I've been a Fedora Linux contributor for a little over a decade now. Fedora has a large community of developers and users, each with a unique set of skills ranging from being a particularly discerning user to being an amazing programmer. I like this because it inspires and motivates me to develop new skills of my own.
For me, the best way to develop skills has always been to make mistakes. Like, really mess things up. It doesn't really matter what kind of mistake it is because it's less about the mistake itself and more about what I learn in the process of having to dig myself out of whatever hole I managed to get myself into.
Why mistakes are good
I remember my first computer mistake. My family's first computer was an Epson laptop that my uncle gave us when he upgraded. It had a blazing fast 10 MHz processor and a carrying handle because it was so heavy. I loved that machine.
It ran DOS, but it had a text-based menu application to make it a little friendlier for the novice user. Hard Disk Menu had ten "pages," each of which could have ten commands configured. We had a page for games, another for "boring stuff" like word processors and spreadsheets, etc.
Hard Disk Menu had some other features that, when I got bored of playing the games, I would explore. At some point, I decided that I should make use of the account feature. It didn't change what applications appeared, but it would prevent unauthorized access, sort of. You could just drop to the DOS shell instead, but still, it was a nice try.
I created accounts for myself, my parents, and my sisters. My parents were a little annoyed, but they humored me. Everything was fine for a while. Then my sister forgot her password. My parents told me to remove the passwords. But without my sister's password, I couldn't remove the password on her account (it was the early 90s, a much simpler time). What to do? What to do?
For a little while, we kept going with the attempted passwords until one day when I decided I'd try something I hadn't done yet. When I was first creating the accounts, I set a master password. What would happen if I typed the master password in place of my sister's password?
Facebook engineer Song Liu has sent out a set of patches for "BPF_PROG_TYPE_USER" as a new BPF type for the Linux kernel focused on better supporting user programs.
Given the success of the eBPF in-kernel virtual machine and new use-cases continuing to be worked on it outside of the traditional networking scope, Facebook has been working on BPF_PROG_TYPE_USER for better handling of user-space programs within the realm of BPF. (e)BPF has numerous program types for areas of networking and other areas while this new type is for better handling of user programs.
The Linux 5.9 kernel merge window will open up immediately upon the release of Linux 5.8, which is expected to happen this evening unless Linus Torvalds decides to stave it off for one week to allow for additional testing. In any case, once Linux 5.9 kicks off there are a lot of changes expected.
Based on our monitoring of the various kernel "-next" Git branches in recent weeks and the mailing lists, here is a look at some of the changes slated for the Linux 5.9 kernel. Stay tuned to Phoronix for much more once the Linux 5.9 merge window is underway.
We are pleased to announce that the VFIO/IOMMU/PCI Microconference has been accepted into the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference!
The PCI interconnect specification, the devices implementing it, and the system IOMMUs providing memory/access control to them are incorporating more and more features aimed at high performance systems (eg PCI ATS (Address Translation Service)/PRI(Page Request Interface), enabling Shared Virtual Addressing (SVA) between devices and CPUs), that require the kernel to coordinate the PCI devices, the IOMMUs they are connected to and the VFIO layer used to manage them (for userspace access and device passthrough) with related kernel interfaces that have to be designed in-sync for all three subsystems.
The kernel code that enables these new system features requires coordination between VFIO/IOMMU/PCI subsystems, so that kernel interfaces and userspace APIs can be designed in a clean way.
VokoscreenNG screencasting application 3.0.5 was released a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and derivatives.
VokoscreenNG is an easy to use screencast creator that can be used to record videos from computers screen, webcams, external cameras, etc. This graphical tool can produce educational videos, live recordings of browser navigation, tutorials of installations, record video conferences, etc.
Incredibly it has taken until now with Wine-Staging 5.14 to implement more than just a stub to Wine's FINDSTR program implementation. Yes, the long-standing command to search for strings.
Up until now the Wine Findstr stub has just always returned zero as do most stubbed out functions for Wine. In the case of Findstr, its Windows behavior is inverted in returning 0 to signify a match or 1 for no match. So regardless of what is being fed to Wine's Findstr stub, it has always returned a "match". But now in Wine-Staging 5.14 is finally a minimal implementation of Findstr to actually handle string searching behavior.
Wine's Findstr stub has been problematic for at least some software and outlined in this 7 year old bug report about the Freemake Video Converter installer running into problems with the Findstr stub.
Wine 5.14 was released one day ago as the latest development release of the compatibility layer allows to run Windows apps on Linux and Mac OS.
“Reality Check,” the new 21-page special report from Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP), explores the hype machine behind virtual and augmented reality, and how investors, particularly in the entertainment space, may have jumped the gun too soon and projected outlandish expectations onto a medium that still has plenty of significant, unexplored potential.
The initial wave of investments in VR and AR following Facebook’s acquisition of start-up Oculus VR in 2014 was a seemingly great sign for the gaming and tech spaces, with up to an estimated $2.3 billion in funding for VR and AR companies in 2016 (per Digi-Capital).
But something happened on the way to VR and AR’s happy Hollywood ending.
While some platforms like Netmarketshare have reported increases month-over-month for Linux desktop usage, that doesn't appear to be translating similarly to the Linux gaming market-share, or at least not at the rate Steam is growing on Windows and macOS. Valve has just published their July 2020 numbers that are part of the Steam Survey.
Steam is a video game digital distribution service by Valve. It was launched as a standalone software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to include games from third-party publishers., see Wikipedia.
Starting with the 20.04 release, Kate allows the user to turn on some telemetry submission. This is a purely opt-in approach. We do not submit any data if you not actively enable this feature! For details about the introduction of this feature, see this post.
After some months of having this out in the wild, I think it is time to show up with the first data we got.
Thanks to Martijn Vogelaar a new visibility mode for sidebars is supported. The new mode triggers Latte panel showing/hiding through the Latte Sidebar Button applet and global shortcuts but at the same time if the panel does not contain mouse for a period of time (can be set from Show timer) then it auto hides itself.
Visibility modes in general have updated their organization in order to be grouped much better. Currently they look like...
Fedora 33 is the next installment of the Fedora Linux operating system for the desktop workstation, servers, and all of its spins.
Last few debian-live images being tested for amd64. We have found a bug with the debian-live Gnome flavour. This specifically affects installs after booting from the live media using and then using the Calamares installer found in the desktop.
Fixes are known - we've had highvoltage come and debug them with us - but will not be put out with this release but will wait for the 10.6 release which will allow for a longer time for debugging overall.
This tshirt is 15 years old and from DebConf4. Again, I should probably wash it at 60 celcius for once...
DebConf4 was my 2nd DebConf and took place in Porto Alegre, Brasil.
