03.29.21

After Crushing Dialogue With the Union (SUEPO) the EPO’s President Does the Same to Staff Representatives

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 8:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: We examine the outcome (or lack thereof) of the latest General Consultative Committee (GCC) meeting at the EPO

The Central Staff Committee (CSC) of the EPO had a ‘meeting’ with António Campinos, the ‘wunderkind’ (or agent of cover-up) for Benoît Battistelli.

“…it seems that Campinos is totally inadequate for proper social dialogues. He no longer speaks to the union (SUEPO) and now he’s sort of gaslighting staff representatives (not external to the Office).”For those who haven’t seen it yet, IP Kat has finally (for a change) written about the assault on the EPO's tribunals by Campinos (he’s no better than Battistelli!) and the comments are worth reading closely. The comments are always more informative than AstraZeneca’s word-mincing take. The headline is far too polite; they’re breaking the law! In any event, it seems that Campinos is totally inadequate for proper social dialogues. He no longer speaks to the union (SUEPO) and now he’s sort of gaslighting staff representatives (not external to the Office). These representatives (CSC) have just published their “[r]eport on the GCC meeting of 24 March 2021,” focusing on “[g]uidelines for rewards” (lack of them).

They’ve explained to their colleagues, whom they represent: “On 24 March 2021, we had the first GCC meeting of 2021, with only one document on the agenda, namely the General Guidelines on Budget allocation and rewards distribution for 2021. The CSC members of the GCC could only give a negative opinion on this document. The remaining time was used to briefly address some other matters, essentially: the building occupancy levels; the education allowance; the targets in DG1.” (a.k.a. Microsoft clown computing)

“In this publication,” they have noted, “you will find more details, including the written opinion that we sent to the President after the GCC meeting.”

Somebody has sent us a copy, so we’ve decided to reproduce it here as HTML. Our concluding words will follow at the bottom.

Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich, 26.03.2021
sc21042cp

GCC meeting on 24 March 2021 – A short meeting

Guidelines on Rewards 2021

On 24 March 2021, we had the first GCC meeting of 2021, with only one document on the agenda: General Guidelines on Budget allocation and rewards distribution for 2021. Last year’s Guidelines can be found here.

The administration went to great lengths to demonstrate the merits of the 2021 Guidelines. We referred to our earlier publication (“Strong Together” but 30% of staff excluded”) on the 2021 rewards, and asked some questions during the GCC:

- The document still mentions incomplete steps, whereas by now everyone should be at full steps, the transition period from the old career system should have passed already. The administration gave no answer, except to say that some 150-160 staff members will fall under the ‘catch-up mechanism’ through which a staff member who didn’t receive a pensionable reward since four years would now receive one (compared to the 430 colleagues who received a “catch-up” step last year). We also learned that the automatic catch-up mechanism would be maintained in the years to come.
- We also questioned how the calibration process of the reward distribution at VP or PD level can work: what criteria will be used to deviate from the proposals of the line management. We received no answer, though the President stated that every staff member is entitled to know why they were not considered in the reward exercise and that line management should be able to explain this to their staff;
- The document misses any detail on functional allowances (which for the first time have been removed from the rewards budget). According to the President, functional allowances should not be linked to the rewards because they are not based on merit but are part of particularly difficult or complex functions. Examples given were ‘management’ (sic) or ‘BIT staff’ which now have to deal with the spaghetti structure. The budget for functional allowances amount to €2.3m per year.

We stated again that the fundamental flaws of the career system are not being addressed: 40% of staff are lagging behind, receiving less than one step every three years. The new Salary Adjustment Procedure (SAP) resulted in huge savings for the EPO in 2020, (a bit) more of these savings could have been put into the rewards envelope – still within the limits set by the Administrative Council – such that everyone could have been rewarded. We reminded the President of the burden on parents and our colleagues in BIT. In 2021, 30% of colleagues will not receive a pensionable reward, despite their efforts and despite the exceptional situation due to the pandemic. To this, the administration answered that Staff Representation were dogmatic, and that the EPO could not afford to give everybody a pensionable reward.

Clearly, the CSC members of the GCC could only give a negative opinion on this document (see the annex).

Any other Business

The remaining time was used to briefly address some important matters.

Concerning the New Normal document, we learned that there would not be a New Normal Working Group (we must have misunderstood so before), but that Staff Representation would only be involved if and when there are new policies and regulations to be discussed. We might be invited for the aspects of teleworking – once the proposal is finalised.

Concerning the building occupancy levels, currently set at 15%, we wondered whether the continued isolation of staff at home does not lead to more psychosocial risks, whether stress would not be alleviated if staff had the possibility to come to the Office more often. The President replied that we are the only International Organisation that didn’t have any casualty due to Covid-19, and that the rules have remained the same throughout the pandemic, offering legal certainty. We should not expect any change in occupancy until after Easter.

Concerning the education allowance, we again questioned why this reform is taking place during this pandemic, putting parents and young families under additional stress. We reminded the President of the three promises he made: a cost-neutral reform, site-specific measures and negotiation with staff representation. Instead we have a cost–saving reform (please note that the overall education budget is negligible vs. the EPO yearly budget), with no real site-specific measures (with a lump-sum only approach instead, disregarding the costs actually incurred by the parents), and with our proposal unceremoniously wiped off the table because it is “too expensive” – despite the declining demographics of our population. We insisted that Staff wondered why this is happening, and why now. The administration only replied that all would be sorted out by long(er) transitional measures, during which there would be no savings.

Finally concerning the DG1 targets, although the absolute production targets are indeed decreasing, production is achieved with fewer and fewer staff, resulting in an overall net productivity increase again (on average +2.2% vs 2020). The DQA statistics for one sector now show that one in three grants is not compliant with under Article 54 EPC – read: the subject-matter of the granted claims is not novel. This is what happens when staff is under more and more time pressure. Also, some of the timeliness objectives are exaggerated: the composition of the divisions is sometimes changed if one of its members is absent due to sickness for more than three days, just so that the dossier does not stay on the Patent Workbench for too long.

The administration replied that the production targets have been decreasing year by year (but they seem to keep on ignoring that it’s done with fewer and fewer staff and productivity has been on the rise year by year), and that individuals who have problems with their targets should approach their line manager. We maintain that this is not a problem to be solved on an individual basis, but it is a general, global problem in DG1 The administration should finally realise that it is not a matter of playing at the individual level.

As a closing remark, the administration said that they have been meeting lots of individual staff during 2020. VP1 added that, in his meetings with DG1 staff, he never heard any complaint about production pressure, about the SAP¹ or about the education allowance².

In view of this collective amnesia, we can only encourage you to continue to make you voice heard, also by continuing to send emails to senior management (president@epo.org or vp1@epo.org) to let them know how you feel about the production pressure, the SAP, the education allowance… Please feel free to keep us in copy.

The Central Staff Committee

Annex: opinion of the CSC members of the GCC on GCC/DOC 1/2021

_______
¹ conveniently forgetting that well over 1000 staff members filed the Request for Management Review recently
² again conveniently overlooking the swaths of emails that staff have sent to the administration

Opinion of the CSC members of the GCC on GCC/DOC 1/2021

President’s Instructions on Rewards for 2021

The CSC members of the GCC give the following opinion on the President’s Instructions on Rewards proposed in GCC/DOC 1/2021.

The document defines the annual budget envelope and reward types, the eligibility and criteria for rewards and the process and timeline.

On the consultation

Since the implementation of the New Career System in 2014, the President’s Instructions on Rewards were submitted each year for information only to the General Consultative Committee (GCC). In essence, the document could not be submitted for vote. The CSC members of the GCC argued each year that such instructions on rewards should be submitted for consultation in compliance with Article 38(2) ServRegs stating that the GCC shall be consulted on “any proposal which concerns the conditions of employment of the whole or part of the staff to whom these regulations apply”.

Back in 2016, Ms Bergot (PD4.3) rejected our arguments and replied (GCC/PV 5/2016, paragraphs 34 & 37) that “discussions about rewards should take place with recognised unions [...] In this context, SUEPO had been re-invited to discuss the signature of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which would lead to its recognition as an EPO union and enable its participation in said discussions.” The GCC members expressed their surprise that union matters could be discussed in the GCC and explained that it was a statutory right of GCC members to be consulted on the instructions on rewards. Nevertheless, Ms Bergot (PD 4.3) maintained her line of argumentation the years after (GCC/PV 4/2017, paragraph 104) and the topic remained for information on the agenda. After his entry into service in 2018, Mr Campinos preferred not to deviate from what he considered to have become the Office’s practice.

For the first time under the New Career System, the President’s Instructions on Rewards were submitted for consultation, in the GCC meeting of 24 March 2021, and Mr Campinos invited the GCC members to send their opinion in writing. Ms Bergot explained this change of practice by a recent opinion of the Appeals Committee (ApC) recommending that the Instructions should be submitted for consultation from now on. At the time of drafting the present GCC opinion, the CSC members of the GCC are still not aware of the exact content of the ApC opinion. Although the change of practice is welcome, it is regrettable that only legal action convinced the Office to comply with its own Service Regulations. Furthermore, it was long overdue after six reward exercises and it shows once again the flaws of our internal justice system as well as in the consultation process.

On the merits

On the pensionable rewards

In the GCC meeting, the administration repeated the arguments exposed in the Intranet publication of 25-02-2021, namely “in view of the efforts of staff to ensure business continuity under the challenging pandemic conditions, up to 70% of staff will be able to receive a pensionable reward. This marks a 10% increase versus the reward cycles of the last 3 years.”
This communication exercise is not convincing. A careful look at the past, shows that Mr Battistelli’s reward exercise in 2015 already defined that up to 70% of staff may receive a pensionable reward (GCC/DOC 12/2015). The subsequent exercises in 2016 (GCC/DOC 11/2016) and 2017 (GCC/DOC 16/2017) were slightly below at 65%.

