing in December.

Defence/Aggression

• After Vowing ‘No More Blank Checks for Trump’s Favorite Dictator,’ Biden Seeks $200 Million Arms Sale to Egypt

  “Here’s some missiles. Please stop abusing human rights, please?”

• ‘Washington Has Been Asking the Wrong Question on North Korea’

  Janine Jackson interviewed Women Cross DMZ’s Hyun Lee about ending the war in Korea for the February 12, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

• ‘If Our Goal Is to Stop Killing Afghans, We’re Going About It All Wrong’

  Janine Jackson interviewed IPS’s Phyllis Bennis about ending the Afghan War for the February 12, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

• Diverse Coalition Calls on Congress to End ‘Forever Wars’ and ‘Unaccountable, Interventionist’ US Foreign Policy

  A separate letter, signed by some of the same groups, lays out how the Biden administration can “end the cycle of endless war of the last two decades.”

• To Normalize US-Cuban Relations, Restore Working Embassies

  Meanwhile, the two countries’ embassies in Havana and Washington are dysfunctional. No normal relations will obtain until they are fully operative. A report recently issued by the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA) explores circumstances through which the embassies are disabled.

  The NSA is a truth-telling organization that monitors U.S. conduct of international affairs by reviewing declassified U.S. government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

• The Iran Deal: Biden and Blinken, Wynken and Blynken

  * the decision to abuse and rip apart would-be immigrant families on the border, disgusting the whole world to say nothing of all Central America; * the decision to maintain U.S. troops illegally in Syria (if only to steal Syrian oil); * the cruise missile attack on Shayrat Airbase, Syria in April 2017 destroying 20 aircraft, and three airstrikes in April 2019 injuring six soldiers, all based on lies about chemical weapons; * the decision to recognize Israeli land-grabs in Syria and Palestine, offending the Arab and broader worlds; * the decision to clamp unprecedented sanctions on Russia (if only to deflect charges of “Russian collusion”); * the decision to promote a pretender-regime in Venezuela; * the decision to designate Cuba a “sponsor of terrorism” for no reason; * the decision to declare the Houthi movement “terrorist,” maligning it to prove solidarity with Saudi Arabia, hamper provision of humanitarian aid and insure the deaths of more Yemeni children; * the decision to offend Chinese everywhere by calling COVID19 “the China virus;” * the decision to impose punitive tariffs on China, resulting in Chinese retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., costing U.S. soy farmers $ 10 billion; etc.

  Withdrawal from the Iran Deal was the most egregious departure from Obama precedent, initiated by a president nurturing a pathological hatred for his predecessor, intent on undoing anything considered an Obama achievement. (You get a sense of the magnitude of the mental health issues here when you reflect that Trump actually seems to have fantasized that he would, like Obama, receive the Nobel Peace Prize—virtually as a matter of entitlement—for his several inconsequential meetings with Kim Jung-Un after threatening Korea with annihilation. Trump denounced the Iran Deal not even gripping what it entailed but only knowing that right-wing Republican Christian Zionists hated it, his son-in-law Jared’s family hated it, and he could get applause from his crowds promising to undo all that Obama had done. He truly seems to have thought the mullahs, intimidated by his threats as the people suffer from ongoing sanctions and sabotage, would come to him pleading to negotiate a total surrender that he could claim as further grounds for a Peace Prize. This is what we call “malignant narcissism.”)

• The Arab Spring Failed But the Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues

• Nigeria dispatches security chiefs after gunmen kidnap schoolboys, teachers

  Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has dispatched security chiefs to the state of Niger to coordinate a rescue mission for students and teachers abducted by gunmen late Tuesday. “The President has directed the Armed Forces and Police, to ensure immediate and safe return of all the captives,” presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said in a statement.

• Taiwan’s envoy in US calls for ‘high alert’ over China’s coast guard law

  She accused Beijing of using “aggressive tools” to expand its presence in the region, with the new coast guard law allowing the use of weapons against foreign ships. The envoy added the law could lead to miscalculation and conflict, specifically near the Diaoyutai Islands, an uninhabited archipelago controlled by Japan but also claimed by both Taiwan and China.

• The New Humanitarian | A push for justice in Central African Republic

  A trial of two militia leaders accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Central African Republic at the International Criminal Court is prompting hope of justice for victims of past conflicts, even as a new wave of violence sweeps the country.
  Alfred Yekatom, known as “Rambo”, and Patrice-Édouard Ngaïssona are accused of directing attacks on civilians by the anti-Balaka, a largely Christian and animist militia that emerged in CAR in 2013 to counter the Séléka, a mainly Muslim alliance of northern rebels who had ousted former president François Bozizé.
  The trial at The Hague of the anti-Balaka leaders – whose fighters indiscriminately targeted Muslims they considered complicit with the Séléka – is the first before the ICC involving crimes committed during this past phase of CAR’s ongoing conflict.
  Watching the opening of the trial on Tuesday on a screen in CAR’s capital, Bangui, Étienne Oumba, from the Central African United Victims Association, told The New Humanitarian: “We were waiting, discouraged, for this moment to happen. Today, it is Rambo and Ngaïssona, but tomorrow it will be more tormentors that will be arrested and brought to justice.”

Environment

• How a Texas TV Reporter Gained Confidence to Cover Climate Change

• Demanding Gov. Abbott’s Resignation, Sunrise Movement Says Texas Crisis Shows Urgent Need for Green New Deal

  “We deserve a government that addresses our basic needs and protects all of us in moments of crisis. Despite the lies you’ll hear from Governor Abbott on Fox News, that’s truly what the Green New Deal is all about.”

As US Prepares to Reenter Paris Agreement, Campaigners Urge Biden to Contribute ‘Fair Share’ to Tackling Climate Crisis

“We are calling upon you and your administration to walk the walk of real climate leadership.”

Environmental Groups Fight Back Against Alberta’s ‘Anti-Energy’ Inquiry

In July 2019, the province of Alberta set up a “public inquiry” to investigate the “anti-Alberta energy campaigns” supposedly backed by “foreign organizations.” It was the fulfillment of a campaign promise by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who vowed to fight “foreign meddling” that he says has been injurious to the province’s oil and gas industry, singling out foreign philanthropic organizations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the William and Flora Hewlett foundation, and foreign funding for Canadian environmental groups such as Environmental Defence and the Pembina Institute.

Opinion | We Must Give Power to the People Most Affected by Climate Change, While Also Disrupting the Capitalist System

In her new book, Shalanda Baker, President Biden’s choice for Deputy Director of Energy Justice, emphasizes the need for an urgent and equitable response.

Role of Climate Crisis ‘Can’t Be Hand-Waved Away’: Scientists Say Freezing Texas Linked to Warming Arctic

“This extreme polar vortex event epitomizes everything climate change is: unprecedented, unrelenting, affecting a population unaccustomed and unprepared. Yes, we have always had winter—but not here, and not like this.”

Energy

• Opinion | From Covid To Mass Power Outages, the Texas Republican Party Has Created a Failed State

  The Republican Party does not believe in government. They believe in coddling the very rich.

• Big Oil Spent $10 million Lobbying California Officials in 2020

  The top four oil industry lobbyist employers — the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), Chevron, Aera Energy and California Resources Corporation — spent $10,192,047 lobbying the Governor’s Office, Legislature and regulatory agencies to advance Big Oil’s agenda in 2020, according to data posted on the California Secretary of State’s website by February 1.

  The Western States Petroleum Association, the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying organization in California, spent a total of $4,267,181, less than half of the $8.8 million that it spent in 2019. 2020’s lobbying expenses included $1,084,702 in the fifth quarter, $1,220,986 in the sixth quarter, $1,116,397 in the seventh quarter and $845,096 in the eighth quarter.

• Analysis: The Natural Gas Industry Is Trying To Deny How Affordable Renewable Energy Is

  Rather than denying the existence of climate change, the industry has switched to trying to delay the energy transition to clean energy — a transition that New Jersey’s energy master plan, introduced in January 2020 by Governor Phil Murphy, hopes to achieve. The Energy Master Plan (EMP) aims to transition the state to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.

• Opinion | It’s the Wind’s Fault, Nobody Owes You Anything, Quit Crying, The Weak Will Parish (sic) and Other Words of Comfort From Texas Officials

• Fact check: Renewable energy is not to blame for the Texas energy crisis

  The politicization of the Texas crisis underscores the ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over how to address climate change, as well as previous battles over the energy industry. When California faced energy issues in August related to a heat wave, many Republicans including Texas politicians pointed to it as an example of Democratic mismanagement.

  Now, Texas is under the microscope, with experts pointing to the state’s deregulated energy grid (and its lack of cold weather preparation) as the culprits.

• Behind GM’s shift to all-electric vehicles by 2035

  The company is already close to finishing the development of Factory Zero, formerly the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, which is due to come online later this year. Once reopened, it will produce electric versions of the Hummer SUV and eventually the Cruise Origin self-driving vehicle.

  While GM left itself ample wiggle room in its timeline to move to all-electric—calling the plan an “aspiration”—the announcement nonetheless reflects tectonic shifts in the global auto industry and world economy.

• Video: This Wind-Powered Gigantic Cargo Ship Will Carry 7,000 Cars Across the Atlantic

  Oceanbird reduces emissions by as much as 90%. It has five wing sails, more like airplane wings, all 80 metres tall, giving the ship a height above water line of approx 100 metres, but thanks to a telescopic (retractable) construction, the wings can be reduced to a quarter of its length – from 80 to 20 metres. This function is key for several reasons, most important being: [...]

• Why America’s power grids will keep failing us

  “Many of the problems we’re seeing, both in California now in Texas, are due to the fact that the grid we have in both places is dumb and old, as opposed to being smart, new and flexible,” said Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley. “Fossil fuel grids” like the one in Texas, and like what California used to have until they transitioned away from them, are “really dumb systems — they’re not adaptive or flexible, and that is really causing a lot of the problems you’re seeing in Texas today,” Kammen added.

  Indeed, fossil fuel power plants are generally built to be far away from population centers, which means that the power has to be shipped long distances. This alone, Kammen said, creates a very “inflexible” system. In Texas, the power shortage happened after natural gas plants couldn’t supply the 30 gigawatts of power they were expected to supply. To put this in perspective, 30 gigawatts is more than the average demand in California, Kammen said.

Wildlife/Nature

• The Staggering Decline of Oceanic Sharks and Rays

• Opinion | Making America’s Rivers Blue Again: Connecting the Dots Between Regenerative Agriculture and Healthy Waterways

  Building a regenerative food system where bees buzz, dragonflies hover, and fish and frogs thrive will begin when we change the necessary hearts and minds across this nation.

Opinion | CBO Not Competent to Assess Economics of Minimum Wage in “Unreliable” New Report

CBO should not have published this report, and no one should rely on it.

What the Congressional Budget Office Doesn’t Get

The Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of President Biden’s proposed increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour is both predictable and disappointing. While acknowledging that 27 million people would get a raise (which would help alleviate a poverty rate that now stands at 11.8 percent), the CBO makes the questionable claim that there would be 1.4 million jobs lost. Hence it scores the proposal negatively, as a net cost to the government of $54 billion over 10 years.

