As longtime tech reporter Robert Cringely, who knows the company through and through, told me in 2004: "Microsoft is about money, not innovation. They aren't opposed to innovation and like to be seen as innovators, but what really matters to them as a company is the money. Think of it that way and a lot of what they do starts to make sense.
"When I give speeches (and why haven't I been asked to speak lately in Oz?) I like to pull out a US$S20 note and point out that there is something about that note that bothers [Microsoft co-founder] Bill Gates - that it is in my pocket. Microsoft really does want all the money and I'm not sure they won't get it."
Following in Raymond's footsteps, ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who has been writing about Linux and open source for a long time, claimed that Raymond was "on to something".
It is an indication that there is little cold, hard reasoning employed when people who have been in the business of open-source advocacy start making predictions.
Would the development of Windows, the way Raymond has outlined — migrating the Windows interface to run on the Linux kernel — remove the major headache that Windows causes Microsoft: malware? The short answer is no.
An introduction to the **mariadb** database and the **mysql** command.
LBRY has changed massively since I last did a video on the service so I thought it was time to do a bit more shilling especially since Odysee was released recently which is the all new interface for LBRY which provides a bit nicer and more user friendly experience, do we finally have a really competitor to YouTube, I think we're getting really close.
As Python 3 has eclipsed the old constrains of Python 2 and web frameworks that adopted them, we have seen a big jump in new frameworks appearing on the scene taking full advantage of things like type hints, async and await, and more.
No framework has done this more successfully than FastAPI recently. That's why we are here with the creator of FastAPI, Sebastián Ramírez to dive into this exciting new Python web framework.
Quite a bit from Google this week, with new products and notable changes coming for developers and users.
In this lengthy rant video, I address a few questions and comments that I've been receiving from viewers. I discuss what phone I use, whether Emacs violates the Unix Philosophy, why I type "clear" in my terminal, what I use to shave my "bald" head, why I am not "bald", and how I deal with professional burnout.
It's been eight years already since the launch of the OUYA game console built atop Android and initially driven up by hype as a new low-cost gaming platform only to turn out to be a commercial failure. Razer bought out OUYA's software assets in 2015 and last year finally shutdown all of the console services. But if you still have the OUYA hardware it soon may start running off the mainline Linux kernel.
Intel's Meteor Lake architecture will be the successor to Tiger Lake (11th Gen) and Alder Lake (12th Gen) CPUs set to come next year, roadmaps say it will be Intel's first architecture on a 7nm process using future Ocean Cove CPU cores with Gracemount CPU cores. If you're confused about that, Intel's developing a hybrid strategy starting with its 12th Gen CPUs that involves using two different sets of CPU cores for better efficiency, smaller more efficient cores for low-powered workloads, and standard high-performance cores for more power-hungry applications.
So far we have no indicators of what Meteor Lake performance will be like, but given Intel's 10nm SuperFIN will be succeeded by its new 7nm process, I think it would be appropriate to believe Meteor Lake will be noticeably quicker vs Intel's future 11th and 12th Gen CPUs.
So things have been pretty calm, and rc8 is fairly small. I'm still waiting for a networking pull with some fixes, so it's not like I could have made a final 5.9 release even if I had wanted to, but there was nothing scary going on this past week, and it all feels ready for a final 5.9 next weekend.
In fact, a lot of the emails I'm seeing are about the next merge window, and I already have one pull request ready to go, which is all good. That's how it's all supposed to work.
Anyway, the changes in rc8 are mostly driver fixlets, with some AMD GPU header file updates being a fairly noticeable part of the patch. That's not some scary big change - it' just the usual register definition update (and much smaller than the wholesale big ones we've had).
Outside of the driver stuff, we do have a few filesystem fixes (btrfs and nfs), and a couple of core fixes (tiny fallout from the VM changes, but also a pipe splice race fixlet for stable and a couple of epoll fixes). And slime other small noise (small arch and DT fixes). Quite a small diffstat overall - which it obviously should be this late in the release.
One final push for testing this week,
Linus
While normally the Linux kernel sees its stable releases after about seven weeks worth of release candidates, today Linux 5.9-rc8 was issued in allowing an extra week of testing.
Following that page lock unfairness performance regression and other issues this cycle as well as more changes than usual late in the cycle, as expected Linus Torvalds today issued Linux 5.9-rc8 rather than going straight to Linux 5.9 stable. In turn this means the Linux 5.9 official release will happen next weekend on 11 October.
With the new OpenBenchmarking.org that's been out in public form since last month and being developed as part of the soon-to-be-released Phoronix Test Suite 10.0, here is the latest feature now enabled in making it much easier for quickly carrying out high-level processor (CPU) and graphics card (GPU) component comparisons along with other improvements.
FreeFileSync 11.2, folder comparison and synchronization software to create and manage backup copies of all your important files, was released a few days ago.
There are several open-source Markdown editors available for Linux but KeenWrite is a bit interesting with the string interpolation and R markdown support.
Not just limited to that, it also supports real-time preview and a bunch of other features particularly helpful for academics in mathematics, statistics and other related fields.
HP Linux Imaging and Printing 3.20.9 release is here three and a half months after HLPIP 3.20.6 to add support for several recently released GNU/Linux distributions, including Linux Mint 20 “Ulyana”, Debian GNU/Linux 10.4 “Buster”, as well as openSUSE Leap 15.2.
The new HP Linux Imaging and Printing release also addresses a vulnerability that may have affected the scanning functionality, and reverts recent plugin changes made in the models.dat file to improve compatibility for older HP printer and scanner models.
The importance of security should never be underestimated. The consequences of losing data can be disastrous for any organization. For example, the loss of a single unencrypted laptop may have huge repercussions. This could include breaching data protection legislation with the risk of a significant fine, a loss in the confidence of an organization, as well as the risk that sensitive data may fall into the hands of a competitor or third party with malicious intent.
