Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

01.22.20

Links 22/1/2020: Wayland 1.18 Alpha, ODF 1.3 Approved

Posted in News Roundup at 6:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Microsoft is testing ads in WordPad in Windows 10

      Over the years Microsoft has taken numerous controversial decisions with Windows 10, including installing sponsored apps, using the Start menu to advertise apps it thinks you might be interested in, and — of course — the various forms of data-collecting telemetry.

      Now it has been discovered that more ads could be on their way. A Windows researcher has uncovered ads in WordPad encouraging people to try out Word, Excel and PowerPoint online.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • MNT Reform, an Open Source Laptop, Expected to Hit Crowd Supply in February

        MNT Reform is a laptop that aims to utilize all opensource materials, everything from firmware, hardware, and software. This device is expected to hit Crowdsupply in February and aims to offer a very modular design, having easily replaceable parts which are a combination of both standard components and 3D printed parts.

      • Here’s a Kubuntu Exclusive Linux Laptop Priced at $2285

        We have a lot of manufacturers focusing on Linux laptops nowadays. For instance, the latest $200 Pinebook Pro laptop. And, of course, System 76 also makes some of the best Linux laptops for several years.

        Now, The Kubuntu Council, MindShareManagement Inc, and Tuxedo Computers teamed up to come up with a premium Kubuntu-powered laptop for power users: Kubuntu Focus.

        Here, let me highlight some of the key specifications of the laptop and what you need to know about it.

      • All new Chromebooks will get at least 8 years of automatic updates

        One of the nice things about buying a Google Chromebook is that the operating system receives automatic security and feature updates delivered straight from Google — which means that it’ll stay up to date years after your Android phone stops receiving official updates.

        But up until recently, Google only promised 5 to 6.5 years of updates… which might seem fine if you spend $200 or less on a cheap Chrome OS laptop, but which can be rather frustrating if you drop $999 or more on a premium model.

    • Server

      • KubeInvaders – Gamified Chaos Engineering Tool for Kubernetes

        Some months ago, I released my latest project called KubeInvaders. The first time I shared it with the community was during an Openshift Commons Briefing session. Kubenvaders is a Gamified Chaos Engineering tool for Kubernetes and Openshift and helps test how resilient your Kubernetes cluster is, in a fun way.

      • CSI Ephemeral Inline Volumes

        Typically, volumes provided by an external storage driver in Kubernetes are persistent, with a lifecycle that is completely independent of pods or (as a special case) loosely coupled to the first pod which uses a volume (late binding mode). The mechanism for requesting and defining such volumes in Kubernetes are Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) and Persistent Volume (PV) objects. Originally, volumes that are backed by a Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver could only be used via this PVC/PV mechanism.

        But there are also use cases for data volumes whose content and lifecycle is tied to a pod. For example, a driver might populate a volume with dynamically created secrets that are specific to the application running in the pod. Such volumes need to be created together with a pod and can be deleted as part of pod termination (ephemeral). They get defined as part of the pod spec (inline).

        Since Kubernetes 1.15, CSI drivers can also be used for such ephemeral inline volumes. The CSIInlineVolume feature gate had to be set to enable it in 1.15 because support was still in alpha state. In 1.16, the feature reached beta state, which typically means that it is enabled in clusters by default.

        CSI drivers have to be adapted to support this because although two existing CSI gRPC calls are used (NodePublishVolume and NodeUnpublishVolume), the way how they are used is different and not covered by the CSI spec: for ephemeral volumes, only NodePublishVolume is invoked by kubelet when asking the CSI driver for a volume. All other calls (like CreateVolume, NodeStageVolume, etc.) are skipped. The volume parameters are provided in the pod spec and from there copied into the NodePublishVolumeRequest.volume_context field. There are currently no standardized parameters; even common ones like size must be provided in a format that is defined by the CSI driver. Likewise, only NodeUnpublishVolume gets called after the pod has terminated and the volume needs to be removed.

      • Reviewing 2019 in Docs

        Hi, folks! I’m one of the co-chairs for the Kubernetes documentation special interest group (SIG Docs). This blog post is a review of SIG Docs in 2019. Our contributors did amazing work last year, and I want to highlight their successes.

        Although I review 2019 in this post, my goal is to point forward to 2020. I observe some trends in SIG Docs–some good, others troubling. I want to raise visibility before those challenges increase in severity.

      • IBM

        • RHEL 8.2 Beta Features Monitoring And Performance Improvements

          The beta version of the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 operating system is now available. RHEL 8.2 Beta comes packed with six months’ worth of updates from Red Hat to make it easier for IT organizations to adopt new, production-ready innovations faster.

          RHEL 8.2 is said to drive enhancements to the user experience for both new and existing customers. It not only extends monitoring and performance capabilities but also adds new supported developer languages and tools. To streamline how new and existing users register a RHEL subscription, RHEL 8.2 Beta makes subscription registration a step in the installation process.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • We may have just got a peek at AMD Zen 3 in this Linux kernel update

        References to Zen 3, the architecture of AMD’s next-gen Ryzen desktop processors, have turned up in the Linux kernel, hinting that these chips might just arrive sooner than we think.

        New versions of the Linux kernel are often combed through as they emerge, looking for clues like references to unreleased hardware, and this time around it’s Komachi_Ensaka (a prolific leaker) who spotted details of AMD’s ‘Family 19h’ processors, and shared them on Twitter.

      • New Linux System Call Proposed To Let User-Space Pin Themselves To Specific CPU Cores

        A “pin_on_cpu” system call has been proposed for the Linux kernel as a new means of letting user-space threads pin themselves to specific CPU cores.

        User-space processes requesting to be run on specific CPU cores can already e done by the likes of Linux’s sched_setaffinity to get/set the CPU affinity mask while pin_on_cpu would be a new and simpler way.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Vulkan 1.2.132 Released As The First Documentation Fix-Up Following Vulkan 1.2

          Following last week’s release of Vulkan 1.2, Vulkan 1.2.132 was released on Tuesday as the first maintenance/point release to this major Vulkan API revision.

          With Vulkan 1.2.132 there are no new extensions but a number of corrections to the documentation/specification as a result of a number of public and private bug reports. This includes clarifications as well for ensuring the correct semantics of Vulkan API behavior.

    • Applications

      • GParted 1.1.0

        This release of GParted includes enhancements, bug fixes and language translation updates.

        Key changes include:
        Fix error when moving locked LUKS-encrypted partition
        Switch to faster minfo and mdir to read FAT16/32 usage
        Calculate JFS size accurately
        Recognise ATARAID members and detect their busy status
        See the Release Notes for more details.

      • GParted 1.1.0 
        Release Notes
-------------
  This release of GParted includes enhancements, bug fixes and
  language translation updates.

### Key changes include:

  * Fix error when moving locked LUKS-encrypted partition
  * Switch to faster minfo and mdir to read FAT16/32 usage
  * Calculate JFS size accurately
  * Recognise ATARAID members and detect their busy status

Bug Fixes
---------
  * Fix test (dentry->d_name is invalidated by closedir...) (!41)
  * Fix error when moving locked LUKS-encrypted partition (#48, !44)
  * Add missing window title to Help Contents dialog (!45)
  * Switch to faster minfo and mdir to read FAT16/32 usage (#569921)
  * Whole device FAT32 file system reports device busy warning from mlabel (!46)
  * Fix "invalid argument for seek()" error on very small (<=40KiB) drives (#16)
  * Remain with CentOS 7 for GitLab CI (!48)
  * Add file system interface tests (!49)
  * Calculate JFS size accurately (!50)
  * Recognise ATARAID members and detect their busy status (#75, !51)
  * Rename members and variables currently named 'filesystem' (!52)

Code Credits
------------
  Code enhancements are courtesy of Félix Piédallu, Mike Fleetwood,
  and Curtis Gedak

Translations (new/updated)
--------------------------
  ca(Jordi Mas), cs(Marek Černocký), de(Wolfgang Stöggl, Mathias L. Baumann),
  en_GB(Bruce Cowan), es(Daniel Mustieles, Andre Klapper #80),
  eu(Alexander Gabilondo, Asier Sarasua Garmendia), fr(Claude Paroz),
  hr(Goran Vidović), hu(Balázs Úr), id(Kukuh Syafaat), is(Sveinn í Felli),
  lv(Rudolfs Mazurs), pa(A S Alam), pl(Piotr Drąg), pt_BR(Rafael Fontenelle),
  ro(Daniel Șerbănescu), sv(Anders Jonsson), vi(Trần Ngọc Quân)

Dependencies (new/updated)
--------------------------
  * xvfb-run command is required for 'make check' and 'make distcheck'

Checksums
---------
### MD5SUM:
    0da45cb522d766dfb4886fb3bdbc2634  gparted-1.1.0.tar.gz

### SHA1SUM:
    af44456f16bfc53f4f72ddc9b15e097bdfdaeab7  gparted-1.1.0.tar.gz
      • Get your RSS feeds and podcasts in one place with this open source tool

        RSS news feeds are an exceptionally handy way to keep up to date on various websites. In addition to Opensource.com, I follow the annual SysAdvent sysadmin tools feed, some of my favorite authors, and several webcomics. RSS readers allow me to “batch up” my reading, so I’m not spending every day on a bunch of different websites.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Wine 5.0 for Linux released with major gaming improvements

        Today, the Wine Project officially released Wine 5.0 as stable for the Linux, macOS, Android (limited support), and FreeBSD platforms. The announcement comes after a year of development by the Wine team comprising bi-weekly development releases.

        For those unfamiliar with Wine (Wine is Not an Emulator), it is a FOSS compatibility layer that allows users to run computer programs like computer games and application software on Linux platforms, and more recently, macOS platforms, too. Wine was first released in 1993, over 26 years ago.

      • Wine 5.0 Released With Numerous Gaming Improvements for Linux

        Wine 5.0 has been released today and contains over 7,400 bug fixes and numerous audio and graphics improvements that will increase performance in gaming on Linux.

        Wine is a compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows applications, including games, in Linux and macOS. This means that users can run native Windows games and applications such as Steam, Battlefield 1942, Fallout: New Vegas, Counter-Strike, and much more directly in Linux.

      • Wine 5.0 Released by WineHQ- Stable available for Download

        Wine 5.0 Stable Release: WineHQ, the developer of Wine released its latest and most stable Wine 5.0 on January 21, 2020. The latest version comes with a lot of surprising updates and features which makes Wine 5.0 stand out of its previous releases. Wine 5.0 release has been dedicated to Mr. Józef Kucia, the major contributor to Wine’s Direct3D implementation who passed away recently at a young age. May his soul rest in peace.

      • Windows compatibility layer Wine hits v5.0 on Android

        Wine has been giving users of Unix-like platforms access to Windows software for many, many years. The open source project just added support for Android back in 2018 with the v3.0 update and continued that with Wine v4.0 last year. Now, Wine v5.0 is available on multiple platforms including Android.

        This version of Wine includes some nice functionality improvements. You can run multiple monitors in Wine, and there’s support for the new-ish Vulkan 1.1 graphics API. The Wine app doesn’t contain Windows or any Windows software, but it does let you load Windows applications on your device.

      • Wine 5.0 released (Windows compatibility layer for Linux, Mac, Android, and BSD)

        The Wine project has been letting folks run some Windows applications on Unix-like operating systems including Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD for decades… and a few years ago, the developers of this open source project added limited support for Android as well.

        Wine 5.0 is now available for all supported platforms, and it brings a number of improvements including support for the Vulkan 1.1 graphics driver and support for multiple monitors.

      • Wine 5.0 Officially Released with Multi-Monitor and Vulkan 1.1 Support, More

        Big news today for Linux gamers and ex-Windows users as the final release of the Wine 5.0 software is now officially available for download with numerous new features and improvements.

        After being in development for more than one year, Wine 5.0 is finally here with a lot of enhancements, starting with support for multi-monitor configurations, the reimplementation of the XAudio2 low-level audio API, Vulkan 1.1.126 support, as well as built-in modules in PE (Portable Executable) format.

        “This release is dedicated to the memory of Józef Kucia, who passed away in August 2019 at the young age of 30. Józef was a major contributor to Wine’s Direct3D implementation, and the lead developer of the vkd3d project. His skills and his kindness are sorely missed by all of us,” reads today’s announcement.

      • Wine 5.0 released

        Wine 5.0 has been released. The main highlights are builtin modules in PE format, multi-monitor support, XAudio2 reimplementation, and Vulkan 1.1 support.

      • Wine 5.0 Stable Released With Vulkan 1.1 Support, Reimplemented XAudio2, Proper Multi-Monitor Support

        Wine 5.0 is available for download after being in development for a year. This release includes over 7400 changes, the main highlights being proper multi-monitor support, Vulkan 1.1 support, the reimplementation of XAudio2, and built-in modules in the PE format.

        [...]

        As usual, most of these changes / features were already available in the Wine staging and development builds maintained by WineHQ, which are also used by Lutris, PlayOnLinux or Valve’s Proton for example.

        [...]

        The Wine 5.0 binaries provided by WineHQ have not yet been built at the time I’m writing this article, but they should be available very soon. That’s why in the screenshot above I’m using Wine 5.0-rc6 (development build). The source is already available for download though.

        It’s worth noting that Wine 5.0 (this started with Wine 4.5 development / staging) is the first stable Wine release that requires the libfaudio0 dependency, which is not available in the Ubuntu 19.04 / Debian 10.1 / Linux Mint 19.* and older repositories, or in the official Wine repository.

      • Wine 5.0 is Released! Here’s How to Install it

        With some efforts, you can run Windows applications on Linux using Wine. Wine is a tool that you may try when you must use a software that is available only on Windows. It supports a number of such software.

        A new major release for Wine has landed i.e Wine 5.0, almost after a year of its 4.0 release.

        Wine 5.0 release introduces a couple of major features and a lot of significant changes/improvements. In this article, I’ll highlight what’s new and also mention the installation instructions.

      • Wine 5.0 has been released

        Linux users rejoice; the team behind the Wine application has released Wine 5.0 for all supported operating systems. Wine 5.0 is as usual available as a binary for certain systems, e.g. Android, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Mac Os, and as source code.

        Wine 4.0, the last major version release, was released one year ago in January 2019. Wine, in a nutshell, lets Linux and Mac users run many Windows applications on their devices. It is great for users who switched to Linux or Mac OS X but want or need access to certain programs.

        Games play a core part probably. Valve uses a modified version of Wine on Steam to provide Linux gamers with access to Windows game.

      • Wine Is Approaching Six Million Lines Of Code

        Given yesterday’s release of Wine 5.0 I was curious to run some development stats on Wine Git as of the 5.0 release tag for seeing how development is trending on this wildly popular program among Linux users especially for running Windows games and applications.

        When running GitStats on the Wine Git repository, it’s now up to 135,558 commits from around 1,586 different authors with the oldest Wine code dating back to its initial release in 1993.

    • Games

      • Albion Online has the ‘biggest-ever’ update now live named ‘Queen’

        The Queen update for the MMO Albion Online is live, what Sandbox Interactive claim is the “biggest-ever”. This is the eighth post-release content update for Albion Online, with a focus on a major rework of the Outlands continent.

        A new Hideouts system sounds quite fun, giving Guilds a place to build a secret underground base in the open-world black zones (full PvP). You will see see a lot more open-world PvP battles with a new territory claiming system, new Elite enemy NPCs to fight in Elite Randomized Dungeons, a new skin customization system, simplified and streamlined Item Power progression and more.

      • Rosewater, a wild west adventure set in the world of Lamplight City is coming to Linux next year

        Grundislav Games along with Application Systems Heidelberg have announced Rosewater, a wild west adventure set in the world of their previous game Lamplight City.

        “It’s been several years since Harley Leger left New Bretagne and headed west, hoping to leave the past behind and make her way as a freelance writer. After arriving in the sleepy border town of Rosewater, a seemingly trivial assignment for the local paper leads to the hunt for a missing man’s fortune–and the story of the century.”

      • Terminal Phase – A Space Shooter Game That Runs In Terminal

        Today, I came across an interesting CLI game called Terminal Space, a space shooter game that runs in your Terminal. It is somewhat similar to a mobile game named Space Impact that usually came bundled with several old Nokia phones. I have played Space Impact game on my Nokia basic model phone several years ago. It was really interesting and addictive game. If you’ve played Space Impact, Terminal Space might look very familiar. It is an open source project released under GPLv3 and is written in Racket programming language. In this brief guide, I am going to show you how to install and play Terminal Phase space shooter game in Terminal on Linux.

      • The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters has a new trailer ahead of the full release next week

        Leaving Early Access on January 28, the Korean-made survival-horror The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters has a new trailer.

        While it’s technically part of a series, you don’t need any amiliarity with the story from The Coma: Recut. Vicious Sisters follows a new protagonist, Mina Park and her first experience in the Shadow Realm. However, if you’ve played the previous game you might spot some familiar faces.

      • Planetary Sanitations Inc, a free and open source world exploration mecha roguelike

        A game I completely forgot to cover some time ago is Planetary Sanitations Inc., a free and open source roguelike that has you exploring different worlds. As you explore, you piece together a mech unit from various modules, each of which can be destroyed individually.

        Thankfully, even though I forgot about it there was a big update to it recently which popped up in my feed so here we are. It’s another game made with Godot Engine, with the source code available up on GitLab. The recent update to it brings in some first steps towards polishing the experience with a proper starting menu and a small tutorial.

      • Terminal Phase, a space shooter you can play in a Terminal window

        Ever wanted to play a space shooter in your Terminal window? Well, now you can with Terminal Phase which was announced recently.

        The developer, Christopher Lemmer Webber, is a name some of you might know as they’re involved in the ActivityPub specification and they’re the co-founder of GNU MediaGoblin amongst other things. Terminal Phase was actually released as a result of hitting a goal on their Patreon page, funding their work in the free software community.

      • The Humble Europa Universalis IV Bundle is live ready to take your time away

        That’s a pretty ridiculously good deal, considering just how much playable content is included with all of that together. As usual though, there’s higher tiers as well.

        If you pay more than the average there’s also: Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man, Europa Universalis IV: Mare Nostrum, Europa Universalis IV: The Cossacks, Europa Universalis IV: Common Sense and Europa Universalis IV – El Dorado.

      • The original Half-Life games are now free to play until Half-Life: Alyx launches

        Valve have made their original Half-Life titles all the way up to Half-Life 2: Episode Two free to play for a few months.

        This is to build up excitement for their VR-only title, Half-Life: Alyx, which releases in March. Which we still don’t know if it will support Linux or not, I’ll be speaking to Valve more about that closer to the time. It likely all depends on the state of SteamVR at the time.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Venturing out

          Plasma 5.18 LTS Beta has been released, which brings many exciting new features to a computer near you, especially if you’re upgrading from our previous LTS release, Plasma 5.12. Of course for us developers this now means that a stable git branch has been created and we can work on new stuff on master to eventually become Plasma 5.19, scheduled for an early June 2020 release. This blog post is less about KDE code, though.

    • Distributions

      • New Releases

        • EasyNAS 1.0 Beta-1

          This doesn’t mean it’s finished. it only means that the firmware update can take this version up to 1.0 GA. Almost most of the features are ready, still there are some edges that need to attend to. Still need to test everything but it will be easier with the new design.
          Updates are hosted from EasyNAS repo that will also have the addons, it will be able to install new packages and distribute new code, new languages even custom apps that someone need.
          Working as fast as I can

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

        • [VIDEO] Linux Laptop Screencast

          A few weeks ago, I wrote about tuning up my Linux laptop for writing. Via YouTube, here’s a very quick (20 minute) screencast. Enjoy!

      • Slackware Family

        • First ‘ktown’ Plasma5 update for Slackware in 2020

          Slackware and Plasma5… what will 2020 bring?

          For starters, Pat just added Kerberos to Slackware-current! That is the first (small but significant) step towards a big change in Slackware which will unfold over the coming period. And at the end of that, I expect that Plasma5 gets folded into the distro as well. Here’s hoping!

          In any case, I just released KDE-5_20.01 and the packages are available for download from my ‘ktown‘ repository. As always, these packages are meant to be installed on a full installation of Slackware-current which has had its KDE4 removed first. These packages will not work on Slackware 14.2.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Canonical’s Anbox Cloud enables Android app and game streaming

          While Canonical’s Ubuntu operating is one of the most popular desktop GNU/Linux distributions, the folks at Canonical have been pushing cloud services pretty hard in recent years (because that’s where the money is). The latest example? Canonical’s new Anbox Cloud solution, which lets developers host mobile apps in the cloud.

          Basically the idea is that instead of running an app or game on your phone, you’d be able to stream it over the web from a remote server. Theoretically this opens the door to running apps and games on any internet-connected device at any time, regardless of whether it’s a $100 smartphone or a $3000 laptop — because the operating system and processing power are all hosted in the cloud, which means it’s almost irrelevant how much processing power the device you’re using has.

        • Canonical Introduces Scalable Android-Based Cloud Platform

          Canonical is deploying a scalable Android-based operating system for mobile and desktop enterprise applications from the cloud.

          The company on Tuesday announced its Anbox Cloud containerized workload platform. Anbox Cloud allows apps to be streamed to any operating system or form factor. Its uses include cloud gaming, enterprise workplace applications, software testing and mobile device virtualization.

          “Anbox Cloud is the first commercially available mobile cloud computing platform,” said Galem Kayo, product manager for Ubuntu at Canonical.

        • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to drop pre-installed Amazon Web App

          Canonical is finally killing off one of the most annoying features of Ubuntu. With the release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, the Amazon Web App will no longer be pre-installed.

          Ubuntu 20.04 LTS “Focal Fossa” will mark the end of the Amazon Web App’s default inclusion in the OS. The Amazon Web App was introduced in Ubuntu 12.10 to the chagrin of many users. Many claimed that the app scraped user search results and system usage to better target ads or products sold by Amazon. Considering one of Linux’s base foundations is the protection of user privacy, the inclusion of an Amazon-centered app flew against one of the core tenants of the OS, at least in the eyes of many users.

        • Ubuntu Studio: New Website!

          Ubuntu Studio has had the same website design for nearly 9 years. Today, that changed.

        • Ubuntu Server development summary – 21 January 2020

          The purpose of this communication is to provide a status update and highlights for any interesting subjects from the Ubuntu Server Team. If you would like to reach the server team, you can find us at the #ubuntu-server channel on Freenode. Alternatively, you can sign up and use the Ubuntu Server Team mailing list or visit the Ubuntu Server discourse hub for more discussion.

        • Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo End of Life- JAN 2020

          Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo– It is been 9 months from the date of release of the interim release from Canonical, the Ubuntu 19.04 codenamed Disco Dingo. Through all the positive and negative critics, Ubuntu 19.04 has done its job very well. Disco Dingo was released on April 18, 2019, with a lot of latest updates that included GNOME desktop 3.32, Trackers by default, Safe Graphics Mode, Yaru theme with updates and refinement and a lot more. Throughout its journey, Disco Dingo did well and it is time to bid farewell to it. Though the end of life cycle of Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo is mentioned as January 2020, there is no official confirmation from Canonical about the exact date of the end of life of the Disco Dingo.

          Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo reaches its end by the end of January 2020. The date is not released by Canonical yet.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • ProtonVPN goes open source to build trust

        The Swiss firm says that not only is it releasing the source code for its VPN tool on all platforms, but also that it has conducted an independent security audit. Created by CERN scientists, ProtonVPN has amassed millions of users since it launched in 2017 and the decision to open source the tool gives users and security exports the opportunity to analyze the tool very closely.

      • An Open Source Effort to Encrypt the Internet of Things

        End-to-end encryption is a staple of secure messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal. It ensures that no one—even the app developer—can access your data as it traverses the web. But what if you could bring some version of that protection to increasingly ubiquitous—and notoriously insecure—internet-of-things devices?

      • Why UK leaders need open technology for the disrupted future

        We’re not quite past the post with Brexit, but thankfully, we have moved beyond the Brexit hiatus. And, it’s time we did. Whatever your views on the merits of Brexit, as the UK’s Prime Minister has stressed, it’s time to move on and move forward.

        In fact, there may be no better time to spread the word about being open for business by highlighting the benefits of open technology. It is a task that all business leaders in the UK need to embrace. By seizing the moment to “get open done”, we can not only develop and sustain the UK’s leadership in open technology, but also carve out our status on the world stage for many years to come.

        The timing couldn’t be better. It’s a pivotal moment to demonstrate how declaring our independence of European markets does not equate with a lack of collaboration or creativity.

        Brexit offers us a convenient pause; a time for us to take stock and reflect on who we are as a nation and what we can offer global markets. We’ve had our fair share of inventors and game-changers in the past. Now, we have an opportunity to show the UK can lead in technology.

      • Graphics

        • wayland 1.17.91
          This is the alpha release for Wayland 1.18. Here's a highlight of the
biggest changes:

- Add support for the Meson build system (autotools is still supported
  but will be removed in a future release)
- Add API to tag proxy objects to allow applications and toolkits to
  share the same Wayland connection
- Track wayland-server timers in user-space to prevent creating too
  many FDs
- Add wl_global_remove, a new function to mitigate race conditions with
  globals

Thanks to all contributors!

Full commit history below.

Antonio Borneo (1):
      log: remove "%m" from format strings by using strerror(errno)

Daniel Stone (2):
      build/doc: Ensure destination dir exists despite VPATH
      display-test: Remove unused variables

Drew DeVault (3):
      Document unusual wl_registry.bind new_id behavior
      Add .editorconfig
      Improve description of wl_surface

Emmanuel Gil Peyrot (2):
      cursor: Use memfd_create() when available
      wayland-shm: Don’t set SIGBUS handlers on unshrinkable fd

Emmanuele Bassi (2):
      Support running tests from different build directories
      Add Meson build

Harish Krupo (2):
      docs: Abort configure if docbook-xsl package is missing
      wayland.xml: document invalid_finish error in wl_data_offer.finish

Jiayuan Ren (1):
      adding O_RDWR flag in the open()

Jonas Ådahl (1):
      proxy: Add API to tag proxy objects

Joshua Watt (2):
      scanner: Add configure check for strndup
      Move wl_priv_signal to wayland-server-private.h

Leonid Bobrov (1):
      configure: detect libdl and librt

Liu Wenlong (1):
      server: Fix fake "Address already in use" error

Manuel Stoeckl (13):
      scanner: error when element names will not compile
      tests: Verify that wayland_scanner can catch bad identifiers
      protocol: clarify wl_display.delete_id description
      connection: do not abort when dup(fd) fails
      client: Ignore new requests if display has a fatal error
      client: Don't abort when sending a request fails
      tests: Test that send overflow doesn't abort
      tests: Fix race condition in send overflow test
      tests: Ensure that overflow test always overflows
      event-loop-test: Verify proper timer cancellation
      event-loop-test: Confirm distant timers do not fire
      event-loop: Track timer event sources in userspace
      event-loop-test: Add test to verify timer ordering

Marty E. Plummer (1):
      scanner: prepend protocol name to types symbol

Michael Forney (3):
      Use wl_container_of internally
      Avoid pointer arithmetic on `void *`
      protocol: fix typo in wl_data_offer.set_actions description

Mosè Giordano (1):
      Add $(RT_LIBS) to fixed-benchmark LD dependencies

Pekka Paalanen (2):
      configure.ac: reopen master for regular development
      scanner: include config.h from command line

Scott Anderson (1):
      wayland.xml: Make releases for multiple 'wl_surface.attach' undefined

Simon Ser (22):
      Add releasing.txt
      releasing: adapt for Wayland
      releasing: fixup section numbers
      protocol: allow to send a zero output refresh rate
      client: check event opcode in queue_event
      Update .editorconfig for Python
      Add an automated script to update wl_shm.format
      protocol: add a comment about the wl_shm.format script
      protocol: sync wl_shm.format with libdrm 2.4.99
      server: check global interface on bind
      tests: test that binding to a global with an interface mismatch fails
      protocol: invalid_method is sent on malformed request
      server: add wl_global_set_user_data
      server: add wl_global_remove
      tests: add a test for wl_global_remove
      build: check wayland-scanner version
      Revert "build: check wayland-scanner version"
      meson: use strict wayland-scanner mode
      autotools: use strict wayland-scanner mode
      build: check wayland-scanner version
      protocol: add missing enums for wl_data_device_manager.dnd_action
      build: bump to version 1.17.91 for the alpha release

asynts (1):
      doc: Expand the abbreviation "hw" to "hardware".

orbea (1):
      Add a missing -pthread to fix compile with slibtool.

git tag: 1.17.91
        • Wayland 1.18 Alpha Released With Meson Support, Connection Sharing

          Wayland 1.18 is adding Meson build system support so that Autotools can be dropped in a future release, API support for allowing applications and toolkits to share the same Wayland connection, better handling over file descriptors, and wl_global_remove as a new function for mitigating race conditions with globals. There are also various test improvements, improved documentation, and various other fixes and minor improvements.

        • Linux on Embedded Ryzen with Radeon

          American Micro Devices (AMD) has released the Ryzen processors which works very well with Linux. The embedded processor also contains a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) which is an AMD Ryzen Vega.

          The board I am using is the IBase 918f-1605 to install Linux. Linux can be installed from a stock ISO, but the system does not perform as well unless using a special Linux kernel from AMD. It also helps to have the proper GPU driver for performance. Stability is much better with the AMD kernel they provide on their website.

        • Keith Packard Talks About The Early Politics Of X Window System + Code Licensing

          At last week’s Linux.Conf.Au conference was an interesting presentation by longtime X developer Keith Packard on the early days of the pre-X.Org X Window System, the collapse of Unix, and how his views formed on copyleft licenses for building thriving communities.

          Keith’s LCA 2020 presentation is focused on the X happenings largely during the 80′s and very early 90′s. Keith’s involvement goes back to the 80′s during which he was employed at MIT as part of the X Consortium.

        • Keith Packard: lca2020

          I just got back from linux.conf.au 2020 on Saturday and am still adjusting to being home again. I had the opportunity to give three presentations during the conference and wanted to provide links to the slides and videos.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • The Mozilla Developer Roadshow: Asia Tour Retrospective and 2020 Plans

            November 2019 was a busy month for the Mozilla Developer Roadshow, with stops in five Asian cities —Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Singapore, and Bangkok. Today, we’re releasing a playlist of the talks presented in Asia.

            We are extremely pleased to include subtitles for all these talks in languages spoken in the countries on this tour: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, as well as English. One talk, Hui Jing Chen’s “Making CSS from Good to Great: The Power of Subgrid”, was delivered in Singlish (a Singaporean creole) at the event in Singapore!

            In addition, because our audiences included non-native English speakers, presenters took care to include local language vocabulary in their talks, wherever applicable, and to speak slowly and clearly. We hope to continue to provide multilingual support for our video content in the future, to increase access for all developers worldwide.

          • CRLite: Speeding Up Secure Browsing

            CRLite pushes bulk certificate revocation information to Firefox users, reducing the need to actively query such information one by one. Additionally this new technology eliminates the privacy leak that individual queries can bring, and does so for the whole Web, not just special parts of it. The first two posts in this series about the newly-added CRLite technology provide background: Introducing CRLite: All of the Web PKI’s revocations, compressed and The End-to-End Design of CRLite.

            Since mid-December, our pre-release Firefox Nightly users have been evaluating our CRLite system while performing normal web browsing. Gathering information through Firefox Telemetry has allowed us to verify the effectiveness of CRLite.

          • Niko Matsakis: Async Interview #5: Steven Fackler

            Hello! For the latest async interview, I spoke with Steven Fackler (sfackler). sfackler has been involved in Rust for a long time and is a member of the Rust libs team. He is also the author of a lot of crates, most notably tokio-postgres.

            I particularly wanted to talk to sfackler about the AsyncRead and AsyncWrite traits. These traits are on everybody’s list of “important things to stabilize”, particularly if we want to create more interop between different executors and runtimes. On the other hand, in [tokio-rs/tokio#1744], the tokio project is considering adopting its own variant traits that diverge significantly from those in the futures crate, precisely because they have concerns over the design of the traits as is. This seems like an important area to dig into!

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • Acculturation Guide

          The Acculturation Guide is a hands-on “boot camp” for those interested in the configuration, administration and operation of applications on YottaDB. This file is the script (or workbook) for the workshop, consisting of the exercises below.

          At the end of these exercises, you should have a basic working knowledge of the essential aspects of YottaDB Administration and Operation. While this workshop alone will not by any means make you a YottaDB expert, the basic working knowledge it will give you will help you to quickly understand the concepts explained in the user documentation and put you on the path to becoming an expert.

          The workshop is not a course in programming with YottaDB. Familiarity with Linux® (or at least UNIX®) will allow you to move faster through the material, but is not absolutely required. If you have no experience whatsoever with Linux or UNIX, supplementary tutorial material on the side will increase your level of comfort.

        • Where InfluxDB time series database is going

          Paul Dix: So in mid-2012, I started this company and basically we wanted to build a SaaS [software as a service] product for doing real-time metrics and monitoring. Initially my idea was I wanted to do anomaly detection and machine learning on data sets, but to build that we first had to build all the infrastructure, so we could collect time series data at scale and query it.

          Fast forward, basically another year, and we went to Y Combinator, we did the winter of 2013 batch and this product wasn’t really taking off. But I could see that there was something from an infrastructure perspective. We did have some customers paying us and I talked to them, asked why they were paying us. They told us that they were using our product as a time series platform.

          So we pivoted and the goal was initially to build a database, but that later morphed into being an entire platform for working with time series data. My goal was to build something that was generally useful for developers to create their applications with.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Accessibility checker and support for PDF/UA specs

          PDF/UA or ISO 14289 is a specifications that defines the requirements for accessibility in a PDF document. The specification defines the required structure and formatting of the document (also refers to WCAG specification from W3C for use on the web) and PDF features, which should be enabled or disabled so the document is better suited for accessibility (for example PDF tags are required).

          Thanks to the Dutch Standardisation Forum for financially sponsoring and Collabora Productivity in cooperation with Nou&Off for the work on implementing this specification into LibreOffice.

      • BSD

        • FreeBSD is an amazing operating system

          What I failed to realize back then was that FreeBSD was (and it still is) designed as a complete multi-purpose operating system meant to be setup and tuned according to specific use cases. When I occasionally installed FreeBSD it didn’t always perform as well as a default Debian GNU/Linux installation for the same task. Even FreeBSD on my FTP server at home eventually got replaced by Debian GNU/Linux because FreeBSD had to be rebooted every third day or so otherwise the performance degraded a lot. Debian on the other hand performed without any “hick-ups”.

          Later in the years to come GNU/Linux also got better hardware support, and often when I wanted to install FreeBSD some stupid hardware didn’t work. Hardware was very expensive back then and I didn’t have the option to purchase hardware that I knew would work on FreeBSD. All of these issues eventually made me use GNU/Linux more than FreeBSD. Today this is no longer a problem as FreeBSD has great support for most modern hardware.

          Later I discovered and learned about many of the tuneable options and specific settings in FreeBSD, which makes it possible for the system administrator to tailer FreeBSD to his specific needs. I eventually ended up using FreeBSD as my main desktop computer for a very long time.

          Some of the things I love about FreeBSD are: [...]

        • u2k20 Hackathon Report: Alexandr Nedvedicky on PF anchors work

          Looking back everything could have be done with simple one-liner diff, which was just good enough for my particular use case. But the diff itself would not bring much improvement to pf(4). It feels so good to see, how quite a few people helped me to put stuff in shape, which brings us one step closer towards perfect pf(4).

        • u2k20 Hackathon Report: Tracey Emery on GotWeb

          Stefan Sperling and I started a discussion in November about a CGI program, which would work in httpd(8), use the Game of Trees library along with the kcgi library by Kristaps Dzonsons, to display repository information in a browser. I was getting frustrated with working on my own project and was looking for something else to hack on. So, I told Stefan that I’d take a crack at Gotweb.

        • Why you should migrate everything from Linux to BSD

          A Linux distribution is a collection of tools written by different groups of people, often with conflicting interests and priorities, and because of this fragmented structure of the GNU/Linux operating system, the project as a whole is rapidly spinning out of control as it gets pushed around by commercial interests.

          Even the best GNU/Linux distributions, such as Debian GNU/Linux and Arch Linux, that are still driven by Open Source enthusiasts, are not immune to this problem because they still depend heavily on the fragmented tools.

          In my article The real motivation behind systemd I have previously written about how the primary reason for developing systemd is Red Hat’s interests in embedded devices. Initially systemd was released as a new init system, but it has slowly grown into what Poettering describes as “a suite of software that provides fundamental building blocks for a Linux operating system.” This is by design, not by coincidence.

        • Why you should migrate everything from Linux to BSD – part 2

          It is correct that Netflix is one of the biggest commercial contributors to FreeBSD, but this has nothing to do with “hijacking” as in the Linux world. Netflix is contributing all the improvements they make on FreeBSD back to the project. All the performance enhancements they have made has been contributed back to FreeBSD. This is very beneficial for FreeBSD.

          But Netflix is in no way trying to influence the FreeBSD project or trying to “hijack” FreeBSD. They don’t need to. The BSD license makes it possible for Netflix to do whatever they want with FreeBSD, and they could easily just use FreeBSD without contributing anything back. However, Netflix has decided to give something back to the project and the least they could do was to contribute the improvements they have made.

          With regard to the services that Netflix provides and their so-called DRM content that can only be played using their proprietary application, and other proprietary project based upon FreeBSD, then that has no influence on FreeBSD, and that has absolutely nothing to do with “hijacking”. None of these projects are affecting FreeBSD.

          [...]

          With the recent forced adoption of DRM going into the Linux kernel, and Linus Torvalds several detached statements from reality, and his complete disregard for many of the important matters in the Linux world, where he clearly doesn’t care about how the companies are affecting the development (lots of bloatware), the future of the Linux kernel doesn’t look bright, not from a privacy perspective and not from a security perspective.

      • Programming/Development

        • 9 favorite open source tools for Node.js developers

          I recently read a survey on StackOverflow that said more than 49% of developers use Node.js for their projects. This came as no surprise to me.

          As an avid user of technology, I think it’s safe to say that the introduction of Node.js led to a new era of software development. It is now one of the most preferred technologies for software development, right next to JavaScript.

        • Operator pattern: REST API for Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift

          In this article, we will see a similar pattern when writing the REST API in any known framework vs. writing an Operator using Kubernetes’ client libraries. The idea behind this article is not to explain how to write a REST API, but instead to explain the internals of Kubernetes by working with an analogy.

        • Rust framework dev says ‘I’m done with Open Source’…has second thoughts

          The main developer behind a Rust actor framework pulled the code behind the project in apparent protest against an “unsafe sh*tstorm” against him last week.

          And while the coder in question now appears to have nominated new leadership to continue the project, the apparent “ragequit” has prompted questions about the dynamics within the open source community.

          [...]

          “You could notice after each unsafe shitstorm, I started to spend less and less time with the community,” he continued. “You felt betrayed after you put so much effort and then to hear all this sh*t comments, even if you understand that that is usual internet behavior. Anyway, removing issue was a stupid idea. But I was pissed off with last two personal comments, especially while sitting and thinking how to solve the problem. I am sorry for doing that.” [SIC]

        • How to Write and Run a C Program in Linux

          Linux is becoming programming heaven for developers, being an open-source and free operating system. Turbo C compiler is already an old approach to compile programs so let us programmers move to Linux for a new programming environment. In this article,

        • TechWiser’s giant Raspberry Pi AirPod speaker (and more)

          YouTube is a haven for awesome Raspberry Pi projects, and we often spend time scanning through the platform’s wares for hidden gems. One such hidden gem is this video from TechWiser, in which they showcase some of their favourite Raspberry Pi projects:

        • Perl / Raku

          • Springtime in Switzerland

            During the same week I’ll also be giving a half-day seminar on Raku, which has been generously sponsored by EPFL and so will cost nothing to attend. It’s suitable for anyone who would like a quick but comprehensive overview of this remarkable new programming language.

            Besides making the Raku seminar entirely free, SIB/UNIL/EPFL have done an amazing job
            keeping the prices of the other classes extremely competitive…especially if you can claim a plausible association to any academic institution, either as a student or staff member.

            If you’re looking for some training that’s economical, practical, and just plain fun,
            in a location that’s central, civilised, and simply breathtaking, then this week
            in Switzerland might fit just the bill.

        • Python

          • PyCoder’s Weekly: Issue #404 (Jan. 21, 2020)
          • Basic Data Types in Python

            In this step-by-step course, you’ll dig into the basic data types that are built into Python.

          • Python 3.7.5 : Django security issues – part 002.
          • Python 3.7.5 : Use Django Formsets.

            Django Formsets manage the complexity of multiple copies of a form in a view.
            This simplifies the task of creating a formset for a form that handles multiple instances of a model.

          • A quick-and-dirty guide on how to install packages for Python

            When people start learning Python, they often will come across a package they want to try and it will usually start with “just pip install it!” The problem with that advice is it’s a very simplistic view of how to manage packages and can actually lead to problems down the road. And while there is a tutorial on installing packages at packaging.python.org, it might be a bit intimidating for some if they are just looking to quickly get up and going.

            If you just want to start poking at Python and want to avoid the pitfalls to installing packages globally, it only takes 3 steps to do the right thing.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Hunting gremlins

            In the UTF-8 files I audit, the only invisible characters I expect to see… er… not see… are whitespace (hexadecimal 20), horizontal tab (09) and newline (linefeed; 0a). All others I call “gremlins”. They include carriage return (0d), no-break space (c2 a0), soft hyphen (c2 ad) and another 62 control characters.

            Gremlins are a nuisance. One gremlin causes a shell to hang. Less evil gremlins lurk inside apparently OK strings and cause the strings to be processed weirdly. In the file “demo1″, two of the strings contain no-break spaces (in different places), two contain soft hyphens (in different places) and three have no gremlins.

          • A more expressive Bash prompt

            Bash provides some interesting built-in specifiers for the prompt strings PS1.

          • Screenshot your Linux system configuration with Bash tools

            There are many reasons you might want to share your Linux configuration with other people. You might be looking for help troubleshooting a problem on your system, or maybe you’re so proud of the environment you’ve created that you want to showcase it to fellow open source enthusiasts.

            You could get some of that information with a cat /proc/cpuinfo or lscpu command at the Bash prompt. But if you want to share more details, such as your operating system, kernel, uptime, shell environment, screen resolution, etc., you have two great tools to choose: screenFetch and Neofetch.

      • Standards/Consortia

        • ODF 1.3 approved as OASIS Committee Specification

          OASIS is pleased to announce that Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.3 from the OpenDocument TC has been approved as an OASIS Committee Specification.

          The OpenDocument Format is an open XML-based document file format for office applications, to be used for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical elements. OpenDocument Format v1.3 is an update to the international standard Version 1.2, which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 26300 in 2015. OpenDocument Format v1.3 includes improvements for document security, clarifies underspecifications and makes other timely improvements.

          The OpenDocument Format specifies the characteristics of an open XML-based application-independent and platform-independent digital document file format, as well as the characteristics of software applications which read, write and process such documents. It is applicable to document authoring, editing, viewing, exchange and archiving, including text documents, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, drawings, charts and similar documents commonly used by personal productivity software applications.

          This Committee Specification is an OASIS deliverable, completed and approved by the TC and fully ready for testing and implementation.

  • Leftovers

    • Gustave Flaubert Anticipated Our Surreal New Normal

      Are we all trapped in a live-action version of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary”?

    • Science

      • Emil’s Story as a Self-Taught AI Researcher

        For this Humans of Machine Learning (#humansofml) interview, I’m super excited to share my conversation with Emil Wallner. Emil is living, breathing proof that it’s possible to pursue serious AI research as a self-taught creator. Emil is currently doing machine learning research at Google Art & Culture and an independent researcher in reasoning.

      • Pop Culture May Evolve at the Same Rate as Birds and Bugs

        We like to think modern culture moves at a dizzying pace, fueled by a relentless parade of new works of music, literature, and technological design. Change in nature, by contrast, seems to follow a slower trajectory as genetic mutations over generations give animals bigger teeth, say, or a better camouflage. But maybe the opposite is true, and human culture doesn’t move so fast and we consumers are less eager to embrace change than we realize.

        That’s the conclusion of a new study by a group of British researchers who analyzed rates of change for popular songs, English literature, scientific papers, and car design. Using metrics designed by evolutionary biologists, they compared the rates of cultural change to the rates of biological change for finches from the Galapagos Islands, two kinds of moths, and a common British snail. The result was kind of surprising: Biology and culture move at about the same speed.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • America’s Radioactive Secret

        Through a grassroots network of Ohio activists, Peter was able to transfer 11 samples of brine to the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University, which had them tested in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh. The results were striking.

        Radium, typically the most abundant radionuclide in brine, is often measured in picocuries per liter of substance and is so dangerous it’s subject to tight restrictions even at hazardous-waste sites. The most common isotopes are radium-226 and radium-228, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires industrial discharges to remain below 60 for each. Four of Peter’s samples registered combined radium levels above 3,500, and one was more than 8,500.

        “It’s ridiculous that these drivers are not being told what’s in their trucks,” says John Stolz, Duquesne’s environmental-center director. “And this stuff is on every corner — it is in neighborhoods. Truckers don’t know they’re being exposed to radioactive waste, nor are they being provided with protective clothing.

      • WHO Reports Reveal Weak Pipeline for Antibiotic Agents

        The Director-General of WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that “[n]ever has the threat of antimicrobial resistance been more immediate and the need for solutions more urgent,” adding that “[n]umerous initiatives are underway to reduce resistance, but we also need countries and the pharmaceutical industry to step up and contribute with sustainable funding and innovative new medicines.” WHO also pointed out that research and development for antibiotics is primarily driven by small- or medium-sized enterprises, and that large pharmaceutical companies continue to exit the field of antibiotic research.

        [...]

        WHO Assistant Director-General for Antimicrobial Resistance, Hanan Balkhy, stated that “[i]t’s important to focus public and private investment on the development of treatments that are effective against the highly resistant bacteria because we are running out of options.” WHO also noted that with respect to antibiotic research and development, WHO and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) have established the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP), a non-profit research and development organization that is working with more than fifty public and private sector partners in twenty countries to accelerate the development of new and improved antibiotics to tackle drug-resistant infections. GARDP’s goal is to deliver five new treatments by 2025.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Cops: Waze App Directs Casino-Bound Drivers Into Wilderness

            “The address on the ad lists 1 Borgata Way in Atlantic City NJ, which is correct, the location pinned with the ad is actually in the middle of the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area, near Lake Success.”

          • Senators to Trump administration: Protect small businesses from Iranian [cracking] threat [iophk: Windows TCO]

            The advisory from DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned of Iran’s history of “disruptive and destructive cyber operations against strategic targets” and advised U.S. organizations to consider whether they make an attractive target for the Iranians. According to the FBI, those potential private-sector targets include cleared defense contractors.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Verizon Launches New Private Search Engine In Hopes You’ve Forgotten Its Terrible Track Record On Privacy

              We’ve noted for some time now how Verizon desperately wants to pivot from dull old broadband provider to sexy, Millennial-focused, video advertising juggernaut. To accomplish this task, Verizon acquired both Yahoo and AOL, smushed them together, then hoped this would be enough to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook. The effort distracted the company from upgrading or repairing much of its fixed-line broadband footprint, since investing in networks isn’t profitable enough, quickly enough, for many on Wall Street.

            • California’s Ban Of Facial Recognition Tech Killed Off San Diego’s Mostly Useless Biometric Program

              California’s ban on use of facial recognition tech by law enforcement showed the state’s government is willing to get out ahead of potential privacy issues. The tech is as popular as it is unproven. Law enforcement agencies strongly believe facial recognition will help it apprehend criminals more efficiently, but the available data simply doesn’t back up this belief.

            • 4000 “smart” streetlights in San Diego contain always recording cameras and microphones

              As you walk down the street, it’s hard to imagine that your privacy could be violated by the street light above you – but in San Diego, California, this nightmare is currently reality. San Diego’s City Council is seeking a moratorium on a contract that allowed General Electric (GE) to install thousands of surveillance cameras and microphones in city street lights, and sell the data collected from these cameras and microphones to third parties. The Union Tribune also found that San Diego’s city council had approved police access to these cameras and microphones.

            • Go read this NYT expose on a creepy new facial recognition database used by US police

              Hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the US have started using a new facial recognition system from Clearview AI, a new investigation by The New York Times has revealed. The database is made up of billions of images scraped from millions of sites including Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo. The Times says that Clearview AI’s work could “end privacy as we know it,” and the piece is well worth a read in its entirety.

              The use of facial recognition systems by police is already a growing concern, but the scale of Clearview AI’s database, not to mention the methods it used to assemble it, is particularly troubling. The Clearview system is built upon a database of over three billion images scraped from the internet, a process which may have violated websites’ terms of service. Law enforcement agencies can upload photos of any persons of interest from their cases, and the system returns matching pictures from the internet, along with links to where these images are hosted, such as social media profiles.

            • Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained – sources

              Apple Inc dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company’s iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

              The tech giant’s reversal, about two years ago, has not previously been reported. It shows how much Apple has been willing to help US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite taking a harder line in high-profile legal disputes with the government and casting itself as a defender of its customers’ information.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Far Right Groups Are Rallying Virginia Counties to Form Militias

        An estimated 22,000 people attended the rally against looming gun restrictions in Virginia yesterday in the state capital of Richmond. The week leading up to it was filled with warnings of potential violence, wild conspiracy theories, threats against lawmakers, and indications that white supremacist groups would attend. Three neo-Nazis were arrested before the event for threats related to it, and the governor passed an emergency decree banning guns inside the rally due to threats. After the buildup, the rally itself was anticlimactic; there were no incidents and only a single arrest. But the events have energized the Patriot movement and militia groups to encourage the formation of new, armed political forms in rural Virginia counties, many of which have vowed to reject the gun restrictions.

      • The Military-Industrial Complex Gets Away With Murder in Contract After Contract

        Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn’t won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. As last year ended, as if to highlight the strangeness of all this, the Washington Post broke a story about a “confidential trove of government documents” — interviews with key figures involved in the Afghan War by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction — revealing the degree to which senior Pentagon leaders and military commanders understood that the war was failing. Yet, year after year, they provided “rosy pronouncements they knew to be false,” while “hiding unmistakable evidence that the war had become unwinnable.”

      • How Corporate Media Feeds America’s Bloodlust

        Even when critical of US actions, media commentary on recent US bombings and assassinations in the Middle East is premised on the assumption that the US has the right to use violence (or the threat of it) to assert its will, anytime, anywhere. Conversely, corporate media coverage suggests that any countermeasure—such as resistance to the US presence in Iraq—is inherently illegitimate, criminal and/or terroristic.

      • The US’s Inalienable Right to Violence

        Even when critical of US actions, media commentary on recent US bombings and assassinations in the Middle East is premised on the assumption that the US has the right to use violence (or the threat of it) to assert its will, anytime, anywhere. Conversely, corporate media coverage suggests that any countermeasure—such as resistance to the US presence in Iraq—is inherently illegitimate, criminal and/or terroristic.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Andy Worthington and Kristina Borjesson Return – The Project Censored Show

        In the second half of the program, journalist and filmmaker Kristina Borjesson summarizes the turns her career took when her investigative work went beyond what her corporate media employers wanted. She also explains her new project, a podcast by and for whistleblowers called The Whistleblower Newsroom.

    • Environment

      • How Long Before the Regime Falls in Iran?

        One man I spoke to believes he knows what will ultimately fire up the opposition to the regime: water. Iran is running out, fast. Nothing to do with climate change, and everything to do with the sort of epic state mismanagement reminiscent of China’s “Great Leap Forward.”

        I learnt this from Nikahang Kowsar. Dedicated Iran watchers know Kowsar as an outsized critic of the regime, a voice amplified by his skill as a political cartoonist. If you’ve ever seen a cartoon about Iran imbued with a brilliant, brutal sarcasm, odds are Kowsar drew it. His work has appeared in prominent outlets around the world, but before he ever picked up his cartoonist’s pen he was a geologist. He was ultimately forced to leave Iran after being imprisoned and interrogated for his cartoons mocking the regime. But before that happened, he told the so-called “moderate” president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, that Iran’s water management practices were going to eventually push the regime off a cliff. Kowsar believes his warning, delivered almost 20 years ago, is about to become a reality. Iran is headed for a drought of biblical proportions, according to him, one that is already underway if you look at rural migration patterns. And continuing regime mismanagement is making it worse: [...]

        [...] Kowsar asserts the people moving to the cities—shantytowns and slums, for the most part—are rural people who can no longer work their land as they’re running out of water. He estimates that Iran has an annual water deficit of close to 20 billion cubic meters of and is making up the shortfall by drawing down the aquifers at a terrifying pace:

      • Greta Thunberg’s Message at Davos Forum: ‘Our House Is Still on Fire’

        Greta Thunberg on Tuesday punched a hole in the promises emerging from a forum of the global political and business elite and offered instead an ultimatum: Stop investing in fossil fuels immediately, or explain to your children why you did not protect them from the “climate chaos” you created.

      • ‘The Driving Force Is to Help Polluters Get Their Permits Faster’
      • The Climate Solution That Could Make Poor Countries Richer

        Californian scientists have just made a case for geo-engineering as a solution to the climate crisis. One stratospheric technology – the reflection of incoming sunlight back into space – could do more than just lower global average temperatures.

      • Energy

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Trump’s Border Wall Is an Environmental Disaster

          Prominent on the list of suspended laws is the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which, until recently, was the nation’s look-before-you-leap conscience. The environmental analyses and impact statements NEPA requires might not force the government to evaluate whether a palisade of 30-foot-high metal posts—bollards in border wall terminology—were really a better way to control drug smuggling than upgrading inspection facilities at ports of entry, where, by all accounts, the vast majority of illegal substances enter the country. They would, however, require those wall builders to figure out in advance a slew of other gnarly questions like: How will wildlife be affected by a barrier that nothing larger than a kangaroo rat can get through? And how much will pumping scarce local water to make concrete draw down shallow desert aquifers?

          The questions get big, fast. One that might look easy but isn’t concerns the flash floods that stream down desert washes. The uprights of the border wall are to be spaced only four inches apart, which means they’ll catch flood debris the way a colander catches spaghetti.

        • Rock Stacks Might Look Great on Your Insta, But There’s a Dark Side to The Magic

          According to Clemann, the problem can present itself even when well-meaning rock-balancers replace the rocks where they originally found them, because even the simple act of removing stones once can be enough to disrupt animals, who may then have to abandon their compromised habitat.

          Another issue is soil erosion, where rock removal exposes previously hidden soil, making it more likely to wash away, which diminishes the land that plants can grow in.

          The disturbances threaten animals in aquatic environments too, just as they do on land.

        • How the #rockstacking Instagram trend is putting endangered species at risk

          “That destroys the burrow system for those lizards and it can knock those colonies out,” he said.

          Damaging, disturbing or destroying wildlife habitat is illegal in Victoria, and carries a maximum penalty of more than $8,000.

          Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning has urged anyone with information about disturbances or destruction of wildlife habitat to report it on 136 186.

        • The Crazy Story of How Florida Panthers Were Saved From Extinction

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Is Hillary Clinton Running for President Again? Sure Seems Like It.

        Did Hillary Clinton become a candidate for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday? Not officially, but I’m pretty damned certain she’s in it now just the same, hoping for a confluence of circumstances that can catapult her to the office she has so spectacularly failed to obtain.

      • The Trump Coup to Come

        America’s political authoritarianism comes in different, yet combined, mutually reinforcing forms. We have the neofascist authoritarianism of the white nationalist Republican Party, its Great Dog-Wagging God in the White House and his cultish, white-Amerikaner base.

      • Planned Parenthood Endorses Challenger to Sen. Susan Collins

        PPlanned Parenthood on Tuesday endorsed a Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, saying Collins “turned her back” on women and citing her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as well as other judicial nominees who oppose abortion.

      • Abuses of Power in Trumpworld and Davos

        One thing he did not say is that the whatever-it-takes abuses of economic and political power such as he and much of his audience are engaged in threaten to destroy capitalism, democracy and the planet.

      • How Trump Manufactured the Hunter Biden-Ukraine Scandal

        Trump’s weaponization of information was complete.

      • Cambodia: Opposition Leader’s Trial Blocked to Public

        Expand

        Cambodian police officers stand guard in front of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court during a hearing of Kem Sokha, the head of the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020. 

      • Saudi Arabian prince reportedly hacked Jeff Bezos’ phone with malicious WhatsApp message

        According to the report, Bezos and the Saudi prince were having a friendly exchange over WhatsApp when the crown prince’s account sent a mysterious video file, after which Bezos’ device was compromised and large amounts of data were transferred off the phone, The Guardian reports. Heir apparent to the Saudi throne, Prince Mohammed was embroiled last year in the controversy over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and has faced growing outcry over his country’s civil rights record.

      • Saudi Arabia calls for probe into ‘absurd’ reports of Bezos phone [cracking]

        “Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos’ phone are absurd,” the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., tweeted. “We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out.”

      • The Referees Have Taken Trump’s Side

        I’ve covered sports for 40 years, not politics. Maybe that’s why I’m so bamboozled by this impeachment case in the U.S. Senate. Republicans are going to try Donald Trump with no witnesses? Some jurors have already announced they’re voting not guilty? The guy who makes the rules—Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—gets his marching orders from the accused himself?

        Can you imagine if we did sports like this?

      • The Loser President

        Warren may be ready, and her critique throughout the current campaign—“Call me old-fashioned, but I think the person who gets the most votes should win”—is right. But for the most part, Democrats have been slow to recognize the immediate and long-term challenges they face when it comes to the Electoral College.

        They’re good at griping about the 18th century construct that has cost their party the presidency twice since 2000, but they lack a sense of urgency when it comes to addressing this barrier not just to their own electoral prospects but also to democracy itself. That lack of urgency could give Donald Trump a second term that’s every bit as undeserved as his first.

      • DisruptJ20 Protests Should Be Remembered As Part of the Anti-Trump Resistance

        “I think the majority of J20 participants — which constituted a pretty broad church — wanted to take part in an action that took direct aim at the inauguration, at the grim spectacle of a President Trump,” Natasha Lennard, an independent journalist who also attended J20 as a protester, told Teen Vogue. “The mainstream media largely under-covered the J20 legal case, despite the fact that it constituted a mass rights infringement and prefigured of the sort of escalated anti-protest policing that was to come, around the country, under Trump. Compared to the inauguration ceremony and the Women’s March the following day, the J20 protests themselves didn’t garner much media attention, which was a problem only insofar as mainstream #resistance under Trump was, from the jump, framed as relatively fangless action.”

      • I asked people why they don’t vote, and this is what they told me

        At least 40% to 90% of American voters stay home during elections, evidence that low voter turnout for both national and local elections is a serious problem throughout the United States.

      • Bloomberg says Warren, Sanders don’t ‘know what they’re talking about’ on breaking up big tech firms ‘Breaking things up just to be nasty is not an answer,’ former NYC mayor says

        The multi-billionaire discussed his views on tech policy while sitting in a more than 150-year-old adobe building in Monterey, where he gave a speech to about 200 supporters Friday afternoon. Bloomberg’s trip to California this week was his third swing through the state in less than two months as a presidential hopeful.

        Wading into another ongoing debate between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., Bloomberg said he thought social media companies should face similar legal requirements as newspapers or other media outlets about the information shared on their platforms.

      • Mike Bloomberg says breaking up tech companies ‘is not an answer’

        But in comments provided to reporters, Bloomberg said of Warren and Sanders: “I don’t think they know what they’re talking about.” According to Mercury News, Bloomberg does support “more limited antitrust enforcement.” He also appears to be in favor of reviewing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a foundational internet law that protects social media companies from being liable for the content posted by users on its platforms.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Crimea Bans for Journalists Are Choking the Truth

        Russian authorities barred an independent Ukrainian journalist, Taras Ibragimov, from entering Crimea last weekend and issued him a 34-year-ban. Ibragimov had traveled regularly to Crimea the past four years, and in May 2019 joined me in Crimea as a videographer, when I interviewed dozens of lawyers and family members of Crimean Tatars jailed on bogus terrorism charges.

        Shortly before that trip in May last year, I had heard that Ibragimov was also heading to Crimea for Radio Liberty. He and I met for coffee in Kyiv, and I asked whether he could spare a few days to film my interviews. He said that as long as he was allowed entry, finding the time wouldn’t be a problem, because his Crimea trips always lasted at least a month. “I never know whether I’ll actually get past Russian security officers. So when I’m in, I try to do loads of work because next time I go, they can turn me back and ban me.”

      • Anti-LGBT Bolsonaro Government Targets Glenn Greenwald With Criminal Charge For Exposing Their Corruption

        Journalist Glenn Greenwald, a co-founder of The Intercept, was charged with a cyber crime by the right-wing government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. It was retaliation for the investigative journalism he spearheaded in 2019 that exposed rampant corruption among Bolsonaro officials.

        The charge was also a product of the Bolsonaro government’s religious fanaticism, especially since Bolsonaro and other officials have mounted anti-LGBT attacks on Greenwald and his husband, David Miranda, a representative in Brazil’s Congress.

      • Journalist Glenn Greenwald charged with cybercrimes for reporting in Brazil

        Greenwald posted a response to the charges on Twitter, calling the move “an attack on Brazilian democracy” and stating that his reporting would continue. “The Bolsonaro government and the movement that supports it has made repeatedly clear that it does not believe in basic press freedoms, he wrote — citing an earlier police report concluding that “I exercised extreme caution and professionalism as a journalist never even to get close to any criminality.”

      • Free Press Advocates Decry Cybercrime Charges Against Glenn Greenwald

        The leak in question revealed unethical behavior and conflicts of interest among some law enforcement officials in Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. The criminal complaint, first reported by The New York Times, claims that the leak and Greenwald’s reporting undermined the credibility of a government anticorruption organization. More importantly, it accuses Greenwald of actively participating in the illegal interception of the leaked messages rather than simply reporting on data he was given.

        Greenwald issued a stern response in a statement to the Daily Beast on Tuesday. “I did nothing more than do my job as a journalist—ethically and within the law,” Greenwald wrote. “We will not be intimidated by these tyrannical attempts to silence journalists.”

      • Outrage As Brazil Accuses Glenn Greenwald Of Hacking Crimes

        In an official statement, Brazil’s Ministério Público Federal said Greenwald was one of seven accused of breaking into the cellphones of Brazilian officials. Prosecutors have claimed Greenwald helped and encouraged others as they hacked phone and snooped on Telegram chats related to Operation Car Wash, Brazil’s largest ever corruption investigation. The other six individuals have been accused of money laundering offences alongside the cybercrime allegations; Greenwald hasn’t been charged with those, however. According to the BBC, Greenwald hasn’t yet been officially charged at all, but authorities are seeking to do so once a judge has given approval.

      • Glenn Greenwald: Brazil accuses journalist of cyber-crimes

        Mr Greenwald has been accused of “helping guiding and encouraging” a criminal group that hacked into the phones of Brazilian officials.

        The journalist had recently published stories describing private messages between public prosecutors.

        At this point, federal public prosecutors have proposed the charges.

        However, a judge still needs to decide whether to formally indict him.

      • Why Brazil’s Charges Against Glenn Greenwald Are an ‘Absolute Red Alert’

        The Brazilian government has long tried to shut up Glenn Greenwald for committing acts of journalism, like an investigation last summer that implicated high-ranking government officials in corruption.

