In fact, If there is no operating system (OS) installed the computer becomes a worthless device because the operating system is the intermediate interface that connects the user to the hardware and vice versa. People choose operating systems according to their preferences and what they do. Besides, some people had to go with an operating system that is given by their preferred hardware device (Apple computers come with macOS).
My first computer was a Pentium II one and it had Windows 98 installed when I purchased it in 2008. Thereafter, I used Windows 2000 for several months. Like most die-hard Windows fans, I used Windows XP and 7 for a long time. Before I completely switched to Ubuntu, my favorite OS was Windows 10. As everybody says, freedom is a key factor that leads us to choose a Linux distribution instead of a proprietary operating system. But, Windows was okay for me until they patch the graphical user interface (GUI) for Windows 7. I switched to Linux mostly due to the following key factors.
This year good news coming one after another. Everything starts with Fedora announcing Fedora on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, then Ubuntu announcing Dell XPS Focal Fossa, and now elementary OS announcing both Slimbook and Pine64 PineBook laptops. Now everybody globally can find Ubuntu, Fedora, and elementary OS preloaded on branded laptops and PCs. This means GNU/Linux desktop goes mainstream. I am happy to see this. I really want to sum them up in one article so everybody sees these great moment. For everyone who loves Free Software community here's the news for you!
The Linux Kernel 5.9 is now out and available for the masses. Like any other release, Kernel 5.9 introduces fantastic features along with updated drivers. The development of Linux kernel 5.9 started about two months ago when Linus Torvalds announced the first release candidate (RC) milestone.
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By anonymous memory, we refer to the memory that is not file-backed—commonly known as malloced memory. The release of Kernel 5.9 aims at better system workload detection and protection of this memory. Generally, the Linux Kernel manages anonymous memory by placing its pages either in an active or inactive list. When the system runs low on memory resources (memory pressure), unused pages are moved from active to inactive list to be referenced again. In case of more memory pressure, they are moved to SWAP.
Previously, newly created or swap-in pages were pushed to the active list. That, in turn, led to the forced removal of used pages to the inactive list. With kernel 5.9, newly created or swap-in pages are first placed on the inactive list. They are only moved to the active list after being referenced enough. Additionally, to prevent the newly created or swap-in pages from swapping out existing pages from an inactive list, Kernel 5.9 comes with new features to handle the anonymous LRU list.
Linux 5.9 was released last Sunday. See our usual resources for a good coverage of the highlights of this new release: KernelNewbies page, LWN.net article on the first part of the merge window, LWN.net article on the second part of the merge window.
On our side, we contributed a total of 69 commits to Linux 5.9, which unusually low and makes Bootlin the 31st contributing company by number of commits according to Linux Kernel Patch Statistic. The highlights of our contributions are...
Pinning down complicated network issues doesn’t have need to involve the use of complicated tools. You don’t need to craft packets by hand and have the network engineering knowledge of a CCIE. More often than not you can easily troubleshoot a network issue using the readily available tools that ship with most Linux distributions. Spending less time finding and installing third-party tools means you have more time to get to the bottom of the problem.
In this article, we’ll explore some common and fairly straightforward networking tools and how to use them. Most of these tools are usually included in most popular distributions, but there will also be installation instructions where applicable for each one just in case.
While most of these tools can be used for very simple purposes like checking host connectivity or bandwidth, they can also be used in more advanced ways to investigate problems. This doesn’t mean you absolutely need to go deep diving through the man page, but usually there are additional flags that can be of great use that are less widely known. Sometimes studying the additional options available for a built-in package reveal functionality that would prevent you from reaching for a third-party tool.
The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) that is of growing prominence on Android-powered mobile phones and other flash-storage-only Linux systems has some promising improvements with Linux 5.10.
The F2FS feature updates for Linux 5.10 are rather exciting this round. Some of the changes for F2FS with this late 2020 kernel include...
Working from home is beginning to move from being a necessary but temporary way of achieving social distancing in offices, to a radical shift in how many companies will operate. Until now, most of the evidence of that change has been anecdotal. But a Twitter thread by Chris Herd, who is CEO of FirstbaseHQ, which "lets you supply, finance and manage all the physical equipment your remote teams need to do great work at home", provides some fascinating statistics on the scale of the shift to working from home. Herd says he has talked to around 1000 companies over the last six months about their plans for remote work. One trend is that corporate headquarters are "finished", he says: companies will cut their commercial office space by 40 to 60%, with people working from home for two to four days each week. Some 30% of the companies Herd talked to say that they intend to get rid of offices completely, and move fully to remote working.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a protocol used mainly for text based communication over the Internet. IRC chatroom servers are usually used to facilitate communication between groups of users. Users can use any client capable of communication with IRC protocol to connect to the servers and start chatting. IRC groups are often used as the primary mode of support in many open source applications. This article will list free and open source IRC chat clients available for Linux.
OpenLDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) provides active directory authentication and enables you to set up user accounts that provide the user access on each computer in your network without having to set up a local user account on each computer. This is the protocol that Microsoft Active Directory utilizes. OpenLDAP is the free and open-source implementation of LDAP.
For this tutorial, you will need an Ubuntu Linux installation with a static IP address assigned, and you will need to make friends with the command prompt.
Docker Compose is a Python program that lets you easily deploy multiple containers on a server.
As you start exploring Docker, you'll learn that often to run a certain web-app, you'll need to run various services (like database, web-server etc) in different containers.
Deploying multiple containers is a lot easier with Docker Compose.
Emacs can be overwhelming to the new user. There is so much stuff inside Emacs. Take the various shells and terminal emulators inside Emacs. Why are there so many? What's the differences between them?
There are often moments in life where an opportunity arises in which you need to write something down and preserve it. This can be from attending a meeting with a client and having to write something important that was discussed during the meeting or the contact information to communicate with the client to even go as far as putting out your thoughts and ideas into words. Both require a medium on which you can write down something.With the world around us becoming fully influenced by technology and everything becoming digitized, gone are the days where a paper and pen was used. Rather, this is where note-taking applications come into the picture which allows you to keep notes of almost everything with your smartphones, either in the form of text or voice. Some even allow you to upload these to the cloud which gives you access to them in multiple devices.
Note-taking applications, however, are not equal in what they offer, and therefore, it is essential to choose the one that provides you with the most features. One such application that has gained a large following is Evernote and with that in mind, the topic of our discussion in this article is to see how one can use the note-taking application, Evernote, on Linux.
In a production environment, no matter how large or small your PostgreSQL database may be, regular back is an essential aspect of database management. In this article, you will learn how to backup and restore a PostgreSQL database.
We assume that you already have a working installation of the PostgreSQL database system. If not, read our following articles to install PostgreSQL on your Linux distribution.
For centuries, books have been the source of knowledge, providing people with happiness, wisdom, and entertainment. It is these simple pieces of paper that have been there supporting mankind during its hardest time. For most people, there is nothing more pleasing than creeping into the realm of the unknown with a book in hand. As George R.R Martin writes in his Game of Thrones novel, “a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”With the world stepping into the era of the digital age, technology has seen rapid growth in its development and this, in turn, has led to more and more things becoming digitized. One such evolution has also taken place in the world of knowledge is with the emergence of eReaders, devices that allow users to read their books digitally, many people have started preferring digital books over their print versions.
When invoked without arguments, the date command displays the current date and time. Depending on the options specified, the date would set the date and time or print it in a user-defined format. However, how do you get yesterdays with bash shell script? What about tomorrows day?The post Getting Yesterday's or Tomorrow's Day With Bash Shell Date Command on Linux / Unix appeared first on nixCraft.
Nano is a user-friendly text editor that provides an ease to the new users than other editors. Users can start work on Nano without getting any training. Nano text editor is not similar to the most popular vim editor. It doesn’t have fancy changing modes that have vim. It works on simple keyboard shortcut keys. So, just hold the Ctrl key and press any key with it to perform an action.
Any Linux distro is a collection of numerous packages. To keep all of them in order, a suitable package manager is a must. Depending on what type of package the distro uses, the package manager differs. In the case of distros using the RPM package, yum is the package manager. It’s available on CentOS, RHEL, and other RPM-based distros (Fedora, and OpenSUSE, etc.). However, it’s mostly used on CentOS and RHEL.
This video tutorial shows how to install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 (Minimal No GUI) on VMware Workstation step by step. This tutorial is also helpful to install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 on physical computer or laptop hardware.
Network management is a part of the job of a system administrator. Zabbix is a wonderful solution for monitoring and managing networks. This program is free and open-source software that comes with tons of features. Zabbix is used for monitoring networks, servers, applications, services, and even cloud resources. It also supports monitoring storage, databases, virtual machines, telephony, and a lot more.