Of course, whenever information is accessible, there is the risk of its loss. A misdirected fax or a misdelivered letter can lead to sensitive information being disclosed in error. But the severity and ramifications of that risk is exacerbated when the data is stored on a computer. Modern computer hard disks have the capacity to store a gargantuan amount of data. A single hard disk may hold personal details of hundreds of thousands or even millions of individuals. In the event that the data is not encrypted, the loss of the hard disk may represent an organization’s worst nightmare. The actual cost of replacing the hard disk of the machine pales into insignificance compared to the loss of the confidential information and customer security.
Interrupts are an essential part of how modern CPUs work. For example, every time you press a key on the keyboard, the CPU is interrupted so that the PC can read user input from the keyboard. This happens so quickly that you don't notice any change or impairment in user experience.
Moreover, the keyboard is not the only component that can cause interrupts. In general, there are three types of events that can cause the CPU to interrupt: Hardware interrupts, software interrupts, and exceptions. Before getting into the different types of interrupts, I'll define some terms.
After my recent failure of gaining traction to get people to join a potential Okular Virtual Sprint i wondered, is the okular-devel mailing list representative of the current okular contributors?
Looking at the sheer number of subscribers one would think that probably. There's currently 128 people subscribed to the okular-devel mailing list, and we definitely don't have that many contributors, so it would seem the mailing list is a good place to reach all the contributors, but let's look at the actual numbers.
Okular git repo has had 46 people contributing code[*] in the last year.
Think about IPFS as a giant conveyor belt: the upstream developer puts two files there to begin with, the tarball and a GPG signature.
Another volunteer does a license analysis on the tarball and publishes their findings. Maybe they use the DEP-5 file format from Debian. Their findings are published as a separate object in IPFS with a distinct CID.
The critical insight here is that in Ford Motor Company's assembly line, each worker would focus on a single area, for example, the wheels. In this IPFS-based assembly line approach, a contributor doesn't focus on a single package, they are empowered to do a single task for any package.
Another example that is relevant across platforms is the development of patches for a package. In some cases a single patch is useful across many distributions. These patch files can also be published as objects in IPFS to facilitate sharing.
Mabox Linux creator Daniel Napora has announced a new version Mabox Linux 20.10 “Eithné,” which comes with a long-term Linux kernel 5.4, language translation, and many other improvements.
For those who don’t know, Mabox is a Manjaro Linux-based operating system inspired by CrunchBang Linux. It features the light and fast Openbox window manager.
Hello and welcome to the 98th edition of our Linux Roundup! We truly hope that you are doing very well?
We had a very exciting week in the world of Linux Releases with Fedora 33 Beta, Ubuntu 20.10 Beta, and Sparky Linux 4.13. Enjoy!
deepin is a distribution which does a lot of things differently from other, more mainstream projects, but in my opinion it is doing a lot of things well. deepin runs on the popular Debian base, which is a common choice, but the interface, tools, and options layered on top of the Debian core are unusual.
The custom deepin installer, for example, is very streamlined and easy to use, especially if we want to take over the entire disk for the operating system. The Deepin desktop is, in a word, beautiful. A lot of care appears to have gone into making Deepin look attractive and consistent. I like that custom deepin applications can alternate seamlessly between using the system theme, a light theme, or a dark theme, independent of other applications. Despite putting effort into looking nice and offering some eye candy, Deepin runs faster and smoother now than it has in the past.
The distribution ships with some common, popular tools, though it augments these with its own programs. Most of the deepin applications, such as Draw, the audio player, and video player appear to be designed with simplicity in mind. The interfaces are streamlined, generally with large icons that are easy to find. Most of the time this approach of doing a few things well as opposed to offering many options in one program appeals to me.
There were some issues with package management during my trail. These all appear to be rooted in the missing "Release" file on one of the repository servers. It will probably be corrected soon. Apart from this issue, which mostly just blocked updates, I really liked App Store. Its interface and performance were otherwise solid.
deepin strikes me as being a good, general purpose desktop operating system. It is easy to install, looks nice, has a friendly settings panel, and the App Store is easy to navigate. I also appreciate that the Deepin desktop allows us to switch between a more attractive visual layout and a more efficient layout for better performance. The ease of switching between themes and managing notifications also feels pleasantly flexible.
All in all, despite a few minor issues, deepin provided a pleasant experience for me. The custom applications and Deepin desktop mean some things work a bit differently than on other popular distributions/desktop combinations. However, I found I liked deepin's approach to most things. The desktop was attractive, faster than it was in the past, and worked well with my hardware.
The IBM POWER processor architecture is now over 30 years old. Although it arrived in February 1990 with a closed source operating system and closed source applications on top, it gradually embraced open source. I became a POWER user soon after it launched and an open source user and contributor just two years later.
This article provides a subjective history of POWER and open source from the viewpoint of an open source developer, outlines a few trends and conclusions, and previews what the future will bring. It is based on my talk at the annual OpenPOWER North America Summit, in which I aimed to show the importance of desktop/workstation-class hardware available to developers. In this article, I will cover a few additional topics, including cloud resources available to POWER developers, as well as a glimpse into the products and technologies under development.
[...]
I became aware of open source in 1994 when I started university back in Hungary. I first became a FreeBSD user and, within a few months, I was running the faculty's first Linux server and the university's first web server. In 1996, I became a SUSE Linux tester and contributor. Around this time, I helped one of my university friends boot Linux on the PowerPC (PPC) accelerator card in his Amiga. We cross-compiled the PPC kernel on my x86 Linux server.
The wait is finally over (almost) for all you Ubuntu fans out there. The latest version of Ubuntu, 20.10 codenamed “Groovy Gorilla,” is currently available in the beta version. I have tested out the distro myself, and it is stable enough to take out for a spin.
However, as the case with any beta releases, I won’t recommend it to regular users who plan to use it on their main PC for serious work. For that, you need to be patient and hold your breath for a little longer. The final release is scheduled for 22nd Oct 2020.
