12.06.21

[Meme] Rowing to the Bottom of the Ocean

Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Patents at 9:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Rowan EPO staff

Summary: The EPO‘s Steve Rowan (VP1) is failing EPO staff and sort of “firing” workers during times of crisis (not at all a crisis to the EPO’s coffers)

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EPO Gradually Reduced to ‘Fee Collection Agency’ Which Eliminates Its Very Own Staff

Posted in Deception, Europe, Microsoft, Patents at 8:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“[T]hey start to bring in more money through gambling than through the normal work activities. At that point the normal work activities become a charade at best, so they can pretend that they are active in a particular field of endeavor. More often the normal work activities just get in the way of the gambling so in response any staff still involved in normal work activities get fired in one way or another.” –Techrights associate

Layoffs? Well Yes, But Actually No
The ‘cull’ of the EPO has already begun; in spite of more money being amassed (fewer expenses during the pandemic) staff is being eliminated

Summary: Mr. Redundancies [1, 2] and Mr. Cloud are outsourcing EPO jobs to Microsoft and Serco [1, 2] as if the EPO is an American corporation, providing no comfort to long-serving EPO staff

LAST week the Central Staff Committee (CSC) of the EPO circulated a message of concern about staff’s future, with focus on “Job Groups 5/6 matters”. So it published a long and detailed document about the current situation, entitled “Topics and issues of interest for Formalities Officers”.

The target audience of that publication is EPO insiders (ordinary staff), and Team Battistelli/Campinos is politely criticised (remember this is CSC folks, not SUEPO, i.e. not the union).

“They’re not even supposed to hoard money; they violate the EPC.”Over the weekend we published in Daily Links a number of articles about invalid European Patents being granted (or being tossed out by courts); some of these are European software patents, which should never even be granted in the first place.

What does the EPO do? Just grant as many patents as possible.

Here’s the text of the publication, dated last Friday:

Munich, 03/12/2021
sc21145cp

Topics and issues of interest for Formalities Officers

A new DG1 restructuration, the second in five years, is announced and Formalities Officers are feeling very tired and unsure about the future of their work.
Staff representation wants to be involved in this process and intends to channel their concerns and views to the management.
Our goal is that this time the restructuration will bring a real improvement and provide the appropriate framework for the colleagues.

Dear Colleagues,

Introduction
The work of Formalities officers is going through a lot of changes: since the 2018 restructuration, the Formalities Officers (FO) work environment continued to go through multiple changes, many of which created unnecessary additional stress and work pressure. Even during the COVID-pandemic with near-obligatory teleworking, the pace of changes did not slow down, rather to the contrary, and there hasn’t been any time for a breathing pause to catch up and adapt. The message from the administration indicates that the times ahead are going to bring many more changes to the already exhausted FO with a new restructuration of DG1.

Status report
Staff Representation had a meeting with Steve Rowan (VP1) on 15 September 2021, during which he emphasized that the Formalities Officers were “his priority”.

In order to have a clear picture of the current FO population, we requested FOs demographic data, not only to know how many would retire in the coming years, but also to get statistics on the distribution of grades and steps and the number of transfers in recent years.

Below is a summary of the statements we have made and those received from VP1 so far (which doesn’t imply that we agree with them):

On the skill assessment tool
Its proclaimed role is to find out where training needs are, initially for present and future jobs. In the next step, it ought to allow the mapping of staff skills, connect them with vacancy notices to offer these jobs to those most suitable (without being obliged to accept them).

At the time of the meeting, some 80% of FO had already completed the self-assessment. According to VP1, staff is expected to be pro-active and take responsibility for their own training. VP1 noted that there were lots of new tools and it was important to avoid people “falling off the ladder”. This skill assessment tool is initially targeted at FO staff, but it is intended to be rolled out across the Office. VP1 would like to see a change in mentality across staff: thinking in skills for the future rather than focusing on functional competencies for the present.

We were assured that the self-assessment tool is only meant to assist staff and should be decoupled from the rewards.

On job mobility
Identifying one’s skills is meant to enable job mobility across the Office. The administration aims at stimulating internal job mobility from Q4 2021 – Q1 2022 onwards.

We mentioned being aware of some staff members who were prevented from applying for jobs for the only reason that they were “in a different job group”. This appears to be contrary to the idea of the “single spine” structure that was promoted with the New Career System. We consider that staff with the right skills and experience, should be able to apply for any job and the most suitable candidate being chosen.

VP1 noted that although some jobs were open to all job groups, staff seems not to understand that they are free to apply in any case. He stated to be willing to see if jobs could be advertised openly.

We pointed out that some of these open jobs were in fact time-limited (and often part-time) projects and not real jobs. Furthermore, we stressed that anyone requesting for a transfer should be seen positively, and that the choice of the colleague should be accepted without being unnecessarily questioned: all too often, we learn about colleagues seeking for a transfer, but being looked at negatively. Besides, before applying for a job, colleagues have reflected thoroughly, and management should demonstrate an a priori trust in the colleague’s choice.

The administration further stated that, in line with the one-office-structure, transfers across sectors will be allowed.

On digitalisation
Due to the pandemic, digitalisation impacted the FO work harder than expected. Whilst management sees opportunities, it also foresees that future digital transformation will have an even stronger effect on FO work, with changes in the patent grant process, the introduction of the unitary patent, and more.

We estimate that there will be a strong need to ensure sufficient training and support through all these continued changes.

The administration expects the unitary patent to go live by July 2022, with extra work and possibly new units. This may entail a (further) reorganisation, possibly also (external) FO recruitment. Their mid-term recruitment plan (5 years) is focused on needs based on digitalisation, new roles, unitary patent, and transferring CDR work to Munich. They stated that they are consulting all FO Team Managers in this project.

On the future of FO work
We noted the demographic evolution of the FO population: more and more FO are nearing their retirement age. SR is also contacted by a growing group of colleagues that are having difficulty coping with the constant changes. We inquired on how the administration intends to cater for this.

The administration seems to realise that not necessarily everyone wants to study for the “Formalities Officers’ Development Programme” (EPAC) or become a paralegal. Their stated idea is based on flexibility and providing something for everyone. Staff members will however have to show adaptability. It was understood that colleagues that are near retirement will be given the possibility to go on with their FO work as they currently do.

However, VP1 expressed the hope that also older staff, also those close to retirement, would at least have the possibility to retrain. Training is seen as a life-long process and therefore it is to be expected that someone aged 30 will not have the same job when they are 60. VP1 considered that the age pyramid was actually helpful because it gives the Office the possibility to control the way it recruits.

On career opportunities

Six new SCAPEs have been recruited meanwhile. LPS equivalent expert FO roles are about to be created. The EPAC, which was announced in 2018, will likely start to take place soon.

On knowledge resources
There are currently more than 100 different sources of knowledge and information channels for FO. These resources are expected to be used in order to remain up to date in all work-related aspects.

we pointed out that there are simply too many different and seemingly unrelated information and communication resources, making it very time consuming, even counterproductive, to keep up. There should be an effort to regroup and consolidate these many different resources into a coherent single overview.

VP1 reassured us that the administration will look into this.

On rewards
There is a perception that FO are not being fairly considered when rewards are distributed, and that they are in competition with JG4 staff for these rewards.

VP1’s view is that this should not happen; he finds it important to reward all staff in DG1 fairly.

Conclusion
During the meeting with VP1, we heard a lot of positive statements and good intentions – we are now looking forward to seeing concrete actions. A first indicator to concrete actions can be seen from the “Orientation Paper on Recruitment for 2022”¹, where we learn that no external recruitment of FO is foreseen for 2022, and consequently the headcount will continue to decrease.

Management, as usual, comes with the mantra that digitalisation and better tools will counter-balance the recruitment freeze and compensate for the declining numbers. The number of formalities officer posts will go further down from 620 in the 2021 to 585 in the 2022 budget. By strongly pushing the introduction of PWB and DFR, FO and their work are more and more replaced by automation. We have the feeling that’s not the message an ageing and tired of constant changes FO population was waiting for.

In any case, we continue to request to be properly involved in the administration’s concrete plans for the future of the FO work.

Only then would we be in a position to properly channel the Formalities Officers’ views and to try to nudge the ongoing reforms in the right direction.

Your Central Staff Committee

____
¹ CA/100/21 – See § 33

It says: “The number of formalities officer posts will go further down from 620 in the 2021 to 585 in the 2022 budget.” As we showed before, based on leaks from the inside, the number of workers is generally decreasing and this is planned. This is what they want. But meanwhile they expect more patents to be “produced” (misnomer) while insisting quality would not be negatively affected. Let’s face it — they just don’t care about the “products”, they only care about hoarding money. They’re not even supposed to hoard money; they violate the EPC. █

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Linux Foundation 2021 Annual Report Made on an Apple Mac Using Proprietary Software

Posted in Deception, Kernel at 7:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Mr. Corbet from the Linux Foundation is shilling this Linux Foundation PR/marketing in LWN, which isn’t supposed to promote such openwashing nonsense

Summary: Yes, you’re reading this correctly. They still reject both “Linux” and “Open Source” (no dogfooding). This annual report is badly compressed; each page of the PDF is, on average, almost a megabyte in size (58.8 MB for a report of this scale is unreasonable and discriminates against people in countries with slow Internet connections); notice how they’re milking the brand in the first page (straight after the cover page, the 1991 ‘creation myth’, ignoring GNU); remember that this foundation is named after a trademark which is not even its own!

Update: Ryan notes that the report “mentions Microsoft 11 times.” Example: “We have also expanded our open source horizons with industry partners, such as Microsoft and Accenture. Together, we’ve launched several new projects and foundations that are meaningful to humanity.”

Update #2: Today there are similar responses to ours, e.g.:

Phoronix: Linux Foundation Expects Revenues Of $177 Million This Year

Once again they are facing some criticism for the Linux Foundation’s annual report being made on macOS using Adobe software products. They’ve done that in the past and in public settings pre-pandemic it hasn’t been uncommon to find Linux Foundation directors and other stakeholders running Apple MacBook products with macOS.
Daniel Lange: Gradual improvements at the Linux Foundation

After last year’s blunder with trying to hide the Adobe toolchain and using hilarious stock photos, the Linux Foundation did much better in their 2021 annual report published Dec. 6, 2021.

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Links 7/12/2021: OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.10 and AppStream 0.15

Posted in News Roundup at 7:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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

GNU/Linux
- Desktop/Laptop
  - Here’s how initial Chromebook performance will improve in a future Chrome OS update
    
    Have you noticed that your Chromebook isn’t very responsive until a minute or so after startup? Depending on your hardware, you may not have as higher performing components could mask this. But Google has. And it has a solution to improve initial Chromebook performance in an upcoming Chrome OS update.
    
    The issue is laid out in a description in this code commit. ARCVM “continuously consumes CPU for several minutes on user login before user has even launched any Android app or playstore.”
    
    If you’re not familiar with the term, ARCVM is the virtual machine used to run Android apps on a Chromebook. Based on the description, this virtual machine launches when you boot your Chromebook. This occurs even if you don’t immediately open an Android app or the Google Play Store. And that causes the CPU in your Chromebook to spend most, if not all, of its resources firing up ARCVM.
- Server
  - [Amazon spam] How CentOS changes the cloud Linux game [Ed: Check that first paragraph and beyond. AWS employee Mac Asay spamming for his employer... and it is disguised as 'article'. IDG has become little but a spamfarm]
- Audiocasts/Shows
  - Me And Plasma Panels Are FRIENDS Again! (DEVLOG) – Kockatoo Tube
  - Enterprise Linux Security Episode 10 – The worst healthcare breaches of 2021 – Invidious
    
    Joao and Jay talk about the worst healthcare breaches of 2021, and some lessons that can be learned from these events.
- Kernel Space
  - AMD SMCA Updates
```
Hi all,

This set adds supports for SMCA changes in future AMD systems.

Patch 1 adds an "unknown" bank type so that sysfs initialization issues
can be avoided on systems with new bank types.

Patch 2 adds new bank types and error descriptions used in future AMD
systems.

Patch 3 adjusts how SMCA bank information is cached. Future AMD systems
will have different bank type layouts between logical CPUs. So having a
single system-wide cache of the layout won't be correct.

Thanks,
Yazen
```
  - AMD Makes Some Interesting SMCA Driver Changes For Future CPUs – Phoronix
    
    These latest AMD machine check error driver patches can be found on the kernel mailing list as they work their way towards the mainline Linux kernel.
  - Announcing buildroot-external-st, Buildroot support for STM32MP1 platforms – Bootlin’s blog
    
    Back in 2019, ST released a brand new processor family, the STM32MP1, whose members are currently based on a dual Cortex-A7 to run Linux combined with one Cortex-M4 to run bare-metal applications, together with a wide range of peripherals.
  - Updated Rust Code For Linux Kernel Patches Posted – Phoronix
    
    In 2022 we will very likely see the experimental Rust programming language support within the Linux kernel mainlined. Sent out this morning were the updated patches introducing the initial support and infrastructure around handling of Rust within the kernel.
    
    This summer saw the earlier patch series posted for review and discussion around introducing Rust programming language support in the Linux kernel to complement its longstanding C focus. In the months since there has been more progress on enabling Rust for the Linux kernel development, Linus Torvalds is not opposed to it, and others getting onboard with the effort. Rust for the Linux kernel remains of increasing interest to developers over security concerns with Rust affording more memory safety protections, potentially lowering the barrier to contributing to the kernel, and other related benefits.
  - Graphics Stack
    - Mesa Begins Trek Bringing Up Arm Mali “Valhall” Graphics – Phoronix
      
      The Panfrost Gallium3D OpenGL driver and PanVK open-source drivers in Mesa have come a long way via reverse-engineering for Arm Mali graphics support. However, to this point the focus has been on Arm’s “Midgard” and “Bifrost” architectures while the newer “Valhall” architecture has been around the past two years. The Panfrost effort for bringing up Valhall is now getting underway.
      
      Alyssa Rosenzweig who has led the Panfrost effort for open-source Arm Mali graphics has been working for a while now on getting Arm’s Valhall architecture reverse-engineered and supported by the Linux graphics driver code. (That’s also in addition to her separate work on reverse-engineering the Apple M1 graphics as another ongoing open-source adventure.)
    - GRVK 0.5 Gets Battlefield 4 Running With AMD’s Mantle Over Vulkan API – Phoronix
      
      It’s been a number of months since GRVK 0.4 as the open-source project re-implementing AMD’s defunct Mantle API over the modern Vulkan API that was originally based on the former. With Sunday’s release of GRVK 0.5, this Mantle-on-Vulkan translation layer is now capable of correctly rendering Battlefield 4.
      
