Apache versus Nginx is a well-deserved topic. If you are confused about which server is the better solution for you, let’s find out the answer in this article.
Apache and Nginx are the most popular web servers that power the internet today. Together, they are responsible for serving over 50% of traffic on the internet. But Apache has seen a decline in recent years, in favor of Nginx. At a high level, both platforms do the same core thing: host and serve web content. Both of them have unique capabilities catering to particular computing requirements, therefore making one more suitable than the other in various scenarios.
The newest Intel Tiger Lake-powered InfinityBook from Linux laptop company @TUXEDO Computers rocks a 16:10 (YES!), 3K display. Let's unbox it and talk about it.
On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got a lot of Distro News this week with an update to the Beta for elementary OS 6.0, we’ll also check out the latest releases of Regolith Linux, Redcore Linux and Alpine Linux. We’ve also got some cool hardware news to talk about with an update from Pine64 and the IndieGoGo for the JingPad A1 has launched. Plus I’ve got a new mechanical keyboard to show you that I guarantee you will make you think “BUT WHY?” We’ve also got a new Desktop Environment to talk about this week called CuteFishDE. Later in the show, we’ve also some App News to check out. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!
Earlier this month Linux 5.13 disabled Intel's ENQCMD functionality for upcoming Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" processors as the kernel software code around it was deemed "broken beyond repair". More of the recent Intel-submitted patches around reworking kernel code in preparation for upcoming CPU features has been found to be rather hairy after already being mainlined and thus another batch of urgent x86 fixes were sent in this morning.
Over the past year has been a lot of low-level x86 (x86_64) kernel code changes around Intel's Linux 5.13 disabled Intel's ENQCMD functionality for upcoming Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" processors as the kernel software code around it was deemed "broken beyond repair". This stems from changes contributed by Intel over the past year around XSAVES supervisor states and preparing the kernel for Control-Flow Enforcement Technology (CET), Intel Processor Trace (PT), ENQCMD with Sapphire Rapids, and other features needing supervisor extended states (xstate) handling.
While vendors are increasingly just focused on Vulkan (and Direct3D under Windows), there still is plenty of OpenGL software out there especially in the workstation space where software vendors are slow to adapt. Well known RadeonSI OpenGL developer Marek Olšák of AMD landed another performance optimization this week that should benefit the likes of SPECviewperf.
This year we have seen Marek and AMD's other open-source driver developers working on workstation optimizations with optimizing their Gallium3D driver against SPECviewperf and making other improvements in this year.
Joshua Ashton who is known for his work on DXVK (formerly D9VK) and related Steam Play / Proton graphics related efforts has submitted a proposal for a Wayland Surface-Suspension protocol.
The proposed "surface-suspension" protocol is about being able to know if/when a surface has been fully occluded/hidden. This is important with some Wayland compositors suspending the client's windows' buffers under such conditions.
With games/applications potentially hanging if the buffers are suspended when hidden from view, the Wayland Surface Suspension protocol can be quite practical. The proposal would allow for providing events when a surface buffer is suspended and then restored. In turn the windowing system integration and graphics APIs can handle these surface suspension events to take proper action. Knowing this information could also allow for possible efficiency gains around memory management and the like when being able to reliably know if a surface's buffer is suspended.
Whenever you add a new repository on Ubuntu, the system adds a record to the sources.list file.
What other information related to repositories does this file contain? And is it important for the operating system to store this data? You'll find out in this post.
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The second field is reserved for the repository URL. This URL points to the server that stores all the package files along with the database.
The third field denotes the release code name for the version of your Ubuntu installation. You might find xenial, bionic, and focal in the case of Ubuntu, and buster or sid if you're using Debian.
The fourth entry contains information about the type of repository. On Ubuntu, the fourth field would contain any of these four repository components: main, restricted, universal, and multiverse.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install NetworkManager on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, NetworkManager is the default tool for configuring and managing the network services on AlmaLinux 8 or CentOS 8, there are situations where it may be necessary to permanently disable NetworkManager, and use alternative methods to configure and manage the network. Remember good practice always demands that NetworkManager service is up and running for automatic detection of networks and managing interface settings.
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 turn-off of the NetworkManager on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Cloudron on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Cloudron is a complete solution for running apps on your server and keeping them up-to-date and secure. Cloudron comes with the App store from where you can install various applications with just one click without the need of going through Database setup and other processes, for example, WordPress, Joomla, and more.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Cloudron 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.
If you’re writing a lot of Common Lisp and you want to follow the convention of using all uppercase to refer to symbols in docstrings, comments etc., you really need something better than the shift key. Similarly if you’re writing C and you have VARIOUS_LONG_ENUMS.
The traditional way is a caps lock key. But that means giving up a whole keyboard key, all of the time, just for block capitalisation, which one hardly uses outside of programming. So a better alternative is to come up with some Emacs thing to get block capitalisation, as Emacs key binding is much more flexible than system keyboard layouts, and can let us get block capitalisation without giving up a whole key.
The second orchestration and automation framework we’ll consider is SaltStack, which has commercial backing by the SaltStack company. SaltStack uses a declarative language similar to Ansible and is also written in Python. In this chapter, we will use the open source SaltStack framework, but an enterprise version of SaltStack is available as well, which adds more features on top of the open source one.
A service is a program that runs automatically when the computer starts and waits in the background to do its job. A service usually does not have a graphical user interface and works without user interaction. The best-known services are certain web, mail, or database servers, for example, apache, MySQL, and many others. But also the hardware detection or the automatic integration (mounting) of USB sticks, for example, is done by services.
