The latest iteration of the Nextcloud on-premise cloud server has been released, and it focuses on knowledge management with a few new features that might well find their way to being your favorite. To make the collaboration workflow even easier, Nextcloud introduces Collectives, an app that makes it possible for users to share a set of "handbooks" with each other. This app is tied with a new group feature, Circles, which builds on the Nextcloud Text app.
Collectives collects documents together, each shared with a different circle. Within those Collectives, you can create new pages, and those pages can have sub-pages that come together to structure a complete knowledge base.
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Click Finish Setup to complete the installation. You'll find yourself logged in as the admin user, where you can start customizing your Nextcloud 22 instance.
Congratulations, you can now start working with the latest release of the finest on-premise cloud solution within your company data center.
Microsoft's Hyper-V and Linux's KVM are capable, enterprise-class hypervisors that can host VMs and scale to the largest of workloads. These options are both type 1 hypervisors, but there are some significant differences between them when it comes to management tools, memory allocation and storage requirements.
This makes it important for virtualization admins to understand how these hypervisors compare to one another. When organizations choose between the two, admins should select the hypervisor that best aligns with their existing infrastructure.
One of the core values of Canonical, that we all identify with, is the mission of bringing the power of open source to everyone on the planet. From developing to developed countries. From individuals to big enterprises. From engineers to CEOs. And there is only one way to find out if we are efficient in what we do. This is community feedback.
It is no different this time. The OpenStack User Survey 2020 results are out and Ubuntu was appointed by the entire OpenStack community as the most popular platform for OpenStack deployment. This is great news for Canonical and the entire Ubuntu community. It was a long journey, sometimes bumpy, but we made it. And we are not going to stop there!
The deal was struck by Hostirian President, Ken Cox, with Navy Linux’s Adil Hussain on July 1, 2021. Hostirian is providing Navy Linux with dedicated servers. “We are excited to announce the sponsorship with Navy Linux,” Cox said. He also added, “With CentOS removing support, when the opportunity arose to partner with Navy Linux, it was an obvious solution for Hostirian. Navy Linux is currently the only option for in-place upgrades for CentOS.” The representative from Navy Linux also stated, “Hostirian will be one of the primary sponsors, relationships like this make Navy Linux possible. We are very excited about the opportunity for partnership.”
Rocky Linux was created to offer the community an alternative following Red Hat’s recent decision to shift its focus away from CentOS—the open source version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). However, the Linux distro’s popularly can also be attributed to how its creator sought to offer a superior alternative based on lessons learned during CentOS’ development—and less as a perceived backlash to Red Hat’s controversial move, said Gregory Kurtzer, Rocky Linux’s creator, who is also founder and CEO of Ctrl IQ.
Ramon has just published this month’s new video on the Krita Youtube channel! “Back to School” is all about getting into Krita for the first time, no matter how old you are. And there’s a new brush preset pack for you, too!
Linux Kernel 5.14 RC1 brings a good deal of new hardware support, we round up the new features in this kernel release in this post.
On the heels of the 5.13 kernel debut, Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux) announced the first release candidate for the Linux 5.14 kernel. According to Torvalds, this kernel will be a fairly standard release (especially compared to the 5.13 kernel). In fact, Linus said of this release, "On the whole, I don't think there are any huge surprises in here, and size-wise this seems to be a pretty regular release too." Torvalds added, "Let's hope that that translates to a nice and calm release cycle, but you never know."
That the 5.14 kernel is a less-than-exciting release is mostly because it follows one of the biggest kernel releases in recent history (especially with the 5.13 kernel adding support for Apple M1 Arm-based CPUs).
That doesn't, however, mean the 5.14 kernel isn't without its own exciting features. Let's take a look at what's possibly coming to the next Linux kernel.
Linux founder Linus Torvalds recently posted an update on the Linux Kernel Mailing List announcing the arrival of Linux kernel version 5.14. Perhaps the biggest change is the removal of legacy support for Parallel ATA (PATA), also referred to as ATAm or IDE.
IDE is a connector that has long served as a base for IBM computers, which turned into PCs later. It is a type of connector that is used to connect hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, and optical disc drives in computers. As more advanced protocols appeared, IDE has become irrelevant to most PC builders in recent years, having been replaced by the SATA connector in modern PCs.
As the Linux kernel continues to advance, supporting code for legacy devices becomes increasingly difficult, while the need becomes less and less. That is why the Linux kernel is officially dumping support and removing the IDE code from its repositories.
The upcoming Linux kernel 5.14 adds several laptop improvements for devices manufactured by Lenovo, Dell, Asus, and Microsoft. So if you're using a notebook device from one of these manufacturers, you may be getting some significant improvements in user experience.
Let's see what new features you can expect from the 5.14 kernel version.
Following the usual two-week long merge window, the first release candidate (RC) of Linux kernel v5.14 is now available, offering a peek into the expected features of upcoming launches.
The release, set to roll out in just a few week's time, is in fact a good representation of the state of the kernel development of late, with lots of code cleanup and dwarfed by the addition of new drivers.
“The fact that we removed all that legacy IDE code doesn't mean that we had a reduction in lines over-all: a few tens of thousands of lines of legacy code is nowhere near enough to balance out the usual kernel growth,” observed Linus Torvalds, the principal developer of the mainline Linux kernel.
Thanks to one of VMware's Linux engineers there are improvements pending to the AMD IOMMU support code to help with performance.
Earlier this year VMware's Nadav Amit landed a patch to make use of AMD hardware IOMMU functionality to avoid full address-space invalidation by handling page-specific invalidations when needing to flush multiple pages.
Following up on our report for Linux 5.12 this summarizes the progress on mainline support for the Librem 5 phone and its development kit during the 5.13 development cycle. This summary is only about code flowing upstream.
Being worked on for quite a while now by longtime kernel developer Matthew Wilcox of Oracle is memory folios to improve Linux's memory management and allow for greater efficiency. Benchmarks with memory folios have shown for example kernel builds can be up to 7% faster. It's looking like there is a desire to see at least some of this folios code land for Linux 5.15.
Memory Folios provide a new struct type for the Linux kernel to better manage memory. The prior patch series goes into more detail over the problems with the status quo and the new "folios" approach.
