Desktop/Laptop

• System76 Updates The 15″ Pangolin with Ryzen

  System76 announced they’re updating the Ryzen-powered Pangolin laptop to meet today’s need for more power.

  System76 is not just one of the most popular makers of Linux-only hardware, they’re also really good at pushing all of the boundaries and reinventing all of the wheels. This latest move might not push or reinvent, but it certainly gives consumers options for more mobile power.

  But this isn’t news, right? The Pangolin was already available with an AMD Ryzen processor. This is a situation where out with the old, in with the new applies, because the company is upping the Ryzen ante by offering the 15″ Pangolin with a Ryzen 7 5700U CPU.

• AlmaLinux 8.4 on my IdeaPad 3 – Decent, with a snag or two

  All in all, my AlmaLinux 8.4 experiment on the IdeaPad 3 went well. Very nice considering this being a relatively new device, with some relatively new hardware in it (not innit, guv), plus the fact AlmaLinux 8 is a conservative server distro with a somewhat older kernel. In that regard, I had a good, fast, stable experience. Solid speed, no errors, pretty looks. Very desktopy, very accessible. Triple boot, no issues and all that.

  The Wireless card issue can be a dealbreaker for many, though. Having to customize the system is also a tricky one, ergonomics and all that. But, at the end of the day, I had a very stylish, functional system, and now I can focus on some extra tweaking and testing. Can I call this: How to turn AlmaLinux into a perfect desktop? Well, almost. ‘Tis a good, promising start. Now, from a pure usability perspective, this ain’t it, but then, this also isn’t a desktop per se, which explains my chipper and forgiving attitude. Definitely worth exploring, and stay tuned for more solid fun and nerdology.

Audiocasts/Shows

• The 5 things holding back the Librem 5 – Invidious

  The Librem 5 is very, very close to being the only phone I carry around with me. But there are five things holding it back. Let’s talk about them.

• Adventurous Build | Self-Hosted 53

  We chat with Matt from Adventurous Way about the home automations that have improved his quality of life, the clever way he manages their off-grid rig, and the new smart home project he’s just kicking off.

Kernel Space

• Looking back on 30 years of Linux history with Red Hat’s Pete Zaitcev

  The Linux kernel and the second version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2) turned 30 this year. As part of that major milestone we asked Red Hatters who have been using or contributing to Linux since the early days about their experiences. What was it like contributing to Linux, what was it like using it? Could you imagine that Linux would have the impact it’s had on the world up until now?

  Today we’re talking to Pete Zaitcev, who has been contributing to Linux since the early 1990s, joining Red Hat in 2001. Pete now works as a Principal Software Engineer in Red Hat’s R&D OpenStack Platform team.

  [...]

  A: I do not remember what my first proper contribution was. I think it must have been a patch to fix pseudo-DMA in floppy.c in August 1995. Nobody cared who you were as long as the code was good. My first attempt was to make a raster console. It was required for SPARCstation, which did not have a text mode. The prime customer for that was David “DaveM” Miller, the leader of the port to SPARC. However, my code was over-engineered for what was needed. Although he accepted it in the Sparclinux tree initially, DaveM eventually ripped it out and replaced it with the raster console developed by Geert Uytterhoeven for Amiga. I remember being very disappointed. I wasn’t sure Dave even made the right call. Thereafter I stuck with minor fixes here and there.

• The most popular AMD Ryzen CPUs are finally getting optimized Linux support

  The latest AMD driver has posted patches to the Linux kernel that’ll enable users to get better per watt performance from their AMD Zen-based CPUs.

  According to Phoronix, the drivers currently support processors powered by the Zen 3 microarchitecture, such as the Ryzen 5000 desktop processors, as well as the Epyc server processors.

  “We would like to introduce a new AMD CPU frequency control mechanism as the “amd-pstate” driver for modern AMD Zen based CPU series in Linux Kernel,” wrote Rui Huang, senior member of the technical staff at AMD.

• Ext4 vs XFS – Which Filesystem Should You Use

  Users running a Linux system hardly pay attention to the underlying filesystem. In fact, during the installation of Linux, there’s a tendency to often go with the default filesystem listed without exploring other available options. For windows, things are a lot easier since NTFS is the dominant filesystem. With Linux, there are numerous filesystems at your disposal. These include the Ext4, XFS, ZFS, and BTRFS.

  The most widely used filesystems are Ext4 and XFS, with the latter being the default filesystem in RHEL-based distros and Ext4 being the standard filesystem in Debian and Ubuntu distributions. When choosing a filesystem some of the factors that need to be considered include scalability, stability, and data integrity.

• Linux Kernel 5.15 Will Have Improved NTFS File System Support

  The Paragon’s NTFS driver was merged by Linux creator Linus Torvalds earlier this month, bringing reliable read and write functionality for this filesystem to the kernel.

  The last month, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, made it known to Paragon Software that it should really submit a pull request for its read-write NTFS driver to be included in the awaited version 5.15 release, for which the merge window is still open at the time of writing this.

• Linux 5.15 Readies More Code For Compile & Run-Time Detection Of Buffer Overflows – Phoronix

  Last week a number of patches were merged in the quest to provide the kernel with comprehensive compile-time and run-time detection of buffer overflows. Another patch series was sent out today while still for this cycle they are expected to enable the compiler warnings around array-bounds and zero-length-bounds.

  Kees Cook sent in the second batch of overflow updates for Linux 5.15. This latest batch has tree-wide changes to replace open-coded flex arrays in unions, replacing zero-element memcpy() destinations with flexible arrays, and a variety of other improvements to improve the Linux kernel’s buffer overflow detection and trying to make it an issue of the past.

• Graphics Stack

  • AMD Just Squeezed More Workstation Performance Out Of Its RadeonSI Driver – Phoronix

    While Vulkan is quickly taking over as the dominant graphics API for Linux gamers especially with the likes of DXVK and VKD3D-Proton mapping Direct3D atop Vulkan, OpenGL remains widely used by workstation software. It’s also for workstation software where AMD’s “PRO” closed-source OpenGL Linux driver has traditionally competed well (and outperformed) the open-source Mesa driver. But with all the recent changes, that’s either a matter of the past or close to not being relevant with the latest Mesa enhancements.

Benchmarks

• Ubuntu 21.10 Performance Still Pushing Ahead Of Windows 10, Latest Windows 11 Build

  With less than one month out from the official release of Microsoft Windows 11, I was curious to run some fresh benchmarks of the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview build against Windows 10 21H1 to see how the performance is looking. Of course, also to see how Windows 11 is shaping up against Ubuntu 21.10 also due for release in October.

Applications

• Input mapping tool AntiMicroX 3.1.7 is out with improved Wayland support

  AntiMicroX (a continuation of AntiMicro) for mapping gamepad keys to keyboard, mouse, scripts and macros has a new release out with version 3.1.7.

  Thankfully for people who have moved from classic X11 over to Wayland – you’re in luck. This version brings on Wayland support for keyboard emulation! This was achieved by moving from xtest to uinput when wayland session is detected, and they’ve added some new udev rules too. That’s the biggest change with the rest being general bug fixes and improvements.

• Cozy – modern audio book player

  Linux offers a huge array of open source music players. And many of them are high quality. I’ve reviewed the vast majority for LinuxLinks.

  Cozy is different to the music players we’ve covered. While it plays music the software is geared to playing audio books. Cozy is free and open source software. It’s written in Python.

  Let’s see how it fares.

• OpenSnitch Application Firewall 1.4.0 Adds eBPF And nftables Support, Allow/Block Lists

  OpenSnitch, a Linux port of the Little Snitch application firewall for macOS, had a major new release today. The latest OpenSnitch 1.4.0 adds the ability to use eBPF to intercept processes, nftables support, allow/block lists, GUI improvements, and more.

  The application is made of a daemon (written in Go) and a GUI (PyQt5); a tray icon is also available which you can use to open the OpenSnitch GUI, disable the firewall or close it. While running, OpenSnitch monitors outbound connections that your applications are trying to make, preventing or permitting their connection based on a set of rules (the user is prompted to allow or deny access when no existing rules are found).

  It’s worth noting that the first time you run this application-level firewall for Linux, it will display many dialogs to allow or deny connections. That’s expected since every process that tries to make outbound connections is shown in a new popup by OpenSnitch. But once you allow or deny your most used applications, the application will remember your preference, and it won’t bother you again.

• YOGA Image Optimizer – Graphical Tool to Convert & Compress PNG, JPEG, WebP

  YOGA Image Optimizer is a graphical tool to batch convert photos into JPEG, PNG and WEBP, and compress file sizes while having equivalent quality.

  It’s a free and open-source tool based on YOGA command line tool, which can also convert and optimize 3D models from various formats to glTF and GLB.

• PipeWire Media Server 0.3.35 Released

  The release of the project has PipeWire 0.3.35 been published , which develops a new generation multimedia server to replace PulseAudio. PipeWire has enhanced video streaming capabilities over PulseAudio, low latency audio processing, and a new security model for device and stream access control. The project is supported in the GNOME and already the default used in Fedora Linux. The project code is written in C and is distributed under the LGPLv2.1 license.

Instructionals/Technical

• MAKE MORE with Inkscape – Ink/Stitch – Fedora Magazine

  Inkscape, the most used and loved tool of Fedora’s Design Team, is not just a program for doing nice vector graphics. With vector graphics (in our case SVG) a lot more can be done. Many programs can import this format. Also, Inkscape can do a lot more than just graphics. The first article of this series showed how to produce GCode with Inkscape. This article will examine another Inkscape extension – Ink/Stitch. Ink/Stitch is an extension for designing embroidery with Inkscape.

• Setup Lamp in Slackware 15.0 – Unixcop

  So Slackware is already in release candidate available, this release is coming with many changes on the core and on the packages, we will explain to you to Setup LAMP stack Slackware 15.0 Server.

• 3 must-know Linux commands for text manipulation

  Sysadmins use an untold number of command-line tools, and you probably regularly use the three discussed in this article: grep, sed, and awk. But do you know all the ways you can use them to manipulate text? If not (or you’re not sure), continue reading.

• A nightmare of confcalls and microphones

  I had this nightmare where I had a very, very important confcall.

  I joined with Chrome. Chrome said Failed to access your microphone – Cannot use microphone for an unknown reason. Could not start audio source.

  I joined with Firefox. Firefox chose Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo as a microphone, and did not let me change it. Not in the browser, not in pavucontrol.

  I joined with the browser on my phone, and the webpage said This meeting needs to use your microphone and camera. Select *Allow* when your browser asks for permissions. But the question never came.

• How to format a harddisk partition with BTRFS on Ubuntu 20.04 – VITUX

  Btrfs or commonly pronounced as b-tree FS or butter FS is a COW (copy-on-write) based disk storage format and filesystem. In btrfs, all characters except / and Null are applicable for creating the files featuring self-healing and the capability of spanning multiple volumes. It was initially developed by Oracle in 2007 and developed by multiple companies such as Redhat, Linux Foundation, Facebook, suse, etc.

  Many features like sub volume file-system, extended base file-system, mks skinny-metadata, ability to link lost files to lost and found, etc. make it a powerful file system compared to others. In this article, I will show you how to create a disk partition and format it with Btrfs file system on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

• How To Install Trimage on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Trimage on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Trimage is a cross-platform GUI and command-line interface to optimize image files for websites, using optipng, pngcrush, advpng and jpegoptim, depending on the filetype (currently, PNG and JPG files are supported). It was inspired by imageoptim. All image files are losslessy compressed on the highest available compression levels, and EXIF and other metadata are removed. Trimage gives you various input functions to fit your own workflow: A regular file dialog, dragging and dropping and various command-line options.

  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 Trimage image compressor 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.

• How To Install Sublime Text on Debian 11 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Sublime Text on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Sublime Text is a cross-platform text editor written in C++ and python and developed for individuals who are looking for an effective yet minimalist tool for shuffling code around. Not only does it supports many languages, but you can also even extend the functionality using plugins.