In this video, we are looking at Lubuntu 20.10 Beta.
Today we are looking at Lubuntu 20.10 Beta. It comes fully packed with LXQt 0.15, Linux Kernel 5.8, and uses about 400-500MB of ram when idling. It is fast, stable, and should be another great Lubuntu release! Enjoy!
In this video, we are looking at Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 Beta.
Today we are looking at Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 Beta. It comes fully packed with Gnome 3.38, Linux Kernel 5.8, and uses about 1.3GB ram when idling. It is fast, stable, and should be another great release! Enjoy!
One of the downsides of Android compared to desktop operating systems is its apparent lack of options to deep-dive into the OS and manually manage your files.
Still a lot of communications to establish again in this new role and understand who does what in the organization. It's interesting to see that in every organizations and companies I have worked, the hierarchy organization chart is not necessary helpful to understand how the products chart is organized. The communication workflow is happening in between people at many different levels. These connections are fluid and like a garden, they need a perpetual cleaning and nurturing. Slowly rebuilding some of the communications channels for webcompat.
This week, as a global champion for net neutrality, Mozilla wrote to South Korea’s ICT Minister, Mr. Ki-Young Choe, to urge him to reconsider the Telecommunications Business Act (TBA) amendments. We believe they violate the principles of net neutrality and would make the South Korean internet a less open space.
In our view, forcing websites (content providers) to pay network usage fees will damage the Korean economy, harm local content providers, increase consumer costs, reduce quality of service, and make it harder for global services to reach South Koreans. While we recognise the need for stable network infrastructure, these amendments are the wrong way to achieve that goal and will lead to South Korea to be a less competitive economy on the global stage.
TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 28 beta 1 is now available (downloads, hashes, release notes). The two most noticeable changes in this release are the triumphant return of the user-exposed "Enable JavaScript" toggle (now moved to the Tools menu), as submitted by Raphaël, and further improvements to Reader View that make it current with Firefox 82. Because the new toggle menu item requires a new locale string that can't be built from existing ones, a langpack update will also be shipped parallel with this version.
TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 28 beta 1 is now available (downloads, hashes, release notes). The two most noticeable changes in this release are the triumphant return of the user-exposed "Enable JavaScript" toggle (now moved to the Tools menu), as submitted by Raphaël, and further improvements to Reader View that make it current with Firefox 82. Because the new toggle menu item requires a new locale string that can't be built from existing ones, a langpack update will also be shipped parallel with this version.
The open source PostgreSQL database project is continuing to improve performance in its latest release as well provide users with enhanced monitoring capabilities.
The PostgreSQL 13 release became generally available on Sept. 24 and is the first major update of the popular open source database since the PostgreSQL 12 release that debuted in Oct. 2019. With PostgreSQL 13, a series of administrative optimizations help database administrators to improve operations.
The new release also includes features that provide performance gains over previous releases.
PostgreSQL itself is growing in popularity and many third-party database management vendors, including public cloud providers, offer PostgreSQL-compatible interfaces.
Hybrid and public cloud adoption by larger enterprises should drive even more for PostgreSQL adoption, said Carl Olofson, research vice president at IDC.
"PostgreSQL 13 improvements seem to be mainly about efficiency, which can be huge because resource waste is a key source of poor database performance," he said. "The wide range of improvements points to the benefit of developing technology in an open source manner."
Today, on October 4th, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) celebrates its thirty-fifth year of fighting for software freedom. Our work will not be finished until every computer user is able to do all of their digital tasks in complete freedom -- whether that's on a desktop, laptop, or the computer in your pocket. The fight for free software continues, and we wouldn't be here without you.
To celebrate, we have a full week of announcements and surprises planned starting today, and we will end in an online anniversary event featuring both live and prerecorded segments this Friday, October 9th, from 12:00 EDT (16:00 UTC) until 17:00 EDT (21:00 UTC). We'd love for you to join in celebration of this amazing community by submitting a short (two-minute) video sharing your favorite memory about free software or the FSF, and a wish for the future of software freedom. We'll be collecting the videos all week and airing a selection during the birthday event on October 9th. Please follow the instructions linked below on how to successfully (and freely!) submit the video via FTP.
Our work will not be finished until every computer user is able to do all of their digital tasks in complete freedom -- whether that's on a desktop, laptop, or the computer in your pocket. The fight for free software continues, and we wouldn't be here without you.
To celebrate, we have a full week of announcements and surprises planned.
[...]
The event will be livestreamed through the fsf.org Web site, and the link will be posted here as soon as the livepage is available.
Join the conversation, and ask questions to the speakers through IRC on Freenode at #fsf.
“At this time, on October 4th, the Free Software program Basis (FSF) celebrates its thirty-fifth 12 months of combating for software program freedom,” proclaims a weblog submit at FSF.org: Our work is not going to be completed till each laptop person is ready to do all of their digital duties in full freedom — whether or not that is on a desktop, laptop computer, or the pc in your pocket. The combat without spending a dime software program continues, and we would not be right here with out you.
To rejoice, now we have a full week of bulletins and surprises deliberate beginning at the moment, and we’ll finish in a web based anniversary occasion that includes each dwell and prerecorded segments this Friday, October ninth, from 12:00 EDT (16:00 UTC) till 17:00 EDT (21:00 UTC). We might love so that you can take part celebration of this superb group by submitting a brief (two-minute) video sharing your favourite reminiscence about free software program or the FSF, and a want for the way forward for software program freedom. We’ll be gathering the movies all week and airing a variety through the birthday occasion on October ninth…
If you’ll be able to, please make a donation of $35 or extra to assist preserve the combat for person freedom going one other 35 years, we’ll ship you a commemorative pin… We’re one other 12 months older, however that does not imply we’re slowing down our efforts to convey software program freedom to customers across the globe. Keep tuned for extra info on how we plan to ring within the FSF’s subsequent 12 months, and the very important position every one in every of us performs in making certain free software program’s success for the long run. We hope that you can participate in our festivities this week!