        But prosecutors in the country took their efforts to a new level on Tuesday with hacking charges. Press freedom groups fear the allegations are an attempt to criminalize routine reporting methods.

        Officials in Brazil’s Public Ministry allege that Greenwald’s attempts to coax information out of sources and coach them on covering their tracks made him part of a “criminal organization” that hacked public officials’ phones. The information those sources gleaned from private chats and documents exposed the shady dealings of an anti-corruption task force that helped pave the way for President Jair Bolsonaro’s rise.

        The charges fit within a larger pattern of Trumpian antagonism toward the news media from Bolsonaro. A spokesperson for The Intercept, Greenwald’s publication, condemned the legal action as a “blatantly politically motivated” attack in a statement to VICE News Tuesday.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Dubious Charges Against Tanzanian Activist

        The United Nations and the African Union have been urged to intervene on behalf of Tito Magoti, a Tanzanian human rights activist, who was arrested on December 20, 2019 in Dar es Salaam. 28 civil society groups have written a letter to voice their concerns that Magoti’s detention is in retaliation for his legitimate human rights work.

        Magoti, 26, works for the nongovernmental Tanzanian organization Legal and Human Rights Center (LHRC). The organization said he was arrested after being lured to a meeting by text messages from a friend, Theodory Giyan, who had himself been arrested the day before. As he arrived at the meeting place, four unidentified men handcuffed and blindfolded Magoti, drove him away, and held him at several different police stations. LHRC says the police questioned Magoti about his online activism and his involvement with other rights activists and opposition members.

      • From Chile to China: Human Rights Weekend 2020

        Program Human Rights Weekend 2020

      • Bangladesh Lawmakers Openly Call for Extrajudicial Executions

        In Bangladesh, people who question the government’s increasingly authoritarian rule fear they may be next in line to be killed or forcibly disappeared by security forces. When Human Rights Watch raises this with the Bangladeshi authorities, they are quick to dismiss the reports as lies made up by the political opposition.

        Yet extrajudicial killings have become so established in Bangladesh that some legislators openly recommended them as a way of dealing with the country’s high levels of rape when protesters mobilized over the recent rape of a 21-year-old student. For instance, according to media reports, one legislator told parliament that “the only remedy is killing rapists ‘in crossfire’ after their confession.” 

      • Mexico Begins Flying, Busing Migrants Back to Honduras

        Hundreds of Central American migrants who entered southern Mexico in recent days have either been pushed back into Guatemala by Mexican troops, shipped to detention centers or returned to Honduras, officials said Tuesday. An unknown number slipped past Mexican authorities and continued north.

      • Papuans on trial in Indonesia ordered to remove penis gourds

        “We have been the victims of racism outside the court and now we have fallen victim to racism inside the court,” he said.

        Papua has seen several spasms of violence in recent months, including deadly unrest partly linked to a fresh push for independence and racism against Papuans, who have been called monkeys and other slurs.

        Ethnically Melanesian, most Papuans are Christians who have few cultural links to Muslim-majority Indonesia.

        [...]

        A former Dutch colony, Papua came under Indonesian control in the 1960s after a self-determination vote widely viewed as a sham.

      • Northeastern student from Iran removed from US before court hearing, won’t be returned

        “There seems to be some history of CBP ignoring district court orders, which should concern the court,” Doyle said during the hearing. She asked that Hossein Abadi be returned to the US, but the judge said there was little he could do now that the student was gone.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Keynote: DNS Wars – Episode IV — A New Bypass

        Since commercialization and privatization of the Internet first began in the 1990′s, there has been a steady push to move access side DNS (called “recursive”) away from customer networks and towards first ISP’s and later Cisco, Google, IBM, and Cloudflare. What are the real motives for this trend? What are the risks and costs, and who pays them? Dr. Vixie has worked in the DNS field since 1989 and has invented many of the monitoring and filtering capabilities now used by nearly all DNS services, and he will try to explain what’s happening. Special attention will be paid to the new web-based “DNS over HTTP” or “DoH” protocol now being strongly pushed by Mozilla and others.

    • Monopolies

      • Book Review: Cambridge Handbook of Intellectual Property in Central and Eastern Europe

        Steeped in history and ideology, Central and Eastern Europe is a prime candidate for comparative law studies. Cambridge Handbook of Intellectual Property in Central and Eastern Europe is a mind-expanding and necessary book that attempts to make sense of IP on the other side of the Berlin wall, one country at a time. This vibrant collection of 20 essays by experts from a wide range of backgrounds tackles topics such as incentivising creation when private property ownership is prohibited, implementing ambitious author’s rights in legal systems that lack IP case law, and coping with fellow EU members and their policies. They gracefully confront our default Western-centric mindset. On a more fundamental level, this book is about an inevitable goal of humanity: the promotion of the growth of what is valuable.

      • Patents

        • Abridged EPO appeal decisions

          T1687/17 is an early example of what an abridged decision under the new Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) looks like: very short and published only a week after the oral proceedings, thereby also being timely in accordance with Art. 15(9) RPBA.

          The current RPBA contain new provisions allowing the Boards to issue written decisions in abridged form, either with consent of the parties for decisions given at oral proceedings or – if agreeing with the first instance decision – without needing consent of the parties. New Art 15(9) RPBA also introduces the somewhat vague requirement for decisions to be issued “in a timely manner”. Readers will recall that appeal decisions can sometimes take months to be issued in writing following oral proceedings, so it is good to have an early example of just how quickly decisions might be issued with the abridged format.

          The decision notes that the parties confirmed at the hearing that no new arguments were raised during the appeal proceedings – providing a clear reasoning for the abridged form of the decision. The reasoning of the Board merely refers to passages from the first instance decision and even the minutes of the decision are rather short, referring again to the facts put forward in the appealed decision.

          Parties to appeal, especially appellants, should take note that the Boards are ready to use the new RPBA to provide speedy decisions on appeals and will not hesitate to call out repetitive argumentation by representatives. In this case, the Board made use of Art. 15(8) RPBA, thereby not needing explicit consent of the parties to abridge the decision. Nevertheless, in case the Board seeks consent of parties (Art. 15(7) RPBA) to make an abridged decision then a legitimate reason to have an unabridged decision should ideally be at the ready. Also for third parties who may be watching in the wings, a legitimate reason can be indicated to try and force an unabridged decision on an appeal case, although it is not apparent at what stage such indication should be filed to avoid an abridged version.

      • Copyrights

        • Radiohead launched an online ‘public library’ with rare tracks and a printable library card

          The archive launched today, and in a brief introduction, the band describes it as “an online resource containing videos, music, artwork, websites, merchandise, and assorted ephemera.” It’s very loosely arranged by album, and as NME notes, you can find links to work that’s been historically tough to find online. The four-track Drill was just added to the band’s YouTube channel. TKOL RMX 8, an addendum to the 2011 remix album TKOL RMX 1234567, is back online after its original digital stream went down.

        • No Music Is “Free of Broadcasting Rights”, French Court Rules

          In the world of music licensing, a cautionary tale was recently told by the French Cour de Cassation involving background music, a carpet store and collective management societies.

          Musicmatic France (now Storever France) is a company providing “audio concepts for higher customer satisfaction”, a.k.a. background music in stores. The company rents out audio equipment to stores and streams music adapted to the respective clientele. Musicmatic sources its music from musicians and other right holders under a creative commons licence agreement.

          [...]

          One interesting aspect of this decision is the lack of any discussion of the principle “ignorance of the law is no excuse” [nemo censetur ignorare legem for Kat readers fond of Latin]. French law apparently provides for a mandatory remuneration to be paid by the “user” of the work to the collecting society; thus the obligation to pay this remuneration cannot be overridden by contract.

          Can the user, therefore, assume that a contract concluded with a third party will exempt it from the obligation to pay? Or is there perhaps a specific duty on the licensor to inform the licensee that additional payments to the collecting societies will have to be made? One may assume that in business-to-business transactions, neither party has to inform the other about the existence of statutory rules.

          Under the rule established by this decision, licensing musical works “free of all broadcasting rights” in France makes the licensor liable for additional payments to the collecting societies. Whether this holds true in other European jurisdictions remains to be seen.

        • Meet the Artists Commissioned for the Public Domain Day Celebration

          In order to celebrate the public domain and highlight the work of artists around the world who contribute to the global commons, we are excited to showcase the creative works of six artists during the PDD celebration in Washington, D.C. Following the event, these works will be made available under a CC License or released into the public domain. 

        • Court Sides With Nintendo Over RomUniverse In Attempt To Dismiss The Former’s Lawsuit

          As most of you will know, a year or so ago saw Nintendo suddenly flip a litigious switch and begin going after all the ROM sites that had existed for a decade or more. The timing suggests that the company may have made this move out of a misguided attempt to support its release of several retro consoles that contained many of the games that the public could also simply get for free on these ROM sites. I say misguided because it’s not as though Nintendo’s aggression suddenly made free online ROMs unavailable. They are all still very much there through various means, but Nintendo’s retro consoles sold like gangbusters anyway, because half the appeal in the product is the ease of use and the other half is in having the cool looking retro console next to the television.

01.21.20

Links 21/1/2020: Wine 5.0 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 1:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • What Must be Considered Before Choosing a Container Platform?

        An increasing number of IT groups are incorporating development tools, such as containers, in order to create cloud-native apps that operate in a constant manner across public, private, and hybrid clouds.

        However, the trickiest part is to find the best container platforms for the organization. It is hard to make the correct decisions regarding container orchestration for managing lifecycles of the containers in order to function at scale and accelerate innovation.

        Containers can be Linux

        It is vital for every application to run on Linux since the containers are always running on a Linux host.

        Containers that are used for managing their lifecycles, work best with Linux. However, these days, Kubernetes is the popular container orchestration platform that was built on Linux concepts and make use of Linux tooling and application programming interfaces (APIs) for managing the containers.

        The companies are advised to opt for a Linux distribution that they know and trust before taking any decision on the OS for their container platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), an OS platform, suits well for operating company’s containers as it provides stability and security features simultaneously, allowing developers to be agile.

      • IBM

        • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Enters Beta with Enhanced User Experience, More

          Packed with six months’ worth of updates and bug fixes, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 promises to enhance the user experience by implementing a new way for both new and existing users to register a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, directly from the installer. As such, users won’t have to perform a YUM update after installation to confirm the subscription.

          “Additionally, Red Hat Insights, Red Hat’s proactive management analytics service that helps to keep RHEL systems running at a high level, can be enabled during the installation process. This capability delivers Insights monitoring immediately after the installation is finished,” said Red Hat.

        • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Beta now available

          Today, we’re pleased to announce that the latest beta version of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.2, is now available. Maintaining our commitment to a predictable, six-month release cadence for minor platform releases, RHEL 8.2 Beta is designed to make it easier for IT organizations to adopt new, production-ready innovations faster. This same cadence and engineering process is also intended to help our hardware partners more quickly deliver supported hardware configurations, furthering customer choice for their datacenter estates.

          Beyond the continued benefits of the regular release cadence, RHEL 8.2 drives enhancements to the user experience for both new and existing customers, extends monitoring and performance capabilities and adds new supported developer languages and tools.

        • RHEL gold images in Azure and user experience improvements for Red Hat Cloud Access

          Red Hat’s Cloud Access program is one of the ways that Red Hat helps its customers use their Red Hat subscriptions in the public cloud. In the last few weeks we’ve introduced significant enhancements and new features we don’t want you to miss, including self-service access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) gold images directly in Microsoft Azure, and a number of customer experience improvements.

        • First steps with the data virtualization Operator for Red Hat OpenShift

          The Red Hat Integration Q4 release adds many new features and capabilities with an increasing focus around cloud-native data integration. The features I’m most excited about are the introduction of the schema registry, the advancement of change data capture capabilities based on Debezium to technical preview, and data virtualization (technical preview) capabilities.

          Data integration is a topic that has not received much attention from the cloud-native community so far, and we will cover it in more detail in future posts. Here, we jump straight into demonstrating the latest release of data virtualization (DV) capabilities on Red Hat OpenShift 4. This is a step-by-step visual tutorial describing how to create a simple virtual database using Red Hat Integration’s data virtualization Operator.

        • Never enough: Working openly with anxiety

          I’ve spent most of my career in an organization built on openness and transparency, and yet I have rarely spoken about my mental health and how it might impact my work. In sharing these stories now, I hope to help reduce the stigma of mental health at work and connect with others who may be experiencing similar or related situations. Given the prevalence of mental illness globally, chances are good that if you don’t experience a mental health condition first hand, then you’re likely working on a daily basis with someone who does.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Software Freedom Podcast #4 about REUSE with Carmen Bianca Bakker

        In the monthly Software Freedom Podcast we talk with people who have inspiring ideas about software freedom. In this episode, we talk with Carmen Bianca Bakker about the REUSE project. By this we are covering the very broad topic of software licensing and the problems there, which REUSE is able to solve with three simple steps.
        OPUS FeedMP3 Feed

      • Brunch with Brent: Jim Salter | Jupiter Extras 48

        Brent sits down with Jim Salter, co-host of Jupiter Broadcasting’s TechSNAP and technology reporter at Ars Technica. We explore his relationship with computers via the US Navy, when code has it’s place in either proprietary or open source licensing, the value in being a social gadfly, and Jim’s motivations behind his writing and who he is hoping to reach and inspire.

      • Test and Code: 98: pytest-testmon – selects tests affected by changed files and methods

        pytest-testmon is a pytest plugin which selects and executes only tests you need to run. It does this by collecting dependencies between tests and all executed code (internally using Coverage.py) and comparing the dependencies against changes. testmon updates its database on each test execution, so it works independently of version control.

        In this episode, I talk with testmon creator Tibor Arpas about testmon, about it’s use and how it works.

    • Kernel Space

    • Benchmarks

      • AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Linux Gaming Performance

        As announced back at CES, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is being launched as the newest Navi graphics card to fill the void between the original RX 5700 series and the budget RX 5500 XT. The Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards are beginning to ship today at $279+ USD price point and offers great Linux support but with one last minute — and hopefully very temporary — caveat.

        The Radeon RX 5600 XT features 36 compute units, 2304 stream processors, up to 7.19 TFLOPs, a 1375MHz game clock, 6GB of GDDR6 video memory, and a total board power of around 150 Watts. The Radeon RX 5600 XT like the rest of the RDNA/Navi line-up is a 7nm part, supports PCI Express 4.0, and other common RDNA features.

    • Applications

      • Need a distraction-free art application on Linux? Try out MyPaint

        If you have a Wacom-style graphic tablet and you need a simple and distraction-free painting program, MyPaint seems like it could be a really good fit.

        The developer, Martin Renold, says it’s a “fast and dead-simple painting app for artists” and I can certainly appreciate the ease of use to it. Very handy for doing any kind of art really. Perhaps if you’re in the mood for some sketching, mockups or you’re designing art for a game it’s pretty sweet.

        A big new version is currently in testing, with a Beta that was released back in December. This brings with it great AppImage support to run it (hopefully) out of the box on any modern Linux distribution, along with tons of new features for artists like Spectral Paint/Pigment layer and brush mode, Linear blending for non-pigment layers and brush modes, Smudge enhancements, Fullscreen improvements, “fake inputs” for pressure and barrel rotation (allowing on-the-fly expressive adjustments to your brush even while using a mouse) and loads more.

      • bandwhich Shows What’s Taking Up Your Network Bandwidth On Linux And macOS

        This tool’s main purpose is to shows what is taking up your bandwidth. It was originally called “what”, but its name was changed to bandwhich about 3 weeks ago.

        bandwhich is able to show the current network utilization by process, connection and remote IP/hostname by sniffing a given network interface and recording the IP packet size, cross-referencing it with the /proc filesystem on Linux and lsof on macOS. Also, the tool attempts to resolve the IP addresses to their host names in the background, using reverse DNS “on a best effort basis”; this can be disabled using the -n / –no-resolve option.

        By default, bandwhich runs in interactive mode and it has 3 panes that show: network utilization by process name, utilization by connection, and utilization by remote address. Because bandwhich has a responsive terminal user interface, the terminal window in which you run bandwhich must be large enough for these 3 panes to be displayed – depending on the window width and/or height, only one or two of these panes may be shown.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Wine 5.0 Released

        The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 5.0 is now available.

        This release represents a year of development effort and over 7,400 individual changes. It contains a large number of improvements that are listed in the release notes below. The main highlights are:

        – Builtin modules in PE format.
        – Multi-monitor support.
        – XAudio2 reimplementation.
        – Vulkan 1.1 support.

        This release is dedicated to the memory of Józef Kucia, who passed away in August 2019 at the young age of 30. Józef was a major contributor to Wine’s Direct3D implementation, and the lead developer of the vkd3d project. His skills and his kindness are sorely missed by all of us.

      • Wine release 5.0
        What's new in Wine 5.0
======================


*** PE modules

- Most modules are built in PE format (Portable Executable, the
  Windows binary format) instead of ELF when the MinGW compiler is
  available. This helps various copy protection schemes that check
  that the on-disk and in-memory contents of system modules are
  identical.

- The actual PE binaries are copied into the Wine prefix instead of
  the fake DLL files. This makes the prefix look more like a real
  Windows installation, at the cost of some extra disk space.

- Modules that have been converted to PE can use standard wide-char C
  functions, as well as wide-char character constants like L"abc".
  This makes the code easier to read.

- Not all modules have been converted to PE yet; this is an ongoing
  process that will continue during the Wine 5.x development series.

- The Wine C runtime is updated to support linking to MinGW-compiled
  binaries; it is used by default instead of the MinGW runtime when
  building DLLs.


*** Graphics

- Multiple display adapters and monitors are properly supported,
  including dynamic configuration changes.

- The Vulkan driver supports up to version 1.1.126 of the Vulkan spec.

- The WindowsCodecs library is able to convert more bitmap formats,
  including palette-indexed formats.


*** Direct3D

- Fullscreen Direct3D applications inhibit the screensaver.

- DXGI swapchain presents inform the application when the
  corresponding window is minimized. This typically allows
  applications to reduce CPU usage while minimized, and is in some
  cases required to allow the application window to be restored again.

- Switching between fullscreen and windowed modes using the standard
  Alt+Enter combination is implemented for DXGI applications.

- The following features are implemented for Direct3D 12 applications:
  - Switching between fullscreen and windowed.
  - Changing display modes.
  - Scaled presents.
  - Swap intervals.
  These features were previously already implemented for earlier
  versions of the Direct3D API.

- The handling of various edge cases is improved. Among others:
  - Out of range reference values for the alpha and stencil tests.
  - Sampling 2D resources with 3D samplers and vice versa.
  - Drawing with mapped textures and buffers.
  - Usage of invalid DirectDraw clipper objects.
  - Creating Direct3D devices on invalid Windows, like the desktop
    window.
  - Viewports with a minimum Z larger than or equal to the maximum Z.
  - Resources bound through both shader-resource views and
    render-target or depth-stencil views at the same time.
  - Blits between formats with and without alpha components.
  Since well-behaved applications don't rely on these edge cases, they
  typically only affect one or two applications each. There are
  nevertheless quite a number of them.

- Dirty texture regions are tracked more accurately for Direct3D 8 and 9
  texture uploads.

- Uploads of S3TC-compressed 3D textures require less address space.
  Since 3D textures can be potentially large, and address space
  exhaustion is a concern for 32-bit applications, S3TC-compressed 3D
  textures are uploaded per-slice, instead of in a single upload.

- The ID3D11Multithread interface is implemented.

- Various lighting calculation fixes and improvements for older
  DirectDraw applications have been made.

- Limited support for blits across swapchains is implemented.

- More shader reflection APIs are implemented.

- The wined3d CPU blitter can handle compressed source resources.
  Support for compressed destination resources was already implemented
  in a previous release.
      • Wine 5.0 Released With Big Improvements For Gaming, Countless Application Fixes

        Wine 5.0 has been released as stable as the annual timed release of this software for running Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms.

        Wine 5.0 is another big step forward in allowing modern Windows applications to run well particularly on Linux and macOS. Thanks to CodeWeavers and funding by Valve for their work on the Wine-based Proton downstream, there are many game fixes that have been incorporated over the past year especially. So Windows games are in better shape plus there is Vulkan 1.1 support, FAudio integration, and countless other improvements.

      • The bottle for Wine 5.0 has officially been popped open as it’s out now

        The day has arrived, the official stable release of Wine 5.0 has arrived bringing thousands of improvements and a bunch of new features.

        [...]

        Wine 5.0 as a release is also being dedicated to the memory of Józef Kucia, a major contributor to Wine’s Direct3D implementation and he lead developer of the vkd3d project who sadly passed away in August 2019.

    • Games

      • New stable Steam Client up, fixing Steam Survey and NFS mounts on Linux, plus other Steam news

        The first stable update for the Steam Client of 2020, pulling in all the recent changes from the Beta versions.

        For Linux users, it’s a good one. It fixes the Steam Library not working on some NFS mounts, fixes a crash while prepare the Hardware Survey and some tweaks to the Steam Runtime system info gathering to only run when needed.

      • If you enjoy Slay the Spire you should try the opt-in Beta for a better experience

        Now that the huge update to Slay the Spire is live adding in The Watcher as the fourth character, Mega Crit Games have also updated their opt-in game engine upgrade Beta.

        For a while now, they’ve had a “libgdx199″ Beta available on Steam to improve the foundation the game is built upon. However, that’s only compatible with save files from the previous major build. A new opt-in Beta “libgdx199.main” has been put up, which is compatible with the current version of the game.

      • Feeling extra competitive? The creative platformer DASH now has online multiplayer

        DASH (Danger Action Speed Heroes), a platformer that’s built for people who love creating and competing across user-made levels just recently expanded with a big new online multiplayer mode.

        It’s one thing to create levels, play those made by others and see the Ghost of players from their times. It’s a whole different experience to run, jump and fail with others right there with you. That’s exactly what the new update to DASH will offer. This Competitive Run game mode might be the first of multiple, with it being a big all-for-one mode too.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE Plasma 5.18 Includes a System Report Tool — But It’s Strictly Opt-In

          So, to help fill in the knowledge gap, KDE is including a new feedback tool in the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.18 release, due in February.

          Now, before anyone gets antsy about it, let me stress that this new data collection feature is strictly opt-in (just like Ubuntu’s system reporting). It’s also up to distribution maintainers to decide whether to package the relevant module as part of the Plasma desktop.

        • Krita Weekly #9

          With everyone getting back into work, we have managed to control the number of bugs. There are 2 fewer bugs than what I reported last time. I know it is still not a lot, but with Dmitry not available for most of the time and team having to divide its time between the resource rewrite & bug fixing, it is pretty good that the number is decreasing.

        • Reference lines and image elements

          We continue working on the plotting capabilities of LabPlot. In the next release we will be adding two new worksheet objects to provide more flexibility and features to create attractive looking visualizations. In this short blog post we want to report on this recent development.

        • Skipping functions from entire directories while debugging (e.g. skip all functions from system headers)

          So, today I got finally so tired of navigating (or explicitly stepping over) all the internal functions in gdb (you know, all the inline functions from STL containers, from Boost, from this pointer wrapper class, that string class) that I finally googled ‘gdb skip system functions’. And guess what, it’s been there since gdb 7.12, from 3 years ago, and it’s almost trivial, just adding something like this to ~/.gdbinit:

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • It’s Not Your Eyes: Why HQ Desktop Backgrounds Look Blurry on Ubuntu

          Well, stop blaming your eyes because it’s turns out that this is a rendering bug — and I’m (personally) pleased to carry word that a fix for the pixel smudging flaw is on the way!

          Regular omg! readers won’t be surprised to hear that the patch in question comes courtesy of prolific Ubuntu developer Daniel Van Vugt (he’s contributed major performance improvements to GNOME Shell and Mutter in the past).

        • GNOME Work Is Underway For Sharper Background Images

          Canonical’s Daniel Van Vugt continues working on a variety of interesting performance optimizations for upstream GNOME as well as other usability enhancements for this desktop environment. One of the latest items being tackled is improving the quality of background images on GNOME.

          Long story short, for where the background/wallpaper image is larger than the desktop resolution, OpenGL is used for downscaling the image. But the existing means of downscaling could lead to blurry images or just not as sharp as possible images. But now with patches pending, the mipmap level is being limited to still downscale with OpenGL but to have the maximum sharpness possible for the display.

    • Distributions

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • Fedora Family

        • Fedora’s Scientific & Audio/Music Spins Could Be On Their Last Leg

          Fedora 32 could be two spins lighter with two little known variants of Fedora Linux set to be removed unless maintainers step up.

          Fedora Jam, a spin of Fedora catered to audio/music enthusiasts, is set to be eliminated with Fedora 32 if their existing or new maintainers don’t step up to work on it. Likewise, Fedora Scientific, a spin catered to shipping scientific software out-of-the-box, is also on the chopping block unless there is maintenance happening.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Ubuntu Linux 20.04 Ditches A Feature That’s Been Annoying You For Years

          You install Ubuntu and there it is: the familiar app dock with Firefox, Thunderbird, Files, the Software Center and the seemingly permanent, much-derided shortcut to Amazon.com. It’s been a fixture on the dock since 2012, but it’s about to make an exit. Yep, when Canonical’s upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) release lands this April, that Amazon icon will be no more.

        • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Is Finally Dropping The Amazon Web App

          Does the Amazon web app also give you a hard time on Ubuntu?

          If yes, then it’s time to cheer for you as the much-awaited Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa” has finally removed the pre-installed amazon web launcher from the dock. Now you won’t have to worry about the affiliated search results from the Amazon in the dash.

        • Canonical debuts Anbox Cloud for highly scalable Android apps

          Canonical Ltd. has come up with a way to distribute compute-intensive applications from the cloud so they can run seamlessly on low-powered Android devices.

          The solution, announced early today, is a platform called Anbox Cloud. It uses Android as a guest operating system to containerize workloads so they can easily be distributed from the cloud, where they run, to any kind of mobile device.

          “The ability to offload compute, storage and energy-intensive applications from devices to the cloud enables end-users to consume advanced workloads by streaming them directly to their device,” Canonical noted in its pitch. “Developers can deliver an on-demand application experience through a platform that provides more control over performance and infrastructure costs, with the flexibility to scale based on user demand.”

        • Anbox Cloud disrupts mobile user experience

          With the launch of the iPhone in 2007, mobile users were introduced to the smartphone as we still know it today: touchscreen, cameras and app stores. The launch of Android spurred low-cost alternatives to the iPhone, bringing the smartphone to the masses. Popularisation and growth in app consumption drove demand for mobile broadband.

          Smartphones, app stores and mobile broadband are the foundations of mobile UX today. However, we’ve been using mobile devices the same way for over a decade now. But, with Anbox Cloud delivered by telcos, this is about to change.

        • Canonical’s New Cloud Tech Can Stream Android Apps and Games to Phones, Desktops, Etc

          We’re also fast becoming comfortable with the notion of game streaming too, thanks to Google Stadia.

          But app streaming?

          Well, that’s the use case that Canonical’s new Anbox Cloud service is taking aim at.

          Why? Who’s it for? How does it work? And where will it be supported?

          For all those details and more, keep reading.

        • Canonical Gets Into Cloud Gaming & More With Anbox Cloud For Cloud-Based Android Apps/Gaming

          Canonical this morning has announced Anbox Cloud for containerized workloads using Google’s Android as the guest operating system.

          Canonical is advertising Anbox Cloud for enterprises wanting to distribute Android-based applications from the cloud. Interestingly, Canonical is also using Anbox Cloud to talk up “cloud gaming” with Android games but equally so also talking up possibilities for enterprise workloads, software testing, and mobile device virtualization.

        • problem-oriented

          Don’t get me wrong; the MAAS doc is pretty solid. I just want to do more with it. As in not just update it for new versions, but make it come alive and show off what MAAS can do. I also want to pick up some of the mid-range applications and situations. MAAS is well-envisioned in large datacentres, and there are obviously hobbyists and small shops tinkering, but that’s not the bulk of people who could genuinely benefit from it. I want to dig into some of the middle-industry, small-to-medium-size possibilities.

          Since I already know something about small hospital datacentres, having worked with them for about ten years, that might be a good place to start. Hospitals from 50-200 beds tend to have the same requirements as a full-size facility, but the challenges of a somewhat smaller budget and lower IT headcount. It really feels like a good sample problem for MAAS.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Nextcloud Hub takes on Google Docs and Office 365

        For years, Nextcloud has set the standard for run-your-own Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) private clouds. Now with the open-source Nextcloud Hub, it’s taking on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) office programs such as Google Docs and Office 365.

        Nextcloud has long offered Collabora Online Office, a SaaS version of the open-source LibreOffice office suite to its customers. Hub, though, is a new product. It combines Nextcloud’s outstanding cloud file system, Nextcloud Files, with Ascensio System’s ONLYOFFICE. Together they are a complete productivity office suite with word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software document management, project management, customer relationship management (CRM), calendar, and mail.

      • ProtonVPN Applications are Now 100% Open Source

        But can you trust your VPN service provider? On more than one occasion, the VPN providers have been caught logging, snooping or sharing data with third party. What to do in such cases?

        I have shared a list of privacy focused VPNs for Linux in the past and ProtonVPN is one of them. The good news is that ProtonVPN has just open sourced all its apps and underwent an independent security audit.

      • Road Map for 2020

        Following the last year’s leitmotif of “bridging worlds”, we turn our attention to the removal of the hurdles faced by aspiring developers and users. During the annual road-map discussion on our mailing list, we identified four tangible approaches towards that goal. First, making Sculpt OS more user friendly. Second, reinforcing trust in Genode by fostering the framework’s high quality. Third, making the tooling around Genode a joy to use. And finally, the illustration of Genode’s versatility in the form practical use cases.

      • Genode OS Draws Up 2020 Plans Of USB Audio, A Kernel Written In Ada

        The Genode operating system framework that’s been going strong for over a decade and continuing to employ a micro-kernel architecture continues to plan for an interesting future.

        The twelve year old Genode OS open-source project has drawn up an interesting road-map for 2020. Some of their plans for this year include:

        - 64-bit ARM (specifically the i.MX8 SoC) support for its general purpose Sculpt OS operating system.

      • FSF

        • Peggy Siegal Sends Her Regrets

          Some, including Siegal, point to sexism. Matt McKenna said Siegal’s gender made her a media target: “That it was a woman who helped Jeffrey Epstein come back? I think that narrative was too seductive for the trades.” Several people I spoke to argued that Siegal would not seem so “brusque” if she were a man and invoked seemingly unsinkable male Epstein associates such as Wexner and Black. But has gender protected those men, or has their status and wealth? Some men have lost prestigious posts: Joi Ito, director of the MIT media lab, resigned after his role soliciting donations from Epstein came to light. MIT computer scientist Richard Stallman stepped down amid controversy over leaked emails discussing a different scientist’s Epstein-related sexual assault allegation. Prince Andrew may have been forced into early retirement. “I think we wonder, are we somehow not giving her the pass that we would give to men?” said the observer who thought the scandal revealed Siegal’s larger issues. “But it’s like, no! She’s a person who had no issue kind of orchestrating the social reinvention of David Koch and Jeffrey Epstein,” this person said, referring to Siegal’s relationship with the late billionaire activist. “That’s a specific person. And sometimes ruthless ambition is loathsome.” There are publicists who rehabilitate criminal reputations for a living, a different publicist noted. But Siegal’s job is to bring people places. “She cultivates an audience. You want to feel good about that person.” When the mix is the message, there isn’t room for any error in judgment.

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Make makes it to 4.3

            GNU Make 4.3 shot out of the door this weekend, promising a raft of bug fixes and a smattering of new features.

            The venerable build automation tool has been around in one form or another for 43 years, which makes the latest version number particularly appropriate. The previous update was 4.2.1 back in 2016.

            New features include grouped explicit targets for explicit rules, via a single invocation. Pattern rules have always had the ability to do this. Also new is an .EXTRA_PREREQS variable, which can either be global, applying to all targets, or a target-specific variable.

            The previous limit of 63 jobs under -jN on MS-Windows has been increased to 4095. That limit includes the subprocess started by the $(shell) function, the make team adds.

            Advertisement
            Meanwhile, error messages printed “when invoking non-existent commands have been cleaned up and made consistent.”

      • Programming/Development

        • Server-side Swift’s slow support story sours some: Apple lang tailored for mobile CPUs, lacking in Linux world

          The Swift programming language has suffered some setbacks in its quest for ubiquity since Apple released it under an open-source license in 2015.

          In December, IBM said it had reevaluated its priorities and decided to back away from server-side Swift development. Then last week, Vapor Cloud, a server-side Swift hosting biz, and a related service called Vapor Red, announced plans to shut down in February.

        • Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn Scala

          Scala is a modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based programming and scripting language that’s released under the Apache License 2.0. It blends functional and object-oriented programming models. Scala introduces several innovative language constructs. It improves on Java’s support for object-oriented programming by traits, which are stackable and cannot have constructor parameters. It also offers closures, a feature that dynamic languages like Python and Ruby have adopted.

          Scala is particularly useful for building cloud-based/deliverable Software as a Service (SaaS) online applications, and is also proficient to develop traditional, imperative code.

          The language helps programmers write tighter code. It uses a number of techniques to cut down on unnecessary syntax, which helps to make code succinct. Typically, code sizes are reduced by an order of 2 or 3 compared to an equivalent Java application.

        • 13 of the best React JavaScript frameworks

          React.js and React Native are popular open source platforms for developing user interfaces (UIs); both rank well for desirability and use in StackOverflow’s 2019 Developer Survey. React.js was developed by Facebook in 2011 as a JavaScript library to address the need for cross-platform, dynamic, and high-performing UIs, while React Native, which Facebook released in 2015, is used for building native applications using JavaScript.

          The following are 13 of the best React JavaScript frameworks; all are open source—the first 11 (like React) are licensed under the MIT license and the latter two are licensed under Apache 2.0.

        • Espacio de Datos: fulldome installation

          Espacio de Datos is a site-specific, immersive audiovisual installation, consisting of a fulldome projection and a spatialized audio track that I created in collaboration with sound artist Mene Savasta for the +CODE 2018 festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was originally comissioned by Cristian Reynaga and Merlina Rañi, organizers of the festival. Espacio de Datos was also shown at the 2018 edition of the Domo Lleno festival in Bogotá, Colombia, the 9th International Festival of Science Visualization in Tokyo, Japan, in February 2019, and finally at the Elektra Festival XX in Montréal, Canada, in June 2019. This blog post goes in more depth into the background for this project, and the process we followed to create its images and sounds.

          [...]

          The sound palette was informed by the thematic field of the data, which contained anonymized clinical information of patients affected by Lassa fever, a virual hemorrhagic fever endemic in West Africa. The tragedy of a deadly disease, reduced to indices and values that are then visualized in a cosmic and minimalistic vision. Mene considered these aspects to construct a noisy and glitchy while simultaneously clean palette, where the tragic element is manifested in the dynamic range, such as contrasts and accumulation.

        • Git Update Improves DevOps with Partial Cloning Feature

          On Jan. 13, Git 2.25 was released, bringing to one of the most commonly used developer tools new capabilities that will help improve performance and overall developer productivity.

        • Perl / Raku

          • 2020.03 Trait::Traced

            Ben Davies has published a module that may well change ad-hoc debugging in Raku: Trait::Traced. It introduces the is traced trait that can currently be attached to any type (class), or to any subroutine or method. So, to find out anything that is happening while executing code in your class Foo, simply do use Trait::Traced and change class Foo { to class Foo is traced {. Yours truly feels this could become a core module rather sooner than later!

        • Python

          • Solving Python Error- KeyError: ‘key_name’

            As per Python 3 official documentation a key error is raised when a mapping (dictionary) key is not found in the set of existing keys.

          • Python’s Execution Time Is Close To C++ And Go Language: Study

            Python is the most preferred programming language for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, but it is also the least preferred for being slow to solve certain problems that involve loops.

            To challenge this fact, researchers at EPFL Computer Vision Laboratory published a report in which they presented the competitiveness of Python against C++ and Go by solving the popular N-queens puzzle.

        • PHP

          • PHP in 2020

            It’s no secret among web developers and programmers in general: PHP doesn’t have the best reputation. Despite still being one of the most used languages to build web applications; over the years PHP has managed to get itself a reputation of messy codebases, inexperienced developers, insecure code, an inconsistent core library, and what not.

            While many of the arguments against PHP still stand today, there’s also a bright side: you can write clean and maintainable, fast and reliable applications in PHP.

            In this post, I want to look at this bright side of PHP development. I want to show you that, despite its many shortcomings, PHP is a worthwhile language to learn. I want you to know that the PHP 5 era is coming to an end. That, if you want to, you can write modern and clean PHP code, and leave behind much of the mess it was 10 years ago.

      • Standards/Consortia

        • Incentivizing Accessible Design

          When scholars contemplate the legal tools available to policymakers for encouraging innovation, they primarily think about patents. If they are keeping up with the most recent literature, they may also consider grants, prizes, and taxes as means to increase the supply of innovation. But the innovation policy toolkit is substantially deeper than that. To demonstrate its depth, this Article explores the evolution of designs that help people with disabilities access the world around them. From artificial limbs to the modern wheelchair and the reshaping of the built environment, a variety of legal doctrines have influenced, for better and for worse, the pace and direction of innovation for accessible design.

          This Article argues that two of the most important drivers of innovation for accessible design have been social welfare laws and antidiscrimination laws. Both were responsible, in part, for the revolution in accessibility that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. Unlike standard innovation incentives, however, these laws operate on the “demand side.” Social welfare laws and antidiscrimination laws increase the ability and willingness of parties to pay for accessible technology, ultimately leading to greater supply. But in doing so, these laws generate a different distribution of the costs and benefits of innovation. They also produce their own sets of innovation distortions by allowing third parties to make decisions about the designs that people with disabilities have to use.

          The law can promote innovation, and it can hinder it. The law’s relationship to the wheelchair, the most important accessibility innovation of the twentieth century, produced both results. Policymakers have choices about which legal incentives doctrines they can use and how they can use them. This Article evaluates those tools, and it provides guidelines for their use to encourage accessible technology in particular and innovation generally.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • Organizing for Innovation: How Team Configurations Vary with Modularity and Breadth of Application

        While innovation has increasingly become a collaborative effort, there is little consensus in research about what types of team configurations might be the most useful for creating breakthrough innovations. Do teams need to include inventors with knowledge breadth for recombination or do they need inventors with knowledge depth for identifying anomalies? Do teams need overlapping knowledge to integrate insights from diverse areas or does this redundancy hamper innovation by creating inefficiencies? In this paper, we suggest that the answers to these questions depend on the characteristics of the technologies, which explains why prior evidence based on single domains or that aggregates all technologies have yielded inconclusive findings. Focusing on the degree of modularity and the breadth of application in patent data, we find that differing team configurations are associated with different technological domains.

    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • Can the Linux Foundation Speak for Free Software?

                The kindest interpretation of this situation is that the Linux Foundation has a public relations problem that it is unaware of and is overdue to correct. A more cynical interpretation is that, from its very start, the Linux Foundation has been a slow coup, gradually usurping an authority to which it has no right. Ask me on alternate days which one I believe.

                Whatever the case, the solutions are the same. A concerted effort to get community members elected to at-large positions might help, although they would still be a minority. Many, too, might not want to legitimize the foundation by participating in it. A more promising response might be to see that community organizations are strengthened to provide a counter-balance, but that would be a slow solution if it worked at all.

                I don’t pretend to have an answer. But I believe that free software owes its success to the fact that it is diverse. Centralizing the authority in the community means an end to free software as we know it — and that is something to be avoided at all cost. The very real good that the Linux Foundation does cannot disguise the harm that its orientation may cause.

        • Security

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (openconnect), Fedora (e2fsprogs, glibc, kernel, and nss), openSUSE (Mesa, php7, and slurm), Oracle (.NET Core, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, and thunderbird), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk, openvswitch, and openvswitch2.11), Scientific Linux (java-1.8.0-openjdk), SUSE (java-11-openjdk, libssh, libvpx, Mesa, and thunderbird), and Ubuntu (libbsd and samba).

          • KeePass2 2.44 Released with True Key 4 CSV Import

            KeePass 2.44 was released a days ago as the latest stable mono password manager. Users of any previous 2.x version are recommended to upgrade.

            KeePass Password Safe was a Windows only password manager. Through the use of Mono, KeePass 2.x works on Linux and Mac OS.

          • Convenience over security: Mobile healthcare apps open up fresh risks to patients’ data

            Healthcare is increasingly going mobile, as hospitals and medical practitioners look to reduce waiting room times by harnessing the benefits of treatment on the go. But patients are often placing too much trust in these apps, which can often expose them to fresh security and privacy risks.

            The rapid growth of mobile healthcare app market was borne more out of necessity than any medical advancement, in the view of Adam Piper, a software developer working in the UK.

            “If I want to get a doctor’s appointment, it has to be today, and by 8.01am all the appointments are gone,” Piper told The Daily Swig.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Nuclear Hubris

        One thing that becomes clear to me when I wander into the world, and the minds, of geopolitical professionals — government people — is how limited and linear their thinking seems to be.

      • Teaching War So That It Matters

        Students need to be taught a more nuanced and complete narrative on the endless wars America has been involved in.

      • Instead of Real-Time Commentary, Eight Common-Sense Reason for Not Going to War with Iran

        In the wake of the assassination of Iranian military leader Major General Qasem Soleimani and nine other people by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq, tensions between the United States and Iran are at their height. The immediate threat of war is real. Real-time news and expert commentary across the nationwide spectrum of media outlets probably have the heads of American citizens spinning. When things are moving so fast, perhaps it is best to move away from the ever-changing and confusing real-time commentary about what should happen and what will happen. Let’s look for the obvious reasons for not going to war with Iran. Here are eight:

      • Worldwide Furor Sparked by U.S. Assassination of Iran’s General Suleimani

        The Trump administration’s January 3 drone missile assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani just outside Iraq’s Baghdad airport brought the world to the brink of yet another catastrophic U.S. war. That the Iranian government would retaliate in a matter of days, if not hours, was unquestioned.

      • Best Enemies Forever: The Iran-U.S. Kabuki Show

        The recent conflict between the U.S. and Iranian regimes brings to mind that hilariously famous scene from Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Dr. Strangelove, with the U.S. president calling the Soviet leader to warn him about a foolish mistake that had led to a hydrogen bomb heading their way from an American base. The President is amiable, polite and concerned-sounding, patient and contrite, approaching the situation with the goal of cooperative damage control.

      • 10 Ways Trump’s Aggression Against Iran Hurts Americans and the Region

        The U.S. assassination of General Qasem Soleimani has not yet plunged us into a full-scale war with Iran thanks to the Iranian government’s measured response, which demonstrated its capabilities without actually harming U.S. troops or escalating the conflict. But the danger of a full-blown war still exists, and Donald Trump’s actions are already wreaking havoc.

      • Nepal Falters on Justice Pledge for Conflict Abuses

        The horrors of Nepal’s ten-year insurgency weigh greatly on the country, with a heavy toll of killings, rapes, disappearances, and torture.

        The conflict ended in 2006 with a peace agreement and since then, Nepal’s leaders have tried their best to shrug off responsibility for crimes committed during the insurgency. Last week, former Maoist leader, and twice prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who used the nom-de-guerre “Prachanda”, blurted out that he can “only” be blamed for 5,000 deaths, while “state forces” had killed as many as 12,000. 

      • Martin Luther King Jr. Warned That the Poor Pay for War With Their Lives

        Sheyda Shadkhoo called her husband from Flight 752 and said she was scared. The U.S. had killed a top Iranian general. Iran vowed revenge. Hassan told her, “Not to worry. Nothing’s going to happen.” As the plane took off from Tehran, two surface-to-air missiles were fired from a nearby military base. Sheyda, along with 175 others, were killed.

      • Gun Control Advocates Counter Pro-Gun Richmond Rally, Lobbying for Regulation and Calling for Nonviolence

        “We’re advocating today, and everyday, honoring Martin Luther King’s legacy with actions that would have been impossible if not for his dedication to justice and nonviolent protest.”

    • Environment

      • It’s Time For Revolution. Our Climate Crisis And Our Future Demands It.

        The crisis that has engulfed Australia this summer means we can no longer afford ‘business as usual’, writes George Grundy. And by ‘business as usual’, he means a complete absence of real leadership, and a free pass for corporations that take and don’t give.

      • If Alan Jones Was A Climate Activist…

        Kirk Owers dreams of a better world. One where shock-jocks surprise not for the depth of their ignorance, but for their inspiring activism, unshakeable commitment to equality and social justice, lustrous beards and sensible shoes. Ever the optimist, Kirk has penned an ‘alternate transcript’ of Sydney radio personality Alan Jones’ response to the climate crisis gripping our nation.

      • ‘Global Precedent’ Set as UN Rules Climate Refugees Cannot Be Sent Back to Life-Threatening Conditions

        Advocates praised the ruling as an “excellent step forward in refugee rights.”

      • The Humanitarian and Environmental Disaster of Trump’s Border Wall

        A new Wild West has taken root not far from Tombstone, Arizona, known to many for its faux-historical reenactments of the old West. We’re talking about a long, skinny territory — a geographic gerrymander — that stretches east across New Mexico and down the Texan Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. It also runs west across hundreds of miles of desert to California and the Pacific Ocean. Like the old Wild West, this one is lawless, save for the law of the gun. But that old West was lawless for want of government. This one is lawless because of it.

      • A Matter of Quality: Air Pollution, Tennis and Sporting Officialdom

        They are disgruntled and have every right to be. Whatever one’s feelings about tennis, expecting athletes to perform in subpar conditions is a rank matter that should see officials taken to task. But administrators of a game are often distant from the practice of the game itself. Being on different, cognitive paths, the players can be left stunned by decisions that have the estranging effect of being made in committee.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Owyhee Initiative Wilderness and Public Lands Deal Critique: Ten Years After

          The Owyhee Initiative (OI) wilderness and public lands legislation passed Congress in 2009 as the Owyhee Public Land Management part of an Omnibus package bill. Hoopla on the bill’s ten-year anniversary generated a spate of articles extolling collaboration and idolizing individual cattlemen. OI collaboration talking points are being parroted by supporters of a new round of Quid Pro Quo wilderness proposals.

        • New forests mean permanently lower river flows

          Planting trees helps to combat the climate crisis by cutting greenhouse gases. But the price can be permanently lower river flows.

        • Some Trees: Los Angeles

          Los Angeles, the desert city, may have more species of trees than any other city in the United States, almost none of which are native to the basin. Thank Luther Burbank, the Johnny Appleseed of southern California. Trees in LA are used to advertise, decorate, disguise, shade, beautify, camouflage, capture carbon, barricade, cool and conceal. I spent an hour or so each day for the last couple of weeks walking the neighborhoods of the Valley and its nearby canyons surveying LA’s mad assemblage of trees, lustily taking root where no trees should grow. – JSC

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Glenn Greenwald Charged With Cybercrimes in Brazil

        Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in the spreading of cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force.

        In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a “criminal organization” that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year.

        Mr. Greenwald could not immediately be reached for comment.

        The Intercept Brasil, a news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, has published several articles based on a trove of leaked messages he said he received last year.

        In a 95-page criminal complaint, prosecutors say Mr. Greenwald did more than merely receive the hacked messages and oversee the publication of newsworthy information.
        Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.”

        [...]

        The articles raised questions about the integrity, professionalism and motives of key members of Brazil’s justice system — particularly of figures directly involved in the investigation of a vast corruption scheme that resulted in the imprisonment of powerful business and political figures.

        Among the revelations in the articles, for instance, were chats in which Sérgio Moro, a former federal judge who handled the prosecution of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2017, provided strategic guidance to prosecutors, in violation of legal and ethical norms. Mr. Moro is now Brazil’s justice minister.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • A Loophole for the Lawless: “Qualified Immunity” Must Go

        On August 11, 2014, officers from the Caldwell, Idaho Police Department asked for Shaniz West’s permission to enter and search her home. They were looking for her ex-boyfriend. West authorized the search and handed over her keys.

      • The Power of Righteousness
      • Qatar: End of Abusive Exit Permits for Most Migrant Workers
      • ‘Sit This One Out’: FBI Slammed for Social Media Shoutout to Martin Luther King Jr.

        “FBI, translated: Of all the people we have wiretapped, blackmailed, and tried to drive to their deaths through suicide, there are none we think more highly of than Dr. King.”

      • In Anti-Communist Fervor, FBI Built a 500-Page File on Coretta Scott King

        The FBI’s aggressive efforts against Martin Luther King Jr. remain a huge stain on the Bureau, and exemplary of the dirty work it carried out during the long 1960s. Less known, but of no less consequence, was the unwanted attention it directed at Coretta Scott King, the wife of the late civil rights leader. Scott King was meticulously monitored by the Bureau, which compiled over 500 pages of records on her. Her file offers not only a clear view of the FBI and government’s preoccupation with Communist infiltration during the Cold War — and the depths the FBI would sink to in attempting to undermine anyone associated with it — but the larger racist ugliness festering in U.S. society, one still very much present.

      • Dr. King Called On Us to Express the Better Angels of Our Souls

        Dr. King’s commitment provides a wonderful example for all of us, but particularly for the young. By the wisdom of his teaching, the justice of his cause, the intensity of his commitment, he helped transform America.

      • Countering Annual Whitewash of His Legacy, Progressives Remember the ‘Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Imperialist’ Martin Luther King Jr.

        King “saw racial injustice, economic injustice, and war as three of the world’s great evils.”

      • MLK and the Ghost of an Untrue Dream

        In his keynote address for the Civil Rights Movement’s March on Washington, DC in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. expressed his despair and disappointment that a century after emancipation, freedom still was not a lived reality in the United States of America:

      • A King Is Born
      • Dr. King’s Radical Revolution Of Values

        Dr. King’s spirit lives on in the new Poor People’s Campaign, and in every place radicals gather to change the world.

      • Martin Luther King and the Black Revolutionary Tradition

        Every year, until The Revolution comes again, the counter-revolution manipulates the historic birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, that so many people fought for, as their symbol of Black “integration” into imperialism and “non-violent” acquiescence to, at best, Barack Obama’s cynical negation of his dream. As Donald Trump has just assassinated Iranian General Quassem Soleimani—with Democratic Party token opposition at best and acquiescence at worse, Dr. King reminds us that “the United States, my government, is the greatest purveyor violence in the world.” As Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren squabble for position and too often, reduce the meaning of life to a barren economic populism, Dr. King reminds us that U.S. society is a moral disgrace and we need a revolutionary movement to challenge its “racism, militarism, poverty, and materialism.” His thoughts offer Democrats and the Movement a challenge. There is an urgent need for a revolutionary worldview to challenge the racism and reaction of Donald Trump’s Make America Great fascist appeal. Meanwhile, on the ground, Black and Latino communities and the world are suffering the worst political, economic, and ecological catastrophe with little help in sight. In this context the most engaged and introspective study of Dr. King’s theory and practice is an urgent corrective than can offer hope and inspiration.

      • The MLK Lesson America Needs Most in 2020

        As we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s natural to remember his courageous advocacy for racial equity. But before he was assassinated, King had also begun to broaden his efforts to unify the around economic justice.

      • Race and Selective Legal Memory: Reflections on Invention of a Slave

        In 1858, the United States Attorney General issued an opinion, Invention of a Slave. Relying on the Supreme Court’s recent declaration in Dred Scott v. Sandford that African Americans were not citizens, he created a formal racial barrier to the patent system, declaring inventions by all African Americans, enslaved and free, unpatentable. Within a few years, legal changes that overruled Dred Scott and abolished the law of slavery rendered the opinion obsolete. This brief opinion became, as far as lawyers and legal scholars were concerned, forgotten. Unlike many overruled opinions dropped from the legal canon, however, Invention of a Slave and the associated story of an enslaved blacksmith who invented an innovative plow have been continuously remembered. Women and men committed to fighting the legacy of slavery maintained both in the collective memory of those seeking full civil rights for African Americans. Our legal forgetting was an act of persistent blindness to their efforts and publications. This Essay excavates the generations of African American writers and activists who have worked to remember the opinion and argues that legal forgetting has carried a cost. Their remembering was not casual storytelling but rather deliberate, strategic, and political. I offer Invention of a Slave as a case study of race and selective legal memory, tracing an unacknowledged color line that demarcates legal memory and the costs of that line. Because of our forgetting, the opinion appears as an obscure part of the antebellum past. When we understand their remembering as a political act, we can see what they have always seen: There is a connection between the patent system and the legal and social definition of citizenship. At a time when the boundaries of citizenship and the contours of who is worthy to be considered an American are hotly contested in ways related to race and ancestry, learning from those who remembered Invention of a Slave offers lessons that link this piece of the past to our present and future, with implications both for the patent system and for our on-going conversation about race, equality, citizenship and the laws that affect them.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Apple Sued for Patent Infringement by Masimo and Affiliate

          Apple contacted Masimo in 2013, the lawsuit alleges. Following that, a series of meetings were held, after which the tech giant hired away important employees at both Masimo and Cercacor. Two notables to depart were Masimo Chief Medical Officer Michael O’Reilly and Cercacor Chief Technology Officer Marcelo Lamego.

          [...]

          The disputed Masimo and Cercacor patents cover noninvasive technologies that use light to monitor aspects of a user’s health. Health monitoring was a novel selling point of the Apple Watch when it was launched.

        • BlackBerry led Canadian tech firms in U.S. patent grants last year

          BlackBerry Ltd. beefed up its patent portfolio last year, leading a list of Canadian technology companies that received new patents in the United States.
          The Waterloo, Ont.-based company received 322 U.S. patents in 2019, according to patent data firm IFI Claims. That’s down slightly from 337 in 2018, but still highest among Canadian firms.

          Other tech players in Canada that added substantially to their patent holdings included OpenText Corp. and Pratt & Whitney Canada. That’s based on research by IFI, which was provided to BNN Bloomberg.

        • US patents hit record 333,530 granted in 2019; IBM, Samsung (not the FAANGs) lead the pack

          We may have moved on from a nearly-daily cycle of news involving tech giants sparring in courts over intellectual property infringement, but patents continue to be a major cornerstone of how companies and people measure their progress and create moats around the work that they have done in hopes of building that into profitable enterprises in the future. IFI Claims, a company that tracks patent activity in the US, released its annual tally of IP work today underscoring that theme: it noted that 2019 saw a new high-watermark of 333,530 patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

          The figures are notable for a few reasons. One is that this is the most patents ever granted in a single year; and the second that this represents a 15% jump on a year before. The high overall number speaks to the enduring interest in safeguarding IP, while the 15% jump has to do with the fact that patent numbers actually dipped last year (down 3.5%) while the number that were filed and still in application form (not granted) was bigger than ever. If we can draw something from that, it might be that filers and the USPTO were both taking a little more time to file and process, not a reduction in the use of patents altogether.

        • Sonos vs. Google: Amazon won patent for ‘distributed speaker synchronization’ four years ago

          Is this why Sonos decided to sue Google rather than going after Amazon?

          Our search of U.S. patent records this afternoon, following news that the high-tech speaker maker is suing the search giant for patent infringement, turned up an interesting and potentially relevant patent that was granted to Amazon in 2016, based on a 2013 patent application.

          Under the title, “Distributed speaker synchronization,” the patent describes a system that uses a “signal synchronization component” to perform calculations “to align signals corresponding to the output audio of the electronic audio devices and then determine a delay for the output audio transmitted from the electronic audio devices with respect to each other.”

      • Copyrights

        • UFC 246 Twitch Piracy Fail Raises Questions For Amateur Pirates & UFC Alike

          The much-heralded return of Conor McGregor this weekend ended in a stunning 40-second victory for the UFC’s biggest star. The event also resulted in one of the biggest piracy fails in recent memory when a Twitch user broadcasting the PPV event illegally managed to expose details of his personal life to more than 130,000 people. This incident and others like it raise questions not only for amateur pirates but also the UFC.

        • New Pirate Sites Line Up to Fill IndoXXI’s Shoes

          Pirate streaming giant ‘IndoXXI,’ stopped offering pirated movies at the start of the year. This left millions of Indonesian pirates without their favorite site. However, according to anti-piracy group AVIA, many others have jumped in to fill this gap. Industry insiders are now calling on the government there to consider criminal prosecutions.

Links 21/1/2020: EarlyOOM Fedora Decision and AMD Zen 3 Microcode

Posted in News Roundup at 5:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Here’s Why Windows 7 Users Should Switch to Linux

      Linux has so many different distros

      Linux Mint and Zorin OS are just a few Linux distros that are thought to be very Windows-user friendly. This means within no time, you should be up and running.

      Other distros like Ubuntu, Suse Linux and offer so much functionality without feeling cluttered.

      Many Linux distros are regularly updated. Microsoft might have stopped updating your Windows but if you switch to Linux, you are assured of regular security and feature updates, regardless of which distribution you choose.

      Also, if you install your applications from a central repository, all your applications will get updated via system updates. This means your whole computer will always be up to date. This eliminates the need to update each application independently.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • The Official Kubuntu ‘Focus’ Linux Laptop Goes on Sale
      • You can buy the official Kubuntu ‘Focus’ Linux laptop now

        Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux-based desktop operating systems in the world. Why? Well, it is easy to use, preloaded with useful software, and has one of the best online communities.

        Not everyone likes the default GNOME desktop environment, however, so some folks opt for different flavors of Ubuntu, such as Xububtu (which uses Xfce) or Kubuntu (which uses KDE Plasma). Speaking of the latter, today, you can buy an official Kubuntu laptop. Called “Focus”. It is an absolutely powerhouse with top specs.

      • MNT Modular, Open Source ‘Reform’ Laptop to Hit Crowd Supply in February

        It’s easier than ever to make open source hardware that doesn’t rely on hardly any proprietary technologies. “Easier than ever” isn’t the same as “easy,” though, which is why it’s taken a few years for the MNT Reform laptop to officially debut. CNX Software reported Sunday that the wait should finally be over soon–the MNT Reform 2 is expected to hit the Crowd Supply crowdfunding platform in February.

        CNX Software said the original MNT Reform was envisioned as a DIY kit for which development started in 2017. MNT sent units to beta testers in 2018, and once it received their feedback, it started work on the MNT Reform 2. Now it’s reportedly set to debut on Crowd Supply in February; its placeholder page can be found here.

      • What you need to know about System76′s open source firmware project

        When you power on your computer, there’s a lot more going on than you might think. One of the most important elements involved is the embedded controller (EC). This is what is responsible for providing abstractions for the battery, charging system, keyboard, touchpad, suspend/resume, and thermal control, among others. These controllers are typically proprietary and usually run proprietary firmware.

        System76 is about to change that paradigm. Recently, the company adopted coreboot for their Galago Pro and Darter Pro laptop models. Now they intend to extend the open source approach to the EC. There is a project associated with Chrome OS devices called Chromium EC that is open source; however, it is only available for Chromebooks and specific EC chips. System76 wanted to supply their customers with an open source embedded controller firmware, too.

    • Server

      • Building a home lab: Sysadmin after dark

        Here at the dawn of the new decade (or, one year from now if you prefer to count from 2021), almost everyone owns and uses a computer—especially if you count smartphones as computers (which they are). System administrators, being employed in the IT industry, typically have at least one personal system (from which they do things like surf the web, purchase things, or access their online banking). They have other personal systems, whether virtual or bare metal hardware, on which they perform system administration functions for themselves in a safe, private environment entirely under their control.

      • IBM

        • Deploy Jenkins Pipelines in OpenShift 4 with OpenShift Container Storage 4

          Jenkins is one of the most important development infrastructure components, but can we make Jenkins pipelines run faster? Using OpenShift Container Storage we can speed up the build time of applications by using persistent storage to save the stateful data of dependencies and libraries, for example, that are needed during compilation.

        • IBM Ceases Work on Server-Side Swift Development

          Swift was originally developed by Apple in 2010 to make it easier for developers to build mobile applications. However, multiple groups, including IBM, have been working to extend Swift for server-side applications, participating in the Swift server workgroup. IBM has also been one of the primary contributors behind the Kitura server-side Swift framework. In late December, after almost four years of development effort, IBM decided to discontinue its server-side Swift efforts.

        • Google offers IBM AS/400 apps new home in its cloud

          Enterprises looking for a way to modernize legacy AS/400 workloads now have a new option: Move them onto Google Cloud Platform.

          Google won’t host your old AS/400 for you, but it is renting time on IBM Power Systems servers, the AS/400’s architectural successors. Its announcement follows a similar one from Microsoft in September.

          [...]

          Its software now runs on IBM i but “it goes back to the heritage of System i and iSeries, and way back to the AS/400 days,” says VAI’s CIO Kevin Beasley. “Now Google hosts IBM i, IBM hosts it, Microsoft hosts it. … Back when we started there weren’t many places that you could actually find IBM i hosted.”

          Thousands of other companies are still running systems built on the old AS/400 architecture, according to all400s.com, a website that tracks job offerings for IT workers with AS/400 skills, prompting the cloud giants to look for ways to serve these businesses.

        • Google Cloud to support IBM Power Systems

          Enterprises looking for a way to modernise legacy AS/400 workloads now have a new option: Move them onto Google Cloud Platform.

          Google will not host your old AS/400 for you, but it is renting time on IBM Power Systems servers, the AS/400’s architectural successors. Its announcement follows a similar one from Microsoft in September.

          At the same time, Google is introducing a Premium Support plan to maintain high-availability services, making the GCP more attractive to CIOs averse to down-time.

        • Red Hat Upgrades Kubernetes Security With OpenShift 4.3

          Red Hat has announced the general availability of the latest versions of Kubernetes-based Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage.

          Red Hat OpenShift 4.3 delivers FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) compliant encryption and additional security enhancements to enterprises across industries. It also features support for remote enablement of Linux Unified Key Setup-on-disk-format (LUKS) encrypted volumes and the ability to encrypt sensitive data stored in etcd. These new features can help protect sensitive customer data with stronger encryption controls, according to the company.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • VIDEO: MX Linux 19 Features and Desktop Tour

        MX Linux is a Linux distribution based on Debian stable and using core antiX components. The distributions MX Tools is very popular among users and combined with other several ready-to-use tools, it is great for users who prefer to tweak their distro to their liking. In this video, we will take you through the features tour showing casing MX Linux 19.

      • 2020-01-20 | Linux Headlines

        Nextcloud follows up with good news for mobile users, breaking a Kubernetes install on purpose, and the amicable resolution for recent concerns in the Rust community.

      • Going Linux #384 · 2019 Year In Review

        In our annual review of the previous year we discuss Larry’s books on Ubuntu MATE, Microsoft’s transformation into an open source company, the distros we’ve tried, and predictions for 2020. We read a couple of emails from listeners and recommend podcasts and Linux applications.

      • File Systems | Which One is the Best? ZFS, BTRFS, or EXT4

        Let’s go over File Systems in this video. We will determine which one is the best ZFS, BTRFS, and EXT4. Each one might work for you based on YOUR needs!

      • Linux Action News 141

        Nextcloud’s new release is so big it gets a rebrand, why Mozilla had a round of lay-offs, and the real possibility of Steam coming to Chrome OS.

        Plus, the sad loss of a community member, and more.

      • Late Night Linux – Episode 81

        The death of Windows 7 presents yet another opportunity for the wide adoption of Linux on the desktop. Is that just wishful thinking? Plus Y2K comes back, bad news for Mozilla, a great new Nexcloud release, and more in the news.

