04.14.21

Links 14/4/2021: Alpine Releases and X.Org Server 1.20.11 Release (Security)

Posted in News Roundup at 3:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • The Linux Setup – Göktuğ Kayaalp, Student

        Linux is my main operating system these days. My workstation computer has been running GNU/Linux almost uninterruptedly since 2012, save for a year I—quite happily—used FreeBSD as my main operating system. I originally started playing with Linux as a kid, mostly out of curiosity, but what captivated me and made me a permanent user was how free and open source systems were way more stable and configurable compared to other operating systems, and readily receptive of my (or anyone else’s, for that matter) peculiar use cases and workflows.

    • Server

      • Blog: kube-state-metrics goes v2.0

        kube-state-metrics, a project under the Kubernetes organization, generates Prometheus format metrics based on the current state of the Kubernetes native resources. It does this by listening to the Kubernetes API and gathering information about resources and objects, e.g. Deployments, Pods, Services, and StatefulSets. A full list of resources is available in the documentation of kube-state-metrics.

      • Local Storage: Storage Capacity Tracking, Distributed Provisioning and Generic Ephemeral Volumes hit Beta

        The “generic ephemeral volumes” and “storage capacity tracking” features in Kubernetes are getting promoted to beta in Kubernetes 1.21. Together with the distributed provisioning support in the CSI external-provisioner, development and deployment of Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers which manage storage locally on a node become a lot easier.

        This blog post explains how such drivers worked before and how these features can be used to make drivers simpler.

        [...]

        The first problem is volume provisioning: it is handled through the Kubernetes control plane. Some component must react to PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) and create volumes. Usually, that is handled by a central deployment of the CSI external-provisioner and a CSI driver component that then connects to the storage backplane. But for local storage, there is no such backplane.

        TopoLVM solved this by having its different components communicate with each other through the Kubernetes API server by creating and reacting to custom resources. So although TopoLVM is based on CSI, a standard that is independent of a particular container orchestrator, TopoLVM only works on Kubernetes.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • You can finally run Windows 10 along with Ubuntu Linux on Apple M1 Mac computers

        When Apple switched from Intel to its own ARM-based processors for new Mac computers, some people were dubious that the transition would go smoothly. Well, guess what? Apple did it, folks. The company moved to a new chip type without any major negative issues. In fact, Apple’s M1 chip has been universally praised as being both fast and energy efficient.

        Earlier this year, some people got Linux-based Ubuntu running on the M1 hardware, and that process is getting better all the time. Sadly, owners of M1 Mac computers have been unable to run Windows 10 like they could on older Intel-based Mac machines. Until now, that is. Yes, you can finally run Windows 10 on Apple M1 Mac computers — sort of.

        Why do I say “sort of?” Well, while it is Windows 10, it is the ARM variant, which means it is more limited than the normal x86_64 version. Also, Windows 10 on ARM is not running natively, but using Parallels Desktop 16.5. With that said, Parallels promises the performance to be the same as if it was native.

      • Linux 5.11.14
        I'm announcing the release of the 5.11.14 kernel.

All users of the 5.11 kernel series must upgrade.

The updated 5.11.y git tree can be found at:
	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.11.y
and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

thanks,

greg k-h
      • Linux 5.10.30
      • Linux 5.4.112
      • Linux 4.19.187
      • 30 Years of Tux Earns You 30% Discount on all Linux Foundation Training Programs [Ed: They say "TUX turns 30" because they know GNU/Linux is 38 years old...]
      • Linux 5.13 To Allow For OpenBMC Development With A Lower-Cost ASRock Rack Motherboard – Phoronix

        The Linux Foundation’s OpenBMC project to provide an open-source BMC firmware stack is quite exciting for freeing this low-level aspect of servers, but finding a supported motherboard that works well with OpenBMC can be a challenge at this stage. Fortunately, Linux 5.13 is set to support a lower-cost motherboard option in hopes of boosting OpenBMC development/usage.

        Queued into the SoC “for-next” Git tree is support for the baseboard management controller on the ASRock Rack E3C246D4I motherboard.

      • Graphics Stack

        • ROCm AOMP 13.0 Released For OpenMP Offloading To Radeon GPUs – Phoronix

          AOMP 13.0 is out today as the first update to AMD’s Radeon OpenMP offloading compiler since AOMP 11.0 last December.

          AOMP is part of the Radeon Open eCosystem (ROCm) for offloading OpenMP work to AMD GPUs. AOMP is a downstream of the LLVM Clang compiler stack. AMD engineers have been working to upstream their OpenMP offloading patches albeit is a work-in-progress and they churn out new patches faster than what it takes to get reviewed and upstreamed. AOMP is not to be confused with AOCC as AMD’s other LLVM Clang downstream focused on providing the latest CPU compiler optimizations/support.

        • X.Org Server 1.20.11 Released Due To New Security Advisory – Phoronix

          Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative has uncovered another security issue with the X.Org Server.

          Trend Micro security researchers found that shortcomings in the X.Org Server’s X Input extension input validation could ultimately lead to privilege escalation for authorized clients.

          CVE-2021-3472 involves insufficient checks on the lengths of an X Input request could lead to out-of-bounds memory accesses in the X.Org Server. If the X.Org Server is running with privileged rights, this could lead to privilege escalation for authorized X11 clients.

        • xorg-server 1.20.11
        • Mesa 21.1 Squeezes In Improvements For Direct3D 9 (Gallium Nine) – Phoronix

          The feature freeze and code branching for Mesa 21.1 is imminent but last minute feature work continues to pour in. Hitting Mesa Git this morning as the latest activity were some fixes and improvements in Gallium Nine for providing Direct3D 9 support atop Gallium3D drivers to Wine/Windows programs.

          Gallium Nine lead developer Axel Davy saw his various fixes and improvements to this state tracker merged in time for Mesa 21.1. There are various fixes made as a result of running the Address Sanitizer over the code as well as from test compiles using LLVM’s Clang. There are also various game fixes included as part of this broad merge request too. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the games that should be working again with Gallium Nine.

        • Mesa’s Virgl Straps On A Simple Disk Cache – Phoronix

          The “Virgl” virtual 3D GPU project for providing OpenGL (and work-in-progress VirtIO-GPU Vulkan) acceleration within guest virtual machines continues to mature for improving the open-source Linux desktop virtualization stack.

          The latest Virgl addition worth mentioning on the Mesa side is the introduction of a simple disk cache. Stéphane Marchesin of Google has created a simple front-end disk cache for Virgl.

        • NVIDIA 465.24.02 stable driver rolls out for Linux

          Get ready to upgrade your NVIDIA drivers once again, as NVIDIA has today rolled out the 465.24.02 stable driver.

          This is not to be confused with the Vulkan Beta 455.50.12 that rolled out yesterday that’s aimed at developers and serious enthusiasts. This is a stable driver release that you should be okay to upgrade with. Most of this 465.24.02 driver is following on from the 465.19.01 Beta that was released back in March.

        • NVIDIA 465.24.02 Linux Driver Released As Stable

          At the end of March NVIDIA released the 465 beta Linux driver while today has been promoted to stable in the form of the 465.24.02 release.

          The NVIDIA 465.24.02 driver is available today with the NVIDIA RTX A4000/A5000 series support, various new Vulkan extensions now supported, power management improvements, and a variety of bug fixes.

    • Applications

      • Ventoy Bootable USB Creator Adds Persistence Support For Arch Linux And Fedora

        Ventoy, a tool to create a bootable USB drive by simply copying the ISO to the USB, has been updated to version 1.0.40, bringing support for creating persistent USB drives for Fedora and Arch Linux (including ArchMan, ArchBang, BlackArch, etc.).

        Ventoy is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux, and it can create bootable USB drives containing Linux and Windows ISO files.

        You need to install Ventoy to a USB drive, then every time you want to create a bootable USB drive, all you have to do is copy the ISO to the USB. There’s no need to format the USB drive. You can copy as many ISO files as you wish (even combined Windows and Linux ISOs), and when booting from the USB, Ventoy shows a list of available ISO files, allowing you to boot from the one you select.

        What’s more, since you don’t need to format the USB drive, you can continue to use it for other purposes. So you can copy other files to the USB, and it won’t interfere with Ventoy.

      • Display Keystrokes And Mouse Clicks In Screencasts Using KmCaster

        KmCaster is a Java tool for showing the keyboard and mouse events on the screen, useful for teaching / screencasts.
        Using it, every keystroke and mouse click is shown on the screen, so you don’t have to mention what you’re typing when creating a screencast or when teaching students.

        For now, the application only works on X11. Getting it to work on Wayland depends on the JNativeKeyHook library, which is used by KmCaster, getting Wayland support. You can track this here. If you’re looking for an application that shows your keystrokes on the screen which works with Wayland, check out Show Me The Key.

        KmCaster comes with a user interface similar to Key-mon, which hasn’t been updated since 2015. The GUI doesn’t have any options – you just run KmCaster, and you can start using it to show what keyboard keys and mouse buttons you’re pressing. There are various command line options available though (details further down this article).

        There are also plans to add a configuration file, from where you’ll be able to specify the font face and color, on-screen location, and more.

      • 9 Best Email Client Apps for Linux distros such as Ubuntu in 2021

        We already have instant chat applications to run in a browser, however, still, email is the indispensable medium of communication. And that’s why Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, and other such services are so popular. However, the one thing that is common between most email service providers is they all provide a web-based client to let users use their services with the help of the internet and browser. Hence, you cannot surf your email offline until you are not using some Email client that fetches and store emails for offline view. Furthermore, organizations that are using their in-house or cloud-based mail server, their employees, or users also require mail client software to access emails such as Outlook and Thunderbird which are common ones.

        Another thing why Email clients are still the best choice because when it comes to managing email across multiple accounts popular mail service provider’s webmail clients running in the browser usually only support a single email account and do not allow the management of mail accounts from other providers.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Remove unused Flatpak Runtimes from Linux

        Flatpak does not remove dependencies such as runtime components after a certain program is removed, this means if the program has been uninstalled the runtime libraries do not uninstall with it.

        This can over time cause massive disk space usage, if you heavily rely on it.

        Step 1. Removing runtime dependencies using the unused flag while running uninstall command.

      • Adam Young: Custom RPMS and meta-rpm

        We are trying to enable the graphics hardware subsystem on the Raspberry Pi 4. This driver lives in mesa. The current Centos mesa.spec file does not enable the V3D Driver we need. Here are the steps I am going through to build the driver and integrate it into the meta-rpm build.

      • Jekyll on Fedora

        Jekyll is a free and open-source static site generator written in Ruby. It is popularly known for being used to power the GitHub Pages service.

        I switched my testing machine to Fedora 34, to test Gnome 40 and to work on some web development projects. In that process I discovered that setting up Jekyll requires more steps to get working on Fedora.

        Step 1. We need to get the dependencies required to get Jekyll working.

      • 6 options for tcpdump you need to know | Enable Sysadmin

        This article is part two in a series covering the great tcpdump utility. You can use this utility to capture network traffic for troubleshooting and analysis (and eavesdropping). Here in part two, I demonstrate capturing and viewing data.

      • What is a Zombie process in Linux?

        You may come across a message that states, “There is 1 zombie process.”.

        You might come across this when logging into your Ubuntu Server via SSH. If you see such a message you don’t have to panic or worry, it is just notifying you. I will explain in depth what this means.

      • Three Linux Commands You Should Never Use – LateWeb.Info

        In this article we are going to cover three commands you should know, but you should never use. Yes Linux is a great tool and gives you great power, but with that great power comes great responsibility. So without further ado lets start.

      • Install Kitty (Terminal Emulator) on Ubuntu

        Kitty is a free and open-source feature rich GPU based terminal emulator developed by Kovid Goyal, the project is being actively maintained with over 130+ contributors.

      • How to use Ansible to send an email using Gmail

        Here’s a brief introductory article that describes how to configure Gmail with Ansible.

        A lot of people use Gmail daily to send and receive mail. The estimated number of global users in 2020 was 1.8 billion. Gmail works on the SMTP protocol over port number 587. In this article, I demonstrate how to configure your SMTP web server and send mail automatically from Ansible and using ansible-vault to secure passwords.

      • How to Create New Files on Linux Using touch

        Every now and then, Linux users feel the need to create a new file on their system. Whether it be for taking notes, writing some code, or simply for file validation during programming, the touch command is the only file creation utility you need.

        Creating files and managing timestamps on Linux is a snap with the touch command. Here in this article, we will discuss the touch command in detail, along with the various functions that can be performed using the tool.

      • How To Install Varnish on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Varnish on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator that can be used as a proxy to your Apache webserver. The open-source software sits in front of your webserver to serve web traffic very fast. If you are running multiple servers, Varnish Cache can also be used as a load balancer. It makes your website really fast and accelerates your website performance up to 300 – 1000x (means 80% or more).

        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 Varnish HTTP accelerator on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How To Install Snap Package Manager in Linux Distributions

        If you’re a newbie on Linux, there is a chance that you had faced dependency and repository issues while installing a package on your system. It was hard to find one convenient method to install a package on every major Linux distribution without facing any issues. In the beginning, Canonical started building Snap for only Ubuntu. Later, Snap Package Manager is used widely on other Linux distributions too. You can get compiled versions of applications through Snaps. This provides both CLI and pre-compiled packages for Linux.

      • FreeBSD Install and Review CMatrix Terminal Wallpaper – LateWeb.Info

        CMatrix is a simple command-line utility that shows a scrolling ‘Matrix‘ like screen in a Linux terminal.

      • FreeBSD Install and Review Browsh Terminal Browser – LateWeb.Info

        Browsh is a fully-modern text-based browser. It renders anything that a modern browser can; HTML5, CSS3, JS, video and even WebGL. Its main purpose is to be run on a remote server and accessed via SSH/Mosh or the in-browser HTML service in order to significantly reduce bandwidth and thus both increase browsing speeds and decrease bandwidth costs.

    • Games

      • Release candidate: Godot 3.3 RC 9

        In case you missed the recent news, we decided to change our versioning for Godot 3.x and rename the upcoming version 3.2.4 to Godot 3.3, thereby starting a new stable branch. Check the dedicated blog post for details.

        Here’s another Release Candidate for Godot 3.3! Keeping this post short as there wasn’t much change, just a handful of fixes – refer to the 3.3 RC 7 post for details on new features.

        We’re pretty confident about this candidate (Famous Last Words™) so if no new regression is found, the next build should hopefully be the stable release (yes, we said that for RC8 too)! If you haven’t tried 3.3 RC builds yet, now would be a great time to do it to help us ensure everything upgrades smoothly from 3.2.3 to 3.3.

        As usual, you can try it live with the online version of the Godot editor updated for this release.

      • Relaxed narrative-adventure about a struggling writer Forgotten Fields is out now

        Forgotten Fields from Frostwood Interactive and Dino Digital, a casual and quite relaxing adventure about a struggling writer is out now with Linux support. In Forgotten Fields you assume the role of Sid, as you travel towards your childhood home to say goodbye and try to beat writers block at the same time while working against a deadline.

      • Shell Shuffle offers a different take on tile-matching from the dev of The Caribbean Sail | GamingOnLinux

        Victorian Clambake, developer of the clever The Caribbean Sail has recently released Shell Shuffle into Early Access. A tile-matching puzzle game that does things a little differently. Note: key provided by the developer.

        Like most similar matching puzzle games, the idea is to line up everything how you want it by moving things around. In Shell Shuffle though, you’re not swapping two tiles. Instead, you’re moving entire rows and columns to slot things into place to remove an entire line. When you wipe a line you get a pearl and if you wipe a line of pearls, you get given special power-ups.

      • Metro Exodus from 4A and Deep Silver has officially released for Linux

        While it was playable with the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer, 4A Games and Deep Silver have today officially released Metro Exodus for Linux.

        “Metro Exodus is an epic, story-driven first person shooter from 4A Games that blends deadly combat and stealth with exploration and survival horror in one of the most immersive game worlds ever created. Explore the Russian wilderness across vast, non-linear levels and follow a thrilling story-line that spans an entire year through spring, summer and autumn to the depths of nuclear winter.”

      • Metro Exodus Is Out Now on Steam for Linux

        Metro Exodus is the third installment in the Metro video game trilogy based on Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novels. It was initially released on February 15th, 2019, only for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Later in 2019, the game was also ported to Google’s Stadia, and a year after on the Amazon Luna cloud gaming service.

        Fast forward to 2021, as of today, April 14th, the game is now playable on Linux and macOS platforms. Users can download and install it right now from Steam, and if you already own it even better because you don’t have to buy it again, it will just appear in your Steam for Linux library like magic.

      • Time-looping narrative adventure Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood is out now | GamingOnLinux

        From Devespresso Games, the team behind The Coma series and Vambrace: Cold Soul plus publisher Headup, Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood is their latest game out now. It’s something of a time-looping adventure, starting off in modern times as your band tries to hit it big that turns into a weird mash-up of The Wizard of Oz, Brothers Grimm and Groundhog Day.

        [...]

        For anyone who has played The Coma or Vambrace, the overall feel is very similar. They’ve kept the same style and mechanics throughout, with it being another side-scrolling adventure. It’s very much like playing a point and click adventure. As a smaller title, sadly there’s no full voice-over which would have helped pull me in. Even so, that was one of the only downsides of what was an otherwise satisfying and thoroughly weird adventure.

        [...]

        Based in Seoul, South Korea and San Francisco, USA – this is the fourth full title to come from Devespresso Games to Linux so it’s wonderful to see the continued support again as their games are always wonderfully unique.

      • Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion improves further in the open source re-implementation OpenLoco | GamingOnLinux

        OpenLoco continues advancing and bringing Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion another step further to being as great as OpenTTD for Transport Tycoon Deluxe with a new OpenLoco 21.04 release out now.

        While it might be small in number features with the 21.04 release, it does bring a major enhancements with the ability to unlock the FPS by detaching game logic and rendering. This should serve as a good base for improving the performance over time. Additionally there’s now an FPS counter and a tile inspector included.

      • Free Game Wednesday: take a look at the great twin-stick Cecconoid

        Cecconoid, a fantastic twin-stick shooter with small cramped environments where the screen flicks between each section actually released the source code and now you can play free. The source code snapshot on GitHub is a snapshot of the DRM free version of Cecconoid, so it’s unsupported but gives you another great free game to play.

        “The starship Equinox is under attack from Stormlord and his robotic minions, the Exolons! You’re the crew’s only hope. Take your Samurai-1 fighter, find Captain Solomon’s Key, clear the decks of evil robots, and save the Equinox from certain destruction! Cecconoid is an 8-bit inspired, flick-screen, twin-stick-shooter, set in an alternate dimension where the pixels are still chunky, and the bad guys are black and white.”

      • Klabater drops Linux and macOS support for Crossroads Inn | GamingOnLinux

        Crossroads Inn and later Crossroads Inn Anniversary Edition from developer Klabater was crowdfunded in March 2019 and later released in October 2019 and now Klabater are leaving Linux and macOS behind.

        This is one title that’s had a bit of a rough history. At release it was a complete mess, so much so that they later rebranded it to Crossroads Inn Anniversary Edition and it didn’t exactly get much better from there. On Steam it has a Mixed overall score from users, on GOG it’s a low 2.3 / 5 stars and across Metacritic it also has a rather low 59.

      • Spirit Swap is an incredible looking narrative-driven match-3 with seriously good beats | GamingOnLinux

        Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To (the actual full title – what a mouthful!) is an upcoming action-puzzle game set in a lush, narrative-driven world of witchy demons.

      • Solus Has Resolved Issues with Recent Proton Builds

        A little while ago I pointed that Solus users (at least several, myself included) were experiencing issues to run modern versions of Proton following Proton 5.13 (and the introduction of the new vessel technology with Soldier). In other words, no games actually launched with 5.13 versions of Proton on Solus – you had to manually select an earlier version of Proton in order to keep running the games you wanted. This issue lasted for several months.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Desktop Icons NG – Get some icons onto your Gnome desktop

          Desktop Icons NG is a handy tool. It’s versatile, it comes with a lot of nice options, and it allows people to be efficient. Compared to the original versions, it definitely has more features. A useful, even necessary addition to the Gnome desktop. Ironically, these various third-party bits and pieces actually help Gnome, because without them, I really would have zero reason in using it.

          The extension can benefit from some small improvements, though. It would be nice to save the default layout, so if one changes too much, they can easily go back. Icons spacing is another feature. Icons sorting? Yes please. Finally, I wonder if this extension could allow the creation of new files (of any type) so it’s aligned to what Files does, now that the desktop is a usable workspace. Anyway, not bad at all. I can’t imagine Picard saying not bad at all, so instead here’s a tug on the uniform and a gruff hmm. We’re done. WARP 9.

    • Distributions

      • Makulu LinDoz makes its case that Linux can successfully resemble Windows

        “If you build it, they will come.” That’s been the idea behind every Linux distribution that tries to mimic Windows. Create a distribution that looks like Windows and people will want to use it. The problem with that theory is that Linux is not Windows, and the second end-users attempt to use that operating system, they’ll know it.

        Repeat after me: Linux isn’t Windows. That’s a good thing.

        Linux shouldn’t attempt to be Windows. Linux should be what it is: a flexible, powerful, user-friendly operating system that stands on its own to be something other operating systems cannot be—free and untethered from how a single company believes an operating system should function.

      • New Releases

        • Alpine 3.13.5 released

          The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.13.5 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

          This release includes a fix for apk-tools CVE-2021-30139.

        • Alpine 3.10.9, 3.11.11 and 3.12.7 released

          The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.10.9, 3.11.11 and 3.12.7 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

          Those releases include fixes for apk-tools CVE-2021-30139.

      • BSD

        • FreeBSD 13 released: Here is how to upgrade FreeBSD 12 to 13

          The FreeBSD project released FreeBSD version 13. The new version comes with updated software and features for a wild variety of architectures. The latest release provides performance improvements and better support for FreeBSD. One can benefit greatly using an upgraded version of FreeBSD. Let us see what’s new and quickly update FreeBSD 12 to 13 using the CLI.The post FreeBSD 13 released: Here is how to upgrade FreeBSD 12 to 13 appeared first on nixCraft.

        • FreeBSD 13 Released With OpenZFS Support and Performance Boost

          The 13th stable release of FreeBSD is here, with major upgrades including the transition to a new OpenZFS filesystem as well as an upgraded toolchain that aims to unify FreeBSD across all architectures.

          Here, I will be discussing the key highlights of the release but me briefly introduce you to FreeBSD if you do not know about it.

          [...]

          One of its key advantages over Linux is the fact that it is licensed under the BSD license, which is much more permissive than the more commonly used GPL license.

          The BSD license allows modified versions of the OS to be licensed under any license the developer wants, including a proprietary license. This has made it very popular for many large companies to base their software on, with well-known products and services such as OPNsense firewall, Netflix, and Sony’s PS3 and PS4 Operating Systems being based on FreeBSD.

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Kevin Fenzi: Ansible and Fedora/EPEL packaging status

          Just thought I would post a current status on ansible packaging in Fedora/EPEL

          ansible 2.9.x (aka, “ansible classic”) continues to be available in EPEL7/EPEL8 and all supported Fedora releases. Odds are most people are just still using this. It does still get security and some small bugfixes, but no big changes or fixes.

          ansible 3.x (aka, “ansible-base 2.10.x + community collections”). I had packaged ansible-base in rawhide/f34, but due to the naming changing and lack of time, I have dropped it. ansible-base is retired now in Fedora and likely never will land there.

          ansible 4.x (aka, “ansible-core 2.11 + community collections”). I have renamed ansible-base to ansible-core in rawhide. Unfortunately, a dep was added on python-packaging, so there’s 6 or so packages to finish packaging up and getting reviewed. The collections are a bit all over the place as people have been submitting them and getting them in. You can find the ansible collections via ‘dnf list ansible-collection\*’. After I get ansible-core in shape, I am going to look at packaging up at least the rest of the collections for 4.x. At that point we could look at dropping ansible-classic (or moving it to ‘ansible-classic’ and shipping ansible-core + community collections as ‘ansible’ 4.x. Note that collections work with both ansible-classic and ansible 4.x.

        • David Rheinsberg: Locating D-Bus Resource Leaks

          With dbus-broker we have introduced the resource-accounting of bus1 into the D-Bus world. We believe it greatly improves and strengthens the resource distribution of the D-Bus messages bus, and we have already found a handful of resource leaks that way. However, it can be a daunting task to solve resource exhaustion bugs, so I decided to describe the steps we took to resolve a recent resource-leak in the openQA package.

        • Enabling modern IT service management actions for ServiceNow with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

          Adopting modern IT service management practices is an important part of a digital transformation strategy. Many businesses depend on ServiceNow to implement modern workflows, and with the Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow, they can help improve speed, efficiency and consistency.

        • IBM joins Eclipse Adoptium and offers free certified JDKs with Eclipse OpenJ9 – IBM Developer

          IBM is pleased to announce that we are joining the Eclipse Adoptium working group as an enterprise member. IBM is a founding and active member of the AdoptOpenJDK community, which is moving under the stewardship of the Eclipse Foundation to form the Adoptium working group.

          In news this week, Adoptium announced that they will build their own binary called Eclipse Temurin and market and promote a wide variety of JDK releases that are produced by working group members, are certified by the Java SE TCK test suite, and meet its own AQAvit quality criteria. As part of our continuing commitment to Eclipse Adoptium and the Eclipse OpenJ9 Java Virtual Machine, IBM will build and publish Java SE TCK-certified JDK binaries with OpenJ9 at no cost.

          [...]

          As the AdoptOpenJDK community project moves under the stewardship of the Eclipse Foundation to form the Adoptium working group, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with that same community to build JDKs and to help advance the quality for all JDK releases that use the Adoptium infrastructure.

          IBM has already contributed a huge number of our own release tests to the AdoptOpenJDK project, and we are excited by the opportunity to work with others to continue raising the quality of Java release binaries, including the Adoptium project’s new OpenJDK binary called Eclipse Temurin.

        • Fedora Workstation 34 feature focus: Btrfs transparent compression

          The release of Fedora 34 grows ever closer, and with that, some fun new features! A previous feature focus talked about some changes coming to GNOME version 40. This article is going to go a little further under the hood and talk about data compression and transparent compression in btrfs. A term like that may sound scary at first, but less technical users need not be wary. This change is simple to grasp, and will help many Workstation users in several key areas.

        • Is picking the right container base image really that hard?

          Picking the right container base image feels hard for a lot of people. Every major Linux distribution offers a base image. Open source projects for programming languages like Python, Ruby, and Node.js offer their own base images. Many open source projects and vendors also provide their own images for services like MariaDB, Redis, Elastic, and MySQL. While programming languages and services are not technically base images, most people perceive them as such and include them in their analysis when choosing standardized base images.

        • Mandrel: A specialized distribution of GraalVM for Quarkus

          When we first announced Mandrel, we explained why Red Hat needed a downstream distribution of GraalVM. We were most interested in GraalVM’s native image capability, specifically in the context of Quarkus. In this article, we explain what Mandrel is and what it’s not. We’ll introduce some of Mandrel’s technical features and offer a short demonstration of using Mandrel with Quarkus.

        • Using a custom devfile registry and C++ with Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces

          Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces provides teams with predefined workspaces to streamline application development. Out of the box, CodeReady Workspaces supports numerous languages and plugins. However, many organizations want to customize a workspace and make it available to developers across the organization as a standard. In this article, I show you how to use a custom devfile registry to customize a workspace for C++ development. Once that’s done, we will deploy an example application using Docker.

        • OpenStack’s history, community, and 7 of its core projects | Enable Sysadmin

          In this post, I discuss what OpenStack is by examining its history, community, and a few of the core projects that are most frequently installed. I’m not diving into things too deeply as the intent is to do more in-depth articles on each of the services (projects) mentioned here in the future.

          The simplest way to describe OpenStack is that it is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering that’s used for both public and private clouds to manage compute resources. In this article, I review the history behind OpenStack and review some of the larger projects (services) that make it up.

        • How AI helps Overwatch League process 410M data points to build power rankings

          Overwatch is an intense 6v6, network-based, action game that is played by millions of gamers in over 190 countries. The game challenges teams to capture more objectives than their opponents against the backdrop of fantasy cityscapes, using an array of tools and characters. In 2018, Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Overwatch, launched the inaugural season of the Overwatch League, an esports league of professional gamers that represents city-based teams around the world who compete for millions in prize money and Overwatch League supremacy. The simple question we all want answered is, “Who is the best player?” The speed, strategy, and mechanics of the game create complex data combinations that challenge traditional player rankings.

          In 2020, IBM became the official cloud, AI, machine learning, and analytics partner for the Overwatch League. Throughout this multiyear partnership, IBM will engage a global audience in novel ways by bringing AI-based solutions and insights to the league. This same technology can be used within enterprise applications such as banking and healthcare.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • What’s New in Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo? Installation and Impressions

          Ubuntu, the popular Debian-based Linux distribution, is about to unveil its latest release on April 22, 2021. Codenamed Hirsute Hippo, the 21.04 version is expected to launch with multiple enhancements to the previous version.

          While the stable release is a few weeks away, Canonical has provided the public beta ISOs for enthusiasts to get their hands on the latest Ubuntu software prior to the final stable build. Here’s a guide on how you could run Ubuntu 21.04 on your own machine and discover what’s new.

        • Taking control of your Ubuntu desktop

          You may have a lot more control over your Ubuntu desktop than you know. In this post, we’ll look into what you should expect to see by default and how you can change that.

          Most Linux desktops start out charmingly uncluttered. They display a handful of icons on an attractive background. These include shortcuts for launching applications, generally along the left side or bottom of the screen, and maybe another icon or two in the otherwise open area.

          The uncluttered desktop is generally a good thing. You can open folders using your file manager and move around to any group of files that you need to use or update. By changing a setting on Ubuntu (and related distributions), however, you can also set up your system to open with a specified set of files in view – and you don’t have to move them into your Desktop folder to do so.

        • Ubuntu Blog: From lightweight to featherweight: MicroK8s memory optimisation

          If you’re a developer, a DevOps engineer or just a person fascinated by the unprecedented growth of Kubernetes, you’ve probably scratched your head about how to get started. MicroK8s is the simplest way to do so. Canonical’s lightweight Kubernetes distribution started back in 2018 as a quick and simple way for people to consume K8s services and essential tools. In a little over two years, it has matured into a robust tool favoured by developers for efficient workflows, as well as delivering production-grade features for companies building Kubernetes edge and IoT production environments. Optimising Kubernetes for these use cases requires, among other things, some problem-solving around memory consumption for affordable devices of small form factors.

        • Ubuntu Blog: DISA has released the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS STIG benchmark

          The Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG) are developed by the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) for the U.S. Department of Defense. They are configuration guidelines for hardening systems to improve security. They contain technical guidance which when implemented, locks down software and systems to mitigate malicious attacks.

        • The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 678

          Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 678 for the week of April 4 – 10, 2021.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Daniel Stenberg: curl 7.76.1 – h2 works again

        I’m happy to once again present a new curl release to the world. This time we decided to cut the release cycle short and do a quick patch release only two weeks since the previous release. The primary reason was the rather annoying and embarrassing HTTP/2 bug. See below for all the details.

      • Daniel Stenberg: talking curl on changelog again

        We have almost a tradition now, me and the duo Jerod and Adam of the Changelog podcast. We talk curl and related stuff every three years. Back in 2015 we started out in episode 153 and we did the second one in episode 299 in 2018.

      • Develop a Linux command-line Tool to Track and Plot Covid-19 Stats

        It’s been over a year and we are still fighting with the pandemic at almost every aspect of our life. Thanks to technology, various tools and mechanisms to track Covid-19 related metrics. This introductory-level tutorial discusses developing one such tool at just Linux command-line, from scratch.

        We will start with introducing the most important parts of the tool – the APIs and the commands. We will be using 2 APIs for our tool – COVID19 API and Quickchart API and 2 key commands – curl and jq. In simple terms, curl command is used for data transfer and jq command to process JSON data.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • FSF India Board Statement

            The recent statement by some members of the wider free software and open source community to RMS re-joining the board of FSF as a member have led to some unnecessary friction in the community. Unfortunately many of the arguments made against him were based on misunderstanding and half truths. More dangerous is concerted attack on RMS vilifying him and trying to isolate him. FSF India condemns this action. There is no freedom more important than freedom of thought and expression.

            We welcome and encourage the efforts of FSF to improve their governance process and hope that the larger free software community will also support them in this process.

            FSF India is an independent and autonomous non-profit organisation. It continues to stand and work for the cause of free software. It is committed to making all its forums and programs inclusive and promoting diversity while standing firm on the ideals set out by the GNU project.

          • FSF India Board Statement On RMS Re-joining The FSF Board

            The Free Software Foundation of India has released a statement in support of Richard Stallman and his return to the FSF’s board. They call the recent attempts at vilifying Richard Stallman “dangerous”.

          • GNU Guix: New Supported Platform: powerpc64le-linux

            This is important because it means that GNU Guix now works on the Talos II, Talos II Lite, and Blackbird mainboards sold by Raptor Computing Systems. This modern, performant hardware uses IBM POWER9 processors, and it is designed to respect your freedom. The Talos II and Talos II Lite have recently received Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification from the FSF, and Raptor Computing Systems is currently pursuing RYF certification for the more affordable Blackbird, too. All of this hardware can run without any non-free code, even the bootloader and firmware. In other words, this is a freedom-friendly hardware platform that aligns well with GNU Guix’s commitment to software freedom.

            How is this any different from existing RYF hardware, you might ask? One reason is performance. The existing RYF laptops, mainboards, and workstations can only really be used with Intel Core Duo or AMD Opteron processors. Those processors were released over 15 years ago. Since then, processor performance has increased drastically. People should not have to choose between performance and freedom, but for many years that is exactly what we were forced to do. However, the POWER9 machines sold by Raptor Computing Systems have changed this: the free software community now has an RYF-certified option that can compete with the performance of modern Intel and AMD systems.

            Although the performance of POWER9 processors is competitive with modern Intel and AMD processors, the real advantage of the Talos II, Talos II Lite, and Blackbird is that they were designed from the start to respect your freedom. Modern processors from both Intel and AMD include back doors over which you are given no control. Even though the back doors can be removed with significant effort on older hardware in some cases, this is an obstacle that nobody should have to overcome just to control their own computer. Many of the existing RYF-certified options (e.g., the venerable Lenovo x200) use hardware that can only be considered RYF-certified after someone has gone through the extra effort of removing those back doors. No such obstacles exist when using the Talos II, Talos II Lite, or Blackbird. In fact, although Intel and AMD both go out of their way to keep you from understanding what is going on in your own computer, Raptor Computing Systems releases all of the software and firmware used in their boards as free software. They even include circuit diagrams when they ship you the machine!

            Compared to the existing options, the Talos II, Talos II Lite, and Blackbird are a breath of fresh air that the free software community really deserves. Raptor Computing Systems’ commitment to software freedom and owner control is an inspiring reminder that it is possible to ship a great product while still respecting the freedom of your customers. And going forward, the future looks bright for the open, royalty-free Power ISA stewarded by the OpenPOWER Foundation, which is now a Linux Foundation project (see also: the same announcement from the OpenPOWER Foundation.

            In the rest of this blog post, we will discuss the steps we took to port Guix to powerpc64le-linux, the issues we encountered, and the steps we can take going forward to further solidify support for this exciting new platform.

            [...]

            Very early in the porting process, there were some other problems that stymied our work.

            First, we actually thought we would try to port to powerpc64-linux (big-endian). However, this did not prove to be any easier than the little-endian port. In addition, other distributions (e.g., Debian and Fedora) have recently dropped their big-endian powerpc64 ports, so the little-endian variant is more likely to be tested and supported in the community. For these reasons, we decided to focus our efforts on the little-endian variant, and so far we haven’t looked back.

            In both the big-endian and little-endian case, we were saddened to discover that the bootstrap binaries are not entirely reproducible. This fact is documented in bug 41669, along with our extensive investigations.

            In short, if you build the bootstrap binaries on two separate machines without using any substitutes, you will find that the derivation which cross-compiles %gcc-static (the bootstrap GCC, version 5.5.0) produces different output on the two systems. However, if you build %gcc-static twice on the same system, it builds reproducibly. This suggests that something in the transitive closure of inputs of %gcc-static is perhaps contributing to its non-reproducibility.

      • Programming/Development

        • 4 tips for context switching in Git

          Anyone who spends a lot of time working with Git will eventually need to do some form of context switching. Sometimes this adds very little overhead to your workflow, but other times, it can be a real pain.

          [...]

          Like with most other Git commands, you need to be inside a repository when issuing this command. Once the worktrees are created, you have isolated work environments. The Git repository tracks where the worktrees live on disk. If Git hooks are already set up in the parent repository, they will also be available in the worktrees.

          Don’t overlook that each worktree uses only a fraction of the parent repository’s disk space. In this case, the worktree requires about one-third of the original’s disk space. This can scale very well. Once your repositories are measured in the gigabytes, you’ll really come to appreciate these savings.

        • Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.10.4.0.0 on CRAN: New Upstream ‘Plus’

          Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 852 other packages on CRAN.

          This new release brings us the just release Armadillo 10.4.0. Upstream moves at a speed that is a little faster than the cadence CRAN likes. We release RcppArmadillo 0.10.2.2.0 on March 9; and upstream 10.3.0 came out shortly thereafter. We aim to accomodate CRAN with (roughly) monthly (or less frequent) releases) so by the time we were ready 10.4.0 had just come out.

        • Qt Installer Framework 4.1 Released

          Qt Installer Framework (IFW) 4.1 has been released today. We have also released Qt Online Installer 4.1 and Qt Maintenance Tool 4.1, which now use the new IFW.

        • The Qt Company expands offering into quality assurance tools with acquisition of froglogic GmbH

          We are excited to announce that The Qt Company has acquired a long time Qt partner froglogic. froglogic GmbH is a global leader in the software test automation market, providing state-of-the-art solutions to enhance software quality in any industry context. They have been a cornerstone in the Qt ecosystem for a long time, and we are happy to join forces with them and welcome their team in Hamburg & globally joining the Qt team!

        • Qt Creator 4.15 RC1 released

          We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 4.15 RC1 !

          Please have a look at the Beta blog post and our change log for a summary of what is new and improved in Qt Creator 4.15.

        • 10 Essential Skills For DevOps Engineers To Have A Successful Career

          DevOps is a mixture of cultural philosophies, processes, and resources that improve an organization’s ability to produce high-volume applications and services. Evolving and raising products at a quicker pace is what DevOps does. Organizations’ ancient package development and infrastructure management processes are mainstream now. The speed provided by DevOps permits companies to serve their customers well and compete with other companies effectively in the market. However, to do well in DevOps’ competitive world, you need to have some special skills. These DevOps skills will help you to boost up your career and become successful in this field.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Reimagining perl5-porters email list for 2021 and beyond

            Let’s examine if in 2021 an email redistribution list, i.e. perl5-porters@ (p5p) is still the best model for collaborating on the perl language. This is a discussion so comment below!

          • Key Perl Core developer quits, says he was bullied for daring to suggest programming language contained ‘cruft’

            On Monday, the Perl Core developer known as Sawyer X announced his intention to leave the three-person Perl Steering Committee, or Council, and the Perl Core group because of what he described as community hostility.

            Sawyer X, who became “pumpking” – manager of the core Perl 5 language – in 2016 when he took over that role from Ricardo Signes, explained his rationale for departing in a post to a Perl discussion list.

            “Due to the continuous abusive behavior by prominent Perl community members and just about anyone else who also feels entitled to harass me (and unfortunately, other Core developers), I am stepping down from the Steering Council, from the Perl security list, and from the Perl Core,” Sawyer said, adding that he is stepping down from the Perl Foundation’s Grants Committee and that he will not be speaking at or attending the next Perl conference.

        • Python

        • Rust

          • The Rust Programming Language Blog: Brainstorming Async Rust’s Shiny Future

            On March 18th, we announced the start of the Async Vision Doc process. Since then, we’ve landed 24 “status quo” stories and we have 4 more stories in open PRs; Ryan Levick and I have also hosted more than ten collaborative writing sessions over the course of the last few weeks, and we have more scheduled for this week.

            [...]

            When writing “shiny future” stories, the goal is to focus on the experience of Rust’s users first and foremost, and not so much on the specific technical details. In fact, you don’t even have to know exactly how the experience will be achieved. We have a few years to figure that out, after all.

          • Using Web Assembly Written in Rust on the Server-Side

            WebAssembly allows you to write code in a low-level programming language such as Rust, that gets compiled into a transportable binary. That binary can then be run on the client-side in the WebAssembly virtual machine that is standard in today’s web browsers. Or, the binary can be used on the server-side, as a component consumed by another programming framework — such as Node.js or Deno.

            WebAssembly combines the efficiency inherent in low-level code programming with the ease of component transportability typically found in Linux containers. The result is a development paradigm specifically geared toward doing computationally intensive work at scale — for example, artificial intelligence and complex machine learning tasks.

  • Leftovers

    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

        • Security

          • Apache SpamAssassin 3.4.6 Release Fixes Two Potentially Aggravating Bugs

            Apache SpamAssassin is a mature, widely-deployed open-source project that serves as a mail filter to identify spam. SpamAssassin leverages a combination of mail header and text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases. SpamAssassin’s flexible modular architecture makes the framework compatible with a wide array of other technologies

          • Security updates for Wednesday

            Security updates have been issued by CentOS (screen), Debian (clamav, courier-authlib, and tomcat9), Red Hat (thunderbird), SUSE (clamav, glibc, kernel, open-iscsi, opensc, spamassassin, thunderbird, wpa_supplicant, and xorg-x11-server), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-dell300x, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-5.8, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux-oem-5.10, linux-oem-5.6, nettle, and xorg-server, xorg-server-hwe-16.04, xorg-server-hwe-18.04).

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Senators Ask President to Prioritize Appointment of IP Officials [Ed: Patent extremists funded by the litigation cartel don’t want the rule of law; instead they want patent litigation moles fuelling legal battles at the expense of innovation. Reminder again that blogs that cover patents are in fact funded by the litigation cartel.]

          In a letter sent to President Joseph Biden at the end of March, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, asked the President to “prioritize the appointment of intellectual property officials within the Executive Branch over the coming weeks.”

        • EPO BoA report shows successful 2020, despite COVID impact [Ed: Worthless EPO puff pieces amid illegalities and corruption. World Intellectual Property Review used to do decent work half a decade ago, now it’s firing real journalists, filling up their spaces with stenographers of the EPO’s “Mafia” (what EPO staff calls its management).]
        • James Mellor: “Anti-suit injunctions require judicial restraint” [Ed: JUVE has become a puff pieces factory for the patent litigation cartel]

          JUVE Patent: How did the coronavirus pandemic impact your last few months as an IP barrister?
          James Mellor: Apart from changing how we did trials and hearings, there was very little change to the work. Very early on in the first lockdown, Richard Hacon (presiding judge of the Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court) adjourned one trial, but that was due to the witnesses in that case.

          But as soon as that had happened, Colin Birss made it really clear that IP cases were going to continue and that we were going to do everything online. I did a trademark trial in the summer and that was fully-remote. I did the Amazon trial in November/December, and that was fully remote. So while the remote working was a big change, we were very lucky that everything in our jurisdiction just continued.

      • Trademarks

        • Counsel welcome ‘brand-friendly’ strides in China [Ed: They only ask lawyers of very large firms (i.e. representatives of oligarchs) and bother speaking to no other person with stake in the outcome. Guess who funds this site...]

          As a Chinese court hands down another favourable ruling to a Western brand, counsel speculate on whether the future is looking brighter

        • Bad faith, intent of parodic use and trade marks – Swatch successfully appeals ‘ONE MORE THING’ opposition by Apple

          From I-Watch to I-Swatch, ‘Think different’ to ‘Tick Different’, Apple and Swatch have previously clashed over their trade mark applications. This time, Swatch’s international application for ‘ONE MORE THING’ came to appear in the England and Wales High Court (EWHC), where Swatch was able to successfully appeal a so-called “bad faith” opposition filed by Apple.

          This case was unusual in many ways – it didn’t proceed on the ‘conventional’ basis of a bad faith opposition (AKA, submitting that the application had been made by Swatch to ‘block’ Apple from using the mark). Instead, it considered whether intent of parodic use of the mark by Swatch could be found, and if so, whether it would be sufficient to amount to bad faith.

Links 14/4/2021: EasyOS Dunfell 2.7, Tor Browser 10.5a14

Posted in News Roundup at 5:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini Desktop PC – Benchmarks – Week 2

        This is a weekly blog looking at the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini Desktop PC running Linux.

        This machine was made available by Bargain Hardware. Bargain Hardware retails refurbished servers, workstations, PCs, and laptops to consumers and businesses worldwide. All systems are completely customisable on their website along with a vast offering of clean-pulled, tested components and enterprise replacement parts. They supply machines with a choice of Linux distros: Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora. They even install FreeBSD.

        For this week’s blog, we’ve run a variety of benchmark tests on the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 together with five other systems to put the results into context.

      • Linux PC maker System76 introduces the COSMIC desktop environment, coming to Pop!_OS 21.04

        System76 has been selling Linux laptops and computers since 2005. A few years ago the company introduced its own Linux distribution called Pop!_OS, and now when customers buy a System76 computer they can choose between Pop!_OS and Ubuntu Linux.

      • Pop!_OS Linux Introduces a GNOME-based ‘COSMIC’ Desktop Environment

        Pop!_OS has been my daily driver until I recently switched to Linux Mint to experience Cinnamon.

        If you have used Pop!_OS by System76, you probably know that it is based on Ubuntu releases with LTS and non-LTS editions.

        While I always believed that Pop!_OS does a few things better than Ubuntu, they also announced that they are crafting a separate Desktop Environment ‘COSMIC‘ based on GNOME.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Own Your Mailbox | LINUX Unplugged 401

        Do as we say, not as we do. This week we’re setting off to host our own email. We’ll cover the basics, what’s we’re using, and why.

        Plus an update on Jupiter Broadcasting going independent, community news, and more.

      • mintCast 358.5 – Three Finger Swipes

        1:41 Linux Innards
        29:45 Vibrations from the Ether
        48:25 Check This Out
        1:20:20 Announcements & Outro

        In our Innards section, we cover Gnome 40 and try to keep it RMS-free

        And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Ceph Pacific 16.2.0 is now available

        Try Ceph Pacific now on Ubuntu to combine the benefits of a unified storage system with a secure and reliable operating system. You can install the Ceph Pacific beta from the OpenStack Wallaby Ubuntu Cloud Archive for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or using the development version of Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo).

      • Understanding the Btrfs file system in Fedora Linux | FOSS Linux

        B-Tree Filesystem (Btrfs) is a copy on write (CoW) filesystem for Linux operating systems. Fedora users got introduced to Btrfs when the Fedora project team made it the default filesystem for Fedora Workstation 33. I hadn’t given Btrfs too much thought despite it being available for Linux for several years. This article will get you up to speed with the Btrfs filesystem and its features like snapshots, subvolumes, and quotas.

        Btrfs

        B-Tree Filesystem (Btrfs) is both a filesystem and a volume manager. It has been under development since 2007, and since then, it has been a part of the Linux kernel. Its developers aim at creating a modern filesystem that can solve the challenges associated with scaling to large storage subsystems. From the Btrfs Manpage, its main features focus on fault tolerance, easy administration, and repair.

      • How To Install Kontact on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kontact on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Kontact is an integrated solution to your personal information management needs. It combines applications like KMail, KOrganizer, and KAddressBook into a single interface to provide easy access to mail, scheduling, address book, and other PIM functionality. This allows users to handle all their emails, deadlines, and other data in a more organized and efficient manner. Being both highly customizable and secure, Kontact provides users with powerful tools, giving them full control over what to do with their data.

        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 Kontact personal information management on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How to install Gravit Designer on Ubuntu

        If you want to work with vector graphics files, you can use a nice utility on Ubuntu called Gravit Designer which is a free and complete vector graphics design application.

        Gravit Designer has unmatched precision in any unit ( pixels, mm, cm, etc. ) from creation to export. It offers automatic anchors and layouts designed for pixel-perfect screen layouts, as well as multiple fills / edges, effects, and blending modes, along with shared styles.

      • How to Install and Use locate Command in Linux

        When you are working with the command line in Linux you need to know how to find files quickly. There are few utilities that can get the job done but you should know how to use them and when to use them.

        One among such utility is locate command and in this tutorial, we will walk through how to install locate command if not already installed and see how to use them effectively in Linux.

      • How to Install Tomcat on Ubuntu 20.04 using Ansible

        Apache Tomcat is often used as an application server for strictly web-based applications. It basically executes Java servlets and renders web pages that include JSP coding.

        Manual installation on Tomcat is time-consuming. Using Ansible we can easily automate the installation process.

        In this tutorial we learn how to install Tomcat on Ubuntu 20.04 using Ansible.

      • How to Install NFS Server on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa)

        Originally developed by Sun’s Microsystems, NFS is an acronym for Network File System. It is a distributed protocol that allows a user on a client PC to access shared files from a remote server much the same way they would access files sitting locally on their PC. The NFS protocol provides a convenient way of sharing files across a Local Area Network (LAN). In this guide, we will walk you through the installation of the NFS Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa). We will then demonstrate how you can access files on the server from a client system.

      • How To Install Atom 1.56.0 In Ubuntu / Linux Mint | Tips On UNIX [Ed: But is is controlled by Microsoft]

        Atom is a free, cross-platform, and open-source graphical software that has been designed to act as a hackable text editor and programmer’s editor application that helps the developer to write code without too much hassle.

        Atom editor is built on the Electron framework, which lets developers create modern desktop apps using state-of-the-art Web technologies like HTML5, CSS, Node.js, and JavaScript.

        This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install atom 1.56.0 in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 18.04, LinuxMint 20.1, CentOS 8, and Fedora 33

      • How To Install No More Secrets In FreeBSD – LateWeb.Info

        No More Secrets is a command line tool called nms that recreates the famous data decryption effect seen on screen in the 1992 hacker movie Sneakers.

      • 3 essential Linux cheat sheets for productivity

        Linux is famous for its commands. This is partially because nearly everything that Linux does can also be invoked from a terminal, but it’s also that Linux as an operating system is highly modular. Its tools are designed to produce fairly specific results, and when you know a lot about a few commands, you can combine them in interesting ways for useful output. Learning Linux is equal parts learning commands and learning how to string those commands together in interesting combinations.

        With so many Linux commands to learn, though, taking the first step can seem daunting. What command should you learn first? Which commands should you learn well, and which commands require only a passing familiarity? I’ve thought about these questions a lot, and I’m not convinced there’s a universal answer. The “basic” commands are probably the same for anyone…

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • My current Plasma Wayland from git

          However much distress the current scenario and some personal stuff might cause, I’ve really been having fun with my laptop. Running everything on bleeding edge is exciting: kernel 5.12.rc6, openSUSE Tumbleweed with Plasma built daily from master (so openSUSE Krypton), using only the Wayland session, switching entirely to pipewire and so on. I figured I might share what I have set up for those interested, while providing some workarounds and sharing some experiences.

          My general distro of choice (openSUSE) offers quite a few conveniences. YaST, the main “hub” software for managing the system, is a power beast. I learned quite a bit with its sysconfig manager, being able to edit kernel and boot settings, snapshots, journal, network, and update my system is handy.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Shortwave 2.0 Arrives with GTK 4 Port, Slick Mini-Player Mode

          Such as? Well, check out its fancy new GTK4 interface. Yes, Shortwave 2.0 has seen its core UI ported from GTK3 to GTK4. As part of the process “many elements were improved or recreated from scratch” according to lead developer Felix Häcker.

    • Distributions

      • New Releases

        • EasyOS Dunfell version 2.7 released

          Throughout 2020 and early 2021, the flagship releases of EasyOS were the “Buster series”, built with DEB packages from Debian Buster 10.x. There were also releases of the “Dunfell series”, compiled from source in a port of OpenEmbedded, that took a back-seat.
          Now, EasyOS Dunfell version 2.7 has the driver’s seat and is the flagship release. Almost all of the packages are compiled in a port of OpenEmbedded, with the exception of a few large and difficult-to-cross-compile packages, such as LibreOffice and SeaMonkey — these were compiled in the running EasyOS 2.7 pre-release.
          LibreOffice and SeaMonkey are the latest versions, 7.1.2.2 and 2.53.7. Network management has been enhanced with ModemManager, which NetworkManager Applet and ModemManage GUI are frontends for. NetworkManager Applet is an icon in the systray and ModemManager GUI is in the “Network” menu. The Linux kernel is 5.10.26.
          There have been some significant bug fixes since the previous release of EasyOS, including faster startup of a Linux distribution desktop in a container (without wallpaper corruption), Osmo stability, and the XorgWizard previously causing X not to start.

      • BSD

        • FreeBSD 13.0 released

          The FreeBSD 13 release is out. It includes a lot of updated software, the removal of a number of GNU tools (including the toolchain), and more, but not WireGuard. See the release notes for the details.

      • Slackware Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Canonical Publishes New Ubuntu Linux Kernel Updates to Fix 20 Vulnerabilities

          For Ubuntu 20.10 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS systems running Linux kernel 5.8, the new kernel update fixes CVE-2021-20239, a flaw discovered by Ryota Shiga in Linux kernel’s sockopt BPF hooks that could allow a local attacker to exploit another kernel vulnerability, CVE-2021-20268, a flaw discovered in the BPF verifier, which could allow a local attacker to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code, and CVE-2021-3178, a flaw discovered in the NFS implementation, which could allow an attacker to bypass NFS access restrictions.

        • Ubuntu Blog: Ubuntu in the wild – 13th of April 2021

          The Ubuntu in the wild blog post ropes in the latest highlights about Ubuntu and Canonical around the world on a bi-weekly basis. It is a summary of all the things that made us feel proud to be part of this journey. What do you think of it?

        • Telecom AI: a guide for data teams | Ubuntu

          Data is the new oil, and Artificial Intelligence is the way to monetize it. According to an IDC report, Artificial Intelligence (AI), alongside 5G, IoT, and cloud computing, is one of the technologies reshaping the telecom industry. From data-driven decisions to fully automated and self-healing networks, AI developments are accelerating innovation and driving costs of operation down.

        • Security podcast: March

          Welcome to the second post in our series based on the weekly Ubuntu Security Podcast! I am Alex Murray and am a Staff Engineer and the Tech Lead for the Ubuntu Security team at Canonical. Each month, I cover the most interesting security fixes around Ubuntu, as well as an in-depth discussion of the different vulnerabilities that we’ve been addressing. This time we will look into Python updates, have a discussion about 16.04 LTS transitioning into extended security maintenance (ESM) in April and finally, I will cover some open positions within the team!

        • Security at the Edge: hardware accelerated AI-based cybersecurity with Canonical Ubuntu and the BlueField-2 DPU

          During GTC last fall, NVIDIA announced an increased focus on the enterprise datacenter, including their vision of the datacenter-on-a-chip. The three pillars of this new software-defined datacenter include the data processing unit (DPU) along with the CPU and GPU. The NVIDIA BlueField DPU advances SmartNIC technology, which NVIDIA acquired through their Mellanox acquisition in 2020.

          Here at Canonical, we are proud of our long partnership with NVIDIA to provide the best experience to developers and customers on Ubuntu. This work has advanced the state of the art with secure NVIDIA GPU drivers and provisions for GPU pass-through. Our engineering teams collaborate deeply to provide the fastest path to the newest features and the latest patches for critical vulnerabilities. For networking, this has meant partnering with Mellanox (now NVIDIA) engineering to provide not just Ubuntu support but also support for hardware offload going back to the oldest ConnectX devices. In fact, Ubuntu was the first Linux distro enabled on the Bluefield cards back in 2019. Increasingly, Ubuntu, which has long been the operating system of choice for cutting-edge machine learning developers, data scientists, containers and Kubernetes is seeing more enterprise adoption across verticals.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Make your data boss-friendly with this open source tool

        Enterprise Data Analytics (EDA) is a web application that enables access to information through a simple, clear interface.

        After several years of working for Barcelona open source analytics company Jortilles, we realized that the modern world collects data compulsively but there was no easy way for average people to see or interpret that data. There are some powerful open source tools for this purpose, but they are very complex. We couldn’t identify a tool designed to be easy to use by common people with little technical skill.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • New Release: Tor Browser 10.5a14

            Tor Browser 10.5a14 is now available from the Tor Browser Alpha download page and also from our distribution directory.

            Note: This is an alpha release, an experimental version for users who want to help us test new features. For everyone else, we recommend downloading the latest stable release instead.

  • Leftovers

    • Opinion | Some Humans Ain’t Human
    • Games People Play

      Or I would amuse myself watching a pal in the smoking room light his farts on fire with a Bic lighter, eschewing his dares to do said same, one of the other boys (it was an all-boys school then) comically warned people were known to blow themselves up with this activity. I thought of Charles Fort, who a friend had told me about days previously, and the notion of spontaneous combustion. After I dropped out of the school, my pal would turn me on to a “signed copy” of the I Ching. Wouldn’t you know it, I drew hexagram 56, The Wanderer. I’ve been getting it up the ole yinyang ever since in my travels. Sometimes I feel I should have risked everything with that Bic.

      Anyway, I was thinking about Magister Ludi recently. Got to thinking tThese wise guys get together once a year and play a game with beads that reveals, as they play, esoteric patterns of the world that they themselves are stoicially disinclined to engage in. Know it all think-tankers back at a time when the Canon was still extant, and so they were imbued with the mystical powers that sympathetic magic brings. (You remember Christmas morn as a starry-eyed kid, the radio playing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” Dad snarking that Rudolph the Red Nosed Lush should be driving, getting DIBS: In Search of Self from “Santa”). Postmodernism has dealt such wise guys a vicious backhand blow, and, frankly, nobody really reads Herman Hesse anymore, except me, as far as I know.

    • Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio
    • How ‘Things’ In Fiction Shape the Way We Read

      In the prefurnished apartment where I have spent most of the last year, I am surrounded by things that seem to vibrate strangely with something like life. On my desk, there are three interchangeable coffee mugs and another, for unknown reasons, that is special to me. There is a lamp that came with the apartment, whose bulb needs to be fussed over every time I turn it on. There are my beloved books, some of them dragged with me from apartment to apartment since college, gathering grime and dust on the shelves. There are certain objects of sentimental value—a reproduction of a painting that I bought at a museum last January, which I have propped against the wall. There is an empty plastic bottle of sparkling water, of which I am ashamed, and which will get crushed in next week’s recycling but which will also likely endure in another form like most plastics on the planet. Indeed, much of this stuff may, bizarrely, outlast me. Alternately, like a wine glass I knocked over last week while vacuuming, some of it may get smashed to smithereens.

      Much of our material world is caught somewhere between disposability and permanence. It is not always clear what will last or what won’t; we stumble upon old stuffed animals from childhood that have strangely endured beyond the versions of ourselves that played with them. Or some things have an afterlife in new forms, one guaranteed by recycling or alteration. “Consumer habits shaped by a national ideology of progress and innovation have given rise to a frequently binary relationship to objects: either they persist, archived or curated to help stabilize individual and collective memory and identity, or they are disposable, cast out of sight and out of mind,” writes scholar Sarah Wasserman in her recent book, The Death of Things. “But between these two poles exists a greater number of objects that are neither quite lost nor quite present; neither dead nor alive, they are instead dying, coming to us in an ongoing state of ceasing to be.”

    • Opinion | We Are So Glad You’re Here: A Glimpse of the Good Society at a Hollowed-Out Kmart

      What I saw and felt as I was getting my first jab.

      I got my first shot today, in a sprawling space that used to be a Kmart, in West Orange, NJ. It was moving in some ways that surprised me.

    • Opinion | Investing In Nature Is Essential to Our Shared Future

      Canadian women leaders send an open letter to the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Finance.

      For over a year the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on our health and well-being, our economy and our communities. Low-income and working women, particularly from Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities, have borne the brunt not only of job loss in this ‘she’-cession, but of the physical and mental stress fueled by lockdowns and school closures, rising family violence and heavy demands on frontline workers.  

    • Education

      • Graduate Workers Unions At New York’s Two Largest Universities Vote For Strike

        Graduate workers at New York University and Columbia University, the two largest universities in New York City, are in the midst of a contentious labor battle with their administrations to eliminate the economic uncertainty, which has intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

        The NYU Graduate Student Organizing Committee, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, announced on April 9 that their union members voted overwhelmingly—with 96.4 percent of the vote—to authorize a strike because contract negotiations have dragged on for the past nine months.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Public Health Coalition Urges Biden to Create Vaccine ‘Manufacturing Operation for the World’

        “Vaccine donations alone won’t end the pandemic.”

        A coalition of 66 global health, development, and humanitarian groups on Tuesday urged President Joe Biden to establish a global vaccine manufacturing program to end the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and prepare for future ones.

      • Covid-19 and Commonsense
      • Citing $9 Trillion Cost of Vaccine Inequity, UN Chief Calls for Global Wealth Tax on Pandemic Profiteers

        “Advancing an equitable global response and recovery from the pandemic is putting multilateralism to the test. So far, it is a test we have failed.”

        United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres expressed support Monday for a wealth tax on those whose fortunes soared amid the coronavirus pandemic to tackle global economic inequality.

      • The FDA Did the Right Thing in Pausing the J&J Vaccine

        After more than a year of Covid, everyone on Twitter is an epidemiologist now. Ever since the news broke early Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that states “pause” their Johnson and Johnson vaccine efforts because of evidence that six women between the ages of 18 and 48 had experienced rare blood clots after being vaccinated (one died and another is in critical condition), social media has been swarmed by folks with no medical background who are nonetheless convinced the federal agencies are making a horrible public health mistake. Admittedly, six clotting episodes out of more than 6 million doses delivered looks like a literal one in a million risk. And that made it easy for some would-be experts to proclaim that the regulators are wrong.

        As he tends to do, data journalist Nate Silver cannonballed into the deep end of the pool, with no doubt there to muffle his big splash:

      • Veterans face uphill battle to receive treatment for ‘burn pit’ exposure

        The pits were a common feature at military bases during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a crude answer to the basic logistics problem of how to deal with piles and piles of trash. Everything from electronics and vehicles to human waste was regularly doused in jet fuel and set ablaze, spewing toxic fumes and carcinogens into the air.

        The Department of Defense estimates that roughly 3.5 million service members could have been exposed to burn pits. The Department of Veterans Affairs has denied about 75 percent of veterans’ burn pit claims, including Evans’, because it does not acknowledge a connection between conditions like asthma and cancer to exposure to the flaming garbage piles.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Linux Client for Cisco Webex is Coming Next Month

          Webex is the video conferencing and online meeting tool from Cisco. At present, you can use Webex through a web browser in Linux but soon you would be able to install the Webex application on Linux.

          In a blog post, Cisco revealed the plan to release Webex Linux client in May. There is no set date, just the information that Webex application will have Linux support in May.

        • Microsoft Patch Tuesday, April 2021 Edition
        • Over half of ransomware victims pay the ransom, but only a quarter see their full data returned

          More than half (56%) of ransomware victims paid the ransom to restore access to their data last year, according to a global study of 15,000 consumers conducted by global security company Kaspersky. Yet for 17% of those, paying the ransom did not guarantee the return of stolen data. However, as public awareness of potential cyberthreats grows there is reason for optimism in the fight against ransomware.

        • Where are phishing emails more likely to originate from?

          The country where emails originate and the number of countries they are routed through on the way to their final destination offer important warning signs of phishing attacks.

          For the study, researchers at cloud-enabled security solutions provider Barracuda Networks teamed up with Columbia University researchers.

          They examined the geolocation and network infrastructure across more than two billion emails, including 218,000 phishing emails sent in the month of January 2020.

        • Security

          • Print Friendly & PDF: Full compromise

            I looked into the Print Friendly & PDF browser extension while helping someone figure out an issue they were having. The issue turned out unrelated to the extension, but I already noticed something that looked very odd. A quick investigation later I could confirm a massive vulnerability affecting all of its users (close to 1 million of them). Any website could easily gain complete control of the extension.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Pressure on Biden to End Yemen Blockade Builds With New Letter From Lawmakers

        Rep. Ro Khanna says members of Congress are “assessing” whether a War Powers Resolution is needed to fully end U.S. involvement.

        A bipartisan letter that members of Congress sent Tuesday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken increased growing pressure on the Biden administration to fully end U.S. support for Yemeni suffering and push the Saudi Arabia-led coalition to “lift its obstruction of commercial and humanitarian imports” to the war-torn country.

      • Progressives Welcome ‘Incredibly Encouraging News’ of Planned US Withdrawal From Afghanistan

        “With today’s decision, President Biden recognizes what the people of the United States and Afghanistan have long known: we simply cannot bomb our way to peace.”

        Progressive lawmakers and peace activists on Tuesday welcomed news that President Joe Biden plans to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11, a move that if accompanied by an end to U.S.-led airstrikes would end the longest war in American history. 

      • Nevskaya Manufaktura Russian authorities suspect arson after fire destroys historic St. Petersburg factory

        On April 12, a massive fire broke out at the Nevskaya Manufaktura, a historic factory in St. Petersburg. The blaze spread over a 10,000-square-meter area (more than 107,600 square feet), and the emergency services declared it a “level five” — the hardest type of fire to put out. After 10 hours, firefighters managed to get the blaze under control, though it wasn’t completely extinguished. One firefighter was killed and three others were injured; two of them were hospitalized in serious condition. According to sources in law enforcement, the preliminary assessment is that the fire was caused by arson. The property was handed over for a residential development about a month ago. The authorities have detained both the factory’s director and his deputy in connection with a criminal case for negligence leading to the death of a person.

      • Court Says Two Cops Who Deployed Deadly Force Can Use Florida’s Victims’ Rights Law To Hide Their Names From The Public

        Laws written with good intentions are being used in bad faith by public servants hoping to shield themselves from public scrutiny. Multiple states have passed versions of “Marsy’s Law” — legislation that grants more rights to victims of crime, including blocking the release of personal info under the theory this will protect victims’ privacy and head off abuse and harassment.

      • Progressives Call for Action on the Yemen Blockade

        In early February, President Joe Biden announced that he would end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, where six years of continuous conflict have created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. But progressive members of Congress are growing frustrated with his refusal to push Saudi Arabia to lift its blockade on Yemen, which has recently reached a critical stage and is starving millions. While his pledge represented a significant policy shift, Biden has not yet taken decisive action to alleviate suffering on the ground—or even give members of Congress answers.

        Biden’s promise to end “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” was celebrated by progressive organizers and lawmakers who had been fighting to stop US military involvement. But questions about what forms of support the United States has cut off and which Trump-era military activities it plans to discontinue in the future remain. Forty-one Democratic lawmakers wrote to the administration asking for clarification on the forms of military, intelligence, and logistical support the United States has previously provided or currently provides, requesting a response by March 25, The Intercept reported. They still haven’t heard back.