This should be furthermore put in perspective with the fact that “[s]taff falling in the category of the catch-up mechanism 2021 as described in Annex II are included in the 70%.” (section II. 2. 1) whereas the catch-up mechanism 2020 was under a separate budget¹. Therefore, the announced “10% increase” is not “generous” as the administration is trying to say.

The document in ANNEX 1 mentions: “With regards to career progression, the baseline scenario of the Financial Study 2019 corresponds to granting a step to 60% of eligible staff. Every 5% increase in quota increases the coverage gap with around EUR 160 million.” It gives the impression that staff is more of a liability than an asset. In the meeting, Ms Simon (VP4) stressed that the 70% should be seen as “a very generous offer which bring strain on our finances in the long run”. Management should actually not worry about the financial consequences of their “offer” which is not even generous. The last reported values in 2020 for the EPO funds (EPOTIF and RFPSS) prove that they performed EUR 3,9 billion² better than foreseen by the baseline scenario. While management is running out of convincing arguments, the EPO continues to make surpluses of up to EUR 310 million³ in 2020.

We consider that a purely competition-based career system excluding 30% of eligible staff is not fit for purpose and we would be ready to discuss within a Working Group a performance-based system defining a minimum career, an average career and a fast career. Regrettably, in the GCC meeting, Mr Campinos simply reproached us for having a “dogmatic” position in favour of automaticity. When the reward statistics⁴ actually show that 40% of eligible staff got less than 3 steps in 6 reward exercises, it is high time to come to a pragmatic revision of the New Career System.

On the budget
In the GCC meeting, the administration presented the available budget for pensionable and non-pensionable rewards of EUR 22,600 million in 2021 as an increase over the last years: EUR 21,300 million in 2019 (GCC/DOC 4/2019), and EUR 22,000 million in 2020 (GCC/DOC 11/2020).

However, one should compare budgets if they are of the same nature. The budget for 2021 includes a catch-up mechanism which will apply to 150-160 colleagues. But the above-cited budget for 2020 did not include a catch-up mechanism. The catch-up

______
¹ “One-off measure”, President Communiqué of 13-01-2020, “this one-off measure has been decoupled from the next reward envelope. The sum will be taken out of the 2019 budget and will not come from, or affect, the funds available for the next rewards exercise.”
² “Virtual Floor Meetings – Why 1 day strike”, page 29, LSCMN publication of 11-12-2020 (sc20022mp)
³ CA/56/20
⁴ “Virtual Floor Meetings – Why 1 day strike”, page 13, LSCMN publication of 11-12-2020 (sc20022mp)

mechanism 2020 of EUR 861.000 applied to 437 colleagues came from a separate budget⁵.

The overall budget for 2020 of EUR 22,861 million was therefore higher than the one Mr Campinos offers in 2021 for the work of staff during the pandemic.

In preparation of the meeting, the Central Staff Committee already explained⁶ how the 2021 budget for rewards was reduced by EUR -3,6 million compared to the one in the draft budget 2021. This cut came on top of massive unexpected savings of EUR 18 million made on the salary mass because of the disastrous application of the salary adjustment procedure 2020. It shows that, contrary Mr Campinos’ promise after the Financial Study 2019, when the Organisation makes more savings than expected, these are not redistributed to staff.

On the lack of transparency: functional allowances

Until now, the budget for functional allowances was mentioned in the President’s Instructions on rewards. In the 2020 budget, they amounted to EUR 2,3 million. This year, no figure is communicated yet, besides the estimated percentage of 0,3% on the basic salaries referred to in CA/D 1/20 (page 144) which would amount to around EUR 3 million. In the meeting, Mr Campinos explained that functional allowances relate to the function rather to a reward and should thus mentioned elsewhere. But where? No more clarification was given in the meeting.

Initially, functional allowances were meant to compensate employees in Job Groups 4-6 for temporarily taking on tasks above and beyond what is in their job description. This is for instance the case for Team Managers. Obviously, this did not apply in the beginning to managers in Job Groups 1-3 since the New Career System awarded them an increase in salary for higher responsibilities.

With GCC/DOC 7/2017, management amended Article 12(2) ServRegs to open up the possibility of getting a functional allowance also to … Management. Concomitantly, the functional allowance was increased from a maximum of “an amount equivalent to two steps in the current grade” to “two monthly basic salaries per year”.

The Office stated that this was justified for “the sake of efficiency and flexibility”. Annex I to the new Circular 364 indicates that duties and constraints deserving a functional allowance are for “functions of high responsibility (…) organizational and technical change management etc.” One can easily suspect self-service and how the trend will continue if the award of functional allowances remains untransparent and not submitted to statutory consultation. After having opened the cookie jar to help themselves, management is now hiding the cookie jar. We wonder whether management will ever increase the functional allowances for Team Managers in DG1 as it was only adjusted once since its introduction, harmonizing the amount given to Team Managers in different grades.

On the lack of transparency: performance criteria
The criteria for granting a reward still consist of a broad non-exhaustive list which is interpreted differently among directorates and teams.

______
⁵ “One-off measure”, President Communiqué of 13-01-2020, “This one-off measure will take effect as of January 2020 and represents a total investment of around EUR 861 000.”
⁶ “Reward exercise for pandemic year 2020 “Strong Together” but 30% of staff excluded”, CSC paper of 22-03-2021 (sc21040cp)

For steps, one of the criteria is the “achievement of the expected objectives and competencies corresponding to grade, seniority and job profile” and for promotions “proven performance and expected objectives corresponding to the grade continuously achieved over a long period of time.” However, such expectation levels are not defined and the so-called corridors of “production/productivity” applied in DG1 continue to be deliberately hidden from staff.

Colleagues are hardly ever given reasons as to why they have or have not received a reward, and how they should perform to get one in the future. The fact that appraisal and reward are not linked do not contribute to transparency either. Only the few who dare to file management review start to have the beginning of answer which raises even further questions on the arbitrariness of the exercise.

On the lack of transparency: calibration by PDs and VPs
As in the previous years, “[w]hile performance is a pre-condition, it may not be sufficient to warrant a reward in view of other elements taken into account for its attribution such a comparison with peers, collaborative behaviour, priority of the Office and contribution to the Office’s achievement”.

This broad statement allows management to exclude anyone at PD or VP level from the reward exercise during the so-called calibration process in an arbitrary manner. The term “peers” is not substantiated by any document: are the peers from the same team? from the same grade? from the same directorate? from the same technical field?

On the collaborative bonuses
In the GCC meeting, Ms Simon (VP4) explained that “this year, the Office will put much more emphasis on collaboration to go to a one Office concept and therefore half of the EUR 10,5 million bonus budget will reward collaboration”. The criteria for defining collaboration again lack transparency.

The word “collaboration” appears to be a communication exercise designed to hide the fact even during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Office decided to maintain in a morally questionable way a competition-based system that goes actually blatantly against the values of cooperation. The collaboration bonuses appear to be a fig leaf on the actual exclusion of 30% of eligible staff from a pensionable reward. Such a regressive and non-inclusive policy is impossible to reconcile with the “Strong Together” message the Office is trying to convey.

Conclusion

The many pitfalls identified by staff and their representation over the last six years of application of the New Career System still remain unsolved. The reward exercise is still a lottery which is unique among International Organisations.

For the above reasons, the CSC members of the GCC give a negative opinion on document GCC/DOC 1/2021.

The CSC members of the GCC

From the above, one is left to conclude that the Office management simply isn’t listening to staff at all. It’s just milking the institution, doing loads of illegal things, and nobody will be held accountable for that. █

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Microsoft Leaders and Supporters Desert Sinking Ship

Posted in Deception, IBM, Microsoft at 7:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link

Summary: With Microsoft’s co-founder having been found to be closely connected to someone who trafficked thousands of underage girls for sex it’s hardly surprising that Microsoft is sinking and old leaders move away; we examine the history of Microsoft with focus on the past 20 years

ZDNet: Our sponsor is on fire and sinking THE state of Microsoft is appalling. Don’t be misled by what they pay the media to say. With Ballmer ousted amid many other high-level departures (we used to cover those closely until about a decade ago) it’s hardly surprising that Microsoft creates a fake expectation of growth (or fake prospects) while aligning itself more closely with the military. Bill Gates ‘left’ the Board last year, the layoffs accelerated around the same time (including Azure layoffs), and nowadays more money is spent on bribing/manipulating the media than on R&D. GitHub users are walking away (it’s hard to just buy market share as it’s becoming another CodePlex, just like SoapBox, the so-called YouTube competitor). There are also large-scale LinkedIn layoffs, Skype users walk away (Microsoft had almost a monopoly in VoIP, but that rapidly slipped away), and we mentioned the collapse of IIS earlier today. Internet Explorer/Edge became just a niche browser (they’re just copying Chrome now), Microsoft became totally insignificant in the embedded space, Windows Phone users barely exist anymore, and Chromebooks rapidly replace Windows in many sectors, especially education.