      • Building A Business On Building Data Driven Businesses

        In order for an organization to be data driven they need easy access to their data and a simple way of sharing it. Arik Fraimovich built Redash as a way to address that need by connecting to any data source and building attractive dashboards on top of them. In this episode he shares the origin story of the project, his experiences running a business based on open source, and the challenges of working with data effectively.

    • Kernel Space

      • AMD’s next generation Zen 3 CPU code will be added to the Linux kernel before 2020 starts

        Aside from something unforeseen and catastrophic, Zen 3 is definitely making its debut this year. We know this because AMD managing director Dr. Lisa Su has already indicated this several times, including in an interview in which she promised that “Big Navi” (Navi 20) would also make its debut in 2020. If anyone needs more evidence on this matter, just turn their attention to the underlying code that is added to the Linux kernel.

        Interestingly, patches for the Linux kernel have been great in the past to point to new hardware before it officially launched. And more recently, updates to the Linux kernel have given references to things like Navi 22 and Navi 23, which are two unpublished Navi GPUs. Now Zen 3 is doing a cameo.

      • AMD Includes Zen 3 Microcode In Linux Kernel

        After the success of Zen 2 powered CPUs, Dr. Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO, formally disclosed in his recent interview that AMD is planning to release Zen 3 later this year.

        Additionally, famed Hardware leaker, Komachi Ensaka, also tweeted revealing the line of code added to the Linux kernel for the Family of 19h system, which is the family of AMD CPUs based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture.

      • AMD Zen 3 “Family 19h” Enablement Beginning With The Linux 5.6 Kernel

        With the upcoming Linux 5.6 kernel cycle will be the first of many patches to come surrounding AMD Zen 3 “Family 19h” support.

        So far there haven’t been any AMD Family 19h patches to the Linux kernel besides k10temp driver support. But queued up ahead of the weekend were a couple changes relating to Zen3/19h beginning to collect in ras/core for the Linux 5.6 merge window kicking off in the next week or two.

      • AMD Zen 3 Linux update suggests a radically different CPU design to Zen 2

        The new Linux patch details support for Family 19h of AMD’s processor silicon, which is widely assumed to be a reference to the Zen 3 family given that the Family 17h refers to the current Zen 2 CPUs and APUs. As such this is definitely not the Linux code base getting prepped for the Ryzen 4000 APUs that have been launched at CES, but the Ryzen 4000 CPUs being launched, likely around Computex.

        Confusing? Nah, Ryzen 4000 chips are obviously not the same as Ryzen 4000 chips, that would be stupid. Anyways, the new Linux code doesn’t really give us any extra details about the new Zen 3 microarchitecture, beyond providing a pair of different Family 19h CPU device IDs. And those themselves tell us precious little aside from the fact there are AMD Zen 3 chips being prepped for testing.

      • AMD Zen 3 Microcode Spotted in the Linux Kernel

        AMD Zen 3 microcode has recently been spotted in the Linux kernel, months ahead of the expected launch of this new line of processors.

        The discovery was shared on Twitter by @KOMACHI_ENSAKA, who says the new code is linked with EDAC, or Error Detection and Correction.

        By the looks of things, the Linux kernel is updated to support the AMD Family 19h processors, which represents the new Zen 3-based chip family.

        As the leaker notes, AMD 17h series can still be used, as they’re already supported – Family 17h is the existing AMD Zen 2 series.

      • AMD’s next generation Zen 3 CPU code will be added to the Linux kernel before 2020 starts

        Aside from something unforeseen and catastrophic, Zen 3 is definitely making its debut this year. We know this because AMD managing director Dr. Lisa Su has already indicated this several times, including in an interview in which she promised that “Big Navi” (Navi 20) would also make its debut in 2020. If anyone needs more evidence on this matter, just turn their attention to the underlying code that is added to the Linux kernel.

        Interestingly, patches for the Linux kernel have been great in the past to point to new hardware before it officially launched. And more recently, updates to the Linux kernel have given references to things like Navi 22 and Navi 23, which are two unpublished Navi GPUs. Now Zen 3 is doing a cameo.

      • Zen 3: AMD’s new architecture microcode surfaced in the Linux kernel

        Despite the fact that it only seems to be yesterday that the Zen 2 chips for the Ryzen 3000 processors were released, we have noted that the Zen 3 is on its way, which shouldn’t be too surprising considering that AMD does everything possible to keep its CPU line up to date every year.

      • AMD Zen Thermal/Power Reporting Improvements Could Hit Linux 5.6 But More Testing Needed

        Last week I eagerly reported on Ryzen CPUs on Linux finally seeing CCD temperatures and current/voltage reporting thanks to new patches to the k10temp driver by Google’s Guenter Roeck who oversees the kernel’s hardware monitoring “HWMON” subsystem. The patches seem to be working well and are tentatively queued in hwmon-next, but more testing is still needed.

      • Samsung’s Better exFAT Driver Gets Revised Ahead Of Mainline Linux Integration

        While there has been the initial Microsoft exFAT file-system driver since Linux 5.4, that code is based on a vintage snapshot of prior Samsung code. Samsung engineers meanwhile have been working to upstream a much newer and better off exFAT implementation to replace that existing driver and it looks like it could be ready for Linux 5.6.

        That current exFAT driver within the Linux kernel’s staging area is on a several year old snapshot of the driver that Samsung has continued advancing internally for use on their Android devices and more. This newer Samsung driver code is more cleaned up, offers more meta-data operations, and fixes countless bugs. Once Samsung can get this driver upstream they plan to use that as their code-base moving forward.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Think Silicon’s GLOVE OpenGL-Over-Vulkan Library Now Works On Wayland, Windows + macOS

          One of several projects implementing the OpenGL graphics API over Vulkan has been Think Silicon’s GLOVE library. GLOVE currently is focuses on OpenGL ES 2.0 + EGL 1.4 support and is a standalone project unlike Mesa’s Zink Gallium3D driver working on OpenGL / GLES over Vulkan too. GLOVE 0.4 is out today as a big feature update.

          GLOVE 0.4 is the project’s first new release in more than one year and comes with greatly expanded hardware and software support.

        • Intel’s Vulkan Driver Begins Making Infrastructure Changes For Multi-GPU Support

          For months we have seen various Intel open-source Linux graphics driver patches that begin preparing for multi-GPU support where in moving forward with their Xe graphics cards there could be the iGPU + dGPU setup or even multiple Xe graphics cards in a single system. So far those Intel Linux multi-GPU preparations have been focused on their kernel-space driver while now it’s reaching into user-space with their Vulkan driver seeing early infrastructure changes.

    • Applications

      • Read Reddit from the Linux terminal

        Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I’m taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

        Taking short breaks is essential in staying productive. One of the places I like to go when taking a break is Reddit, which can be a great resource if you want it to be. I find all kinds of articles there about DevOps, productivity, Emacs, chickens, and some ChromeOS projects I play with. These discussions can be valuable. I also follow a couple of subreddits that are just pictures of animals because I like pictures of animals (and not just chickens), and sometimes after a long work session, what I really need are kitten pictures.

      • LXMusic – music player designed for the minimalist

        The music scene is where I’m happiest in life. As an amateur musician, I spend a lot of time improving my technique, practicing, practicing, and practicing. I also love listening to professional musicians. Linux is my other passion. Linux is endowed with bountiful globs of open source multimedia software. I love testing out new multimedia software early in its development, or introduce myself to popular software that’s mature and laden with tons of features. The choice is bamboozling.

        I’ve covered the vast majority of free and open source music players for Linux, but there’s always more to look at. This week, I’ve been exploring LXMusic. It’s a minimalist music player for LXDE, a lightweight desktop environment. The project aims to be the default music player of LXDE, but it runs on any desktop environment.

        LXMusic is written in the C programming language, and uses GTK+, a highly usable, feature rich toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. LXMusic is based on xmms2, using xmms2d, a daemon through which XMMS2 clients playback and manage music.

      • OpenShot – If you have to … shot, shot, don’t talk

        As you probably know, my go-to video editor is Kdenlive, which I’ve used many times before, to great success, creating dozens of unfunny clips, all of them available on my Youtube channel. But then, I’ve recently had less luck with the program, having tested both 2018′s beta and last year’s 19.08 stable edition, and neither really impressed me.

        I came across bugs and crashes, and overall, it felt like the application has taken a nosedive. While older versions ought to keep working fine for quite a while longer, I wouldn’t like to be in a position where my artistic spread of majestic wings is curtailed for any reasons. Hence, alternatives, hence testing. And thus, I came across an old-new title, OpenShot, a free, cross-platform video editor. Funnily, I’ve seen it many times before, but never really used in properly. This article shall remedy that.

      • Evernote’s Official Linux Client is Coming Soon

        If you are an Evernote fan, you probably have been missing it on Linux desktop. There is the web version available but you cannot use it offline if you are not a premium user.

        Linux (almost) always has a way around. So, there are some third party applications that let you use Evernote on Linux. There are also some alternative applications to Evernote available on Linux.

        A native Linux client for Evernote has been requested for a long time and the good news is that it should finally be coming to Linux in the year 2020.

      • KeePassXC 2.5.3 Released with Microsoft Edge Integration

        KeePassXC password manager 2.5.3 was released today with stability improvements and new feature: browser extension for Chromium-based Edge browser.

      • GParted 1.1 Open-Source Partition Editor Is Out with Various Enhancements, Fixes

        Curtis Gedak released Gparted 1.1.0, a maintenance update aiming to include enhancements, bug fixes, as well as translation updates. Highlights include the adoption of faster minfo and mdir to read FAT16 and FAT32 usage, and the ability to calculate the size of JFS partitions more accurately.

        Moreover, this release adds support for recognizing ATARAID members, as well as to detect their busy status, and improves the moving of locked LUKS-encrypted partition. The xvfb-run dependency has been added and it’s required for the “make check” and “make distcheck” commands during compilation.

      • Comparison: Snap vs Flatpack vs AppImage

        New packaging formats like Snap, Flatpak and AppImage are providing distribution agnostic packages that work on most Linux distributions. This solves packaging problems faced by app developers who want to distribute their apps on multiple Linux distributions. Now they can focus on one build that works everywhere instead of going through different packaging standards.
        This article will list the main differences between these three packaging formats from end users’ perspective. Differences in packaging architecture and ease of packaging from developers’ point of view won’t be covered here.

        The table below summarizes the main differences between Snap, Flatpak and AppImage file formats. Most of them are self-explanatory, other points have been explained below the comparison table.

      • Syncthing: Open Source P2P File Syncing Tool

        Syncthing is an open-source peer-to-peer file synchronization tool that you can use for syncing files between multiple devices (including an Android phone).

        Usually, we have a cloud sync solution like MEGA or Dropbox to have a backup of our files on the cloud while making it easier to share it.

        But, what do you do if you want to sync your files across multiple devices without storing them on the cloud?

        That is where Syncthing comes to the rescue.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Thanks to Linux, Google and Valve are Bringing Steam to Chromebooks

        In yet another win for desktop Linux, Google and Steam are about to up the chromebook gaming field.

        On many supported chromebooks, it is already possible to run Linux applications on the chromebook. For certain user types, this has been a real boon. However, for gamers, not so much. That is about to change, thanks to a joint effort by Google and Valve.

        According to Kan Liu, Director of Product Management for Google Chrome OS, Steam is coming to chromebooks. What is Steam? Steam is a digital video game distribution service, offered by Valve, originally released in 2003 as a means for Valve to provide automatic updates for their own line of games. Eventually the service was expanded to include third-party publishers and is now one of the largest digital distribution systems for games.

      • Lucky Lanterns event is now live in Rocket League and there’s a brand new arena

        Psyonix have put the Lucky Lanterns event live now in Rocket League. No update is needed today, as one went out a few days ago to prepare for it.

        Working just like previous events, giving you a special currency for playing which you can then redeem for special customization items. This time around though, there’s no special game mode to play. Instead, there’s an entirely new arena called The Forbidden Temple Arena.

      • Amusing sticky-tongue physics platformer ‘Crumble’ has a big demo update, now with multiplayer

        A rolling-ball physics platformer where you move like slime, jump like a bouncy ball and swing using a sticky tongue like a weird version of Spider Man. Crumble has a lot of fun ideas going for it and a big demo update is out now with co-op.

        Covered a few times here now, as I’ve absolutely loved following the progress on this one. The developer posts a lot of upcoming bits for it on Twitter, and it looks like they have some pretty amusing plans for Crumble. Including a portal that turns you into a shadow that completely warps the gameplay.

      • Tower Of God: One Wish, a nice casual match-3 game released recently

        A genre Linux surprisingly doesn’t have a huge selection in is Match 3 puzzle games, thankfully if you love these casual games a new one is out with Tower Of God: One Wish.

      • The charming platformer & space shooter hybrid A.N.N.E to get a huge 1.0 update in May

        Gamesbymo have announced that A.N.N.E, the crowdfunded mixture of metroidvania style platforming with space shooter elements will get a big 1.0 update on May 20. See Also: Some previous thoughts here.

        While it hasn’t received much attention after being released on Steam last year, following a Kickstarter campaign in 2013, they have been making progress on it. Slow progress though, as it sounds like they don’t have much money left as written in the announcement they “had to get back to a barebone team” but it’s not all bad news. The good news is that a big content update was announced and it will be out on May 20, although they’re not sure if that will also end Early Access.

      • RetroArch to have the emulation ‘Cores’ as DLC when it releases on Steam, plus big updates

        The team behind RetroArch, the open source and cross platform frontend/framework for emulators (and a lot more like open source game engines), have stated their plans for handling the various emulators it works with for the Steam release.

        While there’s now no exact date for the Steam release, after being delayed from last year, work has continued on preparing for it. Part of this is dealing with the legal situation, since the application is licensed under the GPL, there are certain rules they have to follow.

      • Recent updates to Littlewood added a lot of bugs and a nervous looking Sea Monster

        Probably one of the most charming games I’ve ever played, Littlewood, just constantly gets bigger and more sweet with each update.

        What is Littlewood? A game set after the world has been saved, there’s no fighting here as it’s time to rebuild. It’s a peaceful and relaxing little building, crafting and farming sim from developer Sean Young. Currently in Early Access, each month seems to bring in a huge new update.

        December, for example, added in a massive update focused on Fishing. You can now meet Captain Georgie (who appears to be some sort of Monkey) and go out on their boat for some rare fish. It can take a while to be able to do this though, you need Level 30 in Fishing before they let you go.

      • OpenRA for classic Westwood RTS games has a new build in need of testing

        What is OpenRA? It’s an open source game engine that recreates and modernizes the classic Command & Conquer real time strategy games including Command & Conquer, Red Alert, Dune 2000 and with Tiberian Sun in progress. It’s awesome!

      • Obversion, a puzzle game from a former Google developer releases next week

        Former Google developer Adrian Marple quit to become an indie developer, with the puzzle game Obversion being their first title which is releasing next week.

        Marple said “the journey through the levels of Obversion is a coalescence of striking environments, philosophical quotes, geometric satisfaction, and intricately woven puzzles” and that if you’ve played games like Portal you should feel right at home.

      • DragonEvo, a trading card game mixed with RPG elements you can play in your browser

        Oh how I do love deck-building, card games and strategy stuffs. If you do too, you might want to take a look over at DragonEvo. Fully cross-platform, as DragonEvo is not a traditional desktop game. It’s browser-based, meaning you can play it on most things that have something resembling Firefox or Chrome.

        While we don’t usually cover many browser-based games, DragonEvo stands out as it’s actually quite good and it certainly has some unusual mechanics with how you play cards. Strategy is the key to victory, careful planning and card placement—not a random generator.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Contributing to KDE is easier than you think – Localization and SVN

          This is a series of blog posts explaining different ways to contribute to KDE in an easy-to-digest manner. This series is supposed to run parallel to my keyboard shortcuts analysis so that there can be content being published (hopefully) every week.

          The purpose of this series originated from how I feel about asking users to contribute back to KDE. I firmly believe that showing users how contributing is easier than they think is more effective than simply calling them out and directing them to the correct resources; especially if, like me, said user suffers from anxiety or does not believe they are up to the task, in spite of their desire to help back.

          This time I’ll be explaining how the localization workflow looks like for contributing to KDE; this should also immediately enable you to translate your favorite third-party Plasma widgets (if the project supports it), and generally allow you to translate any PO file with your preferred localization software. I will also explain a bit about CAT tools in general and how professional translation is done since it’s my field of expertise, but that will serve only as optional reading for those interested.

          Don’t get scared with how lengthy this blog post is: by the end of this text, you should be perfectly fine to start working with localization, that’s the point. The localization process is quite straightforward, I simply put a lot of explanations in-between so you don’t have many (or better yet, any!) doubts about how stuff works.

          This article should be timely in that a new Plasma version, 5.18, will be released in about two weeks. Contributions to the stable branch would be quite appreciated in the following days!

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • GNOME Founder responds to Code of Conduct concerns

          I like Federico’s straightforward stance on racism — one that I share — “racist behaviour will not be tolerated, irrespective of the race of those involved.” Clearly the GNOME team has their heart in the right place with that.

          With that in mind, it would seem to me to make sense to modify the GNOME Code of Conduct to reflect that. In its current state the document clearly divides racism and sexism into two categories: Those the GNOME team is going to act to stop, and those the GNOME team will allow.

    • Distributions

      • Have You Tried Kaisen Linux? — A New System Rescue Linux Distro

        Being a system administrator, lots of responsibilities and duties are to be taken care of, which are wide-ranging from covering backups, disaster recovery, hardware maintenance, automation, filesystem housekeeping, system security management, and many more to add to the list.

        To keep the system running smoothly and securely, a sysadmin has to rely upon several tools that sometimes become frustrating to install and configure regularly.

        Keeping that in mind, and to ease the life of sysadmins, 11 months back, Linux developer Kevin Chevreuil, along with his mate Eren Arslan, started the development of their own Linux distribution based on Debian 9, dubbed as Kaisen Linux.

      • Reviews

        • Zorin OS 15.1 Review

          Nothing restricts you to Zorn OS’s collection of installed software – its Software Center allows you to expand it with everything but the kitchen sink.

          Although it might be presented as a solid alternative to Windows, Zorin OS is also worth a look for everyone tired of trying to grasp with some distributions’ approach to organization. It’s uncomplicated in its use, beautiful to look at and fast. What’s not to like?

      • Fedora Family

        • Fedora’s FESCo Has Deferred Any Decision On EarlyOOM By Default

          Some FESCo members have been okay with letting the workstation working group decide on their own defaults that would include the EarlyOOM decision (the Fedora Workstation WG already voted among themselves to ship with it enabled for Fedora Workstation 32), and others not necessarily being convinced by EarlyOOM with there being several ways to improve the low-memory Linux experience. Some are also waiting for systemd to integrate Facebook’s OOMD work, but that is still a number of months if not a year out.

      • Debian Family

        • Debian Policy Updated Following Recent Systemd “Init System Diversity” Vote

          Following last month’s Debian init system diversity vote where the Debian developers decided on a general resolution of focusing on systemd but support exploring alternatives, the official Debian Policy has been updated to reflect that.

          Debian Policy 4.5 is the new version that incorporates guidance following that general resolution.

          The Debian Policy manual now states that packages with system services should include systemd service units, init scripts are encouraged if there is no systemd unit but optional otherwise, init scripts are encouraged to support the “status” argument, and use of update-rc.d is required if the package includes an init script.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • User Guide to Pantheon Desktop of elementary OS

          Unlike Windows, user interface in elementary OS has a name, and it is Pantheon Desktop. It is a beautifully designed and easy to use desktop environment. This article wants to be a user guide to Pantheon Desktop that is simple to read and practice. You will learn about basic concepts of Pantheon and then practice to use it for daily tasks. You will see here how to use Wingpanel (top panel), Slingshot (start menu), Plank (taskbar), Switchboard (system settings), plus understand Headerbars and Multitasking mode. Of course I also include frequently used Keyboard Shortcuts so you can work more quickly. For your information, I use elementary OS 5.0 Juno as basis of this tutorial. I hope everybody could take benefit from this article and next time I could refer here if I write again about elementary. Enjoy!

        • XanMod-ing Ubuntu To Perform Closer To Intel’s Clear Linux

          Earlier this month many Phoronix readers were interested in our fresh tests of the XanMod-patched Linux kernel for boosting the desktop and workstation performance compared to Ubuntu’s default Linux kernel. Among many patches, XanMod does pull in some kernel patches from Intel’s performance-optimized Clear Linux, so we figured it would be interesting to see how the XanMod’ed Ubuntu compares to Clear Linux performance.

          As covered more in the earlier article, the XanMod Linux kernel flavor makes use of the BFQ I/O scheduler, offers CPU scaling governor improvements, makes use of preemptive full tickless kernel settings, and has a variety of other patches from leveraging Clear Linux optimizations to the BMQ process scheduler to the Proton FSYNC patches to much more. This round of testing was using a daily snapshot of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with its current Linux 5.4 default kernel and then re-tested using the same Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installation but running on the 4.1.10-xanmod6 kernel at the time. Additionally, the same CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS as Clear Linux defaults to were also utilized.

        • Canonical introduces Anbox Cloud – scalable Android™ in the cloud

          Canonical today announced Anbox Cloud, a platform that containerises workloads using Android1 as a guest operating system enabling enterprises to distribute applications from the cloud. Anbox Cloud allows enterprises and service providers to deliver mobile applications at scale, more securely and independently of a device’s capabilities. Use cases for Anbox Cloud include cloud gaming, enterprise workplace applications, software testing, and mobile device virtualisation.

          The ability to offload compute, storage and energy-intensive applications from devices (x86 and Arm) to the cloud enables end-users to consume advanced workloads by streaming them directly to their device. Developers can deliver an on-demand application experience through a platform that provides more control over performance and infrastructure costs, with the flexibility to scale based on user demand.

        • Implementing an Android™ based cloud game streaming service with Anbox Cloud
        • Canonical Announces Anbox Cloud, Ubuntu-Powered Scalable Android in the Cloud
        • Canonical announces Anbox Cloud allowing users to host Android apps in the cloud

          Canonical has announced a new service called Anbox Cloud aimed at enterprises. With Anbox Cloud, enterprises can distribute Android apps via the cloud in a container environment. By hosting the apps in the cloud, the businesses that opt to use the service will know that the app is secure and independent of a device’s capabilities. According to Canonical, it envisions this tech being used for cloud gaming, enterprise workplace applications, software testing, and mobile device virtualisation.

          If you use Linux already, you may have seen and used Anbox if you’ve ever looked for a solution to run Android apps on the desktop. With Anbox Cloud, several Canonical technologies will be included in the software stack including the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS kernel, LXD containers, MAAS, and Juju. Additionally, Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage support programme is included to provide continuous support and security updates for up to ten years.

        • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 614

          Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 614 for the week of January 12 – 18, 2020. The full version of this issue is available here.

        • Ubuntu Finally Removes the Amazon Web App You Never Use

          First introduced in Ubuntu 12.10, the Amazon web launcher gives Ubuntu users an easy, out-of-the-box shortcut to the Amazon website.

          And I do mean easy: an Amazon icon is pinned to the desktop launcher on all new installs by default.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • UN working group asking about corruption: is there any in open source?

        For example, why have so many organizations like Linux Foundation and the FSFE simultaneously eliminated their elections, shifting the balance of power towards certain corporations like Google? Why are messages about corporate influence routinely censored from the mailing lists of open source groups who claim to be both transparent and independent of the corporations funding them? Voting and censorship are both human rights issues. If we can’t get these things right in an organization of professionals, how can there be any hope for the developing world?

      • Orgs

        • If George Orwell was alive today, would he be an Internet troll?

          In 2017, a German organisation, FSFE e.V, elected me as their community representative. They had this odd approach to membership, approximately 28 people had been registered as members of the assocation. Their 1500 volunteers and donors were invited to join but kept off the books. As the organization’s contempt for membership became apparent, I started to feel Orwell’s animals coming to life. As he wrote all those years ago, All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. In FSFE’s case, we could say all Fellows are equal but some Fellows are more equal than others.

          [...]

          Animal Farm is only one side of the Orwellian coin, the other being his uncannily accurate tour-de-force of the modern surveillance state, Nineteen-Eighty-Four. All of the organizations mentioned above (Debian, FSFE) are secretly funded by Google. Would you be less surprised to find a bible in a church than to find Nineteen-Eighty-Four under the pillows of Google’s founders? One of the most startling discoveries during my time as community representative was the extent to which all of these organizations had built their budgets around recurring annual contributions from Google. Their experiments in demotions arose at exactly the same time that women in Google’s workforce who spoke up against harassment found themselves being publicly demoted and humiliated. It was revealed that one of the organizations, Debian, had secretly banked $300,000 from Google under the radar at the same time that attention was on an identical-sized donation from a non-profit, the Handshake Foundation. What a convenient cover. After Linux Foundation and FSFE had decided to eliminate their annual elections, Google’s money had a community representative “demoted” to a lower status in Debian just days before the call for nominations in leadership elections.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Firefox 72.0.2 Improves Playback Performance for Full-Screen 1080p Videos

            Coming almost two weeks after the Firefox 72.0.1 point release, which was an important security update addressing a zero-day vulnerability, the Firefox 72.0.2 update is a maintenance release that fixes various issues, such as the inconsistent playback performance for full-screen 1080p videos on certain systems.

            Firefox 72.0.2 also addresses a web compatibility issue with CSS Shadow Parts, which shipped as part of the Firefox 72 release, a hang that occurred when opening about:logins when a master password is set, issues reported by users when attempting to open files containing spaces in their path, as well as various stability issues.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU make 4.3 released

            GNU make 4.3 is out. New features include explicit grouped targets, a new .EXTRA_PREREQS variable, the ability to specify parallel builds in the makefile itself, and more. There are also a couple of backward-incompatible changes; see the announcement for details.

      • Programming/Development

        • MIR: A lightweight JIT compiler project

          For the past three years, I’ve been participating in adding just-in-time compilation (JIT) to CRuby. Now, CRuby has the method-based just-in-time compiler (MJIT), which improves performance for non-input/output-bound programs.

          The most popular approach to implementing a JIT is to use LLVM or GCC JIT interfaces, like ORC or LibGCCJIT. GCC and LLVM developers spend huge effort to implement the optimizations reliably, effectively, and to work on a lot of targets. Using LLVM or GCC to implement JIT, we can just utilize these optimizations for free. Using the existing compilers was the only way to get JIT for CRuby in the short time before the Ruby 3.0 release, which has the goal of improving CRuby performance by three times.

          So, CRuby MJIT utilizes GCC or LLVM, but what is unique about this JIT?

          MJIT does not use existing compiler JIT interfaces. Instead, it uses C as an interface language without losing compilation speed. Practically the same compilation speed as with the existing JIT interfaces is achieved by using precompiled headers and a memory filesystem.

        • Red Hat Developer’s MIR Is A Lightweight JIT Compiler

          Not to be confused with Ubuntu’s Mir display stack or Rustlang’s MIR, the new MIR effort by Red Hat developer Vladimir Makarov is a new project focused on providing a lightweight JIT compiler.

          MIR in this context is the Medium Internal Representation (Rustlang’s is the Mid-Level Internal Representation) and is striving to be a lighter-weight JIT compiler than the JIT interfaces offered by GCC or LLVM.

          Initially, MIR is aiming to suit the just-in-time needs of CRuby and/or MRuby and from there expand out. This IR is strongly-typed, based on the concept of modules, and you can get to MIR through LLVM IR as one of the options.

        • DocKnot 3.03

          DocKnot is the software that I use to generate package documentation and web pages, and increasingly to generate release tarballs.

          The main change in this release is to use IO::Uncompress::Gunzip and IO::Compress::Xz to generate a missing xz tarball when needed, instead of forking external programs (which causes all sorts of portability issues). Thanks to Slaven Rezić for the testing and report.

          This release adds two new badges to README.md files: a version badge for CPAN packages pushed to GitHub, and a Debian version badge for packages with a corresponding Debian package.

        • The Titler Revamp – The QML MLT Producer is testing ready

          The last time I blogged about the Titler, I promised that the next update would be when we have some sort of a backend ready – and I’m happy to announce now that now we have some sort of a backend ready!

        • The Meson Manual is now available for purchase

          Some of you might remember that last year I ran a crowdfunding campaign to create a full written user manual for Meson. That failed fairly spectacularly, mostly due to the difficulty of getting any sort of visibility for these kinds of projects (i.e. on the Internet, everything drowns).

        • anytime 0.3.7

          A fresh minor release of the anytime package is arriving on CRAN right now. This is the eighteenth release, and it comes roughly five months after the previous showing the relative feature-stability we have now.

          anytime is a very focused package aiming to do just one thing really well: to convert anything in integer, numeric, character, factor, ordered, … format to either POSIXct or Date objects – and to do so without requiring a format string. See the anytime page, or the GitHub README.md for a few examples.

          This release brings a clever new option, thanks to Stephen Froehlich. If you know your input has (lots) of duplicates you can now say so and anytime() (and the other entry points for times and dates, UTC or not) will only parse the unique entries leading to potentially rather large speed gains (as in Stephen’s case where he often has more than 95% of the data as duplicates). We also tweaked the test setup some more, but as we are still unable to replicate what is happening with the Fedora test boxen at CRAN due to the non-reproducible setup so this remains a bit of guess work. Lastly, I am making use of a new Rcpp #define to speed up compilation a little bit too.

        • Merging Of Flang/F18 Fortran Compiler Support Into LLVM Has Been Delayed

          The modern F18/Flang Fortran front-end to LLVM had been set to land in the LLVM mono repository last Monday that could have made it included as part of the LLVM 10.0 branch set for that day. The LLVM 10.0 branching happened as planned but the landing of this Fortran support did not.

          Landing of the Flang front-end was delayed to allow for last minute changes to happen. Their revised target for merging was 20 January.

        • Connect your Raspberry Pi 4 to an iPad Pro

          Have you ever considered attaching your Raspberry Pi 4 to an Apple iPad Pro? How would you do it, and why would you want to? Here’s YouTuber Tech Craft to explain why Raspberry Pi 4 is their favourite iPad Pro accessory, and why you may want to consider using yours in the same way.

        • C

          • 2019 was the “Year of C”

            The TIOBE Programming Community has released an index indicating the popularity of programming languages in which it recognised C as the programming language of the year 2019.

            OK, it was not at the top – Java is still King – but was a number two above Python – which is a little surprising.

            C is considered the red-headed stepchild of programming these days and most people consider Python emerged as the most productive and popular language in recent times and, apparently, the language had a good year due to the Internet of Things.

            C is really good with small devices that are performance-critical with limited resources. It is a feature-rich programming language, including direct access to machine level hardware APIs. There are lots of C compilers, deterministic resource use and dynamic memory allocation.

          • Fundamental C – Files

            This extract, from my new book on programming C in an IoT context, explains the basics of files the C way. As with all things C it starts simple and then gets a little more involved.

        • Python

      • Standards/Consortia

        • This Blog Has Moved

          I moved my blog back to a self-hosted WordPress, but am powering it with Jetpack to offer many of the same features as during the seven months it ran on WordPress.com. I am also using the same theme, just have rearranged a few things. The privacy policy was updated to reflect the new status.

        • 5G: The outsourced elephant in the room

          In a break from the usual GPS/Galileo, DNA and C++ posts, here is a bit on 5G and national security. It turns out that through PowerDNS and its parent company Open-Xchange, we know a lot about how large scale European communication service providers work – most of whom are our customers in some way.

          In addition, in a previous life I worked in national security and because of that I have relevant knowledge of how governments (your own and foreign ones) “interact” with telecommunication providers. So what follows is based on lived experience.

          Note: this article is mostly about Europe. Considerations and conditions in the US and the rest of the world are very different.

  • Leftovers

    • The importance of culture

      Being abroad in Japan the last couple weeks, I’ve noticed that the high efficiency -from crossing roads to almost everything- they do (cooking/public transportation/etc) is due to the fact of using small queues for every step of the process. Reaching to a maximum throughout with small effort.

      [...]

      Is about the feedback you will get from your customers and colleagues, is about the respect to your work. Is about being happy.

      For the first time in my life, I took almost 30days out of work, to relax, to detox (not having a laptop with me) to spend some time with family and friends. To be happy. So if any colleague from work is reading this article:

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Y2038: It’s a Threat

        On Unix-derived systems, including Linux and MacOS, time is stored internally as the number of seconds since midnight GMT, January 1, 1970, a time known as “the Epoch.” Back when Unix was created, timestamps were stored in a 32-bit number. Well, like any fixed-size value, only a limited range of numbers can be stored in 32 bits: numbers from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. (Without going into technical details, the first of those 32 bits is used to denote a negative number. The asymmetry in range is to allow for zero.)

        I immediately got pushback: did I really think that 18 years hence, people would still be using 32-bit systems? Modern computers use 64-bit integers, which can allow for times up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 seconds since the Epoch. (What date is that? I didn’t bother to calculate it, but it’s about 292,271,023,045 years, a date that’s well beyond when it is projected that the Sun will run out of fuel. I don’t propose to worry about computer timestamps after that.)

        It turns out, though, that just as with Y2K, the problems don’t start when the magic date hits; rather, they start when a computer first encounters dates after the rollover point, and that can be a lot earlier. In fact, I just had such an experience.

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

          • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

            • Docker, Perl and GitHub

              There are many reasons to use Docker Images, from setting up a development environment to pushing your code to production. The primary/first reason which pushes me to start using some Docker Images is “Continuous Integration”.

              When maintaining a Perl package used by multiple users/companies (or not), you absolutely want to know how your code behaves on different versions of Perl. Even if you could have multiple versions of Perl installed on your development environment, most of the time, the development is only performed using a single version of Perl.

              Continuous Integration system like Travis CI or GitHub Workflows allows you to run your test suite on every push, pull request… without the need of testing manually on all Perl Versions.

              When testing your code on a container (or Virtual Machine) you do not want to install or compile a fresh version of Perl each time… This is a slow operation, that ideally, should be done once.

              This is where Docker Images come to the rescue. They are “snapshots” of a pre-set linux environment.

            • Week notes – 2020 w03 – worklog – Murphy

              Also GitHub decided to revive our anonymous bugs, around 39,000 bugs are back. We haven’t yet reactivated our anonymous reporting.

        • Security

          • It’s Friday, the weekend has landed… and Microsoft warns of an Internet Explorer zero day exploited in the wild

            Still using Internet Explorer? Don’t. There’s another zero-day
            Microsoft let slip on Friday an advisory detailing an under-attack zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2020-0674) for Internet Explorer. The scripting engine flaw can be exploited to gain remote code execution on a vulnerable machine by way of a specially crafted webpage. The flaw can be mitigated by restricting access to the JavaScript component JScript.dll, and thus far there is no patch available.

            “Microsoft is aware of this vulnerability and working on a fix,” the software giant noted.

          • Verifying your system state in a secure and private way

            This is solved using a procedure called Remote Attestation. The TPM can be asked to provide a digital signature of the PCR values, and this can be passed to a remote system along with the event log. That remote system can then examine the event log, make sure it corresponds to the signed PCR values and make a security decision based on the contents of the event log rather than just on the final PCR values. This makes the system significantly more flexible and aids diagnostics. Unfortunately, it also means you need a remote server and an internet connection and then some way for that remote server to tell you whether it thinks your system is trustworthy and also you need some way to believe that the remote server is trustworthy and all of this is well not ideal if you’re not an enterprise.

            Last week I gave a talk at linux.conf.au on one way around this. Basically, remote attestation places no constraints on the network protocol in use – while the implementations that exist all do this over IP, there’s no requirement for them to do so. So I wrote an implementation that runs over Bluetooth, in theory allowing you to use your phone to serve as the remote agent. If you trust your phone, you can use it as a tool for determining if you should trust your laptop.

          • Telnet credentials of 515,000 routers, servers & IoT devices dumped on hacker forum

            A hacker has reportedly dumped Telnet credentials associated with more than 515,000 home routers, servers, and Internet-connected devices on a popular hacker forum.

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by CentOS (git, java-11-openjdk, and thunderbird), Debian (cacti, chromium, gpac, kernel, openjdk-11, ruby-excon, and thunderbird), Fedora (chromium and rubygem-rack), Mageia (suricata, tigervnc, and wireshark), openSUSE (glusterfs, libredwg, and uftpd), and Ubuntu (linux-hwe and sysstat).

          • Amazon’s Ring blamed hacks on consumers reusing their passwords. A lawsuit says that’s not true.

            After a series of high-profile incidents in which hackers gained access to live footage of Ring security cameras inside people?s homes, the company blamed consumers for reusing old passwords. Two plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit accusing the company of negligence and invasion of privacy say that?s not the issue ? instead, they say their passwords were unique and that the company didn?t implement basic security measures to protect users. A security expert enlisted by Recode found that Ring?s devices lack widely adopted safety precautions.

          • DDoS Mitigation Firm Founder Admits to DDoS

            A Georgia man who co-founded a service designed to protect companies from crippling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks has pleaded to paying a DDoS-for-hire service to launch attacks against others.

          • Siemens Warns of Security Risks Associated With Use of ActiveX

            Some of Siemens’ industrial products — the list includes SIMATIC WinCC, SIMATIC STEP 7, SIMATIC PCS 7, TIA Portal, and S7-PLCSIM Advanced — rely on ActiveX components and customers need to use Internet Explorer to execute these components.

            However, the German industrial giant has warned that using Internet Explorer to access untrusted websites can pose serious security risks. Siemens recommends using a web browser that does not support ActiveX if accessing web pages other than the ones associated with the company’s products.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Self-hosted web fonts

              Today on Lobsters I found a link to Kev Quirk’s blog post How to self-host your web fonts. For the last nine years I’ve been using Google’s font-hosting service, which whilst very convenient, carried some privacy concerns (which Joey Hess originally brought to my attention) and (it turns out) does not appear to have been faster, in network terms, than bundling what I was using locally. This is something I’ve been meaning to get around to doing for almost that long.

            • Clearview app lets strangers find your name, info with snap of a photo, report says

              The app, says the Times, works by comparing a photo to a database of more than 3 billion pictures that Clearview says it’s scraped off Facebook, Venmo, YouTube and other sites. It then serves up matches, along with links to the sites where those database photos originally appeared. A name might easily be unearthed, and from there other info could be dug up online.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • The Gun Rights Showdown Brewing in Virginia
      • The Virginia Anti-Gun Control Protests
      • Most Millennials Expect World War III in Their Lifetime

        A survey of 16,000 millennials in 16 countries at peace and at war indicates a majority is nervous about the future, and a large plurality believes heightened global tensions are likely to lead to a catastrophic war. Launch of the report was commissioned last year by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

        The ICRC survey finds millennials are deeply pessimistic about the future they face. The results indicate this generation of young people, now between the ages of 25 and 39, is worried about future conflicts and nuclear weapons. Other top concerns include unemployment, increasing poverty and terrorism.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Documents reveal how ‘Africa’s richest woman’ stole fortune from her country

        The New York-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) worked with newspapers such as Munich’s Suddeutsche Zeitung to reveal the “Panama Papers” tax haven scandal in 2016.

        Its latest series called “Luanda Leaks” zeros in on Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of former Angola president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

    • Environment

      • Climate Change Is Killing Alpine Skiing as We Know It

        At the northern edge of the Alps, ski runs near the foot of Germany’s highest mountain snake down the greenish-brown slopes in narrow white ribbons of artificial snow.

        Like other resorts at relatively low altitude, global warming has left its mark on Garmisch-Partenkirchen — the site of the 1936 Winter Olympics—putting the town’s identity and affluence at risk. It’s January, and there’s so little natural snow that anxiety is building whether upcoming ski races can go ahead.

        In Garmisch and across the Alps, tourism is a key support for local economies. In neighboring Austria, it makes up just over 6% of economic output, while in the mountainous region of Tyrol the share is more like 18%. The ratio is similar for the Swiss canton of Graubünden, thanks to resorts like St. Moritz, Klosters and Davos.

      • Energy

        • ‘Pirate state’: Cyprus slams illegal Turkish drilling

          Turkey has attempted to drill in Cypriot coastal waters four times since last July, most recently in an area already licensed to Italian oil company Eni and French firm Total.

          In response, the EU has set up a mechanism to impose sanctions on any individuals or companies involved in illegal drilling off Cyprus. Possible sanctions could be put in place as soon as Monday, officials said.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • The never-ending migration of wildebeest is one of nature’s great spectacles

          The scene: Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and The Great Migration. Part magnificent spectacle, part great tragedy. One thing is certain for those who bear witness, the migration evokes a variety of emotions from awe to empathy and everything in between.

          There are few places in the world that compare to the wide-open grass plains and bush-covered Savannah of Tanzania, Africa which is home to a staggering volume and diversity of wildlife.

          It’s one of the main reasons visitors flock here. They come with the hopes of seeing nearly two million wildebeest, along with thousands of other plains animals, travel across the country in the world’s largest overland migration that takes them from the Serengeti to the south of Kenya’s Masai Mara.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • ‘An investigation loves silence’ What little we know about Igor Krasnov, Russia’s next attorney general

        On January 20, 2020, Vladimir Putin dismissed long-time Attorney General Yuri Chaika and asked the upper chamber of Russia’s parliament to approve a replacement, Igor Krasnov, who’s known for his work as a senior official on several high-profile criminal cases at Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee. Unlike his predecessor, Krasnov hasn’t been muddied by a series of corruption scandals and has generally avoided the public spotlight, Meduza investigative correspondent Maxim Solopov learned in this special report.

      • Putin replaces his attorney general

        Russia is getting a new attorney general. On Monday, Vladimir Putin dismissed Yuri Chaika, who’d served in the position since June 2006, and appointed Igor Krasnov, the deputy head of the Federal Investigative Committee, as acting attorney general. The upper house of Russia’s Parliament, the Federation Council, will reportedly vote on Krasnov’s confirmation on Wednesday, January 22. 

      • What MLK Would Make of the Israeli Occupation
      • Senators Know They Don’t Know the Whole Story

        Parnas’s recent media interviews did two crucial things that deserve urgent attention. First, he directly linked President Trump to the delivery of an ultimatum to Sergey Shaffer, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Parnas told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he was instructed to deliver what he described as “a very harsh message,” and to do so in “a very harsh way, not in a pleasant way.” Parnas explained, “Mayor Giuliani, Rudy, told me after, you know, meeting the president at the White House. He called me. The message was, it wasn’t just military aid, it was all aid. Basically, their relationships would be sour, that he would—that he would stop giving them any kind of aid … unless there was an announcement made.”

        The key words here? That Giuliani spoke to Parnas “after meeting with the president at the White House.”

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • The Erasure of Political History at the National Archives

        The Post and others who went on to pick up the story noted that the director of the Archives, David S. Ferriero, was appointed by Obama. This is indeed an important point, because it provides a measure of how far we, as a society, have drifted under President Donald Trump. By the third anniversary of his inauguration, an organization created for the purpose of creating a historical record—and headed by someone who is not a Trump appointee—has falsified the historical record.

      • Wife of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi inspired by global solidarity

        It was Raif Badawi’s outspokenness that landed him in court in 2013. After criticizing the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, the young blogger and journalist was initially sentenced to death. Later, his punishment was reduced to a 10-year jail term, a fine and 1,000 lashes.

        Badawi had not only criticized Wahhabism, the state religion in Saudi Arabia, but also the power of clerics in the country. The court ruled that he had insulted Islam.

      • Raif Badawi in isolation, 5 years after his first 50 lashes

        In 2012 Saudi writer and activist Raif Badawi was imprisoned for advocating liberalism and secularism, and for “insulting Islam”. Last month, Badawi was arbitrarily moved into isolation, As was his lawyer, Waleed Abulkhair. Humanists International and other human rights organizations call upon Saudi Arabia for their immediate release.

      • [Old] Raif Badawi among Saudi political prisoners to launch hunger strike over arbitrary detention

        Three prominent Saudi political prisoners – blogger Raif Badawi, activist Khaled al-Omari, and lawyer and human rights activist Waleed Abu al-Khair, have gone on hunger strike in prison to protest the conditions they are being held under and their arbitrary detention.

        The “Prisoners of Conscience” Twitter account, which monitors the situation of Saudi political prisoners, said on Sunday evening that Abu al-Khair and Badawi began their hunger strike on December 11 in protest at being held in solitary confinement.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Women work for free while billionaires accumulate wealth

        This means not only do women earn less every day or that they earn less over the course of their lives, but also that they get a smaller pension. Germany has the largest gender pension gap among OECD countries at 53%.

        The most-affected women do not live in Germany, but in poorer countries in the Global South. There, women have less infrastructure, opportunities to afford domestic help and less technical labor-saving equipment. Women in low-income communities in Uganda, Zimbabwe, India, the Philippines and Kenya spend on average one year more during their lifetime on care work activities than women from better-off households.

      • France’s Transit Workers: “We’re Fighting for Everyone”
      • 5 Absurdly Petty Abuses Of Power By The Cops

        Our personal relationship with the police at the moment is … complicated. Well, that’s how we put it. They say “Wanted,” but that feels a little needy. Our collective cultural relationship with the police is also a little strained. It’s clear that some officers view their badges as a license to do whatever they want to whoever they want. Like how …

    • Monopolies

      • ‘Amazon Empire’ Documentary Shows How Jeff Bezos Took Over Everything

        Amazon is rapidly metastasizing into an invisible infrastructure that mediates our economy, politics, social relations, and culture. It is important we have a clear understanding of that and reject its rosy PR about simply wanting to provide goods to customers cheaply (and profitably).

        Catch the PBS Frontline documentary about Amazon’s empire on February 18.

      • Patents

        • Patent Dominance: Top 5 Companies Leading the Charge

          “Patents protect the interests of inventors whose technologies are truly groundbreaking and commercially successful, by ensuring that an inventor can control the commercial use of their invention,” according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

        • Patent case: Intrakardiale Pumpvorrichtung, Germany

          The patentee is not limited on appeal to defending the patent in the (limited) version pursued in the first instance, but may revert to the version as granted and to other limited versions. A declaration in the response to the nullity action that the patent is defended in a limited form has no limiting effect; this effect only enters into force with the final decision in the nullity proceedings. The declaration does not constitute a waiver either, unless a waiver is explicitly declared by the patentee.

        • China apex court ruling will provide more patent consistency

          In-house counsel and lawyers believe that a decision by the IP tribunal at China’s Supreme People’s Court will help to give more consistency to patent litigation.

        • One year after trial loss against FTC, Qualcomm approaching Ninth Circuit hearing on far stronger basis: scope of reversal hard to predict

          On February 13, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hold the appellate hearing in FTC v. Qualcomm. Apart from a misleading citation that I criticized, and a few other weak spots, Qualcomm’s reply brief, which I have read more than once, was very powerful. All in all, Qualcomm’s lawyers have done far better work than the FTC’s appellate team–and than most of the FTC’s amici, though some amicus briefs (especially the ones submitted by Intel and MediaTek) were very persuasive.

          Qualcomm has made so much headway on appeal that I’m sure at least parts of the district court’s ruling will be reversed, if not by the Ninth Circuit, then by the Supreme Court.

          In the meantime, the Ninth Circuit has heard Qualcomm’s appeal of Judge Lucy H. Koh’s certification of a consumer class. The most likely outcome, based on what the circuit judges said, is that the class action will go forward, but limited to customers based in California and, possibly, other states with similar antitrust laws governing indirect-purchaser claims. However, the consumer case is based on the FTC’s claims against Qualcomm, so if Qualcomm defeated the FTC’s case on the merits, the consumers wouldn’t be entitled to anything regardless of class certification.

          With respect to Qualcomm’s appeal of the FTC ruling, the Ninth Circuit granted, as expected, an unopposed motion by the United States Department of Justice last week, allowing the DOJ to deliver, on behalf of the United States of America, five minutes of oral argument in support of Qualcomm.

        • Software Patents

          • Browse3D Settles with Unified

            On January 17, 2020, the Board issued an order terminating IPR2019-01265 pursuant to a joint settlement request filed by Unified Patents and Browse3D LLC, an NPE. The IPR involved US Patent 10,031,897, which is generally directed to providing website recommendations by monitoring a user’s selection of hyperlinks within a current web page, has been asserted against various retailers such as Nordstrom, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Carter’s.

      • Copyrights

        • Spotify Preparing To Acquire Podcasting Network the Ringer — Report

          In the wake of analysts from both Evercore and Bernstein giving Spotify an underperform rating, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company is in early talks to acquire a podcasting network called the Ringer.

        • A Tool That Removes Copyrighted Works Is Not a Substitute for Fair Use

          YouTube, which has become essential for video creators to build an audience, has a new tool that’s supposed to help users respond to its copyright filter. Is it something that makes fair use a priority? No, it’s a way to make it easier to remove the part of a video that someone has claimed they own.

          In December, YouTube released a list of “New YouTube Studio tools to help you deal with copyright claims.” Mostly what it’s done is make it easier for you, as a video creator, to sort through all the copyright claims that have been filed against you and what that’s done to your videos. That is, so you can see difference between a “copyright strike” that is the result of the takedown process—which YouTube does in order to comply with the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA—and something which has been flagged by Content ID—a copyright filter voluntarily built and deployed by YouTube and subject only to YouTube’s policies.

        • It’s Copyright Week 2020: Stand Up for Copyright Laws That Actually Serve Us All

          We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing what’s at stake and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.

          While culture is shared, copyright law has increasingly been used to lock people out of participating in it. Although copyright law is often treated as the exclusive domain of major media and entertainment industries, it actually should be serving all of us. Because, of course, it affects all of us.

01.20.20

Links 20/1/2020: MNT Reform, Linux 5.5 RC7, KMyMoney 5.0.8

Posted in News Roundup at 10:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • MNT Reform 2 Open Source DIY Arm Linux Modular Laptop Coming Soon (Crowdfunding)

        We first covered MNT Reform in fall of 2017, when it was a prototype for a DIY and modular laptop powered by NXP i.MX 6QuadPlus processor, and with plans to eventually use i.MX 8 hexa-core processor.

        Last year they designed several beta units of Reform to get feedback for a dozen users, and have now fully redesigned the laptop based on an NXP i.MX 8M system-on-module with the crowdfunding campaign expected to go live in February on Crowd Supply.

        The goals of the project are to provide an open-source hardware laptop that avoids binary blobs as much as possible and is environmentally friendly. These goals guided many of the technical decisions.

        For example, there are many NXP i.MX 8M SoM’s, but MNT selected Nitrogen8M as the schematics are available after registration on Boundary Devices website, and that means people wanting to create their own module compatible with Reform 2 could do so.

      • MNT Reform open source, modular laptop crowdfunding campaign launches in February

        The MNT Reform is a modular laptop designed to run free and open source software and to be easy to repair, upgrade, or customize. It’s been under development for a few years, and now the developers of the project have finalized the design.

        You’ll likely be able to pre-order one in February when a crowfunding campaign gets underway.

      • MNT Reform open source, modular laptop

        A new open source modular laptop will be launching next month via a crowdfunding campaign on the Crowd Supply website, offering an open source DIY laptop that can be modified and customised in a wide variety of different ways as well as protecting your online privacy. “Modern laptops have secret schematics, glued-in batteries, and mystery components all over. But Reform is the opposite — it invites both curious makers and privacy aware users to take a look under the hood, customize the documented electronics, and 3D-print their own parts.”

      • Is the MNT Reform the Most Open Source Laptop, Ever?!

        Every single inch of this uniquely positioned notebook has been designed to be as hacker, user, and open source friendly as possible.

        It also boasts some seriously unexpected touches, like a mechanical keyboard, a 5-button trackball, and an system-independent OLED display to relay information.

        In this post we take a closer look at what the hack-friendly MNT Reform laptop has to offer, why it’s designed the way it is, and where and when you can buy one for yourself.

      • Manjaro Linux Laptop with 10th Gen Intel Chips to Launch as “Dell XPS 13 Killer”

        Manjaro Lead Project Developer Philip Müller confirmed in an interview with Forbes that a partnership with Tuxedo Computers will bring us several new Linux laptops powered by Intel’s 10th Generation Core i7 chips.

        In essence updated versions of the InfinityBook Pro 15 model, the Manjaro-powered laptops will boast a maximum of 64GB RAM and feature 2TB SSD storage thanks to a Samsung EVO Plus NVMe drive.

        Like several other Tuxedo Computers, all devices support aftermarket upgrades without losing warranty.

    • Server

      • Catalogic Announced Open Source Kubernetes Disaster Recovery

        Today Catalogic Software, announced its open source utility, KubeDR. KubeDR is said to provide backup and disaster recovery for Kubernetes cluster configuration, certificates and metadata. On top of KubeDR, Catalogic also launched its cLabs to support new products, open source initiatives and innovations.

      • Catalogic Software Announces KubeDR – Open Source Kubernetes Disaster Recovery

        Catalogic Software, a developer of innovative data protection solutions, today announced the introduction of its Catalogic open source utility, KubeDR, built to provide backup and disaster recovery for Kubernetes cluster configuration, certificates and metadata. Kubernetes is the fastest growing and most popular platform for managing containerized workloads in hybrid cloud environments. Catalogic is also launching cLabs to support new products, open source initiatives and innovations, such as KubeDR.

        Kubernetes stores cluster data in etcd, an interface that collects configuration data for distributed systems. While there are solutions focused on protecting persistent volumes, the cluster configuration data is often forgotten in existing industry solutions. There is a market need to provide the specific requirements of backup and support for Kubernetes cluster data stored in etcd. Catalogic’s new KubeDR is a user-friendly, secure, scalable and an open source solution for backup and disaster recovery designed specifically for Kubernetes applications.

      • Elastic Brings Observability Platform to Kubernetes

        Elastic N.V. announced this week that Elastic Cloud, a subscription instance of an observability platform based on the open source Elasticsearch engine, is generally available on Kubernetes.

        Anurag Gupta, principal product manager for Elastic Cloud, deploying Elastic Cloud for Kubernetes (ECK) eliminates the need to invoke an instance of the platform running outside their Kubernetes environment.

      • Kubernetes Launches Bug Bounty

        Kubernetes, the open-source container management system, has opened up its formerly private bug bounty program and is asking hackers to look for bugs not just in the core Kubernetes code, but also in the supply chain that feeds into the project.

        The new bounty program is supported by Google, which originally wrote Kubernetes, and it’s an extension of what had until now been an invitation-only program. Google has lent financial support and security expertise to other bug bounty programs for open source projects. The range of rewards is from $100 to $10,000 and the scope of what’s considered a valid target is unusual.

      • Google Partners With CNCF, HackerOne on Kubernetes Bug Bounty
      • CNCF, Google, and HackerOne launch Kubernetes bug bounty program

        Bug bounty programs motivate individuals and hacker groups to not only find flaws but disclose them properly, instead of using them maliciously or selling them to parties that will. Originally designed by Google and now run by the CNCF, Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration system for automating application deployment, scaling, and management. Given the hundreds of startups and enterprises that use Kubernetes in their tech stacks, it’s significantly cheaper to proactively plug security holes than to deal with the aftermath of breaches.

      • IBM

        • Update: State of CentOS Linux 8, and CentOS Stream

          We wanted to update you on what is happening, largely out of sight to most of the community, on the CentOS Linux 8 front. We have appreciated the patience of the community, but we understand that your patience won’t last forever.

          A lot of the work in rebuilding RHEL sources into CentOS Linux is handled by automation scripts. Due to the changes between RHEL 7 and RHEL 8, many of these scripts no longer work, and had to be fixed to reflect the new layout of the buildroot. This work has been largely completed, allowing us to pull the source from Red Hat without a lot of manual work. This, in turn, should make the process of rebuilding RHEL 8.2 go much more smoothly than RHEL 8.0 and 8.1 have done.

        • Retooled CentOS Build Scripts To Help Spin New Releases Quicker, More Automation

          The release of CentOS 8 came several months after RHEL 8.0 and this week’s release of CentOS updated against RHEL 8.1 took over two months of work. But moving forward to RHEL 8.2 and beyond, that turnaround time will hopefully be less.

          When transitioning from CentOS/RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 sources, a lot of the CentOS community build scripts broken. The build root needed a new layout and initially a lot of manual steps were involved in pulling the enterprise Linux sources from Red Hat. But now with getting the initial CentOS 8 work done and their first stable point release under their belt, their new scripts for assembling CentOS 8 appear to be in good standing.

        • Industry Speaks: IBM i Predictions for 2020, Part 1

          We are three weeks into 2020, and that New Year smell hasn’t worn off yet. As time rolls on, the IBM i community will certainly get down to business. In the meantime, here are industry predictions from nine community members to read.

          For Alan Seiden, the CEO of Seiden Group and an IBM Champion for Power, risk management will be a common theme for how they approach IT staffing in 2020.

          “IBM i shops have traditionally operated in a lean manner, relying on key individuals who knew their systems intimately,” Seiden says. “Now, with IT staff managing more projects than ever, new technology entering, and senior staff retiring, companies are looking for reliable partner organizations to supplement internal continuity and support. In the same vein, I see DevOps automation and disaster recovery solutions on the minds of CIOs.”

        • IBM joins LOT Network to thwart patent trolls

          IBM on Tuesday announced it’s joining the LOT Network, a nonprofit group of companies that aims to thwart patent trolls. The move is a commitment to open innovation from IBM, which received a record 9,262 US patents in 2019 alone.

          The LOT Network was founded in 2014, with Red Hat (which IBM acquired in 2019) as a founding member. The organization aims to protect its members from patent assertion entities (PAEs) — entities that genereate more than half of their annual revenue from patent litigation.

          With a membership of more than 600 companies of all sizes, the LOT Network includes more than 2 million patent assets. If any of them fall into the hands of a PAE, LOT Network members automatically receive a license to that patent. Consequently, the PAE won’t be able to sue LOT members for alleged infringement of that patent.

          Since 1920, IBM has collected more than 140,000 US patents. It’s adding more than 80,000 patents and patent applications to the LOT Network.

        • Red Hat Announces OpenShift Container Platform 4.3

          Today, Red Hat announced plans to release OpenShift Container Platform 4.3. OpenShift Container Platform, sometimes shortened to just OpenShift, is Red Hat’s Kubernetes based open-source software container application. When Red Hat says open-source, they mean open source. You can find the current full release notes here alongside the source code in their GitHub repository. Red Hat was founded in 1993 as an open-source software provider and advocate. Today it provides a wide range of home and enterprise software products and services, including a Linux operating system and 24/7 support subscriptions.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • XFS – Online Filesystem Checking

        Since Linux 4.17, I have been working on an online filesystem checking feature for XFS. As I mentioned in the previous update, the online fsck tool (named xfs_scrub) walks all internal filesystem metadata records. Each record is checked for obvious corruptions before being cross-referenced with all other metadata in the filesystem. If problems are found, they are reported to the system administrator through both xfs_scrub and the health reporting system.

        As of Linux 5.3 and xfsprogs 5.3, online checking is feature complete and has entered the stabilization and performance optimization stage. For the moment it remains tagged experimental, though it should be stable. We seek early adopters to try out this new functionality and give us feedback.

      • Linux 5.5-rc7
        Well, things picked up at the end of the week, with half of my merges
happening in the last two days.

Whether that is the usual "send the weeks work to Linus on Friday", or
a sign that things are just picking up in general after the holidays,
I don't know.  If the former, I'll probably just release the final 5.5
next week. But if it looks like there's pent-up fixes pending next
week, I'll make another rc.

Nothing in here looks particularly odd. Drivers is about half of the
patch (networking, sound, gpio, gpu, scsi, usb, you name it), with the
rest being the usual mix - arch, networking, filesystems, core
kernel..  The diffstat looks mostly fairly nice and flat, with a
couple of exceptions that look harmless (a few device tree file
updates, some pure code movemment, and a couple of driver fixes that
ended up changing calling conventions to get done and as a result got
to be more lines than the bug otherwise would have merited).

Please do test, there should be nothing scary going on.

              Linus
      • Kernel prepatch 5.5-rc7

        The 5.5-rc7 kernel prepatch is out. Linus is still unsure whether the final 5.5 release will come out next week or not: “if it looks like there’s pent-up fixes pending next week, I’ll make another rc”.

      • Linux 5.5-rc7 Kernel Released

        The seventh weekly release candidate to Linux 5.5 is now available for testing.

        Linus noted with Linux 5.5-rc7 there was a large uptick in patch volume at week’s end. “Well, things picked up at the end of the week, with half of my merges happening in the last two days.”

        Due to the recent holidays in large part, it’s possible an eighth release candidate may be needed for Linux 5.5 before then releasing the kernel as stable on 2 February. However, in today’s 5.5-rc7 announcement, Torvalds noted he may just end up releasing 5.5 stable next week. In any case, the release of Linux 5.5 is right on the horizon and this should be the kernel powering Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and other upcoming distribution releases.

      • Do not blame anyone. Please give polite, constructive criticism

        Note that “we don’t break users” is literally about user-space applications, and about the kernel I maintain.

        If somebody adds a kernel module like ZFS, they are on their own. I can’t maintain it, and I can not be bound by other peoples kernel changes.

        And honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it’s ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL’d.

        Other people think it can be ok to merge ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface makes it ok, and that’s their decision. But considering Oracle’s litigious nature, and the questions over licensing, there’s no way I can feel safe in ever doing so.

        And I’m not at all interested in some “ZFS shim layer” thing either that some people seem to think would isolate the two projects. That adds no value to our side, and given Oracle’s interface copyright suits (see Java), I don’t think it’s any real licensing win either.

        Don’t use ZFS. It’s that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me.

        The benchmarks I’ve seen do not make ZFS look all that great. And as far as I can tell, it has no real maintenance behind it either any more, so from a long-term stability standpoint, why would you ever want to use it in the first place?

      • What Linus Torvalds Gets Wrong About ZFS [Ed: This anti-Torvalds rant comes from the same publisher, Conde Nast, that forced Torvalds out of his own project for a month]

        Ars Technica recently ran a rebuttal by author, podcaster, coder, and “mercenary sysadmin” Jim Salter to some comments Linus Torvalds made last week about ZFS.

      • Zhaoxin 7-Series x86 CPUs Mitigated For Spectre V2 + SWAPGS

        When it comes to the Zhaoxin x86-compatible processors coming out of VIA’s joint venture in Shanghai, their forthcoming 7-series (KX-7000) has hardware mitigations in place for some CPU vulnerabilities.

        We haven’t heard much about these Chinese x86 CPUs with regards to speculative execution vulnerabilities but it appears the pre-7-Series is vulnerable to Spectre Variant Two and at least SWAPGS. But with their 7-series, hardware mitigations appear to be in place.

      • Benchmarks Of Arch Linux’s Zen Kernel Flavor

        Following the recent Linux kernel tests of Liquorix and other scheduler discussions (and more), some requests from premium supporters rolled in for seeing the performance of Arch Linux’s Zen kernel package against the generic kernel. Here are those benchmark results.

        These are some benchmarks I recently did on the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X while running EndeavourOS. Tests were done with its default Linux 5.4.8-arch1 kernel compared to the same kernel revision but using Arch’s Zen kernel flavor. That is Arch’s spin of the Zen-kernel patches (not to be confused with AMD Zen).

      • Intel’s ConnMan Is Ready With WireGuard Support

        In addition to NetworkManager having good WireGuard support in advance of this secure VPN tunnel tech landing with the Linux 5.6 kernel, Intel’s ConnMan software is also ready with supporting WireGuard.

        Intel’s ConnMan hasn’t seen a new tagged release in nearly one year but over the past two months in the Git development code WireGuard support has materialized. ConnMan, as a reminder, is the Intel-led effort for providing an Internet connection manager on Linux designed for embedded/mobile use-cases that dates back to their Moblin days.

