My first attempt at Linux was one of those "maybe I should give this a try" kinds of situations.
Back in the late 1990s, I found some kind of packaged Red Hat distro on quite a few floppies, bought a second hard drive for the family laptop, and set about installing it. It was an interesting experiment, but as I recall the family wasn't quite ready to share the computer to that extent. Fast forward to 2005, I finally broke down and bought a lovely Toshiba laptop that ran Window XP. At work, I had an aging Sun SPARCStation 5, and I didn't really like the direction the whole Solaris thing was going at that point (Motif-based desktop). I really wanted GIMP for some project or the other, but the convoluted journey to installing GNOME 1.x (was it 1.4? maybe) on Solaris was challenging. So, I was actually contemplating jumping ship to Windows XP. But after living with it on my home machine for a few months, I found myself liking that even less than trying to run GNOME on Solaris, so I installed Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog 5.04 and then Breezy Badger 5.10 on my laptop. It was wonderful. That machine with its 3.2GHz Pentium, 2GB of memory, and 100GB hard drive ran rings around my SPARCStation 5.
German hardware vendor Tuxedo computer has launched a new line of Linux laptops with some eye-popping features.
One of the standout features of the sixth generation of the InfinityBook Pro 14 laptop series is its 3K resolution 14-inch display in a 16:10 aspect ratio.
The laptop is available in two processors from Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake series, the i5-1135G7 and the Core i7-1165G7. The base model ships with 8GB of 3200Mhz RAM, but can take upgrades of upto 64GB.
Last year, I took a look at a new Linux distro called Archcraft OS on camera. I trashed Archcraft on that video due to it being virtually unusable due to some insanely small font sizes that caused me pain just looking at it. Well, Archcraft has recently had a new release with a lot of changes, and the main dev has asked me to take another look at it. Fair enough. Will the new release change my opinion of this distro?
Today, we're going to talk about which distributions someone currently using Windows could move to. They're not in any specific order or preference, they all answer to different needs!
Linux kernel developer Konstantin Ryabitsev has been working on Patatt as a cryptographic-based patch attestation system. While started a while ago, there is renewed interest in such patch attestation following the University of Minnesota "hypocrite commit" debacle.
Patatt allows for optionally adding end-to-end cryptographic attestation to patches and its design is based on the DKIM email signature standard. Patatt can be used for signing code patches in workflows involving email patch submission, such as is the case for the Linux kernel development.
I started working for 9elements in October 2020 and my first assignment was to get Intel CBnT working on the OCP Deltalake using coreboot firmware. Intel Converged Bootguard and TXT is a hardware assisted method to set up a root of trust. In this blog post I will discuss some of the changes needed in coreboot to get this working. Setting CBnT up properly was definitely a challenge, but the work did not stop there. So while Intel CBnT provides a method to verify or measure the initial start-up code, it is not enough. You want to trust the code you run from start, the reset vector, to end, typically a bootloader. CBnT only takes care of the start. You have to make sure that each software component trusts the assets it uses and the next program it loads. This concept is called a chain of trust. Now in 2021 I have an assignment that involves supporting the older Intel Bootguard technology. Since Bootguard is very similar to CBnT, I'll also touch on that.
Bootlin has been offering for several years a Buildroot system development course, which allows engineers interested in learning and understanding the Buildroot embedded Linux build system to get up to speed very quickly.
In preparation for our public Buildroot system development course next week, we updated our training materials, both slides and labs to Buildroot 2021.02, which is the latest stable Buildroot release as of today, and is also a Long Term Support release.
The Linux 5.14 kernel this summer will feature improved support for a new MikroTik 10G/25G NIC.
This network card works with the Linux kernel's existing Atheros atl1c network driver in the Linux kernel but for the 5.14 cycle is being extended to better support the capabilities of this MikroTik NIC. Details on this NIC though are light with it seemingly not launched yet.
Two pull requests so far have made it into "net-next" ahead of the Linux 5.14 cycle for improving this MikoTik 10G/25G NIC. First up is the initial support so the MikoTik NIC with the atl1c driver can enjoy a higher link speed, RX checksum offload, improved TX performance, and other improvements.
This guide was written to help Linux users to choose the best remote desktop app for usage with their Linux distro of choice.
With more people working from home than ever before, having the right remote desktop access software has become very important. Maybe you’re helping a family member or colleague with an IT issue, or perhaps you’re working from home. Accessing any system remotely is the need of the day.
Generally, a remote desktop connection is defined as any software allowing you to remotely access a device from a geographical distance. In addition to desktop sharing, many tools can now conduct file transfers and offer highly secure remote access.
[...]
Remmina is an open-source remote desktop client written in GTK+. It primarily targets system administrators and travelers that need to work with computers remotely in front of either large monitors or tiny netbooks. Remmina is a native Linux app to connect to another computer with remote desktop service started on it. Remmina supports multiple network protocols such as RDP, VNC, SPICE, NX, XDMCP, and SSH, within an integrated and consistent user interface.
According to the (or a) less manpage, you can use Ctrl-N instead of '!' if you want, and use Ctrl-R to make the match literal instead of a regular expression. This less feature is sufficiently old and widespread that it's in OpenBSD and NetBSD. Based on the NEWS file and less's historical releases, this was in less 429, released in April of 2009, so it should be in anything that hasn't completely stopped updating its version of less.
If you use Ubuntu or any other Debian-based Linux distro, you've no doubt read installation instructions telling you to use the APT command, while others have told you to use dpkg.
So does it matter if you install packages on your Linux system with any of those package managers? What's the difference? Today we'll tackle those questions so that you know how to best install packages on Ubuntu.
If you use Ubuntu or any other Debian-based Linux distro, you've no doubt read installation instructions telling you to use the APT command, while others have told you to use dpkg.
So does it matter if you install packages on your Linux system with any of those package managers? What's the difference? Today we'll tackle those questions so that you know how to best install packages on Ubuntu.
