So the year is 2019 and people still use system trays on their desktops. I’m not going to get into if that is good or bad but lets discuss an implementation to sanely use them and what existing ones get wrong. I hope this is somewhat informative to developers using or implementing status icons.
New Jersey-based Offchain Labs has announced the launch of the Alpha 2 version of its scaling solution that can be easily integrated to any Etherum application.
Led by a former White House Deputy Chief of Technology and a team of U.S.-based academics, Offchain Labs aims to make smart contracts more private, secure, and scalable using a combination of protocol design, incentives, and virtual machine architecture. The firm has invented Arbitrum, a blockchain agnostic Layer 2 scaling solution that incentivizes parties to agree off-chain how a virtual machine would act in order to improve transaction throughput, speed, and privacy.
Earlier this year IBM purchased Red Hat, the oft-referred to model for how open source can thrive, for $34 billion.
Long the consultant to enterprises, IBM is going through a transitional period as a business and needs a boost. Red Hat’s open-source software offers IBM the ability to better compete in cloud services offered by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Why is this important? Red Hat is one of the most name-checked examples of how open-source software can be successful. It is often used as an example of how championing open source can lead to business success. This is particularly pertinent to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, where open-source ethos rule the technology.
An interview with Emma Marshall of System76; Microsoft Brings exFAT to Linux; Pinebook Pro Available Now; Gamepad Support Comes To Linux In Steam Proton; Software Spotlight and Tips & Tricks.
SGI systems going back to the SGI Origin servers starting some two decades ago will see better mainline kernel support with the upcoming Linux 5.4.
SGI systems going back to the Origin and continuing through have featured "1-wire devices" for interfacing with PROM devices that contain information on device part numbers, revision information, serial numbers, MAC addresses for Ethernet, and other informational details.
It seems the NVIDIA driver has had a few issues lately with multiple titles played with DXVK and Steam Play, so they've put out a new Vulkan Beta driver in need of some testing.
NVIDIA on Friday released their 435.19.03 Vulkan beta driver as their newest Linux driver update. This Vulkan beta doesn't come with any new extensions this go around but does have some DXVK fixes for helping Linux gamers.
Headlining the NVIDIA 435.19.03 Linux beta are corruption fixes for DXVK D3D11-over-Vulkan game titles like Saints Row IV and Saints Row: The Third. It's also possible other DXVK titles are helped out as well.
Canonical developer Martin Wimpress shared an update to their handy NVIDIA Optimus GPU switcher, might be worth a look if you're in need of something to make it easier.
MATE Optimus was updated recently with 19.10.1, which adds support for the new NVIDIA PRIME render offload feature added in the 435.17 beta driver release and now the 435.21 stable driver.
DriConf is the common infrastructure for Mesa drivers that are used for applying application specific workarounds based upon the executable name as well as handling different options to expose to users through configuration files or a few basic graphical configuration utilities like the ADriConf user interface. DriConf originates back during the Mesa OpenGL days but has been extended to handle Vulkan drivers as well.
A few days ago I provided some benchmarks showing how running Intel's open-source Clear Linux on AMD EPYC Rome can provide some significant speed-ups over Ubuntu Linux, but how do other Linux distributions compare on AMD's new Zen 2 server processors? Here is an eight-way benchmark comparison on the AMD EPYC 7742 2P Daytona server with its 128 cores / 256 threads.
The dual AMD EPYC 7742 server was equipped with 512GB of RAM and using an Intel Optane 900p NVMe solid-state drive for storage throughout. The tested Linux distributions were Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, Ubuntu 19.04, Ubuntu 19.10 daily (4 September 2019), openSUSE Leap 15.1 derived from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP1, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0, Fedora 30, Clear Linux 30940, and Debian 10.0.
Anthony Morganti of IAmMrPhotographer.com recently teamed up with photographer and fellow YouTuber Rico Richardson to produce a comprehensive introduction to the popular (and free) Lightroom alternative Darktable. If you’ve been wanting to try this open source RAW editor but don’t know where to start, this video is for you.
Richardson is an expert in Darktable who’s created many a tutorial for the RAW processing software over on his own channel. This 10 minute tutorial is a bit more broad than all that: a beginner’s guide that starts by showing you how to download the software off the Darktable website, moves into a detailed walkthrough of the user interface and available tools, and finishes off with a quick demonstration of Darktable’s powerful masking features in action.
If you already have Darktable downloaded, skip to the 3:58 mark to jump right into the UI; and if you already understand the import settings in the Lighttable tab, you can skip straight to the tools overview and editing demonstration around 7:20.
imapautofiler applies user-defined rules to automatically organize messages on an IMAP server.
Flowcharts are incredibly useful diagrams to explain process flows. Remember the phishing flow chart that Martin created in 2011? Or the flowchart about flowcharts?
If you took a computer science class in school or college, you may know how to make one. Even if you don't, it's not difficult to learn how to create flowcharts.
But how do you make them using a computer? Microsoft Office or Libre Office can be used to create flowcharts. But an application like Draw.io that specializes in drawing diagrams can be a better option. I tested the offline version of draw.io, (and only tested it with flowcharts).
GTA Trilogy (GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas) running through Steam play.
ROCKFISH have announced that the upcoming Kickstarter campaign for the space shooter EVERSPACE 2 has been delayed until October 2nd.
Need something to manage all your games from different places? Lutris [Official Site] is pretty handy and it just had a huge upgrade.
Just released today, Lutris 0.5.3 is the first major release in a couple of months and as expected it doesn't disappoint on the list of improvements.
You now have an option for D9VK in addition to DXVK, making it an even better application to use with Wine so you can easily tweak your settings. Continuing on the addition of new options you can now hide the right and left panels, have Lutris hide when a game is launched plus there's an option for launching the Wine console.
Despite its many merits, the X server has become very long in the tooth, and Wayland is poised to become a more modern and dependable alternative. However, KDE's software is still quite far off from being completely implemented on the newer protocol.
"As technology and the needs of modern computer users advance, X server has been proven less and less capable to keep up", says Fanis Bampaloukas, author of the first proposal. "I propose to make our goal to migrate the core of the Plasma desktop, and make X server an optional compile and runtime dependency".
To achieve this goal, Fanis says KDE will have to fix major breakages and implement missing features.
This is the last week in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative (next week the blog posts will continue, but under a new name). The voting results are in for KDE’s new goals and the community-selected winners are full Wayland support, UI consistency, and a renewed focus on KDE apps. Read all about it here!
But meanwhile, there’s a ton of stuff to announce right now, so let’s jump right in.
Serendipitously enough, something big landed this week that’s relevant to the first new goal: fractional scaling on Wayland!!!
GNOME 3.34 RC2 made it out on Friday night as the final step before next week's official GNOME 3.34 release.
GNOME 3.34 RC2 delivers the last minute fixes ahead of the stable unveiling in the days ahead. While normally the release candidates aren't all that exciting, this time around it is thanks to the last minute performance fixes for Mutter.
Hi,
The second release candidate for 3.34 is here! Remember this is the end of this development cycle; enjoy it as fast as you can, the final release is scheduled next Wednesday!
Also, the 3.34beta flatpak runtime has been pushed to flathub if you want to give it a try. We will try to make it available sooner on the next cycle. Currently the architectures supported are: - x86_64 (with the new extension to run 32bit software) - aarch64 - armv7
We remind you we are string frozen, no string changes may be made without confirmation from the l10n team (gnome-i18n@) and notification to both the release team and the GNOME Documentation Project (gnome-doc-list@).
Hard code freeze is also in place, no source code changes can be made without approval from the release-team. Translation and documentation can continue.