Like many DebConfs, it was a great opportunity to meet people: I remember sitting in the lobby of the venue and some guy asked me what I did in Debian and I told him about my little involvements and then and asked him what he did, and he told me he wanted to become involved in Debian again, after getting distracted away. His name was Ian Murdock...
DebConf4 also had a very cool history session in the hallway track (IIRC, but see below) with Bdale Garbee, Ian Jackson and Ian Murdock and with a young student named Biella Coleman busy writing notes.
That same hallway also saw the kickoff meeting of the Debian Women project, though sadly today http://tinc.debian.net ("there's no cabal") only shows an apache placeholder page and not a picture of that meeting.
[...]
Finally, DebConf4 and more importantly FISL, which was really big (5000 people?) and after that, the wizard of OS conference in Berlin (which had a very nice talk about Linux in different places in the world, illustrating the different states of 'first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win'), made me quit my job at a company supporting Windows- and Linux-setups as I realized I'd better start freelancing with Linux-only jobs. So, once again, my life would have been different if I would not have attended these events!
Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS is the first (of many to come) point releases in the latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system series, which is a long-term supported release that will receive updates for up to 10 years.
Initially set to hit the streets on July 23rd, the first point release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS was delayed for August 6th, 2020. Canonical gave us no reason for the delay, but looking at what happened recently with the BootHole vulnerability found in the GRUB2 bootloader I guess we all know the real reason.
Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS isn’t a major update to the Focal Fossa series. It’s just an updated installation media, which will most likely help newcomers or those who want to deploy Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on new computer, as well as those who want to reinstall their systems, as they won’t have to patch the installations against BootHole, nor download hundreds of updates after the installation.
So today, I'm wrapping up my Raspberry Pi Cluster series with my thoughts about the Turing Pi that I used to build a 7-node Kubernetes cluster.
There’s a lot going on on your Android screen. Maybe you’ve just scored a kill in PUBG mobile and want to share it with the world or perhaps want to record snippets of your screen for a video you’re making. In other words, there are plenty of reasons to want an Android screen recorder.
And luckily, you’re not short of options. There are plenty of great Android screen recorders out there, including open-source options and a secret screen-recording option built right into Android 10. We’ve gathered them for you here.
Cult text editor GNU Nano has released a major update, taking the terminal-based program to its fifth version in twenty years.
The new update, called "Among the fields of barely", introduces a new --indicator command-line switch that will enable the display a kind of scrollbar on the right-hand side of the screen to indicate where in the buffer the viewport is located and how much it covers.
Welcome to the August 2020 edition of the monthly Fortran newsletter. The newsletter comes out on the first calendar day of every month and details Fortran news from the previous month.
I’ve talked about how I optimise this site before, but I wanted to do some digging into which is the best WordPress caching plugin. I’ve tested some of the most popular caching plugins available, and decided to write this post with the results.
Why do you fear to code? Is it because you’re afraid to mess up or break something? is it because the technical concepts are confusing for you? is it because of so many overwhelming concepts in programming? Whatever your answer is…but, the most pleasurable thing for a programmer is the moment when they see their code run in the blink of an eye and the magic happens on the screen.
Coding is intimidating, coding is overwhelming but if anyone defeats the fear of coding then it’s also one of the most enjoyable and fun things to do. Some people who enjoy coding get addicted to it and they start spending hours either trying different programming strategies or building the new applications, or solving some coding-related challenging problems. In this blog, we will discuss the top reasons why people fear of coding and tips to overcome this problem.
The issue is that folder pinning is far from being the only thing I want to do with incoming mails at delivery time, and shoving everything in the mda executable is not ideal. I rewrote the MDA to have it handle delivery only and call an API to determine where it should do it, this let me play with a ton of ideas on a custom API server without tweaking the working MDA. At the end of the day, I had incoming mails processed by various text analyzers, attachments automatically extracted and put in an s3 backing store, and mails indexed for fast lookups.
I will not expand much on how I did this as I think it makes a nice topic for a dedicated article on custom MDA, and fun stuff you can easily do with them to provide some awesome features on your mail setup.
A few days back we wrote of Intel's ISPC compiler landing GPU code generation support for their UHD/Iris/Xe Graphics from Gen9 Skylake and beyond. Following that code being merged, ISPC 1.14.0 was quickly tagged.
Intel ISPC 1.14.0 was released shortly after the GPU support code landed for the Implicit SPMD Program Compiler. See more details on the GPU code landing in the aforelinked article. It's an exciting milestone and another great Intel software achievement playing into their oneAPI efforts. ISPC 1.14.0 continues offering great first-rate CPU support across all platforms. All of these open-source goodies remain open-source as one of Intel's continued strong points.
God, the year 2020 seems never ending. I just pray it gets over quickly and we start fresh with new year 2021. Unfortunately we have to wait for another 5 months. In the current situation, anything can happen in this period. Please stay safe and avoid unnecessary human contacts.
So what was the main attraction of last month?
Well, quite a few, to begin with, I submitted 12 Pull Requests which is much better than the month before i.e. 9 Pull Requests. I remember there was time when I used to submit at least 50 PR every month. I aim to do at least 1 PR every 2 days i.e. 15 PR every month. Unfortunately I have only managed to do that in January i.e. 22 Pull Requests. I did come close to the target in two months e.g. May (13 Pull Requests) and July (12 Pull Requests). I am going to keep trying hard. Wish me luck.
I would like to talk about my participation to the Pull Request Club contributions. Ever since I joined i.e. January 2019, I have never missed a single month. As of today, I have submitted 20 Pull Requests to 20 different distributions. Of those 10 have been accepted and merged. There are 9 PR still open and 1 closed without merge. So overall 50% success rate, not a bad attempt so far.
Regular expressions (regexes) are famously hard to read or write. There are some techniques you can use to improve this. Like any other code you write, your regular expression patterns should
include comments
break apart large blocks into smaller related sections
use named variables and identifiers
Do you obsess about writing your code just the right way before you get started? Maybe you have some ugly code on your hands and you need to make it better. Either way, refactoring could be your ticket to happier days! On this episode, we'll talk through a powerful example of iteratively refactoring some code until we eventually turn our ugly duckling into a Pythonic beauty.
Being a Python developer is a fantastic career option. Python is now the most popular language with lots of growing job demand (especially in the fields of Web, Data Science and Machine Learning). You have many job opportunities, you can work around the world, and you get to solve hard problems. One thing that is hard, however, is staying up to date with the constantly evolving ecosystem. You want to be a top-performing python developer, coder, programmer, software developer, but you don’t have time to select from hundreds of articles, videos and podcasts each day.
This monthly newsletter is focused on keeping you up to date with the industry, keeping your skills sharp, without wasting your valuable time. I will be sharing the most important articles, podcasts and videos of the month. Think Tim Ferriss and the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) meeting the Software Development world. What’s the 20% that will get you 80% of the results?
