9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: January 16th, 2022

This week has been really great for Linux news and releases. We kicked off with a new major Firefox release, pre-orders of the PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone for everyone, and a new GNU Linux-libre kernel for those who want to build a 100% free computer without any proprietary code or drivers.

We also got a new major FFmpeg release with lots of goodies for all your multimedia creation, a new major NetworkManager release with great stuff for all your networking needs, and a new major release of the SystemRescue live Linux system for all your system rescue and recovery needs.

Linux Weekly Roundup #165

I hope that you are doing well.

We had a peaceful week in the world of Linux releases with the releases of Sparky Linux 5.16, Bluestar Linux 5.16.0, and Slackware 15.0-rc3.

Audiocasts/Shows

• FOSS dev SABOTAGED their libraries, EAC isn’t so easy, Humble Bundle disappoints – Linux News Jan. – Invidious

• Terminal Based Gaming Is Just Better #shorts – Invidious

  Have you ever thought modern graphics are just too much and want to go back to a simpler time a time where we just played games using ascii symbols in our terminal, well now you can.

• How to install FreeOffice on Elementary OS 6.0 – Invidious

  In this video, we are looking at how to install FreeOffice on Elementary OS 6.0.

• It’s easy to replace Windows with Linux: Here’s how

Kernel Space

• Kernel Updates Available » PCLinuxOS

  The following Kernels are available for PCLinuxOS. Kernel 5.15.15, Kernel LTS 5.10.92 and Kernel LTS 5.4.172.

• Linux To Adopt New Multi-generation LRU Page Reclaim Policy

  Based on observed behaviour on Android and Chrome OS, Google began working on a new page reclamation strategy for its Linux-based OSes aimed to improve how the virtual memory subsystem reclaims unused memory pages. More recent work shows the new MGLRU policy can benefit server environments, too.

Applications

• ‘Rnote’ is an Impressive Freehand Note Taking App Built in Rust & GTK4 – OMG! Ubuntu!

  Rnote is a seriously impressive freehand note taking app written in Rust and GTK4.

  I came across it on Flathub this week and, within seconds of installing it, I knew I had to give it a bit of a spotlight. If you’ve got a laptop with a stylus or touch-enabled screen and you use GNOME Shell you have to try it out.

  Rnote is billed by its developer as a “simple note taking application written in Rust and GTK4”. I spent about 20 minutes playing around with it (albeit with a mouse as primary input) and it’s really quite polished considering that it’s likely far from feature complete.

• Mumble 1.4.230 | Mumble

  We are proud to present you with the first stable release of the Mumble 1.4.x release series, which brings many new features, bug fixes and general improvements.

  You can download the new version from our Downloads page or the GitHub release page or from within your Windows client or software package management system.

• Mumble 1.4 Released For Open-Source Voice Chat

  It’s been over two years since Mumble 1.3 was released for this open-source VoIP / voice chat program that is popular with gamers and open-source enthusiasts while today it’s been succeeded by Mumble 1.4.

  Mumble 1.4 has reached stable and comes with a new plug-in framework for extending this high quality voice chat software. This new framework can be used for extending the functionality offered by Mumble and can be used for a variety of general purpose use-cases. Mumble 1.4 also adds a full-featured search dialog, channel listeners, TalkingUI as a convenient non-gamer overlay for showing who is talking, various other UI improvements, stereo audio streams support, and support for Markdown in text messages.

• Spectator is an open-source REST-API testing app for Linux

  Spectator is a free, open-source (Libre) REST-API testing program for Linux. It is written in Vala programming language and GTK.

  The app allows developers to make requests to test their web endpoints, create custom environments, and save everything within a collection.

Instructionals/Technical

• How to Install and Configure Samba File Sharing on Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 8

  Samba is a suite of open source applications that implements the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Many operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, use the SMB protocol for client-server networking. Samba enables Linux / Unix machines to communicate with Windows machines in a network. Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Microsoft Windows Server domain, either as a Domain Controller (DC) or as a domain member.

  Sharing files is an essential part of server administration. It allows sharing of resources across the network which are needed by users to carry out their tasks. Samba server is usually installed on central Linux server where information is stored in variety of media and accessed using windows client or Linux using Samba client.

• How To Install FTP Server on Debian 11 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FTP Server on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, The vsftpd FTP Server is one of the most trusted applications among the Linux professionals. The official website of vsftpd FTP Server claims that the security, stability and performance is the key points due to which it has gained much popularity among the Linux users.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the FTP Server on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• How to fix the issue “No authenticators available” with Mutt in Fedora

• Install Pydio With Ubuntu 21.04s

  What can come among the top 5 open source firewalls? Yes, this I was thinking of! Of course, there are lots of services and ready use os available. Deciding

• How to install Cpanel and WHM on Ubuntu 20.04 – NextGenTips

  In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to install Cpanel on Ubuntu 20.04. Also, I will show you the free alternatives to Cpanel. This will make a big impact while trying to choose which free web hosting to use without worrying about the licenses. Cpanel provides a way where you can send emails by providing email hosting services which makes it easy to communicate with your customers.

  Cpanel is a web hosting control panel. It provides a GUI interface where administrators key in the information they want to configure, this simplifies the process of hosting a web site to the website end-user.

• How to install Steam on a Chromebook in 2022

  Today we are looking at how to install Steam 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.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • SFXR-Qt 1.4.0 is out! | agateau.com

    Last release of SFXR-Qt was in September 2019. I kept using it for Pixel Wheels, it had its quirks and bugs but I did not have the time and motivation to work on it, so the poor app was left on its own for more than two years.

    Fast forward to November 2021: SFXR-Qt was added to Debian! It always feels good to see an app getting more widespread, with the minor issue that I learned about it because tests did not pass on big-endian machines… Working on that bug was a bit frustrating because I do not own a big-endian machine and failed to setup a working big-endian VM to test my changes on, but after a few blind fixes I eventually got it fixed. Kudos to Alex Myczko, the bug reporter, for the responsiveness in testing my changes.

    Entering Debian probably gave a bit more exposure to the app, because I then received a bug report for that crash I had known for a long time but never got to fix… Now that someone else reported it, I finally fixed it.

Distributions

• EasyOS: Rollback exceptions extended

  Currently only bringing up this erase-exceptions window when do a rollback to pristine first bootup, but perhaps should consider it for other rollback choices — such as rollback to an earlier version of EasyOS or a snapshot.

  Note, the “Web browser profile” checkbox will save all firefox, seamonkey, chrome and chromium profiles under /home, as well as all mozilla profiles running as root (/root/.mozilla).

Devices/Embedded

• How to Build a Morse Code Transmitter Light with Raspberry Pi | Tom’s Hardware

  I recently moved into a new place, and discovered that my friend and I live in buildings that face each other. We’re about a kilometer apart, but both our balconies have line of sight to each other. I’ve always wanted to build a communications network with my friends since I was a kid, so I dusted off an old book about Morse, one of my Raspberry P’s and got to work. I’m a big fan of mixing old and new technologies, so instead of using something modern, I decided to use Morse code.

  This tutorial is the first in a two part series for building a building-to-building morse code communications system. In it, we’ll explore how to create a morse code transmitter using a Raspberry Pi and a DJ light.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • The Best FPS Games for Android 2022 – Call of Duty Mobile, Infinity Ops and More – Droid Gamers

  • 13 new Android games from the last week: The best, worst, and everything in between (1/9/22-1/16/22)

  • Android users warned some Google features will stop working next month – change these settings now

  • Motorola’s next flagship Android phone could have insane specs | Android Central

  • postmarketOS // v21.12 Service Pack 1

    Welcome to 2022! This is the first service pack of the year bringing some of the improvements from edge to stable. This also brings a few nice new features to the v21.12 release that were not ready for inclusion yet when the last stable release was made.

Aeroponic Cell Grows Garlic, Forwards CellSol Packets | Hackaday

Certain pictures draw attention like no other, and that’s what happened when we stumbled upon a Twitter post about “resuscitating supermarket garlic” by [Robots Everywhere]. The more we looked at this photo, the more questions popped up, and we couldn’t resist contacting the author on Twitter – here’s what we’ve learned!

This is an aeroponics cell – a contraption that creates suitable conditions for a plant to grow. The difference of aeroponics, when compared to soil or hydroponics methods, is that the plant isn’t being submerged in soil or water. Instead, its roots are held in the air and sprayed with water mist, providing both plenty of water but also an excess of oxygen, as well as a low-resistance space for accelerated root growth – all of these factors that dramatically accelerate nutrient absorption and development of the plant. This cell design only takes up a tiny bit of space on the kitchen countertop, and, in a week’s time, at least half of the cloves have sprouted!

Thirty Seconds At 100 Megakelvins | Hackaday

Back in Dec 2020 we wrote about the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) magnetic fusion reactor’s record-breaking feat of heating hydrogen plasma up to 100 megakelvins for 20 seconds. Last month it broke its own record, extending that to 30 seconds. The target of the program is 300 seconds by 2026. There is a bit of competition going, as KSTAR’s Chinese partner in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) did a run a week later reaching 70 million degrees for 1056 seconds. It should be noted that KSTAR is reaching these temperatures by heating ions in the plasma, while EAST takes a different approach acting on the electrons.

Hardware

• Printable Portable Mask Gives You The Numbers On Your Workout | Hackaday

  We’re currently in the midst of New Year’s Resolutions season, which means an abundance of spanking new treadmills and exercise bikes. And one thing becomes quickly obvious while using those machines: the instruments on them are, at best, only approximately useful for measuring things like your pulse rate, and in the case of estimating the calories burned by your workout, are sometimes wildly optimistic.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • Josh Bressers: Episode 306 – Open source isn’t broken, it’s an experience

      Josh and Kurt talk about the faker and colors NPM events. There is a lot of discussion around open source being broken or somehow failing because of these events. The real answer is open source is an experience. How we interact with our dependencies determines what the experience looks like.

    • Top 5 opensource firewalls that secure your network

      What can come among the top 5 open source firewalls? Yes, this I was thinking of! Of course, there are lots of services and ready use os available. Deciding to deploy any firewall can be difficult. Why difficult? Well, the reason is simple, we never know what consequences will be there while not taking care of security. From the very beginning of the Linux era, things started with Squid, where Administrators were supposed to manage everything manually. I remember still, how we were supposed to get install service with RPM manually. How all ACLs, IP address ranges were supposed to take care of very precisely. Getting access to logs, reports was altogether a tedious job. Applying IPTable to provide extra layer security made Linux admins feel like some sort of saviors.

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • The Log4j lesson for open-source users [Ed: Trying very hard to distract from the real threat, which is back doors in proprietary software and no transparency at all]

      • CrowdStrike expands Zero Trust support to macOS and Linux [Ed: CrowdStrike spam (press release) edited into a fake ‘article’ by Mitchell Hagema, who crossposts this in shadow domains; these Microsofters spam the media with FUD in order to promote their pure garbage]

Monopolies

• 6 Tips For Ensuring Your Intellectual Property Works For You [Ed: False terminology; "Intellectual Property" is a misleading misnomer, it should say trademarks instead]

  IP rights are valuable assets to any business. Patents and utility models protect new technologies and give you a monopoly over them. Trademarks protect your brand and ensure that only you can use it. Industrial design rights protect the appearance of a given product and gives you exclusive rights over it. These rights provide significant commercial advantages which can lead to higher revenues and profits.

• Patents

  • Official expresses concern that pandemic will drag on until the world is vaccinated

    How patent law and corporate profits keep variants crawling the globe

  • A review of railway innovation through patenting trends

    Turning first to Figure 1 below, which shows EU patenting trends across the aforementioned subsystems, the data indicates that the ENE and INF areas have remained relatively stable in terms of patent filings, but that CCS and RST have seen significant increases in patent filings since around 2010. Of note, the “High value inventions” referred to on the Y-axis of Figure 1 represents patent families “that include patent applications filed in more than one patent office”.

  • Deferred Subject Matter Eligibility Response (DSMER) Pilot Program

    Back in 2010, I wrote an article with Prof Rob Merges titled Operating Efficiently Post-Bilski by Ordering Patent Doctrine Decision-Making. We suggested that patent examiners often lack capacity to judge metaphysical questions centered around abstractness and laws of nature. In addition, we noted that many eligibility questions substantially overlap with bread-and-butter patent doctrines such as obviousness, enablement, and indefiniteness. What that means is that delaying eligibility decisions can often result in entirely avoiding eligibility decisions. In a 2019 article, Professor Chien provided more detailed guidance on how this could be accomplished.

  • Serstech files nine patent applications [Ed: Serstech acting as if patents, even software patents which are mostly bunk, are a substitute for actual products]

    Serstech has filed nine patent applications to the European patent office over the last two weeks. The patent applications are filed to protect the newly launched Serstech Arx products and the next generation product platform that is currently under development. Due to ongoing and expected sales opportunities in particularly the US market, Serstech recently decided to ramp up its IPR efforts to better protect its innovations.

  • UK: With News That The Austrian Parliament Has Ratified The Protocol On The Provisional Application Of The Agreement On A Unified [Ed: And yet more shameless fake news from Team UPC]

    With news that the Austrian parliament has ratified the Protocol on the provisional application of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on 2 December 2020, the #UPC opening in 2022 is becoming more likely.

  • IP in 2022 – What next and where? [Ed: Truly ridiculous propaganda item with the misnomer “IP”; it also promotes fake news about UPC along the way]

  • Mazda May Be Cooking Up a Rotary-Powered Sports Car After All [Ed: EPO patent valid though?]

    Rumors about Mazda building a new rotary-engined sports car have proliferated ever since Mazda pulled the RX-8 after 2012. Mazda stoked those rumors with their spectacular RX-Vision rotary sports car concept they unveiled in Tokyo in 2015, and the company has affirmed the desire to build such a rotary sports cars — if it becomes feasible. Now, however, we have some new evidence the brand has been working on one behind the scenes.

  • Mazda Patent App Shows Hybrid Rotary Engine That Powers the Rear Wheels

    Everyone’s been waiting for a new rotary-powered Mazda since the RX-8 bowed out in 2012. Mazda itself even built an RX-Vision Concept that many believed would preview an eventual RX-9; that was way back in 2015, though, and we still haven’t seen anything like it enter production. The car world had more or less accepted that rotaries would only have a future as EV range extenders—that is, until Friday when a patent application was unveiled showing what looks like a hybrid rotary engine that drives the rear wheels.

    Detailed patent drawings from Europe were published on a Japanese Hatena blog, which pointed out key details that hint this may be a three-rotor engine. Indeed, there are what look like three spark plug holes and three rotor housings, so it would likely be pretty potent. Factor in the electrification aspect and it’s doubtful anyone would call it underwhelming like they did with the naturally aspirated RX-8.

  • Is Amending the Description of a European Patent Application to be Consigned to History? [Ed: These EPO boards are stacked and besieged; this merits a mention all the time, but they leave that out]

    In a notable decision on an apparently mundane legal topic, a Technical Board of Appeal of the EPO recently decided (in T 1989/18) that requiring applicants to amend their description so that it is consistent with the claims has no basis in the EPC. This decision may help to consign this practice to history, streamlining the prosecution process at the EPO in a way that will be welcomed by applicants and attorneys alike.

    It is a historic feature of European practice that the description of a patent application must be amended so that it is consistent with the claims. The Guidelines for Examination at the EPO refer to a number of examples of inconsistencies that must be corrected. One example includes inconsistencies where a statement in the description suggests that the invention is limited to a particular feature, but the claims are not so limited. Another example is where it is stated or implied in the description that certain features are essential to the invention when those features are not present in the claims. A further example is where parts of the description give the impression that they disclose ways of carrying out the invention, when those examples are no longer within the scope of the claims. Examiners can be particularly enthusiastic in pursuing these objections. In order to overcome these objections it is often necessary to make amendments wherever the word “embodiment” or “invention” appears. It can also be necessary to delete passages or to indicate in the description that certain examples are not within the scope of the claims.

• Trademarks

  • IP Court Clarifies What Constitutes Token Use For Trademarks Vulnerable To Non-Use

    Russian law stipulates that if an owner does not use a trademark within three years, it can be cancelled. To avoid this happening, some owners try to keep their marks alive by producing evidence of use, though in very small volumes. However, token use is generally insufficient to establish that a trademark is, in fact, being used. The IP Court of the Russian Federation often issues rulings to this effect, and has published some criteria for what it defines as ‘token use’.

  • Quality no longer affects assessment of trademark recognition in Polish courts [Ed: When trademark law becomes just a pipeline for rubber-stamping]

    Proving the reputation of a trademark is not an easy task. The owner must prove that the mark is recognised by a significant share of the population in a substantial part of the territory in which it is registered. In the European Union this is mainly assessed using quantitative criteria. However in Poland, one must also provide qualitative criteria to prove recognition.

    The reputation of a mark is not defined by the EU Trademark Regulation, nor by Polish industrial law. Pursuant to case law, a well-known mark must have sufficient recognition that the relevant public, when confronted by a similar mark, may possibly make an association between the two, even when they are used for non-similar products or services, consequently damaging the reputation of the established mark (14/09/1999, C-375/97, Chevy, EU:C:1999:408, § 22-23). There is no EU case law specifying that a qualitative threshold must be met in order to enjoy protection deriving from reputation.

• Copyrights

  • Turkey: What Amendments Does Law No. 7346 On Amendment Of Certain Laws Envisage In Law No. 5846 On Intellectual And Artistic Works? [Ed: Treating people who share like criminals]

    Law No. 7346 aims to redraw the boundaries of criminal liability by expanding the scope of the acts stipulated in Article 72 of the Copyright Law.

  • Federal Supreme Court seeks clarification on visibility criterion in German design law

    ‘What you see is what you get’ is one of the vital principles of EU (and German) design law. Particularly in relation to designs for component parts of a complex product (ie, parts used in or incorporated into a complex product, eg, a car hood), EU design law ties availability of design protection to visibility of such parts during normal use. This ‘visibility criterion’ has massive practical relevance in design law. Still, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) – despite a few incidental remarks in the more recent Ferrari ruling (C-123/20) on unregistered EU designs – has not yet had the chance to give specific guidance on how ‘visibility’ is to be assessed. Upon a referral (I ZB 31/20) from the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH), an inconspicuous bicycle saddle might now write history in that it could trigger the CJEU to define the contours of the visibility criterion in more detail.

Desktop/Laptop

• Top 4 Linux Distros for Beginners (2022)

  As we come into the new year, it might be part of your New Year’s Resolution to make the big move to the amazing world that is the Linux OS. If so, then the first hurdle you will have to overcome is choosing what distribution (distro) you want to use.

Kernel Space

• New Xilinx Drivers, GNSS Reciver USB Driver & Habana Labs Updates Land In Linux 5.17 – Phoronix

  Sent in to the Linux kernel on Friday were the “char/misc” updates as the smorgasbord of kernel changes not fitting formally within other areas of the kernel. The char/misc changes range from AI accelerator driver updates to new Xilinx code to other random changes littered throughout.

  Char/misc for Linux 5.17 is as diverse as ever. Among the many changes bringing in roughly 26.9k lines of new code (and 4.5k lines removed) include items such as:

  - The Xilinx event management driver is new and is used for notifications from firmware. This can be used for error events, device events, and more.

• Page Table Check Feature Merged For Linux 5.17 To Help Fight Memory Corruption – Phoronix

  Merged into Linux 5.17 this weekend is the Google-developed Page Table Check feature that can help combat some forms of memory corruption.

  Google engineers last year uncovered a reference count underflow issue in the kernel that affected all kernel releases going back to Linux 4.14 four years prior. Stemming from uncovering that issue, Google engineers came up with Page Table Check to help uncover issues like that moving forward. The Page Table Check feature is principally about ensuring there is no illegal sharing of pages such as one process accidentally (or otherwise) leaking to another process.

• Graphics Stack

  • GravityMark 1.44 Released With Ray-Tracing Support – Phoronix

    Those wanting to enjoy some impressive Vulkan ray-traced visuals on Linux (and macOS or Windows) now have GravityMark to add to the list of Linux-native ray-traced software for testing.

    GravityMark is the new graphics benchmark from Tellusim, the company led by Alexander Zapryagaev who was one of the original Unigine co-founders. GravityMark has been quite impressive for a free and cross-platform, cross-API benchmark while with this weekend’s v1.44 release is even more impressive now that there is DirectX 12 / Vulkan / Metal ray-tracing support.

Applications

• ‘Secrets’ – Modern Simple GTK4 App to Store Your Passwords in Ubuntu / Fedora | UbuntuHandbook

  Looking for an app to store your passwords? Secrets is a good choice for those using GNOME desktop.

  “Secrets” is a free open-source password manager that integrates perfectly with GNOME desktop and provides a modern and easy to use user interface. It’s formerly Password Safe (nothing to do with pwsafe). Since v6.0, it’s called Secrets.

• JACK2 1.9.20 Released With Official FreeBSD Support

  A new version of JACK2 is available this weekend, the latest version of this cross-platform, professional sound server.

  While PipeWire continues taking off on the Linux desktop for roles filled by PulseAudio and JACK, that hasn’t let up development of JACK2. With JACK2 1.9.20 for that modern version of JACK there is fixes around the 32-bit support in the ALSA driver, multiple fixes affecting Windows and macOS, new build options around the example tools, and official FreeBSD support.

Instructionals/Technical

• How to Install Linux Kernel 5.17 on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

  For users of Fedora, most packages are almost up to date with what is present and classed as stable. However, when it comes to Kernels, users often may want to try the latest release candidate without switching to Fedora Rawhide and having an unstable system. With Fedora becoming more popular and mainstream, newer users do not realize you can enable the Fedora repository and install upcoming release candidates constantly being updated by the Fedora team.

  In the following small tutorial, you will learn how to install the Latest Linux Kernel from the Fedora Rawhide repository on your Fedora 35 Workstation or Server.

• Wouter Verhelst: Backing up my home server with Bacula and Amazon Storage Gateway

  Initially conceived and sized so I could digitize my (rather sizeable) DVD collection, I started using it for other things; I added a few play VMs on it, started using it as a destination for the deja-dup-based backups of my laptop and the time machine-based ones of the various macs in the house, and used it as the primary location of all the photos I’ve taken with my cameras over the years (currently taking up somewhere around 500G) as well as those that were taking at our wedding (another 100G). To add to that, I’ve copied the data that my wife had on various older laptops and external hard drives onto this home server as well, so that we don’t lose the data should something happen to one or more of these bits of older hardware.

• How To Install Let’s Encrypt SSL with LEMP on AlmaLinux 8 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Let’s Encrypt SSL with LEMP on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Let’s Encrypt is the free SSL option for you. Let’s Encrypt can be signed through Certbot, a free, open-source software tool for automatically issuing the SSL Certificate.

  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 a free SSL certificate with LEMP on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

• Install Arch Linux as fast as possible – Invidious

  This includes downloading, bootloader, and all the fixing for a functional arch system. Using this new branch you can do it as well!

• How to Install Java on AlmaLinux – Linux Stans

  AlmaLinux is a FOSS alternative to the old CentOS. It’s a great server distro and a lot of people switched to Alma after the whole CentOS Stream announcement. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to install and configure Java on AlmaLinux via the CLI.

  Java has different editions to choose from, so we’ll include instructions for the most popular and widely used one – the Standard Edition. Java also has different packages to choose from, Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and the Java Development Kit (JDK). The JDK also includes JRE, so this tutorial will show you how to install JDK on Alma Linux. There are also two different implementations – OpenJDK (FOSS), and Oracle Java. Most people prefer OpenJDK, so that’s what we’ll use. If you don’t know the differences between any of these, you can either google them or don’t worry about it – this tutorial will set up the environment that will most likely work for you.

Games

• Solve Wordle using the Linux command line | Opensource.com

  I’ve recently become a little obsessed with an online word puzzle game in which you have six attempts to guess a random five-letter word. The word changes every day, and you can only play once per day. After each guess, each of the letters in your guess is highlighted: gray means that letter does not appear in the mystery word, yellow means that letter appears in the word but not at that position, and green means the letter appears in the word at that correct position.

• Mac and Linux games leave Humble Bundle’s Trove after January 31st – Yahoo Tech

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • psifidotos: Latte Dock v0.11~ | Multi-Screens Dream, an AllScreens option…

    This is a long awaited feature for multi-screens users. In Latte upcoming v0.11 users can now choose their docks and panels to be on all screens or on all secondary screens. Docks and panels will be up to date in such case and it is also easier for users to make changes to them and use them in general.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Günther Wagner – Announce new release 0.9.0 of librest

    I’m pleased to announce the release of 0.9.0 of librest, a library meant to interact with “Restful” web services. This library is very old and not really big but it handles the aspect of interaction with REST-APIs in a convenient fashion. After a long period of maintenance state i picked it up and brought it into 2022. Most of the deprecated API calls are gone now and it should be now possible to parallel-install librest with the previous release.

  • ‘Nordic’ GTK Theme Brings Nord Color Scheme to Linux Desktops – OMG! Ubuntu!

    If you want to bring the chilled out tones of the popular Nord theme to your Ubuntu desktop you simply must check out the ‘Nordic’ GTK theme.

    The Nordic GTK theme is a faithful implementation of the popular colour-scheme of the Nord theme For GTK-based desktop environment. Like the similarly-ubiquitous Dracula theme, Nord is a hugely popular colour scheme with developers, and there are a ton of ports for all kinds of applications.

    Originally created to provide “optimal focus and readability for code”, Nord has bloomed in popularity with developers and non-developers alike.

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry PI Kiosk: creating a touchscreen, informative stand – peppe8o

  Welcoming guests in stores or exibitions can require a lot of effort when peak hours are in progress. Usually, informative stands help managing guests with self-service devices, giving the first info and reducing guests bounce rate. You can build them on low costs solution by creating kiosks with Raspberry PI computer boars and touchscreen display

  In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a kiosk with Raspberry PI, mounted with a touchscreen display.

  A lot of tutorials on this topic focus on installing specialized kiosk software. I will make things simpler: our kiosk will just show a web page for the user. I’ll build my kiosk configuration on Chromium running in a special configuration named “kiosk”.

  All the logic and customer services will be built on web pages to be shown. A good practice will be creating these web pages with a clear navigation menu so that guests can easily understand where they are and how to go back to the home page.

• Pine64′s Newest Linux Smartphone ‘PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition’ Now Available for Pre-Order – Slashdot

  “Linux fans rejoice!” writes Hot Hardware. ” Pine64′s newest smartphone is officially available for pre-order.”

• PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition Linux Handset Opens Preorders At An Attractive Price

  Linux fans rejoice! Pine64’s newest smartphone is officially available for pre-order. Here is everything you need to know to get your hands on the PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition.

  PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition pre-orders opened up yesterday. Devices that are pre-ordered before January 18th will be shipped from Pine64’s Hong Kong warehouse by January 24th and should arrive by early February. Devices ordered after that date will not be shipped until late February. The team will be on vacation for Chinese New Year, which begins on February 1st.

  There are a few other things to note about pre-orders. First, consumers can only purchase a single device. Second, the PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition must be purchased separately from other items on the Pine64 website. Consumers will otherwise receive an error at check-out and be unable to complete their transaction. This includes adding items like the charging case. Last, Pine64 notes, “The PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition is aimed at Linux developers with an extensive knowledge of embedded systems and/or experience with mobile Linux.” The device is intended for “developers and early adopters” and not for those who rely upon mainstream apps.

• Intel launches NUC 11 Essential mini PC, Kits, and SBC with Jasper Lake SoC – CNX Software

  Details about the Intel NUC 11 Essential “Atlas Canyon” mini PCs with Jasper Lake processor were leaked in May 2021, but Intel has now made it official with the “launch” of five NUC 11 Essential SKUs with one Windows 11 mini PC with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, three kits (bare mini PC), and one bare board all listed on Ark Intel.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Glitch Your Way To Reverse-Engineering Glory With The PicoEMP | Hackaday

    Most of our projects are, to some extent, an exercise in glitch-reduction. Whether they’re self-inflicted software or hardware mistakes, or even if the glitches in question come from sources beyond our control, the whole point of the thing is to get it running smoothly and predictably.

    That’s not always the case, though. Sometimes inducing a glitch on purpose can be a useful tool, especially when reverse engineering something. That’s where this low-cost electromagnetic fault injection tool could come in handy. EMFI is a way to disrupt the normal flow of a program running on an embedded system; properly applied and with a fair amount of luck, it can be used to put the system into an exploitable state. The PicoEMP, as [Colin O’Flynn] dubs his EMFI tool, is a somewhat tamer version of his previous ChipSHOUTER tool. PicoEMP focuses on user safety, an important consideration given that its business end can put about 250 volts across its output. Safety features include isolation for the Raspberry Pi Pico that generates the PWM signals for the HV section, a safety enclosure over the HV components, and a switch to discharge the capacitors and prevent unpleasant surprises.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Serial Studio One Year On

  The program is open-source and multi-platform. You can build it yourself or download pre-compiled binaries for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

• Programming/Development

  • Osmo PIM 0.2.14 compiled in OpenEmbedded

    Very good news about Osmo. “PIM” means Personal Information Manager, and Osmo has been in the pups for a very long time. However, it is somewhat neglected and not as well integrated as could be.

    The way this latest work with Osmo came about, is I have an elderly relative who has a mobile phone with prepaid account with a telco. I pay it, every 4 weeks. Don’t want to do a direct-debit with a bank, so renewal requires me to remember when to pay… and I forget.

    Besides, renewal is peculiar. I have to pay $15 for the renewal, then separately have to pay $5 international-calls addon. That second payment requires a manual online choice. I cannot see how to automate this with direct-debit or bpay. The telco is Optus.

  • Josef Strzibny: Configuring Rails system tests for headless and headfull browsers

    Want to run your system tests headless? And why not both ways? Here’s how to extend Rails tasks to run your system tests with the driver of your choice.

  • 3 Best Free and Open Source JavaScript Engines – LinuxLinks

    JavaScript is an interpreted programming language. It means that source code isn’t compiled into binary code prior to execution. The role of the JavaScript engine is to turn plain text script into executable code. In other words, the engine is a container in which you run your program.

    JavaScript engines are often developed by web browser vendors, and every major browser has one. In a browser, the JavaScript engine runs in concert with the rendering engine via the Document Object Model. JavaScript engines implement specification of the language provide by ECMAScript. Standardization enables the development of independent engines and ensures scripts give the same results no matter wherever they run.

    The first JavaScript engines were mere interpreters, but all relevant modern engines use just-in-time compilation for improved performance.

    The use of JavaScript engines is not limited to browsers. For example, the V8 engine is a core component of the Node.js and Deno runtime systems.

    Engines which use runtime interpreters and do not compile into native machine code are excluded from this roundup.

    Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary ratings chart. We feature free and open source software only here.

  • Kasm Workspaces – Stream Docker Containers Easily & Quickly

    Kasm Workspaces is an intriguing platform for security and development aficionados. It is accessible by web browser and allows users to deploy container apps, including full-fledged Ubuntu desktops.

    In our daily lives, we must deal with a wide range of challenges that arise in our workplace. As an independent developer, I am concerned with designing secure code, optimizing application speed, and hunting and fixing bugs. But what if, when searching for something on the Internet, I accidentally click on a site that steals my session or downloads ransomware or malware? That is beyond frustrating. Isn’t that right?
    Every day, I’m sure firms of various sizes have the same difficulty. What if one of their employees accidentally downloads malware in the workplace? Kasm Workspaces, on the other hand, attempts to solve the same problem to a large extent.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Fooled by complexity | Playing Perl 6␛b6xA Raku

      And that fool would be me. After realising that HyperSeq is lazy, I managed to simplify the code in my last post.

      [...]

      The sub needle transforms it’s argument or returns Nil. By turning Nil into Empty, any call to .head will skip all values that where not a hit. At least for strongly CPU-bound tasks, which allow for small batch sizes, .hyper doesn’t overshoot much.

  • Rust

    • GStreamer Rust bindings 0.18.0 release

      A new version of the GStreamer Rust bindings, 0.18.0, was released. Together with the bindings, also a new version of the GStreamer Rust plugins was released.

      As usual this release follows the latest gtk-rs release and the corresponding API changes.

      This release includes optional support for the latest new GStreamer 1.20 APIs. As GStreamer 1.20 was not released yet, these new APIs might still change. The minimum supported version of the bindings is still GStreamer 1.8 and the targetted GStreamer API version can be selected by applications via feature flags.

Giant Wheels Make For Exciting Powered Rollerskates

Roller skates are fun and all, but they’re pretty well limited to rolling on relatively smooth surfaces. [Fireball Tool] wanted something a little more rugged, so set about a build of his own.

The challenge of the design was to build these skates using as many wheelchair parts as possible, including the wheels. Roughly 22″ tall, the wheels have great bearings inside and are designed to run on a single-sided axle support, perfect for the skates. A metal bracket is then used to attach a snowboard boot binding so the wheels can be fitted to the wearer’s feet. Training wheels were fitted to the rear to make it easier for the rider, while a chainsaw engine was pressed into service to provide some welcome propulsive force.

Hardware

• Giant 3D Prints Piece-by-Piece | Hackaday

  While FDM printers have gotten bigger lately, there’s almost always going to be a part that is bigger than your bed. The answer? Break your design into parts and assemble them after printing. However, the exact method to do this is a bit of a personal choice.

• Coin Sorter Is Elegant And Beautiful | Hackaday

  Counting change is a great way to teach children about mathematics and money, but it grows tiresome for those of us that have passed the first grade. Thus, a machine should the job, as [Daniele Tartaglia] demonstrates.

  A vibrating motor is used to shake a hopper full of coins, letting them fall through a feeder slot into the machine at a steady rate. They then go through a size-based sorter, which flicks the coins into a different channel depending on their physical dimensions. The coins are counted via infrared sensors wired up to an Arduino, and then pass through a rather lovely maze on their way down to sorting bins at the bottom of the machine.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• COVID-19 in 2021 — a timeline of the coronavirus outbreak

• The Omicron Shift in Europe: Pandemic or Endemic? – The New York Times

  In Britain, France, Spain and other countries across Europe, politicians and some public health experts are pushing a new approach to the coronavirus pandemic borne of both boldness and resignation: that the illness is becoming a fixture of daily life.

  Governments are seizing a moment in which their populations have experienced less severe illness, and, in some instances, a drop in new daily cases after weeks of record growth. And they are moving their mitigation policies off emergency footing.

  In Spain, for instance, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared last week that citizens would “have to learn to live with it, as we do with many other viruses,” and said that the country should adjust the national approach to more closely align with how it handles influenza outbreaks. Olivier Véran, the French health minister, said recently that France’s high level of infection and strong vaccination rate could “maybe” mean this would be the final wave.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • GCC 12 Ready To Help Fend Off Trojan Source Attacks – Phoronix

      Disclosed a few months back were “Trojan Source” attacks against compilers where specially crafted code could be rogue but not appear so due to exploiting Unicode issues. Unicode control characters could be used to reorder tokens in source code that could alter the behavior when compiled. With the upcoming GCC 12 compiler release there is a new warning to help point out possible Trojan Source attacks.

    • Vulnerability in cryptsetup Allows Decrypting Part of LUKS2-Encrypted Device

      An attacker with physical access to the medium could use this flaw to force a user into permanently disabling the encryption layer of that medium.

      Many enterprises, small businesses, and government users need to encrypt their laptops to protect confidential information such as customer details, files, contact information, and much more.

      LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) is the standard for Linux hard disk encryption and it is transparent to the user as it operates below the filesystem layer. Basically, it is a block device encryption, which means that when a block from disk is read or written the encryption module at kernel level works for us, like a translator.

      [...]