You may remember the Pipewire coverage we ran a couple weeks ago, and the TODO item to fix up Firewire device support with Pipewire. It turns out that this is an important feature for kernel hackers, too, because the Alsa changes just got pulled into the 5.14 kernel, and included is the needed Firewire audio work. Shout-out to [Marcan] for pointing out this changeset. Yes, that’s the same as [Hector Martin], the hacker bringing Linux to the M1, who also discovered M1racles. We’ve covered some of his work before.
I thought I might have to sacrifice something near and dear to me, maybe a family heirloom…or a limb. Or just spend an entire PC budget on just one part. Yes, I’m talking GPUs, rare as a good reason for cryptocurrency, and exactly as valuable. This is the story of my conversion from Nvidia to AMD.
The plucky underdog won in this tale, as I managed to secure an AMD 6700 XT, at the base cost even (direct from AMD). True, I’d like the more powerful 6800 XT, but as the timeless saying goes, “A GPU buyer in a global pandemic with crazy high demand and a crypto boom can’t be picky.” Next will be upgrading the rest of my rig.
If you are in my shoes and looking for something new from AMD, I wish you the best of luck and patience, since it will take plenty of that. Still, there are some things you can do to improve your chances buying direct from AMD, summarized in this Reddit thread.
For several years already the AMDGPU kernel driver has supported virtual display functionality for cases like headless GPUs, pre-silicon hardware bring-up, GPUs/accelerators that lack physical display outputs, and other similar use-cases. That virtual display code is now being overhauled by re-using the existing VKMS DRM driver.
VKMS has matured the past few years as a software-only model of a kernel mode-setting driver for testing on headless machines. VKMS allows for providing a virtual display without any physical hardware requirements.
Mesa's independent Crocus Gallium3D driver providing a modern OpenGL driver alternative for Haswell and older graphics hardware continues seeing improvements following its recent mainlining.
Crocus is already in quite good shape for i965 through Haswell Gen7 graphics though some generations are better off than others. With recent Mesa 21.2 code from the past week, Gen4/Gen5 is seeing better support for workloads at least relying on EXT_gpu_shader4 support. EXT_gpu_shader4 was originally developed by NVIDIA during the GeForce 8 days to extend GLSL for providing new texture lookup functions, full signed integer / unsigned integer support for GLSL, and other features.
With having hands on with a Dell XPS 13 9310 (Dell 0DXP1F) with the Core i7 1185G7 Tiger Lake processor (compared to prior Linux tests with the i7-1165G7), here is a fresh look at the performance of Microsoft Windows 10 Pro as shipped by Dell with all available stable updates versus a clean install of Ubuntu 21.04 Linux.
LaTeX is a document preparation system and document markup language for high-quality typesetting. The system was originally developed by Leslie Lamport in the early 1980s. LaTeX is based on Donald E. Knuth’s TeX typesetting language. Lamport says that LaTeX “represents a balance between functionality and ease of use”.
LaTeX is often used for technical or scientific documentation, particularly because it generates well formatted papers with beautifully crafted formulae, but the system can be used for any form of publishing. It employs beautifully crafted typesetting algorithms. Academic journals will often accept submission in this format.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FreeIPA on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, FreeIPA stands for Free Identity, Policy, Audit and it is an open-source management tool based on an LDAP directory and Kerberos with optional components such as DNS server, certification authority, and more. It can manage a domain with users, computers, policies, and trust relationships.
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 the FreeIPA on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.
Dig command is used to gather information about host addresses, mail exchange servers, name servers by sending query to the DNS Name server. This tool can be run by Linux or Mac OS. Simply this works with single domain name, to get the result of multiple domain you will have to run multiple queries.
Brute force attacks on DNS name to find out subdomains or domain suggestions, and it checks domain status and DNS records. Before start learning about dnsmap you should know what is domain name server and subdomain? Domain name system is a server which resolves dns name query into Ip Address and vice versa IP address to domain name. Most DNS servers have two-part primary DNS and secondary DNS. A subdomain is a domain related to a domain like www.aa.example.com is a subdomain of www.example.com.
SNMP Enumeration Kali Linux by snmpwalk tool is a Free and best SNMP monitoring software tools based on Windows and Linux. SNMP tools are used to scan and monitor the SNMP network. I this article you will learn about commands. snmpenum tools for kali Linux also used to enumeration.
Several years ago, the IBM Power open source ecosystem team developed a search engine called Open Source Power Availability Tool (OSPAT). The purpose of OSPAT was, and still is, to address a pain point that many developers, sellers, business partners, and other IBM Power users brought to the team: They didn’t know how to (or couldn’t) find open source packages built specifically for IBM Power. And so, OSPAT was created.
In the years since we first launched OSPAT, we’ve made many enhancements to improve the user experience and to expand the search functionality and results. So, in that spirit, we are happy to announce that, by popular demand, we’ve made yet another improvement to the tool. You can now search for containerized packages!
Evince is a relatively new document viewer that was developed with the intention of integrating multiple document viewers into one single tool. It was done so that you do not need a different document viewer for every different type of document. Moreover, this tool lets you view your documents within the Linux terminal. In this article, we will show you how you can open a PDF in Linux Mint 20 terminal using this tool.
Renaming a file is a basic operation in any operating system. Files can be renamed in multiple ways in Linux. The task can be achieved using GUI or command-line. Moreover, advanced utilities can also be used to rename these files. All these ways are documented in this article in a way that is easy to follow.
WordPress is a free, open-source, and the world's most popular CMS built entirely in PHP. It is used by thousands of people around the globe for running blogs, business websites, and e-commerce stores. It has some great features including, a simple and easy-to-use admin panel, thousands of plugins, a huge community, in-depth theming, customization, and more.
In this guide, we will show you how to install WordPress with Apache and Let's Encrypt SSL on AlmaLinux 8.
Vagrant is a powerful tool for building and managing virtual machines in a development environment. It has an easy-to-use workflow. It lowers the development environment setup time and increases productivity. Virtual images of Ubuntu, Centos etc are available on the vagrant website in the form of vagrant boxes. As per the official website, Vagrant provides easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work environments built on the top of industry-standard technology and controlled by a single consistent workflow to help maximize productivity and flexibility.
Virtual Machines can be provisioned on the top of VirtualBox, VMware or any other provider. These VM’s can be provisioned using industry-standard provisioning tools such as shell scripts, Ansible, Chef, or Puppet etc. These provisioning tools can automatically install and configure the software on the virtual machine.