The announcement suggests 10 other ways to rejoice, which embrace:
Strive a completely free distribution of GNU/Linux, which will be run “dwell” with out making any everlasting modifications to your laptop’s arduous drive. Take an hour to comply with our Electronic mail Self-Protection Information, and learn to decide out of bulk surveillance . Obtain and experiment with one of many oldest elements of the GNU working system, the GNU Emacs textual content editor. Strive the tutorial by launching the editor and typing Ctrl-h + t (C-h t), or see if you can also make it via a number of the video games included with Emacs, reminiscent of Alt-x (M-x) dunnet or M-x tetris. Make the dedication to switch one nonfree program that you simply use with one which respects your freedom, reminiscent of utilizing LibreOffice as a substitute of Microsoft Workplace. Petition the directors of your favourite Website to free the proprietary JavaScript lurking on their web page that many customers run and obtain with out ever realizing it.
The Free Software Foundation on Sunday marked thirty five years since its founding by Richard Stallman.
It was on 4 October 1985 that Stallman founded the FSF as a non-profit to further the free software movement.
The GNU Image Manipulation community is rapidly moving forward to a big 3.0 release, using GTK+3, with a lot of development going on behind the scenes. It may not appear that way since the 2.10.x branch releases have been slow incremental releases with a few big and small features added for years now. Big things have been happening and the GIMP community is highlighting that by offering nightly snapshot builds of the upcoming GIMP 3.0 release. There's currently only nightly packages Windows users. Nightly Flatpak releases for GNU/Linux users are planned.
Thus I think I come in squarely on the side of open-source companies dual-licensing GPL on their product[s]. A model that already exists and often enough has great success (see MariaDB and Aerospike).
It's a nice compromise for moving towards a more open world, without having to live in Stallman's utopia. It's an amazingly pragmatic solution and anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a fan of those.
Programming languages are the building blocks of all software applications. They form the basic set of instructions that allow computers to quickly and efficiently process large and complex information groups. These languages enable humans to communicate with computers. Learning programming may not be easy for everyone, but with proper help, it can be straightforward.
Congratulations Team PWC for crossing the magic number second week in a row, once again.
This week we welcome Frank Valcarcel (@fmdfrank) as our PyDev of the Week! He is the cofounder of Cuttlesoft.
[...]
I’m a Florida native but I live in Denver, CO now after relocating my company’s HQ here about 4 years ago. We came from Tallahassee, FL where I went to school at Florida State University and started our company out of community accelerator called Domi Station.
I’m a bit of a workaholic, so I don’t get to enjoy hobbies too often, but when I have time I enjoy reading, biking, fishing, hiking, and photography.
I also have a penchant for travel but the pandemic has made returning to that an uncertainty.
[...]
I like Flask a lot and even wrote some packages for it, but I’ve gravitated back to Django now that the business engages with more enterprise-level projects.
I love Jupyter! It’s my go-to prototyping tool these days.
spaCy and Prodigy are two impressive tools for NLP and AI development from the team at Explosion.
If you've ever shared a neat computer trick, a complex application, or something in between with a friend, then you've probably uttered the phrase, "Well, it works on my computer." No matter how advanced computers become, there seem to be recurrent problems related to the differences in what any two machines have configured or installed. There are ongoing attempts to solve this, and for Python developers, one of the best ways to prevent it is to use virtual environments.
In both cases, you can either use Stripe Checkout (which is a Stripe-hosted checkout page) or Stripe Elements (which are a set of custom UI components used to build payment forms). Use Stripe Checkout if you don't mind redirecting your users to a Stripe-hosted page and want Stripe to handle most of the payment process for you (e.g., customer and payment intent creation, etc.), otherwise use Stripe Elements.
The fixed-price approach is much easier to set up, but you don't have full control over the billing cycles and payments. By using this approach Stripe will automatically start charging your customers every billing cycle after a successful checkout.
Python deque is a double-ended queue. You can append to both ends and pop from both ends. The complexity of those operations amortizes to constant time.
We are going to look at the Python 3 internal implementation of deques. It uses a linked list of blocks of 64 pointers to objects. This reduces memory overhead since there are fewer previous and next links.
This post is organized in three parts:
Part 1: The Good — What pushed me to keep the job
Part 2: The Bad — What pushed me to leave the job
Part 3: The Bye Bye — The decision to leave
Enjoy!
The entirely self-inflicted nature of this tragedy is one of its central elements, as is the way Trump's incredible irresponsibility and arrogance was mimicked by his supporters, significantly exacerbating the pandemic. It's a hugely important element of what's going on here.
The group was organized by chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez, who has been studying aerosols for 20 years. You may remember Jimenez from his excellent piece in Time magazine, where he used the analogy of smoke to explain aerosol transmission. Here’s a snippet from the FAQ, highlighting something I’ve been concerned about lately: people wearing face shields instead of masks and employees in stores not wearing masks behind plexiglass shields: [...]
These arguments, and many others like them, are central to Dr. Richard D. Wolff's new book, "The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself." In a series of well-researched essays outlined with impeccable logic, the professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst analyzes the events of the last seven months — what one might deem the "COVID-19 era" — and explains how the horrors of 2020 are primarily caused by the social, political and economic status quo. His book tackles a number of issues, including how the economy crashed not because of a virus but because capitalism is incapable of coping with epidemics, how America's healthcare system is corrupt, and how income inequality caused immense suffering long before the pandemic and is propped up by economic myths.
Linux is always a top choice for the commercial sector. Not only because it is an open operating software, but it also sports up multiple other features which are definitely missing in some major operating systems. Both Windows and Linux are user-friendly in nature, but whenever we compare the latter with anything else, security always comes up as a big factor to consider.
Linux is developed with simple codes. However, it likely accepts more information in terms of security. today, more and more devices are running on this platform because of the amazing features that this operating system comes with. it is ideal to have one with yourself.