  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 Sublime Text 4 on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• How To Install Anaconda on Debian 11 – TecAdmin

  Anaconda is an open-source platform written with Python programming language. It was built by data scientists, for data scientists. Anaconda contains a large variety of packages and repositories. It is important in its functionality as it provides processing and computing data on a large scale and also to program in python language. The Anaconda is a good platform to program python applications.

  This article helps you to install Anaconda on your Debian 11 (Bullseye) Linux system with easy instructions.

• How to Install MERN Stack for JS based applications on Debian 11

  MERN stack consists of four key technologies MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. It is specially designed for easier and faster deployment of full-stack web applications. It is one of the most popular and user-friendly development structures that helps you to improve your applications to a great extent. The MERN stack allows you to build a 3-tier architecture (frontend, backend, database) entirely using JavaScript and JSON.

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the MERN stack on Debian 11.

• How to Install Vivaldi Browser on Debian 11 – LinuxCapable

  Vivaldi is a freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Vivaldi Technologies. It had grown from the downfall of Opera with many disgruntled when it changed from the Presto layout engine to a Chromium-based browser, the platform that angered traditional Opera users. Since then, Vivaldi has become one of the most popular alternative Internet Browsers amongst the big three Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

  Vivaldi promotes itself as a leading browser with faster navigation, clever bookmarking, smarter browsing, extensive tab management, and a more visual style approach to browsing than its competitors.

• How to Set JAVA_HOME in Ubuntu Linux Correctly

  If you are running Java programs on Ubuntu using Eclipse, Maven or Netbeans etc, you’ll need to set JAVA_HOME to your path. Otherwise, your system will complain that “java_home environment variable is not set”.

  In this beginner’s tutorial, I’ll show the steps to correctly set Java Home variable on Ubuntu. The steps should be valid for most other Linux distributions as well.

• How to Change WordPress Site URL via phpMyAdmin

  Changing the WordPress site URL is an inevitable activity. A growing WordPress site or one under active development and testing introduces new URL routes to make it more flexible, dynamic, and easily explorable to the targeted internet users.

  One reason to remove this issue of changing WordPress site URLs from your bucket list is the fact that your WordPress site developer might not always be on speed dial.
  When a WordPress site changes its domain name, the domain name change does not automatically integrate with the already configured site URLs.

• 3 Ways to install Slack Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) – Linux Shout

  Slack is a group collaboration tool designed for teams that work in different locations. Primarily used for communication in teams, as the service can be perfectly integrated into the workflow. Users can link Slack with many other services, for example with cloud services such as Dropbox or with social networks. So Slack becomes the focal point of the action. At its core, Slack is instant messaging software. In addition to direct messaging, Slack enables communication “channels” that can be organized by project, customer, team, or any other way your company deems appropriate for separate conversations. Channels are structured according to the concept of a chat room: All channel participants can take part in the conversation and the messages appear in real-time.

  Well, communication using Slack is possible both between individuals and in groups. It comes with a free plan suitable for small teams. You can use this plan for as long as you want, but there are limitations.

• How to install and use wget on CentOS 6, 7 and 8

  If you try to download something with wget on CentOS 6/7 or 8 you will get the error : bash: wget: command not found or bash: /usr/bin/wget: no such file or directory and this is because wget is not installed on your system, so to solve this issue you need to install wget first then you can use it to download anything you want.

Games

• Valve rolls out big Steam client update with new Downloads Page & Storage Management | GamingOnLinux

  After being in Beta since the end of July, Valve has now released a big update to the stable version of the Steam client for everyone which has the new Downloads Page & Storage Management.

  The new Downloads Page is actually a big improvement overall. Allowing you to drag and drop games around in the list. It now also correctly shows the total progression based on the downloading and disk allocation.

• Open source in games: How to save your studio time and effort | GamingOnLinux

  At the Game Developers Conference 2021, multiple developers from Red Hat attended and gave a talk titled “Open source in games: How to save your studio time and effort”. GDC 2021 was held back in July but only recently Red Hat put their presentation video up so now everyone can view it.

  For most normal gamers it probably won’t be a hugely relevant talk but for developers it could be an interesting one. The main thing is that Linux had a presence at such a huge industry event.

• PS4 emulator Spine gets a new demo release | GamingOnLinux

  Spine is an upcoming PlayStation 4 emulator that’s currently closed-source while it’s under heavy development. It’s also currently only available for Linux. Well-known PlayStation “scener” Nagatoro announced the new demo on Twitter along with a download link.

  What’s interesting is that the PS4 was the generation to come back to x86 CPUs, instead of the Cell style found in the PS3. This makes the emulator a bit more like the Wine compatibility layer and less like a full emulator, the developers even announced it originally as it being “Wine-like”.

• Tux and Fanny is the most completely bizarre adventure and it’s out now | GamingOnLinux

  Ever heard of Tux and Fanny? It’s originally an incredibly strange 2019 animated film by Albert Birney who has teamed up with Ghost Time Games (Jettomero, Test Tube Titans) to make an adventure game out of it.

  The film was so weird that it’s gained a small cult following. I cannot express in clear enough wording just how completely odd it is. Tux and Fanny matches up well with a lot of the early classic flash animations, it leaves that strange lasting impression.

• Valve Releases Major Steam Client Update with New Downloads Page, Linux Improvements

  The biggest new feature of the new Steam Client update is a brand new downloads page that’s easier to use and has a new design. The new download page now displays the total progress, including disk allocation process, when downloading or updating a game, as well as a faded progress bar and percent completed for partially completed downloads or updates.

  In addition, the new downloads page will now display a new icon next to a game’s title with a tooltip showing the type of content included in the update (e.g. Downloadable Content, Game Content, Shader Pre-caching, or Workshop Content). Moreover, users will now be able to re-order the download queue using drag and drop, as well as to launch a game or suspend download throttling from the context menu of the actively downloading game.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Get more out of the window title with Konsole

    If you use git on a regular basis, you should look at using git-prompt; there is a file called git-prompt.sh that is shipped with git, the location in your setup varies depending on the Linux distribution you’re using, for example in OpenSuse it’s /etc/bash_completion.d/git-prompt.sh. The file is of course available in the upstream git repo.

    Following the instructions from the top of that file should give you a very useful addition to the prompt of your shell (the file has instructions for BASH and ZSH). However that is not what this blog post is about; this post is about making the Konsole window title more useful, and by that I mean use the window title to show the current dir path and the info from git-prompt.

  • kdenlive / mlt status in Debian Bullseye

    Debian 11 (Bullseye) comes with the mlt framework 6.24.0 and kdenlive 20.12.3. Unfortunately it was already too late (freeze) to build mlt with enabled OpenCV features, this are also required to use the motion tracker features, which are now still missing in the pure stable release.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME 41 RC1 Download with fixes beta bugs

    The beta version for GNOME 41 from August 25th is now followed by a release candidate GNOME 41 RC1 (Download). Release manager Javier Jardón announced this on the GNOME mailing list . The stable release of GNOME 41 is scheduled for September 22nd.

  • Cleaning up header bars

    Making the style feel lighter and reducing visual noise is a major goal for the style refresh we’re doing for libadwaita. While we’ve done lots of smaller changes and cleanups across the stylesheet to bring us closer to that goal, this is probably the highest-impact part of it due to how prominent header bars are in GNOME apps.

    This is not a new idea either — pretty much everyone else is doing it, e.g. macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, elementary OS, KDE.

    In fact, we’ve been doing this for a long time in view switchers. So this just extends it to the whole header bar.

    However, if applied carelessly, it can also make certain layouts ambiguous. For example, a text-only button with no background would look exactly same as a window title. To prevent that, we only remove background from buttons that we can be confident won’t look confusing without it — for example, buttons containing a single icon.

    While we avoid ambiguous situations, it also means that apps will need changes to have consistent buttons. In my opinion this is a better tradeoff: since the API is not stable yet, we can break behavior, and if an app hasn’t been updated, it will just get inconsistent look and not accessibility issues.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Linux Release Roundup #21.37: Lakka Linux 3.4, Tails 4.22, GhostBSD 21.09.06, and More New Releases

    In the Linux Release Roundup series, we highlight the new distribution and application version releases in the last few days. This keeps you informed of the latest developments in the Linux world.

    Lakka Linux 3.4

    The retro gaming OS now runs on the latest Retroarch 1.9.9. It has received many new features, including AMD’s Fidelity FX, Mesa 21.2.1, and new console cores.

    To know more, you can check out our original coverage.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • KDE Gear, Plasma, systemd Update in Tumbleweed

    There was one openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshot this week out of five that brought an enormous amount of package updates for those using the rolling release.

    Snapshot 20210904 brought updates for systemd, GTK4, Mesa, KDE’s Plasma and Gear and many other packages.

    The most recent snapshot to be released was 20210908; it updated fuse3 3.10.5 and made various improvements to unit tests more robust for the Filesystem in Userspace package. The mpg123 1.29.0 update added an–enable-runtime-tables. An update of yast2 4.4.17 provided some maintenance for the systemd package that arrived earlier in the week. A few other packages like glslang 11.6.0, libstorage-ng 4.4.36 and pinentry 1.2.0 were also updated in the snapshot.

    Snapshot 20210907 updated seven packages. The package manager zypper 1.14.49 made a change to avoid calling su as it can be too restrictive for sudo user umask. The package manager library libzypp also had an update to version 17.28.3, which had a policy modification for avoid the breaking of a single rpm transaction. The AV1 decoder package dav1d 0.9.2 had some Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 and SSE4 optimizations for x86_64. Other packages updated in the snapshot were geoclue2 2.5.7, mozilla-nss 3.69.1, supermin 5.2.1 and an update to plymouth.

• Slackware Family

  • liveslak-1.3.10 and new ISO images for Slackware Live Edition

    The previous batch of ISOs for Slackware Live Edition is already a few months old, so I decided to generate new images.
    The ISO files are based on Slackware-current of “Wed Sep 8 18:07:38 UTC 2021” and using the liveslak-1.3.10 scripts, where passwordless login is a new feature.

    Slackware-current has the label “15.0 Release Candidate 1” since August 16th but considering the amount of non-trivial updates since that date, I wonder whether the phrase “release candidate” has any relevance here. No sign that we are anywhere nearer to a final 15.0 release.

    Let’s hope for the best, and in the meantime fresh ISOs for the Slackware Live Edition can be obtained at download.liveslak.org .

    I refreshed he ‘bonus‘ section as well. There you find several squashfs modules you can use with your persistent liveslak USB stick. Copy these module into the ‘addons’ directory on the USB drive. They expand the functionality of the Live OS and allow me to keep the ISO file size within reasonable bounds.
    Among these you’ll find the binary nvidia driver (already contained in the CINNAMON, DAW and MATE ISOs by the way); Wine 6.12, multilib, the DAW package collection, and a set from my own repository (chromium, libreoffice, veracrypt, vlc etc).

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Sumo Logic’s Continuous Intelligence Platform Now Available On Red Hat Marketplace

    Sumo Logic and IBM have expanded their alliance to announce the availability of Sumo Logic’s Continuous Intelligence Platform on Red Hat Marketplace, the open cloud marketplace for enterprise customers that offers a simpler way to buy and deploy certified container-based software.

  • When everything is in the cloud, does the OS matter?

    With applications running in the cloud, it’s easy to focus on the cloud services without ever thinking of the underlying operating system — or even needing to think about it. It almost seems quaint, to think about standard operating environments, base images, and compatibility like it’s 2010.

    When all of your innovation and future projects are in the cloud, does the operating system really matter anymore?

  • Remi Collet: PHP version 7.4.24RC1 and 8.0.11RC1

    Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.

    RPM of PHP version 8.0.11RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-php80-test repository for Fedora 33-34 and Enterprise Linux.

    RPM of PHP version 7.4.24RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-test repository for Fedora 33-34 or remi-php74-test repository for Enterprise Linux.