First of all I have chosen Python as the language for the project since python provides many libraries and documentations to support with any challengs during this milestone.
Optimize Images has just been updated to version 1.3.6, a minor but still important release that fixes a few bugs and improves its overall stability. Thank you for using Optimize Images and/or contributing with feature suggestions, bug reports, or pull requests!
Ternary operator can be used as the alternative of ‘if-else’ and ‘if-else-if’ statements. It is called a ternary operator because it takes three operands to do any task. If the conditional expression that is used in a ternary statement returns true, then it executes a particular statement; otherwise, it executes another statement. The ‘?’ and ‘:’ symbols are used to define the ternary statement. The ternary operator is better to use for solving a very simple task in place of ‘if’ statement. Different uses of the ternary operator in java are shown in this tutorial.
The list is a useful way to store ordered multiple data like an array in Java. But It has many features that do not exist in the array. The list is called an ordered collection, and it is an interface that extends the Collection interface. It cannot create an object like an array, but it implements four classes to use the functionalities of the list. These classes are ArrayList, LinkList, Stack, and Vector. These are defined in the Java Collection Framework. ArrayList and LinkList classes are widely used in Java. The insert, update, delete, and search operations are done in the list based on the index-value like an array. It can store both null and duplicate values. java.util package contains the ‘list’ interface, and it will require to import to use the ‘list’. How the different methods of the ‘list’ can be used in Java are shown in this tutorial.
‘switch-case’ statement can be used as the alternative of ‘if-else-if’ statement where different conditions are defined in different ‘if’ statements. If the first condition returns false, then check the second condition and so on. Defining multiple conditions using this way is a very lengthy process. The same task can be done very simply by using a switch-case statement. It contains different execution parts and executes the statement where the particular value matches with any ‘case’ value. The switch statement can be applied to the various types of primitive data such as int, char, byte, etc. The different uses of switch-case statements in Java are explained in this tutorial.
Three individuals have been charged for their alleged roles in the July 15 [attack] on Twitter, an incident that resulted in Twitter profiles for some of the world’s most recognizable celebrities, executives and public figures sending out tweets advertising a bitcoin scam.
Graham Ivan Clark, 17, allegedly hijacked 130 Twitter accounts as part of a cryptocurrency scam, according to a criminal affidavit filed in Tampa, Florida. The accounts that were [cr]acked included those of former President Barack Obama, Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos and Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk.
If Whyte wants to argue that book loans unfairly mean lost revenues for authors, he must account for the fact that those books generate PLR compensation annually for 25 years, paying authors long after the majority of books have lost most of their commercial value and can be found on bookstore shelves. Given that the PLR already compensates for hundreds of book loans per year, the compensation (if the books remain usable) for authors can run into the tens of thousands of dollars covering thousands of loans. Further, these numbers have grown significantly in recent years given the 50% increase in the PLR allocation budget.
The value of libraries obviously extends far beyond the PLR, but if the claims are focused on the compensation for authors, authors groups successfully addressed that issue in the 1980s. They have been the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of dollars for library loaning activity as a result, which, needless to say, is enough for those so-called “guileless authors” to buy a lot of beans.
The San Francisco Chapter has an article by a software developer using open source software and open standards hardware to teach computer science skills to students in rural Nigeria. Chioma Ezedi Chukwu, founder of the STEMTeers mentorship program, writes that open source is more than free tools, software, or hardware. “It was a great opportunity to learn, learn by building and create with innovation.”
Can these trends go on? Not every city can bank on a university. And many smaller colleges are threatened by demographic change, lower immigration, the pandemic and, for public ones, looming cuts in funding. But federal authorities, seeking ways to recharge the economy, could adopt an idea of professors at MIT to “jumpstart America” through $100bn of investment in 20 new centres of high-technology, innovation and commercialised research, similar to DPI in Chicago. The idea is that lots of rivals to Silicon Valley could bloom. Of the top 20 candidates in the professors’ list, 13 were around universities in the Midwest. With luck it will take less than 200 years to produce results.
As we all know this lock down period cannot continue forever which is already pressing our economy badly in various ways. We cannot continue to bear this huge loss in economy for a long period of time. Therefore government has rightly taken the decision to unlock all necessary services with utmost care. In this transition phase from lockdown to unlock, COVID-19 cases are increasing exponentially by every passing day.
Hence we all have to take care of ourselves more effectively than a normal individual because we stand at a greater risk for Covid-19 transmission. As we all know co-morbidity and immunity-compromised patient possess more vulnerability for Covid-19.
CKD itself is a co-morbidity that poses a greater risk. And we all are aware that the reason behind CKD is primarily either diabetes or hypertension. Hence CKD patients are on high risk for Covid-19.
"And those who are solid organ transplant recipients are all on immunity-suppression drugs to avoid organ rejection. This makes you more vulnerable and susceptible for infection. Therefore it is obvious that the degree of complications in covid-19 for these patients will be on the higher side".
"It doesn't get less stupid if you say it more."
"Ed has long been a progressive champion for universal health care as well as the environment, equity, and dozens of other issues."
As she waited for the results of her rapid COVID-19 test, Rachel de Cordova sat in her car and read through a stack of documents given to her by SignatureCare Emergency Center.
Without de Cordova leaving her car, the staff at the freestanding emergency room near her home in Houston had checked her blood pressure, pulse and temperature during the July 21 appointment. She had been suffering sinus stuffiness and a headache, so she handed them her insurance card to pay for the $175 rapid-response drive-thru test. Then they stuck a swab deep into her nasal cavity to obtain a specimen.
Trump: The combination of his pathologies and his position is extremely dangerous. In some sense, you could say that any American in his position is potentially the most dangerous person on the planet. But my uncle clearly doesn't have the intellectual capacity or the impulse control to be trusted.
South Africa is the hardest-hit country on the continent and accounts for half of all reported infections in Africa.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a series of 2020 guidance documents on how to seek Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for new SARS-CoV-2 tests. These guidance documents suggest EUAs are needed for laboratory-developed tests (LDTs), a type of test created and used in-house by high-complexity clinical laboratories that already are regulated by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA). These CLIA-regulated laboratories traditionally have provided a rapid response to emerging epidemics. Many laboratories viewed the FDA’s 2020 guidance documents as having a practical binding effect even though the FDA lacked clear statutory authority to require EUAs for LDTs developed at CLIA-compliant high-complexity laboratories. The FDA’s guidance documents led to decreased availability of testing, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic, which contributed to the catastrophic course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
This Essay concludes that the FDA lacks authority to require EUAs for COVID-related LDTs and that the FDA’s intervention, in key respects, just replicates protections CLIA already provides. The Essay then discusses recently proposed legislation, known as the VALID Act of 2020, which would expand the FDA’s authority to regulate LDTs. While spurred by longstanding concerns about tests used in genomics and precision medicine, the VALID Act’s reach is much broader and would have harmful consequences for more traditional tests, including tests for emerging communicable diseases. Before Congress acts on specific legislative proposals, a much broader, more inclusive, nuanced, and evidence-informed dialogue about diagnostic-testing policy is needed.
