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Links 12/7/2021: digiKam 7.3, EuroLinux, and GNU/Linux on IdeaPad



  • GNU/Linux

    • My IdeaPad Y50-70 now runs Linux, too - Nvidia, 4K, details

      This would be the end of part one of my IdeaPad Y50-70 Linux saga. Overall, the experiment went well. But there were problems. Cardinally, HD/UHD scaling in Plasma before 5.20 is still rather meh, and I needed a lot of manual work to get things sorted. The desktop also had some rather rough edges, for no good reason.

      On the bright side, the hardware compatibility is top-notch, performance and responsiveness are more than reasonable for a seven-year old laptop with a 5,400rpm mechanical disk, and Kubuntu sure looks the part, plus you get a decent spread of good applications. But now we must up the game [sic]. I intend to test the gaming side of things as well, which will surely be rather interesting. Anyway, that would be all for now. Hopefully, this was an entertaining little exercise. GRUB and SDDM 4K scaling tutorials coming soon.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Microsoft has its own Linux distro called CBL-Mariner [Ed: E.E.E. in action, this is not about going upstream]

        It's no secret that Microsoft has been showing Linux a lot more love in recent years -- just look to Windows Subsystem for Linux as an example. Nonetheless, it might surprise you to learn that Microsoft has its very own Linux distribution.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.14 Can Create Secret Memory Areas With memfd_secret

        The "memfd_secret" system call is being added to the Linux 5.14 kernel to provide the ability to create memory areas that are visible only in the context of the owning process and these "secret" memory regions are not mapped by other processes or the kernel page tables.

        This work originated with the proposed secretmemfd work for secret memory on Linux and over the past year as memfd_secret has been gping through many rounds of review. The intended use-case for these secret memory areas are cases like OpenSSL private keys potentially being stored within these areas to reduce the possibility they are exposed in system memory and not able to be backed up by other hardware encryption methods with modern hardware.

      • New Linux kernel 5.14 release candidate is out: Here's what's inside

        This release of kernel has contributions from about 1,650 developers. There were 11,859 file changes, nearly 82,000 insertions and 285,485 deletions.

        Torvalds expects this to be a "pretty regular release" compared to the larger 4.13 stable release in late June, which brought early support for Apple's M1 Arm-based processor.

        "Last release was big, but it was all fairly calm despite that, so size isn't always the determining factor here," he warned in the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to install Openldap on RockyLinux or Centos 8 Step by step - Unixcop

        The project is to copy the LDAP reference source code. OpenLDAP is the abbreviation of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.LDAP is a vendor-neutral application protocol that lets you assess and maintain distributed directory information services over an ISP.There are many different ways to provide a directory.For example, using LDAP helps you to provide a central place to store usernames and passwords.

        So, many various applications and services could connect to the LDAP server to validate users. LDAP servers are widely used in Organizations to store the User name and password in a Centralized Server against which the User can authenticate further to programs and services present on the network. Furthermore, we will be using Symas OpenLDAP packages for the standard software maintenance commands native to your operating system.Symas OpenLDAP is the principal contributor in writing 90% of OpenLDAP code.

      • How to disable SELinux on CentOS/RHEL 8 – TecAdmin

        SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) is a Linux kernel security module that provides enhanced security for Linux systems. SELinux provides a mechanism for supporting access control security policies. This specifies how the processes communicate with each other and interact with the files.

        It’s not a good practice to disable SELinux on a system, especially on production servers. For developer systems, you can disable it only if facing issues due to its policies.

        In this how-to-guide, you will learn to disable SELinux on a CentOS 8 or RHEL 8 Linux system.

      • How to Remap Keyboard / Gamepad in Ubuntu Easily with This Tool | UbuntuHandbook

        Want to remap your keyboard or gamepad keys in Ubuntu Linux? It’s easy to do this via Key Mapper.

        Key Mapper is a free and open-source tool written in Python 3. With it, you can change the mapping for input devices, including mouse, keyboard, and gamepad.

        It works on both X11 and Wayland, and supports for mapping to combined buttons (e.g., Control+A) and programmable macros.

      • Real Time Linux Server monitoring with GLANCES



        Glances is an open source real time Linux server monitoring system that aims at providing as much as information possible in as minimum as space possible. Glances is like top command but more refined with many more features & much more real time information of your Linux system.