Up first on the patch priority list this month is a very high priority vulnerability, which is called “Zerologon” and identified by CVE-2020-1472. It is an elevation of privilege vulnerability that exists due to a flaw in a cryptographic authentication mechanism used by the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC). During the August patch Tuesday patch release, Microsoft released patches for affected operating systems. Note that the recently released Metasploit module targets the Windows operating system. However, various versions of Samba, i.e. within the open source ecosystem, could be vulnerable to this attack (refer to the bugzilla link below) and open source proof-of-concepts are available via Github. Linux vendors such as Fedora, SuSe, and Ubuntu have released advisories and patches for their versions of Samba.
You've possibly just found out you're in a data breach. The organisation involved may have contacted you and advised your password was exposed but fortunately, they encrypted it. But you should change it anyway. Huh? Isn't the whole point of encryption that it protects data when exposed to unintended parties? Ah, yes, but it wasn't encrypted it was hashed and therein lies a key difference: [...]
Students say their academic activities are being closely monitored by the authoritarian state, forcing them to censor criticism of the regime in papers and research.
As I hinted in the introduction, there is some historical context to this. The idea has been in the works for a few years now. The progress on this has also been chronicled well by Steven Levy in his book, Facebook: The Inside Story. It is an excellent read, but if you do not have the time, here is a short summary.
Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, promising the founders of both companies the freedom to build out the platforms the way they wanted. The arrangement worked fine for a few years, but then Facebook began to rein them in. Here is an excerpt from Levy’s book that explains how Zuckerberg thought about this:
Rather than represent a genuine desire to fix the United Nations, where authoritarian regimes have secured clout over the last decade to shield themselves from international scrutiny, Erdogan offers a classic example of a strongman bent on exploiting intergovernmental organizations.
The Turkish president's disregard for UN conventions, resolutions and sanctions is well documented. For example, a 376-page report the UN Panel of Experts on Libya issued in December 2019 found that Turkey, among others, violated a 2011 embargo by delivering arms and fighters to the war-torn North African country. The panel stated that the transfers to Libya were "repeated and sometimes blatant, with scant regard paid to compliance with the sanctions measures."
But it would be years before Facebook and Twitter would make major moves to curb QAnon’s presence on their platforms, despite serious cases of online harassment and offline violence that followed, and moves by other social media companies to limit the spread of QAnon’s lurid and false allegations of pedophilia and other crimes.
Attenborough broke a new kind of record earlier this week, when he joined Instagram and found himself with one million followers in just four hours and forty-four minutes. (His count currently is at five million.)
His newest project, the more-autobiographical-than-usual David Attenborough: A Life on This Planet, debuts on Netflix this Sunday.
Five lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) joined Deputy Director Hsu Huang-hsiung (許æâ¢Æéâºâ) of Academia Sinica’s Research Center for Environmental Changes in holding a press conference on the urgent need to adopt measures against extreme weather events, wrote CNA.
The four initiatives they proposed include pushing for the 2050 zero-emission objective, setting out a Taiwanese Green Deal modeled on the European Green Deal, drafting a Climate Change Act based on the existing Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act, and increasing public participation in climate policies.
EU member states have agreed on a Commission proposal to invest €998 million in key European energy infrastructure projects under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). Financial aid will be provided for works and studies on ten projects, in line with the objectives of the European Green Deal; 84% of the funding goes to electricity or smart grid projects. The largest amount goes to the Baltic Synchronization Project (€720 million), to better integrate the electricity markets of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Meeting with the Lithuanian president and the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Poland to celebrate the funding to the Baltic Synchronization Project, President Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) said: “Today is a very important day for Europe. It is a landmark moment in ending the isolation of the Baltic energy market. This project is good for connecting Europe, good for our energy security, and it is good for the European Green Deal.”
Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said: “These ten projects will contribute to a more modern, secure and smart energy infrastructure system, which is crucial for delivering the European Green Deal and meeting our ambitious 2030 climate targets. Yesterday's decision marks a decisive step in the Baltic Synchronisation process in particular, a project of European strategic interest. These investments will help sustain the EU's economic recovery and create jobs.”
Despite the strong economic performance and sustained reform momentum over the past few years, Portugal entered the COVID-19 crisis with undersized capital markets. These markets must now be mobilised to support a resilient, dynamic and sustainable recovery, according to a new OECD report.
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the European Brand Institute (EBI), held the 16th Brand Global Summit at the Vienna International Centre and online. The Summit brought together leading branding experts and government representatives, and showcased success stories of Branding for Sustainability – a theme that raises awareness of brands’ impact on business performance, upgrading and sustainable development.
[...]
Gerhard Hrebicek, President of the EBI, underlined the fact that “brands are the most valuable intangible assets that, unfortunately, remain the least understood”.
UNIDO has pioneered branding as a tool for sustainable and inclusive industrial development. Since launching the service module, “Branding for competitiveness and sustainable growth (B4C)”, the approach has generated a number of success stories across the globe and industries. Examples of corporate-, destination-, city- and region- branding initiatives showd the value of (umbrella) branding initiatives for improving product quality, leading to more competitiveness, sales and contributing to sustainable development.
Investment in brands show superior returns and short payback times, as UNIDO’s project beneficiaries showcased. UNIDO’s branding initiatives have had a large impact on Armenia’s textile sector, Cuba’s agribusiness development, Namibia’s sustainable bush harvesting, Morocco and Tunisia’s food-processing, and Tajikistan’s carpet industries, leading to an increase in tax income, exports and job creation.
New regulations came into effect on October 1 in Turkey stipulating that social media providers with over a million Turkish daily users must open offices or appoint a legal representative in the country. If companies do not comply with the new rules, they face major fines.
The rules, which were pushed through Parliament by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, threaten major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, among others.