Service discovery cannot gain a proper definition without the acknowledgment of an existing computer network. A computer network sets the needed communication protocols for network devices to share the available resources through its network nodes. This sharing of resources involves both network devices and services pre-defined on that network.
The workaround to the automatic discovery or detection of these network devices and services under a computer network is a viable definition of service discovery. For service discovery under a configured computer network to be complete, it will need the assistance of a network protocol called Service Discovery Protocol (SDP). With these protocols, network users and administrators do not have to rely on their network configuration skillsets to get things going.
Since service discovery communicates with software agents on a computer network, its communication protocols need to adhere to a common networking language to prevent continuous user intervention whenever the execution of a critical step is needed.
In my first column I spoke about why I moved my writing to Vim – away from the standard tools of modern writers such as word processors (MS Word and their open source equivalents), text editors (Notepad since I’ve been a Windows user until last year), and cloud based storage technology. If you are a writer, I urge you to read that part 1 before continuing here.
Essentially, I argued that the more devices you use, the more writing tools you’ll need, the more complex the workflow eventually becomes. This is pertinent because I have four devices, including an Android phone, a main daily driver laptop running Linux, and a couple of older laptops, including a Mac, I take when I go outdoors for shoots.
After the announcement of RedHat for ending up the LTS version of CentOS, people start looking for other options and AlmaLinux & Oracle are a few of the stable ones available to use. Recently, developers of both these server Linux distros announced their latest version based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.4. This means that both AlmaLinux 8.4 and Oracle Linux 8.4 benefit from many of the features added or changed in their upper stream distribution project.
DirectAdmin is a paid online graphical web hosting control panel and management system for virtual hosts. Through this management system, you can easily manage your server, set EMAIL, set DNS, open FTP, online file management, database management, etc. It offers 3 access levels: Admin, Reseller, and User. This gives convenience to efficiently manage Server resources by administrators and hosting resellers for their customers who want to buy the hosting services on Shared or VPS servers to host their websites. DirectAdmin is a straightforward alternative to the popular WHM Cpanel; however in terms of features it is not as wide as WHM.
DirectAdmin is a paid web hosting control panel just like WHM CPanel. Available to install on almost all popular Linux operating systems including FreeBSD. Here we let you know the process and commands to install DirectAdmin on AlmaLinux 8 server.
Using the DirectAdmin control panel, you can easily manage your own web server and websites. It offers hosting reselling, web server, DNS, backup, database, and file management; log statistics, Full usage statistics, System/Service Information, Pre-configured Reseller configuration plan, IP management Authorization/update and other functions. Although it is not feature-rich like WHM cPanel but still cheaper than it.
Wine is the only stable way in the free and open-source world to install Windows 10//7/xp applications on Linux operating system. However, not much user friendly. Thus to make it easy to use and simplify the process of installing Windows apps “Bottles” is here.
Of course, Linux operating systems in today’s world don’t deprive for applications. There is one almost for each task, yet couldn’t compete with the app database available for Windows. That’s is the reason why many users intermittently are looking for some best and stable way or free software that allows running Windows applications on Unix and Unix-like systems, including GNU / Linux and FreeBSD. And unfortunately, there are no options except WINE.
However, Wine’s interface has never been particularly friendly because of the command line, especially for those who do not have advanced knowledge of how to configure it. Hence, to mitigate this issue to some extend Bottles comes in, which is nothing more than a simple interface that makes Wine easy to use and also makes available re-implementations like Lutris and Glorious Eggroll.
SSH has become the default method of accessing a remote Linux server these days.
SSH stands for Secure Shell and it’s a powerful, efficient, and popular network protocol used to establish communication between two computers in a remote fashion. And let’s not forget the secure part of its name; SSH encrypts all traffic to prevent attacks like hijacking and eavesdropping while offering different authentication methods and a myriad of configuration options.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP 7.4 on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP is a popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of PHP 7.4 on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Bludit CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Bludit is a free, open-source, file-based content management system that helps you to host a blogging website within a minute. Bludit is a Flat-File CMS, which (in this case) means that Bludit uses files in the JSON format to store the content. You don’t need to install or configure a database; you only need a web server with PHP support.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Bludit Content Management System (CMS) on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
To appreciate the idea of converting an MP3 audio file format into a WAV audio file format, you first need to understand the making of these two distinguishable audio formats. The keyword that distinguishes an MP3 audio file from a WAV audio file is “compressed”. An MP3 audio file exists in a compressed state, while a WAV audio file exists in an uncompressed state.
Now that you know the difference between these two audio file formats, the next question is knowing why you need each of them. In terms of applicability, the WAV audio file format will help you edit a podcast, while the MP3 audio file format is a better candidate for distributing audio files. The iTunes application takes this distribution approach to relay music to its user base.
If you are after top uncompressed audio quality for media like DVD, radio, or TV, you should consider converting your audio to a .wav format. This audio file format is lossless and uncompressed. Also, if you are considering or already pursuing web animations, the .WAV files are the best option for processing loops.
Portal 2 is the second game in the Portal series. It follows Chell, a woman trapped in a science testing facility, who uses a portal gun to complete tests. In this guide, we’ll show you how to play Portal 2 on Linux.
Redis stands for Remote Dictionary Server, which is an open-source tool for Linux systems. The most common and popular use of Redis is using it as an in-memory database cache system that can make the process of reaching the site faster. For example, if you have a webserver in point A and the database stored in point B, you can use the Redis cache instance service to minimize the data loading time. Redis stores data inside the memory in the key-value method to gain high performance during any server-level operation. Redis offers caching server, storing data in NoSQL format, and real-time server log monitoring. Installing Redis on a Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora-based Linux is easy and straightforward.
Golang is an open-source programming language developed the Google. It provides easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software. This language is designed for writing servers, that’s why it is using widely these days. Go has released the latest version 1.16.
In this tutorial you will get instructions to install Go 1.16 on your Ubuntu 21.04, 20.10, 20.04 LTS Linux systems. Choose one the below methods for the installation of Go on your system.