      Battlefield 4 back in the day was one of the flagship titles having a native Mantle renderer for that AMD-specific graphics API. Battlefield 4 was a flagship title for Mantle and one of the few games using this API along with the likes of Battlefield Hardline, Thief, Sniper Elite III, and others.
    - Radeon RADV Driver Lands Vulkan Dynamic Rendering Support – Phoronix
      
      Landing in Mesa 22.0 on Sunday night was the Radeon Vulkan driver “RADV” support for the recently introduced VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering extension.
      
      VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering premiered last month with Vulkan 1.2.197. This new extension allows for creating single-pass render pass instances without the need of creating render pass objects or frame-buffers.
      
      The Khronos documentation on dynamic rendering explains, “If you’re not using multiple subpasses or input attachments though, go ahead, rip those render pass objects right out! Dynamic rendering offers similar rendering performance to a single pass render pass object but with a much simpler interface on all implementations. Hopefully this extension will make writing future Vulkan renderers just a bit more enjoyable.”
- Applications
  - New things in AppStream 0.15
    
    On the road to AppStream 1.0, a lot of items from the long todo list have been done so far – only one major feature is remaining, external release descriptions, which is a tricky one to implement and specify. For AppStream 1.0 it needs to be present or be rejected though, as it would be a major change in how release data is handled in AppStream.
    
    Besides 1.0 preparation work, the recent 0.15 release and the releases before it come with their very own large set of changes, that are worth a look and may be interesting for your application to support. But first, for a change that affects the implementation and not the XML format…
  - The 7 best open-source terminal web browsers
    
    Browsing websites from the command line has a niche following from seasoned Linux users. In the early days, users could access the websites from a terminal using text-only browsers like Lynx. At the time, most people used low-powered PCs with slow internet connections. Fast forward, Linux users are spoilt for choices with many modern GUI web browsers like Firefox, Chromium, Brave, or lightweight browsers like Midori, Otter. However, browsing from the terminal is still much practiced.
    
    The article describes some of the best text-based web browsers and how to install them in your Linux distribution.
    
    A text-based web browser displays the text content of a website. The majority of its niche community are seasoned Linux command line users who want to get everything done from the terminal. Text-based browsers provide faster loading and minimum bandwidth usage, which is great for low bandwidth connections. Another use case of command-line browsers is for system administrators who only interact with a terminal console.
  - Announcing MAAS 3.1: bare-metal cloud gets easier | Ubuntu
    
    We are happy to announce that MAAS 3.1 has been released. MAAS 3.1 brings some of the most frequently-requested features into the product. A lot of this is serendipity — or maybe you could say that it’s about like minds tracking the same problem. Either way, we’re doing our best to provide features that match our users’ needs, as soon as we possibly can.
    
    In any case, the details of these features are a little big for one blog, so we’ll be taking a detailed look at one feature a week over the next seven or eight weeks (not counting the Christmas break). In this introductory blog, we’ll be introducing these requested features and linking you to more information in the product documentation.
- Instructionals/Technical
  - How to install and configure Grafana OSS in Debian 11
    
    In this guide, we are going to learn how to install and set up Grafana OSS in Debian 11.
    
    Grafana is a multi-platform open source analytics and interactive visualization web application. It provides charts, graphs, and alerts for the web when connected to supported data sources.
  - How to Install and Use MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04 – RoseHosting
    
    In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to install MySQL on your Ubuntu 20.04 and how to use it with the basic MySQL commands. MySQL is an open-source relational database management system and with its popularity is used widely on different systems for storing data.
    
    In this post you will learn more about logging to MySQL with or without root user, database creation, user creation, granting privileges, external access to your databases, importing a database, making a dump of a database and etc. Let’s get started!
  - How to install Scratch on a Chromebook
    
    In this video, we are looking at how to install WPS Office 2019 on Elementary OS 6.0.
  - How to install Scratch on a Chromebook
    
    Today we are looking at how to install Scratch 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.
  - How to install and configure Apache webserver on Fedora 35. – NextGenTips
    
    Apache HTTP Server is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software. The goal of Apache is to provide a secure, efficient, and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.
    
    The main job of the Apache web server is to establish connections between the server and a browser. This aids in the transfer of files between the server and the client.
    
    Apache provides many modules that allow server administrators to turn on and off some functionalities. It has modules such as those for security, caching, password authentication, URL rewriting, etc.
    
    In this tutorial guide, I will take you through the installation steps of the Apache webserver on the Fedora 35 server.
  - How to change the output color of echo in Linux – buildVirtual
    
    Sometimes it’s nice to be able to change the text, or foreground, color when working with shell scripts or the Linux command line. This is a useful trick as it allows us to make the text more readable and the output more interesting. This can be done using ansi escape codes. Let’s take a look at a quick example.
- Games
  - AssaultCube 1.3 Free Multiplayer Shooter is Finally Here
    
    AssaultCube hasn’t seen a new release since 2013, but now it’s back with AssaultCube 1.3 Lockdown Edition to the delight of all Linux fans.
    
    AssaultCube is a name which probably plenty of Linux users know but haven’t heard anything of in a long time. For those of you unaware, it’s a free multiplayer first-person shooter game, based on the CUBE engine. The game is available free of charge to download for Microsoft Windows, Linux and macOS.
    
    Although the main focus of AssaultCube is multiplayer online gaming, a single player mode consists of computer-controlled bots. The game has a ton of fan made maps, and the game comes with like 45.
  - Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun – Aiko’s Choice is out now | GamingOnLinux
    
    Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun – Aiko’s Choice, the new standalone addon to the very popular stealth tactics game Shadow Tactics is out now.
    
    Focusing on one of the main game’s protagonists: the kunoichi adept Aiko. She is a master of camouflage and distracts enemies disguised as a geisha. While Aiko was certain that she left her old life behind, her former sensei, the cunning spymaster Lady Chiyo, reappears from the shadows to challenge her. Together with her friends—a group of deadly assassins—she sets out to hunt down the ghosts of her past.
  - Arch User Reacts To Linus Tech Tips Linux Challenge Pt 3 – Invidious
    
    We’re back for the 3rd part of the Linux Tech Tips linux challenge and this week went surprisingly well, I mean really well I didn’t even have anything to say about most of the video. For basic user tasks Linus and Luke have sort of got used to using Linux.
  - jJonathan Dowland: Sixth Annual UK System Research Challenges Workshop lightning talk
    
    in 2018 I talked about some hack I’d made to the classic computer game Doom from 1993. I’ve done several hacks to Doom that I could probably talk about except I’ve become a bit uncomfortable about increasingly being thought of as “that doom guy”. I’d been reflecting on why it was that I continued to mess about with that game in the first place and I realised it was a form of expression: I was treating Doom like a canvas.
- Desktop Environments/WMs
  - GNOME Desktop/GTK
    - Fly Pie Is A GNOME Shell Launcher For Users With One Hand On The Mouse Most Of The Time – Linux Uprising Blog
      
      Fly Pie is a GNOME Shell launcher (available as an extension) designed for users who have one hand on the mouse most of the time. It can be used to launch applications, URLs, recent files, simulate hotkeys, access the clipboard, and more. It works under both X11 and Wayland.
      
      With Fly Pie, you use a keyboard shortcut to open a menu, then use the mouse to do the rest. Once you open a menu, there are three alternative selection modes: point and click (select an item by clicking on it), marking mode (select items by drawing gestures) and turbo mode (draw gestures while holding Ctrl, Shift or Alt without having to press your mouse button).
- Distributions
  - OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.10 is here – openindiana
    
    Another 6 months have passed and we are proud to announce the release of our 2021.10 snapshot. The images are available at the usual place. As usual we have automatically received all updates that have been integrated into illumos-gate.
    
    The new images are interesting for people with newer hardware that hasn’t been supported in the past. There is no necessity to re-install from newer images as OpenIndiana Hipster is a rolling release and will bring all updates with a simple call of “pfexec pkg update -v”.
    
    More details will follow when time permits…
  - OpenSolaris/Illumos-Derived OpenIndiana 2021.10 Released With Better Hardware Support
    
    OpenIndiana as the open-source operating system forked from what was Sun’s OpenSolaris and now based on Illumos is out with its latest half-year update.
    
    What’s in store with OpenIndiana 2021.10? Improved hardware support, which is great to see. Upstream Solaris these days hasn’t had robust and timely hardware support like many years ago during the great Sun Microsystems days, but for the community-based open-source Solaris/Illumos-based platforms maintaining modern hardware support has been even more of a challenge. The release announcement notes, “The new images are interesting for people with newer hardware that hasn’t been supported in the past.”
  - CloudReady v94.4 now available!
    
    We’re excited to release v94.4 today. This release will go out to all channels for the Home, Education, and Enterprise Editions of CloudReady.
    
    Reminder: We’ll slowly roll out updates on stable channels for all editions to reduce the chance of any unidentified issues affecting users. Only a few devices will receive the update right away, with more following over time. We understand, though, that some users will want to see this new update without waiting.
  - New Releases
    - Makulu Shift Release Date News and Preview – MakuluLinux
      
      We take a look at what’s new in Makulu Shift, some News and Release Date details confirmed, enjoy the Video…
  - Screenshots/Screencasts
    - Linux overview | Endless OS 4.0.0 – Invidious
      
      In this video, I am going to show an overview of Endless OS 4.0.0 and some of the applications pre-installed.
  - IBM/Red Hat/Fedora
    - 6 edge computing trends to watch in 2022 | The Enterprisers Project
      
      While many aspects of edge computing aren’t new, the overall picture continues to evolve quickly. For example, “edge computing” encompasses the distributed retail store branch systems that have been around for decades. The term has also swallowed all manner of local factory floor and telecommunications provider computing systems, albeit in a more connected and less proprietary fashion than was the historical norm.
      
      Edge computing helps IT and business leaders solve problems as both sensor data and machine learning data proliferates.
      
      However, even if we see echoes of older architectures in certain edge computing deployments, we also see developing edge trends that are genuinely new or at least quite different from what existed previously. And they’re helping IT and business leaders solve problems in industries ranging from telco to automotive, for example, as both sensor data and machine learning data proliferates.
    - Digital transformation: Are you using the right metrics? | The Enterprisers Project
      
      For any digital transformation project to succeed, you need a well-laid-out road map, clear objectives, and bite-sized goals to mark the milestones. And it’s important to put those plans into action and measure their success against the pre-defined relevant metrics.
      
      The pandemic made the pace of digital transformation a key performance metric by making it urgent for enterprises to embrace and accelerate digital. Now it’s time to think beyond speed and measure the success of digital transformation against metrics that align with business goals.
    - How customers and partners are meeting growing market demands with Red Hat OpenShift and learning resources
      
      Which came first: the culture or the technology? Many companies are facing this Catch 22 as they modernize to better meet customer demands. It doesn’t have to be one before the other—actually, they should kind of go hand in hand.
      
      This month our customer success spotlights, which span from Europe to Southeast Asia, demonstrate how Red Hat helps customers focus on two critical components of success: helping their people learn new skills and implementing new technology. Let’s see how Red Hat OpenShift and Online Partner Enablement Network have helped customers and partners modernize their environments to keep up with growing market demands.
    - Automating host to host VPN tunnels with RHEL System Roles
      
      In today’s world where organizations frequently use multiple cloud providers, datacenters, and systems in edge environments, secure communication between these distributed systems is essential. Host-to-host VPN tunnels allow for encrypted communication between systems, and are frequently used when traffic needs to traverse untrusted networks such as the public internet.
      
      While host-to-host VPN tunnels can be implemented on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) manually, this can be time consuming and error-prone. Red Hat introduced the VPN RHEL System Role in RHEL 8.5 to provide an automated solution to implement host-to-host VPN connections, as well as opportunistic mesh VPNs.
      
      RHEL System Roles are a collection of Ansible roles and modules that are included in RHEL to help provide consistent workflows and streamline the execution of manual tasks. For more information on VPNs in RHEL, refer to the configuring a VPN with IPsec documentation.
    - Custom WebAssembly extensions in OpenShift Service Mesh
      
      Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 2.1 requires using WebAssembly extensions instead of Istio Mixer to extend Service Mesh functionality. The 2.11 release of Red Hat 3scale API Management also supports using WebAssembly extensions. Thus, the latest release of the 3scale integration for Istio uses the WebAssembly proxy instead of the Istio Mixer component.
      
      Developers can use WebAssembly extensions in OpenShift Service Mesh and 3scale to add features directly to the Envoy proxy, thereby moving common functionality out of applications and into the sidecar.
    - Boost Apache Camel performance on Quarkus
      
      Camel Quarkus is a subproject in the Apache Camel community that enables Camel to run on Quarkus. Apache Camel is the most popular open source community project aimed at solving all things integration. Quarkus is a Java framework tailored for OpenJDK HotSpot and GraalVM, boasting lightning-fast boot times and low memory utilization.
      
      This article explains how Camel has evolved over time and why it is now embracing Quarkus. I’ve included a quick getting started guide that will show you how easy it is to create a Camel Quarkus project and experience the significant performance benefits for yourself.
  - Canonical/Ubuntu Family
    - Ubuntu-based Freespire 8.0 Linux distribution focuses heavily on Google services
      
      Guess what, folks? Freespire 8.0 is available to download immediately. This version of the Ubuntu-based operating system utilizes Linux kernel 5.4.0-91 LTS while using Xfce 4.16 as its desktop environment. This no-nonsense distribution is fairly lightweight and easy to use, making it a good choice for Linux newbies; particularly with aging (not obsolete) hardware.
      