Congressional Budget Office Not Competent to Assess Economics of Minimum Wage

This note examines the so-called data: should they be taken seriously as economics? Without in any way criticizing the competence of CBO’s budget analysts, the answer is clearly “no.” In particular, the CBO’s employment forecast is unsupported. As a result, its deficit forecast, though trivial in magnitude, is also unsound.

Much of the CBO report details the effects of an increase in the minimum wage on Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, SNAP, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and on tax revenues, which would increase due to higher payroll taxes on higher rates of pay. Some of this analysis is apparently novel and represents a significant advance on earlier CBO work in this area. However, the net estimated budget effects are small, since the total increases in spending are roughly offset by increases in tax revenue or reductions in tax expenditure. Of the cumulative estimated increase in the (on-budget) deficit, almost $53 billion are due to spending increases in just three areas: unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and CHIP. These expenses CBO attributes to its projection of job loss. The job loss projection is therefore the nub of CBO’s deficit projection, and it is important to understand how CBO arrived at its number.

Cotton-Romney Effort to Tie Minimum Wage Hike to Undocumented Workers Denounced as ‘Transparently Cynical Ploy’

“If you don’t support raising the minimum wage without racist dogwhistles attached, then you don’t support raising the minimum wage.”

Biden ‘Can and Must Go Big,’ Say Progressives Urging President to #CancelStudentDebt

“Far more than $10,000 in cancellation is required to provide aid that 44 million families and the economy need.”

Jaded business practices Investigative reporters link the son of Russia’s deputy attorney general to a money-laundering investigation in Australia

A new report by iStories, Transparency International Russia, and Australia’s ABC links Russian Deputy Attorney General Alexey Zakharov’s relatives to a suspect in a criminal case opened almost a decade ago in Australia, where officials worry that a handful of Russian business owners used local banks to launder millions of dollars in jade sales to China. Though required by law to cooperate with foreign police inquiries involving Russian citizens, the Russian Attorney General’s Office has apparently declined to share needed financial records. Meduza summarizes the joint investigative report, which also ties Alexey Zakharov’s family to several suspicious property holdings. 

Whose Rights Matter in Pandemic America?

Three decades later, Congress would do well to finally heed that warning. In a moment of unprecedented crisis, when 140 million people in the richest country on the planet are poor or low-income, when tens of millions of them are on the verge of eviction and millions more have lost their healthcare in the midst of a pandemic, at a moment when Congress and the president are debating the next Covid-19 relief package, isn’t it finally time for human rights and guarantees to become the standard for any such set of policies?

I was introduced to the idea of using a human rights framework to address racism and poverty when I got involved in the National Union of the Homeless and the National Welfare Rights Union. From poor and dispossessed leaders building a human-rights-at-home movement, I learned about the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). I came to understand how the concept of inalienable rights laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution meant that all people should be guaranteed the right to jobs that pay living wages, an adequate standard of living, public education, and the ability to thrive (not just barely survive).

‘Great, Now Do Mar-A-Lago!’: Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza Razed to the Ground

The local fire chief said the complex once owned and operated by Trump “will crumble like a deck of cards.” Sound familiar?

Can the NAACP Succeed Where Everyone Else Has Failed?

I’ve said repeatedly that we do not need new domestic terrorism laws to deal with the threats we face from white domestic extremists today. We have enough laws. We have every tool we need to hold the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6—and their enablers and their president—accountable for their actions. We just need the will to apply those laws to white people.

The “Return” of America: Biden’s Maiden Foreign Policy Speech

Doing so naturally meant much cap doffing to the US State Department, that long time enunciator of Washington’s imperial policies. President Donald Trump had held a rather different view of the department he generally saw as fustian and obstructive. Biden tried reassuring department staff that he valued their expertise, respected them and would have their back. “This administration is going to empower you to do your jobs, not target or politicize you.”

The effort of the new administration, outlined Biden, will focus on repairing and restoring. Paint and scaffolding will be provided. Alliances will be revisited, the world engaged with. He strikes a collaborative note: cooperation with other states will be needed to fight the pandemic, climate change and nuclear proliferation.

Opinion | Failure to Prosecute Trump’s Serial Assaults on the Republic Would Be Indefensible

Failure to prosecute Trump will embolden aspiring autocrats.

We Need a Racial Reckoning to Save Democracy

The crisis of American democracy that burst into view on January 6 is rooted in our country’s long history of racism. To begin the work of repair, President Biden issued executive orders undoing many of the policies of the Trump administration and breaking new ground, like ending private prison contracts and embedding racial equity analysis in the federal bureaucracy. As important and welcome as these actions are, they are not enough. A crucial mistake recurs in American history: trying to move forward without reckoning honestly with injustice. We have an opportunity to break this pattern of forgetting. Remembrance and repair are not just morally necessary—they are the keys to saving our fragile multiracial democracy. Here we offer a plan to undertake that vital work.

Rush Limbaugh—Prized Propagandist of America’s Reactionary Right-Wing—Dead at 70

“If you don’t want people to speak ill of you when you die, then live decently,” said one critic.

Republicans Hide Behind Constitution

“Just look what Republicans have been forced to defend,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said after the 57-43 vote against conviction. “Look what Republicans have chosen to forgive.”

The verdict underscored Donald Trump’s incomparable cult-like hold on the weak Republican Party, which stabbed the majority of Americans who voted for President Joe Biden in the back. It took 67 votes to convict.

Fecalnomics

Considering recent self-inflicted injuries such as the election of Donald J. Trump in the “United” States, the Brexit Referendum in the “United” Kingdom, and the “cooperation” among nations on climate change, this may be an opportune time to reflect on how and why humans make terrible decisions and what we can do to improve both our good-decision rate and our happiness with our decisions. Here, then, are Ten Basic Principles of Fecalnomics.

1. Humans Make Quick Emotional Decisions

‘I live in my own bubble’: Meeting on the app Clubhouse, one of Putin’s alleged daughters chats with the investigative reporter who exposed her ties to the Russian president

Elon Musk may have failed to get Vladimir Putin into a chat room on Clubhouse, but one of the Russian president’s alleged daughters has joined the new social network. Late on Tuesday, Louiza Rozova spoke briefly to Andrey Zakharov, one of the journalists who recently outed her as Putin’s supposedly illegitimate daughter. In November 2020, Zakharov and others at Proekt released an investigative report revealing that a minority stake in the enormous Rossiya Bank belongs to a woman named Svetlana Krivonogikh, apparently received thanks to her intimate association with Russia’s president. Proekt also reported that Krivonogikh has a daughter named Louiza Rozova who “looks remarkably” like Putin. Based on a transcript reported by The Village, Meduza summarizes Rozova’s Clubhouse broadcast on Tuesday night.

‘The Russians were just passing by’: In Penza, 28 members of a Roma community are on trial for a mass brawl in a nearby town

In the summer of 2019, a Russian border policeman died when mass fighting broke out in the town of Chemodanovka outside Penza. Twenty-eight people have been charged in the deadly brawl — all members of Roma families who have lived in the town for decades. Ekaterina Malysheva has been covering the court hearings and has studied the case files. She explains why the Roma are being tried, and why their relatives, lawyers, and representatives of the local community are all avoiding the press.

Opinion | GOP Senators Said Trump Was Culpable, but a “Private Citizen” Now. Fine—Indict Him Like One.

Impunity is a disease that rots the rule of law.

Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza says he’s under surveillance in Moscow

Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza has reported that he is being followed once again — this comes less than a week after Bellingcat and its Russian investigative partner The Insider revealed that FSB agents were tailing Kara-Murza prior to his near-fatal poisonings in 2015 and 2017.

‘Right Person to Lead the Charge Against the Existential Threats of Our Time’: Nearly 500 Groups Call for Haaland’s Confirmation

“Rep. Haaland’s confirmation would be both an historic and much-needed step toward reckoning with a long and troubling legacy while building new, lasting, equitable achievements.”

The Trump-McConnell Death Match Is Good for Dems—and the Country

After four years of an uneasy alliance that often seemed on the verge of fracturing, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are finally at each other’s throats. With his characteristic two-faced duplicity, the Senate minority leader tried to play both sides during Trump’s second impeachment, this time for fomenting insurrection. After refusing to allow the Senate to begin its trial in the waning days of Trump’s term, McConnell voted to acquit, claiming the Senate had no authority to convict a former president. But on Monday McConnell also took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to offer a stern rebuke to Trump.

Lukashenko’s opponent Viktor Babariko faces 15 years in prison as trial begins in Minsk

The Belarusian Supreme Court began the trial of former presidential hopeful Viktor Babariko (Viktar Babaryka) on Tuesday, February 17.

‘An Excellent Pick’: Labor Advocates Applaud Biden Nomination of Jennifer Abruzzo for NLRB General Counsel

“There is no one who has a more thorough grasp of the National Labor Relations Board and the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act than Jennifer Abruzzo,” said one union leader.

‘Court decisions worsened relations with tech companies’: Fawad urges judges not to hear cases about IT sector

The federal minister was addressing a a two-day International Media Conference at the Fatima Jinnah Women University in Rawalpindi. He said past decisions of the state and the courts, particularly those in 2014, had dealt a blow to Pakistan’s relations with digital and tech companies and hindered the progress of the industry in Pakistan.

The federal minister said that he had urged judges in his meetings with them to not hear cases pertaining to the technology or digital sector. He said the country needed to prepare itself for the future and foreign investment could only be attracted through altering state policies. He suggested that technology companies should be invited for the training and skills development of Pakistan’s students.

Estonia to Stop Lobbying U.S. for Share of Potential Danske Fine

Estonia emerged as ground zero in Danske’s money laundering scandal in 2018, when the bank said that a large part of 200 billion euros ($243 billion) in non-resident flows that went through its Tallinn operations was suspicious.

Portal: Prime minister to scrap controversial US lawyer deal

This means Estonia would not get a cut of any potential damages arising from litigation against Danske, a Danish bank. The intention had also been to ameliorate reputational damage the Danske case had caused.

Around €200 billion in potentially illicit funds, mostly of Russian origin, are thought to have passed through Danske Estonia’s portals in the period of 2007-2015.

Texas Republicans mocked California for blackouts. Now their tweets are coming back to haunt them

Although many right-wing lawmakers and pundits are loudly blaming frozen wind turbines for the historic blackout Texas is facing, coal and nuclear energy were reportedly responsible for about twice as many outages as renewables, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), which operates the state’s power grid. Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program Jacobson, told the Associated Press, “It’s really natural gas and coal and nuclear that are providing the bulk of the electricity and that’s the bulk of the cause of the blackouts.”

Zuckerberg’s Grand Illusion: Understanding The Oversight Board Experiment

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about The Oversight Board — which everyone refers to as the Facebook Oversight Board, because despite its plans to work with other social media companies, it was created by Facebook, and feels inevitably connected to Facebook by way of its umbilical cord. As we noted earlier this month, after the Oversight Board’s first decisions came down, everyone who had a strong opinion about the Oversight Board seemed to use the results to confirm their existing beliefs about it.