        Glances provide information regarding memory, CPU, Disk IO , file system, Uptime, processes, interfaces, alerts & many other system information.

        One of the best features of Glances is that it can work in server/client mode. We can perform remote monitoring of the systems using a Web interface or through terminal/CLI & we can also export stats to a file.

      • Introduction To Ansible Automation Platform - OSTechNix

        Are you a beginner to Ansible? This guide will give a brief introduction to Ansible, and other important factors of Ansible automation platform including Ansible architecture, inventory, modules and playbooks.

        If you are someone who is trying to understand what ansible is and what are its core features, then this article is for you.

      • How to Install and Use Kontact in Ubuntu - Unixcop

        Kontakt is a free, open-source Linux-based Email application that is developed by the KDE project, which can be used on GNOME desktop as well to replace e.g. Thunderbird. It works as a Personal Information Manager (PIM). Kontact has modules to provide email, calendar, contacts, and notes functions. Users can easily handle their emails and other relevant tasks in a way better method by using Kontact. In this article, we will show you how to install Kontact on Ubuntu 21.04 desktop by either using Flatpak or the Ubuntu repository.

      • How to Install MediaWiki with Nginx and Let's Encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 20.04

        MediaWiki is an open-source wiki software written in PHP. It allows you to create your own self-hosted wiki website on the server. It is one of the most popular wiki platforms due to its simplicity and customizability. Currently, it is used by many companies to manage their wiki pages. It provides a versatile and free tool for publishing content on the internet.

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MediaWiki with Nginx web server and Let's Encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 20.04.

      • How To Install Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Thinkorswim is an online trading platform developed by TD Ameritrade to allow users to trade in various stock, options, futures, and equities.

        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 Thinkorswim 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.

      • Deploy a Kubernetes Cluster using Ansible - buildVirtual

        In this article we will take a look at how to deploy a Kubernetes cluster on Ubuntu 18.04 using Ansible Playbooks. I have found Ansible to be a fantastic tool for getting a Kubernetes cluster up and running quickly in my development environment, and now use the Ansible playbooks detailed in this article when I need to stand up a Kubernetes cluster quickly and easily.

        For the purposes of this article, we will use Ansible to deploy a small Kubernetes cluster – with one master node, used to manage the cluster, and two worker nodes, which will be used to run our container applications. To achieve this, we will use four Ansible playbooks.

      • SUSE Manager and Ansible: Making Automation Easier and More Powerful

        SUSE Manager is a single, powerful tool that makes it possible for your IT operations team to manage the complete lifecycle of RPM- and DEB-based Linux systems. With a feature-rich, web-based interface, you can use SUSE Manager to administer, deploy, configure, and audit all of your Linux systems, no matter if they are running on bare metal or within a virtual environ-ment.

        SUSE Manager includes several deployment, orchestration, and automation tools that not only make the job of the administrator easier but also give them even more power to work faster. With SUSE Manager in place, you can minimize staffing costs and maximize efficiency.

      • What is XML?

        Reading the sample XML, you might find there's an intuitive quality to the format. You can probably understand the data in this document whether you're familiar with the subject matter or not. This is partly because XML is considered verbose. It uses lots of tags, the tags can have long and descriptive names, and the data is ordered in a hierarchical manner that helps explain the data's relationships. You probably understand from this sample that the Fedora distribution and the Slackware distribution are two different and unrelated instances of Linux because each one is "contained" inside its own independent tag.

      • How to Work with Case Statement in Bash Scripts

        In this article, we will take a look at bash case statements and how to use them in bash scripts. The case statement is a bash built and is used to simplify conditional logic in bash scripts.

      • How To Create SFTP User for a Web Server Document Root

        SFTP (SSH/Secure File Transfer Protocol) is a network transmission standard used to transfer, access, and manage files over a remote network. It contains SSH (Secure Shell), making it a lot more secure than the FTP protocol.

        Files are transferred through a single control channel in SFTP. It requires authentication and runs on port 22. In SFTP, the SSH shell provides encryption that helps protect usernames, passwords, and other personal data transferred through SFTP.

        In this how-to guide, we will learn to create SFTP users for web server document root.