If you want to compile GNOME 3.33.92, you can use the official BuildStream project snapshot. Thanks to BuildStream's build sandbox, it should build reliably for you regardless of the dependencies on your host system:
https://download.gnome.org/teams/releng/3.33.92/gnome-3.33.92.tar.xz
The list of updated modules and changes is available here:
https://download.gnome.org/core/3.33/3.33.92/NEWS
The source packages are available here:
https://download.gnome.org/core/3.33/3.33.92/sources/
Historically, Cinnamon development started after GNOME 3.X came out, a lot of things actually started after GNOME 3 came out in 2011: MATE was forked of GNOME 2 in an effort to keep the traditional desktop layout. Unity started to be developed by Canonical / Ubuntu. Mint developers, on the other hand, introduced a set of GNOME Shell extensions that tried to alter the behaviour of the shell to make it look like a traditional GNOME 2 desktop environment; An effort which seemed impossible to sustain with the API break between each new GNOME version, especially that it was still under heavy development back in the day. In the end, Mint developers forked the entire GNOME Shell stack and called it “Cinnamon”.
Nautilus, the default GNOME file manager was forked into “Nemo”. Mutter, the GNOME Shell’s compositor, was forked into “Muffin”, and a lot of similar libraries and apps were forked too.
Today, 8 years later, Cinnamon is almost nothing like the original GNOME Shell. It’s quite extendable, functional yet beautiful in its own traditional way that do not require you to get used to a new user experience each new version, but instead, just use your PC to do your actual work. Cinnamon 1.0 in terms of the general UI / UX is almost identical to Cinnamon 4.2 released few weeks ago. And the Linux community seems to forget that the silent majority would like such thing.
When I'm still writing Debian Source Code article today (Saturday 7 September 2019), I'm surprised when I opened gNewSense website and I found it's changed drastically with a beautiful announcement that the development continues after a long time being dormant. You know, gNewSense is a 100% free software GNU/Linux distro derived from Debian that has been not released new version since 2014 so many of us thought that it's abandoned. Fortunately, Matt Lee, former FSF member, taken over the project from Sam, the former gNewSense leader, and started the development anew in 2019! More happy news is thet gNewSense Project is merging with Skeleton GNU/Linux Project, another completely free distro project. I am happy with this. This new project sets new goals that are very interesting, among them, they decided to use GitLab CE as central of online development and number their releases to follow Debian's. If you want to help the development, see link resources below to join what you are interested with. Thank you Sam for all good deeds you have done up to now! Thank you Mat Lee for starting gNewSense once again! Congratulations to gNewSense project!
As a continuation to Part 1, this article will present you information regarding source code availability of Debian GNU/Linux operating system. Fortunately, Debian provides us Source Code DVDs in ISO image format. This means when we distribute Debian to people we can easily distribute the corresponding source code as well, quickly and conveniently, as many free software licenses like GNU GPL within Debian require it. Think about it: if Debian does not provide so, how do we distribute the source accompanying the binary ISO? It requires gigantic effort per person, as we will need --among other options-- to manually scrap Debian repository to provide corresponding source code. That's why I said source DVDs are convenient. More fortunately, Debian also provides us so many places online to get source code either in individual or collective forms and facilitate us to search among them intelligently. Everything is really professional in my opinion. I could not find any other distro that gives same level of source code availability services like Debian. Finally, like before, I hope this helps everybody to get source code of GNU/Linux and learn more about it. Okay, let's go!
The Debian project is pleased to announce the tenth update of its oldstable distribution Debian 9 (codename "stretch"). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.
Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 9 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "stretch" media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror.
Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages, and most such updates are included in the point release.
The Debian project is pleased to announce the first update of its stable distribution Debian 10 (codename "buster"). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.
Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 10 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "buster" media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror.
Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages, and most such updates are included in the point release.
Debian 10.1 was released today as the first collection of security and bug fixes to this summer's release of Debian 10 "Buster" GNU/Linux.
Debian 10.1 has a wide array of updated packages that mostly come down to security and other bug fixing. Among the updates for Debian 10.1 are Cryptsetup fixes, multiple security issues with CUPS, fixing e2fsprogs crashes on 32-bit, fuse-emulator preferring the X11 back-end over Wayland, GNOME Shell crash fixes for when GNOME-Bluetooth is used, an updated Linux 4.19 based kernel, support for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 with its bundled firmware, and various fixes to systemd.
Earlier this month, the team behind the popular Linux distribution, Mint, finally released Linux Mint 19.2 after a long development cycle. Clem Lefebvre, head of the project, said that Linux Mint 19.3 was planned for Christmas which will mean they have to work with a shorter development cycle. Linux Mint 19.3 will be the last big upgrade in the 19.x series so more effort will likely go into tidying up any rough edges.
In his announcement, Lefebvre pointed to the fact that the technology being used to display notifications was obsolete and wouldn’t be around in the future. Additionally, programs were responsible for rendering the widget rather than the panel applet. As an alternative to the outdated Gtk.StatusIcon software, the Linux Mint team have developed XApp.StatusIcon, which allows the applets to render the tray icon, tooltip, and optional label natively – this will fix any rendering issues and allow for good looking icons no matter their size.
It’s a Handheld PS2 Game Console The PIS2 is a handheld PS2 game console that has the chopped-up insides of PS2 game system stuffed into a small console, along with a display...
UpSwift offers a GUI based management interface to their customers to update, manage, control & diagnose IoT and embedded devices
Andrew Lindesay continue his work on HaikuDepot, tweaking the BarberPole look, adding a display of "usage conditions" (EULA, license, etc) from packages,
Ryan Leavengood also worked in this area, making sure if you open an existing hpkg file with HaikuDepot, it will offer you to uninstall the package if it's currently installed.
humdinger improved the colors and icons used in DriveSetup to indicate read-only, BFS, and encrypted volumes, after attempting to document the existing ones and finding they didn't make that much sense.
We are approaching the one year anniversary since the Haiku R1 Beta and the developers working on this open-source BeOS-inspired operating system are as busy as ever with improvements.
“It’s hard to stop humans from destroying our planet, but we can stop the machines they use,” says Hugo Veiga, executive creative director at AKQA Brazil, a creative firm that created the code, called the Code of Conscience, along with Tekt Industries and other partners.
An Ottawa-based mould removal company is turning its machine learning solution over to the open source community in hopes of developing a robust platform to speed up the identification of dangerous moulds.
Mold Busters, founded 15 years ago by Ottawa entrepreneur Michael Golubev and his father, Andrey, is a mould identification and remediation company operating in Ontario and Quebec with franchises in a few Asia-Pacific countries. The firm recently unveiled its InstaLab platform, which looks to identify mould just by taking a picture of the fungal growth, potentially saving days on the current time-intensive processes.
Insilico Medicine has developed GENTRL, a new artificial intelligence system for drug discovery that dramatically accelerates the process from years to days. In the industry’s first successful experimental validation of such AI technology for drug discovery in cells and animals, Insilico successfully tested the technology by creating a series of entirely new molecules capable of combating disorders like fibrosis.
The traditional drug discovery starts with the testing of thousands of small molecules in order to get to just a few lead-like molecules and only about one in ten of these molecules pass clinical trials in human patients. Insilico was able to ideate and generate a novel molecule from start to finish in 21 days. In a similar technique used by DeepMind to outcompete human GO players, GENTRL — powered by generative chemistry that utilizes modern AI techniques — can rapidly generate novel molecular structures with specified properties. Insilico has made GENTRL’s source code available as open source.
This GUADEC was really special for the Foundation, as it was the first year that there was a significant staff presence. In addition to many years of Rosanna Yuen, and lately Neil McGovern, we had four other staff members at the conference. As most of us were hired in the past year, thanks to several very generous donations, this was our first opportunity to come together, meet in person, and plan for the future of the GNOME Foundation.
After the holidays we took the train to Thessaloniki to meet with other Gnomies. Sadly Regina didn’t join us for GUADEC.
So, what have I been up to during GUADEC:
I finally got the icon export feature merged into Icon Preview. I fixed issues with this literally right up until Jakub’s demo, but it was worth it: During his demo the export worked flawlessly. As soon as there’s a new release, you’ll be able to export hicolor and symbolic icons directly from the same template, which improves the icon authoring experience a lot. You can also export a nightly version of the symbolic icon, which is automatically generated with no extra work. We’ve wanted this for a very long time, and it’s great to finally see it come to fruition. Expect Nightly icons in nightly versions of GNOME apps soon!
