Desktop/Laptop

• Open-source Linux PC Stuffs 4 Quadros Into Mid-Tower Case | Tom’s Hardware

  Are you looking for a new PC build project that could cost as much as a new car? Do you have four RTX 3090s, or even Nvidia Quadros, kicking around with a Threadripper CPU? Or are you just able to spend up to $45,000 on someone who does building a deep-learning PC for you? Then System 76’s new Thelio Mega, which packs corporate power into a form factor that would be at home in your well, home, is for you.

  System 76 is a bit of an oddity in the extreme high-end PC world. The company is a staunch advocate of open-source and the right to repair, meaning that all of their computers are actually free for you to build yourself, if you can understand their freely downloadable schematics and have all the right parts and tools. They also all pack Linux as their OS, because of course that’s how System 76 rolls. But if you don’t have the confidence or knowhow to build one of their systems from just its schematics, or just can’t get your hand on parts like RTX 3000 series cards, you can also pay the company to build your new system for you.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Social Media Regulation and Journalism

  Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, and Petros Koutoupis talk social media regulation and its relationship to journalism and the threat to Section 230.

• Automation Entropy Factor | Self-Hosted 30

  Chris gets left out in the cold after a Home Assistant glitch, and Alex puts a big batch of USB hard drives to the test

  Plus a great pick for you pack rats, feedback, and more.

• Tribalism and Toxicity in the Linux Community – YouTube

  Gatekeeping, tribalism and toxicity in the Linux community. We’re tired of it and it’s time to silence it. But WHY does it happen, and HOW do we DEAL with it?

Kernel Space

• Laptop Touchpad Improvements, New Joystick Driver For Linux 5.10 – Phoronix

  The Linux 5.10 merge window is closing this weekend but there still is new code landing for this last complete kernel series of 2020.

  The input subsystem updates were sent in on Friday morning and include some new drivers and other work. As previously reported, there is better support for newer Synaptics laptop touchpads with this kernel. There is Synaptics RMI4 F3A support for buttons on newer touchpads helping the likes of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen1 and P1 Gen2. There is also InterTouch now enabled for the ThinkPad P1/X1E Gen2 devices.

• Sensor Fusion Hub Driver For AMD Laptops With Gyroscopes Is Coming To Linux 5.11 – LinuxReviews

  It’s been a long and hard road to acceptance for AMD’s Sensor Fusion Hub Linux driver. The first revision was submitted to the Linux kernel Mailing List in January 2020. It took eight revisions and a lot of effort before Jiří Kosina finally accepted it into the hid.git#for-5.11 tree, almost guaranteeing that it will become a part of Linux 5.11.

  [...]

  Sandeep Singh didn’t give up. He submitted a fourth revision with fingers crossed on February 12th, 2020. Intel’s Linux driver engineer Andy Shevchenko rejected it on the grounds that it had long list of issues and concluded that it would need “a bit of work”.

  Sandeep Singh sent a firth revision to the Linux Kernel Mailing List on the May 29th. Intel’s Andy Shevchenko several additional objections and Sandeep Singh had to go back to the drawing-board.

• AMD SFH Driver To Land With Linux 5.11 For Better Ryzen Laptop Handling In 2021 – Phoronix

  It was sadly too late for squeezing into the current Linux 5.10 merge window but it looks like for Linux 5.11 in early 2021 the AMD Sensor Fusion Hub “SFH” driver will make its long awaited debut.

  The AMD SFH driver is similar to the long-standing Intel ISH driver for supporting the sensor hub on modern laptops. The AMD SFH support is needed for laptops bearing gyroscopic sensors and other capabilities.

  Back in January AMD finally published the Sensor Fusion Hub Linux driver for supporting the Ryzen laptops of recent years. With time the driver was revised to address various feedback but wasn’t quick to get picked up for mainline and at times several weeks passing between code revisions.

• Intel Sends Linux Kernel Patches For VRR / Adaptive-Sync Enablement – Phoronix

  For months now Intel’s open-source Linux driver stack has been preparing for VRR support with Gen11/Gen12 graphics. We’ve seen user-space patches by Intel around VRR while now they are finally sending out their key Linux kernel driver patches with the i915 DRM code.

  This kernel code is what’s needed for actually enabling DisplayPort 1.4 Adaptive-Sync / Variable Refresh Rate on capable Intel graphics hardware with capable displays. The 11 patches add just under 300 lines of new code to their kernel driver in making the necessary VRR preparations and handling for this display feature.

• Graphics Stack

  • Integer Scaling To Come With Linux 5.11 For Intel Graphics Driver – Phoronix

    Going back more than a year there have been Intel “i915″ kernel graphics driver patches implementing integer mode scaling support while finally for Linux 5.11 in early 2021 the support will have landed.

    Intel added integer mode scaling to their Windows graphics driver back in 2019 to provide better clarity when upscaling games (particularly pixel art type content) and other software. The Linux patches materialized in September 2019 for nearest-neighbor integer mode scaling and then seemingly forgotten about. The capability works with Gen11 / Ice Lake and newer.

  • Linux Support for Variable Refresh Rates On Gen12+ Intel GPUs Is On The Way – LinuxReviews

    Intel developer Manasi Navare has submitted a series of patches for the Linux kernel that brings support for variable refresh rates on Intel’s latest graphics chips to the Linux kernels i915 driver. The feature is only enabled on Tiger Lake, Sapphire Rapids and newer Intel graphics chips.

    [...]

    You do not need a special “Freesync” monitor to use adaptive vertical synchronization, Freesync is just a marketing term used by AMD. The DisplayPort specification has included variable refresh rate (VRR) as an option feature since DP 1.4 and there are many monitors with support for it that are not marketed as “Freesync” or “gaming” monitors. Monitors that are marketed as “Freesync” support the standard DisplayPort VRR protocol so you don’t need to use a AMD graphics card to get the benefits of a Freesync monitor. You will soon be able to use one of the very latest Intel CPU’s with integrated graphics or one of Intel’s upcoming dedicated graphics cards with Freesync monitors on Linux.

Benchmarks

• Intel Xe Graphics’ Incredible Performance Uplift From OpenCL To oneAPI Level Zero To Vulkan

  Since picking up the Dell XPS 13 9310 for delivering Tiger Lake Linux benchmarks, most of the focus so far has been about the overall processor performance while in this article is our first deep dive into the Gen12 Xe Graphics performance on Linux with Intel’s fully open-source graphics and compute stack. Here is a look at how the Tiger Lake Xe Graphics performance is with the Core i7-1165G7 ranging from OpenGL and Vulkan graphics tests to OpenCL, oneAPI Level Zero, and Vulkan compute tests.

Applications

• The Top 5 Podcast Players for Ubuntu

  Because life can be boring at times, people are often on a search for novelty. Luckily, with each passing year, many new sources of entertainment are produced. Several decades ago, television changed how people perceive entertainment: with a television, a person could be transported to a different place without ever leaving home. Since then, entertainment has been evolve quickly, with a rapidly increasing number of channels and expansion in types of programming that eventually culminated in video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.
  The entertainment industry has underwent many changes since the television became popularized, and at present, one format in particular has been rising in popularity: the podcast.

  You can listen to a podcast while you cook, clean, or work; they can make your daily commute fly by, or help to pass the few minutes you have to spare here and there: there is a podcast for every person, every situation, and every time frame. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, there is a podcast that covers every topic, so whether you are interested in current events, science or science fiction, there is a podcast out there for you. That is why the podcast is quickly becoming a popular form of entertainment.

  In this article, we will discuss the top five podcast players available for Ubuntu 20.04.

• Linux Candy: Hollywood – fill your console with Hollywood melodrama technobabble

  Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open source software in this series.

  Some of the programs in this series are purely cosmetic, frivolous pieces of fun. Candy at their finest. But we also include some programs that aren’t purely decorative.

  There’s a diverse range of programs included in this series. Programs such as eDEX-UI and Variety are actually highly practical programs. ASCIIQuarium has soothing and relaxing qualities for your desktop. Other programs included in this series (such as lolcat, cacafire) are included purely for their decorative qualities. And then there’s some really fun software that just raises a smile or two.

  Hollywood is a 102 line script that occupies your console with tech geekery.

• Is Albert going to be your loyal app assistant?

  A light comic book repartee, right there, ha ha. So. Let’s say you have a Linux desktop. What’s the one thing missing? Apart from all the other things missing? Well, it’s an integrated application launcher. Now, what I just said is incorrect. Because if you’re using the Plasma desktop environment, you have Krunner, and you’re all set like. Unity also has some elements of this goodness available.

  If you’re using other desktop environments, then there’s isn’t such functionality in the operating system really. And so Dedo reviews Ulauncher. Dedo gets emails. Emails say Dedo wrong. Dedo should review Albert. Dedo ponders and decides to blaze forth. After all, nailing down the formula for an omnipotent and actually useful desktop assistant is very hard. Often, it’s a fad, a gimmick, an extra, but never something you embrace with heart and loin. Maychance Albert will convince us otherwise. To the cave.

  [...]

  Going into this experiment, I have to say I didn’t expect to be mindblown. Because I know how difficult it is to create a really useful helper software. Even the mega-giants out there, with their multi-billion-dollar budgets can’t do it right. But even if we keep our goal modest, Linux desktop wise, Krunner remains well ahead of the game, both in functionality and system integration.

  Albert is okay. It works reasonably well, and it’s no slouch. But the magic is getting the advanced functionality right. The basics are too trivial – and too overdone to matter. Also, I find the lack of a simple extensions management option tiring. I don’t want to go about the net, manually downloading Python scripts and such. I don’t have the time or the mental strength to commit to something like that, especially since the benefits aren’t that big. The, there were also actual bugs and issues – like the hotkey binding, Firefox bookmarks and no built-in translation. For now, Albert is worth testing and playing with, but I don’t see it becoming an indispensable household software any time soon.

Instructionals/Technical

• Oracle Linux 8 Password Aging and Su

• Oracle Linux 8 System Monitoring iostat utility

• Toggling Line Numbers On/Off in the vi Text Editor – Linux Hint

  The line numbers shown in a text editor can greatly enhance a programmer’s experience writing and reading code. There are several text editors available for the Linux operating system, including the popular and powerful vi text editor, and these editors can be used to create and modify various file types.
  The vi editor provides three different types of line numbers: absolute, relative, and a hybrid combining features of absolute and relative. In this article, we will discuss method that can be used to change the line number type shown in the vi text editor.

  Note: Linux Mint 20 is used to demonstrate all the methods discussed below.

• How to Configure Network Static IP Address on RHEL/CentOS 8/7

  The scope of this tutorial is to explain how we can edit and make changes to Network Configurations on RHEL/CentOS 8/7 from the command line only, and, more specifically how we can set up a Static IP address on network interfaces using system network-scripts, which is a must be configured to serve Internet-facing network services, and how to configure or change RHEL/CentOS system hostname.

• Ansible file Module – Tutorial and Examples – LinuxBuz

  Ansible file module is used to deal with the files, directories, and symlinks. You can create or remove files, symlinks or directories on the remote hosts using the Ansible file module. It is also used to change the file ownership, group and permissions.

  Ansible file module performs all tasks on the remote hosts. So before changing the ownership and permissions of the files and directories, relevant user and group must exist on the remote hosts. Otherwise, playbook execution will fail. In this case, you should always check the user or group’s existence on the remote hosts then change the ownership or permissions.

• Linux interface analytics on-demand with iftop | Enable Sysadmin

  Got network bandwidth? Are you sure? Find out with iftop.

• GCP Quickstart Guide for OpenShift OKD – A Random Walk Down Tech Street

  I recently did a blog post series. showing how to get started with OpenShift OKD on Fedora CoreOS for DigitalOcean. For that series I wrote a script to do most of the heavy lifting because DigitalOcean isn’t a native supported platform by the OpenShift installer.
  Today I’ll show off how to get started in GCP, which is supported natively by the OpenShift installer. This makes it much easier to get started because most of the heavy lifting (including infrastructure bringup) is done by the installer itself.
  As always, when looking for more information in addition to what I’m showing here today refer to the existing documentation.

• How to Install Jenkins Automation Server with Apache on Ubuntu 20.04

  Jenkins is a free and open-source automation server that helps developers to build, test, and deploy their software. It is based on Java and provides over 1700 plugins that help to automate the repetitive tasks involved in the software development process. It supports multiple operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and can easily be distributed across multiple machines.

• How to install MySQL server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux – nixCraft

  Explains how to install and set up Oracle MySQL server 8.x on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux, including new users and databases for your project.

• How To Create A Custom Ubuntu Live ISO Image With Cubic – OSTechNix

  In this guide, we are going to learn what is Cubic and how to create a custom Ubuntu live ISO image with Cubic application.

• Enabling new hardware on Raspberry Pi with Device Tree Overlays – Bootlin’s blog

  We recently had the chance to work on a customer project that involved the RaspberryPi Compute Module 3, with custom peripherals attached: a Microchip WILC1000 WiFi chip connected on SDIO, and a SGTL5000 audio codec connected over I2S/I2C. We take this opportunity to share some insights on how to introduce new hardware support on RaspberryPi platforms, by taking advantage of the Raspberry Pi specific Device Tree overlay mechanism.

• How to Use Sudo Command in Linux? – Linux Hint

  Among the different concepts of an operating system, the most crucial one is access control, which specifies the level of access that is granted to each user of that operating system. The access control policies ensure that no user is allowed to perform those activities for which he has not been granted any privileges. The two most common types of users in any operating system are the root user (has administrative level privileges) and the guest user (only has a limited set of privileges).

• Settings to Try with Firefox

  There are various stories about Firefox not respecting user privacy. Some suggest certain settings to reduce the information Firefox sends out (such as this one from Mozilla). Over time, I have collected a lot of them into a user.js file. For those who do not know, a user.js file may be dropped into a Firefox profile directory as a convenient way to force certain settings every time Firefox starts up. This can reset changes made by the user during a previous session, but is also a convenient way to initialize desired settings in a fresh profile.

  In an IRC discussion, Martyb suggested I share the settings I have collected. Below is a sample user.js that I sometimes use as a template for disabling many potential privacy and/or security holes in Firefox. Some, like HTML pings, are probably features that most privacy-minded individuals do not want (and may not have even known about). Others, like disabling cookies and/or javascript, can break how sites work (sometimes, amusingly, they only break the advertisements). Others, like disabling tracker protection, are double-edged in that disabling them exposes you to being tracked by known trackers, while enabling them might cause Firefox to phone home to get updated lists of known trackers. The comments in the user.js point out some, but definitely not all, of the potential pitfalls. The settings are definitely not set the way everybody should use them, but having them listed out at least provides a convenient starting point. I highly recommend against dropping them directly into your main Firefox profile, as they may undo changes you have made for yourself. Instead, either try them in a fresh profile and copy over things that work for you, or research the settings and only copy over the ones you want that will not break your browser.

• How To check LXD container BTRFS disk usage on Linux

  Find LXD container disk size and how much space they are using when storage back end set to BTRFS.

• How to Install Perl Modules on Debian Linux? – Linux Hint

  Perl is a very popular high-level programming language. It is a scripting language, in fact, whose syntax resembles closely with C and C++. A Perl module is defined as a collection of related functions. It is very much similar to the concept of libraries is C++ and Java. This means that if you intend to run a function in Perl, you must have the respective module for that function installed on your system. That is why in this article, we will be learning the method of installing Perl modules on Debian 10.

• How to Format a Drive in Linux – Linux Hint

  Formatting a drive is necessary whenever you are trying to erase data on a drive or partition or to create a new partition. Before formatting a partition or drive, it is strongly recommended to make sure that there is nothing important there, as formatting may erase the data for good.

• How to Install and Configure OpenVPN Server in CentOS 8/7

  In this article, we will explain how to set up a VPN server using OpenVPN with two remote clients (a Linux box and a Windows machine) on an RHEL/CentOS 8/7 box.

• How to set up a Kubernetes cluster in Ubuntu 20.04 > Tux-Techie

  In this tutorial, we are going to set up a Kubernetes cluster with two Ubuntu 20.04 servers. Learn how to set up for master and worker nodes.

• How to find Linux distribution name and Version? – Linux Hint

  While you are working on new Linux distribution, you might not know which Linux version is installed on your system. Sometimes, you need to meet a few system requirements while running an application on your system. However, different ways are available to check the Version of installed Linux distribution. Linux Mint 20 is the most growing Linux distribution and has a number of available graphical user interfaces that may vary from one user to the other. Hence, each user may also have a different running procedure. For this purpose, the recommended solution is to access and open the terminal command-line application.

• How To Safely Remove PPA Repositories in Ubuntu – Linux Hint

  PPA is popularly known as Personal Package Archives, it provide Ubuntu users to get new and updated software regularly. Some are officials and provided by Ubuntu developers.

• How to Change or Reset Root Password in Linux – Linux Hint

  If you have not logged in as a root user for a long time and have not saved the login information anywhere, there is a chance that you may lose access to the credentials for your system. It is not an unusual occurrence, but rather, a common issue, which most Linux users have probably encountered before. If this happens, you can easily change or reset the password via the command-line or the GUI (Graphical User Interface).

  But what do you do if the root password must be modified or reset?

  This article shows you how to change the root password for your Linux Mint 20 system via three different methods.

• Use mobile numbers for user authentication in Keycloak – Red Hat Developer

  Use Keycloak’s authentication service provider interface to develop a custom MobileAuthenticator class that you can run in your JBoss EAP container.

• How to List All Users in a Linux System – Linux Hint

  At any given time, multiple users can operate a single computer system. However, with such shared systems, a system administrator must take the proper security measures so that one user cannot breach the privacy of another by, for example, applying an access control mechanism that specifies the privileges of each user.

  At times, a change in user privileges might be necessary. For example, a user might need his or her privileges extended for a certain task, or a ability of a certain user to access the system may have to be revoked entirely. In such scenarios, it is important for the system administrator to have complete knowledge of all users of the system.

  In this article, we explore the methods used to list the users of a Linux system. Both graphical user interface (GUI)-based methods and command line interface (CLI)-based methods can be used for this task; however, this article focuses on four terminal-based methods.

• iSH Shell app lets you locally run a Linux shell environment on iPhone and iPad – 9to5Mac

  If you always wanted to have a fully functional Terminal on your iPhone or iPad, now you can. Today the new iSH Shell app was officially released on the App Store to let iOS users locally interact with a Linux shell environment.

  The iSH project started a few months ago with a beta app, but now the developer was able to release it on the App Store for everyone. iSH Shell runs on usermode x86 emulation, and it uses syscall translation so it can run locally on iOS.

• How to Merge PDF Files on the Command Line? – Linux Hint

  PDF is the most frequently used file format all over the world. This file format is not only used for personal documents but also for professional documents. At times, you might have multiple inter-related PDF files, and you wish to integrate them all as a single PDF file. Therefore, today we will be explaining to you the different methods of merging PDF files on the command line.

• Making Docker Work in Your Computer Infrastructure | Mind Matters

  By itself, Docker makes great use of filesystem space. Because each container only holds the changes from the images, a little bit of image bloat doesn’t directly impact the server adversely. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t worry about bloat at all. Not only should we not waste space without reason, images that are too big cause other problems that you need to be aware of.

  The most important consideration is attack surface. Every program that you have on your image is a potential hole for a hacker to exploit. Keeping unneeded software off of your container is the easiest first step to maintaining secure containers.

  However, in more general terms, everything on your container will wind up needing maintenance at some point. The more software you have installed, the more maintenance you will be subject to. You might think, “If I don’t use it, how does it cause maintenance issues?” Well, most software is written by a software team, not just a single individual. I have noticed that, if something is available to use, some member of the team will eventually find an excuse to use it. So, the more software that you leave on your container, the more tools your team will eventually make use of. Additionally, those team members may not even remember to document which operating system tools they are using. Therefore, it is best to start off with the most minimal set of tools you can, and then only add when absolutely necessary. Then your team will think twice before adding something, and— more importantly—it will be added explicitly to your Dockerfile, which makes it easier to spot.

• What is LVM (Logical Volume Management), and what are its Benefits? – Linux Hint

  Logical Volume Management or LVM is a framework of the Linux operating system that has been introduced for the easier management of physical storage devices. The concept of logical volume management is very much similar to the concept of virtualization, i.e. you can create as many virtual storage volumes on top of a single storage device as you want. The logical storage volumes thus created can be expanded or shrunk according to your growing or reducing storage needs.

• How to Search for Files on Linux from the Command Line? – Linux Hint

  In any computer system, you have got tons of different files. Some of them are system files that are there since the very beginning, whereas some of them are user files that you create on your own as per your needs. However, when there is a large bulk of files, and you only wish to search for a particular file or set of files for any specific task, then the process of looking for that file or files manually can be extremely tedious as you have to go to each and every directory in search of that file or files that you need. And even then, it is not assured that you will be effectively able to find all those files.

  Thankfully, our operating systems these days are efficient enough that they present us with different ways in which we can automate this task and make it more speedy. Like other operating systems, Linux also enables us to search for files automatically via terminal commands. Therefore, today, our discussion will revolve around exploring the different methods of searching for files on Linux from the command line.

Games

• Ahoy, Me Hearties! Civilization VI’s free Pirates game mode is out now | GamingOnLinux

  Fancy sailing the seas and becoming king of the pirates? We’re not talking about One Piece but Civilization VI with the latest major free update out now.

  Inspired by the classic Sid Meier’s Pirates!, this freshly included game mode sees 1-4 players take on the role of a Pirate King. Across 60 turns, each player will go around pillaging cities, ships, build a big fleet, collect Relics to power up and attempt to become the true king. You lose by having nothing left, you win by having the most points at the end. It totally changes the gameplay, much like the Red Death battle royale mode did.

  You’re not alone either with four AI civilizations (Spain, Netherlands, England, and France) fighting to control the map, as well as Buccaneers, this scenario’s version of Barbarians.

• Don’t Starve Together gets a brand new biome and an animated short | GamingOnLinux

  Klei Entertainment continue expanding their incredible looking survival game Don’t Starve Together, with the Return of Them: Forgotten Knowledge update out now along with a Halloween event.

  This is the online version of Don’t Starve that you can play with friends, and it’s been going through something of an evolution. Return of Them is a series of big updates, each expanding the game in different ways and Return of Them: Forgotten Knowledge continues that trend.

• First-person magic-shooting rogue-lite ‘Ziggurat 2′ enters Early Access | GamingOnLinux

  Ziggurat 2 from Milkstone Studios has arrived in Early Access, letting you jump into the shoes of a mage and blast through some freaky creatures with all sorts of wands and staffs in gorgeous first-person action. What’s awesome is how Milkstone decided to support Linux right away too, so we have it from day-1.

  If you’ve not played the original, fear not as you don’t need to. It’s a firmly standalone game, and thanks to the mechanics and progression it’s real easy to get into and enjoy. Exactly like the original, it’s a first-person dungeon crawling rogue-lite FPS that relies on speed and skill to progress through various rooms of enemies.

  The story here is that the Ziggurat housed various dangerous creatures, some of which couldn’t be destroyed so they were locked away. The Ziggurat was mostly destroyed during some sort of civil war between mages, and so tons of these creatures escaped. It’s up to you to travel around and deal with them as best you can across various quests.

• Try not to lose your head in a world full of colour in GONNER2 out now | GamingOnLinux

  In motion, GONNER2 is almost mesmerising in how the world flows around with colourful tiles flowing in and connecting up that follows your movements. Honestly, the design work alone on it totally deserves an award. Gameplay though? Well, it’s a rather challenging platformer with roguelike elements, where you play as the “largely misunderstood and altruistic Ikk”. It’s absolutely hectic, quite confusing initially as it dumps you into the world but you soon get the hang of it thanks to the simple to grasp controls.

  GONNER2 rewards speed. Go fast, shoot fast, take down as many enemies as you can in a short space of time and keep on jumping and running while trying not to lose your head. You build up a combination as you keep on taking enemies down, which will boost up your score.

• Rogue, the original Roguelike from 1980, is now available on Steam | PC Gamer

  “Roguelike” is a well-known genre of videogame: Spelunky 2, Noita, Hades, Demons Ate My Neighbors, Caves of Qud, Stoneshard, and Atomicrops are all relatively recent examples. But have you ever wondered where the name actually originated—or more to the point, wished you had a chance to actually play the ancient progenitor that started it all? Now you can, and on Steam no less, thanks to today’s launch of the original Rogue, developed by Epyx and released all the way back in 1980.

• The big tech upgrade for They Bleed Pixels is now out everywhere | GamingOnLinux

  They Bleed Pixels, a fiendishly difficult action platformer inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and classic horror recently released on the Nintendo Switch which gave the PC version a nice tech upgrade too.

  While technically this has been out for a while, as the itch.io release of They Bleed Pixels back in June had all the upgrades it wasn’t updated everywhere else. As of this week though, it’s now live on Steam too. Much like the recent 64bit upgrade to Quadrilateral Cowboy, this tech upgrade was done by game porter Ethan Lee.

  So what’s new? Much improved and expanded gamepad support including hot-plugging, additional pad support, PS4 and Switch glyphs are now supported and the icons will correctly switch on-screen, the cut-scenes have been improved to fade properly, 64bit support Linux and macOS, checkpoint save/load optimizations and plenty of bug fixes.

• Cyberpunk adventure Quadrilateral Cowboy goes 64bit on Linux | GamingOnLinux

  The weekend is just about here and if you’re stuck for something to do, why not try out the cyberpunk adventure Quadrilateral Cowboy with the latest update.

  “Quadrilateral Cowboy is a single-player adventure in a cyberpunk world. Tread lightly through security systems with your hacking deck and grey-market equipment. With top-of-the-line hardware like this, it means just one thing: you answer only to the highest bidder.”

  [...]

  Wonderful to see more Linux games get updated to continue working far into the future with all that 64bit goodness. Ports done by Ethan Lee are always great.

• According to a Stadia developer, streamers should be paying publishers and it backfired | GamingOnLinux

  After a three day event to show off new games for Stadia, along with three special demos now live you would think Google was having a good time. Unfortunately for them, one developer derailed it all.

  For a quick recap of the Stadia event you can see day 1 here with PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle, day 2 here with the HUMANKIND demo and as for day 3: you can now play a free demo of the upcoming Immortals Fenyx Rising free, they announced a new exclusive ‘First on Stadia’ title Young Souls and the strategy game Phoenix Point is coming to Stadia in 2021. Additionally, they expanded their invite system so that if you do invite a friend to Stadia, they will get two months of Stadia Pro free and if they continue with it you then get a month free too. See the Stadia community post for all the info on that.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Neon vs Kubuntu: What’s the Difference Between the Two KDE Distribution?

    I know it is often confusing especially if you have never used either of them but got them as recommendations for usage. Hence, to help you make a decision, I thought of compiling a list of differences (and similarities) between KDE Neon and Kubuntu.

    Let’s start with getting to know the similarities and then proceed with the differences.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Molly de Blanc: Endorsements

    This transparency could mean many things, though it most frequently refers to the technology itself: the code or, in the case of hardware, the designs. We could also apply it to the overall architecture of a system. We could think about the decision making, practices, and policies of whomever is designing and/or making the technology. These are all valuable in some of the same ways, including that they allow us to make a conscious choice about what we are supporting.

    When we choose to use a piece of technology, we are supporting those who produce it. This could be because we are directly paying for it, however our support is not limited to direct financial contributions. In some cases this is because of things hidden within a technology: tracking mechanisms or backdoors that could allow companies or governments access to what we’re doing. When creating different types of files on a computer, these files can contain metadata that says what software was used to make it. This is an implicit endorsement, and you can also explicitly endorse a technology by talking about that or how you use it. In this, you have a right (not just a duty) to be aware of what you’re supporting. This includes, for example, organizational practices and whether a given company relies on abusive labor policies, indentured servitude, or slave labor.

    [...]

    Not only does this empower those making choices about what technologies to use, but it empowers others down the line, who rely on those choices. It also respects the people involved in the processes of making these technologies. By acknowledging their role in bringing our tools to life, we are respecting their labor. By holding companies accountable for their practices and policies, we are respecting their lives.

  • Molly de Blanc: GNOME Asia 2020 Registrations Are Open

    Topics covered include the GNOME desktop and a range of other topics that are GNOME specific and general to the free software and tech communities. The summit brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a place for users, developers, leaders, governments and businesses to discuss present technology and future developments.

  • gedit and around

    (( As a small interlude, I’ve assembled a page with my statistics about my GNOME contributions (number of git commits in the different modules). Numbers can tell a story, and the story is probably useful for the gedit crowdfunding )).

    I write this blog post to talk more about gedit, its philosophy for the user experience (the external aspects) and trends in its code development (the internals). I will also relate on an improvement to a plugin, to allow new use-cases. To finish with a list of possible topics to talk about the next time: other recent work already done (or in progress), the future work that will be done, and some other future possible tasks (if time permits); heh, this is an endless software project after all, like many.

    [...]

    If you count the check-boxes, it’s the same number before and after. But with the new preferences, it’s more powerful! Before, the configuration was a list (a set of flags). Now, it is a two-dimensional matrix (a table), with the whitespace character type on one dimension and its location in the text on the other dimension. Note that the way this is presented to the user doesn’t look like a matrix or table, it has been a little abstracted away.

    New use-cases that are now possible: basically, draw only unwanted whitespaces. Examples of unwanted whitespaces: all kinds of trailing spaces on a line (git doesn’t like them), plus possibly tabulations if the indentation/alignment needs to be done with spaces. Note that such a configuration still allows the non-breaking spaces to be drawn at all locations, to distinguish them from normal spaces (since everybody will agree that this is a good thing, there is no configuration for it, it is always enabled when the plugin is enabled).

    This functionality is easily available to other applications, I’ve implemented the new preferences widget in the Tepl library. The drawing of the little symbols in the text area is implemented in GtkSourceView, where I’ve implemented the new API with the matrix several years ago.

Distributions

• Linux vs. BSD: 10 Key Things You Need to Know

  Both Linux and BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) are free, open-source, and based on Unix. Both systems also use many of the same applications and strive towards the same goal – developing the most stable and reliable operating system.

  But, despite all the similarities, these are two distinct operating systems with plenty of differences. Keeping this in mind, we have put together a detailed read going over 10 key differences between Linux vs. BSD to give you a better understanding of the two systems.

• New Releases

  • What’s New in Pop!_OS 20.10

    Pop!_OS 20.10 is the result of fine-tuning features released in version 20.04. Continue on to see what we’ve added!

    This addition also includes a new library for repository management, which adds features such as the ability to change the default system repository mirrors, reset mirrors to defaults, and change the names of your repositories.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Node.js, OpenSSL, Mesa Update in Tumbleweed

    Some of the package updates in the snapshots include newer versions of Node.js, OpenSSL, Mesa, Apparmor, ImageMagick and AutoYaST.

    The latest snapshot, 20201021, is trending stable at a 98 rating on the Tumbleweed snapshot reviewer. This snapshot updated Mozilla Thunderbird to version 78.3.3 and improved support for encrypting with subkeys with OpenPGP. The new email client version also added support for wayland mode/autodetection in a startup wrapper. The security kernel module Apparmor added missing permissions to several profiles and abstractions. The 5.9 version of ethtool arrived in the snapshot and improved compatibility between system call ioctl and netlink output. The Linux Kernel updated to 5.8.15 and fixed a close proximity Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure, CVE-2020-12352, that could allow a remote attacker in adjacent range to use the flaw to leak small portions of stack memory by sending specially crafted Bluetooth AMP Packets. Node.js 14.14.0 had some bug fixes and a few changes like the behaviour of a new fs.rm method that follows the UNIX rm command. The update of the ruby2.7 package to 2.7.2 turned off deprecation warnings by default.

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2020/43 – Dominique a.k.a. DimStar (Dim*)

    During this week, we have only released 3 snapshots (1019, 1021, and 1022). a bunch of snapshots has been tested and discarded due to some bugs we, and surely either you, did not want to see on your machines. But as usual; lesser snapshots do not mean less change, as things just cumulate until we feel confident to send a snapshot out again.

  • Introducing the Open Build Service Connector [Ed: SUSE sucking up to Microsoft’s openwashed proprietary software as usual]

    That’s right. The Open Build Service Connector is built around bookmarks of packages and projects. Bookmarks can be used to browse a project, its packages and its files. Additionally, you can view the configured repositories and adjust project paths and architectures.

    Individual packages or whole projects can be checked out directly from within Visual Studio Code to the file system similarly as one would do via osc. OBS’ version control is seamlessly integrated into Visual Studio Code’s Source Control module and can be used in a comparable fashion to the git extension.

  • Richard Brown: MicroOS Desktop, The Road to Daily Driving – LinuxReviews

    openSUSE Chairman and MicroOS Release Engineer Richard Brown presented OpenSUSE’s minimal MicroOS Linux distribution as a potential desktop operating system at the openSUSE+LibreOffice Virtual Conference 2020 last week in a half an hour long presentation. MicroOS is a minimal Linux distribution primarily made for cloud services, IoT devices, containers and those types of use-cases. It could potentially also be used as a light desktop system similar to ChromeOS and an alpha version of MicroOS for Desktop is available. There are some problems to be solved on the road to a stable release as Richard Brown explains.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Open Source Defies Conflicts of Interest: Red Hat Tells All

    Only two parts of the guidelines state any sort of limit on company associates, she clarified. The first is that projects use an Open Source Initiative-approved license. The second is that if an associate is asked to sign a third-party contributor agreement, they should check with Red Hat’s legal team.

  • Red Hat’s Paul Cormier On How Partners Win The Hybrid Cloud

  • ANZ moves internet banking to Red Hat OpenShift

    The Australia and New Zealand Banking Corporation (ANZ) in October last year turned to Red Hat for help to bring its internet banking proof of concept to life.

    The bank wanted to modernise its internet banking platform that had passed its end of life and required extended support for some years. Deciding on a Red Hat OpenShift platform, tech area lead for ANZ’s digital arm Raghavendra Bhat said the bank wanted to not constrain itself to a cloud-only solution.

    ANZ has now migrated 30% of its traffic to the platform and within the first hour of go-live, it processed around AU$2.9 billion worth of payments.

    Speaking with media on Wednesday, Bhat said the bank’s expectation is to complete about 80% of the traffic transition onto the new platform by November, with complete transition by March. He said there has been no “cookie-cutter approach” for how it has lifted and shifted the old system onto the new one.

  • Juggling Ansible, OpenShift and K8s? This is for you: Red Hat couples automation to cluster management

    Red Hat is integrating its Ansible automation platform and Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.

    “We’ve known people use Ansible and OpenShift and Kubernetes together for years,” Red Hat senior manager Richard Henshall told The Register. “But here we get a bona fide integration between the two.” Typical uses would be to automate deploying system updates, configuring load balancers, or scaling server resources.

    The integration is in technical preview. “We’ve got the initial plumbing working, so it’s exposed through Advanced Cluster Management (ACM),” said Henshall, referring to the company’s tool for controlling OpenShift clusters and applications.

  • About me and my life …: Fedora 32 : Can be better? part 016.

    Today I tested the Unity 3D version 2020 on Linux Fedora 32.Maybe it would be better to integrate Unity 3D or Unity Hub in Fedora repo just like other useful software like Blender 3D, GIMP.It will improve the user experience and attract new users and developers for this distro.I download the AppImage from Unity website and I run with these commands…

  • Why it’s important to keep the cloud open | Opensource.com

    There’s a famous sticker featured on many laptop lids; it goes something like this: “the ‘cloud’ is just somebody else’s computer.”

    There’s a lot of truth to that sentiment, but it’s not exactly technically accurate. In fact, cloud computing isn’t just somebody else’s computer; it’s somebody else’s hundreds and thousands of computers.

    Years ago, “the cloud” did indeed just refer to the simplified graphic in a flowchart, so the illustrator didn’t have to try to accurately depict the multiple networks that comprise the World Wide Web. Now, however, the cloud isn’t just describing traffic or small-time remote file storage offers. The cloud of today is a platform of interconnected computational nodes working together to keep containerized Linux images, each running a distinct service (or “microservice” in developer lingo), functioning as applications distributed over the whole world.

  • Red Hat talks and workshops at NodeConf Remote 2020 – Red Hat Developer

    Red Hat is heading to NodeConf Remote 2020 with IBM to demonstrate a few of our favorite production-quality tools and solutions, all designed to help developers maintain their productivity while successfully navigating the vast and rapidly-changing cloud-native landscape.

    Attend our conference talks and workshops, or talk with an expert during the virtual booth crawl and get a look at our latest workflows for building cloud-native JavaScript solutions on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. Our open source experts can show you how to integrate JavaScript and Node.js with other technologies like authentication, distributed data caching and streaming, or business automation.

  • Fedora 33 To Be Released Next Week

    Fedora 33 will manage to ship on-time per its back-up target date of next week Tuesday.

    While Fedora 33 wasn’t ready to ship this Tuesday per its “preferred” target date, Fedora 33 has been cleared by to ship next week on its “Final Target date #1″ for this major update to the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.

  • ABRT Analytics 2.3.0 released

    A new version of ABRT Analytics (formerly known as FAF) has just been released. From the user’s point of view, you will probably find the following changes the most noticable…

  • [Older] Ben Williams: F32-20201016 Updated isos Released

  • [Older] Ben Williams: F32-20201001 updated-isos Released

  • [Older] OSBuild Project: Release of cockpit-composer 25

  • [Older] Release of osbuild 21

  • First release of koji-osbuild

  • Release of osbuild 22

  • Release of osbuild-composer 22

  • Introducing RPMrepo

  • Resiliency in Banking : A ‘must have’ for continuity in the new reality (Part 2)

    As cited previously, a new business operating environment – whether from an increasingly demanding customer ecosystem or as a result of external events – has necessitated new approaches to understand challenges, adapt, focus, and formulate the new normal. In addition to shifts in the ways consumers interact with banks, internal cultural reluctance to change can be an obstacle. Banking organizations have recognized the need for new operational approaches, but also have often been cautious in light of inherent risks – especially when combining a cloud, data center and on-premises model.

  • What’s new in Smart Management with Satellite 6.8 – YouTube

• Debian Family

  • Linux-Based TrueNAS SCALE Alpha Released

    The crew at iXsystems this week not only released TrueNAS 12.0 as their convergence of TrueNAS and FreeNAS, but they have also put out an alpha build of TrueNAS SCALE as their new Linux-based offering.

  • Salsa updated to GitLab 13.5

    Today, GitLab released the version 13.5 with several new features. Also Salsa got some changes applied to it.

    [...]

    It’s been way over two years since we started to use Google Compute Engine (GCE) for Salsa. Since then, all the jobs running on the shared runners run within a n1-standard-1 instance, providing a fresh set of one vCPU and 3.75GB of RAM for each and every build.

    GCE supports several new instance types, featuring better and faster CPUs, including current AMD EPICs. However, as it turns out, GCE does not support any single vCPU instances for any of those types. So jobs in the future will use n2d-standard-2 for the time being, provinding two vCPUs and 8GB of RAM..

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu Touch: What It Is and Why It Is Awesome

    Ubuntu, a popular open-source operating system (OS), has garnered a huge community around it. The OS has been around for quite some time and has gone through numerous changes and updates. Since Ubuntu has a Linux kernel at its core, it adheres to the same philosophy as Linux. For example, everything needs to be free, with open-source availability. Thus, it is extremely secure and reliable. Furthermore, it is well-known for its stability, and it is improved with each update.

    Ubuntu combines the fantastic .deb Debian package with an exceptionally stable desktop environment to produce a system that works fantastically well. In addition, because it has one of the largest communities, developers usually produce Linux-based software for Ubuntu first to cater to the large community.

    [...]

    Since Ubuntu Touch is built upon Ubuntu, it uses the same color scheme as and a similar layout to Ubuntu Desktop. Unlike Android and iOS, Ubuntu Touch does not make much use of buttons; the only two buttons it uses are the power button and the volume button. Furthermore, Ubuntu Touch does not have a centralized home location to return to after clicking the home button and instead uses an applications launcher, which stores all the installed applications.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ Swings Onto Raspberry Pi

    We have tested Ubuntu 20.10 installation via an external NVMe drive connected using USB 3. We can confirm that this is possible and much simpler than previously indicated. The Ubuntu 20.10 image for Raspberry Pi 4 can be directly written to a USB drive using Balena Etcher or Raspberry Pi Imager. To boot from USB the Raspberry Pi 4 will need be configured using Raspberry Pi OS as per our guide.

  • How to Upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 to 20.10 (Focal Fossa to Groovy Gorilla)

    Ubuntu 20.10 is available to download now. Here are the steps on how to upgrade your current Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa to Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla.

  • Major Windows Exploit | Quibi Failure | Ubuntu 20.10 Release

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla Family Released

    Ubuntu 20.10 aka Groovy Gorilla finally released by Canonical bringing the latest and greatest Free Libre Open Source Software technology to worldwide computer users. What’s new in this release is that it’s the first time Ubuntu Desktop available for Raspberry Pi – the world most popular ARM-based computers. Now here’s list of Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi download links, as well as Official Flavors from Kubuntu to Ubuntu Budgie with Checksums included. Simply click and download. Happy downloading!

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Released, Download Now

    Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla is now available for the download. For your information, Ubuntu 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ is a short-term release version with 9 months of security updates and critical fixes.

    Along with Ubuntu 20.10, all the flavours are also available for the download from the respective official website. One of the interesting part of the Ubuntu 20.10 release is it’s desktop support for the Raspberry Pi4 (4GB + 8GB models).

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla released

    Ubuntu has announced the latest release of its Linux-based operating system, codenamed Groovy Gorilla.

    Ubuntu 20.10 is the first Ubuntu release to feature desktop images for the Raspberry Pi 4.

    “The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 5.8 based Linux kernel, and our default toolchain has moved to gcc 10 with glibc 2.32. Additionally, there is now a desktop variant of the Raspberry Pi image for Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and 8GB,” the Ubuntu release team said in its announcement.

    Ubuntu Desktop 20.10 introduces GNOME 3.38, which the Ubuntu team said comes with significant performance improvements and a more responsive user experience.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) released

    Codenamed “Groovy Gorilla”, 20.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

    The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 5.8 based Linux kernel, and our default toolchain has moved to gcc 10 with glibc 2.32. Additionally, there is now a desktop variant of the Raspberry Pi image for Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and 8GB.

    Ubuntu Desktop 20.10 introduces GNOME 3.38, the fastest release yet with significant performance improvements delivering a more responsive experience. Additionally, the desktop installer includes the ability to connect to Active Directory domains.

  • Kubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla released

    The Kubuntu community are delighted to announce the release of Kubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla. For this release Kubuntu ships with Plasma 5.19.5 and Applications 20.08. The desktop carries the fresh new look and gorgeous wallpaper design selected by the KDE Visual Design Group.

    [...]

    Dolphin, KDE’s file explorer, for example, adds previews for more types of files and improvements to the way long names are summarized, allowing you to better see what each file is or does.

    [...]

    For those of you into photography, KDE’s professional photo management application, digiKam has just released its version 7.0.0. The highlight here is the smart face recognition feature that uses deep-learning to match faces to names and even recognizes pets.

    If it is the night sky you like photographing, you must try the new version of KStars. Apart from letting you explore the Universe and identify stars from your desktop and mobile phone, new features include more ways to calibrate your telescope and get the perfect shot of heavenly bodies.

  • Ubuntu Studio 20.10 Released – Ubuntu Studio

    The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 20.10, code-named “Groovy Gorilla”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 28th release. This release is a regular release, and as such it is supported for nine months until July 2021.

    Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a complete list of changes and known issues.

    You can download Ubuntu Studio 20.10 from our download page.

  • Seven Official Flavors Of Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla” Released

    Yesterday, Canonical announced the release of the new non-LTS Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla” with Linux kernel 5.8, GNOME 3.38, optimized desktop image for Raspberry Pi 4, and nine months of support until July 2021.

  • Lubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) Released! | Lubuntu

    Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 20.10 has been released! With the codename Groovy Gorilla, Lubuntu 20.10 is the 19th release of Lubuntu, the fifth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

    [...]

    Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, the last supported release with LXDE, will be supported until April 2021 and Lubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2023. For both of these releases, we are limiting changes to critical fixes and underlying system changes shipped with all other Ubuntu flavors.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 on Raspberry Pi delivers the full Linux desktop and micro clouds

    Canonical has released Ubuntu 20.10 with optimised Raspberry Pi images for desktop and server, in support of learners, inventors, educators and entrepreneurs, bringing the world’s most open platform to the world’s most accessible hardware.

    The Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4 join a very long list of x86 and ARM devices certified with Ubuntu, the operating system (OS) best known for its public cloud and desktop offerings. Dell, HP and Lenovo all certify PCs with Ubuntu Desktop, which is also the most widely used OS on the AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google, IBM and Oracle clouds.

    Ubuntu 20.10 also includes LXD 4.6 and MicroK8s 1.19 for resilient micro clouds, small clusters of servers providing VMs and Kubernetes on demand at the edge, for remote office, branch office, warehouse and distribution oriented infrastructure.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla update brings Ubuntu Desktop to the Raspberry Pi

    Canonical has announced the release of Ubuntu 20.10, aka ‘Groovy Gorilla’. The big news in this release is a newly optimized stack that brings Ubuntu Desktop and Server to the Raspberry Pi range. Since the launch of the Raspberry Pi 4 in 2019, the diminutive computer line has been increasingly sympathetic to being used as a desktop alternative, and the arrival of a tailored version of the biggest Linux GUI (Android excluded, of course) is a significant step on that road.

    “In this release, we celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s commitment to put open computing in the hands of people all over the world,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO at Canonical. “We are honored to support that initiative by optimizing Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi, whether for personal use, educational purposes, or as a foundation for their next business venture.”

    Ubuntu 20.10 can also run on RP 2 and 3 variants but only with 4GB RAM and above – if you go lower than that, you’ll probably get a smooth installation but a glitchy experience. You’ll also see improved support for 2-in-1 devices with on-screen keyboard modes, and more devices of all form-factors now support fingerprint readers under Linux.

  • Ubuntu clouds on the Raspberry Pi

    Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, just released Ubuntu 20.10. This “Groovy Gorilla” is a short-term release (STR) that’s only supported for 9 months. If you want an Ubuntu to use in production you want the long-term support (LTS) Ubuntu 20.04. But, the new Ubuntu does come with one new feature that Raspberry Pi users will appreciate. It’s the first version to come with optimized Raspberry Pi images for the desktop, server, and the cloud. Yes, the cloud. Stick with me. Here’s how it works.

    First, Ubuntu 20.10 is built on top of the Linux 5.8 kernel. For the desktop, it now uses the GNOME 3.38 release. It also comes with the latest and greatest open-source desktop programs such as the Firefox 81 web browser, the Thunderbird 73 e-mail client, and the LibreOffice 7.0.2 office suite. For Ubuntu workers in a primarily Windows shop, you can now install Ubuntu with Active Directory (AD) integration. Oh, and you can now run the full desktop on the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4.

  • OpenStack Victoria for Ubuntu 20.10 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

    The Ubuntu OpenStack team at Canonical is pleased to announce the general availability of OpenStack Victoria on Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) via the Ubuntu Cloud Archive.

  • Canonical & Ubuntu Join AfricaCom Virtual 2020

    This year, AfricaCom becomes a virtual event as part of the new Virtual Africa Tech Festival – the largest and most influential tech and telecoms event on the continent. Canonical and Ubuntu will be joining as a Lead Stream Sponsor, introducing the Digital Infrastructure Investment stream of sessions and exhibits with a speaker session by Mark Shuttleworth – Canonical’s founder and CEO.

  • Full Disk Encryption, without LVM, by default – Call for comments

    Historically Desktop / Server, only configured LUKS full disk encryption with an LVM layer. Thus ones root ext4 filesystem was an LVM volume, on an VG group, on LUKS, on a GPT partition.

    The upcoming Ubuntu Core 20 has full disk encryption with TPM support. In that configuration ext4 filesystem is created directly on the LUKS volume which is directly on a GPT partitition.

    For the upcoming HH 21.04 release, I want to change Desktop/Server, to also install in a similar fashion. Specifically such that by default, we simply use ext4+LUKS without LVM.

    It seems to me that despite having LVM layer, it’s not actually used or appreciated much.

    Would you be ok with having full-disk encryption without LVM by default?

  • Ubuntu 21.04 Installer Might Allow EXT4 Encryption Without LVM – Phoronix

    An early proposal by Ubuntu/Canonical developer Dimitri John Ledkov is proposing full disk encryption by default without LVM. With Ubuntu Core 20 there is going to be support for TPM-backed full disk encryption created directly on the LUKS volume and in turn directly on a GPT partition without LVM. For Ubuntu 21.04, the developers are looking at changing the Ubuntu desktop/server installers to potentially allow similar EXT4 encryption directly atop LUKS without LVM.

Devices/Embedded

• ClearFog CX CN9K Mini-ITX 10GbE/5GbE networking SBC runs Linux or FreeBSD

  Last year, SolidRun introduced ClearFog CX LX2X networking single board computer offering up to 100GbE via NXP LX2160A 16-core Cortex-A72 communication processor that followed ClearFog CX 8K ARMADA 8040 networking board launched the year before.

  The Israeli company is now working on two ClearFog CX CN9K networking SBC’s powered by CEx7 CN913x system-on-module featuring Marvell Octeon TX2 CN913x quad-core Cortex-A72 processor and offering multi-gigabit Ethernet with various 10Gbps, 5Gbps, and Gigabit Ethernet ports.

• Turing Pi 2 announcement

  Today we are thrilled to announce the Turing Pi V2. We’ve been collecting a massive amount of information, synthesizing all of it in product variations, and thinking about what steps we should do next. Today we are going to announce only some of the fundamental details about the V2. We are still working on checking some of the hypotheses, but believe me, the other parts of the announcement will be exciting too. We will disclose more closer to opening orders.

  After we released the original 7 nodes Turing Pi, we had many questions. What to do next, how to increase the product’s value, what compute modules to choose, how many nodes, etc. We decided to determine the minimal cluster block size with options to connect hard drives and extension boards. The cluster block should be a self-sustained base node and with ample scope of scale. Next, we wanted the minimum cluster blocks to have an option to connect and form cluster federations and, at the same time, be cost-efficient and easy to scale. The speed of scale should be higher than connecting regular computers on the network and cheaper than the typical server hardware. Another thing, the minimum cluster units should be compact enough, mobile, energy-efficient, cost-effective, and easy to maintain. This is one of the key differences between server racks and everything related to them.

• Turing Pi 2

  Turing Pi is a compact ARM cluster that provides a secure and scalable compute in the edge. It is designed to make web-scale edge computing easier for developers. Turing Pi cluster architecture allows you to migrate and sync web apps with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of the edge infrastructure and improves reliability.

• New Chair and Trustees of the Raspberry Pi Foundation

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino Blog » Upgrade your flight sim setup with Tom Stanton’s floor-mounted joystick

    Most joysticks sit on your desktop, allowing you to control flight sims and other such games with a bit more realism than a keyboard and mouse. YouTuber Tom Stanton, however, decided to take things to the next level by creating one that pivots from the floor out of aluminum extrusion and 3D-printed parts.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Tracking COVID-19 Exposure In Colorado: Android And iPhone Users Will Be Asked To Opt In To New Service

  • How to view a map of COVID-19 cases in Google News on Android

  • How to disable keyboard suggestions on Android 11

  • How to Connect a USB Mic to Android or iPhone

  • Redmi Note 7 gets an Android 10-based MIUI 12 beta stable update

  • Mozilla adds pull-to-refresh for Firefox Nightly on Android

  • Free Fire latest version APK file for Android: Download link and step-by-step guide

  • 19 vicious Android apps remain on Google Play Store – make sure they are not on your phone

  • Android users urged to delete 21 dangerous apps that can bombard your phone with ads

  • Google removes 3 Android apps for children, with 20M+ downloads between them, over data collection violations

  • Best Rugged Android Tablet 2020

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• New open source project crowdsources internet security

  CrowdSec is a new security project designed to protect servers, services, containers, or virtual machines exposed on the internet with a server-side agent. It was inspired by Fail2Ban and aims to be a modernized, collaborative version of that intrusion-prevention framework.

  CrowdSec is free and open source (under an MIT License), with the source code available on GitHub. It is currently is available for Linux, with ports to macOS and Windows on the roadmap.

• 15 Open-Source Push Notification Projects, Alternative to Apple and Google (Firebase) services

  A push notification is the message that pops up on your mobile iOS or Android, and sometimes on your desktop or a web browser. It’s often used by application publishers and authors to notify the end-user’s device about certain event.

  It looks like SMS text message and local mobile alerts, but they are application oriented only appears to user who use the application.

  Users can stop any push notification anytime from their mobile settings in the notifications section. However, they are essential for many applications so the user should be selective when selecting the app.

  Push technology (server push) are technical term for internet-based communication that occurs when a server notifies the client about certain transaction (notification).

• Uncovering the Best Open Source Google Analytics Alternatives

  Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data. In a nutshell, it is the study of website visitor behavior. It is the process of using online data to transform a organization from faith-based to data driven.

  This type of software helps you generate a holistic view of your business by turning customer interactions into actionable insights. Using reports and dashboards, web analytics software lets you sort, sift and share real-time information to help identify opportunities and issues. Keeping track of web visitors, analyzing traffic sources, measuring sales and conversions are just some of the possibilities.

  Google Analytics is an excellent well known free service that lets webmasters and site owners access web analytics data. The web service generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and sources. It helps marketers and is the most widely used website statistics service. But the biggest downside with Google Analytics is that your data is controlled and used for Google’s own purposes, not just by you. It is also not an open source solution, with a webmaster or site owner being denied access to the raw data.

  There are also many other remote-hosted web analytics services that are well-designed and comprehensive. However, if you want an open source solution where the software is hosted on your own server, there are some good alternatives. Having the software installed on your server means that you retain full control over your data, with the possibility of integrating that data into your own system. This solution might, for example, be important to people who do not want to give Google (or another organization) the invitation to control a large portion of their online activity, or who want to be fully in control of visitor privacy.

  To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled the following list of open source web analytics software.

• ITFirms Lists Top Free, Open-Source Statistical Analysis Software

• Cloud Foundry Is A Developer Experience For Kubernetes | Chip Childers

• OpenStack Foundation Rebrands as Open Infrastructure Foundation

  Also announced at the Open Infrastructure Summit was the OpenStack Victoria open source cloud platform, with improved integration with Kubernetes and enhanced IPv6 support. / In a keynote at the event, Thierry Carrez, vice president of engineering at the Open Infrastructure Foundation, said his personal definition for cloud native is applications designed to run on programmable infrastructure. “Cloud native requires programmable infrastructure, and open infrastructure provides an open source solution for that,” Carrez said. “So cloud native and open infrastructure really go together like bread and butter.”

• OpenStack Foundation transforms into the Open Infrastructure Foundation

  The writing was on the wall two years ago. The OpenStack Foundation was going to cover more than just the OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud. Today, that metamorphosis is complete. The Foundation now covers a wide variety of open-source cloud and container technologies as the Open Infrastructure Foundation.

• Events

  • Justin W. Flory: Hacktoberfest 2020 with TeleIRC

    October is here! If you contribute to Open Source projects, you might know that October is the month of Hacktoberfest. DigitalOcean teams up with different partners each year to send a t-shirt (or plant a tree on your behalf) for anyone who makes four GitHub Pull Requests in October. And guess what? TeleIRC is a participating project for you to get your Hacktoberfest t-shirt or tree!

    This post identifies specific tasks the TeleIRC team identified as “good first issues” for Hacktoberfest hackers. They are in order of least difficult to most difficult. Golang developers especially are encouraged to participate!

  • Open Source Summit Europe & ELCE 2020

    Following a great virtual ELC & Open Source Summit North America last June/July, Collabora will be attending their European counterparts, Open Source Summit Europe & Embedded Linux Conference Europe, which take place next week, from October 26 to October 29.

    “The 4-day event is dedicated to everything open source and will showcase a program of 250+ talks (conference session, tutorials, BoFs and keynotes) across tracks covering Linux Systems, IoT, AI, Cloud & Cloud Native, OS Dependability, OS Databases, Diversity & Inclusion, OS Leadership, Open Source Program Office Management (TODO) and the Embedded Linux Conference.”

    Collaborans will once again be actively participating in the week’s activities with no less than 8 presentations on topics including fuzzing Linux drivers with syzkaller, efficient syscall emulation on Linux, demystifying Linux kernel initcalls, creating Debian-based embedded systems in the Cloud using debos, simplifying and reusing your driver’s code with regmaps, the new Futux2() system call, and the state of Linux gaming. You can find the details for all of these presentations below.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • [Old] Mozilla WebThings To Become An Independent Open Source Project

      Mozilla has announced that Mozilla WebThings is being “spun out” as an independent open source project. It means that WebThings is no longer going to be a direct project from Mozilla.

      The company says that it’s winding down its direct investment in WebThings. This transition will happen to stabilize the WebThings gateways around the world. Now, WebThings is getting an independent domain and will work on the web of things, independent of Mozilla.

    • Firefox on Fedora with OpenH264 – Martin Stransky’s Blog

      Firefox on Fedora which sits in the updates [F32][F31] right now comes with enabled OpenH264 Cisco decoder for video playback and fdk-aac-free used for audio decoding.

      It’s implemented by GMP (Gecko Media Plugin) API so the OpenH264 is not used through ffmpeg library but Firefox sandboxed interface, the same as Firefox uses for Widevine CDM plugin.

      The OpenH264 GMP video playback is a fallback solution when system ffmpeg is missing and internal ffvpx library can’t decode the stream, so ffmpeg from RPM Fusion is always a better alternative if you can install it.

      The video streams are decoded by system wide OpenH264 2.1.1 which is shipped by Fedora as mozilla-openh264 rpm package. Even if Mozilla OpenH264 (1.8.1) plugin is installed in your profile and claimed at about:plugins page, the Fedora system one is used.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 7.1 Alpha

    LibreOffice 7.1 is being developed by our worldwide community, and is due to be released in early February 2021 — see the release notes describing the new features here.

    In order to find, report and triage bugs, the LibreOffice QA team is organizing the first Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 7.1 on Monday October 26 , 20 20 . Tests will be performed on the first Alpha version. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), macOS and Windows, and can be installed and run in parallel along with the production version.

  • Camera Rotation Improvement – LibreOffice / Collabora Office

    Texts in shapes is frequently used in LibreOffice. LibreOffice already supports rotation of the text in shape for years. But some users prefer to use camera rotation to rotate text in shape.

• FSFE

  • 35 years FSF +++ Participation at SFSCon +++ Technical job vacancy

    35 years ago, our sister organisation, the Free Software Foundation, was founded to work for users’ freedoms to use, study, share, and improve software with the introductory line that “Our work will not be finished until every computer user is able to do all of their digital tasks in complete freedom”. That is a promise that holds true even after thirty-five years of working for software freedom and inspiring countless people and many organisations to take a stand for user freedoms. The FSFE’s President, Matthias Kirschner, recorded a congratulatory speech in which he reflected on the importance the FSF and our movement have had and continue to have over the years.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • GNU Parallel – News: GNU Parallel 20201022 (‘Samuel Paty’) [Savannah]

      GNU Parallel 20201022 (‘Samuel Paty’) has been released. It is available for download at: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/parallel/

      Please help spreading GNU Parallel by making a testimonial video like Juan Sierra Pons: http://www.elsotanillo.net/wp-content/uploads/GnuParallel_JuanSierraPons.mp4 It does not have to be as detailed as Juan’s. It is perfectly fine if you just say your name, and what field you are using GNU Parallel for.

• Public Services/Government

  • EU Open Source Policy: good analysis, missing concrete next steps

    After the Commission’s previous Open Source Strategy expired in 2017, we have waited three years for a new one. Instead of the hoped-for major step, which would reflect current developments around the debates on digital sovereignty and state of the art administration, the Commission has presented only a fig leaf. The benefits of Free Software are fully emphasised and the Commission is ambitious in its future use of Free Software. But concrete goals are rare, and a clear commitment to the use of Free Software is lacking. A failure of the strategy is foreseeable at this stage as the objectives are ambitious but the measures merely establish the status quo. Therefore, we call upon the Commission to present and implement concrete measures and activities in the coming weeks and months.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Hybrid open access risks limiting researchers’ publishing options

      In the case of the 34 Nature-branded journals, the first step is a “read and publish” deal with Germany’s Max Planck institutes, allowing affiliated researchers to both access the journals and to publish in them open access. The OA fee that Max Planck will pay is based on a cost of €9,500 (£8,600) per article. The publisher, Springer Nature, says that it is in discussions to allow authors worldwide to publish open access in Nature journals from next year.

      The UK alone spends more than £25 million on OA journal publishing annually, but the proportion that goes to large commercial publishers for OA in hybrid journals has increased year-on-year. The average cost for publishing in hybrid journals also continues to increase steadily.

      This trend has been evident since Springer Nature launched its leading OA journals, Nature Communications and Scientific Reports. In 2018 alone, these journals received more than £1.6 million from 30 UK research-intensive institutions. In 2019, Elsevier launched 100 new OA journals and the humanities publisher IEEE launched 13.

• Programming/Development

  • LLVM Clang 12 Adds Support For Vectorization Using Glibc’s Vector Math Library – Phoronix

    Upstream LLVM/Clang now supports making use of the vector math library found within the GNU C Library.

    Clang 12 will allow for vectorization using libmvec via the -fvec-lib=libmvec compiler option.

  • Notes to self on frama-c | Richard WM Jones

    Frama-C is a giant modular system for writing formal proofs of C code. For months I’ve been on-and-off trying to see if we could use it to do useful proofs for any parts of the projects we write, like qemu, libvirt, libguestfs, nbdkit etc. I got side-tracked at first with this frama-c tutorial which is fine, but I got stuck trying to make the GUI work.

  • Why I Dislike Switch Statements

    Of course this is a contrived example, but readers will hopefully agree it’s representative of the construct.

  • Setup – Full Stack Tracing Part 2 – KDAB

    If you’ve read the first article in this series, you’ll know what full stack tracing is and why you definitely want it. This time, we’ll show you how to setup full stack tracing on your Linux system. There are two steps – first get everything configured to capture a trace, and then view and interpret the trace.

    Setup full stack tracing with a bit of kernel help

    To capture a trace, we’ll be using LTTng (Linux tracing toolkit next generation) in our examples. LTTng captures tracepoints with minimal overhead. This is something you definitely want, as too much extra CPU introduced by tracing can change the system’s behavior, even causing it to fail unpredictably. Another factor in LTTng’s favor is that it’s well supported by the open source community.

    LTTng was designed to record kernel level events. However, you’ll also want to use its user space tracepoints to capture application level events. That will give you consistent visibility, regardless of where execution moves throughout the software stack. User space tracepoints is critical to the setup of full stack tracing as it lets you integrate application, Qt, and kernel tracepoints together in a single view.

  • Mariuz’s Blog: Firebird 3.0.7 sub-release is available

    Firebird Project is happy to announce general availability of Firebird 3.0.7 — the latest point release in the Firebird 3.0 series.This sub-release offers many bug fixes and also adds a few improvements, please refer to the Release Notes for the full list of changes.Binary kits for Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Android platforms are immediately available for download.All users of Firebird v3.0.6 are

  • Use of self or $this in PHP – Linux Hint

    In PHP object-oriented programming, we have the self keyword and $this variable that is used for different purposes. The self keyword represents current and static members of the class. While the $this variable represents current object and non-static members of the class. More about these are discussed in this article.

  • 4 C programming courses for every skill level

    Even with so many other system-level languages to choose from, C remains the popular choice. Many key projects—such as the Linux kernel and the Python runtime—still use C, and they will likely do so indefinitely. For some fields of computing, like embedded programming, C is a must.
    And there has never been a better time to learn C. Resources abound, from books to guided courses. Here we’ll look at four major online course offerings for learning C programming, each aimed at different levels of user and offering different approaches. For instance, one combines learning C with learning Linux, while another teaches C and C++ together.

  • rand() Function in C Language – Linux Hint

    In the C language, the rand() function is used for Pseudo Number Generator(PRNG). The random numbers generated by the rand() function are not truly random. It is a sequence that repeats periodically, but the period is so large that we can ignore it. The rand() function works by remembering a seed value that is used to compute the next random number and the next new seed. In this article, we are going to discuss in detail how random numbers can be generated using the rand() function. So, let’s get started!

  • A bug by any other name – Open Source Security

    This tweet from Jim Manico really has me thinking about why we like to consider security bugs special. There are a lot of tools on the market today to scan your github repos, containers, operating systems, web pages … pick something, for security vulnerabilities. I’ve written a very very long series about these scanners and why they’re generally terrible today but will get better, but only if we demand it. I’m now wondering why we want to consider security special. Why do we have an entire industry focused just on security bugs?

    Let’s change the conversation a little bit. Rather than focus on security bugs, let’s ask the question: Which bugs in a given project should we care about?

    There are of course bugs an attacker could use to compromise your system. There are also bugs that could result in data loss. Or bugs that could bring everything down. What about a bug that uses 10% more CPU? Every piece of software has bugs. All bugs are equal, but some bugs are more equal than others.

    We are at a time in software history where we have decided security bugs are more equal than other bugs. This has created entire industries around scanning just for security problems. Unfortunately the end goal isn’t always to fix problems, the goal is often to find problems, so problems are found (a LOT of problems). I think this is a pretty typical case of perverse incentives. You will always find what you measure. The pendulum will swing back in time, maybe we can help it swing a little faster.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Why you should use ppport.h in your XS code modules | Karl Williamson [blogs.perl.org]

      
      The answer comes down to two words: Security and Reliability.
      As a bonus, less work on your part.
      
      It's surprising to find that there are modules on CPAN that aren't using
      ppport.h that could stand to benefit from it.
      
      ppport.h is a file that is part of the Devel::PPPort distribution. As you
      know, Perl has evolved over the years, adding new features, and new API for XS
      writers to use. Some of that is to support the new features, and some to make
      tasks easier to accomplish. ppport.h implements portions of the API that
      people have found desirable to have when a module gets installed in a Perl that
      was released before that API element was created. You can write your module
      using the latest API, and have it automatically work on old Perls, simply by
      #including ppport.h in your XS code. ppport.h generally provides support for
      an API element as is reasonably practicable, with many supported to 5.03007.
      
      Importantly, but often overlooked, ppport.h can override buggy early Perl
      implementations of an API element. By using it, you get fixed, proper
      behavior. That sure beats trying to reproduce a reported problem in your
      module that only happens in some ancient Perl, and then try to come up with a
      workaround in an area you aren't familiar with.
      
      This is especially important if your XS code interacts with Unicode in any way.
      Early versions of the Unicode standard and early Perls allowed things that we
      now know are potential attack vectors. Right now, someone could be using your
      module to hack into systems, so you are actually being negligent if you don't
      use ppport.h.
      
      If your XS code has preprocessor #if statements that check for the existence of
      functions, macros, etc, that are only in later perls, you can generally avoid
      that by simply using ppport.h
      

  • Python

    • Episode 32: Our New “Python Basics” Book & Filling the Gaps in Your Learning Path

      Do you have gaps in your Python learning path? If you’re like me, you may have followed a completely random route to learn Python. This week on the show, David Amos is here to talk about the release of the Real Python book, “Python Basics: A Practical Introduction to Python 3″. The book is designed not only to get beginners up to speed but also to help fill in the gaps many intermediate learners may still have.

    • Sentiment Analysis in Python With TextBlob

      In this article, we will take a look at how we can use the TextBlob library for sentiment analysis. We will also go through an example of how to analyze tweet sentiments.

    • Levene’s & Bartlett’s Test of Equality (Homogeneity) of Variance in Python

      Here you will learn how to carry out two tests for equality of variances in Python: Bartlett’s test and Levene’s Test

    • Python Code to Delete a File – Linux Hint

      We can use Python for performing various operations on file and directories, i.e., check the existence of files, verify the existence of directories, and remove the files and directories. Python provides a built-in operating system (OS) module for this purpose. By using the OS module, we can access the system files, directories, and we can delete them as well. Therefore, to perform any operation on file or directory, first, we need to import the OS module. In this article, we will learn to delete the file by using Python.

    • Check If File Exists in Python – Linux Hint

      Python provides a built-in operating system (OS) module that can be used to access OS files and directories. Any computer user often finds the need to check whether a file exists in a system. For example, suppose you are working on a file system and want to make sure that a file is available before performing any major operations on it. If you attempt to navigate or open a non-existent file, then this would cause an error. This article shows you how to use various Python file-checking mechanisms.

Britbox Streamer Promotes Emily Powers to North America Head

BritBox, the U.K. content-focused streaming service launched by BBC Studios and ITV, has promoted Emily Powers to executive vp and head of Britbox North America.

That follows the North American streamer announcing that Britbox president and CEO Soumya Sriraman will step down at the end of October. Powers, who has been helping oversee the upcoming launch of BritBox in Australia, most recently served as senior vp and commercial head and now adds editorial and creative control of the core North American business to her responsibilities.

Science

• Trump’s Attacks on Science Have Scarred Our Public Institutions

  In less than four years, the Trump administration has mounted more than 150 attacks on science. “The harms and costs of the Trump administration’s attacks on science are staggering,” says the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a U.S. science-advocacy group. Nature, the prestigious British science journal, recently cataloged many of Trump’s assaults on science, saying some of the damage “could be permanent.”

Education

• Open Education and Artificial Scarcity in Hard Times

  The sudden move to remote education by universities this year has forced the inevitable: the move to an online education. While most universities won’t be fully remote, having course materials online was already becoming the norm before the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year it has become mandatory for millions of educators and students. As academia recovers from this crisis, and hopefully prepares for the next one, the choices we make will send us down one of two paths. We can move towards a future of online education which replicates the artificial scarcity of traditional publishing, or take a path which fosters an abundance of free materials by embracing the principles of open access and open education.

  The well-worn, hefty, out-of-date textbook you may have bought some years ago was likely obsolete the moment you had a reliable computer and an Internet connection. Traditional textbook publishers already know this, and tout that they have embraced the digital era and have ebooks and e-rentals available—sometimes even at a discount. Despite some state laws discouraging the practice, publishers try to bundle their digital textbooks into “online learning systems,” often at the expense of the student. However, the costs and time needed to copy and send thousands of the digital textbooks themselves is trivial compared to their physical equivalent. 

Health/Nutrition

• Citing ‘Big Mistakes’ Made in Covid-19 Fight, Khanna and Warren Lead 130+ Dems Calling for Congress to Prevent the Next Pandemic

  “The current administration’s response has exposed serious flaws in the country’s ability to combat large scale public health challenges.”