[...]
While nothing will buy back time already lost, the COVID-19 outbreak casts a useful light on flaws in recent laboratory-testing policy. These flaws need correction, both to improve oversight during the current crisis and to avert future problems. COVID-19 is not the last pandemic. Hundreds of different coronaviruses circulate in pigs, cats, camels, and bats.3 Over the past two decades, a handful of those viruses jumped to humans.4 More will do so on a crowded planet where human and animal habitats increasingly overlap.5 Coronaviruses are just one subset of viruses, and viruses are just one type of pathogen. Future pandemics may be worse—possibly much worse—than this one.6 Lessons from the current pandemic might still help us in the next one. This Essay offers recommendations for Congress on reform of diagnostic-testing policy.
Thanks to Sang Young LEE and Kevin Kyumin LEE of Kim & Chang for some news from Korea - reproduced below. There is no published decision available yet, and we will post it once it appears.
"In contrast to some foreign jurisdictions where the patent scope during PTE covers all types of use, Article 95 of the Korean Patent Act stipulates that PTE patent scope should be restricted to the specific use of the approved originator product. It was generally considered that the use of medical inventions should refer to the target disease of the approved products but there has been no judicial precedent supporting how Article 95 should be interpreted on this issue.
This changed on July 1, 2020 when the Korean Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) rendered a historic decision regarding the type of "use" that is considered within the enforceable patent scope during the PTE of a pharmaceutical compound patent. Galvus€® (API: vildagliptin), a type 2 anti-diabetic drug of Novartis, has five different types of dosage regimens (or efficacy and effect under the Korean translation). Utilizing the fact that Novartis filed a PTE application based on only one approved efficacy and effect, three Korean generic companies filed scope confirmation actions claiming that their products did not fall within the patent scope because they had carved out the efficacy and effect first filed by Novartis as the basis for the PTE. They argued that the patent scope during the PTE should be limited to the first approved efficacy and effect only, and that the later approved four efficacies and effects were not covered.
An expanded five-member panel of the IPTAB held that the use (and therapeutic effect) that is within the patent scope of the compound PTE is not limited to the first efficacy and effect, and that the generic's products were within the scope of the patent during PTE ruling in favor of Novartis.
If you’re suffering from ADHD and despairing that you will never finish a task or be on time to an appointment: you can. It’s possible to do it at least pretty reliably. I believe if you commit to one and only one task tracking system, and consistently use it every single day, all the time, you can commit to tasks and get them done.
If you do it consistently enough, it will eventually become muscle memory, and not something you need to consciously remember to do every day.
It’s still never going to be easy to Do The Thing, even if your digital brain can perfectly remember what The Thing is right now.
At the very least, it was possible for me to learn to trust myself when I say that I will do something in the future, by designing a system around my own limited attention, and if I can do it, I think you can too.
Surges of new coronavirus cases continued Sunday in India and the Philippines, which recorded another daily high to surpass 100,000 total infections, as officials across the globe considered stricter measures to stymie the spread of the pandemic.
A curfew was imposed on Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne, following a spike in infections.
Countries including the United States, India and South Africa are struggling to rein in their first wave of infections while South Korea and others where the disease abated try to avert a second wave as curbs on travel and trade ease.
Governments worldwide have reported 684,075 deaths and 17.8 million cases, according to data gathered by Johns Hopkins University.
India's 54,735 new cases were down from the previous day's record 57,118 but raised the total to 1.75 million. The month of July accounted for more than 1.1 million of those cases.
The premier of Australia’s hard-hit Victoria state has declared a disaster among sweeping new coronavirus restrictions across Melbourne and elsewhere from Sunday night.
An evening curfew will be implemented across Melbourne from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Premier Daniel Andrews says the state of disaster proclamation gave police greater power.
He says 671 new coronavirus cases had been detected since Saturday, including seven deaths. It comes among a steadily increasing toll in both deaths and infections over the past six weeks in Victoria.
Apple shares closed up by 10.47 percent Friday, giving it a market valuation of $1.84 trillion. Saudi Aramco, which had been the most valuable publicly listed company since its market debut last year, now trails at $1.76 trillion, as of its last close.
In February, Microsoft revealed that it would be slowly phasing out Cortana functionality in mobile and other devices, implying that the third-party Harman Kardon Invoke would be among them. On Friday, Microsoft clarified that these changes will occur in early 2021, including the Invoke—but the company will offer gift cards of up to $50 to sweeten the deal.
GM’s move is a sign that the pressure on Facebook will continue in August and potentially longer. Ford and Honda Motor Co.’s U.S. subsidiary also said Friday they have no plans to resume spending on Facebook. On Thursday, Unilever NV-owned ice-cream brand Ben & Jerry’s extended through the end of the year its halt of paid social-media advertising.
Amazon’s plan is to use the [I]nternet satellites to improve connectivity in parts of the world that are underserved or unserved by terrestrial networks. Whereas traditional [I]nternet satellites fly at altitudes of more than 20,000 miles, Amazon is proposing to deploy its constellation just a few hundred miles above the Earth. The increased proximity could provide lower latency for users and potentially cut launch costs, since the satellites will need to be carried a shorter distance to their perch.
But it’s not clear how a Trump order to “ban” TikTok would work — or if it would stand up in court. The Trump administration might try to threaten to punish Apple and Google if they carry TikTok in their U.S. app stores, by adding TikTok to the Commerce Department’s list of foreign entities that “present a greater risk of diversion to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, terrorism, or other activities contrary to U.S. national security and/or foreign policy interests.”
Video-sharing app TikTok “instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor or disabled for the platform,” according to leaked documents obtained by The Intercept, an online publication known for investigations and analysis.
Some videos that were reportedly censored featured serious subjects such as military movements, natural disasters, “defamed civil servants” and material threatening to national security. But other kiboshed videos were ones showing more innocuous images related to “fat” people, run-down houses, “rural poverty, slums, beer bellies and crooked smiles.”
In 2017, Abel Cedeño was an 18-year-old high school senior when the bullying he’d experienced for so many years came to a head. Defending himself from a homophobic attack, Cedeño injured one student and killed another. In September 2019, a New York judge sentenced him to 14 years in prison.
Win Without War was among the anti-war voices on Friday issuing blistering condemnations of the passage in the U.S. House of a $740 billion defense bill as part of the 2021 Appropriations Minibus.
