Chromebooks tick a lot of boxes: they’re affordable, portable, and have enough processing power for all basic tasks, such as web browsing or document editing. Some even come with high-end hardware components capable of meeting the needs of software developers and other professionals.
Last year, at Google I/O in Mountain View, Google announced its intention to ship all future Chromebooks with Linux support right out of the box, making it possible for users to run just about any popular Linux distribution in a container, in parallel with Chrome OS.
There’s also GalliumOS, a fast and lightweight Linux distro for Chromebooks built on top of Xubuntu to provide a fully functional desktop. It integrates Google’s mouse driver to offer a touchpad experience similar to Chrome OS and features multiple Optimizations that improve responsiveness and eliminate system stalls.
As you can see, Chromebooks have a lot to offer to Linux users—not to mention their ability to run Android apps. To help you spend your money wisely, we’ve compared dozens of popular Chromebooks, and here’s our list of the best Chromebooks for Linux in 2020.
Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, we are pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases. Our primary objectives are to ensure they continue to be stable, secure, and work reliably for anyone who depends on them. We’ll continue to prioritize any updates related to security, which will be included in Chrome 80. Please, follow this blog for updates.
There seems to be the slightest change in the release date of Chrome and Chrome OS. As reported by Google, They are pausing Chrome and Chrome OS release due to adjusted work schedules.
In view of the ongoing developments with novel coronavirus outbreak, Google on Wednesday said it has paused upcoming releases for Chrome and Chrome OS to ensure it continues to be stable, secure, and work reliably for all.
"Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, we are pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases. Our primary objectives are to ensure they continue to be stable, secure and work reliably for anyone who depends on them. We'll continue to prioritize any updates related to security, which will be included in Chrome 80," Google Chrome wrote in a blog post.
Linux (or, GNU/Linux, if you prefer) distributions are absolutely amazing. Stability, speed, flexibility; Your average Linux-based system is a veritable powerhouse of functionality – a tour de force of what computers can accomplish. But, from time to time, other operating systems have some pretty great ideas. Here are 7 of my personal favorites that our favorite Linux distributions might want to consider… “borrowing”. Hint hint.
This is a weekly blog about the Raspberry Pi 4 (“RPI4”), the latest product in the popular Raspberry Pi range of computers.
One area I’ve not covered to date is utility software. Nestling in the Raspbian repositories are a ton of utilities from the essential to the wacky. File management is definitely a routine but important activity for any desktop user. Recognizing that file management software is deeply personal (causing almost as many conflicts as text editors), I’ve looked at a good spectrum of file managers this week.
There’s good and bad news. Raspbian repositories host packages for lots of high quality open source file managers, including both graphical and console based software. Sadly, you often don’t get the latest stable release.
Our small form-factor mini-PC that puts freedom, privacy and security first. We’re really excited about the Librem Mini, it’s a device our community have wanted and we’ve wanted to offer for some time.
The Librem Mini is accessible, small, light and powerful featuring a new 8th gen quad core i7 processor, up to 64 GB of fast DDR4 memory and 4k 60 fps video playback. It’s a desktop for your home or office, a media center for your entertainment, or an expandable home server for your files and applications.
Purism, a company that has already impressed with its Librem lineup of devices, is ready to enter the mini-PC fight with a new device called Librem Mini and supposed to offer all the benefits of its other products but packed in a smaller form factor.
So today, we’ll be providing you with a closer look at Librem Mini in a way that could help you decide whether it’s worth the money or not.
It seems that we have gotten past the obsession with dongles that gave rise to small HDMI PC sticks. Thanks to the popularity of set-top and smart TV boxes as well as the revival of the Mac Mini, we’re back to being fascinated with small boxes that act as full-blown desktops, sans the discrete graphics card. Comparing Purism’s latest product to the Apple Mac Mini probably isn’t too far-fetched but the Librem Mini does have the advantage not only in power but in the promise of control, security, and privacy.
The Librem Mini is first and foremost a device that’s supposed to come with all the benefits of the Librem lineup of computers in a smaller form factor, so it still runs PureOS with Pureboot and Librem Key support.
It can be used as a stand-alone desktop computers “to protect your family and business,” as the parent company itself says, but it can also play the role of a media center as it offers smooth 4K video at 60 fps. And of course, it can also be a mini server with full disk encryption and tamper detection.
Purism has launched the new Linux mini PC this week with prices starting from $699 for a system equipped with an 8th-gen Intel Core i7-8565U Whiskey Lake processor. Immediate PC measures approximately 5 x 5 x 1.5 inches in size and comes preloaded with a GNU/Linux-based PureOS software, Pureboot bootloader, and support for the company’s Librem Key security key.
Connectivity on the Linux PC include HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2, 4 x USB 3.0 Type-A, 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 3.5mm audio combo jack, Gigabit Ethernet and optional wireless module (802.11n + Bluetooth 4.0).
Purism flaunts itself as “Social Purpose Company” aiming to do good for society and they have several services and products to offer in this regard.
While you might be aware of its Librem series of Linux laptops, Librem One (encrypted services), PureOS Linux, and the Librem 5 Linux smartphone. Now, they have come up with a small-factor mini PC targeted at the users who want to take control of their privacy and security.
The Purism Librem Mini is a small form factor PC powered by an 8th Gen Intel Core i7 processor. And, as you’d expect from this company, the uni runs Linux out of the box.
“Smaller than a Mac Mini, slightly bigger than a Raspberry Pi. More freedom, more privacy, more security,” Purism says of the device.
The minimal footprint of the fan-cooled Librem Mini should mean it works well as a desktop PC, but also as a media centre and entertainment hub or even a home server.
Built with the same security and privacy standards Purism is known for, the Librem Mini promises a smaller and versatile alternative to a desktop computer, but you can also use it as a set-top TV box or powerful home server.
Featuring a beautiful and modern design, the device uses Purism’s PureBoot secured boot process, PureOS Linux-based operating system, Heads secure BIOS replacement, and support for the Librem Key security key to detect, disable and prevent device tampering.
Purism has been known for its Linux-based secure and privacy-focused laptops for years, and more recently they developed Librem 5 Linux smartphone with the same philosophy in mind.
But now the company has introduced Purism Mini based on an Intel Core i7 Whiskey Lake processor with up to 64GB DDR4 RAM and running PureOS Linux distribution, and Coreboot based PureBoot bootloader that disables and neutralizes Intel Management Engine (IME).
Desktops have largely fallen out of favor with home consumers, as they instead opt for laptops. Really, it isn't hard to see why this is -- a desktop PC often takes up a lot of room in a home, as it usually requires its own dedicated desk. Not to mention, you then have to add a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. You are then tethered to one place, unable to realistically work outdoors or at a coffee shop.
And yet, despite all the benefits a notebook has over a desktop, many people -- including yours truly -- prefers them. If you like the idea of a desktop, but prefer one that is very small (and won't take up a lot of space), there are plenty of options such as Intel NUC and Apple Mac mini. Today, we get another diminutive desktop option, but this one is designed for Linux and privacy. Yes, Purism is finally launching a tiny desktop, and it will come pre-installed with the Debian-based PureOS. Called "Librem Mini," the cute bugger has 4 USB-A ports on the front, along with a 3.5mm audio jack, and the power button. On the rear, there are two more USB-A ports, a single USB-C port, Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, and the power port.
Purism aren't a company we cover here often, as their devices aren't usually gaming related. However, they did just announce a mini-PC that looks and sounds rather lovely called the Librem Mini.
Sized at 12.8cm (5.0 inches) x 12.8cm (5.0 inches) x 3.8cm (1.5 inches) they say it's smaller than a Mac Mini and not that much bigger than a Raspberry Pi. Powerful too with an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8565U processor, up to 64 GB DDR4 RAM, Intel UHD Graphics 620, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2 which will both support 60Hz 4K, Gigabit Ethernet LAN and plenty of ports it's a mighty sounding machine.
The keyboard: it’s a daily tool that’s become ingrained in our work, our gaming and our communication. But the basic fundamentals of a PC keyboard haven’t changed substantially. Ergonomics have improved, the locations of specialty keys have been slightly tweaked, but for the most part PC users have adapted to the traditional layout of a keyboard, rather than the keyboard adapting to our workflows and various needs. Fresh off the announcement that it will design its own laptops in-house, Pop!_OS developer System76 is take the same approach with keyboards.
System76 do a lot of things, they've steadily grown to a point where they make their own desktops and now they're expanding further into making more hardware.
Now they're going to have a go at making a keyboard. Not the fanciest of tech, sure, however it's something we use constantly when at a PC and it's obviously essential. It also hasn't really changed much over the years, which System76 think they can do better.
Since they're a Linux hardware vendor, and they also make their own Linux distribution with Pop!_OS, it will of course all fit together nicely.
As I approach my third year using it as my daily driver for working and playing, I’m still amazed at how frequently Linux surprises me. I approach Linux as an endless rabbit hole of new discoveries. Endless OS, then, is like an oversized amusement park full of intersecting rabbit holes and winding mazes of knowledge you’re happy to get lost in. I never envisioned having this much fun with a Linux operating system — any operating system — while completely disconnected from the lifeline we’ve become addicted to: internet connectivity.
Linux is the open platform, and you can choose the best distro by considering every single element of the distribution. Furthermore, you can also change a number of useful elements within your Linux distribution, which is yet another cool aspect of using a Linux distro. But, if your first priority of getting a Linux distribution with best and beautiful UI (user interface), there are a handful of Linux distributions that you can choose from. Depending upon what exactly you are looking for, you can get a Linux distribution that resembles the user interface of Windows and Mac, the two most popular proprietary operating systems in the market.
But, there are also a number of Linux distributions that sport a completely different user interface, which most people also love. But at the core, every single distribution is running the Linux kernel, and thus, even if you switch from one distro to the other, you will always feel at home, as everything else, other than the user interface is the same. Instead of switching to a new distro altogether, you can also install another desktop environment and start enjoying a different flavour of Linux. But, I will talk about the top Linux distributions with the best user interfaces that you can start using now.
Charles reached out to me about doing another interview, which is something I’ve thought about for a while. You do an interview about your setup and it’s locked in time, when really your Linux set-up evolves. So I was happy to hear from him again, after our 2014 interview. He’s using Fedora and GNOME now, rather than Ubuntu and Unity, but as he mentions, his workflow hasn’t changed. Which is the beauty of Linux. The desktop and distro can change, but your workflow doesn’t have to.
Contributing to SIG Scalability is a great way to learn Kubernetes in all its depth and breadth, and the team would love to have you join as a contributor. I took a look at the value of learning the hard way and interviewed the current SIG chairs to give you an idea of what contribution feels like.
Kubernetes has become the de facto way to orchestrate containers and the services within services. But how do we give services outside our cluster access to what is within? Kubernetes comes with the Ingress API object that manages external access to services within a cluster.
Ingress is a group of rules that will proxy inbound connections to endpoints defined by a backend. However, Kubernetes does not know what to do with Ingress resources without an Ingress controller, which is where an open source controller can come into play. In this post, we are going to use one option for this: the Kong Ingress Controller. The Kong Ingress Controller was open-sourced a year ago and recently reached one million downloads. In the recent 0.7 release, service mesh support was also added.
The latest release of Kubernetes is now available for download and experimentation, with the MicroK8s Kubernetes 1.18 release candidate.
The easiest, fastest way to get the latest Kubernetes is to install MicroK8s on your machine.
2020 has suddenly become the year of the coronavirus. In order to slow transmissions, save lives and dampen the economic impact of this frightful virus – governments, medical professionals, research institutes are racing around the clock to transform plans into action. Speed is key – that’s where high performance computing comes in.
Here are a few profiles of organizations that are stepping up to the front lines of this new bio-war:
It is pretty clear at this point that there is going to be a global recession thanks to the coronavirus outbreak. Maybe it will be a V-shaped recession that falls fast and recovers almost as fast, and maybe it will be a sharp drop and a much more prolonged climb back to normalcy. As we have pointed out before, we think that IT technology transitions are accelerated by such trying times, and this could happen starting soon. There is no doubt that companies are going to be even more aggressive in measuring the performance per dollar and performance per watt on every piece of hardware that will still need to go into datacenters in the coming days, weeks, and months.
As far as servers go, AMD, with its Epyc processors, is going to perhaps be the biggest beneficiary because it is the easiest drop-in replacement for the much more expensive Xeon SP processors from Intel. And while the Arm server chip upstarts, Ampere Computing and Marvell, were not planning for a global pandemic when they timed the launches of their chips on their roadmaps, they may be among the beneficiaries of the budget tightening that will no doubt start at most companies – if it hasn’t already. They would do well to get their chip samples ramped and products into the field as soon as possible.
We have reviewed the upcoming “Quicksilver” Altra processor from Ampere Computing and its future roadmap two weeks ago and also reviewed the upcoming “Triton” ThunderX3 processor from Marvell and its future roadmap this week. And now we are going to go through the performance and price/performance competitive analysis that these two chip makers have done as they talk about their impending server chips.
Play Any PC Game on Any Device | Moonlight Project Let's go over how to play any PC Game (Fortnite, CoD:Warzone, PUBG, RDR2, etc.) on Linux, Mac, or even your TV. I am talking about GameStreaming with the Moonlight project and an nVidia based machine as the host. Here is the setup and sample gameplay.
GitHub goes mobile with new apps for Android and iOS, Vulkan has new ray tracing extensions, RiskSense reports on the most vulnerable web and application frameworks, System76 enters the keyboard market, and Google starts rolling out new labels for Chromebook-compatible accessories.
OpenBSD Full disk encryption with coreboot and tianocore, FreeBSD 12.0 EOL, ZFS DVA layout, OpenBSD’s Go situation, AD updates requires changes in TrueNAS and FreeNAS, full name of FreeBSD’s root account, and more.
We try out Solus and are all impressed by this independent distro. Then Ell and Drew sing the praises of Visual Studio Code - a text editor that's packed full of features.
I'm announcing the release of the 5.5.10 kernel.
All users of the 5.5 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 5.5.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.5.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
System calls on Linux are relatively cheap, though the mitigations for speculative-execution vulnerabilities have made them more expensive than they once were. But even cheap system calls add up if one has to make a large number of them. Thus, developers have been working on ways to avoid system calls for a long time. Currently under discussion is a pair of ways to reduce the number of system calls required to read a file's contents, one of which is rather simpler than the other.
The tool started out as get-lore-mbox, but has now graduated into its own project called b4 — you can find it on git.kernel.org and pypi.
To use it, all you need to know is the message-id of one of the patches in the thread you want to grab.
Since its introduction in Linux 5.1, IO_uring has been coming together quite nicely and getting better with each new kernel release. IO_uring is the effort for delivering faster and more efficient I/O by avoiding excess copies and other efficiency improvements over the existing Linux AIO code. Here are some comparison benchmarks off Linux 5.6 Git.
IO_uring has been maturing well with each new kernel release for new features, fixes, and further optimizations. Linux 5.6 seems to be in very good shape for IO_uring and we should see more adoption of this new Linux kernel interface this year. Particularly once Ubuntu 20.04 LTS ships with being a major long-term support release on a now-supported kernel that will hopefully spur the adoption. But there's been work by RocksDB and other projects in exploring IO_uring for faster I/O potential.
Systems making use of NVMe solid-state storage may see slightly faster boot times with the Linux 5.7 kernel this summer.
Intel's Josh Triplett has been working recently on optimizing the Linux kernel boot performance. Earlier this month he posted a simple patch for Amazon's EC2 cloud Linux network driver so it could then start ~90x faster.
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Intel's Clear Linux team has achieved boot times in as little as 300ms. Among the motivation for ensuring such speedy boot times are not only for desktop/laptop users but also use-cases like needing to have automobile cameras operational in a defined period of time or also for booting up new VMs in the cloud as quickly as possible in responding to changes in load.
Linux 5.7 continues the trend of the community taking up new drivers being created to support different peripherals under Linux that amount to dealing with quirky/buggy behavior of the hardware.
Having new drivers mainly to deal with hardware quirks is particularly prevalent among HID devices and with time we've only been seeing more drivers come about, especially among gaming input devices as more gamers try out the likes of Steam on Linux.
Linux 5.7 will support the MHI protocol developed by Qualcomm as part of the new kernel bus being introduced.
Greg Kroah-Hartman has queued the MHI bus code into the char-misc's "-next" Git branch ahead of the Linux 5.7 merge window opening up around the start of April.
Hi list,
I'd like to announce the availability of mesa 20.0.2. We've had a fairly busy cycle (outside of the release management metadata), and there's fixes all over the code base, but for the most part it was all no-fuss sort of fixes.
Just a reminder that Eric Engestrom will be handling the release of 20.0.3.
Dylan
Git Short Log =============
Andreas Baierl (1): gitlab-ci: Add add a set of lima flakes
Bas Nieuwenhuizen (2): amd/llvm: Fix divergent descriptor indexing. (v3) amd/llvm: Fix divergent descriptor regressions with radeonsi.
Danylo Piliaiev (2): glsl: do not crash if string literal is used outside of #include/#line st/mesa: Fix signed integer overflow when using util_throttle_memory_usage
Dave Airlie (1): gallium: fix build with latest meson and gcc10
Dylan Baker (11): docs: Add sha256sums for 20.0.1 .pick_status.json: Update to 07f1ef5656e0721282d01a8421eaca056348137d .pick_status.json: Update to 70341d7746c177a4cd7377ef633e9f85afd11d54 .pick_status.json: Update to 625d8705f02e211e2733c3fe12845505725c37d4 .pick_status.json: Mark b83c9aca4a5fd02d920c90c1799137fed52dc1d9 as backported .pick_status.json: Update to ee9e0d1ecae307fa48200d2604d3114070253299 .pick_status.json: Update to 3dd0d12aa5fefa94123269a541c94cdf57599e34 .pick_status.json: Update to 94e37859a96cc56cf0c5418a5af00a3e9f5a1bf5 Docs: Add release notes for 20.0.2 VERSION: bump for 20.0.2 release docs/relnotes: Add sha256 sums for 20.0.2
Eric Anholt (1): glsl/tests: Fix waiting for disk_cache_put() to finish.
Eric Engestrom (7): bin/gen_release_notes.py: fix commit list command .pick_status.json: Update to 24db276d11976905b2e8a44965c684bb48c3d49f gen_release_notes: fix vulkan version reported docs/relnotes/20.0: fix vulkan version reported .pick_status.json: Update to ba03e308b66b0b88f60b99d9d47851a5e1522e6e vulkan/wsi: fix cleanup when dup() fails gen_release_notes: fix version in "you should wait" message
Francisco Jerez (1): intel/fs: Fix workaround for VxH indirect addressing bug under control flow.