• Transforming Our Food Systems is the Only Way to Nourish the World

  So do we intensify the current system of farming or is there a better way? Much criticism has been levelled at alternative approaches to conventional farming, for example – that they can’t produce enough food for 10 billion people by 2050, they’re not always climate friendly, and consumers reject the cost of sustainable food.

  Writing in a new book, Transformation of our food systems, published by sustainable development organisation Biovision and German farming charity Foundation on Future Farming, scientists and food security experts refute these criticisms. Agroecology – a farming philosophy and approach that works for nature and people – they say, can nourish the world, fight climate change and help solve the global food security crisis.

• Here’s How Meatpacking Corporations Could Protect Workers From COVID-19—and What They’re Doing Instead

  It’s time for our elected officials to pass enforceable workplace protections like those in the HEROES Act to make sure workers are able to stay safe, maintain social distance, and access paid sick leave.

• Blasting ‘Deliberate Indifference’ to Inmate Health, California Court Orders San Quentin Prison to Reduce Population by Half

  The ruling called the Covid-19 outbreak at the notorious lockup “the worst epidemiological disaster in California correctional history.”

• Trump to Seniors: Drop Dead

  In lieu of a plan for the virus, the president keeps assuring audiences that “only” older people will die.

• Divest / Invest

  With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many were shocked to see woman, children and migrants—including many pre-trial and pre-hearing—who had never been convicted of anything crammed into overcrowded lock-ups that might as well have been petri dishes for community spread of the disease. By the middle of October, close to 150,000 residents and almost 30,000 staff and workers had tested positive. 1,122 detainees and 42 staff had died according to the Behind Bars Covid Data Project of UCLA. 

  For many Americans, there’s never been a better time to reconsider the entire system. Years of work by abolitionists like Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, Mariame Kaba and organizations like Critical Resistance are paying off.

• Russian court fines ventilator-manufacturer for shoddy production. The same company made the devices that were shipped in April to the U.S., which later dumped them in the trash.

  An arbitration court in the Sverdlovsk region has fined the Ural Instrument Making Plant 500,000 rubles ($6,500) for manufacturing faulty equipment after federal regulators discovered violations of licensing requirements in the production, maintenance, and circulation of medical devices. 

• The Government Should Pay Bars to Close for Several Months

  If we really want to stem the spread of the coronavirus as winter looms and we wait for a vaccine, here’s an idea: The government should pay bars, many restaurants and event venues to close for some months.

• A federal lawmaker participating in Russia’s coronavirus-vaccine trial has contracted COVID-19

  Russian lawmaker Valery Gartung, the deputy head of the “Just Russia” faction in the State Duma, announced on Facebook on October 21 that he has tested positive for COVID-19, though he has no symptoms of the illness. Gartung is one of 40,000 people participating in the Stage III trials of “Sputnik V,” Russia’s first registered vaccine against the coronavirus. “Now I’ve tested positive, which means I definitely got the placebo,” he told the news outlet RBC.

• Grenades, Bread and Body Bags: How Illinois Has Spent $1.6 Billion in Response to COVID-19 So Far

  Fighting — and adapting to — the coronavirus in Illinois has been costly. So far, state agencies have spent more than $1.6 billion in federal and state COVID-19 funding since late March, buying everything from face masks to Subway sandwiches.

• We’re Never Going Back to Normal

  Last Friday, the United States recorded 70,000 cases of SARS-CoV-2, the largest single-day tally since the end of July. Meanwhile, the president of the United States is trashing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, saying, “People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.”

• Trump’s “Lethal Screwup” on COVID Led to 130,000 Avoidable Deaths, Study Says

  A new study by researchers at Columbia University estimates that between 130,000 and 210,000 deaths from coronavirus in the United States could have been avoided, placing much of the blame for those deaths on the “abject failure” of the Trump administration.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Psychotherapy centre’s database [cracked], patient info held ransom

    The Helsinki-based company said that the [crackers] who [copied] the data made attempts to extort money in exchange for its return.

  • Security

    • EU imposes sanctions on GRU officers over ‘Fancy Bear’ cyberattacks

      The Council of the European Union has imposed sanctions on two Russian citizens and a military intelligence center due to cyberattacks targeting Germany’s parliament in 2015 and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2018. This was announced in the latest volume of the Official Journal of the European Union. The United Kingdom announced plans to enforce these sanctions, as well. 

    • Free XSS Tools – Linux Hint

      Cross-Site Scripting, commonly known as XSS, is a type of vulnerability in which attackers remotely inject custom scripts on web pages. It commonly occurs in sites where data input parameters are improperly sanitized.

      Sanitization of inputs is the process of cleansing of the inputs, so the data inserted is not used to find or exploit security holes in a website or server.

      Vulnerable sites are either unsanitized or very poorly and incompletely sanitized. It is an indirect attack. The payload is indirectly sent to the victim. The malicious code is inserted on the website by the attacker, and then it becomes a part of it. Whenever the user (victim) visits the webpage, the malicious code is moved to the browser. Hence, the user is unaware of anything happening.

    • Google Chrome Update for Windows, Mac, Linux Fixes Critical Zero-Day Bug | Technology News

      Google Chrome stable channel users are receiving an update that rings along multiple security fixes. Update v86.0.4240.111 includes a fix for zero-day vulnerability CVE-2020-15999 discovered by a member in Google’s Project Zero team. This new zero-day vulnerability is reported to be a memory bug in the FreeType font rendering library. This was spotted being abused by a threat actor. Chrome users are recommended to install this latest update by going into the Help section.

      The tech giant has confirmed via a blog post that it has updated the Chrome stable channel to 86.0.4240.111 for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. This update will roll out for all users in the coming week. Chrome users can update to the latest version via the integrated update function inside the browser itself. Hit the three dots on the top right corner of the browser window and select Help > About Google Chrome. Here it will show you of any pending update, and after installation, it will ask you to relaunch the browser to finish the updating process.

    • Josh Bressers: Episode 218 – The past was a terrible place

      Josh and Kurt talk about change. Specifically we discuss how the past was a terrible place. Never believe anyone who tells you it was better. Part of a career now is learning how to learn. The things you learn today won’t be useful skills in a few years. The future is is always better than the past. Even in 2020.

    • Josh Bressers: Episode 219 – Chat with Larry Cashdollar

      Josh and Kurt have a chat with Larry Cashdollar. The three of us go way back. Larry has done some amazing things and he tells us all about it!

    • Josh Bressers: Episode 220 – Securing network time and IoT

      Josh and Kurt talk about Network Time Security (NTS) how it works and what it means for the world (probably not very much). We also talk about Singapore’s Cybersecurity Labelling Scheme (CLS). It probably won’t do a lot in the short term, but we hope it’s a beacon of hope for the future.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • EFF Files Comment Opposing the Department of Homeland Security’s Massive Expansion of Biometric Surveillance

        EFF, joined by several leading civil liberties and immigrant rights organizations, recently filed a comment calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to withdraw a proposed rule that would exponentially expand biometrics collection from both U.S. citizens and noncitizens who apply for immigration benefits and would allow DHS to mandate the collection of face data, iris scans, palm prints, voice prints, and DNA. DHS received more than 5,000 comments in response to the proposed rule, and five U.S. Senators also demanded that DHS abandon the proposal.    

        DHS’s biometrics database is already the second largest in the world. It contains biometrics from more than 260 million people. If DHS’s proposed rule takes effect, DHS estimates that it would nearly double the number of people added to that database each year, to over 6 million people. And, equally important, the rule would expand both the types of biometrics DHS collects and how DHS uses them.  

      • Victory! EFF Wins Appeal for Access to Wiretap Application Records

        Imagine learning that you were wiretapped by law enforcement, but couldn’t get any information about why. That’s what happened to retired California Highway Patrol officer Miguel Guerrero, and EFF sued on his behalf to get more information about the surveillance. This week, a California appeals court ruled in his case that people who are targets of wiretaps are entitled to inspect the wiretap materials, including the order application and intercepted communications, if a judge finds that such access would be in the interests of justice. This is a huge victory for transparency and accountability in California courts.

        This case arose from the grossly disproportionate volume of wiretaps issued by the Riverside County Superior Court in 2014 and 2015. In those years, wiretaps from that single, suburban county accounted for almost twice as many wiretaps as were issued in the rest of California combined, and almost one-fifth of all state and federal wiretaps issued nationwide. After journalists exposed Riverside County’s massive surveillance campaign, watchdog groups and even a federal judge warned that the sheer scale of the wiretaps suggested that the applications and authorizations violated federal law.

      • Facebook Poised to Face Antitrust Suit With FTC Decision Near

        Staff at the Federal Trade Commission support bringing a case, which could be filed in the coming weeks, the person said. A final decision about suing the company rests with the five-member commission. The commission met Thursday to discuss the case, according to the person, who declined to be named because the investigation is confidential.

        The FTC has been investigating whether Facebook violated antitrust laws for more than year, including whether its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were designed to eliminate emerging competitive threats. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg was questioned by FTC officials in August as part of the investigation. A nationwide group of state attorneys general led by New York are also investigating the company.

Defence/Aggression

• 10 Years After Iraq War Logs, It’s Impunity for War Criminals, War on Whistleblowers

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning have both paid a tremendous price for revealing U.S. and allied war crimes while the planners and perpetrators face no consequences.

• MAS Returns to Power in Bolivia One Year After US-backed Coup

  MAS won by such a wide margin that it even surprised many of its supporters in Bolivia and around the world. According to official exit polls, Arce and his vice-presidential candidate David Choquehuanca won 52.4 percent of the vote compared to centre-right candidate Carlos Mesa, who garnered only 31.5 percent.

  In order to win in the first round, a candidate must secure more than 40 percent and a margin of at least 10 percent over the nearest rival to avoid a second round runoff. Arce won by an astonishing 20 percent.

• Lisa Montgomery: A Victim of Incest, Child Prostitution and Rape Faces Execution

  The story of Lisa’s life reads like the script of a horror movie.

• Law Enforcement Agencies That Acquire Military Gear Are More Likely To Kill People

  Correlation is not causation, but if you gear yourself up like you’re going to war, chances are you’re going to treat the people you’re supposed to serve as enemy combatants.

• Former politician suspected of organizing contract killings of Krasnoyarsk mobsters arrested hours after transfer to house arrest

  During the afternoon of Thursday, October 22, businessman and former politician Anatoly Bykov was arrested in Krasnoyarsk, reports Interfax.

• “We Are Asking for Justice”: #EndSARS Anti-Police Brutality Protests Grow as Nigerian Forces Kill 12

  Mass protests against police brutality continue in Nigeria after security forces shot and killed 12 peaceful protesters in Lagos this week. Video widely shared on social media shows security forces firing directly into a crowd of demonstrators in Lagos singing the country’s national anthem. Authorities have imposed a curfew to clamp down on the growing demonstrations, which started as a demand to disband the notorious police unit known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS, but which have since grown into a wider movement against police brutality and official impunity. “We are asking for justice. We are asking for our lives to be preserved, not to be killed arbitrarily by these officers of state,” says lawyer and human rights activist Aderonke Ige, who has taken part in the protests. We also speak with Omoyele Sowore, who says young people in the streets are also confronting other systemic issues. “They are fighting against police brutality, but they are also fighting against army brutality, they are fighting against unemployment, they are fighting against the incompetence and indifference of the regime that has been in power,” he says.

• Nagorno-Karabakh: What’s at Stake in the Conflict Between Armenia & Azerbaijan?

  As fighting continues between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, we look at the roots of the conflict that has already killed at least 700 people since fighting began in late September and which threatens to escalate despite two ceasefire attempts brokered by Russia. Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians, was the site of a bloody conflict in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This latest spike in violence is the worst since the 1990s and holds the risk of spiraling into a regional war, with Turkey openly supporting Azerbaijan while Russia has a mutual defense pact with Armenia. “You enter into the capital, Stepanakert, and the lights are off. The city is in complete darkness, and everyone is in bunkers and shelters,” says reporter Roubina Margossian, who has been reporting from the region. We also speak with UC Berkeley professor Stephan Astourian, author of the forthcoming book “At the Crossroads of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict: History, Territory, Nationalisms.”

• Nigerian Forces Kill 12 as Anti-Police Brutality Protests Grow

  Mass protests against police brutality continue in Nigeria after security forces shot and killed 12 peaceful protesters in Lagos this week. Video widely shared on social media shows security forces firing directly into a crowd of demonstrators in Lagos singing the country’s national anthem. Authorities have imposed a curfew to clamp down on the growing demonstrations, which started as a demand to disband the notorious police unit known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS, but which have since grown into a wider movement against police brutality and official impunity. “We are asking for justice. We are asking for our lives to be preserved, not to be killed arbitrarily,” says lawyer and human rights activist Aderonke Ige, who has taken part in the protests. We also speak with Omoyele Sowore, who says young people in the streets are also confronting other systemic issues. “They are fighting against police brutality, but they are also fighting against army brutality, they are fighting against unemployment, they are fighting against the incompetence and indifference of the regime that has been in power,” he says.

• I Was in the Room Where It Happened: One Woman’s Perspective on “The Trial of the Chicago 7″

  Jerry and I had been living together for about 4 years. After the guilty verdict and contempt sentences the judge threw the defendants immediately into jail, and Anita Hoffman, Tasha Dellinger and I burned judges robes at a press conference underneath a huge banner — “We Are All Outlaws In the Eyes of America”— and helped organize a large protest. I spoke alongside attorney Bill Kunstler at Santa Barbara the day the citizens of that town burned down the Bank of America. So we were there, even if invisibly, as women often are.

  Although the actors were great, Sorkin failed to reflect the essence of many of the characters. He showed Jerry as a violence-provoking buffoon, one who let a female FBI agent get close to him in the midst of what we had put our hearts and souls into for much of the year. The only woman that was next to him the whole time was me. And I knew Jerry’s faults as well as anyone which is finally why I left him. But I also knew his strengths. He had tremendous courage. Not Rambo courage. It was ridiculous to see him in the film talking about molotov cocktails. He couldn’t even make a smoothie. But he was brave. He stood up 3 times to the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). All times in costume. First as a revolutionary war hero with tri-corner hat and all, then as an international guerrilla, and finally as Santa Claus. (It was Xmas time, and the headlines read HUAC BARS SANTA.) Many times bravery involves being able to put yourself out there, even if you are scared, to be outspoken and fight for what you think is right. Jerry had been a journalist and knew how to work the media to expand the movement. He developed theatrical politics and was a creative, brilliant tactician of protest. He helped lead the earlier protests against the war. It was largely his vision, as the Project Director, that guided the 1967 attempt to SHUT DOWN the Pentagon through both levitation and huge civil disobedience action against the war where 800 of us were arrested.

• Ten Years Since WikiLeaks Published Iraq War Logs And Revealed ‘Small Change Of War’

  The Iraq War Logs published by WikiLeaks revealed 15,000 civilian deaths that were previously unknown. They also exposed torture that the United States military instructed officers to ignore.

  “In our release of these 400,000 documents about the Iraq War, the intimate detail of that war from the U.S. perspective,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hoped to correct some of the attacks on the truth that occurred “before the war, during the war, and which [had] continued on since the war officially concluded.”

• How Bolivia fights fascism – It takes more than the ballot box

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Former Google CEO: Social Networks Serving as ‘Amplifiers for Idiots and Crazy People’

  Eric Schmidt said regulation should be directed toward “the excesses in the social-networking space.”

Environment

• The Elders Call for Surge in Global Cooperation to Combat ‘Current Disarray’ Set Off by Covid-19, Climate Crisis

  “Covid-19 has placed unprecedented strain on the multilateral system and cruelly exposed its failings. A fresh approach is urgently needed in 2021 with an unrelenting focus on justice and equality.”

• Poor air inflicts billions of premature deaths in Asia

  Air pollution by tiny particles is among the world’s worst health risks. In South Asia, poor air is as bad as it gets.

• Polling Shows Growing Climate Concern Among Americans. But Outsized Influence of Deniers Remains a Roadblock

  These kinds of disasters are becoming increasingly costly and impossible to ignore. Yet even as the American public becomes progressively more worried about the climate crisis, a shrinking but vocal slice of the country continues to dismiss these concerns, impeding efforts to address the monumental global challenge.

• Water crisis looms in Taiwan in year of zero typhoons

  Without the abundant rainfall brought by the weather events, dams in Taiwan are seeing alarmingly low water levels at a time when water use is growing due to heightened hygiene awareness amid the coronavirus pandemic.

• Rethinking Our Relationship With Fire

  The factors driving the extreme nature of these fires are three-fold: persistent climate patterns in the western U.S. are creating sustained periods of hot, dry weather that is conducive to fire; warm conditions are drying out fuels, creating explosive conditions when ignition occurs; and a growing number of homes and other structures in flammable forests and shrublands is increasing the danger of fires for human health and safety.

  The conflagrations this summer are not unexpected; fire and climate scientists have been predicting their likelihood for a number of years. Yet, the intensity, size and speed of recent fires and the weather conditions that they have created have surprised even the scientific community – in California, for example, the Creek Fire spawned tornado-like conditions.

• ‘Frightening Milestone’: Scientists Sound Alarm Over Record Amount of Open, Iceless Sea in the Arctic

  This is the first time in recorded history that the Laptev Sea has not yet started freezing this late into October.

• Energy

  • ‘What the Future Can Look Like’: Study Shows US Switch to 100% Renewables Would Save Hundreds of Billions Each Year

    “Too often we are told doing the right thing for the environment requires sacrifice and costs more. But we can actually make a better economy and save people money and a byproduct will be to cut emissions.”

  • The Elk, the Tourists and the Missing Coal Country Jobs

    Standing at the site of a long-abandoned, multimillion dollar industrial park in November 2016, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers urged residents in southeastern Kentucky’s Bell County to envision the tourism potential for miles of open land.

    Joined by Matt Bevin, then Kentucky’s governor, and local politicians, Rogers pointed to the expanse of forestlands and mountaintops in the distance as he unveiled a $12.5 million federal grant for the Appalachian Wildlife Center. Rogers, a Republican who represents the state’s Appalachian region, had helped secure the money through the Abandoned Mine Land Pilot Program, a federal initiative designed to foster economic development around former coal mine sites in Kentucky and other states.

• Overpopulation

  • It’s time environmentalists talked about the population problem

    Research suggests our species has far exceeded its fair share of the planetary bounty, and Brown is right to call for the global population to peak. It is high time others joined the chorus—not only other environmentalists, but those concerned with international development and human rights.

Finance

• With Millions of People Out of Work, the Senate’s Inaction Is Not Only Cruel, It’s Bad Economics

  When these programs expire, millions of these workers and their families will be financially devastated.

• Ending Corporate Impunity is at the Heart of a Sustainable Post-Pandemic Global Recovery

• Coke is canceling 200 drink brands

• Ten years of construction Billionaire Arkady Rotenberg’s company tops list Moscow’s main outside contractors under Mayor Sobyanin

  Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, a friend of President Vladimir Putin, has been the main outside contractor for the Moscow authorities during the ten years that Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has been in charge of the city, reports a new joint investigation from the investigative site Proekt and business magazine Forbes. 

• Follow the Money: Banking, Criminality and the FinCEN Files

  The journalists had been combing through leaks comprising 2,121 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) between 2000 and 2017. The relevant amount in terms of transactions: somewhere in the order of $2 trillion. It was awfully good of the banks themselves to be filing such reports with the US Treasury. But such matters are mere formalities; there is no incentive for the bank in question to stop trading with a shady client, despite what is suspected in the report. The point is to merely keep an account of it.

  The criteria for an SAR are not sharply defined. Matthew Collin of the Brookings Institute suggests a few: unclear sources and ill-defined beneficiaries; a nexus with a jurisdiction historically noted for financial crime and irregularity. Another “common sign of suspicion is one in which a client attempts to avoid attention from the authorities by making several deposits below $10,000, which is the automatic reporting threshold.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• WATCH: Joe Biden and Donald Trump Face Off in Final Presidential Debate Before Election Day

  The candidates are expected to address Covid-19, climate change, and national security, among other topics.

• Guns, Germs, and Smoke

  That was J.R. de Vera, one of two directors of UNITE-HERE!’s independent expenditure campaign to elect Biden and Harris in Reno, Nevada. UNITE-HERE! is a union representing 300,000 workers in the hospitality industry — that world of hotels and bars, restaurants and caterers. Ninety percent of its members are now laid off because of Trump’s bungling of the Covid-19 pandemic and many are glad for the chance to help get him out of the White House.

  “So some of you will want to stay in your hotel rooms and make phone calls today,” JR continues. Fifty faces fall in the 50 little Zoom boxes on my laptop screen. Canvassers would much rather be talking to voters at their doors than calling them on a phone bank. Still, here in the burning, smoking West, the union is as committed to its own people’s health and safety as it is to dragging Donald Trump out of office. So, for many of them, phone calls it will be.

• AOC to Join Jane Fonda for Fire Drill Friday Focused on Planetary Imperative of November Victory

  “This is one of our most important calls in the lead-up to Election Day.”

• ‘Would Be So Wild If Harrison Pulled This Off!’: Democratic Challenger Pulls Ahead of Lindsey Graham

  The development came after former President Barack Obama released an ad urging South Carolinians to vote for “my friend Jaime Harrison.”

• Trumpist Republicans Latest Freakout A Total Self-Own, As They Reveal They Don’t Read What They Tweet

  I know, I know: Trumpists have decided that part of the culture war they need to create for the election is that “big tech” is somehow “censoring conservatives.” The narrative is complete bullshit, but the Trump cultists are so deeply bought into it that they’ll make themselves look absolutely ridiculous to further it. The latest is that a bunch of Republican officials apparently don’t understand Twitter and, in trying to continue this anti-tech culture war, instead demonstrated to the world that they can’t read.

• A Trump Defeat Will Not End the Far-Right Threat

  For decades now, the Democratic political establishment has overseen the betrayal of progressive and working-class hopes and interests.

• Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All

  If you don’t want such a person as your neighbor, why would you want him as your President where he’d have exponentially more power to harm you and your family?

• Cold War, coronavirus, climate change Putin’s speech at the annual Valdai Discussion Club, in a nutshell

  On Thursday, October 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the annual Valdai Discussion Club via video link. He talked for about forty minutes and covered a wide range of topics, including the coronavirus pandemic, the post-Cold War order, and the existential trials and tribulations of our times. Here’s what he said, in brief.

• Fascist Culture, Critical Pedagogy, and Resistance in Dark Times

  We have arrived at a moment in which two worlds are colliding and a history of the present is poised at a point when “possibilities are either realized or rejected but never disappear completely.”[1] First, there are the harsh and crumbling worlds of neoliberal globalization and its mobilizing passions that fuel different strands of fascism across the globe, including the United States.[2] Power is now enamored of amassing profits and capital and is increasingly addicted to a politics of white nationalism and racial cleansing. Second, there are growing counter movements, especially among young people, with their search for a new politics that can rethink, reclaim and reinvent a new understanding of democratic socialism, untainted by capitalism. [3] What is not in doubt is that something sinister and horrifying is happening to liberal democracies all over the globe. The global thrust towards democratization that emerged after World War II is giving way once again to authoritarian tyrannies. As alarming as the signs may be, the public cannot look away and allow the terrors of the unforeseen to be given free rein. For those who believe in democratic socialism we cannot allow the power of dreams and militant hopes to turn into ashes.

  We now live in a world that resembles a dystopian novel. The COVID-19 crisis created a surrealist nightmare that floods our screens and media with images of fear. We can no longer shake hands, embrace our friends, use public transportation, sit in a coffee shop, or walk down the street without experiencing anxiety and fear. What must be acknowledged is that the pandemic is more than a medical concept. It also refers to ideological and political plagues that emerged as a result of the irresponsible response of the U.S. and other countries such as Brazil, the United Kingdom, and India to the Covid-19 crisis. Marked by inept leadership rooted in a distrust of science and reason and a blind allegiance to market forces, what emerged over time was unimaginable suffering, massive deaths, and a further legitimation of lies and right-wing violence. The horror of the pandemic often blinds us to the fact that anti-democratic economic and political forces that have prioritized profits over human needs have grinded away at the social order for the last forty years.

• Sending Trump to Hell

  Dante Alighieri has words for Donald J. Trump from the other side of death.

• Putin says he personally helped secure Alexey Navalny’s release for treatment abroad

  Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that he helped ensure opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s medical evacuation to Germany personally.

• US Presidential Campaign Spectacle: Distracts from Essential Issues while Playing the Race Card

  There are other reasons why a coup is unlikely. Namely, most of the politically active public believe that they live in an exceptional democracy. This conviction is held despite the abysmal candidate choices they are given and the obscene mountains of money backing them. Surely, the ruling elites would not want to disabuse a quiescent citizenry of this delusion by allowing the naked coercive state to be exposed.

  Symmetry of the two-party duopoly

• Trump Takes a Beating…in Montana

  It’s worth noting that this is the second major, national-level lawsuit Governor Bullock has won against Trump’s corrupt appointees in the last three weeks. Prior to the latest victory, Bullock had won his suit against the illegitimate actions of William Perry Pendley as head of the Bureau of Land Management that oversees millions of acres of public lands. As Federal Judge Brian Morris wrote in his ruling, Pendley “served unlawfully as the Acting BLM Director for 424 days” and enjoined him from exercising the authority of the agency’s director.

  While it’s nothing short of incredible that it took a Montana governor to fight and win these huge national issues, it’s worth remembering that it’s not just the lawsuits, but the effect of these victories, that deliver long-term and wide-reaching actions.

• Pennsylvania’s New Vote-by-Mail Law Expands Access for Everyone Except the Poor

  Rem Em emigrated from Cambodia in 2002 to help take care of a grandchild with leukemia. Twelve years later, she became a U.S. citizen. It was one of the proudest moments of her life.

  Ever since, she’s made sure to vote, even though the native Khmer speaker isn’t fluent in English. She talks to her family, other Cambodian immigrants in her South Philadelphia neighborhood and community groups about the candidates and the races. Before she votes, she studies what her preferred candidate’s name looks like in English, noting as well the shapes that form the word “VOTE.”

• Labor Prepares for Last-Minute General Strike If Trump Tries to Steal Election

  The 100,000-member MLK Labor Council, an AFL-CIO regional body of labor groups representing more than 150 unions in the Seattle, Washington, area, passed a resolution Wednesday that calls for a general strike if President Donald Trump does not respect the outcome of the November 3 election.

• Monona County Officials Working To Remove Military-Style Truck With Campaign Flags From Voting Site

• A Guide to In-Person Voting vs. Mail-In Voting

  In the rush to respond swiftly to the pandemic, every state has changed something about its voting process. If you plan on voting in person, your polling place may be different, and you’ll have to follow safety protocols. If you vote by mail, you’ll want to send in or drop off your ballot earlier than you normally would — ideally as soon as possible.

  But chances are it won’t significantly change your ability to vote and have your vote count. Despite worries around primary elections, the major problems have been isolated to a small number of counties in places that consistently have election issues, virus or not. For a snapshot of your state’s election administration performance, compared with other states, check out MIT’s Elections Performance Index. This database tracks how each state performed in the last election. Where yours ranked in the past could help you start to understand what things could be like in 2020.

• Countless Disasters Have Occurred Since Last Debate. Will Trump Address Any?

  How bad could tonight’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden be, really, compared to the last one? Remember that hot mess back in late September? Much of the news media, myself included, waxed ominous in the preamble about what would happen if Biden was unable to keep his cool in the face of the inevitable Trumpian onslaught.

• We Need Joe Biden to Deliver the Knockout Trump Deserves Tonight

  Donald Trump is terrified of accountability. That’s why he walked out of a critical interview with Lesley Stahl for CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Tuesday, and that’s why he’s been attacking the moderator of tonight’s final presidential debate, veteran NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker.

• What the Berlin Wall Means to a New Generation

  In 1990, the oil baron and philanthropist Robert Hefner III sent a representative to Germany to purchase a section of the recently dismantled Berlin Wall. The portion he eventually acquired consists of three panels weighing 8,818 pounds, which stand 12 feet tall and 16 feet wide. Hefner and his wife, MeiLi, loaned the panels to the University of Virginia in 2014, where they stand today in a glass display case in the middle of campus. “The installation serves as the centerpiece of a year-long celebration of that unforgettable day, November 9, 1989,” writes John Kelly in the Fall 2014 edition of the university’s arts magazine, “when the whole world looked on to witness the power of the human spirit to triumph over oppression and to celebrate those unalienable rights which Thomas Jefferson so famously championed and cherished.”

• Are You Prepared for an Election Disaster?

  Everyone should have a plan to vote this year, but people should also have a plan for what comes after that.

• Nobody needs another Prigozhin ‘Putin’s chef’ reportedly wants to expand his political influence and maybe even win a seat in Russia’s Parliament

  Evgeny Prigozhin, the Russian catering oligarch who allegedly owns a private military company and an Internet troll empire, wants to become an elected politician and he plans to use the “Rodina” party as his ticket into the State Duma, two sources close to the Putin administration and one person inside Prigozhin’s own inner circle told Meduza. Asked about his own political ambitions, however, Prigozhin denies any wish to become a federal lawmaker, and he even has a special message for the people reading this very article.

• Forcing the Vulnerable in Alabama to ‘Choose Between Voting and Staying Alive,’ SCOTUS Upholds Ban on Curbside Ballot Drop-Off

  “An outrageous 5-3 ruling that puts Alabama voters at risk.”

• Poll Shows Most Who Voted Third-Party in 2016 Are Supporting Biden Over Trump in 2020

  The Democratic nominee holds a significant lead over the GOP incumbent among those who voted outside the major parties last time around.

• DNI John Ratcliffe, a Trumpie Wingnut, Hilariously Blames Iran for Pro-Trump Proud Boy Email Spoof

  Anyone with the slightest common sense can see that Iran would be much better off with Biden, who is likely to try to re-implement the 2015 nuclear deal.

• Iran Denies ‘Malign and Dangerous’ US Allegations of Election Interference as Critics Note Dubious Nature of Claims

  “Note that this is the same administration who has twice in the last 12 months nearly gone to war with Iran.”

• With 220,000+ Dead From Covid-19 on His Watch, Trump Says ‘Not Much’ He Would Do Differently

  “Now 225,000 dead Americans, virus spread raging, millions out of work, an economy spiraling down, and Trump today says he’d do the same things all over again.”

• Poll: Trump’s Reelection Rating Is Lowest for Incumbent President Since 1992

  A majority of American voters don’t believe President Donald Trump deserves to win reelection in this year’s presidential race, according to a poll published this week.

• Supreme Court Upholds Alabama’s Ban on Curbside Ballot Drop-Off

  Offering no explanation for their ruling, the five conservative justices who hold the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Alabama state officials Wednesday night in a decision banning curbside voting in the state.

• Don’t Blame the Moderator. Presidential Debates Are Set Up to Be a Charade.

  Assuming he doesn’t chicken out, Donald Trump will take part in his second 2020 presidential debate tonight. His opponents will be Joe Biden, his own record, the notion of truth, and any sense of decency.

• QAnon Is Becoming a Republican Dog Whistle

  QAnon may be losing some of its online platforms—but the conspiracy theory is increasingly being enabled by the Republican Party.

• Trump Posts “60 Minutes” Interview, Complains About “Tough Questions” Throughout

  President Donald Trump posted a full-length video of his “60 Minutes” interview with CBS News’s Lesley Stahl on Thursday, following through on a promise he made the day before.

• Cancel Culture

• Trump administration has known for weeks that Iran, Russia hacked local governments, officials say

  At a news conference Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe alleged that Iranian intelligence used the hacked information for a recent campaign of emails that purported to be from the white nationalist group the Proud Boys, which were sent to intimidate Florida Democratic voters. They added that Russia was also working to influence the election.

  The two intelligence officials said that Iran’s intention wasn’t entirely clear but that one goal was to sow chaos and undermine confidence in the election. Both officials said it would hurt the Trump campaign if a white nationalist group was exposed as having sought to bully Democrats.

• Twitter and White House deny claims that researcher [cracked] Trump’s account

  A security researcher claims he [cracked] President Donald Trump’s Twitter account earlier this month, guessing that his password was “maga2020!” and possibly posting a tweet where Trump appeared to take a satirical article seriously. Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant and magazine Vrij Nederland reported the news earlier today, citing screenshots and interviews with the researcher, Victor Gevers.

  But when reached for comment, both Twitter and the White House vigorously denied the claim.

• Did a Security Researcher Really Access Trump’s Twitter Account?

  The alleged break-in was done by Victor Gevers, a security researcher who’s uncovered vulnerabilities and unsecured databases before. He told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that he logged into the president’s account last Friday in order to test whether it was secure. And according to him, it wasn’t.

• Dutch Man Claims He [Cracked] Trump’s Twitter With the Extremely Clever Password ‘Maga2020!’

  According to Gevers, two days after he rang the alarm, was contacted by the Secret Service, who thanked him for bringing the issue to their attention. Two-step verification was then implemented on Trump’s Twitter account.

• [Repeat] The New Humanitarian | Lake Van: An overlooked and deadly migration route to Turkey and Europe

  On the night of 27 June, at least 61 people died in a shipwreck on a lake in Van, a Turkish province bordering Iran. The victims were asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan, and the wreck shed light on a dangerous and often overlooked migration route used by people trying to move west from the border to major cities, such as Ankara and Istanbul, or further beyond to Europe.

  Turkey hosts the largest refugee population in the world, around four million people. A significant majority – 3.6 million – are Syrians. Afghans are the second largest group, but since 2018 they have been arriving irregularly in Turkey and then departing for Greece in larger numbers than any other nationality.

  Driven by worsening conflict in their country and an economic crisis in Iran, the number of Afghans apprehended for irregularly entering Turkey increased from 45,000 in 2017 to more than 200,000 in 2019. At the same time, the number of Afghans arriving in Greece by sea from Turkey increased from just over 3,400 to nearly 24,000.

Censorship/Free Speech

• EFF Urges Vallejo’s Top Officials to End Unconstitutional Practice of Blocking Critics on Social Media

  San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told the City of Vallejo that its practice of blocking people and deleting comments on social media because it doesn’t like their messages is illegal under the First Amendment, and demanded that it stop engaging in such viewpoint discrimination, unblock all members of the public, and let them post comments.In a letter today to Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan and the city council written on behalf of Open Vallejo, an independent news organization, and the Vallejo community at large, EFF said that when the government creates a social media page and uses it to speak to the public about its policies and positions, the page becomes a government forum. Under the First Amendment, the public has a right to receive and comment on messages in the forum. Blocking or deleting users’ comments based on the viewpoints expressed is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.“Courts have made clear that government officials, even the president of the United States, can’t delete or block comments because they dislike the viewpoints conveyed,” said Naomi Gilens, Frank Stanton Legal Fellow at EFF. “Doing so is unconstitutional. We’ve asked that all official social media pages of Vallejo officials and pages of all city offices and departments unblock all members of the public and allow them to post comments.”Open Vallejo discovered the practice of deleting comments and blocking users during an investigation of the social media practices of council members, other city officials, and the City of Vallejo itself.EFF sided with members of the public blocked by President Trump on Twitter who sued him and members of his communications team in July 2017. We filed an amicus brief arguing that it’s common practice for government offices large and small to use social media to communicate to and with the public. All members of the public, regardless of whether government officials dislike their posts or tweets, have a right to receive and comment on government messages, some of which may deal with safety directions during fires, earthquakes, or other emergencies.The district court agreed, ruling that President Trump’s practice violates the First Amendment. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Two other federal Courts of Appeals have ruled in separate cases that viewpoint discrimination on government social media pages is illegal.We urge Vallejo to bring its social media practices in line with the Constitution, and have requested that city officials respond to our demand by Nov. 6.For the letter:https://www.eff.org/document/city-vallejo-demand-letterFor more on social media and the First Amendment:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/when-officials-tweet-about-government-business-they-dont-get-pick-and-choose-who

• How to deal with free speech on social media

  Elsewhere, governments have also used social media companies to go beyond the law, often without public debate. In London the Metropolitan Police requests that they take down legal, but troubling, posts. In June France’s Constitutional Council struck down a deal between the government and the tech companies because it curbed free speech—an initiative that is sure to be revisited after Mr Paty’s murder. Citing Western precedents, more authoritarian governments in countries such as Singapore expect the tech firms to restrict “fake news”—potentially including irksome criticism from opponents.

  This might not matter were the networks less dominant. If people could switch as easily as they change breakfast cereal, they could avoid rules they dislike. But switching is like giving up your mobile-phone number: it cuts you off from your friends. Social networks have also become so central to distributing news and opinion that they are, says Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, a “town square”. If you want to be part of the conversation you have no choice but to be there, soapbox in hand.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Bill Barr’s Speech To Law Enforcement Officials Is Full Of The Sort Of Lies Cops Love To Hear

  Very few people in law enforcement want to be told the truth. Fortunately for them, those that speak to and for law enforcement are similarly uninterested in speaking the truth. The man at the top of the law enforcement food chain — Attorney General Bill Barr — has turned his second tour at the head of the DOJ into a bullhorn for the airing of law enforcement grievances. He encourages their unwillingness to comprehend the damage they’ve done has led directly to the animosity they’re now experiencing. He reflects their unearned outrage, allowing them to feel their anger is righteous.

• Saudi Arabia, Belarus Among Countries Joining US-Led Coalition Claiming Women Have ‘No International Right to Abortion’

  “This administration doesn’t seem content to stop until it has fully trampled on the rights, autonomy, and dignity of women and girls everywhere.”

• Saying Quiet Part ‘Really Loud,’ Trump Admits He Hopes Supreme Court Kills ACA as Barrett Moves Closer to Confirmation

  “Senate Republicans who claim this was never about gutting healthcare are lying to you and Donald Trump just proved it.”

• ‘Shameful Power Grab’: Democrats Boycott and Progressives Protest as GOP Votes to Send Barrett Nomination to Senate Floor

  “Republicans refuse to listen or care, putting their insatiable quest for power ahead of the people they vowed to serve and the Constitution they swore to uphold.”

• To Fix ‘Out of Whack’ US Judiciary and Supreme Court, Biden Says He’ll Create Commission to Study Reforms

  “There’s a number of alternatives that… go well beyond packing,” Biden asserted. “The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football.”

• Appeals Court Reinstates Injunction Blocking Federal Agents From Assaulting Portland Journalists

  The city of Portland, Oregon is still in the midst of anti-police brutality protests stemming from the killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. Federal officers arrived in Portland in July, making their presence known by engaging some extremely questionable tactics.

• The Disabled Community Doesn’t Want Your Pity

  The Muscular Dystrophy Association is bringing back its signature event: the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Running from 1954 to 2014, the show, which could last as long as 23.5 hours, defined the genre. Crying mothers and disabled children were trotted out along with a variety of entertainers and celebrities to convince an audience of millions to donate. And they raised a lot of money to search for a cure—an estimated $2 billion, according to Time magazine. In 1989, NPR’s Scott Simon described it as “the largest single-day, private fundraising effort in the world.”

• It’s ‘Court Reform,’ Not Court Packing

  With the likely imminent confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, the Republicans will succeed in entrenching a solid 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court for many years to come. Already, questions have arisen as to how Democrats should respond. There has been much discussion of blunting the impact of this ideological coup through the expedient of court-packing.

• Three Antifa Poems to Get Me Through

• It Would Evidently Be Inappropriate for Amy Coney Barrett To Opine on the Existence of Gravity

• ‘It’s a Very Determined Power Play to Pack Our Court’

  Janine Jackson interviewed True North Research’s Lisa Graves about what’s behind the Amy Coney Barrett nomination for the October 16, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

• Finland suspends extraditions to Hong Kong, prompting response from Beijing

  By suspending the treaty, Finland is following in the footsteps of countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

  The concern is that suspects extradited at the request of authorities in the semi-autonomous city could be transferred to and convicted in the not independent court system of Mainland China.

• Why Nigerian protesters want Beyoncé to be more like Rihanna

  Protesters against police brutality say that on Tuesday night in Lagos men in army fatigues closed in on them and shot at them while they sang the national anthem, something the army denies as “fake news”.

  The irony struck a chord across the world. South African comedian Trevor Noah said: “Just like we’ve seen in the US, the police in Nigeria are responding to protests about police brutality with more police brutality.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Cuomo’s NY Broadband Pledge Under Audit After Coming Up Short

  Back in 2015, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a Broadband for All pledge the state proclaimed would invest $500 million to ensure statewide broadband access by 2018. The effort was to be funded largely by legal settlements struck with banks after the last recession, with dollar-per-dollar matching pledges by companies promising to deliver speeds of at least 100 Mbps down, 25 Mbps up across the state.

• Congress, With Nothing Important On Its Hands, Seeks To Rush Through Nomination Of Anti-230 FCC Commissioner

  You might think that Congress has more important issues on its hands, with a pandemic still going on, issues around disinformation and the election, massive fires still burning in parts of the US, a record number of hurricanes pounding the south… but it appears that Congress thinks the most pressing issue is gutting Section 230. As you’ll recall, right after FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly made some generally straightforward statements about how the 1st Amendment wouldn’t let the government interfere with social media platforms, Trump informed O’Rielly that his nomination to stay at the FCC had been rescinded.

• It’s Opposite Day At The FCC: Rejects All Its Own Legal Arguments Against Net Neutrality To Claim It Can Be The Internet Speech Police

  As was expected following Ajit Pai’s announcement that the FCC would be moving forward with the rulemaking process to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Act in response to a petition from NTIA — instigated by the President’s unconstitutional executive order, which came about because Twitter suggested people research the facts,following Trump tweeting blatant disinformation regarding elections and ballots — the FCC’s General Counsel Tom Johnson has released the FCC’s legal explanation for how it could possibly have authority here.

Monopolies

• Minecraft will require a Microsoft account to play in 2021

  Minecraft players have been able to play without a Microsoft account for the past six years that the company has owned the game, but that will change in 2021, the official Minecraft blog announced yesterday. Players who own the original version of the game and do not switch to a Microsoft account will be unable to play.

  The game has existed in two separately developed versions since its 2011 launch on consoles. Previously, the original Minecraft: Java Edition used Mojang accounts, while Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, the name for the console and Windows store version of the game, used Microsoft accounts. After this change, the accounts will be the same, but there’s still no crossplay: you still won’t be able to play with friends using the other version of the game.

• TikTok will now tell you why it removed your video

  But today, TikTok is announcing that it will give you at least a vague idea of why your video is gone, by naming the specific policy it fell afoul of. That’s pretty similar to how other companies do it.

  As before, you’ll be able to submit an appeal. Maybe you’ll have some idea what you’re appealing now. TikTok says it’s been experimenting with these notifications for a few months, and that appeals have actually gone down by 14 percent. (I guess they did know what they’d done.)

• Uber, Lyft Ordered to Comply With California Labor Law

  The appeals court upheld a lower-court ruling ordering the companies to comply with Assembly Bill 5, which took effect in January and would force the companies to reclassify their drivers as employees — and provide the benefits that status confers.

• U.S. Accuses Google of Illegally Protecting Monopoly

  In a much-anticipated lawsuit, the agency accused Google of locking up deals with giant partners like Apple and throttling competition through exclusive business contracts and agreements.

  Google’s deals with Apple, mobile carriers and other handset makers to make its search engine the default option for users accounted for most of its dominant market share in search, the agency said, a figure that it put at around 80 percent.

• Twitter suspended Trump campaign press secretary after tweet about mail-in voting issue: report

  Hogan Gidley was temporarily suspended after he tweeted about receiving an envelope in the mail addressed to someone named Daniel. He attached a screenshot of the envelope marked “Your Official Ballot.”

• Patents

  • Not a toothless prohibition: Even implicit step of treatment by surgery makes method claim unpatentable under the EPC

    An opposition was filed and eventually withdrawn against the patent. However, the Opposition Division decided to go ahead with the opposition proceedings nevertheless, which it is allowed to do if it is likely that the patent will be limited or revoked even “without further assistance from the opponent(s)” (see the EPO Guidelines for Examination, Part D-VII, 5.2 and 5.3). The patent was eventually revoked for violation of Art. 53(c) EPC. The patentee appealed.

    The Board of Appeal first underscores that independent claim 1 does not contain any feature explicitly involving a method of treatment by surgery. However, the Board explains (by reference to the Enlarged Board’s decision in G 1/07) that Art. 53(c) EPC also excludes the granting of patents that involves such a step even implicitly. If a surgical method of treatment is an essential feature of the invention (whether implicitly or explicitly), the invention is excluded from being patentable under Art. 53(c) EPC.

    [...]

    This decision must be traced back to the Enlarged Board of Appeal’s ruling in G 1/07 (Treatment by surgery/MEDI-PHYSICS), directly referred to in the decision. G 1/07 enshrined the principle that a method, which “encompasses an invasive step representing a substantial physical intervention on the body which requires professional medical expertise to be carried out and which entails a substantial health risk even when carried out with the required professional care and expertise”, is not patentable under Art. 53(c) EPC. G 1/07 also set forth that this issue cannot be solved by simply omitting the surgical treatment step from the claim, when it remains an essential feature that is necessary to carry out the invention.

    Two aspects still distinguish the decision at hand from G 1/07.

    First, the patent claim in the decision at hand differs from the one at stake in G 1/07 in that the step of treatment by surgery was at no point explicitly mentioned in the patent claim. Only the subsequent claim interpretation performed by the Board showed that the claim necessarily encompasses that step. The exclusion from patentability thus cannot be circumvented by hiding the problematic feature in the description, since the claims are always interpreted by reference to the description.

  • FFII preparing constitutional complaint against Unified Patent Court Agreement

    “The members of parliament we contacted seem to be receptive, some of them already know the issues that we have raised. I have the impression that the key political group to convince will be the liberals of FDP. That is the opposition party whose support is needed to get the required 2/3 majority for ratification of the UPCA.”

    In your objections to the speedy ratification procedure in Germany, you have pointed at the importance of four EPO cases pending before the Federal Constitutional Court. Could you explain why the outcome of these cases is relevant?
    “The EPO decisions to administer the Unitary Patent cannot be brought to court. This is in direct violation of the rule of law principle, which is enshrined in Art 2 TFEU and in most national constitutions. This principle is heavily debated at EU level at the
    moment because of two problematic countries (Poland and Hungary).

    For patent applicants, it means they cannot sue the EPO for a refusal to grant. There were amendments in 2012 by a member of the Green party of the European Parliament to make the EPO responsible for acts concerning the UPC, but those amendments were not adopted.

    For others, it means there is no possibility to bring the EPO to court for maladministration. When FFII Spain opposed the Amazon One Click Gift patent back in 2012, our Spanish representative was refused a live translation in Spanish, the EPO only providing a choice between three languages. We looked at bringing the EPO to court for language discrimination, but came to the conclusion that the EPO had diplomatic immunity, and cannot be brought to court for maladministration.

  • St. Jude Medical, LLC v. Snyders Heart Valve LLC (Fed. Cir. 2020)

    Both parties appealed the Board’s decision in IPR-106, Snyders on the grounds that the ’601 patent anticipated claims 1, 2, 6, and 8 of the ’782 patent and St. Jude on the ground that claim 28 of the ’782 patent was not anticipated by the ’601 patent. Snyders argued that the Board had made three errors of claim construction, but the Federal Circuit’s decision found that one of these was in error and was sufficient for the panel to reverse the Board’s anticipation determination. The construed term was “how the frame is sized and shaped,” which Snyders argued was incorrect because “it covers frames sized and shaped for installation with the native valve removed, rather than only with the troubled native valve remaining in place.” With regard to this limitation the Board found that “‘[t]he claim language does not require the frame be sized and shaped for insertion into a damaged heart valve,’ but ‘only that the frame is sized and shaped for insertion in a position between the upstream region and the downstream region.’” This was error in the panel’s view because the Board did not consider the further disclosure in the ’601 patent that the native valve was required to be replaced, which the challenged ’782 patent claims expressly did not require. The panel opinion found support for the argument that structural features of the claimed artificial valve was consistent with this lack of a requirement for native valve removal in the plain meaning of the claim language, as well as express disclosure to that effect in the ’782 specification. Specifically, the specification disclosed that “the frame is sized and shaped for insertion between the plurality of cusps C of the damaged heart valve in a position between an upstream region and a downstream region” (emphasis in opinion). The significance for the Court was that this language indicated that the term “sized and shaped” “is not meant to refer only to placement in a position between the upstream and downstream regions, but also to fitting between the cusps of the intact native valve.” This interpretation is consistent, according to the opinion, with further disclosure in the ’782 specification of the benefit of not needing to remove the native heart valve as an improvement over the prior art and in particular the deficiencies in the ’601 patent in this regard. Because the ’601 patent does not meet the “size and shape” limitation as construed by the Federal Circuit, the panel reversed the Board’s determination that the ’782 patent claims were invalid for anticipation.

    Turning to St. Jude’s grounds for appeal, the panel first addressed the argument that the Board had erred in not finding the ’601 patent anticipated claim 28, directed to a system for inserting the claimed heart valve. The panel rejected St. Jude’s argument (related to whether the ’601 patent disclosed the “manipulator” recited in claim 28 of the ’782 patent) because “[c]laim 28 contains exactly the same ‘sized and shaped’ limitation for the valve as does claim 1, requiring a valve meeting that limitation (among others) in combination with an instrument used to install the valve.” Accordingly, claim 28 is not anticipated by the ’601 patent for the same reason the Court held that claims 1, 2, 6, and 8 of the ’782 patent were not, and affirmed the Board’s decision on that basis. The Court also rejected St. Jude’s argument that the Board erred in not finding claims 1, 2, 6, 8, and 28 of the ’782 patent invalid for obviousness over the asserted art. The Court’s basis for this decision was that the grounds for the Board’s decision were a factual determination regarding “whether a skilled artisan would be motivated to make the proposed combination to arrive at the claimed invention.” And the panel held that St. Jude had not satisfied its burden to show that the Board did not have substantial evidence supporting its decision. Because the Federal Circuit must give deference to factual determinations of the Board, unless an appellant can show a lack of substantial evidence, the Court affirmed the Board’s decision that the cited references did not render obvious the challenged claims of the ’782 patent.

• Trademarks

  • The threat to trust: Will the certification mark be a long-term victim of the coronavirus?

    Pandemics may have long-term consequences. One such early outbreak, the sixth century Plague of Justinian, severely weakened both the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire, which in turn contributed a century later to the rapid expansion of Islam. The death toll from the Black Death of the 14th century decimated the agricultural working population in Europe and hastened the demise of feudalism.

    The coronavirus will hopefully not come anywhere close to the baleful effect of these pandemics. But even after the medical and economic damage of the coronavirus is ultimately brought under control, harmful side effects may linger, even, perhaps, for IP. In particular, in tandem with the deterioration of public trust over the course of the pandemic, the status of the certification mark might be impaired.

    I know– few of us rely on certification marks for our livelihood. When was the last time that you filed an application for a certification mark? “Can’t remember”. When was the last time that you saw an advertisement for the owner of a certification mark? — “Can’t remember”, much less when you last heard a radio advertisement for a certification mark? — “Can’t remember”. But certification marks play an essential role in enabling consumers to rely on the mark as a badge of safety and standards, sparing us from the transaction cost in trying to verify the certification function by other, less efficient means.

    [...]

    A central part of this culture of trust is certification, embodied in a certification mark. Should the public come out of the pandemic with a further diminished sense of trust, to the extent that the view ultimately takes hold that certification is not feasible, then the certification mark will have no raison d’etre. It is against this background that this Kat understood the felt need by UL to advertise itself.

• Copyrights

  • FLVTO.biz Petitions SCOTUS To Hear Jurisdiction Argument In Stream-Ripping Lawsuit

    While the music industry’s war on stream-ripping sites — sites that have perfectly legitimate and legal uses — continues, it’s true that this is a war in which one side has almost universally surrendered. Facing legal opposition with well-funded industry groups, most stream-ripping sites simply close up shop when staring down litigation. But Russia-based FLVTO.biz has been an exception. We first wrote about the site’s decision to defend itself back in early 2019. At that point, the owner of the site, Tofig Kurbanov, had successfully argued in a Florida court that the United States legal system had no jurisdiction over his site, given that it operates in Russia and makes no effort to entice American patronage.

  • French Three-Strikes Anti-Piracy Law Mostly Benefited American Movies

    New research into the effects of the French anti-piracy law Hadopi shows that its introduction failed to significantly increase box-office revenue. It did, however, cause a shift in people’s movie preferences. The interest of moviegoers in U.S. films increased, at the expense of other content, including French productions.

  • Logs Seized From F-Secure’s VPN Must Be Destroyed, Court Rules

    In January 2019, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation seized logging data from F-Secure’s FREEDOME VPN service to investigate an alleged crime. After a prolonged legal process, the Helsinki Court of Appeal has now ruled that the seizure of the logs was illegal. As a result, all of the seized logs must be destroyed.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Ncmpcpp: The Best MPD Client With The Worst Name – YouTube

  I picked a good place to start with MPD client, I think it’s fair to say that ncmpcpp might be one of the best mpd clients that exist, I’ll be trying out other but I don’t know how anything will top this one.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.10 ARM64 Has A “8~20x” Performance Optimization Forgotten About For Two Years – Phoronix

  Last week was the main set of ARM 64-bit architecture updates for Linux 5.10 while today a second batch of changes were sent in for this kernel. That first round had the Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) and Pointer Authentication support among other improvements while this secondary pull has two notable performance optimizations.

  First up is a performance optimization that the Arm developers acknowledge was seemingly forgotten about for some two years. Back in 2018 was a memory management speed-up by around 20x for the mremap system call on large memory regions. That work was merged but the feature never enabled for the ARM64 Linux kernel builds until now.

• Kernel 5.9: Onwards and upwards

  With version 5.9 of the Linux Kernel now released, it is time to, once again, review Collabora’s contributions to this release which contains many improvements, primarily in hardware support, multimedia, graphics, testing and continuous contributions to other subsystems.

  The importance of software maintenance has been highlighted in the last week with the discovery of a high-severity Bluetooth flaw. Whilst some reports have suggested that 5.9 contains the required fixes, many articles have been updated to reflect the fact that this is not the case. The required changes should be available as part of the 5.10 kernel when it is released and the kernel stable branches have picked them up. Many distributions are also now providing security releases covering this issue, we advise that you look out for (and apply) security fixes from your distribution of choice.

• It’s in the Air: The Corsair HS70 Wireless Headset & Linux

  Looking more widely at headset support in Linux, what can we expect? Unfortunately there’s a dearth of information, especially once you get away from the most popular models. Analog headsets will of course be fine (the joys of analog!), and Bluetooth should also work well, as long as you have that working. Though note that some Bluetooth audio devices prefer mobile, like some Jabra wireless earbuds that have spotty records of connecting to computers in general.

  Otherwise, though, there lacks any central database or way to find out what the support is like for a device you are interested in. You’ll have to rely on your search skills, maybe GitHub, and probably sorting out random forum or Reddit posts to figure out any issues. The Arch Wiki tends to be a great hardware reference, but here there’s just a page for Bluetooth headsets.

  These days it seems quite likely that your random USB audio device, even wireless, has a decent chance of working. But maybe not, and if you rely on any features that may require software or special drivers (controlling the device beyond volume, sound virtualization, etc.) it is still is a bit of a guessing game. At least HeadsetControl provides an indirect way of knowing if something will work, as they list many models of headsets which I assume means all the standard audio works already. When in doubt, make sure you check that return policy!

• Graphics Stack

  • The Most Innovative ~$50 Graphics Card For Linux Users

    This ~$50 USD graphics card is open-source friendly, can drive four display outputs simultaneously, passively cooled, and can fit in a PCI Express x1 slot. It’s a unique card offering good value especially for those Linux users wanting open-source friendly hardware.

    Earlier this year ASUS announced the GT710-4H-SL-2GD5. In the months since we didn’t hear anything more about it given the pandemic but recently saw it became available via Internet retailers and picked one up for testing.

Applications

• KeePassXC 2.6.2 Released with ‘Always on Top’ Option

  KeePassXC, KeePass Cross-Platform Community Edition, released a new update today with new menu option to keep window always on top.

• 5 of the Best Linux Text Editors

  A text editor is very important for any operating system. Be it taking quick notes, drafting a document, or even coding a script, it is the best tool for the job. For Linux, you’d be amazed by just how many different text editors there are out there. To help you decide which text editor you want to use, here we cover the best text editors on Linux.

  [...]

  Linux Text editors are serious business. Everyone has a strong opinion about what they feel is the best one. None of them are wrong, of course. Each editor has its strengths and weaknesses, and even if none of the text editors in the above list interest you, there are still many alternatives around, like the CherryTree Notepad, which didn’t make the list above.

Instructionals/Technical

• How to Install Arch Linux 2020.09 + Cinnamon Desktop + Apps + VMware Tools on VMware Workstation – SysAdmin

  This video tutorial shows how to install Arch Linux 2020.09 with Cinnamon Desktop on VMware Workstation step by step.

• How To Install Angular on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial we will show you how to install Angular on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, as well as some extra required package by Angular

• How to Download DaVinci Resolve 16 and install on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout

  Follow the steps to download latest free davinci resolve 16 to install Linux distros such as Ubuntu 20.4, CentOS, RedHat, Debian, Linux Mint

• How to use TeamViewer on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux without installation – Linux Shout

  Learn how you can use the poratble TeamVIewer from Pen drive without installation on Linux such as Ubuntu 20.04, CentOS, Linux Mint, Debian.

• How To Turn Your Raspberry Pi into NAS Server [Guide]

  A NAS server will allow you to save data from anywhere. Follow this article step by step to turn your Raspberry Pi into a NAS Server.

• How to install Nextcloud 20 on Ubuntu Server 20.04

  Nextcloud is everywhere these days. There’s a good reason for that–of all the on-premise cloud solutions on the market, the open source Nextcloud is the easiest to install, most flexible, scales from a single user to an enterprise environment and makes using the cloud as easy as any other tool.

  With the release of Nextcloud 20, there are a few new features you’ll want to take advantage of such as the new Dashboard and Talk integrations. Instead of upgrading Nextcloud 19 to Nextcloud 20, why not go for a fresh installation. Let’s do just that. I’ll demonstrate on Ubuntu Server 20.04.

• How to deploy the ONLYOFFICE Workspace Community Edition on Ubuntu Server 20.04 – TechRepublic

  Jack Wallen shows you how to deploy a full-blown groupware suite for your LAN with ONLYOFFICE Workspace and Docker.

• How to sync configuration files on Linux with Syncthing

  In the past on AddictiveTips, we’ve talked about Symbolize, a Linux app that works with Dropbox to keep your config files in sync. However, not everyone has a Dropbox account.

  If you do not have a Dropbox cloud account but still want your Linux configs to stay in sync, the next best tool to use is Syncthing. In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up a Syncthing system that will always keep your configuration files on Linux in sync.

• How to set up Adguard Home on Linux

  Adguard Home is a network-wide advertisement filtering system, much like Pi-Hole, which we’ve covered on AddictiveTips in the past. The main selling point for Adguard Home is that it doesn’t require using a client-side app (like the Adguard app you can install on Windows, Mac, etc.)

• How to create a new user with admin privileges on Linux – TechRepublic

  If you’re a Linux system admin, you probably find yourself scrambling to keep everything in check every day. There’s a lot to be done and doing this with a nod to security makes the task even more challenging. That’s why you dole out tasks to those admins under you. After all, if you attempt to do everything yourself, eventually you’re going to make a mistake, and mistakes can be disastrous in today’s light speed world of business. You create new users on your Linux servers and let those admins do their thing.

Games

• Hunt down other players in the competitive local multiplayer game Unspottable out now | GamingOnLinux

  Unspottable has you and friends all blended together amongst a crowd, and you each need to find the other to take them down. It’s highly amusing and out now.

• Explore an open world with dynamic turn-based battles in Tenderfoot Tactics out now | GamingOnLinux

  I honestly feel like I need to take an entire week off just to play Tenderfoot Tactics, a mix of turn-based battling and open-world exploration that’s out now. Note: key provided by the developer.

  Tenderfoot Tactics is a very strange mix of games. The open-world exploration is real-time, and it blends in party-based RPG mechanics with each of your goblins having levels, equipment, abilities and the option to evolve into something bigger and then when you get into the combat it flips that into a turn-based tactical battler. It works together so amazingly well though.

  “For a generation, the terrible Fog – one vast, voiceless, and cruel spirit – has been eating the once-thick forests of the mainland. Now, with nowhere left to call home, and granted magic by the friendly spirits of the archipelago, one small party of would-be adventurers sets out. Find a way to save the many goblin towns of the rocky coast, discover the truth of the Fog, and, if possible, put an end to it.”

• Avoid getting cut up in an intergalactic slaughterhouse, Disc Room is out now

  Small rooms, lots of spinning blades – what could possibly go wrong? Disc Room is insane and I absolutely love it.

  [...]

  Just note, that it’s made with Game Maker Studio which continues to have some weird dependency problems with libcurl. On Arch Linux for example, you can install the libcurl-compat package and then launch it like this…

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Plasma on the Edge

    You probably have heard the news by now that Microsoft have released the Linux version of their new Chromium-based Edge web browser. Of course I’ve been waiting for this day ever since they announced the switcheroo to Chromium in order to bring Plasma Browser Integration to Edge users. It took Microsoft almost two decades to offer another web browser to a Unixoid desktop and this time around it’s based on KDE’s legacy – what a time to be alive!

    You can already use Plasma Browser Integration just fine with Edge by installing it from the Chrome web store. Until Plasma 5.21 is out, however, it will only see it as yet another Chromium, meaning that KRunner, media controls, and so on might not map to the correct browser window or show only a generic icon.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Things I do: Proposal to add build graph output to GNU Make

    In 2015 I worked as a consultant at a large company in Lund. My position was with the build team and one of our responsibilities was managing and maintaining the build system for their Android based phones.

    The problem I was tasked with solving was the fact that running ‘make’ for a product after a successful build resulted in a lot of stuff being rebuilt unnecessarily.

    A stock Android build tree behaved nicely: a second run of ‘make’ only produced a line about everything being up-to-date. But the company products were taking a good 15 minutes for a rebuild even if nothing had been changed.

    The Android build system works by including all recipes to be built (programs / libraries / etc) using the GNU Make include directive, so that you end up with one giant Makefile that holds all rules for building the platform. Possibly to avoid the problems laid out in the paper Recursive make considered harmful.

  • Sébastien Wilmet: gedit crowdfunding

    The gedit text editor has a long history of development, it has been created in 1998 at the beginnings of GNOME. So it is one of the oldest GNOME application still alive and usually installed by default with Linux distributions that provide GNOME as their desktop environment.

    It is this – the fact that many Linux users know and have gedit installed – that motivates me to improve it, to make it a top notch core application. It is not an easy undertaking though, the codebase is old and large, and there are several underlying software components (libraries) that are critical for the main functioning of gedit.

Distributions

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu 20.10 on Raspberry Pi delivers the full Linux desktop and micro clouds

    Canonical today released Ubuntu 20.10 with optimised Raspberry Pi images for desktop in support of learners, inventors, educators and entrepreneurs, bringing the world’s most open platform to the world’s most accessible hardware.

    “In this release, we celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s commitment to put open computing in the hands of people all over the world,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO at Canonical. “We are honoured to support that initiative by optimising Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi, whether for personal use, educational purposes or as a foundation for their next business venture.”

    The Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4 join a very long list of x86 and ARM devices certified with Ubuntu, the operating system (OS) best known for its public cloud and desktop offerings. Dell, HP and Lenovo all certify PCs with Ubuntu Desktop, which is also the most widely used OS on the AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google, IBM and Oracle clouds.

    Ubuntu 20.10 also includes LXD 4.6 and MicroK8s 1.19 for resilient micro clouds, small clusters of servers providing VMs and Kubernetes on demand at the edge, for remote office, branch office, warehouse and distribution oriented infrastructure.

  • Ubuntu MATE 20.10 Release Notes

    If you want bug fixes :bug:, kernel updates :corn:, a new web camera control :movie_camera:, and a new indicator :point_right: experience, then 20.10 is for you :tada:. Ubuntu MATE 20.10 will be supported for 9 months until July 2021. If you need Long Term Support, we recommend you use Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS.

  • Build a Raspberry Pi Desktop with an Ubuntu heart | Ubuntu

    Since the Raspberry Pi Foundation began its mission, users have been using their boards to run everything in their lives. Whether that’s making DIY devices, learning to code or building products, it was made possible by Raspberry Pis. But running a full-featured, LTS desktop that can handle the expectations of everyday users, without technical knowledge, wasn’t really possible. Until recently.

    The Raspberry Pi 4 debuted with the graphics, RAM and connectivity needed for a Linux workstation. Users finally had the hardware to make a Raspberry Pi into a viable primary PC. But there were still issues. Most importantly, a lot of the desktop options either required a non-zero amount of technical knowledge or weren’t suited for long term use. Usually because of a lack of upstream support or running unmaintained, niche software.

    Canonical, the company that publishes Ubuntu, is and continues to be a long term fan of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Together, our missions to make technology more accessible to people all of the world aligns, and both organisations understand the value of an active and trusting community. So, when the Raspberry Pi 4 launched with the capabilities to run a full-fat Ubuntu Desktop, we didn’t blink.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Flavours Released, This is What’s (Mostly) New

    Arriving alongside the final Ubuntu 20.10 release are new builds from Ubuntu’s family of flavours, which includes Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Budgie.

    Rather than publish individual posts for each flavour I decided to post this instead: a concise roundup limited to just two paragraphs per flavour.

    Short though that sounds I still present flavour’s key changes and new features, plus give you the download links you need if you want to try a flavour out for yourself.

  • Ubuntu Linux 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ is Here With Renewed Raspberry Pi Focus – Slashdot

  • Ubuntu 20.10 now supports Raspberry Pi » Linux Magazine

    Ubuntu 20.10 is the first release from Canonical to support the Raspberry Pi single board computer.

    For any Linux admin who’s been looking to deploy single board computers for various purposes, there’s a new (while at the same time old) player in the Raspberry Pi mix—Ubuntu 20.10. Groovy Gorilla is the first official Ubuntu release to not only be optimized for the Raspberry Pi as a server distro, but as a full-blown desktop as well.

    To make this even more appealing, Ubuntu 20.10 will include the likes of LXD 4.6 and MicroK8s for the easy deployment of resilient micro clouds, small clusters of servers providing virtual machines, and Kubernetes on demand at the edge.

    Any Raspberry Pi 4 board with 4GB or 8GB of RAM can be deployed with Ubuntu Desktop or Server. And this isn’t a stripped-down version of the platform, it’s the full Monty. Canonical has put in a ton of work to optimize Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi. According to the Ubuntu PR Machine, “With this release, Ubuntu is optimized for Raspberry Pi, giving users of all levels and capabilities the access to Linux and microcloud technologies.”

  • What’s new in Ubuntu 20.10 – YouTube

    In this video, we are looking at what’s new in Ubuntu 20.10.

  • 10 Things to Do After Installing Ubuntu 20.10

    A new Ubuntu release means a new rundown of the most important post-install procedures you should perform.

    This guide is (as always) aimed at those who are new to – or less experienced with – Ubuntu. Each item aims to enhance or improve the default Ubuntu 20.10 experience, not rip it out or remould it

    I write a new “things to do…” list for each Ubuntu release rather than just update the old one. Why do I do that? Because the steps often change. Issues that needed post-install futzing last time may now be fixed.

  • Essential Guide: How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.10 from Ubuntu 20.04

    The Ubuntu upgrade process is fairly straightforward and shouldn’t take that long providing you have a semi-decent internet connection.

    There are a few things to keep in mind before rushing into an upgrade though so do pay close attention to the steps laid out in this tutorial.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 is Now Available to Download

    The official release announcement hasn’t been sent to the Ubuntu mailing list, but Ubuntu 20.10 desktop .iso images are up on the release server, ready for you (and everyone else) to download.

    Ubuntu 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ is a short-term release. It comes with 9 months of security updates, critical fixes, and select software updates from Canonical, makers of Ubuntu.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Released With GNOME 3.38, Active Directory Installer Integration

    Ubuntu 20.10, the “Groovy Gorilla”, is now officially available.

    Ubuntu 20.10 features many improvements like:

    - The GNOME 3.38 desktop is available with a wealth of improvements there including several performance optimizations / fixes handled by Canonical’s desktop team.

    - Continued work on the experimental OpenZFS file-system support that is available as an option when installing Ubuntu.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New

    Dubbed Groovy Gorilla, Ubuntu 20.10 has been in development for the past six months, continuing the six-month release cycle of Ubuntu. It supersedes the previous release, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa), though being a long-term support series many will prefer not to upgrade since they’ll receive free updates for at least 4 and a half more years.

    What’s new in Ubuntu 20.10? Well, being a short-lived release supported for only nine months, Ubuntu 20.10 comes with a handful of new features, including the latest and greatest GNOME 3.38 desktop environment which I previewed last month if you’re curious to see the differences from GNOME 3.36 used in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Official Flavors Released, Here’s What’s New

    As part of the today’s Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) release, all the official Ubuntu flavors have been updated and I want you to be the first to read about their new features and improvements. The official flavors released as part of Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) include Kubuntu 20.10, Xubuntu 20.10, Lubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu Studio 20.10, Ubuntu MATE 20.10, Ubuntu Budgie 20.10, and Ubuntu Kylin 20.10. As expected, they come with all the core features of Ubuntu 20.10, as well as…

    Kubuntu 20.04 LTS ships with the KDE Plasma 5.19.5 desktop environment, KDE Frameworks 5.74 and KDE Applications 20.08 software suites, as well as Qt 5.14.2. Among the included apps, there’s Elisa 20.08.1 as default music player instead of Cantata, LibreOffice 7.0 office suite, Mozilla Firefox 81 web browser, Latte Dock 0.9.10, KDE Connect 20.08.1, Krita 4.3.0, and KDevelop 5.5.2.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) released

    The Ubuntu 20.10 release is out.

  • Groovy Gorilla Release Notes

    These release notes for Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu and its flavours.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla” Arrives With Linux 5.8, GNOME 3.38, Raspberry Pi 4 Support

    Just two days ago, Ubuntu marked the 16th anniversary of its first ever release, Ubuntu 4.10 “Warty Warthog,” which showed Linux could be a more user friendly operating system.

    Back to now, after the six months of development cycle and the release of the current long-term Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa,” Canonical has announced a new version called Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla” along with its seven official flavor: Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Kylin, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, and Ubuntu Studio.

    Ubuntu 20.10 is a short term or non-LTS release, which means it will be supported for 9 months until July 2021. Though v20.10 does not seem a major release, it does come with a lot of exciting and new features.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 overview | Fast, secure and simple.

    In this video, I am going to show an overview of Ubuntu 20.10 and some of the applications pre-installed.