      • Senate Dems Tell Biden Returning to Iran Nuclear Deal Should Be a Top Priority

        “Should Iran be willing to return to compliance with the limitations set by the JCPOA, the United States should be willing to rejoin the deal and provide the sanctions relief required under the agreement.”

        Amid critical talks in Vienna, more than two dozen Senate Democrats on Tuesday sent a letter urging President Joe Biden to treat the United States’ return to the Iran nuclear agreement as a top priority.

      • Another treason case Physics professor arrested in Moscow for allegedly passing secrets to a NATO country

        On Tuesday, April 13, a Moscow court remanded theoretical physicist Valery Golubkin in custody on suspicion of treason. Allegedly, he passed information to a NATO country. Golubkin’s arrest comes in connection with a treason case against another scientist — physicist Anatoly Gubanov, who was arrested in December 2020. Though the details of the case remain classified, both professors have denied any guilt.

      • The Biden Administration and the Chaotic Middle East

        Ten years ago, President Barack Obama announced a “pivot” from the Middle East to the Pacific, but there has been no significant change in our force disposition in the Middle East. Russia has stable state-to-state relations throughout the region, but cannot even influence Syrian President Bashar al-Assad whom they saved five years ago.  China makes no attempt to play an influential role in the region, and wisely pursues commercial arrangements such as the major oil deal with Iran in return for long-term investment in Iran’s outdated infrastructure.

        Meanwhile, chaos reigns. Israel’s democracy is deadlocked, facing the possibility of its fifth national election in the past two years.  The most divisive politician in modern Israeli politics—Benjamin Netanyahu—is seeking reelection so that he gains immunity from prosecution of charges that include corruption and breach of trust.  The Hashemite royal family is waging a food fight in full public view, threatening one of the few states that can claim stability over the past twenty years.  When Lawrence of Arabia was referring to the Middle East as a “trap,” he was primarily concerned with Iraq, which President George W. Bush destabilized in 2003 with an invasion based on deceit.  U.S. forces remain in Iraq, where they confront Iranian-backed militia forces.  The U.S. invasion opened a strategic door for Iran’s influence in Iraq.

      • Opinion | The United States as a Mass-Killing Machine

        On this planet of ours, America is the emperor of weaponry.

        By the time you read this piece, it will already be out of date. The reason’s simple enough. No matter what mayhem I describe, with so much all-American weaponry in this world of ours, there’s no way to keep up. Often, despite the headlines that go with mass killings here, there’s almost no way even to know.

      • Biden Wants to Spend Even More on Defense than Trump

        Robert Reich knows a thing or two about federal budgets, and the economist who has served in three presidential administrations says there is something wrong with Joe Biden’s plan to increase Pentagon spending above the levels proposed by former President Trump.

        “The Pentagon already spends: $740,000,000,000 every year, $2,000,000,000 every day, $1,000,000 every minute,” says the former secretary of labor. “The last thing we need is a bigger military budget.”

      • ‘They Stole My Son’s Dad’: Families of Daunte Wright and George Floyd Hold Emotional Press Conference

        The event took place outside the Minneapolis courthouse where former cop Derek Chauvin is on trial for allegedly murdering Floyd last May. 

        Amid the second day of protests over the police killing of Daunte Wright and the continuation of the trial of former Minnesota cop Derek Chauvin—who is accused of murdering George Floyd last May—relatives of the two slain unarmed Black men and their attorney on Tuesday held an emotionally charged press conference outside a downtown Minneapolis courthouse. 

      • Opinion | The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act Is the Reform We Need

        Police reforms will never work unless accompanied by and embedded in rebuilding and empowering communities.

        Even as Derek Chauvin is on trial for the murder of George Floyd, police 10 miles away fatally shot an African American man, Duante Wright, after pulling him over for an alleged traffic violation.

      • Killed over a Car Air Freshener: Outrage Grows over Police Shooting of Daunte Wright in Minnesota

        Protests continue in the Minneapolis area after a white police officer shot and killed a 20-year-old Black man, Daunte Wright, during a traffic stop Sunday in the suburb of Brooklyn Center. The deadly shooting took place about 10 miles from where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd. Just before he was killed, Wright called his mother to say he was being pulled over — allegedly because an air freshener was obscuring his rearview mirror. The Brooklyn Center police chief claims Kimberly Potter, a 26-year police veteran who has served as the police union president for the department, accidentally pulled a gun instead of a Taser. The Star Tribune reports Daunte Wright is the sixth person killed by Brooklyn Center police since 2012. Five of the six have been men of color. “Unfortunately, there has not been a serious attempt to change the phenomenon of driving while Black, which is something that happens to Black people on a routine basis in the Twin Cities and across the state of Minnesota,” says Minneapolis-based civil rights attorney and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong. We also speak with Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who says policing in the United States is as dangerous to Black and Brown people as ever. “They are deadly. They kill Black and Brown people,” says Hussein.

      • Derek Chauvin Trial Breaks Down “Blue Wall of Silence” as Police Officials Testify Against Ex-Cop

        We get the latest on the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, with Minneapolis-based civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong. She says prosecutors in the case have successfully chipped away at the “blue wall of silence” by getting current police officials to testify against Chauvin. However, she says it’s likely that “the only reason that these officers have testified is because the world is watching.”

      • Headlines April 13, 2021

        In Minnesota, police fired tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades as protesters defied a curfew and took to the streets of the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center for a second straight night. They were demanding justice for Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop Sunday.

      • “I Felt Hate More Than Anything”: How an Active Duty Airman Tried to Start a Civil War

        It was 2:20 p.m. on June 6, 2020, and Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old Air Force sergeant who belonged to the anti-government Boogaloo Bois movement, was on the run in the tiny mountain town of Ben Lomond, California.

        With deputy sheriffs closing in, Carrillo texted his brother, Evan, asking him to tell his children he loved them and instructing him to give $50,000 to his fiancée. “I love you bro,” Carrillo signed off. Thinking the text message was a suicide note from a brother with a history of mental health troubles, Evan Carrillo quickly texted back: “Think about the ones you love.”

    • Environment

      • Greenhouse gas levels surge despite slow economy

        The global economy has been hard hit by the Covid pandemic. But greenhouse gas levels have worryingly shot upwards.

      • Scientific American to Use ‘Climate Emergency’ in Magazine’s Future Coverage

        “This idea is not a journalistic fancy,” writes a senior editor. “We are on solid scientific ground.”

        After over 175 years of publishing, Scientific American made a major editorial announcement on Monday: the historic U.S. magazine will officially adopt the term “climate emergency” for its coverage of the human-caused crisis.

      • ‘The Climate Emergency Is Not Coming. It Is Here’: Local Officials Across US Demand Fracking Ban

        “It’s time for our leaders in Washington to tackle the climate crisis now, not later. This means halting fracking and fossil fuel projects, period.”

        More than 375 local and state elected officials from across the United States sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Congress Tuesday urging national leaders to halt all new fracking and fossil fuel infrastructure projects. 

      • European Court Opens Itself up to Climate-Related Human Rights Challenges – DeSmog
      • Opinion | When It Comes to the Climate Crisis, Those Responsible Should Be Held Accountable

        Majority Action, has released a list of 30 corporate directors who are obstacles to climate progress—directors who should be voted out of positions of power to make way for people who are more climate literate. 

        Along with many others, I’ve spent the last four years urging JPMorgan Chase to stop providing financial services to the fossil fuel industry. It’s been no easy task. Since the Paris Agreement was signed, Chase has loaned more than $317 billion to the fossil fuel industry—33% more than any other bank on the planet. Want to build a massive new tar sands pipeline? JPMorgan is your bank. What to build a vast new coal mine? Just give Chase CEO Jamie Dimon a call, he’s your man.

      • How Warming Oceans Are Accelerating the Climate Crisis

        Adapted from an article for the Florida Climate Reporting Network’s project “The Invading Sea,” this article is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

        The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize. Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather—that much is widely understood. The larger problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.

      • Opinion | Why the World Needs a Green Social Contract

        The green transformation will have far-reaching socio-economic implications. Action is needed to ensure domestic and international social equity and fairness.

        As a climate policy researcher, I am often asked: what is the biggest obstacle to decarbonisation? My answer has changed profoundly over the last couple of years. Before, I used to point to a complex combination of a lack of cost-competitive green technologies and an absence of political will. Today, I point to something else. Something less tangible, but possibly more challenging: the absence of a green social contract.

      • Over 25 Years, World’s Wealthiest 5% Behind Over One-Third of Global Emissions Growth: Study

        “We have got to cut over-consumption and the best place to start is over-consumption among the polluting elites who contribute by far more than their share of carbon emissions.”

        As world leaders prepare for this November’s United Nations Climate Conference in Scotland, a new report from the Cambridge Sustainability Commission reveals that the world’s wealthiest 5% were responsible for well over a third of all global emissions growth between 1990 and 2015. 

      • Energy

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Bozeman Watershed Logging Project Based on Flawed Assumptions

          Flawed assumptions and science characterize all these state-funded projects. Even though numerous studies have documented that logging/thinning fails to protect homes or reduce fire severity in nearly all instances, the mindless mantra that logging will preclude large fires continues unabated.

          + Most of the acreage burned annually results from a few blazes burning under “extreme” fire weather conditions. Under these conditions, the climatic/weather conditions trump fuels as the primary factor in fire spread.

        • Human Solidarity and Nature Conservation

          We know that the most elementary organisms of proto-life, like the SARS-CoV-2 virus that infects people with the deadly COVID-19 disease, have no purpose beyond the mindless mechanical continuation of their genetic formats, by feeding their metabolisms through parasitism. But, what of more conscious organisms, like: plants, animals, us?

          We humans pride ourselves as presumably having the most highly developed conscious minds of all life-forms on Planet Earth (though very deep ecologists and naturalists disagree with this presumptuousness). From this human-centric point of view, the various levels of consciousness of living organisms are all evolutionary adaptations enhancing the survivability of individuals, to thus enhance the likelihood of the propagation and continuation of their species as environmental conditions change.  

    • Finance

      • Opinion | It’s Time for Corporations to Pay America What They Owe

        Biden and Yellen are taking on the herculean job of cleaning the Augean stables after decades of rampant and growing tax abuse.

        America’s corporate sector owes the rest of the economy big time. And the Biden administration is taking first steps to redress this through long-overdue tax reforms that will help pay for the modernization of infrastructure that businesses—and all of us—need to thrive. 

      • Will a Scorched-Earth Campaign Successfully Invisibilize Toronto’s Homeless Encampments?

        Toronto’s police, fire department, and most other City officials have provided a carefully drawn study in steadfastly looking the other way when it comes to the cause of such fires.

        Jeff, a gaunt, goateed man who had just turned forty-six years old, dealt drugs in the Sanctuary-Hislop encampment.

      • The Trillion Dollar SUV

        Let me spell that out for you: $1,002,300,000,000. At Wall Street’s market closed Friday, according to the billionaire trackers at Forbes, America’s eight richest individuals held over $1 trillion for the first time ever.

        Six of the eight — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Larry Ellison — each now sit on a personal fortune worth $100 billion or more. But don’t feel bad for the other two, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both of Google. With wealth of $98.6 billion and $95.6 billion respectively, they’re both sitting just a rounding error away from “centi-billionaire” status.

      • A Plea to President Biden to Stop Perpetuating Racist Tax Policy

        Dear President Biden,

        You have pledged to fight to rid our nation of systemic racism. I believe you mean that. But it seems that many in your administration do not. Or perhaps they simply underestimate your resolve.

      • Opinion | Why the Poorest Millionaires Should Stop Worrying About a Wealth Tax

        If you don’t have $20 million or sitting around you can just relax.

        Benjamin Franklin observed that nothing is certain except death and taxes.

      • Lessons From Bessemer: What Amazon’s Union Defeat Means for the American Labor Movement

        When Amazon opened its second fulfillment center in the Baltimore region, in 2018, most anyone driving to it from the city arrived via Dundalk Avenue, which took them past a yellow brick building that was constructed in 1952 to house Local 2609 and 2610 of the United Steelworkers and an adjacent building that opened after Local 2610 moved into its own space.

        By then, the buildings were mostly vacant, because the steel mill whose workers the union had represented had closed, in 2012, after a long, steady decline. The Bethlehem Steel works were once the largest in the world, an industrial sprawl on the Sparrows Point peninsula that employed some 30,000 people, several thousand of whom lived in an adjoining company town. The work had been grueling and frequently treacherous since the mill’s founding, in the 1890s: “Always More Production” was the slogan of Eugene Grace, Bethlehem Steel’s president from 1916 to 1945. And, in the early decades of the 20th century, a disproportionate share of the fruits of the workers’ labor flowed to the top: Grace’s predecessor split his time between a mansion on Riverside Drive, in New York, which with 75 rooms and a dining salon that could seat 250 was the largest residence in the city, and a 1,000-acre, 18-building estate in Pennsylvania, which required a staff of 70 and included a replica of a farming village in Normandy.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Will Biden’s Foreign Policy Sap His Domestic Policy?

        In his first 100 days, President Biden has rolled out elements of his “build back better” domestic reform agenda, including the American Rescue Plan, his $2 trillion infrastructure bill and a family plan soon to come. Simultaneously, he has turbocharged his “ America is back” foreign policy, exchanging insults with Russia and China, striking at Iranian militia camps in Syria, rejoining the Paris climate agreement and more. Both at home and abroad, his initiatives must overcome strong opposition. The larger question is whether the foreign policy will sap the energy, attention and resources needed to rebuild the United States at home.

        The scope of Biden’s domestic ambitions has been a pleasant surprise. The president has called for new industrial policy to address the climate calamity, long overdue investments in infrastructure and housing, fair trade and “ buy American” policies, tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, bolstering economic rights, and beginning to redress racial inequities.

      • U.S. President Biden proposes summit meeting during call with Putin

        U.S. President Joe Biden spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, April 13.

      • Right-Wing Banker Pulls Off Upset Win in Ecuador Over Leftist Champion

        “Now is a time for reflection,” said Progressive International’s David Adler. “The triumph of lawfare should send a chill through the global community.”

        Following left-wing economist Andrés Arauz’s loss to right-wing former banker Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador’s recent presidential election, Progressive International on Monday argued that the disappointing results reflect the unsettling “triumph of lawfare” and underscore the need for progressive forces of all stripes to unify behind an emancipatory vision in order to “defeat the reactionary right” worldwide.

      • Opinion | The Republican Party Must Be Purged Like the Nazis and Fascists

        It must not be allowed, like the Confederacy was, to live on with its own “lost cause” BS mythology.

        President Joe Biden has largely given up on trying to negotiate anything with Republicans. There’s a good reason for this: the GOP is no longer a legitimate political party.

      • Russian businessmen close to Putin have lost billions of rubles on the winery near his alleged palace

        The winery located near President Vladimir Putin’s alleged “palace” on the Black Sea has cost its owners billions of rubles in losses over the past three years, reports MBX Media.

      • This isn’t a Border Crisis, It’s a Poverty, Violence and Climate Crisis

        Despite their legal rights to apply for asylum, U.S. officials are turning away huge numbers, claiming pandemic restrictions. But thousands of children remain, held in crowded border detention facilities while awaiting transfer to Department of Health and Human Services facilities that are full to bursting.

        The situation is terrible for those children and their families. But dealing with it isn’t rocket science: The government should authorize emergency spending to expand and build new facilities and hire social workers, health care providers, and teachers to care for these kids — along with an expanded team of family reunion workers.

      • The Return of Northern Ireland as the Most Dangerous Open Wound in British Political Life
      • When Prince Philip Became a Monument

        The awardees were justifiably brilliant.  There were the establishment birds of paradise: the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, a man who soporifically charmed; and the Bank of England governor, Mervyn King.  The mad cat mathematician’s contribution was also honoured in the form of string theorist Edward Witten of Princeton. Honorary doctorates in law were also conferred upon educator Charles Vest and writer Njabulo Ndebele. Ahmed Zewail scooped the honorary doctorate in science and novelist Margaret Drabble the honorary doctorate in letters.

        The ceremony was softly coated in formal Latin, the awards themselves granted to the bright and the brightest, the hall acting as a brace of history.  But it was the Duke of Edinburgh who, as ever, managed to cut through what would have otherwise been a stuffy gathering with his immemorial manner.  Cambridge University’s chancellor turned up to preside, and, his cloak train held by the unfortunate subaltern, appeared like a decorated reptile, gown merged with body.

      • GOP Smears DOJ Civil Rights Pick Kristen Clarke in Latest Attack on Voting Rights & Racial Justice

        We look at President Biden’s nomination of Kristen Clarke to become the first Black woman to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the conservative smear campaign against the veteran civil rights lawyer. The far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson has devoted at least five segments to attacking Clarke’s nomination, including baseless accusations of anti-Semitism. Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way and former president of the NAACP, says “the right-wing attack machine” springs into action whenever Black nominees are up for confirmation. “They make sport, quite frankly, of trying to defame their character, destroy their reputation, and they see women of color as being very vulnerable,” says Jealous. He also addresses the state of police-community relations in the U.S. and efforts to stop police impunity for killing Black people.

      • ‘White Lives Matter’ protests are failing across America. Here’s one big reason why.

        Other critics say deplatforming would drive bad actors underground toward more nefarious watering holes. But evidence shows the opposite: Most simply give up. They are demoralized by the sudden loss of influence and income.

      • Anti-war podcaster harassed by police after criticizing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter

        The tweet that apparently prompted the police visit was a video clip of Ocasio-Cortez in which she provided a tortuously convoluted response to a question on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which bordered on incomprehensible. Wentz described her answer to the question as “incredibly underwhelming” and, as is commonplace on Twitter, tagged the congresswoman.

        [...]

        The fact that either a tweet criticizing Ocasio-Cortez or a tweet in which Wentz was tagged but did not author could lead to police harassment at Wentz’s home has serious implications for the entire working class.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Tennessee Lawmakers Decide Chris Sevier Has Good Ideas, Push His Bill To Compel Speech From Media Outlets

        There’s no freer speech than compelled speech. That’s the conclusion some Tennessee legislators have come to. Sure, they managed to whip up an actual anti-SLAPP law that’s starting to curtail the state’s reputation as a place where anyone can be sued for anything they say… including things they didn’t actually say.

      • Why Would China Censor Oscars Over a Short Doc Nominee? ‘They Are Obviously Afraid,’ Director Says

        Anders Hammer, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary short “Do Not Split,” talks to TheWrap about the Chinese government’s harsh reaction to his film on the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

      • China Orders No Live Oscars After Hong Kong Protest Film Nomination

        China told local media not to broadcast next month’s Oscars ceremony in real time and to play down coverage of the awards, according to people familiar with the matter, after a documentary on the Hong Kong protests was nominated and amid concern over the political views of Best Director contender Chloe Zhao.

        The Communist Party’s propaganda department issued the order to all media outlets, said the people, declining to be identified given the sensitivity of the issue. Outlets were told that Oscars coverage should focus on awards that aren’t seen as controversial, according to the people.

      • Hollywood’s China Problem Unfolds In Ongoing Chloé Zhao Controversy

        The answer is pretty obvious. Beijing’s notoriously sensitive powerbrokers, of course, have already taken note. Disney badly needs access to the Chinese market when it comes to releasing “Eternals,” Zhao’s forthcoming Marvel film. Angered by Zhao’s prior sentiments, Chinese Communist Party sensors could imperil the “Eternals” release, blocking their citizens from interacting with the work of a perceivably hostile artist who left China and found success in the West. The government actually took steps to censor online chatter about Zhao and “Nomadland” in March.

        That means Disney is in damage-control mode, which would explain the missing quote from Filmmaker’s article on Zhao. The publication deleted the quote in February, eight years later, and added a note to say the story had been “edited and condensed after publication.”

      • Is Hong Kong’s Oscars blackout a sign of Beijing’s crackdown on Hollywood?

        Critics fear the move, announced this week, could be part of a broader crackdown on real or perceived critics of the Chinese government. English-language Hong Kong newspaper The Standard suggested that the Oscars ban was also in response to Chinese filmmaker Chloe Zhao’s critical comments about China and her multiple nominations for the awards this year. Zhao’s US drama “Nomadland” is the frontrunner to win the top prize for Best Picture at the Academy Award ceremony next month.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Prison officials declare Navalny’s health satisfactory, but his wife says otherwise

        Two weeks after the start of his prison hunger strike, Alexey Navalny’s health is “satisfactory,” according to Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officials in Russia’s Vladimir region.

      • Russian oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin wins defamation case against ‘Navalny Live’ host

        A Moscow court has partially satisfied a lawsuit filed by Russian catering mogul Evgeny Prigozhin against opposition politician Vladimir Milov, the host of the YouTube show “Navalny Live.”

      • Right-Wing Attacks on Germany’s Press

        In the former East-German city of Leipzig, on a cold and damp evening of 7 November 2020 everything looked rather ordinary. It was dark but local people came to the rally. They screamed and waved their arms. Bottles became missiles and fireworks exploded. Suddenly, a group of aggressive demonstrators broke through the police line. Right in the middle were newspaper reporters and public broadcast journalists from TV stations.

        Some of these media people pressed their backs against a police car which seemed to offer the only protection. But the journalists were surrounded by the unruly crowd. The right-wing mob gathered. The police were watching as the howling pack across the street. Journalists were insulted and called whores and traitors. They were called liars and fake news mongers, just as Donald Trump did for years. The playbook is the same, the country different. Reporters were shoved, spat at, threatened with lethal injuries and the Hitler salute is shown.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Amazon Vote Shows Why We Need the PRO act
      • The Sweeps Stop Here?

        Whether or not that is the case, something important is happening.  There are new developments every day, so just describing what’s been going on feels like taking a picture of a moving train, but it seems like a good moment to give a little report-back.

        As I describe what’s been going on, I’ll just note first that I don’t mean to be implying that similar kinds of efforts haven’t been ongoing all over the country for a long time — they have.  And even thriving, intersectional rebellions like Tompkins Square Park in New York City in the 1980’s could be crushed, with enough money spent on riot cop overtime.  But what’s happening at Laurelhurst has an energy about it that has many echoes of Tompkins Square.

      • Stand with Haiti! A Call for Solidarity

        Ten years ago on March 18, 2011, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, his wife and colleague, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, and their two children, returned from forced exile in South Africa. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Port-au-Prince and poured into the courtyard of their home to greet them, seeing in their return a renewal of hope for a democratic and just Haiti.

        In honor of that day and to demonstrate our resolve to support the people’s movement in Haiti, we the undersigned organizations join with Haiti Action Committee to call for a Day of Solidarity With Haiti on March 18, 2021.

      • Farmworkers Need Families, Not Deportation and Exploitation

        Deporting people while bringing in contract farm labor is not new.  In 1954, during the bracero program the U.S. deported 1,074,277 people in the infamous “Operation Wetback, and brought in 309,033 contract workers. ” Two years later 445,197 braceros were brought to work on U.S. farms.

        Farmworkers already living in the U.S. were replaced by contract labor when they demanded higher wages.  Farmworker advocates accused the government of using deportations to create a labor shortage, and force workers and growers into the bracero program. Braceros were abused and cheated, they argued, and deported if they went on strike.

      • How Antidiscrimination Law Fails Black Mothers

        One July night in 2019, Tiffinni Archie felt a stranger’s fingers closing around her throat and woke up screaming. Too scared to fall sleep again, she took a shower and tried to get ready for another day at work. At night, in her dreams, it was always strangers who attacked, chased, and strangled her; by day, it was her supervisor who slapped her on the back and called her the “token African American” at their small police department in Washington state.

        Every day she braced herself for a new attack: Her coworkers wrote a letter to the chief of police accusing her of sleeping with another minority police officer for favors on the job. They accused her of putting her hand on her vagina and then rubbing her coworker’s face. One coworker told her that he had to work twice as hard because “minorities have it easy.” They cruised past her home at night to intimidate her. She lived in fear of what they might do or say to her next.

      • ‘Team Navalny’ members detained in multiple Russian cities over the past two days

        The authorities in multiple Russian cities have detained several members of “Team Navalny” over the past two days. Moreover, on April 12, two employees of the newly opened campaign headquarters in Makhachkala were reported missing. These arrests and disappearances have been accompanied by searches of the Team Navalny headquarters in St. Petersburg and Voronezh, while the campaign office in Murmansk was left with property damage after a break-in.

      • Navalny files lawsuit against prison for withholding his copy of the Quran

        Imprisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny has filed a lawsuit against Pokrov’s Penal Colony No. 2, where he is serving a 2.5 year sentence, for withholding his copy of the Quran. 

      • Biden’s Supreme Court Commission Is Designed to Fail

        I can distill the Democrats’ decades-long failure to control the Supreme Court into a single concept: Republicans use the nation’s highest court to reward their hard-core voting base; Democrats use it to pacify their moderates. The staunch refusal of establishment Democrats to offer anything more than a token defense of their voters through the court is the reason Democrats are always fighting an asymmetrical war over the third branch of government—and always losing.

        The latest Democratic Party failure is Joe Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court. Last week, in fulfillment of his campaign promise, Biden announced the composition of an 180-day commission to study expanding the court. Biden’s choices confirm the worst fears court reformers had about the president: He doesn’t want a solution; he wants an excuse to do nothing.

      • Solidarity With the Asian Community

        Check out all installments in the OppArt series.

      • An NDA Was Designed to Keep Me Quiet

        Companies have long used NDAs to prevent competitors from poaching confidential information and good ideas. But they appear to increasingly be used to prevent workers from speaking out about instances of harassment, discrimination or assault they may face on the job.

        During the #MeToo movement, those who came forward to report workplace abuses did so at great personal and legal risk. But it shouldn’t be this way. That is why I’m helping lead the passage of a bill in California that, if signed into law, will allow victims of any kind of workplace discrimination to speak openly about the abuse they experience, regardless of the language in an NDA.

      • Grocery workers died feeding the nation. Now, their families are left to pick up the pieces.

        More than one year after the pandemic first swept across the country, the plight of grocery workers who risked death to keep the country fed has raised questions about retail labor conditions and the responsibility of corporations in worker deaths from the coronavirus. At least 158 grocery workers have died from the virus, with at least 35,100 workers infected or exposed, according to data from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

        Walmart has seen at least 22 store workers die from Covid-19, according to worker-sourced data provided to United For Respect, a nonprofit labor advocacy group. Walmart declined to comment on the number of coronavirus cases among its 1.5 million U.S.-based workers.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • California: Demand Broadband for All

        Take Action

        Tell your Senators to Support S.B. 4

        This is why EFF is part of a coalition of nonprofits, private-sector companies, and local governments in support of  S.B. 4. Authored by California State Senator Lena Gonzalez, the bill would promote construction of the 21 st century infrastructure necessary to finally put a dent in, and eventually close, the digital divide in California.

    • Monopolies

      • Why it’s easier to move country than switch social media

        When we talk about social media monopolies, we focus too much on network effects, and not enough on switching costs. Yes, it’s true that all your friends are already stuck in a Big Tech silo that doesn’t talk to any of the other Big Tech silos. It needn’t be that way: interoperable platforms have existed since the first two Arpanet nodes came online. You can phone anyone with a phone number and email anyone with an email address.

        The reason you can’t talk to Facebook users without having a Facebook account isn’t that it’s technically impossible – it’s that Facebook forbids it. What’s more, Facebook (and its Big Tech rivals) have the law on their side: the once-common practice of making new products that just work with existing ones (like third-party printer ink, or a Mac program that can read Microsoft Office files, or an emulator that can play old games) has been driven to the brink of extinction by Big Tech. They were fine with this kind of “competitive compatibility” when it benefited them, but now that they dominate the digital world, it’s time for it to die.

        To restore competitive compatibility, we would need reform to many laws: software copyright and patents, the anti-circumvention laws that protect digital rights management, and the cybersecurity laws that let companies criminalize violations of their terms of service.

      • Patents

        • Patent Loving Judge Keeps Pissing Off Patent Appeals Court, But Doesn’t Seem To Care Very Much

          You may recall last fall we had an absolutely astounding story about Judge Alan Albright, a former patent litigator, who was appointed as the only judge in the federal district court in Waco. He very, very quickly made it clear that he wanted all patent cases to come to him, turning the Western District of Texas into the new favored home of patent trolls, taking the mantle from East Texas, which has famously been the trolls’ preferred home for over a decade. Albright did things most people inherently recognize no judge should ever do. This includes things like literally going on a publicity tour to convince patent holders and trolls to file patent cases in his court. To this day, he seems to relish the fact that, despite being on the bench for just a little over two years, more than 20% of all patent cases end up on his personal docket.

      • Trademarks

        • Flip-Flop: Nike Now On The Receiving End Of Trademark Threat Over USPS Inspired Sneakers

          Nike finds itself on our pages again. We’re fresh off of the settlement Nike reached with MSCHF over the Lil Nas X “Satan shoes”. That settlement sees MSCHF agreeing to buy back at retail prices 666 modified Nike Air Max 97s after Nike sued over trademark. It could have been an interesting case, bringing in all kinds of questions about resale rights, the First Amendment, ownership of property, and more. Instead, it all ends with a posturing settlement that achieves nearly nothing, since these fought-over shoes have suddenly been moonshot into an even more rare and valuable item than they already were. But, Nike gets its ounce of litigation blood and gets to pretend this is all somehow a victory.

      • Copyrights

        • Google triumphs over Oracle

          Recently the US Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that Google’s use did indeed represent fair use under US law and the long-running case is now finished. Oracle was understandably not pleased, while Google declared the decision to be “a victory for consumers, interoperability and computer science”. The ruling covered 37 Java APIs and 11,500 lines of copyrighted code so it begs the question of just how much you can “reuse” before being culpable. In a separate ruling, the court also vacated a ruling that found the former US president Donald Trump could not block Twitter users, which opens up the question can Twitter block Twitter users? I suspect we will see a lot more on this last ruling in the coming months.

          - They said it would never happen, but in other Java-related news Microsoft has released its own OpenJDK variant with binaries for Java 11 for macOS, Linux and Windows platforms. Microsoft also plans to make the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK the default distribution for Java 11 across Azure-managed services later this year.

          - Going even further back, nearly 30 years in this case, the eons old case of SCO vs Linux has reared up from the almost dead once more. As one source put it “the software zombie court case to end all zombie software court cases has woken from its slumber”. The SCO Group tried from a long time back to get money out of 1,500 companies, without success. IBM was a main target and they ended up paying out a little just to stop the harassment. In more recent times a group called Xinous found some money and are having another go but the word is that they will have even less luck than the SCO Group did back in the day. There is now after all such a thing as Ubuntu for Windows.

        • MSCHF’s ‘Exclusive’ Pirate Bay and Megaupload Email Addresses Sold Out Quickly

          Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF ‘dropped’ a set of exclusive email addresses, featuring The Pirate Bay and Megaupload domains. While these hype domains have nothing to do with the original sites and cost a healthy $250 apiece, they sold like hot cakes. Even the $1,200 box sets, including 4Chan, Heaven’s Gate, and Angelfire addresses, are no longer available.

        • ‘Pirate’ Law Firm Pressured Cooperative Housing Project to Settle Porn ‘Lawsuit’

          Under-fire law firm Njord Law pressured a cooperative housing association to settle a proposed lawsuit, despite none of the parties having any idea who the infringer was. In a clear sign that copyright trolls’ answer to every response is “pay us”, Njord simply kept dropping the settlement amount until paying became the least painful option.

04.13.21

Links 13/4/2021: FreeBSD 13.0 Final, Slackware 15.0 GNU/Linux Beta Release and OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 Plans

Posted in News Roundup at 8:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • The Linux Community Is Real. Linux UNITY Is A Myth.

        In today’s backyard boomer rant, I talk about “the Linux community” which some people think is not even a real thing. I think the Linux community is a real thing, or at least can be a real thing…

      • Full Review: The Tuxedo Pulse 15 Linux Notebook

        Tuxedo Computers sent their Pulse 15 Linux notebook to the studio, and it gets a full review in this video. I’ll talk about the build quality, battery life, performance, and more!

      • Ubuntu Unity Remix 21.04 Beta

        Today we are looking at Ubuntu Unity Remix 21.04 Beta. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.11, Unity, and uses about 1.5GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

      • Ubuntu Unity Remix 21.04 Beta Run Through

        In this video, we are looking at Ubuntu Ubnity Remix 21.04 Beta.

      • GNOME 40. I have questions – my first impressions

        Today we’re taking a quick look into the changes that have landed in GNOME 40 – why those changes exist and whether they make a real difference.

      • This LINUX DESKTOP is a MONSTER – Slimbook Kymera review

        I bought a new desktop! It comes from Slimbook, which is a spanish company that sells laptops and desktops with Linux preinstalled, and it’s a pretty big upgrade over the previous one I used, so it’s time we take a look at it, at the experience of buying it, and using it after that!

      • Late Night Linux – Episode 120

        Signal disappoints with crypto nonsense, Google finally triumphs over Oracle, Nvidia helps out Mozilla’s voice project, the EFF helps you find out if you’re part of Chrome’s latest experiment, KDE Korner, and more.

    • Kernel Space

      • New Important Kernel Update Released for RHEL 7 and CentOS Linux 7 Systems

        The new Linux kernel security update comes just three weeks after the previous one, which patched 11 flaws, to address three vulnerabilities affecting the Linux 3.10 kernel used in all supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and CentOS Linux 7 operating system series.

        Two of these vulnerabilities are marked by the Red Hat Product Security team as “important.” These include CVE-2021-27365, a heap buffer overflow discovered in Linux kernel’s iSCSI subsystem that could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code, and CVE-2021-27364, an out-of-bounds read flaw discovered in the libiscsi module that could lead to reading kernel memory or a crash.

      • Russell Coker: Yama

        I’ve just setup the Yama LSM module on some of my Linux systems. Yama controls ptrace which is the debugging and tracing API for Unix systems. The aim is to prevent a compromised process from using ptrace to compromise other processes and cause more damage. In most cases a process which can ptrace another process which usually means having capability SYS_PTRACE (IE being root) or having the same UID as the target process can interfere with that process in other ways such as modifying it’s configuration and data files. But even so I think it has the potential for making things more difficult for attackers without making the system more difficult to use.

        If you put “kernel.yama.ptrace_scope = 1” in sysctl.conf (or write “1” to /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope) then a user process can only trace it’s child processes. This means that “strace -p” and “gdb -p” will fail when run as non-root but apart from that everything else will work. Generally “strace -p” (tracing the system calls of another process) is of most use to the sysadmin who can do it as root. The command “gdb -p” and variants of it are commonly used by developers so yama wouldn’t be a good thing on a system that is primarily used for software development.

        Another option is “kernel.yama.ptrace_scope = 3” which means no-one can trace and it can’t be disabled without a reboot. This could be a good option for production servers that have no need for software development. It wouldn’t work well for a small server where the sysadmin needs to debug everything, but when dozens or hundreds of servers have their configuration rolled out via a provisioning tool this would be a good setting to include.

      • Secret Memory Areas For Linux Might Finally Be Ready With memfd_secret

        In development for more than one year has been the ability to create secret memory areas on Linux that would be visible only to the owning process and is not mapped for other processes or the kernel page tables. That “memfd_secret” system call has finally materialized in Linux-Next and looking like it could be ready for mainline.

        The memfd_secret system call is the new interface for creating secret memory areas on Linux for use-cases like OpenSSL in user-space for storing private keys and reducing the chances they are potentially exposed while in system memory and not backed by any other hardware encryption methods.

      • Multigenerational LRU Code Updated For Enhancing Linux Kernel Performance

        Last month Google engineers proposed multi-generational LRU for Linux to enhance the kernel performance and today the work has advanced to a second version.

        Google’s Yu Zhao announced the “v2″ of the multigenerational LRU framework today for the Linux kernel. The key takeaway from this work remains: “The current page reclaim is too expensive in terms of CPU usage and often making poor choices about what to evict. We would like to offer an alternative framework that is performant, versatile and straightforward.”

        As noted in the original article on the matter, the multi-generational LRU code in its preliminary form was found to yield ~18% fewer low-memory kills on Android, reducing cold starts by 16%, on Chrome OS there were ~96% fewwer low-memory tab discards and 59% fewer out-of-memory kills on fully-utilized devices. Google’s testing found a “significant reduction” in CPU usage with this proposed multi-generational LRU (Least Recently Used) framework.

      • Linux kernel will soon have initial support for Apple’s M1 chipset

        Apple revealed its first desktop-class System-on-a-Chip design last year, the Apple M1, based on the same ARM architecture as most smartphones and tablets. While Linux has worked well on ARM devices (like the Raspberry Pi) for years, Apple’s hardware is heavily customized and requires specific software support. Thankfully, we’re now one step closer to running Linux on Apple Silicon.

        Asahi Linux has been working to bring “a polished Linux experience” to Apple Silicon Macs and has been submitting its code to the Linux project for inclusion in the official Linux kernel. The group’s initial work has been merged into the Linux SoC codebase, and will likely arrive as part of the upcoming Linux 5.13 update.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Vulkan Video Arrives For New Industry-Standard Video Encode/Decode

          For years we have been eager to learn more about the long mentioned Vulkan Video API, which was supposed to come in H1-2020, but now has finally arrived with today’s v1.2.175 update in provisional form. The new Vulkan Video extensions allow for GPU-accelerated video encode/decode. The initial public work is treated as a provisional specification and with limited codec coverage but will be expanded upon in time.

          Vulkan Video allows for GPU-accelerated encode/decode and integration with the Vulkan API over scheduling, synchronization, and other Vulkan capabilities. The main new extensions for Vulkan Video are VK_KHR_video_queue, VK_KHR_video_decode_queue, and VK_KHR_video_encode_queue. Vulkan Video is designed to be extensible in terms of codec coverage while initially the new extensions there are VK_EXT_video_encode_h264, VK_EXT_video_decode_h264, and VK_EXT_video_decode_h265).

        • Vulkan 1.2.175 Published With Many New Extensions

          Vulkan 1.2.175 is now public as the latest Vulkan API specification and it’s bringing with it many new extensions.

        • Vulkan Video announced with new provisional extensions along with Vulkan 1.2.175 released | GamingOnLinux

          Vulkan, the graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs expands further with Vulkan Video and some provisional extensions. What is it? A new expansion years in the making to add in seamless hardware accelerated video compression and decompression into the Vulkan API.

          [...]

          The Khronos Group say they plan to “add support in the Vulkan SDK with layers for validation and higher-level abstractions that will speed the development of video applications where simple frame-in-frame-out and black-box decoding and encoding is sufficient” along with open source Vulkan Video samples for Windows and Linux. All of this closely integrates “hardware accelerated video processing with Vulkan’s existing graphics, compute and display functionality”.

        • NVIDIA Vulkan Beta 455.50.12 rolls out with new Vulkan Video extensions | GamingOnLinux

          As expected, NVIDIA continue to be at the forefront of new and improved Vulkan support as they’ve today rolled out the 455.50.12 Vulkan Beta Driver. This is to go along with the announcement of Vulkan Video and Vulkan 1.2.175 that were put out today too.

        • Arcan Presents “Pipeworld” Dataflow Computing Interface

          Arcan, the long running open-source display server built atop a game engine that has embraced technologies like XR/VR and Wayland and claims feature parity with X.Org this week announced their new Pipeworld project.

    • Applications

      • Best Email Clients For Linux [2021]

        Most of us access our emails from the web browser. While web browsers may be a common way of accessing emails but not quick and efficient. Email clients for Linux easily sync email accounts with the system and notify users of any new email.

        Email clients can add multiple email accounts and keep users informed about each and every new email. If needed, email clients also support plugin-ins for adding any missing feature. Email clients can also read feeds from your favorite blogs.

        In this article, I will review some of the best email clients for Linux. Even though this list contains 8 email clients, many of them still be out of the list. Let me know if you use any email client that you think should be in this list.

      • Quiet Audio Fade – Get The Quietest Volume Level for Work

        The tool is written in Go programming language, and it works in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

        It works as a system tray indicator with only a few menu options. The first option shows the current tool status (ACTIVE or PAUSED) along with the volume level in number.

        When it’s in ACTIVE mode, it slowly decreases your system volume bit by bit with time interval set in “Speed” option. Higher intervals mean a longer, more subtle decrease.

        Eventually you’ll notice the sound is a tad too low and you’ll increase the volume, which will disable Quiet AF and leave your volume at the perfect level – not too loud, not too quiet!

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Create an encrypted file vault on Linux

        Recently, I demonstrated how to implement full-drive encryption on Linux with LUKS and the cryptsetup command. While encrypting a whole drive is useful in many cases, there are reasons you might not want to encode an entire drive. For instance, you might require a drive to work across several platforms, some of which may not have Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) integration. Furthermore, it’s the 21st century, the cloud exists, and you may not be using a physical drive for all your data.

      • dmidecode: Get System Hardware Information On Linux

        Dmidecode is a Linux command line tool which is commonly used to retrieve the useful information of your system’s hardware components in human readable format.

      • 40+ most used Ubuntu 20.04 Commands

        The world of Ubuntu welcomes you and it is ready to grant you all the power over your system. However, being a newbie, you might find its Command Line Interface (CLI) a little intimidating. A lot of people find Linux more challenging as an operating system especially when they are coming from the comfort of using Windows or macOS.

        Here we present the basic but very important Ubuntu commands to give you an in-depth knowledge of how to use your Linux terminal.

      • 5 Linux Commands Every Linux User Should Know

        In this article, we will show you a few commands that every Linux administrator should know and use to make their lives easier.

        Many people think that the graphical environment is the easiest way to use Linux, but this is not the case. The easiest way is to work with the terminal and now we will show you some of the most pleasant commands that you can use every day.

      • 3 Ways to Install Skype in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout [Ed: Turning a GNU/Linux PC into a Microsoft eavesdropping device]
      • 10 of the best ways to get help on Linux | Network World

        Just because Linux appeals to the nerdiest of nerds doesn’t mean that it can’t be extremely helpful for those who don’t want to spend a lot of time delving into the technical details of how to use various commands. In fact, Linux provides a series of tools that can help anyone master the command line or just get the task at hand done more quickly and efficiently. This post covers 10 of the best options.

      • François Marier: Deleting non-decryptable restic snapshots

        Due to what I suspect is disk corruption error due to a faulty RAM module or network interface on my GnuBee, my restic backup failed with the following error…

      • How to install Funkin’ Kade Engine on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Friday Night Funkin’ Kade Engine on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • How To Change Directory in Linux Using the cd Command

        System navigation is one of the most basic tasks that a user can perform on an operating system. While many file managers are available that allow you to switch directories and navigate your disk drives in a graphical way, doing the same using the command line can provide you better control over your system.

        Luckily, Linux provides you with a command known as cd, which allows you to easily change the current working directory on your terminal.

        Here’s how you can use the cd command on Linux, the only utility that you’ll ever need to traverse through directories on your system storage.

      • 6 tcpdump network traffic filter options

        The tcpdump utility is used to capture and analyze network traffic. Sysadmins can use it to view real-time traffic or save the output to a file and analyze it later. In this three-part article, I demonstrate several common options you might want to use in your day-to-day operations with tcpdump.

      • How To Install Deluge BitTorrent Client on CentOS 8 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the Deluge BitTorrent Client on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Deluge using a front and back end architecture where libtorrent, a software library written in C++ which provides the application’s networking logic, is connected to one of various front ends including a text console, the Web interface, and a graphical desktop interface using GTK+ through the project’s own Python bindings.

        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 Deluge BitTorrent on a CentOS 8.

      • How to Mount an exFAT Drive on Ubuntu and Other Linux

        exFAT presents a proprietary filesystem that Microsoft created in 2006, which was first originally used in Windows operating systems and on various SD cards and USB drives. The main purpose of the existence of the exFAT filesystem is optimization for a USB flash drive.

        These days exFAT presents a standard for utilized default filesystem for numerous high-capacity SD cards or USB steak drives.

        On Linux, exFAT has been supported with a special implementation called fuse-exfat. In order to mount an exFAT drive on Linux, you need to install fuse-exfat.

      • How to Set or Change Hostname in Fedora Linux

        Setting up hostname is an important task when you are installing the operating system. Hostnames are invented to make human life easy. When you have 100’s of machines in your network it is not easy to remember each machine with its IP address but with hostname it becomes easy. Let’s dive in and see how simple it is to configure hostname in Fedora Linux.

      • How to Create User in Linux by Adduser in Ubuntu Tutorial for Beginners

        Are you a perfect user in Linux or need one more user for your Linux system/server.

        Today I am going to cover how to create user in Linux or add a user in Ubuntu by command. Having multiple users with different privileges is good for linux system security propose.

        This article is not to cover types of users in Linux.

        ‘useradd’ and adduser are the two most popular commands in Linux to create a new user. You are a system administrator and asked to create a new user account in Linux with some specific properties, limitations, and comments, etc.

      • How to Install Angular CLI on CentOS 8

        Angular is a popular open-source application development framework. It is highly extensible and used for developing mobile and web applications using TypeScript/JavaScript. It is designed for building small to large-scale applications from scratch. It provides an Angular CLI utility to create, manage, build and test Angular applications..

        In this post, we will show you how to install Angular (CLI) on CentOS 8.

      • How to Install PrestaShop with Apache and Let’s Encrypt SSL on CentOS 8

        PrestaShop is an open-source shopping cart written in the PHP used to create and manage your online business. It provides a simple and easy-to-use interface that helps you to launch your online store in a minimal time. It provides a lot of features including, a user-friendly interface, multiple payment gateways (PayPal, Google Checkout), mobile-responsive design, free support, multi-lingual, analytic, reporting and more.
        In this post, we will show you how to install PrestaShop with Apache and a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on CentOS 8.

      • How to create Cloudwatch alarms for a DynamoDB Table on AWS
      • How to install BMON in FreeBSD – LateWeb.Info

        bmon is a monitoring and debugging tool to capture networking related statistics and prepare them visually in a human friendly way. It features various output methods including an interactive curses user interface and a programmable text output for scripting.

      • How to install MX Linux 19.4

        In this video, I am going to show how to install MX Linux 19.4.

      • How To Install HTOP In FreeBSD – LateWeb.Info

        htop is an interactive system-monitor process-viewer and process-manager. It is designed as an alternative to the Unix program top. It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage. Unlike top, htop provides a full list of processes running, instead of the top resource-consuming processes. htop uses color and gives visual information about processor, swap and memory status. htop can also display the processes as a tree.

      • How To Install SpiderFoot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install SpiderFoot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Spiderfoot is a free source testing tool to analyze any vulnerabilities/malicious functions on the server to reduce the attacks. It is written in Python and uses SQLite as a database backend. It provides a web-based interface to perform penetration testing for more than one target simultaneously through a web browser.

        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 SpiderFoot 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 Visualize Disk Space Usage With Vizex In Linux – OSTechNix

        There are multitude of applications available to view as well as visualize disk usage in Linux. We already have looked at du, Ncdu, Agedu, Filelight, Duc and a few good alternatives to du command. Today we will discuss about yet another tool named Vizex to visualize disk space usage in Linux.

      • How to install MySQL in Ubuntu 20.04 a Step by Step Tutorial for Beginners

        MySQL is well known and an open-source database management system. It uses a relational database and SQL to manage data. It is easy to use, fast, and integrated with popular stacks Lamp, Xampp, Lemp, etc.

        In this tutorial, I will cover how to install MySQL in Ubuntu 20.04, Secure MySQL, Check MySQL service, Connect and use MySQL server, Uninstall MySQL in Ubuntu and more.

      • How to install SQLite & SQLite Browser on Ubuntu / Debian – LinuxH2O

        In this quick guide, you will go through the complete process on how to install SQLite and its companion graphical manager SQLiteBrowser on Ubuntu, Debian, and any of their derivatives.

        SQLite as the name itself suggests, a lightweight relational database management system contained in a C library. It does not follow the traditional client-server model like any other RDBMS (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Microsoft SQL). Rather, it is just a small self-contained file having everything in it. This file can be embedded into any end program.

        Being so small but still SQLite has ACID compliance and implements most of the SQL standards while following SQL syntax. Let’s see how you can get the SQLite in your Ubuntu or Debian distribution.

    • Games

      • How to play Nioh 2 on Linux

        Nioh 2 is the sequel to Nioh, a 2015 Action RPG. It takes place in Japan and was released on PS4, PS5, as well as Microsoft Windows. With a few tweaks, the game can run on Linux. Here’s how.

      • The Ultimate Guide to N64 Emulation on Retroarch

        The N64 is one of the greatest games consoles of all time, leading the way in the late 90s with pioneering 3D graphics and bringing franchises like Mario and Zelda into gorgeous open worlds. If you own the original games, you can relive these glory days through emulation on PC, which lets you do things like increase resolutions and framerates and add shaders over the game to recreate that retro feel.

        The emulation frontend Retroarch is arguably the best N64 emulator out there, letting you run several different N64 emulators as “cores” (as well as letting you play PS1, SNES, Sega Genesis, and various other retro console games on your PC). Here, we’ll show you the best way to get Retroarch to run your N64 collection.

      • How to Play PS1 Games on your PC with Retroarch

        Emulation is all the rage in PC gaming. Not only does it allow you to relive the glory days of retro titles on your PC, it also often allows you to enhance your experiences with those games. Going back to play an old game – especially from the PS1 era – can often shock those who are surprised at how much better these titles look through nostalgia glasses.

        Using RetroArch PS1 emulation, you can upscale and tweak these games to something that looks a lot closer to what you remember – and better.

      • Commandos 2 – HD Remaster has been released for Linux | GamingOnLinux

        Raylight Games / Yippee! Entertainment and Kalypso Media have today announced the release of Commandos 2 – HD Remaster for Linux after waiting over a year since the original release.

        “Take control of an elite group of Allied commandos who must venture deep into enemy territory and utilize their combined expertise to complete a series of progressively demanding missions. In this World War II genre-defining classic, explore interactive environments and use unique skill sets to complete missions against seemingly impossible odds.”

      • Flock of Dogs will have you and friends soar through the clouds on flying dogs and a whale | GamingOnLinux

        Yes this is a real game and yes it sounds hilarious. Developer Max Clark has now formally announced Flock of Dogs, a 1 – 8 player online / local co-op experience and I’m a little bit in love with the premise and style.

        Describing it as simply as possible Clark says it’s a “top-down, twin-stick, crew game. Most of the time, one player pilots the whale and everyone else rides flying dogs to battle and quest. Players can land on the whale and relaunch when ready. The journey leads to the Flying Festival through procedurally-generated, floating biomes with a mix of creatures, characters, and quests.”

        It sounds completely wild, and the visuals and gameplay matches up wonderfully to the idea. Inspired by storybooks like Goodnight Moon, The Cat in the Hat, and Go, Dog!. The idea is that each playthrough had you journey to an annual Flying Festival, with each year seeing the skies you fly through being different.

      • Across the Obelisk is an engrossing new deck-builder with online co-op

        You’ve played Slay the Spire, Dicey Dungeons and many other great deck-builder but now it’s time for Across the Obelisk to shine and it’s rather engrossing. We did some pre-release testing for the developer on the Linux build and it’s already great fun even though it’s not finished, as this is an Early Access game.

        This is a party-based game so you build up a roster of powerful heroes, each with their own set of cards and items they can equip to buff various statistics. What makes it quite different is that you can play it in co-op online with other players controlling different heroes in the party. Quite a refreshing little mix!

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Internet Radio Player Shortwave 2.0 Releases with Adaptive Interface

          Shortwave is an impressive Internet radio player for Linux desktops. It offers a modern and minimal user interface.

          Shortwave v2.0 has finally landed after its last release in June 2020. Formerly known as Gradio, the new iteration of the app has become more robust and has a slew of nifty features thanks to Felix Häcker and other contributors.

          It was already an easy-to-use app that enables users to simply launch the app, select a radio station and hit play. No subscriptions or sign-ups required. A no-frills, no-nonsense minimal internet radio player.

        • Shortwave Internet Radio Player 2.0 Released With UI Rewritten In GTK4, New Mini Player Mode

          Shortwave Internet radio player has reached version 2.0, adding a new mini player mode, redesigned station information dialog, and more. Also, the user interface has been ported to GTK4.

          Shortwave is a GTK Internet radio player written in Rust, created as the successor of Gradio. It uses radio-browser.info as its radio stations database, which features more than 25,000 radio stations, but this also means that if you want to add a radio station that’s not already in the database, you’ll need to add it to radio-browser.info, with no option to add it directly in Shortware.
          The radio player features include the ability o easily discover new radio stations, add your favorite radio stations to your library, automatically record songs (with automatic detection based on the stream metadata), adaptive layout, play audio on Chromecast devices, MPRISv2 support, and more.

    • Distributions

      • Reviews

        • Lubuntu (20.10) Review: A Modern Take on the Classic Desktop

          After a sub-par 20.04 version, Lubuntu returns updated, upgraded, and all-around improved. What should you expect from it compared to other distributions or the other members of the Ubuntu family? Read on to find out.

          Like many modern Linux distributions, Lubuntu boots into a live environmen, where you can both test it and start its actual installation on your computer.

      • BSD

        • FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE Announcement

          The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE. This is the first release of the stable/13 branch.

        • FreeBSD 13.0 Brings Better Performance, LLVM Clang 11, Obsolete GNU Bits Removed

          FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE is now officially available as the debut of the big FreeBSD 13 feature update.

          FreeBSD 13.0 delivers on performance improvements (particularly for Intel CPUs we’ve seen in benchmarks thanks to hardware P-States), upgrading to LLVM Clang 11 as the default compiler toolchain, POWER 64-bit support improvements, a wide variety of networking improvements, 64-bit ARM (AArch64) now being a tier-one architecture alongside x86_64, EFI boot improvements, AES-NI is now included by default for generic kernel builds, the default CPU support for i386 is bumped to i686 from i486, and a variety of other hardware support improvements.

        • FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE Release Notes

          The release notes for FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 13-STABLE development line. This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since the last release, as well as significant changes to the FreeBSD kernel and userland. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.

        • FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE Errata

          This document lists errata items for FreeBSD “13.0-RELEASE”, containing significant information discovered after the release or too late in the release cycle to be otherwise included in the release documentation. This information includes security advisories, as well as news relating to the software or documentation that could affect its operation or usability. An up-to-date version of this document should always be consulted before installing this version of FreeBSD.

      • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

        • OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 Promises Linux Kernel 5.11, Official AMD Vulkan Driver

          While they continue to work hard on the next major OpenMandriva Lx release, version 5.0, the development team saw an opportunity to release a new update for the OpenMandriva Lx 4 series, which arrived in mid-June 2019, due to the multitude of package updates and recent GNU/Linux technologies published lately.

          As such, OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 is now taking shape as the third installment in the OpenMandriva Lx 4 series, shipping with the latest Linux 5.11 kernel and KDE Plasma 5.21 desktop environment series, as well as the systemd 248 init system, FFmpeg 4.4 multimedia framework, Mesa 21.0 graphics stack, and LLVM/Clang 12 system compiler.

        • OpenMandriva: Plans for OM Lx 4.3 release

          It’s not what we were originally planning, but we are planning a OM Lx 4.3 release very soon — an extra release made possible by the load of progress made in the Cooker development branch before getting to some of the major core changes planned for 5.0 — changes we don’t want to withhold from people not ready to install a 5.0 development snapshot.

        • What To Do After Installing OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 for Ubuntu Users

          Continuing the downloads, now here’s our traditional What To Do article for OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 (made easy for Ubuntu users). This includes how to install more software, setup several stuff on the desktop, and getting started to the Control Center. I wish you really enjoy this!

      • Slackware Family

        • Current (pre-release) ChangeLog for x86_64
        • Slackware 15 Beta Process Begins – Phoronix

          Back in February Slackware 15.0 went into alpha, nine years since Slackware 14.0 made its debut or even five years since Slackware 14.2. Now Slackware 15.0 is up to its beta phase.

          In the two months since the alpha start, Slackware 15.0 has seen many package updates and is ready enough to be called beta. Slackware 15.0 Beta is using the GCC 10.3 compiler, a newer revision of the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel, and many other package updates like the newest KDE desktop components are available.

        • Slackware Linux 15.0 Beta, The Legend Is Back

          Is Slackware dead? The answer is no! Patrick Volkerding has announced that Slackware 15 moved to stage of beta testing.

          Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. For many early Linux users, Slackware was their introduction. After more than a quarter century and 30-plus versions later, Slackware is the oldest actively maintained Linux distribution, but now it is not nearly as popular as it was a decade or more ago. The features of the distribution are the lack of complications and a simple system of initialization in the style of classical BSD systems.

          We haven’t had any Slackware news since the release of Slackware Linux 14.2 in July 2016. Till now.

        • Phew! The Oldest Active Linux Distro, Slackware, is Not Dead Yet

          Slackware is one of the earliest distributions before any mainstream option was popular. You will be surprised to know that this year marks its 28th year. It is mostly suitable for experienced Linux users who want the stability and ease of use.

          Slackware hasn’t seen a new release in years, the last release being in 2016. That left people guessing if the oldest maintained Linux distribution was on the verge of being discontinued.

      • Arch Family

        • Guided Arch Linux Installer Is An Absolute Joke

          Recently the Arch team decided to add a guided installer into the ISO, and it seems like everyone else is ignoring the fact that this script is completely broken, not only is it buggy it doesn’t even setup a decent Arch system.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • FSF defends Stallman reappointment following Red Hat snub

          The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published a statement in defence of its decision to reappoint Richard Stallman (RMS) to its board.

          “We decided to bring RMS back because we missed his wisdom,” the FSF said. “His historical, legal and technical acumen on free software is unrivaled. He has a deep sensitivity to the ways that technologies can contribute to both the enhancement and the diminution of basic human rights.

        • Getting to know Jennifer Dudeck, Red Hat’s chief people officer

          We are delighted to welcome Jennifer “Jen” Dudeck as senior vice president and chief people officer. In her new role, Jen will be responsible for leading Red Hat’s People team, which is focused on attracting, developing and rewarding associates around the world.

          Prior to joining Red Hat, Jen served as vice president of the Transformation Office at Cisco Systems, Inc. and held several business-aligned HR roles at the Honeywell Corporation, within the Aerospace and Performance Materials business units.

          Jen brings more than 25 years of experience to Red Hat, and we caught up with her to find out more about the insights and perspectives she will be bringing to her role as chief people officer.

        • Vested in 5G: The latest episode of our Technically Speaking series

          What’s all the hype about 5G? Check out the latest episode of our Technically Speaking series to learn all about the 5G revolution.

          Technically Speaking features conversations between Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Chris Wright and a rotating cast of industry leaders around what’s on the horizon for technology.

          Wright is joined by Srini Kalapala, Vice President, Global Technology Strategy and Network Cloud, Verizon, for this episode to talk about 5G as it relates to the mobile edge. Kalapala shares some challenges his team has faced in building networks in a cloud native world, how they’re leveraging open source, and the value he sees in collaboration across ecosystems.

        • A developer goes to the Masters: Every stroke matters [Ed: Only IBM can say “Masters”]

          It was Sunday at the Masters, and Xander Schauffele had momentum, trimming Hideki Matsuyama’s lead from seven strokes to just two on the back nine. But, in this game, there is no margin for error. And by misjudging the wind, his 8-iron on 16 landed a yard short, found the drink, and led to a triple bogey, dashing his hopes of donning the coveted green jacket.

        • Free RHEL Is Also RHEL

          Red Hat Enterprise Linux simplifies development use cases by providing a consistent way to host applications along their life cycle. Explore how easily using RHEL in development translates to a predictable and repeatable security certification and accreditation environment with no surprises when moving to production.

        • Robin CNS Offers Customers Flexibility To Pay For Hourly Usage On Red Hat Marketplace

          Robin.io has announced the availability of the pay-as-you-go pricing model for Robin Cloud Native Storage (CNS) on Red Hat Marketplace.

          Robin.io customers can now pay for hourly usage of Robin CNS when purchased on Red Hat Marketplace, giving them the flexibility to tie their project budgeting to consumption, rather than commit to fixed pricing up front.

        • Red Hat, NEC Join Hands To Drive Kubernetes-Based 5G Adoption

          Red Hat has joined hands with NEC Corporation to deliver 5G solutions built on Red Hat OpenShift. With NEC’s 5G core network solutions running on Red Hat OpenShift, organizations will be able to capitalize on 5G across a broad set of use cases including 5G core, 5G radio access networks (RANs), edge computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and more, helping them create new revenue opportunities.

      • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • System76 announce COSMIC, their own GNOME-based desktop environment for Pop!_OS | GamingOnLinux

          Pop!_OS from Linux hardware vendor System76 is set to get a massive upgrade when Pop!_OS 21.04 releases, as they’ve announced COSMIC – their very own desktop environment.

          “We’re providing a honed desktop user experience in Pop!_OS through our GNOME-based desktop environment: COSMIC. It’s a refined solution that makes the desktop easier to use, yet more powerful and efficient for our users through customization. The new designs are developed from extensive testing and user feedback since the Pop!_OS 20.04 release, and are currently being further refined in their testing phase.”

        • COSMIC to Arrive in June Release of Pop!_OS 21.04

          With April in full swing, it’s time to preview the upcoming version of Pop!_OS! New features are lined up for the release like kids at a candy store. Among them is the tale…the legend…the ultimate customizer…the COSMIC desktop. To ensure the best taste, we’re slow-cooking COSMIC to deliver a *chef’s kiss* quality experience. As a result, Pop!_OS 21.04 will release in June.

        • System76 Developing “COSMIC” Desktop Environment For Pop!_OS

          System76 has their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu and have long been customizing their GNOME-based desktop. However, the Linux PC vendor is now taking things a step further by developing their own desktop environment dubbed COSMIC.

          While System76 has long been a supporter of GNOME, with the changes around GNOME 40 they have decided instead they will be moving to their own GNOME-based desktop environment. COSMIC will make its debut in Pop!_OS 21.04 due out this June.

        • Yep, Pop OS 21.04 Will Have Exactly What You’ve Wanted

          What’s the first thing you do after installing a fresh copy of Linux distro Pop OS? I’d wager the majority of you install Gnome Tweaks, Dash to Dock, or Dash to Panel. Jeremy Soller, Principal Engineer at System76 (the hardware company also responsible for developing Pop OS), is well aware of this.

          “90% of the screenshots on the Pop OS subreddit have a dock,” he says in my upcoming Linux For Everyone interview. “It’s something we want to provide out of the box.”

          Following that, Soller drops all kinds of info bombs regarding Pop OS 21.04 (yep, there will be a public beta). Specifically, System76 will be integrating Gnome-Tweaks and building upon it.

        • System76 Unveils COSMIC as Their GNOME-Based Desktop Environment for Pop!_OS Linux

          System76 are well known for their Linux-powered laptops and desktops, but they’re also famous for Pop!_OS Linux, the company’s in-house built Ubuntu-based distribution that ships pre-installed on all of their computers.

          Until now, Pop!_OS Linux featured the GNOME desktop environment, with various customizations and improvements from System76. But this is about to change with the next major release of their distribution, Pop!_OS Linux 21.04, due out in June 2021.

        • YES! Pop OS 21.04 Is Getting That Feature We Want

          System76 Linux ninja Jeremy Soller has a lot to say. Here’s the most exciting 45 seconds you’ll hear about Pop OS 21.04. It’s finally happening guys!!! Hear the rest of the 2+ hour interview beginning May 5th.

        • Is Linux Mint Turning Into Windows? [Ed: Clickbait nonsense wherein the answer to the headline is "no"]

          In a March 31 blog post, the Linux Mint development team detailed how Mint’s Update Manager application will soon start showing desktop notifications when a user has gone for a significant amount of time without applying any updates to the operating system. A small dialog will appear prompting the user to either view the updates, set up automatic updates, or snooze till later.

          Previously, the only indication of available updates has been a tiny red dot in the taskbar. The developers of the beloved Linux distribution claim they’re adding the feature in response to research showing that a significant number of Mint users ignore any and all updates for extended periods, missing critical security updates in the meantime.

          The team found in interviews with Mint users that many “were sensitive to the importance of applying updates but didn’t do so simply because they were never really told to.”

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • [Old] Best practices for writing SQL queries

          This article covers some best practices for writing SQL queries for data analysts and data scientists. Most of our discussion will concern SQL in general, but we’ll include some notes on features specific to Metabase that make writing SQL a breeze.

          Correctness, readability, then optimization: in that order

          The standard warning against premature optimization applies here. Avoid tuning your SQL query until you know your query returns the data you’re looking for. And even then, only prioritize optimizing your query if it’s run frequently (like powering a popular dashboard), or if the query traverses a large number of rows. In general, prioritize accuracy (does the query produce the intended results), and readability (can others easily understand and modify the code) before worrying about performance.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Dates for LibreOffice Virtual Conference

          Our traditional LibreOffice Conference will be a fully virtual event for the second consecutive year, from September 23 (Thursday) to September 25 (Saturday), 2021. Unfortunately, the uncertainty still surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on travel, conference planning, logistics and possibility for attendees to come to the conference – coupled with the unpredictability of the current vaccination campaign – are reasons for shifting the event to online also in 2021.

        • When online suites go down, we need options not on the cloud

          You could use Office 2019, or the forthcoming Office 2021. But let me offer up a better, more universal suggestion: LibreOffice.

          LibreOffice is an open-source office suite. It’s based on OpenOffice, which it superseded years ago. It includes a word processor, Writer; a spreadsheet, Calc; a presentation creator, Impress; a vector graphics and flowchart editor, Draw; a simple database program, Base; and a mathematical formula editor, Math.

          If you can use other office programs, you can use LibreOffice. It supports most of today’s popular document formats, including Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx); Adobe PDF and the Open Document Format (ODF). Admittedly, its support for Microsoft’s formats isn’t perfect. But if you ever read Microsoft’s Office Open XML File Format “Standard” closely, you’ll find even Microsoft doesn’t fully support its own standard. Practically speaking, if you’re doing very elaborate work in Word or Excel, you would be better off sticking with Office.

          On the other hand, LibreOffice won’t cost you a single cent. It’s also available on all major desktop operating systems. And, when I say all, I mean all. This includes Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, and even ChromeOS. The last comes from LibreOffice’s commercial partner Collabora via the Google Play Store.

        • Dependencies to compile modem-manager-gui

          I posted a couple of days ago, that compiled dependencies for LibreOffice in OpenEmbedded, but compile LO itself in a running EasyOS. I am going to do the same with ‘modem-manager-gui’, as have found it to be cross-compiler-unfriendly.

          Actually, it only seems to be the usage of po4a that is unfriendly, so I could probably hack on it. But decided to take the easy path and compile in a running Easy.

          ModemManager GUI is a gtk+3 frontend to ‘modemmanager’.

      • CMS

        • What’s new with Drupal in 2021?

          The success of open source projects is largely carried by the pillars of the community and group collaborations. Without putting a stake in the ground to achieve strategic initiatives, an open source project can lose focus. Open source strategic initiatives should aim at solving impactful problems through collaboration involving the project’s stakeholders.

          As one of the leading open source projects, Drupal’s success largely thrives on implementing its various proposed strategic initiatives. Drupal’s focus on strategic initiatives and continuous innovation since Drupal 7 brought huge architectural changes in Drupal 8, 9, and beyond that offer a platform for continuous innovation on the web and an easy upgrade path for end users.