Why We Filed A Comment With Facebook’s Oversight Board

Back when Facebook’s Oversight Board was just getting organized, a colleague suggested I represent people before it as part of my legal practice. As a solo lawyer, my entrepreneurial ears perked up at the possibility of future business opportunities. But the rest of me felt extremely uncomfortable with the proposition. I defend free speech, but I am a lawyer and I defend it using law. If Facebook removes you or your content that is an entirely lawful choice for it to make. It may or may not be a good decision, but there is nothing for law to defend you from. So it didn’t seem a good use of my legal training to spend my time taking issue with how a private entity made the moderation decisions it was entirely within its legal rights to make.

EFF to First Circuit: Schools Should Not Be Policing Students’ Weekend Snapchat Posts

EFF filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit urging the court to hold that under the First Amendment public schools may not punish students for their off-campus speech, including posting to social media while off campus.

The Supreme Court has long held that students have the same constitutional rights to speak in their communities as do adults, and this principle should not change in the social media age. In its landmark 1969 student speech decision, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court held that a school could not punish students for wearing black armbands at school to protest the Vietnam War. In a resounding victory for the free speech rights of students, the Court made clear that school administrators are generally forbidden from policing student speech except in a narrow set of exceptional circumstances: when (1) a student’s expression actually causes a substantial disruption on school premises; (2) school officials reasonably forecast a substantial disruption; or (3) the speech invades the rights of other students.

However, because Tinker dealt with students’ antiwar speech at school, the Court did not explicitly address the question of whether schools have any authority to regulate student speech that occurs outside of school. At the time, it may have seemed obvious that students can publish op-eds or attend protests outside of school, and that the school has no authority to punish students for that speech even if it’s highly controversial and even if other students talk about it in school the next day. As we argued in our amicus brief, the Supreme Court’s three student speech cases following Tinker all involved discipline related to speech that may reasonably be characterized as on-campus.

China’s ban on the BBC is worse than it sounds

But there may be another, more immediate reason for the ban; a week earlier, British broadcasting regulator Ofcom revoked a license allowing China Global Television Network (CGTN) to operate in the UK because its owner violated rules on editorial oversight. This was a big blow for CGTN, which planned to make London the base for its European operations. Because the license was non-transferrable, CGTN also lost its ability to broadcast across Europe.

Many saw the BBC ban as retaliation. In response, the BBC said it was “the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster and reports on stories from around the world fairly, impartially, and without fear or favor.” The UK said “China’s decision to ban BBC World News in mainland China is an unacceptable curtailing of media freedom.”

Larry Flynt, The King Of Obscene Who Refused To Be Canceled

A generation before the online culture wars and bad-faith actors popularized and then mangled the term, Flynt was a target of what we might call “cancel culture.” Except that unlike Josh Hawley whining about a (briefly) revoked book deal or Bari Weiss and Glenn Greenwald sanctimoniously “self-canceling” from plush jobs at the pinnacle of the mainstream media hierarchy in order to further self-promote, Flynt, a constant underdog, suffered and survived real physical and professional violence in the name of free speech, that almost always challenged a more powerful adversary.

In this way, he offered an example of what “free speech” actually is, and how precarious the First Amendment can actually be. He refused to be truly and actually canceled.

He took a bullet, went to jail, and gambled his fortune in commitment of this ideal. He was an antidote to the disingenuous and entitled contemporaries who cry victimhood at the first sniff of conflict, at the first challenge to their platform and authority.

China no longer needs Hollywood movies

In 2012, China expanded the quota of foreign films allowed into the country to 34 per year. That agreement expired in 2017, and still hasn’t been renewed. With relations between the US and China on edge—and China improving its own ability to produce blockbuster films—China is in no rush to codify a new pact.

Larry Flynt Made the World Freer for Everybody by Pushing Boundaries

But by being abrasive, tasteless, and uncompromising, Flynt undoubtedly made the world safer for speakers of all varieties. That includes expanded protections for modern skeptics who, more perversely than any issue of Hustler, speak out against wide-ranging free-speech protections.

“My position is that you pay a price to live in a free society, and that price is toleration of some things you don’t like. You have to tolerate the Larry Flynts of this world,” he told an interviewer in 1996.

In doing his best to offend just about everybody, Larry Flynt undoubtedly strengthened protections for the freedom of the people he upset. To judge by the state of the world, we would benefit from more just like him.

The Bachelor’s Chris Harrison Was Canceled for Criticizing Cancel Culture

To sum things up: Merely objecting to the speed and fairness of someone else’s cancellation is now itself grounds for canceling. What will the next standard be?

UPDF soldiers beat up journalists covering Bobi Wine petition to UNHRC

Several journalists have been admitted to hospital with serious injuries they sustained when military police on Wednesday assaulted them while covering National Unity Platform (NUP) president, Robert Kyagulanyi who was delivering his petition to United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) offices in Kololo, Kampala.

Some of the journalists assaulted by security operatives on Wednesday include Geoffrey Twesigye of NTV, Irene Abalo of Daily Monitor, Shamim Nabakooza of Record TV, John Cliff Wamala of NTV and Timothy Murungi of New Vision, among others.

‘What Does It Mean to Be Black and Alive Right Now?’

In 2015, New York Times Magazine writer and cohost of the podcast Still Processing Jenna Wortham sent a direct message on Twitter to the author, curator, and then-stranger, Kimberly Drew. “It must be said that I love your Instagram and you are a DREAM QUEEN,” Wortham wrote. From there, the two women exchanged praise, and began to collaborate on a zine of Black art. Six years later, that project has been materialized in their coedited book, Black Futures, a stunning anthology of art, writing, photography, recipes, tweets, and Facebook posts. Though these women had never interacted before this messaging each other on Twitter, they seemed fated to collaborate: Both women’s experience collecting and curating Black art and culture on Tumblr and Twitter had uniquely prepared them to create a book that captured the vastness and nuance of modern Black life, placing screenshots of Black Twitter exchanges alongside nightly hair routines and family recipes for coconut bread. In Black Futures, the writers have created an anthology that not only chronicles the 21st century Black experience with grace and care, but also preserves decades of Black history and culture for generations to come.

Panther Gunfight at a Not-So-O.K. Corral

Undaunted, the pandemic can’t stop the Pan African Film Festival and in that immortal show biz tradition, the show must go on! Albeit virtually, as this year in order to stay cinematically safe, America’s largest and best annual Black-themed filmfest since 1992 is moving online and starting later than usual, kicking off on the last day of Black History Month. 2021’s Pan African Virtual Film + Arts Festival is taking place from Feb. 28 – March 14.

This year, the 29th annual PAFF is screening at least three Black Panther Party-related films: The documentary Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me (see: Pan African Film FestivalTruth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me – PAFF 2021). Judas and the Black Messiah is probably Hollywood’s best political feature in years (see: Pan African Film Festival41st and Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers – PAFF 2021 and Pan African Film FestivalJudas and the Black Messiah – PAFF 2021). (PAFF’s co-founder and fearless leader, Ayuko Babu, is a former Panther, which may explain PAFF’s astute cultural, political and educational prowess.)

A Federal Appeals Court Has Ruled in Favor of Releasing NYPD Discipline Records

A federal appeals court on Tuesday affirmed a lower court ruling allowing New York officials to release police discipline records that had been kept secret for decades.

ECHR calls on Russia to release Alexey Navalny immediately

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has demanded that Russia release opposition politician Alexey Navalny from custody immediately, Interfax reports citing his lawyer, Olga Mikhailova. A copy of the court’s decision was also published on Navalny’s website on Wednesday, February 17.

“David vs. Goliath”: Warehouse Workers in Alabama Fight Amazon for the Right to Unionize

Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, are continuing to vote on whether to become the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States. Their demands include stronger COVID-19 safety measures and relief from impossibly high productivity standards that leave many unable to take bathroom breaks. “We want to be heard. We want to be treated like people and not ignored when we have issues,” says Jennifer Bates, a worker at Amazon’s BHM1 facility who has been part of the union drive from the beginning. We also speak with Michael Foster, a poultry plant worker, union member and member-organizer with RWDSU. “Amazon has a lot of authority going on right now. And we, as the union, trying to take on Amazon in a right-to-work state, gives you the perfect image of David and Goliath,” he says.

“Work Won’t Love You Back”: Sarah Jaffe on Toxic U.S. Work Culture & the Fight Against Inequality

Amid the economic crisis and precarious working conditions for millions of people during the pandemic, we look at a new book by Sarah Jaffe, an independent journalist and author who covers labor and economic justice. “Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone” looks at the unsustainable expectations of fulfillment around work and how the “labor of love” myth has contributed to the rise of toxic workplaces. Jaffe says the pandemic has shown that work can always get worse, and that more and more people are pushing back. “It’s not just that it’s a bad, grinding, slow, miserable job, but it’s also a bad, grinding, slow, miserable job that could kill you now.”

Police Unions Lose Bid to Keep Disciplinary Records a Secret

A federal appeals court in New York cleared the way on Tuesday for the city to release hundreds of thousands of police disciplinary records, a major milestone in a long and bitter political battle to open the records to public scrutiny.

The ruling by a three-judge panel, which also affects firefighters and corrections officers, dealt a heavy blow to efforts by officers’ unions to block the records’ release.

The decision was hailed as a victory by New York City as well as by civil liberties groups, which have long argued that making the materials public would make it harder for problematic officers to escape significant punishment.

What McDonald’s Shows About The Minimum Wage

One big fear of a higher minimum wage is that it could cause businesses to replace their workers with machines. Ashenfelter and Jurajda found that some McDonald’s restaurants have already installed touch screens so customers can input their meal orders without interacting with a human being. But they also found that those touch screens weren’t installed in response to higher minimum wages. “We couldn’t find any relationship between minimum wage increases and the adoption of touch-screen technology,” Ashenfelter says.

“Our society is sick:” The Lancet condemns American capitalism

The report is, appropriately, dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet found the Trump administration directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people during the pandemic, and that over 200,000 people would still be alive if the United States had a COVID-19 mortality rate similar to that of other developed countries.

But The Lancet’s meticulously-researched report, written by over a dozen distinguished authors, goes far beyond condemning the record of Trump alone. It argues that the nearly half million dead in the US from COVID-19 should be added to the toll of the “missing Americans” whose deaths were attributable to the rise of social inequality over the course of the past four decades. The Lancet report presents both the pandemic and the Trump administration as the outcome of deeper and more profound tendencies in American society.

Remember Bean Dad? Child Protective Services Was Called to Check on His Daughter

Last month, musician John Roderick became known as “Bean Dad” for his tweets about making his nine-year-old daughter figure out how to use a can opener if she wanted to eat. The thread went viral, and Roderick swiftly became an object of scorn on social media—as if was letting his child starve. Bean Dead was canceled.

Roderick recently divulged a new wrinkle in the story, which makes clear that it was not just an online kerfuffle. For his afternoon of bean-withholding, Roderick actually earned a visit from child protective services (CPS).

NLG Adopts Resolution Supporting Police Abolition

National Lawyers Guild (NLG) membership voted to pass a resolution supporting police abolition following its #Law4thePeople Convention last fall, acknowledging that the institution of policing is incompatible with the NLG’s mission to use law in defense of human rights and ecosystems over property interests. Taking leadership from community demands reiterated during last summer’s uprisings against racist police violence catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd, the resolution calls for the “defunding, dismantling and abolition” of policing in all its forms.

