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Links 28/5/2021: Nitrux 1.4, Diffoscope 176



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • StarLabs’ LabTop Mk III and Mk IV Linux Laptops Now Support Coreboot 5 Firmware

        Star Labs is one of the Linux hardware vendors that’s very serious about offering open hardware to their customers, and the company recently unveiled the fact that they plan to completely replace the proprietary AMI firmware with the well-known Coreboot open-source firmware.

        The Linux hardware company started adding Coreboot support to its Linux laptops since early March 2021, starting with the Star LabTop Mk IV and Star LabTop Mk III models, and it also released a Coreboot Configurator utility a month later to make it easier to change various Coreboot settings.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.14 To Bring Reworked User-Space API For Intel Discrete Graphics - Phoronix

        The Linux 5.14 kernel this summer is going to bring a reworked user-space API for Intel's DG1 graphics card and their future discrete graphics offerings. This change to the Intel kernel graphics driver's user-space API, which is currently flagged as "broken" until it has been proven sufficiently capable for user-space needs and stable, is principally needed for handling of device local memory (dedicated vRAM).

        For a while now Intel's open-source driver engineers have been working on a redesigned user-space API for accommodating the DG1 and future Intel discrete graphics processors. This changed uAPI is necessary for user-space to be able to control their desired memory regions whether they are wanting to utilize system memory or now the device local memory attached to a dGPU.

      • Dell Hardware Privacy Support Slated For Linux 5.14 - Phoronix

        Last year we wrote about Dell working on a hardware privacy driver for Linux as with 2021 laptops they are beginning to add hardware-based privacy buttons for disabling microphone and camera support. That Dell Hardware Privacy platform support is now set to be introduced to the mainline kernel with Linux 5.14.

        With Dell 2021 laptops select models will begin having hardware-based kill switches for the microphone and web camera shutter assembly to physically block the web camera from capturing images/video. As part of this Dell Hardware Privacy is also ePrivacy screen support too.

      • Linux 5.12.8
        I'm announcing the release of the 5.12.8 kernel.
        
        

        All users of the 5.12 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.12.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

        thanks,

        greg k-h
      • Linux 5.10.41
      • Linux 5.4.123
      • Graphics Stack

        • OpenGL and Vulkan applications can now talk to each other with Mesa drivers

          Not specifically gaming related but we love to cover industry stuff too, that might be interesting for some of our more technically minded users. Collabora have mentioned that thanks to work done on Mesa, OpenGL and Vulkan applications can now talk to each other.

          While Vulkan is the next-generation, and eventually anything that wants performance will move over from OpenGL like applications, game engines and games - this all takes time. The bigger games especially, often taking a great many years and an API switch isn't an easy thing. However, what if some parts could gradually move to Vulkan while keeping other bits OpenGL?

    • Applications

      • Zellij Rust Terminal Multiplexer 0.12.0 Released With Detachable / Persistent Sessions

        Zellij, a new terminal workspace and multiplexer (like tmux and screen) written in Rust, has reached version 0.12.0, receiving a much requested feature: detachable / persistent sessions.

        Compared to other terminal multiplexers, Zellij comes with a user-friendly UI with the available keyboard shortcuts displayed at the bottom, as well as auto placement of new vertical and horizontal splits, based on the available space, along with no limitations when it comes to panes resizing.

        Besides this, Zellij includes a layout system and plugins written in any language that compiles to WebAssembly.

        For a lot more information, check out the initial article about Zellij on Linux Uprising.

      • Tailwind is an interesting concept, but I am not convinced yet



        Tailwind 2 is all the rage now. With a beautiful landing page, promising productivity, and thousands of people swearing by it, could Tailwind be the future of front-end design? I am still not convinced.

        What is Tailwind? Tailwind is a Tachyons school of thinking that preaches the utility-first approach to CSS. Whereas frameworks like Bootstrap and Bulma give you basic styling, pre-designed components, and utility classes, Tailwind gives you only the utility classes that you can combine to components yourself with just HTML extraction.