  • The Ubuntu desktop has a vision problem – Ubuntu 20.10 review

    We’re nearing the end of October already, and this means it’s time for a new release of Ubuntu 20.10, Groovy Gorilla. There are new desktop features, and new plumbing, as always, but I mostly have some thoughts about the Ubuntu desktop in general. Does 20.10 deserve its name?

  • Looking At Six Flavors of Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla”

    In this video, I take a quick look at the recently released (or soon-to-be-released) versions of Ubuntu 20.10 codenamed “Groovy Gorilla.” I will briefly look at the flagship Ubuntu distribution as well as: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie and Ubuntu MATE.

Devices/Embedded

• PineCube camera kit arrives for $30

  Pine64’s $30 PineCube camera dev kit runs Linux on an Allwinner S3 and offers a 5MP, OmniVision OV5640 based M12 camera with IR night-vision plus audio I/O, WiFi, 10/100 LAN with PoE, USB, 26-pin GPIO, and optional battery and display.

  The open-spec PineCube was first revealed by Pine64 in early 2019 as a device called The CUBE with an 8-megapixel Sony iMX179 CMOS sensor. By early this year, it was recast as the CUBE IP Camera, which was promised for a delayed 2Q release due to issues with the Sony camera implementation. Since then, Pine64 switched to a 5MP OmniVision OV5640 sensor and a new PineCube name. The camera dev kit has now shipped for $30.

• Turing Pi 2 clusters four Raspberry Pi CM4 modules

  Turing Machines unveiled a “Turin Pi 2” Mini-ITX board that clusters 4x Raspberry Pi CM4 modules with a Layer-2 managed switch along with 2x GbE, 4x USB, 2x mini-PCIe, and 2x SATA 3.0.

  Turing Machines Inc., which earlier this month announced a final 1K run of its Turing Pi cluster board, announced a second-gen Turing Pi 2. Due to ship in 2021, the board offers 4x nodes to cluster Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, compared to 7x for the original Turing Pi. The Gen2 design supports the new Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and is equipped with additional interfaces, including 2x mini-PCIe and 2x SATA 3.0.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Google’s made a change that impacts all Android users and some won’t like the sound of it

  • Apple iPhone 12′s MagSafe charger works with some Android smartphones

  • Android 11 comes to Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra users with One UI 3.0 beta

  • Upgrade Android Auto to Full Android with This Small USB Computer

  • What is Focus Mode on Android and How to Use It?

  • IOS vs Android: Who wins speed test? Know here

  • Technicolor, Google accelerate Hybrid Android TV

  • 10 more Xbox Game Pass titles have added touch controls for Android

  • How to Create Custom Emoji Mashups on Android

  • Top 15 best farming games for Android

  • Technicolor partners with Google for Android TV hybrid device development

  • Humax UK announces Aura 4K set-top-box DVR with Android TV and Freeview Play

  • This Could Be the Only Android Auto and CarPlay Cable You Need

  • Huawei Mate 40 Pro is the first Android phone with a 5nm chipset

  • Avoid This Game-Breaking Android 11 Bug

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 361

    • MDN Web Docs: Editorial strategy and community participation – Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog

      Our updated editorial strategy has two main parts: the creation of content pillars and an editorial calendar.

      The MDN writers’ team has always been responsible for keeping the MDN web platform reference documentation up-to-date, including key areas such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web APIs. We are breaking these key areas up into “content pillars”, which we will work on in turn to make sure that the significant new web platform updates are documented each month.

    • L10n Report: October 2020 Edition | Mozilla L10N

      New content and projects What’s new or coming up in Firefox desktop

    • Modern Web Standards Are Leaving Niche Web Browsers Behind – LinuxReviews

      There’s plenty of web browsers to choose from on desktop computers but there’s not much of a choice if you look beneath the surface. There’s a ton of web browsers based on Google’s Chromium code-base, a few mostly iOS and macOS browsers based on Apple’s Webkit engine and then there’s Firefox with it’s own Quantum rendering engine. There also Pale Moon with it’s own Goanna rendering engine. It is increasingly falling behind the bigger browsers and more and more websites are broken in it as web developers deploy web standards other browsers, but not Pale Moon, support.

      [...]

      The developer of the Pale Moon web browser announced that Pale Moon’s source code is being migrated off Microsoft GitHub yesterday. The reason? Moonchild doesn’t like that GitHub is increasingly relying on web standards the Pale Moon web browser doesn’t support.

    • US Department Of Justice Lawsuit Against Google Could Kill Firefox – LinuxReviews

      A US Department of Justice lawsuit against Google on the grounds that they are a “monopolist” could result in the death of the one realistic free software web browser alternative that’s not based on the Google-controlled Chromium code-base and it’s Blink rendering engine. Mozilla will need to find some other partner willing to pay them $400 million a year if they are forced to cancel their sweet “royalty” contract with Google.

• Programming/Development

  • Python

    • Webinar Recording: “virtualenv – a deep dive” with Bernat Gabor – PyCharm Blog | JetBrains

      PyCharm virtual environments are an important but challenging topic. We recently hosted Bernat Gabor to discuss this, as well as his rewrite of virtualenv, the hugely-popular command-line tool for creating virtual environment. The recording is now available.

      This was a very engaging webinar, with lots of questions, and many thanks to Bernat for taking the time to give thoughtful replies.

    • Python Morsels: The 2 Types of “Change” in Python

      The word “change” is ambiguous in Python: we have two distinct types of “change” in Python.

      We can “change” a variable by changing which object that variable is pointing to. We do that through an assignment statement.

      We can also “change” an actual object through a mutation.

      Let’s take a look at both types of change.

    • Python: Slice Notation on String

      The term slicing in programming usually refers to obtaining a substring, sub-tuple, or sublist from a string, tuple, or list respectively.

      Python offers an array of straightforward ways to slice not only these three but any iterable. An iterable is, as the name suggests, any object that can be iterated over.

      In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about Slicing Strings in Python.

    • R vs Python for Data Analysis — An Objective Comparison

      There are dozens articles out there that compare R vs. Python from a subjective, opinion-based perspective. Both Python and R are great options for data analysis, or any work in the data science field.

      But if your goal is to figure out which language is right for you, reading the opinion of someone else may not be helpful. One person’s “easy” is another person’s “hard,” and vice versa.

      In this article, we’re going to do something different. We’ll take an objective look at how both languages handle everyday data science tasks so that you can look at them side-by-side, and see which one looks better for you.

      Keep in mind, you don’t need to actually understand all of this code to make a judgment here! We’ll give you R vs Python code snippets for each task — simply scan through the code and consider which one seems more “readable” to you. Read the explanations, and see if one language holds more appeal than the other.

Planning for Disaster: A Writing Exercise

What does it take to survive a crisis? Have you ever written a personal safety plan? Kelly Hayes offers some guidance on building solutions for the situation you’re in.

Military Flyovers at NFL Games Are Ridiculous

There is no broadcast team more pleased with their own stentorian authority than NFL announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. Buck is an American legacy, the son of legendary play by play man Jack Buck. Aikman, the handsome, blond former star quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, might as well be Captain America’s uncle. These two voices of the heartland were caught on a hot mic speaking the kind of truth that they never would have dared utter on the airwaves.

Fraudulent Indigenous Art Is Flooding Museums

It’s a modest museum on the edge of a modest town. The Lander Pioneer Museum is dimly lit, a nod to its log cabin beginnings, and its mismatched display cases house everything from antique saddles to applesauce mills—artifacts of early settlers in what is now Lander, Wyo. In the main gallery, a placard announces the institution’s major show, “Tribal Warrior Art.” The exhibition, which debuted in fall of 2018, contains about 100 ledger art drawings—narrative illustrations created by Indigenous artists from the Plains on discarded account books, mostly during the late 19th century.

Health/Nutrition

• “Herd Immunity” Was Originally About Vaccination. Now It Is Neoliberal Violence.

  Recent weeks have seen right-wing governments, notably Trump’s administration, embrace the deeply problematic notion of “herd immunity.” These efforts are fortified now by a mysterious “minority report” — purportedly from dissident public health experts — known as The Great Barrington Declaration. Yet the validity of the document is being questioned, as many of the names appearing on it look to be based on jokes. Angela Mitropoulos is a political theorist and academic based in Sydney, Australia, and the author of Pandemonium: Proliferating Borders of Capital and the Pandemic Swerve (2020) and Contract and Contagion (2012). In this interview with cultural theorist Max Haiven (editor of the VAGABONDS book series in which Pandemonium appeared), Mitropoulos discusses the origins and politics of the “herd immunity” argument.

• McConnell Admits to Sabotaging COVID Relief Talks to Rush Barrett Confirmation

  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his Republican colleagues Tuesday that he has privately been urging the Trump White House not to strike a coronavirus relief deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the November 3 election, warning that an agreement could interfere with his chamber’s plan to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court early next week.

• Veterans Affairs Secretary Headlines GOP Fundraiser as COVID-19 Cases Surge

  Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie headlined a fundraiser for the North Carolina Republican Party last week, taking time away from his job leading the government’s second-largest agency at a moment when COVID-19 cases are surging in VA hospitals.

  Though legal, campaigning by cabinet secretaries is a departure from historical norms. Nevertheless, it’s become standard practice in the administration of President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has hit the campaign trail for Trump, and several other cabinet members recently visited Iowa. Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is also campaigning in North Carolina. Trump himself has routinely blurred politics with official functions, most prominently by hosting the Republican convention on the White House lawn, and he’s brushed off more than a dozen staff violations of the federal Hatch Act, which limits political activity by government employees.

• World Food Day Drives Home Need for Change in the US

  The pandemic has exposed the fragility of the current industrialized food supply system, which is nested in an unequal, racialized and gendered socio-economic system experiencing the increasing prevalence of unemployment and food insecurity.

• Global Reproductive Health on the Ballot this November

  If Democrats are elected, we can have a new president and a congress that will fight to repeal the Helms Amendment and safeguard accessible and affordable healthcare everywhere.

• Illinois Will Start Sharing Data About COVID-19 Outbreaks in Schools

  Eight months into the pandemic and following pleas from educators and parents, Illinois has decided it will publish data on the coronavirus’s spread in schools.

  The decision comes two weeks after a story by ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune detailed the lack of information available to school officials and parents as they try to decide whether in-person learning is safe. Illinois public health officials told reporters there had been outbreaks in at least 44 school buildings across the state but declined to say where.

• The EPA Refuses to Reduce Pollutants Linked to Coronavirus Deaths

  In April, as coronavirus cases multiplied across the country, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected scientists’ advice to tighten air pollution standards for particulate matter, or soot.

  In the next few weeks, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler likely will reaffirm that decision with a final ruling, despite emerging evidence that links particulate pollution to COVID-19 deaths.

• ‘Prosecute the Sackler Family’: Critics Say DOJ Settlement Not Nearly Enough for Purdue Pharma’s Deadly Role in Opioid Crisis

  “Today’s guilty plea comes too late for the millions of lives that Purdue’s crimes destroyed over the past decade.”

• Dumb Bastards Are Killing Us

• Amid Trump’s Politicization of FDA, California Joins New York in Vowing to Independently Review Coronavirus Vaccines

  “Like our approach to Covid-19, when it comes to a vaccine, California will be guided by science.”

• Russian manufacturer says it refuses to believe news reports that America trashed the ventilators shipped to NYC in April

  The Rostec subsidiary that manufactured the 45 ventilators delivered to New York earlier this year as part of a U.S.-Russian exchange of medical supplies says it doesn’t believe reports in the American news media that the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency “disposed of” the hardware. “We believe in reason and reject the idea that American officials could do such a thing with valuable equipment so highly in demand around the world during the pandemic,” a spokesperson for the Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET) told the news agency TASS.

• A Glimmer of Hope: Mortality Rate Is Improving for Hospitalized COVID Patients

  The drought in New England made this year’s foliage season a foreshortened russet-and-dun affair, and it suits the moment. The hills are painted red in homage to the third surge of COVID-19 that will soon cover every COVID-charting map in a wine-spill of scarlet from sea to sea and border to border. We know this beast by now; that which we are told is coming soon has already arrived in stealth.

• Trump Denounces Fauci as a “Disaster” Who “Got It Wrong” About COVID-19

  President Donald Trump denounced Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a “disaster” and possible “idiot” who “got it wrong” about COVID-19 — even though the president recently used Fauci’s words in a recent campaign commercial.

• Looming Failure of Stimulus Exposes GOP’s Double Standards on the Deficit

  With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell coming out against a stimulus deal, it looks increasingly unlikely that Congress will pass a COVID stimulus bill before the election. While supposed concerns about a clash between the stimulus and the vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have thrown a wrench in the timing, the continuation of the months-long Republican resistance in the Senate is supposed to be based on good, old-fashioned fiscal responsibility.

• The Pandemic Sent Americans’ Health Care Coverage Into Free Fall

  Before the pandemic hit, John made a decent living mowing people’s yards and doing landscaping in Houston. He had a place to live with his 15-year-old son. He even had health insurance that he bought for himself and his son “in case anything happens,” he said.

• Putin says Russia isn’t planning to introduce a second coronavirus lockdown

  The Russian government isn’t planning to introduce severe restrictions due to the ongoing spread of the coronavirus in the country, said President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs on Wednesday, October 21.

• Russian health authorities launch inquiry following media reports of COVID-19 patients dying in Rostov-on-Don hospital due to lack of oxygen

  Russia’s federal healthcare watchdog, Roszdravnadzor, is carrying out an inquiry on behalf of the Health Ministry into the cause of death of 13 COVID-19 patients in a hospital in Rostov-on-Don, who, according to media reports, passed away due to a lack of medical oxygen.

• Oblivion Agenda: Mike Adams’ COVID-19-inspired update to his alien vaccine holocaust conspiracy theory

  I’ve been writing about conspiracy theories over 20 years now. Indeed, my entry into skepticism and science-based medicine came in response to one of the most despicable conspiracy theories in existence, Holocaust denial. At the time, that conspiracy theory seemed on its face ridiculous enough to me, but, as I quickly learned as the 1990s drew to a close, it was held by a disturbing number of people, mostly in the support of admiration of Hitler and even outright fascism. Also, in the course of a few short years, deconstructing Holocaust denial led me to develop many of the skills that enabled me to start tackling alternative medicine and the antivaccine movement. Not long after, I witnessed for my first time the birth of a conspiracy theory, “9/11 Truth,” the conspiracy theory that it wasn’t jetliners that brought down the towers and that the attack was an “inside job,” in response to the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001. This conspiracy theory was soon followed by others, such as the anti-CDC Simpsonwood conspiracy theory first popularized by antivax leader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in 2005 and the “CDC whistleblower” antivaccine conspiracy theory in 2014, which later led to Del Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield’s antivaccine propaganda movie disguised as a documentary, VAXXED. As a result of these experiences, I remain a bit of a connoisseur of conspiracy theories, the more ridiculous and outrageous the better, for the simple reason that nearly all science denialism, be it alternative medicine, the antivaccine movement, climate science “skepticism” (i.e., denial), “9/11 Truth,” Holocaust denial, creationism, or others, has at its heart one or more conspiracy theories. Little did I know that, two decades later, knowledge of conspiracy theories, how they originate, and how they spread would be so essential, which leads me to Mike Adams’ “Oblivion Agenda.”

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • 1Password for Linux desktop app now available in beta [Ed: So many puff pieces for proprietary software that is harvesting people's passwords. Are those sites paid to spew out bad recommendations that likely have undisclosed/undocumented back doors?]

      The popular password manager 1Password is now available for Linux users in beta version.

      Pegged for an official release in early 2021, the Linux release for 1Password – which has been used by Windows and Mac users for years – offers a “full-featured desktop app” where users can securely manage and store passwords and other important credentials, such as credit card information.

  • Security

    • U.S. Justice Department charges six Russian military intelligence officers in connection with worldwide cyberattacks

      The United States has accused six officers from the Main Directorate of the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces (the GU, formerly known as the Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) of involvement in a series of large-scale cyberattacks. According to the indictment, these Russian nationals are all officers in Unit 74455, which has been linked repeatedly to hacker attacks in the past, including by Washington. The U.S. Justice Department released the names of the Russian military intelligence officers in question, identifying them as Yuri Andrienko, Sergey Detistov, Pavel Frolov, Anatoly Kovalev, Artem Ochichenko, and Pyotr Paliskin. All six have been charged formally already. The Justice Department noted that one of the accused — Anatoly Kovalev — is also a defendant in the case on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    • Making the Grade with Linux and Cybersecurity at the Intelligent Edge

      As intelligent edge deployments accelerate, we have reached a crossroads where many are being forced to choose between the accessibility, ease of use, flexibility, and leading-edge capabilities of open source software and the safety and security of systems in the field. How we proceed has the potential to lead massive transformation in the embedded industry.

      “Using open source early in the proof-of-concept cycle means taking advantage of the rapid pace of open source innovation,” says Matt Jones, Chief Architect at Wind River. “Taking your solution to market comes with additional measures meant to protect your device throughout its lifecycle.”

    • Security updates for Thursday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (freetype2), Debian (bluez, firefox-esr, and freetype), Fedora (firefox), openSUSE (chromium), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (java-11-openjdk), Slackware (kernel), SUSE (freetype2, gnutls, kernel, php7, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (flightgear, italc, libapache2-mod-auth-mellon, libetpan, and php-imagick).

    • Snyk to automatically check Docker Official Images for security problems [Ed: ZDNet pushing FUD vendors again, ones connected to Microsoft]

    • OpenDev’s Gerrit deployment back online after suspected admin account compromise

      OpenDev.org’s Gerrit deployment has been restored after being taken offline following the detection of malicious activity on its repositories.

      The repositories were disabled two hours after project maintainers were alerted to a suspected security breach on Tuesday morning (October 20).
      “We believe an admin account in Gerrit was compromised allowing an attacker to escalate privileges within Gerrit,” said Clark Boylan in a service announcement issued later that day.
      “Around 02:00 UTC October 20 suspicious review activity was noticed, and we were made aware of it shortly afterwards.

      “The involved account was disabled and removed from privileged Gerrit groups. After further investigation we decided that we needed to stop the service, this happened at about 04:00 UTC.”

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • The pylons have ears: Moscow allocates roughly $2 million for a new traffic-monitoring system that will capture the MAC-address from your mobile device

        In its efforts to manage and monitor the flow of human beings through the city, Moscow officials have experimented with mobile apps, QR codes, and telephone hotlines. Many of these systems have confused the elderly, overwhelmed operators, and frustrated virtually everyone. According to a new public contract reported in the Russian news media, the capital now plans to invest in a less intrusive technology that silently tracks traffic flows by logging background connections with random mobile devices. Meduza summarizes a new report by the newspaper Kommersant.

      • Peru’s Third Who Defends Your Data? Report: Stronger Commitments from ISPs, But Imbalances, and Gaps to Bridge.

        Hiperderecho, Peru’s leading digital rights organization, has launched today its third ¿Quién Defiende Tus Datos? (Who Defends you Data)–a report that seeks to hold telecom companies accountable for their users’ privacy. The new Peruvian edition shows improvements compared to 2019’s evaluation.

        Movistar and Claro commit to require a warrant for handing both users’ communications content and metadata to the government. The two companies also earned credit for defending user’s privacy in Congress or for challenging government requests. None scored any star last year in this category. Claro stands out with detailed law enforcement guidelines, including an explanatory chart for the procedures the company adopts before law enforcement requests for communications data. However, Claro should be more specific about the type of communications data covered by the guidelines. All companies have received full stars for their privacy policies, while only three did so in the previous report. Overall, Movistar and Claro are tied in the lead. Entel and Bitel lag, with the former bearing a slight advantage. 

Defence/Aggression

• ‘Unprecedented and Desperate’: As Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty Nears Entry Into Force, Trump Administration Urges Withdrawals

  “This is completely outrageous and yet somehow not at all surprising,” one nuclear expert said of the U.S. effort.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• ‘The Nation’ and the ‘Texas Observer’ Partner on Hard-Hitting Accountability Journalism in a Key Battleground State

  Contact: Caitlin Graf, The Nation, press [at] thenation.com, 212-209-5400

Environment

• Russia to spend $106 million on constructing desalination plants in Crimea

  The Russian government is planning to build industrial desalination plants in Crimea and Sevastopol to resolve local water shortages by 2023. This was outlined in the government’s newly released plan to ensure reliable water supply to the two regions.

• What Amy Coney Barrett Means For the Climate

  This article is adapted from “The Climate Beat,” the weekly newsletter of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative strengthening coverage of the climate story.

• Merkley Unveils Pioneering Bills to Make Financial Institutions ‘Stop Bankrolling Climate Catastrophe’

  “This is how we stop the money pipeline between Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry.”

• The US Is Missing a Chance to Tackle Climate Crisis and Pandemic Relief Together

  The pandemic crisis has exacerbated existing inequalities and has been an abject lesson in what happens when nations don’t prepare in advance for catastrophe. It has also led many to draw the comparison between this health crisis and the ongoing climate crisis — and the growing and urgent need to tackle climate change now before it spirals out of control.

• Energy

  • Investing $2 Trillion in US Clean Energy and Infrastructure Could Create Millions of ‘Good Jobs,’ Analysis Finds

    “We don’t have to choose between a strong economy or a healthy environment—we can have both,” says an EPI data analyst.

Finance

• ‘The Gilded Age Is Here Again’: Billionaire Wealth Has Surged by $931 Billion During Seven Months of Pandemic, Economic Collapse

  “The juxtaposition between surging billionaire wealth and the imploding livelihoods of ordinary Americans is grotesque and unseemly.”

• The Fed Saved the Economy but Is Threatening Trillions of Dollars Worth of Middle-Class Retirement

  The Federal Reserve, which these days seems to be the only major part of the federal government capable of operating drama-free, has done a lot to help keep our economy afloat. It has cut interest rates to unprecedented low levels, bought billions of dollars of corporate IOUs, helped stabilize the debt markets and helped rescue a stock market that had begun falling sharply in mid-February when the COVID-19 recession started and that seemed headed for a crash.

  In the process, the Fed has indirectly provided support to house prices and to the vital home construction business by forcing down mortgage interest rates to all-time lows of about 3%. Given that home equity is a major asset for many middle-class Americans, supporting home prices is especially important. As is supporting the home construction industry, which is a major source of blue-collar jobs.

• As Deadline for Covid Relief Deal Looms, Poll Shows Voters Support $2 Trillion Stimulus by 51-Point Margin

  The new survey shows 72% of likely voters—including 56% of Republicans—support an ambitious coronavirus relief package.

• ‘Stop Financing Climate-Wrecking Companies’: Campaigners Light Earth on Fire Outside European Central Bank HQ

  Critics call out the bank for “purchasing bonds from some of the world’s worst climate criminals through its trillion-euro Covid recovery package.”

• Democrats Cannot Cave to the Republican Death Cult on the Stimulus Bill

  The latest Covid-19 relief package is held up in the Republican-controlled Senate for a number of reasons. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has been refusing to put the HEROES Act, first passed in the House of Representatives in May and recently updated, on the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote. That act would almost surely garner support from the three or four Republicans senators needed to pass the legislation, if McConnell would allow simple democracy to function.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Coalition of Advocacy and Business Groups Call On Election Officials to Uphold ‘Sacred Responsibility’ to Democratic Principles

  “We know you understand the importance of your role in preserving our fragile democracy,” the groups wrote. 

• Fascism in America

  Words matter. We must call what is happening in the US by its true name.

• How to Vote During a Pandemic

  COVID-19 already had the primaries looking very different, with several elections delayed, vote by mail expanded, drive-thru voting offered in some states and poll workers wearing personal protective equipment.

  Sign up to learn how to become a more informed, more engaged citizen.

• Trump Abruptly Ends “60 Minutes” Interview Tweeting It Was “FAKE and BIASED”

  Apparently upset over the line of questioning he was receiving from CBS News’s Lesley Stahl, President Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview on Tuesday with the veteran journalist that was set to air on “60 Minutes” over the weekend.

• Will Union Workers Deliver Nevada For Biden?

  “Look, folks, the air quality is in the red zone today. The EPA says that means people with lung or heart issues should avoid prolonged activity outdoors.”

• Facebook and Google Cash In on Misleading Ads for Nonexistent “Trumpcare”

  “Trumpcare” insurance will “finally fix healthcare,” said an advertisement on Facebook.

• Senate Democrats Can Still Block Barrett Confirmation by Slowing Down Process

  Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout says Senate Democrats can still block the confirmation of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, if they use every possible procedural method available to them to slow and frustrate the process. “A Barrett confirmation is a catastrophe,” Teachout says. “A 6-3 majority on the court is basically a bomb coming at what is left of our protections against corruption in politics, against corporate money, against what is left of the Voting Rights Act.”

• Voting in Exile

  The forces that have kept us in exile want us to lose touch with our sense of democratic agency—they want us to feel that we have forever lost our worlds.

• Guns, Germs, and Smoke

  UNITE-HERE! Canvassers take on Trump in Nevada.

• Voter Suppression Has Spread Like Fire Across the US — Far Beyond the South

  As tens of millions of people across the U.S. cast their ballots in early voting ahead of the November 3 election, we look at voter suppression efforts with journalist and academic Jelani Cobb. His new Frontline documentary Whose Vote Counts examines the long lines, record number of mail-in ballots and the legal fights that have marked voting during the pandemic, with a focus on Wisconsin. “This is a state where the presidency was essentially decided in the last election,” says Cobb, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a contributor to The New Yorker. He describes voter suppression as “a fire that has spread across the country.”

• Trump and Biden’s Mics Will Be Muted for at Least Some of the Final Debate

  The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) announced on Monday that it would mute the microphones of both candidates for portions of Thursday night’s debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden — a move that Trump has described as “unfair,” even though it will be applied to both candidates equally.

• ‘One of the Most Significant Rulings’ of 2020 as Supreme Court Blocks GOP Effort to Curb Ballot Deadline in Pennsylvania

  “This decision could have easily gone the other way if Amy Coney Barrett was on the court.”

• Shouting Matches, Partisan Rallies, Guns At Polling Places: Tensions High At Early-Voting Sites

• Mobile app sends Miami users the wrong date for Election Day. So, here’s a reminder

• Iowa Could Make Joe Biden President, and Give Him a Democratic Senate to Work With

  Dubuque, Iowa—After Donald Trump swept Iowa by an overwhelming margin in 2016, the prospects for a Democratic comeback in the historic swing state did not look good. Perhaps, Republican operatives gleefully suggested, the historic swing state was headed the way of the more reliably Republican Great Plains states to its west. After the 2016 election, Iowa had a Republican governor, two Republican US senators, a Republican-dominated US House delegation, and it had just backed the Republican nominee for president by a wider margin than he’d secured in Texas. Trump won 93 of Iowa’s 99 counties. Where Barack Obama held his own in rural areas, carrying 53 counties in 2008 and 38 in 2012, Hillary Clinton scraped by with just a handful of urban centers and college towns where voters kept the blue flag flying.

• Calling Trump a ‘Clear Threat to Our Democracy,’ Civil Rights Group Sues Admin. Over Voter Intimidation

  “The court should protect the fundamental right to vote by blocking Trump’s attempt to prevent a free and fair election.”

• ‘Final Line of Accountability Lies With You’: 40+ Progressive Groups Urge House Democrats to Impeach Barr

  “The best time for the House of Representatives to consider an impeachment of Attorney General Barr was months ago. The second-best time is right now.” 

• Denying Pre-Trial Detainees the Right to Vote Must Stop

  This form of voter suppression is a social injustice and a civic indignity.

• Voters Are Receiving Emails Threatening Them to “Vote for Trump or Else!”

  Voters in at least two states, perhaps more, have reported receiving emails from unknown senders threatening them, saying that if they cast a ballot against President Donald Trump in the upcoming election they will face severe consequences for doing so.

• Lawyers Can’t Find Parents of 545 Kids Separated by Trump’s Immigration Policies

  Lawyers appointed to represent the interests of migrant children and parents who were separated from one another as a result of a program established by the Trump administration, say that the whereabouts of hundreds of parents affected by that policy remain unknown.

• Ocasio-Cortez Holds ‘Biggest Get Out the Vote Rally of 2020′ as Nearly Half a Million People Watch Gaming Stream

  In addition to urging viewers to support Joe Biden, the congresswoman wove comments about universal healthcare and renewable energy into the livestream. 

• Bolivians Reclaim Their Democracy

  On Sunday, October 18, Luis Arce won the presidency of Bolivia, in a pronounced repudiation of last year’s military coup, which had put the current government in power. Arce is the former economy minister for Evo Morales, who was the first indigenous president of the country with the largest percentage of indigenous people in the Americas. Morales’s democratically elected government was overthrown in November of last year.

• Bernie Sanders Cheers Bolivia on “Year-Long Fight to Restore Democracy”

  Following socialist candidate Luis Arce’s resounding victory in Bolivia’s high-stakes and closely watched presidential election, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday applauded the people of the South American nation for persisting in their “difficult, year-long fight to restore democracy” in the wake of last year’s military coup that ousted Evo Morales and installed a vicious right-wing regime.

• Bernie Sanders Applauds People of Bolivia for ‘Year-Long Fight to Restore Democracy’ in Wake of Military Coup

  “The Bolivian people made their voices heard in yesterday’s election,” said Sanders, who was among the first U.S. lawmakers to condemn the coup that ousted Evo Morales last year.

• How to Stop Trump from Stealing the Election

  Make this a blowout victory for Joe Biden and Democrats down the ballot, and stop Trump from stealing this election.

• Federal Officers Are Still Struggling To Find Evidence Of A Massive Antifa Conspiracy

  Donald Trump’s lurid myths about bad hombres crossing the border to wreak havoc in the United States have failed to be ushered into existence by CBP and ICE. Try as they might, the two agencies have done little more than process a bunch of bog-standard illegal entries. And… um… target college students here legally. Numbers were fudged, but it has proven to be an exercise in futility. This attempt to villainize immigrants has been abandoned by both Trump and these DHS components.

• Belarusian court declares opposition Telegram channel ‘Nexta’ extremist

  The opposition Telegram channel Nexta Live and its logotype are now considered “extremist materials” in Belarus, reports the state news agency BelTA, citing a decision from the Central District Court in Minsk.

• Confident but not uncontested: Internal campaign documents show that Russia’s ruling political party has a plan hold onto the State Duma and beat Alexey Navalny’s strategic voting initiative

  The leaders of United Russia, the party that has dominated national politics since it was founded roughly two decades ago, fully expect to lose seats in next year’s parliamentary elections, but they have a plan to maintain their constitutional majority in the State Duma, according to campaign documents obtained by Meduza. In the 2021 races, Russia’s “party of power” intends to nominate “specialists in socially significant or socially approved spheres of activity,” and it’s looking for ways to beat “Smart Vote,” the strategic voting initiative spearheaded by opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s team.

• It’s Not Trump’s Job to Be Informed, Is It?

  Support independent cartooning: join Sparky’s List—and don’t forget to visit TT’s Emporium of Fun, featuring the new book and plush Sparky!

• Progressives Should Support Biden Now, but Be Ready to Push Later

  This year more than most election years, progressives are on tenterhooks. The anticipation is twofold: whether November 3 will mark a new chapter not just for the country but also for the Democratic Party. This moment demands broad-scale transformation—testing and treatment to contain the coronavirus; economic justice for Americans caught in the crosshairs of governmental incompetence; and a full push to dismantle systemic racism. Time, and action, will tell whether the Democratic Party sticks with centrism or embraces the progressivism necessary for that transformation.

• ‘It’s what society wants’ Belarusian bodybuilding champion divorces husband identified as riot policeman in infamous protest snapshot

  Belarusian Internal Troops Officer Timur Grishko was captured in one of the most well-known photographs from the first night of post-election opposition protests in Belarus. Ever since his identity leaked online, his wife, fitness trainer and Belarusian bodybuilding champion Liliya Salimgareeva, has faced constant harassment. Now, she has confirmed to the Belarusian news outlet Nasha Niva that the public pressure pushed her to divorce her husband. 

Free Speech

• Jeffrey Toobin’s Zoom Dick Incident Is The Perfect Example Of Why We Need Section 230

  I know that it’s 2020 and the normal concepts no longer make any sense, but on Monday of this week, quite a story broke that spread quickly through the media world. CNN and New Yorker famed legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was apparently suspended from both companies, after it was revealed that he was caught masturbating on a Zoom call with New Yorker colleagues, in which they were playing an election simulation game (that appears to be similar, but not identical to the election simulation game we created — though I swear that ours does not involve any masturbating legal analysts).

• Content Moderation Case Study: Handling Trolls Invading A Community (1993)

  Summary: Before even the World Wide Web existed, Usenet was a popular gathering place for various niche communities to congregate. In many ways it was similar to what Reddit has become today, except that it was not controlled by any single company. Instead there were a number of newsgroups (like subreddits) and various news servers that could choose to carry whichever news groups they wanted.

• Russia’s media watchdog says state TV airing leaked photos of historian’s underage foster daughter isn’t a rights violation

  Russia’s media and censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, has determined that the state television channel Rossiya didn’t violate the rights of historian Yuri Dmitriev’s underage foster daughter by airing nude photos of her leaked from a court case file, Karelia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Gennady Saraev wrote on his page on the social media site Odnoklassniki.

• Stupid Use Of Profanity Filter Makes A Mess Of Virtual Paleontologist Conference

  We’ve known for some time that the sorts of automated filters that get applied to various internet-y things are flawed in the extreme. But of all the filters that annoy me the most, profanity filters are the worst. And, no, it’s not just because I use curse words like commas. Rather, it’s the combination of just how badly this is used, such as how Google thought for years that “bisexual” was a naughty word, along side how nefarious actors can block all sorts of non-profane language just by calling it profane. Add to all of this that a total lack of nuance for identifying so-called “naughty words” regularly causes perfectly non-profane content to be blocked or censored and this all begins to look like an exercise worth giving up.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Labor, Land, and Legacy: What New Might We Grow in the Shell of the Old?

  Jersey City, N.J.—Our diasporic family lives between three places, at least figuratively: the United States, Ecuador, and Egypt. Ecuador was hit hardest by the pandemic in regions where migrants had returned home from Spain, bringing the virus with them. Images of dead bodies deserted in the streets of Guayaquil made my mom’s anxiety about Covid-19 soar. For weeks, my parents would not even walk Pechochito, their feisty Pomeranian, around the block. And so, I did what any loving (and newly unemployed) first-generation daughter would do: I took care of their grocery shopping, and their business; I became an interim landlord.

• A Dilemma of Intimacy

  When I shaved my head in anticipation of chemotherapy, two things happened. First, just like that, I stopped looking like a woman. Second, I turned into a monk. My husband, peering in the mirror, said, “Hey, you look like a cute monk!” I am pretty sure the “cute” part came out of love, but the “monk” part, echoing my thoughts, struck me as a notable coincidence. In the spirit of camaraderie, he, too, shaved his head. But he did not look less male, nor did he look like a monk. Being tall and white, he looked… well, military. So there we were: the monk and the soldier.

• ‘Exciting and Historical Moment’: Their Rights Restored, 67,000+ Former Felons Set to Vote in Florida Amid Record Early Turnout

  “There are thousands upon thousands of energized and inspired returning citizens throughout the state that will not be denied, that will be a voice, and will have an impact in determining who wins Florida.”

• Using DOJ ‘to Crush a Victim,’ Barr Claims Trump Cannot Be Sued for Denying E. Jean Carroll’s Rape Accusation

  “There is not a single person in the United States—not the president and not anyone else—whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” Carroll’s lawyers said. 

• Report Details How Trump Downplays, Ignores Grave Human Rights Violations Around the World

  One expert accused the administration of “using all the tools at its disposal to undermine our asylum system.”

• Best Wishes

• DEA’s “Project Safeguard” Latest Salvo in Failed US War on Drugs

  “It is astonishing that in the midst of a pandemic and calls for police reform, the DEA is using the same old heavy-handed tactics to address a public health issue.”

• Overdoses Are Skyrocketing During COVID-19. The DEA Is Making It Worse.

  Drug overdose deaths have seen an alarming spike as the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted treatment and aggravated the underlying causes of drug misuse, according to multiple data sources. Meanwhile, millions of people in the United States continue to face significant barriers to evidence-based addiction treatment as law enforcement restricts the supply of pharmaceutical opioids, forcing pain patients and drug users toward dangerous substitutes such as heroin and fentanyl that fuel high rates of fatal overdoses.

• Confirmation Hearings Exposed Barrett as a Hardcore Rightwing Activist

  Her goal on the court will be to drive America back to the days before the New Deal and the civil rights movement.

• We Can’t See Young Progressive Voters as a Monolith

  These dispatches are published as part of StudentNation’s “Vision 2020: Election Stories From the Next Generation,” reports from young journalists that center the concerns of diverse young voters. In this project, working with Dr. Sherri Williams, we recruited young journalists from different backgrounds to develop story ideas and reporting about their peers’ concerns ahead of the most important election of our lives. This is the final installment of the series.

• Pope Francis Signals ‘Historic’ Shift for Catholic Church, Publicly Supporting Civil Unions for Same-Sex Couples

  The pope won praise for “pushing the Church into the 21st Century.”

• Russian Cabinet rejects bill outlining changes to the Family Code impacting children’s and transgender rights

  Russia’s Government Commission on Legislative Activities has rejected conservative Senator Elena Mizulina’s draft law “aimed at strengthening the institution of the family.” The commission believes that the changes outlined in the bill would tip the balance “towards the rights of parents” at the expense of children’s rights. A draft of the cabinet’s decision was obtained by TASS on Tuesday, October 20.

• Women’s Rights, No Strings Attached

• Aaron Sorkin Sanitizes the Chicago 7

  I confess that I was disheartened when I first heard that Aaron Sorkin, best known as the creator of the TV show The West Wing, was writing and directing a film about the trial of the Chicago Seven. Although much celebrated not just for The West Wing but for his scripts for films like A Few Good Men (1992) and The Social Network (2010), Sorkin struck me as having the exact wrong sensibility for telling the story of radicals fighting the legal system. Spanning the years 1969 and 1970, the Chicago Seven trial involved the federal government trying to convict seven anti-war radicals (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner) along with Black Panther leader Bobby Seale (whose case was eventually treated separately). All stood accused of fomenting riots during the 1968 Democratic convention. The trial was extremely controversial and polarizing, with many shocking moments, most notoriously when Judge Julius Hoffman ordered Seale shackled and gagged after the defendant repeatedly tried to represent himself in court.

• EFF to Supreme Court: American Companies Complicit in Human Rights Abuses Abroad Should Be Held Accountable

  For years EFF has been calling for U.S. companies that act as “repressions little helpers” to be held accountable, and now we’re telling the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite all the ways that technology has been used as a force for good–connecting people around the world, giving voice to the less powerful, and facilitating knowledge sharing—technology has also been used as a force multiplier for repression and human rights violations, a dark side that cannot be denied.Today EFF filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to preserve one of the few tools of legal accountability that exist for companies that intentionally aid and abet foreign repression, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). We told the court about what we and others have been seeing over the past decade or so: surveillance, communications, and database systems, just to name a few, have been used by foreign governments—with the full knowledge of and assistance by the U.S. companies selling those technologies—to spy on and track down activists, journalists, and religious minorities who have been imprisoned, tortured, and even killed.Specifically, we asked the Supreme Court today to rule that U.S. corporations can be sued by foreigners under the ATS and taken to court for aiding and abetting gross human rights abuses. The court is reviewing an ATS lawsuit brought by former child slaves from Côte d’Ivoire who claim two American companies, Nestle and Cargill, aided in abuse they suffered by providing financial support to cocoa farms they were forced to work at. The ATS allows noncitizens to bring a civil claim in U.S. federal court against a defendant that violated human rights laws. The companies are asking the court to rule that companies cannot be held accountable under the law, and that only individuals can.We were joined in the brief by the leading organizations tracking the sale of surveillance technology:  Access Now, Article 19, Privacy International, Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, and Ronald Deibert, director of Citizen Lab at University of Toronto. We told the court that the Nestle case does not just concern chocolate and children. The outcome will have profound implications for millions of Internet users and other citizens of countries around the world. Why? Because providing sophisticated surveillance and censorship products and services to foreign governments is big business for some American tech companies. The fact that their products are clearly being used for tools of oppression seems not to matter. Here are a few examples we cite in our brief:Cisco custom-built the so-called “Great Firewall” in China, also known as the “Golden Shield, which enables the government to conduct Internet surveillance and censorship against its citizens. Company documents have revealed that, as part of its marketing pitch to China, Cisco built a specific “Falun Gong module” into the Golden Shield that helped Chinese authorities efficiently identify and locate member of the Falun Gong religious minority, who were then apprehended and subjected to torture, forced conversion, and other human rights abuses. Falun Gong practitioners sued Cisco under the ATS in a case currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. EFF has filed briefs siding with the plaintiffs throughout the case.Ning Xinhua, a pro-democracy activist from China, just last month sued the successor companies, founder, and former CEO of Yahoo! Under the ATS for sharing his private emails with the Chinese government, which led to his arrest, imprisonment, and torture.Recently, the government of Belarus used technology from Sandvine, a U.S. network equipment company, to block much of the Internet during the disputed presidential election in August (the company canceled its contract with Belarus because of the censorship). The company’s technology is also used by Turkey, Syria, and Egypt against Internet users to redirect them to websites that contain spyware or block their access to political, human rights, and news contentWe also cited a case against IBM where we filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs, victims of apartheid, who sued under the ATS on claims that the tech giant aided and abetted the human rights abuses they suffered at the hands of the South African government. IBM created a customized computer-based national identification system that facilitated the “denationalization” of country’s Black population. Its customized technology enabled efficient identification, racial categorization, and forced segregation, furthering the systemic oppression of South Africa’s native population. Unfortunately the case was dismissed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  The Supreme Court has severely limited the scope of ATS in several rulings over the years. The court is now being asked to essentially grant immunity from the ATS to U.S. corporations. That would be a huge mistake. Companies that provide products and services to customers that clearly intend to, and do, use them to commit gross human rights abuses must be held accountable for their actions. We don’t think companies should be held liable just because their technologies ended up in the hands of governments that use them to hurt people. But when technology corporations custom-make products for governments that are plainly using them to commit human rights abuses, they cross a moral, ethical, and legal line.We urge the Supreme Court to hold that U.S. courts are open when a U.S. tech company decides to put profits over basic human rights, and people in foreign countries are seriously harmed or killed by those choices.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Our Latest Techdirt Greenhouse Panel: Broadband In The Age Of Covid

  Let’s be clear: despite ample rhetoric to the contrary, U.S. broadband has always been a mediocre mess. Despite decades of incalculable industry handouts and political lip service, 42 million Americans (double official FCC estimates) still lack access to any broadband whatsoever. 83 million Americans are trapped under a broadband monopoly. Tens of millions more Americans are stuck with a duopoly, usually a combination of a cable giant and a phone company unwilling to upgrade or even repair aging DSL lines because it’s not profitable, quickly enough, for Wall Street’s liking.

• FCC Too Afraid To Go On Record To Truly Support Trump’s Dumb Attack On Social Media

  We’ve already discussed at length how the FCC’s support of Trump’s dumb attack on social media and Section 230 is some of the most blistering hypocrisy we’ve ever seen (and we’ve seen a lot). This was, you’ll recall, an agency that whined like a toddler for five straight years about how some fairly modest rules holding telecom monopolies accountable was somehow “government run amok,” yet has now pivoted gracelessly into supporting Trump’s dumb, likely unconstitutional effort to have the FCC police social media — despite having little to no authority to actually do so.

Monopolies

• ‘Long Overdue’: Justice Department Sues Google in Antitrust Case

  The filing, announced Tuesday morning, accuses the tech giant of violating law to stifle competition.

• Supporters Of Using Antitrust Against Big Tech Should Be Very Disappointed In How Weak The DOJ’s Case Is

  As you’ve already heard, the DOJ filed the long-expected antitrust case against Google earlier this week. Karl has already discussed how it appears to be a politicized weapon wielded by Attorney General Bill Barr to create a bogus culture war around how Trump is “taking on” big tech. Cathy has looked at one weird aspect of the case — how its own argument regarding trademark genericide actually cuts against the idea that Google is a monopoly.

• Hague District Court grants cross-border preliminary injunction against Mylan in Novartis SPC battle

  Conventional wisdom says that the Dutch courts favour a pragmatic and commercial approach to patent litigation, allowing, where they can, patentees to effectively obtain cross-border injunctions against multiple defendants. In a recent decision dated 29 September 2020, the Hague District Court once again proved this conventional wisdom to be true.

  The Court’s decision imposes a pan-European preliminary injunction on three different Mylan entities for the infringement or facilitation of infringement of a Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) held by Novartis. There decision can be found here [in Dutch].

  The decision is interesting because of (1) the Court’s analysis of the interface between paediatric extensions, orphan drugs and SPC’s; (2) the Court’s finding that the holder of a market authorization (MA) and a parent company can be liable for tortious interference of patent infringement; and (3) the Court’s assumption of jurisdiction to impose cross-border relief against a foreign MA holder.

• Trademarks

  • Trademark Genericide And One Big Way The DOJ Admits That Its Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google Is Utter Garbage

    Don’t misread the title of this post to think there’s only one thing wrong with the DOJ’s antitrust complaint against Google. There’s plenty. But on the list is this particular self-defeating argument included in the complaint — the complaint where the DOJ basically has but one job: show that Google is a monopoly.

When “progress” is backwards

Lately I see many developments in the linux FOSS world that sell themselves as progress, but are actually hugely annoying and counter-productive.

Counter-productive to a point where they actually cause major regressions, costs, and as in the case of GTK+3 ruin user experience and the possibility that we’ll ever enjoy “The year of the Linux desktop”.

[...]

We live in an era where in the FOSS world one constantly has to relearn things, switch to new, supposedly “better”, but more bloated solutions, and is generally left with the impression that someone is pulling the rug from below one’s feet. Many of the key changes in this area have been rammed through by a small set of decision makers, often closely related to Red Hat/Gnome/freedesktop.org. We’re buying this “progress” at a high cost, and one can’t avoid asking oneself whether there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Never forget, Red Hat and Microsoft (TM) are partners and might even have the same shareholders.

When “progress” is backwards

Desktop/Laptop

• 10 Linux Based Mini PCs to Buy in 2020

  It won’t be wrong to say that mini PCs have all the potential in the world to take over the computer market shortly. Not only do they save a lot of space on your computer desk but also work in a very power-efficient manner while also causing less noise. Although they could be a tad more expensive than regular desktop PCs, they will actually save you some money in the long run.

  With that being said, one thing that should be noted here is that most of these mini PCs are not as powerful as your regular desktop computers when it comes to processing power, memory size, and storage space. Accordingly, users who don’t plan on either gaming or video editing should definitely give these computers a shot.

  The 10 Best Linux-based Mini PCs

  Mini PCs aren’t anything new since they’ve been in the computer market for quite a while now. However, the number of such computers that have optimal support for Linux distros is still relatively small. So, in this article, we’re going to do all the research for you and provide you with some of the best Linux-based mini PCs out there right now.

• System76 Launches Quad-GPU Linux Workstation

  Denver-based System76 has launched the powerful new Thelio Mega, calling it the world’s smallest quad-GPU Linux workstation.

  The Thelio Mega workstation, which is priced starting at US $7,499, incorporates advanced technologies and high-performance components that make it ideal for deep learning and scientific computing.

Server

• Production-Ready Notebooks for End-to-End ML Workflows With Kubeflow

  Machine Learning projects consist of several distinct steps: first, data validation verifies the state of the collected data. Processing prepares the features so an algorithm can consume them. Model training makes learning feasible, and model validation guarantees generalization. Fine-tuning adjusts the hyper-parameters to obtain the optimum results. Finally, after numerous iterations, the last step deploys a model to staging or production.

  Each of these steps can be a separate process, running at its own cadence, with well-defined inputs and outputs. Thus, data scientists and ML engineers tend to think of these projects like pipelines. If there is something wrong with incoming information, the process could fail or even worse corrupt downstream analytic tasks. Thus, standardizing the process of creating these interconnected actions can make the pipeline more robust.

  In this article, we demonstrate how to turn Jupyter Notebooks into Kubeflow Pipelines and Katib Experiments automatically. Such a system eliminates the erroneous process of manually extracting the bits that make sense in a Notebook, containerize them and launching a Pipeline using explicit Domain-Specific Languages.

• Support for Istio 1.6 ends on November 21st, 2020

  According to Istio’s support policy, LTS releases like 1.6 are supported for three months after the next LTS release. Since 1.7 was released on August 21st, support for 1.6 will end on November 21st, 2020.

  At that point we will stop back-porting fixes for security issues and critical bugs to 1.6, so we encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of Istio (1.7.3). If you don’t do this you may put yourself in the position of having to do a major upgrade on a short timeframe to pick up a critical fix.

• Cloud Foundry Foundation Announces Project Updates

  The Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF) has announced the release of version 1.0 of cf-for-k8s, the release of version 2.5 of KubeCF, and the release of version 4.2 of Stratos.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Leaping Lizard People | Coder Radio 384

  It’s confession hour on the podcast, and your hosts surprise each other with several twists and turns.

• The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 876

  repairing 3ds, power issues, ubuntu 20.10, games

• Episode #287 Testing without dependencies, mocking in Python – [Talk Python To Me Podcast]

  We know our unit tests should be relatively independent from other parts of the system. For example, running a test shouldn’t generally call a credit card possessing API and talk to a database when your goal is just to test the argument validation.

  And yet, your method does all three of those and more. What do you do? Some languages use elaborate dependency passing frameworks that go under the banner of inversion of control (IoC) and dependency injections (DI). In Python, the most common fix is to temporarily redefine what those two functions do using patching and mocking.

  On this episode, we welcome back Anna-Lena Pokes to talk us through the whole spectrum of test doubles, dummies, mocks, and more.

• FLOSS Weekly 601: Open Source Creative – Blender, Gimp, Audacity

  Looking at open source software from a creative lens and discussing the importance and ease of using open-source software to make art, graphics, video, and more. Doc Searls and Jonathan Bennett talk with Jason van Gumster a creator, engineer, and host of the podcast, Open Source Creative. They talk about the positive side of customizing your workplace with open source software such as Blender, Gimp, Hydrogen, and Audacity. They also discuss the simplicity of open source creative software support and the great community surrounding open source creative software.

• Ubuntu Podcast S13E31 – Cheers with water

  This week we’ve been upgrading computers and Ebaying stuff. We discuss the Windows Calculator coming to Linux, Microsoft Edge browser coming to Linux, Ubuntu Community Council elections and LibreOffice office getting Yaru icons. We also round up our picks from the general tech news.

• Review – The Verix 9100 Linux Laptop from ZaReason

  Time for another laptop review! This time I have the Verix 9100 in the studio sent over from ZaReason, an awesome local Linux laptop vendor that has some great hardware available.

• BSD Now #373: Kyle Evans Interview

  We have an interview with Kyle Evans for you this week. We talk about his grep project, lua and flua in base, as well as bectl, being on the core team and a whole lot of other stuff.

Kernel Space

• Linux Developers Discussing Possible Kernel Driver For Intel CPU Undervolting

  While the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) on Windows allows for undervolting laptop processors, currently on Linux there isn’t any Intel-endorsed way for undervolting your CPU should you be interested in better thermal/power efficiency and other factors. But a hypothetical Linux kernel driver could be coming for filling such void.

  There does exist the intel-undervolt program that is unofficial and developed by an independent developer for undervolting Intel CPUs from Haswell and newer on Linux. Besides dropping the CPU voltage, it also allows manipulating the throttling power/thermal limits for Intel processors. That intel-undervolt functionality relies on reverse-engineering and discoveries made by the community for the support. That program in turn is touching the CPU MSRs directly for manipulating the behavior.

• The Closed-Source NVIDIA Linux Driver Is Incompatible With Linux 5.9 And Support Won’t Come Until Mid-November

  The latest Nvidia graphics driver for Linux, v455.28, won’t work with the latest Linux kernel. This may be due to an intentional change on the Linux kernel side that blocks third party shims from using GPL-only symbols. Regardless of the root cause, anyone using Nvidia on Linux should stick with Linux 5.8 for now. Nvidia has promised that an updated driver compatible with Linux 5.9 will arrive mid-November.

  [...]

  Using the closed-source proprietary software driver from Nvidia used to be a total nightmare on Linux. It would only work with Xorg version X and kernel version Y and if you were screwed if you upgraded either of those. That’s been less of a problem in recent years. now we’re once again back to Nvidia’s driver dictating what kernel versions those who own their hardware can and can’t use.

• Live Embedded Event: a new online conference – Bootlin’s blog

  In these times of COVID19, pretty much all of the existing conferences have moved to an online format. For example, the Embedded Linux Conference Europe is going to take place next week, online, and Bootlin will significantly contribute to the event with no less than 7 talks on a wide range of topics.

  But this trend for online conferences has also spurred the creation of new events. And specifically, we’re happy to announce the creation of a new conference oriented towards our favorite topic of embedded systems: Live Embedded Event. It will take place online on December 3 and will have a broader range of topics covered than ELC typically has, as Live Embedded Event is open to non-Linux embedded topics, hardware platform and interfaces discussions, and more.

• The ABI status of filesystem formats [LWN.net]

  One of the key rules of Linux kernel development is that the ABI between the kernel and user space cannot be broken; any change that breaks previously working programs will, outside of exceptional circumstances, be reverted. The rule seems clear, but there are ambiguities when it comes to determining just what constitutes the kernel ABI; tracepoints are a perennial example of this. A recent discussion has brought another one of those ambiguities to light: the on-disk format of Linux filesystems.
  Users reporting kernel regressions will receive a varying amount of sympathy, depending on where the regression is. For normal user-space programs using the system-call API, that sympathy is nearly absolute, and changes that break things will need to be redone. This view of the ABI also extends to the virtual filesystems, such as /proc and sysfs, exported by the kernel. Changes that break things are deemed a little more tolerable when they apply to low-level administrative tools; if there is only one program that is known to use an interface, and that program has been updated, the change may be allowed. On the other hand, nobody will be concerned about changes that break out-of-tree kernel modules; the interface they used is considered to be internal to the kernel and not subject to any stability guarantee.

  But those are not the only places where user space interfaces with the kernel. Consider, for example, this regression report from Josh Triplett. It seems that an ext4 filesystem bug fix merged for 5.9-rc2 breaks the mounting of some ext4 filesystems that he works with.

• NFS Client With Linux 5.10 Adds “READ_PLUS” For Faster Performance – Phoronix

  The NFS client code with Linux 5.10 has another performance optimization.

  The NFS client code now supports the READ_PLUS operation supported by NFS v4.2 and later. READ_PLUS is a variant of READ that supports efficiently transferring holes. In cases where READ_PLUS is supported by both the NFS client and server, this operation should always be used rather than READ.

• NAPI polling in kernel threads

  Systems that manage large amounts of network traffic end up dedicating a significant part of their available CPU time to the network stack itself. Much of this work is done in software-interrupt context, which can be problematic in a number of ways. That may be about to change, though, once this patch series posted by Wei Wang is merged into the mainline.
  Once a packet arrives on a network interface, the kernel must usually perform a fair amount of protocol-processing work before the data in that packet can be delivered to the user-space application that is waiting for it. Once upon a time, the network interface would interrupt the CPU when a packet arrived; the kernel would acknowledge the interrupt, then trigger a software interrupt to perform this processing work. The problem with this approach is that, on busy systems, thousands of packets can arrive every second; handling the corresponding thousands of hardware interrupts can run the system into the ground.

  The solution to this problem was merged in 2003 in the form of a mechanism that was called, at the time, “new API” or “NAPI”. Drivers that support NAPI can disable the packet-reception interrupt most of the time and rely on the network stack to poll for new packets at a frequent interval. Polling may seem inefficient, but on busy systems there will always be new packets by the time the kernel polls for them; the driver can then process all of the waiting packets at once. In this way, one poll can replace dozens of hardware interrupts.

• Some 5.9 kernel development statistics [LWN.net]

  The 5.9 kernel was released on October 11, at the end of a ten-week development cycle — the first release to take more than nine weeks since 5.4 at the end of 2019. While this cycle was not as busy as 5.8, which broke some records, it was still one of the busier ones we have seen in some time, featuring 14,858 non-merge changesets contributed by 1,914 developers. Read on for our traditional look at what those developers were up to while creating the 5.9 release.

  Of the 1,914 developers contributing to 5.9, 306 made their first contribution for this release. This is the largest number of new contributors we have seen since 4.12 (which had 334 first-time contributors) was released in 2017 and, indeed, the second-highest number ever seen. All together, the 5.9 contributors added just over 730,000 lines of code and removed nearly 262,000 for a net growth of 468,000 lines of code.

• Graphics Stack

  • NVIDIA Ships Vulkan Driver Beta With Fragment Shading Rate Control – Phoronix

    This week’s Vulkan 1.2.158 spec release brought the fragment shading rate extension to control the rate at which fragments are shaded on a per-draw, per-primitive, or per-region basis. This can be useful similar to OpenGL and Direct3D support for helping to allow different, less important areas of the screen be shaded less than areas requiring greater detail/focus.

    NVIDIA on Tuesday released the 455.26.02 Linux driver (and 457.00 version for Windows) that adds this fragment shading rate extension.

  • Intel Begins Adding Alder Lake Graphics Support To Their Linux Driver – Phoronix

    Intel has begun adding support for Alderlake-S to their open-source Linux kernel graphics driver.

    An initial set of 18 patches amounting to just around 300 lines of new kernel code was sent out today for beginning the hardware enablement work on Alderlake-S from the graphics side.

    Yes, it’s only a few hundred lines of new driver code due to Alder Lake leveraging the existing Gen12/Tigerlake support. The Alder Lake driver patches similarly re-use some of the same workarounds and changes as set for the 14nm Rocket Lake processors with Gen12 graphics coming out in Q1.

  • AMD Linux Driver Preparing For A Navi “Blockchain” Graphics Card – Phoronix

    While all eyes are on the AMD Radeon RX 6000 “Big Navi” graphics cards set to be announced next week, it also looks like AMD is preparing for a Navi 1x “Blockchain” graphics card offering given the latest work in their open-source Linux driver.

    Patches posted today provide support for a new Navi graphics card referred to as the “navi10 blockchain SKU.”

    The Navi 10 part has a device ID of 0x731E. From the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver perspective, the only difference from the existing Navi 10 GPU support is these patches disable the Display Core Next (DCN) and Video Core Next (VCN) support with this new SKU not having any display support.

Benchmarks

• Phoronix Test Suite 10.0.1 Released – Phoronix

  Following last week’s big Phoronix Test Suite 10.0 and the new OpenBenchmarking.org, a small update is out this week to address some initial hiccups.

  Phoronix Test Suite 10.0.1 fixes support if using the stock PHP package of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7 / CentOS 7) and other distributions relying on dated versions of PHP that there could be an error on installation of tests.

Applications

• 5 Best Free and Open Source Console Web Browsers

  A web browser is the quintessential desktop application. Everyone needs one, and there is not a desktop Linux distribution around that does not make a web browser available.

  This type of software application is responsible for retrieving and presenting information held on the World Wide Web, a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the internet. Web browsers allow users to view web pages which often contain a mixture of text, images, videos, and other multimedia.

• Note-Taking App Simplenote 2.0 Released With Support For Internal Links, More – Linux Uprising Blog

  The Simplenote Electron desktop application has received a major update yesterday. The new 2.0.0 version includes a rewrite “of some key parts of the app, as well as replacing the editor component and adding support for internal links”.

  Simplenote is a note-taking application with optional Markdown support. There are applications for desktops (Linux, Windows and macOS), iOS and Android, and there’s also a web client. The Simplenote applications are free and open source software, but the server is not (though there’s no cost in using it to sync notes).

  Originally created by Simperium back in 2008, Simplenote is developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet, etc., since 2013.

  Simplenote features include notes version history, instant search and search by tags, public note links, optional Makrdown support, different note views, light and dark themes, and the ability to export notes.

• Auto-Suspend Inactive X11 Applications To Reduce CPU And Battery Usage With XSuspender

  XSuspender is a tool to suspend X11 applications when they are inactive. Its purpose is to reduce CPU usage, which in turn reduces the battery usage, and decreases the CPU temperature and fan noise.

  The tool uses SIGSTOP, which prevents the process from obtaining further CPU time, or a custom shell script that you can specify, to suspend an application after its window loses focus. When the window regains focus, it’s immediately resumed so you can continue from where you left off.

• CopyQ: A Clipboard Manager That Does Everything?? – YouTube

  I’ve tried out a bunch of different Linux clipboard managers and all of them seem to have some incredibly important missing feature whether that be image support, or anything else you may want in a clipboard history manager but today we’re checking out Copyq which is probably the closest thing to complete that I’ve seen thus far.

• GoAccess (A Real-Time Apache and Nginx) Web Server Log Analyzer

  GoAccess is an interactive and real-time web server log analyzer program that quickly analyze and view web server logs. It comes as an open-source and runs as a command line in Unix/Linux operating systems. It provides brief and beneficial HTTP (webserver) statistics report for Linux administrators on the fly. It also takes care of both the Apache and Ngnix web server log formats.

  GoAccess parses and analyze the given web server log formats in preferred options including CLF (Common Log Format), W3C format (IIS), and Apache virtual hosts, and then generate an output of the data to the terminal.

• Incremental backup with Butterfly Backup

  This article explains how to make incremental or differential backups, with a catalog available to restore (or export) at the point you want, with Butterfly Backup.

• Identify Songs On Your Linux Desktop Using SongRec, A Shazam Client For Linux

  SongRec is an open source Shazam client for Linux. It’s written in Rust, with the GUI using Gtk3.

  Using the Shazam audio fingerprinting algorithm, this application can identify a song from an audio file or using the microphone. MP3, FLAC, WAV and OGG formats are supported.

  This works by analyzing the captured sound, be it from the microphone or and audio file, and seeking a match based on an acoustic fingerprint in a database of millions of songs. Most of the processing is done server-side (so SongRec connects to the Shazam servers). When finding a match in the Shazam database, SongRec shows the artist, song and album names, as well as the date when the recognition was done. All recognized songs are kept in a history list that you can export to CSV or wipe.

  Shazam is a music recognition application own by Apple, available for Android, iOS, watchOS and macOS. It can identify music based on a short sample, provided that the background noise level is not high enough to prevent an acoustic fingerprint being taken, and that the song is present in the software’s database.

Instructionals/Technical

• Install MultiPass on Ubuntu : A good VM Manager – LinuxTechLab

  Multipass is a very lightweight VM manager that can be used to launch & manage VMs with a single Linux command. It is available on Linux, macOS as well as Windows. On Windows, it used Hyper-V, on Linux, it uses KVM & on Mac it used HyperKit.

  It can simulate a cloud environment with the support of cloud-init. It helps to create a new development or testing environment with ease. It also supports VirtualBox on macOS & Linux also. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Multipass on Ubuntu

• How to install Java on Manjaro Linux

  Many developers and programmers choose Manjaro because it’s one of the most user-friendly and feature-rich Linux distributions. In this guide, we go over the steps to install the Java Development Kit on Manjaro Linux. We’ll show you how to install both the OpenJDK package (which is free and GPL-licensed) as well as Oracle Java SE Development Kit.

  Arch Linux and Manjaro only officially support the OpenJDK, as that is the non-proprietary version. However, the Oracle package can be installed from the AUR, as you’ll see shortly.

• Lenovo ThinkPad Booting GNU/Linux USB

  Lenovo ThinkPad users can boot USB drives finely. As Ubuntu Buzz often publishes booting articles, now let’s learn how to practice that on computers using ThinkPad as example. By making this tutorial I hope I give abilities to all computer users who didn’t know yet they can do this amazing thing. Let’s go!

• How to install Arduino IDE on CentOS 8

  Arduino IDE stands for the “Arduino Integrated Development Environment”. Arduino is used to create electronic devices that communicate with their environment using actuators and sensors. Arduino IDE contains an editor that is used for writing and uploading programs to the Arduino board. Before start to create projects through Arduino, the user needs to set up an IDE for the programmable board.

  In this article, we will learn how to install the latest Arduino IDE on CentOS 8.

• Vincent Fourmond: QSoas tips and tricks: generating smooth curves from a fit

  Often, one would want to generate smooth data from a fit over a small number of data points. For an example, take the data in the following file. It contains (fake) experimental data points that obey to Michaelis-Menten kinetics: $$v = \frac{v_m}{1 + K_m/s}$$ in which \(v\) is the measured rate (the y values of the data), \(s\) the concentration of substrate (the x values of the data), \(v_m\) the maximal rate and \(K_m\) the Michaelis constant.

  [...]

  Now, with the fit, we have reasonable values for \(v_m\) (vm) and \(K_m\) (km). But, for publication, one would want to generate “smooth” curve going through the lines… Saving the curve from “Data…/Save all” doesn’t help, since the data has as many points as the original data and looks very “jaggy” (like on the screenshot above)… So one needs a curve with more data points.

• Switching Xorg keyboard layout on OpenBSD

  Here’s a few minimalistic options to switch keyboard layout on OpenBSD.

• Update all Docker Images

• The Baseline

  Writing your technical documentation so it is easy to understand is good. This does not mean you have to remove information or “dumb down” your text. Often it just means moving things around, changing the focus of a few sentences, or expanding a couple of paragraphs. The content remains the same. What changes is the way you present it.

  But if you still need convincing on why you should bother going that extra mile, let’s run through some of the reasons.

  The truth is you never really know who your audience is going to be or how much they know. Internal documentation, aimed initially at a very specific group of people, is often pushed out elsewhere because “it is good enough”, or “we don’t have time (or money) to change it”, or someone found it on the Internet and simply started using it and linking to it.

  Hence, your documentation will most certainly be used in more ways than you originally anticipated. Your technical manual can get recycled into a user manual, for example. Or Darryl, from sales, may need to convince clients of the benefits of the product, and all he has to build his case on is your technical manual.

  [...]

  You could’ve written that paragraph more formally and it would’ve still been easier to understand than the original. Note also how the re-written version contains essentially the same information as the original. The original is just obtuse.

  Dig out a baseline to kick off your text, yes, but also every time you are about to begin a new section, any time you introduce a new topic, or simply have a tricky paragraph you are not sure how to approach.

  The baseline will help you focus your text, making the usefulness of what you are describing clearer to the reader throughout. The aim is that your reader, regardless of their level of technical knowledge, can always come away with a broad idea of what you are talking about.

  If you start by listing features or the libraries used, stating what the thing is instead of what it is used for, or forgetting about your audience entirely (and all these things happen waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more often than you think), the chances of you never getting through but to a small number of readers is virtually guaranteed.

• 12 Tips to improve GNU/Linux server security | LibreByte

  Any server or device with a public IP address becomes a target for attackers. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to harden the security in order to neutralize any malicious activity, here are 12 tips that will help you improve the security of your server.

• Create Windows 10 Install Media (USB flash drive) on Linux

• How to install Teamviewer on Ubuntu 20.04 via command line – Linux Shout

  Here are the commands to install TeamViewer on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux using the official repository of this free remote desktop software

• How To Install Apache Subversion on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial we will show you how to install Apache Subversion on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, as well as some extra required package by Apache

• Install Bacula Backup Server on Ubuntu 20.04

  Bacula is an open-source backup tool that can be used to backup and restore data across the network. It is simple and easy to use tool, and offers many advanced storage management features that help you to backup and recover your lost files easily. It supports Linux, Windows and macOS backup client and also supports a wide range of backup devices. Bacula is made from several components including, Bacula directory, Bacula, console, Bacula storage, Bacula file and Bacula catalog. Each components are responsible for managing specific jobs.

• How to Run Android on Linux Using Virtual Machine | Beebom

  Learn how to run Android on Linux using Virtual Machine. You can install Android apps and games on Linux and the performance will be better than emulators.

• How to Use AppImage on Linux (Beginner Guide) – TecAdmin

  The Linux system uses a package manager tool with central repositories like Apt, Yum etc. Which is the traditional way for the applications installation on any Linux system.

  Some of the application comes with extension .appimage. It may be, you are not much aware about these files.

  In this tutorial you will learn about the AppImage file. Also you will found details to how to install and use AppImage files on a Linux machine.

• How to Change Color Schemes in Vim

  Vim is a text editor that can be used to edit all kinds of plain text, especially useful for writing and editing programs. It is also one of the customizable text editors heavily used in Linux operating system.

  The suitable color in the editor helps you to categorize, analyze and identify bug in the code. You can change color schemes that come with the software package or install vim themes.

  We are going to use and set Vim color schemes in centos 7 or 8. Though the tutorial is prepared on centos 8, the procedure is same for all the Linux distribution.

• How to check TLS/SSL certificate expiration date from command-line – nixCraft

  Explains how to check the TLS/SSL certificate expiration date from Linux or Unix CLI and send an email alert using a simple script.

• How to develop Gstreamer-based video conferencing apps for RDK & Linux set-top boxes

  CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Promwad that explains the basic steps to develop a video conferencing app with Gstreamer on TV boxes running Linux.

• GStreamer 1.16.3 old-stable bug fix release

  The GStreamer team is pleased to announce the third and likely last bug fix release in the stable 1.16 release series of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework!

  This release contains important security fixes. We suggest you upgrade at your earliest convenience, either to 1.16.3 or 1.18.

• How to install the Fluent GTK theme on Linux

  The Fluent GTK theme aims to bring the Windows design style to Linux. It comes in two themes: dark and light, and honestly does an excellent job of giving Linux users a “Windows-like experience.” Here’s how to set it up on your system.

• How to Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Video Conferencing Station – Make Tech Easier

  With the advent of working and schooling from home, more people are turning toward video conferencing as a way to get things done. Using tools like Google Meet and Zoom, we can keep in touch with people across cities, time zones, and even countries and continents, making the world much smaller and allowing for collaboration in ways we never thought of before. However, if you’re looking for another great Raspberry Pi project, I can’t recommend a video conferencing station enough. In this tutorial we show you how to turn your Raspberry PI into a video conferencing station.

• Magento Tips & Tricks for Better Performance – RoseHosting

  Most web hosting providers provide either Linux or Windows server hosting. The type of operating system you need depends on what kind of language and database you plan to use with your website.

  Linux is a command-line operating system and everything on it, including PHP should (and almost always does) work better on Linux. Linux is a free and secure operating system and provides ready-to-use software to power your website.

• How to Setup FTP Server with Vsftpd on Raspberry Pi | Linuxize

  This tutorial explains how to install and configure an FTP server on Raspberry Pi that you use to share files between your devices.

• Linux / UNIX Desktop Fun: Terminal ASCII Aquarium

  You can now enjoy mysteries of the sea from the safety of your own terminal using ASCIIQuarium. It is an aquarium/sea animation in ASCII art created using perl.