The audio above discusses the emergence of Microsoft (owing to IBM’s deal, set up by the mother of Bill Gates because of her family/dynasty connections), the peaking in the 1990s, and the rapid fall over the past 20 or so years. Microsoft was founded in 1975, 8 years before the GNU Project, and nowadays Microsoft is increasingly irrelevant, void of any substance or merit. █

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FSF and Politics

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF at 6:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The paper above is not new, but it helps connect the FSF to politics. “BTW,” says the person who sent us a tip about it, “speaking of right-wing, I’ve found a 20 pages paper a few days ago, where a person from Sweden traces a direct link between Popper and Hayek (the fathers of neo-liberalism) and the things Eric Raymond says to distinguish OSS/OSI from Libre/FSF. I loved it, as is the kind of work I like to do. It’s also a good example of the things I usually try to warn when talking to software people and call for “politics”, “culture”, “society”, “history”, and stuff like that. Here’s the link.” [PDF]

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Links 29/3/2021: Parrot 4.11, Kate 21.04 Feature Preview, Crystal Language Version 1.0

Posted in News Roundup at 5:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux
- Distributions
- Devices/Embedded
Free Software/Open Source
Leftovers

GNU/Linux
- Desktop/Laptop
  - Why I predict Chrome and Chrome OS will split with the roll out of version 94
    
    We’ve been hearing more and more about LaCrOS in the past few weeks, and I think there’s a reason for that. You see, LaCrOS (Linux and Chrome OS, or a Linux version of Chrome running in Chrome OS) has been in the works for quite some time and even though we don’t have complete confirmation on what Google plans to do with it once completed, there are good reasons to think it is being developed with the idea that Chrome OS and the Chrome browser will cease to be a unified software moving forward. While we’ve posited that may be the case, it still hasn’t been 100% clear that Google will replace the existing Chrome browser on Chromebooks with a standalone, Linux-based version for all users. Instead, as we’ve considered, perhaps the plan is to put LaCrOS into play only when a device reaches the end of life. It’s a plausible scenario and one that could still happen, but I think a much more cohesive plan is in the works.
  - Shells virtual desktop cloud computers turn all your devices into Linux computers
- Server
  - Why Is Linux Hosting So Much More Popular Than Windows?
    
    The 21st century has seen the rapid digitization of life. All things within daily life – be it shopping or eating out or commuting, technology and computers have a role in enabling almost all of these activities. Different countries, organizations and people collaborate on the internet and contribute to a better working world. And the internet works with the use of computers called servers or hosts. Humans interact with computers with the help of operating systems. The importance of Linux reseller hosting stems from the fact a big chunk of the internet (websites) is up and running, thanks to cheap Linux reseller hosting.
  - March 2021 Web Server Survey
    
    nginx gained 3.7 million sites this month and holds 35.3% of the market with a total of 419.6 million sites. By contrast, Apache lost 8.5 million sites and accounts for just over a quarter of all sites with 308.5 million. Microsoft lost 9.6% (-7.5M) of its sites this month and ceded third place to OpenResty which in turn gained 1.2 million (+1.6%).
- Audiocasts/Shows
  - Vim Which Key: Never Forget Your Key Binds
    
    When you have a bunch of custom keybindings in Vim it’s very easy to forget them, but what if we could see the bindings inside of the editor. We can do exactly that with a plugin called Vim Which Key, inspired by an Emacs plugin of the same name.
- Kernel Space
  - Kernel prepatch 5.12-rc5
    
    The 5.12-rc5 kernel prepatch is out for testing. “So if rc4 was perhaps a bit smaller than average, it looks like rc5 is a bigger than average. We’re not breaking any records, but it certainly isn’t tiny, and the rc’s aren’t shrinking. I’m not overly worried yet, but let’s just say that the trend had better not continue, or I’ll start feeling like we will need to make this one of those releases that need an rc8.”
  - Linux Creator Warns Next Kernel Could be Delayed
    
    Linux Torvalds has issued concern about the size of kernel 5.12 and possible delays for its release.
    
    Never one to mince words, Linus Torvalds has released the latest RC (Release Candidate) of the Linux kernel, while expressing a slight bit of concern the size might hinder a timely release. Torvalds went so far as to say, “I’m not overly worried yet, but let’s just say that the trend had better not continue, or I’ll start feeling like we will need to make this one of those releases that need an rc8.” Most Linux kernels go through 7 Release Candidates, which are made available every Sunday.
  - Linux Driver Published For FSP/3Y-Power Server PSUs
    
    For those that happen to be running FSP/3Y-Power hot-swappable power supplies, a Linux driver is en route.
    
    Václav Kubernát of CESNET developed this “fsp-3y” driver for Linux’s hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem so that the exposed monitoring metrics can be tapped by the mainline kernel.
  - Torvalds says Linux kernel 5.12 may ‘need an RC8’ due to size
    
    Linus Torvalds says Linux kernel 5.12 may need a little longer in the oven due to the latest release candidate (RC) having a “bigger than average” size.
    
    Torvalds made the comment in his latest State of the Kernel report where he announced the fifth release candidate of 5.12.
    
    “I’m not overly worried yet, but let’s just say that the trend had better not continue, or I’ll start feeling like we will need to make this one of those releases that need an RC8,” Torvalds wrote.
    
    “We’re not breaking any records, but it certainly isn’t tiny, and the RC’s aren’t shrinking.”
  - Graphics Stack
    - NVIDIA Proposes Mesa Patches To Support Alternative GBM Back-Ends – Phoronix
      
      NVIDIA has proposed a merge request to Mesa that would lay the infrastructure for allowing alternative GBM (Generic Buffer Manager) back-ends to be loaded, such as for NVIDIA’s proprietary driver should it presumably implement GBM in the future.
      
      It looks like NVIDIA is finally taking the GBM route for supporting Wayland compositors with their proprietary driver… For years NVIDIA was against using GBM and instead proposed using EGLStreams. Some compositors like GNOME’s Mutter implemented EGLStreams support but that has only been a mild success with Wayland compositors not liking that rather NVIDIA-specific solution while the open-source GPU drivers all support GBM. NVIDIA also was working on an EGLStreams back-end for KDE and more. The Generic Buffer Management interface is a means of allocating graphics buffers and can be used with EGL. Most Wayland compositors use GBM for their buffer handling given its an abstraction that works across GPU drivers.
- Applications
  - Qt Based Journald API Abstraction (& yet another journald browser)
    
    On modern Linux systems usually you will find systemd as init system. Along with it, there comes journald as a logging backend with many nice and cool features (which I will not tell you anymore about, the Internet will have answers for you). But also when you are looking on embedded devices with the power of a smart phone or like a Raspberry Pi, journald is a really nice logging data sink for you.
    
    When analyzing logs of embedded devices, usually you are not working on the device “directly”, meaning not using the tiny konsole application of your smart phone to browse through the logs. Instead, you are either (1) grabbing the full log database from there for offline analysis or (2) you read the logs online via a network stream. Both is easily doable with journald. For the first use case you can simply (please remember to configure journald to use persistent logs!) copy the database from /var/logs/journal and access them on your developer system via “journalctl -D <path>” and get all the nice processing tooling from journalctrl — journalctl is the default CLI frontent for journald. For the second variant, you can start the journal remote service on the target device and receive the online stream of log information on your host system for analysis.
    
    For the second case there are a few GUI applications available, which nicely solve this problem for you, e.g. qjournalctl (which parses the journalctl CLI input/output) or ksystemlog (yet with the focus of being a generic front-end for various log sinks). Yet, both do not support the parsing of non-system offline logs.
    
    [...]
    
    Since my focus originally was on offline logs, those are the type of logs for which the support works quite well right now. But both online local journals (ie. new log entries are attached while the log is open) as well as remote logs will join soon.
- Instructionals/Technical
  - Monitoring Arch Linux with Prometheus
    
    For monitoring the Arch Linux infrastructure we’ve moved on from Zabbix to Prometheus as it fits more into our infrastructure is code goal. This required some research into how we could achieve the same monitoring with Prometheus. Our Zabbix setup monitored Host, MySQL, Borg and Arch Linux related metrics. For host metrics node_exporter is an excellent solution and mysqld_exporter exists for MySQL. Our Arch Linux where custom Zabbix metrics, which where the number of out date packages and the number of vulnerable installed packages, the Borg metrics is the last backup date of a machine.
    
    For the Borg/Arch Linux metrics there are two options, create a custom exporter which has to be exposed over the network and periodically polled by Prometheus or use node_exporter’s textcollector feature. The textcollector feature of node_exporter works by reading additional metrics from a textfile in a given directory, these metrics are then added to the node_exporter metrics.
  - [Older] Install Anaconda Navigator on Opensuse Tumbleweed or Leap Linux
    
    Anaconda is a Python and R programming distribution created for developers to easily develop and test various python code and applications. It is designed for scientific work and the analysis of (large) amounts of data. Anaconda is free and consists of free software but also offers additional commercial support.
  - Hung Linux System? How to Escape to the Command Line and More
    
    It is not much fun when your Desktop hangs. The fear of lost work, the inability to continue work, and more. But it need not always be like this. Knowing just a little extra – a few shortcut keyboard combinations and a few commands at the command line – will hopefully get you back up and running quickly. It does not always work, but it works often.
  - How to install the Bacula backup server on Ubuntu 20.04
    
    Your server backups are critical to keeping your servers from permanently losing their data. This can happen due to a server crash, a hacker, a misconfigured service and plenty of other reasons. You don’t want to ever have to depend on a backup, but you’ll be thankful it’s there when you do.
  - Four Ways to Speed Up Ubuntu
    
    Ubuntu is already zippy, especially if you’re coming to Linux from the world of Windows. However, you might have heard that there are snappier distributions available. Why is Ubuntu responding slower than they do? Is there anything you can do to give it a boost? The answer is yes. If you feel that your Ubuntu system is becoming “slow,” here are a few ways to speed up your Ubuntu.
  - How to Enable ModSecurity Web Application Firewall inside NGINX Server on the RoseHosting Cloud platform – RoseHosting
    
    Nginx is a free, open-source, and one of the most popular web servers and reverses proxy servers. Mostly, it is used for load balancing and high-performance websites. It offers a rich set of features including, TCP and UDP proxying, auto-indexing, error code redirection, SSL support, fault tolerance, and many more.
    