2011 was the year when eCommerce was new and all the budding entrepreneurs intended to try things new and cutting-edge for their business. This was the moment when the coding of buying carts with brand-new featured plugins was in demand. At that time PHP and Dot web coding were used which later were used to develop systems, Magento was among them.
Magento was thought to be the most effective open resource platform for eCommerce and all the programmers had their paths straight recommending Magento to their customers, also there is no doubt to migrate Magento to Shopify! Yet this has actually ended up being a trouble for all the Magento users currently!
In this video, I am going to show how to install Linux Mint 20.2
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RubyMine on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, RubyMine is a dedicated Ruby and Rails development environment. The IDE provides a wide range of essential tools for Ruby developers, tightly integrated together to create a convenient environment for productive Ruby development and Web development with Ruby on Rails.
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 RubyMine 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.
Your files are saved in the Download folder by default in the Google Chrome browser. If you want your Google Chrome browser to always ask for your location before downloading and storing a file, follow this simple guide:
1. Click on three dots located on the top right corner, a menu will pop up.
Want to know how you can capture a web page and save it as a PDF document or an image using the terminal? Luckily, Linux has a plethora of utilities that you can use to automate the task of converting HTML documents to PDF files and images.
This article will introduce you to wkhtmltopdf and wkhtmltoimage, utilities that you need to make your work easier.
Linux utilities are a lifesaver for server administrators when it comes to troubleshooting and fixing network issues. Before, administrators used the netstat command to view network statistics and other socket-related information on Linux. But this command has now been deprecated for a better tool.
The ss command replaced netstat as it provides more detailed information than its predecessor. This article will demonstrate how you can use ss to extract socket-related information from your system.
Today we are looking at how to install Firealpaca on a Chromebook in 2021. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
In this video, we are looking at how to install FreeCAD on Linux Lite 5.4.
In this article we will take a look at how to deploy a Kubernetes cluster on Ubuntu 18.04 using Ansible Playbooks. I have found Ansible to be a fantastic tool for getting a Kubernetes cluster up and running quickly in my development environment, and now use the Ansible playbooks detailed in this article when I need to stand up a Kubernetes cluster quickly and easily.
For the purposes of this article, we will use Ansible to deploy a small Kubernetes cluster – with one master node, used to manage the cluster, and two worker nodes, which will be used to run our container applications. To achieve this, we will use four Ansible playbooks.
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is an open-source office suite that is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS users. Freely distributed under the terms of AGPLv3, it combines three editors for text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that are natively compatible with the Microsoft Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX).
RavenDB is a free and open-source NoSQL database that was designed to use with dot net or Microsoft. But, you can now use the RavenDB NoSQL database widely on Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions. Using a NoSQL database can change the database speed revolutionary speedy. If you’re a database engineer, you might have already known that the debate between SQL or NoSQL is not a strong topic anymore. Any new database programmer can use RavenDB to learn the NoSQL engine. RavenDB is easy, and has both cloud-based and local machine-based services, and can provide a high performance than other DB engines.
Desktop environments are a collection of software packages and different components that run on top of an operating system and manage the look and feel (GUI; Graphical User Interface) of the operating system. They consist of window managers, text editors, folders, drag and drop functionality, and many other features to make it easier for the user to use an operating system.
Desktop environments are super user-friendly and intuitive; they help the user access, manage and manipulate files easily. But they do not provide full control over the functionality/capabilities of the OS. To get the most out of an operating system CLI (command line interface) is still preferred.
echo is a shell built-in command that is used to print the information/message to your terminal. It is the most popular command that is available in most Linux distributions and is typically used in bash scripts and batch files to print status text/string to the screen or a file.
In this article, I will show you how to use the echo command in Linux shell scripts.
Linux systems generally start out with a large number of fonts available, especially once you've installed LibreOffice. Even so, you might find yourself craving some highly distinctive or unusual fonts to add a special tone to some of your projects. If so, you're in luck. You're likely to find many thousands of free fonts available online – bold, italic, calligraphy, modern, script, hand lettering, cursive, brush lettering, symbolic and more.
Yum is the package manager in Red Hat and Red Hat-based Linux distributions. It allows you to manage every aspect of software on your Red Hat system.
You are not going to learn Yum commands in detail here. Instead, this Yum cheat sheet provides you with a quick and easy overview of all major Yum package manager commands and their respective functionality.
You can download the Yum command cheat sheet in PDF form from the Dropbox link below.
Learning to parse XML is often considered a complex venture, but it doesn't have to be. XML is highly and strictly structured, so it's relatively predictable. There are also lots of tools out there to help make the job manageable.
One of my favorite XML utilities is XMLStarlet, an XML toolkit for your terminal. With XMLStarlet, you can validate, parse, edit, format, and transform XML data. XMLStarlet is a relatively minimal command, but navigating XML is full of potential, so this article demonstrates how to use it to query XML data.
BadLand Publishing and developer Cereal Games have now officially released their film noir inspired police action RPG Pecaminosa on Linux.
"Pecaminosa blends the charm of pixel art and the mechanics of an Action RPG with the atmosphere of film noir. The Legend of Zelda combined with Touch of Evil. You have not seen and played anything like it. Interrogate suspects, explore a city dominated by crime and sin, and never hesitate to use your fists and guns. These are hard times in a very tough city."
After the recent 3.0 release of Wolfenstein - Blade of Agony, a free FPS inspired by WWII shooters from the 90's and early 2000's they gathered a lot of feedback and another release is out now.
Some of the changes they needed to do were actually quite urgent it seems, as not long after the 3.0 release with the last episode they took the whole thing down. There was a concern on how some elements of WWII were shown in the game, especially from German news and gaming websites. It's a tough subject, especially with certain German laws and so they made steps to adjust parts of the game and this 3.1 release is the result of that.
Crowsworn looks pretty damn good and it appears plenty of other people feel the same way, with it only just launching on Kickstarter recently and the goal was completely smashed. Taking some inspiration from games like Hollow Knight, Bloodborne, and Devil May Cry this metroidvania has a "strong design emphasis on explorative platforming, immersive combat, and compelling storytelling".