        • People of WordPress: Tyler Lau

          In this People of WordPress contributor story, we chat to Tyler Lau from the US on his relationship building work in marketing and his WordPress journey.

          Read on to discover his story which shows it is often what you have learned from negative experiences in your life that can make you a major asset to a product team.

      • Education

        • Online event: International Conference on Open Source Systems

          On 12 May 2021, the 17th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS), also known as OSS 2021, will take place. The event provides an international forum where diverse professionals from academia, industry and public administrations can come together and discuss FLOSS initiatives. The event will address the use of FLOSS in large organizations, including private for-profit corporations, major non-profit organizations and large public administrations.

      • FSF

        • A statement by the FSF board

          The voting members of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which include the board of directors, voted to appoint Richard Stallman to a board seat after several months of thorough discussion and thoughtful deliberation.

          We decided to bring RMS back because we missed his wisdom. His historical, legal and technical acumen on free software is unrivaled. He has a deep sensitivity to the ways that technologies can contribute to both the enhancement and the diminution of basic human rights. His global network of connections is invaluable. He remains the most articulate philosopher and an unquestionably dedicated advocate of freedom in computing.

          RMS acknowledges that he has made mistakes. He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF. While his personal style remains troubling for some, a majority of the board feel his behavior has moderated and believe that his thinking strengthens the work of the FSF in pursuit of its mission.

        • Jonathan Carter & Debian: fascism hiding in broad daylight

          The people relentlessly screaming orders at Dr Stallman and the FSF board appear to be autocratic and dictatorial in many ways.

        • Stallman Apologizes! Blames his lack of social skills.

          Stallman has apologized, blames his lack of social skills. Will people accept his apology?

        • FSF Affirms that RMS is not Going Anywhere, Come What May

          Sponsors withdrawn, management team resigned but the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is determined to keep its founder Richard Stallman on board.

          Soon after Richard Stallman issued an apology, FSF released a statement on the election of Richard Stallman. It’s clear that both the apology and the statement had been prepared well in advance and published almost at the same time.

          [...]

          The surprise return announcement of Stallman in a LibrePlanet conference talk was blamed on a “planned flow of information that was not executed in a timely manner”. FSF keeps emphasizing Stallman’s vision and thinking throughout the statement.

        • Thank you FSF for defending Richard Stallman

          In response to its newfound resolve, a new smear campaign against Richard was launched, and its agenda furthered by the non-free media. Part of it took the form of a petition calling for his removal from the FSF. In response, we, the libre software community, started a petition of our own, and a subsequent counter-campaign urging the FSF to publicly endorse and exonerate RMS. Read more about this effort on https://stallmansupport.org/

          The FSF does well to defend him from the campaign out for his name; to hold their ground and retain Richard at his post, and possibly reinstate him in his rightful place as leader of the FSF. No doubt will he downplay his position and contribute towards the FSF creating the required resilience against attacks on it, regardless of who holds it.

          The following defense of Richard Stallman I submitted March 31st, 2021: Defend Richard Stallman!

          We won. The FSF issued this news post on the 12 of April 2021: https://www.fsf.org/news/statement-of-fsf-board-on-election-of-richard-stallman

          I, Leah Rowe, would like to publicly *thank* the FSF for their courage and backbone in this matter. Richard Stallman in his leadership of our movement is an excellent public speaker showing great character in unfiltered fashion. He should never have had to resign in the first place, but the failed past is a strengthened future.

          I, Leah Rowe, would like to thank everyone working tirelessly to defend our guy against the mob. It is my wish we move past the divisive and hateful politics and tactics of those that engage in it.

          Now is the time to deal. Let’s write more libre software!

        • 6250+ Free Software Users Have Signed A Letter In Support Of Honorary Doctor Richard Stallman And The FSF Stands By Their Re-Election Of RMS To Their Board

          Richard Stallman is not a universally loved figure. He has spent his life [[What is Free Software?|educating people about the importance of free software, advocating for a free digital society, warned against the danger of software patents and criticized proprietary software corporations at every turn. Big technology corporations strongly oppose his free software activism. They have been looking for ways to remove Stallman from the public spotlight for decades.

          “Strategic Initiatives Manager” Molly de Blanc from the GNOME Foundation, a semi-profitable big tech funded lobbying organization with $876,871 in revenue in fiscal year 2019, published a vicious opinion piece titled “RMS Open Letter” on March 23rd. More than 3000 people signed on to that letter the following week thanks to heavy promotion of it in large corporate-controlled “News outlets”.

        • FSF says it decided to bring back Stallman after much discussion Featured

          The Free Software Foundation has doubled down on its support for its founder, Richard Stallman, issuing a statement on Monday backing his reinstatement to the board.

        • The influential Free Software Foundation defends the return of controversial programmer Richard Stallman to its board, but vocal critics aren’t buying it
        • The world of free software clashes over accusations against its “guru” Richard Stallman

          There is a war going on in the world of free software. And the first to pay for it is its inventor, Richard Stallman. It all started again with a letter published on Github calling for his resignation from all positions, including those in the Free Software Foundation, for being “misogynist, abilist and transphobic” and for other behaviors and ideas defined “repugnant”. The letter was signed by about 50 organizations involved in the development and maintenance of both free and open source software. To put it into perspective, that’s what lies behind Linux, the Android operating system, the Libre Office package, and much of the technology that the digital world is sitting on creating thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of value through companies like Red Hat and MuleSoft.

        • Free Software Foundation and RMS issue statements on Stallman’s return

          The Free Software Foundation’s board of directors issued a statement today regarding the controversial return of Richard M. Stallman (RMS) to its ranks, alongside a statement of Stallman’s own.

          [...]

          According to today’s statement, the voting members of the Free Software Foundation voted to appoint RMS to a board seat once more, but only “after several months of thorough discussion and thoughtful deliberation.” The board’s statement goes on to describe a “planned flow of information” to be “executed in a timely manner” and “delivered in the proper sequence.”

          Instead, the world discovered that RMS was back on the board of the Free Software Foundation when he self-announced it at the FSF’s LibrePlanet conference this March. RMS declared “I’m [back] on the Free Software Foundation board of directors [...] that’s how it is. And I’m not planning to resign a second time.”

          The board goes on to state that “the announcement by RMS at LibrePlanet was a complete surprise to staff, [LibrePlanet organizers], to LibrePlanet speakers and to the exhibitors,” and that the board “had hoped for a more inclusive and thoughtful process.”

        • Michael Meeks: Excommunicating a heretic

          Recently RMS returned to the FSF board with to my mind an indefensible lack of grace & engagement with his critics. This seems to unfortunately intersect with the absence of good, representative governance structures for eg. GPL users to affect license direction. People started on-line petitions in liu of voting to either remove the FSF board or to unconditionally support RMS. Spoiler alert – there is something to annoy everyone here. I don’t believe either of these stated positions is helpful and one of them is actively dangerous. I expect RMS to demonstrate hard-core leadership by preparing for his inevitable political or physical death, and building good governance structures that can live on and continue his work. It is not a time to do nothing. KDE’s, statement seemed constructive, Debian had a middle ground option, and even RedHat’s position was not so extreme. I sincerely hope that the FSF can be improved and continue to reflect RMS’ vision of Software Freedom.

          [...]

          This focus on beliefs is unconscionable. Beliefs struggle to exist outside people’s heads so I read this as: People who we can plausibly accuse of having misogynistic, ableist or transphobic beliefs have no place in the free software community. This might sound plural and welcoming, and I understand the desire to stick up for those who are marginalized, but it has a number of acute problems.

          [...]

          It seems to me there is a substantial convergence of views between RMS and this new orthodoxy – so it should be far easier to find those whose beliefs diverge significantly. Luckily very detailed descriptions exist of what very large groups of people believe around the world. Many have different ideas of how best to love those with whom they disagree. For example Male and Female he created them – towards a path of dialogue on the question of gender theory in education. (published 2019 under Pope Francis). That should be easy to caricature in order to exclude people from the Free Software community. I think it would also be easy to argue that a loyal Catholic faithfully upholding the Churches’ teaching has beliefs that are more easy to caricature as mysogynist than RMS’. I really don’t want to pick on Catholics (who just happen to be rather good at multi-lingual write-ups of their doctrines), so how about a random update from the Church of England. Of course – in each case adherents would reject such a caricature and these labels; no doubt they would also have powerful convictions on when life begins. But perhaps that’s all a bit Euro-centric – so how about Wikipedia on Islam, or we can spend all day cycling through major belief systems each representing hundreds of millions of people, and collectively billions. Almost all of these will have some element that will conflict with or upset the opinions of someone else. Most of these belief systems are mutually contradictory and/or mutually offensive at some level to adherents of others. So there should be no shortage of beliefs for which we can excommunicate others.

          [...]

          Apparently it is easy to end up championing the gentle treatment of a sexual minority while thinking it is funny to be gratuitously offensive to other minorities. Surely it can be offensive enough to respectfully state ones position. Still – in a world where there is a broad freedom of belief, conscience and speech, possibly some humour can cut through the gloom. A possibly tragic, possibly humorous but probably co-incidental aside here is that some chunk of this is based on an excessive focus on a small divergence in linguistic orthodoxy; when this was a hallmark of the GNU-slash-Linux campaigns of the past.

          Perhaps you think it is deeply unfair to examine people’s public twitter feeds – which occur outside the context of a project – to determine whether their beliefs are aligned with the standards they demand from others. Actually – I tend to agree. For good reason any sensible code of conduct excludes speech and behaviour outside its immediate project context. Not so this statement – its scope is everyone, everywhere and all of the time – even historic beliefs.

          But possibly you think that it is ok to attack the privileged to defend the weak; that it is proportional to agitate to end someone’s career in order to avoid the risk of a friendly minority member inadvertently working alongside someone who has some subset of beliefs that differ from theirs.

          [...]

          Is being offended occasionally by others’ (truly objectionable) beliefs the price of collaborating with people with diverse viewpoints, discussing anything and everything without boundaries and learning? Not always a small price to pay, but is it not necessary? Surely it is the case that each member of outlying groups benefits from mutual tolerance. Indeed we often celebrate the amazing contributions to society of those who (at the time) were viewed to have unacceptably fringe beliefs & practices. Becoming a less tolerant society is potentially polarizing and dangerous.

          What is love’s response to a neighbour in need in this instance? Probably it is to vigorously encourage RMS to setup a representative governance so actual users of the GPL family can determine its post-RMS future. Perhaps it is to loudly re-iterate the obvious: that RMS does not represent you or me – and that we don’t share the details of his unusual politics; to make more obvious that personal views are disjoint from organizations’ missions, and to ensure we are able to choose our representatives in a secret ballot. But love’s response is certainly not to let Free Software get twisted into a new and narrow orthodoxy consumed by gender politics to its own harm and the exclusion of others. We should remain a broad, tolerant and inclusive church even when it hurts. We used to be focused on liberty & freedom – I miss that.

        • Can the Free Software Foundation Save itself?

          The story dates back to September 2019, when Stallman commented on an MIT email thread about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Specifically, Stallman defended AI pioneer Marvin Minsky against allegations of sexually assaulting an underage girl who had been one of Epstein’s victims. Stallman wrote, “We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.” The insensitivity of Stallman’s comments, which were focused on his personal definition of the word “assault” and did nothing to acknowledge the complexities of sex trafficking or the disturbing power relationships at the heart of the Epstein story, caused a shock wave through the free software community. Although Stallman described the reaction to his comments as “a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations,” the comments were widely interpreted as implying that the victim was to blame for the incident, an interpretation that seems supported by the fact that Stallman also described statutory rape laws as “morally absurd.”

        • GNU Projects

          • Free Software Projects Are Not Allowed To Ask For Donations On The Google Play App Store

            Free software developer Aurélien Gâteau reports that his free software 2D racing game Pixel Wheels got flagged on the Google Play app-store for the horrible crime of asking for donations. Pixel Wheels is also available for GNU/Linux, Windows, macoS (but not ARM based Macs).

            [...]

            The updated banner mentioning donations was the only thing he had made when the game stopped being “compliant” with “Google Play Policies”. The Pixel Wheels Android version on the Google Play has been there, with no issues, since February 24th, 2021.

      • Programming/Development

        • Logica: organizing your data queries, making them universally reusable and fun

          We present Logica, a novel open source Logic Programming language. A successor to Yedalog (a language developed at Google earlier) it is a Datalog-like logic programming language. Logica code compiles to SQL and runs on Google BigQuery (with experimental support for PostgreSQL and SQLite), but it is much more concise and supports the clean and reusable abstraction mechanisms that SQL lacks. It supports modules and imports, it can be used from an interactive Python notebook and it even makes testing your queries natural and easy.

        • Google Talks Up Logica As Open-Source Programming Language For Data Manipulation – Phoronix

          Google engineers are responsible for a number of programming languages like Go and Dart while their newest one to be made public is Logica.

          Logica is the successor to Yedalog, another language out of Google. Logica compiles to SQL and can run on Google BigQuery with experimental support for PostgreSQL and SQLite databases.

        • Make Conway’s Game of Life in WebAssembly | Opensource.com

          Conway’s Game of Life is a popular programming exercise to create a cellular automaton, a system that consists of an infinite grid of cells. You don’t play the game in the traditional sense; in fact, it is sometimes referred to as a game for zero players.

          Once you start the Game of Life, the game plays itself to multiply and sustain “life.” In the game, digital cells representing lifeforms are allowed to change states as defined by a set of rules. When the rules are applied to cells through multiple iterations, they exhibit complex behavior and interesting patterns.

        • 12 Backend Development Tools For Web Developers

          While Frontend Web Development is concerned with the designing of the user interface of the website using web technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. – Backend Web Development (or you can say Server-Side Development) is responsible for the appropriate functioning of the website.

        • Eclipse Foundation aims open VS Code registry at Microsoft

          VS Code)extension users and providers argue that the industry needs a fully open source marketplace for the extensions. That’s because Microsoft forbids the use of its marketplace for non-Microsoft-branded products, as noted in the marketplace user agreement, which reads: “Marketplace Offerings are intended for use only with Visual Studio Products and Services and you may only install and use Marketplace Offerings with Visual Studio Products and Services.”

        • 5 dead programming languages we should never forget [Ed: Many programming languages that Chris Tozzi called "dead" are not dead at all! Is he trying to bury things alive?]

          Just as some spoken languages have faded into history, programming languages also face the risk of obsolescence and extinction. Though their profound influence on development techniques and coding styles certainly still resonates, languages like ALGOL and LISP don’t enjoy nearly as much prominence and acclaim as they once did. It’s only natural that some of the languages we use today will follow the same path.

          In no way does that mean these languages will disappear entirely. There will be plenty of legacy codebases written in these prophetically dead programming languages, and a need for developers with the know-how to understand and maintain them. Just look at legacy languages like COBOL, which still sits at the heart of countless enterprise software systems (including Fortune 500 companies).

          [...]

          Perl was conceived in the 1980s as a scripting language designed for Unix system administration tasks, and subsequently gained popularity as a general-purpose programming language. Despite its age, the language hovers in 19th place on the TIOBE index, as it remains important in areas like data science and analytics. However, Perl commands much less mindshare now than it did a decade ago.

          The release of Raku in 2019 — a Perl spinoff designed by the language’s creator, Larry Wall — profoundly undercut community enthusiasm for Perl. Plans for future version releases counter the argument that Perl is already a dead programming language, but it is quickly turning into one that may find itself confined to legacy codebases.

        • 11 Open Source DevOps Tools We Love For 2021

          DevOps isn’t just a cultural shift — it requires great tools to come to fruition. Below, we’ve pulled together a list of some of the most well-loved DevOps tools available today. But, throwing loads of money into fancy SaaS solutions can quickly gobble up the cloud budget. These DevOps tools all are open source, and enable everything from container builds and orchestration to microservices networking, configuration management, CI/CD automation, full-stack monitoring and more. Here are some of our favorite open source DevOps tools for 2021.

        • Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn Haml – LinuxLinks

          Haml (HTML Abstraction Markup Language) is a markup language that’s used to cleanly and simply describe the HTML of any web document, without the use of inline code.

        • Steinar H. Gunderson: plocate 1.1.6 released

          I’ve released version 1.1.6 of plocate with some minor fixes; changelog follows.

        • Tools and Practices I Use In Every Real-World Software Project

          There are very few books written for junior-to-mid level developers that answer the question “How do I run a real-world software project?”. Industry best practices often arise as the result of cross-pollination and institutional/tacit knowledge rather than explicitly prescribed rules that you can read about in a book.

          For developers working alone or in small organizations such as startups, these norms may not be obvious. Knowing which tools one needs to deploy a production-scale application is crucial knowledge.

          In 2019 I published the article “Software Tools for Hobby-Scale Projects.” It is still one of my most popular blog entries. This post will explore the same idea within a professional context and hopefully help new or solo developers get guidance on tools and practices for new projects at small to mid-scale organizations.

          Objective: Provide a list of tools and practices that apply to a majority of real-world software projects.

          Intended audience: Developers familiar with software authorship wishing to learn about real-world software deployments and practices.

        • The Sacred “Back” Button

          Younger readers will find it hard to conceive of a time in which every application screen didn’t have a way to “Go Back”. This universal affordance was there, a new thing, in the first Web browser that anyone saw, and pretty soon after that, more or less everything had it. It’s a crucial part of the user experience and, unfortunately, a lot of popular software is doing it imperfectly. Let’s demand perfection.

          Why it matters · Nobody anywhere is smart enough to build an application that won’t, in some situations, confuse its users. The Back option removes fear and makes people more willing to explore features, because they know they can always back out. It was one of the reasons why the nascent browsers were so much better than the Visual Basic, X11, and character-based interface dinosaurs that then stomped the earth.

          Thus I was delighted, at the advent of Android, that the early phones had physical “back” buttons.

        • An easy to use MTP implementation for your next embedded Linux project

          Did you know you could run a permissively-licensed MTP implementation with minimal dependencies on an embedded device? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to easily run cmtp-responder on a Rock Pi 4 or any other board equipped with a UDC.

          To recap: In part1 of this series I introduced you to the concept of USB gadgets, their configfs composition interface, available opensource tools and basic systemd integration. In part2 I wrote about one particular USB gadget function – FunctionFS – and its integration with systemd. Then I presented cmtp-responder, a permisively-licensed MTP responder implementation and showed how to play with it on your PC with dummy_hcd driver. It is in this latter post that I promised you running cmtp-responder on real hardware. You can also watch me talking about USB gadgets at ELC 2019 and Linux Piter 2019.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.15 First Conf

            Andrew Shitov has announced the very first Raku Conference, to be held online on 7 August 2021. You can sign up if you want to attend, or want to give a presentation. Formats for presentations vary from a 5-minute lightning talk to an 8-hour workshop. The deadline for talk submissions is 15 July 2021. Of course, you can also sponsor this conference in various ways! Exciting to see our first Raku Conference planned like that!

          • Perl Weekly Challenge 108: Locate Memory and Bell Numbers

            In languages such as Perl and C, it is a fairly common task to take a reference or a pointer to a variable, and a reference or a pointer are essentially the memory addresses of such a variable (for some definition of memory address). In Raku, using the memory address of a variable is almost never necessary (except possibly for low-level debugging purpose). Actually, I originally wasn’t even completely sure I was going to find a way of doing that in Raku. However, the Metaobject Protocol (MOP) offers some metamethods, which are introspective macros that provide information about objects (including variables). One such metamethod is WHERE, which returns an Int representing the memory address of the object.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • What exactly was the point of [ “x$var” = “xval” ]?

            The x-hack was indeed useful and effective against several real and practical problems in multiple shells.

            However, the value was mostly gone by the mid-to-late 1990s, and the few remaining issues were cleaned up before 2010 — shockingly late, but still over a decade ago.

            The last one managed to stay until 2015, but only in the very specific case of comparing opening parenthesis to a closed parenthesis in one specific non-system shell.

            I think it’s time to retire this idiom, and ShellCheck now offers a style suggestion by default.

        • Rust

          • Niko Matsakis: Async Vision Doc Writing Sessions V

            This is an exciting week for the vision doc! As of this week, we are starting to draft “shiny future” stories, and we would like your help! (We are also still working on status quo stories, so there is no need to stop working on those.) There will be a blog post coming out on the main Rust blog soon with all the details, but you can go to the “How to vision: Shiny future” page now.

        • Java

          • Gradle Release Notes

            This release enables file system watching by default to make your incremental builds faster, expands support for building projects with Java 16, and adds support for building on Macs using Apple Silicon processors (such as M1).

          • Gradle 7.0 released

            The latest release of the Gradle build tool is now available. Gradle 7.0 enables file system watching by default to make incremental builds faster and expands support for building projects with Java 16 as well as Apple Silicon support.

            When the file system is enabled in the new version, Gradle keeps what it learned from the file system in memory and skips reading from the file system on each build, reducing the amount of disk I/O needed to determine what has changed, the team explained.

            The release also introduces a feature preview for centralized dependency versions and it enables build validation errors to make builds more reliable.

  • Leftovers

    • Corinna Fales’ Book Is A Roaring Success

      This too is what is worthwhile about Fales’ work. She identifies a peculiar politically correct take on sex, namely that anything goes. She accurately identifies this shift as a total turn away from a biological understanding of reality into one of pure automation. Indeed, the pro-sex argument today sounds just the same as the pro-capitalist argument. You are free, you have choice, be who you want to be! How horrifying an argument it is. The reason sex is the most enriching thing in life (from my vantage point as a young horny male) is that it is an overwhelmingly constricting source, almost authoritarian in the way it binds you to the desire of the Other.

      What compares to sex, more so than a hungry child on the side of the road? Do we not become overtaken by a form of authoritarianism within ourselves to give everything up for this child? Is this not what freedom is, in its exact form? The freedom to bind ourselves to something greater than ourselves?

    • Opinion | What’s Going On?
    • Philip Guston’s Peculiar History Lesson

      You might remember that a retrospective of the paintings of Philip Guston was planned to open last June at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and would then have traveled to Houston, London, and Boston. When the Covid-19 pandemic forced the museum to close, a new tour schedule was set: The show would open at the Tate Modern in London in February 2021, with dates in Washington, Boston, and Houston to follow.

      If all had gone well, I might have flown to London to see that show and write about it. But the Tate is closed again, and I’m not flying anywhere, thank you. Besides, the National Gallery and its sister institutions chose to put off the Guston show until 2024—and then, after an uproar, until 2022. This is not the time or place to thrash out the rights and wrongs of the museums’ decisions and redecisions, or of the objections many of us raised to those decisions. But I wish I had those paintings to look at now. Their disabused self-interrogation seems more necessary than ever these days.

    • Out on Highway 95: the Loneliest Road in the USA

      There along that stretch of highway we see signs for the two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, The Cold War, Desert Storm and so on. After several miles and many wars we finally come to the last sign, ominous there in the brutal, barren and strangely surrealistic beauty of the Nevada desert. This sign reads, Dedicated to the Veterans of the Global War On Terror. There it stands glaring out at the passing motorist, a frightening reminder in an Orwellian world designating a road that goes on and on seemingly forever, that has no end, just like the global war on terror and so it is.

      Out in this part of our world a person can find lots of loneliness and solitude, along with a stark natural truth in the ragged mountains, the bright-white salt flats and that ever more and more elusive but so necessary treasure, peace and quiet. This part of the country with all its vast space and natural beauty is also home to the Fallon Naval Air Station, the Fallon Naval Range, the Hawthorn Army Depot, the Nellis Air Force Range, The Nellis Air Force base, The Creech Air Force Base, the Nevada National Security Site and the highly classified USAF training range commonly known as Area 51. There’s not much else out in this desert–what’s left of the struggling to survive Piute Indian Tribe, a few very old, old-time prospectors and miners, a few ranchers with their farms and families spread out across the land, a couple “cat-houses” with what few working women that remain during a pandemic and the occasional motorist speeding along from Reno to Las Vegas or Vegas to Reno.

    • Thinking About the Ways Other People Think and Live: the Legacy of Marshall Sahlins

      Marshall Sahlins was a titan in his field, not just in anthropology, where his ideas were as revolutionary as those of Levi-Strauss, or in the classroom, where his students included David Graeber, but in academia itself, where he continually punctured institutional prejudices and excoriated the corrupting influence of big money and the political biases and, let’s face it, cowardice that warps so much research and pedagogy. Sahlins taught us radical new ways to think. But more than that he taught us how to think about the way other people from distant cultures think and to value those ways of thinking and learn from them.

      Sahlins began writing for CounterPunch on a fairly regular basis a few years ago, unloading his mighty intellectual arsenal on the travesties of Trumpworld. Ultimately, Trump proved too easy of a target, plodding, predictable and cretinous. Sahlins told me Trump was only worth some limericks and doggerel, which he eventually distilled to a succinct couplet, as direct and obscene as Roman graffiti: POTUS FUCTUS, which he wanted us to turn into bumperstickers and t-shirts.

    • Hardware

      • Biden Seeks Billions While the Chips Are Down

        The goal of the meeting, according to the president, was to figure out how to “strengthen our domestic semiconductor industry and secure the American supply chain.”

        Earlier, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, speaking to reporters, said, “This isn’t a meeting where we expect a decision or an announcement to come out of, but part of our ongoing engagement and discussion about how to best address this issue over the long term, but also over the short term.”

        A shortage of semiconductors, commonly known as chips, has significantly slowed U.S. auto manufacturing, with General Motors, Ford and other carmakers temporarily shuttering some factories or reducing production.

      • As Biden works to fix chips shortage, Intel promises help for automakers

        During the meeting, Biden said he had bipartisan support for legislation to fund the semiconductor industry. He previously announced plans to invest $50 billion in semiconductor manufacturing and research as part of his drive to rebuild U.S. manufacturing under a $2 trillion infrastructure plan.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Saratov regional officials spend millions of rubles quarantining locals ahead of Putin visit

        The Saratov regional government spent 8.46 million rubles (about $109,345) on organizing a two-week quarantine for locals who were set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to the region on April 12. This was reported by the BBC Russian Service, citing a tender the Saratov regional government posted on the public procurement website on March 27.

      • Arm Our Cities With Military-Grade Health Care…Not Weapons

        So how about we arm our cities with military-grade healthcare instead?

        The US Department of Veterans Affairs is part of the most generously funded institution in the government, and guess what? All that investment pays off.

      • A Vaccine Summit: Taking the Pandemic Seriously

        To my view, taking the pandemic seriously means doing everything we can to get the whole world vaccinated as quickly as possible. This is not just an issue of being concerned for the poor people in the developing world, who are being left behind in the vaccination race, it is a recognition of the reality that viruses mutate.

        We already know about several mutations that are more contagious than the original coronavirus and are at least somewhat more resistant to some of the vaccines that have been developed. If the pandemic is allowed to spread largely unchecked through the developing world for another year or two, then it is virtually certain that we will see many more mutations. Some of these may be even more contagious and deadly, and most importantly, more vaccine-resistant.

      • Covid: Drawn from Experience

        Directed by Rafe Scobey Thal; Animated by by Luca Valente; Produced by #MeWeSyria, and #MeWeMexico, and #MeWeHonduras community leaders Fernando Camacho, Nadine Hraki, Ola Ali, Sandra Hernandez, Sara Killawi, #MeWeIntl, and Rafe Scobey Thal

        Check out all installments in the OppArt series.

      • The Tiredness Virus

        Covid-19 is a mirror that reflects back to us the crises in our society. It renders more visible the pathological symptoms that already existed before the pandemic. One of these symptoms is tiredness. We all somehow feel very tired. This is a fundamental tiredness that accompanies us everywhere and all the time, like our own shadows. During the pandemic we have felt even more tired. The idleness imposed on us during lockdown has made us tired. Some people claim that we might rediscover the beauty of leisure, that life might decelerate. In fact, time during the pandemic is ruled not by leisure and deceleration but by tiredness and depression.

        Why do we feel so tired? Today, tiredness seems to be a global phenomenon. Ten years ago, I published a book, The Burnout Society , in which I described tiredness as an illness afflicting the neoliberal achievement society. The tiredness experienced during the pandemic has forced me to think about the subject again. Work, no matter how hard it might be, does not bring about fundamental tiredness. We may be exhausted after work, but this exhaustion is not the same as fundamental tiredness. Work ends at some point. The compulsion to achieve to which we subject ourselves extends beyond that point. It accompanies us during leisure time, torments us even in our sleep, and often leads to sleepless nights. It is not possible to recover from the compulsion to achieve. It is this internal pressure, specifically, that makes us tired. There is thus a difference between tiredness and exhaustion. The right kind of exhaustion could even free us from tiredness.

      • Opinion | The Racist Roots of Big Tobacco

        Big Tobacco has targeted Black communities for generations with multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns and a plethora of deadly products.

        Trigger warning: police and anti-Black violence

      • Only 0.2 Percent of COVID Vaccines Have Gone to Poor Countries

        The head of the World Health Organization estimated in a recent address that of the more than 700 million coronavirus vaccine doses that have been administered across the globe, just 0.2% have gone to people in low-income nations — inequity that experts warn will persist unless rich countries end their obstruction of an international effort to suspend vaccine patents.

      • ‘Major Step Forward’ as New Mexico Legalizes Recreational Marijuana

        “By ensuring equity and social justice in our cannabis legalization, we are saying ‘enough’ to the devastating ‘war on drugs’ that over-incarcerated and over-penalized thousands of New Mexicans.”

        “Seven years later, New Mexicans are finally able to exhale.”

      • Top WHO Epidemiologist Warns Coronavirus Pandemic ‘Growing Exponentially’ Around the World

        “It is the time right now where everyone has to take stock and have a reality check of what we need to be doing.”

        The World Health Organization’s head epidemiologist on Monday warned that humanity has reached a “critical point” in the coronavirus pandemic, which despite increased vaccination is “growing exponentially” around the world.

      • No, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines do NOT “hack the software of life”

        If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years combatting science denial, quackery, and antivaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories, it’s that words matter and messaging is important. At no time in my life have I seen this more than now, in the middle of a pandemic, and I’d like to do something a little different from what I normally do here on SBM and discuss an example. It’s an example in which early messaging used years ago to promote and sell a promising new technology has been weaponized by antivaxxers and COVID-19 minimizers to demonize COVID-19 vaccines. You might recall a  post of mine from two months ago, when I discussed how mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are not “gene therapy”. Think of this as a follow-up looking at how that claim by antivaxxers came about, plus the idea that such vaccines “hack” your genes.

      • The mRNA IP and Competitive Landscape Through One Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic–Part I [Ed: These patent monopolies are not helping; they restrict the reach and distribution to people whose lives depend on access to medicines]

        Shortly after we posted about Moderna, Inc.’s October 2020 pledge not to enforce its COVID-19-related patents during the pandemic, the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency regulatory approval for two COVID-19 vaccines produced by Moderna and BioNTech (with Pfizer), making these groups the first to ever enter the commercial market with mRNA-based therapies. This little-known and never-before-approved mRNA technology has since been widely administered and represents a primary weapon being used to defeat the pandemic.

        While this effort carries on, market players are confident that COVID-19 is but one of many indications that the mRNA technology platform might be utilized for, and that approval of the mRNA vaccines could open the door for the approval of other mRNA-based medicines, creating a wide range of new markets.

        With the anticipated increase in market activity and competition, we will provide an overview of the mRNA IP and competitive landscape in a series of three posts in the context of certain key players’ patent positions, drug pipelines, strategic relationships, and other attributes. These posts are based on publicly available information, are non-exhaustive, and do not identify all market players or potential market players in this space.

      • Shirish Agarwal: what to write

        The saddest story is that this time Covid has reached alarming proportions in India and surprise, surprise this time the villain for many is my state of Maharashtra even though it hasn’t received its share of GST proceeds for last two years and this was Kerala’s perspective, different state, different party, different political ideology altogether.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • ParkMobile Breach Exposes License Plate Data, Mobile Numbers of 21M Users
        • Playing the Open Source Game

          While the core team itself might be fine, we can’t forget that all those developers have hierarchies above them and they lack the ultimate power that Antirez had: copyright ownership and undisputed control over the codebase which allowed him to raise a big, fat middle finger to pressure coming from Redis Labs or any of the clouds.

          Another thing that might hint at the sad mess everything is turning into, is what’s at the top of redis.io. It used to be that all commercial content would be relegated to redislabs.com, but now apparently a “Try Free” button has found its way to the top menu of the open source website. So now you have to be careful because if you press the wrong (big, red, well positioned) button you might end up signing up for a Redis Enterprise Cloud account instead of getting a copy of Redis. Disgusting.

        • Parents were at the end of their chain — then ransomware hit their kids’ schools [iophk: Windows TCO]

          The [attackers] infected Buffalo’s schools with malicious code that spidered through their networks, freezing computers and making it impossible for teachers to reach their students who were working remotely because of the pandemic. They demanded a ransom to make it go away.

          School officials canceled remote classes for the day while they figured out what to do. They would end up needing more than a week to resume their planned class schedule. A single infection of a school district can affect dozens or hundreds of schools: Buffalo counts 63 individual schools and learning systems.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Critics Warn $15 Billion Merger of Global Water Giants Would Create ‘Dangerous Corporate Monopoly’

              “Veolia’s plan to dominate public water services all across the globe is becoming a terrifying reality.”

              French-based transnational corporation Veolia agreed in principle to acquire Suez, its main rival, for $15.5 billion on Monday, setting the stage for the creation of a water and waste management juggernaut that critics warn would be a “dangerous corporate monopoly” destined to “hurt consumers and enrich shareholders.”

            • Linux Foundation

              • Armory Joins Continuous Delivery Foundation As Premier Member

                The Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF), the open-source software foundation that seeks to improve the world’s capacity to deliver software with security and speed, today announced that Armory has joined the CDF as a premier member. Armory adds enterprise-grade proprietary features and support to the open-source Spinnaker project under the CDF.

              • Linux Foundation launches blockchain-based platform for insurance

                The Linux Foundation and the American Association of Insurance Services are co-launching a blockchain-based platform to help the insurance industry.

              • Human Factors & Trust Fabrics: Building Confidence & Resilience Across Connected Systems

                “The ultimate potential of digital is driving new experiences and business value through interconnected ecosystems, however in order to build complex relationships that span private and public boundaries, we need both open interoperability and tools to ensure that no single entity owns the trust,” Shepherd explains. “For this, we need to focus on the human elements that balance privacy with the value received, collaborate openly and leverage technology to automate data confidence because it simply isn’t feasible to build the necessary trust relationships one by one.”

                To this end, Shepherd led the incubation of Project Alvarium within Dell starting in 2018 and the November 2019 public announcement of intent to form as a Linux Foundation project. Project Alvarium aims to build out the concept of data confidence fabrics by layering trust insertion technologies with a system-based approach. Dell, The IOTA Foundation, and Intel continued to incubate the Alvarium code in 2020, and soon open collaboration will begin within the Linux Foundation.

                Shepherd has observed the overall industry increasingly step up on enabling trusted systems and data, from developing secure edge operating systems like Zephyr and EVE-OS, establishing trusted software supply chains, and building distributed ledger efforts like IOTA.

          • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

        • Security

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (libpano13), Fedora (mosquitto and perl-Net-CIDR-Lite), Mageia (curl, mongodb, pdfbox, python-jinja2, rygel, spamassassin, tor, velocity, webkit2, and wireshark), openSUSE (umoci), Oracle (389-ds:1.4, kernel, and virt:ol and virt-devel:rhel), Red Hat (kernel and kpatch-patch), Slackware (dnsmasq and irssi), and SUSE (cifs-utils, rubygem-actionpack-4_2, and spamassassin).

          • Support for Istio 1.8 ends on May 12th, 2021

            According to Istio’s support policy, minor releases like 1.8 are supported for three months after the next minor release. Since 1.9 was released on February 9th, support for 1.8 will end on May 12th, 2021.

            At that point we will stop back-porting fixes for security issues and critical bugs to 1.8, so we encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of Istio (1.9.2). If you don’t do this you may put yourself in the position of having to do a major upgrade on a short timeframe to pick up a critical fix.

          • 100 Million More IoT Devices Are Exposed—and They Won’t Be the Last
          • These new vulnerabilities put millions of IoT devices at risk, so patch now
          • ‘Name:Wreck’ is the latest collision between TCP/IP and the standards process
          • New DNS vulnerabilities have the potential to impact millions of devices

            New DNS vulnerabilities have the potential to impact millions of devices

          • Forescout and JSOF Disclose New DNS Vulnerabilities, Impacting Millions of Enterprise and Consumer Devices

            Today, Forescout Research Labs, partnering with JSOF Research, disclose NAME:WRECK, a set of nine vulnerabilities affecting four popular TCP/IP stacks (FreeBSD, Nucleus NET, IPnet and NetX). These vulnerabilities relate to Domain Name System (DNS) implementations, causing either Denial of Service (DoS) or Remote Code Execution (RCE), allowing attackers to take target devices offline or to take control over them.

          • Set of 9 Vulnerabilities Called “Name:Wreck” Affects Over 100 Million Devices

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Senators Warn Feebly Regulated Ad Data Is Being Exploited By Governments Worldwide

              Back when the whole TikTok hysteria was taking root, we noted how people were generally obsessing over the wrong things. Yes, there are concerns about what a Chinese company does with your data. But there was nothing TikTok was doing that was particularly unique in an adtech sector that’s massively complex, sees little meaningful regulatory oversight, isn’t big on the whole ethical behavior thing, operates in many countries with no real internet privacy laws, and is comprised of thousands of foreign and domestic app makers, data brokers, telecoms, tech giants, and others — all dashing toward a hugely profitable trough.

            • After Cookies, Ad Tech Wants to Use Your Email to Track You Everywhere

              There are several proposals from ad tech providers to preserve “addressable media” (read: individualized surveillance advertising) after cookies die off. We’ll focus on just one: Unified Identifier 2.0 , or UID2 for short, developed by independent ad tech company The Trade Desk. UID2 is a successor to The Trade Desk’s cookie-based “ unified ID .” Much like FLoC, UID2 is not a drop-in replacement for cookies, but aims to replace some of their functionality. It won’t replicate all of the privacy problems of third-party cookies, but it will create new ones. 

              There are key differences between UID2 and Google’s proposals. FLoC will not allow third-party trackers to identify specific people on its own. There are still big problems with FLoC : it continues to enable auxiliary harms of targeted ads, like discrimination, and it bolsters other methods of tracking, like fingerprinting. But FLoC’s designers intend to move towards a world with less individualized third-party tracking. FLoC is a misguided effort with some laudable goals.

              In contrast, UID2 is supposed to make it easier for trackers to identify people. It doubles down on the track-profile-target business model. If UID2 succeeds, faceless ad tech companies and data brokers will still track you around the web—and they’ll have an easier time tying your web browsing to your activity on other devices. UID2’s proponents want advertisers to have access to long-term behavioral profiles that capture nearly everything you do on any Internet-connected device, and they want to make it easier for trackers to share your data with each other. Despite its designers’ ill-taken claims around “privacy” and “transparency,” UID2 is a step backward for user privacy.

            • Google is making another attempt at personal health records

              Right now, the company is recruiting around 300 people who use Android devices in Northern California, Atlanta, and Chicago.

              This is Google’s second attempt at creating a way for people to access their medical records. In 2008, it launched Google Health, which aimed to give people a way to see their health information online. It didn’t take off, and Google shut it down in 2012. “We haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people,” Google wrote in a 2011 blog post.

            • Google is exploring a health record tool for patients

              After 13 years, Google is coming back for patient health records. The tech giant has launched an early user feedback program aimed at exploring how patients might want to see, organize, and share their own medical record data.

              The work could inform the creation of a consumer-facing medical records tool along the lines of Apple’s Health Records app. It also follows an early attempt by Google — later panned by medical experts — at creating a new version of the electronic medical record in 2008. This time around, timing may be on the company’s side: Its new effort, which is still in the early stages, came on the heels of the introduction of the federal information blocking rule, which lets patients access their medical records through health apps.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • How Humanity Can Realistically Prevent New Wars: an Interview With Anthropologist Douglas P. Fry

        While conflict and war have written much of modern human history, they offer an incomplete narrative. Anthropological evidence suggests war is not innate to humanity, as detailed in a recent Independent Media Institute (IMI) article on the topic. Further, war can be successfully stopped and can be prevented in the future when societies shift their cultures and values and adopt intentional systems of peace, or what are now called peace systems, due in large part to the work of anthropologist Douglas P. Fry. Fry, a professor and chair of the department of peace and conflict studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has studied existing clusters of neighboring societies that do not make war with each other, and how they operate, for years. These peace systems exist both in smaller, Indigenous groups like Brazil’s Upper Xingu River Basin tribes and Aboriginal Australians, as well as in larger societies, the most obvious modern example being the European Union (EU)—a peace system which would have been assumed impossible, even ridiculous, just decades prior to its adoption.

        Fry says peace systems like the EU demonstrate the ability for peace to eclipse systems of war.

      • Biden Has a Chance to End the Jail-to-Deportation Pipeline

        Guillermo Bustos migrated to the United States when he was a child. He spent his formative years in Los Angeles, where he graduated from Huntington Park High School in 2006. Guillermo’s entire family and life is in California. He was raised by his mother, Maria Bustos, a lawful permanent resident, and his older sister and brother-in-law, who are both US citizens and small-business owners. In 2014, Guillermo was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era policy that allowed undocumented people who had been brought to the United States as children to get a work permit and avoid the threat of deportation. He was on a path to having a stable documentation status in this country.

        But two years later, Guillermo was convicted of a felony for being a passenger in a car that was carrying drugs. Even after serving his sentence, Guillermo now sits in a precarious position: Because of a double punishment written into American immigration law, his conviction bars him from legal status and citizenship, and he now faces permanent banishment from his entire family and the country that he has called home for 20 years. He has been caught in a punitive part of the US immigration system that advocates call the prison-to-deportation pipeline.

      • Mozambique’s is a Continental Tragedy

        These days the darkness remains. Ignoring Africa while the Middle East burned was a bad move. Conflicts, war crimes, weaponized food supplies, all are on the rise. The effective lack of accountability in a multi-polar world only adds to the caustic mix.

        Mozambique is not the only nation in Africa for which the Cold War was an inescapable vortex of violence. Yet it is facing a crisis as militants affiliated to Islamic State intensify a horrific campaign of violence in the Cabo Delgado region, which has a long Indian Ocean coastline and a lot of gas reserves. Those displaced now number upwards of half a million.

      • Hunting in Yemen

        Saleh decries the prevention of fuel from entering a key port in Yemen’s northern region.

        “When people think of famine, they wouldn’t consider fuel as contributing to that, but when you’re blocking fuel from entering the main port of a country, you’re essentially crippling the entire infrastructure,” said Saleh  “You can’t transport food, you can’t power homes, you can’t run hospitals without fuel.”

      • Virginia Cop Who Pepper-Sprayed Army Officer Fired After Damning Video Released

        “This should have been a routine traffic stop and the video speaks for itself.”

        A Virginia police officer who pepper-sprayed and threatened a uniformed Black and Latinx Army officer during a routine traffic stop was fired Sunday after video footage of the incident was published, sparking nationwide outrage. 

      • What the Cops Off Campus Movement Looks Like Across the Country

        As protests surged across the country to condemn George Floyd’s death by Minneapolis police in the summer of 2020, police divestment became a serious and pressing demand that has reaped rewards: Many cities have recently taken steps to divert police department money to fund community resources that, protesters argue, would better serve the people and resolve many of the issues cops have historically turned into opportunities for violence. 1

        Students have been making these demands for years now, and not just for local police. Students have to deal with both municipal and campus cops, and so do the people who live around university grounds. And campus have only become more professionalized and militarized in the paste decade. They are frequently armed, equally as violent as regular cops, and—especially at private universities— not burdened with the same expectation of transparency. These are complaints shared by students across the country. To this end, we asked students at universities that have led the way in campus police abolition movements to tell us about what they’ve been doing to hold their universities’ police departments accountable. 2

      • MLB, NBA, and NHL Games Are Canceled in the Twin Cities

        The police killing of Daunte Wright just outside of Minneapolis is creating reverberations throughout the sports world. First the Minnesota Twins, then the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves, and then the National Hockey League’s Minnesota Wild all canceled their games. And they didn’t do it out of fear of riots, as some sportswriters erroneously ( and inexcusably) tweeted.

        Here is the statement that the Twins issued regarding the decision to postpone Monday’s contest against the Boston Red Sox.

      • Biden’s Domestic Spending Plan Is Welcome, But More Military Spending Isn’t

        Last week, the Biden administration published its “skinny budget” proposals — essentially a wish list of the most important discretionary expenditures for the coming year. It’s divided roughly evenly between military and nonmilitary spending.

      • Residents of Minneapolis Suburb Rise Up Against Police Killing of Daunte Wright

        Following the police-perpetrated killing of a 20-year-old Black man in the Twin Cities suburb of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, hundreds of residents demonstrated outside of the police headquarters and throughout the city Sunday night into Monday morning.

      • Julian Aguon’s Poetic Riposte to American Empire

        There are white flowers clinging to limestone cliffs, teeming schools of rabbitfish, and busy tree snails—but in The Properties of Perpetual Light , there is no birdsong. Save for an epigraph, the absence of one of nature’s most ubiquitous pleasures in Julian Aguon’s new, effusively nature-loving book is acknowledged only in the final chapter, a transcribed conversation between Aguon and a close friend, in which he reveals to readers that, on his home island of Guam, there have been virtually no songbirds for a generation. They were eradicated when the United States military inadvertently introduced the invasive brown tree snake. It “is one of those gifts from the colonizer that keeps on giving,” Aguon tells his friend sarcastically.

        A lawyer by trade, Aguon lives what he calls “the integrated life,” employing his passion for writing, activism, and advocacy in the fight for environmental justice and Indigenous self-determination. Guam is a US territory, full of US citizen residents, including thousands of Indigenous CHamorus like Aguon, who live with truncated civil rights and no voting representation in Congress. Closer to Asia than the US mainland, the Pacific island also hosts a massive US military outpost, which has for decades wrought environmental havoc. And the military is expanding its presence on the island. For a decade and a half it has been upscaling its operations in preparation for the relocation of thousands of Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

      • Iran Says Israeli ‘Nuclear Terrorism’ Could Have Led to Catastrophic ‘Crime Against Humanity’

        “This is sabotage all right,” said one outside critic of the attack on Natanz, reportedly carried out by Mossad. “But the target is Biden’s diplomacy with Iran.”

        Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that an attack on its Natanz nuclear facility over the weekend, which it accused Israel of carrying out, could have led to a catastrophic “crime against humanity” if the damage had been more extreme than what occurred.

      • Iowa Senate Approves Bill That Would Add Qualified Immunity To The State Law Books

        In 2018, the Iowa Supreme Court decided to align the state with one of the worst aspects of federal jurisprudence. Deciding it was too much to demand law enforcement officers perform their duties without violating rights, the state’s top court decided to adopt a form of qualified immunity so plaintiffs could be just as screwed in state courts as in federal courts.

      • Iraqi Kurds Say Major IS Attack on Capital Was Foiled

        Iraqi Kurdish officials announced Monday that their counterterrorism unit arrested five Islamic State (IS) suspects who had penetrated the autonomous Kurdistan Region from war-torn Syria to carry out explosions and assassinations in the region’s capital, Irbil.

      • France: Macron Gave Up Fighting Radicalism

        Most journalists seem to prefer avoiding all discussion of the advance of radical Islam in France. They know that those who do so are immediately called “racists” or “Islamophobes” and are often threatened, prosecuted, sentenced to heavy fines or fired from their place of work.

        Even though what the journalist Éric Zemmour said was accurate and verifiable, the CSA (Superior Audiovisual Council), said that to state certain facts constitutes an “incitement to racial hatred”.

        In 2015, a French journalist compared the National Rally Party to the Islamic State. [National Rally President] Marine Le Pen responded by posting on Twitter two photographs of crimes committed by the Islamic State and added, “This is Islamic State”…. In court, the judge asked Le Pen, “Do you consider that these photos violate human dignity?”. Le Pen replied, “It is the crime that violates human dignity, it is not its photographic reproduction”.

      • Internal Pentagon document confirms military standdown during January 6 coup attempt

        Over the weekend the Associated Press (AP) revealed the contents of an internal Pentagon report detailing a series of calls made between lawmakers and the Department of Defense during the attack on Congress on January 6. The report demonstrates that Trump-appointed officials within the Pentagon purposefully forestalled the deployment of military forces for hours even as lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence pleaded for help while fascist-led mobs hunted and called for their deaths inside the Capitol.

        The report states that at 4:08 p.m. on January 6, over two hours after windows at the Capitol were breached by members of the fascist Proud Boys, Pence called acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and demanded he “clear the Capitol.”

    • Environment

      • Majority of Voters Want Government to Rein In Wall Street’s Climate Destruction: Poll

        “It’s time that the U.S. government take the reins back from Wall Street so we can assure the rapid, justice-centered decarbonization necessary for a livable planet.”

        A new poll released Monday shows that large majorities of voters in the United States want the federal government to bolster its regulation of big banks, insurers, and other financial institutions to prevent climate-driven economic crises.

      • Another species harmed by climate change: Japanese poets

        It is not just cherry trees that climate change is confusing, however, but also the poets who write paeans to them. Seasons have long occupied a prominent place in Japanese literature: Kokinwakashu, a poetry anthology published in the 10th century, opens with six chapters of seasonal poems. Basho, who popularised haikus in the 17th century, tended to include in his poems kigo, or seasonal words, to anchor them temporally and thus evoke a certain emotional state.

      • [Old] Ethiopia’s ‘church forests’ are incredible oases of green

        Over the past century, nearly all of the native forests in the South Gonder province have disappeared, cleared to make way for wheat fields and grazing land—agricultural endeavors that support the region’s rapidly growing population. Many of the church forests, though, remain, protected by their religious stewards and the communities around them. They are tiny fragments of a lost past, and the center of hope for conservation and future restoration.

      • [Old] Church Forests of Ethiopia

        Because these church forests of Ethiopia house water supplies, biodiversity (including pollinators of local crops), conserve soil, store carbon, as well as the local churches which represent important spiritual centers, these forests are an important legacy to the health of the Ethiopian people. TREE’s Ethiopia project represents a win/win/win in the world of conservation biology: [...]

      • [Old] The ‘sacred forests’ of northern Ethiopia

        Each dot of green stands out on the landscape because they are some of the only trees left in a country that’s experienced widespread deforestation. Some forests are more than 1,000 years old, and these precious trees have been spared thanks to shadow conservation – conservation as a by-product of religious stewardship. But they are small and threatened by encroaching roads, buildings and farmers’ fields. Paradoxically, humans have both protected them yet pose the biggest threat to their future.

      • The Truth About Trash And The Fight To Save A Balinese Paradise

        Bali is a radically different place today than it was before it became a tourist mecca. The explosion in interest has brought growth and jobs and a growing economy to one of the world’s poorer nations. But progress has also brought problems, in this case, trash. And a lot of it. Paige Leacey weighs in on the fight to protect the Balinese environment from the tourist hordes. S

      • Methane Emissions Spiked in 2020. Scientists Fear Feedback Loops – DeSmog
      • Global farming feels the impacts of global heating

        Global heating has already set back farming around the world, and wiped out seven years of steady advance.

      • Media Coalition Declares That Journalism Should Reflect ‘Climate Emergency Is Here’

        “Why ‘emergency’? Because words matter. To preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately.”

        Lead partners of a global consortium of news outlets that aims to improve reporting on the climate emergency released a statement on Monday urging journalists everywhere to treat their coverage of the rapidly heating planet with the same same level of urgency and intensity as they have the Covid-19 pandemic.

      • Rainforests Could Turn Into Savannas as Climate Warms, New Study Warns

        As the planet warms, it isn’t just humans who are feeling the heat — trees are too. Rising temperatures are disrupting a primary engine of life on Earth: photosynthesis.

      • Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Ecocide in the Pacific

        In fact, no one will ever know the mountains of wastes that have been buried or dumped into rivers, lakes, seas and oceans in violation of the law or with the consent of local and national authorities.

        The EPA is still struggling to lessen the dangers of illegal pollution and burial of toxic wastes in places throughout the country. The EPA baptizes these gangster operations “superfund” sites.

      • Dear Media, Let’s Treat the Climate Emergency Like the Pandemic Emergency

        This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

        It’s long past time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here. To be clear, that is a statement of science, not politics—and the science says the hour is very late.

      • Ecology and Economics

        A new report, published on 14 March, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly.

        The Ambio article was written as part of the preparation for a meeting of Nobel Prize winners to discuss the state of the planet. The virtual meeting will be held on April 26-28, 2021.

      • Energy

        • ‘Only the Beginning’: Citing Climate and Investment Risks, NY State Pension Fund to Ditch Tar Sands

          “Kudos to Tom DiNapoli for making it clear that you can’t build your retirement on tar sands.”

          In a development climate campaigners welcomed as a harbinger of more institutions ditching fossil fuel investments, New York state’s pension fund will divest $7 million from seven tar sands companies, the state comptroller announced Monday.

        • Opinion | Investing in Destruction: California Teachers Pension Money Should Not Be Funding Line 3

          For years organizations have been calling on pension funds to divest from fossil fuels due to environmental racism and the climate impact of these investments.

          Environmental organizers across the country are converging in Northern Minnesota in support of Indigenous Water Protectors, to stop the construction of the Line 3 pipeline expansion. Across the country, people  are protesting, sending letters, and making calls to demand that President Biden shut down the construction of Line 3 just as he called for the shut down the Keystone XL pipeline in January. They are also demanding that banks, insurance companies and pensions divest from Enbridge, the pipeline owner.

        • Remembering LaDonna Brave Bull Allard: Standing Rock Elder Helped Lead 2016 Anti- DAPL Uprising

          LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Standing Rock Sioux tribal historian, has died of cancer at the age of 64, and we look back on her work, through interviews on her land and in the Democracy Now! studio. Allard co-founded the Sacred Stone Camp on Standing Rock Sioux land in April 2016 to resist the Dakota Access pipeline, to which people from around the world traveled, making it one of the largest gatherings of Indigenous peoples in a century. “We say mni wiconi, water of life. Every time we drink water, we say mni wiconi, water of life. We cannot live without water,” LaDonna Brave Bull Allard said in a September 2016 interview with Democracy Now! “I don’t understand why America doesn’t understand how important water is. So we have no choice. We have to stand. No matter what happens, we have to stand to save the water.”

        • Denmark inks massive electric train deal

          Today, those plans were laid bare as the government unveiled a 20 billion kroner deal with French firm Alstom.

          Alstom has initially been tasked with delivering 100 sets of electric trains to national rail operators DSB between 2024 and 2030.

          The new electric trains will replace DSB’s ageing fleet of IC3, IC4 and IR4 trains on Denmark’s national and regional grid.

        • France moves to ban short-haul domestic flights

          Over the weekend, lawmakers voted in favour of a bill to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.

          Connecting flights will not be affected, however.

      • Wildlife/Nature

    • Finance

      • South Korea’s Rural Basic Income Experiment Scheduled for Second Half of 2021

        The rural basic income system that Gyeonggi Province is introducing is a significant step: an examination aimed at pre-testing the effects of a particular policy before it is expanded nationwide. No government to date has implemented a full-scale basic income at the state level. The US state of Alaska, which has made cash payments in the form of “Permanent Fund Dividends” (PFDs) since 1982 to people who have resided there for at least one year, represents a special case, with a stable source of finances in the form of profits from the sale of natural resources. Other examples have all been policy experiments designed to pre-test the effects of a basic income. In Finland, a center-right coalition government that came to power in 2015 launched an experiment in 2017 with a basic income for people unemployed for two or more years. The Canadian province of Ontario, the Spanish city of Barcelona, and the countries of India and Namibia have experimented with cash payments to the impoverished class based on minimal eligibility conditions. The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), a global alliance of basic income proponents, defines a basic income as “a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.” The aforementioned policy experiments, however, fall short in terms of two of the most important conditions of a basic income, namely unconditionality and universality. This limits our interpretations of the outcomes of those experiments, confining them to examining effects on particular groups or particular circumstances rather than the general effects of a basic income.

        The rural basic income system to be introduced by Gyeonggi Province is different from other basic income policy experiments in the past, in that the funds are to be provided to all residents of a given region rather than a particular group such as unemployed persons or members of the impoverished class. Under this system, a basic income is to be provided not only to farmers but also to people employed in other professions, without distinctions of age, income, employment status or other factors. Only one condition applies: residency in a particular region. In effect, the implementation of this policy will permit a comprehensive examination of the effects of a basic income on income stability, life satisfaction, willingness to work, working hours and other areas.

      • Why I Cut Ties With Insurance Giant Liberty Mutual

        After decades as a loyal customer, I recently dropped my insurance policies with Liberty Mutual. I had not realized that the company I had thought was protecting me was, in fact, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel insurers and is supporting violations of Indigenous rights worldwide.

      • Economic Pressure on GA Grows as Will Smith Pulls Film Production Out of State

        Actor Will Smith and film director Antoine Fuqua released a joint statement on Monday announcing they would no longer produce a highly anticipated film in Georgia due to the state’s recently passed restrictive voting law.

      • When Are Taxes Due?

        The IRS is struggling under a mountain of paperwork and grappling with outdated technology, and in the past year it has been tasked with distributing stimulus checks three separate times.

        2020 federal income tax returns for individuals are now due on May 17, 2021. The IRS announced in March that its tax deadline would be pushed back from the usual date, April 15. “Even with the new deadline, we urge taxpayers to consider filing as soon as possible, especially those who are owed refunds. Filing electronically with direct deposit is the quickest way to get refunds,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in the statement.

      • California Bans “Dark Patterns” That Subvert CCPA’s Opt-out Rights

        [...] Specifically, it prohibits companies from burdening consumers with confusing language or unnecessary steps such as forcing them to click through multiple screens or listen to reasons why they shouldn’t opt out. [...]

      • Coinbase’s listing may break records

        And then there is the inherent contradiction of trying to be a big, if not dominant, player in a world that by definition is meant to be fragmented (or “decentralised”, in the lingo). If crypto becomes as successful as Coinbase wants it to be, there may be no need for a financial behemoth. In fact, the firm’s most dangerous rivals may be neither its peers, such as Binance and Kraken, nor conventional financial institutions, but those without a big organisation behind them—fully decentralised, like most cryptocurrencies themselves.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Opinion | The Terrible Deal Between Corporate America and the GOP Is Alive and Well

        Corporations can and should bankroll much of what America needs. But they won’t as long as corporations keep bankrolling American politicians.

        For four decades, the basic deal between big American corporations and politicians has been simple. Corporations provide campaign funds. Politicians reciprocate by lowering corporate taxes and doing whatever else corporations need to boost profits.

      • Opinion | Corporate Media Offers Wall-to-Wall Propaganda Every Day. We Only Notice When a Royal Dies

        In normal times the propaganda is better masked, wrapped in the illusion of choice and variety.

        A few lessons to be learnt from the wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death in the British media…

      • ‘Surrender to Kadyrov’s mercy’ Russian asylum seeker deported from France handed over to Chechen police

        Facing deportation to Russia, Chechen asylum seeker Magomed Gadayev stabbed himself in the stomach at a migrant detention facility in France on Friday, April 9. Nevertheless, the French authorities put him on plane to Moscow. When he arrived, FSB border guards held him in an airport transit zone for 12 hours, before loading him onto a flight to the far-northern town of Novy Urengoy, where his relatives live. By Sunday, Magomed Gadayev had been handed over to the Chechen authorities — despite the fact that he faces reprisals in Chechnya as a witness in a torture case against local police.

      • Biden Fulfills Campaign Pledge to Create Commission on Supreme Court Reforms

        President Joe Biden issued an executive order over the weekend that creates a commission to study potential reforms for the Supreme Court, including expanding the size of the court and instituting term limits for sitting justices.

      • Manchin’s Objection to Infrastructure Bill May Be Motivated by Corporate Donors

        President Biden’s schedule for Monday included a White House meeting with four House members and four senators on the administration’s proposed $2 trillion infrastructure bill. On the GOP side, Representatives Don Young and Garret Graves joined Senators Roger Wicker and Deb Fisher, while Democratic Representatives Donald Payne and David Price joined Senators Maria Cantwell and Alex Padilla.

      • Michigan AG Using Former Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell’s ‘No Reasonable Person Would Believe Me’ Statements To Seek Sanctions Against Her

        In January — shortly after the failed DC insurrection — Dominion Voting Systems sued former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for defamation over her repeated assertions the company was somehow involved in “stealing” the election for President Joe Biden.

      • Opinion | Manchin’s Filibuster Defense Betrays the Senate Legacy He Claims to Protect

        The senator from West Virginia says he sees himself as a defender of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd. If we review Byrd’s legacy, however, it’s clear Manchin is not doing that.

        Joe Manchin of West Virginia is the  Democrats’ pivotal 50th vote in the Senate—the key to passing bills with a simple majority. (With the  tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.) He is also pivotal for  changing the filibuster rule.

      • Help the Papua New Guinea Greens!

        Home to the world’s third largest rainforest, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has a biodiversity as well as a cultural and linguistic diversity that is as great as any region on Earth.

        PNG’s biological and cultural diversity is under assault by the global economy. PNG’s economy is dominated by foreign corporations engaged in resource extraction that plunders PNG’s wealth while leaving little for PNG’s ordinary people. This resource colonialism destroys habitat and quickens global warming. It is accelerating the sixth mass extinction of species in Earth’s history.

        Global logging companies have deforested over a third of PNG, often replacing rainforest with palm oil plantations. Corrupt logging deals between the PNG government and foreign corporations have left indigenous landowners economically and culturally impoverished by the destruction of their traditional means to life in the rainforest.

        [...]

        The U.S. and other rich countries now owe PNG and other exploited tropical countries an ecological debt. The rich countries expropriated their resources, destroyed their habitat and biodiversity, and impoverished their people. We must push the U.S. to lead a Global Green New Deal that invests in the habitability of the whole planet by paying these countries for reforestation, habitat restoration, and revenues lost from cutting the international trade that drives biodiversity destruction.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • Twitter to open first Africa office to tap fast-growing market

        Twitter trails its largest rival, Facebook Inc, which opened its first African office in Johannesburg in 2015 and plans to open a second in Lagos this year. The firm struck a deal with African telecom majors in 2020 to build one of the world’s largest subsea cable networks.

      • Twitter Plans to Hire First Product, Engineering Team in Africa

        Dorsey has said he wants to better understand Africa’s [Internet] users, many of whom are moving online for the first time. He announced plans to live in Africa part-time after visiting the continent in late 2019 to meet entrepreneurs and attend a meditation retreat. He scuttled the idea after the Covid-19 outbreak forced people to stay home and limit travel.

      • Lower the paywalls to keep the bullshit at bay

        A piece in Current Affairs resonated strongly with me: The Truth is Paywalled; but the Lies are Free. The premise of the piece is simple: access to journalistic institutions and academic journals is restricted by paywalls; but hogwash, regurgitated rubbish, and conspiracy theories are available for free. The institutions of truth seem to be too busy erecting paywalls to notice that they’re loosing the market to those that manage to operate without direct payments.

        [...]

        Paywalled websites don’t just request payment for the individual articles you want to read. The only options on offer is a reoccurring monthly subscription. The interests of the consumer are completely ignored in the pursuit of a pot of gold and reoccurring revenue stream.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Oh Look, Here’s Some More Culture Being Canceled, Now Thanks To The Second Circuit

        This decision, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, came out only a few weeks ago, yet before the Supreme Court ruled in Google v. Oracle. In light of that latter decision it’s not clear that this one is still good law. Then again, it’s not clear it ever was.

      • Anti-Free Speech Muslim Group Sues Facebook for Not Removing Sites Opposing Jihad Violence

        The tech site Engadget reported Thursday that the far-left legal group Muslim Advocates has filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Facebook for allowing “anti-Muslim hate to spread on the platform, leading to real-world harm.” The organization provided a list of what it claimed were 26 “anti-Muslim hate groups,” including organizations that are dedicated simply to opposing jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others, including my own news site Jihad Watch, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the Center for Security Policy, and other groups whose main crime is opposing leftist Islamopandering and the left’s tendency to turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses sanctioned by Islamic law.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • A public oversight Meduza looked into Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission and found rampant connections to the security business

        On April 6, the Russian Civic Chamber removed human rights activist Marina Litvinovich from Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission (ONK), an organization tasked with overseeing the observance of prisoners’ rights. Allegedly, Litvinovich was suspended for “multiple ethical violations.” Meduza correspondents Maxim Solopov and Ivan Golunov dug into the Moscow ONK’s internal workings to find out who’s really in control, why so many members are from Moscow’s Mitino district, and how a union for security guards factors in.

      • The National Union of Journalists (SNJ) in France calls on British authorities to release Assange

        If it has so far opposed the American request, the British justice refuses to give Julian Assange his freedom, on the pretext that he would take the opportunity not to appear in court during the appeal by the American side. An appeal that the Biden administration recently confirmed to have made.

      • Everything The West Claims It Values Is Invalidated By Its Treatment Of Assange

        If the western world valued truth, there wouldn’t be a journalist languishing in Belmarsh Prison for publishing it.

        Julian Assange is in prison entirely because of his authentic publications of the 2010 Manning leaks. He remains locked up for no other reason than the Biden administration’s efforts to appeal a British court’s rejection of its extradition request to try him in the United States for those entirely truthful publications.

        If the western world valued truth, Julian Assange would be free. He never would have been imprisoned in the first place. He would be a celebrated hero.

      • Iran: Press freedom violations recounted in real time January 2020

        Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled to learn that three imprisoned Iranian journalists who have almost certainly caught Covid-19 – Baktash Abtin, Reza Khandan Mahabadi and Kayvan Samimi Behbahani– are being denied appropriate medical attention. They must be freed at once, RSF says. Abtin, 48, was transferred to the infirmary of Tehran’s Evin prison on 4 April with a serious pulmonary condition that was confirmed by X-ray. He had been given a PCR test for Covid-19 three days before that and got a negative result. Mahabadi, 59, and Behbahani, 72, also have Covid-19 symptoms and their condition is also very worrying.

      • Execution-Style Killing of Greek Journalist Sends Shockwaves across Europe, West

        Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has ordered an urgent investigation Friday of one of the country’s top crime reporters, Giorgos Karaivaz.

        Greek media have long been targeted by far-left organizations and anarchists in a show of violent defiance to what they call links between them and the nation’s political and financial establishment. However, journalist killings are rare in Greece. If it is established that the reporter was gunned down for carrying out his duties, it will be the first such case in Europe in years.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • For Black Lives Matter Protesters, There Are No Days Off

        Minneapolis, Minn.—The spark comes just before the boom. Every time the cops throw a flash-bang grenade, protesters sprint and cry out. They take cover and protect one another while retreating in tiny increments across the street.