“Space is now a distinct warfighting domain,” says the U.S. Defense Space Strategy.
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) suspects A. of sending money to women "who traveled ot the Middle East to participate in violent jihad". He took the money from these women's family and acquaintances and sent it to them in the Middle East through others, including another man also arrested at the end of June, the OM believes. At this stage, A. is charged with violating the Sanctions Act, money laundering, and hawala banking - a form of unlicensed banking.
Which is to say that, on the subject of illiberalism, Applebaum is more familiar with the topic than most popular commentators. She is surely correct to note that authoritarianism is a protean “–ism,” expressing itself in both right-wing and left-wing forms. Of the world’s two leading authoritarian or despotic states, Russia inclines to the Right and China (ostensibly) to the Left. In the Western world, the right-wing form is presently more evident in opposition, holding power in only Poland, Hungary, and the United States. The left-wing variant, meanwhile, tends to dominate in South America (excepting Brazil), especially in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Climate experts, former firefighters, doctors and bushfire survivors are urging the Federal Government to introduce a levy on the fossil fuel industry for a climate disaster fund to help pay for the impact of “climate fuelled” bushfire costs.
“If an industry produces a product, which is later found to be hazardous, it's bound by law to help clean it up,” Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA) member and former Fire & Rescue NSW commissioner Greg Mullins told NCA NewsWire.
It comes as part of 165 recommendations by the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA), a group of more than 150 experts and affected community members, in a bid to improve bushfire readiness, response and recovery.
It follows the ELCA National Bushfire Summit, which took place in June and July — and it's hoped the findings will be included in the royal commission report, which is due to be handed to
"It is unconscionable that President Trump would propose to scale back essential protections for endangered and threatened species and their critical habitat."
"All our government wants is money in their pockets, while the people are poor and starving and scrounging."
The United States economy saw a monumental contraction in the second quarter of this year, dropping at a rate that is unprecedented since records of performance started being kept in the 1940s.
Cutting service and shuttering locations are both under consideration by the U.S. Postal Service as the agency faces a cash crunch ahead of an expected surge in mail-in voting due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a sitting U.S. senator and numerous postal worker union officials.
Capitalism, as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows, relentlessly worsens wealth and income inequalities. That inherent tendency is only occasionally stopped or reversed when masses of people rise up against it. That happened, for example, in western Europe and the U.S. during the 1930s Great Depression. It prompted social democracy in Europe and the New Deal in the United States. So far in capitalism’s history, however, stoppages or reversals around the world proved temporary. The last half-century witnessed a neoliberal reaction that rolled back both European social democracy and the New Deal. Capitalism has always managed to resume its tendential movement toward greater inequality.
If policymakers care about motivating people to work, they should focusing on raising the minimum wage and giving workers a voice in decisionmaking.
If we think inequality was bad before Covid-19, it's about to get a whole lot worse.
A€ testament to the resolve of Palestinian society.
Police surrounded a West Philadelphia warehouse on the afternoon of August 1, where more than 70 protesters were making puppets. Multiple Pennsylvania state police officers infiltrated the group of “puppetistas” days earlier and, that afternoon, the deputy police commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) claimed that protesters had bomb-making materials inside. Everyone was arrested, including the owners of the warehouse.
The Texas congressman's a dangerous fool, like the president he so admires.
Even before Donald Trump and his trophy bride rode down that gilded escalator in Trump Tower, launching his campaign for the White House by denouncing “Mexican rapists,” it was plain as day that he was, at best, a sick joke, unfit for the office he would go on to win in the Electoral College after losing the popular vote.
It’s possible someone finally persuaded President Donald
In his stirring eulogy at the funeral service for Congressmember John Lewis, President Barack Obama said expanded voting rights would be the greatest way to honor the civil rights icon’s legacy. In a speech that condemned the status of American democracy without ever naming the sitting president, Obama called for election day to be declared a national holiday, full Congressional representation for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and the end of the filibuster, which he called a “Jim Crow relic.” “You want to honor John? Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law he was willing to die for,” Obama said in reference to the Voting Rights Act. We feature an extended excerpt from Obama’s remarks at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
President Donald Trump on Thursday tried to draw a distinction between “mail-in voting” and “absentee voting,” but his own lawyers acknowledged in court documents the two are the same thing.
What political ambition it takes to defend expensive Obamacare (that still left 30 million people uninsured and more than double that number underinsured), instead of€ bucking up to support full Medicare for All.
TikTok has recently been scrutinized in the United States because of its China-based owner. Chinese law can compel any domestic company to hand over data it has collected on users.
On Friday Brazil's Supreme Court fined Facebook 1.92m reais ($368,000; €£280,000) for refusing to block worldwide access to the accounts - it had only agreed to block access to accounts that could accessed from Brazil - and a further 100,000 reais for each day it failed to comply.
It was not clear whether Twitter had also been fined.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes had ruled on Thursday that Facebook and Twitter failed to comply with orders to block the accounts because they were only blocked within Brazil, but remained accessible with foreign IP addresses.
On Friday, he ruled that Facebook must pay a 1.92 million reais (281,123.9 pounds) fine for not complying and face further daily fines of 100,000 reais per day if it does not block the accounts in question globally.
Before the fine was announced, Facebook said on Friday that it would appeal the decision. The world's largest social network said it respects the laws of countries where it operates, but that "Brazilian law recognizes the limits of its jurisdiction."
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Friday night that the company had failed to fully comply with a previous ruling ordering the accounts to be shut down, saying they were still online and publishing by changing their registration to locations outside Brazil.
A short and rather vaguely worded open letter published in Harper’s Magazine (7/7/20) earlier this month caused an unlikely media storm that continues to rumble on. Glossing over right-wing threats to the First Amendment, the letter, signed by 150 writers, journalists and other public figures, decried a new intolerance to dissent and a threat to freedom of speech coming from the left.
On Saturday, Somalia’s parliament removed prime minister Hassan Ali Khaire from his post in a vote of no confidence. 170 of 178 MPs backed the motion against Khaire citing a dispute over the scheduling of elections.
Real-time metrics showed national connectivity levels at just 30% of ordinary levels, with most impact recorded in capital city Mogadishu. Journalists noted that the cuts limited news coverage of political reactions to Saturday’s events.
This ideological obsession with pornography is bad for conservatives for several reasons. First, evidence linking pornography to negative outcomes is weak. Second, it’s an easy issue to lampoon because, notwithstanding conservatives’ expressed outrage about pornography, it is actually more popular in conservative enclaves. And third, producers of pornography involving consenting adults are protected by the First Amendment, so there’s little hope of satisfying constituents’ desire for its suppression. None of this means that those who dislike and disapprove of pornography should change their stance; in a free society, individuals or organizations must be free to express their views and make their case. But as a political issue, this is a loser.