        There is a lot of praise published on Tailwind &mdash, and some critics as well. I don’t feel like repeating it. Rather, I will make this post about my personal experience. I will tell you why I avoided Tailwind, why I gave it a try, my first experience, and my final thoughts.

        Why didn’t I try out Tailwind sooner?

        I am not a CSS guru, but I can write stylesheets for my use-cases. I depended on frameworks like Bootstrap and Bulma for application development or plain old vanilla CSS for prototyping and small sites. But above all, I am a developer that doesn’t depend on a build system for his styles and JavaScript. I didn’t work on fully separated components in my own work.

        This brings me to the reason why I avoided Tailwind. I didn’t want to depend on a build system to ship a few styles for a landing page. You can try Tailwind without it, but you cannot ship Tailwind in the same sense of shipping Bulma due to its size. On top of that, I thought having a lot of classes is ugly and pollution for your templates.

      • Daniel Stenberg: Giving away an insane amount of curl stickers

        Everyone once in a while when I post a photo that involves curl stickers, a few people ask me where they can get hold of such. I figured it was about time I properly offered “the world” some. I expected maybe 50 or a 100 people would take me up on this offer.

        The response was totally overwhelming and immediate. Within the first hour 270 persons had already requested stickers. After 24 hours when I closed the form again, 1003 addresses had been submitted. To countries all around the globe. Quite the avalanche.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Install VeraCrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VeraCrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, TrueCrypt was a popular cross-platform open-source software used to encrypt and protect your data. But the TrueCrypt project is no longer maintained and the VeraCrypt has become the most popular alternative to TrueCrypt. VeraCrypt is a cross-platform encryption tool based on TrueCrypt and supports all operating systems including Windows, Linux, and macOS.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of VeraCrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How to Install Thelia on Ubuntu 18.04 | LinuxHostSupport

        We will show you how to install Thelia 2 on Ubuntu 18.04 using Apache web-server and a MySQL database. Thelia is an open-source tool for creating e-business websites and managing online content. It is written in PHP and it is published under a free license. Developed in accordance to web development standards and based on Symfony 2, Thelia meets the following objectives: performance and scalability. It is fairly easy to install Thelia 2 on an Ubuntu 18.04 VPS. The installation process should take about 10 minutes if you follow the very easy steps described below.

      • How to Work with Ansible Provisioner in Vagrant

        In the previous article, we have seen what is provisioner and how to work with shell and file provisioner. In this article, we will see how to use an ansible provisioner to automate the vagrant workflow. Here we will create a playbook and use the playbook to run ansible play against the vagrant guest machine.

        The following is the snippet from the playbook I am going to use in this article for demonstration. There is only one play and it will take care of installing packages using the apt module. Create a new .yml or .yaml file and copy the snippet.

      • How to add GUI to Arch Linux 2021

        In Arch Linux 2021 we have the power to customize it as per our desire and needs. While using Arch Linux we use to get our hands on command line to work out on it. But sometimes ,we need to explore the Arch Linux with the help of a GUI. As GUI makes it more simple for the new linux lovers to explore and interact with the Arch linux distribution. Here we will go through “Install Gnome to arch Linux”.

        In this tutorial I will make you aware with all the steps to make your Arch Linux more live. We can do this by installing a GUI on our Arch Linux 2021. If you haven’t done the Arch Linux installation you can check out my tutorial “How to install Arch Linux 2021 on Virtual Box”. I am choosing the Gnome Desktop environment as it is one of the most popular Linux GUI environment in the Linux community. And also everyone from the linux community is familiar with that. Now Let’s start.

      • How to set up a Pacemaker cluster for high availability Linux
      • Logical operators & Pipes in Linux
      • Queueing theory

        Last year I began looking at queuing theory, to try and see if I could use it as a robust underpinning for a cost model to evaluate rewritten stream-processing programs.

      • Jonathan McDowell: Trying to understand Kubernetes networking

        I previously built a single node Kubernetes cluster as a test environment to learn more about it. The first thing I want to try to understand is its networking. In particular the IP addresses that are listed are all 10.* and my host’s network is a 192.168/24. I understand each pod gets its own virtual ethernet interface and associated IP address, and these are generally private within the cluster (and firewalled out other than for exposed services). What does that actually look like?