Jason Ekstrand (9): isl: Set 3DSTATE_DEPTH_BUFFER::Depth correctly for 3D surfaces iris: Don't skip fast depth clears if the color changed anv: Parse VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures2 in CreateDevice vulkan/wsi: Don't leak the FD when GetImageDrmFormatModifierProperties fails vulkan/wsi: Return an error if dup() fails anv: Use the PIPE_CONTROL instead of bits for the CS stall W/A anv: Use a proper end-of-pipe sync instead of just CS stall anv: Do end-of-pipe sync around MCS/CCS ops instead of CS stall anv: Do an end-of-pipe sync before updating AUX table entries
José Fonseca (1): meson: Avoid duplicate symbols.
Kristian Høgsberg (2): Revert "glsl: Use a simpler formula for tanh" Revert "spirv: Use a simpler and more correct implementaiton of tanh()"
Marek Olšák (4): Revert "mesa: check for z=0 in _mesa_Vertex3dv()" radeonsi: add a bug workaround for NGG - LATE_ALLOC_GS ac: add a bug workaround for the 100% NGG culling case gallium/cso_context: remove cso_delete_xxx_shader helpers to fix the live cache
Martin Fuzzey (3): freedreno: android: fix build failure on android due to python version freedreno: android: add a6xx-pack.xml.h generation to android build freedreno: android: fix build of perfcounters.
Michel Dänzer (1): llvmpipe: Use uintptr_t for pointer values
Rafael Antognolli (3): anv: Wait for the GPU to be idle before invalidating the aux table. iris: Split aux map initialization from invalidation. iris: Wait for the GPU to be idle before invalidating the aux table.
Rob Clark (1): freedreno: fix FD_MESA_DEBUG=inorder
Samuel Pitoiset (5): aco: fix image load/store with lod and 1D images nir/lower_input_attachments: remove bogus assert in try_lower_input_texop() ac/llvm: add missing optimization barrier for 64-bit readlanes radv: only inject implicit subpass dependencies if necessary radv: fix random depth range unrestricted failures due to a cache issue
Timur Kristóf (2): nir: Add ability to lower non-const quad broadcasts to const ones. radv: Enable lowering dynamic quad broadcasts.
Vinson Lee (1): st/nine: Fix incompatible-pointer-types-discards-qualifiers errors.
git tag: mesa-20.0.2
Mesa 20.0.2 is out this evening as the latest stable bug-fix update for the Mesa Q1'2020 driver series.
Mesa 20.0.2 has a good number of fixes present but basically amounts to the usual assortment of different driver fixes throughout with no over-arching theme besides as usual most of the driver activity surrounding the Intel and AMD Radeon OpenGL/Vulkan drivers.
For the past year Mesa has offered a "soft" implementation of FP64 capabilities for GPUs lacking FP64 hardware capabilities in order to support ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 as required by OpenGL 4.0. Optimizations were merged today to significantly enhance the "soft FP64" capabilities of Mesa.
Longtime Intel Linux graphics driver developer Ian Romanick merged his set of 30 patches today to improve the compilation performance of FP64-based tests for platforms relying upon this software fallback. Mesa's existing soft FP64 implementation had a lot of control flow to deal with on the GPUs and this new revision seeks to reduce that in making it more GPU-friendly. Various micro-optimizations were also carried out around the NIR portion.
I was quite perked up going into this adventure and somewhat rather dejected coming out of it. I am quite dismayed that neither my Gnome nor my KDE experiment worked out. Both failed, in slightly different ways. Moreover, even if the actual steps had taken me to success, the Plasma Krunner plugin setup is difficult in particular. Although for Gnome users, if you don't have Gnome Tweak Tool and aren't that savvy, you won't get far either. But as it turns out, these endeavors are still not ready for general use, and I guess there's a reason why.
There are other problems still in the implementation, hurdles that make instant usage quite difficult. Perhaps there's no real need for this, and it's a nice-to-have academic usecase, and I'm entirely mistaken in the value of something like an integrated desktop translator. And academic it remains for sure, because you probably won't have more success than I did getting the plugins running. I'm not happy to end an article on a negative note, but then, this failure is a valuable lesson, too. The Linux desktop has never quite made it when it comes to online presence, and this is a good example. Maybe one day. Maybe. For now, if you want to play with foreignese, it will have to the old methods. Or the new ones. Hey Tux, how do you say Cheers in Linux?
Cockpit is the modern Linux admin interface. We release regularly. Here are the release notes from version 215.
Log rotation, a normal thing on Linux systems, keeps any particular log file from becoming too large, yet ensures that sufficient details on system activities are still available for proper system monitoring and troubleshooting.
The oldest in a group of log files is removed, remaining log files are bumped down a notch and a newer file takes its place as the current log file. This process is conveniently automated and the details can be adjusted as needed.
MangoHud, the awesome Linux overlay for OpenGL and Vulkan games has another new release. GOverlay, the FOSS application designed to make configuring MangoHud easy has also been refreshed.
Firstly, MangoHud's release this time with v0.3.1 is quite a small one. It includes the ability to display Vulkan and OpenGL versions and the configuration now auto reloads when modified. There's also a few very helpful bug fixes to make using it smoother.
The latest release to GOverlay is quite a big one, which brings support for many of the new options released in MangoHud 0.3.0. This includes the ability to globally enable MangoHud (only for Vulkan currently), an overhaul to the user interface, dark theme adjustments and more.
Car racing of a miniature sort with RC cars is what's on the track in PocketCars, and it just recently enabled Linux support in their Early Access release.
Paradox Interactive and developer Colossal Order have announced Cities: Skylines Sunset Harbor, a brand new expansion for the massively popular city-builder to release on March 26.
Cities: Skylines Sunset Harbor brings with it quite a lot of content and features requested by the player community. This includes the fishing industry, new mass transit options, important city services and some new maps to build cities and your new fishing infrastructure across.
Today, Valve replied to our message asking about the situation with Half-Life: Alyx and Linux support and we got our answer.
Two bits of Steam store news today: firstly there's a Steam Game Festival "Spring Edition" going on to highlight some good looking games, a few of which will come to Linux and there's some demos.
Similar in style to how they did it during The Game Awards, you just go to the special linked page above and see what's been picked.
Want to enjoy the latest Steam games on the biggest screen in your house? Valve may have discontinued their physical Steam Link product, but you can still use the software that powered this now-defunct set-top box. Here we will show you how to stream Steam games with Raspberry Pi 4 and Steam Link.
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In this article we will go through the steps to set up Stream Link on your Raspberry Pi 4 and then use it to stream your favorite game onto any compatible screen – whether that’s the spare monitor that you haven’t used for years or your brand-new ultra HD TV.
OBS (which stands for ‘Open Broadcaster Software’) is a popular open source streaming and recording program for Windows, macOS and Linux and is built in Qt.
Many popular YouTubers and Twitch.tv streamers make use of the software for recording, live streaming, and sharing gameplay. The app even has a bunch of built-in presets that tailor footage for popular social networks and online services.
OBS Studio 25.0 is the latest stable release — but what’s new?
Well, aside from the aforementioned ability to directly capture Vulkan-based game playback — a big feature for many, though alas limited to Windows — the app also adds the following new features and improvements...
Open source screen recording and streaming software OBS Studio 25.0 has just been released and it brings the ability to capture Vulkan-based games with game capture among other new features.
Exit the Gungeon from Dodge Roll/Singlecore and Devolver Digital is a small, spin-off 'dungeon climber' immediately following the adventures in the excellent Enter the Gungeon. Still focused on making you dodge, roll and deal with bullet hell it mixes the gameplay up with an ever-changing weapon as you travel through increasingly perilous elevators. It looks wild and a lot of fun.
Death and Taxes, a narrative game about choosing who lives and who dies as the Grim Reaper is now officially open source. In an announcement on Steam written by their coder, they said their wish when joining the team was to eventually open it up and so now they have.
It's only been out since February (and I quite liked it!), since then they've gone on to sell "pretty well" at twenty-six thousand copies so they're not afraid people will copy it. Only the code is open source though, you still need the assets which is a good example of how to do it that others have also done. The game code can live on, be ported elsewhere and fixed up, while the original developer can still earn from it.
Imperator: Rome, the grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studios about the classical world will soon have a little more depth to the religion features in the 1.4 "Archimedes" update now due on March 31.
This is the start of Paradox's new plan to focus on smaller and more frequent updates to Imperator, as they've really turned the game around now from the rough launch. With Archimedes focusing on the Religion side, the next update named Menander will focus on Culture which will be due sometime around the Summer and will also be a free update.
The free and open source video livestreaming and capture software, OBS Studio, has a brand new release now available with lots of new goodies to play with.
Wonderful software, we use it all the time here for our livestreams on Twitch and for all videos we record onto our YouTube Channel.
OBS Studio 25.0 arrived yesterday and one of the highlights for Linux users is the inclusion of a proper browser plugin by default now. No more hunting around for an external plugin. Thanks to the inclusion of this, another new feature added works in the Linux version, allowing you to drag and drop from a website into OBS Studio to create browser sources. Quite a clever feature, allowing people to setup all sorts of additions that others can just drop right into their OBS scene.
Stadia now has more games available with the release of The Division 2 and the latest expansion, plus DOOM Eternal arrives on it this week. A quick look round-up of Stadia game streaming news.
With The Division 2, the Stadia version comes with built-in support for Stadia's unique Stream Connect feature. This is where when you team up with others, you can all see each others screen in real-time, which does open up multiplayer games in an interesting way. It's also cross-platform against Windows and cross-progression with all platforms.
The Unity team have put out the first Beta for Unity 2020.1 which will form the first of two "TECH stream" releases for this year. As part of their new release cycle, each year will have two of these TECH releases for people who want the latest and greatest with 2020.1 and 2020.2 which will lead into a 2020 LTS (Long term support) release early next year.
On the Linux side there's quite a lot of bug fixes, and Vulkan especially seems to have been given quite a bit of attention with this release and not just for bug fixes. With the Vulkan API developers can now select number of swapchains when using Vulkan, they added stencil binding support for Vulkan, stripping of unused shader constants from Vulkan compute shaders, improved Vulkan device selection, improved Vulkan performance and more.
No Plan B needed here apparently, as your first idea always works right? You better hope so. No Plan B is a tactical strategy game from GFX47, the creator of the AI combat arena Gladiabots.
Looking a little like Door Kickers, No Plan B has you plan how your team will storm various buildings using a special timeline system. This unique way to plan looks brilliant, as you keep dragging around your combatants as you hop between different time points to get them all synced up.
Cyanide & Happiness - Freakpocalypse, the crowdfunded dark comedy adventure is now going to have the first part released on Steam this Summer.
Get your space legs ready for X4: Foundations to expand into a much bigger game. Egosoft have now announced the X4: Split Vendetta expansion and a huge free 3.0 update will release on March 31.
Egosoft say this is going to be the biggest update to their open-world space sim since release, pulling in lots of new goodies for everyone. The 3.0 update will add in a whole new storyline with special diplomatic missions, new systems to discover, French voice-over, 3 new tutorials, new ships, a new unlockable game start, a configurable alert system, new weapons, an improved graphics engine and improved sound effects are just some of what to expect from it.
Albion Online is getting a few more systems overhauled in the next few updates, plus some welcome changes and additions for Solo players and small groups.
The game already has a lot of things to do, much of which is geared towards high-level play and big groups, especially so with all the faction and guild warfare. Sandbox Interactive are going to introduce special Corrupted Solo Dungeons, for people who enjoy the PvE side with a risk of some PvP as well. These will be non-linear dungeons where you face possesed creatures, with one other player able to invade to hunt you down which actually sounds like a huge amount of fun.
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold and Blake Stone: Planet Strike, two classics from the 90s have been revived thanks to the BStone open source game engine that continue seeing big updates.
BStone adds in features like high resolution vanilla rendering, 3D-rendering,customizable controls and separate volume controls for sound effects and music. This is thanks to Apogee Software releasing the source code to Planet Strike in 2013.
Yesterday, build v1.2.0-beta.1 (and a quick fix with beta.2) went up and the major addition here is a new 3D renderer which uses OpenGL on the backend keeping it nicely Linux compatible. Plus, the developer also added some actual Linux instructions to the GitHub page now too.
We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 4.12 Beta2 !
For an overview of the improvements in Qt Creator 4.12, please head over to the first Beta blog post.
The opensource version is available on the Qt download page under "Pre-releases", and you find commercially licensed packages on the Qt Account Portal. Qt Creator 4.12 Beta2 is also available under Preview > Qt Creator 4.12.0-beta2 in the online installer. Please post issues in our bug tracker. You can also find us on IRC on #qt-creator on chat.freenode.net, and on the Qt Creator mailing list.
A user experimenting with Clear Linux had an opinion to share on their mailing list and referred to it as a "toy" distribution and some of our readers have expressed similar opinions on it. Here is the response by one of the Intel developers central to Clear Linux's development.
The user referred to it as a toy project over not supporting as much hardware as some distributions, supporting too much GNOME "bloatware", and not easily supporting as much closed-source software.
It looks like in the next one or two kernel releases we could see Intel transitioning their CPU frequency scaling governor default from the long-standing powersave to the modern schedutil governor. It's now believed schedutil should be at least as good as powersave.
Schedutil is the modern Linux CPU frequency scaling governor that makes use of scheduler utilization data (hence its name) in making decisions about ramping up or down the CPU clock frequencies. Schedutil has been around for a while now and continues to receive improvements. It's been looked at as the future of CPUfreq governors.
It has been some time since the last design post about Qubes. There have been some big changes happened, and it took us a little while to find people best suited to write these articles. But, as you can see, the victims volunteers have been found. The team has been hard at work on the changes that are coming in 4.1, and we want to tell you more about them.
One of the Big Things coming soon, in Qubes 4.1, is the first public version of the GUI domain: the next step in decoupling the graphical hardware, the display and management, and the host system. Very briefly, the GUI domain is a qube separate from dom0 that handles all the display-related tasks and some system management.
Only days after finally releasing our new DNS stack in IPFire 2.25 - Core Update 141, we are ready to publish the next update for testing: IPFire 2.25 - Core Update 142.
This update comes with many features that massively improve the security and hardening of the IPFire operating system. We have also removed some more components of the systems that are no longer needed to shrink the size of the operating system on disk.
We have a huge backlog of changes that are ready for testing in a wider audience. Hopefully we will be able to deliver those to you in a swift series of Core Updates. Please help us testing, or if you prefer, send us a donation so that we can keep working on these things.
In the latest release of test v2.25 – Core update 142, IPFire has introduced a new method to sign the Linux kernel module cryptographically. As a result of this, the attacker cannot execute an illegal action using a deployed third-party module into the IPFire kernel.
This new approach of kernel rootkit protection can completely restrict the activities of hidden rootkits on the system. Any modification to the kernel code now requires validation using a cryptographic signature to check its authenticity and integrity.
Whonix is being used by Edward Snowden, journalists such as Micah Lee, used by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Qubes OS. It has a 7 years history of keeping its users safe from real world attacks. [1]
The split architecture of Whonix relies on leveraging virtualization technology as a sandbox for vulnerable user applications on endpoints. This is a widely known weakness exploited by entities that want to circumvent cryptography and system integrity. Our Linux distribution come with a wide selection of data protection tools and hardened applications for document/image publishing and communications. We are the first to deploy tirdad, which addresses the long known problem of CPU activity affecting TCP traffic properties in visible ways on the network and vanguards, an enhancement for Tor produced by the developers of Tor, which protects against guard discovery and related traffic analysis attacks. Live Mode was recently added. We deliver the first ever solutions for user behavior masking privacy protections such as Kloak. Kloak prevents websites from recognizing who the typist is by altering keystroke timing signatures that are unique to everyone.
In this video, we are looking at Fedora 32 Beta. Enjoy!
In this video, I am going to show an overview of KDE NEON 20200312 core and some of the applications pre-installed.
Like many larger free-software projects, openSUSE has an elected board that is charged with handling various non-technical tasks: organizing events, dealing with conduct issues, managing the project's money, etc. Sitting on such a board is usually a relatively low-profile activity; development communities tend to pay more attention to technical contributions than other types of service. Every now and then, though, board-related issues burst into prominence; that is the case now in the openSUSE project, which will be holding a special election after the abrupt resignation of one-third of its board.
The openSUSE project has, in fact, just held a board election that closed on January 31. There were four candidates for the two available seats; in the end, Simon Lees was returned to the board for another term and Sarah Julia Kriesch won the other seat. The discussion over the course of the election was perhaps a bit more contentious than usual, with Kriesch in particular stirring things up by claiming to be the driving force behind the in-progress openSUSE foundation effort and seemingly overlooking the existence of openSUSE contributors in China (something she later apologized for). That all settled down, though, and it appeared that the new board was set to get to work after the announcement of the results on February 1.
Red Hat-sponsored community project, Fedora, has announced the beta version of the upcoming Fedora 32. This release includes various minor bug fixes and package updates along with the latest GNOME 3.36 desktop.
According to the blog post, Fedora 32 Beta will also introduce a new image in its Fedora Lab initiative for computational neuroscientists. Currently, Fedora Labs already contains six dedicated images named Astronomer, Designer, Gamer, Musician, Developer, and Security tester.
Fedora 32 should be releasing at the end of April, around the same time as the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release.
Since we are covering the Ubuntu 20.04 release in detail, we thought of doing the same for our Fedora fans here.
In this article, I am going to highlight the new features coming to Fedora 32. I’ll update this article as the development progresses further.
The new GPU operator enables OpenShift to schedule workloads that require use of GPGPUs as easily as one would schedule CPU or memory for more traditional not accelerated workloads. Start by creating a container that has a GPU workload inside it and request the GPU resource when creating the pod and OpenShift will take care of the rest. This makes deployment of GPU workloads to OpenShift clusters straightforward for users and administrators as it is all managed at the cluster level and not on the host machines. The GPU operator for OpenShift will help to simplify and accelerate the compute-intensive ML/DL modeling tasks for data scientists, as well as help running inferencing tasks across data centers, public clouds, and at the edge. Typical workloads that can benefit from GPU acceleration include image and speech recognition, visual search and several others.
Welcome to the first briefing of the “All Things Data” series of OpenShift Commons briefings. We’ll be holding future briefings on Tuesdays at 8:00am PST, so reach out with any topics you’re interested in and remember to bookmark the OpenShift Commons Briefing calendar!
In this first briefing for the “All Things Data” OpenShift Commons series, Red Hat’s Guillaume Moutier and Landon LaSmith demo’d how to easily integrate Open Data Hub and OpenShift Container Storage to build your own data science platform. When working on data science projects, it’s a guarantee that you will need different kinds of storage for your data: block, file, object.