    ModSecurity is an open-source web application firewall that protects your web server from different kinds of attacks. You can enable this module with Nginx to block some attacks including, SQL injection, bad user agents, session hijacking, trojans, and more.
    
    RoseHosting cloud provides Nginx Stack (application servers and load balancer) with a built-in ModSecurity module. You just need to enable this module in your container.
  - Pi IoT In C Using Linux Drivers – GPIO Character Driver
    
    Linux drivers make working with devices so easy – assuming you know how. The most basic of all hardware is the GPIO and the sysfs way of working is now obsolete. Find out what the new way of doing things is all about.
  - How to Install Ansible AWX on Debian 10
    
    Ansible is an open-source automation tool used for software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. It allows you to install, configure and deploy applications across multiple systems automatically.
    
    AWX is a web-based application used for controlling Ansible. You can manage Ansible playbooks, inventories, Secrets, and scheduled jobs from an AWX web interface.
  - How to install Manjaro 21.0
    
    In this video, I am going to show how to install Manjaro 21.0.
  - Ubuntu: delete app history [Guide]
    
    After using Ubuntu for a while, the app history builds up, slowing down your system. Thankfully, it is easy to clear this app history to speed up your system. In this guide, we’ll show you how.
  - How To Configure Nginx To Work With PHP Via PHP-FPM
    
    Nginx + PHP is one of the most popular groups of software that you can use to build your website. This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to install and configure Nginx to execute PHP on your server using PHP-FPM.
    
    Nginx is the ideal combination with PHP-FPM. It’s a stable web server recognized for its impressive performance and low resource-consumption.
  - How to Install Java on Ubuntu and Remove it When You’re Done
    
    In the world of software development, Java is one of the most widely used programming languages. You can use it for developing websites, desktop software, android applications, and even games.
    
    But before all that, the first thing you need to do is install Java on your machine. Most of the Linux distributions do not have Java preinstalled and users have to install it manually on their system.
    
    In this article, we will discuss how to install and remove Java on Ubuntu, along with a detailed section on JDK and JRE.
  - ISPConfig Perfect Multiserver setup on Ubuntu 20.04 and Debian 10
    
    This tutorial will take you through installing your own ISPConfig 3 multiserver setup with dedicated servers for the panel, web, DNS, mail, and webmail. Both the DNS and mail server will have a mirror server for redundancy. You can easily add more servers of a certain type afterwards.
    
    ISPConfig’s official auto-installer will be used to set up the servers. Debian 10 will be used as operating system. The guide has been tested with Ubuntu 20.04.2 as well.
  - Learning Binary Reversing: Radare2 vs. GDB | Hurricane Labs
    
    I’ve seen this question a few times: is it better to learn Radare2 (r2) or GNU Debugger (GDB)? The short answer is you should learn both. The long answer depends on what you are really asking. I usually see this question posed when someone wants to learn binary reverse engineering. In this case, the real question is, “How should I get started? With GDB or r2?”
  - Show USB Devices Event History Using Usbrip In Linux – OSTechNix
    
    This guide explains what is Usbrip program, how to track the details of connected or disconnected USB devices and also how to show USB devices event history using Usbrip tool in Linux.
  - Install digiKam 7.2.0 in Ubuntu / Linux Mint
    
    digiKam is an advanced open-source photo management application written in Qt and it is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. This application allows you to import, export, manage and edit the raw files.
    
    Digikam team released its stable version 7.2.0 and released on 22th Mar 2021.
    
    This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install digiKam 7.2.0 in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04, and Linux Mint 20.
  - Gaming on Linux? Here’s How to Install Nvidia Drivers on Ubuntu
    
    If you’re intending to run AAA games on Linux, you’ll need to ensure you’re using the latest graphics drivers. But does Nvidia produce a driver for Linux?
    
    Thankfully, yes it does. But how do you install the latest drivers on Ubuntu? Whether you prefer to use the desktop environment or command line, installing and updating the Nvidia graphics driver on Ubuntu is straightforward.
  - Linux 101: How to give users sudo privileges on Ubuntu and Red Hat-based Linux distributions
    
    Most users on your Linux machines might be non-admins who use services and directories for various purposes. However, you might come into a situation when you need to “promote” one of those users to admin and give them sudo privileges.
    
    How do you do that?
    
    Once upon a time, it was required that you edit the sudoers file–which is still very much possible, but not necessary. There’s a much easier and more reliable method of promoting those standard users with sudo privileges. I’m going to show you how to do just that.
    
    I’ll demonstrate on both Ubunutu- and Red Hat-based distributions, specifically, Ubuntu Server and AlmaLinux. You’ll be surprised how easy this is. It’s all about adding those users to the right group. Let’s first do this on Ubuntu Server.
  - Great Finds: How to Operate on Multiple, Diverse Files at Once
    
    With disk space nowadays reaching into multiple terabytes, even on a humble laptop, operating systems offer sophisticated tools to search for files. Many of these tools present simple graphical interfaces. But for great flexibility and power, it serves you well to turn to a classic Unix tool, the find command.
  - How to configure static IP address on Alpine Linux
    
    At home or in a cloud environment, IP addresses are assigned dynamically by the DHCP server. Setting a static IP address on your Alpine Linux server is required for various reasons. For instance, Alpine Linux is configured as a DHCP server or KVM server to host multiple VMs. Static IP address makes it easy to work with port forwarding, firewalling, and HTTPS server too. This quick tutorial will explain how to set up a static IP address on Alpine Linux.
  - YUM Command in Linux – A Definitive Guide
    
    YUM also called “Yellowdog Updater” is a package management tool for RPM-based Linux distributions including, RHEL, CentOS and Fedora operating systems. It is used to install, update, remove, find and manage packages on Linux.
  - Try These Fixes When Your Sound Is Not Working In Chrome
    
    Few situations that occur during daily internet browsing are more annoying than a video where the sound doesn’t play. You’ve probably experienced this at some point or another, and you’re not alone – it’s a very common issue. Fortunately, most of the time it’s nothing serious, and solving this problem merely requires following a few straightforward steps.
  - Ansible Playbook to Install and Setup Apache on Ubuntu
    
    Ansible is an open-source configuration management and application deployment tool. It helps to reduce managerial overhead by automating the deployment of the app and managing IT infrastructure.
    
    Using ansible we are going to install apache2 web server in Ubuntu 20.04. For which we need to create a configuration in YAML syntax called Ansible playbooks.
    
    Normally, there is a control node and host nodes. Ansible is installed in the control node and will execute the playbook to deploy in host nodes. In this lab, we are going to install and use it in a single node.
    
    [...]
    
    Ansible is a helpful tool as it is agentless and writing configuration is easy. You can browse more configurations from ansible official documentation. Please do comment if you have any issues while writing the playbook on ansible.
  - Setting up a VM on Fedora Server using Cloud Images and virt-install version 3 – Fedora Magazine
    
    The standard virtualization tool for Fedora Server is libvirt. For a long time the only way to create a virtual Fedora Server instance was to create a libvirt VM and run the standard Anaconda installation. Several tools exist to make this procedure as comfortable and fail-safe as possible, e.g. a Cockpit module. The process is pretty straight forward and every Fedora system administrator is used to it.
    
    With the advent of cloud systems came cloud images. These are pre-built ready-to-run virtual servers. Fedora provides specialized images for various cloud systems as well as Fedora Cloud Base image, a generic optimized VM. The image image is copied to the server and used by a virtual machine as an operational file system.
    
    These images save the system administrator the time-consuming process of many individual passes through Anaconda. An installation merely requires the invocation of virt-install with suitable parameters. It is a CLI tool, thus easily scriptable and reproducible. In a worst case emergency, a replacement VM can be set up quickly.
    
    Fedora Cloud Base images are integrated into the Fedora QA Process. This prevents subtle inconsistencies that may lead to not-so-subtle problems during operation. For any system administrator concerned about security and reliability, this is an incredibly valuable advantage over libvirt compatible VM images from third party vendors. Cloud images speed up the deployment process as well.
  - Doing simple backups to Google Drive on Ubuntu 20.04 – Techzim
    
    Like everyone else I am one of those people who like to speak about the importance of backups, in reality, I rarely follow through on my own advice especially when it comes to important files on my computer. That changed this weekend when I decided to roll my sleeves and implement automatic backups on my primary laptop. It wasn’t at all what I expected.
- Games
  - Space station building sim Starmancer gets a Beta on March 31, pre-orders to stop
    
    Ominux Games have announced their exciting upcoming space station building sim Starmancer is coming along nicely, and there’s a Beta going up on March 31.
    
    This Beta will be supported across Linux, macOS and Windows and will be available to people who pre-order before March 31 as that will be stopped after then, plus people who pledged for Beta access on Kickstarter also get access. The developer made it clear this is not a “fear-of-missing-out tactic”, and to wait until the release if that’s better for you. Likely it’s just to cut down on the amount of reports to a manageable level.
  - Godot Engine – Editor improvements for Godot 4.0
    
    If you are following me on Twitter (where I post my progress on different Godot features I work on), you might have noticed that I took a two month break from rendering to work on many long standing editor improvements and features.
    
    While I am far from being the only contributor working on editor-related tasks, I put together a list of everything I have been working for the past two months!
  - Linux Steering Wheel Manager Oversteer v0.6.0 Brings support For 6 Additional Wheels
    
    Oversteer is a graphical application that lets you configure steering wheels connected to GNU/Linux machines – assuming they are supported by the Linux kernel or user-space drivers. The latest version has a new profile manager and support configuring 6 additional steering wheels.
    