      • AMD

        • AMD Adds Zen 3 Code To Linux Kernel

          Even though it may feel like just yesterday that the Zen 2-powered chips in the Ryzen 3000-series processors came out, we’re already catching plenty of wind that Zen 3 is well on its way, which shouldn’t be all too surprising given that AMD does its best to maintain annual updates to its CPU lineup. Today, we caught a whiff of Zen 3 microcode being added to the Linux kernel, as spotted by hardware leaker Komachi.

          The spotting details the addition of EDAC (Error Detection and Correction) family ops code to the Linux kernel for the Family 19h systems, which is the family of AMD CPUs based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture. Naturally, the existing family 17h (Zen2) chips can still be used, and we must note that this is not about the Ryzen 4000 ‘Renoir’ APUs that were announced at CES, as those are still based on the Zen2 microarchitecture.

        • ASUS TUF Laptops With Ryzen Are Now Patched To Stop Overheating On Linux

          The AMD Ryzen Linux laptop experience continues improving albeit quite tardy on some elements of the support. In addition to the AMD Sensor Fusion Hub driver finally being released and current/voltage reporting for Zen CPUs on Linux, another step forward in Ryzen mobile support is a fix for ASUS TUF laptops with these processors.

        • AMD Sends In A Bunch Of Fixes For Linux 5.6 Along With Pollock Support

          After already several rounds of feature work queued in DRM-Next for Linux 5.6, AMD has submitted a final batch of feature work for this next kernel as it concerns their AMDGPU graphics driver.

          While Linux 5.6′s merge window isn’t opening until around the start of February, with RC6 having come, it effectively marks an end to the feature window of DRM-Next for targeting the next kernel. AMD’s final pull request is mostly centered on fixes plus a few other extras and also enabling AMD Pollock display/graphics support for that forthcoming hardware.

        • The AMD Ryzen Thermal / Power Linux Reporting Improvements Working Well – V2 Up For Testing

          A few days ago I reported on AMD’s “k10temp” Linux kernel driver finally seeing the ability to report CCD temperatures and CPU current/voltage readings as a big improvement to this hardware monitoring driver. The work hasn’t yet been queued for inclusion into the mainline kernel, but initial testing is working well and a second revision to the patches has been sent out.

          Linux HWMON maintainer Guenter Roeck who spearheaded this work independent of AMD sent out the “v2″ k10temp driver improvements on Saturday. This allows core complex tie temperature reporting for Zen 2 CPUs and allows current and voltage reporting for Ryzen CPUs. While this information has long been available to Windows users, sadly it’s not been the case for Linux at least as far as mainline drivers go — the out-of-tree Zenpower driver and other third-party attempts have been available but nothing mainline.

      • Intel

        • More Benchmarks Of The Initial Performance Hit From CVE-2019-14615 On Intel Gen7 Graphics

          On Wednesday I shined the light on the initial performance hit from Intel’s CVE-2019-14615 graphics vulnerability particularly striking their “Gen7″ graphics hard. That initial testing was done with Core i7 hardware while here are results looking at the equally disturbing performance hits from Core i3 and i5 affected processors too.

          This article offers some benchmarks with Core i3/i5 results added in alongside the i7 CPUs previously tested with the Gen7 graphics found most commonly with Ivy Bridge and Haswell processors. Each distinct system was tested before/after from the CVE-2019-14615 posted on Wednesday.

        • Intel graphics patch “wrecks” Gen7 iGPU Linux performance

          Earlier this week Intel released details about a vulnerability in its integrated graphics hardware. Its advisory ID was INTEL-SA-00314 and it talked about the CVE-2019-14615 vulnerability. Products from 3rd Gen Core up to 10th Gen are affected including the contemporaneous Xeon, Pentium, Celeron and Atom products. Intel was made aware of this vulnerability as far back as August so already has patches available and links to recommended new drivers for both Windows and Linux users (scroll down this page about half way).

          All so regular and nothing surprising so far… However, since the updated drivers have been released, Linux-centric tech site Phoronix has been busy checking and testing the new drivers (on Linux of course) to see if there are any performance penalties, or other aberrations, delivered with the vulnerability patches.

        • More Details On Intel’s CVE-2019-14615 Graphics Vulnerability, a.k.a. iGPU Leak

          As for CVE-2019-14615 the Intel graphics vulnerability disclosed this week affecting Gen7 through Gen9 graphics architectures, it’s been dubbed “iGPU Leak” by the researchers involved. Thanks to the researcher who originally discovered this vulnerability having reached out to us, we now have some more information on this issue they describe as a “dangerous vulnerability.”

          This is the vulnerability that initially piqued our interest over the big graphics performance hit to older Ivybridge/Haswell processors with integrated graphics where in the initial patches we’ve seen quite dramatic losses.. Fortunately though the current Gen9 graphics have a mitigation where we’re seeing fortunately no change in performance. As relayed yesterday, however, they hope for no Gen7 graphics performance penalty in the final version of their mitigation.

        • Intel Gen7 Graphics Mitigation Will Try To Avoid Performance Loss In Final Version

          Intel’s open-source developers working on their security mitigation for the Gen7 graphics hardware have volleyed a new version of the patch series for that mitigation currently causing big hits to Ivybridge / Haswell performance.

        • Intel’s OSPray 2.0 Ray-Tracing Engine Released

          An area where Intel continues striking with rhythm and near perfection is on the open-source software front with their countless speedy and useful open-source innovations that often go unmatched as well as timely hardware support. Out this weekend is their OSPray 2.0 release for this damn impressive ray-tracing engine.

          OSPray 2.0 is out as their latest big upgrade to this open-source ray-tracing engine that supports photo-realistic global illumination, MPI for exploiting large system performance, volume rendering, and is all open-source software. OSPray 2.0 is another big advancement for this project that is part of Intel’s growing oneAPI tool-kit.

        • The Linux Kernel Obsoletes The Intel Simple Firmware Interface

          We haven’t heard of the Simple Firmware Interface in a number of years, but that changed this week in Linux now formally marking SFI as “obsolete” and confirmation Intel does not plan to ship any future platforms with this standard that dates back to their early days of working on Atom-powered mobile devices.

    • Applications

      • Keep a journal of your activities with this Python program

        Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I’m taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

      • Use this Twitter client for Linux to tweet from the terminal

        Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I’m taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

        I love social networking and microblogging. It’s quick, it’s easy, and I can share my thoughts with the world really quickly. The drawback is, of course, that almost all the desktop options for non-Windows users are wrappers around the website. Twitter has a lot of clients, but what I really want is something lightweight, easy to use, and most importantly, attractive.

      • KMyMoney 5.0.8 released

        The KMyMoney development team today announces the immediate availability of version 5.0.8 of its open source Personal Finance Manager.

        Despite even more testing we understand that some bugs may have slipped past our best efforts. If you find one of them, please forgive us, and be sure to report it, either to the mailing list or on bugs.kde.org.

        Besides the software itself, the KMyMoney website was refurbished and now has a more modern clean look. Thanks to all who were involved in the process.

      • Shotcut is an open source video editor for Windows, Linux, and macOS

        Last month, we talked about SimpleVideoCutter. This time, we’ll be looking at a more advanced video editor called Shotcut.

        Shotcut is an open source video editor for the Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The application has a ton of features, and in this review, I’m giving you an overview of the program’s main functionality.

        The start screen of the application looks complex, but once you get past it, the program turns out to be user-friendly. First things first: select the project folder, name and video mode (resolution) and click on the Start button. There are some panels on the left and right sides of the screen, these are the Filters, Peak Meter and the Recent panes. You can close these if you don’t need them, they can be recalled from the toolbar at the top. The GUI should look simpler already.

      • VirtualBox 6.1.2

        VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

        [...]

        Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don’t have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

        Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Christopher Allan Webber: Terminal Phase 1.0

        I’m pleased to announce that Terminal Phase, a space shooter game you can play in your terminal, has achieved version 1.0. The game is completely playable and is a fun game (well, at least a number of playtesters told me they thought it was fun). It includes two levels (one of which is more balanced than the other), and more content is on its way (1.0 isn’t the end!). You can see it being played above in cool-retro-term but it works in all sorts of terminals, including gnome-terminal and etc.

        I also released a video recently (archive.org mirror) of me doing a live playtest of the game and also showing off how to make new levels and program new enemies (which serves as kind of an introduction, but probably not the best one, to Spritely Goblins).

        Terminal Phase was actually a reward for hitting the $500/mo milestone on my Patreon account, which we achieved a little over a week ago. I aimed to get 1.0 out the door by midnight on Wednesday but I actually released it a couple of hours later, closer to 2:30am, because I was trying to make the credits look cool:

        Terminal Phase Credits

        I think I succeeded, right? Maybe you would like your name in there; you can still do so by selecting a tier on my Patreon account. I released the game as FOSS, so whether you donate or not, you can still reap the benefits. But I figure making the credits look cool and putting peoples’ names in there would be a good way of making people feel motivated. And there are more releases on the way; I’ll be adding to this now and then and releasing more stuff occasionally. In fact you may notice the cool parallax scrolling starfield in the gif at the top of this post; I added that after 1.0. I guess it’s a bit sneaky to put that on top of a post labeled 1.0, but the good news is that this means that 1.1 is not far away, which will include some new enemies (maybe a boss?), new levels, and yes, parallax starfields (and maybe your name in the credits if it isn’t already).

      • Indie Game VVVVVV Goes Open Source In Honor Of Its Tenth Anniversary

        Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV is an action-platform game that has offered players a tough challenge for almost ten years.

        On January 10, 2020, VVVVVV celebrated its tenth anniversary in a blog post. With the blog post came a big surprise for longtime fans of the game.

      • Indie smash hit VVVVVV is now open source

        The popular Indie platformer VVVVVV is now open source and available on GitHub. Terry Cavanagh, the creator of the game, detailed the process of porting the original Adobe Flash release to C++ for release on PC on his blog. It’s an entertaining read, especially for fans of the game.

      • Indie Platforming Classic VVVVV Is Now Open Source

        Creative game developer Terry Cavanaugh has recently decided to release the source code for his beloved gravity-bending platformer VVVVV in honor of the game’s tenth anniversary.

      • Steam for Chrome OS would make Chromeboxes even more awesome

        Once upon a time, there was this small-form-factor PC you could buy called a SteamBox. It was designed to hook up to your television and give you access to the almost 40,000 games at Valve’s Steam storefront.

        I bought a SteamBox. It worked surprisingly well until I bricked it trying to install Windows 7.

        After several reinventions and a revolving door of partners, the only way to find a SteamBox today is looking for a very overpriced used model on eBay or Amazon. It was a shame, really, because the idea was a good one — an inexpensive way to get Steam into your living room. All Valve needed was a partner with deep pockets and that wasn’t afraid to keep dipping into them.

        Hello there, Google.

      • Report: Google wants to bring the Steam game store to… Chrome OS?

        We have a wild report from Android Police this morning, as the site claims that Google is working to bring official Steam support to Chrome OS. Yes, Valve’s Steam. The gaming platform. On Chromebooks.

        The story apparently comes from a direct source: Kan Liu, the director of product management for Chrome OS. During an interview with Liu at CES, the site says Liu “implied, though would not directly confirm, that Google was working in direct cooperation with Valve on this project.” The idea is that, according the Liu, “gaming is the single most popular category of downloads for Play Store content on Chromebooks,” and Steam would mean even more games.

      • Google and Valve are bringing Steam to Chromebooks – and it’s all thanks to Linux

        Kan Liu, Director of Product Management for Google’s Chrome OS, has revealed that the Chromebook team at Google is bringing Steam to Chromebooks.

        The news, reported by AndroidPolice, is certainly exciting, as it means PC gamers won’t have to rely on Windows to play games. According to the website, Liu implied that Google is working with Valve, the company behind Steam, to make this happen.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Kubuntu Focus: First Boot And Initial Impressions Of This Powerful New Linux Laptop

          Tuxedo Computers and the Kubuntu Council recently introduced us to the Kubuntu Focus, a premium Linux laptop designed for power users, developers and gamers. I’ve cracked open my review unit and wanted to introduce a series of articles by taking a first look at the modified KDE desktop and start exploring what distinguishes this particular laptop from the crowd.

        • KDE Plasma 5.18 Seeing More Last Minute Work To Make It One Of Their Best Releases Ever

          This past week KDE Plasma 5.18 reached beta for this next long-term support release of the modern KDE desktop. While it’s approaching the finish line next month, developers have not let up on more improvements in making this one of their best and most polished releases ever.

          Some of the additional work that headed into Plasma 5.18 this week as well as other KDE components has included…

        • Plasma 5.18 is the release you’ve been waiting for

          A ton of features, bugfixes, and and user interfaces have landed for Plasma 18, and a beta release is now available for adventurous types to test out ahead of the release next month.

          I think this is the Plasma release that a lot of people have been waiting for. It’s faster, more stable, more beautiful, and more feature-filled than any previous release, and it comes with a Long Term Support guarantee. Nothing is perfect, and we can always do better (and always strive to), but I think Plasma 5.18 is going to hit a sweet spot for a lot of people. Look for it in the next LTS releases of Kubuntu and openSUSE Leap, as well as all the rolling release distros of course.

        • This Cool Cyberpunk Desktop is Easy to Recreate on Kubuntu

          Arguably the most striking feature of this neo-noir desktop in the video above is the vivid live wallpaper. Atmospheric, this instantly instills an edgy, futuristic vibe reminiscent of films like Blade Runner, Dark City, and eXistenZ.

          I am even more impressed by easy it is to recreate the whole look (assuming you’re running KDE Plasma desktop) for yourself.

          On a regular Ubuntu desktop with GNOME Shell setting up a live wallpaper requires some a bit of effort (installing an unmaintained app from a random repo or getting tricksy with mpv, fining the numbers and deftly placing enough hyphens).

    • Distributions

      • Reviews

        • Review: Zorin 15.1 “Lite”

          Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based operating system that aims to make Linux easy for Windows and macOS users. In the words of Zorin, it is “the alternative to Windows and macOS designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure and privacy respecting”. Zorin’s main product is the paid-for “Ultimate” edition, which will set you back €39 and comes with macOS, Windows, Linux and “Touch” layouts (i.e. themes) as well as a relatively large collection of software and “installation support”. Other editions of Zorin are free but come with less pre-installed software and fewer desktop layouts.

          For this review I dusted off a MacBook that dates from late 2009 and installed the “Lite” edition which, as the name suggests, is designed to breathe new life into older hardware. The laptop is one of the plastic, white MacBooks. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM – I doubled the amount of RAM a few months ago. The laptop has mostly been running Fedora with the MATE desktop and the i3 window manager as an alternative environment, both of which ran fine. Zorin’s Lite edition uses Xfce as the desktop environment.

          First impressions and installation

          Zorin’s website is either modern and clean or yet another bootstrap site, depending on your view. There are just three links in the navigation menu: Download, Computers and Help (the Computers section links to vendors that sell laptops with Zorin pre-installed). The Download section lists Zorin’s Ultimate edition first, followed by the Core, Lite and Education editions.

          Clicking any of the Download links for the free versions triggers a “Sign up to our newsletter & Download” pop-up window featuring a huge “Sign up & Download” button and a very small “Skip to download” link. I am not a fan of this type of marketing. I don’t mind that they ask if I maybe want to sign up to their mailing list, but I take issue with the fact that the dialogue window has been designed to make the “No thanks” option easy to miss. Such marketing techniques assume that users need to be tricked into signing up to receiving marketing materials, which reflects poorly on the project as a whole.

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • Fedora Family

        • The Performance Cost To SELinux On Fedora 31

          Following the recent AppArmor performance regression in Linux 5.5 (since resolved), some Phoronix readers had requested tests out of curiosity in looking at the performance impact of Fedora’s decision to utilize SELinux by default. Here is how the Fedora Workstation 31 performance compares out-of-the-box with SELinux to disabling it.

          By default Fedora runs with SELinux enabled in an enforcing and targeted mode. But by booting with selinux=0 as a kernel parameter or editing /etc/selinux/config it’s possible to outright disable the Security Enhanced Linux functionality or change its operating mode.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Xubuntu 20.04 Will Include a Dark Theme

          Current Xubuntu 20.04 daily builds include a freshly created ‘Greybird-dark’ variant that does exactly what it says on the tin.

          Greybird’s steely bright aesthetic is swapped for a collection of darker greys. While new colour palette allows the theme to stay true to its name — it’s still grey — the overall effect is more transformative than you might have otherwise thought.

          In short, Greybird Dark instantly gives the Xfce desktop a distinctive, classy new look that’s more than a match for dark themes touted in other distros.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Mattermost co-founder survived tough times to launch game-changing collaboration platform

        One of the co-founders of the influential startup accelerator Y Combinator once termed the struggles of entrepreneurs to launch a business the “trough of sorrow.” As he was trying to run an independent video game business, entrepreneur Ian Tien suddenly found himself waist deep in that trough.

        Tien (pictured) had built his business on a messaging app that quickly went south after being acquired by a large company.

        “It started crashing and losing data, and we were super-unhappy,” Tien recalled. “Rather than go to another platform, we realized we had 10 million hours of people running messaging in their own video games. Why don’t we build this ourselves?”

        The result was Mattermost Inc., an open-source, online self-hosted messaging service that has attracted attention from investors and recognizable customers, such as Uber Technologies Inc., Airbus and the U.S. Department of Defense.

      • Unifying open standards and open source with agile technology

        Broadband installations globally have eclipsed the one billion mark to date. These connections are largely based upon a traditional model of modified existing central office architectures, complemented by copper or fibre access and a relatively simple edge network connecting a handful of devices in the home via wired or Wi-Fi connections.

        However, a new digital era is fast emerging, where new technologies such as 5G, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV), a proliferation of devices driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), and a significantly more sophisticated and complex connected home have compounded matters and applied significant pressures to the network architecture and its ability to scale to meet the challenges and opportunities of this new world.

      • What’s in Your Containers? Try an Open Source Tool to Find Out

        As most security pros know, application containers — Docker, rkt, etc. — and the orchestration elements employed to support them, such as Kubernetes, are used increasingly in many organizations.

        Often the security organization isn’t exactly the first stop on the path to deployment of these tools. (If it was in your shop, consider yourself one of the lucky ones.) Instead, usage tends to emerge from the grass roots. It starts with developers using containers on their workstations to streamline unit testing and environmental configuration; builds traction as integration processes adapt to a more “continuous integration” approach facilitated by containers; and ultimately gains acceptance in the broader production landscape.

        [...]

        “Anchore Engine is an open source tool for performing deep inspection of container images,” said Ross Turk, Anchore VP of marketing. “These images can contain a whole lot: operating system packages, language libraries, credentials and secrets, and configuration that affects how the resulting containers are executed. Anchore Engine flattens and unpacks the image, layer by layer, and inventories what’s inside.”

        This information is valuable not only because it provides information on what software may need to be updated in the event of security patches or updates, but also because it gives you visibility into the implementation of applications and services before, after, or during their release into the production environment. It can inform software architecture reviews, threat modeling, conversations about secrets management, audit activities and design reviews, among other things.

      • What’s Ahead for Open Source and Financial Services in 2020

        It should not come as a surprise that software companies like to try their hand in many different industries, and it was only a matter of time before the most popular ones decided to start offering financial and banking services. Google’s recent announcement that it will start to offer “smart checking accounts” comes right on the heels of Facebook’s Libra currency announcement, and we anticipate that this trend will just continue. The biggest reason is that banking continues to happen where customers are already shopping, and/or where social networking occurs – ultimately serving to streamline the customer experience and to permit spending and lending to happen faster and in places the customer already spends a significant amount of time.

      • SD Times Open Source Project of the Week: Khronos Vulkan

        Khronos Vulkan, which just released its 1.2 update, is a low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and computing API.

        Vulkan targets high-performance realtime 3D graphics applications such as video games and interactive media across all platforms.

        The new version includes improved performance, enhanced visual quality and easier development.

        Last year, Google’s Stadia launched with a host of AAA titles that use HLSL on Vulkan: Destiny 2, Red Dead Redemption II, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and the Tomb Raider games

      • LSD welcomes Knowledge Focus to Planet Open Source

        Today, LSD Information Technology (LSD) is announcing the merger of Knowledge Focus into its fold as of 1 January 2020. The strategic integration is the result of a shared vision to unify and further strengthen competencies across key open source solution spaces. With this merger, LSD hopes to explore new opportunities with their combined superpowers and will continue to deliver market-leading open source solutions.

        Stefan Lesicnik, CEO of LSD Information Technology, said on the merger: “We are really excited to no longer compete with the great team from Knowledge Focus, but rather, as colleagues, to work with them and deliver great customer solutions based on open source Elastic Stack and Kafka. Knowledge Focus’ open source experience with Elastic and Kafka, combined with the LSD expertise around DevOps, Openshift and Kubernetes, provide instant combined value for strategic solutions for our clients.”

      • Wine industry collab develops open source platform

        A University of Adelaide and industry collaboration has developed a digital platform to help grapegrowers optimise their irrigation and crop management.

      • flexiWAN Offers Escape From SD-WAN Black Box

        Israeli startup flexiWAN has introduced open source SD-WAN software that, it believes, can give telcos a competitive edge by enabling them to customize services to suit their own needs.

        The company says its approach, based on modular software elements, addresses a growing problem in the SD-WAN market — namely that service providers are struggling to differentiate because they’re all selling similar services based on the same set of inflexible systems, says flexiWAN’s co-founder and CEO Amir Zmora.

      • Inspecting TLS-encrypted traffic with mitmproxy

        Mitmproxy is a free, open-source tool whose killer feature is the ability to inspect Transport Layer Security (TLS)-encrypted mobile phone app traffic. The tool is superior to Wireshark when it comes to examining TLS-encrypted network traffic, and its zero-dollar price point beats out the not-cheap Burp Suite. The only downside (upside for some) is that mitmproxy is primarily a command line tool, unlike the swish Burp Suite GUI.

      • Value Of Open Source Strategy Is To Attract Right Developers: Sudhir Tiwari, ThoughtWorks
      • CDMO Speeds its Line with Open-Source L4 Serialization System

        Sovereign Pharmaceuticals, LLC is a CDMO specializing in small-batch prescriptions drugs, packaging solid and liquid products in their Ft Worth, TX, facility. They handle a variety of bottle sizes—from 50 cc up to 950 cc and from 1 oz to 16 oz—for a number of drugs and indications. Dealing with several virtual companies for clients, they spend a lot of time educating them about regulatory requirements.

        In 2016, the company sought a serialization solution to meet the DSCSA enforcement date in Nov. 2018. While they were driven by regulations, meeting the deadline appeared it would be a challenge. “We tried one solution and our customers tried three other solutions and none of them were going to meet the deadline,” says Ryan DeSario, Serialization Supervisor at Sovereign.

      • Open Source Luminary Marc Fleury Enters Crypto Arena with Announcement of New Crypto Asset Class and Continuous Token Offering Sale
      • Open source pioneer Dr. Marc Fleury launches Two Prime & new crypto asset class

        Open source pioneer Dr. Marc Fleury today launches Two Prime, a fintech firm that focuses on the financial applications of crypto to the real economy. Two Prime’s Chief Executive Officer Fleury and Chief Operating Officer Alexander S. Blum are bringing abundance to the crypto industry by introducing a new breed of cryptocurrency with safeguard mechanisms that use real assets. Two Prime’s ultimate goal is to bring about the next phase of crypto’s financial applications and reinvigorate the crypto market by introducing traditional tools and models to the space.

      • Open-Source Guru Fleury’s Crypto Firm to Debut Asset Token

        Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency firm Two Prime, headed by an entrepreneur who sold a previous tech business for $350 million, is set to introduce a digital token invested in a basket of blockchain-based holdings.

        The FF Accretive Token, registered in Hong Kong, will use the proceeds from its initial issuance to make crypto-related investments in a structured portfolio of cryptocurrencies, debt and equities with the goal of generating accretive cash flow, according to a company release. Instead of releasing all the coins at once like most initial coin offerings, Two Prime will issue the tokens continuously into the market based on demand.

      • Open-source Nextcloud rebrands itself, ready to compete with GSuite and Office 365

        For years now Nextcloud has been considered by many, mostly more tech-savvy users, especially those in the free and open-source community, as a fairly viable alternative to Dropbox – although one that just “isn’t there” yet.

        Not only in terms of user-friendliness – for one thing, Nextcloud is self-hosted – but more importantly, there have been complaints about its functionality and even reliability.

        However, there was always one pretty major advantage that recommended it over a proprietary service like Dropbox: Nextcloud is free and open-source, meaning that there are no “secret ingredients” in its code, which allows users full control of the data they sync, share, and host while using it.

        Nextcloud has announced taking a big step forward in the hope of growing into much more than just a Dropbox alternative.

        The product has changed its name to Nextcloud Hub to reflect the addition of new features to its integrated mail client, calendar and contacts, audio and video team chat, and real-time collaborative document editing – a competitor to Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office 365.

      • European public services rely on Bareos for backups

        European public services make up about half of all customers that pay for support services on Bareos, a backup solution available as open source. The software is used by universities across the continent, national and state archives, and municipalities small and large, reports Bareos, the 8-year-old company based in Cologne (Germany) that is the main developer of the eponymous software solution.

      • My FOSS Story

        Being a FOSS maintainer has given me a lot of interesting experiences. Some bad, some good. I’ve tried to express some of those experiences in this article with the goal of helping everyone understand each other better. This article doesn’t necessarily generalize because these experiences are told through my perception of the world. For example, my individualist perspective on life greatly colors how I perceive FOSS. Namely, it’s largely a personal endeavor for me, rather than a more altruistic attempt at improving a public good. A different perspective could greatly change how one experiences FOSS.

        My hope is that others will use these experiences to reflect on their own and perhaps the experiences of others. I think this process can lead to greater empathy and an overall better experience for everyone.

        In this article, I listed a lot of behaviors that I considered negative. Not everyone will see them as negatively as I do. That’s okay and expected. More to the point, I am certainly guilty of committing some of those negative behaviors myself. We are not perfect and we will never be able to be purely empathetic 100% of the time. This is a game of inches and my hope is that we can do better, even if it’s just a little bit.

      • The new standard in on-premises team collaboration: Nextcloud Hub

        During a keynote presentation in Berlin, Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek announced the availability of a new product from Nextcloud. Nextcloud Hub is the first completely integrated on-premises content collaboration platform on the market, ready for a new generation of users who expect seamless online collaboration capabilities out of the box.

      • Nextcloud Hub Announced For Offering On-Premises Content Collaboration Platform

        Nearly four years since forking from ownCloud, Nextcloud continues taking on the likes of Dropbox, Google Docs, and Microsoft 365 — especially more so now with their introduction of Nextcloud Hub. Nextcloud Hub is a completely integrated on-premises content collaboration platform.

      • Open source fights cancer, Tesla adopts Coreboot, Uber and Lyft release open source machine learning

        It’s hard to a growing company these days that doesn’t take advantage of machine learning to streamline its business and make sense of the data it amasses. Ridesharing companies, which gather massive amounts of data, have enthusiastically embraced the promise of machine learning. Two of the biggest players in the ridesharing sector have made some of their machine learning code open source.

        Uber recently released the source code for its Manifold tool for debugging machine learning models. According to Uber software engineer Lezhi Li, Manifold will “benefit the machine learning (ML) community by providing interpretability and debuggability for ML workflows.”

      • JetBrains Mono is a free, open source monospace font

        JetBrains Mono is a new font designed especially for coders and developers. The lowercase characters are taller than the ones in other monospace fonts, improving readability.

      • Best fonts for programming: JetBrains Mono typeface is easy on the eyes

        What typeface do you program with? JetBrains released a new open source typeface that is designed with coding in mind. JetBrains Mono aims to minimize eye strain, improve code readability, reduce noise, and balance whitespace with ligatures. Besides its practical usage, it’s also just plain beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. See what it looks and add it to your IDE.
        Long hours staring at a screen is a recipe for eyestrain. Dark mode and display-altering software such as f.lux help take some of the strain away.

        What typeface is best for coding? When designing a typeface with the intention of coding, the distinction between characters, spacing, height, and line thickness are all components that need consideration.

      • Events

        • X.Org’s XDC2020 May Abandon Poland Conference To Find More Welcoming European Location

          Hopefully you didn’t yet book your tickets to XDC2020 as the annual X.Org conference as the venue — and host country for that matter — may change.

          The annual X.Org Developers’ Conference flips each year between different venues in North American and Europe. Last year it was announced XDC2020 would be hosted in Gdansk, Poland by a local Polish crew at Intel. But now that decision is being reassessed over finding a more welcoming and inclusive country for the event.

        • Top 5 Reasons Why You CAN’T MISS SUSECON 2020

          A new year, a new decade, and a new SUSE (now fully independent), all coalesce to a new SUSECON—bigger, more inspiring, and more focused on the world we live in than ever before. Like a pot of gold, SUSECON 2020 will be full of life-enhancing moments to make your world better. Here are the top five riches you have to look forward to when the rainbow lands in Dublin, March 23 – 27, 2020.

        • Xen Project Design and Developer Summit: Registration and CFP Open Now!

          Starting today, registration and Call for Proposals officially opens for the Xen Project Developer & Design Summit. This year’s Summit, taking place from June 2nd through the 4th at the PRECIS Center in Bucharest, Romania, will bring together the Xen Project community of developers and power users to share ideas, latest developments, and experiences, as well as offer opportunities to plan and collaborate on all things Xen Project.

          If you’d like to present a talk at the Summit, the Call For Proposals is open now and will close Friday, March 6, 2020.

          The Xen Summit brings together key developers in this community and is an ideal sponsorship opportunity. If you are interested in sponsoring this year’s event, check out the Sponsorship Page. For information regarding registration, speaking opportunities and sponsorships, head over the event website and learn more!

        • FOSDEM 2020 RTC Devroom schedule announced

          The schedule for the RTC devroom at FOSDEM 2020 in Brussels, Belgium has recently been announced. The devroom is on Sunday, 2 February 2020. We have 18 great presentations scheduled this year. Please share the link and come to support them.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • webcompat.com: Project belt-on.

            So last week, on Friday (Japanese time), I woke up with a website being half disabled and then completely disabled. We had been banned by GitHub because of illegal content we failed to flag early enough. And GitHub did what they should do.

            Oh… and last but not least… mike asked me what Belt-on meant. I guess so let’s make it more explicit.

          • Units of Measure in Rust with Refinement Types

            Years ago, Andrew Kennedy published a foundational paper about a type checker for units of measure, and later implemented it for F#. To this day, F# is the only mainstream programming language which provides first class support to make sure that you will not accidentally confuse meters and feet, euros and dollars, but that you can still convert between watts·hours and joules.

          • This post focuses on the work I accomplished as part of the Treeherder team during the last half of last year.

            The Taskcluster team requested that we stop ingesting tasks from the taskcluster-treeherder service and instead use the official Taskcluster Pulse exchanges (see work in bug 1395254). This required rewriting their code from Javascript to Python and integrate it into the Treeherder project. This needed to be accomplished by July since the Taskcluster migration would leave the service in an old set up without much support. Integrating this service into Treeherder gives us more control over all Pulse messages getting into our ingestion pipeline without an intermediary service. The project was accomplished ahead of the timeline. The impact is that the Taskcluster team had one less system to worry about ahead of their GCP migration.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • This Beaten-Down Software Stock Has a New CEO: Time to Buy?
        • Cloudera taps former head of the company it merged with to be its new CEO

          Data software company Cloudera named Rob Bearden as its new CEO on Monday. Bearden was previously the CEO of rival Hortonworks, which merged with Cloudera last year in a stock swap that valued the combined companies at $5.2 billion.

          Shares of Cloudera rose 3% in extended trading following the announcement.

          Bearden is a familiar face for many of the company’s employees. Now he’s keen to eke out more savings from the integration of the two companies and bring in more revenue from customers.

        • MariaDB goes bigly on cloud-native smart apps

          MariaDB Corporation is upping its cloud-native playbook.

          At the same time, MariaDB is aiming to up its approach to so-called ‘smart’ applications., so before we define the parameters at play here, let’s look at the news.

          The database company’s mysteriously named MariaDB Platform X4 is new to the table and is described as a cloud-native open source database for developers to build modern applications using smart transactions and cloud-native data storage.

          We know that modern applications (that aspire to be smart) require access to vast amounts of data — and that data needs to be optimised for analytical queries and Machine Learning (ML) models.

          In this way, transactions can be augmented with data insights, turning them into smart transactions.

        • How can CIOs avoid vendor lock-in and stop repeating past mistakes?

          Percona’s own research supports this — around 89% of respondents to the Open Source Data Management Software Survey were using more than one open source database in their applications. The most popular public cloud services make heavy use of open source in their cloud deployments, and host many open source implementations. The growth of software containers based on Docker is also increasing the consumption of open source.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • CMS

        • Alfresco Helps George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust Begin Its Paperless Journey

          Alfresco Software, an open source content, process and governance software company, has announced the successful implementation of its Digital Business Platform by George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust to enable paperless processes. By digitising clinical and non-clinical forms, the Trust is able to make creation and changes quicker and easier, as well as give patients more control over their health and well-being. After just four months, patients and staff are seeing such a positive difference that there are plans to expand the usage of the Alfresco Digital Business Platform to digitise more processes.

        • Should You Use Open-Source Document Management Software?

          A document management system (DMS) can play an integral role in the organization and efficiency of your business. Companies that want a paperless office or a streamlined way to store and access digital documents turn to document management software. The most useful systems allow you to perform a variety of tasks like scan paper documents, control file versions, organize various folders, set user permissions and collaborate with other team members.

          Not all applications are created equal; you must, therefore, choose a DMS that serves your needs and integrates with your other business platforms. Business owners and developers who want added flexibility and customization often turn to open-source DMS solutions.

        • Drupal 8.8.0 is available

          The last normal feature release of Drupal 8 includes a stable Media Library as well as several improvements to workspaces and migrations. The new experimental Claro administration theme brings a fresh look to site management. This is also the first release to come with native Composer support.

        • Drupal 8.8.0 Released, Acquia Acquires AgilOne and More Open Source CMS News

          Drupal 8.8.0 — the last normal feature release of Drupal 8 — is now available for download. Some of the updates in this release include:

      • Funding

        • UVM Gets $1 Million From Google For Open Source Research

          Open source software can be shared and modified but UVM said the concept is about more than software. The school says the aim of the project is to broaden understanding of how people, teams and organizations thrive in technology-rich settings, particularly in open-source projects and communities.

        • UVM gets $1M from Google for open source research

          The unrestricted gift is to support open-source research. Open source is a type of computer software, where source code is released under a license, and the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Make 4.3 Released!

            The next stable version of GNU make, version 4.3, has been released and is available for download from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/

            Please see the NEWS file that comes with the GNU make distribution for details on user-visible changes.

          • GNU Make 4.3 Released With Performance Improvements, Newer GNU libc + Musl Support

            While a Red Hat developer is working on “Goals” to try to improve upon Make, the GNU Make project is not slowing down and is out this Sunday with a big update.

            GNU Make 4.3 is this new release and some of the changes include:

            - Makefiles can now specify the “-j” option within their MAKEFLAGS variable to enable the parallelism mode.

      • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

        • Is open source culture the answer to our technology woes?

          For that, open source culture is likely to be the most effective, if not the only, therapy. Open source means to be open about the source of knowledge that enables anyone to make something. With regard to technology, one important element of that source, but certainly not the only one, is represented by the code used to generate a given piece of software, AKA the source code.

          But you would be mistaken to think that the ability to read and write code is a necessary requirement to access this alternative technological world. In fact, open source should be understood in its broader sense of open knowledge. Should one wish, everyone can contribute in many ways such as by sharing, translating and editing instructions, creating tutorials and engaging with the ethical issues at stake in our technological society. Contrary to how things were 30 years ago, open source software is today as user-friendly and good-looking as any other proprietary and close-source counterpart. The ability to read and write code is certainly useful, but not necessary when using open source alternatives.

        • Open Data

          • Open source: Vatican wartime archives ready for new batch of scholars

            After decades of anticipation, the Vatican archives are ready to welcome, starting March 2, scores of scholars wishing to study documents related to the wartime pontificate of Pope Pius XII.

            All 85 researchers who have requested access have been given the green light to come and sift through all the materials from the period of 1939 to 1958, Bishop Sergio Pagano, prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Archives, told Catholic News Service Jan. 13.

            [...]

            The nationality or religion of those requesting aid did not matter to the pope, only verifying that need was legitimate, the bishop said.

            He said the archives have letters from people who admitted they were atheists but were turning to the pope for help because they saw him as the only moral leader left in such a dark time in history.

            Referring to accusations by some historians and Jewish groups that Pope Pius XII and others did not do enough to stop the Nazi rise to power and the Holocaust, Pagano said the pope “did speak with his efforts and then he spoke up with words, so it is not true that the pope was totally silent.”

            The new researchers’ stated fields of interest, he said, obviously were focused on World War II, the Holocaust, the persecution of the Jewish people, the murder of Italian citizens in Rome by Nazi German troops and the relationship between the Holy See and the Nazi’s national socialist party and with communism.

          • How open-source code could help us survive natural disasters

            In November 2019, while on a trip to Australia to discuss the power of technology to make a difference in the aftermath of natural disasters, I saw firsthand the devastation caused by historic bushfires raging throughout the country.

            Sadly, devastating bushfires are still burning on the continent, putting more and more lives at risk and destroying entire communities. As the fires persist, the smoke in Sydney and elsewhere has rendered the air quality “hazardous.” There’s been a national spike in hospital visits, many to treat breathing problems.

            Unfortunately, Australia is not alone in being ravaged by natural disaster.

        • Open Access/Content

      • Programming/Development

        • SaltStack Introduces Plugin Oriented Programming with New Open-Source Innovation Modules to Power Scalable Automation and Artificial Intelligence
        • JFrog Launches Free ConanCenter to Improve C/C++ DevOps Package Search and Discovery English

          JFrog, the Universal DevOps technology leader known for enabling liquid software via continuous updates, announces today the launch of the free ConanCenter, enabling better search and discovery while streamlining C/C++ package management. Conan is an open-source, decentralized, and multi-platform package manager for developers to create and share native binaries.

        • Rav1e Kicks Off 2020 With Speed Improvements For Rust-Based AV1 Encoding

          Xiph.org’s Rustlang-written “Rav1e” AV1 video encoder is back on track with delivering weekly pre-releases after missing them over the past month due to the holidays. With Rav1e p20200115 are not only performance improvements but also binary side and build speed enhancements.

          The new Rav1e pre-release should be roughly 30% faster while also delivering slight enhancements to the image quality at the highest speed (10). That’s a winning combination with speed and image quality improvements together!

        • RPushbullet 0.3.3

          Release 0.3.3 of the RPushbullet package just got to CRAN. RPushbullet offers an interface to the neat Pushbullet service for inter-device messaging, communication, and more. It lets you easily send (programmatic) alerts like the one to the left to your browser, phone, tablet, … – or all at once.

          This release further robustifies operations via two contributed PRs. The first by Chan-Yub ensures we set UTF-8 encoding on pushes. The second by Alexandre permits to downgrade from http/2 to http/1.1 which he needed for some operations with a particular backend. I made that PR a bit more general by turning the downgrade into one driven by a new options() toggle. Special thanks also to Jeroen in help debugging this issue. See below for more details.

        • Static Customization Of Function Signatures In Rust

          Sometimes I have a big function that does a lot, and in new code I need to do almost the same thing, but slightly differently. Often the best approach is to call the same function but add parameters (often described as “options”) to select specific variations. This can get ugly when the function has optional outputs — results that are only produced when certain options were passed in — because typically there is the possibility of an error when code looks for an output (e.g. unwraps a Rust Option) at a site that did not request it. It would be great if the compiler could check that you only use an output when you passed in the option to enable it. Fortunately, some simple Rust coding patterns let us achieve this.

        • Perl Weekly: Issue #443 – 2020-01-20 – New Book: Mojolicious Web Clients

          brian d foy has just let me know that his new book, “Mojolicious Web Clients” is now available for puchase. You can buy it on Amazon and on LeanPub as well.

          I’d recommend you buy it from LeanPub as they give him a much larger percentage of the sales and they also let you easily tip brian with extra money. IMHO the $5.99 he is asking for is ridiculously low.

          LeanPub also allows brian to update the book and easily distribute it to everyone who purchased an earlier revision of it.

        • [Old] Building a search engine from scratch

          The previous blog post in this series explored our journey so far in building an independent, alternative search engine. If you haven’t read it yet, we would highly recommend checking it out first!

          It is no secret that Google search is one of the most lucrative businesses on the planet. With quarterly revenues of Alphabet Inc. exceeding $40 Billion[1] and a big portion of that driven by the advertising revenue on Google’s search properties, it might be a little surprising to see the lack of competition to Google in this area[2]. We at Cliqz believe that this is partly due to the web search bootstrapping problem: the entry barriers in this field are so massive that the biggest, most successful companies in the world with the resources to tackle the problem shy away from it. This post attempts to detail the bootstrapping problem and explain the Cliqz approach to overcoming it. But let us first start by defining the search problem.

        • What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

          Computational notebooks, such as Jupyter Notebooks, Azure Notebooks, and Databricks, are wildly popular with data scientists. But as these notebooks are used for more and more complex tasks, data scientists run into more and more pain points. In this post I will very briefly summarize our method, findings, and some opportunities for tools.

        • How to Check If String Contains Substring in PHP
        • How to Get Current Date & Time in JavaScript
        • Che: A Revolutionary IDE for the Mainframe

          Tools such as the green screens of ISPF and the Eclipse desktop IDE, enhanced with proprietary plug-ins, have served mainframe application developers well over the years and, for those comfortable with them, will continue to do so. However, changes in the broader world of development are creating the conditions for a revolution in mainframe tooling.

          [...]

          Finally, as the velocity of overall software delivery increases, mainframe is a critical component of digital transformation initiatives. According to 451 Research, 24% of companies are releasing application software daily or hourly while, similarly, DORA’s 2019 State of DevOps survey shows 20% of teams are deploying multiple times per day. Software delivery expectations have changed with continuous deployment becoming the new normal and, to remain a vital computing platform for the long term, mainframe app development needs to support this paradigm.

        • How developers will work in 2020

          Software development is perpetually in a state of flux. Coders are constantly fighting a battle to keep their skills relevant. Each year brings new methodologies, frameworks, and languages to learn. Within the context of a highly-complex and rapidly changing industry, it’s important to find out which skills, tools, and trends are worthy of your time.

        • Setup Your Local Environment for Open Source Package Contributions

          One of the most important steps to get started in contributing to an open source package is to set up your local environment.

          [...]

          Now that you’ve pulled down your forked version of the package, let’s composer require your fork of the package locally. This will allow you to make changes to your local version of the package, and they will immediately be reflected in your local Laravel project without needing to run composer update.

        • SaltStack Introduces Plugin Oriented Programming with New Open-Source Innovation Modules to Power Scalable Automation and Artificial Intelligence
        • SaltStack Advances Automation Stack With 3 Open-Source Software Modules

          SaltStack, the makers of intelligent automation for IT operations roll out three new Open-Source projects to drive machine learning and data stream processing.

        • Perl / Raku

          • Perl Weekly Challenge 43: Olympic Rings and Self-Descripting Numbers

            These are some answers to the Week 43 of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

            Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a couple of days (January 19, 2020). This blog post offers some solutions to this challenge, please don’t read on if you intend to complete the challenge on your own.

        • Python

          • The tiniest of Python templating engines

            In someone else’s project (which they’ll doubtless tell you about themselves when it?s done) I needed a tiny Python templating engine. That is: I wanted to be able to say, here is a template string, please substitute a bunch of variables into it. Now, Python already does this, in about thirty different ways, and str.format or string.Template do most of it as built-in.

          • How to set a variable in Django template
          • Why ASGI is Replacing WSGI in Django

            When I first learnt about how to deploy my Django website. I took the easy route which was deploying it on Heroku.

            There’s literally tons of tutorial on how the process of deploying it work. Heck, there was even a book about the benefits of deploying Django using Heroku.

            Soon in my own work, I needed to deploy my own Django project. It was working well for a bundled development grade web server. I thought to myself, why not find a better way on a production-grade web server. Instead of just a miserable default web server that is not production-grade.

            My journey in searching on deploying Django started for me. Which if you look at multiple tutorial references they still suggest the use of Heroku or Digital Ocean.

          • Weekly Python StackOverflow Report: (ccxi) stackoverflow python report
          • Understand predicate pushdown on row group level in Parquet with pyarrow and python

            We are using the NY Taxi Dataset throughout this blog post because it is a real world dataset, has a reasonable size and some nice properties like different datatypes and includes some messy data (like all real world data engineering problems).

  • Leftovers

    • Barry Tuckwell, the Michael Jordan of French Horn, Dies at 88

      Australia has lost one of its most celebrated musicians. Barry Tuckwell has passed away – he was one of the greatest French horn players of the last 70 years.

    • The Aesthetics of Panic

    • Education

    • Health/Nutrition

      • With Fate of Roe v. Wade Unsure, Abortion Fight Shifts to New Territory

        Jan. 22 marks the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide. Those on both sides of the furious debate say this could be the year when everything changes.

      • White House Seeks to End Michelle Obama Guidelines on School Nutrition

        The Trump administration on Friday proposed rolling back nutrition guidelines for school meals that had been promoted by Michelle Obama as part of her campaign to combat child obesity.

      • Doctor’s pro-vaccine TikTok went viral. Then came hate and threats from around the world

        For more large-scale attacks, such as what the backlash against Baldwin’s post grew into, Shots Heard triggers a “formal activation,” meaning an email is sent out to the entire volunteer network.

        Baldwin ended up with 11 people volunteering their services to monitor her social media pages and prevent the spread of inaccurate information about vaccines. By Thursday morning, the volunteers had banned over 5,000 anti-vaccine accounts on Facebook and the angry calls to Baldwin’s office had slowed. By Friday afternoon, Google Reviews had removed all fraudulent reviews of Baldwin’s practice.

        “When the bullies get pushback, they dissipate,” Wolynn said. “They’d rather go after people who don’t have help and have to try to defend themselves.”

        Baldwin says the experience won’t stop her from trying to get out the message that vaccines are safe.

      • Big Pharma Is Literally Poisoning Us

        Big Pharma spends a small fortune every year buying politicians to make sure we can’t import prescription drugs from Canada, but they’re more than happy to sell us contaminated medications from countries with weak manufacturing controls and exploitable labor that ensure high profit margins.

    • Integrity/Availability

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Virginia Braces for Arrival of Pro-Gun Militias Amid State of Emergency

        Virginia-based gun control activist Catherine Koebel is intimately familiar with the reign of terror that the state’s pro-gun forces attempt to maintain through threats and intimidation, despite the fact that a strong majority of Virginia residents support gun reforms.

      • Southern Peace Activists Help Soldiers Become Conscientious Objectors

        The South is arguably the engine of the U.S. war machine. The region is home to Fort Bragg, the largest U.S. military base in the world. Southern states supply more soldiers than others; the region is home to three of the five states with the highest military recruitment numbers in 2016 – Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Its congressional delegations have historically been some of the most militaristic, and military contractors have long put many of their production facilities in Southern communities, where right-to-work laws are a barrier to unionization.

      • Destruction Without Death: China’s Modern Day Genocide

        You don’t have to commit mass killings to perpetrate a genocide, and the Chinese government’s oppression of Uighur Muslims meets precisely that definition, writes James Devenish.

      • The Army’s cyber school now teaches information operations

        School officials are now building a cohort of instructors and curriculum to train the cyber and electronic warfare professionals. Much of the curriculum is coming directly from lessons learned from the operational force, Craft said, and includes a mixture of cyberspace operations, electronic warfare and information operations.

      • 3 Alleged Members Of Hate Group ‘The Base’ Arrested In Georgia, Another In Wisconsin

        The Floyd County, Ga., Police Department says Luke Austin Lane, 21, Michael John Helterbrand, 25, and Jacob Kaderli, 19, were “allegedly involved in a white supremacist group with plans to overthrow the government” and to kill a married couple whom they identified as having high-profile roles in the far-left group Antifa.

        [...]

        The Base was founded in mid-2018 and “seeks to accelerate the downfall of the United States (US) government, incite a race war, and establish a white ethno-state,” according to an affidavit prepared by local law enforcement.

      • How Nazis courted the Islamic world during WWII

        Hitler had already postulated the racial inferiority of non-European peoples in “Mein Kampf.” Once in power, however, German officials showed themselves to be more pragmatic: Non-Jewish Turks, Iranians and Arabs had already been explicitly exempted from any official racial discrimination in the 1930s, following diplomatic interventions from the governments in Tehran, Ankara, and Cairo. And during the war the Germans showed similar pragmatism. Muslims everywhere, it was clear to every German officer, were to be treated as allies.

      • Trump’s Space Force Is Worse Than Reagan’s Star Wars

        With a stroke of a pen, Donald Trump created an entirely new branch of the armed forces last year. It’s the first new branch of the U.S. military since 1947.

      • Trump Is the Third President to Lie About Afghan War Success

        The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations all routinely lied to the American people about the success of the 18-year war in Afghanistan. They exaggerated progress and inflated statistics to create an illusion that that the war was winnable. But after the deaths of 157,000 people at a cost of $2 trillion, corruption is rampant and the carnage continues.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • How Does This White House Stop Lying? By Not Talking at All.

        But this administration views any information sharing as a sign of weakness. Hence the extraordinary decision earlier this week to suddenly cancel two classified congressional briefings on Trump’s Iran strategy and embassy security. Given the shifting explanations for the assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, perhaps the administration figured it had more to lose by furnishing manipulated “evidence” of an imminent threat than by simply yanking the briefings.

        Such contempt for the free flow of information is contagious. As the Senate impeachment trial nears, journalists are facing extraordinary restrictions on their ability to report its developments. Given the fact that majority leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear he doesn’t want to call new witnesses or listen to any evidence that might force the Senate to conclude that Trump is a sociopathic lawbreaker, such restrictions make perfect sense.

    • Environment

      • ‘You have not seen anything yet,’ climate activist Greta says ahead of Davos

        “So, we are now in a new year and we have entered a new decade and so far, during this decade, we have seen no sign whatsoever that real climate action is coming and that has to change,” Thunberg said in a speech in Lausanne.

        “To the world leaders and those in power, I would like to say that you have not seen anything yet. You have not seen the last of us, we can assure you that. And that is the message that we will bring to the World Economic Forum in Davos next week.”

        Protesters held signs including “Wake up and Smell the Bushfires” and “It is late but it is not too late”.

      • Astronaut Shares Heartbreaking Photos of The Australian Bushfire Smoke

        About 70 percent of Australia’s 3 million square miles of land is covered by a layer of grey-and-brown smoke. According to NASA, the smoke had already travelled halfway around the planet by January 8, “turning the skies hazy and causing colourful sunrises and sunsets” in South America.

        [...]

        “We are seeing a sign of what would be normal conditions in a 3C world,” Betts said. “It tells us what the future world might look like.”

      • ‘Our Planet Is Seriously Burning and the Adults Keep Letting Us Down’: Ninth Circuit Throws Out Youth Climate Case

        “Seeking to quash this suit, the government bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation,” wrote Judge Josephine Staton in a scathing dissent opinion. “My colleagues throw up their hands, concluding that this case presents nothing fit for the Judiciary.”

      • Doctors Sound the Alarm on Climate Emergency

        The doctors are worried about the climate emergency. In recent days the UK’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has announced it’s halting investments in climate-changing fossil fuel and mining companies.

      • Energy

        • Despite Trump Vows, Coal Industry Falling as Wind Power Surges in US and Worldwide

          Trump is one of a handful of significant trans-generational genocidal maniacs whose policies will kill millions in the future.

        • ANALYSIS: Turkey becoming a second Iran

          The Turkish leader last month signed a memorandum with Libya about the linking of their so-called economic zones in the Mediterranean Sea.

          The deal that was clearly meant to prevent Israel, Greece and Cyprus from realizing their plan for the construction of the pipeline and to claim the expected gas reserves in these zones.

        • Pull out or perish: behind Blackrock’s grand exit from coal

          BlackRock, the world’s biggest fund, is quitting thermal coal. The move by the $10 trillion fund has stunned financial markets. Climate change and coal: while the people protest in the streets, progressive analysts such as IEEFA’s Buckley protest to global finance bosses. Tim Buckley, who had lobbied hard for the BlackRock exit, reports on the revolution in big money.

      • Wildlife/Nature

    • Finance

      • The Multinational Trying to Bankrupt the Dock Workers Union Has a Sordid Past

        The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is facing an existential crisis.

      • A 2020 Reminder: 55% of US Women Between 18 and 54 Would Rather Live Under Socialism Than Capitalism

        Not raving Marxists clamoring for state-run economy, evidence shows four in 10 Americans overall would rather live in country that provides “universal health care, tuition-free education, and a decent day’s wage for a decent day’s work.”

      • Peter Schiff Says He’s Lost His Bitcoin After Wallet Freeze-Out

        “I just lost all the Bitcoin I have ever owned,” Schiff, chief global strategist at Alliance Global Partners, said in a series of posts on his unverified Twitter account. “My wallet got corrupted somehow and my password is no longer valid.”

      • Joe Biden Thinks Coal Miners Should Learn to Code. That’s Classist.

        As of 2016, there were only 50,000 coal miners in the United States, and yet they occupy so much of our political imagination and conversation around jobs, unions and climate change. During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump ran on bringing coal jobs back to the United States, and Joe Biden said on December 30 that miners should learn to code, as those are the “jobs of the future.” His comments, made to a crowd in Derry, New Hampshire, were reportedly met with silence.

      • Sanders Team Hits Back After Biden Claims Social Security Video Was “Doctored”

        Highlighting a major contrast between the current top two candidates in the Democratic primary field in terms of how they have addressed the issue over their long legislative careers, the Bernie Sanders campaign hit back against a claim made by Joe Biden earlier in the day in which the former vice president said there was “doctored video” being circulated by the Sanders campaign that showed him agreeing with former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about the need to cut Social Security.

      • Sanders Team Slams Biden for Claiming Social Security Video Was ‘Doctored’

        Highlighting a major contrast between the current top two candidates in the Democratic primary field in terms of how they have addressed the issue over their long legislative careers, the Bernie Sanders campaign hit back against a claim made by Joe Biden earlier in the day in which the former vice president said there was “doctored video” being circulated by the Sanders campaign that showed him agreeing with former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about the need to cut Social Security.

      • Joe Biden Can’t Outrun His Record on Social Security

        Recently, a newsletter from the Bernie Sanders campaign laid out Joe Biden’s long record of supporting cuts to Social Security. The website PolitiFact weighed in on one part of that record, a speech Biden gave in 2018 in which he expressed enthusiasm for former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plans to cut Social Security.

      • ‘The Facts Are Very Clear’: Sanders Team Hits Back After Biden Claims Social Security Video Was ‘Doctored’

        “Biden not only pushed to cut Social Security—he is on tape proudly bragging about it on multiple occasions,” said Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir in response to accusations by the former vice president.

      • California Bill Would Raise Taxes on Corporations With Large CEO-Worker Pay Gaps

        A bill to raise taxes on corporations with large gaps between CEO and worker pay moved forward in the California state senate Wednesday after a hearing that drew sharp lines between labor and anti-poverty supporters and corporate and Wall Street opponents.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • As Citizens United Turns 10, We Need to Fight to Get Money Out of Politics

        Ten years ago this week, the Supreme Court released its disastrous 2010 Citizens United decision.

      • Britain Cannot Turn Its Back on Lone Children Now

        Eighty-one years ago last month, the first of the Kindertransport trains arrived in the United Kingdom, bearing children fleeing conflict and persecution ahead of the outbreak of World War II. In total, the Kindertransport rescue effort ferried 10,000 child refugees to safety in Britain. But now, the government is threatening to turn its back on vulnerable children.

        This month, members of parliament from the ruling Conservative Party blocked a move to guarantee the right of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to be reunited with family members living in the UK after Brexit. Unless the amendment to a bill is blocked by the House of Lords or by the courts, countless vulnerable children across Europe will be left without a safe and legal way to rejoin their families.

      • Because ‘I Can Feel Bernie Beating Trump,’ Pramila Jayapal Endorses Sanders for President

        The co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus “has led the fight against Trump’s racism, sexism and xenophobia,” Sanders said responding to the news. “Together, we will defeat Trump and build a working class movement and transform this country so it works for all.”

      • Today’s US-Iran Crisis Is Rooted in the Decision to Invade Iraq

        The ramifications of the illegal, unnecessary and predictably tragic U.S. decision to invade Iraq are still with us. This includes the ongoing crisis with Iran, which brought us perilously close to all-out war in early January, resulted in the tragic downing of a civilian airliner and remains in a hair-trigger situation.

      • Peru: Many With Disability Left Off Voting Lists

        Actors with down syndrome represent Hamlet in a theater in Lima in December 2019. 

      • The Battle With Trump Over Refugee Resettlement Is Not Over Yet

        Refugee resettlement groups throughout the country are, thankfully, back to their usual work of finding new homes for refugees following this week’s ruling by a federal judge in Maryland temporarily barring the implementation of Trump’s executive order 13888, signed this past September. That order, part of a much broader package of anti-immigrant, anti-refugee and anti-asylum-seeker measures pushed by hard-line adviser Stephen Miller, was intended to allow cities, counties and states to opt out of the refugee resettlement program. And since new funding streams for the resettlement agencies were due to kick in on Jan. 21, based on estimates of how many refugees were to be resettled in each region of the country in the year beginning in June 2020, agencies had been scrambling to obtain approval letters from governors and local officials by the Jan. 21 deadline.

      • Parnas Spins Tales of Trumpian Corruption — and We Know Most of Them Are True

        Following the rules of an anachronistic 18th-century ritual, the House managers walked in formation to the Senate to deliver the articles of impeachment on Thursday. The sergeant at arms informed the senators that if they speak during the trial they could be imprisoned, and then the chief justice arrived in his robes accompanied by four senators. He then administered the constitutionally prescribed oath to deliver impartial justice to the assembled senators, after which, one by one, they signed their names to a book. The only thing missing was the white wigs.

      • ‘This Is Why No One Trusts the Media’: MSNBC Slammed for Featuring ‘Body Language Expert’ Who Calls Sanders a Liar

        While the Sanders campaign demanded an apology from the network, critics of Joy Ann Reid’s morning show said the segment was “fraudulent garbage” and a “disgrace.”

      • The Women’s March Is Back and Ready to Defeat Trump

        The Women’s March is back this year — with a new board and new strategy to get women activated to oust Donald Trump in November. The organization’s flagship march in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, which culminates a week of actions, is expected to draw more than 10,000 participants. Sister marches around the country will see thousands more participate.

      • ‘The Government Can’t Airbrush History’: National Archives Denounced for Blurring Out Anti-Trump Signs in Women’s March Photos

        “It is the job of the National Archives to document history, not alter it to serve the president’s ego.”

      • Sanders Leads Democrats in New National Poll

        Amid a series of endorsements from key groups and allies in crucial primary states this week — and despite the “brouhaha” with Sen. Elizabeth Warren — a new national poll shows Sen. Bernie Sanders now in the lead over former Vice President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic primary field.

      • What Rod Blagojevich’s Double Impeachment Could Mean for Trump

        Impeachments are fortunately rare in American political life: Trump is only the third president to have been impeached; eight governors have been impeached and removed from office.

      • The Battle to Impeach Trump Is Part of a Global Struggle for Democracy

        The impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump — with their abundance of political theater and insipid media coverage — often treat Trump’s crimes as the endpoint of an abuse of power and an illegal act. This is a grave mistake: We must understand Trump’s crimes not as an endpoint but as symptoms of a long history of conditions that have led to the United States’ slide into the abyss of authoritarianism.

      • Trump’s Impeachment Defense, Prosecutors Dig In

        Advocates for and against President Donald Trump gave no ground Sunday on his Senate impeachment trial, digging in on whether a crime is required for his conviction and removal and whether witnesses will be called.

      • Trump Defense Team Includes Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr

        President Donald Trump has assembled a made-for-TV legal team for his Senate trial that includes household names like Ken Starr, the prosecutor whose investigation two decades ago resulted in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz will deliver constitutional arguments meant to shield Trump from allegations that he abused his power.

      • Bernie Sanders Leads in New Post-Debate National Poll

        Amid a series of endorsements from key groups and allies in crucial primary states this week—and despite the “brouhaha” with Sen. Elizabeth Warren—a new national poll shows Sen. Bernie Sanders now in the lead over former Vice President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic primary field.

      • Voters in Iowa Care More About Key Issues Than Warren-Sanders Unity

        “What people are talking about on the doors is nothing like what’s on social media.”

      • ‘Naked, Unapologetic and Insidious’ Corruption: Democrats Respond to Trump’s Official Statement on Impeachment Charges

        “Though the President describes this conduct as perfect,” said the House Managers assigned to prosecute the Senate trial, “the Founders had a different word for it: impeachable.”

      • As Senators Are Sworn In, Calls for a Full for Impeachment Trial Intensify

        For just the third time in history, the U.S. Senate has opened a trial to determine if a sitting president should be removed from office. The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached President Trump for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside over the impeachment trial in the Senate, later swore in senators who will serve as jurors when the trial officially begins on Tuesday. This comes as more information is coming to light about the actions of President Trump and his associates. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said the White House Office of Management and Budget violated federal law by withholding $400 million in aid money to Ukraine even though the funds had been allocated by Congress. We speak with attorney John Bonifaz, co-founder and president of Free Speech for People and co-author of The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.

      • US Citizen Dies in Egyptian Prison

        The death this week of Mustafa Kassem, an Egyptian-American imprisoned in Egypt after an unfair trial, underscores the Trump administration’s failed approach on human rights in Egypt.

        Police arrested Kassem in August 2013, during protests against the military takeover in Cairo. He was held for more than five years, until his conviction and sentencing in September 2018 in an unfair trial alongside more than 700 others. According to his family, Kassem, a diabetic with a heart condition, was repeatedly refused appropriate medical care.

      • Moderate Democrats are celebrating MLK. He was disgusted by them

        From a Birmingham jail cell, he wrote he was “gravely disappointed with the white moderate” that he saw as “the Negro’s great stumbling block,” as much or more so than ardent segregationists or even the KKK. The white moderate, he observed, lived “by a mythical concept of time” and constantly advised “the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

        As King saw it, the American embrace of moderation in his time was enabled by a belief “that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately, this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.”

      • Election Update: The First Post-Debate Polls Are In! And They’re … Pretty Weird.

        For all that said, polls with strong house effects, because of the additional complications they present, aren’t necessarily ideal for evaluating polling swings following news events such as debates. So while it’s tempting to infer from the polls we have so far that the debate didn’t change things very much — no candidate is consistently seeing their numbers surge or crater — we should wait for a few more polls to confirm that.

      • Brazilian authoritarian Bolsonaro fires his culture minister for giving a speech plagiarized from Joseph Goebbels

        Last week, Roberto Alvim, gave a speech in his capacity as Brazil’s culture minister: backed by a Wagner aria, Alvim gave a speech about reforming Brazilian art that literally plagiarized the words of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda.

      • 3 Years In, ‘A Very Stable Genius’ Authors Say Trump Decisions Are ‘More Chaotic’

        Through an aide, President Trump declined to speak to the journalists for the book, Leonnig said. Relying on more than 200 unnamed sources — many of whom were at Trump’s side during defining moments of the presidency — Rucker and Leonnig build scenes that paint Trump as dangerously uninformed as he is self-congratulatory.