The resolution cites the various ways anti-Blackness, other forms of white supremacy, and additional systems of oppression are inherent within the institution of policing. It traces its origins to slave patrols in the South and the repression of organized labor and social movements, especially those for Black liberation. In addition, it recognizes that the incremental, liberal reforms have consistently failed to stop police murder and other abuse, and have only served to further legitimize an institution built to perpetrate racialized, gendered, colonialist, and class violence. Furthermore, it reaffirms commitments made by past NLG resolutions that also implicate policing, such as those in support of prison abolition, the decriminalization of sex work, and liberation for Palestine, among others. The resolution also aligns with other areas of NLG work, such as the Mass Defense Committee and the International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence against People of African Descent in the US.

A 90 Year Old Shouldn’t Have To Buy A $10,000 Ad Just To Get AT&T To Upgrade His Shitty DSL Line

Last week I wrote over at Motherboard about 90 years old North Hollywood resident Aaron Epstein, whose family has been an AT&T subscriber since the 1930s. Epstein himself has been a loyal AT&T subscriber since around 1960, and has had the company’s DSL service since it was first introduced in the late 90s. Unfortunately for Epstein, much like countless millions of other Americans, his DSL line only delivered speeds of 1.5 to 3 Mbps, and he’s been waiting for decades for faster speeds to no avail.

Patents

• No Inherency in Design Patent Cases

  Here is the problem — the patent includes claim features on the bottom-side of the shoe, and Fig 11 does not show the bottom of the shoe. On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed with only cursory analysis: “Having reviewed the Board’s decision and the record, we discern no reversible error.”

  Mojave’s basic argument is that nothing on the bottom of the shoe was really claimed. Mojave’s briefing included the figure below, where it argued that the red lines were the only claimed portion — and those were adequately shown in the Fig 11 prior art. (Sorry color blind friends).

  [...]

  The briefing involved substantial discussion about who should count as the “ordinary observer” for both infringement and validity consideration. In a prior case involving the patent, Crocs had argued that the ordinary observer was an “Impulse Buy Purchaser.” That low-standard made it easier to argue infringement since – at a quick glance the accused product looked so similar. In this case, however, the patentee changed its tune and focused on detailed and small differences that would not have been observed at a quick glance. The court did not reach this issue, which might have applied judicial estoppel.

• Software Patents

  • Richman Technology settles with Unified

    On February 17, 2021, the Board issued an order terminating IPR2020-01704 pursuant to a joint settlement request filed by Unified Patents and Richman Technology Corporation. U.S. Patent 9,449,484, generally related to security hardware and real-time security monitoring software systems, has been asserted against security system makers such as ADT, Assa Abloy, Skylink Technologies, Google, and others.

Trademarks

• give up’: EU breaks with tradition on slogan

  A General Court ruling has shown brand owners that certain types of slogans can be trademarked, but in-house counsel remain wary of any long-term shift

Copyrights

• Appeals Court Affirms $1.5 Million Restitution Judgment Against Paul Hansmeier

  The long saga of Paul Hansmeier — one of the Prenda Law Firm partners who turned the already-shady business of copyright infringement lawsuits into a rolling debacle composed of fraud, extortion, and catastrophic failures — has produced another coda.

Desktop/Laptop

• Chromebooks outsold Macs worldwide in 2020, cutting into Windows market share [Ed: Even Microsoft boosters such as Microsoft Emil now admit Windows is in trouble, even on laptops]

  This is a big win for Google and a warning for both Apple and Microsoft. It also signals to app and game developers that Chrome OS can no longer be ignored. Frankly, any business that provides a product or service over the internet should be setting aside resources to ensure the Chrome OS experience is comparable to Windows and macOS.

• Chromebooks continued to outsell Macs in 2020

  Data from both IDC and Strategy Analytics independently confirmed that trend. SA reported that Chromebooks outsold MacBooks during 2020 and especially during the fourth quarter. Research firm IDC (Disclosure: IDC and PCWorld are owned by the same parent company), which included desktops in its analysis, reported similar findings. A third analyst firm, Canalys, compiled data showing that total worldwide Chromebook shipments nearly quadrupled in 2020 to 11.2 million units, compared to just 2.9 million in 2019. SA’s data is shown below.

• Mac market share grew significantly last year, but Chromebooks pulled ahead

  However, the company said that a dramatic explosion in Chromebook sales during the year meant that ChromeOS convincingly kicked macOS into third place in the desktop OS battle…

Audiocasts/Shows

• FLOSS Weekly 617: Open Source in the Workplace – Open Source Business Model

  How is open source utilized in the workplace? On this episode of FLOSS Weekly, veteran co-hosts Aaron Newcomb and Jonathan Bennett join Doc Searls in a lively discussion of open source news in workplaces—both professional and personal. Topics include: open source business and business models; involvements of Google, Microsoft and IBM in making open source history; a Microsoft repository showing up in the Raspberry Pi Linux; hacking current and retro gear; open hardware, including open FPGAs and RISC-V; and much more.

• The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 894

  exotic meats, pixel 4a, automation

• Unauthorized | Coder Radio 401

  Mike crosses over to report back from the other side, and Chris is along for the ride.

Kernel Space

• Oracle Releases Linux-Based Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 5 Update 5

  Oracle today released their Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 Update 5 intended for use on their RHEL-based Oracle Linux. Oracle’s “Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel” tends to be a newer Linux LTS kernel with extra features compared to what is found in the current RHEL / Red Hat Compatible Kernel builds.

  Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 is a super-set of features for what is offered by the Red Hat Compatible Kernel “RHCK”. With UEK Release 5 Update 5 there are several features back-ported.

• Open-source H.265/HEVC Hantro G2 decoder driver added to NXP i.MX 8M in Linux

  Getting open-source multimedia drivers on Arm Linux is one of the most difficult tasks, that’s why there’s no much talk about open-source GPU drivers for 2D & 3D graphics acceleration, but work on video hardware decoding and encoding is also a challenge.

  We’ve previously seen Bootlin work on Cedrus open-source driver for Allwinner VPU (Video Processing Unit), but Collabora has been working on open-source drivers for VeriSilicon’s Hantro G1 and G2 VPU found in some Rockchip, NXP, and Microchip processors.

  The company previously managed to have Hantro G1 open-source driver for JPEG, MPEG-2, VP8, and H.264 codecs, but H.265/HEVC relies on Hantro G2, and the patch for H.265 hardware video decoding on NXP i.MX 8M Quad has just been submitted to mainline Linux.

• linux-5.11-ck1, MuQSS version 0.208 for linux-5.11

  Announcing a new -ck release, 5.11-ck1 with the latest version of the Multiple Queue Skiplist Scheduler, version 0.208 These are patches designed to improve system responsiveness and interactivity with specific emphasis on the desktop, but configurable for any workload.

• Linux 5.11-ck1 Released With MuQSS 0.208 Scheduler

  Linux 5.11-ck1 or the new MuQSS 0.208 doesn’t deliver much in the way of new functionality but is primarily about re-basing the existing code against the new kernel. Con’s -ck patch-set plus the Multiple Queue Skiplist Scheduler (MuQSS) remain focused on improving Linux system responsiveness and interactivity, primarily for desktops but can also help mobile hardware and other devices.

• Linux 5.10.17 Backports CPUFreq Patches From 5.11 – Benchmarks

  Released yesterday was the Linux 5.10.17 LTS kernel and what makes this point release a bit more notable than usual is that it backports the CPUFreq patches from 5.11 that were used for addressing the earlier AMD performance regression on Linux 5.11 and often leading to net improvements as well over prior kernel series. The CPUFreq patches were back-ported while the AMD frequency invariance support was not, so what does the performance look like for the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel? Here are some benchmarks.

  The newly-released Linux 5.10.17 kernel back-ported “cpufreq: ACPI: Extend frequency tables to cover boost frequencies” and “cpufreq: ACPI: Update arch scale-invariance max perf ratio if CPPC is not there”. See this prior article for additional context but long story short these were the two patches to address the performance issue on Linux 5.11 when AMD frequency invariance was introduced for Zen 2 / Zen 3 and used when using the likes of the Schedutil governor.

• Many Networking Improvements Routed To The Linux 5.12 Kernel

  David Miller sent in the big batch of networking improvements today for the ongoing Linux 5.12 merge window.

  As usual with Linux being widely used on enterprise networking equipment and hardware vendors being especially concerned about driver support with high-end hardware commonly running Linux in the data center, the networking subsystem updates are quite extensive and varied. Among the many networking changes landing with Linux 5.12 include:

  - RFC6056 “Recommendations for Transport-Protocol Port Randomization” is now implemented for better port randomization. “This document describes a number of simple and efficient methods for the selection of the client port number, such that the possibility of an attacker guessing the exact value is reduced. While this is not a replacement for cryptographic methods for protecting the transport-protocol instance, the aforementioned port selection algorithms provide improved security with very little effort and without any key management overhead.”

• The burstable CFS bandwidth controller [LWN.net]

  The kernel’s CFS bandwidth controller is an effective way of controlling just how much CPU time is available to each control group. It can keep processes from consuming too much CPU time and ensure that adequate time is available for all processes that need it. That said, it’s not entirely surprising that the bandwidth controller is not perfect for every workload out there. This patch set from Huaixin Chang aims to make it work better for bursty, latency-sensitive workloads.

  [...]

  Thus, for example, setting cpu.cfs_quota_us to 50000 and cpu.cfs_period_us to 100000 will enable the group to consume 50ms of CPU time in every 100ms period. Halving those values (setting cpu.cfs_quota_us to 25000 and cpu.cfs_period_us 50000) allows 25ms of CPU time every 50ms. In both cases, the group has been empowered to consume 50% of one CPU, but in the latter case that time will come more frequently, in smaller chunks.

  The distinction between those two cases is important here. Imagine a control group containing a single process that needs to run for 30ms. In the first case, 30ms is less than the allowed 50ms, so the process will be able to complete its task without being throttled. In the second case, the process will be cut off after running for 25ms; it will then have to wait for the next 50ms period to start before it can finish its job. If the workload is sensitive to latency, the bandwidth-controller parameters need to be set with care.

  This mechanism works reasonably well for workloads that consistently require a specific amount of CPU time. It can be a bit more awkward, though, for bursty workloads. A given process may use far less than its quota during most periods, but occasionally a burst of work may come along that requires more CPU time than the quota allows. In cases where latency doesn’t matter, making that process wait for the next period to finish its work may not be a problem; if latency does matter, though, this delay can be a real concern.

• The imminent stable-version apocalypse

  As has often been pointed out, the stable-kernel releases are meant to be stable; that means they should be even more averse to ABI breaks than mainline releases, if that is possible. This may be a hard promise to keep for the next set of stable kernels, though, for the most mundane of reasons: nobody thought that there would be more than 255 minor updates to any given kernel release.
  For most of the existence of the kernel project, few developers within the project itself have maintained any given kernel release for more than a couple years or so, and maintenance releases were relatively rare. There were some exceptions; the 2.4 release happened at the beginning of 2001, and Willy Tarreau finally stopped maintaining it more than eleven years later. Even then, the final version was 2.4.37, though one could perhaps call it 2.4.48 after the final set of eleven small “fixup” releases. Releases for kernels maintained for the long term were relatively few and far apart.

