Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 6/6/2021: Visually Stunning Week in Tok and OpenPOWER SpiderMonkey JIT



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Chromebook ready?- The New Indian Express

        What’s the first thing you do on a laptop? Most of us open a web browser (mostly Google Chrome) and start working. Should MS Office refuse to open, no worries. You simply open Google Docs and go ahead. Right? If Adobe Acrobat Reader fails to open PDFs, you would use Google to do so.

        If this is how you get your work done, then you are ready for a Chromebook. Unlike regular computers, Chromebooks work differently. It looks exactly like a regular laptop with a keyboard, connectivity ports and a trackpad. But it differs in terms of the operating system. While Windows laptops run Windows OS, Chromebooks have ChromeOS. This OS is designed by Google and is based on a Gentoo Linux system. So when you boot the Chromebook, it starts up instantly like a smartphone and the user interface is pretty much like Android devices. Chromebooks work best with the internet.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • François Marier: Upgrading an ext4 filesystem for the year 2038
      • Linux Disables Intel's New ENQCMD Feature Since Kernel Code "Broken Beyond Repair"

        For two years now we have seen various open-source patches around ENQCMD instructions for the code compilers and the Linux kernel. This Enqueue Stores support is part of Intel's Data Streaming Accelerator coming with Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids". But even with Sapphire Rapids not launching until later this year, the already merged Linux kernel code is force-disabling the ENQCMD instructions support as the current kernel support is deemed "broken beyond repair" and will need to be reworked.

        In recent months the Linux kernel bits have been coming together for Intel's DSA (Data Streaming Accelerator) and handling of the ENQCMD instructions along with related kernel work like on the XSAVES supervisor states.

      • Linux x86/x86_64 Will Now Always Reserve The First 1MB Of RAM - Phoronix

        The Linux x86/x86_64 kernel code already had logic in place for reserving portions of the first 1MB of RAM to avoid the BIOS or kernel potentially clobbering that space among other reasons while now Linux 5.13 is doing away with that "wankery" and will just unconditionally always reserve the first 1MB of RAM.

        The Linux kernel was already catering to Intel Sandy Bridge graphics accessing memory below the 1MB mark, the first 64K of memory are known to be corrupted by some BIOSes, and similar problems coming up in that low area of memory. But rather than dealing with all that logic and other possible niche cases besides the EGA/VGA frame-buffer and BIOS, the kernel is playing it safe and just always reserving the first 1MB of RAM so it will not get clobbered by the kernel.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Crocus Gallium3D Nears Mainline Mesa For Gallium3D i965 Through Haswell Graphics - Phoronix

          A few months ago you may recall word of Crocus as a new Mesa Gallium3D driver for supporting Intel Gen7 Haswell graphics and older back through the i965 class hardware. That Gallium3D driver for the aging class of Intel graphics is nearing mainline Mesa with the work-in-progress merge request now pending as of this week.

          Crocus is the Intel Gallium3D driver for handling Gen4 (i965) through Gen7 (Haswell) graphics. Intel's modern "Iris" Gallium3D driver that has become their de facto OpenGL driver is what supports Gen8 Broadwell graphics and newer up through the modern Xe Graphics. If you care about vintage Intel graphics prior to Gen4, there is still the i915g Gallium3D driver in Mesa albeit rarely touched by any developers these days aside from fixes.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Install OBS Studio 27 in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

        This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install OBS Studio 27.0 in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and LinuxMint 20.

        OBS Studio a Free and open-source software for Video recording and Live Streaming, it is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

        OBS released a new version 27.0, with many features, Bug-fixes, and improvements.

      • How To Install WineHQ on AlmaLinux 8 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WineHQ on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Wine is an open-source, free and easy-to-use program that enables Linux users to run some Windows-based applications on Unix-like operating systems. Wine is a compatibility layer for installing almost all versions of Windows programs.

        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 WineHQ on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.

      • How to audit SSH server and client config on Linux/Unix - nixCraft

        All developers and Unix users know how to use an ssh client. OpenSSH is a widely used implementation of Secure Shell (SSH) Internet communication protocol. Back in the old days, Unix folks used Telnet which was insecure. On the other hand, SSH allows exchanging data using a secure channel between two hosts. Therefore, every Linux and Unix server running cloud or at home needs an OpenSSH server for management and IT automation. Regrettably, the popularity of SSH servers and client also brings various security issues. I wrote about “Top 20 OpenSSH Server Best Security Practices” a long time ago. Today, I will talk about ssh server and client auditing tools that anyone can use to the hardened standard SSH server and client configuration for security issues.

      • Controlling Somfy roller shutters using an ESP32 and ESPHome



        Our house has solar powered, remote controllable roller shutters on the roof windows, built by the German company named HEIM & HAUS. However, when you look closely at the remote control or the shutter motor, you'll see another brand name: SIMU. As the shutters don't have any wiring inside the house, the only way to control them is via the remote interface. So let's go on the Internet and see how one can do that, shall we? ;)

        First thing we learn is that SIMU remote stuff is just re-branded Somfy. Great, another name! Looking further we find that Somfy uses some obscure protocol to prevent (replay) attacks (spoiler: it doesn't!) and there are tools for RTL-SDR and Arduino available. That's perfect!

      • Netflix and IPv6 €« etbe - Russell Coker

        It seems that Netflix has an ongoing issue of not working well with IPv6, apparently they have some sort of region checking code that doesn’t correctly identify IPv6 prefixes. To fix this I wrote the following script to make a small zone file with only A records for Netflix and no AAAA records. The $OUT.header file just has the SOA record for my fake netflix.com domain.

      • Rethinking Sanakirja

        This is fast! I’m not entirely sure why it is so much faster than LMDB in these benchmarks, but here are a few hypotheses: first, the arity of internal nodes is higher, as Sanakirja doesn’t store the lengths on the page. Also, Sanakirja has a special implementation of leaves for types whose size is known at compile-time, and experiments I ran showed a ~15% performance gain compared with a basic “unsized” implementation. I guess compile-time optimisations enabled by genericity make up for the rest (one could probably get similar results in C++, but it would probably take longer to write and debug).

      • How To Install Duf on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Duf on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Duf (Disk Usage Free Utility) is a useful disk monitoring terminal tool written in Golang. It’s a free and open-source cross-platform tool designed to be a replacement for the df command. It allows you to easily check your disk usage and present it in a much more organized and presentable manner.

        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 the step-by-step installation of the Duf 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 the Pantheon desktop environment on Ubuntu Linux

        So here we will discuss how you can install Pantheon or the Elementary OS desktop environment on Ubuntu. But before that, let’s have a look at the consequences of installing a new desktop environment.

        Doing and seeing the same thing every day makes life boring. It’s then, when we go for a change, talk to our friends, or do something that makes us feel good. When it comes to our digital life, sometimes we switch to a new launcher or use a new icon pack on our Android devices, install a new theme on our computer, and do a lot of other things to change the look and feel. When it comes to Linux, it is possible to change the complete desktop environment to get a new user interface, a new set of apps without changing the core of the operating system or end up installing a new distribution.

      • How to Create a Database in MySQL using MySQL Workbench

        The MySQL Workbench is a graphic tool for working with MySQL Servers and databases. It is cross-platform, open source, and easy to use.

