02.24.22

[Meme] Patent Invasion

Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 9:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO Lawlessness OK; It's about money, not principles

Summary: We’ve just seen that the European Council, which includes the President of the European Commission (Miss Ladson), is fine with violations of very fundamental rights at the EPO

European Council Complicit in European Patent Office (EPO) Abuses

Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 9:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Answer from the European Council to MEP's question about the EPO

Clare Daly (GUE/NGL); CC BY-SA 2.0Summary: The EPO continues to become more of a massive liability to the reputation and functioning of the European Union (EU); tolerating the profound corruption of Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos for the sake of imposing an illegal ‘legal’ system is something we might expect from Putin’s Russia, not Europe

READERS may remember this question which a member of the European Parliament submitted to the Council of the European Union (known as the “European Council”).

Well, the answer has just been published.

“It seems that the members of the European Council have failed to understand something fundamental.”Just to clarify, the European Council is “the EU institution that defines the general political direction and priorities of the European Union”. The members of the European Council are the heads of state or government of the 27 EU member states, the European Council President and the President of the European Commission.

So, what did the European Council have to say about the recent revelations concerning breaches of fundamental rights at the EPO?

Not a lot it seems:

The European Patent Office (EPO) is the executive body of the European Patent Organisation, an independent international organisation established by the European Patent Convention (EPC), which falls outside the institutional remit of the European Union.

The EPO Administrative Council, composed of representatives of the 38 States parties to the EPC, supervises all EPO activities and related administrative matters, including human resources questions. As the Honourable Member points out, the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation has ultimate jurisdiction over employment matters in the EPO.

It is therefore not for the Council to comment on this body’s internal matters.

So that’s it then? The European Council is not prepared to comment on established breaches of fundamental rights at the EPO because – allegedly – these are “internal matters” for the EPO.

“The fact that the ILOAT has “ultimate jurisdiction” over employment disputes at the EPO, doesn’t absolve the EU member states – all of which are also contracting states of the European Patent Convention – from their obligations under international law to safeguard and protect the fundamental rights of all EU citizens, including employees of the EPO.”It seems that the members of the European Council have failed to understand something fundamental. The fact that the ILOAT has “ultimate jurisdiction” over employment disputes at the EPO, doesn’t absolve the EU member states – all of which are also contracting states of the European Patent Convention – from their obligations under international law to safeguard and protect the fundamental rights of all EU citizens, including employees of the EPO.

There is something seriously wrong when the representatives of the majority of those states are prepared to repeatedly endorse measures which violate fundamental rights, such as the right to freedom of association.

But apparently the European Council can’t see that.

Reliable sources report that the MEP who submitted the question to the European Council was not impressed by the answer that she received and there may well be a follow-up.

Watch this space… █

Links 25/2/2022: GIMP 2.99.10, NetworkManager 1.36, and MythTV 32.0

Posted in News Roundup at 8:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux kernel edges closer to dropping ReiserFS • The Register

        Linux kernel developer Matthew Wilcox has proposed removing ReiserFS from the Linux kernel – a relatively rare step.

        This isn’t due to a problem or bug in ReiserFS: it still works fine and has plenty of features. The problem was that ReiserFS code in the kernel used some API calls that nothing else did, preventing them from being changed or enhanced. For now, one of the other ReiserFS developers has contributed a patch that removes the issue.

        ReiserFS has been stuck on version 3 for some fifteen years, and although there are proposals for Reiser4 and even Reiser5, development is not moving forward because its chief architect is still in prison for murdering his wife.

        Partly due to this lack of advancement, ReiserFS is no longer widely used. One of its main proponents, SUSE, switched to ext3, leading to debates about its future as long ago as 2008. Now, SUSE kernel developer Jan Kara is not opposing Wilcox’s idea, just proposing a slower route.

      • Intel energizes decades-old Linux kernel sub-project • The Register

        Intel announced a move on Wednesday that will inject fresh energy into a Linux kernel project that started close to two decades ago – and was lacking funding and contributors.

        The microprocessor giant has made an under-the-radar acquisition of Linutronix, a German developer house that provides services for Linux-powered industrial systems. Intel didn’t disclose the amount it paid for Linutronix, which is also an expert in real-time Linux applications. The acquisition comes as real-time industrial applications are set to make increasing use of low-latency communication between controllers, sensors, robots and tooling, and other equipment.

        Most interestingly, Linutronix is described by Intel as the architect of the PREEMPT_RT patch set, which when applied and enabled makes the Linux kernel as preemptible as possible. This in turn lowers internal latencies, which is very useful for those scheduling time-sensitive software threads to complete within a given deadline (using the deadline scheduler). This in turn is useful for ensuring, for example, incoming data is processed reliably within a tight time-frame.

        So far, PREEMPT_RT has lacked sufficient contributors and funding for mainline kernel integration and maintenance. Though folks have been building products that use the preemption patch, they did not contribute enough funding or feedback, and as a result development slowed. Linutronix has previously noted only a handful of people maintaining PREEMPT_RT.

    • Applications

      • NetworkManager 1.36 Released with Improved WPA3 Security, 5G NR Modem Support

        Coming a little over a month after NetworkManager 1.34, the NetworkManager 1.36 release is here with new features and numerous improvements, starting with improved support for WPA3 Wi-Fi network security by enabling a new H2E (hash to element) method for generating the SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals) password element.

        New features include support for 5G NR (New Radio) modems, support for the IWD (iNet wireless daemon) backend for Wi-Fi P2P in addition to wpa_supplicant. Users will be able to select the default Wi-Fi backend, wpa_supplicant or IWD, during build time.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Install Liquorix Kernel on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – LinuxCapable

        Liqourix Kernel is a free, open-source general-purpose Linux Kernel alternative to the stock kernel with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. It features custom settings and new features and is built to provide a responsive and smooth desktop experience, especially for new hardware. Liquorix Kernel is popular amongst Linux Gaming, streaming, and ultra-low latency requirements and often boasts the latest Linux Kernels, having multiple branches to choose from the stable, edge, and development.

      • How to Install or Upgrade Mesa Drivers on Linux Mint 20 – LinuxCapable

        With the release of modern graphics cards, it’s easy to forget that before they were standard in most gaming laptops and consoles – there was Mesa. The open-source software implementation translates API specifications into vendor-specific drivers so you can use high-end applications with your PC even if it has older hardware!

        Most Linux distributions feature Mesa drivers, given they are free and open-source before any proprietary drivers options, however for most Linux distributions that focus on stability first, you may find your Mesa drivers needing an update when new releases support newer graphic card hardware and technologies.

      • How To Access Linux Files From Windows 11 | Itsubuntu.com

        If you are using Linux and Windows on your PC or laptop om dual-booting mode then sometimes you might need to have access to the Linux files from Windows. Accessing Windows files or drive from Linux is easy as Linux has inbuilt support for it. For Windows users, there is various software available for it. Thanks to Windows Insiders preview build 20211, You will find a new feature: wsl –mountthat lets you attach a physical disk and mount inside WSL 2, and also enables you to access filesystems that aren’t natively supported by Windows (such as ext4).

      • Add Worker Nodes To Amazon EKS Cluster – OSTechNix

        In this article, we are going to learn about how to add Node Group/Worker nodes into the Amazon EKS Cluster. Before getting into this guide, refer to the below guide to learn about how to create Kubernetes Cluster (Amazon EKS) in AWS cloud.

      • How To Enable Randomized MAC Addresses on Android Device

        The first and foremost question might be pops-up in your mind after seeing the title, what are actually randomized MAC addresses on Android? Well, it’s all about your privacy. Google developers made it possible for your Android to keep your information safe and secure. However, the feature started with Android 8 till now. The randomization of MAC addresses is network-based nowadays. Le’s make things more clear.

      • How o Install Zulip Chat Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Zulip Chat Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Zulip is a free and open-source chat application used for sharing private and public messages. It provides threaded conversations efficiently and handles thousands of concurrent chat sessions and is one of the fastest-growing open-source chat servers today.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Zulip Chat Server on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How To Search For a File In Linux

        No matter how careful you are about file management, you’ll eventually find yourself wondering where a particular document is. This is true on Mac, Windows, and even Linux.