      • Use Docker Compose with Podman to Orchestrate Containers on Fedora - Fedora Magazine

        Docker Compose is an open-source tool used by developers for orchestrating containers locally or in production.

      • 6 steps to automating code pushes with Ansible Automation Platform | Enable Sysadmin

        Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) is an enterprise solution by Red Hat to make Ansible easier to use. It comes bundled with a lot of components to help you automate your processes across the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It provides you with various features such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), workflows, third-party integration via an API, notifications, shared SSH key credentials, and more. It also integrates well with LDAP and comes with pre-configured logging.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Box64 Emulator Released for Arm64 Linux

        Box86, the popular x86 emulator, has just received a huge upgrade. This comes in the form of Box64, the ARM64 equivalent.

        If you did not know, Box64_86 lets you run 64-bit or 32-bit Linux programs on ARM systems. In other words, it makes it possible for you to access desktop Linux programs on your Raspberry Pi or Raspberry Pi alternatives.

        Fortunately, now we have Box86 and Box64 to the rescue no matter what type of ARM system you’ve got.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • digiKam 7.3 Open-Source Photo Management App Released with ExifTool Support, More

          Coming about three months after digiKam 7.2, the digiKam 7.3 release is here to introduces official support for the famous ExifTool utility for handling file metadata instead of Exiv2. digiKam now features an ExifTool metadata viewer in the metadata sidebar, which can be accessed from everywhere within the app.

          Another new feature in this release is the addition of a new tool that can be used to export your photos to the iNaturalist social network service for biologists, citizen scientists, and naturalists.

        • digiKam - digiKam 7.3.0 is released

          Dear digiKam fans and users, After four months of maintenance, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.3.0 of its open source digital photo manager. Here is the list of most important features coming with this release: ExifTool Support The famous ExifTool is now supported officially in parallel than the former Exiv2 shared library to handle file metadata. ExifTool is a powerful tool that we will use in special cases to fix metadata dysfunctions that we cannot solve using Exiv2.

        • Patching XFSTESTS file system regression testing suite for FUSE support

          Hello everyone! I’ve been working as a student software developer for Google Summer of Code at KDE (KIO-FUSE) since past couple months and thought it’d be nice to share the progress made. This particular blog is supposed to give readers a rough overview of what FUSE, KIO-FUSE, XFSTESTS are, why we’re trying to integrate them, how far we’ve managed to come, and more important, to announce that it is finally possible to test FUSE file systems using XFSTESTS without ugly hacks!

        • Repairing Akonadi on FreeBSD

          Akonadi (the server) crashes on startup in a MySQL function; if you restart it a couple of times quickly-enough, it stops auto-restarting and the sad-faced DrKonqi goes away from the task bar.

          I wrote about the problem previously with the somewhat derpy suggestion “use an older libmysql”. That’s a workaround, but any accidental upgrade (like I did saturday morning) will pull in the latest MySQL 5.7.34 libraries and start the problem all over again. (It actually took me until saturday afternoon or so to realise that I had this problem and that I had already described it – derp on me).

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Canonical and Microsoft: Securing, strengthening, and simplifying your Linux Stack [Ed: Canonical was 'sold' to Microsoft for nothing]
        • Desktop Team Updates - Monday 12th July 2021 [Ed: This page will make desktop users vomit. It’s like Ubuntu development became just Microsoft Windows while IBM kills off whatever Red Hat was doing.]

          Hi everyone, below you will find the updates from the Desktop team from the last week. If you’re interested in discussing a topic please start a thread in the Desktop area of Discourse.

        • Ubuntu Developer Still Pursuing Triple Buffering, Deep Color For GNOME

          Triple buffering and deep color support are two of the features still being worked on for GNOME by Ubuntu maker Canonical.

          Daniel Van Vugt of Canonical has been known for his upstream GNOME work since they switched back to using GNOME as their default desktop. One of the long ongoing efforts by Van Vugt for GNOME has been around deep color support so the desktop and applications will work better with today's deep color displays. Another effort by Van Vugt has been dynamic triple buffering support primarily for when the GPU is running behind in rendering elements for the desktop.