        We’ll assume you already have MySQL Workbench installed. Let us show you how we can use it to create a new database in MySQL.

        First, launch the MySQL Workbench and click on the button as shown in the following screenshot to setup a new connection.

      • Wget – Download files to Specific Directory

        Wget is a free command-line utility for downloading files from the remote server. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, as well as follows the HTTP proxies servers.

        The default wget download files under the current working directory. In this tutorial, we will describe you to how to download files to a specific directory using wget.

    • Games

      • Mighty Goose is a furious over the top honking good time and it's out now | GamingOnLinux

        Mighty Goose is the brand new run and gun action game from Blastmode, MP2 Games and publisher PLAYISM. It's out now with same-day Linux support and it's fantastic.

      • What have you tapping play on recently? Let us know | GamingOnLinux

        It has again been a while since we ask you, our wonderful community about your gaming picks recently, so let's have another chat in the comments. Sunday for a lot of people is a time for rest, relaxation and plenty of gaming!

      • AMD on the Brink of Taking Over – Survey Q2 2021

        After our recent analysis from the Q2 2021 survey covering the evolution and future of Cloud Gaming, we wanted to focus on a topic we had already touched upon before. We had previously seen in the ProtonDB data that AMD was seriously taking over the gaming scene on Linux both in terms of CPU and GPU penetration. The recent survey enables us to confirm if this is indeed the case, and also confirm what are the key drivers for the market changes. So, what did we actually see this time around?

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • A Visually Stunning Week in Tok

          This week has seen a LOT of stuff come to Tok, both in terms of aesthetics and in functionality.

          Tok now has support for displaying animated stickers.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • GNOME's Need To Broaden Its Audience For Greater Impact & Funding

          Robert McQueen, the President of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, wrote a post this week ultimately about the GNOME project's need to broaden its focus in order to attract more new users and ultimately to be able to raise funds from new organizations outside of their traditional reach. If they aren't able to find new funding sources, they may need to scale back in some of their efforts but still have a sufficient safety net.

          While GNOME has been delivering on GTK4, expanded community engagement, better infrastructure, and delivering on all of their other recent improvements, their fundraising hasn't caught up. The GNOME Board of Directors latest budget that was approved for this financial year is spending more funds from their resources than they expect to raise in income. GNOME's reserves policy dictates though that they can't do this again so over the next year they will need to either raise more money or begin spending less.

        • Nishal Kulkarni: Turning over a new leaf with GNOMEHello, GNOME!

          This will be the first post of many that document my journey of being a Google Summer of Code 2021 student at the GNOME Foundation.

          I’m really excited about this opportunity and plan on learning a lot during this period.

          To introduce myself to the community I’ll be answering the 5Ws and 1H.

    • Distributions

      • BSD

        • actually, BSD kqueue is a mountain of technical debt

          A side effect of the whole freenode kerfluffle is that I’ve been looking at IRCD again. IRC, is of course a very weird and interesting place, and the smaller community of people who run IRCDs are largely weirder and even more interesting.

          However, in that community of IRCD administrators there happens to be a few incorrect systems programming opinions that have been cargo culted around for years. This particular blog is about one of these bikesheds, namely the kqueue vs epoll debate.

          You’ve probably heard it before. It goes something like this, “BSD is better for networking, because it has kqueue. Linux has nothing like kqueue, epoll doesn’t come close.” While I agree that epoll doesn’t come close, I think that’s actually a feature that has lead to a much more flexible and composable design.

          [...]

          It is possible to do almost everything that kqueue can do on FreeBSD in Linux, but instead of having a single monolithic syscall to handle everything, Linux takes the approach of providing syscalls which allow almost anything to be represented as a kernel handle.

          Since epoll strictly monitors kernel handles, you can register any kernel handle you have with it and get events back when its state changes. As a comparison to Windows, this basically means that epoll is a kernel-accelerated form of WaitForMultipleObjects in the Win32 API.

          You are probably wondering how this works, so here’s a table of commonly used kqueue event filters and the Linux syscall used to get a kernel handle for use with epoll.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

      • Debian Family

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • 5 handy guides to open source for teachers

        For some teachers, summer is here and thus a long (hopefully, relaxing) break. All the teachers I know are proud lifelong learners, though, and at the end of the summer break there's a new school year awaiting. To help you get the most out of your summer, but also satiate the real need to plan for the coming school year, we've collected some of our favorite concise guides to help you plan.

        By going all-in on Linux, teacher Robert Maynord ensured his school was ready for remote learning—even before it needed to be. We still don't know what the rest of the year has in store, but if there's anything that the pandemic has shown the world, it's that digital transformation (the integration of digital technology into all areas of education) is not only possible, but beneficial to both teachers and students. You may not have the authority to change the way your classroom operates on a technological level, but there are lots of small changes you can make to create a more agile learning experience for your pupils.

      • More Intel Alder Lake Enablement Landing For Coreboot - Phoronix

        In addition to getting Intel's Alder Lake hybrid processors ready for the Linux kernel and other areas of the operating system stack, Intel's open-source engineers have continued their trend in recent weeks of upstreaming more Alder Lake work into Coreboot.

        Since February~March there has been a steady flow of Alder Lake enablement work landing in Coreboot Git and that pace has ramped up in recent weeks with more Alder Lake / ADL commits.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • The Talospace Project: Progress on the OpenPOWER SpiderMonkey JIT

            This may not look like much, but it demonstrates that the current version of the OpenPOWER JavaScript JIT for Firefox can emit machine language instructions correctly (mostly — still more codegen bugs to shake out), handles the instruction cache correctly, handles ABI-compliant calls into the SpiderMonkey VM correctly (the IonMonkey JIT is not ABI-compliant except at those edges), and enters and exits routines without making a mess of the stack. Much of the code originates from TenFourFox's "IonPower" 32-bit PowerPC JIT, though obviously greatly expanded, and there is still ongoing work to make sure it is properly 64-bit aware and takes advantage of instructions available in later versions of the Power ISA. (No more spills to the stack to convert floating point, for example. Yay for VSX!)

            Although it is only the lowest level of the JIT, what Mozilla calls the Baseline Interpreter, there is substantial code in common between the Baseline Interpreter and the second-stage Baseline Compiler. Because it has much less overhead compared to Baseline Compiler and to the full-fledged Ion JIT, the Baseline Interpreter can significantly improve page loads all by itself. In fact, my next step might be to get regular expressions and the OpenPOWER Baseline Interpreter to pass the test suite and then drag that into a current version of Firefox for continued work so that it can get banged on for reliability and improve performance for those people who want to build it (analogous to how we got PPCBC running first before full-fledged IonPower in TenFourFox). Eventually full Ion JIT and Wasm support should follow, though those both use rather different codepaths apart from the fundamental portions of the backend which still need to be shaped.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Poke 1.3 Released For Poking At Binaries, Understanding Binary Data

            GNU Poke debuted earlier this year as a new GNU project providing an interactive editor and integrated, interactive programming language for dealing with binary data. Poke makes it easier to analyze binary data and their data structures as well as manipulating said binary data.

            GNU Poke had been in development for three years prior to tagging the official v1.0 release back in February. Debuting today is GNU Poke 1.3.