      Surprisingly, the developers have decided to focus heavily on Google with this release. This includes the search giant’s services (Translate, News, etc.) and the Chrome browser. Apparently, this new focus is a result of reading user feedback. While this may scare some privacy-zealots away, it should make the operating system more appealing to the average home computer user. Let’s be honest, shall we? Google services are rather essential for many people.
    - Canonical Data Platform 2021 winter roundup | Ubuntu
      
      It’s that time of the year again: many folks are panic buying cans of windscreen de-icer spray and thermal underwear, bringing pine trees into the front room and preparing to enjoy an extended break with the family. So we thought to ourselves, what better time than now to take a look back at the year gone by on the Canonical Data Platform?
    - Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 712
      
      Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 712 for the week of November 28 – December 4, 2021. The full version of this issue is available here.
    - Deploy Container on Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud | Ubuntu
      
      Since I wrote Launch Ubuntu Desktop on Google Cloud last week, I kept thinking about putting Ubuntu Desktop into containers. A container is an independent unit of software packages and their dependencies so that the application on the container can run reliably in different computing environments. Docker, an open-source project launched in 2013, made Container technology popular all over the world in just a few years. Why? Let’s compare Containers and Virtual Machines.
- Devices/Embedded
  - Tiny four-port net appliance runs Linux on Elkhart Lake
    
    The NCA-1040 runs Linux on Intel’s quad-core, 1.5GHz/3.0GHz Atom x6413E or quad-core, 1.2GHz/3.0GHz Pentium N6415. Both Elkhart Lake processors provide Intel’s new AES-NI instruction set for network security, notes Lanner. The “fanless multi-service gateway” is aimed at “edge environment, branch offices and retail settings for applications such as routing, VoIP, VPN, firewall, IPS/IDS, web filtering, email server, high-volume storage and wireless networking hub,” says the company.
    
    Like Aaeon’s very similarly equipped FWS-2280, but unlike the previous Lanner systems, the NCA-1040 supports up to 32GB DDR4 3200 via a single slot. The 4x GbE ports use Intel i211 controllers. There is also an RJ45 console port.
  - Open Hardware/Modding
    - The 10 Best Arduino Wearables Projects
      
      Arduino is an open-source electronics platform. Originally created for educational purposes, it has since expanded its range of boards for makers as well as some commercial use.
      
      Some Arduino boards have a small form factor and are ideal for wearable projects. Let’s take a look at some wearables made with the Arduino.
- Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
  - SaaS/Back End/Databases
    - PostgreSQL: pgFormatter v5.2 has been released
      
      Version 5.2 of pgFormatter, a free and reliable tool used to format SQL and PLPGSQL code, has been officially released and is publicly available for download. A demonstration site is available online at http://sqlformat.darold.net/
      
      pgFormatter is the most advanced SQL and PlPgsql code formatter and beautifier dedicated to PostgreSQL. It is provided as a CLI or a CGI program.
      
      This is a maintenance release to fix issues reported by users since the last three months. As usual there is also some improvements and new features.
    - PostgreSQL: pgDay Paris 2022 — Call for Papers, Registration, and Sponsors
      
      We are excited to announce that pgDay Paris is back for 2022 – live and in person on March 24!
      
      That’s right – COVID-19 may have stopped us last year, but this year, we’re back and we’re looking forward to seeing you there.
      
      Potential speaker?
      
      Got an idea for a presentation? We’re now accepting proposals for talks 45 minutes in length, on any PostgreSQL-related topic. Check out our past conferences to get some ideas if you think you might want to give a talk but don’t know where to start.
  - Programming/Development
    - Kiwi TCMS: Call for participation: Testing and Automation devroom, FOSDEM’22
      
      Attention testers! On behalf of Testing and Automation devroom we’d like to announce that call for participation is now open.
    - LLVM Clang 14 Lands An “Amazing” Performance Optimization – Phoronix
      
      While the performance of LLVM/Clang has improved a lot over the years and for x86_64 and AArch64 can be neck-and-neck with the GCC compiler, the fierce performance battle is not over. With LLVM/Clang 14.0 due out in the early months of 2022 will be more performance work with one recent commit in particular showing a lot of promise.
      
      LLVM developer Djordje Todorovic recently landed an improvement to LLVM’s Loop Invariant Code Motion (LICM) Pass for being able to hoist a LOAD without STORE. The patch explains, “When doing load/store promotion within LICM, if we cannot prove that it is safe to sink the store we won’t hoist the load, even though we can prove the load could be dereferenced and moved outside the loop. This patch implements the load promotion by moving it in the loop preheader by inserting proper PHI in the loop. The store is kept as is in the loop. By doing this, we avoid doing the load from a memory location in each iteration.” The improvement to this pass helps to address this bug report around missed opportunities for register promotion.
    - Dirk Eddelbuettel: tidyCpp 0.0.6 on CRAN: Package Maintenance
      
      Another small release of the tidyCpp package arrived on CRAN this morning. The packages offers a clean C++ layer (as well as one small C++ helper class) on top of the C API for R which aims to make use of this robust (if awkward) C API a little easier and more consistent. See the vignette for motivating examples.
      
      This release makes a tiny code change, remove a YAML file for the disgraced former continuous integration service we shall not name (yet that we all used to use). And just like digest five days ago, drat four days ago, littler three days ago, RcppAPT two days ago, and RcppSpdlog yesterday, we converted the vignettes from using the minidown package to the (fairly new) simplermarkdown package which is so much more appropriate for our use of the minimal water.css style.
    - Takao Fujiwara: gnome-remote-desktop
      
      Seems Vino is deprecated in Fedora 35 because of the security issue and gnome-remote-desktop is the replacement but there are a few document to setup the VNC server and let me summarize the setup and differences.
    - No easter eggs in curl
      
      There are no Easter eggs in curl. For the good.
      
      I’ve been asked about this many times. Among the enthusiast community, people seem to generally like the concept of Easter eggs and hidden treasures, features and jokes in software and devices. Having such an embedded surprise is considered fun and curl being a cool and interesting project should be fun too!
      
      With the risk of completely ruining my chances of ever being considered a fun person, I’ll take you through my thought process on why curl does not feature any such Easter eggs and why it will not have any in the future either.
    - Tricked-Out Breadboard Automatically Draws Schematics Of Whatever You Build | Hackaday
      
      When it comes to electronic design, breadboarding a circuit is the fun part — the creative juices flow, parts come and go, jumpers build into a tangled mess, but it’s all worth it when the circuit finally comes to life. Then comes the “What have I done?” phase, where you’ve got to backtrack through the circuit to document exactly how you built it. If only there was a better way.
      
      Thanks to [Nick Bild], there is, in the form of the “Schematic-o-matic”, which aims to automate the breadboard documentation process. The trick is using a breadboard where each bus bar is connected to an IO pin on an Arduino Due. A program runs through each point on the breadboard, running a continuity test to see if there’s a jumper connecting them. A Python program then uses the connection list, along with some basic information about where components are plugged into the board, to generate a KiCad schematic.
    - Multiplication by Halving and Doubling in AARCH64 Assembly | Adam Young’s Web Log
      
      While multiplication is defined in the context of repeated addition, implementing it that way algorithmically is not nearly as efficient as some other approaches. One algorithm for multiplication that is an order of magnitude faster is to halve one number while doubling the other. I gave myself the challenge of implementing this algorithm in AARCH64 Assembly, and it was not too hard.
    - The Apache Weekly News Round-up: week ending 3 December 2021
      
      Welcome, December –we’re opening the month with another great week. Here’s what the Apache community has been up to…
    - Website Load Testing with Apache JMeter on Ubuntu 20.04
      
      In this article, I will show you how to install Apache JMeter and how to use it to do load testing on websites. JMeter is an open-source Java-based load testing tool. It is useful to check and improve the performance after developing a new website. With load tests, it checks the performance of the system and helps to stimulate the weight of the load. As it is mainly focused on testing web applications, one can make a better website for all the users. But now, it is also used for different other purposes like functional testing and database testing.
      
      Now let’s see how to install the Apache JMeter and use it on Ubuntu 20.04.
    - Perl/Raku
      - gfldex: MAIN course
        
        On IRC vasko asked how to handle a –verbose-flag. This is quite simple.
      - Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.49 Adventing Is On!
    - Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh
      - Bash Shell Scripting for beginners (Part 3)
        
        Welcome to part 3 of Bash Shell Scripting at a beginner level. This final article will look at a few more items that will get you primed for your continued personal development. It will touch on functions, using comparisons with if/elif statements, and will wrap up with looking into the while loop.

Leftovers
- Hardware
  - TTL And CMOS Logic ICs: The Building Blocks Of A Revolution | Hackaday
    
    When starting a new electronics project today, one of the first things that we tend to do is pick the integrated circuits that make up the core of the design. This can be anything from a microcontroller and various controller ICs to a sprinkling of MOSFETs, opamps, and possibly some 7400- or 4000-series logic ICs to tie things together. Yet it hasn’t been that long since this level of high integration and miniaturization was firmly in the realm of science-fiction, with even NORBIT modules seeming futuristic.
    
    Starting with the construction of the first point-contact transistor in 1947 and the bipolar junction transistor (BJT) in 1948 at Bell Labs, the electronics world would soon see the beginning of its biggest transformation to that point. Yet due to the interesting geopolitical circumstances of the 20th century, this led to a fascinating situation of parallel development, blatant copying of designs, and one of the most fascinating stories in technology history on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
  - Secret Ingredient For 3D-Printed Circuit Traces: Electroplating | Hackaday
    
    Conductive filament exists, but it takes more than that to 3D print something like a circuit board. The main issue is that traces made from conductive filament are basically resistors; they don’t act like wires. [hobochild]’s interesting way around this problem is to use electroplating to coat 3D-printed traces with metal, therefore creating a kind of 3D-printed circuit board. [hobochild] doesn’t yet have a lot of nitty-gritty detail to share (update: here’s the project page with more detail), but his process seems fairly clear.
    
    The usual problem with electroplating is that the object to be coated needs to be conductive. [hobochild] addresses this by using two different materials to create his test board. The base layer is printed in regular (non-conductive) plastic, and the board’s extra-thick traces are printed in conductive filament. Electroplating takes care of coating the conductive traces, resulting in a pretty good-looking 3D-printed circuit board whose conductors feature actual metal. [hobochild] used conductive filament from Proto-pasta and the board is a proof-of-concept flashing LED circuit. Soldering might be a challenge given the fact that the underlying material is still plastic, but the dual-material print is an interesting angle that even allows for plated vias and through-holes.
  - STMicro ST31N600 Arm SecurCore SC000 microcontroller includes biometric security, energy harvesting – CNX Software
    
    The microcontroller can be programmed with Arm Keil SecurCore SC000 software development tools that include an instruction set simulator (ISS) and a C compiler. STMicroelectronics also provides a time-accurate hardware emulator controlled by the Keil debugger and the ST development environment, as well as a product simulator based on Keil’s ISS simulator for the Arm SecurCore SC000 CPU.
    
    More details can be found on the product page. The solution was also on display on November 30 – December 2 at Trustech 2021 in Paris, with STMicro showing a secure biometric payment based on STPay-Topaz-Bio “ready-to-use payment solution”, which the company also called a “Biometric System-on-Card (BSoC) solution”, equipped with ST31N600 MCU and an STM32L4 microcontroller embedded in an EMV (Eurocard Mastercard Visa) module.
  - Amlogic V901D – A quad-core Cortex-A55 processor for in-vehicle infotainment – CNX Software
    
    Amlogic has decided to enter the automotive market with the Amlogic V901D quad-core Cortex-A55 processor designed for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) applications such as car dashboards, multi-camera dashcam systems, automotive multimedia players, and so on.
    
    Also equipped with an Arm Mali-G31 MP2, a 1 TOPS NPU, support for 4K AV1 video decoding, and a 12nm manufacturing processor, Amlogic V901D may look like a rebranded Amlogic S905X4 at first glance, but as we’ll see below, it includes some features specific to the automotive infotainment market.
- Integrity/Availability
  - Proprietary
    - Google Chrome Alternative, Vivaldi, Has Released 5.0 for Desktop and Mobile – FOSS Force
      
      When the Vivaldi browser folks sent me an email late in the day last week saying “we turn five today” my heart sank, because I’m the type of person who hates to have to offer belated happy birthday greetings. Turns out, the “we turn five” wasn’t really a reference to the browser’s age (although the browser did, indeed, have its fifth birthday in April of this year), but an announcement of the release of Vivaldi 5.0, the latest and greatest version of the Chrome-based browser.
      
      Norway-based Vivaldi Technologies was started by Tatsuki Tomita and Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, who is now the company’s CEO. Von Tetzchner was also the co-founder and CEO of Opera, and started Vivaldi as a virtual community after new owners at Opera shut down the My Opera virtual community. The community and browser company is named after the 17th and 18th century composer, Antonio Vivaldi, who’s widely known for his operas — for those who didn’t catch the connection.
    - Percepio Wins Coveted Elektra Award for Tracealyzer for Linux
      
      Percepio®, the leader in visual trace diagnostics for embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT), has been awarded the prestigious Elektra Award 2021 for its visual trace diagnostics tool Tracealyzer for Linux.

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Microsoft “Defender” Pretender Attacks Random Software That Uses NSIS for installation; “Super Duper Secure Mode” for Edge is a Laugh

Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Security at 6:06 pm by Guest Editorial Team

Guest post by Ryan, reprinted with permission from the original

Windows has for some time, apparently, attacked random software just because that software uses the Nullsoft Scriptable Installation System, a totally legitimate and Free and Open Source installation framework which has been around for decades.

Microsoft released an article about doing this years ago, but it appears they just randomly detect NSIS installers and assign some scary-sounding but bogus Trojan name to them.

In reality, just having a powerful scripting system doesn’t make your software a Trojan horse, and if Windows had proper software management, tools like NSIS would never have been necessary.

The developers I’ve heard from consider this just one more frustration to expect when developing software for Windows, and keep submitting their particular installer package to Microsoft to get on some kind of an exclusion list, but that doesn’t solve the bigger problem.

There’s nothing wrong with NSIS, and “Microsoft Pretender” is either just guessing and pulling random trojan names out of its proverbial ass or this is another attack on competitors and things that the “MAFIAA” doesn’t like and sometimes remove them without permission from the user or even a warning.

They’ve been caught doing this with LibreOffice, QBittorrent, PeaZip and other perfectly legitimate things.

Going after NSIS, which is what many Free Software programs prefer to use to install themselves on Windows because NSIS is also Free Software and doesn’t cost an exorbitant license fee, seems to me to be worthy of intense scrutiny, as it would be a great way to harass the Free Software community and blame it on “suspected malware”.