• How to Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.9 (No GUI) on VMware Workstation – SysAdmin

  This video tutorial shows how to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.9 (No GUI) on VMware Workstation step by step.

• How To Install Apache OpenOffice on CentOS 8 – idroot

  In this tutorial we will show you how to install Apache OpenOffice on CentOS 8, as well as some extra required package by Apache OpenOffice

Games

• Atomix: A Molecule Building Game for Chemistry Nerds

  Atomix is built for Gnome desktops for Linux and Unix systems. However, if you in something similar you can try Atomiks for Windows and Linux desktops.

• Robot grappling-magnet platformer Get-A-Grip Chip is out now and I’m hooked | GamingOnLinux

  A platformer where you can’t jump? Well, it’s been done before but not quite like this. Get-A-Grip Chip is out now and it’s a wonderfully unique indie game worth your time. Note: key sent by the developer.

  Thing is, grappling hooks have been done before too, and there’s a number of excellent games with it. Get-A-Grip Chip is still different though, as the grapple is a big magnet on your robot head and you can only use it at specific points. The challenge here is getting in range of each point, to hop between them all. The result is a game that’s seriously charming, while also proving to be a good challenge.

• GDScript progress report: Typed instructions

  It’s been a while my last report because this particular task took me more time than I anticipated. GDScript now got a much needed optimization.

  Bug fixes

  Between my last report and this one I’ve been fixing many bugs in GDScript. While not thorough, it should be stable enough to not crash all the time. I am aware that a lot of bugs remain, but I’ll iron them out when the features are complete.

  As I said before, if you found a bug not yet reported make sure to open a new issue so I can be aware of it.

  [...]

  I know many of you have been waiting for this. GDScript has had optional typing for quite a while, but so far it had only been for validation in the compilation phase. Now we’re finally getting some performance boost at runtime.

  Note that some optimized instructions are applied with type inference but to enjoy the most benefit you have to use static typing for everything (you also get safer code, so it’s a plus).

• Minecraft Java will move to Microsoft accounts in 2021, gets new social screen [Ed: Can Microsoft use Minecraft Java to attack Java itself?]

• Classic 3D RTS ‘Machines: Wired for War’ goes open source under the GPL

  Machines: Wired for War is a true classic 3D RTS from the late 90s, and it appears to now be open source under the GPL and up on GitHub. This was in the list of actually being one of the first proper 3D games of the genre, although not as well known as many other RTS games.

  Back in 2019, one dedicated fan posted on their website about how they managed to grab a copy of the source, update it a bit and port it to modern platforms (Linux included). The actual rights to the game appear to sit with Nightdive Studios now, and they appear to have given the greenlight on open sourcing the code from that same fan which they’ve now listed on their own official GitHub.

• Stellaris gets spooky with the Necroids Species Pack on October 29 | GamingOnLinux

  The latest expansion pack for Stellaris arrives on October 29 and it’s going to get a little spooky with the Necroids Species Pack. Diving into the darker side of the galaxy, the expansion comes with as you prepare to meet the Necroids, an intelligent species who believe that death is not the end, but rather the beginning of their journey.

  Necroids are known to spend their days excitedly studying in preparation for their eventual “transformation” in the Elevation Chamber. They’re not exactly the nicest bunch, and they certainly look the part too.

• Stadia gets exclusive HUMANKIND beta, ARK: Survival Evolved heading to Stadia Pro + more | GamingOnLinux

  Day 2 of 3 down for the Stadia event (see day 1 here), with multiple new announcements to go through of new games coming and extras playable right now.

  Starting off with the big one, Stadia has an exclusive Beta of HUMANKIND, the upcoming 4x strategy game that’s been likened to a Civilization-killer. Not only is it coming to Stadia, just like they did with the PAC-MAN battle royale title from yesterday anyone with a Google account can just jump on in right now and play it until October 28.

• The Steam Digital Tabletop Fest is now live with sales, streams and more | GamingOnLinux

  Ready to fill your Steam Library full of awesome games once again or perhaps try out a demo or two? You might want to pull up a seat to the digital table then, as the Steam Digital Tabletop Fest is now live. This special event features nearly 40 hours of livestreams, virtual let’s plays, panels, talks and so much more.

  The idea, done in partnership with Auroch Digital is to show off games that “explore the fusion between physical and digital games”.

  For this event, they even made a trailer which is pretty unusual and goes to show how much Valve has changed over the years as they continue working with more developers on events like this. This is actually one of the biggest events I believe they’ve ever done.

• Fast, challenging and you can run up walls to slice up enemies – ScourgeBringer is out | GamingOnLinux

  ScourgeBringer is a fast-paced action rogue-lite that has you run from room to room slicing and dicing through enemies, and it makes you feel awesome.

  Flying Oak Games, who previously made NeuroVoider, describe it as a “free-moving roguelite platformer” which doesn’t really do it much justice. You’re one of the last surviving humans, fighting through the ScourgeBringer, some kind of almighty weapon with a whole lot of random rooms inside which for some unknown reason decided to decimate the world. You given a big sword, a gun and then sent on your way to save everyone and perhaps redeem humanity. So, no pressure then right?

• Godot Engine – Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 1

  Godot 3.2.3 was released a month ago and the reception was great! It focused mostly on fixing bugs and therefore we were somewhat conservative on what could be merged before the release.

  Now that we’re confident that 3.2.3 works well, we can take some time to add new features to the 3.2 branch while you wait for Godot 4.0

• Godot 3.2.4 has a first beta with 2D batching for GLES3 | GamingOnLinux

  Despite the small version bump, Godot 3.2.4 will be quite big release for game developers wanting to squeeze out some more performance.

  The first Beta release is out now, and the Godot team mentioned it’s best to get in and start testing now to ensure your games and Godot as a whole is as good as can be when Godot 3.2.4 is released properly. With 3.2.3 now behind them which added in batching for GLES2, they’re moving to ensure it’s hooked up for GLES3 too.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix Review

  The Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix brings together Linux Mint’s Cinnamon desktop with the Ubuntu Core. While some users are welcoming the new flavor of Ubuntu with open arms, others are scratching their heads, wondering where it fits in.

  The main confusion arises when you consider that Cinnamon is the official desktop for Linux Mint, based on Ubuntu. This begs the questions – what is the need for Ubuntu Cinnamon? Why not use Linux Mint, to begin with?

  Even though Mint is based on Ubuntu, there are still many significant differences between the two distros. You can go through our in-depth read on Linux Mint vs. Ubuntu to learn about this.

  Since Ubuntu Cinnamon uses Ubuntu as its core, it works and feels more like Ubuntu rather than Mint, except for the obvious fact that the GNOME shell is replaced with the Cinnamon desktop.

  Furthermore, the developers behind Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix has done an excellent job in translating the Ubuntu aesthetics over to the Cinnamon desktop. You get to see identical icons, the iconic orange color scheme, and the same wallpapers, which helps to retain the same charm.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Setup KOrganizer with Operation Tulip Online Calendar

    Anyone using Kubuntu will see KOrganizer the best desktop calendar and anyone knows internet knows NextCloud technology a complete solution to live online. Now we find Operation Tulip a generous online service for data storage and calendar based on that technology. This tutorial explains how to synchronize your desktop and your online calendar the easy way.

    KOrganizer is a complete desktop calendar similar to Mac’s or Windows’ built-in Calendar application. It works with multiple accounts and supports the popular iCalendar format. It supports colors and categories and is able to work offline. It is developed by KDE.

    NextCloud is latest computing technology in the field of online storage developed from the earlier one named OwnCloud. Any company or organization with enough capacity can make their own Google Online Services such as office suite, storage, mail, calendar, video call, and more simply by installing this on their server. NextCloud is Free Software. It is founded by vice president of KDE.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Septor 2020.5

    Tor Browser is fully installed (10.0.2)
    System upgrade from Debian Buster repos as of October 21, 2020
    Update Linux Kernel to 5.9.0-1
    Update Thunderbird to 78.3.1-2
    Update Tor to 0.4.4.5
    Update Youtube-dl to 2020.09.20

• BSD

  • NetBSD 9.1 released

    NetBSD is an open-source Unix-like operating system. The new release offers a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements.

    New features include parallelized disk encryption with cgd(4), added support for Xen 4.13, various reliability fixes and improvements for ZFS, and more.

    The full list of new features and enhancements is available here.

  • [Old] History of FreeBSD: Part 1: UNIX and BSD

    FreeBSD, a free and open-source Unix-like operating system has been around since 1993. However, its origins are directly linked to that of BSD, and further back, those of Unix. During this History of FreeBSD series, we will talk about how Unix came to be, and how Berkeley’s Unix developed at Bell Labs.

  • FreeBSD Can Now Be Built From Linux/macOS Hosts, Transition To Git Continues

    The FreeBSD project has published their Q3-2020 report on the state of this leading BSD operating system.

    Among the highlights they made during the third quarter include:

    - The FreeBSD Foundation issued additional grants around WiFi and Linux KPI layer improvements, Linux application compatibility improvements with the Linuxulator, DRM/graphics driver updates, Zstd compression for OpenZFS, online RAID-Z expansion, and modernizing the LLDB target support for FreeBSD.

    - FreeBSD Foundation staff members have been working to improve the build infrastructure, ARM64 support, migrating their development tree to Git, rewriting the UNIX domain socket locking, and run-time dynamic linker and kernel ELF loader improvements.

  • FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report – Third Quarter 2020

    FreeBSD Project Quarterly Status Report - Third Quarter 2020
    Introduction
    
       This report covers FreeBSD related projects for the period between July
       and September, and is the third of four planned reports for 2020.
    
       This quarter brings a good mix of additions and changes to the FreeBSD
       Project and community, from a diverse number of teams and people
       covering everything from architectures, continuous integration,
       wireless networking and drivers, over drm, desktop and third-party
       project work, as well as several team reports, along with many other
       interesting subjects too numerous to mention.
    
       As the world is still affected by the epidemic, we hope that this
       report can also serve as a good reminder that there is good work that
       can be done by people working together, even if we're apart.
    
       We hope you'll be as interested in reading it, as we've been in making
       it. Daniel Ebdrup Jensen, on behalf of the quarterly team.
    

  • FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • openSUSE Jump will likely land in openSUSE Leap 15.3

    During the openSUSE + LibreOffice Virtual Conference, there were 2 presentations on what’s next for openSUSE Leap. These presentations also touched on Closing the Leap Gap. This is a project which tries to resolve / minimize the differences in packages between openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE), by unifying the code base and the development process. More details on this project can be found here.

    On the 20th October, there was a Go-No Go decision to be made. This decision is documented here. The outcome is also described in the Engineering Meeting Minutes that can be found here. There was a Conditional No Go given on the proposal to create an in-between release called openSUSE Leap 15.2.1. That means that the Jump and Leap unification will most likely happen in Leap 15.3. I think that this is a reasonable decision, which provides a better timeline for the openSUSE and SUSE teams to work out all of the outstanding issues.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • IBM integrates Linux One with R3 Corda Enterprise

    It’s an exciting time for IBM LinuxONE. Over the past several months, we’ve been doubling down on new hardware, Red Hat OpenShift and new Cloud Paks for LinuxONE, and new confidential computing capabilities.

    More than ever, our clients of all sizes looking to win in the era of hybrid cloud are focused on key areas: resiliency, performance demands, security, flexibility and modernization.

    Other areas of growth for LinuxONE are emerging workloads and industries like blockchain and digital asset custody. While the importance of safeguarding business and customer data is well known, the nature of blockchain use cases often include the initiation, transfer and custody of financial assets for your business and your customers—which further increases the importance of building applications with security and privacy first.
    News from R3’s CordaCon

  • Persistent storage in action: Understanding Red Hat OpenShift’s persistent volume framework – Red Hat Developer

    Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform that provides a number of different models you can use to deploy an application. OpenShift 4.x uses Operators to deploy Kubernetes-native applications. It also supports Helm and traditional template-based deployments. Whatever deployment method you choose, it will be deployed as a wrapper to one or more existing OpenShift resources. Examples include BuildConfig, DeploymentConfig, and ImageStream.

    In this article, I introduce you to OpenShift’s Kubernetes-based persistent volume framework for persistent cluster storage. You will learn how to use OpenShift’s PersistentVolume (PV) and PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) objects to provision and request storage resources.

  • How to use the Linux kernel’s Integrity Measurement Architecture

    The kernel integrity sub-system can be used to detect if a file has been altered (accidently or maliciously), both remotely and/or locally. It does that by appraising a file’s measurement (its hash value) against a “good” value stored previously as an extended attribute (on file systems which support extended attributes like ext3, ext4. etc.). Similar, but complementary, mechanisms are provided by other security technologies like SELinux which depending on policy can attempt to protect file integrity.

    The Linux IMA (Integrity Measurement Architecture) subsystem introduces hooks within the Linux kernel to support creating and collecting hashes of files when opened, before their contents are accessed for read or execute. The IMA measurement subsystem was added in linux-2.6.30 and is supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

    The kernel integrity subsystem consists of two major components. The Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) is responsible for collecting file hashes, placing them in kernel memory (where userland applications cannot access/modify it) and allows local and remote parties to verify the measured values. The Extended Verification Module (EVM) detects offline tampering (this could help mitigate evil-maid attacks) of the security extended attributes.

    IMA maintains a runtime measurement list and, if anchored in a hardware Trusted Platform Module(TPM), an aggregate integrity value over this list. The benefit of anchoring the aggregate integrity value in the TPM is that the measurement list is difficult to compromise by a software attack, without it being detectable. Hence, on a trusted boot system, IMA-measurement can be used to attest to the system’s runtime integrity.

  • Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, IndusInd Bank, ManipalCigna Health Insurance Company, and _VOIS Named Winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 for India

    Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 for India. Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company, IndusInd Bank, ManipalCigna Health Insurance Company Limited and _VOIS were honored at the Red Hat Forum Asia Pacific 2020 today for their exceptional and innovative use of Red Hat solutions.

  • Thoughts of Dev: One piece of advice to a new developer – IBM Developer

    We all have to start someplace in our careers and as a developer, you have a LOT of options and decisions to make. From your first job and industry, programming language to learn, training, soft skills and more. The choices are endless and each right decision (and sometimes wrong decision) helps bring you to where you are today in your career. Looking back, if you could give an important piece of advice to a junior developer, what would you tell them?

  • How Red Hat celebrated Hispanic Heritage month

    We’ve always maintained that a diverse and inclusive organization thrives when people from different backgrounds feel comfortable being their full self when they’re at work. This includes sharing and celebrating holidays and traditions with colleagues that are important to their culture or heritage. At Red Hat, Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) communities are a rich source for associates to have new experiences and learn from others with different backgrounds. Our D&I communities are global, associate-led groups focused on fostering diversity and inclusion, knowledge sharing, learning and development, and relationship building.

    Unidos, our Latinx and Hispanic D&I community, recently led its first formal recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month. The team organized virtual events for associates including a live cooking session of traditional hispanic cuisine (arepas con carne or a patacon/jibaritos sandwich anyone?) and a panel discussion featuring Red Hatters from Unidos discussing different aspects of Latinx and Hispanic culture including language, traditional family dynamics and the experience of being an immigrant.

  • Multi-stack deployments for the edge with Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.1

    In past releases, Red Hat OpenStack Platform director has used a single Heat stack for the overcloud deployment. With the Train release, it’s now possible to use multiple stacks for a single cloud deployment. Multiple stacks is advantageous to edge deployments as it allows for each distributed edge site to be managed and scaled independently, minimizing operational complexity. First, let’s review the concept of a “stack” in director, as the term can often have overloaded meanings in software engineering.

  • Build custom Ansible modules using Python’s Pexpect

    When developing automation you may be faced with challenges that are simply too complicated or tedious to accomplish with Ansible alone. There may even be cases where you are told that “it can’t be automated.” However, when you combine the abilities of Ansible and custom Python using the Pexpect module, then you are able to automate practically anything you can do on the command line. In this post we will discuss the basics of creating a custom Ansible module in Python.

    [...]

    If these tools also provided a non-interactive mode or config/script input we would not need to do this. To overcome this situation we need to use Python with Pexpect. The native Ansible expect module provides a simple interface to this functionality and should be evaluated before writing a custom module. However, when you need more complex interactions, want specific data returned or want to provide a re-usable and simpler interface to an underlying program for others to consume, then custom development is warranted.

• Debian Family

  • iXsystems Expands TrueNAS Product Line

    iXsystems has expanded the TrueNAS Open Storage portfolio with the R-Series storage systems and the SCALE Open Source HyperConverged Infrastructure (HCI) software.

    The new R-Series storage systems include four models “designed for maximum density, performance, Open Storage flexibility, and cost savings”. TrueNAS SCALE introduces easy-to-manage hyperconvergence based on scale-out OpenZFS.

    The TrueNAS R-Series combines the advantages of purpose-built storage systems with the flexibility of TrueNAS storage OS. The R-Series includes the ability to run any of three TrueNAS software editions: TrueNAS CORE, TrueNAS Enterprise and TrueNAS SCALE.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Automating Server Provisioning in phoenixNap’s Bare Metal Cloud with MAAS (Metal-as-a-Service)

    As part of the effort to build a flexible, cloud-native ready infrastructure, phoenixNAP collaborated with Canonical on enabling nearly instant OS installation. Canonical’s MAAS (Metal-as-a-Service) solution allows for automated OS installation on phoenixNAP’s Bare Metal Cloud, making it possible to set up a server in less than two minutes.

    Bare Metal Cloud is a cloud-native ready IaaS platform that provides access to dedicated hardware on demand. Its automation features, DevOps integrations, and advanced network options enable organizations to build a cloud-native infrastructure that supports frequent releases, agile development, and CI/CD pipelines.

    Through MAAS integration, Bare Metal Cloud provides a critical capability for organizations looking to streamline their infrastructure management processes.

  • Telco cloud: what is that? | Ubuntu

    Telco cloud or a network function virtualisation infrastructure (NFVI) is a cloud environment optimised for telco workloads. It is usually based on well-known technologies like OpenStack. Thus, in many ways, it resembles ordinary clouds. On the other hand, however, it differs from them. This is because telco workloads have very specific requirements. Those include performance acceleration, high level of security and orchestration capabilities. In order to better understand where those demands are coming from, let’s start with reviewing what kind of workloads are telcos running in the cloud.

  • OpenStack at 10 – from peak to plateau of productivity | Ubuntu

    This week is the latest Open Infrastructure Summit, in a week where the OpenStack Foundation became the Open Infrastructure Foundation to reflect the expansion of the organisation’s mission, scope and community to advance open source over the next decade to support open infrastructure. It is also ten years since OpenStack launched and a lot has changed during that time.

    We asked freelance journalist, Sean Michael Kerner, to share his views on the last ten years. Sean is a freelance journalist writing on myriad IT topics for publications around the world. He has spoken at more OpenStack events than he cares to remember. English is his second language (Klingon his first). Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

    10 years ago in July 2010, I got an unusual pitch from a PR person. It was the beginning of a long and winding road that defines my experience and viewpoint on OpenStack.

    Unlike the usual spate of product and open source pitches from vendors that I got at the time (and still get), the pitch I got on the sunny July afternoon was an offer to speak with the CTO of IT at NASA. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse – and I suspect it’s also the reason why OpenStack got so much attention early on – it was literally ‘rocket science’. In a 2012 video interview I did with Chris Kemp after he left the role of CTO at NASA to start his own OpenStack startup, he told me that in his view OpenStack could well become one of NASA’s great contributions to society.

  • Canonical & Ubuntu at KubeCon NA Virtual 2020 | Ubuntu

    By now it’s no surprise that KubeCon NA is going virtual, like the majority of events worldwide. Is that bad news? Quite the opposite! According to CNCF, this year’s KubeCon EU – the first KubeCon to ever be hosted virtually – made it possible for over 18,700 Kubeheads to sign up, 72% of which were first-time KubeCon + CloudNativeCon attendees. In other words, as we have all believed for so many years now, tech is helping the community grow and get closer.

  • Groovily Going Ubuntu 20.10 Gorilla

    Groovy Gorilla is the birth name of Ubuntu 20.10 the next generation computer operating system with latest technology. As its version number suggests, it is the October release this year after the April one 20.04 LTS as traditionally Ubuntu released twice a year since its first inception in 2004. Now I have the chance to see what’s new in Groovy for dear readers who are curious plus how it works on Lenovo ThinkPad. Let’s enjoy!

  • Check Out Ubuntu France’s Gorgeous Groovy Gorilla Tee

    Canonical canned the official Ubuntu merch shop last year, leaving it to the wider Ubuntu community to meet market demand.

    The fab folks in the Ubuntu France community have once again taken Ubuntu’s latest mascot animal and turned it into another top-tier t-shirt design.

    When the “Groovy Gorilla” codename was first announced I predicted that the cartoony combo would help artists cook up some terrific art — and the Ubuntu France guys have proved me right.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Arrives Today! Here are 11 New Features in Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla

    Ubuntu 20.10 releases today. An Ubuntu fan may get excited about the new features it brings.

    Ubuntu 20.10 codenamed Groovy Gorilla is a non-LTS release with nine months of life cycle. You cannot expect drastic changes between subsequent releases.

    It doesn’t mean you won’t find new things in Ubuntu 20.10. There are some performance improvements, new Linux kernel and visual changes thanks to the latest release of GNOME 3.38 (and other desktop environments in various other Ubuntu flavors).

    Let’s see what new features Ubuntu 20.10 brings.

  • What’s New in Ubuntu 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla,’ Available Today

    The Groovy Gorilla has hit the streets and, again, this is an interim build of the massively popular Linux distribution. Every two years, Canonical releases a long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu that’s supported for five years.

    Still, Canonical releases new versions of Ubuntu every six months. Every LTS release is followed by three interim releases before the next LTS release. These collect the changes and improvements that have been made so far en route to the next LTS version.

    These interim builds allow Canonical’s developers to collect feedback and conduct field testing on their work so far. Interim builds also give people a chance to play with the latest, greatest version of the software.

    The April 2020 release (20.04 “Focal Fossa”) was the most recent LTS version, so six months down the development road, Groovy Gorilla doesn’t deliver any big surprises or shake-ups. The Gorilla has had its dusters out, polishing and shining here and there, but that’s about it.

    That’s not to say this isn’t a slick and (throughout our testing) stable build. So far, it seems rock-solid and looks great, but is it worth leaving a long-term service release?

  • Ubuntu 20.10 released, brings full Linux dekstop to Raspberry Pi

    Open-source software fans will now be able to work across even more devices after Canonical revealed the launch of Ubuntu 20.10.

    The latest version of the world’s most popular open-source software features a raft of upgrades and improvements, making it more accessible and easier to use than ever before.

    For the first time, users will be able to enjoy Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi devices, with the new release offering optimised Raspberry Pi images for desktop and server.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Desktop Now Supports the Raspberry Pi 4

    As of the latest release, Raspberry Pi models with 4GB or 8GB RAM can run the Ubuntu 20.10 desktop. Yup, the Groovy Gorilla dishes up support for full-fledged, full-fat desktop version.

    Groovy is but the first foot forward towards a larger goal: an Ubuntu LTS release on the Raspberry Pi, as Eben Upton, CEO at Raspberry Pi, says:

    “From the classic Raspberry Pi board to the industrial grade Compute Module, this first step to an Ubuntu LTS on Raspberry Pi with long term support and security updates matches our commitment to widen access to the very best computing and open source capabilities.”

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla Released, this is What’s New

    The latest Ubuntu 20.10 code-named “Groovy Gorilla” is released. The final announcement is due today October 22 2020 from Canonical. Check out what’s new.

    Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla” is the last short term release in 2020 from Canonical and will be supported until July 2021. This release is the bleeding edge Ubuntu flavor and some of its features will be merged back to the current Ubuntu 20.04 LTS eventually.

  • Ubuntu Linux 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ is here with renewed Raspberry Pi focus

    There are many Linux-based desktop operating systems these days. Some of them are great, while others range from mediocre to downright bad and unnecessary. When a new version of a Linux distro comes out, the Linux community takes notice, but largely, the world doesn’t pay it any mind. That is, of course, unless it is Ubuntu.

    Yes, Canonical’s Ubuntu is undoubtedly the most well-known desktop Linux-based operating system, and when a new version becomes available, it is a very big deal — even in the mainstream. This is despite that there is no real surprise in each release announcement — they come twice a year, in April and October.

    What is the cause for Ubuntu’s renown? Sure, the name “Ubuntu” is catchy and fun to say, but really, it is just a well-designed OS that is easy to use and is very stable. Both Linux beginners and experts use Ubuntu. Hell, even other Linux distributions rely on Ubuntu as their base — Linux Mint is just one example.

  • Ubuntu 20.10 rolls out today, along with official support for the Raspberry Pi 4

    While users who want a properly stable base to game with should probably stick to Ubuntu 20.04 which is the long-term support release, the Ubuntu 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ update is out today.

    For a while there has been a few special Ubuntu flavours that have offered images to install on the Raspberry Pi like Ubuntu MATE, however, that’s now becoming official directly within Ubuntu as of the 20.10 release. This is actually awesome, as Ubuntu is one of the easiest Linux distributions to get going with.

    From the press release:

    “In this release, we celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s commitment to put open computing in the hands of people all over the world,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO at Canonical. “We are honoured to support that initiative by optimising Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi, whether for personal use, educational purposes or as a foundation for their next business venture.”

    “From the classic Raspberry Pi board to the industrial grade Compute Module, this first step to an Ubuntu LTS on Raspberry Pi with long term support and security updates matches our commitment to widen access to the very best computing and open source capabilities” said Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading.

Devices/Embedded

• Qualcomm IPQ6000 embedded SBC offers dual Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 6 connectivity

  At the beginning of the month, we covered Mango-DVK development kit based on a Qualcomm IPQ6000/IP6010 powered system-on-module enabling 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 connectivity.

  Wallys Communications contacted us earlier this week, about one of their new “802.11ax low-end product”, namely DR6000 SBC that happens to be based on Qualcomm IPQ6000 “CP03” reference design, and offers both WiFi 6 and dual Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in a round-shaped board.

• Turing Pi 2 mini-ITX cluster board takes four Raspberry Pi Compute Modules 4

  Can you remember Turing Pi mini-ITX cluster board taking up to 7 Raspberry Pi Compute Modules launched last year? Honestly, I had forgotten about it until I was asked this morning is Gumstix CM4 to CM3 adapter could be used to replace Compute Modules 3 with Compute Modules 4 in the cluster board. When I went to Turing Pi website to have a look at the board, I discovered the company had made an announcement about Turing Pi 2 cluster board specifically designed to take up to four Raspberry Pi CM4 modules.

• Raspberry Pi CM3+ based DIN-railer features isolated I/O module

  STV Electronic has launched an “I/O Module 16” extension for its Raspberry Pi CM3+ based “Smart Manager 4.0” DIN rail PC featuring configurable, isolated DIO. Up to 8x modules with 128 I/Os can be controlled from a single system.

  We missed the Embedded World announcement in early March from German embedded vendor STV Electronic, introducing a Smart Manager 4.0 DIN-rail computer based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+. This week, the company announced an IO Module 16 add-on for the system, which is designed for industrial control and building automation.

• Designing the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino Blog » Gigantic pumpkin dispenses candy at the push of a button

    YouTuber Brankly is going to be giving out candy in style this Halloween. Or, more accurately, his automated pumpkin system is going to take care of the task for him.

    His large fake jack-o’-lantern sits atop a hilariously smaller skeleton body, and hides inside a servo-driven turntable dispensing mechanism. As it rotates, treats are pushed out of a tongue-like slide mechanism, where it’s detected by two infrared sensors. This detection stops (and reverses) the dispensing plate, while the bowl in front illuminates.

  • Arduino Blog » Minimal metal detector made with an Arduino and a coil of wire

    For an easy DIY metal detector setup, look no further than this project by creator “rgco.”

    The handheld device uses a 20-60 turn coil of 26AWG enameled wire, connected across an Arduino Uno or Nano’s pins 8 and 10. A series of pulses is continuously sent out by pin 10, which are delayed in reaching pin 8 according to the inductance across the coil. As this coil approaches other metallic objects, the effective inductance changes, thus varying the delay in the signal reaching pin 10.

    This effect is sensed by the Arduino, outputting chirps on a buzzer as audio feedback when metal is nearby. To convert it into a practical device, the Nano configuration is stuffed into a Tic Tac container, with the coil held at a distance with two skewer sticks.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • EMUI 11 based on Android 11 update is being prepared

  • Google Assistant driving mode for Android smartphones to be rolled out

  • Google Play Services preps to share Android notifications with Chrome OS ‘Phone Hub’

  • Reliance Jio Launches Privacy-Focused JioPages Web Browser for Android

  • Why iPhone 12’s MagSafe Charger Also Works With Android Phones

  • Visa Turns Android Phones Into Contactless Payment Terminals

  • Best Android phones at Republic Wireless

  • 10 best minesweeper games for Android

  • How to download Minecraft Trial version: Step-by-step guide for PC and Android devices

  • Sailfish OS now lets you share your Mobile Linux device

    Use Multi-account sign-on on your Mobile Linux device. Jolla has Introduced this feature as part of its latest Sailfish OS 3.4 Pallas-Yllästunturi release software update.

    Having the ability to share a mobile device amongst your family or co-workers can be very useful. This is something that mobile manufacturers such as Motorola have been doing on their smartphones and Samsung on their tablets for a while now. What I mean by sharing is that everyone can have their own Independent accounts set up on the device – once logged in they have access to their OWN emails, social media accounts, pictures, etc. It’s THEIR device.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Mudita Pure OS is going open source

  The company stated that MuditaOS operating system will be publicly available on the GitHub platform, under a GPL (GNU General Public License) license. In the initial phase, MuditaOS will be available as a Developer Preview, during which, Mudita will work with the growing community to fine-tune the documentation and deal with the first reported issues.

  [...]

  The Mudita phone has been delayed numerous times this year, it was supposed to have come out in April, and was slated for release in October and now has been pushed back until Spring of 2021. It will eventually come out, it is a vanity project of Michal Kicinski, who created the Witcher/Cyberpunk games.

• A Librem 5 Video Made on a Librem 5

  When it comes to making a video, there are a lot of workflows involved. From writing, planning, to local screen capture, all the way to editing raw 4k footage with proxy clips. Even with all that workflow complexity, the following video was made completely on the Librem 5 phone.

  [...]

  Ultimately the Librem 5 phone lets you take your regular workflow with you while also keeping you in contact with your friends and family.

• Specify Form-Factors in Your Librem 5 Apps

  While more and more applications are being redesigned to take smartphones like the Librem 5 into account, PureOS still offers lots of desktop applications which are not ready to run on such devices yet.

  As a user you want to know which applications are relevant to install, so PureOS Store will by default only present mobile-ready applications, while still letting you opt-into showing all applications to take full advantage of the Librem 5’s convergeant docked mode. As a user you also want to know which applications are relevant to run at a given time, so Phosh will let you run desktop-only applications only when the phone is docked.

  This requires the applications to provide some information on which form-factors they can handle, if you are an application developer and you want your applications to work as expected on the Librem 5, please provide the relevant information as shown below.

  To make your application appear in PureOS Store, add the following lines to your AppStream metainfo…

• Unleashing the Best Open Source Social Networking Software

  Social networking is only going in one direction – up. The huge social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become a necessity for businesses. They increasingly recognise the importance of incorporating social networking features with their content strategy. The benefits are broad and wide. Social networking helps to increase brand awareness, improve social signals, offers word-of-mouth advertising, and boosts audience reach and influence.

  Social networking’s appeal is even more notable among consumers. Social media helps individuals follow breaking news, keep up with family, friends, or colleagues, as well as contributing to online debates, and learning from others. Social networking sites have been rapidly adopted by children and, especially, teenagers and young people worldwide. 98% of 18-24 year old use social media in the UK.

• How to influence people to join open source

  If you are reading Opensource.com, you might be able to code, and you are probably reading this on an open source browser on some elusive Linux distro. You probably have not seen a browser ad in years because you are running an open source ad blocker. You feel warm and fuzzy when you think about penguins.

  Simply, you know the power of the force of open source and have made it part of your life. Sadly, not everyone has found the open source way yet. Their computers are painfully slow; they see more ads than content when they surf the web; they spend their money on patented and copyrighted junk. Some of these people may even be related to you—take your nieces and nephews, for example.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Doug Belshaw: Notification literacy?

      Some people have criticised the film as being light on practical responses that everyday people can make. They point out that while there are recommended steps, they come right at the end of the film while the credits are rolling.

      I thought it was excellent, and that the aim of the film was awareness-raising in the general population, with the main focus on politicians and people who make the laws in western societies (particularly the USA). To me, it showed that, far from being regulated as ‘publishers’, governments should instead consider regulating companies running social networks in the same way as they regulate gambling companies.

      As I’m not planning on running for political office anytime soon, I thought I’d stick to what I know (new literacies!) and think about what it means to talk about ‘notification literacy’. That particular term currently returns zero results in Google Scholar, a search engine for academic articles. If I search DuckDuckGo, one of my own posts from 2017 is in the top few results.

    • These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 82 – Firefox Nightly News

      Highlights:

      Urlbar Update 2 enabled on Firefox Beta. This work includes Search Mode, refreshed one-offs, and tab-to-search results.

      We recently introduced tab-to-search results that are shown when a search …

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.4.7

    The Document Foundation announces the availability of LibreOffice 6.4.7, the 7th and last minor release of the LibreOffice 6.4 family, targeted at users relying on the application for desktop productivity. LibreOffice 6.4.7 includes bug fixes and improvements to document compatibility and interoperability with software from other vendors.

  • LibreOffice 6.4.7 Released as the Last in the Series, End of Life Set for November 30

    Containing a total of 72 bug fixes across most of its core components, the LibreOffice 6.4.7 update is here about two months after LibreOffice 6.4.6 to add one last layer of improvements and fixes, ensuring the LibreOffice 6.4 series remains as stable and reliable as possible, as well as to improve document compatibility and interoperability with other office suites.

    While it’s already working on fixing bugs for the latest LibreOffice 7.0 office suite series, The Document Foundation currently still recommends LibreOffice 6.4 for enterprise users and any other type of organization that wants to save money by not buying expensive licenses for proprietary office suites.

• FSF

  • Streaming services, beware: International Day Against DRM (IDAD) is coming Dec. 4

    The fourteenth International Day Against DRM (IDAD) is coming soon, and the Defective by Design (DbD) campaign needs your help to spread the word. This year’s annual day in protest of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) will be on December 4th, 2020, and will focus on streaming services’ unjust use of DRM. We need your help to spread that message far and wide to both anti-DRM activists and those simply concerned with how in a world with continued technological advancement, our digital freedoms are increasingly under threat.

    While in quarantine, we’ve all been conscious of how the way we engage with our favorite films, television, and music has been changing. Many (if not most) homes connected to a high-speed Internet connection have turned to streaming services that peddle DRM to seek entertainment, subjecting themselves to onerous restrictions in exchange for a way to pass the time. The Defective by Design campaign exists to raise awareness about the injustice of these services and other ways that media conglomerates use DRM to deprive computer users of their freedom.

    In the last few years since the rise of these services, we’ve seen their influence grow from a mere drop in the bucket of video distribution to a stranglehold on global culture. Each more poorly named and unnecessary than the last, these services dictate what we watch, surveil us while we watch it, and through it all, make use of digital restrictions to keep viewers helpless and unable to exert meaningful control on how they choose to experience movies, music, and television. Not only do they keep subscribers trapped in the “walled gardens” of their service, but these dis-services dictate exactly how the works they distribute can be viewed, down to mandating the use of proprietary software and hardware that curtails user freedom. We deserve better.

  • GNU Projects

    • GNU RCS 5.10.0 available

      release notes:
      
        A spate of bugfixes, new support for nanosecond mtime, etc.
      
      README excerpt:
      
        GNU RCS (Revision Control System) manages multiple revisions of files.
        RCS can store, retrieve, log, identify, and merge revisions.
        It is useful for files that are revised frequently, e.g.,
        programs, documentation, graphics, and papers.
      
      NEWS for 5.10.0 (2020-10-20):
      
        - bug fixes
      
          - RCS file search skipped RCS/FILENAME by default
      
            The default set of candidate filenames for the RCS file is:
      
             RCS/FILENAME,v
             RCS/FILENAME
             FILENAME,v
      
            RCS 5.8 (released 2011-08-30) introduced a bug which caused the
            default RCS file search to skip RCS/FILENAME.  Regression fixed.
      
          - ‘rlog -w’ behaved like ‘rlog’ (sans ‘-w’)
      
            RCS 5.8 (released 2011-08-30) introduced a bug which caused
            ‘rlog -w’ (without any logins specified) to fail to default to
            the user login.  Instead it behaved as if option ‘-w’ were
            omitted entirely.
      
            The cases where logins are specified (e.g., ‘rlog -wjrhacker’)
            were not affected.
      
          - missing string in comma-v detected, diagnosed
      
            Previously, if foo,v contained fragment:
      
             1.1
             log
             text
             @@
      
            i.e., there was no string value following the ‘log’ keyword,
            then rlog (et al) would interpret that as an "empty log message"
            instead of as a violation of the RCS file format grammar, which
            stipulates that a string value must follow the keywords ‘desc’,
            ‘log’ and ‘text’ -- (info "(rcs) comma-v grammar").
      
            Now, such a situation causes rlog (et al) to abort w/ message
            "missing string after KEYWORD" (KEYWORD ∈ {desc, log, text}).
      
          - subsecond resolution maintained for ‘-d’, ‘-T’
      
            An RCS ‘delta’ includes a ‘date’ component w/ second (whole
            number) resolution.  Previously, on filesystems that support
            subsecond (fractional) resolution for the file modification time
            (aka "mtime"), RCS commands given the ‘-d’ and/or ‘-T’ options
            would disregard, on read, and specify 0 (zero), on write, the
            fractional mtime.
      
            Now, RCS preserves subsecond mtime in those cases.  More details
            in new manual section -- (info "(rcs) Stamp resolution").
      
        - portability fixes
      
          - now buildable under ‘gcc -std=c11’ (default for GCC 5)
      
            RCS previously failed to build under ‘-std=c11’, which happens
            to be the default mode of GCC 5.  In particular, ‘-std=c11’ is
            more strict about function attributes syntax than ‘-std=c99’.
      
            Now, the offending code has been rectified.  (Specifically,
            attribute ‘_Noreturn’ now is at the start of a func decl.)
      
          - threads support
      
            RCS itself is clueless about threads, but it uses gnulib, which
            may or may not require threads support.  This manifests as the
            configure script options ‘--enable-threads=MODEL’ as well as
            ‘--disable-threads’.
      
            Previously, "make" would ignore MODEL (even implicitly), acting
            as if ‘--disable-threads’ were specified.  Now, it takes into
            account MODEL by propagating makefile var ‘LIBTHREAD’.
      
          - consult ‘USER’ first if ‘LOGNAME’ read-only
      
            To determine the user (login) name in the absence of a specific
            command-line option, RCS normally checks first the env var
            ‘LOGNAME’ and second, ‘USER’.  Alas, this is unworkable under
            AIX, where ‘LOGNAME’ is read-only.  So now, if the configure
            script finds ‘LOGNAME’ to be read-only, it arranges to build RCS
            to check ‘USER’ first and then ‘LOGNAME’.  See README.
      
          - configure script avoids ‘date -r’
      
            Unfortunately ‘date -r’ is not POSIX.  This made AIX unhappy.
      
          - other AIX accomodation
      
            The AIX compiler complains about the implicit casting that
            occurs when returning a pointer from a function whose return
            type is ‘bool’.  So, we are now explicit.
      
        - documentation improvements
      
          - docfix: add "Log message option" to Detailed Node Listing
      
            Probably Emacs by now has some automagic way to sync the
            ‘@detailmenu’ section w/ the text body... hmmm.
      
          - style change due to ‘-zZONE’ option
      
            Specifying option ‘-zZONE’ to ‘rcs log’ changes the date output
            style to use hyphens (ISO) instead of slashes (YYYY/MM/DD).
      
          - rlog, use with CVS
      
            Since RCS 5.8 (released 2011-08-30), there have been sporadic
            reports of rlog (aka "rcs log") failing with CVS files.  The
            manual now addresses this -- (info "(rcs) comma-v particulars").
      
          - delim-separated list
      
            GNU RCS has always supported comma to separate items in a list
            (e.g., ‘rcs frob -o1.1,2.2’ to remove (or "outdate") revisions
            1.1 and 2.2).  But did you know that most places a comma is
            welcome and you can use other delimiter characters as well?
            Read all about it -- (info "(rcs) Delim-separated list").
      
          - (style) pargraphs no longer indented
      
            This looks nicer (IMHO) for Info and Text output formats.
      
        - testing improvements
      
          Many new tests and test cases for existing tests were added, to
          catch regressions and exercise infrequent code paths.  For "make
          check" (locally), function coverage is 97.3% (considered "high")
          and line coverage is 84.9% (considered "medium"), per lcov.
      
        - bootstrap/maintenance tools
      
          upgraded:
      
           GNU gnulib 2020-10-19 23:37:09
           GNU texinfo 6.7
           GNU Automake 1.16.2
           GNU Autoconf 2.69c
      
          as before:
      
           (none)
      
      tarballs and detached signatures:
      
      http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.lz
      
      
      http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.lz.sig
      
      
      http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.xz
      
      
      http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.xz.sig
      
      source code:
      
      https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/rcs.git/?h=p
      
      homepage:
      
      https://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/
      
      

  • Licensing/Legal

    • How You can Have an Impact on European Openness Policy | ConsortiumInfo.org

      Are there political dimensions to open source software and hardware? Americans might be surprised to see such a question, given Washington’s almost complete indifference to the dramatic rise of these approaches to technology development. But that’s not the case in many other parts of the world, and particularly in Europe, where the European Commission (EC) and the governments of many constituent nations have taken great interest in not only promoting the uptake of open software, and, more recently hardware, but incorporating open source software and hardware into procurement decisions and inter-country communication platforms and protocols.

      This process continues, and you can have an impact on future decision making by participating in a survey commissioned by the EC to guide its future open source policy development.

      The survey questionnaire is targeted at developers and users of open source, takes about fifteen minutes to complete, and can be found here. Input from non-Europeans as well as Europeans is welcome and requested.

      The survey is part of an ongoing EC-commissioned OpenSource Impact Survey being conducted by OpenForum Europe, a Brussels-based policy think tank (of which I’ve been a Fellow for many years), and Fraunhofer ISI, a multi-location European research institute.

    • History of FreeBSD: Part 2: BSDi and USL Lawsuits

      In the late 1950s, AT&T was forced to accept a consent decree from the US government to end an anti-trust lawsuit. As part of that consent decree, AT&T had to limit its business endeavours to its national telephone system and special projects for the federal government. Once educational institutions became aware of AT&T’s Unix system in the 1970s, they requested access to it for their computer labs. Legally AT&T couldn’t be in the computer business. So, AT&T’s lawyers came up with a workaround. They would license Unix to universities, but they would operate under a “no advertising, no support, no bug fixes, payment in advance” plan.

      Since the educational institutions that licensed Unix couldn’t expect support from the creators of the system, many of them shared bug fixes and improvements. Thus the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) was born.

      In the early 1990s, the US government broke up AT&T and removed the consent decree. Now AT&T could move into other business ventures. UNIX System Laboratories or USL was one of those ventures. This subsidiary was created solely to develop and sell Unix. When USL caught wind of BSDi’s marketing strategy, their lawyers jumped into action. They sent a letter demanding that BSDi do two things: drop the 1-800-ITS-Unix phone number and make it clear in the advertisements that BSDi’s product was not Unix. There are differing accounts as to whether or, not they got rid of the phone number, but they did fulfil the second part of USL’s demand.

      USL was still not content with the fact that BSDi was selling a competing product, so they decided to take them to court. The suit filed by USL alleged that BSDi’s product included code and trade secrets that belonged to USL. They also asked for an injunction to prevent BSDi from selling their product until the lawsuit had been resolved because it could damage USL.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Open Access Must Be the Rule, Not the Exception

      The COVID-19 pandemic demands that governments, scientific researchers, and industry work together to bring life-saving technology to the public regardless of who can afford it. But even as we take steps to make medical technology and treatments available to everyone, we shouldn’t forget that more crises will come after COVID-19. There will be future public health disasters; in fact, experts expect pandemics to become more frequent. As climate change continues to threaten human life, there will be other kind of disasters too. A patch for the current crisis is not enough; we need a fundamental change in how scientific research is funded, published, and licensed. As we celebrate Open Access Week, let’s remember that open access must be the rule, not the exception.

      We wrote earlier this year about the Open COVID Pledge, a promise that a company can make not to assert its patents or copyrights against anyone helping to fight COVID-19. Companies that take the pledge agree to license their patents and/or copyrights under a license that allows for “diagnosing, preventing, containing, and treating COVID-19.” When we last wrote about the Open COVID Pledge, it had just been introduced and had only a few adopters—most notably, tech giant Intel. Since then, many big tech companies have taken the pledge, including Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and Microsoft. And the list of licensed technology on the Open COVID Pledge website continues to grow.

• Programming/Development

  • Developer survey: C# losing ground to JavaScript, PHP and Java for cloud apps, still big in gaming [Ed: When Microsoft Tim writes about development trends he expectedly focuses on largely rejected Microsoft stuff, not what actually matters.]

    A new developer survey has shown the popularity of C#, the primary language of Microsoft’s .NET platform, slipping from third to sixth place in three years, though usage is still growing in absolute terms and it is particularly popular in game development.

    Research company Slashdata surveyed over 17,000 developers globally for its 19th “State of the Developer Nation” report. The researchers make a point of attempting to measure the absolute number of programming language users, rather than simply looking at relative popularity, as done by indexes from the likes of StackOverflow or Redmonk.

  • LLVM Clang 12 Merges Support For x86_64 Microarchitecture Levels – Phoronix

    In an effort to better cater towards newer and common x86_64 instruction set extensions, open-source toolchain developers are moving ahead with the work on x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels for being able to target a handful of different “levels” beyond the base x86_64 instruction set.

    The x86_64 feature levels are for easily segregating different classes of x86_64 Intel/AMD CPUs in hopes of making it easier for Linux distributions to increase their base requirements beyond just x86_64/AMD64 and improving compiler toolchains with a common set of possible levels / hardware capabilities in generating optimized libraries. This goes along with work pursued by Red Hat in raising the x86_64 CPU requirements for new RHEL/Fedora releases and for optimization initiatives like the glibc HWCAPS in supporting a few different optimization levels rather than having to target every possible Intel/AMD CPU microarchitecture family as is currently done for code optimization/tuning.

  • RStudio is a refreshingly intuitive IDE | Christian Kastner

    I currently need to dabble with R for a smallish thing. I have previously dabbled with R only once, for an afternoon, and that was about a decade ago, so I had no prior experience to speak of regarding the language and its surrounding ecosystem.

    Somebody recommended that I try out RStudio, a popular IDE for R. I was happy to see that an open-source community edition exists, in the form of a .deb package no less, so I installed it and gave it a try.

    [...]

    This, and many other features that pop up here and there, like the live-rendering of LaTeX equations, contributed to what has to be one of the most positive experiences with an IDE that I’ve had so far.

  • Engaging in an “Open First” remote internship at Collabora

    The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to move very quickly to a partial or even full home office regime. In this context, Collabora is at a very privileged position, since remote work has always been at the core of our day to day operations. Over 80% of our people work remotely from all over the world even when our offices are open.

    As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the world, many students’ scholarships have been impacted one way or the other. As the world economy is being shaken, many of them are facing challenges finding internships and entering into the professional life.

    At Collabora, and despite of COVID-19, we want remote internships to have the power to get students, regardless of where they live, into a dream job. Or, at the very least, provide them with informative venues for exploring and confirming (or not) professional interests. Our internships also connect students with a larger ecosystem of FLOSS projects and vendors, serving as a good way to improve their visibility and networking.

  • Nibble Stew: Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other languages with Meson

    My previous blog post about modern C++ got a surprising amount of feedback. Some people even reimplemented the program in other languages, including one in Go, two different ones in Rust and even this slightly brain bending C++ reimplementation as a declarative style pipeline. It also got talked about on Reddit and Hacker news. Two major comments that kept popping up were the following.

    [...]

    One notable downside of this approach is that WrapDB does not have all that many packages yet. However I have been told that given the next Meson release (in a few weeks) and some upstream patches, it is possible to build the entire GTK widget toolkit as a subproject, even on Windows.

    If anyone wants to contribute to the project, contributions are most welcome. You can for example convert existing projects and submit them to wrapdb or become a reviewer. The Meson web site has the relevant documentation.

  • Percepio Releases Tracealyzer Visual Trace Diagnostics Solution Version 4.4 with Support for Embedded Linux

    -Percepio, the leader in visual trace diagnostics for embedded and IoT software systems, today announced the immediate availability of Tracealyzer version 4.4 with support for embedded Linux. Tracealyzer gives developers a high level of insight during software debugging and verification at the system level by enabling visual exploratory analysis from the top down. This makes it easy to spot issues during full system testing and drill down into the details to find the cause.

  • Facebook Is Looking To Upstream Their BOLT Binary Performance Optimizer Into LLVM – Phoronix

    Facebook’s BOLT is a multi-year project focused on speeding up the performance of binaries. This open-source project initially focused on being able to better optimize Linux x86_64/ARM64 ELF binaries as a post-link optimizer. BOLT has been seeing much success with even Google using it now for better performance and now there is work to upstream it as part of the LLVM project.

    Facebook engineers are hoping to see BOLT added to LLVM as a binary optimization framework. Google has reported with their own workloads that BOLT can normally provide 2~6% uplift on top of the abilities of compiler optimizations. Other organizations and academia also have been using BOLT in varying capacities.

  • 5 steps to learn any programming language | Opensource.com

    Some people love learning new programming languages. Other people can’t imagine having to learn even one. In this article, I’m going to show you how to think like a coder so that you can confidently learn any programming language you want.

    [...]

    With just a little programming experience, which you can gain from any one of several introductory articles here on Opensource.com, you can go on to learn any programming language in just a few days (sometimes less). Now, this isn’t magic, and you do have to put some effort into it. And admittedly, it takes a lot longer than just a few days to learn every library available to a language or to learn the nuances of packaging your code for delivery. But getting started is easier than you might think, and the rest comes naturally with practice.

    When experienced programmers sit down to learn a new language, they’re looking for five things. Once you know those five things, you’re ready to start coding.

  • RcppZiggurat 0.1.6

    The RcppZiggurat package updates the code for the Ziggurat generator by Marsaglia and other which provides very fast draws from a Normal distribution. The package provides a simple C++ wrapper class for the generator improving on the very basic macros, and permits comparison among several existing Ziggurat implementations. This can be seen in the figure where Ziggurat from this package dominates accessing the implementations from the GSL, QuantLib and Gretl—all of which are still way faster than the default Normal generator in R (which is of course of higher code complexity).

  • The four things you must be able to do in nano

    Text editing is essential to Linux users. Historically, the Vim text editor has been the default tool for managing file contents. Today, many systems and many sysadmins prefer to use the nano text editor.

    [...]

    In some ways, using nano is more like using the keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer. Nano is significantly more powerful than I am showing here, so be sure to check the documentation for more tricks. If you’re a Vim user and you find yourself on a distribution that only has nano available, at least you’ll know these simple functions.

    I guess I’m old school (or just old), but I prefer Vim, even for very short and simple edits. I acknowledge that nano is easier, but I am in the habit of using Vim. In fact, I have it installed on my Mac and Windows computers, too.

  • Sysadmin careers: the correlation between mentors and success | Enable Sysadmin

    Typically, the more information you have about a situation, the more successful you will be in navigating it. The same can be said about the level of experience you have in dealing with specific problems. This is what inspired me to explore the experience of other industry professionals. I had several great mentors over the years, and I always felt that the time spent learning from them paid off exponentially. It’s not always some intellectual atom bomb that reshapes your skillset. Many times, the most powerful lessons are in the wisdom gained over time. Having the skill to act is great, but it helps to know when and how to act as well.

    We asked a group of our core contributors about their mentors and the impact of these experiences on their careers. Some had specific people in mind; however, an equal number stated that a close-knit team can be just as valuable as a single guiding force.

  • Steinar H. Gunderson: plocate in testing

    plocate hit testing today, so it’s officially on its way to bullseye I’d love to add a backport to stable, but bpo policy says only to backport packages with a “notable userbase”, and I guess 19 installations in popcon isn’t that It’s also hit Arch Linux, obviously Ubuntu universe, and seemingly also other distributions like Manjaro. No Fedora yet, but hopefully, some Fedora maintainer will pick it up.

  • Dev Boards

    • Forlinx OK1028A-C networking SBC supports LVDS displays, 4G/5G modules

      Forlinx released two networking SBC’s with 10Gbps Ethernet powered by NXP LS1043A and LS1046A processor nearly exactly one year ago. Like many other networking SBCs they do not come with video output so configuration is done via a computer or laptop either through a UART interface or a web interface. But in some cases, such boards may be integrated into machines that require a display for human-machine interaction. That’s why Forlinx has now released a new networking board – OK1028A-C – powered by NXP QorIQ Layerscape LS1028A dual-core Cortex-A72 processor that natively supports video output up to 4K UHD resolution via an eDP/DisplayPort interface which the company used to provide an LVDS header.

    • Flex Logix InferX X1 AI Inference Accelerator Takes on NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX

      When it comes to AI inference accelerators, NVIDIA has captured the market as drones, intelligent high-resolution sensors, network video recorders, portable medical devices, and other industrial IoT systems use NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX. This might change as Flex Logix’s InferX X1 AI inference accelerator has been shown to outperform Jetson Xavier NX as well as Tesla T4. During the Linley Fall Conference 2020, Flex Logix showcased InferX X1 AI Inference Accelerator, its performance, and how it outperformed other edge inference chips. It is the most powerful edge inference coprocessor with high throughput, low latency, high accuracy, large model megapixels images, and small die for embedded computing devices at the edge.

  • Python

    • DISTUTILS_USE_SETUPTOOLS, QA spam and… more QA spam? – Michał Górny

      I suppose that most of the Gentoo developers have seen at least one of the ‘uses a probably incorrect DISTUTILS_USE_SETUPTOOLS value’ bugs by now. Over 350 have been filed so far, and new ones are filed practically daily. The truth is, I’ve never intended for this QA check to result in bugs being filed against packages, and certainly not that many bugs.

      This is not an important problem to be fixed immediately. The vast majority of Python packages depend on setuptools at build time (this is why the build-time dependency is the eclass’ default), and being able to unmerge setuptools is not a likely scenario. The underlying idea was that the QA check would make it easier to update DISTUTILS_USE_SETUPTOOLS when bumping packages.

      Nobody has asked me for my opinion, and now we have hundreds of bugs that are not very helpful. In fact, the effort involved in going through all the bugmail, updating packages and closing the bugs greatly exceeds the negligible gain. Nevertheless, some people actually did it. I have bad news for them: setuptools upstream has changed entry point mechanism, and most of the values will have to change again. Let me elaborate on that.

    • Python and the infinite [LWN.net]

      A recent proposal on the python-ideas mailing list would add a new way to represent floating-point infinity in the language. Cade Brown suggested the change; he cited a few different reasons for it, including fixing an inconsistency in the way the string representation of infinity is handled in the language. The discussion that followed branched in a few directions, including adding a constant for “not a number” (NaN) and a more general discussion of the inconsistent way that Python handles expressions that evaluate to infinity.

      In general, Python handles floating-point numbers, including concepts like infinity, following the standards laid out by IEEE 754. Positive and negative infinity are represented by two specific floating-point values in most architectures. Currently, representing a floating-point infinite value in Python can be done using a couple of different mechanisms. There is the float() function, which can be passed the string “inf” to produce infinity, and there is the inf constant in the math library, which is equivalent to float(‘inf’). Brown provided several reasons why he believed a new, identical, and built-in constant was necessary. One of his reasons was that he felt that infinity is a “fundamental constant” that should be accessible from Python without having to call a function or require a library import.

    • Further analysis of PyPI typosquatting [LWN.net]

      We have looked at the problem of confusingly named packages in repositories such as the Python Package Index (PyPI) before. In general, malicious actors create these packages with names that can be mistaken for those of legitimate packages in the repository in a form of “typosquatting”. Since our 2016 article, the problem has not gone away—no surprise—but there has been some recent analysis of it, as well as some efforts to combat it.

      On the IQT blog, John Speed Meyers and Bentz Tozer recently posted some analysis they had done to quantify PyPI typosquatting attacks and to categorize them. They started by looking at the examples of actual attacks against PyPI users from 2017 to 2020; they found 40 separate instances over that time span. The criteria used were that the package had a name similar to another in PyPI, contained malware, and was identified and removed from the repository.

    • Automating PDF generation using Python reportlab module

      Generating PDF using python reportlab module, Adding table to PDF using Python, Adding Pie Chart to PDF using Python, Generating PDF invoice using Python code, Automating PDF generation using Python reportlab module

    • Level Up Your Skills With the Real Python Slack Community – Real Python

      The Real Python Community Slack is an English-speaking Python community with members located all over the world. It’s a welcoming group in which you’re free to discuss your coding and career questions, celebrate your progress, vote on upcoming tutorial topics, or just hang out with us at the virtual water cooler.

      As a community member, you also get access to our weekly Office Hours, a live online Q&A session with the Real Python team where you’ll meet fellow Pythonistas to chat about your learning progress, ask questions, and discuss Python tips and tricks via screen sharing.

    • Remove Duplicates From a List

      How do we remove duplicates from a list? One way is to go through the original list, pick up unique values, and append them to a new list.

      About the “Writing Faster Python” series

      “Writing Faster Python” is a series of short articles discussing how to solve some common problems with different code structures. I run some benchmarks, discuss the difference between each code snippet, and finish with some personal recommendations.

      Are those recommendations going to make your code much faster? Not really.
      Is knowing those small differences going to make a slightly better Python programmer? Hopefully!

      You can read more about some assumptions I made, the benchmarking setup, and answers to some common questions in the Introduction article.

  • PHP

    • A PHP syntax for discardable assignments [LWN.net]

      Recently, John Bafford revived a years-long conversation on expanding the syntax of the PHP foreach statement to include iterating solely over keys. Bafford, who wrote a patch and request for comments (RFC) on the matter back in 2016, hopes to update his work and convince the community to adopt the abbreviated syntax in PHP 8.1. The community took Bafford’s general idea and expanded it into other areas of the language.

  • Rust

    • Kata Containers rewritten in Rust gets a major speed boost

      Kata provides container isolation and security without the overhead of running them in a VM. Usually, containers are run in VMs for security, but that removes some of the advantages of using containers with their small resources footprint. Kata containers, however, can run on bare metal.

      The purpose of runV was to make VMs run like containers. In Kata, this approach is combined with Intel’s Clear Containers, which uses Intel built-in chip Virtual Technology (VT), to launch containers in lightweight virtual machines (VMs). With Kata, those containers are launched in runV.

      Despite the Intel connection, Kata Containers are hardware agnostic. Kata Containers are also built to be compatible with the Open Container Initiative (OCI) specification, and Kubernetes’ container runtime interface (CRI).

Standards/Consortia

• Professors, please let us submit PDFs

  We are under two weeks away from a presidential election and already eight months into a deadly pandemic, but we still have time for the little things. No, I don’t mean smelling flowers and sipping pumpkin spice lattes, though you are welcome to do so—I mean the types of file formats that professors request students use to submit papers.

  In my experience, most professors ask for files with a DOCX extension, a format which was developed by Microsoft in 2007 to help standardize its file extensions across its various applications. Officially known as Office Open XML, the DOCX format broke backwards compatibility with the old .doc format. This meant that all previous versions of Microsoft Word prior to the new standard would be unable to open files with this particular extension. Consternation followed that development in 2007 (or 2008 for Mac users), but in the year 2020 we have mostly solved that issue, as most computers these days do not run any pre-2006 versions of Microsoft Office.

  The modern problems with DOCX are really not problems with DOCX itself, but rather with its place in the pantheon of file extensions that are now available. Most students in our current age produce their work in a Google Doc (in point of fact, this very article was produced in a Google Doc). It’s a simple workflow that has all the functionality of a full-blown application without having to leave a web browser or fight with a sign-in form (beyond the one that we’re always signed into as a part of daily campus life). I don’t support submitting an essay or exam as a raw Google Doc, however, and my reasons for not doing so are partially shared with my aversion to submitting in DOCX: all the writing tools are immediately available upon opening the document.

  [...]

  The obvious solution is for professors to request papers in Portable Document Format, PDF. Originally developed in 1993, the PDF file format has not outlived its usefulness. Anything, from Windows 10 to Windows 95, MacOS to OS X or Unix to Ubuntu, anything can open a PDF. And since anything can open it, when students finish writing and export to PDF, we can see exactly what it is we’re submitting with our names attached. And it’s not like professors should hate it; it’s the default format for any downloaded academic document, and providing comments is much closer to how comments are written on physical paper.

  Students shouldn’t be the only ones submitting files in PDF format either. For every file in DOCX a professor puts on Moodle, there are probably three copies on every student’s hard drive. Every weekday we face the choice of digging through our downloaded files for the syllabus we downloaded a week ago or downloading yet another copy of that same syllabus. Uploading PDF files instead of DOCX to Moodle lets students open it in a web browser, a faster and less cluttered operation that lets our focus stay on class instead of going through old files.

• Static versus dynamic web sites

  In this post, I want to explore two fundamental principles or criteria that underpinned my original article, but were more or less unpronounced: sustainability and power. I also want to update you on my current site configuration.

• [Old] Writing HTML in HTML

  I’ve just finished the final rewrite of my website. I’m not lying: this is the last time I’m ever going to do it. This website has gone through countless rewrites – from WordPress to Jekyll to multiple static site generators of my own – but this is the final one. I know so, because I’ve found the ultimate method for writing webpages: pure HTML.

  It sounds obvious, but when you think about how many static site generators are being released every day – the list is practically endless – it’s far from obvious. Drew DeVault recently challanged people to create their own blog, and he didn’t even mention the fact that one could write it in pure HTML:

  If you want a hosted platform, I recommend write.as. If you’re technical, you could build your own blog with Jekyll or Hugo. GitHub offers free hosting for Jekyll-based blogs.

  Now, there’s nothing wrong with Jekyll or Hugo; it’s just interesting that HTML doesn’t even get a mention. And of course, I’m not criticizing Drew; I think the work he’s doing is great. But, just like me and you, he is a child of his time.

  That’s why I’m writing this blog post – to turn the tide just a little bit.

• Shaping the future interoperability policy

  The European Commission is currently evaluating the ISA² programme and the European Interoperability Framework to present a reinforced public sector interoperability policy in 2021.

  The related roadmaps (EIF and ISA²) are now published for feedback on the Commission’s Have your say portal. You can provide feedback on the EIF and future interoperability policy roadmap till 12 November 2020. Feedback on the roadmap for the evaluation of the ISA² programme is open till 13 November 2020.

Retroactive Mindfulness

We can navigate our memories, in as pure a form as possible, and just be there. Experience them. Be present. Accept what happens without becoming the event. Just observing it and letting it pass—like we would today with the present.

Retroactive Mindfulness. A way to harvest meaning from our past.

Why Are People Watching Less Sports?

This week we speak to Jane McManus, New York Daily News sports columnist and director of the Center for Sports Communication at Marist College. We talk about a new survey from Marist College on recent sports viewership. We dive into theories on why there has been a drop in sports viewers since the pandemic as well as the broader American sports world’s response to the virus and why it’s been found to be lacking.

Science

• Stunning images show NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft stirring up rocks on an asteroid

  NASA shared astonishing images of its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touching an asteroid yesterday, revealing how the vehicle stirred up rocks and debris on the object’s surface when it made contact. The goal of the tap was to collect a sample of material from the asteroid, but the engineers behind the spacecraft say they won’t for sure if they collected anything until this weekend, when they spin the vehicle and measure how much material is inside.

Hardware

• One Netbook A1 7-inch laptop features Ethernet and COM port for IT Pros

  We’ve seen many Intel-powered mini-laptops with 6 to 9-inch display in the last coupled of years mainly from GPD and One Netbook, but also CHUWI.

  Most models are tinier versions of ultrabooks with wireless-only connectivity, but last year GPD MicroPC 6-inch mini-laptop added Ethernet and RS-232 COM port for IT professionals such as sysadmins. But there’s now another option with One Netbook A1 equipped with a 7-inch display, powered by an Intel Core m3-8100Y Amber Lake processor, and also featuring Ethernet and COM ports, plus the usual USB and HDMI ports.

  [...]

  The mini laptop ships with Windows 10, but Liliputing got a pre-production unit and also tested Ubuntu 20.04 with WiFi, keyboard shortcuts, and audio all working properly.

Health/Nutrition

• ACLU Sues Trump Admin. to Obtain Key Records on ‘Dishonest and Incompetent’ Federal Handling of Coronavirus Pandemic in Prisons

  The suit seeks “the immediate release of improperly withheld agency records related to federal government’s failed response to the spread of Covid-19 in prisons in jails.”

• McConnell Admits He’s Been Working to Sabotage Covid Relief Talks Behind the Scenes to Prioritize Rushing Barrett Confirmation

  “Mitch McConnell is rushing to steal a Supreme Court seat before the election. Senate Republicans would rather help him do it than help millions of Americans.”

• ‘Vote These Monsters Out’: Trump Officials Weigh Deep Funding Cuts to Covid-19 Relief, Newborn Screenings in Democrat-Led Cities

  “Besides shameless graft, Trump’s central agenda is tormenting the people who didn’t vote for him.”

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • J Balvin to Headline ‘Fortnite’ Halloween Concert

    “I am always looking for innovative ways to connect with fans that have been so incredibly supportive of my career and music, as well as gain exposure to future fans,” said J Balvin in a statement. “Partnering with Fortnite is an out of this world way to perform a concert in 2020.”

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • 1Password for Linux Beta now available on Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro, Fedora, and more [Ed: Who would trust proprietary software for password handling when our governments (nowadays) openly demand back doors in everything?]

      Back in August, we told you about some very exciting news — 1Password had come to Linux… as a development preview. Yeah, it was a pre-beta release, but still, it was a huge win for the Linux community overall.

      1Password is an extremely popular password management service, available for Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS/iPadOS. Bringing it to Linux makes the software truly cross-platform. Not to mention, it says a lot about the growing popularity of Linux that Agilebits found it beneficial to assign precious resources to its development.

    • 1Password’s Linux App is Now in Beta

      The official 1Password Linux app is available for wider testing ahead of a planned stable release next year.

      Preview builds of the 1Password Linux app were soft-launched earlier this year, albeit with a few caveats in place. The feedback gathered as part of that early effort clearly bore fruit as the team is back with freshly ripened beta candidate for fans of the service to try.

      1Password is a popular, cross-platform password manager. Official apps are available for Android and iOS, all major web browser, and Windows and macOS. The service isn’t free (though plans start at a low $2.99/m) but it packs in some pretty decent credential management features.

      The 1Password Linux app backend is written in Rust and leverages the ring crypto library for its end-to-end encryption.

      Integration with the Ubuntu desktop is also on offer. The app can detect when you’re using a dark GTK theme; uses descriptive window titles (handy if you tile windows); has support for biometric unlocking; and shows a good ol’ system tray icon for easy access.

    • First Beta Version Of ‘1Password’ App For Linux Arrives

      Finally, a month and a half after we reported the initial release of the 1Password app for Linux desktop, its co-founder Dave Teare has now announced the beta version of the full-featured ‘1Password’ Linux desktop app.

      As you may know, 1Password is a user-friendly and cross-platform password manager app whose stable version is already available for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and now is getting ready for Linux-based operating systems.

    • How to Install 1Password Beta On Linux?

      The beta version of 1Password is now available on Linux. for starters, it is a beautiful, user-friendly, and cross-platform password manager app which is already available on various other platforms like Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS.

      The app is now available for Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Apart from that, an App Image is also available. Here’s how you can install 1Password on Linux —

    • Windows/Openwashing

      • Ventoy 1.0.25

        Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. With Ventoy, you don’t need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly. You can copy many files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them. Both Legacy BIOS and UEFI are supported in the same way. Most type of OS supported (Windows/WinPE/Linux/Unix/Vmware/Xen…)

      • Spotify open-sources Klio, a framework for AI audio research

        This week at the 2020 International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, Spotify open-sourced Klio, an ecosystem that allows data scientists to process audio files (or any binary files) easily and at scale. It was built to run Spotify’s large-scale audio intelligence systems and is leveraged by the company’s engineers and audio scientists to help develop and deploy next-generation audio algorithms.

  • Security

    • Gerrit code review tool taken offline after suspected admin account compromise

      Gerrit has been taken offline after malicious activity was flagged on the open source code collaboration platform.

      The web-based Git code review service was disabled two hours after project maintainers were alerted to a suspected security breach on Tuesday morning (October 20).

      “We believe an admin account in Gerrit was compromised allowing an attacker to escalate privileges within Gerrit,” said Clark Boylan in a service announcement issued later that day.
      “Around 02:00 UTC October 20 suspicious review activity was noticed, and we were made aware of it shortly afterwards.

      “The involved account was disabled and removed from privileged Gerrit groups. After further investigation we decided that we needed to stop the service, this happened at about 04:00 UTC.”

    • KeePassXC 2.6.2 Password Manager Adds Major UI Improvements and Bug Fixes

      One of the major improvements included in the KeePassXC 2.6.2 release is a new way for the web browser integration to handle and prioritizes URLs. In addition, there’s also a new “Always on Top” mode in the view menu that lets users set the main KeePassXC window to always be on top.

      Furthermore, KeePassXC 2.6.2 moves the option to show or hide usernames and passwords to the view menu, adds new command-line options to let users specify the location of the configuration file and to set environment variables, and improves the CSV import and export functionality, along with support for ISO datetimes.

    • Reproducible Builds: Supporter spotlight: Civil Infrastructure Platform 01:00
      

      The Reproducible Builds project depends on our many projects, supporters and sponsors. We rely on their financial support, but they are also valued ambassadors who spread the word about the Reproducible Builds project and the work that we do.

      This is the first installment in a series featuring the projects, companies and individuals who support the Reproducible Builds project. If you are a supporter of the Reproducible Builds project (of whatever size) and would like to be featured here, please let get in touch with us at contact@reproducible-builds.org.

      However, we are kicking off this series by featuring Urs Gleim and Yoshi Kobayashi of the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) project.

      [...]

      A: Reproducibility helps a great deal in software maintenance. We have a number of use-cases that should have long-term support of more than 10 years. During this period, we encounter issues that need to be fixed in the original source code. But before we make changes to the source code, we need to check whether it is actually the original source code or not. If we can reproduce exactly the same binary from the source code even after 10 years, we can start to invest time and energy into making these fixes.