      • [Older] Command separators in Linux

        Commands can also be combined in such a way that they are executed in a particular sequence.

      • [Older] Command substitution - Linux Concept

        On a keyboard, there is one interesting key, the backward quote, `. This key is normally situated below the Esc key. If we place text between two successive backquotes, then echo will execute those as commands instead of processing them as plain text.

      • [Older] Pattern matching in vi Editor - Linux Concept

        To learn about pattern matching, we will ensure that the pattern that we will search for is highlighted when the pattern searched for is found.

      • [Older] Redirection Operators in Linux - Linux Concept

        You will learn the very useful concept of I/O redirection in this article.

      • How to Remove Package from Laravel (Composer) – TecAdmin

        Composer is the most popular way for managing packages in PHP bases applications. Laravel also relies over composer for installing, upgrading and removing packages. Composer 2.0 is the latest version available for installation. This is more powerful, fast and fully compatible with older versions.

      • Change Authentication Method For MySQL Root User In Ubuntu

        This guide explains why and how to change authentication method for MySQL root user to Caching SHA-2 Pluggable Authentication or Native Pluggable Authentication method in Ubuntu.

        Even if you have setup password for MySQL root user, you still can't authenticate with the database server as root user with a password. Because, the MySQL root user is set to authenticate using the auth_socket plugin by default instead of the password in Ubuntu systems running MySQL 5.7 and newer versions.

      • Install Open Classifieds on Debian 9 | LinuxCloudVPS Blog

        Open Classifieds is a free, powerful, open-source web platform that allows users to easily create and build classifieds, advertisement, and listings sites. Let’s begin with the installation. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Open Classifieds on your Debian 9 server.

      • [Older] How To Harden OpenSSH on Ubuntu 20.04

        OpenSSH is one of the most popular tools that uses SSH protocol for secure system administration, file transfers, and other communication across the Internet. It is free and used by system administrators to manage remote systems. OpenSSH runs on port 22 and it is the first target of a hacker. So you may need to harden your OpenSSH server to protect it from hackers.

      • How To Install Nagios 4 and Monitor Your Servers on Ubuntu 20.04 | LinuxCloudVPS Blog

        Nagios is a free, open-source and powerful monitoring tool that helps you to monitor your entire IT infrastructure, servers, services and applications from the central location. It is based on client-server architecture. So you will need to install the Nagios agent on the client system and add it to the Nagios server for monitoring. If you are looking for a monitoring solution then Nagios is an essential tool for any production server environment.

    • Games

      • An interview with Kodera Software, creator of the hard sci-fi ΔV: Rings of Saturn

        Today we present another interview with a game developer! We had a chat with Kodera Software, creator of the hard sci-fi ΔV: Rings of Saturn which is available in Early Access.

        [...]

        If you are curious about the software, I use a lot of FOSS. I render my sprites in Blender, compose them in GIMP, edit audio in Audacity, put it all together in Godot Engine, control my version with git and use gitlab as both an online repository and issue tracker."

        [...]

        "Windows sales are, unsurprisingly, the majority with 90.3% units, followed by 6,3% for Linux and 3,4% on Mac."

      • Look after and manage young pop stars in Idol Manager, with a Beta available now | GamingOnLinux

        Here's one we completely missed from Kickstarter that was fully funded back in 2018 and has a Beta available now. Idol Manager is all about developing your agency and looking after the stars of tomorrow.

        Not exactly a game I personally would have jumped at the chance to play, however, the more I think on it - why the heck not? We manage all kinds of ridiculous things like prisons, space ships, colonies, airports, train stations and all sorts in between so why not people who want to become pop stars? Idol Manager actually has quite a great look to it.

        [...]

        It's actually been in Beta now for multiple years with the Linux build arriving all the way back in March 2019.

      • rpg-cli turns your filesystem into a 'JRPG-inspired' terminal game | GamingOnLinux [Ed: would be wide to delete GitHub and use Free software instead]

        If you've used the Linux command-line before you've likely done plenty of CD commands to change directory - but what if that was an RPG? Not that you asked but rpg-cli answered.