  • 5 tips for recruiting an open source job candidate

    This is one of those more open-ended posts in that I don’t have any good answers, but I’ve got a bunch of questions. I’d love to have feedback, comments, and thoughts if you have any.

    Recently, it was “results week” in the UK. Here, there are two major sets of exams that most students take: GCSEs and A levels. The former generally are taken by 16-year-olds, with around 8-12 in total, and the latter by 18-year-olds, with 2-4 in total (3 being the strong median). A level results are one of the major criteria for entry into universities, and GCSE results typically determine what A levels students will take, and therefore have an impact on university course choice in the future.

  • Call for Projects and Mentors for Outreachy December-March Cohort

    Fedora will be participating in the upcoming round of Outreachy (December 2021-March 2022) and we are looking for more projects and mentors!

    Being a community of diverse people from various backgrounds and different walks of life, the Fedora Project has been participating as a mentoring organization for Outreachy internships for years. The Outreachy program is instrumental in providing a rich experience in working with free and open-source software. Fedora is a proud participant.

  • Moving Forward After CentOS 8 EOL

    The Linux community was caught unprepared when, in December 2020, as part of a change in the way Red Hat supports and develops CentOS, Red Hat suddenly announced that it’s cutting the official CentOS 8 support window from ten years – to just two, with support ending Dec 31, 2021.

    It created a peculiar situation where CentOS 7 users that did the right thing and upgraded quickly to CentOS 8 were left using an OS with just a year’s official support remaining – while users of CentOS 7 still get full support until June 30, 2024.

    Worse, the fact that stable releases of CentOS were discontinued in exchange for the rolling-release CentOS Stream means that to secure their workloads most CentOS 8 users have to opt for an entirely different Linux distribution, with just a year to choose, evaluate and implement an alternative.

  • 5 must-read Harvard Business Review articles | The Enterprisers Project

    Each month, through our partnership with Harvard Business Review, we refresh our resource library with five new HBR articles we believe CIOs and IT leaders will value highly. Check out the curated pieces below, available to readers through the end of the month.

  • 6 IT hiring pitfalls to address now | The Enterprisers Project

    In terms of IT jobs, it’s largely a candidate’s market. If the predicted post-pandemic turnover tsunami hasn’t hit your organization yet, it may soon. The hybrid work options that the pandemic created means that as an IT leader, you may have more open roles – and a tougher time filling them.

    That points to the need to step up retention efforts. But there are also IT hiring practices that need rethinking. Fine-tuning your recruiting approach can improve your ability to attract and retain top IT talent.

Devices/Embedded

• Musical Cyberdeck is Part Synth, Part MIDI Controller, and All Cool

  When a new project type starts to get a lot of exposure, it’s typically not long before we see people forking the basic concept and striking out in a new direction. It happened with POV displays, it happened with Nixie clocks, and now, it seems to be happening with cyberdecks. And that’s something we can get behind, especially with cyberdecks built to suit a specialized task, like this musical cyberdeck/synth.

  Like many musicians, [Benjamin Caccia] felt like he needed a tool to help while performing with his band “Big Time Kill.” He mainly needed to trigger track playbacks on the fly, but also wanted something to act as a mega-effects pedal and standalone synth. And while most of that could be done with an iPad, it wouldn’t look as cool as a cyberdeck. The build centers around a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 7″ LCD display. Those sit on top of a 25-key USB MIDI keyboard and a small mixer. Alongside the keyboard is a USB keypad, which has custom mappings to allow fast access to buried menu functions in the cyberdeck’s Patchbox OS. Everythign was tied together on a 3D-printed frame; the video below shows it in action, and that it sounds as good as it looks.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • EU Begins Antitrust Investigation Into Google Assistant on Android – Voicebot.ai

  • [Updated] Want to disable Tab Groups in Chrome on Android? Here’s how

  • How to unlock Android phone without password – Phandroid

  • How to use Android 12′s new one-handed mode

  • Motorola Android 11 update: List of eligible devices & release date

  • The Best Android Games On Sale This Week – KOTOR, Titan Quest, Cyberlords – Arcology and More – Droid Gamers

  • The Best Games On Android For 18+ – TechFinancials

  • Renault joins Volvo, Polestar in offering Google’s Android Automotive in production vehicle | Automotive News Europe

  • An innovative ROUND Android smartphone – The Cyrcle Phone 2.0 -

  • SOVA: New Android Banking Trojan Emerges With Growing Capabilities

  • SOVA, Worryingly Sophisticated Android Trojan, Takes Flight | Threatpost

  • iOS vs. Android Security – 4 App Development Experts Share Insights [DesignRush QuickSights] | News | wfmz.com

  • Google Pay on Wear OS now works in 10 new countries

  • Google Assistant Driving mode is replacing Android Auto on phones — are cars next? | Android Central

  • Renault joins Volvo, Polestar in offering Google’s Android Automotive in production vehicle | Automotive News Europe

  • Google’s made-for-India cut of Android and the one phone that runs it delayed by chip shortages, testing • The Register

  • Handheld announces new version of the NAUTIZ X6 ultra-rugged Android phablet

  • Azulle Ally is a $150 Android mini PC with Snapdragon 450 – Liliputing

  • Android 12′s Material You Clock app works on older versions (APK Download)

  • 6 Must-Have Android Apps for Cyclists

  • Top 10 Best Investment Android Apps – 2021

  • Top 3 Android Antivirus Software With VPN In 2021

  • Fake Cryptomining Apps Stole Over $350K From Android Users

  • Tips for playing your favorite shooters on an Android phone – 9to5Google

  • TIM Deploys Technicolor’s Next-Gen Android TV Set-Top Boxes

  • Bharti Airtel Android DTH Box Might Be the Best In India

  • How To Create A Logo On Android Using Logo Maker Apps And Online Tools

  • Snapchat Dark mode for Android phones: Here’s how to get the feature

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Building an open source community health analytics platform

  Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has made considerable strides in increasing its presence in the open source world lately. RIT’s Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture minor is the first of its kind in academia. For example, its open source programs office, Open @ RIT, has begun helping RIT faculty and staff fellows build and maintain communities for their open source projects.

  These strides are driven by the students, faculty, and staff at RIT. Already, a growing number of people at the university are heading their own open projects. However, running an entirely open source project can be cumbersome. Much of this comes from maintaining a community for the project and managing data such as the project’s code, issue tracking, and repositories.

• An xrdesktop summer of code

  This summer, Christoph Haag and I had the pleasure of taking part in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) as mentors for xrdesktop, the Open Source project bringing the Linux desktop to VR on SteamVR & Monado. Our students, Remco and Manas, were both able to finish their projects and submit merge requests. Kudos!

  As our tools of choice, C/GObject and Vulkan were used in both projects, maintaining our goal of keeping xrdesktop low level and thus providing a performant XR experience.

  Contributions like these support our vision with projects like xrdesktop and Monado to provide a fully open source XR stack that enables complete control and independence for end users and product builders alike.

• Briar: The right open-source messenger for activists

  Briar is an open-source mobile massager application with enhanced security for Android systems. It is designed to protect its users from surveillance and authority tracking.

  With Briar, you don’t need to worry about messages encryption as it uses a peer-to-peer encryption for all messages and forums.

  The app can work seamlessly even with or without internet as it can sync the messages between devices using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or Tor network.

  Using Briar messenger you don’t need to worry about denial of service, metadata surveillance, message/ content surveillance, takedown and internet blackouts.

  Currently, the application works in the background, and asks for some permission to run as camera access, location access and Bluetooth access.

• Schedule Finalized for Practical Open Source Information [Ed: BBB is good. Having said that, OSI’s Practical Open Source itself is quite the farce with talks for sale]

  We’d also like to point out several details regarding event administration. We will be using an instance of the open source web conferencing system, BigBlueButton, to stream our talks and panels at POSI, with hosting courtesy of our in-kind sponsors at Blindside Networks.

• The Apache News Round-up: week ending 10 September 2021

  We’re wrapping up another great week with the following activities from the Apache community…

• Programming/Development

  • 5 Programming Languages you must know

    Once upon a time, a few people were thought to be software engineers with cutting-edge coding skills. Currently, a good command of many programming languages is required for a variety of IT jobs. If you want to advance in your career or change careers completely, you may be considering which programming language to study.

    Given that learning a language will take time and money, you must choose wisely. A few considerations, for example, the difficulty level you’re willing to learn, the information you already have that corresponds to your present coding talents, or your motivation for learning a top programming language, all play a role in your decision.

  • Python

    • Five things to know before learning Python | Red Hat Developer

      Getting started with a new programming language can be challenging. Whether you’re a beginner or a grizzzled veteran, there are a number of larger context questions to answer that go beyond simply learning the language’s syntax. This article provides a high-level overview of five important things to keep in mind as you begin your journey into Python. You won’t learn the specifics of the language here, but you’ll gain a general picture of how Python works.

Standards/Consortia

• Six Standards Recommendations for the Biden Administration

  Adopting an enlightened standards policy could greatly advance the national interest in the area of information and communications technology (ICT) standards. And at no time in recent memory has the need to do so been more urgent, as trade tensions with China sustain rather than abate. Absent a change in direction in policy, there is the potential for standards wars between East and West in areas such as 5G technology.

  Maintaining a healthy standards development ecosystem domestically is equally important, as standards setting organizations (SSOs) annually create hundreds of standards that are referenced into law, at great savings in time and tax dollars when compared to the costs of drafting regulations within the government.

  [...]

  With the exception of specific treaty obligations, international adoption of standards is entirely voluntary and market driven. Competing standards can, and often have, been used as competitive weapons, both to exclude or burden foreign products or to avoid licensing costs associated with “standards essential patents” (SEPS). While both the US and China are signatories of the World Trade Organization Treaty on Technical Barriers to Trade (TTBT), which bars signatory nations from adopting local standards where suitable global standards have become widely adopted, this did not prevent China from launching its own wireless standard (WAPI) in competition with Wi-Fi a decade and a half ago, alleging that the Wi-Fi standard developed by the IEEE provided insufficient security.

  The WAPI standard was encumbered by many SEPS owned by Chinese companies (as, indeed, the competing Wi-Fi standard was encumbered by SEPS owned by Western companies). Licenses to those standards were available only to certain Chinese companies. China also developed its own 4G standard (CDMA) in competition with two Western contenders. With the largest population in the world, China was able to use its competing standards to the benefit of its domestic vendors. It has every incentive to do the same now if trade tensions between the US and China do not lessen.

  Significantly, Huawei is recognized as owning more 5G patents than any other company in the world. It is also believed to have been a member of c. 400 SSOs, many of which ejected Huawei or suspended its participation after it was placed on the Entity List. The intellectual property rights (IPR) policies of virtually all of these SSOs require participants to either license their SEPS on “reasonable and non-discriminatory” (RAND) terms, or to disclose them so that an attempt can be made to revise the related standards to avoid infringement. But this obligation only attaches to companies participating in the working groups that create the standards.

EFB Tampering. The Human Factor

Like most people, pilots want to expedite things and generally make their work easier. A common conception about aviation is that it’s a leading industry with technology at its forefront. While this is generally true some of the systems in use today are rather dated (to put it mildly). A great example is the method that pilots use in poor visibility to “find” the runway; their Instrument Landing System (ILS), a technology invented in 1929.

[...]

The ILS is used on aircraft to help pilots navigating to the runway on approach / landing in both a horizontal and the vertical sense. Whilst there have many improvements to ILS technology since its conception, the fact remains that the ILS was invented in the 1920s and became approved and adopted by ICAO in 1949. To this very day, it remains the most accurate method available to commercial pilots when it comes to navigating to the runway.