        • Arijit Kundu: Summer of 2021 with GNOME

          GNOME Foundation is a vibrant worldwide community of amazing people involved in making GNOME, one of the most loved desktop environment. The community is not limited to the people delivering pieces of code. But also includes people helping with designs, translations, documentation, management, and much more.

          GNOME is built by people, and we value your each & every contribution to help create such world-class free software.

          Back in 2020, the Engagement team — the frontiers of GNOME came with the new initiative Faces of GNOME to celebrate all kinds of contributions with a motive of creating a much stronger community driven by passion.

    • Distributions

      • Best Linux Distros for 2021

        Each Linux distribution has its own uniqueness and features. It becomes best when it continuously improves in quality, features, user experience and security.

        This tutorial is about the best Linux distributions for beginners and experienced users.

        Please also note that our description is not presented in any particular order. There is a likelihood that your preferred Linux distribution may not be captured in the description list since our description is based on the various user tastes fetched from various forums, and distribution ratings on the internet. Feel free to give us your views on the same.

      • 5 Things Pop!_OS Linux Does Better Than Windows 11

        Last month it was raining Windows 11 content all over the internet. Judging by the pre-release and post-release reactions on social media, the release was a rollercoaster for fans. While Windows 11 brings many things to the table and improves on many aspects, many people were disappointed with their PC not supporting it because their hardware is old. But, open-source always has an answer. The main goal of open-source software is to solve problems and not to create more of them.

        Pop!_OS is one of the prime examples of how good the open-source software community is. The new Pop!_OS 21.04, which was released recently, brings tons of new productivity-focused features and is one of the most popular Ubuntu-based distros in the community. Here are some things that it does better than Windows 11 and why it can be a perfect replacement for Windows 11 on your PC.

      • New Releases

        • Solus 4.3 Delivers New Desktop Environment Updates

          Solus have just released a new update to their Fortitude series of distributions bringing us up to version 4.3. Let’s take a quick look at what’s new.

          Targeted at desktop users, Solus is a fully-fledged, independent rolling release Linux distribution with its own desktop environment and repositories. It is a unique distribution in that it is written from scratch, meaning it is not derived from Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux or one of the other major distributions. Solus has it’s own package manager named EOPKG which makes it very easy to install software on Solus desktop.

          The Solus desktop environment is called Budgie. It is a great desktop that aims to provide sane defaults and a beautiful interface. Any GNOME user looking for something lighter would enjoy Budgie. The experience of using it is quite a bit like using GNOME with the Dash to Panel extension.

        • Solus 4.3 Released

          We are proud to announce the immediate availability of Solus 4.3, a new Solus 4 “Fortitude” series release. This release delivers new desktop environment updates, software stacks, and hardware enablement.

        • Solus 4.3 released

          Version 4.3 of the Solus "home computing" distribution has been released. "This release delivers new desktop environment updates, software stacks, and hardware enablement."

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Avoiding the “Frankencloud” as you accelerate transformation [Ed: Or just avoid hype and buzzwords like clown computing altogether]

          We’re all now well aware that COVID-19 disrupted operations across industries and forced many companies to put a long list of projects on hold. But today it’s clear that digital transformation initiatives were often not on that list.

          In fact, a new Harvard Business Review study revealed that ninety percent of survey respondents say COVID-19 has accelerated the timing of their organization’s modernization efforts. But just because digital efforts are growing in importance and executives are feeling more confident that their strategies are working, it’s not all smooth sailing. In fact, nearly 30% report the complexity of the current IT environment as the biggest technology challenge to transformation.

        • A friendly business model – i. e. how we license EuroLinux and EuroMan [Ed: From Poland comes EuroLinux 8.3, based on RHEL. Their latest speaks of licensing.]

          Over the years, we have encountered many different product licensing models: from the very intricate to the less complicated ones. Licensing has always been a nightmare for customers and partners. So is it worth keeping the business model simple, friendly and honest?