In the next article we are going to take a look at Kompare. If you are interested compare files in a simple way, this tool can be useful and easy to install through its corresponding Snap package. Kompare offers a graphical user interface, which is also open source and written in C ++.
Kompare is a GUI front-end program that enables differences between source files to be viewed and merged. It can be used to compare differences on files or the contents of folders, and it supports a variety of diff formats and provide many options to customize the information level displayed.
The font size of startup boot menu is too small or too large? It’s easy to fix by setting an appropriate screen resolution for the Grub boot-menu in Ubuntu.
Zoom is an easy-to-use video conference app and is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, and all other common platforms – interesting as a Skype alternative in the home office or distributed teams. Here we will let you know the command to download and install Zoom Client on AlmaLinux 8…
The starter plan of zoom can be used to handle 100 participants in a video conference with 1 GB Cloud Recording. And those who are interested in webinars or showing online courses, the tool can hold up to 10k viewers without letting them interact without interacting with each other.
Dead Rising 4 is the fourth entry in the Dead Rising series. The player controls Frank West (from Dead Rising 1) and sets out to destroy zombie hordes in the game. In this guide, we’ll show you how to play Dead Rising 4 on Linux.
Metro Last Light Redux is a re-release of the post-apocalyptic FPS Metro Last Light. The game works surprisingly well on Linux and was released natively on the platform. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install it on Linux.
Are you developing games? Making awesome gifs of things and whatever else? Bitmapflow is a very clever application that will generate extra parts of animations to make them smoother. Like a lot of things lately, it slipped through the TODO list and got buried under a pile of "I should really take a look at these" but we're finally getting to it.
Now and then we like to highlight things that aren't games that we think might be useful to certain readers and game developers, this is one such time because it's just so seriously cool.
Want to try your hand at an in-development RTS that has some potential? Check out Retro Commander, from Noble Master Games ( Age of Conquest IV, Demise of Nations). Noble Master recently released an Alpha build up on itch.io, so they can begin to gather feedback and see if they're going in the right direction after being in development for some time now.
"Retro Commander is a 4X post-apocalyptic real-time strategy wargame (RTS). Fight it out in a world where a cataclysmic timeline has transpired on Mother Earth. Wage wars solo, against the AI, or take on your gaming comrades and friends in cross-platform multiplayer matches. Form teams and clans and fight co-op style with the AI and other players for ultimate victory."
[...]
I did some initial testing quite some months ago for the developer, to ensure their standalone Linux builds were working correctly and it seems to hold up nicely in this release.
We're seeing even more leaks out of a recent Steam Beta update from Valve that not only hinted at the SteamPal console, and the new Downloads page but also a big overhaul to the Library manager.
If you only have one storage drive, you've probably never used it or even looked at it. In the Steam Client, you can set where you want Steam to install downloads into, with it being pretty darn archaic right now and not so useful.
We are happy publish a new release of Kaidan that brings it closer fullfilling the daily messaging needs.
As promised, this release includes some major new features: The chat history is now being synchronized across devices, to allow finding information in old messages. It is now indicated when the chat partner is typing, which makes conversations easier.
We have also polished the general usability, so that now the size of the windows is preserved across restarts. Some of the strings in the user interface have received some rewording, to make them easier to understand.
KDE developers are wrapping up May with more performance optimizations and bug fixes in tow.
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with this week's development summary and some of the highlights include:
- Better performance using the Plasma Wayland session with NVIDIA GPU. This change is for Plasma 5.22 and deals with KDE's EGLStreams handling in conjunction with the binary NVIDIA driver.
SteamOS is a Debian-based Linux distro optimized for the Steam client and designed from the ground up to deliver a modern living room experience. It is optimized to work with a controller and doesn’t need you to attach a keyboard and a mouse. Furthermore, the UI is big and console-like, allowing you to operate it while lying on your sofa easily.
Now, SteamOS was originally announced way back in 2013. However, over the years, development on the operating system has been poor, to say the least. The last major update to SteamOS came back in July 2019, which makes it nearly two years old when writing this review.
But all that said, the project is far from dead. Valve (Steam Developer Company) has reportedly stated that SteamOS is currently sidelined, but they do have plans to go back to it.
However, till SteamOS gets back on track, is the current version of the operating system good enough to function as your living room entertainment system? Well, that’s exactly what we will be looking into in this in-depth review of SteamOS.
Calibre is meant to be a complete e-library solution. It includes library management, format conversion, news feeds to ebook conversion as well as e-book reader sync features.
Pinta is an image drawing/editing program. It’s goal is to provide a simplified alternative to GIMP for casual users.
Sonic Visualiser is a free, open-source application for Windows, Linux, and Mac, designed to be the first program you reach for when want to study a music recording closely. It’s designed for musicologists, archivists, signal-processing researchers, and anyone else looking for a friendly way to look at what lies inside the audio file.
Opera is a Chromium-based browser using the Blink layout engine. It differentiates itself because of a distinct user interface and other features.
Foxit is a small, fast and feature rich PDF viewer which allows you to open, view and print any PDF file.
When I started visiting the Gentoo Linux discussion forums in 2007 there were at least three pages of posts daily, if not more. These days there is usually one page. I’m sure the number of Gentoo Linux users has dropped significantly since then. Interest in the distribution has certainly decreased since its heyday: Google Trends – gentoo linux.
I don’t think the drop in interest is limited to individuals either. Articles such as ‘Flying Circus Internet Operations GmbH – Migrating a Hosting Infrastructure from Gentoo to NixOS‘ lead me to suspect that some companies have switched to other distributions over the years. NASDAQ’s use of ‘a modified version of Gentoo Linux’ was publicised in 2011 (How Linux Mastered Wall Street) but I do not know if it still uses the distribution and, in any case, that is only a single significant entity. I personally have never come across another user (corporation or individual) of Gentoo Linux, although I do know several companies and individuals using distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora.