In principle, there are two types of services: internal, for tasks that are relevant or hardware-related when the system is started, and other is services that are subsequently installed by the user, which usually include all server services. In technical terms or computer jargon, services are also traditionally referred to as daemons. The letter ‘d’ therefore often used as the last letter in the program to denote some services, such as when the server component sshd of SSH or mysqld of MySQL.
Whereas Systemd is a system and session manager (init system) that is responsible for managing all services running on the system over the entire operating time of the computer, from the start-up process to shutdown. Processes are always started in parallel (as far as possible) to keep the boot process as short as possible. Now, when we create a configuration file that ends with .service and holds code about a process controlled and supervised by Systemd; is know as a Systemd Service Unit file. Units are created for services, timers, mount points, sockets, swap space, and devices, for example.
This is an edited copy of an email I sent to provide guidance to users of apt-key as to how to handle things in a post apt-key world.
The manual page already provides all you need to know for replacing apt-key add usage...
First thing in the morning, Aleix Pol, president of KDE, introduced the event at and explained how Akademy 2021 was still "special" because we could still not meet in person.
Aleix then introduced the first keynote speaker of the event: Patricia Aas, co-founder of TurtleSec and a C++ developer and trainer. In her talk, Patricia explored bugs, types of bugs, how to deal with the secondary problems bugs create.
Then Aleix was back with his own talk, in which he told us about KDE's "All about the apps" goal. The goal encourages community members to develop, improve and help distribute KDE apps. Thism it turns out, is especially important for new KDE environments, such as Plasma Mobile! He explained how the goal is going and encouraged people to join the effort.
I was able to see a few more presentations than anticipated. The most inspiring was the one given by Patricia Aas I Can’t Work Like This. Based on a fictive story (with a lot of real background) she explained the Cynefin framework No, this is not a new UI or Qt based framework. The idea of the Cynefin framework is that it offers decision-makers a “sense of place” from which to view their perceptions. Unfortunately, I missed Nicolas Fella’s What’s cooking for KDE Frameworks 6. Coincidentally, I was preparing dinner at the time. This also cost me the first minutes of Dan Vratil’s C++ Coroutines and Qt. I compensated that by watching Dave Edmundson’s talk about Wayland for Qt application developers. Until yesterday, I thought Qt will abstract everything away from the application and we don’t have to do anything within KMyMoney, but now I know better. Thanks Dave. Guess I have to start playing with Wayland then in the near future just to avoid surprises in the future.
The virtual KDE Akademy 2021 conference kicked off on Friday and runs through the 25th. This annual summertime event of the KDE desktop community is attended by hundreds but again carried out online due to the pandemic.
For those wishing to enjoy the recordings from this KDE developer conference, there is a YouTube playlist for all Akademy 2021 content.
This week’s MR involved a big refactor of the linkage between the front-end of the reminder and attendee addition UI and the back-end stuff going on.
All this stuff now happens with models, and changes in each of the fields gets added to the models. This means that anything that you see in the UI should directly reflect whatever is present in the actual event — you won’t see a reminder and attendee that isn’t actually in the event. The benefits of having a single source of truth!
The UI for each attendee’s details has also changed, and it now allows you to select the attendee’s status (i.e. have they RSVPed?) and it also lets you request an RSVP from the attendee.
On 7th June, I started working on the first task of my project (Redesigning Health’s MainView). The objective was to create a popup window that contains an AdwViewSwitcherTitle in the header bar which lets the user switch between tabs (Add Activity Data and Add Weight Data). We might add another tab (Water Intake Data).
The Linux distribution NixOS stands out from the crowd with a mathematically “functional” package manager and a declarative system configuration. The system is based on the package manager Nix, from which it also inherits its name and its main advantages and peculiarities. Nix basically does not overwrite anything and regards every adjustment and update as a new, separate package. This means that the status quo is not endangered by failed updates and updates can be withdrawn at will.
Welcome to the 2021 Opensource.com summer reading list. This year's list contains eight wonderful book recommendations from members of the Opensource.com community. From classics like Frank Herbert's Dune and a new translation of Beowulf to non-fiction books about the history of tech industry culture, this list has books for readers with different tastes and interests.
Each recommendation provides valuable insight into why the person who recommended the book thinks it is worth reading. As always, the book selections and reviews shared by my peers are insightful and inspiring. I always learn so much from what they share, and I always enjoy seeing what new and interesting books I will invariably add to my "to read" list. I hope that you will also find something to add to your "to read" pile.
The Debian Project has announced the availability of Debian 10.10. As with other Debian point releases, Debian 10.10 does not constitute a major release to Debian, rather, it rolls up all the latest packages into a brand new ISO that can be used to install Debian without then having to apply post-install updates.
Anyone who is currently using Debian and has kept their system up-to-date will be on Debian 10.10 already. If you were thinking about installing Debian 10 with pre-existing installation media; you can do that and apply available updates later. Just because Debian 10.10 has been released, it doesn’t mean you have to create new installation media.
After moving my server to Hetzner, I built up a large collection of self-hosted services I use on a daily basis: from fun things like an RSS reader and an IRC bouncer, to critical services like my email. I ran them all with docker-compose from a Debian VPS.
For the last couple months, however, I’ve been meaning to move away from Debian and towards something more minimal and clean. Over this last weekend, I decided to move to Alpine Linux.
Ubuntu 20.10 release will reach end of life next month on July 22nd, 2021. Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) was released almost 9 months ago, on October 22, 2020. Canonical says that Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 20.10.
The Royole RoKit is a flexible display development kit with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 board running Android 10 operating system. The kit includes a 7.8-inch “fully flexible” display and corresponding touchscreen module.