        On Sunday afternoon, police in Brooklyn Center—a suburb 15 minutes north of downtown Minneapolis—killed a 20-year-old Black man named Daunte Wright during a traffic stop. Protesters initially gathered in the neighborhood where he was killed before blocking off the intersection outside the Brooklyn Center police station two miles away.

      • How Corporate America Supports Racism, Hatred & Exploitation (in New & Fun Ways!)

        So I believe we can all admit that there are large groups of racist pricks wandering around our country — usually armed, rarely friendly. Everyone knows it. I bet even the racist parents of a 32-year-old white supremacist know he’s a dick. At Thanksgiving dinner they probably tell him, “Listen, Robbie. We’re very proud of you. We love what you’ve done with hating Black people online. But the thing is — you’re kinda a dick. Can you just be more polite? Just approach people slowly and kindly ask if they would like to be racist with you. You don’t have to make such a scene — with all the guns and the camo.”

        Anyways, I bring this up because I don’t think we’re going to solve America’s militant hate group problem until we get the help of  Fruit by the Foot and  Gushers. …You heard me.

      • Stop Calling It a Border Crisis

        With the increase, the federal government’s capacity to process and shelter migrant children has been stretched, leading to children being housed in overcrowded and inhumane CBP facilities for extended periods of time.

        Federal officials and some media have called what’s happening at the border a “crisis” or a “surge”— harmful rhetoric that has long been used to dehumanize immigrants and people approaching the southern border.

      • Racial Justice Activist Charles Booker Launches Exploration to Unseat Rand Paul

        Charles Booker announced on Monday that he is launching an exploratory committee looking into challenging Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. Booker is a former state representative from Louisville and previously ran against fellow Democrat Amy McGrath in the party’s failed 2020 challenge against Sen. Mitch McConnell.

      • ‘We Can Shock the World’: Kentucky Progressive Charles Booker Considers US Senate Run

        “I know Rand Paul is watching this movement. I know he’s scared. He should be. He knows we can transform Kentucky.”

        In a move swiftly cheered by progressives, Kentucky Democrat Charles Booker announced in a video message on Monday that he was forming an exploratory committee to consider running against Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul in 2022.

      • Protests Erupt After Police Kill Black Man During Traffic Stop Near Minneapolis

        “Yet another Black life was taken by those sworn to protect, and we join the community in mourning Wright’s loss,” said the ACLU of Minnesota.

        Update:

      • Remembering Ramsey Clark

        He served his country as the 66th Attorney General of the United States from 1967 to 1969 under U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. As Deputy and Assistant Attorney General he was instrumental in drafting some of the leading civil rights and environmental legislation that any generation before or after has produced. His hand contributed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the legislation that later inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA. After leaving public office he ran for U.S. President in 1972 and U.S. Senate in 1974 and 1977.

        He was the son of a Supreme Court Justice and former Attorney General, and had his son Tom rose to a senior position in the Department of Justice before his life was ended prematurely by illness. He was married to Georgia (Welch) who he met while they were students at the University of Texas. He was always fond of recalling his travels with Georgia right after they were married when they drove as far South in Central America as they could before turning around and heading all the way back to Chicago. Georgia passed away in 2010. Their daughter Rhonda survives them.

      • Ramsey Clark’s Choices

        For a while during Ramsey Clark’s 1974 senate race, I was his finance chairman. I’m not sure exactly how this happened. I had never been the finance chairman of anything. Maybe Victor Navasky, who ran the campaign, picked me from a list of volunteers. Or maybe it was a role no one else seemed to be filling at the time. The job required that I file documents with the Federal Election Commission. I learned two lessons. Campaigns cost a lot of money—and ours needed more.

        Ramsey rejected contributions above $100. I, among others, urged him to raise this limit. No one, we said, would think that individual contributions of $200 or $300 or even more would corrupt Ramsey Clark. He declined. You could look at his position as imprudent and obstinate. Or you could look at it as principled and resolute. At the time, I was unsure of the answer. Today, in light of Ramsey’s work in the next four decades, I choose principled and resolute.

      • Ramsey Clark, Former U.S. Attorney General Turned Fierce Critic of U.S. Militarism, Dies at Age 93

        Former U.S. attorney general and longtime human rights lawyer Ramsey Clark has died at the age of 93, and we look back on his life. Clark was credited as being a key architect of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He served as attorney general from 1967 to 1969, during which time he ordered a moratorium on federal executions and opposed J. Edgar Hoover’s wiretapping of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., though he was also involved in the prosecution of antiwar activists. After leaving office, Clark became a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy. “The world is the most dangerous place it’s ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing, and we have to take it back,” Ramsey Clark said while addressing a protest against the inauguration of George W. Bush on January 20, 2005. We also play an excerpt from an interview with Clark about defending the Hancock 38, a group of peace activists arrested at a U.S. drone base near Syracuse, New York.

      • Ramsey Clark, Human Rights Lawyer and Critic of US Empire, Dies at Age 93

        “The world is the most dangerous place it’s ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing, and we have to take it back.”

        Former U.S. attorney general and longtime human rights lawyer Ramsey Clark has died at the age of 93, and we look back on his life. Clark was credited as being a key architect of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

      • Amazon “Broke the Law”: Union Seeks New Election After Alabama Warehouse Organizing Drive Fails

        The largest union drive in the history of Amazon has ended with the company on top. After a months-long battle, 738 workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse voted to unionize, and 1,798 voted no. Ballots from another 505 workers were challenged, mostly by Amazon. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that led the drive says Amazon illegally interfered in the vote, and it plans to file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Amazon, which is led by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, spent millions to defeat the closely watched election, and even got a private mailbox installed at the warehouse so it could pressure workers to mail their ballots from work and monitor votes. “It’s important that people don’t misread the results of this election,” says Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “People were not saying that they were satisfied with Amazon’s working conditions in any way. They were saying that they were afraid to vote for the union.”

      • Opinion | ‘This Fight Is Far From Over’: Amazon Union Vote Shows Exactly Why We Need the PRO Act

        In the face of intimidation by one of the largest companies in the world, Alabama workers bravely spoke out about the need for greater labor protections.

      • Union Seeks New Election After Alabama Warehouse Organizing Drive Fails

        The largest union drive in the history of Amazon has ended with the company on top. After a months-long battle, 738 workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse voted to unionize, and 1,798 voted no. Ballots from another 505 workers were challenged, mostly by Amazon. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that led the drive says Amazon illegally interfered in the vote, and it plans to file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Amazon, which is led by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, spent millions to defeat the closely watched election, and even got a private mailbox installed at the warehouse so it could pressure workers to mail their ballots from work and monitor votes. “It’s important that people don’t misread the results of this election,” says Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “People were not saying that they were satisfied with Amazon’s working conditions in any way. They were saying that they were afraid to vote for the union.”

      • “We Need to Give the Workers a Fair Shot”: Jane McAlevey on What Went Wrong in Amazon Union Vote

        Labor organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey says there were many warning signs that the historic Amazon union drive in Bessemer, Alabama, would fail. Workers at the Amazon warehouse voted overwhelmingly against forming a union after a months-long vote by mail, with Amazon using widespread intimidation and misinformation to undermine the effort. But McAlevey says organizers made a number of missteps in their campaign and didn’t do enough to engage workers in the warehouse. “There’s a strategy and a method for every part of a hard campaign. Do we always win when we follow them? No. Do we stand a better chance of winning them? Yes,” says McAlevey.

      • Two Team Navalny members reported missing in Russia’s Dagestan

        Eduard Atayev, the coordinator of Team Navalny’s office in Makhachkala, has gone missing along with his aide Murad Manapov.

      • FBI Scores Itself Another Lawsuit For Using The No Fly List To Punish A Lebanese Man For Not Becoming An Informant

        For years, the FBI has threatened brown people with a miserable existence unless they’re willing to become informants. What should be illegal somehow isn’t — or at least hasn’t generated enough courtroom precedent to force the FBI to knock it off.

      • Rights Advocates Concerned Over Biden Push to Increase Militarization of Borders in Central America

        “The Biden administration should place human rights at the center of its migration discussions and agreements with regional governments.” 

        Human rights defenders expressed concern Monday after the Biden administration announced it reached agreements with Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala for those countries to boost their deployments of military forces to stop the flow migrants trying to make their way to the United States.

      • Navalny transferred out of the prison’s sick ward, reports threats of force-feeding

        Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who is currently on hunger strike in Pokrov’s Penal Colony No. 2, has been transferred out of the prison’s sick ward and returned to the general population. 

      • Connecting the DHS to the airline industry

        A Request For Information (RFI) posted on a website for Federal government contractors gives a glimpse into the degree to which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has embedded itself into the information technology infrastructure of the airline industry.

        The RFI for Services to Electronically Transmit Airline Data was posted April 5, 2021, by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Responses from potential vendors are due by April 19, 2021.

        CBP says it is “conducting market research to gain a greater understanding of the full range of available options for services for obtaining names and related information of passengers who are arriving and departing the U.S. on commercial airlines.” Although the RFI was put out by CBP, which surveils and controls international air travel and cargo transport to and from the US, it appears to contemplate integration with the parallel systems used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for data-driven surveillance and control of domestic US air travel as well.

      • Russian court fines Doctors’ Alliance director Anastasia Vasilieva for rally outside Navalny’s prison

        A district court in Russia’s Vladimir region has fined Anastasia Vasilieva, the director of the medical workers’ union “Alyans Vrachey” (Doctors’ Alliance), 180,000 rubles (about $2,325) for her involvement in a rally outside the prison where opposition politician Alexey Navalny is being held.

      • Why EFF Supports Repeal of Qualified Immunity

        Do you think you have a First Amendment right to use your cell phone to record on-duty police officers, or to use your social media account to criticize politicians? Do you think you have a Fourth Amendment right to privacy in the content of your personal emails? Courts often protect these rights. But some judges invoke qualified immunity to avoid affirmatively recognizing them, or if they do recognize them, to avoid holding government officials accountable for violating them.

        Because of these evasions of judicial responsibility to enforce the Constitution, some government officials continue to invade our digital rights. The time is now for legislatures to repeal this doctrine.

        In 1871, at the height of Reconstruction following the Civil War, Congress enacted a landmark law empowering people to sue state and local officials who violated their constitutional rights. This was a direct response to state-sanctioned violence against Black people that continued despite the formal end of slavery. The law is codified today at 42 U.S.C. § 1983 .

      • The war against money-laundering is being lost

        These cases suggest that banks remain the Achilles heel in the global war on money-laundering, despite the reams of regulations aimed at turning them into front­line soldiers in that conflict. However, closer examination suggests that the global anti-money-laundering (AML) system has serious structural flaws, largely because governments have outsourced to the private sector much of the policing they should have been doing themselves. A study published last year by Ronald Pol, a financial-crime expert, concluded that the global AML system could be “the world’s least effective policy experiment”, and that compliance costs for banks and other businesses could be more than 100 times higher than the amount of laundered loot seized.

      • Final Vote For Exile Tibetan Leader Set For April 11, With Frontrunners Pledging Greater Foreign Outreach

        The Tibetan diaspora is estimated to include about 150,000 people living in 40 countries, mainly India, Nepal, North America, and in Europe.

      • Victims of ‘forced confessions’ urge Western powers to ban Chinese TV channels

        Thirteen people who describe themselves as “victims of forced confessions broadcast on Chinese television” are urging European satellite operator Eutelsat to reconsider carrying Chinese channels CGTN and CCTV4.

        The letter published by human rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders details a list of violations that the signatories say China is guilty of using to extort confessions from them and “refuse the right to a fair trial”.

      • Chinese Political Prisoner Dies Amid Suspicion of Torture, Mistreatment

        A Chinese political prisoner jailed after he publicly supported the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong has died at the age of 48, despite warnings from his family that mistreatment and possible torture at the hands of the prison authorities and police could kill him.

        Guo Hongwei, who was serving a 13-year jail term in China’s northeastern province of Jilin, was rushed to hospital with a brain hemorrhage after his family repeatedly warned that his high blood pressure had been left unmedicated, Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper reported on Monday.

        A person familiar with the matter told RFA last week that Guo had been tortured.

      • Chinese Christians Held in Secretive Brainwashing Camps: Sources

        State security police and religious affairs bureau officials frequently raid unofficial “house churches” that aren’t members of the CCP-backed Three-Self Patriotic Association, although member churches have also been targeted at times.

        The CCP under Xi Jinping regards Christianity as a dangerous foreign import, with party documents warning against the “infiltration of Western hostile forces” in the form of religion.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 83: Inside in the Industry Committee Hearing on the Proposed Rogers-Shaw Merger

        Credits: Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, April 6, 2021

      • Ajit Pai Should Not Still Have His Government Twitter Account

        You are probably familiar with Ajit Pai, the former head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) famous for killing net neutrality rules, doing the Harlem Shake in a Daily Caller video, and drinking from an oversized coffee mug to appear funny and relatable.

      • Activists Say Biden Camp Taking Too Long To Properly Staff The FCC

        If you’ll recall, the Trump administration rushed the appointment of Nathan Simington to the FCC last year, despite Simington having absolutely no real experience or qualifications for the role. That’s because Simington was appointed for two other reasons. One being the idiotic (and utterly hypocritical if you tracked the net neutrality fights) effort by the Trump administration to try and have the FCC target Section 230, which was derailed by Trump’s election loss.

      • The FCC wants you to test your [Internet] speeds with its new app

        The FCC Speed Test App works similarly to existing speed-testing apps like Ookla’s and Fast by Netflix, automatically collecting and displaying data once users press the “start testing” button. According to the FCC, the data collected through the app will inform the agency’s efforts to collect more accurate broadband speed information and aid its broadband deployment efforts.

    • Monopolies

      • New battleground up north: serious challenge to Apple’s App Store model must be brewing in Canada as Cupertino is in full defense mode

        It’s not just about privacy and Apple’s plan to deal major damage the in-app advertising business (in order to force app developers to rely on subscriptions, in-app purchasing, and download fees–the types of revenues on which Apple imposes a tax). On the same day that Tim Cook’s Canadian interview appeared, Apple posted a Canada-centric defense of its App Store business model to its website: Apple’s iOS app economy drives economic growth and opportunity across Canada

        The story mentions some smaller Canadian apps and app development companies: Sago Mini, Ground News, TRU LUV, FILM3D. Apple connects those success stories to Canada’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic: “Canada’s dynamic app economy stands poised to be a competitive and powerful force for job growth as the country recovers from the COVID-19 recession.”

        What Apple does not say, of course, is that the Canadian app economy would do even better if #OpentheAppStore became a reality. Developers of all sizes would find more and greater opportunities that way. I can’t think of anybody who would doubt that the app economy is huge and growing. But I also don’t know a single developer who likes to be at Apple’s (and Google’s) mercy.

      • US vs China – Moving toward Global Injunctions [Ed: Seems like patent law is becoming all about monopolies and nationalism instead of science]

        I wanted to briefly highlight this important pending Federal Circuit appeal involving parallel litigation in both the US and China. The Swedish company wants to litigate in the US, while the Korean company wants to litigate in China.

        [...]

        The Chinese court issued an anti-suit injunction order that would force Ericsson to stop litigating the case in the US (and globally anywhere but in Wuhan). The US court then issued an anti-interference order that bars Samsung from attempting to enforce the Chinese order against the US actions. Litigation between the parties is apparently also ongoing in the USITC, Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium.

      • Judge denies Apple motion for pretrial sanctions against Epic Games, won’t exclude Microsoft and Facebook witnesses

        On Friday, Apple brought a motion for pretrial sanctions against Epic Games. I only tweeted about that motion as it didn’t allege any particular wrongdoing on Epic’s part (just “procedural gamesmanship” according to Apple) and, all in all, fell short of what would have warranted a blog post…

        [...]

        What Apple wanted was for the court to preclude three witnesses–Vivek Sharma of Facebook, Lori Wright of Microsoft, and Benjamin Simon of a five-people company named Yoga Buddhi–”from testifying unless they agree to make sufficient productions four business days in advance of their depositions.”

      • Patents

        • A Residence with a Green Roof in Greece, an Exhibition Hall in China, and a Patent Office in the Netherlands [Ed: They allude to an EPO building that was catastrophic and problematic for so many reasons [1, 2, 3]]]

          The New European Patent Office Site in The Hague houses the EPO’s extensive staff and operations within 278,871 square feet of office space. Completed in 2018 by the Paris-based firm Ateliers Jean Nouvel and the Amsterdam-based firm Dam & Partners Architecten, the project isthe largest steel structure in the Netherlands. In his latest column, ARCHITECT contributing editor Aaron Betsky analyzed winning design for the Shenzhen Opera House in China, explaining that the proposed building is “translucent and coherent from a distance, while close-up and interior views reveal vast, shimmering spaces, covered with net-like grids, that seem to have no visible support.” Read more of Betsky’s “Notes from the Shenzhen Opera House Competition” here, and read more about the New European Patent Office Site in The Hague here.

        • Repurposed drugs: protections and incentives [Ed: So instead of saving lives, patents save fat cats]

          Repurposing drugs has very clear benefits. It gives companies the opportunity to develop entirely new uses for existing drugs that they don’t have patent protection, and may allow innovator companies to protect a molecule or formulation even after initial patent protection has expired.

          Despite these benefits, the road to repurposing drugs can be unclear and costly, with many countries lacking incentives for smaller companies to pursue repurposing for drugs they don’t already have patent protection for.

          LSPN Connect invited five repurposing specialists to a panel talking about the barriers to repurposing treatments, how to incentivise the practice, and notable trends in repurposing over the past 10 years.

        • EPO plans radical shake-up of EQEs 2024 onwards [Ed: EPO’s EQE is corruption and that won’t be taken seriously any time soon]

          The online European Qualifying Examinations (eEQEs) are part of the EPO’s overall digital strategy. The patent exams were moved online for the first time this year as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However (like ViCo oral proceedings), the EQEs will continue to be held online, even post-pandemic. As part of the change to online exams, it has now become apparent that the EPO is planning a radical overhaul of the exams themselves, to be implemented by 2024. Part of the goal of this change is to make the exams more relevant tests of “fit-to-practise”.

          In moving online, the EPO endeavoured to keep the form and content of the exams as close as possible to the paper examinations. In 2022 and 2023, the EPO is expected to make only relatively minor changes to the exams, to better adapt the papers to the online format. Technical changes to the online platform are also expected, which will hopefully prevent a repeat of the issues faced by candidates this year (IPKat here and here).

          [...]

          As the comments on this and other blogs frequently highlight, there is a strong perception by many in the profession that the patent examinations as currently formatted do not test fit for practice. This Kat can herself testify that the more professional experience she accrues, the more absurd some of the requirements of the examinations appear, either because of subject-matter specialism and/or the artificial nature of the jigsaw puzzle-like style of the EQEs. The epi discussion paper begins with an acknowledgement of the problem to be solved: “There is a strong feeling among the tutors and some qualified European patent attorneys that some Exam Papers are too remote from reality” and is welcome for this acknowledgement alone. This Kat wonders if the highly-anticipated Mercer Review of the UK patent examinations (IPKat) will make a similar acknowledgement [Merpel: Speaking of which, where is the Mercer Review?]. The fact that the EPO appears prepared to go further and address the perceived need for a better examination system should be applauded. Let’s hope the PEB is taking note.

        • EPO President in discussion with Members of the European Parliament on the importance of patents in supporting innovation

          President António Campinos addressed Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) on the latest developments in the European patent system on 12 April.

          The EPO President’s participation at the JURI committee meeting, held by videoconference, provided an opportunity to exchange views with MEPs, particularly on the role of patents and innovation and the EPO’s efforts to create a sustainable patent system. It underlined the importance of the European patent system to the success of EU policies on innovation, industry and SMEs and for providing the incentive for ground-breaking research.

        • FOSS Patents: Samsung replies to Ericsson’s response to its Federal Circuit anti-antisuit injunction appeal only three days after amicus curiae briefs

          The lawyers representing Samsung in the U.S. part of its patent dispute with Ericsson must have had a very busy weekend. On Friday, five amicus curiae briefs were filed in support of Ericsson’s responsive brief, one of which was a joint filing by Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel, and the Trump Administration’s USPTO Director Andrei Iancu. But around mignight Eastern Time on Monday, Samsung already filed its reply brief (this post continues below the document):

          [...]

          The remaining questions are not that clear-cut. I’ve recently spoken with two U.S. lawyers whose positions on standard-essential patent (SEP) enforcement I consider to be pretty balanced. They’ve made some points that I need to think about, and they relate to situations in which antisuit injunctions from other jurisdictions (not necessarily China) could disadvantage net licensees (like Samsung) even though in this case, a net licensor (Ericsson) obtained the anti-antisuit injunction at issue. And it’s interesting that only one company has filed an amicus brief: InterDigital supports Ericsson, but InterDigital may have nothing to lose in China and is presently embroiled in litigation with Xiaomi, which obtained an antisuit injunction like the one Samsung got against Ericsson. Other companies and their industry bodies prefer not to alienate any particular jurisdiction, at least for the time being, and/or they’re afraid of situations in which the shoe will be on the other foot and whatever they’d say now would be held against them.

        • Software Patents

          • Inspur Joins the Open Invention Network [Ed: IBM’s monopoly agenda propped up by fake solutions like OIN]

            Open Invention Network (OIN), the largest patent non-aggression community in history, announced today that Inspur has become a licensee and community member of OIN. As a leading global provider of data center infrastructure, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions – ranking among the world’s top-three server manufacturers – Inspur is reinforcing its commitment to open source software (OSS) as an enabler of advanced infrastructure computing systems.

          • Inspur Joins the Open Invention Network

            “Linux is rewriting what is possible in infrastructure computing. OSS-based cloud computing and on-premise data centers are driving down the cost-per-compute while significantly increasing businesses’ ability to provision AI and machine-learning (ML) capabilities,” said Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network. “We appreciate Inspur’s participation in joining OIN and demonstrating its commitment to innovation and patent non-aggression in open source.”

          • Inspur, China’s largest cloud hardware vendor, joins open-source patent protection consortium [Ed: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols no longer works for GNU/Linux but for monopolies trying hard to undermine it and then hijack the whole thing. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols should be treated accordingly.]

            The Open Invention Network (OIN) defends the intellectual property (IP) rights of Linux and open-source software developers from patent trolls and the like. This is a global fight and now the OIN has a new, powerful allied member in China: Inspur.

      • Trademarks

        • Law School Canons: Summer-y Judgment

          Grilling weather is coming up soon! You may be in the market for a new grill to set up in your backyard. Well, now you have to make a choice: will you go with the “Backyard Grill” or the “Backyard BBQ?” That’s not a choice that Variety Stores, Inc. (Variety | Plaintiff) wants you to need to make. Variety Stores, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 888 F.3d 651 (4th Cir. 2018).

          [...]

          Tolan arose from a claim of excessive force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 651. Officer Edwards believed that Tolan (Plaintiff) and his cousin had stolen a car, which the two exited at Tolan’s home. Id. at 651-52. Tolan’s parents came out of the house when they noticed the brewing situation. Id. Officer Cotton (Defendant) arrived, responding to a request for backup from Edwards. Id. at 652. From here, the parties had differing stories. Id. at 653. The two parties disputed how Cotton handled Tolan’s mother during the incident, and as to how Tolan responded to Cotton’s interactions with Tolan’s mother. Id. The stories converge around an unfortunate ending, however: Cotton fired three shots towards Tolan, striking him in the lung. Id.

          Cotton moved for summary judgment with the district court, who granted it for Cotton, later affirmed by the Fifth Circuit. Id. at 654. In upholding summary judgment, the Fifth Circuit relied on Cotton’s version of Tolan’s response to Cotton’s interactions with Tolan’s mother (that Tolan rose to his feet) and to the lighting conditions of the porch where the shooting occurred (that it was dimly lit). Id. at 655. The Supreme Court noted that this was in error: the lower courts had failed to credit Tolan’s versions of the facts, vacating the Fifth Circuit’s judgment. Id. at 660.

      • Copyrights

        • Oracle vs Google: No, the Supreme Court did not say APIs aren’t copyright – and that’s a good thing

          You won’t be paying an Oracle tax on your next Android phone. After 10 years of Big Red claiming dibs on Android internals and Google telling them to GTFO, the legals have finally been settled by the US Supreme Court. Google has won.

          The case was in many ways a classic troll. Way back when, Google thought Java SE would be a good platform to build its new Android phone around. That didn’t work out, thank your favourite deity, so Google wrote its own platform with just enough Java structure to bring caffeinated programmers – of whom there were millions – along for the ride.

          Everyone was happy until Oracle turned up. It fancied a new revenue line for the profit centre it called its legal department. Looking around, Oracle discovered and hauled away the dying Sun with – aha – intellectual property that could be weaponised. Most notably, Google’s little shards of Java API. There were other things too, like patents, but they soon fell by the wayside. As the court case crept up the American legal system, it became widely understood to be about whether you can copyright APIs. Oracle said yes, and Google had infringed that copyright. Google said no, and anyway even if it had, the “fair use” aspect of copyright applied.

        • MPA Targets Pirate Streaming Sites With More Than Half a Billion Visits

          Via the MPA, global anti-piracy coalition Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment is investigating several major streaming platforms. The sites, which offer mainstream movies and TV shows, are good for more than half a billion visits per year. With the help of a US court, the rightsholders are hoping to identify their operators, with disruption or even closure the ultimate aim.

        • Court Orders Paypal to Freeze VPN Company’s Funds in Piracy Case

          A federal court in Virginia has signed a temporary restraining order that requires PayPal to freeze the assets of VPN provider VPN.ht. The company is being sued by several movie studios and stands accused of facilitating piracy. The court also signed off on a request to lock the domain name of a Popcorn Time fork, which already appears to have thrown the towel.

04.12.21

Links 12/4/2021: RSS Guard 3.9.2 and IBM-Funded Hacks Keep Attacking RMS

Posted in News Roundup at 6:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • A Linux Safari to Classify the Genus of This Penguin

      Recently, I took an interest in poking at Gentoo a bit. In the eyes of many desktop Linux users, it’s considered a rite of passage to install this historically significant distribution. I’ve scaled Mt. Arch, so Gentoo Peak is next in my Linux mountaineering.

      Before I started sinking time into it, though, I wanted to see just what I would gain from the formidable task of installing Gentoo. In other words, what does Gentoo bring to the table? A lot, it turns out, but we’ll get there in time.

      This curiosity sent me on a much more interesting Linux safari to explore what truly differentiates distributions. What follows is the classification field guide I wish I had when I began my Linux journey.

    • Is Linux A More Secure Option Than Windows For Businesses?

      There are many factors to consider when choosing an OS, security being among one of the most critical. The general consensus among experts is that Linux is the most secure OS by design – an impressive feat that can be attributed to a variety of characteristics including its transparent open-source code, strict user privilege model, diversity, built-in kernel security defenses and the security of the applications that run on it.

      The high level of security, customization, compatibility and cost-efficiency that Linux offers make it a popular choice among businesses and organizations looking to secure high-value data. Linux has already been adopted by governments and tech giants around the world including IBM, Google and Amazon, and currently powers 97% of the top one million domains in the world. All of today’s most popular programming languages were first developed on Linux and can now run on any OS. In this sense, we’re all using Linux – whether we know it or not!

      This article will examine why Linux is arguably the best choice for businesses looking for a flexible, cost-efficient, exceptionally secure OS. To help you weigh your options, we’ll explore how Linux compares to Windows in the level of privacy and protection against vulnerabilities and attacks it is able to offer all businesses and organizations.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • 10 Reasons To Change Windows 10 To Linux

        Windows 10 has been around for a long time, but not everyone likes it. On the other hand, support for Windows 7 ended in early 2020, and users must either upgrade to a new version or look for an alternative. For such cases, there are a huge number of free Linux distributions that you can try and start using.

        In today’s article I will give 10 reasons why you should leave Windows in favor of Linux. Linux-based operating systems are open source and freely distributed, but this is not their only advantage.

        [...]

        In this article, we’ve covered 10 reasons why you should replace Windows 10 with Linux. Every year there are more and more such reasons. Previously, Linux was positioned only as a system for servers. Now everything is not so bad on home computers. In addition, thanks to Valve for Linux, games have appeared. I hope this article will help those who still have doubts. Have you already switched to Linux? What are the most compelling reasons for you? Write in the comments!

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • MX Linux 19.4 overview | simple configuration, high stability, solid performance.

        In this video, I am going to show an overview of MX Linux 19.4 and some of the applications pre-installed.

      • Destination Linux 221: Our Backup & Data Recovery Methods: Break Glass In Case Of System Failure

        This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we breakdown all of our systems for Backups & Data Recovery! We have some great news on how Open Source is being used to fight rare genetic diseases on multiple fronts. Later in the show, we’re also going to cover Facebooks latest 500 Million record breach. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

      • LHS Episode #406: HamPi and HamPC Deep Dive

        Hello and welcome to Episode 406 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, we interview Dave Slotter, W3DJS, of the HamPi and HamPC projects. We learn a little bit about dave, then we take an in-depth look at his ham shack distribution projects. We explore how to get them, compile them, configure and use them and also get support for them. Thank you for listening to this episode of the show. We hope you have a fantastic week and join us again for our next episode.

      • WP Briefing: Who Is WordPress?

        In this episode, Josepha explores the five groups within the WordPress ecosystem and provides a high-level example of how they interact and support one another. As always, stay tuned for the small list of big things and a contributor highlight.

      • Create Beautiful Websites Using Emacs Org Mode

        In my never-ending quest to find the perfect way to create beautiful (yet minimal) websites, I had to try out Org Export in Emacs. Since I tend to write everything in Org Mode these days, it would be amazing to simply be able to convert my Org docs into HTML, and maybe add a little CSS to spice things up.

      • Free Software: Is It Just A Thing Of The Past?

        Free software is an idea that has existed since before the foundation of Linux but has the idea become stuck in the past and is FOSS something that we should move past, this author seems to think so, I disagree though.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.12 release date may be delayed

        The final release of the next version of the Linux kernel might be pushed back by a week, following a larger than expected release candidate (RC).

        One of the largest RC releases, Linux kernel 5.12-rc7, is just the latest in a series of issues that have plagued the current release cycle.

        “I’m still waffling about the final 5.12 release. The fact that we have a big rc7 does make me think that I’ll probably do an rc8 this time around,” wrote Linus Torvalds, the release manager of the mainline Linux kernel.

      • Apple M1 Hardware Support to be Merged into Linux Kernel 5.13

        Linux users will be able to install their favorite distribution on Apple’s M1-based hardware.

        Hector Martin has merged the initial support for Apple M1 hardware into the Linux SOC (System On a Chip) tree. Martin is the founder of Asahi Linux, a project to port Linux to Apple Silicon Macs. The project was started in 2020, using the M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro hardware. The Asahi goal is “not just to make Linux run on these machines but to polish it to the point where it can be used as a daily OS.”

        Now that M1 support has been merged into the tree, it should make it into the Linux kernel for the 5.13 release (which should come sometime this summer). That does not mean, however, you’ll be able to run Linux on Apple Silicon this summer. In fact, at the moment there is no timetable for full support. The reason for this is porting Linux to Apple Silicon is a daunting task. Because Apple doesn’t release any documentation for the M1 hardware, everything must be reverse-engineered and drivers must then be written.

      • MSM DRM Driver Picks Up Initial Support For The Snapdragon SC7280 – Phoronix

        The MSM DRM driver changes have been sent to DRM-Next for this Freedreno aligned project providing open-source graphics/display driver support for Qualcomm SoCs.

        Most notable to the MSM driver changes slated for Linux 5.13 is the initial support for the SC7280, a forthcoming Snapdragon SoC that has seen rumors and various information in recent weeks. The SC7280 SoC so far has surfaced within reports about future Google Chromebooks. Details on the SC7280 remain light.

      • Intel DG1 Graphics Card Nears Working State On Linux – Phoronix

        While these kernel patches aren’t expected to land until the Linux 5.14 kernel cycle later in the summer, a set of 19 patches published on Monday morning begin allowing a test system to boot with the DG1 graphics card.

        Intel’s open-source driver engineers continue pushing a lot of Linux patches around DG1 specifically and other underlying driver changes for being able to support discrete graphics processors with their i915 kernel driver.

      • Minimizing struct page overhead

        There is a struct page associated with every base page (4K) of system memory, regardless of use. This rather contentious data structure is 64bytes long. While it looks small, it exists for every base page (4K) of system memory regardless of how process page tables (huge pages) may look. Thus, on x86, its overhead is about 1.5% of total physical memory… or for quick math, it is 16 GB per 1 TB. In systems where the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) is small and memory availability is a concern, 1.5% can quickly translate to tens of GB of wasted memory that could be dedicated to guests.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Introducing Pipeworld: Spreadsheet Dataflow Computing

          Now for something completely different. In the spiritual vein of One Night in Rio: Vacation photos from Plan9 and AWK for multimedia, here is a tool that is the link that ties almost all the projects within the Arcan umbrella together into one – and one we have been building towards for a depressing number of years and tens of thousands of hours.

          [...]

          Pipeworld will join Safespaces in acting as the main requirement ‘driver’ in improving Arcan and evolving its set of features, while Durden takes the backseat and moves more towards stabilisation.

          These projects are not entirely disjunct. Pipewold has been written in such a way that the dataflow and window management can be integrated as tools in these two other environments so that you can mix and match – have Pipeworld be a pulldown HUD in Durden or 360 degrees programmable layers in Safespaces with 3D data actually looking that way.

          The analysis and statistics tools that are part of Senseye will join in here, along with other security/reverse engineering projects I have around here.

          Accessibility will be one major target for this project. The zoomable nature helps a bit, but much more interesting is the data-oriented workflow; with it comes the ability to logically address / route and treat clients as multi-representation interactive ‘data sources’ with typed inputs and outputs rather than mere opaque box-trees with prematurely composed (mixed contents) pixels and rigid ‘drag and drop’ as main data exchange. With programmable text-to-speech and OCR already available to any Arcan application, when combined with the logically

          Another major target is collaboration. Since we can dynamically redirect, splice, compose and transform clients in a network friendly way, new collaboration tools emerge organically from the pieces that are already present.

          Where we need much more work is at the edges of client and device compatibility, i.e. modify the bridge tools to provide translations to non-native clients. A direct and simple example is taking our Xorg fork, Xarcan, and intercept ‘screen reading’ requests and substitute for whatever we route to it at the moment – as well as exposing composed cell output as capture devices over v4l2-loopback and so on.

    • Benchmarks

      • Radeon Vulkan Variable Rate Shading Benchmarks For Boosting RDNA2 Performance

        Landing in Mesa 21.1 on Friday was a variable rate shading (VRS) override for the Radeon Vulkan “RADV” driver for providing significant performance boosts by effectively rendering less. This feature is limited to RDNA2 graphics processors while here are some benchmarks on what it means for 4K gaming with the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards on Linux.

        The Mesa RADV driver has Variable Rate Shading (VRS) support for trading less rendering for higher performance. The driver allows setting an environment variable (RADV_FORCE_VRS) to force-enable the functionality even for games/software not making direct use of Vulkan VRS. A value of 2×2 will reduce the fragment shader invocations per pixel to one per 2×2 pixels as a decent performance boost while not degrading quality too much. For the benchmarking today I tested the RDNA2 graphics cards available with the 2×2 setting compared to no overrides.

    • Applications

      • Nuvola Player 4.21 Brings Official Support for Linux Mint, Anghami Support, and More

        Nuvola Player 4.21 looks to be a major update to this overlooked media player that gives you instant access to a wide range of popular media streaming services like Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music, Jamendo, Tidal, BBC iPlayer, DI.FM, SoundCloud, ownCloud Music, SiriusXM, and many others.

        Two major changes are implemented in this update, the first being official support for the Linux Mint distribution in the way that the player will no longer give you errors during installation and it better integrates with both the Cinnamon and MATE desktop environments, and the second is support for the Anghami Arabic music streaming service.

      • Element Keeps conversations in your control

        You are probably using chat applications like Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and another chat app. These are all great to have but in using them you are making a trade-off; you are trading security and privacy for a service that easy to use.

        Matrix is an open standard for communication messages. It is not a server so much as a standard way for clients and servers to talk with each other. The clients and server are open sources. With Matrix, you are not giving your data away to a company that is going to profile you and target advertising at you. This provides a degree of transparency you can look at the code, and you can be confident that it is behaving itself.

        Many developer love Matrix because it let them build on it like Lego bricks and write their clients and servers bots or anything else you can self-host your Matrix server and that means you can create a private community where it knows that your communications are not being intercepted by anybody else. Matrix also has the option for end-to-end encryption, so you know that your messages are private.

        Let’s take a look at a Matrix client known as Element (Riot and Vector) and it is pretty much the reference messaging client.

      • RSS Guard 3.9.2

        RSS Guard is a simple (yet powerful) feed reader. It is able to fetch the most known feed formats, including RSS/RDF and ATOM. It’s free, it’s open-source. RSS Guard currently supports Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian. RSS Guard will never depend on other services – this includes online news aggregators like Feedly, The Old Reader and others.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Use tcpdump and 6 Examples

        Are you trying to capture data packets in order to analyze traffic on your network? Maybe you are a server administrator who has bumped into an issue and wants to monitor transmitted data on the network. Whatever the situation be, the tcpdump Linux utility is what you need.

        In this article, we will discuss the tcpdump command in detail, along with some guides on how to install and use tcpdump on your Linux system.

      • How to play The Forest on Linux

        The Forest works on Linux, but only with Proton’s help, which is a built-in feature of the Linux release of Steam. So, before we can go over how to configure the game, we must demonstrate how to install Steam on Linux.

      • How to Install CopyQ Clipboard Manager 4.0.0 in Ubuntu 20.04 | UbuntuHandbook

        The CopyQ clipboard manager released version 4.0.0 a day ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 18.04 via PPA.

        CopyQ is a free and open-source clipboard manager with editing and scripting features. The new 4.0.0 release features new script engine with some new functions, better ECMAScript support, improved performance.

      • These 10 Sed Examples Will Make You a Linux Power User

        Editing text files and terminal output is an everyday job for those who administer Linux machines. Command-line utilities like sed allow a user to modify and change the content of a text file right from the terminal window.

        In this article, we will discuss the sed command in detail, along with some essential examples that demonstrate the power of the sed utility in Linux.

      • Forgot Your Linux Mint password- Here is a way to recover it.

        Just like Ubuntu Linux distros, resetting passwords on Linux Mint is the same, you have to use the advance boot option to perform the job. Using this we can even change or reset the root password or some other users as well. Just what you have to do is, restart your Linux PC or laptop in recovery mode and follow the steps given in this article to change the password.

        Linux Mint is quite easy to use distro, however, if don’t remember your current password then just like any other operating system, it won’t let you log in. However, as there is no option to recover the current password of your Linux root and other users. Thus, the only option left with us is resetting it manually using the command line. Well, don’t worry, even if you are a Linux beginner, the steps to do that are really a piece of cake.

      • How to Run Shell Script as SystemD Service in Linux

        Systemd is a software application that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. It is the first service to initialize the boot sequence. This always runs with pid 1. This also helps use to manage system and application service on our Linux operating system.

        We can also run any custom script as systemd service. It helps the script to start on system boot. This can be helpful for you to run any script which required to run at boot time only or to run always.

        In our previous tutorial we have provides you instructions to run a Python script using Systemd. This tutorial coverts to run a shell script as Systemd service.

      • Linux 101: How to quickly open a terminal in a specific directory – TechRepublic

        Unlike when working with a server, when using the Linux desktop, I spend more time with a GUI than I do the command line. That doesn’t mean I never touch the command line from within a desktop environment. In fact, I do so on a daily basis. I also try to use it as efficiently as possible.

      • How to Easily Transfer Files between Linux, Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone
      • Arch-linux building from source – and Obarun to the rescue

        What if, there was a benefit in building from source, a system that is commonly used by pre-fabricated binary packages, like Arch or any of its forks and desktop flavors? What Arch considers a “clean-chroot” is primarily of need to developers ensuring their package can be both satisfied for all dependencies AND are reproducible, as long as this can be achieved within a constantly rolling distribution. That is open and nearly free condition for you.

        [...]

        Scratch most of this for several reasons. We are not developers, we are building our own system like Gentoo-ers, k1ss-ers, Crux-ers, and others do. We want to make sure that each of our packages fits well within the parameters of our specific machine, and it wasn’t built on another machine that may not be 100% compatible to ours. One of the aspects of Arch’s clean chroot that shouldn’t be neglected is the tmpfs space a chroot is given. That 20G is borderline enough to build some packages … that may be compiling for half a day and end with an error message “no space left on device“. That is a very sad waste of electricity and processing mileage.

      • Install Wine 6.6 in Ubuntu 20.04 / Linux Mint & Fedora 33

        Wine team released its new development version 6.6

        This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install wine 6.6 in Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 20.04, Fedora 33, and Linux Mint 20.1.

      • How to use the tail command in Ubuntu Linux

        Everyone knows about the cat command alternative to the tail command , which is used to view the contents of files. But in some cases you don’t need to look at the whole file, sometimes it’s enough to look only at the end of the file. For example, when you want to see the contents of a log file, you do not need what it starts with, you will have enough of the latest error messages.

        To do this, you can use the tail command, it allows you to output a specified number of lines from the end of the file, as well as display new lines online. This article will look at the tail Linux command.

      • How to enable Large Indexes in MariaDB 10 on Debian 10

        This tutorial shows you how to enable large indexes in MariaDB 10 on Debian 10. This refers to the innodb_large_prefix option which exists in MariaDB and MySQL. I will show you how to enable the large index option permanently by editing the MariaDB configuration file and I will also show you how to enable it temporarily in the current database session by using SQL commands. InnoDB large prefix allows it to have index key prefixes up to 3072 bytes (for 16k pages, smaller otherwise).

      • Fix for menu font size in LibreOffice

        This morning posted how LibreOffice was compiled in EasyOS:

        https://bkhome.org/news/202104/how-to-compile-libreoffice-in-easyos.html

        …and mentioned that menu font size is a bit small.
        Well, that is the case for all gtk+3 applications, compared with gtk+2 apps. The reason is, Easy is released with a theme set for gtk+2 apps, but no theme set for gtk+3 apps. So gtk+3 apps use the default theme built-in to gtk+3.

      • Fedora 34/33 Enable root Account Password/Login – If Not True Then False

        This is quick guide howto enable root account password/login on Fedora 34/33.

      • FreeIPA and Foreman Proxy development setup

        I have been avoiding this for like ten years now, but today is the day when I will setup a FreeIPA with Foreman Proxy for development and testing purposes and here are my notes.

        The goal is to deploy a libvirt VM with IPA server and Foreman Proxy intergated with it. The domain will be ipa.lan and the host named ipa.ipa.lan. This is NOT how you should deploy production Foreman FreeIPA integration! For that, reading our official documentation and using foreman-installer is suggested instead.

    • Games

      • OpenHV, a free and open source RTS based on the unreleased Hard Vacuum has a stable build

        If you’re looking out for a new real-time strategy (RTS) to play you’re in luck. Recently, OpenHV has a first stable release powered by the OpenRA game engine.

        OpenHV has a fun history, basing the game around an unreleased game named Hard Vacuum that developer Daniel Cook wrote up a Post Mortem for back in 2005. Tons of assets were released under open licenses, along with details on what the gameplay would be like and so OpenHV was created from the ashes. OpenHV also uses the remastered Tyrian Graphics and the Iron Plague artwork by Daniel Cook as well.

      • Get three months FREE of Stadia Pro thanks to Lenovo

        Want to get some free Pro time on Google Stadia? Here’s a chance for you if you act quick enough as Lenovo are giving away 3 months of Stadia Pro for FREE.

        All you have to do is register for an account with their Lenovo Legion Gaming community, confirm your email and then it will send you to a special page to claim which will look like this:

      • Check out the Linux system specs needed for the Metro Exodus port releasing April 14

        Metro Exodus will be officially releasing for Linux on April 14, ahead of the release 4A Games and Deep Silver have put out some new system requirements.

      • Wolfenstein – Blade of Agony releases Chapter 3 plus a revamped Chapter 1 & 2 on April 30

        Even more glorious retro FPS goodness is coming! Wolfenstein – Blade of Agony, the incredible GZDoom story-driven free game will be getting a brand new release on April 30.

        “Blade of Agony is a story-driven FPS. The project is inspired by WWII shooters from the 90′s and early 2000′s, like Wolfenstein 3D, Medal of Honor, and Call of Duty, but with faster-paced gameplay in the spirit of Doom! The game can be played standalone using the GZDoom engine as a base.”

        [...]

        So running it on Linux is as easy as another other Doom-like mod you want to play so we expect no Linux-specific issues at release. You can also use the Snap / Flathub packages.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE KWin Introducing Item-Based Scenes For Improved Wayland Support

          More KDE KWin Wayland improvements are coming down the pipe.

          KDE developer Vlad Zahorodnii has been working on furthering along the KWin compositor’s Wayland support with one of his latest undertakings to adapt the compositor’s existing window-level-focused scene structure into an item-based scene. The items in turn can represent individual surfaces like tooltips, server-side decoration items, etc. This opens up per-item damage tracking and other possible improvements moving forward and potentially a scene/render graph.

    • Distributions

      • The Best Linux Distros for a Touchscreen Monitor

        The concept of using Linux on a touchscreen monitor or two-in-one computer has come a long way. Touchscreen support is now built in to the Linux kernel, so theoretically, any Linux distribution should run with a touchscreen. That said, not every distribution will be easy to use on a touchscreen, and this comes down to the desktop. This means choosing the best Linux distros for a touchscreen that use the optimal desktop out of the box.

        For example, using a tiling window manager like Awesome or i3 isn’t going to do you much good on a touchscreen. Choose the right desktop (more precisely, desktop environment), and you’ll have a much better time using Linux with a touchscreen.

      • Top 3 Linux Server Operating Systems in 2021

        In this article we will look at several Linux distributions, which are an excellent choice if we want to use them as servers. We chose them precisely because they have an excellent level of security, regular patch maintenance and updates, and huge communities. In addition, there are thousands of tutorials on the Internet for every single thing on how to do it and last but not least they are easy to use.

        [...]

        Although we have not put them in the top three, not because they are not unique server operating systems, but because they require more patience, knowledge and time, we must mention FreeBSD, Red Hat, Cent OS and Fedora.

      • BSD

        • FreeBSD 13.0 – Full Desktop Experience

          With the release of FreeBSD 13.0 on the horizon, I wanted to see how it shapes up on my Lenovo T450 laptop. Previous major releases on this laptop, using it as a workstation, felt very rough around the edges but with 13, it feels like the developers got it right.

          I like to keep things simple when it comes to a desktop operating system so the description below is how I went from a fresh install of FreeBSD 13.0RC1 to a working environment that is based on using the XFCE4 desktop experience.

          The FreeBSD install process is simple and well documented in other official locations, so I am not going to repeat that here. However, some of the configuration items that I did select was to use ZFS on Root, encrypted swap and disabled all services (this is a workstation, not a server).

          Once the machine had been rebooted, we need to set it up so that suspend/resume works correctly (and tests as such) and enable power management. The main issue that people have getting the resume part of the suspend/resume to work is not having the drm or xf86 drivers loaded that are applicable to the onboard graphics.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • Arch Family

        • Comparison Of Debian vs Arch Linux

          Debian and Arch Linux are what many distributions are based on. But what are they and what are their main differences? Can they be used as an operating system for a server or home computer?

          In their development, they hold radically different views. Debian is the main GNU / Linux distribution with all the ensuing ones. Arch Linux – DIY distribution (do it yourself). But let’s talk about everything in order.

          Let’s start comparing Debian and Arch Linux as usual with the installation. Debian has a graphical installer. Most of the questions are not difficult. Although some points could be automated, such as adding a Grub bootloader. In general, if you read the tips carefully, then even a beginner will cope with the installation. After that, only the basic set of programs will be available to you.

          There are several installation images, by default a small image is offered with the installation of most packages from the Internet. There is also a kit for full installation. However, this is not the best solution, as multiple disks are used. But if you do not need several desktop shells, then download the live image with the desired environment. With it you will not only get acquainted with the distribution, but also get a quick installation.

          Arch Linux does not have a graphical installer, it does not even have a text version. All commands must be registered manually, starting with the disk layout and ending with the installation of the environment and the bootloader. This method of installation scares away not only beginners but also experienced users.

        • MacOs, Windows and Linux running simultaneously on an old PC

          Luke Metoki virtualized MacOS and Windows simultaneously on an 2000s-era PC, with Arch Linux as the host organism. The mad science worked, but Windows was “very sluggish” if not given the lion’s share of RAM.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • [Older] Fedora Linux 34 Beta with GNOME 40 is here

          Oh my. Today is officially the day many of us have been waiting for. Yes, Fedora Linux 34 has officially achieved Beta status, and you can download it immediately. For many Linux users, Fedora is considered the best overall operating system to be based on that open source kernel, and I happen to agree. The distro focuses on truly free and open source software — a pure Linux experience. It is also fairly bleeding edge, but at the same time, it remains stable for everyday use. Hell, even the inventor of Linux, Linus Torvalds, uses Fedora.

          But what is so exciting about Fedora 34 Beta? Well, this pre-release version of the upcoming operating system uses GNOME 40 as its default desktop environment, and version 40 is the most electrifying version of GNOME in years. GNOME 40 is notable for having a horizontal workspace switcher and having the Dash (favorites launcher) moved to the bottom of the screen.

          “Fedora 34 Workstation Beta includes GNOME 40, the newest release of the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME 40 represents a significant rewrite and brings user experience enhancements to the GNOME shell overview. It changes features like search, windows, workspaces and applications to be more spatially coherent. GNOME shell will also start in the overview after login, and the GNOME welcome tour that was introduced in Fedora Linux 33 will be adapted to the new design for an integrated, cohesive look for the desktop,” explains Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader.

        • 8 Popular Flatpak Apps You Could Try in 2021

          Flatpak packaging comes baked-in in Fedora and Solus distributions. Gradually, it has gained a dedicated following and userbase.

          If you are coming in late, Flatpak is an application bundle used to distribute and install an app on a Linux-based platform. Flathub is where you usually get Flatpak packaged applications. Have a look at our Flatpak guide for more information.

          If you are thinking about giving Flatpak a try, or if you want to try some cool open-source applications, Flathub offers several tools for your Linux distribution. So, I have made a list of some of the most popular software that you can get now from Flathub.

        • Policy proposal: New Code of Conduct

          The Fedora Council has been working with the Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator to update and improve Fedora’s Code of Conduct. This work began with Brian Exelbierd during his tenure as FCAIC and was then picked up by Marie Nordin at the start of 2020. The new draft of the Code of Conduct is more comprehensive than our current Code of Conduct and will be accompanied by a set of Clarifying Statements. The Clarifying Statements are a work in progress.

        • Optimizing server utilization in datacenters by offloading network functions to NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs

          By using hardware offloading and dedicated hardware businesses can free up their CPU resources and handle network traffic more efficiently. In this post we’ll look at using NVIDIA BlueField-2 data processing units (DPU) with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Red Hat OpenShift to boost performance and reduce CPU load on commodity x64 servers.

          Modern networks are expected to be able to quickly and securely move a large number of data packets. Processing that data on both the sending and the receiving ends is an expensive operation for servers that are responsible for handling the network traffic. As the server is performing network operations, its CPUs are spending valuable cycles handling the networking tasks and, as a result, have fewer cycles available to run the actual applications or process the data. A practical solution to this problem is to use hardware offloading to transfer resource intensive computational tasks from the server’s CPU to a separate piece of hardware.

        • Combating security challenges with cloud-native AI-driven architecture

          Network security in modern datacenters is primarily focused on the inbound/outbound packet flow, often referred to as north-south traffic. However, the growth of cloud-native applications has driven an explosion of east-west network traffic within a datacenter where applications can create hundreds of thousands of network connections among virtual machines and containers. As a consequence the ability to track, monitor and secure a datacenter in a timely manner has risen above that of any individual or team. To combat this challenge, Red Hat and NVIDIA are working together to protect networks from breaches via real-time AI security analysis.

          NVIDIA’s Morpheus AI application framework is designed to handle a variety of complex security tasks and policies allowing users to develop and deploy AI-enabled security applications efficiently. Morpheus AI provides several pre-trained models, including one with the ability to immediately recognize many types of sensitive personal information, like public cloud or GitHub user credentials, private keys, passwords, and credit card numbers. This pre-trained model enables AI to search through network packets for patterns associated with these credentials and flag exposed data to the enterprise security team.

        • An Introduction to Convert2RHEL: Now officially supported to convert RHEL-like systems to RHEL

          Convert2RHEL is now an officially supported component of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Convert2RHEL enables the conversion of select RHEL derivative distributions into a supportable RHEL system, retaining existing applications and configurations. This is the culmination of multiple teams within Red Hat who have worked to provide solutions and guidance to our customers and the community at large.

          The concept for the Convert2RHEL utility began nearly five years ago when Red Hat engineering was asked to explore how conversions to RHEL might work. Since then, it has evolved as a collaborative effort between Red Hat Engineering and Consulting services, who have used it successfully with many Oracle Linux and CentOS Linux conversions in many large and complex enterprise environments. Due to numerous requests, Red Hat has now productized it as a supported component of RHEL.

          It was important to ensure that access to the Convert2RHEL utility was frictionless and served the broad CentOS Linux user community who wanted to make use of new options such as our no-cost developer subscriptions. In January, Red Hat announced the enhanced no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals and the Developer for Teams subscription (available via sales), which both provide no-cost access to RHEL subscriptions. This includes Red Hat Insights and many management capabilities from cloud.redhat.com.

        • Red Hat named to Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list for third year in a row

          In February 2020 Red Hat proudly announced that we had earned a place on Fortune’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. At the time, achieving such a distinction seemed guaranteed to be one of the most memorable moments of the year. 2020 had other ideas, though.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Hirsute Hippo Preview

          Welcome, Ubuntu 21.04! This preview is for you who are curious about this new version of Ubuntu that planned to be released at Thursday, 22 April 2021 with the codename Hirsute Hippo. It features a hippopotamus as a wallpaper now continuing the gorilla wallpaper from the previous release of 20.10. This includes updates to GNOME (the desktop), improvements to Settings (the control panel), LibreOffice (the document suite) alongside the Linux kernel and Wayland technologies inside. Let’s dive in!

        • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 678

          Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 678 for the week of April 4 – 10, 2021.

        • Ubuntu Blog: Design and Web team summary – 12 April 2021

          The web team at Canonical run two-week iterations building and maintaining all of Canonical websites and product web interfaces. Here are some of the highlights of our completed work from this iteration.

          This iteration has seen many of the team out of the office as schools are out in the UK. This has not limited the exciting new features and developments from the team.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Nvidia

          • Nvidia to bring GeForce RTX graphics to ARM-based Chromebooks and Linux PCs

            At Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, CEO Jensen Huang announced that the company was working with industry partners to make its graphics technology more widely accessible. Specifically, Huang mentioned that it is looking to bring its GeForce GPU graphics technology to ARM-based processors that are popular on Chromebooks today.

            “We’re announcing a partnership with MediaTek to create a reference system and SDK for Chrome OS and Linux PCs,” Huang said during his keynote presentation at GTC while highlighting the power efficiency and popularity of ARM processors due to their open licensing model. “Combining Nvidia GPUs and MediaTek SoCs [systems on a chip] will make excellent PCs and notebooks.”

          • Mozilla partners with NVIDIA to democratize and diversify voice technology

            Over the next decade, speech is expected to become the primary way people interact with devices — from laptops and phones to digital assistants and retail kiosks. Today’s voice-enabled devices, however, are inaccessible to much of humanity because they cannot understand vast swaths of the world’s languages, accents, and speech patterns.

            To help ensure that people everywhere benefit from this massive technological shift, Mozilla is partnering with NVIDIA, which is investing $1.5 million in Mozilla Common Voice, an ambitious, open-source initiative aimed at democratizing and diversifying voice technology development.

            Most of the voice data currently used to train machine learning algorithms is held by a handful of major companies. This poses challenges for others seeking to develop high-quality speech recognition technologies, while also exacerbating the voice recognition divide between English speakers and the rest of the world.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Community Member Monday: Gökçe Kuler

          I’m from Aydın, Turkey. Currently I’m studying in my final years at the Computer Engineering department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. I’m interested in free software – and enjoy working with free software projects and learning new things aboutthemit. I met free software when I started university via my advisor Necdet Yücel.

          I like playing the guitar and the kalimba. Also, I recently started painting with acrylic paints. I’m vegetarian, and actively participate in animal protection and gender equality projects.

      • FSF

        • Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation speak up on Stallman’s return

          Recently a big controversy surrounding the Free Software Community appeared and cut deep into the community when it was announced without warning that Richard Stallman (RMS) had returned.

          This controversy reached a boiling point, as we covered before with a petition to have Stallman removed. Since then, the FSF repeatedly put out statements about their policies, things that will change, people resigning, a Twitter post and more – but not once did the FSF mention Stallman or what the heck was going on. Finally, multiple weeks later, both the FSF and Stallman have released new statements.

          In the FSF statement, it’s mentioned that FSF staff had no idea what was going on and neither did organisers of LibrePlanet where RMS returning was announced. RMS was voted back in by voting members and the board of directors after “several months of thorough discussion and thoughtful deliberation”. The FSF acknowledge how “badly we handled the news of his election to a board seat” and take “full responsibility”. With RMS back on the board as an “unpaid volunteer” the rules still apply including “prohibitions against conflicts of interest and sexual harassment and those outlining whistleblower processes and fiduciary duties”. The FSF linked to the changes the organisation is committed to implementing and will “continue to pursue additional ideas and actions designed to improve transparency and accountability”.

        • The FSF doubles down on restoring RMS after his non-apology apology [Ed: Corporate Poodle of ZDNet again attacking software freedom and it’s IBM/Microsoft propaganda of hate and defamation; is he sponsored to libel people? Or just a hobby?]
        • Justin W. Flory: What is Freedom?

          Yet what is there to do? The only thing Stallman ever directly gave to me in life was an email explaining elegantly how there was nothing he could do for the Minecraft GPL community fiasco. At a time when I was so personally lost as I saw a community I love tear itself apart, he stood by idly as the so-called steward of these licenses that I was just too naïve to believe in. That experience to me now is amplified in the light of the much more egregious things he is accused of.

          So, the Free Software Foundation welcomes Richard Matthew Stallman back to its board. Wonderful. Congratulations Mr. Stallman. I am going to pause for a moment of sadness and hurt as I contemplate the impact of this moment on our fragile movement, which has much bigger enemies today than it has in its 40 year legacy. But then…

          I will move on. Because we have to. The only way is forward.

        • RMS addresses the free software community

          Ever since my teenage years, I felt as if there were a filmy curtain separating me from other people my age. I understood the words of their conversations, but I could not grasp why they said what they did. Much later I realized that I didn’t understand the subtle cues that other people were responding to.

          Later in life, I discovered that some people had negative reactions to my behavior, which I did not even know about. Tending to be direct and honest with my thoughts, I sometimes made others uncomfortable or even offended them — especially women. This was not a choice: I didn’t understand the problem enough to know which choices there were.

          Sometimes I lost my temper because I didn’t have the social skills to avoid it. Some people could cope with this; others were hurt. I apologize to each of them. Please direct your criticism at me, not at the Free Software Foundation.

          [...]

          False accusations — real or imaginary, against me or against others — especially anger me. I knew Minsky only distantly, but seeing him unjustly accused made me spring to his defense. I would have done it for anyone. Police brutality makes me angry, but when the cops lie about their victims afterwards, that false accusation is the ultimate outrage for me. I condemn racism and sexism, including their systemic forms, so when people say I don’t, that hurts too.

        • Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

          The voting members of the Free Software Foundation, which include the board of directors, voted to appoint Richard Stallman to a board seat after several months of thorough discussion and thoughtful deliberation.

          We decided to bring RMS back because we missed his wisdom. His historical, legal and technical acumen on free software is unrivaled. He has a deep sensitivity to the ways that technologies can contribute to both the enhancement and the diminution of basic human rights. His global network of connections is invaluable. He remains the most articulate philosopher and an unquestionably dedicated advocate of freedom in computing.

          RMS acknowledges that he has made mistakes. He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF. While his personal style remains troubling for some, a majority of the board feel his behavior has moderated and believe that his thinking strengthens the work of the FSF in pursuit of its mission.

          We take full responsibility for how badly we handled the news of his election to a board seat. We had planned a flow of information that was not executed in a timely manner or delivered in the proper sequence.

          FSF staff should have been informed and consulted first. The announcement by RMS at LibrePlanet was a complete surprise to staff, all those who worked so hard to organize a great event, to LibrePlanet speakers and to the exhibitors. We had hoped for a more inclusive and thoughtful process and we apologize that this did not occur.

        • The FSF on Stallman’s reinstatement

          The Free Software Foundation has finally issued a statement on why the decision to return Richard Stallman to the organization’s board of directors was taken.

        • A Message from the openSUSE Board [Ed: OpenSUSE is finished. Like Fedora (driving away anything left of the “community”) being a voice of IBM and nothing else, OpenSUSE Board is just a voice of proprietary software reseller of SAP and Microsoft (SUSE)]

          Inclusion is a fundamental pillar of our community and the broader free software and open source communities that we are part of, are connected with, and value.

          We firmly stand against sexism, racism,… and strive to keep our communities open, welcoming, and safe for everyone to join.

      • Programming/Development

        • Qt Creator 4.15: New CMake Features

          Qt Creator 4.15 comes with a bunch of features and bug fixes for the CMake Project Manager.

          Below, you have a list of what’s new and a few tips and tricks which would hopefully improve your CMake experience in Qt Creator.

        • 7 Popular Open Source CI/CD Tools

          DevOps is a software development strategy that incorporates agile practices for fast, efficient product creation and release. It focuses on integration of development and operations teams, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) and automation of tasks and processes.

          Typically, DevOps teams use pipelines to streamline and standardize processes. DevOps pipelines are toolchains that teams can use to automate tasks and provide visibility into the software development life cycle. In this article, we’ll cover seven popular open source CI/CD tools.

  • Leftovers

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Pandemic and european patent application filings in the biomedical field [Ed: When you become a lawyer you quit caring about people and instead obsesses over stuff like patents... and celebrate the Mafia that runs the EPO and breaks the law every day]

        If the European Patent Office (EPO) notes a very slight decrease in the total number of European patent applications filed in 2020 (-0.7%), it nevertheless notes for this pandemic year a strong increase in these filings in the biomedical field.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • New Linux Foundation project takes blockchain and the open source approach to the insurance industry
              • Linux Foundation Hosts Collaboration Among World’s Largest Insurance Companies

                The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS), today are announcing the launch of OpenIDL, the Open Insurance Data Link platform and project. The platform will reduce the cost of regulatory reporting for insurance carriers, provide a standardized data repository for analytics and a connection point for third parties to deliver new applications to members.

                openIDL brings together some of the world’s largest insurance companies, including The Hanover and Selective Insurance Group, along with technology and service providers Chainyard, KatRisk and MOBI to advance a common distributed ledger platform for sharing information and business processes across the insurance ecosystem.

                [...]

                “AAIS, and the insurance industry in general, are trailblazers in their contribution and collaboration to these technologies,” said Mike Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “Open governance networks like openIDL can now accelerate innovation and development of new product and service offerings for insurance providers and their customers. We’re excited to host this work.”

                As an open source project, all software source code developed will be licensed under an OSI-approved open source license, and all interface specifications developed will be published under an open specification license. And all technical discussions between participants will take place publicly, further enhancing the ability to expand the network to include other participants. As with an openly accessible network, organizations can develop their own proprietary applications and infrastructure integrations.

        • Security

          • Windows, Ubuntu, Zoom, Safari, MS Exchange Hacked at Pwn2Own 2021

            The 2021 spring edition of Pwn2Own hacking contest concluded last week on April 8 with a three-way tie between Team Devcore, OV, and Computest researchers Daan Keuper and Thijs Alkemade.

            [...]

            The Zoom vulnerabilities exploited by Daan Keuper and Thijs Alkemade of Computest Security are particularly noteworthy because the flaws require no interaction of the victim other than being a participant on a Zoom call. What’s more, it affects both Windows and Mac versions of the app, although it’s not clear if Android and iOS versions are vulnerable as well.

            Technical details of the flaws are yet to be disclosed, but in a statement sharing the findings, the Dutch security firm said the researchers “were then able to almost completely take over the system and perform actions such as turning on the camera, turning on the microphone, reading emails, checking the screen and downloading the browser history.”

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by CentOS (kernel and libldb), Debian (mediawiki, qemu, ruby-kramdown, and xen), Fedora (grub2, libldb, libopenmpt, python-pikepdf, python39, samba, squid, and webkit2gtk3), openSUSE (bcc, ceph, gssproxy, hostapd, isync, kernel, openexr, openSUSE KMPs, and tpm2-tss-engine), SUSE (fwupdate and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (spamassassin).

    • Monopolies

      • FOSS Patents: Apple and Google abuse their app store monopolies to obstruct governmental COVID pandemic control efforts in the UK (not even for the first time)

        For a long time I gave Apple and Google the benefit of the doubt with respect to app store policies. When my own app development company got affected by the utterly unreasonable COVID app rules those monopolists had promulgated more than a year ago, I couldn’t help but conclude that the situation was unsustainable. And brought my own antitrust complaints against those companies in multiple jurisdictions (including the UK) though I continue to agree with those companies in some other areas, particularly patent policy.

        It’s bad enough that private companies like the Coronavirus Reporter team and mine were prevented from making our little contributions to the fight against COVID-19. But what’s really unfathomable is that Apple and Google’s hubris even impedes governmental pandemic control efforts.

        This must be a wake-up call for lawmakers, regulators, and courts. Alternative third-party app stores for iOS and Android are absolutely needed. Even governments need such alternatives in a situation like this.

        The BBC’s technology desk editor Leo Kelion reported today that “[a]n update to England and Wales’s contact tracing app has been blocked for breaking the terms of an agreement made with Apple and Google.” Yes, this is about the official contact-tracing app provided by the National Health Service (NHS).

      • Patents

        • Intel emphasizes its independent research and development in second VLSI Technology v. Intel patent trial in Western District of Texas

          As I reported on Saturday, Waco-based Judge Alan Albright of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas denied an Intel motion to transfer or postpone the second VLSI v. Intel patent trial. Intel understandably expressed concern over the possibility of jurors having learned in the local media about the very recent $2.175 billion verdict in another case involving the same parties but unrelated patents. That verdict would be the first of that magnitude to be upheld by the appeals court. Normally, those damages awards don’t stand. The final damages award is zero if the patent turns out on appeal never to have been infringed, or to be invalid; and even if the decision on the merits stands, the amount very often turns out to be excessive. But jurors may take that earlier verdict at face value–and may not fully understand that the outcome of one case over different patents doesn’t mean anything for the case before them, just like the outcome of a hockey game between a team from New York and one from L.A. doesn’t predetermine the result of a football game between teams from the same two cities.