        How do you search for a file in Linux? As it turns out, the operating system has some very powerful built-in tools for making file searches. Here’s what you need to know.

      • How To Install Xrdp Server On Ubuntu 22.04 | Remote Desktop | Itsubuntu.com

        Xrdp is an open-source remote desktop protocol server that provides a graphical user interface to remote machines using RDP (Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol). xrdp works perfectly with the RDP clients: like desktop, Microsoft remote desktop client, NeutrinoRDP and FreeRDP. RDP transport is encrypted using TLS by default.

      • How To Install Teampass Password Manager on AlmaLinux 8 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Teampass Password Manager on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Teampass is an open-source password manager that helps you to store and manage all your passwords from the central location. It offers a large set of features that allows you to manage all your passwords in an organized way. You can define access rights on users to allow them to access only a given set of data. Teampass uses MariaDB as a database backend to store the password securely.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Teampass Password Manager on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and Rocky Linux distributions.

      • How to Install RPM Packages on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – Linux Shout

        RPM Packages are native to RedHat-based Linux, however not for Debian-based. Hence, in this tutorial, we learn the steps to convert the RPM package or Deb package and install it on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 LTS Linux.

        Ubuntu Linux is popular because its official repositories offer thousands of packages to directly install on the system. Even to make things easy this Linux developer offers GUI software Center. Well, on one the installation of Debian packages is pretty easy on Ubuntu using the APT package manager. However, that’s not possible for RPM ones. Because they are created for RedHat-based operating systems such as CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, and others.

        Although, we hardly require any RPM package to install on Ubuntu because most of the time software available in RPM format will also have Deb binary. Nevertheless, in some situations, we do need RPM to DEB conversion, and to perform there is an open-source tool called “Alien”.

      • How to Install Hiawatha Web Server in Ubuntu

        With more users embracing cloud computing technologies, the deployment of web applications and services on the web is continuously increasing. Such web-based applications are usually at risk of security vulnerabilities depending on firewall settings and web server technologies used to run them. While a firewall issue is easy to fix, the same cannot be said about a compromised web server.

        This article guide recognizes Hiawatha as a reputable web server and will therefore walk us through its installation and configuration on Ubuntu 20.04 and later.

      • How to Install FeatherNotes on Debian 11 Bullseye – LinuxCapable

        This article recognizes Hiawatha as a reputable web server and will therefore walk us through its installation and configuration on Ubuntu 20.04 and later.

      • How to Install Arduino IDE on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout

        Learn the steps to install Arduino IDE on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or 20.04 Focal Fossa to write your programming code.

        The Arduino IDE is a convenient development environment for the Arduino, a circuit board with a microcontroller, i.e. a kind of mini PC. This IDE – Integrated development environment includes a text editor for writing code, a message area, a text console, a toolbar with buttons for common functions, and a set of menus. We can connect connects to the Arduino board with it to upload and communicate with programs.

      • How to Install ‘Python-Pexpect’ Module in Linux

        Pexpect is a Python module that allows you to spawn child applications, manage them as well as acknowledge expected patterns in their output. In addition, it is used for automating interactive applications such as ftp, ssh, passwd just to mention a few. You can also use it to automate Linux commands, setup scripts, and Software testing.

        In this guide, we will demonstrate the installation of the Python-Pexpect python module in Linux.

      • How To Install Signal 5.33.0 On Ubuntu And Other Distributions | Tips On UNIX

        This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to download and install Signal 5.33.0 on Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Linux Mint 20.3, Fedora 35, Manjaro Linux, AlmaLinux 8, and Rocky Linux 8.

        Signal is a free, cross-platform application for communication purposes, it’s main aim is to protect users’ PRIVACY and is one of the best alternatives to Whatsapp messenger.

        With Signal messenger you can do HD Voice / Video calls, Chat, etc.

      • How to Install Saltstack Master and Minion on Debian 11

        SaltStack is a free, open-source, and Python-based automation and configuration management software. It is a command-line tool that helps you to manage your infrastructure from a central location. SoltStack is made from four components.

      • How to install DokuWiki on Ubuntu 20.04 – NextGenTips

        In this tutorial we are going to learn how to install DokuWiki on Ubuntu 20.04.

        DokuWiki is easy to use and simple open-source wiki software it that doesn’t require a database. Something that doesn’t require any storage space is something incredible. Lets highlight it more.

        The reason why we need this wiki software is that, it is easy to install and use, it doesn’t require specialized system requirements such as storage space, RAM, it has high language base support, its open-source and also device independent.

        We have other alternatives apart from DokuWiki such as: confluence, clickup, notion, xwiki, bloomfire, yext, guru and many more.

      • How to Utilize Python for Basic Linux System Administration and Networking Tasks

        Python is a great programming language for automating system administration tasks on Linux systems. With its wide selection of different libraries, many of them can be used to improve the efficiency of various tasks. Using the examples below, you can easily run Linux system commands, work with files and directories, perform networking tasks and automate authentication processes in just a few seconds.

      • How to Reload bashrc in Bash

        Bash is a UNIX shell and command language that you’ll find on almost all Linux distros. First released in 1989 by Brian Fox, Bash has been the default shell for most Linux distros. The name “Bash” is actually an acronym for “Bourne Again Shell”, an intended pun of the Bourne shell it replaces.

        In this guide, we’ll have a quick look at bashrc and how to reload it after making any changes.

      • How to Rename Index Postgres

        This article leads to creating and renaming the index of relations. We have used PostgreSQL and Windows 10 to implement some elementary examples.

      • Postgres Setval Sequence

        PostgreSQL sequences are created to automatically insert or update values on function calls like Nextval, Setval, and currval functions. In this article, we will be discussing the Setval function present in the list of sequence functions. The Setval function is called in a sequence when we have to change the next value in the current sequence due to some conditions. The manual alteration in a sequence is done by the Setval function in PostgreSQL.

      • PostgreSQL Grouping Sets

        PostgreSQL sequences are created to automatically insert or update values on function calls. The Setval function is called in a sequence when we have to change the next value in the current sequence due to some conditions. This article will discuss Setval function present in the list of sequence functions.

      • PostgreSQL Change Column Type

        You may have heard or known about SQL. Technically SQL is a language for databases that allows managing the stored information in the database using the tables by querying these tables and other related objects. Likewise, SQL, PostgreSQL also support manipulation in the databases with the help of queries. A user can easily alter data types in PostgreSQL. In this article, our main focus is to examine the concept of PostgreSQL and other relevant information related to PostgreSQL. Most importantly we will discuss how to change column type in PostgreSQL using Windows 10 with some interesting examples that will clear the concept about PostgreSQL queries.

      • Make Applications Start in the Center of Screen in Ubuntu – It’s FOSS

        You might have experienced it but never paid enough attention to it.

        If you open an application in Ubuntu, the application window usually starts in the top left, not at the center.

        Is it a big deal? No, probably not.

      • Ubuntu 22.04 System Backup and Restore

        The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to install Timeshift on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish and use the program to perform a backup of the system, and subsequently restore the system from that backup.

        Most Linux users love to customize their Linux system to their liking. If your system becomes unusable, all of this work put into customizing your system will be lost, because you have to reinstall Ubuntu and start over.

        Timeshift is an application that will backup your system settings and files. It does NOT backup personal files. Taking a snapshot with Timeshift will allow you to browse that snapshot any time, like you would a normal directory of files. If your system gets corrupted or goes through some undesirable change, it is easy to restore your system as it was by using Timeshift.

    • Games

      • Roguebook adds a timed Tournament system, new character DLC

        Roguebook, the singeplayer roguelike deckbuilder from the developer of Faeria just got a big upgrade with a new Tournament system, plus a DLC character.

        [...]

        The unique treasure of Fugoro, Merchant of Wonders, is the Magic Staff: the first attack Fugoro performs each turn generates +5 power.

      • Challenging epic RPG adventure ‘Tails of Iron’ gets Linux support | GamingOnLinux

        This is a bit of a surprise. Tails of Iron from Odd Bug Studio that released for Windows back in September 2021 just added official Linux support. An announcement went up on Steam today, with a short and sweet single-line mention of the new support.