    [...]
    
    Oversteer is a graphical application that lets you configure steering wheels connected to GNU/Linux machines so they work as desired in games like SuperTuxKart. It is a useless application if you do not have a steering wheel, and it is only useful if the one(s) you have work thanks to a built-in Linux kernel driver or a third party driver.
  - Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer – Part 5: Quaking in My Boots
    
    Dave Taylor can be credited with kickstarting the commercial Linux gaming industry with his ports of the games Doom and Abuse. Before leaving id Software he also graced us with a Linux port of Quake, which while unofficial and unsupported was later taken by Macmillan Digital Publishing to form the basis of their retail Quake: The Offering package. This included not only Quake but also its two mission packs, Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity.
    
    To install Quake: The Offering on Red Hat Linux 7.3 you need SVGAlib, which I got using the svgalib-1.9.25-1.rh7.rf.i386.rpm package from freshrpms. The setup will still complain about not having libglide2x.so and will skip installing the quake-1.09-glibc-5.i386.rpm package, but you can install it off the disc using rpm and the “–nodeps” flag to skip the dependency check. Then download and copy libglide2x.so to /usr/lib manually to avoid conflicts with the Glide3 package.
    
    In terms of software rendering you can either launch the squake binary to use SVGAlib from the command line or you can launch the quake.x11 binary to run the game in an X11 window. Full screen is only supported using SVGAlib, and while it can be ran with hardware acceleration through the use of the glquake binary, this will only work on 3dfx Voodoo cards. Everyone else is stuck using the glquake.glx binary within an X11 window.
    
    This is a temperamental port. As well as not allowing for full screen glquake.glx is also a creature of the XFree86 server. This means it will use the system gamma and the mouse cursor will be drawn on top of the window. This being Linux, I was able to create a BASH shell script that blanks the pointer, increases the brightness, and loads the correct libGL.so.1.2 library file. I also included a menu for selecting either Quake or one of its two mission packs as an added bonus.
    
    Mouselook is a separate issue. The most reliable way to make this work I found was dropping down the game console and entering both “+mlook” and “_windowed_mouse 1” each time I launched the program. Playing with SVGAlib must be done with root privileges, but the X11 binaries can be ran from a regular user account if the ownership of the glquake.glx binary is changed to the user and write permission is given for the rogue, hipnotic, and id1 directories.
  - Total War: Three Kingdoms – Fates Divided Is Now Available For Linux
    
    The British game studio Feral Interactive has a long history of making GNU/Linux versions of the games they develop and/or port mostly on the behest of partners like Sega, Warner Bros and Codemasters.
    
    Feral Interactive has now made a GNU/Linux version of their “Fates Divided” add-on to their somewhat popular “Total War: Three Kingdoms” game released in May 2019.
    
    Feral Interactive does not make free software, only closed-source proprietary software, so you will have to pay €10 or $12 for the “Fates Divided” add-on in addition to €60 or $71 for the “Total War: Three Kingdoms” game if you want to try “Total War: Three Kingdoms – Fates Divided”. We’re not about to send Britannia €70 just to try this game, so we can’t comment on its graphics, game-play or quality. All we can say for sure is that both “Total War: Three Kingdoms” and the “Fates Divided” add-on are available for GNU/Linux. We haven’t even tested if they work.
  - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS – Fates Divided out now for Linux
    
    Developer and game porter Feral Interactive announced today that the Total War: THREE KINGDOMS – Fates Divided DLC is now supported in the Linux version.
    
    Fates Divided brings a host of new faction mechanics, start dates, objectives and reworked systems to existing lords from the base game and previous Chapter Packs. Released simultaneously, a free update also introduces Liu Yan’s new cross-generational faction into the fray, with two unique units of their own and a brand new succession mechanic.
- Desktop Environments/WMs
  - K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
    - Kate 21.04 Feature Preview
      
      If you wonder: what is KDE Gear? That is the new name for the KDE release service.
      
      This had different names in the past, like “KDE Applications” that were misleading, as not all KDE based applications are released together like this. For example neither Krita is part of KDE Gear nor is KDevelop, to just name a few.
      
      After some releases with the very neutral “release service” moniker, we are now back to have some more recognizable branding for this bundle of applications: KDE Gear. I like that ;=)
  - GNOME Desktop/GTK
    - Gnome 40 – The anti-desktop desktop
      
      Gnome 40 is Gnome. Simple. A desktop environment that caters to a weird “minimalistic” model that introduces touch-like inefficiency into the world of classic computing. The naming conventions falsely raises expectations, but it’s a standard release, with a few new options, a few small visual changes, and some tweaks behind the scenes. You can’t really decouple most of the experience from Fedora.
      
      I wasn’t impressed really. Scaling, fonts, overall ergonomics are all off – and slowly getting worse as time goes by. Just setting up the framework to use extensions – so you can have basic desktop functionality present in 100% of all other desktop setups in the world – is frustrating. A total waste of time. I need a dozen steps just to be able to see my application shortcuts all the time. Why bother? However, there’s one advantage to Gnome – it’s a good indicator of where the future of Linux lies. So a decade from now, the Linux desktop will gently, gracefully make itself completely irrelevant to everyday computing. But hey. I’m on my happy pills. Smiley face, bye bye.
- Distributions
  - Maybe will close down the EasyOS Forum
    
    The fundamental problem for me is that EasyOS is a stop-start project. I go off onto other things, then do not watch over the forum as perhaps should happen. It may be that hiatuses will become longer duration in the future.
    
    It is simpler to piggy-back on the Puppy Forum, as do all the *Dog distributions. It takes advantage of the guys such as ‘rockedge’ who maintain and safeguard the forum.
    
    Another factor is that I visit the Puppy Forum regularly, and continue to find it to be a valuable resource for sharing of ideas within the extended “Puppy family”. This cross-pollination is, I think, invaluable.
  - Screenshots/Screencasts
    - Debian 10.9 Run Through
      
      In this video, we are looking at Debian 10.9.
    - Debian 10.9
      
      Today we are looking at Debian 10.8. It comes with Linux Kernel 4.19, XFCE 4.12, and uses about 400 MB of ram when idling.
  - IBM/Red Hat/Fedora
    - How partners are helping customers embrace the cloud with Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA)
      
      Last week, Red Hat and AWS announced the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA), a fully managed and jointly supported offering that enables organizations to build, deploy and manage applications with Red Hat OpenShift, delivered as a native AWS service accessible through the AWS Management Console.
      
      The availability of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS gives our customers and partners a managed, self-service option to run OpenShift in the AWS cloud, making it even easier for customers to adopt containers, migrate workloads to AWS and deploy their applications faster.
    - Using cloud technology to create better digital banking experiences
      
      Defining “the next normal” of a digital business may prove to be as elusive as the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The digital world around is rapidly changing and is straining the systems and processes of banks that created over the last two decades.
      
      Customers may be increasingly impatient and demanding. As they shift between digital and physical products, services, and channels, banks will need to rapidly pivot to keep them happy. This requires spending as much or more time on shoring up transactional systems as it does on digital applications. For instance, a payment service needs to be connected to customer and account information along with financial crime prevention services and, of course, payment networks. The user interface is important, but it is only one component of the larger customer experience.
  - Debian Family
    - Parrot 4.11 Security OS Released with Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS, Updating Hacking Tools
      
      Arriving more than seven months after Parrot 4.10, the Parrot 4.11 release is powered by the latest LTS (Long-Term Support) Linux 5.10 kernel series for better hardware support and includes up-to-date core components based on the stable Debian GNU/Linux 10 “Buster” operating system repositories.
      
      While Parrot 4.11 ships with Linux 5.10 LTS as the default kernel, the team plans to upgrade the system to the recently released Linux 5.11 kernel series since Parrot follows a rolling-release model. But they did not provide a time frame for doing so, and if you install Parrot 4.11 make sure you keep it up to date.
  - Canonical/Ubuntu Family
    - Design and Web team summary – 29 March 2021
      
      The web team at Canonical run two-week iterations building and maintaining all of Canonical websites and product web interfaces. Here are some of the highlights of our completed work from this iteration.
- Devices/Embedded
  - Ubuntu Touch port for the Fairphone 3 running Android 10
    
    The Fairphone 3 is a smartphone manufactured using ethically-sourced materials when possible and designed to be repairable – the phone’s maker sells replacement parts and even a camera upgrade module that essentially turns the phone into a Fairphone 3+.
    
    While the Fairphone 3 ships with Android software, the bootloader is unlockable and you can install alternate operating systems including the Android-based LineageOS or /e/OS as well as GNU-Linux distributions like Ubuntu Touch.
    
    A few months ago a version of Ubuntu Touch for the Fairphone 3 and 3+ was released. It was designed for installation on phones running Android 9. Now there’s a new build that’s compatible with Fairphone 3 series smartphones running Android 10.
  - Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, and Ryzen SBCs run at -30 to 80°C with auto heat-up feature
    
    DFI’s Coffee Lake based “CS551” 3.5-inch SBC features an auto heat-up function that enables a -30 to 80°C range. The feature also appears on new, Whiskey Lake based, 2.5-inch “WL051” and Ryzen-based, 3.5-inch “GH551” SBCs.
    
    DFI has announced a 3.5-inch CS551 SBC built around Intel’s 8th and 9th Gen CPUs claimed to be the first Coffee Lake SBC with a -30 to 80°C operating range. The Linux-ready SBC is also claimed to be the first SBC of any kind with an automatic heat-up function.
    