          Today I was one of more than 60 people to dial in and listen to opening arguments. In an order, Judge Albright had stated an incorrect meeting code, but friendly court staff provided the correct one when I contacted them about it. I missed VLSI’s opening statement for that reason, but was just about in time for Intel’s response.

          The patents-in-suit are U.S. Patent No. 6,633,318 on a “method and apparatus for enabling a stand[-]alone inegrated circuit” and U.S. Patent No. 6,366,522 on a “method and apparatus for controlling power consumption of an integrated circuit.” Those patents were originally filed in 2000 by a company named SigmaTel and ultimately acquired by VLSI, a non-practicing entity (NPE) set up specifically for the purpose of buying those patents as Intel noted. One of them has already expired, and the other will expire next month.

        • FOSS Patents: European Court of Justice assigned case numbers to preliminary references in Nokia v. Daimler and Phoenix Contact v. Harting patent cases

          In November, the Dusseldorf Regional Court decided to refer to the European Court of Justice certain questions of component-level licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs) as well as questions regarding the application of the Huawei v. ZTE SEP injunction framework. In February, Nokia withdrew its interlocutory appeal of that order.

          In January, the Munich I Regional Court’s 21st Civil Chamber (Presiding Judge: Tobias Pichlmaier) identified a different patent-related question that it would like the top EU court to answer. The Munich court, which is clearly the most popular patent injunction venue in the world by now, would like to enjoy broader discretion in preliminary injunction decisions than its appeals court (which decides patent PI cases consistently with the appeals courts in Dusseldorf and Karlsruhe) allows. I translated that order.

          [...]

          From what I heard, the translations in the automotive case will be sent to the governments of the EU member states and the parties later this month, with a likely deadline for the European Commission’s, the EU Member States’ and the parties’ observation in early to mid August. I have not been able to find out about the timeline in the preliminary injunction case.

        • Applied UV Receives Patent for Pathogen Destroying Devices in China

          MOUNT VERNON, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 12, 2021 / Applied UV, Inc. (NASDAQ: AUVI) (“Applied UV” or the “CompanyApplied UV Receives Patent for Pathogen Destroying Devices in China

          “), an infection control technology company that applies the power of narrow-range ultraviolet light (“UVC”) for surface areas and catalytic bioconversion technology for air purification to destroy pathogens safely, thoroughly, and automatically, today announced that the Chinese Patent office has issued a notice granting Applied UV’s patent application for its core pathogen destroying device.

          “We have always maintained that a strong and growing intellectual property portfolio is one of our key assets and will enable us to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage while establishing barriers of entry to future competitors,” said Max Munn, President of Applied UV. “Including China, we have received ten crucial patents for our foundational pathogen destroying technology, which defines an exciting new path to address the global challenge of infection prevention and reinforces the uniqueness of our technology.”

        • A Push to End Germany’s Status as ‘Paradise for Patent Trolls’

          Germany has long been a magnet for global patent litigation, ensnaring companies like Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

          Now a coalition of German blue-chip firms and foreign multinationals, including big U.S. tech firms, is pushing legislation that would lessen the country’s appeal for those seeking to assert their intellectual property.

          Germany’s main patent courts, in Munich, Mannheim and Düsseldorf, systematically order injunctions, or temporary sales bans, for products subject to patent suits. That makes them attractive legal venues for patent holders.

          Key targets of the legislation are so-called nonpracticing entities, or NPEs, which amass portfolios of patents that they license instead of using them in their own products. Critics call them patent trolls.

          The proposed rules aim to make it harder for a plaintiff to win an injunction. The initiative has split Germany’s typically unified business community, pitting some of the country’s biggest patent users against its biggest patent holders.

        • Opinion: Why Biden should leave Bayh-Dole alone [Ed: Team UPC propagandist and liar (many lies have been spread, deliberately) Charlotte Kilpatrick is now lobbying for people who pay her salaries, basically pushing for patent trolls in a think tank disguised as “news” site]

          On his way out the White House door, Donald Trump left a present for the pharmaceutical industry in the form of proposed changes to the Bayh-Dole Act that would weaken protections for access to inventions funded with taxpayer money.

          The reforms in question concern the so-called “march-in” orders that were included in the act as a compromise to ensure that all inventions created with federal funds are made available to the public “on reasonable terms”. In specific circumstances the government can march in and either grant, or require the patent owner to grant, licences to third parties.

        • EPO released the Patent Index 2020: in the year of Covid-19, Italy plays a major role in healthcare innovation [Ed: A much-belated, silly and pointless puff piece for the EPO, as if the applications say anything about merit or quality when both have reportedly collapsed at the EPO, for it's just a rubber-stamping production line]

          The European Patent Office (EPO) released the Patent Index 2020, which gives an overview of the filing activities in the EU during the past year. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s dramatic impact on all aspects of the economy, the number of patent applications filed only slightly declined with a 0.7% decrease compared to 2019.

          In this scenario, Italy emerges as one of the fastest-growing European countries in the healthcare innovation sector, achieving an increase in applications well above the average in pharmaceutical patents. Also worth noting is a considerable growth in medical technology, which is now the fourth most relevant technical field in the country.

          Medical technologies, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology all registered strong performance overall at the EPO level as well. Healthcare innovation was the main driver of European patent applications in 2020, with medical technologies in the lead spot among all tech sectors and major growth in the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology fields.

        • Grant Rate by Size and Representation [Ed: As people have long suspected, the patent system is massively tilted in favour of massive corporations and it reinforces monopoly by those who can afford to keep it (and hide legions of lawyers)]

          The chart below shows a measure of patent grant rate for a group of 30,000 recently completed patent prosecution cases. I reported earlier on the grant-rate differential based upon entity size classification: Large>Small>Micro. For this chart, I also added-in a second variable of whether the patent application filings were submitted by a registered US patent attorney or agent. As you might expect, those non-represented cases showed a much lower grant rate.

          The most surprising result: Overall in this sample, I found that over 99% of patent applicants were represented by a US patent practitioner. An important note here is that the focus of this study was non-provisional utility application filings. I expect that the rate of true pro-se applications would be much greater if we looked at provisional patent applications.

          [...]

          Micro entities are a creation of the America Invents Act of 2011 and allow for reduced fees for individuals without much patenting experience (<5 prior applications filed for themselves) and who are not unduly wealthy (<3x median US household income). Again though, universities can count as micro entities. In my sample, a number of the small and micro entities are universities with a higher grant rate than the average for their category.

          Generally, the USPTO requires non-human legal entities to be represented by a patent practitioners. Of the 22,000+ large entity filings in my sample, I found only 4 that were not represented by a US patent attorney/agent. Those cases appeared to me to be ones where the filer should have claimed small or micro entity status.

        • Patent case: Pirri v. Cheek, USA

          An individual who asserted that he was the co-inventor of a patent directed to a method of “reverse online dating” must pay the attorney fees incurred by one of the named inventors and her company, who successfully defended against the individual’s claims for joint inventorship and various state law torts, including fraud and defamation. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the federal district court in New York City correctly determined that the case was “exceptional” for purposes of the Patent Act’s fee-shifting provision, based on the “sheer lack of colorable factual (or legal) support” for the claims, as well as for making, through counsel, “tendentious, bizarre, non-responsive and caustically accusatory arguments.” The Federal Circuit also held that the defendants were entitled to sanctions in the form of appellate attorney fees and double costs, against both the complaining individual and his legal counsel (Pirri v. Cheek, March 22, 2021, per curiam).

        • Red Cat Holdings Announces Issuance Of U.S. Patent On Drone Positioning System

          Red Cat Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB:RCAT), a leading brand in the drone industry, reports that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 10,877,162 on December 29, 2020 to Skypersonic Inc. Red Cat previously announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Skypersonic in February 2021 and expects to close the transaction in April.

        • The nature of parallel proceedings: EPO trumps Patents Court validity decision after just 2 days [Ed: Corrupt EPO management has long broken the law and attacked courts themselves]

          This consequential judgment, handed down by Mr Justice Marcus Smith on 12 March 2021, addresses the repercussions deriving from two opposing conclusions having been reached, almost concurrently, by the Patents Court and the European Patent Office.

          The patent in question claimed prolonged release pharmaceutical formulations concerning the active ingredient melatonin to improve the restorative quality of sleep in a patient suffering from primary insomnia characterised by non-restorative sleep.

          On 4 December 2020, following an expedited trial, the Patents Court determined Neurim Pharmaceuticals Ltd’s (“Neurim”) EP (UK) 1,441,702 B1 (the “Patent”) to be valid and infringed by Generics UK Limited and Mylan UK Healthcare Limited (“Mylan”). On 16 December 2020 Orders were made in Neurim’s favour, in line with that judgment, but were never sealed (together, the “First Order”).

          Only 48 hours later, the EPO Technical Board of Appeal expressed its oral opinion, that the Patent lacked sufficiency. Neurim withdrew its appeal against the earlier invalidity decision of the Opposition Division (“OD”) and, in consequence, the Patent was revoked. Revocation takes place ab initio, meaning it’s as though the patent never was.

        • Software Patents

          • $2,500 for prior art on Gravel Rating Systems

            On April 9, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,500 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claims 1, 4, 5, 8, and 9 of U.S. Patent 7,590,636. This patent is owned by Gravel Rating Systems, LLC, an NPE.

            The ’636 patent relates to a method and system comprising of receiving information input into a database and organizing items of information in the database. This allows the user to quickly share and obtain information about the data stored. It is currently being asserted against Kohl’s, Lowe’s, McAfee, T-Mobile, Costco, and Target in the Eastern District of Texas.

          • Per se abstract?

Links 12/4/2021: Lagrange 1.3.2, Linux 5.12 RC7

Posted in News Roundup at 5:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: April 11th, 2021

      This week has been slow on news due to the Easter holidays, so we only saw the release of a new maintenance update for the latest KDE Plasma 5.21 desktop environment series, a new major update for the Getting Things GNOME to-do app, a new KDE Frameworks release, as well as a new major FFmpeg release.

      On top of that, Arch Linux adds the ArchInstall guided installer in the April 2021 ISO snapshot, KDE promises to keep their Qt 5 apps up to date until they finish the transition to Qt 6, KDE neon devs announce offline updates, Star Labs teases another Linux ultrabook, and GNOME 41 gets a final release date.

    • Linux Weekly Roundup #125

      Hello and welcome to this week’s Linux roundup.

      We had a peaceful week with only the release of Garuda Linux 210406.

      Have a great week and stay safe!

    • Linux Weekly Roundup – XScreenSaver, Sway, Plasma 5.21.4, and More

      Presenting this week’s DebugPoint.com weekly roundup series (Week Ending April 12, 2021) series, refined for you from the Linux and the open-source world on application updates, new releases, distribution updates, and major news. Take a look.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Lenovo M93 Ultra Small Desktop PC- OBS Studio – Week 6

        This is a weekly blog looking at the Lenovo M93 Ultra Small Desktop PC running Linux.

        This week’s blog looks at video recording on the Lenovo M93. When it comes to software, Linux offers a fantastic array of free and open source programs. In the vast majority of areas there’s a wide range of programs to choose from. Sometimes the amount of high quality open source software is bamboozling. But there’s still a few areas which are dominated by a single program. In the case of video recording and streaming, the stand out open source program is OBS Studio.

        Modern graphic cards perform a variety of tasks. They aren’t just designed for gaming. Many cards help offload video encoding and decoding from the CPU. This helps to lower power consumption and free up resources for the rest of the system. In the case of OBS Studio, this program relies heavily on the GPU. But the Lenovo M93 doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card. This ultra small PC uses the Intel HD Graphics 4600, a mobile integrated graphics solution by Intel launched in May 2013. Performance of the graphics unit is widely reported as in the low-end segment.

      • How Google is continuing to chip away at Microsoft’s productivity dominance [Ed: Even the Microsoft boosters admit Microsoft is in trouble…]

        The paths of the digital advertising giants may just be beginning to diverge. While Google will remain dependent on advertising revenue for years to come, the company’s levelheaded approach regarding threats to that business may be indicative of a broader shift that could have the future of the company looking a lot more like Microsoft than Facebook.

        As we were recently reminded when Microsoft executive Brad Smith testified regarding Google’s dominance, the two companies have a long-running rivalry. It has included Microsoft chasing Google in online search and mobile phone operating systems and Google chasing Microsoft in cloud computing, productivity suites, and PC operating systems. The startup display of the Surface Duo, which shows the Microsoft logo on one screen and the Android logo on the other, is a great metaphor for the companies’ relationship — separated by a divide designed to bend but not break.

      • [Older] 13 Places to Buy Linux Laptops in 2021

        Almost all the non-Apple computers sold these days come with Windows preinstalled on them. The standard procedure for Linux users is to buy such a computer and then either remove Windows and install Linux, or dual boot Linux with Windows.

    • Server

      • Kubernetes 1.21: Introducing Suspended Jobs

        Jobs are a crucial part of Kubernetes’ API. While other kinds of workloads such as Deployments, ReplicaSets, StatefulSets, and DaemonSets solve use-cases that require Pods to run forever, Jobs are useful when Pods need to run to completion. Commonly used in parallel batch processing, Jobs can be used in a variety of applications ranging from video rendering and database maintenance to sending bulk emails and scientific computing.

        While the amount of parallelism and the conditions for Job completion are configurable, the Kubernetes API lacked the ability to suspend and resume Jobs. This is often desired when cluster resources are limited and a higher priority Job needs to execute in the place of another Job. Deleting the lower priority Job is a poor workaround as Pod completion history and other metrics associated with the Job will be lost.

        With the recent Kubernetes 1.21 release, you will be able to suspend a Job by updating its spec. The feature is currently in alpha and requires you to enable the SuspendJob feature gate on the API server and the controller manager in order to use it.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux could run on Apple M1 chips in just a few months

        Apple’s latest M1-based range of laptops and desktops has impressed many with the impressive speed boost over Intel chips. While many macOS fans have been eagerly waiting for their favorite apps to be ported across, others have been waiting to the arrival of Linux.

        And with the launch of version 5.13 of the Linux kernel, this should become a reality. The hard work of developers means Linux support could be coming to M1 Apple devices as soon as June this year.

        Support will initially, understandably, be somewhat rudimentary. But it will at least be official and — hopefully — rather more reliable than cobbled-together hacks. While the early stage of support will mean that not everything will be working as everyone might hope, it will serve as an important starting point from which to build.

      • Linux will soon get official support for M1 Macs

        There are several different ongoing projects to bring Linux to the latest Macs – including the news back in January of a working version based on a variant of Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi – but we may soon get official support. The upcoming Linux kernel 5.13 is in “good enough shape” to work with Apple’s M1 computers, writes Phoronix.

      • Kernel prepatch 5.12-rc7

        The 5.12-rc7 kernel prepatch is out; it’s rather larger than Linus would have liked. “End result: I’m still waffling about the final 5.12 release. The fact that we have a big rc7 does make me think that I’ll probably do an rc8 this time around. But it ends up depending a bit on how the upcoming week goes, and if things are deathly quiet, I may end up deciding that an rc8 doesn’t really make sense.”

      • Linux 5.12-rc7
        Oh well. rc5 was big. rc6 was small. And now rc7 is big again. In
fact, it's the biggest rc7 (at least in number of commits) we've had
in the 5.x series.

It's mostly due to networking fixes (of which rc6 had none), and none
of them should be all that scary, but it's never great when we have
such a big rc. It's particularly annoying at the end of the release
window like this.

End result: I'm still waffling about the final 5.12 release.  The fact
that we have a big rc7 does make me think that I'll probably do an rc8
this time around. But it ends up depending a bit on how the upcoming
week goes, and if things are deathly quiet, I may end up deciding that
an rc8 doesn't really make sense.

So we'll see.

Anyway, networking (both core and drivers) is over half of the rc7
patch, with the rest being a fairly random collection of fixes all
over. We've got other driver updates (sound, rdma, scsi, usb..) some
fs fixes (io_uring, umount, btrfs, cifs, ocfs), minor arch fixes (arc,
arm, parisc, powerpc, s390, x86), and other misc fixes.

The shortlog is appended, although it's obviously not as nice and
small and readable as I'd have liked at this point in the release..

Please do test,

               Linus
      • Linux 5.12-rc7 Kernel Released – It’s Big And Causing Some Concern

        The Linux 5.12 stable kernel release is quickly approaching but may be challenged by an extra release candidate.

        Following last weekend’s “positively tiny” Linux 5.12-rc6 kernel, Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.12-rc7 a few minutes ago. The 5.12 kernel has bumped back to being larger than expected for this late stage of development. Linus has yet to decide if this will mean an extra week’s worth of testing or if things are looking good for releasing as stable and avoiding an extra release candidate.

      • The Mesa RADV Vulkan Driver Will Soon Have An Option That Boosts Performance 30%+ On RDNA2 GPUs By Rendering Less

        Those who have the very latest Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards from AMD will get the option of doing fewer fragment shader invocations per pixel rendered in Vulkan games when Mesa 21.1 is released come May. This can provide a huge performance-boost, or nearly none at all, depending on the game or workload. The new Mesa option requires variable rate shading support in hardware, so it is only for those who have a shiny new GPU from AMD.

        [...]

        The RX 6000 series graphics cards (“RDNA2″) from AMD are currently the only cards cards with the required hardware support. It is simply not possible to implement this on older graphics cards from AMD.

        Those lucky enough to have the shiny new and supported graphics hardware will be able to run Vulkan applications with a new RADV_FORCE_VRS= variable that can take the arguments 2×2, 1×2 and 2×1.

      • Linux 5.13 Will Stop Restricting CPU Power Metrics Access For AMD Energy Driver – Phoronix

        Following the PLATYPUS discovery last year that CPU energy information could be used for possible side channel attacks, the Intel RAPL counters were not only restricted to root but the “amd_energy” driver for exposing CPU energy information on supported Zen series CPUs was also dialed back to root-only in the name of security. Linux 5.13 is introducing a new mechanism so AMD CPUs will be able to still read the energy counters even if not operating as root.

        Linux hardware monitoring subsystem (HWMON) maintainer Guenter Roeck authored a change to the AMD_Energy driver and went ahead and committed it on Friday to his hwmon-next tree ahead of the Linux 5.13 merge window opening up later in April. The restricting of energy counters to root privileges as a result of the side-channel attack is “annoying” and so he slightly modified the behavior of the driver. As PLATYPUS relies on quick and accurate energy readings, the approach is to make it…. slightly less accurate.

      • LTP: Linux Test Project, Bootlin contributions

        The Linux Test Project is a project that develops and maintains a large test suite that helps validating the reliability, robustness and stability of the Linux kernel and related features. LTP has been mainly developed by companies such as IBM, Cisco, Fujitsu, SUSE, RedHat, with a focus on desktop distributions.

        On the embedded side, both the openembedded-core Yocto layer and Buildroot have packages that allow to use LTP on embedded targets. However, for a recent project, we practically tried to run the full LTP test suite on an i.MX8 based platform running a Linux system built with Yocto. It turned out that LTP was apparently not very often tested on Busybox-based embedded systems, and we faced a number of issues. In addition to reporting various bugs/issues to the upstream LTP project, we also contributed a number of fixes and improvements

    • Applications

      • CopyQ 4.0

        CopyQ is an advanced clipboard manager with editing and scripting features. CopyQ monitors system clipboard and saves its content in customized tabs. Saved clipboard can be later copied and pasted directly into any application.

      • fmedia 1.24

        fmedia is a fast asynchronous media player/recorder/converter for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. It provides smooth playback and recording even if devices are very slow. It’s highly customizable and can be easily extended with additional plugins. Its low CPU & memory consumption saves energy when running on a notebook’s battery.

      • Atmosphère 0.19.0 released; adds support for Switch firmware 12.0.0

        @SciresM has released the latest version of Atmosphère. Version 0.19.0 adds support for Nintendo Switch on firmware 12.0.0 and the release is also bundled with hbl 2.4.1, and hbmenu 3.4.0. In addition to some stability improvements and bug fixes, version 0.19.0 of Atmosphère includes improvements to mesosphere. The release note mentions that the current focus of Atmosphère’s development is on the implementation of the host target connection protocol.

      • Create and Edit EPUB Files on Linux With Sigil

        Sigil is an open source EPUB editor available for Linux, Windows and macOS. With Sigil, you can create a new ebook in EPUB file format or edit an existing EPUB ebook.

      • Top 10 Image Editors for Linux

        When it comes to adding fun and dynamism to boring and drab pictures, image processing apps come into play. Numerous image editing applications are available to bring life to your black and white photos and patch your torn photographs. If you are a Linux user and searching for the best image editors, thanks to the open-source group of developers, there are plenty of them.

      • Tools for Monitoring Disk Activity in Linux

        Disk activity refers to the percentage of time the currently running disk is busy performing various activities. Activity includes disk read, and disk writes activity, etc. There are various parameters on which Disk activities are being monitored.

        [...]

        Throughout this article, we discussed various tools that can be used to monitor Disk Activities in Linux-based operating systems. Every tool delivers its own set of features, which helps the user analyze how their system behaves from the inside.

        By detailed analysis, system admins can make the desired changes in their system configurations to make their system work faster and smoother. These tools produce results that show the system’s current state, disk health, network bandwidth utilization, and a lot more.

        Using these tools can make system admins troubleshoot issues related to disk and operating systems in a go. It will allow them to save time while troubleshooting and keep their system in a proper state while performing heavy resource utilization tasks.

      • Lagrange 1.3.2 Is Released

        Lagrange is the by far best graphical web browser for the Gemini “space” (A purely text-based web equivalent for hackers). The latest release is mostly a bug-fix for the big 1.3.0 release on March 31st. It fixes a crash for those upgrading from v1.2 caused by older now invalid CA configuration, pixel ratio detection has been improved and there’s a handful of other fixes relating to the sidebar, bookmarks, the Gopher URL support and keybindings.

        [...]

        Lagrange is a special-purpose browser for the “Gemini Space”. It has no idea what to do if you enter a regular web https:// URL in the address bar so it will simply refer that to the systems regular web browser. It does the same with regular web links on Gemini sites.

        Lagrange 1.3.0, released on March 31st, was a major new release with some big improvements in a number of areas. It added the option to have pre-formatted collapse on page loads, it started showing alternative text when hovering over pre-formatted text blocks and it got code to correctly handle unknown URL schemes. Page rendering was also improved with better color themes, it got better spacing for bullets and lists, it got lager content buffers for smoother browsing on larger Gemini pages and it got smarter word wrapping. The already great graphical user-interface got the ability to apply user interface scaling immediately upon closing the Preferences (prior versions had to be restarted to make scaling settings take effect), git got soft shadows for pop-up menus, highlighted domain names in URL fields, and a few other small improvements.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to create new users in OpenShift with htpasswd and OAuth

        Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform that offers many powerful features that meet today’s enterprise needs. For example, one feature of OpenShift is its flexible way of integrating with different authentication mechanisms, whether basic authentication, LDAP, Active Directory, OpenShift login, GitHub login, and so on.

        As you start OpenShift the first time, you might find it super easy to leverage the htpasswd utility, which is a built-in tool for most Linux distributions and macOS. This article demonstrates how you can create your own htpasswd file and add it to Red Hat OpenShift through an intuitive web interface.

      • Fedora Magazine: Scheduling tasks with cron

        Cron is a scheduling daemon that executes tasks at specified intervals. These tasks are called cron jobs and are mostly used to automate system maintenance or administration tasks. For example, you could set a cron job to automate repetitive tasks such as backing up database or data, updating the system with the latest security patches, checking the disk space usage, sending emails, and so on. The cron jobs can be scheduled to run by the minute, hour, day of the month, month, day of the week, or any combination of these.

      • Beginner’s Guide to Docker Restart Policy

        Docker provides a restart policy option to let your containers restart automatically in case of certain events or failures.

        This is extremely helpful in scenarios where you have to restart the Docker host (your Linux server) or if the service running in the container fails.

        Docker restart policies are applied on a per-container basis. There are two ways to assign restart policy to a container. You can set it in the YAML file if you are going to use Docker Compose or Swarm or Kubernetes.

        You can also set the restart policy directly in the command line when you run a container:

      • Install VirtualBox guest additions in Ubuntu 20.04 – PragmaticLinux

        Bummed that you can’t change the screen resolution in your freshly installed Ubuntu virtual machine? An easy fix exists for this: You just need to install the VirtualBox guest additions in your Ubuntu virtual machine. Besides automatically adjusting the screen resolution, you also get support for a bi-directional clipboard and shared folders. This article explains how to install the VirtualBox guest additions in an Ubuntu virtual machine.

      • LFCA: Learn Basics of Network IP Addressing – Part 9

        In our previous chapter of the LFCA series, we defined a computer network and briefly brushed over some of the general Linux networking commands that you can use to retrieve useful network information such as your IP address, subnet mask, open ports and so much more.

        In an interconnected world, networks play a huge role in enhancing seamless communication, access to information, and file-sharing. Because of computer networks, you can check your email, purchase a plane ticket, and download files.

        To better understand computer networks, we go a step further and look at the following salient points.

      • How To Install Chatwoot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Chatwoot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Chatwoot is an open-source, real-time messaging platform that also provides simple and elegant live chat for your websites, collaborates with other agents and messaging apps, and more. This means that you can integrate your social media chat e.g Facebook, Twitter, email, WhatsApp e.t.c to one central place. This will effectively help you have eyes on all your platforms and respond to customer requests in real-time.

        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 Chatwoot 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.

      • [Older] How to install Chrome browser on Kali Linux 2021

        Chrome Browser is a proprietary version of Google’s open-source Chromium. However, on one hand, Chromium is available to install on Kali Linux via its official repository, the Chrome is not. Yes, for this Google browser, we have to either add its repository to Kali manually or get the Deb file from the official website of Chrome.

        Here we will show you both the methods of installing the Google Chrome browser on Kali Linux.

      • How to Remove All Files from a Directory in Linux

        In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to use rm command to remove all files safely from a directory. This document helps you delete non-hidden files, files with specific extensions, hidden files inside a directory.

      • How to compile LibreOffice in EasyOS

        Yesterday I posted about dependencies of LibreOffice compiled in OpenEmbedded…

      • PostgreSQL Substring Function

        PostgreSQL is an open-source database that runs on all operating systems, i.e., Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, etc. It is an object-relational database management system that helps run dynamic websites and applications. A substring contains characters in a sequence within a string. PostgreSQL substring function is useful in getting specific parts of a string by applying queries on strings and tables. This article will help you to learn this feature while manipulating both strings…

      • How to Install RealVNC VNC Viewer on Linux

        RealVNC VNC Viewer is a very popular VNC client. RealVNC VNC viewer is a cross-platform VNC client. RealVNC VNC Viewer is available on Windows, Linux, Mac, and many other devices.
        The RealVNC VNC Viewer client connects to remote computers via the VNC (Virtual Network Computing) remote desktop protocol.

        To connects to a remote computer with the RealVNC VNC Viewer, the remote computer must have the VNC server program installed and configured. Many articles at LinuxHint.com and many other websites you can read to learn how to install and configure the VNC server program on your desired Linux distribution. This is out of the scope of this article.

        This article will show you how to install RealVNC VNC Viewer on some of the most popular Linux distributions and connect to a remote computer with RealVNC VNC Viewer. So, let’s get started.

      • Why NFS servers generally have a ‘reply cache’

        In the beginning, NFS operated over UDP, with each NFS request and each NFS reply in a separate UDP packet (possibly fragmented). UDP has the charming property that it can randomly drop arbitrary packets (and also reorder them). If UDP drops a NFS client’s request to the server, the NFS client will resent it (a ‘retransmit’ in the jargon of NFS). If UDP drops the server’s reply to a client’s request, the client will also resend the request, because it can’t really tell why it didn’t get a reply; it just knows that it didn’t.

      • How to review Apache tomcat access logs – Linux Hint

        Nowadays, there is a tremendous pace in the software development cycle. All the Organizations have codebases containing a huge number of codes consisting of web pages interlinked. There are many circumstances when a system crashes or behaves unexpectedly.
        To analyze and debug the issue, developers and system administrators look into the Log files to find the system’s problems. In reality, when a system is down, log files are often used as the primary source of information.

        In every system, system administrators maintain all the activities related to requests received from various users and store them in a file called log files.

        To debug the system, we can refer to the individual log files to gain insight into the system and move through the various timestamps to know the system’s state.

        In this article, we’ll go into the specifics of these logs below: we’ll go through what’s stored in Apache access logs, where to find them, and how to review Apache tomcat access logs. It makes the system admins keep track of all the information and activities happening within their system.

      • Is List Only Directories Recursively in Linux?

        The word “recursive” refers to the fact that a Linux or Unix operating system commands deals with the contents of folders, and if a folder has subfolders and documents, the instruction still functions with all of those documents (recursively). It could be possible that the child directory has its own set of files and folders (for example, large folders), so on and so forth. You will use different Linux instructions to recursively traverse each folder before making it to the edge of the specified folder. At that level, Linux instructions return to a turnoff of the tree and repeat the process for any sub-folders that exist. In this tutorial, you will learn all the methods to list the directories recursively.

      • How to Install and Configure an NFS Server on Ubuntu 20.04

        NFS or Network File System is a distributed file system protocol that allows you to share directories over a network. With NFS, you can mount remote directories on your system and work with the files on the remote machine as if they were local files.

        By default, the NFS protocol is not encrypted and does not provide user authentication. Access to the server is restricted by the client’s IP addresses or hostnames.
        This article explains how to set up an NFSv4 Server on Ubuntu 20.04. We’ll also show you how to mount an NFS file system on the client machine.

      • How to change the hostname in Ubuntu Linux

        What is a hostname? On a computer network, the host name is a label that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network and that is used to identify the device in various forms of electronic communication, such as the World Wide Web.

        If you decide that the name chosen at installation time or assigned automatically is not what you want, you can follow the steps below to update to a new name.

        The hostname should be unique on a network and should identify individual machine. There should not be two machines with same hostname.

      • Superfast update of ArcoLinux

        There are lots of more tutorials about updating. There is even two playlists on Youtube just about updating. Watching these videos will learn you how to manage your operating system.

        Here we just want to update and get on with our work.

        You can use these commands as you see fit.
        We have added the frequency behind it as indication. Again you are free to do it differently.

        update – ArcoLinux packages, third-party packages build for ArcoLinux and Arch Linux packages – DAILY
        upall – updating all AUR packages – any package you installed additionally – DAILY
        skel – copy/pasting /etc/skel content to your home directory and making a backup of .config folder – MONTHLY
        cb – copy/pasting content from /etc/skel/.bashrc to ~/.bashrc + making it work (source) – MONTHLY

      • SurfingKeys: Browser Vim Keys Better Than Ever

        There’s a ton of these vim browser extensions and I was recently told about another one called Surfingskeys which has some nice advantages to it over something like say Vimium, is it worth switching to.

      • How to install OpenTTD on a Chromebook – based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe

        Today we are looking at how to install OpenTTD on a Chromebook, a game based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

        Please take note that the mouse pointer is glitchy in the game, but it does work.

      • How to Install VLC Media Player on Ubuntu / Debian Linux – LateWeb.Info

        VLC media player is a free, open source multimedia player developed by the non-profit organization VideoLAN. VLC supports almost all known media formats for video and audio, DVD and Video CD. The program offers video streaming from remote computers and servers without loss of quality.

        For more details about VLC Media Player, please check its official website.

        Ubuntu is a modern GNU / Linux distribution developed by Canonical and the surrounding community. The first version was released on October 20, 2004 and is based on one of the largest Linux distributions – Debian.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Wine 6.6 Released with Updated Mono, Improved Plug & Play Driver Support

        Wine 6.6 was released a few days ago as the latest development release of the Windows compatibility layer.

        In the new release the Mono engine is updated to version 6.1.1 with upstream updates. DWrite and DnsApi libraries are now converted to PE. And it improved plug & play driver support.

        Other changes in Wine 6.6 include various bug-fixes to Windows applications and games, e.g., Evil Twin, Half-life, Breath of Fire IV, Google drive, Legends of Runeterra, and more.

    • Games

      • In less than three years Proton and Steam Play have changed the world of Linux gaming by running more than 14 thousand games

        Few games were as highly anticipated by the end of 2020 and ended up making as much noise (though mostly for bad reasons) as Cyberpunk 2077. The ambitious CD Projekt Red title came with so many bugs and performance issues, especially on next-gen consoles. last, that Sony ended up removing it from its digital store and until the sun today it has not returned.

        The best version, most reviews agreed, is the PC version, one that could also be played almost from day one on Linux. Yes, one of the most powerful and technically ambitious triple-A games of recent times, played better on Linux than on a PS4 (depending on the PC of course). The point is, if that story doesn’t tell us already how different the Linux gaming landscape is today than it was 5 years ago, nothing will.

      • Godot Engine – Tiles editor progress #3

        It’s time for a third progress report on the TileMap and TileSet editors rework! Updates are likely less visually appealing than in the previous progress report, but a lot of groundwork has been done since then.

        [...]

        A significant part of my work those past two months has mostly been about reimplementing most of the already existing TileSet features, while introducing more flexibility to it. Most of TileSet’s systems (rendering, collisions, physics, navigation, …) are now using a concept of “layers” (this might be renamed). This allows you to customize the properties that the tiles themselves expose. As an example, you could now define several PhysicsBodies per tile with different collision layers/masks. This was not possible before.

        The remaining of this section describes the TileSet changes I made. Right now, there is no way to edit the tiles’ properties in an efficient way. They are only editable using a dedicated inspector for now, but I plan to implement a way to paint values over tiles in the TileSet editor. However, most properties can now be visualized in the tile atlas.

      • Build engine port backed by GZDoom tech ‘Raze’ has a 1.0 release with Vulkan support

        Raze is a fresh attempt to bring together many different games under one roof including Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Redneck Rampage, Shadow Warrior and Exhumed/Powerslave.

        It’s actually mainly developed by Christoph Oelckers, one of the lead developers on ZDoom/GZDoom so it’s not surprising Raze is using GZDoom tech to make more classic first-person shooters easier to run with an up to date game engine.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Scene Items in KWin by Vlad Zahorodnii

          If your background includes game development, the concept of a scene should sound familiar. A scene is a way to organize the contents of the screen using a tree, where parent nodes affect their child nodes. In a game, a scene would typically consist of elements such as lights, actors, terrain, etc.

          KWin also has a scene. With this blog post, I want to provide a quick glimpse at the current scene design, and the plan how it can be improved for Wayland.

          [...]

          At the end of March, an initial batch of changes to migrate to the item-based design was merged. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but even with those initial changes, you will already see some improves in the Wayland session. For example, there should less visual artifacts in applications that utilize sub-surfaces, e.g. Firefox.

          The end goal of the transition to the item-based design is to have a more flexible and extensible scene. So far, the plan is to continue doing refactorings and avoid rewriting the entire compositing machinery, if possible.

          [...]

          In short, we still have some work to do to make rendering abstractions in KWin fit well all the cases that there are on Wayland. However, even with the work done so far, the results are very promising!

        • A new face for the Qt Project

          project, could learn how to contribute. Additionally, for current members, having a good way of representing this contribution information will help to analyze these contributions for different Qt modules, and help the decision-making process to boost the development in some modules.

          This information is already spread in many places, mainly in our wiki, which doesn’t facilitate newcomers that don’t know their way around to easily find, which raised the motivation of creating a one-page site which will play the role of being the face of the Qt project.

        • Walled gardens

          Plasma Mobile aims to be not a walled garden, and provides a full control/freedom to users, which interestingly also comes with freedom to use the walled garden inside your open garden.

          If user can not have this freedom or is actively being pushed towards ecosystem liked by the developers, then what we have created is a walled garden with illusion of being open garden.

          [...]

          Where we aim that users have full control over their data and do not use closed systems.

          Which is why we need to find a balance between both of this goals/mission. We need to make sure that our default user experience does not make use of closed ecosystem software and at same time if users/developers have preference or requirement of using other systems we enable them to do so to best of our capability.

    • Distributions

      • Reviews

        • Review: Venom Linux 20210312

          I believe the Venom Linux project is still relatively young and, I suspect, the work of one developer. With this in mind it is perhaps unfair to judge the project harshly as it seems to still be finding its feet. Some aspects of the design appeal to me. I have a growing fondness for relatively lightweight distributions and ones which keep the under-the-hood components simple. However, I think Venom takes this to an uncomfortable extreme.

          The project currently has very little documentation, relatively few packages available, few utilities most people would need to get set up, such as a graphical network connection manager, an office suite and a full featured terminal. The distribution is surprisingly light in memory which is great, but it was unusually hard on my CPU.

          The package manager mostly worked well, apart from failing to compile one package, but the fact it needs to build packages from source code is deal breaker for me. It would be faster for me to go into town, buy another computer, and install another distribution featuring LibreOffice on it than wait for Venom to compile the suite from source.

          All of this is to say that while most of what Venom provides works, it provides very little. Some people, myself included, can appreciate a minimal starting foundation, but I do like to have some more basics like volume control and printer support easily available.

          Venom is, as the project’s website says, targeting people who are advanced Linux users, folks who want to use the command line, people who want to build from the ground up. In this way it’s not dissimilar to CRUX or Arch Linux. However, it offers fewer tools, documentation, and packages than the latter, making it a more niche distribution.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

        • What’s the Difference between openSUSE and OpenMandriva

          Here’s a comparison between openSUSE and OpenMandriva (continuing our comparison involving Mageia) the two European computer operating systems from our Free Libre Open Source Software community. The most obvious similarity from both is their name, which includes the word OPEN, which comes particularly from the Open Source Movement. In this article we will see several interesting stuffs from both around their architectures, distributions, control center, etc. so we know about their YaST and OMCC, respectively. If you want to know more similarities and differences of these two OSes, this article is for you. To make it easier to read, OS below is for openSUSE while OM is for OpenMandriva. Let’s go!

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 12 April 1300 UTC

          Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 12 April at 1300UTC in #fedora-neuro on IRC (Freenode). The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend. You can join us over:

      • Debian Family

        • Steve McIntyre & Debian: threatening researchers in gender and diversity studies

          This is chilling. A researcher studying diversity will be completely ostracized.

          These threats are the dark side of Debian that most people don’t see. Debian leaders try to create an image of being helpful and friendly while deleting any facts or people who are not convenient.

          It is also hypocrisy. The Debian Social Contract, point #3 states We will not hide problems. How could McIntyre forget that?

          The lack of diversity is a huge problem. Less than two percent of Debian Developers are female while thirty-one percent of Non-Developing Developers are female. This suggests there is lower trust in women and insufficient effort to change things.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • The Apache Software Foundation Welcomes 40 New Members

        The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) welcomes the following new Members who were elected during the annual ASF Members’ Meeting on 9 and 11 March 2021:

        Maxime Beauchemin, Bolke de Bruin, Wei-Chiu Chuang, Jiangjie (Becket), Pablo Estrada, Dave Grove, Madhawa Kasun Gunasekara, Nathan Hartman, Tilman Hausherr, Georg Henzler, Xiangdong Huang, Nikita Ivanov, Yu Li, Geoff Macartney, Denis A. Magda, Carl Marcum, Matteo Merli, Aaron Morton, Aizhamal Nurmamat kyzy, Enrico Olivelli, Jaikiran Pai, Juan Pan, Pranay Pandey, Arun Patidar, Jarek Potiuk, Rodric Rabbah, Katia Rojas, Maruan Sahyoun, Aditya Sharma, Atri Sharma, Ankit Singhal, Michael Adam Sokolov, Simon Steiner, Benoit Tellier, Josh Thompson, Abhishek Tiwari, Sven Vogel, William Guo Wei, Ming Wen, Andrew Wetmore, and Liang Zhang.

        The ASF incorporated in 1999 with a core membership of 21 individuals who oversaw the progress of the Apache HTTP Server. This group grew with Committers —developers who contributed code, patches, documentation, and other contributions, and were subsequently granted access by the Membership…

      • 6 open source tools and tips to securing a Linux server for beginners

        Because so much of our personal and professional data is available online today, it is important for everyone—from professionals to general internet users—to learn the basics of security and privacy. As a student, I’ve been able to gain experience in this area through my school’s CyberPatriot initiative, where I’ve had the opportunity to interact with industry experts to learn about cyber breaches and the basic steps to establish a system’s security.

        This article details six simple steps to improve the security of your Linux environment for personal use, based on what I have learned thus far as a beginner. Throughout my journey, I have utilized open source tools to accelerate my learning process and familiarize myself with higher-level concepts related to securing my Linux server.

      • Send your scans to a Linux machine over your network
      • Encrypt your files with this open source software
      • Inkscape [Releases] Beta Download for Version 1.1

        Inkscape will be launching it’s much-awaited 1.1 update in the coming months, but in the meantime, you can download the beta on the official website.

      • Web Browsers

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • LibreOffice Writer Guide 7.1 is just out!

          The LibreOffice documentation team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the Writer Guide 7.1

          The book is a complete guide for advanced user the want to explore the best resources of LibreOffice Writer, the word processor of the LibreOffice suite. Covering advanced topics such as styles, illustrations, indexes and table of contents, master documents, form design, document automation and more, this guide will bring your word processing skills to a professional level.

          The Writer Guide 7.1 is a joint effort of Jean Weber and Kees Kriek, who reviewed and updated The LibreOffice 6.4 Writer Guide with the new features of LibreOffice 7.1, released last February.

          “I enjoy writing user documentation for LibreOffice because it gives me an excuse to learn about new and improved features that I might otherwise not know about. The team members are good to work with, friendly and helpful. I especially want to thank Kees Kriek for reviewing all the chapters of this book.”

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU World Order 401

            Thoughts on the changing face of free and open source software.

          • Intel Rocket Lake Target Added To GCC 11

            While Intel is often very proactive in adding new CPU families to the open-source GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers where it tends to land a year or more in advance of the processors actually shipping, occasionally there are slipups. Today in fact the “Rocket Lake” support finally was merged into GCC 11 days ahead of that compiler release and after the CPUs were already launched at the end of March.

            This morning the Rocket Lake support was merged so users/developers can enjoy the likes of -march=rocketlake beginning with GCC 11 and possibly back-ported to a future GCC 10.x point release.

          • G’MIC 2.9.7 Is Released

            G’MIC is a really advanced framework for image processing. It can be used stand-alone or as a plug-in for GIMP and other image manipulation software. The latest version is a minor update to the G’MIC development branch that will eventually lead to a big 3.0 release. 2.9.7 brings better support for .webp images, a new meigen command and two bug-fixes.

          • Andy Wingo: guile’s reader, in guile

            Like many language implementations that started life when you could turn on the radio and expect to hear Def Leppard, Guile has a bottom half and a top half. The bottom half is written in C and exposes a shared library and an executable, and the top half is written in the language itself (Scheme, in the case of Guile) and somehow loaded by the C code when the language implementation starts.

            Since 2010 or so we have been working at replacing bits written in C with bits written in Scheme. Last week’s missive was about replacing the implementation of dynamic-link from using the libltdl library to using Scheme on top of a low-level dlopen wrapper. I’ve written about rewriting eval in Scheme, and more recently about how the road to getting the performance of C implementations in Scheme has been sometimes long.

            These rewrites have a quixotic aspect to them. I feel something in my gut about rightness and wrongness and I know at a base level that moving from C to Scheme is the right thing. Much of it is completely irrational and can be out of place in a lot of contexts — like if you have a task to get done for a customer, you need to sit and think about minimal steps from here to the goal and the gut doesn’t have much of a role to play in how you get there. But it’s nice to have a project where you can do a thing in the way you’d like, and if it takes 10 years, that’s fine.

      • Programming/Development

        • Claudio Cambra: On finishing Season of KDE: improving Kirigami docs

          I wrote my first Season of KDE blog-post 3 months ago… and have since forgotten to write any updates. It’s time to address that!

          Since January, I’ve been working mainly on improving the documentation for Kirigami. Back then, the Develop wiki had some pages teaching newcomers how to create a Kirigami application, but these were a little disjointed and didn’t really lead readers towards any specific goal.

          There were also a lot of aspects and components of Kirigami that weren’t properly documented. Some of the existing materials also needed revising in terms of style, structure, and clarity.

        • How to Install and Use Ruby on Linux Distributions

          Ruby is one of the most used and easy to use programming languages. Ruby is an open-source, object-oriented interpreter that can be installed on a Linux system. Many programmers prefer Python over Ruby to start learning basic programming, but Ruby can handle large web-frameworks and web applications. Once you start learning Ruby, you would find it less machine-like and not repetitive. If you’re confused between Ruby and Ruby on Rails, I must mention that they are not the same; Ruby is a programming language; on the other hand, Ruby on Rails is a web framework.

        • Jelmer Vernooij: The upstream ontologist

          The Debian Janitor is an automated system that commits fixes for (minor) issues in Debian packages that can be fixed by software. It gradually started proposing merges in early December. The first set of changes sent out ran lintian-brush on sid packages maintained in Git. This post is part of a series about the progress of the Janitor.

          The upstream ontologist is a project that extracts metadata about upstream projects in a consistent format. It does this with a combination of heuristics and reading ecosystem-specific metadata files, such as Python’s setup.py, rust’s Cargo.toml as well as e.g. scanning README files.

        • Demystifying programs that create programs, part 1: A disassembler

          People appear to enjoy the blog posts about me porting different compilers to OpenBSD. What I would like to do for the next couple of posts beginning with this one is to take a step back and de-complexify these programs. Both the D compiler and the GNU Modula-2 compiler are highly complex pieces of software. But at their core they are the exact same thing: a program that can create programs. We need not explore something so complex in order to learn how to create a program of our own that creates programs. In this series of blog posts, we will create two programs that will help us demystify programs that create programs: first, in this blog post, we will create a disassembler, or a program that reads a program and produces a higher-level representation (assembly); second, in a couple of subsequent blog posts, we will create an assembler, a program that understands that higher-level assembly language and produces a program from it.

        • Demystifying programs that create programs, part 2: Starting an assembler

          It’s time to tackle the inverse of a disassembler. It will take a lot more effort than our disassembler, but I believe we are up for it. For today, let’s sit down and plan our assembler and begin coding up some boilerplate at least and see how far we get.

        • Demystifying programs that create programs, part 3: Globals, passes, and error handling

          Let’s continue writing our assembler. Today, I want to set up any global variables we might need and also set up error handling.

        • Demystifying programs that create programs, part 4: Parsing

          On this episode of building our Z80 assembler, we are going to learn how to parse a line of assembly into tokens. We’ll need to do this so that we can figure out what that line of assembly is trying to tell us. Then we will be able to generate the correct object code for that line.

          You may have heard about concepts such as abstract syntax trees, or top-down and bottom-up parsers, or LL and LALR parsers. We are going to discuss none of that. We are instead going to take a much more direct approach: we will assume every line of assembly is its own independent universe. We can therefore parse a line and generate object code in one step. Once we have done that, we will discard the line we are currently working with, read the next line, and repeat the process.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Calculating EV battery charge pricing with Perl

            Presently I have great interest in “EVs” Electric Vehicles but I haven’t seen any data on how much it would cost to charge an electric vehicle from 0 % to 100 % battery charge at home in NYC ( So I wrote a Perl script to do just that ) but before we dig in into it I explain a few things about Electric Vehicles.

            Electric Vehicles will have a battery capacity that is represented by kilowatt-hour units or kWh for short.

            An EV’s driving range is represented in miles units ( In the US ) and the average mileage is determined by the EPA battery range rating ( the bigger the battery capacity usually means the more driving range you will have in a car ) after conducting a few tests ( so in reality your mileage will vary ).

            Electric vehicles have an onboard charger which determines its charging rate in Kilowatt per Hour and it varies by car makers. Most EV car owners will install a Level 2 charger that is usually capable of charging cars up to 7.2 kWH rate using 220 volt electric circuit with 32 amps of power ( but there are chargers that can go at a higher rate ).

            Ok now that I explained a few things lets dig into the data used to make my script.

            I checked my electric bill and found that my electricity rate in NYC is $0.13 cents per kWh.

            For comparison I phoned a friend in Florida to get electricity rates where he lives which is $ 0.07 cents per kWh. ( Almost half of NY rate )

    • Standards/Consortia

      • The rise of online readability scrapers

        There are a new breed of services coming out that purport to make the modern web less frustrating to use in specific circumstances. But they’ve incurred the wrath of creators in doing so, and don’t address the structural issues for why we’re at this point.

        A recipe site scraper was the most recent and publicised example. Its developers claimed the tool removed superfluous paragraphs of text surrounding actual cooking instructions, based on the perception that recipe sites are mostly filler. In the social media space, “unroll” services present long Twitter threads on a single page, making them as easy to read as a blog.

        Both of these types of services address a real need people online have, for better or worse. I love reading about the history of a family recipe, but there are far more people who think the padding is only there to serve more ads. Likewise, as long as people insist on using Twitter’s threads feature instead of linking to a blog post, unroll services render them more accessible.

  • Leftovers

    • Opinion | Feast Your Eyes on the Trillion-Dollar SUV

      The concentration of America’s wealth has hit still another terrifying new milestone.

      The Expedition, an SUV that can seat eight passengers, rates as the biggest SUV Ford makes. So how much can an Expedition be worth? That all depends. If the eight passengers sitting in an Expedition happen to be the eight wealthiest Americans, the net worth of that Expedition and everyone in it — as of yesterday — would be over $1 trillion. To be more precise: $1.023 trillion dollars, plus the value of the vehicle.

    • John Prine – Summer’s End
    • Remote work tips: availability heat map

      When your team goes remote or when you are creating a new remote or distributed team, you need to reconsider the most basic ground rules. Most are a given when colocated. One of these ground rules to reconsider is people’s availability.

      At the office, you expect people to be available more or less at similar times, even if your organization promotes flexi-time or core hours, such expectation is mostly there. But when you go remote or even in the case of companies moving towards flexi-days (many will after COVID-19) availability is something that needs to be carefully considered and agreed within the context of the team or department.

      This article will focus on one of those ground rules, availability, including a simple but powerful way of starting the conversation with your team members about it, which has a major impact in scheduling.

      I have written before about the need to redefine those ground rules when going remote in several articles. I list them at the end of this article, in the References section. I mentioned in one of those articles that my former colleague back during my Linaro days, Serge Broslavsky, showed me a visualization to start the conversation about availability that I found so useful that I use it ever since. I have mastered it over time, have used it frequently and even assigned it a name: availability heat map. But before describing what it is, let me start by justifying why you should focus energy in reconsidering availability.

    • A bit of XENIX history

      These are kinds of stories that need to be written down for posterity, of we risk losing a lot of valuable information and backstories to some of the less successful technology products of our time.

    • Hardware

      • Russell Coker: Storage Trends 2021

        Last year NVMe prices were very comparable for SSD prices, I was hoping that trend would continue and SSDs would go away. Now for sizes 1TB and smaller NVMe and SSD prices are very similar, but for 2TB the NVMe prices are twice that of SSD – presumably partly due to poor demand for 2TB NVMe. There are also no NVMe devices larger than 2TB on sale at MSY (a store which caters to home stuff not special server equipment) but SSDs go up to 8TB.

        It seems that NVMe is only really suitable for workstation storage and for cache etc on a server. So SATA SSDs will be around for a while.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • More Than 3,600 US Health Care Workers Have Died in the Pandemic’s First Year

        More than 3,600 U.S. health care workers perished in the first year of the pandemic, according to “ Lost on the Frontline,” a 12-month investigation by The Guardian and KHN to track such deaths.

      • [Older] Norway penguins get vaccinated, isolation nearly over

        They have been living under strict confinement measures for months, but soon the second shot of a life-saving vaccine will let them go outside and get back to their normal lives.

        While it sounds like a familiar story, in this case their normal lives involve sliding about on their bellies, frolicking in icy water and catching fish in their mouths.

        Twenty-nine gentoo penguins at Norway’s Bergen Aquarium have had a tarp stretched over their pen since early December after cases of a highly infectious bird flu strain, H5N8, were detected in the country.

        “Because of this, the Food Health Authority introduced a curfew: all birds in captivity must be kept under a roof,” aquarium director Aslak Sverdrup told AFP on Thursday.

      • How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines

        On February 11, 2020, public health and infectious disease experts gathered by the hundreds at the World Health Organization’s Geneva mothership. The official pronouncement of a pandemic was still a month out, but the agency’s international brain trust knew enough to be worried. Burdened by a sense of borrowed time, they spent two days furiously sketching an “R&D Blueprint” in preparation for a world upended by the virus then known as 2019-nCoV.

        The resulting document summarized the state of coronavirus research and proposed ways to accelerate the development of diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. The underlying premise was that the world would unite against the virus. The global research community would maintain broad and open channels of communication, since collaboration and information-sharing minimize duplication and accelerate discovery. The group also drew up plans for global comparative trials overseen by the WHO, to assess the merits of treatments and vaccines.

        One issue not mentioned in the paper: intellectual property. If the worst came to pass, the experts and researchers assumed cooperation would define the global response, with the WHO playing a central role. That pharmaceutical companies and their allied governments would allow intellectual property concerns to slow things down—from research and development to manufacturing scale-up—does not seem to have occurred to them.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • What if We Made Paying Ransoms Illegal?

          A lot of what I reacted to was the notion that this would be easy. “Disappear in a month”, he said. That’s hyperbole but I should have ignored it and focused on the argument.

          The part that most people latched on to, including me, was the notion that making something illegal can stop it from happening. As many pointed out, history has taught us that this doesn’t work many times. The war on drugs. Alcohol prohibition. The list goes on.

        • Setting up Starlink, SpaceX’s Satellite Internet

          So I thought, why not let a cousin who lives out in a rural area try it out while I figure out what to do about mounting ‘Dishy’ (a common nickname for the Starlink satellite dish) on my own house?

          After all, my cousin Annie, who lives in Jonesburg, MO, currently pays for the maximum available DSL plan to her farm (Haarmann Farms), and gets a measly 5 Mbps down, and 0.46 Mbps up—on a good day: [...]

        • Security

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Facebook ‘knew about phone number data leak vulnerability two years before issue was fixed’, claims security researcher

              As Facebook defends its actions over a massive data leak, one researcher says he notified the company of the issue a full two years before the problem was fixed.

              Last week, Business Insider revealed that the personal data of more than 500 million Facebook users had been posted in a low-level hacking forum where phone numbers were being offered for sale.

              Facebook has defended itself in a lengthy blog post, pointing out that the data was obtained by scraping, rather than [cracking].

            • Facebook says [crackers] ‘scraped’ data of 533 million users in 2019 leak

              The data included phone numbers, birth dates, and email addresses, and some of the data appeared to be current, according to US media reports.

              The stolen [sic] data did not include passwords or financial data, according to Facebook.

              Scraping is a tactic that involves using automated software to gather up information shared publicly online.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Former hostage responds to top diplomat calling Al Qaeda a US ‘asset’ in Syria
      • Biden, Blinken and DOD

        As an indication of his worldview, it is revealing to note Blinken’s membership in the Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS). According to its website, the CSIS “has been dedicated to finding ways to sustain American prominence and prosperity as a force for good in the world.” One is not being particularly cynical when they point out that the good this statement is referring to is the good of Wall Street, and not necessarily Main Street. The CSIS bills itself as a nonpartisan entity. It is funded in large part by war industry contractors, energy corporations and US based banks with an expressed purpose of “maintaining US prominence” in the world. Given the nature of its board of trustees, it’s clear that what that nonpartisansship means is it represents the power elites that run the United States. Democrats and Republicans share a common goal of ensuring the US remains the world’s most powerful state. The differences of opinion the parties have on certain issues do not exist when it comes to enveloping the world in the web of US imperialism. There are differences in how to go about this, but not on the goal itself. This is why both parties are up in arms about China’s rising star and Russian challenges in the Mideast and Europe. The non-partisan nature of the Board lies in the inclusion of both US capitalist parties, not in the inclusion of anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist viewpoints.

        Biden, Blinken and DOD

      • Iran starts up advanced centrifuges in nuclear deal breach

        The IR-5 and IR-6 centrifuges allow uranium to be enriched more quickly and in greater amounts than the Iran’s first generation devices, which are the only ones that the 2015 deal allows it to use.

      • Reports of atrocities by child soldiers, alleged beheadings during Moz attacks – UN

        The UN has expressed deep concern amid reports that about 12 bodies have been beheaded and buried in a shallow grave outside Palma Hotel, in Mozambique.

        The reports about the bodies came on the same day when President Cyril Ramaphosa flew into Mozambique to join the South African Development Community (SADC) leaders attending the extraordinary Troika Summit meeting to plan how they can deal with the violent attacks by insurgents.

        UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said there were reports of atrocities carried out by child soldiers, alleged beheadings during attacks by non-State armed groups, and clashes in the Cabo Delgado region.

      • UN warns Tanzania not to reject people fleeing Mozambique violence

        United Nations teams have received “worrying” reports that Tanzania has rejected over 1 000 people seeking refuge from an Islamic State-claimed attack on a town in northern Mozambique, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday.

        The 24 March attack on the town of Palma, adjacent to gas developments worth $60 billion, sent the town’s residents scattering in all directions, with some fleeing into dense forest while others escaped by boat.

      • Denmark deploying special forces to Mali

        The government has unveiled intentions to dispatch a special forces unit to Mali.

        The group, which will also consist of surgeons and staff officers, will assist the French-led Task Force Takuba tackle terrorism in the embattled west-African country.

        Moreover, the government also wants to redeploy a transport aircraft to help the UN-led MINUSMA mission in the country.

        “The threat from the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda’s terror violence remains serious. They desire to create an oasis for their extremist violence and regime of death in west Africa,” said foreign minister, Jeppe Kofod.

    • Environment

      • ‘The Time Is Now to Go Forward’: Sanders Says Dems Can’t Waste Time Catering to Obstructionist GOP

        “When the scientists tell us we have five or six years before there will be irreparable damage done because of climate change, I’m not going to slow down.”

        Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Saturday that amid the immediate emergencies of climate change, Covid-19, mass unemployment, and homelessness, congressional Democrats cannot afford to dampen their infrastructure ambitions in the hopes of winning support from obstructionist Republicans.

      • Sanders Calls on Democrats to Pursue Big Legislative Agenda Without Republicans

        Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Saturday that amid the immediate emergencies of climate change, Covid-19, mass unemployment, and homelessness, congressional Democrats cannot afford to dampen their infrastructure ambitions in the hopes of winning support from obstructionist Republicans.

      • Energy

        • Opinion | Greening Earth and Creating Jobs, Biden to Slash Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Extend Wind, Solar Credits

          Together, wind and solar account for 40 percent of electricity sector jobs in the United States.

          Reuters reports that President Biden intends to slash tax subsidies for fossil fuels like coal and petroleum and to use taxes instead to encourage renewable energy. Since jobs in the coal industry are plummeting, and since job growth in renewable electricity is over 3 percent a year, Biden’s plans will actually increase employment.

        • Ending Fracking by 2035

          Ottenberg: The first thing that came to my mind when I finished the book, where you’ve done all this research for “Up to Heaven and Down to Hell,” and spent time there and lived in fracking country – do you think Biden should ban fracking and what does that mean with regard to 100 companies causing 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas, over the last 30 years?

          Jerolmack: The first thing to make clear is that Biden can’t ban fracking in most places. He can only ban fracking on public land, which, in America, more than two thirds of fracking occurs on private land. And the only way that fracking can be banned on private land is either at the state level or through congressional action. What he can do is ban new leases on public land. And he’s put a moratorium on them and if you asked me should he turn that into a ban, yes, absolutely. It’s clear that to get even close to meeting our targets for emissions reductions to prevent planetary warming at the catastrophic level, we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

        • Power consumption of old computers

          I run a server from home, utilising old hardware. I want to know how much power this actually consumes, but I have no way to measure it directly.

          More specifically, I have used an old laptop for this, but its battery is permanently shot (the device won’t power on with the battery connected but works just fine without it, drawing power from the charger only). I already have a replacement – an (almost) equally old “multimedia” desktop with a mini-ITX motherboard. I had to replace the “mini” PSU with a normal-sized one. It says 300W on the label (this is not how much power it draws all the time, just the maximum it can provide).

          I want to know how much electricity each setup constantly cosumes.

    • Finance

      • Domestic Workers Need Federal Protections — Even More So Amid a Pandemic

        I’m a domestic worker. You can just imagine how badly COVID-19 has impacted my income.

      • Opinion | American Consumers Deserve Better Than US Retailers Like Costco Provide

        Grocery chains like Costco in the U.S. need to commit to making substantial changes that improve the welfare of chickens in their supply chains here at home.

        Imagine a food so filthy that it requires chemical disinfection prior to packaging and sale. Now imagine that the average American eats almost 100 pounds of it every year. Sadly, that product is not imaginary. It’s chicken, and few US consumers know the grisly truth about how it’s produced.

      • Opinion | What’s Really Behind the Opposition to a $15 Minimum Wage

        Fifty-seven senators from both parties are determined to preserve an economic system that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.

      • Pentagon and Tax Cheats Already Cost Taxpayers Far More Than Biden’s Job Plan

        Is President Biden’s $2.3 trillion jobs plan too big? Conservatives are arguing that the package is too expensive and its broad reach is unnecessary.

      • The Basic Deal Between Corporate America and the GOP is Alive and Well

        The deal has proven beneficial to both sides, although not to the American public. Campaign spending has soared while corporate taxes have shriveled.

      • Chinese Regulators Levy Record $2.8 Billion Fine On Alibaba

        Chinese authorities have fined Alibaba $2.75 billion for alleged antitrust violations, Reuters and other news agencies reported.

        The fine, according to Reuters, equals about 4 percent of Alibaba’s 2019 domestic revenue and allegedly came in response to several years of market-power abuses, especially refusing to let some merchants it worked with also work with other eCommerce companies.

        “This penalty will be viewed as a closure to the anti-monopoly case for now by the market,” Hong Hao, head of research at BOCOM International, reportedly told Reuters. “It’s indeed the highest profile anti-monopoly case in China. The market has been anticipating some sort of penalty for some time … but people need to pay attention to the measures beyond the anti-monopoly investigation.”

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Opinion | Arizona Republicans Declare Their Opposition to Democracy

        After officially objecting to the federal reforms in the For the People Act, the state legislature is considering a raft of voter suppression bills.

      • Trumpism Is Not Just an American Problem. It’s Festering in the UK.

        When Donald Trump was driven out of office, many of us hoped that would be the end not just of the man himself, but of the politics he represented. In the U.K., however, Trumpism has continued to gain momentum. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party, the U.K. government has taken a distinct authoritarian turn, using the pandemic as a cover for introducing laws and regulations to criminalize protest and facilitating police repression against communities of color.

      • Endorsed by Trump Allies, Disgraced Former Missouri Governor Will Run for Senate

        Missouri has embarrassingly made international headlines several times as of late. In January 2018, then-Gov. Eric Greitens admitted to having an affair and was subsequently probed for blackmail and assault. That February, he was formally charged. That April, a bipartisan report was released by the Missouri House Special Investigative Committee on Oversight, which detailed graphic allegations against the former governor. This prompted Missouri’s then-Attorney General Josh Hawley to call on Greitens to “ resign immediately.”

      • Google’s Project Zero Finds a Nation-State Zero-Day Operation

        Google’s Project Zero discovered, and caused to be patched, eleven zero-day exploits against Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Windows, and iOS. This seems to have been exploited by “Western government operatives actively conducting a counterterrorism operation”: [...]

      • Russia fines TikTok over calls for minors to join protests

        A Moscow court on Tuesday fined TikTok more than $30,000 for failing to delete posts calling for minors to join unsanctioned protests in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

        The court said on its Telegram channel that the video-sharing platform had been found guilty of failing to remove information that violates Russian law and sentenced to an administrative fine of 2.6 million rubles ($34,000/28,000 euros).

        The ruling comes as Russia ramps up pressure on foreign tech platforms, with a Moscow court also hitting Twitter on Friday with three fines totalling 8.9 million rubles ($116,700/99,000 euros) for the same violation as TikTok.

    • Disinformation

      • Ken Burns’ vicious Hemingway smear: PBS series totally ignores writer’s lifelong leftist politics

        Instead of considering how anyone might feel and behave while struggling with hemochromatosis, depression, brain damage and alcoholism, all while receiving little to no medical intervention, Burns and Novick are content to cast Hemingway as a narcissistic bully. Crucial to their presentation of Hemingway as a loathsome and delusional figure is the inclusion of his intense concerns that the FBI was surveilling him. Hemingway’s suspicion that two men in a Ketchum, Idaho, restaurant were federal agents, and that men working in the local bank after hours were scrutinizing his finances, are treated as nothing more than the psychotic ravings of a lunatic.

        On the issue of the FBI, and Hemingway’s politics more broadly, Burns and Novick manage a surprising achievement — they outperform the dishonesty they exercised when presenting Hemingway’s health problems.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Have Your Say! Public Consultation On #CHATCONTROL Plans Open Until 15 April

        The EU Commission is drafting permanent legislation on the automatic searching of all online activities, including personal electronic mail and messages of each citizen, for suspicious content in the search for child pornography. Suspected cases would be notified to the police. An online consultation is underway until 15 April. It includes questions on whether private communications should be covered and whether backdoors to end-to-end encrypted communications services should be required to enable this monitoring.

        Such privatised mass surveillance is unprecedented in western democracies and would have unacceptable consequences for our freedom of communications and expression. According to police reports, in the vast majority of cases, innocent citizens come under suspicion of having committed an offence due to unreliable processes.

        Therefore, please participate in the ongoing consultation. The responses will be taken into account by the Commission when deciding on the content of the planned legislation. So far, almost only child protection organizations and industry stakeholders have participated.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Assange Countdown to Freedom

        Sunday, April 11,  will mark the two year anniversary of the kidnapping, incarceration, and torture of journalist and publisher Julian Assange.