"In Fearanndal, a dark and oppressive world, where even the air seems to carry weight, you awake from a deep slumber. You find yourself in a coffin, buried in an unmarked grave, surrounded by unfamiliar territory. Seemingly void of purpose, you venture forth attempting to retrace your steps and regain your lost memories."
It's this time of the year! Godot Community Poll 2021 is now out for everyone to take part. Let us know what your relationship with Godot is in this brief list of questions!
The poll is completely anonymous, and you can see the results after filling it. It will remain open for a week.
Splitgate, originally called Splitgate: Arena Warfare, is going through a huge overhaul and relaunching on July 27 and now Linux support is confirmed (Twitter). Not only that, there's a limited-time Beta that's going live today so that should be quite exciting.
Batman Arkham Knight running through Steam Play on Linux. As mentioned, it just works. Little bit of stuttering due to the Shader cache which fixes itself in the long run.
Ready for another game that will truly mash a bunch of genres together? Draft of Darkness is confirmed to be entering Early Access on July 30.
In a post-apocalyptic setting you will be exploring a broken procedurally generated city, with it giving off a survival-horror theme. Explore, find items and weapons, deal with resource management and during combat it turns into a card-battler like something from Slay the Spire. Death is not the end in this one either, as you get to open booster packs of cards to unlock more for your next run, so each death is a chance to play it differently next time.
Lona: Realm Of Colors is a short adventure that focuses on bringing various paintings to life based on the protagonists conflicting emotions. Originally funded on Kickstarter back in 2017, it features music and artwork from Taraneh Karimi with the story being inspired by the works of Hayao Miyazaki (the co-founder of Studio Ghibli).
With creatures inspired by the idea of the classic Lemmings games, in Panic Mode you need to safely guide a bunch of 'pammies' out of various dangerous situations.
In the first three parts of this series (part 1, part 2, part 3) we looked at how power works within GNOME and what that means for getting things done. We got to the point that to make things happen you (or someone you’ve hired) need to become a trusted member of the community, which requires understanding the project’s ethos.
In this post we’ll go over that ethos is about, both in terms of high level values, and what those translate to in more practical terms.
GNOME’s Tobias Bernard has a new blog post out and it’s an essential read if you’re interested in the direction of the GNOME desktop.
It’s always great to get some background rationale from the folks inside of the project and the way they think and the way they work. Posts like these help fill in the blanks of why GNOME does what GNOME does which, regardless of whether you agree with specific decisions or not, is a healthy thing to do.
Long running work by Ivan Molodetskikh to reduce the input latency for GNOME's Mutter compositor was merged today.
The work that landed is around dynamic frame clock dispatch with a focus on reducing the max render time. As part of this work Ivan also added the ability to report the max render time and other information via Clutter when the "CLUTTER_PAINT=max-render-time" environment variable is set.
This is Part 2 in a series about the Discovery Docs initiative, which I will present about in my upcoming GUADEC talk. In Part 1: Discovering Why, I gave a brief history of GNOME documentation, and explained our current unabashedly boring task-based approach. I proposed focusing instead on learning and discovery in an attempt to attract and retain enthusiastic users. In this post, I’ll explore what a learning-based topic might look like.
GNOME documentation currently focuses on tasks, concepts, and references, with tasks doing the bulk of the work. This is a common approach across the entire documentation industry, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only approach. Notably, we don’t strictly enforce these taxonomies as some other documentation systems do. Rather, we provide some templates and guidelines, and we trust humans to make good judgment.
To shift to a more engaging approach, I’m exploring a lengthier topic type that I’m hesitantly calling a “lesson”. A lesson incorporates a concept, possibly a task, possibly a quick reference, and further reading for specific use cases or advanced users. It should be readable in about five to seven minutes. Let’s break down an outline of a lesson.
As much as I extol the variety that Linux offers, I’ve done a bad job of enjoying it. Sadly, playing with new distributions usually gets bested by competing priorities. Not today.
A browse through Linux reviews revealed one dearth in attention: Intel’s Clear Linux*.
It’s been on my radar for its ambition to sprint to the head of the pack. While it’s certainly not the first distro developed by a tech heavyweight, it’s a rare case in which a private company releases a distro with no direct commercial application. It’s an experiment to prove what Linux might aspire to.
Given where it seeks to go, and that it’s had a few years’ travel time, I thought Clear Linux deserved a look. So I took it for a spin. After a week of testing, here’s what I observed.
Solus, the independent Linux distribution, has just announced their third installment of their 4.x “Fortitude” series. This release brings improved hardware support, a new kernel, and updated desktop environments.
Read on for an exciting look into what this new release brings.
One of the problems with computer programming is that the same names are constantly used for different purposes. For example, the term namespace is used in many different ways. I often get confused when people talk about namespaces within Kubernetes. For example, some people hear the term and think of virtual clusters, but when I hear it, I think of the Linux namespaces used with pods and containers. Similarly, image can refer to a VM image, a container image, or an OCI image stored at a container registry.
Welcome back to our series on using serverless functions on Red Hat OpenShift. The previous article introduced you to how logging works in Node.js and how to customize what is logged in a Node.js function application. Now, we'll take a look at how to debug Node.js function-based applications. Because debugging is a longer topic, we'll cover it in two parts. This article walks through how to set up and debug function applications locally with Visual Studio Code (VS Code). The next article will show you how to connect and debug function applications running in a container on a cluster.
Note: For an introduction to logging function-based applications, see Node.js serverless functions on Red Hat OpenShift, Part 1: Logging. For an overview of Red Hat OpenShift Serverless Functions, see Create your first serverless function with Red Hat OpenShift Serverless Functions.
We conducted interviews with 1,250 IT leaders worldwide to get a picture of how, where, and why they’re using enterprise open source. We shared the results in the third installment of Red Hat’s "The State of Enterprise Open Source" report earlier this year. The survey included respondents from 13 different countries and various industries, who indicated enterprise open source has become a default choice of IT departments around the world. Let’s dive into key findings in healthcare.
Partners remain an important multiplier for Red Hat and play a key role in enabling customer success by delivering innovative enterprise open source solutions to drive business results. Red Hat partners have demonstrated commendable resilience this past year, and have been instrumental in contributing to Red Hat’s success.