    The heat-up feature enables the -30°C minimum by automatically heating the CPU when it drops below the chip’s typical lower range of 0°C. On the high end, the systems supports up to 80°C instead of the usual 60°C in part by dynamically allocating computing resources between the CPU and GPU. On higher-TDP models, a fan option is required to achieve the range.
  - Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
- Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
  - Web Browsers
    - Mozilla
      - Cameron Kaiser: The end of TenFourFox and what I’ve learned from it
        
        I’ve been mulling TenFourFox’s future for awhile now in light of certain feature needs that are far bigger than a single primary developer can reasonably embark upon, and recent unexpected changes to my employment, plus other demands on my time, have unfortunately accelerated this decision.
        
        TenFourFox FPR32 will be the last official feature parity release of TenFourFox. (A beta will come out this week, stay tuned.) However, there are still many users of TenFourFox — the update server reports about 2,000 daily checkins on average — and while nothing has ever been owed or promised I also appreciate that many people depend on it, so there will be a formal transition period. After FPR32 is released TenFourFox will drop to security parity and the TenFourFox site will become a placeholder. Security parity means that the browser will only receive security updates plus certain critical fixes (as I define them, such as crash wallpaper, basic adblock and the font blacklist). I will guarantee security and stability patches through and including Firefox 93 (scheduled for September 7) to the best of my ability, which is also the point at which Firefox 78ESR will stop support, and I will continue to produce, generate and announce builds of TenFourFox with those security updates on the regular release schedule with chemspills as required. There will be no planned beta releases after FPR32 but Tenderapp will remain available to triage bugfixes for new changes only.
      - How one woman founder pivoted her company online while supporting small businesses
        
        Eighteen years ago Susie Daly started Renegade Craft as a way to build a community of artists through in-person events. When COVID-19 and the corresponding shutdown put a stop to all in-person events, like art fairs, Susie had to quickly create a new strategy for her business. This plan involved seven virtual events, revamping an online shop for artists, cost-cutting measures, and selling a lot of face masks. Like most of us, Renegade Craft has been re-shaped permanently by the events of 2020. They will be continuing the digital efforts they pivoted to this year, but also hope to host their first in-person event in over 18 months later this year. Here’s how the business was able to move their community online, helping countless small businesses, when people needed it more than ever.
  - CMS
    - Structure & Design WordPress Homepage | WordPress 101
      
      Welcome back to WordPress 101 series. WordPress 101 series aims to teach WordPress CMS to beginners. In this article, we are going to learn to better structure and design the website homepage with WordPress.
      
      Homepage is the main page on your WordPress site. If better designed and structured, your website’s homepage can represent the entire website content making it easier for visitors to understand it.
      
      With WordPress, you can create good homepage designs even without buying a premium theme. No doubt, premium themes have a ton of advantages and make everything a lot easier. Premium themes have a pile of widgets and blocks to showcase different types of content beautifully such as images, videos, products, and more.
    - WP Briefing: Talking Full Site Editing with Matías Ventura
      
      In this episode, Josepha is joined by Matías Ventura, also known as “the spark behind the vision of Gutenberg.” Josepha and Matías discuss full site editing and answer your questions, from “is full site editing a standalone plugin?” to “will full site editing break my current site?”
    - WP Briefing: How WordPress Improves
      
      In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy explores the WordPress release process. Tune in and learn the phases of a release and catch this week’s small list of big things.
    - WP Briefing: My Typical Day as WordPress’s Executive Director
      
      In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy speaks to her role as the Executive Director of WordPress.
  - FSF
    - Red Hat withdraws from the Free Software Foundation after Stallman’s return
      
      Last week, Richard M. Stallman—father of the GNU Public License that underpins Linux and a significant part of the user-facing software that initially accompanied the Linux kernel—returned to the board of the Free Software Foundation after a two-year hiatus due to his own highly controversial remarks about his perception of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims as “entirely willing.”
    - Red Hat pulls funding from Free Software Foundation
      
      In a major vote of no-confidence, popular open source vendor Red Hat has axed all monetary support to the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
      
      Red Hat announcement follows the return of FSF’s former president, Richard Stallman (RMS) to the board of directors of the organization he founded.
    - Jamie McClelland: The problem with Richard Stallman is not about free speech
      
      There are profound reasons why any movement interested in equitable and open participation would want to publicly distance themselves from Stallman. However, the long form defenses of Stallman, including a note from Nadine Strossen, the former executive director of the ACLU, quoted in this defense, persist.
      
      Many of the arguments defending Richard Stallman (including the one from Strossen) are grounded in a belief that Stallman is being punished for his unpopular political views, which deserve to be defended on the grounds of freedom of expression.
      
      That’s wrong.
    - More changes at the Free Software Foundation
      
      John Sullivan, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, has announced his resignation from the organization. “It’s been a humbling honor to serve this institution, and to work alongside the FSF’s staff, members, and volunteers over the years. The current staff deserve your full confidence and support — they certainly have mine.”
    - Free Software Foundation leaders and supporters desert sinking ship [Ed: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols lying and defaming as usual; the FSF removes RMS-hostile elements and that's what's happening right now.]
    - GNU Projects
      - GnuCash 4.5
        
        GnuCash is a personal and small business finance application, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. It’s designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible. GnuCash allows you to track your income and expenses, reconcile bank accounts, monitor stock portfolios and manage your small business finances. It is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports.
        
        GnuCash can keep track of your personal finances in as much detail as you prefer. If you are just starting out, use GnuCash to keep track of your checkbook. You may then decide to track cash as well as credit card purchases to better determine where your money is being spent. When you start investing, you can use GnuCash to help monitor your portfolio. Buying a vehicle or a home? GnuCash will help you plan the investment and track loan payments. If your financial records span the globe, GnuCash provides all the multiple-currency support you need.
      - GNU Taler news: Why a Digital Euro should be Online-first and Bearer-based
        
        The report does not discuss other choices of hybrid systems. However, the choice is more arbitrary than it might seem at first sight: bearer-based systems are not necessarily offline payment systems, and online payment systems do not need to exclude anonymity.
        We argue that operating a bearer-based payment system to complement an account-based CBDC in order to gain offline and privacy features is not a good trade-off. Adding permanent, regular offline capabilities via the bearer-based payment instrument constantly exposes the CBDC to the severe issues inherent in offline-capable payment systems. Instead, the offline mode of operation should be restricted to scenarios where it is actually required, which mitigates the risks.
  - Programming/Development
    - What is Glassmorphism? Create This New Design Effect Using Only HTML and CSS
    - Constructors in Dart – Use Cases and Examples
      
      Most of us are familiar with the concept of constructors. They allow us to create different instances of our classes. We can specify which parameters the class should depend on when it is being instantiated and hide inner initialization logic.
      
      We can have many constructors for different use cases, or we can rely on the default one.
      
      In dart, constructors play a similar role, but have several variations that do not exist in most programming languages. This article will go over the different use cases and examples of constructors.
    - How to Implement the Paxos Algorithm in Pure Functions
      
      This analogy is the same problem that we encounter in distributed systems, but you are dealing with many servers this time. We want to make many servers agree on common events or common information in an asynchronous environment.
      
      You can use many algorithms to solve the problems, and today we will talk about one of them: the Paxos Algorithm.
      
      Paxos is one of the earliest published papers about this distributed consensus algorithm that runs rounds and rounds of times to help many servers agree on a value proposed by a group member.
    - Bayes’ Rule Explained For Beginners
      
      Bayes’ Rule is the most important rule in data science. It is the mathematical rule that describes how to update a belief, given some evidence. In other words – it describes the act of learning.
    - Crystal 1.0 – What to expect
      
      The release of the first major release of Crystal arrives after many years of hard work. With thousands of contributions from people worldwide, it was finally possible to find consensus for what truly mattered for 1.0 and what could wait for future releases. Getting here wasn’t an easy journey, filled with enriching, controversial, delightful, and endless conversations that, in the end, made it possible to build a language more useful for more users.
      
      But what does it mean to have a 1.0 version? After all, the process of receiving valuable contributions and evolving the language will not stop after this milestone. Let’s dig deeper to understand the true meaning of this release for the community, especially those already using Crystal in production environments.
    - Crystal Language Version 1.0 Released
      
      Crystal’s syntax, according to the website, “is heavily inspired by Ruby’s, so it feels natural to read and easy to write, and has the added benefit of a lower learning curve for experienced Ruby devs.”
    - Perl/Raku
      - Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.13 Games Pop
        
        JJ Atria just announced another part of the Raku Programming Language’s growing support for games: POP, an experimental 2D game development framework. It has been inspired by frameworks like LÓVE2D and Pico-8, and by others of a similar nature. Meanwhile, it turns out that this work is complementary to Geoffrey Broadwell‘s MUGS (Multi-User Gaming Services) project. Which made it the right time to start a new IRC channel dedicated to game development using the Raku Programming Language: #raku-gamedev on Freenode.
    - Rust
      - Async Vision Doc Writing Sessions III
        
        Ryan Levick and I are hosting a number of public drafting sessions scheduled this week. Some of them are scheduled early to cover a wider range of time zones.

Leftovers
- Integrity/Availability
  - Proprietary
    - Security
      - PHP Git repository server compromised
        
        The PHP project has announced that it is moving its PHP repository to GitHub after its own server was compromised.
      - Counterterrorism Hackers Behind Large Hack Google Identified
        
        We’re so conditioned to be wary of cybersecurity issues that we forget that white hat hackers and grey hat hackers exist. Even major tech companies like Google forget – or choose not to remember. The large hacking operation Google outed was actually being carried out by counterterrorism hackers.
        
        [...]
        
        China, North Korea, and Russia are often called out by hackers backed by U. S. rivals. Project Zero didn’t blame anyone when identifying the 11 zero-day attacks. However, because these originated from an ally, it caused some drama at Google.
        