        One such episode occurs six months into his presidency, during a Pentagon meeting in which, the journalists report, Trump called senior military commanders “a bunch of dopes and babies.” Leonnig and Rucker cite the anecdote as a climactic “inflection point,” marking Trump’s determination to drive away those who try to offer him counsel.

        “The guardrails are gone, and increasingly the decisions have become more chaotic,” Leonnig said. “And the people that he’s surrounded by are increasingly those who think their mission is to tell him, ‘Yes.’ ”

      • As Iraqi cleric calls for mass protests against US some Iraqis refuse out of fear of Iran

        “The Iranian-backed militias, such as Kataib Hezbollah, al-Nujaba, and Asaib Ahl al-Haq have to be expelled to Iran before expelling the American troops. “[The] US troops presence in Iraq is very important for our protection,” Sajad added. “If the US troops {are] expelled now, we as protesters will be the biggest losers, as Iranian-backed militias will kill all of us in days.”

        Over 511 protestors and security force members have been killed since December and about 17,000 people have been wounded since the beginning of the protests, according to Human Rights Watch.

      • 2 GTA men indicted in U.S. for allegedly trafficking items for Pakistan nuclear program

        Two Mississauga, Ont., men have been indicted for allegedly helping to run an international procurement network over a five-year period to traffic materials such as aircraft parts and satellite communications equipment to support Pakistan’s nuclear program.

        Father and son Muhammad Ahsan Wali, 48, and Haji Wali Muhammad Sheikh, 82, are among five men accused of being associated with an alleged front company called Business World, based in Rawalpindi, a city in northern Pakistan, according to the United States Department of Justice.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • National Archives ‘Wrong’ to Blur Images of Anti-Trump Signs

        The National Archives said Saturday it made a mistake when it blurred images of anti-Trump signs used in an exhibit on women’s suffrage.

      • National Archives `Wrong’ to Blur Images of Anti-Trump Signs

        The independent agency is charged with preserving government and historical records and said it has always been committed to preserving its holdings “without alteration.”

        But the archives said in a statement Saturday “we made a mistake.” The archives’ statement came one day after The Washington Post published an online report about the altered images.

        The archives said the photo in question is not one of its archival records, but rather was licensed for use as a promotional graphic in the exhibit.

        “Nonetheless, we were wrong to alter the image,” the agency said.

      • Stephen King Walks Back Diversity Remarks After Twitter Backlash
      • Chip Gibbons on FBI vs. 1st Amendment

        This week on CounterSpin: At a Sacramento rally in 2016, members of a white supremacist group called the Traditionalist Worker Party stabbed counter-protesters from the civil rights group By Any Means Necessary. The FBI responded by opening up a domestic terrorism investigation—into By Any Means Necessary. At first, the FBI misidentified the Traditionalist Worker Party as the Ku Klux Klan, and was going to investigate BAMN for conspiring to violate the rights of Klan members, in documents that described the Klan as consisting of people “that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda.”

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Louis Adamic’s Life Fighting Fascism

        Louis Adamic, a popular nonfiction writer of the 1920s-40s, never escaped—perhaps never wished to escape—his status as an enigma. He was a talented journalist whose work appeared in a variety of magazines, as well as the author of well-received works of fiction and nonfiction. He was also a Slovene immigrant, from that sliver of land once part of Yugoslavia and now an independent state. He poured his finest energies into the vision of a multicultural, multiracial American democracy, something not seen then—or now. Adamic also seemed early on to be an existentialist or grim pessimist, projecting images of fatalism and a propensity for violence as the inescapable reality of his new country. In the end, he threw himself into a crusade against the incoming Cold War, and was assassinated for his trouble. His death removed one more political inconvenience from the latest version of American liberalism.

      • WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Barry Spurr: Ex-Professor, Racist, Misogynist, Turned Literary Editor

        Where Are They Now is an occasional column in New Matilda. You can read a past edition here (on party boy Corey Worthington). This edition brings you an update on Barry Spurr, the ‘Racist Professor of Poetry’.

      • Illegal Crossings Plunge as U.S. Extends Policy Across Border

        Adolfo Cardenas smiles faintly at the memory of traveling with his 14-year-old son from Honduras to the U.S.-Mexico border in only nine days, riding buses and paying a smuggler $6,000 to ensure passage through highway checkpoints.

      • Qatar: End of Abusive Exit Permits for Migrant Workers
      • Sialkot man ‘dupes’ Canadian wife of thousands of dollars

        A Canadian woman has alleged that her Pakistani husband ran away after siphoning off thousands of dollars from her bank account.

      • Hindu Fascism: An All-American Threat

        We, as Muslim and Hindu women of color, have watched in horror as both the country of our ancestors, India, and the country of our birth, the United States, have devolved into nationalism and fascism.

      • 7 Men, 5 Women Selected for Weinstein Trial

        A jury of seven men and five women was selected Friday for Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial after an arduous, two-week process in which scores of people were dismissed because they had already made up their minds about the disgraced Hollywood mogul.

      • Noam Chomsky Makes the Case for the Lesser of Two Evils

        After a harrowing discussion about humanity’s undeniable march toward a dystopian future, world-renowned thinker Noam Chomsky and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer move on to other pressing topics related to current events and end on a positive note.

      • EFF Asks the Supreme Court to Put a Stop to Dangerously Broad Interpretations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

        At EFF, we have spent years fighting the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The law was aimed at computer crime, but it is both vague and draconian—putting people at risk for prison sentences for ordinary Internet behavior. Now, we are asking the Supreme Court to step in and stop dangerous overbroad interpretations of the CFAA.

        The CFAA was passed more than 30 years ago, before the invention of the World Wide Web. Consequently, the law is hard to make sense of in our increasingly digital world. Some courts have rightly interpreted the law narrowly, focusing on hacking and other illegal computer intrusions. But other courts have bought into tactics used by creative prosecutors, who argue that when the statute outlaws “exceeding authorized access” to a computer, it also covers violating the “terms of service” of websites and other apps.

      • Bhutan on Brink of Overturning Same-Sex Conduct Ban

        A bill that would repeal parts of Bhutan’s penal code that criminalize same-sex conduct will be introduced in the upper house of Parliament this month. The lower house of Parliament voted in June 2019 to repeal two sections of the country’s 2004 criminal code, which made “unnatural sex” between consenting adults illegal. But before being sent to royal approval, the bill first needs to pass the National Council, Parliament’s upper chamber.

        Bhutan’s penal code includes a provision derived from British colonial authorities punishing “sexual conduct against the order of nature” with up to one year in prison. While there have been no known prosecutions under the law, provisions like this one curtail the rights and freedoms of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, subjecting their intimate lives to unwarranted scrutiny.

      • At US Border, Inaccurate Mayan-Language Interpretation Can Lead to Deportation

        As the U.S. continues to use hostile policies to stop people from seeking refuge and asylum in the United States, we look at a key problem that is preventing migrants from getting due process, and in many cases getting them deported: inadequate interpretation for indigenous asylum seekers who speak Mayan languages. Guatemala has a population of 15 million people, and at least 40% of them are indigenous. In the past year, a quarter of a million Guatemalan migrants have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. At least half of them are Mayan. Many speak little or no Spanish. This is the focus of a new report in The New Yorker magazine titled “A Translation Crisis at the Border.” We speak with the article’s author, Rachel Nolan, in Guatemala City. We also spoke with Odilia Romero, Zapotec interpreter and a longtime indigenous leader with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations. Romero is a trilingual interpreter in Zapotec, Spanish and English, who recently developed a training program for indigenous-language interpreters.

      • India Failing on Kashmiri Human Rights

        Kashmir has been under a lockdown for five months. Fearing that Kashmiris might protest the revocation of autonomy provided to Jammu and Kashmir state under India’s constitution, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi clamped down.

        Since the restrictions in August, the government has taken slow, reluctant steps to ease some of them, but is still falling far short in upholding Kashmiri rights.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Thoughts on LBRY

        At the behest of people like Bryan Lunduke and DTLive on YouTube, I have started using LBRY more and last night I even uploaded a few test videos of my own. I would eventually like to put up some of my own tutorial videos.

        With that said, LBRY has some serious issues. So, let’s be frank. LBRY has no rules against hardcore porn or if they do, they are not enforced. That’s fine, and I don’t care. It’s not hard to find porn on YouTube also. However if a porn channel doesn’t flag their own content as mature, then it will be in your search results and there’s no way right now to flag it yourself. The suggestions that I got in the help forum (aka the discord server) was to report it to the #report-spam room which I did. Will that result in these channels being told to reflag their content? Who knows. It seems a little iffy.

      • AFRINIC WHOIS database tampered?

        In the same email, AFRINIC CEO, Eddy Kayihura, informed the community that following allegations of fraudulent manipulation of the AFRINIC WHOIS database, the matter has been referred to the Central Criminal Investigation Division (CCID) of the Mauritius Police Force for further investigation. Also, due to the serious nature of the allegation, an employee of AFRINIC, whose name has been cited in the allegation, has been immediately dismissed on grounds of very serious professional misconduct.

      • How just five companies came to dominate the world’s 5G networks

        The agenda for the meeting will be dominated by the topic that has cast a shadow over Britain’s relations with the US, the entire telecoms industry and ties with China. At last, the Prime Minister will decide whether to allow Huawei to supply mobile operators equipment for their 5G networks.

        Allowing Huawei to continue to supply some kit in the UK, as is expected, is certain to be controversial. The US government has publicly warned allied countries not to use Huawei equipment, claiming that its closeness to the Chinese state and the country’s intelligence laws could mean that Huawei devices could be used for espionage in the future. Huawei executives have consistently denied this.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • HP remotely disables customer’s printer until he joins monthly subscription

        Just because you buy a product doesn’t mean you actually own it; that’s the new normal that the advancement of technology has been slowly establishing over the past decades. Corporations look after themselves by using copyright protections such as digital rights management, DRM, but in this process, consumers’ rights are often restricted to an absurd degree.

        For example – as Ryan Sullivan has discovered and then shared on Twitter – HP will disable ink cartridges in your (or, it would seem, their) printers if you stop paying a monthly subscription for a service that’s known as HP Instant Ink.

    • Monopolies

      • Disney is hunting down the most popular Baby Yoda toys on Etsy

        Everyone loves Baby Yoda, but official merchandise of the character has been hard to find, since Disney didn’t want to spoil the surprise surrounding the little green alien by producing toys and t-shirts ahead of The Mandalorian’s premiere. In that vacuum, plenty of enterprising Etsy sellers have popped up to sell their own homemade Baby Yoda plushies and toys — at least, until Disney started issuing takedown notices, requiring that Etsy remove listings for bootleg merch.

      • Patents

        • Taking the measure of the prior art (T 1943/15)

          In a recently published Board of Appeal decision (T 1943/15), the Board considered the circumstances under which a disclosure of a component’s dimension may be derived solely from the patent drawings, either by eye or by measurement.

          [...]

          As with any disclosure, the disclosure of a drawing used in a novelty attack should be clearly and unambiguously derivable. In order to assess whether a measurement in a drawing is clear and unambiguous, it is necessary to assess what technical teaching a skilled person could be said to derive from the drawing (T 204/83). Consequently, dimensions derived solely by measuring a patent drawing (and not complemented by the description) are not considered part of the disclosure of a patent.

          What about relative measurements? Are these disclosed by a patent drawing? In a previous decision of the Boards of Appeal, the relative size of two components deduced solely from the drawings in a patent were not considered part of the patent’s disclosure (T 1664/06). Several other decisions, based on different facts, have reached the opposite conclusion. In one decision, the relative thickness of two drawing components were considered disclosed, as the relative thickness of the components was identified in the specification as an essential component of the invention (T 748/91). Practical technical teaching could thus be said to be derivable from measurement of the drawings. In other decisions, the drawing in a patent were considered “quite” precise (T 1200/05) or akin to construction drawings (T 422/95). Measurement of the drawings could therefore again be said to confer practical teaching.

        • BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc. v. Aquestive Therapeutics, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2020)

          Last week, the Federal Circuit issued a per curiam Order in BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc. v. Aquestive Therapeutics, Inc., denying a petition for a panel rehearing or rehearing en banc filed by Appellant BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc. Judge Newman dissented from the denial of the petition for rehearing en banc.

          The dispute between the parties arose when BioDelivery sought inter partes review of claims 1, 4, 6–9, 11, 12, 26, 27, 32, 38, 44, 51, 58, 65, 72, 82, 109, and 125–127 of U.S. Patent No. 8,765,167, citing seven prior art grounds of anticipation or obviousness. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted the IPR on most, but not all, of the challenged claims, and on one of the grounds. The PTAB ultimately issued a Final Written Decision finding claims 1, 4, 11, 12, 26, 27, 44, 51, 58, 65, 72, 82, and 125–127 of the ’167 patent to be patentable.

          BioDelivery appealed to the Federal Circuit, which received briefing and argument before the Supreme Court issued its decision in SAS Institute Inc. v. Iancu. On BioDelivery’s motion, the Federal Circuit directed the PTAB “to implement the Court’s decision in SAS.” In response, the PTAB “modif[ied its] Decision to Institute and instead deny the Petition in its entirety, thereby terminating [the] proceeding,” and in particular, “ORDERED that Petitioner’s request for inter partes review of claims 1, 4, 6–9, 11, 12, 26, 27, 32, 38, 44, 51, 58, 65, 72, 82, 125–127 of the ’167 patent is denied and no inter partes review is instituted.”

        • Patent case: Fractus S.A. vs. Xiaomi Inc. c.s., Netherlands

          The Spanish company Fractus sued Xiaomi and their distributors for infringement of their patent on a monopole antenna with a radiation arm that is shaped as a space-filling curve. However, the provisions judge declared that the claim of the patent should be interpreted narrowly on the basis of the prosecution history and on the basis of the general knowledge of the skilled person.

        • Patent Injunctions Update: German Ministry of Justice publishes draft amendment to Patent Act and Hague Court of Appeal decides in further Philips FRAND cases [Ed: Philips imposing a patent tax on everybody, using the dubious and highly misleading (misnamed) concept of “FRAND” (each letter in this acronym is a lie)]

          This patent was upheld and found infringed by the Court of Appeal [see here for decision against Asus and here for decision against Wiko]. It then further discussed both parties’ FRAND defences.

          In the case against ASUS, the Court of Appeal referred to its earlier decision and then addressed ASUS additional arguments. It reiterated that [under the CJEU's decision in C-170/13 Huawei/ZTE] after notification by the SEP-holder, a SEP-implementer must show willingness to take a licence before an obligation to make a FRAND-offer on the part of the SEP-holder arises. According to the Court of Appeal, this is consistent with the UK approach, as set out in the decisions in Unwired Planet [see [2017] EWHC 711 (Pat) and [2018] EWCA Civ 2344, Katpost here].

          The Court of Appeal also reaffirmed that it will not always be necessary to submit claim charts as part of the notification to the implementer, but that it depends on all circumstances of the case whether sufficient notification is given. What is decisive is whether the SEP-implementer knows which rights are invoked against is, which products are alleged to infringe them and in what manner.

          As for willingness, the Court of Appeal clarified that mere attendance of licensing negotiations is not sufficient: to be considered willing, a licensee must actively engage in them. It may also oblige licensees to inquire after the relevant licensing terms if it considers these unclear. In the absence of such willingness, it will not be inappropriate for SEP-holders to request an injunction, even if they did not make a FRAND-offer – since under the Huawei/ZTE framework, they are under no obligation to do so until a licensee has proved to be willing.

          In the decision in proceedings against Wiko, the Court of Appeal did not explicitly differentiate between Wiko’s FRAND-arguments in the present proceedings and those that led to the earlier decision. Its discussion of the FRAND-issues in the case was entirely along the lines of its July 2019 decision and the Court of Appeal did not add significant new points to its earlier reasoning.

        • Software Patents

          • How Sonos’s case against Google could help shift the US patent narrative [Ed: These bogus software patents of Sonos can only highlight the absurdity of such patents; Google should work to invalidate these]

            Earlier this month the home speaker business Sonos sued Google for patent infringement in US district court and at the International Trade Commission. The case, for a journalist, had an immediate appeal to it. The search giant is sued on a regular basis, but mostly by NPEs not operating companies; and while Sonos rarely litigates it has shown a willingness to defend its IP rights in court.

            Throw in the high profile of both companies and the confrontation makes for a juicy story and so it has proved. There has been a lot of coverage, including this comprehensive piece in the New York Times.

            Sonos is by no means a small player – the company sells around $1 billion-worth of speakers annually – but it pales in comparison with the giants of Silicon Valley. What’s more, as its district court complaint outlined, it relies on the likes of Google and Amazon to reach customers and to add functionality to its products.

            [...]

            Other outlets and reporters have also turned their attention to the array of challenges faced by IP owners to protect themselves. Rana Foorahar at the Financial Times, for instance, has won a legion of fans for her reporting on what she frames as big tech’s creeping power.

            In December last year, The Economist ran a story titled “The trouble with patent-troll-hunting” on how “rules to curb frivolous patent claims may encourage infringement”. If you want a sense of how the climate has changed, in August 2015 it ran a lengthy piece on how it was “time to fix patents”, declaring that “today’s patent systems are a rotten way of rewarding” ideas.

          • Dallas Invents: 130 Patents Granted for Week of Dec. 31 [Ed: A lot of these are software patents granted to bogus entities looking to sue in Texas where courts favour all patents and trolls]

            Dallas Invents is a look at U.S. patents granted with a connection to the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area. Listings include patents granted to local assignees and/or those with a North Texas inventor. Patent activity can be an indicator of future economic growth, as well as the development of emerging markets and talent attraction. By tracking both inventors and assignees in the region, we aim to provide a broader view of the region’s inventive activity. Listings are organized by Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).

      • Copyrights

        • Google garners support from tech industry in Supreme Court API copyright fight

          The Google-Oracle legal battle dates back over a decade, with the core issue being whether copyright laws bar the commonplace practice of software reimplementation — the “process of writing new software to perform certain functions of a legacy product”.

          Oracle won the most recent iteration of the legal fight, with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling that the functional elements of application programming interfaces (APIs) are subject to copyright. Since then however, Google has got the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to reconsider Oracle’s court victory.

          Submitting a joint “friend of the court” brief on Monday — a legal document that offers information that has a bearing on the issues of a court case — Mozilla, Medium, Cloudera, Reddit, along with others, have pleaded for SCOTUS to reverse the Federal Court’s decision and allow for APIs to continue to be free from copyright, or at least be available for fair use.

        • A Creative Commons-Licensed Work Walks into a Copy Shop – Great Minds v. Office Depot

          As 2019 came to a close, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision in Great Minds v. Office Depot. Concerned the interpretation of permitted, non-commercial activity under the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, this case resembles and is, in fact, intertwined with Great Minds v. FedEx, which Great Minds appealed to the 2nd Circuit in 2018.

          In both cases, Great Minds sued a copy shop for reproducing – for a profit – their Eureka Math curriculum on behalf of public schools or school districts that had paid the copy shop for the reproductions; while the schools are free to use and reproduce the curriculum for noncommercial uses, Great Minds contends that the copy shops are violating the CC BY-NC 4.0 license through commercial use by reproduction for profit. Let’s explore how courts on both coasts rejected Great Minds’ argument, finding for the copy shops.

          [...]

          On November 8, 2019, the Ninth Circuit heard Great Minds appeal from the dismissal of the copyright infringement claim; this came a year and a half after the 2nd Circuit affirmed a similar dismissal in Great Mind’s appeal against FedEx. The Ninth Circuit issued an affirming opinion on December 27th, as 2019 came to a close.

          The court noted that reproduction by the school and district licensees was permitted by the license, while “if Office Depot were itself a licensee, commercial copying of Great Minds’ material would fall outside the scope of the License and infringe Great Minds’ copyright.” As a result, the question as issue was whether or not, by the licensees using Office Depot’s services to lawfully exercise the rights of the license, Office Depot had themselves become licensees.

          The court ruled that Office Depot was not a downstream recipient licensee, citing to a “consensus in courts” that third-party agents employed by licensees to exercise the lawful rights of the license do not themselves become licensees by virtue of providing their services to the licensee. Rather, “[i]ts activities remain within the ambit of the schools and school districts’ license.”

          The court rejected Great Mind’s argument that there was a volitional element to Office Depot’s services, noting the unwanted consequences that would result from the court drawing the line of distinction sought by Great Mind’s council.

        • Most Canadian ISPs Are Staying Quiet on Pirate Site Blocking

          Canada is a relative newcomer when it comes to pirate site blocking. At the moment it remains unclear how most ISPs will technically implement these blocks and whether they’ll communicate this information to the public. To find out more we reached out to nearly a dozen providers. Unfortunately, only one took the time to respond.

        • Ebook.bike Owner Risks Crippling Sanctions Over Piracy Case Discovery Failures

          Former Pirate Party Canada leader and Ebook.bike operator Travis McCrea is facing the possibility of crippling sanctions if the plaintiff in his copyright infringement lawsuit has his way. After McCrea failed to produce discovery as ordered by the court, the legal team of author John Van Stry are moving in for the kill, demanding sanctions that have the potential to undermine any chance of McCrea winning his case on the merits.

01.19.20

Links 19/1/2020: Wine 5.0 RC6, Alpine 3.11.3

Posted in News Roundup at 4:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Why Windows 7 Users Should Switch to Linux

        Now, if you think that Linux is intimidating, confusing, or (and I mean this nicely) for nerds: I hear you. At first glance it can often look that way.

        But Linux suffers from poor marketing rather than poor product. With no multi-million dollar marketing campaign out there promoting one specific flavour of Linux it’s left to enthusiasts to ‘sell’ each system, usually on its technical merits — which is what makes things seem rather niche.

        However it’s 2020 and Linux-based operating systems (called ‘distros’) like Ubuntu and Linux Mint are very user-friendly. They let you continue to do pretty much all of that you currently do on Windows 7 just as easily, but with safety first.

      • Should I upgrade from Windows 7 to Linux?

        After 10 years of service, Microsoft has finally decided to cease support for Windows 7. This means that the OS will no longer receive any type of updates and that anyone still using it will be exposed to online threats.

        Given this change, many users are left wondering what they should do. Most think that they are limited to just three choices…

      • Windows 7 Support Ended. Here’s You Should Do.

        As per the information available, there are 200+ million devices that are still running Windows 7. The number might increase, as, it is difficult to estimate the offline devices which might be still running Windows 7.

    • Server

      • IBM

        • CentOS 8 (1911) derived from RedHat Linux 8.1 Enterprise released

          With the release of RedHat Linux 8.1 Enterprise, we knew that it was only a matter of time for CentOS V8 (1911) to be released. Now that it is finally here let’s have a look at what this new update has in store for us.

          What’s New

          Since RedHat Linux 8.1 Enterprise powers this version of CentOS, it’s going to accompany all the features and improvements that came with the latest RHLE. If you’ve not been keeping up with RHLE, you need not worry as we’re going to discuss all the changes that were implemented with this update.

        • Enterprise Insights: Red Hat And The Public Cloud

          Open source projects are the epicenter of technology innovation today. Docker and Kubernetes are revolutionizing cloud-native computing, along with data-focused projects like Mongo and Redis and many others. Even as open source projects drive innovation, however, sponsoring companies face a growing existential threat from hyper-scale cloud providers.

          Red Hat is the recognized leader in enterprise open source support. It’s a successful public company with a track record of growth, so it was somewhat puzzling to understand why the Red Hat board decided to sell to IBM this past year.

        • Red Hat Shows Off Their vDPA Kernel Patches For Better Ethernet Within VMs

          Red Hat engineers have been developing virtual data path acceleration (vDPA) as a standard data plane that is more flexible than VirtIO full hardware offloading. The goal is providing wire-speed Ethernet interfaces to virtual machines in an open manner.

          This patch series was sent out on Thursday by Red Hat’s Jason Wang. This implements the vDPA bus for the Linux kernel as well as providing a vDPA device simulator and supporting vDPA-based transport within VirtIO.

        • What is the latest kernel release for my version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

          I read an interesting question on the Red Hat Learning Community forums recently. What is the latest kernel version for my version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)? In this post we’ll see how you can find out.

          Some users, trying to be helpful, gave a specific version of the kernel package. Unfortunately, that might only be valid at the time of writing. A better approach would be to understand where to get that information about the latest kernel version for a given version of RHEL.

          When Red Hat releases a major or minor update to RHEL, they ship it with a specific branch of the kernel version. This page in the customer portal shows the kernel version “branch” associated with a release of RHEL (e.g. RHEL7.6).

        • dnf-automatic – Install Security Updates Automatically in CentOS 8

          Security updates play a crucial role in safeguarding your Linux system against cyber-attacks and breaches which can have a devastating effect on your critical files, databases and other resources on your system.

          You can manually apply security patches on your CentOS 8 system, but it is much easier as a system administrator to configure automatic updates. This will give you the confidence that your system will be periodically checking for any security patches or updates and applying them.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.4.13

        I’m announcing the release of the 5.4.13 kernel.

        All users of the 5.4 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.4.y git tree can be found at:
        git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.4.y
        and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

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

      • Linux 4.19.97
      • Linux 4.14.166
      • Btrfs Async Discard Support Looks To Be Ready For Linux 5.6

        After months of work by Facebook engineers, it looks like the new async discard support for Btrfs is ready for the upcoming Linux 5.6 cycle as a win for this Linux file-system on solid-state storage making use of TRIM/DISCARD functionality.

        Btrfs has been handling its DISCARD functionality synchronously during the transaction commit, but that can lead to performance issues depending upon the amount of TRIM’ing required and how the drive behaves. With this async discard support, the work is punted off the transaction commit.

      • BTRFS Guide | The Best Desktop File System

        This video goes over BTRFS in-depth, and in this guide, you will learn basic commands, structure, snapshots, and raid capabilities.

      • Ryzen

        • Ryzen 9 3900X vs. Ryzen 9 3950X vs. Core i9 9900KS In Nearly 150 Benchmarks

          This week our AMD Ryzen 9 3950X review sample finally arrived and so we’ve begun putting it through the paces of many different benchmarks. The first of these Linux tests with the Ryzen 9 3950X is looking at the performance up against the Ryzen 9 3900X and Intel Core i9 9900KS in 149 different tests.

          The Ryzen 9 3950X is AMD’s new $749 USD processor just below the Threadripper 3960X. The 3950X offers sixteen cores / 32 threads with a 3.5GHz base clock and 4.7GHz maximum turbo clock. Over the 3900X at $499 is four extra cores / eight threads, a 300MHz lowering of the base clock, 100MHz higher maximum boost clock, and larger L1 and L2 caches while both of these Zen 2 processors share the same TDP of 105 Watts.

        • Ryzen CPUs On Linux Finally See CCD Temperatures, Current + Voltage Reporting

    • Applications

      • The 10 Best Presentation Software for Linux in 2020

        Presentation always plays a vital role in decision making, and in closing any kind of deal. It provides graphical descriptions and clears the situation. In ancient times, we used papers for presentation. With the revolution of our modern technology, we shifted to screens from the papers and developed a lot of tools for making our work easy. If any company’s core system in Linux, then they should go through the whole post and find out the best presentation software for Linux.

        Our world has many types of operating systems for our personal computers and laptops. Among them, Linux is one of the most popular ones because it’s free and has a lot of open-source tools. With that, a user can customize his/ her’s operating system at his/ her will. But getting the right presentation software for Linux distributions can be quite tough. Don’t fear, and we will discuss the presentation software in our content today. I hope you will get the right match for your work.

      • 5 Best GUI Clients for PostgreSQL on Ubuntu

        Written in C, PostgreSQL which is also known as Postgres is one of the most popular relational database management systems. macOS server has it as default database and is also available for other operating systems such as Windows, FreeBCD, OpenBCD and Linux. As PostgreSQL is one of the most used database management systems in the world, it is used as the backbone of many small to large applications and software’s.

        Even though I feel working in command-line is best way to learn anything in the world of application and software development, there are some limitations while working with databases in command-line. It requires great experience of working in command-line or it could get really messy for newbies as well as for professionals.

      • XMPP – Fun with Clients

        As I already wrote in my last blog post there’s much development in XMPP, not only on the server side, but also on the client side. It’s surely not exaggerated to say that Conversations on Android is the de-facto standard client-wise. So, if you have an Android phone, that’s the client you want to try&use. As I don’t have Android, I can’t comment on it. The situation on Linux is good as well: there are such clients as Gajim, which is an old player in the “market” and is available on other platforms as well, but there is with Dino a new/modern client as well that you may want to try out.

        The situation for macOS and iOS users are not that good as for Windows, Linux or Android users. But in the end all clients have their pro and cons… I’ll try to summarize a few clients on Linux, macOS and iOS…

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Shift on Stack: api_port failure
      • How To Git Commit With Message
      • Windscribe VPN on openSUSE

        With all the talk of VPN (Virtual Private Network) services to keep you safe and my general lack of interest in the subject, I was talking to Eric Adams, my co-host on the DLN Xtend podcast about the subject. He was telling me that he was hesitant to recommend any service so he gave me some option to try out. The one I chose, after doing a little reading was Windscribe.

        I am new to the VPN game so I want to be careful in saying, I am recommending this as the perfect solution but rather demonstrating how I set it up and how I am using it on my openSUSE Tumbleweed system. Much in the same way Eric informed me about it.

      • How to Install Minecraft on Ubuntu 18.04
      • How to Remove Top Bar Application Menu in Ubuntu 19.10, 18.04
      • How to add podcasts to a mobile device with Linux
      • How to transfer a file from a remote computer to a local machine on Linux/Ubuntu
      • How to Make Linux Mint Look Like Windows 7
      • 50 Useful and Productive cURL Command in Linux

        The cURL utility is a simple yet powerful command-line tool for transferring files to/from remote locations. Its full form stands for ‘Client URL’. It has cemented its position as one of the best tools for remote data transfer over the internet. cURL offers a robust collection of commands that enable many advanced functionalities. Additionally, most curl command in Linux works exceptionally well for headless agents and/or automated scripts. To help you get started with cURL, our editors have compiled this thoughtfully curated introductory guide. Although it’s meant as a starting point for beginning Linux users, seasoned users can use it as a reference guide.

        The cURL utility supports a wide variety of protocols and features. We’ve outlined the essential commands with appropriate examples and suggest readers try them interactively for gaining first-hand experience on them. As with any Linux tool, your expertise with cURL will only grow when you continue to use it in everyday life.

      • How To Install Selenium Chrome On Centos 7
      • How To Limit User’s Access To The Linux System
      • How to Get Started with Raspberry Pi
      • How to Install Arduino IDE on Ubuntu 18.04
      • How to Preserve Directory Path with CP Command
      • How to Set or Change Timezone in Ubuntu Linux [Beginner’s Tip]
      • Install Steam on OpenSUSE to Play Games
      • What is Kanban and How to use Kanban in Linux

        in 1997, directly after University, I started as an IT specialist and have been working in this area ever since in different roles. During these more than 20 years of being part of and later also leading IT related projects, our teams were using several methods and supporting software to plan our projects in the best possible way. Not all were equally successful. Currently our teams are working in a Scrum approach which is part of the Agile methodology. To support this way of working we use among others a Kanban board to plan and monitor our work. Kanban is nothing new but seems extremely popular at the moment. It is not only a great approach for large and complex projects, but also on a smaller scale for your study and your personal projects. In this article, which will be a part of a series on productivity apps, I want to explain three topics: What is Kanban, Why should you use Kanban to be more productive and What are the best Kanban apps for Linux.

      • What’s your favorite Linux terminal trick?

        The beginning of a new year is always a great time to evaluate new ways to become more efficient. Many people try out new productivity tools or figure out how to optimize their most mundane processes. One area to assess is the terminal. Especially in the world of open source, there are tons of ways to make life at the terminal more efficient (and fun!) with shortcuts and commands.

        We asked our writers about their favorite terminal trick. They shared their time-saving tips and even a fun terminal Easter egg. Will you adopt one of these keyboard shortcuts or command line hacks? Do you have a favorite you’d like to share? Tell us about it by taking our poll or leaving a comment.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Wine Announcement
        The Wine development release 5.0-rc6 is now available.

Barring any last minute issue, this is expected to be the last
release candidate before the final 5.0.

What's new in this release (see below for details):
  - Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.

The source is available from the following locations:

https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/5.0/wine-5.0-rc6.tar.xz


http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/5.0/wine-5.0-rc6.tar.xz

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

https://www.winehq.org/download

You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git
repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details.

Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.
      • Wine 5.0-RC6 Released With Another 21 Fixes

        We’ll likely see the Wine 5.0 stable release next week or the following week, but for now Wine 5.0-RC6 is available as the newest weekly release candidate.

        Given the code freeze that’s been in place for over the past month, there are no new features but only bug fixes at this stage. Wine 5.0-RC6 ships with 21 known bug fixes in total.

        Some of the fixes in Wine 5.0-RC6 are for Brothers In Arms – Hell’s Highway, Tomb Raider, The Witcher Enhanced Edition, Serious Sam Classic, and other games. There are also fixes for applications like 7-Zip, Acrobat Reader, and Pale Moon.

      • The sixth Release Candidate for Wine 5.0 is out now

        The Wine team have released a sixth and perhaps final Release Candidate for the upcoming stable release of Wine 5.0. What’s going to be one of the biggest releases ever, with some truly massive feature improvements since Wine 4.0 back in January last year.

        Going by how many Release Candidates they’ve done before (7 for 4.0 and 6 for 3.0 and 6 for 2.0), the final stable Wine 5.0 release could well be next week.

        For this sixth Release Candidate of Wine 5.0, they noted 21 bug fixes. As always, some might have been fixed in older versions that have been retested recently. From the recent fixes you should see a better experience with The Witcher Enhanced Edition, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Serious Sam Classic, Far Cry 5 and probably more too.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • So you want to make a KDE video…

          KDE is running a competition in search of the next great promotional video for KDE’s Plasma desktop and KDE’s applications.

          The prizes are two fantastic TUXEDO computers, one per category, which will undoubtedly boost your film rendering capacity. There are also 12 goodie packages for runner-ups, and who doesn’t need more Linux shirts, caps and stickers?

          Although we have already received some interesting entries, we feel it may be time to help video artists out there with ideas from the judges themselves.

          Below, Julian Schraner, Ivana Isadora Devčić, and Paul Brown from the Promo team and Farid Abdelnour from the Kdenlive team give their views on what a KDE promotional video should look like, where to find resources, and which pitfalls may hurt your film if you fall for them.

        • Learning about our users

          In a product like Plasma, knowing the kind of things our existing users care about and use sheds light on what needs polishing or improving. At the moment, the input we have is either the one from the loudest most involved people or outright bug reports, which lead to a confirmation bias.

          What do our users like about Plasma? On which hardware do people use Plasma? Are we testing Plasma on the same kind of hardware Plasma is being used for?

          Some time ago, Volker Krause started up the KUserFeedback framework with two main features. First, allowing to send information about application’s usage depending on certain users’ preferences and include mechanisms to ask users for feedback explicitly. This has been deployed into several products already, like GammaRay and Qt Creator, but we never adopted it in KDE software.

          The first step has been to allow our users to tune how much information Plasma products should be telling KDE about the systems they run on.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Doing Things That Scale

          I used to have an Arch GNU/Linux setup with tons of tweaks and customizations. These days I just run vanilla Fedora. It’s not perfect, but for actually getting things done it’s way better than what I had before. I’m also much happier knowing that if something goes seriously wrong I can reinstall and get to a usable system in half an hour, as opposed to several hours of tedious work for setting up Arch. Plus, this is a setup I can actually install for friends and relatives, because it does a decent job at getting people to update when I’m not around.

          Until relatively recently I always set a custom monospace font in my editor and terminal when setting up a new machine. At some point I realized that I wouldn’t have to do that if the default was nicer, so I just opened an issue. A discussion ensued, a better default was agreed upon, and voilà — my problem was solved. One less thing to do after every install. And of course, everyone else now gets a nicer default font too!

          I also used to use ZSH with a configuration framework and various plugins to get autocompletion, git status, a fancy prompt etc. A few years ago I switched to fish. It gives me most of what I used to get from my custom ZSH thing, but it does so out of the box, no configuration needed. Of course ideally we’d have all of these things in the default shell so everyone gets these features for free, but that’s hard to do unfortunately (if you’re interested in making it happen I’d love to talk!).

          Years ago I used to maintain my own extension set to the Faenza icon theme, because Faenza didn’t cover every app I was using. Eventually I realized that trying to draw a consistent icon for every single third party app was impossible. The more icons I added, the more those few apps that didn’t have custom icons stuck out. Nowadays when I see an app with a poor icon I file an issue asking if the developer would like help with a nicer one. This has worked out great in most cases, and now I probably have more consistent app icons on my system than back when I used a custom theme. And of course, everyone gets to enjoy the nicer icons, not only me.

    • Distributions

      • TROMjaro Updates Deliver Lighter, Better Manjaro

        TROMjaro is based on Arch Linux but is much simpler to install and maintain. That makes it a good computing platform to investigate.

        While it is easier to install and use than most other Arch Linux-based distributions, users already familiar with how the Linux OS works will have a less challenging experience than newcomers to Linux migrating from macOS and Microsoft Windows.

        The TROMjaro desktop has its own unique look and feel, and its own approach to handling software.

        Existing TROMjaro users do not have to do anything special to update their systems if they installed an earlier ISO. Just update the TROM repository.

      • New Releases

        • Alpine 3.11.3 released

          The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.11.3 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • Arch Family

        • Tuxedo’s New Manjaro Linux Laptops Will Include Massive Customization

          The Manjaro/Tuxedo Computers partnership will also offer some intense customization options, Forbes adds.

          “Want your company logo laser-etched on the lid? OK. Want to swap out the Manjaro logo with your logo on the Super key? Sure, no problem. Want to show off your knowledge of fictional alien races? Why not get a 100% Klingon keyboard?”

      • Fedora Family

        • Fedora’s CoreOS Released and Out for Preview (Stable & Testing Version)!

          Fedora’s CoreOS Released Now: The team Fedora officially announced that the CoreOS stable and testing version are released for users. CoreOS is designed for handling the running containerized workloads securely and at scale. Fedora’s CoreOS combines the OCI support, SELinux security for atomic host, provisioning tools and automatic update model of container Linux with the packaging technology.

        • Linux Container Fedora CoreOS Released For Public Use: Download Now!

          As per the official blog, Fedora CoreOS does not give guaranteed stability, which is challenging to achieve along with the incremental and evolving development required by Fedora CoreOS.

          However, Fedora CoreOS is still under active development. The CoreOS team promises to provide tools and work over the time to manage the impact of any regressions or breaking changes from automatic updates.

          Future of CoreOS Container Linux and Fedora Atomic Host

          CoreOS Container Linux will be maintained for a few more months, as mentioned in the latest blog by Fedora CoreOS team, whose end-of-life date will be announced later this month.

          Fedora Atomic Host has already reached end-of-life, and the users are highly recommended to migrate to Fedora CoreOS as soon as possible.

          Upcoming Enhancements

          Fedora CoreOS also serves as the upstream to Red Hat CoreOS. It aims to provide the best container host to run containerized workloads securely and at scale.

      • Debian Family

        • Debian Is Making The Process Easier To Bisect Itself Using Their Wayback Machine

          For a decade now snapshot.debian.org has been around for accessing old Debian packages and to find packages by dates and version numbers. Only now though is a guide materializing for leveraging this Debian “wayback machine” in order to help in bisecting regressions for the distribution that span multiple/unknown packages.

          The bisecting is intended for Debian Sid users of the latest bleeding-edge packages and to helping track down what specific package versions may have introduced a regression. This Debian snapshot archive offers a JSON-based API to query changed packages based upon dates and from there with leveraging Git can make the bisecting manageable.

        • Stremio

          There is a new tool available for Sparkers: Stremio

          What is Stremio?

          Stremio is a one-stop hub for video content aggregation. Discover, organize and watch video from all kind of sources on any device that you own.
          Movies, TV shows, series, live television or web channels like YouTube and Twitch.tv – you can find all this on Stremio.

        • Debian 10, the clean install

          Events have ended my upgrade procrastination. Last week my hard drive started having many errors. Fortunately it lasted long enough for me to copy all of its contents to my USB backup drive. (My /home/brad directory is automatically backed up daily, but I also have separate partitions for downloaded files, PDFs, Linux CD images, and archived photos from my digital camera…and those only get backed up now and then.) Then a quick trip to the store for a new SATA hard drive.

          I suppose I could have copied my old root partition over to the new drive. But I’ve been running 32-bit Debian 8 (“Jessie”), which is now two versions behind. And I’ve been noticing more and more applications that I want to run are only being distributed for 64-bit Linux. So I decided to do a clean install of 64-bit Debian 10 (“Buster”), with my preferred MATE desktop (now a standard option with Debian).

        • gnu Linux Debian – top 1000 packages by install – popularity contest

          remember: only the installs are counted where the user said yes during setup to: „do you want to participate in popularity contest?“ (guess that many Linux users are privacy sensitive and a lot of them probably say „no“)

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • [Ubuntu] Design and Web team summary – 17 January 2020

          The second iteration of this year is the last one before our mid-cycle sprint next week.

          Here’s a short summary of the work the squads in the Web & Design team completed in the last 2-week iteration.

        • 5 key steps to take your IoT device to market

          IoT businesses are notoriously difficult to get off the ground. No matter how good your product is or how good your team is, some of the biggest problems you will face are just in getting to market and maintaining your devices once they’re in the field. The webinar will take a look at how Canonical’s Brand Store product allows you to get to market while catering for long term problems and the need to keep your product up to date in the future.

          More specifically, this webinar will look at the common problems we see organisations facing on their way to getting an IoT device to market, and cover five key steps to solve these problems. Along the way we will dig a little into serval case studies Canonical has done with various customers and partners to show you what has already been achieved with these solutions.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • 7 things I learned from starting an open source project

        I’m currently involved—heavily involved—in Enarx, an open source (of course!) project to support running sensitive workloads on untrusted hosts. I’ve had involvement in various open source projects over the years, but this is the first for which I’m one of the founders. We’re at the stage now where we’ve got a fair amount of code, quite a lot of documentation, a logo, and (important!) stickers. The project will hopefully be included in a Linux Foundation group—the Confidential Computing Consortium—so things are going very well indeed.

        I thought it might be useful to reflect on some of the things we did to get things going. To be clear, Enarx is a particular type of project, one that we believe has commercial and enterprise applications. It’s also not mature yet, and we’ll have hurdles and challenges along the way. What’s more, the route we’ve taken won’t be right for all projects, but hopefully, there’s enough here to give a few pointers to other projects or people considering starting one up.

      • Open source: A matter of license and lock-in

        Recently, a few bits of newsworthy information hit the open source landscape. Separately, these pieces of news were not that glaring, but when you put them together something a bit more ominous comes into focus–something I never would have thought to be an issue within the open source community.

        Before I get into this, I want to preface this by saying I am not usually one to cry foul, wolf, or squirrel! I prefer to let those pundits who make a living at gleaning the important bits out of the big bowl of alphabet soup and draw their own conclusions. But this time, I think it’s important I chime in.

        Yes, at this very moment I am donning my tin foil hat. Why? Because I think it’s necessary. And with me sporting that shiny chapeau, understand every word you are about to read is conjecture.

      • Why Did Red Hat Drop Its Support for Docker’s Runtime Engine?
      • [KDE] Itinerary extraction in Nextcloud Hub

        Nextcloud announced their latest release and among the many new features is itinerary extraction from emails. That’s using KDE’s extraction engine, the same that powers similar features in KMail as well.

      • One open source chat tool to rule them all

        Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I’m taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

        Instant messaging and chat have become a staple of the online world. And if you are like me, you probably have about five or six different apps running to talk to your friends, co-workers, and others. It really is a pain to keep up with it all. Thankfully, you can use one app (OK, two apps) to consolidate a lot of those chats into a single point.

      • Finance goes agile as open source checks the security box

        “At Northwestern Mutual, we’ve finally gotten past that curve,” said Sean Corkum (pictured, right), senior engineer at Northwestern Mutual. “Now we’re trying to make it even easier for our internal developers to participate in open source … and contribute more to the community.”

      • Top NLP Open Source Projects For Developers In 2020
      • Kiwi TCMS: Project roadmap 2020

        Hello testers, the Kiwi TCMS team sat down together last week and talked about what we feel is important for us during the upcoming year. This blog post outlines our roadmap for 2020!

      • Events

        • Let’s Talk With Neal Gompa of Fedora @ openSUSE Conference

          In this episode of Let’s Talk, we sat down with Neal Gompa of the Fedora community at openSUSE Conference

        • FOSSCOMM 2019 aftermath

          FOSSCOMM (Free and Open Source Software Communities Meeting) is a Greek conference aiming at free-software and open-source enthusiasts, developers, and communities. This year was held at Lamia from October 11 to October 13.

          It is a tradition for me to attend this conference. Usually, I have presentations and of course, booths to inform the attendees about the projects I represent.

          This year the structure of the conference was kind of different. Usually, the conference starts on Friday with a “beer event”. Now it started with registration and a presentation. Personally, I made my plan to leave Thessaloniki by bus. It took me about 4 hours on the road. So when I arrived, I went to my hotel and then waited for Pantelis to go to University and set up our booths.

      • Web Browsers

        • Chromium

          • Google announces end of support dates for Chrome Apps on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS

            The end of support for Chrome apps has been a long time coming — Google announced more than two years ago that it was going to start winding things down.

            The Chrome Web Store has already been stripped of the App section on Windows, macOS and Linux, and now Google has announced that it is to be pulled from Chrome OS too. The company has also revealed the dates on which support will be dropped completely for all platforms.

          • Linux disk resizing on Chromebooks pushed back to Chrome OS 81

            The good news is that plans have been in the works since March of last year to allow you to reclaim some of that space by shrinking or resizing the Linux storage. The bad news is that after being pushed back twice since the feature is being put off again; this time until Chrome OS 81.

            You’d think this would be a relatively simple thing to implement but in reality, it’s not. That’s because the Chrome OS filesystem has evolved in the past year and due to expected support for a particular file type for older Linux kernels never worked out.
            I’d rather the Chromium team take their time for a well designed and implemented solution so as not to break any functionality. Plus there’s the challenge of having enough free storage to restore a container backup.

        • Mozilla

          • The Pros And Cons Of Using Tor Browser

            The Tor Browser sends all traffic data through the Tor Network. Some also call it the anonymity network. It does so by connecting to a server with a list of Tor nodes and bouncing the connection through three different proxies.

            There’s an entry node, a middle relay, and an exit node that are selected at random. The connection between these different nodes is encrypted, and the IP addresses aren’t public. It makes the whole process safe and anonymous.

            The Tor Browser is easy to download and install and doesn’t cost a penny to boot. Volunteers created and run the Tor Project, so donations are welcome. Moreover, the code is open-source, which means anyone can review it. It ensures that the code stays secure, and no one can use it for any hidden exploitative money-making purposes.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Guile 3.0.0 now available

            GNU Guile, a programming and extension language for the GNU Project, is now available as version 3.0.0. According to the team, this is the first release in the stable 3.0 release series.

            The major new feature in this version is just-in-time (JIT) native code generation, which helps speed up performance. In this release, microbenchmark performance is twice as good as the 2.2 release, and some individual benchmarks have seen improvements up to 32 times as fast, according to the project maintainers.

            Other new features include support for interleaved definitions and expressions in lexical contexts, native support for structured exceptions, and improved support for R6RS and R7RS Scheme standards.

          • Experimental Support For C++20 Coroutines Has Landed In GCC 10

            As of this morning experimental support for C++20 coroutines has been merged into the GCC 10 compiler!

            Coroutines allow a function to have its execution stopped/suspended and then to be resumed later. Coroutines is one of the big features of C++20. Sample syntax and more details on C++ coroutines can be found at cppreference.com.

            Coroutines support for GCC has been under development for months and now as a late addition to GCC 10 is the experimental implementation.

          • GNU Binutils 2.34 Branched – Bringing With It “debuginfod” HTTP Server Support

            With GNU Binutils 2.34 comes debuginfod support, which is the HTTP server catching our eye while the debuginfod server is distributed as part of the latest elfutils package. This isn’t for a general purpose web server thankfully but is an HTTP server for distributing ELF/DWARF debugging information and source code. With debuginfod enabled, Binutils’ readelf and objdump utilities can query the HTTP server(s) for debug files that cannot otherwise be found. Enabling this option requires building Binutils using –with-debuginfod.

        • Licensing / Legal

          • Fugue open sources Regula to evaluate Terraform for security misconfigurations and compliance violations

            Regula rules are written in Rego, the open source policy language employed by the Open Policy Agent project and can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines to prevent cloud infrastructure deployments that may violate security and compliance best practices.

            “Developers design, build, and modify their own cloud infrastructure environments, and they increasingly own the security and compliance of that infrastructure,” said Josh Stella, co-founder and CTO of Fugue.

            “Fugue builds solutions that empower engineers operating in secure and regulated cloud environments, and Regula quickly and easily checks that their Terraform scripts don’t violate policy—before they deploy infrastructure.”

      • Programming/Development

        • Announcing git-cinnabar 0.5.3

          Git-cinnabar is a git remote helper to interact with mercurial repositories. It allows to clone, pull and push from/to mercurial remote repositories, using git.

        • Steve Kemp: Announce: github2mr

          myrepos is an excellent tool for applying git operations to multiple repositories, and I use it extensively.

          I’ve written several scripts to dump remote repository-lists into a suitable configuration format, and hopefully I’ve done that for the last time.

        • Perl / Raku

          • Term::ANSIColor 5.01

            This is the module included in Perl core that provides support for ANSI color escape sequences.

            This release adds support for the NO_COLOR environment variable (thanks, Andrea Telatin) and fixes an error in the example of uncolor() in the documentation (thanks, Joe Smith). It also documents that color aliases are expanded during alias definition, so while you can define an alias in terms of another alias, they don’t remain linked during future changes.

        • Python

          • JavaScript destructuring like Python kwargs with defaults

            I’m sure it’s been blogged about a buncha times before but, I couldn’t find it, and I had to search too hard to find an example of this.

          • Create the input text box with tkinter

            In the previous post, I have written a python program to create the database, earning table as well as input the first row of data into the earning table. In this chapter, I will create a simple UI to accept the user’s input so we do not need to hardcoded the values into the SQL query. I will leave the SQL commit code to the next chapter, we will only create a simple input’s UI in this chapter first.

            A description box and the earning box of the Earning Input user interface
            As you can see I will create the above simple UI with tkinter which can then be further upgraded in the future to include more stuff.

          • Start using 2FA and API tokens on PyPI

            To increase the security of PyPI downloads, we have added two-factor authentication (2FA) as a login security option, and API tokens for uploading packages. This is thanks to a grant from the Open Technology Fund, coordinated by the Packaging Working Group of the Python Software Foundation.

            If you maintain or own a project on the Python Package Index, you should start using these features. Click “help” on PyPI for instructions. (These features are also available on Test PyPI.)

          • How to Build RESTful APIs with Python and Flask

            For some time now I have been working with Python but I just got to try out Flask recently, so I felt it would be nice to write about it. In this aritcle I’ll discuss about Flask and how you can use it to build RESTfull APIs.

            Flask is a Python-based microframework that enables you to quickly build web applications; the “micro” in microframework simply means Flask aims to keep the core simple but extensible.

          • Reading Binary Data with Python

            When you deal with external binary data in Python, there are a couple of ways to get that data into a data structure. You can use the ctypes module to define the data structure or you can use the struct python module.

            You will see both methods used when you explore tool repositories on the web. This article shows you how to use each one to read an IPv4 header off the network. It’s up to you to decide which method you prefer; either way will work fine.

          • Python 3.7.5 : Django security issues – part 001.

            Django like any website development and framework implementation requires security settings and configurations.
            Today I will present some aspects of this topic and then I will come back with other information.

          • How to display flash messages in Django templates

            Sometimes we need to show the one-time notification, also known as the flash messages in our Django application. For this Django provides the messages framework. We are going to use the same here.

            To show flash messages in the Django application, we will extend our previous project Hello World in Django 2.2. Clone the git repository, check out the master branch and set up the project on your local machine by following the instructions in the README file.

  • Leftovers

    • Baby Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark

      In violation of the separation of church and state, American tax dollars are funneled to fundamentalist private schools teaching crackpot absurdities – such as a claim that Noah probably took two baby dinosaurs onto his ark.

    • Brecht in Berlin

      One of Brecht’s best-loved and most-performed works, The Caucasian Chalk Circle was written in Los Angeles in 1944 while the playwright was still in exile. He returned to Germany in 1947, but the play remained behind, a parting gift to the country that had offered him refuge from the Nazis, but which, with the Cold War heating up and the House Un-American Activities Committee in full lather, had turned against his socialist politics. With Brecht back in East Berlin, The Caucasian Chalk Circle received its premiere in May of 1948 in a student production at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota under the direction of the young theater professor Henry Goodman, a World War II veteran.

      A native of Minneapolis, Goodman had been stationed in Berlin during the occupation and had seen Brecht’s work onstage in the devastated city. From America Brecht had tried to stop such productions. In September of 1945 he wrote to the Soviet cultural official Mikhail Apletin requesting that all further stagings of his work be forbidden until his own repatriation to Germany. Brecht was appalled that a production of his Threepenny Opera—utterly inappropriate given the circumstances, he thought—had been mounted in August of 1945, just a few months after the end of the war, and likely seen by Goodman. In the new post-Nazi, post-War world, Brecht felt all his plays needed at least some revision. The only work he believed ready for immediate presentation was Fear and Misery of the Third Reich.

    • Education

      • Why College Should Be Free

        Obviously, I am making an analogy with free college. And obviously, people who don’t support free college (and probably many who do) are going to reject this analogy. Here are some possible counterarguments: [...]

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Evidence Shows Whooping Cough Is Evolving Into a ‘Superbug’, Scientists Warn

        In new world-first research, a team of Australian scientists has discovered how B. pertussis strains are adapting to the current acellular vaccine (ACV) used in Australia, which is similar to the ACVs used for whooping cough in other countries around the world.

        “We found the whooping cough strains were evolving to improve their survival, regardless of whether a person was vaccinated or not,” explains microbiologist Laurence Luu from UNSW.

      • Federal Regulators: Newark Beth Israel Put Patients in “Immediate Jeopardy”

        Newark Beth Israel Medical Center’s heart and lung transplant program was putting patients in “immediate jeopardy” before the hospital began to implement corrective measures, according to federal regulators.

        In a pair of reports sent to the Newark, New Jersey, hospital on Dec. 12, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the transplant program repeatedly failed to fix mistakes. Spurred by ProPublica articles, the CMS investigation uncovered a series of incidents in which the hospital identified areas for improvement following botched surgeries but didn’t carry out its own recommendations, allowing “subsequent adverse events to occur.”

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Boeing discovers new software problem in 737 Max

          The news comes following the release of internal documents showing employees knew about problems with pilot training for the 737 MAX and tried to conceal them from regulators. In the documents released by US lawmakers, Boeing employees said the aircraft was “designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” in an apparent reference to regulators.

        • A Georgia election server was vulnerable to Shellshock and may have been hacked

          Forensic evidence shows signs that a Georgia election server may have been hacked ahead of the 2016 and 2018 elections by someone who exploited Shellshock, a critical flaw that gives attackers full control over vulnerable systems, a computer security expert said in a court filing on Thursday.

          Shellshock came to light in September 2014 and was immediately identified as one of the most severe vulnerabilities to be disclosed in years. The reasons: it (a) was easy to exploit, (b) gave attackers the ability to remotely run commands and code of their choice, and (c) opened most Linux and Unix systems to attack. As a result, the flaw received widespread news coverage for months.

        • Micro Focus AD Bridge 2.0: Extending security policies and access controls to cloud-based Linux

          With AD Bridge 2.0, organizations can leverage existing infrastructure authentication, security as well as policy, in order to simplify the migration of on-premises Linux Active Directory to the cloud, resulting in fully secured and managed Linux virtual machines in the cloud.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

        • Security

          • [Attacker] stole [sic] over 10,000 hospital files

            Jason Corden-Bowen, of the CPS, said: “Moonie had no right to access confidential patient and staff records. He admitted his earlier wrongdoing and accepted a police caution yet he went ahead to reoffend knowing fully well it was not just against hospital procedures but it was wrong and illegal.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Dear Reuters: This Is NOT How You Report On Dishonest, Disingenuous Talking Points From US Officials Regarding Encryption

              Attorney General William Barr and his DOJ and FBI have really ramped up their bullshit campaign against the public being able to use encryption. President Trump himself weighed in himself with some ignorant statements, suggesting that Apple owes him some sort of quid pro quo, because his policies may have helped them on trade:

            • FBI used Graykey to unlock an iPhone 11 Pro, which was previously thought to be the most secure iPhone

              A recent article by Thomas Brewster at Forbes highlights the fact that the FBI is able to unlock iPhones using a product called Graykey. Specifically, a product called Graykey was used in a case against Baris Ali Koch to unlock Koch’s iPhone – an iPhone 11 Pro. Graykey works by bypassing the timeout functionality in iOS and allows for brute forcing of the passcode or password.

            • Police forces around the world continue to deploy facial recognition systems, despite no evidence of their utility

              Last month, this blog wrote about governments around the world continuing to trial facial recognition systems, and the growing concerns this is provoking. There’s one area in particular where facial recognition systems are deployed: law enforcement. That’s hardly a surprise, since the legal system can only operate if it identifies alleged criminals that need to be arrested, tried and punished. But it also emphasizes how facial recognition is seen by many as a natural tool for controlling populations. The most famous example is in China, where facial recognition systems are widely deployed, especially in the turkic-speaking region of Xinjiang. The situation is getting so bad that even Chinese citizens are becoming concerned.

            • Report: Adult Site Leaks Extremely Sensitive Data of Cam Models

              There are at least 875,000 keys, which represent different file types, including videos, marketing materials, photographs, clips and screenshots of video chats, and zip files. Within each zip folder – and there is apparently one zip folder per model – there are often multiple additional files (e.g. photographs and scans of documents), and many additional items that we chose not to investigate.

              The folders included could be up to 15-20 years old, but are also as recent as the last few weeks. Even for older files, given the nature of the data, it is still relevant and of equal impact as newly added files.

            • 2019 End of Year Campaign Wrap Up – Thanks for Helping Tor Take Back the Internet

              Our commitment to privacy extends to our donors. We execute our fundraising in a way that is very different than other nonprofits. We never share your information with third parties. We never receive potential new donor information from outside sources. We do not track the behavior of our donors when you open our emails. We allow donors to choose what information you share with us. You can be more anonymous by sending a money order to our physical address or utilizing cryptocurrency to protect your personal information. Privacy is limited by requirements of the most popular donation methods, PayPal or credit card, but we are committed to offering privacy-preserving methods of making donations.

            • America’s Most Powerful Woman Called Mark Zuckerberg a Crook. Facebook Has No Rebuttal

              “They don’t care about the impact on children. They don’t care about truth,” she said, adding that Facebook’s only interest is turning a profit. Facebook has “schmoozed” the administration—a likely reference to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s secretive dinners with President Trump—because “all they want is their tax cuts and no antitrust action against them.”

              “I think that what they have said very blatantly, very clearly, that they intend to be accomplices for misleading the American people with money from god knows where. They didn’t even check on the money from Russia in the last election. They never even thought they should,” Pelosi said, before returning to the topic at hand, the Senate’s looming impeachment trial.

            • The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

              Clearview has shrouded itself in secrecy, avoiding debate about its boundary-pushing technology. When I began looking into the company in November, its website was a bare page showing a nonexistent Manhattan address as its place of business. The company’s one employee listed on LinkedIn, a sales manager named “John Good,” turned out to be Mr. Ton-That, using a fake name. For a month, people affiliated with the company would not return my emails or phone calls.

              While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • A Conflict Fueled By Global Warming

        One of the world’s worst humanitarian crises is unfolding on the shores of Lake Chad, according to the United Nations. In Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, people are suffering from more than just extreme poverty. Boko Haram and other violent Islamist groups combined with corrupt governments and the absence of any functional state administration are making their lives hell — not to mention diseases, natural disasters and overpopulation. All these problems are now being made worse by climate change.

      • Gun-Rights Activists Gear Up for Show of Force in Virginia

        Police are scouring the internet for clues about plans for mayhem, workers are putting up chain-link holding pens around Virginia’s picturesque Capitol Square, and one lawmaker even plans to hide in a safe house in advance of what’s expected to be an unprecedented show of force by gun-rights activists.

      • City Of Dallas Shuts Down Business Of Man Who Called Cops Over 100 Times In 20 Months To Deal With Criminals Near His Car Wash

        Let’s talk about nuisance abatement laws. These are laws cities can use to shut down businesses that appear to draw more than their fair share of the criminal element.

      • Riots in Lebanon’s Capital Leave More Than 150 Injured

        Police fired volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets in Lebanon’s capital Saturday to disperse thousands of protesters amid some of the worst rioting since demonstrations against the country’s ruling elite erupted three months ago. More than 150 people were injured.

      • Eminem Attacked for Rapping About 2017 Manchester Arena Bombing

        The latest album by rapper Eminem is facing backlash over lyrics that seemingly make light of the 2017 bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.

      • As Iran and Iraq simmer, giants of Shiite world vie for influence

        “Lots of Iraqis believe in Iran,” says Hisham al-Hashemi, a security analyst with the European Institute of Peace. “They believe in it as an Islamic Revolution, and the right for this revolution to cross borders everywhere.”

      • War in Syria drives out Christian community

        The recent history of the Christians of the Khabur Valley is a nightmare in a loop. They are descendants of those who fled Anatolia during the 1915 genocide. Iraq was a first stop for many, but life there was far from easy either. After a massacre in northern Iraq in 1933, many crossed to French-controlled Syria, where they settled along the Khabur River.

        Once a thriving community of 15,000 individuals in the Khabur Valley, local NGOs say there are a “few hundred” left in the area following the IS offensive in 2015.

        “It was IS back in 2015 and it’s very much the same people right now,” said Lunan. Videos continue to emerge of Turkish-backed Islamists committing atrocities against civilians.

    • Environment

      • Michigan’s ‘green ooze’ may be ‘tip of iceberg’ of state’s toxic sites

        The discovery of toxic PFAS chemicals at a contaminated site in Madison Heights could triple the cost of an already expensive cleanup effort, a state official told lawmakers Wednesday.

        And taxpayers could get stuck with the bill to clean up the green ooze site, since it’s unclear if its imprisoned owner can pay for it.

        “Is it $2 million? Is it $20 million? I don’t know, but it’s not in the hundreds of thousands. It’s in the millions,” said Tracy Kecskemeti, southeast district coordinator for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE).

      • Brazil’s indigenous communities resist Bolsonaro

        Meanwhile, in southern Brazil, the Kaingang are working to reforest their land with araucaria, an indigenous tree which produces a fruit they can eat and sell, and that supports indigenous wildlife. For Marcio Kokoj of the Kaingang Guarani Indigenous Environmental Association, the Bolsonaro government feels like a throwback to Brazil’s military dictatorship that murdered thousands of indigenous people, drove thousands more from their lands, and tortured many and enslaved others between 1964 and 1985.

        “The greatest concern today is with the attacks on the demarcations of our lands, we therefore need to make self-demarcation,” Kokoj said. “If it depends on Bolsonaro, he will open up areas for large-scale agricultural production, multinationals, mining. That worries us a lot.”