      • Two Years After Assange’s Arrest, Biden Can End Trump’s Assault On Press Freedom

        WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been detained at the high-security Belmarsh prison in London for two years. During that time, Assange became the first publisher to be indicted under the United States Espionage Act and prevailed after a district judge denied the U.S. government’s extradition request. He completed a sentence for “jumping bail” when he sought asylum from Ecuador. He also survived multiple COVID-19 outbreaks in prison. “It’s long past time for this injustice to end, and we continue to appeal to the United States and the Department of Justice to drop the appeal and all the charges against Julian. This gross injustice must come to an end,” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson declared. Stella Moris, Assange’s partner, acknowledged the protests and solidarity actions that are planned throughout the world. Mobilizations were planned for April 11 in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., Denver, Chicago, Raleigh, San Jose, Seattle, Tulsa, Toronto, London, Glasgow, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Mexico City, Melbourne, Perth, Auckland, and Wellington. Several actions will take place over the course of the week in cities like Boston, Berlin, Brussels, Dresden, Vienna, and Hamburg.   “Anniversaries are a platform to educate, nurture compassion and solidarity, and bring like-minded people onboard,” Moris stated. The U.S. Justice Department dramatically escalated the political prosecution against Assange on April 11, 2019, when it unsealed a single charge indictment against the WikiLeaks founder. Ecuador allowed British police to enter their London embassy and drag him to a van. While video posted showed a vulnerable person in distress, begging the United Kingdom and everyone around the world to resist this prosecution, many focused on his unkempt appearance—his long hair and shaggy beard—and mocked him. Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, shared, “During my visit, he explained to us that his shaving kit had been deliberately taken away three months earlier.” This was all part of Ecuador President Lenin Moreno’s U.S.-backed pressure campaign to force Assange to leave the embassy. In 2012, Assange was granted political asylum, when Rafael Correa was president of Ecuador. Correa’s administration considered “legal evidence” that Assange would not receive a fair trial if extradited to the U.S. and endorsed Assange’s fears of due process violations and cruel and inhuman treatment if he was handed over to Sweden.  At Assange’s extradition trial in September, his defense team presented evidence of an espionage operation backed by U.S. intelligence that was carried out against him at the London embassy. Undercover Global S.L., a Spanish security company, bugged the embassy and had a “real obsession” with spying on Assange’s legal team. Beyond that, U.C. Global Director David Morales talked about plots to kidnap Assange or even poison him, and the company ordered employees to steal diapers so they could figure out if he fathered a child. In October 2019, a Spanish high court charged Morales with offenses “related to violating the privacy of the WikiLeaks founder and passing the information on to the United States’ intelligence services,” according to El Pais. That case is still unfolding in Spain, however, the Justice Department has sought to obstruct proceedings by refusing cooperation unless whistleblowers from the company reveal their identities. The unsealed indictment against Assange was initially limited to a “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a general statute against any conspiracies to “defraud” the U.S. government, which prompted a number of Western pundits to erroneously insist prosecutors avoided a case that would implicate the First Amendment. However, the indictment declared, “The WikiLeaks website publicly solicited submissions of classified, censored, and other restricted information. Assange, who did not possess a security clearance or need to know, was not authorized to receive classified information of the United States.” The indictment relied upon language straight from the Espionage Act. Prosecutors explicitly singled out Assange as an “aider” and “abettor” of “espionage” for publishing unauthorized disclosures of classified information, even though reporters and editors at media organizations throughout the world routinely produce stories based upon sensitive documents without a U.S. security clearance. A little over a month later, in May 2019, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed a superseding indictment with 17 charges under the Espionage Act. It dispelled any illusions journalists throughout the world may have had.

      • Marking Two Years Since Assange’s Arrest, Press Freedom Advocates Demand Biden DOJ Drop All Charges

        “Shame on the U.S. and U.K. It’s time to free Assange!”

        Press freedom advocates on Sunday marked the two-year anniversary of Julian Assange’s arrest at the hands of British police by demanding that the Biden administration immediately drop all U.S. charges against the WikiLeaks publisher, who is currently facing 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • United States: Eleventh Circuit Says Winn Dixie’s Inaccessible Website Does Not Violate The ADA

        After two and a half years of deliberation, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit finally issued a decision in Gil v. Winn Dixie, overturning the trial court’s finding that Winn Dixie violated the ADA by having an inaccessible website. Rather than clarifying the state of the law on website accessibility, the decision makes the law on website accessibility even more complicated.

        Plaintiff Gil, who is blind, sued grocery retailer Winn Dixie alleging that the business violated the ADA by having a website that he could not access using screen reader software. He claimed that he wanted to use the website to order prescriptions which he would pick up at the store. He later also claimed that he wanted to download online coupons onto his rewards card for use at the store. After a bench trial, the district court concluded that the website was not accessible to screen reader users and that Winn Dixie had violated the ADA. The district court found that it did not need to decide whether websites are covered by the ADA because, in this case, the website was “heavily integrated” with Winn Dixie’s physical stores (which are undoubtedly public accommodations) and acted as a “gateway” to them. The court issued a detailed injunctive relief order which, among other things, required Winn Dixie to make its website conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guideline 2.0 Level AA – a privately developed set of criteria for web accessibility that has not been adopted as a legal standard under the ADA for public accommodations websites.

      • Because Of Winn-Dixie, Companies Threatened With Website-Accessibility Litigation Can Raise Stronger Defenses

        Courts in other parts of the country disagree with the Eleventh Circuit, so the decision will not stop the flow of litigation by itself. Rather, it gives companies new arguments to resist website-accessibility claims, it makes the choice of venue more important, and it increases the chances that the Supreme Court will eventually need to resolve the issue.

      • Websites Not Bound by ADA Accessibility Rules, 11th Circuit Finds

        In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court ruled that although “inaccessibility online can be a significant inconvenience,” supermarket chain Winn-Dixie cannot be found liable under Title III of the ADA for having a website that is inaccessible to disabled people who use screen-reading software.

        Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in places of public accommodations, including hotels, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, grocery stores, parks, schools and museums.

        “All of these listed types of locations are tangible, physical places. No intangible places or spaces, such as websites, are listed. Thus, we conclude that, pursuant to the plain language of Title III of the ADA, public accommodations are limited to actual, physical places,” U.S. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote on behalf of the majority.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Boeing’s comma drama: Commas and taking the description into account when construing a claim (T 1127/16) [Ed: Some fake patents from EPO again. And it took a decade to throw them out!]

          It is not only the choice of words that matter in patent claim interpretation. As the recent decision in T 1127/16 shows, grammar can be similarly important. In this decision, the lack of a comma in a claim led to a successful added matter objection against Boeing’s patent EP1798872. Caught in the inescapable trap of added matter that cannot be deleted without unallowably broadening the claim, the patent was found invalid on appeal. However, aside from the obvious lesson to be scrupulous in your claim drafting, the decision in T 1127/16 is also worth a read for the Board of Appeal’s comments on the primacy of the claims over the description for determining the scope of protection, as was also recently discussed in the High Court’s application of the doctrine of equivalents (IPKat).

        • Hanwha Q Cells files patent infringement suits against Astronergy in Germany [Ed: Instead of tackling climate warming issues they sue each other over patents while corrupt EPO does greenwashing with terms like "greentech" (alluding just to patent monpolies)]

          South Korea-based solar module manufacturer Hanwha Q Cells has filed another patent infringement suit with the Düsseldorf Regional Court: this time against Astronergy Solarmodule GmbH.

          The Korean company filed the lawsuit on March 12 and, a week later, a separate lawsuit with the France Federal Court of Justice.

          The legal action against Astronergy follows the patent lawsuit initiated by Hanwha Q-Cells in Germany, the USA and Australia in March 2019, against Longi, Jinko Solar and REC. The latter trio are said to have infringed existing patents held by Hanwha Q-Cells for its passivated solar cell technology.

          While Hanwha Q-Cells’ patent infringement suit was largely thrown out in the USA, the judges at the Düsseldorf district court ruled in the first instance in favor of the South Korean photovoltaic manufacturer. Jinko Solar, REC and Longi Solar appealed the judgment. Longi said, at the beginning of the year, that the appeal hearing is scheduled for April 22, 2021. Hanwha Q-Cells has now also confirmed that the appeal will probably take place in April, before the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court.

        • Nokia Settles Patent Dispute With Lenovo
        • CVC Files Motion Opposing Broad Motion to Correct Inventorship [Ed: Hard to believe that some people still lobby for patents on life and nature, serving to discredit the very legitimacy of the patent system with its supposed purpose]

          Last December, Junior Party University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (hereinafter, “CVC”) filed its Substantive Motion No. 3 under 37 C.F.R. § 41.121(a)(1) asking for judgment of unpatentability for all claims in interference under 35 U.S.C. § 102(f) or (if post-AIA) 35 U.S.C. § 115(a) for “failure to name all inventors of the alleged invention” against Senior Party The Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University (hereinafter, “Broad”) in Interference No. 106,115. Recently, Broad filed its opposition to this motion. At the time, Broad filed a responsive motion asking for leave to correct inventorship, and CVC recently filed its motion opposing Broad’s attempt to effect a post hoc inventorship correction, the details of which are set forth herein.

          CVC begins its opposition brief by asserting that Broad has not established that it is entitled to this relief, as required under 37 C.F.R. § 41.121(b). The basis of this argument comes first from the language of the statutes — 35 U.S.C. §§ 116 and 256 — permitting inventorship correction. This language requires an applicant or patentee, respectively, provide proof of the facts surrounding the change and an identification of the inventors who should properly be named (“on application of all the parties and assignees, with proof of the facts and such other requirements as may be imposed”). Second, CVC argues that Broad did not provide consent for one of the individual — Shauiliang Lin — to be added as an inventor. Third, CVC alleges that the motion is barred by laches and submitted in bad faith. And finally, CVC argues that as a matter of jurisdiction the Director — not the Board — has sole authority to change inventorship and that there is no evidence that the Director has delegated this authority to the Board.

        • Is this the golden age of battery innovation? [Ed: EPO puff piece which conflates innovation with patents]

          Will the lightning pace of battery innovation last? A report by the European Patent Office and International Energy Agency has shown the massive growth of battery technology innovation since 2000 and given an insight into how and where innovation will continue.

        • Medlab’s NanaBis drug dramatically improves cancer-induced bone pain for first patient group in treatment study

          Last week, Medlab announced the European Patent Office would grant a patent covering the use of NanoCelle in European member states as well as the UK until 2036.

        • The rise in remote working and how DIAMS iQ can help [Ed: This mentions the EPO, but fails to say that what it does with the hearings is illegal and it now stacks the tribunals to cover that up]

          Crucially, when asked about the future, more than two-thirds of respondents predicted they would have fewer face-to-face meetings, do less business travel and work more from home. These views also reflect the safe assumption that hearings, events and meetings will take place remotely in the coming period. For example, at the European Patent Office (EPO), oral hearings will be held by video conference as standard until at least September 2021. Meanwhile, major event organizers such as the International Trademark Association (INTA) plan to host meetings virtually or in a hybrid form until the end of this year at the earliest.

        • Sunday Surprises [Ed: Today's IP Kat posts spam and ads for EPO management; quite the opposite of what it once did.]

          On April 22-23 and on May 17-19, the European Patent Office will be offering “Opposition Matters reloaded” and “Examination Matters reloaded”, a reprise of two 2020 courses that sparked high interest among the patent attorneys.

        • As Rich Countries Shield Pharma Monopolies, Just 0.2% of Covid Vaccine Doses Have Gone to Poor Nations

          “We need the cooperation of the whole world and the elimination of all the barriers to the production and distribution of vaccines.”

          The head of the World Health Organization estimated in a recent address that of the more than 700 million coronavirus vaccine doses that have been administered across the globe, just 0.2% have gone to people in low-income nations—inequity that experts warn will persist unless rich countries end their obstruction of an international effort to suspend vaccine patents.

        • Opinion | A Vaccine Summit: Taking the Pandemic Seriously

          This would mean suspending intellectual property claims over these vaccines.

        • Opinion | Vaccine Apartheid: A Threat to an Inclusive COP26

          Rich nations are vaccinating one person every second while the majority of the poorest nations are yet to give a single dose.

          The ongoing global inequality in people’s access to life-saving Covid-19 vaccines is not just a global public health issue, it also threatens the inclusivity of the COP26 climate negotiations and other important global summits. The already delayed climate talks or COP26 to be held in Glasgow, originally scheduled for November 2020 and moved to 1-12 November 2021, may have to be postponed again or radically changed because of the continuing global coronavirus pandemic.

        • Software Patents

          • Financial Product Differentiation Using Patents – A Canadian Example (Part 2) [Ed: Lawyers look at everything in terms like patents and litigation]

            As I mentioned in my previous post, quant and TOBAM funder Yves Choueifaty’s journey towards securing a Canadian patent for his process of constructing “anti-benchmark” securities portfolios has not been easy.

            [...]

            Despite the mention of a computer, the Canadian patent examiner rejected his process under Section 2 of the Patent Act for being outside of the definition of invention. Machines like computers and methods that are computer-implemented are indeed fully contemplated as inventions in Canada. However, the Examiner seemed to take the position that Choueifaty had not himself actually invented anything to do with computers. So, the Examiner embarked on a problem-solution analysis to distill out the computing aspects in the analysis, leaving behind only the residue of disembodied steps and calculations as targets for the rejection.

            Choueifaty appealed to the Patent Appeal Board. He filed a declaration by TOBAM’s Head of Research stating that the claimed steps and calculations, when executed on a computer, would significantly increase the computer’s functionality, in terms of computational speed gains.

          • Farmobile Receives U.S. Patent for Its Farming Data and Collection System [Ed: Software patents on data collection or farming data, not in the sense of data-farming]

            Farmobile has been granted a U.S. patent for its “Farming Data Collection Exchange System.” The cloud-based system is capable of capturing, processing, and sharing machine-generated data while being used for operations such as fertilizing, planting, spraying, or harvesting crops. It includes a relay device that is installed in machinery that automatically receives, stores, and processes detailed machine and ag data captured by the machine during an operation.

            The technology enables real-time collection, tracking, monitoring, sharing, and monetizing of a farm’s critically important data. This includes details like the amount of seed, fertilizer, water, and pesticide used on a field; how often the field was treated with a certain chemical; which parts of the field were untreated; weather conditions during an operation; the equipment used to perform an operation; and the equipment settings activated or deactivated during an operation.

            Farmobile was issued two other patents for its “Distributed Transaction-Based Security and Tracking of Agricultural Machine and Agronomic Data.” The first was granted in 2019 by the USPTO and the second in 2020 by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. The patents give Farmobile the exclusive right to use blockchain in both countries to track electronic agricultural data sets through associated exchange transactions.

      • Trademarks

        • The Lego Case T-515/19: A building block castle built up on sand

          In Lego A/S v EUIPO (T-515/19), the General Court (“GC”) considered the scope of protection of a design, consisting of the representation of a building-block that is part of a larger Lego building set.

          The implications of the present judgment may change the paradigm of design protection in the EU since it considerably enlarges the scope of protection granted to modular systems.

          This author is not inclined to opine on whether greater or lesser protection for modular systems is preferable, but he disagrees with the argumentative path by which the GC reasons in its judgment.

          The following analysis sets out that, with the purpose of broadening the scope of protection of modular systems, the GC misconstrued Art. 8 of Regulation No 6/2002 on Community designs (“CDR”).

      • Copyrights

        • Google v. Oracle: Lessons for Innovators

          The holding in Google v. Oracle, No. 18-956, slip op. (U.S. Apr. 5, 2021), worth a cool $9 billion, is that Google and others are free, under the fair use doctrine of copyright law, to copy Oracle/Sun’s Java API (application program interface) code. They’re also free, under copyright law, to write their own implementing code or to have others do so. Taking these two points together, Google escaped liability for infringement of Oracle’s copyrighted Java code. They can have Java programmers write apps to run on the Android operating system. And they can thumb their noses at Oracle.

          Let’s unpack the term API for those of us who are not steeped in interface code. An “app” is like a customer walking into a restaurant. The computer on which the app runs is like the kitchen. An API is like the waiter that goes back and forth between the customer and the kitchen. The Supreme Court has just held in Oracle that the waiter has to serve every customer that enters the restaurant.

          Oracle’s predecessor Sun wrote the Java code and made some effort to protect the APIs with patents and copyrights. Google did not want to pay Oracle/Sun for a license to use the Java code in its Android systems. So Google wrote its own code (or at least 99% of it), and it incorporated, that is, copied, the APIs. The Oracle/Sun patents fell by the wayside: A jury found that Google did not infringe Oracle’s patent claims. And now the Supreme Court has held that under copyright law, it was okay for Google to use the APIs without any obligation to Oracle, because (1) Google’s use was held to be new and transformative, (2) the APIs comprised less than 1% of Java’s total code, and (3) the APIs were held to be functional, thus making it “fair use” for Google to copy and use the same.

        • Supreme Court Tech Ruling Could Have Wider Effects on Copyright

          The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Google didn’t infringe Oracle’s copyright when it copied some Java code into early versions of the Android operating system. The decision is—to borrow a Bidenism—a big fucking deal. It will take lawyers and courts years (and thousands of billable hours of attorney time) to work out all the ways this case is going to change copyright practice. But right off the bat, it’s clear that there are at least three important things that this case tells us that go beyond Google’s fight with Oracle—things about the Supreme Court and partisanship, about some fundamental aspects of copyright that we’re still arguing about, and about some of the reasons that copyright isn’t the best tool for everything we’re using it for. It also raises one huge question: What, if anything, does the case mean outside the software industry?

        • Playing music in parks will no longer be copyright infringement

          Playing music in Taiwan’s parks will no longer constitute an infringement of the Copyright Act, after seven major amendments were passed at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday (April 8).

          The amendments mean that people will be able to play music on devices at parks without worrying about copyright infringement. It is the biggest change in the law for 20 years.

        • Oscar Nominations Boosted the Piracy Numbers of Best Picture Contenders

          Winning the Oscar for “best picture” is the most prestigious accolade a movie can get. Aside from the honor that comes with it, revenue tends to increase as well. The same is true for piracy. Data collected by TorrentFreak shows that being nominated already triggers a piracy boost. This is something to keep in mind, especially in countries where legal options are lacking.

04.11.21

Links 11/4/2021: GnuPG 2.3.0, Linux 5.13 Additions

Posted in News Roundup at 1:35 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Linux As An Alternative To Windows & MacOS

        I downloaded Mandrake Linux and installed it onto my computer and tried it. It had a familiar-looking desktop, not exactly like windows but not too alien from it either. It contained some useful software including a web browser, email program, office suite, etc, and I loved trying something truly different. The problem I found though, it was too difficult to download new programs and to customise the user experience.

        It had a command-line interface meaning you needed to type computer code to download programs or change the system to your liking. Although it looked familiar, to use it on a day-to-day basis, a certain amount of coding knowledge was required. I wanted to use my computer to be productive rather than learning to code to use it. Although this experiment was enjoyable, at this stage Linux just wasn’t for me.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • This Week in Linux 146: Linux on M1 Mac, Google vs Oracle, PipeWire, Bottom Panel for GNOME Shell – TuxDigital

        On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got an update for Linux support on Apple’s M1 Mac hardware. KDE Announces a new patch-set for Qt 5. IBM Announced COBOL Compiler For Linux. Then later in the show we’re bringing back everyone’s favorite Legal News segment with Google v. Oracle reaching U.S. Supreme Court. We’ve also got new releases to talk about such as PipeWire 0.3.25 and JingOS v0.8 plus GNOME Designers are exploring the possibility of having a bottom panel. Then we’ll round out the show with some Humble Bundles about programming in Python. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

      • MineTest: I Am A Dwarf And I’m Digging A Hole

        People have been asking me to play MineTest for ages so I thought I should finally get around to it, if you’ve never heard of it MineTest is an open source Minecraft clone that surprisingly has a lot of community support

    • Kernel Space

      • Official Support For Linux On M1 Macs Could Be Coming Soon

        There has been work to try and bring Linux onto the M1 Macs, and it seems that the developers are confident that they could have something stable enough this June. This is according to a report from Phoronix in which they claim that the Linux 5.13 cycle could be when support for Apple Silicon could be introduced.

        However, it should be noted that it won’t necessarily provide the full Linux experience just yet. The initial port could see things like UART, interrupts, SMP, DeviceTree, and so on, so this port is more like a working proof of concept that an M1 compatible Linux is a possibility. If you plan to use Linux often, then maybe it might not be a good idea to rely on this port just yet.

        This development comes on the heels of an announcement earlier this year where Corellium was successful at porting Ubuntu onto M1 Macs, although it wasn’t necessarily the “core Linux kernel”.

      • You might be able to run Linux natively on Apple M1 Macs as early as June

        The new hardware from Apple runs on the ARM processor architecture and as a result, requires extra work to bring the same feature support as an Intel or AMD processor.

      • EXT4 With Linux 5.13 Looks Like It Will Support Casefolding With Encryption Enabled – Phoronix

        While EXT4 supports both case-folding for optional case insensitive filenames and does support file-system encryption, at the moment those features are mutually exclusive. But it looks like the upcoming Linux 5.13 kernel will allow casefolding and encryption to be active at the same time.

        Queued this week into the EXT4 file-system’s “dev” tree was ext4: handle casefolding with encryption.

      • SiFive FU740 PCIe Support Queued Ahead Of Linux 5.13 – Phoronix

        Arguably the most interesting RISC-V board announced to date is SiFive’s HiFive Unmatched with the FU740 RISC-V SoC that features four U74-MC cores and one S7 embedded core. The HiFive Unmatched also has 16GB of RAM, USB 3.2 Gen 1, one PCI Express x16 slot (operating at x8 speeds), an NVMe slot, and Gigabit Ethernet. The upstream kernel support for the HiFive Unmatched and the FU740 SoC continues.

        With the Linux 5.12 cycle there was the start of mainlining SiFive FU740 SoC support and that work is continuing for the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle.

    • Applications

      • GnuPG 2.3.0 Is Released With New Default Public Key Algorithms, A New Key Daemon And More

        GnuPG is the de-facto standard for encrypted e-mail, and to some degree encrypted instant messages, within the free software world. Most FOSS e-mail software has built-in support or plugins for it. It is also used to sign software releases, ISO images for GNU/Linux distributions and a whole lot more. Nobody outside the FOSS community uses it or cares about it, which is a bit sad.

        GnuPG 2.3.0 has quite a few improvements over previous versions. It now comes with a still experimental key database daemon that uses a SQLite database to store the keys. It can be enabled by adding use-keyboxd to $HOME/.gnupg/gpg.conf. There is a new separate configuration file for it called $HOME/.gnupg/gpgsm.conf. This daemon makes key look-ups much faster.

        There’s also a new tpm2d daemon for physically binding keys to a machine. You can read more about it in a blog post on gnupg.org titled Using a TPM with GnuPG 2.3. Most newer laptops in the upper price range come with a TPM module. Desktop computers tend to come with a empty motherboard header where one can be installed, so this is mostly useful if you have a fairly new high-end laptop or you are willing to buy a TPM module.

        New GnuPG keys are now, by default, created with the ed25519/cv25519 public key algorithms. Similarly, AES is now the new last resort cipher preference instead of 3DES.

      • Matrix: a decentralized open-source messaging platform for the future

        When you are looking at a secure and private instant messaging solution, there are certain issues that are important to consider which is metadata; metadata can be inferred just by knowing details like whose your contact, frequency, and length of the message; some platform collects contact info and phone numbers, email address, etc. In the general collection of identity information is a problem. In addition, the centralization problem which comes from creating and collecting contact lists and phone numbers; this is one of the worst things that you can do for privacy.

        In this article, we will discuss an instant messaging platform called Matrix. This platform is good for privacy, not just message encryption. Matrix does not take any personal information from the user. We will focus on it because it is open-source and has end-to-end encryption for groups and two-party conversations.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Install TeamSpeak Client on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux – Linux Shout

        TeamSpeak is a free voice conferencing software available to install on Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, and Android. It is the pioneer in its areas of other platforms such as Discord. TeamSpeak allows free of cost access to around 1000 public TeamSpeak servers or even your own private one. In parallel to online games, you can use the current TeamSpeak to communicate with friends via speech and text.

      • How To Install Robo 3T on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Robo 3T on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Robo3T formerly known as RobMongo is one of the best GUI tools for managing and querying MongoDB database. It provides GUI tools for managing & querying the MongoDB database. It embeds the actual mongo shell that allows for CLI as well as GUI access to the database.

        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 Robo 3T RobMongo on an Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server. You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How to Install Java on Ubuntu Step by Step Guide for Beginners

        Some programs/tools/utility on Ubuntu required java/JVM, without java these programs are not working. Are you facing the same problem? Don’t worry!

        Today I am going to cover in this article how to install Java on Ubuntu. This article will cover the complete tutorial step by step.

        You can get java on Ubuntu via three packages JRE, OpenJDK and Oracle JDK.

        Java and Java’s Virtual Machine (JVM) are widely used and required to run much software.

      • “apt-get command not found” error in Ubuntu by Easy Way

        apt-get command is used to manage package in Ubuntu and other Debian based distribution. You can install, remove software in Ubuntu, You can update upgrade ubuntu and other operating systems with help of this command.

        If you want to install new software on the Linux operating system by apt-get command but you get the error “apt-get command not found“. This is really the biggest problem for the new user. Neither you can install new packages nor you can update and upgrade ubuntu.

        apt-get is not working, how will you install a new package? If the problem only of installing new packages then it can be solved. You can use dpkg command to install deb files in ubuntu and derivatives.

      • How to upgrade Linux Mint 19.3 (Tricia) to Mint 20.1 (Ulyssa) – Linux Shout

        Are you planning to upgrade your existing Linux Mint 19.3 (Tricia) PC or Laptop to Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa, then following the simple steps given in the tutorial…

        Linux Mint is one of the popular distros among users who want a Windows-like operating system but with the benefits of Linux and a user-friendly interface. As Mint is an Ubuntu derivative, thus not only we have the access to a large number of packages to install but also stability.

        The process of upgrading Mint is very easy, we can use GUI or command to do that. However, in this article, we will show you how to upgrade from Tricia (19.3) to Ulyssa (20.1) using CLI, thus first you have to make sure that your existing Mint 19.3 is on 64-bit because 20.1 doesn’t support 32-bit.

      • How to Install Node js in Ubuntu Step by Step Explanation for Beginners

        Node.js is an open source cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment that allows server-side execution of JavaScript code.

        In simple words you can run JavaScript code on your machine (server) as a standalone application, and access form any web browser.

        When you create a server side application you need Node.js, it is also help to create front-end and full-stack. npm (Node Package Manager) is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language, and default package manager for Node.js.

        This tutorial will cover step by step methods “how to install node js in ubuntu 19.04″.

        in case you need the latest Node.js and npm versions. If you are using Node.js for development purposes then your best option is to install Node.js using the NVM script.
        Although this tutorial is written for Ubuntu the same instructions apply for any Ubuntu-based distribution, including Kubuntu, Linux Mint and Elementary OS.

      • How to play Geometry Dash on Linux

        Geometry Dash is a music platformer game developed by Robert Topala. The game is available to play on iOS, Android, as well as Microsoft Windows via Steam. In the game, players control a character’s movement and navigate through a series of music-based levels while avoiding obstacles and hazards.

      • How To Set Up a Firewall with UFW in Ubuntu \ Debian

        The Linux kernel includes the Netfilter subsystem, which is used to manipulate or decide the fate of network traffic headed into or through your server. All modern Linux firewall solutions use this system for packet filtering.

        [...]

        The default behavior of the UFW Firewall is to block all incoming and forwarding traffic and allow all outbound traffic. This means that anyone trying to access your server will not be able to connect unless you specifically open the port. Applications and services running on your server will be able to access the outside world.

      • A Ceph war story

        It all started with the big bang! We nearly lost 33 of 36 disks on a Proxmox/Ceph Cluster; this is the story of how we recovered them.

        At the end of 2020, we eventually had a long outstanding maintenance window for taking care of system upgrades at a customer. During this maintenance window, which involved reboots of server systems, the involved Ceph cluster unexpectedly went into a critical state. What was planned to be a few hours of checklist work in the early evening turned out to be an emergency case; let’s call it a nightmare (not only because it included a big part of the night). Since we have learned a few things from our post mortem and RCA, it’s worth sharing those with others. But first things first, let’s step back and clarify what we had to deal with.

      • [Old] Create animated GIFs from MP4 with FFmpeg

        Animated GIFs are after all these years still pretty popular. FFmpeg is a good FLOSS tool to create these animated GIFs. FFmpeg is available for Windows, Linux and OSX. A word of warning FFmpeg is a command line tool that’s very versatile but it’s not for everybody. In fact suppose this post is more for users that like to tinker a lot with their animated GIFs. Below I will explain not only how to create a animated GIF from an mpeg4 movie but I also provide instructions to improve the quality.

        The basic command to create an animated GIF from a mpeg4 is:

        ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.gif

      • [Old] How to make GIFs with FFMPEG

        In that light, I wrote this post to share and explain some of its functionality, especially as it relates to GIF transcoding. To follow along you’ll need FFmpeg installed. The easiest way to do that is to go here and find a static build for whatever platform you’re working on.

      • How To Install 7Zip on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install 7Zip on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, The 7Zip is open-source software available to compress and decompress files and folders into various formats. A 7Zip archive file usually ends in .7z extension.

        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 7-Zip File Archiver 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.

      • Getting Started With System Logging in Linux

        System logs in Linux provide you with great insight into core activities on your PC or server infrastructure. They’re critical for keeping your system stable and secure. System logs also provide you with an opportunity to audit various activities that have taken place in the past.

        This guide introduces you to the logging system in Linux. All the major activities carried out by core system applications and services are recorded in the form of logs and at the heart of all this is a system known as Syslog.

      • How to edit config files on Ubuntu | FOSS Linux

        The information needed to monitor the execution of a program is stored in configuration files. To maintain an Ubuntu server or desktop or any other Linux system, Linux users, especially Linux administrators, must edit configuration files.

        In fact, every Linux administrator must manually edit a configuration file at some stage. You can’t resist diving deep into the heart of one or more configuration files while setting up a web server, configuring a service to link to a database, modifying a bash script, or troubleshooting a network connection. Manually editing configuration files might seem like a nightmare to some people.

        Wading through what seems to be endless lines of choices and feedback can lead to a rapid loss of hair and sanity.

        Of course, this isn’t the case. Most Linux administrators, in reality, relish a good debugging or configuration challenge. It’s a lot of fun to sift through the details of how a server or piece of software works. This method, however, does not have to be a waste of time and resources. In reality, you have resources at your disposal that make editing config files a lot easier.

      • How to make a bootable Windows USB drive on Linux using Woeusb-ng?

        As a Linux user, you may need to make a bootable Windows USB drive for testing and education purposes or even to install it alongside your favourite distro. Whatever your reasons, you will be able to create a Microsoft OS bootable flash drive after reading this humble post. So power on your system and plug in your USB flash drive as you are only a few lines away from acquire this skill.

      • How To Install Emacs Editor on CentOS 8 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Emacs Editor on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Emacs is a very useful plus feature-rich text editor that may be used across multiple various platforms. Because of its considerable support for writing code within different languages, it is favored by most programmers. If you’re thinking about switching to Emacs on your Linux, or you’ve just switched to it, you will find that Emacs is not that hard to use.

        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 Emacs Editor on a CentOS 8.

      • Self host your web meetings with Jitsi and Raspberry PI – peppe8o

        Even if already used with smartphones, video meetings overwhelmingly raised with Covid pandemic. Between solutions discovered in this context, a great open source and web application to host your video meetings, Jitsi, can run on Raspberry PI

      • Shell Script – Remove Double Quote (“”) from a String – TecAdmin

        This tutorial will help you to remove start and ending double quote from string in shell script. Where the string is stored in a variable.

        [...]

        The result will be printed on the terminal. You can also save the result to variable and or redirect output to a file.

        The below commands will help you to remove double quote and store output to the same or different variable.

      • GNU Linux Debian 10 – dead boot partition stuck at grub prompt

    • Games

      • OpenTTD Went to Steam to Solve a Hard Problem – Boiling Steam

        OpenTTD, the free and open-source software recreation of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, has been a popular game for a long time, but recently something unusual happened. The team behind the project decided to release the game on Steam (still free as always) and this has changed everything. Let me explain why this matters.

        If you have ever played OpenTTD on Linux, let me venture that you have probably relied on your distro’s package manager to keep your game up-to-date. In theory, this is the BEST way to keep your packages up to date. Rely on maintainers. In practice however, it’s far from being something you can rely on, beyond security updates. Debian stable tends to have really old packages, sometimes years behind their latest versions. So on Debian stable you end up with OpenTTD 1.08 as the most recent version. That’s what shipped in April 2018. Just about 3 years old.

      • Portal Stories: Mel gets Vulkan support on Linux in a new Beta | GamingOnLinux

        Portal Stories: Mel, an extremely popular and highly rated mod for Portal 2 just had a new Beta pushed out which adds in Vulkan support for Linux. Much like the update for Portal 2 that recently added Vulkan support, it’s using a special native build of DXVK, the Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11.

        Compared with the Portal 2 update, in some of my own testing today it seems that Portal Stories: Mel seems to benefit from the Vulkan upgrade quite a bit more in some places. At times giving a full 100FPS increase! So for those on weaker cards, this will probably be an ideal upgrade. Another game to test with Vulkan is always great too.

    • Distributions

      • antiX

        • Firefox update

          Firefox 87.0 available

        • mtPaint upgrade

          mtPaint has been upgraded to latest git version (3.50-9)

        • antiX-17 kernel updates

          There have been various security patches applied upstream so users are strongly advised to update to the latest kernels via Package Installer, synaptic or cli-aptiX. Available for 64 and 32 bit.

          5.10.27
          4.19.184
          4.9.264
          4.4.264

      • BSD

        • The state of toolchains in NetBSD

          While FreeBSD and OpenBSD both switched to using LLVM/Clang as their base system compiler, NetBSD picked a different path and remained with GCC and binutils regardless of the license change to GPLv3. However, it doesn’t mean that the NetBSD project endorses this license, and the NetBSD Foundation’s has issued a statement about its position on the subject.

          Realistically, NetBSD is more or less tied to GCC, as it supports more architectures than the other BSDs, some of which will likely never be supported in LLVM.

          As of NetBSD 9.1, the latest released version, all supported platforms have recent versions of GCC (7.5.0) and binutils (2.31.1) in the base system. Newer (and older!) versions of GCC can be installed via Pkgsrc, and the following packages are available, going all the way back to GCC 3.3.6: [...]

        • Review: OpenBSD 6.8 on 8th Gen Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 13.3″

          10 days ago, I bought this X1 Carbon. I immediately installed OpenBSD on it. It took me a few days to settle in and make myself at home, but here are my impressions.

          This was the smoothest experience I’ve had getting OpenBSD set up the way I like it. The Toshiba NB305 in 2011 was a close second, but the Acer I used between these two laptops required a lot more tweaking of both hardware and kernel to get it to feel like home.

      • Arch Family

        • Reactions to Arch Linux’s New Guided Installer

          Tech Radar writes that previously Arch Linux had “a rather convoluted installation process, which has given rise to a stream of Arch-based distros that are easier to install,” adding that the new installer “was reportedly promoted as an official installation mechanism back in January, and was actively worked upon leading to its inclusion in the installation medium.”

        • Latest Arch Linux ISO Release Comes with the ArchInstall CLI Guided Installer

          Arch Linux 2021.04.01 is now available for download as the most up-to-date installation medium of this independently developed, flexible, lightweight, and rolling-release GNU/Linux distribution.

          While last month’s ISO release was the first to be powered by the latest and greatest Linux 5.11 kernel, Arch Linux’s ISO release for April 2021 includes the archinstall guided installer developed by Anton Hvornum.

      • Debian Family

        • Charles Plessy: Debian Bullseye: more open

          Debian Bullseye will provide the command /usr/bin/open for your greatest comfort at the command line. On a system with a graphical desktop environment, the command should have a similar result as when opening a document from a mouse-and-click file browser.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Going Against Google Analytics With Plausible’s Co-Founder [Interview]

        Plausible is a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It also aims to be a simple and lightweight analytics solution.

        Above all, it is a completely open-source project that also gives you the ability to self-host.

        Right after an interview with Lutris creator, I reached to out to Marko Saric, who happens to be a Co-Founder of the project to provide some insights on his vision for this project and the future of Plausible.

      • Why Crate.io has returned to its pure open source roots

        The headline benefits of open source are widely known and well-articulated. Open source technologies provide enterprise-level scalability, performance, security, and reliability. Trust is there, and it’s deserved. But what’s less celebrated, other than by die-hard open source adherents, are the inner workings of the everyday community contributions building those macro benefits at the atomic level. For those offering open source technologies, it is the community’s constant user-driven testing and hardening that forges those technologies into robust and proven solutions. Those contributions don’t show up on the balance sheet, but they can be absolutely formative to an enterprise’s health and success.

        In 2013, I co-founded Crate.io with open source ideals and my belief in the power of the community. As a startup intent on bringing the simplicity and strength of open source to the realm of advanced SQL databases that could handle the growing volume of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT data, we rooted our CrateDB database in 100% open source component technologies. And we were sure to play our role as active contributors to those technologies and nurtured our own community of CrateDB developers.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Dependencies for LibreOffice compiled in OE

          In the current release of EasyOS, LibreOffice (LO) was compiled in a running EasyOS, not in OE. During the build, LO automatically downloads any extra source packages that it needs, that are not available in the system.

          What I have done is compile many of those dependencies in OE, so they will be available as shared libraries for LO to link against, but other applications will also be able to use them.

          For example, LO uses ‘libcdr’, a CorelDraw import filter. By having this as a shared system library, Inkscape can optionally link against it, and also have CorelDraw import capability. Hmmm, does anyone still use CorelDraw?

      • FSF

        • In Support of Richard Stallman: Normalizing Truth, Reason, Dialogue

          False accusations were made against Richard Stallman in September 2019. Although others pointed out the mistakes, the stage had been set for a cascade of defamatory reactions that followed and spread like wildfire. This was fueled by misquotes and distortion of events in mainstream headlines, blogs, and social media, leading ultimately to Stallman’s resignation from his positions at MIT and the FSF.

          [...]

          Some published accurate articles, objectively and meticulously showcasing the facts. Many others wrote short comments in blogs and news websites pointing out the errors that were being swiftly propagated by copy paste “authors.” Still others sent letters of concern to the FSF.

          A petition[1] was launched to condemn bad press and demand apologies to Stallman from journalists who knowingly or incompetently spread false information. It was to no avail. Journalists never corrected their erroneous headlines, let alone apologize. The petition is now stale (and it requires JavaScript.) Better to sign the letter of support.

          We have become sadly familiar with the terms “misinformation and disinformation” and the need to critically examine the agendas and mindsets motivating these campaigns as well as check the facts behind their assertions. To our collective social woe, disinformation succeeds because so many people care deeply about injustice but do not take the time to study the facts before passing along or acting on disinformation.

      • Programming/Development

        • Jussi Pakkanen: Converting a project to Meson: the olc Pixel Game Engine

          Meson’s development has always been fairly practical focusing on solving real world problems people have. One simple way of doing that is taking existing projects, converting their build systems to Meson and seeing how long it takes, what pain points there are and whether there are missing features. Let’s look at one such conversion.

          We’ll use the One Lone Coder Pixel Game Engine. It is a simple but fairly well featured game engine that is especially suitable for beginners. It also has very informative YouTube channel teaching people how to write their own computer games. The engine is implemented as a single C++ header and the idea is that you can just copy it in your own project, #include it and start coding your game.

        • Python

          • Create a Hello World App Using Flask Framework

            This article will cover a guide on writing a simple hello world application using Python based “Flask” framework. Flask can be used to create minimal, extensible and advanced web applications using a set of libraries included in its module. All code samples in this tutorial are tested on Ubuntu 20.10 having Python version 3.8.6 and Flask version 1.1.2.

  • Leftovers

    • To Julia de Burgos

      Already people murmur I’m your enemy since they say that in verse I give the world to me.

      They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos. The one rising in my verses isn’t your voice: it is my voice since you are costumes and I, the essence; and the deepest abyss spreads between us.

    • Vishal Gupta: Sikkim 101 for Backpackers

      Host to Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain peak and the endangered Red Panda, Sikkim is a state in northeastern India. Nestled between Nepal, Tibet (China), Bhutan and West Bengal (India), the state offers a smorgasbord of cultures and cuisines. That said, it’s hardly surprising that the old spice route meanders through western Sikkim, connecting Lhasa with the ports of Bengal. Although the latter could also be attributed to cardamom (kali elaichi), a perennial herb native to Sikkim, which the state is the second-largest producer of, globally. Lastly, having been to and lived in India, all my life, I can confidently say Sikkim is one of the cleanest & safest regions in India, making it ideal for first-time backpackers.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Customs and Border Protection Plans Vast Expansion of Tech-Based Surveillance

              The United States government plans to expand a program for monitoring the Mexico border through cutting edge artificial intelligence technology.

            • Facebook spent $23 million for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s security in 2020

              A new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Facebook spent more than $23 million last year on security for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook’s annual reviews of company security “identified specific threats to Mr. Zuckerberg,” according to a proxy statement filed Friday.

            • Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal
            • 5 of the Best Alternatives to WhatsApp that Actually Respect Your Privacy [Ed: Some of the items in this list are dubious]

              When social media giant Facebook purchased everyone’s favorite mobile messenger WhatsApp, users were promised their data would be private and that they wouldn’t be subject to the shady things that Mark Zuckerberg and crew are known for. As time has gone on, more and more privacy has been taken away from Whatsapp users in the name of “analytical data.”

              Gone are the days when you could trust this app to be totally private and not expect to get data mined for valuable information – information that could easily be sold to advertisers. Here we show you the best alternatives to WhatsApp that actually respect your privacy.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Opinion | Hunting in Yemen

        “It’s not normal for people to live like this,” says Iman Saleh, now on her thirteenth day of a hunger strike demanding an end to war in Yemen.

        Since March 29 th, in Washington, D.C., Iman Saleh, age 26, has been on a hunger strike to demand an end to the war in Yemen. She is joined by five others from her group, The Yemeni Liberation Movement. The hunger strikers point out that enforcement of the Saudi Coalition-led blockade relies substantially on U.S. weaponry. 

      • Opinion | Yemen Is a Public Health Catastrophe

        The country’s civilians have been the unwilling participants in a proxy war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and has left the public health system in shambles.

        The war in Yemen—the Arab world’s poorest country—has reached new heights of sickness and death by the spreading of the coronavirus pandemic in a vulnerable and fragile population. The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic could be greater than the combined toll of war, disease and hunger over the last five years, according to Lise Grande, the U.N.’s head of humanitarian operations in Yemen.

      • Opinion | Why Biden Must Reverse Trump Policy on Landmines Now

        We must renounce these indiscriminate weapons that will continue to kill decades after they were placed.

      • ‘Subclinical Psychopathy And The Cops’: A Quick But Alarming Way Into George Floyd Murder Trial

        If you’re trying to follow the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd – the 2020 killing that re-invigorated the #BlackLivesMatter movement and sparked worldwide protests against police violence – there’s unfortunately not a lot of interest in Australian media.

      • Torture Australian-Style: A New Secret Country

        It turns out it’s surprisingly easy to tolerate the torture of your citizens if you’re a country with a long record of it. Dr Lissa Johnson weighs in on the Australian Government’s silence on Julian Assange.

      • Convicted ISIS supporter tells Chicago judge he’s ‘just a normal guy’

        As ABC7′s I-Team first reported five years ago, both men had a jihadist scheme to attack Great Lakes Naval Base, the Navy’s sole basic training facility. They also expressed an interest in throwing people off the roof of the (former) Sears Tower skyscraper in Chicago. The violent scenarios were not serious threats, according to Schimenti’s attorney on Friday but were merely stated for “shock value.”

      • Rejecting Biden’s $715 Billion Proposal, Jayapal Says Congress Must Slash the ‘Bloated Pentagon Budget’

        “Don’t increase defense spending. Cut it,” said the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

        Joining fellow progressive lawmakers in rejecting President Joe Biden’s request for a $715 billion Pentagon budget, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Saturday argued that Congress must slash military spending and “invest that money into our communities” as coronavirus infections rise across the U.S. and mass layoffs continue.

      • Opinion | Western Media Incite Anti-Asian Racism When They Join in Cold War Against China

        Western news outlets have deceptively omitted the centrality of media-promoted Sinophobia to this latest spike in hate crimes toward anyone perceived to be Chinese.

        Over the past few weeks, the subject of anti-Asian racism has received an unusual degree of Western media attention, ever since a video showing the January 28 killing of Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai immigrant in San Francisco, was widely shared on social media. Coverage intensified when gunman Robert Aaron Long targeted three Asian-owned spas on March 6, killing six Asian women among eight victims in Atlanta, Georgia. Local and national media centered the gunman’s professed motive of a “sex addiction” and police statements disputing whether the crime was racially motivated, even though gendered racism is still a factor when racist incidents don’t meet the narrow and arbitrary requirements of what constitutes a hate crime ( FAIR.org, 3/26/21).

    • Environment

    • Finance

      • Opinion | Stock Buybacks Stand in the Way of Biden’s Infrastructure Plan

        Hedge fund managers are pushing American firms to play Wall Street games instead of investing in technologies of the future. China doesn’t have that problem.

        President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure and climate proposal has a lot of people excited, and no wonder. Americans are sick of being stuck with frazzled electric grids, foul drinking water, falling bridges, far too many left out of prosperity, and feeling that the country’s global status is suffering.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Corporations Criticize Georgia’s Racist Voting Bill After Giving Big to GOP

        Corporate America is clashing with GOP leaders over Georgia Republicans’ bill to overhaul voting laws, representing another break between the two forces that have long been closely aligned.

      • Republicans Ready Battle for State-Level Court Takeovers in Texas

        After a slate of 19 Black women swept judicial elections in Houston in 2018, some Republicans called for a constitutional amendment to end judicial elections. That effort has failed so far, but a new bill in the Texas legislature could slash the number of appellate courts, which include more Democrats now than they have in decades. The state’s 14 appellate courts have jurisdiction — sometimes overlapping — in civil and criminal cases appealed from trial courts.

      • As Amazon Election Spotlights Rigged System, Senate Dems Urged to Nuke Filibuster and Pass PRO Act

        “In most states, it is easier to buy an AR-15 than it is to join a union.”

        Amazon’s victory over an against-the-odds unionization effort at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama is intensifying pressure on Senate Democrats to swiftly eliminate the 60-vote legislative filibuster and pass the PRO Act, a proposed revamp of employer-friendly U.S. labor law that would ban many of the tactics the tech behemoth used to crush the organizing drive.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • 4 Wikipedia Editing Scandals That Slipped Under Readers’ Radars

        Wikipedia is an invaluable resource for cheating at bar trivia, winning an argument with your dad about what year Bruce Willis’ R&B album came out, and reading a list of erotic video games at three in the morning after starting on the Battle of Lepanto five hours ago. But it’s not without its controversies, such as …

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • As Activists’ Hunger Strike Reaches Day 13, Calls Mount for Biden to End US Complicity in Starvation of Yemen

        “My pain cannot amount to that of Yemenis under siege,” said one hunger striker. “I am starving, but I am not being starved. I am suffering, but I can choose to end that suffering.”

        A hunger strike launched by Detroit-based anti-war activists in protest of the Saudi-led blockade of Yemen entered its 13th day on Saturday as calls grow for President Joe Biden to end all U.S. support for the kingdom’s deadly restrictions, which are preventing food, medicine, fuel, and other aid from reaching starving Yemenis.

      • “We Are Not Here or Funded to ‘Promote the Best Interest’ of the Children,” Wrote the Head of a Program for Brain-Damaged Infants

        Over two decades, Choi “Julie” Nguyen bounced from one low-paying job to the next: dishwasher, custodian, manicurist. As a single mom raising two daughters and a profoundly disabled son, Nguyen could never hold a job for long.

        Inevitably, the nurses Nguyen relied on to care for her son, Justin, would arrive late or not at all. Who would suction his mechanical airway, fill his feeding tube or turn him in bed to prevent pressure sores? Who was going to sleep on the couch at the hospital when Justin had surgery or fought life-threatening infections?

      • The Race To The Bottom In Our Return to the Moonlight State

        It’s 2021 and Australia is again reflecting on monstrous abuses by men in power. For some of us, it brings back memories of villains past. And it makes us wonder when it’s going to change. Mike Dowson thinks it won’t. Not finally. Not until we tackle the whole rotten post-colonial system in which it thrives.

      • New Zealand Law Granting Paid Leave for Miscarriage Sparks Organizing in US

        When New Zealand’s Parliament extended three days of paid leave to workers and their partners following a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or stillbirth, as well as to those whose plans to welcome a child through adoption or surrogacy become derailed, it cast a spotlight on how countries throughout the world treat the aftermath of pregnancy loss.

      • In Wake of Amazon Union Vote, Progressives Urge Action on Filibuster and PRO Act

        Amazon’s victory over an against-the-odds unionization effort at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama is intensifying pressure on Senate Democrats to swiftly eliminate the 60-vote legislative filibuster and pass the PRO Act, a proposed revamp of employer-friendly U.S. labor law that would ban many of the tactics the tech behemoth used to crush the organizing drive.

      • Opinion | The Message From the Amazon Union Defeat in Alabama Is Clear: Keep Organizing

        The union’s loss in Bessemer shows the urgent need for both labor law reform and organizing at a mass scale.

      • The woman who took on Google and won

        The Alphabet Workers Union was set up in January 2021 for Google workers. It is not recognised by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent government agency, and is sometimes referred to as a “minority union”. The vast majority of Google workers aren’t members, but Shannon was and the union took up her case.

        In February, they filed two cases on her behalf under unfair labour practice laws. One that she had been suspended illegally – for talking about supporting a union. The other that her managers had asked her, illegally, not to discuss her wages.

        [...]

        Well it didn’t admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and didn’t admit to being a “joint employer” of contract staff. The BBC put Shannon’s story to Google but it said it had nothing further to add. Adecco has not responded to a BBC request for comment.

      • [Old] “Fair” Doesn’t Mean “Equal”

        In all of these discussions, we quickly came to a common point: to be effective, you’d need to tailor the feedback, both content and form, to the particular needs of the person hearing it. If someone struggles with insecurity, I might choose to soften the tone and emphasizing available support. If they tend to process feedback out loud and want to talk things through, I might make it more of a conversation than a direct message. If they need time to process, I might send the feedback over chat or email and then set aside time for any follow-ups at our next one-on-one. What I wouldn’t do: use the same script for everyone.

        This brings me back to one of the earliest lessons I learned in my management career. It’s a realization that’s embarrassingly obvious in hindsight: treating people fairly doesn’t mean treating everyone the same.

      • Lawsuits seek to stop mining, construction on sacred sites

        Two disputes over sites that are sacred to Native Americans are on the docket at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. A group of Apache tribal members and their allies are fighting to stop the construction of a copper mine on a place in Arizona where Indigenous people have worshiped for centuries.

      • Mine Will Destroy Apache Sacred Site, Court Declines to Intervene

        Last week, a federal judge in Arizona denied to the Native American advocacy organization Apache Stronghold a preliminary injunction that would have blocked a land swap opening the way to the creation of one of the largest copper mines in the U.S. and indeed in the world. The mine, a $ 61-billion project, will employ 1,500 people.

        The problem, U.S. District Judge Steven Logan was told, is that the project implies the destruction of Oak Flat, called by the Apache Chi’chil Bildagoteel, and regarded by them as a sacred place of their religion. As such, they claim, it cannot be destroyed both for reasons of religious freedom and because of a treaty signed in 1852 between the Apache tribes and the U.S. government.

        The Apaches explained that Oak Flat is a natural “portal to the Creator God” in their religion, and its destruction will have devastating religious and cultural consequences.

      • [Old] Native Activists File Suit After Trump Officials Hand Sacred Land to Foreign Mining Firm

        According to Archeologist John R. Welch, there is indeed no evidence that the United States ever took legal possession of the territory of Oak Flat. In his lengthy 2017 analysis of the treaty, Welch thoroughly examines the only treaty executed between the Apache Indians and concludes that he found “no evidence, in the proceedings of the Indian Claims Commission or elsewhere, of any change or diminishment in the Apaches’ reserved treaty rights to the Western Apaches’ Treaty Territory.” Welch further states unequivocally that “Oak Flat is Apache land, as it has been for centuries and is not owned by the United States of America or any other entity or person.”

      • Cops Caught on Video Holding a Black Army Lieutenant at Gunpoint, Then Pepper-Spraying Him

        By the end of the incident, the cops would threaten Nazario, pepper-spray him in the face, and knee-strike him in the legs, according to body camera footage, Nazario’s cellphone video, and legal filings. Later, when Nazario was in tears and on the ground of a gas station parking lot as officers put him in handcuffs, he repeated, “This is fucked up, this is fucked up.”

        The officers allegedly told Nazario if he were to complain, they’d charge him with crimes like obstruction, eluding, and assault on a law enforcement officer—potentially destroying his military career.

    • Monopolies

      • Epic antitrust case versus Apple in Australia gets three-month stay

        An Australian judge has ruled that Epic’s lawsuit against Apple in Australia will be temporarily suspended as the two sides prepare for a trial in the US, Gizmodo Australia reported. Apple had asked for a permanent stay of the case in Australia, arguing that the US and Australia cases were very similar, and that the matter should be settled in the original jurisdiction of the United States.

        The two companies are fighting over Epic’s battle royale game Fortnite, and the fees Apple charges. In August, Epic set up its own in-game payments system, effectively circumventing Apple’s App Store payments and avoiding the 30 percent surcharge Apple collects on App Store purchases. Apple then removed Fortnite from its iOS App Store for violating its rules. Epic fired back with an antitrust lawsuit seeking to establish Apple’s App Store as a monopoly and tried to rally Fortnite fans with a protest video mocking Apple’s iconic “1984” ad.

      • Patents

        • Anixa Biosciences Announces Issuance and Publication of European Patent for Ovarian Cancer Vaccine Technology [Ed: EPO giving patent monopolies on cancer]

          “The ovarian cancer vaccine targets a protein (the Extracellular Domain of the Anti-Mullerian Hormone Receptor 2, AMHR2-ED) that is expressed only in the ovaries and only in pre-menopausal women. After menopause, the target protein disappears and is only seen again when ovarian cancer cells arise. Our vaccine targets the AMHR2-ED and trains the immune system to destroy these cancer cells as they arise,” said Dr. Vincent Tuohy of the Department of Inflammation and Immunity at Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute. “We are looking forward to our continued alliance with Anixa Biosciences to further develop this technology.”

        • PMI sees BAT e-cig patents invalidated at English High Court

          The UK high court has revoked two British American Tobacco (BAT) e-cigarette patents for obviousness, concluding they lack an “inventive step” over an existing Philip Morris International (PMI) patent.

          Justice Richard Meade ruled on March 9 that the BAT patents were invalid, therefore dismissing BAT’s claim that PMI had infringed the two ‘heat-not-burn’ patents with its IQOS product line.

          The two BAT patents are UK 3,398,460,B1 and UK 3,491,944,B1. The ‘460 patent relates to an “aerosol-generating device with housing and a cigarette”, whereas the ‘944 patent refers to a cigarette “for use with” an aerosol-generating device.

        • FCBA Remote Program on Appellate Perspectives [Ed: FCBA is a misnomer [1, 2] that borrows its name from something it is not]

          The Federal Circuit Bar Association (FCBA) will be offering a remote program entitled “Appellate Perspectives” on April 15, 2021 from 1:00 to 2:00 pm (ET). Nicholas Groombridge of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP will moderate a panel consisting of Hon. Timothy Dyk, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; Hon. Kathleen O’Malley, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; Hon. Jimmie Reyna, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; Hon. Klaus Bacher, Presiding Judge, 10th Civil Senate, Bundesgerichtshof (Germon Federal Court of Justice, FCJ); and Hon. Peter Meier-Beck, Presiding Judge, Antitrust Senate, Bundesgerichtshof (Germon Federal Court of Justice, FCJ).

        • Webinar on Patenting Antibodies at the EPO [Ed: J A Kemp keeps pushing patents on life in Europe, benefiting from corrupt EPO management that never met a patent application it did not like]

          J A Kemp will be offering a webinar entitled “Patenting Antibody Pharmaceuticals at the EPO” on April 15, 2021 from 2:30 to 3:30 pm BST (British Summer Time). Vicki Allen and Andrew Bentham of J A Kemp will explore the basic principles of patenting of antibodies, and highlight recent trends in examination and strategies for drafting new cases and for addressing objections to existing applications.

        • GBT – 3D Chip and Memory Patent Enters the Regional Phase in Europe

          GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) (“GBT” or the “Company”), is pleased to report a continuation to its prior release – www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GTCH/news/story?e&id=1829166 that the above-mentioned PCT application has entered the regional phase in Europe on March 16, 2021. The application has been allocated the number 19862631.9 and designates all EPC states (as of the PCT filing date).

          The Company filed its application on or around October 9, 2019. It is expected that the European Patent Office will shortly issue a communication under Rule 161 EPC. This will invite GBT to file a response to the WO (ISA)/IPRP as well as the opportunity to reduce the claims to avoid fees at that stage.

        • Software Patents

          • Patentability Of General AI: Is China Moving Away From Europe and Toward The United States? – Lexology [Ed: "Technically-applied AI inventions are generally patentable in Europe, China, and the U.S." according to this, but that's just a way of saying they grant bogus patents on software using buzzwords and hype as justification]

            Patenting an artificial intelligence (AI) invention can be a challenge that depends greatly on jurisdiction and the category of AI to which the invention belongs. Important jurisdictions for patent protection include Europe and China, and, of course, the United States. There are two important categories of AI pertinent to patentability that are termed herein as “technically-applied AI” and “generally-applicable AI”.

            Technically-applied AI involves applying AI to other technology areas. AI inventions in this category include, for example, autonomous vehicles and robots, facial recognition, and AI-controlled medical devices. Technically-applied AI inventions are generally patentable in Europe, China, and the U.S.

            Generally-applicable AI includes AI innovations that may be applied to any technology area. Obvious inclusions in this category are improvements to fundamental AI and machine learning algorithms, such as algorithms for neural networks and random forests. Patenting inventions directed only to these fundamental algorithms may be possible in the U.S. and also, shortly, in China, but is impossible in Europe except in rare circumstances. In fact, pundits most often cite improvements to such fundamental algorithms as the example of generally-applicable AI that is virtually unpatentable in Europe.

          • IPO Webinar on Protecting Medical Device Software [Ed: Same old trick for amassing bogus patents on software is to misportray these as “devices” and “medical”]

            The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) will offer a one-hour webinar entitled “Protecting Software Related to a Medical Device: A Case Law Review & Strategy” on April 14, 2021 from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm (ET). Christopher George of Hanley, Flight & Zimmerman, LLC; John Kind of Fenwick & West LLP; Jonathan Kwok of Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Ishir Mehta of Cantor Colburn LLP; and Ryan Phelan of Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP will review recent case law relating to software-related medical patents and provide strategy tips for preparing and prosecuting patent applications involving such technologies.

      • Trademarks

        • Chinese court rules against trade mark squatter

          n 18 March 2021, the Minhang District (Shanghai) Court published on its website a judgment, rendered on 25 September 2020, which could become a precedent in the fight against trade mark squatting. Zhigang ZHU of the MARQUES China Team reports.

          This case concerned a form of trade mark squatting that targets the owner of a reputable trade mark. The squatter files large numbers of identical or similar marks, preferably in classes of goods or services where the targeted trade mark is not registered.

          This kind of behaviour forces the victim to file numerous oppositions or invalidation actions and therefore incur significant costs.

        • Phonetic similarity, even to a high degree, is not enough to cause confusion, the General Court says

          In the assessment of the similarity of signs, visual, phonetic and conceptual similarity are evaluated and it is not necessary that similarity exist in all three aspects, one can suffice. Nonetheless, in the global assessment of likelihood of confusion, visual, phonetic and conceptual similarity do not actually carry the same weight, and often the balancing of these factors brings results which may be found surprising.

          Case in point is the recent decision T‑117/20, of 10 February 2021, where the General Court (GC) held that despite a high aural similarity among two signs, conceptual and visual differences might neutralize this and preclude confusion. Some aspects of this case are worth further reflection.

          [...]

          Now it is interesting to note that, when the GC holds that “the earlier figurative marks are clearly associated with the concept of a black feline” at § 63, this finding is “clearly” predicated upon the visual evaluation, because at least in two EU languages, namely Finnish and Hungarian, PANTHER is, respectively PANTTERI. and PARDUC. Therefore, at least from a phonetical point of view, a good argument can be made that at least on Finnish and Hungarian consumers, the “clear and specific meaning” of PANTHER would be lost and thus the high aural similarity should be considered as carrying enough weight, if coupled with the identity of the goods and in light of the “interdependence principle”, to prevail over the visual differences.

          Finally, and not to poke (too much) at the somewhat inconsistent application of the GC’s own principles, we cannot but notice that in a quite recent case (here commented “Should different meanings outweigh the similarities of non-distinctive elements?”), the GC had not given much relevance to the conceptual differences, finding confusion based on the visual and aural similarity of the (descriptive components of the) marks in conjunction with the identity between the goods. Judge Bridlegoose, were those …. the little small dice or the large great ones?

      • Copyrights

        • Is Site-Blocking Reducing Piracy or Helping to Disperse it Elsewhere?

          A report from anti-piracy group Rights Alliance reveals that the volume of Danish visits to pirate sites remained steady in 2020 but the overall number of users of illegal services dropped by almost 18%. Rights Alliance attributes the decrease to several initiatives including site-blocking, but also a tendency for users to consume pirated content on legal platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

        • Nigerian ‘Scam Artist’ Used Apple, Amazon and Tidal to Cash in on Pirated Music

          An aspiring Nigerian musician named Wisekid copied an album from one of Africa’s biggest artists Wizkid, reportedly passing it off as his own. By uploading the ‘pirated’ album to music services such as Apple Music, Amazon and Tidal, the scammer appears to have earned substantial revenue.

        • Around the IP Blogs

          Interest in eSports has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the rise of eSports, we also see new creative tools, and platforms for sharing them. Yet surprisingly, and despite being fundamentally underlain with a copyrighted work, relatively little research has been undertaken into the copyright context of eSports. Kluwer Copyright Blog explores copyright subsistence in eSports from a UK perspective

        • ‘All he has done is to play the game’: eSports players and copyright

          Interest in eSports (‘electronic sports’ or competitive video gaming) has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. With many traditional face-to-face sports suspended, eSports have become an attractive viable competitor for self-isolating new and existing fans alike. With no geographic discrimination, an all-digital medium and even ‘anyone allowed to play’ tournament models, eSports is now a nascent industry of considerable commercial value.

          With the rise of eSports, we also see new creative tools, and platforms for sharing them. Yet surprisingly, and despite being fundamentally underlain with a copyrighted work (a video game), relatively little research has been undertaken into the copyright context of eSports. In an attempt to remedy this, my latest article in JIPLP explores copyright subsistence in eSports from a UK perspective.

        • UK Court of Appeal will not depart from EU on Communication to the Public: TuneIn Radio

          As previously reported by the IPKat here in 2019 the High Court of England and Wales weighed in on communication to the public, in what the court called ‘a test case’ about infringement of copyright in sound recordings accessed via an online platform that connects users to radio stations around the world.

          Facts & first instance

          The claimants – Warner Music and Sony Music – own or hold the exclusive licences to copyright in sound recordings of music, together accounting for more than half the market for digital sales of recorded music in the UK and about 43% globally.

          The defendant – TuneIn – is a US technology company, that operates an online platform which enables their 75 million monthly active users to access over 100,000 radio stations around the world. TuneIn Radio is available via a website and app, its free for registered and unregistered users, and includes a paid for advert-free version (TuneIn Radio Pro). TuneIn has partnership deals that mean it is pre-installed on a number of devices such as Bose, Sonos and Sony PlayStation [yes, Sony] as well as connected TV and connected cars.

          [...]

          TuneIn contended that this reasoning confused the communication to the public right with the reproduction right. LJ Arnold agreed. The starting point is the stream simulcast or webcast by the foreign station. The act of communication is the provision by the Pro app of the link to that stream. That involves precisely the same technical means as the original communication. It makes no difference if the Pro app has the record function enabled. First, this cannot depend on whether the user activates the record function or not. Secondly, the mere potential for the user to record the stream does not affect the provision of the stream in any way. The communication remains the link to the stream.

          The Claimants contended that, even if there was no new technical means, there was a new public because the rightsholders would not have taken into account the possibility of users recording their repertoire. This argument was not accepted by the Court, as the presence or absence of the record function in the Pro app makes no difference to the public which was taken into account by the rights holders when they authorised the original communication by the category 1 stations: it remains the public in the UK. It is true that the rightholders did not grant a licence which extended to reproduction of sound recordings by users, but the consequence of this is that users who made recordings within the Claimants’ repertoire infringed the Claimants’ rights unless those users could rely upon a relevant exception or limitation.

04.10.21

Links 10/4/2021: osbuild 28, KDE Frameworks 5.81.0

Posted in News Roundup at 5:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • GNOME 40 is HERE | This Is The Future Of Desktop Linux Experience (NEW!)

        This is the all-new GNOME 40. The latest version of the popular GNOME desktop environment is now redesigned with major changes and improvements. GNOME 40 is the biggest update since GNOME jumped from version 2 to 3. And with this update, how things look, how things work, and how you interact with the system are reimagined for the better. GNOME is the most prevalent desktop environment, and all the Linux distros using it will be updating to GNOME 40 soon, giving you a fresh new experience. So let’s jump right in and see what’s new, what’s changed, the updated set of GNOME core apps, and We’ll also see why GNOME 40 is the next step in desktop interface standards for 2021 and beyond.

      • I’ve used KDE exclusively for a month, here’s my opinion – KDE Plasma Review

        I’ve been using Manjaro KDE on my new Slimbook desktop for a month now, so here are my conclusions. Become a channel member to get access to a weekly patroncast and vote on the next topics I’ll cover…

      • Privacy and Security in Technology

        Using a Secure Operating System

    • Kernel Space

    • Applications

      • Best Apps to Install on Linux Mint in 2021

        Linux Mint is a popular Linux distro alongside Ubuntu. There is not much difference between the functionalities and features of the two. Hence, the various app that is compatible with Ubuntu also works effortlessly on Linux Mint.

        The advantage of using Linux distros and apps is that most are free and open-source.

        As Linux Mint is an alternative to Ubuntu, you can find an alternative to every popular and widely used app. Thus, there is no scarcity of apps in each category. However, finding a reliable app is not an easy task because of so many options.

      • Best Text Editors for CentOS

        Based on RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS is an open-source Linux distribution. It is an ideal operating system platform for web hosting, thanks to active developer community support. It is completely free and a great platform for web application developers.

        Text editors are a very important tool in every operating system platform as they can be used for a variety of purposes from writing short notes to scripting big web applications and programs.

        Having a perfect text editor eases hectic tasks like programming and coding. Today, many text editors come with a variety of pre-defined functionalities that make the task of programming much easier and convenient.

      • Best Image Compression Apps for Linux

        This article will post a list of useful command line and graphical utilities that allow you to compress image files to save local or remote disk space. Some of these applications provide “lossless” options that reduce size of image files with no or minimal loss of quality. Note that image compression is not the same as resizing, rescaling or altering geometry of images to reduce size. Image compression involves manipulating quality of images using various compression algorithms. Usually, quality of colors, individual pixels and transparency is manipulated to compress images and save disk space.

      • Neovide Is A Graphical Neovim Client Written In Rust

        Neovide is a really cool GUI client for Neovim. Although it essentially functions like Neovim in the terminal, Neovide does add some nice graphical improvements such as cursor animations and smooth scrolling. It even has me thinking about making it my new “vim” alias.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to try Elementary OS 6 early build on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or Linux Mint

        Do you want to try the new Pantheon Desktop without waiting for elementary OS 6 (Odin)? Then here is the solution to do that by installing it on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or Linux Mint.

        Elementary OS 6 is the up coming version from the developers of this operating system, however, even it will be based on Ubuntu 20.4, still taking quite some time to get released. In such a scenario if you don’t want to wait, we can access its early builds to install on some existing Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or Linux mint.