Gentoo Linux is certainly not for everyone. In recent years the user base seems to have settled down to a smaller number of people, primarily consisting of enthusiasts who appreciate its advanced features and are prepared to put in the extra effort and time required to create and maintain a working installation. I’m sure it also still has a place in some specialised commercial applications, but I have my doubts its deployment comes anywhere near that of the major distributions such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, etc. If I were only interested in using an OS that enabled me to perform typical personal and professional tasks, I wouldn’t be using Gentoo Linux. Some people touted Gentoo Linux’s configurability as giving it a speed advantage over binary distributions but, having correctly installed and used Gentoo Linux and various other distributions on the same hardware, I cannot say I noticed an improvement in performance.
[...]
I personally would now only consider installing Gentoo Linux on a machine with at least 16 GB RAM and a CPU with at least four cores and a speed of circa 3 GHz or more. Additionally, although I have been a user of KDE in Gentoo Linux all these years, I would probably switch from KDE to a simpler, less resource-hungry and less feature-rich (some might say less ‘bloated’!) desktop environment such as LXQt in new installations of Gentoo Linux.
One thing that has improved a lot since I started using Gentoo Linux over a decade ago is the package manager Portage, at least in terms of dependency resolution and blockage handling. I used to have to do a lot more work to resolve problems during package upgrades; ‘merging world’ (upgrading installed packages) is generally a lot less troublesome than it used to be ten years ago. Portage is a lot slower than it used to be, but that’s because it does a lot more than it used to do. I used to have to use revdep-rebuild – a utility to resolve reverse dependencies and rebuild affected packages – frequently, but not any more. Building software from source code takes time, though, so plenty of RAM and a fast CPU are important for installing packages, however good the package manager itself.
–The AlmaLinux OS Foundation, stewards of the AlmaLinux distribution — the open source enterprise-grade replacement for CentOS, today announced availability of AlmaLinux OS 8.4 – just one week after the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.4.
Huawei's HarmonyOS is right around the corner at this point, with an official unveiling event set for June 2. The Chinese giant has major plans for its Android alternative, with a goal to have it running on 300 million devices by the end of the year. Some part of that massive figure will surely come from brand new device sales. For one, Huawei has been posting teasers for the June 2 event with hints for the upcoming MatePad Pro 2, as well as the Huawei Watch 3 - both slated to be among the first to run HarmonyOS out of the box.
Video downloaders aid users in downloading files from the internet and store them on their computers or phones. Downloading enables users to use media files while in offline mode. This is essential since you might be required to access files, music, data, and videos locally whenever you are not connected to the internet.
There are a variety of downloading tools that can be of help during the download process. However, not all downloaders are recommended since some are used for phishing, and the users should stay away to ensure they do not risk their privacy by downloading downloaders that contain a virus.
Firefox is one of the best browsers that is widely used in the Linux community. It is an easy-to-use browser that one can easily navigate through. Firefox is compatible with all Operating systems, including Linux distros, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. Despite it not being the most popular browser, it has usage of 9.87%, with more than 15 million Linux users using it globally.
Prolific Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow envisions the world in 2041 and informs us that we were able to solve major world problems thanks to collective work and sharing of knowledge. Doctorow is thanking the FSFE for our 20 years ahead contribution of fostering freedom and disestablishing monopolies.
Cory Doctorow is a British-Canadian writer, author of several Sci-fi novels, who has been blogging for twenty years now. He was co-editor of the blog boingboing.net and now runs his own blog at Pluralistic. Doctorow is one of the trailblazers in the demands of digital rights and software freedom. He speaks in favour of a less restrictive copyright law; his books are published under Creative Commons licenses. His Sci-fi books often deal with the ownership of technological means in the future.
For over a decade, he has been vocal in supporting the work of the FSFE. This year, he is celebrating the 20 year anniversary of FSFE in his own fascinating way. He greets us and congratulates us on our 40 year anniversary, talking to us from 2041. In the video you will find below you can see how Doctorow fits the FSFE into his vision of 2041.
Don’t call this “relicensing” – it is not! The original license will continue to apply and you remain responsible for complying with its requirements. Only the copyright holder can change the license. You’re not relicensing – instead you are using the rights the license has given you and applying an additional license to the combination of the earlier work and your work.
As the copyright holder of both the new code and the new combined work you may pick any license you want as long as in doing so you can also comply with the existing license. The recipients of the work from you must also be able to comply with both the existing license and your overlay license at the same time. But you are not “relicensing” the original work as only its owner can do that. Rather, you are adding an “overlay license”.
The University of California’s recent negotiations with Elsevier achieved a better deal for researchers than was initially given to them when they walked away in 2018.
After a two-year standoff, during which academics at the multi-campus system had no direct access to paywalled Elsevier content, the publisher largely bowed to California’s demand to cut overall costs while allowing California authors to publish open access.
This landmark deal, announced in March, was achieved at least in part because California academics were actively engaged with the negotiations and equipped to make their priorities known to the negotiators. They were also willing to ensure the shutting down of access to Elsevier journals in order to get what they wanted.
O’Neill’s paper was published as a Functional Pearl in the Journal of Functional Programming, when Richard Bird was the handling editor for Pearls. The paper includes an epilogue that presents a purely list-based implementation of the Genuine Sieve, contributed by Bird during the editing process. And the same program pops up in Bird’s textbook Thinking Functionally with Haskell (TFWH). This post is about Bird’s program.
While the official/reference Rust compiler implementation is LLVM-based, there continues to be the independent effort working on a GCC Rust front-end as an alternative full implementation of the Rust programming language.
The GCC front-end for Rust continues advancing as an alternative compiler moving forward for Rust code though at the moment isn't feature complete or close to it for major features.
LabVIEW is a graphical programming language used by professional scientists and engineers as well as students, hobbyists and makers. It was designed to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly without getting bogged down in subsystem minutia.
LabVIEW has powerful features for simulation, control and DAQ applications.