      This attack requires repeated physical access to the LUKS device but no knowledge of user passphrases. The decryption step is performed after a valid user activates the device with a correct passphrase and modified metadata. There are no visible warnings for the user that such recovery happened. The attack can also be reversed afterward with possible modification of revealed plaintext.

    • Microsoft Warns of Destructive Malware Targeting Ukrainian Organizations [Ed: Highly misleading headline and misdirection, suggestive of Microsoft controlling CISA and using it to deflect blame]

      Microsoft has released a blog post on possible Master Boot Record (MBR) Wiper activity targeting Ukrainian organizations, including Ukrainian government agencies. According to Microsoft, powering down the victim device executes the malware, which overwrites the MBR with a ransom note; however, the ransom note is a ruse because the malware actually destroys the MBR and the targeted files.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Brussels Playbook: David Sassoli dies — Russia talks — Surveillance scandal – POLITICO

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Why Hawaii Needs A Chief Data Officer — Now

  It’s a familiar story at the Hawaii State Capitol: A bill is authored by top legislative leaders, strongly supported by experts in the field and publicly opposed by no lawmakers, and yet it mysteriously dies in the waning days of session.

  Such was the case of House Bill 532 in 2019, which called for establishing a chief data officer within the state Office of Enterprise Technology Services.

  Along with creating a data task force, the legislation authorized the new employee to develop, implement and manage statewide dataset policies, procedures and standards.

  A chief data officer, a favorable committee report explained, “will help to standardize the sharing of data among agencies, increase government transparency, and promote data-driven government policies.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Novak Djokovic, Sport, Politics, Harassment, Defamation and Misdirection

  British newspapers have given heavy coverage to the association between Prince Andrew and the Epstein saga. Yet the Australian press, faced with strict laws about defamation, can not give the same level of attention to the relationship between the Prime Minister and Hillsong allegations.

  What we have just seen this week can be summarized as the defamation and harassment of a foreigner, the distraction from more serious issues and most critical of all, the trivialization of consent.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Survivor993 Is Not Alone: Lawsuits Show Abuse at School for At-Risk Teens

  Decades later, lawsuits submitted under the Child Victims’ Act have exposed rampant claims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Monopolies

• FOSS Patents: Google’s call on Apple to support the RCS messaging standard is consistent with what an EU commissioner already wanted 11 years ago: the EU’s unfinished interoperability business

  I may not always agree with The Verge on Apple-related issues, but I have no problem acknowledging that they’ve been right all along to ask Apple when iMessage would finally support the RCS messaging standard in order to achieve interoperability with other messengers. Now that Google’s Android chief Hiroshi Lockheimer publicly called on Apple to do so, there is at least some hope for change.

  While the iMessage lock-in problem and the social pressures it exerts on low-income families has been discussed on the Internet for some time (see this Septemer 2020 thread on Hacker News, which contains pretty good explanations of how it works), it took a recent Wall Street Journal article to draw the attention of influential people to that problem. It also came up during the Epic Games v. Apple trial, with Apple-internal communications revealing a lock-in strategy.

  When I ditched my iPhone last summer, I knew (not least thanks to the public debate surrounding Epic v. Apple) that one can switch off iMessage, which I did about a week before making my Google Pixel my primary phone. It was a non-issue since I primarily use WhatsApp and Signal. Then I’m not a teenager in the United States. The problem is real, and I do feel sorry for low-income families impacted by it. However, let’s be clear that Apple’s “culpability” in this context is merely a refusal to be interoperable. No one can reasonably expect them to provide an iMessage app on Android, but I agree with Google that supporting RCS would be the morally right thing to do.

• European Union: Don’t Wait Too Long To Enforce Your IP Rights, Especially Community Plant Variety Rights [Ed: No, there is no such thing as “IP” and what Márk Kovács is neither legally nor technically a right; moreover, life monopolies or patents on plants are insane!]

  Mark Twain famously said “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.” Although procrastination usually does not have serious consequences, careful consideration is needed when enforcing IP rights. In its recent decision in case C-186/18, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) concluded that an unjustified delay in enforcing IP rights may result in the loss of a large part of the claim due to time-limitation.

• Guest Book Review: Research Handbook on Design Law [Ed: There is no such thing as “IP” and what’s alluded to here is not “rights”, either. Hayleigh Bosher/Rosie Burbidge drank too much Kool-Aid. Bardehle Pagenberg is itself notorious.]

  Designs overlap with all the other IP rights and are vital for a wide range of industries from fashion to automotive. I was delighted to have the opportunity to read and review the Research Handbook on Design Law edited by Henning Hartwig, Bardehle Pagenberg, Munich, Germany.

• Patents

  • CVC Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 for Priority Benefit [Ed: These affairs show that the patent system became all about profiteering and privatisation, nothing at all to do with discovery and invention]

    On November 19th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, “CVC”) filed its Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 in Interference No. 106,132 (which names Sigma-Aldrich as Senior Party), asking the Patent Trial and Appeal Board for benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/652,086, filed May 25, 2012 (“P1″), U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/716,256, filed October 19, 2012, (“P2″), and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/757,640, filed January 28, 2013 (“Provisional 3″), pursuant to 37 C.F.R. §§ 41.121(a)(1)(ii) and 41.208(a)(3) and Standing Order ¶ 208.4.1.

  • CVC Files Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 3 to Substiture the Count [Ed: This is wasting courts’ time; they should just reject all of these ludicrous patents]

    On November 19th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, “CVC”) filed its Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 3 in Interference No. 106,132 (which names Sigma-Aldrich as Senior Party), asking the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to substitute the Count of the interference pursuant to 37 C.F.R. §§ 41.121(a)(1)(iii) and 41.208(a)(1).

  • CVC Files Substantive Miscellaneous Motion No. 4 to Add Senior Party Patents and Designate Claims Corresponding to the Count [Ed: Total lunatics still trying to patent life itself, not because of inventiveness but pure greed, deceit, Hubris]

    On November 19th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, “CVC”) filed its Substantive Miscellaneous Motion No. 4 in Interference No. 106,132 (which names Sigma-Aldrich as Senior Party), asking the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to add Sigma-Aldrich’s U.S. Patent Nos. 10,731,181 and 10,745,716 to the interference and designate claims 1-17 of the ’181 patent and claims 2-4, 11, 14, and 21-22 of the ’716 patent as corresponding to the Count, pursuant to 37 C.F.R. §§ 41.121(a)(1)(i) and 41.208(a)(2) and Standing Order (“SO”) 203.2. CVC’s substantive argument is that these claims would have been obvious over Count 1 and the Jinek 2012 reference (Jinek et al., 2012, “A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity,” Science 337(6096): 816-21) in light of the Krebber 2000 reference (Krebber and Silver, 2000, “Directing Proteins to Nucleus by Fusion to Nuclear Localization Signal Tags,” Methods in Enzymology 327: 283-96) or the Lange 2007 reference (Lange, 2007, “Classical Nuclear Localization Signals: Definition, Function, and Interaction with Importin α,” J. Biol. Chem. 282(8): 5101–05).

    [...]

    The brief then explicates with particularity the disclosures in the cited references which in combination with the limitations in the Count satisfy the requirements for obviousness. These include 1) disclosure of dual-guide (dgRNA) and single-guide (sgRNA) RNA embodiments of CRISPR in the Jinek 2012 reference; and 2) the use of the nuclear localization signal from SV40 T antigen as the “canonical NLS for targeting proteins to the nucleus” in the prior art, citing references in exhibits. The brief then subjects each of the claims CVC asks the Board to designate as corresponding to the count to the test established by the Supreme Court in Graham v. John Deere and KSR v. Teleflex Int’l to support its obviousness argument with regard to those claims.

  • Bioionix, Inc. Announces Issuance of European Patent for Electrochemical Water Treatment [Ed: Is Bioionix aware that EPO grants loads of invalid patents, based on insiders?]

    Bioionix, Inc, (www.bioionix.com) a technology platform company that develops, manufactures and distributes proprietary electrolytic systems to eliminate biological and chemical contaminants from water, announced today that the European. Patent Office issued the Letter of Acceptance for EP. Pat. No. 3507002 covering the configuration for electrochemical water treatment.

  • Admissibility of post-published evidence [Ed: Well, the Enlarged Board of Appeal is rigged, but they do not mention it]

    Inventive step and thus patentability of the claimed invention may be based on experimental data demonstrating a technical effect. In interim decision EPO T 116/18 – “Insecticide compositions” of October 11, 2021, questions on the admissibility of taking into account experimental data filed after the filing date of the patent application were referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (reference G 2/21).

  • Austrian government completes ratification of Protocol on Provisional Application of the UPC Agreement – once this is deposited the UPC may start within 8 months [Ed: Team UPC still pushing hard with fake news [1, 2], trying to advance totally illegal agenda]

    The EPO has announced that the Austrian government has successfully completed its ratification of the Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on provisional application (PPA). Once this ratification is deposited with the EU Council, then the provisional application period can commence and final preparations can be made for the arrival of the UPC, with the knowledge that its commencement is assured. The UPC Preparatory Committee has estimated that this preparation period would need to last around 8 months, so the UPC could start around 8 months from Austria’s deposit (depending of course on when Germany deposits its ratification of the UPC Agreement (UPCA) itself – see below).

  • Korean tech giants fall prey to patent trolling

    Though the pandemic has driven record-breaking profits for tech firms as demand for at-home leisure and communication hardware rises, it has also stoked a growing threat coming from patent trolls.

    Companies specializing in exploiting patent rights have been buying up intellectual property from firms struggling amid the pandemic and using it as ammunition against Korean firms.

    The approach is often seen as a “file-and-settle” strategy, as their targets would often prefer to avoid fighting a time-consuming court battle and the associated costs, even if they are likely to win the case.

    As a result, they are settling an increasing number of patent suits at an early stage of court proceedings, particularly in the United States, where the tech market is largest.

  • Doctor at Maynooth University awarded €1.5 million grant for ‘PatentsInHumans’ biology project
    

    …European Research Council (ERC) starting grant worth €1.5 million to undertake a five-year research project examining the bioethical implications posed by patents over technologies related to the human body.

  • Texas Two-Step Cannot Avoid Licensee Liability

    There is a lot going in this decision, but the crux of the appeal is a license interpretation question.

    [...]

    Statute of Limitations: Plastronics also had a counterclaim. In particular, Hwang had a right to further license the patent, but only with approval from Plastronics. Hwang admitted that he had licensed the patent, but that the license occurred 9 years before the lawsuit began and thus was outside of the 4-year statute of limitations under Texas law. The Texas allowed the claim — since it was an ongoing license. On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit reversed — holding that the “breach of contract … arose from a single, unauthorized license grant … almost ten years before Plaintiffs filed suit.” As such, the case was beyond the statute of limitations. The court distinguished other situations regarding periodic payments of royalties, where each missed payment is seen as another breach and thus can restart the statute of limitations. See Hooks v. Samson Lone Star, LP, 457 S.W.3d 52, 68 (Tex. 2015).

  • Admitted Prior art in 1886

    Field’s patent uses a spring to make it easier to slip on tight-fitting gloves. The case reached the Supreme Court in 1886, but the court sided with the accused infringer. The case involved admitted-prior-art. In particular, the patent specification admitted “that springs had been combined before with the wrists of gloves” in the past. That admission assured the court that the patent cannot cover “the combination of springs in every form with the wrists of gloves to close them.” The accused infringer was also using a spring-glove combination, but a different form than that claimed. As such, no infringement.

  • Supreme Court Patent Decisions

    We are 2 years into the 2020s and have 5 decisions thus far (counting Google v. Oracle, which discusses substantive patent issues). If that trend continues, then the final figures for the 2020s would be similar to that of the 2010s. Of course, thus far in the 2021-22 term, the Supreme Court has not yet granted certiorari in any patent cases.

  • Overruling the First Patent Case

    The Patent Act permits a patent to be divided up regionally within the United States.

    [...]

    35 U.S.C. 261. The provision was (I believe) added as part of the Patent Act of 1870 and overruled the very first Supreme Court patent law decision, Tyler v. Tuel, 10 U.S. 324 (1810). In Tyler, the Supreme Court found that a patent assignment excepting a few specific counties was not a “true assignment” and therefore the purported assignees had no right to sue on the case. The court suggested that exceptions might be found in equity.

  • Opinion: SCOTUS study is good idea, but little will come of it [Ed: Managing IP downplaying severe corruption of US patent courts, having courted the culprit (Albright) for puff pieces "interviews"]

    Albright’s actions are unusual enough to warrant the Supreme Court’s patent venue study, but they aren’t nefarious

  • Ones to Watch in UK patent litigation 2022 [Ed: Nowadays JUVE posts mostly marketing spam instead of articles; to make matters worse, Amy Sandys keeps posting fake news (lies) for people who break the law]

  • Vaccines and Vidal: what pharma in-house are watching in 2022 [Ed: Speaking only to patent boosters (and sponsors) to install a Microsofter as USPTO Director]

    Innovator and generics counsel weigh in on key court cases and why they have high hopes for Kathi Vidal

  • One Step Closer To The Unified Patent Court [Ed: No, UPC is illegal, but litigation profit drool over the money, so they promote fake news and lie to politicians]

    Germany and Slovenia have both deposited the Protocol on Provisional Application (PPA) with the Council of the European Union. Now only one more country will need to ratify the PPA before the Council can initiate the final step for implementation of the UPC, which is expected to enter into force in late 2022.

  • Federal Circuit Dataset & Stats: 2021 Update [Ed: Patent maximalist Jason Rantanen taking on CAFC, which has been pushing back against such maximalists]

    Figure 1 shows the number of Federal Circuit opinions and Rule 36 summary affirmances by origin since 2010. Once again, the highest number of merits terminations arose from the PTO. The most notable change for 2021 was a drop in the number of decisions arising from the district courts: from 197 in 2020 to 142 in 2021. These represent individual documents (i.e.: a single opinion or Rule 36), not docket numbers, but there’s also a 25% drop when looking at the data on a per-docket number basis. Overall, the Federal Circuit issued 653 merits decisions in regular appeals in 2021 as compared with 690 in 2020.

  • AutoBrilliance patent challenged as first US reexam in new Unified V2X Zone

    On January 10, 2022, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 6,615,137, owned and asserted by AutoBrilliance, LLC, an NPE. The ‘137 patent is generally directed to inter-vehicle communication systems and methods for detecting objects and notifying drivers of possible collision conditions and has been asserted against General Motors and Volvo. This filing marks the first U.S. reexamination within Unified’s new V2X Zone.

  • $2,000 for AutoBrilliance prior art

    On January 13, 2022, 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 7,337,650. The patent is owned by AutoBrilliance, LLC, an NPE. The ’650 patent generally relates to a vehicle sensor system consisting of video, radar, ultrasonic or laser sensors, oriented to obtain a 360 degree view around the vehicle for the purpose of developing a situation or scene awareness. The patent is currently being asserted against General Motors.

  • UK: The Patent Prosecution Highway [Ed: The patent system warped to favour aggressors at the expense of due process and presumption of innocence]

    The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) provides a mechanism for accelerating examination of a patent application at a second patent office, if examination work has already been conducted at a first patent office with whom a PPH agreement is in place. If claims of an application have been found acceptable by a first office (often the office of first filing), accelerated examination of a corresponding application at a second office may be requested. The PPH allows a second patent office to make use of relevant work already conducted by a first office when examining an application.

  • 2022 forecast: what lies in store for the UPC? [Ed: World Intellectual Property Review or WIPR is peddling fake news for Team UPC, as it has been doing for years (and proven wrong, repeatedly)

  • Crunchfish announces 12th Gesture Interaction patent

    Crunchfish Gesture Interaction AB (“Crunchfish”) has received an Intention to Grant from the European Patent Office (EPO) regarding gesture interaction with a physical or virtual display to type PIN codes or passwords in a unique way every time. The patent protects scrambling the keypad or display to ensure different touchless interaction patterns every time PIN codes or passwords are entered to lock or unlock the wearable. The patent number is EP18197711.7 and is valid until September 2032.

  • Mazda 3 May Receive A Two-Door Coupe Version

  • Mazda Is Back With Another Rotary Patent! This Time For A 3-Rotor Hybrid Design – The Fast Lane Car [Ed: Well, but EPO grants a lot of fake patents]

    Mazda recently filed a patent application for a rear-wheel drive rotary design with the European Patent Office. (Images: European Patent Office)

    [...]

    If you’re interested in learning more about Mazda’s patent, you can search the EPO listings through a service called Espacenet, using the top search bar. The case numbers are EP3932712A1, EP3932714A1 and EP3932730A1 respectively.

  • FOSS Patents: 2022′s most interesting patent enforcement question: how to raise a successful FRAND defense in Munich and Mannheim under Sisvel v. Haier (short of § 315)

    Standard-essential patent (SEP) litigation will be an even bigger topic in 2022 than in recent years, and a major reason is a wide discrepancy between the “ask” and the “bid” prices for 5G licenses. Of course, agreements do silently fall into place here and there (be they license or arbitration agreements), but some 5G litigation is already underway and storms are brewing elsewhere. Let’s not forget about WiFi 6 either–or the problem that one video codec pool (Access Advance) makes exorbitant demands. Bluetooth may be the only Sea of Tranquility in the digital standards space.

    Munich and Mannheim will remain the world’s primary SEP injuntion hotspots. London is also key, but let’s talk about that one on a different occasion.

    Vintage year 2021 and 2022 SEP cases in Munich and Mannheim will raise important new questions and have the potential to lead to more nuanced outcomes. That is so because cases that have been decided so far in the Sisvel v. Haier era–starting with the two Sisvel v. Haier cases themselves–presented fact patterns characterized either by implementers’ reliance on a strictly sequential application of the ECJ’s Huawei v. ZTE guidance or by defiance, ignorance, sometimes maybe terrible advice. Now we’re going to see what happens when reasonably sophisticated defendants who benefit from realistic advice go out of their way to comply with German SEP case law during the entire course of negotiations. That wasn’t the case before as far as I can tell.

    Global players typically have significant exposure to patent assertions in Germany. That was already the case when the Munich I Regional Court issued its SEP guidelines about two years ago. Those guidelines did not even come as a surprise. For example, Presiding Judge Dr. Matthias Zigann of the court’s Seventh Civil Chamber even went to an ETSI meeting to explain his plans beforehand. He listened to a lot of input, but then he and his colleagues decided. At that point, the prudent thing for implementers of FRAND-pledged SEPs to do would have been to heed that guidance in everyday licensing negotiations. It appears, however, that many parties were hoping that they wouldn’t be slapped with a Munich SEP injunction before the appeals court would overturn those SEP Local Rules. Wishful thinking.

  • Is Work From Home a U.S. Venue Work-Around? [Ed: Symptom of a corrupt patent system in the US, wherein the courts can act like for-profit corporations to treat lawsuits like business and then facilitate "form shopping"]

    As we begin year three of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of the Omicron variant has caused many workers, who had returned to the office during summer and fall 2021, to revert to working from home. This trend has further increased speculation that remote working arrangements will become more widespread, even after the pandemic ends, and may be here to stay.

    In the United States, “[a]ny civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.” The shift to working from home has raised new questions regarding a defendant’s “regular and established place of business” and thus, the proper venue for a patent infringement suit when a company’s remote employees work within many judicial districts in the United States. Recently, however, Hatch-Waxman plaintiffs in Celgene Corporation v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc., 17 F.4th 1111 (Fed. Cir. 2021), received the clearest guidance to date from the Federal Circuit regarding venue.

  • Vidal and Stark nominations go to full Senate [Ed: Biden still trying to shoehorn a Microsoft aggressor and proponent of software patents into the USPTO’s leadership]

    The Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed the nominations of Kathi Vidal for USPTO director and Len Stark for the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, sending them off for a full Senate hearing.

    The committee confirmed Vidal by a vote of 17 to five and Stark by 16 to six.

    The hearing had originally been scheduled to take place last week but was postponed to allow committee members to attend the funeral of former senator Johnny Isakson on January 6.

    Senator John Kennedy led the votes against Vidal’s nomination, saying: “If you took big tech and turned it upside down and shook it, our patent office directors would fall out of big tech’s pocket.”

    Michael Hawes, partner at Baker Botts in Houston, said he was pleased by Stark’s confirmation.

    “With Judge Stark’s experience as chief judge in Delaware, he can hit the ground running and add hands-on experience with Section 101 patentable subject matter procedures and pharmaceutical trials to the Federal Circuit,” he said.

    “He will also bring understanding of how Federal Circuit decisions on petitions for mandamus and interlocutory appeals, considering, for example, temporary injunction decisions, can affect a district court with a heavy docket of patent cases.”

    Vidal, the managing partner of Winston & Strawn’s Silicon Valley office, was nominated by President Joe Biden last October.

    Stark, a judge at the District Court for the District of Delaware, was nominated in November to replace Kathleen O’Malley, who will leave the Federal Circuit in March.

    A full Senate hearing is the last hurdle Vidal and Stark will face before they take their new position.

    A date for the hearing has yet to be announced.

  • Christmas Patents [Ed: Are even holidays and traditions being patented?]

    The festive season is, for many, a magical time of the year. And when magic is in the air, our imaginations are often encouraged to work a little harder – whether it’s children listening for sleigh bells in the snow, or grown-ups trying to find a perfect gift for that difficult-to-buy-for person in their life. For some inventors, however, imaginations are focussed on how to solve problems that come but once a year, such as how to stop the angel at the top of the tree from sitting lop-sided, or how Father Christmas can get into a house with no chimneys. There’s a certain kind of innovation which is special to the holiday season, and in this edition of Insight we explore some of the patents filed (and in some cases even granted) for Christmassy inventions.

  • Snow Brakes

    We have snow on the ground here in Missouri. That makes me think of Gary Reinert’s new patent entitled “method and apparatus for rapid stopping of a motor vehicle particularly on snow or ice.” U.S. Pat. No. 11,091,154. The image below from the patent tells the story. Conventional brakes are awful. Antilock Brakes are much better, but the Reinert Snow Brakes take the cake. Rather than just stopping the wheels, the Reinert Snow Brakes actually shift the car into reverse and spin the tires backward to slow-down the car. I feel like I saw this in Cannonball Run II, but I’m probably misremembering.

  • EU lays down law on UK rights of representation [Ed: Is this an attempt to distract from illegality of UPC?]

    The General Court has clarified the law on rights of representation before EU courts, but some lawyers think further challenges are possible

  • Motorola Wrap-around Display Tech Surfaces In A Patent, Covers Four Sides Of Device [Ed: Focusing too much on patents instead of actual products (not the same)]

    Motorola has been reportedly working on an all-screen smartphone. A patent submitted by the company has been published recently, suggesting that it has plans for making a smartphone with a screen that wraps all around it, such that only the top and the bottom edge of the smartphone is left with the frame. Read along to find out more details about the all-screen Motorola smartphone.

  • What It Means to Support a Waiver of COVID-19 Vaccine Patents [Ed: With COVID-19, the patents have killed millions of people needlessly. A lot of the media is in the pocket of the patent holders, so it's not informing readers.]

    “We can no longer rely on these big superpowers to come in and save us.”

    These words of biotechnologist Emile Hendricks capture the sentiment of countries unable to pay for the same quantities of COVID-19 vaccines as wealthier countries.

    In Africa, Hendricks and others are currently working, with backing from the World Health Organization (WHO), to reverse-engineer the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine because the pharmaceutical company has not released the intellectual property rights for its vaccines.

    Moderna, Pfizer, BioNTech, and other vaccine manufacturers have profited billions of dollars by selling their patented vaccines to wealthy countries, while nations such as Nigeria and Ethiopia endure the world’s lowest vaccination rates.

    But the Biden Administration—despite publicly supporting a waiver of COVID-19 vaccine patents—has done little to help under-vaccinated countries lift the patents.

• Trademarks

  • Precedential No. 1: TTAB Sustains Spotify’s Dilution-By-Blurring Claim Against POTIFY for Clothing and Marijuana-Related Software and Services

    In a rare dilution ruling, the Board sustained this opposition to registration of the mark POTIFY, in standard character and word-plus-design form, for clothing and for software and services related to medical marijuana dispensaries, on the ground of likelihood of dilution by blurring of the famous, registered mark SPOTIFY for downloadable software and online services. The Board found the mark SPOTIFY to be “as famous as marks comes” and dilution not just likely but “inevitable.” Spotify AB v. U.S. Software, Inc., Oppositions No. 91243297 and 91248487 (TTAB 2022) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Michael B. Adlin).

    [...]

    To prevail on its dilution claims, Spotify was required to show that: “(1) it owns a famous mark that is distinctive; (2) Applicant is using a mark in commerce that allegedly dilutes Opposer’s famous mark; (3) Applicant’s use of its mark began after Opposer’s became famous; and (4) Applicant’s use of its mark is likely to cause dilution by blurring or tarnishment. N.Y. Yankees P’ship v. IET Prods. & Servs., Inc., 114 USPQ2d 1497, 1502 (TTAB 2015) (quoting Coach Servs., 101 USPQ2d at 1723-24).”

  • $4,000 for Big Will Enterprises prior art

    On January 4, 2022, Unified Patents added two separate PATROLL contests with an opportunity to collect up to $4,000 in cash for prior art on at least claim 1 of two patents – U.S. Patent 8,452,273 and U.S. Patent 9,049,558. The patents are owned by Big Will Enterprises, Inc., an NPE. The patents generally relate to electronic messaging technologies for accurately identifying motion activity (MA) associated with mobile things (MT) using sensor data from a wireless communication device (WCD) transported by the MT so as to enable or initiate an activity based actions. The patents have been asserted against Montblanc, Unaliwear, and Kronoz.

  • European Union: Bubble Trouble For Names Similar To Champagne, EU Court Rules

    In the recent EU case C-783/19, a Spanish tapas bar chain had used CHAMPANILLO in its name, why Champagne producers had brought action. The EU Court clarified the scope of protection and found that there was significant similarity between the name CHAMPANILLO and the world-famous Champagne protected by EU law due to its origin. New and interestingly, a service provider’s use of a name similar to names protected due to their special origin was deemed an infringement.

  • Russian Federation: The Eurasian Trademark And Appellations Of Origin Registration System May Start Operating In 2022

    The EAEU trademark Treaty that introduces a new regional trademark and appellations of origin protection system was signed in Moscow on February 3, 2020 by five member-states of the EAEU: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The Treaty governs legal relations concerning filing application for registration and protection of trademarks and appellations of origin within the member-states of the EAEU. The said Treaty was ratified by all member-states and came into force on April 26, 2021. However, after the ratification procedure was completed it was not clear when the new regional trademark and appellations of origin protection system will become available for applicants.

    On December 16, 2021 a new development has been made – the Russian government adopted a schedule of official fees for certain legal operations related to registration of Eurasian trademarks and appellations of origin which enter into force on July 1, 2022 (The Government Resolution No.2318 dated December 16, 2021). It may be expected that the governments of the rest of the member-states are to adopt the local fees this year as well in order for the Eurasian trademark and appellations of origin system to start operating.

  • USPTO must back up new TM sanctions with action: in-house [Ed: By "sources" they mean sponsors; this is lobbying disguised as "journalism"]

    The USPTO should make sure it deters attorneys and filers from bad practices if it wants its new process to be effective, say sources

  • Sunday Surprises [Ed: Giorgio Luceri is posting misleading PR spam for EUIPO, looking to distract from the EUIPO’s destruction and corruption]

  • In 2021, How Often Did the TTAB Affirm Section 2(e)(1) Mere Descriptiveness Refusals?

    I have again reviewed the TTAB’s FOIA page (now called the “TTAB Reading Room”) in order to estimate the percentage of Section 2(e)(1) mere descriptiveness refusals that were affirmed by the Board during the last calendar year (2021). I counted 92 refusals, of which 84 were affirmed and 8 reversed. That’s an affirmance rate of about 91.3%, a five-point rise from last year’s 88%.

  • US judge says gruyere is a common food name

    A ruling in the US courts says gruyere is a generic style of cheese that can come from anywhere.

    The decision means US cheesemakers, not just those in France or Switzerland, can continue to create and market cheese under the common name.

  • E.D. Va. District Court Upholds TTAB Decision Finding “GRUYERE” Generic for Cheese

    In a convincing opinion, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has upheld the Board’s decision [TTABlogged here] finding the term GRUYERE to be generic for cheese, and thus unregistrable as a certification mark. On the Dairy Export Council’s motion for summary judgment, the court found that “the undisputed evidence produced by the parties in this case makes clear that the primary significance of the term GRUYERE, as understood by the relevant purchasing public in the United States, is a generic term for a type of cheese and does not refer solely to cheese from a specific geographic region.” Interprofession du Gruyère et al. v. U.S. Dairy Export Council et al., Civil Action No. 1:20-cv-1174 (E.D. Va. December 15, 2021).

    [...]

    “The central issue in this matter is whether the term GRUYERE has become generic for a certain type of cheese and is no longer understood to refer only to cheese which comes from the Gruyère region of Switzerland and France.”

  • Is Gruyère Still Gruyère if It Doesn’t Come From Gruyères?

    In Europe, the mild, smooth and nutty cheese called gruyère must have a slightly damp texture, with average spring and low crumble. It must be in the shape of a wheel, weighing between 55 and 88 pounds. Fruity notes must dominate.

    Perhaps most importantly, according to Swiss guidelines, gruyère must be made in the region around Gruyères, Switzerland, which has produced the cheese since the 12th century.

    In the United States, however, gruyère can be made anywhere, according to a federal court ruling that was made public last week. It was the latest development in a long-running legal tangle between American cheese producers and producers in Switzerland and France over what makes gruyère gruyère.

    In the ruling last month in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge T.S. Ellis III wrote, “Although the term gruyère may once have been understood to indicate an area of cheese production, the factual record makes it abundantly clear that the term gruyère has now, over time, become generic to cheese purchasers in the United States.” Under U.S. law, trademarks cannot be given to generic terms.

  • UK: By Design: Update On Registered Design Filing At The UK IPO

    Following a referendum in the UK in 2016, the UK’s official membership of the European Union ended in January 2020, triggering the start of an 11-month transition period which was relevant for various IP rights, including UK registered designs.

    Prior to the UK’s departure from the EU, a Registered Community Design (RCD) (also known as an EU design) would cover the UK. To ensure that rights from existing RCDs continue to be protected in the UK, the UK Government agreed to create an equivalent “cloned” registered UK design for all existing RCDs.

  • In 2021, What Was The Rate of TTAB Affirmance of Section 2(d) Refusals to Register? [Ed: UJSPTO very often wrong in granting trademarks]

    Yours truly, the TTABlogger, has once again reviewed the TTAB’s FOIA page (now called the “TTAB Reading Room”) in order to estimate the percentage of Section 2(d) likelihood-of-confusion refusals that were affirmed by the Board in the past calendar year. I counted 273 decisions, of which 240 were affirmances and 33 were reversals. That’s an affirmance rate of approximately 87.9%, or a bit less than 9 out of 10. A follow-up question is: how many were WYHAs?

    [...]

    How does this compare with past years? Here’s a bar chart (prepared by the incomparable Francesca (“Frankie”) Householder of Wolf Greenfield), covering the last ten years…

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • DRM updated

    Johathan Gray (jsg@) has updated DRM to Linux 5.15.14 (with support for several additional chips): [...]

Instructionals/Technical

• There is no such thing as a static website

  A common distinction in technology for building websites is a separation between “static” and “dynamic” websites. The idea is that a “static” website always returns the same HTML/CSS/etc, whereas a “dynamic” website changes the content that the server returns depending on the request.

  This seems, at first glance, to be a pretty sharp and useful distinction, letting us easily distinguish between static and dynamic. However, I don’t think it holds up to real scrutiny, and I believe that this distinction is holding us back from building better types of software that exist in the blurry space between static and dynamic.

  First off, we should look at why people care about this distinction in the first place. When looking at any sort of taxonomy, a good first question to ask is “who is this useful to, and why?”

• Pi-hole Installation Guide

  You probably know already the concept of the Pi-hole. If not, it’s a (forwarding) DNS server that you can install on your private network at home. All your clients, including every single smartphone, tablet, laptop, and IoT devices such as smart TVs or light bulb bridges, can use this Pi-hole service as their DNS server. Now here’s the point: it not only caches DNS entries, but blocks certain queries for hostnames that are used for ads, tracking, or even malware. That is: you don’t have to use an ad- or track-blocker on your devices (which is not feasible on smart TVs or smartphone apps, etc.), but you’re blocking this kind of sites entirely. Nice approach!

  Yes, there are already some setup tutorials for the Pi-hole out there. However, it’s not only about installing the mere Pi-hole, but setting it up with your own recursive DNS server (since the default installation forwards to public DNS servers), using DNSSEC, and adding some more adlists. That’s why I am listing my installation procedure here as well. However, it’s not a complete beginners guide. You’ll need some basic Linux know-how.

  I am using a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Rev 1.3 with Raspberry Pi OS for this setup. (While in the meantime I’m running Pi-hole on my Intel NUC with Ubuntu server.)

• How To Add, Remove and Update Software in Linux Using Apt

  Linux has many ways to install software. We can build our own executables or use AppImage to run containerized applications. But at the heart of many Linux distros is a package management system, which for Debian based systems, such as the Raspberry Pi and Ubuntu, is Apt.

  Apt, the Advanced Packaging Tool is a command line application which handles the installation, categorization and removal of applications and their dependencies from the software repositories. Apt is the heart of Debian systems and the lessons learnt are applicable from the $35 Raspberry Pi to million dollar super computers. Apt is available via the Terminal and we can even administrate systems remotely using a remote connection such as SSH.

  A command line tool may seem daunting but here we detail the most common commands that you will use to keep your system updated with the latest software.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Lots of Video News!

    I’ve been incredibly happy with the very early success and interest with the videos produced the past couple weeks… Both of them. While I think the attention received may have been oddly disproportionate to the quality of the content, I feel I can do far better and will be stepping up my video game!

    First, I’m going to be breaking up my current YouTube account into 3 distinct channels outside of my personal videos; “Kver Create!”, “Kver Play!” and “Kver Workshop!”. I’m furiously trying to get everything ready, but here’s what everyone can expect:

    Kver Create!

    Will focus on work, and will be mostly livestreams. This is where I’ll be doing things like wallpapers, icons, other art, development, and even personal projects. It’s also where I’ll publish excerpts of the previously recorded livestreams when there’s interesting segments. In the future it might be neat to feature other artists and developers as well. Expect regular KDE content here.

    Kver Play!

    May or may not have a future, but if my first livestreams taught me anything it’s that I’m not yet comfortable with the mic, so what’s a better teacher than a more casual and fun environment while I rehabilitate my voicebox? This will probably have the most livestreams out-of-gate, but I imagine it will slow down in favour of other channels as time goes on.

Distributions

• BSD

  • freebsd-update fetch install -> Cowardly refusing to proceed any further.

Devices/Embedded

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • How To Block Phone Number on Your Android: No 3rd Party App Needed

  • How to cancel your Netflix membership on Android and web – 9to5Google

  • How to stop apps from running in the background on Android

  • Even BlackBerry’s best Android apps are reaching end-of-life this year

  • 4 best library apps for Android to read for free – Android Authority

  • The 5 Best Firewall Apps to Secure Your Android Phone

  • android smartphone: 6 Android smartphone settings you should change right now – Times of India

  • Androids have six ‘secret codes’ that unlock hidden features

  • 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week – Android Apps Weekly

  • Report: Android updates make users happier than iOS – Android Authority

  • Android 13 release date rumors, supported phones and what we want to see | TechRadar

  • Samsung Galaxy A13 5G review: Cheap in a good way

  • Pixel 5a review: The best-kept secret in Android

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Best Free and Open Source Alternative to IBM Rational DOORS

  International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York. They sell computer hardware, middleware and software employing over 370,000 people.

  IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019. But you can trace IBM’s history of open source far further back. They were one of the earliest champions of open source, backing influential communities like Linux, Apache, and Eclipse, advocating open licenses, open governance, and open standards.

• Best Free and Open Source JavaScript Engines

  JavaScript is an interpreted programming language. It means that source code isn’t compiled into binary code prior to execution. The role of the JavaScript engine is to turn plain text script into executable code. In other words, the engine is a container in which you run your program.

  JavaScript engines are often developed by web browser vendors, and every major browser has one. In a browser, the JavaScript engine runs in concert with the rendering engine via the Document Object Model. JavaScript engines implement specification of the language provide by ECMAScript. Standardization enables the development of independent engines and ensures scripts give the same results no matter wherever they run.

• Programming/Development

  • Comparing Static Site Hosts; Which Is The Best Host For A Static Site?

    I have compared a number of static site hosts to see which is the best for me in terms of performance, build times and pricing. This post contains the results of that research.

  • Opencv compiled in OpenEmbedded

    Opencv is an optional dependency for mlt, lives, flowblade and other video editor packages. I have compiled it in OE, and it brings in these new dependencies:

    ade       0.1.1f
    gflags    2.2.2
    glog      0.3.5
    libeigen  3.3.7
    libunwind 1.3.1
    opencv    4.5.2
    tbb       1_2020.2
    

  • Perl/Raku

    • Eagle’s Path: DocKnot 6.01 (2022-01-15)

      This release of my static site generator and software release manager finishes incorporating the last piece of my old release script that I was still using: copying a new software release into a software distribution archive tree, updating symlinks, updating the version database used to generate my web pages, and archiving the old version.

Tsunami Triggered by Huge Volcanic Eruption Hits Tonga

This is a developing news story… Check back for possible updates…

A major volcanic eruption near Tonga triggered tsunami waves that hit the shores of the Pacific island nation on Saturday, forcing people to flee the streets and their homes in search of higher ground.

Education

• Schneier: Upcoming Speaking Engagements

  This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: [...]

• The Developers Conference 2022 has been postponed

  The Developers Conference (DevCon) was due to happen on the 17ᵗʰ, 18ᵗʰ and 19ᵗʰ of February 2022 at the Caudan Arts Centre. We were hoping that restrictions would be eased before the DevCon day. Unfortunately, that did not happen. No new dates have not been announced as that would be pending negotiation with the conference venue owner and several other stakeholders.

Hardware

• New leak claims the Galaxy S22 series will use the Exynos 2200 in Europe after all – NotebookCheck.net News

  Recent reports excited Samsung fans in Europe with the idea of the Galaxy S22 Ultra being shipped with the Snapdragon Gen 1 across all regions. New information might just have put paid to those thoughts, however, as it now appears that the Galaxy S22 series will ship with the Exynos 2200 in Europe.

• SSD Endurance « etbe – Russell Coker

  I previously wrote about the issue of swap potentially breaking SSD [1]. My conclusion was that swap wouldn’t be a problem as no normally operating systems that I run had swap using any significant fraction of total disk writes. In that post the most writes I could see was 128GB written per day on a 120G Intel SSD (writing the entire device once a day).

  My post about swap and SSD was based on the assumption that you could get many thousands of writes to the entire device which was incorrect. Here’s a background on the terminology from WD [2]. So in the case of the 120G Intel SSD I was doing over 1 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) which is in the middle of the range of SSD capability, Intel doesn’t specify the DWPD or TBW (Tera Bytes Written) for that device.

  The most expensive and high end NVMe device sold by my local computer store is the Samsung 980 Pro which has a warranty of 150TBW for the 250G device and 600TBW for the 1TB device [3]. That means that the system which used to have an Intel SSD would have exceeded the warranty in 3 years if it had a 250G device.

  My current workstation has been up for just over 7 days and has averaged 110GB written per day. It has some light VM use and the occasional kernel compile, a fairly typical developer workstation. It’s storage is 2*Crucial 1TB NVMe devices in a BTRFS RAID-1, the NVMe devices are the old series of Crucial ones and are rated for 200TBW which means that they can be expected to last for 5 years under the current load. This isn’t a real problem for me as the performance of those devices is lower than I hoped for so I will buy faster ones before they are 5yo anyway.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• It’s Not ‘Encouraging’ That Mostly People With Disabilities Die Despite Covid Shots

  Asked on ABC‘s Good Morning America (1/7/22) about “encouraging headlines that we’re talking about this morning, this new study showing just how well vaccines are working to prevent severe illness,” CDC director Rochelle Wallensky responded:

• Djokovic Is Obnoxious, But His Story Highlights Cruelty of Australian Detention

• April 3 is D day, COVID-related deaths exceed 40,000 and Hungarian govt backs Kazakh regime

  Hungarian President Janos Ader called the general elections and also set the date for the homophobic “Child protection” referendum for April 3 in an official statement published on Tuesday.

  “The general parliamentary elections will be held on April 3″, Ader declared in the statement, recalling that the first free general parliamentary elections in Hungary were held 32 years ago.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • [Crackers] disrupt payroll for thousands of employers — including hospitals [iophk: Windows TCO]

    A month-old ransomware attack is still causing administrative chaos for millions of people, including 20,000 public transit workers in the New York City metro area, public service workers in Cleveland, employees of FedEx and Whole Foods, and medical workers across the country who were already dealing with an omicron surge that has filled hospitals and exacerbated worker shortages.

  • Ransomware attack on New Mexico prison knocks systems offline, forces lockdown

    A prison in New Mexico was forced to go into lockdown last week after a ransomware attack knocked its systems offline.

    The ransomware attack hit the Metropolitan Detention Center in Bernalillo County on Jan. 5. Systems affected by the attack included the jail’s internet, most of its data systems and its security cameras.

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Good News for GDPR Enforcement against Cookie Walls, but Also a Dangerous Legal Challenge from WhatsApp

        In 2019, the EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), ruled that pre-ticked checkboxes, used to encourage people to consent to the storage of and access to cookies, weren’t valid under the GDPR. Despite that, research the following year showed that many websites were still using “dark patterns” — online tricks to nudge visitors to accept privacy-hostile cookies.

      • Meta faces billion-pound class-action case

        Facebook “abused its market dominance to impose unfair terms and conditions on ordinary Britons, giving it the power to exploit their personal data”, Dr Lovdahl Gormsen says.

        And this data, harvested between 2015 and 2019, provided a highly detailed picture of their internet use, helping the company make “excessive profits”.

      • TikTok isn’t silly. It’s serious

        TikTok derives its magic from its algorithm and the data on which it is trained. Unlike Facebook’s rolling feed, TikTok’s simple, one-video interface means that the app always knows exactly what a user is watching. Clips are short, so viewers see a lot of them, generating plenty of information. This, combined with few friends and family clogging up the feed, allows the algorithm to match users with content creators that actually entertain them. And because videos are mostly shot on a smartphone, anyone can make them. Barriers to entry are low. Virality is high.

Defence/Aggression

• Opinion | 10 Reasons the OAS Secretary-General Must Go

  The Organization of American States (OAS) has never been a friend to the peoples of the Americas. This institution, ostensibly a space for multilateralism, has instead always been a tool for the U.S. Department of State. As Fidel Castro said in 1962, it is nothing but the U.S. Ministry of Colonies. That is truer now more than ever under the leadership of Secretary General Luis Almagro, who has been at the helm since March 2015. He is quite possibly the worst leader since the OAS was founded in 1948.

• Hawkish Pundits Downplay Threat of War, Ukraine’s Nazi Ties

  With the United States and Russia in a standoff over NATO expansion and Russian troop deployments along the Ukrainian border, US corporate media outlets are demanding that Washington escalate the risk of a broader war while misleading their audiences about important aspects of the conflict.

• Opinion | Untangling Ourselves From the Dark Side of War

  Guess what? I direct the following insight to, among others, the U.S. Congress, which annually and without comment, with only a few objectors, passes a trillion-dollar (and growing) military budget, by far the largest such budget on Planet Earth.

• How the states have become “Laboratories of Autocracy” — and why it’s worse than you think

  Pepper’s book provides a detailed, nitty-gritty explanation of how the general conditions Mika describes have been created in Ohio and many other states across America. And when Pepper writes about how to fight back, it’s about fighting back against the conditions that made Trump possible, if not inevitable. Of course Trump himself remains a danger, but Pepper’s book provides a roadmap for action that addresses the roots of the problem. This conversation with David Pepper has been edited for clarity and length.

• Small bands of mercenaries extend Russia’s reach in Africa

  Yet Russia’s mercenaries will probably find it no easier to battle jihadists than do the Western forces they hope to supplant. Their record is certainly uninspiring. In 2019 Wagner sent men to fight jihadists in northern Mozambique. It pulled out after about ten of them were killed, including some who were beheaded. In Libya roughly 1,200 Wagner men fought on the side of a rebel general, Khalifa Haftar, against the UN-recognised government. Yet the rebel push to topple the government failed and Wagner’s troops were accused of war crimes, including murdering prisoners and civilians.

• Drones Over Ethiopia

  Less than two months ago, the Ethiopian government was on the brink of defeat as Tigrayan forces closed in on the capital. Now the Tigrayan troops have turned about and withdrawn north back into Tigray. The government’s use of foreign-supplied unarmed aerial vehicles (UAVs) and armed drones appears to have played a significant role in reversing those spectacular gains made by the Tigrayan forces that had Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed calling on citizens to arms themselves and be ready to defend the capital, Addis Ababa.

Environment

• Opinion | Families in Brazil Face Devastating Floods; Social Movements Respond

  Since the beginning of this year, hundreds of thousands of families have faced devastating flooding in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The floods have displaced more than 93,000 people and have taken 26 lives. People are scrounging for their few remaining belongings, and frantically searching for loved ones.

• Energy

  • Opinion | Rest Is Important, but Corporate Polluters Want Us to Stay Distracted

    When people do things they shouldn’t, they often try to distract attention from their actions. Guardian writer George Monbiot notes that many corporations fueling the planet’s destruction spend significant resources to shift attention away from themselves and onto us.

  • “Appalling”: Climate Groups Slam Biden for Prolonging Trump Coal Policy

  • Cities facing issues with street lighting during soaring energy prices

    In 2020, Tartu city government’s electricity bill for December was €96,000. This past December, that number grew to €241,000. Although much of the electricity bill stems from street lighting, Tartu has not cast darkness on any streets yet, Tartu road service authority’s street lighting chief specialist Andrus Reinmann told ERR.

Finance

• Opinion | Time for AG Garland to Create Corporate Crime Database

• Opinion | The Ethics, Economics, and Imperative of Cancelling Student Debt

  Economist Marshall Steinbaum recently appeared on my radio show The Zero Hour to discuss the economic and ethical issues surrounding student debt cancellation. Steinbaum, a Senior Fellow in Higher Education Finance at the Jain Family Institute and a professor at the University of Utah, is one of the authors of a seminal 2018 study from the Levy Economics Institute on the macroeconomic impact of student debt.  As pressure grows for a solution, Steinbaum discussed with me both the economics and the ethics of student debt. The following selections from the interview have been lightly edited for clarity.

• How Did We Go From Stimulus Checks to “Go to Work With COVID”?

• Monthly Child Tax Credit Payments Have Ended as Congress Debates Its Future

• Poor People’s Campaign Readies ‘Massive, Nonviolent’ Effort to Save Democracy

  Don’t call it a day of action.

  On June 18, the Poor People’s Campaign and its partners in organized labor, the civil rights movement, and religious communities are planning to mobilize their members and allies from across the U.S. to Washington, D.C. for what they hope will be the “largest mass assembly of poor people and low-wage workers in this nation’s history.”

• If you see your employer offer you any benefits managed by Auxiant, run like hell.

  Lately, it appears that they’re basically stealing from the employees by freezing them out of their accounts and threatening them with having the IRS called on them if they don’t pay back FSA money that the employees spent on eligible medical care.

  It’s happening to many people my mom works with, including her. They froze her out of nearly $2,000 that was left in her account and then tried to blackmail her into paying back money that she used on HSA/FSA eligible dental care.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• State Legislatures Are Silencing Native Voices Through Redistricting

• Opinion | Eight New Year’s Resolutions for NPR to Consider Now

  The reasons Congress created NPR (National Public Radio) under the Nixon Administration was to fill the yawning gaps of commercial radio in local, national, and international news coverage and to give voice to the people, without ads. It was to be publicly funded by taxpayers. Almost 51 years later, NPR is now funded heavily by national corporations, with its local affiliates soliciting local business advertisements.

• Sanders Says Manchin and Sinema Are Undermining US Democracy

• Sanders Says Manchin and Sinema Are Imperiling US Democracy

  Sen. Bernie Sanders said Friday that by vowing to uphold the archaic Senate rule standing in the way of voting rights legislation, his colleagues Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are putting “the future of American democracy” at risk.

  “It is a sad day when two members of the Democratic caucus are prepared to allow the Freedom to Vote Act to fail,” the Vermont senator tweeted. “I hope very much they will reconsider their positions.”

• China Seen Backing ‘Digital Authoritarianism’ in Latin America

  Chinese technology and expertise is making it possible for Venezuela and Cuba to exercise suffocating control over digital communications in the two countries, according to insider accounts and several international investigations.

  Venezuela and Cuba do more to block internet access than any other governments in Latin America, according to the U.S.-based advocacy group Freedom House, which has documented what it describes as “digital authoritarianism” in the region since 2018.

• China, Iran Begin Implementation of Sweeping Strategic Agreement

  Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian announced the start of the partnership’s implementation at a meeting in east China’s Wuxi on Friday, Beijing’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

  Few details of the secretive deal have been published, but the New York Times reported in 2020 that it would secure a regular supply of oil for China, citing a draft of the agreement leaked to the paper.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Disney Censors ‘The Simpsons’ Episode From Hong Kong Site

  If an episode of “South Park” that satirizes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was conspicuously excluded from an American streamer’s Hong Kong site, Trey Parker and Matt Stone would skewer them for it. However, Disney+ did exactly that when it censored for its HK customers the episode of “The Simpsons” wherein Homer Simpson visits Beijing.

  If you live in Hong Kong, you can’t watch “Goo Goo Gai Pan” (S16 E12), but the rest of us still can—for now. According to Google, there has been no response from Matt Groening yet.

• This is messed up: a Swedish village decides to rename itself.

  The earliest records of Fucke date back to 1547, when it was described as being “by a lake, situated very high up on a hillside with very steep fields,” according to the Institute for Language and Folklore.

  Despite its historic roots, residents of Fucke are fed up, particularly with Facebook’s censorship of their posts when they try to write about their village on social media or sell items online.

Civil Rights/Policing

• REVEALED: Portland Police Riot Training Presentation Included Graphic Slide on Brutalizing ‘Dirty Hippies’

  The image — cataloged at Know Your Meme as the “Prayer of the Alt-Knight” — is again stirring controversy about the practices of the notorious Portland Police Bureau, which recorded more than 6,000 uses of force while policing racial justice protests in the summer of 2020.

  The Bureau is currently under supervision by the Department of Justice, which blasted the Portland police last May for its unconstitutional reliance on violence and a leadership that “portrays all force as justified.”

• UK: Scotland young persons’ free bus travel scheme — is it “Your papers, please!” time?

• This Private Equity Firm Is Amassing Companies That Collect Data on America’s Children

• A bill to ban geofence and keyword search warrants in New York gains traction

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• DirecTV to Drop Rabidly Pro-Trump One America News

  Facing a wave of grassroots pressure, one of the largest television providers in the U.S. reportedly plans to drop the far-right, rabidly pro-Trump One America News Network, an outlet that has come under fire for disseminating falsehoods about the 2020 election results, the coronavirus pandemic, and other major issues.

  Bloomberg reported late Friday that DirecTV has informed OANN’s owner, Herring Networks Inc., that it intends to “stop carrying the company’s two channels when their contract expires” in early April.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Will Come With One Year No-Sale Provision

  When the second-generation Ford GT was released a few years ago, it came with a big asterisk for buyers – they weren’t allowed to sell the car for two years. This was the very first time Ford had imposed such a restriction, and it was serious about it. In fact, more than one person tried to circumvent the requirement and sell their cars early, including professional wrestler/actor John Cena, who wound up getting sued by The Blue Oval and eventually settled the case out of court. Now, it appears that the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning will also come with the same sort of no-sale provision, albeit for one year, according to a dealer memo seen by Ford Authority.

Monopolies

• Zuckerberg, Pichai signed ‘big deal’ to carve up ad market: Report

  San Francisco, A serious anti-trust complaint in the US has reportedly revealed that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were allegedly involved in an ad collusion plot, a charge that both tech giants denied.

  Attorneys for Texas and other states alleged in newly unsealed court filings that Zuckerberg and Pichai “personally approved a secret deal that gave the social network a leg up in the search giant’s online advertising auctions”, reports Politico.

• Tokenization of intellectual property for IP rights management [Ed: There is no such thing as "intellectual property" (a misnomer and lie) and they're not rights, either; this is just a bunch of charlatans stroking their egos as they help plutocrats ban their competition]

  Interest in blockchain technology, tokens, and IP, continues apace. Consider the recent WIPO webinar, “Blockchain Whitepaper for IP Ecosystems”, at which the view was expressed that the future of IP management rights could include a solution that utilizes tokens, and, in particular, non-fungible tokens. While the tokenization of IP, namely for anti-counterfeiting purposes, was already outlined by the European Intellectual Property Office several years ago, WIPO sees potential applications of blockchain technology in IP ecosystems for “[a]ll types of IP assets: Registered and Unregistered Rights”.

• Counterfeits study raises questions over social media influencers [Ed: Max Walters uncritically passes on self-serving UKIPO propaganda in “study” clothing]

  A new UKIPO study prompts counsel to ponder the power of influencers in promoting counterfeits and what should be done about it

• Patents

  • Philip Morris and Hoyng ROKH Monegier strike back against BAT’s Glo products [Ed: EPO has granted patent monopolies to company that killed millions of humans, including some family members of mine, using cancer (smoking)]

    The Düsseldorf Regional Court has found that BAT infringes Philip Morris’ European patent EP 32 66 323. As a result, according to a court spokesperson, the court has prohibited the cigarette manufacturer from marketing its Glo products in Germany (case ID: 4b 105/20).

    However, JUVE Patent is not yet aware if Philip Morris will enforce the injunction against BAT.

    [...]

    Furthermore, Dreiss partner Andreas Pfund is handling the patent-in-suit from the Düsseldorf proceedings at the EPO. Powell Gilbert is conducting the UK proceedings for Philip Morris.

  • France to push design, GI, UPC, and safe harbours reform as president of the Council of the EU [Ed: IP Kat is again repeating lies from the UPC’s Preparatory Committee]

    In the area of patents, France plans to support the establishment of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), which has been delayed, first by the Brexit, and then by the German Constitutional challenge. As GuestKat Frantzeska Papadopoulou reported last November, the UPC’s Preparatory Committee has set out a timeline for the UPC to commence its activities. According to this timeline, the UPC will become operational by mid-2022.

  • User survey on future Ombuds services [Ed: The criminals who have taken over the EPO want you to think they will regulate themselves; they’re above the law and they made corruption the norm; perhaps more amusingly, if one attempts to answer the EPO’s survey there’s a notice at the bottom (“Data protection and privacy”) suggesting that they’re lying about anonymity and will likely outsource all this data to Microsoft/NSA/USA]

    The EPO plans to launch a new informal, confidential and neutral Ombuds service in mid-2022 as part of its commitment to continuously improve its products and services. The Ombuds Office will assist stakeholders who have exhausted the existing mechanisms for resolving problems that may have been encountered when using EPO services.

  • Gowling and Kirkland go head-to-head in UK’s next major FRAND trial [Ed: EPO-granted patents weaponised by patent trolls euphemised as “NPEs” here]

    InterDigital initially alleged that Lenovo infringed five SEPs in the UK. The NPE claimed that all patent were essential to the 3G and 4G UMTS and LTE standards. The patents, EP 2 485 558, EP 23 63 008, EP 2 557 714, EP 24 21 318 and EP 33 55 537 are part of InterDigital’s portfolio and are regulated by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI). The portfolio also contains patents granted in the US and China.

    [...]

    Since 2009, the parties have discussed licensing EP 558, with InterDigital claiming it made global licensing offers to Lenovo on FRAND terms under the ETSI declaration. InterDigital also offered a licence on alternative terms. InterDigital claimed that Lenovo was an unwilling FRAND licensee and would not accept the offered FRAND licence, while Lenovo rejected claims that InterDigital’s offer was FRAND.

  • Egetis Therapeutics gets Notice of Intent to Grant for a new European patent for a combination therapy with Aladote [Ed: Egetis Therapeutics seems unaware that European Patents are nowadays suspect, with many not in compliance with the law]

    Egetis Therapeutics AB (publ) (ticker: EGTX) today announced that the European Patent Office (EPO) has issued a Notice of Intent to Grant for a new patent covering a combination treatment with the company’s clinical candidate drug Aladote® (calmangafodipir) and N-acetylcysteine ​​(NAC). The new patent further improves the unique value proposition of the Aladote franchise and provides patent protection until year 2037 in Europe, before a potential extension.

  • Patent: Suspension of Infringement Proceedings in the Case of (Future) Nullity Suit [Ed: When fake patents get granted by the deeply corrupt EPO and these patents do a lot of damage regardless]

    Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf, order of 22 September 2021, Case No. I-2 W 17/21 – Suspension standard

    After the Technical Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) upheld the patent in suit and a subsequent nullity suit based on prior art not yet taken into account in the opposition proceedings, the parallel infringement dispute was initially suspended by the Regional Court of Düsseldorf by order of 3 September 2020.

    Inresponse to the admissible and valid immediate appeal of the infringement plaintiff, the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf repealed the order of the Regional Court to stay the proceedings and referred the case back to the Regional Court for a new decision. For the reasons set out below, the Higher Regional Court concludes that the Regional Court had applied an incorrect standard for a stay of proceedings.

  • Mazda 3 2-door hatchback patent hints at sporty coupe

    First spotted by CarBuzz, patent documents filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Patent Office show a car with the same basic silhouette as the current Mazda 3 hatchback, but with two doors.

  • Mazda three-rotor hybrid engine plans appear in patent filings [Ed: Judging companies by patents instead of actual products]

  • Motorola patents a crazy phone that’s all screen [Ed: As if getting a patent is indicative of real success]

    While some companies are moving away from curved screen smartphone design, others seem to be taking things to new extremes. Our good friends at LetsGoDigital have unearthed yet another patent application, this time depicting something truly peculiar.

  • Motorola may be serious about making a phone with a wrap-around display

    Motorola appears to be actively working on a smartphone with a wrap-around display, with the company publishing repeated patents for such a device.

  • [Older] UK: Essential Information On Confidentiality [Ed: EPO is now flagrantly in breach of confidentiality principles]

    Anybody to whom you disclose your invention must agree in advance that it is confidential and that the information will not be used by them or passed on. Outside an immediate circle of family and possibly friends, you should have a written confidentiality agreement signed. The safest thing is to limit disclosures strictly until a patent application has been filed.

    If there have already been disclosures of your invention, you should give us details of those. In many cases they may be treated as confidential in any event but we need to assess the situation. Even if patent protection cannot be obtained in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, there will be other countries where it may be possible. One of those is the United States, where a patent application can be filed up to a year after your own disclosures.

  • [Older] UK: COP26 & New Materials For The Green Industrial Revolution [Ed: More greenwashing of patents, monopolies, and basically oligarchy]

  • [Older] UK: IP At Sea
    [Ed: Marks & Clerk, convicted corrupt firm, repeatedly calling patents “rights”; this is a lie, they’re repeating a falsehood. It’s a falsehood they look to profit from.]

    A patent is an Intellectual Property (IP) right. As a legal right, patents have geographical limitations that set the area in which the patent owner can exercise their rights. Understanding the geographical extent of a patent right is especially important for inventions used at sea where potentially infringing products may transit between may different territories.

  • Taliens hires senior partner from Gide in Paris [Ed: This is an excellent new example of JUVE posting marketing spam and pretending that the mere hiring of one person is some kind of important news; once upon a time JUVE was a new source, not spamfarm]

    IP disputes partner Grégoire Triet (67), who has joined Taliens as a partner, previously worked for Gide Loyrette Nouel for 32 years. Over the past 20 years, he was instrumental in building the current patent litigation team. Following his departure, three partners and eleven associates remain at Gide.

  • The successful development of the Eurasian community [Ed: Conveniently mistaking patent cartels for a "community"]

    Since the Eurasian Patent Convention was signed in 1994 it has been shaping the global IP landscape. In the 25 years 22.700 Eurasian patents were granted at the Eurasian Patent Organization (EAPO). Recently Eurasia expanded the activities to include the applications of industrial designs and although it is not yet possible to file Eurasian trademarks, there is a relevant agreement. IP experts Vladimir Biriulin and Nikolay Bogdanov, both partners in the Russian Law Firm Gorodissky & Partners, expect some interesting development in the future.

    [...]

    The Eurasian Patent Office has been accepting patent application since then. A Eurasian patent, unlike European patent is a unitary patent and does not require translation into national languages. A Eurasian patent application is filed and examined in the in the Russian language, the patent is issued in Russian and is valid in all those countries.

  • $22,000 for III Holdings prior art [Ed: You can make a living by helping to squash fake patents]

    On January 13, 2022, Unified added 11 new PATROLL contests, with a $2,000 cash prize for each, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of the list below. The patents are owned by III Holdings, LLC. The contests will all end on April 15, 2022. Please visit PATROLL for more information or click on each link below.

  • Software Patents

    • Sound View ’860 patent successfully challenged

      On January 11, 2022, less than 10 months after Unified filed the request for ex parte reexamination, the USPTO issued a final office action rejecting claims 1-3, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 18 of U.S. Patent 8,135,860, owned by Sound View Innovations, LLC. The ‘860 patent relates to data processing that transforms web content into a format suitable for display by a client device and was previously asserted against Facebook.

    • $2,000 for Setala Juha prior art [Ed: This looks like abstract stuff again, leveraged by patent trolls]

      On January 4, 2022, 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 8,495,167. The patent is owned by Setala Juha, an NPE. The ’167 patent generally relates to data communication networks and has been asserted against Apple, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Cisco, Amazon, and Akamai Technologies.

• Trademarks

  • Perfume N°5 v N°9: Chanel won an unfair competition case in China

    In 2019, after spotting a perfume product in China’s market highly similar to its classic N°5 perfume, Chanel took a ‘notarization-throughout purchase’ online and located the alleged infringing product shown below on the right. The side-by-side comparison captures several common features. The obvious difference lies in the text: whilst Chanel has ‘N°5, CHANEL’, the alleged infringing product uses ‘N°9, FLOWER OF STORY’ (hereinafter ‘the N°9 perfume’).

  • Written Description: Jessica Litman: Who Cares What Edward Rogers Thought About Trademark Law?

    Professor Jessica Litman has a fascinating forthcoming book chapter on the history of the Lanham Act and the influence of Edward S. Rogers, “Edward S. Rogers, the Lanham Act, and the Common Law. ” Litman tells the history of the drafting of the Lanham Act of 1946 through the lens of Edward S. Rogers, detailing how his advocacy and drafting work influenced the final statutory text.

    Readers may be surprised to learn that Litman started research on the topic as a law student in the 1980s, while writing a student note on trade dress infringement. She went into the stacks of the Columbia Law Library and started reading bound copies of legislative history. She noticed it seemed like Rogers was everywhere, from 1932 all that way up to 1946, and that the chairs of the committees were deferring to him. That was really interesting, she thought. But after the note was done, she kind of forgot about it.

    Now, forty years later, Litman is a professor at the very institution Rogers attended, the University of Michigan. She was surprised to find no one seemed to remember Rogers had been at Michigan, even though he “earned three law degrees and was a member of the adjunct faculty for 18 years” (3). In this book chapter, Litman is making up for that, returning to the topic of Rogers and his legacy. She’s found her notes from 1981. She’s read everything he wrote, and all his cases, starting in 1895 all the way until his death in 1949.

  • Precedential No. 2: TTAB Rejects Summary Judgment Motion Filed Three Days Too Late

    The Board denied Opposer Lumber Liquidator’s request for reconsideration of the denial of its summary judgment motion because the motion was untimely. A summary judgment motion must be filed before the deadline date for pre-trial disclosures, but Lumber Liquidator filed its motion three days after the deadline date. Lumber incorrectly applied Rule 2.196 in adding three days to the deadline. Lumber Liquidators Services, LLC v. Columbia Insurance Co., 2022 USPQ2d 31 (TTAB 2022) [precedential] (Order by Interlocutory Attorney Jennifer Krisp).

    [...]

    The Board faced a similar issue in Asustek Comput. Inc. v. Chengdu Westhouse Interactive Entm’t. Co., 128 USPQ2d 1470 (TTAB 2018), involving a motion to compel discovery. Pursuant to Rule 2.120(f)(1), such a motion must be filed “before the day of the deadline for pretrial disclosures for the first testimony period as set or re-set.” The Board rejected Austek’s position that, because the day before the deadline day was a Sunday, it could timely file its motion on the following day. Not so said the Board. The motion to compel had to be filed before the deadline day.

    In Asustek, the Board pointed out that Rule 2.196 “does not apply to the relevant provision of Trademark Rule 2.120(f)(1), which does not fix a particular day by which a motion to compel must be filed, but instead ensures that the motion be filed before the day of another event (pretrial disclosures) occurs.” The Board, anticipating that similar timeliness issues might arise with respect to a motion for summary judgment, stated that “[m]otions for summary judgment, just as motions relating to discovery, must be filed before the proceeding enters the trial phase.”

    In the case at hand, the Board observed that “[t]he overriding interest in assuring that all matters relating to the discovery phase are closed and resolved prior to trial is evident in and achieved from a proper application of Trademark Rule 2.196 to motions for summary judgment as well as motions to compel discovery.

• Copyrights

  • Copyright of Software API

    This week, the Federal Circuit is hearing oral arguments in an important software copyright case, SAS Institute, Inc. v. World Programming Ltd., Docket No. 21-1542. The SAS is an important follow-on to the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in Google v. Oracle, 141 S. Ct. 1183 (2021). In Google, the Supreme Court sided with the accused infringer on fair use grounds, but did not decide the broader issue of whether Oracle’s API naming convention was copyrightable.

    WPL created a clone version of SAS that allows users to use SAS-style inputs and receive SAS-style outputs. SAS argues that those input and output formats are protected by copyright. However, the district court (E.D.Tex. Judge Gilstrap) sided with the accused infringer — holding that WPL presented unrebutted evidence that these elements were not protectable by copyright.

  • Manga Artist Maki Murakami Targets Large Pirate Site NyaHentai.com

    Japanese manga artist Maki Murakami has gone to court in the United States after several pirate sites published her work without permission. Among the platforms is NyaHentai, a large pirate service with an estimated 24 million visits per month, making it Japan’s 75th most visited site overall. Murakami’s legal team is attempting to find out who runs this platform and several more.

Desktop/Laptop

• 16 Reasons why you should switch to Linux – Real Linux User

  Are you considering buying a new desktop or laptop computer because the performance of your current system is not up to standards anymore? But you doubt what to buy and how much money to spend. And you have even more doubts because you already did an expensive upgrade only a couple of years ago and ask yourself if these kinds of repetitive investments are actually really necessary, while your current equipment is not really broken. Did you know that Linux can bring back your “old” device back to life and will give you at least some or even many years extra with your trusted companion. In this article I will give you 16 reasons why you should switch to Linux.

• Is 2022 the year of the Linux desktop? | by Tim Wells | Jan, 2022 | Medium

  It should be no surprise that I am a Linux user and I have been for many years. I was introduced to Slackware 1 many many years ago and have been a user since. I’ve seen it’s transition for it’s early days to what it is today, and it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t look good these days. Over the years the idea of the “year of the Linux desktop” has been a regularly debated topic.

• Are We Getting Closer to the Year of the Linux Desktop?

  Earlier this year TechRepublic argued that while 2021 wasn’t the year of the Linux desktop, “there was no denying the continued dominance of Linux in the enterprise space and the very slow (and subtle) growth of Linux on the desktop. And in just about every space (minus the smartphone arena), Linux made some serious gains.”

Audiocasts/Shows

• This Week in Linux 181: PinePhone Pro, Linux Mint / Mozilla, GNOME Extensions, System76 COSMIC – TuxDigital

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition, Extension Manager App for GNOME, Exploring System76’s COSMIC Desktop Environment, Slackware Linux RC3, Linux Mint & Mozilla Partnership, Firefox 96 & Firefox Major Bug Found, Developer Sabotage’s Own Projects, Desktop Environment In A Browser, God of War Now On Steam (via Proton), Steam Deck On Track for February, Humble Bundle Removing Linux from Trove. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

• Gecko Linux Takes OpenSUSE To The Next Level – Invidious

  GeckoLinux is a Linux spin based on the openSUSE distribution, with a focus on polish and out-of-the-box usability on the desktop. It is available in Static (based on openSUSE Leap) and Rolling (based on openSUSE Tumbleweed) editions. Today, I’m taking a look at the recently released Rolling edition with the Cinnamon desktop.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.17 KVM Updates Deliver Intel AMX Support – Phoronix

  The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes for Linux 5.17 bring several feature additions.

  First up, KVM with Linux 5.17 brings support for Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) debuting with Xeon “Sapphire Rapids” processors. While Linux 5.16 brought Intel AMX support, this didn’t include support for using the new instructions within KVM guests. With Linux 5.17 that AMX support for KVM is now ready.

Instructionals/Technical

• What Is the Arch User Repository (AUR)? Everything You Need to Know

  Arch users are spoilt for choice when it comes to software downloads. You could either get your packages from the official Arch repository, Snap Store, and Flathub or completely eliminate the need to install software by simply downloading AppImages.

  Then there’s another option—downloading software from the Arch User Repository (AUR). But not every Arch user is familiar with it, especially newcomers. So, what is the AUR, and how can you download packages from this special repository? Let’s find out.

• Some ways DNS can break

  When I first learned about it, DNS didn’t seem like it should be THAT complicated. Like, there are DNS records, they’re stored on a server, what’s the big deal?

  But with DNS, reading about how it works in a textbook doesn’t prepare you for the sheer volume of different ways DNS can break your system in practice. It’s not just caching problems!

• What is WordPress Heartbeat and How to Reduce Admin-ajax.php Hits

  WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. They released the initial version of WordPress in 2003. It introduces new features every year. On August 1, 2013, WordPress Heartbeat was initially introduced in WordPress version 3.6. It allows your browser to communicate with the server when you are logged into the WordPress dashboard.

  WordPress Heartbeat offers great functionality, it helps in post revision tracking, auto-saving of posts while composing, and user session management. WordPress Heartbeat sends a continuous pulse, as the name indicates, using AJAX calls to perform periodic tasks. In this article, we will explain what is WordPress Heartbeat and how to reduce admin-ajax.php hits.

• 5 Step Nginx contains podman easy

  Nginx contains podman is an accessible, open-source, high-performance HTTP server, reverse proxy, and IMAP/POP3 proxy server. NGINX is known for its high performance, stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. Now we create an instance nginx containing podman.

• How To Install Octave on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Octave on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, GNU Octave is a programming language for scientific computing. It is used to perform numerical computations very easily and with a very high level of precision. Moreover, it is a very good alternative to MATLAB.

  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 GNU Octave 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.

Games

• Stats show Linux now a “viable” game platform | Boing Boing

  Driven by refinements in compatibility frameworks and heavy promotion by Steam as a hedge against Microsoft’s increasing control of the Windows marketplace, Linux is becoming the OS of choice for more players.