Hardware

• Habana Labs Opens Up The Code To Their AI Compiler, SynapseAI Core

  Intel-owned Habana Labs now has the most open software stack among AI accelerators! While Habana Labs has long provided an open-source, upstream kernel driver for their Gaudi AI training and Goya AI inference accelerators, the user-space portions including their code compiler and run-time library have been closed-source. This has been a thorn for upstream kernel developers and their standards, but now Habana Labs has open-sourced their user-space components too.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • SPDX becomes internationally recognized standard

          In use for a decade as the de facto standard for communicating software bills of materials, The Linux Foundation has announced that the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) specification has been published as ISO/IEC 5962:2021 and recognized as the open standard for security, license compliance and other software supply chain artifacts.

  • Security

    • HAProxy urges users to update after HTTP request smuggling vulnerability found

      Users of HAProxy 2.0 and earlier versions are being urged to push through updates after a vulnerability was found that could allow “an attacker to bypass the check for a duplicate HTTP Content-Length header, permitting a request smuggling attack or a response-splitting attack.”

    • Security updates for Friday

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, ghostscript, ntfs-3g, and postorius), Fedora (java-1.8.0-openjdk-aarch32, libtpms, and salt), openSUSE (libaom, libtpms, and openssl-1_0_0), Red Hat (openstack-neutron), SUSE (grilo, java-1_7_0-openjdk, libaom, libtpms, mariadb, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, and php74-pear), and Ubuntu (firefox and ghostscript).

    • WordPress Releases Security Update

      WordPress 5.4-5.8 are affected by multiple vulnerabilities. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected website.

      CISA encourages users and administrators to review the WordPress Security and Maintenance Release and upgrade to WordPress 5.8.1.

    • New ChaChi malware variant designed to target Linux systems [Ed: More of that very typical FUD trying to blame Go and Google because people can write malicious software in some particular language. It also blames “Linux” even though it’s not clear how the malicious programs get there in the first place and what that has to do with Linux.]

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Surveillance state incoming with Australia’s “hacking” bill – Access Now

        Imagine that the data on your devices could not only be collected and copied, but also added to and modified (data disruption warrant). To make matters worse, imagine if any or all of your online accounts could be controlled by law enforcement without your knowledge, and you could potentially also be locked out of those accounts (account takeover warrant). Further, any network you interact with and all your electronic communications, whether on email, social media, or messaging platforms, could be intercepted (network activity warrant). Not only would all of this be done without your consent or knowledge, but the fact of access by law enforcement could also be concealed. This is how three new warrants under the Identify and Disrupt bill, or the hacking bill, jeopardise people’s data, privacy and security in Australia.

        Indeed, any device, online network or account, including social media profiles, used by people in Australia, could now be susceptible to hacking by Australian law enforcement agencies. The Identify and Disrupt Bill confers hacking powers on the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), enabling them to add, copy, delete or modify data, control online accounts and access communications data, through a data disruption warrant, an account takeover warrant, and a network activity warrant.

      • ProtonMail Now Keeps IP Logs

        After being compelled by a Swiss court to monitor IP logs for a particular user, ProtonMail no longer claims that “we do not keep any IP logs.”

      • ProtonMail deletes ‘we don’t log your IP’ boast from website after French climate activist reportedly arrested • The Register

        Encrypted email service ProtonMail has become embroiled in a minor scandal after responding to a legal request to hand over to Swiss police a user’s IP address and details of the devices he used to access his mailbox – resulting in the netizen’s arrest.

        Police were executing a warrant obtained by French authorities and served on their Swiss counterparts through Interpol, according to social media rumours that ProtonMail chief exec Andy Yen acknowledged to The Register.

      • Neutron: A Libre Mail server for Proton Webmail client

        ProtonMail is an open-source webmail client distributed and licensed under GNU “General Public License” version 3.

Defence/Aggression

• Bob’s 9/11 post from 20 years ago — To a Man With a Hammer

  The point of terrorism is to leverage the efforts of a small group in an attempt to modify the behavior of a much larger group.

  [...]

  “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” wrote Mark Twain. In the current, context this means that the organizations charged with reacting to this catastrophe will do so by doing what they have always done, only more of it. Congress, which controls the budget and passes laws, will want to pass laws and to allocate more money, lots of money, forgetting completely about any campaign promises. The military, which is the nation’s enforcer, will want to use force, if only they can find a foe. The intelligence community, which gathers information, will want to be even more energetic in that gathering, no matter what the cost to the privacy of the millions of us who aren’t thinking of terrorist acts. And agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulate, will want to create more stringent regulations. Now here is an important point to be remembered: All these parties will want to do these things WHETHER THEY ARE WARRANTED OR USEFUL OR NOT.

  In 1956 two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon and the regulatory response was today’s air traffic control system. The FAA felt that by keeping most planes under positive control — telling them where to go and when — they could avoid future collisions. Yet collisions continue to happen. In 1978 a Pacific Southwest Airlines plane smashed into a small Cessna over San Diego despite the fact that both planes were flying under instrument rules and were under positive control. The FAA response that time was to carve up even more finely the sky over nearly every metropolitan area, controlling the airspace even more stringently with the intent of keeping instrument and visual traffic apart. There was no visual traffic in the San Diego accident, yet we still live with rules that arose from that accident even though those rules would not have prevented it.

  So how will the FAA react this time? They will do what they have always done, pass new and stricter rules, and they will do so because it makes them feel better, not because it will actually help.

  [...]

  Why, I find myself thinking, can’t we build a system that takes over control of the autopilot, locks out flight crew and hijackers alike, and lands the plane at the first sign of trouble. Well, we could, but it opens a whole new area of vulnerability — hijacking autopilots. Forget I said anything.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Uganda charges lawmakers allied to opposition leader with murder

  Ugandan prosecutors on Tuesday charged two lawmakers allied to opposition leader Bobi Wine with the murder of three people, following a spate of unsolved killings that have stoked widespread public alarm.

  Wine’s opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) dismissed the prosecution of the two MPs, Muhammad Ssegirinya and Mr Allan Ssewanyana, both NUP members, as a politically motivated attempt by authorities to smear the party.

  Appearing at a court in Masaka town in central Uganda, south of the capital Kampala, the two were charged with the three murders and remanded in prison, Joel Ssenyonyi, a fellow NUP lawmaker and the party’s spokesperson, told Reuters.

• ‘Incredible fear’ among women across Afghanistan -U.N. official

  A lack of clarity on the Taliban’s position on women in Afghanistan has generated “incredible fear” across the country, a senior U.N. official said on Wednesday, warning there were daily reports of curbs on the rights of women.

  Alison Davidian, deputy head of UN Women in Afghanistan, said some women were being prevented from leaving home without a male relative, women in some provinces were forced to stop work, protection centers for women fleeing violence had been targeted and safe houses for rights activists were at full capacity.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Brazil’s Restrictive New Social Media Rules Could Be an Omen For the Future of the Internet

  Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree on Monday that temporarily bans social media platforms from removing many types of content, including misinformation about COVID-19 and the country’s upcoming presidential election.

  Brazil’s new rules appear to be the first in the world to make certain types of content takedowns illegal under national law, even as other national governments around the world implement rules that force social media companies to take down more types of content proactively.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• IFF wrote to the Haryana Government urging restraint on internet shutdowns

  Between September 7, 2021 and midnight of September 9, 2021, internet services were suspended in four districts of Haryana due to ongoing farmers’ protests. The order has been circulating on social media, but is not available on the Government websites. The order does not lay out a factual justification for why the internet suspension is required, and does not justify the geographical extent of the suspension either. We wrote to the Haryana government to officially publish all orders related to the current internet shutdowns in the state and proactively publish any subsequent internet shutdown orders in compliance with the Supreme Court of India’s judgment in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2019).

• Why you should be more concerned about internet shutdowns

  Deliberate internet shutdowns enacted by governments around the world are increasing in frequency and sophistication, according to a recent report. The study, published by Google’s Jigsaw project with the digital rights nonprofit Access Now and the censorship measurement company Censored Planet, says internet shutdowns are growing “exponentially”: out of nearly 850 shutdowns documented over the last 10 years, 768 have happened since 2016.

  India’s government has shut off the internet more than any other—109 times in 2020 alone—and data shows that shutdowns are most common around elections and times of potential civil unrest, leading to claims that it has become a tactic to suppress dissent. But while they are becoming more prevalent, shutdowns are also getting more subtle, using tactics like throttling a URL to dramatically slow its function, blocking particular internet addresses, and restricting the use of mobile data.

  MIT Technology Review sat down with Dan Keyserling, the chief operating officer of Jigsaw, to discuss the growing phenomenon.

Applications

• Best Linux Text Editors: The 20 Text and HTML Editors Reviewed

  From jotting down your latest thoughts to writing your most recent program, a text editor is a go-to solution for Linux enthusiasts. Text editors are perhaps the most used software in Linux systems. They are used to modify system configs, administer system resources, and other critical areas. So, your choice of Linux text editor should be capable enough to get the job done.

• Top 15+ Fast and Secure Remote Desktop Clients for Linux

  As you are a developer or administrator or even a traveler, you might want to access the remote desktop to perform any task, including mounting remote directories, cleaning remote databases, or even backing remote servers. In this situation, the remote desktop clients help to communicate with the remote RDP server for easy access. There are many remote desktop protocols available for performing the task of remote system access. It’s a communication between the server and client software.

  Linux has the default SSH remote access tool to perform this sort of job, but as it’s done through the terminal, so many users do not feel comfortable using it. Besides using the terminal, you can also use GUI based remote desktop client for your Linux system.

Instructionals/Technical

• Figuring out the container runtime you are in – /home/liquidat

  Containers are pretty good at keeping everyone and everything inside their boundaries – thanks to SELinux, namespaces and so on. But they are not perfect. Thanks to a recent Azure security flaw I was made aware of a nice trick via the /proc/ file system to figure out what container runtime the container is running in.

• Helpful tips to improve Linux system performance | FOSS Linux

  We all detest when a running Linux system becomes slow or sluggish over time. You might have invested in powerful PC hardware but find it getting slow when you run multiple applications. Linux systems are known for their resilience and speed of processes. However, sometimes processes or services take longer to execute than expected.

  The reasons can range from system applications consuming your RAM, many unnecessary applications consuming system resources, poorly configured systems, or inefficient hardware resources that cannot handle increasing demand.

• How to install World Painter on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install World Painter on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• Install Prometheus and Node Exporter on CentOS / RHEL 8 – Unixcop

  Prometheus is a free software application used for event monitoring and alerting. It records real-time metrics in a time series database built using a HTTP pull model, with flexible queries and real-time alerting. The project is written in Go and licensed under the Apache 2 License, with source code available on GitHub, and is a graduated project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, along with Kubernetes and Envoy.

• How to install Olive Video Editor on Linux Lite 5.4 – Invidious

  In this video, we are looking at how to install Olive Video Editor on Linux Lite 5.4. Enjoy!

• How To Setup Chrooted SFTP In Linux

  This guide explains how to setup Chrooted SFTP in Linux in order to restrict SSH user access to home directory or any particular directory. To put this in other words, we are going to force the users to a specific directory and set their shell to /bin/nologin or some other shell that denies access to a ssh login. Once the chrooted SFTP is configured, the users can only access their assigned home directory, but not the entire filesystem

• How to access clipboard using xclip in Ubuntu

  A clipboard is non-permanent storage on your computer for data that the user wants to copy from one path to another. Later, you can also paste that data stored in the clipboard to somewhere else as well. Until logging off of the system or cutting/copying something, the data on the clipboard is saved. This might be a word selection, a picture, a file, or any other form of data.
  You can also clip text from one section of a document and paste it into another portion of the document or somewhere else in a word processing program. The selected information will be copied and kept in the clipboard till you paste it somewhere. Xclip is a great tool that is used as a clipboard in Ubuntu OS. This article is focussing on how you can install and use Xclip clipboard. Let’s begin:

• How to automount USB Drive in Ubuntu

  USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a device which is used as a medium of communication between two peripherals, laptops and personal computers. We can save data on USB from one computer and can copy it to another computer by just using a plugin. When USB is plugged into a computer it is mounted by the operating system installed on that machine. By default the USB is automatically mounted by the operating system installed in a machine but sometimes because of some issue like USB storage device configurations are missing the USB devices are not automatically mounted when they are plugged in. In this case, we have to configure the USB storage devices so that they can be automatically mounted when the system is plugged in. Two methods to auto mount the USB drive on Ubuntu are going to be discussed in this post.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Privacy-Screen DRM API With Intel Support Ready Now That GNOME Is Prepared To Use It

    Over the past two years we have seen work around bringing up privacy screen support on Linux whereby an increasing number of laptops can reduce the amount of visible light when viewed at wide angles to try to block the screen contents from anyone potentially snooping at the screen. Ready to go now is the DRM/KMS user-space interface and the Intel graphics driver support now that there is a user-space “client” ready.