The mainboard is also equipped with on-board wireless connectivity, a gyroscope, a speaker, and more, and the kit ships with modular extension boards, data and power cables all packed into a suitcase.
There’s a strict eligibility criteria for inclusion in this series. See the Eligibility Criteria section below.
Pure Writer is a plain text editor. The editor is designed to be minimalistic and tries to help the writer focus on writing content.
The app has a protective mechanism to ensure you never lose your content. It’s autosave functionality ensures content is saved every couple of seconds.
Yew is a really nice framework for writing single-page-applications in Rust, that is then compiled to wasm for running in the browser. For me it has helped make web development much more accessible to me, but getting started with it isn’t always straight forward.
This is the bare-minimum to get a “hello world” in your browser - from there you can build on that foundation to make many more interesting and rich applications.
Learning cloud programming is the need of the hour in this era of technology. Cloud computing programming languages are taking the business by storm, and knowing modern cloud coding can assist you to keep ahead.
Bash is a kind of program called a shell. Shells are usually text-based, and allow us to interact with our computers by exposing a set of builtin functions for things like directory and file navigation, and run commands. The first Unix shell was called the Thompson shell and was written in 1971. Shells have come a long way since then, but more modern shells, including Bash, still use a bunch of the same ideas and concepts as this original shell that was written almost 50 years ago.
Estonia had already announced a similar decision earlier. The dives will focus on the newly discovered hole in the hull of the vessel, according to officials.
"When and how did this rupture occur? Was it before or after sinking?" director of SHK Jonas Backstrand said at the authority's press conference on Friday.
The decision was prompted by a documentary series of the ferry wreck which aired in fall 2020 and revealed a large previously unnoticed hole in the hull of the vessel. The video was filmed with the help of a diving robot in 2019.
More than half of disadvantaged young people are “not confident” they will be able to appeal unfair grades this summer following the exams marking fiasco of last year.
A total of 52 per cent of disadvantaged pupils are worried about the appeals process, while 38 per cent are not confident they will receive grades reflective of their ability, a new survey of over 1,500 high-achieving disadvantaged young people by the Social Mobility Foundation has found.
The findings come as the Department for Education and Education Policy Institute published research suggesting a lack of in-person teaching following the pandemic has led to a widening of the disadvantage gap.
"If this right-wing hit job proceeds, it will be in spite of the Vatican warning against the inevitable divisions," said the petition by Faithful America, which describes itself as the largest online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice. "It would also be just for show: Washington's Archbishop Wilton Cardinal Gregory has made it clear he will not deny Biden Communion, proving the vote's only point is to send a partisan signal."
The Christian organization said the conservative bishops were pushing the effort forward and "prioritizing cheap political points over spiritual grace."
As the highly transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant has spread to 74 countries in just six months since its discovery, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is warning Americans that the strain will become the “predominant variant in the months ahead” in the United States.
The Delta variant is believed to be 43 to 90 percent more transmissible than the previous Covid-19 strains and is now the dominant strain both in India and in the United Kingdom.
Decrying "medical apartheid" and the "failure" of G7 nations "to take on the Big Pharma monopoly rules that are preventing global mass vaccination," Progressive International on Friday kicked off a four-day virtual summit to promote "vaccine internationalism."
"Vaccine internationalism is how we end the pandemic." —Progressive Internationalism
The software was developed by a joint team of the Foundation for Innovations in Health, Kolkata Science for Equity, Empowerment and Development (SEED) division of the Department of Science & Technology, IIT Guwahati, Dr Kevin Dhaliwal from the University of Edinburgh and Dr Sayantan Bandopadhyay, who was formerly associated with the WHO SEARO.
The software was made available in primary care e-Health facilities through the support of the SEED Project. Healthcare workers trained under the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) or certified by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) would be able to record all important parameters in a tablet for the running of the software.
As I spend more time in the classroom, I’ve grown accustomed to not eating in school, but I still come home very hungry and with the occasional headache. While this year’s COVID-19 eating policies hindered many students’ health and studies, school districts now have the opportunity to redesign their policies with student wellness in mind. As districts plan for next school year, it is important to take into account students’ perspectives, needs and suggestions, as well as general safety precautions to help kids succeed.
Manufacturers of prescription drugs and medical devices are on pins and needles as they await news of who will lead the Food and Drug Administration, and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said the decision will come once a busy President Joe Biden finds time to make that crucial decision.
“This is one of those positions where obviously the president is very interested because FDA is just not another agency, it’s a critical agency. They’ve done some tremendous things during Covid. So I think what you’re going to do is find that as soon as the president has a chance to think a little bit closer, we’ll be able to work with him to see if we can get a nominee,” Becerra said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Law.
The agency was key in authorizing the Covid-19 vaccines and is now being tasked with permanent approval of them. The FDA also will need to consider how it can update the regulatory structure for other drugs and medical devices in light of some of the challenges through the pandemic. Many of the key HHS nominees tasked with responding to the pandemic have been confirmed or are on the path to being so.
The United States government has already stepped up its response back home. The Biden administration sent a letter to corporations and business leaders with recommendations for how they can better protect themselves from attacks, and a plea that they do so. The DOJ formed a task force dedicated to ransomware, which has already managed to recover part of the ransom Colonial Pipeline paid to its attackers. And FBI director Christopher Wray even compared the ransomware attack epidemic to 9/11.
But the scale, speed and ease at which that contest can now play out has been transformed. Robert Hanssen, one of the KGB’s most productive agents ever, supplied thousands of pages of classified material to his handlers. But he did so over a period of 20 years, from 1979 to 2001. Vasili Mitrokhin, a disillusioned KGB archivist, pilfered an astonishing 25,000 pages of material between 1972 to 1984, hiding reams of documents under the floor of his dacha, but it took him another eight years to get those secrets to Britain’s MI6.