Open Data Hub (ODH) is an open source project that provides open source AI tools for running large and distributed AI workloads on OpenShift Container Platform.
OpenShift Container Storage (OCS) is software-defined storage for containers that provides you with every type of storage you need, from a simple, single source.
Just a few months into 2020 and we are already celebrating our successes over here at Red Hat! In fact, we are pleased to announce that we have been honored with 31 new award wins and honorable mentions. Our latest award roll call includes recognition in categories ranging from Red Hat’s unique workplace culture, our talented individuals who make Red Hat so special, our incredibly talented design and creative teams and the depth and experience of our business portfolio.
I cut my teeth on mainframe computers. My first system administration language wasn't -- as you might guess from my Unix/Linux background -- Borrne or C shell, but rather, IBM 360 mainframe Job Control Language (JCL). So, the notion that a DevOps system, such as Red Hat Ansible, could ever control a mainframe is a little mind-blowing. Sure, IBM mainframes have been using Linux for 20 years now, but DevOps on a mainframe? Really?
Linux has come a long way since its inception and now powers a majority of the web infrastructure. Linux admins are already in high-demand while new lucrative computer science jobs are opening every day. There are many well-reputed Linux certifications that will help you land your dream job in no time. Red Hat Linux certifications are one of the most prominent in this regard. You can easily prove your Linux credentials to employers if you have completed any Red Hat courses. Moreover, you don’t necessarily need to obtain certifications if you’re just sharpening skills. Simply complete some online courses that validate your knowledge in some way.
When an engineer I work closely with first suggested we work on the Service Telemetry Framework docs upstream and then synchronize downstream, I was excited and enthusiastic but pretty clueless as to how to even begin.
There are lots of advantages to single-sourcing your content: you and the engineers save time on working on one set of docs, quality of upstream docs should improve, and if a change occurs, you only have to update it in one place.
IDC further predicted that, "Through 2024, 75% of CIOs will reshape all IT resources, including budgets, assets, and talent, to support real-time resource allocation and enterprise agility, dramatically reducing fixed costs."
The key to unlocking these business innovations is the open hybrid cloud model. Incorporating multiple hardware providers, hardware types, locations, devices, developers, services and billing models, the hybrid cloud model of application delivery enables developers to innovate around the globe, at the edge, with AI, at scale and with reliability.
This is the second briefing of the “All Things Data” series of OpenShift Commons briefings. Future briefings are Tuesdays at 8:00am PST, so reach out with any topics you’re interested in and remember to bookmark the OpenShift Commons Briefing calendar!
In this second briefing for the “All Things Data” OpenShift Commons series, Red Hat’s Sagy Volkov gave a live demonstration of an OpenShift workload remaining online and running while Ceph storage updates and additions were being performed. This workload resilience and consistency during storage updates and additions is crucial to maintaining highly available applications in your OpenShift clusters.
OpenShift stands out as a leader with a security-focused, supported Kubernetes platform—including a foundation based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
But we already knew all that, the game changer for OpenShift, is the release of OCP version 4.x: OpenShift 4 is powered by Kubernetes Operators and Red Hat’s commitment to full-stack security, so you can develop and scale big ideas for the enterprise.
OpenShift started with distributed systems. It was eventually extended to IBM Power Systems, and now it is available on IBM Z. This creates a seamless user experience across major architectures such as x86, PPC and s390x!
We recently added PHP 7.4 to our repos on Oracle Linux yum server. These repos include also include the PHP OCI8 extenstion to connect your PHP applications to Oracle database.
In this post I describe the steps to install PHP 7.4, PHP OCI8 and Oracle Instant Client on Oracle Linux to connect PHP to Oracle Database. For this blog post, I used a free Autonomous Database included in Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
Now that the Fedora Beta is officially released, the Fedora Cloud SIG would like to get the community together this week to find and squash some bugs. We are organizing a test day for Friday, March 20th.
For this event we’ll test Fedora Cloud Base content. See the Alternative Downloads Beta Page for links to the Beta Cloud Base Images. We have qcow, AMI, and ISO images ready for testing.
Devuan 3.0 "Beowulf" has finally reached beta as a spin of Debian 10 "Buster" created without a dependence on systemd.
This fork of Debian without systemd tries to ensure init system freedom. With Devuan 3.0 the focus is on re-basing against the Debian 10 package set.
Besides pulling in the Buster packages, the Devuan 3.0 beta also brings behavioral changes to the su command, PulseAudio changes, and other tweaks.
More details on the Devuan 3.0 beta via the release announcement and download images available from Devuan.org.
A recent message to the debian-project mailing list by Debian project leader (DPL) Sam Hartman is about a proposal to moderate the mailing list. There have been repeated attacks on various project members and the distribution itself posted to the list over the last few years, many from sock-puppet, throwaway email accounts, which spawned a recent discussion on the debian-private mailing list; Hartman was summarizing that discussion for those who are not on the private list. But the problems on debian-project (and other Debian public lists) are kind of just the tip of the iceberg; there is an ongoing, persistent effort to roil the distribution and its community.
The discussion on debian-private happened while Hartman was taking a vacation; his summary was partly from catching up with his email and also a continuation of the consensus building work he has done during his DPL term. The debian-private discussion led to a bug report that asked for debian-project to become a moderated list "for the time being", which is where Hartman suggested the technical discussion on how to do the moderation should go. In parallel with the private discussion, there was also a thread on the project list about how distributed moderation of a mailing list might work. The idea is that multiple moderators could help filter out messages from new subscribers to the list.
Particularly for those on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or derivative distributions based on the current long-term support base, moving to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS due out next month will yield some nice improvements particularly for those on newer platforms like the AMD Ryzen 3000 series. Here are some benchmarks at how the Ryzen 9 3900X performance is looking between Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS, Ubuntu 19.10, and the current Ubuntu 20.04 LTS development snapshot.
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is launching in April with the Linux 5.4 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.36, Mesa 20.0, GCC 9.3.0, and other updated software packages. It's a bit unfortunate they didn't go for Linux 5.5 (or even Linux 5.6 albeit that would have been a very tight fit with their schedule) but opted for Linux 5.4 given its an LTS kernel. But moving to Linux 5.4 compared to 5.3 on 19.10 or 18.04.4 LTS has some advantages, more so if you are still on an older hardware enablement stack of Ubuntu 18.04.
This video is the first of several low-energy server ideas I'll be showing off. This time around, we explore the setup of a storage server, but on a Raspberry Pi. This will greatly decrease power-usage. OpenMediaVault will be installed on the Raspberry Pi, and you'll see the entire process in this video.
The NymphCast server is connected directly to an output device (TV, stereo, projector, etc). This server is controllable over a local network using a remote client. This client can be operated from a PC, tablet, or even a smartphone device.
NymphCast is designed to support custom applications that can run on the NymphCast server. Since this is a new development, you won't find many available. However, you can always look at developing your own (if that's your cup of tea). NymphCast applications are written using AngelScript and use a library of functions that operate within the NymphCast runtime. Posch has provided detailed information on the NymphCast website for developers looking to implement their own applications.
This project is still in its Alpha phase. If you want to keep an eye on its development, be sure to follow Maya Posch. You can read more about NymphCast on both Github and the official NymphCast website.
Yoshi aside, we can’t think of anyone who isn’t a fan of the double jump. In their latest video, the Wireframe magazine team take a deep(ish) dive into one of video gaming’s most iconic moves.
It runs Codex Linux-based operating system optimized for low-latency digital paper displays and supports PDF and ePUB documents. Note and file syncing between reMarkable tablet is possible on MacOS, Windows 7 and newer, iOS, and Android.
Based on the processor datasheet, RTL8196E is a 5-Port Fast Ethernet router processor, so there must be a separate WiFi chip connected over USB or PCIe, likely RTL8192ER PCIe WiFi chip since it’s found in combination with the processor in other devices and supports 2.4 GHz 2T2R WiFi 4. At this price point, it’s unlikely to match the recommended minimum memory and storage requirements for the latest version of OpenWrt, but there’s a port on Github.
Arbor unveiled three Rockchip -ased computers that run Android 9.0. The “AAES-RK391” is an RK3399-based mini-PC for signage with dual HDMI ports, and the 10.1-inch RP-101K open frame panel PC and similar RP-101P Android Price Checker tap the PX30.
Arbor Technology has shown considerable enthusiasm for Rockchip’s Arm-based processors. Last year it launched an EmQ-RK390 Qseven module built around the hexa-core Cortex-A72 and -A53 RK3399, as well as SOM-RK391 (RK3399) and SOM-RP301 (PX30) modules. We would not be surprised if some of these modules were also powering its new RK3399-based AAES-RK391 mini-PC and PX30-based RP-101K open frame panel PC and RP-101P Android Price Checker systems.
Avalue’s Linux-ready “EMX-WHL-GP” is a thin Mini-ITX board with 8th Gen Whiskey Lake CPUs, triple displays, 3x GbE, SATA with power, 2x M.2, PCIe, and optional -20 to 60€°C support.
Avalue announced an industrial thin Mini-ITX board that runs Linux or Win 10 on Intel’s 8th Gen Whiskey Lake U-series processors. The EMX-WHL-GP has much in common with its 6th or 7th Gen EMX-KBLU2P thin Mini-ITX model, but adds a third GbE port and a PCIe golden finger interface among other enhancements.
Looking to build their own ergonomic mechanical split keyboard, Gosse Adema turned to the Raspberry Pi Zero W for help.
As the Arduino blog explains “making your own medical equipment isn’t normally advisable” Johnny Lee has published a project two GitHub exploring how to transform a CPAP machine into a ventilator. Although this device “has in no way been evaluated or approved for medical use, but it does provide a starting point for experimentation”.
The open source hardware movement has long championed the importance of the right to repair, fully own the technology you buy, and be able to remix and reproduce gadgets, just like you can with music. And so, during this challenging time, open hardware is providing some answers to some of the problems created by the coronavirus pandemic.
An overview of what's happening
For one, hardware developers around the world are working to resolve supply chain weaknesses using open source, the same philosophy that has driven a proliferation of new software technologies over the last 30 years. The hardware movement's past successes include the RepRap Project, Open Source Ecology, and Open Source Beehives, proving this can be done.
There has been increasing interest in creators using 3D printing and other technologies to create replacement parts for and manufacturing of safety equipment on demand. For example, the Polytechnic University lab in Hong Kong 3D printed face shields for hospital workers. And Italian startup Isinnova partnered with the FabLab in Milan to 3D-print replacement valves for reanimation devices in hard-hit Northern Italy. Companies are also releasing designs to adapt our physical interactions, like this 3D printed hands-free door opener from Materialise. These examples of replacing parts and solving problems are an excellent start and appear to be saving lives.
Smartphones haven’t really needed a full computer keyboard, until now. We are turning the Linux desktop ecosystem into a convergent one. In order to access desktop applications, our keyboard has to feel good on the small screen, as well as expose common desktop keystrokes.
While you can comfortably use the GUI in PureOS, the terminal is fully empowered. Giving you all your favorite GNU commands, anything missing is likely an install command away. Actually using a terminal on a smartphone poses a few challenges. Displaying on a smaller screen size was solved easily by adding a touch-friendly zoom function.
If you work from home, you know how important it is to have a great set of tools that stay out of your way and let you focus on what matters. The harder you work during work hours, the more easily you can relax once the workday is through.
I've been working from home for years, and here are my top picks for the best tools open source has to offer the remote worker.
One of the wonderful things about open source is the large community of writers contributing to our shared knowledge base. Not surprisingly, much of this is written in English; but there is also a well-served demand for open source-related information in other languages.
I first encountered Victorhck through his kind and thoughtful comments on Opensource.com, then learned that he has translated some of our content into Spanish and published it on his blog, Victorhck in the Free World. I find a lot of really useful info on his blog, such as articles about Vim and openSUSE and a lot of excellent reference material. I particularly like his overviews of topics, like this article about open source/libre technical materials.
Open Source software, once the scorn of Microsoft and profit-seeking software developers, is playing an active role in efforts to combat COVID-19's spread. Several open source projects are assisting health providers and helping people mitigate some of the hardships associated with the pandemic.
Often, open source accomplishments in the public health and government services fields go unreported. This time, however, in response to COVID-19's worldwide assault, open source technologies are ramping up to pursue potentially world-saving results.
"Open Source software is the platform that virtually all mitigation efforts are built on top of. These current efforts use the foundational software that we use every day," said Thomas Hatch, CTO of SaltStack.
There are a lot of backend frameworks that are open source and easily available, but not all of them offer great features. Backend frameworks are an essential part of website development, as they work as the nuts and bolts of a website. Basically, they handle everything behind the scenes of a website.
Backend frameworks have extensive libraries, APIs, web servers, and a lot more. They are responsible for the database, ensuring it makes proper communication with the front end and generates backend functionality.
When it comes to working with files formatted with Markdown, command-line tools rule the roost. They're light, fast, powerful, and flexible, and most of them follow the Unix philosophy of doing one thing well.
Take a look at four utilities that can help you work more efficiently with Markdown files at the command line.
The Linux development community is spread out over the planet and interacts primarily through email and online systems. It is widely felt, though, that there is great value in getting people together in person occasionally to talk about current issues and get to know each other as people. This year, though, the coronavirus pandemic is disrupting the conference schedule to an extent that won't be known for some time. But there are longer-term concerns as well, to the point that the head organizer for one of the kernel community's most successful events is questioning whether it should continue to exist.
Short-term disruption
While some conferences scheduled in March have proceeded as planned — SCaLE 18x being one example — many others have been canceled or postponed to a later date. There are two obvious reasons for this: gathering large numbers of people together into close quarters while a pandemic is growing is ill-advised in general, and many of the participants and speakers have decided not to participate in any case. This is creating some short-term economic pain for conference organizers, and it hurts the communities that have been deprived of their gatherings. But, by most accounts, canceling these events is the only right thing to do.
It will be interesting to see what will happen in the near future. Many of the canceled events are attempting to reschedule during the (northern hemisphere) summer months when, it is hoped, there will be a respite from the pandemic, company travel bans will be rescinded, and the mood will be generally better. It is worth noting that the authorities have been clear that this respite may or may not happen; if things do not get better, a lot of organizers and attendees are going to be disappointed a second time. In that case, regular events may not return for some time.
If the situation does improve in the coming months, then conference-goers can expect a rather busy summer as all of the postponed events land on top of the other conferences that were already scheduled during that time. That, too, may affect the success of some events; there are only so many conferences one can go to over a short period of time. Trust us, here at LWN we've explored those limits fully.
On Sunday March 22 foss-north 2020 will go virtual with a set of lightning talks. This will be the dress rehersal before the big virtual event March 29 – April 1. Join us and enjoy the fun!
FOSS-North has been canceled this year, like so many events, due to COVID19. There will be a virtual conference instead, live-streamed on YouTube.
The KDE Community Day which was going to happen before / in parallel to the conference, is also canceled. It is not responsible to be getting together right now. We will be looking at other ways to build the community and maintain the ties we have during the lockdown period.
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a tragic and widespread impact around the globe, and creating unprecedented disruption in all areas of our lives.
For the safety of our community, speakers, staff, and sponsors, and in alignment with local, regional and federal guidance and mandates, we have decided to combine both ChefConf 2020 Seattle and ChefConf 2020 London into a single online experience to be held on June 2, 2020.
curl up 2020 will not take place in Berlin as previously planned. The corona times are desperate times and we don’t expect things to have improved soon enough to make a physical conference possible at this date.
curl up 2020 will still take place, and at the same date as planned (May 9-10), but we will change the event to a pure online and video-heavy occasion. This way we can of course also even easier welcome audience and participants from even furher away who previously would have had a hard time to participate.
Before Oleksandr Popov had the idea to build a browser extension that could broadcast thousands of global radio stations, his initial motivation was as abstract as it was aspirational. “I wanted to create something that was simple for people to use,” explains Popov, while adding his creation sought to also “bring together users from different countries.”
That impulse eventually led Popov to create Worldwide Radio for Firefox, a browser extension that lets you choose from nearly 50,000 radio stations from more than a hundred countries. Once installed on Firefox, the extension displays a “radio” button on your browser toolbar—giving you easy one-click access to real-time international broadcasts.
As far as I can tell, 100% of the google results for “burnout” or “recognizing burnout” boil down to victim-blaming; they’re all about you, and your symptoms, and how to recognize when you’re burning out. Are you frustrated, overwhelmed, irritable, tired? Don’t ask for help, here’s how to self-diagnose! And then presumably do something.
What follows is always the most uselessly vague advice, like “listen to yourself” or “build resiliency” or whatever, which all sounds great and reinforces that the burden of recovery is entirely on the person burning out. And if you ask about the empirical evidence supporting it, this advice is mostly on par with leaving your healing crystals in the sun, getting your chakras greased or having your horoscope fixed by changing your birthday.
Resiliency and self-awareness definitely sound nice enough, and if your crystals are getting enough sun good for them, but just about all of this avoiding-burnout advice amounts to lighting scented candles downwind of a tire fire. If this was advice about a broken leg or anaphylaxis we’d see it for the trash it is, but because it’s about mental health somehow we don’t call it out. Is that a shattered femur? Start by believing in yourself, and believing that change is possible. Bee stings are just part of life; maybe you should take the time to rethink your breathing strategy. This might be a sign that breathing just isn’t right for you.
Last week I read Feedback Ladders: How We Encode Code Reviews at Netlify and also shared that with my team at Mozilla. In this post I want to summarize how we organize our reviews and compare that to Netlify's Feedback Ladder.
My team is mainly responsible for all work on Firefox Telemetry and our other projects. (Nearly) everything we do is first tracked in Bugs on Bugzilla. No code change (nor doc change) will land without review. For changes to land in Firefox the developer is responsible for picking the right reviewer, though right now that's mostly shared work between chutten and me. Sometimes we need to involve experts from other components of Firefox.
On Glean we rely on an auto-assign bot to pick a reviewer after opening a pull request. Sometimes the submitter also actively picks one from the team as a reviewer, e.g. if it's a followup to previous work or if some niche expertise is needed.
When reviewing we use a system not too dissimilar to the Feedback ladder. However it is much more informal.
[...]
In Mozilla speak that would be an "r-" - "Rejected". In my team this rarely (never?) happens on code changes.
Since the first browser war between Netscape and Internet Explorer, web browsers have been using features as their primary means of competing with each other. This strategy of unlimited scope and perpetual feature creep is reckless, and has been allowed to go on for far too long.
I used wget to download all 1,217 of the W3C specifications which have been published at the time of writing1, of which web browsers need to implement a substantial subset in order to provide a modern web experience. I ran a word count on all of these specifications. How complex would you guess the web is?