        About the game: “Set in a grim land plagued by war, Tails of Iron is a hand-drawn RPG Adventure with punishingly brutal combat. As Redgi, heir to the Rat Throne, you must restore your broken Kingdom by banishing the merciless Frog Clan and their ferocious leader, Greenwart.

      • Dota 2 gets another new hero with Primal Beast, Techies reworked | GamingOnLinux

        Dota 2 just got a pretty huge update that not only brings in a fierce new hero with Primal Beast, but finally reworks Techies in the gameplay patch too.

      • A Day before Launch, The Steam Deck Has Almost 800 Games Ready (Playable and Verified) – Boiling Steam

        As expected we should be reaching 1000 titles playable for the Steam Deck before the end of the month. We are now at 783 titles at the time of writing, just before the official launch scheduled for the 25th of February 2022.

      • All Hands on Deck: Preparing for the Steam Deck – Boiling Steam

        The end times are nigh! There is a lot of hype for a handheld Linux gaming device from Valve, that Steam Deck you’ve been hearing about. I have to admit, after being curious but not completely on board at the announcement, I find myself being swept up in the hype train. But let me temper those expectations (I prefer to be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed) and let you know my thoughts going into the launch this Friday, as well as catching you up on the flurry of news we’ve recently covered.

        While I wasn’t sure at first, I did try to get a reservation as soon as I could. I managed, through dumb luck, to reserve the 256 GB model within 5-10 minutes of the reservations going live. So I’ll be the first of the Boiling Steam staff to have a Deck, and fingers crossed I’m in an early shipment to get you my impressions, hacking, and review as soon as possible.

      • Steam Deck – what to expect for launch tomorrow with nearly 800 titles Playable | GamingOnLinux

        Apart from mass hype, what can we actually expect when the Steam Deck releases tomorrow? Here’s what’s going on.

        Starting at 10 AM PST / 6PM UTC, Valve will begin sending out emails to people in the first batch of reservations. So keep an eye on your emails and Steam app notifications. Once you get it, you have 72 hours to make the full purchase otherwise it goes to the next person in the queue.

        When this happens, the embargo on all coverage also ends. Valve said they sent out a Steam Deck to “roughly 100 media outlets” (including yours truly). So expect loads of very different takes on it.

        As for the Dock, Valve aren’t yet giving out more details but they did say it won’t be as early as they hoped. It will be available sometime “in late spring”.

      • Musk says he wants to install Steam games in Tesla infotainment centers | Ars Technica

        Since Tesla first introduced in-car gaming with a 2019 port of Cuphead, the list of games available on its “Tesla Arcade” platform has slowly grown to include just under 20 games. Now, though, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed interest in expanding that list of Tesla-compatible games to include the tens of thousands of titles available on the Steam gaming platform.

      • Dwarf Fortress gets a roadmap, Linux version included | GamingOnLinux

        The new Steam version of Dwarf Fortress sounds exciting, bringing in a whole new generation to the classic and they’ve finally given something of a roadmap to release. Still the same great classic game but modernised with official graphics and sound effects – hooray!

        Included in their post is a 6-point plan of work still to be done that includes various amounts of UI work with hotkeys and tooltips, the continued work on graphics, bug fixing, Steam Workshop support, Steam Achievements, supporting the different game modes and the confirmation of Linux and macOS builds too!

      • Heroic Games Launcher 2.2 (plus a hotfix) adds GOG support | GamingOnLinux

        For the new GOG support, Heroic is able to download games using the Galaxy API (Windows and macOS) and for Linux you can use the offline installers that developers put up. It also supports DLC, you can run native Linux downloads using the Steam Runtime (requires Steam installed of course) which can fix some dependencies errors and pick languages for games that support it.

      • 3.3 ‘Libra’ update out now for Stellaris | GamingOnLinux

        Paradox Interactive has released the 3.3 ‘Libra’ Update for Stellaris, as their “custodians” initiative continues with a dedicated team working on free updates. There’s a huge assortment of fixes available from game balance to AI adjustments.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KFLuff – New KRunner web shortcuts for development and user support

          I added some KRunner web shortcuts recently to KIO (MR600, MR631), and I’d like to tell you about them since they made my life significantly easier, and they might make yours easier too if you contribute to KDE. The inclusions from MR600, namely Invent and Invent Repo, were added in KDE Frameworks 5.88, whereas the new ones from MR 631 I expect will land in 5.92.

          KRunner’s web shortcuts, or web runners, are very convenient once you get used to them. After enabling them, you can type something in the format “keyword: queryhere”, and your query will be immediately sent and the result shown in your browser. That is to say, if you open KRunner and type “dd: kde”, your browser will open and directly show the result of the search for “kde” in DuckDuckGo. This provides a faster workflow as you no longer need to open your browser, type the address of the search provider, wait for it to load and then search; you open krunner, type and search, loading the page once. Web shortcuts like this can be applied to virtually any website which provides a search query URL, and you can decide whether they’re separated by : or by spaces. I prefer spaces.

        • The market

          Here is also an accelerated timelapse of the screen recording captures while making this digital painting illustration with the software Krita 5.0.2 on Kubuntu Linux. The video is 2min43 long but the original time was around 15h and it was painted on a Intuos 4 XL.

    • Distributions

      • New Releases

        • MythTV 32.0 Released

          The MythTV Team is pleased to announce the release of MythTV version v32.0

          This release is the first release of the new stable branch fixes/32.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Call for Projects and Mentors for Outreachy May 2022 cohort – Fedora Community Blog

          The Fedora Project is participating in the upcoming round of Outreachy. We need more project ideas and mentors! The last day to propose a project or to apply as a general mentor is March 3rd, 2022.

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

        • Inspecting containerized Python applications in a cluster | Red Hat Developer

          Container technologies that are easy to maintain, extend, ship, and run are the new de facto standard for large-scale application deployments. Thanks to cluster orchestrators such as Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, these runnable units are deployed to clusters to provide the desired functionality on a large scale.

          To ensure the application is shipped in a healthy state, it is often up to developers to confirm that each runnable unit behaves as expected in the environment where it will be deployed. This article introduces Amun, a tool created and used by Project Thoth to inspect containerized Python applications. Running such inspections before deployment can reveal problems up and down the stack—including incompatibilities with dependencies, the operating system, or other parts of the environment.

        • SQL cache stores and more in Data Grid 8.3

          Red Hat Data Grid is a distributed, cloud-based datastore offering very fast response times as an in-memory database. The latest version, Data Grid 8.3, features cross-site replication with more observability and two new types of SQL cache store for scaling applications with large datasets. This version also brings improved security, support for Helm charts, and a better command-line interface (CLI).

          This article is an overview of new features and enhancements in this latest version of Red Hat Data Grid.

        • Service providers: The digital link between industries, society and enterprise IT

          Last year, Red Hat shared our plan to evolve our global Telecommunications, Media and Entertainment (TME) organization to better suit the needs of our partners and customers. Since then, we’ve been connecting and building within our ecosystem to deliver solutions that answer our customer’s biggest needs, one of which is helping navigate the global shift in the way services are delivered across both the TME industry and society as a whole.

          Industry-leading partners and connected organizations are working together with the telco ecosystem to build on each other’s innovations in new ways, working together to accelerate the pace of industry change, with a focus on building frictionless customer journeys. For example, service providers are helping banks meet the demands of customers for real-time digital services like hyper-personalization, real-time fraud detection and next-gen connectivity – while also giving the unbanked access to financial services. From mobile banking and payments, connected vehicles, public safety monitors, private 5G and more, service providers are fundamental in providing the many technologies that are driving a completely new landscape for improved societies and global transformation.

        • Digital transformation: Do’s and don’ts for IT leaders to succeed | The Enterprisers Project

          Digital transformation is an inevitable part of today’s uncertain and evolving marketplace. It applies the power of data science and marketing technology to shape your business around new possibilities. Digital transformation initiatives also help you better engage your customers and workforce, improving your ability to compete.