By contrast, the Chinese [crackers] who penetrated America’s Office of Personnel Management in 2014 gained access to the records of 21.5m people at a stroke—a haul which, if printed out, would have filled a fleet of lorries. Some see the capacity to steal secrets in such remarkable quantity as qualitatively different from older forms of espionage: not just spying but warfare, or some hybrid of spying and warfare, or something entirely new.
The Linux Foundation — a trade organization founded in the year 2000 with the purpose of supporting, standardizing, and growing the Linux operating system — is rapidly putting their weight behind their new business venture: their COVID Vaccine Passport system. And sacrificing other portions of their business to do so.
The commitment level to their Vaccine Passport business is so high, that they are requiring 100% of all attendees at future events to not only be vaccinated against COVID-19… but also specifically use the Linux Foundation Vaccine Passport system.
With the rapid series of events, here is a chronological listing of some of what has transpired over just the last two weeks.
If admins don’t update IBM AIX and Db2, attackers could paralyze the systems via DoS attacks. Security updates are available for download.
The White House has issued a communique to business leaders [PDF] urging them to take the threat of ransomware a bit more seriously.
The memo, from deputy national security advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger, said the private sector has a “critical responsibility” to protect their businesses against ransomware.
“All organizations must recognize that no company is safe from being targeted by ransomware, regardless of size or location,” she said.
Thanks to increased demand for internet-connected cars, autos are driving the manufacturing edge with robotics-driven automation during assembly.
I’m one of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC 2021) interns contributing to the GNOME Foundation. And I'm contributing to the libsecret project.
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In simple terms, my goal is to extend current libsecret file database encryption-decryption functionality to work with a TPM. So, the TPM will handle key generation, wrapping-unwrapping of keys and key storage processes. This is very exciting work! Honestly, this was not the case in my early stage of contributing to libsecret. I knew nothing about libsecret, computer security, cryptography or TPMs. Thanks to both my mentors and upstream TSS developers, I'm confidently finding my way around the project. So, thank you Daiki Ueno for guiding me through every step of the way from my initial contribution to making my final project proposal for GSoC. And thank you Anderson Sasaki for helping me out with my questions every single day. Also, I would very much like to thank, upstream TSS developers Peter Huewe, Philip Tricca and Andreas Fuchs for helping me out with all things related to TPMs.
The report is authored by Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association and Joseph Cannataci, Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy.
The identity verification service ID.me is intended to help reduce unemployment fraud, and uses biometric data and official documents to verify people. But according to Motherboard, some who have applied for unemployment have reported that ID.me has failed to identify them correctly, and that they have had difficulty reaching someone at ID.me to remedy the problem.
On Twitter, there are dozens of complaints about ID.me per day, and local news articles all over the country have detailed the problem over the course of months. In California, 1.4 million unemployment beneficiary accounts were abruptly suspended on New Year’s Eve and the beneficiaries were required to re-verify their identity using ID.me, a process which many found difficult and resulted in them waiting for weeks to reactivate their accounts while they struggled to make ends meet.
In Colorado, benefit recipients who had no problem establishing their identity before ID.me took over were suddenly rejected and went months without receiving the payments they were eligible for.
The story is similar in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and many other states.
"The walking stick... is also a weapon and it meets a felt need of barbarian man on that ground.' —Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
Neither general could explain why it took hours to send National Guard troops to clear the Capitol. Their absurd stonewalling about the need for a “concept of operation” plan was belied in previous testimony by then-D.C. National Guard Commander William Walker. Walker said Piatt and Flynn justified their rejection of his initial request for permission to deploy National Guard troops, at 1:49 p.m., on the grounds that having soldiers deployed to the Capitol would be “bad optics.”
Walker further testified in March that he had 155 guardsmen fully equipped and ready to deploy, and that their timely dispatch to the Capitol could have “secured the perimeter” and “made a difference.”
No one at Tuesday’s hearing mentioned the fact that Charles Flynn is the younger brother of retired General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. Days before the January 6 coup attempt, Flynn publicly urged Trump to declare martial law and hold new elections at gunpoint in swing states that had given Biden his margin of victory.
The election, in other words, was not competitive—even by the standards of Iran, where unelected clerics hold the real power. Of the nearly 600 candidates who registered to run, all but seven were disqualified by the Guardian Council, including a former president, a current vice-president and Iran’s longest-serving speaker of parliament. (Three of the seven dropped out later.) The council, a group of clerics and lawyers who vet candidates, essentially cleared the field for Mr Raisi, a hardline cleric and judiciary chief with close ties to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Amnesty said Raisi was a member of the "Death Commission" that forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of opposition prisoners in 1988 while serving as Tehran's deputy prosecutor.
Asked in 2018 and again last year about the executions, Raisi denied playing a role, even as he lauded an order he said was handed down by the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to proceed with the purge.
Amnesty said the "fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity".
Political analysts had predicted that Raisi's win could complicate efforts by President Biden to renegotiate a nuclear deal, with Ali Vaez, Iran project director with the International Crisis Group, saying this week, “Raisi’s abhorrent human rights record, I think, will increase the price of diplomatic engagement for the Biden administration."
Progressive Iran-watchers on Saturday reacted to the election of Ebrahim Raisi, the country's conservative judiciary chief, with concern and appeals to the Biden administration to choose conciliation over confrontation with the Islamic Republic, beginning with a U.S. return to the Iran nuclear deal and the easing of crippling economic sanctions.