        A pretty amusing idea really, giving you a little RPG experience in your terminal that uses your file system as the environment. So you move into a directory and something will happen. Actually, it's quite an ingenious idea that I've fallen a tiny bit in love with and hope to see it expanded a lot.

        [...]

        Check it out free and open source on GitHub.

      • Learn to break locks in Sophie's Safecracking Simulator

        You've broken locks in all sorts of games, although they're never particularly difficult and usually just involve rotating one thing until it becomes easy as some kind of mini-game, but what about one that teaches you a little about mechanical locks? Sophie's Safecracking Simulator does that and plenty more. There's a wonderful multi-step tutorial to walk you through different pieces of a lock, along with some high-tech tools you can use and you can keep generating a new lock to bust through in record time.

    • Distributions

      • Nitrux 1.4.1 Released with Plasma System Monitor, Heroic Games Launcher, and Pacstall

        The monthly release cycle continues, and Nitrux 1.4.1 is here as the ISO release for May 2021, adding the latest KDE apps and Plasma desktop environment. Included, you can find KDE Plasma 5.21.5, KDE Gear 21.04.1, as well as KDE Frameworks 5.82.0.

        Not only that, but the KDE Plasma environment has been enriched with a new app, namely Plasma System Monitor, which replaces the old KSysGuard (KDE System Guard) system monitor app. In addition, the Parachute overview and plasma-hud have been updated to make your workflow more productive.

      • Changelog: Nitrux 1.4.1

        We are pleased to announce the launch of Nitrux 1.4.1. This new version brings together the latest software updates, bug fixes, performance improvements, and ready-to-use hardware support.

        Nitrux 1.4.1 is available for immediate download.

      • Arch Family

        • Archinstall 2.2 Released For Improving This Easy-To-Use Arch Linux Installer

          Archinstall 2.2 brings support for using GRUB as a secondary boot loader on installations, but is still considered experimental. Archinstall 2.2 also has a number of install experience improvements, the ability to select multiple options during installs, support for loading a JSON-based install configuration file, the minimal installation now includes AMD/Intel CPU microcode files by default, a new "--advanced" option for launching the installer with more options, and a variety of other improvements.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Rocky Linux 8 - Phoenix Tux

          That's it. For now. I have to say, I'm quite happy with Rocky. All considering, it's doing pretty well. I was able to replicate my CentOS desktop experience almost fully. That's already a highly promising start. Some issues remain, but they could be entirely due to the pre-release nature of this project. But always remember, this is a server distro, it's never really meant for the common laptop, mind.

          The emotional connection still isn't there - that will take a while - but Rocky Linux is definitely a good, solid choice for a decade-savvy desktop, if you care about stability more than the latest fads and colors. It will take me a bit more time to polish the edges off my Frankenstein, but even so, I've got 95% of the stuff already here. Browsers, music players, productivity tools. Looking good. Well, there you go. A sort of a teaser slash primer. I feel like some good things are about to come. If you want to reignite that CentOS spark, Rocky Linux is a very smart choice. Recommended. For those who're about to Rocky, we salute you. See you around.

        • 3 key considerations for your trusted compute base

          This isn't the first article I've written about trusted computing bases (TCBs), so if the concept is new to you, I suggest you have a look at What's a trusted compute base? to get an idea of what I'll be talking about here. In that article, I noted the importance of the size of the TCB: "What you want is a small, easily measurable and easily auditable TCB on which you can build the rest of your system—from which you can build a 'chain of trust' to the other parts of your system about which you care."

          In this article, I want to discuss the importance of a TCB's size, how you might measure it, and how difficult it can be to reduce its size. Let's look at those issues in order.

        • What you need to know about Quarkus in 2021

          Part of publishing services on the cloud is providing users and developers easy access to those services through easy and reliable means. One of the most popular methods of interfacing with applications online is through an application programming interface (API), a fancy term that means you allow users to interact with your app through code.