In June, Lu was released after serving his full sentence. He spoke to CPJ via messaging app on Monday about Not News, his time in detention, and his plans for the future. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice is blocking the release of basic information about the judge who is to rule on Julian Assange’s extradition to the US in what appears to be an irregular application of the Freedom of Information Act, it can be revealed.
Declassified has also discovered that the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, has ordered extradition in 96% of the cases she has presided over for which information is publicly available./p>
A Michigan teenager who has been detained since mid-May after not doing her online schoolwork was set free on Friday, after the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered her immediate release from a juvenile facility in suburban Detroit.
Ask Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT), what public schools need in order to safely reopen this fall and her answer is immediate: more money for the daily deep-cleaning of schools; personal protective equipment (PPE) for teachers, staff and students; the hiring of thousands of additional school nurses and counselors to help students navigate social and emotional roadblocks; reliable computers and internet access for every kid; and a 10 percent increase in the number of instructors so that class size can be reduced.
The crucial question is what were the imperatives and motivations for the radical change in Nazi policy from ethnic cleansing of the Jews to genocide? Himmler and Heidrich were in the front. As we shall see, like others among the Nazi leadership, they both were deeply influenced by the Islamic propaganda and operations of Amin al-Husseini. He pushed and pressured against the ethnic cleansing and deportations of Jews but propagated and implored for their extermination. However, from their vantage point, the trigger and the example model was the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
Homeland Security’s size and sprawling mission are what creates the mechanisms by which these rights can be violated with impunity. And when there is a president like Donald Trump in the White House, who isn’t embarrassed about ignoring civil liberties and constitutional rights, it is DHS agents he will call upon to act on his behalf.
It’s time to acknowledge the mistakes of the past. An agency created by two centrist lawmakers (Ridge and Lieberman), wanted by no one else, passed by a Congress cowed into believing that voting against anything with the word homeland, patriot, or terror in it would result in attack ads, and a failure from the start was a mistake of history.
Whether to abolish the Department of Homeland Security is not a question of safety versus liberty. The department makes us less safe and violates our liberties.
It’s time to make it a thing of the past.
Work is already underway, with teams from AFRINIC and the Internet Society collaborating on establishing a framework of metrics that will help to determine Internet resilience throughout Africa. This framework will eventually inform the Internet Resilience focus area of the Measuring the Internet project’s Insights platform (currently under development), which will provide actionable data to governments and policymakers as well as provide historical data on the growth of, and improvements to, the continent’s Internet resilience.
Under ByteDance’s new proposal, Microsoft, which also owns professional social media network LinkedIn, will be in charge of protecting all of TikTok’s U.S. user data, the sources said. The plan allows for a U.S. company other than Microsoft to take over TikTok in the United States, the sources added.
“What’s the right answer? Have an American [sic] company like Microsoft take over TikTok. Win-win. Keeps competition alive and data out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
Microsoft was in advanced talks with ByteDance prior to the president’s comments, the WSJ said. Trump’s remarks led TikTok to agree to add 10,000 jobs in the US. Whether that will still hold after the president’s comment was unclear Saturday. A deal was possible as early as Monday, according to the WSJ.
A deal by Microsoft for TikTok’s U.S. operations would “resolve the security issues with this app” and also give the software giant an immediate inroad into social media, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote.
“For Microsoft, this would be a big bet on the consumer social-media space, which the company has stayed away from over the last decade,” Ives wrote in a research note Friday. An acquisition of TikTok, or a strategic investment, “would be Microsoft throwing its hat in the ring and trying to compete with other tech giants such as Facebook in a new avenue of growth for the next decade for its consumer business.”
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) defended President Trump’s plans to ban the social media platform TikTok from operating in the United States.
The newly proposed deal would see a complete exit of ByteDance from the platform and usher in Microsoft to take on the management of TikTok in the U.S., the sources told Reuters.
ByteDance is now waiting on the administration to approve Microsoft Corp.’s potential acquisition of TikTok, said one person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
A deal would give the software company a popular social-media service and relieve U.S. government pressure on the Chinese owner of the video-sharing app -- although Trump seemed to throw cold water on the plan in his remarks on Friday.
Microsoft’s move is “not the deal that you have been hearing about, that they are going to buy and sell, and this and that. And Microsoft and another one. We’re not an M&A company,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
ing together 5G patent owners and car makers after the US Department of Justice said it was unlikely to harm competition.
Avanci revealed its 5G automotive licensing programme on Wednesday, July 29, a day after the DoJ’s Antitrust Division issued a business review letter giving it the green light.
Makan Delrahim, assistant attorney general, said the 5G platform can enable potentially thousands of standard essential patents to be licensed on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms.
The review letter, penned by Delrahim, said the platform may bring efficiency gains by providing car companies with a “one-stop shop” for licensing 5G technology. It may also reduce patent infringement and ensure that 5G patent owners are compensated, the letter added.
Avanci has included several safeguards to help protect competition, including licensing only technically-essential patents and allowing essential patents to be independently evaluated, the DoJ noted.
Kasim Alfalahi, founder and CEO of Avanci, said: “5G will power the internet of things (IoT) to expand to many new categories of connected products. As we begin operating our first 5G licensing programme for connected vehicles, we will continue to transform how patent licensing is done.”
Avanci, which was founded in 2016 and also offers licences to 2G, 3G and 4G patents, confirmed it has 38 patent owners and 14 automotive brands as licensees. It said it will now enter discussions with IoT device makers, the auto industry and patent owners about the new platform.
As COVID-19 continues to lay bare the deficiencies in the global food system, imagining new food futures is more urgent than ever. Recently, some have suggested that seeds that are genetically modified to include pest, drought, and herbicide resistance (GMOs) provide an avenue for African countries to become more self-sufficient in food production and less reliant on global food chains. Although we share the desire to build more just food systems, if history is any indicator, genetically-modified (GM) crops may actually render African farmers and scientists more, not less, reliant on global actors and markets.
In a paper we recently published in African Affairs, we trace a nearly 30-year history of collaborations among the agribusiness industry, US government agencies, philanthropic organizations, and African research councils to develop GMOs for African farmers. We found that these alliances, though impressive in scope, have so far resulted in few GMOs reaching African farmers and markets. Why, we ask, have efforts to bring GMOs to Africa yielded so little?