          • 11 Tools for Graphic Designers in 2021 | CoFounder

            GIMP is one of the most popular photo editors, its being free might be a factor. GIMP or GNU Image Manipulator is a good photo editor. Though it is free, GIMP has many tools and features that have paid for photo editors.

            Its user interface is not as good as paid editors, but it does a good job editing raster photos.

      • Programming/Development

        • Wreck Your Mail Before You Check Your Mail | Hackaday

          Every five years or so, I think it’s time to review my e-mail flow. (Oh no!) I run my own mail server, and you should too, but this means that I get to figure out managing and searching and archiving and indexing it all by myself. (Yippee!)

          And I’ll be honest — sometimes I’m a bit of a luddite. I actually, literally have been using Mutt, or its derivative NeoMutt for maybe fifteen years, after a decade or so of mouse-intensive graphical mail readers. If e-mail is about typing words, and maybe attaching the occasional image, nothing beats a straight-up text interface. But what a lot of these simple mail clients lack is good search. So I decided to take that seriously.

        • Perl/Raku

          • gfldex: Late early bound

            My last post got at least two people thinking. I made the suggestion to add a sub called pretty-print to make the resulting text/html human friendly. Since this is a nice name, making it a multi seams a polite move.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Using awk in Linux

            awk is a program that has its own programming language for performing data-processing and generating reports.

            The GNU version of awk is gawk.

            awk processes data, which can be received from a standard input, input file, or as the output of any other command or process.

            awk processes data similar to sed, line by line. It processes every line for the specified pattern and performs specified actions. If the pattern is specified, then all the lines containing specified patterns will be displayed. If pattern is not specified, then the specified actions will be performed on all the lines.

  • Leftovers

    • 2021-2030: The Renewal Decade
    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • [Crackers] Breached Colonial Pipeline Using Compromised Password [Ed: Windows]

            The hack that took down the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S. and led to shortages across the East Coast was the result of a single compromised password, according to a cybersecurity consultant who responded to the attack.

            Hackers gained entry into the networks of Colonial Pipeline Co. on April 29 through a virtual private network account, which allowed employees to remotely access the company’s computer network, said Charles Carmakal, senior vice president at cybersecurity firm Mandiant, part of FireEye Inc., in an interview. The account was no longer in use at the time of the attack but could still be used to access Colonial’s network, he said.

          • David Tomaschik: GPU Accelerated Password Cracking in the Cloud: Speed and Cost-Effectiveness

            As a red teamer and security researcher, I occasionally find the need to crack some hashed passwords. It used to be that John the Ripper was the go-to tool for the job. With the advent of GPGPU technologies like CUDA and OpenCL, hashcat quickly eclipsed John for pure speed. Unfortunately, graphics cards are a bit hard to come by in 2021. I decided to take a look at the options for running hashcat on Google Cloud.

            There are several steps involved in getting hashcat running with CUDA, and because I often only need to run the instance for a short period of time, I put together a script to spin up hashcat on a Google Cloud VM. It can either run the benchmark or spin up an instance with arbitrary flags. It starts the instance but does not stop it upon completion, so if you want to give it a try, make sure you shut down the instance when you’re done with it. (It leaves the hashcat job running in a tmux session for you to examine.)

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • IT minister: EU digital services should be available equally across union

              The framework also aims to provide a digital wallet for member states' citizens and businesses, enabling the linking of digital IDs to other identification and the transition from paper documents to digital ones.

              This digital wallet would build on digital ID issued by member states, meaning Estonia's and other states' ID cards and e-ID solutions would not be replaced, but rather all member states would be subject to an obligation to make reliable digital IDs available to their citizens

            • The FBI is trying to get IP addresses and phone numbers of people who read a USA Today article

              The FBI is trying to get a list of IP addresses, phone numbers, and other information on people who read a USA Today article about the deaths of two of its agents (via Politico). The subpoena (PDF) says it relates to a criminal investigation, and is seeking the information of readers who accessed the article in a specific 35-minute timespan, but it’s unclear who or what the Bureau is trying to track down. USA Today is fighting back against handing over the information, calling the request unconstitutional.

            • Confidentiality

              • [Old] A Look at Two Recent CVEs in Thunderbird's OpenPGP Support

                In a blog post that I published two weeks ago, I wrote that RNP is dangerous, because it is too easy to misuse. I also explained how we avoid those problems in Sequoia. In this blog post, I will lay out how not one, but two CVEs have since come up in Thunderbird that seem to underline that danger.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • 'Disgusting': Comparing AR-15s to Swiss Army Knives, Federal Judge Overturns California's Assault Weapons Ban
      • Sunday Marks 77th Anniversary of D-Day

        Sunday marks the 77th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces landed in Normandy, France, to help liberate Europe from German forces and turn the course of World War II.

        The June 6, 1944, operation was the largest seaborne invasion in history, involving land, sea and air forces.

        Nearly 160,000 troops took part in the landing, including those from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

      • A parallel society is developing in parts of Muslim Britain

        This is particularly true in the old mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire, which now contain parallel societies, where the faithful can live their day-to-day lives without mixing. Mosques run schools and pronounce on Islamic law. Restaurants offer gender segregation under the polite name of “family seating”.

        These societies are dominated by a clerical class that extends its influence into secular society by, for example, endorsing candidates for Parliament. Mr Husain visited mosque after mosque that taught a highly literal interpretation of Islam, sometimes clinging to arguments that are being dropped in the Middle East. He saw shops displaying books that advocate stoning gays or keeping wives in purdah or waging jihad. Sayyid Qutb, Osama bin Laden’s favourite philosopher, appeared often.

        Many of these clerics belong to religious groupings with roots far from these shores. Saudi Wahhabis pour money into British mosques and offer all-expenses-paid scholarships to young British Muslims. More surprising is the importance of the Deobandis. Mr Husain claims more than half of the country’s mosques now belong to the movement, which began in India and seeks to rebuild the caliphate from the ground up, convert by convert. Dewsbury, a historic market town in Yorkshire, is the European capital of the largest Muslim organisation in the world, the Tableeghi Jamaat, the movement’s evangelical arm.

      • British towns that are no-go areas for white people: Muslim author's study of mosques

        Local bookshops sold pamphets and books promoting the separation and suppression of women, with one even outlining how women shouldn't leave the house without their husband's permission. One read: 'When a woman leaves her home without her husband's consent then all the angels of the skies and the entire universe curse her for this act until she returns home.'

        The mosque is also the central office for the Tableeghi Jamaat (about which regular readers of this blog will have heard, many times, in particular their attempts to build a mega-mosque, a new European HQ, in West Ham.)

        Ed called it 'the culture of caliphism', explaining: 'The Tableeghi Jamaat separates itself from secular society, and preaches from door to door, to create a Muslim society from which a caliphate is expected eventually to emerge.'

      • After Years Of Detecting Land Mines, A Heroic Rat Is Hanging Up His Sniffer

        Magawa is a Tanzanian-born African giant pouched rat who was trained by APOPO to sniff out explosives. With careful training, he and his rat colleagues learn to identify land mines and alert their human handlers, so the mines can be safely removed.

        Even among his skilled cohorts working in Cambodia, Magawa is a standout sniffer: In four years he has helped to clear more than 2.4 million square feet of land. In the process, he has found 71 land mines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance.

        Last year, Magawa received one of Britain's highest animal honors.