It seems, in my experience, that “False Positives” on Windows antivirus products are the most serious problem when you use Microsoft’s own, and it almost always “oopses” in really suspicious ways. Like, ways you’ll never have them dead to rights on, but very interesting nonetheless.

In fact, whenever I would ask VirusTotal for another opinion, it was rare that even a single antivirus program out of dozens of others agreed with Microsoft’s “False Positives”.

Like, you can just about count on “Microsoft Pretender” to miss RATS and ransomware, and removing QBittorrent without asking. (There’s also mention here of it attacking Ardour, a Free Software Digital Audio Workstation, and quarantining it.)

It’s a dark joke among Reddit users. Everyone knows how bad this thing is.

SJVN of ZDNet, which is a total spam farm now, for corporate PR releases, was talking about the “rich investigative experiences” of “Microsoft Pretender” for GNU/Linux, but considering that it’s by far the most incompetent and corrupt antivirus solution on the market for Windows, and it’s known to transmit lots of information about you back to Microsoft, there’s absolutely no reason to use it.

SJVN should write another article about the comforts of Rich Corinthian Leather seats. There’s nothing sadder than a so-called “independent journalist” who writes absolute drivel like this.

If Microsoft hadn’t made installing and removing software on Windows an unholy mess from its inception, and then told developers to go license a third party solution to deal with it, we probably wouldn’t be dealing with half the problems we have over the years, but NSIS is so good that it’s all but relegated the InstallShield Wizard and other expensive and error-prone methods of dealing with software programs on Windows to the ash heap of history.

Another thing Microsoft stands to gain from creating the perception that legitimate software (and might as well be FOSS while they’re attacking something) is overflowing with viruses, is it puts pressure on software developers to use Microsoft’s crummy Windows Store and agree to a litany of abuses that don’t apply if you “sideload” (the newspeak term for installing programs on your own computer).

Apple, for their part, pulls no punches when they make wild accusations that people who “sideload” are probably criminals.

Sure, yeah, okay…. I want to use Infinity for Reddit and NewPipe for Youtube on my phone because the real things have gotten so annoying that I can’t stand them and otherwise wouldn’t use a phone, but sure….

Most of the software in the F-Droid (for Android) store is of much higher technical quality and far less annoying to the user than in the Google Play or Apple App Store, because the author is writing it to be useful, not like these companies that have given up on anything except 27 tracking libraries and ads every 2 minutes.

Since Apple has warred against “sideloading”, anyone who wants software on their phone that’s not an annoying piece of shit designed to spy on them, shovel ads onto their screen, and drain their bank accounts with micro-transactions is now a “child molester”. Whoa, that escalated quickly. Thanks Apple!

Microsoft’s “liberalized” terms of use, which are still awful, for their Windows Store, are a desperate move ten years too late, and years after their Windows Mobile division failed.

Had they done these then, it may have saved that division.

Who knows? The Windows brand is the operating system version of “Internet Explorer” at this point. There are those who look back and actually liked Windows Mobile and say “Oh why oh why did they have to call it Windows?”.

I have to wonder who would accept any restrictions on their creative vision and their rights as a software author when delivering software straight to the customer and being able to ship the full version without any meddling from Microsoft and delays in getting updates out is possible.

Whether there’s a conspiracy afoot at Microsoft or if you believe them that these really are “False Positives” that few or no other antivirus companies can ever seem to corroborate, or both, it’s definitely worth openly asking why we’d install this junk on GNU/Linux.

Even if it is just to make sure malicious Windows software isn’t being downloaded by Windows users from a server, it doesn’t appear to be doing a great job as part of Windows itself.

Of course, at this point, all antivirus boils down to is a short list (of millions) of prevalent malware samples and then a lot of guesswork, and that leaves plenty of room to be wrong. When the problem on Windows is so out of control that you have to resort to outright guessing, there’s going to be collateral damage.

We’ve never had a disaster of this magnitude on GNU/Linux, so Microsoft Googlebombs “Linux malware” to refer to something that runs in Windows Subsystem for Linux, and that’s a very important distinction, as they bungle WSL/WSL2 quite badly and manage to add an insurmountable amount of attack surface on their own OS.

A “WSL” is what a company does when they’re losing, or have already lost. It says, “We’re not important anymore, but we are compatible with the standard.”.

SCO did it with their “Linux Kernel Personality” on their way to bankruptcy court, and Microsoft is doing it while they bleed users.

But when we see “Linux” news sites talking about WSL viruses, we should err, “Blow the WSL.” on them. They’re Windows viruses that just so happen to exploit some dodgy compatibility hack that Microsoft tossed in there.

Microsoft has done things like leave WSL broken and inaccessible for weeks at a time before.

So, even if you manage to become productive somehow with a workflow that relies on WSL, remember Microsoft’s incompetent upgrade bungling. It’s only a matter of time before you’re doing negative work that wouldn’t have been necessary at all on a real computer running real GNU/Linux.

This virus mess and the ensuing disaster of malicious and randomly-guessing “security” software, some of which actually does cost a fortune, are more reasons to get out.

I about fell out of my chair laughing the other day that Microsoft actually put a thing in Edge called “Super Duper Secure Mode” (actual name), and all it does really is turn off the just-in-time compiler from the V8 JavaScript engine so that it can slowly interpret the scripts on the page.

When something is compiled by a JIT runtime, you do get extra potential for security vulnerabilities. The Medium Security mode on the Tor Browser (Firefox based) also turns off the JIT.

The thing is that if your browser really wants to have good “Web apps” performance, it can’t run in this mode, so the whole thing is a ruse put in there so Microsoft can Googlebomb the illusion of security in their products some more.

In fact, every day, more and more of our infrastructure is under attack, more identity theft happens, and more corporate and national secrets are spilled due to the fact that Windows is naked despite all of this rather bloated security theater that removes compatibility with older programs.

The only thing that makes sense for “national security” executive orders would be a plan to transition away from Microsoft entirely. They’ve proven time and time again that they can’t secure Windows, and they misconfigure their own networks and cause data breaches with it, and blame their customers for “using it wrong”.

Whether you choose to use Microsoft products or not, your data is subject to Windows malware because somewhere along the way, you will do business with people who do use Microsoft products.

Until we have some sort of national “cybersecurity” policy that makes sense, I think all we can do is ensure that our computing is as secure as possible on our end.

Microsoft pays for whitepapers and advertisement editorials, but will these fix the problem when you’re a victim of identity theft or ransomware and trying to clean up the mess?

How much will Microsoft pay you to help out with that? The whitepapers maybe? SJVN and the Rich Investigative Experiences of Corinthian Leather?

FDR famously said (or rather, usurped for his pitch for the New Deal) that he wanted a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, however, when the ransomware went after JBS and the Colonial Pipeline recently, humorously there were regions of America where you couldn’t get gas to travel to the store and there wouldn’t be a chicken for your pot if you could.

Microsoft has thrown up more roadblocks to prosperity. Their crummy software has licensing costs and it costs the economy over and over when we have to stop and deal with the fallout from the latest attack.

These are problems that we didn’t even have before there were computers everywhere. Dealing with antivirus software that barely works and often “malfunctions” is just salt in the wound.

Thanks Microsoft! █

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Links 6/12/2021: LibreOffice Maintenance Releases, Firefox 95 Finalised

Posted in News Roundup at 2:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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

GNU/Linux
- Audiocasts/Shows
  - Josh Bressers: Episode 300 – Apple vs NSO: What can copyright do for you?
    
    Josh and Kurt talk about Apple suing NSO using a copyright claim as their vehicle. Copyright is often used as a reason to bring lawsuits, even when it doesn’t always make sense. Copyright has been used by open source to expand rights, and many companies to restrict rights. It’s a very odd law sometimes. At the end of the day it seems the only real path forward for a problem like NSO is up to governments to protect their citizens.
  - GNU World Order 437
    
    Listener feedback. This is the Git hook example. Save it as **.git /hook/pre-commit** in a valid Git repository, and make it executable with **chmod +x .git /hook/pre- commit**. It gets called any time you tell Git to commit a file, and replaces **foo** with **bar** before committing the file.
  - Linux Action News 218
    
    Industry-changing open-source project releases, and why the new CentOS Stream 9 might be more noteworthy than you realize.
- Benchmarks
  - Blender 3.0 Benchmarks – Performance Across 19 Different NVIDIA GPUs
    
    Last week marked the debut of the highly anticipated Blender 3.0 open-source 3D modeling software. Since then I have been very busy putting Blender 3.0 through its paces with a lot of performance benchmarking across various CPUs and GPUs.
    
    Today’s article is focusing on the NVIDIA GPU render performance with Blender 3.0. Unfortunately, the AMD HIP support for Blender on Linux didn’t make the v3.0 cut but is being targeted for Blender 3.1 next year. As such on Linux right now with Blender 3.0 the only form of GPU acceleration is using the NVIDIA proprietary driver stack with Blender’s CUDA or OptiX back-ends. The OpenCL support was removed as part of the “Cycles X” work and thus for now Linux users will have either just CPU-based rendering or NVIDIA support.
- Applications
  - Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Autodesk EAGLE
    
    EagleEAGLE is a scriptable electronic design automation (EDA) application with schematic capture, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, auto-router and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) features.
    
    EAGLE is available for Linux but it’s proprietary software. What are the best free and open source alternatives?
  - Gaphor: Open Source Graphical Modeling Tool
    
    Gaphor is a free and open source modeling application with support for various modeling languages such as UML, SysML, RAAML and C4.
    
    Not aware of the term “modeling language”? Basically, it’s a set of instructions that can be used to create the design and constructions of structures. It could be textual and graphical, both.
    
    The graphical one is easier to look at and figure out how various components of the project are related to each other.
    
    Have you seen a flowchart or sequence diagrams? Those are also a type of graphical modeling in the simplest form.
  - Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Autodesk’s Products
    
    Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software company that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. It bills itself as a “… leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software”.
    
    The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, who was a joint developer of the first versions of AutoCAD, the company’s best known software application. Autodesk is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, it has over 11,000 employees, and is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.
    
    While Autodesk develops many high quality applications they are proprietary software. And the vast majority of their products are not available for Linux. This series looks at the best free and open source alternatives.
  - Blender 3.0 is a Milestone Release to Step Up Open Source 2D/3D Content Creation
    
    Blender 3.0 marks the major leap of open-source 3D/2D content creation. This release has numerous changes, ranging from a refreshed user interface to improved rendering options.
    
    This release is sure to excite all 3D artists, regardless of their skill level.
    
    Overall, the release involves many fascinating changes and could be industry-leading in some cases.
- Instructionals/Technical
  - How to Install Deb Package in Arch Linux – Make Tech Easier
    
    If you’ve used Linux for any amount of time, you’ve noticed that one of the most common methods to install third-party applications is via a .Deb package. Often times this is the only way to get this software, as the developers can’t be bothered to go through the process of packaging in the dozens of different formats the Linux platform offers.
    
    Many non-Debian-based Linux distributions have their own ways of getting around this issue. However, out of all Linux distributions, Arch Linux has the most interesting ways of getting a Debian package working. In this article we outline three ways to accomplish this and discuss which one is best.
  - How To Install WPS Office on Debian 11 – idroot
    
    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WPS Office on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, WPS Office (formerly known as Kingsoft Office) is an office suite for Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS that includes three components: Writer (like Word), Presentation (like PowerPoint), Spreadsheets (like Excel), and a WPS PDF viewer. The kit is compatible with Microsoft Office formats PPT, PPTX, DOC, DOCX, XLS, and XLSX, and can be read and written. It also has a premium version that adds additional features like cloud backup, encryption, and document collaboration. It has a 10-day trial period if you’re interested in trying the premium features out or you can install WPS Office for free, and use it as is without getting the premium version.
    
    This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the WPS Office on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
  - How to write YARA rules for improving your security and malware detection
    
    In our first article about YARA, we defined what kind of tool it was and in which context it could be used: detecting malware on the network or on endpoints, helping incident response and monitoring, classifying files or even detecting sensitive data leaks. We also showed how to install it. Now it’s time to write rules to get the best out of it.
  - How to Install and Use Podman to run Containers On Rocky Linux 8
    
    Podman is a free and open-source container platform built to develop, manage and deploy containers and pods on Linux environment. Redhat developed Podman in 2018. It is a containerization engine that works differently than Docker. Podman does not depend on a daemon to work, unlike Docker which uses Docker CLI and Docker daemon. Being dependent on daemon leads to a single point of failure.
    
    Podman is designed according to OCI (Open Container Initiative) standards that allow Podman to interact directly with the kernel, containers and images. It is also more secure than Docker as it does not require root access. Podman can be used as a drop-in replacement for Docker since both are OCI-compliant.
  - Improve your Kafka Connect builds with Debezium | Red Hat Developer
    
    Debezium connectors are easily deployable on Red Hat OpenShift as Kafka Connect custom resources managed by Red Hat AMQ Streams. However, in the past, developers had to create their own images to deploy using those custom resources. The Red Hat Integration 2021.Q4 release provides an easier way to support the process.
    
    This article shows you how to configure the resource to improve your container build process and describes the new features for the Debezium component as part of the latest release.
  - Linux Basics: 15 Commands for those who just switch from Windows to Linux
    
    If you want to switch from Windows to Linux due to personal interest or due to job requirements, then this article will help you get started with the Linux command line. In this article, I have included a list of 15 basic Linux commands that you should know.
    
    I have demonstrated all the examples in this article using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system, but these commands are available on most other Linux distributions as well.
  - Enable UEFI Support in KVM Virtualization
  - K3XEC | Proxying Ethernet Frames to PACKRAT (Part 5/5)
    
    This post is part of a series called “PACKRAT”. If this is the first post you’ve found, it’d be worth reading the intro post first and then looking over all posts in the series.
    
    In the last post, we left off at being able to send and recieve PACKRAT frames to and from devices. Since we can transport IPv4 packets over the network, let’s go ahead and see if we can read/write Ethernet frames from a Linux network interface, and on the backend, read and write PACKRAT frames over the air. This has the benifit of continuing to allow Linux userspace tools to work (like cURL, as we’ll try!), which means we don’t have to do a lot of work to implement higher level protocols or tactics to get a connection established over the link.
  - How To Setup MySQL With Docker In Linux – OSTechNix
    
    If you are new to MySQL or someone who wishes to quickly and effortlessly install MySQL database, then this article is for you. In this article, we will learn how to setup MySQL with Docker and Docker compose in Linux.
    