The 2021 Red Hat Australia and New Zealand Partner Awards celebrate our dedicated partners for their continued commitment to using open source technologies through collaborative and transparent working practices. From cloud-native applications to managed services to automation solutions, this year’s award winners have helped customers across varied industries on their path to IT modernization and digital transformation.
With all the ways digital innovation has enabled companies to remain productive during the pandemic, one of the most positive outcomes is improved collaboration across traditional business silos. In my new book, Getting to Nimble: How to Transform Your Company into a Digital Leader, I discuss how enterprises have made these silos more permeable, creating greater partnerships along the way.
Organizational culture ranks as an eternally important leadership issue. Ignore culture and you’re more likely to end up with negative outcomes: toxicity, inequitability, burnout, turnover, and so forth.
Investing in a positive culture, on the other hand, is both healthy and good business.
How do you foster a healthy hybrid work culture? First, fight the FUD. Organizational culture discussions took a different turn in 2020: How to foster a healthy one when everyone works remotely? In 2021, that question is shifting again for many companies: How do you foster a healthy hybrid work culture?
Of course, it helps to know what “hybrid work” means, as we recently reported. Hybrid work entails some well-defined mix of on-site and remote work, say on specific days of the week or by specific teams. Given that basic framework, building and maintaining a positive organizational culture can be even more complex, as it needs to encompass the different dynamics of hybrid work models.
The biggest change in Tails 4.20 is the brand-new Tor Connection assistant that simplifies the way you connect to the Tor anonymous network from the Tails live system. The new Tor Connection assistant pops up immediately after connecting to a local network.
The advantages of the new Tor Connection wizard are many, mostly helping censored users, but it promises to better protect anyone who wants to remain unnoticed when using the Tor network, or those who want to connect to Tor using bridges, as well as first-time users.
Hey, man. Want to know something totally far out? The privacy-focused Linux-based operating system, Tails, has achieved version 4.20. How groovy! If you aren't familiar, Tails is designed to run from an optical disk or USB drive and hide your browsing activity. It is particularly handy for journalists or computer users living in countries ruled by oppressive governments.
Version 4.20 of Tails receives several improvements. For instance, OnionShare has been updated to 2.2 and KeePassXC is now at 2.6.2. More importantly, the Tor Browser has been updated to 10.5.2 and the Linux kernel now sits at 5.10.46. Most significant, however, there are massive enhancements when connecting to a Tor network, including a new assistant.
Tails 4.20 completely changes how to connect to the Tor network from Tails.
After connecting to a local network, a Tor Connection assistant helps you connect to the Tor network.
Tails is a privacy focused distribution and Tails 4.20 "completely changes how to connect to the Tor network from Tails" with the new Tor Connection assistant.
Grml is a Debian based live system focusing on the needs of system administrators. This Grml release provides fresh software packages from Debian bullseye. As usual it also incorporates up to date hardware support and fixes known bugs from previous Grml releases.
Last week the Linux Mint team rolled out Linux Mint 20.2 which is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS hence the version which is 20.x. This iteration of Mint is nicknamed Uma as per their tradition. While Ubuntu uses an adjective and endangered animal name, Linux Mint versions have almost always been named after goddesses. If you are new to Linux are struggling to settle on a distro then Linux Mint is the operating system you want.
What’s Linux Mint?
A quick Google search ought to answer this question but I will indulge it here nevertheless. You see unlike Windows which is made and distributed by one company Linux is different. All its bits are made by different people as open-source i.e. you actually get the source code if that’s how you want to start. This makes it pretty modular. In fact, the only thing Linux about the Linux operating system is the Linux kernel itself. So if you are creating a Linux operating system you can:
The latest release of Linux Mint has included a raft of changes to the Update Manager to help nudge users to keep their installations updated.
Earlier this year, Clement Lefebvre, the developer of the popular desktop distro, had expressed concern about users ignoring security updates exposing their Internet-connected installations to all kinds of risk.
Although Linux Mint doesn’t collect any relay any telemetry data, based on the activity of the distro’s update server, Lefebre shared that only about 30% users update their distros in less than a week, and a sizable percentage of users are running an outdated version of the distro that stopped receiving security updates in 2019.
postmarketOS is a Linux operating system designed for phones, notably the PinePhone, and based on Alpine Linux. But now it’s possible to install the Linux distribution on Kobo Clara HD e-Reader (about $115), so you could have your own Linux e-Reader in a way that’s more versatile than with commercial solutions.
The image can either be based on the vendor kernel or the mainline kernel. The latter works without modification to the X server, and the framebuffer can be used directly with either kernel, but most free e-reader programs such as koreader, plato, and inkbox are developed for the slightly different framebuffer API used in the vendor kernel.
After introducing Station P2 Rockchip RK3568 mini PC in March of this year, Firefly has now launched another, cheaper model with the ultra-thin Station M2 computer based on the company’s ROC-RK3566-PC single board computer equipped with Rockchip RK3566 SoC.
Station M2 is only slightly larger than a business card, but packs up to 8GB RAM, M.2 SSD storage, HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 3.0/2.0 ports.
The mini PC supports the same operating systems as the single board computer with Android 11, Ubuntu 18.04, Buildroot + Qt, and Station OS. When I wrote about ROC-RK3566-PC SBC last May, only Android 11 firmware and SDK were available, but now I can see a Linux SDK, buildroot, and an Ubuntu image on the Download page, as well as the RK356x RKNN Toolkit that was just added a few days ago to use the processor’s NPU with Tensorflow, Caffe, ONNX, etc…
 Firefly has launched a $79-and-up “Station M2” mini-PC that runs Linux or Android on the NPU-equipped Rockchip RK3566 with up to 8GB RAM and 128GB eMMC plus M.2 storage, WiFi/BT, 3x USB, GbE, and HDMI.
When T-Chip Technology’s Firefly community project launched its ROC-RK3566-PC SBC based on the quad-core, Cortex-A55 Rockchip RK3566, it teased an upcoming Station M2 mini-PC based on the SBC. The ultra-compact Station M2 has arrived with promotional pricing of $79 (2GB LPDDR4 RAM) and $104 (4GB), both with 32GB eMMC 5.1.
While the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC has greater multimedia capabilities, it can also be used for headless projects like mini servers or networked access storage (NAS).
Michael Klements’s DIY Raspberry Pi mini server is especially interesting as it’s cute, and includes a UPS to handle power failures, plus an OLED display to show information. Here’s the final result.