      • Post-Christian Europe must understand this hegemonic project, anti the individualistic values ​​of the West, before it is too late. Op-ed.

        Turkey has built 13,000 mosques since Erdogan came to power. The largest mosque in the world stands on the hill of Camlica, dominating the Asian side of Istanbul. Unsatisfied, the Turkish President just inaugurated a new mega mosque in Taksim Square in Istanbul, realizing the ambition to build a Muslim place of worship in the main public space of the city, which had become a symbol of the modern secular Turkish Republic.

        Erdogan joined thousands of worshipers for the first prayers at the towering 3,000-seat mosque in Taksim, which was also the site of mass anti-government protests in 2013.

      • Thirteen on trial in France over threats against teen who slammed Islam

        Thirteen people went on trial in France on Thursday for online harassment, including death threats, against a teenage girl who was placed under police protection after posting anti-Islam rants on social media. The treatment of Mila, who was forced to change schools over her expletive-laden videos, caused an outcry and fuelled a debate about the right to offend religious beliefs.

        "The Koran is filled with nothing but hate, Islam is a shitty religion," the teen said in the first post on Instagram in January 2020. She was 16 at the time.

        She posted a second video in November, this time on TikTok, after the jihadist killing of high school teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown students controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed.

      • Thirteen On Trial In France Over Threats Against Teen Who Slammed Islam

        Mila's lawyer Richard Malka told the court that she "received more than 100,000 hateful messages and death threats promising to have her trussed up, cut up, quartered, beheaded, with images of coffins or doctored pictures of her decapitation."

        "I cannot believe that these 13 people who have all been through our education system do not know that criticising religions is legal and has nothing to do with racism," he said.

        France's staunch defence of the right to mock religion and its crackdown on religious extremists have sparked protests in several Muslim countries, where the French have been accused of stigmatising Islam.

      • Armed Attackers Kill 100 Civilians in Burkina Faso Village Raid

        The violence in Burkina Faso has displaced more than 1.14 million people in just over two years, while the impoverished arid country is also hosting some 20,000 refugees from neighboring Mali who are seeking safety from jihadist attacks.

      • The Taliban Are Getting Stronger In Afghanistan As U.S. And NATO Forces Exit

        Another driver, Sharif Omeri, says the insurgents search passengers' cellphones for music or material forbidden under the Taliban's strict version of Islam forbid. "One time they found a guy who had some pornography on his phone," he says. "They told him to delete it and not watch porn again."

        Across Afghanistan, there are echoes of what the Taliban did in the 1990s when they seized power after a brutal civil war. The Taliban wrested order out of chaos, imposing harsh rules on Afghan society until they were toppled in the U.S. invasion in 2001.

        In the two decades since, the Taliban have fought the Afghan government and its international allies to regain land and power. Analysts say the insurgents have been growing stronger for years. Now, as American and NATO troops withdraw, the Taliban appear even more emboldened and are wresting more territory from the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Campaign calls for MPs to bring ARIA under FOI

        The Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill will have its report stage in the House of Commons on Monday 7th June 2021. As it stands, ARIA will not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Campaign has written to MPs urging them to support amendments 8 and 14 to bring ARIA under FOI.

    • Environment

      • The Perils of an 'America First' Climate Policy
      • What Is Climate Justice? A Framework for Understanding the World

        Thanks to an incredible amount of youth energy and high-profile protests like the standoffs at the Standing Rock reservation and Hawaii’s Mauna Kea mountain, the movement to take on the climate crisis continues to gain momentum. The Green New Deal has inspired other proposals — the Red Deal, the Red, Black, and Green New Deal, and the Green New Deal for Cities — and young people worldwide have stepped up the pressure to get these proposals passed, using their knack for creativity to help keep the climate crisis in focus. Amid divestment campaigns, massive strikes, targeted sit-ins, and other efforts, the youth climate movement is pushing politicians and the public to understand that the fight for economic justice and environmental justice are one and the same.

        Teen Vogue sits down with Gunn-Wright and Zero Hour’s volunteer management director Khristen Hamilton for a conversation about how they’re making these connections.

      • U.S. conservatives stake claim to climate activism with Miami rally

        The rally is being held in Miami, a city threatened by tidal floods from rising seas and stronger hurricanes due to climate change

        [...]

        Backer's nonprofit, the American Conservation Coalition, held what it billed as the country's first conservative climate rally in Miami, part of an effort by the 23-year-old activist to convince fellow right-leaning Americans they don't have to be liberals to support action on the issue.

        It included a handful of Republican politicians from south Florida, which faces climate threats including tidal floods from rising seas, stronger hurricanes, and health risks from higher temperatures and humidity.

        "The environment does not have a preferred political party," Backer said from a podium overlooking a bay near where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed a $6 billion sea wall. "Today conservatives are reclaiming our seat at the environmental table."

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • Where did the microchip vaccine conspiracy theory come from anyway?

        But this conspiracy, along with other false claims about the vaccine, has gained traction. These dangerous myths have built on a distrust of vaccines sown for years by well-organized groups that launched targeted, effective disinformation campaigns. Through glossy magazines distributed to Orthodox Jews in New York, intimate seminars led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the California coast, and deceptive websites like the National Vaccine Information Center, these messages found receptive audiences among Americans who have grown more distrustful of its elites and institutions.

      • Fauci fights back as right-wing attacks enter new, more conspiratorial phase: “It’s all nonsense”

        Since the pandemic began last year, Fauci has emerged as a flashpoint of conservative ire despite his role as a top adviser to former President Donald Trump. But recent attacks have become more brazen and vitriolic as members of Congress and high-profile right-wing pundits stepped up their attacks, asking for his firing — or worse. Top aides to Trump even suggested this week that Fauci is the GOP's new Hillary Clinton: someone reviled by the Republican base that Trump will continue to use as a punching bag at rallies.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Microsoft says error caused 'Tank Man' Bing censorship

        The phrase relates to the iconic image of a lone protester standing before tanks in China's Tiananmen Square during demonstrations in 1989.

        On Friday users who searched for the term reported receiving the message: "There are no results for tank man".

        It prompted accusations of possible censorship on the protest anniversary.

      • The Cover-Up Continues: The Truth About Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Jeffrey Epstein

        While more revelations about the Bill Gates–Jeffrey Epstein relationship have begun trickling out following the Gates’s divorce announcement, the strong evidence pointing to their relationship beginning decades prior to 2011 continues to be covered up by the media—not necessarily to protect Bill but to protect Microsoft.

        [...]

        The Daily Beast also revealed that the details of the Gates’s divorce had been decided several weeks prior to the official announcement. Then, on May 9, the Wall Street Journal published a report suggesting that the plans for divorce went back even farther, with Melinda having consulted divorce lawyers in 2019. Allegedly, that consultation was made after details of Bill Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein had gained considerable mainstream media attention, including from the New York Times.

        While mainstream media outlets apparently agree that Jeffrey Epstein was a likely factor in the Gates’s recently announced split up, what these same outlets refuse to cover is the real extent of the Bill Gates–Jeffrey Epstein relationship. Indeed, the mainstream narrative holds that Gates’s ties to Epstein began in 2011, despite the evidence pointing to their relationship beginning decades earlier.