    Let’s start by setting up the docker environment to launch the MySQL container.
  - How to Remove Multiple Files at once on Linux
    
    To remove (or delete) a file in Linux from the command line can be done using the rm command. It allows you to delete more than one files at once.
    
    Also, you can match multiple files using the wildcard (*) and regular expansions and easily delete them as needed.
    
    In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use the rm command, and a combination of other commands to remove files and directories in Linux.
  - How to Install The Latest Tesseract OCR 5 in Ubuntu 20.04 / 18.04 / 21.10 | UbuntuHandbook
    
    This simple tutorial shows how to install the latest Tesseract OCR engine in all current Ubuntu releases via PPA.
    
    Tesseract is the most accurate open-source OCR engine that reads a wide variety of image formats and converts them to text in over 40 languages.
  - How to install and use Clonezilla on Ubuntu 20.04 – NextGenTips
    
    Clonezilla is a suite of open-source, disk cloning programs used for bare metal backup and recovery and also used during system deployment. Clonezilla server edition uses multicast technologies to deploy a single image file to a group of computers in a local area network.
    
    In this tutorial guide, we are going to explore how to install and use Clonezilla on Ubuntu 20.04.
  - Find Large Files and Directories in Linux – ByteXD
    
    There are times when our system is running out of disk space. We can use various commands to find the large files in Linux. We may need to find these files to delete them or even archive them in some scenarios. There will obviously be critical files that we may want to retain. The action we take on these files will depend on the types of files we find.
    
    Just like the largest files, we may also want to find the largest directories. It could be possible that the /tmp directory has gigabytes of temporary files and maybe eating space on the hard drive. Sometimes it is easy to target the directory rather than the individual file.
  - Try ‘labs as a service’ to learn Linux in the cloud
    
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Skills Workshops offer a way to learn more about Linux without building and maintaining your own lab environment.
  - Sign and verify container images with this open source tool
    
    Many open source software projects get used in software builds every day, which is critical for almost every organization. Open source software brings many benefits and helps software developers focus on innovation and efficiency rather than reinventing the wheel.
    
    Sometimes, you cannot identify and verify the integrity of the third-party software used by constantly doing verification, which can open the door to supply chain attacks. Hence, the sigstore project was born. The sigstore project aims at securing supply chain technology and eventually the open source software security itself.
  - Create Custom Libraries For Xmonad Such As Color Libraries – Invidious
    
    I’ve been putting in a lot of work on DTOS (my custom Xmonad desktop desployment script), and lately I’ve spent time trying to get consistent theming across various applications. The way I’ve decided to tackle this problem is to create my own custom Xmonad libs to simplify changing color schemes across several programs.
- Games
  - Smissmas 2021 is live in Team Fortress 2 | GamingOnLinux
    
    It’s getting cold now and more games are opening up their festive events and Valve is no different. Smissmas 2021 is now officially live in Team Fortress 2.
    
    During the event all players will get a Stuffed Stocking gift, there’s 6 new community maps, a Winter 2021 Cosmetic Case, 3 new community-contributed taunts, 27 new community-created Unusual effects and all cosmetic and taunt cases will grant Smissmas 2021 Unusual effects instead of their normal Unusual effects during the event. On top of that there’s usual festive sale in the Mann Co. Store. It’s not just the new community maps to play through though, you also get a playlist with maps from previous events too.
  - Legend of Keepers: Feed the Troll announced, free update out now | GamingOnLinux
    
    Legend of Keepers: Feed the Troll is the first expansion to the clever mix of dungeon keeping and turn-based auto-battling that somewhat resembles the Boss Monster card game.
    
    First though, a big free upgrade is out now for everyone bringing with it 11 new monsters, 2 new traps and 3 new artefacts as well as a new mission for each master.
  - fheroes2 reimplementation for Heroes of Might and Magic II updated | GamingOnLinux
    
    Released originally in 1996, Heroes of Might and Magic II is a game that’s beloved by many and the fheroes2 project continues to mature with version 0.9.10 out now.
    
    As part of this release, they now have a wiki page to explain the enhancements to this game engine reimplementation compared to the original. You will also find the game includes a minimum 4 languages that can be chosen including: English, French, German and Polish. These languages will appear even for a demo version of the game but their team still needs time to polish the characters for each language and soon it’ll update all of them. For the next release the much requested Russian translation will also be added.
  - The Captain is a quirky pixel-art sci-fi point and click adventure worth your time | GamingOnLinux
    
    Swedish duo Sysiac Games and Tomorrow Corporation have released The Captain, a quirky comedy sci-fi point and click adventure with pixel-art visuals and it’s a lot of fun. Note: personal purchase.
    
    At the beginning of a war, you end up getting lost in a distant part of space, far from home in a transport accident and now it’s up to you to find the only thing that can help stop the destruction of Earth’s Sun. It’s a race across the galaxy but since you’re a scientist and a member of Spacefleet, you of course need to deal with anything else that appears along the way. Distress calls, hostile ships and it’s filled with some pretty funny moments.
    
    It’s not all fun and games though, there’s the urgency to the situation always present and since it’s a point and click adventure, there’s a few minor puzzles to solve too. You also have plenty of decisions to make as you go through it, resulting in a few different ways to progress through it.
  - itch.io has another great charity bundle to help World Land Trust | GamingOnLinux
    
    Need more games and you’re on a budget? Want to help charity and get some games at the same time? The World Land Trust Bundle on itch.io looks great.
  - Merging a roguelike with monster catching, Siralim Ultimate is out now | GamingOnLinux
    
    With thousands of unique creatures, plenty of dungeons to explore and roguelike mechanics, Siralim Ultimate definitely looks like a game you can spend a lot of time with and enjoy. A game that the developer says is a bit like “Pokemon meets Diablo, or more accurately, Dragon Warrior Monsters meets Path of Exile”.
    
    It might not be on par with more modern-looking games, with it low-resolution pixel-art but don’t let that put you off. There’s a ridiculous amount of depth to this one that roguelike fans will no doubt love if they give it a go.
  - 7th-Grader Makes “Linus-Proof” Ubuntu Gaming App – Invidious
  - City of Gold update for Stoneshard is out now | GamingOnLinux
    
    City of Gold brings some pretty big changes and feature additions to Stoneshard, the challenging turn-based RPG set in an open world.
    
    Some of the smaller things that came with this update include: a new special beginner quest, new enemies, new Steam Achievements, new throwables, reworked dungeon progression and plenty of tweaks to various parts of the game.
- Desktop Environments/WMs
  - K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
    - 5 surprising reasons I use Krita for photo editing on Linux
      
      Krita is best known as a digital painting application, but in my experience, it’s kind of a digital imaging powerhouse. Recently, a fork of GIMP called GLIMPSE had to pause its development, and because I like alternatives, it occurred to me that Krita could be a reasonable photo editor for at least some use cases. It isn’t easy to measure the suitability of an application for a group of tasks because different people require or prefer different things. What’s very common and indispensable to one person is an edge case for someone else. However, photo editing applications are broadly known for a primarily universal set of functions, so I decided to look at those likely to be in a top 5 must-have list and test Krita against each on
  - GNOME Desktop/GTK
    - GNOME has a Brand New Text Editor and it is Likely to Replace Gedit in GNOME 42
      
      Gedit is the default text editor for the GNOME desktop environment. It is a popular option and an effective text editor that offers all the essentials with a simple user interface.
      
      But, with GNOME evolving, there is a new text editor that hasn’t yet replaced gedit. And, looking at its next release, it might just be ready to replace gedit in the upcoming GNOME 42 release with a bunch of improvements.
      
      Christian Hergert shares more details about it in his blog post and on Twitter.
- Distributions
  - Reviews
    - Review: OpenSnitch – an application firewall for Linux
      
      For years I’ve heard people new to Linux talk about how they would like a user friendly, application-focused firewall solution. Linux distributions typically focus on blocking traffic based on network ports and hostnames. The few solutions which have focused on process filtering tend to be either harder to set up or less friendly to use. OpenSnitch is one of the first tools I have encountered which provides both the rules and real-time monitoring that Windows tools (such as Zone Alarm) provide. The fact that OpenSnitch manages to be friendly, pretty easy to navigate, and flexible in how we manage both rules and new connections is fantastic. I’m really happy with how this tool work and how easy it is to set up.
      
      What I particularly like about OpenSnitch is that it is not just useful for making new rules, the way traffic is sorted and cataloged in the various tabs is great. Even if you are not interested in locking down your network, I think it is well worth installing OpenSnitch to find out what processes are talking over your network and who they are talking with. For example, while I was running Linux Mint, some programs sent out signals to Canonical servers which appears to be used for connectivity checks and/or getting a count of how many users are on-line. You might be interested in seeing how many programs are phoning home or pinging remote servers in an effort to count users or check for news updates.
  - New Releases
    - Upcoming CutefishOS Could Topple Deepin as the Most Beautiful Linux Distro – It’s FOSS News
      
      CutefishOS is a relatively new Linux distribution that comes bundled with its own desktop environment (i.e., CutefishDE).
      
      It is not yet a stable release, but in its beta phase.
      
      However, with its latest beta release (v0.6), it seems to be shaping up as a promising alternative to the available Linux distributions focusing on simplicity and beauty.
    - Freespire 8.0 Released
      
      Today, the PC/OpenSystems LLC FOSS development team has released Freespire 8.0, an update which delivers much needed system enhancements and security fixes. Once again we have let users decide; they have spoken, and we have included all the most requested Google services; Calendar, Docs, and Gmail. For more traditional use cases, Freespire core has not changed at all : it’s still a full featured desktop OS, with all of the applications and resources of the Ubuntu repositories available as always. To repeat : Freespire does not incorporate any proprietary media codecs; aside from the use of Google Chrome there are no other vendor-specific software applications pre-installed at all.
      
      Freespire 8.0 features a new stable kernel which fixes bugs / broadens hardware support. Google Chrome version 96 includes security patches and other general browser improvements. We have upgraded Xfce 4.16, X11, Samba and other system fundamentals including non-UEFI and secure boot systems..
  - Arch Family
    - EndeavorOS 21.4 Has Arrived
      
      If you prefer your Linux to be of the Arch-type, but don’t want to go through the challenges inherent in installing the full-blown Arch Linux, you have options. One such option is EndeavorOS. Endeavor OS calls itself “terminal-centric.” That doesn’t mean you’ll be spending all of your time within the terminal. In fact, I’d say that Endeavor OS labeling itself as such is a bit misleading. I’ve worked with the OS and found it quite easy to use.
      
      But what does the new version have to offer? First and foremost, it ships with kernel 5.15, which is bleeding edge. One very important feature found in this kernel is the newly written NTFS3 driver, which vastly improves how Linux can interact with NTFS file systems.
  - Canonical/Ubuntu Family
    - Ubuntu Vs. Windows
      
      This may not be true for all distributions, but LTS (Long Term Service) focused ones like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Debian Reliable are unquestionably more stable than Windows 10. They are less likely to crash due to a stray software or app and are more efficient in utilizing memory and CPU resources.
      
      The Linux security architecture is more robust than the Windows security architecture. Linux is credited with inventing the DAC (Discretionary Access Controls). Their directory permissions system is simpler and easier to use than the permissions system used by Windows NT. The Linux built-in firewall component (iptables) is likewise quite simple and efficient, and it can be operated via the command line. The multi-user feature of Ubuntu is also much better in Ubuntu than Windows as there are strict policies maintained in Linux to ensure complete privacy and security to the users.
- Devices/Embedded
  - Compact Elkhart Lake system triples up on GbE and HDMI
    
    Nexcom’s Linux-friendly “NISE 53” embedded PC runs on Intel’s Elkhart Lake with up to 16GB DDR4, optional eMMC, 3x HDMI, 3x GbE, 4x USB, 2x COM, 2x M.2, and mini-PCIe.
    
    Nexcom has upgraded its Apollo Lake based NISE 52 design with a much faster Intel Elkhart Lake processor and twice the maximum RAM at 16GB. The NISE 53 system provides an extra expansion slot (now driven by PCIe Gen3), and an option for up to 32GB eMMC. The USB count has dropped from 8x to 4x, and dual serial ports have replaced the DB44 combo port.
  - Open Hardware/Modding
    - Touchscreen-Powered USB Hub Selectively Powers Down Devices | Hackaday
      
      One of the most useful features of the Universal Serial Bus is its hot-plugging capability. You simply plug in your device, use it, and unplug it when you’re done. But what if you’ve got a huge number of USB devices? You might not want to use all of them all of the time, but repeatedly unplugging and re-plugging them is inconvenient and wears out the connectors. [Matt G] fixed this problem by building the RUNBOX: a USB hub that can be controlled through a touchscreen.
      
      [...]
      
      Although we’ve seen switchable USB hubs before, they usually require you to either press a manual switch or run dedicated software on your PC. We’ve also seen other sleek builds combining a Raspberry Pi with a USB hub.
    - open cores, ISAs, etc: what is actually open about them?
      
      In the past few years, with the launch of RISC-V, and IBM’s OpenPOWER initiative (backed up with hardware releases such as Talos) there has been lots of talk about open hardware projects, and vendors talking about how anyone can go and make a RISC-V or OpenPOWER CPU. While there is a modicum of truth to the assertion that an upstart company could start fabricating their own RISC-V or OpenPOWER CPUs tomorrow, the reality is a lot more complex, and it basically comes down to patents.
      
      [...]
      
      Ultimately, we come to the unavoidable topic, patents. Both RISC-V and OpenPOWER are described as patent-free, or patent-unencumbered, but what does that actually mean? In both cases, it means that the ISA itself is unencumbered by patents… in the case of RISC-V, the ISA itself is patent-free, and in the case of OpenPOWER, there is a very liberal patent licensing pool.
      
      But therein lies the rub: in both cases, the patent situation only covers the ISA itself. Implementation details and vendor extensions are not covered by the promises made by both communities. In other words, SiFive and IBM still have entire portfolios they can assert against any competitor in their space. RISC-V, as noted before, does not have a multilateral patent pool, and these microarchitectural patents are not covered by the OpenPOWER patent pool, as that covers the POWER ISA only.
      
      This means that anybody competing with SiFive or IBM respectively, would have to be a patent licensee, if they are planning to produce chips which compete with SiFive or IBM, and these licensing costs are ultimately passed through to the companies licensing the SoC cores.
      