Ideally, you’d need a laser cutter and a 3D printer like the Ender 3 Pro to make the case, but most of the parts are off-the-shelf components including...
Throughout the day as the sun evaporates the water from a plant’s leaves via a process called transpiration, observers will notice that they tend to get a little bit droopy. Also known as drought stress, this response to a loss of water results in low turgidity (internal water pressure) and can impact the ability of the plant to grow correctly. Traditional irrigation monitors use soil moisture sensors to determine the soil’s water levels, but Terry Rodriquez and Salma Mayorquin wanted to create something a bit more unique: a visual droop detection system.
Their device, which they affectionately call the “Droop, There It Is”, features a Nano 33 BLE Sense and ArduCam camera module to take pictures of the plant and uses an image classifier to determine if the plant is drooping or not. They started by taking a pre-trained MobileNetV2 base model and fine-tuned it with a set of 6,000 images. After optimizing the result with grayscale reductions and knowledge distillation techniques, the team deployed it onto their Nano 33 BLE Sense for inferencing.
MongoDB has announced a series of product enhancements from the keynote stage of MongoDB’s annual conference, MongoDB.live. These updates include the launch and general availability of MongoDB 5.0 with native time series support, the preview of serverless databases in MongoDB Atlas, and the continued evolution of its application data platform with enhancements to Atlas Search, Atlas Data Lake, and MongoDB’s end-to-end mobile data solution, Realm.
Meteor is a unique open-source multi-platform full-stack JavaScript platform. To put all these in one sentence may not seem that unique, but comparing it to other JavaScript frameworks and platforms it offers unique more than building web apps.
The Meteor app is consisting of a server and a client as it makes a use of client's (browser) database and sync data between clients and server.
With Meteor, developers can build web apps, mobile apps (iOS, Android), server apps, bot apps, or use it as a backend with its powerful DDP (Distributed Data Protocol) for mobile, web or desktop apps.
I have been using Meteor for years, with different frameworks, Blaze, Angular, React and recently Vue. I have a seamless experience using it as a backend for Flutter app.
If you're just starting off in IT security, you may be wondering, where do you even begin with the process of securing an organization's data.
There are frameworks available that can provide you with some of this information. One of the challenges with this is that every organization is going to be just a little different.
For example, your organization may have unique requirements for security based on the line of work you happen to be in. There may be compliance and regulations that you have to follow, and internally, there will be an entirely different set of security policies and tools than you might see at a different organization.
There are many security frameworks that you can use to help guide you down this particular path.
These frameworks can help you understand the different security processes available, and they can help you understand what you need to do to follow those particular processes.
80% of Americans live in cities, and 70% of the world's population is expected to be urban dwellers by 2050. Thanks to the Stanford National Capital Project, city planners and developers have a new open source tool to help improve urban wellbeing.
Urban InVEST is new software that helps users visualize where they might create areas to absorb carbon emissions and encourage public use, such as marshlands and parks.
As the summer rolls around for those of us in the northern hemisphere, temperatures are high and unwinding with a cool ice tea is high on the agenda. Isn’t it lucky then that Background Update is here for Windows, which means Firefox can update even if it’s not running. We can just sit back and relax!
Also this release we see a few nice JavaScript additions, including private fields and methods for classes, and the at() method for Array, String and TypedArray global objects.
Version 90 of the Firefox browser is out. The headline feature this time around, beyond working links in PDF output, is a new version of the SmartBlock feature which appears to have been designed with a specific goal in mind: "Third-party Facebook scripts are blocked to prevent you from being tracked, but are now automatically loaded 'just in time' if you decide to 'Log in with Facebook' on any website."
Mozilla Firefox released version 90.0 today with some new features and various security fixes.
Firefox 90 introduced the 2.0 version of SmartBlock. The built-in tracker blocking mechanism now provides robust privacy protection, while ensuring you can still use third-party Facebook logins. Facebook scripts are all blocked, just as before, except the short period for the sign-in to proceed smoothly.
For HTTPS-Only Mode, there’s now an option to add exceptions. So that you can visit specified HTTP websites directly without HTTPS-only alerts.
In this blog post we’ll talk about what the Firefox Performance team set out to achieve for 2021 and the Firefox 89 release last month. With the help of many people from across the Firefox organization, we delivered a 10-30% snappier, more instantaneous Firefox experience. That’s right, it isn’t just you! Firefox is faster, and we have the numbers to prove it.
Mozilla has officially released Firefox 90.0 as the latest monthly update to their cross-platform web browser.
Changes with Firefox 90 include working hyperlinks when printing pages to PDFs, a new version of the SmartBlock feature for better privacy, various security fixes, FTP support has now been completely removed as planned, better WebRender performance for its software renderer, and with that the software WebRender should be used by most users now lacking hardware acceleration.
Firefox 90 is here and comes with some notable new features and improvements to make the update noteworthy.
After last month’s major redesign, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that Firefox might take it easy with its latest update. With Firefox 90, the Mozilla has added a number of improvements mainly to the Windows version of its browser.
Today, with the launch of Firefox 90, we are excited to announce a new version of SmartBlock, our advanced tracker blocking mechanism built into Firefox Private Browsing and Strict Mode. SmartBlock 2.0 combines a great web browsing experience with robust privacy protection, by ensuring that you can still use third-party Facebook login buttons to sign in to websites, while providing strong defenses against cross-site tracking.
At Mozilla, we believe that privacy is a fundamental right. As part of the effort to provide a strong privacy option, Firefox includes the built-in Tracking Protection feature that operates in Private Browsing windows and Strict Mode to automatically block scripts, images, and other content from being loaded from known cross-site trackers. Unfortunately, blocking such cross-site tracking content can break website functionality.
Welcome to a new quarter. Lots of projects and planning are underway. But first, let’s take a step back and see what we’ve been doing for the past month.
Harald Berger is a volunteer in our German-speaking LibreOffice community, and over the years has created many tutorial videos for the software. We’re really thankful for his work, and we decided to find out exactly how he goes about creating the videos…
I collect ideas and topics from Ask LibreOffice and the LibreOffice-Users mailing list. These are topics that are usually repeated quite often in the questions.
Most of the time, these are topics that are very often requested or that I myself consider important, e.g. the use of templates. I collect the topics and add them to the wiki.