        This blanket refusal to honestly report on the Gates-Epstein ties likely is due to Gates’s outsized role in current events, both in terms of global health policy as it relates to COVID-19 and in his being a major promoter and funder of controversial technocratic “solutions” to a slew of societal problems. What is more likely, however, is that the nature of the relationship between Gates and Epstein before 2011 is even more scandalous than what transpired later, and it may have major implications not just for Gates but for Microsoft as a company and for some of its former top executives.

        [...]

        One line stands out, however, as the first major clue toward demystifying the true origin the of the Gates-Epstein relationship. Soon after Rosser introduces Epstein in the article, he states that Epstein “has made many millions out of his business links with the likes of Bill Gates, Donald Trump and Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner, whose trust he runs.”

        Both Wexner’s and Trump’s relationships with Epstein prior to 2001 are well known and date back to 1985 and 1987, respectively. Mainstream media, however, continue to report that Gates and Epstein first met in 2011 and have declined to follow the leads laid out by Nigel Rosser. I am personally aware of this withholding of information to a degree as a BBC reporter contacted me in 2019 for details about this 2001 Evening Standard article, which I provided. To date, the BBC has never reported on the contents of that article. Notably, the BBC has received millions in funding for years from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

        Not only was Rosser’s article never retracted, but neither Gates, Trump, nor Wexner disputed the claims made in the article at the time, which was well before Epstein became notorious. In addition, given that Gates is named alongside two known close Epstein associates at the time—Donald Trump and Leslie Wexner—it further suggests that Gates’s ties to Epstein prior to 2001 were considerable enough to warrant his mention alongside these two other men.

        In addition to the Evening Standard article, there is evidence from Maria Farmer, an Epstein victim who was employed by Epstein and Maxwell from 1995 to 1996, that she recalled hearing Epstein mention Bill Gates in such a way as to imply they were close friends and which gave her the impression that the Microsoft cofounder might soon be visiting one of Epstein’s residences.

        [...]

        Of all the alliances and partnerships Isabel negotiated during her early years at CommTouch, it was her dealings with Microsoft cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen that put CommTouch “on the map.” Microsoft’s cofounders did much more than put CommTouch “on the map,” however, as they essentially intervened to prevent the collapse of its initial public offering, a fate that had befallen Isabel Maxwell’s previous company, the McKinley Group, not long before. Indeed, CommTouch kept pushing back its IPO until a massive investment from firms tied to Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen was announced in July 1999.

        [...]

        It further appears that Bill Gates, then head of Microsoft, made a personal investment in CommTouch at the behest of Isabel Maxwell. In an October 2000 article published in the Guardian, Isabel “jokes about persuading Bill Gates to make a personal investment” in CommTouch sometime during this period.

        [...]

        While the Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation intermingled, and the latter had ties to Epstein and Maxwell, it also appears that Epstein had significant influence over two of the most prominent science advisers to Bill Gates over the last fifteen years—Melanie Walker and Boris Nikolic.

        [...]

        During her time at the Gates Foundation, Walker introduced Boris Nikolic, Gates’s science adviser, to Epstein. Today, Melanie Walker is the cochair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnology and Brain Science, having previously been named a WEF Young Global Leader. She also advises the World Health Organization, which is closely linked to Bill Gates’s “philanthropy.”

      • Christian Pakistani couple accused of blasphemy given reprieve after seven years on death row

        The EU Parliament in April also asked Pakistan to immediately repeal its blasphemy laws.

        Blasphemy remains an extremely sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim nation.

        Radical Islamists parties have held violent rallies in recent years to stop the government from making any changes in the blasphemy laws

        Pakistan is often the scene of vigilante violence against people accused of blasphemy.

      • Kelantan police to probe report of woman in video belittling Islam

        “The complainant claimed to have watched a video shared on Whatsapp last night showing a Malay woman in her 30s stating that she did not like praying and that everyone did not perform salat in 2021.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • US to stop seizing reporters' records in leak investigations

        The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has said it is ending a long-standing practice of secretly obtaining reporters' records during investigations into the leaking of classified information.

        It happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

        But the use of subpoenas and court orders to obtain journalists' records came under growing scrutiny this year.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Anti-Asian Violence Didn’t Start or End With Trump’s White House
      • Why the PRO Act Is Critical
      • The Supreme Court pared down a controversial anti-[cracking] law

        The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a controversial anti-hacking law which bans “exceeding authorized access” on a computer system, was narrowed by the Supreme Court on Thursday in a 6-3 ruling. The court said the law shouldn’t cover people misusing systems they’re allowed to access — and that claiming otherwise would criminalize a “breathtaking amount” of everyday computer use.

        The court case, Van Buren v. United States, concerns a former Georgia police officer named Nathan Van Buren. Van Buren accepted $5,000 in exchange for looking up a woman’s license plate in a police database. (The deal was actually an FBI sting operation, and the plate number was fictitious.) Because the exchange violated department rules, prosecutors said Van Buren had “exceeded access” to the system. Van Buren’s lawyers argued that whether or not he misused the database, he was authorized to access it — and therefore hadn’t violated anti-hacking laws.

      • France: Muslims retaliate against schoolgirl in love with non-Muslim man

        According to information from Actu Lyon, several people went to the school to attack the student. Fortunately, they were repelled by the security services. The girl’s family had also received threats. The victim, who lives in Vénissieux, decided to press charges and should even be placed in a safe place.

      • Google removes diversity chief over anti-Semitic 2007 blog post

        In the 2007 post, first reported by The Washington Free Beacon, Bobb, then a research associate at Georgia Tech, shared his views on how Jews people should view the conflict in the Middle East.

      • Merkel’s state broadcaster denies Muslim anti-Semitism in Germany

        In a report, ZDF news programme “heute” called a Syrian-Palestinian refugee a champion “against Jew-hatred”. Yet the man is an open Israel-hater. “His” country has been occupied “for 73 years”, he declares on Facebook: “We are against Israel.” In other words, the founding of the Jewish state 73 years ago is already an illegal act for him!

        But the ZDF report denies the anti-Semitic statements. “He condemns anti-Semitism, but Israel as well,” it says distortingly. His hatred of Israel is not classified. The absurd headline of the article: “Muslims against anti-Semitism.” ZDF did not answer a enquiry from the newspaper BILD about the programme.

      • [Old] Al Jolson- Misunderstood Hero or Villain?

        Jolson also insisted on the hiring and fair treatment of black people at a time when this was an outlandish concept to many in America. (For example, at the time members of the KKK are estimated to have accounted for about 15% of the U.S.’s voting-age population.) He also crusaded for equal rights for African-American as early as 1911, when he was 25. Through his very controversial portrayals, and advocating for black performers, Jolson helped pave the way for the success of such legends as Louis Armstrong, Ethyl Waters, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. As the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture stated, “Almost single-handedly, Jolson helped to introduce African-American musical innovations like jazz, ragtime, and the blues to white audiences.”

      • Talking software imperative for helping blind education

        The participants at a conference Friday expressed concerns over non-availability of useful ‘talking software’ to what they called was hindering blind persons from reaping the benefits of higher education and research.

        Participants of the conference also called upon the government to make mobile devices duty-free or make these available at subsidized rates for the disabled peoples that has become an international norm. They were addressing a one-day conference organised by Pakistan Disabled Foundation (PDF) at the auditorium of the National Skills University. PDF is struggling for the betterment of disabled persons of the country.