The total word count of the W3C specification catalogue is 114 million words at the time of writing. If you added the combined word counts of the C11, C++17, UEFI, USB 3.2, and POSIX specifications, all 8,754 published RFCs, and the combined word counts of everything on Wikipedia’s list of longest novels, you would be 12 million words short of the W3C specifications.2
I conclude that it is impossible to build a new web browser. The complexity of the web is obscene. The creation of a new web browser would be comparable in effort to the Apollo program or the Manhattan project.
[...]
The major projects are open source, and usually when an open-source project misbehaves, we’re able to to fork them to offer an alternative. But even this is an impossible task where web browsers are concerned. The number of W3C specifications grows at an average rate of 200 new specs per year, or about 4 million words, or about one POSIX every 4 to 6 months. How can a new team possibly keep up with this on top of implementing the outrageous scope web browsers already have now?
The browser wars have been allowed to continue for far too long. They should have long ago focused on competing in terms of performance and stability, not in adding new web “features”. This is absolutely ridiculous, and it has to stop.
With the upcoming Firefox 75 there is VA-API GPU-based video acceleration working on Wayland. While this built off FFmpeg, the initial code was limited to supporting H.264 while for Firefox 76 that is being extended.
There has been the bug report to track VP9 decode support using VA-API. That was done by Red Hat's Martin Stránský who has been leading this Wayland and VA-API work.
As of Wednesday, support was merged so VA-API on Wayland uses all video formats available. Up until now (and for Firefox 75) there was code limiting the support to the H.264 codec while for Firefox 76 those limitations are set to be cleared.
The Document Foundation announces the availability of LibreOffice 6.4.2, the 2nd minor release of the LibreOffice 6.4 family, targeted at technology enthusiasts and power users. LibreOffice 6.4.2 includes several bug fixes and improvements to document compatibility.
Mac users will be happy to know that the issue of blurry fonts on Retina displays has been resolved.
LibreOffice 6.4.2 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and as such is not optimized for enterprise class deployments, where features are less important than robustness. Users wanting a more mature version can download LibreOffice 6.3.5, which includes some months of back-ported fixes.
LibreOffice 6.4.2’s change log pages are available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.4.2/RC1 (changed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.4.2/RC2 (changed in RC2).
LibreOffice’s individual users are helped by a global community of volunteers: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/community-support/. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help us to make all of these resources available.
Available for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms, the LibreOffice 6.4.2 release is here three weeks after the first point release to address more than 90 bug fixes across various of its core components as detailed here and here.
This update is recommended to everyone who has the latest LibreOffice 6.4 office suite installed on their personal computers as it will probably improve the stability and reliability of the software.
However, The Document Foundation doesn’t recommend the deployment of the LibreOffice 6.4 series on enterprise environments as it represents the bleeding edge in term of features.
The Skia-driven text rendering still is to be tweaked and at the moment may appear slightly lighter than the Cairo-based rendering.
Following that text rendering plumbing for X11 and Windows, the Skia code was updated against the latest code found in Chrome 82 development state.
In February 2020, European Commission agents received a communication encouraging them to use the messaging service Signal. The Signal messaging service is an open source and fully encrypted alternative to proprietary solutions.
Several months ago, the LLVM project blog published an article, Closing the gap: cross-language LTO between Rust and C/C++. In it, they explained that link-time optimization can improve performance by optimizing throughout the whole program, such as inlining function calls between different objects. Since Rust and Clang both use LLVM for code generation, we can even achieve this benefit across different programming languages.
Why is this important?
For several reasons, but primarily because it completely goes against the traditional structure of the web being an open and accessible place that isn't inherently locked down to opaque structures or a single client. WebComponents used "in full" (i.e. dynamically) inherently creates complex web page structures that cannot be saved, archived or even displayed outside of the designated targeted browsers (primarily Google Chrome).
One could even say that this is setting the web up for becoming fully content-controlled.
The more additional "features" are tacked on to these components, the less likely it is for non-Google clients to be able to display sites in full or properly. It creates problems for people who are in limited environments, need special web clients for e.g. limited physical accessibility, or need to strictly protect their privacy. What of people on older hardware who don't have the computing power to basically run all these JavaScript applications fully off-loaded in their browser just to be able to render a page? Not to mention other software that needs to be able to parse web pages as a whole like alternative search engines (another thing one could consider unfair competition from Google).
VimL is a powerful scripting language of the Vim editor. You can use this dynamic, imperative language to design new tools, automate tasks, and redefine existing features of Vim. At an entry level, writing VimL consists of editing the vimrc file. Users can mould Vim to their personal preferences. But the language offers so much more; writing complete plugins that transform the editor. Learning VimL also helps improve your efficiency in every day editing.
VimL supports many common language features: variables, control structures, built-in functions, user-defined functions, expressions first-class strings, high-level data structures (lists and dictionaries), terminal and file I/O, regex pattern matching, exceptions, as well as an integrated debugger. Vim’s runtime features are written in VimL.
VimL is often known as Vimscript or Vim script.
RcppCCTZ uses Rcpp to bring CCTZ to R. CCTZ is a C++ library for translating between absolute and civil times using the rules of a time zone. In fact, it is two libraries. One for dealing with civil time: human-readable dates and times, and one for converting between between absolute and civil times via time zones. And while CCTZ is made by Google(rs), it is not an official Google product. The RcppCCTZ page has a few usage examples and details. This package was the first CRAN package to use CCTZ; by now at least three others do—using copies in their packages which remains less than ideal.
JavaFX 14, the latest version of the open source, Java-based, rich client application platform, has arrived. The new version features improvements related to the top-level API as well as mobile development.
For the API, functionality was added to make it easier for developers to build custom controls. In the mobile vein, JavaFX for mobile SDKs are now built from OpenJFX, the same source as for desktop JavaFX. Combined with the GraalVM native image AOT (ahead-of-time) compiler, JavaFX now achieves high performance on mobile, while developers can use the same JavaFX APIs for mobile as for the desktop.
WordPress is not slow. This website uses WordPress and is pretty darn quick, I think you will agree? In this post I want to talk a little bit about how I’ve optimised the performance of this website so that it loads in less than 2 seconds.
A few days ago, as someone working remotely since 3 years I published some tips to help new remote workers to feel more confident into their new workplace: home
I’ve been told I should publish it on my blog so it’s easier to share the information, so here it is.
Documentation is extremely valuable to the health of open source software projects, but it is often overlooked. We are a small team at Tor, and as a nonprofit organization with a big mission, we rely on volunteer contributions around the world to keep up with an ever-changing [Internet] freedom landscape with the appropriate tools to navigate it. Keeping Tor's documentation up-to-date, organized, and accessible is a way to potentially help millions of people access a private, secure, and uncensored [Internet] by using our tools.
Between 22 and 30 March, the Tor Project will host the second edition of our user documentation hackathon, the DocsHackathon. The DocsHackathon is a totally remote and online event.
I've had moments as a software engineer when I'm asked to do a task that sends shivers down my spine. One such moment was when I had to write an interface between some new hardware infrastructure that requires C and a cloud infrastructure, which is primarily Python.
One strategy could be to write an extension in C, which Python supports by design. A quick glance at the documentation shows this would mean writing a good amount of C. That can be good in some cases, but it's not what I prefer to do. Another strategy is to put the two tasks in separate processes and exchange messages between the two with the ZeroMQ messaging library.
When I experienced this type of scenario before discovering ZeroMQ, I went through the extension-writing path. It was not that bad, but it is very time-consuming and convoluted. Nowadays, to avoid that, I subdivide a system into independent processes that exchange information through messages sent over communication sockets. With this approach, several programming languages can coexist, and each process is simpler and thus easier to debug.
COVID-19 has hit hard in the past couple of weeks and its impact has been notorious both from a sanitary perspective and an economic one. Plenty has been written about it, especially statistical reports on its exponential growth and the importance of “flattening the curve”.
At RMOTR, we wanted to help raise awareness of the issues associated with the spread of COVID-19 by making a dynamic and interactive analysis of the situation using Python and Data Science.
We’ve made an interactive project that you can fork and follow step by step. You can see the process that Data Scientists follow to analyze the situation and make predictions. Here is a quick summary.
CudaText is a free, open-source, cross-platform (runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS or FreeBSD) code editor written in Lazarus. It evolved from the previous editor named SynWrite which is no longer developed. It is extensible by Python add-ons (plugins, linters, code tree parsers, external tools). Syntax parser is feature-rich, based on EControl engine (though not as fast as in some competitors).
We’ve fixed a couple of issues in PyCharm 2019.3. You can get it from within PyCharm (Help | Check for Updates), using JetBrains Toolbox, or by downloading the new version from our website.
In this Python data visualization tutorial, we will work with Pandas scatter_matrix method to explore trends in data. Previously, we have learned how to create scatter plots with Seaborn and histograms with Pandas, for instance. In this post, we’ll focus on scatter matrices (pair plots) using Pandas. Now, Pandas is using Matplotlib to make the scatter matrix.
We are all facing a dynamic and difficult situation in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our families, friends, customers, employees, and communities are all dramatically affected by the impact of the virus and its impact on the global economy. During this time, I wanted to reach out and tell you how Anaconda is responding to the situation.
Most importantly, our hearts go out to anyone impacted by the virus, especially those who are sick. We are also incredibly grateful to the healthcare workers, first responders, and other people who work to ensure we have healthcare, food, safety, shelter, and sanitation.
Along with so many others, we are prioritizing the safety of our employees, customers, and the communities in which we operate. Our teams have been working from home since March 9, and we have eliminated all travel for the time being. This means that our touchpoints with you will be entirely digital for the foreseeable future; in today’s world this is a minor adjustment and we plan to make every effort to minimize disruption.
The concept of scope rules how variables and names are looked up in your code. It determines the visibility of a variable within the code. The scope of a name or variable depends on the place in your code where you create that variable. The Python scope concept is generally presented using a rule known as the LEGB rule.
The letters in the acronym LEGB stand for Local, Enclosing, Global, and Built-in scopes. This summarizes not only the Python scope levels but also the sequence of steps that Python follows when resolving names in a program.
Since Python 3.6, CPython has a mechanism which allows clients to override how it evaluates frames. This is done by changing PyThreadState.interp.eval_frame to a different C-function (the default being _PyEval_EvalFrameDefault). See: pydevd_frame_evaluator.pyx#L370 in pydevd (note that Cython is used there).
Note that this affects the Python runtime globally, whereas the regular Python tracing function -- set through sys.settrace() -- affects only the current thread (so, some of the caches for frame evaluation in pydevd are thread-local due to that).
Today a wanted to share a neat trick that might save you some headache: debugging a hanging test.
Java 14 has reached general availability today with numerous updates to the JDK.
Among the changes with Java 14 are:
- Records is available in a preview state. Records provide a compact syntax for declaring classes that are transparent holders for shallowly immutable data.
The latest Unicode Standard adds 5,930 characters, including 4 new scripts, 55 new emoji characters, and the following CC license symbols:
Since the earliest days of consumer computing, computer users have asserted their right to have a say in how their tools worked: whether it was Gopher delivering easy new ways to access services that had originally been designed for power users who could memorize obscure addresses and arcane commands; or toolkits like Hypercard and Visual Basic, which let everyday people automate their work; or Scratch, which lets kids design games and apps that come from their imaginations, rather than an app store.
This ability to adapt your tools is especially urgent when those tools are designed by people who live very different lives from your own. The disability rights movement's rallying cry of "Nothing about us without us," crystallizes generations of discontent with the high-handed attitude of distant “experts” who built systems and tools without truly working together with those who use and are affected by them. Technologists are especially notorious for this high-handedness: —like the Honeywell 316, a $10,600 "kitchen computer" for storing recipes that was offered for sale in the 1969 Nieman Marcus catalog. It was designed for women by men, but no women wanted or needed a kitchen computer, and they didn't sell a single one. Despite this ghastly failure, early computer vendors continued to market their wares to women by advertising the ability to store and retrieve recipes.
My high school Latin teacher, Mr. McPherson, passed away recently, before his time.€ Joe’s death brought back memories of our class more than forty years ago translating Cicero, Ovid, Catullus and other Roman writers.
In Milan, one of the epicentres of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, this has meant that researchers have had to make agonising choices, such as whether to stay away from the lab or risk jeopardising months of work on experiments that require regular attention.
“We want to save experiments that have been running for months or years” – on mice, for example – but at the same time “shut off everything that is not needed”, said Marco Foiani, scientific director of the FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology.
Although 63 per cent expected established, prestigious universities to be offering full degrees online by 2030, only 24 per cent thought that the electronic versions would be more popular than traditional campus-based degrees (“How will technology reshape the university by 2030”, Features, 27 September 2018).
Lino Guzzella, president of ETH Zurich, asserted that “meeting people, interacting with peers, students and supervisors – in short, a real university environment – is the key to deep understanding”.
Joe Biden has surged since the South Carolina primary, and the received wisdom is that this was mainly because of the perception by his voters that he was the most electable candidate against President Donald Trump. But there are some potential pitfalls that have not yet surfaced, and some of them concern voters who are currently among Biden’s strongest base of support: Americans over 65 years old.
Postal carriers say they are being pressed into service against medical advice and with insufficient protection against the novel coronavirus. Two mail carriers told ProPublica they have been pressured to stay on their routes despite showing symptoms of COVID-19.
One of the workers, in Denver, says he had to keep delivering mail for days while he awaited a doctor’s note. He says the route includes many locations where there are elderly and immunocompromised residents.
Russia’s State Duma is no longer admitting members of the foreign press, according to BBC Moscow correspondent Pyotr Kozlov, whose camera crew was denied permission to report from the Russian Parliament’s lower house on Thursday, March 19. “This is a temporary measure due to the unusual situation,” a spokesperson for the State Duma told Kozlov, referring to the coronavirus pandemic.€
On Tuesday, as Illinois voters went to the polls amid growing concerns about the coronavirus, Chicago Alderman Nicholas Sposato was determined to deliver several dozen pizzas in his Northwest Side ward.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker had already ordered schools and bars shut down and limited restaurants to takeout and delivery service. But polling places were open and so was Sposato’s 38th Ward office. As he saw it, his job was to keep delivering constituent services — which in this case also meant delivering “the pies.” Sposato had a tradition of using campaign funds to buy pizza for election volunteers around his ward, and he was intent on continuing it. So, as Chicago election officials traded blame with Pritzker over struggles to staff and sanitize polling places, Sposato embarked on his usual rounds.
The report also foresees a "straining" of the national healthcare system due to increased hospitalizations.
As epidemiologists urged the public to avoid nonessential shopping in hopes of controlling the spread of the novel coronavirus and suppressing its death toll, Spencer’s, as of Wednesday morning, was still asking employees to come into its stores to sell lava lamps, rubber chickens and fake poop.
The gag and gift shop that prides itself on being “the best place to work” remained open in malls across the country and beyond, five days after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, and as employees and their families begged store leadership to close, calling its headquarters, speaking up during conference calls and peppering its social media accounts.
"There were people whose lives were in danger, and we acted. Period."
More than 200 people in Russia’s capital who are at risk of having contracted coronavirus and now quarantined at home have reportedly disobeyed the terms of their self-quarantine. Moscow Chief of Police Oleg Baranov says the authorities have used street surveillance cameras in the so-called “Safe City” system to track violators.
In spite of public health directives limiting public gatherings and a spike in coronavirus cases, some members of ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn were continuing to congregate in large groups Wednesday afternoon.
Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood closed on Tuesday night for the first time ever. That news was followed by a final prayer service in which worshippers stood shoulder to shoulder, according to Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
If government won’t mobilize the people to fight for our lives and health, healthcare workers can take the lead.€
The Chicago Public Library system plans to keep 20 of the city’s 81 libraries open, with fewer services, despite pleas from workers that all sites be closed as the novel coronavirus continues to spread.
“Mayor Lightfoot considers libraries an essential part of the life, health and vibrancy of our city. As such we will not be shutting down CPL completely, but enacting a plan for drastically reduced services,” Chicago Public Library Commissioner Andrea Telli wrote in an email to library workers Wednesday afternoon.
Sung to the tune of Bobby Dylan’s “Corrina, Corrina”
"Evicting families puts their health at risk, imposes trauma on and disrupts the education of their children, and exacerbates the risk of outbreak in their communities," said Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and other lawmakers.
As we slide inexorably into the tunnel of coronavirus fear and despair, here are some candles of hope.
How’s life under quarantine? I bust out daily (unless my wife strenuously objects) to try to get supplies. This is supposedly officially allowed by the Shelter In Place Order, to wit:
We were notified this afternoon, that we are going on a lockdown, the whole institution, and the lockdown will be for at least 30 days. We were told we would be given 500 minutes for the phone, which is 200 minutes more than usual, so it doesn’t sound like we will be in our cells. I don’t know if we will be able to write letters or receive mail. I will not be visiting anyone if I survive that is for at least 30 days and the virus doesn’t get into Coleman I.
On March 18, Russian health officials announced that they recorded 33 new cases of coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the country's number of confirmed COVID-19 infections to 147.
"This pattern of conflating race with a specific disease is a constant thread in American history."
Powerful interests used the Great Recession to hardwire more inequality into our system. This time, let’s do the opposite.
"Today's action is the prudent thing to do."
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders put forth a far-reaching plan Tuesday night that calls for at least $2 trillion in emergency funding — including for free healthcare and direct cash payments of $2,000 per month to every American — as a way to “mobilize on a scale not seen since the New Deal and World War II to prevent deaths, job losses, and economic ruin” caused by the deadly and growing threat of the coronavirus outbreak now sweeping the United States and much of the world.
As the Russian authorities continue to report relatively low numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases, state officials have already started enacting emergency measures, such as closing schools nationwide and asking senior citizens to stay at home. COVID-19 has already killed thousands of people in Europe — mostly in Italy, where the disease has infected more than 30,000 people and claimed more than 2,500 lives. To find out if Russia’s healthcare system can be expected to handle the pandemic any better, Meduza turned to Russian healthcare scholar Larisa Popivich and Russian healthcare union leader Andrey Konoval.
U.S. sanctions against Iran, cruelly strengthened in March of 2018, continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing hardship and tragedy while contributing to the global spread of the pandemic. On March 12, 2020, Iran’s Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif urged member states of the UN to end the United States’ unconscionable and lethal economic warfare.
"As Iranians are€ ravaged by the coronavirus, the U.S. is complicit in their death. This is a crime against humanity."