Programs are called virtual instruments, or VIs, because their appearance and operation often imitate physical instruments, such as oscilloscopes and multimeters. LabVIEW contains a comprehensive set of tools for acquiring, analyzing, displaying, and storing data, as well as tools to help you troubleshoot the code you write.
Many times, we may pass certain parameters from the command line, but, sometimes, we may not pass any parameters at all. We may need to initialize certain default values to certain variables.
Command-line parameters passed along with commands are also called positional parameters. Many times, we need to pass options such as -f and -v along with a positional parameter.
Let’s look at an example for passing the -x or-y options along with commands.
An array is a list of variables. For example, we can create an array called FRUIT, which will contain the names of many fruits. The array does not have a limit on how many variables it may contain. It can contain any type of data.
Why the soldiers used unsecured study apps to remember the information wasn’t clear. Postma contacted officials with the US Department of Defense, NATO, and European Command several weeks before publishing his report, and the flashcards with the sensitive information have since been taken down (although may still be visible on the archival Wayback Machine site, as Motherboard reported).
Flashcards are a time tested method of memorization for students the world over. According to a report from Bellingcat, U.S. soldiers working in America’s secret nuclear bases in Europe also used them to memorize nuclear security secrets. The Pentagon scrubbed some of those secret laden flashcards from the web, but it didn’t get them all. Many are still archived on the Wayback Machine.
"The question before us now is: What will do with these lessons?"
Republican politics often use meat to mobilize an image of working-class, masculine toughness, or heartland American patriotism.
Proponents of a state-based universal healthcare approach believe states can be incubators for change, and that ultimately, once one state shows the way, all states will follow—but we have yet to see any evidence of this.
According to Just Stand, an organisation raising awareness around excessive sitting and sedentary lifestyles, the average person spends 12 hours a day slouching in the office chair, in front of the computer, driving a car or couch potatoing (sic) in the evenings. Another 7 hours are spent sleeping, meaning that we only spend 5 hours (if we're lucky) on our feet. That's quite a disastrous figure. In fact, some researchers argue that sitting decreases life expectancy, and that only 30 minutes of additional exercise can combat this. Australian researchers found that people who sit for more than 11 hours a day have a 40% increased risk of death.
It took me quite sometime to write as have been depressed about things. Then a few days back saw Nova’s The Great Electric Airplane Race. While it was fabulous and a pleasure to see and know that there are more than 200 odd startups who are in the race of making an electric airplane which works and has FAA certification. I was disappointed though that there no coverage of any University projects.
From what little I know, almost all advanced materials which U.S. had made has been first researched in mostly Universities and when it is close to fruition then either spin-off as a startup or give to some commercial organization/venture to make it scalable and profitable. If they had, I am sure more people could be convinced to join sciences and engineering in college. I actually do want to come to this as part of both general medicine and vaccine development in U.S. but will come later. The idea that industry works alone should be discouraged, but that perhaps may require another article to articulate why I believe so.
[...]
Rich countries donated/gifted ventilators to India on which GOI put GST of 28%. Apparently, they are a luxury item, just like my hearing aid.
Last week Delhi High Court passed a judgement that imposition of GST should not be on a gift like ventilators or oxygenators. The order can be found here. Even without reading the judgement the shout from the right was ‘judicial activism’ while after reading it is a good judgement which touches on several points. The first, in itself, stating the dichotomy that if a commercial organization wanted to import a ventilator or an oxygenator the IGST payable is nil while for an individual it is 12%. The State (here State refers to State Government in this case Gujarat Govt.) did reduce the IGST for state from 12% to NIL IGST for federal states but that to till only 30.06.2021. No relief to individuals on that account.
The Court also made use of Mr. Arvind Datar, as Amicus Curiae or friend of court. The petitioner, an 85-year-old gentleman who has put it up has put broad assertions under Article 21 (right to live) and the court in its wisdom also added Article 14 which enshrines equality of everyone before law.
The Amicus Curiae, as his duty, guided the court into how the IGST law works and shared a brief history of the law and the changes happening before and after it. During his submissions, he also shared the Mega Exemption Notification no. 50/2017 under which several items are there which are exempted from putting IGST. The Amicus Curiae did note that such exemptions were also there before Mega Exemption Notification had come into play.
However, DGFT (Directorate General of Foreign Trade) on 30-04-2021 issued notification No. 4/2015-2020 through which oxygenators had been exempted from Custom Duty/BCD (Basic Customs Duty. In another notification on no. 30/2021 dated 01.05.2021 it reduced IGST from 28% to 12% for personal use. If however the oxygenator was procured by a canalizing agency (bodies such as State Trading Corporation of India (STC) or/and Metals and Minerals Corporation (MMTC) and such are defined as canalising agents) then it will be fully exempted from paying any sort of IGST, albeit subject to certain conditions. What the conditions are were not shared in the open court.
The Amicus Curiae further observed that it is contrary to practice where both BCD and IGST has been exempted for canalising agents and others, some IGST has to be paid for personal use. To share within the narrow boundaries of the topic, he shared entry no. 607A of General Exemption no.190 where duty and IGST in case of life-saving drugs are zero provided the life-saving drugs imported have been provided by zero cost from an overseas supplier for personal use.
Microsoft recently announced the retirement of its longstanding web browser, Internet Explorer, in favour of its newer product, Microsoft Edge. With support for Internet Explorer only set to last until June 15, 2022, its remaining users have just over a year to find an alternative. But of course, most web users already have. While the eventual downfall of Internet Explorer was seen as a foregone conclusion by those who monitor web trends, the news might come as an unwelcome surprise for those who are somewhat less up-to-date.
Google has been working on its capability-based OS Fuchsia for at least six years. A few days ago, Fuchsia started rolling out to Nest Hub devices, thus marking its official release.
The code powering the popular Have I Been Pwned? (HIBP) website that allows users to check whether any login information has been compromised, is now available under an open source license to everyone.
Created and managed by cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt, HIBP has gained millions of fans over the last seven years. In 2020 Hunt tried to unsuccessfully sell the project when he realized that it could no longer be managed by a single individual.