Cinnamon is a trendy flavor of the Linux desktop. In simple terms, Cinnamon operates as an open-source desktop environment that is a driven part of GNOME. Installing Cinnamon on Arch Linux is comparatively convenient because it does not comprise any heavy programming. Cinnamon comes from the developing team of Linux Mint. Even a beginner can install Cinnamon on the Arch Linux server without any hassle. In terms of operability, it works on par with other desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE. The depository works at a smoother pace in Cinnamon, and it offers a more vibrant look by incorporating a user-friendly interface. This guide covers some features of the Cinnamon desktop, along with how to install this desktop in Arch Linux, for both beginners and professionals.
TeamViewer is a remote connection software that allows connections between multiple users of different systems through desktop sharing. It is a vital tool that allows many users to share videos, conferencing, and file transfers with other computers throughout the world. TeamViewer optimizes instant remote access and real-time support between connecting devices. An unlimited number of devices at once can connect through this program. This guide helps you to understand the needs of this application and provides its method of installation. Note that TeamViewer does not officially support Arch Linux. To install the TeamViewer software, you must go through the packaging. In this article, we will show you how to quickly establish TeamViewer in Arch Linux.
The Arch Linux users are well aware of the open-source software that is voguish by the name of GRUB. It is inherently a bootloader that administers the function of system booting. The programmers who use Arch Linux will implement GRUB as their primary bootloader. If you are not using GRUB, then every time you open the server for updating, it will refer you to use a bootloader or GRUB. It also encompasses a variant configuration packages that assist in the assurance of thorough system boot. Whenever you open your system of Arch Linux, it executes the operationality of GRUB to update and load the server. This guide shares the details of updating GRUB efficaciously on your operating system of Arch Linux. The step by step process will enable you to comprehend the commands of GRUB to use it on your server. This way, you can affirm that your GRUB is actively operating on your server to boot and update system packages.
Every program that has been brought into RAM and is all set to be directed towards CPU for execution is known as a process. Whenever you are working with an operating system of your choice, you will notice multiple processes running on it at a time. Some of these processes are triggered to start automatically as soon as you turn on your operating system, i.e., these processes are mandatory for your system to work properly. There are also some processes that you have to trigger manually upon system start.
At times, you may feel as though some unnecessary processes are running on your system, you might not need a process any longer, or a process may have started malfunctioning. In all of these situations, you will have to try to find a way of killing (or ending) the processes. You can kill a process in Linux either via the GUI or the CLI. This article explores some of the different ways in which to kill a process from the command line in Linux.
With technology progressing at such a rapid rate, this has led to the introduction of several applications and websites that allow interaction between people and easily lets them communicate with one another even if they are hundreds, thousands of meters apart. One such form of communication that has come into existence and become an integral part of people’s lives is email.
Before the advent of email, there was a heavy reliance on postal services which involved a lot of delay and uncertainty. With the introduction of email, the communication sector has undergone a huge change as now people can easily communicate with one another with just a click of a button. Emails have also become highly important in the business sector as many companies talk with their clients through this source of medium. Being cheap, fast, highly efficient as well as the most flexible and best source for communication in a professional manner, emails have greatly revolutionized the communication sector.
With emails having such a huge role in today’s market, it is, therefore, important to choose an email client that offers the best features and is easy to use. One great alternative is Mailspring, a cross-platform desktop email client, which will also be the topic of our discussion in this article.
Ubuntu is a Debian based operating system that has become one of the most popular Linux distributions available for desktop. Since it has a Linux kernel at its core, it follows the same code of conduct and public license as that of Linux and thus, is completely free to use and users are free to run, copy, distribute and develop its software. This makes it an extremely reliable and secure alternative to have and allows it to be less vulnerable to bugs and errors. Ubuntu is bundled with so many amazing features and it is no wonder why it has gained such a large following. One such feature that is greatly appreciated by all users is its customizable and extensible nature. Ubuntu is extremely easy to configure and tweak around with and this is a huge plus point as users want to be able to change their desktops to match their interests. There are hundreds of Linux themes available out there and the figure keeps on increasing.
A popular choice among users is the Papirus Icon Theme, a polished and well-designed theme that is available on several desktop environments including Unity, GNOME, Cinnamon, XFCE, KDE, and so on.
Valve has released Proton 5.13-1 for testing, this compatibility layer for Steam Play brings with it many advancements for getting more Windows games working on Linux.
This is the first proper public release of Proton since 5.0-9 back in June, while they also had 5.0-10 left in testing back in July so no doubt this will be very exciting for fans of Proton. If you're not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page.
Before getting started, be aware this comes with a known issue with controllers / gamepads where hotplugging is currently broken in some titles. Apart from that, it sounds like a huge release including lots of new playable titles like: Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, DEATH STRANDING, Sea of Thieves, Age of Empires III, Call of Duty: WWII, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and others.
The Wine-based Proton development has been disappointingly quiet in recent weeks but fortunately it's alive and ticking with today's Proton 5.13-1 release for powering Valve's Steam Play to run many modern Windows games gracefully on Linux.
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Red Dead Redemption 2 Horizon Zero Dawn DEATH STRANDING Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes Final Fantasy XV Sea of Thieves Star Wars: Battlefront II Call of Duty: WWII Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Asssassin's Creed: Rogue Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag South Park: The Fractured But Whole DiRT Rally 2 Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Age of Empires III Dragon Quest Builders 2 Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation Tron 2.0 AO Tennis 2 Fight'N Rage Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries
On the Linux gaming front, news from the Steam Proton team probably hasn’t been as frequent as we’d like. Thankfully, the wizards at Wine and Valve just released a fantastic update to Proton (version 5.13), the built-in tool that seamlessly allows Windows-only Steam games to run on Linux. And said update brings a bunch of sought-after AAA games to the Linux crowd including Horizon Zero Dawn, Microsoft’s Sea of Thieves and Death Stranding.
Binogure Studio, developer of City Game Studio have released their casual Zuma-like marble shooter and it seems like another lovely little coffee-break game.
With a wonderfully simple idea, you just need to shoot marbles from your little cannon towards matching colours to make combinations that set off chain-reactions, so it works very much like a match-3 puzzler, with everything gradually moving along the snake-like path and you need to remove them all before the snake at the end gobbles them all up.
While the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 will not support the Linux desktop, it is at least confirmed to be launching on Stadia same-day as other platforms on November 19.
This gives Linux gamers another way to play, with Stadia getting more huge upcoming games, as on Linux all you need is a Chromium browser and a mouse or gamepad hooked up. If your country is in the supported list for Stadia, that is. Google has still yet to announce wider support for the game streaming service.
Stadia getting probably one of, if not the biggest release this year day and date with other platforms with Cyberpunk 2077 is pretty huge news and perhaps a show of how serious Google are about bringing more people and more games over to it.
While the actual release is a while away and it's still in development, Adventure4Life Studios have put up a demo of their comedy point and click adventure Plot of the Druid.
Sounds like it's going to be a completely ridiculous game too, inspired by Simon the Sorcerer, Discworld and Harry Potter with an attempt at sarcastic British humour where you harness the power of nature to solve problems. There will be party crashing, wood spirits with hangovers, you get to avoid awkward social situations by turning into a small furry creature and plenty more.
Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, the very cool turn-based strategy game from Bulwark Studios and Kasedo Games is worth a look this weekend.
They've just announced that they've put up a Complete Collection bundle, so if you were interested in picking it up you can buy it as one big bundle of the base game plus the DLC. Not only that though, you can now try before you buy as it's on a Steam Free Weekend - this means you can download and play for free and it's also on a big discount so if you decide you like it you can grab it cheaps.
Valve are trying to communicate a little more now, and they've announced some major changes for Dota 2 along with info on more to come. Here's some highlights of what's live and what's coming.
A new season has arrived that runs until the beginning of December 2020, and with it plenty of changes.
Firstly, there's a new Autumnal Treasure 2020 up that can be purchased with Shards, the in-game Dota 2 currency. Valve is planned to have a new seasonal treasure up every 3 months, with the next coming on December 1.
After being in development for some time, Zombie Panic! Source has the huge 3.1 release pushed out which brings with it the official Linux support.
What actually is it? Zombie Panic! Source is a cooperative, survival-horror first-person-shooter. Think of it like a dedicated infection-mode game. Most players start off as humans, while a few Zombies trying to take them down and infect them and have it spread. Two opposing teams, with very different play-styles.
So why did this upgrade take so long? As time went on and they attempted to do a major code rewrite to get around major issues, they realized how "awful" some parts of the game functioned and so they decided to blitz through it all and ship out a much bigger and better upgrade overall. They've said now this is out, they will hopefully go back to more regular updates.