I’m writing this post on the train from Rome to Milan, but I guess better late than never. I’ll be in the city all week and I will host a Dolphin BoF on tuesday.
Joey Hess designed the first Fridge0 a year ago: it uses a standard chest freezer with added thermal mass, a simple controller, and a photovoltaic panel that effectively stores sunshine as coldness, obviating the need for expensive backup batteries.
Conceptually, cooking on a grill is simple enough: just crank up the flames and leave the food on long enough for it to cook through, but not so long that it turns into an inedible ember. But when smoking, the goal is actually to prevent flames entirely; the food is cooked by the circulation of hot gasses generated by smoldering wood. If you want a well-cooked and flavorful meal, you’ll need the patience and dedication to manually keep the fuel and air balanced inside the smoker for hours on end.
[...]
Ultimately, this project boils down to tossing a bunch of temperature sensors at the problem. The software developed by [HackersHub] takes the data collected by the five MAX6675 thermocouples and uses it to determine when to inject more air into the chamber using a PWM-controlled fan at the bottom of the smoker. As an added bonus, all those temperature sensors give the user plenty of pretty data points to look at in the companion smartphone application.
Mozilla recently demonstrated debugging of WebAssembly binaries outside the browser, with standard debuggers like GDB and LLDB. Debugging WebAssembly code in the same execution environment used in production allows developers to catch and diagnose bugs that may not arise in a native build of the same code.
WebAssembly, in connection with WASI made strides to be used outside of the browser, and realize the Write Once, Run Anywhere promise.
POCL, the "Portable Open Computing Language" project known for implementing OpenCL support on top of the CPU, is closing in on its version 1.4 release.
POCL 1.4-RC1 was released on Friday as the new test release for this OpenCL implementation that works not only on CPUs via LLVM but can also target the likes of AMD HSA and NVIDIA CUDA.
Agile is everywhere: More than 97 percent of companies that develop software have some form of agile framework in their delivery cycle, according to the CollabNet VersionOne State of Agile report. Most agile implementations, however, are not successful. Eighty-three percent of organizations have less than high levels of agile competency, which indicates that there’s a lot of room for improvement if businesses want to unlock agile’s promised value.
[...] So . . . please roll up your sleeves, give it a try and let us know if you were able to migrate successfully from Buster to Beowulf. What issues did you have? How did you work around them? Are there any blockers?
Looking at a dataset of 350 million ssl connections inspires some initial questions:
who made the certs
what crypto powers it
what sort of life time
The moment the liquid hits the mark, lips on the balloon rim, the hand having swirled the mellow colouring to life, the throat anticipates. It is tenderising, the gentle burn finding its way down to the belly. Most cultures have their tribute of firewater, or hellfire’s brew, but France’s brandy Cognac, in its various incarnations, applies the blow with soft relentlessness. You are drinking a chronicle of pleasure, a full archive of sensations.
They’re back-the folks in the Education Department.
The moon is all the rage these days. China wants to send people there. So, too, does the United States and NASA.
Think of America’s forever wars as a funnel between the largest and second largest federal government departments.
"Honeybees€ and other pollinators are dying in droves because of insecticides like sulfoxaflor, yet the Trump administration removes restriction just to please the chemical industry."
"This is an issue of basic morality."
After passage of the 2018 federal farm bill legalized hemp production, states scrambled to pass their own laws legalizing hemp and CBD. But in doing so, they may have inadvertently signed a death warrant for the enforcement of marijuana prohibition.
Ritchard Jenkins reached into the black computer bag he keeps near his workstation at Graceful Touch Barber and Beauty Salon and rifled through medical papers, pulling out an envelope buried deep at the bottom.
It was an unopened medical bill for $971.78, now 17 months overdue, that he had put out of sight and out of mind. Another unpaid bill from May for $447.13 rested in a nearby drawer. Both are the result of an arthritic knee that needs to be replaced and keeps the 55-year-old master barber in near-constant pain.
"We've proven—once again—that our grassroots organizing can apply the pressure needed to win over even the most hard-to-convince Democrats."
Gene-editing is seen by many as the ultimate in precision breeding. Polled cattle, whose horns have been genetically removed, have been presented as exemplars of this–a socially beneficial use of precise genome engineering. Such hornless cattle were produced in 2016 by Recombinetics, Inc., of St. Paul, Minnesota, a development that was reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology (Carlson et al, 2016).
In early August 2019, the Canadian government announced regulations to reduce patented drug prices, with the intent to save Canadians over $10 billion (USD) over the course of a decade. The new regulations are the final amendments to the Patented Medicines Regulations and come after months of delay, which had prompted speculation that the government would back down in the face of lobbying or run out of time before Canada’s October 2019 election.
Under the new rules, Canada will change the list of countries the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) compares domestic prices with. This change involves dropping the US and Switzerland as comparison countries, where prices tend to be highest. It will also allow the PMPRB to have the actual market price of medicines in Canada, instead of the “sticker” price which tends to be an inflated list price, to better determine the reasonableness of a price ceiling. Last, the changes allow the PMPRB to consider whether the drug price actually reflects the value it offers to patients.
MoviePass initially seemed like it might be a plausible idea, though recently the outfit has been exposed for being terrible at this whole business thing. The service initially let movie buffs pay $30 a month in exchange for unlimited movie tickets at participating theaters, provided they signed up for a full year of service. But recent reports have made it clear company leaders had absolutely no idea what they were doing, the service was routinely hemorrhaging cash (particularly after an unsustainable price drop to $10), and execs even tried to change user passwords to prevent users from actually using the service.
Testing users might want to manually pull the latest (4.92.1-3) upload of Exim from sid instead of waiting for regular migration to testing. It fixes a nasty vulnerability.
[Drew DeVault] recently wrote up some interesting instructions on how to package up interactive text-based Linux commands for users to access via ssh. At first, this seems simple, but there are quite a few nuances to it and [Drew] does a good job of covering them.
One easy way — but not very versatile — is to create a user and make the program you want to run the default shell. The example used is to make /usr/bin/nethack the shell and now people can log in as that user and play nethack. Simple, right? However, there are better ways to get there.
A newly disclosed vulnerability in Supermicro hardware brings the threat of malicious USBs to corporate servers.
Former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, an ex-guerrilla chief who took power when the African country shook off white minority rule and presided for decades while economic turmoil and human rights violations eroded its early promise, has died in Singapore. He was 95.
If at first you don’t succeed, spread some money around. The Financial Times reports that the US State Department is offering cash bribes to captains of Iranian ships if they sail those ships into ports where the US government can seize them.
The saying goes that the greatest trick the devil ever played was fooling the world that he doesn’t exist. I’ve long said that the greatest trick the state ever played was fooling the world that only its existence could keep the devil at bay. The devil in this case being a constantly evolving crop of scapegoats often labeled terrorists. Then again the Old Testament interpretation of the devil has always been the ultimate scapegoat. Lucifer’s great crime was trying to mimic god’s omnipotence with a failed coup. God cast the rebellious angel out of heaven but allowed him to continue to play god in hell because his existence served as the ultimate excuse for god’s unlimited power. My childhood priest, Father Foster, probably wouldn’t agree with this interpretation, but as a budding young anarchist, this is the way the tale sounded to me. The devil’s very existence was defined by god and god in turn needed the devil to justify his power. And this is what I see when I look at the issue of terrorism.
On September 1, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevitable response to a series of Israeli strikes that targeted four different Arab countries in the matter of two days.
“In India today,” said an Indigenous activist I recently interviewed in the northeastern Indian state of Jharkhand, “everywhere is Kashmir.”