          The API concept is significant because it helps others build upon your app. Suppose you design a website that returns a random number when a user clicks a button. Normally, that would require a user to navigate to your site and click a button. The site might be useful, but only to a point. If you included an API, a user could just send a signal to your server requesting a random number, or they could program something of their own that "calls" your server for a number with no clicking or manual interaction required. A developer could use your random number as a value for a game or as part of a passphrase generator or whatever else developers need random numbers for (there's always something). A good API unlocks your application for others to use your code's results, transforming your work on the web into, essentially, a software library.

        • Building a real-time leaderboard with Red Hat Data Grid and Quarkus on a hybrid Kubernetes deployment

          Red Hat Data Grid, built on the Infinispan community project, has been a key component of the Red Hat Summit keynote demonstration for several years, and the first part of our virtual summit in April 2021 was no exception. This year, we built an online Battleship game that was deployed across three continents and hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. If you missed the live action with Burr Sutter, you can catch the video replay on YouTube.

          In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at Data Grid's role in the demonstration, explain the architecture, and break down some of the technical details behind what Burr calls “that Data Grid magic.”

        • IT leadership: 5 steps to foster inclusive decision-making

          Everyone with a good idea should be given the respect to have that idea thoughtfully and authentically considered. Everyone, regardless of demographic, should be able to freely contribute and lend their expertise to the conversations when decisions are made. It isn’t just the morally right thing to do; it makes good business sense.

          To accomplish this within Research & Development at Tricentis, we use a framework called “R&D Thinks.” Participation is not limited to the R&D department. We also invite solution architects, support engineers, marketing content strategists, product marketing managers, and others to participate – and they do!

      • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Hey snap, where’s my data?

          Snaps are self-contained applications, isolated from the underlying operating systems by several layers of confinement. This mechanism introduces security benefits, but it may also create confusion for people who are less familiar with how snaps work and behave, especially when it comes to filesystem access. Today, we’d like to clarify some of the questions and misconceptions around how snaps manage system and user data.

          [...]

          Snap data management is different from the classic Linux conventions. To that end, both the developers and the users should pay attention to the finer nuances, so they can get the best experience. Developers should make sure they correctly utilize the necessary and available paths, and build their snaps so they store important information in locations that will be backed up on maintenance operations. Users should note the difference between their classic Linux home and snap home.

        • Let’s play: sharded big data PostgreSQL

          Everyone knows that if you’ve got big data, you need Apache Hadoop, right? It’s an affordable, horizontally scalable, clustered data processing platform ideal for data warehousing use cases. And it knocks the socks off classic relational database management systems like PostgreSQL that can barely keep up when playing with a terabyte of data, let alone a petabyte. Right? Well, maybe. Let’s look at PostgreSQL again and see what it can do.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • The Apache News Round-up: week ending 28 May 2021

        Farewell, May --we're wrapping up the month with another great week. Here are the latest updates on the Apache community's activities...

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Contest for LibreOffice Ecosystem and LibreOffice Technology logo

          The Strategic Marketing Plan discussed in 2020 has introduced a couple of concepts – LibreOffice Ecosystem and LibreOffice Technology – which will be the cornerstone of LibreOffice marketing activities for the foreseeable future, and will be deployed on web properties, marketing materials, documents, presentations and merchandise for events. Now, we need high-impact visuals to stress the importance of these concepts for LibreOffice.

      • Programming/Development

  • Leftovers

    • Opinion | Billie Jean King Has Emerged as a Venerated Foremother of American Sports

      At 77, Billie Jean is still active in the progressive movement in sports.

    • Education

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Vaccinating the World, If We Had Grown Ups in Charge

        To be specific, suppose that instead of funneling money into drug companies to subsidize the patent monopoly financed system, we instead use this money, and added more to it, for the purpose of fully prefunding the development of vaccines. The condition of accepting funding is that all the work would be fully open-source.

        This means that all the findings would be posted on the web, so that researchers around the world could build on them. It also means that any patents would be in the public domain so that any manufacturers, anywhere in the world, could produce the vaccines developed through this system, if they had the necessary expertise. The requirement for openness would also apply to the results of clinical trials, so it would be possible for researchers to know which vaccines were most effective for specific demographic groups and against which variants of the virus.