        Self-demarcation is when indigenous communities draw the boundaries of their own territory, often expelling illegal occupants, such as loggers.

      • No one will be untouched by a warming planet, scientists say

        Climate change is costing cities as they try to adapt and mitigate. Farmers are facing increasing challenges, which can lead to consumers paying more for food. Extreme weather disasters are on the rise in Canada and costing insurance companies, leading to higher premiums. People are dying in heat waves which are set to become more frequent as the planet warms; and hurricanes are stalling, meaning more people are in danger for longer periods of time.

      • With Passage of NAFTA 2.0, Congress Boosts Fossil Fuel Polluters in Mexico

        NAFTA 2.0 cleared another hurdle on January 16 as the U.S. Senate approved the trade deal with bipartisan support.

      • This Is Our Last Decade to Get Climate Right

        The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in October 2018 that we have 12 years to keep global temperatures increases at 1.5 degrees Celsius or less. Now, we have more like 10 years.

      • Activists Find Evidence of Formosa Plant in Texas Still Releasing Plastic Pollution Despite $50 Million Settlement

        Their suit against Formosa Plastics Corp. USA resulted in a $50-million-dollar settlement and a range of conditions in an agreement known as a consent decree. Key among the conditions was the company’s promise to halt releasing the nurdles it manufactures into local waterways leading to the Texas Gulf Coast by January 15.

      • Energy

        • How One Utah Community Fought the Fracking Industry — and Won
        • ‘Pete Takes Money From Fossil Fuel Billionaires’: Climate Activists Disrupt Buttigieg Rally in New Hampshire

          “We are really concerned about candidates who have taken money from fossil-fuel executives. So that includes Joe Biden as well as Pete Buttigieg.”

        • Big Oil sponsors Croatia’s EU presidency

          The six-month Croatian presidency of the Council of the EU has signed a deal with the country’s national oil company INA to supply its fuel.
          The part state-owned firm is now designated as the EU council presidency’s “official gasoline supplier” – and comes during the launch of the European Commission’s European Green Deal, a seminal policy that seeks to cut carbon emissions and fossil fuel consumption across the European Union over the next three decades.

          “INA is proud to be official fuel supplier during Croatian’s presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2020. The company will provide fuel for official vehicles,” it said when asked for a comment.
          The deal, described as an in-kind contribution, was confirmed to EUobserver by the secretariat of the Croatian Presidency (EU2020HR) whose spokesperson, in an email, also noted it had signed sponsorship deals with six other Croat companies.

          “The EU2020HR has so far signed seven sponsorship agreements with exclusively Croatian companies. When we complete the list of sponsors full information will be posted on the EU2020HR website,” said the secretariat on Wednesday (15 January).

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Pacific Ocean’s Warm “Blob” Killed a Million Seabirds in One Year

          For this new study, published in the journal PLOS One Wednesday, researchers from the University of Washington, the United States Geological Survey, and other institutions determined that approximately 62,000 murre carcasses had washed ashore from central California through Alaska between the summer of 2015 and spring of 2016.

          In some locations, the number of carcasses was 1,000 times more than normal. In total, the researchers estimate that one million murres died during the time period they studied, making the event the largest mass death of seabirds in recorded history.

        • Victoria Police rejects social media campaign claiming arson caused fires

          Victoria Police say the fires engulfing the eastern part of Victoria are not being treated as the work of arsonists, as claimed by a widespread social media campaign.

          In the past week, a Twitter hashtag #ArsonEmergency – mimicking the popular #BushfireEmergency hashtag – attracted thousands of tweets linking the fires to arsonists and casting doubt on the role of climate change in exacerbating the bushfires’ severity.

          But authorities have moved to dispel those claims.

          “Police are aware of a number of posts circulating in relation to the current bushfire situation, however currently there is no intelligence to indicate that the fires in East Gippsland and north-east Victoria have been caused by arson or any other suspicious behaviour,” a police spokeswoman said.

        • WHEN IT COMES TO THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRES, RUPERT MURDOCH IS AN ARSONIST

          In times of crisis, social media can become a hotbed of misinformation. Often it’s accidental—people sharing faulty information they think is true, based on unconfirmed initial reports, or comical trolling, like the now-nearly-decade-old “shark on the highway” photoshop that gets shared during seemingly every hurricane landfall. But there is increasingly another sort of misinformation, and it’s much more sinister. It’s the deliberate injection of lies, disinformation, employing a combination of high profile trolls and bot armies to wage a public disinformation campaign.

          The bushfires currently engulfing Australia offer an unwelcome example, one that I’m watching from front row seats here in the country. Little did I know when I planned my sabbatical in Sydney to study the impact of climate change on extreme weather events in Australia, that I would be here in the country to witness what is arguably the most profound example yet of that phenomenon. As I write this commentary, I’m looking out at smoke-tinged skies while the faint smell of smoke wafts in through an open window. Living through its consequences, even as we study it, is a recurring irony of climate science in the 21st century.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Airbus Asks Court To Dismiss Chuck Yeager’s Lawsuit, Pointing Out It Doesn’t Allege Anything Actionable

        You may recall that last summer we wrote about how American aviation legend Chuck Yeager decided to sue Airbus when the company mentioned the fact that Yeager broke the sound barrier in marketing material. Yeager’s lawyer is Lincoln Bandlow, who has spent much of the past few years as a copyright troll after a formerly respectable career in which he once touted himself a free-speech fighter. His complaint, however, served mostly as comedic material. There were claims of trademark infringement and violation of Yeager’s publicity rights. Neither made much sense, as repeating a historical fact, even in marketing material, does not constitute either violation and is clearly protected speech. It was only a matter of time before Airbus responded and now we have that response.

      • Marin to meet with Google, Apple CEOs at Davos conference

        During the 22-24 January conference, Marin also meet with leaders of major tech firms including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft President Brad Smith to discuss “new technologies and data policy, corporate social responsibility, sustainable development and job creation,” the statement says. Google has a major data centre in Hamina, while Microsoft shut down its product development operations in Finland in 2016.

      • Harry, Meghan to Give Up Public Funds, ‘Highness’ Titles Under Deal

        Goodbye, your royal highnesses. Hello, life as — almost — ordinary civilians.

      • Bernie Sanders Denounces Trump’s Effort to Divide Democrats

        After President Donald Trump earlier in the day accused Democrats in Congress of “rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders,” the 2020 presidential candidate shot back Friday evening to say the president’s effort to divide Democrats would be unsuccessful.

      • “Let’s Be Clear About Who Is Rigging What”: Bernie Sanders Denounces Trump Effort to Divide Democrats

        2020 candidate says only reason for impeachment trial is president’s effort to “use the power of the federal government for his own political benefit.”

      • Yes Minister Fan Fiction

        I have been rather unwell this last week with atrial fibrillation, and at 5am last Sunday morning had the paramedics out and puzzling over the ECG results. This particularly severe episode was a result of being out in the cold and storm for hours on the AUOB march, and I felt so guilty at being a self-inflicted drain on the NHS that I declined their offer to take me into hospital and decided to recover at home.

      • How an Anti-Sexist Candidate Got Smeared as Sexist

        The recent scandal alleging that Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren a woman couldn’t beat Trump captured attention for days. The manufactured narrative shows how the media repeats cynical, bad-faith attacks until they get seen as fact.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Iranian Tech Users Are Getting Knocked Off the Web by Ambiguous Sanctions

        Between targeted killings, retaliatory air strikes, and the shooting of a civilian passenger plane, the last few weeks have been marked by tragedy as tensions rise between the U.S. and Iranian governments. In the wake of these events, Iranians within the country and in the broader diaspora have suffered further from actions by both administrations—including violence and lethal force against protesters and internet shutdowns in Iran, as well as detention, surveillance and device seizure at the U.S. border and exacerbating economic conditions from U.S. sanctions. And to make matters worse, American tech companies are acting on sanctions through an overbroad lens, making it much harder for Iranian people to be able to share their stories with each other and with the broader world.

        The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions that target foreign countries, groups, and individuals. Some of these sanctions impact the export to Iran (or use by residents of the country) of certain types of technology, although trying to parse precisely which types are affected appears to have left some companies puzzled.

      • ‘King Of Bullshit News’ Sees His Bullshit Libel Lawsuit Tossed For A Second Time

        Michael Leidig, the owner of Central European News, wasn’t thrilled BuzzFeed called him the “King of Bullshit News” in a 2015 article. The BuzzFeed investigation dug into CEN’s publishing business and found the company did nothing more than generate a steady stream of salacious and rarely plausible “news” stories, which were then picked up by other “news” agencies (Mirror, Sun, etc.) less concerned with accurate reporting than with racking up page views.

      • Joe Biden Can’t Tell The Difference Between The 1st Amendment & Section 230; Still Thinks Video Games Cause Violence

        Joe Biden is the latest Democratic candidate for President interviewed by the NY Times editorial board, and if you’re interested in tech policy, well, it’s a doozy. Biden seems confused, misinformed, or simply wrong about a lot of issues from free speech to Section 230 to copyright to video games. It’s really bad. We already knew he was on an anti 230 kick when he gave a confused quote on it late last year, but for the NY Times he goes even further:

      • Turkey restores access to Wikipedia after 991 days

        Internet rights group Turkey Blocks first reported the block on April 29 2017, establishing technical evidence of a nationwide restriction in the absence of a court order or official notice. After the initial blocking, authorities explained that the entirety of Wikipedia was restricted because attempts by state officials to amend specific articles via the platform’s own editorial process and legal demands had both been unsuccessful.

        The site uses TLS encryption to enforce HTTPS security, an industry standard that provides user confidentiality and makes it impossible for governments to censor individual web pages. Hence, network operators blocked the entire platform in order to comply with the order. The sites were blocked with a combination of SNI filtering and DNS poisoning at the ISP level, with each telecom operator responsible for technical implementation of restrictions.

      • National Archives Censors Anti-Trump Messages from 2017 Women’s March Photo to Avoid ‘Political Controversy’

        A massive, blown-up photo of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, D.C., currently on display in the National Archives, has been altered to remove anti-Trump messages, in order to avoid “political controversy.”

        As reported in the Washington Post, the photograph, taken by Mario Tama for Getty Images, sits near the entrance to a National Archives exhibit on the women’s suffrage movement. But upon closer inspection, it’s clear that the exhibited photo has been quietly changed, with any mentions of President Donald Trump, as well as references to parts of female anatomy like “vagina” and “pussy,” blurred out from the protestors’ signs.

      • Librarians, Advocacy Groups Take Action Against Missouri’s Proposed Censorship Legislation

        As news broke about HB 2044, legislation proposed in the state of Missouri which would open wide the doors to rampant censorship of library material and prosecution of librarians, librarians and library advocacy groups got to work.

        “Public libraries already have procedures in place to assist patrons in protecting their own children while not infringing upon the rights of other patrons or restricting materials. The Missouri Library Association will always stand against censorship and for the freedom to read, and therefore opposes Missouri House Bill 2044,” reads the statement from Missouri Library Association president Cynthia Dudenhoffer. “Public libraries exist to provide equitable access to information to all of its users, as it is key to having an informed populace. Missouri Library Association will always oppose legislation that infringes on these rights.”

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Cambodia: Drop Charges Against 2 Journalists

        Expand

        Former RFA reporters Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin speak to the media outside of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Aug. 29, 2019.

      • Obama Freed Chelsea Manning Three Years Ago. Why Is She Still in Jail?

        The country that Manning stepped into in 2017 was very different from the one she essentially left in 2010. For one, Donald Trump was president, and his administration was already outwardly hostile toward her—only days after he was inaugurated, Trump called Manning an “ungrateful traitor” in a tweet.

      • Impeachment trial security crackdown will limit Capitol press access

        “There is no additional safety or security brought by bringing such a device into reporter work space and gives the impression that it is being done mostly to protect Senators from the bright light of the public knowing what they are doing in one of the country’s most important moments,” the Standing Committee of Correspondents wrote in a letter Tuesday to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer.

      • EU could force mobile phone manufacturers to standardise chargers

        “To reduce electronic waste and make consumers’ life easier, MEPs want binding measures for chargers to fit all mobile phones and other portable devices,” claims the briefing.

        The parliament plans to vote on the measures in the next month.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Verizon Kills Cable Contracts As TV Sector Finally Starts Listening To Cord Cutters. Kind Of.

        Remember cord cutting? The trend that cable and broadcast execs and countless sector analysts spent years claiming either wasn’t real, didn’t matter, or would most certainly end once Millennials started procreating? It set records in 2019, and despite some wishful thinking among cable TV executives, there’s no real sign that the trend is going anywhere thanks to the continued rise of new streaming services.

      • ICANN Needs To Ask More Questions About the Sale of .ORG

        Over 21,000 people, 660 organizations, and now six Members of Congress have asked ICANN, the organization that regulates the Internet’s domain name system, to halt the $1.135 billion deal that would hand control over PIR, the .ORG domain registry, to private equity. There are crucial reasons this sale is facing significant backlash from the nonprofit and NGO communities who make the .ORG domain their online home, and perhaps none of them are more concerning than the speed of the deal and the dangerous lack of transparency that’s accompanied it. 

        Less than three months have passed from the announcement of the sale—which took the nonprofit community by surprise—to the final weeks in which ICANN is expected to make its decision, giving those affected almost no chance to have a voice, much less stop it. The process so far, including information that the buyer, Ethos Capital, provided to ICANN in late December, raises more questions than it answers. U.S. lawmakers are correct that “the Ethos Capital takeover of the .ORG domain fails the public interest test in numerous ways.”

    • Monopolies

      • 2019 Income Sources

        Trad pub certainly sells a bunch through Amazon. Traditional publishers put even more effort into diversification than I do. I’m going to assume that they’re at least as successful as I am, and roughly one-third of my trad pub income comes through Amazon. This means Amazon backs roughly 42% of my income.

      • Book Review: 3D Printing and Intellectual Property

        One of the subjects that IP laws have had to grapple with in the 21st century is that of 3D printing technology. 3D printers manufacture physical objects based on input from a digital file. The range of 3D printable products includes medical products, aesthetic products, plane parts, toys, buildings, guns etc. With the opportunities offered by 3D printing technology comes the worry from the IP community that the technology is susceptible to abuse and undue exploitation of IP rights. In 3D Printing and Intellectual Property, Lucas S. Osborn explains the technical aspects of 3D printing in plain language before going on to address how various aspects of IP laws (copyright, trademarks, patent and design laws) confronts the issues raised by 3D printing technology. A primer chapter on the foundations of IP law provides a much-needed context for the issues at the root of IP law concerns about 3D printing.

        [...]

        This book will be relevant to a variety of readers: lawyers, lawmakers, policymakers and judges. For its plain, easy-to-read language and its coverage of technical aspects of the 3D printing technology, this book will also be relevant to technologists and artists. Having said that, legal practitioners and scholars in the US, Europe and many countries in the Global North might find the book more relevant than practitioners from the Global South and the African continent, as it focuses on the former jurisdictions.

      • Patents

        • Proportionality clause in draft German patent reform bill falls short of not only eBay v. MercExchange but also the EU’s definition

          The debate over a draft patent reform bill presented by the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection is raging. I outlined some fundamental issues on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the ministry has published its draft bill.

          On his (strongly recommended) Comparative Patent Remedies blog, Professor Thomas Cotter indicated my reaction to the draft bill made more sense to him after reading the explanations provided by the ministry. The rationale provided for the measure, and the legislative intent expressed in the “Eckpunktepapier,” are very clear that they don’t mean to change anything about where the case law already stands under the current statutory framework. Yesterday, CIPLITEC hosted a speech by Presiding Judge Ulrike Voss (“Voß” in German) of the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court (not to be confused for Andreas Voß of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court, formerly Mannheim Regional Court). The last question an attendee had for the appellate judge was about what the reform bill would change, and essentially she said this:

          There’s the statute, and there’s the rationale given by the ministry. As a judge, she’ll be sure to read the rationale part as well, but the statute will be the law to apply. The rationale says that there’s no intent to change anything, and the language of the statute is consistent with existing case law. Yet the courts may ask themselves whether the fact that the law was amended means that some change of the situation was intended anyway, contrary to the official statement by the ministry. She certainly predicted that the statute would encourage defendants to argue proportionality more frequently than before.

          The judge went on to say that there might be a bit more of an opening for exceptional cases in which the defendant would, on the basis of proportionality, be granted not only a transitional (workaround/”use-up”) period as stated by the Federal Court of Justice in the Heat Exchanger decision, but in some cases might be able to elude injunctive relief on a permanent basis. She did, however, note that “it would take a lot” to get to that point, and in response to a follow-up question agreed that the standard for that would be clearly more demanding than the one for a transitional period. In my opinion, while Heat Exchanger addressed the hypothetical possibility of a use-up period and stopped short of suggesting a permanent denial of injunctive relief, it didn’t preclude that from being the outcome in some extreme cases either. So the door was never closed, but the judge has a point that it may be slightly more open now.

        • Shooting from the Hip and Curing a Premature Appeal

          When I first wrote about Amgen v. Amneal, I focused on the patent law issue regarding Markush groups in the patent claims. Here, I want to circle back to the question appellate jurisdiction. I’ll be teaching the 2nd semester of Civil Procedure at Mizzou this spring and appellate jurisdiction is the the first topic up for grabs.

          Most patent infringement litigation reaches the Federal Circuit under the “final judgment rule” which creates appellate jurisdiction over cases “appealed from a final decision of a district court.” 28 U.S.C. 1295(a)(1). Final decisions “are decisions that end litigation on the merits and leave nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.” Slip op.; Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 467 (1978). Thus, in a patent case involving infringement claims and invalidity defenses, both must be resolved before appeal. (Note here, that there are some, albeit limited, options for interlocutory appeals prior to final judgment).

          [...]

          Too Short Analysis: The Federal Circuit did not cite any precedent or statute to support its conclusion that the oral-argument waiver can cure the lack of final judgment. The procedure principles here fall within the umbrella of “cumulative finality.” Most courts have accepted the notion that a premature appeal can be cured by a subsequent entry of final judgment by the district court. However, some courts have taken an alternative approach.

        • Without eBay factor #2, German patent reform movement is left with nothing but Kremlinology, spin, and self-delusion: licensing vs. injunction

          Thanks to both those favoring and those opposing patent injunction reform in Germany who gave me feedback. What I hear for the most part is that people appreciate my relentless pursuit of harsh analysis. The injunction-related part of the German patent reform bill is redundant boilerplate of the kind that’s not really going to move the needle. Someone has to tell it like it is. The only good news so far is that Ingmar Jung, the rapporteur of the CDU/CSU (= the chancellor’s party) group in the German Federal Parliament, told Handelsblatt that they’re going to “scrutinize and discuss” the proposal.

          I’m quoted in that same article, saying that the proposed reform, a draft version of which was revealed earlier this week, fails to deliver meaningful progress as a prevailing patentee simply needs to make a licensing offer that may be excessive, but just not excessive enough for the court to categorize as unreasonable based on a superficial analysis. In that case, the “infringer” will be considered an “unwilling licensee,” and the injunction will come down regardless of the damage it may do.

          While I agree with at least one of the thought leaders of the reform movement who says that he sorely misses (as do I) a reference to the commercial value of an invention underlying an injunction patent relative to the accused product, even that perspective isn’t comprehensive enough. At the heart of the single biggest issue there’s the total absence, from the statute as well as the government’s rationale, of the second eBay v. MercExchange factor: the requirement for an injunction that monetary relief (= a damages award) be “inadequate” to make the patentee whole. That includes, but is not limited to, the intrinsic value of the invention at issue and its relevance to the accused product.

        • Obstruction Ahead! The IPEC decision in Adolf Nissen Elektrobau v Horizont Group

          As an early Christmas gift, on 18 December 2019, His Honour Judge Hacon handed down a judgment in the matter of Adolf Nissen Elektrobau v Horizont Group. This case concerned the field of electric road traffic signs. Horizont’s UK patent (the ‘Patent’) claimed a board to be mounted on to vehicles which had an arrangement of lights which included flashing directional arrows and a warning cross which was shown in a different colour in a constant light. The benefits of the invention was said to be causing “increased levels of attention” to road users due to the “unusual – and thus unexpected – form and colour”. Oddly the Patent specification described mobile electric road traffic devices that were known in the art as those that include directional arrows and warning crosses both of which flash and are in a yellow colour. This, however, was not in line with UK road traffic regulations which require that the crosses are constant (not flashing) and are red. It was noted in the decision that yellow flashing arrows and crosses are consistent with German road traffic regulations.

          Adolf Nissen (‘Nissen’) sought to revoke Horizont’s Patent for lack of inventive step over three pieces of prior art: DE007 (a German Utility Model), a US Patent (‘Pederson’) and the prior use of one of Nissen’s traffic boards. The court held that Horizont’s Patent was invalid as it lacked inventive step over DE007 and one of Nissen’s traffic boards. DE007 described a panel with flashing lights which could be “interconnected to represent a leftward or rightward arrow or a diagonal cross”. Horizont argued, among other things, that DE007 differed from the Patent as it did not display a constant (i.e. not flashing) red cross. It was held that it would be obvious to adapt DE007 to show a constant red cross as well as flashing yellow arrows as these were conventional road traffic signals in the UK. The skilled person would have known how to achieve this as part of his common general knowledge (‘CGK’) using LEDs of two colours in the spotlights. Further it was held that the any reservations the skilled person might have concerning safety or regulatory approval were not relevant to the assessment of obviousness. Turning to the other successful piece of prior art: Nissen’s traffic board. This was supplied with a purely yellow LED display which contained a full library of possible signs, including a cross or flashing yellow arrows. As this yellow LED display was not in line with UK regulations, it was argued that the skilled person would not find this purely yellow LED display useful and therefore it would be obvious to incorporate red LEDs to allow the optional display of a red cross, so as to comply with UK regulations. This would make the device familiar to UK road users.

        • Help or headache? Counsel share data tips and pitfalls

          Data is providing both headaches and solutions for corporates, according to in-house lawyers, who say that data mining has proven to be a useful means of tracking down infringers.

        • Cross-Licenses, Royalty Stacking, and Patent Disputes

          While the majority of U.S. patent litigation is now NPE litigation (and has been since at least 2009), litigation between operating companies continues to occur at roughly the same rate as it has for the past 20 years. (So much for the idea that IPR or eBay destroyed the ability for patent owners to enforce their intellectual property.)

          These two categories of litigation are often fundamentally different, occurring for completely different reasons. For every Smartphone War, there are dozens of cases that are fundamentally about getting a competitor to pay a little more for the license they were probably already discussing taking. That’s true in cellular technology, but it’s true in a lot of other areas as well, ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to automotive to digital video. It’s relatively rare for an operating company to file a lawsuit without discussing the possibility of a license first—after all, patent litigation is expensive and if you can avoid it, why wouldn’t you? (This is also why large companies employ entire teams of people whose sole job is to make deals to license patents—at least, once they’re aware those patents exist and have a chance to evaluate infringement.)

          But there are a couple of considerations that can make it hard to get to an agreement as to that license. These considerations can result in litigation being filed—and often quickly settled after the parties refocus on negotiations, realizing that they’d far rather have a deal than spend tens of millions on protracted patent litigation.

          [...]

          Another issue is royalty stacking. When you have a complex multi-component product it could potentially require licensing hundreds or thousands of patents. Smartphones might implicate more than 250,000 patents. And if each licensee asks for 1% of the sales price, you can very quickly wind up paying more for licenses than you’ll make from the product—at which point you just don’t make the product. That’s the essence of the royalty stacking problem.

          One analysis, examining the royalty stack problem for smartphones, arrived at an estimate of more than $120 in patent royalties for a $400 smartphone. Each licensee, individually, might only receive $0.50 or $1.00 or $9.00 per phone—but, when summed up, the licenses approach the cost of the hardware. That situation recurs in many consumer products—for example, consumer audio-visual devices may need to license Wi-Fi patents, A/V codecs, user interface patents, and other features, all of which can add up quickly on a $50 or $100 device.

          Effectively, the royalty stacking problem is a species of tragedy of the commons. Licensors are incentivized to extract the highest possible royalty from the manufacturer, but if every licensor does so, they run the risk of the product becoming unprofitable and the manufacturer ceasing to manufacture it. Even worse, licensors generally don’t have knowledge of the total royalty stack of the party they’re negotiating with, meaning that their idea of a reasonable portion of the stack may be very different from what the licensee knows is possible. (And licensees are generally obligated to keep their licenses secret, meaning they can’t share how much they’re paying as a way of reducing this knowledge gap during negotiation.)

          At the end of the day, the licensor may think they’re asking for something reasonable, while the licensee knows the requested royalty is out of line with licenses for similar patents and paying that rate would drive the product into unprofitability, a net loss for all involved. Again, this can make it difficult to reach a settlement.

        • 2020 is set to be a crucial year for Standard-Essential Patent litigation in Europe

          The debate over standard-essential patents (SEPs) is typically distinguished as much by concerns over competition than issues of patent law per se. Erixon argues: ‘…SEP disputes are less concerned about the rights and boundaries of patents, and more about antitrust limits to market behavior.’ At the European level EU institutions acknowledge the policy concern that the owners of patents on technological standards (SEPs) could block competitors from making use of standards, and thus obstruct the development of efficient and thriving ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) sectors, an acute point in the 5G era. The aim is to balance the role of monopolistic patent rights (granted at the non-EU EPO) in the context of the EU’s overriding focus on competition (embedded in Articles 101 to 109 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)).

          The inherent fragmentation of the European patent system, which has significant EU and non-EU aspects, works against the regulatory centralisation typically favoured by the EU. Further fragmentation is caused by the self-regulation model of standard-setting, which occurs at independent standard organisations such as ETSI and ISO. Yet, the EU is still able to exert a great deal of influence – in particular, in disputes over SEPs national courts are obliged to follow the CJEU’s guidance on what amounts to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing of standard-essential patents (FRAND). At the judicial level, the challenges of resolving this issue are compounded by tension between the CJEU’s role in making prescriptive rulings on matters of intellectual property and the implementation of these rulings by national courts in complex domestic litigation.

          [...]

          Key questions concern the global nature of SEP disputes, the interpretation of the CJEU guidance in Huawei (2015), and assessing the effect of the non-discrimination component of the FRAND (does it mean that materially the same licence terms as offered to Samsung must be offered to Huawei in the circumstances of the Unwired case?). The question of royalty-rate calculation is also the subject of appeal. In a linked case, the UKSC will also decide a case involving Conversant, Huawei and ZTE concerning whether England & Wales is an acceptable forum to decide global patent licensing disputes regarding patents valid in other territories.

          Huawei seeks to overturn the earlier Court of Appeal and High Court rulings that held that seeking a global FRAND licence (rather than a territory-by-territory one) is fair and reasonable approach in the context of SEPs. In this view, if an implementer of the SEP technology refuses a FRAND global licence, an injunction can be sought by the SEP holder and granted by the court (as it will not constitute abuse of dominance). The UKSC will consider whether Unwired Planet, as SEP holder, made use of a ‘time advantage’ to improve its negotiation position.

          Will the decision be handed down before the UK’s formal exit from the EU on 31st January 2020? What could the impact of a ‘no deal’ or ‘bare-bones’ exit mean for the UK’s legal system post-transition at the end of 2020? Could the impact of Brexit mean UK courts choosing (in coming years) to depart from the CJEU’s guidance in Huawei v ZTE and develop an alternative approach? Looking to the year ahead, 2020 ought to bring a measure clarity on at least some these issues.

        • Software Patents

          • $4,000 Cash Prize for Prior Art on Universal Cipher Patent

            On January 17, 2019, Unified added a new PATROLL contest with a $4,000 cash prize for prior art submissions for US 7,721,222. The ’222 patent generally relates to a non-English text generation system by which text can be generated in any language without a keyboard. The ‘222 patent is owned by Universal Cipher, LLC (an NPE) and has been widely asserted in district court. To protect innovation and deter future frivolous assertions, Unified is offering a $4,000 cash prize for the best prior art on this patent.

      • Copyrights

        • Learned societies turn against scholarship and join publishers for profit

          Many researchers, including the authors of this post, are members of learned societies whose mission is to support research and advance scholarly values. At the end of last year, we saw these values betrayed when over 100 societies joined with the Association of American Publishers in signing the letter to the White House. It is unsurprising that corporate publishers would resist reform. For them, any change to the rules threatens their profits. But why would learned societies purporting to represent researchers sign on? One reason is that some scholarly societies have come to depend on the lucrative business of journal publishing to subsidize their operations. In the case of one of the signatories, the American Psychological Association, publishing income accounts for ~80% of their revenue. Such learned societies face a dilemma: Their stated mission is to support scholarship, but the funds to do it come from a publishing system that has worked against scholarly values for more than three decades. We are saddened that these societies have decided to side with the publishers against the public interest.

        • Red Hat and IBM Jointly File Another Amicus Brief In Google v. Oracle, Arguing APIs Are Not Copyrightable

          Monday Red Hat and IBM jointly filed their own amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the “Google vs. Oracle” case, arguing that APIs cannot be copyrighted.

          “That simple, yet powerful principle has been a cornerstone of technological and economic growth for over sixty years. When published (as has been common industry practice for over three decades) or lawfully reverse engineered, they have spurred innovation through competition, increased productivity and economic efficiency, and connected the world in a way that has benefited commercial enterprises and consumers alike.”

        • OSI Files Amicus Brief in Supreme Court’s Google v. Oracle

          The Open Source Initiative is proud to join OSI affiliate members Creative Commons, Mozilla Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy, and Wikimedia Foundation along with other small, medium and open source technology organizations in filing an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in the Google v. Oracle case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

          In Google v. Oracle, Oracle successfully convinced the appeals court that Google’s reuse of a limited number of Java declarations in its creation of the Android operating system is a copyright infringement and that a jury finding it fair use was mistaken. The brief asks that the Court reverse this decision and confirm that, as has been the common understanding for decades, API interfaces are not copyrightable and that their reuse by others is a fair use under copyright law.

        • Ariana Grande Faces Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Over ’7 Rings’

          A rapper is suing pop star Ariana Grande for copyright infringement, claiming that she copied the chorus of “7 Rings” from one of his songs.

        • ‘Local’ Pirate Sites Are Thriving Around the World

          The Pirate Bay, YTS and Animeflv are well-known pirate brands that are hugely popular in many countries. The same can’t be said for Mrpiracy, Filma24, and Cimaclub. However, the latter and many other ‘local’ sites dwarf these major brands on their ‘own’ turf.

        • ‘Casting Couch’ Movie Company Orders Cloudflare to Unmask Tube Site Pirates

          Adult movie company AMA Multimedia has obtained a DMCA subpoena from a Washington court to help it track down individuals who uploaded content to various ‘tube’ sites. The subpoena orders Cloudflare to hand over the identities of uploaders and potentially site operators too but given the way the content seems to be delivered, it remains a question whether the former will be possible.

        • Manga Scanlation Teams Don’t Want War, They Want Accessible Content

          Huge scanlation platform MangaDex recently revealed that legal pressures had, among things, restricted its ability to receive donations from users. Following our report, a server administrator connected to several other groups gave us additional insight into these anti-piracy efforts. Amid the hostilities, however, it appears that all the scanlation community really wants is to improve the chances of manga titles arriving in the West.

        • Pirated Copy of ’1917′ Leaks in Massive Screener Dump

          Six pirated movie screeners have leaked in the span of just a few hours. The screener dump includes a copy of Golden Globe winner 1917, one of the most prominent leaks thus far. Also notable is the involvement of the group TOPKEK, which hasn’t released any screeners before.

01.18.20

Links 18/1/2020: Mir 1.7 and GNU Guile 3.0.0

Posted in News Roundup at 1:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Kubuntu Focus Laptop is Now Ready for Pre-Order

        If you’ve ever wanted a KDE-specific, Linux-powered laptop, now’s your chance.

        The Kubuntu Focus is a new Linux laptop effort set to marry the Kubuntu Linux distro and a laptop aimed specifically for gamers, power users, developers, video editors, and anyone who seeks performance and seamless Linux compatibility.

        And now, this brand new laptop is ready for pre-order.

        The laptop was born from a collaboration between Kubuntu, Tuxedo Computers, and MindShareManagement Inc. The Focus will not only highlight the KDE desktop environment, it will be the first officially recognized laptop created specifically for the Kubuntu Linux distribution.

      • Kubuntu Focus: A new top-of-the-line Linux laptop arrives

        For years, there have been high-powered Linux laptops like Dell’s XPS 13 Developer Edition, System76′s Serval WS, and ZaReason’s UltraLap 6440 i5, but I’ve never seen anything quite as powerful out of the box as the Kubuntu Focus from the Kubuntu Council, MindShareManagement, and Tuxedo Computer.

        The specs alone are pretty darn impressive. It starts with the CPU. The Focus uses an Intel Core i7-9750H 6 core 4.5GHz Turbo processor. There are faster CPUs out there, but you’re not going to find many of them in a laptop. This is backed up by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU with 6GB of video RAM.

        To run applications with all that processor power, the Focus comes with 32GB of Dual Channel DDR4 2666 RAM. This, in turn, gets its data from a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe-connected Solid-State Drive (SSD).

        What all that horsepower gives you is an outstanding performance. With the CPU set to ‘Performance’ mode via the CPU frequency widget, GeekBench 5.0.4, I saw single core measurements of 1,292 and a multi-core rating of 5,734. There are maxed up faster desktop systems, but you’d need to look long and hard for laptops that can give it a run for its money.

        That said, you may find yourself using the Focus in desktop mode more often than you’d like. With great power comes great battery drain. Running the machine hard, I saw a battery life of just less than three hours. When not beating the heck out of it, it came in at a respectable three and a half hours. Still, I’m used to getting five or six hours out of a laptop these days.

      • Can You Live Without These Five Companies That Rule Your Life?

        Want to get a PC that’s not a Mac or a Windows machine? Well, you’ve got to try using one that runs on Ubuntu or Linux, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Similarly, good luck trying to get around using Word, Excel and Powerpoint like apps without cozying up to Apple or Google for that.

      • I’m still on Windows 7 – what should I do?

        If Windows 10 runs well on your PC, you might decide to pay to authenticate it. If it doesn’t run well, you can still try a different option, such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu LTS or CloudReady.

        Alternatively, keep Windows 7 for offline use, and use a “live Linux” for internet access.

        Many people are familiar with the idea of running Linux from a “live CD” or DVD, which doesn’t interfere with the current desktop operating system. There are not many DVD drives around nowadays, so the modern equivalent is to run it from a thumb-drive. You can create one with a tool such as Rufus or LinuxLive USB Creator. Thumb-drives are slow, so you won’t get great performance, but it will keep you safe online. You’ll also find out if you can live with Linux.

      • How to Upgrade From Windows 7 to Linux

        If you’re still using Windows 7 because you just don’t like Windows 10, that’s understandable. But there’s an alternative upgrade path: You can install Linux on your PC for free, and you’ll have a supported operating system that’s still getting updates.

        This is easier than you might think. You can try Linux on your PC before installing it, and you can even install it alongside Windows 7 when you make the leap. Here’s what you need to know.

      • How to install Linux on your Chromebook

        Chromebooks can do a lot right out of the box. However, if you want just a little more, you can install Linux apps to most newer models (see the full list here) and have access to a full catalog of desktop-class applications.

        [...]

        The Pixelbook Go is one of the more expensive Chromebooks on the market, but for all you get, it’s worth it. You get an amazing keyboard, great battery life, and an Assistant key that lets you connect to the company’s smart assistant at any time. It is, like we said, pricey, but there are plenty of other great Chromebooks out there if you’re looking for something different.

      • 7 Best Windows 7 Alternatives You Can Use After Its Death

        Linux Mint is probably the closest replacement to Windows 7 in terms of look and feel. You get a similar taskbar and a menu bar that looks like the Start Menu. It appears that the initial learning curve won’t be steep as compared to other operating systems.

        To install apps on Linux Mint, you can take the help of the command line, but it also has a full-blown app store for the users.

        In terms of hardware, the popular Linux distro can run smoothly if your machine has 1GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, and 20GB of storage. However, it can manage to run with somewhat less capable hardware as well.

    • Server

      • IBM

        • Red Hat Accelerates Cloud-Native Development with Unified Hybrid Cloud Storage for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

          Enhanced with Multi-Cloud Object Gateway from Red Hat’s 2018 acquisition of NooBaa, Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4 offers greater abstraction and flexibility so customers have the freedom to choose data services across multiple public clouds, while still operating from a unified Kubernetes-based control plane for applications and storage. In addition to helping customers avoid public cloud lock-in, this enables developers to keep their data close to applications through improved accessibility, delivering a more efficient developer experience.

          With a consistent Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) interface, enterprises now have built-in object storage and scalability needed to support portability for data-intensive applications across the hybrid cloud on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, previously unavailable through any container storage vendor in the OpenShift OperatorHub.

        • OpenShift and Kubernetes, with Clayton Coleman

          Five years ago, Clayton Coleman took a bet on a new open source project that Google was about to announce. He became the first external contributor to Kubernetes, and the architect of Red Hat’s reinvention of OpenShift from PaaS to “enterprise Kubernetes”. Hosts Adam Glick and Craig Box return for 2020 with the story of OpenShift, and their picks for Game of the Holidays.

        • Command Line Heroes season 4 trailer

          No one ever said hardware was easy. In Season 4, Command Line Heroes is telling 7 special stories about people and teams who dared to change the rules of hardware and in the process changed how we all interact with technology.

          The first episode drops January 28, 2020. Subscribe today and sign up for the newsletter to get the latest updates and bonus content.

        • Deploying applications in the OpenShift 4.3 Developer perspective

          In this article, we take a look at user flow improvements for deploying applications in Red Hat OpenShift 4.3‘s Developer perspective. You can learn more about all of the developer-focused console improvements in the OpenShift 4.3 release article here. Since the initial launch of the Developer perspective in the OpenShift 4.2 release, we’ve had frequent feedback sessions with developers, developer advocates, stakeholders, and other community members to better understand how the experience meets their needs. While, overall, the user interface has been well received, we continue to gather and use the feedback to enhance our flows.

        • A ‘fail fast’ solution for end-to-end machine learning

          Enterprise AI solutions are characterized by an end-to-end workflow that involves data sourcing, querying, ETL, feature engineering, and training the machine learning algorithms. Did you know there’s an end-to-end machine learning pipeline, which can be built using Pythonic frameworks, that allows you to fail fast at TeraScale data levels?

        • Deploying your storage backend using OpenShift Container Storage 4

          This Blog is for both system administrators and application developers interested in learning how to deploy and manage Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4 (OCS). This Blog outlines how you will be using OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) 4.2.14+ and the OCS operator to deploy Ceph and the Multi-Cloud Object Gateway as a persistent storage solution for OCP workloads. If you do not have a current OpenShift test cluster, you can deploy OpenShift 4 by going to the OpenShift 4 Deployment page and then follow the instructions for AWS Installer-Provisioned Infrastructure (IPI).

        • What desktop OS do you use at work?

          We have all heard the age-old debate of what is the best operating system user prefer. Windows or Mac? Linux or nothing. The funny thing about this question is that in many places of business, the user does not get a choice. You are handed a laptop when you start and may be stuck with whatever is preloaded onto the machine. In some cases, you’re not even allowed to run something else in a virtual machine.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Destination Linux 156 – CES 2020, Disaster Recovery Tips, Fallback Safe Distros?, Firefox

        Topics covered in this episode:
        openEuler
        New Firefox 72 Released
        Linus Say No To ZFS In Kernel
        New Dell Linux Laptop
        Nvidia Wakes Up

      • No, But | User Error 83

        Context switching, improving Linux conferences, a positive approach to life, what makes us cringe, and more.

        #ErrorAsk: What’s the dumbest idea for an app that you can come up with?

      • LHS Episode #321: The Weekender XL

        It’s time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we’re doing. We’d love to hear from you.

      • 2020-01-17 | Linux Headlines

        Nextcloud announces exciting changes to the platform, Puppet is now releasing both faster and slower, DigitalOcean?s restructuring is resulting in layoffs, and Fedora CoreOS reaches production-ready status.

      • Infrastructure Engineer: Seth McCombs | Jupiter Extras 47

        Ell and Wes are joined by Infrastructure Engineer Seth McCombs for a chat about how he got started in tech, the hard transition from legacy data centers to the cloud, and why being honest about both success and failure can lead to a better open source community.

      • 5 Things I Hate About Linux

        So I love Linux for my daily desktop driver, but there are some things that I hate about it. Here are the 5 things that I wish were different.

    • Kernel Space

      • Graphics Stack

        • Red Hat Recommends Disabling The Intel Linux Graphics Driver Over Hardware Flaw

          It’s been another day testing and investigating CVE-2019-14615, a.k.a. the Intel graphics hardware issue where for Gen9 all turned out to be okay but for Gen7 graphics leads to some big performance hits. Besides the Core i7 tests published yesterday in the aforelinked article, tests on relevant Core i3 and i5 CPUs are currently being carried out for seeing the impact there (so far, it’s looking to be equally brutal).

          The contents of CVE-2019-14615 are still marked private, but the Red Hat Customer Portal has opened their guidance on this graphics flaw. Red Hat rates this CVE as having moderate impact. This Red Hat bug report does shed some more light onto the issue.

        • Mir 1.7 Released With Improvements For Running X11 Software

          Mir 1.7 was released today as the newest feature release for this Ubuntu-focused display stack that for the past two years now has focused on serving viable Wayland support.

          With the Mir 1.7 release there are a number of X11 client improvements, including the ability to show basic window decorations, a new configuration knob for specifying the XWayland executable to utilize for the support, and various code clean-ups.

        • Panfrost: Liberating ARM GPUs @ Linux Conf Au

          This talk covers the history, future and internals of the Panfrost driver for ARM GPUs.

        • Raspberry Pi 4 V3D Driver Reaches OpenGL ES 3.1 Conformance

          The V3D Gallium3D driver that most notably offers the open-source graphics support for the Raspberry Pi 4 is now an official OpenGL ES 3.1 implementation.

          Consulting firm Igalia has continued working on the V3D driver since Eric Anholt left Broadcom. Igalia had ironed out OpenGL ES 3.1 support and last month also went on to begin tackling geometry shaders and more.

        • Iago Toral: I am working on the Raspberry Pi 4 Mesa V3D driver

          Yeah… this blog post is well overdue, but better late than never! So yes, I am currently working on progressing the Raspberry Pi 4 Mesa driver stack, together with my Igalian colleagues Piñeiro and Chema, continuing the fantastic work started by Eric Anholt on the Mesa V3D driver.

          The Raspberry Pi 4 sports a Video Core VI GPU that is capable of OpenGL ES 3.2, so it is a big update from the Raspberry Pi 3, which could only do OpenGL ES 2.0. Another big change with the Raspberry Pi 4 is that the Mesa v3d driver is the driver used by default with Raspbian. Because both GPUs are quite different, Eric had to write an all new driver for the Raspberry Pi 4, and that is why there are two drivers in Mesa: the VC4 driver is for the Raspberry Pi 3, while the V3D driver targets the Raspberry Pi 4.

        • Raspberry Pi 4 V3D driver gets Geometry Shaders

          I actually landed this in Mesa back in December but never got to announce it anywhere. The implementation passes all the tests available in the Khronos Conformance Tests Suite (CTS). If you give this a try and find any bugs, please report them here with the V3D tag.

        • Raspberry Pi 4 V3D driver gets OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance

          So continuing with the news, here is a fairly recent one: as the tile states, I am happy to announce that the Raspberry Pi 4 is now an OpenGL ES 3.1 conformant product!. This means that the Mesa V3D driver has successfully passed a whole lot of tests designed to validate the OpenGL ES 3.1 feature set, which should be a good sign of driver quality and correctness.

          It should be noted that the Raspberry Pi 4 shipped with a V3D driver exposing OpenGL ES 3.0, so this also means that on top of all the bugfixes that we implemented for conformance, the driver has also gained new functionality! Particularly, we merged Eric’s previous work to enable Compute Shaders.

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel graphics patch “wrecks” Gen7 iGPU Linux performance

        Earlier this week Intel released details about a vulnerability in its integrated graphics hardware. Its advisory ID was INTEL-SA-00314 and it talked about the CVE-2019-14615 vulnerability. Products from 3rd Gen Core up to 10th Gen are affected including the contemporaneous Xeon, Pentium, Celeron and Atom products. Intel was made aware of this vulnerability as far back as August so already has patches available and links to recommended new drivers for both Windows and Linux users (scroll down this page about half way).

        All so regular and nothing surprising so far… However, since the updated drivers have been released, Linux-centric tech site Phoronix has been busy checking and testing the new drivers (on Linux of course) to see if there are any performance penalties, or other aberrations, delivered with the vulnerability patches.

        Intel describes the CVE-2019-14615 vulnerability as follows: “Insufficient control flow in certain data structures for some Intel Processors with Intel Processor Graphics may allow an unauthenticated user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access.” Please note the key phrase – local access – but Phoronix thinks that WebGL within web browsers is another possible attack vector.

        In its Linux testing, Phoronix was initially unperturbed by results on processors sportin

      • Intel’s Mitigation For CVE-2019-14615 Graphics Vulnerability Obliterates Gen7 iGPU Performance

        Yesterday we noted that the Linux kernel picked up a patch mitigating an Intel Gen9 graphics vulnerability. It didn’t sound too bad at first but then seeing Ivy Bridge Gen7 and Haswell Gen7.5 graphics are also affected raised eyebrows especially with that requiring a much larger mitigation. Now in testing the performance impact, the current mitigation patches completely wreck the performance of Ivybridge/Haswell graphics performance.

        The vulnerability being discussed and analyzed this week is CVE-2019-14615. This CVE still hasn’t been made public over 24 hours later (though there are the Intel SA-00314 details for this disclosure), but from going through kernel patches and other resources, it certainly caught our interest right away and have been benchmarking it since yesterday evening. The CVE-2019-14615 vulnerability amounts to a new information disclosure issue due to insufficient control flow in certain data structures. Local access is required for exploiting this control flow issue in the hardware, but it’s not yet known/published if say WebGL within web browsers could exploit this issue. This is a hardware issue with all operating systems being affected. Our testing today, of course, is under Linux.

    • Applications

      • The 15 Best Physics Tools for Linux System in 2020

        There are different types of applications of Linux physics software in the study and research of theoretical and applied physics. So, it’s very difficult to call a single piece of software the best. Here we have enlisted a collection of 15 best Physics tools for Linux.

        Some of them are for analyzing data, some for numerical applications, some for simulation, and even some will help you in programming the solution of different physics-related problems. We are certain that no matter what your requirement is, you are going to love this curated collection of Linux physics software.

      • 11 Best Web Browsers I Discovered for Linux in 2020

        Web Browser is a software that provides an interface to surf the web. With an introduction in around 1991, there development and advancement have advanced many folds till the current stage which we see today.

        Earlier there used to be mostly text-based sites with few having images and graphical content, hence only text-based browsers sufficed with some of the early browsers being: Lynx, Netscape, and Opera.

        But, with the advancement of technology to support audio, video, images and even flash content, browsers also need to be that advanced to support such content. This has pushed the advancement of browsers to what we see today.

        A modern browser requires the support of many software which include: web browser engines like Geeko, Trident, WebKit, KHTML, etc, Rendering engine to render the web site content and display in a proper format.

        Linux being an open-source community gives freedom to developers across the globe to experiment with features they expect from an ideal browser.

      • Get started with this open source to-do list manager

        Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I’m taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Godot Engine 3.2 is almost here with a first Release Candidate

        Godot Engine, the quickly improving free and open source game engine is getting real close to a major release with the first Release Candidate now up for Godot 3.2.

        What was suppose to be a reasonable small release, has grown into something rather large with a lot of new features coming in to help developers make their games. With thousands of code commits by hundreds of different developers to the point that they expect Godot 3.2 to be “much more mature than 3.1 in all aspects”.

      • RELEASE CANDIDATE: GODOT 3.2 RC 1
      • The hero is dead so it’s up to you to fix a glitched world – Lenna’s Inception is out now

        In Lenna’s Inception you will be exploring a little island, filled full of dangerous dungeons as you work to bring order to a kingdom falling apart from glitches. Designed in a way that’s much like classic Zelda titles, however it has a clever idea of letting you play through in either 8-bit or 32-bit pixel art styles and they each have a distinct soundtrack.

      • Detailed open-world space sandbox game ‘Avorion’ leaving Early Access soon

        Boxelware have announced that Avorion, their procedural co-op space sandbox where you build your own spaceship will leave Early Access soon.

        After being in development for years, first appearing on Steam in early 2017 it’s been seriously fun to watch it grow into such a massive game. Incredibly fun too.

      • Wizard of Legend gets a little electric in a huge content update out now

        Contingent99 just released a massive upgrade to Wizard of Legend, their fast-paced magical action game and it continues to be brilliant.

        The Thundering Keep update brings in an entirely new stage complete with new enemies and a big boss battle which should make runs through it more interesting. Also added in this update you will find over 20 new Arcana (card spells), over 30 new Relics (items you equip to buff you up), new special moves, new outfits and plenty of balance changes and bug fixes.

      • Google is Reportedly Working to Bring Steam Support to Chromebooks

        It would appear that Google is working to bring official Steam support to its Linux-based Chrome OS operating system for supported Chromebook devices.

        According to a report from the Android Police website, Kan Liu, director of product management for Google’s Chrome OS, revealed the fact that Steam support could be enabled on Chrome OS in the near future by taking advantage of the implementation of support for Linux apps that landed in Chrome OS last year.

        While this might come as good news for Chromebook owners, the fact of the matter is that Chrome OS devices aren’t powerful enough to support many of the games available on Steam. If Steam comes to Chrome OS, most probably Google will only enable it only on its most powerful Chromebooks.

        Kan Liu did not said when Steam will be coming to Chrome OS, and neither Google or Valve have confirmed this news. However, it looks like Google will be working directly with Valve to enable official Steam support on Chrome OS, and Google is working to release more powerful Chromebooks this year.

      • Steam reportedly coming to Chrome OS – Linux gaming across even more devices

        Android Police have an article up mentioning that Google is reportedly working on getting Steam working officially and supported on Chrome OS. While the details of this are a little sketchy, since neither Valve or Google have announced this, Android Police claim they spoke directly to Kan Liu at CES, the Director of Product Management for Google’s Chrome OS who told them of their plans to make it happen.

        Note: You can get Steam working on it in some form with some manual effort now, although it’s not great. This seems to be about making it all official. Having it properly integrated, enabling ease of use would be good, part of what Chrome OS is supposed to be about?being simple and easy.

      • Exclusive: Google is working to bring official Steam support to Chrome OS

        Last week in Las Vegas while at CES, I spoke with Kan Liu, Director of Product Management for Google’s Chrome OS. In a wide-ranging discussion about the Chrome platform and ecosystem, Liu dropped something of a bombshell on me: the Chrome team is working—very possibly in cooperation with Valve—to bring Steam to Chromebooks.

        Liu declined to provide a timeline for the project, but did confirm it would be enabled by Chrome OS’s Linux compatibility. The Steam client would, presumably, run inside Linux on Chrome—a platform for which it is already available. Liu implied, though would not directly confirm, that Google was working in direct cooperation with Valve on this project. Valve’s motive here is largely in being the first major gaming storefront on a platform that, to date, has had no compatibility with mainstream PC or console releases. Valve also seems like a good fit, as the company has no particular loyalty to any one platform, and is increasingly facing competition from players like Epic and Microsoft on its most popular OS, Windows. Currently, it is possible to install the Steam Linux client on Chrome OS using the Crostini Linux compatibility layer, but there’s no official support, and performance has been pretty lamentable even when comparing identical Linux-native systems to Chrome. Even getting games running in a remotely playable way is kind of a nightmare.

      • A Long Way Down blends together Slay the Spire card combat with maze building – now in Early Access

        One thing is for sure, Slay the Spire truly has kicked off a deck-building indie game revolution of sorts. More and more are releasing with deck-building and A Long Way Down seems like one of the better ones so far. Note: Key provided by the publisher, Goblinz Studio.

        Quite derivative I would say though, in the nicest way possible. The deck-building card-based combat from Slay the Spire is merged in with maze building in a similar fashion to what’s seen in Guild of Dungeoneering.

      • The Humble Australia Fire Relief Bundle is up with 100% going to charity

        Humble are back with a new bundle, although this is a 100% charity bundle to help deal with the sad situation in Australia.

        The Humble Australia Fire Relief Bundle only has one tier at $25, which does include quite a lot of games. Here’s what’s included, I’ve highlighted in bold text those with Linux support….

      • Google plan over 120 Stadia games this year, 10 coming to Stadia before other platforms

        In their latest community update, the Stadia Team have given a small insight into what’s coming to the Linux-powered game streaming service Stadia across 2020.

        Missed our first impressions of Stadia? Check them out here.

        They said “more than” 120 games will be coming to Stadia this year, more interestingly though they also mentioned that 10 will be arriving in the “first half of this year” that will “only” be on Stadia when they launch. So that’s presumably some timed-exclusives they have going. No names were mentioned, so we just have to wait and see.

      • Move over Sonic, Surge has arrived with Open Surge – a game engine and retro platformer

        I grew up playing the early Sonic games so Open Surge really speaks to me. A retro Sonic-inspired platformer (that’s actually quite polished already) and a game engine for others to create with it.

        Open Surge is free and open source software (GPL license), so anyone can grab it from GitHub and do whatever they wish. Written from scratch in C, using the cross-platform Allegro programming library.

      • Boxtron, the Steam Play tool to run games through a native DOSBox on Linux has a new release

        Boxtron is another awesome Steam Play tool! Covered here a few times now, like Proton it enables you to play games on Linux that don’t have a Linux build setup on Steam only this is for DOSBox games.

        Rather than running DOSBox-powered games on Steam through Proton when they don’t have a Linux build of it all up, using Boxtron should give a better experience.

        Today a new release went up with Boxtron 0.5.4 fixing multiple issues including: games that use multiple CD images not starting like The Dame Was Loaded (and probably other FMV titles), they tweaked Retro City Rampage 486 to use “aspect=false”, several bugs around parsing user-supplied regex for MIDI synthesiser detection were fixed, they also fixed a bug preventing MIDI port detection if there are no soundfonts installed and there’s now several fallback soundfont names for various Linux distributions.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • Xfce 4.16 is Adopting Client Side Decoration by Default

        Xfce 4.16 will look a little different to long time users when it arrives later this year, as the popular desktop environment is adopting client side decoration by default.

        But before you cry tears over the loss of traditional app menus I should stress that the plan is to go full CSD, not full GTK header. It’s a subtle sounding difference, but an important one.

        Xfce 4.16 is switching to GTK header bars, but they’re more commonly referred to as client side decoration (CSD) as window borders are rendered client side (GTK), not by the window manager.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KPatience added to flathub. Which app should be next?

          This week we added KPatience to flathub.

          That makes for a quite a few applications from KDE already in flathub

        • KDE Connect Website SoK 2020 Week 1

          It had been great fun working with KDE Community on my SoK 2020 Project that is making a Website to promote KDE Connect. I started early off making the website from December by having a lot of discussion with my mentors Carl Schwan and Piyush Aggarwal, and the KDE Connect Developers. They were all very supportive and provided very constructive feedback. So when the project got accepted last week a lot of the work was already over. My proposal included the more work that is required on the website and taking the website to as much perfection as possible.

        • Plasma 5.18 LTS Beta (5.17.90) Available for Testing

          Are you using Kubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine, our current Stable release? Or are you already running our development builds of the upcoming 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa?

          We currently have Plasma 5.17.90 (Plasma 5.18 Beta) available in our Beta PPA for Kubuntu 19.10.

          The 5.18 beta is also available in the main Ubuntu archive for the 20.04 development release, and can be found on our daily ISO images.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • PaperWM: tiled window management for GNOME

          When I started using Linux on my personal computer, one of the first things I got excited about was tiny lightweight window managers, largely because my laptop at the time had 32MB of RAM and anything else was unusable.

          Then I got into tiling window managers like xmonad! I could manage my windows with my keyboard! They were so fast! I could configure xmonad by writing a Haskell program! I could customize everything in all kinds of fun ways (like using dmenu as a launcher)! I used 3 or 4 different tiling window managers over the years and it was fun.

          About 6 years ago I decided configuring my tiling window manager wasn’t fun for me anymore and switched to using the Ubuntu stock desktop environment: Gnome. (which is much faster now that I have 500x more RAM in my laptop :) )

          So I’ve been using Gnome for a long time, but I still kind of missed tiling window managers. Then 6 months ago a friend told me about PaperWM, which lets you tile your windows in Gnome! I installed it immediately and I’ve been using it ever since.

        • Alberto Ruiz: GTK: OSX a11y support

          Everybody knows that I have always been a firm believer in Gtk+’s potential to be a great cross platform toolkit beyond Linux. GIMP and Inkscape, as an example, are loyal users that ship builds for those platforms. The main challenge is the short amount of maintainers running, testing and improving those platforms.

          Gtk+ has a few shortcomings one of them, one of the biggest ones is lack of a11y support outside of Linux. Since I have regular access to a modern OSX machine I decided to give this a go (and maybe learn son Obj-C in the process).

          So I started by having a look at how ATK works and how it relates to the GTK DOM, my main goal was to have a GTK3 module that would walk through the toplevels and build an OSX accessibility tree.

    • Distributions

      • Introducing Zorin Grid: Manage All of Your Organization’s Computers as Easily as One.

        We’ve been working on a major new product over the past 2 years, and we’re excited to finally introduce it to you today.

        Since the beginning of the Zorin OS project in 2008, our mission has always been to bring the power of Linux to people who’ve never had access to it before. It has been downloaded millions of times since then, helping countless users switch to Linux and giving them a better, easier, and more secure computing experience.
        Now, we’re moving onto the next part of the Zorin OS master plan: to bring Linux into the working world; into businesses, schools, and organizations. We’re making this possible with the help of our new product called Zorin Grid.

      • Zorin OS Makes It Easy to Deploy Linux-Powered Computers in Schools, Businesses

        The Zorin OS development team announced today a new tool to make it easier for organizations to deploy a fleet of Linux-powered computers and administrate them from a a centralized place.

        Meet Zorin Grid, an in-house built tool whose whole purpose is to make it simple for IT administrators to set up, manage, and secure a fleet of Linux-powered computers in any type of organization, including small and medium sized businesses or schools and universities. The tool also provides a centralized place to administrate all these computers.

        “We’ve been working on a major new product over the past 2 years, and we’re excited to finally introduce it to you today. We’re moving onto the next part of the Zorin OS master plan: to bring Linux into the working world; into businesses, schools, and organizations. We’re making this possible with the help of our new product called Zorin Grid,” reads today’s announcement.

      • Meet Zorin Grid: A Slick Linux Desktop Management Tool For Schools And Businesses

        Zorin Grid is aimed specifically at organizations still running Windows 7 who want an alternative to upgrading or buying new hardware with Windows 10.

        In a nutshell, Zorin Grid is a cloud-powered tool with the intention of making it simple to set up, manage, monitor and secure a fleet of Zorin OS computers. The Zorin team says it’s like “putting your PCs on auto-pilot.” The concept seems very similar to the Google Management Console, which lets an entire fleet of Chromebooks be managed from a single device.

        From the announcement: “Imagine all of your organization’s computers working in concert. When you choose to install an app or make a new security policy, it’s deployed to your fleet automatically. It’s just as easy to manage computers that are off-site as on-premises. Fully-owned or BYOD. And all of this is accessible anytime, anywhere, in the cloud.”

        For the past 2 years, the Zorin team has been working with various organizations, soliciting feedback and building Zorin Grid.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Martin de Boer: Comparing uptime performance monitoring tools: StatusCake vs Freshping vs UptimeRobot

          When you host your own website on a Virtual Private Server or on a DigitalOcean droplet, you want to know if your website is down (and receive a warning when that happens). Plus it’s fun to see the uptime graphs and the performance metrics. Did you know these services are available for free?

          I will compare 3 SaaS vendors who offer uptime performance monitoring tools. Of course, you don’t get the full functionality for free. There are always limitations as these vendors like you to upgrade to a premium (paid) account. But for an enthousiast website, having access to these free basic options is already a big win!

          I also need to address the elephant in the room: Pingdom. This is the golden standard of uptime performance monitoring tools. However, you will pay at least €440 per year for the privilege. That is a viable option for a small business. Not for an enthousiast like myself.

          The chosen free alternatives are StatusCake, Freshping and UptimeRobot. There are many other options, but these ones are mentioned in multiple lists of ‘the best monitoring tools’. They also have user friendly dashboards. So let’s run with it.

        • Vinzenz Vietzke: Running for openSUSE Board #2: Questions and Answers

          Already in the beginning of 2019 I have been a candidate for the board of openSUSE. Since there are now two places open again, I am again available for the task and run for election.

          A general overview of my ideas and goals can be found here.

          In the run-up to the election all candidates of the community are of course open for questions. I have answered a catalogue of 5 questions from Gerald Pfeifer, currently chairman of the board, and would like to make it available here.

        • Q&A for openSUSE Board elections

          Our openSUSE Chairman has some questions for the candidates for the openSUSE Board. My answers are here:

      • Fedora Family

        • Fedora CoreOS out of preview

          The Fedora CoreOS team is pleased to announce that Fedora CoreOS is now available for general use. Here are some more details about this exciting delivery.

          Fedora CoreOS is a new Fedora Edition built specifically for running containerized workloads securely and at scale. It’s the successor to both Fedora Atomic Host and CoreOS Container Linux and is part of our effort to explore new ways of assembling and updating an OS. Fedora CoreOS combines the provisioning tools and automatic update model of Container Linux with the packaging technology, OCI support, and SELinux security of Atomic Host. For more on the Fedora CoreOS philosophy, goals, and design, see the announcement of the preview release.

        • Fedora CoreOS Now Deemed Production Ready For Containerized Workload Experience

          Fedora CoreOS has graduated out of its preview state and is now considered ready for general use.

          Fedora CoreOS is the spin of the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution focused on running containerized workloads and succeeds the earlier Fedora Atomic Host initiative as well as CoreOS Container Linux.

        • Fedora program update: 2020-03

          I will not hold office hours next week due to travel, but if you’ll be at DevConf.CZ, you can catch me in person.

      • Debian Family

        • Debian Xfce vs Gnome

          XFCE is a light desktop environment compatible with low resource systems while keeping a nice visual interface and effects like screen rotation and transparency. Xfce is extremely user friendly and it is a lot more user friendly than new GNOME versions for PC users without touch screen.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Elementary OS 6 will be based on Focal Fossa Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Version!

          Elementary OS 6: The Co-founder and CXO of Elementary OS Cassidy James Blaede says, Elementary OS 6 will be based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa version. He also mentioned that the developers are working furiously to make the Elementary OS 6 more convenient and bug-free. The exact words from him are,

          Elementary OS 6. elementary OS is based on the Ubuntu LTS core and repositories under the hood. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will be coming out this year, and subsequently, we plan to release elementary OS 6 with a 20.04 base.Cassidy James Blaede

        • Elementary OS 6 Will Release with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Base

          As Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is under the UI development phase with a recent desktop theme update, Cassidy James Blaede, Co-founder & CXO, mentioned in his latest blog that Elementary OS 6 will release with a 20.04 base.