• Cemu Emulator Plans For 2022 With Going Open-Source, Aiming For Linux Support – Phoronix

  Cemu as one of the leading Nintendo Wii U video game emulators is planning to go open-source this year and is also working on Linux support and related cross-platform advancements.

  Cemu is a Wii U video game console emulator that has been out for Windows since 2015 and has garnered much success albeit criticism for being closed-source. A Phoronix reader has written in about their newly-published 2022 road-map that holds much interest for the year ahead. In particular for 2022 they plan to publish the source code of Cemu and open up its development process to community contributors. They are planning for this open-source milestone to happen this calendar year.

• Mac and Linux games leave Humble Bundle’s Trove after January 31st

• Humble Bundle subscription drops Linux and Mac support

• Keep Bugging Game Devs For Linux Anti Cheat Support – Invidious

  Sure it might seem like you’re just being annoying but the only way to encourage game devs to add Linux support for anticheat systems like EAC and Battle Eye into there games is to continue bugging them and showing that there is a lot of support for these changes.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • First Look at the Maui Shell – The Future of Linux Desktop [Test Drive+Video]

    We compiled the brand new Maui Shell and test drive it. Here’s the first look on this amazing vision of Linux desktop.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux maker board market survives chip shortage, adds 29 new SBCs in 2021

  In this intro to our catalog of 136 Linux hacker boards, we examine how the 2021 chip shortage led to higher prices, limited availability, and more than twice the usual number of discontinuations. Yet, 29 models launched in 2021, including SBCs with M.2 slots, RISC-V CPUs, and AI chips.

  Welcome to our 2022 edition of our roundup of maker boards selling for $200 or under that run Linux or Android. The Catalog link in the box below leads to 136 new or updated SBC summaries, and the spreadsheet links offer quick feature comparisons.

• Catalog of 136 open-spec, community-backed Linux SBCs under $200

  Our 2022 catalog of 136 open-spec, maker-oriented SBCs that run Linux or Android provides updated prices and descriptions plus a comparison spreadsheet of major features.

  The following summaries of 136 predominantly community-backed and open-spec Linux/Android hacker boards at $200 or under are listed in alpha order. They list specs and lowest available pricing recorded in the last two weeks of Dec. 2021 and first week of Jan. 2022 with products either shipping or available for pre-order with expected ship date by 2Q 2021.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • RISC-V Powered Mango Pi Takes on Raspberry Pi Zero at Its Own Game | Tom’s Hardware

    Over the past decade there have been many Raspberry Pi clones. The latest clones the Raspberry Pi Zero form factor but introduces a RISC-V processor in place of the usual Arm powered SoC. MangoPi has appeared in a series of Twitter posts (as reported by Liliputing), and looks like a good choice for those needing more fruit in their diet.

    The Mango Pi MQ Pro, in fact. The little Allwinner D1 processor we’ve covered before beats at its heart, a 1 GHz single-core, 64 bit chip built on the open-source RISC-V architecture. RAM can range from 512MB to 2GB, and while the MQ Pro carries enough ports (2x USB Type-C, HDMI, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), along with its 40-pin GPIO (Pi compatibility to be confirmed), to function solo, there’s also a carrier board in testing to add Ethernet and USB Type-A.

    The MQ Pro isn’t the first Mango Pi board. The company, whose Twitter account gives its location as Beijing and New York, previously created the postage-stamp sized Mango Pi MQ around an Allwinner D1s processor. This tiny SBC sports a pair of USB Type-C ports, but no video output beyond a 15-pin DSI FPC connector.

  • Homemade Pirani vacuum gauge controller with Arduino | Arduino Blog

    In theory, a Pirani gauge is a very simple device for measuring the pressure of a gas within a container, as it consists of a heated metal wire that loses heat as the pressure increases internally. With this value now known, the electrical resistance can be measured and used to determine the precise pressure of a given gas. And although the sensors themselves are relatively inexpensive, the controllers they are often connected to can have a very high price, which is why YouTuber Advanced Tinkering decided to create his own digital readout.

    The display uses an Arduino Mega to take in data from the sensor, convert it to a pressure level, and send it to a pair of LCDs. First, the Pirani gauge’s analog value is read with an ADS1115 ADC, which has 16 bits of resolution, and from there the value is converted to pressure using the calibration constant for air and a unit coefficient. The Mega then writes this information to the unit’s 16×2 character LCD module and plots points along a graph shown on a 3.5” TFT screen. Additionally, pressure data is sent via USB to a host machine where it can be read by an external program such as the Arduino Serial Plotter tool.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Oracle TopLink – LinuxLinks

    Oracle is a computer technology corporation best known for its software products and services like Java.

    In 2020, Oracle was the second-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. They employ over 130,000 people, and sell cloud-engineering services and systems and database management systems.

    Oracle has a fairly prominent position with open source. They are a supporting member of the Linux Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, and the Java Community Process.

    Through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010, Oracle also became the steward of many other important and long-running open source projects such as the Java programming language and the MySQL relational database, introduced in 1995. The acquisition of Sleepycat Software, brought the open source Berkeley DB key/value store.

    The company co-develops the OpenJDK, an open source implementation of the Java Platform Standard Edition, and Btrfs, a B-tree file system. They also open source the Oracle Coherence Community Edition, NetBeans, and produce Oracle Linux which is a Linux distro compiled from Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code.

    While Oracle develops and distributes open source software, they have many different business models. The majority of their products are published under a proprietary license. This series looks at free and open source alternatives to Oracle’s products.

The TODO List (by David REVOY, Krita artist)

Here is a little Pepper & Carrot comic strip inspired by the too many task I decided to handle in this start 2022 “to start fresh”. In my long list, I managed to do a lot (DIY/Maintainance/Refactor/Paperwork/Documentation) but not as quickly as I wanted.

Hardware

• Recycling Soda Bottles Into Filament To Print Smaller Soda Bottles | Hackaday

  Soda bottles are usually made out of PET plastic, or polyethylene terephthalate, which is one of the most popular thermoplastics in modern society. A soda bottle can be cut into a continuous long, thin strip with the use of a simple hand-operated machine that slices the bottle with a blade. This strip of plastic can then be fed through a heated nozzle in order to produce filament for 3D printing. [The Q] demonstrates both parts of this process, including using a motorized reel to take up filament as the bottle material is fed through the extruder.

  The filament is then demonstrated by printing tiny versions of soda bottles. [The Q] fills these with soda and gives them the appropriate lids and labels for completion’s sake. It’s a neat way to demonstrate that the filament actually works for 3D printing. It bears noting that such prints are almost certainly not food safe, but it’s really a proof of concept rather than an attempt to make a usable beverage container.

• The Eerie Sounds Of Ioalieia: An ESP32/Valve/Analog Hybrid Circuit Sculpture | Hackaday

  We’ve not had a circuit sculpture piece for a while, so here’s “ioalieia” a lovely hybrid digital-analog sound sculpture by [Eirik Brandal] to dig into.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • macOS, Windows, Linux all targeted by new cross-platform exploit [Ed: This misses the point that Windows has back doors, whereas this needs to be somehow installed, e.g. by incompetent admins]

        On January 11, researchers from Intezer revealed they had found SysJoker, a backdoor that was originally discovered to be attacking Linux. Shortly after, variants of the same backdoor were uncovered that went after Windows and macOS.

      • Linux malware sees 35% growth during 2021 [Ed: Crowdstrike is directly connected to Microsoft, so this is just Microsoft distracting from the fact almost all malware and ransom affects Windows, not Linux]

Monopolies

• Patents

  • The EU’s patent attorney deficit is a major hindrance to innovation leadership [Ed: Truly appalling propaganda from bribed agent (Joff Wild) of corrupt EPO leadership, conflating patents with innovation and claiming a crisis, which is false. How does he sleep at night? On a pile of cash (bribe money).]

    A new scheme launched yesterday offers finding to SMEs seeking to protect their inventions but does little to tackle what is a major problem in many member states

  • [Older] UK: What To Do If You Suspect Infringement [Ed: Patents are not rights, but Dehns, which was spreading fake news to promote an illegal agenda, says “The monopoly provided by your patent rights can really give you the edge in your market.” No, not really. This is salesmanship, not facts.]

  • [Older] UK: UK Government Launches Intellectual Property And Artificial Intelligence Consultation [Ed: This government has been reduced to buzzwords and nonsense]

    The UK Government officially launched its consultation on intellectual property (IP) and artificial intelligence (AI) on 29 October 2021, as part of the National AI Strategy (see our summary here) which aims to ensure the UK continues to be a world-leader in AI development and deployment.

  • [Older] Vegan Patent Analytics [Ed: This is sick. Veganism is supposed to be about ethics, not patent monopolies (but guess who looks to monopolise the activism for profit)]

    November marks World Vegan Month which, this year, happily coincided with the COP26 conference. Veganism is becoming increasingly popular for reasons of sustainability, as well as ethical reasons. Eating less meat is believed to be one of the key steps that individuals can take to reduce their own carbon footprint. The total number of vegans in the world is currently estimated to be around 79 million, with this number expected to grow in years to come. In the UK, market-research in 2019 found that 40% of meat-eaters were also seeking to reduce their meat consumption.

  • Unitary patent promises a cheaper alternative for life sciences companies [Ed: The bribed propagandists of IAM still produce fake news and utter lies for Team UPC; the opposite of what they say is true]

    It is looking likely that the unitary patent (UP) will finally become available in 2022, now that Austria has completed its legislative requirements. While the preparatory committee has yet to announce a definitive timetable, its current estimate is for the provisional application phase to begin in January 2022, followed by the new system properly starting in mid-2022. Even with some delays, it seems realistic to expect the UP to arrive by the end of this year. While the most obvious beneficiaries may be innovators in the life sciences arena, how will the new system work and what will happen to the current national validation system?

  • Top 10 Patent Cases: 1891 to 1951 [Ed: “Top 10 Patent Cases,” according to person funded by the patent litigation ‘sector’ (to advance its agenda at the expense of innovators’)]

    Prior to 1891, appeals in patent cases went directly to the Supreme Court, and the Court decided lots of patent cases. In 1891, Congress created the regional circuit courts of appeals as a buffer between the trial courts and the Supreme Court and the number of high-court patent cases began to fall. The court decided a number of big patent cases during the period of 1891-1952, although many of them have been rejected or are no longer followed. Many are also primarily anti-trust cases involving the use (or misuse) of patent rights.

  • Denmark: Decision G 1/21: Oral Proceedings By Videoconference [Ed: Missing the point that this ‘case’ just proved EPO corruption has taken over its tribunals, too]

    On 28 October 2021, the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office issued the reasons for decision G 1/21 of 16 July 2021, in which it was ordered that “during a general emergency impairing the parties’ possibilities to attend in-person oral proceedings at the EPO premises, the conduct of oral proceedings before the boards of appeal in the form of a videoconference is compatible with the EPC even if not all of the parties to the proceedings have given their consent to the conduct of oral proceedings in the form of a videoconference”.

  • FOSS Patents: InterDigital, Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) readying for FRAND trial: one patent valid and infringed, one invalid, shortcut injunction denied for now

    We’re very close now to the InterDigital v. Lenovo FRAND trial in London, so I’d like to provide a quick update to my July post on this dispute, InterDigital’s hole-in-one in UK court build tremendous pressure on Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) to take global cellular SEP license pursuant to Unwired Planet. InterDigital prevailed on the merits with respect to EP2485558 on a “method and apparatus for providing and utilizing a non-contention based channel in a wireless communication system” because Judge Hacon deemed it valid and essential to the 4G (LTE) cellular communications standard.

    Apparently the pressure I was talking about has not yet resulted in a settlement, though it may still happen on the eve of the trial (a juncture at which license agreements often fall into place).

  • [Older] Lenovo gets access to InterDigital licensing info ahead of FRAND trial [Ed: InterDigital is just a very large patent troll]

  • [Older] UK: Peloton Faces Patent Challenges In The Race To Beat The Competition [Ed: Example of likely fake patents]

    For a fitness-based business, Peloton seems to be quite active in the US patent courts right now. Success will always attract unwanted attention I guess. Peloton will certainly find it challenging to assert a broad monopoly in the general field of remote-lead home exercise, even if they possess some pretty broad patents in this area.

  • [Older] How Much Are My Patents Worth? [Ed: Most of them are worthless, but lying lawyers won't tell you that because they profit from making financial bubbles]

  • [Older] NFTs: Beware Of IP Rights [Ed: There's no such thing as "IP", what he refer to isn't even remotely "rights", and NFTs are just another elaborate scam]

  • [Older] UK Government Consultation On Standard Essential Patents [Ed: Convicted corrupt firm promoting the interests of patent trolls in the UK (its clients)]

    The UK government has commenced a consultation regarding standards essential patents and their impact on innovation. As the consultation’s introduction says, “The government seeks views as to whether the Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) ecosystem (i.e. the enabling participants, commercial relationships, infrastructure, and legal and regulatory environment) surrounding SEPs is functioning efficiently and effectively and striking the right balance for all entities involved.” It is doubtful that any company that has been involved in the often multi-jurisdictional and always expensive litigation concerning SEPs would regard the SEP ecosystem as functioning efficiently and effectively. There is a fundamental disconnect in that telecoms companies generally operate and licence on a global basis, yet the relevant standards provide no mechanism themselves for resolving disputes, leaving the parties with no choice but to engage in litigation in national courts. Furthermore, the number of patents involved is enormous: for example, the consultation request notes that, as of 2020, around 95,000 patents had been declared essential for the 5G standard.

  • [Older] UK IPO Launches Consultation On Standard Essential Patents – Intellectual Property – UK [Ed: UKIPO paving pathways for patent trolls in the UK]

    The UK IPO has issued an open consultation with a call for views in relation to standard essential patents. The consultation includes a wide range of questions relating to the relationship between standard essential patents and innovation, competition and market functioning, transparency, licensing and litigation. The closing date for responding to the consultation is 1 March 2022.

  • [Older] Current Revocation Rates In German Patent Nullity Proceedings [Ed: Bardehle Pagenberg, which keeps promoting illegal software patents, coming to grips with courts ‘getting in the way’ of this injustice]

    This article presents the current revocation rates with respect to granted patents in Germany on the basis of the case law of the German Nullity Senates of the German Federal Patent Court and the German Federal Court of Justice in the period between 2018 and 2020. It highlights patents from the field of software and telecommunications. Repeating this survey was prompted by the dispute regarding the presumption of validity of patents in preliminary injunction proceedings which has recently been escalated up to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

  • [Older] UK: Double Patenting In The EPO [Ed: EPO is granting everything conceivable for money]

    The issue of “double patenting” arises in the EPO when one applicant files two European patent applications with closely related claims and the same effective filing date.

  • [Older] Medical Inventions In Europe [Ed: Many of these are illegal patents in software, albeit in “medical” clothing]

    Methods of treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy and diagnostic methods practiced on the human or body are excluded from patentability in Europe (see Art. 53 EPC).

    However, such methods of treatment can still be protected in the form of a first medical use claim or a second medical use claim. Medical use encompasses use in therapy, use in in vivo diagnostics or use in surgery. These provisions are set out in Art. 54(4) and Art. 54(5) EPC.

  • European Commission asked about the compatibility of the UPC with EU law [Ed: About time!]

    The European Parliament has recently published a written question from Patrick Breyer, a German MEP, to the European Commission. Mr Breyer asks, in summary, whether the Unified Patent Court (UPC) complies with the requirement (under CJEU case law) that an international court common to EU member states has functional links with the courts of the member states when it has to apply EU law and cooperate with the CJEU.

• Trademarks

  • [Older] LEGO Wins Design Case At The EU Court [Ed: European court (EU) decides that the corrupt EUIPO got it wrong]

    The European IP authority, EUIPO, hadwrongly declared invalid a design of one of the building bricks of LEGO’s toy building sets. LEGO’s design protection is therefore upheld.

    LEGO has just won a case by the EU Court concerning design protection of one of its building bricks. The case goes back to 2010. LEGO had obtained design protection of one of its building bricks with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, EUIPO. The protection means that LEGO is protected against other companies copying the brick.

  • €47 million fund to protect intellectual property of EU SMEs in their COVID-19 recovery and green and digital transitions
    [Ed: Funnelling more money into a deeply corrupt EUIPO will improve nothing; it'll deepen the abuse]

    Today, the Commission and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) launched the new EU SME Fund, which offers vouchers for EU-based SMEs to help them protect their intellectual property (IP) rights. This is the second EU SME Fund aiming at supporting SMEs in the COVID-19 recovery and green and digital transitions for the next three years (2022-2024).

  • €47 million fund to protect intellectual property of EU SMEs in their COVID-19 recovery and green and digital transitions

  • How to trademark the metaverse [Ed: How to pay lawyers to buy land on Venus]

    Intellectual property is valuable both physically and virtually. Brands, and their legal teams, are playing catch-up.

    [...]

    Attempted land grabs are having an impact on brands regardless of whether or not they currently have a virtual presence. In November, two trademark applications were filed in the US by third-parties to use the Gucci and Prada logos in a range of metaverse-related arenas, including “downloadable virtual goods”, virtual worlds and virtual clothing used in virtual spaces. And on metaverse platforms with user-generated content, such as Roblox, creators are currently selling clothes that feature logos from the likes of Louis Vuitton, Prada and Chanel.

• Copyrights

  • The Artist Pension Trust Had a Utopian Dream to Give Artists a Shared Retirement Fund. It’s Devolved Into Legal Threats and Despair [Ed: As usual people who do all the actual work are being robbed]

    In the first of a two-part series on the rise and fall of the Artist Pension Trust, we examine the origins of the plan.

Audiocasts/Shows

• How to DITCH Google for good and NEVER look back. – Invidious

  Nextcloud is one of the most powerful self-hosted platforms in the world–and it’s one I’m a huge proponent.

Kernel Space

• Initial Sound Open Firmware Support For AMD Hardware Comes With Linux 5.17 – Phoronix

  The sound subsystem updates have been merged into the Linux 5.17 kernel with a few notable hardware driver additions this cycle.

  First up, there is initial Sound Open Firmware “SOF” support for AMD. The AMD Renoir Audio Co-Processor is now supported with Sound Open Firmware (SOF). The Renoir ACP was previously supported on Linux outside of the SOF path. Back in November when the patches first surfaced I wrote more about Sound Open Firmware coming to AMD hardware with the Renoir audio co-processor being the first supported target.

• PCI Changes For Linux 5.17 Bring Intel Raptor Lake IDs, Apple PCIe Clock Gating – Phoronix

  The PCI subsystem updates for the in-development Linux 5.17 kernel have been submitted to Linus.

  The PCI/PCIe subsystem updates for Linux 5.17 aren’t particularly exciting but do have a few changes worth pointing out:

  - Clock gating is now enabled for the Apple PCIe controller driver for saving power on Apple Silicon hardware.

Applications

• Flameshot 11.0 Screenshot Tool Is Here with Completely Refactored CLI

  Flameshot is a cross-platform, free and open-source tool to take screenshots with many built-in features to save you time.

  Taking screenshots is a very elementary purpose and we are surrounded by apps that can perform the task in a very professional capacity, but that’s just it. Most functionalities are limited to simply grabbing a section of your computer screen.

  This is where Flameshot comes into play. With it you can add blur effects, texts, shapes and arrows with all the colors you want just directly after you take the screenshot.

  Now the first release of Flameshot for this year is out. It is important to note that from here on each Flameshot release will increment the major app version and if there is an urgent fix it will be implemented as a minor release. For example, the current version is 11.0, and the next will be 12.0.

• Arti 0.0.3 is released: Configuration, predictive circuits, and more!

  Arti is our ongoing project to create a working embeddable Tor client in Rust. It’s nowhere near ready to replace the main Tor implementation in C, but we believe that it’s the future.

  We’re working towards our 0.1.0 milestone in early March, where our main current priorities are stabilizing our APIs, and resolving issues that prevent integration. We’re planning to do releases every month or so until we get to that milestone.

Instructionals/Technical

• Connect Snowflake With SnowSQL CLI Client – OSTechNix

  In this tutorial, we will learn what is SnowSQL, how to install SnowSQL in Linux and Windows, and finally how to connect to Snowflake with SnowSQL.

  Before getting started with SnowSQL, I suggest you to take a look at the following link to get to know what exactly Snowflake is and how to create a free trial account in Snowflake.

• Display Command Output or File Contents in Column Format

  This article will show you how to display command output or a file content in a column format to clarify and demonstrate the output.

  We can use the column utility to transform standard input or a file content into tabular form of multiple columns, for a much clear output.

• Common MongoDB Interview Questions | FOSS Linux

  If you have been successfully shortlisted as an interviewee for the above subject matter, we recommend checking out some of the commonly asked questions provided in this article guide. MongoDB interview questions are purposely designed to help our readers get acquainted with the nature and form of questions they might encounter during a MongoDB interview.

  However, an important point to note is good interviewers hardly ask particular questions during an interview. Instead, they occasionally tend to stay professional and unpredictable.

• How to add a Repository to Debian | FOSS Linux

  We all agree that Linux users install most programs from their centralized official repo listed in the source.list file. However, they might find a situation where the software or program is not listed in the repo list; In such instances, they will have to use the PPA (Personal Package Archive) or apt (advanced package tool) to install the program.

  PPA is a software repo created for Ubuntu or Linux users and is simple to set up compared to other third-party repositories. PPAs/apt are frequently used in distributing pre-release software for testing.

  PPA is an unofficial repo made available to Linux users by Canonical to allow developers to upload their source package. Then, Launchpad makes those packages available for users to install the applications from.

• How to Change file, folder or app Icons in Gnome Linux – Linux Shout

  If you are using Ubuntu, AlamLinux, CentOS, RedHat, Rocky Linux, or any other Linux with GNOME, then here are the steps to change the icon of folder, apps, or files using Gnome graphical user interface.

  Well, if you don’ like the default icon of files and folders in Gnome then you can use the Tweak Tool to change the default theme icons. However, many times we just want to change the icon of some particular item, let’s say a folder that we want to be identified distinguished from the rest of the system ones. In such a case, we can manually assign any icon available on the system or the one we have downloaded from the internet in SVG or PNG format.

• Temperature Sensor with Arduino Uno: LM35 wiring, setup, and code

  To keep maintaining rooms, crops, and weather conditions under control, many projects require to monitor environment temperature. Arduino Uno can interface LM35, which is a good temperature sensor as it can measure from -55 to 150 ˚C with a 0.1°C resolution

  In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to connect and setup Arduino Uno with an LM35 temperature sensor, also examining its pinout, working, convention, and working protocol.

• How To Install And Use fd Command In Linux

  Hi guys, there is an alternative command for find command – fd – which has some additional features, including friendlier colorized output, faster search speed, and some useful defaults.

  fd, is a simple, fast and user-friendly tool meant to simply perform faster compared to find. It is not meant to completely replace find, but rather give you an easy to use alternative that performs slightly faster.

  In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to install and use fd command.

• How to install Portainer with Docker – NextGenTips

  Portainer is a free and open-source lightweight service delivery platform for containerized applications that can be used to manage Docker, Kubernetes, Docker swarm, etc. The application is simple to deploy and use. The application allows you to manage all your container services via smart GUIs or an extensive API, this makes the developers’ work easier.

  Portainer gives developers a chance to deploy, manage, and troubleshoot containerized applications without needing to deeply have experience with Kubernetes. This is awesome in my view.

  In this tutorial we are going to learn how to install Portainer inside a docker container, also we will learn the uses of Portainer, what are Portainer agents. Also, we need to understand about Portainer ports i.e which ports do Portainer uses to communicate with the world. So let’s dive in

  We have two editions of Portainer, the Portainer community edition which is free to use, and the Portainer Business Edition which requires one to purchase the license fee to use and it has more features compared to the community edition.

• How to Set Up SSH on CentOS & RHEL

  SSH (Secure Shell) is a secure network protocol based on the client-server architecture that allows you to securely access remote computers/servers over the network.

  SSH is widely used by system administrators for connecting to remote servers. This makes administrators easily manage servers and applications remotely and securely from anywhere at any time.

  In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up and enable SSH on CentOS/RHEL systems. With the SSH enabled on this CentOS system, you should be able to access this system from other computers using its IP address.

  This tutorial also includes the steps to change the default SSH port, disable SSH login for the root user, and set up firewalld to secure your SSH server.

• How To Install Node.js on CentOS Stream 9 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Node.js on CentOS Stream 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform lightweight, and powerful Javascript run-time environment for server-side programming, built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine and used to create scalable network tools and web applications. When you install NodeJS on your CentOS, the supportive npm packages are also automatically installed on your system that allowing developers to share and reuse the code.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Node.js on a CentOS Stream 9.

• How to install Debian 11 Minimal Server | FOSS Linux

  Linux provides fantastic options to deploy your server on one of its versatile distributions like Debian. There are just so many useful features of a Linux server. Some of them include setting up separate servers for Web, Email, File Sharing, Database, RAID, and many more. You can even set up ad-blocking servers through Linux.

  Today, we will learn how to do the minimal installation of Debian 11 ‘Bullseye,’ which is an excellent choice if you want to deploy your server on it in the future.

• Enable Minimize & Maximize buttons on Almalinux or Rocky Linux 8

  If you are missing window minimize and maximize Title bar buttons on RPM-based Rocky Linux or Almalinux 8 then here are the steps to follow to get them back.

  CentOS, RedHat, Oracle, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and other similar but popular Linux operating systems come by default with Gnome Desktop environment. But, this Vanilla desktop UI missing in the most common Minimize and Maximize title bar icons. Well, if you are more into the command lines then having them may not be important for you; however the Desktop users using Gnome as their daily wok OS, absolutely need it.

  Hence, go through this article to get back the Title bar icons and more using the Gnome Tweaks tool.

Games

• Proton Experimental pulls in newer DXVK to help God of War on Linux | GamingOnLinux

  A small update landed last night for Proton Experimental with a main aim of helping the recent God of War release, which has been running quite nicely already. ICYMI: there was another update to Proton Experimental recently that solved a number of problems like Sea of Thieves voice chat.

  The only change we know of for the January 14 release of Proton Experimental is an update to the DXVK version used, which added in some new options that are turned on by default in DXVK’s configuration to help the performance in God of War even more. On top of that, it also makes it easier to use NVIDIA DLSS as it disabled DXVK’s NVAPI hack for God of War.

• Valve’s Steam Deck pre-orders will begin arriving at the end of February – GSMArena.com news

  The most recent update from Valve confirms that the first wave of Steam Deck handheld gaming device will be arriving by the end of February. After being announced back in July of 2021, the portable gaming device has faced supply chain delays from its originally planned target of December 2021.

  In the update, Steam reveals that the Steam Deck verified program has been ongoing in which some game developers have been provided with developer kits with “hundreds” shipped in the last month with plans to send out more of them to devs.

• Even More Reasons Why You Need A Steam Deck

  Let’s take a moment to appreciate the confusion in and around the gaming media right now, and say thanks once again to Valve for providing the entertainment. Many journalists have slapped their Cynical Hat on and assumed Valve are selling the standard 64Gb Steam Deck at a loss to emulate Sony’s business model. A few have outright said that Valve’s foray into mobile gaming in 2022 is going to be another Steam Machines debacle.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Caps Off Plasma 5.24 Beta Week With More Wayland Fixes – Phoronix

    In addition to shipping Plasma 5.24 beta this week, KDE developers remained busy working on Plasma 5.24 as well as other KDE desktop components.

    KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly development summary for what this leading free software project has been tackling for the past week. There is the seemingly never-ending work on the Plasma Wayland session and a wide variety of other fixes and enhancements to the desktop.

    - KDE’s Disks & Devices applet now allows the option for launching the KDE Partition Manager for a specified partition.

  • KDE Frameworks 6 Continuous Integration

    Just a month ago we had the first KDE Framework build against Qt6 without requiring local modifications. Things progressed rapidly from there, just with 2021 ending Kate has been seen running with proper styling and proper file dialogs. And by now we also have KF6 continuous integration for a number of Frameworks modules.

    Building against Qt6

    More than 40 frameworks are meanwhile building out of the box, close to 60 build with pending merge requests applied or individual problematic parts commented out.

    To support this kdesrc-build now also provides initial configuration files for KF6 development builds, covering Frameworks and their dependencies as far as available already.

    Note that this is all experimental and only meant for KF6 development. It uses the latest development branches as well as a number of changes still in review or not even submitted to review yet. Do not try to use this yet.

Distributions

• BSD

  • TwinCAT/BSD Hypervisor provides efficient engineering and execution of virtual machines

  • TwinCAT/BSD Hypervisor Provides Efficient Engineering and Execution of Virtual Machines

  • TwinCAT/BSD operating system from Beckhoff

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Irving Wladawsky-Berger: What’s the State of Our Digital Technology Revolution?

    I first met Carlota Perez in the mid-2000s when she gave a seminar at IBM based on her 2002 bestseller Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. At the time, we had been living through a series of major changes, – the explosive growth of the Internet, the advent of the digital economy, the dot-com bubble, and the bursting of the bubble. In her excellent presentation Perez explained these turbulent times by positioning them within the historical perspective she wrote about in her book.

    If you look at the historical big picture, patterns begin to emerge which serve as a good guide for understanding the past and thinking about the future. Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution we’ve had 5 major technological revolutions, each one lasting roughly 40 to 60 years. First was the age of machines, factories and canals starting in 1771. This was followed by the age of steam, railways, iron and coal, starting in 1829; steel, electricity and heavy engineering in 1875; oil, automobiles, and mass production in 1908, and our present information technology and telecommunications (ICT) digital age starting in 1971.

    Technology revolutions are engines of growth, ushering new paradigms for innovation, rejuvenating and transforming the economy, and re-shaping social behavior and the institutions of society. To better understand the dynamics of a technology revolution, we should split it into two different periods, each lasting 20 to 30 years.

Devices/Embedded

• Pine64 offers a more premium mobile Linux experience with PinePhone Pro

  With a few notable exceptions, if you’re looking for a new smartphone today you’re pretty much limited to operating systems powered by Google or Apple. The PinePhone Pro flagship from Pine64 is a very different proposition, running Linux instead of Android or iOS.

  The new flagship is not a replacement for the original PinePhone launched in 2019, nor is it a second generation. Pine64 prefers to think of it as a higher-end handset for more demanding users “who wish to daily drive a fully open Linux Stack.”

  It will come running the Manjaro distro, but is expected to be compatible with other Linux distributions such as PureOS, Ubuntu Touch, LuneOS, Sailfish OS and more. “It is also likely that PinePhone Pro will give rise to new software options,” said the company. “We cannot wait to see what the community comes up with.”

• Pre-Order The Linux OS-Powered PinePhone Pro Smartphone For $399

  Amidst a barrage of Android phones in the smartphone market, there is a Linux-powered PinePhone Pro, which you can now pre-order, starting January 11, 2022.

  PinePhone Pro is developed by the same team that produced the different Linux-powered hardware, including single-board computers, notebooks, and the OG PinePhone smartphone.

  PinePhone Pro was announced back in October 2021, which was the successor to the original phone, the PinePhone from 2019. Pine64 started delivering the Pro model to developers last month, however, it wasn’t available for the masses.

  Thankfully, the pre-order is now up and running and you can get your hands on the device. The device comes with a good set of features and the price of the PinePhone Pro is set at $399.

• ROCK 5B: Pico-ITX board launches with an RK3588 SoC from US$84 with up to 16 GB of RAM – NotebookCheck.net News

  In the same blog post, Radxa clarifies that the Rock 5B supports Linux kernel 5.10, Android 12 and Debian Buster. The SBC starts at US$129 with 4 GB of RAM and increases to US$149 for the 8 GB of RAM edition, or US$189 if you want 16 GB of RAM. However, Radxa’s partners are offering a US$50 code to be used against one ROCK 5B device. There are no limits on the volume of R3 codes you redeem, though. Pre-orders are open now on Ameridroid and ALLNET China; orders should start shipping in Q2 2022.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • The RISC-V experience

    I’m writing to you from a Sway session on Alpine Linux, which is to say from a setup quite similar to the one I usually write blog posts on, save for one important factor: a RISC-V CPU.

    I’ll state upfront that what I’m using is not a very practical system. What I’m going to describe is all of the impractical hacks and workarounds I have used to build a “useful” RISC-V system on which I can mostly conduct my usual work. It has been an interesting exercise, and it bodes well for the future of RISC-V, but for all practical purposes the promise of RISC-V still lives in tomorrow, not today.

    In December of 2018, I wrote an article about the process of bootstrapping Alpine Linux for RISC-V on the HiFive Unleashed board. This board was essentially a crappy SoC built around a RISC-V CPU: a microSD slot, GPIO pins, an ethernet port, a little bit of RAM, and the CPU itself, in a custom form-factor.1 Today I’m writing this on the HiFive Unmatched, which is a big step up: it’s a Mini-ITX form factor (that is, it fits in a standardized PC case) with 16G of RAM, and the ethernet, microSD, and GPIO ports are complemented with a very useful set of additional I/O via two M.2 slots, a PCIe slot, and a USB 3 controller, plus an SPI flash chip. I have an NVMe drive with my root filesystem on it and an AMD Radeon Pro WX 2100 GPU installed. In form, it essentially functions like a standard PC workstation.

    I have been gradually working on bringing this system up to the standards that I expect from a useful PC, namely that it can run upstream Alpine Linux with minimal fuss. This was not really possible on the previous SiFive hardware, but I have got pretty close on this machine. I had to go to some lengths to get u-Boot to provide a working UEFI environment,2 and I had to patch grub as well, but the result is that I can write a standard Alpine ISO to a USB stick, then boot it and install Alpine onto an NVMe normally, which then boots itself with UEFI with no further fiddling. I interact with it through three means: the on-board UART via a micro-USB cable (necessary to interact with u-Boot, grub, or the early Linux environment), or ethernet (once sshd is up), or with keyboard, mouse, and displays connected to the GPU.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Events

  • Pulling on a thread – Jan Schmidt

    I’m attending the https://linux.conf.au/ conference online this weekend, which is always a good opportunity for some sideline hacking.

    I found something boneheaded doing that today.

    There have been a few times while inventing the OpenHMD Rift driver where I’ve noticed something strange and followed the thread until it made sense. Sometimes that leads to improvements in the driver, sometimes not.

    In this case, I wanted to generate a graph of how long the computer vision processing takes – from the moment each camera frame is captured until poses are generated for each device.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Open-source software LibreOffice to add Star Trek’s Klingon language to 7.3 update

    Beginning in February, open source writing platform LibreOffice 7.3 promises to include support for two “made up” languages: Interslavic and Klingon.

    According to a report from neowin.com, the decision to include the Klingon and Interslavic languages is an effort to streamline user workload by allowing users to work with the languages without the need to use alternative translation. The Klingon language was developed for the Star Trek franchise by linguist Marc Orkrand. Interslavic, on the other hand, is meant to “bridge the language gap between Slavic languages such as Russian and Polish.”

  • LibreOffice 7.3 will ship with support for two made-up languages; Klingon and Interslavic

    The popular open-source office suite, LibreOffice, will support two constructed (made-up) languages from early February with the launch of LibreOffice 7.3. The two languages are Star Trek’s Klingon – the language of the Klingons, and Interslavic, a language that’s supposed to bridge the language gap between Slavic languages such as Russian and Polish.

    With LibreOffice mainly being funded by donations, some of its benefactors will be no doubt wondering if their money isn’t being wasted on the implementation of these languages due to the fact that they have a tiny number of speakers. In response to this concern, The Document Foundation (which runs LibreOffice) said that it’s important to remember the community develops the suite so individual contributors can work on items that are important to them, therefore, an individual working on a Klingon translation doesn’t stop the wider project from working on other important tasks.