We’ve just released version 1.8.2 of our developer tool, KD Reports. KD Reports generates printable and exportable reports from code and from XML descriptions. Reports may contain text paragraphs, tables, headlines, charts, headers and footers and more. Version 1.8.2 is planned to be the final release in the 1.8 series of KD Reports.
KD Reports 1.8.2 is a minor release, with the main purpose of cleaning up any last remaining small issues for people who want to keep using Qt 4. Version 1.9 will not support Qt 4. Additionally, 1.8.2 comes with two fixes: fix compiling against a Qt namespace build and fix static linking examples and unittests in the CMake buildsystem. Finally, we made a few small improvements to the buildsystem.
This article will cover some of the most popular GTK3 themes available for Linux. If you don’t like the default look and feel of your GNOME based Linux distribution, you can use these themes to give a new flavor to your desktop.
To change GTK3 themes in your system, you may need to install the “GNOME Tweaks” app from the package manager of your Linux distribution. Maintaining and continuously updating GTK3 themes can be a difficult task for developers, as the GNOME API is ever changing. The new GNOME Shell desktop environment doesn’t encourage third party themes. However, third party themes are still being developed, though their numbers have certainly declined over the years.
Looking for an XMPP Jabber client for Linux? CoyIM is a free open-source GTK+ client that focus on safety and security.
CoyIM is written in Go programming language with GTK+ framework. It works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. The chat client has built-in support for Tor, OTR and TLS.
The Tor support allows users to become anonymous while chatting, OTR makes end-to-end encryption of communication possible, and TLS adds another layer of encryption for the communication with chat servers.
Back in April I wrote a Trip Report of the last major Endless OS Beta release. It was fun! I use Endless OS every day and have a very soft spot for it after Product Managing it for a couple of rewarding yet high stress years. Now the team has released their first beta of the 3.9 release series. If I was still there this is the sort of thing the team would get in a blizzard of Google Docs and Phabricator tickets. Sadly for them open source means they don’t get to escape my opinions that easily.
I’m going to mention again, because I’ve recently had to sit through a couple of excruciating update experiences in macOS, Windows and Manjaro that image based update experiences like those used by Endless, Fedora Silverblue and Chrome OS are just plain better. Aside from that the most important thing to note is that this comes with the new 3.38 GNOME release so it inherits all the improvements from that, although many of the app improvements will have already come through to users directly through Flathub. Now GNOME is released software, but an operating system isn’t just GNOME, it’s a whole thing so you should really remember that this is a beta, which means that the team doesn’t think this is finished yet. I’m sure they’re aware of some or all of the comments I’m making below - this is intended to be helpful, to let them know what people find useful, or would like them to prioritise improving.
Parrot OS was initially released on 10th April 2013. It has now grown to become one of the most popular penetration testing distros in the arena. So, we asked the Parrot Dev Team some interesting questions and got some interesting answers. Here’s what NONG HOANG Tu, aka @dmknght, ââ¬â¹one of the developers, had to say...
This Commodore 64 retro computer case plus openSUSE Linux with a little mix of DIY is a perfect mixture of Linux and vintage tech enthusiasm with a dash of my almost unhealthy obsession of openSUSE Linux. It just all comes together here.
I have often heard from some people that standards aren’t fun or standards restrict too much. I think this idea is rather absurd as it is the “restriction” of standards that give us the framework to support the freedom to create new and interesting things. Everything from this “Modern” Commodore 64 case to house standard components is cost effective because of the standard interfaces. I think we can see evidence of this everywhere. This can be everything from programming languages to graphical widget toolkits. Not to say that standards need to be static but having a solid foundation from which to build allows for wonderful and interesting creations. The Commodore 64 Retro Case is just one example of it.
Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster" operating system series, Redo Rescue 3.0 is a major release that introduces UEFI Secure Boot support, thus making the backup and recovery distribution compatible with even more computers and hardware.
Due to the major upgrade to a newer Debian GNU/Linux branch, Redo Rescue now includes more recent binaries of the Partclone open-source partition cloning and restore utility, as well as for all the other included tools.
On top of that, Redo Rescue now features a beautiful new GRUB bootloader theme with dynamic screen layout and the initial implementation of multi-language support through a new language selection menu.
The Debian Janitor is an automated system that commits fixes for (minor) issues in Debian packages that can be fixed by software. It gradually started proposing merges in early December. The first set of changes sent out ran lintian-brush on sid packages maintained in Git. This post is part of a series about the progress of the Janitor.
Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS.
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a fully automated Kubernetes cluster service on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Ubuntu is a popular and proven operating system for both virtual machine and containerized cloud computing. Canonical (the creator and primary maintainer of Ubuntu) is an Amazon partner and works with the EKS team to provide an optimized Ubuntu Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for running Kubernetes on AWS. EKS-optimized Ubuntu AMIs give you the familiarity and consistency of using Ubuntu, optimized for performance and security on EKS clusters.
Ubuntu optimized AMIs for Amazon EKS and Kubernetes versions 1.17 and 1.18 are now available. These images combine the Ubuntu OS with Canonical’s distribution of upstream Kubernetes that automates K8s deployment and operations. In addition to using a slimmed-down, minimal image these images take advantage of a custom kernel that is jointly developed with AWS.
If you’re on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and you’ve been waiting for the prompt that lets you upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS you can relax: it’s rolling out
Confused? I imagine a lot of people reading this post will be. So I’ll recap: an Ubuntu LTS to LTS upgrade is only “officially” possible once the first point release to the latest LTS has gone live.
But until it does you can’t upgrade one LTS to the new LTS., not without diving into the command line.
Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS was released in July. In theory, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS users should’ve started to see the “there’s a newer version of Ubuntu” upgrade prompt box on their desktops from this date onwards.
The term "open source" was coined in 1998 at a strategy session held by Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI maintains the Open Source Definition (OSD), which places mandates on the distribution terms of any software that claims to be open source. The OSI also maintains a curated list of official open source licenses that meet these guidelines.
The OSD gives a clear definition of what open source software is, but doesn't provide much insight into how the adoption of open source affects a company's ability to build and deliver products or services that people want and need. Stated another way, there's still tremendous debate about the best ways to build a business based on open source.
This week, open and equitable access to the law got a bit closer. For many years, EFF, along with co-counsel at Fenwick & West and attorney David Halperin, has defended Public.Resource.Org in its quest to improve public access to the law — including standards, like the National Electrical Code, that legislators and agencies have made into binding regulations. In two companion lawsuits, six standards development organizations sued Public Resource in 2013 for posting standards online. They accused Public Resource of copyright infringement and demanded the right to keep the law behind paywalls.
Yesterday, three of those organizations dropped their suit. The American Educational Research Association (AERA), the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), and the American Psychological Association (APA) publish a standard for writing and administering tests. The standard is widely used in education and employment contexts, and several U.S. federal and state government agencies have incorporated it into their laws.
In the last few weeks, we had a close look at the how the situation around COVID-19 is panning out. Unfortunately, things are not moving in a direction where we’d feel confident to hold next year’s conference as an in-person event in Dublin.
In this episode, I started a new project to build a different kind of social network. This social network will contain a max number of connections to encourage thoughtful choice when growing your personal network. We talked MVP features and put in the basics of a Django app.
I had a wild thought to build a social network with a capped number of connection in the hope that users would choice their connections based on people that they really care about. To get that idea out of my head, I started a social network repo.
I have been trying to get an Eloquent model from the database but keep getting into BadMethodCallExceptionMethod[find] does not exist.
This one if a fairly common issue that shows up among new Laravel developers.
A lot of people have been trying to update their .env file just to see that when they refresh their application, the .env config values are not showing up.
And what’s more interesting is that quite often, this will show up after you upgrade your Laravel version.
Adding new columns to your Laravel migrations is a common thing. Applications are meant to be scalable which means that adding new features develops your application further.
Very often, new Laravel developers need to run their migrations but they don’t make sure that migrations can rollback and migrate multiple times without breaking anything.
While that’s not our focus, I think it was important to state that before we head into our problem.
The following is a common issue that new Laravel developers will try to do when they want to add a new column to an existing table.
Unfortunately, many new Laravel developers don’t realize this until they put their code in production, and something happens so they lose their data.
Laravel does not offer a database backup as part of their core functionality so new Laravel developers don’t get to work with that while reading Laravel articles or building a Laravel application.
Today, it becomes an increasingly important thing to store and preserve your backup data in case you ever need to use it.
Common mistakes new Laravel developers do is to go to phpmyadmin and try to run this export manually. While this will still work, it is not the best practice because sometimes you won’t be there to make the backup, and your users already generated new data.
Your Laravel application will probably have an ability to communicate with your users through emails.
There are many hurdles and challenges when coding an email template for Laravel. The most time-consuming thing is making sure that your email template works well and looks the way you expected it to look like.
Obviously you could register a new Gmail account and create an app with Gmail. That would give you real email delivery that you can check on your phone for example.