One reason, of course, is organized activism. Widespread distrust of the technology and its developers has animated local and transnational social movements that have raised important questions about the ownership, control, and safety of GM crops. But another issue has to do with the complex character of the public-private partnerships (PPPs) that donors have created to develop GM crops for the continent. Since 1991, beginning with an early partnership between the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute, and Monsanto to develop a virus resistant sweet potato (which never materialized), PPPs have become a hallmark of GMO efforts in Africa. This is mainly so for two reasons. The first is that GM technology is largely owned and patented by a handful of multinational corporations, and, thus, is inaccessible to African scientists and small to mid-sized African seed companies without a partnership agreement. The second is that both donors and agricultural biotechnology companies believe that partnering with African scientists will help quell public distrust of their involvement and instead create a public image of goodwill and collaboration. However, we found that this multiplicity of partners has created significant roadblocks to integrating GMOs into farming on the continent.
Celaire_search.jpg Neither Brexit nor Covid-19 seems to have hindered the motivation of the European Commission (EC) to see the project of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the Unitary Patent realized.
Viscoelastic, lightweight composite armor that is resistant to backface deformation, and to a method for evaluating the effectiveness of composite armor in resisting backface deformation. The index of retraction of a composite is determined by evaluating the degree of composite retraction at the site of impact of projectile after movement of the projectile is stopped. The degree of retraction indicates the ability of the composite to resist backface deformation.
With a share of 35% in patent application in the field of additive manufacturing (AM) at the European Patent Office (EPO), U.S. companies are the clear leaders in innovating AM, also known as 3D printing, a new study by the EPO published today shows.
The study reveals that the EPO has been experiencing a boom in patents in 3D printing. Patent applications for additive manufacturing increased at an average rate of 36% from 2015 to 2018. This is more than ten times greater than the average annual growth of all applications at the EPO combined in the same period (3.5%).
Patent prosecution entails arguing for the patentability of your invented machines, devices, methods or systems. This starts with applying for and successfully receiving a patent from the appropriate government agencies. It also involves asserting the novelty of your Intellectual Property through the submission of supplementary materials, including design blueprints and detailed instructions.
However, the term defining this process is one that can, at times, be misunderstood or confused by those new to the world of IP law. To mitigate the chances of something like this ever happening, it will be critical to dive deep into the ins and outs of patent prosecution. The more informed you are before you get started, the more likely your bid for patent rights will be successful, no matter where you are.
In the on-going context of Covid-19, the SpicyIP blog analyses the relevance of Art. 73(b) TRIPS, granting states the right to take actions that breach their obligations under TRIPS, but are necessary for the protection of the state’s essential security interests. While TRIPS also allows for compulsory licenses, the blog’s conclusion is that Art. 73(b) may be more suitable in cases where a bundle of a third party’s patents will have to be used to fight the pandemic.
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The SPC blog discusses a decision from the Korean Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB), where the Korean system of Patent Term Extension (PTE, local equivalent of the European SPC) was addressed. Up until recently, Art. 95 of the Korean Patent Act was interpreted as limiting the PTE for medical inventions only to the original target disease of the approved products. Now, the IPTAB has ruled that PTEs shall not be limited to the first efficacy and effect, as interpreting Art. 95 otherwise will violate the purpose of the PTE system.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a global priority, the recent WHA resolution (PDF) has called upon countries for the removal of unjustified obstacles related with the provisions of international treaties including TRIPS and Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health. However, IP barriers in the context of COVID 19 go beyond medicines and are not confined to patents alone. Therefore, the use of flexibilities needs a new approach in the COVID 19 context.
In this context, the Executive Director of the South Centre called upon the Directors General of the World Health Organization (WHO) and WTO as well as the United Nations Secretary-General “to support developing and other countries, as they may need to make use of article 73(b) of the TRIPS Agreement to suspend the enforcement of any intellectual property right (including patents, designs and trade secrets) that can potentially obstruct the procurement or local manufacturing of the products and devices necessary to protect their populations”. This write up discusses the use of this option in the context of the Indian Patents Act.
Many predictions have been made about 3D printing over the years. They have ranged from hype that every household would have its own 3D printer to being tracked on the Gartner Hype Cycle (with its emotive labels of plummeting to the ‘trough of disillusionment’ and reaching the ‘plateau of productivity’). Could patent applications shed another light?
According to recent European Patent Office (EPO) statistics in its report “Patents and Trends in 3D printing technologies”, there has been a significant growth in European patent applications for additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing. The increase in patent applications for 3D printing was recorded at an average annual rate of 36% between 2015 and 2018. In comparison, the average yearly growth of patent applications to the EPO in the same period across all technologies increased at a rate of 3.5%, indicating that 3D printing applications are increasing more than ten times faster than the average.
It is rare for the Enlarged Board to consider questions about patentability of software related inventions and potentially make a change. Any change in patent law in this area has significant commercial implications for those developing and exploiting software products and services. Many parties had filed amicus briefs in advance of the oral proceedings. Depending on how the Enlarged Board answers the questions which have been referred to it there are potential implications for software related patents more generally (even though the referred questions are about simulations). There is also a possibility of an existing case, referred to as T1227/05, becoming law which is no longer followed.
When will the outcome be known?
The Enlarged Board have not said when they will issue their written decision. In similar cases such as case G1/15 there was an oral proceedings on 7 June 2016 and a written decision on 29 November 2016. On that basis we can expect a written decision in the present case, G1/19, around December 2020.
What happened during the oral proceedings?
During the oral proceedings the representative of the patent applicant and the representatives of the President of the EPO made arguments in favour of maintaining the current position. The current position includes established case law which says that software simulations of things like noise in electrical circuits is inherently patentable. The current position includes established case law setting out how to examine inventions which have a mixture of technical features and non-technical features (such as mathematics).
Direct link with physical reality
The referred questions were made by a Board of Appeal and in the referral there are statements about a direct link with physical reality being a requirement for patentability. These statements are possibly one of the reasons for the high level of interest in the present case. At present a requirement for a direct link with physical reality is not made by the EPO in all cases. Introducing such a requirement would be a change that might exclude many software implemented technologies from patent protection.
The recent G 1/19 hearing at the Enlarged Board of Appeal has reignited the patent community's interest in the law on AI patents. Although concerning computer simulations, the scope of G 1/19 is such that its conclusion could fundamentally alter the patenting of AI-related or AI-driven inventions. For many patent attorneys, the development of guidelines on AI patents would be welcome. But the approach of patents courts and offices requires a careful balance of interest.
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The hearing sparked interest among a global patent community for whom patenting in the computer inventions and AI is gathering importance. Artificial intelligence belongs to the framework of computer-simulated inventions; both are based on abstract mathematical theory. As a result, so far there are no specific rules on patenting AI. Current case law in computer simulations is also applicable to AI patenting cases.
For some patent attorneys, existing law is sufficient. AI sits at the intersection between technical and non-technical patenting. They take the view that as technology continues to develop, so too will the legal and political response to AI patents. Furthermore, the technicality of an AI invention remains a fundamental part of its patentability.