    In recent times there has been Lenovo PrivacyGuard work for Linux and Dell privacy support. As part of enhancing the Lenovo ThinkPad support there has also been a patch series by Hans de Goede working on the necessary changes from the DRM/KMS driver side, coming up with a common user-space interface via KMS properties for indicating it, and getting it implemented for the Intel i915 driver.

    [...]

    Thus the thinkpad_acpi driver will likely need to be pulled into the initrd images of distribution kernel builds if not already done so.

Distributions

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • New IBM Power E1080 server promises dramatic increases in energy efficiency, power

  • Quarkus for Spring Developers | Red Hat Developer

    Java can be clunky and slow. Learn how to optimize Java for today’s compute and runtime demands with Quarkus—a Kubernetes-native platform.

  • Red Hat to help bring climate impact data to global finance industry [Ed: Red Hat is greenwashing with Microsoft while the servers pollute the planet; we’re meant to think that the very worst culprits are the solution]

    Enterprise open source giant Red Hat has joined OS-Climate (OS-C), a Linux Foundation-backed initiative that’s setting out to harness open source collaboration and big data to push “global capital flows” into climate change mitigation and resilience initiatives.

Devices/Embedded

• Remembering Intel 740 | Custom PC #218

• Beelink LZX – A Zhaoxin KX-6640MA based x86 Mini PC you may never see – CNX Software

  The mini PC comes with Windows 10 operating system, but it also supports the Unity Operating System (UOS) and Kylin both of which are Linux distributions for the Chinese market.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Mikron MIK32 – Made in Russia 32-bit RISC-V MCU offers features similar to STM32L0 MCU – CNX Software

    The Mikron MIK32 is a 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller made in Russia with features similar to an STMicro STM32L0 Cortex-M0+ MCU that shows how RISC-V open-source architecture can help lower the barrier to entry, and let more companies design their own chips.

    The MIK32 microcontroller features CPU IP from Syntacore based in Saint Petersburg following the RV32IMC profile. Clocked a 32 MHz, the MCU comes with I2C, UART, SPI, ADC, DAC interfaces, as well as various timers, an interrupt controller, and more.

  • Wio Lite AI – An STM32H725A Cortex-M7 board for AI vision applications

    Wio Lite AI is another development board from Seeed Studio’s “Wio Lite” family. The board is based on STMicro STM32H725A Cortex-M7 microcontroller with a dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth module, as well as camera & display interfaces for connected AI vision applications.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Feel good when you get online with Firefox

• CMS

  • Top 10 Open Source Affiliate Management, Marketing Programs For 2021

    On this article, I’m going to show you 10 open source different affiliate platforms that you can consider promoting if you’re looking to make money with affiliate marketing.

    The affiliate is the person that is the connector between the enterprise and the consumer.

    Basically, the affiliate is the middle person between the company and consumers. They work independently as an affiliate, so he has no boss he’s basically they are a boss because he has no boss.

    Affiliate it’s simple to find consumers and here’s the key who are interested in the company’s product then affiliate will tell

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Sci-Hub Celebrates 10 Years Of Existence, With A Record 88 Million Papers Available, And A Call For Funds To Help It Add AI And Go Open Source

      To celebrate ten years offering a large proportion of the world’s academic papers for free — against all the odds, and in the face of repeated legal action — Sci-Hub has launched a funding drive:

• Programming/Development

  • What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

    I recently had the privilege of helping a client with localization efforts for their website. There are some things I did not run into in my web research that I learned in actually doing the work, things that I feel are worth capturing and sharing: [...]

  • How to add elements into an array in JavaScript

    Arrays are data structures which are used to keep multiple values in a variable. A single JavaScript array can have multiple element types stored in it. It can be modified even after it has been declared and initialized. JavaScript arrays offer a lot of built-in methods which can be used to access and manipulate data stored inside them.

    In this how-to guide we will discuss four different methods which can be used to add elements into JavaScript arrays.

  • Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppSMC 0.2.5 on CRAN: Build Update

    A week after the 0.2.5 release bringing the recent Google Summer of Code for RcppSMC to CRAN, we have a minor bug-fix release consistently, essentially, of one line. “Everybody’s favourite OS and toolchain” did not know what to make of pow(), and I seemingly failed to test there, so shame on me. But now all is good thanks to proper use of std::pow().

    RcppSMC provides Rcpp-based bindings to R for the Sequential Monte Carlo Template Classes (SMCTC) by Adam Johansen described in his JSS article. Sequential Monte Carlo is also referred to as Particle Filter in some contexts. The package now features the Google Summer of Code work by Leah South in 2017, and by Ilya Zarubin in 2021.

  • How do you append to a Vector in C++?

    Appending to a vector means adding one or more elements at the back of the vector. The C++ vector has member functions. The member functions that can be used for appending are: push_back(), insert() and emplace(). The official function to be used to append is push_back(). The use of these three member functions to append to a C++ vector is explained in this article.

  • How Do You Find Something in a Vector in C++?

    C++ vector does not have a find member function. However, the algorithm library has a find() function of different types that can be used to find something in a C++ vector. The algorithm library has four groups of find() functions that can be classified as Find, Find End, Find First, and Adjacent Find.

Heading Into the Fall

Opinion | An Unwillingness To Abide Lost Cause Idolatry Any Longer: Robert E. Lee Comes Down At Last

So Long to a Sense of Community

As the echoes of 1960s’ solidarity lose even their place in the rearview mirror of life, and slogans from political campaigns that purport to hold community in awe (“Not me. Us.”), perhaps a reckoning demands attention?

The left, or at least those who could fit into a defunct phone booth of old, is now siloed into identity movements of either one kind or another. What prospects are there for any kind of community? The sad, if not disastrous answer, is nearly none.

Education

• Why won’t Donald Trump go away? Because Americans can’t tell appearance from reality

  There are those who argue we’ve long been unable to tell the difference between appearance and reality, while others believe it is a recent phenomenon caused by misinformation. But rather than arguing which came first, we need to focus on those who don’t recognize the problem at all.

Health/Nutrition

• Conservationists and Locals Praise Biden EPA’s Move to Protect Bristol Bay From Pebble Mine

  Conservationists, local tribes, and commercial fishers celebrated on Thursday the Biden administration’s move to permanently protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed from the proposed Pebble Mine and similarly destructive projects.

  “The people of Bristol Bay are counting on the EPA to listen to the science and finish the job of protecting our lands and waters.”—Robert Heyano, United Tribes of Bristol Bay

• Address the Global Public Health Crisis: Ban Glyphosate Now!

  (Since this article was written, Jose Tarazona has stepped down from his position and the letter has been forwarded to his successors, Manuela Tiramani and Benedicte Vagenede.)

  Mason wrote to Tarazona  because the licence for glyphosate is up for renewal in the EU in 2022 and the Rapporteur Member States (France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden), tasked with risk assessing glyphosate and appointed by the European Commission in 2019, said in June 2021 that there was no problem with glyphosate-based herbicides, the world’s most widely used weedkillers in agriculture.

• ‘Time for Waiting Is Over’: Biden’s New Vaccine Requirements Target US Workforce

  “The time for waiting is over,” President Joe Biden said in a televised address at the White House on Thursday.

  In an effort to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control as the ultra-contagious Delta variant kills about 1,500 Americans per day and imperils the nation’s fledgling economic recovery, Biden on Thursday announced new vaccine requirements affecting tens of millions of workers in the United States.

• LA School District Is Considering Mandatory Vaccinations for Students 12 & Older

• ‘Appalled’ by Vaccine Booster Plans, WHO Chief Rebukes Big Pharma, Rich Nations

  With the Biden administration expected to begin offering third doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine to the U.S. public in less than two weeks despite vocal pushback from many experts, the head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday demanded a moratorium on booster shots until at least the end of the year in order to free up supply for low-income nations.

  “Low- and lower-middle income countries are not the second or third priority.”—Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

• Biden to Issue Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers

  During a Thursday night speech laying out his administration’s plans to contain the coronavirus pandemic that continues to overwhelm the nation’s hospitals, U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to announce that the vast majority of federal workers must be vaccinated against Covid-19.

  According to the New York Times, “The mandate will apply to employees of the executive branch, including the White House and all federal agencies and members of the armed services—a workforce that numbers more than four million—but not to those who work for Congress or the federal court system.”

• Opinion | Vaccine Mandates and Patent Waivers for the Common Good

  The upsurge of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States serves as a bitter reminder that the pandemic is not over. The global economy will not return to normal until the disease is under control everywhere.

• Health Advocates Say Biden’s Global Covid-19 Summit Must Be ‘More Than Just PR’

  With the White House expected to propose a late-September international summit on the coronavirus pandemic response, health justice advocates on Thursday told the Biden administration that for the meeting to be “more than just PR,” rich governments must commit to ramping up vaccine production and rectifying the grossly unequal distribution of lifesaving jabs.

  “Biden has an opportunity to help launch an urgent global vaccine manufacturing, delivery, and knowledge sharing program that can fight variants and end the pandemic.”—Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen

• Florida Judge Shoots Down Ron DeSantis’s Mask Ban for Second Time in 2 Weeks

• Biden Set to Mandate Vaccinations for Federal Workers With No “Opt-Out” Options

• 88,000 tons of radioactive waste – and nowhere to put it

• Nearly 18 Million US Adults Couldn’t Afford a Prescription Medication This Year: Study

  Around 15.5 million U.S. adults under the age of 65 and 2.3 million seniors were unable to afford at least one doctor-prescribed medication this year, according to a study released Thursday as the Biden administration unveiled its plan to reduce the nation’s sky-high drug prices.

  The new study (pdf) was based on four nationally representative surveys conducted in recent months by the polling outfit Gallup in partnership with West Health, a nonprofit organization focused on lowering healthcare costs.

• Years after 9/11, first responders are still dying from exposure. This is their story

  The problem with this mainstream narrative is that it frames those attacks as something singular and isolated: they happened, and people died tragically on that horrific day. But that is not the reality lived by hundreds of thousands of 9/11 World Trade Center first responders and survivors. For them, it’s not over: the death toll continues to mount every week since. It will continue to do so late into this century. For them, 9/11 is a 20-year (and counting) ordeal of mass death.

  This is the untold 9/11 narrative, in which the United States was attacked; and then, in the days and months after, first responders and the people that lived, worked and studied in lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn were betrayed both by municipal officials and the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. The reason, of course, relates to money: Officials in both agencies were more concerned amount preserving the pulse of Wall Street than the lungs of close to a half million people, including roughly 90,000 rescue and recovery workers.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Manjaro Cinnamon Switches Default Browser To Vivaldi

    Manjaro and Vivaldi announced a change to the default browser for the popular community edition Manjaro Cinnamon from the open-source Firefox to Chromium-based Vivaldi. The Manjaro team is hoping that this move gives Vivaldi the attention it deserves according to Bernhard Landauer of Manjaro.

    Vivaldi offers many features such as tab grouping, split screen support, built-in mail client, and gestures. Vivaldi also offers many privacy controls such as anti-tracking and ad blocking by default. The company Vivaldi Technologies was founded by Tatsuki Tomita and Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, who was the co-founder and CEO of Opera Software.