Since I work with Windows 10, some of the videos are operating system-specific.
The LibreOffice Quality Assurance ( QA ) Team is happy to announce LibreOffice 7.2 Release Candidate s1 is available for testing!
LibreOffice 7.2 will be released as final in mid August, 2021 ( Check the Release Plan for more information ) being LibreOffice 7.2 RC1 the third pre-release since the development of version 7.2 started at the end of November, 2020. Since the previous release, LibreOffice 7.2 Beta1, 208 commits have been submitted to the code repository and 100 bugs have been fixed. Check the release notes to find the new features included in LibreOffice 7.2.
Since last month's LibreOffice 7.2 beta process began, more bug fixes have been accumulating into this major half-year update to this cross-platform open-source office suite. LibreOffice 7.2 introduces a command pop-up / heads-up display, initial GTK4 toolkit support, the ability to compile to WebAssembly, font caching for faster rendering, Calc spreadsheet performance improvements, the usual assortment of import/filter export work, and dropping its OpenGL-based drawing code in favor of routing all the code through Skia. Among the filter work is faster importing of Microsoft DOCX files. Also in the name of greater performance is large images will now be loaded on-demand while there is also faster slide rendering in LibreOffice Impress by pre-fetching of large images. The default templates for LibreOffice have also been refreshed with a better appearance.
While I firmly believe that reading is a central part of that, there is no replacement for getting your hands dirty. Building things, making mistakes, and learning to fix them is what makes programming fun.
Working on open-source software like WordPress is one of the best ways to do that. There is no upfront cost, assuming you have access to a computer, a prerequisite to programming of any kind. There are usually people willing to lend a hand or answer questions, and there are always problems to solve for those ready to dive into them.
France is to bolster not-for-profit “diamond” open access journals, backed by universities, academic societies and the state after it warned that commercially run publishing risked landing institutions with ever spiralling costs.
In its second national open science plan, the government committed to back “economic publishing models that do not require the payment of articles or books processing charges”.
It is our pleasure to introduce a shiny new Maps & Navigation solution for QML developers!
This QML plugin is a joint effort between KDAB & General Magic to bring the excellent General Magic Maps and Navigation SDK to the QML world.
If you work with optimizing code for a while, you'll notice that a fairly common pattern is for people to believe in optimization silver bullets; just one trick that they think is always the solution for whatever woes you may have. It's not that said thing is bad per se, it's just that they keep suggesting the same thing over and over even if that's not actually the issue.
To name some examples: I've seen people suggesting removing mallocs is always the case (even if malloc didn't show up on the profile), or that adding likely() and unlikely() everywhere would double the IPC of a complex system (PGO, with near-perfect condition probabilities, gave 5%), or designed a system entirely around minimizing instruction cache pressure (where the system they intended to replace didn't have issues with instruction cache). And I guess we've all seen the people insisting on optimizing their code on -O9, because higher is better, right, and who are the GCC people to compile their own code with -O2 anyway?
Growth hacking and lowest common denominator experiences are their problems, so we should avoid making them our problems, too. We already have various tools for enabling growth: the freedom to use the software for any purpose being one of the most powerful. We can go the other way and provide deeply-specific experiences that solve a small collection of problems incredibly well for a small number of people. Then those people become super-committed fans because no other thing works as well for them as our thing, and they tell their small number of friends, who can not only use this great thing but have the freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does their computing as they wish—or to get someone to change it for them. Thus the snowball turns into an avalanche.
What if a single government initiative could (1) create fulfilling jobs for thousands of struggling Americans, (2) help irrigate “news deserts,” (3) create apprenticeships for recent humanities graduates, (4) preserve the vanishing stories of the disadvantaged and the elderly, and (5) reassure marginalized citizens that their stories are heard and valued?
They started by referencing the Doomsday Clock (Science and Security Board Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), which has pegged humanity’s risk of annihilation at an all-time high of only 100 seconds to midnight. Chomsky feels we’re actually closer to midnight than that. For example, his opinion is influenced by information in a leaked draft of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) upcoming report, “which is much more grim than earlier reports,” keeping in mind it is only a draft so far, and he believes the final report may temper the initial draft.
Even before the decade of the 1960s ended, critics of the counterculture and the anti-war movement lambasted radicals, feminists and left wing ideologists for creating anarchy and fomenting chaos.
Over the past five decades, the culture wars—with defenders of the Sixties on one side and detractors on the other—have not abated.€ “The Sixties” are still scapegoated; the generation that embraced sex, drugs, rock ‘n’roll and rebellion are still held responsible for the decline of the American empire. That’s giving them far more credit than they deserve.
On January 19, 2018, shortly before 10 am, Robin Lafleur exited Texas Highway 290 at First Street, as she did every morning on her way to work at Austin Habitat for Humanity. It was a cold, cloudy morning, but Lafleur was in a good mood. She finally felt settled in her new home, which she’d bought less than a year before in Cedar Park, a suburb northwest of Austin. It was a Friday, and she had happy-hour plans with friends after work, so she was wearing one of her favorite outfits—maroon jeggings and a new mauve sweater with matching boots.1This story is published as part of a partnership between The Nation and the Texas Observer.
The results, he says, highlight not just the disproportionate salaries and benefits of senior executives compared to workers - they also show the wider strain on society caused by those exploiting the labour market.
"And it's getting worse and worse. In the US in particular we have a culture of always blaming individuals for everything. But when you pull back and look at it systemically..
"The baby boomers, when they were the age that Millennials currently are, they controlled 20 percent of all wealth, and then the Gen Xs at this age controlled 11 percent. But Millennials are only controlling 5 percent of all wealth - and what's even worse is that 2 percent of all Millennial wealth is controlled by only one person; Mark Zuckerberg."
The issues were clearly systemic, with the system set up to make it hard for workers to live a good life and comfortably support your family, Price said.
The PC market racked up another boom quarter in Q2 2021, but analyst firm IDC also found “mixed signals” about future demand.
IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, announced today, finds that worldwide shipments of traditional PCs – desktops, notebooks, and workstations – reached 83.6 million units in 2Q21. That’s a 13.2 per cent jump compared to Q2 2020, when the world went home to work.
