Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 11/10/2020: Arch Conf 2020, Plasma 5.20 'is Nigh'



  • Leftovers

    • IBM to break up 109-year old company to focus on cloud growth

      International Business Machines Corp is splitting itself into two public companies, capping a years-long effort by the world's first big computing firm to diversify away from its legacy businesses to focus on high-margin cloud computing.

      IBM will list its IT infrastructure services unit, which provides technical support for 4,600 clients in 115 countries and has a backlog of $60 billion, as a separate company with a new name by the end of 2021.

      The new company will have 90,000 employees and its leadership structure will be decided in a few months, Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh told Reuters.

    • Hardware

      • NXP IW620 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.1 Chip Targets Gaming, Audio, Industrial and IoT Markets

        The company highlights the low-latency of WiFi 6 that makes IW62X "ideal for advanced gaming consoles that demand high-performance Wi-Fi with near zero wireless controller lag time and low-latency multiplayer gaming experiences (via a single, in-room console) over wireless networks". NXP also keep referring to the "world's first WiFI 6 gaming console" in the press release without naming it, but it should probably mean IW620 is integrated in the upcoming Sony Playstation 5.

    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Microsoft cloud issues continue with more global outages

          The most recent disruptions seem to be primarily affecting US users, with some individuals noting that they are struggling to access their admin centre dashboards. There were also reports that a number of Microsoft 365 services, as well as Azure Active Directory and Azure Networking services, were experiencing issues.

        • Quickpost: 4 Bytes To Crash Excel

          When you create a text file with content "ID;;", save it with extension .slk, then open it with Excel, Excel will crash.

        • Security

          • A CrowdSec Primer: A Modern Replacement for Fail2Ban

            This tells me they're thinking big and long-term with this thing, and not just as a replacement for a local banning tool.

            So the bottom line--at the very miniumum--is that we seem to have a modern replacement for Fail2Ban, and over time that may turn into something more.

          • Microsoft Took 10 Days to Remove Leaked XP Code From its Own Site

            Last month there was excitement when the source code for Windows XP was leaked online. The big question, however, was how quickly Microsoft would act to have it disappeared from the web. The partial answer is that the company took 10 days to have one public repository taken down. And that was hosted on Github, a platform owned by Microsoft itself.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • EU develops wiretap platform using face recognition and geodata

              The combination of different techniques will provide police authorities with a powerful surveillance tool. Persons can then be located in intercepted telephone conversations. The technology uses extensive metadata that people leave behind in public places or the Internet.

            • Finance Minister proposes tolls on good roads

              On Saturday Finance Minister Matti Vanhanen told Yle's talk show Ykkösaamu he was in favour of using location data to introduce tolls on certain roads.

              Finland is in the middle of planning an overhaul to traffic-related taxes due to be rolled out next spring.

            • Google is giving data to police based on search keywords, court docs show

              The original warrant sent to Google is still sealed, but the report provides another example of a growing trend of data requests to the search engine giant in which investigators demand data on a large group of users rather than a specific request on a single suspect.

              "This 'keyword warrant' evades the Fourth Amendment checks on police surveillance," said Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. "When a court authorizes a data dump of every person who searched for a specific term or address, it's likely unconstitutional."

              The keyword warrants are similar to geofence warrants, in which police make requests to Google for data on all devices logged in at a specific area and time. Google received 15 times more geofence warrant requests in 2018 compared with 2017, and five times more in 2019 than 2018. The rise in reverse requests from police have troubled Google staffers, according to internal emails.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • How Can Americans Support Peace in Nagorno-Karabakh?

        The U.S. should support a ceasefire and a lasting and stable negotiated peace that respects the human rights and self-determination of all the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

      • Democrats and corporate media cover-up Trump's role in Michigan coup plot

        Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not issued a major statement on the plot and did not even refer to it at a campaign rally Thursday night in Phoenix, Arizona.

        The Democratic Party and the corporate press have raised no questions about the potential role of Trump's fascist advisers or where the plotters obtained the money to plan their operations and buy equipment. Unlike Watergate, there is to be no investigation or congressional hearings into the connections between the plotters and top operatives in and around the Trump administration. No Democrat has called for subpoenaing Roger Stone, Stephen Miller, Steven Bannon, Erik Prince, or any other aides with ties to fascist groups. The position of the Democratic Party is: "nothing to see here."

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • Op-ed: Battered by Hurricanes and Pollution, It Is Time for Louisiana to Imagine Life Beyond Oil

          Living in Louisiana, reconciling the environmental harm caused by the state's often celebrated oil and petrochemical sectors amounts to cognitive "gaslighting."