"The philosophy of HIBP has always been to support the community, now I want the community to help support HIBP," Hunt wrote last year when he initiated the process to open source the code behind HIBP.
Fake, positive reviews have infiltrated nearly every corner of life online these days, confusing consumers while offering an unwelcome advantage to fraudsters and sub-par products everywhere. Happily, identifying and tracking these fake reviewer accounts is often the easiest way to spot scams. Here’s the story of how bogus reviews on a counterfeit Microsoft Authenticator browser extension exposed dozens of other extensions that siphoned personal and financial data.
Tesla has started using cabin cameras in some Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to make sure drivers are paying attention to the road when they use driver assistance features, according to release notes obtained by CNBC.
Their Model 3 and Model Y cars already had driver-facing cabin cameras, but the company's owners manuals said they were not used for driver monitoring. Instead, Tesla's systems required drivers to "check in" by touching the steering wheel, which is equipped with sensors.
TikTok is notorious for its younger-leaning demographic, though the question over whether the platform is safe for kids received new scrutiny this week. Officials with the European Commission (the EU’s executive branch) announced today that they’d formally informed TikTok and its ByteDance parent company of the one-month response deadline. The overarching inquiry stemmed from a February of 2021 complaint filed by the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), which receives funding from the European Union.
In this complaint, the BEUC alleged “that TikTok falls foul of multiple breaches of EU consumer rights and fails to protect children from hidden advertising and inappropriate content.” The entity also outlined specific qualms including “unclear, ambiguous” portions of the short-form video app’s terms of service, which purportedly “favour TikTok to the detriment of its users.”
The European Court of Human Rights’ judgment on the 10 Human Rights Organisations case is imminent. Privacy International sat down with whistleblower Ed Snowden last year to discuss what this case means for surveillance not only in the UK, but around the world. We spoke about mass surveillance, litigation, privacy, proportionality, Tempora and everything in between.
When the Palestinian-Israeli conflict blew up this spring, the Palestinians showed that they were refusing to go quietly and to just drop dead, as Mr. Kushner clearly desired from them.
The government has expanded a ban on symbols associated with extremist organizations to include the far-right nationalist Austrian Identitarian Movement as well as Islamist groups.
Police, without producing any evidence, attempt to explain such killings on social media pages associated with the force by saying the person killed was a criminal who would have bribed his way to freedom, if arrested and prosecuted. Both claims have been proven false by the media and human rights activists.
According to rights group Missing Persons, Kenyan police killed 157 people in 2020 and 10 people disappeared without a trace after being arrested.
But Nantes prosecutor Pierre Sennes did not rule out handing the case over to the national anti-terrorism authority in Paris however, depending on what elements come to light as the probe progresses.
In particular, data on a tablet computer and mobile phone seized by police should be accessible sometime early next week, Sennes said.
Amid growing government concern about a possible resurgence of Islamist extremism, The Telegraph understands that William Shawcross, the official reviewer of Prevent, the Government's anti-extremism programme, is examining links between Islamist activity and anti-Semitic incidents across the country.
Sir John Jenkins, the former diplomat who led a government review of the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist network in 2015, said that there are "warning signs flashing everywhere" about the presence of Islamist extremists in Britain, urging the Government to "grasp the nettle".
The District Court in The Hague issued a landmark ruling ordering multinational oil and gas company Shell to drastically cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. The court ordered the British-Dutch company to reduce net emissions by 45 percent compared to 2019 levels. This gives Shell more room to achieve its goal by also using strategies which compensate for expelled emissions, such as carbon capture and storage or reforestation.
The reduction is based on the emissions directly caused by Shell as a business, and not by the use of the fuel it sells to businesses and consumers. Shell was ordered to demonstrate it is making its best efforts to meet the target set by the ruling. The ruling affects all companies and legal entities that Shell "commonly includes in its consolidated annual accounts" which together comprise of the Royal Dutch Shell group, the court stated.
By 2050, 90% of global electricity generation could come from renewable sources, 70% from solar photovoltaic and wind.
This week, the House and Senate called in the CEOs of six big banks for two wide-ranging hearings that lawmakers touted as efforts to hold “megabanks accountable,” the first time in roughly two years that the heads of major banks have collectively appeared before Congress.
Combined, the six CEOs lead organizations that have poured over $1 trillion in financing into the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, based on the numbers tallied in a 2021 report from Rainforest Action Network and other environmental advocates.
The worst of the pandemic may be over for airlines, but the industry faces another looming crisis: an accounting over its contribution to climate change.
The industry is under increasing pressure to do something to reduce and eventually eliminate emissions from travel, but it won’t be easy. Some solutions, like hydrogen fuel cells, are promising, but it’s unclear when they will be available, if ever. That leaves companies with few options: They can make tweaks to squeeze out efficiencies, wait for technology to improve or invest today to help make viable options for the future.
One of Estonia's national parks celebrates its 50th jubilee this weekend, an event which is being marked by a variety of events through the rest of May and into early June.
Lahemaa National Park (Lahemaa Rahvuspark), in Lääne-Viru County and about 50 km east of Tallinn, marks its half century from Saturday, with the celebrations starting in the village of Palmse and to be followed in other villages lying in the park's terrain throughout the weekend, the environment ministry says.
The events also honor the role of local residents down the years in making the park what it is, the ministry says.
The saguaro is to the American southwest what the Empire State Building is to New York City: A breathtaking icon and a symbol of the region. A cactus that branches like a tree, the saguaro can grow to be 40 feet tall with roots spread over 100 feet of ground. They can live for longer than 150 years, meaning there are saguaros alive today that were born when Ulysses S. Grant was president. As the colder seasons give into warmer ones, the saguaro famously sprouts beautiful white flowers that blossom from the tips of their trunks and arms.
At least, that is what they normally do. Arizona news outlets are reporting that many of the cacti are budding on their sides, a phenomenon never seen before. It is a development that has researchers curious — and a little worried.