The problem here is if you are working with a real database and you can’t afford to send out test emails to your real users. If this is what’s bugging you then I have some good news for you.
Javascript is a scripting or programming language of the web. Strings are an important part of the variables in any programming language. We often need to manipulate string according to our needs. In this article, we will talk about the javascript’s split string method which is used to split the string according to our needs. So, let’s take a look at what is a string and what does split string method do.
Javascript is a scripting or programming language of the web. Strings are an important part of the variables in any programming language. We often need to manipulate or extract some specific string according to our needs. You must have seen it often at a lot of websites that on a click of a button or something the text got changed. How can we find and replace some specific words in a long paragraph in javascript? Do we have to change all the code? Of course not, we have a replace() method in javascript to replace the substring with a new provided string. So, let’s take a look at what is a string and how can we replace a substring with another string.
What bothers me most about the region is its hubris. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hear someone tell me that northern California is the best place to live and work anywhere in the world, though with wildfires and the pandemic their voices aren’t as loud or as strident as they once were. The local daily paper, The Press Democrat, continually tries to cheer up its readers, instill them with hope (often false) and encourage them to buy, sell, consume and join the chorus of yeah sayers.€ The San Francisco Chronicle€ does much the same thing. So I understand Alexander Tarr’s sentiments and I laud him for his honesty.
Tarr teaches at Worcester State University in Massachusetts. He and his co-author, Rachel Brahinsky, who once wrote for the€ San Francisco Bay Guardian€ and who teaches at the University of San Francisco, have written an honest book about a region often dishonest about itself, which extends over ten counties, at last count, and that includes Contra Costa, Marin, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Santa Cruz and San Francisco, all of them connected by economics, politics and culture, and increasingly challenging to navigate by car, mass transit and on foot.
Wendy Carlos would hate the way I’ve written about her. For decades, the pioneering electronic music composer has deflected suggestions that her identity as a transgender woman has any bearing on the inventive, playful, and often surreal electronic music she has made on the instrument she helped develop, the synthesizer. She worked with Robert Moog closely and rigorously during the development of early commercial synths; she’s in part responsible for the way these now ubiquitous machines sound and feel, helping usher in the synthesizer’s transformation from a huge, awkward computer housed in academic laboratories to a lithe, flexible instrument that plays like a futuristic piano.
In the 1980s, more than 100 years after Babbage’s death, Allan Broomley, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, took interest in the original drawings of the Babbage Engine at the Science Museum Library in London. His studies caught the attention of the Museum’s then Curator of Computing, Doron Swade, who led the construction of the Difference Engine 2 calculating section from 1985-1991. Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, then commissioned the construction of the printing section of the engine. The first complete version of the Difference Engine 2 was finally completed in 2002,[9] and it works just as Babbage had designed. After the successful completion of the first Difference Engine 2, Myhrvold also funded the construction of its clone, which was completed in 2008.
Today, the original Difference Engine 2 is on display at the Science Museum in London, and its clone is sitting inside Intellectual Ventures in Seattle. Babbage’s pioneering work in automatic computing has become the foundation of the subsequent computer technologies that were developed over time. He may never have seen his masterpiece in its full glory, but the Babbage Engine is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant and founding inventions in the history of computer technology.
New York court officials have begun a review of recent cases handled by a State Supreme Court judge forced to retire this summer because of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.
The state’s chief administrative judge, Lawrence Marks, said the review would include all decisions or rulings signed by ShawnDya Simpson while she was on medical leave — dozens of Civil Court matters from Sep. 1, 2019 to Jan. 8, 2020. Simpson, 54, did not receive a formal Alzheimer’s diagnosis until early 2020, and her retirement was not announced until late July this year.
As the U.S. focuses on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings, another story out this week may have flown under the radar. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters went public with a story about his first wife’s near-death experience from a miscarriage that sounded familiar to people who research Catholic hospitals. When his wife, Heidi, was four months pregnant in the 1980s, her water broke, meaning the fetus could not survive. The hospital sent her home twice to wait for a miscarriage. On the third day, as her health deteriorated, her doctor warned she could lose her uterus or die if she didn’t have an abortion soon. But the hospital’s policy banned abortion and its board denied the doctor’s request for an exception.
Flint, Michigan, made headlines, starting in 2015, when 5 percent of the city’s young children tested high for the toxic metal lead in their blood. As the story unfolded, it became clear that the children of Flint were victims of a massive failure of government — really a century-long failure to control the lead industry and the secondary industries that put lead into products for public consumption (gasoline, batteries, water pipes, paint, even some cosmetics, spices and glazes on pottery for cooking). The Trump administration is compounding and extending that failure.
The Great Barrington Declaration. Sounds heavy, yeah? Thunder of drums, hushed silence, and behold: A jagged stack of cruelty passing itself off as science that claims “herd immunity” is the way to get out from under the grinding crisis of COVID-19. In truth, it sounds like just more preposterous ooze from the primordial swamp of the far right, but for the fact that the White House has embraced it as the Trump administration’s defining COVID policy.
More evidence has emerged showing that the Trump administration provided a profoundly different outlook to the public about the possible effects of the coronavirus pandemic than it did behind closed doors in the weeks leading up to.
At 7:47 a.m. on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, Dr. Jay Butler pounded out a grim email to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Butler, then the head of the agency’s coronavirus response, and his team had been trying to craft guidance to help Americans return safely to worship amid worries that two of its greatest comforts — the chanting of prayers and singing of hymns — could launch a deadly virus into the air with each breath.
"Our best chance of staying safe is to ensure a Covid-19 vaccine is available for all as a common good."
In responding to a question on these new regulations, the prime minister erred in stating that the rule-of-six limit on gatherings did not apply to people meeting outdoors. “It is a six in a home or in hospitality but not six outside.” The government’s official guidance stated something rather different. “When meeting friends and family you do not live with (or have formed a support bubble with) you must not meet in a group of more than 6, indoors or outdoors.” This would be “against the law and the police will have the powers to enforce these legal limits, including to issue fines (fixed penalty notices) of €£200, doubling for further breaches up to a maximum of €£6,400.” Stiff consequences tend to follow from such misunderstandings.
Having fallen into his own trap, the prime minister had to concede his error. “Apologies,” he tweeted, “I misspoke today.” Having corrected himself on the regulations limiting such socialising both indoors and out, he tried to wave the much tattered flag of patriotic encouragement. “This is vital to control the spread of coronavirus and keep everyone safe. If you are in a high risk area, please continue to follow the guidelines from local authorities.” But evidently be wary of what the prime minister tells you.
If Donald trump can be said to believe in anything besides his own enrichment, it is the power of positive thinking. His family worshipped at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York, whose pep-talking preacher Norman Vincent Peale came up with the positive-thinking creed. Trump married two of his wives—Ivana Trump and Marla Maples—in the church; his parents’ funerals were also held there. It’s this unassailable faith in boosterism that has led him to respond to his diagnosis of Covid-19 with a narrative about how he’s learned valuable lessons that will make him an even better president.
As coronavirus cases increase across much of the United States, the Trump administration has reportedly adopted a policy of deliberately letting the virus infect much of the U.S. population in order to attain “herd immunity” — despite warnings from the World Health Organization against such an approach. We host a debate on the contentious issue of herd immunity and how best to confront the virus with two Harvard medical experts: epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University and one of the lead signatories of the controversial Great Barrington Declaration arguing for an easing of lockdowns, and Dr. Abraar Karan, an internal medicine doctor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and at Harvard Medical School who has worked on the COVID-19 public health response in Massachusetts since February.
"Totally Under Control" is a 123-minute indictment of the Trump administration's disastrous mishandling of this pandemic, which is exactly what a person expects from an Alex Gibney documentary. No fan of this administration, Gibney has had an especially prolific 365 days thanks to this administration's bungling; this is his third Trump-related documentary released since last November, after "Citizen K," and HBO's "Agents of Chaos."
Norwegian software-maker Vivaldi has emitted an update to its eponymous browser, featuring some additional configuration and reload options as well as a ton of retro-pixelled gaming goodness.
The company is keen that users take an occasional break from the web, but even the most enlightened boss might be a little alarmed at Vivaldia turning up on the desktop and Android versions of the browser.
Vivaldi is the latest to pop a bit of entertainment into the code of a browser. edge://surf will send a surfer avatar down the screen of Microsoft's Chromium browser. vivaldi://game will similarly fire up the pixels with some horizontal scrolling 80s-inspired arcade action.
Microsoft is no stranger to using Windows and other software to promote more of its own apps and services. The latest way the company is doing this is via Edge.
Accusations of using its products as an advertising tool or as a means of forcing products onto users are nothing new for the Windows maker, and the company's latest move with Edge does nothing to shake them off. The browser has been found to install Microsoft Office web apps without asking for permission.