    • Security updates for Wednesday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (kdeconnect, kernel, kpmcore, lib32-freetype2, linux-hardened, linux-lts, linux-zen, lua, and powerdns-recursor), Debian (mariadb-10.1 and mariadb-10.3), Fedora (thunderbird), Mageia (claw-mail, freetype2, geary, kernel, and tigervnc), Oracle (nodejs:12), Red Hat (python27, rh-postgresql96-postgresql, and rh-python38), Slackware (freetype), SUSE (hunspell, kernel, libvirt, and taglib), and Ubuntu (grunt, quassel, and tomcat9).

    • Linux 5.10 Hardens Against Possible DMA Attacks By External PCIe Devices – Phoronix

      The PCI changes were submitted on Wednesday for the Linux 5.10 kernel.

      The PCI subsystem updates for Linux 5.10 aren’t too exciting this round but there are a few items worth noting. One change is the enabling of ACS translation blocking for external PCIe devices in protecting against possible DMA attacks.

      Translation Blocking is enabled for untrusted/external PCIe devices to harden against direct memory access attacks. ACS (Access Control Services) Translation Blocking will block any request with the AT bit set as an effort to protect against improper routing of PCIe packets.

    • LockBit ransomware using Windows tools to bypass security: claim

      Windows ransomware known as LockBit, which made its presence known in 2019, has now matured and is using novel ways to escalate privileges by bypassing the User Account Control feature on Windows systems.

    • Hint to Brad Smith: getting rid of Windows will halt most cyber attacks

      Microsoft president Brad Smith has called for the barrage of cyber attacks on democracies — not other countries which also face the same issue — to be called out and stopped.

    • PayPal move on digital currencies will make cyber criminals richer: claim

      The move by worldwide online payments system PayPal to allow customers to hold bitcoin and other virtual currencies in their online wallets will end up making more than a few cyber criminals richer, a senior technologist has claimed.

    • Big engineering consultancy takes a hit from REvil ransomware

      The Meinhardt Group, an engineering consultancy with 51 offices worldwide and 5000 employees, appears to have been attacked by a group using the REvil ransomware last month.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Five Bar Owners Arrested In France For Not Logging Internet Use By Patrons Using Bars’ WiFi Connections

        A seldom used mandate from France’s 2006 anti-terrorism law is being wielded rather conspicuously in a single French city to lock up small business owners.

      • Former Google CEO Calls Social Networks ‘Amplifiers for Idiots’

        Schmidt, who left the board of Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. in 2019 but is still one of its largest shareholders, said the antitrust lawsuit the U.S. government filed against the company on Tuesday was misplaced, but that more regulation may be in order for social networks in general.

        “The context of social networks serving as amplifiers for idiots and crazy people is not what we intended,” Schmidt said at a virtual conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “Unless the industry gets its act together in a really clever way, there will be regulation.”

      • Eric Schmidt, who bought YouTube for a premium, thinks social networks are ‘amplifiers for idiots’

        The Verge used to have a fine tradition of cataloging all of the times when Eric Schmidt stuck his foot in his mouth, and today’s feels like a worthy addition: the former Google CEO and executive chairman has decided that social networks are “amplifiers for idiots.”

        The fuller quote, according to Bloomberg: “The context of social networks serving as amplifiers for idiots and crazy people is not what we intended.”

        Without knowing who “we” refers to, you might think he’s talking about how the entire tech industry has failed to keep sites like Facebook and Twitter from creating echo chambers and polarizing politics around the world (though some argue we can’t blame social networks alone).

      • Facebook Dating launches in Europe after lengthy delay

        While the service still only appears as a tab in Facebook’s mobile app, it’s deeply integrated with the rest of the social giant’s products. Your profile can pull stories and photos from Instagram, you can initiate Messenger video calls from chats, and the splashy Secret Crush feature searches both your Instagram followers and Facebook friends for potential matches.

      • Facebook’s Dating Service Goes Live In Europe After Long Delay

        Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner at the Irish watchdog, said in an interview this week that Facebook had since provided “detailed clarifications” on the processing of personal data in the context of the dating feature. “We will continue to monitor the product as it launches across the EU this week,” he added.

      • Despite Concessions, Experts Warn $2.1B Google-Fitbit Deal Risks Privacy, Competition

        The European Commission has extended its deadline for a decision on Google’s $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness-tracking company Fitbit, despite Google last week tweaking its concessions aimed at allaying European Union antitrust concerns, according to news reports.

        The commission, which acts as the EU’s competition regulator, is investigating the privacy and antitrust implications of the deal.

      • China welcomes lifting of TikTok ban in Pakistan

        The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on Monday restored TikTok services across the country after a 10-day hiatus under certain conditions. The authority warned the company that the spread of “vulgarity and indecent content” as well as the “abuse of societal values” would result in a permanent ban.

        The ban, which was placed on Oct 9 after the regulator received complaints against “immoral content”, was lifted after an assurance regarding effective “moderation of content” by the TikTok management in a virtual meeting, according to PTA.

Defence/Aggression

• Guilty Verdict in the Massacre of Jesuits Marks a “Milestone of Justice” for El Salvador

  “The conviction marks a milestone of justice in the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have occurred in El Salvador,” said David Morales, director of Strategic Litigation for the Cristosal organization. “Justice had been denied in this country and now criminal justice has been done, at least for one of those responsible. It is the first time that these war crimes have been addressed in a criminal proceeding and reached a conviction,

  The Spanish court sentenced Montano to a historic sentence of 133 years for the massacre of six Spanish Jesuit priests and two Salvadoran employees who worked at the Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador. The murders were carried out on the university campus by a military commando on the night of November 16, 1989.

• Scott Atlas Is Trump’s Doctor Death

  He’s a reminder of an infamous Russian who “probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history.”

• Ex-Mexican Military Head Arrested in U.S. on Drug Charges. Should He Be Tried for Massacres, Too?

  We speak with legendary Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández about a case that has sent shockwaves throughout Mexico: the U.S. arrest of Mexico’s former defense secretary for allegedly working with a major drug cartel while heading Mexico’s military. General Salvador Cienfuegos served as secretary of defense from 2012 to 2018 in the former government of President Enrique Peña Nieto and has long been accused of human rights abuses, including refusing to allow investigators to interview soldiers who may have been involved in the 2014 disappearance and likely massacre of 43 students from a teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. Hernández’s book “Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers” links top Mexican government officials to the world’s most powerful drug cartels, and she has received so many death threats that the National Human Rights Commission assigned her two full-time bodyguards. Despite the danger, she has continued to report. We are also joined by John Gibler, author and independent journalist based in Mexico, and examine how Mexican soldiers were involved in the 2014 disappearance and apparent massacre of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa.

• Nukes on the Moon?

  While our species’ insatiable scientific curiosity has undoubtedly led to some beneficial inventions, it has also drawn us inexorably towards our own downfall. Our zeal to create the atomic bomb ignored logic, ethics, consequences and the fundamentals of human rights.

  The bomb brought us so-called civil nuclear power reactors, the ugly and irresponsible spawn of a weapon that leaves us perched perpetually on the precipice of extinction. But there is nothing “civil” about nuclear power.

• Brennan’s Nuremberg Defense: One More Whitewash of the CIA’s Torture Program

  Bob Gates refused to tell “truth to power” regarding Iran-contra and, as a result, he had to withdraw his nomination as CIA director in 1986.  Gates did so after the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, David Boren (D-OK), alerted him that the committee believed he had lied about Iran-contra and therefore would not be recommended for confirmation.  Similarly, John Brennan had to turn down President Barack Obama’s preference for naming Brennan as CIA director, since Brennan’s acquiescence with the sadistic policy of torture and abuse and the cover-up of the shoot down of a missionary plane in Peru would create confirmation problems.  Interestingly, both Gates and Brennan managed to rehabilitate their credentials over a four-year period, and withstood significant opposition to be confirmed to lead CIA the second time around.

  Brennan claims to have written a “brutally honest memoir” and stresses the importance of integrity, which is why the shadings and outright deceits of his story are particularly troublesome.  Brennan maintains that he was not in the chain of command for decisions to conduct extraordinary renditions and torture and abuse, but he was chief of staff and deputy executive director under CIA director Tenet when these decisions were made.  In his memoir, Brennan states that he decided against a career in clandestine operations because he thoroughly opposed tactics of “intimidation, bullying, and threats of physical violence” in coercing “individuals to cooperate with us.”  Years later, however, he expressed no opposition to tactics of waterboarding and actual physical violence as well as the renditions policy that sent suspects to Arab intelligence services that conducted their own sadistic practices.  These policies were violations of U.S. law, international law, and the U.S. Constitution.

• Nuclear War Makes a Comeback

  On War on the Rocks, an online platform for national security articles and podcasts, Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, reported August 11 on public calls in China “to quickly and massively build up its nuclear forces” on the theory that only a “more robust nuclear posture” would prevent war with the United States.

  The biggest nuclear arms budget ever is nearing approval in the US Congress, and the Trump administration has raised the possibility of resuming nuclear tests. President Trump has pulled the United States out of the1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, while the New Start Treaty capping Russian and U.S. nuclear warheads and delivery systems is set to expire next February if the two countries don’t agree to extend it.

• Fighting Racism in the US Marine Corps

  The one base that hadn’t had an outbreak of racial violence was the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona, where I was stationed. We were a base where Marine pilots came to learn bombing and gunnery practices.

  I was an avionics technician, trained to work on communications and navigation equipment in A-4 Skyhawk aircraft; but my lack of seniority had knocked me down to work on vacuum-tubed radio equipment in CH-47 helicopters. I wasn’t very good at it; I guess the night I threw a 75 pound radio against a cement brick wall in frustration kinda gave me away.

• Britannic Impunity: Torture and the UK Overseas Operations Bill

  Veterans minister Johnny Mercer had his lines in order, and they were not particularly convincing. “This legislation is not about providing an amnesty or putting troops above the law but protecting them from lawyers intent on rewriting history to line their own pockets.” For Mercer, Britannia is exceptional, a cut above the rest, suggesting, in the lingering wisdom of British imperialism, that they are just a bit more exceptional in hypocrisy than others.

  The Ministry of Defence has been feathering grounds for such changes arguing that unnecessary claims have been made against its personnel. They include compensation claims for unlawful detention regarding operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. To this can be added 1,400 judicial review claims for investigations and compensations on the basis that human rights have been violated. Of these, 70 percent assessed by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team were dismissed as having no case to answer.

• Demanding Investigation, Amnesty International and UN Official Condemn Killing of #EndSARS Protesters by Nigerian Forces

  “There need to be immediate, independent, transparent, and thorough investigations, not just into last night’s killings, but also into all the previous violations committed by security forces.”

• ‘A Source of Inspiration’ for Egalitarians Everywhere: Progressive International Celebrates Triumph of Democracy in Bolivia

  “Bolivia’s election not only showed the world how to defeat authoritarianism and its imperialist allies. It also revealed the power of international solidarity to defend democracy around the world.”

• Decisive Victory of MAS in Bolivia: A Blow to Anti-Indigenous and Anti-Socialist Coups in the Americas

  The decisive electoral victory of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia may be a point of inflection on the continent that advances the construction of a new South American socialist bloc.

  After having been removed from power by a military coup with fascist, anti-Indigenous, and neoliberal elements a year ago, ex-president Evo Morales, with his allies, presidential candidate Luis Arce and vice-presidential candidate David Choquehuanca, declared victory in the elections that came to a close on the evening of October 18. According to an exit poll, Arce, who served as Minister of Finance in the Morales administration, was leading in the presidential contest with 52.4 percent of the vote and ex-president Carlos Mesa came in second place with 31.5 percent. The right wing candidate Luis Camacho, allied with the de facto president Jeanine Añez, follows in a distant third place, with only 14.1 percent of the vote. Añez and Mesa have both recognized the outcome of the election[1].

• America’s New Policy of Demoting Democracy

  The Democrats wanted a recount of the votes in Florida. The Republicans didn’t. The case went to the Supreme Court. In December 2000, in a 5-4 decision, the Court stopped the recount in Florida and awarded the election to Bush.

  At the same time, halfway around the world, a young East Timorese activist was sitting in a U.S.-sponsored democracy seminar. He was bored and frustrated. As the activist recounted to me several years later, the American presenter was lecturing his audience on the virtues of the U.S. model of democracy.

• Soldiers open fire in Nigeria, drawing global attention to weekslong protests

  Akpan, who has been documenting the demonstrations for weeks, told NBC News most protesters were sitting on the ground, brandishing Nigerian flags and singing the national anthem by the tollgate near the bridge that connects the affluent area with the mainland of the city.

  Around 3 p.m. Tuesday he said he saw bridge workers near the tollgate take down security cameras and switch-off street lighting, which raised his suspicions. Hours later, Akpan said Nigerian military in uniform arrived and within seconds began shooting at the crowd.

• Threatening emails sent to Democratic voters in multiple states

  CNN and The Washington Post reported that voters in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Alaska and Florida all said they received threatening emails warning them to vote for President Trump in the upcoming election, adding that the mysterious sender claimed to have access to voter history and “will come after you” should they fail to vote for the president.

  “You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you,” reads one email obtained by the Post. Dozens were reportedly sent, including more than 180 to students, faculty and staff of the University of Florida, a school spokesperson told CNN.

• Proposal by Katie Porter, House Dems Would Fund Mental Health First Responders to Reduce Police Violence

  The co-sponsors cited research showing people with mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement officers.

• German battle about arming drones: Unmanned cardboard characters

  The German Social Democratic Party sets conditions for the procurement of Israeli armed drones, which are fulfilled anyway

• Grand Juror in Breonna Taylor Case Speaks Out, Accusing AG Cameron of Misrepresenting Proceedings

  A judge ruled that grand jury records regarding the Taylor case should be released so the public can determine whether “publicly elected officials are being honest.”

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Video Hearing Wednesday: Advocacy Orgs Go to Court to Block Trump’s Retaliation Against Fact-Checking

  San Francisco – On Wednesday, October 21 at 11 am ET/2 pm PT, voter advocacy organizations will ask a district court to block an unconstitutional Executive Order that retaliates against online services for fact-checking President Trump’s false posts about voting and the upcoming election. Information on attending the video hearing can be found on the court’s website.

  The plaintiffs— Common Cause, Free Press, Maplight, Rock the Vote, and Voto Latino—are represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Protect Democracy, and Cooley LLP. At Wednesday’s hearing, Cooley partner Kathleen Hartnett will argue that the president’s Executive Order should not be enforced until the lawsuit is resolved.

Environment

• Geology’s human footprint is enough to spur rage

  Once again science has presented evidence that a new geological epoch is here. This human footprint is all our own work.

• Ex-EPA official who spoke about Pruitt scandals claims retaliation in new lawsuit

  The lawsuit was filed Tuesday and first reported by E&E News on Wednesday.

  Chmielewski claimed that after being stripped of access to the EPA’s building, he received documents signed by other officials falsely stating that he had resigned. He alleged that he was later told his insurance was canceled.

• Air pollution killed nearly half a million newborns in 2019, report finds

  Hundreds of thousands of newborns, mostly in India and sub-Saharan Africa, died from air pollution in 2019, a study has found. Noxious fumes from cooking fuels are blamed for causing the majority of the babies’ deaths.

  Some 476,000 infants across the world died from the adverse effects of exposure to air pollution in 2019, a new global study has found.

  The State of Global Air study released Wednesday said nearly two-thirds of those deaths were related to the burning of poor-quality fuels for cooking.

• Air Pollution Kills Almost Half a Million Babies Around the World

  The majority of newborns who lost their lives to air pollution were in the developing world, with indoor air quality to blame for two-thirds of the deaths, according to the State of Global Air 2020 report. Scientists discovered that polluted air has an impact on the health of babies while they are still in the womb and could lead to premature birth or low birth weight – both factors associated with infant mortality.

• Advocates Welcome ‘Inspiring’ Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act as ‘Exactly What America Needs Right Now’

  “By presenting smart, focused solutions to the climate crisis, this pioneering legislation propels the oceans into the heart of the climate debate in Congress.”

• Pressed on Climate Views and Ties to Shell Oil, Barrett Once Again Calls Established Climate Science ‘Controversial’

  “Barrett again followed the standard script of climate denialists, repeatedly attempting to cast climate science as unsettled and a matter of controversy that she could not offer an opinion on.”

• Large-Scale Permafrost Thawing

  Making matters much, much worse, new research has identified past warming events of large-scale permafrost thaw in the Arctic that may be analogous to today, thus spotting a parallel problem of large-scale thawing accompanied by massively excessive carbon emissions spewing into the atmosphere, like there’s no tomorrow. (Source: Jannik Martens, Remobilization of Dormant Carbon From Siberian-Arctic Permafrost During Three Past Warming Events, Science Advances, vol. 6, no. 42, October 16, 2020)

  Permafrost thawing is not, at all times, simply “thawing.” Of course, as a standalone, the word “thawing” implies a rather evenly keeled methodical process without any specific definition of scale. But, there’s thawing, and then, there’s “large-scale thawing,” which is kinda like turning loose a behemoth. The results are never pretty.

• Energy

  • Texas Regulators Failing to Act on Pollution Complaints in Permian Oilfields, New Report Finds

    However, in response to those 141 complaints, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) took action to reduce pollution — by, for example, issuing a violation to the company responsible — just 17 times, according to a new report published today by Earthworks, which describes a pattern in which Texas regulators failed to address oilfield pollution problems, allowing leaks to continue in some cases for months.

  • Press Worries About a Fracking Ban’s ‘Risk’ to Democrats—Not Fracking’s Threat to Planet

    There is no reason for a fracking ban to be “political suicide” unless corporate journalists are determined to equate that with the death of the fossil fuel industry.

  • This Massive Facebook Solar Project Will Power Shell’s Fracking Operations in Texas

    The social media corporation helped make possible the 379-megawatt Prospero I solar array, located about 18 miles west of the city of Andrews and covering an area five times larger than New York City’s Central Park. The project represents a model initiative for Facebook, which is striving to become a leader on climate change. A June 2019 Associated Press article about Prospero I repeatedly implies its energy will power Facebook’s data centers, where photos, videos, and other information is stored. The article quotes CEO Mark Zuckerberg in saying that, “These new solar projects will help us reach” a goal “for all our data centers and offices to use 100% renewable energy by 2020.”

  • Earth to Biden: Stop Talking About Fracking

    One of President Donald Trump and Republicans’ favorite hobby horses on the campaign trail is the absurd notion that Joe Biden and Democrats would subject Americans to a “radical socialist Green New Deal.” The Grand Old Party would like voters to believe that Democrats are just an election away from abolishing hamburgers, pickup trucks, and airplanes, sending electricity bills through the roof, and putting all the workers on unemployment insurance. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hurled these familiar attacks against former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris during the presidential and vice presidential debates. While Data for Progress has observed that voters in fact support Biden’s plan for a massive investment in clean-energy jobs and do not believe Trump and Republicans’ Green New Deal smears, a key sticking point on the issue of fracking remains.

  • Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing

    And then there’s the environmental problem. The environmental problem? Aren’t we talking about digital coins? Yes, which makes it even stranger. Solving all those complex puzzles requires a huge amount of energy. So much energy that the two biggest blockchains in the world – bitcoin and Ethereum – are now using up the same amount of electricity as the whole of Austria.

    Carrying out a payment with Visa requires about 0.002 kilowatt-hours; the same payment with bitcoin uses up 906 kilowatt-hours, more than half a million times as much, and enough to power a two-person household for about three months.

    And the environmental problem is only going to grow. As miners put more effort into solving the puzzles (ie, building more of those dark server caves in Alaska), the puzzles will automatically become more difficult, requiring more calculation power. It’s an endless, pointless arms race in order to facilitate the same number of transactions with more and more energy.

    And for what? This is actually the most important question: what pr oblem does blockchain actually solve? OK, so with bitcoin, banks can’t just remove money from your account at their own discretion. But does this really happen? I have never heard of a bank simply taking money from someone’s account. If a bank did something like that, they would be hauled into court in no time and lose their license. Technically it’s possible; legally, it’s a death sentence.

  • [Old] This website is killing the planet

    So I ran a web page performance test and got some grim results: my website takes over a minute to load on a Moto G4 on using 3G data networks. It’s just as bad using a desktop PC in Nottingham on 1.5Mbps DSL. My website is bloated with large images and a bunch of JavaScript, which means it’s eating up lots of energy transmitting those bits and bytes.

    But how much energy? I used the Website Carbon Calculator to find out. Turns out that

    6.90g of CO2 is produced every time someone visits the homepage

    it emits the amount of carbon that 4 trees absorb in a year, and

    it uses enough electricity to drive an electric car 1,116km

    Eugh. That’s disgusting. For each year my website has been online, I should have planted 4 trees just for the homepage alone. But, instead, my laziness has filled the atmosphere with more and more carbon.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Tear Down the Walls: The Racist Roots of ‘Fortress Conservation’

Finance

• Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

  The coronavirus pandemic has greatly increased wealth inequality in the United States, a key issue in the upcoming presidential election. Polls are currently looking good for the Democrats, many of whom have been murmuring about—or even demanding—a new wealth tax. Recent surveys show the idea is overwhelmingly popular with the electorate, with voters in 11 polled states more than three times as likely to support than oppose a candidate backing a tax on the assets of the wealthy.

• A Short History of the ‘On Again, Off Again’ Fiscal Stimulus Negotiations

  Last March’s ‘CARES ACT’ was not a fiscal stimulus. It was instead about ‘mitigation’–meaning the various measures contained in that $2.3 trillion package (actually nearly $3T when the additional $650 billion in business-investor tax cuts are added to the Act) were designed only to put a floor under the collapsing US economy–not to generate a sustained economic recovery. Even the politicians voting for it publicly acknowledged at the time that it was not a stimulus bill, but rather a set of measures designed to buy time–no more than 10-12 weeks at most–until a more serious economic recovery Act could be implemented.

  The real fiscal stimulus bill was to follow, designed to pick the economy up off the floor and generate a sustained recovery as the economy reopened. The reopening began in May and gained a little momentum over the summer. But not enough to generate a sustained recovery by itself that was expected by late summer.

• Employees Say Foxconn & Donald Trump’s Wisconsin Factory Scam Was An Absurdist Hellscape

  You might recall how the Wisconsin GOP, with Donald Trump and Paul Ryan at the head of the parade, struck what they claimed was an incredible deal with Foxconn to bring thousands of high-paying jobs to the state. Initially, the state promised Foxconn a $3 billion subsidy if the company invested $10 billion in a Wisconsin LCD panel plant that created 13,000 jobs. The amount of political hype the deal generated was utterly legendary, helping market Trump as a savvy dealmaker who’d be restoring technological greatness to the American Midwest.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Trump Is Butchering Our Regulatory Infrastructure

• Damnatio Memoriae: The First Step to Recovery in a Post-Trump America

  To get beyond the present crisis, we must undo his crimes and follies.

• Sloppy Methodology: Social Media, Censorship and the New York Post’s Hunter Biden Story

  The article in question featured Hunter Biden, making mention of an alleged email from April 2015 suggesting that he had introduced his father, Democratic presidential contender and former Vice President Joe Biden, to Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm. “Dear Hunter,” goes this email supposedly obtained by the Post, “thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent[sic] some time together. It’s realty[sic] an honor and pleasure.”

  The email correspondence had been purportedly obtained from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, though the owner of the computer repair store who passed on the material to the FBI and one Rudy Giuliani was unsure if Hunter had left the computer with him. Thin stuff to go on.

• “A Barrett Confirmation Is a Catastrophe”: What Democrats Can Do to Block Trump’s Supreme Court Pick

  Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout says Senate Democrats can still block the confirmation of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, if they use every possible procedural method available to them to slow and frustrate the process. “A Barrett confirmation is a catastrophe,” Teachout says. “A 6-3 majority on the court is basically a bomb coming at what is left of our protections against corruption in politics, against corporate money, against what is left of the Voting Rights Act.”

• Trump’s Durable Base and Rolling Coup

  Every few weeks or so for the last three years, I have engaged in the masochistic exercise of seeing whether Donald Trump’s latest outrages have significantly hurt his approval rating. The answer is almost always the same: not really.

  Which is depressing, for the orange-brushed fascist’s maniac’s crimes and horrors are endless. Where to begin? Here’s a short list:

• Labour Under Keir Starmer

  As is to be expected from someone who was a top lawyer before entering politics, Starmer is a skilled parliamentary debater, and week-in week-out trounces Boris “BoJo” Johnson during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.

  Apart from skinning BoJo in parliament, and calling out the failings of the government, Starmer has been somewhat lacklustre.

• Two White Men

  How do we know this?

  Our institutions, which our presidents are sworn to uphold, are designed to maintain this privilege. The U.S. Supreme Court is an oracle that claims every question in the present can be answered by precedent. This is a country that defines itself by reference to the past. Never mind that our past is founded on the slave labor of Black Americans and the genocidal elimination of Native Americans. Its innate prejudice is further elaborated by the Chinese Exclusion acts, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the mass incarceration of black and brown men, and, most recently, the heinous acts of family separation and commitment to concentration camps that await Mexican and Central American immigrants. These are acts committed under the full protection of the laws and institutions of the United States, and by a leadership that has fully internalized the validity of white-male supremacy.

• Young Activists Aren’t Waiting For Anyone

  Older generations have generally favored “nowism,” which privileges short-term well-being at the expense of long-term environmental and societal sustainability. And today’s youth are done with it.

• Voting Heroes

  But the stunning pictures also call for reflection. How is that that these people still have faith that their votes will count? That they still have faith in the electoral system? After all the denigration of the voting process, after all the rumors about fraud, the lines show that there are still believers, there are still people who trust the electoral process, including the outdated Electoral College.

  In a deeper sense, those waiting in line believe that the people they will choose will represent them loyally once they are elected. Those waiting in line not only believe in the electoral process, they also believe that the democratic system works; i.e., in Abraham Lincoln’s terms: government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

• Top 12 Reasons Biden Is Not My Fault

  First, millions of people could have publicly announced that they would not vote for either rotten candidate but only someone who stood for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, public education through college, demilitarization, and massive taxation of corporations and billionaires — or at least one of those things. Either a candidate would have credibly changed or a message would have been sent very loudly to all future candidates. I tried promoting this plan, and a relative handful of people mumbled their agreement. Apart from the Green Party doing its thing, and a new party being started, there was no more organizing around this than there was to reject the Supreme Court handing George W. Bush the crown.

  Second, people could vote for a lesser evil while organizing educational and activist campaigns to try to save the world from that evil. There’s a credible, though uncertain and muddy case, that the lesser evil is Joe Biden. Thousands of people have enthusiastically screamed this case at me at the top of their lungs, and accused me of racism, sexism, and working in the employ of the Russian government — even though my actual, real-world employment includes working for an organization pushing just this approach. I’ve pushed just this approach because it’s my second choice and my first choice above has gone nowhere. I’ve also maintained honesty about the rottenness of both candidates, which has angered and confused many supporters of both who believe that part of supporting a candidate is lying about him.

• An Open Letter to Biden: 5 Easy Steps to Reduce the Threat of Nuclear War

  Dear President-Elect Biden,

  I’m so happy that you were elected because in January you can start to address major problems in America. But before you deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, racism, immigration, gun violence, and climate change, all of which are very important, I recommend that first you take immediate steps to lower the danger of nuclear war. You will be Commander in Chief, and there are several first steps you can take immediately to make the world safer.

• How Biden Flubbed Town Hall Foreign Policy Question

  This question encapsulated all the smoke and mirrors that Trump has used to confuse the public and obscure his broken promises to end America’s wars, bring our troops home and build a more peaceful world. This was a fantastic opportunity for Biden to clarify the reality of Trump’s abysmal record and explain what he would do instead.  But he didn’t. Instead he endorsed some of the most deceptive elements of Trump’s propaganda, dropped some clangers of his own and, in a classic Freudian slip, laid bare his own enduring commitment to American imperialism.

  In response to the questioner’s designation of Israel’s deal with the UAE and Bahrain as a “modern-day miracle,” Biden simply rolled over and said, “I complement the president on the deal with Israel.” What he should have said was something like this:

• Soon, The Old-Guard Democrats Have To Go

  Some of the leading Democrats are getting very long in the tooth. While they are well connected and great at fund-raising, they are growing out of touch with USAian society and the younger members of the party. After they win this election, they should step aside. This includes Biden who is older than I am. The time to be a mature wise leader is in the 50s, not the 80s.

• What Happened to the Voting Rights Act?

  This country has a long history of disenfranchising and suppressing the votes of people of color, particularly in the South. But in 2013 the voter suppression efforts of yesteryear came roaring back. That’s when the Supreme Court gutted key provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those provisions had stopped states with histories of voter suppression from changing their election laws without an okay from the federal government. 

• Protest Song Of The Week: ‘All You Fascists Bound To Lose’ By Resistance Revival Chorus with Rhiannon Giddens

  The following was originally published by Ongoing History of Protest Songs. “This machine kills fascists” was emblazoned on folk singer Woody Guthrie’s guitar, and he used his weapon of choice to compose timely songs of protest, which still remain relevant. One of those tunes is “All You Fascists Bound To Lose” which Guthrie wrote in 1942. 

  The song was recently reworked by the Resistance Revival Chorus and Rhiannon Giddens. It appears on the Resistance Revival Chorus’ debut album “This Joy.”

• What Happens If the US Presidential Election Yields No Clear Winner?

  With the 2020 U.S. presidential election just two weeks off, political scientists and election law experts are gaming out a variety of scenarios the nation could face on Election Day and in the weeks that follow. The possibilities vary between a clear cut victory by either President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden, and an unresolved legal battle that leaves the outcome uncertain into January, when the new Congress is supposed to certify the election’s final result.

  Experts say determining the winner of this particular election is especially fraught because of an unprecedented level of absentee voting due to the coronavirus pandemic. Variation in laws among the states about how and when to count absentee ballots means that a final count could take days or weeks to complete.

  In what he called the “nightmare scenario,” political scholar William Galston of the nonprofit Brookings Institution writes that a closely contested election in which the outcome is in doubt would “[throw] the country into chaos under highly adverse circumstances.”

• Twitter Investigation Report: Report on Investigation of Twitter’s July 15, 2020 Cybersecurity Incident and the Implications for Election Security

  On July 15, 2020, a 17-year old [attacker] and his accomplices breached Twitter’s network and seized control of dozens of Twitter accounts assigned to high-profile users. For several hours, the world watched while the [attackers] carried out a public cyberattack, by seizing one high-profile account after another and tweeting out a “double your bitcoin” scam. The Hackers took over the Twitter accounts of politicians, celebrities, and entrepreneurs, including Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian West, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, as well as Twitter accounts of several cryptocurrency companies regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services. And for several hours Twitter seemed unable to stop the [attack].

• China warns Swedish firms of tit-for-tat action after Huawei ban

  The Swedish telecoms regulator issued a ban on Tuesday that would require carriers to remove existing Huawei and ZTE equipment by 2025, citing national security concerns.

  Chinese telecoms companies have faced bans and heightened scrutiny in recent months over fears Beijing could use their overseas deals to spy on foreign citizens.

  That has provoked a furious response from Beijing, which denies the allegations and says trumped-up security concerns are being used against its successful tech firms to hem them in for commercial reasons.

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Among Us’ Twitch Stream Promotes Voting to 435,000 Viewers

  On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez announced on Twitter that she was looking to play “Among Us,” the massively popular murder mystery video game, on Twitch to encourage people to vote. On Tuesday night, she launched her livestream with Rep. Ilhan Omar and several popular Twitch streamers, including Pokimane, HasanAbi, Myth and JackSepticEye.

  According to the Associated Press, Ocasio-Cortez’s stream had 435,000 concurrent viewers at its highest point. The congresswoman’s Twitch account now has more than 575,000 followers, and her three-hour “Among Us” stream received more than 4.5 million views.

• Amy Coney Barrett, Constitutional Precedent, and the Problem of Originalism

  The foundation of the US legal system is strongly based on the concept of legal precedent.  Judges when interpreting the law or the Constitution are supposed to respect past decisions when there are similar facts.  “Like cases are to be the same” is the rule.  Respect for legal precedent is founded on the idea of stability, consistently, and the belief that people have relied on the law to operate in a certain way and it should not change unexpectedly.

  Departure from precedent is supposed to be an exception and not a rule.  When it comes to constitutional precedent, the Supreme Court has only reversed itself 147 times in history.  Historically the justification for reversing constitution precedent was that the prior decision  proved no longer to be workable or that  the conditions under which it was decided had so changed that the factual basis for it had been undermined.  Precedent could also be rejected if new facts pointed to the lack of viability of the old decision.  Deference to constitutional precedent historically was firm even though the Court has said it should not be given as much respect for statutory precedent because the latter would be easier for Congress to overturn or overturn if the Court made a mistake.

• Green Party Candidate Howie Hawkins in Nashville on Thursday for final Presidential debate

  Green Party Presidential candidate Howie Hawkins will appear at a Meet & Greet on October 22, 3-5 p.m. Central, at Camp 308, 407 Gallatin Avenue, Nashville. He will then travel across town to Belmont University, 1900 Belmont Blvd. for the Presidential Debate.

  [...]

  The Economic Bill of Rights is integral to the Hawkins/Walker campaign’s Ecosocialist Green New Deal, which also includes a Green Economy Reconstruction Program to transform all productive sectors of the US economy to zero-to-negative greenhouse gas emissions and 100% clean energy by 2030. As the country plunges into the Covid-19 Depression, Hawkins considers the Green New Deal as an economic recovery as well as a climate action program.

  “We need a multi-trillion dollar public investment in public enterprise and planning to convert our economy to 100% clean energy on the timescale that the carbon budgets of climate science demand. It is also how we are going to climb out of this economic hole. The dogmatic blind faith of both the Democrats and Republicans that private enterprise alone will lead a recovery and make the energy transition is a recipe for a long depression and a climate catastrophe,” Hawkins said.

• McCarthyism 2020: A Second Generation NLG Member and Red-Baiting in Texas

  He is also, according to his opponent Rep. Michael McCaul, “the most radical liberal running for Congress in America.”
  After Siegel won the Democratic nomination for the Texas 10th Congressional District on July 14, 2020, McCaul unveiled a series of attacks attempting to portray Siegel as a “red diaper baby” who “won’t stand up to China.”

  Exhibit A for McCaul’s attack? A speech Siegel gave to the San Francisco NLG chapter in 2014, when Siegel’s parents, Anne Weills and Dan Siegel, were honored at the annual testimonial dinner. As part of the tribute, Mike Siegel joked that if his parents were Cuban revolutionaries, his mom would be more like Che Guevara (because she has always been committed to grassroots organizing) while his dad is more like Fidel (drawn to institutional leadership). Now, McCaul has injected this speech into the campaign, as he paints Siegel as “too liberal for Texas.”

  The irony in all this, is that Mike Siegel’s parents faced red-baiting throughout their decades in the civil rights movement. Anne Weills started working in the early 1960s to organize for African-Americans to get jobs and resist housing segregation in San Francisco. And Dan Siegel got his start during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

  As Dan says, “it was my trip to the South that inspired me to become a civil rights lawyer. As we worked to integrate lunch counters and support the movement of Black activists across the South, we faced immense repression. Beatings, threats on our life, and of course police brutality and arrests. I noticed that there were few lawyers who were there to defend us and bail us out — and most of them were Lawyers Guild members.”

  Mike Siegel started his career as a public school teacher and then attended Cornell Law School, where he was active in the student NLG chapter. He says, “I was inspired to become a lawyer when I was teaching in Brooklyn, New York, and lived through the attacks of 9/11. After seeing the community come together in a beautiful way, to support each other and foster movements for peace and solidarity, I was horrified how the Bush Administration used that moment to not only advance war abroad, but to also terrorize the Muslim, South Asian and Middle Eastern communities at home. I became a lawyer to fight Attorney General John Ashcroft and support movements for civil and human rights.”

• The New Humanitarian | Catholic charity boss accused of racism and abuse in Sudan

  An alleged racist incident capped months of complaints from staff about management at the Catholic Relief Services offices in Sudan.

  In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, Catholic Relief Services told its staff it was launching an initiative to stamp out racism within the NGO, one of the world’s largest charities.

  Soon after, its American boss in Sudan sent staff a reminder for the launch. The same day – 28 July – he was arrested on a charge of verbal abuse for calling a security guard a “slave”.

  The allegations of racism weren’t the first against Driss Moumane – at least three whistleblower complaints had been filed against him, dating as far back as 2018, according to a six-month investigation by The New Humanitarian that involved interviews with several former and current employees.

• The New Humanitarian | Why sanctions should be a key issue in this US election

  Sanctions have become more of a geopolitical tool than about protecting human rights. It’s time to change course.

  [...]

  The legality of unilateral sanctions imposed by countries or regional groups is dubious in itself, especially when the sanctions are not authorised by the UN Security Council or go beyond its authorisation – most unilateral sanctions fall into one of these two categories. With narrow exceptions, the UN Charter designates the Security Council as the sole body that can authorise sanctions to enforce international law.

  Too often, we face the contradiction that measures introduced ostensibly to deter human rights violations are themselves contributing to those very same violations – and some even create, or worsen, humanitarian crises, for example in Syria or Venezuela.

  It is essential for the world’s nations to act against this harm.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The Importance of Blasphemy

  The stubborn persistence of Islamist terror speaks to the durability of ferocious faith-based dogmas, one of which seeks to reintroduce secular Western democracies to the long-forgotten notion of “blasphemy.” This will only come as a surprise to those with short memories. Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa suborning the murder of Salman Rushdie for merely writing a novel reignited the old debate about the place of tolerance in an age of religious hatred. More than 30 years later, theocratic forces have grown more diffuse but also tenacious.

• Philosophy Is Being Hijacked by Woke Twitter Mobs

  It didn’t take long for the paper and Editors’ Note to come the attention of the wokerati on Twitter. Macquarie University philosophy professor Mark Alfano deemed my paper “shit” and announced his plan to “ruin [my] reputation permanently and deservedly.” He started a petition on change.org demanding an “apology, retraction, or resignation (or some combination of these three)” from the journal editors. A number of philosophers—many of whom did not even read the paper—joined the campaign to get it retracted and/or smear me. University of South Carolina professor Justin Weinberg promoted Alfano’s petition on his widely read philosophy blog, Daily Nous. He also published a guest post that falsely and preposterously claimed that I defended “segregation” and “apartheid schemes.”

  But the editors of Philosophical Psychology stood firm. Van Leeuwen and Herschbach wrote a statement on Facebook reiterating that the review process had been carried out properly, and declaring, “Efforts to silence unwelcome opinion… are doing a disservice to the community.”

• Paris terror attack: Beheaded teacher Samuel Paty to be awarded France’s highest honour

  Samuel Paty, the 47-year old history teacher who was beheaded in a Parisian suburb last week, will posthumously receive France’s highest award, the “Legion d’Honneur”.

  Education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer made the announcement during an interview with BFM TV on Tuesday morning.

• Beheaded Teacher To Be Posthumously Awarded France’s Highest Honor

  On Tuesday, French education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told broadcaster BFMTV that Paty will be posthumously awarded the Legion d’Honneur, reserved for French military or civilians who serve the nation in a notable way.

  Paty will also be made a Commandeur of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques, an honor that recognizes outstanding contributions made by teachers and academics to their institutions.

• Thailand Slashes at Media Freedom in Response to Anti-Establishment Protests

  The decree bars the “publication of news, other media, and electronic information that contains messages that could create fear or intentionally distort information, creating misunderstanding that will affect national security or peace and order.” That was understood to mean no live news footage of anti-government demonstrations.

  Protestors were quick to show their defiance. Crowds measured in their thousands gathered at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument on Thursday afternoon. Still more gathered at multiple other locations in the capital the next day.

  And Bangkok police were quick to use their new powers. They arrested a news reporter for Prachatai as he live-streamed a police dispersal operation on Friday evening.

• Artists are irked by Twitter’s change to retweets

  It’s all the more pressing now that Twitter has, temporarily at least, changed its retweet system to encourage users to quote tweets and add their own words on top, rather than simply boost someone else’s message. Artists say quote tweets take attention away from their profiles, making it harder for them to be discovered, while someone else gets the glory.

  “When you’re quote tweeting an artist, it’s almost like saying ‘I feel like what I have to say about this piece is more important than the actual piece,’” RadiantG, an artist, journalist, and indie game developer, told The Verge.

• Section 230 Basics: There Is No Such Thing As A Publisher-Or-Platform Distinction

  We’ve said it before, many times: there is no such thing as a publisher/platform distinction in Section 230. But in those posts we also said other things about how Section 230 works, and perhaps doing so obscured that basic point. So just in case we’ll say it again here, simply and clearly: there is no such thing as a publisher/platform distinction in Section 230. The idea that anyone could gain or lose the immunity the statute provides depending on which one they are is completely and utterly wrong.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Fiancee of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi sues Saudi crown prince

  The suit says that the defendants were “aware of Mr. Khashoggi’s US ties and brutally killed Mr Khashoggi to silence him and prevent him from continuing in the United States his advocacy for democracy in the Arab world.”

• Khashoggi fiancee sues MBS, Saudi officials in US over murder

  Turkish citizen Hatice Cengiz and the human rights group Khashoggi formed before his death, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), is pursuing Mohammed bin Salman and 28 others for damages over the October 2, 2018 killing of the US-based writer.

  Cengiz claims personal injury and financial losses over Khashoggi’s death, while DAWN said its operations and objectives were hampered by the loss of its founder and central figure.

• Jamal Khashoggi’s Fiancee And His Pro-Democracy Group Sue Saudi Crown Prince

  The complaint, filed in a U.S. district court in Washington, alleges that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing because he considered Jamal Khashoggi’s work to promote democracy in the Middle East an existential threat. It was filed by DAWN, the democracy organization that Khashoggi started, and by Hatice Cengiz, his fiancee. The suit names her as Khashoggi’s widow. It says they were finalizing their civil marriage when he was killed. Cengiz spoke by videoconference.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The US Spends More Than $80 Billion a Year Incarcerating 2.3 Million People

  There’s never been a better time to reconsider the entire system.

• ‘Just Babies at the Time’: ACLU Says It Can’t Find Parents of Over 500 Children Separated From Families by Trump

  “We will not stop looking until we have found every one of the families, no matter how long it takes.”

• Google sold AI to customs for use at US-Mexico border: report

  Despite protests from its staff in the past leading to its pulling out from controversial US Government projects, Google has now made a deal for its artificial technology to be used by the Trump administration to fortify the US-Mexico border, The Intercept reports, based on documents obtained under a FOIA request.

• Will ‘Nones’ Bring a Progressive Future?

  This part of the 21st century will be remembered chiefly, I predict, as the era when supernatural religion died among intelligent western people.  I think it will survive mostly as an emotional fringe for lower-brow folks such as those who “speak in tongues.”

  In other words, the Secular Age is blossoming right now, amid many daily distractions.  Evidence is everywhere:

• First-Time Voters Want to Have a Say in Our Country’s Future

  The ongoing struggle for racial justice. The future for immigrant families. The health and well-being of all Americans. The very fate of our fragile planet. The US faces a crossroads in this year’s elections. Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar, The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What’s At Stake, a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers. Follow the whole series here. This installment was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

• Trump State Department Plan to Declare Human Rights Groups ‘Anti-Semitic’ Slammed as ‘Desperate,’ ‘Obscene’

  The designation would target humanitarian organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam, sources said. 

• Grand juror in Breonna Taylor case says homicide charges were not presented

  An anonymous Kentucky juror from the Breonna Taylor grand jury on Tuesday said state Attorney Daniel Cameron (R) never presented homicide charges for the officers who killed Taylor in her own home back in March.

  The comments come from the same anonymous juror who filed a motion to be able to speak publicly about the case proceedings.

  “The grand jury did not have homicide offenses explained to them,” the anonymous juror said in a statement that was released by attorney Kevin Glogower, who is representing two of the jurors. “The grand jury never heard about those laws. Self-defense or justification was never explained either. Questions were asked about additional charges and the grand jury was told there would be none because the prosecutors didn’t feel they could make them stick.”

• SF Police Used Camera Network to Illegally ‘Spy on Protesters,’ New Lawsuit Alleges

  In the weeks following the May 25 killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, hundreds of thousands of people in the Bay Area took to city streets to march against police brutality. Despite the mostly peaceful demonstrations that took place in downtown San Francisco, there were also multiple incidents of vandalism, theft and clashes between protesters and police that occurred over consecutive nights, prompting officials to order citywide curfews.

  The San Francisco Police Department responded to these protests in part by commandeering private security cameras to keep an eye, in real-time, on a 27-block area surrounding Union Square, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday that seeks to prevent police from doing so again.

• Photo of the Day: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet pro-independence flags wave in Thailand

  As anti-government protests intensified in Thailand on Wednesday (Oct. 14), this photo surfaced on social media showing demonstrators waving the Taiwan independence flag, Hong Kong pro-democracy flag, and the flag of Tibet.

• The New Humanitarian | COVID-19 and BLM: A new era for aid?

  Welcome to the first episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism, a joint 10-part series with The New Humanitarian and the Center for Global Development.

• Pioneer Award Ceremony 2020: A Celebration of Communities

  Last week, we celebrated the 29th Annual—and first ever online—Pioneer Award Ceremony, which EFF convenes for our digital heroes and the folks that help make the online world a better, safer, stronger, and more fun place. Like the many Pioneer Award Ceremonies before it, the all-online event was both an intimate party with friends, and a reminder of the critical digital rights work that’s being done by so many groups and individuals, some of whom are not as well-known as they should be.    

  Perhaps it was a feature of the pandemic — not a bug — that anyone could attend this year’s celebration, and anyone can now watch it online. You can also read the full transcript. More than ever before, this year’s Pioneer Award Ceremony was a celebration of online communities— specifically, the Open Technology Fund community working to create better tech globally; the community of Black activists pushing for racial justice in how technology works and is used; and the sex worker community that’s building digital tools to protect one another, both online and offline. 

• When Does Incompetence Become a Crime?

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• EU Parliament Paves the Way for an Ambitious Internet Bill

  The European Union has made the first step towards a significant overhaul of its core platform regulation, the e-Commerce Directive.

  In order to inspire the European Commission, which is currently preparing a proposal for a Digital Services Act Package, the EU Parliament has voted on three related Reports (IMCO, JURI, and LIBE reports), which address the legal responsibilities of platforms regarding user content, include measures to keep users safe online, and set out special rules for very large platforms that dominate users’ lives.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Disney’s Streaming Pivot: How Will New Structure Work in Practice?

  One-year-old streamer Disney+ has been a public success story for Disney, surpassing its five-year goal of attracting more than 60 million subscribers in just nine months. But the service has been a structural challenge for the legacy studio and the center of a power struggle over who has final say in the streamer’s programming lineup, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

  Disney could put an end to that tussling with its Oct. 12 restructuring, which hands its studio leaders greater control over the content they create for outlets like Disney+ while consolidating all budget and distribution decisions under the new Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution group led by former consumer products executive Kareem Daniel. But it’s unclear how this new arrangement will play out in practice.

• Charlie Brown fans upset over ‘Peanuts’ holiday specials moving exclusively to Apple TV+

  Though Apple will provide limited free access, many are disappointed the animated classics won’t be broadcast on television for the first time since the ’60s.

• ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’ won’t air on ABC this year, moves to Apple TV+

  It has been announced that the Peanuts TV specials that generations of Americans grew up with are moving to Apple TV+ as part of a new corporate deal.

  Among other things, this means “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” began streaming Monday for the digital platform’s subscribers. It will be streamed free Oct. 30-Nov. 1.

  As Charlie himself would say: Rats!!!!! Will no social, political or cultural norms be preserved in 2020? Can no tradition go unscathed? Is nothing, not even the quest for a pumpkin patch sincere enough to draw the Great Pumpkin to its leafy environs, sacred.

  [...]

  Still, I’m bitter. Just add the “Great Pumpkin” TV night to the other traditions being chipped away by the internet — like privacy and legitimate news sources.

• Quibi is shutting down

  Quibi — the shortform mobile-focused streaming service — is shutting down after just over six months of operation, making it one of the shortest-lived streaming services to date, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company since confirmed that it’ll be shutting down in a Medium post from Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman.

  “We feel that we’ve exhausted all our options. As a result we have reluctantly come to the difficult decision to wind down the business, return cash to our shareholders, and say goodbye to our colleagues with grace,” the announcement reads.

• Quibi is shutting down, just months after launching

  Quibi will reportedly be returning $350 million of the $1.75 billion it raised from investors. (NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News, is a minority investor in Quibi, and NBC News produced a daily show on the platform. NBCUniversal and NBC News declined to comment.)

• Quibi to Shut Down Six Months After Launch

  The service, which had more than 100 original series, struggled to build up subscribers, coming in well below internal projections, according to a source. According to a report from third-party measurement firm Sensor Tower, Quibi’s mobile app has been downloaded by around 9.6 million users since launch, though not all of those people are necessarily subscribers. Sensor Tower also reports that first-time installs of Quibi in October are down 41 percent from the same period in September.

• As Quibi Shutters, So Goes Nearly $2 Billion in Major Hollywood Investments

  Disney, NBCUniversal, Viacom, Sony Pictures Entertainment, WarnerMedia, Lionsgate, MGM, ITV, Entertainment One — the list of Hollywood heavy hitters that poured money into Quibi is a veritable who’s who of entertainment industry giants. Now, with the closure of the mobile streaming startup led by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, just six months after launching, so goes nearly $2 billion in investment dollars.

• Quibi Is Shutting Down After Failing to Find a Buyer

  Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Katzenberg was exploring “strategic options” for Quibi, including a potential sale. Katzenberg pitched a sale of the company — which has about 500,000 paying customers — to Apple, WarnerMedia and Facebook but was rebuffed, The Information reported earlier this month. Katzenberg also struck out in his attempt to sell Quibi’s programming rights to companies including NBCUniversal and Facebook, per The Information’s story this week. NBCU was “put off by the fact that Quibi doesn’t own many of the shows it puts on its platform,” according to today’s Journal article.

  Actually, Quibi doesn’t own any of the big-budget premium content for which it has shelled out upwards of $100,000 per minute. The company has seven-year licenses on its short-form series; after two years, content owners have the right to assemble the shows and distribute them elsewhere.

Monopolies

• As U.S. presidential election enters final days, Canada braces for the fallout

  A government official (who asked not to be identified because the person is not authorized to speak publicly on the plans) said the cabinet committee is worried about security at the border, the prospect of even higher COVID infection rates in the U.S. and the possibility of Trump taking harder lines on international issues that could affect Canada.

• “Break ’Em Up”: As DOJ Targets Google, Zephyr Teachout Urges Breakup of More Big Tech Monopolies

  The Department of Justice and 11 states have filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Google in a move that could lead to the breakup of the company’s business and holds major implications for other tech giants. The lawsuit accuses Google of engaging in illegal practices to maintain a monopoly on the search market, which fuels its dominance in online advertising. Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout, who has long advocated for breaking up Big Tech monopolies, says it’s “an incredibly important lawsuit” that should be the start of a wave of legal and legislative action to tackle “this incredible democratic crisis we have of Big Tech really becoming a form of private, for-profit government that is taking over so many parts of our lives.”

• Patents

  • Incandescent Lamp Patent Case

    This was a bill in equity, filed by the Consolidated Electric Light Company against the McKeesport Light Company, to recover damages for the infringement of letters patent No. 317,[6]76, issued May 12, 1885, to the Electro-Dynamic Light Company, assignee of Sawyer and Man, for an electric light. The defendants justified under certain patents to Thomas A. Edison, particularly No. 223,898, issued January 27, 1880; denied the novelty and utility of the complainant’s patent; and averred that the same had been fraudulently and illegally procured. The real defendant was the Edison Electric Light Company, and the case involved a contest between what are known as the Sawyer and Man and the Edison systems of electric lighting.

    In their application, Sawyer and Man stated that their invention related to ‘that class of electric lamps employing an incandescent conductor [e]nclosed in a transparent, hermetically sealed vessel or chamber, from which oxygen is excluded, and … more especially to the incandescing conductor, its substance, its form, and its combination with the other elements composing the lamp. Its object is to secure a cheap and effective apparatus; and our improvement consists, first, of the combination, in a lamp chamber, composed wholly of glass, as described in patent No. 205,144,’ upon which this patent was declared to be an improvement, ‘of an incandescing conductor of carbon made from a vegetable fibrous material, in contradistinction to a similar conductor made from mineral or gas carbon, and also in the form of such conductor so made from such vegetable carbon, and combined in the lighting circuit with the exhausted chamber of the lamp.’

  • Software Patents

    • $2,000 for Blyncsy Prior Art — Unified Patents

      On October 20, 2020, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least Claim 1 of U.S. Patent 10,198,779. The patent is owned by Blyncsy, Inc., an NPE. The ’779 patent generally relates to contact tracing of contagions and is currently being asserted against using this technology for the current Covid-19 pandemic.

    • PTAB/District Court Trial Date Denials Spiraling Upward: PTAB Discretionary Denials Third-Quarter Report

      Key Takeaways: After returning to the data, breaking down all discretionary denials by category, and updating the data for the past three months, it is clear that the PTAB now prefers denying more petitions under their recent NHK Spring/Fintiv “parallel district court” practice than any other means; discretionary denials as a percentage of overall denials have risen and will almost certainly exceed last year’s denials, both in terms of raw numbers (in a down year) and by overall percentage (by a substantial margin).

      Following Unified’s Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 reports on PTAB procedural denials, we went back to further analyze and categorize all Board decisions to date to understand the impact of new decisions, including the NHK Spring/Fintiv and General Plastic/NVIDIA line of decisions. This year, the number of non-merits or “procedural” denials by the Board has dramatically increased overall; for example, through the first nine months of 2020, 151 denials (16% of all decisions) have been issued, nearly tying 2019’s 162 denials for the entire year.

      With total number of institution decisions by the Board somewhat depressed overall this year, we now see that the amount of discretionary denials as a percentage of total denials has risen dramatically, representing more than a third of all institution denials in 2020–or put another way, 38% of all denials in 2020 to date are cases where the Board did not consider the merits of the petition.

    • Guest Post by Profs. Contreras and Yu: Will China’s New Anti-Suit Injunctions Shift the Balance of Global FRAND Litigation?

      The first case involves Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei and Texas-based patent assertion entity Conversant Wireless Licensing (formerly Core Wireless). Conversant holds a globe-spanning portfolio of patents that it acquired from Nokia and which it claims are essential to the 2G, 3G and 4G wireless telecommunications standards developed under the auspices of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Conversant sought to license these patents to Huawei, but negotiations broke down and in 2017 and 2018 Conversant asserted the patents against Huawei in multiple jurisdictions. The UK suit was recently decided by the UK Supreme Court, [2020] UKSC 37, which held that a UK court has the authority to set a global FRAND royalty rate between the parties, notwithstanding its lack of jurisdiction over patents outside the UK (see discussion here). (This case also involved an unsuccessful 2018 bid by Conversant to obtain an ASI from the UK Court of Chancery, [2018] EWHC (Ch) 2549, against the prosecution of a related suit by ZTE, Huawei’s co-defendant, in the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in China – discussed here).

      In response to Conversant’s initial patent assertions, in January 2018 Huawei sought declarations from the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court of Jiangsu Province, China, that it did not infringe three of Conversant’s Chinese patents and, if it did, that it was entitled to a license on FRAND terms. On September 16, 2019, the Nanjing court declined to issue a declaration regarding infringement, but established a “top down” FRAND royalty for the three Conversant patents (discussed at length in IAM, 23 Sept. 2019 and IAM, 5 Aug. 2020). The decision is currently on appeal at the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) of China.

      Meanwhile, in April 2018, Conversant sued Huawei in the District Court in Düsseldorf, Germany, alleging infringement of several European patents. On August 27, 2020, the Düsseldorf court granted Conversant an injunction against Huawei’s sale, use or importation in Germany of devices infringing patent EP1797659 (the German Patent).

• Copyrights

  • Songs and Lyrics by Tom Lehrer

    In other words, all the lyrics herein should be treated as though they were in the public domain.

    [...]

    Note: This website will be shut down on December 31, 2024, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long.

  • Twitch DMCA “Bloodbath” Trades Copyright Strikes For Due Process

    A large number of Twitch users have had their videos deleted following a new round of mass DMCA notice processing. Twitch has also imposed an interesting ‘deal’ on those affected. In exchange for removing their ability to file a counternotice, Twitch won’t be placing a copyright ‘strike’ against users’ accounts. A fair ‘amnesty’ deal or a coach-and-horses through due process?

  • Pirated Screeners of ‘Falling’ and ‘My Salinger Year’ Leak Online Early

    Two new pirated movie screeners appeared online this week, way ahead of the usual screener season. Pirate release group EVO published advance copies of ‘Falling’ and ‘My Salinger Year,’ two popular films at international festivals. The releases are not typical award screeners but appear to come from online festival screenings instead.

  • Making the CC Global Network Work Better for You

    Just over a year ago, the Executive Committee of the CC Global Network Council (GNC) launched an open process to collect feedback from all members on the network structure, with the purpose of understanding what was working and what was not, and to offer recommendations on how to make the structure work better for those on the ground and in local communities. 

  • How Can Linking to an Article be Immoral When the Media Source Itself Does the Posting, Part 2: A Day in the Life of the Toronto Star on Facebook

    Second, this data is focused on public postings. CrowdTangle also provides aggregate data that incorporates non-public posts (ie. private sharing). The number of public and private article shares (along with all the data on posts) is posted below. The total number of article shares – both public and private – for all 36 articles was 2,663 for an average of 74 shares per article. Even leaving aside the fact that many of these shares come from the Toronto Star’s own posts, Canada’s largest newspaper by circulation generates just 74 shares per article on Facebook. The loss of ad revenue may be a significant threat to Canadian media organizations, but the claim that this can be attributed to Facebook “taking” media content simply does not accord with the data on how articles make their way onto Facebook nor what happens once those articles are publicly posted.

Magazines and Shows

• Linux IS fun! | Linux Format

  Some people have gained the impression that Linux might not be fun. How did that happen? So this issue we’re putting the fun back into Lin(f)u(n)x! We’re not sure that’s going to catch on…

  This issue we’re going to look at Plex. While no longer open source, it’s always treated Linux as a first-class citizen and delivers a super-slick media streaming experience across networks, devices and all media. You can use it for free and if you get on with it there are membership levels that unlock extra features and app access. It’s certainly a system that works for Plex.

• Enabling A Firewall Is Easy In Linux – YouTube

  I am going to show you how to install and enable the Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw) and how to add and delete rules for it. Ufw is a very easy-to-use command line utility, and for those that want a graphical tool, gufw is available as well.

• Destination Linux 196: Going Sub-Atomic With Quantum Computing – Destination Linux

  This week We’re going to take a look at what’s new for KDE’s latest Plasma 5.20 release! We’re going visit the Quantum Realm to discuss Quantum Computing and an article Red Hat released about the subject including what sysadmins will need to do to manage in this new realm without an Ant Man suit. In our gaming section, we’re going to be howling at the moon because this week we’ll be checking out Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest. Later in the show, we’ll give you our popular tips/tricks and software picks. Plus so much more, on this week’s episode of Destination Linux.

• mintCast 346 – It’s Not You, It’s Me – mintCast

  First up, in our Wanderings, Leo makes web apps, Moss sends a Telegram, Joe gets an upgrade, Josh fights with a mic, and Bo gets a gnome.

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • Nouveau + LLVMpipe Drivers Enable OpenCL Image Support – Phoronix

    The interesting work continues pouring in for Mesa 20.3 as the Q4’2020 feature release to this open-source graphics stack… The latest excitement is on the “Clover” front for Gallium3D OpenCL.

    The LLVMpipe software back-end and Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D drivers now are advertising OpenCL image support! This is important for making use of OpenCL acceleration with programs like Darktable and LuxCore, among many other imaging type programs supporting OpenCL.

  • Intel OpenGL/Vulkan Linux Drivers Strike Another Optimization For Tiger Lake – Phoronix

    It was just on Monday that Intel’s talented open-source developers merged a hefty Tiger Lake graphics optimization into the Mesa 20.3 code that for some games/software can be around ~11% faster thanks to greater caching. Just a day later another optimization has arrived for helping these latest-generation Intel graphics.

    Merged on Tuesday was a change to benefit Intel’s Iris Gallium3D (OpenGL) and ANV Vulkan drivers for making use of the HDC data cache for uniform buffer object (UBO) pulls on Gen12+ hardware, namely Tiger Lake at this point.

  • Vulkan update: merged to Mesa

  • New NVIDIA Vulkan Beta Driver 455.26.02 is out

    Need the latest bleeding-edge Linux drivers from NVIDIA? There’s a new release out of the Vulkan Beta Driver.

    [...]

    Reminder: This special Vulkan beta driver is where all the shiny new stuff goes in before making its way into the stable release for everyone. Really, it’s mostly aimed at developers and serious enthusiasts. Unless you need what’s in them, it’s generally best to use the stable drivers.

    The newest stable versions of the main NVIDIA driver for Linux are at 450.80.02 released on September 30 from their “long lived” series or 455.28 released on October 7 from their “short lived” series. Confused?

Benchmarks

• Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 20.10 Performance With Intel Tiger Lake, AMD Renoir

  Stemming from our initial Intel Core i7 1165G7 “Tiger Lake” benchmarks on the Dell XPS 13 9310 last week and then also discovering better single-threaded performance on Ubuntu 20.10, one of the pressing questions was whether this is expected performance on Linux or if it’s coming up short of Microsoft Windows for this first tier-one notebook to market with Intel Tiger Lake. So following those earlier tests I proceeded to do a Windows 10 Pro with all available updates comparison on Ubuntu 20.10 with the i7-1165G7. For added context, the same software stack and tests were repeated on an AMD Ryzen “Renoir” notebook.

  Today’s article answers the question of Intel Tiger Lake performance on if it’s coming up short against Windows and where any outliers are between the Windows and Linux support for these latest-generation Intel mobile processors. Plus with the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U “Renoir” Lenovo Flex 15 performance added in there it also helps address whether any of the tests/benchmarks may be favoring one operating system over the other and ultimately seeing how the Windows vs. Linux raw performance is for these autumn 2020 notebooks.

Applications

• Oracle VirtualBox 6.1.16 Released with Kernel 5.9 Support

  Oracle VirtualBox 6.1.16 was released as a new maintenance release with Kernel 5.9 support for Linux host and guest.

Instructionals/Technical

• Installing PHP 8 on Debian 10

  PHP is a general-purpose open-source scripting language that can be embedded in HTML. It stands for HypertextProcessor and is widely used in web development. A scripting language is used to write ready-made programs that are later used to automate tasks. PHP scripts are often used on Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac OS, and other operating systems. With PHP, you have the freedom to choose an operating system and the underlying web server, according to your needs.

  In this article, we will explain how to install PHP 8, PHP 7.4, and PHP 5.6 on Debian. After you have installed the multiple PHP versions, we will also explain how to disable one version and choose a default version on the system.

• Install a minimal KDE on Debian 10 “buster” – PragmaticLinux

  If you select the KDE desktop environment, while installing Debian, the installer installs several extra desktop applications. Kmail, Knotes, Korganizer, Kaddressbook, to name just a few. Not all KDE users are interested in these extra desktop applications. However, when attempting to remove them, Debian removes the entire KDE. Luckily, a method exists to install just a minimal version of KDE in Debian. Grab yourself a drink and read on to find out how you can install a minimal KDE on Debian.

• How to delete container with lxc (LXD) command on Linux – nixCraft

  Explains how to delete and remove LXD based container or instance with the lxc command on Linux operating systems using the CLI.

• Building Resilient Microservices with Istio and Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh (Course DO328)

• Understanding Linux File Permissions and Ownership – Linux Hint

  Linux operating system, which is a clone of UNIX, is developed to handle multiple users with multi-tasking features. This means than more than one user can work in this operating at the same time when the computer is attached to a network or Internet. The remote users can connect with the computer that contains the Linux operating system through SSH and work on the system. It is very important to maintain security when multiple users work in the same operating system at the same time. Many built-in security features exist in the Linux operating system that can be used when local or remote access is granted from different users. The Linux users have to understand the concept of file permissions and the ownership of the file to provide security at the file system level. How the Linux users can view and modify the permissions, and the ownership of the file and folders is shown in this article.

• Wikimedia’s CDN

  The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia and other well known wiki-based projects, operates websites and services that are high volume and rank in the world’s top 20. We serve about 21 Billion read requests per month and sustain 55 Million edits to our articles. On a normal day over 90% of these read requests are served by our caching solution, our own Content Delivery Network (CDN). Like other parts of our technology stack, the CDN is based on Open Source software and is constantly evolving. During the last couple of years, we have performed various changes in terms of on-disk HTTP caching and request routing.

  This 3 part series of articles will describe some of the changes, which included replacing Varnish with Apache Traffic Server (ATS) as the on-disk HTTP cache component of the CDN. ATS allowed us to significantly simplify the CDN architecture, increase our uptime, and accelerate the procedure to switch between our two primary data centers in Virginia and Texas.

• UNIX printing demystified

  Every now and then people post a “question” about printing to this mailng list which exposes their confusion. I am putting this email together so that anybody capable of searching through the mailing list can at least have terminology straight before asking for help. Information presented here is in the public domain and I make no claims of posting anything new.

• How to Create a New user and Grant Permissions in MySQL

  How to Create a New user and Grant Permissions in MySQL . Learn how to assign specific permissions like delete, update, insert, all privileges

• How to Install Elasticsearch on Fedora 32/31/30 – TecAdmin

  Elasticsearch is a modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene. It is completely open source and built with Java. It stored data in form of documents and provides APIs for the full-text search. Elasticsearch is distributed under the Apache 2 license, which provides it flexibility.

  This tutorial will help you to install and configure elasticsearch on Fedora Linux systems.

• How to Install Kali Linux Easily?

  One of the most popular and go-to Linux distributions for cybersecurity enthusiasts and professionals is Kali Linux, mainly because of the numerous security features it brings to the table. If ethical hacking interests you then there’s no best way of getting started other than installing Kali Linux and using it. In this article, let’s have a look at how you can swiftly install Kali Linux and start your ethical hacking journey.

  There are two ways to install Kali Linux; the first one uses VirtualBox, and the second is using dual boot method. The latter requires prior installation knowledge, and believe us, you don’t want to mess with your disk if you’re new to the field. Hence, we suggest you install Kali on VirtualBox. With VirtualBox, you will be able to run Kali Linux as if you’re running any other applications like Chrome or VLC.

• How to Schedule a Task in Linux? – Linux Hint

  Whenever using a UNIX-based operating system, certain tasks are to be performed repeatedly. UNIX comes with its built-in task schedulers. In the case of Linux, it comes with two basic but powerful tools: Cron daemon (default task scheduler) and at (more suitable for one-time task scheduling). How to Schedule a Task in Linux are explained in this article.

• How to Setup and Manage Log Rotation Using Logrotate in Linux

  In this article, we will explain how to use logrotate to automatically rotate system logs, compress, remove, and mail logs on a periodic basis in Linux servers.

• How to Use Cron in Linux – Linux Hint

  Cron is a built-in automatic scheduler for the Linux operating system and is responsible for running the commands or scripts that are added to the crontab file at a specified time. This article shows you how to use Cron in the Linux operating system.

• How to Write a Simple Bash Script – Linux Hint

  Apart from being the default command-line interpreter for the Linux operating system, Bash is also a full-fledged programming language. This article shows beginning users the process for writing a simple Bash script in Linux Mint 20.

• How To Install Asterisk 17 VoIP Server on Ubuntu 20.04

  Asterisk is a free and open-source VoIP server created by Sangoma. It is used for building a VoIP telephony infrastructure for all sizes of organizations. VoIP is a Voice Over Internet Protocol used to make a call using the TCP/IP stack. With VoIP, you can make a call from your mobile device or computer to other devices without any cost. It runs on Unix and Linux based operating systems and able to connect any traditional global telephony network. It offers a set of features including, conference call, voice mail, IVR, and automatic call distribution.

• Install Ansbile on CentOS and Red Hat [RHCE Ansible Series]

  In this Ansible series, you will learn all the skills you need to manage and automate your IT infrastructure operations with Ansible.

  Also, all the objectives for the RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) EX294 exam will be covered in this series. This means that you will be fully prepared to pass the EX294 exam and become a Red Hat Certified Engineer if you follow the series.

Games

• Tsuro – The Game of The Path is a gorgeous digital adaption out now | GamingOnLinux

  A new digital adaption of the original board game Tsuro is out now with Tsuro – The Game of The Path, and it’s really lovely. Note: The developer sent over a key to our Steam Curator.

  In Tsuro you each have indirect control of a coloured pebble, while taking it in turns to place down a single path tile in front of your little pebble to move it across the board. Incredible simple to get into, yet there’s plenty of strategy involved in it and it really is quite brilliant. It’s a wonderful adaption, with some digital-exclusive modes. You can play for the longest movement loop, the last one remaining on the board and more.

• Retro 3D indie first-person shooter ‘Perilous Warp’ has released | GamingOnLinux

  The growing list of retro-fuelled shooters has another entry now with Perilous Warp which has released.

  Inspired by the greats like Quake, Unreal, Doom and Chasm: The Rift. There’s cramped hallways, deadly weapons and plenty of action. Created by Crystice Softworks, who are known for the Half-Life mod Headcrab Frenzy and for the J.A.C.K level editor, this is their first full commercial release.

• Go and cure Director’s Gut in the Two Point Hospital: Culture Shock DLC out now | GamingOnLinux

  I sure do love a good pun and the Two Point Hospital: Culture Shock DLC that’s out now is full of it, with plenty of new illnesses that you need to conquer. No laughing at the patients please.

  Two Point Hospital: Culture Shock is the biggest expansion so far in terms of total illness, however just like the other packs only a few of them are entirely new with new visuals and machines. As for the actual illnesses they’re themed after the arts and media like Stunt Trouble, Private Parts, Snot Twist, Culture Shock, Stage Hand, Square Eyes, Wardrobe Malfunction and so on.

• Fire a magical sword at goblins in the physics-based puzzler ‘Sword Slinger’ out now | GamingOnLinux

  Sword Slinger is a rather unique physics-based puzzle game about slaying goblins by controlling a sword with magical behaviours. Combine magical logic blocks together, to unleash amusing solutions. Out now with Linux support.

  Created by Firebelley, an indie game developer and software engineer based out of Northeast Ohio. Sword Slinger was created over a period of 7 months, after being fascinated with the idea that simple inputs can create complex outputs.