Popular podcaster Joe Rogan and his relationship with the streaming platform Spotify have made headlines in recent weeks, and he addressed some of the controversies during his recent podcast with comedian Tim Dillon. Rogan and Dillon spoke during episode No. 1544 of the Joe Rogan Experience about Spotify employees potentially wanting to censor and edit his podcast.
Spotify has the exclusive licensing rights to the Joe Rogan Experience, and according to reports from media outlets, some employees have threatened to strike if they do not receive editorial control over Rogan’s podcast, taking issue with some of the subjects Rogan speaks about as well as what he says.
However, according to the podcaster and UFC commentator, Spotify has not spoken to him about censoring his show or about any internal company dialogue about the situation.
In the three-page letter from campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, addressed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Biden-Harris camp states that the social media platform is “the nation’s foremost propagator of disinformation about the voting process,” and demands that posts from the Trump campaign be removed.
Twitter has categorically said that it will proactively remove tweets by those who wish for US President Donald Trump's death on the platform and will put their accounts into a "read only" mode for violating its policies.
The nation’s government, led by President Alexander Lukashenko, whose election was mired in controversy and has not been recognized by the European Union, announced Friday it was canceling the press accreditations for all foreign journalists immediately. The move comes as Belarus continues blocking its citizens from accessing local media websites, including the Belarusian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, in the wake of a massive, three-day internet outage and weeks of protests over the Aug. 8 election.
Now, some media outlets are fighting back. To make their mobile apps more resilient, some Belarusian news organizations are using NewNode, a decentralized file-sharing service by the California-based startup Clostra, which basically runs on the same principle as torrents. This means users store bits of content on their devices, sharing them with others in a peer-to-peer fashion.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii Democrat, has gained support from Republican colleagues in calling for the U.S. government to abandon its criminal cases against Julian Assange and Edward J. Snowden.
Along with Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, she introduced a resolution Friday urging the U.S. to drop all charges and efforts to extradite Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
The pope took direct aim at trickle-down economics, the theory favored by conservatives that tax breaks and other incentives for big business and the wealthy eventually will benefit the rest of society through investment and job creation.
"There were those who would have had us believe that freedom of the market was sufficient to keep everything secure (after the pandemic hit)," he wrote.
Francis denounced "this dogma of neo-liberal faith" that resorts to "the magic theories of 'spillover' or 'trickle' ... as the only solution to societal problems". A good economic policy, he said, "makes it possible for jobs to be created and not cut."
That sounds benign. What they're all doing now, or at least so many of these higher "learning" institutions is indoctrinating students in being racist. It's just a new group to hate these days, which makes it no less ugly.
Look at this -- "original sin"-seeking document sneakily damning students (between the lines) for what they have no control over: the skin color they are born with: [...]
“It is clear that the rule of law in the Maldives is now under siege,” said the experts in a news release issued Monday by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
“We call on the Government to refrain from any threats or interference that may hamper the court’s independence as the supreme guardian of the country’s constitution and legislation,” they added.
In the release, José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez, the current Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; and Diego García-Sayán, the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and magistrates, also stressed that judicial independence, enshrined in the national constitution and in international human rights treaties, had to be guaranteed by the State.
Mr. García-Sayán also raised concern over the timing of the arrests, five days after the Supreme Court had ordered the release and retrial of nine opposition leaders, including former President Mohamed Nasheed.
Following the arrest of Chief Justice H.E. Abdulla Saeed and Ali Hameed Mohamed – shortly after the Government declared a state of emergency – the three remaining Supreme Court judges overturned the order to free the nine leaders.
On November 20th, the EPO is having an online conference on the Boards of Appeal and key decisions of 2020, including a session on AI and computer implemented inventions, and another on the Enlarged Board of Appeal Opinion in G3/19 [also covered by The IPKat here]. The full programme is available here, and registration is open until November 5th.
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The Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI) published its Second Opinion on certain aspects of Art. 17 of the DSM Directive. This Second Opinion addresses the proposals, advanced with regards to the German implementation of Art. 17 in the so-called German Discussion Draft, issued by the German Ministry of Justice and for Consumer Protection.
The European Commission has launched a public consultation on the state of intellectual property protection and enforcement in third countries. The information gathered will help the European Commission to prioritize its efforts in the external action, according to the so called “Priority countries” list (not to be confused with the US Special 301 Report!). Any interested stakeholders may fill out a lengthy questionnaire by November 16.
Fresenius Kabi, Gedeon Richter, Insud and three others suggest patentees are refusing to attend virtual oppositions to unfairly stall critical invalidations
Despite having the word "patents" in its name, this blog has recently talked more about the antitrust injunction Epic Games is seeking against Apple in the Northern District of California, but today I wish to discuss patent injunctions again.
Injunctive relief is the most bitterly-fought part of the patent reform package the German government will soon present to the patent litigation hotspot's legislature. Those advocating reform are much happier than last time, but resistance from those opposing any reform is stiffer than ever.
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There still would be fundamental differences between eBay and that particular interpretation of the proposed German patent injunction statute, the most important one being that Judge Kuehnen believes a defendant should not be entitled to a proportionality defense on top of a FRAND-based antitrust defense. I disagree, but Judge Kuehnen's take on FRAND is far more balanced than that of the Munich I Regional Court and at least one of the two patent litigation divisions of the Mannheim Regional Court: Judge Kuehnen initially analyzes whether the standard-essential patent (SEP) holder's offer was FRAND-compliant before potentially turning to the implementer's counteroffer; he expects a rather comprehensive disclosure of comparable license agreements; and he doesn't deprive component makers of their right to an exhaustive SEP license on FRAND terms.
Traditionally, before the Paris first instance court (tribunal judiciaire), the validity and infringement of a patent and, more rarely, the compensation for damages are addressed, pleaded and judged together. However, sometimes, the particular context of a dispute leads the judge in charge of case preparation to dissociate these issues, in order to rule on them one after the other.