          Many years of experience in the IT industry and observation of the activities of various companies have allowed us to draw many interesting conclusions. One of the main factors hindering the cooperation of customers and partners with software producers is complicated licensing. Some manufacturers often change their licensing method or introduce different models for the same group of products. This means that we get lost in the meanders of licensing and we cannot keep up with the changes. We start wondering: how many subscriptions should we buy? Do we use the subscription as expected by the manufacturer? Are we going to be charged penalties? How many subscriptions should we price for a customer for a given environment? In addition, changes to the licensing rules are usually accompanied by an increase in the price of the solution and a marketing guide for partners ‘how to convince the customer that it is cheaper’.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Linux Mint 20.2 is a bit more insistent about updating but not as annoying as Windows or Mac, team promises

          Version 20.2 of Linux Mint has attempted to address the sticky subject of system update notifications and automation.

          Linux Mint (aside from the Debian edition) is based on Ubuntu, with Mint 20 editions based on Ubuntu 20.04, this being the most recent LTS (Long-term support) edition. The emphasis is more on stability and ease of use rather than cutting-edge features. Linux Mint 20.2 is supported until April 2025 – as are all the 20.x releases.

          Upgrading Mint 20 or 20.1 to 20.2 is rather straightforward – essentially a matter of creating a backup snapshot, updating packages, and choosing "Upgrade to Linux Mint 20.2" from the Update Manager menu. The upgrade notes also suggest running a utility called usrmerge, which simplifies the directory structure. This has been done since Linux 20.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • 5 Popular Free and Open Source EMR Software

        Health institutes over the world are using EMR systems to carry on their critical daily tasks. There are lots of choices out there, but of course, many of them come with a heavy price to pay since they are proprietary. Nonetheless, there are many good open source EMR software that meet international standards and can be trusted with your patient data.

        If you are managing a hosptial infrastructure or a clinical unit, then you do not need to pay for premium licenses for mainstream EMR systems. Instead, you can use these open source EMR systems to get larger benefits.

      • 5 Popular Free and Open Source EMR Software

        Health institutes over the world are using EMR systems to carry on their critical daily tasks. There are lots of choices out there, but of course, many of them come with a heavy price to pay since they are proprietary. Nonetheless, there are many good open source EMR software that meet international standards and can be trusted with your patient data.

        If you are managing a hosptial infrastructure or a clinical unit, then you do not need to pay for premium licenses for mainstream EMR systems. Instead, you can use these open source EMR systems to get larger benefits.

      • Predictions for open source and cloud over the months ahead

        It’s no secret that public cloud has exponentially grown in recent years but what is particularly exciting to me is the acceleration of open source adoption too. Public cloud has freed enterprises of their ties to proprietary software, and they are adopting open source technologies in unprecedented numbers. In fact, a recent survey of enterprise developers conducted by Aiven found that 85% of enterprises reported they already used open source in their organization and over 90% of developers say that open source will be a part of their businesses in the future.

      • Collaboration and Cost Savings Drive Open Source Adoption in the UK

        In the second phase of research into open source adoption, the non-profit Open UK has found that “97 percent of businesses of different sizes in all sectors of the UK economy use open source software technology.”

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Mozilla Firefox 90 Is Now Available for Download, Removes Built-In FTP Support

            The biggest change in the Mozilla Firefox 90 release is the deprecation of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) support. Firefox follows on the footsteps of Google Chrome/Chromium, and other web browsers, to no longer allow access to ftp:// links.

            Mozilla started deprecating FTP support since Firefox 88, but users where able to re-enable the feature by setting the network.ftp.enabled option from false to true in about:config. But starting with the Firefox 90 release, all FTP code is now gone forever and can’t be re-enabled, which means that you’ll have to use a special app to access your FTP sites.

          • Mozilla Security Blog: Firefox 90 supports Fetch Metadata Request Headers

            We are pleased to announce that Firefox 90 will support Fetch Metadata Request Headers which allows web applications to protect themselves and their users against various cross-origin threats like (a) cross-site request forgery (CSRF), (b) cross-site leaks (XS-Leaks), and (c) speculative cross-site execution side channel (Spectre) attacks.

            Cross-site attacks on Web Applications

            The fundamental security problem underlying cross-site attacks is that the web in its open nature does not allow web application servers to easily distinguish between requests originating from its own application or originating from a malicious (cross-site) application, potentially opened in a different browser tab.