JACK2 1.9.15 released on Thursday as the newest version of this professional-minded sound server focused on real-time, low-latency connections.
JACK2 1.9.15 brings a number of bug fixes, improvements to various JACK tools, deprecates JACK-Session, and makes other improvements. JACK1 continues to be in a bug-fix mode while JACK2 continues advancing slowly and incorporating all of its functionality.
After only one public Git commit this year, penguinstas think: Fork it, we don't need Cupertino. The official public repository for CUPS, an Apple open-source project widely used for printing on Linux, is all-but dormant since the lead developer left Apple at the end of 2019.
Intel and Google have published advisories about what they say are high-severity bugs in the Bluetooth stack used in the Linux kernel, with kernels up to 5.8.15 affected.
A total of 809 ransomware attacks have taken place in the last 12 months, according to DarkTracer, a company that develops a dark web intelligence platform.
Malicious attackers appear to have used the Windows SunCrypt ransomware to attack the Texas operations of global steel conglomerate JSW Steel, and have leaked a single company document on the dark web, apparently one which was stolen during the attack.
Barnes & Noble, the biggest retail bookseller in the US, appears to have been hit by a cyber attack and been forced to take down parts of its network.
Feeling cool? Itching to show off your hip moves at the nearest discotheque, bar, or other entertainment venue? In Moscow, according to new executive orders issued by Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, you’ll need to register a telephone number with the city by scanning a QR code or sending a text message to 7377 in order to strut your stuff between the hours of 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.
The media called Jesse Harvey a “recovery advocate.” To others, he was “Narcan Jesus.”
In 2016, Harvey founded Journey House Recovery, a non-profit that today operates four low barrier, peer-run recovery houses in Southern and Central Maine. In 2018, Harvey formed Church of Safe Injection because “other churches…aren’t interested in helping people who use drugs.” The church is a workaround and a protest. It is an attempt to find loophole to distribute clean hypodermic needles and naloxone, the medication used to counteract opioid overdoses. It’s also a political challenge to the criminalization of the opioid epidemic. Now with five branches in as many states, its success is further support for what the approximately 120 supervised injections sites operating across the world have already proven: harm reduction works.
Last month, this blog looked at the continuing repercussions of the decision by the EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), to strike down the Privacy Shield framework that legalizes most flows of personal information from the EU to the US. The privacy activist who brought the original case against Facebook some seven years ago, Max Schrems, is still fighting to get the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) to investigate whether Facebook complies with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As Privacy News Online wrote, instead of responding to Schrems’s original complaint, the DPC has opened up a second investigation – one, moreover, that is largely irrelevant, for reasons explained last month. Schrems’ organization noyb.eu has now taken further legal action against the DPC, and has been granted a judicial review into the DPC’s actions by the Irish High Court. Schrems hopes the hearing will take place by the end of the year, and says: “The DPC has already pledged to the Court in 2015 that it will swiftly decide. It seems like we need a clear judgment to force the DPC to do its job.”
Developed in cooperation with the information and security technology company Virian, the system tested is based on video analytics. It can determine how many people are on the move in the key outdoor spaces at different times of the day. Test monitoring was carried out in August at Helsinki's Senate Square and in September at Citizen's Square.
[...]
The system that was piloted was developed and implemented by Viria's subsidiaries Viria Security Oy and Aureolis Oy.
The company earlier said it saw no evidence of a security breach or [cr]ack, but was investigating internal causes for the problems. San Francisco-based Twitter had said on its status website it was looking into an “irregularity” with its APIs, the technology that lets different software systems interact with each other.
Twitter has been experiencing an outage that began in the early evening on Thursday, with some users reporting problems sending tweets and refreshing their timelines starting shortly after 5:30PM ET. Just after 7PM ET, tweets began to cross our timelines, and things may be returning to normal.
A day after it blocked the posting of an article about alleged shady doings by the son of Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden, the social media site Twitter has apparently been hit by an outage.
Yesterday was certainly an interesting day in the content moderation realm. Early in the morning the NY Post released a story that I won't link to, mainly because it's hot garbage. If you want a concise, non-hyperbolic, and thorough (and non-partisan) analysis of why the story is problematic, I suggest reading Thomas Rid's analysis, which highlights the many questions the story raises, and why it should not be reported on until certain details are confirmed.
On Thursday, October 15, the European Union imposed sanctions against six senior Russian officials and one scientific research institute in response to the use of a Novichok-type nerve agent to poison opposition figure Alexey Navalny. The new sanctions were announced in the latest volume of the Official Journal of the European Union. The United Kingdom, which is not an EU member state, opted to impose similar sanctions, as well. Here’s what you need to know about who’s on sanctions list and how the EU made this decision.
Moscow considers the sanctions that Europe has introduced against a number of Russian officials in response to the poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny a “deliberately unfriendly gesture towards Russia,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday, October 15.
The European Union has added Russian oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin to its Libya sanctions list due to his ties to and support of the Wagner Group private military company (PMC), reports the latest volume of the Official Journal of the European Union.
We must work to end the United States’ role in existing conflicts, repeal the AUMFs, return the powers of warmaking to Congress, and slash the Pentagon budget.
Look, for example, at the recent “normalization” of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel he helped to broker, which has set the stage for yet another surge in American arms exports. To hear Trump and his supporters tell it, he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the deal, dubbed “the Abraham Accords.” In fact, using it, he was eager to brand himself as “Donald Trump, peacemaker” in advance of the November election. This, believe me, was absurd on the face of it. Until the pandemic swept everything in the White House away, it was just another day in Trump World and another example of the president’s penchant for exploiting foreign and military policy for his own domestic political gain.
Peace talks between the Taliban, Mujaheddin, Afghan Government and US have been slowly unfolding over the last 2 years. Mainly taking place in the city of Doha, Qatar, the talks consisted predominantly of older male leaders who have been trying to kill one another for the last 30 years. The Taliban almost certainly have the upper hand, as after 19 years of fighting 40 of the richest nations on the planet, they now control at least two thirds of the country’s population, claim to have an endless supply of suicide bombers, and have most recently managed to secure a controversial deal with the US for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners. All along the Taliban have been confident of the long game despite the US initial 2001 promise to defeat the Taliban.
Most ordinary Afghans hold out little hope for the peace talks, accusing the negotiators of being disingenuous. Kabul resident 21-year-old Naima says:
Biden has recently stated that under his leadership he would end U.S. support for Saudi military intervention in Yemen, a move supported by Congress, and reassess the current close U.S.-Saudi relationship.
Reinoehl’s killing has come under new scrutiny in recent days after a pair of investigations questioned whether law enforcement officers identified themselves or did actually attempt to arrest Reinoehl before firing dozens of shots at him, as well as whether Reinoehl in fact “produced a firearm” as claimed in September by Attorney General Bill Barr, who went out of his way to “applaud” federal agents for having “this violent agitator removed.” Multiple witnesses told reporters the officers did not identify themselves and started firing at Reinoehl as soon as they rolled up in two SUVs outside an apartment building in Lacy, Washington, where Reinoehl was hiding out. After he was killed, investigators reportedly found a handgun still in Reinoehl’s pocket, and the officers on the scene have now given differing accounts as to whether he raised the gun, with two of them saying that he did not, according to The New York Times.
President Donald Trump made alarming remarks on Thursday regarding the police-perpetrated killing of Michael Forest Reinoehl in early September, suggesting to a crowd of supporters that his death was premeditated.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called on his country's elite fighting troops to focus on "preparing for war" during an inspection of the People's Liberation Army Marine Corps on Tuesday.
From leading the market 20 years ago the big fossil fuels companies are plunging in value, as investors turn to renewables.
It’s February 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have just been inaugurated, a new cabinet’s been sworn in, and Democrats have reclaimed their majority in the US Senate. There’s a palpable sense of relief in the air, but also a real sense of urgency, because a legislative fight is already underway over a green stimulus bill. Leadership didn’t give activists everything they wanted, but the bill would create millions of jobs and prevent a recession while also scaling up renewable energy and building the clean energy economy of the future. It would represent a massive step forward for climate justice, which is why Exxon Mobil and Chevron are running ads on the airwaves of newly elected freshman members in swing districts. In Pennsylvania, the ads accuse Democrats of destroying fracking jobs. Elsewhere, they say Democrats will raise the price of gas and the cost of household plastics. All of which will stack on top of the predictable Fox News onslaught heralding the end of meat, the internal combustion engine, airplane travel, and freedom.
Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard Law’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, warned that if the clean energy rule case made it to the Supreme Court, industry briefings on the power plant rule could lead to questions on a court precedent that established the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Biden’s choice for Treasury Secretary is arguably among his most important climate policy decisions.