• Content Management Systems (CMS)

  • Happy B’day Matt Mullenweg: The Man Who Powers Over 40% of World’s Total Websites [Ed: Misleading title. He co-founded a successor of b2, which now gets downloaded and then used by many sites.]

    Versatile is the word that comes to mind when describing Matt Mullenweg. The music fanatic enjoyed playing saxophone, but never considered it as a career. He dropped out of college when he was 19 years old. Later in life, he developed an interest in coding, and when the puzzle pieces of his life formed the meaningful picture, he met Mike Little, a professional coder.

• Programming/Development

  • Frei0r compiled in OpenEmbedded

  • The Top 9 Places to Learn Programming Online for Free

  • IBM Open Sources CodeFlare

    IBM has announced improvements to CodeFlare, its serverless framework that aims to reduce the time and effort developers spend training and preparing AI and machine learning models for deployment in hybrid cloud environments. CodeFlare has also now been made open source.

    CodeFlare is a framework that simplifies the integration, scaling and acceleration of complex multi-step analytics and machine learning pipelines on the cloud.

  • The best software engineering conferences of 2022

    One of the best ways for software engineers to keep up to date with trends in the field is to attend conferences. And after a couple of years of virtual conferences and even canceled events, many organizations will be back in 2022 to holding in-person gatherings, and others are opting for hybrid events.

    Attending these conferences will allow you to hear keynotes from world-class practitioners and learn from tech talks with leading authorities. You’ll also have the opportunity to participate in informative Q&A sessions, as well as engage with peers who can help answer your questions. In addition, you’ll acquire actionable ideas that you can bring back to your team and implement immediately.

  • Qt Oyj : Qbs 1.21 released | MarketScreener

    Qbs is a community-driven language-agnostic build automation system. It is fast and offers an easy-to-learn language based upon QML.

  • Intel ISPC 1.17 Compiler Released With Xe HPG, PS5 & AMD Zen Support – Phoronix

    Intel ended out the week with a huge update to ISPC, the Intel Implicit SPMD Program Compiler. ISPC is Intel’s LLVM-based compiler focused on its C variant with extensions for single program, multiple data (SPMD) programming. Interestingly with this release is the introduction of AMD Zen 1/2/3 targeting and even the PlayStation 5 while also adding support for forthcoming Intel Arc “Alchemist” (Xe HPG) hardware.

  • Maintainable Rails system tests with page objects

    Rails system tests often depend on input and CSS selectors. To make our tests more maintainable, we can isolate layout changes within page objects.

    This post is about an idea I had a long time ago and came back to recently. It’s from a similar category as my idea for Rails contexts, so it might not be 100% failproof, and I am looking for feedback.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Manual hypering

      Nemokosch was unhappy with the performance of a literal translation from Python. So he asked for advice in #raku-beginner. (The logger is missing messages. Authorities have been informed.) This lead to many suggestions, none of which helped much. As such, I was forced to play our Get out of Jail Free (card).

Standards/Consortia

• Why table cells won’t fit into your CSS baseline grid

  A baseline grid design is a fancy way of describing a page design laid out like on lined paper sheets. (The lines are not visible, of course.) It’s the art of ensuring your design and text maintain a rhythm and the same visual pacing throughout the page by using consistent line heights and spacing.

  It just takes a bit of practice to stay within the lines when you’re writing on paper It’s also easy with CSS, until you meet rigid pixel-design elements like figures, images, and tables. In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to align the text in your tables with your baseline grid. I’ll also explore why it’s so difficult with tables in particular. It should easily fit with some adjustment, but the eccentricities of CSS Table Layout will fight you to the bitter end. It’s just rows of text, right?

• What is Web3? A new decentralized web, or the latest marketing buzzword

  Web3, as envisioned by the Web3 Foundation, will be a public internet where data and content are registered on blockchains, tokenized, or managed and accessed on peer-to-peer distributed networks.

  Web3 promises to be a decentralized, immutable version of the web, free of intermediaries and built with the same cryptographic verifiability that has given rise to cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and new types of decentralized applications underpinned by a distributed ledger, or Dapps.

• libvirt v8.0.0 (2022-01-14)

  A rogue guest could continuously reboot itself and cause libvirtd on the host to deadlock or crash, resulting in a denial of service condition.

• libvirt 8.0 Virtualization API Released – Phoronix

  Libvirt 8.0 has been released for this open-source Virtualization API and associated daemon/tools for managing KVM, Xen, and other hypervisors.

  Libvirt 8.0 isn’t the most exciting release but does bring some changes to note. Libvirt 8.0 with QEMU now supports a synchronous write mode for disk copy operations. The option is intended to ensure the job will converge under heavy I/O. The new options are exposed as “virsh blockcopy –synchronous-writes” and “virsh migrate –copy-storage-synchronous-writes”.

Hitch ’22

Rebecca Solnit Is Not Giving Up Hope

Rebecca Solnit, the great essayist of this time, gave us a fresh understanding of George Orwell with her brilliant 2021 book Orwell’s Roses (Viking). But as with all things Solnit, Orwell’s Roses is about a good deal more than its nominal subject: the flowers that the author of Animal Farm and 1984 planted in the garden of a rented cottage in the English village of Wallington. I spoke with Solnit about the need for bread and roses—especially in perilous times. —John Nichols

Making Your Own Mclaren F1 LM | Hackaday

It isn’t often we get a project that has an eighteen-year-long timeline, as staying focused on one project for that long is a significant investment of someone’s lifetime. But when you’re making your own carbon copy Mclaren, you need to be prepared for it to take a while. Unfortunately, there are only 6 of them in the world so for most people if you want one, you need to make your own.

Granted, in those eighteen years, [Brough Built] freely admits there were some gaps. He scrapped most of the earlier work, and today’s current iteration took about three years. This car is made of steel, aluminum, foam, carbon fiber, and sweat. It is a close copy of the F1, and it has all the features you would expect to see on the real thing, like the centered driver’s seat and the gold cladding in the engine bay.

50 US airports to be surrounded by 5G C-band-free zones [Ed: While the 5G patent pool/cartel has been busy painting all critics as cranks using straw men]

Live close to an airport in US and have a 5G handset? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released a promised list of major American airports to be surrounded by buffer zones that won’t have 5G-C band service.

The tech is slated to go live on January 19th.

The selected 50 airports – which include JFK, LAX and SFO – were chosen based on traffic volume, number of low-visibility days and geographic location, said the FAA in a canned statement.

The buffer zones are designed to keep wireless signals and aircraft separate following reports that the 3.7 GHz band used by the 5G C-band could harmfully interfere with civilian aircraft radar altimeters.

Science

• Capitalism and the Profit-Motive Didn’t Create the James Webb Space Telescope

  The first is the extraordinary new Webb telescope heading rapidly towards its parking orbit at the Lagrange point 2.2 where its telescope, reportedly 100 times more powerful than the already extraordinary orbiting Hubble telescope, will be able to show images of early galaxies formed only a short time after the Big Bang.

  That telescope, which has had to go through over 300 automated or remotely controlled steps — in order — to open up from its fetal position crammed inside the oversized faring of a European-built Ariane rocket — was designed and built by scientists and engineers working on salary and launched by a rocket designed and built by a government agency. That is to say, nobody involved was a capitalist. Okay, the prime contractor for the satellite telescope is Northrop Grumman but that company is a Pentagon arms contractor, and as such, is actually as much a state-capitalist enterprise as any state enterprise in China or Russia. Payments are all sole sources by the government — in this case, NASA — and pricing is what the government says it will be.

• Elizabeth Holmes is set to be sentenced on Sept. 26. [Ed: She wouldn’t have gotten this far without help from corrupt EPO management, which helped legitimise a a massive fraud]

• Custom-Molded Offloading Footwear Effectively Prevents Recurrence and Amputation, and Lowers Mortality Rates in High-Risk Diabetic Foot Patients: A Multicenter, Prospective Observational Study

  Conclusion: Patients’ adherence is imperative to efficacy of custom-molded offloading footwear during treatment of high-risk diabetic foot. Further studies are needed to elucidate the role of improved design of the offloading device and the need for enhanced patient education for improved adherence.

• Clothes dryers are an underappreciated source of airborne microfibers

  No one likes when their favorite clothes develop holes or unravel after many laundry cycles. But what happens to the fragments of fabric and stitching that come off? Although it’s known that washing clothes releases microfibers into wastewater, it’s unclear how drying impacts the environment. Now, a pilot study reports that a single dryer could discharge up to 120 million microfibers annually — considerably more than from washing machines.

• Unusual team finds gigantic planet hidden in plain sight: Gas giant is much closer to Earth than others like it

  An astronomer and a group of eagle-eyed citizen scientists have discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view by typical stargazing tools.

Hardware

• Observed differences using SATA and NVME SSDs

  This post is just some observations using SATA and NVME SSDs, not quantified measurements.
  I have two 1TB SSDs, that I use to backup my work. I have all my work under folder “bk” on my Lenovo desktop PC, and two backup SSDs. I use rsync to backup to the SSDs alternately, usually about once a week, and keep the SSDs in a safe.

  I used to backup to an external HDD, but the SSD is considerably faster and also there is far less electric current being pulled through the USB cable — or so I thought.

  The first SSD that I used for backaup is a Western Digital (WD) Blue SATA 1TB, and I was happy with how fast it is compared with the HDD. It also runs “cool as a cucumber” — after performing the rsync backup, cannot feel any warmth on the casing.

  [...]

  Secondly, the heating of the NVME SSD is alarming. It negates the original rationale for using an external SSD, being to reduce current drain over the USB cable.

  Of course, the SATA aluminium casing has a bigger surface area, but I don’t think that will account for the huge difference in the feel of heat when touching the cases.
  My guess is that the NVME SSD is being deliberately run hotter, so as to get more speed, what we would refer to as “overclocking” in the case of a CPU.

• Doing The Right Thing The Wrong Way: Dumping STM8 Firmware With 555 Timers | Hackaday

  When [Jarrett] decided to enter the 555 Contest that’s just wrapped up, he leaned up on an idea that’s been rattling around in his noggin for a few years: Using 555 timers to trigger a firmware dump on a microcontroller. It’s definitely the wrong tool for the job, but [Jarrett] got it working and documented it nicely at Hackaday.io.

  The premise is that by interrupting the power supply to the STM8 microcontroller at just the right time and for just the right duration, it would skip the instruction telling it not to allow its firmware to be read. Time and duration… things the 555 is well known for being capable of. There was a problem, however.

• Travel Guitar Hacked With Digital FX Setup | Hackaday

  [Courcirc8] was a big fan of the ALP AD-80, with the travel guitar being a surprisingly competent instrument despite its folding form-factor. However, the onboard headphone amp left something to be desired, so it was time to get hacking.

  To achieve better audio output, [courcirc8] decided to purchase an iRig HD 2 guitar interface, and installed it inside the body of the compact guitar. The original volume pot on the guitar was instead spliced into the iRig circuit, and a switch hooked up to allow the guitar to output clean tones to an amp or the digital audio output of the iRig instead. It’s a tight fit inside, but it all nestles in there rather neatly when finished.

• Improve Your Front Panels | Hackaday

  For many of us, the bane of electronic projects is making a professional-looking enclosure. Sure, 3D printing has made it easier to make the actual enclosure, but there’s still the problem of labeling it. [Richard Langner] has the answer with something he calls easy front panels. You can read about it or watch the tutorial video below.

  The concept is easy enough. You create your beautiful artwork in your choice of graphics programs. The example uses Inkscape, but you could do it in anything, even PowerPoint. You print it out and cut it to size. You could, of course, print it in color or — as the example does — color it in by hand.

  Even if you print in color, [Richard] suggests you print a black border around holes and then use a black marker to color it to hide any imperfections in cutting. For the next step, you place the artwork in a laminator pouch and laminate it. We wondered if any of the self-laminating pouches would work as well.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Biden Decries Supreme Court Ruling That Blocks Vaccine Rules for Workers

• Me, Richard Nixon and the War on Drugs

  Speaking of getting busted, when I told this fellow that I had done a total of around forty days in jail for marijuana in the 1970s and early 1980s, he didn’t believe me. At first, he thought I must have been moving some serious weight and that I got off easy because I was white and had a decent lawyer. When I explained that no, I was thrown in jail for an ounce of weed or less every time and had a public defender, he shook his head in disbelief. When I told him there were probably thousands of people sitting in prison for marijuana doing long stretches, he could not believe it.

  The first few times I smoked legal marijuana was in Portland, Oregon. As I toked on the pipe I was proffered I couldn’t help but look out my friends’ front window to make sure no cops were around. It was usually my failure to be aware of cops that were the reason I had been busted in the past. Of course, there was also the fact that the Berkeley cops who patrolled certain parts of town where I hung out at did not like me and seemed to be constantly harassing me and some of my fellow street denizens. Talk about a waste of resources. But, then again, I’m of the mind that most of what police do is a waste of resources.

• Florida Republicans Push for 15-Week Abortion Ban

• Suicide, Indian Farmers, Indigenous North Americans . . . and the Shame of Shrinks

  Chrisjohn—to make it as easy as possible for all but completely obtuse shrinks to “get it”— documents that during the years of the intensive removal of German Jews to concentration camps, their suicide rate was at least 50 times higher than for non-Jewish Germans; and he then reminds mental health professionals: “Not one social scientific study was designed or conducted to establish why the Jews were behaving in such a fashion, nor was there any apparent urge to uncover the ‘inner dynamics’ of Jewish suicide.”

  Caustically but correctly, Chrisjohn points out that “the ‘proper treatment’ for the ‘Jewish Suicide Problem’ wasn’t to send cheerleaders into what remained of their communities; it was the elimination of the system of unspeakable cruelty that destroyed their lives.” Instead of increasing access to mental health treatment, he reminds us that a very different treatment was required: “It was, in fact, Zhukov and Patton, and the forces they led, that ended the oppression that ended the storm of suicide that engulfed the Jews.”

• Radiation in Medicine: Treatment or Torment?

  Heike Daldrup-Link, associate professor of radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine, has recommended replacing CT and PET scans with sonograms and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). In Newsweek April 11, 2014, Daldrup-Link wrote that MRI and sonogram can “spot all of the tumors with none of the radiation. Rather than radioactive tracers, the new method sends an iron oxide contrast agent through the patient.”

  There are crucial reasons to avoid CT and PET scans. Here are just a few:

• Roaming Charges: Republic of the Tormented

  + Only 9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, compared to 66% of people in high-income countries.

  + The Biden Health Care Plan in Action: “Americans who are uninsured, or who are covered by Medicare will not be able to seek reimbursement for over-the-counter tests they purchase.” The people who most need to be tested will continue to be those who can’t afford to get tested…There’s a death panel for you, Gov. Palin.

• Poor Sleep Habits May Exacerbate Bipolar Disorder Symptoms – Psychiatry Advisor

  Individuals with bipolar disorder who got less sleep than normal experienced a higher level of impulsive behavior and other symptoms the next day, according to a study published in Journal of Affective Disorders.

  In between manic and depressive episodes, symptoms including disturbed sleep and impulsivity remain. Both these symptoms can predict the onset of bipolar disorder. The researchers investigated these core bipolar disorder features as potential risk factors for bipolar disorder.

• Smart Sutures Become WiSe | Hackaday

  If you’ve ever had the misfortune to experience surgery, no doubt the surgeon and nurses drove home the importance of diligent monitoring of the wound for early signs of infection. These smart sutures allow detection of wound infection even before symptoms can seen or felt. They can be used on internal stitches up to 50 mm inside the body. More details can be read in this paper, and we covered another type of smart sensor back in 2016.

• Researchers identify signaling mechanisms in pancreatic cancer cells that could provide treatment targets

  Scientists have provided new insights into molecular ‘crosstalk’ in pancreas cancer cells, identifying vulnerabilities that could provide a target for therapeutic drugs already being studied in several cancers.

• Scientists dive deep into the different effects of morning and evening exercise

  Exercise causes the body to release hundreds of different signals that improve our health in many different ways. Now scientists have mapped these intrinsic signals and how they are released by different organs in mice following exercise at different times of the day. Their ‘Atlas of Exercise Metabolism’ is a major step toward developing more effective exercise therapies that are timed to the body clock.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Openwashing

      • Qbox Joins Instaclustr, the Platform for Open Source Data Infrastructure

        Qbox, which provides hosted OpenSearch and Elasticsearch solutions and support, announced today that the company has joined Instaclustr, which helps organizations deliver applications at scale by operating and supporting their open source data infrastructure.

        With deep expertise delivering Elasticsearch and OpenSearch as a fully-hosted service, Qbox is a natural addition to Instaclustr for its strong technical acumen around mission-critical data solutions and its commitment to open source technology. For nearly a decade, Qbox has grown its impressive customer base – which includes data-intensive companies like Doordash and CBRE – by providing a fully scalable, available, and reliable solution backed by its world-class 24/7/365 support. Qbox immediately bolsters Instaclustr’s capabilities providing managed OpenSearch and delivering OpenSearch and Elasticsearch support.

  • Security

    • Many Gaps In The Jenkins Software System Discovered – And Not Yet Closed [Ed: Those servers are usually firewalled]

      Anyone who uses the Jenkins software system for development should carefully study the current security warning from the developer. There you will find information about recently discovered security gaps and patches. However, some security updates are still a long way off.

    • Raspberry Pi uses field analyzers to detect malware on computers: Research

      In a recent study, researchers have been able to detect the presence of malware with the help of electromagnetic waves and the popular portable chipset called Raspberry Pi. A new device has been developed along with Raspberry Pi by the Research Institute of Computer Science and Random Systems in France. Along with the portable processor, the device uses an H-field probe and a Picoscope 6407 to find out the presence of malware on devices.
      In the research paper that was published last month, the team wrote, “Our method does not require any modification on the target device.

      Thus, it can be deployed independently from the resources available without any overhead. Moreover, our approach has the advantage that it can hardly be detected and evaded by the malware authors.” During the study, the researchers used a design developed by Convolution Neural Networks to measure the traces of malware from a device. The team says that it was successfully able to detect the presence of malware with nearly perfect accuracy of 99.82%.

    • Researcher discloses alleged zero-day vulnerabilities in NUUO NVRmini2 recording device | The Daily Swig

      A critical ‘zero-day’ vulnerability in network video recording equipment made by NUUO has been made public, as a researcher claims unpatched issues could lead to remote code execution (RCE).
      Discovered by Agile Information Security founder Pedro Ribeiro, the issues have allegedly been present in the NUUO NVRmini2 device since 2016.

    • Apple to Attend White House Meeting to Discuss Security Risks of Open-Source Software [Ed: Foes of Open Source are not experts in it?]

    • White House convenes open-source security summit amid Log4j risks

    • White House hosts tech summit to discuss open-source security after Log4j

    • Backdoor for Windows, macOS, and Linux went undetected until now [Ed: More sensationalist garbage from Dan Goodin right now and a very misleading headline, distracting from actual back doors]

    • Iran-Based APT35 Group Exploits Log4J Flaw [Ed: This headline is somewhat misleading; this is a Windows problem]

    • Google calls for govt help to secure critical open-source software [Ed: This is the same Google that has put NSA back-doored crypto inside Linux]

    • Four million outdated Log4j downloads were served from Apache Maven Central alone despite vuln publicity blitz [Ed: Seems like a human error as the patched software has been available for a month]

    • Avira also mines imaginary internet money on customers’ PCs

      Many Reg readers probably won’t have user fleets running on the legacy AV, however, as highlighted by security researcher Brian Krebs earlier today, the feature was added to Avira’s product set late last year, just days after Norton360 started to hit the headlines for doing the same.

      Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised, as the same company, NortonLifeLock, owns both brands. NortonLifeLock is what’s left of Symantec after it spun off Veritas and then got bought by Broadcom.

    • No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP

      Game knows game. Thus it came as little surprise that Norton’s consumer security software not only sprouted a cryptominer that slurps your computer’s life essence and skims a cut, but that it’s hard to turn it off.

      A marriage not made in heaven but the other place: consumer-grade antivirus software has always had an uneven reputation, much of which it richly deserves. But how did we come to carry such a high parasitical load in 2022?

      Some of this is technical. Early generations of PC malware established standard techniques to propagate and protect themselves. Rootkit methods were common, monitoring and modifying operating system calls to defect target files and infect them, and to deflect scans or probes by returning false information. This means sinking hooks into the operating system at its lowest levels and taking control – which is precisely the same techniques early AV software used to detect and nullify viruses while defending itself from attacks in turn.

    • Russo-Ukrainian tension and the future of open source software security.

      Cyberattacks of unclear (but probably Russian) origin hit Ukrainian websites. The FSB “liquidates” REvil. And the US moves toward an approach to open-source software security.

    • Software supply chain security. A new backdoor. An intelligence agency fumbles a RAT. A warning on commercial surveillance.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • IFF explains: An Election Commission vulnerability that could expose your phone number!

        On December 15th, 2021, CERT-IN reached out to the Election Commission of India (ECI) IT team, which patched a vulnerability in the ECI’s National Voters Service Portal website that allowed access to unredacted, registered phone numbers of voters. Though this was fixed, awareness about the issue and its consequences are limited. Keeping that in mind, IFF, along with Sai Krishna Kothapalli, the independent researcher who came across this technical snag, attempt to provide you with a background of the issue, explain the loopholes that caused this vulnerability and elaborate on the consequences of privacy breach of citizens.

      • Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike resigns, leaves WhatsApp co-founder to run things until a successor is named

        Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the Signal secure messaging app, on Monday announced his resignation as CEO of the company.

        Marlinspike said he had always intended to grow Signal to the point that it could go on without his direct involvement but that wasn’t possible as recently as four years ago when he was writing most of the code, managing employees, and personally handling support. Fast forward to today and Marlinspike said he rarely writes code and feels comfortable leaving matters in the hands of his leadership team.

        Signal is one of only two mobile messaging apps deemed secure enough to be recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where “secure” means encrypted end-to-end with some degree of credibility. The other, Signal’s much larger rival, is Meta’s (Facebook’s) WhatsApp.

Defence/Aggression

• Biden Urged to Eliminate Land-Based Nuclear Missiles as US Policy Is Revised

• Macedonian Ramble: The Tragedy and Competing Legends at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli

  The Turks came late to the Gallipoli war monument game (by that point the British and French had erected their memorials all over the peninsula), but above S Beach they put up a memorial worthy of Mao or Stalin.

  My guide Bulant left me there in the parking lot, and we agreed to meet up in forty-five minutes, after which I would have walked around the soaring arch and read some of the inspirational inscriptions that overlook the Dardanelles.

• Washington Tightens the Noose around China

  The gigantic 2022 defense bill — passed with overwhelming support from both parties — provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis. For China’s leaders, who surely can’t tolerate being encircled in such a fashion, it’s an open invitation to… well, there’s no point in not being blunt… fight their way out of confinement.

  Like every “defense” bill before it, the $768 billion 2022 NDAA is replete with all-too-generous handouts to military contractors for favored Pentagon weaponry. That would include F-35 jet fighters, Virginia-class submarines, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and a wide assortment of guided missiles. But as the Senate Armed Services Committee noted in a summary of the bill, it also incorporates an array of targeted appropriations and policy initiatives aimed at encircling, containing, and someday potentially overpowering China. Among these are an extra $7.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, or PDI, a program initiated last year with the aim of bolstering U.S. and allied forces in the Pacific.

• Saving the Iran Nuclear Deal Requires Balancing It

  Today, the nuclear negotiators have to tackle many thorny issues to come to an understanding on the terms of a return to full compliance with the JCPOA by all parties, especially the United States and Iran. Most notably, these issues include determining the list of sanctions that the United States needs to lift and developing formulas for measuring and verifying their effective removal. The agreement’s failure to prohibit the imposition of new sanctions on Iran for non-nuclear purposes has rendered these tasks more daunting, given the bulk of new sanctions that the Trump administration slapped on Iran. Although these issues pose serious obstacles to reviving the nuclear deal, they pale in comparison to the challenge of developing legal and political mechanisms or guarantees that would allay Iran’s concerns over the abandonment or a major violation of the deal by a future U.S. president.

  As such, the main question facing policymakers in Washington and Tehran is how to make sure that the JCPOA, once revived, remains effectively in force for all its parties over its entire duration. Although some U.S. and Israeli politicians call for intensifying economic pressures and military threats against Iran to bring it into conformity with Washington’s line, these tools have proven counterproductive time and again and have led to dangerous mutual escalation in the absence of other favorable conditions. Rather, the best solution lies in strengthening the JCPOA in a manner that would minimize the possibility of defection by the parties.

• Anachronistic Frivolity: Australia’s Recent Tank Purchase

  Australia’s war-wishing Defence Minister Peter Dutton may be in urgent need of such treatment, but he is unlikely to take up the suggestion, preferring to pursue an arms program of delusional proportions.  His mental soundness was not helped by last year’s establishment of AUKUS and the signals of enthusiastic militarism from Washington.  Having cut ties with the French defence establishment over what was a trouble-plagued submarine contract, Dutton has been an important figure in ensuring that Australia will continue its naval problems with a future nuclear-powered submarine.

  Submarines are seaborne phallic reassurances for the naval arm of defence.  Stubbornly expensive and always stressing celebrated potential over proven reality, they stimulate the defence establishment.  The land-based forces, however, will also have their toys and stimulants, their own slice of make believe.  And Dutton is promising them a few, including tanks.

• IED found at Delhi’s Ghazipur market, controlled explosion carried out

  Just less than a fortnight ahead of the Republic Day, an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was found concealed in an unattended bag in the eastern part of the national capital on Friday morning triggering panic among the people.

Environment

• New bacteria in UK waters as temperatures rise

  Rising temperatures are causing a ‘growing diversity’ of Vibrio bacteria in the sea around the UK, new research shows.

• Ocean physics explain cyclones on Jupiter: Images from NASA satellite of polar cyclones on Jupiter allow scientists to study the forces that drive them

  Images from NASA’s June Spacecraft have given oceanographers the raw materials for a new study that describes the rich turbulence at Jupiter’s poles and the physical forces that drive the large cyclones.

• Opinion | Replacing Climate Anxiety With the Hope That Multilateral Action Brings

  The end of a year and the start of a new one is a joyous time for families and particularly for children. It’s the season to gather, enjoy local traditions and reflect on the year that has passed.

• ‘Juries Get It’: Climate Activists Acquitted After Train Protest

  Jurors on Friday unanimously acquitted three Extinction Rebellion activists who were on trial for blocking a train in London to demand an adequate response to the life-threatening climate emergency.

  “The real crime lies with a government failing to do what’s necessary to safeguard the future of the human race.”

• The Oceans Are Overheating

  According to the Ocean Conservancy: “From the beginning of industrialization until today, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat from human-caused global warming and about one-third of our carbon emissions. But we are now seeing the devastating effects of that heat and carbon dioxide.”

  This brings into focus big questions about the overall condition of the ecosystems of the planet. The oceans, by far the biggest, cover more than 70% of the planet. As readily seen from outer space, the oceans are the essence of the planet.

• Opinion | Don’t Look Up: A Real Call to Climate Action Is Missing

  The Netflix satire Don’t Look Up has a lot going for it: An all-star cast—including Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio—and celebrated director Adam McKay deliver a razor sharp critique of America’s empty-headed political and media culture, while also deriding the dangerous, delusional prescriptions of a Big Tech billionaire. (Former In These Times senior editor David Sirota is a co-creator of the film.) The film’s animating crisis—a massive comet headed for Earth—aptly stands in for our own climate emergency. And the failure to confront a mass extinction event by wishing it away (with a Don’t Look Up movement akin to our own climate denial disinformation machine) hits close to home.

• Energy

  • Sanders, Warren Demand BlackRock Intervene in Coal Strike for Fair Contract

  • ‘A Great Step’: Biden Admin Launches Clean Energy Corps

    A new program launched by the Biden administration on Friday will hire 1,000 Americans to help expand the country’s clean energy infrastructure, a step the White House says is “critical to achieving the president’s goal of 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.”

    Workers in the Clean Energy Corps will work in areas including engineering, physical science, legislative affairs, and contract management and will work on large-scale projects including the administration’s Building a Better Grid initiative.

  • Sanders Leads Call for BlackRock to Side With Striking Coal Miners

    Sen. Bernie Sanders and two of his Senate colleagues on Friday demanded that the Wall Street behemoth BlackRock—the largest shareholder in Warrior Met Coal—intervene on the side of Alabama miners as they continue their strike for fair wages and benefits.

    “Mr. Fink must tell the company’s executives to sit down and negotiate a fair contract now.”

  • Activist Pressure Pauses Newark Fracked Gas Project

    Faced with strident opposition from community and climate activists, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Thursday intervened to stop a vote on a controversial fracked gas power plant in Newark pending further review of the project’s environmental impact.

    “Delaying this project is the right thing to do because new facilities should serve and protect overburdened communities—not increase harm and pollution.”

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Dog lost in wildfire rescued 4 months later in snowy California mountains | | missoulian.com

    A dog separated from his owner last summer as a wildfire forced evacuations in Northern California mountains was found after a backcountry skier spotted the animal in deep snow last month, prompting an intense rescue operation.

    Russ, a pit bull-terrier mix, ran away from his owner’s vehicle in August as the Caldor Fire roared toward South Lake Tahoe, according to a Facebook post by Tahoe PAWS and TLC 4 Furry Friends, the nonprofit organization that assisted with the dog’s rescue in late December.

    The owner was forced to evacuate because of the blaze after searching for the dog and reporting him missing to animal services officers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.

  • Tiger shark migrations altered by climate change: New migration patterns leave sharks more vulnerable to fishing

    A new study has revealed that the locations and timing of tiger shark movement in the western North Atlantic Ocean have changed from rising ocean temperatures. These climate-driven changes have subsequently shifted tiger shark movements outside of protected areas, rendering the sharks more vulnerable to commercial fishing.

• Overpopulation

  • More Afghans May Die From US Sanctions Than at the Hands of the Taliban

Finance

• We Know the Silver Bullet to Ending Poverty and Destitution But Choose Not to Use It

  That’s how the United States government should work, but it doesn’t. For-profit healthcare, corporate personhood, the drug war, funding terrorists overseas that we call “moderate rebels,” etc. — all of these things have been tried, they fuckin’ suck every time, and we keep doing them. The U.S. continually racks itself on the newel post all day long and then responds, “I think I’ll try that again.”

  But the reverse should be true also — if a city or country anywhere in the world tries something and it works great, we should do it.

• Hundreds of Thousands of Children Are Homeless — and the Problem Is on the Rise

• Democrats, Struggling Parents Blast Lapsed Child Tax Credit

  Progressive lawmakers, advocates, and working parents spoke out Friday as millions of families weighed what they will do without the temporarily expanded child tax credit that has now ended after Democrats failed to pass the Build Back Better Act.

  “The CTC payments have kept us afloat for the last six months.”

• Warren Demands Private Equity-Backed Firms Answer for Role in Rising Rent Prices

• The Continuing Phony Debate on Free Trade

• Latest IMF Controversy Unveils Biased Policies and a Harvard Economist’s Skewed Views

  The catchy phrase was deployed by Harvard University economist Ken Rogoff in early January, while cheekily asking, “Why is the International Monetary Fund trying to morph into an aid agency?”

  The IMF’s leftward turn, he supposes, reflects an overly-generous mentality and practice under the very shaky leadership of neoliberal Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva. Last year, Georgieva became notorious for data manipulation on behalf of multinational corporations and nearly lost her managing directorship because her statistical fraud was to China’s benefit, angering the IMF’s geopolitical bully-boy directors from the United States and Japan.

• 75% of Kroger Workers Meet Definition of ‘Food Insecure,’ 14% Have Been Homeless in Last Year, According to New Report

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Deputized Nation

  What next? Well, think about it: Deputizing Montanans to rat on neighbors who won’t hunt wolves, or empowering oil and gas companies to sue pipeline protestors. Deputizing busybodies to report their neighbors for using birth control. Rewarding Floridians for informing the local prosecutor on anyone who uses the phrase “climate change” (after all, former governor Rick Scott banned the term, an imbecility he should never be allowed to forget). Authorizing anyone to punch anyone who tells them to wear a face mask. Deputizing parents to sue school systems that require ANY vaccines. Allowing anyone to ram their car into anyone they think “might be antifa.” Basically, just name anything currently annoying the idiotic average American reactionary and before long that creature will be deputized to take action against it, as if it were as objectionable as cannibalism. The list is endless.

  So it’s time to turn this stupid fad on its head. California’s plan to deputize its citizens against gun manufacturers blazes the way. Governor Gavin Newsom produced this stupendous idea and he’s to be commended. If Californians sue gun manufacturers out of business – voila! No more school slaughters. Who cares about the second amendment, especially when Oklahoma already ditched the first? Clearly, it’s open season on the bill of rights – most of which American morons oppose on principle anyway.

• Elite Media Remember Lani Guinier as ‘Embattled’—and Forget How They Battled Her

  “Harvard Law Professor Guinier Dies at 71; Known for Civil Rights Work, Public Service,” was the headline on the Boston Globe‘s January 8 obituary for teacher, voting rights advocate and author Lani Guinier. The story cited Harvard Law School dean John Manning, saying that Guinier “changed our understanding of democracy—of why and how the voices of the historically underrepresented must be heard and what it takes to have a meaningful right to vote.” New York’s Daily News (1/7/22) had “Lani Guinier, Civil Rights Attorney, Voting Rights Advocate, Dies at 71.”

• Reformist DAs Spark Murdoch Empire Freakout

  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who took office January 1, wasted no time getting in the headlines, telling his prosecutors (New York Times, 1/6/22) that they should seek “jail or prison time only for the most serious offenses—including murder, sexual assault and economic crimes involving vast sums of money.” He also told them to “avoid seeking jail time for…certain robberies and assaults, as well as gun possession” if “no other crimes are involved.”

• Meet the Tokayevs Journalists trace real estate in Russia to Kazakhstani president’s ex-wife and son

  Precious little is known about the immediate family of Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. But according to a recent investigation from RFE/RL’s Russian Service and Current Time TV, Tokayev’s ex-wife and son are both closely connected to Russia. Indeed, according to media reports, Tokayev’s ex-wife is a Russian citizen. And both she and her son have been linked to pricey real estate in and around Moscow. More recently, their ownership of two apartments in the Russian capital appears to have been covered up in Russia’s federal property database. Meduza summarizes the investigation’s findings here.

• Manchin Joins Sinema in Announcing Opposition to Abolishing Filibuster

• Come on, Man! Joe Biden’s Dumb and Deceptive January 6 Anniversary Speech

• Wisconsin Judge Rules Ballot Drop Boxes Unlawful

  Amid efforts by Republican lawmakers across the nation to suppress access to the polls, a Wisconsin judge ruled Thursday that absentee ballot drop boxes are not allowed by state law.

  “This underscores the imperative of a voting rights legislation that ensures the freedom to vote is protected nationally.”

• Ohio Supreme Court Strikes Down Rigged Congressional Maps

  Voting rights advocates on Friday celebrated the Ohio Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision to strike down new GOP-drawn congressional districts just days after a similar ruling against rigged maps for state-level legislators.

  “When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins.”

• Half of Mail-In Ballot Requests Rejected in Key Texas County

  Voting rights advocates responded with alarm to reports this week that around half of the mail-in voting applications in Texas’ fifth-largest county have been rejected as a result of a recently enacted voter suppression law that experts say is part of a nationwide Republican effort to restrict access to the polls.

  “It’s disturbing that our senior citizens who have relished and embraced voting by mail are now having to jump through some hoops.”