"The ascension of Raisi to the presidency will be widely viewed as a victory for hardliners in Iran and the U.S. who seek confrontation over conciliation between the U.S. and Iran."—NIAC
It’s been years since Newsweek has been a regular news source for large numbers of readers but it still occasionally produces good investigative reporting. In a long feature story titled “Inside the Military’sSecret Undercover Army” published in the magazine last month, William Arkin, author of a number of books on U.S. national security, revealed that the Pentagon and, even more alarmingly, private contractors working with it, have deployed thousands covert operatives at home and abroad. These covert programs are believed to have 60,000 operators, twice as many as the CIA.
The past few years have seen young people around the globe emerging as leaders in the fight for transformative change—on issues ranging from climate change to gun violence to gender equality.
“The typical data center uses about 3-5 million gallons of water per day -- the same amount of water as a city of 30,000-50,000 people,” said Venkatesh Uddameri, professor and director of the Water Resources Center at Texas Tech University.
Although these data centers have become much more energy and water efficient over the last decade, and don’t use as much water as other industries such as agriculture, this level of water use can still create potential competition with local communities over the water supply in areas where water is scarce, he added.
Twitter India accepted before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology that it differentiates between tweets- promoting the healthy ones and suppressing the harmful- and gives priority to its own laid down policies over the law of the land in cases of conflict, leading the panel to conclude that this is a gross violation of the IT Act, 2000.
The Shashi Tharoor-led parliamentary panel grilled Twitter India representatives at a sitting on Friday for over 90 minutes on issues ranging from failure to appoint a full time compliance officer and its claims of being an intermediary despite "manipulating content" on its site, which would put it in the category of a publisher, according to sources.
The Modi government on Friday sought public comments on the draft Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill 2021, which proposes to arm the Central government with the power to order recertification of an already certified film following the receipt of viewer complaints – a move that would lead to an additional layer of direct government censorship going beyond that envisaged by the existing process run by the Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC).
While the ministry says that the original Cinematograph Act empowered the Central Government, “if the situation so warranted … to reverse the decision” of the CBFC in certifying a particular film, the Supreme Court’s view that the government has no right to demand censorship once the Board has certified a film has left the Centre powerless.
The [Internet] in general and social media platforms in particular have proven to be effective places to spread misinformation about important matters such as Covid-19 and vaccines, disinformation (intentional falsehoods) about politics and elections, plus all manner of character assassinations and conspiracy theories.
The Oversight Board pointed out in its recommendation that while Facebook has said it will make exceptions for satire, it doesn’t specify how or what qualifies as satire in its guidelines. Facebook said in its post that in addition to making its guidelines around satire clearer, it would “initiate a review of identical content with parallel context,” and may take further action.
A new FAIR study finds that TV news coverage of the southern US border largely ignores the experiences and voices of those most impacted by the immigration system.
Being Black in America, one often encounters a paradox: that in a so-called “free” country, one is not Black with impunity; that the “freedom” we lionize in this country began and holds itself together on top of your subjugation.
The decline of democracy in Hong Kong, with Beijing continuing to tighten its grip, has accelerated. While the Chinese government pledged a hands off posture towards Hong Kong for 50 years when the UK relinquished its control, that pledge seems to have been worth less than the paper on which it was written. A couple years ago, Hong Kong implemented a new "national security" law that has almost nothing to do with national security beyond allowing for the prosecution of anyone who doesn't think the CCP are perfect in every way. The end result of that has been the arrest of media members accused of participating in "unauthorized protests", arrests of protesters themselves, and the ousting and later arrest of pro-democracy lawmakers for the crime of being pro-democracy.
Back in the mid-nineteen-fifties, the prolific, progressive political economist, Harvard’s John Kenneth Galbraith, developed his “theory of countervailing powers.” He asserted as big business got bigger, its overreach would be constrained by strong labor unions, regulators, and antitrust enforcement. Inside the realm of large companies, big retail chains could check the power of large manufacturers.
British judges would be told that they are no longer "bound" by European human rights rulings under major reforms being considered by a government review.
The Telegraph understands that the first review of the Human Rights Act in 20 years is weighing up proposals to curb the influence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the UK.
The program will provide timely, up-to-date information on the latest IP legislative and case law developments in China during 2020 and the first half of 2021, during which China passed and implemented a myriad of IP-related measures.
This guest post is brought to you by Sandra Torrillas Rodríguez. Sandra is an IP lawyer and PhD student at University Carlos III Madrid under the supervision of Sara Martín Salamanca, and visiting PhD student at Brunel University London, under the supervision of this Kat. Sandra's main areas of research include the audio-visual market, the new ways of exploiting works in the digital sphere and the study of the making available right and the distribution right.
Here is another mandamus writ coming out of Judge Albright’s Waco Texas courthouse. A basic repeated complaint against Judge Albright is that he appears to work quickly regarding issues that move the case toward trial, but acts more slowly to decide motions to dismiss transfer. I personally don’t put much weight in this complaint because truthfully he’s deciding all of the issues more quickly than most other judges.
On 22 April 2021 the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) gave a judgement in Claydon Yield-O-Meter v Mzuri, a UK case on patent invalidity because of prior disclosure. As is known, in order for an invention to be considered new under Section 2(2) of the UK’s Patents Act 1977, it must not form part of ‘the state of the art’, i.e. all matter which is available to the public anywhere in the world in any manner, before the priority date.