The battle over American war stories began during the peak of the last revolution. Millions of Americans and tens of thousands of veterans and soldiers€ opposed the war in Vietnam. In the war’s moral outrages, crimes and betrayals, many saw the US empire for the first time. [1]
Nearly a month after a mysterious explosion apparently involving a radioactive-isotope-fueled rocket engine, authorities in the Arkhangelsk region have officially recognized the pontoons damaged in the blast as “potentially dangerous objects.” The local government says it’s formally informed Rosatom, the Defense Ministry, the National Weather Service, and the Consumer Protection and Welfare Federal Service. Officials stress that the danger posed by the radioactive pontoons is not life-threatening.
What follows is a conversation between “The Age of Jihad” author Patrick Cockburn and Greg Wilpert of The Real News Network.
A new trailer out Thursday for Amazon’s television series “Jack Ryan” featuring the titular hero racing against time to stop Venezuela from obtaining a nuclear weapon was widely ridiculed for its jingoistic nature and reliance on conspiracist tropes, with critics deriding the plotline of the new season of the nationalist series.
This week on CounterSpin: A UN panel has just announced that the US could be deemed complicit in war crimes being carried out in Yemen. “Third state” parties, including the US, that supply weapons and other support “[perpetuate] the conflict,” the panel said, and contribute to the immiseration of Yemen, where a near-incomprehensible 80% of the population require humanitarian aid. US media bring images of Yemen’s suffering, but you could think it was happening on Mars, if the dots are not connected between the bombs and the hunger and the cholera, and elected US congressmembers voting again and again to be part of it. We’ll talk about how to change that with Hassan El Tayyab,€ legislative representative for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
"No matter how cynical you might be about propagandistic American media, you are not prepared for how much watching this trailer is like snorting 100% pure John Bolton."
". . . and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." These lost words — Isaiah 2:4 — are nearly 3,000 years old. Did they€ ever€ have political traction? To believe them today, and act on them, is to wind up facing 25 years in prison. This is how far we
In August 21, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, Lise Grande, put out a heartbreaking call for nations to make good on their pledges to send humanitarian aid to feed destitute families in war-torn Yemen.
"Americans intended to give every Reykjavik citizen a paralyzing drug during Pence's visit," joked a satirical Icelandic newspaper
Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about how the White House was clearly setting itself up for another embarrassing failure in court when it removed the press pass of Brian Karem. This wasn't new. The same thing had happened a year ago. And yet, our comments filled up with a lot of nonsense about how we were wrong and "there is no right to a White House press pass" and a bunch of other nonsense.
While so many have heard of whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden making history in recent years, few have heard the story of Katharine Gun, the subject of the film “Official Secrets,” directed and co-written by Gavin Hood. On the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the “Official Secrets” director tells Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer that he learned about Gun from Ged Doherty, a producer he’d worked with on the film “Eye in the Sky” about drone warfare, and realized the whistleblower’s compelling story needed to be told.
"Gotta say that just seeing the words 'Climate Crisis' in red on screen is a victory for our movements."
One wonders if Trump and his administration are aware of what is happening in the world or if they care the Earth is under deadly stress by no less an enemy than humans.
He crossed the border without permission or, as far as I could tell, documentation of any sort. I’m speaking about Donald Trump’s uninvited, unasked-for invasion of my personal space.
"The heavy rainfall could flood poorly located factory farms, spreading untold tons of hog, chicken, and turkey waste along the coastal plain."
I spent last week in the Brazilian Amazon in Porto Velho, Rondonia, on the edge of what is called the arco do incendios. The “arc of fires” is a region stretching along the yet-to-be-paved highways 319 and 230...
Climate change is an existential threat to human civilization. If only corporate media acted like it.
Given the Democratic National Committee’s refusal to allow its party’s presidential hopefuls to take part in a televised climate debate, CNN (and, later this month, MSNBC) agreed to host “town halls” on the climate crisis—events with one candidate at a time on stage, fielding questions from network hosts as well as network-selected audience members.
“The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges”
The Trump administration has been on a collision course with California, and it appears that collision is imminent. An administrative action to undermine the authority granted to the state by the Clean Air Act to protect its citizens from vehicle pollution appears to be imminent.
The court's decision, explained one attorney, "creates a strong legal basis for climate protesters to justify their actions in a court of law."
It’s been a rough summer in Europe.On August 18, several dozen people gathered around a patch of snow in Iceland to commemorate the demise of the Okjokull glacier, a victim of climate change. Further to the west, Greenland shed 217 billion tons of ice in the month of July alone.
"Get organized, get active, and join forces in defense of the Amazon and in defense of our future."
"Biden can't expect to convince Americans that he's a leader on climate if he's also cozying up to fossil fuel power players."
To profit as much as possible from fossil fuels before markets fall under the weight of climate chaos and better alternatives, industry and its allies tell us fracked gas is a climate solution. It’s not.
The U.S. is a capitalist country and capitalist control the country.€ € The recent death of David Koch [pronounced “coke”], principle co-owner with his brother, Charles, of the Koch Industries, reminds Americas once again that those with the power and money determine the destinies of everyone else.
David Koch may be dead, but his legacy of support for far-right politics and climate change denial lives on. The New York Times, however, chose to focus more on his love for the ballet than on his pollution and profiteering. | By Olivia Riggio
"These dirty fossil fuel companies are not getting the message, let alone acting on the urgency of the climate crisis."
The Milwaukee motorcycle manufacturer, which has been on a quest to grow ridership of its big and pricey machines, appears to be thinking of venturing into the rapidly growing electric bicycle niche.
The company unveiled prototypes at a recent dealers meeting in Milwaukee. Harley is keeping mum about its plans but has released a photo of three electric bikes.
The Federal Reserve Board chair might seem an odd pick of a person to honor on Labor Day, but he really does deserve some recognition. In addition to dealing with incoherent tirades from the whiner-in-chief, Jerome Powell has led a hugely important shift in the focus of the Fed.
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) just said out loud what Republican politicians usually only talk about in secret meetings with their billionaire donors: The GOP wants to cut our earned Social Security benefits—and they want to do it behind closed doors so that they don’t have to pay the political price. | By Nancy J. Altman
Presidential candidates should take a pledge: The middle class should not pay one dollar more in new taxes until the super-rich pay their fair share.
"The Trump administration wants to make it harder for creditworthy working families—especially families of color—to buy a home and build wealth."
The Pentagon will cut funding from military projects like schools, target ranges and maintenance facilities to pay for the construction of 175 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, diverting a total $3.6 billion to President Donald Trump’s long-promised barrier.
Aircastle Ltd. is not a household name, but if you’ve flown on South African Airways, KLM, or any of more than 80 other airlines, you’ve probably traveled on an airplane the Connecticut-based company owns and manages.
The headquarters of the Walton/Walmart billionaires is in Bentonville, Arkansas, so it is not surprising that the Walton Family Foundation and the members of the family (net worth: $100 billion) have decided to privatize the public schools of Arkansas.Arkansas is a poor state. It doesn’t have an abundance of private schools that are as good as its underfunded public schools
In recent months there have been a number of large retail companies that went into bankruptcy, most notably Sears and Toys “R” Us. In these and other cases, the public is naturally concerned about the plight of long-term workers who have often spent decades working for the same company.
The underlying premise was never plausible, but for a while it was still possible to hope that, under Trump, American foreign policy would be less bellicose than it would have been had Hillary Clinton not managed to lose the 2016 election.
Russian police say a masked intruder broke into Central Election Commissioner Ella Pamfilova’s home and attacked her repeatedly with an electric-shock device. The assailant reportedly entered her home through a terrace window. Police have launched a robbery investigation, and top officials from the Interior Ministry are managing the case.
Numerous Democrats have quoted Ronald Reagan, trying to show how far the Republican Party has fallen under Trump, yet there is much in Reagan’s approach that Trump has taken and elaborated on: specifically, the tough guy presidential persona.
U.S. and Chinese envoys will meet in early October for more talks aimed at ending a tariff war that threatens global economic growth.