• Brimstone & Mist is the latest update to the MMO Albion Online out now | GamingOnLinux

  As their player numbers continue climbing, Sandbox Interactive have just released a big mid-season update to Albion Online with Brimstone & Mist.

  While they regularly released big free expansions, this is a smaller and more focused update that continues to refine lots of new features from previous upgrades.

  That said, it’s still quite a big update by itself considering it’s an interim update. It adds in a new boss, multiple new enemies, new traps, more locations to go fishing, you can now roast Chicken, Goose, and Pork to create a new food line and the same for some of the new Fish, the mini-map had a big refresh to improve visual quality and readability, an optional language filter and much more.

• Creature taming metroidvania Monster Sanctuary launches on December 8 | GamingOnLinux

  After a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter back in 2018 and then over a year in Early Access, Monster Sanctuary is now set for a full release.

  It’s going to leave Early Access on December 8, and they’ve confirmed that the launch of Monster Sanctuary will include brand new content to expand the experience even further.

  Denis Sinner, the Managing Director at Moi Rai Games mentioned “The full release of the game will bring an exciting five-year journey to an end. Monster Sanctuary originally started out as a hobby project of mine while having a normal day job, and back then I couldn’t imagine that it would be released as a full-fledged game on multiple platforms with a publisher on my side. Ever since we launched the game into Early Access last year, the community feedback we’ve received has helped to improve the game and make it the best possible experience.”

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Plasma 5.20 is an exceptionally refined desktop

    There you go. I have to say, this is the best Plasma release in a long while. I would say since 5.12. In fact, this should have been the LTS. You get everything: speed, stability, consistency, beautiful looks, highly functional software. And now, the challenge: this ought to remain, without regressions, for three releases.

    There are some small niggles here and there, but all in all, there’s nothing cardinally wrong with this edition. Quite the contrary, it brings massive improvements on many levels, and infuses joy into my jaded soul, a ray of hope that has been absent for many months now. If you’re contemplating Linux, or contemplating replacing your desktop environment, then Plasma 5.20 offers the freshest, most elegant solution by a huge margin. Worth testing and using – and hopefully, there will be some long-term version available somewhere, so that people need stability and minimal change can settle in and enjoy a refined, pleasant desktop. That’s my wish for the new year, and now off you go testing. Bottom line: awesome. Bye bye.

  • Inside KDE: leadership and long-term planning

    Based on my post about KDE’s anarchic organization and the micro-not-macro nature of my This Week in KDE series, you would be forgiven for having the impression that KDE is directionless and has no leadership or long-term planning capabilities. In fact the opposite is true, and I’d like to talk a bit about that today, since this information may not be obvious to users and the wider community.

    Now, since KDE is so vast, I can only provide my personal perspective based on the projects I’m most heavily involved in: the VDG, Plasma, and a few apps.

    [...]

    KDE doesn’t lack for strategic long-term goals and direction, so I think that part can be pretty solidly marked as a success. As for tactical leadership and direction within and between individual projects, I also think things are pretty rosy overall. KDE’s maintainer-led projects generally have excellent maintainers. The variety of KDE apps using this model model is a testament to how successful it can be with a high-quality maintainer–especially our professional-class apps like Krita. And in my opinion, KDE’s council of elders projects also have very good leadership today

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Accessibility in GTK 4

    The big news in last weeks GTK 3.99.3 release is that we have a first non-trivial backend for our new accessibility implementation. Therefore, now is a good time to take a deeper look at accessibility in GTK 4.

    Lets start with a quick review of how accessibility works on Linux. The actors in this are applications and assistive technologies (ATs) such as screen readers (for instance, Orca), magnifiers and the like.

    The purpose of ATs generally is to provide users with alternative ways to interact with the application that are tailored to their needs (say, an enlarged view, text read out aloud, or voice commands). To do this, ATs need a lot of detailed information about the applications UI, and this is where the accessibility stack comes into play—it is the connecting layer between the application (or its toolkit) and the ATs.

Distributions

• Now and Then: The Fate of 15 Linux Distributions

  A typical desktop Linux distribution consists of various software components including the Linux kernel, a broad collection of programming tools produced by the GNU Project, a graphical server, and other free and open source software.

  Due to Linux’s open source nature, there are many hundreds of actively maintained distributions or ‘distros’ of the OS. Linux distros are like Linux software in general. They come and (some) go.

  Back in 2006, Distrowatch ranked the following distributions in terms of page hit ranking1. The top ranked distro was Ubuntu. The other places were taken by openSUSE, Fedora, MEPIS, Mandriva, Damn Small, Debian, PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Gentoo, KNOPPIX, FreeBSD, Kubuntu, VectorLinux, and CentOS.

• New Releases

  • ExTiX Deepin 20.10 Live based on Deepin 20 (latest) with Skype, Spotify, Refracta Snapshot and kernel 5.9.1-exton :: Build 201021

    I’ve released a new version of ExTiX Deepin today (201021). This ExTiX Build is based on Deepin 20 released by Deepin Technology 200911.

  • Alpine 3.12.1 released

    The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.12.1 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

• BSD

  • OpenBSD Officially Available for PPC64

    OpenBSD 6.8 is now available and with it the first official release of the big-endian ppc64 port (which they call powerpc64). The port is specifically advertised for PowerNV machines (i.e., bare metal) with POWER9, which naturally includes the Raptor family but should also support IBM PowerNV systems as well. POWER8 support is described as “included but untested.

  • NetBSD 9.1 released

    After a small delay*, the NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 9.1, the first feature and stability maintenance release of the netbsd-9 stable branch.

    The new release features (among various other changes) many bug fixes, a few performance enhancements, stability improvements for ZFS and LFS and support for USB security keys in a mode easily usable in Firefox and other applications.

  • NetBSD 9.1 Released: Highly Portable, Free And Open Source BSD Distro

    After the major release of OpenBSD 6.8, here comes NetBSD 9.1, another popular and one of the oldest free and open source operating system from BSD family.

    NetBSD 9.1 is the first point update for the NetBSD-9 release branch, bringing new features, bug fixes, enhancements, and stability improvements for ZFS and LFS.

    [...]

    Furthermore, v9.1 has added support for the Xen 4.13 hypervisor and updated NVMM hypervisor to bring improved emulation, performance, and stability.

    For security purposes, version 9.1 has brought Parallelized disk encryption support with CGD cryptographic disk driver. You can even now use USB security keys in raw mode for several applications like Firefox.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Ride the Kubernetes wave confidently with SUSE Cloud Application Platform – SUSE Communities

    Many businesses today are struggling through digital transformation, dealing with a rapidly changing technology landscape that often seems to present too many choices, too much uncertainty, and too little support. Maybe your business is struggling too. For sure you want to ride the next great technology wave, but just as surely you don’t want to get crushed by it.

    Take Kubernetes for example. It’s an incredibly powerful container management platform that’s fast becoming a modern infrastructure standard. It could enable you to deliver new digital capabilities more quickly, to create the exceptional customer experiences that will launch you ahead of your competition. But Kubernetes is notoriously difficult to use, especially for the application development and operations teams that stand to benefit from it most.

  • New Exam Provider For SUSE Certifications – SUSE Communities

    Our SUSE Certification Program offers industry-leading certifications and exams that are globally recognized. High-stakes assessments are vital, so it is important to always look for ways to improve the overall experience for the certification candidate. We have begun transitioning all of our exams to Questionmark. Questionmark is as full-service, enterprise-grade assessment platform, which enables him-stakes exams and assessments to be conducted remotely and securely.

  • New Zealand’s Wellington Institute of Technology students build Ceph proof of concept with help from SUSE

    A team of students at the Wellington Institute of Technology (WelTec) is developing a proof of concept that involves implementing a software defined storage solution for campus-wide staff and student use. WeITec is one of New Zealand’s oldest tertiary education institutions that trains over 6,000 students each year. They offer degree programmes that are future-focused, developed alongside industry and provide students with practical real-world skills.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Deconstructing an Ansible playbook | Enable Sysadmin

    A straightforward explanation of the sections of an Ansible playbook, including packages, modules, and variables.

  • Kubernetes basics for sysadmins | Enable Sysadmin

    Learn when Kubernetes can be effectively used and how the containers it manages might be better than virtual machines.

  • Start your Red Hat training and certification journey with a skills path that’s right for you

    When we talk to our customers they are often engaged in digital transformation projects where they have trouble finding employees with the right skills to drive the projects to success. If you want to prove you have the knowledge needed to lead these projects, a skills path can guide you through the right training and certification programs to develop and demonstrate those abilities.

    The Red Hat Training and Certification team has restructured its curriculum around 23 new skills paths to prepare you and your team to complete digital transformation projects successfully. Each new skills path provides a curated guide for learning industry leading, open hybrid cloud technologies, whether you’re in the beginning of your journey to becoming a Red Hat Certified Professional or you’re already an expert in your discipline. We offer skills paths that help prepare for the future of open hybrid cloud for administrators, developers, engineers, or architects.

  • How IBM’s Massive POWER9 UNIX Servers Benefit from InfluxDB and Grafana Technology

    IBM has been innovating to create new products for its clients and the world for over a century. Customers look to IBM Power Systems to address their hybrid multicloud infrastructure needs. Larger POWER9 servers can have up to 192 CPU cores, 64 TB of memory, dozens of PB of SAN storage and typically run a mixture of AIX (UNIX) and Enterprise Linux (RHEL or SLES) workloads. As part of its sales process, IBM is always benchmarking its new hardware and software which clients use to monitor their systems.

  • National Information Resources Service Daegu Center and Orange Life Named Winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 for Korea

    Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 for South Korea. The National Information Resources Service (NIRS) Daegu Center and Orange Life were honored at the Red Hat Forum Asia Pacific 2020 today for their exceptional and innovative use of Red Hat solutions.

  • ANZ Named Winner of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 for Australia and New Zealand Region

    Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winner of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 for the Australia and New Zealand region. Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) was honored at the Red Hat Forum Asia Pacific 2020 today for its exceptional and innovative use of Red Hat solutions.

• Debian Family

  • TrueNAS 12 Released As The Marriage Of FreeNAS + TrueNAS [Ed: Debian and/or BSD]

    OpenBSD 6.8, NetBSD 9.1, and now TrueNAS 12.0 is out… It seems to be BSD release week!

    TrueNAS 12.0 is a big release in that iXsystems has unified TrueNAS and FreeNAS into a single code-base. This week’s TrueNAS 12.0-RELEASE is the first production release of the unified FreeNAS+TrueNAS platform now known as TrueNAS CORE and then the professional version as TrueNAS Enterprise.

  • Debian donation for Peertube development

    The Debian project is happy to announce a donation of 10,000 USD to help Framasoft reach the fourth stretch-goal of its Peertube v3 crowdfunding campaign — Live Streaming.

    This year’s iteration of the Debian annual conference, DebConf20, had to be held online, and while being a resounding success, it made clear to the project our need to have a permanent live streaming infrastructure for small events held by local Debian groups. As such, Peertube, a FLOSS video hosting platform, seems to be the perfect solution for us.

    We hope this unconventional gesture from the Debian project will help us make this year somewhat less terrible and give us, and thus humanity, better Free Software tooling to approach the future.

Devices/Embedded

• The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Review

  But today, that all changes with the fourth generation of the compute module, the Compute Module 4! Here’s a size comparison with the previous-generation Compute Module 3+, some other common Pi models, and an SD and microSD card (remember when the original Pi used a full-size SD card?): [...]

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • How To Block Unknown Callers On Your iPhone and Android

  • How to play GTA 5 on Android smartphones by mirroring the game via Steam Link: Step-by-step guide and tips

  • 15 best open world games for Android

  • Best Android phones at Total Wireless

  • SlashNext launches on-device AI mobile phishing defense for iOS and Android

  • Redmi K20, Redmi K30 4G get Android 11-based MIUI 12 beta

  • The 20 Best Science Apps For Android Device in 2020

  • Top 5 entertainment apps for Android, iOS: Netflix, Hotstar and more

  • Best Android VPNs for 2020

  • Truecaller announces new features for Android, iOS: Call reason, SMS scheduling and more

  • No sign of mini Android Chinese smartphones in the near future: tipster

  • In iPhone vs Android Speed Test, The Winner Is…

  • Nokia 50TAUHDN Smart TV Review: A decent Android TV with exceptional audio output by Onkyo

  • Humax Aura is the first Android TV 4K Freeview Play recorder

  • Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S and Mi Mix 3 owners can sample Android 11 via ArrowOS 11.0 custom ROM

  • Antivirus Solutions For Android Smartphones

  • Check Your Android Phone’s Battery Health, Tips to Prevent Battery Degradation

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• 5 open source tools I can’t live without

  Some time ago, I engaged with a Twitter thread that went viral among techies. The challenge? Pick only five tools that you cannot live without. I started to think about this in relation to my everyday life, and picking just five tools was not easy. I use many tools that I consider essential, such as my IRC client to connect with my colleagues and friends (yes, I still use IRC), a good text editor to hack on things, a calendar app to keep organized, and a videoconferencing platform when more direct interaction is needed.

  So let me put a twist on this challenge: Pick just five open source tools that boost your productivity. Here’s my list; please share yours in the comments.

• How anyone can contribute to open source software in their job

  Imagine a world where your software works perfectly for you. It meets your needs, does things your way, and is the ideal tool to achieve great things toward your goals.

  Open source software stems from these roots. Many projects are built by engineers that have a problem and build a solution to solve it. Then they openly share their solution with others to use and improve.

  Unfortunately, building software is hard. Not everyone has the expertise to build software that works perfectly for their needs. And if the software developers building applications don’t fully understand users’ needs and how they do their job, the solutions they build may not meet the users’ needs and may accidentally create a lot of gaps.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • This Week in Glean: Cross-Platform Language Binding Generation with Rust and “uniffi” – Data@Mozilla

      As the Glean SDK continues to expand its features and functionality, it has also continued to expand the number and types of consumers within the Mozilla ecosystem that rely on it for collection and transport of important metrics. On this particular adventure, I find myself once again working on one of these components that tie into the Glean ecosystem. In this case, it has been my work on the Nimbus SDK that has inspired this story.

      Nimbus is our new take on a rapid experimentation platform, or a way to try out new features in our applications for subsets of the population of users in a way in which we can measure the impact. The idea is to find out what our users like and use so that we can focus our efforts on the features that matter to them. Like Glean, Nimbus is a cross-platform client SDK intended to be used on Android, iOS, and all flavors of Desktop OS that we support. Also like Glean, this presented us with all of the challenges that you would normally encounter when creating a cross-platform library. Unlike Glean, Nimbus was able to take advantage of some tooling that wasn’t available when we started Glean, namely: uniffi.

      So what is uniffi? It’s a multi-language bindings generator for Rust. What exactly does that mean? Typically you would have to write something in Rust and create a hand-written Foreign Function Interface (FFI) layer also in Rust. On top of that, you also end up creating a hand-written wrapper in each and every language that is supported. Instead, uniffi does most of the work for us by generating the plumbing necessary to transport data across the FFI, including the specific language bindings, making it a little easier to write things once and a lot easier to maintain multiple supported languages. With uniffi we can write the code once in Rust, and then generate the code we need to be able to reuse these components in whatever language (currently supporting Kotlin, Swift and Python with C++ and JS coming soon) and on whatever platform we need.

    • New Release: Tor Browser 10.5a2

      Tor Browser 10.5a2 for Desktop platforms is now available from the Tor Browser Alpha download page and also from our distribution directory.

      Note: This is an alpha release, an experimental version for users who want to help us test new features. For everyone else, we recommend downloading the latest stable release instead.

    • New Release: Tor Browser 10.0.2

      Tor Browser 10.0.2 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

      This release updates Firefox to 78.4.0esr and NoScript to 11.1.3. This release includes important security updates to Firefox.

• FSF

  • Licensing/Legal

    • I enforced the AGPL on my code, here’s how it went

      How should they have acted?

      They should have provided the source code to anyone asking, preferably online, right from the start when they set up their service. Even if they would not have named me, but had provided source code, it would be fine by me.

      I’m not sure how long their site was online (they state 3 years in the email), but they have been violating the license all that time, and the half-assed attempt ended badly. I suspect their service was not used that much, because they just took it down without notice. I hope all their subscribers know of it, since they will never be notified if their certificate is about to expire.

      When I still hosted this code myself, I had about 20,000 (twenty thousand) domains being checked. When I cancelled the service, each and every one of those domains got a message notifying them that their service would be cancelled after 30 days with a few alternative services they could use.

• Programming/Development

  • [Older] QList changes in Qt 6

    With Qt 6, changes are coming to many components. Containers are no exception. In this blog post I tried to capture the most significant changes to QList and related classes.

  • [Older] Join the increasing group of Qt Installer 4.0 beta testers

    We are about a month away from the Qt Online Installer 4.0 final release. We call Qt developers to test the beta release, published today.

    After several months of heavy work, we are almost ready to release Qt Online Installer and Maintenance Tool 4.0. Since the alpha release, several improvements have been implemented to Installer.

  • [Older] Qt Network in Qt 6

    In this blog post we want to tell you about some of the recent updates and changes that Qt Network module received in Qt 6, and also about some potential future developments.

  • [Older] Qt Automotive Suite 5.15.1 Released

    Qt Automotive Suite 5.15.1 was released today. It is a patch release and based on Qt 5.15.1 LTS.

  • What’s New in QMetaType + QVariant

    As you might know, Qt has a metatype system which provides run-time dynamic information about types. It enables storing your types in QVariant, queued connections in the signal slot system and is used throughout the QML engine. With the upcoming Qt 6.0 release, we used the chance to revisit its fundamentals and make use of the functionality that C++17 gives us. In the following, we examine those changes, and explain how they might affect your projects.

  • Introducing JSDB

    Yesterday, I released version 1.0 of JavaScript Database (JSDB), a new database for Node.js optimised for use with Small Web sites and apps.

  • Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.10.1.0.0

    Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 786 other packages on CRAN.

    A little while ago, Conrad released version 10.1.0 of Armadillo, a a new major release. As before, given his initial heads-up we ran two full reverse-depends checks, and as a consequence contacted four packages authors (two by email, two via PR) about a miniscule required change (as Armadillo now defaults to C++11, an old existing setting of avoiding C++11 lead to an error). Our thanks to those who promptly update their packages—truly appreciated. As it turns out, Conrad also softened the error by the time the release ran around.

  • Kushal Das: Fixing errors on my blog’s feed

    For the last few weeks, my blog feed was not showing up in the Fedora Planet. While trying to figure out what is wrong, Nirik pointed me to the 4 errors in the feed according to the W3C validator. If you don’t know, I use a self developed Rust application called khata for my static blog. This means I had to fix these errors.

  • DevOps: Principles and Practice

    The term DevOps has been around for more than a decade now, and the related practices have been widely adopted by companies including Google and Amazon as a way to accelerate the pace of software development and deployment. DevOps is, however, still evolving and finding new applications in the enterprise. These days, a DevOps approach is seen as crucial to successful digital transformation, cloud computing, security, site reliability engineering, and more.

    In this article, we’ll look at the basic ideas that define DevOps and point to resources to help you understand and implement the philosophies, practices, and tools that work for your organization.

  • Python

    • Python uppercase string – Linux Hint

      The upper() function translates all the lowercase characters in a string into uppercase and returns the string. The upper() function is an integral function in Python. In certain cases, the upper() function is very useful. For example, if we are developing a university management system and want to convert the name of all the students into uppercase letters, in this case, we will definitely use the upper() function. This article explains the use of the upper() function with the help of simple examples.

    • Basics of Parsing Command Line Arguments in Python | FOSS Linux

      Command-line applications are one of the oldest and most used types of apps. If you are an experienced Linux user, you may have hardly used GUI tools instead of command-line tools to do the same task. For example, Anaconda, the package manager for python, has command-line tools named conda and GUI tool named anaconda navigator.

    • How To Take A Screenshot Using Python & Selenium? | Codementor

      The goto software framework for any web developer looking for an open-source, free test automation tool is Selenium. It is used with various programming languages, including Java, Python, PHP, Perl, and C#. Selenium can also be used as a web-scraping tool or to create a human-replica bot to automate social-media or even test PDF files ! Geeks at Google & Thoughtworks are highly credited for its development and maintenance.

      In this Python Selenium screenshot tutorial, we are going to explore different ways of taking screenshots using Selenium’s Python bindings. Before we hop-on to capturing Python Selenium screenshots, let’s first acquaint ourselves with Selenium Python bindings.

    • The More, the Better — Why Become a Multi-Language Programmer | Codementor

      Are you just taking your first step into web development, and you want to learn programming? Discover the benefits of learning more than one programming language.

    • Datacamp Review 2020 – PythonForBeginners.com

      DataCamp is the best source of reference material for data science. It is the first online learning platform dedicated to providing data science training to professionals seeking the knowledge and understanding of the topic. Established in 2014, DataCamp is a MOOC-providing platform. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses meaning that the company specializes in providing online courses to students all over the world.

      In this Datacamp review, I am going to tell how easy it is to use DataCamp then touch on the quality of courses offered. I’ll follow with telling you about some of the features you will find with DataCamp and how you can start exploring DataCamp for free before finishing up the review with the pricing and whether or not it is worth paying for DataCamp.

    • How To: Simple HTTP Server with Python

      When building new infrastructure elements and deploying servers, quite often you need to test firewall rules before the rest of application stack is deployed. The basic tool of my choice here is curl which is great to testing TCP connections. But it has an important dependency: you actually need to have something listening on the other end of the connection you’re testing. If there’s no software running and servicing the port you specify, you will receive an error.

      Traditionally there have been small programs or scripts you’d write – first (many years ago now) in C, later in Perl. They would imply that you have to bring your test code or compiled binary to the server you need to test.

      Today I’d like to share a super easy way to start a basic HTTP server with Python – it’s literally just one line that will work in most cases since Python is now ubiqutous enough to be installed by default in most Linux distributions.

    • How to Iterate over Rows in a Pandas DataFrame

      Pandas is an immensely popular data manipulation framework for Python. In a lot of cases, you might want to iterate over data – either to print it out, or perform some operations on it.

    • Matplotlib Scatter Plot – Tutorial and Examples

      Matplotlib is one of the most widely used data visualization libraries in Python. From simple to complex visualizations, it’s the go-to library for most.

      In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at how to plot a scatter plot in Matplotlib.

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • How to use flags in AWK (revisited)

      Flags in AWK are variables which are set to either true or false. They’re handy for defining ranges over which AWK can act, as shown below. The AWK used here is GNU AWK 4 (gawk 4).

  • JavaScript

    • The Javascript for…in Loop – Linux Hint

      Javascript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. In any programming language, loops have an essential value. Like many other languages, Javascript provides different loop syntax formats, as well. This article discusses an important Javascript topic known as the for…in loop. Sometimes, we may have to iterate through every single element of an object/array. But, we do not usually know the length of that particular object/array. The for…in loop even comes in handy when working with JSON. In this article, we will take a look at the for…in loop, its syntax, and some examples using this loop.

    • Global Variables in Javascript – Linux Hint

      JavaScript is a versatile yet functional language. Variables, which are key to any programming language, can be used to store values that can be accessed at any time. However, when using functions, there are certain factors related to the scope of the function that limit our ability to access a variable.

      We cannot access a variable if it is outside the scope of the function, and so the variables we want to use must have the proper scope upon declaration. To avoid issues related to scope, it is important to understand global variables. Therefore, in this article, we are going to discuss global variables and scope.

      The scope of a function can be considered as a boundary within which the function can be accessed. However, while a function does not know what is happening beyond the curly brackets that define it, a global variable can be accessed from anywhere in the program.

    • Joining Arrays in JavaScript – Linux Hint

      In JavaScript, as in many other scripting and programming languages, we often need to use arrays. Furthermore, it is often useful to combine the elements of an array into a single string. In PHP, for example, the implode function is used to join the elements of an array. In this context, “implode” can be viewed as a synonym for “join”. In JavaScript, however, there is no “implode” function; instead, there is a built-in “join” function that performs the same task. In this article, we are going to examine JavaScript’s join function in some detail.

Standards/Consortia

• SAML vs. OAUTH – Linux Hint

  SAML and OAUTH are technical standards for authorizing users. These standards are used by Web Application developers, security professionals, and system administrators who are looking to improve their identity management service and enhance methods that clients can access resources with a set of credentials. In cases where access to an application from a portal is needed, there is a need for a centralized identity source or Enterprise Single Sign On. In such cases, SAML is preferable. In cases where temporary access to resources such as accounts or files is needed, OAUTH is considered the better choice. In mobile use cases, OAUTH is mostly used. Both SAML (Security Assertion and Markup Language) and OAUTH (Open Authorization) are used for web Single Sign On, providing the option for single sign-on for multiple web applications.

• The Long Road to HTTP/3 : Short History of HTTP Protocol

  While HTTP/3 specification is still in the draft stage, the latest version of the Chrome browser already supports it by default . With Chrome holding around 70% of browser market share, you could say HTTP/3 has gone mainstream.

  The new revision of this foundational protocol aims to make the web more efficient, secure, and shorten the content-delivery latencies. In some ways, it’s a braver take of HTTP2: similar goals addressed by replacing the underlying TCP protocol with a new, purpose-built protocol QUIC. The best way to explain the benefits of QUIC is to illustrate where TCP falls short as a transport for HTTP requests. And to do that, we’ll start at the very beginning.

[Old] What does raymii.org cost to run?

This site is generated with my self-written open source static site generator named ingsoc (named after 1984). The hosting therefore consists of just simple VPS servers, running some form of Linux or BSD that I can manage with Ansible. The VPS servers don’t need many resources, 2 GB of disk and 128 MB of RAM is enough, all of the current servers have better specs because nobody sells low end VPSes anymore. After the first sale of LowEndBox.org the fun was gone there, I used to be very active on the site and forum there.

An Ex-Fox News Commentator Is Backing Away from the Seth Rich Conspiracy Theories

Now, after years of fighting in court and insisting that Rich was WikiLeaks’ inside source, Butowsky is retreating from his legal offensive. In the past few days, he has moved to voluntarily dismiss nearly half a dozen Seth Rich-related lawsuits. That includes a high-profile defamation suit he had filed in 2018 against NPR, NPR editors and executives, and one of NPR’s senior reporters, David Folkenflik, for in-depth reporting about Butowsky and his role in promoting the baseless Rich theories.

Science

• Elation as [NASA]‘s Osiris-Rex probe tags asteroid Bennu in sample bid

  Radio signals from 330 million km away confirm the probe made contact with the 500m-wide object known as Bennu.

  But the [NASA]-led mission will have to wait on further data from Osiris-Rex before it’s known for sure that material was actually picked up.

  The aim was to acquire at least 60g, perhaps even a kilo or more.

• Patent Docs: Sequence Variants in Human Olfaction Genes Associated with Perceptual Differences

  Recently, an international* team of researchers published a paper entitled “Sequence Variants in TAAR5 and Other Loci Affect Human Odor Perception and Naming,” Current Biology 30: 1-11, that shed some light on these genetic questions. Olfactory receptors (OR) in humans, as in most mammals, are encoded by genes having high DNA sequence diversity. These genes (termed “canonical olfactory genes”) are supplemented by genes involved in olfaction of amines termed trace amine-associated receptors (TAAR), a family of G-protein coupled receptors. But OR genes have been reduced during primate evolution; in humans, most of these genes are inactive pseudogenes, wherein out of 855 genes in this group only about 400 encode functional genes involved in olfaction. As a consequence, each individual has “a highly personalized set of functional ORs.” The question posed by these researchers was “[h]ow does genetic sequence diversity in this unusual class of genes translate to perception and behavior?”

  The study was performed with 9,122 Icelanders, first to establish phenotype and then to correlate phenotype with genetic variants. In their phenotypic assessments, a challenged cohort of almost 10,000 Icelanders were tested for perception of five different smells: licorice; cinnamon; fish; lemon; and menthol. Participants ranged in age from 18-96 years old; the mean age was 55.3 years and 44% were men. Each participant was asked to identify the smell and then provide “pleasantness” and intensity ratings for each. Consistent with common experience perception of intensity decreased with age, but the fish odor was consistently the least pleasant.

  [...]

  Compared with earlier genome-wide association studies only one previously detected variant (within an OR gene cluster on chromosome 11) correlated with any of the phenotypes (increased pleasantness for lemon aroma) tested in this study.

  The authors speculate regarding the significance of these results to explain selection against sensitivity to fish smells in an Icelandic culture dependent on fish and without traditional means (besides freezing) for preservation. They also discuss the difficulty humans have with naming smells (which has led to speculation that the sense of smell is “muted” in humans compared with other animals), and consider whether this difficulty stems from deficiencies in “brain circuitry” in the piriform cortex and elsewhere in the brain. They state that “[i]t could be that the effects on odor naming are mediated by sensory perception, i.e., increased or reduced sensitivity. However, we cannot rule out that variation in OR receptors results in altered neuronal connectivity, leading to the observed differences in naming.”

• Donald Knuth: A Professional Biography

  Born to German-American parents Ervin Henry Knuth and Louise Marie Bohning on January 10, 1938 in Wisconsin, Donald Ervin Knuth was a child prodigy. He went to Milwaukee Lutheran High School and was already showcasing his analytical genius after winning a contest in eighth’ grade by developing an algorithm that found 4500 words in the title of ‘Ziegler’s Giant Bar, beating the judges’ former measure at 2500 words.[1]

  In college, Knuth majored in physics after receiving a scholarship at Case Institute of Technology, but later switched to mathematics. While in college, he stumbled upon an IBM 650 computer which he then used to build different computer programs. Among the popular programs he created was one used to analyse the performance of basketball players on the team he managed, thereby helping them win games.

  Knuth is one of the rare individuals receiving two degrees in the same year. He earned his B.S. in mathematics in 1960, and was awarded an M.S. in mathematics as a special faculty award, which noted his academic performance as exceptional. [2] Three years later, he earned his PhD in mathematics at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

• The History of Computer Mouse

  Many of today’s online transactions can be conveniently done with just a click of a mouse. Prior to the invention of the mouse, people were only using the keyboard as an input device. Imagine the struggle of memorizing a whole gamut of commands to perform the functions and operations using just a keyboard. Douglas Engelbart must’ve gone through the same struggle when he thought of inventing a device that would make things easier for computer operators.

  A Mouse on the Wheels

  Douglas Engelbart invented the very first mouse in 1964 at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Unlike today’s optical mouse, Engelbart’s invention used two perpendicular wheels enclosed in a wooden box, with one button on top. It can move from side to side and forwards and backward; thus, it was first called “X-Y position indicator for a display system.”[1] The name sounds too technical and lengthy for a layman to use. Hence, Bill English, the man who helped Engelbart build the device, used a mouse to refer to the device in his 1965 publication “Computer-Aided Display Control” [2] because of its resemblance to the small mammal.

  Get the Ball Rolling

  In 1968, German company Telefunken, led by Rainer Mallebrein, developed a mouse that used a rolling ball instead of wheels. It was called Rollkugel (rolling ball) and was an optional device for the SIG 100-86 computer system of Germany’s Federal Air Traffic Control.[3] Telefunken didn’t create any patent for the device and considered it unimportant at the time.

  Billie English, while working at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), further developed Engelbart’s invention by replacing the wheels with a rolling ball in 1972. Infrared light and sensors were used to detect x and y directions. In addition, it used a 9-pin connector to send the signals to the computer. English’s version of the mouse rolled in with Xerox’s minicomputer system with a graphical user interface, Xerox Alto, the first computer released for individual use, and the first computer to use a mouse.[4] Because it’s far easier to explore the GUI with this small device, Xerox continued to include it as part of the package in their subsequent releases of personal computers. Now, this also piqued Apple’s interest, and made an agreement with Xerox to use their mouse for Macintosh computers.[5] Apple issued Macintosh computers with the device in 1984, and this further boosted the mouse’s popularity.

• The History of Cray Supercomputers – Linux Hint

  Today’s fastest supercomputer, Fugaku by Fujitsu, has a speed of 415 petaflops (Pflops).[1] But would you believe that the first supercomputer is slower than an iPhone? The CDC 6600, considered to be the first supercomputer, was running at a speed of 3 megaflops (Mflops) and was the fastest supercomputer from 1964 to 1969. [2] It was later overtaken by its successor, CDC 7600, designed by the same man behind CDC 6600, Seymour Cray.

  [...]

  While Cray Y-MP was being developed, Seymour Cray was simultaneously developing Cray-3. Aiming to achieve 12 times the speed of Cray 2, he explored using gallium arsenide as semiconductors for the new machine. With Cray Y-MP underway, and because Cray 2’s sales were lower than Cray X-MP, the company decided to put its development on hold. Undaunted, Cray left CRI and formed another company, Cray Computer Corporation (CCC), in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1988 and continued to work on the Cray-3 project. Because it was more ambitious than Cray-2 and various experiments were necessary, it proved to be more expensive than any of its predecessors. With numerous supercomputers emerging in the market, Cray-3 had no launch customer when it was completed in 1993. Its first and only model was instead sent to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NRAC) for demonstration. [10] With no other sales prospect for Cray-3, CCC filed for bankruptcy in 1995.

Education

• Distance learning is not the best model for pandemic teaching

  As a result of such injunctions, many lecturers have sought inspiration for their own teaching by looking at existing distance learning (DL) courses. As the course leader of a DL MA programme in international relations, I can confirm that DL does indeed offer great insights into how to improve “distant” learning and student-lecturer interaction. However, as an academic who, like most, had to move her face-to-face teaching online earlier this year as a result of Covid-19, I am also very conscious of the folly of seeking to replicate DL techniques in interim online teaching.

  One reason is a recognition that it isn’t possible. Setting up a high-quality DL course takes years of planning and preparation: time we simply do not have at the moment. But, more to the point, fully fledged DL teaching is not what either lecturers or students signed up for and it is not what they want.

• As QAnon Conspiracy Theories Draw New Believers, Scientists Take Aim at Misinformation Pandemic

  The moves may be too little too late. “The technology has generally done more to help those who purvey this misinformation than those trying to defend against it,” says Travis Trammell, an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel who earlier this year received a science and engineering doctorate from Stanford. “I can’t think of anything that has had such nefariously disruptive impact on the United States.”

  Neil Johnson, a George Washington University physicist, agrees. “This is a problem that’s bigger than the individuals in these communities, and bigger than any effort of a platform to control it,” he says. “It’s a huge challenge, and it absolutely requires new science to deal with it.”

  Johnson and Trammel are part of a cadre of scientists who are at the forefront of efforts to map QAnon and understand how it works. The explosion of disinformation that has upended American life and now threatens its democratic institutions has given rise to a new branch of science called “infodemiology.” Inspired by epidemiology, the study of how diseases spread through a population, infodemiology seeks to understand how misinformation and conspiracy theories spread like a disease through a free-wheeling democracy like America’s, with the ultimate goal of understanding how to stem its spread.

  If Big Tech can’t stop QAnon, perhaps scientists can.

Hardware

• Intel sells NAND business to South Korea’s SK hynix for US$9b

  US processor maker Intel has sold its NAND memory and storage business to South Korea’s SK hynix, statements from the two companies say, with the going price being US$9 billion (A$12.8 billion).

Health/Nutrition

• COVID-19 in Prisons Is Far Worse Than Previously Thought, Data Trackers Say

  James King was incarcerated in California’s San Quentin State Prison for roughly six years. He spent much of that time analyzing the politics of incarceration by chronicling his experiences living in one of the country’s most notorious prisons. When he was released from prison in December 2019, he joined the staff of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, where he has campaigned for decarceration.

• 300,000 Excess Deaths This Year Suggest COVID Death Rate Is Higher Than Reported

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Tuesday that hundreds of thousands more Americans died this year than in previous years, likely owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

• Trump Called ‘Mass Murderer’ After White House Docs Show He Lied About Recent Covid-19 Surge

  The congressman who released the reports said they reveal “Trump’s contempt for science and refusal to lead during this crisis have allowed the coronavirus to surge.”

• Facebook moderators in India were pressured to return to the office despite COVID-19 concerns

  Genpact, one of many firms Facebook outsources moderation to around the world, employs roughly 1,600 moderators in India, where employees analyze offensive and disturbing content posted in large volumes to Facebook’s platforms for potential rule violations. The company was pressuring employees to return to its offices in Hyderabad as early as July, Rest of World reports, with Genpact claiming key parts of its moderation services had to be performed in the office due to privacy issues and other technical hurdles.

  Genpact claims any in-office work was done so voluntarily. “To make this manageable, safe, and clear, employees need to sign a weekly form that asks them to voluntarily agree to this,” a Genpact spokesperson told Rest of World. But according to interviews with employees, Genpact management allegedly instructed some employees that their jobs may be at risk if they chose not to perform in-office duties.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • OLED-sensitive people left out from the iPhone 12

    If you haven’t seen my earlier posts about this, OLED screens flicker uncomfortably for some of us, especially in low light and when being moved. This is amplified when holding a phone that literally moves in your field of vision as a function of its regular operation. The visual sensation can cause headaches even after a short time; I get them because I find focusing difficult, which irritates my eyes and mimics the unsettling colour shimmer I get at the onset of a migraine.

  • Security

    • Kaspersky’s Secur’IT hacking competition attracts entrants from 24 universities

      Four university students, competing as ByteMe, have won the first prize in the Secur’IT Cup, an annual hacking competition jointly organised by security outfit Kaspersky and Hackathons Australia.

    • Hackers Use Billboards to Trick Self-driving Cars into Slamming on the Brakes

      “The attacker just shines an image of something on the road or injects a few frames into a digital billboard, and the car will apply the brakes or possibly swerve, and that’s dangerous,” Ben Gurion University researcher Yisroel Mirsky told the magazine. “The driver won’t even notice at all. So somebody’s car will just react, and they won’t understand why.”

    • File Exfiltration via Libreoffice in BigBlueButton and JODConverter

      BigBlueButton is a free web-based video conferencing software that lately got quite popular, largely due to Covid-19. Earlier this year I did a brief check on its security which led to an article on Golem.de (German). I want to share the most significant findings here.

      BigBlueButton has a feature that lets a presenter upload a presentation in a wide variety of file formats that gets then displayed in the web application. This looked like a huge attack surface. The conversion for many file formats is done with Libreoffice on the server. Looking for ways to exploit server-side Libreoffice rendering I found a blog post by Bret Buerhaus that discussed a number of ways of exploiting such setups.

      One of the methods described there is a feature in Opendocument Text (ODT) files that allows embedding a file from an external URL in a text section. This can be a web URL like https or a file url and include a local file.

      This directly worked in BigBlueButton. An ODT file that referenced a local file would display that local file. This allows displaying any file that the user running the BigBlueButton service could access on the server. A possible way to exploit this is to exfiltrate the configuration file that contains the API secret key, which then allows basically controlling the BigBlueButton instance. I have a video showing the exploit here. (I will publish the exploit later.)

      I reported this to the developers of BigBlueButton in May. Unfortunately my experience with their security process was not very good. At first I did not get an answer at all. After another mail they told me they plan to sandbox the Libreoffice process either via a chroot or a docker container. However that still has not happened yet. It is planned for the upcoming version 2.3 and independent of this bug this is a good idea, as Libreoffice just creates a lot of attack surface.

      Recently I looked a bit more into this. The functionality to include external files only happens after a manual user confirmation and if one uses Libreoffice on the command line it does not work at all by default. So in theory this exploit should not have worked, but it did.

      It turned out the reason for this was another piece of software that BigBlueButton uses called https://github.com/sbraconnier/jodconverter JODConverter. It provides a wrapper around the conversion functionality of Libreoffice. After contacting both the Libreoffice security team and the developer of JODConverter we figured out that it enables including external URLs by default.

    • New Gitjacker tool lets you find .git folders exposed online

      A new open-source tool called Gitjacker can help developers discover when they’ve accidentally uploaded /.git folders online and have left sensitive information exposed to attackers. Gitjacker is available as a free download on Github.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • German proposal: Prohibited EU secret service cooperation through the back door

        Although this violates EU treaties, the police agency Europol is to cooperate closely with secret services. This involves lists of suspicious persons originating from third countries. The individuals listed there will then be discreetly searched for throughout Europe.

      • Google says bug causing Chrome cookie issue only on its own sites

        Google claims that a bug in its Chrome browser is the reason why deleting cookies from the application does not get rid of cookies from its own sites such as Search and YouTube after the browser is closed and restarted.

      • German proposal: EU to take over working group on covert observation and surveillance

        European police forces are organised in three informal networks for the exchange of information on techniques and methods of clandestine surveillance. The German Presidency wants to merge the structures and establish them with the EU. Europol could be responsible for coordination.

      • Members of Congress Join the Fight for Protest Surveillance Transparency

        Three members of Congress have joined the fight for the right to protest by sending a letter to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to investigate federal surveillance against protesters. We commend these elected officials for doing what they can to help ensure our constitutional right to protest and for taking the interests and safety of protesters to heart.

        It often takes years, if not longer, to learn the full scope of government surveillance used against demonstrators involved in a specific action or protest movement. Four months since the murder of George Floyd began a new round of Black-led protests against police violence, there has been a slow and steady trickle of revelations about law enforcement agencies deploying advanced surveillance technology at protests around the country. For example, we learned recently that the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a team specializing in cellular phone exploitation to Portland, site of some of the largest and most sustained protests.  Before that, we learned about federal, state, and local aerial surveillance done over protests in at least 15 cities. Now, Rep. Anna Eshoo, Rep. Bobby Rush, and Sen. Ron Wyden have asked the PCLOB to dig deeper..

      • The Week in Internet News: Seven Countries Repeat Calls for Encryption Backdoors

        Here we go again: Seven countries, including the U.S., U.K., Japan, and India, are again pushing tech companies to provide encryption backdoors for law enforcement, The Verge reports. The new international statement says encryption poses “significant challenges to public safety.” The U.S. and allies have long pushed for backdoors, even as security advocates have warned that criminals will find ways to exploit holes in encryption.

      • Australians are being urged to consider a publicly-funded alternative to Facebook

        Many of the worst ills of social media — from its addictive nature to its psychological effects to its corporate surveillance capabilities — emerge because of its status as a for-profit, capitalist enterprise.

        But if social media has become a public good — the digital equivalent of a public forum — does it make sense to consign it to the private sphere? And in turn, couldn’t those ills be cured by making a publicly-owned alternative?

      • Facebook Building Neighborhood Feature as Nextdoor Eyes IPO

        Facebook had been pushing people toward more intimate interactions within the app in recent years, including private groups and messaging, as a way to increase usage of its services. It has also started to encourage users to create separate profiles within their larger Facebook profile for specific cases, like dating and college connections.

      • US Election Carries High Stakes for Twitter, Facebook

        But it isn’t just some Republicans who are frustrated. Lawmakers from both parties are considering changing the laws that say the companies are not responsible for the speech other people publish on their sites.

        Take that protection away and the companies will be destroyed, said Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee University.

      • Choose your browser carefully

        Privacy on the Internet is important because privacy risks range from the gathering of statistics on users to more malicious acts such as the spreading of spyware and the exploitation of various forms of bugs (software faults). Many companies, such as Google, track which websites people visit and then use the information, for instance by sending advertising based on one’s web browsing history. Sometimes prices on products are changed on the same website, depending on tracking information, and two people may view the exact same product on the exact same website yet be presented with very different prices.

Defence/Aggression

• Kremlin suddenly offers arms-control treaty extension with the major warhead freeze demanded by the Trump administration

  In negotiations to extend Obama-era the New START arms control agreement, which expires early next year, the Trump administration has insisted on adopting a broader cap on nuclear warheads not currently limited by the treaty. Last week, Washington rejected the Kremlin’s latest proposal to extend the New START for one more year “unconditionally.” On Tuesday, October 20, Russia’s Foreign Ministry “clarified” its offer, saying the country is ready to “freeze” the number of its nuclear warheads together with the U.S. during the one-year treaty extension, provided this is the only precondition to prolonging the agreement.

• Chomsky: OPCW cover-up of Syria probe is ‘shocking’

• Chomsky: from nuclear weapons to Iran, Trump’s worst threats are dangerously ignored

• Germany wants EU concept for „persons considered a potential terrorist or violent extremist threat“

  In Germany there is no legal definition of „Gefährder“. They are persecuted for acts they have not yet committed. The Federal Government now wants to exchange more data on this group of people throughout the EU.

• Suspected Islamists free 900 prisoners from east Congo jail

  The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan armed group active in eastern Congo since the 1990s, has killed more than 1 000 civilians since the start of 2019, according to UN figures, despite repeated military campaigns aimed at destroying it.

  Islamic State said fighters from its so-called Central African Province franchise carried out the attack, according to its AMAQ news agency. The group has claimed responsibility for several suspected ADF attacks in the past.

  United Nations experts, however, have found no evidence of a direct connection between the two groups.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Half of Trump supporters believe baseless QAnon pedophilia claim about Democrats: poll

  The Yahoo/YouGov poll, conducted October 16-18, asked participants, “Do you believe that top Democrats are involved in elite child sex trafficking rings?” — and 50% of Trump supporters said “yes” compared to only 5% of former Vice President Joe Biden’s supporters.

• We’re Going to Need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to Recover From Trump

  The depth of that failure has only grown over time. Many of the legal apparatchiks who made torture possible still wield power today. Take, for instance, Gina Haspel. The current director of the CIA is the former head of a “black site” where torture went down. The fact that she’s allowed to hold power today is an indictment of our country and our commitment to human rights.

  Moreover, failing to hold accountable those who abuse their power signals to future abusers that all will be forgiven. It tells people in power that they can commit atrocities while they hold office, because nobody will be coming for them when they’re on the other side. It is important to distinguish crimes against humanity from mere political policy differences, but acting like no distinction can be made is a mistake.

• Fact-checking Trump’s dishonest weekend: The President made at least 66 false or misleading claims in three days

  President Donald Trump’s dishonesty is getting worse.

  Trump has been reliably deceptive for his entire presidency, filling his speeches and tweets with lies and other false statements.

  The frequency and magnitude of his deception tends to accelerate, however, during campaign season — when he complements his usual ad-libbed inaccuracy with a barrage of inaccurate statements that are written into his speech scripts.

  For fact checkers, the period from Friday through Sunday was one of the most challenging of Trump’s entire presidency: he made at least 66 separate false or misleading claims over that three-day span. In other words, it was 66 false or misleading claims without even counting all the times he repeated some of those same 66 claims over the course of the three days.

• Swedish authorities charge documentary filmmakers Henrik Evertsson and Linus Andersson for MS Estonia film

  The journalists’ five-episode documentary began streaming on September 28 on Dplay, an online video service of Discovery, Inc. Their reporting using an underwater camera shows that the ship’s hull has a large hole, suggesting that something hit the ship, not that it capsized due to a malfunction, which is the official explanation, according to The Guardian and The New York Times.

Environment

• “I’ve lost count of the number of fires I’ve covered this year”: How journalists stay safe covering U.S. wildfires

  Photojournalist Kent Porter has covered wildfires in the western United States for more than 30 years. But this year, he says, the fires are different. The season’s first fire usually burns about one or two acres, Porter told CPJ in a phone interview. This year, however, the first fire he covered was 140 acres.

• Rising heat means more methane, warmer nights

  Nights are warmer. So are northern lakes. And farm livestock are at greater risk of disease, thanks to rising heat.

• The New Humanitarian | Twin storms drive ‘catastrophic’ Vietnam floods as a third approaches

  Severe floods and landslides, fuelled by a pair of tropical storms striking in quick succession, have caused “catastrophic” damage in parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. A third storm is projected to hit inundated central Vietnam within days.

  The UN says more than 110,000 people have been pushed from their homes in the three countries, and authorities have recorded at least 130 deaths in Vietnam and Cambodia.

  The brunt of the damage is in central Vietnam, where some 178,000 homes are submerged and at least 900,000 people are directly affected. Vietnam’s Red Cross reports flood levels are at their highest since 1999 in some areas.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Amazonia: In the Flames, They See Money

    On behalf of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, APIB, I thank you for this award. It is an important recognition of the work APIB has been developing. Indigenous peoples are protecting the Amazon rainforest against a genocidal government that values the profits of international corporations at the expense of life — often our own lives.

    This award reminds the world that protecting tropical forests like the Amazon is not only an environmental issue, but also a human rights issue. Brazil is one of the most dangerous places to be a defender of human rights and the environment.

Finance

• Philadelphia Agrees to Provide Community Housing Amid Unhoused Activist Push

  After months of organizing that included the establishment of two protest encampments, Philadelphia’s unhoused people successfully pushed the city to agree to provide housing on a community land trust on October 14.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• With DMVs Closed And Backlogged, People Who Want to Vote Are Struggling Even To Register

• Mendham GOP Tells Voters They Can’t Vote In Person. That’s Not True

• Moscow prosecutors launch internal investigation over orders issued to universities on reporting anti-Kremlin activity

  The Moscow District Attorney’s Office has launched an internal investigation concerning prosecutor Konstantin Prostakov and his orders asking local universities to report on any students or faculty involved in “anti-Russian campaigns,” reports the Russian business newspaper Kommersant. 

• Reimagining American Foreign Policy

  The so-called Age of Trump is also an age of instantly forgotten best-selling books, especially ones purporting to provide the inside scoop on what goes on within Donald Trump’s haphazard and continuously shifting orbit. With metronomic regularity, such gossipy volumes appear, make a splash, and almost as quickly vanish, leaving a mark no more lasting than a trout breaking the surface in a pond.

• Cambridge Analytica’s Crime Was Not Violating Your Privacy Or Taking Data From Facebook, It Was A Massive Campaign Finance Scam

  If you asked most people what the Cambridge Analytica scandal was about, many would insist that it involved the company illegally sucking up all sorts of data from Facebook and using that to nefariously micro-target people with ads or information in a way that supported Donald Trump or suppressed the interest in voting for Hillary Clinton. As we pointed out years ago, it seemed like everyone was very much misinterpreting what happened with Cambridge Analytica.

• Trump Makes Alarming Call for AG Barr to Investigate Biden “Before the Election”

  During a Fox News interview on Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump called on Attorney General William Barr to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, over allegations made in a disputed story by an unnamed staff reporter in the New York Post last week.

• Rights Advocates and Dems Reiterate Calls to #BlockBarrett as McConnell Vows to Confirm Trump Nominee on Monday

  “If we’re to have courts that protect equal justice for everyone, we need a nominee who will defend our civil and human rights. Amy Coney Barrett is not that nominee.”

• “A Blow Against Neoliberalism”: Socialist Wins Bolivian Election a Year After Coup Ousted Evo Morales

  Former Bolivian President Evo Morales’s political party MAS has claimed victory in the country’s presidential election, with Morales’s handpicked successor Luis Arce securing over 50% of the vote, according to exit polls. If confirmed, the result will put the socialist party back in power almost a year after a right-wing coup that ousted Morales and installed Jeanine Áñez as president. The election was postponed twice, and protests rocked Bolivia for months leading up to the vote, calling out the government’s use of military and police repression and violence against Indigenous communities. “It’s an extraordinary election,” says Ollie Vargas, a reporter for Kawsachun News. “In 2019, Evo Morales won by a margin of just over 10%, and now we have a margin of over 20% with which the left is ahead.” We also speak with Leonardo Flores, Latin America campaign coordinator of CodePink, who calls the election results “a huge, huge victory” for Bolivian people and for democracy itself. “It’s a blow against neoliberalism and fascism in this country,” says Flores.

• “A Fire That Has Spread Across the Country”: Jelani Cobb on Voter Suppression in the 2020 Election

  As tens of millions of people across the U.S. cast their ballots in early voting ahead of the November 3 election, we look at voter suppression efforts with journalist and academic Jelani Cobb. His new “Frontline” documentary “Whose Vote Counts” examines the long lines, record number of mail-in ballots and the legal fights that have marked voting during the pandemic, with a focus on Wisconsin. “This is a state where the presidency was essentially decided in the last election,” says Cobb, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a contributor to The New Yorker. He describes voter suppression as “a fire that has spread across the country.”

• What A Post-Trump America Looks Like Is Anyone’s Guess

  With or without Donald Trump at the helm, the future of the United States should concern everyone, writes Stephen Scher.

• How to Stop Trump from Stealing the Election

  But he won’t necessarily keep that advantage after the election. If the decision goes to the House, it would be made by lawmakers elected in November, who will be sworn in on January 3 – three days before they’ll convene to decide the winner of the election.Which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is focusing on races that could tip the balance of state delegations – not just in Pennsylvania and Michigan but any others within reach. “It’s sad we have to plan this way,” she wrote recently, “but it’s what we must do to ensure the election is not stolen.”The targets are Alaska (where replacing the one House member, now a Republican, with a Democrat, would result in a vote for Biden), Montana (ditto), Pennsylvania (now tied, so flipping one would be enough), Florida (now 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats, but 3 Republicans are retiring) and Michigan (where Republicans now have 6 members and Democrats 7). Congress has decided contested elections only three times in U.S. history, in 1801, 1825, and 1877. But we might face another because Donald Trump will stop at nothing to retain his power.That’s why it’s even more critical for you to vote. Make this a blowout victory for Joe Biden and Democrats down the ballot, and stop Trump from stealing this election.

• “Trumpcare” Does Not Exist. Nevertheless Facebook and Google Cash In on Misleading Ads for “Garbage” Health Insurance.

  “Trumpcare” insurance will “finally fix healthcare,” said an advertisement on Facebook.

  A Google ad urged people to “Enroll in Trumpcare plans. Healthcare changes are coming.”

• AOC’s debut Twitch stream is one of the biggest ever

  That peak viewership puts her broadcast among the 20 biggest streams ever, according to the third-party metrics site TwitchTracker, and much higher if you’re only looking at broadcasts from individual streamers. Ninja holds the record for an individual streamer, with more than 600,000 viewers during a Fortnite match with Drake in 2018. TwitchTracker’s metrics suggest that AOC’s stream could in the top 10 for an individual in terms of peak viewers.

  Politicians have increasingly been using tech and games to get out their message. The Biden campaign debuted an Animal Crossing island last week. Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined Twitch to reach a “potentially supportive audience that we may not be hitting other ways.”

• Sweden bans Huawei, ZTE from 5G, calls China biggest threat

  Sweden is banning Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE from building new high-speed wireless networks after a top security official called China one of the country’s biggest threats.

  The Swedish telecom regulator said Tuesday that four wireless carriers bidding for frequencies in an upcoming spectrum auction for the new 5G networks must not use equipment from Huawei or ZTE.

  Wireless carriers that plan to use existing telecommunications infrastructure for 5G networks must also rip out any existing gear from Huawei or ZTE, the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority said.

• Sweden bans use of Huawei, ZTE equipment in new 5G networks

  PTS noted that it was following advice from the Swedish Armed Forces and Security Services, with these organizations carrying out studies to ensure that the use of radio equipment in the spectrum bands being auctioned in November “does not cause harm to Sweden’s security.”

• Mauritius: Cybersecurity Bill

  The Minister of Technology, Communication and Innovation (TCI), Deepak Balgobin, announced that the Cybersecurity Bill will be introduced to the National Assembly of Mauritius as parliament resumes on the 3rd of November 2020.

• Foreign reporters describe safety concerns covering US elections and protests

  This year, however, amid the spread of COVID-19, curtailed campaigns, civil unrest, visa issues, and an unpredictable political environment, the elections beat has been particularly challenging for foreign reporters.

  CPJ spoke with three foreign journalists about the challenges of covering the United States in 2020. These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Thailand orders ISPs to block Telegram amid ongoing protests

  Thai users of Telegram will soon need a VPN to access the increasingly popular messaging app. The government of Thailand has ordered Thai internet service providers (ISPs) to block the Telegram encrypted messaging service. This news comes to us from a leaked government document that was sent from Thailand’s digital economy ministry to the country’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission. The government is also making moves against four media outlets that are accused of promoting the protests. Thai protesters have defied orders not to demonstrate for several days in a row. A lot of the organization of these protests is happening on Telegram, and thus the current Thai government seeks to ban Telegram.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Baseball’s Race Problem

  Roger Angell, who turned 100 in this year of pandemic and upheaval, is one of the best and most beloved writers on baseball, in large part because of his lyrical, sinewy prose. Over the decades, he has cogently analyzed the “summer game” and its importance to American life. Baseball, he wrote, boasts “the most enviable corporate image in the world.” Its evocations, overtones, and loyalties, firmly planted in the mind of every American male during childhood and nurtured thereafter by millions of words of free newspaper publicity, appear to be unassailable. It is the national pastime. It is youth, springtime, a trip to the country, part of our past. It is the roaring excitement of huge urban crowds and the sleepy green afternoon silences of midsummer.

• SCOTUS mail-in voting ruling raises alarm: Democrats may “never win another national election”

  With Chief Justice John Roberts joining the court’s three liberals, the court split 4-4 to reject a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to block an order from the state’s Supreme Court allowing mail-in ballots to be counted if they are received within three days of Election Day — even if they do not have a clear postmark. The tie left the state decision in place, which Democratic lawyers hailed as “great news for voting rights.”

• Uniformed Miami cop spotted wearing pro-Trump mask near voting site will be disciplined

  Simeonidis, an attorney who works downtown, said he was passing through Government Center when he spotted Ubeda “well within” the 150-foot barrier that police and campaigners are not permitted under state statute during an election if they are endorsing a candidate. He photographed the officer and tweeted about the encounter.

  “He may have been going to vote. But he was in full uniform with the mask and a gun. That’s voter intimidation,” Simeonidis said.

• Anti-stalkerware group still working to protect domestic abuse victims

  Security firms, victim advocacy groups and anti-domestic abuse organizations combined forces roughly a year ago to bring an end to stalkerware, the kind of technology that people use to monitor their domestic partners’ devices. The group, known as the Coalition Against Stalkerware, has made progress in the past 12 months or so, though there’s still a long road ahead, said Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the founding members of the coalition.

• Former Tibetan Political Prisoner Takna Jigme Sangpo Dies in Switzerland

  Takna Jigme Sangpo, famous as Tibet’s longest-serving political prisoner, has died in Switzerland at the age of 91 after spending 37 years in Chinese prisons and 18 years in exile, where he spoke out against Chinese human rights abuses in Tibet.

• The New Humanitarian | An Indigenous protest movement emerges in Colombia

  Four years after being promised changes as part of a landmark peace accord, Indigenous communities have had enough and are demanding action.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Netflix’s subscriber growth slows, but company isn’t worried about running out of content

  One easy and anticipated answer, Benes says, is a price hike. Netflix already introduced a price hike in Canada this month, and that’s a good sign subscribers in the US should prepare, too. Benes believes that Netflix is still underpriced as a service, adding that people get “a lot of value for not a whole lot of money.” It’s a good time for Netflix to ask people for an extra dollar a month, Benes said, because they’ll probably pay. “Some people might cancel, but I bet it would pay off for them,” Benes added.

• Netflix Co-CEOs Defend ‘Keeper Test’ After Programming Exec Exits

  Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer who was elevated to co-CEO in July, was asked about the recent executive churn by Barclays Capital analyst Kannan Venkateshwar on the company’s third-quarter 2020 earnings interview.

• Netflix Misses Wall Street Expectations With 2.2M Subscriber Additions

  The company had been predicting that it would see a pullback in new subscribers after a strong first half of the year as people became accustomed to life amid a global pandemic. As a result, it forecast that it would add a relatively modest 2.5 million subscribers during the three-month period from July to September.

  Still, Wall Street analysts were expecting the streamer to add around 3.6 million subscribers during the period, per Goldman Sachs. The company’s soft quarter — down from 6.8 million net adds in the same period last year — sent the stock down around 5 percent during after-hours trading on Tuesday.

Monopolies

• Both the GOP and the Democrats want to break up Big Tech. Could it really happen?

  In general, the Democrats and Republicans seemed united in their desire to rein in big technology companies. Cicilline declared at one point that “these once-scrappy, underdog startups have grown into the kinds of monopolies we last saw more than a century ago.”

  Gus Hurwitz, an associate professor of law at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, told Salon that this narrative of “little guy” companies growing dangerous big is consistent with perceptions of technology corporations since the late 20th century. In the 1990s they were viewed as bringing about a potential utopia — the logic, as he described it to Salon, was “Hey, this is going to be a incredibly important platform that’s going to bring the world together and create a new global entity that is independent from any nation.” Now they are perceived with suspicion because of concerns that normally would not have fallen under the purview of antitrust legislation. These include the belief that Big Tech companies violate users’ privacy and, on the right, the accusation that companies discriminate against conservative voices.

• US files anti-trust suit against Google, 11 states join action

  The US has filed a civil anti-trust suit against search firm Google, saying it was aimed at stopping the company, which dominates the sector, “from unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anti-competitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets and to remedy the competitive harms”.

• Bill Barr’s Google ‘Antitrust Inquiry’ Is A Weaponized Farce

  Last month we noted how Bill Barr was rushing DOJ staffers (much to their chagrin) to launch his “antitrust inquiry” into Google. Why? Three reasons. One, it helps Trump allies and Google adversaries like “big telecom,” Oracle, and Rupert Murdoch. Two, it helps put the utterly false narrative of “social media unfairly censors Conservatives” into headlines during an election. And three, it creates leverage over companies that have finally just begun to take online hate speech and disinformation (a cornerstone of Trumpism) seriously. Genuine concerns about “monopoly power” are the last thing on these folks’ minds.

• The US government has filed antitrust charges against Google

  In a call this morning, Justice Department officials emphasized the scale and power of Google’s control over the search market. “Google’s conduct is illegal under traditional antitrust principles and must be stopped…. Google owns or controls search distribution channels accounting for about 80 percent of general search queries in the United States,” said Ryan Shores, the Justice Department’s senior advisor for tech industries. “We’re asking the court to break Google’s grip on search distribution so that competition and innovation can take hold.”

• Here’s Why Google Shares Rose After the U.S. Antitrust Suit

  For starters, the lawsuit had few major surprises and many elements that investors expected. Bloomberg and other media already reported that Google’s search default deals would be a focus of the DOJ, and some Wall Street analysts had written research about this.

  There’s also speculation that any eventual remedies won’t have a deep, lasting impact on Google’s ability to make money from its leadership in search advertising. Mark Shmulik, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, told investors on Tuesday that the firm sees “limited risk” to Google from the suit.

  In the end, the U.S. government could force Google to stop paying partners, such as Apple Inc., billions of dollars to make its search engine the default on their devices and browsers. And even if users have more choice, they may end up gravitating toward Google anyway.

• U.S. Case Against Google Mimics Lawsuit That Weakened Microsoft

  The suit focuses on payments Google makes to ensure its search engine is the default on mobile phones and web browsers. Google’s dominant market share and massive revenue allows it to spend billions of dollars a year on these deals, blocking out competitors from the valuable placements and limiting consumer choice, the Justice Department alleged.

  It’s a similar argument the government made against Microsoft when it alleged in 1998 that the software company was requiring computer makers to set its web browser as the default on their machines. That lawsuit dragged on for years, distracted executives and helped Microsoft competitors — Google among them.

• Google Abuses Its Monopoly Power Over Search, Justice Department Says In Lawsuit

  Justice Department lawyers accuse Google of illegally using its monopoly power to stifle competition and hurt consumers through exclusionary agreements, including deals like the one it struck with Apple making Google the default search engine on the Safari browser on iPhones.

• Justice Department Hits Google With Antitrust Lawsuit

  In the complaint filed in D.C. federal court (read in full below), the DOJ and 11 states focus on how Google has allegedly abused market power to protect its 90 percent share of internet search and 95 percent share of mobile search. The government asserts that Google is violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act through its alleged monopoly maintenance.

• The Federal Government Just Took a Big Step Toward Regulating Big Tech

  Among the maybe-not-quite-so-legal practices outlined in the 57-page complaint are the “exclusionary agreements” Google has struck with manufacturers like Apple to ensure Google is the default search engine on all of their products. The complaint estimates that these agreements have given Google control over around 80 percent of the online search engine market. “For many years, Google has used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising and general search text advertising — the cornerstones of its empire,” the complaint reads.

• Patents

  • Watch Out: The Patent Maximalists Are On The Warpath To Destroy Innovation And Empower Patent Trolls

    Over the last year or so there’s been a concerted effort by patent maximalists to try to shred a long line of very good Supreme Court rulings that finally (after two decades) limited just some of the destructive nature of patent trolling. There was an attempt in Congress to literally reject all of those key Supreme Court cases, and bring back Congress’s full support for patent trolling. The current head of the patent office has been spewing a bunch of similar nonsense as well, and seems to have no recognition that patents that are too broad hinder, rather than help innovation. And now we have Judge Randall Rader, who ran the federal patent court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), for many years before stepping down due to an ethics scandal.

  • Software Patents

    • Nokia enforcing video codec patent injunction against Lenovo in Germany: standard-essential patent case law diverging from CJEU’s Huawei v. ZTE guidance

      Bloomberg reported earlier today, and Lenovo has meanwhile confirmed to me, that Nokia is enforcing a standard-essential patent (SEP) injunction it obtained from the Munich I Regional Court against computer maker Lenovo after posting collateral to the amount of 3.25 million euros (less than $4 million). Lenovo has asked the Munich Higher Regional Court to stay the enforcement of the injunction.

      [...]

      If the Munich appeals court wanted to prevent reversible lower-court decisions from causing irreversible economic harm, it could do what its equivalent in Karlsruhe did in a Nokia v. Daimler case this year. Judge Andreas Voss (“Voß” in German), who presides over the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court’s patent-specialized panel, gave Nokia a pretty clear indication that if they didn’t commit to refrain from enforcement, he’d order a micro-stay for the period during which his court would weigh Daimler’s motion for a stay during the entire appellate proceedings. But in that Apple v. Qualcomm case, the Munich appeals court said that a micro-stay was only an option if, essentially, a company would go out of business.

      Nokia’s SEP enforcement campaign against Daimler has hit a snag with the Dusseldorf Regional Court poised to refer certain legal questions relating to component-level SEP licensing to the CJEU. Nokia even tried a Hail Mary pass by making a new round of licensing offers to some of Daimler’s suppliers. That lack of success on the automotive front makes it all the more important for increasingly trollish Nokia to demonstrate to the wider tech industry that it will vigorously enforce any injunctions unless the amount of security is unaffordable and/or an appeals court takes swift and decisive action.

• Copyrights

  • Brilliant satirist Tom Lehrer’s catalog now in the public domain

    Tom Lehrer has released all his works into the public domain. We have til 2024 to download them, however, when it appears his website will go down.

  • There’s a Hidden ‘Proxy War’ Between YouTube and Stream Rippers

    Every day millions of people use YouTube rippers, tools that are often used to download music for free. Music industry insiders are sounding the alarm about this piracy threat but YouTube itself is not very vocal about the issue. Behind the scenes, however, YouTube is fighting an ongoing battle to block these sites, one that they’re not winning just yet.

  • Hollywood Wins New ‘Pirate’ Blocking Order After Contentious Sites Removed

    In the summer a group of major Hollywood studios, Netflix, and other movie companies filed a new pirate site blocking application in Australia. The list contained plenty of obviously infringing sites but also the domains of Iran’s ‘YouTube’ and an Israeli newspaper. The Federal Court has now awarded the injunction but following our initial report, both contentious domains have been removed.

  • Nintendo Nukes ‘Zelda’ Fan Game, As Per Usual

    I’ve tried with Nintendo. For some years now, I have both complained about how strict and hamfisted the company is when it comes to allowing fans to express their fandom in the form of fan-created games and content, as well as offered the company advice as to how it could be just a little more cool about all of this. The frustration really starts to boil over when you realize just how much cool content the world could have if Nintendo could figure out some way not to be as protectionist as possible and instead seek out ways to work with fans to allow for this sort of thing. To be clear, as I have said in the past, Nintendo certainly can act this way when it comes to how it treats its fans, but it doesn’t have to act this way.

Desktop/Laptop

• Thelio Mega: The World’s Smallest Quad-GPU Deep Learning System

  Most quad-GPU workstations on the market right now use a generic chassis. It works if you want something just for storing components, but what you get is a machine that runs hot and slows down your system. That’s where Thelio Mega comes in.

  We’ve engineered Thelio Mega to ensure your top-line components perform to their fullest potential. Its thermals are actually two separate systems, as we found it more effective to divide and conquer. Unique airflows keep heat generated by the CPU and GPU from mixing, exhaust air effectively, and prevent throttling.

  Heat builds up quickly when you have up to 4 NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs stacked atop one another. Rather than use a single vent to cool the entire system, Thelio Mega uses intake fans on the bottom and side panels to blow cool air directly onto your GPUs. Everything down to the GPU brace has been tested for maximum thermal efficiency. The result is consistent access to every last core of performance in your system.

• RTX 2080Ti vs RTX 3090 Machine Learning Benchmarks

  NVIDIA’s 2nd generation RTX architecture brings more performance for faster Machine Learning training. We tested four Geforce RTX 2080Ti GPUs against three Geforce RTX 3090 GPUs and found that three RTX 3090s performed similar or better than four RTX 2080Ti’s for most tests with the same batch size. The RTX 3090s offer faster training with larger batch sizes as well, thanks to the additional memory available in the RTX 3090. Three RTX 3090s were used, rather than four, due to their increased power requirements.

  The tests were conducted on the new Thelio Mega workstation from System76. Thelio Mega was engineered specifically for graphics compute intensive workloads.

• System76 Thelio Mega is a quad-GPU Linux desktop powered by Ryzen Threadripper

  System76 began its life as a Linux computer seller only. Essentially, the company would sell re-branded laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed. To provide a class-leading experience, however, System76 also provided top-notch customer service, helping Linux beginners get started with a little hand-holding when needed. This focus on service continues today, and it is largely responsible for the company’s success and longevity.

  Seeking to better control its own destiny, the company branched out from only being a computer-seller and transformed into a maker too. It’s handcrafted Thelio desktops are powerful works of art, comprised of wood, metal, and good ol’ fashioned American elbow grease. Yes, these Thelio machines are made in the USA — Colorado, specifically.

  System76 has even created its own operating system — the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS, which has been very well received by the Linux community. This Linux distro will work on most computers — not just Sytem76 machines. If you want vanilla Ubuntu, don’t worry — the company continues to offer that OS as an option when buying one of its computers.

• System76 Launches The Thelio Mega With Threadripper + Four GPUs

  The System76 Thelio Major with AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3900 series is already a beast, but now this Linux PC vendor has managed to outdo themselves once again with the Thelio Mega.

  The System76 Thelio Mega is what the Colorado company calls “the world’s smallest quad-GPU deep learning system”. The Thelio Mega pairs the latest-generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper platform with up to four NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs to make for an incredibly powerful system.

• System76 unleash a quad-GPU Linux monster with the ‘Thelio Mega’

  What has four GPUs and could probably heat up your entire house? System76 have announced the Thelio Mega and it’s absolutely ridiculous.