          Reviewing 2019 and listing the great accomplishments and improvements along with the major release of elementary OS 5.1 Hera that broke the previous first-month downloads, his team has designed significant 2020 goals for making life much more comfortable with elementary OS.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • 16 Open Source Cloud Storage Software for Linux in 2020

        The cloud by the name indicates something which is very huge and present over a large area. Going by the name, in a technical field, Cloud is something that is virtual and provides services to end-users in the form of storage, hosting of apps or virtualizing any physical space. Nowadays, Cloud computing is used by small as well as large organizations for data storage or providing customers with its advantages which are listed above.

        Mainly, three types of Services come associated with Cloud which are: SaaS (Software as a Service) for allowing users to access other publically available clouds of large organizations for storing their data like Gmail, PaaS (Platform as a Service) for hosting of apps or software on Others public cloud ex: Google App Engine which hosts apps of users, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) for virtualizing any physical machine and availing it to customers to make them get feel of a real machine.

      • Meet the newest Collaborans!

        What better way to start the new year than by highlighting the newest members of our engineering and administrative teams who joined in Q4 2019!

        Based in Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Greece, these newest Collaborans join our worldwide team of highly skilled engineers, developers and managers who all share a common passion for technology and Open Source.

      • Web Browsers

        • Chromium

          • Google is finally killing off Chrome apps, which nobody really used anyhow

            Today, Google shared an updated timeline for when Chrome apps will stop working on all platforms. June 2022 is when they’ll be gone for good, but it depends on which platform you’re on (via 9to5Google). Previously, we knew that Chrome apps someday wouldn’t work on Windows, macOS, and Linux, but today, Google revealed that Chrome apps will eventually stop working on Chrome OS, too.

            A Chrome app is a web-based app that you can install in Chrome that looks and functions kind of like an app you’d launch from your desktop. Take this one for the read-it-later app Pocket, for example — when you install it, it opens in a separate window that makes it seem as if Pocket is functioning as its own app.

        • Mozilla

          • A brand new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

            It’s been almost 9 years since we released the first Firefox for Android. Hundreds of millions of users have tried it and over time provided us with valuable feedback that allowed us to continuously improve the app, bringing more features to our users that increase their privacy and make their mobile lives easier. Now we’re starting a new chapter of the Firefox experience on Android devices.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • MariaDB X4 brings smart transactions to open source database

          MariaDB has come a long way from its MySQL database roots. The open source database vendor released its new MariaDB X4 platform, providing users with “smart transactions” technology to enable both analytical and transactional databases.

          MariaDB, based in Redwood City, Calif., was founded in 2009 by the original creator of MySQL, Monty Widenius, as a drop-in replacement for MySQL, after Widenius grew disillusioned with the direction that Oracle was taking the open source database.

          Oracle acquired MySQL via its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2008. Now, in 2020, MariaDB still uses the core MySQL database protocol, but the MariaDB database has diverged significantly in other ways that are manifest in the X4 platform update.

          The MariaDB X4 release, unveiled Jan. 14, puts the technology squarely in the cloud-native discussion, notably because MariaDB is allowing for specific workloads to be paired with specific storage types at the cloud level, said James Curtis, senior analyst of data, AI and analytics at 451 Research.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Guile 3.0.0 released

            Version 3.0.0 of the Guile implementation of the Scheme programming language has been released. There’s a lot of work here, including a new, lower-level byte code implementation, interleaved internal definitions, a new exception implementation, and much more. “Guile programs now run up to 4 times faster, relative to Guile 2.2, thanks to just-in-time (JIT) native code generation. Notably, this brings the performance of “eval” as written in Scheme back to the level of ‘eval’ written in C, as in the days of Guile 1.8.”

          • GNU Mes 0.17 released
            We are delighted to announce the release of GNU Mes 0.17, representing
64 commits over 6 weeks.

Mes is now an official GNU package and we have bootstrapped gcc-4.7.4
for x86-linux with a reduced binary seed (i.e., without regular toolchain).

Next targets:

 - upstream the x86 Mes bootstrap to GuixSD
 - create a x86_64 Mes C Lib, see if that is is enough to bootstrap x86_64
 - reduce the 1MB ASCII M1 seed to ~5000 LOC/~100KB of M2 source
 - create a plan for Geesh and Gash and use them to reduce the
   bootstrap binary dependencies
 - and/or otherwise reduce the bootstrap binary dependencies

Packages are available from Guix's wip-bootstrap branch.

* About

GNU Mes[0] aims to help create full source bootstrapping for GNU/Linux
distributions such as GuixSD[1] as part of the bootstrappable builds[2]
effort.

It consists of a mutual self-hosting Scheme interpreter written in
~5,000 LOC of simple C and a Nyacc-based C compiler written in Scheme.
This mes.c is being simplified[3] to be transpiled by M2-Planet[4].

The Scheme interpreter (mes.c) has a Garbage Collector, a library of
loadable Scheme modules-- notably Dominique Boucher's LALR[5],
Pre-R6RS portable syntax-case[6] with R7RS ellipsis, Matt Wette's
Nyacc[7] --and test suite just barely enough to support a simple REPL
and simple C-compiler: MesCC.

Mes+MesCC can compile an only lightly patched TinyCC[8] that is
self-hosting.  Using this tcc and the Mes C library we now have a
reduced-binary-seed bootstrap for the gnutools triplet: glibc-2.2.5,
binutils-2.20.1, gcc-4.7.4.

Mes is inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: LISP-1.5[9] --
John McCarthy page 13, GNU Guix's source/binary packaging transparency
and Jeremiah Orians's stage0[10] ~500 byte self-hosting hex assembler.
          • Mes Becomes An Official GNU Project, Mes 0.17 Released To Bootstrap GNU/Linux Distros

            GNU Mes 0.17 was released this weekend as the first release as being an official GNU project. Mes consists of a self-hosting Scheme interpreter and a Nyacc-based C compiler written in Scheme. From this Scheme interpreter to build its C compiler, it can then build a (slightly patched) TinyCC compiler and in turn that resulting TinyCC compiler can go on to building GCC 4.7, Glibc 2.2.5, and Binutils 2.20 for getting a toolchain in place to go on to build the rest of the GNU/Linux platform.

          • SecureMyEmail makes really private email surprisingly simple

            The service also allows seamless, key-free transmission to other SecureMyEmail subscribers and to others who use PGP software such as the PGP-compatible free-software GNU Privacy Guard.

        • Licensing / Legal

          • Copy-left behind: Permissive MIT, Apache open-source licenses on the up as developers snub GNU’s GPL

            Permissive open-source software licenses continue to gain popularity at the expense of copyleft licenses, according to a forthcoming report from WhiteSource, a biz that makes software licensing management tools.

            Permissive licenses include the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses and are known as such because the permit licensors to do more or less what they want with the covered software, with minimal caveats, and without imposing obligations like sharing code revisions.

            Copyleft licenses like GPLv2, GPLv3, and LGPLv2.1 convey similar freedom, while, to put it simply, requiring that licensors not release versions or derivatives of the licensed code that restrict said freedom.

      • Programming/Development

        • JetBrains’ New Font (Apparently) Makes Reading Code Easier

          A new free and open source monospace font has been released by software development powerhouse JetBrains.

          Their typographic creation is called (surprise) JetBrains Mono and, they claim, it makes reading code much kinder on the eyes.

          Admittedly it feels a bit like everyone has their own monospace font these days: IBM released ‘Plex’ in 2017; Microsoft has launched ‘Casacida; and even Ubuntu has its own one for when you need to get up close with the command line.

          But with JetBrains being — apologies in advance, you knew this obvious pun was coming — the brains behind some of the world’s best-loved development and code creation tools, it kinda makes sense for them to have their own one too, doesn’t it?

          And lo: the creation of JetBrains Mono.

        • 9 Best Free Git Clients

          Git is an open source distributed version control system which was originally designed by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, in 2005 for Linux kernel development. This control system is widely used by the open source community, handling small to extremely large projects with an emphasis on speed and efficiency, but maintaining flexibility, scalability, and guaranteeing data integrity.

          Git is one of a number of open source revision control systems available for Linux. Other popular tools in this field include Subversion, Bazaar, Mercurial, Monotone, CVS, and SVN. However, Git is frequently regarded by many developers to be the finest version control tool available.

          There are two Git tools that are part of the main Git repository each designed for a different job. Git-gui is a Tcl/Tk-based graphical user interface that concentrates on commit generation and single file annotation. gitk is a repository browser that is also written in Tcl/tk. Whilst these two tools, used in conjunction, offer reasonable access to the power of Git, they lack integration, and functionality that other Git clients provide.

          The purpose of this article is to provide an insight into the best free open source Git clients that are available. We have covered the best graphical and console based clients available, so hopefully there will be something here of interest for anyone involved in the development of software projects.

          There are a large number of projects that use Git to aid their development. Notable examples include the Linux kernel, Eclipse, Wine, X.org, Ruby on Rails, ALSA, Bacula, Drupal, FreeRADIUS, Puppet, VLC, and many more.

        • Code a Boulder Dash mining game | Wireframe #30

          Learn how to code a simple Boulder Dash homage in Python and Pygame. Mark Vanstone shows you how. 

        • Announcing Better Support for Fuzzing with Structured Inputs in Rust

          Today, on behalf of the Rust Fuzzing Authority, I’d like to announce new releases of the arbitrary, libfuzzer-sys, and cargo fuzz crates. Collectively, these releases better support writing fuzz targets that take well-formed instances of custom input types. This enables us to combine powerful, coverage-guided fuzzers with smart test case generation.

          Install or upgrade cargo fuzz with:

          cargo install –force cargo-fuzz
          To upgrade your fuzz targets, bump your libfuzzer-sys dependency to 0.2.0 on crates.io. That should be all that’s needed for most cases. However, if you were already using Arbitrary inputs for your fuzz target, some changes will be required. See the upgrading fuzz targets section below for more details.

        • C vs. Rust: Which to choose for programming hardware abstractions

          Rust is an increasingly popular programming language positioned to be the best choice for hardware interfaces. It’s often compared to C for its level of abstraction. This article explains how Rust can handle bitwise operations in a number of ways and offers a solution that provides both safety and ease of use.

        • Perl / Raku

          • Shorewall 5.2.3.5 Released!

            Shorewall 5.2.3.5 is now available for download. Shorewall is a gateway/firewall configuration tool for GNU/Linux, written in Perl.

        • Python

          • Mocking in Python

            The first mission is called “Univocalic davasaan” created by Phil15 and here you have to write a function named davasaan which calculates the integer division by 10, and make your code as short as possible.

            The second one is the “Tree Walker” mission created by quarkov where you are given a tree and a target and your task is to calculate the number of leaves or subtrees that are equal to the target.

          • Python Bytes: #164 Use type hints to build your next CLI app
          • Talk Python to Me: #247 Solo maintainer of open-source in academia

            Do you run an open-source project? Does it seem like you never have enough time to support it? Have you considered starting one but are unsure you can commit to it? It’s a real challenge.

            On this episode, we welcome back Philip Guo, who has been a solo maintainer of the very popular PythonTutor.com project for over 10 years. He has some non-traditional advice to keep your sanity and keep your project going while holding down a busy full-time job.

          • Leysin Winter sprint 2020: Feb 28 – March 7th

            The next PyPy sprint will be in Leysin, Switzerland, for the fourteenth time. This is a fully public sprint: newcomers and topics other than those proposed below are welcome.

          • Use this Python script to find bugs in your Overcloud

            OpenStack stores and manages a bunch of log files on its Overcloud nodes and Undercloud host. Therefore, it’s not easy to use OSP log files to investigate a problem you’re having, especially when you don’t even know what could have caused the problem.

            If that’s your situation, LogTool makes your life much easier! It saves you the time and work it would otherwise take to investigate the root cause manually. Based on a fuzzy string matching algorithm, LogTool provides all the unique error and warning messages that have occurred in the past. You can export these messages for a particular time period, such as 10 minutes ago, an hour ago, a day ago, and so on, based on timestamp in the log.

      • Standards/Consortia

        • Apple may have to abandon Lightning connector cable

          The cable is used to charge and sync many Apple devices, such as the iPhone.

          But members of the European Parliament urged the European Commission on Monday to force tech giants to adopt a single universal charging method.

  • Leftovers

    • The Wonders of Modern Life Briefly Explained: An Anthropology of the Industrial Revolution

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Ex-Pharma Lobbyist Embedded in White House Tanked Drug Pricing Bill

        In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump told voters that lowering drug prices would be a top priority of his domestic agenda. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) introduced a bill to lower drug costs, Trump greeted it with enthusiasm. But in October, Trump executed an about-face, abandoning negotiations on the House bill, claiming it would “harm seniors,” and threatening to veto the bill if it passed the Senate.

      • 1st Malaria Vaccine Tried Out in Babies in 3 African Nations

        A pinch in the leg, a squeal and a trickle of tears. One baby after another in Malawi is getting the first and only vaccine against malaria, one of history’s deadliest and most stubborn of diseases.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Software tips for nerds

        I use Vim for almost a decade now, which is probably the longest I’ve sticked to some application. During that time, I repeatedly tried to use it as an IDE but inevitably failed each time. Let’s remember eclim as my Java IDE. I work almost exclusively on projects written in Python, which can be beautifully done in Vim but because of a gap in my skills, I was reliant on PyCharm. Thankfully, not anymore.

        My biggest issue was misusing tabs instead of buffers and poor navigation within projects. Reality check, do you open one file per tab? This is a common practice in other text editors, but please know that this is not the purpose of tabs in Vim and you should be using buffers instead. Please, give them a chance and read Buffers, buffers, buffers.

        Regarding project navigation, have you ever tried shift shift search in PyCharm or other JetBrains IDE? It’s exactly that thing, that you wouldn’t even imagine but after using it for the first time, you don’t understand how you lived without. What it does is, that it interactively fuzzy-finds files and tags (classes, functions, etc) that matches your input, so you can easily open them. In my opinion, this unquestionably defeats any other way of project navigation like using a file manager, NerdTree, or find in the command line.

        Fortunately, both of these problems can be solved by fzf.vim, which quickly became one of my most favorite Vim plugins. Please read this section about fzf plugin.

        I am forever grateful to Ian Langworth for writing VIM AFTER 11 YEARS, EVERYTHING I MISSED IN “VIM AFTER 11 YEARS” and VIM AFTER 15 YEARS articles. If you are a Vim user, those are an absolute must-read.

      • Proprietary

        • Was It an Act of War? That’s Merck Cyber Attack’s $1.3 Billion Insurance Question. [iophk: Windows TCO]

          In all, the attack crippled more than 30,000 laptop and desktop computers at the global drugmaker, as well as 7,500 servers, according to a person familiar with the matter. Sales, manufacturing, and research units were all hit. One researcher told a colleague she’d lost 15 years of work. Near Dellapena’s suburban office, a manufacturing facility that supplies vaccines for the U.S. market had ground to a halt. “For two weeks, there was nothing being done,” Dellapena recalls. “Merck is huge. It seemed crazy that something like this could happen.”

        • A Windows 10 Vulnerability Was Used to Rickroll the NSA and Github [iophk: Windows TCO]

          “What Saleem just demonstrated is: With [a short] script you can generate a cert for any website, and it’s fully trusted on IE and Edge with just the default settings for Windows,” Kenn White, a researcher and security principal at MongoDB, said. “That’s fairly horrifying. It affects VPN gateways, VoIP, basically anything that uses network communications.” (I spoke with White before Rashid had demonstrated the attack against Chrome.)

          The flaw involves the way the new versions of Windows check the validity of certificates that use elliptic-curve cryptography. While the vulnerable Windows versions check three ECC parameters, they fail to verify a fourth, crucial one, which is known as a base point generator and is often represented in algorithms as G. This failure is a result of Microsoft’s implementation of ECC rather than any flaw or weakness in the ECC algorithms themselves.

        • VirtaMove Announces Beta Version V-Migrate for Linux Container Migrations

          The new release of VirtaMove’s award-winning application migration product V-Migrate for Linux now moves legacy Red Hat and other Linux application infrastructure forward with a stateful re-install of applications into a container. You can now easily move legacy applications from Red Hat Enterprise Linux RHEL 5 and 6 to new Linux Docker containers on modern Linux releases and even run those containers on Microsoft Windows Server 2019. V-Migrate for Linux software automatically moves Linux-based applications from older to newer operating systems, on modern in-house servers or on hybrid or public cloud environments, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS clouds. RHEL 6 reaches End of Maintenance Support 2 on November 30, 2020. On January 14, 2020, Microsoft ended all support for Windows Server 2008 R2.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Openwashing

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • Confidential computing promises secure cloud apps

                Enterprises, governments and other organizations all sit on vast troves of data that cannot be processed due to security and privacy concerns. To address this limitation, researchers and vendors have developed various confidential computing techniques to safely process sensitive data.

                Confidential computing is particularly important for organizations in heavily regulated industries or sectors where opportunities for running workloads on the public cloud are severely limited, such as government, telecommunications, healthcare and banking. Confidential computing protects data at rest, which enables organizations to deploy sensitive workloads off premises and provides further protection to sensitive workloads on premises.

                [..].

                “If projects and products can show regulators and legislators that the levels of security are sufficient to meet their requirements, then deployment to public clouds becomes plausible for a great many more applications and use cases,” said Mike Bursell, chief security architect at Red Hat.

              • Akraino Edge Stack Enables Connected Car, AR/VR, AI Edge, and Telco Access Edge Application Use Cases

                LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stack Release 2 (“Akraino R2”). Akraino’s second release furthers the power of intelligent edge with new and enhanced deployable, self-certified blueprints for a diverse set of edge use cases.

                Launched in 2018, and now a Stage 3 (or “Impact” stage) project under the LF Edge umbrella, Akraino Edge Stack is creating an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimized for edge computing systems and applications. Designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, over-the-top (OTT) edge, and carrier edge networks, it offers users new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, to maximize the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of systems that must be up at all times.

                “The Akraino community has grown rapidly in the past year, and now includes contributions from 70 percent of LF Edge Premium member companies and countless other ecosystem partners beginning to deploy the blueprints across the globe,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “With R2, strong community collaboration brings even more blueprints to the ecosystem that support current and future technology at the open source edge.”

        • Security

          • Patch Tuesday, January 2020 Edition

            As first reported Monday by KrebsOnSecurity, Microsoft addressed a severe bug (CVE-2020-0601) in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016/19 reported by the NSA that allows an attacker to spoof the digital signature tied to a specific piece of software. Such a weakness could be abused by attackers to make malware appear to be a benign program that was produced and signed by a legitimate software company.

          • Study Shows The Internet Is Hugely Vulnerable To SIM Hijacking Attacks

            U.S. Wireless carriers are coming under heavy fire for failing to protect their users from the practice of SIM hijacking. The practice usually involves conning or bribing a wireless employee to port a victim’s cell phone number right out from underneath them, letting the attacker then pose as the customer to potentially devastating effect. Carriers are facing numerous lawsuits from victims who say attackers used the trick to first steal their identity, then millions in cryptocurrency, or even popular social media accounts.

          • Restoring DNS Privacy

            Stefan and I have been taking last week to add DNS over TLS into IPFire – another step to make DNS more private. Here is what we have done.

            Cleaning up some mess

            IPFire has multiple places where DNS servers could be configured. If you were using PPP for your Internet connection, you would have set this up with your dialup settings. If you were using a static IP address, then you would have set up the DNS servers with it in the setup. If you were using DHCP, you had a page on the web user interface to go to. This is not only confusing for the user, but also there were the places in the code where those settings were applied.

            Now, we have created an entire new page which combines all of it together! You will have a list where you can set all DNS servers and set new settings.

            [...]

            This will be release with Core Update 140. Amongst the many new features, we have removed a lot of code that has caused us a lot of trouble in the past and rewritten many things entirely from scratch.

          • Security updates for Friday

            Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (chromium), Fedora (gnulib, ImageMagick, jetty, ocsinventory-agent, phpMyAdmin, python-django, rubygem-rmagick, thunderbird, and xar), Mageia (e2fsprogs, kernel, and libjpeg), openSUSE (icingaweb2), Oracle (git, java-11-openjdk, and thunderbird), Red Hat (.NET Core), Scientific Linux (git, java-11-openjdk, and thunderbird), SUSE (fontforge and LibreOffice), and Ubuntu (kamailio and thunderbird).

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

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • US Government Challenges Apple on Encryption (Again)

              Expand

              Attorney General William Barr speaks during a tour of a federal prison in Edgefield, South Carolina, July 8, 2019.

            • Chief Justice Arrives at Capitol for Impeachment Trial

              The chief justice of the United States arrived Thursday at the U.S. Senate to preside over President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, ready to swear in the senators with an oath to ensure “impartial justice” as jurors for only the third such proceeding in American history.

            • Free Press Advocates Decry ‘Unprecedented’ and ‘Unjustified’ Restrictions on Reporter Access to Trump Impeachment Trial

              “Americans expect and deserve a fully transparent impeachment trial… For the Senate to produce anything less would be a show of GOP contempt for the American people.”

            • Trump Was on Board With the Plan to Use Ukraine to Torpedo Biden, Parnas Says

              Lev Parnas, a close associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, claimed in a series of interviews that aired on Wednesday and Thursday that the president and top aides were aware of and on board with the plot to use Ukraine to torpedo former Vice President Joe Biden’s chances in the 2020 election.

            • Ukraine launches criminal probe into Trump allies’ alleged “surveillance” of Marie Yovanovitch

              “Ukraine’s position is not to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States of America. However, the published references cited by the Washington Post contain a possible violation of the law of Ukraine and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which protects the rights of a diplomat on the territory of the foreign country,” the agency said in a statement. “Ukraine cannot ignore such illegal activities on the territory of its own state.”

              The statement added that the agency reached out to the FBI for information and materials about “persons who may be involved in a possible criminal offense.”

            • Traficom sells license plate data for targeted adverts, research

              When customers drive into the shopping mall car park, a camera snaps a picture of their vehicle’s registration plate number. The camera was installed by Jyväskylä-based information technology and services firm Nodeon.

              Checking the registration number at the Transport and Communications Agency’s (Traficom) database, the firm is able to gather personal information about the owners of the vehicles, including their postal codes – and then sells that data to the shopping mall.

            • Breaking iPhone encryption won’t make anyone safer

              It only takes one disaffected government employee, one deeply inserted spy in government or a tech company, or one sophisticated criminal attack to successfully extract that key.

            • Pelosi rips ‘shameful’ Facebook behavior, accuses it of intentionally misleading users

              House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed tech giant Facebook on Thursday, accusing the social media company of abusing technology to mislead users and calling its behavior “shameful.”

              “The Facebook business model is strictly to make money. They don’t care about the impact on children, they don’t care about truth, they don’t care about where this is all coming from, and they have said even if they know it’s not true they will print it,” Pelosi said at a press conference.

              “I think they have been very abusive of the great opportunity that technology has given them,” she added.

            • Jack Dorsey Asks Elon Musk How to Fix Twitter

              “Basically, how do you tell if the feedback is real or someone trying to manipulate the system, or probably real, or probably trying to manipulate the system,” Musk continued. “What do people actually want, what are people actually upset about versus manipulation of the system by various interest groups.”

            • Facebook Foes Sue to Force Zuckerberg to Sell Majority Stake

              Facebook Inc. was sued by four potential competitors who accuse it of anticompetitive behavior and who asked a judge to order Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to give up control of the social media behemoth.

              The companies also said if Facebook isn’t forced to sell its WhatsApp and Instagram assets, it’ll integrate them into the social network, “consolidating its market power across the globe, likely permanently foreclosing competition in the relevant markets for decades to come.”

            • EU considers banning facial recognition technology in public spaces

              As the development of facial recognition technologies gains traction, lawmakers have been left with the task of working out how to control its use.

              The EU, as reported by Reuters, is considering a ban of up to five years on facial recognition in public areas — potentially including locations such as parks, tourist hotspots, and sports venues — to give politicians time to thrash out legislation to prevent its abuse.

              The proposals, as seen by the publication, are part of an 18-page whitepaper that suggests a ban could permit the time to create a “sound methodology for assessing the impacts of this technology and possible risk management measures.”

            • EU mulls five-year ban on facial recognition tech in public areas

              The European Union is considering banning facial recognition technology in public areas for up to five years, to give it time to work out how to prevent abuses, according to proposals seen by Reuters.

              The plan by the EU?s executive – set out in an 18-page white paper – comes amid a global debate about the systems driven by artificial intelligence and widely used by law enforcement agencies.

              The EU Commission said new tough rules may have to be introduced to bolster existing regulations protecting Europeans? privacy and data rights.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • How the President Became a Drone Operator

        We’re only a few days into the new decade and it’s somehow already a bigger dumpster fire than the last. On January 2nd, President Trump decided to order what one expert called “the most important decapitation strike America has ever launched.” This one took out not some nameless terrorist in a distant land or a group of civilians who happened to get in the way, but Major General Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind of its military operations across the Middle East.

      • Russia’s Bid to Block UN Financing for Syria Probe Defeated

        In late December, United Nations member countries defeated an attempt by Russia to block funding for investigations into grave abuses in Syria, approving US$17.81 million for a team of investigators responsible for gathering evidence of serious crimes for future prosecutions and ensuring they have the resources necessary to do the work.

        The UN General Assembly created the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) in 2016 in response to a stalemate at the UN Security Council, where Russia had used its veto  six times since 2011 to block action on the Syrian conflict. Since 2016, Russia has used its veto eight more times to the same effect. But Moscow was unable to prevent the IIIM’s creation in the General Assembly or block its inclusion in the UN budget.

      • Nuclear Hubris

        If an attack of any sort kills “hundreds of thousands or even millions” of people—their deaths are instantly belittled if they aren’t Americans.

      • Trump’s Space Force Means Trump Not Satisfied Being Terrible Only on This Planet

        The U.S. military is creating an imaginary “space gap” to pour money into closing, wasting funds while increasing the risk of conflict.

      • Senate Urged to Convict Trump After GAO Says Freezing Ukraine Aid Was Illegal

        Sparking fresh calls for the Republican-controlled Senate to remove President Donald Trump from office, a federal watchdog agency announced Thursday that the White House violated the law by withholding congressionally approved U.S. military aid to Ukraine — a decision at the center of the impeachment probe.

      • Texas Baby-Killer Pleads Guilty to a New Murder

        Former nurse Genene Jones, suspected for decades of killing more than a dozen children but tried and convicted for only one, pleaded guilty Thursday in San Antonio to the murder of an 11-month-old boy in 1981 and was sentenced to life in prison. Jones’ sudden reversal — she had previously pleaded not guilty to five murder charges filed in 2017 — confirms her place as a serial baby-killer and ends a twisted criminal-justice saga that has played out over four decades.

        Jones, 69, unexpectedly sought the plea deal last week, just a month before she was to go to trial in the first of the five murder charges: for the death of Joshua Sawyer on Dec. 12, 1981.

      • Trump’s Unprecedented Attack on Iran and the Rule of Law

        It’s time to demand an end to the madness once and for all.

      • Go To War And One Day You Might Get A Dunny Named After You Too!

        Wondering how you can help the Morrison Government save $500 million on their War Memorial upgrade, and maybe redirect the money towards fighting climate change?

      • The Real Reason Trump Ordered Soleimani’s Killing

        President Donald Trump’s administration has trotted out an embarrassingly inconsistent series of justifications for the recent drone strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The ever-changing story of why Soleimani was killed underscores the Trump administration’s thin rationale for an action so provocative that it could have triggered an all-out war.

      • The Media Failed Us in the Lead-Up to the Iraq War

        In 2003, virtually every newspaper endorsed the war, and journalists reported as fact the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This was an unchallenged lie pitched by then–Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has since professed remorse. Many journalists later expressed regret for falling for it. But our profession is shrinking, and I worry that our collective memory is, too.

        On January 3, Donald Trump ordered a US drone strike that killed Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. The ensuing swirl of political punditry and Trump’s continued erratic behavior give me a sinking feeling that we are about to repeat our worst mistakes.

      • Joe Biden won’t tell the truth about his Iraq war record — and he hasn’t for years

        Sen. Bernie Sanders’ camp has just highlighted a video of Biden speaking at the Brookings Institution in July 2003, after the invasion, in which he expresses support for “finishing this job” in Iraq and says: “The president of the United States is a bold leader and he is popular.”

        As far as showing Biden’s support for the war, that video is the tip of the iceberg.

      • [Old] Three Stooges first to blast Hitler

        The book both exposes and accuses Hollywood’s largest moviemakers — MGM, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox — as hideously bowing to the demands of Nazi censors in order to have their movies released in Germany, a large and steady commercial consumer of American movies.

        Urwand reveals many documents showing Adolf Hitler’s front men to have had great and sustained influence in Hollywood and on its executives, starting with Hitler’s rise to the Reich chancellorship in January 1933, through to the inevitable outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s Dispute Is a Sign the Media Has Learned Little from the 2016 Election

        Media consumers have their own responsibility in this, especially as we share news on social media. Those of us who are extremely online should consider what fixating on these reality-TV-type moments means and how it affirms the models of for-profit media that thrive off drama. But similar to how plastic-straw bans ask individuals to step up while massive corporations bear far greater climate responsibility, placing the onus for change entirely on media consumers ignores the systemic problems that only those of us in content production can address.

    • Environment

    • Finance

      • How Economic Despair Drives Workers to Their Deaths

        Maria Fernandes was a good-hearted American with a family, ambitions and a rock-solid work ethic.

      • ‘I Made a Lot of Bankers Look Very Good,’ Brags Trump as Wall Street Titans Enjoy $32 Billion Tax Bonanza

        “It looks like Trump just let the six largest banks ‘get away with murder’ something he promised he wouldn’t do as president,” said a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders in response.

      • Another Geithner Scandal

        Tim Geithner might have left his job as Treasury Secretary seven years ago, but his legacy lives on. The Wall Street Journal reported that the financial firm Morningstar had reached a settlement with the SEC over marketing it had done for firms whose bonds it had rated.

      • Trump’s Broad-Based Sanctions Failed in Iran and Will Fail in North Korea

        In both Iran and North Korea, the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive policy of “maximum pressure” — crushing economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and military threats — in order to thwart their nuclear ambitions. In both cases, “maximum pressure” has not only failed to achieve the desired goal but has had the opposite effect: ramping up tensions and hardening both countries’ resolve to obtain nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, sanctions are having devastating consequences for ordinary citizens in both countries.

      • Treasury Inspector General Probes Possible Trump Tax Break Abuses

        The Treasury Department’s inspector general is looking into the opportunity zone program following stories by ProPublica and The New York Times about how the tax break meant to help the poor had been manipulated by billionaires.

        The development, which was first reported by NBC News, comes after three congressional Democrats wrote to Treasury’s inspector general in October asking for the probe and citing the ProPublica and Times stories.

      • Bose Closing All Retail Stores in North America, Europe, Japan, & Australia

        Bose will close all of its retail stores in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Online sales played a significant part in Bose’s decision.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • The Warren-Sanders Squabble is Foolish

        The real issues in this campaign have nothing to do with who said what in 2018.

      • How Donald Trump Successfully Wagged the Dog, and More

        Although I have never seen Donald Trump with a pet, I do believe that he wagged the dog when he ordered the assassination of the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The expression “wag the dog” comes from a 1997 film satire in which a president, caught up in a sex scandal, uses a war to divert attention from his peccadillo. It was released at about the time of the Monica Lewinsky/ President Clinton scandal and later U.S. bombing in Sudan. In Trump’s case, he more than wagged the dog. By ratcheting up tensions with Iran, he also increased his stature as commander-in-chief to the detriment of Democratic candidates and reinforced his image as a rogue head of state.

      • Death by Illogic, Lies and Stupidity

        Donald Trump continues to be under fire. He has been impeached for a gross abuse of power: attempting to blackmail the Ukrainian government into libeling his likely 2020 Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, with allegations of corruption. To induce the Ukrainians to do this, Trump ordered the withholding of military aid. This was an illegal act. When a congressional investigation followed, Trump and his rather clownish minions in Congress tried to obstruct it. This constituted yet another impeachable offense.

      • In Explosive Interviews, Giuliani Sidekick Lev Parnas Says Trump ‘Lied’ and ‘Knew Exactly What Was Going On’

        “It was all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden. It was never about corruption.”

      • Standing With Labor, Farmers, and Climate Groups on Trump Trade Deal, Sanders Vows to Vote Against NAFTA 2.0

        “In my view, we need to rewrite this trade agreement to stop the outsourcing of American jobs, to combat climate change, to protect the environment, and stop the destructive race to the bottom.”

      • Progressive Groups Urge Sanders-Warren Unity to Defeat Corporate Democrats in Primary—and Then Donald Trump

        “When progressives fight each other, the establishment wins.”

      • Politics and Business in Seattle

        I am in Seattle for an academic conference, having last been here about ten years ago.

      • The welcome wagon Here’s what Russia’s new prime minister told lawmakers, immediately after they voted him into office

        On January 16, State Duma deputies approved the appointment of Federal Tax Service chief Mikhail Mishustin as Russia’s new prime minister. The new head of Vladimir Putin’s cabinet won the support of 383 deputies. Another 41 lawmakers abstained, and not a soul voted against him. At the hearing, Mishustin made a speech outlining his plans for the federal government and also answered a few questions. Meduza summarizes these remarks below.

      • With Bernhardt Running Trump’s Interior Dept., Former Corporate Clients Lavishing Tens of Millions in New Lobby Spending

        “The corruption is absolutely shameless.”

      • Should Facebook and Twitter Stop Trump’s Lies?

        Antitrust law was designed to check the power of giant commercial entities. Its purpose wasn’t just to hold down consumer prices but also to protect democracy.Antitrust should be used against Facebook and Twitter. They should be broken up. So instead of two mammoth megaphones trumpeting Trump’s lies, or those of any similarly truth-challenged successor to Trump, the public will have more diverse sources of information, some of which will expose the lies.A diverse information marketplace is no guarantee against tyranny, of course. But the system we now have – featuring a president who lies through his teeth and two giant uncritical conveyors of those lies – invites tyranny.

      • Scotty From Marketing Makes The Urban Dictionary: To Do A ‘Scomo’ Is To…?

        Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has finally made the big time… the Urban Dictionary.

      • Group Behind Wisconsin Voter Purge Lawsuit Has Strong GOP Ties

        This case has thrust Wisconsin to the forefront in this year’s voter suppression wars and reflects a larger Republican strategy to tilt the playing field by making it harder for low-income, student, and minority citizens to vote.

      • Wisconsin May Purge 200,000 Voters From State Rolls in 2020

        A Wisconsin appeals court on Tuesday put on hold a purge of approximately 200,000 voters from the state voter rolls. The court proceedings have been complicated, and how it will end is unclear, but this purge is a bad idea regardless of how the courts come down on its legality.

      • Pelosi Pushes for a Real Impeachment Trial With Witnesses and Cross-Examination

        In a historic move, the House of Representatives presented articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate Wednesday. It marks only the third presidential impeachment trial in all of U.S. history. Earlier Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a news conference with the seven impeachment managers. The House vote to send articles of impeachment to the Senate comes as The Washington Post reports explosive new information at the center of the impeachment inquiry. New material released by House Democrats shows text messages between former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas and Robert Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate from Connecticut, in which the two have threatening exchanges about Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. In the text messages, Parnas and Hyde discuss how Yovanovitch was under surveillance. Yovanovitch has repeatedly said she felt threatened by Trump, who called her “bad news” in his now-infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. For more, we’re joined by Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation. “Pelosi at least thinks or hopes that there will be witnesses, there will be cross-examination, and this will be something more approaching a real trial situation as opposed to kind of just a show,” Mystal says.

      • Biden, Buttigieg and Corporate Media Are Eager for Sanders and Warren to Clash

        Corporate Democrats got a jolt at the end of last week when the highly regarded Iowa Poll showed Bernie Sanders surging into first place among Iowans likely to vote in the state’s Feb. 3 caucuses. The other big change was a steep drop for the previous Iowa frontrunner, Pete Buttigieg, who — along with Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden — came in a few percent behind Sanders. The latest poll was bad news for corporate interests, but their prospects brightened a bit over the weekend when Politico reported: “The nonaggression pact between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren is seriously fraying.”

      • Not Bernie, Us. Not Warren, Us.

        In a sense, this moment calls for Sanders and Warren supporters to be better than their candidates, who’ve descended into an avoidably harsh conflict that hugely benefits corporate power and corporate Democrats.

      • What Separates Sanders From Warren (and Everybody Else)

        In America, the term “middle class” has long been used to describe the majority of wage and salary earners, from those receiving a median annual income of around $50,000 to those who earn three or four times that amount. Whether Democrat or Republican, politicians from across the political aisle claim to represent the middle class—that vast-yet-amorphous segment of the population where the managers and the managed all seem to fit together.

      • Moscow City Court cancels fine against non-protester whose leg was broken by police before a protest

        The Moscow City Court has reversed a 10,000-ruble ($162) fine instituted against Konstantin Konovalov, who has said he was going on a run in central Moscow on July 27 when police violently arrested him, breaking his leg in the process. A protest was scheduled to take place three hours later; Konovalov claims he was not involved in the protest. Protest Apologists, a human rights organization whose attorney Fyodor Sirosh is representing Konovalov, posted about the court’s ruling on Telegram.

      • Zelensky withdraws bill decentralizing power in Ukraine for further revision

        Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has withdrawn a bill from the national legislature that would have increased the autonomy of individual regions, including breakaway regions in the country’s east. Zelensky introduced the bill into the Verkhovna Rada in mid-December and decided to withdraw it after meeting with legislative leaders from his party, Servant of the People.

      • Mikhail Mishustin formally appointed Russia’s prime minister as Medvedev takes on Security Council role

        Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially signed an order appointing Mikhail Mishustin to be Russia’s new prime minister, the Kremlin’s press service reported.

      • Pauline Hanson Weaponises Her Wilful Ignorance. Why Can’t We Call It Out?

        Pauline Hanson has been getting a free pass by mainstream media for far too long, writes Nico Bell.

      • New Report: Trump Violated US Funding Law at Center of Impeachment Trial

        But after an investigation, the Government Accountability Office ruled that “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.” It said that the Trump-controlled U.S. budget agency blocked release of the money “for a policy reason,” which is not allowable under U.S. law.

        The ruling by the GAO came less than two hours before the formal start of Trump’s Senate trial on two articles of impeachment, that Trump abused the office of the presidency by trying to get Zelenskiy to open the Biden investigations while withholding the military aid and then obstructing congressional efforts to investigate Trump’s Ukraine-related actions.

      • Senate Urged to Convict Trump After GAO Says White House Broke Law by Freezing Ukraine Aid

        The federal watchdog’s decision “should be a call to action for every senator to put country over party and vote to remove Trump from office.”

      • ‘Russia’s Political Transition Has Arrived Ahead of Schedule’

        In his annual State of the Nation address, Putin proposed changes to the constitution in a series of moves that appear to pave the way for the term-limited president to assume a new position of power after he leaves office. A few hours after Putin’s address, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced on live television that he and the entire Russian government would be resigning, saying that the Russian president will choose a new government.

        Putin later nominated Mikhail Mishustin, a 53-year-old technocrat who heads the Federal Tax Service and is best known for boosting tax collections and cutting graft, as Medvedev’s successor. Mishustin is a low-profile choice not seen as a power player in Moscow, making his prospects of transitioning into a major political force unlikely.

      • New allegations, watchdog report complicate GOP position on impeachment trial

        The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Thursday issued a stunning report, accusing the White House budget office of breaking the law by withholding military aid to Ukraine — the very issue at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment effort.

        Separately, a close associate of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, has delivered a trove of information to House Democrats related to Giuliani’s campaign to pressure Ukrainian leaders to find dirt on the president’s political rivals. Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born Florida businessman facing unrelated campaign-finance charges in New York, is also making the media rounds to deliver a damning message: Trump, he says, was privy to the pressure campaign from the start.

      • Sanders says he’s concerned about lost campaign time during impeachment trial

        Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is atop polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, said Thursday he is worried about losing valuable time on the campaign trail while he sits through an impeachment trial that could last for weeks.

        The Senate spent much of Thursday in a ceremonial session to mark the beginning of President Trump’s trial, which included all senators present taking an oath administered by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to uphold impartial justice. Senators then signed an oath book one by one.

        Asked later if he’s concerned about how participating in the trial will affect his White House bid, Sanders responded, “Yeah, I am.”

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Assange ‘denied access’ to lawyers in UK

        Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been denied access to evidence and even basic items like paper and pens by British prison officials, putting his US extradition case on the brink of judicial review, his lawyer has warned.

        Solicitor Gareth Pierce was shocked to learn that District Judge Vanessa Baraitser only intended to allow the defence team one hour to review evidence with the Australian in the holding cells at the Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday.

        He’s been charged in the US with 17 counts of spying and one count of computer hacking after WikiLeaks allegedly tried to help US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning conceal her virtual identity in the release of thousands of classified Pentagon files regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

        Some of those files have revealed US war crimes committed in both countries.

      • Short of Time: Julian Assange at the Westminster Magistrates Court

        Another slot of judicial history, another notch to be added to the woeful record of legal proceedings being undertaken against Julian Assange. The ailing WikiLeaks founder was coping as well as he could, showing the resourcefulness of the desperate at his Monday hearing. At the Westminster Magistrates Court, Assange faced a 12-minute process, an ordinary affair in which he was asked to confirm his name, an ongoing ludicrous state of affairs, and seek clarification about an aspect of the proceedings.

        Of immediate concern to the lawyers, specifically seasoned human rights advocate Gareth Peirce, was the issue that prison officers at Belmarsh have been obstructing and preventing the legal team from spending sufficient time with their client, despite the availability of empty rooms. “We have pushed Belmarsh in every way – it is a breach of a defendant’s rights.” Three substantial sets of documents and evidence required signing off by Assange before being submitted to the prosecution, a state of affairs distinctly impossible given the time constraints.

        A compounding problem was also cited by Peirce: the shift from moving the hearing a day forward resulted in a loss of time. “This slippage in the timetable is extremely worrying.” Whether this shows indifference to protocol or malice on the part of prosecuting authorities is hard to say, but either way, justice is being given a good flaying.

        The argument carried sufficient weight with District Judge Vanessa Baraitser to result in an adjournment till 2 pm in the afternoon, but this had more to do with logistics than any broader principle of conviction. As Baraitser reasoned, 47 people were currently in custody at court; a mere eight rooms were available for interviewing, leaving an additional hour to the day. In her view, if Assange was sinned against, so was everybody else, given that others in custody should not be prevented from access to counsel. (This judge has a nose for justice, albeit using it selectively.)

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • It’s 2020 and Florida’s Supreme Court Just Ruled in Favor of a Poll Tax

        “Florida cannot violate the U.S. Constitution’s protections. The right to vote cannot be contingent on the ability to pay.”

      • EU Parliament Calls for Release of Burundi Journalists

        The European Parliament today adopted a resolution condemning the continued deterioration of the human rights situation in Burundi ahead of the May 2020 elections. It also called on authorities to drop charges and immediately and unconditionally release four journalists working for Iwacu, one of the country’s last remaining independent newspapers, and all others arrested for exercising their fundamental rights.

        Christine Kamikazi, Agnès Ndirubusa, Egide Harerimana, and Térence Mpozenzi, and their driver, Adolphe Masabarakiza, were arrested on October 22, 2019 while on a reporting trip to Bubanza Province, and later charged with being complicit in “threatening the security of the state.” Their judgment is due by the end of January.

      • The Trump Administration Weakens Standards for ICE Detention Facilities

        The new immigration detention standards set by the Trump administration weaken critical protections and lower oversight requirements. The consequences for the health and safety of people who are detained could be disastrous.

      • The Humanitarian and Environmental Disaster of Trump’s Border Wall

        Making America great again in a new wild west.

      • The Questions No One’s Asking About the Border Wall

        A new Wild West has taken root not far from Tombstone, Arizona, known to many for its faux-historical reenactments of the old West. We’re talking about a long, skinny territory — a geographic gerrymander — that stretches east across New Mexico and down the Texan Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. It also runs west across hundreds of miles of desert to California and the Pacific Ocean. Like the old Wild West, this one is lawless, save for the law of the gun. But that old West was lawless for want of government. This one is lawless because of it.

      • Trump Has Suspended Nearly 50 Laws to Build the Wall

        A new Wild West has taken root not far from Tombstone, Arizona, known to many for its faux-historical reenactments of the old West. We’re talking about a long, skinny territory — a geographic gerrymander — that stretches east across New Mexico and down the Texan Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. It also runs west across hundreds of miles of desert to California and the Pacific Ocean. Like the old Wild West, this one is lawless, save for the law of the gun. But that old West was lawless for want of government. This one is lawless because of it.

      • The Longue Durée: Commemorating RIC and Black & Tan Colonialism

        Most histories of modern Ireland tend to marginalise or completely disregard questions of language and culture. This neglect occurs within various fields, be it the study of the conquests of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the rise to power of Ascendancy Ireland during the eighteenth century, the expansion of the modern technocratic state during the nineteenth century as well as in the study of quasi-independent Ireland during the twentieth century.

      • Why Legal ‘Innovation’ Might be Bad News for Rights in Russia

        Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans for constitutional reform that, among other things, seem to clear a path for him to remain in power – albeit not as president – after his term expires in 2024.

        But the reforms have implications beyond Putin’s political future. Some, like me, are pondering the impact on the rights of millions of Russians if Putin’s call “to directly guarantee the priority of the Russian Constitution in our legal framework” becomes law.

      • Judge Says Chicago PD Must Release Nearly 50 Years Of Misconduct Files Before The End Of This Year

        The Chicago Police Department is one of the worst in the nation. There’s simply no denying this.

      • Morocco: 3 Years in Abusive Solitary Detention
      • Parental Leave Laws Are Failing Single Parents

        The two parties in Congress don’t agree on much these days. However, in the final days of December, they struck a deal that will give about 2 million federal workers paid time off following the birth of a baby, an adoption or the arrival of a foster child in their home.

      • Moms 4 Housing Speaks Out After Militarized Eviction From Vacant Oakland House

        We look at the fight for affordable housing in the Bay Area with Moms 4 Housing, the unhoused and insecurely housed mothers who were evicted Tuesday by a militarized police force from a vacant home they had been occupying in Oakland, California. The action ended a two-month standoff between the mothers and real estate developer Wedgewood Properties when sheriff’s deputies arrested two mothers and two of their supporters. All four were released on bail Tuesday afternoon. We speak to Misty Cross, one of the moms who was arrested, and her daughter Destiny Johnson. “It was never about trying to stay in that house,” says Cross. “The message we were trying to send out was to get people aware of policies and things that are in place that are making us not move forward in life.” We also speak to Carroll Fife, the director of the Oakland office for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

      • A Christian Nationalist Group Is Quietly Shaping Bills for State Legislatures

        Fred Clarkson, a senior research analyst at the social justice think tank Political Research Associates, had studied the Christian right wing for decades when someone tipped him off about an intriguing link on the website of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF) — a group that seeks to “preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer.” In early 2018, Clarkson clicked on the link, which led him to what was essentially a roadmap of the Christian right’s theocratic vision for state legislatures — a 116-page manual of model legislation aimed at advancing an anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice, Christian nationalist agenda.

      • Dissenter Weekly: Blowing Whistle On Business Of War In Iraq—Plus, Honduras and DOJ Cheat Whistleblower

        On this week’s “Dissenter Weekly Update,” host and Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola discusses how military contractors are speaking out after President Donald Trump assassinated—and attempted to assassinate—leaders of militias aligned with General Qassim Soleimani.

        Current and former employees for a military contractor called Sallyport Global Services claim the Iranian-backed militia, Kataib Al Imam Ali, allegedly stole military hardware and issued death threats against their employees. The company, which had a billion-dollar contract with the Pentagon, bribed the militia with “free trucks” and a first, second, and third base for their operations. These fighters were aligned with the United States, probably fighting ISIS, wasting taxpayers dollars like most military ventures. It’s how the business of war works.

      • The end of Iraqi Christianity?

        Erbil has been a refuge for Christians escaping the horrors of ISIS during the militants’ occupation of Mosul and the nearby Nineveh Plains, home to some of the oldest Church communities dating back to earliest times. Such attacks have underlined the precarious state of Iraq’s now tiny Christian community, which continues to reel from an exodus triggered by genocidal persecution.

        According to research by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), within a generation, Iraq’s Christians have declined by 90 per cent to below 250,000. Some reports suggest that the actual figure may be lower than 120,000.

        Were the Iran crisis to become protracted, bishops from the region believe that the consequences for Iraqi Christians would be potentially catastrophic.

      • How to Organize Your Workplace Without Getting Caught

        In the last few years, American workers across multiple industries have unionized or mobilized collectively in an attempt to get better wages, demand accountability for sexual harassers in the workplace, push for real action to slow down climate change, and in general, change company culture.

        The movement seems to be popping up everywhere: Amazon, Google, Gawker, Riot Games, Salesforce, Tesla, Kickstarter, Uber, you name it. In fact, approval ratings for unions among Americans are at the highest level since the beginning of the 2000s, according to Gallup.

        As proud members of a union, we at Motherboard understand how important collective action is, and how challenging it can be. One of the biggest and perhaps most overlooked questions is: how do you form a union or organize a workplace walkout without tipping off the company that owns your computers and internet connection?

      • All the Single Ladies

        Still, much of this is assuming that men in educated dating pools prefer educated women. And for long-term relationships, they do. Compared with women, though, men tend to be more open to pairing up with less educated partners. And less educated women tend to be open to dating men more educated than themselves. What this means, then, is that educated women are not only competing against other educated women for educated male partners, but also against less educated women. To use Guttentag’s phrasing, the dating environment for educated men has an oversupply of women, and they are acting in line with Guttentag’s original findings. As Birger puts it in Date-onomics, describing why educated men are often reluctant to settle down, “Why make a lifetime commitment to one woman when you can keep her as an option while continuing to survey the market—a market that, for college-educated men, has an ever-increasing number of options?” This point has also been stressed by David Buss. In an essay titled The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women, Buss observes that it is no coincidence that the rise of hookup culture on college campuses has developed alongside the growing proportion of female students. Even Tinder, he suggests, is a part of the same phenomenon. Fewer men means more hookups.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Bad Ideas: Raising The Arbitrary Age Of Internet Service ‘Consent’ To 16

        We all know various ideas for “protecting privacy online” are floating around Congress, but must all of them be so incredibly bad? Nearly all of them assume a world that doesn’t exist. Nearly all of them assume an understanding of “privacy” that is not accurate. The latest dumb idea is to expand COPPA — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — that was put in place two decades ago and has been a complete joke. COPPA’s sole success is in getting everyone to think that anyone under the age of 13 isn’t supposed to be online. COPPA’s backers have admitted that they used no data in creating and have done no research into the effectiveness of the law. Indeed, actual studies have shown that COPPA’s real impact is in having parents teach their kids its okay to lie about their age online in order to access the kinds of useful services they want to use.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • False Profits and Anti-Christs™

        It doesn’t take many viewing minutes into Messiah, the new Netflix series, to make an old postmodernist like myself wonder what the fuck I’m wasting what’s left of my time with this stuff for. El-Masih, the YouKnowWho (played, this time, by Mehdi Debhi), shows up in “Palestine” out of nowhere to announce that it’s Armageddon Time, accompanied by the first of many signs: Just as Damascus is about to have a bad hair day with artillery fired on them by ISIS from mysteriously unguarded heights not far away, a locust-like sandstorm engulfs Assad-abad. Insh’allah intervenes, it seems, but on whose behalf I can’t tell.

    • Monopolies

      • Uber Wins Dubious Honor Of Being First Big Tech Company To Bully A Small Nation Using Corporate Sovereignty

        Six years ago, when Techdirt first started writing about the investor-state dispute system (ISDS) — or corporate sovereignty as we prefer to call it — it was largely unknown outside specialist circles. Since then, more people have woken up to the power of this apparently obscure element of international trade and investment deals. It essentially gives a foreign company the ability to threaten to sue a nation for millions — even billions — of dollars if the latter brings in new laws or regulations that might adversely affect an investment. The majority of corporate sovereignty cases have been brought by the extractive industries — mining and oil. That’s not least because many of the laws and regulations they object to concern environmental and health issues, which have come to the fore in recent years. New legislation designed to protect local communities might mean lower profits for investors, who then often threaten to use ISDS if they are not offered compensation for this “loss”.

      • Trademarks

      • Copyrights

        • Corellium CEO says Apple is trying to ‘eliminate public jailbreaks’ with latest DMCA filing

          The intensity of the lawsuit that Apple has filed against software virtualization company Corellium has reached another level as the latter’s CEO says a recent DMCA from Apple claims that it is “engaging in trafficking” and that Apple is trying to set a precedent to “eliminate public jailbreaks.” Corellium CEO Amanda Gorton has penned an open letter expressing her belief that “Apple’s latest filing against Corellium should give all security researchers, app developers, and jailbreakers reason to be concerned.”

        • Apple Lawsuit Against Cyber Startup Threatens ‘Dangerous’ Expansion Of Copyright Law

          As Apple and Corellium head towards mediation talks, the iPhone maker has been criticized for “dangerous” claims that the cybersecurity startup has broken copyright laws. Critics say the lawsuit could lead to an expansion of U.S. copyright law and legally endanger software creators and security researchers tinkering with Apple tech.

          Corellium “virtualizes” Apple iPhones. In other words, it creates software-only versions of the devices, helping researchers and developers better test hacks or the functionality of apps. For instance, if a developer wanted to see whether their app crashes iOS or breaks a phone entirely, they won’t have to restart or buy a new iPhone if they can just spawn a new software version at speed.

          But Apple believes this amounts to illegal replication of its famous phone. It first launched a suit in August 2019 but has ratcheted up the claims against Corellium, in particular around what the Cupertino giant says are breaches of its rights as protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

        • Corellium Accuses Apple of Using Lawsuit to ‘Crack Down on Jailbreaking’

          The lawsuit has been ongoing since August, but it is heating up after Apple amended its lawsuit in late December with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) filing, suggesting the Cupertino company believes jailbreaking is a violation of the DMCA. Corellium, says Apple, facilitates jailbreaking through its software.

          Corellium’s CEO Amanda Gorton has taken issue with Apple’s new filing, and yesterday penned a missive lambasting Apple for its jailbreaking position. “Apple’s latest filing against Corellium should give all security researchers, app developers, and jailbreakers reason to be concerned,” reads the letter’s opening statement.

        • Join Us in Washington D.C. to Celebrate Culture and Heritage on Public Domain Day

          In collaboration with the Internet Archive, the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and SPARC, this event will “bring together a diverse group of organizations, musicians, artists, activists, and thinkers” to celebrate the works entering the public domain in 2020 as well as highlight the “elements of knowledge and creativity that are too important to a healthy society to lock down with copyright law.”

        • RomUniverse’s Request to Dismiss Nintendo Piracy Lawsuit Fails

          A California federal court has denied RomUniverse’s request to dismiss Nintendo’s piracy lawsuit. The site’s operator, who is leading his own defense, argued that he is protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions. However, the court notes that a motion to dismiss is not the proper stage to bring this up and has refuted other arguments too.

        • Kim Dotcom Wins Back K.im Domain After Dispute & $100K Sell-Back Offer

          After falling into third-party hands the main domain of Kim Dotcom’s K.im project is set to be reclaimed. The Isle of Man domain recently expired and was quickly snapped up but, following a dispute process, it could be transferred back to the crypto project in a matter of days. Documents reviewed by TorrentFreak reveal that there was an attempt in December to sell the domain back for $100,000.

        • Why Is The NYC MTA Going After A Random Artist Who Created A Different Subway Map For Infringement?

          It’s been a while since we last wrote about the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), but in the past, it’s always been for incredibly stupid reasons. There was the time it claimed it owned the facts of its schedule and went after someone who created a better scheduling app. There was the time it claimed that its “unlimited rides” card really meant no more than 90 rides. We didn’t write about this other one, but a few years back, the MTA actually sued a bagel place for calling itself “F Line Bagels.” And now we have it filing an incredibly questionable copyright takedown notice over someone making a nicer subway map.

01.16.20

Links 16/1/2020: Mozilla Layoffs, PinePhone Braveheart Shipping, KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS Reaches Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 6:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Kubuntu Focus Offers The Most Polished KDE Laptop Experience We’ve Seen Yet

        As we mentioned back in December, a Kubuntu-powered laptop is launching with the blessing of Canonical and the Kubuntu Community Council. That laptop, the Kubuntu Focus, will begin shipping at the beginning of February while the pre-orders opened today as well as the embargo lift. We’ve been testing out the Kubuntu Focus the last several weeks and it’s quite a polished KDE laptop experience for those wanting to enjoy KDE Plasma for a portable computing experience without having to tweak the laptop for optimal efficiency or other constraints.

      • Kubuntu Focus Linux Laptop Is Now Available for Pre-Order, Ships Early February

        The previously announced Kubuntu Focus Linux laptop is now available for pre-order and has a shipping date and a price tag for those who want a premium computer.

        Unveiled last month during the Christmas holidays, the Kubuntu Focus laptop is a collaboration between Kubuntu, Tuxedo Computers, and MindShareManagement Inc., and it aims to be the first-ever officially recognized Kubuntu Linux laptop targeted mainly at gamers, power users, and developers.

        Kubuntu Focus is a premium and very powerful device that comes pre-installed with the latest Kubuntu release, an official Ubuntu flavor featuring the KDE Plasma Desktop environment, some of the most popular Open Source software, and astonishing hardware components.

        Today, Kubuntu announced on Twitter that the Kubuntu Focus laptop is now available for pre-order with a price tag starting at $2,395.00 USD for the base model, which features 32GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card, and one power supply, but the laptop can go for up to $3,665.00 USD.

    • Server

      • Edge AI server packs in a 16-core Cortex-A72 CPU plus up to 32 i.MX8M SoCs and 128 NPUs

        SolidRun’s “Janux GS31 AI Inference Server” runs Linux on its CEx7 LX2160A Type 7 module equipped with NXP’s 16-core Cortex-A72 LX2160A. The system also supplies up to 32 i.MX8M SoCs for video and up to 128 Grylfalcon Lightspeeur 2803 NPUs via multiple “Snowball” modules.

        When people talk about edge AI servers, they might be referring to some of the high-end embedded systems we regularly cover here at LinuxGizmos or perhaps something more server-like such as SolidRun’s rackmount form factor Janux GS31 AI Inference Server. The system would generally exceed the upper limits of our product coverage, but it’s a particularly intriguing beastie. The Janux GS31 is based on a SolidRun CEx7 LX2160A COM Express Type 7 module, which also powers the SolidRun HoneyComb LX2K networking board that we covered in June.

      • IBM

        • CentOS Linux 8 (1911) Released: Free/Community Version Of RHEL 8.1

          Just four months after the release of first CentOS 8 series based on the Red Hed Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 source code, the second CentOS Linux 8 (1911) was released on Jan 15, 2020.

          If you’re aware, CentOS is the “community version” of RHEL. The current release for CentOS 8, tagged as 1911, is derived from RHEL 8.1 source code, which is fully compatible with the upstream product.

        • Red Hat ups its OpenShift Kubernetes hybrid-cloud game

          When they’re not working on Linux, Red Hat is making it darn clear that job one is the hybrid cloud by way of Kubernetes. In its latest steps to support this, Red Hat is releasing its Kubernetes-based Red Hat OpenShift 4.3 and Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4 to provide multi-cloud Kubernetes container support.

          OpenShift 4.3 is based on Kubernetes 1.16. Red Hat supports customer upgrades from OpenShift 4.2 to 4.3.

          Building on last fall’s developer-friendly OpenShift 4.2, the new OpenShift release brings stronger platform security to Red Hat’s Kubernetes take. Specifically, it brings the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) compliant encryption (FIPS 140-2 Level 1) to OpenShift. FIPS validated cryptography is mandatory for US federal departments that encrypt sensitive data.

        • Huawei has created an alternative to Android and Windows: the project openEuler

          A trade war between the US and Huawei has forced Chinese companies to look for a replacement Android, the license of which was revoked by Google. In the summer of 2019 mobile giant from China has introduced Harmony OS – the concept of a universal operating system for mobile devices, including smartphones, TVs and even wearable electronics. On the weekend unexpectedly Huawei has introduced another OS – openEuler.

          [...]

          It is worth noting that at this point in the project repositories, there was no documentation in languages other than Chinese. Wishing to establish openEulear yourself you can use an. ISO file (3.2 GB), but all the documentation is available in Chinese only.

          We will remind that earlier smartphones Huawei promised to ban in Google and lock your apps. Also Huawei has introduced a smartphone Mate 30 without the support of Google.

        • Google Cloud Now Offering IBM Power SystemsGoogle Cloud Now Offering IBM Power Systems

          With this, customers can now run IBM Power Systems as a service on Google Cloud—whether they are using AIX, IBM i, or Linux on IBM Power.

        • Crafting a future-proof application environment across the hybrid cloud

          Modern information technology (IT) success requires the right investment in infrastructure and tooling. Beyond the tooling, however, the real benchmark for accomplishment lies in the successful development, deployment and operation of applications that power an organization. Ultimately the applications are what drive value to customers, partners and employees.

          The challenge for IT becomes how to combine available technologies to empower development teams to do their work and successfully operate the resulting applications.

          Thinking of the overall organizational IT capacity as an application environment that spans the various cloud locations, on-premises resources and technologies deployed seems daunting. However, it provides a very useful lens through which to look at long term IT strategy.

        • The Red Hat Edge: How Red Hat OpenStack Platforms Delivers the Potential for Nearly 600 Percent ROI

          To conduct this study, IDC interviewed eight organizations asking survey respondents a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions about the impact that Red Hat OpenStack Platform has had on their IT operations, businesses and cost of deploying private cloud services. Interviewees encompassed the financial services, manufacturing, financial technology, information technology, medical research, automotive, education and healthcare sectors.

        • Red Hat Summit 2020 flash sale: get your hoodie before it’s gone!

          Planning to go to Red Hat Summit this year? You don’t want to miss the industry’s premier enterprise open source technology conference, and it’s coming up fast! We’ve got an added incentive for you to sign up today, until end of day January 23 or we run out, we’re giving a special bonus to folks who register for Red Hat Summit.

          Through January 23rd or until we’ve moved through our limited quantity (whichever comes first), those who register for Red Hat Summit will get an exclusive Red Hat Summit hoodie with their Summit registration. We expect these to go fast, so don’t hesitate to register today and take advantage of the flash sale to get Early Bird Red Hat Summit pricing and a little something extra.

        • OpenShift Container Storage 4: Introduction to Ceph

          This Blog will go through Ceph fundamental knowledge for a better understanding of the underlying storage solution used by Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.

        • New and improved Topology view for OpenShift 4.3

          The Topology view in the Red Hat OpenShift console’s Developer perspective is a thoughtfully designed interface that provides a visual representation of an application’s structure. This view helps developers clearly identify one resource type from another, as well as understand the overall communication dynamics within the application. Launched with the 4.2 release of OpenShift, the Topology view has already earned a spotlight in the cloud-native application development arena. The constant feedback cycles and regular follow-ups on the ongoing trends in the developer community have helped to shape up a great experience in the upcoming release. This article focuses on a few showstopper features in the Topology view that were added for OpenShift 4.3.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • FLOSS Weekly 562: Kong

        Kong delivers a next-generation API and service lifecycle management platform designed for modern architectures, including microservices, containers, cloud and serverless. Offering high flexibility, scalability, speed and performance, Kong enables developers and Global 5000 enterprises to reliably secure, connect and orchestrate microservice APIs for modern applications.