      • A Caring World Needs a Sharing World to End the COVID-19 Pandemic

        While appearing to support the South Africa-India proposal, the Biden administration has considerably narrowed down the scope of the waiver to just patents in comparison to what was there in the original proposal in the WTO: to waive all intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and medicine, including industrial designs, copyright and trade secrets. These waivers are required to scale up vaccines from research and development to production at an industrial scale. The Biden patent waiver is, however, limited to vaccines only. It leaves out patents on Remdesivir and various monoclonal antibodies that have shown efficacy against COVID-19. Without extending the vaccine patent waiver to other property rights, the stance by the Biden administration of waiving only vaccine patents is more optics than a real effort to ramp up the fight against COVID-19. The issue of knowledge transfers, to scale up vaccine manufacturing in other countries, still needs to be fought and won.

        Even if it is at the level of optics, there are several reasons behind the United States’ sudden change in its position. The United States has been relatively isolated because of its America First policy of hoarding vaccines and vaccinating all Americans first before exporting the vaccines to the rest of the world. According to an article in the New York Times in March, the United States was sitting on “tens of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine,” which it was not using, while the WHO’s Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT)-Accelerator program—and its vaccines pillar of COVAX, on which a large part of the world depends—has been facing difficulties getting vaccine supplies. And lastly, with India facing a huge surge in cases domestically and virtually stopping all vaccine exports, China has emerged as one of the only suppliers of vaccines to large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is endangering Biden’s plans of a grand alliance against China, isolating it globally.

      • Tiger Nut Maker in Newburgh Recalls Products Over Safety Concerns

        Tiger nuts aren't made from tigers, and they're not actually nuts either. The sweet treats are tubers that have been described as having the same consistency as chickpeas with the sweetness like that of a coconut. While tiger nuts aren't really a household name in the United States, they're extremely popular in Spain and are the main ingredient in the popular drink, horchata.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 176 released

            The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 176. This version includes the following changes:

            * Update ffmpeg tests to work with ffmpeg 4.4.
              (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#258)
            

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Selling Death: the US is Dominant Once Again...in Arms Sales

        In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for 37% of total international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than six times that of Washington’s threat du jour, China.

        Sadly, this was no surprise to arms-trade analysts.€  The U.S. has held that top spot for 28 of the past 30 years, posting massive sales numbers regardless of which party held power in the White House or Congress.€  This is, of course, the definition of good news for weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, even if it’s bad news for so many of the rest of us, especially those who suffer from the use of those arms by militaries in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates.€  The recent bombing and leveling of Gaza by the U.S.-financed and supplied Israeli military is just the latest example of the devastating toll exacted by American weapons transfers in these years.

      • Opinion | A Permanent Structure of Peace

        Every war meant to end terrorism begets terrorism, as it creates an avalanche of collateral damage and unintended consequences.

      • Border Boo Boos

        “A medical examiner has identified human remains found in southeast New Mexico last year near the U.S.-Mexico border.”

        Hmmm. An examination of any map will reveal that southeast New Mexico, Eddy County and Malaga, the small community near where the remains were discovered, are quite a distance from the Mexican border.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • The Faux Civics Lesson

        What is common knowledge to most leftists in the US today and certainly to€ CounterPunch€ readers, is the fact that the political system which the Framers of the Constitution wrote and envisioned has turned to absolute shit because of the right-wing juggernaut so prevalent in US society.

        The imperial presidency has rendered laughable the system of checks and balances between the three branches of the federal government. Congress has been gerrymandered at exponential levels, and it has turned the Supreme Court and many lower federal courts into the playground of the far right and the wealthy. Watch what happens to Roe v. Wade as the litmus test of both the latter and the former.

      • Opinion | Meet the Senate Nuke Caucus, Busting the Budget and Making the World Less Safe

        These lawmakers represent states with a direct interest in pouring billions into modernizing and building new weapons.