  In recent years, though, that situation has changed, with some older kernels receiving much more long-term-maintenance attention. Thus, February 3 saw the release of the 4.9.255 and 4.4.255 updates. Those kernels have received 18,765 and 16,986 patches, respectively, and there is no sign of things slowing down. The current posted plan is to maintain 4.9 through January 2023 and 4.4 through February 2022.

• ioctl() for io_uring

  Of all the system calls in the Unix tradition, few are as maligned as ioctl(). But ioctl() exists for a reason — for many reasons, in truth — and cannot be expected to go away anytime soon. It is thus unsurprising that there is interest in providing ioctl()-like functionality in the io_uring subsystem. A recent RFC patch set from Jens Axboe shows the form that this feature might take in the io_uring context.
  The ioctl() name comes from “I/O control”; this system call was added as a way of performing operations on peripheral devices that went beyond reading and writing data. It could be used to rewind a tape drive, set the baud rate of a serial port, or eject a removable disk, for example. Over the years, uses of ioctl() have grown far beyond such simple applications, with some APIs (media, for example) providing hundreds of operations.

  The criticism of ioctl() comes from its multiplexed and device-dependent nature; almost anything that can be represented by a file descriptor supports ioctl(), but the actual operations supported vary from one to the next. While system calls are (in theory, at least) closely scrutinized before being added to the kernel, ioctl() commands often receive close to no review at all. So nobody really knows everything that can be done with ioctl(). For added fun, there is some overlap in the command space, meaning that an ioctl() call made to the wrong file descriptor could have unexpected and highly unpleasant results. Attempts have been made to avoid this problem, but they have not been completely successful.

• Btrfs With Linux 5.12 Gets More Performance Improvements, Working Zoned Mode – Phoronix

  David Sterba on Tuesday submitted the Btrfs file-system updates for the Linux 5.12 kernel, which once again include more performance optimizations and notable new features.

  Some of the performance enhancements for Btrfs with this next Linux kernel version includes improved flushing that can lead to better throughput for random write loads, preemptive background flushing, less locking contention, avoiding some possible long stalls on deletes, and improvements targeting Dbench that can lead to ~7% higher throughput and 20% lower latency.

• USB/Thunderbolt Changes For Linux 5.12 Include More USB4 Work – Phoronix

  Greg Kroah-Hartman sent in the big set of USB/Thunderbolt updates already for the ongoing Linux 5.12 merge window.

• Peter Hutterer: A pre-supplied “custom” keyboard layout for X11

  Last year I wrote about how to create a user-specific XKB layout, followed by a post explaining that this won’t work in X. But there’s a pandemic going on, which is presumably the only reason people haven’t all switched to Wayland yet. So it was time to figure out a workaround for those still running X.

  This Merge Request (scheduled for xkeyboard-config 2.33) adds a “custom” layout to the evdev.xml and base.xml files. These XML files are parsed by the various GUI tools to display the selection of available layouts. An entry in there will thus show up in the GUI tool.

  Our rulesets, i.e. the files that convert a layout/variant configuration into the components to actually load already have wildcard matching [1]. So the custom layout will resolve to the symbols/custom file in your XKB data dir – usually /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/custom.

  This file is not provided by xkeyboard-config. It can be created by the user though and whatever configuration is in there will be the “custom” keyboard layout. Because xkeyboard-config does not supply this file, it will not get overwritten on update.

• Graphics Stack

  • NVIDIA continues tweaking their work for hardware accelerated Xwayland support

    Back in January we reported on how NVIDIA was looking to support hardware accelerated GL and Vulkan rendering with Xwayland, and it seems it’s continuing to progress.

    To save you a quick click: in the Merge Request to the xserver, NVIDIA engineer Erik Kurzinger mentioned their patches were intended to support a new upcoming Linux driver release and with the patches and the new driver together it “should just start working”. Performance should be fine in full-screen games, as long as the compositor supports the required zwp_linux_dmabuf_v1 interface.

    All important work, as XWayland will be used when Wayland replaces the legacy X11 display server most distributions and most gamers use to ensure your games continue working.

Applications

• 5 must-have Linux media players

  In 2021, there are more reasons why people love Linux than ever before. In this series, I’ll share 21 different reasons to use Linux. Playing media is one of my favorite reasons to use Linux.

  You may prefer vinyl and cassette tapes or VHS and Laserdisc, but it’s still most likely that you consume the majority of the media you enjoy on a digital device. There’s a convenience to media on a computer that can’t be matched, largely because most of us are near a computer for most of the day. Many modern computer users don’t give much thought to what applications are available for listening to music and watching movies because most operating systems provide a media player by default or because they subscribe to a streaming service and don’t keep media files around themselves. But if your tastes go beyond the usual hit list of popular music and shows, or if you work with media for fun or profit, then you have local files you want to play. You probably also have opinions about the available user interfaces. On Linux, choice is a mandate, and so your options for media playback are endless.

• OpenRGB: Open Source RGB Lighting Control For Keyboards, Fans, Mice And Much More

  Usually each component manufacturer has their own software for controlling RGB lights, with some requiring an online account to function. For Linux users, even that is not usually available since most of these applications are proprietary and Windows only. This is where OpenRGB comes in.

Instructionals/Technical

• DTB parser implementing notes

  Ever find yourself needing to implement a device tree blob (aka FDT, flattened device tree) parser and want to save yourself some time? Learn from my mistakes!

• WebPKG

  WebPKG is a web-interface for the OpenBSD ports collection. It features a full-text search across package names, comment, description and mantainer field, as well as a presentation page for the packages.

• How to Find What IP Addresses are Connected to Linux

  A server is application software that listens to requests over a network and returns the requested files, data, etc. Linux machines have servers installed for many different protocols: Eg. HTTP Server, SSH Server, FTP Server, etc.

  The computers which request data from a server (client machines) using either a web browser for HTTP requests or an SSH or FTP Client and are obviously identified by an IP address.

  In this article, we will learn how to find out what IP addresses are connected to your Linux server.

• How to Find and Close Open Ports in Linux

  Network and Server administration is one of the key areas in which Linux is actually preferred to any other operating system. Hence most data center admins are well versed with the Linux command line.

  There can be scenarios when certain ports on a server, which were required to be closed, are open and causing unexpected traffic on the server.

  Today, we will learn how to find and close an open port in Linux.

• How to use cURL – Anto ./ Online

  cURL is used to send data or fetch data to/from a server. This data is transferred using the following protocols: FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, POP3, SCP, SFTP, SMTP, TELNET, TFTP, and many more. cURL does not involve any user interaction. You can also use this tool when testing RESTful API’s and much more.

• How to create a TLS/SSL certificate with a Cert-Manager Operator on OpenShift | Enable Sysadmin

  cert-manager builds on top of Kubernetes, introducing certificate authorities and certificates as first-class resource types in the Kubernetes API. This feature makes it possible to provide Certificates as a Service to developers working within your Kubernetes cluster.

  cert-manager is an open source project based on Apache License 2.0 provided by Jetstack. Since cert-manager is an open source application, it has its own GitHub page.

  This guide will show you how you can install cert-manager in Red Hat OpenShift with an Operator. After that, you will issue a self-signed certificate through the installed cert-manager. You can also follow this tutorial by watching this video.

• A how-to guide for your first remote Red Hat certification exam | Enable Sysadmin

  The challenges of the past year have enabled us to do things differently, including the way one learns through online training and testing your skills through certification exams. These self-growth initiatives continue to help you further advance your knowledge and careers as sysadmins. These opportunities also positively impact your organizations. There are numerous ways to take Red Hat exams available in some areas.

  Last year, Red Hat launched remote certification exams in response to the evolving pandemic situation. I have sat several Red Hat exams in an onsite testing center in the past. Over the holidays. I also completed remote exams in the safety of my work-from-home desk and at a remote office room location. I can say that the remote exam experience is very similar to traditional onsite exams, with a few more steps to set up your environment and ensure you have connectivity speeds that meet the minimum requirements.

• How to work around Docker’s new download rate limit on Red Hat OpenShift – Red Hat Developer

  Have you recently tried running oc new-app on Red Hat OpenShift and received a similar error message to the one below?

  W0216 12:21:52.014221 671649 dockerimagelookup.go:237] container image registry lookup failed: docker.io/username/image:latest: toomanyrequests: You have reached your pull rate limit. You may increase the limit by authenticating and upgrading: https://www.docker.com/increase-rate-limit
  If so, you do not need to upgrade your Docker account to a paid one. Instead, you can use a secret to pull your images as an authenticated Docker Hub user.

• How To Install GitScrum on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install GitScrum on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, GitScrum is a free, open-source project management tool that you may use to cope with projects with ease. GitScrum makes use of the noted Git platform and Scrum application methodology to allow for greater team management. With GitScrum, organizations can triage and distribute work throughout groups in numerous departments based on email, calls, orders, projects, tasks, reminders, calendar events, and more.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of the GitScrum management tool on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian based distribution like Linux Mint.

• Linux Essentials – The Pacman Command – YouTube

  In my “Linux Essentials” series, I go over the basic details of one Linux command or service in each episode in order to teach you the basics. In this episode, I go over the “pacman” command, which is the package manager for Arch Linux and other distributions that are based on Arch Linux.

• HOWTO: Migrate from Ghost v3 to Squarespace

  Over the last few days, I’ve been exploring options for making my website faster and cheaper. While I ultimately moved to the $10 Linode option, I nearly switched to Squarespace. During that trial period, I developed a guide for moving from Ghost to Squarespace.

• 7 Ways to Customize Cinnamon Desktop in Linux [Beginner’s Guide]

  Linux Mint is one the best Linux distributions for beginners. Especially Windows users that want to switch to Linux, will find its flagship Cinnamon desktop environment very familiar.

  Cinnamon gives a traditional desktop experience and many users like it as it is. It doesn’t mean you have to content with what it provides. Cinnamon provides several ways for customizing the desktop.

  Reading about MATE and KDE customization guides, many readers requested similar tutorial for Linux Mint Cinnamon as well. Hence, I created this basic guide on tweaking the looks and feel of Cinnamon desktop.

• How to Easily Encrypt and Decrypt Files and Directories in Linux Terminal

  Have you ever wanted to quickly and easily encrypt files in Linux without having to install and learn new software packages? Here’s an excellent and easy way to easily encrypt files or directories via AES256 secured with a password, helping keep your files away from prying eyes.

• How to Fix /bin/rm: cannot execute [Argument list too long]

  The rm command is used in Linux to delete files and directories. It can be used to delete a few files by specifying each file name, or it can be used with the -r argument (recursive) to delete a directory and the entire directory tree structure which lies beneath it.

• How to Install Gradle Build-Tool on Ubuntu 20.04

  Gradle is a well-known software build-tool that is mostly used for development in Java, C++, and Swift. By combining all of the best features of Ant and Maven, it brings the best development practices to its users. Instead of using XML language for scripting, Gradle uses Groovy which is an OO language for defining the project.

• How to Install and Configure Hive with High Availability – Part 7

  Hive is a Data Warehouse model in Hadoop Eco-System. It can perform as an ETL tool on top of Hadoop. Enabling High Availability (HA) on Hive is not similar as we do in Master Services like Namenode and Resource Manager.