Misinformation/Disinformation

• Vaccines, RFK Jr. and The Science of Misinformation

  That’s the claim RFK Jr. and his raucous admirers make as they point out the lawyer-turned anti-vaccine crusader was kicked off of Instagram and has yet to appear on MSNBC or snag a seat on a late night show. But last I checked his new anti-Fauci book has thus far sold over 500,000 copies. Censorship sells, I guess.

  While RFK Jr. may be blacklisted from MSNBC and other outlets (news flash, so are we), he recently dropped in on the Jimmy Dore comedy hour to cook up a stew of gibberish, with a dash of falsehoods that went unchallenged by Dore, who appears to be more than happy to cash in on all of this anti-vax paranoia.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Sanctions and censorship are making the Internet in Iran less accessible, analysts say

  As Washington and Tehran clash in Vienna over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran continues to struggle under the weight of U.S. sanctions. Among them are restrictions that make it difficult for Iranians to access information and fast-changing technologies that much of the rest of the world takes for granted.

  Over the years, Washington has issued exemptions for personal communications tools – such as applications for messaging, blogging and social networking – citing the U.S. interest in ensuring Iranians maintain access to the global Internet. Such exemptions do not include tools for business communications, which are wrapped up in Washington’s wide-reaching sanctions on Iran and its banking system.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The Rule of Law Must Finally Evolve Into the Rule of Justice

  In a very real sense, we already have a “rules based international order” in the form of the UN Charter and its “supremacy clause”, article 103 of which grants it priority over all other treaties and agreements.  The norms established in the Charter are rational, but effective enforcement mechanisms are yet to be created.

  We also have humanistic “values” that should guide diplomacy and peace-making – including the principle “pacta sunt servanda” (treaties must be implemented, art. 26 of the Vienna Convention on the law of treaties).  Let us not forget the general principles of law, including good faith (bona fide), the prohibition of abusing rights (sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas), and the principle of estoppel (ex injuria non oritur jus) – you can’t have your cake and eat it.  Alas, both in domestic and international law there is a high level of bad faith and the tendency to apply double-standards.  Major powers make agreements and then break them with impunity.  Major powers undermine diplomacy by brazenly lying, by making promises and not keeping then.  This subverts the credibility of the entire system of norms and mechanisms.  Politicians often forget that keeping one’s word is not only a matter of personal honour – it is an indispensable element of trust in the conduct of public affairs. Among other crucial values that we should promote are Christian values such as compassion, empathy, forgiveness, solidarity.

• Rebuild and Revive

• Pardiss Kebriaei on Guantánamo Prisoners

• We Can’t Let Radical Hope Disappear Into the Abyss of Authoritarianism

• Opinion | Massive Labor Uprising Expected in South Korea on January 15

• Making Sugar, Making ‘Coolies’: Chinese Laborers Toiled Alongside Black Workers on 19th-Century Louisiana Plantations

  In fact, far more Asian workers moved to the Americas in the 19th century to make sugar than to build the transcontinental railroad. It is a history that can force Americans to contend with colonial violence in the making of the modern world, dating back centuries to Christopher Columbus and his search for trade routes and quick wealth.

  As I explore in my book “Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation,” thousands of Chinese migrants were recruited to work side by side with African Americans on Louisiana’s sugar plantations after the Civil War. Though now a largely forgotten episode in history, their migration played a key role in renewing and reinforcing the racist foundation of American citizenship. Recruited and reviled as “coolies,” their presence in sugar production helped justify racial exclusion after the abolition of slavery.

• How the Vietnam War Pushed MLK to Embrace Global Justice, Not Only Civil Rights at Home

  King called the law’s passage “a great moment … something like the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.” Johnson recognized King’s contributions to the law by gifting him a pen used to sign the historic legislation.

  A year later, as Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, King again joined the president for the occasion.

• The Protest Movement and the Protest Government

  On January 11, in Georgia, President Biden delivered a speech on civil rights to boost a new federal election law. There are, he said, “moments so stark that they divide all that came before from everything that followed.… They rip away the trivial from the essential. And they force us to confront hard truths about ourselves, about our institutions, and about our democracy.”

• Ethical aspects relating to cyberspace: Self-regulation and codes of conduct – Modern Diplomacy

  Virtual interaction processes must be controlled in one way or another. But how, within what limits and, above all, on the basis of what principles? The proponents of the official viewpoint – supported by the strength of state structures – argue that since the Internet has a significant and not always positive impact not only on its users, but also on society as a whole, all areas of virtual interaction need to be clearly regulated through the enactment of appropriate legislation.

  In practice, however, the various attempts to legislate on virtual communication face great difficulties due to the imperfection of modern information law. Moreover, considering that the Internet community is based on an internal “anarchist” ideology, it shows significant resistance to government regulations, believing that in a cross-border environment – which is the global network – the only effective regulator can be the voluntarily and consciously accepted intranet ethics based on the awareness of the individual person’s moral responsibility for what happens in cyberspace.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• A group of Philly technologists are working on a free, community-based mesh Wi-Fi network – Technical.ly

  When the pandemic hit the Philadelphia region in 2020, the city’s existing digital divide issues became impossible to ignore.

  Thousands more people relied on internet in their homes for the work and schooling they usually did elsewhere. The City of Philadelphia, along with state and federal government, has been working on the issue alongside private partners over the last two years.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• EFF takes on DMCA provision criminalizing open speech, indirectly forwarding ‘Right to Repair’ – Neowin

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has officially requested a federal appeals court to decriminalize certain provisions within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The EFF reasons that these provisions violate the First Amendment (Right to Free Speech).

  Specifically speaking, the EFF is going after Section 1201 of the DMCA, which currently makes it unlawful for people to get around the software that restricts access to lawfully-purchased copyrighted material. Essentially, the EFF feels that this section unnecessarily puts severe restrictions, and the fear of persecution, in the minds of people who wish to speak openly or access details about the software they legally purchased.

  Section 1201 of the DMCA, was originally intended to protect artists who created creative content such as songs. However, the same has long been used to restrict people’s ability to access, use, and even speak out about copyrighted materials.

• Hacking Is Hacking | Hackaday

  Tom Nardi and I had a good laugh this week on the Podcast when he compared the ECU hacks that enabled turning a VW with steering assist into a self-driver to a hack last week that modified a water cooler to fill a particular cup. But it’s actually no joke — some of the very same techniques are used in both efforts, although the outcome of one is life-and-death, and the other is just some spilled ice-cold water.

  [...]

  So I had junk hacking in the back of my mind when I was re-watching Hash Salehi’s great talk on his work reverse engineering smart meters. Funnily enough, he started off his reverse engineering journey eleven years ago with work on a robot vacuum cleaner’s LIDAR module. Junk hacking, for sure, but the same techniques taught him to work on devices that are significantly more serious. And in the craziest of Hackaday synergies, he even hat-tipped Travis’ talk in his video! Hacking is hacking!

Monopolies

• Lawsuit: Google, Facebook CEOs colluded in online ad sales

  Newly unredacted documents from a state-led antitrust lawsuit against Google accuse the search giant of colluding with rival Facebook to manipulate online advertising sales. The CEOs of both companies were aware of the deal and signed off on it, the lawsuit alleges.

  The original, redacted lawsuit, filed in December 2021, accused Google of anti-competitive conduct and of teaming up with the social networking giant. But the unredacted version offers details on the involvement of Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in approving the deal. Facebook has since renamed itself Meta.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux From Scratch: The Nightmare Will Never End! – Invidious

  It’s been a while since we last did an Linux from Scratch stream because I was starting to drive myself insane but we’re finally getting back to it, this time I won’t be doing it for 6 weeks straight though

Instructionals/Technical

• How To Install AngularJS on Debian 11 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install AngularJS on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Angular is an open-source, popular, and highly-extensible front-end application development framework, used for building mobile and web applications using TypeScript and other common languages. It was developed by Google on October 20, 2010, and is currently maintained by Google and other individuals and corporations.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the AngularJS on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• How to install Ampache5 on Ubuntu/Debian

  In this post, you will learn how to install Ampache5 on Ubuntu / Debian

  Ampache is an open-source web based audio/video streaming applcation and file manager, which allows you to access your Audio & Video files from anywhere from the world through internet. It has a decent and responsive GUI which allow users to locate their files really easily

• How to install Apache Cassandra on Debian 11? – An Impressive NoSQL Database manager

  This post is about how to install Apache Cassandra on Debian 11.

  One of the most important NoSQL database solutions out there is Apache Cassandra. So in this post, you will learn how to install it on Debian 11.

• How to Install and Configure VNC on Ubuntu Server 20.04

  This article will show you how to set up a VNC on Ubuntu Server 20.04.

  Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop sharing technology that allows you to control another computer using your keyboard and mouse.

• Apache Tomcat container with Podman

  The Apache Tomcat container software is developed in an open-source and participatory environment under the Apache License version 2. The Apache Tomcat project is intended to be a collaboration of the best-of-breed developers from around the world. We invite you to participate in this open development project. To learn more about getting involved, click here or keep reading. You can also check Tomcat 10 installation tutorial.

• How to Install and Configure Kibana on OpenSUSE Leap 15.3

  In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure Kibana on OpenSUSE Leap 15.3.

  Kibana is a proprietary data visualization dashboard software for Elasticsearch, whose open source successor in OpenSearch is OpenSearch Dashboards. It is a data visualization and exploration tool used for log and time-series analytics, application monitoring, and operational intelligence use cases. It offers powerful and easy-to-use features such as histograms, line graphs, pie charts, heat maps, and built-in geospatial support. Kibana also acts as the user interface for monitoring, managing, and securing an Elastic Stack cluster — as well as the centralized hub for built-in solutions developed on the Elastic Stack.

• How to Install and Configure Elasticsearch on OpenSUSE Leap 15.3

  In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure Elasticsearch on OpenSUSE Leap 15.3.

  Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch has quickly become the most popular search engine and is commonly used for log analytics, full-text search, security intelligence, business analytics, and operational intelligence use cases.

• How to install smokeping monitoring tool in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

  In network and system administration profession, it is very important to monitor your infrastructure. Smokeping is one of the best open source icmp/ping monitoring and latency monitoring server. It shows historical data of packet loss, high latency of a network device.

  It is very easy to deploy. Today we will see the step by step installation process of smokeping server in Ubuntu operating system

Games

• The Humble Choice subscription is ditching Mac and Linux gamers

  Many Humble fans point to the company’s 2017 acquisition by online gaming media giant IGN (itself owned by Ziff Davis) as the primary reason for the shift in strategy. It’s worth noting that the service’s iconic Humble Bundle sales have continued to offer at least some games available on both macOS and Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • This week in KDE: the Plasma 5.24 beta

    This week we released the Plasma 5.24 beta, so go check it out and file bug reports! We spent most of the weak preparing for it and fixing bugs, which we’ll continue to do for the next month in preparation for the final release.

Distributions

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • openSUSE Leap 15.2 Reached End of Life, Users Urged to Upgrade to openSUSE Leap 15.3

    Released on July 2nd, 2020, openSUSE Leap 15.2 was based on the SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 Service Pack (SP) 2 sources and powered by the Linux 5.3 kernel. It introduced several exciting new features and improvements, such as new Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning tools like Tensorflow, PyTorch, ONNX, Grafana, and Prometheus.

    However, openSUSE Leap 15.2 is supported for only 18 months, which means that it has now reached end of life, no longer receiving software and security updates as of January 4th, 2022. This means that existing openSUSE Leap 15.2 installations will soon become vulnerable to attacks.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • What If You Could Fully Customize Your Ubuntu Desktop Experience

    It turns out a college student frustrated by the limited customization options available on the latest Ubuntu Linux releases, and inspired by the settings offered by Linux hardware vendor System76 in their Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS Linux distribution, created an alternate version of the Ubuntu/GNOME settings app with new features.

    He managed to modify GNOME Control Center and add in a new panel called Personalize, which includes four new pages that allow you to take full control over your Ubuntu Desktop. These include General, Appearance, Dock, and Multitasking.

  • Ubuntu 22.04 Release Date & New Features – OMG! Ubuntu!

    Ubuntu 22.04 is due for release on April 21, 2022. In this post we look at the various new features and key changes that are planned for the release.

    Development of Ubuntu 22.04 is still at a somewhat early stage but we do have a good idea of what to expect from the update developers have codenamed “Jammy Jellyfish”.

    In this post we rundown everything that’s known so far, from the Ubuntu 22.04 release date to how long it’ll be supported for. And at the very bottom of this article you will find a link to download the Ubuntu 22.04 daily build to try it out for yourself.

Devices/Embedded

• Why use a Raspberry Pi to power your business

  Raspberry Pi computer boards are very small form factor computers running Linux. They have an OS delivered and maintained from Raspberry Pi Foundation—the Raspberry Pi OS. Based on Debian, it shares many software packages with the most known Linux distributions. Moreover, many Raspberry Pi boards can flawlessly run the most famous Ubuntu server. They include ARM processors, which grant low energy consumption.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • RISC-V SoC and Snapdragon 8 Gain Mainstream Linux Compatibility | Tom’s Hardware

    Support for the StarFive JH710 has been merged into the Linux 5.17 kernel, along with support for the prototype BeagleV Starlight which never went into mass production.

    In case you’re not familiar with the Chinese-developed StarFive JH7100, it’s a SoC with two U74 64bit cores running at 1.5 GHz. It doesn’t have a built-in 3D GPU, but does support 4K output over its HDMI port. It supports LPDDR3 and 4 (the VisionFive V1 board pictured above, for example, comes with 8GB of the latter), Gigabit Ethernet, built-in flash storage, SD cards, Wi-Fi, and various camera modules and LCD panels. Boards even come with a row of GPIO pins like a Raspberry Pi. Phoronix reports that the performance of the U74 is similar to an Arm Cortex A55, the successor to the Cortex A53 chip used in the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.

    “This SoC promises to be the first usable low-cost platform for RISC-V,” reads the pull request that introduces the SoC’s support in Linux. It will be great to see cheap computers running the likes of Ubuntu or Debian, adding an open-source competitor to the X86 and Arm architectures.

  • USB add-on boards leverage Raspberry Pi Zero test pads, USB Gadget mode – CNX Software

    I’ve just come across a few USB boards that take advantage of the Raspberry Pi Zero (W) test pads to add one or more USB Type-A ports to the board without soldering.

    The first one is “Catda Raspberry Pi zero WH USB expansion board” which I found on Banggood for $9.99.

  • Throwback to 2021, More from Librem 5 in 2022 – Purism

    We’ve had an excellent year of adding more functionality for the phone to the mainline Linux kernel. As a result, the Librem 5 phone has become quite usable in 2021 and will further improve in 2022. We have also increased shipping throughput, and our estimated shipping times are more accurate than ever. Here is a complete run-down from our team.

    [...]

    Get better control of how you share your location. When you disable location services on a Librem 5, you can trust (and audit) that the phone is honoring your request. For ultimate privacy, you can even go into full lockdown mode to disable all radios, GPS, cameras, mics and other sensors.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • How to See Which Android Apps Are Taking Up the Most Space

  • How to cancel your Netflix membership on Android and web – 9to5Google

  • 4 best library apps for Android to read for free – Android Authority

  • Galaxy S22, S22+ and S22 Ultra delay: Android and Samsung users, the wait might be worth it! – PhoneArena

  • Galaxy S21 FE Review: Samsung’s sure crowd-pleaser – 9to5Google

  • Everything you wanted to know about how Google brought Cast volume controls back to Android 12

  • T-Mobile finally pushes Android 12 to the Galaxy Note 20, Note 20 Ultra | Android Central

  • Samsung One UI 4.0 (Android 12) update tracker: Eligible devices & more

  • Google Pixel Android 12 missed call notifications can’t dismiss fixed

  • T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint & AT&T Android 12 update tracker: Eligible…

  • Samsung Galaxy A Series One UI 4.0 (Android 12) update status

  • Your Android has six ‘secret codes’ that unlock hidden features

  • Find, lock, or erase lost Android phone via Google Account, Find My Device app, smartwatch

  • Google comes with the latest feature for Android users to disable the 2G network to avoid “stingray” attacks / Digital Information World

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • Perl/Raku

    • Benchmark for Scala, Ruby and Perl

      I know this benchmark is maybe meaningless. But I would like to give a simple comparison for run speed of Scala, Ruby and Perl.

Of Bullies, the Bullied & the Craft of Art

Political powers in the mastergame

The Player who controls the board

The History Of Ranch Dressing: Let’s Get Sauced

When I heard about the tale of the industry group that successfully lobbied the Food & Drug Administration about French dressing, that most disgusting of salad dressings that often includes friggin’ ketchup as an ingredient, I knew what I had to do: revive my backstory about how ranch dressing came to life and how, despite not getting the full ranch experience, the general public accepted that it was amazing anyway. Ranch dressing is more than a condiment at this point. It is a cultural phenomenon. It is a way to add extra fat to just about anything and wash it over with seasoning and creaminess. There are restaurants dedicated to this creamy delight, which shares four of its five letters with the word “French” but couldn’t be any more different. (By the way: Possible Wordle starter word?) It is “Fancy Like” a full 65 years before “Fancy Like” was a terrible song. And I’m going to tell you all about it. Today’s Tedium talks ranch dressing, because honestly, we must.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Public Health Professionals Must Demand an End to the Use of Weaponized Drones

• Opinion | The Right-Wing Supreme Court’s Appalling Decision on Covid Safety Rules

  By a 6 to 3 vote, with liberal justices in dissent, the Supreme Court yesterday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers. (The court upheld a more modest mandate requiring vaccinations for health care workers who treat Medicare and Medicaid patients.)

• Americans Can Order Free Rapid Covid Tests Starting Jan. 19

  A day after U.S. President Joe Biden announced he had directed his administration to secure a billion rapid Covid-19 tests to distribute for free amid rising infections nationwide, the White House revealed Americans can start placing orders online next week.

  “There will be free tests available for every household, and to promote broad access, the initial program will allow four free tests to be requested per residential address,” according to a White House fact sheet. “Starting January 19th, Americans will be able to order their tests online at Covidtests.gov, and tests will typically ship within 7-12 days of ordering.”

• Gavin Newsom’s New Budget Proposal Expands Health Care to the Undocumented

• Donald Trump’s Neglect has Fueled the Coronavirus Pandemic

  Except for its resolve to speed up the development of a vaccine against the coronavirus, the Trump administration’s decisions on the pandemic have been flawed, with dire consequences not only for the U.S. but also for the rest of the world. Countries that better controlled the spread of the virus like Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, did so based on continuous testing, isolation of the infected, quarantining the contacts and massive use of masks. The Trump administration neglected these basic measures.

  A report issued by the House Select Subcommittee investigating the nation’s Covid response found that the Trump White House repeatedly overruled public health guidance by the nation’s top infectious disease experts, silencing officials to promote then-President Donald Trump’s political agenda.

• Under the microscope: Antivaxxers find “impurities” in COVID-19 vaccines

  Every thing old is new again. I know that my readers probably get tired of my saying this, but it’s true. Since the pandemic began, there is not a single piece of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines or single technique of portraying them as horrifically dangerous that is new. Be they weaponizing VAERS to blame vaccines for death and destruction, claiming that vaccines are “sterilizing our women,” portraying them as laden with frighteningly awful “toxins,” or many others, the antivax tropes reborn for COVID-19 vaccines that are shocking those previously oblivious to them are simply repackagings, tweaks, and reinventions of old antivax tropes that I’ve been writing about for nearly two decades. There is, however, one that I hadn’t seen yet (or at least hadn’t written about yet), and that’s when antivaxxers start looking at vaccines under the microscope. That changed when I saw this doozy of an article on that center of all quackery, antivaccine nonsense, and conspiracy theories on the Internet, Mike Adam’s website Natural News, in the form of a story entitled, SHOCK: German physicians discover “astonishing” impurities in COVID “vaccine.” Predictably (at least to those of us who’ve been following the antivaccine movement, it involves antivax “scientists” looking at COVID-19 vaccines under a microscope and finding…things, horrifying things…although I will give them credit for going on step beyond what antivaxxers used to do and finding “impurities” in the blood of the vaccinated as well:

• It’s Time for Biden to Keep His Promises on Marijuana

  Such is the case thus far with President Biden’s campaign pledge to reform America’s archaic and unpopularmarijuana prohibition laws.

  “No one should be in jail because of marijuana,” Biden insisted on the campaign trail. “As president, I will decriminalize cannabis use and automatically expunge prior convictions.” Biden also supported “the legalization of cannabis for medical purposes” and promised to “leave decisions regarding legalization for recreational use up to the states.”

• At White House Vigil, Nurses Decry ‘Unacceptable’ Pandemic Response

  Nurses dismayed by the federal government’s floundering pandemic response capped off a day of strikes and demonstrations Thursday with a candlelight vigil outside the White House, where healthcare workers gathered to commemorate colleagues who have lost their lives to Covid-19.

  “We can’t safely care for our patients if we are sick ourselves.”

• America Is Falling Apart at the Seams

  In June a statistic floated across my desk that startled me. In 2020, the number of miles Americans drove fell 13 percent because of the pandemic, but the number of traffic deaths rose 7 percent.

• How the Navajo Nation Beat Back Covid

  The solution, Nez said, has been the community’s prioritization of collective responsibility in its ongoing vaccination efforts. “While the rest of the country were saying no to masks, no to staying home, and saying you’re taking away my freedoms, here on Navajo, it wasn’t about us individually,” he said. “It was about protecting our families, our communities and our nation.”

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • European Cyber Exercise: Digital Attacks from „Blue Land“

    For five weeks, EU member states will simulate attacks on their critical infrastructures. For the first time, the threshold of an armed attack will be surpassed. The rehearsal includes the provision of assistance in accordance with EU treaties, and the NATO case of alliance could also be triggered.

  • No lights, no heat, no money – that’s life in Ukraine during cyber warfare

    Intrusions by [attackers] on hospitals, power utility companies, and the financial system were until recently rare. But organized cybercriminals, many of them living in Russia, have gone after institutions aggressively in the past two years with ransomware, freezing data and computerized equipment needed to care for hospital patients.

    In some cases, those extortion attacks have led to patient deaths, according to litigation, media reports and medical professionals.

    Friday’s attack on Ukrainian websites included a warning to “be afraid and expect the worst”, at a time when Russia has amassed about 100,000 troops near Ukraine, raising fears in the West that it is considering an invasion. Moscow denies it wants to invade.

  • Google buys London site for $1 billion

    Google plans to refit the building so it is adapted for in-person teamwork and has meeting rooms for hybrid working, as well as creating more space for individuals.

  • New Windows KB5009543, KB5009566 updates break L2TP VPN connections

    When attempting to connect to a VPN device, they are shown an error stating, “Can’t connect to VPN. The L2TP connection attempt failed because the security layer encountered a processing error during initial negotiations with the remote computer,” as shown below.”

  • New Windows Server updates cause DC boot loops, break Hyper-V

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Instant Messaging Apps: How Private Are They & What Alternatives Are There?

        And because communication takes place over the internet, it is, for all intents and purposes, free — unlike SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), which often involve expensive fees for sending and receiving messages.

      • Interview With Anand Naik – Sequretek

        Anand Naik: Cyber Security industry from a customer’s point of view can be divided in the world of have’s and have not’s – where the Top 10% has access to everything whilst the rest have to make do without much of any. As they say the industry is for, by and to the elite.  

Defence/Aggression

• Welcome to the New Cold War

  The word “encirclement” does not appear in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 27, or in other recent administration statements about its foreign and military policies. Nor does that classic Cold War–era term “containment” ever come up. Still, America’s top leaders have reached a consensus on a strategy to encircle and contain the latest great power, China, with hostile military alliances, thereby thwarting its rise to full superpower status.

• Afghanistan in Freefall: Deadly U.S. Sanctions Blamed for Shocking Humanitarian Crisis

  As Afghanistan faces a dire humanitarian crisis, we look at how more Afghans may die from U.S. sanctions than at the hands of the Taliban. The U.S.’s attempts to block support for the new de facto government have prevented vital funding from flowing to the nation’s civil servants, particularly in education and the health sector. Dr. Paul Spiegel says conditions in the hospitals he visited in Kabul as part of a World Health Organization emergency team are rapidly deteriorating, and he describes the lack of heat and basic amenities as winter descended. “There’s been a drought. There’s food insecurity. And all of this has been exacerbated due to this economic crisis and due to lack of the U.N. and NGOs being able to pay people in the field,” says Spiegel. “What we see now is that it’s not the Taliban that is holding us back. It is the sanctions,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

• Moral Injury: A New Description of What Ails You?

  Feeling in the dumps? What could be the reasons? Winter blues? Add COVID and lack of social interaction. Worried about climate change? Arctic melting? For Americans: Are the Republicans set to sweep mid-terms in 2022? No accountability for higher-ups in the January 6 assault on the Capitol? Supreme Court catastrophic? Bye-bye Roe vs. Wade? Potential U.S. civil war? Global politics? Russian troops ready to cross Ukraine border? Chinese pressure Hong Kong and Taiwan? Illiberal democracies flourishing? For the French: “Pissed off” with the man, Emmanuel Macron, who is pissed off with you? Aren’t the Brits incensed with partying BoJo? The list could go on and on. I have no magic cure for all that ails you (or me). But I do have a description of a new phenomenon which may explain some of your symptoms.

  We learned what post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is for returning Vietnam War vets. It is now considered a familiar disease for soldiers after combat. While it was certainly prevalent throughout history – shell shock and combat fatigue in W.W.II – it became officially recognized in 1980 when it was included in the American Psychological Association’s statistical manual for mental health practitioners.

• Completely different approaches Political scientist Igor Zevelev breaks down Russia’s security talks with the U.S. and NATO

  Russia’s week of security talks with the U.S., NATO, and the OSCE wrapped up on Thursday, January 13. The meetings took place amid ongoing international concern over Russia concentrating troops near its border with Ukraine. However, the talks didn’t result in any agreements, as each party refused to budge on key issues. Russia has demanded an array of security guarantees, including that NATO rule out membership for Ukraine and Georgia. But both the alliance and Washington insist that Moscow has no say in the matter. For Meduza, political scientist Igor Zevelev breaks down why this week’s talks failed to produce results and where there may be room for negotiations.

• At Request of U.S., Russia Rounds Up 14 REvil Ransomware Affiliates

  The Russian government said today it arrested 14 people accused of working for “REvil,” a particularly aggressive ransomware group that has extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from victim organizations. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said the actions were taken in response to a request from U.S. officials, but many experts believe the crackdown is part of an effort to reduce tensions over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to station 100,000 troops along the nation’s border with Ukraine.

• Russian FSB busts ransomware group REvil at U.S. request

  On Friday, January 14, the Russian FSB reported that it had carried out a special operation to shut down the ransomware group REvil in response to a request from the United States. According to the FSB, its operatives detained and charged the group’s members after conducting raids on 25 addresses in Russia. If convicted, the suspects could face up to seven years in prison. The FSB’s announcement coincided with Ukraine reporting a major cyberattack that shut down dozens of government websites overnight. As yet, there is no indication that the two events are related and the Ukrainian government has not confirmed who is behind the attack.

• “Smoking Gun” Analysis Finds US Sanctions Produce “War Time” Economy in Venezuela

• France shuts down another mosque

  The Minister of Interior stated that 70 Muslim places of worship in the country have been “radicalised”. According to the ministry, there are 2623 Muslim mosques and places of worship throughout France and 21 places of these have been closed, according to figures dating from the end of December.

• The fates of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump

  But a year later, those Republicans are finding themselves ostracized — and even facing death threats — for being out of step with a party that continues to embrace Trump.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Millennium Tower Now Tilting 3 Inches Per Year, According to Fix Engineer

  The engineer responsible for the troubled fix of the Millennium Tower acknowledged Thursday that the building is continuing to tilt about 3 inches a year since work began.

  He also revealed that his team did not provide any instructions to the fix contractor on ways to prevent the tower’s sinking and tilting from getting worse from drilling and digging around two sides of the foundation.

• Anti-Israel Muslim Group Drops Lawsuit Against Whistleblower

  The resulting discovery, Saroya’s attorneys argued, would show she was not lying about “sexual harassment, gender discrimination, retaliation against those who raised these issues, gross financial mismanagement, disregard of basic governance requirements and duplicity about its raising of foreign funds, and [about] whether CAIR has been disingenuous with its Board, donors, chapters and volunteers, as well as the Muslim community at large.”

Environment

• Elephants Dying from Eating Plastic Waste in Sri Lankan Dump

  Examinations of the dead animals showed they had swallowed large amounts of nondegradable plastic that is found in the garbage dump, wildlife veterinarian Nihal Pushpakumara said.

• Elephants dying from eating plastic waste in Sri Lankan dump

  Around 20 elephants have died over the last eight years after consuming plastic trash in the dump in Pallakkadu village in Ampara district, about 210 kilometers (130 miles) east of the capital, Colombo.

• We found a solution in historical Lviv to the Tisza’s sea of garbage

  There is a historic city in Ukraine with 800,000 inhabitants, and its highest point is a garbage dump. Such could be the opening line of an ad for disaster tourism in Lviv, but in fact, we’re talking about a promising reclamation site where an attractive park is planned to be in a few years. The city will also get a sustainably cost-effective and environmentally friendly waste management system out of it. The solution could also serve as an example for Transcarpathia, where, without proper waste processing, garbage is sure to continue coming into Hungary. Plans are already in place to tackle the problem – and Ukraine is largely looking to the EU for funding. The leadership of the region, which has a population of 1.2 million, says that building waste treatment plants could be completed by 2030 for €100 million, after which the system would become self-sustaining on a market basis. The industry is more pessimistic about the business model, but with a moderate budgetary supplement it could work – and it’s certainly worth it when you factor in the elimination of river pollution. Translation by Dominic Spadacene.

• A Bigger Tent Delivers Stronger Wins for Climate: The Lesson From Illinois

• Energy

  • ‘Appalling’: Outrage as Biden Prolongs Trump Coal Policy

    A coalition of environmental groups slammed President Joe Biden on Friday for refusing to immediately reinstate the federal moratorium on coal leasing on public lands that was discarded more than four years ago by the Trump administration.

    “It’s appalling that the Biden administration is refusing to confront Trump’s reckless policy of federal coal leasing.”

  • Federal government forecasts that U.S. oil production in 2023 will surpass record high set in 2019

    In case you were thinking that the federal government under President Joe Biden was addressing the climate crisis by reducing oil drilling and dependence on fossil fuels in the U.S. at this time, I have some alarming news for you.

    The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that U.S. oil production will average 12.4 million barrels per day during 2023, surpassing the record high for domestic crude oil production set in 2019 under Trump.

  • Clean energy tech needs to be designed for recycling, experts say

    Companies like Apple and Samsung aren’t the only ones making high-tech devices that are hard to take apart and recycle. So are the manufacturers of critical clean energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicle (EV) batteries — and unlike the consumer tech industry, which is slowly starting to reverse some of its unsustainable design practices, there isn’t much being done about it.

    Batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines are all essential tools for combating climate change. However, these technologies take considerable energy and resources to make, and the best way to ensure we can keep making more of them sustainably is to recycle those resources at end of life. But today, clean energy recycling is limited by design choices that hinder disassembly, including the widespread use of ultra-strong adhesives. That could change, experts say, if the companies manufacturing supersized batteries for EVs and rare earth magnets for wind turbines shifted toward new adhesives that can be “de-bonded” using light, heat, magnetic fields, and more, or toward glue-free designs.

  • Mainstream Media Catching On

    Two of the externalities of cryptocurrencies I discussed in my Talk at TTI/Vanguard Conference were the way decentralization and immutability work together to enable crime, and their environmental impact. How well are mainstream media doing at covering these problems? The picture is mixed, as the two examples below the fold show.

  • California is poised to kill rooftop solar, damaging climate and health

    The California Public Utilities Commission is poised to kill off much of the rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) industry in California, which will result in the use of more polluting natural gas and biomass electricity as well as dirty electricity imported from out of state. The use of the new dirty electricity will raise air pollution death rates in California above the 12,000 per year who perish in the state already. Most of these additional deaths will be in poor communities in the Los Angeles basin and Central Valley, where pollution levels are already the highest in the state.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • They Chopped Down a Centuries-Old Tree. Now They Face Felony Charges.

    Mr. Jones and Ms. Hoffman were also charged with falsification. Both charges are felonies that carry a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison, a spokeswoman for Mr. O’Malley said.

  • Marines rescue 3 whales trapped in nets off Acapulco

    A boat of marine personnel freed the animals and herded them away from shore. It was the second incident in as many days: on Wednesday, a humpback whale calf was found stranded on the beach in Acapulco, disoriented and dehydrated. Residents threw water on it and later helped authorities push it back into the water despite heavy surf.

    Farther south, a whale rescue group has been trained by the International Whaling Commission.

• Overpopulation

  • Why Britain needs more migrants

    As in other rich countries, women are having fewer children: after the sharp peak that followed the second world war, fertility rates have declined. And the big baby-boom generation is affecting demographics in Britain and beyond. In Japan, the dankai no sedai—those born between 1947 and 1949—have contributed to the country’s rapid ageing: almost 30% of the population are aged over 65. The slowdown in life-expectancy increase is also weighing on Britain’s population growth. Projections made since 2012 (see chart 2) have steadily revised down period life expectancy at birth (a measure of the average number of years people will live beyond their current age). For someone born in 2025, the latest projected life expectancy is 2.1 years lower than the projection made in 2012.

Finance

• Inspired by Bernie Movement, Starbucks Workers Gain Steam

  With direct ties to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ people-powered presidential campaigns, the push for workers’ rights at Starbucks stores is “spreading like wildfire,” said one observer as the National Labor Relations Board on Friday ordered union elections at three more locations of the coffee chain in Western New York, weeks after workers at two stores in the area made history by unionizing.

  “The spark was the win at a Starbucks in Buffalo. The kindling was the thousands of Bernie supporters that Starbucks has hired over the years.”

• Lee Camp: We Know the Silver Bullet to Ending Poverty and Destitution But Choose Not to Use It

  Here’s how the world should operate in simple terms: A certain country or region or city or township or Hobbit hole tries something in order to help their society or group or hovel — if it works, other places then do it. If it doesn’t work, other places don’t do it. It’s like when you were a kid and you saw your brother slide down the banister and rack himself on the newel post — You then thought, “Maybe that activity is not for me.” But if he didn’t nail himself in the jewels, you probably thought, “I think I’ll try that.”

• Workers Are Paying the Price for Kroger’s Profits

  Cindy Wilbur has spent over 20 years working for Fred Meyer, a big-box supermarket that is part of the Kroger family of grocery chains, and for the first 18 of them, she was happy. Back then, she was employed as a food price changer and making decent money working 48 hours a week. After itchy feet led her to try a string of sales jobs for other grocery chains, like Kraft and Advantage, Wilbur realized something wasn’t clicking. “Although I was good at sales, I didn’t really enjoy it,” the soft-spoken 51-year-old told me in a phone call earlier this week. “I really stopped and thought about what was the last time I was really happy in my job, and that was when I was at Fred Meyers.” She returned to the chain in 2020, and began working at the Federal Way location near her home just outside Seattle, Wash. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and everything changed. Now, she said, “I would swear that I was in a completely different company.”

• Opinion | Food-Price Inflation Hits Poorest the Hardest

  The question of how best to control inflation is back on the economic policy agenda, and opinion is divided about how to address it. The mainstream view emphasizes the need for tighter monetary policies and regards higher interest rates and reduced liquidity provision as justified, even if they dampen the fragile economic recovery now underway in many countries. Others argue that today’s inflation is transitory, reflecting temporary supply bottlenecks and labor-market shifts, and will soon correct itself.

• They Promised Quick and Easy PPP Loans. Often, They Only Delivered Hassle and Heartache.