U.S. sanctions against Iran, cruelly strengthened in March of 2018, continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing hardship and tragedy while contributing to the global spread of the pandemic. On March 12, 2020, Iran’s Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif urged member states of the UN to end the United States’ unconscionable and lethal economic warfare.
Swiftly moves the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), dashing across continents, skipping over oceans, terrifying populations in every country. The numbers of those infected rises, as do the numbers of those who have died. Hands are being washed, tests are being done, and social distance has become a new phrase. It is unclear how devastating this pandemic will be.
By the beginning of March, organizers of large conferences and meetings were canceling events because of worries about the coronavirus.
The American Physical Society on Feb. 29 canceled its upcoming meeting of about 10,000 physicists in Denver because of “rapidly escalating health concerns relating to the spread of the coronavirus disease.” On March 2, thousands of people expected to attend Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California, the next day were told not to come because of concern about COVID-19.
This month, Congress passed an $8.3 billion emergency bill to respond to the coronavirus crisis. The money goes toward developing vaccines, disease surveillance, disaster loans and much more. But none of it goes directly to first responders for the protective gear and supplies they need to safely combat the novel coronavirus.
Last week, ProPublica reported that firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians on the front lines are desperate for such equipment. Some EMTs are begging for masks at local hospitals. Others are rationing gowns and face shields.
"This is a total failure of Democratic Party leadership."
Sitting in the East Village, drinking a coffee and trying to read a book, it was hard to ignore the rollicking conversation of liberal Boomers sitting an empty table or two behind me. What surprised me, but shouldn’t have, was the pedestrian character of the conversation. You might have scripted it for a Broadway show, had not the theater district been shuttered out of “an overabundance of caution.” We may soon find abundance wanting. Still the unceasing conversation roars ahead, unstoppable even as a malign pathogen thunders its way across the heartland.
As the coronavirus spreads around the globe—with more than 300 known cases already in Brazil and members of President Bolsonaro's staff infected—an evangelical Christian organization has purchased a helicopter with plans to contact and convert isolated indigenous groups in the remote Western Amazon.
Mass shutdowns and layoffs due to the spread of COVID-19 are affecting millions of restaurant workers across the U.S., with bars and restaurants closing for the foreseeable future. Servers, bartenders, kitchen staff and more have been left in the lurch, many without paid sick leave, paid time off or benefits. One study estimated 4 million restaurant workers in the U.S. are at risk of losing their jobs in a matter of weeks. For more on the impacts on service workers, we speak with Saru Jayaraman, the co-founder of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and president of One Fair Wage, which has launched an emergency fund to support workers during this time. We also speak with Damani Varnado, a restaurant worker who has worked in catering, fine dining and cocktailing for the past 20 years in New York City. He was working at the restaurant Tiny’s & The Bar Upstairs when the whole staff was let go during the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus outbreak is a “devastating” blow to an industry that had “severe structural inequality problems that existed long before this crisis,” Saru Jayaraman says.
As the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic escalates, support is growing for immediate economic relief for the millions of Americans whose lives have been upended. Utah Senator Mitt Romney has proposed sending a one-time infusion of $1,000 to every American adult during the crisis, while Trump Administration officials are also weighing the idea of direct cash payments to Americans.
At its core, the United States Declaration of Independence argues that all human beings have “unalienable rights.” These include right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
There’s a pandemic spreading across the U.S., and amid ongoing struggles to scale up testing, it’s still unclear how many people are actually infected.
In the absence of real numbers, projections have filled the void, and I’ve been struggling as a reporter to know which forecasts to trust. Last week, the Ohio Department of Health said that over 100,000 people were infected, at a time when there were five confirmed cases in the state. Some epidemiology experts critiqued that estimate as too high, and the department’s director later said she was “guesstimating.”
On the fourth floor of the University of Florida cancer research building, the once-bustling laboratory overseen by professor Weihong Tan is in disarray. White lab coats are strewn over workbenches. Storage drums and boxes, including some marked with biohazard warnings, are scattered across the floor. A pink note stuck to a machine that makes copies of DNA samples indicates the device is broken.
No one is here on this weekday afternoon in February. On a shelf, wedged next to instruction manuals and binders of lab records, is a reminder of bygone glory: a group photo of Tan surrounded by more than two dozen smiling students and employees.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox cable networks, amid this crisis, have not been diverted from their primary mission, even if misinformation is the price. Apologia and advocacy for both Donald Trump and the Republican Party has typically taken precedence at Fox News and Fox Business. Even at a time when such a collective public effort is required to combat a global pandemic, the danger wasn’t a deterrent. Some anchors and guests likened COVID-19 to the flu, which is patently false. Fox Business’ Trish Regan theorized that media alarm about COVID-19 was “yet another attempt to impeach the president.” They encouraged Americans to congregate and travel, ignoring safety advice from medical experts and even government officials.
The Peace Corps, a government-run volunteer program established in 1961, has about 7,000 volunteers serving in over 60 countries. They will be evacuated to head off a scenario in which volunteers are trapped in their host countries due to international travel restrictions. “We are not closing posts, and we will be ready to return to normal operations when conditions permit,” Olsen stressed. She added that host country staff will remain in their current positions, and the Washington-based headquarters will remain open under its continuity of operations plan.
The Peace Corps hasn’t specified when it would resume operations. “The safety of our volunteers is our highest priority. We will temporarily suspend our operations as long as it takes to keep them safe,” Marjorie Wass, a Peace Corps press officer, told Foreign Policy.
One person having recently visited the United Kingdom and two others who worked on a cruise ship. The person coming from UK was not in quarantine and was only tested positive after being ill and visited the Candos hospital. The other two persons were quarantined upon their arrival to Mauritius and later they were tested positive for COVID-19.
Public reaction on the social networks was undoubtedly bitter towards the government. The past few weeks it was a general feeling among Mauritians that the government should take strict measures, restrict access to the island, and that all inbound passengers be on mandatory quarantine. Such calls went to deaf ears. Even opposition's pressure was ineffective.
Illinois hospitals face the possibility of widespread bed shortages if the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 continues to spread through the state, according to several scenarios analyzed by Harvard’s Global Health Institute.
Perhaps 1.7 million adults living in Illinois are projected to get the virus over the course of the pandemic, with thousands expected to become sick enough to need a hospital bed, the analysis found. Yet across the state, from metropolitan Chicago to southern Illinois, hospitals lack enough beds, including intensive care unit beds, to meet that rising need.
In Chicago, bars and restaurants are closed for business. Schools are shut down.
But the city’s library system of about 80 branches is still open, even as librarians are calling in sick in protest and pleading with city officials to close as the novel coronavirus spreads in Chicago and throughout the country. An online petition demanding that libraries close had more than 4,300 signatures by Tuesday morning.
In Italy and France during the 17th century, the plague doctor was a physician who treated victims of the bubonic plague. He would dawn a plague mask which usually resembled the face of a white bird to include a curved beak and glass, goggle-like eye holes. Inside the beak or nose-case were placed various aromas—often lavender—and the two holes under the beak allowed the doctor to take in air which was believed to be purified thus protecting him. The widely-held belief at this time was that the plague was transmitted through smells caused by a€ miasma€ (üïñÃÆüñ,€ ancient Greek for “pollution”), a noxious form of “bad air.” This was the dominant medical theory of contagion transmission that persisted at the time until the late 19th century when germ theory came into prominence and adopted by the scientific community. Attributed to Charles de Lorme, the chief physician of€ Louis XIII, the plague mask became a symbol of impending death, of fear and in years long after the plague, a symbol used during carnival, especially that of Venice.
To slow the spread of coronavirus, all professional-league soccer, hockey, and basketball competitions in Russia have been suspended until at least April 10, following reported decisions by the Russian Premier League, Kontinental Hockey League, and VTB United League. According to journalist Nikolai Konov, the decision to postpone games and tournaments until next month was made jointly by the leagues’ leaders and was not even discussed with individual team owners.€
The stark choice for a nonviolent future is here.
Belfast, Maine, USA. Monday, March 16, 2020. Life has taken on a surreal quality, like living on a set of a zombie apocalypse movie. In my midcoast Maine town of 6,700, shelves in the Hannaford supermarket are three quarters empty. If your company’s product is still on the shelf, you might want to think about what you’re doing wrong.
"Officials who promised that they had extremely serious plans to make voting in person in the middle of a pandemic safe were not telling the truth."
There is no public health system in the US, in short, because the richest nation in the world has no capacity to protect the public as a whole, apart from national defense.€
As the president urged Americans on Monday to keep gatherings to fewer than 10 people, his administration left many federal workers still confused: Should they show up for work or not?
This follows a yearslong push by the Trump administration to sharply reduce telework across federal agencies, a shift that has hindered efforts to protect the nation’s largest workforce without slowing critical government functions.
What the global outbreak reminds us about inequality.
As cities and states grapple with the spread of coronavirus, activists remind government why water is a human right and not a commodity.
The employees demanded that "the health of workers be prioritized over production in the face of the coronavirus health crisis."
"Only now is the White House coming out of denial and heading straight into saying it could not have been foreseen."
On March 17, Russian health officials announced that they recorded 21 new cases of coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the country's number of confirmed COVID-19 infections to 114.
In connection with the coronavirus pandemic, the Kremlin imposed new restrictions on media access this week. According to the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, all journalists and news crews attending events that include President Putin will now have their temperatures measured at least three times in a single visit: first at the Kremlin’s security checkpoint near the Spasskaya Tower, then when entering the compound, and again before entering the Kremlin’s press center.€
Policy is needed now to curb further losses.
"This is not getting enough attention."
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the United States, laying bare the myriad dysfunctions and inefficiencies of America’s for-profit healthcare system, a powerful insurance industry front group is openly ramping up its campaign against systemic healthcare reforms that experts say would help mitigate the outbreak and guarantee essential care for all.
Let's get all US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, make peace with Iran, and address the real threats to human security like pandemics and the climate crisis.
"There is no *good* coronavirus plan unless it includes compensation for these 18% of workers. Full stop."
From testing for coronavirus to treating the health impacts of climate change, universal healthcare and publicly owned medicine production are critical components for adapting to the coming crisis.
Years of austerity at all levels of government, combined with profiteering in the health care sector and the Trump administration’s bungled response, have severely weakened the nation’s ability to combat the coronavirus outbreak and is putting public health workers on the front lines of the crisis in danger, according to experts and labor advocates.
The medical evidence is clear: The coronavirus global health threat is not an elaborate hoax. Bill Gates did not create the coronavirus to sell more vaccines. Essential oils are€ not effective€ at protecting you from coronavirus.
The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare how ill-prepared the U.S. is to address basic human needs. Unlike every other wealthy nation, the U.S. fails to provide access to health care for everyone, paid time off for workers who are sick, safety standards to protect health workers, adequate payment to caregivers for people with disabilities, or financial support for businesses in times of natural disasters or widespread illness.
For all the fears and freak-outs over "disinformation" on social media, over the past few weeks Twitter, especially, has been an amazing source for getting accurate, thoughtful information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and how to deal with it. It's a pretty stark contrast, in fact, between people who seemed to be paying attention to credible voices on social media, and who began "social distancing" sooner, and those who were getting their information from politicians and television (especially cable news) who seemed to wave off the dangers for way too long. That's not to say there hasn't been disinformation about Covid-19 online -- including some spread by politicians and crackpots. However, on the whole, social media has done what it does best: allowed credible, knowledgeable voices to rise to the top for many.
"Whether it be coronavirus or our global climate crisis, we cannot shut down. Instead, we must shift our energies and efforts to new ways to mobilize the world to action."
Fake News Alert.
All cultural institutions operated under the Russian federal government’s umbrella will be closed temporarily amid the COVID-19 pandemic. TASS reported that the country’s Culture Ministry introduced the closures on March 17. It is not yet clear how long they will last.
The Russian Orthodox Church has developed new rules to curb the spread of coronavirus during church services. The precautions have been approved by Patriarch Kirill, but they apply only to the Moscow diocese.
A crew of gathered customers were busying themselves this Friday evening at the BWS (Beer, Wine and Spirits for the uninitiated) along Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, sporting shirts heavy with sponsorship. Some were surly; others were trying to keep their spirits up. “Things to do in Melbourne when you are not going to the Formula One,” a sprightly one chirped, looking at his phone with mild amusement. “Go to the zoo; or you may use the famous tram network. Do observe the wonderful left-hook turn on the road.” Another customer was keen to get back to her home stomping ground – Sydney. It was seeing cars racing, or nothing. “If I cannot get a flight out tonight, I will simply drive.” Appropriate for a Formula One fan, perhaps. “And why don’t they close the tram network anyway?” she blurted. “So many people, close and cramped.”
Valentin Gorbunov, the longtime chairman of the Moscow Election Commission, is stepping down due to health reasons, he told the news agency TASS on Tuesday. Gorbunov revealed that he is currently hospitalized, though he didn’t share any details about why.
The virus is exposing inadequacies in health systems all over the world, especially the U.S.’s abysmal health infrastructure. Health workers on the ground continue to provide care during the pandemic despite the severe lack of resources and dangers to their personal health.
We need to jointly confront the coronavirus while constructing a humane future for the world without wasting time or resources on the continuation of brutal wars.
The mayor's comments come as Gov. Cuomo says peak of infectious outbreak could still be 45 days away.
"This is good for workers, businesses, and critically, it will help slow the spread of the coronavirus."
After a lot of Trump Administration obfuscation, dillydallying, denial, sloppy planning, incompetence, inaction, and indecision about the spread and the combatting of the Coronavirus in the United States, and, after much criticism by Democrat politicians and the “liberal” media, the White House apprised the nation that at 9:00 p.m. EDT, March 11, 2020, President Donald Trump was going to address the nation.
Donald Trump can’t fake his way through the coronavirus. It’s spreading and doesn’t respond to his delusions. Donald is flailing, failing, fibbing, stumbling, and scapegoating. With the stock market collapsing and the economy shaking, Donald fears defeat in November. Trump is a daily clear and present danger and he is the worst person to handle the COVID-19 crisis.
During the SARS-1 epidemic scare in 2002-4, America invaded Iraq. If you followed science, you would know that SARS-1, was a coronavirus that caused an acute respiratory disease that killed on average about 11 out of every 100 infected (but sometimes more depending on health care infrastructure), and was a pandemic bullet the world barely missed. Due to heroic work of doctors, nurses and scientists, it was contained. Had it not been contained…. Next time you see a doctor or nurse or scientist, you should thank them for their service.
COVID-19 surged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December 2019 and by January 2020 it had hit Hubei province like a tidal wave, swirling over China and rippling out overseas. The Chinese state rolled into action to combat the spread and care for those infected. Among the 30 medicines the Chinese National Health Commission selected to fight the virus was a Cuban anti-viral drug Interferon Alpha 2b. This drug has been produced in China since 2003, by the enterprise ChangHeber, a Cuban-Chinese joint venture.
"Actively denying an entire country medicine and humanitarian goods and continuing to pummel their economy in midst of global pandemic is the height of 'malign behavior' in my book."
The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is far from the first proof of how intertwined we are as a global community. The climate crisis and the refugee crisis have long been glaring examples that the wars or CO2 emissions on one continent risk the lives and well-being of people on another continent. What coronavirus is providing, however, is a unique opportunity to look specifically at how the intentional damage caused to one country’s healthcare system can make it harder for the entire world to address a pandemic.
Officials in St. Petersburg have offered free coronavirus testing to everyone in the city. On March 16, St. Petersburg’s Health Committee released a list of clinics where anyone who wanted could supposedly get tested without charge for COVID-19. Based on the list, the tests would be available to adults and children at clinics in the city’s Vasileostrovsky, Kolpinsky, Moskovsky, Nevsky, Primorsky, Pushkinsky, Frunzensky, and Central districts. Officials assured the public that at least one hospital in the city’s other districts would also offer coronavirus tests. According to an official government announcement, a mandatory medical insurance policy number would be the only requirement for getting the test. Individuals who test positive for the disease will be hospitalized and their results will be sent for confirmation to the “Vektor” Novosibirsk virology center.
Russia’s consulates and diplomatic missions have suspended the processing of documents as well as the issuance of all visa categories, the country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry announced.
The city of Moscow may soon enter a state of emergency that will include a complete transport shutdown and a ban on entering or exiting the city, Vedomosti reported. Several sources close to Moscow City Hall and the Russian federal government spoke with journalists about the planned shutdown, saying it may be instituted within the next two weeks or as soon as the end of this week.
Dr. Anthony S Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and just about the only official in the Trump administration trusted to tell the truth about the coronavirus, said last Thursday: “The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now … It is a failing, let’s admit it.”
There has been some absolutely ridiculous sniping between the Chinese government and the US government over "blame" for Covid-19. For idiotic reasons, President Trump and his sycophantic followers started referring to Covid-19 as "The Chinese Virus," a racist term that hints at putting blame on Chinese people for the virus or even implying that those of Chinese ancestry are more risky than others. The administration also stupidly limited the number of Chinese staffers allowed at the US bureaus of Chinese news organizations, partly in response to China expelling three Wall Street Journal reporters over a headline it didn't like.
The biggest college in Norway urged students to return from countries with “poorly developed” health systems — such as the United States! — as experts warned that the American hospital system would be overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As San Francisco takes the most severe measures in the country in response to COVID-19, telling 7 million people to shelter in place, we go inside the Bay Area’s San Quentin State Prison, where two prison blocks are under partial quarantine, to speak with incarcerated journalist Juan Moreno Haines. We look at how the coronavirus pandemic is a growing threat to the 2.3 million people locked up in U.S. prisons and jails, as prisons across the country have been shut down in response to the spreading virus and calls grow for mass prison releases around the United States.
Europe is the epicenter of coronavirus, and Spain now has the second most cases in Europe, with more than 2,000 new cases in 24 hours and the number of deaths doubled. We’ll go to Madrid for an update, where more than half of the country’s cases have been reported. This comes as the Spanish government announced it is nationalizing hospitals and private healthcare companies to better manage the pandemic. We are joined by María Carrión, a freelance journalist and former Democracy Now! producer who is also executive director of FiSahara and co-founder of Nomads HRC, which focus on human rights in Western Sahara.
Descriptions of emergency rooms and intensive care units in China and Italy paint a grim picture: Doctors forced to treat patients in hallways instead of intensive care units, military helicopters ferrying patients to hospitals with available beds, and entirely new facilities constructed within days to handle the massive overflow of infected residents.
But even in these countries, there’s a higher number of hospital beds per capita than in the United States. America lags behind with 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared with Italy (3.2), China (4.3) and South Korea (12.3), according to recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental institution that tracks societal indicators. When it comes to intensive care beds, the United States compares more favorably, several studies have suggested. Still, the impending shortage of overall hospital beds puts regional systems at risk of breakdown.