      There are steps which both communities could take to improve the patent problems: for example, RISC-V could establish a patent pool, and require ecosystem participants to cross-license their patents through it, and IBM could widen the scope of the OpenPOWER patent pool to cover more than the POWER ISA itself. These steps would significantly improve the current situation, enabling truly free (as in freedom) silicon to be fabricated, through a combination of a RISC-V or OpenPOWER core and a set of supporting cores from OpenCores.
    - India reveals home-grown server that won’t worry the leading edge
      
      Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology & skill development and entrepreneurship, did reveal that some progress towards India’s pursuit of its own microprocessors has also progressed. India currently developers two modestly-specced RISC-V CPUs – named Shakti and Vega – and hopes they will one day meet the nation’s needs and be used around the world. With the Shakti E-Class built on a 180nm process and running at between 75Mhz and 100MHz, India is not yet a threat to incumbent market leaders. Chandrasekhar announced that a national competition to improve local CPU tech has been narrowed to ten finalists.
  - Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
- Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
  - Helios-NG: An open-source cluster OS that links the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga
    
    What is old is new again: linking open source Unix-alikes, native cluster OSes for massively parallel computers, and 1980s platform rivalries. You get all this in a somewhat dusty project hoping to “breathe new life” into Helios, a manycore OS from the ’90s.
    
    Parallel computing is back in fashion. Just last week, The Reg covered an inexpensive Arm cluster in a box; and support in the next Linux kernel for 24-core Atom chips and 64-core ARM ones.
    
    Back in the 1980s, Intel couldn’t build you a box with that many cores – but a small British outfit called Inmos could. While a remote descendant of Inmos provides one of the processors in relatively recent Amiga hardware, there’s a much older connection.
  - Web Browsers
    - Mozilla
      - Firefox 95 Is Now Available for Download with New Picture-in-Picture Feature, More
        
        Firefox 95 is here as the last release of the web browser in 2021, coming seven weeks after Firefox 94. It’s not a big update, but it brings a few cool changes to make your web browsing experience more enjoyable and secure.
        
        This release further improves the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature with a new right-click context menu option called “Move Picture-in-Picture Toggle to Left/Right Side,” which lets you move the Picture-in-Picture toggle button to either the left or right side of a video. Check it out in action below!
      - WebAssembly and Back Again: Fine-Grained Sandboxing in Firefox 95
        
        In Firefox 95, we’re shipping a novel sandboxing technology called RLBox — developed in collaboration with researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas — that makes it easy and efficient to isolate subcomponents to make the browser more secure. This technology opens up new opportunities beyond what’s been possible with traditional process-based sandboxing, and we look forward to expanding its usage and (hopefully) seeing it adopted in other browsers and software projects.
      - Firefox 95 Ready With RLBox Sandboxing Across All Platforms
        
        Mozilla Firefox 95.0 is now available for download ahead of its official release tomorrow. Making this new version interesting is the RLBox integration.
        
        Across all platforms the Mozilla Firefox 95.0 web browser is now using RLBox to protect against security vulnerabilities within third-party libraries.
      - Firefox 95 Enhances Security, Slack, and CPU Usage
        
        The latest stable release of this flagship FOSS browser comes with a couple of interesting feature tweaks, improved online security, and lower CPU usage too.
        
        We’ll start with the most obvious change: the picture-in-picture button can be moved to the opposite side of embeds. Oh, I know: groundbreaking, right? Not exactly; while this isn’t the most consequential change in the history of the browser it is sure to be appreciated by those who make heavy use of this (handy) feature.
  - Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra
    - LibreOffice 7.2.4 and 7.1.8 Released with an Important Security Fix, Update Now
      
      Released a month earlier than expected, LibreOffice 7.2.4 is now available for download along with LibreOffice 7.1.8, an unplanned release in the LibreOffice 7.1 series of the popular, free and open-source office suite, which reached end of life on November 30th, 2021.
      
      Both releases include a fix for a buffer heap overflow vulnerability, namely CVE-2021-43527, which is a remote code execution flaw discovered in the way Mozilla’s NSS (Network Security Services) component verifies certificates.
    - LibreOffice 7.2.4 Community and LibreOffice 7.1.8 Community available ahead of schedule to provide an important security fix
      
      The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 7.2.4 Community and LibreOffice 7.1.8 Community to provide a key security fix. Releases are immediately available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/, and all LibreOffice users are recommended to update their installation. Both new version include the fixed NSS 3.73.0 cryptographic library, to solve CVE-2021-43527 (the nss secfix is the only change compared to the previous version).
    - 4 Best Ways to Use Office on Chromebook
      
      Libre Office is one of the most popular Microsoft Office alternatives out there. And you know what the best thing about it is? It’s completely free to download and use.
      
      We tested and used Libre Office on our Chromebook, and for the most part, the experience was pretty smooth and seamless. The app uses the same file extensions as its Microsoft Office sibling.
      
      So opening saved Microsoft Office files with Libre Office should be as easy as drinking a glass of water.
      
      That being said, many of you may be wondering how to install Libre Office on a Chromebook. Do not worry; the process is pretty simple; let us take a look.
  - FSFE
    - FSFE is hiring a working student specialised on websites
      
      We are looking for a working student to support our work to empower people to control technology. The person will work 10-15 hours per week and will maintain and improve the FSFE’s websites. Applicants have to be enrolled in a German university and can work remotely.
  - Public Services/Government
    - German State Switching 25,000 Windows PCs to Linux and LibreOffice
      
      The German state of Schleswig-Holstein plans to start using Linux and LibreOffice to replace Microsoft Windows and its Office suite in their administration and schools to migrate public organizations to open-source solutions.
      
      The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, on Nov. 18 announced the news in its blog. The software swap out is part of that government’s plan to reduce its dependence on proprietary software.
      
      The end game is to eventually stop using proprietary products altogether. By the end of 2026, the plan will replace Microsoft Office with LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by government workers and teachers. Schleswig-Holstein officials will replace the Windows operating system with GNU/Linux.
  - Programming/Development
    - What is JSON
      
      JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a data format commonly used to exchange data between the client and server end of a web application. JSON is arguably the most widely used data exchange format on the web. With the growing number of web developers, there is a growth in the number of people looking to understand this format and be able to work efficiently with JSON data. This article is targeted at those individuals to explain the basics of JSON in a simple way.
    - What Is AJAX?
      
      Asynchronous execution code is opposite to synchronous in which your code does not have to wait for a statement to finish executing but can continue executing in parallel. Asynchronous execution is achieved with the help of AJAX.
      
      In this post, we will discuss what AJAX is, the stepwise working of AJAX, and walk through an example to better understand the implementation of AJAX.
    - 10 Best Plugins For Your WordPress Website
      
      WordPress is one of the best content management systems available right now. To have wider accessibility to functions in your WordPress site, you need to install WordPress plugins. These plugins are small pieces of softwares that you can upload or install on your WordPress website to add some new features.
      
      Currently, there are more than 50,000 plugins in the WordPress directory that you can install directly from your WordPress site dashboard. It’s really confusing for beginners to choose the right plugins for their website.
    - Adam Young: How Man registers?
      
      AARCH64 has a lot of general purpose registers.
    - Perl/Raku
      - Raku Advent Calendar: Day 6: Following the Unix philosophy without getting left-pad
        
        The Unix philosophy famously holds that you should write software that “does one thing, and does it well”.
      - Developing A Game Engine with Perl: Part 7 – Fork
        
        If you want to start reading from the beginning. Check out the first article in this series
        
        Continuing from our last post, I talked about how ANSI Game Engine is a colourful telnet server. We left off with needing to fork the engines telnet server.

Leftovers
- Integrity/Availability
  - Proprietary
    - Vivaldi 5.0 Web Browser Released with Shareable Themes
      
      Vivaldi web browser, best know for its deep customization capabilities, released a new major update – Vivaldi 5.0. Here’s what’s new.
      
      Vivaldi is a fast web browser that certainly pays attention to its users needs, privacy, and web experience. It has been planned and developed by a former Opera developer, adding many particularly good options.
      
      Vivaldi 5.0 is a major update and carries a couple of key feature updates and a lot of bug fixes and changes. So let’s take a look at what’s new.
    - Microsoft Edge keeps me on edge
      
      My primary browser is Firefox, on desktop and mobile, and it will always be. I dread the eventuality of Firefox disappearing. That will be the death knoll of the Internet as we know it. So listen carefully, you tech nerds.
    - Microsoft backpedals on changing default browsers in Windows 11 [Ed: No, Microsoft just fears legal action and fines]
      
      Many people have been complaining about difficulty of changing the default browser in Windows 11, but it seems that Microsoft is finally taking note.
    - Security
      - Security updates for Monday
        
        Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (isync, lib32-nss, nss, opera, and vivaldi), Debian (gerbv and xen), Fedora (autotrace, chafa, converseen, digikam, dmtx-utils, dvdauthor, eom, kxstitch, libsndfile, nss, pfstools, php-pecl-imagick, psiconv, q, R-magick, rss-glx, rubygem-rmagick, seamonkey, skopeo, synfig, synfigstudio, vdr-scraper2vdr, vdr-skinelchihd, vdr-skinnopacity, vdr-tvguide, vim, vips, and WindowMaker), Mageia (golang, kernel, kernel-linus, mariadb, and vim), openSUSE (aaa_base, python-Pygments, singularity, and tor), Red Hat (nss), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (aaa_base, kernel, openssh, php74, and xen), and Ubuntu (libmodbus, lrzip, samba, and uriparser).
      - VEHICLE THEFT WARNING AND PREVENTION TIPS
        
        Investigators with the York Regional Police Auto/Cargo Theft Unit are advising residents they have identified a new method being used by thieves to track and steal high-end vehicles across York Region.
        
        Since September 2021, officers have investigated five incidents where suspects have placed small tracking devices on high-end vehicles so they can later locate and steal them. Brand name ‘air tags’ are placed in out-of-sight areas of the target vehicles when they are parked in public places like malls or parking lots. Thieves then track the targeted vehicles to the victim’s residence, where they are stolen from the driveway.
        
        Thieves typically use tools like screwdrivers to enter the vehicles through the driver or passenger door, while ensuring not to set off alarms. Once inside, an electronic device, typically used by mechanics to reprogram the factory setting, is connected to the onboard diagnostics port below the dashboard and programs the vehicle to accept a key the thieves have brought with them. Once the new key is programmed, the vehicle will start and the thieves drive it away.
      - Apple AirTags Are Now Being Used To Steal Cars In Canada
        
        The trackers have anti-stalking measures, but those don’t seem to be an issue for thieves
      - Thieves Using AirTags to “Follow” Cars
      - Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation
        
        [Older] Unboxing Busybox: Claroty and JFrog uncovers 14 vulnerabilities [Ed: "GUEST RESEARCH" or sponsored crap?]
        
        Within BusyBox you can find a full-fledged shell, a DHCP client/server, and small utilities such as cp, ls, grep, and others. You’re also likely to find many OT and IoT devices running BusyBox, including popular programmable logic controllers (PLCs), human-machine interfaces (HMIs), and remote terminal units (RTUs)—many of which now run on Linux.
      - Privacy/Surveillance
        
        Spy Tool Was Deployed in State-Sponsored Hack of Ugandans – The New York Times
        
        Apple warned two Ugandan journalists and an opposition figure last week that their iPhones may have been hacked by a state-sponsored surveillance entity, the targeted people said on Saturday, and at least one attack appeared to have employed spyware from an Israeli company blacklisted by the United States.
        
        The latest revelations add Uganda to the list of countries where journalists, human rights activists and lawyers have been targeted using the sophisticated Israeli-made spyware, known as Pegasus.
        
        The disclosure of the Apple warning notices to the three Ugandans came one day after reports that American diplomats in the East African nation also had their iPhones hacked with Pegasus.
        
        Those diplomats were the first American government officials known to have been targeted by the Pegasus tool, which is designed to sneak into a user’s phone and give the invader access to its contents without being detected. Apple has said iPhones equipped with its latest software are not at risk.
- Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press
  - De-indexing and silencing, a trial to watch, persecuted journalists and a perverse technology – IFEX
    
    Google recently de-indexed from its search results two important pieces of investigative journalism published by Uruguayan online news portal Sudestada. The removal was the result of two different requests, and was based on alleged violations of US copyright legislation (DCMA) and European data protection norms (GDPR).
    
    Latin American groups, including IFEX-ALC, are concerned. According to them, the complaints, presented by anonymous third parties, are an attempt to hide information of significant public interest about the participation of Uruguayan law firms in corruption cases.
    
    The organizations also called attention to faulty procedural safeguards. According to them, Google’s notifications do not provide a sufficient description of the grounds for considering the content illegal. Additionally, avenues for appeal were inadequate and/or abusive, since content moderation rules force the journalist and the outlet to accept that any judicial remedy should take place in a jurisdiction outside of Uruguay.
    
    The imposition of US and EU legislation to users based outside these jurisdictions is also problematic, impacting their right to complain and defend themselves.
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
  - Jammu and Kashmir: 93 internet shutdown orders issued after SC ruling on communication restrictions
    
    In January 2020, the court had directed the administration of the Union Territory to publish all such directives.
- Monopolies
  - [Reposted] FOSS Patents: In Black Friday filing, Epic Games opposes Apple’s 9th Circuit motion to stay the injunction
    
    n November 16, Apple filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit a motion to stay the Epic Games v. Apple injunction, whih came down in September based on a finding of a violation of California Unfair Competition Law (UCL). Epic had ten days to respond, plus one extra day because the deadline would otherwise have been on Thanksgiving Day.
    
    I continue to believe that the Ninth Circuit is more likely than not to grant Apple’s motion. While I don’t agree with all of Apple’s arguments, and don’t disagree with all of Epic’s either, there simply are overwhelming reasons to order a stay. It’s the most logical and reasonable thing to do. Should the appeals court deny Apple’s motion, Apple asks for an additional administrative stay (30 more days) so it can seek Supreme Court review.
    