          However, leading a digital transformation initiative can be daunting. With the pandemic causing constant shifts in consumer behavior and expectations, it’s easy to make mistakes that could adversely affect your organization.

          If you’re also struggling to navigate the business benefits of digital transformation, here are a few do’s and don’ts to follow.

        • Quickly find containerized packages built for IBM Power (ppc64le) – IBM Developer

          Several years ago, the IBM Power open source ecosystem team developed a search engine called Open Source Power Availability Tool (OSPAT). The purpose of OSPAT was, and still is, to address a pain point that many developers, sellers, business partners, and other IBM Power users brought to the team: They didn’t know how to (or couldn’t) find open source packages built specifically for IBM Power. And so, OSPAT was created.

          In the years since we first launched OSPAT, we’ve made many enhancements to improve the user experience and to expand the search functionality and results. So, in that spirit, we are happy to announce that, by popular demand, we’ve made yet another improvement to the tool. You can now search for containerized packages!

        • How Baicells and Red Hat are driving connectivity and wireless accessibility for a 5G future

          As 5G technologies become more prevalent in propelling radio access network (RAN) capabilities, the question remains, how can this technology be made more accessible worldwide? For the past seven years, Baicells has been working to bring high-speed internet to organizations and end-users across the world, including areas lacking internet connectivity. To continue this effort, 5G technologies need a powerful open RAN ecosystem to establish broad network interoperability and provide internet in a variety of use cases.

      • Debian Family

        • Discover SLAX, a Debian Desktop So Tiny on Your Pocket

          SLAX is a modern, lightweight desktop operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux designed to run on a USB stick. It offers all software available on Debian repository and enables you in these years to run LibreOffice or Chromium Browser in just under half a GB memory, with tens of thousands software packages available for both old and modern computers, while any other OS cannot today. That’s SLAX and we will discover it on this article.

          SLAX is a portable, lightweight computer operating system from Czech Republic. It is based on Debian GNU/Linux and prior to version 9, Slackware. It is developed as a hobby project for more than ten years by one person, Tomas Matejicek, and independently funded by donation via Patreon and its computer shop.

        • Lightweight Linux distribution Slax rides again with v11.2

          It appears that the diminutive Linux distribution Slax is not dead. It’s been a while, but version 11.2 has finally popped out.

          By “a while” we mean more than two years, according to the maintainer. However, it’s a welcome update, even if some of its fans might have moved on to alternatives during its hiatus.

          Slax is an impressively compact distribution and will boot from USB mass storage devices as well as traditional hard disks or CD/DVD media (the slots for which are disappearing from hardware faster than the once ubiquitous floppy).

          The distro’s homepage claims it will also run on 128MB of RAM, although a full 512MB is needed if one wants some web browser action. Chrome is, however, missing this time around (although “you can still install it with a single click or two”).

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS Released with Linux Kernel 5.13 and Mesa 21.2 from Ubuntu 21.10

          Released on April 23rd, 2020, the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system series is a long-term supported one that will receive software and security updates for a least five years, until April 2025, on the desktop.

          Canonical also provides the community with up-to-date installation media every six months incorporating newer Linux kernel and Mesa graphics stacks. The Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS point release is here with Linux kernel 5.13 and Mesa 21.2.6 graphics stacks from Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri).

        • Nautilus 42 Arrives in Ubuntu 22.04 Daily Builds

          Nautilus 42 was released as part of the recent GNOME 42 beta and it’s making the jump to the Jammy Jellyfish, albeit in a version that lacks the libadwaita redressing offered in the GTK4 port.

          Ubuntu 21.10 shipped with Nautilus 41, so Ubuntu 22.04 shipping with Nautilus 42 means there’s a larger change log than usual, with an improved file conflict UI, improved file renaming UI, and support for file search based on creation time included.

        • Mir Release 2.7.0 – Mir – Ubuntu Community Hub

          We are pleased to announce Mir 2.7

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • FreeDOS puts out first new version in six years

        Nearly six years after its last release, FreeDOS 1.3 came out at the weekend… in case you’re feeling nostalgic for a 1980s enterprise-grade OS.

        DOS ain’t dead. Although the long history of MS-DOS officially ended with version 6.22 in 1994, there have long been multiple other DOS-compatible OSes out there. And unlike all the others, FreeDOS is open source, legal, legitimate, and free to use.

        IBM continued development on PC DOS until 2003. Big Blue still hosts downloads of the last version, PC DOS 7.1, complete with FAT32 and LBA support. Its lead developer, Vernon Brooks, has a comprehensive reference site with all you could ever need to know about DOS’s history.

        Digital Research’s DR-DOS was bought by Novell, sold off to Caldera, and ended up an important exhibit in the Department of Justice’s monopoly case against Microsoft in the 1990s, as The Reg covered in a six-part report at the time.

        Caldera released the source code to the DR DOS 7.01 kernel, but changed its mind and closed it again, so although it too is available, the legality of using it is questionable.

      • PostgreSQL: pg_back 2.1.0 released

        pg_back is a tool that can dump all your databases to files, with the configuration of the server and roles/tablespaces definitions.

      • Taskwarrior: The most underrated open-source Task manager

        Taskwarrior is an open-source, free to-do/ task lists manager that works from command-line as a terminal application.

        Taskwarrior first release was on 3 June 2008, by Paul Beckingham, as it gained popularity over time, it gets an active open-source developer community that keeps it up to date.

        Despite it comes in a command-line form, it is pretty easy to learn and use in daily task tracking and management.

      • Miro Kredit: Why we support the OSI [Ed: Miro Kredit does not seem to know who really controls the OSI; it’s not people]

      • Web Browsers

      • FSFE

        • FSFE at FOSDEM: A vital Devroom, virtual chats, and waffles

          At the prominent annual conference for Free Software, FOSDEM, we exchanged opinions and chatted with people from the Free Software community. We raised awareness on wider issues that impact our movement in the Legal and Policy Devroom, co-hosted by the FSFE. Enjoy the videos from the talks and stay in touch via Matrix until the next FOSDEM.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • Development version: GIMP 2.99.10 Released – GIMP

            GIMP 2.99.10 is once again a pretty massive step in our development plans toward GIMP 3.0. We redesigned some core concepts of GIMP (“linked layers”, item locks’ GUI, dynamics switch), substantially improve the new API further into releasable state, babl and GEGL gets crazy optimizations going on, macOS and Wayland get more love, all the while improving file formats… And more!

          • GIMP 2.99.10 is out! New ‘Layer set’, ‘.cur’ file & Improved Wayland Support | UbuntuHandbook

            The new development release for the next major 3.0 of the popular image editor, GIMP 2.99.10, is out last night!

            The GIMP website does not announce the release at the moment. According to the welcome dialog, the new release introduced the new ‘Layer set’ concept to replace ‘Linked layers’. It also added Microsoft Windows Cursor file format (.cur files) support, and improved support for Wayland, macOS Big Sur, as well as PSD / JPEG-XL / HEIF files.

      • Programming/Development

        • #36: pub/sub for live market monitoring with R and Redis

          There is an saying that “you can take the boy out of the valley, but you cannot the valley out of the boy” so for those of us who spent a decade or two in finance and on trading floors, having “some” market price information available becomes second nature. And/or sometimes it is just good fun to program this.

          A good while back Josh posted a gist on a simple-yet-robust while loop. It (very cleverly) uses his quantmod package to access the SP500 in “real-time”. (I use quotes here because at the end of retail broadband one is not at the same market action as someone co-located in a New Jersey data center. It is however not delayed: as an index, it is not immediately tradeable as a stock, etf, or derivative may be all of which are only disseminated as delayed price information, usually by ten minutes.) I quite enjoyed the gist and used it and started tinkering with it. For example, it collects data but only saves (i.e. “persists”) it after market close. If for whatever reason one needs to restart recent history is gone. In any event, I used his code and generalized it a little and published this about a year ago as function intradayMarketMonitor() in my dang package. (See this blog post announcing it.) The chart of the left shows this in action, the chart is a snapshot from a couple of days ago when the vignettes (more on them below) were written.