        Which ally was carrying out this attack has not been divulged, nor has the basis for the counterterrorism operation.
        
        MIT Technology Review reported that Google might have left out those details intentionally. It’s not even clear whether the Project Zero researchers notified the hackers before they outed them in January.
      - Security updates for Monday
        
        Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (awstats, busybox, dotnet-runtime, dotnet-runtime-3.1, dotnet-sdk, dotnet-sdk-3.1, gitlab, godot, groovy, libebml, mkinitcpio-busybox, openssl, python2, vivaldi, webkit2gtk, and wpewebkit), CentOS (firefox and thunderbird), Debian (pygments, spamassassin, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (CGAL, dotnet3.1, dotnet5.0, firefox, kernel, qt, and xen), Mageia (imagemagick, jackson-databind, openscad, redis, and unbound), openSUSE (evolution-data-server, go1.15, and zstd), Oracle (firefox, openssl, and thunderbird), Red Hat (flatpak), Slackware (xterm), and Ubuntu (squid, squid3 and webkit2gtk).
- Monopolies
  - Amended Apple-Intel complaint against Fortress alleges monopolization of markets such as ‘Generating Alerts Based on Blood Oxygen Level Patents Market’
    
    Earlier this month, Apple and Intel filed their second amended complaint against Fortress Investment. It all started in October 2019 with an Intel antitrust lawsuit in the Northern District of California, which was effectively replaced with a joint Apple-Intel filing in November 2019.
    
    The November 2019 filing was 57 pages long, but not specific enough to meet the pleading requirements in Judge Edward M. Chen’s opinion. The complaint has meanwhile grown to 161 pages plus a 17-page table. In many other cases, this would suggest that additional claims have been added. Here, however, the complaint is actually more narrowly focused, and the prayers for relief are the same as in the original complaint except an additional request for “[a]n order directing the termination of the anticompetitive conduct and injunctive relief that restores competition to the markets at issue.”
    
    The fact that Qualcomm’s Ninth Circuit victory over the FTC won’t be appealed to the Supreme Court doesn’t make things easier for Apple and Intel, but it makes Apple and Intel v. Fortress even more important: whether this case reaches the appeals court before or after trial, and regardless of who prevails in this case, it will present an opportunity for the Ninth Circuit to clarify that FTC v. Qualcomm doesn’t immunize patent-related practices from antitrust liability to the far-reaching extent that some would have us all believe.
    
    Even if–in a totally hypothetical but conceivable scenario–all that Apple and Intel achieved in the Fortress case was a trend reversal from FTC v. Qualcomm, that would be a strategic breakthrough in its own right.
    
    [...]
    
    The question before Judge Chen at this point is whether the pleading requirements for an antitrust case are met. It’s not that Apple and Intel didn’t state these types of allegations before, but broad assertions just weren’t deemed sufficient to go forward with the case.
    
    But long before this case goes to trial, or before an appeals court might hear a dismissal with prejudice, policy makers should pay attention to what Apple and Intel describe in their complaint. How much leverage, such as in the form of injunctive relief, do we as a society want to give patent owners who don’t make products that compete with the ones they accuse of infringement? In the U.S., there are limits under eBay v. MercExchange, which some lawmakers on Capitol Hill would like to overturn. In Germany, NPEs have the same access to injunctive relief as all other patent holders (and the patent injunction reform that may be enacted in the coming months won’t change that). Interestingly, the complaint notes that “VLSI is seeking to enjoin Intel in multiple litigations in China.” That’s the Fortress-funded company that recently won a $2.2 billion verdict against Intel in the Western District of Texas. Another VLSI v. Intel trial in the Western District of Texas–where many major technology companies get sued as I discussed in my previous post–will go to trial next month.
  - Patents
    - Artificial Intelligence: Where is Human After All? [Ed: Insane law firms that promote illegal software patents and the extremely harmful (also unconstitutional) UPC never met a patent applications they did not like]
      
      I can imagine what the reader might think when reading these few lines: another text on artificial intelligence (“AI”) and the Patent Law! (With perhaps: the author is obsessed with the Daft Punk split[1]). My mantra is: “Never disappoint the reader”! So both are true. That said, concerning the reception of AI by Patent Law I recently published two articles – one in English available on SSRN and one, more substantial, in Revue Propriétés Intellectuelles (i.e. a French peer review). I would like to resume here to the main conclusions of both [2].
      
      The aim of my work was (and is still), essentially, to insist on the need to (re)take the right road, despite what I like to call “the DABUS Joke”. Thus, in the two above mentioned articles, which include a preamble and two parts, I propose a simple thesis: it is necessary to take into account what artificial intelligence really is, technically, to be able to apply it Patent Law rules, by considering AI from two perspectives: that of the Subject of Patent Law and that of the Object of Patent Law[3].
    - An incredible invention (incredible = not credible).
      
      The Patent Office rejected applications as inoperative and the Federal Circuit has affirmed. Operability is not expressly required by the patent act, but is directly derived from the utility doctrine of 35 U.S.C. § 101 (“new and useful”). In addition, an inoperative creation also lacks enablement — especially in situations like this where the claims are directed to a functional result and not just the machine assembly.
    - Software Patents
      - Dominion Harbor entity, Sovereign Peak Ventures, patent challenged
        
        On March 26, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,042,457, owned by Sovereign Peak Ventures, a Dominion Harbor entity. The ’457 patent relates to video processing and has been against LG and TCL.
      - World’s biggest portfolios revealed; Sony IP strategy exclusive; Change of guard at CAFC; East Asia EPO biotech boom; Brazilian patents in peril; and much more [Ed: Joff Wild of IAM is enabling EPO crimes by pretending their decisions are objective, e.g. regarding software patents in this case. This scandal will unfold and Wild has no diplomatic immunity, just bribes from the EPO]
        
        The EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal has confirmed that all CII patent applications should be treated the same way during the examination process. Read more here
        
        [...]
        
        An explosion in east Asian biotech applications at the EPO suggests new opportunities for European IP law and attorney firms.
      - BCS Software patent challenged
        
        On March 26, 2021, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 7,302,612, owned by BCS Software LLC. The ’612 patent relates to a high-level operational support framework for monitoring, assessing, and managing the health of applications (or components/objects) in a distributed computing environment. The ‘612 patent has been asserted against Hewlett Packard, Elster Solutions (Honeywell), Landis+Gyr, and Itron.

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Looks Like the Pro-FSF Petition Will Double the Number of Signatures of FSF Haters

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF at 5:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Chart created by LinuxReviews using GIMP, modified by us with improvised curves (crude linear extrapolated curves)

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Microsoft’s Death in Web Servers Accelerates Further (10% of Sites Lost in Just One Month!)

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Servers at 12:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

It’s a bloodbath!

Video download link

Summary: The corporate ‘tech’ media never mentions it, but Microsoft is becoming a dying breed in Web servers (watch the video above) and it will have to quit that sector altogether some time soon

OVER the past few months we’ve closely observed the collapse of IIS and Windows in Web servers [1, 2, 3]. Today, or just over an hour ago, this latest report was published and said “Microsoft lost 9.6% (-7.5M) of its sites this month and ceded third place to OpenResty which in turn gained 1.2 million (+1.6%).”

“Shouldn’t that be all over the corporate ‘tech’ media?”Losing 10% in just one month is huge. Maybe people need to focus on that instead of some phony scandal over an E-mail sent 2 years ago (not the E-mails that really matter). IIS might be a dead product in 1-2 years from now, leaving Microsoft in the (Web) server space no better than it is in HPC/supercomputers. Shouldn’t that be all over the corporate ‘tech’ media? Well, when Microsoft pays the sites which claim to cover “tech” they’d rather defame RMS on political (non-tech) matters than cover actual tech news. █

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A South American Perspective on Misframing the Debate about Free Software and Critics of Bill Gates

Posted in Bill Gates, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 10:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

OSI and Gates

Last year the OSI became a Microsoft (GitHub) reseller and little more

Summary: In 2021 it has become harder to have a rational discussion, based on underlying facts, when it comes to Microsoft’s co-founder, who continues to meddle in the affairs of the Free software community (sometimes subversion, sometimes just distraction)

THIS might shock some people, but the OSI isn't exactly tolerant (except tolerance for the intolerant), it's nowadays serving Microsoft, and it’s doing openwashing more than Open Source. That’s similar to the Gates-connected "Inner Source" (proprietary rebranded, or GitHub — being proprietary — as “ethical”). While it’s true that Gates has his finger in a lot of things, some people go too far and falsely associate him with crazy things. That, in turn, helps him demonise if not censor/silence his critics.

A reader of ours from Argentina (longtime reader; well over a decade) sent us a detailed analysis or thoughts about the RMS issue, noting the role it has served to distract from the real MIT scandal (Epstein and Gates; how many people even remember that?), as we noted yesterday. For those who missed yesterday’s story, the gist is the framing of all Gates critics as paranoid conspiracy theorists (or “Conspiranoia Strawman Attacks Defending Bill Gates” by means of false connotations).

We’re aware that many of our readers have been noticing the same thing (in every country, in every language). The Gates-funded media likes to portray people who mention Gates in a negative context as merely a bunch of dangerous cranks. Some of them might be, but the media doesn’t like putting the focus on those with legitimate criticisms. That would disrupt the false narrative, wouldn’t it?

“Whatever the case,” our reader told us, “I want to share with you some notes about my perspective of the whole Gates issue. Mainly because I have very few people that I can talk about these issues with. So please feel no rush to read this, as I know you have lots of things to do, and of course also no need to answer.”