Progressive activists often see a frustrating pattern. Many Democrats in office are good at liberal platitudes but don’t really fight for what we need. Even when constituents organize to lobby or protest, they have little leverage compared to big campaign donors, party leaders and corporate media spin. Activist efforts routinely fall short because—while propelled by facts and passion—they lack power.
Ever since the 2016 elections, neoliberals have been looking for reasons to explain why Hillary Clinton lost and why Donald Trump won.€ They've blamed the Russians, Bernie Bros, the media … anything but themselves.€ Now, a new study gives them another reason—blame it on the Internet.
There are many inaccuracies in the Proyect/Szelegieniec essay, but I will comment only on a few of the most important ones...
More than a year out from the 2020 presidential election, we’re already starting to see “spoiler” fear-mongering from supporters of America’s two largest political parties and their candidates.
It’s not unusual for politicians in one elected office to seek higher office and that’s just what Montana’s Gov. Steve Bullock has been doing for much of the last few months. But reality has a way of chiming in on political ambition and given that Bullock will not make the next Democratic debate due to his lack of widespread€ — or even marginal —€ support, it’s time for him to come home to Montana, where there is plenty of challenging work to do.
A new poll shows that support for former vice president Joe Biden is falling. The survey, produced by Monmouth University, shows Biden dropping from 32 percent amongst Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters in June – when Monmouth produced its last poll – to below 19 percent now. The stats, meanwhile, place Biden’s two progressive competitors, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, ahead at 20 percent each.
The Democratic Party establishment might want to heed Santayana’s warning about how people who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. One of the many lessons of the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign is that your candidate better damn well possess strong quality and character if you are going to run on, well, candidate quality and character.
"This Brexit crisis has now come down to a simple question about whether we live in a democracy: can we allow Boris Johnson to force No Deal on our country, without all of us having our voice heard?"
The controversy reached a fever pitch on Wednesday when Trump displayed a map in the Oval Office that apparently was altered with black marker to show the storm's projected path extending into southeastern Alabama.
Trump has denied knowing about the apparently altered map that he showcased, though The Washington Post reported that the president had marked it up.
How can we explain that the victim of another Trump slur nonetheless stated afterward that this president “is the best thing that ever happened to this country”? How—after the president bawled out his victim, Frank Dawson, € for being overweight and told him to go home to his mother—could thousands in his Manchester, NH rally on August 15 just € sit there and stomach Trump’s claim that his campaign is based on “love”?
Week of legislative defeats and popular ridicule continues for embattled UK Prime Minister
July heatwave luckily distracted public attention in Europe from disruption in another area: democracy. Few hot and bothered Europeans noticed that the political line they had been fed for at least three years had just been dropped. The media, busy with other investigations, did not try hard to alert them.
The manufacture of crisis as ‘reality owned’ continues to exist within a dialectical paradigm of political abuse by Stateless Bastards condemned to relish filth and as ‘ascendant’ Geopolitical?
Another day, another racist clown. Seeking to rebut AOC with a big "Oh yeah?" for slamming conditions at Trump's concentration camps so barbaric migrant women had to drink water from toilets, Iowa's Steve 'What's Wrong With Being A Nazi' King got into a camp so he could film himself drinking water from said toilets and declare "Not bad!" Except he used the attached fountain,
The scanning of visa and green card applicants' social media accounts during the application process continues to escalate. Even though the program hasn't shown itself to be effective in keeping the country free of terrorists or criminals, the DHS and its components continue to believe this is an essential part of our national security infrastructure.
As you probably heard, earlier this week, the FCC fined Google/YouTube for alleged COPPA violations in regards to how it collected data on kids. You can read the details of the complaint and proposed settlement (which still needs to be approved by a judge, but that's mostly a formality). For the most part, people responded to this in the same way that they responded to the FTC's big Facebook fine. Basically everyone hates it -- though for potentially different reasons. Most people hate it because they think it's a slap on the wrist, won't stop such practices and just isn't painful enough for YouTube to care. On the flip side, some people hate it because it will force YouTube to change its offerings for no good reason at all and in a manner that might actually lead to more privacy risks and less content for children.
An anonymous high schooler in Moscow has leaked an audio recording to the website Mediazona, capturing a speech by a visitor dressed in a police uniform, who introduced herself to the class as a juvenile case inspector. In her remarks, the woman threatened the students with criminal prosecution for attending political protests, warning that they’d have no legal recourse, if a case against them is opened.
A month ago we wrote about Devin Nunes' third lawsuit against his critics over their speech, and noted that he was promising in the press that more lawsuits were coming. We noted that the latest lawsuit was slightly odd in that he actually filed it in California, rather than Virginia (as with his first two lawsuits), and in California he could face real anti-SLAPP penalties (i.e., paying the other side's legal fees). Perhaps that's why that lawsuit was not actually filed by Nunes himself, but rather his campaign. If it got tossed out via anti-SLAPP, then suckers who donated to his campaign would foot the bill, rather than Nunes directly himself. Either way, we'll likely never find out because as suddenly as that case was filed, it's now been dismissed by Nunes. Amusingly, Nunes' lawyer is claiming victory:
It appears that the idea of SLAPP suits has moved to China. The Chinese internet giant Tencent is apparently fed up with its own users criticizing the company on its own WeChat blogging platform, and has sued a bunch of them (possibly paywalled -- here's another link for the story). The details are pretty ridiculous, even recognizing that China doesn't (by a long shot) have a history of protecting free expression. What's incredible here, of course, is that Tencent could have just shut down the accounts of the WeChatters. But, instead it's trying to completely destroy them with these lawsuits.
A federal court has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against the Splinter website by a former Trump staffer. Jason Miller, a Trump campaign spokesman, sued after Splinter published an article that included allegations made by another Trump staffer Miller had an affair with. The allegations being sued over weren't your normal allegations. These allegations were made in court by A.J. Delgado, Miller's affair partner who later had Miller's child.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign is demanding that Facebook, Twitter, and Google more aggressively counter disinformation on their platforms. In letters addressed to the companies Friday, O’Rourke’s team outlines how they believe each of them could address the issue after his campaign was falsely linked to a suspected shooter on social media last weekend.
YouTube's Content ID system aims to protect copyright holders, but for now, it's not open to everyone. This limited availability of one of the largest copyright enforcement tools has raised questions among several US members of Congress. They question Google CEO Sundar Pichai on several Content ID issues, hoping the company will open it up to more rightsholders.
A court in Kyiv has released Vladimir Tsemakh on his own recognizance. Tsemakh was arrested in June inside the self-declared People’s Republic of Donetsk and then transferred to Kyiv. His daughter, Maria, confirmed to the news agency Interfax that she learned from his lawyer that her father has left the courthouse.
The administration of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics has threatened to ban the student journal Doxa from a university celebration at Gorky Park on September 5, if the editors refuse to “depoliticize” the activities they plan to conduct at their booth during the event.€
Next week will mark the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Politicians and bureaucrats wasted no time after that carnage to unleash the Surveillance State on average Americans, treating every citizen like a terrorist suspect. € Since the government failed to protect the public, Americans somehow forfeited their constitutional right to privacy. Despite heroic efforts by former NSA staffer Edward Snowden and a host of activists and freedom fighters, the government continues ravaging American privacy.
If you open Facebook’s mobile app today, it will likely suggest that you try the company’s new Dating service, which just launched in the U.S. after a rollout in 19 other countries last year. But with the company’s track record of mishandling user data, and its business model of monetizing our sensitive information to power third-party targeted advertising, potential users should view Facebook’s desire to peek into our bedrooms as a huge red flag.