    • Monopolies

      • G7 Countries Reach Deal on 15% Global Minimum Tax Rate for Multinational Corporations
      • G-7 Nations Reach Historic Deal to Tax Big Multinationals

        The United States, Britain and other leading nations reached a landmark deal Saturday to pursue higher global taxation on multinational businesses such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

        In a move that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to help governments cope with the aftermath of COVID-19, the Group of Seven (G-7) large, advanced economies agreed to back a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15%. Companies will also have to pay more tax in the countries where they make sales.

      • How international partnerships help boost Saudi intellectual property watchdog’s effectiveness [Ed: This is very clearly a puff piece. Whether a paid-for or not... to be decided upon context]

        Sports journalist and analyst covering international football. Staramopoulos is a member of AIPS and the IFFHS Football Committee as well as the chief editor of Discoveryfootball.com and Sportpress24.com. He has also served as a special correspondent for France Football, A Bola, Mundo Deportivo.

      • Apple: We didn't take commission on 90% of App Store sales and billings
      • Book Review: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Intellectual Property and Trade in the Pacific Rim

        This Kat is delighted to review “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Intellectual Property and Trade in the Pacific Rim”, by Matthew Rimmer (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020, 616 pp). The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was a mega-regional agreement, which involved 12 negotiating states, including the US. After the US withdrew from the negotiations, the remaining 11 states renegotiated a new agreement, known as the Comprehensive and Progressive for Trans-Pacific Partnership (also known as TPP-11). Nevertheless, the new agreement which entered into force in December 2018, incorporated many norms that were included in TPP, which in turn were influenced by US norms. In the book, Rimmer takes a cross-sectoral analysis to IP-related norms of the TPP-11. From copyright exceptions and limitations, through geographical indications to trade secrets protection, the author looks at numerous ramifications that TPP-11 will have, not only on signatory states, but also on IP norm-setting internationally.

        Moreover, in each chapter, the analysis of TPP-11 norms is supplemented by an extensive discussion of national laws and caselaw of the relevant signatory states. Theoretical foundations are found in works by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, who himself has extensively studied the economics foundations of the TRIPS Agreement.

      • Patents

        • U.S. encouraged by progress toward vaccine patent waiver [Ed: The patent cartel is afraid not just because of #patents waiver related to coronavirus... because the success of such a waiver can herald of similar actions all across the board, impoverishing the cartel (long overdue).]
        • Melitta and Krieger Mes fend off vacuum cleaner filter lawsuits [Ed: EPO granting bad patents, but you need to pay huge court fees to get justice]

          Eurofilters and Melitta are Europe’s two leading manufacturers of vacuum cleaner filters. The Belgian and German companies share a large part of the market. In 2013, Eurofilters sued its German competitor at Mannheim District Court for infringement of its two patents EP 19 60 084 und EP 17 95 247. However, the case is currently going against the Belgian company.

          The Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe ruled that Melitta did not infringe the two patents with its Swirl brand vacuum cleaner filters. Eurofilters had claimed injunctive relief, damages and a recall from Melitta subsidiary, Wolf GmbH (case IDs: 6 U 68/19 and 6 U 69/19). Had the court upheld the claims, this would have had significant economic consequences for Melitta’s German business.

          In 2019, Mannheim Regional Court had already dismissed the two suits. Eurofilters appealed the decision. Both parties conducted the proceedings at considerable expense and with numerous expert opinions.

          The filter technology involves using optimal filter structures to ensure that as much air flows through as possible. Secondly, it ensures as many dust particles remain attached to the fibres as possible. The production of such fleece pads is complex.

        • Strongbridge Biopharma plc Announces Issuance of Patent for RECORLEV€® (levoketoconazole) for the Treatment of Cushing’s Syndrome

          This will be the third patent issued in the U.S. relating to RECORLEV. The first, U.S. Patent No. 9,198,906, covers methods of reducing C-reactive protein levels and systemic inflammation through administration of a once-daily dose of RECORLEV and will expire on December 29, 2030. The second, U.S. patent No. 9,918,984, covers methods of treating Cushing’s syndrome with levoketoconazole and will expire on January 10, 2026.

        • A Shift in Carbon Capture and Storage Technology? [Ed: Do you want to solve climate crisis? This law firm, which faces lawsuits for massive corruption at the moment (not for its shameless promoting of illegal patents), wants to monopolise the solution, then gloats about this suicidal (to humans) agenda. Imagine patent lawyers getting together to secure human survival instead of human exploitation through monopolies. They basically look to just 'monetise' crises which they themselves create or exacerbate. ]

          Figure 1a). Number of published patent applications that were tagged with CPC code Y02C20-40 (capture or disposal of greenhouse gases, specifically CO2) at the USPTO (green), CNIPA (orange), WIPO (grey) and EPO (yellow). Figure 1b). Percentage of the total publications which also contain the keyword “air” near the keyword “captur*”.

        • Future of IP – Canada: A brighter horizon for diagnostic methods [Ed: This is a "sponsored" (see disclosure) so-called article that's in fact shameless self-marketing disguised as 'journalism'. Managing IP is becoming a spam farm. Managing IP promotes patent maximalism... for a fee.]
        • Future BMWs Might Have Virtual Wing Mirrors Beamed Onto The Windows [Ed: Sorry, BMW, but this is hardly innovative even if the overstressed, overworked, not-compliant-with-EPC EPO grants a patent on it]

          As spotted by someone on the i4 Talk forum BMW has filed a patent with the European Patent Office (EPO) detailing a very different take on the virtual wing mirror. As with the system on its i8 and similar setups on the likes of the Honda E and Audi E-Tron, cameras are fitted in place of the conventional mirror units, but the feed isn’t simply displayed on dashboard/door-mounted screens.

        • BMW Patents Projection Side Mirror Display, Cool But Pointless

          The problem with being in the sales business is the need to constantly outdo your rivals. Automakers know this better than just about anyone, which is why you see gimmicky features installed into vehicles that probably would have been just as good without them. But one never knows what’s going to catch on with consumers and you’ll never catch the big one if you don’t go fishing, so you’ll see patents filed on just about everything.

          BMW has reportedly done just that with its new virtual mirror technology system that merges camera-based mirrors with olde-tyme projection technologies. The purpose appears to be something that replicates the experience of traditional side mirrors (which work fine) while adding some modern features that can only be accomplished using the newer stuff.

          First shared by the BMW i4Talk forum, Bavaria’s latest patent swaps side mirrors for cameras but ditches the video display they normally require for a partially opaque reflective section on the windows. Imagines are beamed from inside the cabin onto that area, giving an experience that can offer modern HUD features without the need for another screen. Drivers will also benefit from their cars becoming a wee bit more aerodynamic since there’s no need for exterior mirrors.

        • Roman Bonn: "The issue of SEP licences is by no means off the table" - JUVE Patent

          Roman Bonn: The lawsuits have been withdrawn and Daimler has a licence. The suppliers, on the other hand, do not. The decisive question for us is therefore how to obtain a licence, for example via the court proceedings in the Northern District of Texas. Of course, we need to avoid “double dipping” so that we do not end up paying royalties twice for the same product. Additionally, the out-of-court settlement between Daimler and Nokia still lacks a binding legal framework for key issues in SEP licensing. This is exactly what Nokia wanted to achieve.