      • How to Use Gzip on Linux? – Linux Hint

        Gzip is a common compression algorithm that allows you to compress a file while keeping the original file format, ownership, and timeline.

        When you use the gzip command to compress a file or folder, it would have the same name as before, but with the extension.gz.

      • How Do You Make Chown Recursive? – Linux Hint

        You may sometimes find errors while using any Linux operating system such as denied while editing a file. This is because of fewer rights on that particular file. Chown is usually abbreviated as “change ownership”, which means that the Chown is an instruction for changing the owner of a group of files and folders on Linux. Moreover, you need to modify the owner of a folder that holds all of the documents in certain situations. You might have to consume recursive chown, which is one of the choices of the chown instruction. Recursive means chown will be done for all documents in the specified directory, and also files and folders inside all sub-directories. You’ll discover how to recursively modify the directory and file authorizations while using the chown instruction in this guide.

      • How Do You List Only Files Not Directories in Linux? – Linux Hint

        You must have prior knowledge on how to list all the directories and folders that are residing in Linux systems. You may have used the “ls’ command to do this while working on any distribution of the Linux operating system. In this tutorial, we will be covering the topic of the process of listing only the files from a specific directory or folder in a Linux system. If you want to learn about listing files, go through each step of this guide.

      • How Do I List Empty Directories in Linux? – Linux Hint

        Most of the time this question arises, how will you list the empty file and folders when you are working on the Linux-based operating system? Empty files and directories are those which have no data or sub-directories within them, respectively. If you want to learn how to do it, then this tutorial is meant for you. You have to go through each step defined in this tutorial to list the empty folders or files in the terminal. First, you must have sudo privileges of a Linux-based system to use it. After logging in from the system, you have to open the command terminal from the Applications. We will have a look at some of the examples for listing empty folders.

      • What is the difference: .bashrc and bash_profile? – Linux Hint

        If you spend most of your time on the terminal, you might think to personalize its appearance by changing the configuration files. If you notice that there are two configuration files of bash shell in Linux, one is “.bashrc,” and the second one is “bash_profile” or “.profile.”

        These files are hidden and cannot be displayed using “ls” only; therefore, use “ls -a” in the terminal to view these files.

      • 10 Awesome Awk Command Examples – Linux Hint

        Awk command is a powerful tool to process data. It gets input data, manipulates it, and gives results in standard output. Various operations can be performed on rows and columns of a file.
        Knowing the essentials of the “awk” command is very important when it comes to processing data efficiently, and this post covers the key features of the “awk” command.

      • How to install TeX Live on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS- A free typesetting system

        With TeX Live, the TeX Users Group has created the most extensive distribution of the TeX free typesetting system. Here we learn how to install Tex Live full distribution version on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux.

        Well, Tex Live has replaced the no longer maintained teTeX distribution and is most likely aimed at users who already have experience with DTP and the corresponding programming languages.

        It comes with lots of features, such as the TeX Live helps users to prepare and edit texts for typesetting and printing. A large number of typographical rules can be set for this. TeX Live specializes in texts with complex content – the program can also handle tables, for example, and TeX Live is the measure of all things, especially when it comes to setting mathematical formulas.

      • How To Install Miniconda In Linux – OSTechNix

        Miniconda is a minimal and stripped-down version of Anaconda distribution. As the name implies, Miniconda contains only Conda package manager, Python and a small number of useful packages such as pip, zlib including their dependencies.

        Miniconda is suitable for those who don’t mind to install each package individually. It saves you not only the disk space but also avoids dumping a lots of unnecessary applications that you don’t use often in your hard drive. For those wondering, Anaconda distribution automatically installs 1,500 packages that consumes around 3 GB disk space. If you use only a handful of applications, miniconda might be a good choice!

      • How to play Space Engineers on Linux

        Space Engineers is a voxel-based sandbox game that takes place in space. In it, the player can mine for resources, create bases, explore, etc. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can play the game on Linux.

      • How To Install Flectra on CentOS 8 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Flectra on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Flectra is a free and open-source, CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning) software system that provides a lot of flexibility and customization that lets you meet the unique needs of your business. In simple terms, Flectra gives you a comprehensive platform so that you can easily modify or configure it as per your requirements. Flectra provides a lot of features such as Accounting, E-Commerce, Inventory Management, Marketing, Project Management, CRM, Reporting, Leave Management, and many more.

        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 install of the Flectra open source ERP and CRM software on CentOS 8.

      • Linux Essentials – Understanding File & Directory Permissions

        Confused about permissions in Linux? In this tutorial, I go over the basics of permissions so that you can understand how it works. We’ll cover the permissions string and each element within it, what each individual section means, as well as how to change permissions.

      • How to Run “ls” Command in Linux? – Linux Hint

        “ls” is a basic command that any Linux user should know. The ls command displays basic information about files and folders inside the file system. It’s included in the GNU core utility kit which comes standard with all Linux distributions.

      • How to Use Linux Chrt Command? – Linux Hint

        While using Linux operating system, multiple programs wait to be converted into a process for execution. When a program changes into a process, a lot of attributes are set that can be manipulated. For this, the Linux system provides a helpful tool to set or fetch real-time attributes of a process.

        The “chrt” command is a part of a low-level Linux utility that is not only used to set attributes on runtime but also to change the scheduling policy of a process and set its priority. It uses the existing PID of any waiting program to set and retrieve a schedule of real-time attributes. Simply, the scheduler decides which process is executed by the CPU first when the “chrt” command changes its priority.

      • How to Use $IFS in Bash? – Linux Hint

        In scripting, we must break string data for a variety of reasons. Split is an integrated feature in many computer languages that divides every string of data into various pieces. However, bash lacks a built-in feature for splitting a string. To break any string value, there are many single and compound delimiters to be used. A variable IFS (Internal Field Separator) is being used to specify a particular delimiter for string division. In this guide, you will learn how to use various methods to illustrate the process of breaking a string value in bash using the $IFS.

      • How to Use Linux Chage Command? – Linux Hint

        Linux Operating system provides multiple tools to manage its system. One of the helpful tools in Linux is the “chage” command. From its name, the “chage” command is derived from the words “Change Age”, which is used to modify the information such as duration when to change password, make account status active or inactive, sets expiry date of the account, and sets a reminder to change the password through an alarm before user’s account will be inactive.

        It is important to enforce users to modify the password after a certain period due to security reasons. If you’re an admin, then modified and updated information will be visible to you.

      • Date command in Bash – Linux Hint

        Performing date operation in shell scripting is very common especially performing scheduling tasks. But dealing with “date” in bash scripting is a tangling job. Bash comes with the “date” command that displays the date in various formats.

      • How to Install deb File in Ubuntu – 4 Ways Explained

        How will you install packages which are not available in the software center?

        Basically there are are many software’s are available on Ubuntu software center, and you can install those very easily by using an apt and apt-get command as well as by graphical Interface.

        If the software does not exist on the software center and you want to install on your ubuntu operating system then you must download first from the official website of that particular software.

        if you want to install external you must download the executable file in .deb format for Debian and Ubuntu-based operating system.

        This tutorial will cover how to install Deb file in Ubuntu operating system using different methods. I will cover command-line methods as well as the graphical interface for installing deb files on ubuntu.

      • How to install Stringer RSS reader on Fedora Linux – Linux Hint

        Stringer is an RSS reader which is used to get the latest updates of blogs and websites. It can be hosted on your own server and accessed over the localhost. It is developed using the Ruby language. This app is based on Sinatra, ActiveRecord, PostgreSQL, Backbone.js, and DelayedJob. It can be run on Heroku, Linux-based VPS with Ruby, Docker, Openshift. One can use their own domain with a stringer by using a CNAME. It can also be used on mobile clients that support Fever.

      • Ubuntu How To Set A Static IP Via Terminal And GUI

        The default IP address of your computer – whatever it is, is probably “dynamic”. This is mostly convenient, as network administrators do not have to go through the hassle of creating individual IP addresses for each computer on their network. However, there are good reasons why you may want to set a static IP address in Ubuntu – from improved security to games, servers, faster Internet speeds and port forwarding.

        In this article we will show you how to set a static IP address in Ubuntu.

      • Hashcat Tutorial on Brute force & Mask Attack step by step guide

        Password cracking is a very interesting topic and loved by every hacker.

        There are multiple password cracking software exist in the market for cracking the password. but hashcat is unique.

        Hashcat is working well with GPU, or we can say it is only designed for using GPU. GPU has amazing calculation power to crack the password.

        In this article, I will cover the hashcat tutorial, hashcat feature, Combinator Attack, Dictionary Attack, hashcat mask attack example, hashcat Brute force attack, and more. This article covers the complete tutorial about hashcat.

        Hello friends, you reading articles on Password cracking under Penetration Testing this article will cover about another tool hashcat tutorial. It is the best password cracking tool. and give the best result with GPU Machine.

      • How to Use bc to Perform Advanced Arithmetic Operations in BASH – Linux Hint

        Basic Calculator, also known as ‘bc,’ is a Linux command-line utility used to perform advanced arithmetics and algebra in bash scripts. It provides many different mathematical functions like sine, cosine, tangent, natural logarithm in bash. Bash can’t perform advanced arithmetic operations, like comparing floats; that’s where bc comes in handy. The ‘bc’ command was preceded by ‘dc’ (Desk Calculator), a UNIX utility. In this tutorial, we will use the ‘bc’ command to perform advanced arithmetic operations.

      • Tcpdump command examples and tutorial – Linux Hint

        If your work mostly depends upon the internet, then having network issues is very common. Resolving and troubleshooting these network issues is a challenging task. In such a situation “tcpdump” tool gets into the game.
        The “tcpdump” is a packet analyzer and used to diagnose and analyze network issues. It captures the network traffic going through your device and looks over it. The “tcpdump” tool is a powerful tool to troubleshoot network issues. It comes with many options, which makes it a versatile command-line utility to fix network issues.

        This post is a detailed guide about the “tcpdump” utility that includes its installation, common features, and usage with different options.

      • Setting up PyQt5 in PyCharm 2021.1 on AlmaLinux 8.3

        PyQt5 is a comprehensive set of Python bindings for Qt v5. It is implemented as more than 35 extension modules and enables Python to be used as an alternative application development language to C++ on all supported platforms including iOS and Android. Following below is a brief description to enable PyCharm 2021.1 to execute python scripts been written with PyQT5 bindings involved on AlmaLinux 8.3.

      • Clusterssh – Administer multiple ssh or rsh shells simultaneously

        The command opens an administration console and an xterm to all specified hosts. Any text typed into the administration console is replicated to all windows. All windows may also be typed into directly.
        This tool is intended for (but not limited to) cluster administration where the same configuration or commands must be run on each node within the cluster. Performing these commands all at once via this tool ensures all nodes are kept in sync.

        Connections are opened using ssh which must be correctly installed and configured.

        Extra caution should be taken when editing files as lines may not necessarily be in the same order; assuming line 5 is the same across all servers and modifying that is dangerous. It’s better to search for the specific line to be changed and double-check all terminals are as expected before changes are committed.

    • Games

      • King of Seas: Preview on Linux (Proton)

        King of Seas is an upcoming Pirates!-like title to be released in May 2021 on PC. I had the opportunity to try a closed-demo version of the game back in December 2020, so here’s my first impressions. Playtime was limited to 45 minutes of continous gameplay, so suffice to say, I can only talk about the very beginning of the game, and I certainly can’t comment on the final quality of the game.

        It all starts with you… the heir to the throne of an island kingdom. And one day, as you were away on the seas to make your mark as a young captain, you find out as you return that the king has been killed and an usurper has taken power for himself. As you try to fight back, your ship is sunk and you are left for dead in the waters. Fortunately, you are rescued by a bunch of pirates, who decide to take you under their protection.

      • Our New Linux Gamer Survey for 2021 is Out!

        We are back with with a survey! To be fair, it’s been a while we did not conduct a new one. But it’s time. There’s been sufficient changes in the past few years to justify checking once again where we all are. So we are inviting all of you to participate in the Q2 2021 Linux Gamer Survey prepared by Boiling Steam.

      • Top 10 Games to Play on Ubuntu 20.04

        Windows platform has been one of the dominating platforms for gaming because of the huge percentage of games that are developing today to natively support Windows. Can anyone challenge Windows’ supremacy in terms of their operating system? The answer is, yes! It is Linux.

        Gaming library for Linux is expanding and is one of the popular platforms. Open-source developers have established a way to play most Windows games on Linux. If you are a dedicated gamer, then Linux would probably not on your first choice but you would rather stick with Windows or any gaming console. That’s not the concern anymore, since gaming on Linux has improved a lot. More and more developers are now looking at Linux as an alternative against Windows and releasing games that natively support Linux, it all thanks to Steam for Linux.

        This post is dedicated to list some of the best games that essentially support Linux/Ubuntu. There are a lot of games that can be played on Linux, all you need is a compatible machine and graphics card with drivers. Most of the drivers for Nvidia and AMD are easily accessible on Ubuntu. Players nowadays would like to play games in groups, so Linux provides an opportunity to players by helping them in building a game server.

        After playing games for years, we have developed a list that comprises the top ten best games which are mentioned below.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE Frameworks 5.81 Released with KHamburgerMenu, Various Improvements

          The biggest new feature in the KDE Frameworks 5.81 release is the implementation of a new, custom hamburger menu called KHamburgerMenu, which will be shown on QWidgets-based apps whenever the main menubar is hidden.

          The KDE Project plans to adopt the KHamburgerMenu for all KDE apps as it offers several advantages, including an alternative app menu in case you hide the default menubar by accident, more freedom when you want to take full advantage of the maximum vertical space, more compact design with only relevant menu items, as well as support for relocating, renaming, removing, or even changing its icon.

        • KDE Ships Frameworks 5.81.0

          KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.81.0.

          KDE Frameworks are 83 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the KDE Frameworks release announcement.

          This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.

        • Activities Feature Working On Wayland

          It’s been another week of fixes and feature work for the KDE desktop as the march continues toward the Plasma 5.22 release this summer.

          Crash fixes and more Wayland improvements remain the common theme for KDE this year.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Internet Radio App Shortwave 2.0.0 Released with Mini Player Mode

          Shortwave, free and open-source internet radio player for Gnome, released version 2.0.0 today.

          The new release introduces a mini player mode. It is a super compact window widget with a few control buttons, and displays the current radio station and playing song name.

          [...]

          The radio player is available in Ubuntu Software as Snap package, it is however not updated at the moment of writing.

          Besides building from source（impossible as it depends GTK4), so far the only way is installing the containerised Flatpak package.

        • Sam Thursfield: Calliope, slowly building steam

          There are some interesting complexities to this, and in 12 hours of hacking I didn’t solve them all. Firstly, Bandcamp artist and album names are not normalized. Some artist names have spurious “The”, some album names have “(EP)” or “(single)” appended, so they don’t match your tags. These details are of interest only to librarians, but how can software tell the difference?

          The simplest approach is use Musicbrainz, specifically cpe musicbrainz resolve-ids. By comparing ids where possible we get mostly good results. There are many albums not on Musicbrainz, though, which for now turn up as false positives. Resolving Musicbrainz IDs is a tricky process, too — how do we distinguish Multi-Love (album) from Multi-Love (single) if we only have an album name?

          If you want to try it out, great! It’s still aimed at hackers — you’ll have to install from source with Meson and probably fix some bugs along the way. Please share the fixes!

    • Distributions

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

        • Get involved with Mageia, become a Packager

          With Mageia 8 just released and development for Mageia 9 getting underway in Cauldron, the unstable branch of Mageia, now is a great time to get involved with packaging.

          We are starting to look at the features that we want to include for Mageia 9, and as it is so early in the development cycle, now is the time for major developments, or big updates to key pieces of software. This is a great time to join the project as you can propose features you would like to see, help to implement large changes or see how a distribution evolves through development, stabilisation and then is released.

          If there is an application that you are interested in, if you want to help maintain part of the distribution, or if you want to learn something new, there are many opportunities to do so with the packaging team.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Release of osbuild 28

          We are happy to announce version 28 of osbuild. This time with a large set of fixes and minor additions to the different stages bundled with osbuild. Furthermore, Fedora 35 is now supported as host system.

          Below you can find the official changelog from the osbuild-28 sources. All users are recommended to upgrade!

        • Fedora Linux Download ISO 64-bit

          We can download Fedora Linux free of cost to install on PC, Laptop, or virtual machines. It is developed and maintained by the Fedora project community while sponsored by Red Hat. It came into existence when in 2003 Red Hat decided to turn its end-user Linux distribution into a community project, and so the Fedora distribution was born. Fedora uses and publishes software that are available under a free license. The project is led by the Fedora Project Board, which includes members of the community as well as Red Hat employees.

          The key goal of developing Fedora is to provide a new, versatile, and free ( open source ) operating system. And being an upstream source code of the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution, it helps a lot in developing and providing stability to RHEL.

          Therefore, in short, it is a testing platform for many new technologies, and technologies that are considered available will eventually be added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

      • Debian Family

        • Google operates with a Debian developer to produce COVID-19 research simpler on Linux

          “The Bazel team jumped in to help Olek and the COVID-19 research community. Yun Peng, Software Engineer at Google with Olek Wojnar led the team of Bazel and Debian volunteers to move the project forward. The joint effort between Debian and Google has produced some great results, including packaging the Bazel bootstrap variant in 6 months’ time (Debian 11 — released in Late 2021; Ubuntu 21.04 — 22 April 2021),” clarifies Google.

          The search giant further says, “Bazel is now available as an easy to install package distributed on Debian and Ubuntu. The extended Google team continues to work with Debian towards the next step of packaging and distributing Tensorflow on Debian and other Linux distributions.”

          While Olek Wojnar deserves a lot of credit for this successful partnership, Google has clearly acquired significant praise as well. Not only has the search giant assisted amazingly in this case, yet it has for some time been a companion of both the open-source and Linux communities.

        • Kentaro Hayashi: Grow your ideas for Debian Project

          There may be some “If it could be …” ideas for Debian Project. If idea is concreate and worth to make things forward, it should make a proposal for Project Funding.

          [...]

          I’m not confident whether mechanism works, but Debian needs change.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • FSF

        • Kurt Roeckx & Debian, the character assassination equivalent of a lynching

          On 24 March 2021, Canonical/Ubuntu employee Steve Langasek formally requested support for a vote to publicly defame Dr Richard Stallman.

          The Debian Project Secretary, Kurt Roeckx went about processing the request as if nothing was wrong. He has acted like a robot.

          Imagine for a moment that the vote was about murdering somebody with physical force instead of character assassination. Imagine that such a motion was presented with the required number of supporters, as defined in the constitution. If Roeckx went about processing a request for such a vote, he could be prosecuted for crimes like conspiracy to murder and if the plot went ahead, accessory to murder.

          In such circumstances, the best thing to do is to resign. The resignation of the secretary at this point could invalidate the voting process. It would be a circuit breaker.

          Even now, volunteers have come to realise that they will face serious consequences for their abuse of the 68-year old Dr Stallman and previous acts of defamation against volunteers. These consequences can be avoided by abandoning the vote. The secretary can ensure that happens by resigning. This is the best course of action for the Debian Project today.

      • Programming/Development

        • Python

          • Create a JSON Response in Python

            JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file is a very popular medium to interchange data between different formats. It contains data in text format that is supported by various languages such as Python, PHP, PERL, etc. The main purpose of the JSON file is to transfer data between the server and the client. The requests are generated by Python to retrieve the data from a particular resource URI. If the response of the request is returned in JSON format then the content of the response can be retrieved using the response.json() function. It returns the response by using a Python dictionary object. How this function can be used to parse JSON response using the Python request library will be shown in this tutorial.

          • Use of Django Request and Response Objects – Linux Hint

            The Request-response cycle is used to transfer the data between the client and server in all types of web APIs. The client-server architecture is used in the Django framework to implement the web application. The request and response are the two main components of the client-server application. An HttpRequest object is created in the Django application when a client requests any resource. A particular view function is used to handle the request and send the response using the HttpResponse object. The uses of different attributes and methods of HttpRequest and HttpResponse classes of the Django framework will be explained in this tutorial.

          • Form Validation in Django – Linux Hint

            Form validation is a very important task for any web application to enter valid data in the database. The users of the application will not be able to insert invalid data if the form data are validated before submitting. Django is called MVT (Model View Template) based framework where the task of the controller is done by this framework itself. The database-related tasks are done by Model and the data are presented to the template using View. The fields of a form are generated based on the particular model that will insert data into the Django database after validation. One type of validation is done by the browser-based on the field type that is defined in the model. Using the is_valid() function is another way to check the form data whether they are valid or not after submitting the form. This tutorial will show you how the data can be inserted into the Django database after validating the form.

          • How to Build a Basic Search for a Django Site? – Linux Hint

            A particular content of any site is normally retrieved by the users through Google search. However, if this search option is implemented on the website, then the users can easily find their desired content within the site without using Google search. . Another benefit of adding a search option within a website is that the developer can manage the searching output properly. That means he can control which content of the site will appear or not. This tutorial will show the process of implementing the basic search in the Django site.

  • Leftovers

    • Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses.

      Often the language used by those hiring betrays their view of people as resources. Or, to use its current popular disguise: “talent”.

      “We hire top talent” “the candidate didn’t meet our bar”, “our hiring funnel selects for the best”. “we hire smart people and get out of their way”. We design “fair tests” that are an “objective assessment” of how closely people match our preconceptions of good.

      The starting point for the talent mindset is that we want to hire the smartest people in the “talent pool”. If only we can hire all the smartest people, that will give us a competitive advantage!

      If you focus on hiring brilliant people, and manage to find people who are slightly smarter on average than your competitors, will you win? Achievements in tech seldom stem solely from the brilliance of any one individual. Successes don’t have a single root cause any more than failures do.

    • How Many People Still Use Desktop Compared to Mobile

      Are you a desktop-user? Or do you prefer to use a mobile device while browsing the internet and playing games? The way we use technology is changing every year. More people than ever before are online- about 58.8% of the world’s total population. That is no small number.

      [...]

      A Statista study reviewed the amount of mobile users who make up organic search visits. During the last five years, they noticed a major increase in how many people used mobile devices to conduct internet searches.

      In 2013, 27% of organic search engine clicks came from mobile devices. It went up steadily that year to 33%. They would conduct the same research later, in 2019. During those six years, mobile device use continued to grow.

      In late 2018, 56% of search engine visits came from mobile users. That means that mobile traffic for search engines was consistently growing- and would likely continue to do so. Mobile traffic likely overtakes desktop traffic soon enough.

      [...]

      Still, with 96% of Americans owning some kind of cell phone, it makes sense that we see growth in the mobile device uses each year. You can continue this number to grow, although desktop use will likely stay the same or slightly decline- it is not likely to die out completely in the foreseeable future.

    • Finance

      • The Intriguing Nature of Non-Fungible Tokens

        The blockchain first came to light in 2008 as the digital ledger for bitcoin transactions. The blockchain creator’s original vision was limited to enabling peer-to-peer bitcoin transactions with no need for a bank or government agency to certify the validity of the transactions. But, like the Internet, electricity and other transformative technologies, blockchain soon transcended its original objectives.

        Over the years, blockchain technologies have evolved along two major lines. One continues to focus on blockchain as the underlying platform for bitcoin, as well as a wide variety of cryptoassets, such as digital tokens and cryptocurrencies. The other focuses on the use of blockchain in the business world, – a kind of Internet 2.0. The cryptocurrency camp is based mostly on public permissionless blockchains, which anyone can join and require some kind of proof-of-work or proof-of-stake systems. The business camp, – best characterized by Hyperledger, – is based on private or public permissioned blockchain networks to support transactions among institutions that need not know nor trust each other.

        Given my professional history with the Internet and e-business, I’ve been almost exclusively focused on the business camp for two major reasons. First, blockchain technologies can help us enhance the security of Internet transactions and data, by developing a layer with the required standard services and their open source implementations for secure communication, storage and data access. And second, blockchain technologies can significantly improve the efficiency, resilience, and management of supply chains, financial services, and other complex global applications involving multiple institutions across multiple countries.

        [...]

        Digital artist Mike Winkelmann offered answers to these questions in an interesting recent podcast interview with technology journalist Kara Swisher. “Very simply … a non-fungible token is really just, at its core, a proof of ownership,” he said. “It’s just proving you own something, and it can be attached to anything. It sort of points to a digital file and says, this is the thing you own.” He explained that owning a digital asset is somewhat similar to owning a master recording. A lot of people can have the mp3 and listen to the recording. “Everybody’s hearing the exact same thing. But one person owns the master recording of it. And that person can prove, O.K., I own it. And if you have a copy of the mp3, you don’t think you own it. You’re not going to convince anybody you own it, just because you have access to it.”

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Power of Attorney

          If you are in-house patent attorney/agent prosecuting cases for your employer-client, do you still need to file a power of attorney? I’m finding that a good percentage of cases have a registered patent professional listed as the correspondence address within the Application Data Sheet, and that individual is being allowed by the USPTO to prosecute the case no behalf of its client. However, no power-of-attorney is on file with the USPTO.

        • EPO’s new examination guidelines: what you need to know [Ed: These guidelines are largely unlawful, but this sort of media is just a cheerleader for the same people who crushed lawfulness at the EPO]

          The updated rules included important changes involving amino or nucleic acid sequences and antibodies, as Clare Roskell and Samantha Moodie of Mathys & Squire explain.

          A new edition of the European Patent Office (EPO) Guidelines for Examination came into force on March 1, 2021. Relevant to life sciences, this edition includes a new subsection detailing EPO practice with respect to the interpretation of terms relating to amino or nucleic acid sequences, as well as a new section on the examination of claims to antibodies.

          [...]

          First, they confirm that when an amino acid or nucleic acid sequence is defined by using percentage sequence identity language, this is determined by the number of identical residues over a defined length in a given alignment. If no algorithm or calculation method for determining the percentage of identity is defined, the broadest interpretation will be applied using any reasonable method known at the relevant filing date.

      • Trademarks

        • European Patent Filings Indicate Mercedes-Benz Is Working On An Electric G-Class [Ed: European media cannot even tell the difference between patents and trademarks; stupidity out in the open]

          Mercedes-Benz seems to be developing an all-electric version of the ever-popular G-Class, as evidenced by patent applications recently made with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) on April 1, 2021.

          The German car brand filed to patent the names ‘EQG 580’ and ‘EQG 560’ and while no official details about these models have been confirmed, their names suggest that they could have the same powertrain configurations as the forthcoming EQS.

Links 10/4/2021: Linux on M1, Wine 6.6, ClamAV 0.103.2

Posted in News Roundup at 7:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Kernel Space

      • Work to make Linux run on M1 still in early days, says Torvalds

        Work towards making Linux run on Apple’s M1 platform is still in its early days and to make the hardware useful it needs more of a GPU driver than the basic frame buffer, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has said.

      • Linux 5.13 update expected to add Apple Silicon M1 support

        Although Linux has been already been run on Apple Silicon M1, it’s been through a series of patches designed to make a version boot on the new machines. Now Linux 5.13 is expected to gain preliminary support in its kernel.

        According to Phoronix, developer Hector Martin initial M1 support is in the running to be part of 5.13, which is expected to get a stable release around June 2021. Martin previously launched a Patreon crowd-funding effort to support his development work on the project.

        “This initial Apple M1 Linux port gets the UART, interrupts, SMP, and DeviceTree bits in place for offering basic functionality,” says Phoronix. “There is also a SimpleFB-based frame-buffer but getting working 3D/video acceleration will obviously be a daunting challenge.”

        Key areas of full M1 support have yet to be addressed. Specifically “getting the Apple M1 graphics systems fully working under Linux for day to day use is likely to take some time.”

      • Official support for Linux on the M1 Macs could come as soon as June

        While we’ve seen a variety of different efforts to bring Linux support to the M1 Macs, official support could be coming sooner than expected. As reported by Phoronix, the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle could be when preliminary support for the M1 Macs is added.

      • Asahi Linux devs merge effort to run Linux on Apple M1 silicon into kernel

        The Asahi Linux project, an effort to bring the Linux kernel to Apple’s M1 silicon, has merged its work and is on track to have it accepted in version 5.13 of the kernel.

        A merge from kernel hacker Arnd Bergmann of Linux-on-Arm outfit Linaro and a kernel mailing list post from Asahi Linux backer Hector Martin delivered the news.

        Martin also tweeted an alert, while also acknowledging that Linux overlord Linus Torvalds could banish the effort.

        [...]

        “This has been tested on an Apple M1 Mac Mini booting to a framebuffer and serial console, with SMP and KASLR, with an arm64 defconfig (+ CONFIG_FB_SIMPLE for the fb),” he wrote.

        Instructions on how to boot Linux on an M1 box can be found here.

        The code has been merged for the next version 5.13 of the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds this week issued rc6 of version 5.12, and each release usually runs to eight weekly release candidates and then a two-week merge window. If all goes well, Asahi Linux could therefore be a reality in about 12 weeks.

      • Apple M1 hardware support merged into Linux 5.13

        Asahi is the Japanese name for what we know as the McIntosh Apple—the specific fruit cultivar that gave the Mac its name. Asahi Linux is a fledgling distribution founded with the specific goal of creating a workable daily-driver Linux experience on Apple M1 silicon.

        This is a daunting task. Apple does not offer any community documentation for Apple Silicon, so Martin and cohorts must reverse-engineer the hardware as well as write drivers for it. And this is especially difficult considering the M1 GPU—without first-class graphics support, Asahi cannot possibly offer a first-class Linux experience on M1 hardware such as the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, Macbook Air, and Macbook Pro.

        [...]

        As exciting as the news of Martin’s work landing upstream might be, don’t rush out to buy an Apple M1 device for Linux use just yet. It’s been five months since we tested the first Apple M1 hardware—and it’s taken every day of that time to get to a completely vanilla boot environment “just about suitable for debugging.”
        It’s impossible to guess how long it will take the Asahi developers to reverse-engineer the M1′s GPU and produce a quality open source driver. Even now it’s not impossible they’ll fail to do so entirely; or for some reason their work might not be accepted upstream.

        We’re cautiously excited about the idea of first-class Linux support on the M1, but we absolutely do not recommend buying M1 hardware for that purpose unless and until the Asahi project gets much, much farther down the road than it’s managed so far. This isn’t because we doubt Martin—his effort in getting the project as far as it’s gotten already is outstanding—it’s just far too early to assume success, let alone success within a concrete timeline.

      • Vulnerabilities In The Linux Kernels BPF Virtual Machine Lets Any Local User Run Kernel-Level Code

        A new Linux kernel vulnerability identified as CVE-2021-29154 allows regular unprivileged system users on any modern GNU/Linux users to run code in kernel-mode. Proof of concept exploit code exists. The vulnerability is present up to and including Linux 5.11.12, the Linux kernel developers have yet to release a safe version. A patch and workarounds do exist.

        The Linux kernel has a built-in virtual machine called the extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF). It was primarily intended for firewall-related purposes, but it has become much more than that. It is, in essence, a simple general-purpose virtual machine within the Linux kernel.

        It turns out that the Linux kernels eBPF virtual machine can be tricked into running code it shouldn’t due to the way BPF JIT compilers for some architectures compute branch displacements when generating machine code. It is possible to create specially crafted machine code that is executed in kernel mode, thus allowing attackers to execute all sorts of malicious code in kernel mode.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Radeon Vulkan Driver Adds Option Of Rendering Less For ~30% Greater Performance – Phoronix

          If your current Vulkan-based Radeon Linux gaming performance isn’t cutting it and a new GPU is out of your budget or you have been unable to find a desired GPU upgrade in stock, the Mesa RADV driver has added an option likely of interest to you… Well, at least moving forward with this feature being limited to RDNA2 GPUs for now.

          RADV as Mesa’s Radeon Vulkan driver has added an option to allow Variable Rate Shading (VRS) via an environment variable override. This RADV addition is inspired by the likes of NVIDIA DLSS for trading rendering quality for better performance but in its current form is a “baby step” before being comparable to DLSS quality and functionality.

        • Bas Nieuwenhuizen: A First Foray into Rendering Less

          In RADV we just added an option to speed up rendering by rendering less pixels.

          These kinds of techniques have become more common over the past decade with techniques such as checkerboarding, TAA based upscaling and recently DLSS. Fundamentally all they do is trading off rendering quality for rendering cost and many of them include some amount of postprocessing to try to change the curve of that tradeoff. Most notably DLSS has been widly successful at that to the point many people claim it is barely a quality regression.

          Of course increasing GPU performance by up to 50% or so with barely any quality regression seems like must have and I think it would be pretty cool if we could have the same improvements on Linux. I think it has the potential to be a game changer, making games playable on APUs or playing with really high resolution or framerates on desktops.

          [...]

          VRS is by far the easiest thing to make work in almost all games. Most alternatives like checkerboarding, TAA and DLSS need modified render target size, significant shader fixups, or even a proprietary integration with games. Making changes that deeply is getting more complicated the more advanced the game is.

          If we want to reduce render resolution (which would be a key thing in e.g. checkerboarding or DLSS) it is very hard to confidently tie all resolution dependent things together. For example a big cost for some modern games is raytracing, but the information flow to the main render targets can be very hard to track automatically and hence such a thing would require a lot of investigation or a bunch of per game customizations.

    • Applications

      • Top 14 Terminal Emulators for Linux (With Extra Features or Amazing Looks) [Ed: Updated with 14 instead of 10 as before]

        By default, all Linux distributions already come pre-installed with a terminal application or terminal emulator (correct technical term). Of course, depending on the desktop environment, it will look and feel different.

        Here’s the thing about Linux. You are not restricted to what your distribution provides. You can opt for an alternative application of your choice. Terminal is no different. There are several impressive terminal emulators that offer unique features for a better user experience or for better looks.

        Here, I will be compiling a list of such interesting terminal applications that you can try on your Linux distribution.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Download, Install and Use ExpressVPN on Kali Linux

        It doesn’t come as a surprise to know that Kali Linux and VPNs are a match made in heaven. This Debian-based Linux distribution supports VPNs in many different ways – and we’ll focus on the most effective one. So, here’s how to set up and use ExpressVPN on Kali Linux.

      • How To Install Cinnamon on Debian 10 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Cinnamon on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, Cinnamon is a free and open-source desktop environment that provides advanced innovative features and a traditional user experience for the X Window System, derived from GNOME. It strives to be the best desktop environment for Linux by offering speed, flexibility, and a slew of 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 through the step-by-step installation of the Cinnamon Desktop Environment on a Debian 10 (Buster).

      • How To Set A Cron Job In TrueNAS – LateWeb.Info

        TrueNAS allows users to run specific commands or scripts on a regular schedule using cron. This can be helpful for running repetitive tasks.

      • How to Install, Run and Uninstall VMware Player on Fedora Linux

        Vmware Workstation player is one of the best options to run virtual machines on Windows and Linux operating systems. In my personal experience, the interaction with VMs installed on VMware player was better as compared to VirtualBox. So, if you don’t want to use VirtualBox on Fedora Linux to run virtual machines, then here are the steps to set up this free virtualization platform.

      • Virtualization Performance on an Intel NUC 11 Enthusiast Phantom Canyon NUC11PHKi7C

        I’ve previously looked at Windows and Linux performance on the NUC11PHKi7C Enthusiast Phantom Canyon which is Intel’s latest NUC 11 flagship product specifically targeting gamers as it includes an NVIDIA RTX 2060 GPU.

        One usage aspect I didn’t test was virtualization and this brief article looks at the performance running VirtualBox and WSL2 on the NUC11PHKi7C and comparing it to Intel’s previous NUC with a discrete GPU: the NUC 9 Extreme Ghost Canyon.

      • How To Install and Configure Apache SVN Server On Linux Desktop

        The Apache server is widely used for running servers and sites over the internet. If you own a distributed server where many administrators work together on the same project, you probably face problems keeping a record of who made the server changes. Here comes the Apache SVN server that you can install on your Linux machine to keep the log of your server’s activity and changes. It can maintain the login data, documentation data, source code, and other revisions.

        The Apache subversion system allows users and contributors to make changes, add features, revise and modify the repository with keeping the change records. You can also backup, revert, override, update your repository and delete revisions through the Apache SVN tool.

      • How to Create a Self-Signed SSL Certificate

        SSL certificates are used to facilitate authentication and encryption on the internet. Normally, these certificates are issued by trusted third-party certificate authorities such as Let’s Encrypt. A self-signed certificate is one that is obtained without going through any third-party certificate authority.

        TLS/SSL is a combination of a public certificate and a private key. The private key is stored securely on the server or on the load balancer, whereas the certificate is publicly accessible.

        In this tutorial, we explain how to create a self-signed SSL certificate by using the OpenSSL tool.

      • How to install and configure pCloud on Fedora | FOSS Linux

        You might have heard and used cloud services like DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, and many others. These have already integrated into various applications as an additional cloud storage option. However, one more cloud service seems to be taking the market by a storm due to its amazing features and plans. That’s the pCloud Service.

        pCloud is a cloud storage service from Switzerland and first launched in 2013. It is a cross-platform application with a desktop client available for Windows, Linux, macOS, IOS, and Android. When you first sign-up on pCloud, you are given 10GB of storage completely free. One of their amazing and competitive features is the security implemented on their systems. They even went ahead to hold a pCloud Crypto challenge that brought hackers worldwide to try and break their client-side encryption, but none of them succeeded.

        To ensure reliability in the availability of data, pCloud uses a distributed system architecture. All users’ data are distributed across five (5) servers stored in different locations. Therefore, when one server goes down, you are still assured of data availability. To ensure data security in transit (data being transmitted from your device to pCloud servers and vice versa), pCloud uses SSL/TLS protocols (Secure Socket Layer and Transport layer security. Like most cloud services available, pCloud comes with both free and paid plans. As you would expect, the latter comes with a lot more amazing features, including a lifetime plan.

      • How to create a user on Linux EC2 instance on AWS and add a public key to it using a shell script

        Creating a user and adding a public key to it can be very tedious. In this article, we will see how this process can be automated using a shell script which can help us avoid human errors that can arise if we do the task manually.

      • How to play Total War: ROME II on Linux

        Total War: ROME II is a strategy video game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. It focuses on historical Roman society at a time of war. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can get Total War: ROME II working on your system.

      • How to Remove Files and Directories using the Linux Command Line – ByteXD

        In this tutorial we will go through how to remove files and directories in Linux using rm, unlink, and rmdir.

        These commands also work on macOS or other Unix-like operating systems.

        Deleting files using a desktop manager is easy and convenient, and you can usually recover them from the trash if you need them back.

        However, with the command line, it’s easier to delete multiple files, based on various patterns that you can set. However, when removing files and directories using the command line, they are not moved into the Trash, and will be more difficult to recover, if at all.

      • How to install Toontown Rewritten on a Chromebook – updated tutorial

        Today we are looking at how to install Toontown Rewritten 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.

        This tutorial will only work on Chromebooks with an Intel or AMD CPU (with Linux Apps Support) and not those with an ARM64 architecture CPU.

      • Scan from Raspberry PI terminal with SANE – peppe8o

        With more and more people going near to programming languages, the requirement to get common external devices running from terminal command can become useful for your personal apps. A case use can include driving a scanner from terminal console and getting results with a Raspberry PI and the tool we are going to install is SANE

      • Install Docker on AlmaLinux

        Docker is a tool that is used to run software in a container. It’s a great way for developers and users to worry less about compatibility with an operating system and dependencies because the contained software should run identically on any system.

        [...]

        In this guide, we’ll show you how to install Docker on AlmaLinux and get started with installing containerized software. After Docker is installed, you can use it to install software packages much the same way you would use your distro’s package manager to download an app. The difference of using Docker is that everything is more automated, with compatibility and dependencies no longer being potential issues.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Wine 6.6
        The Wine development release 6.6 is now available.

What's new in this release (see below for details):
  - Mono engine updated to version 6.1.1, with upstream updates.
  - DWrite and DnsApi libraries converted to PE.
  - Plug & play driver support improvements.
  - Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/6.x/wine-6.6.tar.xz


http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/6.x/wine-6.6.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 6.6 Released With Better Plug & Play Driver Support

        Wine 6.6 is out as the open-source project’s first release of April for running Windows games and applications primarily on Linux and macOS platforms. With Wine 6.6 comes more feature work that will ultimately be incorporated into the Wine 7.0 release due out in early 2022.

        Wine 6.6 isn’t a particularly big release but it does update its Mono engine against v6.1.1, the DWrite and DNSAPI libraries have been converted to portable executable (PE) format, there is plug and play driver support improvements, and a variety of bug fixes. The plug and play work includes a number of improvements to NTOSKRNL and SETUPAPI around storing of root PnP devices and re-enumerating the root devices.

      • Wine 6.6 Is Released

        Wine 6.6 comes with Mono 6.1.1, DWrite and DnsApi libraries ported to portable executables, some plug and play driver improvements and 56 game and application-specific bug-fixes. The DirectX 11 support remains somewhat unimpressive compared to what DXVK offers in certain specific demo scene demos.

        [...]

        Wine 6.6 has fixes a Evil Twin demo crash, it adds ITextServices::TxDraw and ITextServices::TxGetNaturalSize implementations which allows quite a few programs such as Google Talk, WebLoad, XMPSetup, ICQ 6.x, Kugou Music, QQ, Wechat and PVSYST to run, there’s two fixes for software rendering in the Half Life games, there’s two fixes for Breath of Fire IV, a fix for Dune 2000, a crash fix for the ancient Word 97 official application, a fix that allows online multiplayer in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 and a fix that prevents Solid Edge 15 from hanging when files are saved.

        The DWrite and DnsApi Wine libraries have been converted to portable executable (PE), the Mono engine has been updated to version 6.1.1 and some work has been done in the Plug & Play driver area.

        The Wine 6.6 release-notes do not mention any work on the DirectX9-11 to OpenGL translation layers, which is a shame because Wine is still a bit lacking in that area. The Windows PC demo Asahi by Futuris, which took forth place at in the demo competition at the Revision 2020 demo scene party, illustrates this in a rather clear manner. Just consider the following screenshots…

    • Games

      • Dota 2 version 7.29 is out with the new Dawnbreaker melee hero

        Valve has put out a major upgrade for their popular free to play MOBA with Dota 2 getting Dawnbreaker. This brand new hero is focused on melee, with a low-skill entry level so it should be suitable for a lot of players. You can see a dedicated hero page for Dawnbreaker here.

        “Dawnbreaker shines in the heart of battle, happily crushing enemies with her celestial hammer and healing nearby allies. She revels in hurling her hammer through multiple foes and then converging with it in a blazing wake, always waiting to tap her true cosmic power to fly to the aid of her teammates — eager to rout her enemies on the battlefield no matter where they are.”

      • Grape times ahead with the release of Wine 6.6 noting plenty of fixes

        No wine-ing about the puns please. Jokes aside, the tasty compatibility tech that is Wine has a new development release available today with Wine 6.6.

        For newer readers and Linux users here’s a refresher – Wine is a compatibility layer built for operating systems like Linux, macOS and BSD. The idea is to allow other platforms to run games and applications only built and supported for Windows. It’s also part of what makes up Steam Play Proton. Once a year or so, a new stable release is made.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • This week in KDE: Activities on Wayland

          This week the Wayland train continued barreling on, full speed ahead! We picked up a bunch of nice fixes and a big feature…

          The “Activities” feature now mostly works on Wayland! There are a few remaining things to implement to make it 100% comparable to the X11 version, but that should get done in time for the next Major Plasma release (Kevin Ottens, Plasma 5.22)

          Sticky Note widgets now have an option to change the font size (Shantanu Tushar, Plasma 5.22)…

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • GNOME’s Very Own “GNOME OS” is Not a Linux Distro for Everyone

          Few people know that GNOME has its very own Linux distribution aptly named GNOME OS. Curious? Here’s an overview of this distribution.

        • GNOME 41 Desktop Environment Slated for Release on September 22nd, 2021

          While some of you out there are still waiting for the GNOME 40 desktop environment to arrive in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution, the GNOME Project is already working on the next major version, GNOME 41.

          Development on the GNOME 41 release will kick out soon and it will stick to the same routine as in the GNOME 40 development cycle, meaning that public testers will be able to test drive only an Alpha, a Beta, and a Release Candidate.

    • Distributions

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Chromium

          • Am I FLoCed? A New Site to Test Google’s Invasive Experiment

            FLoC is a terrible idea that should not be implemented. Google’s experimentation with FLoC is also deeply flawed . We hope that this site raises awareness about where the future of Chrome seems to be heading, and why it shouldn’t.

            FLoC takes most of your browsing history in Chrome, and analyzes it to assign you to a category or “cohort.” This identification is then sent to any website you visit that requests it, in essence telling them what kind of person Google thinks you are. For the time being, this ID changes every week, hence leaking new information about you as your browsing habits change. You can read a more detailed explanation here .

            Because this ID changes, you will want to visit https://amifloced.org often to see those changes.

          • The Brave browser basics: what it does, how it differs from rivals

            Boutique browsers try to scratch out a living by finding a niche underserved by the usual suspects. Brave is one of those browsers.

            Brave has gotten more attention than most alternate browsers, partly because a co-founder was one of those who kick-started Mozilla’s Firefox, partly because of its very unusual — some say parasitical — business model.

      • Programming/Development

        • Inkscape compiled in OpenEmbedded

          Cross-compiling can be a challenge with some packages, and some of the big ones, such as SeaMonkey, LibreOffice and Inkscape, I have compiled in a running EasyOS (with the “devx” SFS loaded).
          I have previously compiled LibreOffice in OE, see the Pyro series. But it was a lot of work.

        • Felix Häcker: New Shortwave release

          Ten months later, after 14.330 added and 8.634 deleted lines, Shortwave 2.0 is available! It sports new features, and comes with the well known improvements, and bugfixes as always.

          [...]

          Shortwave has always been designed to handle any screen size from the beginning. In version 2.0 we have been able to improve this even further. There is now a compact mini player for desktop screens. This still offers access to the most important functions in a tiny window.

        • 5 signs you’re a groff programmer

          I first discovered Unix systems in the early 1990s, when I was an undergraduate at university. I liked it so much that I replaced the MS-DOS system on my home computer with the Linux operating system.

          One thing that Linux didn’t have in the early to mid-1990s was a word processor. A standard office application on other desktop operating systems, a word processor lets you edit text easily. I often used a word processor on DOS to write my papers for class. I wouldn’t find a Linux-native word processor until the late 1990s. Until then, word processing was one of the rare reasons I maintained dual-boot on my first computer, so I could occasionally boot back into DOS to write papers.

          Then I discovered that Linux provided kind of a word processor. GNU troff, better known as groff, is a modern implementation of a classic text processing system called troff, short for “typesetter roff,” which is an improved version of the nroff system. And nroff was meant to be a new implementation of the original roff (which stood for “run off,” as in to “run off” a document).

        • Rust

          • AWS’s Shane Miller to head the newly created Rust Foundation

            Miller, who leads the Rust Platform team for AWS, has been a software engineer for almost 30 years. At AWS, Miller has been a leader in open-source strategic initiatives and software engineering and delivery. Miller’s Rust Platform team includes Rust language and compiler maintainers and contributors and developers on the Tokio runtime for writing reliable asynchronous applications with Rust. Under Miller’s leadership, the AWS Rust team is crafting optimizations and tools for the features that engineers will use to build and operate services which take full advantage of Rust’s performance and safety.

        • Java

  • Leftovers

    • Trapped at the Border: Their Fate is Our Fate

      Oh, what to do, what to do? All these people showing up at our back door, trying to get in. They want to take our jobs, drink our water. . . . And think about the dangers they pose for the new president.

      “For a relatively popular Biden administration,” the  New York Times pointed out the other day, “the recent surge of migrants at the southern border has emerged as a glaring vulnerability.”

    • Union Calls Foul Play as Amazon Unionization Vote Fails

      The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) began counting votes for the unionization effort at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, on Thursday. With about two-thirds of the total counted, enough “no” votes have been tallied to thwart the union effort. Last-minute revelations about Amazon’s union-busting efforts, however, have the union alleging foul play.

    • Payments From Gaetz to Indicted Official Prompt Call for Resignation

      Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), currently embroiled in a scandal tying him to an indicted former official in Florida who has been charged with sex-trafficking crimes, reportedly paid that person in two transactions containing the same amount of money later sent to three women.

    • The Trumpet Shall Sound

      I live between a gorge and a graveyard. The gorge just to the south began forming some ten thousand years ago at the end of last Ice Age, and its northern rim is moving inexorably in the direction of our house.

      When the path that runs along the rim of the gorge was built a hundred years ago it stood well back from the edge. Now parts of the path are tipping into the abyss, sections of the guardrail crumbling away. Bits of asphalt tumble down the shale walls to be swept away by the spring-swollen creek below.

    • Fatuous Defence: Australia’s Guided Missile Plans

      The latest instalment in this pitiable train towards conflict was revealed in Canberra last month.  Australia, it seems, wants to make its own guided missiles.  In a joint statement, the Prime Minister and Ministers for Industry and Defence outlined the enterprise.  “The Morrison government will accelerate the creation of a (AU)$1 billion Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise, boosting skilled jobs and helping secure Australia’s sovereign defence capabilities.”

      Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison outlined his views in a media release on March 31.  “Creating our own sovereign capability on Australian soil is essential to keep Australians safe, while also providing thousands of local jobs in business right across the defence supply chain.”

    • Letters From Minsk: Warsaw, Conrad and the Katyn Woods

      At the main Warsaw train station, I struggled to find a place to check my luggage (okay, saddle bags), coins for the locker, and a tourist office that might have a street map of the city (again, my phone was beyond its GPS affiliations). Once freed of my burdens, I rode into downtown Warsaw on a succession of bike lanes that were heavy with bus and car exhaust.

      At night, the bright lights of Warsaw make it look like Berlin or Stuttgart, but on a cloudy March day it can still feel as though it is a constituent part of a socialist republic.

    • Decolonizing Knowledge Production: a Practical Guide

      While the lecture engaged with the work of some key thinkers in decolonial thought, I tried to keep the focus on the practical side of the matter – how do we do it? I did so because I believe that the concept of “decolonizing” is being circulated, thrown around, and even abused by many individuals who hijacked it without having direct experience and connection to what many decolonial thinkers call the “colonial wound”. In doing so, the concept is at risk of being devoid of its effectiveness and deep meaning. To give a concrete example, I think it is absurd to have many privileged and institutionalized Western professors who have no firsthand experience with the colonial wound to give us lectures, workshops, or write about decolonizing this or that matter. Yet, not everyone who shouts “decolonize, decolonize” is genuine, good intentioned, or most importantly, qualified to do so. Furthermore, my choice to focus on the practical aspects of decolonizing knowledge production is because I seldom see any public writings that provide concrete and meaningful steps on how to decolonize the way we read, write, and engage with the slippery processes of knowledge production.

      As such, building on my own praxis with how I started and continue to decolonize my engagement with knowledge production (reading, writing, sensing, and doing), I would like to address what I see as the most critical components to consider to be able to engage with knowledge as equals not as submissive minds and souls who have nothing to contribute. Before addressing these critical components, I would like to be clear about two things. First, for me, to decolonize knowledge production does not mean to dismiss or never engage with Western knowledge. Rather, as many decolonial thinkers have repeatedly pointed out, it means that the terms of engagement must change. It means that we should not only engage with Western knowledge, but also deeply engage with knowledge from all over the world. It means that we must not use Western knowledge as a compass to measure the value of other forms of knowledge produced around the world. In other words, to decolonize knowledge production is to reject and dismantle the Western hegemony of knowledge production; the Western control on what counts and what does not count as knowledge. As Walter Mignolo has rightly and consistently pointed out in most of his works, decolonizing countries from the West never ended coloniality itself (1). It simply changed its face and manifestations. Furthermore, just because a country was not colonized, it does not mean that it has escaped coloniality. To put this in a concrete example, decolonizing knowledge does not mean that we should stop reading Shakespeare or Jane Austin. It means that they are not the only great writers out there. It means that we should be aware that equally great writers in every field (literature is just an example here) exist in many other countries outside the Western world, and we need to know about them, translate their works, read them, and engage with their work in the same ways the world has been doing with canonized Western knowledge for centuries. And if that has not been done adequately throughout the centuries, it is only because of the suffocating effects of the colonial matrix of power.

    • The Judicial Persecution of Steven Donziger

      The New York federal prosecutor declined to prosecute this case which is based, Donziger says, on lies, so in an astonishing move, Kaplan appointed Chevron’s attorneys. There will be no jury. Judge Preska will doubtless find Donziger guilty – of a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of 90 days – though he’s already been under house arrest for over 600 days. The message to the legal community is clear: don’t mess with a fossil fuel company, because if you do, they will find a judge who favors the company and they will destroy you.

      This unprecedented judicial persecution of a human rights attorney has its roots in the Amazon rain forest. Back in 2011, Donziger won a court case in Ecuador against oil giant Chevron. Worse yet for Donziger’s prospects, the Ecuadorian court awarded his indigenous clients $9.5 billion. These Ecuadorians charged that their health and livelihood had been destroyed by Texaco, now owned by Chevron, and its oil spills in the Amazon rainforest. In the face of this staggering penalty, Chevron took action, refusing to pay and, despite the fact that Chevron originally fought to have the trial in Ecuador, it then brought its case to a congenial judge in New York. Donziger’s fate was sealed.

    • A Great Tree Has Fallen: The Passing of Marshall Sahlins

      Marshall was a Chicago native. His brother Bernard founded the Second City comedy troop, helping form some of the 20 th century greatest comedians; and Marshall shared a flare for the comedic and had a lightning-fast wit. His academic path began as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, where he first encountered the cultural determinism and neo-evolutionary anthropology of cryptomarxist Leslie White. While Sahlins’ work departed from White’s cultural evolutionary themes, detectible elements of White’s atavistic notions of culture’s symbolic nature shaped elements of his work. He earned his doctorate in anthropology at Columbia University in 1954, studying Polynesian social stratification. He then taught at the University Michigan where he joined anti-war campaigns. In 1967 he went to Paris for two years, experiencing the student protests of 1968 firsthand and came to know Claude Levi-Strauss. Since 1973, the University of Chicago has been his academic home.

      His 1972 book, Stone Age Economics , established him as one of American anthropology’s most significant theorists; he argued that hunter-gatherers were not some primitive undeveloped representation of human potential but were in fact the original affluent society. Sahlins challenged anthropologists who used western economic models to study nonmarket economies, eventually insisting that materialism was nothing but a form of idealism. In the years that followed he wrote books cutting through the codes of history, culture, kinship, and mythos, frequently revealing culture at the core of what was otherwise was conceived in some other way; all this presented with frequent surges of brilliance.

    • Disruptions and threats plague Russia’s top documentary film festival

      Over the course of the past week, Artdocfest — the largest documentary film festival in Russia — has been disrupted by the police, Russia’s consumer protection agency, threats, and pro-Kremlin activists. In response, Artdocfest’s organizers have been forced to cancel screenings and pull films, and have done their best to see the festival through regardless. Meduza breaks down the chain of disruptions and threats that have plagued Artdocfest 2021.

    • Church-Based Cuckoldry Gone Wrong

      Apparently, this Unholy Trinity first assembled at the Super 8 Motel, where I’d imagine they had sex (there’s no room to do much else in a Super 8 Motel room), and which they continued doing on “more than one occasion.” Considering their mug shots, it looks like the classic stereotypical “interracial” cuckold arrangement, where the “bull” or “other lover” (in this case, a 20-years younger African American man) has sex with the (Caucasian) “hot wife” (or “ cuckoldress”) while the cuckold husband watches, and possibly the two men also have sex, depending on the trio’s preferences. The sex may have been in conjunction with various forms of kink, BDSM, domination, humiliation, penis size comparison, crossdressing, trust games and compersion (taking pleasure in your lover’s pleasure).

      As long as it’s all between consenting adults, there nothing wrong with any of this, even if some of it sounds a little *strange* to many people. Consensual cuckolding can be a pleasurable and meaningful experience for all. There are many reasons it excites some people, including the arousing phenomenon of “ sperm wars.” It’s surprisingly common, at least as a fantasy, and it’s becoming more popular for adventurous couples to explore as a reality. The “ interracial” aspect is particularly popular, especially in somewhat segregated cultures or areas, like the American Midwest. Though controversial and at heart, racist, or at least, connected to racism (otherwise, why call it that?), being intimate with people one usually thinks of as *different* can be a very positive and even healing experience for all.

    • The Last Time People Tried to Get Baseball to Move the All-Star Game

      In 2021, Major League Baseball defied decades of entrenched conservatism within its ruling ranks and moved the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta, Ga., to Denver, Colo. The GOP is still reeling from this decision, reduced to claiming—I kid thee not—that baseball is a part of a global communist conspiracy. But the question that lingers is why. Why has baseball defied its own culture to make such a move?

      One way to understand it is to look back a decade ago, to the last time there was a public push to move the MLB All-Star Game. Back then, all eyes were on Arizona. The state’s governor, Jan Brewer, signed SB 1070, the “papers please” bill, into law on April 23, 2010. The law in its worst form would have not only given law enforcement the right to ask anyone for their immigration papers; it would have criminalized citizens who had any knowledge of undocumented people in the midst but did not report them. It was brutal. It was ugly. And the sports world took note, both on and off the field.

    • On I, Claud: the Autobiography of Claud Cockburn

      Claud Cockburn was born in Peking (now Beijing) in 1904. His father, “a younger son of Lord Cockburn, the great Scottish advocate and judge who shone so brightly in the golden age of Edinburgh society,” had passed the necessary exam at age 19 and become British Vice-Consul in “the then-remote city of Chungking…

      Claud was educated in England with an interlude in Budapest, where his father was posted for three years. “The valley of the Danube was the first area in which I ever felt immediately and completely at home,” he writes. “Since then I have twice experienced the same sense of being immediately at home in an entirely strange place —once in New York and once in Oklahoma City.”

    • Why Do We Believe in Photographs?

      One of the more speculative tales surrounding the Shroud of Turin, which supposedly depicts the face of Jesus Christ, purports that the cloth was actually made by Leonardo da Vinci. The story goes that Leonardo passed off his own image as Christ’s, possibly as an act of hubris or to trick the Catholic Church. The theory has merits. According to traditional belief, Jesus imparted his image to his burial cloth when he was wrapped in it, but radiocarbon testing has dated the fabric to the Middle Ages. Yet dating the image’s genesis even to the 14th century is mystifying. The linen fiber is neither painted nor dyed—how was the image made?

      We know that Leonardo, who made his masterpieces in the late 15th century, experimented with aged cloth. We know that he encoded his own face within the Mona Lisa and Salvator Mundi. We know he was fascinated by the anatomical effects of crucifixion. We also know that the optical science underlying photography was more or less understood in Renaissance Europe and during the Arabic Golden Age—Ibn al-Haytham’s Book of Optics had been translated into Latin by the early 13th century—and that alchemists knew its basic chemistry. And really, who other than Leonardo would have been as capable of creating such an enigmatic and technically inexplicable image?

    • The Spook to Bellingcat Pipeline: How Bellingcat Launders National Security State Talking Points into the Press

      Investigative site Bellingcat is the toast of the popular press. In the past month alone, it has been described as “an intelligence agency for the people” ( ABC Australia ), a “transparent” and “innovative” ( New Yorker ) “independent news collective,” “transforming investigative journalism” ( Big Think ), and an unequivocal “force for good” ( South China Morning Post ). Indeed, outside of a few alternative news sites, it is very hard to hear a negative word against Bellingcat, such is the gushing praise for the outlet founded in 2014.

    • Florida Senate Advances ‘Dangerous’ Bill Critics Warn Criminalizes Peaceful Protest

      “H.B. 1 is a direct attack on the First Amendment. It is designed to stifle Floridians’ right to peacefully assemble and seek change in their democracy.”

      Civil rights and free speech advocates on Friday decried the advancement in the Florida Senate of a controversial bill that the ACLU says “aims to silence, criminalize, and penalize Floridians for exercising their First Amendment right to protest.”

    • Deceptive Checkboxes Should Not Open Our Checkbooks

      A pre-checked box to donate more than you intended is just one  example of a “ dark pattern ”—a term coined by user experience (UX) designer Harry Brignull to define tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn’t mean to, such as buying a service. Unfortunately, dark patterns are widespread. Moreover, the pre-checked box is a particularly common way to subvert our right to consent to serious decisions, or to withhold our consent. This ruse dupes us into “agreeing” to be signed up for a mailing list, having our data shared with third party advertisers, or paying recurring donations . Some examples are below.

      The National Republican Congressional Committee, which uses the same WinRed donation flow that the Trump campaign utilizes, displays two instances of the pre-checked boxes.

      The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s donation site, using ActBlue software, shows a pre-selected option for monthly donations. The placement is larger and the language is much clearer for what users should expect around monthly contributions. However, this may also require careful observation from users who intend to donate only once.

    • How John le Carré Became Irish

      Nicholas Cornwell said his father, best known for his Cold War thrillers, became an Irish citizen before his death, aged 89, in December. The reason for the change of heart? One word. Brexit. It infuriated le Carré. “This is without doubt the greatest catastrophe and the greatest idiocy that Britain has perpetrated since the invasion of Suez,” le Carré said of Brexit at the time. “Nobody is to blame but the Brits themselves – not the Irish, not the Europeans.”

      He thought it was a massive own goal. “The idea, to me, that at the moment we should imagine we can substitute access to the biggest trade union in the world with access to the American market is terrifying,” he said.

    • Variety Wins 20 Awards, Including Best Entertainment Website, at National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards

      Variety was nominated for a record 99 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism awards. Organizers noted that total submissions for the awards topped more than 1,000 for the first time.

    • Sysrv Botnet Expands and Gains Persistence

      The attack we’ve seen so far specifically targets port 8081, which affects a web based MongoDB admin interface known as “Mongo-Express”. Mongo-Express is a web-based admin interface used to manage MongoDB databases. Exploiting this interface could allow the attacker to gain access to the MongoDB databases. As of this writing, there are 847 public IPs in Shodan.io that are hosting this service.

    • Education

      • Alarm grows over cheating services in Australia

        Reports of essay mills mushroomed in Australia after parliament passed legislation to outlaw the provision and promotion of contract cheating services, according to a first-of-its-kind report from the higher education regulator.

        The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa) fielded 23 complaints about commercial cheating services in 2020 – more than four times the previous year’s tally. Most were lodged late in the year, following the regulator’s “outreach” to publicise its new Higher Education Integrity Unit.

      • University student ordered to undergo PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION & then suspended after questioning definition of ‘microaggressions’

        A student who was suspended by the University of Virginia for daring to ask questions during a presentation about ‘microaggressions’ has taken the institution to court, with his story sparking disbelief and anger on social media.

        The bizarre saga begins in October 2018, when Kieran Bhattacharya, a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine, attended a panel discussion on the subject of ‘microaggressions.’ During a Q&A session, Bhattacharya asked the presenter, an assistant dean at the university, to clarify what constitutes a mini form of aggression.

      • UVA Student Suspended For “Antagonizing” Questions During Social Justice Lecture

        Kieran Bhattacharya, a second-year medical student at the University of Virginia, was suspended for allegedly becoming “unnecessarily antagonistic and disrespectful” during a panel lecture on microaggressions.

        Bhattacharya asked a series of questions during the Q&A portion of the event that eventually led to his suspension.

        Published on SoundCloud, Bhattacharya has released audio recordings of both the classroom incident and the disciplinary hearing.

        As can be heard in the recording, beginning at the 28:44 minute mark, Bhattacharya’s questions call out one of the speakers for apparent contradictions.

      • Ex-UVA student can sue school after asking questions during a panel got him expelled: judge

        A former University of Virginia medical student can proceed with a lawsuit against the school over his expulsion — which stemmed from questions he asked about the nuance of microaggressions during a panel discussion that led to him being branded a threat, a federal judge has ruled.

      • Students are copying from the internet. And it’s because of how we teach

        Since the onset of COVID-19 last year, it’s not only the virus that has perfected the art of copying. Students across the globe are acing it. With an expansive, permanently available repository at their fingertips, copying is a breeze. In online exams, students have the choice of copying from each other, from the internet and from other resource material. Consequently, setting a question paper in these times has become more challenging than answering one.

        For most subjects, evaluation is a fundamentally problematic task anyway. When confronted with an answer, the evaluator has to convert the worth of the answer into a number. Even with a rubric at hand this is never straightforward. And it would be best to not talk about the reliability of these scores. Different evaluators at different times and the same evaluator at a different time would rarely give the exact same marks to an answer. It is such a fragile scoring system on which entire careers are built. The pandemic has compounded the difficulty of evaluation.

        Do I give more marks to an answer that is original but incomplete or even off-the-mark or to an answer that’s more comprehensive but is copied?

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Cuba’s Medical Investments Led to Lower Death Rates and Aid for Other Nations

        Since last year, approximately 440 Cubans have died from COVID-19, giving Cuba one of the lowest death rates per capita in the world. Cuba is also developing five COVID-19 vaccines, including two which have entered stage 3 trials. Cuba has heavily invested in its medical and pharmaceutical system for decades, in part because of the six-decade U.S. embargo that has made it harder for Cuba to import equipment and raw materials from other countries. That investment, coupled with the country’s free, universal healthcare system, has helped Cuba keep the virus under control and quickly develop vaccines against it, says Dr. Rolando Pérez Rodríguez, the director of science and innovation at BioCubaFarma, which oversees Cuba’s medicine development. “We have long experience with these kinds of technologies,” he says. We also speak with Reed Lindsay, journalist and founder of the independent, Cuba-focused media organization Belly of the Beast, who says U.S. sanctions on Cuba continue to cripple the country. “Cuba is going through an unbelievable economic crisis, and the sanctions have been absolutely devastating,” says Lindsay.

      • Florida Plans Audit of Program That Blocks Parents of Brain-Damaged Newborns From Suing

        Declaring that Florida leaders “can and will do better” for the families of catastrophically brain-damaged children, the state’s top financial regulator Thursday initiated an audit of the state program that oversees care for those injured in childbirth.

        Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said Thursday that the Office of Insurance Regulation, which he supervises, will examine the books of the state’s Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, or NICA. Patronis’ office already has begun an “inspection” of the program, which was the subject of an investigative report published hours earlier by the Miami Herald and ProPublica.

      • She Can’t Sue Her Doctor Over Her Baby’s Death. When She Spoke Out, She Was Silenced Again.

        On the day Reggie Jacques was born, doctors at Winnie Palmer Hospital in Orlando told his parents that there was no hope, that his brain had gone too long without oxygen during his difficult birth. But Reggie refused to die.

        On his sixth day, said parents Jean and Ruth Jacques, doctors urged them to remove Reggie from his ventilator. They said he would surely stop breathing. The couple agreed a month later. But Reggie wouldn’t die.

      • Opinion | Arm Our Cities With Military-Grade Healthcare, Not Weapons

        It might not be perfect, but in contrast to the rest of our healthcare sector, instead of being fragmented, fractious, profit-driven, and poorly prepared, the VA is national, integrated, non-profit, and relatively effective.