  • Manjaro Cinnamon changes to Firefox from Vivaldi as default web browser

    There are few Linux distributions that give these kinds of surprises and Manjaro is one of them. We are talking about changing the usual defaults , usually free software totems, for more debatable and even proprietary alternatives, as is the case at hand: Manjaro Cinnamon puts Vivaldi as the default web browser and although it is still an anecdote for the no importance of this particular flavor …

    Indeed, it is a controversial decision for what it means: replacing free software with proprietary software, when it is not essential . As you know, it is very common for Linux distributions to include proprietary add-ons to offer the basic or desired functionality, that is, both so that certain hardware components work, and so that they do so with the best guarantees. This is usually done through drivers.

    But it is also common for large Linux distros to facilitate the installation of popular proprietary applications, such as Steam, Spotify, VSCode or many others. What is quite unusual is to find a distribution that pre-installs some of these applications, much less one that replaces a free software application with a proprietary one, when the free one meets contracted quality requirements.

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Damned If You Do; Damned If You Don’t: ProPublica’s Bizarre Reporting On WhatsApp Abuse Reports

        I’ve been struck over the years by how much reporting on technology involves attacking companies for what they do — even if for totally contradictory reasons. Everything is viewed through the lens of assuming the worst possible intentions. And, yes, sometimes perhaps that’s deserved. Companies act badly and no one should give them the benefit of the doubt if they can’t show reasons it ought not to be. But sometimes, it just gets ridiculous, as is clear in a recent ProPublica piece that attacked WhatsApp for its “report” feature. Now, I like ProPublica a lot and feel that they do some of the best investigative reporting around. But this was not that.

      • EFF Activists To Lead Protest Demanding Apple Cancel iPhone Scanning Program and Keep Its Privacy Promises To Customers

        For more about Apple’s program:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life

      • Don’t Stop Now: Join EFF, Fight for the Future at Apple Protests Nationwide

        Activists from EFF, Fight for the Future, and other digital civil liberties organizations have planned protests around the country for Monday, September 13, at 6PM PT to demand that Apple completely drop its planned surveillance software program. You can find a list of the protests here. Protests are already planned in Boston, Atlanta, Washington D.C., New York City, and Portland (OR).

        EFF will host a protest at San Francisco Union Square, with signs, stickers, and speakers, but you can protest no matter where you are:

      • The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Prison Gaming and AR/VR Services

        In one of their newest patents, granted February of 2021, Securus describes their latest revolutionary technology. A tablet, which would be issued to individual inmates to allow them to make video calls, access information about their case, and give them the opportunity to pay money for temporary access to video games. WIth this new invention Securus re-asserts their determination to extract every last penny from incarcerated people. Just because you are in prison doesn’t mean you get a pardon from the insatiable maw of capitalism. 

        Not only is this tablet useful for extracting money from prisoners. Securus also proposes that it can also be used as a biometric surveillance device. According to the patent: “the monitoring system may be configured to collect sensor information from the resident communications device in order to detect unsafe conditions during a gaming session. For instance, the monitoring system may collect sensor information from the resident communications device indicating a level of stress or agitation by the resident during game play. One or more gyroscope sensors included within the resident communications device may be used to detect unsafe handling of the resident communications device. Heart rate and blood pressure information detected by sensors worn by the resident may be transmitted via RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) to the resident communications device.”

        Taking this to its logical conclusion, the sensors and biometrics in such a handheld device could be used as an indicator of a prisoners mood, if the prisoner gets excited or angry at the game the system could determine that the prisoner is uncooperative or a recidivism risk, this data could potentially be used in parole hearings or when deciding to give punishments/rewards to prisoners. If Securus has its way, your “gamer moment” could land you in trouble and even then you will have no escape from micro transactions. 

      • Australian Surveillance Has Reached New Heights – Invidious

        The world is watching Australia right now and is looking on in confusion because we keep making mistake after mistake after mistake and some how we’ve now reached an insane level of surveillance that has been tried in the past and wasn’t a good idea then and still isn’t a good idea now.

      • Twitter takes on Facebook Groups with invite-only Communities

        Similar to how groups on Facebook and Reddit’s subreddits work, each Twitter Community will have its own moderators who are able to set rules and invite or remove people. Twitter invited a handful of users to create the first Communities and will let anyone apply to create their own on its website. “Communities are just invite-only for now, but we’re working on ways for people to discover and join Communities they want to be a part of,” the company said in a statement. That makes Communities harder to join than subreddits or public groups on Facebook. Twitter is also approving moderators to start.

      • Facebook developing machine learning chip: Report

        Facebook Inc is developing a machine learning chip to handle tasks such as content recommendation to users, The Information reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the project.

        The company has developed another chip for video transcoding to improve the experience of watching recorded and live-streamed videos on its apps, according to the report.

      • Twitter is beginning to test labels for bot accounts

        Initially, in what Twitter is calling a test, a small number of developers will be invited to be able to apply the labels to their accounts. For accounts in the test that have activated the labels, an “Automated” label will appear on profile pages and on tweets themselves for accounts. Twitter says all developers will be able to use the labels by the end of the year.

Defence/Aggression

• Opinion | How Can America Wake Up From Its Post-9/11 Nightmare?

• Why America Goes to War

  Innumerable wars originate, wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 6, “entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members.” As an illustration of this truth, he cited the case of Pericles, lauded as one of the greatest statesmen of classical Athens, who “in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute, at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the Samnians” before igniting the disastrous Peloponnesian War in order to extricate himself from political problems back home. Adapted from The Spoils of War by Andrew Cockburn (Verso Books, September 2021).

• New Opportunities For Progressives in an Evolving Middle East?

  First, NATO partners still retain their concern over terror threats emanating from the less stable areas of the region. The American reliance on Qatar to broker a deal with the Taliban and assist in permitting a (relatively) orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan is a case in point.

  Second, and related to the first, is persistent concern over Iran. In American (and Israeli) eyes at least, Iran still aspires to be a nuclear power, as well as a conventional military power able to counter the influence of the “pro-Western” states. Through its Shi’ite proxies and other allies, Iran continues to expand its presence in the region, whether in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (though Hizbollah) and Gaza in one direction, into Yemen in another. While there are signs of pragmatic relations developing among such former adversaries as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Taliban, Iran remains a major source of American apprehension.

• Twenty Years After 9/11: a Health Worker’s Perspective

  On the following day, the University of Hawaiʻi Department of Family Practice (before the name was changed to Family Medicine) held a debriefing session with all staff, residents, and faculty in attendance. We came to some conclusions that we wrote about in the medical school newsletter:

  One participant, a Muslim and Arab woman, was silent through most of the session, but at the end, she related that she first wanted to hear what others had to say. She told us that she had grown up with, and constantly lived with anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiments being expressed around her – such that she often found it most prudent to hide her ethnicity.

• Opinion | 20 Years of Wasted Money and Missed Opportunities Since 9/11

  Twenty years have now passed since 9/11.

• Many FBI Files on 9/11 Remain Classified. Victims’ Families Want Them Released.

• The Fierce, Enduring Legacy of America’s Anti–Afghanistan War Protests

  After 20 years of US imperial intervention, Afghanistan is a deeply war-wounded country, its cities in ruins and hundreds of thousands of its people in graves. It didn’t have to end this way.

• The $8 Trillion Cost of Failure

  They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is.

• Opinion | The Moral Idiocy and Suicidal Tendency of Endless War

  We pretend to have enemies, but mostly what we “have” are people whose lives simply don’t matter. And then we kill them, either directly—via airstrikes or other war games, turning them into collateral damage—or indirectly. . .by simply failing to notice that they exist.

• How the War on Terror Created the “Muslim American”

  On September 12, 2001, the day after horrific terrorist attacks shook the country, The New York Times published an editorial titled “The National Defense.” In it, the paper focused on “the urgent work of determining how an open and democratic society can better defend itself” against terrorism. Sandwiched between several security-related policy suggestions, the Times sounded this note of caution:

• “Humane”: Yale Historian Samuel Moyn on “How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War”

  In his new book, Yale historian Samuel Moyn explores whether the push to make U.S. wars more “humane” by banning torture and limiting civilian casualties has helped fuel more military interventions around the world. He looks in detail at the role of President Obama in expanding the use of drones even as he received the Nobel Peace Prize. “What happened after 2001 is that, in the midst of an extremely brutal war on terror, a new kind of war emerged. … It was important to Americans to see their wars fought more humanely,” says Moyn. “Even though this represents a kind of progress, it also helped Americans sustain war and helped make the war on terror endless.” Moyn’s new book is “Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.”

• Legacy of the US Response to 9/11 Is Terror, Domestic Surveillance and Drones

• Sept. 11 – Day of Warning

  Nineteen young male fanatics, armed only with boxcutters, hijacked four airliners and flew them like projectiles into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

  This date should be marked to warn of the terrible harm that can be inflicted by just a few religious zealots.

• Civilian Deaths Aren’t News for Fox News

  CNN, for example, ordered reporters to frame reports of civilian deaths with reminders that “the Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that it is trying to minimize” such casualties, and that “the Taliban regime continues to harbor terrorists who are connected to the September 11 attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives in the US” (Washington Post, 10/31/01).

• Declassifying the 9/11 Investigation

  With families of 9/11 victims threatening to protest his appearance at events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the attacks, President Joe Biden took the notable step last week of ordering the Justice Department and other agencies to disclose new portions of their long-secret files on the Qaida plot.

  The executive order on Sept. 3 appears to stave off the prospect that the president might be picketed on the eve of 9/11 memorial services, just days after the final, chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

• “Turning Point”: Legacy of the U.S. Response to 9/11 Is Terror, Domestic Surveillance & Drones

  As this week marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., we look at a new five-part documentary series on Netflix about the attacks and the response from the United States, both at home and abroad. “Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror” features a wide range of interviews with survivors of the attacks, U.S. officials, former CIA members and veterans, as well as soldiers in the Afghanistan National Army, Taliban commanders, and Afghan officials, warlords and civilians. “What we really wanted to do was tell the story not just of what happened that day, but how we got there and where our response to those attacks took us as a country,” says director Brian Knappenberger. We also speak with co-executive producer Mohammed Ali Naqvi, an award-winning Pakistani filmmaker, who says the film was an attempt to go “beyond the binary narrative of good versus evil.”

• Caving to NRA and Pro-Gun Democrats, Biden Withdraws ATF Nominee

  “It is hugely disappointing and unconscionable that 50 members of the U.S. Senate as well as at least one senator who caucuses with the president’s party would deny President Biden his choice to lead the ATF.”—Kris Brown, Brady

Environment

• Climate change: Fossil fuels must stay underground, scientists say

  And this “bleak picture”, the scientists say, “is very probably an underestimate of what is required”.

  The carbon budget determined by the modelling would give the world a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5C.

  But the study says: “That does not consider uncertainties around, for example, climate-system feedbacks

  “So to ensure more certainty of stabilising at this temperature, [even] more carbon needs to stay in the ground.”

• Failing Key Climate Test, Biden Nominates Fossil Fuel ‘Crony’ to Federal Energy Post

  Climate campaigners and critics of corporate influence in politics responded with alarm Thursday to President Joe Biden’s selection of Willie L. Phillips Jr. for a key federal energy post, given the raging climate emergency and the nominee’s record both in government and as a private attorney.

  “We’re deeply concerned about whether the new commissioner will be too closely tied to the energy utilities that have put profit above people.”—Jean Su, Center for Biological Diversity

• Ro Khanna Vows to Put Big Oil, PR Firms in Hot Seat ‘Like the Big Tobacco Hearings’

  Rep. Ro Khanna on Thursday fired a broadside at an often-overlooked enabler and profiteer of the worsening climate emergency—the public relations and advertising firms that continue to serve the fossil fuel industry—by announcing that their deceptive practices would be scrutinized during forthcoming congressional hearings on Big Oil climate misinformation.