Rather than contributing to an environment in which the words "Green New Deal" are treated as a political liability, good journalism should assess both candidates' plans on their merits and inform the public accordingly.
Even the largest companies in the industry appear€ to have few plans to properly clean up and plug oil and gas wells after the wells stop producing — despite being legally required to do so. While the bankruptcy process could be an opportunity to hold accountable either these firms, or the firms acquiring the assets via bankruptcy, it instead has offered more opportunities for companies to walk away from cleanup responsibilities — while often rewarding the same executives who bankrupted€ them.€
Western Organization of Resource Councils, Democracy Forward Sue to Halt All NCC Activity Until Trump Administration Complies with Federal Transparency Law
Great Falls, MT€
"Congress should immediately pass their legislation, which will boost the economy and save lives," said Nancy Altman of Social Security Works.
"We are ensuring mail services will be immediately restored," said Montana's Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock.€
The overall and core Consumer Price Index (CPI) both rose 0.2 percent in September, driven in large part by an extraordinary 6.7 percent jump in the price of used cars. The overall index is now up 1.4 percent from its year-ago level, while the core index is up 1.7 percent.
The most striking feature in the September price data is the return of pandemic price patterns in several hard-hit sectors. For example, hotel prices fell 0.5 percent in September, after sharp price rises in the prior three months. Hotel prices fell 16.7 percent between February and May. They are now 15.0 percent below year-ago levels.
"It's really important that we reinstate some of the lost benefits" that were extended as part of the CARES Act, one researcher said.€
"Good time to remember that a number of free market economists defend child labor as being a good thing."
Russian banks and microfinance organizations have never had more overdue loans than they do right now: 12.6 million. According to new figures released by the National Association of Professional Collection Agencies and analysts at Equifax, the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has led to the credit boom. The number of loans in Russia at least 90 days overdue is 12.5 percent higher now than at this time last year, and more and more loans go unpaid every day, raising the total by 80,000–500,000 every month.€
Instead of helping Trump's chances of electoral victory, Republicans appear to be jockeying to "restrain a Biden administration on federal spending."
Whatever you think about her, Ksenia Sobchak is one of the most recognizable women in Russian society today. The daughter of Vladimir Putin’s mentor, a television celebrity, a sometimes politician, and a wealthy business owner, Sobchak has managed to remain present in both Russia’s opposition and the national mainstream, mixing activism, journalism, and campaigning in ways that few others can. According to a new investigative report written by Olga Churakova and Mikhail Rubin, published by the website Proekt, perhaps the one constant in Sobchak’s career is her capacity to profit from her public prominence and fortuitous parentage. Meduza summarizes the report’s key findings below.
President of Kyrgyzstan Sooronbay Jeenbekov has announced his resignation. In a statement issued on the afternoon of Thursday, October 15, he said the main reason for his resignation was fear that the confrontation between protesters and law enforcement agencies could escalate to the point that the latter would use weapons. “I am not holding on to power. I don’t want to remain in the history of Kyrgyzstan as a president who shed blood and shot at his own citizens,” Jeenbekov said. In light of Jeenbekov stepping down, the parliament’s speaker Kanabet Isayev — who was elected to this role just two days ago — has become acting president.
Fast forward one year to July 2020 and the Justice Department drops a bombshell.
Commonwealth Edison, the largest electric utility in Illinois, will pay $200 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into a years-long bribery scheme.
No area in the world, including in Israel, is more diversely Jewish than Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway. Along its roughly five-mile course from Prospect Park to Coney Island live Jewish communities with roots in the Caucasus, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. People speak English, Yiddish, and Hebrew—but also half a dozen forms of Arabic (both Jewish and non-Jewish varieties), Russian, Persian, Azeri, and Uzbek. Some speak smaller, endangered Jewish languages such as Juhuri, Bukhori, Ladino, and Judeo-Shirazi. Many are refugees, or the children or grandchildren of refugees—survivors of persecution, displacement, and in some cases genocide. Compared to most American Jews, they are much more religiously and communally engaged, following many different traditions and leaders.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post published a series of stories on Tuesday surrounding alleged emails between Hunter Biden and officials connected with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which the outlet obtained from a source who met multiple times over the last year with an individual whom the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned as an active agent of Russia.
White-tailed deer, and bears How many are out there On shoulders of highways Shredded to pieces by cars
Dead birds litter boulevards
ProPublica, in partnership with The Guardian, is today releasing a tracker for mail-in ballots in battleground states.
An unprecedented number of Americans are voting by mail this year to avoid COVID-19 risk. Democrats have said they’re more likely to vote by mail while Republicans say they’re more likely to vote in person. With postal delays, rejected ballots and a dearth of funding, the process isn’t always smooth — ballots can be rejected for multiple reasons, and due to court challenges election rules are changing even while voting is underway. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and other Republican officials have spent the last months casting doubt on the mail-in voting process, likely paving the way for additional legal battles during the vote count.
"Let me be clear: unofficial, unauthorized ballot drop boxes are not permitted by state law," said California's secretary of state.
From the Salem witch hunt to conspirator-in-chief Donald Trump
Calls for #NBCblackout on Thursday night after network accused of "caving to the Trumpian impulses the network helped hone."
The Trump presidency has overturned many norms of democracy, but one of his most dangerous moves is the weaponization of the powers of government against his political opponents. He’s never shied away from talk of it—as the ubiquitous chants of “Lock her up” at his 2016 rallies made clear—but as the 2020 election nears, Trump’s tolerance for democratic checks on his power has eroded dramatically, and he has openly€ pressured his cabinet members to use the levers of state power to target his opponents and aid his re-election.
Of course there will be Trump die-hards wailing and gnashing their teeth over that prediction, but just ask yourself: Do you really need or want another presidential debate? The last one was a disaster. The president was rude, ignored the debate rules, interrupted both Biden and the moderator over a hundred times and should have been muted — which I’m sure much of the audience would have appreciated.
Truth is there probably won’t be a second debate thanks to Trump’s self-inflicted Covid-19 infection. Whining that “they cut you off whenever they want” he’s refusing to abide by the€ Commission on Presidential Debates€ medically prudent decision to hold a virtual debate to avoid exposing staff, the moderator, and Biden to potentially lethal Covid-19.
Americans have never been comfortable with sex. The notion of sex as a sin, something forbidden, has been an aspect of American social life since the country’s founding four centuries ago. The Puritan minister, Samuel Willard (1640-1707), once observed, “… in nothing doth the raging power of original sin more discover itself … than in the ungoverned exorbitancy of fleshly lust.”
The Puritan’s moralistic legacy drags on. In the last two centuries, the nation witnessed four “culture wars” – in the 1840s, accompanying the Second Awakening; in the 1910s, culminating in Prohibition; in the 1950s, reflecting Cold War McCarthyism; and in the 1970s, a rejection of 1960s counterculture.
We air highlights from the second day of questioning of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who faced eight hours of questions on Wednesday about her views on issues ranging from climate change to voting rights to gay marriage and abortion, as Republicans race to confirm her ahead of the election and secure a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court for conservatives.
Is it time to bid farewell to Roe v. Wade? If Amy Coney Barrett is seated on the Supreme Court, as seems likely, she will be the sixth anti-abortion justice. That means John Roberts’s respect for precedent, which last summer led him to strike down restrictions on clinics because they were identical to those the court struck down in 2016, won’t matter. He can play the dignified centrist while the other five tip Roe into the grave. Of course, they might leave it technically in force while approving every restriction that crosses their desks. That would be the politically clever thing to do, because it would keep anti-abortion voters riled up while lulling into complacency the many pro-choicers who don’t read beyond the headlines. “Court Upholds Roe” will be what they take in, not “Court OKs Barbecuing Louisiana Abortion Docs.”
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is a desperate man. So desperate that he broke the law on Wednesday by explicitly soliciting campaign donations in the halls of a federal building.
During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) seemed to acknowledge that President Donald Trump, his own party’s nominee, was far from guaranteed to win a second presidential term.
Locked in a tight race with Democratic opponent Jamie Harrison, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday urged South Carolinians who are “excited about Judge Barrett” to contribute to his reelection campaign — a blatant violation of U.S. law barring members of Congress from soliciting donations while inside federal buildings.
"Senator Graham just further proved the illegitimacy of this sham process by again breaking the rules to ram through a justice to rip away healthcare from millions in the middle of a pandemic."
"Senator Graham might need a lawyer."
Slave trade? Genocide? Armageddon? Never heard of it!
There was something of an uproar over the lack of an autopsy for Scalia’s ravaged body. Quick-draw conspiracists alleged the portly associate justice was murdered to give Obama a chance to realign the Supreme Court. These creative thinkers seem not to have paid much attention to the bleak presence of Elena Kagan on the bench. There’s no mystery about Scalia’s death. A three- pack a day man for most of his life, Scalia was clearly offed by his friends in the tobacco industry, whose murderous enterprise he zealously guarded in his legal opinions. And they say there’s no justice.