        • Oplà IoT Kit Gets Italian, Spanish, German and French Translations

          A big part of the Oplà IoT Kit’s value comes from its online content. When you get the kit, one of the first tasks is to visit opla.arduino.cc, where a host of awesome resources are available.

          And now it’s expanding on its usefulness by adding four new languages to the content.

        • Qt Creator 7 Beta2 released

          Qt Safe Renderer 2.0 will provide a new Monitor component for improved functional safety.

        • Qt Safe Renderer – Introducing the Monitor

          Qt Safe Renderer is our solution for the creation of user interfaces to safety critical systems. Available since 2017 the Qt Safe Renderer is used by multiple customers and certified for several different functional safety standards. With the upcoming version 2.0 we are introducing a new approach for validating the correct rendering of safety critical information – the Monitor.

        • Qt Installer Framework and Online Installer 4.3.0 released

          We are happy to announce the Qt Installer Framework, Online Installer, and Maintenance Tool 4.3.0 releases today.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Bash Scripting: Arithmetic operations

            The need to perform basic arithmetic operations is common in all types of programming, including in Bash scripts. A Linux system has multiple ways to perform arithmetic operations, and it is up to the user to decide the best method for the scenario at hand.

            In this tutorial, you will learn several ways to use arithmetic operations to perform basic calculations inside of a Bash script on Linux. Check out the examples below to see how these different methods work.

          • Bash Scripting: Execute command from within the script

            Bash scripts are, essentially, just a series of Linux commands that have been chained together in order to accomplish something. Depending on your code, there are a few different ways to execute commands inside the script.

            In this tutorial, we will go over a few ways to execute commands from within a Bash script on a Linux system.

          • Bash Script: Hello World Example

            When getting started with a new scripting or programming language, such as Bash scripting on Linux, the first thing a user learns to create is a Hello World script.

            This serves as a basic introduction into Bash scripts, and gives you a simple idea of how a script is formatted in Bash. In this tutorial, we will take you through the steps to create your first Hello World Bash script on a Linux system.

            It does not matter which Linux distro you are running, and you do not need any previous experience to follow along with the steps below. Let’s get started!

        • Rust

          • This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 431
          • Rust 1.59.0 released [LWN.net]

            Version 1.59.0 of the Rust language has been released. There are a number of new features, including support for inline assembly (in unsafe blocks, naturally), the ability to use tuples and slices on the left-hand side of an assignment, const generic defaults, and more. Incremental compilation is also disabled by default in this release to work around a known bug.

          • Announcing Rust 1.59.0 | Rust Blog

            The Rust team has published a new version of Rust, 1.59.0. Rust is a programming language that is empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.

          • Rust compiler ambitions for 2022 (Inside Rust) [LWN.net]

            The Inside Rust Blog has posted the Rust compiler team’s goals for this year in the hope of encouraging others to help.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • New media types in 2022 (100%)

        At the beginning of this year I updated a hundred of media types associated with file name extensions in the file called /etc/mime.types, distributed by the media-types package. Most changes are additions originating from recent submissions to the IANA. Amon the themes that caught my attention, there are telecommunications, computer security, commerce, healthcare and industrial automation. The vast majority of the update come from western provenance. Did the rest of the World decide to move ahead without us?

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

        • Security

          • 10 Best Free and Open Source Anti-Malware Tools

            Security is paramount. Security involves defence in depth. Approaching security one step at a time, with consistency and rigour, you can mitigate threats, and keep intruders at bay.

            Intruders use a variety of different techniques in an attempt to compromise a system. For example, systems can be attacked by denial of service, cracking, intrusion, snooping (intercepting the data of another user), or viruses/worms/Trojan horses. To have a secure box, a system therefore needs a variety of defences.

            Anti-malware is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. The most common types of malware include viruses, worms, trojans, ransomware, bots or botnets, adware, spyware, rootkits, fileless malware, and malvertising.

            This article focuses on the best anti-malware tools for Linux. We only include free and open source software.

            Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks chart.

          • Microsoft’s Critical Windows Security Tool Is an Epic Fail [Ed: Microsoft is a back doors company, not a security company]

            Resetting a Windows machine and deleting all the data on it can be useful for businesses or before you sell a laptop, but only if it deletes all of your user information. Apparently, Microsoft’s updated data wipe tool is doing the opposite and is actually leaving data behind.

          • Security updates for Thursday [LWN.net]

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (thunderbird), Fedora (php), openSUSE (jasper and thunderbird), Oracle (389-ds-base, kernel, openldap, and python-pillow), Red Hat (cyrus-sasl and samba), and SUSE (cyrus-sasl, firefox, jasper, kernel-rt, nodejs10, nodejs14, nodejs8, and thunderbird).

          • Ubuntu launches security fixes for all versions following recent threats | TechRadar

            Canonical has released a new major update for multiple versions of the Ubuntu OS as it looks to target more than a dozen high-severity vulnerabilities recently discovered in the Linux kernel.

            The new update fixes five flaws found in all supported Ubuntu releases (Impish Indri, Focal Fossa, Bionic Beaver, as well as 16.04 and 14.04). Others are affecting specific versions of the OS.

          • Kali Linux 2022.1 is your one-stop-shop for penetration testing | TechRepublic

            For anyone who deals with security, penetration testing is often a necessary evil. Sometimes you cannot know what vulnerabilities lie in your systems until you intentionally try to break them. Fortunately, with the help of penetration testing, you’re not actually breaking those systems, you’re only knocking on their doors to see how possible it is to crash through.

            That’s why platforms like Kali Linux are so important. With pen-testing Linux distributions, you have all the tools you need to run nearly every known penetration test on your servers, desktops and network.

            Offensive Security recently unleashed the first iteration of Kali Linux for 2022. In this new release, dubbed simply 2022.1, you’ll find improved accessibility features, SSH compatibility for legacy protocols and more new tests to try.

            Let’s dig into Kali Linux 2022.1 and see if this Linux distribution should be your go-to penetration testing tool.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • #KeepItOn: 2022 elections and internet shutdowns watch

        Throughout 2021, the #KeepItOn coalition witnessed governments in Uganda, Zambia, Russia, Niger, and the Republic of the Congo hit the kill switch during elections, disconnecting millions of people from the internet — and their civic rights.

We Need to Start Self-Hosting Wherever and Whenever Possible

Posted in Free/Libre Software at 2:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum f5b17f3fc49d1479aa249d9127e1992b
Site Increasing Gemini Focus
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The clown computing bubble is going to burst sooner or later, just like social control media; we need to prepare for the implosion and keep information circulating

TONS of stuff has happened over the past 24 hours (political issues aside; we try to abstain from touching ‘pure’ politics or purely political issues in order to stay focused).

We’ve added IRC functionality (through PHP-based bots; 5 of them in total), everything was then added to Git (locally-hosted), we’ve added a way to distinguish gemini:// links (as shown in the video above), and we’ve added all site-specific PHP files to Git (WordPress and CSS files for the most part). Sooner or later we will start adding Gemini links to Daily Links, with the specified protocol shown to avoid confusion (we’ll also try not to link to social control media, as noted in a separate video today).

“Some time soon we might do video tutorials on how to set up one’s Gemini capsule from scratch on one’s own computer.”The direction we’re taking may seem outlandish to some, but old hype is dying in a dumpster fire (like Facebook’s stock) and new things are emerging with a lot of promise, especially when it comes to emancipating so-called ‘netizens’. As an associate put it this evening, “self-hosting ought to be encouraged whenever possible for as long as it remains legal. Perhaps it can be kept legal if enough people (re-)gain awareness of how useful and easy it is.”

Some time soon we might do video tutorials on how to set up one’s Gemini capsule from scratch on one’s own computer. To use/access Gemini be sure to get one of the many clients available for almost every platform.