  System76 say that the Thelio Mega is the world’s smallest quad-GPU workstation primarily made for deep learning and scientific computing. I’m sure that won’t stop someone trying to play games with it though as this might be (probably is) the most powerful Linux desktop you can buy and it’s gorgeous too.

• System76 Launches Thelio Mega as World’s Smallest Quad-GPU Linux Workstation

  It took System76 almost a year to perfect the Thelio Mega, which they dub as a “LeMans hypercar” due to the advanced technologies and engineering that this new Linux-powered workstation includes, thus making it ideal for deep learning and scientific computing.

  The state-of-the-art thermal system in the Thelio Mega appears to be the thing that set it apart from other desktop computers. It comes with two separate thermal system, designed to keep the heat generated by the CPU and GPUs from mixing and to prevent throttling.

Audiocasts/Shows

• From The Factory Floor | LINUX Unplugged 376

  We put the new Ubuntu 20.10 to the test, and chat with System76′s Mechanical Engineer to get the secrets of the new Thelio Mega.

  Plus some important community news, feedback, picks, and more.

• The COOLEST Linux Terminal App I’ve Ever Seen! – YouTube

  Say hello to a stunning, futuristic, Tron-inspired Terminal app for Linux, Windows and macOS that’ll bring to life those hacker fantasies you had in the late 90s and early 2000s. It’s also a fully functional system and resource monitor!

• There Are Too Many “Real Life” Script Kiddies – YouTube

  Just another boomer rant about some of the people that annoy me in real life and on the interwebs. I’m talking about the “script kiddies”. And not just about programming “script kiddies” but people that are “script kiddies” in all aspects of life.

• Fd: Stop Using The Find Command And Try This – YouTube

  The find command on linux is great and all but it’s quite slow, especially when searching over large directories like your home, but luckily there’s better and faster alternatives that exist like fd which is written in rust and is the topic of today’s video.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.10 Xen Brings Security Updates – Includes Fixing ARM Guests With KPTI – Phoronix

  The Xen virtualization work for the Linux 5.10 kernel revolves around security.

  Last week brought the initial Xen updates for the Linux 5.10 merge window which primarily consisted of fixes. The main change to point out though was a temporary fix for allowing Xen guests on ARM to work with Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) enabled. A more long-term fix is still being worked on for Xen support in KPTI-enabled ARM environments.

  The fix is around the VCPUOP_register_runstate_memory_area hypercall that under KPTI-protected guests would be passed an invalid virtual address, so the short term solution is to just avoid that call. ARM relies on Kernel Page Table Isolation as part of their mitigation against the Meltdown vulnerability on affected ARM Cortex processors, similar to the more well known usage on Intel processors.

• XanMod Linux Kernel

  There is a new tool available for Sparkers: XanMod Linux Kernel Installer

  What is XanMod Linux Kernel?

  XanMod is a general-purpose Linux kernel distribution with custom settings and new features. Built to provide a stable, responsive and smooth desktop experience.
  The real-time version is recommended for critical runtime applications such as Linux gaming eSports, streaming, live productions and ultra-low latency enthusiasts.
  Supports all recent 64-bit versions of Debian and Ubuntu-based systems.

  [...]

  – GPLv2 license. Can be built for any distribution or purpose.

• XFS Lands More Code For Linux 5.10 – “Even More Monumental” – Phoronix

  Last week saw the XFS file-system with Linux 5.10 support timestamps until the year 2486 rather than year 2038 and other improvements too. This week a second round of XFS work has landed for Linux 5.10.

  XFS maintainer Darrick Wong describes this week’s file-system changes as “even more monumental than last week!”

  XFS developers are announcing that in the Year 2030 they intend to deprecate their Version Four (V4) file-system format — thus users have a decade to upgrade to the newer V5 format. Making use of the newer on-disk format means better metadata validation, support reflink and online fsck, and this support for timestamp handling beyond the year 2038.

• Graphics Stack

  • Mesa Just Got A Significant Performance Boost For Intel Tiger Lake Chips

    Intel’s Kenneth Graunke has written a few patches for Intel Gen12+ graphics chips that boost graphics performance by one to twelve percent. Don’t get too excited, it only applies to Intel Tigerlake and newer and they won’t arrive in mainstream GNU/Linux distributions until Mesa 20.3 is released mid-December.

  • The Vulkan driver for Raspberry Pi 4 becomes official for Linux, merged into Mesa | GamingOnLinux

    In case you’ve missed what’s been going on, the progress on proper Vulkan support for the Raspberry Pi 4 has been going really well. So well in fact, that it’s been merged into the upstream Mesa project and so it’s all a bit more official.

    Writing in a guest post on the official Raspberry Pi blog, Igalia’s Iago Toral, who has been largely responsible for hacking away on the v3dv driver gave an update on the progress.

    [...]

    Plenty more still to be done, and as they said, passing tests is one thing but real-world use is another. I’ve no doubt people will find many ways to break it while it’s still in development. That’s part of the point of being official in Mesa now though, makes it vastly easy to try it. As a proud owner of a Raspberry Pi 4, it’s going to be fun to see it in action with Vulkan now.

  • AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 Is Released With A New Vulkan Extension And Three Game-Specific Fixes – LinuxReviews

    AMD has released a new version of their AMDVLK Vulkan driver for Linux with support for one new Vulkan extensions and game-specific fixes for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Second Extinction and X-plane. Performance is still overall worse than the AMD RAVD Vulkan driver that comes with Mesa 20.2.0 and performance is much worse in specific graphics benchmarks and image up-scaling.

    [...]

    AMDVLK’s performance has long been sub-par compared to Mesa’s RADV driver. That’s the driver GNU/Linux distributions ship with, AMDVLK is optional. AMDVLK is much closer to the Windows-driver than Mesa’s RADV and compatibility may be a reason to install the latest and greatest AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 driver. Performance is, as you will see if you read on, not a reason to install it.

  • AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 Released With Various Game Fixes – Phoronix

    AMD has issued their first open-source Vulkan driver code drop of the quarter with AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1.

    The main changes of AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 are updating against the Vulkan API 1.2.156 revision and enabling support for VK_EXT_shader_image_atomic_int64. VK_EXT_shader_image_atomic_int64 allows for 64-bit integer atomic operations to work on images.

  • Arch Linux – News: nvidia 455.28 is incompatible with linux >= 5.9

    nvidia is currently partially incompatible with linux >= 5.9 [1] [2]. While graphics should work fine, CUDA, OpenCL, and likely other features are broken. Users who’ve already upgraded and need those features are advised to switch to the linux-lts kernel for the time being until a fix for nvidia is available.

  • Radeon Linux Driver Seeing “MALL” Feature For Big Navi – Phoronix

    The AMDGPU open-source Linux kernel graphics driver continues seeing work on next-generation GPU support around the forthcoming “Big Navi” GPUs.

    Building off the Sienna Cichlid support that has come together and made its debut for Linux 5.9, and has further improvements for the now in-development Linux 5.10 kernel, new patches are now surfacing as material that will eventually make its way into Linux 5.11 for release as stable in early 2021.

    One of these late feature additions for Sienna Cichlid is the “MALL” display feature. MALL in this context is the Memory Access at Last Level. This Memory Access At Last Level is a DCN 3.0 feature for enhancing power savings with the screen contents coming from the “MALL” when certain conditions are met. At least at this point the support is only enabled for Sienna Cichlid and not other variants like Navy Flounder.

  • NIR-To-TGSI Support Added To Mesa 20.3 – Phoronix

    Mesa 20.3 has merged a long work-in-progress patch series providing support for going from the modern NIR intermediate representation to TGSI as the conventional Gallium3D IR.

    The NIR-To-TGSI translation layer has been in the works for most of the year with hopes of using that to eventually kill the Mesa state tracker GLSL-to-TGSI code that is quite large and crusty. While RadeonSI, Iris, and the other larger Gallium3D drivers are making use of NIR for a while now, this NIR-to-TGSI path can help other Gallium3D drivers like Softpipe that still rely on TGSI. If getting rid of the GLSL-to-TGSI path, GLSL shaders would ultimately go through NIR and then translated to TGSI.

Benchmarks

• A Quick Look At Ubuntu 20.04 LTS vs. 20.10 With The Core i9 10900K – Phoronix

  With Ubuntu 20.10 due for release this week I have begun testing near-final Ubuntu 20.10 builds on many more systems in the lab. Larger than our normal distribution/OS comparisons, here is the culmination of running hundreds of benchmarks (366 tests to be exact) under both Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with all available updates and then again on the Ubuntu 20.10 development state while testing on Intel Comet Lake.
  Aside from specific improvements for bleeding-edge hardware like Intel Tiger Lake performing better on Ubuntu 20.10 or when looking at cases like the Intel and Radeon graphics performance being better on Ubuntu 20.10 due to the newer Linux kernel and Mesa, for general CPU/system workloads the performance has largely been found to be similar to that of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
  The other caveat is for workloads being built from source, Ubuntu 20.10 now ships with GCC 10 rather than GCC 9. GCC 10 doesn’t normally yield any night-and-day differences in performance but in some cases for newer CPU microarchitectures there has been some improvements there or with features like LTO.

Applications

• The 10 Best Linux Guitar Tools: The Guitarist’s Essential Toolkit

  Linux guitar tools are helping the guitarists for a long time. I always say that Linux is a great environment for music composers. Yet some people have different arguments. In their logic, Linux is not that useful for multimedia because of the lack of some popular paid tools. It’s a partial truth. But still, there are a lot of free Linux tools available for acoustics and mixing. You know the electric guitar completely relies on electronic devices and software. Even there are some great tuner and amp tools for the acoustic guitars also. As a music enthusiast, I love tinkering with these audio-related programs.

• You can Surf Internet in Linux Terminal With These Command Line Browsers

  I’m guessing that you are probably using Firefox or a Chrome-based browser like Brave to read this article. Or, maybe, Google Chrome or Chromium.

  In other words, you are utilizing a GUI-based approach to browse the web. However, back in the days, people used the terminal to fetch resources and browse the web because everything was mostly text-based information.

  Even though you cannot get every information from a terminal now, you can still try the command line browsers for some text-based information and open a web page from the Linux terminal.

  Not just limited to that, but if you are accessing a remote server or stuck in a terminal without a GUI, a terminal web browser can prove to be useful as well.

  So, in this article, I will be mentioning some terminal based web browsers that you can try on Linux.

• VirtualBox 6.1.16 Released with Full Support for Linux Kernel 5.9, Various Improvements

  The biggest news in VirtualBox 6.1.16 is the implementation of support for the latest and greatest Linux 5.9 kernel series. This support is offered for both Linux hosts and guests, which means that you’ll now be able to install VirtualBox on distributions powered by Linux 5.9, as well as to run distros that use Linux 5.9 as virtual machines.

  But wait, there are even more Linux improvements in VirtualBox 6.1.16. For example, this release comes with a workaround to improve the resizing of 32-bit virtual machines that use the VMSVGA graphics controller while avoiding the use of RandR 1.3 due to bugs causing hangs with the X server, as well as VMSVGA 3D support for Linux guests when using the Hyper-V hypervisor.

Instructionals/Technical

• Btrfs on CentOS: Living with Loopback | Linux Journal

  The btrfs filesystem has taunted the Linux community for years, offering a stunning array of features and capability, but never earning universal acclaim. Btrfs is perhaps more deserving of patience, as its promised capabilities dwarf all peers, earning it vocal proponents with great influence. Still, none can argue that btrfs is unfinished, many features are very new, and stability concerns remain for common functions.

  Most of the intended goals of btrfs have been met. However, Red Hat famously cut continued btrfs support from their 7.4 release, and has allowed the code to stagnate in their backported kernel since that time. The Fedora project announced their intention to adopt btrfs as the default filesystem for variants of their distribution, in a seeming juxtaposition. SUSE has maintained btrfs support for their own distribution and the greater community for many years.

  For users, the most desirable features of btrfs are transparent compression and snapshots; these features are stable, and relatively easy to add as a veneer to stock CentOS (and its peers). Administrators are further compelled by adjustable checksums, scrubs, and the ability to enlarge as well as (surprisingly) shrink filesystem images, while some advanced btrfs topics (i.e. deduplication, RAID, ext4 conversion) aren’t really germane for minimal loopback usage. The systemd init package also has dependencies upon btrfs, among them machinectl and systemd-nspawn. Despite these features, there are many usage patterns that are not directly appropriate for use with btrfs. It is hostile to most databases and many other programs with incompatible I/O, and should be approached with some care.

• How To List Filesystems In Linux Using Lfs – OSTechNix

  Lfs is a commandline tool used to list filesystems in Linux system. Lfs is slightly a better alternative to “df -H” command.

• How to Install Debian Linux 10.5 with MATE Desktop + VMware Tools on VMware Workstation – SysAdmin

  This video tutorial shows how to install Debian Linux 10.5 with MATE Desktop on VMware Workstation step by step.

• How to Install Mageia Linux 7.1 + VMware Tools on VMware Workstation – SysAdmin

  This video tutorial shows how to install Mageia Linux 7.1 on VMware Workstation step by step.

• How to install Krita 4.3.0 on Deepin 20 – YouTube

  In this video, we are looking at how to install Krita 4.3.0 on Deepin 20.

• How to install PHP 7.4 in Ubuntu 20.04? | LibreByte

  PHP-FPM is used together with a web server like Apache or NGINX, PHP-FPM serves dynamic content, while the web server serve static content

• How to install the Blizzard Battle.net on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install the Blizzard Battle.net 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 the MGT GTK theme on Linux

  MGT is a modern theme that is based on the Materia GTK theme. It comes in 4 different colors (Grey, Semi-Dark, Light, and Dark) and brings the Google Material Design look that many Linux users love. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install the MGT GTK theme on Linux.

• How to install the RavenDB NoSQL database on Ubuntu 20.04 – TechRepublic

  If you’re looking to deploy a powerful NoSQL database on Linux, let Jack Wallen walk you through the process of installing RavenDB.

• Implementing a self-signed certificate on an Ubuntu Server > Tux-Techie

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a self-signed certificate with OpenSSL on an Ubuntu 20.04 server and discuss its use cases.

• How to Configure And Customize Openbox [Linux]

  Openbox is a great lightweight desktop manager for Linux, except that it can be a bit intimidating for the first time user. Here’s a complete guide to configure and customize Openbox for new users.

• 2 Ways to Upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 To Ubuntu 20.10 (GUI & Terminal)

  Ubuntu 20.10, codenamed Groovy Gorilla, will be released on October 22, 2020. This tutorial will be showing you 2 ways to upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 20.10.

• 3 Ways to Power off Debian

  Along with many other routine tasks, Linux administrators also have to perform a safe shutdown or reboot. It seems the simplest task but should be done in a secure way. Our systems are continuously running processes. If the system is not properly powered off, files and processes will not safe closely, might result in corrupted files, and can leave your system in an unstable state. It is therefore advised to properly and securely power off the system.

• Disowning a process in Linux | Network World

  When you disown a process in bash, you keep it from being terminated when you log out and allow it to finish on its own. This post shows how to use the disown command.

• How to install Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 – YouTube

  In this video, I am going to show how to install Ubuntu Budgie 20.10

• Install Lutris on Manjaro – LinuxConfig.org

  In this tutorial, we guide you through the process of installing Lutris on Manjaro, allowing you to play a lot of popular gaming titles on Linux.

• How To Install Apache Kafka on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Kafka on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Kafka is the most popular open-source software that provides a framework for storing, reading, and analyzing streaming data. Kafka was originally developed by LinkedIn and to be open-sourced in early 2011 under Apache Software Foundation.

  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 Apache Kafka on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian based distribution like Linux Mint.

• How To Install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 18.04 – TecAdmin

  Installing Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 18.04 with Apt. Two methods to install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 18.04 using PPA or Source code.

• How to install ONLYOFFICE Workspace on Ubuntu

  This tutorial shows how to install the new ONLYOFFICE 6.0 Workspace on Ubuntu 20.04….

• How to install and set up SeedDMS | Enable Sysadmin

  If you need a document management system that’s quick and easy to set up, SeedDMS might be your solution.

• How to install the Nextcloud server in Ubuntu 20.04 > Tux-Techie

  This tutorial shows how to set up a Nextcloud server on an Ubuntu install along with an overview of the latest Nextcloud features.

• How to install WordPress in Ubuntu 20.04 > Tux-Techie

  In this tutorial, we will learn how to install WordPress in Ubuntu 20.04. The prerequisites for this guide require an Ubuntu installation with a static IP assigned.

• How to set up a Samba file server in Ubuntu 20.04 > Tux-Techie

  In this tutorial, we will set up a samba file server in Ubuntu 20.04 and access it in Ubuntu DDE. Share files across Linux, Windows, and Mac.

• The four things you must be able to do in Vim | Enable Sysadmin

  A list of the four tasks that any Linux user should be able to accomplish when using the Vim text editor.

• Marvell offers native NVMe SSD Raid 1 Accelerator > Tux-Techie

  Linux and windows open source tech guides and news. NVMe ssd raid 1 native support.

• How to assign a Static IP address in Ubuntu DDE > Tux-Techie

  In this tutorial, we are going to focus on how to assign a static IP address in the DDE version of Ubuntu.

• Creating LDAP accounts with phpLDAPadmin > Tux-Techie

  For this tutorial, you will first need to have an OpenLDAP server installed along with phpLDAPadmin. If you do not already have an OpenLDAP server setup, then check out this article to learn how to do so. In this tutorial, we will create a new user with an Organizational Unit named TestUser and the Posix Group named TestAccount. The user ID for this test account is btester.

• Configuring Ubuntu Linux to authenticate to an LDAP server > Tux-Techie

  The prerequisites for this tutorial require an OpenLDAP server and a client-side system with Ubuntu Linux. To learn how to set up your own OpenLDAP server, check out this article.

Games

• Get some thrills on in the latest Humble Bundle with DUSK and Detention | GamingOnLinux

  Need to boost your library ready for Halloween? Humble Bundle are back with some cheap thrills for you. As usual, we will highlight those with Linux support / Linux builds in bold text to make it easy at a glance.

• Stadia gets PAC-MAN 64-player Battle Royale, Jedi: Fallen Order soon and HUMANKIND beta | GamingOnLinux

  When Google started hyping up three days of announcements and demos, it has probably disappointed many that the first day was PAC-MAN.

  That’s right, after Stadia got an exclusive Bomberman Battle Royale, it’s now getting PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle, a 64-player last-pac standing game. There’s a demo available right now, which anyone can register for a Stadia account to hop in and try it (Stadia Pro not needed). Surprisingly, it’s actually pretty good. Sounds like it might be Stadia exclusive at release too on November 17.

• The latest horror from Frictional Games with Amnesia: Rebirth is out now | GamingOnLinux

  Frictional Games have now released their latest horror title with Amnesia: Rebirth, as you walk in the shoes of Tasi and guide them through an emotional experience.

  Using the same game engine as their previous game SOMA, which they call HPL3, Amnesia: Rebirth is a horror game that focuses on the journey as much as the end. It’s all about the narrative and sinking into the thick atmosphere, Frictional say to not go in aiming to beat it but rather to immerse yourself in the world. Rebirth has a direct connection to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, however it’s a fully stand-alone experience so you don’t actually need to have played any others.

• Steam Proton Updated To 5.13 Making Red Dead Redemption 2 Playable On Linux

  Linux users are simply some of the most stubborn users in the world, willing to forgo almost any convenience in exchange for keeping themselves both secure, and in absolute control of their operating system.

  Whereas Microsoft has attempted to further dummy-proof Windows 10 (bringing about a disastrous ‘software as a service’ routine with consistent updates and changes to everything with little to no warning), Linux is on the far other end of the spectrum where files and configurations rely a bit more on the user understand what they’re doing, rather than intelligent installers doing the necessary heavy lifting.

  If it’s a toss-up between the two, Linux is strongly recommended for the more tech-savvy users. If you’re keener, however, to ensure that you can play all of the latest games and popular tools, then Windows is likely the answer even with its arguably draconian policies and bloat-ware shoveling.

• X11 display server progress report

  I’m Camille, aka PouleyKetchoupp. I use Godot as an indie game developer (Nekomatata) and I’ve been a Godot contributor for a while (Github). Recently I was hired to work as a contractor on fixes and improvements for the Linux port of Godot 4.

  Most of the work was dedicated to fixing regressions due to the new Display Server used for window management, which allows support for multiple windows. I’ve also spent some extra time fixing old issues we had with X11 which required some refactoring in how the engine communicates with the X server. Some of them will be available in a later Godot 3.2 release as well.

  In this post I’m summarizing all the changes I’ve made in the X11 Display Server, in order to (hopefully) clarify how the X server works and how Godot communicates with it.

• Godot Engine to get improved Linux support in the upcoming Godot 4 release | GamingOnLinux

  While the free and open source game engine Godot Engine already has Linux support, for both exported games and the full editor, it’s set to get even better in Godot 4.0.

  In a blog post written by Camille Mohr-Daurat, they mentioned how they’ve been hired by the Godot team to work as a contractor on fixes and improvements for the Linux port of Godot. Camille Mohr-Daurat is an indie developer who actually uses Godot too at Nekomatata, where they created the unique ping-pong battler Punch Pong. So this is a real fun example of open source in action.

  Godot 4.0 will be coming with a new windowing system, so that you can separate parts of the Godot Engine editor from the main window. A lot of their work is focused on ensuring that works great on Linux with X11, which seems like there’s a lot of work involved, because there’s places where X11 doesn’t have APIs to handle things where it does on other platforms like Windows and macOS – with drag and drop between windows being one mentioned example they’ve had to solve directly.

• Lutris game launcher has a huge new Beta update out for testing | GamingOnLinux

  Lutris is the impressive all-in-one solution for managing games on Linux, bundling tons of sources of Linux releases from different stores under one roof as well as emulators, compatibility layers and more.

  Just recently on October 19 they put up the Beta of the new 0.5.8 release, and it includes some pretty huge changes and improvements all across the application. The way it actually works under the hood has been completely changed in many ways, along with the way you add games to it.

  Instead of manually importing games, it now attempts to sync up with your library across other stores like GOG, Humble and Steam. Adding games from the Lutris website using their scripts to set things up is also now in its own section, just called Lutris and it no longer depends on having install scripts for 3rd party services as Lutris will now run stuff with an “auto-generated” script but scripts on the Lutris database will take precedence if available

• XCOM-ish combat and HOMM-styled world exploration Fort Triumph has a major update and sale | GamingOnLinux

  Possibly one of my favourite strategy game releases of 2020, Fort Triumph blends together XCOM styled combat with HOMM (Heroes of Might and Magic) exploration into quite a gem that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

  What makes it fun is the environment interactions during battles, as you push rocks and drop trees onto enemies – it never gets old. It appears the team at CookieByte Entertainment have been busy too, with a huge free first post-release content upgrade out now.

  They’ve added in 27 new locations/events to the world map, and with some of these encounters you can add/remove traits from your heroes. Some of these encounters mix up the combat too, with some being unique Physics-only battles where you can only move around parts of the environment and not use normal abilities which sounds pretty hilarious.

• KeeperRL, the open source dungeon building sim is getting a price bump in November | GamingOnLinux

  Fancy becoming a dungeon master? Well, if you’re watching the pennies you might want to go and pick up KeeperRL before they price gets bumped up.

  This excellent open source building sim that mixes in RPG and roguelike elements has a lot to like about it, and it’s been continually improved over 7 years now. Since it’s had a lot added to it, and the developer has been working almost full time on it, they’re going to be increasing the price from $14.99 to $20 on November 15. Plenty of notice if you were thinking about picking it up.

  Keep in mind they also said there will be no discounts planned until the big 1.0 release, so it’s not going to be cheaper again any time soon.

• Ampersat is an upcoming hack and slash shooter where everyone is ASCII | GamingOnLinux

  Mixing together ASCII characters and enemies, along with a full colour world, the hack and slash shooter Ampersat seems like a rather unique blend. A little weird too, with styles that usually clash and don’t make sense together. You’re the “at sign”, the ampersat, and enemies are also these flat characters yet the world is 3D and full of colour. It looks bizarre but it works.

  Solo developer Gaterooze, Ink mentioned it was inspired by elements of Gauntlet and Smash TV to Zelda and a dash of Angband that “distils some favourite childhood gaming experiences into a fresh, fun hybrid that sees you killing a lot of monsters, finding a lot of loot, freeing captured letters and growing from a world-weary warrior mage into a powerful smashing/blasting machine”.

• Free copy of Europa Universalis II on GOG, with a huge Paradox Interactive sale going on | GamingOnLinux

  Paradox Interactive are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Europa Universalis series so they’re giving away Europa Universalis II and putting a bunch of other games on sale.

  For the free game, simply head to GOG.com and find the big banner. It doesn’t support Linux like Paradox’s later games, since it’s a proper classic from way back in 2001 but you can try your luck with the Wine compatibility layer if you really want it.

• Try the demo for Pyramid Plunge, a lighthearted platformer with a really odd couple | GamingOnLinux

  Ah yes, dangerous ancient pyramids with traps and deadly creatures, why not let a totally unprepared couple explore it? That’s what you’re doing in Pyramid Plunge as you run, carry your partner, fart to get airtime are more.

  The result is actually quite hilarious, mixing together challenging random generation with a sprinkle of comedy from the two wildly different characters that have a bit of banter between them like a true couple would. You don’t see many platformers come along like this, what joy.

• Proton: The Native Port Killer?

  The thrill surrounding the announcement of Street Fighter V coming to Linux was real. It was a few years after SteamOS was announced. After years of silence, fans started to doubt that this was becoming a reality. It wasn’t until two years after the initial release of Proton that Valve started to work with Capcom to try and make the Windows version compatible with Linux. Some people are still salty that it took this long to get here, and even more upset that this isn’t a native port. On the other hand, fans like myself are pleased that Valve/Capcom held to their word, even though they may have compromised a bit by making it Proton-compatible.

  The same goes for Rocket League. End-users like myself naturally get upset when delays happen, even though we don’t understand what it’s like to be on the developer’s side. Several months came and went after the original announcement, and finally the Mac and Linux versions of the game went live on Steam. Fast forward a few years later, and Psyonix decides to drop the ball for said versions, leaving it up to Proton to pick up the slack on Linux and bootcamp for Mac OS. Don’t even get me started on the fact that they basically abandoned support on Steam altogether in favor of the Epic Crap Store.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Linux themes update for October 2020

  Hello there and welcome to LinuxH2O. I’m continuing with the Linux themes update for the month. It’s October 2020 now so let’s see what do we have got here.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Plasma 5.20.1 – First Point Release is Here

    KDE Plasma 5.20 was released last week and it came with a couple of bugs. So, to address those the KDE team announced the first maintenance update on the 5.20 series i.e. KDE Plasma 5.20.1.

  • KDE Plasma 5.20 Desktop Gets First Point Release, 45 Changes Included

    KDE Plasma 5.20.1 is here only a week after the launch of KDE Plasma 5.20, which is one of the biggest and most polished releases of all time, to fix various annoyances or issues that might block the Plasma desktop from functioning correctly.

    There are several Wayland fixes in this first point release to prevent the session from crashing when killing XWayland, correctly clip the mouse cursor clip, and forcing windows to re-open in the same state they were before being closed.

  • KD Chart 2.7.2 released!

    KDAB has released KD Chart 2.7.2, the final release in the KD Chart 2.7 series. This is a very minor release; however, it’s significant in that it may be the final release of KD Chart that will support Qt 4.

    KD Chart is a comprehensive business charting package with many different chart types and a large number of customization options. We are constantly improving the package, and have been doing so for years.

  • TSDgeos’ blog: Make sure KDE software is usable in your language, join KDE translations!

    Translations are a vital part of software. More technical people often overlook it because they understand English well enough to use the software untranslated, but only 15% of the World understands English, so it’s clear we need good translations to make our software more useful to the rest of the world.

    Translations are a place that [almost] always needs help, so I would encourage you to me (aacid@kde.org) if you are interested in helping.

    Sadly, some of our teams are not very active, so you may find yourself alone, it can be a bit daunting at the beginning, but the rest of us in kde-i18n-doc will help you along the way

Distributions

• BSD

  • Announcing NetBSD 9.1

    The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 9.1, the first update of the NetBSD 9 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements.

  • NetBSD 9.1 Released With Parallelized Disk Encryption, Better ZFS, X11 Improvements

    Not only is there a new OpenBSD release this week but the NetBSD crew also issued a big update in the form of NetBSD 9.1.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • Extra! Extra! KDE Plasma updated to 5.20.1

    KDE Plasma has been updated to 5.20.1 which is a bug fix update for the recently released 5.20.0. This update should arrive shortly in the software repository for those using the KDE Plasma desktop. Enjoy!

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Node.js 15 release: Updated handling of rejections, npm 7, N-API Version 7, and more – IBM Developer

    Users can plan for a new release every April and October, with the latest even-numbered release (14.x, in this instance) being promoted to LTS in October. Since the 15.x release is an odd-numbered release, it won’t be promoted to LTS. The predictable timetable for quality releases has increased adoption of the next LTS release over time. In general we recommend that only LTS releases be used for production deployments.

    Today, the Node.js community is releasing Node.js 15 with new features that are important to Node.js users and customers. While it won’t be promoted to long-term support (LTS), we need our customers and the greater ecosystem to try it out and give us feedback to help pave the way for the Node.js 16 release.

  • Key findings from IDC Red Hat Quarkus Lab Validation

    Recently, Arnal Dayaratna, a research director and analystocused on Software Development at IDC, explored Quarkus in an IDC Lab Validation report, sponsored by Red Hat. The report quantifies performance metrics forQuarkus to another widely used Java framework for cloud-native development, referred to throughout as Framework A. The comparison is based on attributes that are important for developers and the developer experience, as well as those that are important for containers, Kubernetes and cloud deployments.

  • Accelerated development cycle enables Macquarie deployments in near real time, addressing business and technical challenges

    As companies continue their quest for digital transformation and face uncertainty in the business environment, especially in current times, the ability to react in an agile manner to address customers’ needs is increasingly apparent. It is a proven strategy cited by industry research and consulting firms, and has delivered results for Macquarie’s Banking and Financial Services Group (BFS), as it modernizes its legacy banking systems.

  • IBM Launches Call For Code For Racial Justice [Ed: IBM trying to flip reality on its head]

    These include Police & Judicial Reform and Accountability; Diverse Representation; and Policy & Legislation Reform.

• Debian Family

  • Tails 4.12 Anonymous OS Is Out with Linux Kernel 5.8, Latest Tor Updates

    Tails 4.12 is here three weeks after Tails 4.11 and it’s the first release of the Debian-based amnesic incognito live system to ship with the Linux 5.8 kernel series. Of course, the firmware packages have been updated as well to provide users with better newer hardware support, making Tails run on more computers.

    On top of that, Tails is now based on the Debian GNU/Linux 10.6 “Buster” operating system. Tails’ purpose is to keep you safe and protect your privacy when surfing the Internet or accessing various other online services. At its core, the distribution relies on the Tor technologies for anonymous and encrypted communication.

  • Tails 4.12 is out

    This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

  • TrueNAS R-series hyperconverged appliances blend storage and compute

    Today, storage vendor iXsystems is launching a new R-series hyperconverged infrastructure appliance for its TrueNAS product line—and the first alpha release of TrueNAS SCALE, a Debian Linux-based version of the TrueNAS storage distribution.

    The new R-series appliances are designed to run either traditional, FreeBSD-based TrueNAS, or the new Debian-based TrueNAS SCALE. The series launches with four models—all rack-mounted—ranging from the 1U, 16-bay TrueNAS R10 to the up to 12U, 52 bay TrueNAS R50. All four models offer Ethernet connectivity up to dual 100GbE, as well as optional dual 32Gb Fibre Channel and Intel Xeon CPUs. The three larger models are expandable via separate JBOD shelves as well.

  • Petter Reinholdtsen: Buster based Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator’s Handbook

    I am happy to report that we finally made it! Norwegian Bokmål became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster based edition of “The Debian Administrator’s Handbook”. The print proof reading copy arrived some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for general distribution. This updated paperback edition is available from lulu.com. The book is also available for download in electronic form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be read online.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Trisquel 9 LTS Finally Released with Download Links, Mirrors and Torrents

    We are pleased to welcome the long awaited Trisquel 9 LTS. This is the free computer operating system for everyone mostly suitable to replace Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS for daily purposes and server. Codenamed Etiona and based upon stable base Ubuntu 18.04, Trisquel, at Friday 16 October 2020, it announces availability for desktop and server plus for old and modern computers. The new big thing is that now it features a KDE edition called Triskel. This list delivers all the download links plus computer vendors where you can purchase PCs or laptops with Trisquel.

Devices/Embedded

• F(x)tec Pro1-X Announced – with physical keyboard, Lineage OS and Ubuntu Touch support but dated Snapdragon 835

  Today, F(x)tec has re-launched their Pro1 smartphone, but renamed as Pro1-X and running LineageOS out of the box combined with compatibility with Ubuntu Touch OS.

  The phone has been developed in partnership with XDA, hence the name. The hardware remains the same which includes the dated Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset; however, this phone isn’t about raw power, it is a productivity tool with a strong focus on privacy.

  It will then combine the chipset with 8GB of RAM a 5.99-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, an 8MP front-facing camera, and a 12MP camera at the rear.

• Dual-GbE mesh networking board features 802.11ax

  Wally’s “DR6000” mesh router board runs on Qualcomm’s quad -A53 IPQ6000 SoC with 2x GbE ports, dual-band concurrent 802.11ax (WiFi 6), and micro-USB and serial connections.

• SDM-L signage system is first to taste Coffee Lake

  Aaeon’s “ASDM-L-CFS” SDM-L form-factor signage module runs on 8th or 9th Gen Core CPUs with up to 32GB DDR4, GbE, 2x USB 3.2, 2x M.2, HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.2, and an optional enclosure.

• SwarmDrive is an ESP32 motor driver board for brushless motors (Crowdfunding)

  Netherlands based NickStick BV has developed a motor driver board powered by an ESP32 dual-core WiFI and Bluetooth module and capable of controlling brushless DC motors.

• ODROID-HC4 low-cost dual NAS comes with 4GB RAM, supports 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA drives

  It’s hard to find low-cost NAS platforms often because of the mechanism to insert drives and the enclosure add to the cost. An alternative is to use boards like Hardkernel ODROID-HC1 for 2.5-inch drives or ODROID-HC2 for 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives, but each board supports only one drive. The designs are stackable, but you’d need one Linux board per drive, so it’s not ideal.

• Odroid-HC4 toaster NAS runs dual PCIe-driven SATA drives

  Hardkernel is prepping an open-spec, $65 to $75 “Odroid-HC4” NAS device that runs Linux on a quad -A55 Amlogic S905X3 and offers dual PCIe-driven 2.5- or 3.5-inch slots for SSDs or HDDs plus HDMI 2.0 and 4GB DDR4.

• Thinking About Creating A Raspberry Pi Replacement? | Hackaday

  If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at creating a Raspberry Pi-like board for yourself, you should check out [Jay Carlson’s] review of 10 different Linux-capable SoCs. Back in the 1960s, a computer was multiple refrigerator-sized boxes with thousands of interconnections and building one from scratch was only a dream for most people. Then ICs came and put all the most important parts in a little relatively inexpensive IC package and homebrew computing became much more accessible. Systems on Chip (SoC) has carried that even further, making it easier than ever to create entire systems, like the Pi and its many competitors.

  Only a few years ago, making an SoC was still a big project because the vendors often didn’t want to release documentation to the public. In addition, most of the parts use ball grid array (BGA) packaging. BGA parts can be hard to work with, and require a multilayer PC board. Sure, you can’t plug these into a typical solderless breadboard. But working with these relatively large BGAs isn’t that hard and multilayer boards are now comparatively cheap. [Jay] reports that he got cheap PCBs and used a hot plate to build each board, and has some sage advice on how to do it.

• New ET977 COM Express Module Supports Windows 10 and Linux Ubuntu

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Codasip Announces a New Design Center in France

    Codasip, the leading supplier of customizable RISC-V embedded processor IP, announced its new strategic design center today. It is based in France and the local Codasip team is going to play an important role in the company’s innovation and development plans for the next-generation product IP.

    The new Codasip French Design Center started operation in the summer. It is located in Villeneuve Loubet on the Mediterranean coastline in southeast France, near the technology park of Sophia Antipolis where major technology companies such as Bosch, NXP, Thales, and many others have offices.

    “As we are expanding the product portfolio and fostering our technology leadership, we need talented senior engineers to support the growth,” explained Karel Masařík, CEO of Codasip. “Sophia Antipolis is an important European location for R&D and technical talent in the semiconductor industry. We are proud to have hired our French colleagues there, close to customers. Their expertise will be a great supplement to that of our main R&D Center in the Czech Republic.”

  • Codasip opens RISC-V design centre in France

    Codasip’s French design centre outside Sophia-Antipolis will focus on the architecture and verification of RISC-V cores
    German RISC-V core designer Codasip has opened a strategic design centre in France for its processor cores based on teh open source RISC_V instruction set architecture (ISA).

    The centre in Villeneuve Loubet is near Sophia Antipolis where major technology companies such as Bosch, NXP, Thales, and many others have offices.

  • Initial Support For Booting RISC-V Hardware Via EFI Sent In For Linux 5.10

    The RISC-V architecture code with Linux 5.10 adds the ability for booting via (U)EFI.

    After months of working towards RISC-V UEFI support led by Western Digital engineers, the initial working support is landing with Linux 5.10.

  • CloudBEAR BM-310 RISC-V MCU core for IoT applications

    In the pool of 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller cores (E20 by SiFive, VEGA ET1031 by C-DAC), CloudBEAR showcased its 32-bit small and efficient MCU core – BM-310 at RISC-V GLOBAL FORUM 2020. CloudBEAR works on providing services like processor IP customization, support for RISC-V ISA extensions, product integration within a system-on-chip, and configurable instruction and data cache.

    Let’s first look into the CloudBEAR processor IP portfolio. It has three different product lines- BM series, BR series, and BI series. First, the BM series targets small and efficient MCUs cores. Second, the BR series targets fast and compact embedded cores. The third and most important BI series is about Linux capable application cores. In this article, we will look into the details of BM-310, which is the RISC-V MCU core for embedded and IoT solutions.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android spyware that can enter Indian travel apps identified: Here is how to protect your smartphone

  • Android 11: Here’s when its rolling out to your phones

  • Annoying Android 11 bug prevents apps from going fullscreen

  • Talking Pixel 5 with Android Central and Android Police

  • Terraria update Journey’s End comes to Android with new content and fixes

  • Quibi reminds you it’s not dead with new Android TV app

  • How to Edit Audio Recording on Your Android Phone

  • How to use Google’s budget feature on Android so you don’t overspend

  • BMW is rolling out wireless Android Auto support with Operating System 7 update

  • Ford EcoSport Infotainment System Upgraded, To Run On Android OS

  • Three easy steps to cast or mirror your Android phone screen on a TV

  • Video editing apps for Android and iPhone

  • Huawei to upgrade EMUI version to Android 11 for upcoming Mate 40 series

  • How to use Chat Bubbles in Android 11: Fix Facebook Messenger

  • This devious malware now threatens Mac and Android users too

  • A phenomenal Android privacy feature you probably forget to use

  • Sailfish OS: Shared mobile devices

    The need for device sharing has become increasingly important for our partners. And it’s easy to understand why: imagine a scenario where a mobile device is required for executing certain actions during a business process. Each workstation has a mobile device and when a work shift changes the previous shift logs out of it and the new shift logs in. In this case the mobile device is more of a shared resource than a personal device.

    One of the major new features that we’re excited to have included in the latest 3.4 Pallas-Yllästunturi release is the ability to have multiple users on the same device that can be switched between in this way. For regular everyday use of Sailfish OS this doesn’t have any impact, the device owner (the primary user) works just as it used to. However, release 3.4 will have a new ‘defaultuser’ (devices flashed prior to 3.4.0 keep ‘nemo’ user, but it’s only the name that’s different). The new ‘defaultuser’ name is mostly visible behind the scenes for application developers; end users can ignore this detail.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Over 60 Global Organizations Join in Establishing ‘Open Infrastructure Foundation’ to Build the Next Decade of Infrastructure for AI, 5G, Edge

• OpenStack Foundation Becomes Open Infrastructure Foundation

  The OpenStack Foundation is changing its name to the Open Infrastructure Foundation (OIF), a move that mirrors the rebranding of the project’s OpenStack Summit to Open Infrastructure Summit. The changes, according to the press release, reflect “an expansion of the organization’s mission, scope and community to advance open source over the next decade to support open infrastructure.”

  As Frederic Lardinois reports for TechCrunch, the OpenStack project itself, “which helps enterprises run their private cloud, found its niche in the telecom space, though, and continues to thrive as one of the world’s most active open source projects.” Last week, OpenStack released a new major version (called Victoria), which includes more than 20,000 code changes.

• 10 Years of OpenStack – Ghanshyam Mann at NEC

  Happy 10 years of OpenStack! Millions of cores, 100,000 community members, 10 years of you.

  Storytelling is one of the most powerful means to influence, teach, and inspire the people around us. To celebrate OpenStack’s 10th anniversary, we are spotlighting stories from the individuals in various roles from the community who have helped to make OpenStack and the global Open Infrastructure community successful.

  [...]

  What advice do you have for the Stacker community and other growing open source communities based on your experience with OpenStack?

  I have my team working in different open source communities and discuss daily on how each community works and solves the issue. Based on that, I found the OpenStack community is more open and transparent (our four opens strength). We might not be perfect but we are definitely one of the best open source communities.

  There is no specific advice as such, but I will suggest keep doing the same and never compromise on defined four opens principles.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 82 Is Released With Four High-Impact Security Fixes

      Mozilla Firefox 82 is faster on websites using flex CSS layout, there’s a new picture-in-picture button that you may or may not find annoying enough to disable and there’s four high-impact and two medium-impact security fixes. There’s no performance improvement in synthetic benchmarks.

    • Firefox 82 Released with Picture-In-Picture Improvements, 17% Faster Session Restore

      Firefox 82 isn’t a major update, but it brings a few enhancements to the Picture-In-Picture mode, which now has a new look and position to make it easier for users to access it and use it when watching videos, and further enhances the Pocket integration by letting users explore new articles when saving a webpage from the Firefox toolbar.

      Most of the improvements in Firefox 82 are under the hood, making the free and open-source web browser more faster on both page loads and start up time. For example, Firefox is now up to 17% faster when restoring a session, and up to 20% faster when loading websites that use flexbox-based layouts.

    • Firefox 83 Enters Beta with HTTPS-Only Mode, WebRender Support for Intel Gen12 GPUs

      Scheduled for release next month on November 17th, the Firefox 83 web browser comes with a new security feature that was supposed to land in a previous version. It’s called HTTPS-Only Mode and will be available in the Privacy & Security tab under Preferences.

      The HTTPS-Only Mode provides a secure and encrypted connection between your web browser and the websites you visit, even if they don’t use HTTPS. While most websites already support HTTPS, when HTTPS-Only Mode is enabled Firefox will upgrade all connections to use HTTPS.

    • Firefox 82 Released with Faster Page Loading, Picture-In-Picture Improvements

      Firefox web browser 82.0 was released today with improved picture-in-picture, faster page loading and start-up time.

    • Coming through with Firefox 82

      As October ushers in the tail-end of the year, we are pushing Firefox 82 out the door. This time around we finally enable support for the Media Session API, provide some new CSS pseudo-selector behaviours, close some security loopholes involving the Window.name property, and provide inspection for server-sent events in our developer tools.

      This blog post provides merely a set of highlights; for all the details, check out the following…

    • Firefox 82 Released With Performance Improvements, Video Playback Enhancements

      Firefox 82.0 is now available as the latest release of Mozilla’s web browser that continues on their expedited release cycles.

      Performance work in Firefox 82.0 includes faster page loads and start-up times. Websites using Flexbox-based layouts should see around a 20% speedup, session restoration should be about 17% quicker, and Windows users see new windows about 10% quicker. WebRender also continues rolling out to more Firefox users.

      Firefox 82 also brings multiple picture-in-picture improvements for video playback, screen reader improvements, security fixes, the MediaSession API is now enabled by default, and other enhancements.

    • Firefox 82.0 and ESR 78.4.0

      Firefox 82.0 has been released, with improvements “that make watching videos more delightful” and improved performance. Firefox ESR 78.4.0 is also available with various stability, functionality, and security fixes. See the release notes (82.0, 78.4.0) for details.

    • Marking issues as regressions

      The Rust project gets many issues filed every day, and we need to keep track of them all to make sure we don’t miss anything. To do that we use GitHub’s issue labels feature, and we need your help to make sure we fix regressions as soon as possible!

      We have many issue labels that help us organize our issues, and we have a few in particular that mark an issue as a regression. These labels will ping a Rust working group called the prioritization working group, whose members will work to determine the severity of an issue and then prioritize it. But, this won’t happen unless someone marks the issue with one of those labels!

    • New Contributors, Firefox 82 – about:community

      With Firefox 82 hot off the byte presses, we are pleased to welcome the developers whose first code contributions shipped in this release, 18 of whom were new volunteers!

    • Defining Data Intuition

      Last week, one of my peers asked me to explain what I meant by “Data Intuition”, and I realized I really didn’t have a good definition. That’s a problem! I refer to data intuition all the time!

      Data intuition is one of the three skills I interview new data scientists for (along with statistics and technical skills). In fact, I just spent the first nine months of 2020 building Mozilla’s data intuition. I’m really surprised to realize I can’t point to a good explanation of what I’m trying to cultivate.

    • Five-Year Moziversary – chuttenblog

      In team news, Georg’s short break turned into the neverending kind as he left Mozilla late last year. We gained Michael Droettboom as our new fearless leader, and from my perspective he seems to be doing quite well at the managery things. Bea and Travis, our two newer team members, have really stepped into their roles well, providing much needed bench depth on Rust and Mobile. And Jan-Erik has taken over leadership of the SDK, freeing up Alessio to think about data collection for Web Extensions.

      2020 is indeed being the Year of Glean on the Desktop with several projects already embedding the now-successful Glean SDK, including our very own mach (Firefox Build Tooling Commandline) and mozregression (Firefox Bug Regression Window Finding Tool). Oh, and Jan-Erik and I’ve spent ten months planning and executing on Project FOG (Firefox on Glean) (maybe you’ve heard of it), on track (more or less) to be able to recommend it for all new data collections by the end of the year.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • LibreOffice Math Guide 7.0 is Published – The Document Foundation Blog

    The Documentation Team is happy to announce the publication of the Math Guide 7.0, the latest update of the guide based on the recently released LibreOffice 7.0, the best open source office suite ever.

    The effort was mostly carried by Rafael Lima and reviewed by Jean H. Weber. The new guide covers were designed by Rizal Mutaqin and Drew Jensen. The final publication was carried by Olivier Hallot.

  • Tender to finish transition of LibreOffice to ODF 1.3 (ODF 1.3 delta) (#202010-01)

    The Document Foundation (TDF) is the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free/libre open source (FLOSS) office suite LibreOffice.

    We are looking for an individual or company to finish transition of LibreOffice to ODF 1.3 (ODF 1.3 delta).

  • The Document Foundation Is Looking To Finish ODF 1.3 Support In LibreOffice – Phoronix

    The ODF 1.3 Open Document Format specification was approved by the OASIS Committee at the start of the year and now as we approach the end of the year The Document Foundation is hoping to see ODF 1.3 support completed soon for this leading open-source office suite.

    The Document Foundation is now soliciting bids from developers / third-party firms to finish up the ODF 1.3 document support in LibreOffice.

• CMS

  • News – WordPress 5.6 Beta 1 – WordPress.org

    WordPress 5.6 Beta 1 is now available for testing!

    This software is still in development, so we recommend that you run this version on a test site.

    [...]

    The current target for final release is December 8, 2020. This is just seven weeks away, so your help is needed to ensure this release is tested properly.

• Programming/Development

  • Git’s move away from SHA-1: Version 2.29 brings experimental SHA-256 support

    The latest version of Linus Torvalds’ Git version-control system brings experimental support for the SHA-256 cryptographic hash, moving it away from its reliance on the less safe SHA-1.

    Google and other researchers in 2017 showed that the SHAttered SHA-1 collision attack made it cheaper than previously thought to cause a SHA-1 collision. That is, when two files, in that case two PDFs with different content, were represented by the same SHA-1 hash value.

  • 9 Benefits of Laravel Framework for Cost-Effective Web Development – LinuxTechLab

    The success of any business depends on its ability to work quickly and with high quality. Nowadays, business development is so fast that many companies simply can’t keep up and leave the race.

    Thus, every business needs a framework that can handle the desirable high speed of work. Laravel is among such frameworks. Let’s find out what Laravel is and what the benefits of the Laravel framework for business are.

  • COBOL’s Enduring Usefulness and Digital Transformation

    These days, it’s difficult to imagine anything untouched by disruptive change, and the same applies to our IT systems. Regardless of the current setting, there are certain critical systems that simply cannot afford to fail. These are the systems that deliver too much value for organizations to be ripped out and replaced. In most cases, a business has made substantial investments in their systems over time, including the development of additional IP and processes to support it. These core systems continue to enable real benefits, and ripping them out and starting from scratch has the potential to put critical revenue at risk.

  • New Training Course Provides a Deep Dive Into Node.js Services Development

    The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the availability of a new training course, LFW212 – Node.js Services Development.

  • Qt 6.0 Beta Released

    There is a huge number of things to talk about when it comes to the features and functionality of Qt 6.0, so I will leave this to the multiple detailed blog posts about Qt 6.0. We have already published many blog posts about all the cool things Qt 6.0 provides, and will continue to publish more blog posts throughout the year. In the upcoming Qt World Summit Online we have lined up many interesting talks about Qt 6.0, so please join to hear more.

  • Qt 6.0 Beta Released For This Big Toolkit Update – Phoronix

    Qt 6 drops Qt Script, temporarily removes Qt Multimedia/Bluetooth/Virtual-Keyboard modules until later Qt6 releases, introduces a major overhaul to their graphics architecture to better support Vulkan and other modern graphics APIs like Metal and Direct3D 12, various other 3D improvements, next-generation QML, various tooling improvements, updated host/platform support, and more.

    Going from Qt5 to Qt6 should mean much less breakage and changes compared to the prior Qt4 to Qt5 transition. Qt 6 adoption though likely won’t tick up until well into 2021 or even 2022 with the first long-term support release not being until Qt 6.2 LTS and due to time/resource constraints several modules not being ported in time for Qt 6.0 but coming later.

    More details on today’s Qt 6.0 Beta via Qt.io.

  • Python

    • Getting Started With MicroPython – Real Python

      Are you interested in the Internet of Things, home automation, and connected devices? If so, then you’re in luck! In this course, you’ll learn about MicroPython and the world of electronics hardware. You’ll set up your board, write your code, and deploy a MicroPython project to your own device.

    • Python: Check Index of an Item in a List

      In this article we’ll take a look at examples of how to get the index of an element in a list with the index() function, for finding the first, last, and all occurrences of an element.

    • Test & Code : Python Testing for Software Engineering 135: Speeding up Django Test Suites

      All test suites start fast. But as you grow your set of tests, each test adds a little bit of time to the suite.
      What can you do about it to keep test suites fast?
      Some things, like parallelization, are applicable to many domains.
      What about, for instance, Django applications?
      Well, Adam Johnson has thought about it a lot, and is here to tell us how we can speed up our Django test suites.

    • PyCoder’s Weekly | Issue #443

    • Python Morsels: Variables are pointers

      Variables in Python are not buckets that contain things, but pointers: variables point to objects.

Glück Glück Glück

They say what they want Is law and order — Either pleonasm or oxymoron — Though, really, they only want order By which they mean murder

And some folks believe That a murder of crows Should henceforth be known As crow crews

Hardware

• Intel: replace thermal compound “every few years”

  Thermal compound (sometimes called thermal paste or grease) is applied to fill minuscule gaps in the materials in the heat spreader (the metal covering on top of the processor) and the heatsink. Eliminating these gaps is essential to ensuring efficient heat transfer into the heatsink.

  The thermal compound that is used in your computer generally won’t go bad or degrade in its useful lifespan. It will get displaced over time, however. You’d need higher temperatures than what you’ll typically find in a computer for other failure modes to come into effect.

  The displacement is caused by thermal cycling that results in an effect known as “thermally induced pump-out.” As the components heat up and cool down, the processors’ heat spreader (its metal top) and the heatsink will expand and contract. This effect will, over time, pump the thermal compound out from in between the two metal plates. You can find illustrations and a more technical explanation in the source links below.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • Videoconferencing Malware, Vizom, Discovered [Ed: Wrong. Zoom itself is malware and they admit having back doors.]

      It was probably only a matter of time before the cyber attackers hit videoconferencing software in 2020. Apps such as Zoom had a bona fide boon this year because of the world health crisis. Researchers discovered a new form of malware that uses remote overlay attacks to hit Brazilian bank account holders who use videoconferencing software.

      [...]

      Phishing campaigns spread Vizom, disguising it as Zoom. Once the malware accesses a Windows computer, it hits the AppData directory to start infecting the system. Using DLL hijacking, it tries to force malicious DLLs to be loaded, using names the attackers believe are on the software directories for the Delphi-based variants.

    • Combating abuse in Matrix – without backdoors.

      Last Sunday, the UK Government published an international statement on end-to-end encryption and public safety, co-signed by representatives from the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and Japan. The statement is well written and well worth a read in full, but the central point is this:

      We call on technology companies to [...] enable law enforcement access to content in a readable and usable format where an authorisation is lawfully issued, is necessary and proportionate, and is subject to strong safeguards and oversight.

      In other words, this is an explicit request from seven of the biggest governments in the world to mandate a backdoor in end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication services: a backdoor to which the authorities have a secret key, letting them view communication on demand. This is big news, and is of direct relevance to Matrix as an end-to-end encrypted communication protocol whose core team is currently centred in the UK.

      Now, we sympathise with the authorities’ predicament here: we utterly abhor child abuse, terrorism, fascism and similar – and we did not build Matrix to enable it. However, trying to mitigate abuse with backdoors is, unfortunately, fundamentally flawed.

    • Security updates for Tuesday

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (python-flask-cors), Fedora (kleopatra, nextcloud, and phpMyAdmin), Gentoo (ark, libjpeg-turbo, libraw, and libxml2), openSUSE (bind, kernel, php7, and transfig), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-alt, kernel-rt, rh-python36, virt:8.1 and virt-devel:8.1, and virt:8.2 and virt-devel:8.2), and Ubuntu (collabtive, freetype, linux, linux-hwe, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-oem, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-snapdragon, and linux-oem-osp1, linux-raspi2-5.3).

    • Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 161 released

      The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 161. This version includes the following changes:

      [ Chris Lamb ]
      * Fix failing testsuite: (Closes: #972518)
        - Update testsuite to support OCaml 4.11.1. (Closes: #972518)
        - Reapply Black and bump minimum version to 20.8b1.
      * Move the OCaml tests to the assert_diff helper.
      
      [ Jean-Romain Garnier ]
      * Add support for radare2 as a disassembler.
      
      [ Paul Spooren ]
      * Automatically deploy Docker images in the continuous integration pipeline.
      

    • Google Patches Bug Used in Active Attacks Against Chrome

      Google has discovered and patched a serious vulnerability in Chrome that attackers are actively exploiting at the moment.
      The bug is a high-severity heap buffer overflow in FreeType, a free font-rendering engine that Chrome, among many other projects, uses. A member of Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research team discovered the vulnerability and subsequently found that attackers were already exploiting it. Google patched the flaw in Chrome 86.0.4240.111 for desktop browsers and the maintainers of the FreeType Project pushed out an emergency release of the library to fix it, as well.
      “I’ve just fixed a heap buffer overflow that can happen for some malformed .ttf files with PNG sbit glyphs. It seems that this vulnerability gets already actively used in the wild, so I ask all users to apply the corresponding commit as soon as possible,” Werner Lemberg, one of the original authors of the FreeType, said in an email to the FreeType announcement mailing list.

    • FreeType 2.10.4 Rushed Out As Emergency Security Release

      The FreeType text rendering library is out with version 2.10.4 today as an important security update.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Migrating away from Google services

        My inbox tells me I started using GMail around 2004. The oldest mail I can find in my archive is from 16 years ago. After Gmail, Google Photos, Keep, Docs, Drive and Fit followed.

        I have reasons to stop. Whether your reasons are privacy, the U.S. as a data harbor, GMail becoming sluggish, karma for killing Inbox, fear about getting your account locked, or you found a better email provider, the objective of this post is not to convince you about my reasons but to help you with a migration plan and showing you alternatives.

        Breaking the dependency on Google services is really hard. This dependency was a showstopper and motivator at the same time. If you are locked-in at this level, something is wrong.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Hawkins Files Communications Act Violation with FCC to Order Rush Limbaugh to Provide 2 hours of Equal Time

  Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for President, has filed a formal complaint under the Communications Act seeking equal time on the syndicated radio show of Rush Limbaugh.

  Rush Limbaugh conducted a 2-hour “radio rally” for Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump on The Rush Limbaugh Show.

  Hawkins had previously contact Mr. Limbaugh seeking equal time but has not received a response.

  Hawkins said he wants equal time to speak to Limbaugh listeners because many live in media markets where the only news/talk commercial radio station features arch-conservative programming 24 hours a day.

  “Limbaugh’s audience deserves to understand that it is me, not Biden, who is the democratic socialist in this race. It is me, not Biden, who supports Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Limbaugh’s listeners also deserve to hear my responses to Trump’s claims about Covid-19, so-called fake news, mail-in ballots, Black Lives Matter, immigration, fracking, and the economy,” said Hawkins.

• Howie Hawkins To Campaign with independent Green Senate candidate Lisa Savage in Maine on Wednesday

  U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins will be in Maine on Wednesday and will have some availability for press interviews alongside independent Green U.S. Senate candidate Lisa Savage.

  Hawkins, and his running mate Angela Walker, are on the ballot in 30 states representing 73% of voters and 381 electoral votes. Including the other states where they are qualified write-in candidates, 96% of Americans, representing 514 of the total of 538 electoral votes, will be able to vote for the Hawkins/Walker Green Party ticket.

  Most significantly, Maine is awarding its electoral votes this election based on ranked-choice voting, which ensures voters can cast ballots for the candidate they like most without invoking the myth a third-party candidate is “spoiling” an electoral win for a corporate-party candidate.

  “There are no states safe from the predatory corporate duopoly,” Hawkins said. “Every state is a battleground. Every state is under economic and environmental assault from the two governing parties. Maine is no exception and I’m excited to be campaigning along with Lisa on platforms that Mainers deserve and need.”

• Frank Morano’s exclusive interview with Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins – 77 WABC

• Why Vote Green? – The Jimmy Dore Show

Civil Rights/Policing

• The New Humanitarian | Lake Van: An overlooked and deadly migration route to Turkey and Europe

  Numbers of Afghans entering Turkey from Iran and then trying to reach Greece have soared in recent years, but many don’t survive the journey.

  [...]

  During that time, Turkey’s policies towards people fleeing conflict, especially Afghans, have hardened. As the number of Afghans crossing the border from Iran increased, Turkey cut back on protections and accelerated efforts to apprehend and deport those entering irregularly. In 2019, the Turkish government deported nearly 23,000 Afghans from the country, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA.

  Early on, travel restrictions put in place due to the coronavirus appeared to reduce the number of people entering Turkey irregularly. But seven months on, the pandemic is worsening the problems that push people to migrate. The economic crisis in Iran has only intensified, and the head of the UN’s migration agency, IOM, in Afghanistan has warned that COVID-19-induced lockdowns have “amplified the effects of the conflict”.

• Abbie Hoffman: the Man at Gate 5

  Abbie Hoffman was a co-founder of the Youth International Party – or Yippies – whose semi-serious political antics dotted the political landscape of the sixties.

  And Hoffman was a co-defendant in the Chicago 7 trial, one of the most important political trials of the sixties. Originally there were eight defendants, but Black Panther Bobby Seale’s trial was severed after Seale repeatedly disrupted proceedings when he wasn’t allowed to choose his own lawyer, and after he was bound to a chair and gagged in the courtroom.

Monopolies

• Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google For Violating Antitrust Laws

  oday, the Department of Justice — along with eleven state Attorneys General — filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop Google from unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets and to remedy the competitive harms. The participating state Attorneys General offices represent Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas.

  “Today, millions of Americans rely on the Internet and online platforms for their daily lives. Competition in this industry is vitally important, which is why today’s challenge against Google — the gatekeeper of the Internet — for violating antitrust laws is a monumental case both for the Department of Justice and for the American people,” said Attorney General William Barr. “Since my confirmation, I have prioritized the Department’s review of online market-leading platforms to ensure that our technology industries remain competitive. This lawsuit strikes at the heart of Google’s grip over the internet for millions of American consumers, advertisers, small businesses and entrepreneurs beholden to an unlawful monopolist.”

• Mozilla Reaction to U.S. v. Google

  Like millions of everyday internet users, we share concerns about how Big Tech’s growing power can deter innovation and reduce consumer choice. We believe that scrutiny of these issues is healthy, and critical if we’re going to build a better internet. We also know from firsthand experience there is no overnight solution to these complex issues. Mozilla’s origins are closely tied to the last major antitrust case against Microsoft in the nineties.

  In this new lawsuit, the DOJ referenced Google’s search agreement with Mozilla as one example of Google’s monopolization of the search engine market in the United States. Small and independent companies such as Mozilla thrive by innovating, disrupting and providing users with industry leading features and services in areas like search. The ultimate outcomes of an antitrust lawsuit should not cause collateral damage to the very organizations – like Mozilla – best positioned to drive competition and protect the interests of consumers on the web.

• DOJ May Force Google To Sell Chrome To Settle Antitrust Case: Report

  he U.S. Department of Justice may force Google to sell its Chrome browser. The development came after the US Congress’ antitrust report on big tech companies.

  It is also told that the DOJ is targeting Google’s advertising business as well. The prosecutors aim at breaking Google’s monopoly on the $162 billion digital advertising market. Politico reported the development via anonymous sources.

• The Evolution of IP Management [Ed: Admitting patents are just fences and not innovation as it's all about monopoly and making competition a crime]

  Patents were either used to build a fence around a product or seek to avoid stepping into another firm’s fenced territory. This made the invalidation of patents or the filing of oppositions to someone else’s patents a principal activity of patent professionals.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • When the State is an Involuntary Plaintiff[Ed: Dennis Crouch is wrong. Patents are not "rights".]

      The usual rule is that a patent infringement lawsuit cannot proceed unless the patentee — i.e., the patent owner — is a plaintiff. And, in a normal lawsuit being a plaintiff is voluntary business. However, our rules of civil procedure do also call for “involuntary plaintiffs.”

      [...]

      35 U.S.C. 281. The petition mentions that on remand it will be able to raise this issue and dismiss the case since Gensetix is not a “patentee.” The FedCir has held that exclusive assignees can be considered a patentee if they have “all substantial rights” to the patent. In this case, Gensetix originally argued that it had all substantial rights, but now admits that it does not. Thus on remand this may become a standing issue.

Audiocasts/Shows

• I Think I Like AppImages More Than Snaps And Flatpaks – YouTube

  AppImages are self-contained applications which can simply be downloaded, made executable, and t run on almost any GNU/Linux distribution. There ease-of-use has won me over.

• Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 overview | Simplicity and Elegance in one package – YouTube

  In this video, I am going to show an overview of Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• Vim Tabs: My Workflow Desperately Needed These – YouTube

  I’ve been using vim as my primary text editor for ages and somhow I had just never bothered to actually try out the tab system build into this editor vim has had tabs forever but I just never bothered to see whether they would suit my workflow.

• We need to talk about KDE Plasma 5.20. Spoiler: you should give KDE another shot. – YouTube

  KDE Plasma has a new release out, Plasma 5.20. We need to talk about this, and spoilers: even if you hated KDE before, you should give it another shot.

Kernel Space

• OpenZFS 2.0-RC4 Released With More Fixes, Linux 5.9 Support – Phoronix

  The fourth release candidate of OpenZFS 2.0 is now available for testing of this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently for Linux and FreeBSD platforms.

  OpenZFS 2.0 is a big update for this project in that it mainlines FreeBSD support, Zstd file-system compression is a new option, various performance improvements, sequential resilvering, fast clone deletion, persistent L2ARC, and a number of other changes compared to the state of the current ZFSOnLinux 0.8 stable series.

• Linux 5.10 FUSE To Allow Faster Performance With VirtIO-FS – Phoronix

  The FUSE implementation for supporting file-systems in user-space is seeing important kernel work merged for Linux 5.10.

  The most prominent change with FUSE in Linux 5.10 is a “DAX” mode for allowing direct access to the host page cache. Making use of this direct access support for the host page cache is the VirtIO-FS file-system for sharing files/folders with virtualized guests.

  By allowing direct access to the host page cache, there is no longer any double caching and most I/O operations should be significantly faster.

• Check out the Oracle talks at KVM Forum 2020

  The annual KVM forum conference is next week. It brings together the world’s leading experts on Linux virtualization technology to present their latest work. The conference is virtual this year, with live attendance from October 28-30, or check out the recordings once they are available! https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kvm-forum.

  We have a good number of engineers from the Oracle Linux kernel development team who will be presenting their work at the forum.

  Alexandre Chartre presents KVM Address Space Isolation, a kernel enhancement that provides a separate kernel address space for KVM when running virtual machines. This provides an extra level of protection against speculative execution exploits, improving security for all, and also was a hot topic at the Linux Plumbers Conference earlier this year.

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel Lands A Hefty Tiger Lake Graphics Optimization – Phoronix

    From my Tiger Lake testing so far with the Core i7 1165G7, the “Gen12″ Xe Graphics have been quite compelling with a very nice upgrade over Gen11 and especially obvious win over the very common still Gen9 graphics. With Mesa 20.3, another measurable performance is on the way for the Intel Vulkan driver with Tiger Lake.

    For Tiger Lake (and theoretically Rocket Lake as well), a new and significant optimization landed today in Mesa 20.3-devel. The optimization applies for Intel Gen12 graphics except for discrete/DG1 graphics.

  • Vulkan Specification Version 1.2.158 Brings Two New Extensions

    Version 1.2.158 of the Vulkan specification introduces VK_KHR_fragment_shading_rate that lets developers change the rate at which fragments are shaded on a per-region, per-primitive or per-draw basis and VK_KHR_shader_terminate_invocation which, together with the previously introduced VK_EXT_shader_demote_to_helper_invocation extension, lets developers do a much more specific OpKill.

  • Open-Source RADV Vulkan Driver Is Seeing Work To Allow Building It On Windows – Phoronix

    An independent party has slowly begun merging patches into mainline Mesa for allowing the open-source Radeon Vulkan driver “RADV” to build on Microsoft Windows.

    AMD is not behind this effort nor Valve but has been worked on in recent months for making Mesa’s Radeon Vulkan driver code compatible with Windows. James Park of a little known “Lag Free Games” has been behind this initiative to bringing it to Windows and seemingly only explaining in private to upstream Mesa developers his motivations for doing so.

    RADV as a reminder is the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver started out by David Airlie of Red Hat and Bas Nieuwenhuizen of Google in the time while waiting for AMD to open-source their Vulkan driver. AMD ultimately provided “AMDVLK” as their official open-source Vulkan driver derived from their internal Vulkan driver sources and built against the AMDGPU LLVM compiler back-end.

Benchmarks

• Further Exploring The Intel Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 Performance On Ubuntu Linux

  Last week I published initial benchmarks of the Intel Core i7 1165G7 “Tiger Lake” performance on Linux with the Dell XPS 13 9310 Developer Edition laptop. Of most surprise from those preliminary Linux figures were finding that for some single-threaded workloads the performance was actually worse than the previous generation Ice Lake. Since then I’ve been running more tests around the clock with some interesting discoveries to note today. It is possible to enhance the single-threaded performance so it’s performing better than Ice Lake as would be expected, but comes with lowering the multi-threaded performance compared to the results shared last week.

Applications

• Rdiff-backup – A Local and Remote Backup Tool for Linux

  The Rdiff-backup tool is a simple yet powerful backup tool that can be used to back up data either locally or remotely. It’s a cross-platform tool written in python that works on both Linux, macOS and even FreeBSD. Rdiff-backup, just like rsync, is mostly a reverse incremental backup tool that updates the differences from the previous backup to the next one and ensures that you get the latest backup. Additionally, you can easily restore the backup and access your files. In this guide, you will learn how to install Rdiff-backup – A local and remote backup tool for Linux.

  The Rdiff-backup tool uses the SSH protocol to back up directories over the network. This provides a secure safe and secure transfer of data thanks to the SSH protocol. The remote system ends up with a replica of the source directory and subsequent backups are synced incrementally. Without much further ado, let’s dive in and see how the tool is used.

Instructionals/Technical

• Rickroll in the Terminal – CubicleNate’s Techpad

  This is a mostly useless blathering but since I got a good laugh out of it, I wanted to index this bit of fun and share it because that is what you do, right? Share nonsense on the Internet? Isn’t that why they invented the thing?

  I was watching “Adrian’s Digital Basement” on YouTube and caught site of a device that had a repeating Rickroll animation. At first, I couldn’t remember what it was called and nearly hurt my thinking muscle in trying to remember it. After a bit of searching, I found a YouTube video of the actual music video of the “RickRoll”. So then I thought, I wonder if someone made this to run in the terminal. Sure enough, that is a thing.

• How to Import and Export Bookmarks in Google Chrome – Make Tech Easier

  Do you frequently use browser bookmarks to save important information? Learn how you can export and import bookmarks in Google Chrome.

• How to Install Eclipse IDE on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux – Linux Concept

  Eclipse is the most famous and widely used Java integrated development environment (IDE). It supports many plugins to enhance the capabilities to use for other programming language development environments such as PHP, C++, and JavaScript.

  You can install Eclipse IDE using your Ubuntu repositories, but the Ubuntu repositories’ installation package is outdated. If you want to use the latest Eclipse IDE package on your Ubuntu 20.04 system, use a snappy packaging system.

• How to Install Guacamole to Access Your Computers from Anywhere in Ubuntu

  Apache Guacamole is a clientless open-source web-based gateway that provides remote access to servers and PCs via a web browser using SSH, VNC, and RDP protocols.

• How to Boost the Productivity with Sublime Text Snippets

  Snippets are a popular programming feature/functionality that ships with many modern text editors or IDE editors that can be reused whenever required.