Just this week, Facebook’s lax data privacy practices resulted in a huge database of phone numbers linked to accounts surfacing on a third party’s unprotected server. Generally, this is how the story goes: sensitive user data is leaked or found to be available in a way that Facebook users didn’t expect. But don’t worry, the company says—we’ve updated those practices. While improvements are appreciated, this cycle gets repeated so regularly that you could almost set your watch by it.€
I have seen the future and it's hundreds of law enforcement agencies morphing into Amazon subsidiaries. Amazon's Ring doorbell camera currently commands 97% of the doorbell camera market. It's easy to see why. Amazon has the marketing power and cash flow to hand out discounted cameras to police departments, using them as loss leaders to ensure buy-in by end users, many of whom get these cameras for free from local cops.
Hepp’s lawsuit names Facebook, Reddit, the image repository Imgur, the animated GIF site Giphy, and the porn site XNXX, alongside 10 other operators of unnamed sites. She writes that approximately two years ago, she discovered that a convenience store security camera photo of her had appeared online in some unwanted contexts. That included a Facebook ad promising meetups with “single women,” an unspecified ad for erectile dysfunction, a Reddit forum for sexualized pictures of older women, and the “MILF” tag on Imgur.
NSO Group's founders and alumni have spawned a web of more than a dozen similar startups, many of which operate in secret, that sell attacks against routers, computers, smart speakers, and other digital devices.
Further down the list I found other, more unsettling revelations about what Google knows about me. It turns out Google has info connecting me to my grandma (on my dad’s side) who’s alive and well but has never had the internet, and my grandpa (on my mom’s side), who recently passed away in March 2019 and also never had the internet.
This was disturbing for several reasons, the biggest of which being that neither of them had ever logged onto the internet in their lives. Neither even had the internet in their homes their entire lives! Beyond that, Google knew their exact addresses and their middle initials. I couldn’t even have told you those things about my grandparents. Sure, I could drive you to their houses, but I couldn’t tell you their address off the top of my head. And lastly was the format of the data entry. The all-caps address on my grandpa’s account really threw me off because it made me feel as if the info was machine processed at one point or another, because I don’t enter information in all caps anywhere except in my handwriting, on paper. After seeing this, I began to investigate how Google might have 1) gained access to this info and 2) connected it to me.
Race riots go way back in the United States. One of the worst occurred in Chicago in 1919; it killed 23 blacks, 15 whites, injured 537, and its arson left 1,000 homeless. As Eve Ewing writes in her new poetry collection, 1919, the melee was in part a reaction to the Great Migration. Her first poem presents the train’s perspective on the migrants it brings up from the South: “
When the police have already decided who they like for some unsolved crime, almost nothing will stop them from getting their man. Investigations are supposed to involve investigating. But when a handful of tipsters said a black man robbed a bank, the Portland PD went to work trying to pin four bank robberies on one man. (via Simple Justice)
Top Mississippi officials called for a review of the state’s increasingly troubled prison system, following stories by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica that documented chaotic conditions in the facilities.
“As governor, one of the first actions I’ll take is a full audit of the system to figure out why we keep seeing problems like this, and identify solutions to prevent them from happening in the future,” Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state Attorney General Jim Hood said in a statement.
She met him at a bar on a windless January night. Anna Sattler, 30 years old at the time, was wrapping up a girls’ night out when she got into an argument with friends and found herself without a designated driver. When this kindly stranger appeared, offering to drive her home, she accepted.
“The intention was never to pick anybody up. I was looking for a ride,” said Sattler, who had grown up in the close-knit native Yup’ik communities of Western Alaska and was still learning to navigate life on the urban road system. The man seemed so nice, she remembers. Until she started saying no.
Good news has arrived for the long, long, oh so very long list of travelers who've had their rights abused by TSA agents. Reversing its own decision, the full panel of Third Circuit Appeals Court judges has removed TSA agents from "can't be sued" list.
On this€ episode€ of Along the Line, Dr. Dreadlocks Nicholas Baham III, Dr. Nolan Higdon, and€ Janice Domingo discuss€ the history immigration policy in the US.€ ATL’s€ Creative Director is Dylan Lazaga.€ Mickey Huff is ATL’s producer. ATL’s engineer is Janice Domingo. Adam Armstrong is ATL’s webmaster.
Reverse warrants are the new tech-related toy law enforcement is experimenting with. Oddly, a lot of what's come to light so far originates in the Midwest, an area not exactly known for early adoption. Outside of the NYPD and feds confirming they use warrants to seek a list of possible suspects (rather than targeting any specific suspect), most reporting has covered deployments by law enforcement agencies in Minnesota.
In a key victory for American Muslims, a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the terrorism watchlist fails to provide due process and therefore violates the United States Constitution.
Judge Anthony Trenga acknowledged the “administrative process” used to place a person in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), the terrorism watchlist, carries an “inherent substantial risk of erroneous deprivation” of rights.
A federal court [PDF] has just declared the federal government's Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) unconstitutional. It's not that the government can't maintain a database of travelers it feels are enough of a threat to hassle repeatedly, it's that it can't do this without providing more information to, and better redress options for, those it has placed on this list.
There still remains much confusion over what postmodernity actually means, so take this sentence as only one attempt, courtesy of Urban Dictionary: “A term that you keep on hearing about in college and have to look up on Wikipedia. Basically says “fuck it” to the search for any intellectual conclusions.” Or, with less hostility from the same website: “The idea that there is no objective meaning, only subjective meaning, the meaning one brings to a thing, irrespective of the intent of the author, or of the Author, or of reality.”
"America needs to be responsive to the people, not to corporations and special interests, or it is no longer a democratic republic."
The leaked information came from a former Siri grader, one of the contract workers tasked with evaluating Siri's accuracy. Apple recently halted the program after it came under scrutiny following a Guardian report revealing that contractors overheard private conversations.
Mr Lilja was shot in the head and chest at his block of flats and then called the police himself with a neighbour's phone, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen.
This year, in Bartow, Florida, a man received a 17-year sentence for raping a 13-year-old girl. The same girl had reported a previous allegation of rape against the same man — only to be branded a liar and prosecuted as a juvenile for filing false information with the police.
The second time she reported being raped, the girl had photo and video evidence. The Ledger, a newspaper in Lakeland, Florida, reported that the prosecutor in the false-reporting case subsequently testified that the girl should never have been prosecuted. A judge, the paper said, later determined she had been failed by the criminal justice system.
State and national lawmakers, victims’ rights advocates and students called for a review of sexual harassment policies at the University of Illinois following an investigation by NPR Illinois and ProPublica that found gaps in the way sexual misconduct allegations were handled at the system’s flagship campus.
The news organizations reported last week how the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign allowed several professors to resign, some with provisions guaranteeing confidentiality, though they were accused of sexual misconduct and found to have violated university policies. Other faculty members facing similar accusations were allowed to stay on staff. Some were given extended periods of paid leave both during and following investigations.
On the corner of 28th Street and Drake Avenue in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, the family of Telesfora Escamilla created a shrine for their mother, decorating a tree with silk flowers, ribbons and Our Lady of Guadalupe candles.
Escamilla was in a crosswalk at that intersection three days before Christmas in 2016 when a driver delivering Amazon packages in a cargo van turned left and hit her. She died that day, two weeks shy of her 85th birthday.
After his mother was killed by a driver delivering Amazon packages, Tyler Hayes wrote a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Hayes asked Bezos to come up with safer ways for Amazon’s contractors to deliver packages so that no other family would experience the devastation his has.
"I had ancestors killed in the Holocaust. We feel this in our bones. We need to mobilize."
"We simply cannot live up to the values we profess if we don't end mass incarceration and eliminate the deep racial bias entrenched in the current system."
After years of abuse and secrecy, court's decision seen by rights advocates as very welcome but "long overdue"
For most of us—excepting possibly Mussolini, Trump, and other bully boasters—the word authoritarian is a pejorative. In contrast, many of us want to define ourselves and our heroes as anti-authoritarians, and this has resulted in some curious definitions of that term.
A federal judge threatened Friday to subject some Texas officials to the same hot temperatures prisoners have experienced after a group of inmates accused the state of failing to honor an agreement to cool a prison that inmates said was oppressively hot.