Don’t be alarmed if there’s a complete avoidance of all social control media; we’ll still do Daily Links and all things as usual. I will be able to devote more time to Daily Links, I’m just not sure if Twitter and ‘chums’ will be part of the circulation (those are waning rapidly; some sites go offline completely). Dropping all social control media would certainly mean less traffic, but it would also means less time spent on social control media and potentially more time spent creating things in the site (videos and stuff). In the short term we plan to add more news picks, some of them from gemini://, and we’ll link a lot less to sites which became spammy (a growing proportion of today’s Web). █

[Meme] Josef the Spectator

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

You don't need to negotiate with staff; I can accuse mothers of 'blasphemy'

Summary: The EPO‘s fake chief (Josef) has done absolutely nothing to hold Benoît Battistelli accountable and keep António Campinos honest; he’s more than complicit and he was recently rewarded for this complicity, along with his deputy, the 'Borg'

Iceland President: The 'king' in 'viking' means we vote for kings

“An Earthquake Would be Needed for the Administrative Council… Not to Support My Major Proposals.” -Benoît Battistelli

Better Late Than Never: ILO Subjects the EPO’s Management to Some Belated Justice (Sans the Removal of Immunity, so Nobody is Being Held Accountable)

Posted in Courtroom, Europe, Law, Patents at 1:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 2df8a649d4e4f273063b25e62fde9ca7
ILO Smackdown
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: There’s some good news from Geneva; the EPO is being served many rulings that reaffirm its negative stigma in spite of António Campinos wasting millions of Euros on lawyers who fight his own staff [1, 2]

TODAY is a pretty “crazy” day for us, so we cannot cover EPO affairs as much as we’d like*.

We’ve decided it’s best to focus on Git and IRC, but meanwhile a lot is happening at the EPO. As noted by the staff union this morning, there’s belated coverage here about “industrial action at the EPO” and some decent early comments like: “Well, according to Management, Quality is Quantity.” Another person has said: “It is amazing that the tenant of the 10th floor has not yet attempted to restaure the preceding situation. The EPO is held hostage by a clique of people who behave like the worth employers of the 19th century. The tenant want to extend his contract! He was called in to restaure social peace but has not done one thing in this respect! A shame on the AC!”

The staff union has meanwhile translated the article into German [PDF] and French [PDF].

Similarly, the staff union produced German [PDF] and French [PDF] versions of the document discussed in the video above. As promised in the video (recorded about 2 hours earlier than this post), for the PDF-lazy we’re producing an HTML equivalent:

24 February 2022
su22012cp – 0.2.1/5.1/5.2

EPO cases of the 133rd Session of the ILOAT: The most salient judgments

In its 133rd Session, the Tribunal ruled on 51 cases among which 12 EPO cases. For the second time after the judgments on the unlawful strike regulations, the Tribunal ruled in Judgment 4482 that an EPO reform, “Social Democracy“, breached the fundamental right to freedom of association. Judgments 4488, 4489 and 4490 sanctioned the EPO’s institutional harassment of a former Principal Director and awarded above 250.000€ of damages in total. Judgment 4491 ordered the reinstatement of a single mother with babies (at the material time) unlawfully charged with fraud by the Investigative Unit which made an unfair and distorted analysis of the facts. This paper provides more details.

GENERAL DECISION AND RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION

Judgment No. 4482

The right to freedom of association implies the right for staff associations to regulate their own affairs, including the election of staff representatives. The Tribunal quashed Article 6 of CA/D 2/14 introducing Article 35(5) ServRegs and Circular No.355.

At the outset, the Tribunal recalled that, if in principle, a general decision cannot be challenged by a staff member unless and until an individual decision is taken adversely affecting the staff member, an implementing decision is not required in cases where the general decision has an immediate and adverse effects on individual rights.

The Tribunal developed a two-part test for the receivability of a direct challenge against a general decision: (1) the existence of an individual right, (2) whether the decision has an immediate and adverse effect on this individual right.

On the existence of an individual right, the Tribunal recalled that the right to associate freely, which encompasses the right to strike has long been recognized by it for officials of international organizations and is protected under Article 30 ServRegs as a term of appointment for EPO staff, thus acknowledging it as an individual right. Of importance, the Tribunal equally based this recognition on various international instruments, including the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the 1966 ICCPR and the 1966 ICESC.

On the immediate and adverse effect on the right to associate freely, the Tribunal recalled that international organizations must refrain from interfering in the affairs of staff

associations or unions, which have the right to manage their own affairs, including the right to freely elect their representatives, irrespective of whether or not the associations/unions are established or operate under the organization’s staff regulations.

Consequently, the Tribunal ruled that the new regime was in violation of the right of staff to freely associate. The Tribunal quashed Article 6 of CA/D 2/14 which introduced Article 35(5) ServRegs and Circular No.355 without retroactive effect – an intrusion into the powers of the Administrative Council justified by the fundamental nature of the right protected. The Tribunal ordered that former Article 35(6) ServRegs applies mutatis mutandis to the future elections of staff representatives for the Staff Committees.

UNLAWFUL DECISION OF TRANSFER AND OPINION OF INTERNAL APPEAL BODY

Judgment No. 4488

Deference given to the decision of an internal appeal body on an unlawful transfer decision that did not respect the dignity of the staff member being assigned to a post that did not correspond to the same level of duties. The Tribunal set aside the impugned decision and awarded 35,000€ in moral damages.

In this case, the Complainant challenged the decision to transfer her to another post. Insofar as the favorable opinion from the Internal Appeals Committee (“IAC”) was not followed by the President in the final decision, the Complainant requested the Tribunal to set aside the said decision and to award her material damages for loss of income as well as moral damages.

The IAC applied the test under Judgment No. 2819, comparing the assigned duties in the newly created post with the general duties of an A6 post, and found that the level of duties assigned to the post where the Complainant was transferred did not correspond to the requirements for an A6 grade post. The IAC thus unanimously concluded that the transfer was unlawful and did not respect the Complainant’s dignity.

On the EPO’s decision not to follow the unanimous recommendation of the IAC, the Tribunal found the arguments contained in the impugned decision unconvincing as the EPO is bound by its own rules. In particular, the Tribunal recalled that the report by an internal body warrants considerable deference where (1) the report involves a balanced and thoughtful analysis of the issues raised in the internal appeal, and (2) its conclusions and recommendations are justified and rational.

For those reasons, the Tribunal ordered that the impugned decision be set aside, 35,000€ in moral damages and 1,000€ in costs.

ARBITRARINESS AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Judgment No. 4489

Arbitrariness in the completion of the performance management report leading to moral injury. The Tribunal awarded moral damages to the Complainant.

In the present case, the Complainant challenged the amount of moral damages paid to her by the EPO for the decision not to finalize her two performance management reports for 2011 and part of 2012.

The Tribunal examined the approach of the Appeals Committee (“ApC”) in the present case. Notably, the Tribunal agreed with the ApC that the statutory requirements concerning management reports had not been met and that it existed a direct relationship between the Complainant’s performance management reports and the end of her contract. However, it diverged from the ApC’s reasoning, finding that the President’s refusal to sign the 2011 and 2012 reports was arbitrary.

On the relief sought, the Tribunal held that the Complainant was entitled to 10,000€ in moral damages for the failure to complete the performance reports and in addition to moral damages already paid by the EPO for the President’s arbitrary decision. Moreover, the Tribunal found that the 300€ recommended by the ApC for the length of the internal proceedings failed to compensate the moral injury suffered by the Complainant, recognizing that the delay of five years “would plainly have had a deleterious effect on the Complainant” and decided to award 3,000€ in moral damages.

However, regarding the claim for material damages, the Tribunal found it to be inadmissible as it had not been introduced during the internal proceedings.

ABOLITION OF POST AND CONSTRUCTIVE DISMISSAL

Judgment No. 4490

Assessment of material damages in the case of an unlawful decision not to renew a contract after the abolition of a post and constructive dismissal. The Tribunal assessed the loss of future income and awarded 200,000€ in material damages and 20,000€ in moral damages.

In this case, the Complainant challenged the amount of damages awarded for the unlawful decision not to renew her contract and to reinstate her in a lower-level post instead.