      • 'End This Game': Dems Urged to Ditch GOP After 'Woefully Inadequate' Infrastructure Offer

        "Ceding to Republicans and accepting any GOP proposal will only lead to the death of more people from extreme weather... and will put in jeopardy the Democratic majority in 2022 and 2024."

      • Opinion | Hunger as a Weapon: How Biden's Inaction Is Aggravating Cuba's Food Crisis

        If President Biden wants to support human rights in Cuba and empower the Cuban people, he can start by alleviating the food crisis by ending Trump's prohibition on remittances and restoring the right of U.S. residents to travel.

      • Shamelessness, Thy Name is Blinken

        The US, as well as the lickspittle NATO nations of Europe have pretty much topped this hypothetical example with a real one. They accomplished this by going into high dudgeon over Belarus President/dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s ruse of warning of a bomb on a UK Ryanair passenger jet flying from€  Greece to Lithuania and sending Belorus fighter jets to intercept and ‘escort’ and divert the plane to a landing in Minsk. There his police conducted a comic “search” for the nonexistent threat and then arrested a critical Belarus journalist who was on board.

        European countries are calling Lukashenko’s outrage an official government act of piracy and are threatening to ban all flights from Belarus in response. In the US, an indignant Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement saying:

      • The Emperor’s New Rules

        In contrast to U.S. actions, in nearly every speech or interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the “rules-based order.” But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law, or some other set of rules he has yet to define. What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?

        We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force, and we have always insisted that the U.S. government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.

      • Led by Jayapal, Broad Coalition of 156 House Dems Demands Medicare Expansion in Infrastructure Bill

        "Lowering the eligibility age, improving benefits, and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices will change lives and save people money."

      • Trump Influence Very Much Alive

        And so it came to pass that the Republican leaders of the House and Senate slavishly followed Trump’s exhortation and expressed their disapproval of bipartisan legislation to create a commission to probe the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection because it ostensibly would make the former president look bad. He was impeached for instigating it.

        “Republicans must get much tougher and much smarter and stop being used by the radical left,” Trump appealed to Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader,€ The Washington Post€ reported.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Reaping the Bitter Fruits of Collaboration

        Make no mistake, collaboration strategy was devised by economic sectors primarily dependent upon the utilization of public resources for their profits. And while Republican governors and presidents initiated that strategy, it was willingly embraced by Democrat politicians as a means of dodging the tough decisions for the political expediency of kicking the can down the road to “collaboratives.”

        The classic example is the Healthy Forests Initiative devised by former timber lobbyist Mark Rey, who was appointed by President Bush to oversee our national forests. The timber industry knew it would be tough for conservationists to argue against “healthy forests,” since who doesn’t want a healthy forest?

      • Your Opinion Doesn't Matter. Protests Matter.

        Your opinion matters only if you express it. Expression of an opinion doesn’t change anything unless it’s done effectively. Opinions expressed en masse, alongside others who share your views, are more likely to effect change—but that’s not enough to move the needle. What changes policy, what improves lives for the foreseeable future, what makes history on a radical scale, is a sustained mass movement that expresses an opinion so aggressively that the ruling classes are forced to change course or risk losing their power and privilege to revolutionary overthrow.

        American liberals and leftists have strong opinions on a variety of issues. But they express them on the couch or online rather than in the streets, where it matters. On the rare occasion when we venture into the public sphere, our protests are usually sporadic and unsustained, like the annual anti-Trump women’s marches with the pink pussy hats or militantly nonviolent, like the antiwar protests leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Neither had any effect. Leftie demonstrations rarely assume the dangerous character required to scare the powers that be: violent, or nonviolent while brandishing a credible threat of violence.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Major open source projects abandon Freenode following hostile takeover

        Dozens of organizations and projects continue to move away from the popular Freenode IRC chat network, which has long been synonymous with open source projects.

        Since last week, several reputable projects and organizations such as Wikimedia (non-profit that runs Wikipedia), Adafruit, along with several Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Gentoo and CentOS have switched away from Freenode, most notably to Libera Chat, which was founded and is run by the former Freenode staff.

    • Monopolies

      • Workers Stage Global Day of Action to #MakeAmazonPay

        "Loud and clear, Amazon's producers, distributors, and delivery drivers are telling Jeff Bezos: pay your workers."