The case pending before the Paris first instance court between Lufthansa Technik (“Lufthansa”) and Thales Avionics, Astronics Advanced Electronic Systems and Panasonic Avionics (“Thales Avionics et.al”) is a recent example of a sequenced procedure, i.e. a procedure arranged in several stages in the interest of the proper administration of justice.
Initial results from producers using Forceris have been extremely encouraging, creating strong demand and frustration in many markets, who were blocked from purchasing the product by Bayer’s aggressive legal actions.
The English High Court has upheld a UK IPO ruling that an AI machine cannot be an inventor under UK patent law. As AI continues to change the world around us, will this position remain?
Earlier this month the UK IPO put out a call for views to help it understand the implications AI might have for IP policy. In a bid to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of the AI and data revolution, the IPO set out a list of questions about the intersection of AI and IP and has invited input and insight into how best to make sure the UK’s IP environment is adapted to accommodate and encourage growth in transformational new technology sectors.
With the IPO’s AI public outreach still hot off the press, the English High Court this week published its decision relating to one of the key questions in the field of patent law circulated for debate by the IPO – namely, whether AI can be a patent inventor. Marcus Smith J ruled that an AI machine called DABUS “is not, and cannot be, an inventor within the meaning of the 1977 [Patents] Act, simply because DABUS is not a person”.
The coronavirus has upended patent challenge proceedings everywhere, forcing courts and intellectual property offices to prioritise physical safety and rely heavily on video conferencing. The EPO is no exception, but generics drug companies say the office’s new rules are being abused.
The EPO Opposition Division, unlike the office’s Boards of Appeal (BoA), has stopped in-person proceedings until December 31, but allowed oral arguments to be made by video conference. Both parties have to consent to a video conference, however, and numerous patentees have refused.
Six generic drugs companies, including Insud Pharma, Accord, Fresenius Kabi, Zentiva and Gedeon Richter, tell Managing IP that this system has caused them problems because patentees often choose to delay, and often seemingly in an effort to stall the invalidation of their patents.
Several argue that patentees should be forced to attend to avoid delaying the release of cheaper drugs.
When filing a PCT application, an election must be made of an international search authority (ISA).
On September 21, 2020, the High Court of England and Wales dismissed an appeal and upheld the decision of the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) that a machine cannot be regarded as an inventor under the UK Patents Act 1977.
The Device Autonomously Bootstrapping Uniform Sensibility ("DABUS") is a "Creativity Machine" that uses neural networks to generate new inventions. DABUS was created by Dr. Stephen Thaler who applied for two patents in 2018 naming DABUS as the inventor.
In a decision issued by the UKIPO on December 4, 2019, UKIPO Hearing Officer Huw Jones rejected Dr. Thaler's application for failing to validly name an inventor. Jones held that naming a machine as the inventor would not satisfy the requirements of the Patents Act 1977 because an inventor must be a natural person. The UKIPO also stated that it does not have the authority to provide a different interpretation of the Patents Act 1977.
In Unwired Planet v Huawei, Unwired Planet alleged infringement of the UK designations of six European patents by Huawei, Google and Samsung. Proceedings in the UK began in March 2014, with parallel proceedings also initiated in Germany and China. Over the course of three technical trials in 2015 and 2016, Birss J held that two of the patents in issue were both valid and essential. Shortly thereafter, Unwired Planet settled with Samsung and Google, with Unwired Planet granting a licence to its portfolio to Samsung. In a trial to determine the remedies appropriate for the infringement of Unwired Planet’s patents by the remaining defendant, Huawei, the judge concluded that a FRAND undertaking (required by standards setting organisations (SSOs) to be given by a SEP owner when declaring patents to be essential to a standard, to grant licences to such patents to implementers of the protected invention on so-called “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms), could be enforced by an English court and that an implementer that refused to take a FRAND licence could be subjected to an injunction to prevent infringement of a valid and infringed UK patent.
Furthermore, the judge held that such a FRAND licence in the circumstances could only be a worldwide licence and not, as Huawei contended, a licence limited to the UK, and that it would not be discriminatory if the fair and reasonable royalty rate determined by the court for a licence between Huawei and Unwired Planet were to be higher than the rate offered by Unwired Planet to Samsung. Finally, the judge held that Unwired Planet had not breached article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”) by abusing its dominant position, following the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in Huawei v ZTE.
Concluding, the judge granted an injunction in favour of Unwired Planet. However, the judge granted the injunction on the condition that it would fall away if Huawei were to enter into a FRAND licence with Unwired Planet (a “FRAND injunction”), and stayed enforcement of the injunction pending appeal. The Court of Appeal, in October 2018, upheld the judge’s decision and dismissed Huawei’s appeal entirely, disagreeing with the judge on only a single issue: in the Court of Appeal’s view, circumstances could allow for both a local/national and global licence being considered FRAND, in which case it would be for the SEP owner to elect which of the two it preferred.
Netherlands-incorporated generic major Mylan and US pharma giant Pfizer today announced that the companies…
Cevira is a photodynamic drug-device combination product under development for non-surgical treatment of high-grade cervical dysplasia. In July 2019, Photocure announced that it had entered into a License Agreement providing Asieris Meditech Co., Ltd (Asieris) with a world-wide license to develop and commercialize Cevira for the treatment of HPV induced cervical precancerous lesions. In July 2020, Asieris received China NMPA's approval to start a global Phase III clinical trial for APL-1702 (Cevira).
The EP 2983780 patent covering the commercial Cevira device in Europe, will expire 09 April 2034.
The recent judgment of the High Court of England and Wales in the DABUS case ([2020] EWHC 2412 (Pat)) has made one thing abundantly clear. For now at least, an AI machine cannot be construed as an inventor within the meaning of the Patents Act 1977. However, this arguably raises more questions than it answers. Is it time, in light of the increased advent of AI in technological development, that this position is reviewed?