Attorneys for a group of inmates who had sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice allege state officials have continued to place "hundreds of men at substantial risk of serious harm" by failing to abide by the settlement. The lawyers say state prison officials have provided false information about broken air conditioners and temperatures inside prison facilities.
Russian officials have issued an international arrest warrant for Sergey Petrov, the founder of “Rolf,” the country’s biggest car dealership franchise, on charges of illegally transferring 4 billion rubles (about $60.6 million) abroad.€
In September of 2011, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis— a man who the best evidence suggested was innocent. On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered by self-appointed community ‘guardian’ George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Then Michael Brown was murdered by the Ferguson police and his lifeless body was left lying in the street for hours. And then Freddie Gray was murdered by the Baltimore police. And on, and on.
We've noted repeatedly how the Sprint, T-Mobile merger isn't great. There's forty years of history showing how telecom industry megamergers almost always result in less competition, higher prices, and fewer jobs, and this deal is no exception. Eliminating one of just four US wireless carriers is likely to result in higher prices (see: Canada or Ireland). And Wall Street analysts not only predict the deal could eliminate anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs, data suggests the consolidation could result in employees across the sector making less money even if they work at other companies.
Right now, a vast majority of Californians have just one choice—or no choice at all—for high-speed broadband service, thanks to a law that removed any state oversight over€ California's broadband market. When that law passed in 2012, its supporters, including AT&T and Comcast, promised that removing oversight of any telecommunications service that worked over the Internet would allow high-speed broadband to flourish, and would create a better and more competitive market.
As California's current broadband market clearly shows, it did not. Yet A.B. 1366, authored by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, exempts broadband carriers from state regulation. Such a move would leave Californians with little or no option for affordable high-speed broadband internet, and no regulators empowered to change that situation—while others across the country and around the world move ahead of California.
"Even the largest social media platform in the world must follow the law and respect consumers."
The first probe, led by New York and including seven other states and the District of Columbia, focuses on Facebook. The second, announced by Texas and likely to include up to 40 other states, did not specify the targets among large tech companies but was expected to center on Google.
Once lauded as engines of economic growth, the companies in social media, Internet search, e-commerce and other digital technologies have increasingly been on the defensive over lapses such as privacy breaches and their outsized market influence.
Eight states, as well as the District of Columbia, have announced a class action in the New York courts to investigate anti-competitive and unethical behaviour from the social media giant. This is in addition to the US Federal Trade Commission investigation, currently ongoing.
State officials from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee are joining forces with Columbia and they're not pulling punches: [...]
Top state law-enforcement officials from across the country are formally launching antitrust probes into Facebook Inc. FB -1.79% and Alphabet Inc. GOOG -0.53% ’s Google starting next week, further pressuring tech giants already under federal scrutiny over whether their online dominance stifles competition.
The moves, involving two large bipartisan coalitions of state attorneys general, add considerable heft to the investigative efforts under way in Washington. As in the government’s antitrust action against Microsoft Corp. two decades ago, state attorneys general are likely to provide important contributions to the substance of the investigations, complementing the federal efforts.
Tech giants Facebook and Google are facing more scrutiny into their business practices.
A multi-state antitrust investigation, led by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, is focusing on "Facebook’s dominance in the industry and the potential anticompetitive conduct stemming from that dominance," she said Friday.
Other states involved in the bipartisan initiative, says James, who is a Democrat, include the attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia.
Another collective of states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, plans to announce the launch of a multi-state investigation "into whether large tech companies have engaged in anticompetitive behavior that stifled competition, restricted access, and harmed consumers," the attorney general's office announced Friday.
“When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found,” tweeted Basecamp CEO and co-founder Jason Fried, yesterday, along with the funny ad he bought to show up in Google's search results.
Google on Friday said the US Department of Justice has asked the company for information on previous antitrust investigations, confirming that the federal government is looking into its business practices.
The search giant also said it's preparing for scrutiny from state attorneys generals. An official announcement of that probe is expected Monday in Washington, DC.
"The DOJ has asked us to provide information about these past investigations, and we expect state attorneys general will ask similar questions," Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president of global affairs, wrote in a blog post. "We have always worked constructively with regulators and we will continue to do so."
At the beginning of this week, Daimler supplier Continental Automotive Systems was forced to withdraw a motion for a U.S. antisuit injunction motion with respect to the ten above-mentioned Nokia cases. As I explained in that post, it remains to be seen whether that partial withdrawal of the U.S. antisuit motion, further to a German anti-antisuit-injunction injunction ("AAII") obtained by Nokia in Munich, will be deemed sufficient--but in the meantime, before any hypothetical contemption motion would be adjudged, the Munich appeals court may very well lift the injunction.
Continental's withdrawal-in-part specifically stated that the motion was not withdrawn with respect to "the other defendants in this proceeding," and not in the same sentence, but in the wider context, the withdrawal notice reminded the U.S. court of "Sharp's separate and ongoing proceedings against Continental's customer Daimler."
Albert Einstein once famously (albeit perhaps apocryphally) said that "[c]ompound interest is the most powerful force in the universe." Not to contradict the creator of 20th Century physics, but it is just as likely that the most powerful force in the universe is the power of unintended consequences. The Federal Circuit illustrated this power in its recent decision in iNo Therapeutics LLC v. Praxair Distribution Inc. with regard to Justice Breyer's exhortation, in his Mayo Collaborative Serv. Inc. v. Prometheus Laboratories opinion, regarding the need to beware of "interpreting patent statutes in ways that make patent eligibility 'depend simply on the draftsman's art' without reference to the 'principles un€derlying the prohibition against patents for [natural laws],'" citing Flook v. Parker.
Plaintiffs iNO Therapeutics, LLC, Mallinckrodt Hospital Products Inc., and Mallinckrodt Hospital Products IP Inc. asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 8,282,966; 8,293,284; 8,795,741; 8,431,163; and 8,846,112, which the opinion "collectively [termed the] 'heart failure patents' or 'HF patents'" against Praxair Distribution Inc. and Praxair Inc. Plaintiffs also asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 8,573,209; 8,776,794; 8,776,795; 9,265,911; and 9,295,802 which the opinion "collectively [termed the] 'delivery system infrared patents' or 'DSIR patents'" and which were directed to devices for administering nitric oxide gas. As explained in the opinion, inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) gas had been "used to treat infants experiencing hypoxic respiratory failure" since at least the early 1990's. However, in certain cases this treatment results in increased pulmonary edema for infants having a congenital defect, left ventricular hypertrophy.
[...]
Returning to the majority's blessedly non-precedential opinion, it will bring cold comfort to patent-divested patentees, as well as being somewhat ironic that the upshot of the opinion leads patent prosecutors to the inevitable conclusion that the Federal Circuit is counseling exactly what Justice Breyer cautioned against in Mayo, that we should beware of the clever draftsman who attempts (or worse, succeeds) in obtaining claims that are enforceable and pass the patent eligibility test that the Federal Circuit has crafted, based predominantly on such claim-drafting cleverness. This is not the first time that this has been the outcome of the Federal Circuit's patent eligibility jurisprudence. For example, in In re Roslyn, Judge Dyk's opinion held patent-ineligible claims to Dolly the sheep which was, after all, just a sheep (notwithstanding being a sheep unlike any sheep that had ever lived). But a careful review of that opinion leads ineluctably to the conclusion that, had the draftsman been clever enough (or prescient enough to realize before the fact the quantum and quality of cleverness required) to have claimed a flock of genetically identical sheep, the Court's objections to patent ineligibility would have perforce fallen, because it would be undeniable that flocks of genetically identical sheep do not occur in nature. This state of affairs is frankly Byzantine and antithetical to Congress's purpose (uniformity and predictability in U.S. patent law) for creating the Federal Circuit, as well as being contrary to the principles of clarity and the creation of "bright line rules" that arguably prompted the Supreme Court to begin its heightened scrutiny of the Court and its opinions (if not philosophy). The Federal Circuit's current path is contrary to the idea that patent claims should be readily understandable to well-intended business people and frank (or in current parlance, "efficient") infringers alike and also contrary to the Founders' attitudes regarding patenting as a way to encourage disclosure of new inventions for the public good. Having such a path will give little relief to those who have lost patent rights under the current regime, but at least it provides a way for inventors to obtain patent-eligible claims no matter what other branches of government do in addressing this issue. Innovation, especially in the diagnostic and life sciences arts, requires no more and is entitled to no less.