The COVID-19 public health emergency is unleashing something most out of the ordinary in U.S. politics.
After covering presidential elections, primaries and politics for the last 20 years, I’ve gotten used to days when the story changes before I can finish typing a sentence. The days after this year’s South Carolina primary are a perfect example. Super Tuesday preview done, think I’ll make a sandwich, wait, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg just dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden, oh well, NO SANDWICH FOR ME.
Vladimir Putin has signed an executive order calling for a nationwide vote on proposed constitutional amendments, including revisions that would allow him to run for another two terms in office, potentially extending his presidency to 2036.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has ordered the creation of a state-run center charged with informing citizens about the COVID-19 pandemic. The center will be built around an existing autonomous nonprofit called Dialogue. That group is directed by Alexey Goreslavsky, the former deputy director of the presidential administration’s public projects team. Goreslavsky essentially served as the Kremlin’s Internet policy curator.
As Democratic primary turns surreal amid infectious outbreak, Sanders lays out "Coronavirus Crisis Principles" for people-centered response and a national mobilization on "a scale not seen since the New Deal and World War II."
In a 27,000-member private Facebook group for first responders who support President Donald Trump, firefighters and paramedics have posted thousands of comments in recent weeks downplaying the coronavirus pandemic that they are responsible for helping to handle.
Posts in the group, which is called IAFF Union Firefighters for Trump and has been endorsed by Trump, scoffed at the seriousness of the virus, echoing false assertions by Trump and his allies comparing it to the seasonal flu. “Every election year has a disease,” read one meme, purporting to be written on a doctor’s office whiteboard. “This is a viral-pneumonia being hyped as The Black Plague before an election.”
As hospitals around the country fear running out of beds and equipment to treat patients, many of us want to know: How will our local hospitals deal with this crisis? ProPublica launched a tool that allows you to look up how patients with COVID-19 could affect hospitals in your area under various scenarios.
For local reporters, this data can be a helpful starting point for writing important stories about the challenges facing your health care system. Here’s our advice on how to use it.
Techdirt has just written about the extraordinary legal action taken against a company producing Covid-19 tests. Sadly, it's not the only example of some individuals putting profits before people. Here's a story from Italy, which is currently seeing more new coronavirus cases and deaths than anywhere else in the world. Last Thursday, a hospital in Brescia, in the north of Italy, needed supplies of special valves in order to use breathing equipment to help keep Covid-19 patients alive in intensive care (original in Italian). The manufacturer was unable to provide them because of the demand for this particular valve.
On Friday 13 March, € listening to the President’s speech on the state of emergency provoked by the Coronavirus, I was thinking that the litany of interdictions enumerated had all the features of a crisis heterotopia. I reveled at all the “measures” he recalled: banning assemblies of people, canceling performances and sporting events, in short “social distancing” (better qualified as “physical distancing”) and cutting off an entire continent, with the (temporary) exception of one chosen Anglo-Saxon one from which you can still return to the USA, unless you are an alien trying to sneak into the American dreamland through Great Britain, after having sojourned in a suspicious European country. And if someone dares such a deviousness, they will be repelled.
OK, maybe it’s not the end of the world – but it’s the end of the world as we know it – and it will be upon us within the next few days. The author heads up coursehero.com. Still, I believe that he’s right. Michael Moore says that the public health-types in government tell him that he’s right.
Every news outlet ought to have a chart like this one, from the Financial Times, featured prominently on their home page—because there is no more important question in the coronavirus crisis right now than how to get off the path led by Italy and onto the track of countries like Singapore.
Russia’s federal government says it’s prepared to expedite the construction of new infectious diseases centers across the country, if necessary to contain the spread of coronavirus. On Tuesday, March 17, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said, “We have indeed considered this option. If necessary, we’re ready to implement these options.” Khusnullin added that the government would draw on officials’ experience in Moscow, where several infectious diseases centers are currently being built.
"The healthcare industry will fight any threat to its profits with force and gobs of cash, even in the midst of a global pandemic. They cannot be bargained with. And they must be defeated."
Each of us is only as healthy as the least-healthy among us.
The European Union is shutting its borders to foreign visitors for the next 30 days to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
With just one new case reported Tuesday in Wuhan, China, Europe -- especially Italy -- has become ground zero for the pandemic.
The four authority figures in my life cannot even coordinate their press conferences, much less their responses. On Sunday, my wife listened to the Trump press conference while I tuned in to Cuomo, who was on at the same time; I also kept the radio on in case de Blasio decided to say anything while the other two were speaking. I’ve got Latimer telling me to support local businesses, de Blasio telling me not to go to the bar, Cuomo telling me he’s going to make it so bars can deliver drinks to my house (I think), and Trump telling me there’s nothing to worry about—but, if there is, it’s not his “responsibility.”
What’s wild is that this confusion is, more or less, the direct consequence of our system of government. States of emergency give executive officers all sorts of powers, yet those officials are still limited by the statutes authorizing the state of emergency and the constitutions of their states and the federal government. Each official has different, overlapping yet not redundant powers, depending on the office they hold and the way the emergency statutes are written. Figuring out who’s in charge is almost impossible. If you don’t have a law degree, good luck figuring out if you’re even allowed to go to a bar to grab a drink.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult to contain worldwide. Governments have been slow to respond in some countries, while in others people have not taken the virus as seriously as they should have. The virus continues to spread even in places where both people and government alike have been proactive.
One of the major problems in dealing with the virus has been information; it was slow to come from major health institutes and governments, and in that time plenty of misinformation spread quickly. For some reason, this information not only tends to circulate more but it also tends to be more believable even though it is essentially fake news.
Researchers into the COVID-19 virus have a new source of distributed computing power: crowdsourcing.
Usually crowdsourcing involves information or opinion gathering, but in this case it involves computing power.
By installing the Folding@home software program, anyone with a computer, gaming console, or even some phones and some compute cycles to spare can contribute to the work of coronavirus researchers around the world.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project from Stanford University's Pande Lab in Palo Alto, California, directed by Vijay Pande, PhD.
Participants can configure the Folding@home application to run in the background all the time or just when a machine is idle.
In this time of social distancing, you don't want to be at a crowded polling place touching the same screens or pens that everyone else has touched before you; and it would be better if poll workers weren't required to be there either. It would be so much better if we all voted by mail.
When Dave and I lived in California, the state had just switched to what they called "permanent absentee ballots": at least in the bay area, ballots were automatically sent to all voters. You could fill the ballot out at home, and then you had the choice of mailing them in or dropping them off at the nearest polling place. (This was thanks to our excellent then-Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who also fought against no-paper-trail voting machines and for increased ballot access.)
New Mexico still uses in-person voting, though I'm happy to say we use paper ballots and allow absentee voting without requiring any excuse. But this year, it looks like New Mexico will be encouraging voting by mail; our Secretary of State has a FAQ | ABSENTEE VOTING FOR THE 2020 PRIMARY ELECTION. page with details on how to sign up, and you must request your ballot for the primary by May 28.
Check the rules for your state (assuming you're in the US). If you haven't voted in the primary yet, check now, since time may be running out! For the November general election, you probably have plenty of time.
On the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, with critics bemoaning a profound crisis of multilateralism, the COVID-19 pandemic poses a crucial moment for the international system. Newton’s third law of motion says that for every action there is a reaction. While many of the 17th century English physicist’s laws have been replaced by modern science, his third law has important implications for today’s coronavirus outbreak. We know the virus exists. It has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). What we don’t know is how to react to the virus.
A new strain of coronavirus causing pneumonia-like symptoms was recently identified in Wuhan, China, marking the beginning of the spread of the virus across the globe. Coronaviruses (CoV), so named for their “crown-like” appearance, are a large family of viruses that spread from animals to humans and include diseases like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Researchers have now confirmed that the virus can spread via human-to-human transmission, though the original source of the virus has not been identified. Unlike other coronaviruses, COVID-19 has a much larger global spread and has infected more individuals than SARS and MERS combined.
Transmission of Covid-19 is happening more rapidly in London, the Prime Minister has said.
Addressing the UK, Boris Johnson said London is weeks ahead of other regions in terms of the virus curve, meaning transmission is happening more rapidly.
He told Londoners to pay special attention to the advice to work from home and to avoid unnecessary social contact.
Pubs, clubs and theatres should no longer be visited, he added.
As of 16 March, London has 480 confirmed coronavirus cases. A total of 55 people have died in the UK due to Covid-19 - 14 of those were from London.
"There won't be anyone to harvest the crops... It will be devastating to growers and ultimately to the supply chain and consumers."
Comparing the coronavirus pandemic to climate change is a fraught endeavor. Using one crisis to illustrate the dangers of another typically doesn’t work. For the most part, people only have the mental bandwidth for one life-threatening, world-altering crisis at a time. (Even one’s a stretch, if personal experience is any indication.)
But there is at least one major way in which coronavirus is similar to the climate crisis, and it’s worth talking about now, while the world’s collective missteps in containing COVID-19 are fresh in our minds: Small differences in numbers matter a lot.
When the coronavirus first began to spread beyond Wuhan, China, a misinformed bit of conventional wisdom started getting passed around: COVID-19 is just like the flu, and Americans survive flu epidemics on a regular basis. President Trump regurgitated this tidbit as recently as last week, tweeting, “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” (Trump’s tweet was almost right — the flu killed 34,000 Americans last year.)
On March 16, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova announced plans to multiply the number of coronavirus tests available in Russia and start free testing throughout the country. So far, however, the only test system in use in Russia is a kit developed by the Novosibirsk state-owned research center “Vektor.” Conducted in two stages, these tests are not highly sensitive, making them prone to false negatives. The Russian company “DNA Technologies,” which specializes in medical equipment and producing reagents for analytical tests, has designed its own coronavirus test, but regulations imposed by the Federal Service for Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) have made trial studies impossible. Meduza spoke to DNA Technologies CEO Vladimir Kolin to find out more about testing in Russia, its accuracy, and what to expect as COVID-19 spreads further.
Andrey Makarov, the head of the State Duma’s Budget and Taxes Committee, has drafted legislation that would enable the federal government to increase its reserve fund without budget amendments that currently require the Duma's approval. According to the bill’s explanatory note, the reform would allow officials to allocate money more rapidly to the fight against the spread of coronavirus.€
As the COVID-19 virus spreads, the U.S. economy has begun to crumble like a house of cards.
Uber today made available in open source Piranha, a tool that automatically deletes stale and unused code from app codebases. The company says it eliminates the need for engineers to engage in the task of code removal themselves, which often prevents them from working on newer features.
The e-tailer, which formed an open source organization called Dent last year, is now looking to bring Target and Walmart into the fold, per The Wall Street Journal.
But Target and Walmart reportedly don’t plan to participate at this point. Dent has access to some of the technologies that enable Amazon to operate its Go stores, which feature autonomous checkout, and already works with technology solutions firm Marvell Technology Group and networking software provider Cumulus Networks. The open source nature of Dent means that firms that download Amazon’s software can use it as they like without collaborating directly with Amazon.
The trends of the open-source world are constantly changing and so are the open-source skills. According to a report shown by the open-source foundation in the year 2018, there is an increasing demand for employees that are open-source savvy. It also reported that around 87 percent of managers are finding difficulty in hiring talent with open source technology and within this, 83% of employers give priority to the open-source employees.
Today, Linux is the highest-ranked skill in software development and in the job market. According to Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, it is made sure that everyone can get access to training and certification of open-source skills with ease. In this modern era, every business is recognizing the need for open source skill and thus the trend of getting Linux certifications is increasing. Today, companies are not hungry for employees with a Linux certification but they are starving for it. This is the reason why companies are ready to pay for the Linux certification if the employees have some primary skills.
This article will shed light on the importance of this skill and its growing demand in the open-source industry.
[Attackers] are zeroing in on government health agencies and hospitals, who are already struggling to keep pace with the coronavirus pandemic, as a way to make money and cause disruptions in the midst of a global crisis.
These concerns were highlighted Monday when Bloomberg News reported that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), one of the agencies on the front lines of the outbreak, had been breached by [attackers].
Security updates have been issued by Debian (libvncserver and twisted), Fedora (libxslt), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, python-flask, python-pip, python-virtualenv, slirp4netns, tomcat, and zsh), Scientific Linux (kernel, python-pip, python-virtualenv, tomcat, and zsh), SUSE (apache2-mod_auth_openidc and skopeo), and Ubuntu (apport and dino-im).
NordPass is a password manager that exists to enable users to remember all their complex login credentials, to autofill forms online, and to generate strong passwords. It offers a free account no credit card required and the ability to store data across multiple devices.
The GrSecurity patches to the Linux kernel have long focused on security enhancements but this year they are said to be taking on a larger focus of performance optimizations.
GrSecurity patches include PaX and various other security-based features, some of which items have ended up in the mainline Linux kernel years later in varying forms. In recent years, however, GrSecurity has just made their kernel patches and binaries only available to paying customers.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (gdal), Fedora (nethack), Mageia (okular, sleuthkit, and webkit2), openSUSE (salt), Oracle (icu, kernel, python-pip, python-virtualenv, and zsh), Red Hat (icu, python-imaging, thunderbird, and zsh), Scientific Linux (icu, python-imaging, and zsh), SUSE (postgresql10), and Ubuntu (apache2).
Eset Endpoint Antivirus for Linux is designed to provide advanced protection from threats to organisations’ general desktops. Powered by the advanced Eset LiveGrid technology, the platform combines speed, accuracy and minimal system impact, leaving more system resources for the desktop’s vital tasks in order to maintain business continuity, the company said.
The Let's Encrypt project has made real strides in helping to ensure that every web site can use the encrypted HTTPS protocol; it has provided TLS certificates at no charge that are accepted by most or all web browsers. Free certificates accepted by the browsers are something that was difficult to find prior to the advent of the project in 2014; as of the end of February, the project has issued over a billion certificates. But a bug that was recently found in the handling of Certificate Authority Authorization (CAA) by the project put roughly 2.6% of the active certificates—roughly three million—at risk of immediate revocation. As might be expected, that caused a bit of panic in some quarters, but it turned out that the worst outcome was largely averted.
Let's Encrypt allows web-site operators to sign up for its service to sign their TLS certificates, so that browsers will recognize the certificate as valid. Let's Encrypt acts as a Certificate Authority (CA) and its keys are signed by a CA (IdenTrust) that is carried in the root certificate store for the browsers. That means a browser can follow the signature chain from a root certificate it trusts all the way to the certificate of the site, thus establishing the validity of the keys contained in the certificate.
In order for a site to get a certificate from Let's Encrypt, its administrator needs to show that they control the domain in question. That's typically done by adding a challenge value provided by Let's Encrypt to either the DNS information for the domain or via a URL that can be retrieved from the domain's web server. The administrator proves that they have the needed access, thus show that the domain is under their control.
Administrators who wish to restrict the kinds of certificates that can be issued for their domains can add CAA records to their DNS configuration. Those can be used to disallow certain providers, such as Let's Encrypt, from issuing certificates for a domain or portion of one. For example, the web site administrator at "subdomain.example.com" could not receive a certificate from Let's Encrypt or some other CA simply by adding a web page to the server they control if the administrator of the top-level "example.com" domain disallowed that with CAA records. Some sites may also want to restrict the CAs that can be used; some CAs offer services beyond just signing, which may be required for security or regulatory compliance.
The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals has looked at the Supreme Court's Carpenter decision and decided it applies to cell site location info, even when that information was obtained by law enforcement years before the Supreme Court came to this conclusion. (via Courthouse News)
The FBI continues to avoid playing its hand honestly in the "going dark" debate. It continues to do things like call strong encryption "warrant-proof" encryption, damning it by associating its very existence with unlawfulness. FBI Director Chris Wray continues to claim he's not asking for encryption backdoors while calling for encryption backdoors. And for nearly two years, the FBI has refused to update its erroneous count of uncracked devices in its possession.
On March 15, 2020, Section 215—a provision of FISA with a rich history of government overreach and abuse—expired. That provision, along with two other provisions of FISA, lapsed after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on a broader set of FISA reforms.
Late last week, before the law expired, the House of Representatives passed the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act, which would have extended Section 215 for three more years, along with some modest reforms.€ After the House passed the bill without a committee markup or floor amendments, EFF, along with other civil society groups and Senators Lee, Daines, Leahy and Wyden, worked to convince the Senate that the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act needed real debate and the opportunity to consider amendments. Our letter to the Senate is here.
We can have beautiful cities without turning our cities into surveillance cities.
Cities across the U.S. are forcing operators of shared bikes and scooters to use dangerous and privacy invasive APIs developed by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. These APIs—collectively called the “mobility data specification,” or MDS—require that operators share granular location data on every trip taken. The location data that cities are demanding is incredibly sensitive and relates to the movements of real people. And some cities, like Los Angeles and soon Santa Monica and Washington, D.C., even require that the data be shared with a five-second delay—essentially in real-time.
After Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Anita Dunn, senior adviser to Joe Biden’s campaign, defended the vice president’s performance in a briefing with reporters.
According to the analysis, from Douglas Leith with the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College in Ireland, Edge sends privacy-invasive telemetry to Microsoft’s back-end servers — including “persistent” device identifiers and URLs typed into browsing pages.
As the EARN IT Act moves forward -- with all of its Section 230 and encryption-threatening appendages still intact -- we're getting some very interesting responses from tech companies that have benefitted from Section 230 and/or rely on strong encryption.
Last week, we were perplexed as to why House Democrats had agreed to an extension of NSA/FBI surveillance powers for a President they keep insisting is incompetent and vindictive against anyone he dislikes. At the same time, we couldn't figure out why Republicans were so keen to support it at the same time they were insisting that those same powers were used by the "deep state" to spy on the President's own campaign. After it passed, President Trump hinted that he might veto it anyway, and now with the Covid-19 pandemic in full swing, the Senate has agreed to punt on the issue for the time being, extending the FISA authorities for 77 days, with a promise of debating real reform in the interim:
In response to an EFF campaign started last year, roughly a third€ of institutions that we believe requested problematic and exploitive data as part of a government automated tattoo recognition challenge deleted the data or reported that they had never received or used it.
EFF has long been concerned with the many problems associated with efforts to use automated tattoo recognition, a form of biometric surveillance similar to face recognition that can use your body art to reveal your identity or personal information about you, such as your political, religious, familial, or cultural affiliations. We€ have particular ethical concerns about an effort known as Tatt-C (also known as the Tattoo Recognition Challenge) that was managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. NIST launched this tattoo recognition program in 2014 by creating an “open tattoo database” that institutions could use to test, train, and improve software that could recognize tattoos.