          • 10 years at Mozilla

            Yesterday (July 11, 2021) was the 10 year anniversary of starting at the Mozilla Corporation. My life has changed a ton in those years: in that time I ended a marriage, changed the city in which I live two times, and took up religion1. Mozilla has also changed pretty drastically in my time here, especially in the last year.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • CMS

      • Programming/Development

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • WinMagic MFA, Encryption Solution for Linux Endpoint Devices Proves It Can Enable U.S. Federal Agencies to Meet Biden’s Cybersecurity Deadline
        • Security

          • Microsoft’s ‘PrintNightmare’ Windows patch accidentally broke people’s connection to their printers | The Independent

            An emergency update issued to Windows 10 by Microsoft to stop a printer exploit bug made users lose access to their printers.

            Users that installed the ‘PrintNightmare’ patch, which stops hackers using a critical flaw in the Windows Print Spooler software that could result in malicious individuals running code as administrators on machines, discovered that they could not connect to their printers.

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by Fedora (djvulibre), Gentoo (connman, gnuchess, openexr, and xen), openSUSE (arpwatch, avahi, dbus-1, dhcp, djvulibre, freeradius-server, fribidi, gstreamer, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-plugins-base, gstreamer-plugins-good, gstreamer-plugins-ugly, gupnp, hivex, icinga2, jdom2, jetty-minimal, kernel, kubevirt, libgcrypt, libnettle, libxml2, openexr, openscad, pam_radius, polkit, postgresql13, python-httplib2, python-py, python-rsa, qemu, redis, rubygem-actionpack-5_1, salt, snakeyaml, squid, tpm2.0-tools, and xstream), Red Hat (xstream), and SUSE (bluez, csync2, dbus-1, jdom2, postgresql13, redis, slurm_20_11, and xstream).

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Ending Anonymity: Why The WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens The Future Of Privacy - unlimitedhangout.com

              Amid a series of warnings and simulations in the past year regarding a massive cyber attack that could soon bring down the global financial system, the “information sharing group” of the largest banks and private financial organizations in the United States warned earlier this year that banks “will encounter growing danger” from “converging” nation-state and criminal hackers over the course of 2021 and in the years that follow.

              The organization, called the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), made the claim in its 2021 “Navigating Cyber” report, which assesses the events of 2020 and provides a forecast for the current year. That forecast, which casts a devastating cyber attack on the financial system through third parties as practically inevitable, also makes the case for a “global fincyber [financial-cyber] utility” as the main solution to the catastrophic scenarios it predicts.

              Perhaps unsurprisingly, an organization close to top FS-ISAC members has recently been involved in laying the groundwork for that very “global fincyber utility” — the World Economic Forum, which recently produced the model for such a utility through its Partnership against Cybercrime (WEF-PAC) project. Not only are top individuals at FS-ISAC involved in WEF cybersecurity projects like Cyber Polygon, but FS-ISAC’s CEO was also an adviser to the WEF-Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report that warned that the global financial system was increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks and was the subject of the first article in this 2-part series.

              Another article, published earlier this year at Unlimited Hangout, also explored the WEF’s Cyber Polygon 2020 simulation of a cyber attack targeting the global financial system. Another iteration of Cyber Polygon is due to take place tomorrow July 9th and will focus on simulating a supply chain cyber attack.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Supreme Court double patenting decision worth $40 billion to Amgen [Ed: Old but serves to show how obscene patents became; to IAM, promoting patents on everything is like promoting war everywhere because that helps sell bombs (they use this logic, too)]

          The Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene in Sandoz v Immunex leaves concerns over double patenting gamesmanship unaddressed and gives Amgen subsidiary a clear path to almost a decade’s more exclusivity

        • Germany: Despite Criticism: German Bundestag Votes For Introduction Of Proportionality Test In Patent Law

          In the night from 10 to 11 June 2021, the German Bundestag voted in the 2nd/3rd reading in favour of the Federal Government's bill on the simplification and modernisation of patent law (19/25821) as amended by the Legal Affairs Committee (19/30498).

          As explained in this context on 22 September 2020 and 25 January 2021, the primary purpose of the bill is to better synchronize patent infringement proceedings in civil courts with nullity proceedings in the Federal Patent Court, as well as to improve the protection of confidential information in patent, utility model, and semiconductor litigation.

        • What it means to be in Intellectual Property [Ed: The sheer lunacy. There's no such thing as "Intellectual Property" but they love the misnomer and propaganda term, which they even managed to convince some politicians (lawyers) to embrace.]