        • Four Types of Scandals Utility Companies Get Into With Money From Your Electric Bills

          Across the country, electric utilities have worked the levers of power to win favorable treatment from state policymakers.

          This week, a Richmond Times-Dispatch and ProPublica investigation found that Dominion Energy, Virginia's largest public utility, successfully lobbied to reshape a major climate bill to cover its massive offshore wind project. The move shifted risk from the company's shareholders to its ratepayers. As a result of the legislation, a typical residential customer's bill is projected to increase by nearly $30 per month over the next decade.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Indonesian journalists say police assaulted them during protests over jobs law

        Civil groups have reported that journalists were assaulted by law enforcement officers while covering protests against the highly controversial Job Creation Law on Thursday (Oct 7).

        The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) reported on Friday that at least seven journalists were attacked by police officers while covering the protests in Jakarta.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • America Needs a Trial Separation: Parallel States Might Be the Solution

        The division of Red and Blue America need not be permanent.

      • I Was a Student of Amy Coney Barrett. She Isn't an LGBTQ Ally.

        During the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, President Trump stated that some of Amy Coney Barrett's "biggest endorsers are very liberal people from Notre Dame." As a former law student of the Supreme Court nominee, and as the former Notre Dame LGBT Law Forum president, I disagree with this characterization of Professor Barrett's support -- and I would note that Professor Barrett refused numerous opportunities to support the LGBTQ students of Notre Dame.

      • Biden-Harris Campaign Releases Plan Addressing Relations With Tribal Nations

        Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris released detailed plans to uphold federal trust responsibilities by addressing health disparities, restoring tribal lands and providing economic opportunity for tribal nations Thursday.

      • Portland Police and Federal Agents Misused Crowd-Control Weapons, Obstructed Medical Care at Oregon Protests: PHR Investigation

        The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) and federal agents used disproportionate and excessive force against both protestors and medics at the Portland, Oregon protests in July, according to a new investigation published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). The report finds that law enforcement's deployment of crowd-control weapons and obstruction of medical care at the protests resulted in severe injuries and psychological trauma to both medics and protestors. This excessive use of force escalated tensions at demonstrations and impeded the right to peaceful assembly and expression.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • How will Brexit impact your trademarks and other IP rights?

          Conversely, Brexit will not impact European utility patents and pending applications because these are filed and granted through a centralized organization separate from the EU, namely, the European Patent Office ("EPO"). The EPO was established through a multilateral treaty known as the European Patent Convention, of which the UK remains a member. Accordingly, granted EPO utility patents that were validated in the UK will remain in force and pending utility applications, once granted by the EPO, can still be validated in the UK even after Brexit.

          Finally, Brexit may impact the scope of agreements which are, by their terms, enforceable within the EU. The impact of Brexit on such agreements will depend on the specific language of the agreement. Agreements should be reviewed with this possibility in mind.

        • US Kidney Research Corporation (USKRC) Granted US Patent



          US Kidney Research Corporation (USKRC) U.S. Application No. 15/732,169 was approved and a patent was granted by the US Patent Office on October 2, 2020. The patent was granted for their Dialysate Free Artificial Kidney Device, the company's waterless renal replacement therapy technology.

          Founder/CEO Roland Ludlow said "We are very pleased to finally have our US Patent granted. It was a long process. Due to the amount of patents processed by the USPTO, it was a 2 €½ year wait before the initial patent examination took place. Fortunately, with the excellent help from our patent attorneys at Morrison Forester, the final examination and approval was completed in less than 6 months from the initial examination. The entire process took nearly 3 years from start to finish".

        • Microbes and Skincare -€“ Insights from Innovator Activity at the European Patent Office [Ed: Lawyers' propaganda site intentionally conflates monopolies with "INNOVATION"]

          The microbes present on our skin, the skin microbiome, is increasingly being prioritised in the next generation of personal healthcare and cosmetic products. Over the last decade, efforts such as the Human Microbiome Project have highlighted enormous diversity within the beneficial microbes that live in or on our bodies. The microbiome is of enormous interest to the health and personal care, food and agriculture sectors. The cosmetics/ personal care sector, fuelled by consumer demand, is recognising the value in developing microbiome friendly skincare products. Such products include those containing specific beneficial microbes or those that encourage the maintenance of healthy skin microbiome.

      • Copyrights

        • Pirate Sites Flourish as UK Site Blocking Efforts Die Down, For Now

          In other countries, the UK is often used as a prime example of how pirate site-blocking injunctions can function effectively. However, over the past several years, movie and music companies haven't requested any new blocks. As a result, new pirate sites can flourish, for now.



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