  Automatic failover will not happen in Hive (Hiveserver2). If any Hiveserver2 (HS2) fails, running jobs on that failed HS2 will get fail. We need to resubmit the job so that the job can run on other HiveServer2. So, enabling HA on HS2 is nothing but, increasing the number of HS2 components in Cluster.

• How to Setup Single Node OpenShift Cluster on RHEL 8

  Using RedHat CodeReady Containers (CRC), we can easily install latest version of OpenShift cluster on laptop, desktop or in a virtual machine. In this tutorial, we will demonstrate how to setup single node openshift cluster on RHEL 8 system with crc. This type of openshift cluster is used only for testing and development purpose, it is not recommended for the production use.

• How to Use Docker Stack to Deploy Docker Containers – buildVirtual

  What is Docker Stack ? Docker Stack can be used to deploy a complete application stack to a docker swarm. This is great for deploying multi tiered applications.

• How to Use the ls Command in Linux

  Getting detailed information related to files on your storage is tricky if you do not know how to use the ls command. Here we’ll discuss everything associated with the ls command on Linux, along with some various flags used with it.

• List Files in a Package with DNF Linux Package Manager – Putorius

  Sometimes you just need to know what files are included in a particular package. The DNF command, like yum and rpm before it, provides a simple way to list files in a package. In this Linux quick tip we will show you how to list all files included in a package.

  Listing files in a package is quite simple with the DNF package manager. Simply use repoquery with the -l option followed by the name of the package. For example, let’s see what games are provided in the bsd-games package.

Games

• CrossCode: A New Home expansion announced for February 26 | GamingOnLinux

  CrossCode, the retro-inspired 2D Action RPG set in the distant future is set to get an expansion with CrossCode: A New Home confirmed to be releasing on February 26.

  “A New Home continues right after the Events of CrossCode and offers more of what you learned to love already: A story rich experience filled up with tons of enemies, bosses and puzzles. Follow Lea on her journey figuring out the truth, use your elements like never before and don’t forget to finish the raid. This time for real.”

• Blasphemous: Strife & Ruin free upgrade out now with a Boss Rush Mode | GamingOnLinux

  Blasphemous has another free expansion out now with Blasphemous: Strife & Ruin, pulling in Miriam from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night along with more free content.

  Tasked with helping Miriam return to her world, you go through a series of platforming challenges and collect shards to repair a portal for Miriam to go home. Filled full of traps it’s a challenge mode to improve your precision platform abilities and you get a special reward if you manage to finish it.

  Another major addition is the Boss Rush Mode, which you need to complete the main story to access. This mode features courses containing a selection of bosses that you take on using any save file and each has a score attached to it with medals awarded.

  [...]

  You can buy Blasphemous from Humble Store and Steam for a key, sadly the Linux build is still not available on GOG.

• Wasteland 3 System Requirements

  Wasteland 3 is playable on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux computers, as well as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. Below you can see both the minimum and the recommended system requirements for running the game on PC, no matter which operating system you are using.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Calamares CI Extended

    Calamares is a modular installer for Linux distributions using Qt and KDE technologies. It is used by dozens of Linux distro’s for that crucial step of “get the ISO onto the HDD”, or some modern variant thereof. It’s modular, so distro’s can pick-and-choose what is needed: OpenRC or systemd, for instance. But it’s hard to cover everything that Linux distributions might need, so Calamares also has an “extensions” repository for more specialised modules. Let’s take a look.

    The screenshot here shows the first screen of Calamares (in demonstration mode, so “real” distro’s will probably have distro-specific styling). There’s a number of user-visible “pages” to Calamares: welcome, location, etc. There are modules that are responsible for each of those; the main Calamares distribution contains a configurable welcome module, and an alternative QML-based welcomeq module as well – plenty of choice for distro’s.

    There are more modules than what is visible here, though: all the invisible steps like making a user, settting up the display manager, configuring OpenRC (or systemd) .. those are modules as well. For these invisible steps there are certainly some that make sense only for specialised distro’s, so while Calamares aims to be modular and address “most” of what a Linux needs to get installed, there is always one more module for that special case (like pre-installing CDE theming, or whatever).

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME 3.38.4 Released with More GNOME Shell, Mutter, and Wayland Improvements

    Coming three weeks after GNOME 3.38.3, this fourth point release is here to introduce more bug fixes, translation updates, and small improvements to keep the GNOME 3.38 desktop environment series as stable and reliable as possible.

    Among the noteworthy changes implemented in GNOME 3.38.4, there’s better HiDPI support on Wayland for the Evince document viewer, Flatpak improvements in the GNOME Boxes virtual machine manager, as well as improved login screen accessibility in GNOME Shell.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Ultra-Lightweight Linux Distro Tiny Core Version 12.0 Released with Kernel 5.10 and Other Improvements

    Tiny Core Linux aka ‘The Core Project’ is a modular Linux-based distribution that offers basic functionality in a very small package with the user having the freedom to choose whatever application and hardware support they want.

    Recently, the team behind Tiny Core Linux announced the release of version 12.0. It was being worked on since the last year and is being offered with a host of improvements.

    [...]

    CorePlus (106 MB): This is an installable ISO that includes the base Core system, seven different window managers that include Openbox, Fluxbox, JWM (Joe’s Window Manager), FLWM, ICE WM, and Hackedbox, wireless support, non-US keyboard layout support and a remastering tool. They recommend this for new users as this will help them explore what Tiny Core Linux has to offer.

• BSD

  • BSDNow 390: Commercial Unix Killer

    Did Linux kill Commercial Unix, three node GlusterFS setup on FreeBSD, OpenBSD on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano (1st Gen), NetBSD on EdgeRouter Lite, TLS Mastery first draft done

  • Preventing a given package from being installed

    I have a few development jails dedicated to my work on FreshPorts. It’s been a hobby of mine since the late 1990s. The code I create gets packaged, ready to deploy onto the test, stage, and production hosts.

    What I absolutely do not want to happen, and it’s happened recently, is for those packages to be installed on the development environments. Why? It installs to the same location as the working copy of my code.

  • Full list of services offered by a default OpenBSD installation

    This article is about giving a short description of EVERY service available as part of an OpenBSD default installation (= no package installed).

    From all this list, only the following list is started by default: openssh, ntpd syslogd and smtpd (listening on localhost only).

• Devuan Family

  • Devuan adds third init option in sixth birthday release

    Devuan, the Linux distribution that came into being after the 2014 disagreement over Debian’s adoption of the systemd as the operating system’s init daemon, has celebrated its sixth anniversary by adding a third init option.

    On February 14th, the self-described Veteran Unix Admins behind the project reminded users that their first pre-Alpha landed on the same day in 2015.

    The project delivered the new Devuan Beowulf 3.1.0 at the weekend.

Devices/Embedded

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Pine64 Announces a Native E-ink Single Board Computer

    The new SBC announcement came as part of the February update announcement from Pine64. The board pictured is the Quartz64 model A, a larger form factor board with a unique layout. A model B with a more familiar Raspberry Pi 4 size and pin layout will be coming later, though no further details are available at this stage.

    In terms of functionality, the Quartz64 seems to share a lot with Pine64′s previous RockPro64 SBC, though there are also some significant upgrades. Up to 8GB of RAM will be supported, along with an optional 16-128GB eMMC storage.

  • Coding on Raspberry Pi remotely with Visual Studio Code [Ed: Microsoft has killed what Raspberry Pi stood for and the the blog is now controlled by Microsoft. This is the second time in a week.]

  • $10 LoRa-E5 STM32WL module offers LoRaWAN networking in a 12x12mm package

    Over the years, we’ve seen many LoRa modules combining STM32 microcontroller with Semtech SX12xx wireless transceivers, so that’s probably why STMicro decided to create the first LoRa SoC with STM32WL that was launched last year.

  • ESP32 TouchDown comes with 3.5-inch display for custom control interfaces

    Dustin Watts developed FreeTouchDeck software to interface with Windows, macOS, Linux computers and boards over Bluetooth LE using an ESP32 board connected to a touchscreen display.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android 12’s dessert name could be Snow Cone

  • Android 12’s dessert name might be Snow Cone, but we thought of 17 better ones – The Verge

  • Latest Android 12 leak reveals dessert name and multitasking improvements | Android Central

  • Android 12’s internal dessert name to be Snow Cone, may feature one-handed mode – GSMArena.com news

  • Android 12 Codename Brings Back Fond Childhood Memories

  • Google Android 12’s dessert name could be Snow Cone: All new features we know so far | Technology News,The Indian Express

  • Poll: What dessert code-name should Google have chosen for Android 12?

  • Android 12 may add Smart Autorotate, Game Mode, & Reduced Brightness

  • Android 12 may bring face-based auto-rotate feature to smartphones | Business Insider India

  • Android 12 to get an update, a face-based auto-rotate feature

  • Android 12 to come with Gaming Mode, reduced brightness quick setting and revamped auto rotation – GSMArena.com news

  • Android 12: Scrolling screenshots, a Game Mode and a one-handed mode will be just some of the highlights of Google’s next OS – NotebookCheck.net News

  • Google Android 12 one-handed mode makes your BIG phone more usable | T3

  • Android 12 may introduce a Reachability-like “One-Handed Mode”

  • Android 12 may introduce many UI changes part of Material “NEXT”

  • More Android 12 UI changes are coming, including some ‘Material NEXT’ tweaks

  • Android 12 could fix the worst thing about big-screen phones | Tom’s Guide

  • Android 12 might finally solve one of the most annoying smartphone problems | TechRadar

  • Here’s what has leaked about Android 12 so far – 9to5Google

  • Here’s when your phone or tablet will get Android 12

  • LineageOS leaves two-dozen devices adrift by ending Android 9.0 Pie support – NotebookCheck.net News

  • How to Get New Emojis on Android

  • Creating an Android Face Filter App Using Banuba Face AR SDK

  • Best Android app deals of the day: FAR Lone Sails, and more – 9to5Toys

  • The 5 best free password manager alternatives for LastPass on Android

  • Top 5 Upcoming Android Games In 2021

  • Google’s Nearby Share now lets you share Android apps with friends

  • Google Maps users can pay for parking and the subway on Android app | Daily Mail Online

  • Google Classroom for Android getting offline mode – 9to5Google

  • Cyber Security Today – Security of file-sharing Android app questioned, a new payment card skimmer found and hack of a French IT monitoring application discovered | IT World Canada News

  • Motorola Moto G30 and G10 offer BIG Android specs for breathtakingly cheap | T3

  • Honda Announces Android Auto for Africa Twin | Rider Magazine

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• CMS

  • 5 Free and Open Source Lightweight Alternatives to WordPress

    Now don’t get us wrong, WordPress is one of our favorite applications. With good reason, it’s a high quality, open source blog publishing application. It’s a mature and highly polished application with development starting in 2003, and it has an active community. The largest self-host blogging tool, a full content management system, which can be extended through thousands of widgets, plugins, and themes, is a good fit for many projects. The software was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL.

    WordPress instantly springs to mind when any project is planned that needs a content management system. However, WordPress can be complicated, offering more bells and whistles than actually needed or wanted. While it’s always tempting to stick with familiar territory, this can actually stifle creativity and does not enhance an individual’s skill-set.