          [...]

          We don’t know, because we don’t know the details of Daimler’s agreement with Nokia. And whether we’ll get to see it is open at best. For now, we are supplying to someone who we assume is entitled to use them.

          But for us, the uncertainty remains whether we will be infringing the patents if we continue to offer and supply our products to Daimler. Since we also developed the disputed products ourselves, we cannot claim to be Daimler’s extended workbench. In addition, we want to continue to innovate in the area of networking. That is why Continental also urgently needs its own licence.

        • Opinion: Daimler-Nokia deal is nail in component-level tyre [Ed: Some patent propaganda from the EPO's favourite mouthpiece these days]

          The standard essential patent war between Nokia and Daimler on the matter of end-point and component-level licensing in automotive was brought to an abrupt stop yesterday.

          After several hard-fought races in the German courts, at the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) – and indirectly in Texas through auto supplier Continental – the Finnish telecoms company and the German car maker signed a patent licence agreement, settling all litigation.

        • Can Toyota take pole in the solid-state battery race? [Ed: Cites the EPO's greenwashing propaganda from last month, as if the corrupt EPO somehow became an authority on technology]

          European Patent Office and the International Energy Agency. Toyota vowed at an earnings conference on May 12 to sell 8 million electrified vehicles in 2030, with fuel-cell vehicles and EVs accounting for a quarter of that estimate.

        • FOSS Patents: Automotive, consumer electronics companies lose German patent reform battle: injunctions still near-automatic under deform-not-reform statute

          The new statute is as unwieldy as it is unhelpful. It's nothing anyone can be proud of. And it confirms the prejudice--or maybe I should just call it a perception--that Germans are not particularly pragmatic. There's this German saying that translates as "why make it easy if you can make it complicated?" That one also applied to the Dusseldorf Regional Court's prolix questions to the ECJ, with one grammatical sentence spanning 13 lines in the English translation. No one at the ECJ will miss that preliminary reference for linguistic reasons...

        • BMW files patent in Europe for HUD ‘virtual’ mirror

          BMW has filed a patent with the European Patent Office (EPO) for a “virtual” mirror in head-up display (HUD) form, according to patent documents listed as released yesterday, according to forum i4 Talk.

          According to the diagrams sourced by the website, the virtual mirror arrangement aims to perform the function of a conventional mirror, with a display device projecting images from exterior cameras on to a partially transparent mirror section on the side window. This would offer benefits for airflow over the exterior of the vehicle from not requiring a relatively large conventional mirror.

        • [Old] Full Court Patent Review Bids Often ‘Waste of Time,’ Judge Says

          The full bench for the lone appeals venue for patent cases gets asked far too often to review decisions made by its three-judge panels, Federal Circuit Judge Todd M. Hughes says.

          The losing party seeks en banc rehearing in a majority of patent cases heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The court’s 12 active judges have to wade through them to see if they merit reconsideration. Few are granted.

          Certain patent issues so deeply divide the judges that rehearing isn’t likely to clarify the law, Hughes told Bloomberg Law. Most petitions for rehearing are “a waste of time and a waste of money,” he said.

        • International Law Talk Podcast: EU Competition Law Developments in the Pharmaceutical Sector with Michael Clancy and David Hull [Ed: Lobbying for COVID-19 vaccine patents, in "podcast" clothing]

          We are happy to announce the new International Law Talk Podcast episode on EU competition law developments in the pharmaceutical sector. And this one is twice as good! Not only are we discussing both competition and IP issues, but I also interviewed two leading experts in the field: Michael Clancy and David Hull from Van Bael & Bellis.

        • Unity And The EPO – A Clarified Approach? [Ed: This falsely insinuates that EPO follows the EPC; in fact, it violates the EPC without consequences, any single day... and the EPO's own guidelines are not lawful]

          According to the EPC, a European patent application shall relate to one invention only or to a group of inventions so linked as to form a single general inventive concept (Article 82 EPC). Thus, our unity article introduces the notion of a "single general inventive concept". The rules elaborate: where a group of inventions is claimed in a European patent application, the requirement of unity of invention under Article 82 shall be fulfilled only when there is a technical relationship among those inventions involving one or more of the same or corresponding special technical features. The expression "special technical features" shall mean those features which define a contribution which each of the claimed inventions considered as a whole makes over the prior art (Rule 44(1) EPC).

          Thus, while the related Rule 44 does not provide much clarity on what a "single general inventive concept" may mean, it introduces the concept of a "special technical feature." Nevertheless, it is implied by the Rule that claims having the "same or corresponding" special technical feature(s) meet the requirement of unity. A "special technical feature" must define a contribution over the prior art and, therefore, in order to be considered "special and technical," a given feature must be novel and inventive over the prior art.

          If this needed affirming (the word "inventive" is used in the text of Article 82 EPC), the Guidelines do so. From the previous version of the Guidelines: The term "special" means that the features in question define the contribution that the invention considered as a whole makes over the prior art in terms of novelty and inventive step (F-V, 2, "Requirement of unity of invention").

        • This week in IP: IP owners debate ADR, Clarivate signs Explore IP deal, SCOTUS accepts H&M copyright case [Ed: Managing IP played a considerable role seeding propaganda about this case, likely on behalf of EPO]

          The EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal has postponed its keenly awaited hearing into the legality of mandatory video conferences for oral proceedings.

          In a decision taken on Friday, May 28 – the same day that it was supposed to consider the substantive issues in the referral – the EBoA decided to delay the hearing.

          The EBoA accepted a request for delay from the opponent, who claimed it had not been given enough time to consider submissions by EPO president António Campinos. The opponent said it had only been notified a few days before the hearing was due to begin.

          A new start date of July 2 has been scheduled.

          The hugely controversial case (G1/21) concerns whether oral proceedings at the EBoA can be conducted by VICO without the consent of all parties.

          The EBoA first confirmed it would hear the matter in February this year. Since then, 48 amicus curiae have been filed from companies including BASF, Philips, Bayer and Siemens.

          In fact, prior to the original scheduled start date of May 28, the EBoA also responded to impartiality concerns by changing the composition of the panel hearing the dispute.

          This included a grievance from one patent attorney association that BoA president Carl Josefsson, who was involved in the drafting of the article (Article 15a) that allowed for VICO hearings, was due to sit on the EBoA panel hearing the dispute.

          In response, the EBoA issued an interlocutory decision last month in which it found there was a justified fear of partiality in the case of Josefsson. He was replaced by EBoA member Fritz Blumer.

          Neither the European Patent Institute (which made the complaint) nor the EBoA had reason to suspect bad faith on the part of Josefsson.

        • Nokia-Daimler truce: here’s what’s next for SEPs [Ed: This is not a truce but an extortion yielding "protection money"]

          Sources from Continental and the telecoms industry disagree on whether Nokia and Daimler’s patent settlement will put an end to the automotive FRAND wars

        • Immutep (ASX:IMM) locks in another European cancer treatment patent [Ed: Fake 'journalism', basically tweaking of a press release to make it seem like reporting. PR industry takeover.]