  “You can’t address the climate crisis without addressing climate misinformation.”—Rep. Ro Khanna

• Opinion | The Dixie Fire and the Day I Became a Climate Refugee

  At 10 a.m. on July 22nd, I interviewed a New York University professor about using autonomous robots, drones, and other unmanned devices to suppress structural and wildland fires. I sent the interview to an online transcription service, walked down the steps of my second-floor office and a block to the Greenville post office, where I mailed a check to California Fair Plan for homeowners’ fire insurance. I then drove 25 miles to a dental appointment. I was lucky to make it home before burning debris closed the roads.

• Climate Campaigners Demand ‘Action, Not Words’ After Biden’s ‘Code Red’ Comments

  Responding to U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent comments calling the climate emergency a “code red” situation, environmental and Indigenous leaders representing a coalition of advocacy groups on Thursday implored the administration to act accordingly by declaring a climate emergency and stopping all fossil fuel projects.

  “In the face of the climate crisis, we should not be expanding the fossil fuel industry and allowing the government to subsidize and hand off funds to the fossil fuel industry.”—Tara Houska, Giniw Collective

• Energy

  • Line 3 Resisters Light the Way in a Battle for Life on Earth

  • Big Oil’s Delay Tactics Are the New Climate Science Denialism

    This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is published here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

  • As World Burns, Morrison Says Australia’s Sticking With Coal

    Defying a “code red” warning about the climate crisis and sustained pressure to take urgent action on the planetary emergency, the conservative government of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday vowed to continue coal mining.

    Asked at a press conference whether his government would put a time limit on the coal industry, Morrison responded that the mining sector is “absolutely critical to Australia’s future. And we’ll keep on mining. Of course we’ll keep on mining.”

  • Coastal Tribes in Louisiana Are in Desperate Need After Ida Wallops Their Communities

    “I am in desperate need of a camper trailer,” Traditional Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, told me outside of her totaled home in Chauvin, Louisiana, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans. Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana with 150 mile per hour wind on August 31, took the roof off of her home and smashed to bits her sewing workshop, located next door. 

    Parfait-Dardar and her family embody the word “resilience.” When I visited the family on September 7, her husband was working to create a shelter for the family amid the Category 4 storm’s destruction. 

  • ‘Majority of Fossil Fuels Must Stay in Ground to Meet 1.5C Goal’

    By Daniel Welsby, James Price, and Steve Pye, The Conversation. Reposted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.Global mean surface temperatures reached 1.2C above the pre-industrial average in 2020, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in its recent report that Earth could hit 1.5C in as little as a decade. The 0.3C separating these two temperatures make a world of difference. Scientists believe that stabilising our warming world’s temperature at 1.5C could help avoid the most serious effects of climate change.

    Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas are the source of just over 80% of the world’s energy. Burning them accounts for 89% of human-derived CO₂ emissions. To avert catastrophic warming, the global community must rapidly reduce how much of these fuels it extracts and burns. Our new paper, published in Nature, revealed just how tight the world’s remaining carbon budget is likely to be.

  • Tory Peer Nicky Morgan Joins ‘Fossil Bank’ Santander After Calling for Greener Financial System

    A Tory peer and ex-minister who called on the UK’s financial sector to cut its carbon emissions has joined a bank that has invested nearly £25 billion in fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement.

    Nicky Morgan, a former MP who now sits in the House of Lords, joined Santander UK – part of the Spanish banking giant – as an Independent Non-Executive Director last month. 

• Wildlife/Nature

  • How Wildlife Rescuers Can Protect Public Health

  • Amazon fires are rising threat to Brazil’s great rainforest

    Brazil’s great rainforest is a reservoir of global richness. Its government has reduced that wealth and burned a resource.

Finance

• Scam the Rich: A Conversation With Novelist Marlowe Granados

  Scammers like Anna Delvey and Billy McFarland get all the credit. Their schemes—pilfering millions from wealthy people for fake businesses and fraudulent music festivals—scream for attention. It’s harder to get credit for lower-stakes grifts: like convincing a man you’ve just met to pay for your cab fare back to Brooklyn, or getting an invite to a Hamptons house based on charm alone. You must possess both smarts and joie de vivre to pull off that kind of con—if you even want to call it that. In Happy Hour, the debut novel by the Toronto-based writer Marlowe Granados, two 21-year old-women named Isa and Gala are con artists of this more intimate sort.

• Rashida Tlaib Corrects Jim Clyburn: ‘$3.5 Trillion Is the Floor’

  Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan pushed back late Wednesday after fellow Rep. Jim Clyburn—the third-ranking Democrat in the House—said that $3.5 trillion was not the “floor” but rather the “ceiling” for the emerging budget reconciliation package, a position that puts him firmly at odds with many members of his own party.

  In an appearance on CNN, Clyburn (D-S.C.) falsely claimed that “no one has ever said” the popular $3.5 trillion figure represents the floor for reconciliation negotiations. In recent days, as Common Dreams has reported, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and other prominent progressives have publicly made clear that $3.5 trillion is already a compromise and that they will not approve of anything less.

• Battle of the Plutocrats in Virginia

  Youngkin refers only fleetingly to his history in the top echelons of the financial sector (with that platinum entry pass, an MBA from Harvard Business School). But flaunting his previous position as the co-CEO of The Carlyle Group can be a double-edged sword, given the Group’s long track record of asset-stripping and job destruction.

  Dirt-throwing opponents can take advantage of someone offering himself to voters as a” job creator” who has a 25-year-long background as a vulture capitalist in a multinational firm lacking a real record of job creation.

• Cheap Fun: Job Growth Under Trump and Biden

  Anyhow, it’s time to see how the economy’s job performance under Biden stacks up against its performance under Trump. As I always say, this is silly since there are so many things that are beyond the president’s control, so the comparison really is not telling us much. But, you know if the situation were reversed, Donald Trump would be touting this graph to the sky. He probably would even have a huge neon version on top of Trump Tower.

  So, here’s where we stand now. Including the August number, and the 135,000 upward revision to growth for the prior two months, Biden has now created 4.5 million jobs in the first seven months of his presidency.  Trump lost 2.9 million jobs over his four years in office.

• ‘Tax These Moochers’: Top 1% Dodge $163 Billion in Taxes Each Year

  A Treasury Department report released Wednesday estimates that the richest 1% of Americans are responsible for more than $160 billion in unpaid taxes per year, a finding that comes as Democratic lawmakers are working to bolster IRS enforcement capacity in their emerging reconciliation package.

  Authored by Natasha Sarin, the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, the new report argues that “today’s tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn; and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• ‘Step Up and Do the Right Thing’: Groups Urge Congress to Pass Build Back Better Bill

  In the face of a massive corporate lobbying blitz and continuing opposition from Republican and right-wing Democratic U.S. lawmakers to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, 93 advocacy groups on Thursday sent a letter to Congress urging members to “stand up to this pressure” and pass the ambitious $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package.

  “One of the biggest indications that President Biden’s Build Back Better plan would provide transformative change to working families is that corporations are spending millions to try to defeat it.”—Heidi Shierholz, EPI

• In Buffalo, Progressive India Walton Fights Off ‘Sore Loser’ Democratic Mayor and GOP Allies

  “I return to the mantra of Senator Bernie Sanders: the way to win against organized money is with organized people. So we continue to organize.”—India Walton

• Kathy Hochul’s Future Ambitions Create an Opening for the Left

  In her first major move as governor since replacing the disgraced Andrew Cuomo in August, Kathy Hochul signed into a law a sweeping extension of a statewide eviction moratorium that had been set to expire. Hochul, returning to Albany for a special session, brokered a deal with Democratic legislative leaders to safeguard hundreds of thousands of tenants until January 15.

• Democrats May Tie Disaster Relief to Raising Debt Ceiling, Putting GOP in a Bind

• ‘The Last Thing We Need’: Ocasio-Cortez Urges Californians to Vote No on Newsom Recall

• The impact of Open Source Software and Hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy: Final Study Report

  Based on the results of our empirical analyses, the following recommendations are derived. [...]

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs social media ‘censorship’ bill into law

  The law targets companies with at least 50 million monthly users in the US, including Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube. The legislation, billed by the governor’s office as protecting Texans “from wrongful censorship on social media platforms,” would allow residents of the state to sue companies for reinstatement of accounts.

Misinformation/Disinformation

• Warren urges Amazon to fix algorithm ‘feeding misinformation loops’

  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is urging Amazon to create a plan to modify its algorithm after her staff found books spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic prominently displayed in searches about the virus and vaccines.

  “As cases of COVID-19 continue to rise, Amazon is feeding misinformation loops through its search and ‘Best Seller’ algorithms, potentially leading countless Americans to risk their health and the health of their neighbors based on misleading and inaccurate information that they discover on Amazon’s website,” Warren wrote in a letter sent to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

• This image from an episode of The Simpsons has been digitally altered to add a reference to vaccines

  The Simpsons did NOT predict the Covid-19 pandemic.

  An image has been shared multiple times in Facebook posts that claim it shows a character from The Simpsons holding a piece of paper supposedly containing a phrase that predicted the vaccine rollout in 2021. The image, however, has been digitally altered: in the original Simpsons episode, the paper has a different phrase unrelated to vaccines written on it.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Impossibility Of Content Moderation: Scientist Debunking Vaccine Myths Gets A YouTube Strike For Medical Misinfo

  Here’s another one in our never ending series on the impossibility of doing content moderation at scale, and how (all too frequently) people trying to expose bad behavior are punished as if they’re promoting bad behavior.

• Connecticut Court Orders Blogger To Turn Over Electronic Devices To Cop Suing Over Alleged Defamation By Blog’s Commenters

  Things are getting dumber and way less constitutional in a defamation lawsuit filed by a Connecticut law enforcement officer. Lt. Vincent Benvenuto — despite being the beneficiary of all the official and codified protection and forgiveness government workers only seem willing to give to other government employees — sued a blogger, demanding the blogger hand over identifying information on commenters who offended the Lieutenant.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Announces On Twitter The Livestreaming On Facebook Of His Signing Of A Bill That Removes 1st Amendment Rights For Both

  We’ve talked a bunch about just how incredibly unconstitutional Texas’s social media content moderation bill, HB20 is, so I don’t really need to cover any of that again. You can look it up — or just read how a court found Florida’s similar bill unconstitutional.

• High Court finds media outlets are responsible for Facebook comments in Dylan Voller defamation case

  The High Court found that, by running the Facebook pages, the media groups participated in communicating any defamatory material posted by third parties and were therefore responsible for the comments.

• The Good Death—Cancel Culture and the Logic of Torture

  Cancellation is a public execution, during which a person is pilloried and destroyed. But while we have become used to the cycle of manufactured outrage that preludes every cancellation, the desperate public apologies, and the devastating consequences for the people whose lives are ruined, we are often at a loss to know what we could do to stop this type of serial assault. Part of the solution is to gain as clear an understanding of the phenomenon as possible by probing its structure. Philosophical and historical scholarship on public executions and torture can help to illuminate the moral logic that drives the cycle of abuse. For both public shaming and cancellation are structured like public acts of torture, and their aims are disturbingly similar means of enforcing political or cultural conformity.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Afghan journalists tell of Taliban beatings after covering protests

  Naqdi said he was accosted by a Taliban fighter as soon as he started taking pictures.

  “They told me ‘You cannot film’,” he said. “They arrested all those who were filming and took their phones,” he told AFP.

  Naqdi said the Taliban tried to grab his camera, but he managed to hand it to someone in the crowd.

  Three Taliban fighters caught him, however, and took him to the police station where the beatings started.

• Afghan Media Say Taliban are Jailing, Attacking News Crews During Kabul Protests

  The Taliban have detained, beaten and threatened several journalists covering protests in Kabul and other districts in Afghanistan, and told some news crews that they need permission to film.

  More than 14 reporters and photographers were detained over two days this week while covering demonstrations for women’s rights and protests against Pakistan, according to the Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association (AIJA).