  In May 2021, Terry Kilcrease thought he saw a lifeline. He was out of work, living in a hotel in Lewisville, Texas, when he ran across a promising ad on Facebook. People who worked for themselves, it said, could still get loans from the government’s then-13-month-old pandemic Paycheck Protection Program.

  Kilcrease had just started selling credit card processing systems to small businesses in early 2020 before the pandemic killed much of the need for cash registers. He hadn’t thought he was eligible for the $800 billion program. But the ad, posted by a company called Blueacorn, convinced him it was worth a try.

• After Navient Forgives $1.7B, Progressives Say Cancel All Student Debt

  As one of the largest U.S. educational lenders on Thursday agreed to pay $1.85 billion to 39 states to resolve predatory lending claims, progressive lawmakers and advocates renewed calls for the cancellation of all outstanding student loan debt.

  “All student loans are predatory because no one should have to go into debt to get an education.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Venezuela: Opposition, Media Blast Maduro Interference in Barinas Election

  In the Venezuelan state of Barinas, the U.S.-backed opposition candidate for governor won an election on Sunday, January 9. Sergio Garrido – who has openly supported the fake “interim” presidency of Juan Guaidó, recognized only by the U.S. and 15 other world governments – defeated the Venezuelan government candidate, Jorge Arreaza, 55% to 41%.

• Biden is Rising to the Moment on Voting Rights, Will Congress?

  Sitting on the campus of Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater, surrounded by friends and colleagues in the voting rights movement, I felt proud that we had arrived at this moment. Every one of us was committed to keeping our eyes on the prize, prepared to do whatever it takes to see President Biden sign urgently needed voting rights protections into law.

  President Biden’s words matched the magnitude of the moment. “I will not yield,” he said. “I will not flinch. I will defend the right to vote and our democracy against all enemies, foreign, and yes, domestic.”

• “Who We Are”: New Film Chronicles History of Racism in America Amid Growing Attack on Voting Rights

  As the United States heads into the Martin Luther King Day holiday weekend, attempts by Democrats to pass major new voting rights legislation appear to have stalled. We examine the new award-winning documentary “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America,” which follows civil rights attorney Jeffery Robinson as he confronts the enduring legacy of anti-Black racism in the United States, weaving together examples from the U.S. Constitution, education system and policing. “The entire purpose of this film is to ask people to take a long hard look at our actual history of white supremacy and anti-Black racism,” says Robinson, the former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “That is something that has been really erased from the common narrative and creation story about America.” We also speak with Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler, the directors of the film.

• Opinion | Democrats Ready Final Push for Voting Rights—Did They Act Too Late?

• Opinion | To Safeguard US Democracy and Economy, Senate Must Reform Filibuster

  Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) set Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day as the Senate’s deadline to vote on a rule change that would allow passage of voting rights legislation, which has been continually blocked by the filibuster. Though Schumer is able to use an existing congressional rule to get around an initial filibuster and open debate on the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, closing debate and passing the legislation without Republican support will still require a change in filibuster procedure. Despite bipartisan support for filibuster reform to raise the debt ceiling in December, doing the same for voting rights has been met with opposition from every Republican senator and the two Democratic senators whose support is necessary to enact the rule change.

• Google calls for govt help to secure critical open-source software

  Following a summit on open-source security hosted at the White House on Thursday, Google said the collaboration between government and the private sector was needed for open-source funding and management.

• Nigeria Lifts 7-Month Ban on Twitter

  Since the ban came into effect, Nigerians have been able to access the service only using a virtual private network. Twitter’s removal of a post by President Muhammadu Buhari was widely seen as having prompted the government to block the site, but the government official, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, said on Wednesday that it was because it had been used “for subversive purposes and criminal activities.”

  In the now-deleted tweet, which was aimed at “those misbehaving,” Mr. Buhari said that the government would “treat them in the language they understand,” a message that was widely read as being a reference to the deadly Nigerian civil war. Some interpreted it as a threat of genocide.

• Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas Four Big Tech Firms

  In letters accompanying the subpoenas, the panel named Facebook, a unit of Meta, and YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet’s Google subsidiary, as among the worst offenders that contributed to the spread of misinformation and violent extremism. The committee said it had been investigating how the companies “contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps — if any — social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence.”

• Ukrainian websites hit by cyberattack amid tensions with Russia

  Several Ukrainian government websites were hit by what officials called a “massive cyberattack” on Friday as hackers took control and posted messages warning Ukraine to “be afraid and expect worse.”

  In the early hours of Friday morning, Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tweeted that “the websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a number of other government agencies are temporarily down” from the cyberattack.

• White House Offers Support to Ukraine Following Cyberattack

  A White House National Security Council spokesman told VOA that U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed on the attack, which shut down as many as 15 of Ukraine’s government websites. The spokesman said the NSC has offered whatever support it can provide as it assesses the impact of the attack.

  Ukraine’s foreign ministry reported Friday that the ministries affected included the treasury, the national emergency service and the state services, where Ukrainians’ electronic passports and vaccination certificates are stored.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Russia puts Navalny associates Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov on ‘terrorist and extremist’ list

  Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov, two close associates of imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny, have been added to Russia’s list of “terrorists and extremists.” 

• Criss Angel Sends Ridiculous Legal Threat After Comedian Creates Parody Menu Of His Restaurant

  Harrison Greenbaum is a comedian and (sometimes) magician, who noticed that the magician Criss Angel had opened a restaurant, named “CABLP” and hadn’t registered the domain cablprestaurant.com. For whatever reason, the restaurant’s actual website appears to be Eatblp.com, and so Greenbaum registered cablprestaurant.com and created a very obvious parody menu. I mean:

• Small Nebraska Town Pays $16,000 To Resident It Attempted To Sue Into Silence

  You most likely have never heard of Ord, Nebraska. There’s no reason you should have. Obviously, the town’s government would prefer you’ve heard of it, but it’s impossible to be well-informed about every small town in a country the size of the United States. Here’s how the town government pitches its wares:

• Moleskine Erases Taiwan From Diaries After Listing It As Province of China

  Until 2019, the company’s popular weekly planners simply used “Taiwan,” but in 2020 that changed to “Taiwan (Province of China).” This year, Moleskine journals don’t mention Taiwan at all, stripping it from the global holidays and dialing codes sections.

  For the final two years that Moleskine continued to display Taiwan’s public holidays among 44 countries and regions including Hong Kong, some dates were also misleading. In 2020, Taiwan’s holidays supposedly included October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. Taiwan celebrates its National Day every October 10, but 2021 editions showed it had no holidays in October.

• Details of ‘plot to kill exiled blogger’ emerge during UK trial

  LONDON: The trial of 31-year-old Gohir Khan, a British Pakistani based in the United Kingdom, began at the Kingston-upon-Thames crown court on Thursday, with the prosecution revealing details of an alleged plot to murder exiled blogger and activist Ahmad Waqass Goraya who is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The Annual American Whitewash

  I understand that people are free to decide who they will receive spiritual guidance from. The commitment to loving your neighbor that Jesus and King present may not resonate with everyone, and I take deep offense when their messages of altruism are distorted to justify and promote indignity and dehumanization. But, these days, it is unavoidable.

  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a key mouthpiece for Trumpism, has been misquoting MLK in his efforts to oppose critical race theory for months. His tweet, “Critical Race Theory goes against everything Martin Luther King Jr. taught us—to not judge others by the color of their skin. The Left is trying to take America backward” is the antithesis to King’s demands for equality. McCarthy loves to sanitize the racism of the Trump-GOP platform; it is inconvenient for him to admit the detrimental impacts that these policies have on black populations, so he lies instead. He deletes his racist tweets, but he never apologizes for them… This January he, like so many others, will no doubt pay lip service to the legacy of King by cynically twisting the meaning of MLK’s words beyond all recognition.

• What’s a “Western”? Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”

  Set in Montana in 1925, the year that American readers fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, it boasts wide open space and spectacular landscapes, though Campion’s landscapes also have something mysterious and spiritual about them. The film has a cowboy named Phil Burbank, a Yale graduate, who is reminiscent of “Johnny Guitar,” played by Sterling Hayden in Nicholas Ray’s film of the same name, though unlike Johnny, Phil plays the banjo, not the guitar.

  Is Phil a good guy or a bad guy? Is he as mean and ornery as Jack Wilson, the hired gunfighter played to perfection by Jack Palance in Shane, a shadowy character that kids have loved to boo and hiss. Or is Phil more like John Wayne who owned the western for much of his career and who brilliantly played “the Ringo Kid,” the outlaw turned good citizen, in John Ford’s classic Stagecoachfrom 1939, when spies began to share screen time with cowboys.

• Continuing King’s “Revolution of Values”

  The staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference would usually give King a new suit, but this year they wanted to make him laugh.

  Xernona Clayton teased, “We know how fond you are of our president Lyndon Johnson,” which got a laugh. Then she pulled out a metal cup engraved: “We are cooperating with Lyndon’s War on Poverty. Drop coins and bills in cup.”

• Appeals Court Says It’s Entirely Possible For Cops To Pinpoint Marijuana Odors In Moving Cars

  Cops are still claiming they can detect the odor of marijuana in moving vehicles. Not only that, they claim they can pinpoint the source, even when in traffic.

• Alec Baldwin turns phone over to authorities investigating ‘Rust’ shooting

  The Santa Fe County, New Mexico, Sheriff’s Department had issued a warrant for Baldwin’s phone on Dec. 16. District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said investigators were seeking to “obtain any materials” from the actor’s phone that possibly pertained to the shooting.

• Alec Baldwin turns over cellphone in investigation of fatal ‘Rust’ shooting: DA

  The search warrant for Baldwin’s phone was approved by a Santa Fe County magistrate judge on Dec. 16. Baldwin’s attorney acknowledged receipt of the warrant, and the Santa Fe County District Attorney’s Office was negotiating with Baldwin’s lawyer to retrieve the phone, according to the sheriff’s office.

  Authorities said they want to look at text messages sent from the phone as part of its investigation into the on-set shooting in Santa Fe last year that killed the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded its director, Joel Souza.

• Alec Baldwin Turns Over His Phone to ‘Rust’ Investigators

  Santa Fe investigators asked Baldwin to voluntarily turn over the phone, but his attorney advised them to get a warrant, according to the search warrant affidavit. The warrant was issued on Dec. 16, and the New Mexico prosecutors’ office subsequently got involved in negotiations with his attorney to obtain the phone.

• Islamic charity advises on when and how to beat women

  The NSS has reported a number of charities registered under the charitable purpose of “the advancement of religion” to the commission for condoning violence against women in recent years.

  NSS head of policy and research Megan Manson said: “All forms of abuse and violence against women should be wholeheartedly condemned, with no exceptions.”

  “An organisation that condones any form of abuse has no business being a charity.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• [UPDATE] Elizabeth Warren Is NOT Cosponsoring A Bill To Repeal 230

  Big Update: It turns out that this was a clerical error on the part of a Senate staffer, and that Elizabeth Warren is not co-sponsoring this bill from Lindsey Graham to repeal Section 230. The Congress.gov site is expected to be corrected and her name removed as a co-sponsor some time soon. I am leaving the original story below for posterity, but it’s good to see that Senator Warren hasn’t gone completely over to the dark side on this.

• New ‘TLDR’ Bill Requires Companies Provide Synopsis Of Overlong, Predatory Terms Of Service

  This week saw the introduction of the The Terms-of-service Labeling, Design and Readability Act, or “TLDR Act,” for short. The bill, which, for now, has bipartisan support, would require the FTC to create rules mandating that websites must offer a truncated version of obnoxiously long and predatory terms of service (TOS) nobody actually reads. The “summary statement” websites would be obligated to provide would not only lay out the legal requirements in terms normal humans could understand, it would also require a website disclose any major data breaches that have occurred in the last three years.

• Ron Yokubaitis: GOP Putting Partisanship over Reform with Gigi Sohn’s FCC Nomination

  I have known Gigi Sohn since she led Public Knowledge. She understands that net neutrality is just a patch and the real solution is true open access to the underlying local telecommunications infrastructure. I certainly don’t agree with 100% of Sohn’s viewpoints, and we’ve told her so. But even when we disagree our voices are heard, understood and considered. She is practical and willing to compromise. She will seek bipartisan solutions to the real problem.

  The Republicans’ effort to derail Gigi Sohn’s nomination to the FCC is misguided. All it does is cripple the FCC’s ability to return to its roots and do what is truly necessary to get America up to speed with the rest of the developed world when it comes to advanced infrastructure in general and [Internet] ubiquity in particular. This is too important a moment for partisan gamesmanship. Billions of dollars and the connectivity of millions of Americans are at stake.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Netflix Hikes Prices in U.S., Canada for Most Subscription Plans

  Netflix raised the monthly price of most of its subscription plans in the U.S. and Canada, as the streamer looks to generate more revenue from a slower-growing base customers.

• Netflix raises prices on all plans in US

  Prices for a Netflix plan have steadily gone up in recent years. The standard plan went to $14 per month from $13 in late 2020, after previously rising to $13 from from $11 in 2019. Prior to that, Netflix raised prices in 2017 and 2015. When Netflix announced its first wide-scale price increase in 2014, the company was so worried about losing subscribers over a $1 per month bump that it let existing members keep their price for two years. It hasn’t offered such a generous perk in the years since.

Monopolies

• Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai were involved in ad collusion plot, claims court filing

  Drawing on internal emails, Friday’s complaint shows that the Jedi Blue deal was reviewed at the highest levels of both companies, with personal involvement from Sundar Pichai, Sheryl Sandberg, and Mark Zuckerberg. In one email to Zuckerberg, Sandberg told the CEO “[t]his is a big deal strategically.” Notably, the filing refers to Zuckerberg and Sandberg by their job titles but redacts their name.

• Facebook, Google CEOs aware of formal advertising market deal, lawsuit alleges

  Chief executives of Alphabet’s Google and Facebook were aware of a deal to carve up part of the online advertising market, according to an amended antitrust complaint filed by Texas and 15 other states against Google.

  The deal with Facebook, which Google dubbed “Jedi Blue,” was “signed off” by Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was on an email thread discussing it, they said in their third amended complaint.

• Executives personally signed off on Facebook-Google ad collusion plot, states claim

  Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai personally approved a deal that would see the social media giant gain an advantage in the search engine’s ad auctions, according to a group of state attorneys general.

  The 2018 arrangement potentially gave Facebook illegal advantages, the attorneys general from 15 states and Puerto Rico, led by Texas’s Ken Paxton (R), allege in court filings unsealed Friday.

  The coalition initially filed its antitrust lawsuit alleging that Google holds a monopoly over the advertising technology market in 2020, then filed an updated complaint in November. The document released Friday is a less redacted version of the newer complaint.

• Trademarks

  • US Court To Gruyere Cheese People: No, You Can’t Ban People From Calling Their Cheese Gruyere If They Aren’t Your Neighbors

    One of the more annoying trends in intellectual property is when regional consortiums try to lock up terms or language around a specific style of product with arguments that only that region can produce a certain thing. If you’re familiar with this concept, the first thing to leap to your mind will likely be one French wine group’s control over the term “champagne” in certain regions. Another example would be a consortium of Belgian chocolate makers trying to assert that nobody can advertise “Belgian-style chocolate” unless it comes from one of them. It’s all very silly, as it attempts to take a term that everyone recognizes as describing the style of a product and transform it into locked up language to be controlled by some specific originators. Like I said, silly, though, far too often, these consortiums get their way.

• Copyrights

  • Major Record Labels Sue Youtube-dl’s Hosting Provider

    As part of their growing battle against popular open source software tool youtube-dl, three major music labels are now suing Uberspace, the company that currently hosts the official youtube-dl homepage. According to plaintiffs Sony, Universal and Warner, youtube-dl circumvents YouTube’s “rolling cipher” technology, something a German court found to be illegal in 2017.

  • Cox Challenges $1 Billion Piracy Verdict Over ‘Lies’ and ‘Serious Misconduct’

    Internet provider Cox Communications has asked a Virginia federal court to reconsider the $1 billion piracy judgment that was handed down three years ago. The ISP argues the verdict was the result of deliberate lies from music industry companies who concealed crucial evidence. This new information surfaced in a separate lawsuit against ISP Charter and was unknown at the time.

  • There’s Still Plenty Of Time To Join The Public Domain Game Jam!

    Gaming Like It’s 1926: The Public Domain Game Jam

  • Join us for ‘Ground Truth in Open Internet’ — the new Creative Commons Open Journalism Webinar Series and Training

    Journalism also faces newfound opportunities, as the tectonic plates of power shift in our shared digital landscape. We witness the rising role of nonprofit media sources, filling gaps where traditional media organizations have shuttered; the rising power of crowdsourcing information and fact checking, and a powerful new role an open internet can play in knowledge sharing. 

Audiocasts/Shows

• 4 areas where LINUX still FAILS compared to other operating systems – Invidious

• Succumbing to the Ecosystem | Self-Hosted 62

  Alex got some new devices for Christmas, and we set off to figure out how to integrate them into his network.

• Hackaday Podcast 151: The Hackiest VR Glove, Plotting Boba Fett With Shoelaces, ECU Hacking, And Where Does Ammonia Come From? | Hackaday

  Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi are back again to talk about all the weird and wonderful stories from our corner of the tech world. Canon had to temporarily give up on chipping their ink cartridges due to part shortages, and that’s just too perfect to ignore. There’s also some good news for the International Space Station as the White House signals they’re ready to support the orbiting outpost until 2030.

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • Open-Source Raspberry Pi Graphics Drivers Add Double Buffer Mode – Phoronix

    Mesa’s V3D and V3DV drivers providing open-source OpenGL and Vulkan driver support, respectively, for newer Broadcom VideoCore hardware now has a double buffer mode implemented. This is a win for numerous workloads for these drivers most notably used by modern Raspberry Pi single board computers.

Applications

• FFmpeg 5.0 “Lorentz” Released with New Encoders, Decoders, Muxers, and More

  Coming about nine months after the release of FFmpeg 4.4 “Rao”, FFmpeg 5.0 “Lorentz” is here to introduce several new encoders and decoders, such as the ADPCM IMA Westwood encoder, ADPCM IMA Acorn Replay decoder, Apple Graphics (SMC) encoder, MSN Siren decoder, GEM Raster image decoder, speex decoder, bitpacked encoder, as well as VideoToolbox ProRes encoder.

  New muxer and demuxers are present as well in this major release, including the AV1 Low overhead bitstream format muxer, Argonaut Games CVG demuxer, Argonaut Games CVG muxer, Westwood AUD muxer, and an experimental IMF demuxer.

• FFmpeg 5.0 Released For This Popular, Open-Source Multimedia Library – Phoronix

  FFmpeg 5.0 is out today as a shiny feature update to this widely-used open-source audio/video handling suite.

• How To Install FFmpeg on Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 8

Instructionals/Technical

• How to ssh through host(jumpserver) to reach another server

  There might come a time where you can only access a remote server by logging in to an intermediate server (firewall/jump host) first. The server could be in a private or isolated network that is only reachable from the intermediate server. When accessing the server, you first need to ssh to the intermediate server before doing another ssh to the destination server. If there is another remote host that can only be accessible from the second server, the chain can be long.

  In this guide, we will learn how to simplify the process using the options that ssh client provides us including using the SSH ProxyCommand command.

• How to Install Jitsi Meet on Ubuntu 20.04

  In this article you will learn how to install Jitsi Meet on Ubuntu 20.04.

  Jitsi Meet is a fully encrypted open source JavaScript WebRTC application used primarily for video conferencing. It incorporates voice, high-quality videoconferencing and instant messaging services with end-to-end encryption for secure communications.

• How to enable a dark theme on your Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to enable a dark theme on your 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 Export Your Servers Logs with Rsyslog in Centos 8

  In this post, you will learn how to Export Your Servers Logs with Rsyslog in Centos 8

  In this article, we’ll walk through setting up a CentOS/RHEL 8 Rsyslog daemon to deliver log messages to a remote Rsyslog server. This configuration ensures that disc space on your machine is available for other purposes.

  In CentOS 8, the Rsyslog daemon is already installed and operating by default. Issue the following commands to see if the rsyslog service is active on the system.

• How to convert from CentOS Linux 8 to CentOS Stream 8

  CentOS Linux 8 was discontinued at the end of 2021. Check out more information about that in this in this article CentOS Linux 8 will end in 2021 and shifts focus to CentOS Stream.

  The team at CentOS decided to shift focus to CentOS stream, an upstream version of RHEL. CentOS stream places itself between Fedora Linux and RHEL. It is not 100% RHEL clone but ahead of RHEL development. Other distros that are 100% compatible with RHEL 8 have come up including Rocky Linux and Alma Linux.

• Kafka and ZooKeeper contains Podman

  Apache Kafka and ZooKeeper is a distributed data store with optimization for ingesting and processing streaming data. Streaming data generated thousands. A streaming platform needs to handle this constant influx of data sequentially and incrementally process the data. Visit Apache Kafka’s site for more info. Also, try the tutorial Apache Kafka WebUI for those who want Web interface.

• How to install RoundCube Webmail on Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 and Debian 9/10

  In this post, you will learn how to install RoundCube Webmail on Ubuntu / Debian

  Roundcube is free open-source web-based email client written in PHP. We can access webmail client in our browser, meaning that instead of using Desktop based Web Clients we can access our mailbox in Browser. It has suppoprt for LAMP/LEMP Stack, We can import mails from mailboxes like Google,Yahoo etc. It has features like Message Filter, MIME Support, Spell Checking, Folder management etc.

• How to Make iptables Rules Persistent after Reboot on Ubuntu and CentOS System

  iptables is a powerful tool to help configure access to various ports on your computer or server. It provides the level of control that makes it possible to configure what network traffic is permitted or denied to the system.

  The main quirk about iptables is that, by default, the configurations for iptables will not persist after a reboot. After configuring your system’s iptables rules, there is one more important step thay you must do in order to make sure the rules are still there after a reboot.

  In this tutorial, you will see how to make iptables rules persistent after reboot on Ubuntu and CentOS based systems.

• Upgrade PHP from 7.2/7.3 to 7.4 on Ubuntu – LinuxWizardry

  If you are running an older version of Ubuntu, chances are you have either PHP 7.2 or 7.3 running. PHP 7.2 was originally released on November 30, 2017, and stopped receiving active support on November 30, 2019 meaning known security issues will not be fixed. It’s therefore important to upgrade.

  By default, older versions of Ubuntu have the packages for PHP 7.4, so here’s how to upgrade.

• How to Install PHP 8 on Ubuntu 20.04 using a PPA – LinuxWizardry

  PHP is by a long stretch, one of the most popular server-side programming languages in the market. It’s is ised by over 50% of all websites. Popular websites like WIkipedia, WordPress, Facebook, Magento, and Laravel are all written in PHP.

  PHP 8.0 is the latest major release of the PHP language. It introduces several breaking changes, performance improvements, and lots of new features such as named arguments, JIT compiler, union types, match expression, and more.

  This article will show you how to install PHP 8 on Ubuntu 20.04 and integrate it with Nginx and Apache. At the time of writing, the default Ubuntu 20.04 repositories include PHP 7.4 version. We’ll install PHP from the ondrej/php PPA repository.

• Apt-Get – Command Not Found ! – buildVirtual

  The Advanced package tool, commonly known as APT, is a application which allows for the management, installation and removal of software packages on Debian-based Linux distributions such as Ubuntu. Apt greatly simplifies the process of managing software applications on Debian Linux by automating the download and installation of software packages, from local or remote software repositories.

  APT is not a single command, rather it is a collection of tools distributed as package, which includes tools such as apt, apt-cache and apt-get.

  This is great for admins as it makes software management much easier – but what happens when it doesn’t work, and you get the “Apt Get – Command Not Found” message? This article looks at how you can troubleshoot the apt command.

• What Is POSIX? How It Relates to Linux

  When you use Linux, you may hear people talking about POSIX compliance. What does that mean? This article will explain POSIX’s relation to Linux and the attempt to standardize operating systems.

• Network Intrusion Detection Using Snort

  This document takes you through the basics of intrusion detection, the steps necessary to configure a host to run the snort network intrusion detection system, testing its operation, and alerting you to possible intrusion events.

  Snort is a software-based real-time network intrusion detection system developed by Martin Roesch that can be used to notify an administrator of a potential intrusion attempt. The ever-increasing amount of Internet crackers, armed with “ready-to-run” exploits, as well as the sophisticated attacker that’s intent on defacing your web page necessitates the use of a method to track their activity and alert you to this.

Wine or Emulation

• WineHQ – Wine Announcement – The Wine development release 7.0-rc6 is now available.

  The Wine development release 7.0-rc6 is now available. This is
  expected to be the last release candidate before the final 7.0.
  
  What's new in this release:
    - Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.
  
  The source is available from the following locations:
  
  https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/7.0/wine-7.0-rc6.tar.xz
  
  
  http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/7.0/wine-7.0-rc6.tar.xz
  
  Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:
  
  https://www.winehq.org/download
  
  You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation
  
  You can also get the current source directly from the git
  repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details.
  
  Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
  AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.
  
  

• Wine 7.0-rc6 Released With Another 47 Fixes – Phoronix

  Wine 7.0 is inching towards release but for this week is the seventh weekly release candidate.

  Wine 7.0-rc6 is now available with another 47 bugs fixed. Among the games seeing fixes this week include Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, Saints Row: The Third, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Sniper Elite 4, Lego Stunt Rally, FIFA 11, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, and a variety of other new and old Windows games. There is also other software like MinGW’s GDB debugger, Homesite+, Logos 8 Bible Software, WeChat, PuTTY, and other applications seeing fixes.

Games

• Get Surviving Mars and expansions in the latest Humble Bundle plus a big sale

  Want to get a copy of Surviving Mars and plenty of extra content? Check out the Humble Surviving Mars Bundle. Plus, there’s a Winter Sale on at Humble. A really great city-builder and you can get the base game for next to nothing thanks to this!

• God of War is now on Steam and runs out of the box on Linux with Proton | GamingOnLinux

  Something that still doesn’t quite feel right somehow is seeing the likes of a PlayStation logo on Linux. Anyway, the smash hit God of War is now on Steam and works right away on Linux. You can thank Steam Play Proton for that.

  It’s hard to believe the changing face of gaming sometimes. Previously console exclusive games now coming to PC more often. A trend I hope to see continue for years to come. Of course the new release comes with the kinds of things you would expect like enhanced graphics, ultra-wide support, NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR and so on.

• Lilbits: Steam Deck, Apple’s AR headset, a Linux-friendly video capture card and more – Liliputing

  Valve has confirmed that its Steam Deck handheld gaming PC is on track to begin shipping in February, following a short delay. And Apple may be looking at a somewhat longer setback for the virtual reality/augmented reality glasses it’s reportedly been developing since 2015: originally expected to ship this year, they may not be ready until 2023.

  In other tech news, Google is rolling out a highly anticipated (and much needed) update for Pixel 6 phones that should bring a bunch of bug fixes, Google Voice continues to get less useful over time, and the Humble Choice game subscription membership is about to drop support for Linux and Mac games from the archives.

• Steam :: Steam Deck Deposit :: Steam Deck – January Update

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Connect is getting better and better

    If you use the Plasma desktop on your Linux, as you should, and you also happen to have an Android phone, then the most convenient way to pair the two and share data and whatnot is through the use of KDE Connect. This is a built-in application available in all the modern releases of the Plasma desktop, and it lets you easily pair and control your phones.

    I’ve tested the solution several times in the past, including an early release for Windows, and overall, the results were quite decent. Now, recently, I encountered a real usability problem as part of my Slimbook Pro adventures. For some odd reason, the computer wouldn’t mount the Nokia 5.3 phone using the MTP protocol, which corresponds to the “File Transfer” option when you connect an Android device via USB. No such problem with any other Android device, including an almost identical Nokia 5.4. So I decided to power on KDE Connect, and thus, this little review was born.

  • Year in Review: Calamares | [bobulate]

    It’s the start of a new year, which means some retrospective – let’s look at what happened in Calamares in 2021. Calamares is an independent Linux system installer. Independent in the sense that it is developed outside of any specific distribution, but it supports Arch derivatives, Debian, Fedora derivatives, and openSUSE derivatives. KDE Neon and KaOS. Probably Gentoo and Slackware and Nix, also, although I haven’t heard of any. Some day it will install FreeBSD, as well.

    Calamares was started in 2014, back then mostly by Teo, Anke, Aurélien, with a changing cast of characters. I can find over 100 different contributors in the git history.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • #26 Contact Me · This Week in GNOME

    Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from January 07 to January 14.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • ExTiX Deepin 22.1 Live based on Deepin 20.3 (latest) with Skype, Spotify, Refracta Snapshot and kernel 5.16.0-exton :: Build 220114 |

    I’ve released a new version of ExTiX Deepin today (220114). This ExTiX Build is based on Deepin 20.3 released by Deepin Technology 211123.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2022-02

    Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

    I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

• Debian Family

  • Some site updates – debian.social blog

    Pleroma has been updated to version 2.4.1. We also suffered some downtime during the 11th of January. Upgrading to the latest version fixed our issues.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Looks Like Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Will Be Powered by Linux 5.15 LTS, Ship with GNOME 42 – 9to5Linux

    Canonical recently shared a few details about their plans for the upcoming Ubuntu 22.04 LTS operating system series regarding the GNOME and Linux kernel stacks.

    Due for release on April 21st, 2022, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) is currently under heavy development, and it will be Canonical’s next long-term supported (LTS) series, which will receive software and security updates for at least 5 years.

    Being an LTS series, Ubuntu 22.04 will be a more conservative release, like all previous Ubuntu LTS releases, which means that it won’t ship with bleeding-edge technologies, but stick to well tested ones instead.

Devices/Embedded

• Solderable OSM module showcases i.MX8M Plus

  iWave’s solderable, 45 x 45mm “i.MX 8M Plus OSM LGA Module” runs Linux on an NPU-equipped i.MX8M Plus. Highlights include up to 8GB LPDDR4, up to 256GB eMMC, WiFi/BT with optional 802.11ax, a -40 to 85°C range, and support for 2x GbE, 2x CAN-FD, and PCIe 3.0.

  iWave, which last March announced an iW-RainboW-G40M (i.MX 8M Plus SMARC SOM) module, has announced a much smaller module with the same NXP i.MX8M Plus SoC and the same iW-RainboW-G40M name. Fortunately, the new module is also referred to as the i.MX 8M Plus OSM LGA Module. The 45 x 45mm module adopts SGET’s recent Open Standard Module (OSM) v1.0 form factor for solderable, LGA packaged compute modules.

• Fish Discover How To Drive Raspberry Pi Powered Tank | Tom’s Hardware

  There’s an amusing joke about some fish in a tank, idly wondering how they drive it. Build them an FOV (fish-operated vehicle), however, and it seems they do more than idly wonder – they actually drive the thing to actively seek out food. At least, that’s the conclusion of a paper in the February edition of Behavioural Brain Research, available on Science Direct and reported on the Raspberry Pi blog. Why that blog? Well, the computational brains behind the FOV is a Raspberry Pi 3B+.

  Created by researchers at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, the FOV consists of a life-support chamber (an aquarium half-full of water) towered over by a mast. On this mast are cameras, looking down at the fish below, and connected to the Pi 3 running motion detection software. Beneath the chassis are wheels, allowing the whole assembly to trundle around. There’s also a LIDAR sensor that reads the FOV’s surroundings, preventing the piscine perambulators from crashing.

  When a fish swims near one of the four tank walls, the camera picks up the movement, and the Pi directs the wheels to move the FOV in the appropriate direction. Fish being what they are, the movement can be a little erratic, but they soon learn to guide the FOV toward a pink patch on the wall, which nets them a tasty reward.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • How To Setup and Limit Hotspot Data on Your Android Device

  • AYN Odin handheld Android game console begins shipping January 17 – Liliputing

  • Android Circuit: OnePlus 10 Pro’s Impressive Launch, More Android 12 For Nokia, Honor’s Powerful Magic V

  • Pre-orders for the Motorola-branded M1A Wireless Android Auto Dongle are live – TalkAndroid.com

  • Khadas Tea – A MagSafe Hi-Fi headphone amplifier to play lossless audio on smartphones (Crowdfunding) – CNX Software

  • How To Track And Find A Lost Android Phone | Screen Rant

  • Motorola MA1 adapter brings wireless Android Auto to all cars – 9to5Google

  • Why is Android 12 so buggy? It’s complicated – The Verge

  • Foldable Pixel might have appeared in Google’s Android 12L beta

  • T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint & AT&T Android 12 update tracker: Eligible…

  • T-Mobile is finally starting its own Android 12 update for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 duo – PhoneArena

  • 6 best teleprompter apps for Android – Android Authority

  • BlackBerry’s Android apps will reach end of life this summer – Liliputing

  • Firefox Focus unveils ‘total cookie protection’ for Android | Digital Trends

  • YouTube is testing a new Smart Downloads feature on Android

  • coocaa & Flipkart kickstart 2022 Android 11 Releases on Republic Day

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • PostgreSQL: temBoard 7.9 for PostgreSQL 14

    A new maintainance version for temBoard 7 is just released. This 7.9 version includes PostgreSQL 14 support, bugfixes and performance improvements.

    temBoard is a monitoring and administration tool for PostgreSQL instances fleet. Its non-intrusive design eases deployment without weakening your PostgreSQL instance. temBoard alerts you, allows you to handle locks, bloat, configuration and more remotely.

  • PostgreSQL: OraDump-to-PostgreSQL v5.1 has been released

    New version of OraDump-to-PostgreSQL has been released with the following improvements:

    improved migration of spatial data (SDO_GEOMETRY)

    SSL connection to PostgreSQL server is supported

  • PostgreSQL: pgAdmin 4 v6.4 Released

    The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 6.4. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 13 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.

    pgAdmin is the leading Open Source graphical management tool for PostgreSQL. For more information, please see the website.

• FSF

  • Share your free software journey and help others start their own: Join us on Jan. 20 — Free Software Foundation

    We’re inviting you to a live session on January 20, starting at 14:00 EST (19:00 UTC), in the #fsf channel of the Libera.Chat IRC network. During this time, we’ll be having an impromptu discussion about our own free software journeys, and opening a convenient place for you to share your own with us. Although it’s not necessary to participate in the IRC session to submit your story to the campaign, we hope that you’ll take the time to join us! To access the story submission form, please visit the event page on Thursday, or any time over the following weekend.

  • Share the story of your free software journey! – January 20, 2022

    Each of us has our own story to share about how we came to free software. For some, it might have been something as simple as learning about it from a friend. Others may have come to GNU/Linux through an article online or in a magazine, and at least a few lucky members of our community will have grown up with free software being used in the home. As part of our Freedom Ladder initiative, we want to take the time to highlight these stories, and distill what we can from them in order to help more and more people join the free software movement. Our stories may differ widely, but we’re confident that we can learn something of value from each of them, and use them as tools to help lead others to freedom.

Toilet Paper Warmer Is A Unique Chinese Luxury | Hackaday

[Handy Geng] lives in Baoding, China, where average winter temperatures can get as low as −7.7°C (18.1°F). Rather than simply freezing in the cold when using the bathroom, he decided he could do better. Thus came about his rather unique toilet paper heating system.

The build uses a gas burner heating up a wok. Toilet paper is fed into the wok body via motorized rollers salvaged from what appears to be an old counterfeit money detector. The wok is then shaken by a second motor in order to more evenly heat the toilet paper within. The burner can then be turned off, and the lid of the wok opened in order to gain access to the toasty toilet paper.