The Tribunal found that the material damages in cases of unlawful dismissal, where reinstatement is not ordered, are “the lost future income in the position with the organisation adjusted by an assessment of whether the staff member would have remained in that position and, if not, also adjusted by future income from other employment (see Judgment 4234, consideration 10). This assessment can also be approached compendiously by assessing the value of the lost opportunity to remain in employment (see, for example, Judgment 4305, consideration 14) (consideration 12).” The Tribunal further stated that the financial effect on the Complainant of the unlawful decision should be assessed by reference to the circumstances existing at the time the decision was made.

In the present case, the Tribunal considered that the Complainant’s unlawful dismissal occurred on the day of her resignation, which coincided with the date of expiry of her contract and the effective date of the abolition of her post (constructive dismissal). As such, the assessment of her damages for unlawful constructive dismissal is the same in substance as for an unlawful abolition of the post leading to an unlawful non-renewal.

Therefore, the Tribunal assessed the loss of future income. The Tribunal held that there was a real prospect that the Complainant’s contract would have been renewed for the period pending her retirement, had the decision been taken in good faith. The Tribunal also considered that the contract could have been lawfully not renewed and thus decided to award the Complainant 200,000€ in material damages.

With regard to moral damages, the Tribunal found that, contrary to the ApC’s finding, the Complainant’s claim did not depend on proof of harassment. Indeed, as evidenced by her letter of resignation and her recent medical certificates showcasing the deterioration of her health, the unlawful decision to abolish her post and to not renew her contract had a serious and negative effect on the Complainant’s health and well-being, resulting in her resignation. The Tribunal awarded the Complainant 20.000,00€ in moral damages.

STANDARD OF PROOF BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT AND DISMISSAL FOR SERIOUS MISCONDUCT

Judgment No. 4491

The Tribunal considered that the misconduct has not been established beyond reasonable doubt. It considered that the Complainant never had the benefit of the doubt and awarded her €30,000 in moral damages.

In the present case, the Complainant challenged the decision to dismiss her with immediate effect for serious misconduct and requested her reinstatement with retroactive effect and moral damages.

At the outset, the Complainant being charged with fraud (and misrepresentation), the Tribunal defined it as the intention to obtain financial advantage by deception. The Tribunal therefore recalled the essential principles applicable to disciplinary proceedings:

- A staff member accused of wrongdoing is presumed to be innocent and is to be given the benefit of the doubt.
- The burden of proof of allegations of misconduct falls on the organization.
- The organization must prove the misconduct beyond reasonable doubt.
- The Tribunal will not ordinarily engage in the determination of whether the burden of proof has been met but rather will assess whether a finding of guilt beyond reasonable doubt could properly have been made.

Applying these principles to the present case, the Tribunal found that the Complainant was never given the benefit of the doubt during the investigative process and the disciplinary proceedings, in particular it considered that an unfair and distorted analysis of the facts had been made. The Tribunal was not satisfied that the misconduct was proven beyond reasonable doubt. The impugned decision was set aside, and the Tribunal considered that in view of the circumstances, the reinstatement of the Complainant was appropriate and awarded her 30,000€ in moral damages and 8,000€ in costs.

SUEPO Central

Interesting times ahead. Notice what the ‘Stasi’ of ‘Sun King’ did to an innocent mother. That’s why such a gestapo-like regime ought not exist in the first place. In just a few years Benoît Battistelli stained the reputation (probably irreversibly!) of an institution almost half a century old. And yet, there’s no plan to punish Battistelli himself… █
_________
* As a matter of priority, we’ve decided to do 4 videos, focusing on: 1) Red Hat hiring from Microsoft 2) the biggest Diapora* pod shutting down; 3) gemini:// in Daily Links and IRC ‘enhancements’; 4) EPO matters, albeit in brief.

The End of JoinDiaspora. Thanks for All the Fish…

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Site News at 12:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum e1b66a2b571708f450ec25f511297939
Technical Debt Has Killed JoinDiaspora
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: JoinDiaspora will help users move to another pod; but JoinDiaspora itself has only weeks left to live (unless there’s a change of heart/strategy)

EARLIER this month we published a pair of posts about JoinDiaspora [1, 2]. It’s the first pod of Diaspora* and also the largest one. It was supposed to be the alternative to Facebook, being both Free software and federated (not the same as self-hosted but at least further decentralised).

The prognosis isn’t good and current plans are to shut down the site. “Please see this post for an official update, and please follow that account for future updates,” said the pod’s operator, linking to this update (also here). I’ll reproduce it below and respond to it.

They say there’s more time before shutdown, but the plan is still more or less the same.

A couple of months ago we the users were told “there is some unfortunate news to share. Feneas will be dissolved and as Joindiaspora is one of the services. JD [JoinDiaspora] will also be shut down on 1 March. This is unless we can find someone who wants to take over the service. If you think you can handle the task please contact us via [hq@feneas.org](mailto:hq@feneas.org).”

Well, somebody will “take over the service”, but not for the purpose of still running it. Some people did offer to run it, but their requests were either not answered or declined.

Here’s the new plan:

An update on the future of JoinDiaspora.com
Hello everyone.

This is a message from the diaspora* Project Core Team, in collaboration with Lukas, the current administrator of JoinDiaspora.

We know it’s been silent for a while, and everyone with an account on JoinDiaspora has been waiting for an update on what is going to happen with the pod in the near future. We have been busy in the background, and we now have a plan ready that we are happy to announce to everyone.

It’s understandable that they checked within themselves the technical state of the pod before making promises in vain, giving false hopes.

We will explain everything in more detail below, but here is a short summary of what is going to happen:
On Friday, March 4th, at around 20:00 UTC, JoinDiaspora will go down for a long maintenance break. We cannot yet estimate how long this will take. We will use that time to move JoinDiaspora and its data from infrastructure maintained by Feneas to infrastructure maintained by the diaspora* Core Team. This work will not resolve existing issues with exporting account data. Our work on the export feature will start at a later time, see below.
When maintenance is completed, JoinDiaspora will be available again in a limited-service mode. In this mode, you will no longer be able to read or write posts or comments. However, you will be able to manage your account, and you will be able to export your account data.

So basically the site is doomed to shut down. There are reasons for it, which follow the above outline (below we use plain text, no HTML):

While this will be a big task for us, you do not need to do anything right now. We know that some of you have been having trouble exporting your profile and contents, but please refrain from using scrapers or similar means to copy your data. We will make sure that everyone who wants to receive an export will have the chance to do so once maintenance of the pod has been completed. Using scrapers and other means of automated downloading at this point will only cause excessive server load that’s not conducive to our work and the system’s reliability as a whole.

Why is the maintenance break and the infrastructure move required?

Feneas is winding down operations, including the operation of its services. A lot of people are concerned about losing their long-standing account data, and we wanted to help out if we possible could. We want to be able to offer everyone a long grace period to download the profile archives and eventually migrate to a new pod, but we cannot do that with the current infrastructure, as the diaspora* Core Team is not in control.

JoinDiaspora is a big pod, and moving all the data over to a different setup will take a long time. We cannot start this process without shutting down the pod, as the only way to guarantee full data consistency with minimal effort is to turn off the pod. We’ll also use the time to make sure that the pod is updated to the latest code version, and that the general environment is up to date. This will make our future work easier.

While we will prepare as much as possible, moving the final set of data and getting the pod running on the new hosts will take some time, and we cannot make any guarantees about when the pod will be available again.

Why can’t you just continue running JoinDiaspora as a full pod?

We’re aware that some of you would like us to keep running JoinDiaspora as-is, and you’re not happy to learn that this is not going to happen. We feel you.

JoinDiaspora is not just an old pod, it’s the oldest pod out there. JoinDiaspora started as a demo-instance, created by the original project team, and it continued its life as the most widely known pod, and one of the biggest.

diaspora* looked a lot different back then. Not only was the interface completely overhauled multiple times, the internals were as well. JoinDiaspora and its data went through lots of different database concepts, database engines, code architectures, schema changes … and all of that has taken a toll.

Some of the architectural changes from the past has left parts of JoinDiaspora’s internal data structures in an inconsistent state. The project team is aware of lots of small and weird bugs and inconsistencies that are specific to JoinDiaspora only, and it’s hard, if not impossible, to address them all. The older JoinDiaspora gets, the harder it becomes to maintain. There is already a set of JoinDiaspora-specific workarounds in place that
allow it to work at all, and those will only grow larger over time.