Mark Greenstein is trying to patent an automated investment system to “automatically adjust the amount [a] person saves” in order to achieve a projected income amount. A key element of the claims, according to Greenstein, is to “utilize a projected amount of income at a future date for at least one person.” The Examiner and PTAB found the claims unpatentable as both lacking eligibility and as either anticipated or obvious.
[...]
On appeal, Greenstein argued that the claimed utilization of projected income was an inventive concept and noted that it “was the basis for the successful commercial launch of a new product, demonstrating its material advantages to persons in the relevant market.” On appeal, the Federal Circuit found that argument failed to connect the dots.
The Federal Circuit affirmed, in an opinion by Judge Lourie joined by Judges O'Malley and Reyna. There was nothing remarkable about the opinion, which agreed with the District Court's claim construction and that Sandoz did not literally infringe under that interpretation of the scope and meaning of the claims. Where the opinion got interesting (and where the en banc court felt the need to grant in part Amgen's petition to rehear the case) was when the panel dismissed Amgen's argument that infringement could be found under the doctrine of equivalents by stating:
[...]
Prudence suggests the Court would have done itself a better service if it had struck the entire sentence, because the sentiment remains that the doctrine is not "readily available to extend protection beyond the scope of the claims." Indeed, the doctrine is readily available to extent protection beyond the literal scope of the claims is warranted; if the Court wants to know why it should be readily evident by now that the reason is that the Supreme Court has said so, in Winans v. Denmead, 56 U.S. 330 (1854); Seymour v. Osbourne, 78 U.S. 516 (1870); Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Prod. Co. 339 U.S. 605 (1950); Warner-Jenkinson v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co., 520 U.S. 17 (1997); and Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., 535 U.S. 722 (2002). This judicial sentiment to the contrary by the Federal Circuit is reminiscent of language that arguably was at least in part responsible for energizing the Supreme Court to review more closely the Federal Circuit's stewardship of the Court's patent jurisprudence (inter alia, in Warner-Jenkinson and Festo) and we all see where that has gotten us (see, e.g., "The Proper Role of the Federal Circuit").
What is particularly disheartening is that this was a precedential decision, available for review by the entire Court. Whilst comprising just 6 words in a 16-page opinion, it is unfortunate that the impact of those 6 words was unappreciated (or worse, that concerns about them were disregarded) by the members of the Court. The precedential value (or risk) of these words in the decision is (for the time being) past, but the circumstances under which they arose in the first place may remain with the patent community for some time.
The standard economic rationale for the alienability of property rights is that it facilitates the flow of resources to those who can put it to the most valuable use, or the “highest utility user.” But patents do not come with a right to productively use some social resource—patent rights consist only of a right to stop others from using the claimed invention. The per-son who is most able to extract rents with a patent’s veto power is not necessarily the same as the person who will put an invention to its most socially valuable use. If one simply applied the conventional economic justification for the alienability of property rights onto patents, then having patents flow to the highest rent extractor is not obviously desirable from a social viewpoint. Restricting transfers to predatory users would accordingly seem justified.
If the unrestricted alienability of patents is to be justified on economic grounds, it must be by reference to other reasons, such as an argument that allowing alienability increases the value of a patent and therefore increases ex ante incentives to invent. But such alternative justifications come with their own limits. Alienability is neither the only means to increase ex ante incentives to invent, nor a particularly effective one, given that inventors must share the surplus generated by alienability with the (more sophisticated) transferee. The case for unlimited alienability of patents is therefore an uneasy one.
Apple Inc. has convinced a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office administrative law tribunal that prior inventions render some claims in a Uniloc 2017 LLC battery charging patent invalid.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board voided more than half of the claims in Uniloc’s U.S. Patent No. 6,661,203, which involves “charging, discharging, and recharging rechargable batteries under adverse thermal conditions.” Apple had challenged the patent at the PTAB in an inter partes review, in which the board weighs the validity of patent claims in light of prior art.
The Aug. 19 decision is the latest in a running battle between Apple and Uniloc over technology patents that has played out at the PTAB and in courts.
Apple argued that two U.S. patents and a Japanese patent application rendered claims in the ‘203 patent obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, meaning an individual knowledgeable about the relevant technology.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) has long relied on active appellate review to bring uniformity and clarity to patent law. It initially treated the PTO the same as the federal district courts, reviewing its factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. Following reversal by the Supreme Court in Dickinson v. Zurko, the Federal Circuit began giving greater deference to PTO factual findings. But it continued to review the PTO’s legal conclusions de novo, while coding an expansive list of disputed issues in patent cases as legal conclusions, even when they rest on subsidiary factfinding.
Congress expanded the role of the PTO in adjudicating challenges to patent validity in the Leahy–Smith America Invents Act of 2011 (“AIA”), authorizing new adjudicatory proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) as an alternative to federal district court litigation. The AIA provides for Federal Circuit review of PTAB decisions, without specifying standards of review. The scope of review could determine the success of these proceedings as a quicker, cheaper, and more expert alternative to district court litigation of patent challenges. The Federal Circuit applies the same standards of review to PTAB decisions in AIA proceedings that it applies to other PTO rulings, reviewing legal conclusions de novo and factual findings for substantial evidence. It also follows the same characterizations of issues as legal or factual that it has long used in the context of court/court review. In the past, by maximizing the scope of appellate review, these characterizations allowed the Federal Circuit to exercise greater quality control over generalist trial courts with limited competence to resolve patent matters. The net benefits are more dubious as applied to decisions of expert PTAB panels in AIA adjudications. Yet reversal rates at the Federal Circuit are essentially the same for PTAB decisions as for decisions of district courts in patent cases, threatening to frustrate a system designed to improve patent quality while limiting litigation costs.
This Essay reconsiders the proper scope of judicial review of PTAB rulings on two issues that the Federal Circuit codes as legal conclusions with factual underpinnings: nonobviousness and claim interpretation. Drawing on a functional approach to judicial review of mixed questions of law and fact, it argues for more deferential review of PTAB rulings on nonobviousness and claim interpretation given the expertise of the administrative tribunal and the case-specificity of the rulings. The Federal Circuit would do better to confine de novo review to generalizable legal rulings that provide guidance in future matters rather than replicating the work of the PTAB from the appellate bench on routine case-specific rulings.
As we've previously discussed, restaurant chain Taco John's has waged at least a decades-long war to try to pretend that its trademarked term, "Taco Tuesday," hasn't become generic. How the chain ever got what sure looks to be a purely descriptive trademark is anyone's guess, but armed with its trademark the company has since gone after other restaurants big and small for daring to host their own "Taco Tuesdays." If all of this sounds depressingly stupid to you, well, you're not wrong.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told Tom Brady that there's only one "Tom Terrific" — and it's not him.
The office rejected Brady's application to have the moniker all to himself, with regulators ruling that the alliterative title is too closely linked to New York Mets pitching icon Tom Seaver.
Over the past year or so, we've been discussing Epic's somewhat strange ongoing legal dispute with a minor from Illinois over cheating software he developed for Fortnite. Epic initially went after a host of so-called cheaters for developing these tools, claiming that they were violating both copyright and TOS agreements for the game. It found out later that one of these targets was a minor. Instead of backing off in any respect, even after the child's mother petitioned the court with a letter asking it to dismiss the case as the minor can't have entered into a TOS agreement, Epic has since pressed the throttle to go after a child.