Hardware

• Improving An Already Phenomenal Star Trek Prop | Hackaday

  When Star Trek: Voyager was in the development phase, concept art was created for a new style of tricorder to be used by the crew of the titular starship. But as it often the case with a younger sibling, the show ended up having to largely make do with the hand-me-down props from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which had recently finished its TV run.

  Trek aficionado [Mangy_Dog] completed a jaw-dropping recreation of this unused tricorder design back in 2019, but unable to leave well enough alone, he’s recently completed a second version that truly raises the bar for fan replicas. It’s not hyperbole to say that the prop he’s created is of a far higher quality and fidelity than anything they would have had during the actual filming of the show.

  Now you might be thinking that building the second version of the tricorder was easier than the first, and indeed, [Mangy_Dog] learned some important lessons from the earlier build. But that’s not to say that construction of this new replica, which was actually done on commission, went off without a hitch. In fact, he almost immediately ran into a serious problem. When he attempted to order a new display from Nextion, he found the quality had dropped significantly from the ones he’d used previously. The viewing angles and color reproduction were abysmal, so he was forced to go back to the drawing board and not only find a new display, but a completely new graphics chip to talk to it.

• 3D Printering: Getting Started With Universal Bed Leveling | Hackaday

  Last time we talked about how Marlin has several bed leveling mechanisms including unified bed leveling or UBL. UBL tries to be all things to all people and has provisions to create dense meshes that model your bed and provides ways for you to adjust and edit those meshes.

  We talked about how to get your printer ready for UBL last time, but not how to use it while printing. For that, you’ll need to create at least one mesh and activate it in your startup code. You will also want to correctly set your Z height to make everything work well.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • White House hosts open-source software security summit in light of expansive Log4j flaw – CyberScoop [Ed: They ask the wrong people, as usual]

      Tech giants and federal agencies will meet at the White House on Thursday to discuss open-source software security, a response to the widespread Log4j vulnerability that’s worrying industry and cyber leaders.

      Among the attendees are companies like Apple, Facebook and Google, as well as the Apache Software Foundation, which builds Log4j, a ubiquitous open-source logging framework for websites.

    • Serious Security: Linux full-disk encryption bug fixed – patch now!

      Lots of people “run Linux” without really knowing or caring – many home routers, navigational aids, webcams and other IoT devices are based on it; the majority of the world’s mobile phones run a Linux-derived variant called Android; and many, if not most, of the ready-to-go cloud services out there rely on Linux to host your content.

      But plenty of users and sysadmins don’t just “use Linux”, they’re responsible for hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of other people’s desktops, laptops and servers on which Linux is running.

      Those sysadmins are usually responsible not merely for ensuring that the systems under their jurisdiction are running reliably, but also for keeping them as safe and secure as they can.

    • Researching with the Lumen Database: Q&A Sessions for Interested Researchers

      Lumen is an independent and one-of-a-kind research project at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center, studying cease and desist letters concerning online content. We collect and analyze requests to remove material from the web. Our goals are to educate the public, to facilitate research about the different kinds of complaints and requests for removal–both legitimate and questionable–that are being sent to Internet publishers and service providers, and to provide as much transparency as possible about the “ecology” of such notices, in terms of who is sending them and why, and to what effect.

    • This new malware wants to create backdoors and targets Windows, Linux and macOS

Environment

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Seeing squid more clearly

    The last common ancestor of cephalopods and vertebrates existed more than 500 million years ago. In fact, a squid is more closely related to a clam than it is a to a person. Even so, the two lineages independently evolved camera-lens-style eyes with very similar features: a single lens in the front and a cup-shaped, image-sensing retina in the back.

    The similarity has had scientists wondering for decades how squid and their cousins get their eyes. In research published this week in BMC Biology, a Harvard lab moves closer to unraveling the mystery.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Reality 2.0 Episode 95: What Was Web 2.0?

  New episode of the Reality 2.0 podcast is uploaded and out today: Reality 2.0 Episode 95: What Was Web 2.0? Tune in to our new episode! Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk to Petros Koutoupis about Air Tags and the generations of the web.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.17 Mainlines Support For More Obsolete MIPS-Based Wireless Routers – Phoronix

  While the MIPS CPU architecture itself is at the end of the road, kernel developers still are busy with MIPS considering the Loongson hardware that is popular in China and lots of older MIPS hardware out there lacking mainline Linux kernel support. For Linux 5.17 several more older, consumer-grade network routers are seeing mainline support.

  With MIPS-specific code for Linux 5.17 the Loongson 2K1000 reset driver has been merged, support for the TX4939 SoC and RBTX4938/RBTX4939 boards removed with no known users remaining, MIPS support for the Broadcom BRCMSTB PCIe controller, and other fixes and clean-ups. Plus there is support for more MIPS-based devices (routers) using the Broadcom BCM47xx MIPS-based SoCs.

• Intel’s Linux Graphics Driver Continues With Multi-Tile Preparations – Phoronix

  In addition to Intel’s open-source Linux graphics driver developers being quite busy preparing for upcoming Intel Arc “Alchemist” (DG2) graphics cards on the consumer side, they have concurrently been preparing for Xe HP “Ponte Vecchio” hardware too. One of the big undertakings on that side from the driver perspective is bringing up multiple tiles.

  For Ponte Vecchio’s multi-tile / chiplet design, Linux driver work for multi-tile support has been going on for months. The driver needs to adapt to support multiple GT instances and the multiple memory regions off a single PCI Express device.

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Planning To Stick With Linux 5.15 By Default – Phoronix

  It turns out Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is planning to use the Linux 5.15 kernel as its default kernel. It makes sense in that Linux 5.15 is also a long-term support kernel, but unfortunate in that Ubuntu LTS releases haven’t always used LTS kernel versions and v5.15 will be a half-year old already by the time the “Jammy Jellyfish” ships in April. This is a choice particularly unfortunate for those with recent hardware but at least there is the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA and other non-default options available.

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Will Use Linux 5.15 Kernel

  Ubuntu 22.04 LTS will come with the Linux 5.15 kernel by default.

  That’s the current plan according to Canonical’s Sebastien Bacher, who says “the plan is to use 5.15 for the LTS but the oem and hwe variants will get 5.17 as some point”.

Applications

• Libre Arts – Streamlining Inkscape for the masses

  It’s not a heavily guarded secret that I have an undying love for Inkscape. For me, it’s one of those applications I’m really excited to use every time I have some silly need for a vector graphics editor. Which is why everyone actively involved with the project is my personal hero, and I’m only happy to chat with them every once in a while about how the project is doing.

  This time, I spoke to Chris Rogers (Vectors team, i.e. PR and communication), Tavmjong Bah (developer), Martin Owens (developer), and Adam Belis (UX guy).

  Q: So, first off, I love a lot of things going on with Inkscape lately. There was a, well, not a moment, but quite a long period of time, actually, when I was a bit scared for the project. Long dev cycles, not enough developers etc. Things seem to be so much better these days. What would you attribute it to? What did you have to change?

  CRogers: better organisation internally helped. A move to RocketChat and Gitlab to track issues and multiple groups for different parts of the project seem to really have helped. Also, sharing successes and mutual respect and gratitude creates motivation, and it’s easier to do that with organised chat and group structures.

• The 8 Best Open-Source Writing Software for Linux

  Writers are always looking for some exciting tools to compile their written pieces. Despite the various options in the market, there is always an ongoing need to look for open-source options, which won’t burn a hole in the pocket.

  If you are a Linux user, you are in luck, for there are plenty of excellent open-source apps that you can use on your machine. A majority of these apps offer premium-grade type features for free.

  If you’re raring to go, then check out these top open-source writing tools enlisted below.

Instructionals/Technical

• 12 Best Practices for Writing Bash Scripts

  Bash shell refers to Bourne Again Shell which can be found as the default shell in most of the Linux distributions. A Bash Script is a file where multiple shell commands are scripted to perform a particular task. If you are familiar with bash script then this article is for you, in this demonstration I have included 12 best practices to write a bash script to enhance the efficiency of the bash script and make it more readable.

• How to Build Docker Images In a GitLab CI Pipeline – CloudSavvy IT

  One common use case for CI pipelines is building the Docker images you’ll use to deploy your application. GitLab CI is a great choice for this as it supports an integrated pull proxy service, meaning faster pipelines, and a built-in registry to store your built images.

  In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up Docker builds that use both the above features. The steps you need to take vary slightly depending on the GitLab Runner executor type you’ll use for your pipeline. We’ll cover the Shell and Docker executors below.

• How to Install OpenLiteSpeed Web Server on Rocky Linux 8 – VITUX

  OpenLiteSpeed is a fast open-source web server application that comes with a built-in fast PHP module. This guide will show you how to install and configure OpenLiteSpeed on Rocky Linux 8 and CentOS 8.

• How to Install and Use Podman (Docker Alternative) on Ubuntu 20.04

  Podman is an open-source tool for managing containers, images, volumes, and pods (group of containers). It’s used the libpod library APIs for managing container lifecycles and supports multiple container image formats, including OCI (Open Container Initiative) and Docker images.

  Podman is OCI (Open Container Initiative) compliance container engine. It’s compatible with the Docker CLI interface and allows you to run container rootless (running container without root privileges). Podman was released as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, designed to be the next generation of Linux container tool with faster experimentation and development of features.

  For this tutorial, you will learn how to install Podman on the Ubuntu 20.04 system. You will be installing Podman and learn the basic usages of podman for managing Docker containers, images, and volumes.

• How to create an RDS instance on AWS using Terraform

  In this article, we will see how to create an RDS MySql Instance. Before proceeding, I assume that you are familiar with the basics of Terraform and AWS RDS Service. If you want to learn to create an RDS MySql instance from the AWS console then search for “How to setup an RDS MySql (Relation Database MySql ) instance on AWS”

• How to Install NEOS CMS with Nginx and Let’s Encrypt SSL on Rocky Linux 8

  Neos is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to build complex websites easily without needing to code. You can create a blog, news website, portfolio page, or a company website using it. It offers a rich set of features such as inline editing, supports multiple websites on a single installation, built-in SEO tools, human-readable URLs, plugin manager, device preview, and supports multiple templates. It supports modern-day technologies such as REST API, JSON, GraphQL, and oEmbed.

  In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Neos CMS on a server running Rocky Linux 8 OS.

• How to Install Linux Kernel 5.16 in Ubuntu 20.04 & 21.10 | UbuntuHandbook

  Linux Kernel 5.16 was released a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and/or Linux Mint 20.x.

• How to Install and Configure Elasticsearch on Rocky Linux 8

  In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure Elasticsearch on Rocky Linux 8. This guide will also work on other RHEL 8 based distros like Alma Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 8.

  Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch has quickly become the most popular search engine and is commonly used for log analytics, full-text search, security intelligence, business analytics, and operational intelligence use cases.

• How to Install and Configure Kibana on Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 8

  In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure Kibana in Rocky Linux 8. This guide will also work on other RHEL 8 based distros like Alma Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 8.

  Kibana is a proprietary data visualization dashboard software for Elasticsearch, whose open source successor in OpenSearch is OpenSearch Dashboards. It is a data visualization and exploration tool used for log and time-series analytics, application monitoring, and operational intelligence use cases. It offers powerful and easy-to-use features such as histograms, line graphs, pie charts, heat maps, and built-in geospatial support. Kibana also acts as the user interface for monitoring, managing, and securing an Elastic Stack cluster — as well as the centralized hub for built-in solutions developed on the Elastic Stack.

• How to View and Monitor Disk Space Usage From the Linux Command Line – CloudSavvy IT

  While it’s usually pretty clear if your system is running out of memory or using too much CPU time, disk usage is another key metric that can sneak up on you over time if you leave your server unattended. You’ll want to regular check your disk usage using these commands.

• How to Install LAMP Stack on Debian 11 Bullseye – LinuxCapable

  LAMP is a collection of open-source software commonly used to serve web applications that have been around since the late 1990s. LAMP is an acronym that stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP and provides the components needed to host and manage web content and is still arguably the most utilized stack deployment for developers and web applications today.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install the LAMP stack (Apache, MariaDB, PHP) on Debian 11 Bullseye using the most up-to-date packages instead of the default Debian 11 repository versions.

  Note, you can install LAMP on Debian 11 using this method without the newer repositories; use the same commands without importing any third-party repositories.

• How to Install Latest Zoom on Ubuntu & Other Linux Distributions – TREND OCEANS

  Zoom, a.k.a. Zoom Meeting, is video conferencing software that is available for all major platforms, including Linux. It is very popular among working professionals and students.

  And I believe you all are familiar with zoom features. That’s why we are directly moving to the Download and Installation step for Zoom in Linux.

  In this following guide, you will see the download and installation steps for Zoom, which include steps for all major Linux distributions and removing steps.

• How to Install WordPress with LAMP Stack on Debian 11 Bullseye – LinuxCapable

  WordPress is the most dominant content management system written in PHP, combined with MySQL or MariaDB database. You can create and maintain a site without prior web development or coding knowledge. The first version of WordPress was created in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little and is now used by 70% of the known web market, according to W3Tech. WordPress comes in two versions: the free open source WordPress.org and WordPress.com, a paid service that starts at $5 per month up to $59. Using this content management system is easy and often seen as a stepping stone for making a blog or similar featured site.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install self-hosted WordPress using the latest LAMP Stack – Apache, MariaDB, and PHP versions available on Debian 11 Bullseye.

• 3 tools for troubleshooting packet filtering | Enable Sysadmin

  Nmap, Wireshark, and tcpdump are helpful tools for troubleshooting your network. This article shows you how to use them with a real-world example, because when you’re trying to learn a new technology or technique, sometimes the best way is to walk through a scenario.

• How To Install Liquorix Kernel on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Liquorix Kernel on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Liqourix Kernel is a free, open-source general-purpose Linux Kernel alternative to the stock kernel with Ubuntu 20.04. Liquorix Kernel is popular amongst Linux Gaming, multimedia, and ultra-low latency requirements and often boasts the latest Linux Kernels, having multiple branches to choose from the stable, edge, and development.

  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 Liquorix Kernel 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 Setup and Limit Hotspot Data on Your Android Device

  Suppose you have an emergency situation and need an internet connection badly, but you don’t have any cellular data or Wi-Fi connection nearby. And noticed that some of your friends or colleagues are with you at this moment who are having cellular data on their phones. The thing is, you have to use your Android device to complete the task. So what to do now? Turn on your friends’ or colleagues phones’ cellular data and hotspot and Wi-Fi of your phone. Just connect your device to their hotspot. The setup and limit hotspot data procedure on your Android is as easy as pie.

  Similarly, you can set up your hotspot on your Android device and also limit the users according to your requirements. Normally, if you’re giving your cellular data to another user through a hotspot, then the rate of data consumption is huge.

  As a result, you need to limit your users at a time, though there’s an option called Unlimited users that will be in the hotspot setting. Let’s start with the setup and limit hotspot data on your Android easily.

Games

• Steam Deck on track for the end of February | GamingOnLinux

  Good news, following the previous delay and even with the pandemic and global shortages Valve has announced that the Steam Deck is still on track to ship by the end of February.

  Writing in a fresh post, Valve said that testing for the Steam Deck Verified program is underway, which we already knew since Portal 2 got recently officially verified. It’s also currently still the only one.

• Discord Overlay for Linux ‘Discover Overlay’ gets a new release | GamingOnLinux

  While Discord continues to not support Linux with their official overlay, there is at least Discover, which helpfully gives you some options to show chatters on your screen. Useful for those of you with a single-screen who want to see who is chatting, plus good for videos / livestreams for viewers to see it too.

• Quiet ocean survival-adventure Aquamarine launches January 20 | GamingOnLinux

  A quiet survival adventure about perception and discovery in an alien ocean. The crowdfunded game Aquamarine is now confirmed to be launching on January 20. According to the official announcement on Steam that includes “Windows, Mac and Linux”.

  “You play as a lone space traveler known only as The Seeker, whose starcraft is intercepted by a malicious signal while orbiting an uncharted planet covered in water. Forced to eject from her malfunctioning starcraft, The Seeker is marooned on a tiny island surrounded by an endless alien ocean, with nothing but her amphibious survival pod. Throughout her underwater journey to reach her crashed starcraft, she’ll uncover the lost history of this planet reclaimed by the elements, and learn the true nature of why she ended up here.”

• Humble subscription service is dumping Mac, Linux access in 18 days | Ars Technica

  Humble, the bundle-centric games retailer that launched with expansive Mac and Linux support in 2010, will soon shift a major component of its business to Windows-only gaming.

  The retailer’s monthly subscription service, Humble Choice, previously offered a number of price tiers; the more you paid, the more new games you could claim in a given month. Starting February 1, Humble Choice will include less choice, as it will only offer a single $12/month tier, complete with a few new game giveaways per month and ongoing access to two collections of games: Humble’s existing “Trove” collection of classic games, and a brand-new “Humble Games Collection” of more modern titles.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• 6 Reasons Why You Should Try the Lightweight Xfce Desktop

  Xfce is a rather humble desktop environment. It has been around for decades, but it has existed largely in GNOME’s shadow as a more lightweight option that just so happens to also be based on GTK. Fewer developers work on Xfce and hence, there are fewer apps made with Xfce in mind.

  Yet year after year, people continue to use Xfce. It receives updates, and numerous Linux-based operating systems ship Xfce as the default interface.

  So, despite the other options available, why might you want to use Xfce?

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Plasma 5.24 Beta Introduces Fingerprint Support, GNOME-Style Overview, and More Improvements

    KDE finally announced the KDE Plasma 5.24 beta version. This release brings a vast array of exciting new improvements, many of which we will be looking at here.

    The last release, KDE Plasma 5.23 marked the 25th anniversary of KDE. And, KDE Plasma 5.24 will be their first release for 2022, let’s dive in!

Distributions

• New Releases

  • EasyOS version 3.2.1 released

    Version 3.2 was released only a few days ago:

    https://bkhome.org/news/202201/easyos-version-32-released.html

    A few minor tweaks, plus one big change; lives video editor replaced with flowblade.

    Release notes here:

    https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/3.2.1/release-notes.htm

    Download:

    https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/3.2.1/

    Feedback welcome on the forum:

    https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewforum.php?f=63

    I would like to know what you guys think of flowblade!

  • Flowblade video editor now in EasyOS

    Easy 3.2 has LiVES video editor; however, it still has bugs. The developer is working on it, but in the meantime I do need something that works in Easy. So, I looked at the alternatives, and eventually settled on Flowblade.

    Flowblade is written in python, and I had initially rejected it as it requires python2. It also has two dependencies that I really didn’t want to include, ‘frei0r’ and ‘gmic’, as I thought the number of dependencies was getting a bit too high. Besides, gmic seems very similar to ‘imagemagick’ that is already in Easy and required by ‘lives’ and ‘obs’.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • EndeavourOS Atlantis Quick overview #Shorts – Invidious

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • curl, GNOME, KDE Updates Arrive in Tumbleweed – openSUSE News

    openSUSE’s rolling release Tumbleweed finished off 2021 with multiple snapshots and 2022 is starting off the same by producing nine snapshots so far this year.

    The latest Tumbleweed snapshot, 20220112, updated Mozilla Firefox to major version 96.0 and addressed almost 20 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. The browser added a new feature for printing that allows users to choose to print only the odd/even pages.The browser now defaults all cookies to having a SameSite=lax attribute to helps defend against one-click attacks. While gnome-desktop had a version bump to 41.3, gnome-shell 41.3 fixed some crashes, improved window tracking and updated translations. GNOME’s window manager mutter 41.3 fixed a mixed up refresh rate in multi-monitor setups and fixed orientation changes on devices with 90 degree adjustments. Command line utility hdparm 9.63 added a patch and has a new –sanitize-overwrite-passes flag. Other packages to update in the snapshot were rdma-core 38.1, libpipeline 1.5.5, rdma-core 38.1, vim 8.2.4063 and wayland 1.20.0.

  • openSUSE Leap 15.2 Reached End-of-Life

    As of January 4, 2022, openSUSE Leap 15.2 will no longer receive security and maintenance updates as the version is now EOL (End-ofLife).

    openSUSE Leap 15.2 was released 18 months ago (July 2, 2020) and is based on the SUSE Enterprise Linux 15 operating system family.

    The openSUSE Project recommends that Leap 15.2 users should upgrade to the latest version of openSUSE Leap 15.3 as soon as possible, which will be supported by software updates and security patches until November 2022.

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2022/02

    Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

    The holidays are over and people are returning to their computers, submitting a lot more than during the last weeks. Out of the 6 snapshots built and tested,5 made it out to the mirrors (0107, 0109, 0110, 0111, and 0112).

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • CentOS Community Newsletter, January 2022

    The first CentOS Dojo of 2022 is scheduled for February 3rd and 4th, immediately before the first day of FOSDEM 2022. We expect to publish the schedule to the event wiki page by the time you read this newsletter. The event will be held online, and registration is free! Join us for two days of CentOS content and networking.

  • Red Hat expanding Training and Certification offerings to address new challenges

    Throughout 2021, Red Hat recognized an increased demand for virtual training and testing options as much of the IT workforce continued to adjust to working from home. We expect that to continue, so here’s what we’re doing to meet demand and help organizations train up their existing staff and identify qualified professionals with open source skills.

    IT leaders report skills gaps as the top barrier to digital transformation, ranking technology skills training as their number one non-technical funding priority for 2022. Industry leaders recognize that training and certification will be a critical component to the success of organizations in the coming year. As a result, we expect to see continued focus on virtual training and transformational learning, particularly focused on the three areas we’ll outline in this blog post..

  • CPE Weekly Update – Week of January 10th – 14th – Fedora Community Blog

    This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering)
    Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this
    report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat
    (https://libera.chat/).

  • No. 656: On missionaries, MLK and C-sections – plus, New York Tech gets in Linux – Innovate Long Island

    The New York Institute of Technology is collaborating with an IBM software subsidiary to introduce new curricula centered on the Linux open-source operating system.

    North Carolina-based Red Hat – the world’s leading supplier of open-source enterprise solutions, including “turnkey curriculum materials” designed to help academic institutions launch and sustain Linux curriculum programs – is lending its expertise to the New York Institute of Technology Red Hat Academy. Instructors will initially offer Red Hat System Administration 1 and 2 courses, preparing New York Tech students to become Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators.

    Linux has become what New York Tech calls “the de facto standard for running critical workloads in the cloud,” aligning the Red Hat Academy with the Old Westbury-based New York Tech’s mission to “provide career-oriented education to future makers, doers and innovators,” according to College of Engineering and Computing Sciences Dean Babak Beheshti. “Our collaboration … provides yet another opportunity for our students to gain practical, real-world experience to help secure sought-after and industry-recognized skills and certifications,” Beheshti added.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu Blog: Design and Web team summary – 17 December 2021

    Happy Christmas and New Years everyone! I hope you are all ready for a well deserved break.

    The Web and design team at Canonical run two-week iterations building and maintaining all of the Canonical websites and product web interfaces. Here are some of the highlights from our final iteration of the year.

Devices/Embedded

• PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition Available for Pre-Order

  Pine64, makers of popular single-board computers (SBCs) and the Pine Phone KDE edition, is gearing up to ship the Explorer Edition of its PinePhone Pro, reports Liam Tung.

• Game Boy Becomes Super Game Boy With A Pair Of Pis | Hackaday

  The extra processing power in this case comes from a Raspberry Pi Pico which is small enough to easily fit inside of a donor NES case and also powerful enough to handle the VGA directly. For video data input, the Pico is connected to the video pins on the Game Boy’s main board through a level shifter. The main board is also connected to a second Pico which handles the controller input from an NES controller. Some fancy conversion needed to be done at this point because although the controller layouts are very similar, they are handles by the respective consoles completely differently.

• 3.5-inch Tiger Lake-U SBC promoted for healthcare applications

  Nexcom’s Linux-ready, 3.5-inch “X200” SBC runs on an 11th Gen U-series CPU and offers triple and 4Kp60 support, 2x GbE, 4x USB 3.2 Gen2, SATA, M.2 M- and E-key slots, and -20 to 70°C support.

  Nexcom announced a 3.5-inch SBC that runs Linux or Win 10 on an 11th Gen Tiger Lake-U processor, which it previously adopted for its NDiS B360 signage player. Other 3.5-inch Tiger Lake-U boards include Commell’s LE-370, Ibase’s IB953, Aaeon’s GENE-TGU6, and Kontron’s 3.5”-SBC-TGL.

  Nexcom pitches the X200 board as an ideal solution for visual inspection or imagery analysis in the healthcare field, noting its triple independent display and 4Kp60 support. Other cited applications include signage and security, which Nexcom also promotes for use in hospitals. The board offers an ISO 13485 medical device certification.

• Have you checked out our winter sale? | Arduino Blog

  Start the year with a new Arduino hardware component. Or two, or three! Dozens of our products are currently discounted at 20% for our annual winter sale. Just head over to the Arduino store and pick out all the modules, shields and carriers that fit your needs.

  We even have the MKR IoT Carrier and full MKR IoT Bundle on sale, to help you make 2022 the year of your first Internet of Things project. There are all kinds of connectivity available, from LoRa to GSM and NB communication, so you can get to work on a connected project that hooks straight up to Arduino Cloud, too.

• OnLogic unveils Karbon 800 Series Alder Lake-S embedded computers – CNX Software

  We’ve already seen the newly announced Intel Alder Lake-S desktop IoT processors in some COM Express and COM HPC modules, and quickly mentioned Vecow ECX-3000 rugged computer, and now, OnLogic has just announced the Karbon 800 Series, a family of Alder Lake-S embedded computers.

  There will be four Karbon 800 models at launch, equipped with up to an Intel Core i9 16-core processor, 64 GB of DDR4 ECC or non-ECC memory, as well as single and dual PCIe Gen 4 slots, and optional “ModBay” hot-swappable bays to add connectivity and storage option up to a six 2.5-inch SSD RAID array or 14 Ethernet ports.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • How to install GitEye GUI Git client on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 LTS

    GitEye is a graphical Git client for Windows, OSX, and Linux available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Here we learn the steps and commands to install GitEye on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish and Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.

    CollabNet is the developer behind GitEye to offer a desktop application for easily but graphically managing Git projects with functions of distributed version control in a graphical interface. Apart from GitEye, CollabNet also offers products related to cloud and ALM (Application Lifecycle Management).

  • Encyclopedia Of Broken UserAgent String Detections – otsukare

    This is not a comprehensive encyclopedia, but these are patterns we have met in the past for identifying user agent strings which are broken or future fail.

    Do not use these ! and if your code is using one form of these, please change it. Tell me if you found new ones.

  • Christopher Davis: Lifetimes, Clones, and Closures: Explaining the “glib::clone!()” Macro

    One thing that I’ve seen confuse newcomers to writing GObject-based Rust code is the glib::clone!() macro. It’s foreign to people coming from writing normal Rust code trying to write GObject-based code, and it’s foreign to many people used to writing GObject-based code in other languages (e.g. C, Python, JavaScript, and Vala). Over the years I’ve explained it a few times, and I figure now that I should write a blog post that I can point people to describing what the clone!() macro is, what it does, and why we need it in detail.

  • SpiderMonkey Newsletter (Firefox 96-97) | SpiderMonkey JavaScript/WebAssembly Engine

    SpiderMonkey is the JavaScript engine used in Mozilla Firefox. This newsletter gives an overview of the JavaScript and WebAssembly work we’ve done as part of the Firefox 96 and 97 Nightly release cycles.

  • Qt

    • Qt 6.3 Alpha released

      You can find initial list of new features in the Qt 6.3.0 from What’s New in Qt 6.3 documentation. But please note the documentation is still under construction and will be updated until we are ready for the final release.

      As usual, you can add the Qt 6.3 Alpha to the existing online installation by using the maintenance tool. Or you can do a clean installation by using the Qt Online Installer. Qt 6.3 Alpha source packages can be downloaded from the Qt Account portal and the download.qt.io as well.

    • Qt 6.3 Alpha Released With New Qt Quick Compiler For Commercial Customers – Phoronix

      The Qt Company just announced Qt 6.3 Alpha as the first formal test release for this next Qt6 toolkit update. The Qt Company also lifted the lid on their new Qt Quick Compiler where they are aiming for QML to run at “a speed close to native” for that interpreted language.

      Qt 6.3 has been working on a new “Qt Language Server” module, there are a number of new functions in the Qt Core module, Qt Quick has added a MessageDialog that will provide a native dialog message box on supported platforms, “qmltc” as the new QML type compiler, the Qt Wayland Compositor module adds a Qt Shell that supports all windowing system features handled by Qt, Qt Wayland can now support creating custom shell extensions, support for Wayland’s Presentation Time protocol, and a variety of other additions.

    • The new Qt Quick Compiler – get QML to run at a speed close to native

      As most of you know, QML is an interpreted language. The flexibility of any interpreted language always comes with a potential decrease in performance. As we are very convinced of many other potentials of QML, we strive to reduce – if not to completely eliminate – this unpleasant potential. We implemented changes in the last Qt5 releases and especially in Qt6 helping to take a significant step towards our long term goal: make QML run at a speed close to native. This blog post explains what is new. The upcoming two blog post will elaborate the technology and its development history.

  • Rust

    • Rust 1.58.0 released [LWN.net]

      More information on “captured identifiers” (the ability to use in-scope variables directly in format strings) can be found on this page.

  • Java

    • How To Install Apache NetBeans on Fedora 35 – idroot

      In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache NetBeans on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, The NetBeans (also known as Apache Netbeans) is an open-source and award-winning IDE (integrated development environment) application for Windows, Linux, and Mac. It offers excellent debugging capabilities, coding, plugins, and extensions with multiple out-of-the-box features.

      This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Apache NetBeans IDE on a Fedora 35.

Rapid-Reload Vacuum Cannon Totally Demolishes Those Veggies | Hackaday

[NightHawkInLight] has been developing his design for a vacuum canon for a while now, so it seems fitting to drop in check out the progress. The idea is pretty straightforward, take a long rigid tube, insert a close fitting piston, magnetically attached to a projectile, and stopper the open end with something easily destroyed. The piston needs to be pulled into the tube with some force, to pull a vacuum against the stopper. The interesting bit happens next, when the piston exits the other end of the tube, with the vacuum at its maximum, there is a sudden inrush of air. Apparently this inrush of supersonic velocity, and the momentum of the mass of air is sufficient to eject the projectile at considerable velocity, smashing through the plug and demolishing the target. So long as the target is of the soft and squishy variety anyway.

Science

• This DIY Microscope Design Is All Wet | Hackaday

  [Robert Murray-Smith] wanted to recreate how some ancient microscopes worked: with a drop of water as a lens. The idea is that the meniscus of a drop of water will work as a lens. This works because of surface tension and by controlling the attraction of the water to the surface, you can actually form convex and concave surfaces.

  What’s interesting is that this doesn’t require a lot of equipment. Some plastic, a hole punch, some pens, a flashlight, and some other odds and ends. Then it’s just a matter of grabbing some puddle water and examining the critters inside. Of course, with a single lens, these are more properly magnifying glasses. Some claim that people in China built such instruments thousands of years ago. [Robert] mentions [Antonie van Leeuwenhoek] as the father of the microscope, although he wasn’t the first to build such a device. He did create amazing glass lenses using a method he kept secret but has been worked out using modern science.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • EVerest: The open source software stack for EV charging infrastructure

          Even if you’d never buy a Tesla, electric vehicles (EVs) are the future. There’s only one big problem. Unlike a gas-based car, where you can always find a gas station when you need to top off, there’s nothing like enough electrical charging stations. One big reason for this is that there’s no standardization to speak of behind those chargers. The Linux Foundation (LF) plans on changing this with the new LF Energy EVerest project.

  • Security

    • Using EM Waves to Detect Malware – Schneier on Security

      I don’t even know what I think about this. Researchers have developed a malware detection system that uses EM waves: “Obfuscation Revealed: Leveraging Electromagnetic Signals for Obfuscated Malware Classification.”

    • Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 200 released

      The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 200. This version includes the following changes:

      * Even if a Sphinx .inv inventory file is labelled "The remainder of this
        file is compressed using zlib", it might not actually be. In this case,
        don't traceback, and simply return the original content.
        (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#299)
      * Update "X has been modified after NT_GNU_BUILD_ID has been applied" message
        to, for instance, not duplicating the full filename in the primary
        diffoscope's output.
      

    • Microsoft pulls new Windows Server updates due to critical bugs

      Microsoft has pulled the January Windows Server cumulative updates after critical bugs caused domain controllers to reboot, Hyper-V to not work, and ReFS volume systems to become unavailable.

    • Ivanti Updates Log4j Advisory with Security Updates for Multiple Products   | CISA

      Ivanti has updated its Log4j Advisory with security updates for multiple products to address CVE-2021-44228. An unauthenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.

    • Security updates for Friday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr), Fedora (cockpit, python-cvxopt, and vim), openSUSE (libmspack), Oracle (webkitgtk4), Scientific Linux (firefox and thunderbird), SUSE (kernel and libmspack), and Ubuntu (firefox and pillow).

    • Google says open source software should be more secure • The Register

      In conjunction with a White House meeting on Thursday at which technology companies discussed the security of open source software, Google proposed three initiatives to strengthen national cybersecurity.

      The meeting was arranged last month by US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, amid the scramble to fix the Log4j vulnerabilities that occupied far too many people over the holidays. Sullivan asked invited firms – a group that included Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle – to share ideas on how the security of open source projects might be improved.

      Google chief legal officer Kent Walker in a blog post said that just as the government and industry have worked to shore up shoddy legacy systems and software, the Log4j repair process – still ongoing – has demonstrated that open source software needs the same attention as critical infrastructure.

    • This Week In Security: NPM Vandalism, Simulating Reboots, And More | Hackaday

      We’ve covered quite a few stories about malware sneaking into the NPN and other JavaScript repositories. This is a bit different. This time, a JS programmer vandalized his own packages. It’s not even malware, perhaps we should call it protestware? The two packages, colors and faker are both popular, with a combined weekly download of nearly 23 million. Their author, [Marak] added a breaking update to each of them. These libraries now print a header of LIBERTY LIBERTY LIBERTY, and then either random characters, or very poor ASCII art. It’s been confirmed that this wasn’t an outside attacker, but [Marak] breaking his own projects on purpose. Why?

      It seems like this story starts back in late 2020, when [Marak] lost quite a bit in a fire, and had to ask for money on Twitter. Two weeks later, he tweeted that billions were being made off open source devs’ work, citing a FAANG leak. FAANG is a reference to the big five American tech companies: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. The same day, he opened an issue on Github for faker.js, throwing down an ultimatum: “Take this as an opportunity to send me a six figure yearly contract or fork the project and have someone else work on it.”

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Pegasus used to target El Salvador activists, journalists: Report | Cybersecurity News | Al Jazeera

        The mobile phones of dozens of journalists and activists in El Salvador have been hacked since at least early 2020 and implanted with Israeli-made Pegasus spyware typically available only to governments and law enforcement, according to a new report by a watchdog group.

        The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said on Wednesday it had identified an operator of the spyware working exclusively in El Salvador and targeting journalists and activists, many of whom were investigating alleged state corruption.

        While the researchers could not conclusively determine the hacks came from El Salvador’s government, the report said “the strong country-specific focus of the infections suggests that this is very likely”.

      • NSO spyware found targeting journalists and NGOs in El Salvador | ZDNet

        The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab along with Access Now have found the Pegasus spyware developed by the now-sanctioned NSO Group was used to target journalists and non-government organisations operating in El Salvador.

        In total, the investigation found 35 individuals were targeted across 37 devices, with Citizen Lab having a high degree of confidence that data was exfiltrated from devices belonging to 16 targets.

Environment

• Energy

  • crypto: does mining monero pay off? – maybe better of boinc

Censorship/Free Speech

• Nigeria Ends Twitter Ban After Seven Months