    When embarking on a new project, there’s a lot to be said experimenting with new software. Fortunately, WordPress is not the only option. There’s a good range of lightweight open source content management systems ready to be deployed that can transform a web site.

    Some of the content management systems featured in this article are well publicised, but there are many good management systems that you may not have heard of that are perfectly suited for small projects.

    Here is our verdict with our recommendations. They are all free and open source goodness.

• FSF

  • Guardian Project’s Nathan Freitas to keynote LibrePlanet 2021

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced Guardian Project director Nathan Freitas as its second keynote speaker for LibrePlanet 2021. The annual technology and social justice conference will be held online on March 20 and 21, 2021, with the theme “Empowering Users.”

• Programming/Development

  • mg — Muine-style Grep

    Kinda always thought it was weird that Unix didn’t have an app that could search for files where multiple patterns matched.

    The patterns shouldn’t have to be on the same lines, but each term needs to be in the file.

  • CL-Gemini-Client

    This is a very basic Gemini client library for Common Lisp. The interface is basically similar to that of the Drakma HTTP library. This isn’t a complete client; it includes basically only the networking routines you would build an actual client around, and is intended for use in actual clients and scripts such as feed aggregators.

  • dang 0.0.13: New intradayMarketMonitor

    package got to CRAN earlier today, a few months since the last relase. The dang package regroups a few functions of mine that had no other home as for example lsos() from a StackOverflow question from 2009 (!!) is one, this overbought/oversold price band plotter from an older blog post is another.

  • 3 agile podcasts to add to your queue | Opensource.com

    Agile’s growing popularity over the last 20 or so years causes some organizations to get it wrong—they apply a bandage when full-blown sustainable solutions are required. But many companies are getting it right with patience, commitment, collaboration, and amazingly intelligent and creative agile leaders and experts to guide them. Many of these experts are sharing their knowledge through podcasts, allowing anyone to learn from their experience.

    I have always enjoyed listening to podcasts and even considered creating one. I used to listen to them while driving to and from work, but surprisingly, I listen to them more now, even though I’m working from home.

    As with books, there are a lot of scrum and agile podcast options you can choose when you want to learn more. The following are my top three favorite agile podcasts; they provide me a lot of value, and they’re well worth my time. I hope this list helps you decide which agile podcasts to start listening to.

  • Not an engineer? Find out where you belong

    Diversity of thought leads to success

  • Python

    • Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

      There is always a certain amount of tension between the goals of those using older, less-popular architectures and the goals of projects targeting more mainstream users and systems. In many ways, our community has been spoiled by the number of architectures supported by GCC, but a lot of new software is not being written in C—and existing software is migrating away from it. The Rust language is often the choice these days for both new and existing code bases, but it is built with LLVM, which supports fewer architectures than GCC supports—and Linux runs on. So the question that arises is how much these older, non-Rusty architectures should be able to hold back future development; the answer, in several places now, has been “not much”.

      The latest issue came up on the Gentoo development mailing list; Michał Górny noted that the Python cryptography library has started replacing some of its C code with Rust, which is now required to build the library. Since the Gentoo Portage package manager indirectly depends on cryptography, “we will probably have to entirely drop support for architectures that are not supported by Rust”. He listed five architectures that are not supported by upstream Rust (alpha, hppa, ia64, m68k, and s390) and an additional five that are supported but do not have Gentoo Rust packages (mips, 32-bit ppc, sparc, s390x, and riscv).

      [...]

      Eventually, things boiled over and commenting was disallowed from anyone other than project contributors. Gaynor, in particular, felt that the problems were unavoidable for these, largely ancient, platforms. Once the thread had closed, he summarized what had been discussed and reiterated that the cryptography developers are not going to be held back by platforms that do not support Rust.

      Back in Gentoo-land, it turned out that the cryptography dependency for Portage came because it was using urllib3 and requests. Those two packages in Gentoo are dependent on cryptography, but it turns out that they do not actually need it. A pull request to fix that was merged, so the problem for Portage, which is pretty fundamental to the operation of a Gentoo system, was averted.

Standards/Consortia

• Visiting another world

  Gemini is built on a foundation that one network request for a resource simply returns the entire resource or an error. There are no multi-request documents, where various pieces are collected up from (potentially) multiple servers a la HTML. Each Gemini document (a .gmi or .gemini file) is a collection of text in a Markdown-derived markup language, along with links to other resources, but each appears as the only item on its own line. Other resources can be returned, identified by their Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) media type, which clients can display or defer to another type of application depending on the type.

  [...]

  In order to take a peek into Geminispace, I grabbed the AV-98 client that was created by the founder of Gemini, “Solderpunk”. AV-98 is a 1500-line, terminal-based, Python program with no required dependencies beyond the Python standard library. When run, it gives a command prompt; the AV-98 “lightning introduction” suggested “go gemini.circumlunar.space”, so that’s what I did. I was greeted with the project’s home page in Geminispace, which is the counterpart to the web-based home page linked above.

  It gives a terse bulleted list for a project overview, along with several other categories (Resources, Web proxies, Search engines, Geminispace aggregators, etc.), each of which had entries preceded by a number. Those numbers can be typed to follow that link, thus retrieve the document described. For example, following the “Users with Gemini content on this server” to the entry for “solderpunk”, gives the following document…

  [...]

  Gemini uses uniform resource identifiers (URIs) with the “gemini” scheme. URIs are closely related to the URLs used by the web, a superset in fact; the URI of the Gemini home page is, thus: “gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/”. The URI for the page shown above is: “gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/”.

  A Gemini request is made by connecting to the server (on port 1965 by default), successfully negotiating a TLS connection, then sending a URI, followed by a carriage return and linefeed (CRLF). The response is a two-digit status code, a space character, a “meta” field of up to 1024 bytes, and a CRLF. The contents of the meta field are status-code-dependent. For success codes (those starting with a “2″, so 2x), the meta field is a MIME media type that describes the type of the response, which directly follows the CRLF as the response body. The MIME “charset” parameter can be used to specify an encoding other than the UTF-8 default for the response body, but that is mainly meant for legacy documents; everything else in requests and responses is always in UTF-8.

  The server closes the connection after it sends a response; the client can determine whether the response body is complete based on whether the TLS connection has been cleanly shut down or not. There are a few other status codes beyond the 2x success codes, including 4x and 5x error codes (temporary and permanent, respectively), 3x redirect, and 1x input required; the latter is how interactive Gemini applications prompt for user input (e.g. search terms). Beyond that, the 6x codes request a client TLS certificate (or indicate that the one provided was rejected). Using client certificates is a way to restrict access to a resource or to voluntarily establish a server-side session without requiring passwords, cookies, or the like.

My war on doomscrolling

I’d like to broaden that definition a bit, because it’s not just about upsetting news, it’s about any news. Doomscrolling for me is when I scroll through feeds, then decide it’s enough, put the phone down, can’t think of anything else to do, so pick the phone back up and continue. Often I’m so sucked in that when I finally look away from my phone, my eyes take a while to adjust and feel strained. A few months ago I decided that this is a bad habit, and needed to stop.

The New Humanitarian | Animal Crossing, aid workers, and mental health

In another lifetime this would have sounded perfectly ridiculous to me, but fishing on a fictional island saved my sanity.
Not knowing what was to come, the Saturday before New York went into lockdown I self-soothed in ways aid workers may recognise. I pulled out my two first aid field kits and customised them for the pandemic. I packed a go bag. I think I ended up packing two. Among tidy rows of cough syrup and antibacterial wipes, I found a semblance of serenity.
Humanitarians often have to take stock of unfamiliar situations and respond or react accordingly. I couldn’t tell if I was losing my touch or if we really were in for the catastrophic disaster I so desperately feared.
I wasn’t exactly certain about the future – but I was determined to have a plan of action. On my last subway ride for months, I also ordered a Nintendo Switch, along with a gravity blanket (a weighted blanket designed to ease anxiety and promote sleep), and a humidifier. After years spent travelling for most of the year, I was facing life for an unknown period in two small-ish rooms on my lonesome.

Science

• Scientists decode the genome of million-year-old mammoths

  The team’s work represents a new record, for their mammoth DNA is, by some half a million years, the oldest ever successfully reconstituted. Extracted from horses, bears and even Neanderthals and Denisovans, two close cousins of modern humans, such ancient DNA has proven an invaluable tool for investigating the past. Although fossils preserve the gross physical features of extinct animals, they are silent about many crucial details that even an incomplete genome can help to fill in.

  The trouble with DNA is that it breaks down post mortem. The more broken-down it is, the harder it is to sequence. Scientists think that, after about 6m years, all that would be left would be individual base pairs, the equivalent of trying to reconstruct a book from a heap of its constituent letters. Under the right conditions, however, such as the extreme cold of Arctic permafrost, this decay can be slowed.

Health/Nutrition

• What if Countries That Excel at Vaccinations Still Don’t Achieve Herd Immunity?

  Vaccine hesitancy persists even in some surprising places, including medical staff at some Israeli hospitals. As of Feb. 10, the staff vaccination rate ranged from 43 to 80 percent across major Israeli hospitals.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Unhappy with response, senators ask for a leader to head up cyber breach cleanup [iophk: Windows TCO]

    In a Feb. 9 letter, Sens. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Marco Rubio, R-Florida ― the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, respectively — expressed their concern with the federal response to date.

  • Microsoft Vaccine Scheduling Software Deal Ended By Iowa

    In New Jersey, the system had yet to work correctly after five weeks, two administration officials who asked not to be identified said last week. That was a high-profile stumble for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, which is trying to build a big business by selling software to run hospitals and health care systems and has been touting its ability to aid the nationwide effort to inoculate residents against the coronavirus.

  • DNA testing source code

    The maker of the software, Cybergenetics, has insisted in lower court proceedings that the program’s source code is a trade secret.

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Openwashing

      • Open Sourcing the Netflix Domain Graph Service Framework: GraphQL for Spring Boot

        Netflix has developed a Domain Graph Service (DGS) framework and it is now open source. The DGS framework simplifies the implementation of GraphQL, both for standalone and federated GraphQL services. Our framework is battle-hardened by our use at scale.

      • Netflix Open Sources Their Domain Graph Service Framework: GraphQL for Spring Boot

        DGS is used within Netflix and the various features are thoroughly tested. Under the hood, DGS uses the graphql-java library. Netflix recommends a schema-first development approach to define the contract. Tooling can be used to consume the schema. Backward compatibility is important, especially with a federated GraphQL setup, and can be verified by comparing the different schema versions.

        As an alternative to REST, GraphQL solves the issue of over-fetching or under-fetching data. Over-fetching is fetching all the data from an endpoint, but using only a portion of that data for, say, a mobile application. This requires filtering and leaving the remaining data unused. Under-fetching is fetching all the data from an endpoint, but not having enough data. This usually requires a call to a second endpoint. For example, consider an endpoint, /student. One user might want to retrieve all the student’s email addresses while another user might want to retrieve the various classes in which the students are enrolled.

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • Darpa, Linux Foundation create open software initiative to accelerate US 5G stack

          The Linux Foundation said it entered a collaboration agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to create open source software. Darpa and the LF will create a broad collaboration umbrella that allows US government projects, their ecosystem and the open-source community to participate in accelerating innovation and security in the areas of 5G, edge, AI, standards, programmability and IoT, among other technologies.