It should be reminded that even if there is no one to observe the disclosure, just a possibility of prior public use being observed can rob an invention of its novelty. This principle was previously affirmed in Lux Traffic Controls Ltd v Pike Signals Ltd (1993). In that case, the invention related to a traffic signal light system. Before the filing date, field trials had been carried out by the applicant. The defendant argued that the invention had been made available to the public because a prototype had been used in public and it did not matter whether anyone observed the particular feature claimed by the patentee. It was held that the relevant claim of the patent was invalid for lack of novelty. Indeed, the court noted, a prototype was made available to a contractor and – if a skilled man had examined it – he/she would have seen how it worked. Whether such person examined it did not matter. To back up this argument the court pointed out that a book on the library shelf may be deemed a prior disclosure even if no one has actually ever opened and read it.
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Claydon Yield-O-Meter Limited (‘Claydon’) was the claimant. Mzuri Limited (‘Mzuri’) and Christopher Martin Lole (sole director of Mzuri) were the defendants. The two companies are both manufacturers and sellers of agricultural equipment. Mr Jeffrey Claydon, CEO of Claydon, to whom the patents were granted, appeared as a third party to the dispute. Claydon filed a case against Mzuri claiming infringement of both its UK and European patents. The patents protected a seed drill, which is attached to tractors for precisely sowing seeds. The inventor, Mr Claydon, tested the invention prototype in his farm for ten hours over two days, before filing for the patents. There was a six-feet tall hedge surrounding the farm and the hedge had several gaps from where anyone could peep into the field. Mzuri contended that Claydon’s prototype could have been seen by anyone from the footpath to which the public had access, providing enough information to enable an understanding of the invention.
In November, the EU revealed a new intellectual property policy with the goal of helping companies — especially small and medium-sized enterprises — make the most of their innovations.
The EU says its plan will improve SMEs’ ability to protect their IP, help companies share IP to broaden the adoption of technological innovations, fight counterfeiting and strengthen enforcement of IP rights.
On May 11, Icelandic-based drug developer Alvotech filed a lawsuit against AbbVie seeking to undo what it alleges is a “minefield” of “invalid” patents surrounding what is arguably the pharma giant’s most prized possession: Humira.
Just 2 weeks prior, AbbVie had filed a lawsuit of its own against Alvotech — currently seeking FDA approval for its Humira (adalimumab) biosimilar AVT02 — accusing Alvotech of patent infringement related to that biosimilar application.
In the first instance, Geofabrics alleged that Fiberweb’s Hydrotex 2.0, a track bed liner used by UK railway infrastructure provider Network Rail in the laying of railway tracks across the UK, infringed EP 238.
In March 2020, the first instance court under presiding deputy judge David Stone concurred with the allegation of infringement. The court also found the patent valid, dismissing Fiberweb’s counterclaim for invaldity based on lack of novelty, obviousness and insufficiency.
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Now the second instance Court of Appeal has upheld the first instance decision, that the Hydrotex product infringes EP 238. The court dismissed claims of patent invalidity for novelty on the basis of Hoare, the first prior art.
The court upheld the decision that Hoare did not provide enough information for a skilled person to perform the invention, as well as corroborating the High Court’s rejection of the attack of obviousness.
Despite all previous decisions, and the patent already surviving a 2014 opposition suit filed by Swiss company Intersurgical at the EPO, the German Federal Patent Court found the patent null and void (6 Ni 62/19).
It is not yet clear whether Fisher & Paykel will appeal the ruling. Since many of the previous rulings are in their favour, this seems to be the next logical step.
Ultimately, the question is whether Fisher & Paykel will receive damages for the time that Flexicare products were distributed on the German market, or Flexicare for the time it was not allowed to distribute in Germany due to the patent dispute.
Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine has announced that it has developed an industrial-scale process for carbon-neutral steel production without the use of fossil carbon and that it has obtained a patent for the process from the European Patent Office. The patent is valid in all major European steel manufacturing countries and covers the production of sponge iron (direct reduced iron or hot briquetted iron) using green hydrogen and biogas in the direct reduction process.
Scandinavian ChemoTech AB announces today that the Company has received approval from the European Patent Office. The final injunction for this patent application was announced in a press release on the 3d of February 2021. The examiner announces that the approval will be published 7th of July 2021.
Lawyers say they are happy to keep flexible working – but question how effective it will be in a post-COVID world
Dutch companies are watching with suspicion how the genetic engineering technique Crispr-Cas9 is being used internationally, while in the Netherlands (and Europe) legislation inhibits the use of the technique. Is this causing the Netherlands to lag behind with agricultural innovations?
Yes and no, that is how you could summarize the answer of LNV Minister Carola Schouten. She took up her pen to answer questions from VVD Members of Parliament Peter Valstar and Thom van Campen.
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Schouten refers to figures from Espacenet, a patent database managed by the European Patent Office. It contains patent documents published worldwide. In China, the number of Crispr-Cas9 publications increased from 200 in 2016 to 850 in 2020. In comparison, the number in the US is 150 and 500 (in 2020), while in Europe 'only' 140 applications were made in 2020, compared to 47 in 2016.
Enlivex Therapeutics Ltd., (Nasdaq: ENLV, the “Company”), a clinical-stage macrophage reprogramming immunotherapy company targeting diseased macrophages in patients with sepsis, COVID-19 and solid tumors, today announced that the European Patent Office has issued European patent No. 3,258,943 covering AllocetraTM, the Company’s immunotherapy product candidate. The new patent’s title is “COMBINATION IMMUNE THERAPY AND CYTOKINE CONTROL THERAPY FOR CANCER TREATMENT”, and is expected to provide added intellectual property protection for therapeutic compositions of AllocetraTMand CAR-T immunotherapies for inhibition or reduction ofcytokine storms associated with CAR-T therapies for cancer.