• How to install TensorFlow Python Machine Learning Library on CentOS 8

  TensorFlow is an important open-source library for machine learning that is built by Google. It can run on the GPU as well as on the CPU of different devices. TensorFlow is used by many organizations, including PayPal, Intel, Twitter, Lenovo, and Airbus. It can be installed as a Docker container, or in a virtual environment of Python, or with Anaconda.

  In this article, you will learn how to install the popular python machine learning library TensorFlow on CentOS 8 using a python virtual environment.

• Web of Trust, Part 2: Tutorial – Fedora Magazine

  Get hands-on with the web of trust with a step-by-step guide to building and verifying a Flatpak.

  [...]

  For this tutorial, you’ll use Flatpak and the Flathub repository. Flatpak is intentionally well-suited for making verifiable rebuilds, which is one of the tenets of the Web of Trust. It’s easier to work with since it doesn’t require users to download independent development packages. Flatpak also uses techniques to prevent in‑flight tampering, using hashes to validate its read‑only state. As far as the Web of Trust is concerned, Flatpak is the future.

  For this guide, you use Remmina, but this guide generally applies to every application you use. It’s also not exclusive to Flatpak, and the general steps also apply to Fedora’s repositories. In fact, if you’re currently reading this article on Debian or Arch, you can still follow the instructions. If you want to follow along using traditional RPM repositories, make sure to check out this article.

• How to install Zorin OS 15.3

  The latest release of Zorin OS has hit the internet. The new release is known as Zorin OS 15.3, and it is packed with the latest features and improvements. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install a fresh copy of Zorin OS 15.3!

  Please note that to use Zorin OS 15.3, you must have a computer with a decently fast CPU, at least 20 GB of hard drive storage, and at least 1 GB of RAM.

• Introduction to using firewalld on Oracle Linux 8

  This video provides an introduction to using the firewalld utility.

  For additional videos on Oracle Linux check out oracle.com/goto/oraclelinuxlearning.

• How to Install pip on Ubuntu 20.04 – RoseHosting

  We’ll show you how to install the pip package manager for both Python 3 and Python 2 on an Ubuntu 20.04 VPS.

• How To Install Nextcloud on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nextcloud on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Nextcloud is an open source self-hosted file sync and share application (Calendar, Contacts, Documents, Email, and more).

• How to install and use Slimbook Battery Saver on Ubuntu | FOSS Linux

  Linux systems can be optimized into having longer battery usage, courtesy of Slimbook battery saver. Slimbook battery saver is an open-source tool which was created by the Slimbook hardware manufacturer (Manufactures and sells laptops running on Linux based operating systems). It is effective in GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, Unity, and MATE desktop environment.

• How to install LibreOffice 7 on Deepin 20 – YouTube

  In this video, we are looking at how to install LibreOffice 7 on Deepin 20.

• How to install Atom Text Editor on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install Atom text editor 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 fix: ‘cannot open shared object file : No such file or directory’ on Ubuntu

  Sometimes, when you try to install a program or a package from its source code, you might end up getting an error which looks like :

  “error while loading shared libraries: cannot open shared object file No such file or directory”

• Secure Azure blobs pre-signing in Elixir

• How to Install pip on Ubuntu 20.04 – RoseHosting

  We’ll show you how to install the pip package manager for both Python 3 and Python 2 on an Ubuntu 20.04 VPS.

  [...]

  Both Python 2 or Python 3 can be installed on Ubuntu 20.04. However, with Ubuntu 20.04, the default version is Python 3. If for some reason you need Python 2 along with its version of pip, don’t worry, we’re covering that in this tutorial as well.

  Pip is not installed by default on Ubuntu – however, the installation is quite quick and simple. Let’s start with the installation.

• SSH 2FA with Google Authenticator and Yubikey – anarcat

  About a lifetime ago (5 years), I wrote a tutorial on how to configure my Yubikey for OpenPGP signing, SSH authentication and SSH 2FA. In there, I used the libpam-oath PAM plugin for authentication, but it turns out that had too many problems: users couldn’t edit their own 2FA tokens and I had to patch it to avoid forcing 2FA on all users. The latter was merged in the Debian package, but never upstream, and the former was never fixed at all. So I started looking at alternatives and found the Google Authenticator libpam plugin. A priori, it’s designed to work with phones and the Google Authenticator app, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work with hardware tokens like the Yubikey. Both use the standard HOTP protocol so it should “just work”.

Games

• Minesweeper-inspired roguelite DemonCrawl has a big free Halloween update and event live | GamingOnLinux

  I’m not sure what I’m scared of more, creepy crawly Halloween stuff or spending even more time playing DemonCrawl with the latest free expansion. With gameplay very much inspired by the classic Minesweeper, it’s got that horrible “one more turn” feeling. It’s so easy to get into too but devilishly difficult to actually get through.

  DemonCrawl needs little in the way of an introduction really. It’s Minesweeper on steroids, with some rogue-lite / RPG flavour thrown into it to create a great mix. Imagine each board being an area your character is travelling through, complete with chests to find, money to grab and monsters.

• Noir roleplaying detective adventure Backbone is ‘content complete’ with a new trailer | GamingOnLinux

  With a free Prologue available to try out right now, developer EggNut has announced that Backbone is pretty much content complete.

  Quite exciting, as Backbone: Prologue which arrived on Linux officially back in October 2019 has been reviewed exceptionally well by users on Steam. That’s really encouraging on what to expect from the full game when it releases next year. The developer said in the recent announcement that, amongst other things, “Backbone is almost done” and it sounds like they don’t have much left to do apart from a big polishing pass on it.

• Need a scary story-rich adventure novel for Halloween? Try out Omen Exitio: Plague | GamingOnLinux

  Omen Exitio: Plague appears to be a title we’ve never even mentioned here on GOL which is surprising as it looks great, it supports Linux and users enjoy it. Released back in 2018, Omen Exitio: Plague is a visual novel choice-based adventure set in H.P. Lovecraft’s otherworldy universe, so you can expect all sorts of nasty creatures to appear.

  Italian developer Tiny Bull Studios say it’s styled very much like gamebooks of the ’80s and ’90s, and while it has Lovecraft themes the overall plot and characters are original and what happens is guided by your choices. You could say it’s a choose your own adventure, although we don’t want to get sued by Chooseco now do we.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Debian-Based DebEX Linux Now Ships with GNOME 3.38 and Linux Kernel 5.9

    Based on the Debian Testing repositories, where the development of the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” operating system series takes place, the new DebEX Linux release is here with goodies that no other live Linux distribution currently offers.

    For starters, the developer removed the lightweight MATE desktop environment, which was used in previous DebEX versions, and replaced it with the latest GNOME 3.38 desktop environment. So that right there might be a very good reason for many wanting to try GNOME 3.38 on Debian GNU/Linux to download this distro.

  • libsecret is accepting Outreachy interns as well – Daiki Ueno

    libsecret is a library that allows applications to store/retrieve user secrets (typically passwords). While it usually works as a client against a separate D-Bus service, it can also use a local file as database. The project is about refactoring the file database so it can easily gain more advanced features like hardware-based security, etc. That might sound intimidating as it touches cryptography, but don’t worry and reach out to us if you are interested

Distributions

• BSD

  • The OpenBSD Project’s 25th Anniversary

    We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 6.8. This day marks the OpenBSD project’s 25th anniversary. As we celebrate our 49th release, we remain proud of OpenBSD’s record of more than twenty years with only two remote holes in the default install.

  • Google Summer of Code 2020: [Final Report] Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD

    This report was written by Ayushu Sharma as part of Google Summer of Code 2020.

    This post is a follow up of the first report and second report. Post summarizes the work done during the third and final coding period for the Google Summer of Code (GSoc’20) project – Enhance Syzkaller support for NetBSD

• IBM/Red Hat and Oracle

  • Get started with Node.js 14 on Red Hat OpenShift – Red Hat Developer

    In April, the Node.js development team released Node.js 14. This major version release, code-named Fermium, will become a long-term support (LTS) release in October 2020.

    Node.js 14 incorporates improvements and new features from the V8 8.1 JavaScript engine. I’ll introduce two of them: Optional chaining and the nullish coalescing operator. I will also show you how to deploy Node.js 14 on Red Hat OpenShift. See the end of the article for a list of resources for learning more about improvements and new features in Node.js 14.

  • Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) IP address changing on October 30, 2020

    Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) will be undergoing planned maintenance beginning on October 30th 2020 starting at 6pm Pacific time. This planned maintenance event is scheduled to be completed by 10pm Pacific time on the same date. During this planned maintenance event, the content delivery component of the Unbreakable Linux Network will move to a new IP address.

  • IBM, ServiceNow Join Hands For New Integrated Solution

  • Join IBM and Red Hat at NodeConf – IBM Developer

    NodeConf remote is coming November 2-6. While the conference will be a bit different this year with everyone remote, it will continue to be a premier showcase and reunion of the Node community.

    IBM is excited to return as a sponsor and to work with Red Hat as our partner in order to provide updates through speaking sessions and workshops. In this blog post, you will find a detailed list of sessions and workshops where you can learn from and interact with Node.js developers and community leaders from Red Hat and IBM.

    We also look forward to talking to you at the Red Hat and IBM booths which are a great opportunity to catch up on what our Node.js team is up to as well as how Red Hat and IBM can help you succeed in your Node.js deployments.

    Make sure to join our community members and leaders through these talks and workshops.

• Debian Family

  • Steve Kemp: Offsite-monitoring, from my desktop.

    I’ve been hosting my services with Hetzner (cloud) recently, and their service is generally pretty good. Unfortunately I’ve started to see an increasing number of false-alarms. I’d have a server in Germany, with the monitoring machine in Helsinki (coincidentally where I live!). For the past month I’ve started to get pinged with a failure every three/four days on average, “service down – dns failed”, or “service down – timeout”. When the notice would wake me up I’d go check and it would be fine, it was a very transient failure.

    To be honest the reason for this is my monitoring is just too damn aggressive, I like to be alerted immediately in case something is wrong. That means if a single test fails I get an alert, as rather than only if a test failed for something more reasonable like three+ consecutive failures.

    I’m experimenting with monitoring in a less aggressive fashion, from my home desktop. Since my monitoring tool is a single self-contained golang binary, and it is already packaged as a docker-based container deployment was trivial. I did a little work writing an agent to receive failure-notices, and ping me via telegram – instead of the previous approach where I had an online status-page which I could view via my mobile, and alerts via pushover.

    So far it looks good. I’ve tweaked the monitoring to setup a timeout of 15 seconds, instead of 5, and I’ve configured it to only alert me if there is an outage which lasts for >= 2 consecutive failures. I guess the TLDR is I now do offsite monitoring .. from my house, rather than from a different region.

    The only real reason to write this post was mostly to say that the process of writing a trivial “notify me” gateway to interface with telegram was nice and straightforward, and to remind myself that transient failures are way more common than we expect.

  • Video Decoding « etbe – Russell Coker

    I’ve had a saga of getting 4K monitors to work well. My latest issue has been video playing, the dreaded mplayer error about the system being too slow. My previous post about 4K was about using DisplayPort to get more than 30Hz scan rate at 4K [1]. I now have a nice 60Hz scan rate which makes WW2 documentaries display nicely among other things.

    But when running a 4K monitor on a 3.3GHz i5-2500 quad-core CPU I can’t get a FullHD video to display properly. Part of the process of decoding the video and scaling it to 4K resolution is too slow, so action scenes in movies lag. When running a 2560*1440 monitor on a 2.4GHz E5-2440 hex-core CPU with the mplayer option “-lavdopts threads=3” everything is great (but it fails if mplayer is run with no parameters). In doing tests with apparent performance it seemed that the E5-2440 CPU gains more from the threaded mplayer code than the i5-2500, maybe the E5-2440 is more designed for server use (it’s in a Dell PowerEdge T320 while the i5-2500 is in a random white-box system) or maybe it’s just because it’s newer. I haven’t tested whether the i5-2500 system could perform adequately at 2560*1440 resolution.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Unity Desktop Review: Good for the Nostalgic Ubuntu Users

    Continuing with our series of Linux Desktop Environment reviews, we’re going back to a classic. The Unity is just as much a blast from the past as MATE. This review covers the Unity Desktop: first impressions, the user experience, some notable features, and some recommendations on who should use it.

    When I first boot into Unity, I’m struck by how much it looks like GNOME and Budgie. This makes sense, as Unity is a graphical shell that sits on top of the GNOME Desktop Environment (rather than GNOME Shell), and it does offer some separate features that are different than GNOME Shell.

  • Trisquel GNU/Linux 9.0 “Etiona” Released: A 100% Free Operating System

    Trisquel GNU/Linux is one of the few operating systems endorsed and listed under “Free GNU/Linux Distributions” by the Free Software Foundation. This is because Trisquel is a 100% free operating system that contains only free software with Linux-libre kernel.

    Recently, after more than two years of development, a new version, Trisquel 9.0 “Etiona,” has been released with long-term support (LTS) for home users, small enterprises, and educational centers.

    Trisquel GNU/Linux 9.0 is based on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS with all proprietary software and firmware removed from the codebase, and all packages up-to-date with long-term-support updates and security patches.

    Since Trisquel has “Abrowser” as the default web browser, it now includes all the latest updates from the upstream Mozilla Firefox. In addition, Trisquel 9.0 has also added backports to provide extended hardware support, the latest software like LibreOffice, and other utilities.

  • Trisquel GNU/Linux 9.0 Is Here for Those Who Seek 100% Freedom for Their PCs

    Trisquel GNU/Linux 9.0 is based on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS (Bionic Beaver) and it’s powered by the GNU Linux-libre kernel. To offer users a 100% free operating system, it uses a version of Ubuntu’s 4.15 kernel that doesn’t contain any proprietary code.

    Of course, this release updates all packages to their latest versions, and includes backports to provide users with top-notch hardware support. Also, Trisquel’s default web browser Abrowser, a version of Mozilla’s popular Firefox web browser that respects the freedom and privacy of users, received a major update, based on Firefox 81.

  • Trisquel GNU/Linux: Trisquel 9.0 “Etiona” release announcement, and 10.0 plans

    They say that good things come to those who wait, and for this release there has been a lot of waiting but also plenty of good things. Trisquel 9.0, codename “Etiona” is our most polished release yet, thanks to the contribution of a very committed team of volunteers.

    [...]

    Despite the longer than usual release time, all packages are fully up to date with long-term-support updates and security patches. The default web browser “Abrowser”, our freedom and privacy respecting take on Mozilla’s browser, provides the latest updates from upstream for a great browsing experience. Backports provide extended hardware support and other goodies like a newer LibreOffice and many other utilities.

    Special thanks (in no particular order, and probably forgetting a few!) to adfeno, Ark74, leny2010, chaosmonk, davidpgil, dctrud, daroal, proninyaroslav, sudoman, a_slacker_here, rms, bill-auger, pabloyoyoista, kpengboy, pikurasa, mtsio, bandali, thomzane, jxself, valessio, DiivaaD, DNS, Eighth_Doctor, iank, fredd, freekurt, aklis, gnutastyc, calher, CharlieBrown, satellit, charh, fvnines, pehjota, and the whole Trisquel community, for your contributions, support, ideas and continuous encouragement.

  • Trisquel 9.0 Released – Powered By The Linux 4.15 Kernel

    Trisquel 9.0 has been released as one of the few Linux distributions approved by the Free Software Foundation.

    Trisquel 9.0 is now the latest version of this 13 year old operating system tracking Ubuntu/Debian while being modified to ensure non-free code is removed among other steps to receive praise from the FSF and Richard Stallman for being one of the few “pure” GNU/Linux platforms.

    Trisquel 9.0 is based on the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS packages but with various de-blobbing and changes to ensure everything is 100% open-source and compliant with the Free Software Foundation recommendations for code freedom. There is also modifications like using “Abrowser” built off the Firefox sources but with more user privacy minded changes.

  • Pop!_OS 20.04 Review: The Best Ubuntu-based Distro!

    The Linux distro world is getting better each day, thanks to developers’ immense dedication. The OS sure has come a long way from people calling it “Complex to use” to “User/Beginner Friendly.” One of the best beginner-friendly distros recommended by almost everyone is Ubuntu. Another distro that has recently taken the Linux universe by storm with its new release is Pop!_OS 20.04; it is developed by System 76, a company that manufactures Laptops and ships them with Linux.

    Pop!_OS is a distro based on Ubuntu that has gained popularity lately. After using it extensively for three weeks, it has now become one of my favorite distros of all time. Here’s my review of the same.

  • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 653

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 653 for the week of October 11 – 17, 2020. The full version of this issue is available here.

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi CM4 launches with smaller footprint, quad -A72 CPU, and optional WiFi

  The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 starts at $25 with the same quad -A72 SoC as the RPi 4 plus up to 8GB RAM and 32GB eMMC, optional 802.11ac, and support for dual 4K HDMI, GbE, and PCIe 2.0.

  The Raspberry Pi Foundation is getting ahead of itself. First, there was the surprise Raspberry Pi 4 Model B launch in June 2019 after hints about a 2020 launch, followed by a surprise 8GB RAM RPi 4 model in May of this year. Now, after indications that the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) would not arrive until 2021, the module has launched starting at the same $25 price, but with up to 8GB RAM and the same Broadcom BCM2711 SoC with 4x 1.5GHz Cortex-A72 cores found on the RPi 4. Earlier Compute Modules topped out at 1GB LPDDR2.

• Customizable carrier boards showcase Raspberry Pi CM4

  Gumstix has launched six carriers featuring the Raspberry Pi CM4, some of which offer Google’s Edge TPU. A CM4 Dev Board is joined by boards for robotics, Pixhawk drones, PoE smart imaging, and conversion to CM3-based carriers.

  Long-time embedded Linux vendor Gumstix, which is now owned by Altium, has jumped all over the new Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) with a sextet of carrier boards that can be customized by the Geppetto online development service. Two of the boards are equipped with Google’s Edge TPU AI accelerator.

• Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 on sale now from $25

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • 3 ways to improve your open hardware documentation

    If you have a project you haven’t got around to open sourcing yet, or your existing documentation could use a makeover, now is the time! Clear documentation helps potential users find, build, and potentially contribute back to your project. Adding pictures, repairing broken links, and uploading auxiliary design files are all ways of making your project more accessible.

    When publishing your documentation, you’ll need to specify a license since copyright applies automatically. A license such as one from Creative Commons will grant others the freedom to distribute and modify your documentation. In order to comply with the community definition of open source hardware, the license must not have a Non-Commercial or No-Derivatives clause.

    Publishing your documentation can also prevent future patents by establishing prior art. If someone else applies for a patent on a similar design, your documentation could help establish your work as the original design and prevent the patent from being granted.

  • Arduino Blog » S.H.I.E.L.D. yourself from unwanted mic and camera access

    If you haven’t heard, a lot of us are working from home these days, making mic and camera discipline more important than ever. To help avoid unwanted recording, Tovi Levis created the S.H.I.E.L.D. device, which stands for Software and Hardware for Invisible Eavesdroppers and Lurkers Detection.

    This amply-named project uses an Arduino Uno to control a pair of WS2812B lights mounted to the top of your computer monitor. Lights shine through acrylic icons of a microphone and camera, with red indicating “on” and green for “off” and safe. There is also a buzzer to note status changes.

  • Arduino Blog » Tell time and temperature with sliding numbers

    While dial clocks are functional and well-understood, for something a bit more uniquely styled, Luuk Esselbrugge has created a 3D-printed timekeeping unit with four rows of sliding numbers.

    As seen here, each digit moves up and down to show the appropriate hour and minutes under the power of a stepper. A rack system is integrated into the number-slider itself, with a printed driving gear affixed to the small motor. A WS2812B LED shines through the proper number on display, with red representing time and green indicating that it’s instead in temperature mode.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Best Android Apps 2020 | Android Central

  • GravityRAT Spyware Targets Android & MacOS in India

  • Spyware found in Android applications: Kaspersky

  • Redmi K30 now getting its first MIUI 12 (Android 11) beta update

  • How to download GTA Liberty City Stories on Android devices: Step-by-step guide and tips

  • YouTube on Android will not let you tap on the video’s progress bar to skip, similar to iOS

  • Google Assistant Driving Mode appears to be coming to Android at last

  • Pixel 4a 5G review: Buy this instead of the Pixel 5

  • Top 15 best adventure games for Android

  • Top 5 Free Apps To Hide Photos, Videos On Android

  • Humax launches first Android TV-powered Freeview Play recorder

  • Humax’s AURA is the first Android 4K PVR with Freeview Play

  • OPPO ColorOS 8 update (Android 11) status

  • How to Install Apps and Games on Android TV

  • How to Set Reminder in Messages App on Android

  • Pokemon Go: How to Fix the Snapshot Bug on Android

  • Android Vs iOS: Which Mobile OS is Best?

  • Android’s new partnership Advances the third-party security system

  • Deals: Anker Android accessories from $11, V-MODA wireless headphones, more

  • Android Studio 4.1 Includes New Database Inspector, Integrated Emulator, TensorFlow Lite Bindings

  • First Look: Manjaro ARM Beta 1 with Phosh on the PinePhone

    The next version of the PinePhone to ship will be the Manjaro Community Edition version which is currently up for pre-order for $150 and up. But if you already have a PinePhone, you can try out the Manjaro software that will be shipping with that phone.

    Manjaro ARM Beta1 with Phosh is now available for download, and while it’s still a little rough around the edges, it’s already one of the most polished operating systems available for the PinePhone.

    [...]

    There’s also a version of the Nemo file manager, calculator and calendar apps, document and image viewers, a text editor, a maps application with support for GPS location and data from OpenStreeMap, and utilities for analyzing system resource and power usage, among other things.

    The Software app is also more functional, allowing you to browse and search for applications and install a variety of packages. Some of the Not every app I installed was actually able to run, but I was able to install and run a couple of programs and simple games.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• How should open source projects handle copyright notices?

  Copyright notices in source code are inconsistently applied and poorly maintained. As a result, such notices are poor sources of information. Should more resources be applied to the maintenance of copyright notices? No.

  Copyright notices are one-line strings that typically include the word “Copyright” (or some substitute, like ©), a name (usually a person or company), and a year.

  In this article, I am not focusing on licenses or license notices (which may sometimes include a copyright notice). My suggestion for low prioritization of investment in copyright notice maintenance does NOT apply to license information. License information should be clearly presented and maintained to be accurate. If you invite others to take and do something with your software, please make the permissions that are being given clear by presenting and maintaining clear license information.

• 8 Best Free and Open Source PDF Development Libraries

  Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. The format includes a subset of the PostScript page description programming language, a font-embedding system, and a structural storage system.

  Over the years PDF has become an extremely important file format. If you want to create documents that can be viewed under all major operating systems, PDF is the ticket, as it maintains the overall look and feel of documents regardless of what platform they are viewed under.

  There is a large range of PDF-related software available with many different applications available that can both output to and open files. Many open source software save documents to this format such as LibreOffice and GIMP.

• Events

  • TSDgeos’ blog: Akademy-es call for papers expanded to October 27

    This year Akademy-es is a bit special since it is happening in the Internet so you don’t need to travel to Spain to participate.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 82 is Out with New Sync Options, Malicious Download Blocking

      Firefox 82 is due for formal release later today (October 20) but as that tend to happen when I’m in bed I’m posting this post a tiny bit early. Firefox 82 downloads are up on the release server.

      Indeed, feature development for Firefox seems to be slowing down in general — Mozilla did recently sack a sizeable chunk of the brower’s development team — but a welcome round of enhancements and changes are available through this uplift.

    • Twitter and Facebook: unfck the algorithms

      Our socially distant reality is pretty damn weird, let’s be honest. Social networks shouldn’t make it any weirder — or more dangerous.

      And yet they are making it more dangerous while promising to “bring the world closer together.” Extremists are finding each other in Facebook groups to plan insurrections and other not-very-good-for-civic life things. Facebook has to do better.

      Over on Twitter, bots and organized mobs have all-too-easily hijacked trends to spread dangerous misinformation and hate speech. Like this and this. Twitter too has to do better.

    • Mozilla Mornings on addressing online harms through advertising transparency

      On 29 October, Mozilla will host the next installment of Mozilla Mornings – our regular breakfast series that brings together policy experts, policymakers and practitioners for insight and discussion on the latest EU digital policy developments.

      A key focus of the upcoming Digital Services Act and European Democracy Action Plan initiatives is platform transparency – transparency about content curation, commercial practices, and data use to name a few. This installment of Mozilla Mornings will focus on transparency of online advertising, and in particular, how mechanisms for greater transparency of ad placement and ad targeting could mitigate the spread and impact of illegal and harmful content online.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • GNU recutils – News: GNU recutils is back to active development [Savannah]

      During the last few years I somehow stopped adding new features to the GNU recutils, limiting its development to the resolution of important bugs, and releasing every one or another year. The reason for this was that I considered the recutils to be, mostly, “finished”.

      However, as of recent some projects have adopted recutils as part of their infrastructure (guix, GNUnet) and it seemst hat Fred’s and George’s favorite tools are getting popular in the internets… and what is more, people are sending patches! o_O

      So I have decided to put the GNU recutils back under active development, for the immense joy of adults and children (and turtles.)

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Come on, Amazon: If you’re going to copy open-source code for a new product, at least credit the creator

      It broke no law in doing so – the software is published under the permissive Apache License v2 – and developers expect such open-source projects will be copied forked. But Amazon’s move didn’t win any fans for failing to publicly acknowledge the code’s creator.

      There is a mention buried in the NOTICE.txt file bundled with the CloudWatch extension that credits Headless Recorder, under its previous name “puppeteer-recorder,” as required by the license. But there’s an expectation among open source developers that biz as big as AWS should show more courtesy.

• Programming/Development

  • Git v2.29.0 released

    The latest feature release Git v2.29.0 is now available at the
    usual places. It is comprised of 627 non-merge commits since
    v2.28.0, contributed by 89 people, 24 of which are new faces.

  • Git 2.29 Released With Experimental Support For Using More Secure SHA-256

  • 13 Reasons Why It’s High Time to Start Learning to Program | Codementor

    Software development is something that is gaining popularity at lightning speed with the development of technology. The demand for regular developers is high compared to most other mainstream professions. But, what are the other reasons for learning to code?

  • Perl/Raku

    • 2020.42 Recipes

      Another Raku book just hit the (virtual) bookshelves: Raku Recipes, A Problem-Solution Approach by JJ Merelo, with examples about data science, analytics, microservices, and desktop/console applications usage. Recommended reading and mandatory addition to your programming language bookshelves!

  • Python

    • Getting Started with Python | FOSS Linux

      Python is the fastest-growing programming language in the world. Major websites like Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, and many others are built using python’s Web Framework Django. The thing that makes python most popular is its simple syntax, which is similar to the normal English language. Its powerfulness makes it a primary choice adopted by top tech companies.

    • Griatch’s Evennia musings: On using Markdown with Sphinx – onward to Evennia 0.9.5

      Last post I wrote about the upcoming v1.0 of Evennia, the Python MU* creation engine. We are not getting to that 1.0 version quite yet though: The next release will be 0.9.5, hopefully out relatively soon (TM).
      Evennia 0.9.5 is, as you may guess, an intermediary release. Apart from the 1.0 roadmap just not being done yet, there is one other big reason for this – we are introducing documentation versioning and for that a proper release is needed as a base to start from. Version 0.9.5 contains everything already in master branch, so if you have kept up-to-date you won’t notice too much difference.

    • The Journey To Replace Python’s Parser And What It Means For The Future – The Python Podcast

      The release of Python 3.9 introduced a new parser that paves the way for brand new features. Every programming language has its own specific syntax for representing the logic that you are trying to express. The way that the rules of the language are defined and validated is with a grammar definition, which in turn is processed by a parser. The parser that the Python language has relied on for the past 25 years has begun to show its age through mounting technical debt and a lack of flexibility in defining new syntax. In this episode Pablo Galindo and Lysandros Nikolaou explain how, together with Python’s creator Guido van Rossum, they replaced the original parser implementation with one that is more flexible and maintainable, why now was the time to make the change, and how it will influence the future evolution of the language.

    • Python Booleans: Optimize Your Code With Truth Values – Real Python

      The Python Boolean type is one of Python’s built-in data types. It’s used to represent the truth value of an expression. For example, the expression 1 <= 2 is True, while the expression 0 == 1 is False. Understanding how Python Boolean values behave is important to programming well in Python.

Your Dog in the Race?

Health/Nutrition

• As Pandemic Surges in US, Trump Says ‘People Are Tired of Hearing Fauci and All These Idiots’

  “People are tired of a science-denying president that has allowed over 218,000 people to die from Covid,” responded Rep. Mark Pocan.

• Jeremy Scahill on Trump’s “Homicidal” Pandemic Response & What’s at Stake in November Election

  As President Trump campaigns in swing states that are also coronavirus hot spots, The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill argues he is directly responsible for the poor U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed almost 220,000 people in the country so far and sickened millions. “I don’t know how else to describe what Trump has done except homicidal,” says Scahill, host of a new seven-part audio series that examines the Trump era.

• Trump Administration Is Paying Big Pharma Billions in Rush for Vaccine

  Desperate to distract the national discourse from his criminal mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump is promising that a vaccine will be available before Election Day. His vaccine campaign is named “Operation Warp Speed” and there is a real danger that its speed will warp the results. Ironically, the Trump administration is comparing this effort to the Manhattan Project, the highly secret government program to develop the first atomic bomb. “This isn’t a secret government weapon we’re trying to keep from an enemy,” said David Mitchell, founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs. “The enemy is the virus. This is actually a rescue mission to save Americans and humanity from the virus.”

• ‘How do you feel?’ A ‘Meduza’ special correspondent continues cataloging her experience as a volunteer in Russia’s coronavirus vaccine trials

  In August 2020, Russia announced the registration of the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, named “Sputnik V.” However, to finalize the vaccine’s registration, its developers at the Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology have to conduct large-scale clinical trials involving tens of thousands of volunteers. In September, “Meduza” special correspondent Svetlana Reiter became one of them. After receiving her first injection, she catalogued her impressions of the process, as well as her body’s reaction, day by day and hour by hour (it wasn’t the most pleasant experience). But the study didn’t end there: the coronavirus vaccine trial includes two injections. After her second trip to a Moscow clinic to get another shot, which took place in mid-October, Reiter continued to record her experience. Here’s the second part of her diary.

• The Metamorphosis

  As the coronavirus ricocheted through New York City this spring, among its many casualties was a certain image of life in the Big Apple. The foodie destinations, posh galleries, and pricey cocktail lounges sat deserted while city hospitals long scorned as antiquated, clunky, and ineffective became crowded, bustling centers of activity and pandemonium. If they didn’t abscond to their second homes, financiers and lawyers huddled in their apartments, and grocery store employees, doormen, UPS drivers, and postal workers all became consummate risk-takers. Spaces segregated from the middle class—homeless shelters, nursing homes, jails—were revealed as inextricably linked to the rest of the city on a microbial level, as the virus could not be kept out or contained within. In the pandemic city, the oft-praised prosperity of New York in the early years of the 21st century proved illusory or at least misdirected: a world of glittering condos and luxe hotels that somehow could not provide enough hospital masks to its nurses or figure out a way to keep its children safe.

• Fauci Says Trump’s Refusal to Wear Mask Is Due to Belief It Makes Him Look Weak

  During an interview on Sunday evening on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that President Donald Trump’s aversion to wearing a mask is based on the desire to be perceived as strong.

• COVID-19 Spikes in Rural Areas While Hospitals Face Financial Crisis

  One by one, COVID-19 outbreaks popped up in April and May at meatpacking plants across the country, fanning fears that the infectious coronavirus could spread rapidly into rural states. Plants closed temporarily in small metro areas such as Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Waterloo, Iowa, and in smaller towns like Iowa’s Tama, Columbus Junction and Perry.

• Amid Trump Failure to Get Pandemic Under Control, Canada Extends Border Closure With US

  “The United States is not in a place where we would feel comfortable reopening those borders,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. 

• 1,000+ CDC Officials Condemn Trump’s Disastrous Pandemic Response, ‘Silencing’ of Agency

  “The absence of national leadership on Covid-19 is unprecedented and dangerous,” reads statement from current and former staffers. 

• Waiting for a Vaccine and the Collaborative Research Alternative

• New Bill Aims to End Racial Disparities in Amputations

  On Friday, Congressman Donald M. Payne Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey, introduced a sweeping bill to reduce unnecessary amputations and address racial disparities that were the subject of a ProPublica story investigating why Black Americans were three times more likely to undergo diabetic amputations than others. The Amputation Reduction and Compassion Act of 2020 was introduced five months after the ProPublica investigation showed how government and hospital policies obstruct equitable care for at-risk patients.

  The bill proposes major reforms that seek to address policy gaps explored in the article. Today, about half of patients with peripheral artery disease — a condition in which clogged arteries limit the flow of blood — are asymptomatic, and primary care physicians are not always reimbursed for screening. But catching and treating the disease, which is often caused by diabetes, is critical to preventing unnecessary amputations. The bill seeks to ensure that all at-risk patients can obtain a screening at no cost. It requires that Medicare and Medicaid cover the tests, as well as private insurers.

• ‘No Wonder the US Leads the World in Covid Deaths’: Trump Mocks Biden for Vowing to ‘Listen to the Scientists’

  The president also claimed the economy is rising “like a rocket ship,” a claim belied by ongoing layoffs and widespread economic suffering.

• In Nevada, Trump Mocks Biden for Listening to Scientists

  Speaking to a largely maskless crowd of supporters on Carson City, Nevada late Sunday, President Donald Trump mocked Democratic nominee Joe Biden for vowing to “listen to the scientists” on the Covid-19 pandemic if elected in November and boasted about his own refusal to heed the advice of experts even as coronavirus cases and deaths continue to surge nationwide.

• The Great Barrington Declaration: COVID-19, “magnified minority,” and eugenics

  When you’ve been examining pseudoscientific and quack claims for over two decades, you start to recognize patterns in the strategies and technique used by those denying science to promote their pseudoscience or quackery. Those who don’t pay attention to these sorts of issues might have been surprised by or unfamiliar with these techniques, but many skeptics were not. I was thinking about this sort of thing when I came across the latest propaganda from COVID-19 deniers, conspiracy theorists, and grifters known as the Great Barrington Declaration.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Apple’s CUPS Repository Has Died A Quiet Death

    The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) is something all the GNU/Linux distributions use to manage printers. It’s been maintained by Apple since 2007. The Apple-lead CUPS development efforts appear to have completely died out after lead CUPS developer Michael Sweet left the company. CUPS isn’t dead, though, Sweet and others are still working on it in a fork maintained by the OpenPrinting organization.

    [...]

    Michael Sweet begun developing the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) for his company Easy Software Products in 1997. The first beta versions, released under the GNU General Public License, appeared in 1999. Linux distributions were quick to adopt CUPS and the Internet Printing Protocol (ipp) it uses as the de-facto standard for printing and so did Apple it it’s inclusion in Mac OS X 10.2 in March 2002.

    Apple bought the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) lock, stock and Michael Sweet in July 2007. They kept the GNU GPL v2 license and Michael Sweet kept working on it after he joined Apple.

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • Goldman Sachs Open Sources its Data Modeling Platform through FINOS

          The Fintech Open Source Foundation (“FINOS“), together with platinum member Goldman Sachs (GS), today announced the launch of Legend, Goldman’s flagship data management and data governance platform. Developed internally and used by both engineers and non-engineers alike across all divisions of the bank, the source code for five of the platforms’ modules have today been made available as open source within FINOS.

          Today’s launch comes on the heels of the completion of a six-month pilot in which other leading investment banks, such as Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and RBC Capital Markets, used a shared version of Legend, hosted on FINOS infrastructure in the public cloud, to prototype interbank collaborative data modeling and standardization, in particular to build extensions to the Common Domain Model (CDM), developed by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA). This shared environment is now, starting today, generally available for industry participants to use and build models collaboratively. With the Legend code now available as open source, organizations may also launch and operate their own instances. The components open-sourced today allow any individual and organization across any industry to harness the power of Goldman Sachs’ internal data platform for their own data management and governance needs as well as contribute to the open code base.

  • Security

    • Ubuntu and Debian Get Patches for Bluetooth Remote Code Execution Flaws, Update Now

      Discovered by security researcher Andy Nguyen in Linux kernel’s Bluetooth L2CAP and Bluetooth A2MP implementation, as well as the Bluetooth HCI event packet parser, the CVE-2020-12351, CVE-2020-12352, and CVE-2020-24490 vulnerabilities are affecting Debian GNU/Linux 10, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

      While CVE-2020-12351 and CVE-2020-24490 could allow a physically proximate remote attacker to crash the system by causing a denial of service or execute arbitrary code, CVE-2020-12352 let physically proximate remote attackers to expose sensitive information (kernel memory).

    • North Korean hacker group attacked targets inside Russia

      The North Korean hacker group “Kimsuky” is reportedly carrying out attacks against military and industrial entities inside Russia, cybersecurity experts told the newspaper Kommersant. 

    • Eyewear giant Luxottica hit by Windows Nefilim ransomware, data leaked

      The world’s biggest eyewear company, Italian conglomerate Luxottica, has suffered a ransomware attack staged by criminals using the Windows Nefilim ransomware and data about its financial and human resources operations have been leaked on the dark web.

    • Auto equipment maker KYB hit by Windows NetWalker ransomware

      Indiana-based KYB Corporation, the biggest supplier of OEM automotive equipment to companies around the globe, appears to have been hit by the Windows NetWalker ransomware, with the criminals behind the attack threatening to leak data stolen from the company on the dark web.

    • Security updates for Monday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (kernel, thunderbird, and yaws), Fedora (createrepo_c, dnf, dnf-plugins-core, dnf-plugins-extras, kata-agent, libdnf, librepo, and wireshark), Gentoo (chromium and firefox), Mageia (brotli, flash-player-plugin, php, phpmyadmin, and wireshark), openSUSE (crmsh, gcc10, nvptx-tools, icingaweb2, kernel, libproxy, pdns-recursor, phpMyAdmin, and rubygem-activesupport-5_1), Red Hat (nodejs:12 and rh-maven35-apache-commons-collections4), and SUSE (gcc10, nvptx-tools and transfig).

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Judge Shuts Down Vallejo PD’s Illegally-Obtained Stingray

        For the moment, police officers in Vallejo, California aren’t allowed to use their cell site simulator. A tentative ruling [PDF] issued by a judge says the city violated the law by approving the purchase of a Stingray device without instituting a privacy policy governing its use — a policy explicitly approved by the city council and subjected to public scrutiny prior to adoption.

      • COVID-19 Is Driving The Uptake Of Chess — And Of Surveillance Tools To Stop Online Players Cheating

        Techdirt has been noting some interesting tech trends arising out of the increasing number of people who work and study from home because of COVID-19. One that few of us saw coming is a greatly increased enthusiasm for playing chess. That would be a good thing, except that life is never simple, as the Guardian reports:

      • Lawful interception: German government sets up new surveillance unit at Europol

        Germany uses its EU Presidency to reorganise digital surveillance in Europe. A 5G working group temporarily set up by the BKA is now being consolidated at Europol. It is to coordinate the „operational capabilities“ in the Member States and facilitate interception through new legislative proposals.

Defence/Aggression

• May 2020, May 1968

  May 68. The students stormed Paris, and the institutions that produced their oppression. They seemed to be a culmination of existentialist thought as much as they were of marxist, anarxist, etc thought. Sartre’s existentialism, born in the cafe settings of the left bank, to the drugs, cigarettes and alcohol intake of its thinkers, (amongst others) seemed to be walking in the streets, setting up barricades. This thought? That first I am. That secondly, I must question and be skeptical of what is. That I can be free, and even from capitalism. Sartre himself was in the streets, along with Michel Foulcault and others whose examination would come to impact the world. Paris after the war in the 40’s and 50’s, a child of Soren Kieerkegard’s thoughts on angst, and existence had taken hold of the streets.

  Who are we? It is a question that we two ask ourselves, and have been for some time. The coffeeshops that stood up to the Vietnam War on our side of the atlantic too hosted conversation, and the love of wisdom (philosophy). How did we arrive at the metaphysics that we have seen in the streets provoke and convoke the entirety of the world (that as a human I MUST protest against injustice). This metaphysics can be heard in much of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches who spoke of a duty. Beyond a right. Let us not forget that the rights of man (which I have purposely limited to man), that comes of the enlightenment, and that the duty of humans are different, that do not exclude one another but that certainly are not the same. They are each a metaphysics.

• Reframing America’s Role in the World

  Remember when Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was all the rage? It’s now available in hardcover for $0.99 from online used booksellers. James Comey’s Higher Loyalty also sells for a penny less than a buck.

  An additional forty-six cents will get you Omarosa Manigault Newman’s “insider’s account” of her short-lived tenure in that very White House. For the same price, you can acquire Sean Spicer’s memoir as Trump’s press secretary, Anthony Scaramucci’s rendering of his tumultuous 11-day stint as White House communications director, and Corey Lewandowski’s “inside story” of the 2016 presidential campaign.

• The War on Cuba and Venezuela

  “Right now fewer trucks are coming in. Less merchandise too. And the quality isn’t the same because a lot of the products are rotting the fields because there’s no oil for the trucks. Because of the U.S. blockade on Cuba, no oil tankers can get here,” says Barbaro Medina, a produce vendor in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood.

  This interview features among others in episode two of The War on Cuba, a documentary series released by Belly of the Beast, a media startup covering Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations.

• How Biden Flubbed Town Hall Foreign Policy Question

  Most of our leaders are still hell-bent on preserving America’s imperial power at any cost: endless wars, climate catastrophe, mass extinctions, and the terrifying risk of a final, apocalyptic mass-casualty war—most likely a nuclear war. 

• St. Petersburg court rejects defamation lawsuit against news outlet that linked Russian mercenary to gruesome execution in Syria

  A court in St. Petersburg has rejected a defamation lawsuit by a man in Bryansk who accused the news outlet Fontanka of falsely identifying him as one of the Russian mercenaries who executed, dismembered, and burned a Syrian war deserter in 2017. The case appears to have been coordinated by the “Patriot” media group — a conglomerate of websites reportedly controlled by Evgeny Prigozhin, who also allegedly owns the “Wagner” private military company that supposedly employed the Russian combatants who tortured, killed, and mutilated Mohammed Taha Ismail Al-Abdullah.

• How Does a Nation Best Deal With a Leader Who Intentionally Kills Its Citizens?

  Regardless of his motivations, Trump is engaging in and encouraging behavior that is killing and disabling Americans by the millions.

• Abby Martin and Eleanor Goldfield – The Project Censored Show

  Program Summary: Anti-imperialist journalist Abby Martin of The Empire Files returns to the program to note the many similarities between Trump and Biden on  foreign policy and US empire. She also explains her battle against a Georgia law under which she was prevented from speaking at a public university there. In the second half-hour, journalist and filmmaker Eleanor Goldfield revisits the program and shares her observations about the US political culture and elections, and what social justice advocates must do to foster genuine progress regardless who wins the election in November.Notes: Abby Martin is an independent journalist, documentary filmmaker, and the creator of “The Empire Files.” She is cofounder and cohost of Media Roots Radio and www.MediaRoots.org. Her web site is www.theempirefiles.tv.       Eleanor Goldfield is a journalist, artist, and organizer; she recently produced the documentary “Hard Road of Hope,” an award-winning documentary about peoples’ resistance in West Virginia coal country. She also cohosts numerous podcasts including “Common Censored” and “Act Out!” Her web site is www.artkillingapathy.com1) “Uncle Sam Goddam” by Brother Ali2) “Land of Confusion” by Genesis3) “Higher Ground” by Stevie Wonderthe Project Censored Show:

• US charges six Russians with being behind numerous computer intrusions

  The US has charged six Russians, all officers in Unit 74455 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU, of participating in intrusion of computer systems in a number of countries.

• Reframing America’s Role in the World

  The specter of isolationism.

• In Trump’s America, There Is Death Before Due Process

  The Thurston County sheriff in Lacey, Washington, where the suspect was killed, released a public statement saying his investigation team “can confirm… that Mr. Reinoehl pointed the handgun that he had in his possession at the officers at the time of the shooting.” The U.S. Marshals Service whose forces were the ones that shot Reinoehl released a similar statement claiming that the fugitive task force that had been sent to his location “attempted to peacefully arrest him,” but, after being shot at, “Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene.”

  News outlets took the official statements at their word and dutifully reported the incident as one where a suspected killer opened fire on officers and was fatally shot in the course of his arrest. In other words, there was “nothing to see here.” But according to a New York Times investigation six weeks after his death, it remains unclear “whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him.”

• Trump Has Stoked White Supremacy and Led Police to Act Outside the Law

  As the 2020 presidential campaign enters its final two weeks, we look at the past four years of the Trump presidency with investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. His podcast “Intercepted” has just released the fourth chapter in a seven-part audio documentary titled American Mythology, which critically examines the Trump presidency and places it within a larger historical context. Scahill says Trump has empowered white supremacist vigilantes and given permission to law enforcement to act extrajudicially to enforce a racist status quo, but he cautions that “Donald Trump is not an aberration of U.S. history or some anomaly, but he’s a very overt representation of many of the absolute most violent, destructive, racist, xenophobic trends in U.S. history.”

• Jeremy Scahill: Trump Has Incited White Supremacists & Emboldened Police to Act Outside the Law

  As the 2020 presidential campaign enters its final two weeks, we look at the past four years of the Trump presidency with investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. His podcast “Intercepted” has just released the fourth chapter in a seven-part audio documentary titled “American Mythology,” which critically examines the Trump presidency and places it within a larger historical context. Scahill says Trump has empowered white supremacist vigilantes and given permission to law enforcement to act extrajudicially to enforce a racist status quo, but he cautions that “Donald Trump is not an aberration of U.S. history or some anomaly, but he’s a very overt representation of many of the absolute most violent, destructive, racist, xenophobic trends in U.S. history.”

• France teacher attack: Four school students held over beheading

  Tens of thousands of people took part in rallies across the country on Sunday to honour Mr Paty and defend freedom of speech. A ceremony paying tribute to Mr Paty, who was 47, will be held at the Sorbonne University in Paris on Wednesday.

  [...]

  Four school pupils who may have helped identify Mr Paty to his killer in exchange for payment have been detained, a judicial source told the AFP news agency on Monday.

• 4 students detained after French teacher’s beheading

  French police on Monday launched a series of raids targeting Islamist networks three days after the beheading of a history teacher who had shown his students a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

• Police operations under way in France after beheading of teacher

  Darmanin said they include the father of a student and an Islamist activist who both “obviously launched a fatwa,” or religious ruling, against the teacher.

• France: Teacher Beheaded, Police Shoot Dead Suspected Killer

  The attack came as Macron is pushing for a new law against what he calls domestic “separatism,” notably by Islamic radicals accused of indoctrinating vulnerable people through home schools, extremist preaching and other activities.

• Suspect in teacher’s beheading in France was Chechen teen

  Ricard told reporters that the Moscow-born suspect, who had been granted a 10-year residency in France as a refugee in March, was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun, which fires plastic pellets.

  His half-sister joined the Islamic State group in Syria in 2014, Ricard said. He didn’t give her name, and it is not clear where she is now.

• Attacker shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’ after beheading teacher in Paris

  Immediately after the beheading, the attacker claimed responsibility and posted an image of his victim’s severed head on Twitter, a police source told NBC News. The grisly image was removed by the social-media site.

• Cameroon Closes Schools as Boko Haram Suicide Bombings Increase

  Cameroon says it has again closed more than 60 schools on its northern border with Nigeria to save children and teaching staff from increasing Boko Haram attacks. The central African state has deployed its military to teach displaced children in locations they say are safe. Boko Haram is increasingly using suicide bombers, as the military has drastically reduced the terrorist group’s firepower.

  Ousmanou Garga, the Cameroon basic education official on the northern border with Nigeria, says recent Boko Haram attacks have made many schools unsafe.

• Sweden embarks on its largest military build-up for decades

  The draft, abolished a decade ago and reintroduced for both genders in 2017, will double in size to 8,000 conscripts a year, and five new local-defence battalions will be established around the country, tasked with protecting supply lines from the Norwegian ports of Oslo and Trondheim. An amphibious unit will be re-established in Gothenburg, Scandinavia’s largest port.

  There are goodies for the other services, too. The air force can look forward to newer Gripen fighter jets with longer ranges and better radar, some of which will go to a new air wing in Uppsala, 70km (43 miles) north of Stockholm. The navy will get an extra submarine, money to design a new type of warship and air-defence missiles that its ships have been in need of for 15 years.

  Civil defence is also getting attention, with funding for cybersecurity, the electricity grid and healthcare. “We’ve begun to rebuild a newer version of what we had during the cold war”, says Niklas Granholm of FOI, Sweden’s defence research agency. A big exercise to test national resilience was held this year. The aim is to enable Sweden to hold out in a crisis or war for at least three months, until help arrives (assuming that it does).

Environment

• China’s climate lead offers the planet new hope

  Beijing’s plan to cut greenhouse gases could mean a global expansion of green industries following China’s climate lead.

• Indigenous Women to Financial CEOs: Stop Abetting ‘Climate-Wrecking’ Tar Sands Sector or Expect More Resistance

  “Join us putting the proverbial nail in the coffin of these dying unneeded industries.”

• ‘Demented’: Oil Giant Refreezing Rapidly Melting Permafrost So It Can Keep Climate-Killing Arctic Drilling Alive

  The effort represented such “mindless idiocy” for many that 350.org ran a “help us out with this caption” contest in response.

• ExxonMobil’s Supposed Shift on Climate Belies Its Donations to Climate Deniers

  After decades of public denial, ExxonMobil now acknowledges that “the risk of climate change is real” and says it is “committed to being part of the solution,” at least according to the company’s website and statements. To that end, the largest investor-owned oil company in the world claims it supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement.

• How Climate-Driven Disasters Threaten Climate Progress

  At the start of September, the dramatic airlift evacuations of campers hemmed in by the Creek Fire at Mammoth Pool in Northern California captivated the country, presaging what has since become a horrifying season of conflagrations across the West. The California Air National Guard’s harrowing rescue mission to Mammoth Pool drew national attention because it seemed to portray an idyllic wilderness landscape converted into a hellscape. As California’s wildfires often do, it illustrated the threat of climate change in brutal monochrome.

• Energy

  • Amid US Sanctions, Venezuelan Oil Tanker at Risk of Spilling 1.3 Million Barrels and Devastating Caribbean Ecosystems

    “The Caribbean Sea would never be the same” should the oil spill, climate scientist Eric Holthaus tweeted. 

  • ‘An Appalling Environmental Crime’: Japan to Dump Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Pacific Ocean

    “The moment that I hear the word ‘treated’ being used instead of ‘contaminated,’ I can’t think differently than this is a kind of newspeak,” said one Greenpeace official. 

  • The TMX Pipeline Threatens First Nations People. It Must Be Stopped.

    I come from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN) in what is now known as the greater Vancouver area in western Canada. In our language, “Tsleil-Waututh” means “People of the Inlet,” referring to Burrard Inlet. Our creation stories teach us that the inlet is our mother, who provided our people with nourishment, sustenance and spirituality. Indeed, studies find that 90 percent of our ancestors’ protein came from the inlet. It isn’t just our backyard; it is our kitchen, breadbasket, teacher and mother.

  • Russian investigators launch criminal case over oil spill in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug

    An emergency situation has been declared in the area around the Kharyaginskoye oil field in Russia’s far-northern Nenets Autonomous Okrug due to a recent oil spill, the state news agency TASS reports.

  • Promise or Peril? Importing Hydropower to Fuel the Clean Energy Transition

  • Former Norilsk mayor is sentenced to six months community service for negligence in massive oil spill

    A court in Krasnoyarsk has convicted former Norilsk Mayor Rinat Akhmetchin of criminal negligence and sentenced him to six months of community service for his role in a massive oil leak this summer by a Nornickel subsidiary. The authorities will also garnish 15 percent of Akhmetchin’s salary. The trial was expedited because the ex-mayor confessed to the charges.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Taxpayers Shell Out Huge Subsidies to Wolf Pup-Killer’s Ranching Enterprise

    Thiessen appealed the loss of his permit all the way up to the regional director, who affirmed the District Ranger’s decision and ordered the cows off Canyon del Buey allotment by the end of August 2019. As you can probably guess, Thiessen defied this direction and his cows are still in trespass on the Gila National Forest. There’s been some legal back and forth between Theissen and the feds and that process is ongoing (more on that here soon), but there’s something else for the taxpaying public to be enraged about:

    Canyon del Buey LLC was the largest recipient of Farm Bill livestock subsidies in Catron County in 2019, raking in $135,683 dollars of federal funding. Of that, $119,029 came under the “Livestock Indemnity Program” which is designated for livestock losses in excess than usual due to extreme weather or due to animals reintroduced by the federal government, i.e. wolves. It’s impossible (so far) to determine whether the Thiessens got money for extreme weather or livestock depredations, but at about $1,000 per head (see page 6 at link), that’s a whole lot of dead cows we taxpayers are paying for. (And it’s not the first time: Craig Thiessen has also received almost $400,000 since he whacked Mia Tuk.)

Finance

• Study Confirms Paid Sick Leave is Crucial in Fight Against Covid-19

  “It’s not a magic bullet, but it’s one tool that’s been shown to work. Over and over again.”

• Ending Corporate Impunity Is at the Heart of a Sustainable Post-Pandemic Global Recovery

  Upcoming negotiations for a UN Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights provide a critical opportunity for governments and business to demonstrate their commitment to responsible corporate conduct.

• Coinbase’s Transparency Report Is a Welcome First Step

  Coinbase has released its first transparency report, and we’re encouraged to see the company take this first step and commit to issuing future reports that go even further to provide transparency for their customers.

  Last month, we renewed a call for Coinbase—one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the country—to start releasing regular transparency reports that provide insight into how many government requests for information it receives and how it deals with them. Financial data can be particularly sensitive, and decisions about turning over that data or shutting down accounts should not be made in the dark.

• Putin’s National Cultural Heritage Fund finally pays wage arrears owed to laid-off workers

  Russia’s National Cultural Heritage Fund has paid off its debts to its former employees, who were laid off during the coronavirus lockdown. The fund is responsible for a large-scale construction project aimed at creating four cultural-educational complexes in Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, Kemerovo, and Sevastopol. The idea for the project came from President Vladimir Putin, who’s personally overseeing its development.

• Goldman Sachs: Benefits of ‘Blue Wave’ and $2.5 Trillion Stimulus Outweigh Wall Street Concerns Over Tax Hike on the Rich

  “As right-wing hacks predict economic disaster if Biden wins, worth pointing out that private-sector analysts are remarkably bullish.”

• Wisconsin Gets Wise To Foxconn’s Grift, Blocks New Subsidies

  You might recall how Donald Trump and Paul Ryan’s once-heralded Foxconn factory deal in Wisconsin quickly devolved into farce. The state originally promised Taiwan-based Foxconn a $3 billion subsidy if the company invested $10 billion in a Wisconsin LCD panel plant that created 13,000 jobs. But as the subsidy grew the promised factory began to shrink further and further, to the point where nobody at this point is certain that anything meaningful is going to get built at all.

• Victory for ‘Basic Human Decency’: Judge Strikes Down Trump Effort to Slash Food Stamps for 700,000 Americans

  “There’s a lot of competition for Vilest Policy Ever, but slashing food stamps during a pandemic that’s causing massive unemployment is way, way up there.”

• Judge Strikes Down Trump SNAP Rule that Would Remove at Least 700K From Program

  A federal judge has struck down a new rule by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) that was set to remove food stamps benefits for hundreds of thousands of households.

• Philadelphia Protest Encampment Ends As City Agrees To Plan For Unhoused People

  After months of organizing that included the establishment of two protest encampments, Philadelphia’s unhoused people successfully pushed the city to agree to provide housing on a community land trust on October 14.

  Camp James Talib-Dean, or Camp JTD, closed last week, and organizers and encampment participants will eventually control a community land trust through a non-profit organization in coordination with the city. They will manage 50 properties provided by the city and PHA, and the city will build two tiny-house villages, which won’t be ready until mid-2021, according to the Inquirer.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Losing Ground

  Here is a version of the old rock-paper-scissors game, on a topic that should be of urgent concern to people on the left: How did Trump’s America happen, and what can we do to dislodge its hold on our politics? One can argue that Donald Trump didn’t really win the 2016 election or that he won it only through some combination of voter suppression, Russian meddling, and the peculiarities of the American constitutional system. Even so, somebody who shouldn’t have been a serious candidate got tens of millions of votes, and it’s legitimate (urgent, if we are to avoid a repeat performance this November) to ask why. Was it racism? Misdirected economic frustration? Expert manipulation of public opinion? A deterioration of democratic norms? All of these combined? Three new books by prominent liberal intellectuals—Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson’s Let Them Eat Tweets, Robert B. Reich’s The System, and Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles’s Never Trump—give strikingly different answers to these questions. Each book’s argument is strong and important, and yet each one also vitiates the others.

• The Public, the Personal, and the Utter Hypocrisy of the GOP

  It is nonsensical to argue, as do Trump and his allies, that government cannot mandate masks or close businesses during a pandemic but can prevent women from having abortions and same-sex couples from marrying.

• Facebook Is So ‘Biased Against Conservatives’ That Mark Zuckerberg Personally Agreed To Diminish The Reach Of ‘Left-Leaning’ Sites

  As you well know if you’ve been reading this site for the last few years, there’s a garbage myth out there that the internet companies have an “anti-conservative” bias. First of all, even if this were true, there’s literally nothing wrong with that. Historically, media companies have long had political biases, going all the way back to the founding of the country (seriously you should read how crazy it was). This is literally part of the reason the 1st Amendment exists in the form that it does. The founders knew that allowing the government to crack down on biased media would create problems over time.

• Can Jaime Harrison Really Beat Lindsey Graham?

  Columbia, S.C.—Does Jaime Harrison really have a chance to unseat Lindsey Graham? Yes. But it won’t be easy—despite some current polls showing the race in a dead heat and Harrison raising money hand over fist.

• Jeremy Scahill: “Trump Is Not the Root of the Problem, He Is a Product of American Imperial History”

  Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 with a mixed message of attacking the legacy of the Iraq War and U.S. military adventurism, while simultaneously pledging to commit war crimes and promote imperialism. As we look back at Trump’s record, Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, says his flouting of international norms and bullying of other countries is in keeping with how U.S. presidents have long behaved. “Donald Trump is not the root of the problem. Donald Trump is a product of American imperial history,” Scahill notes.

• What Joe Biden Can Learn From Jacinda Ardern

  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern accepted her landslide reelection win Saturday with a message for her country and the rest of the world: “We are living in an increasingly polarized world, a place where more and more people have lost the ability to see one another’s point of view. I hope that this election, New Zealand has shown that this is not who we are. That as a nation, we can listen and we can debate. After all, we are small to lose sight of other people’s perspective. Elections aren’t always great at bringing people together, but they also don’t need to tear one another apart.”

• Trump Keeps Slinging Mud, but This Time It’s Not Sticking

  A skilled entertainer, Donald Trump has a natural instinct for pleasing hardcore fans who never get tired of old favorites. If he has a joke that gets a laugh, he’ll tell it again and again. If a nickname like “Crooked Hillary” or a slogan like “lock her up” works up the crowd, he’ll keep hammering at it with no fear of being tiresome. His rallies often seem less like political events than entertainment extravaganzas, where groupies eagerly hang on his words waiting for the greatest hits to echo again. This repetitive quality makes Trump all the more annoying to his political opponents. But his willingness to work within the narrow ambit of a limited repertoire of catchphrases has served him well.

• Balls

  Objectivity in judging is a myth. As Justice Cardozo noted, “We (judges) may try to see things as objectively as we please, nonetheless we can never see them with any eyes except our own.” A test of principled judging is doctrinal consistency. As Ryan Grim and others argue, Judge Barrett fails that test, notably regarding the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

  When Sonia Sotomayor said at her Supreme Court confirmation hearings that her experience as a Latina woman informs her judging, she broke the rules of the game and had to recant in support of the guise of neutrality. The charade continues.

• Sound and Fury

  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with Donald Trump as his crowbar, opened the way to Barrett’s hearings in possibly one of the most hypocritical acts of his career. He denied a hearing to President Barack Obama’s court nominee in 2016, arguing the people should choose in an election year. He pulled a Judas.

  The people’s choice, if life were fair, should go to the winner of the Nov. 3 election, which may not be Trump. But power is as power does. And if Joe Biden becomes president, it will be in his power to expand the Supreme Court.

• Money Rules

  Lee, after observing that they are both members of  once-persecuted groups (Lee a Mormon, Barrett a Catholic) praised Barrett for her courage  defending minorities. The US Constitution, he declared, is designed to “protect unpopular issues and groups from the impulses of a majority which might be bent on harm”.

  Next, Whitehouse called these confirmation hearings a puppet show, whose strings were pulled by dark money, the objective being :remake the national judiciary, demean and diminish the civil jury, weaken regulatory agencies which protect the public trust, allow unlimited  money in politics, restrict voting rights, and of course knocking down Roe vs. Wade,  same-sex marriage and Obamacare. $250 million had been spent, he  stated, in dark money, to reshape the courts.

• Corporatist Judge Barrett – Two More Senate Abstentions Needed to Stop Trump

  This week, nominee to the High Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett followed the “say-nothing” playbook, through injudicious and repetitious filibustering, essentially claiming that it was improper for a judge “to opine” on matters outside the judicial process.

  Really? Judge Barrett “opined” in lectures, interviews, and articles as a judge as have many sitting Supreme Court Justices. Her mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia regularly made controversial declarations at law school addresses and all kinds of other public appearances.

• Michigan Republican Senate Candidate Has Strong Financial Ties to DeVos Family

  Michigan Republican Senate candidate John James attended a fundraiser at the home of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ brother-in-law while trying to downplay the financial help his campaign has received from the family.

• Why a Former Green Party Candidate Is on a Very Long Fast—Urging Progressives to Vote for Biden to Defeat Trump

  “A very large number of people on the left who supported Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren have come around to an understanding that Trump and his accomplices are such a dire threat to any hope of forward progress in this country.”

• Ep112: The DNC’s War on the Green Party and Traditional Versus New Media in an Election Year w/Peter Finch – Along The Line Podcast

  On today’s episode, Nicholas Baham II (Dr. Dreadlocks), Janice Domingo, and Nolan Higdon discuss the DNC’s war on the Green Party and traditional versus new media in an election year with the host of The Finch Files, Peter Finch.

• With Biden Path to Victory Still Fraught, Senate Democrats Issue All-Hands-on-Deck Warning Against Trump and GOP Election Threats

  “The reality is that this race is far closer than some of the punditry we’re seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest,” Biden’s campaign manager cautioned over the weekend.

• Progressives Won’t Wait for Biden to Set the Course

  On October 8, the Working Families Party released the People’s Charter, a progressive “road map out of our current state of crisis,” endorsed by several leading progressive legislators and insurgent congressional candidates, including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and other members of “the Squad,” as well as organizations including the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project,the Service Employees International Union, and MoveOn. Earlier, the Green New Deal Network, an even broader coalition anchored by Indivisible, released the Thrive Agenda endorsed by 85 sitting legislators and legions of unions, environmental, civil rights, and citizen action groups. These serve not only as policy statements but as political markers as well: If Biden wins next month as expected, progressives will not give him a pass but will seek to drive bold reforms from the get-go.

• Belarus moves prominent political analyst Vitali Shkliarov to house arrest, following roundtable meeting with Lukashenko

  After months, the Belarusian authorities have finally released political analyst Vitali Shkliarov from jail, transferring him to house arrest, his lawyer Anton Gashinsky told the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. 

• The Courts v. Democracy

  Of the six major controversies to convulse the Supreme Court since 2000, exactly half have been over personnel. First, in 2016, the Republican Senate refused to consider President Obama’s nomination to the court, claiming that nine months was too soon before an election and that the American people should have a say; then, in 2017, Trump’s nominee to the Court, Brett Kavanaugh, was credibly accused of sexual assault and confirmed amidst national protests; and now, less than two months before the 2020 presidential election, Republicans are vowing to confirm a justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg regardless of the election results.

  That a simple hiring decision can plunge the nation into crisis suggests an institution in profound upheaval, its legitimacy threatened by the increasing gap between its presentation as a non-political arbiter and the profoundly political nature of its job. If one of the central goals of liberal democracy has been to sever the power and legitimacy of political institutions from the personalities of the people who occupy them, if, in Karl Popper’s words, “what we need is not so much good men as good institutions,” then the Supreme Court is failing.

• Rule Draconia: Tories and Labor Collude in Enabling Act for State Crimes

  The Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill provides immunity for any government agent in undercover operations; and this goes far beyond those aimed at dire terrorist threats and big crime gangs, as touted by the bill-pushers. (Activities that are already given perilously wide scope in current practice.) It also includes serious crimes committed while pursuing operations launched “in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder.”

  As the Spectator puts it:

• Days Before Debate, Trump Attacks Moderator After Being Advised to Be Nicer

  President Donald Trump’s campaign advisers are reportedly urging him to approach the final debate of the 2020 presidential election season with a calmer demeanor, but he appears already to be dismissing the strategy by attacking the character of the moderator just days before the debate is set to take place.

• ‘Democracy Has Won’: Year After Right-Wing Coup Against Evo Morales, Socialist Luis Arce Declares Victory in Bolivia Election

  “Brothers and sisters: the will of the people has been asserted,” Morales declared from exile in Argentina.

• QAnon/8Chan Sites Briefly Knocked Offline

  A large number of 8kun and QAnon-related sites (see map above) are connected to the Web via a single Internet provider in Vancouver, Wash. called VanwaTech (a.k.a. “OrcaTech“). Previous appeals to VanwaTech to disconnect these sites have fallen on deaf ears, as the company’s owner Nick Lim reportedly has been working with 8kun’s administrators to keep the sites online in the name of protecting free speech.

  But VanwaTech also had a single point of failure on its end: The swath of Internet addresses serving the various 8kun/QAnon sites were being protected from otherwise crippling and incessant distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks by Hillsboro, Ore. based CNServers LLC.

  [...]

  The FBI last year identified QAnon as a potential domestic terror threat, noting that some of its followers have been linked to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Republicans, Who Have Made Sure The Federal Election Commission Can’t Do Anything, File A Complaint About Twitter’s Moderation Practices

  Last week, Senator Josh Hawley (who knows better) sent a ridiculous letter to the Federal Election Commission claiming that Twitter and Facebook’s decision (based on different reasons) to limit the sharing of a sketchy NY Post article was election interference. We explained why that was nonsense, but it appears that the Republican Party no longer gives a shit about what the law actually says when it can play the victim.

• Pakistan bans TikTok; calls videos “immoral and indecent”

  The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has officially banned TikTok for providing access to “immoral and indecent” videos – though it remains to be seen how permanent this ban will be. TikTok has recently had similar troubles in the United States; however, it is becoming increasingly clear that these software bans being executed or threatened by governments around the world are merely chess moves to try and get tech companies to acquiesce to government demands. The PTA has passed on instrutions to Pakistan’s internet service providers (ISPs) instructing them to block the popular social media app.

• People Need to Reclaim the Internet

  No matter how much you dislike Trump, only a fool can fail to see the implications for public access to information of the massive suppression on the internet of the Hunter Biden leaks.

• New book shines light on China’s influence over Hollywood

  Chris Fenton, the former president of DMG Entertainment, produced nearly two dozen films for the Chinese market. In his new book “Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business,” he details that experience.

  “Quite frankly, myself and other cogs and wheels of the machine of the capitalism between the two countries weren’t really thinking about how what we were doing was detrimental to America, or detrimental to the world overall or helping give more leverage or power to the Chinese Communist Party,” he told VOA.

• Police detain 10 people over beheading of French teacher in Paris suburb

  Reporting from the scene of the attack, FRANCE 24′s Julia Kim said the teacher had recently given a class on secularism and the controversy surrounding the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Supreme Court rules source protection a valid defence for reporter who refused to testify

  Finland’s Supreme Court has granted leave to a Helsingin Sanomat journalist to appeal a decision by the Helsinki District Court regarding whether or not he had the right to protect sources who contributed to a story about a military intelligence research centre.

  The verdict in the earlier case itself is sealed, but the supreme court’s ruling means that the journalist cannot be convicted solely on the basis of protecting a source.

Civil Rights/Policing

• National Guard Spy Plane Monitored Racial Justice Protest in Sleepy Sacramento Suburb Where Commander Lives: Report

  Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office has acknowledged that the surveillance “should not have happened.”

• San Diego Cops Who Abused Old ‘Seditious Language’ Law To Ticket Residents Also Engaged In Other Misconduct

  A few months ago, Voice of San Diego reported cops in the city were ticketing people for the strangest crime: sedition. An old law no one had bothered to take off the books allowed officers to literally police speech. Despite several rulings showing using foul language or flipping the bird to cops is protected speech, cops in San Diego are abusing this bad law to ticket people for “contempt of cop,” which isn’t an actual crime anywhere.

• Policies Targeting Arabs and Muslims Didn’t Just Start With Donald Trump

  Regardless which party is in the White House, these onerous policies must finally be challenged and defeated.

• Jeremy Scahill: Trump’s Xenophobia Is Horrific, But U.S. Immigration Policy Has Always Been Racist

  In Part 2 of our discussion of the Trump era with The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill about his new seven-part audio documentary “American Mythology,” he examines how Trump’s xenophobic immigration policies have been a “methodical, surgical operation” to make life miserable for both current and prospective immigrants, including asylum seekers fleeing violence. He also notes that while Trump’s policies have been particularly vicious, “this country has had a racist immigration policy for a very long time, and it’s bipartisan.”

• ‘We don’t need your children here’ Resident of assisted living facility in Yekaterinburg blows whistle on forced sterilizations

  On October 17, the news outlet Lampa Yekaterinburg published a video on social media of a woman talking about the forced sterilization of residents at the Uktussky Assisted Living Facility on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg — a state institution that houses elderly people and people with disabilities.

• Patriarch Kirill excommunicates defrocked Orthodox priest who seized convent outside of Yekaterinburg

  The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has approved the decision to excommunicate former Schema-Hegumen Sergii Romanov.

• ‘The house looks like a cemetery’ Memorial plaques to victims of Soviet repressions removed from St. Petersburg building after residents complain

  In St. Petersburg, 23 Rubinstein Street — also known as “Dovlatov’s House” — used to have 16 memorial plaques with the names of victims of Soviet-era political repressions. All sixteen people used to live in this building. Now the plaques commemorating them are gone, reports the local news outlet Fontanka.

• Donald Trump’s Hatred of Women

  The extent to which he denigrates women and the anger and even hatred he projects onto them reflects, in equal measure, his own self-hatred of his dependency, weakness, and passivity that he associates with the feminine in him.