        American police are armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons, and the results are in. The more combat gear, the more combat.

      • Yemen is a Public Health Catastrophe

        The country’s civilians have been the unwilling participants in a proxy war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and has left the public health system in shambles. Last December, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that the conflict in Yemen has claimed over 233,000 lives over the last six years, either directly due to the conflict or for causes related to it, calling this number “unfortunate and unacceptable.”

        The conflict started in 2014 when Iranian-backed Houthi fighters seized Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, and much of the north of the country. The Houthis were confronted by a U.S.-backed Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in a bid to bring back Yemeni President Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi (who had been forced to resign) to power, without success. Since 2017, Hadi has reportedly been living in Saudi Arabia.

      • How the Pandemic Laid Bare the Cruelties of Capitalism

        The medical staff, grocery clerks, janitors, sanitation workers, transportation services, delivery people, all of them have been the ones on the front lines, not only of potential exposure to a lethal pathogen, but to abuse from privileged customers, clients or patients who feel their rights have somehow been violated for being asked to simply wear a mask. There are countless videos of people (mostly white and middle to upper middle class) berating workers. And this often takes on a racist tone.

        Over the past year we have witnessed people throwing groceries at workers, spitting at them, calling them names. In various states, from California to Texas to Florida, there have been mobs that invaded stores like Target or Home Depot without masks and carrying anti-masker and “Covid is Hoax” signs, even physically attacking other customers and workers. And in one recent instance in British Columbia an older white male customer was asked to wear a mask in a pizza restaurant. He answered angrily: “are you f**king Middle Easter or where are you from?” Concluding with “I’m worth $50 million, you’re worth zero.” He and his companion then went on to assault a teenage customer outside tearing his mask from his face.

      • Amnesty Int’l: COVID-19 Exacerbates Inequality in Americas as U.S. Policy Drives Refugees to Border

        A new Amnesty International report lays out how the pandemic has significantly exacerbated inequality across the Americas over the past year. Over 1.3 million people have died in the region from COVID-19, making the Americas the hardest-hit area in the world. Women, refugees, migrants, underprotected health workers, Indigenous peoples, Black people and other groups historically excluded and neglected by governments have borne the brunt of the pandemic, according to the report, which also points out the rise in gender violence and lethal crackdown on human rights defenders. “It’s not a surprise that the Americas has been the region worst hit by the pandemic,” says Erika Guevara-Rosas, a human rights lawyer and Americas director for Amnesty International. “Growing inequality, corruption, violence, environmental degradation and impunity created a fertile ground for the Americas to become the epicenter.”

      • The Top Ten Things I’ll Miss When the Pandemic is Over

        On June 14, 2020, I bought the last four boxes of Kellogg’s Grape Nuts at my local Publix, leading to a nationwide panic and global shortage. I also stocked up on Marmite, smoked tempeh, dietary yeast, and fresh cranberries leading to a scarcity of those too. You can blame me.

        9. Crossing to the other side of the street when someone walks toward me.

      • Greta Thunberg Says She’ll Skip UN Climate Conference Over Covid-19 Vaccine Inequity

        “Of course I would love to attend the Glasgow #COP26,” she tweeted Friday. “But not unless everyone can take part on the same terms.”

        Drawing attention to the issue of global coronavirus vaccine inequity, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said Friday that she plans to skip this November’s United Nations climate conference in Scotland because the uneven immunization rollout meant that countries cannot participate equally.

      • How Cuba Beat the Pandemic: From Developing New Vaccines to Sending Doctors Overseas to Help Others

        Since last year, approximately 440 Cubans have died from COVID-19, giving Cuba one of the lowest death rates per capita in the world. Cuba is also developing five COVID-19 vaccines, including two which have entered stage 3 trials. Cuba has heavily invested in its medical and pharmaceutical system for decades, in part because of the six-decade U.S. embargo that has made it harder for Cuba to import equipment and raw materials from other countries. That investment, coupled with the country’s free, universal healthcare system, has helped Cuba keep the virus under control and quickly develop vaccines against it, says Dr. Rolando Pérez Rodríguez, the director of science and innovation at BioCubaFarma, which oversees Cuba’s medicine development. “We have long experience with these kinds of technologies,” he says. We also speak with Reed Lindsay, journalist and founder of the independent, Cuba-focused media organization Belly of the Beast, who says U.S. sanctions on Cuba continue to cripple the country. “Cuba is going through an unbelievable economic crisis, and the sanctions have been absolutely devastating,” says Lindsay.

      • Protect Care Workers…You’ll Probably Need Us One Day

        Clients, especially elderly people, were suddenly uncomfortable with letting outside people into their homes for fear of contracting the virus. A lot of my work dried up. I feed my children only by the grace of God — and the help of food banks. But even food banks can’t pay our rent or utilities.

        I’m one of 2.5 million domestic workers in this country. We’re all fighting so our kids can have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.

      • CDC Declares Racism a ‘Serious’ Public Health Threat

        Public health specialist and physician Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones explained to Scientific American in 2020 how racism, public health and the pandemic have intersected to cause these inequities. “Race doesn’t put you at higher risk. Racism puts you at higher risk,” Phyllis Jones said. “It does so through two mechanisms: People of color are more infected because we are more exposed and less protected. Then, once infected, we are more likely to die because we carry a greater burden of chronic diseases from living in disinvested communities with poor food options [and] poisoned air and because we have less access to health care.”

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • LinkedIn denies data leak after two-thirds user base is compromised

          Personal data of 500 million LinkedIn users, two thirds of its user base, has been scraped and is for sale online, according to a report from Cyber News.

          The data up for sale on a popular hacker platform includes account IDs, full names, email addresses, workplace information and links to social media accounts of users hosted on the platform.

        • Linkedin data leak: Major breach exposes 500 million users on Microsoft platform [details]

          While people are yet to digest the huge Facebook data leak of 533 million users (including 6.1 million Indians), Microsoft-owned professional networking platform LinkedIn is now facing a massive data leak of 500 million users that is allegedly being sold online.

          An archive with data purportedly scraped from 500 million LinkedIn profiles has been put for sale on a popular [cracker] forum, with another 2 million records leaked as a proof-of-concept sample by people behind the [crack].

        • Pseudo-Open Source

        • Security

          • ClamAV 0.103.2 Is Released With Security Fixes For Four Vulnerabilities

            The free software anti-virus scanner ClamAV has, ironically, made a security release fixing four vulnerabilities. Two of them could cause it to crash, one could cause it to enter a endless loop and a Windows-specific vulnerability could lead to privilege escalation. ClamAV has 8,532,858 virus signatures it can scan for in its database.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Oracle’s Projection: As It Accuses Google Of Snooping On You, It Has Built A Huge Data Operation That It Doesn’t Want Regulated

              Over the last decade or so, the fight between Oracle and Google has seemed incredibly personal — at least on the Oracle side. Of course, many have argued the main reason for Oracle’s attacks on Google were to pressure the company into settling its long-running fight over the Java API — and the Supreme Court just put an end to that — so it will be interesting to watch whether or not the attacks continue. But there’s an important point buried in all of this. Almost everything Oracle accuses Google of doing… it does itself. Often in much more nefarious ways. I mean, Oracle even copied an API without a license. But Oracle’s grand projection in blaming Google for the things that Oracle actually does (in much worse ways) goes way further than that.

            • What the Great Personal Data Leak of 2021 tells us about Facebook, the GDPR, and privacy

              For the latest Facebook leak, details include phone number, Facebook ID, full name, location, past location, birth date, email address (for some), account creation date, relationship status, and biography. As Gal points out, this is core information, and it will be used for identity theft, social engineering, scams and hacking. Much of this data can’t be changed, which means the loss of it is extremely serious. And yet Facebook’s official response is this:

            • EFF Challenges Surreptitious Collection of DNA at Iowa Supreme Court

              The case, State v. Burns , involves charges from a murder that occurred in 1979. The police had no leads in the case for years, even after modern technology allowed them to extract DNA from blood left at the crime scene and test it against DNA collected in government-run arrestee and offender DNA databases like CODIS . 

              In 2018, the police began working with a company called Parabon Nanolabs, which used the forensic DNA profile to predict the physical appearance of the alleged perpetrator and to generate an image that the Cedar Rapids Police Department released to the public. That image did not produce any new leads, so the police worked with Parabon to upload the DNA profile to a consumer genetic genealogy database called GEDMatch, which we’ve written about in the past. Through GEDMatch, the police linked the crime scene DNA to three brothers, including the defendant in this case, Jerry Burns. Police then surveilled Mr. Burns until they could collect something containing his DNA. The police found a straw he used and left behind at a restaurant, extracted a profile from DNA left on the straw, matched it to DNA found at the crime scene, and arrested Mr. Burns.

              The State claims that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply in this context because Mr. Burns abandoned his privacy interest in his DNA when he left it behind on the straw. However, we argue the Fourth Amendment creates a high bar against collecting DNA from free people, even if it’s found on items the person has voluntarily discarded. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment does not protect the contents of people’s trash left for pickup because they have “abandoned” an expectation of privacy in the trash. But unlike a gum wrapper or a cigarette butt or the straw in this case, our DNA contains so much private information that the data contained in a DNA sample can never be “abandoned.” Even if police don’t need a warrant to rummage through your trash (and many states disagree on this point), Police should need a warrant to rummage through your DNA. 

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Why the U.S. Shouldn’t Play Games With Cyberwarfare as Its Power Declines

        In the SolarWinds hack, a backdoor in one of the components was downloaded to the systems of 18,000 organizations, including the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

        In the Microsoft Exchange Server hack, an estimated 250,000 machinesworldwide might have been affected by a vulnerability that allowed hackers to control the machines and even infect other systems in the internal network of the targeted companies. Four major vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server were reported to Microsoft in early January. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until early March that Microsoft released patches, according to ZDNet. These vulnerabilities were used by the hackers during the period that Microsoft had either not released the patches, or companies had not upgraded their systems and installed the patches.

      • Zelensky: NATO to stop Donbas War

        This is the parliament that in 2015 passed laws proclaiming two WWII paramilitaries—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—”heroes of Ukraine” and making it a crime to argue otherwise. (These forces had cooperated with the Nazis in slaughtering over 70,000 Jews.) The U.S. media has never acknowledged the obvious—that the coup favored by Victoria Nuland in 2014 had a strong fascist element, indeed depended on its use of terrorist violence to topple the former democratically elected administration. In 2014 Nuland was the top State Department official dealing with Ukraine; she is returning now as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. (Recall she’s the one caught on tape in 2014 saying “Fuck the EU!” if the EU dared to contest Washington’s choices for Ukraine. And when asked at a House hearing about the role of neo-Nazis in the Maidan coup, Nuland acknowledged that “there were many colors of Ukraine involved including very ugly colors.” The problem is she’s comfortable with ugly colors.)

        Over 13,000 people, including military and civilians have been killed in the conflict provoked by the putsch, over half on the Donbas side. But since 2016 fewer than 400 have died in the conflict. Two peace plans have been imperfectly implemented but at least staved off all-out war. Moscow has for its part refused requests for annexation by the Peoples Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and proposed a federal system in Ukraine.

      • More Than Two-Thirds of Students Want Police Out of Schools

        A new survey of more than 600 middle and high school students across four states finds that 41 percent feel “very unsafe” or “unsafe” when they see police officers at their public schools. One-third said they feel targeted by police based on an aspect of their identity, such as race, primary language, sexual orientation or gender identity, and students reported bullying and sexual harassment by police at multiple public schools.

      • Congress Urged to Reject Biden’s Pentagon Budget Increase

        President Joe Biden on Friday is reportedly expected to request a $715 billion budget for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2022, a slight increase from the previous year and a far cry from the substantial reduction that progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups are demanding.

      • Back to the Future at the Pentagon

        Sure, there’s been progress of a sort in the heavens. Elon Musk’s Space X may keep going down in flames, but the Chinese now have their very own moon rocks. As the old-timey, unmanned Voyager probe continues to glide beyond our solar system, Mars is a subject for research by new probes hailing from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the U.S. Meanwhile, the International Space Station continues conducting research in low-earth orbit.

        As with space exploration, so, too, with America’s military. What amazes me most in 2021 is how much of its structure and strategy resembles what held sway in 1981 when I joined the Air Force as a college student in ROTC. Instead of futuristic starship troopers flying around with jetpacks and firing lasers, the U.S. military is still essentially building the same kinds of weaponry we were then. They’re newer, of course, glitzier, if often less effective, but this country still has a Navy built around aircraft carriers, an Air Force centered on fighter jets and stealth bombers, and an Army based on tanks, helicopters, and heavy brigades. Admittedly, that Army may soon spend $20 billion on “ augmented reality goggles” for the troops. (Perhaps those goggles will be programmed so that “reality” always looks like we win.)

      • Film as Art and Weapon: Raoul Peck’s “Exterminate All the Brutes”

        We also see a savage attack on the Congolese people in 1892, during King Leopold’s reign. In this reenactment, a Catholic mission founded by the Swedish priest Edward Sjoblom witnesses a white rubber plantation owner storming into the modest church, gun in hand, and forcing a Black parishioner from his pew. As everyone gathers outside the church, the colonist fires a bullet into the man’s head and then forces a young parishioner to cut off his hand to be proof to the authorities that law and order was being upheld, just as white settlers often took Indian scalps in the USA.

        The source of these narrative set pieces is two books that are very close to my heart. The Seminole massacre is from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s “’ An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”, a book I reviewed for CounterPunch in 2017.

      • Khanna Criticizes Biden for Proposing Pentagon Budget Larger Than Trump’s

        “It’s disappointing that President Biden would propose a budget of $715 billion for the Pentagon.”

        Congressman Ro Khanna of California was the first House Democrat to speak out Friday against President Joe Biden’s request for a $715 billion Pentagon budget for Fiscal Year 2022, an increase from the current $704 billion level approved under former President Donald Trump.

      • Congress Urged to Reject Biden’s ‘Unconscionable’ $715 Billion Pentagon Budget

        “Throwing money at the Pentagon does not keep us safe from modern day threats.”

        President Joe Biden on Friday is reportedly expected to request a $715 billion budget for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2022, a slight increase from the previous year and a far cry from the substantial reduction that progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups are demanding.

      • Ratner for the Defense: the Legacy of a Lefty Lawyer

        American Lawyer David Cole, one of Ratner’s most diligent protégées, explained in an article titled “Michael Ratner’s Army” that “it says much about…his legacy that so many of the nearly eight hundred prisoners once housed at Guantánamo have been released, and that those remaining have forceful and dedicated advocates working on their behalf.” The National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Cole noted that while Bush and Obama deserve some recognition for the release of detainees, most of the credit belongs to “the hundreds of lawyers and thousands of activists” who advocated for the Guantánamo inmates. Cole added that many of these same lawyers and activists owe much of their inspiration to “one man: the human rights attorney Michael Ratner.”

        I suppose I was one of those inspired activists. In 1991 I joined a lawsuit charging Bush, Cheney and Powell with censoring the news about the war in the Persian Gulf,  and specifically the use of “press pools.” At the time I said, “This is a violation of constitutional guarantees.“ I added “It’s the first time in American history that journalists have been prevented from reporting freely about a major war.” That probably wasn’t true, but it sounded good and felt good to say it.

      • International Law Uncanceled: Biden Lifts Sanctions Against ICC, But It’s Not Enough

        And yet, time and again, it has been the loony right that has been so eager to hit the delete button.

        These supposed defenders of everyone’s right to voice opinions attempted to cancel an entire presidential election because it failed to produce their preferred result. They’ve spent decades trying to cancel voting rights (not to mention a wide variety of other rights). They’ve directed huge amounts of time and money to canceling social benefits for the least fortunate Americans. Throughout history, they’ve mounted campaigns to cancel specific individuals from Colin Kaepernick and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to the black lists of the McCarthy era. They’re also not above canceling entire groups of people, from the transgender community all the way back to the original sin of this country, namely the mass cancelation of Native Americans.

      • New Revelations on Germ Warfare: It’s Time for a Reckoning with Our History from the Korean War

        It’s been 70 years since the beginning of the Korean War. For young adults in their twenties today, that’s ancient history. It is as distant to them as the 1905 Russo-Japanese War was to me when I was 20 years old! But in both China and North Korea, the memory of the Korean War and charges of war crimes against America from that war remain a vivid part of the national consciousness, stoked at various times by the regimes in charge.

        The North Korean and Chinese allegations of American use of biological weapons during the Korean War made headlines at the time, and the controversy over U.S. Air Force officers admitting under enemy interrogation details of germ warfare attacks rocked the U.S. defense establishment. In 1998, scholars connected to the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Wilson Center published documents that they claimed showed the germ warfare charges were a hoax, “a grand piece of political theater,” as Milton Leitenberg, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland,  notably put it.

      • Biden’s Empty Gesture: Houthis No Longer “Terrorists” but Yemen’s Suffering Only Grows

        In explaining a much-lauded move, President Joe Biden said that the reason the United States was removing Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list was to avoid exacerbating the humanitarian situation in the war-torn country and to allow much-needed aid to reach local residents. Yet images of children with jutting ribs, swelling bellies, and loose skin that have come to symbolize the war for the past six years can still be found all over Yemen.

      • Chip Gibbons on Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale
      • Biden Calls U.S. Gun Violence an “International Embarrassment.” Will Congress Finally Act?

        President Joe Biden has ordered a series of executive actions on gun control in the wake of mass shootings in Georgia, Colorado and elsewhere, calling gun violence in the U.S. an “epidemic” and an “international embarrassment.” The most significant executive order aims to crack down on so-called ghost guns — easily assembled firearms bought over the internet without serial numbers, which account for about a third of guns recovered at crime scenes. Biden has also nominated gun control advocate David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but acknowledged this week that major new gun control measures, like an assault weapons ban and universal background checks, will require legislation from Congress. “We are calling on Congress to carry the torch here and pass additional laws to keep Americans safe and save American lives,” says Brian Lemek, executive director of Brady PAC.

      • Anti-war activist visited by police after posting embarrassing AOC video
      • The Origins of Nazi Violence

        In 2020, another German Neo-Nazi killed nine people, as well as his mother and himself in the western German city of Hanau. One of the more infamous political assassination by Germany’s right-wing extremists was of Regierungspräsident (region district president) Walter Lübcke in 2019. The worst excess of right-wing terrorism, however, occurred more than forty years ago in Munch in 1980. It became known as the “Octoberfest bombing” when Neo-Nazi Gundolf Köhler murdered thirteen people.

        Right-wing terrorism in Germany has a one-hundred year old history. Dating back to the end of the Great War (World War I), argues Florian Huber in his book Revenge of the Losers. The beginnings of right-wing terrorism in Germany date to the tumultuous years of what one of Germany’s most astute observers, Sebastian Haffner, once called “a failed revolution” in his seminal book, Failure of a Revolution. This was an era of private militias, militant gangs of trade unionists and communists, and various nationalist groups fighting during the anarchy that followed the end of the First Reich’s monarchy.

      • The Cold War Is Being Rebooted and Rebranded

        The future isn’t what it used to be. As a teenager in the 1970s, I watched a lot of TV science fiction shows, notably Space: 1999 and UFO , that imagined a near future of major moon bases and alien attacks on Earth. Movies of that era like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey envisioned colossal spaceships and space stations featuring international crews on mind-blowing missions to Jupiter and beyond. Who’d have thought that, 20 years after Kubrick’s alternate reality of 2001, we humans would effectively be marooned on a warming “ sixth extinction” planet with no moon bases and, to the best of my knowledge, no alien attacks either.

        Sure, there’s been progress of a sort in the heavens. Elon Musk’s Space X may keep going down in flames, but the Chinese now have their very own moon rocks. As the old-timey, unmanned Voyager probe continues to glide beyond our solar system, Mars is a subject for research by new probes hailing from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the United States. Meanwhile, the International Space Station continues conducting research in low-earth orbit.

      • Remains of a dozen expats killed in Mozambique hotel attack found

        The Mozambique government has called for international support after the most serious terror attack since the start of the Islamic State insurgency four years ago.

        The remains of a dozen expats were discovered outside the Amarula Hotel in Mozambique as they attempted to flee jihadist militants who surrounded it as part of the attack.

      • In France there is a city with just one Jew

        They call it the “bunker”- a few windows, all screened, a flag on the roof. “It looks like a foreign embassy in a hostile country”. In July 2013, following a police check on a veiled woman, 400 residents stormed the building. The siege lasted several hours and required, from the police, 700 stun grenades and tear gas. A helicopter was mobilized.“It looked like a war scene,” a policeman said at the time.

        The attacks have continued since then. The latest dates back to Saturday 27 March. Eight mortar rounds with fireworks hit the front of the building.

        What building? It is the police station of Trappes, a French town of 35,000 inhabitants, at the center of a long investigation by the weekly Valeurs Actuelles.

        The “brigades” go around the city. Those so called are the followers of the Islamic fundamentalist movement Tabligh who, all dressed in white, enforce the religious prescriptions on the inhabitants. Sharia law, Islamic law. They intervene against those who drink, against a lightly veiled woman …

    • Environment

      • Rising Tides
      • Economists Warn Democrats ‘Going Too Small’ on Infrastructure Risks Economic and Climate Catastrophe

        “The costs of inaction outweigh the risks of borrowing to take action—by trillions of dollars.”

        Pointing to the nation’s tepid recovery from the 2009 financial collapse as a cautionary tale, economists are pressing Democratic lawmakers to dramatically expand President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal in order to equitably rebound from the coronavirus crisis, achieve full employment, and combat the existential climate emergency.

      • Climate Hacking Experiments Already Taking Place

        But I was off some (as were some sources I consulted  like this one).  It was actually the first test in the stratosphere, the higher layers of the atmosphere, and “the most formal geoengineering experiment to date,” reported James Temple in  MIT Technology Review.  So I changed the article to reflect that and published a correction. It turns out there have been some experiments which actually went further to spread sun-blocking materials at lower levels of the atmosphere. These experiments only serve to underscore the fundamental point I made in the piece, that any field testing of geoengineering technologies must take place under an international protocol that takes account of the risks.

      • Bernie Sanders Invites Oil Executives to Testify at Hearing on Climate Crisis

        Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has called on top oil and gas executives to testify at a hearing on “The Cost of Inaction on Climate Change” before the budget committee next Thursday.

      • ‘Lukewarmist’ Peer Set for Role Scrutinising Government Climate Policy – DeSmog
      • Despite Pledges on Tribal Relations and Climate, Biden Declines to Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline

        “If Biden wants to be a climate leader on the world stage, he needs to start at home.”

        Indigenous leaders and climate campaigners on Friday blasted President Joe Biden’s refusal to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline during a court-ordered environmental review, which critics framed as a betrayal of his campaign promises to improve tribal relations and transition the country to clean energy.

      • The Environmental Impacts of “Green” Technology

        Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars have long been touted as solutions to the climate crisis.

        The “green” image attached to these technologies masks a dark reality; they are adding to the problem of environmental destruction, failing to reduce CO2 emissions, and accelerating the mass extinction of life on the planet.

      • Scientists Warn 4°C World Would Unleash ‘Unimaginable Amounts of Water’ as Ice Shelves Collapse

        “Limiting warming will not just be good for Antarctica—preserving ice shelves means less global sea level rise, and that’s good for us all.”

        A new study is shedding light on just how much ice could be lost around Antarctica if the international community fails to urgently rein in planet-heating emissions, bolstering arguments for bolder climate policies.

      • Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach 3.6 Million-Year High

        Because the COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive economic slowdown, experts had hoped that the decline in transportation and manufacturing might slow greenhouse gas emissions at least a little.

      • Energy

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Southern Africa’s Ivory Delusion
        • Reflections on  Forestry When Confronted With the First Timber Harvest Plan  of the Year in My Watershed

          The  minuet, made famous by Louis XIV of France, used to have meaning: it was metaphor for the serene, hierarchical  architecture of society, where every character played a discrete  part in time and place. In the modern world, however, timber harvest plans  are an oxymoronic  metaphor for chaos.  Outside the ballroom, chunks of Antarctica the size of  New York are falling into the sea. The Gulf Stream  vacillates uncertainly. Scientists grasp at fantastically expensive and risky schemes to sprinkle the stratosphere with sunlight-reflecting particles. And, as Earth warms, a quarter of  its people  face  dying  of thirst while others are swept away by floods or freezes.

          The skies are emptying, one third fewer birds now  than when the  California Forest Practice Rules were written  almost 50 years ago.  According to the World Wildlife Fund, taken together, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians have  declined  70%. The insect  apocalypse is hurtling along  8 times faster.

        • Grazing and Climate Change: the Influence of Livestock on Soil Carbon Storage

          Allan Savory has generated a significant amount of response based upon his TED talk where he claimed that increasing livestock grazing could reverse climate change (Savory, A. 2013)/

          Though many question many of Savory’s assertions of successful livestock production and improvements in rangeland health (Wuerthner, George, 2002b; Jamus, Joseph et al., 2002; Briske, D. et al., 2013; Carter, J. et al. 2014; McGuire. Andrew 2018; Skovlin, Jon. 1987; Holechek, Jerry., 2000; Sundt, Peter. 2013).

        • Rich world’s demands fell poorer world’s forests

          The tropical forests maintain global climate and nurture the riches of nature. The rich world’s demands are destroying them.

    • Finance

      • Time to Get Government Off Our Lawns

        The lawn is such a familiar part of everyday American life that it might seem like the natural state of things.  In reality, it’s evolved over the last two centuries from an aristocratic plaything to what Washington Post columnist Christopher Ingraham rightly calls a “soul-crushing timesuck” that most of us would be better off without.

        More to the point, the lawn is effectively a regressive tax scheme that benefits the sellers of expensive equipment and  those who use that equipment in our stead if we can afford to hire them.

      • New York to Offer Undocumented Migrants Up to $15,600 in Pandemic Relief

        “Today, our work today has been recognized,” said one undocumented worker and organizer. “Our dignity has been recognized, and our dignity has been lifted by passing this fund.”

        Immigrant and worker rights advocates welcomed this week’s passage of a New York state budget package containing a provision authorizing payments of up to $15,600 to undocumented migrants who have been adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. 

      • Global Just Recovery Gathering Kicks Off to Harness ‘Collective People Power’ and Create a ‘Better Future for All’

        The event is being called “an invitation for us all to build a movement that is massive and that shakes the foundations of power and money and greed that seem to hold all the cards right now.”

        A three-day event called the Global Just Recovery Gathering kicked off Friday and is aimed at being “a space to design new pathways for a better future for all.”

      • The End of Trickle-Down Economics

        1) “We don’t have the money.”

        The power elites tell us it would be nice to do the big-ticket reforms America needs, but the money just isn’t there. Then a pandemic slammed into America, and suddenly trillions of dollars gushed out of Washington for everything from subsidizing meatpackers to developing vaccines, revealing that the money is there.

      • Capitalism Versus Economic Democracy, Minimum Wage Edition

        The question of why elected officials are required to consider the consequences to the Federal budget of raising the minimum wage, which is paid by private employers, is simple: they created the process that way. First passed in 1990 and updated in 2010, PAYGO is the Congressional rule requiring that new legislation that impacts the Federal budget be offset by cuts to government spending elsewhere. The origin of PAYGO was Reaganite efforts to slash social spending using the pretext of a budget crisis. The method was to divert money into private coffers via military spending and then pretend that arbitrary budget rules required cuts to social expenditures.

        Raising the minimum wage would only impact the Federal budget indirectly— through changes in tax receipts that result from the legislation. Through PAYGO, legislators and the White House can claim that the hindrance to raising the minimum wage is a budget constraint that they created, rather than on the demands of their corporate benefactors. Great Depression-era economist John Maynard Keynes gave them an out through tying wages to consumer spending. Employers benefit from raising wages when circumstances are amenable. PAYGO is the legislative rejection of Keynes’ out.

      • Roaming Charges: Just a Shot Away

        + The Chinook settlement known as Middle Village (Lewis & Clark dubbed it Station Camp) was very close to where the Chinook River spills into the Columbia, just a few river miles southeast of the Pacific Ocean. This was one of the most prolific salmon runs in the world. Even though the Chinook River is only 8 miles long, tumbling out of the (now butchered) Willapa Hills, it ran thick with several species of salmon, steelhead and sea-run cutthroat trout. By the 1890s, the McGowan Cannery had been erected on the village itself and the hauls of fish were almost unimaginable. Even more unimaginable is that 50 years later many of those runs were nearing extinction…

        + Native households only have 8 cents of wealth for every dollar that the average white American household has.

      • The Daleys of Chicago Need Accountability in Ongoing Loan Scandal

        So, it’s worth asking now: will similar irregularities occur with the still-unfolding Washington Federal Bank for Savings loan scandal, since it directly involves both Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson and Cook County Commissioner John P. Daley, the two remaining Daley family members still in public office?

        As periodic reporting elaborates, a sleepy Chicago bank saw millions of dollars disappear and then its president John Gembara found dead of apparent suicide at a customer’s home, right before the feds closed it in December 2017. Investigations and indictments are ongoing.

      • Biden and the Jobs Revolution

        Led by a determined, ambitious, surprisingly energetic President Joe Biden backed up by a team of progressive Democrats, the United States finally is turning nation-building toward home after years of throwing American lives and treasure at fruitless, seemingly endless wars.

        Biden now proposes to spend $2.2 trillion on rebuilding 20,000 miles of the nation’s roads, repairing bridges, expanding high-speed broadband to rural areas, fixing other infrastructure like pipes and creating millions of jobs to get it all done. The idea is to finish it in eight years and pay for it over 15 years by raising corporate taxes from 21 percent to 28 percent.

      • Signal’s Massive Crypto Payments Mistake

        The Signal chat app has decided to develop a private payment system behind closed doors but rather than doing crypto payments with a well established privacy coin like Zcash or Monero they’ve instead gone with MobileCoin a coin that has onlt existed for 4 months publically.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • The De-Humanization of Free and Fair Elections

        America has a critical illness that has nothing to do with Covid 19. The symptoms are the attempts by states in significant sectors of the country to rewrite election laws in detriment to black and brown voters. Leading the pack is the Georgia state legislature,

        What makes this organized effort particularly ironic is the renewed threat it poses to America’s already tarnished democratic image. Reactionary lawmakers in state capitals such as Atlanta, Des Moines and Phoenix seem to think that nobody is looking. But the entire world is following this latest assault on the Americans’ vaunted democracy.

      • ‘We Really Can’t Take Anything These Companies Say at Face Value’

        Janine Jackson interviewed Public Citizen’s Jane Chung about Big Tech lobbying for the April 2, 2021, episode of CounterSpin . This is a lightly edited transcript.

      • Putin appoints his Siberian envoy as the acting head of North Ossetia

        President Vladimir Putin has appointed Sergey Menyaylo as the new acting head of Russia’s North Ossetia, according to the Kremlin’s website.

      • Fatal Instincts
      • McConnell Has No Trouble With Corporate Speech—as Long as It Takes the Form of Bribery

        There has never been a politician more consistently cynical than Mitch McConnell. He’s the guy who wrote about how moved he was to witness the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965—as a young aide to Kentucky Senator John Sherman Cooper—and then blocked efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act after it was eviscerated by his conservative allies on the US Supreme Court. He’s the guy who blocked President Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to serve on the Supreme Court because, he said, the Senate shouldn’t confirm new justices in election years—and then rushed through the confirmation of right-wing Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the election year of 2020. And, of course, he’s the guy who this year condemned President Trump’s incitement of insurrection right after leading Senate Republicans in blocking accountability for, that’s right, President Trump’s incitement of insurrection.

        But the most jaw-droppingly cynical move McConnell has ever made came this week, when the Senate minority leader dragged himself up to the bully pulpit to tell corporate CEOs to keep quiet about political issues—unless they’re bribing him to do their bidding.

      • GOP: The Pretend Party

        They’re pretending that their four-plus years of overt racism and hatred of immigrants, science and minorities had not been broadcasted each and every night. That their explicit efforts to curtail the US democratic system was just a bad dream. That Trump’s Covid-related racism did not help fuel 3,800 incidents against largely East and Southeast Asian Americans, including a massacre in Georgia where a white guy blamed Asian American masseuses for his own ‘evil’ sexual urges. That when the GOP rails against the recent Covid relief package and Biden’s infrastructure plan that they, as supposed fiscal conservatives, care only about fiscal responsibility and the prevention of waste – despite increasing military spending by $100 billion under Trump and enlarging the national debt to $7.8 trillion, the third largest increase in US presidential history. (Even before the pandemic, the federal debt had skyrocketed in Trump’s America; he had been on track to leave it 50% higher than when he came into office).

        Through all this pretending, the GOP assumes, as they chastise Biden’s “ far-left spending spree,” that the American people not remember their tango with the Proud Boys or their support for a failed coup.

      • In Ecuador, a Presidential Election With Global Reach

        On Sunday April 11, Ecuadorians are scheduled to vote in a runoff election for president. The candidates are Guillermo Lasso, a 65-year-old elite banker, and Andrés Arauz, a 36-year-old progressive former central bank official. There is no doubt that the outcome will have a profound impact on the nation’s future; the candidates have sharply distinct visions for moving Ecuador out of the pandemic and an ongoing economic slump. But while the race has received scant international attention, it has global implications.

        It is easy for many in the United States to overlook Ecuador, a small Andean nation of less than 18 million tucked between Peru and Colombia. Beginning in 2016, however, the country took leadership in a global campaign against the use of offshore tax havens. The upcoming election will be key in determining if that leadership will continue.

      • Georgia’s Voter Suppression Is Sparking Boycotts. History Shows They Can Work.

        Georgia’s new voting law, signed by Gov. Brian Kemp on March 25, is part of a nationwide voter suppression effort involving hundreds of bills. No serious analyst buys the Republican claim that voter fraud is widespread: it’s virtually nonexistent. The real rationale for these bills is occasionally admitted, as when North Carolina Republicans said they outlawed Sunday voting because Sunday voters were “disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic.”

      • ‘A declaration is another thing’: Journalists asked the Kremlin’s spokesman about Ramzan Kadyrov’s wealth. Here’s what he said.

        On Friday, April 9, journalists asked Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to comment on the wealth of Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov. This came after the investigative outlet Proekt published an investigation into the assets held by Kadyrov and his wives (both official and alleged). (The investigation is available in English here). Despite probing questions from the press, Peskov maintained that the asset declarations of all Russian officials are subject to anti-corruption inspections. He could not, however, confirm whether or not Proekt’s findings about Kadyrov’s wealth were reflected in official audits.

      • 100+ Groups to Schumer: Throw Filibuster ‘Into the Dustbin of History’

        In a letter to the Senate majority leader, the coalition says the rule is a “Jim Crow relic” standing in the way of progressive legislative proposals like the For the People Act.

        Nearly 150 progressive organizations put new pressure on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Friday to abolish the filibuster, saying the Senate rule is blocking democracy-strengthening reforms and must be “tossed into the dustbin of history.”

      • Opinion | Trump Has Left White House, But What Has the Left Learn?

        Democrats often blame their election losses on gerrymandering and voter suppression, but progressive initiatives win all over the country. It is time to embrace a bold agenda and then fight like hell to to win it.

        The surreal presidency of Donald Trump was filled with confusion, contradictions, anxiety, and missed opportunities. His rhetoric inflamed political tensions in every facet of American life, from football to COVID-19. Corporate media split along party lines as never before and accentuated all the ugliest aspects of American society. It seemed like anything was possible, up to and including civil war.

      • The Rise of Right-wing Libertarianism Since the 1950s

        One of the useful functions of the latter book, in particular, is that it brings force and clarity to one’s prior knowledge of the dangers of right-wing libertarianism, or more generally anti-government and pro-“free market” thinking. In fact, this sort of thinking is an utter catastrophe that threatens to destroy everything beautiful in the world. I know that sounds like an absurd exaggeration, but it’s not. What with society and nature teetering on the brink, it’s the literal truth. I suppose the reason leftists don’t always take right-wing libertarianism as seriously as it deserves—despite their deep awareness of the evils of capitalism—is simply that it’s embarrassingly easy to refute. It’s a childish, simplistic, vulgar hyper-capitalist ideology that, once you examine it a little, quickly reveals itself as its opposite: authoritarianism. Or even totalitarianism, albeit privatized totalitarianism. Noam Chomsky, as usual, makes the point eloquently:

        “…Here [in the United States] the term ‘libertarian’ means the opposite of what it meant to everybody else all through history. What I was describing [earlier] was the real Adam Smith and the real Thomas Jefferson and so on, who were anti-capitalist and called for equality and thought that people shouldn’t be subjected to wage-labor because that’s destructive of their humanity… The U.S. sense [of ‘libertarian’] is quite different. Here, every word has taken on the opposite of its meaning elsewhere. So, here ‘libertarian’ means extreme advocate of total tyranny. It means power ought to be given into the hands of private unaccountable tyrannies, even worse than state tyrannies because there the public has some kind of role. The corporate system, especially as it’s evolved in the twentieth century, is pure tyranny. Completely unaccountable—you’re inside one of these institutions, you take orders from above, you hand them down below…there’s nothing you can say—tyrannies do what they feel like—they’re global in scale. I mean, this is the extreme opposite of what’s been called libertarian everywhere in the world since the Enlightenment…”

      • Biden Creates Commission to Study Supreme Court Expansion, Other Reforms

        “To restore our democracy, we must expand the Supreme Court,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones. 

        President Joe Biden won praise Friday for signing an executive order to create a 36-member commission that will analyze arguments for and against reforming the U.S. Supreme Court.

      • My Predictions for Biden’s Probably-Truncated Presidency

        “In a dictatorship,” I noted, “particularly where the despot is a megalomaniac in the vein of a Saddam Hussein or a Muammar Gaddafi, citizens obsess over the Great Leader’s every move.” Never have the American people obsessed for four exhausting years over a president as we did over Trump and his autocratic style.

        “People who have done time will tell you that it’s important to study the guards, particularly the sadistic ones.” Like prison inmates, we studied Trump and his tweets and his strange corrupt family incessantly in a vain attempt to isolate the methods to his multiple madnesses.

      • Support the Tropes

        In an earlier piece ( FAIR.org, 3/3/21), we explored some country case study examples of how the press helps to manufacture consent for regime change and other US actions abroad among left-leaning audiences, a traditionally conflict-skeptical group.

      • Voter Suppression is an Attack on Democracy…and My Faith

        The bill, formally SB 202, infamously makes it illegal to give people food or water while they’re waiting in line to cast their ballot. Providing food for the hungry and water for the thirsty are tenets of my Catholic faith.

        So is standing with the marginalized. People don’t like to bring race into the conversation, but we have to be honest about how this bill harms people of color.

      • African Cyber Experts Fellowship: lessons learnt report 2020

        Following the London 2018 Commonwealth Cyber Declaration, the UK government implemented a series of projects to help Commonwealth countries improve their cyber security capacity.

        The Cyber Experts’ Fellowship: Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap in Africa created a working network of African cyber security policy experts. They act as a hub for cascading best practice in important cybersecurity challenges across the continent through individual and joint projects.

        The Fellowship Network itself is the key output of the project, to be referred to as the Africa Cyber Experts Network.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • ‘Proekt’ hit with DDoS attacks after publishing investigation into Ramzan Kadyrov’s wives

        The website of the investigative outlet Proekt has been subjected to DDoS attacks for the past two days, its editor-in-chief Roman Badanin told Meduza on Friday, April 9.

      • Content Moderation Case Study: Dealing With Podcast Copycats (2020)

        Summary: Since the term was first coined in 2004, podcasts have obviously taken off, with reports saying that around 55% of Americans have listened to a podcast as of early 2021. Estimates on a total number of podcasts vary, but some sites estimate the total at 1.75 million podcasts, with about 850,000 of them described as “active.” Still, for many years, actually hosting a podcast remained somewhat complicated.

      • Russian state television channel deletes Chechen beauty pageant newsreel featuring Kadyrov’s ‘second wife’

        The Russian state television channel Perviy Kanal (Channel One) has removed a 2006 news report from its website about a beauty pageant in Chechnya, which included footage of Fatima Khazuyeva, the alleged second wife of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

      • Khloe Kardashian Streisands A Photo She Wanted Taken Down By Issuing Takedowns

        The Kardashians are no strangers to Techdirt’s pages. Being comprised of family members who are by and large famous for being famous, the Kardashians have been notorious for a heavy-handed approach to policing their own images, often times through spurious claims on intellectual property or publicity rights. So, heading into this story, it should be noted that the default posture of this particular family tends to be the use of IP claims to police anything to do with the family’s image on the internet.

      • Muslim advocacy group calls on Valve to drop Six Days in Fallujah from Steam

        The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington DC-based civil rights and advocacy group for Muslims, is asking Valve, Microsoft, and Sony to refuse to distribute Six Days in Fallujah, an upcoming tactical FPS based on the Second Battle of Fallujah, one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq War.

      • The cost of speaking up against China

        In conversations with the BBC over the past few weeks, 22 people who have left Xinjiang to live abroad described a pattern of threats, harassment, and public character attacks they said were designed to deter them from speaking out about alleged human rights abuses back home.

      • Sharing News About Tibet Is High Risk for All Involved

        Eight years after he was jailed for sharing news about protests in Tibet, Kunchok Jinpa died in a Lhasa hospital.

        Jinpa, who in 2013 was sentenced to 21 years in prison for “leaking state secrets,” had been transferred to a hospital without his family’s knowledge. The 51-year-old suffered a brain hemorrhage and was paralyzed, rights groups said.

        His experience sheds light on the dangers for Tibetans who share news about the region with outside sources.

      • World Must Stand With Tibet

        The gross human violations in Tibet is not a new story and is not hidden from anyone despite the media ban and propagandistic approach adopted by Chinese govt. to have the control of one’s destiny is the luxury Tibetans don’t have. The excruciating pain shivers the spine when you see that you are not even allowed to decide on the number of children you can have. The free and fair process of governance in Tibet is just a mirage and the reality, just the opposite. The dilapidated condition of Tibetans is mostly being ignored and not reported, however, the reports which come out as Tibetans flee from Tibet in search of a peaceful asylum are very disturbing. The missing list of people from Lhasa and adjoining areas is growing and no political rival is left unmonitored. The accounts of the torture being administered to politically active workers in Tibet has seen no parallel.

      • China’s ‘new’ border rules in Tibet point to same old dispute with India

        Carrying or disseminating newspapers, books or electronic products deemed to endanger national security is among the acts banned under the rules

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • FSB agents search the home of ‘iStories’ chief editor Roman Anin

        FSB agents are carrying out a search at the home of Roman Anin, the editor-in-chief of the investigative outlet iStories Media.

      • Navalny’s lawyers file complaint over release of prison surveillance footage

        Alexey Navalny’s defense team has filed a complaint over the publication of a video of him filmed inside the penal colony where he is being held, said his lawyer Olga Mikhailova, as reported by RIA Novosti. 

      • The Loss of Fear: Russian Dissidents From Dostoevsky to Navalny

        Russia has a long history of dissenters and rebels who were sentenced, due to their attitude, to penal colonies in the 19th century and to the Gulag in the twentieth; both types of facility are forced labor camps. In 1825, a powerful group of revolutionaries called the Decembrists prepared a coup d’état against the Tsar, in an attempt to democratize a feudal Russia. The coup failed and the plotters who weren’t shot were sent to Siberia where they were forced to do hard labor. Dostoevsky wrote admiringly about the Decembrists and their wives, who had accompanied them into exile. He himself experienced Siberia personally. As a member of the Petrashevsky revolutionary circle, he was sentenced to death; at the last minute the Tsar changed his mind and sent the young writer and his companions to a penal colony in Siberia. Since then Dostoevsky, who was transformed by that experience, wrote several novels in which he analyzed the revolutionaries ( Demons) and the punishment to be meted out for any crime against humanity ( Crime And Punishment).

        After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks set up forced labor camps, later known as Gulags, where they sent people opposed to the Soviet regime. During Stalin’s purges, between 1937 and 1948, eighteen million people ended up in the Siberian Gulags, which made it possible for Stalin to create a system of free labour when it came to the toughest jobs, such as felling trees, building railway lines or working in the mines. Solzhenitsyn was one of the first writers whose work on the Gulag reached the West, where many left-wing intellectuals, who had previously been followers of the doctrines of Soviet Communism, began to change their tune.

      • Disappear the System: A Critical Hegemonic Function of Capitalist Media

        This is just one example among many. A fundamental rule in corporate-crafted U.S. media-politics culture is that the systemic taproot of the people’s pain must be ignored and obscured. The nightly news gives a running record of inner-city bloodshed but never includes serious discussion of the savage race-class apartheid that generates misery and violence in deeply impoverished and hyper-segregated communities of color. What results is a decontextualized “ urban nightmare” horror show that feeds white racist “law and order” sentiments.

        CBS lets Charles Barkley observe (during the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four last weekend) that American politicians play the game of racial “divide-and-conquer” in order to “keep their grasp on money and power.” It was neat to see “Chuck” speak that basic truth. But the network would never bring on a W.E.B. DuBois scholar (or a radical NBA veteran like Craig Hodges, pushed out of the NBA because of his left politics) to explain how racial division and Machiavellian Othering are rooted in the nature of the national and world capitalist system.

      • China’s Propaganda Against Foreign Media Increases

        Both John Sudworth, a journalist with the BBC, and Vicky Xu, a researcher and reporter based in Australia, have refused to be silenced by what Sudworth has referred to as China’s “highly asymmetric battle for the control of ideas.” 

        Sudworth, who reported from Beijing for nearly nine years, relocated with his family to Taiwan last week after an increase in legal threats and other pressure from authorities. His is the latest in a series of sudden departures by foreign media. 

        In an article, he said that China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomats — a term referring to envoys using a more aggressive approach — have unleashed tweet-storms, lambasting foreign reporting including that of the BBC.  

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Striking Alabama Miners Push Back on Contract Settlement

        The 1,100 workers at Warrior Met Coal, Inc. in Brookwood, Alabama are entering their eighth day of a strike over working conditions and “unfair labor practices.” The stories the workers tell about their day-to-day lives in the mines — mandatory 12-hour shifts that make workers strangers to their children, injured miners forced back on the job, “healthcare” that leaves miners thousands of dollars in debt, and wages that are much lower than similar jobs in the area — paint a picture of enormous exploitation for workers who do some of the most dangerous jobs in the country. The workers, organized by the United Mine Workers (UMWA), have been in a fierce contract negotiation battle with Warrior Met since late last month after the company presented them with a contract that made cuts to their wages, healthcare, pensions, and protections.

      • ‘Sacrifice Zones’: How People of Color Are Targets of Environmental Racism

        Designated by corporations and policymakers, these areas are a product of environmental racism, the systemic social, economic and political structures—including weak laws, lack of enforcement, corporate negligence and less access to health care—that place disproportionate environmental health burdens on specific communities based on race and ethnicity. Because they live in sacrifice zones, people of color in the United States are more likely to breathe polluted air, drink polluted water and be exposed to a variety of toxic chemicals and particulate matter.

        The Center for Health, Environment & Justice, a nonprofit environmental activism group based in Falls Church, Virginia, asserts that “[d]ue to redlining, low property values, and other social factors, these communities have historically consisted of [low-income] and/or minority populations.” The group adds, “Current federal air policies regulate facility emissions one stack at a time and one chemical at a time. Impacted communities, however, are exposed to the cumulative impact of multiple pollutants released over an extended period of time from a cluster of facilities.”

      • Opinion | Poor Nation’s of the Earth Host Millions of Refugees as US Refuses to Host Just a Few Thousand

        The factors that drive displacement are often complex, but welcoming refugees isn’t.

        Thousands of desperate migrants, mostly from Central America, are stuck at the U.S.-Mexico border. Most are families and unaccompanied children.

      • How Corporate America Exploits Social Justice (in New & Fun Ways!)

        If you’ve been paying even a modicum of attention to the world at large, you’ve noticed that white supremacists constitute a bit of a problem in America. They led an insurrection at our Capitol recently. They’ve been involved in many mass shootings. I, along with many others, was nearly killed by one a few years ago in Charlottesville, Va.after he tried to murder as many peaceful protesters as possible. Our police forces are brimming with white supremacist assholes. And I think they had a popular TV show about ducks and beards not too long ago.

      • ‘Retire, Breyer’: Progressive Group Joins Growing Call for SCOTUS Justice to Step Down

        “We cannot afford to risk Democrats losing control of the Senate before a Biden nominee can be confirmed,” asserted Demand Justice director Brian Fallon. 

        A left-leaning advocacy group on Friday joined the growing chorus of calls for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer to retire so that President Joe Biden can nominate a liberal replacement while Democrats control the Senate. 

      • Crime Rates Drop After The City Of Baltimore Decides It’s Not Going To Waste Resources Prosecuting Minor Offenses

        The argument against anything perceived as “defunding” cops or going just a bit lighter on suspected criminals (like decriminalization of drug possession or the elimination of cash bail) is that the criminals will win. Apparently all they’ve been waiting for is fewer laws so they can break more laws… or something.

      • Black Cowboys

        Based on the young adult novel Ghetto Cowboy by Greg Neri, director-writer Ricky Staub’s film fictionalizes the tale of Cole, a wayward youth from Detroit played by Caleb McLaughlin. After a school fight that spurs expulsion, Cole’s frustrated mom takes him to stay with his dad, Harp, who lives in North Philadelphia. Idris Elba, the British actor who rocked it in Molly’s Game, portrays Harp with aplomb.

        Like Detroit, Philadelphia is deindustrialized. Capital fled labor for reasons of profits and market share in both cities. That is how capitalism operates stateside and around the world.

      • New Immigration Policy Is Opening Doors for Mixed-Status Families

        Earlier this week, with little fanfare, the Biden administration announced in the Federal Register that it would be rolling back one of the cruelest of Trump’s anti-immigrant proposals: namely, denying all mixed-status families—households where some members are US citizens and others are undocumented immigrants— access to public and subsidized housing.

        Under Trump’s proposal, these families faced a Sophie’s Choice: Either kick out the undocumented member (usually a parent) and keep the home, or maintain the integrity of the family and end up on the streets.

      • Trapping: New Mexico Moves Forward, Montana Leaps Backward

        Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte is infamous for assaulting a journalist, attempting to undermine democracy, and violating his state’s hunting regulations (at least twice). News recently broke that Gianforte illegally trapped and killed a wolf that had ventured a few miles outside of the protections of Yellowstone National Park in February. This brazen and horrific act is par for the course for a man who continues to damage Montana’s reputation.

        In New Mexico, we have elected officials on both sides of the aisle who seem to genuinely care about accountability, integrity and our state’s future — and who represent their constituents with grace and humility.

      • Nonviolent Intervention and George Floyd

        On that terrible day—May 25, 2020—while Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck, and two rookie officers pinned down Floyd’s legs, several onlookers became concerned. Floyd was handcuffed and face-down on the ground. They heard him calling for help, groaning in agony, and saying, over and over, “Please, I can’t breathe!”

        A man named Donald Williams tried to shame Chauvin, calling him a “bum” and, sarcastically, a “tough guy” and a “real man.” Realizing the situation had become critical, Williams shifted to pleading, saying “He ain’t resisting” and “You’re stopping his breathing, man” and “You can get him off the ground” and “He’s human.”

      • Minneapolis Grieves for George Floyd

        Minneapolis, Minn.—Last week, the trial of Derek Chauvin began in the Hennepin County Government Center. 1

        Twenty-nine years after the officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted. 2

      • The Only Treatment is Freedom: Mumia Abu-Jamal and COVID

        Within two hours of that call, the movement to free Mumia mobilized hundreds of supporters to call the prison and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office to demand immediate medical care for Mumia and his immediate release.

        Tried and true, the call-to-action worked. The next day guards entered the imprisoned radio journalist’s cell and without notice, escorted him to the prison infirmary. On Monday, Mumia’s attorneys inquired about their client’s health with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections attorney who reported that Mumia had been tested for COVID over the weekend and the results were negative. None of us had heard from Mumia directly, however.

      • TSA posts video showing how you can fly without ID

        For years Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials and their state government collaborators have been repeating the big lie that all airline passengers must have government-issued ID credentials. That lie has been included in TSA and DHS press releases, airport signage, and Tweets from the official DHS and TSA accounts.

        This public relations lie has been disclaimed, over and over, in TSA and DHS court filings and sworn testimony. But now it has been contradicted on the TSA’s official Twitter feed.

        Tonight the TSA Tweeted a video showing some of the ways you can fly without “acceptable” ID or without any ID at all.

      • Dissenter Weekly: Amazon and Google’s Retaliation Against Whistleblowers

        In this edition of “Dissenter Weekly,” host and Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola highlights the turmoil at Google, which inspired a shareholder to demand the corporation adopt protections for whistleblowers. Amazon is in the midst of thwarting workers at a plant in Bessemer, Alabama, from forming a union. Kevin covers a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, which concluded two Amazon employees were illegally fired for their whistleblowing. Later in the show, Kevin provides an update on the fallout from a scandal in Colorado involving the state’s air pollutions department, which falsified data to fast-track permits for companies. And we wish Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who turned 90 on April 7, a happy birthday.

        Former Employee: Transocean Nearly Caused Oil Rig Catastrophe During Hurricane Zeta Colorado Groups Demand Governor Fire Air Pollution Control Director After Whistleblower Complaint National Labor Relations Board Says Amazon Illegally Fired Whistleblowers

      • Despite Defeat, Sanders Calls Those Behind Amazon Union Drive an ‘Inspiration to Workers’ Nationwide

        The senator also called for changes in federal law, declaring that “workers should not be intimidated or badgered by a company” for organizing.

        Although employees of an Amazon warehouse in Alabama ultimately voted against forming a union, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday called for reforming federal labor law as he applauded the efforts of organizers who took on the retail giant.

      • Medical examiner who ruled George Floyd’s death a homicide blames police pressure for his death

        Baker’s findings were at odds with those of other prosecution expert witnesses who were explicit in their assessments that Floyd died from asphyxia.

      • Opinion | Amazon Union Vote in Bessemer Shows Exactly Why We Need the PRO Act

        U.S. workers will continue to face a rigged system until lawmakers finally stand up to entrenched corporate power.

        The results of the election at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama reveal a broken union election system. It is clear that if policymakers do not reform our nation’s labor law system, then they are effectively denying workers a meaningful right to a union and collective bargaining. If they don’t take action, policymakers will be the architects of an economy marked by continued inequality and injustice. Further, policymakers will be sanctioning workplaces where workers are dehumanized and their health and safety is put at risk.

      • Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign

        The stories of horrific working conditions at Amazon are well-known. Long before the campaign at Bessemer, anyone paying even scant attention would be aware that workers toil at such a grueling pace that they resort to urinating in bottles so as not to get disciplined for taking too much time to use the facilities, which the company calls “time off task.” Christian Smalls was fired a year ago for speaking publicly about people not getting personal protective equipment in his Amazon facility, in bright-blue state New York. Jennifer Bates, the Amazon employee from the Bessemer warehouse, delivered testimony to Congress that would make your stomach turn. Workers at Amazon desperately need to unionize, in Alabama, Germany—and any other place where the high-tech, futuristic employer with medieval attitudes about employees sets up a job site of any kind. With conditions so bad, what explains the defeat in Bessemer?

        Three factors weigh heavily in any unionization election: the outrageously vicious behavior of employers—some of it illegal, most fully legal—including harassing and intimidating workers, and telling bold lies (which, outside of countries with openly repressive governments, is unique to the United States); the strategies and tactics used in the campaign by the organizers; and the broader social-political context in which the union election is being held.

      • Working Multiple Jobs Is a Financial Necessity for Many Young People

        By the fall she had landed a new full-time teaching position, but it paid less than her previous position. She had to keep up her tutoring side hustle to make up the difference. The new routine meant that some days started before dawn, with a 5 a.m. commute from New Jersey to New York City for a full day of teaching, and ended at 8 or 9 p.m., after four hours of tutoring students from her car.

        This kind of professional scramble is one of the narratives that the pandemic has clarified: Side hustles are generally not glamorous. Most people don’t particularly want to work multiple jobs to get by. A lucky few have been able to turn a hobby into a career during these strange, slow months, but many more, like Chavarria, have been left wondering if they could stay in their field of choice at all, cobbling together piecemeal work or several jobs to pay their bills. According to data from the Census Bureau, the percentage of workers in the United States with multiple jobs has been increasing over the past two decades.

      • ‘As if she had never existed’: The graveyards for murdered women

        There are cemeteries like this in several parts of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, full of the unmarked graves of women and girls who have been murdered by male relatives in the name of “honour”.

        Since the 1991 uprising of the Kurdish region, which spans a number of different internationally-recognised countries, including Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, more than 20,000 Kurdish women have been killed in so-called “honour crimes”.

      • Islamic Misogyny: Erdogan Humiliates EU President – Refuses To Let Her Sit With Men (Video)

        Turkish Dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan humiliated European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during an important meeting on Tuesday, April 6th. The Islamic Supremacist leader left only two armchairs for the meeting, one for himself, the other for Charles Michel, the President of the European Council.

        Despite public outcry, left-wing leaders and their media refuse to address the motive behind the supposed “”gaffe“”. The reality is that Erdogan’s treatment of the European Union’s president is merely an expression of classical Islamic doctrine, history and scripture.

        In a video of the awkward moment in Ankara, von der Leyen seems confused as to where to sit, she gestures with her right hand and says “ehm” as Erdoğan and European Council President Michel take their seats.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Wall Street Analysts Say Musk’s Starlink Poses No Real Threat To Traditional Broadband

        To be clear: Space X’s Starlink broadband service won’t be taking on traditional broadband providers in major metro areas. Instead, the company will be using thousands of low orbit satellites (with lower latency than traditional satellite broadband) to deliver marginally decent service to under-served rural Americans, assuming it winds up being profitable longer term. In a country where an estimated 42 million can’t get any broadband at all (during a raging pandemic, no less), any improvement helps.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Jessie Henderson Joins Apple as Features Executive

        Movie executive Jessie Henderson has joined Apple Studios in its features division.

        Henderson, who was previously at HBO Max where she held the title of exec VP, original feature films, will report to Apple Original Films’ head of features Matt Dentler and will be based in Los Angeles. She begins next week.

        Apple is in the midst of growing its film team and Henderson’s arrival comes on the heels of hiring of executive Lejo Pet, who recently joined Apple from Paramount Pictures.

    • Monopolies

      • Opinion | All Workers—Including Amazon’s Employees in Alabama—Deserve the PRO Act

        It’s time to change the power dynamics in America and give working people a real say in our future.

        In all of my years in Alabama’s labor movement—and at this point in my career, it’s been several decades—I have never witnessed the energy nor the momentum that we are seeing right now.

      • Union to File Charges Against Amazon Over ‘Blatantly Illegal Conduct’ in Bessemer Election

        “Amazon’s conduct has been despicable. We demand a comprehensive investigation over Amazon’s behavior in corrupting this election.”

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

      • Apple refuses request to testify for Senate app store hearing

        Senate Judiciary Committee leaders are demanding that Apple provide a witness for an upcoming hearing on app stores and digital competition after the iPhone manufacturer has refused to participate, according to a new letter to the company released Friday.

        In the letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) say the company “abruptly” decided not to provide a witness for an April hearing on digital markets focused on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.

      • FOSS Patents: Bipartisan senators’ letter to stonewalling Apple bookends week with public sentiment turning against App Store terms, policies, and practices

        There was a high density of significant–mostly regulatory–developments concerning Apple’s App Store policies during the first week of March. The week that is ending now is at least as important, but in a different way. It looks like the tide has turned against Apple, with more and more decision makers and opinion leaders starting to realize just how harmful Apple’s abuse of its App Store monopoly is.

        When Epic Games sued Apple last summer, I was glad about it in one way but skeptical in others. I was equally unconvinced of whether the subsequently founded Coalition for App Fairness could achieve its goals. By now I actually think it’s a question of when, not if, the App Store monopoly will fall. I’m looking forward to the day–whenever it may finally come–when I’ll be able to install apps from third-party app stores on an iPhone or iPad. Short of that option, Apple’s conduct is going to create too many problems for regulators to keep up with.

        Change is potentially coming from different directions. Apple (and Google, the sole ally it has in this) can put out some fires, or contain them for the time being, such as in the Arizona state legislature. But there’s already far more than just a crack in the shell. It won’t go quite as fast as Scrat’s continental crack in the Ice Age movie, yet jurisdiction by jurisdiction, #OpentheAppStore is going to become a reality.

        In the middle of the night from Wednesday to Thursday, Epic and Apple filed their proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law (see also my two other posts about those documents: redefinition of “commission”, full text of requested injunction).

      • Patents

        • VLSI v. Intel patent trial to go forward in Western District of Texas on Monday as judge denies Intel’s last-minute transfer motion

          Intel argues that it can’t get a fair trial in Waco so shortly after the big news that the early-March verdict made in the local media: “juror awareness of the prior enormous verdict would be highly prejudicial to Intel.”

          I guess Intel knew from the beginning that Judge Albright was going to go ahead with the second VLSI v. Intel trial no matter what. But if Intel lost and appealed, then it preserved certain arguments by way of this motion.

          Intel and Apple are challenging Fortress Investment’s aggregation of patents in an antitrust action in the Northern District of California, where they recently brought their second amended complaint after the original complaint and the first amended complaint had been dismissed. Meanwhile, Fortress-funded entities are pursuing infringement cases against Apple and Intel in different jurisdictions.

        • FOSS Patents: Amicus briefs in support of Ericsson against Samsung by Sen. Tillis, former Fed. Cir. CJ Michel, former USPTO Director Iancu, InterDigital, NYIPLA, and 13 professors

          After former NIST Director Dr. Copan (whose amicus brief I criticized harshly), some other “friends of the court” have made filings in support of Ericsson against Samsung. Other than noting that there are multiple references in those filings to Munich antisuit case law, I don’t intend to comment right now and will just publish those documents below.

        • Lithium Australia set to progress VSPC patents and LieNA pilot plant in the near-term

          The company’s ongoing strategy is to advance proprietary, downstream lithium and battery technologies and to deliver an ethical and sustainable supply of energy metals for batteries through innovative minerals processing and battery recycling techniques, creating an energy-metals loop.

        • A Pervasive Threat to Biodiversity and Human Security

          According to Prof. Wijesundara, in 1994, a multinational company, W.R. Grace and the U.S. Department of Agriculture were granted a patent by the European Patent Office (EPO) “Covering a (special) method for controlling fungi on plants by the aid of a hydrophobic extracted neem oil” that is diluted with a certain percentage of water was withdrawn in 2000. Lot of concern after 10-year battle, some patents on neem were squashed some still prevail. There are 65 patents so far only for neem. According to Prof. Kotagama, a US company wanted to produce insecticide from neem. They came with Azadariktin as a product. They obtain the patenting required to use and own neem. There is a law that if you are contesting patenting right it has to be in the country it is registered at. So the neem battle has to be fought in the US. With lot of money and help from the NGOs and help along with the Indian government they fought against this patenting. The company contested that they did not bring neem from Asia or India, they brought it from Africa because it grows in Africa. But it was identified that the seeds that had gone to Kenya had been coming from Sri Lanka according to the Registers of the forest department records from Sri Lank. Based on that evidence the patent was revoked. The neem campaign was consisting of a group of NGOs and individuals was initiated in 1993 in India. This was done to mobilize worldwide support to protect indigenous knowledge systems and resources of the Third World from piracy by the west particularly in light of emerging threats from intellectual property rights regimes under WTO and TRIPS. Neem patent became the first case to challenge European and US patents on the grounds of biopiracy.

        • Howard Dean Is Out Stumping For Big Pharma Patent Protection, No Matter How Many People In Poor Countries Die As A Result

          If ever there was a situation that called for a circumvention of the normal patent process and lifespan, surely it would be the COVID-10 pandemic. It seems obvious that a global pandemic is the perfect situation to go beyond the normal restrictive patent protections for things like therapeutics and vaccines and instead operate from a posture of information-sharing and collaboration so that the world can get back to something resembling normalcy. Instead, products of research that are often based on publicly-funded scientific campaigns are being locked up in patent offices, fought over among patent holders, and used for pure profiteering over a public health crises. It’s in that reality that we’ve had to witness some folks who absolutely know better, such as Senator Ben Sasse, advocate for longer patent protections for COVID-19 treatments, rather than the opposite.

        • Software Patents

          • $3,000 for Tekvoke prior art

            On April 9, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $3,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 6,687,343. The patent is owned by Tekvoke LLC, an entity of notorious NPE, IP Edge.

            The ’343 patent is directed to an Internet communication control apparatus selectively connected to communication terminals and a computer network and a method for controlling such an apparatus. This patent has been asserted against over 20 companies, including Cable One, Intrado Corporation, AireSpring, Block Communications, Brekeke Software, IDT Corporation, and Nextiva. Tekvoke is targeting web-based PBX (private box exchange) connected to telephones and smart device apps.

      • Trademarks

        • MSCHF Settles Upgraded Shoe Dispute With Nike And Promises (Wink, Wink) To Buy Back Satan Shoes

          There were actually a whole bunch of interesting legal questions raised by Nike’s trademark lawsuit against MSCHF the weird “structured chaos” organization that seems to basically sell publicity stunts as a business model. It had teamed up with the musician Lil Nas X to sell 666 pairs of upgrade Nike Air Max 97, complete with red ink (and, it claimed, a single drop of blood) inserted in the sole of the shoe. The lawsuit raised issues regarding first sale/resale rights, art, freedom of expression, trademark, ownership, property, dilution, confusion and more. And… all of it’s going nowhere, because a settlement has been reached.

      • Copyrights

        • Taylor Swift releases a ‘perfect replica’ of Fearless

          The backstory is complicated – but here’s a brief overview: Swift’s recording career started in 2005, when she signed a 12-year deal with Nashville’s Big Machine Recordings. Her first album went seven-times platinum in the US and after switching lanes to pop music on 2012′s Red, she became a global superstar in the process.

          In 2018, she signed a new deal with Universal Records, and Big Machine sold the rights to Swift’s first six albums to Scooter Braun – Kanye West’s former manager, whom Swift claimed had “bullied” her for years.

          Braun later sold the rights to an investment fund for an estimated $300m, although he reportedly retains a financial interest in the music.

          Swift was incensed that he would profit from her records, characterising the sale as an act of aggression that “stripped me of my life’s work”.

        • EU Parliament Wants Pirated Sports Streams Taken Down Within 30 Minutes

          The European Parliament is considering a draft resolution that requires online services to take pirated sports streams offline within 30 minutes. This includes a proposal to allow copyright holders to act as trusted flaggers. According to Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, the plan is dangerous as it can cause massive collateral damage.

        • France’s New Strategy For Tackling Online Piracy Presented in New Bill

          France is set to take a fresh approach to online anti-piracy enforcement. A new bill presented to the Council of Ministers this week has several key goals including a pirate site ‘blacklist’, mechanisms to deal with mirror sites, and a new system to tackle live sports piracy. A new regulatory body will also be formed by merging Hadopi and the Higher Audiovisual Council.

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