Validity challenges at the China National IP Administration are an increasingly important part of the Chinese patent landscape, but they can be confusing affairs. With regulations and guidelines, the process that PRID follows is intended to be efficient and many Chinese practitioners will advise that invalidations can be accomplished in six to nine months. However, Unified Patents has filed 18 such challenges since 2020 in China but, based on its experiences, the reality can be very different to expectations.
Intel and Apple demonstrate what perseverance can mean in litigation. They've been trying since 2019 to strike back against Fortress Investment's patent assertion business (which is just one of various fields in which Fortress invests) with an antitrust action in the Northern District of California. Had they not done this, the dispute would have been a one-way street, with Apple and Intel always being on the receiving end of litigation campaign after litigation campaign. Sometimes a good offense is the best defense. So Intel, which was joined by Apple early on, alleged that Fortress and the multitude of patent assertion entities it has funded engaged in anticompetitive conduct.
In 2019, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary of its Patent Local Rules, the Landgericht München I (Munich I Regional Court) commissioned an evaluation by the Max Planck Institute. The results became known last year. For the most part, they were pretty positive, but in my view, the respondents underrated the legal and technical competence of the Munich judges as compared to other German patent infringement courts, and I said so at the time.
Many respondents to the survey criticized inconsistencies between the lower court's decisions and those handed down by the Oberlandesgericht München (Munich Higher Regional Court), the regional appeals court--comparable to a U.S. appeals court for a particular circuit, though regional and higher regional courts in Germany are run by the states, not the federal government.
Germany is the world's most popular patent litigation venue, and last week's legislative decision does nothing to dissuade patent holders from enforcing their intellectual property rights in the largest EU member state. If anything, there may be a further shift from Dusseldorf, where I've only attended one patent trial so far (Huawei v. ZTE in 2013) and covered another (in 2020) from a distance. What happens there is usually uninspiring. The judges presiding over the two patent appeals divisions of the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court made statements last year that suggest they may interpret the new injunction statute in a divergent way from the case law of the Federal Court of Justice, against the clear legislative intent. I don't think the risk there is high, but who would want to be the first patent holder to be denied an injunction after prevailing on the technical merits of a non-standard-essential patent? Or worse still, who would want this to happen as counsel?
In a way, others are beating Dusseldorf at its own game. What made Dusseldorf popular was not the quality of its judges but their plaintiff-friendly inclinations. I remember a conversation with a patent litigator who, back in 2007, described the tilted playing field he found there when trying to defend clients against infringement complaints. Judge Dr. Thomas Kuehnen ("Kühnen" in German) was the one who set the bar so high for staying infringement cases over invalidity contentions that he largely vitiated the invalidity defense. The rest of the country followed. But by now, other venues are more en vogue than the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia. Some of the best Dusseldorf-based patent litigators attend more hearings and trials in Munich and/or Mannheim now than in their hometown. Second- and third-tier litigators still get a fair amount of Dusseldorf business from cases pitting small and medium-sized enterprises against each other, but the exciting cases are filed in Mannheim and Munich.
A Stanford University bioengineering professor’s company on Friday sued a former researcher and his current employer, the University of Oxford’s Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, for allegedly trying to steal its patent rights to breakthrough DNA sequencing technology.
Chunxiao Song and the Ludwig Institute are trying to misappropriate inventions that were co-created by Stephen Quake and belong to his Bluestar Genomics, according to the complaint filed in San Francisco federal court.
In March 2021 the EPO published its revised Guidelines for Examination (hereafter, the "Guidelines"). One area of note that received extensive amendments was Part F Chapter V - Unity. In this article we take some time to examine what has changed, and how this might affect applicants.
The interplay between EPO and national proceedings may take various forms. The Technical Board of Appeal revoking a European Patent during European-wide litigation is one of the more dramatic examples. The EPO’s stay of the grant of an application following an entitlement claim (an ‘entitlement torpedo’) another one. And then there is the central limitation procedure…
According to Article 105a EPC the patentee can request the EPO to limit a European Patent by an amendment of the claims. Article 68 EPC determines that a European Patent shall be deemed not to have had “from the outset” the rights conferred by the patent to the extent it has been limited in the limitation proceedings. These three words, “from the outset”, are words that matter in national proceedings. The long lasting proceedings between High Point and KPN before the Dutch courts show why.
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The Supreme Court’s ruling opened up a new chapter in the litigation: in August 2020 High Point filed a new action against KPN with the District Court on the basis of the (limited) B3 version of the patent, claiming a declaration of infringement and damages (no injunction: the patent expired in 2012).
KPN requested High Point’s claims to be declared inadmissible/denied. KPN, in sum, argued that the B3 version did not enter into force for the Netherlands because before EPO’s central limitation on September 7, 2017, the B1 version was annulled by the District Court in 2010. This invalidation has direct effect on condition that the judgment becomes final in due course. This condition had been fulfilled, as the CoA upheld the 2010 District Court decision, while the supreme appeal was dismissed. The 2010 decision should therefore be considered res judicata in these new proceedings between the parties.
The District Court, in a May 12, 2021 decision, dismissed KPN’s request (decision in Dutch available here). The District Court considered that the condition mentioned by KPN is a suspensive condition. As long as the judgment has not yet become final, the patent still exists, but only its legal effects cannot be invoked. The 2010 decision has indeed become final, but considers the B1 version. However, at the time of the central limitation the patent had not yet been (finally) invalidated. Therefore, the doctrine of res judicata does not mean that it is also settled between the parties that the CoA, by upholding the 2010, has also ruled that the B3 version is null and void. The Supreme Court explicitly considered in its 2020 judgment that the Court of Appeal did not express an opinion on the content of that limited patent. The proceedings based on the B3 version will therefore continue.