    After Epic’s opposition brief, which I’m sharing below, I have nothing to add, nor do I see a need to modify any of my positions, or to adjust any of my predictions. I do, however, wish to note that Epic’s opposition brief simply assumes that Apple would have to continue to allow commission-free purchases being made outside of an iOS app, even though the purchased digital goods or content would be consumed in an iOS app (which is also called “cross-wallet” or “cross-purchase”). That is simply not the case. While the court took note of Apple’s current policy, there is absolutely nothing stopping Apple from making adjustments in that regard, should Apple indeed have to comply with the injunction. As an app developer, that’s not the way I’d like it to be, but as a commentator I strive to provide correct analysis.
  - Severable improvements to IP [Ed: There is no such thing as "IP" -- a misleading and meaningless term]
    
    It has become popular to include references to “non-severable improvements” in research contracts. Typically, the contract will state who owns any IP generated under the agreement. But the parties want different ownership rules to apply if the new IP is a “non-severable improvement” to a party’s pre-existing, or “background” IP.
  - Is it Kurta? Is it a Kaftaan? It’s GUCCI: Why GUCCI May Not be Accountable This Time Too
    
    A few months ago, Gucci was found selling a peculiar outfit named “organic linen kaftan”. Following this incident, news of Zara selling lungi as ‘check mini skirt’ a few years ago had resurfaced on social media. This isn’t the first time Gucci and other fashion houses have been involved in such an act, but an interesting question remains: what are the available legal remedies and attached limitations?
    
    [...]
    
    The Indian subcontinent gave birth to the popular traditional attire – the Kurta. The dress is commonly worn in countries such as Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka along with India. Considered a part of ethnic wear, Kurtas have different varieties depending on their design and fabric. No community or individual per se have any protection over the kurta. However, certain types of embroidered kurtas, such as Kasuti kurta from Karnataka (India) and Chikankari kurta from Lucknow, are GI protected due to the embroidery. But even here, it’s only the embroidery which is protected and not the silhouette of the Kurta per se.
    
    The Kaftan, on the other hand, was initially worn as a robe or a tunic and can be traced back to Morocco in the 16th century, although the Kaftan has been worn across the Middle East and Persia long before this time. To the western world, Kaftan-like dresses were introduced by designers such as Paul Poiret and Mario Fortuny in the early 20th century. In the 1950s/1960s, this style was adapted by French couturiers such as Christian Dior and Balenciaga and appeared in the world of high fashion. By 1966, Vogue had described the kaftan as an essential garment for every member of the jet-set crowd. From the mid-1970s, the kaftan shifted from the runway to being associated with resort wear. Tom Ford also reanimated and shortened it to a micro-mini length for the Gucci Spring 1996.
  - Open Letter to Members of EU Parliament
    
    Today, the Coalition for Competitive Digital Markets (https://competitivedigitalmarkets.eu/), a group of more than 50 technology companies from 16 different European countries, sent an open letter to members of the European Parliament to raise awareness about interoperability and to impose stricter rules on big companies – the so-called ‘big tech’ companies – that act as gatekeepers and prevent transparency and openness in digital markets.
  - Patents
    - Lululemon Countersues, Accusing Peloton of Selling Knock-Offs “Instead of Innovating” [Ed: Design patents are farcical and ought not exist]
      
      Lululemon has responded to Peloton’s declaratory judgment action with a counter suit, arguing that the New York-based exercise bike-maker is on the hook for design patent and trade dress infringement in connection with its sale of “copycat” athleticwear on the heels of pulling the plug on the parties’ 5-year-long co-branding partnership. According to the complaint that it filed in a California federal court on Monday, Lululemon claims that “unlike innovators such as [itself],” when Peloton opted to launch its own collection of apparel, it “did not spend the time, effort, and expense to create an original product line, [and] instead, Peloton imitated several of lululemon’s innovative designs and sold knock-offs of lululemon’s products, claiming them as its own.”
      
      In the newly-filed complaint, much of which mirrors the cease-and-desist letter than it sent to Peloton on November 11, Lululemon alleges that Peloton’s Strappy Bra, Cadent Laser Dot Legging, Cadent Laser Dot Bra, High Neck Bra, and Cadent Peak Bra collectively infringe six different Lululemon design patents. Beyond that, Lululemon claims that Peloton’s One Lux legging is “another imitation of a lululemon product, as it copies the trade dress of lululemon’s Align part, which is one of [its] all-time best-selling products.”
    - Strong sign of life from the Austrian Additive Manufacturing Industry at Formnext 2021 [Ed: Citing the corrupt and anti-scientific EPO as a source: “the European Patent Office report between 2014 and 2017″ (but EPO is just looking to whitewash monopolies it grants in violation of the law)]
      
      Austria plays an above-average active and innovative role in the international 3D printing industry despite its comparatively small size. This development was already reflected in the European Patent Office report between 2014 and 2017, where Austria recorded worldwide the highest rate of increase in patent applications in additive manufacturing. Similarly, the latest Wohlers Report 2021 illustrated thatAustrian additive manufacturing industry has the most AM manufacturers per inhabitant worldwide, even ahead of the USA, Germany, and China.
    - SNIPR Technologies Ltd. v. The Rockefeller University (PTAB 2021)
      
      It is well to recall that the battle over inventorship and thus ownership of CRISPR technology is not limited to the parties in the various interferences surrounding the Doudna and Zhang patents and applications (see “CRISPR Battle Joined Again” and “The CRISPR Chronicles: Enter Toolgen”), as well as remembering that the technology continues to be developed and those developments are or will also be subject to patent protection. Another party already identified in the space is The Rockefeller University, and on Thursday its scientists prevailed in an interference proceeding before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board captioned SNIPR Technologies Ltd. v. The Rockefeller University (naming Luciano Marraffini as one of this party’s inventors).
      
      In the Declaration of Interference No. 106,123, SNIPR was designated as the Junior Party and all claims of all five of its patents were involved (10,463,049; 10,506,812; 10,524,477; 10,561,148; and 10,582,712). Senior Party The Rockefeller University had all claims of its pending U.S. Application No. 15/159,929 designated as corresponding to the Count.
      
      [...]
      
      Third, the Board posed the rhetorical question of what is the remedy for patent applicants like Rockefeller here if it were to adopt (or Congress intended, which the Board’s opinion suggests they do not think it does) SNIPR’s position that interferences were precluded to involve patents such as theirs against applications like Rockefeller’s that do satisfy Section 3(n)(2)? This question is posed in the context of the plain language of the statute maintaining interferences for patents such as Rockefeller’s that satisfy Section 3(n)(2) AIA. In other words, would Congress have enacted a nullity for such patents or applications under circumstances as here where the interfering subject matter is disclosed and claimed in a patent or application that does not satisfy Section 3(n)(2)? “Congress could have ended all interferences at the implementation of the AIA,” according to the Board, and under those circumstances “different parties may both be issued claims for the same patentable invention even when one party has an effective filing date before 16 March 2013″ (an unlikely scenario in view of the consistent interpretation of the statute that the phrase “a patent” in the statute indicates a single inventive entity), but that is not the law Congress enacted in the Board’s view. The point as the Board interpreted Congressional intent was that “Congress did not expressly qualify its choice to continue interferences as being only when both parties’ claims have an effective filing date before 16 March 2013.” And the Board further did not give credit to SNIPR’s suggestion that priority to Rockefeller’s claims could be established in “a different proceeding,” any detailed of which SNIPR left unspecified in its brief.
      
      The issue beomes a choice, according to the Board, of whether SNIPR is correct that “Congress’s express choice to subject a subset of applications and patents to the previous interference provisions reinforces Congress’s intent to exclude applications and patents outside that subset, like SNIPR’s, from interference proceedings” or whether the Board’s view that “the decision to continue interferences, in section 3(n)(2), indicates that Congress contemplated interferences between pre-AIA and post-AIA applications and patents,” it being self-evident which view the Board would consider most consistent with Congressional intent.
    - UPC Seminars [Ed: Team UPC is now doing “seminars” on things that do not exist and are not even compatible with the law]
      
      The first online seminar, entitled “UPC Crash Course,” will be held on December 6, 2021 at 12:00 pm (EST). C. Thomas Becher, Morten Garberg, and Niels Hölder will discuss the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court, including status, timing, provisional application, unitary protection, unified enforcement, costs and savings, opting out, what do to by when, and best practice.
    - [Reposted] Recent Danish case law on acquiescence/passivity in patent infringement actions – Kluwer Patent Blog
      
      On September 30th, 2021, the Danish High Court (Eastern Division) rendered its decision in a long running patent infringement case. One important element of the case was the question of acquiescence, in particular, whether the patent pro-prietor is required to act on a possible patent infringement (and commence legal proceedings) when opposition proceedings are pending.
      
      Both the Danish Administration of Justice Act (article 345) and the Danish Pa-tent Act (article 53a) specify that the court may suspend a case, if there are other ongoing cases (such as opposition proceedings), which may impact the outcome of the case. The Danish courts have interpreted the provisions such that Danish (main) patent infringements action, as a general rule, will be suspended if oppo-sition proceedings are pending. Thus, a patent proprietor is not able to enforce a patent by way of main proceedings in Danish courts as long as opposition pro-ceedings are pending.
      
      In this particular case before the Danish High Court, the patent proprietor, San-genic, a company that manufactures diaper pails with fitting diaper cassettes, was granted a European patent, which was published in Denmark in January 2009, which then became the primary point of contention in the dispute between the parties. The defendant (alleged patent infringer), Lamico, filed an opposition against the patent on the grounds of lack of novelty and inventive step. Lengthy proceedings followed first at the EPO Opposition Division and later at the Board of Appeal. The final decision in the opposition was rendered in December 2018, where the patent was upheld.
  - Trademarks
    - DRS Logistics v. Google: Revival of the Third-party Trademark as a Keyword Dispute
      
      We are pleased to bring you a guest post from Payal Saraogi, on a recent decision of the Delhi High Court on Google’s use of trademarks as advertisement keywords. Payal graduated from the School of Law, Christ University in 2020, and currently practices as a disputes lawyer. She advises/represents clients on issues related or unrelated to those discussed in the post.
    - TTABlog Test: How Did These Three Section 2(d) Oppositions Come Out?
      
      A TTAB judge once told me that you can predict the outcome of a Section 2(d) case 95% of the time by just looking at the goods/services and the marks. I kid you not! Let’s see how you do with the three cases summarized below. Answer(s) in the first comment.
    - To The Metaverse and Beyond: Considerations For Trademark Owners
      
      The metaverse is appearing more frequently in companies’ branding efforts, with companies like Nike launching an experience of its own within the Roblox metaverse, Balenciaga offering up products to wear in the Fortnite metaverse, and Tokens.com’s Metaverse Group subsidiary paid $2.4 million – in crypto – in what is being called one of “the largest ever land acquisitions in the metaverse.” But what does the emergence of the metaverse and the increase in virtual reality platforms mean for trademark owners? The metaverse is a virtual reality construct where there is an overlap between reality and the online 3D virtual environment. The metaverse is accessed through computers, smart devices and AR/VR technologies. Currently, Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook Inc.) is pushing the construct with plans to develop metaverse experiences, services and hardware so the ordinary person can enter the metaverse to work, shop, socialize, play games – the extent and application is somewhat limitless.
    - Precedential No. 31: TTAB Affirms Section 2(a) Refusal of “NATO” for Tents, for Falsely Suggesting a Connection With … Guess What?
      
      The Board affirmed a Section 2(a) refusal to register the proposed mark NATO for “Canopies comprised primarily of tensile fabric membranes; canopies of textile or synthetic materials; Tents; Tents made of textile materials; canvas canopies,” finding that the mark falsely suggests a connection with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“NATO”). Because “military personnel are housed in tents, and third-party specialty retailers advertising the goods for sale tout the quality of these products used by NATO forces,” the Board concluded that the applicant’s tents “are the type of items consumers would associate with the military,” and thus with the Treaty Organization. In re International Watchman, Inc., Serial No. 87302907 (November 30, 2021) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Angela Lykos)
    - The TTABlog^®: CAFC Reverses TTAB’s “MONEY MART” Decision Due to Error in Assessing Priority
      
      In a non-precedential ruling, the CAFC reversed the Board’s decision [here] denying cancellation of registrations for the mark MONEY MART in standard character form for loan financing, check cashing services, not including pawn shop services, and for the mark in design form (below) for pawn shop and pawn brokerage services, concluding that the Board had erred in denying petitioner’s claim of priority. The Board had found that Respondent Dollar Financial had priority because of earlier use of the MONEY MART mark for “loan financing services,” which encompass pawn shop services. Wrong, said the court. Brittex Financial, Inc. v. Dollar Financial Group, Inc. Appeals Nos. 2021-1370 and 2021-1449 (Fed. Cir. November 23, 2021) [not precedential].
    - Trade marks – spotlight on bad faith
      
      Courts at both UK and EU level are increasingly focusing on the concept of “bad faith” and, perhaps as a result, objections of bad faith are arising more frequently in practice. A finding of bad faith may result in the rejection or cancellation of the trade mark.
    - Level of attention – for advertising services [Ed: Not even remotely similar, but lawyers look to make money from unnecessary disputes]
      
      In a trade mark dispute on likelihood of confusion, the CFI clarified the case law on the level of attention, especially for the fields of advertising and educational offers – and of finance. The case concerned the EU trade marks CFA: earlier word mark and figurative mark against later figurative mark.
      
      [...]
      
      In August 2016, the intervener, CFA Institute (USA), filed an opposition against this trade mark application. It relied on its own earlier EU trade marks, the word mark CFA and the figurative mark CFA, which both claim protection for, inter alia, “organising, conducting and providing courses, workshops, seminars and conferences in the field of financial analysis and distribution and preparation of course materials in connection therewith”.
      
      The opposition was initially rejected, but then at the subsequent instance before the Board of Appeal it was partially upheld. Ultimately, it was found that there was at least a slight similarity and that there was a likelihood of confusion for similar and identical goods or services of the marks in dispute. According to the Board of Appeal, these were “advertising; business management; business administration” in class 35 and “education; training” in class 41, similar to the services covered by the earlier marks “association” in class 42, and “education; training”, identical to the services covered by the earlier marks “education; training” in class 41.
      