The context of the High Court’s judgment is that it upholds the decision of the UK IPO, which ruled that the applicant, Dr Stephen Taylor, could not legitimately register his AI creation, DABUS, as the inventor for the purposes of two patents. Mr Justice Marcus Smith rejected Dr Taylor’s arguments on the grounds that the Act, in its definition of inventor, clearly envisages that an inventor must be a natural person – which DABUS is not. Interestingly, while Mr Justice Marcus Smith made this definitive ruling, he stressed “that nothing in this analysis should be taken to suggest that DABUS is not itself capable of an inventive concept” and also emphasised that whether the owner/controller of an inventive AI machine could be said to be the inventor is still an open question (Dr Thaler expressly declined to advance that submission on the basis that he would “illegitimately be taking credit for an invention that was not his”, and also that he considered it bad in law). This eludes to the overarching question as to whether, as a matter of policy, the law’s perspective on AI machines as inventors ought to be reconsidered.
Existing patent legislation would need to be amended to enable companies to name artificial intelligence (AI) systems as 'inventors' on UK patent applications and own such patent rights, experts in intellectual property (IP) law have said.
Mark Marfé and Krishna Kakkaiyadi of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law, were commenting after the High Court in London rejected Dr. Stephen Thaler's patent applications for inventions that he claims were derived from an AI machine called 'DABUS'. Earlier this year, Thaler lost a similar appeal before the European Patent Office (EPO). Thaler is pursuing the argument, across several jurisdictions, that the owner of AI systems should be the default owner of patents for inventions derived from those systems, and that it should be possible to name those AI systems as inventors on patent applications.
Hearing an appeal by Thaler against a decision late last year by a senior official at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), Mr Justice Marcus Smith ruled that the Patents Act 1977 provides that a person making a patent application must be a 'person' with legal personality, whether a human or corporation, and that a patent can only be granted to such a 'person' with legal personality. Since the inventor is by default the person entitled to the patent rights, it follows that existing legislation requires the 'inventor' to be a person with legal personality. Patent rights are property rights, and a machine is incapable in law of holding and transferring patent rights since it lacks the legal personality necessary to assign the rights to property or even hold those rights in the first place, the judge said.
The federal district court in Manhattan erred in concluding as a matter of law that Costco’s use of the word “Tiffany” to describe diamond engagement rings amounted to willful trademark infringement and counterfeiting, warranting compensatory and punitive damages exceeding $21 million, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City has ruled. The district court had a duty on summary judgment to credit evidence presented by Costco regarding its liability for trademark infringement and counterfeiting and, relatedly, its entitlement to present its fair use defense to a jury. As to liability, Costco raised triable issues of fact as to three likelihood of confusion factors—whether Costco’s customers were actually confused, whether Costco adopted Tiffany’s mark in bad faith, and whether the relevant population of consumers was sufficiently sophisticated to avoid confusion. A jury also reasonably could find that Costco used the term “Tiffany” descriptively on its point-of-sale signs, based on Costco’s evidence that “Tiffany” has a descriptive meaning independent of Tiffany’s brand. The district court’s judgment was vacated and the case remanded for trial (Tiffany and Company v. Costco Wholesale Corp., August 17, 2020, Livingston, D.).
On 17 September the CJEU handed down a long-awaited judgment on a matter that thrilled sports fans and the IP community (C-449/18P, C-474/18P, available in French and Spanish). Footballer Lionel Messi Cuccittini is allowed to register his surname as a trademark for a sportswear brand after a nine-year legal battle. The trade mark is a figurative sign in particular for clothing, footwear and gymnastics and sports articles:
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This is in line with the 2010 judgment regarding BARBARA BECKER (see C 51/09P, para. 37). In that case, the German actress and model Barbara Becker, former wife of the tennis player Boris Becker, succeeded in defeating the opposition of the proprietor of the earlier trade mark BECKER to the registration of her trade mark “BARBARA BECKER”.
When speaking about “reputation” or “notoriety”, the CJEU did not mean the concept referred to in the Art. 8(5) EUTMR. The appreciation of the likelihood of confusion depends on numerous elements, and in particular, on the recognition of the trade mark on the market the association which can be made with the used or registered sign, and the degree of similarity between the trade mark and the sign and between the goods or services identified. The likelihood of confusion (LOC) test does not include factors that depend on the applicant itself (C-171/06 P, para. 31). Notoriety of a super-famous person may indeed change over time and it is inherently associated with the applicant’s personal status. In Messi’s trade mark attempts, the EUIPO had said that the likelihood of confusion could not be neutralized by the fact that Lionel Messi was a reputed football player (applications nos. 2765183 and further).
The CJEU handed down a long-awaited judgment on a matter that thrilled sports fans and the IP community! Footballer Lionel Messi Cuccittini is allowed to register his surname as a trademark for a sportswear brand after a nine-year legal battle. Kluwer Trademark Blog reported on the trade mark.
As a Fred Perry fan, I was disappointed to see that the fashion brand has been defeated – for now, at least – by a detestable US far-right group called the Proud Boys.
Ferrero, Ziff Davis and two law firms discuss how buyers can integrate target companies' trademark strategies with their own
For this reason, Disney has done everything in its power to make sure it retains the copyright on Mickey -- even if that means changing federal statutes. Every time Mickey’s copyright is about to expire, Disney spends millions lobbying Congress for extensions, and trading campaign contributions for legislative support. With crushing legal force, they’ve squelched anyone who attempts to disagree with them.
In the age of the Internet, where vast swaths of creative material are freely available, the central question raised by Mickey Mouse’s copyright ordeal is especially pertinent: Which is more important, a robust public domain, or the well-being of private interests?
Unless you earn your living as an intellectual [sic] property [sic] lawyer, you probably don't know that the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Eldred v. Ashcroft, a case that will test the limits of Congress's power to extend the term of copyrights. But while copyright may not seem inherently compelling to non-specialists, the issues at stake in Eldred are vitally important to anyone who watches movies, listens to music, or reads books.
If that includes you, read on.