        • Linux Foundation, DARPA collaborate on open source for 5G | FierceWireless

          The Linux Foundation has signed an agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to establish an open source project for the U.S. government.

          The agreement calls for the Linux Foundation and DARPA to work together in the areas of 5G, edge, artificial intelligence, standards, programmability and IoT, among other technologies.

        • DARPA, Linux Foundation Partner to Advance 5G – Nextgov

          The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is partnering with a major technology consortium to establish an open-source software development collaboration ecosystem to advance emerging technologies such as 5G, according to a Wednesday press release.

          The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization that hosts open-source efforts including Kubernetes and the O-RAN Alliance’s software community, signed a cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA, with DARPA to create a “broad collaboration umbrella” called US Government Open Programmable and Secure, or US GOV OPS. DARPA’s Open Programmable Secure 5G, or OPS-5G, effort will be the first project included under the umbrella, according to the release.

        • DARPA, Linux Foundation team for government 5G | Light Reading

          The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it has signed a collaboration agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create open source software that accelerates United States government technology research and development innovation.

          Under the agreement, DARPA and the LF will create a broad collaboration umbrella (US Government Open Programmable Secure (US GOV OPS) that allows United States Government projects, their ecosystem, and open community to participate in accelerating innovation and security in the areas of 5G, Edge, AI, Standards, Programmability, and IOT among other technologies. The project formation encourages ecosystem players to support US Government initiatives to create the latest in technology software.

    • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

      • A Post-Mortem in 5 Acts: How Microsoft Privatized Open Source And Killed JavaScript in the Process

        Microsoft may not be able to innovate on products, and they usually fail miserably. But it is shockingly good at marketing, propaganda, and take-overs.

        Microsoft has essentially deprecated JavaScript and the non-profit foundation, which governed it, by TypeScript, which is governed and controlled by the for-profit Microsoft Corporation. If Microsoft was truly interested in improving JavaScript it could have done that through the non-profit foundation. But instead, it took the ‘Evil Corp’ approach of making the foundation and JavaScript slowly irrelevant, so it could guarantee that it could monopolize and monetize the whole industry.

  • Security

    • Live Patching Ubuntu Server so That You Don’t Have to Reboot it

      Managing Linux servers can feel like a chore specially if you have to perform repeated tasks.

      Updating the server is one of those tasks. While you can opt to automatically install security updates on your server, it doesn’t make you completely free from the maintenance task.

      Why? Because the security updates to the kernel require restarting Ubuntu server.

      If you use Ubuntu server on one of the cloud services like Linode, you’ll notice that it notifies you that your system requires restart.

    • Patch Raspberry Pi Linux Kernel With KernelCare For FREE!

      Think nobody cares about your Raspberry Pi? Here’s why you must patch Raspberry Pi Linux Kernel with KernelCare live patching service.

      The Raspberry Pi kicked off a computing revolution. In 2012 at Cambridge University, a small team envisioned a tiny, cheap computer that can help revive interest in computer sciences. The first version, Model B, launched for about $50 and had everything it needed to run a full computer operating system – support for Linux, on-board memory, and physical IO ports.

      A fully functional computer that is that cheap was going to be revolutionary, and the Raspberry Pi has found a home with enthusiasts – but also with commercial users. In fact, the Raspberry Pi Foundation estimates that 44% of Raspberry Pi units are sold to industrial customers.

Environment

• Energy

  • ‘He Is Lying. People Are Dying’: Calls for Texas Governor to Resign as He Blames Power Outages on Wind and Solar

    “Five million Texans are without power tonight and temperatures are below freezing. People will most certainly die tonight because of it. But Gov. Abbott had time to go on Sean Hannity to blame the Green New Deal.”

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Refugees and wildlife face risk from border walls

    Not only humans but four-legged migrants are at risk from  border walls. Other species can be climate refugees too.

Finance

• ‘Keep Pushing!’ Says AOC After Biden Tells Nation ‘I Will Not’ Cancel $50,000 in Student Loan Debt

  “The case against student loan forgiveness is looking shakier by the day… We can and should do it,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

• Gamestop summary: what happened, and who REALLY won

  On January 27, 2021, a “rag-tag internet crew” was winning the day at Wall Street- “at least for now”, with “gains since the start of January to 1,745%”. The crew exploited a well-known, perfectly legal gambling technique called “short selling”, using as chips the stocks of a gaming retail company called Gamestop.

  The crew gambled well enough, big enough, to make huge financial companies lose billions of dollars. Of course, this was not the first time that something similar happened. It just was the first stock gambling stunt “orchestrated by a bunch of loosely affiliated social media users acting on a meme”. The gamblers traded stocks for free thanks to a free app called Robinhood, coordinating their actions on public forums, on Reddit and Discord.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Opinion | The Truth on Trial at Trump’s Second Impeachment

  Big stories reveal the good, the bad and the ugly of humankind—and that includes those who report and comment on the news.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Content Moderation Case Study: Google ‘Removes’ German Residences From Street View By Request (2010)

  Summary: Google’s Street View is a powerful mapping tool that allows users to visit places they’ll possibly never be able to visit and allows local users to see homes and businesses they’re trying to locate.

Monopolies

• Patents

  • In-house reveal how they recover attorney fees in patent cases [Ed: Recover fees at whose expense? Lying lawyers who misled clients, urging them to waste money on aimless and pointless lawsuits? Or who else? Just those who actually create something? For sure, a parasitic element in the system.]

    Counsel from three companies, including Sanofi, delve into when they pursue attorney fees in patent litigation and how private practice lawyers can help

  • Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. v. Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (Fed. Cir. 2021)

    In a terse, non-precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s judgment that Defendants Torrent Pharmaceuticals and Indoco Remedies Ltd. had failed to prove that the claims asserted by Plaintiff/patentee Takeda were obvious, either under the statute or the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting, in Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. v. Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

    [...]

    Turning to obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103, Defendants asserted art purportedly teaching substitution of a xanthine scaffold moiety for the uracil moiety in alogliptin. The Federal Circuit agreed that the District Court did not err in concluding that Defendants had not shown that the skilled worker could reasonably expected this substitution to be successful. This was because “the interchangeability references on which Indoco relies do not pertain to DPP-IV inhibitors or diabetes [thereby failing any expectation that the substituted compound would be operative], nor do they, or any other prior art of record, teach substituting an existing xanthine scaffold for uracil (thereby failing to establish the viability of the substitution on structural grounds].”

    The opinion concludes by considering Defendants’ argument that the District Court erred as to the level of skill of the ordinarily skilled worker. This question arose with regard to whether the skilled person should have “specific experience developing DPP-IV inhibitors and/or type II diabetes drugs,” and was relevant to the weight the District Court gave to the testimony of Takeda’s expert who lacked such experience. The Federal Circuit found this distinction immaterial because the District Court considered the prior art from both perspectives (i.e., a skilled artisan with and without such expertise) and found Defendants had not shown Takeda’s asserted claims to be obvious (“[g]iven the substantive gaps in establishing motivation and reasonable expectation of success identified above, the record supports the district court’s conclusion that it would have reached the same outcome under either definition of a skilled artisan”). Moreover, the opinion states that Defendants failed to show that applying the standard to the skilled artisan issue they espouse would have made any difference. Accordingly, the Federal Circuit affirmed the District Court’s finding against Defendants.

  • Respect Please: Objective Indicia or Secondary Factors.

    In a bench trial, the district court invalidated Amarin’s patent covering a drug treatment for hypertriglyceridemia — finding the claims obvious over a combination of prior art references that had been previously considered by the USPTO. On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed without opinion (R.36). Now, the patentee has filed a petition with the US Supreme Court asking for clarification of the Graham analysis. In particular, what is the role of the objective indicia of non-obviousness. We sometimes call these “secondary factors” — and that is the focus of the particular dispute. Does the Federal Circuit err when it (sometimes) relegates the objective indicia to a secondary status.

    [...]

    Id. Goodyear was a 5-4 decision written by Justice Owen Roberts. Justice Hugo Black dissented with a quote from a 19th Century Court decision: “a shadow of a shade of an idea.” A. Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192 (1883) (“It was never the object of [the patent] laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures.”).

  • Economic PTAB Analysis Demonstrates Post-Grant Challenges Save Litigation Costs Regardless of Stay

    Leading Economic Expert finds that PTAB challenges lower total costs and benefit the US Economy almost $2 billion regardless of whether litigation stays are granted

    The Perryman Group, in a recent economic study commissioned by Unified, found substantial cost savings in district court cases when there is a copending IPR proceeding regardless of whether a stay is granted or not.

    The study found either outcome resulted in substantial benefits to the U.S. economy by improving business activity $1.87 billion and saving 8,530 job years. That included where an IPR was conducted parallel to an ongoing district court proceeding, where the Perryman Group estimated the economic benefits of cost savings over the 2014-19 period of $135.4 million in US gross product and 617 person-years of employment. The study also found these benefits are primarily concentrated in the manufacturing sector.

  • Software Patents

    • IP Bridge reexamination request granted

      On February 15, 2021, the PTAB granted Unified’s request for ex parte reexamination, finding substantial questions of patentability for all claims of U.S. Patent 7,515,635, owned by IP Bridge. The patent is claimed to be essential as part of HEVC Advance’s patent pool (HEVC Advance patent list), as well as SISVEL’s VP9 and AV1 patent pools.

    • Dallas Invents: 144 Patents Granted for Week of Feb. 2 [Ed: Far too many bogus software patents for trolls to prey on while pretending it's about "innovation"]

      Dallas Invents is a weekly look at U.S. patents granted with a connection to the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area. Listings include patents granted to local assignees and/or those with a North Texas inventor. Patent activity can be an indicator of future economic growth, as well as the development of emerging markets and talent attraction. By tracking both inventors and assignees in the region, we aim to provide a broader view of the region’s inventive activity. Listings are organized by Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).

• Copyrights

  • The Copyright Bill That Does Nothing: Senate Bill Proposes Copyright Reform to Support Media Organizations

    Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault insists that his own legislation on this issue is forthcoming. But rather than interfere in the market and risk access to news content on platforms, Canada would do far better by implementing the previously announced industry support mechanisms and encourage all news organizations to spend their time competing in the market, rather than focusing their energies on lobbying that leads to poorly thought out bills such as the one introduced by Senator Carignan.

  • ACE Targets Popular ‘Watched’ Streaming App Add-Ons in US Court

    The popular ‘Watched’ streaming app is used by large numbers of viewers to watch movies, TV shows and live sports for free. However, global anti-piracy group ACE is taking action to undermine the user experience, including by attempting to track down the operators of sites that form crucial parts of the extended ‘Watched’ infrastructure.

  • Reddit Piracy Takedowns and Subreddit Bans Skyrocketed in 2020

    Reddit’s latest transparency report reveals that the number of copyright takedown notices it receives continues to rise. Last year, 375,774 pieces of content were removed following copyright holder complaints. This is a 300% increase compared to the year before. At the same time, Reddit’s repeat infringer policy resulted in 303 users and 514 subreddits being banned.