          In 2020, inventors and organizations filed approximately 275,000 patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This represented a 4% increase from 2019 despite the large-scale economic disruption of the coronavirus pandemic, continuing an upward trend since 2010. Given its striking resilience, it is reasonable to project this growth in patent submissions will last long into the future. Some of the top inventive categories in which patents were submitted via the PCT framework in 2020 were computer technology, digital communications, electrical machinery, medical technology, transport and measurement (i.e., gauges of speed, temperature, bandwidth and other metrics).

        • Breaking News: German Federal Constitutional Court rejects PI measures against approval of Agreement on Unified Patent Court (UPC)

          In an eagerly awaited ruling published on 9 July 2021, the German Federal Constitutional Court rejected two applications for preliminary injunctions directed against the German Act of Approval that was adopted on 18 December 2020 for the purposes of ratifying the Agreement of 19 February 2013 on a Unified Patent Court (UPC).

        • Huawei set to launch a smartphone with an Under-display selfie camera [Ed: The UPC that is not a corrupt project of patent litigation profiteers]

          Huawei may be preparing a smartphone with an under-display camera and Audio Jack. Currently, ZTE is the only company commercially selling a smartphone with a selfie camera hidden under the display.

          Samsung and OPPO have also been working on a solution while Google recently acquired a patent hinting the company has figured out a way to make it happen.

          Now, Huawei is on its way to join them after patenting a smartphone with a UPC (Universal Product Code). The patent showcases several models with slight differences in rear camera positioning.

        • Patent cases decline across Europe – but courts report increasing complexity [Ed: Litigation ought not be treated like a business. Patents have lost their way in Europe.]

          On Wednesday, JUVE Patent reported that the seven major patent courts in Germany altogether experienced a 9% drop in new cases in 2020. This result is just one from JUVE Patent’s fourth survey of newly-filed cases at Germany’s patent courts. Now, further research shows the other major European patent courts are experiencing a similar trend.

          Whether in Düsseldorf, Mannheim, Milan, Paris, London or The Hague, the number of newly-filed patent cases is declining almost everywhere. Only in Munich, which recently opened a third patent chamber, did the numbers recently increase.

        • Another week, another mandamus [Ed: Just passing patent cases to courts that operate like corporations and basically cheat to attract more litigation]

          Another week, another mandamus. This case is parallel to In re Samsung discussed earlier where Ikorongo divided its patent rights between Ikorongo-Texas (right to enforce in W.D.Tex.) and Ikorongo-Tech (right to enforce elsewhere in USA). In Samsung, the appellate court rejected this brazen attempt to manipulate venue. Here, the court found “no basis for a disposition different from the ones reached in Samsung” and ordered transfer to N.D.Cal.

        • Opposition by videoconference: a year of progress [Ed: Today the EPO promotes illegal agenda, casually]

          A report published today explains how the EPO, our applicants and the patent profession have successfully navigated a major cultural shift in the conduct of oral proceedings in opposition - namely by videoconference (VICO). The report summarises the considerable progress we have made together since May 2020, in terms of our legal framework, technical infrastructure, training and support to users. Since January 2021 the consent of the parties to VICO has ceased to be a limitation and the EPO has been working steadily to clear the backlog of cases that built up last summer - hearing over 350 cases each month in 2021. The Office is on track to return to a pre-pandemic state as regards the number and timeliness of cases decided in opposition later next year. The experience of Zoom as the preferred VICO platform has been positive, such that it will be expanded in the coming weeks to encompass all oral proceedings, e.g. in examination and before the Receiving Section and Legal Division too.

        • Software Patents

          • How to secure AI patents in Europe [Ed: Disguising illegal software patents as "hey hi" and relying on truly criminal EPO management to slip these slip through; IAM, the litigation industry etc. in bed with EPO corruption (they profit from it)]

            In this co-published piece, Haseltine Lake Kempner partner Caroline Day explains how a good draft could dramatically improve the chances for an AI application at the EPO

            Perhaps more than for any other technology area, the European Patent Office (EPO) has promoted its artificial intelligence (AI) practice proactively in expectation of the wave of AI-related applications that they hope is to come.



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