However, experts say the OMNY payment scheme is rife with problems, based on the limited information about the system made public in its terms of service and privacy policy. The collection of significant amounts of information from users, including smartphone device identifiers and location, which, coupled with payment and transportation data, could be used to map out riders’ patterns of life in minute detail and create a privacy nightmare.
Created for the MTA by Cubic Corporation, OMNY uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to enable tap payment at turnstiles via debit cards, smartphone payment apps, and eventually a loadable card such as those used by transit riders in London, Sidney, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Cubic has created NFC card payment systems for transit systems in San Diego, Sydney, Vancouver, and the Bay Area in recent years, and is also expected to debut mobile payment apps on the Chicago Transit Authority later this year.
Private Internet Access is happy to announce that the beta client and apps now feature WireGuard VPN support. WireGuard on our desktop clients and mobile apps are currently being rolled out to PIA beta testers. Note that this is still a beta version of PIA WireGuard support, there are still some features such as per-app connections on our Android VPN app that don’t yet work with WireGuard – but rest assured that we’re working on it! Also note that PIA will be closing signups for its mobile beta program during this WireGuard beta phase, meaning that the WireGuard beta is only available to existing beta testers.
WireGuard is a relatively new VPN protocol when compared with the decades old OpenVPN and approaches software development with a different philosophy – do one thing simple and do it well (efficiently). This is known as the UNIX philosophy. WireGuard is licensed under GPLv2 – which is the same open source license that the Linux kernel uses. As such, it should be no surprise that WireGuard will be added to the Linux kernel itself – which means WireGuard will eventually be available “preinstalled” on all Linux distributions.
[...]
Jason Donenfeld first started working on WireGuard around 2016 with the first release being on December 9th, 2016. At its core, WireGuard is a kernel virtual network interface for Linux that is meant to replace the current default networking interface on Linux, IPSEC. In fact, IPSEC has largely fallen out of use in favor of the current industry standard, OpenVPN – which operates in user space. WireGuard can also work as a replacement for OpenVPN. WireGuard, in Jason’s own words, is a “solid engineering solution that is both more practical and more secure.” With that in mind, it is still important to note that WireGuard has not yet been released as a stable v1.0.
[...]
At this point in time, to start using WireGuard with Private Internet Access, you’ll need to be part of the PIA beta program which is currently in closed beta mode. Once you have the Private Internet Access beta client installed, simply navigate to the Connections tab in the Settings window of your Private Internet Access app or client and switch from OpenVPN to WireGuard. Personally, I found up to 40% faster speeds using WireGuard when compared with OpenVPN. Additionally, the simplicity of using WireGuard instead of OpenVPN leads to much less option paralysis. WireGuard just works – and beneath the hood it is using better encryption.
"If there remained any doubt that the Trump administration's hostility towards the court is fundamentally punitive and callous in nature, these doubts have now been dispelled."
Reports say that the Turkish-backed mercenaries are transporting these trees to Turkey to sell them as firewood to be used in winter.
According to Afrin Human Rights Organization, the occupation forces have cut down more than 200,000 olive trees in the Afrin region since it was invaded.
According to the recorded data, 3 to 5 million trees were plundered by the invaders who also set fire to an agricultural land of 11 thousand hectares.
The most serious consequences of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq confirm what millions of people around the world warned about 17 years ago.
While the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, on March 19 the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there. After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11, the U.S. military carried out retaliatory strikes against five of the militia’s weapons factories and announced it is sending two more aircraft carriers to the region, as well as new Patriot missile systems and hundreds more troops to operate them. This contradicts the January vote of the Iraqi Parliament that called for U.S. troops to leave the country. It also goes against the sentiment of most Americans, who think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, and against the campaign promise of Donald Trump to end the endless wars.
The OAS has never been a neutral forum. Since its founding in 1948, the United States government has always wielded power far beyond its vote. Each member state’s contribution is based on the relative size of its national economy and the US contributed 60% ($51 million) of the $81million 2019 OAS operating budget. As a result, the U.S. has historically had disproportionate power over the organization.
It was crowded with hundreds of people at the time because many local officials had been invited to a meeting about COVID-19, he said.
Thailand’s three southernmost provinces have been the scene of a Muslim separatist insurgency since 2004. About 7,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the violence.
Some human rights and religious freedom organizations are ready to declare the killings in Nigeria a genocide. Over the last five years an estimated 7,000 Nigerian Christians have been murdered in a country where just under half of the population of 200 million is Christian.
Christians are not the only or even the primary victims of the Islamist extremists’ war in northeast Nigeria. Over the decade that Boko Haram has terrorized the region, more than 50,000 Nigerians, mostly Muslims refusing the terror group’s version of their faith, have been murdered, with more than 2 million displaced. Still, as in the case of Darfur, it is primarily the killings of Christians that is raising alarms in Washington.
Techdirt writes about freedom of information matters often enough. Sadly, many of the stories are about governments and other official bodies refusing to comply with local Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws for various reasons, and using a variety of tricks. In other words, rights to FOI may exist in theory, but the practice falls woefully short. That makes the following story from the UK a welcome exception.
Morgan insisted he was a “master of common sense” before co-presenter Susanna Reid told him to “listen to the clinical director”.
She added: “You’re asking for information, allow him to tell you what the information is”.
Kushner told Trump that the "media's coverage exaggerated the threat," The Times reported. He sought to take on a "more expansive role for himself despite his lack of knowledge on the topic and without talking to most of the task force members or public health experts."
Trump repeatedly sought to downplay the threat, leading many conservatives to ignore public health warnings. But the president struck a different tone in a Monday press briefing, acknowledging that he told his family the situation was "bad."
Mr. Trump has refused repeated warnings to rely on experts, or to neutralize some of the power held by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in favor of a traditional staff structure. He has rarely fully empowered people in the jobs they hold.
John F. Kelly, the second White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump, tried to change the president’s habits, limiting who could reach him and how many people he could solicit fringe information from. But Mr. Trump found ways to get around Mr. Kelly’s edicts, calling people on his cellphone and issuing orders he did not tell Mr. Kelly about.
I was prompted to write this blog post after learning about the airlines screaming for a bail out when the industry had a 45 billion dollar stock buy back. Let’s let the airline industry go the way of the coal industry: ashes to ashes and dust to dust. The amount of pollution a jet airliner produces is pretty bad and one of the byproducts of burnt jet fuel is Benzine. So the industrial whining has me convinced that our future lies in high speed rail. I might be slightly biased because I love trains and have since I was a kid. The state of rail travel in America has been pretty much in precipitous decline for decades. But it does not have to be.
The way the world has been able to mobilize itself and shut down in the blink of an eye to properly respond to the coronavirus is proof that political leaders actually do have the ability to make rapid change happen if they want. So where is that rapid response for the climate crisis?
The graph, updated weekly, shows as individual points daily mean CO2 up to and including the week (Sunday through Saturday) previous to today. The daily means are based on hours during which CO2 was likely representative of “background” conditions, defined as times when the measurement is representative of air at mid-altitudes over the Pacific Ocean. That air has had several days time or more to mix, smoothing out most of the CO2 variability encountered elsewhere, making the measurements representative of CO2 over hundreds of km or more.
First, we argue that the understanding of the ‘human environment’ in NEPA should be extended to consider the orbital space around the Earth.
Second, NEPA was constructed 50 years ago in such a way as to be inclusive of future technologies and activities that Congress couldn’t imagine back then. And it left regulatory decision making up to CEQ. The rapid rise or commercial space operations is a perfect example of this, so we argued that earth-orbiting satellites should be explicitly considered under NEPA regulations
Third, while the current CEQ Implementing Regulations don’t address whether near-Earth space is within the scope of environmental review under NEPA, they also don’t expressly preclude it. We argued that NEPA should apply to activities in space. In support of this assertion, we provided evidence in the value of dark skies, the importance to ground-based astronomy, and concerns about the threats posed by space debris.
Our comments are admittedly a long-shot. But it introduces the argument that the human environment extends to space. It also puts a stake in the ground that existing U.S. environmental policy covers concerns related to astronomy and the night sky.
With financial losses and a heavy death toll from climate-related disasters constantly rising, India is at last focusing on the dangers of global warming.
"This is a moment when we can implement measures to help boost the economy, create jobs, and build climate resilience."
A recent landmark study of massive ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland fulfills the “worst case” prognosis, as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It’s a nightmare come true, as the impact of global warming on the planet’s most significant/biggest masses of ice multiplied six-fold in only 30 years. It wasn’t supposed to happen so unexpectedly, so suddenly.
WTI Crude had plunged 9 percent to $24.83 a barrel at 9:15 a.m. EDT—the lowest level in more than 17 years, while Brent Crude was down 5 percent to $28.84.
By noon, WTI had slumped by 13.79% to $23.56.
There, the messages on billboards, trucks, and the sides of€ rest stops suggest that supporting the industry that’s one of the largest contributors to€ the climate crisis is a matter of American€ pride.€ €
On Monday, the price of West Texas Intermediate petroleum fell below $30 a barrel for the first time in four years. Elliot Smith at CNBC reports that BP CFO Brian Gilvary is braced for petroleum demand actually to contract in 2020.
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In less than a human lifetime, the world’s greatest rainforest could become parched grassland and scrub, and the Caribbean coral reef system could collapse completely.
Society, particularly in wealthy circles, want to foster the image of cuteness that is children and babies. They want Americans to go hog wild and pop out children like rabbits. When birthrates decline, so does profit and so does the economic surplus labor pool. When the economic surplus labor pool goes down, the wealthy are forced to shell out larger amounts of money in labor compensation. So they panic when birthrates decline Ironically, post-2008 recession birthrates are declining and the wealthy are actually blaming millennials. Millennials have become wise to the game and understand that the wealthy just want to extract blood from a stone.
Millennials and GenZers are starting to understand that the world’s population is exploding and the net effect is incredibly taxing on the environment. The newer generations are environmentally conscious in a way that Baby Boomers and GenXers are not. The wealthy make money off of natalism and promote it at the expense of the environment.
The US political scene is haunted by talk of socialism. The basis for this has been developing now for some years, especially since the financial meltdown of 2008, which many came to see as decisive proof that a capitalist economy does not serve the majority.
This biography is a scathing, and well deserved, indictment of that “empty suit” Ronald Reagan, and his ultra-grasping political creed, “Reaganism,” which directly led to the “Financial Meltdown of 2008.” The disastrous economic legacy of “hyper capitalism,” that this “free market” zealot sold the country, (1981-89), along with his mean-spirited “gutting of the public sector,” is fully documented by the author William Kleinknecht.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Wednesday a temporary halt to the city’s debt collection and ticketing practices to give low-income residents relief during the coronavirus outbreak.
Through April 30, and perhaps longer, the city will waive late penalties on city debts, including vehicle tickets and utility bills; suspend its vehicle booting program; and limit its ticketing, towing and impound operations to focus solely on public safety issues.
Has your workplace switched to working remotely over the past week? Truthout staff members have been working from home since our founding in 2001. We have developed some tips and tricks to stay as healthy as possible — and even have fun — while holed up in our homes. Now, we are sharing them with you.
The bill has some glaring exclusions.
As Republicans float proposals for direct cash payments to Americans, the Democratic leader was implored to "read the room."
Remember: For-profit insurers are in the business to make a profit. Period.
Klein showed how corporate elites worldwide have repeatedly and brutally€ used€ "the public’s disorientation following a collective shock—wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes or natural disasters—to push through radical pro-corporate measures."
If we run last night’s events through the “Five W’s” of straight-up journalism, we don’t hit the reef until the end of the formula. Who? Joe Biden. What? Defeated Bernie Sanders in three key primaries. Where? In Florida, Illinois and Arizona. When? Last night.
So what can be done at this point?
"We're not doing no-strings-attached bailouts that enrich shareholders or pay CEO bonuses. Period."
No real explanations by the Fed; it just dictates. It is a government of its own inside our government—the epitome of corporate socialism.
Amid concerns over the spread of coronavirus at polling places, many Americans stayed home. Nearly one in five households have already experienced a layoff or a reduction in work due to the pandemic. Trump wants to inject more than $1 trillion into the economy and send a $1,000 check to everyone. This comes as the Senate is set to consider a multibillion-dollar package bill passed by the Democrat-led House Monday night that includes significantly weakened paid sick leave measures. We get response from California Congressmember Ro Khanna, who has also co-sponsored a bill for an emergency Earned Income Tax Credit that would give up to $6,000 to everyone who made less than $130,000 last year. His Bay Area district has been hit hard by the coronavirus, and about 7 million residents there have been told to stay home for all but the most crucial outings until April 7.
The cancellation of international flights during the coronavirus pandemic threatens to bankrupt multiple Russian airlines, acknowledges First Deputy Transport Minister and Federal Air Transport Agency head Alexander Neradko, according to a report by the news agency Interfax.
"Good," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "Now we must suspend student loan payments."
"We know what Trump's plan is: a pandemic shock doctrine... But the end of this story hasn't been written yet."
"In this time of crisis, my office will not add undue stress or saddle New Yorkers with unnecessary financial burden."
The government should provide direct wage subsidies to airline workers while restricting CEO pay to no more than 50 times median wages.
The Trump administration is discussing a stimulus package with the Senate today which includes $50 billion for the airline industry, following demands from an industry trade group.
“Being a musician in 2020 was already hard,” synth-pop singer-songwriter Caroline Rose says. Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down all live music and touring for the foreseeable future, thereby drying up the primary source of income for the vast majority of working musicians. For countless touring artists who rely on constant touring income to stay afloat, the next few months will be dire.
To put it plainly, musicians need help. The main concern for artists like Rose, who released a new album this month and had to cancel the accompanying two-month spring tour, has been making sure her bandmates can simply pay rent this month. “People are going to have to look out for one another,” she says, “or else this economy will just collapse.”
Rolling Stone reached out to a number of artists and industry folks to share the most useful ways that fans can uplift independent musicians during this crisis.
It is amazing how, in the span of only about 7 days, my fortune has drastically changed for the worse. Homelessness is looking increasingly more likely so I am facing my worst fear. I am an adult with Autism and my particular difficulties are self care and executive functioning which means that I would not survive a week on the streets. I might last a day or two but that would be it. There is not even a place of refuge like a library to go to because of the current Coronavirus pandemic. Our society has no safety net which makes it hard enough for people without Autism and mental illness. For people like myself who have both, the situation looks increasingly untenable.
I wonder what I should do if I find myself homeless and I suppose I need to think about this because my doomsday clock is moving ever closer to midnight. I think what I would do immediately is look into seeing if there is a shelter of some sort to live in. I am going to need some sort of roof over my head if I am to survive. I would even put up with bed bugs so as not to live on the street. I have a credit card with a zero balance so I guess I could see if I could stay at an extended stay or some sort of motel 6 or flop house. When that runs out, I will be really and truly in a world of hurt.
[...]
Sometimes the best learning is through experience. I hope to god that I don’t actually become homeless. It’s more frightening than death. Really and truly. I am not scared of death and dying. But homelessness is a morbid fear of mine. I am not strong like so many other people in my position. I live in awe of the people I hear about that make it. Maybe if I become homeless, I just check out of life on my own terms. America does not care about me so maybe one less mouth to feed is one less person to tax the environment.
In a March 18 meeting with residents of Sevastopol, Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed concerns that holding a nationwide vote on his proposed constitutional changes amid the COVD-19 pandemic would pose risks to voters’ health. The vote, which would set the stage for Putin to hold the presidency until 2036, is currently scheduled for April 22.
At a meeting with Central Election Commissioner Ella Pamfilova on March 17, hours after issuing an executive order that schedules a nationwide vote on constitutional amendments for April 22, Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the plebiscite could be postponed, if the spread of coronavirus presents a serious enough threat to the general public.
"While our campaign has won the battle of ideas, we are losing the battle over electability to Joe Biden."
The UK media are starting to refer to Boris “BoJo” Johnson as the “part-time prime minister” or “invisible man”.
Bernie Sanders presumptive loss of the Democratic Party nomination for president demonstrates the limits of electoral politics for the left. I have already seen some pre-postmortems speculating that Sanders simply arrived to soon, that his staggering margins among young voters presage a socialist wave of the future, perhaps a decade or two from now, when the rising left-leaning generations become a majority of the electorate.
President Trump’s Oval Office speech last week was a massive dud and the stock market took a huge dive last Thursday. So Trump decided to take the bull by the horns and held a press conference in the Rose Garden with a group of CEOs just before closing time the next day. The market made a sharp upward turn as he spoke and the president was extremely pleased with himself. Numerous reports about the deliberations within the dysfunctional White House over the past week, however, have made it clear that was the only thing that pleased him.
"This isn't just a loss for one incumbent. It's a defeat for machine politics and big corporate donors who want to stop our movement for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and reproductive rights."
As Democratic primary turns surreal amid infectious outbreak, Sanders lays out "Coronavirus Crisis Principles" for people-centered response and a national mobilization on "a scale not seen since the New Deal and World War II."
The United States is in the middle of the acceleration phase of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this is the period, where the virus infects people and social distancing is crucial to slow the outbreak.Yet, in a reckless move that defied the concerns of medical professionals, state officials in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois listened to politicians and proceeded with previously scheduled in-person voting in their primaries.
Over 2500 people, including more than 150 medical professionals, signed on to a petition that was sent to state officials. It strongly urged them to extend mail-in voting and reschedule primaries. (Disclosure: I co-organized the petition, which was sent to state officials.)Multiple states postponed their primaries before in-person voting took place on March 17. Rather than respect the fact that states were trying to protect the health of voters and poll workers, the Democratic National Committee threatened states with the loss of delegates if they did not hold their primaries before June 9. On March 16, Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton, the state’s health department director, showed leadership and declared polling places a health emergency risk. They postponed in-person voting until June. The Ohio Democratic Party sued the state the following day. The sociopathic nature of the Democratic Party establishment, as a health crisis plunged the country into a recession, demonstrated how reprehensible party operatives are willing to be in order to shepherd their preferred candidate closer to a presidential nomination. Dysfunction that officials knew would occur resulted in voter suppression that made it impossible for numerous citizens to cast their ballot. Conditions stopped many other citizens from participating in the primaries. Altogether, the results of the Arizona, Florida, and Illinois primaries were the product of an illegitimate electoral process carried out during a national state of emergency. Once the news networks reported former Vice President Joe Biden was the winner of all three primaries, Biden appeared via livestream from his home in Wilmington, Delaware. “This is a moment, where we need our leaders to lead.”€ “It’s also a moment where the choices and decisions we make as individuals are going to collectively impact on what happens, make a big difference in the severity of this outbreak and the ability of our medical hospital systems to handle it,” Biden added. What he declared was rather hypocritical. Biden likely secured an insurmountable delegate lead over his opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. But he also showed zero leadership, put his base of elderly voters, who have overwhelmingly supported him, at risk, and his campaign disregarded CDC guidance to a degree that likely resulted in dozens of people becoming infected with the coronavirus because they believed what they claimed about how “safe” it was to vote.