      CFA Institute brought an action against this decision before the European Court (CFI). It put forward two pleas in law and the first already included several aspects in the assessment of which the Board of Appeal had erred: Definition of the relevant public and its level of attention, comparison of the conflicting signs, assessment of the highly distinctive character of the earlier marks in Germany and overall assessment of the likelihood of confusion. This is an infringement of (i) Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation No 207/2009.
    - Israel: Smells Like CHANEL’s Second Round in the District Court
      
      The Israeli Supreme Court has recently remanded to the District Court for further review a claim for a declaratory order filed by ScentWish Ltd. against Chanel S.A. ScentWish is an Israeli company which repacks regular sized parallel imports of well-known perfumes (including Chanel’s perfumes) into 8ml packages and markets them under the names of the original perfumes and their manufacturers at a discounted price. Importantly, ScentWish’s packages included a disclaimer whereby: “ScentWish merely repackages original perfumes. ScentWish is not related to the manufacturer of this perfume in any way” (free translation from the Hebrew; “the Disclaimer“).
      
      The claim – for a declaratory order of non-infringement – was filed by ScentWish following receipt of a C&D letter from Chanel, the world renewed luxury goods’ manufacturer and the owner of the well-known trademark “CHANEL” and additional well-known trademarks for CHANEL’s perfumes (such as “No. 5” and “COCO MADEMOISELLE”) .
    - Trade Marks, Fashion and Crime in the Nineteenth Century: The Story of the Jaeger brand
      
      I am delighted to have this opportunity to share an aspect of my ongoing Leverhulme-funded research which reappraises the role of the criminal law in the history of intellectual property. One strand of this research is the protection of trade marks in the nineteenth century through the Merchandise Marks Acts 1862 and 1887. The Merchandise Marks Act 1862 (later replaced by the 1887 Act) was the first statute regulating trade marks generally (as opposed to specific trades) and was a criminal law measure that introduced statutory offences relating to forgery of a trade mark, amongst other things. My latest paper stems from my involvement in the Brand Biographies Seminar (convened by Jose Bellido and Alain Pottage in February 2020). It looks at criminalisation and trade marks through the lens of the branding history of a nineteenth century fashion business: the Jaeger clothing company (that many will also have heard of today). The research began with a file that I found at The National Archives in London, which gave the details of the criminal prosecution of the Jaeger company in 1897 under the Merchandise Marks Act 1887, brought by the Board of Trade, a UK Government department. The content of the file was intriguing. Most nineteenth century trade mark prosecutions involve a trade mark owner taking action for the unauthorised use of a trade mark by a third party. By contrast, in the Jaeger case, the trade mark owner was ‘in the dock’ for its own branding practices and was being prosecuted by an organ of the State.
  - Copyrights
    - AI and IP – to legislate or not? UKIPO’s public consultation seeks evidence
      
      This is not the first time the UKIPO has engaged with a public call for views on the topic of AI and IP. In a 2020 consultation, the government sought to broadly understand the implications of AI for IP. That call concerned patents, copyright and related rights, designs, trade marks and trade secrets. It received 92 responses from a wide range of stakeholders –attorneys, trade bodies, industry associations, tech sectors, creative industries and other sectors. This was followed by a National AI strategy in September 2021, with which the UK sought to send a message to the world that its end goal is to become “a global AI superpower”.
      
      IP plays a fundamental role in this. The UK recognises that in order to guarantee that IP incentivises innovation, the government should focus on its domestic IP law and enhance the UK’s AI competitive edge through a potential legislative reform. Against this background, with this new public consultation the UKIPO is now looking for more concrete answers on three specific topics which could potentially lead to a Parliament intervention in the field of IP and AI.
    - Around the IP Blogs
      
      The Kluwer Copyright Blog published a compilation of analyses regarding the transposition of article 17 of the DSM Directive from Germany, Hungary, Italy and Sweden, as well as their respective issues, as presented as a part of a webinar organized by reCreating Europe project team.
      
      The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) launched a public consultation on artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property on 29 October 2021 to assess whether the current IP regime strikes the appropriate balance to encourage the development of AI and its use across the UK economy. Further analysis on the topics of authorship of computer-generated works, text and data mining exception, and inventorship in case of inventions created by AIs was published on the Kluwer Copyright Blog.
    - What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s a-happening (around Article 17)? Tales from Hungary, Germany, Italy and Sweden
      
      Following the implementation of Article 5 CDSMD via a government decree in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (see here, here and here), the preparations for the implementation of the rest of the CDSMD continued throughout 2020. The first (full) draft bill was published on 7 May 2020, and a public consultation took place between May and June 2020. The Hungarian Ministry of Justice and the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, based on more than 100 responses, published an amended draft bill at the end of July 2020. This version was offered for a targeted (semi-public) consultation in August 2020. Taking into consideration the recommendations at this stage, a third version was submitted for a final semi-public consultation in February 2021. The bill was finally submitted to the Hungarian Parliament on 31 March 2021. The Parliament passed the bill with 136 yeas, 29 nays, and 1 abstain on 28 April 2021. Act XXXVII of 2021 was published on 6 May 2021 and entered into force on 1 June 2021. (The Act is available in the Hungarian language here.)
      
      The Act introduced Articles 57/A to 57/H to the Copyright Act (Act LXXVI of 1999). These rules represent an almost verbatim implementation of Article 17. These Articles include the new authorisation or liability regime for online content-sharing service providers (OCSSPs); introduce safeguards in line with Article 17(7) and (9); and exclude the general monitoring obligation of OCSSPs.
      
      The Hungarian legislation has finally decided to introduce parody, caricature and pastiche exceptions in their fullest scope. Hence, these exceptions not only apply in line with Article 17(7) CDSMD, but also to all offline and any other (non-CDSMD-relevant) online uses in line with the InfoSoc Directive. Quotation, criticism and review were not mentioned in the new Articles of the Hungarian Copyright Act. There was no need to do so. These exceptions have already been generally applicable in the online environment (including the use of content via platforms). Similarly, since hosting platforms have already been subject to detailed rules under the E-commerce Act regarding notice-and-take-down and complaint-and-redress mechanisms, as well as the prohibition of general monitoring obligations, OCSSPs will not necessarily need to amend their procedural settings to comply with the new regime.
    - Self-driving Culture
      
      It is well known that self-driving vehicles are a positive development. I, for one, living in the US and thus having no access to decent public transport, must use my private car for many short trips (though I have chosen to live within walking distance of work to limit them as much as possible). Self-driving cars will reportedly save 350,000 lives per year, though some recent research has cast some doubt on the magnitude of the improvement. Thinking of distracted, angry, drunk and other bad human drivers, it is not hard to believe that autonomous vehicles can do better.
      
      Self-driving vehicles have been the subject of deeper legal and moral inquiries because they provide evidence (a) that AI machines can make autonomous decisions; and (b) that those decisions have what one can call at the very least moral or ethical overtones. Going back to the well-known runaway trolley problem used in ethics classes, think of an AI-driven car facing brake failure (there is no reason I can think of why brakes on a self-driving car would magically be infallible). Then the AI “driver” must decide where to go. Imagine that it must “decide” whether to prioritize the life of the passenger(s) or various groups of pedestrians (imagine that they vary by age, gender etc.).
    - Around the IP Blogs
      
      With reference to self-driving vehicles, Professor Daniel Gervais discussed his views concerning copyright protection for the output of AI machines on Kluwer Copyright Blog.

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“Wintel” “Secure” uEFI Firmware Used to Store Persistent Malware, and Security Theater Boot is Worthless

Posted in Hardware, Microsoft, Security at 1:06 pm by Guest Editorial Team

Guest post by Ryan, reprinted with permission from the original

PCMag now reports (And calls out Windows! Good!) that the situation where persistent rootkit malware that doesn’t really need anything except to run once, somehow, on a Windows machine, is now being installed into the system’s uEFI firmware, where it will survive what most Windows users end up doing every time their computer ends up acting weird….nuking Windows and re-installing from scratch.

It was already so much easier for Microsoft to include “Reset this PC” than it was to fix Windows that this has been a staple for the past decade. It sometimes works, unless something has also corrupted the WIM installer image on the recovery partition, which also takes up precious SSD space.

However, with the latest threat to Windows users, which uEFI made possible (as bootkits on legacy BIOS were unheard of), no matter how many times you re-install Windows, no matter whether or not TPM or Secure Boot are on and enforced, it won’t matter. The malware isn’t running in a part of your computer that is subjected to any sort of auditable behavior.

Therefore, the only way to prevent a foothold situation is to get rid of Windows now, while it may not be too late, and replace it with GNU/Linux.

Again, most people find that their “must have” Windows software works in Wine. Sometimes Wine even resurrects programs that Windows itself has been incompatible with or partially broke years ago.

Instead of fixing Windows, Microsoft spends billions in “shadow advertising” to pay “freelance” writers to make “Linux” sound like a security disaster too, so there’s this “false equivalence” in the user’s mind.

My dad used to do the same thing to my mother when she threatened to divorce him. “You know if you leave me, your cancer will come back and there won’t be anyone to help you with that. The kids won’t be able to come back and live with me because I won’t have them”.

Like, here’s the biggest dickhead in the world, right? And mom’s 64 now and she’s fine, and I’m pushing 40, will be 40 in a couple years and some change and I’m fine, right? Bullies always use threats which turn out to be puffery. They want you to think they’re all powerful. And their antics usually get worse as they lose power.

So we should see that Microsoft is acting from a position of weakness.

There’s this whole Truman Show thing going on right now they’re up in the tower panicking because he finally realizes everything around him is fake and he needs to leave, and he finally decides to escape the island.

So all of a sudden there’s a fake nuclear power plant meltdown, and actors getting in the way of his car, and a wind storm being generated on the lake to try to scare him into giving up and thinking he was crazy, and going back to the show. And up until that point, every time he started to question the nature of things, they could always increase his fear of the unknown to overcome his curiosity, or his need to grow. And that’s exactly how abusers operate.

The very act of porting Microsoft Pretender to “Linux” is a part of this psyop.

They fund nasty trolls to imply that there is a remote technical possibility of targeting GNU/Linux users. (Technically possible, but much, much more difficult and far less pay off.)

I have another post coming about that, very shortly.

Just using some back of the napkin math, however, Windows is more than 10 times bigger than GNU/Linux after a fresh install as measured by disk footprint.

Secunia wrote in 2014 that the defect density for open source code was 0.59 defects per 1,000 lines, and for proprietary it was 0.72.

(The bonus in their reports is that the one from the prior year showed that C++ projects tended to be a much bigger security mess than C. Linux the kernel is almost entirely C. Linus was right!)

So if you assume that there’s about 10 times as much source code in Windows (which is amazing, considering that the built-in apps are useless and you don’t get a free fully-featured operating system, only SKUs with various parts of the OS disabled, and most people will try to get a different web browser, LibreOffice, and VLC anyway), and you give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not writing garbage that’s even worse than the proprietary software average (LOL), there’d still be well over 12 times as many bugs in the Windows operating system as in GNU/Linux, even though Windows doesn’t have good features and quality software included.

(It usually comes with a lot of crapware from the OEM though, and that’s a totally different story, and makes the situation worse.)

There absolutely is a security cost to leaving a ton of garbage laying around and no good security practices for software installation and package management (just a failed crApp Store with fake apps and junk), and Windows “users” (useds) are paying this price every day.

Wisdom comes by seeing bullshit, calling bullshit, and refusing to be a part of the bullshit. Software is getting to be so tertiary to what Microsoft even does to make money.

What they seem to do these days boils down to spawn camping “Linux” while they don’t even use Windows internally that much anymore, in favor of “Linux”, and suing Android OEMs -or- offering to cram pack your new phone with pestware that demands to connect to Microsoft. (Samsung)

I’m heartened that the “news” is starting to rebel against this disgusting spectacle that’s going on around Microsoft Edge lately and is no longer just calling Windows bugs a “PC problem” in every article. Hopefully, the more Microsoft tightens their grasp, the more things slip through their fingers. █

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No Linux Foundation IRS Disclosures Since 2018

Posted in Deception, Finance at 12:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 96aa24b3f75fd38487a8abdaac6bdcc0

Summary: The publicly-available records or IRS information about the Linux Foundation is suspiciously behind; compared to other organisations with a “tax-exempt” status the Linux Foundation is one year behind already

THIS morning we published two short but very important posts [1, 2] about the Linux Foundation and Microsoft, which helps protect actual sexual predators, not perceived ones. Not defamed people, thrown under the bus to distract from the real culprits.

The video above concerns further findings. We remind people that Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates visited Jeffrey Epstein in prison, knowing very well what he had done. Seems like Bill Gates was just trying to hide something and protect himself, e.g. in case of interrogation like this month’s trial. The facilitators include the son of the real Maxwell, Bill’s mom (she’s a wealthy Maxwell), not just a partner of Epstein.

We’re meant to think that the Free software community is a bunch of perverts when it is in fact those looking to demonise it who are the biggest offenders. Read this new article (mentioned in the video above). “Billionaire Bill Gates Uses Money to Shape the Media” is the title and it covers some of the important points.

“As usual with the Linux Foundation, it’s not really transparent; their doors are shut, they’re only accountable to corporations they front for, and we’re meant to think they care about GNU/Linux users because they have “Linux” in their name.”The video then points out that right now, when it is almost 2022, the IRS is still not releasing documents/filings of the Linux Foundation. Not even for 2019. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer says: “The IRS has provided extracted financial data for this filing, but has not yet released the source documents.”

We’ve checked the IRS site directly and it’s even further behind than ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer. And other organisations do have their 2019 filings online, fully available. The FSF is shown to have a revenue of $2,628,996 in 2018, $2,183,470 in 2019, and then $1,149,602 in 2020 (after the campaign to defame the FSF and crush it). The EFF had a revenue of $15,913,065 in 2018, $14,232,158 in 2019, and $12,212,821 in 2020. Why is the Linux Foundation so far behind the rest?

According to the EFF’s latest available IRS filing, they were in fact operating at a loss, maybe for the first time ever. Same with 'Linux' Foundation some years ago…

They’re no longer true to their original (stated) goals. The site of the IRS says about the Linux Foundation: “Page Last Reviewed or Updated: 20-November-2020″. Over a year ago and the latest filing they have online is 2018!

“An organization can be automatically revoked again if it fails to file required returns for three consecutive years,” the IRS notes. We can’t help but wonder if Zemlin et al got so greedy that they’ve put at risk their IRS “tax-exempt” status. As usual with the Linux Foundation, it’s not really transparent; their doors are shut, they’re only accountable to corporations they front for, and we’re meant to think they care about GNU/Linux users because they have “Linux” in their name. █