As a project team, we have a lot of experience with debugging the “weird edge cases” of diaspora*, and we’ve also helped a number of old pods to fix their internal data.

After careful evaluation and lots of internal discussion, we concluded that “fixing” and continuing to run JoinDiaspora is not feasable [sic]. All good things must come to an end eventually, and JoinDiaspora has unfortunately reached that point.

So basically it’s technical debt. And nobody can fix that now. Already, as some users have noticed, some functionality was broken and some images (even profile pictures) had gone missing. Too much complexity leads to it…

Then there are some further clarifications, reproduced below as the original will go offline along with the pod.

I am currently not able to export my data. What will happen to my profile?

Some of you are currently unable to export your profile data. You might either see an error message, or it might look like nothing is happening at all. We are aware of this.

After the infrastructure migration is completed, we will start investigating the issues with account exports. Everyone who wants a data export will get one.

If you’re currently facing issues, please do not keep retrying the export over and over again. Please don’t use automated tools like scrapers to manually acquire a copy of your data. Doing so will only cause exessive server load, which only makes our work even harder.

As we don’t know what’s actually causing the export issues and how we can best fix them, this work will take some time. For each export, we have to observe its progress and intervene manually if errors arise.
We don’t know how long it will take, but everyone will get their account data exported.

How long will I have to export my data?

Our current intention is to keep JoinDiaspora running at least until the profile migration feature has been released to a stable version of diaspora* and a significant number of pods have updated to it. This will give everyone who has an account on JoinDiaspora the chance to migrate their old account to an account on a new pod.

We are unable to offer a timeline or an estimate, but we will update everyone when an update is warranted.
I do not consent to the diaspora* Project Team handling my profile data.

If you do not consent to the project team handling your profile data as part of this migration, please head to your account settings and click the “close account” button. This will irrevocably delete your personal data.

Where will you post future updates?

We have created this diaspora* account, joindiaspora-sunset@pod.diaspora.software, specifically for this purpose. Any updates we have will be shared as posts via this account.

You can read posts from this account even if you do not have a diaspora* account yourself by accessing this account’s public profile using this link.

I have a question or concern that’s not answered here.

If you start sharing with this account, it will automatically share back with you. This allows you to send private messages to this account, which we will answer as soon as possible.

Alternatively, you can write an email to joindiaspora-sunset@diasporafoundation.org.
Please be patient while we work on resolving this situation. We’ll do our best to help you all move smoothly to a new home of your choice, as soon as we can.

I want to deeply thank the developers and the sysadmins who ran this platform for so long, usually on shoestring budget (I did contribute my share in donations).

Sadly, to me, this is also a wake-up call. I’ll try to explain this patiently, even if it’s better done in a video (harder to misunderstand tone that way).

Based on the initial replies, the obvious lapses are not overlooked. One person asked: “What will happen with the domain? It could be used for a general landing page for Diaspora in general. I think it would a shame if some domain grabber fetched it.”

There’s this assurance: “The domain has been transferred to the project team. Even in the far future, when all users had a chance to migrate away and we finally turn off JoinDiaspora, we will continue holding that domain, and we’ll host a landing page that explains JD has been shut down and links to the project website.”

“Retaining control over the Joindiaspora.Com domain name would avoid issues with poachers, squatters, or worse. That is addressed above,” said one person.

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine does come up. But it won’t be used. This is deja vu to me. The Wayback Machine was used as a sort of excuse by Evan when he threw away tons of identi.ca data as part of the ‘upgrade’, which in effect ‘killed’ the site.

This situation is so frustrating because it keeps happening over and over again. It’s like nothing on the Web can last even a decade.

If this pod will be shutting down after all (seems unstoppable at this point) and all they offer is help with data export, a lot will still be lost in the process. I’ve asked them, will I be able to import elsewhere? They assured me so. But where to? How long will that other pod last? Nobody knows… in the case of the Fediverse, I received assurances that one instance would last at least 5 years, but it didn’t last even two.

Over time I learned from my mistakes or wrong assumptions. This is why I try to meticulously keep static copies/files of things I post (and to some degree comments I get), both in my personal site and in Techrights IRC channels. That’s the only way to keep them existing for longer than a few years.

“With a paper journal or magazine or newspaper if there were a million subscribers,” an associate told me this morning, “any one of them could keep a copy of their own with each site being centralized it takes only one person to pull the plug on the million subscribers…”

All this “social media” stuff has repeatedly failed when it comes to preservation because the central/single point of failure lacks a financial incentive to preserve things that many other people posted. Sometimes the data is just sold rather than preserved.

“Social control media is mostly a waste of time,” our associated noted, “and the rest of it is just manipulation. Studies on Facebook usage have shown again and again that there is no safe level of exposure. However, the worst part of all is that mainstream news consider social control media a news source and government officials consider it an acceptable replacement for official channels of communication, such as web sites. Both groups mistake it for a communications medium, when it is all about manipulation. The very few that acknowledge even one of those point all appear to consider (wrongly) themselves immune to the adverse effects. Which they are not.”

Well, it is too early for me and for TuxMachines to make a decision on social control media as a whole (like quitting everything), as I wish to first understand if importing to another pod is at all a possibility and which other pod can even guarantee it’ll last into 2030.

I have a long, long history losing accounts (and not for being rude or doing something illegal). First I lost everything in Digg.com, then identi.ca (even link shorteners died, so many posts there linked to nothing usablr, including the ones used inside “tweets”). Then I lost 3 accounts in the “Fediverse” (mostly instance shutdowns), I quit using Gab , and MINDS had me fighting a few times to get the account back. Same with Twitter; they cannot get their moderation right and eventually they always admit their mistakes. Now with Diaspora* it is the same as identi.ca (more or less). All of this hassle isn’t just time-consuming; it can be mentally draining.

As our associate noted, “link shorteners have a short life span; I and others warned about them from day one. They also impose a privacy problem, an authenticity problem, and a general security problems.”

“It’s all transient, social control media is the worst of the transient effects. Also see “Heart Sutra” and Impermanence.

At the moment I very seriously consider just quitting all social control media (altogether, including MINDS, Twitter etc.) because it’s an unwanted overhead and its shelf life (or lifespan) is too short to be worth an investment. People would be better off setting up a Gemini capsule, self-hosting preferably, then focusing on that for decades to come. Some people have run their Gopher sites for over 30 years and they’re still going. Those are cheap to maintain! █

Under IBM Management, Red Hat Has No Will to Survive

Posted in IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat at 11:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 471c2bbca50ce3da2382eac1e5653944
Wearing Two Hats
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Red Hat seems to be falling apart and now it recruits from the company least suitable as a source of workforce; this isn’t some isolated incident but part of a long-going pattern or trend

THIS morning my wife told me about this latest blog post from Red Hat, which for some reason wasn’t even listed in their blog’s front page (it was only in RSS feeds at the time). This reinforced two worrying things about Red Hat: 1) many management-level people are leaving (and leaving a vacuum). 2) Red Hat is incapable of recognising its rival, so it’s bringing potentially hostile people onboard. It’s a simple vetting issue.

The video above covers a lot of background (Red Hat has had the latter issue for quite some time now; over a decade for sure!) and makes it very clear that it’s not a matter or gender of race. It’s about community, technology, and so on…

“As noted at the end of the video above, Red Hat now advertises its presence only in two places/sites, Microsoft LinkedIn and Microsoft GitHub. If that’s not a troubling sign, what is?”As an associate put it this morning, “businesses are not being clever by hiring microsfoters. They are not hiring talent, rather the opposite and on top of that they are bringing in their worst opponent inside their perimeter.”

We’ve been increasingly critical of Red Hat over the past year, partly due to issues covered in this wiki page. The issues range from patent policy to attacks on our community, typically while hypocritically bringing up social issues (which the accuser is vastly more culpable of).

As noted at the end of the video above, Red Hat now advertises its presence only in two places/sites, Microsoft LinkedIn and Microsoft GitHub. If that’s not a troubling sign, what is? █

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