          The European Patent Office has granted Immutep (IMM) protection for its Combined Preparations for the Treatment of Cancer until 2036

        • Immutep Secures Second European Patent For Eftilagimod Alpha, A Soluble LAG-3 Protein, In Combination With A PD-1 Pathway Inhibitor

          Immutep Limited (ASX: IMM; NASDAQ: IMMP) ("Immutep“ or “the Company“), a biotechnology company developing novel immunotherapy treatments for cancer and autoimmune disease, is pleased to announce the grant of patent number EP3473263 entitled “Combined Preparations for the Treatment of Cancer” by the European Patent Office.

        • Software Patents

          • How To Patent Software And Computer-Implemented Business Methods In The US And Abroad [Ed: These patents are bunk, but the law firms make money even when their clients pursue patently fake patents]

            It is well known that in the U.S., abstract ideas, laws of nature, natural phenomena, and products of nature are all excluded from patenting under 35 U.S.C. ۤ 101. This article briefly outlines various U.S. approaches to subject matter eligibility with an eye towards succeeding in patenting domestically and internationally.

            In the U.S., computer-implemented inventions such as software and business methods are patentable, yet hurdles abound. When assessing the eligibility of software and business method patents, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office applies the two step framework of Mayo and Alice.[1] If an invention is determined to be “abstract” in Step 1, it is often a fatal determination unless the Applicant can show “something more,” at Step 2, that transforms the abstract idea into patent eligible subject matter. Many software based inventions and business methods may be determined as “abstract” at Step 1, therefore practitioners must be prepared to show “something more” at Step 2.

          • Epillo launches mobile app for patients, EHR System and healthcare service providers [Ed: Bragging about pursuing fake patents on algorithms at the EPO and elsewhere]

            Estonia-based Epillo Health Systems has patent-pending innovations in 153 countries through the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO/PCT) and 27 countries of the European Union (EU) through the European Patent Office (EPO). The company has also been appraised at $150 million as of April 2021 for their proprietary digital health technology, called INTRx, which will run drug and food constituent interaction analysis.

          • Epillo Launches The First-Of-Its-Kind Integrated Mobile App For Patients, EHR System For Healthcare Practitioners And Service Providers
          • $2,000 for prior art on inventor-owned, Yogesh '265

            On June 4, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 10,990,265. The patent in question is owned by Yogesh Rathod, an inventor who has sent demand letters to various Progressive Web Technology (PWA) developers. An example letter can be found here: https://firt.dev/pwa-patent/

          • Equitable IP entity Optic153's patent challenged

            On May 28, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 6,115,174, owned by Optic153 LLC, an Equitable IP entity. The '174 patent is generally related to devices that vary optical signals and has been previously asserted against Comcast, Verizon, T-Mobile, Windstream Holdings, Dish Network, Charter Communications, Crown Castle International Corp., and AT&T.

          • Autonomous cars and EVs driving IP strategy shift, say in-house [Ed: Promotion of software patents as that's what many of these boil down to (in the name of fake 'innovation')]

            Counsel from Volvo, Toyota and elsewhere say the move towards new technologies is forcing them to rethink where they could reap the most value from IP

          • Classic Prosecution Disclaimer

            The patent document explains the benefits of this system: It avoids the problem of typos in searches; and avoids the time-waste of searching for data that cannot be matched. OK – it is surprising to me that there is not clear prior art, even though the application has a 1985 priority filing date.

            The infringement lawsuit was filed back in 2009 in N.D.Cal. In 2010, Judge White stayed the lawsuit pending outcome a parallel lawsuit against Wal-Mart and an ex parte reexamination of the patent at issue. The reexamination concluded in 2011 — confirming the patentability of the above claim (as well as others); the Wal-Mart action ended with non-infringement finding. And, another parallel action against Home Depot also ended with a finding that the “Kessler doctrine precludes SpeedTrack’s infringement claims.” At that point, Judge White picked up this case again and started working through the remaining issues.

          • AI's failed attempt to win patent rights sparks awareness of legal preparations

            An artificial intelligence system named "DABUS" suffered another setback after South Korea refused to accept it as an investor, but the creator's unyielding challenge sparked fresh shock and awareness of legal preparations for AI patentability in the face of exponential changes being created by a new industrial revolution.

            South Korea's patent office shared decisions made by other countries in rejecting an international patent application submitted by DABUS, which was allegedly created by Stephen Thaler, an American doctor of physics, saying an AI system is not eligible to be named as an inventor. The May 17 request is related to two patent applications: a fractal beverage container and fractal light signals respectively.

      • Copyrights

        • [old] Kim Dotcom loses bid to delay Court of Appeal hearing

          The hearing will be heard in the Court of Appeal on Thursday.

        • Mega.nz cannot rule out hosting data from [crackers]

          Mega says it can't know what's in its encrypted cloud storage - but that when police alert it, it shuts an account down 'within minutes'.

        • [Old] Kim Dotcom in line for new taxpayer payout after court rules mistakes made over 52 Privacy Act requests

          Kim Dotcom's five-year battle over the refusal of Privacy Act requests to 52 government agencies is going to end in him getting a damages payout.

          It's not the first time the German entrepreneur has picked up taxpayer money after pursuing the government in court over decisions made during the eight-year - so far - extradition process.

        • [Old] Kim Dotcom may get compensation from taxpayer for breaches of his privacy rights

          Kim Dotcom has taken a step closer to winning compensation for the Attorney General unlawfully declining 52 “urgent” Privacy Act requests in 2015.

          Dotcom is facing extradition to the United States on criminal copyright-related charges, but as well as fighting to remain in New Zealand, he has been seeking compensation for breaches of his privacy rights.

        • Commission unveils Article 17 Guidance: 3 highlights

          Today, after several months of waiting and with the deadline for the national transposition of the DSM Directive being just a weekend away (it will be on Monday, 7 June), the European Commission has issued its Guidance on the application of Article 17.

          [...]

          As readers know, the nature of the Article 17 right of communication to the public has been a long-discussed issue, and has also featured prominently in some national transposition debates, notably the German one.

          I have already expressed my view that characterizing Article 17 as a special/sui generis right of communication to the public is incorrect: see here and here.

          In any event, we may expect to hear more about this issue when, in a few weeks (on 22 June), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issues its judgment in YouTube, C-682/18 and Cyando, C-683/18. In his Opinion last year [Katpost here], Advocate General Øe opined that platforms like YouTube and Uploaded could be liable under Article 17 lacking a licence, but the same would not be true under the InfoSoc Directive alone.

        • Floyd Mayweather vs. Logan Paul Will Be Another Piracy Bonanza

          This weekend, boxing legend Floyd Mayweather will fight YouTuber Logan Paul for bragging rights, and the not insignificant prospect of tens of millions of dollars each, whatever the outcome. Despite calls from anti-piracy groups for people to watch the event legally, this matchup will be pirated to hell and back. Here's why.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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Yet another example/evidence that EFF has become a rotten pile of junk
 
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[Meme] How to Keep Granting Hundreds of Thousands of Fake Patents (Without Upsetting Anybody in Politics and Media)
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[Meme] Sup, Nazi?
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Over at Tux Machines...
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Links for the day
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You're not even a computer scientist...
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Assange articulated some of the ordeals he went through
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[Video] The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly on Julian Assange
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Links for the day
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GNU/Linux Flaring Up in ASEAN
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