The patent in question is dated on the 12th day of August, 1820. The specification annexed, is in these words: ‘This invention or improvement, in the composition, or making, or manufacturing, of ingrained carpets or carpeting, consists in making the warp thereof, that is, the threads that extend lengthways of the same, of cotton, flaxen tow, or hempen yarn or thread, and weaving or combining them therewith, in the manner of weaving carpets or carpeting; the filling, that is, the threads that extend crossways, to consist of woolen or worsted yarn, by the weaving or combination of which materials, in the manner of weaving carpets, or carpeting, of any figures or colours, can be made or manufactured.’ On the 17th day of February last, the complainant, by his counsel, moved this court for a rule that the patentees show cause why process should not issue against them to repeal the above patent. The application was founded, and the rule granted, upon affidavits alleging that the patent in question had been obtained surreptitiously, or upon false suggestion; and this allegation, supported by other evidence, tending to show that the manufacture, for the exclusive working and making of which the respondents had obtained the patent, was not new, or, in other words, that they were not the true inventors of discoverers. The rule was granted, and in compliance with a decision which had been made in another case, after full argument and deliberation, the parties upon the hearing went into the whole merits of the case, and the alleged originality of the manufacture in question was investigated with much labour and assiduity.
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It has been seen, plainly, I think, that the subject of a patent must be both ‘new’ and ‘not known or used, before the application.’ It must also be ‘useful.’ This term has been defined to mean such an invention as is ‘not frivolous, or injurious to the well being, good policy, or sound morals of society’ (Lowell v. Lewis [Case No. 8,568]); such an invention ‘as may be applied to some beneficial use in society in contradistinction to an invention which is injurious to the morals, the health, or the good order of society’ (Bedford v. Hunt [Id. 1,217]). A more enlarged and comprehensive signification may safely and properly be ascribed to the term ‘useful.’ It may well be added, that it must be an art, &c., not mischievous to the state, or generally inconvenient, which brings it within the terms of the British statute. It seems to me to have been used and intended as equivalent to that clause in the sixth section of the statute of James, which defines the nature of the new manufactures which will be exempted from the general prohibition of the act. What, if I may be allowed the phraseology, can be less useful than a patent that interrupts the practice of an art, &c., commonly known? What more pernicious to the state than the monopoly of a machine or manufacture already in use? I should not hesitate to decide, under this expression in the act, if the point were presented, that such an art, &c., or such a machine or manufacture, were not patentable, and that the grant was void. As this case, in my view of it, does not turn on this point, it is not necessary to pursue its investigation further.
Pandemic-induced remote working, as well as the emergence of new fields of innovation such as artificial intelligence, have increased the difficulties in acquiring and developing the most able patent attorneys.
Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on U.S. Patent 7,349,668. This patent is currently owned by Optinetix, a NPE. The '668 patent generally relates to a system and method for the distribution of information, typically digital information that is distributed actively, through broadcast media such as television and radio. Prior art search service provider, Parola Analytics, found the art shown below.
The latest edition of the EUIPO Guidelines for Examination of European Union trade marks (EUTM) and registered Community designs (RCD) entered into force on 1 March 2021, following approval by the Executive Director of the EUIPO on 8 February 2021 by means of Decision EX-21-1.
The Guidelines are available in both electronic and PDF format on the EUIPO website. The changes introduced in the new edition can be seen and compared to the previous edition by switching on the "Show modifications" option at the top of the electronic version of the Guidelines.
EUIPO says that the growth of e-commerce has been well documented, but how the rise of different technologies and consumer habits has affected IPR infringement on the internet and, in particular, on social media platforms, is not clear. Therefore, EUIPO decided to conduct a study to better understand the volume and frequency of IPR infringement on social media.
The CP11 Common Practice on "New types of marks: Examination of formal requirements and grounds for refusal" was adopted by EUIPO's Management Board by written procedure in October 2020. It delivers a set of general principles and examples on the formal requirements of examination and grounds for refusal and/or invalidity regarding sound, motion, multimedia and hologram marks and the new ways of representing them.
The Common Communication document, which includes the CP11 Common Practice and complementary information, such as the implementation dates and processes for each participating office, was published simultaneously on the websites of the IP offices of the EU on 14 April 2021. The document is also available on the EUIPN website in all EU languages.
Several EU member states have failed to implement the EU Copyright Directive on time, so what happens next?
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 344. This is my appearance with Adam Terrell of the Theocracy podcast: 022 Copyrights Are Unlawful with Stephan Kinsella. From his shownotes: Now, some of you know I have a background in media production. And I have gotten royalty checks and benefitted from a copyright "tradition" (I don't call it law) on multiple occasions, and I have family who have had their entire livelihoods supported by it. So how can I say in the title that "Copyrights Are Unlawful?" Stephan Kinsella is my guest today. I found him through Tom Woods's podcast years back, and I've run in to his talks at Mises University online several times. He's a patent attorney who has helped me think through these issues practically relating to intellectual property and why it doesn't exist. I believe there is a Bible verse I can point to as well in Exodus, but we'll get to that. We get in to some less-than-settled issues as well.
Depending on how the US Supreme Court rules in Unicolors v H&M, copyright defendants could have a harder time fending off serial filers, say counsel
After a leaked copy of Windows 11 began circulating this week, thousands downloaded the ISO file to get an early look at the new operating system. Perhaps surprisingly, Microsoft hasn't yet made much of an effort to contain the leak, but was successful in taking down the ISO from various hosting sites. It also targeted a tech news site, which removed an installation tutorial.