It’s not Scalia’s corpse that needed dissecting, but the true nature and quality of his jurisprudence. From the€ Weekly Standard€ to the€ Washington Post,€ Scalia was lionized as a “titanic legal thinker,” who possessed a blistering prose style and a wit “worthy of Swift.” Even more bizarrely, the praise for Scalia’s alleged brilliance was advanced by Beltway liberals, such as former Obama White House counsel Cass Sunstein (spouse of the odious Samantha Power) who asserted that Scalia was “witty, warm, funny and full of life. He was not only one of the most important justices in the nation’s history; he was also one of the greatest.” This curious assessment would have surprised former€ Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who for years sternly refused to assign any major court ruling to Scalia because he feared Scalia’s mad legal theories and nasty prose style would undermine the standing of the court.
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Here’s a rundown of some of the wild things the president said: [...]
Four former officials familiar with the matter told the Post that the intelligence officers were worried that the president’s personal lawyer was being used to pass Russian misinformation to Trump.
The intelligence community reportedly learned of the campaign through multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that determined Giuliani was communicating with people tied to Russian intelligence during his 2019 trip to Ukraine.
The manner in which both social media giants handled such a divisive news story so late in the presidential campaign is raising questions about how tech companies will evaluate a high volume of information, and potentially misinformation, on Election Day.
YouTube’s ban is an attempt to stamp out the conspiracy without hindering the massive volume of news and political commentary on its service. Rather than a blanket prohibition of QAnon videos or accounts, YouTube is expanding its hate and harassment policies to include conspiracies that “justify real-world violence,” the company said on Thursday.
This is a complicated saga, and almost nobody involved comes out looking good. But it illustrates some very obvious problems with political discourse, social media, and how information works on the internet.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department sued Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former close friend of the First Lady, Melania Trump, who recently published a book about her relationship with Melania, including revealing phone conversations that Wolkoff had recorded.
Consortium News, which frequently covers WikiLeaks and various whistleblower stories, has sued Global News for “falsely accusing” the media organization of “being part of a cyber-influence campaign directed by Russia.”As the lawsuit [PDF] filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia indicates, on December 10, 2019, Global News allegedly spread “false, unfair, and inaccurate statements” that held Consortium News “up to scorn, ridicule, and contempt in the industry.”The statements suggested Consortium News was responsible for “grossly unethical behavior, dishonesty, lack of integrity, conspiracy,” and the organization was unfit to publish in the news media.During January, libel notices were sent to Global News and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE). The notices demanded a retraction of any mention of Consortium News as well as an apology.Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria said at the time, “We’ve been targeted before, but never in this most overt way by a named powerful Five Eyes intelligence agency and a major television station.”
Global News reported on “secret intelligence records” they obtained and claimed the files showed Russia as a “hostile foreign state” that targeted Canada with “cyber influence” campaigns.
For years, FCC Chair Ajit Pai has insisted that the thing that was most important to him was to have a "light touch" regulatory regime regarding the internet. He insisted that net neutrality (which put in place a few limited rules to make sure internet access was fair) was clearly a bridge too far, and had to be wiped out or it would destroy investment into internet infrastructure (he was wrong about that). But now that Section 230 is under attack, he's apparently done a complete reversal. He is now happy to open a proceeding to reinterpret Section 230 to place a regulatory burden on the internet. This is because Ajit Pai is a hypocrite with no backbone, and no willingness to stand up to a grandstanding President.
Section 230 became effective in 1996 and is designed to shield "interactive computer service" providers from liability for comments posted by third parties on their platforms. So, if someone defames FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Twitter he can sue the person who wrote the tweet but not Twitter itself, for example. The text reads, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Pai’s decision to move forward with rulemaking follows a series of moderation decisions on Wednesday made by Facebook and Twitter against a New York Post article regarding former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who has been the subject of political attacks from the right throughout the 2020 presidential election. Facebook reduced the reach of the story, saying that it was eligible for third-party fact-checking. Twitter went even further, banning linking to the story entirely. In a thread Wednesday night, Twitter cited a 2018 rule against posting hacked information as justification for its decision.
These moves from Facebook and Twitter incited an outcry over conservative bias from Republicans. On Thursday, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled that they would subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify about the decision at a hearing on October 23rd.
"Look carefully at what Twitter is saying to justify censoring the Biden story. If applied consistently, it’d mean that some of history’s most consequential journalism—the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks’ war logs, Snowden docs, Panama Papers, our Brazil Archive—would be banned."
Since January, Vietnam has arrested about 20 journalists, publishers and social media users over critical content; demanded that Facebook agree to censor “anti-state” posts; issued a one-month publishing ban on the news website Phu Nu Online over its investigations into environmental damage; and, last week, arrested prominent blogger and democracy activist Pham Doan Trang.
Janine Jackson interviewed Defending Rights & Dissent’s Chip Gibbons about Julian Assange’s extradition hearing for the October 9, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Two City Council members, a municipal court judge and the NAACP are calling for tougher supervision of private police forces that disproportionately arrest Black people in Cleveland’s largely white hospital zone, and one of the police departments is vowing reform.
The criticisms and mea culpa come in the wake of a ProPublica report last month that private police in Cleveland’s medical area predominantly cite and criminally charge Black people for traffic violations and misdemeanors such as trespassing, jaywalking and possession of marijuana. Like some other private police forces nationwide, those run by the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and University Circle Inc. are armed and have the same powers as city police. Cleveland Clinic and University Circle police often stop and cite motorists on city streets that traverse the hospital zone.
But critics, led by exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, say Beijing's rule amounts to "cultural genocide."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said on Wednesday (Oct. 14) that it has instructed its representative office in the U.S. to contact and negotiate with the IMF, and the ministry called on the organization to maintain professional neutrality and make the necessary corrections to the country’s name, according to CNA.
There’s a moment in The Princess Bride when the evil and conniving Prince Humperdinck, eager to finish a sham wedding to his unwilling bride, Buttercup, demands that the priest cut to the chase. As the bride’s rescuers prepare to charge the castle, Humperdinck insists, “‘Man and wife.’ Say ‘man and wife’!”
Allowing the California Democratic senator to remain, argues Demand Justice's Brian Fallon is a "monument to our side's weakness on the fight for the courts."
"To be fair, I don't have any 'views on climate change' either. Just like I don't have any 'views' on gravity."
We air highlights from the second day of questioning of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who faced eight hours of questions on Wednesday about her views on issues ranging from climate change to voting rights to gay marriage and abortion, as Republicans race to confirm her ahead of the election and secure a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court for conservatives.
"This is exactly what we would expect from a justice handpicked by Trump and McConnell: A corporate judge who will help them gut Social Security and Medicare."
Senate Republicans are grasping any last chance to hold onto power well after public support has lapsed and their terms are over.
Prabowo Subianto—who led a notorious commando unit implicated in genocidal violence—was invited to Washington by Defense Secretary Mark Esper.€
In this new 10-part podcast series, Heba, director of The New Humanitarian, and Jeremy, senior policy fellow at Global Development, will discuss the drivers of change affecting international aid, from the increasingly protracted nature of crises, to the funding environment and opportunities offered by digital.
While unveiling its shiny new 5G-enabled iPhones this week, Apple brought Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to the stage to declare that Verizon had launched an updated, "nationwide" 5G network that shores up the company's 5G coverage. Until now, Verizon has largely embraced "high band" or millimeter wave 5G, which provides amazing speeds if you're near an antenna, but suffers from terrible range and building wall penetration issues. As a result, the company has been routinely criticized for comically overstating not only what 5G is capable of, but where 5G is available.
I guess Senator Ted Cruz was getting jealous of Senator Josh Hawley for monopolizing the "I'm a constitutional lawyer who doesn't understand the 1st Amendment when it comes to internet content moderation" space, and has jumped in as well. He has announced that he's going to issue a subpoena to get Jack Dorsey to come justify what he falsely claims is "election interference."
As UploadVR reported yesterday, users complained that they had been suspended for unclear reasons while they were trying to set up the Quest 2. One poster on the Oculus subreddit, for instance, described getting banned after creating a Facebook page for the first time and merging it with an existing Oculus account. “I logged into Facebook’s website to lock down my profile, as I had no intention of using the social media site more than was needed, and within minutes of merging accounts and changing profile settings my account was banned without any reason given or cause I can think of,” the user told The Verge in an email — rendering the Quest 2 a “new white paperweight.” Other people in the subreddit chimed in with their own experiences getting locked out.