      • [Guest Post] Repeat filings after Monopoly: an exchange of views [Ed: Monopoly is a wonderful thing, say lawyers who work directly for monopolists]

        Furthermore, the GC highlighted once again – in accordance with established ECJ case-law – how to interpret bad faith, namely that it "presupposes the presence of a dishonest state of mind or intention" [para. 32]. This is the case if it is apparent from relevant and consistent indicia that the EUTM-holder filed the trademark application "not with the aim of engaging fairly in competition but with the intention of undermining, in a manner inconsistent with honest practices, the interests of third parties, or with the intention of obtaining, without even targeting a specific third party, an exclusive right for purposes other than those falling within the functions of a trade mark, in particular the essential function of indicating origin" [para.33]

        The importance of the EUTM holder's intention also becomes apparent in the wording of established case-law. While "account may also be taken of the origin of the contested sign and its use since its creation, the commercial logic underlying the filing of the application for registration of that sign as an EU trade mark, and the chronology of events leading up to that filing" [para. 38 emphasis added], consideration "must" be given to the EUTM holder's intention [para. 39].

        This intention must be proven by the applicant seeking cancellation, by submitting sufficient and objective circumstances that would allow for the conclusion that the trademark was filed in bad faith. Only after the applicant for a declaration of invalidity has relied on objective circumstances regarding the EUTM holder's intention that could rebut the presumption of good faith [para. 43 (above) and 44], the burden of proof may shift.

        The GC thus stressed that only the trade mark holder's intention is critical, not whether a trade mark has been re-filed per se [para. 89].

        In addition, the GC reminded that all of the specific circumstances of the case had to be taken into account [cf. para 71]. In this case, those circumstances included, aside from the EUTM holder's admission, the filing of oppositions based on the trade mark at stake [para. 59] and the fact that the earlier marks had not been surrendered [para. 60].

      • Patents

        • Patents are needed to develop medicines for future pandemics - Merkel [Ed: Merkel is lying. Old mythology. Merkel also protects criminals and covers up the crimes at the EPO in Germany because of financial interests.]
        • EPO invalidates UC Berkeley CRISPR patent

          The EPO has revoked a foundational CRISPR patent owned by UC Berkeley following oral proceedings at the office on April 12 and 13, it emerged this week.

          The university’s EP3241902 patent, called "Methods and compositions for RNA-directed target DNA modification and for RNA-directed modulation of transcription", was invalidated in its entirety last month on the basis of an invalid priority claim.

          This invalidation represents the first big loss of UC Berkeley’s CRISPR patent rights in Europe.

          While the written decision from the EPO’s Opposition Division has not yet been published, preliminary non-binding opinions from the division cited a key 2012 publication from the university, referred to as Jinek 2012, as potentially relevant prior art.

          This prior art, the division suggested, supported the revocation of the patent on the basis of a lack of inventive step under Article 56 in the European Patent Convention.

          This is the second time a core CRISPR patent has been invalidated by the EPO over the past six months. The Broad Institute’s EP2771468 CRISPR patent, called "Engineering of systems, methods and optimised guide compositions for sequence manipulation", was revoked in November 2020.

        • Unified Files Amicus Addressing Western District's Court Congestion, Refusal To Transfer

          On May 24, 2021, Unified filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in support of a mandamus petition related to a denial of transfer. The brief argues that the Western District judge's decision not to transfer a case brought by Koss Corp. ignored authority and the court's analysis amounted to an abuse of discretion by erroneously weighing or failing to credit the parties' representations, including party witness convenience.

        • Unified Files in Amicus for En Banc Review of Apple v. Qualcomm on Appellate Standing

          On May 21, 2021, Unified filed an amicus curiae brief in support of en banc review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Apple v. Qualcomm on the issue of the court's increasingly patent-focused, Circuit-specific rules surrounding appellate standing. In the brief, Unified asked the court to review a decision on appeal from a PTAB proceeding where the panel found that the petitioner lacked standing, despite having been sued and paying royalties on the patent in question.



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