In last night’s debate, Joe Biden claimed that Italy shows public health care doesn’t help the response to coronavirus. But the Italian health service is providing a vital defense against mass infection — ensuring that any ill person can get proper treatment, regardless of their ability to pay.
In the latest episode of the series 20 Questions for Vladimir Putin produced by the state news outlet TASS, Russia’s president was asked to discuss the opposition and its rights. Specifically, his conversation with journalist Andrey Vandenko touched on the contrast between the so-called “systemic” and “non-systemic” opposition. The former term describes parties that are legally registered and politically established — the Russian Communist Party, for example — as well as candidates who receive official recognition but ostensibly provide competition for the ruling party, United Russia. Non-systemic opposition politicians or parties, on the other hand, are explicitly anti-Kremlin as a rule and may never be recognized by government officials.
"That Tom Perez is encouraging this, and threatening states who postpone in-person voting, is criminal."
Demyan Kudryavtsev, Vladimir Voronov, and Martin Pomnadur have reached a preliminary agreement to sell off 100 percent of the stock company “BNM,” which publishes one of Russia’s leading business newspaper, Vedomosti, and the Russian edition of The Harvard Business Review. Kudryavtsev has confirmed the sale to Vedomosti.€
I am proud of what Truthdig has accomplished. Truthdig has received wide acclaim and many awards. We are a voice for progressive politics, social justice, humanitarian issues, the environment, women’s rights and more. We created our Global Voices initiative to encourage progressive female journalists around the world. We fight violence against women and strive to empower them.
On March 16, those participating in Truthdig’s work stoppage wrote directly to publisher Zuade Kaufman and Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer. We invited them to participate in a conference call on March 17 to begin negotiations to restore Robert Scheer as Editor-in-Chief and to address unfair labor practices, opening a potential path that would allow us to return to work. Mr. Scheer, as co-owner of Truthdig, agreed to speak with us. We received no reply from Ms. Kaufman. She has also not attempted to communicate with€ the copy desk staff, who joined in the work stoppage.
The pundits appear willfully ignorant of their own role in shaping electability narratives.
Biden repudiated his long-standing record on all issues (for real?) and advocated the Bernie Sanders’ program, reduced by at least 55% to protect the wealth of his billionaire contributors and patrons, and protect the status quo, all in hopes of conning Latinos and the numerous American underclasses to vote for his prospective administration, which like the 2008-2016 Obama-Biden Administration would be a protect-the-Wall-Street-Banksters-and-the-high-end-and-the-status-quo administration. Bernie delivered his unchanged and continuing message, which Elizabeth Warren and now Joseph Biden have been poaching on to the minimum extent they think would boost their bids to power in the eyes of the public, while protecting their sponsors.
Purges, interrogation, claims of torture, accusations of treason, suspicion of murder, an insane war in Yemen and ruinous plans for a “reformed” kingdom, all supported by the US€ and the west and an often fawning media. So what’s new?
The Justice Department is moving to drop charges against two Russian companies that were accused of funding a social media campaign to sway American public opinion during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Prosecutors said they concluded that a trial, against a corporate defendant with no presence in the United States and no prospect of meaningful punishment even if convicted, would likely expose sensitive law enforcement tools and techniques, “potentially undermining their effectiveness.”
Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering were among three companies and 13 individuals charged in 2018 by special counsel Robert Mueller in a conspiracy to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 presidential race. The effort was aimed at dividing American public opinion and sowing discord in the electorate, officials said.
Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well in the best of times, but the solutions that seem to at least keep it from devolving into a total mess almost always use a combination of humans and technology working together. But what do you do when the humans are sick, self-isolating, quarantined, etc? While I imagine some may be able to work from home, it's a difficult time to expect anyone to be at full productivity. So YouTube has made it clear that it's turning over more content moderation decisions to the machines knowing full well that some of those decisions are going to be bad...
Sing it with me, folks: content moderation is impossible to do well at scale. Over the last few weeks, all of the big social media platforms have talked about their intense efforts to block misinformation about Covid-19. It appeared to be something of an all hands on deck situation for employees (mostly working from home) at these companies. Indeed, earlier this week, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube all released a joint statement about how they're working together to fight Covid-19 misinformation, and hoping other platforms would join in.
As we've been discussing for a while, India's government has blacked out internet access in Kashmir since around August, setting records for one of the longest government-mandated internet blackouts in history. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to argue that the blackout is a necessary security precaution in the face of growing unrest in the region stemming from its loss of autonomy earlier this year. Granted, like most government internet censorship efforts, the move has a lot more to do with cowardice and fear of an informed public than any genuine concern about public welfare.
But researchers say problems like Tuesday night’s could become more common in the absence of a robust team of human moderators. YouTube and Twitter announced Monday that their contractors would be sent home as well, and that they too would be relying more heavily on automated flagging tools and AI-powered review systems. Leigh Ann Benicewicz, a spokesperson for Reddit, told WIRED on Tuesday that the company had “enacted mandatory work-from-home for all of its employees,” which also applies to contractors. She declined to elaborate about how the policy was impacting content moderation specifically. Twitch did not immediately return a request for comment.
Our country under censorship.
In response, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, said in a Twitter post that it was a bug in an anti-spam system. Later he tweeted that all content that was incorrectly removed had been restored, including “posts on all topics -- not just those related to Covid-19. This was an issue with an automated system that removes links to abusive websites, but incorrectly removed a lot of other posts too.”
Facebook started marking some posts linking to information and articles about the coronavirus and COVID-19 as spam, as observed by one Verge reporter and many users on Twitter on Tuesday evening.
The issue was due to a “bug in an anti-spam system,” according to Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity. Rosen said the company began working on a fix as soon as discovering the issue.
An influential Somali academic and social reformer is in hiding due to threats to his life, after one of the country's leading Muslim scholars called for his killing over allegations of blasphemy.
Prof. Mahmoud Jama Ahmed was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail in 2019 for "blasphemy" but was released in January after a presidential pardon.
Activists say Ahmed was forced into hiding after prominent imam, Adam Sunna, threatened his life during Friday prayers on 6 March.
"Killing this apostate is bad for him in this life but he will benefit from it in the afterlife," he said, according to Humanists International.
Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc warned on Monday that more videos and other content could be erroneously removed for policy violations, as the companies empty offices and rely on automated takedown software during the coronavirus pandemic.
Certainly, the role of the public library has grown and evolved. And we are no longer just places for quiet study and reading, but also vital community hubs. We provide access to the latest technologies, from digital innovation with virtual reality headsets, to studio spaces that host e-learning and self-directed courses. We connect people with diverse cultural and leisure experiences, from indigenous programs to our sewing-fabrication studios.
Throughout this transformation, there is one thing that has not changed, and that is our focus on our core values and our fundamental commitment, as outlined in the library’s mission statement: to provide, preserve and promote universal access to a broad range of human knowledge, experience, information and ideas in a welcoming and supportive environment. Being a public institution and a government body, one of our core responsibilities is to uphold the fundamental freedoms of thought, belief, opinion and expression enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The case against Prokopyeva has been criticized by international media-freedom watchdogs such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the European Federation of Journalists.
“The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns this senseless but entirely predictable retaliation by the Chinese government, which threatens to sharply curtail the reporting operations of major U.S. publications in China,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Beijing and Washington should negotiate to solve their differences and stop taking measures that cripple news reporting during a global pandemic, when the public’s need for accurate information is greater than ever.”
The Moscow City Court has sentenced Alexander Drymanov, the former director of the capital’s Investigative Committee branch, to 12 years in prison and fined him 196 million rubles ($2.5 million) for receiving $200,000 of a $1-million bribe from the gangster Zakhary Kalashov (better known as “Young Shakro”). Prosecutors had requested 16 years.
With the defence opening its case, the Alex Salmond trial finally had a public gallery open all day, and accordingly I was in court with my trusty notebook. I should start by saying that the contrast with the soul-crushing experience of Woolwich Crown Court and the Julian Assange hearing was extreme. Edinburgh High Court is built for public access, not for public exclusion like Woolwich. You walk in straight off the High Street and the entire design of the building is intended to let the public flow through freely. There are literally no fences, no locked doors, no armoured glass, no enclosed glass cage for the accused. The court itself was impressive; Lady Dorrian presided with exemplary fairness, dealing quickly and sensibly with points that arose on admissibility of evidence. The jury of 15 citizens looked engaged and earnest throughout. The impression of my first day is that it is a process that deserves respect and trust, something I never felt at an Assange hearing.
After Day 8, there is a change in the balance of evidence. Previously a popular meme has been that either Alex Salmond must be lying, or 9 separate women must be lying. After today’s evidence we can say that either several of those women must be lying, or a variety of other direct witnesses, female and male, must be lying. There is of course an element of false dichotomy even in this statement of the case, as in a number of instances there is a fair degree of commonality from both prosecution and defence as to actions, but differences as to interpretation or to intent. I can also say without any fear of contradiction that many of the allegations would not meet the definition of a sexual assault as commonly understood by the person in the street. That is not to say they cannot meet a legal definition. There I will bow to the judge – who I continue to find very fair.
Chinese video-sharing app TikTok told its moderators to suppress videos created by “ugly,” poor, or disabled people to be posted on the platform’s main video section, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept.
Other documents showed that anything harming “national honor” or streams about “state organs such as police” would also be banned banned outright. Users that showed “disreputable decorations” in their homes, including cracked walls, would also get banned — an attempt, according to The Intercept‘s interpretation, to punish TikTok’s poorer audiences.
Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia’s 34-year-old de facto ruler, has been on a tear recently. He€ arrested€ members of his own royal family and€ initiated€ an oil price war with Russia that has sent the price of oil—and the world’s stock markets—plummeting. Behind the headlines, however, another critical event will take place in Saudi Arabia starting March 18: women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was arrested almost two years ago for advocating the right to drive, is due in court. The diabolical MBS wants the world to believe he is the Arab world’s liberal reformer and took credit for eventually granting women the right to drive, but he is also the one who had al-Hathloul and nine other women thrown in prison, charging them as foreign agents and spies. The imprisonment of these peaceful women activists exposes the brutal nature of MBS’s regime and the duplicity of the Western democracies that continue to support him.
"From now on abortions will be rightly treated as a health issue."
Women in Germany earned 20% less than men in 2019, according to a study published on Monday. The difference in earnings was lower than in 2018 — by 1%.
On average, women earned €17.72 ($19.76) per hour, while men earned €22.16 per hour. This meant a difference of €4.44, down very slightly from €4.51 in 2018.
The German Federal Statistics Office destatis used the so-called unadjusted gender pay gap to determine the figures. It does not take into account employees' age, education status or work experience in comparing wages — only their gender.
The figures were published ahead of Equal Pay Day on March 17. The date is determined by how far into the year the average woman will have to work to earn as much as a man did in the previous year.
With an incarceration rate exceeding 700 people for every 100,000, Americans have built a monstrosity that has few parallels in history — destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades. Future generations will no doubt wonder how the wealthiest, most developed country in the world ever tolerated such barbarism.
Birmingham, Alabama is a landmark city for the American civil rights movement. Even today, it’s ground zero for a vital fight over voting rights.
The last time I saw former Black Panther, incarcerated activist and poet, Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, he asked me a question I didn’t fully understand. “Here’s a riddle for you,” he began, gap-toothed and grinning from his hospice bed. “If the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second and there are 5,180 feet in a mile and if the speed of sound is 1,100 feet per second, how long would it take you to see that you’ve heard something?”
Just another reminder the Drug Enforcement Agency doesn't care all that much about drugs and/or enforcement. If there's money to be made, the DEA is all in. If it can score easy wins by engaging in entrapment, it will. But the drugs will flow and the damage will be done. And the DEA will be there to hoover up the cash… even when the cash has nothing to do with drugs.
Konstantin Kartashov, the attorney defending Penza Network case prisoner Maxim Ivankin, says officials have tried to pressure his client into confessing to involvement in the death of Artyom Dorofeyev and Ekaterina Levchenko. “They started scaring him and hinting at physical violence. They said it would look like a suicide and [investigators] wouldn’t consider other explanations since he’s being held at a federal detention center as a suicide risk,” Kartashov told Novaya Gazeta.
The sisters, who have a Pakistani mother and English father, said they were "slut-shamed" for not upholding cultural norms of women's behaviour.
They are now working with a charity to educate young people about the issue.
So-called honour crimes are acts that have been committed to protect or defend the supposed honour or reputation of a family and extended community.
The 41-year-old from London was jailed for five years in 2016 after being convicted of espionage charges that she has always denied. The UK has also insisted she is innocent.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has reportedly ordered Russia’s National Guard and ministries of trade and industry, defense, and education to start providing students and the military with materials needed to produce personal protective gear, according to a report by the website RBC, which says its sources in the federal cabinet and in the National Guard verify this information.€
As millions of Americans begin to work and learn from home in a bid to slow the spread of COVID-19, America's patchy and expensive broadband networks are likely to get a workout. To be clear, the shift will certainly highlight the broken US telecom market, at least in terms of patchy availability, limited competition, and high prices. But most experts say US networks should be able to shoulder the load without too much difficulty.
When disaster strikes and internet access is knocked out, how can you communicate? Ham radios and IP over Avian Carriers are two options. If you're reading this, you have internet access. You probably have it either through a local cable or fiber ISP – or through your cell phone provider. We all have one (usually more than one) of these. Speedy. Reliable (mostly). Boring. What happens when that infrastructure goes down?
While it required some nudging, several of the nation's biggest ISPs this week announced they would be suspending their usage caps and overage fees as millions of Americans prepare to hunker down to slow the spread of COVID-19. Comcast, AT&T, and Centurylink all stopped imposing such limits for at least the next 90 days. Critics (and even leaked Comcast memos) have long made it clear such restrictions (particularly on fixed line networks) aren't technically useful in managing congestion as the industry once claimed, and are little more than glorified price hikes on captive customers.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a group of consumer advocacy groups sent letters to the country's largest providers on Tuesday asking them to do more to ensure internet access as the coronavirus spreads.
The letters sent to Altice, AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Frontier Communications, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon ask for data caps to be lifted and for fees for crossing caps to be waived, among other things.
Think of it: you're working from home, videoconferencing over Skype or Zoom, while your kids are playing games and chatting with friends. There's streamed movies to watch in the evenings. Disney+ and Netflix may be in constant rotation, adding to the bandwidth strain. That's a lot of data!
In response, some ISPs and cellular service providers are providing relief for customers. Some are merely adhering to the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge (PDF), which asks the signees not to terminate a customer’s service for non-payment. Others are removing data caps and lowering bills in response to COVID-19.
And others, as you will see in our list below, are doing nothing at all.
Yesterday I wrote up a fairly insane story about how a Softbank-owned patent troll, Fortress Investment Group, through a shell company subsidiary, Labrador Diagnostics (which, despite its name, does not seem to do any diagnostics), using patents that it had bought up from the sham medical testing company Theranos during its fire sale, had sued BioFire Diagnostics/BioMerieux, one of the few companies making a Covid-19 diagnostics test, claiming patent infringement. The patent infringement claims were on all of its diagnostics created using BioFire's FilmArray 2.0, FilmArray EZ, and FilmArray Torch devices -- and the company's Covid-19 tests were based on that technology. Even worse, the company asked the court to issue an injunction, blocking BioFire from using the tests. As we pointed out, this was not just tone deaf, but destructive and dangerous.
Foraying into the foldable mobile phones category, the launch of the Huawei Mate Xs by Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG) has a greater story involved on how Huawei has been so successful in becoming a leader in technological innovation.
Packed with Huawei's newest technology, the Huawei Mate Xs is the most high-end device from the brand till date, featuring the Kirin 990 5G SoC and an improved Falcon Wing Design, powerful performance and a seamless user experience across smartphone and tablet modes.
According to the 2019 patent index, last year Italian applications submitted to the EPO grew by 1.2%, compared to +1% the previous year, and above the +0.9% EU average. Overall, there were 4,456 Italian patent applications. In 2019 confirmed the positive trajectory of recent years: from 2014 to 2019 patent applications to the EPO were up 22%. Lombardy is one of the most innovative regions of Europe and in 2019 saw a 6.2% increase in patent applications. The data also shows that Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna together represent 60% of all Italian applications. The sector in which the country has applied for the most patents is transport and the Italian company submitting the most applications was G.D. (47), followed by Pirelli and Prysmian (both 46). “Patent applications from Italy show a clear and stable upward trend, demonstrating that Italian companies continue to recognize the importance - for innovation - of investment in research and development," commented EPO president Antonio Campinos.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) have announced that all deadlines between 9 March 2020 and 30 April 2020 are extended until 1 May 2020 (in fact, all limits are extended until Monday 4 May, given that Friday 1 May is Labor Day).
Until further notice, all EUIPO staff will work from home but will continue to send communications, set deadlines or receive queries by phone or email, but all public events scheduled during this period are postponed. Trademark and design applications will continue to be received, examined and published, says EUIPO.
Cox Communications has responded to the scathing opposition of several record labels, which asked the court not to lower the $1 billion piracy liability verdict a Virginia jury issued late last year. According to the ISP, the damages are disproportional and excessive, especially since its policies were not so different from the music industry sanctioned Copyright Alert System.
Authorities in Ukraine report that officers from the cybercrime unit have raided an advertising agency in the capital Kiev for doing business with sites offering pirated movies and TV shows. Images released by the government show masked and armed officers targeting a building and herding out large numbers of employees.
This morning several news articles celebrated the "return" of Popcorn Time after it apparently went offline a few years ago. This claim simply isn't true, neither is the assertion that the just released version of the app works as well as the previous one. In fact, Popcorn Time is facing a wave of complaints from users experiencing a wide range of problems that simply didn't exist before.
Bell, Rogers, and Groupe TVA have asked Canada's federal court for an update of its blocking order to ban additional domains that provide access to the pirate IPTV service GoldTV. Internet providers have been asked to keep quiet about the new domains until the order is granted. Internet provider TekSavvy is honoring this request but remains determined to overturn the initial order at the appeals court.
Want to show your support for EFF while you spend more and more€ time€ in video conferences and chats? Here's one fun way: virtual backgrounds!€
We've collected some of our favorite EFF designs that promote€ issues like transparency, creativity, innovation, and privacy, for users to protect their own privacy (and add some joy to their conference calls) by replacing their usual backgrounds. These images are available under the Creative Commons CC BY license.