Civil Rights/Policing

• The Board Meeting

  N There was a meeting. They had an agenda.N It was time to talk about loving a manN in the supermarket, how that mightN affect sales of imported candyN and levels of light in the produce.N It was the best meeting they’d ever had.N Everyone wanted it to last forever, likeN it had seemed April was going to last yearN or was it the year before that. PeopleN at the meeting had a lot in common.N Not only were they all employed byN the same company, but also most of themN drove to the meeting in a car, sometimesN the same car, so there was barelyN a meter between them. They could all voteN and they could all hold forth on the beauty and dangerN of poisonous berries. It was a perfect meeting.N They each had one blue eye and two green ones.

• Sixth Circuit Reaffirms It’s A Fourth Amendment Violation To Chalk Car Tires For Parking Enforcement Purposes

  Two years ago, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals surprised the city of Saginaw, Michigan by finding the process of marking car tires with chalk for parking enforcement violated the Fourth Amendment. The city certainly didn’t expect multiple ticketholder Alison Taylor’s lawsuit to make it this far. And it certainly didn’t expect the Appeals Court to reverse the district court’s decision that no Fourth Amendment violation had taken place.

• Republican FreeDumb is Killing Us

• The End of White Hegemony?

  William Frey, of the Brookings Institute, reports, “Yet most notable is the small decline in white population — the first in any census since 1790. During much of the nation’s history, white population growth mirrored the national growth rate, including a substantial slowdown during the Great Depression.”  He adds, “Yet, since the 1970s, white population growth has shown continued declines — plummeting to just 1.2% in 2000 to 2010 and now to a -2.6% loss (or over 5 million people) for the 2010s.”  And he notes, “Fewer births and more deaths resulted in a natural decrease (more deaths than births) for the 2010s decade, even before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

  Frey goes further noting two parallel develops that compound the overall demographic shift.  “All of the nation’s 2010-to-2020 growth is attributable to people of color—those identifying as Latino or Hispanic, Black, Asian American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Native American, and as two or more races,” he finds. Adding, “Together, these groups now comprise more than 40% of the U.S. population.”  In addition, “Between 2010 and 2020, the nation’s under-age-18 population registered an absolute decline of more than 1 million.  …. As a result, white Americans now comprise less than half of the nation’s under-age-18 population.”

• Body Cam Video Shows Cop Killing A Harmless Dog Within 15 Seconds Of Arriving At The Scene

  I don’t often write about cops killing dogs. It’s not that it’s a rarity. It actually happens all the time.

• Texas Providers May Face Jail Time for Prescribing Abortion Pills

• How Chevron Used the Law and the FBI to Target Whistle-Blowing Lawyer Steven Donziger

• ‘Game-Changer’: Biden DOJ Applauded for Suing Texas Over New Abortion Ban

  Reproductive rights advocates on Thursday praised the Biden administration for legally challenging Texas’ new anti-choice measure banning the termination of pregnancy after six weeks and empowering “vigilantes” to sue anyone who “aids and abets” such an abortion.

  “It’s a game-changer that the Department of Justice has joined the legal battle to restore constitutionally protected abortion access in Texas and disarm vigilantes looking to collect their bounties.”—Nancy Northup, Center for Reproductive Rights

• DOJ Sues the State of Texas Over Its Restrictive Anti-Abortion Law

• AOC Pans Greg Abbott’s Pledge to End Rape in Texas: “GOP Laws HELP Abusers”

• Opinion | On Deregulation and Covid Masks, Libertarians Are Loud. On Female Liberty, Deafening Silence

  It was a bad week for freedom in America. With Texas banning most abortions and empowering self-appointed vigilantes to stop women from exercising their right to reproductive healthcare, and the Supreme Court letting it stand, you’d think freedom-loving libertarians would be out in full force protesting.

• Parliament unanimously approves “Water is ours” citizens’ initiative

  A citizens’ initiative entitled ‘Water is ours’ (Finnish: Vesi on meidän) has been unanimously approved by Parliament.

  The initiative had sought to prevent the privatisation of Finland’s water supply, and to date is the first such citizens’ initiative to receive unanimous backing by MPs. Parliament has previously approved only two other citizens’ initiatives.

• Unconstitutional Texas social media bill attacks human rights

  Yesterday, September 2, the U.S. state of Texas’ legislature passed a bill that aims to stop social media companies from “censoring conservative views.” This bill and others like it across the United States have been drafted in direct response to platforms’ removal of misinformation, incitement to violence, and other content that platforms have deemed in violation of their community guidelines. The legislation includes vague, sweeping language prohibiting platforms from banning or blocking a person based on viewpoint or geographic location, attempting to give judges broad powers to overturn social media platforms’ decisions about their own content moderation policies.

• California bill seeks to halt prison-to-ICE deportation pipeline

  Leonel Sanchez thought he was about to go home to his family after serving three-and-a-half years for assault and other crimes in California, saying he felt redeemed after he started reading the Bible, attending Alcoholics Anonymous and even fighting wildfires as a prisoner.

  Instead of walking free, he became one of the 1,500 foreign-born California prisoners who earn their release each year, only to be transferred to federal detention and told they may be kicked out of the country. He is in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, likely to be deported to Mexico, a country he left at age 10 and where he has no friends or known relatives.

  In an atmosphere still charged by Trump-era rhetoric linking immigration and violent crime, some Californians may have little sympathy for the foreign-born who can be deported because of felony convictions. But advocates for people like Sanchez question whether it serves justice to punish them a second time or send them away regardless of their individual circumstances, the rehabilitation they sought on the inside, or the conditions in their homelands.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• AT&T Whines About Spectrum Hoarding Now That T-Mobile Is Doing It

  Economists predicted the T-Mobile merger would result in a lot of layoffs, something that’s been proven true so far. Those same economists also predicted that the merger will also inevitably result in higher prices for consumers, though that’s expected to take a few years as investors pressure the three remaining companies to take advantage of reduced competition.

Monopolies

• ARIPO Member States adopt the Kampala Protocol on Voluntary Registration of Copyright and Related Rights [Ed: Colonialism by WIPO with misuse of the word “right” (like they used to say slave ownership was a “right”)]

  Late last month (August), the Kampala Protocol on voluntary registration of copyright and related rights within the framework of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) was adopted at a Diplomatic Conference held in Kampala, Uganda. The Protocol establishes a regional voluntary registration of copyright and related rights. It creates and maintains a regional database for copyright and related rights for ARIPO and the ARIPO Member States.

• U.S. Antitrust Cops Unveil Data Backing Facebook Monopoly Case

  The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday revealed figures that it said shows Facebook is far and away the most dominant company in the market. The numbers had been redacted in an earlier complaint.

• Patents

  • Gofore Plc: Gofore Plc’s Business Review 1 – 31 August 2021: Growth continued in August – Through competitive tendering, Gofore included in two framework agreements in Europe [Ed: Gofore just got a contract from EPO but no details given; sometimes it’s hidden [1, 2]]

  • Gofore Plc: Gofore Plc’s Business Review 1 – 31 August 2021: Growth continued in August – Through competitive tendering, Gofore included in two framework agreements in Europe
    

    Gofore has been successful in digitalising the Finnish society. Our expertise in public sector projects is strong and we have also identified the opportunity to export this expertise in other parts of Europe. In August, a major step was taken on this path when we reached framework agreements with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris) and the European Patent Office (EPO, Munich) through competitive tendering. In the case of the OECD, the framework agreement covers procurement related to digital services and capabilities

  • Did the Pandemic Affect 2020 Australian PCT Filings?

    As I reported back in January, there were some indications of weakening patent filings by Australian applicants in 2020. Domestic applicants filed 10% fewer Australian standard applications than in 2019. And while provisional filings overall fell by only 2%, those prepared with professional assistance – which involve greater expense, but are also far more likely to provide a sound basis for valuable future patent rights – fell by nearly 5%. While perhaps not the sole factor, it is logical to assume that the business impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was somewhat influential in this decline. Of course, Australian application numbers are not the only indicator of filing activity. Each year, Australian residents file over 1,500 international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), representing potential future filings not only in Australia, but also in any of the other 152 (as at the time of writing) contracting states. So it is also interesting to know whether there was a corresponding decline in PCT filings by Australian residents in 2020.

  • [Old] Assignor Estoppel: When Can A Party Challenge A Patent They Sold?

    In patent law, the doctrine of “assignor estoppel” refers to barring a party who assigned a patent from later challenging the validity of the patent. Assignor estoppel is an equitable doctrine that has been relied upon in order to prevent someone who has assigned the rights to a patent (or patent application) from later contending that what was assigned was, in fact, worthless. The doctrine has been applied to not just inventors, but also parties in privity with the original inventor, such as a corporation founded by the inventor. Essentially, the doctrine of assignor estoppel is grounded in fair dealing when selling patents.

  • The EPO Conducts A Survey On Users’ Experience With ViCo Proceedings In Opposition [Ed: EPO did something illegal (as usual), then rigged the courts, and after ‘legalising’ this offence by abusing courts it kindly asks for our view on it?]

    The European Patent Office (EPO) is conducting a survey (https://www.epo.org/news-events/news/2021/20210901.html) concerning the experience of users in opposition oral proceedings by videoconference (ViCo). At aera we think it is important that as many as possible provide their input to the EPO since the feedback from users, apparently, will inform the decision of the EPO on whether to continue with ViCo proceedings in the future.

    Our own experience is that it works well from a technical perspective, Zoom being the EPO’s preferred connection software. We also agree with the position, often stated as a major advantage of ViCo proceedings, that ViCo can save parties to oral proceedings time and money that would otherwise be spent travelling to Munich or The Hague. Hence, from a convenience perspective, it could be argued that ViCo should be allowed to continue, even as a mandatory measure (as is currently the case in view of the pandemic).

    However, convenience is only part of the picture. Most opponents do not oppose European patents as a matter of convenience. Often, technology important for the parties’ businesses is at stake. Indeed, when the EPO flags convenience and cost saving as attractive features of ViCo, they often implicitly give the impression that it is convenience for the EPO that is meant.

  • Software Patents

    • China surge in business method patents continues, while Japan and South Korea also see growth [Ed: By Western standards many of these are fake patents for faked 'growth' (only the litigation firms stand to benefit)]

      Statistics prepared by Japan Patent Office show wide regional variations – business method filings in Japan itself continue to grow as grant rate tops 70%

    • $2,000 for Vitek IP prior art

      On September 9, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 9,245,295, owned by Vitek IP, LLC, an NPE. The ’295 patent generally relates to a call-to-action lockout on a mobile device coupled to a data network. The invention has been developed primarily for controlling responses while experiencing media content on mobile electronic devices.

• Copyrights

  • Meet the CC Summit Presenter: Juan Miguel Palma Peña

    Based in: Mexico City, Mexico 

  • Digital Death Penalty? Legal Battle over Piracy Disconnections Heats Up in Appeals Court

    ISP Cox Communications is squaring off against several major record labels at the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The ISP warns of devastating consequences when it has to disconnect alleged pirates, equating it to a digital death penalty. The music companies doubt this, pointing out that Cox terminated the accounts of 600,000 subscribers who failed to pay their bills.

  • Funimation DMCA Notices Shut Down Pirate Anime Apps, Force Others to Consider Future

    A wave of DMCA/cease-and-desist notices sent on behalf of anime company Funimation has caused several piracy-focused apps and services to run for cover. Due to threats of law enforcement referrals for non-compliance, three apps have already shut down while others are taking evasive action to avoid the same fate.

  • Another Mod War: Jagex Demands Shutdown Of HD RuneScape Mod, Retracts After Public Backlash

    The gaming industry modding wars continue. We had recently discussed Nintendo’s continued war on anyone who mods its games, including shutting down tournaments for incredibly minor uses of mods that make those tournaments possible. We’ve also been discussing Take-Two’s attack on its modding community for the Grand Theft Auto franchise. On the flip side, companies like CD Projekt Red and Bethesda have so embraced their own modding communities as to have hired some of them onto their teams as salaried employees.