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G 1/19 concerned a referral made by the EPO’s Technical Board of Appeal. The referral asked the Enlarged Board to clarify the case law on computer simulations under the European Patent Convention (EPC). This is due to a discrepancy over a similar case regarding Infineon Technologies (T 1227.05).
The original application, EP 15 46 948, is entitled “Simulation of the movement of an autonomous entity through an environment”. The Enlarged Board focused largely on whether computer-simulated inventions need a ‘direct link with physical reality’ or if having ‘technical effect [and] purpose’ is sufficient. This meant the Enlarged Board considered what is patentable in the realm of computer simulation technology, and to what extent the technical aspects of an invention can be considered.
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G 1/19 is not the only well-known patent case with the potential to impact future AI patenting case law. In January 2020, the EPO rejected two AI patent applications which designate the inventor as a non-human entity known as Dabus. The EPO rejected the applications on the grounds that AI, rather than a human, is listed as the inventor. In fact, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) have also both rejected patent applications for Dabus.
But last week, the UK High Court heard a referral from the UKIPO due to the potential importance of Dabus on future patent law. It is likely the UK parliament will have the final say on whether the IPO can award the application. At government level, such developments are crucial in setting a precedent for future inventions. Indeed, the IPO referred the case because deciding on the patentability of Dabus could fundamentally impact the future law on AI patents.
Thus, the future of AI patents is seeing movement. Hervey says, “Internationally, similar approaches are taken to core exclusions to patentability, for example in computer programs and mathematical methods. So the position of inventions covering AI is tolerably stable.”
At a global level, over July, patent offices such as the EPO and WIPO took part in consultations regarding potential future legal developments. The offices have discussed what future IP law should look like. This is not only for patent, but also for copyright and data protection. All aspects of IP are impacted by AI developments.
Simulation type claims have been allowed by the EPO before, the key case being T1227/05, which relates to a simulation of an electronic circuit subject to noise. The Board of Appeal in that case ordered the claims to be allowed, the claimed subject matter determined to be “technical”. G1/19 arose because there was felt to be some sort of distinction with simulating pedestrian movement. Simulations by their nature involve mathematical methods but, also due to their nature, do not physically exist outside of the computer on which they are run. A key use of simulations is in the development of engineering products without the need for costly production of physical prototypes. Basic simulation tools even now turn up in free versions of CAD software, and you can perform these simulations on a laptop computer with meagre amounts of memory and processing power. Improvements in simulations can radically speed-up the design process by providing more reliable data about the ultimate performance of a design. Some of these improvements will inevitably be based on the mathematical methods being used.
What did we hope for with this case? Well, the questions posed included a few points regarding whether simulations claimed as such could be considered technical. High up the list of things we wanted to see was a response to the first part of question 2: “what are the relevant criteria for assessing whether a computer-implemented simulation claimed as such solves a technical problem?”. Sadly, the Enlarged Board have made it quite clear that they do not feel they have to provide these. So, for now, we will not be getting any kind of test which lets us know when a simulation is technical. For now we have been introduced to some new terms which will undoubtedly make their way into the European patent attorney’s vernacular. “Potential technical effects” and “Virtual technical effects” look set to provide some determination over whether subject matter will be deemed technical.
We’re in limbo until we see the written decision, but we thought we’d end by taking a punt at what we think the answers to the questions might be. Don’t hold us to it, but at least it might help understand what the case was directed at!
1. In the assessment of inventive step, can the computer-implemented simulation of a technical system or process solve a technical problem by producing a technical effect which goes beyond the simulation's implementation on a computer, if the computer-implemented simulation is claimed as such?
IP risk mitigation – IP management now has its own ecosystem including organisations specifically focussed on NPE risk (RPX and LOT Network), destroying bad patents (Unified Patents), patent acquisition (AST) and patent risk associated with open source (OIN). The panel will also include a discussion of data as a new “IP right” and how organisations are tackling the significant legal and commercial issues associated with both the volume and value of data.
This case involves two copyright-protected photos that users submitted to the RageOn print-on-demand service. Among other defenses, RageOn invoked the DMCA safe harbor. The Greg Young v. Zazzle case held that Zazzle qualified for the 512(c) safe harbor for displaying user-supplied photo on its site, but not for manufacturing and shipping the physical items contain the photos. This court says that RageOn disqualified for several of the DMCA safe harbor’s elements.
The court says RageOn got financial benefits from selling the items. It also had the requisite “right and ability to control” the infringements because “RageOn is an online retailer. Commonsense dictates that RageOn had the ‘right and ability’ to control what it sold.” The legal distinction between an online marketplace and a retailer is the source of substantial litigation. Calling it “commonsense” unhelpfully sidesteps the nuance.
The court also says that RageOn didn’t expeditiously remove infringing “merchandise.” It’s ambiguous if the court is referring solely to the online photos or to the actual printed merchandise (which, remember, the Zazzle court said wasn’t covered by the DMCA at all). RageOn promised 24 hour response times but admitted it took 18-23 days to remove the items. The court says the 18+ day turnaround time isn’t expeditious.
The case is moving onto damages and attorneys’ fees. Despite the bad news for the defense, there’s a tiny chance the case could lay the foundation for future defense win if other courts interpret it as saying the DMCA safe harbors apply to the physical merchandise in addition to the online photos.
Blocking injunctions against internet service providers (ISPs) remain one of the most interesting and litigated issues of contemporary copyright law. Though the concept of blocking injunctions per se is firmly established on the basis of CJEU case law (Cââ¬â324/09 L’Oréal, C-70/10 Scarlet Extended, C-360/10 Sabam and the seminal C-314/12 UPC Telekabel), blocking injunction jurisprudence in the EU continues to develop apace. Perhaps the most interesting recent development concerns so-called dynamic blocking injunctions.
As noted by the EU Commission in its 2017 Guidance on certain aspects of Directive 2004/48/EC, dynamic blocking injunctions are:
“injunctions which can be issued for instance in cases in which materially the same website becomes available immediately after issuing the injunction with a different IP address or URL and which is drafted in a way that allows to also cover the new IP address or URL without the need for a new judicial procedure to obtain a new injunction.”
In the context of the modern internet, regular (i.e. static and fixed) blocking injunctions targeting a specific domain or website with infringing content can easily be circumvented by posting the infringing content on another domain or website.
When The Pirate Bay added support for Bitcoin donations in 2013, copyright holders were worried. Cryptocurrencies provided a new revenue stream that was impossible to stop. Today, Bitcoin donations continue to roll in, but for the TPB team it's little more than lunch money, currently averaging less than $5 per day.
Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, a body of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, has hired Hello Kitty to become its Copyright Ambassador. According to the people behind her appointment, Hello Kitty volunteered for the position because she really respects copyright.