Co-founder of IOTA Foundation, Dominik Schiener, has announced significant progress in the testing of a new “fully decentralized” IOTA.
IOTA Foundation, a non-profit focused on the technical progress of IOTA’s (MIOTA) and its increased adoption. Today, Schiener queried his Twitter followers if they were aware of the progress of the company’s projects as they currently stand.
Specifically, if followers of IOTA Foundation were aware that, for “several months,” a fully decentralized IOTA has been running in the testnet environment. He also noted that all transactions on this network are free of any fees.
And you can bet your bottom dollar they'll continue complaining about the crime that they’ve created, particularly in the election ads they’ll start running next year.
In South Carolina, the Legislature added a third method the condemned can select in order to enter the state prescribed state—the firing squad.
Organizers of an annual vigil to commemorate the Chinese Communist government's bloody crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 said on Saturday they had lost an appeal to hold this year's rally.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China planned to hold a candlelight vigil in Victoria Park next Friday.
This marks the second year that Hong Kong police have banned the vigil, citing coronavirus restrictions.
A Hong Kong pro-democracy alliance on Saturday lost an appeal to hold an annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China had planned to light candles in central Victoria Park next Friday on June 4 — the anniversary of the deadly crackdown in Beijing.
This marks the second year in a row that Hong Kong police have banned the event by citing coronavirus restrictions.
She kept a copy of the photos as evidence of the atrocity, then later joined a band of Russian guerrilla Resistance fighters. As one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers, Mrs. Schulman, thanks to her own graphic record-keeping, debunked the common narrative that most Eastern European Jews had gone quietly to their deaths.
“I want people to know that there was resistance,” she was quoted as saying by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. “Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”
Social media, mobile phones, algorithms that elevate debunked garbage theories, the 24-hour news cycle, 80 billion podcasts and countless think pieces written by people who don't think, this digital ecosystem encourages too many self-proclaimed geniuses and meme-educated amateurs who think Googling is research to give into a burning urge to share their opinions on any and every topic, regardless of whether they are qualified to do so.
"Creating 'dedicated dockets' for families seeking asylum may amount to another round of 'rocket dockets' that short circuit due process and aggravate backlogs."
Arkansas legislators are trying to make abortion inaccessible, so we're taking them to court.
The system itself is rotten—plagued by death, abuse, impunity, and violence.
Loyola was in and out of the hospital over the next 10 months, which ultimately resulted in the amputation of his left hand, according to the lawsuit. The law firm representing Loyola — Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher and Goldfarb of Birmingham — filed the initial complaint on April 27, and an amended complaint the following day. Godber was served with the lawsuit May 3, and has until May 24 to respond, court documents said.
Asking dogs to follow their noses won't work anymore in states that have legalized marijuana.
As Virginia prepares to legalize adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana on July 1, drug-sniffing police dogs from around the state are being forced into early retirement, following a trend in other states where legalization has led to K-9s being retired earlier than planned.
In Virginia, the rush to take marijuana-detecting dogs out of service began even before lawmakers voted last month to accelerate the timetable for legalization. A separate law that went into effect in March prohibits police from stopping or searching anyone based solely on the odor of marijuana.
If you are not familiar with this networks and just want to join our chat room; it's easy. You don't need to install anything and can happen in your web-browser. Just click this link to open Pepper&Carrot chat room and you'll be able to read our recent discussions. To interact with us, you'll need to create an account (and I recommend the read of our CoC) but that's all. Easy!
[...]
On a last note, I want to say that I used daily Freenode to chat with many projects since 2009 (Blender open movies, Krita, Inkscape) and it was also the home of Pepper&Carrot and contributors since 2014 and I'm grateful for that. So many countless ideas and good time happened on this network for me. It is sad to leave it. But knowing most of the Freenode staff moved to Libera.chat makes me feels confident the good time and good ideas will continues to happen on our new place. Thanks again to: Dezponia for the setup of our Matrix room, M1dgard and Cmaloney for reserving the namespace on libera.chat and thanks gleki for the work on the bridge! And thanks also to Matrix and Libera.chat networks for hosting Pepper&Carrot!
Ten years ago I began the olduse.net exhibit, spooling out Usenet history in real time with a 30 year delay. My archive has reached its end, and ten years is more than long enough to keep running something you cobbled together overnight way back when. So, this is the end for olduse.net.
Amazon just dumped an $8 billion-plus chunk of change on MGM, a studio best known for James Bond and its logo of a roaring lion. The acquisition offers an opportunity for Amazon to spin the spy films into a big perk for its streaming services. But it’s hard to believe that dropping billions for the studio’s content library is actually going to prop up Amazon’s streaming services — at least on its own.
Fresh questions have been raised over Amazon’s tax planning after its latest corporate filings in Luxembourg revealed that the company collected record sales income of €44bn (€£38bn) in Europe last year but did not have to pay any corporation tax to the Grand Duchy.
Accounts for Amazon EU Sarl, through which it sells products to hundreds of millions of households in the UK and across Europe, show that despite collecting record income, the Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss and therefore paid no tax.
In fact the unit was granted €56m in tax credits it can use to offset any future tax bills should it turn a profit. The company has €2.7bn worth of carried forward losses stored up, which can be used against any tax payable on future profits.
And why the very freedom of expression in India is at stake
[...]
The companies are in a dilemma. India is a huge market for social media users and hence a lucrative arena for advertising outreach by companies. As per data cited by the government, India has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 44.8 crore YouTube users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers, 21 crore Instagram clients, while 1.75 crore account holders are on microblogging platform Twitter. Koo too has close to 60 lakh users. Hence, there is big money here, which the companies would not like to lose by taking some rigid “principled” stand of defiance, even though the burden the new IT rules puts on them is onerous. They seem to be on a wait-and-watch mode to see whether the Modi government makes a partial climbdown in the face of media opposition and some cases of litigation.
[...]