Late August the piracy Scene was thrown into turmoil when law enforcement raids took place all around Europe. With few hopes of a significant recovery any time soon, in the space of a few minutes yesterday veteran cracking group CPY released four games previously protected by Denuvo. For many pirates, this is the positive signal they'd been waiting for.
YouTube’s move to rid the platform of QAnon content follows similar recent changes by other social media platforms. In July, Twitter removed QAnon accounts and restricted QAnon content. Last week, Facebook said it would remove groups, pages and Instagram accounts that identified with QAnon.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of course, has been claiming that the state is not leaving peasants at the mercy of the monopsonists and that the government-guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) regime will continue. But the bills contain nothing on this; and the government refuses to incorporate into law, which testifies to its bad faith, the right of the peasantry to get a minimum support price in accordance with the Swaminathan Commission recommendation that puts the MSP at Cost C2 plus 50 percent. The peasants in short are being thrown, as under colonialism, to the mercies of a market where price fluctuations have a notoriously high amplitude; and they are rightly putting up a fight against their descent into debt and destitution.
In this entire debate, however, an important dimension has been missed. The debate has been entirely about the condition of the peasantry. But one must also take into account the question of food security, which immediately brings imperialism into the picture.
OSE Immunotherapeutics (ISIN: FR0012127173; Mnemo: OSE) announced the European Patent Office's (EPO) issuance of a notice of allowance for its Phase-2 ready product FR104, a first-in-class selective CD28-antagonist.
Specifically, this European patent will provide additional protection covering novel dosing regimen of FR104 for the prevention and treatment of T-lymphocyte-mediated autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases, transplantation and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) until 2036.
Despite the popularity of the European Patent Office (EPO), the German government has devoted significant resources to German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO). Answering to a request from members of the German Parliament, the German government commits to further increase spending in the future.
A perfect excuse for us to look at why, despite the perceived dominance of the EPO, the GPTO is still a viable option. And why it just might be the right choice for your next patent application if you expect litigation in Germany.
To many applicants seeking protection for their innovation in Europe, the EPO is the first choice that comes to mind. The EPO allows applicants to file a single application and obtain a bundle of patents for each member state including highly relevant countries like Germany, UK, the Netherlands, and France. At the same time, the member states of the EPO maintain their respective national patent offices, in Germany it is the GPTO, which grants German patents.
Microsoft developed a bit of a reputation as a trademark bully during the early 00s, going after an Australian pillow manufacturer (for its polyester fiber "Microsoft" quilt) and a 17-year-old Canadian named Mike Rowe (for his MikeRoweSoft website business). It seems to have settled down on the bullying but it still wields its trademarks with considerable heft. Krebs on Security reports Microsoft recently leveraged its trademarks to severely cripple a botnet.
Following a recent guest post on Singaporean developments in the law of confidence, this Kat is now turning to a similar scenario considered by the Court of Appeal (England & Wales). In Glencairn v Final Touch [2020] EWCA Civ 609, the Court upheld the decision of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court to refuse to find the existence of a true fiduciary duty between a solicitor and an opposing party in circumstances where the firm acted for separate successive parties against that same opponent.
[...]
In December 2018, Glencairn engaged in confidential mediation with Dartington, by which point the law firm representing the defendants decided to set up an information barrier between its teams working on the Dartington and Final Touch matters. The three solicitors participating in the mediation on Dartington’s behalf, none of whom went on to act for Final Touch, all signed a confidentiality agreement. The barrier included measures such as maintaining separate teams, one in Leeds and the other in London, and encrypting electronic files.
Glencairn and Dartington subsequently reached a settlement dated 8 January 2019, which included a confidentiality clause binding on the parties, though not their respective solicitors. Glencairn’s solicitors asked the law firm to stop acting for Final Touch in February 2019 and in March 2019 applied for injunctive relief given their refusal to do so. It contended that Final Touch could gain an advantage if they became aware of confidential information which might have arisen in the course of the Dartington negotiations.
Against this backdrop, I am prompted to underscore the need for amending section 9(2) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, which currently lists grounds for refusal of registration of a TM. These grounds include (i) scandalous and obscene matter, (ii) matter that is likely to hurt religious sentiments, (iii) those that cause public deception or confusion, and (iv) use that is prohibited under the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act. 1950.
[...]
Given the lack of Indian case law on the subject, I refer to foreign jurisprudence dealing with this issue, albeit tangentially. In Pro-Football, Inc. v. Blackhorse, 112 F. Supp. 3d 439 (E.D. Va. 2015) a few native Americans petitioned for cancellation of the registrations of TM ‘Redskin’ and its 5 other variants, claiming that the marks had disparaged native Americans and brought them to contempt or disrepute (on the basis of their appearance/skin-colour). The six trademarks were registered and being used by the Washington Redskins football team.
In a complicated litigation, in 2014, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) stated that the TM ‘Redskin’ and its variants were disparaging to Native Americans and that their registrations should be cancelled. In an appeal by Pro-Football, the appellate court affirmed the cancellation.’
The term ‘Fair’ in ‘Fair and Lovely’ TM produces a similar effect by characterizing any other colour as undesirable, unpleasant or contemptuous and hence projects a singular idea of beauty on the basis of skin colour.
Notably, the TM jurisprudence of the USA uses the expression ‘offensive’ for both discriminatory and obscene marks. So, ‘Redskins’ is categorised as racially offensive, while ‘FUCT’ (referenced below) is simply offensive. The language of India’s Trade Marks Act, is different because under section 9(2), the Act does take care of scandalous and obscene marks but not those that are discriminatory in nature. The word ‘offensive’ is not used.
Banana Republic is being sued over a typeface – or to be more specific, it is being sued for allegedly co-opting a typeface-specific ampersand. In a newly-filed complaint, Moshik Nadav Typography LLC – an “innovative typography and graphic design business” – alleges that the Gap-owned retailer has “engaged in an extraordinary, large-scale and widespread commercial use” of the little “and” symbol from its “distinctive and unique” Paris Pro typeface in an “extensive digital marketing” campaign, as well as on its “worldwide social media platforms.”
According to the complaint, which it filed in a New York federal court on Tuesday, Brooklyn-based Moshik Nadav Typography LLC (“Moshik Nadav”) claims that in 2012 in furtherance of its business of designing and licensing “artistic typefaces, and logotypes in digital formats for headlines in fashion magazines, as well as logos for luxury and high-end brands,” it created “a distinctive and unique artistic typeface font” called “Paris Pro.” Part of the Paris Pro typeface – which Moshik Nadav says “has a specific artistic expression that showcases [Mr.] Nadav’s creativity as a graphic designer and typographer” – is a stylized ampersand.
Dutch ISPs Ziggo, KPN and XS4ALL must block access to Pirate Bay mirrors and proxy sites. This latest verdict is part of a prolonged legal battle that started over a decade ago. The ISPs already blocked sites in the past but lifted the measures recently, because a previous court order no longer applied. In court, they argued that the blocks are ineffective but without result.
The BBC has recently announced that it is making available 16,000 sound effects from their archive. The terms on which they make these sounds available, for non-commercial use, can be found here.
The sound effects are organised by category, so if you need to create an atmosphere with the noise of Radar, Rickshaws or Sanding Machines, there is a sound effect (or several) for you. Perhaps you might want to liven up your blog? Sadly, there seem to be none under the heading of a lawyer’s office – what a missed opportunity!
IP Draughts was intrigued by the licensing terms, which can be found at the above link. They are written in a chatty, non-lawyerly style, as if a journalist had written them – but one who has been careful to ensure that the main legal points are covered.
The media organizations actively encourage users to link to their articles on Facebook for the obvious reason that it increases traffic to their site and thereby generates ad revenue. Facebook does not charge a referral fee, a posting fee or any other fee in connection with the display of links to the newspaper article. Yet according to Guilbeault, these links (which are often licensed through the terms of service) are somehow immoral and merit a mandated licensing requirement. If enacted, the government would be establishing a regime that would grant news organizations guaranteed payments for their own posts, which helps explain why Facebook has indicated that they are likely to simply stop the linking altogether.
One of the unique challenges for this year’s CC Global Summit was to connect events of the past year with our work—and find a path forward in hope and optimism. We asked: How can we best celebrate “open” and continue to foster the culture of gratitude and collaboration that our work and our community brings? How can we link the challenges we’re facing as a planet (e.g. health, human rights, democracy, etc.) with the opportunities for solutions found in creating a more open and free world?
We've written about this case – or rather, these cases – a few times before: Carl Malamud published the entire Code of Federal Regulations at Public.Resource.org, including all the standards that the CFR incorporated and thus gave the force of law. Several organizations that had originally promulgated these various standards then sued Public Resource – in two separate but substantially similar cases later combined – for copyright infringement stemming from his having included them.