We’ve decided to make some grammatical changes (purely grammatical and typographical), knowing that many people out there must have experienced the same thing, not just in South America (Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking spheres). I know for a fact we’ve come across those cranks, even here in Manchester.

“Think about it: what the hell has Argentina’s conservative and non-techie middle class (the anti-quarantine sector here) got ANYTHING to do with Bill Gates? How did that person end up with that placard?”
–Anonymous“Please take a look at this,” the reader said. “That’s an anti-quarantine woman, protesting last year in Buenos Aires when the national government stated strong measures against COVID. There were lots of those. Think about it: what the hell has Argentina’s conservative and non-techie middle class (the anti-quarantine sector here) got ANYTHING to do with Bill Gates? How did that person end up with that placard?”

“It’s not isolated. Here’s Spain. And the thing goes all around the world. You surely recognize that, so I’ll just stop the details there.”

Here in Techrights we’ve taken note of it countless times before, especially last year. The grievances expressed were largely or partly misplaced, based entirely on speculation when in fact there were perfectly factual grounds for berating Gates and even arresting the man. He was arrested several times in the past, so he knows the feeling…

“The COVID crisis made Gates suddenly some kind of secret villain behind the curtains,” our reader wrote. “At least for the anti-vaxers and anti-quarantine people (and anti-science in general too).”

Then Gates would pose as a scientist in the media (he never studied science; never graduated from college, either) and say that all his critics were basically “against science…”

Convenient, isn’t it? Straw man all around…

“But the COVID case is just opportunistic,” our reader noted. “Bill Gates had the same role in the 5G conspiranoia before that. And the 5G conspiranoia was (IIRC) a 2019 thing: the same year of Gates reveals and RMS cancellation. With COVID, there’s a strong reason to be paranoid: the whole world is afraid of an invisible death agent. It’s frankly almost understandable. But 5G? Fricking cellphone antennae? What the hell was that? And before that, Bill Gates was not a thing outside of the Free Software spaces, and very few other places (like the Gates Foundation’s investigations, which NEVER happened to appear in any media around here, and maybe the Monsanto links). How did that happen?”

Whatever the case, right now many people hesitate to name Gates (in a negative way) for fear of falsely associating with some stigmatised group.

“The COVID crisis made Gates suddenly some kind of secret villain behind the curtains…”
–Anonymous“Of course,” our reader continued, “as you say in your post, these tactics are not anything new. I know that. Straw men and ad hominem attacks are the basis of non-debating, and the quickest tools in rhetoric. Thing is, you can’t just do that to the other side of the world by snapping your fingers, just like that. That’s something else. 5G is not a thing in Argentina, yet there was a bunch of paranoid people speaking about that, long before COVID. It was a successful narrative (to some degree) even here. That’s not normal, as we have totally different cultures, history, and problems compared to the US or UK (two places where I’ve seen reports about anti-5G protests). Here’s what troubles me: In Argentina, I have but two records of something like this happening before. By “something like this” I mean “right-wing middle class successfully gathered under some foreign narrative”.”

“The first one was during the seventies: the age of Latin American “red scare”. That time, Argentina’s right-wing middle class was tolerant of (when not celebrating) military coups and anti-Communist-related death campaigns. The “foreign” part wasn’t exactly Communism (as we had Chile’s elected government, Cuba, and the whole Cold War), but who where staging all the combined military coups (and economic changes) on the region: that was Plan Condor.”

“The second one began in about 2008, close to the financial crisis, when a new wave of strong anti-Communism hit Argentina’s right-wing middle class, and the first steps of lawfare in the region started. This seems to be slowly ending now, with Argentina’s late 2019 government, Bolivia coup rejected by popular vote, and Lula’s legal status cleared just days ago. Yet, it is a still-alive thing, and the common denominators are the same: same media conglomerates spreading noise, same US-led influences on key state people through embassies. Many of us say around here that combined lawfare actions in Latin America are a second (and active) Plan Condor.”

“And now this: right-wing middle class getting on the train of conspiranoia from somewhere else, taking it to the streets and affecting mainstream politics. This time it looks almost totally random, until you see things like these.” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (All are images)

“It’s the same people. The same anti-Communist sector from the seventies (you can see anti-Communist slogans there), and the one telling my generation my whole life “politicians are all the same and all corrupt” (which is also a live trend in the rest of the world), is the one now us stuff in the streets, screaming about killer 5G, nanochips in the vaccines, and ‘New World Order’. That’s NOT random. All of those pictures are from Argentina, yet they match what’s happening in remote places like the US (same Republican slogans), the UK, Spain, and almost everywhere else. At the same time, ultra-right-wing parties are a growing trend.”

“…right-wing middle class getting on the train of conspiranoia from somewhere else, taking it to the streets and affecting mainstream politics.”
–Anonymous“You don’t penetrate local culture that easily; you need local interests aligned in order for people to listen to your noise. And we know the players here: that first link is from Clarin, the biggest media conglomerate in Argentina, with a very dark history. And Black Rock: the biggest financial fund in the world. But in the seventies and before, these operations needed the Catholic Church involved for them to reach people over here. That was even the case by 2008, when some local conflict involved the then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires (now Pope Francis) in order to rally several sectors of Argentine demography; but by that time media was already stronger than the church, and the Catholic Church in particular was in crisis too. Today there’s social media, of course. Yet, all of this looks like the very same modus operandi between the very same interests.”

“I don’t fear some kind of secret dark cabal of powerful people; I fear the social consequences of all this. Argentina was not a better place after the seventies; it was destroyed, and the people are still scarred. The world is frankly in decline since the neo-liberal wave from the seventies, and the 2008 crisis turned out to bring another (although shorter) neo-liberal wave. And this looks (very seriously now) like a worldwide neo-fascist wave.”

“I just can’t see the Gates influence and the whole ‘cancel culture’ thing as somewhat of an outsider to that context. It’s the same with Trump, with Brexit, with Bolsonaro, with Vox (Spain’s ultra-right-wing party, not the website). That’s how some sector in Argentina suddenly babbles about the same crazy stuff other people do in other parts of the world. And the scary thing is that this is not about “facts vs lies” but about how the hell are our cultures being hacked and cracked? It’s about weaponizing morals and fears against the very interests of the people feeling all that; that’s how we suddenly happen to be fighting actually good people with good intentions. Gates may be defending himself from his dirty reveals and that’s just it, but the tools he’s using are a whole other deal. Free Software was a very niche thing before this, and talking about Gates was actually possible, whereas today, saying “Bill Gates” out loud instantly means insanity, and “RMS” means pedophilia. That may be a successful campaign from Gates, but if the cost is social hysteria, then speaking about Gates is not about Free Software or RMS anymore, and this is a line crossed from Gates’ side.”

“I just can’t see the Gates influence and the whole ‘cancel culture’ thing as somewhat of an outsider to that context. It’s the same with Trump, with Brexit, with Bolsonaro, with Vox (Spain’s ultra-right-wing party, not the website).”
–Anonymous“Also, I don’t see this man comfortable being the center of social discord. It’s not beyond him, of course: he’s a cretin. But I feel his tactics with other issues were always at a lower profile. I mean, he always had his PR, and his deals were always shady, but the third step was always weak in its impact and localizing the target; now it’s the whole world talking shit about Gates in order to set up critics of Gates as insane. That’s a whole other level.”

“With all this in mind, I may be wrong, but my bet is that Gates is using services previously used by other organizations, most likely politics-oriented, and that’s how he ended like this.”

This is correct. We’ve previously covered how Gates recycled political PACs and even hired PR operatives of politicians. We wrote many articles about this roughly one decade ago (back when we covered those issues a lot more closely).

“Spot on,” an associate of ours interjected regarding this analysis. Our Argentinian reader supposes that Gates doesn’t wish to be at the centre of social discord. “I do,” our associate replied. “He has no alternative. He has to take the heat off of himself about his Epstein-related activities. This is especially true if he has aspirations for high office, which he appears to have. And he looks like he has been preparing for a move into office for close to 20 years now. Biologically he’s running out of time and his long-running reputation management campaigns have seem to reached a turning point in recent years and, while still running, have shifted direction. That was prior to his Epstein-related activities coming to light. These Epstein-related activities now have potential to threaten his political aspirations.”

“Lastly, keep in mind that politicians still mistake social control media for communications media. So, for the most part, many of them are getting played along with the populace especially because social control media is framing the debates in a way that steers them in particular directions.”
–Techrights Associate“Gates eased out of lobbying and entered politics over 20 years ago. It tracks a little with the trajectory of Microsoft itself: software (70s) -> operating system (80s) -> marketing (90s) -> cult (00 +)… Microsoft have been an amalgamation of business and cult like Scientology or of politics and cult like Islam since the end of the 1990s. Gates has been riding that for his investments and also for his growing taste for political power. The Biden administration is already beholden to him.”

“So,” concluded our reader from Argentina, “I have some (very little) hope that this whole Gates operation was sloppy, rushed, too sudden even for their operators to handle cleanly. Yet, I don’t have the skills to look for something like that. I believe a precise chronology would be the first step, but searching this stuff in an Internet so full of noise is kinda hopeless two years later. However, if I were to do some investigation like that, instead of looking for Microsoft links (like you usually do), I’ll look for known right-wing organizational links, as this looks much more like what Trump does than what Gates does.”

To conclude with the words of an associate: “It appears that there are also other interests benefiting from the noise around Gates. My guess is that one faction is the same as those interests which have invested and continue to invest in “both sides” of various online debates in order to turn them in to vicious, polarized arguments. For them, the strawman attacks against Gates would be just another piece on the board in maneuvers to eventually help pull off what happened in Argentina, Chile, and other places in the 1970s but on a global scale this time.”

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