Facebook recently adopted a new controversial privacy policy for WhatsApp. Under it, the country would not track the personal messages of WhatsApp users, but would track the messages on commercial transactions and use the collected personal data for advertisement purposes. The government put its foot down. Europe has strong laws against the use of personal data and Facebook has said that the new privacy policy would not be applicable in Europe. Why then should it try to smuggle it in in the Indian context?
After some talks with the government, Facebook declared that it would not enforce the policy in India until India passes a new IT Act. Will this bring the issue to a close?
Facebook is grappling with a reputation crisis in the Middle East, with plummeting approval rates and advertising sales in Arab countries, according to leaked documents obtained by NBC News.
The shift corresponds with the widespread belief by pro-Palestinian and free speech activists that the social media company has been disproportionately silencing Palestinian voices on its apps – which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – during this month’s Israel-Hamas conflict. Examples include the deletion of hundreds of posts condemning the eviction of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, the suspension of activist accounts and the temporary blocking of a hashtag relating to one of Islam’s holiest mosques. Facebook said these were technical glitches.
We commissioned Independent expert Emeritus Professor Raoul Mortley AO to review the accessibility of the patent system in Australia.
The Patents Accessibility Review focussed on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their low use of the patent system. Professor Mortley consulted a range of stakeholders including SMEs and industry peak bodies.
The Australian Government recently commissioned a Patents Accessibility Review, focusing on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their low use of the patent system, carried out by Emeritus Professor Raoul Mortley.
The efficacy of PPH varies from territory to territory. In some patent offices there is a history of examination being influenced by the granting of a patent by particular patent offices; PPH may work well for such patent offices. In other patent offices, requesting PPH only results in acceleration and does not guarantee allowance.
The UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) continue to receive reports of applicants and proprietors being approached for payment by firms offering to perform official processing such as registering patents and publishing patent applications. These firms often use names, abbreviations and/or logos which are confusingly similar to those used by official offices such as the UK IPO, the EPO, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
These firms do not act on behalf of the official offices and the services they offer cannot replace processing that is carried out by the official offices. To the extent that these firms offer to replicate such processing, applicants and proprietors are therefore under no obligation to pay any invoices issued by such firms.
The Maltese patent registration system is a registration-based system (as opposed to an examination-based one) and, consequently, it is expected that, if a patent is challenged on the basis of lack of inventive step and excluded subject matter, it would be the Maltese Courts or Patent Tribunal that would have to decide this issue. Guidance will be drawn from the European Patent Office (EPO) and precedents of the UK Courts, except where the two diverge, such as in the instance of "mixed-type inventions" (a term used by the EPO to refer to inventions containing technical and non-technical features).
In terms of inventions made through the assistance of AI solutions, it is expected that the defining point would be the extent to which the invention was made through an automated AI solution. Where the invention is generated by an AI system without human intervention, the invention would not be patentable until and unless the law would specify that ownership to the patent of the AI-generated invention would lie with the designer(s)/creator(s) of the AI system. Such specific laws regulating the ownership of IP generated entirely by automated systems, in particular AI, have to date not been adopted.
In terms of protection, AI, being in the most part code, is protected through copyright under the Copyright Act,1 where a "computer program" is identified as falling within the definition of a "literary work". In the context of the Copyright Act, the definition of computer programs extends to such programs irrespective of the mode or form of their expression, including those which are incorporated in hardware, interfaces which provide for the physical interconnection and interaction or the interoperability between elements of software and hardware and preparatory design material leading to the development of a computer program, provided that the nature of the preparatory design material is such that a computer program can result therefrom at a later stage.
[...]
The granting of credit and collateral go hand in hand. Underlying most credit facilities supplied by lenders is some form of collateral or "security".
Malta has, over the past decade, maintained its position as a financial hub in the Mediterranean, and the market is very familiar with the traditional requests of lenders to have the credit secured by a general and/or special hypothec attaching to land or real estate. However, the discussion now is whether real estate security will continue to adequately serve Malta's economy and financial sector in a digital and non-traditional future.
No wonder, computer programs are a major part of innovations around us than ever before. As the advancement in technology continues to progress, it is quite difficult to find technological innovations that do not have a software component in association with them. In this context, Ferid Allani, a Tunisian citizen had remarkable history regarding his application relating to software patent innovations in particular section 3(k) of the Indian IP landscape. In the present case, more than nineteen and half years are passed in deciding the present application by raising objections. The term of a patent in India is twenty years. The said patent is expiring in December 29th, 2020. The recent IPAB order dated July 20, 2020 in the case of Ferid Allani (applicant) v/s Assistant Controller of Patents, clarifies the ambit and complexity of section 3(k) pertaining to patentable subject matter related to computer related invention..
CEO Gerald E Commissiong said TBIA is a game-changing approach to cancer detection as different AI-developed algorithms run for multiple cancer types on the same blood sample
The US is actually becoming more like the EPO in its approach, but differences still exist, particularly in software, AI and medical devices. Leaving aside minor differences in claim form, the key point is to make sure there is a story that can be told which will work in each jurisdiction, and that each specification has enough of the right “hooks” to let it be told without unhelpful components. We often work with US attorneys to reshape and remove red flags for Europe before they file their international applications. Going the other way, it is important to know what you can try that you cannot in Europe or the UK and be bold.
Nintendo has won a $2.1 million summary judgment against the owner and operator of the now-defunct pirate site RomUniverse. A California federal court ruled that the man, a Los Angeles resident, uploaded and distributed pirated Nintendo games. In addition, he profited from mass-scale copyright infringement by charging paid subscriptions.
The tidbit comes from the most recent episode of his Digging Deep podcast. Plant told his co-host Matt Everitt that the lockdown gave him time to “put his house in order.”
“All the adventures that I’ve ever had with music and tours, album releases, projects that didn’t actually get finished or whatever it is – I just put them, itemized them all, and put everything into some semblance of order,” Plant says.
“I’ve told the kids when I kick the bucket, open it to the public free of charge – just to see how many silly things there were down the line from 1966 to now. It’s a journey,” the singer says.