      • 2020-01-15 | Linux Headlines

        We say goodbye to a community member, the latest Vulkan update is looking great, while GitHub, IBM, and CentOS all have announcements.

      • 2020-01-16 | Linux Headlines

        Mozilla faces difficult choices after a major layoff, a new release of PyTorch adds long-awaited Java support, GNU Guile sees a significant speedup, and the LLVM community debates the future of decision making for the project.

      • The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 840

        nest, home, dan horror story

      • Compromised Cameras | Self-Hosted 10

        Wyze and Xiaomi suffer major cloud hosted blunders, so Alex tells us about his new fully offline camera secuirty system, tied into Shinobi.

        Plus Chris gets ready for Project Off-Grid’s solar upgrade, our new favorite self-hosted SpeedTest app, and a Ring alternative.

      • Unix keyboard joy | BSD Now 333

        Your Impact on FreeBSD in 2019, Wireguard on OpenBSD Router, Amazon now has FreeBSD/ARM 12, pkgsrc-2019Q4, The Joys of UNIX Keyboards, OpenBSD on Digital Ocean, and more.

    • Kernel Space

      • A medley of performance-related BPF patches

        BPF programs cannot run until they are “attached” to a specific call point. Tracing programs are attached to tracepoints, while networking express data path (XDP) programs are attached to a specific network device. In general, more than one program can be attached at any given location. When it comes time to run attached programs, the kernel will work through a linked list and invoke each program in turn.

        Actually executing a compiled BPF program is done with an indirect jump. Such jumps were never entirely fast, but in the age of speculative-execution vulnerabilities those jumps have been turned into retpolines — a construct that defeats a number of Spectre attacks, but which also turns indirect jumps into something that is far slower than they were before. For cases where BPF programs are invoked frequently, such as for every incoming network packet, that extra overhead hurts.

        There have been a number of efforts aimed at reducing the retpoline performance penalty in various parts of the kernel. The BPF dispatcher patch set is Björn Töpel’s approach to the problem for BPF programs, and for the XDP use case in particular. It maintains a machine-code trampoline containing a direct jump instruction for every attached BPF program; this trampoline must be regenerated whenever a program is added to or removed from the list. When the time comes to call a BPF program, the trampoline is invoked with the address of the program of interest; it then executes a binary search to find the direct-jump instruction corresponding to that program. The jump is then executed, causing the desired program to be run.

        That may seem like a lot of overhead to replace an indirect call, but it is still faster than using a retpoline — by a factor of about three, according to the performance result posted with the patch series. In fact, indirect jumps are so expensive that the dispatcher is competitive even in the absence of retpolines, so it is enabled whether retpolines are in use or not. This code is in its fifth revision and seems likely to make its way into the mainline before too long.

      • Removing the Linux /dev/random blocking pool

        The random-number generation facilities in the kernel have been reworked some over the past few months—but problems in that subsystem have been addressed over an even longer time frame. The most recent changes were made to stop the getrandom() system call from blocking for long periods of time at system boot, but the underlying cause was the behavior of the blocking random pool. A recent patch set would remove that pool and it would seem to be headed for the mainline kernel.

        Andy Lutomirski posted version 3 of the patch set toward the end of December. It makes “two major semantic changes to Linux’s random APIs”. It adds a new GRND_INSECURE flag to the getrandom() system call (though Lutomirski refers to it as getentropy(), which is implemented in glibc using getrandom() with fixed flags); that flag would cause the call to always return the amount of data requested, but with no guarantee that the data is random. The kernel would just make its best effort to give the best random data it has at that point in time. “Calling it ‘INSECURE’ is probably the best we can do to discourage using this API for things that need security.”

        The patches also remove the blocking pool. The kernel currently maintains two pools of random data, one that corresponds to /dev/random and another for /dev/urandom, as described in this 2015 article. The blocking pool is the one for /dev/random; reads to that device will block (thus the name) until “enough” entropy has been gathered from the system to satisfy the request. Further reads from that file will also block if there is insufficient entropy in the pool.

      • Oracle, OpenZFS respond to Linus Torvalds saying ‘Don’t use ZFS’ from @Lunduke on LBRY.tv
      • Oracle, OpenZFS respond to Linus Torvalds saying ‘Don’t use ZFS’

        The reporting around his comments — coming from a wide array of news outlets (some Linux-centric, others less so) — has been heavy on opinion… but light on commentary from the key parties involved.

        In fact, I have yet to see a single article on this topic where the journalist has reached out to the folks that own ZFS (Oracle) or the maintainers of OpenZFS (which was forked from an earlier, open source version of ZFS).

        Let’s correct that.

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel’s Mitigation For CVE-2019-14615 Graphics Vulnerability Obliterates Gen7 iGPU Performance

        Yesterday we noted that the Linux kernel picked up a patch mitigating an Intel Gen9 graphics vulnerability. It didn’t sound too bad at first but then seeing Ivy Bridge Gen7 and Haswell Gen7.5 graphics are also affected raised eyebrows especially with that requiring a much larger mitigation. Now in testing the performance impact, the current mitigation patches completely wreck the performance of Ivybridge/Haswell graphics performance.

        The vulnerability being discussed and analyzed this week is CVE-2019-14615. This CVE still hasn’t been made public over 24 hours later (though there are the Intel SA-00314 details for this disclosure), but from going through kernel patches and other resources, it certainly caught our interest right away and have been benchmarking it since yesterday evening. The CVE-2019-14615 vulnerability amounts to a new information disclosure issue due to insufficient control flow in certain data structures. Local access is required for exploiting this control flow issue in the hardware, but it’s not yet known/published if say WebGL within web browsers could exploit this issue. This is a hardware issue with all operating systems being affected. Our testing today, of course, is under Linux.

    • Applications

      • broot Is An Interactive Treeview Directory Navigation Tool For The Command Line

        broot is an interactive command line tool written in Rust for navigating directories using a tree view and fuzzy search. It also incorporates a ncdu like disk usage mode.

        The tool is inspired by the tree command (which is not interactively searchable though, and doesn’t act as a launcher) and the excellent fzf command line fuzzy finder, allowing users to navigate to a directory and locate a particular file with the minimum amount of keystrokes.

        It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. There are some rough edges on Windows though – some things need fixing, and it’s quite slow on Windows for now. It works great and it’s very fast on Linux though (and I assume macOS, although I don’t own a Mac so I didn’t try it).

      • VokoscreenNG – Vokoscreen Screencaster Rewritten From Scratch

        VokoscreenNG, open-source screen recording software formerly called Vokoscreen, released its first stable version days ago.

        Vokoscreen 2.5 is the last version with ffmpeg and will not more continue developed. The new VokoscreenNG, which is based of Qt and GStreamer, has been rewritten from scratch with new modern UI. And it works on Linux and Windows.

        VokoscreenNG so far does not provide any binary packages, though Linux binary Appimage and Flatpak package were requested. At the moment, you can build the software from the source.

      • Kubic with Kubernetes 1.17.0 released

        The Kubic Project is proud to announce that Snapshot 20200113 has just been released containing Kubernetes 1.17.0.

        This is a particually exciting release with Cloud Provider Labels becoming a GA-status feature, and Volume Snapshotting now reaching Beta-status.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • When Kickstarter goes wrong for indie games: Drift Stage

        A lot of the time Kickstarter (and other crowdfunding services) for indie games goes well, in fact the vast majority of the time all is fine. Sometimes though, everything breaks down as is the case with Drift Stage.

        Drift Stage was successfully funded on Kickstarter back in February of 2015, with a reasonable sum (compared with other projects) of $57,720 to make their modern take on retro racing a reality. Over the years, they released multiple demo versions and showed it off at Minecon (the Minecraft convention) in 2016 which you can still find a demo of here on itch.io and all seemed well on the surface.

        Time went on, backers noticed a lack of new details and progress on it with many trying to find out what was actually going on. In December of 2018, the Artist on the project Charles “DelkoDuck” Blanchard posted on Steam to finally clear it up and it wasn’t good. The programmer and co-creator, Chase Pettit, apparently did a bit of a disappearing act, becoming hard to get in contact with and claimed they were just too busy for it.

      • Open-world puzzler ‘Bonfire Peaks’ has you climb mysterious ruins and set fire to your belongings

        Arriving with Linux support on May 5, from the developer of Pipe Push Paradise and Hiding Spot is the open-world puzzle game Bonfire Peaks.

        Not much info on it yet, with it only just being announced. From what the developer said it’s a “difficult open world puzzle game about climbing mysterious ruins and setting fire to your belongings” that’s being made in Unity. They do at least have a trailer up you can see below:

      • Action-packed drone building game ‘Nimbatus’ has a huge update, we have 3 copies to give away

        We’ve teamed up with Stray Fawn Studio again to give away three copies of their space drone construction game, Nimbatus, plus there’s a massive update out now.

        So what’s new in the “Mothership Update”? A lot and it sounds awesome!

        Your Nimbatus mothership can be upgraded now, there’s some Steam Achievements with drone skins you can unlock and they will be adding even more in the next update. There’s a new “Programmer” Captain to pick which unlocks everything but it only allows you to build autonomous drones (no manual piloting), proper save file management giving more freedom, new difficulty settings, multiple new locations including a Jungle Ruin and new rewards when you advance through the campaign. There’s also new building parts, bug fixes and balancing changes

      • Core Defense aims to mix up the Tower Defense genre with deck-building and randomness – out now

        Core Defense, available today in First Access on itch.io is a Tower Defense game that’s trying to be a little different. Throwing out predefined waves and rewards, in favour of a little random generation. Note: The developer provided an early key for GamingOnLinux.

        Having everything mostly set in place is usually a big part of Tower Defense, since you know what you will be dealing with and often from where. Throwing that out to keep you on your toes is certainly interesting, as is the rewards system of getting you to pick from a randomised set of rewards each time which could be a new tower or an upgrade.

      • Chaotic platformer with a curved gameworld ‘CreatorCrate’ getting a demo next week

        You’ve played plenty of platformers before, but have you played a platformer where the entire world is a great big spinning space station with variable gravity? CreatorCrate has a fun idea.

        In CreatorCrate you play as a little robot that eats anything, to then print out shiny new objects that might be a bit more useful. Gravity is different throughout the space station, except in the middle where it vanishes altogether. Currently in development by Jori Ryan, it sadly didn’t pass the Kickstarter test with it not getting enough funding. Ryan carried on development and they’ve let us know that next week on January 22nd it’s going to get a public demo.

      • The Frictional Games strange teaser appears to be growing

        Frictional Games, the team that craft some very interesting horror experiences like SOMA and Amnesia are teasing something and it appears to now be growing.

        We posted about it recently, since then checking back each day on their dedicated teaser website to see if anything is different. It appears the video file playing has a date on it when checking the page source, which they update each time a new video is put up.

      • Valve give a little more info on what ‘Gamescope’ actually does for Linux gaming

        Recently, a Valve developer revived steamcompmgr (the SteamOS compositing and window manager) and renamed it to Gamescope. After writing about it yesterday here on GOL, they’ve now given some more info on what it actually does.

        Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais is spearheading the effort and a few hours ago they actually gave it a readme, mentioning that “gamescope does the same thing as steamcompmgr, but with less extra copies and latency”

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • Xfce 4.16 Desktop Environment Switches to Client-Side Decorations

        Work on the upcoming Xfce 4.16 desktop environment continues in 2020 with a lot of new features and improvements that the community can test drive using the Xfce 4.15 development branch.

        Xfce developer Simon Steinbeiß reports on the latest changes and improvements that have been added to the forthcoming Xfce 4.16 desktop environment release, and the biggest new feature so far is support for client-side decorations (CSD) or GtkHeaderBars for all dialogs.

        “The first big step in this direction has now happened in libxfce4ui, our main user interface library. With the change, almost all dialogs will be converted to using CSD by default without any code changes in existing projects,” said developer Simon Steinbeiß in a recent blog post.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • November/December in KDE PIM

          Following Kévin here’s the summary of what happened around KDE PIM in the last two months. While this post got slightly delayed due to the holidays, work didn’t slow down at all. More than 1300 changes by 26 contributors landed in the KDE PIM repositories, and we got the 19.12.0 release out in December.

        • Jonathan Riddell: KUserFeedback 0.9.90 Beta Release

          KUserFeedback is a framework for collecting user feedback for applications via telemetry and surveys.

          The library comes with an accompanying control and result UI tool.

        • Plasma 5.18 LTS Beta

          This new version of your favorite desktop environment adds neat new features that make your life easier, including clearer notifications, streamlined settings for your system and the desktop layout, much improved GTK integration, and more. Plasma 5.18 is easier and more fun, while at the same time allowing you to do more tasks faster.

          Apart from all the cool new stuff, Plasma 5.18 also comes with LTS status. LTS stands for “Long Term Support” and this means 5.18 will be updated and maintained by KDE contributors for the next couple of years (regular versions are maintained for 4 months). So, if you are thinking of updating or migrating your school, company or organization to Plasma, this version is your best bet. You get the most recent stable version of Plasma for the long term.

          Read on to discover everything that is new in Plasma 5.18 LTS…

        • Here’s What’s New in KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS

          With a beta build now available for testing I figured it was time to recap the key changes included in KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS so that those of you who ride the plasma wave have some idea of what to expect when it arrives.

          And do expect a varied set of changes when it does, as there’s lots planned, including notifications that are easier to understand, streamlined organisation of system settings, better integration of GTK applications, and plenty more.

          Let’s take a closer look.

        • KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS Reaches Beta With Much Better GTK App Integration

          Out this morning is the first beta of KDE Plasma 5.18, which is also the project’s first long-term support (LTS) release since Plasma 5.12.

          Some of the changes to find with the forthcoming KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS include:

          - Support for GTK applications using client-side decorations. Additionally, GTK applications now inherit Plasma settings for fonts / icons / cursors and more.

        • KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS Desktop Environment Enters Beta, Here’s What’s New

          The KDE Project announced today the general availability of the beta version of the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems and Linux-powered devices.

          KDE Plasma 5.18 is a major version of the popular Linux desktop environment as it’s the third LTS (Long Term Support) series, coming three and a half years after the first LTS branch and two years after the second one. This means that KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS will be supported with maintenance update for the next two years.

          “LTS stands for “Long Term Support” and this means 5.18 will be updated and maintained by KDE contributors for the next couple of years (regular versions are maintained for 4 months). So, if you are thinking of updating or migrating your school, company or organization to Plasma, this version is your best bet,” reads today’s announcement.

    • Distributions

      • Top 5 Linux Distros for Windows Users

        When Microsoft initially released Windows 7 in October 2009, the software giant committed to providing ten years of support for its popular operating system. The much-maligned Microsoft was true to their word, support for Windows 7 ended just yesterday a little over ten years after its release.

        According to NetMarketShare, the Windows 7 EOL will affect over one-third of PCs that use Windows 7. That’s hundreds of millions of people. Many no doubt will foolishly continue to use the unsupported OS, placing their PCs at “greater risk for viruses and malware.” Still, a great many others will incur the $139 to “upgrade to Windows 10.

        However, there is a third option. A much better option. To upgrade is to “raise (something) to a higher standard, in particular, improve (equipment or machinery) by adding or replacing components.”

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Running for the openSUSE Board again or: reelect (Sarah);

          I was in the openSUSE Board for 2 years in the past and I have enjoyed this time to bring along the openSUSE project.

          I want to run for the openSUSE Board again after a short break about 1 year. I am happy that the existing openSUSE Board has proceeded my idea with the foundation so successfully. But I would be happy about being allowed to finalize this/ my topic together with the other Board Members as my old idea.
          Additionally, I have watched the decreasing reputation. Public representations of openSUSE have been missing by the openSUSE Board in the last year. I would increase that on the same way I have done that at our university.

      • Arch Family

        • Now using Zstandard instead of xz for package compression

          zstd and xz trade blows in their compression ratio. Recompressing all packages to zstd with their options yields a total ~0.8% increase in package size on all of their packages combined, but the decompression time for all packages saw a ~1300% speedup.

          We already have hundreds of zstd-compressed packages in our repositories, and as packages get updated more will keep rolling in. No user-facing issues have been found as of yet, so things appear to be working.

        • Everything you need to know about pacman
        • rsync compatibility

          Our rsync package was shipped with bundled zlib to provide compatibility with the old-style –compress option up to version 3.1.0. Version 3.1.1 was released on 2014-06-22 and is shipped by all major distributions now.

          So we decided to finally drop the bundled library and ship a package with system zlib. This also fixes security issues, actual ones and in future. Go and blame those running old versions if you encounter errors with rsync 3.1.3-3.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • A brand-new desktop theme in works for Ubuntu 20.04

          As we get closer to the release of Ubuntu 20.04, we’re finding out more and more information about how the new operating system update would look like. From what we’ve learned thus far, there’s a new desktop theme in the works that will give the users a fresh look and feel of Ubuntu.

          As Ubuntu users would already know, the operating system has been using Yaru as its UI theme since v18.10. Of course, this is an important period for Canonical as the release of Ubuntu 20.04 is right around the corner, or the 23rd of April, to be more specific. So, the minds behind Yaru considered this the perfect time to conduct a meeting with Ubuntu’s design team at the official Canonical headquarters located in London.

        • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Gets Fresh Desktop Theme

          As Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is due to be released in April 2020, the Ubuntu Desktop team has announced a new default theme.

          For those who don’t know, Yaru is the theme being used since Ubuntu 18.10. Yaru, Canonical Design, and Ubuntu Desktop team have geared up collaboratively to ship the successor of the Yaru theme in the upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS version.

          [...]

          The option of switching between these variations will be available in the settings. These variations will also be available for shell elements, such as the top bar and notification bubbles.

          To make the upcoming Ubuntu Desktop version more distinctive, more upgradation in the design of the folder icons and other elements is continued, which will be disclosed at a later stage.

        • Our 2019 in Review

          2019 was an intense and record-breaking year for us at elementary. You can read about the monthly updates in detail, but let’s take a look back at milestones from the year—and then look forward to our goals for 2020.

        • elementary OS 6 Will Be Based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

          The elementary OS team is kicking off 2020 with a retrospective of the things they managed to do in 2019 and a set of goals for the year ahead as they want to further improve their Linux-based operating system.

          In a recent blog post, elementary co-founder Cassidy James Blaede talks about an “intense and record-breaking” 2019 and also highlights some of the major goals for 2020 while also revealing the fact that work on the next major release, elementary OS 6, is on the way and it will be based on the upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system.

          “Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will be coming out this year, and subsequently we plan to release elementary OS 6 with a 20.04 base. We’ve begun some of the underlying work to migrate to and build against newer libraries, but much of that work still lies ahead,” said Cassidy James Blaede, Co-founder & CXO of elementary.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • 3 open source tools to manage your contacts

        I have collected a lot of email addresses over the course of my, well, life so far. And managing all that data can be a bit of a pain. There are web-based services, but they aren’t as fast as a local copy.

        A few days ago, I talked about vdirsyncer for managing calendars. Vdirsyncer also handles contacts using the CardDAV protocol. Vdirsyncer supports google_contacts and carddav to do contact synchronizations in addition to the filesystem store it uses for calendars, but the fileext setting will change, so you won’t be trying to store contacts in calendar files.

      • Top Open Source Machine Learning Tools

        Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and other tech giants including renowned developers have already taken a nimble step towards the Machine learning and Artificial intelligence to make the dream of human beings of creating a highly intelligent machine. And to armed others to partake in this journey of building a conscious machine for the future, there are quite a good number of open source tools avail by tech giants to integrate artificial intelligence into applications.

        Yet, the artificial intelligence and machine learning are at very early stage, so don?t expect something like some sci-fi movie, however developers those are into AI and ML can use the open-source software we are going to discuss for writing apps for better speech recognition, Image recognization, Voice assistance, developing a neural network and more? Take a look at some of the most popular open-source solutions.

      • Events

        • Call for FOSDEM 2020 Booth volunteers

          This year we’ve got one of the high-traffic locations, on the ground floor where Free Software Foundation Europe set up last year, right next to the stairway to *all* the dev rooms. So we’re looking for volunteers to come and talk about both Perl and Raku at FOSDEM 2020 in Brussels. If I haven’t already talked to you, please email me at drforr [at] pobox (dot) com and give me an idea of your availability and what you’d want to do. We’ve made arrangements for the usual booth swag, and will have pamphlets to hand out and books to sell on both Raku and Perl.

        • A day in the life at SUSECON 2020. Here’s what to expect!

          We are roughly about 9 weeks out from SUSECON 2020 taking place in Dublin, Ireland! Wondering what you can expect from this years event? I’ve got you covered!

          Plan to be inspired by keynotes, 150+ breakout sessions and more certification opportunities than ever before! Expect the latest innovations in Linux, Ceph, Cloud Foundry, and a host of other great open source technologies now available from SUSE and from our technology partners. You can also plan to network with open source technologists and experts in their field, gain new skills in our deep dive hands-on technical sessions and gain insight through talking with peers. Your SUSECON pass brings you the best content and value of any conference in the industry, from hands-on training to complimentary certifications to meeting with experts — it’s all here!

        • Daniel Stenberg: You’re invited to curl up 2020: Berlin

          curl up is the main (and only?) event of the year where curl developers and enthusiasts get together physically in a room for a full weekend of presentations and discussions on topics that are centered around curl and its related technologies.

          We move the event around to different countries every year to accommodate different crowds better and worse every year – and this time we’re back again in Germany – where we once started the curl up series back in 2017.

          The events are typically small with a very friendly spirit. 20-30 persons

      • Web Browsers

        • Chromium

          • Google to kill third-party Chrome cookies in two years

            So it’ll slowly squish third-party cookies, but only after it’s found alternatives. What does that squishing look like, and what are those alternatives?

            The company already announced that it would limit third-party cookies to HTTPS connections, which will make them more secure. It plans to start doing that next month.

            It will also treat cookies that don’t use the SameSite label as first-party only. SameSite is a tag that developers can include with cookies. It sets the rules for exchanging the cookie with other sites. A bank could use it to avoid sending session cookies to another site that links to a customer’s transaction page, for example, so that a third party couldn’t harvest session information. So in future, developers have to be upfront about how third-party cookies will work, or Chrome won’t send them between sites at all.

          • Chrome’s Move To Stomp Out Third Party Cookies? Good For Privacy, Good For Google’s Ad Business… Or Both?

            We’ve talked in the past how efforts solely focused on “protecting privacy” without looking at the wider tech ecosystem and the challenges its facing may result in unintended consequences, and now we’ve got another example. Google has announced that it’s beginning a process to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome. Looking at this solely through the lens of privacy, many privacy advocates are celebrating this move, saying that it will better protect user privacy. But… if you viewed it from a more competitive standpoint, it also does much to give Google significantly more power over the ad market and could harm many other companies. Former Facebook CSO, Alex Stamos’ take is pretty dead on here:

          • Windows 10 users: Google reveals when it’s killing off Chrome apps

            Chrome apps that work offline for Windows, Mac, and Linux have been around since 2013, but Google has now committed firm dates for switching off support for them.

          • Google sets final timeline for killing and replacing Chrome Apps

            Back in 2016, Google announced that it was killing Chrome Apps in favor of the web. This process began with that category disappearing from the Web Store in late 2017, and Google now has a final timeline for the deprecation.

            Chrome Apps launched in 2013 to a different state of the web. “Packaged Apps” were built with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to offer an “experience comparable to a native application.” They were touted as allowing for a wider user base than just one OS, and targeted towards device manufacturers and educators.

            Citing “substantial progress” since then, Google believes that “modern browsers puts the Web in a good position to answer the vast majority of use cases.” Touted first-class experiences include Google Earth and Figma for designers, as well as Progressive Web Apps.

        • Mozilla

          • Firefox 73 Enters Development with New Default Zoom Settings, Improved Audio

            With the Firefox 72 release hitting the stable update channel last week, Mozilla kicked off the development of the next version of its popular, open-source and cross-platform web browser, Firefox 73.

            Now that Mozilla has adopted the monthly release cycle for new Firefox versions, the Open Source company aims to address various bugs and improve the functionality, reliability, and stability of its web browser for all supported platforms.

            Firefox 72 introduced Picture-in-Picture support for Linux and macOS users, the ability to block fingerprinting scripts by default on all supported platforms using the built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection feature, new developer features, and removed the annoying notification request pop-ups.

            With the Firefox 73 release, Mozilla adds the ability to set a default zoom level that’s applicable for all websites. The new option will be implemented in the Preferences page under the “Language and Appearance” section, allowing users to scale the zoom levels up or down from the default 100% setting.

          • Readying for the Future at Mozilla

            Mozilla must do two things in this era: Continue to excel at our current work, while we innovate in the areas most likely to impact the state of the internet and internet life. From security and privacy network architecture to the surveillance economy, artificial intelligence, identity systems, control over our data, decentralized web and content discovery and disinformation — Mozilla has a critical role to play in helping to create product solutions that address the challenges in these spaces.

            Creating the new products we need to change the future requires us to do things differently, including allocating resources for this purpose. We’re making a significant investment to fund innovation. In order to do that responsibly, we’ve also had to make some difficult choices which led to the elimination of roles at Mozilla which we announced internally today.

          • Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue

            In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization’s new revenue-generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this decision. The overall number may still be higher, though, as Mozilla is still looking into how this decision will affect workers in the UK and France. In 2018, Mozilla Corporation (as opposed to the much smaller Mozilla Foundation) said it had about 1,000 employees worldwide.

            “You may recall that we expected to be earning revenue in 2019 and 2020 from new subscription products as well as higher revenue from sources outside of search. This did not happen,” Baker writes in her memo. “Our 2019 plan underestimated how long it would take to build and ship new, revenue-generating products. Given that, and all we learned in 2019 about the pace of innovation, we decided to take a more conservative approach to projecting our revenue for 2020. We also agreed to a principle of living within our means, of not spending more than we earn for the foreseeable future.”

          • Mozilla lays off 70 employees to prepare for tough years ahead
          • Layoff survival guide

            If you’re reading these lines, you may have recently been laid off from your job. Or maybe, depending on your country and its laws, you’re waiting to know if you’re being laid off.

          • No Mo’zilla for about 100 techies today: Firefox maker lays off staff as boss talks of ‘difficult choices’ and funding

            On Wednesday Mozilla Corporation, maker of the Firefox browser and would-be internet privacy protector, said it plans to lay off an undisclosed number of employees.

            “Creating the new products we need to change the future requires us to do things differently, including allocating resources for this purpose,” said Mozilla executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker in a blog post.

            “We’re making a significant investment to fund innovation. In order to do that responsibly, we’ve also had to make some difficult choices which led to the elimination of roles at Mozilla which we announced internally today.”

            A Mozilla spokesperson declined to provide a copy of Baker’s internal memo discussing the job cuts, said to affect 70 people. The spokesperson declined to confirm a specific number of affected employees but said the organization’s total number of employees “was just under 1,100 prior to today’s announcement and will be just over a 1,000 going forward.”

          • Niko Matsakis: Async Interview #4: Florian Gilcher

            Hello! For the latest async interview, I spoke with Florian Gilcher (skade). Florian is involved in the async-std project, but he’s also one of the founders of Ferrous Systems, a Rust consulting firm that also does a lot of trainings. In that capacity, he’s been teaching people to use async Rust now since Rust’s 1.0 release.

            [...]

            We discussed the futures crate for a while. In particular, the question of whether we should be “stabilizing” traits by moving them into the standard library, or whether we can use the futures crate as a “semi-stable” home. There are obviously advantages either way.

            On the one hand, there is no clearer signal for stability than adding something to libstd. On the other, the future crate facade gives a “finer grained” ability to talk about semver.

            One thing Florian noted is that the futures crate itself, although it has evolved a lot, has always maintained an internal consistency, which is good.

            One other point Florian emphasized is that people really want to be building applications, so in some way the most important thing is to be moving towards stability, so they can avoid worrying about the sand shifting under their feet.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Welcoming the new Board of Directors at The Document Foundation

          In December, members of The Document Foundation voted for a new Board of Directors. The Board is the main administration of the Foundation’s projects and teams – including LibreOffice and The Document Foundation. The new Board will begin work after FOSDEM in February – and there are some new faces to welcome! Let’s hear from them…

        • Image Compression

          Finally LibreOffice image compression did what you expect. Shrink your image or the impress presentation and don’t destroy your pictures.

      • CMS

        • Kiwi TCMS 7.3

          We’re happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 7.3!

          IMPORTANT: this is a critical security update for CVE-2019-19844: Potential account hijack via password reset form!

          Also migrates to Django 3.0 and includes several other improvement and bug-fixes!

        • WordPress Leaders Nominated for CMX Awards

          Two members of the WordPress leadership team were nominated for excellent work in their field in the first ever Community Industry Awards. Andrea Middleton is nominated for Executive Leader of a Community Team and Josepha Haden Chomphosy is nominated for Community Professional of the Year.

          [...]

          Andrea has been a vital community strategist for the WordPress project since 2011. Her work to build and support a vibrant community has played a part in the success around the popular open source CMS. Her work is sponsored by Automattic, where she leads a team that focuses on educational efforts, funding, and in-person community-driven events that serve a global base.

          Josepha has been the Executive Director of the WordPress project since 2019. Her work to coordinate and guide volunteer efforts spans 20 teams and involves thousands of volunteers. Her work is also sponsored by Automattic, where she leads the open source division that focuses on all aspects of open source contribution including design, development, volunteer engagement, and the health of the overall WordPress ecosystem.

      • BSD

        • Insight into Why Hyperbola GNU/Linux is Turning into Hyperbola BSD

          In late December 2019, Hyperbola announced that they would be making major changes to their project. They have decided to drop the Linux kernel in favor of forking the OpenBSD kernel. This announcement only came months after Project Trident announced that they were going in the opposite direction (from BSD to Linux).

          Hyperbola also plans to replace all software that is not GPL v3 compliant with new versions that are.

          To get more insight into the future of their new project, I interviewed Andre, co-founder of Hyperbola.

      • FSF

        • First LibrePlanet 2020 keynote announcement: Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle

          The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced Brewster Kahle as its first keynote speaker for LibrePlanet 2020. The annual technology and social justice conference will be held in the Boston area on March 14 and 15, 2020, with the theme “Free the Future.”

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Guile 3.0.0 released

            We are ecstatic and relieved to announce the release of GNU Guile 3.0.0. This is the first release in the new stable 3.0 release series.

            See the release announcement for full details and a download link.

            The principal new feature in Guile 3.0 is just-in-time (JIT) native code generation. This speeds up the performance of all programs. Compared to 2.2, microbenchmark performance is around twice as good on the whole, though some individual benchmarks are up to 32 times as fast.

          • GNU Guile 3.0 Released With JIT Code Generation For Up To 4x Better Performance

            GNU Guile 3.0 has been released, the GNU’s implementation of the Scheme programming language with various extra features. The big news with Guile 3.0 is better performance.

            GNU Guile 3.0 adds just-in-time (JIT) code generation yielding up to four times faster performance. JIT code generation for Guile is enabled automatically and transparently. Guile 3.0 moves its virtual machine instruction set to be lower-level now to allow for more optimizations and has a variety of other improvements.

          • GNU Guile 3.0.0 released
            We are delighted to announce GNU Guile release 3.0.0, the first in the
new 3.0 stable release series.

Compared to the previous stable series (2.2.x), Guile 3.0 adds support
for just-in-time native code generation, speeding up all Guile programs.
See the NEWS extract at the end of the mail for full details.


The Guile web page is located at http://gnu.org/software/guile/, and
among other things, it contains a copy of the Guile manual and pointers
to more resources.

Guile is an implementation of the Scheme programming language, packaged
for use in a wide variety of environments.  In addition to implementing
the R5RS, R6RS, and R7RS Scheme standards, Guile includes full access to
POSIX system calls, networking support, multiple threads, dynamic
linking, a foreign function call interface, powerful string processing,
and HTTP client and server implementations.

Guile can run interactively, as a script interpreter, and as a Scheme
compiler to VM bytecode.  It is also packaged as a library so that
applications can easily incorporate a complete Scheme interpreter/VM.
An application can use Guile as an extension language, a clean and
powerful configuration language, or as multi-purpose "glue" to connect
primitives provided by the application.  It is easy to call Scheme code
from C code and vice versa.  Applications can add new functions, data
types, control structures, and even syntax to Guile, to create a
domain-specific language tailored to the task at hand.

      • Programming/Development

        • Federico Mena-Quintero: Exposing C and Rust APIs: some thoughts from librsvg

          Librsvg exports two public APIs: the C API that is in turn available to other languages through GObject Introspection, and the Rust API.

          You could call this a use of the facade pattern on top of the rsvg_internals crate. That crate is the actual implementation of librsvg, and exports an interface with many knobs that are not exposed from the public APIs. The knobs are to allow for the variations in each of those APIs.

          This post is about some interesting things that have come up during the creation/separation of those public APIs, and the implications of having an internals library that implements both.

        • Dirk Eddelbuettel: RQuantLib 0.4.11: More polish

          New year, new RQuantLib! A new release 0.4.11 of RQuantLib arrived overnight on CRAN; and a Debian upload will follow shortly.

          QuantLib is a very comprehensice free/open-source library for quantitative finance; RQuantLib connects it to the R environment and language.

          This version does three new things. First, we fixed an oversight on our end and now allow a null calendar (as the C++ API). Second, the package switched to tinytest as a few of my other packages have done, allowing for very flexible testing during development and deployment—three cheers for easily testing installed packages too. Third, and per a kind nag from Kurt Hornik I updated a few calls which the current QuantLib 1.17 marks as deprecated. That lead to a compile issue with 1.16 so the change is conditional in one part.

        • Top Skills In Demand For 2020 [Ed: One cannot properly study jobs in need based only on ads in a site owned and controlled by Microsoft]

          The start of the year, when it is traditional to come up with self-improving resolutions, is a good time to contemplate new job opportunities. So what are employers looking for in 2020? Here we have two lists of the most sought skills.

          The first thing to note is that both of them are biased and there is little common ground between them. The divergence is because they have been constructed with differing goals. As a jobs site Dice is on the look out for the terms that crop up in job postings while LinkedIn Learning is hoping to sign you (or your employer) up to its skill building courses which are provided by Lynda.com, the online learning platform which LinkedIn acquired in 2015.

        • Google open-sources tool to boost 2FA adoption in npm

          Google has open-sourced an npm publishing tool for heightened security across organizations? client libraries.

          The tool, Wombat Dressing Room, aims to reduce the security risks associated with the automation of npm publishing.

          ?On my team, a small number of developers manage over 75 Node.js libraries,? Benjamin Coe, developer engineer at Google, said in an announcement on Friday (January 10).

          ?We see automation as key to making this possible,? he said.

        • This Week in Rust 321

          Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but didn’t know where to start? Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started!

        • LLVM Developers Discuss Improved Decision Making Process

          LLVM project founder Chris Lattner has proposed a new decision making process for the LLVM compiler stack around new sub-project proposals, new social policies, changes to core infrastructure, and other key changes.

          Lattner is proposing a process similar to the Swift language’s Evolution Process (to which Lattner has been involved with Swift), Rust’s RFC process, Python PEP, and other similar processes for different programming languages. The motivation is to provide clearer steps for developers wishing to propose effectively fundamental changes to the project with no code owners. And, yes, there still is the LLVM Foundation for more project related matters where as the process changes here are technical focused.

        • LLVM 10 Adds Option To Help Offset Intel JCC Microcode Performance Impact

          Disclosed back in November was the Intel Jump Conditional Code Erratum that necessitated updated CPU microcode to mitigate and with that came with a nearly across the board performance impact. But Intel developers had been working on assembler patches for helping to reduce that performance hit. The GNU Assembler patches were merged back in December while now ahead of LLVM 10.0 that alternative toolchain has an option for helping to recover some of the lost performance.

          On the GNU side the exposed option is “-mbranches-within-32B-boundaries” for altering the handling of jump instructions to aide in reducing the performance hit from the Intel CPU microcode update for Skylake through Cascadelake. (More details in the original JCC article, which includes early benchmarks of the JCC impact and of the mitigated support that has been available within Intel’s Clear Linux since the disclosure date.)

        • RcppRedis 0.1.10: Switch to tinytest

          Another minor release of RcppRedis just arrived on CRAN, following a fairly long break since the last release in October 2018.

          RcppRedis is one of several packages connecting R to the fabulous Redis in-memory datastructure store (and much more). RcppRedis does not pretend to be feature complete, but it may do some things faster than the other interfaces, and also offers an optional coupling with MessagePack binary (de)serialization via RcppMsgPack. The package has carried production loads for several years now.

          This release switches to the fabulous tinytest package, allowing for very flexible testing during development and deployment—three cheers for easily testing installed packages too.

        • Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn COBOL

          COBOL is an acronym which stands for Common Business-Oriented Language. The US Department of Defense, in a conference, formed CODASYL (Conference on Data Systems Language) to develop a language for meeting business data processing needs which is now known as COBOL.

          COBOL is a standard language that can be compiled and executed on various machines. It’s ideally suited for business-oriented applications as it can handle huge volumes of data. It provides numerous debugging and testing tools. COBOL is a structured language; it has different divisions, so it’s easy to debug. The language is not designed for writing systems programs.

          COBOL is one of the oldest computer languages.

        • Perl / Raku

        • Python

          • The 9th Annual PyLadies Auction

            If you haven’t attended one previously, you’re missing out! There’s charity. There’s competition. There’s laughter, food, and drinks. There are auction paddles flying in the air as people graciously give money where it has impact.

            The PyLadies auction holds a special place in my heart – I attended my first PyCon in 2015 thanks to financial aid from PyLadies. If you haven’t heard of PyLadies before, we are an international mentorship group with a focus on helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community. Last year, the auction raised over $44,000 from the 58 items auctioned off.

          • A Primer on the Python Game Framework

            Computer games are a great way to introduce people to coding and computer science. Since I was a player in my youth, the lure of writing video games was the reason I learned to code. Of course, when I learned Python, my first instinct was to write a Python game.

            While Python makes learning to code more accessible for everyone, the choices for video game writing can be limited, especially if you want to write arcade games with great graphics and catchy sound effects. For many years, Python game programmers were limited to the pygame framework. Now, there’s another choice.

            The arcade library is a modern Python framework for crafting games with compelling graphics and sound. Object-oriented and built for Python 3.6 and up, arcade provides the programmer with a modern set of tools for crafting great Python game experiences.

          • Things You Need to Know Before Hiring Developers for Your Startup
          • More efficient way to sum a list comprehension

            List comprehensions in Python let you create a list declaratively, much like the way you would describe the set in English.

          • Airflow Case Study: ProofPort

            Airflow is an open source tool under the Apache Software Foundation developed by Airbnb. Simply put, Airflow is a workflow orchestration platform. Even so, it is most commonly used for data processing (ETL). It has been very successful and has become the industry standard for batch data processing.

          • Python pip
          • Reuven Lerner made one of the first 100 websites… ever… and other things I learned recording his DevJourney
          • Create a daily earning database with Python SQLite

            In this chapter, we will start a project which will then record my daily earning in the future. We will create the earing table and populate the first row of data into that table. I can then view my earning table using DB Browser which is a browser uses to create, edit, plot and view the SQLite table’s items.

            First of all, let us go to the homepage of DB Browser to download DB Browser through this link. I will temporarily use this tool to view my SQLite table but my final objective is to create my own SQLIte table viewer using the tkinter module. I will go phase by phase to accomplish my objective.

          • Build REST API with Flask & SQLAlchemy

            Flask is a great framework that enables you to build web applications quickly with Python. It’s fast, small, and fun to work with. In this tutorial, we’re going to build a RESTful API with Flask framework, and some other supporting tools.

            The objective of this tutorial is to understand the concept of building a Flask server from the ground up, learn how to commuticate with SQL databases via object-relational mapper, as well as design a RESTful API with object-oriented design pattern.

          • User Accounts With django-allauth – Building SaaS #41

            In this episode, we added django-allauth to create accounts that default to email instead of using usernames. We added the package, configured some templates, and created tests.

            We continued to look at Will Vincent’s django-allauth post on creating user accounts with email and passwords.

            django-allauth let’s us swap out username and email so that users won’t need to create a username, which is the behavior that I want for this service.

          • Variable-Length Arguments in Python with *args and **kwargs

            Some functions have no arguments, others have multiple. There are times we have functions with arguments we don’t know about beforehand. We may have a variable number of arguments because we want to offer a flexible API to other developers or we don’t know the input size. With Python, we can create functions to accept any amount of arguments.

            In this article, we will look at how we can define and use functions with variable length arguments. These functions can accept an unknown amount of input, either as consecutive entries or named arguments.

          • Some median Python NaNsense

            Anybody who has ever taken a numerical analysis course understands that floating-point arithmetic on computers is a messy affair. Even so, it is easy to underestimate just how messy things can be. This topic came to the fore in an initially unrelated python-ideas mailing-list thread; what should the Python statistics module do with floating-point values that are explicitly not numbers?
            Kemal Diri doubtless did not mean to start a massive thread with this request to add a built-in function to the language to calculate the average of the values in a list. That request was quickly dismissed, but the developers went on to the seemingly strange behavior of the statistics module’s median() function when presented with floating-point not-a-number values.

          • Toward a conclusion for Python dictionary “addition”

            One of Guido van Rossum’s last items of business as he finished his term on the inaugural steering council for Python was to review the Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) that proposes a new update and union operators for dictionaries. He would still seem to be in favor of the idea, but it will be up to the newly elected steering council and whoever the council chooses as the PEP-deciding delegate (i.e. BDFL-Delegate). Van Rossum provided some feedback on the PEP and, inevitably, the question of how to spell the operator returned, but the path toward getting a decision on it is now pretty clear.

            [...]

            At the beginning of December, Van Rossum posted his review of the PEP to the python-ideas mailing list. He encouraged the authors (Brandt Bucher and Steven D’Aprano) to request a BDFL-Delegate for the PEP from the steering council, noting that he would not be on the council after the end of the year. D’Aprano indicated that he would be doing so. Apparently that happened, because, tucked away in the notes from the November and December steering council meetings was a mention that a BDFL-Delegate had been assigned—none other than Van Rossum himself.

            In his review, he comes down strongly in favor of | and |= and had some other minor suggestions. He said: “All in all I would recommend to the SC to go forward with this proposal, targeting Python 3.9, assuming the operators are changed to | and |=, and the PEP is brought more in line with the PEP editing guidelines from PEP 1 and PEP 12.” Given that, and that he is the decision maker for the PEP, it would seem to be smooth sailing for its acceptance.

            That did not stop some from voicing objections to the PEP as a whole or the spelling of the operator in particular, of course, though the discussion was collegial as is so often the case in the Python world. Van Rossum thought that | might be harder for newcomers, but was not particularly concerned about that: “I don’t think beginners should be taught these operators as a major tool in their toolbox”. But Ryan Gonzalez thought that beginners might actually find that spelling easier because of its congruence to the Python set union operator.

            Serhiy Storchaka is not a fan of the PEP in general, but believes that | is a better choice than +. He thinks there are already other ways to accomplish the same things that the operators would provide and that their use may be error-prone. He also had a performance concern, but Brett Cannon pointed out that it might only exist for CPython; PyPy and other Pythons might not have the same performance characteristics.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Automating Helm deployments with Bash

            Some of our applications are hosted in a Kubernetes cluster, and we use GitLab Continuous Integration (CI) to automate deployments and Helm 2 to deploy our applications. Helm charts enable the storage of templates of Kubernetes object YAML files with variables that can be programmatically set from command-line arguments passed when the chart is used during deployments. This allows us to store critical secrets in GitLab-protected environment variables or in Hashicorp Vault and use them within the CI deployment job.

            [...]

            The script performs all tasks required to deploy a Helm chart for an application to Kubernetes and waits for the deployment to be ready using kubectl and Helm. Helm runs with a local Tiller installation instead of running Tiller in the Kubernetes cluster. The Kubernetes HELM_USER and HELM_PASSWORD are used to log into the Kubernetes CLUSTER_SERVER and PROJECT_NAMESPACE. Tiller is started, Helm is initialized in client-only mode, and its repo is updated. The template is linted with Helm to ensure that syntax errors have not been accidentally committed. The template is then deployed in declarative mode, using helm upgrade –install. Helm waits for the deployment to be ready using the –wait flag.

      • Standards/Consortia

        • Schneier: “It’s really too late to secure 5G networks”

          Schneier points to a variety of factors contributing to 5G’s intrinsic, irreparable unsuitability: first, the US government pushed for weaker security in order to ensure that it could conduct domestic surveillance; the standards themselves are so complex as to be impossible to implement securely; and the system calls for software running on dynamically configurable hardware, which “dramatically increases the points vulnerable to attack.”

          Moreover, 5G is backwards compatible with earlier protocols, inheriting all their insecurities, and generating new ones where these protocols’ weak spots can be chained together to create attacks that each protocol was, in and of itself immune to, but which the system remains vulnerable to.

        • The trouble with IPv6 extension headers

          It has taken longer than anybody might have liked, but the IPv6 protocol is slowly displacing IPv4 across the Internet. A quick, highly scientific “grep the access logs” test shows that about 16% of the traffic to LWN.net is currently using IPv6, and many large corporate networks are using IPv6 exclusively internally. This version of the IP protocol was designed to be more flexible than IPv4 in a number of ways; the “extension header” mechanism is one way in which that flexibility is achieved. A proposal to formalize extension-header processing in the kernel’s networking stack has led to some concerns, though, about how this feature will be used and what role Linux should play in its development.
          In both versions of the IP protocol, the header of each packet contains a collection of information about how the packet is to be handled; at a minimum, it contains source and destination addresses and a higher-level protocol number. In IPv4, the contents of the header are rigidly specified; it is difficult to add new types of information to the header. When IPv6 was designed, extension headers were added as a way to (relatively) easily add new information in the future.

          A few extension header types are defined in RFC8200 (which describes IPv6). Two of particular interest are the “Hop-by-Hop” and “Destination” headers; the former is meant to be acted upon by every system that handles the packet, while the latter is only for the destination node’s attention. These headers may contain one or more options, each encoded in a type-length-value (TLV) format. RFC8200 only defines a couple of options that insert padding into the header, but there is interest in adding a number of others.

          For example, In-situ Operations, Administration, and Maintenance options are meant to allow providers to collect telemetry information on packets passing through their networks. The Path MTU mechanism uses a Hop-by-Hop option to discover the maximum packet size a path can handle. Firewall and Service Tickets (FAST) are a Hop-by-Hop option that documents a packet’s right to traverse a network or pass through a firewall. The Segment Routing options allows a packet to contain the path it should take through a network. And so on.

  • Leftovers

    • Life was a cabaret – the Roaring Twenties in Cairo

      Less than two years before Ashbee saw her performance in that village, she had left behind the life of a nightclub singer to make her theatrical debut on the stage of the Printania Theatre on Alfi Bey Street. She was said to be the first Egyptian Muslim woman to become a professional actress – before then actresses had largely been Christian or Jewish and from Ottoman Syria. The next year she became the first Egyptian woman to lead her own theatrical company.

      Long after Ashbee saw her, Mounira remained one of the biggest names of the riotous underworld of parties and nightlife that flourished in Cairo throughout the 1920s and ’30s. In this period, downtown Cairo was thick with theatres, cabarets, dancehalls, and cinemas, and had an entertainment scene to rival other global cities – Berlin, Paris, or New York.

    • Education

      • Traversed by Tensions: Quebec’s Religious Symbols Law

        Fatima Ahmad, 23, an Education student at McGill University in Montreal, says that Bill 21 prevents her from working as a public school teacher in Quebec. A fourth year student, graduating in April 2020, she is already making plans to move to the United Arab Emirates or Calgary once she graduates. She is photographed wearing a niqab. Thirty-seven year old Nadia Naqvi is a high-school teacher in Quebec. But she is blocked from advancing up the ladder. “Bill 21 has turned me into a second-class citizen in my own profession—my peers can advance professionally, but I cannot. That’s state-sanctioned discrimination” (Globe and Mail, December 21, 2019). She is wearing a beautifully flowered hijab.

      • real world crypto talks

        Real World Crypto 2020 was last week. It’s a conference I like because the talks are usually pretty interesting. The crypto talks have real world applications and the real world application talks have crypto. Afterwards, there’s usually not just something to be learned, but something to be done. I didn’t actually attend every talk, but here’s some notes.

      • France Says Netflix, Disney Must Plow 25% of Local Revenue Into Content

        France is finalizing a bill to force video-on-demand services from Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Walt Disney Co. and others to invest at least 25% of their revenue derived in the country to fund local productions.

        The French legislation falls under a European Union directive requiring such companies to ensure that at least 30% of their catalogs are comprised of European-made content. The French Culture Ministry, which shared a presentation made Tuesday in Paris with Bloomberg, didn’t comment on how France is planning to measure sales of the platforms in France.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Analysis of 30 Years of Single-Payer Research Shows Medicare for All Would Absolutely Save US Money

        “Across the political spectrum, there is near consensus among these economists that a single-payer system would save money.”

      • Study Shows Being Rich Buys 9 Extra Years of ‘Healthy’ Living in US and UK

        “In both countries, efforts in reducing health inequalities should target people from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups.”

      • A Truly Antiwar Agenda Must Include Free College and Medicare for All

        Last night’s debate brought home a reality for me: A truly antiwar agenda is not confined to priorities traditionally seen as “foreign policy.” It must include bold plans to address climate change, education, institutional racism and sexism, health care and immigration justice. And our movements must reflect that broad-based vision.

      • States Can’t Protect Themselves From the Harmful Effects of ACA Repeal

        The Trump Administration and 18 state attorneys general are asking the courts to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) as unconstitutional. With a cloud of uncertainty hanging over coverage and protections for tens of millions of people, some states are looking for ways to protect their residents. On their own, however, states can do nothing to stop most of the harmful consequences of ACA repeal: the only solution is for the courts to uphold the law.

      • The Year in Disability Rights

        People with disabilities around the world face serious obstacles to realizing their rights on an equal basis with others. Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2020 documents abuses such as violence, discrimination, segregation, and unlawful detention of people with disabilities in 32 countries including Australia, Tanzania, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and the United States.

        Due to prevalent stigma and lack of adequate mental health services, thousands of people with mental health conditions are shackled – chained or locked up in small confined spaces – in many countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Indonesia, and Somaliland. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of shackling in homes, traditional and religious-based healing centers, schools, psychiatric hospitals, and state-run rehabilitation centers. Those shackled are often exposed to physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and isolation. Though shackling persists in Indonesia, government agencies have made some progress by signing an agreement to monitor places where people with mental health conditions have been shackled. Governments should ban shackling and develop quality, accessible community-based support and mental health services.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Amazon to invest $1 bn in India to digitise small, medium businesses, says Jeff Bezos

          Under the initiative, Amazon would establish ‘Digital Haats’ in 100 cities, villages, and communities to help businesses integrate into the digital economy. Digital Haats would be in local neighbourhoods and available to MSMEs irrespective of their association with Amazon, a company statement said.

        • Jeff Bezos Says Amazon To Invest $1 Billion To Digitise Small And Medium Businesses In India

          The company will use its global footprint to export USD 10 billion worth of Make In India goods by 2025, Bezos said at the Amazon smbhav summit which will focus on discussions around how technology adoption can enable small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India.

        • CGI to hire 15,000 over the next 5 years

          CGI plans to hire nearly 15,000 people in India over the next four to five years, the Canadian IT services provider’s founder said.

          The software services company’s India offices, which currently employ nearly 15,000 people, play a strategic role in service delivery across key markets. The about $12 billion company follows a strategy of setting up bases close to client locations, either organically or through acquisitions, Serge Godin, founder and executive chairman of CGI told ET in an interview. India continues to be one of the largest facilities outside Montreal, he added.

        • Security

          • Celebrating a million dollars in bounties paid

            But it’s about much more than a million dollars in bounty payments. Our journey to this point has been an iterative one, gaining strength and improving along the way as we grow, learn and receive feedback from the security research community. We believe our journey models our commitment to building a strong and secure product for our customers but also our dedication to the open source and security community; one where everyone can contribute and also reap the rewards.

          • GitLab Celebrates $1 Million In Paid Bounties

            GitLab has officially awarded more than $1 million in bug bounties to hackers on HackerOne for reporting valid vulnerabilities in the past year.

            The milestone comes hot on the heels of the GitLab security team completing one year of its public bug bounty program in December 2019. The vulnerability disclosure program (VDP) was first launched in 2014 and soon moved to a private, paid bounty program.

          • Kubernetes Bug Bounty Program Announced

            Google has joined forces with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and HackerOne to launch the bug bounty program for Kubernetes. The program has been running in a ‘beta’ mode with invite-only researchers for several months now.

            While driving awareness of Kubernetes’ security model, it aims to secure one of the most widely used open source technologies through the support of the developer and hacker communities.

            Interested in helping lock down Kubernetes? Well, the Kubernetes bug bounty program will reward researchers who find vulnerabilities in the container orchestration system, with bounties ranging from $100 to $10,000.

          • Micro Focus Introduces Industry’s First Active Directory Bridging Solution that Extends Security Policies and Access Controls to Cloud-based Linux
          • Microsoft, NSA confirm killer Windows 10 bug, but a patch is available

            The flaw, CVE-2020-0601, was found in the usermode cryptographic library, CRYPT32.DLL, that affects Windows 10 systems. (Contrary to earlier rumors, it does not affect Windows 7, which coincidentally is being shut down Tuesday as well.) Fortunately, Microsoft reported that the library was not in active use, though that doesn’t prevent an attacker from weaponizing it now that it’s been disclosed.

            Specifically, the attack could allow malware to hide behind a spoofed cyrptographic signature. Antivirus software could therefore identify malware as legitimate applications, or fake banking sites could use the vulnerability to trick a user’s PC into thinking it was legitimate.

          • Malware Marketer NSO Group Looks Like It’s Blowing Off Facebook’s Lawsuit

            In late October of last year, Facebook and WhatsApp sued Israeli surveillance tech provider NSO Group for using WhatsApp to deliver device-compromising malware. The lawsuit sought to use the CFAA to stop NSO from using WhatsApp as an attack vector.

          • Some FCC Subsidized Low Income Phones Are A Chinese Malware Shitshow

            We’ve long talked about the problems with the FCC’s Lifeline program, which was created by Reagan and expanded by Bush Junior (yet somehow earned the nickname “Obamaphone”). The $2 billion program doles out a measly $9.25 per month subsidy that low-income homes can use to help pay a tiny fraction of their wireless, phone, or broadband bills (enrolled participants have to choose one). But for years, the FCC has struggled to police fraud within the program, with big and small carriers alike frequently caught “accidentally” getting millions in taxpayer dollars they didn’t deserve.

          • Security updates for Thursday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (debian-lan-config and phpmyadmin), openSUSE (openssl-1_1), Oracle (firefox and kernel), Red Hat (.NET Core, git, java-11-openjdk, and thunderbird), SUSE (Mesa, python3, shibboleth-sp, slurm, and tigervnc), and Ubuntu (libpcap and nginx).

          • Linux 5.6 Crypto Getting AVX/AVX2/AVX-512 Optimized Poly1305 – Helps WireGuard

            Now that lead WireGuard lead developer Jason Donenfeld has managed to get this secure VPN tunnel technology queued for introduction in Linux 5.6 mainline, he’s begun optimizing other areas of the kernel for optimal WireGuard performance.

            Poly1305 is used by WireGuard for the message authentication code and that’s the latest bit being optimized in mainline to not only benefit WireGuard but other crypto users as well. Donenfeld has provided x86_64 vectorized implementations of Poly1305 for AVX, AVX-2, and AVX-512F. These AVX/AVX2/AVX-512 optimized versions are proving to be clearly faster — though with AVX-512 is only enabled for Cannonlake/Icelake and newer as for Skylake the AVX-512 down-clocking is causing the performance to come up short.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Company Sells Surveillance Cameras Hidden In Tombstones, Threatens Websites For Talking About Its Tombstone Cameras

              Thanks to a FOIA request by Open the Government policy analyst Freddy Martinez, we now know someone’s trying to sell cops cameras they can hide in… gravestones?

            • The Internet Should Hide Your Data, Not Share It

              This is where default options matter. If every browser window automatically opened in incognito mode, then it wouldn’t be considered incognito browsing, but regular web browsing. But if only outlaws take the time to safeguard their privacy, then privacy becomes a de facto outlaw product.

            • Did Giuliani Goons Plot Against US Ambassador? ‘Incredibly Disturbing’ House Impeachment Docs Raise Serious New Questions

              “The new documents from Lev Parnas are chilling, and damning,” said Rep. Ted Lieu. “Is Donald Trump a thug? I don’t know. But Trump certainly used thugs to help him abuse the power of his office.”

            • Giuliani Associates May Have Surveilled U.S. Ambassador, New Evidence Shows

              Associates of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer appeared to physically, and perhaps electronically, surveil the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine last spring as they dialed up their pressure campaign on authorities in Kyiv, according to new evidence released by House Democrats on Tuesday.

              The new revelations came on the eve of Wednesday’s House vote to hand over articles of impeachment to the Senate, and it could increase pressure on Republicans to call for further evidence and witness testimony as part of the president’s Senate trial, which is expected to get underway next week.

              The trove of documents includes notes and messages provided to lawmakers by Lev Parnas, a Republican donor and associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Parnas was indicted in October for campaign finance violations.

            • Security expert offers hacking advice to students whose campuses have implemented pervasive wireless surveillance

              In a followup Gizmodo article, Vick delves into the deficiencies with the notifications, consent and privacy policies associated with these services — which are a typical mess of overbroad grabs that are subject to change without notice, couched in deceptive language.

              Vick also puts campus location-tracking in the context of campus information security, which is historically very poor, with low-quality passwords, a lack of access auditing, and interconnection of services and networks that allow both outside attackers and insider threats (such as a professor who wants to stalk a student) to operate with wide latitude and a low likelihood of being caught. Adding location-tracking to such a system vastly increases the risks of the kinds of cyberattacks that are already endemic to campuses.

            • Toronto business and government signal full support for Sidewalk Labs’ dominance of the city and beyond

              I’ve previously written about how Sidewalk Labs is poised to gain control of a vastly larger area than Quayside alone, thanks largely to eager enabling by our municipal, provincial and federal governments and by Waterfront Toronto, which is a creation of these three levels of government.

              The company hasn’t been secretive about its goal to use Quayside as a launching pad for much bigger ambitions. But now it appears they’re confident enough – due to the successful co-opting of our governments and business communities, together with much of the mainstream media and the public – to broadcast more of the scope of their plans.

            • Cards not used for online payments to be disabled of service, says RBI

              “Existing cards that have never been used for online/international/contactless transactions shall be mandatorily disabled for this purpose,” said the central bank, in a notification on Wednesday.

              For existing cards, which have seen the online or ‘card-not-present transactions’, the banks have been directed to carry out a risk assessment and take a call on disabling them based on the risk perception.

              Card transactions are usually divided in two categories — card-present transactions and card not present transactions. In the case of the former, the customer physically interacts with payment machinery using his or her card and in case of the latter, the cardholder does not or cannot physically present the card for a merchant’s visual examination.

            • No documents will be asked or biometric taken for NPR, says Home Ministry

              Amid concerns expressed by Opposition parties and states like West Bengal on the National Population Register (NPR), the Home Ministry on Wednesday said that no documents will be asked or biometrics taken while updating the register.

              A form carrying questions as part of the NPR exercise will be finalised soon, ministry officials said. However, the information available on the website of the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, the NPR database would contain demographic as well as biometric details.

            • Apps are sharing more of your data with ad industry than you may think

              Those laws aren’t doing squat to protect us from the digital marketing and adtech industry, according to a new report from the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC).

              What chance do laws stand against policing what the NCC describes as a shadowy network of companies, “virtually unknown to consumers,” with which popular apps are sharing exquisitely personal behavior/interest/activities/habits data, including our religious preference, menstruation cycle, location data, sexual orientation, political views, drug use, birthday, the unique IDs associated with our smartphones, and more?

              The current situation is “completely out of control, harming consumers, societies, and businesses,” the NCC writes, as evidence continues to mount against what it calls “the commercial surveillance systems” at the heart of online advertising.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Fifty Years and Still the Unrelenting Drumbeat of War

        History tells quite a different story of  Democrats who have run for president supporting war and/or war funding. Look to the failure of the antiwar candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern as Democrats who didn’t even get remotely close to the presidency. Eugene Debs ran as an antiwar candidate on the Socialist Party of America ticket and got 3.4% (in his 1920 bid from prison) of the vote in his last run for the presidency. There’s lots of money to be made from war and more power for the empire.

      • Who Wins and Who Loses in the Iran Crisis?

        In the latest phase of the US-Iran confrontation, who came out on top is not clear-cut; both countries made gains and losses from the crisis and some of its the results are still to come.

      • Vague Imminence: US policy, Pre-emptive Force and Qasem Soleimani

        International relations is typified by its vagueness of definition and its shallowness of justification. Be it protecting citizens of a state in another, launching a pre-emptive strike to prevent what another state might do, or simply understanding the application of a treaty provision, justifications can prove uneven and at odds.

      • Missiles, Lies and Assassinations

        Since President Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Qasam Soleimani in Iraq, I’ve seen some well meaning people sharing a video entitled “My 2 cents on current events” on social media. It is by Iranian-American Saghar Erica Kasraie. In the video Kasraie states she is a “human rights activist” and proclaims that Iranians are celebrating the assassination of Soleimani. She then goes on to thank President Trump for this illegal and brazen act of war. I couldn’t help but be reminded of another “viral video” that was circulated by Venezuelan-American comedian Joanna Hausmann when the US was targeting Venezuela for a coup against Maduro last year. She also praised the American led actions against the country, albeit in a manner more appealing to her progressive audience.

      • ‘Huge’: House to Consider Lee- and Khanna-Backed Measures to Stop Trump’s March to War With Iran

        The Congressional Progressive Caucus said the two bills are “our best chance to avoid future conflict.”

      • American Murder

        Clausewitz said, “War is the continuation of politics by other means”, but  American Presidents have modified his apothegm.  No one knows when it was first judged–How to put it?  Not legal, no; not moral, no, surely not.  Conceiveable..?  Permissible..?–politically safe, for a nation to assassinate a human being, a foreign enemy.  There is no record of that meeting of our government’s most powerful men–only such a group could plan so radical an action–when one of them first dared to say, “Suppose we kill him?”

      • Support for Combat Troop Withdrawal Is Not Enough to Stop Endless Wars

        Six Democratic presidential candidates sparred on Tuesday night in Des Moines, the last debate before the crucial Iowa caucuses. The debate, hosted by CNN and The Des Moines Register, focused heavily on foreign policy and rising tensions with Iran following the U.S. assassination of that country’s top military commander, Qassem Soleimani. As the presidential field continues to narrow, the U.S. Senate is preparing for the historic impeachment trial of President Trump, for which Senators Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar are all expected to leave the campaign trail to serve their role as jurors.

      • Trump’s Unprecedented Attack on Iran and the Rule of Law

        The assassination of Iranian major general Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3 in Baghdad is what happens when the steady erosion of congressional war-making powers intersects with the tenancy of a madman in the Oval Office.

      • Citing Threat From Armed Groups, Virginia Gov. Declares Emergency and Bans Guns at State Capitol

        “This isn’t about the Second Amendment,” said activist Molly Conger, “this is about threats of terrorism.”

      • ‘A Truly Historic Moment’: 50 Years After Congress Passed