Between 2012 and 2020, fossil fuel corporations injected€ potentially carcinogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or chemicals that can degrade into PFAS, into the ground while fracking for oil and gas, after former President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency approved their use despite agency scientists' concerns about toxicity.
"The Obama-Biden administration approved the use of toxic PFAS chemicals for fracking a decade ago, and all these years later, Biden's practices haven't seemed to change a bit."—Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch
Throughout the pandemic, the state health department has maintained an active social media presence, including sharing daily COVID-19 cases, deaths and long-term care facility outbreak counts and other coronavirus-related information. Until recently, the Facebook page allowed all comments, no matter how controversial.
That changed, however, on July 2, when comment sections on some posts went silent.
A San Diego judge ruled last week that the survivors and families of victims of a 2019 shooting at a California synagogue can sue Smith & Wesson, the manufacturer of the weapon used in the incident, in addition to the gun store that sold it.
Judge Kenneth Medel of the Superior Court of California for San Diego County rejected Smith & Wesson's argument that the lawsuit was barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a federal law that generally shields gun manufacturers and sellers from being sued over shootings. San Diego Guns, the store that sold the gun, is also a defendant in the case.
With API use proliferating rapidly within enterprise IT environments, concerns over API security have been growing as well. The trend is driving interest in—and an emerging market for—extending application security testing tool sets to include tools for automated API security testing.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued two guidance documents in compliance with the recent Biden administration executive order (EO) to enhance security of the software supply chain.
In conjunction with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), NIST has outlined specific security measures for critical software use within the following five objective
Security updates have been issued by Debian (sogo), Fedora (libvirt), Gentoo (polkit), Mageia (binutils, freeradius, guile1.8, kernel, kernel-linus, libgrss, mediawiki, mosquitto, php-phpmailer, and webmin), openSUSE (bluez and jdom2), Oracle (kernel and xstream), Scientific Linux (xstream), and SUSE (kernel and python-pip).
Amazon on June 22 asked the FCC, which regulates airwave uses, for permission to market a device that uses radar.…
From out of nowhere, the state of Maine has taken the lead in protecting its residents from the steady encroachment of facial recognition technology. A bill [PDF] recently passed by both sides of the state legislature has become law and makes Maine the standard bearer for future facial recognition tech bans.
Tor Browser 11.0a1 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.
Note: This is an alpha release, an experimental version for users who want to help us test new features. For everyone else, we recommend downloading the latest stable release instead.
Authenticated brand logos in Gmail, a security feature that was first announced last July, will be rolling out over the coming weeks, Google announced on Monday. The feature is enabled by the Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) standard, which Google joined the working group for in 2019.
The idea is that an organization’s logo will show up in your inbox when they send you an email that’s authenticated using the DMARC standard to help reduce the likelihood that you’ll open and act on an email posing as one from a legitimate source. Ideally, the authenticated brand logos will function like a verified badge you might see on social networks that tell you that an account is actually owned and operated by the entity it claims to represent.
ByteDance, the Chinese owner of short-form video app TikTok, has put on hold, indefinitely, plans for an initial public offering in the U.S. or Hong Kong after government officials in China warned management to address data security risks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the situation.
At Bagram air-base, Afghan scrap merchants are already picking through the graveyard of U.S. military equipment that was until recently the headquarters of America’s 20-year occupation of their country. Afghan officials say the last U.S. forces slipped away from Bagram in the dead of night, without notice or coordination.
Like many Americans, I grew up largely ignorant of Korean history. Even though I was born in South Korea and lived there until age 12, I didn’t know, for example, that the Korean War technically never ended and was only halted by an armistice. I never heard anything that diverged from the dominant narrative that the US presence in Korea was only as a benevolent protector.
Daniel Hale, an active-duty Air Force intelligence analyst, stood in the Occupy encampment in Zuccotti Park in October 2011 in his military uniform. He held up a sign that read “Free Bradley Manning,” who had not yet announced her transition. It was a singular act of conscience few in uniform had the strength to replicate. He had taken a week off from his job to join the protestors in the park. He was present at 6:00 am on October 14 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg made his first attempt to clear the park. He stood in solidarity with thousands of protestors, including many unionized transit workers, teachers, Teamsters and communications workers, who formed a ring around the park. He watched the police back down as the crowd erupted into cheers. But this act of defiance and moral courage was only the beginning.
U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday morning that the Biden administration should resist calls to deploy American troops to Haiti in the wake of the assassination of the Caribbean nation's president last week, warning that such a move would risk deepening the country's political crisis.
"I do not believe right now that the introduction of U.S. troops, particularly without any sort of plan, sets any community —whether it's the U.S. or whether it's Haitians—up for success," the New York Democrat said in an appearance on Democracy Now! "Our role should be in supporting a peaceful transition and a peaceful democratic process for selecting a new leader and avoiding any sort of violence."
A Haitian-born doctor based in Florida was arrested Sunday as part of an ongoing probe into the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, who was gunned down in his home in the dead of night last week.
Haitian authorities said that 63-year-old Christian Emmanuel Sanon worked with a Miami-based private security firm to recruit the mercenaries who carried out the assassination last Wednesday. According to video footage of the scene, a group of heavily armed assailants posed as officials with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as they moved in on Moïse's private residence on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
Nonetheless, the American political and media establishments seem to blithely assume that Haiti’s internal affairs are very much America’s business. State Department spokesman Ned Price says “It is still the view of the United States that elections this year should proceed.” An “electoral timetable” proposed by Moïse was “backed by the Biden administration, though it rejected plans to hold a constitutional referendum.”
Imagine, for a moment, that Russian president Vladimir Putin announced his support for the US holding 2022 congressional midterm elections, but denounced a proposed constitutional amendment.
After the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s interim government says it has asked the United Nations and the United States to send troops to help secure key infrastructure. The U.S. has so far declined, but has sent an inter-agency team from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the situation in Haiti is “extraordinarily delicate and extremely fragile,” and that the U.S. should not send troops to the country. “Our role should be in supporting a peaceful transition and democratic process for selecting a new leader,” she says.
Political turmoil continues in Haiti following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, with multiple people claiming leadership of the country and gangs unleashing a new wave of violence in the streets. Haitian police say they have arrested a key figure in the assassination, 63-year-old Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian-born doctor based in Florida who arrived in Haiti in June with “political objectives.” Sanon is one of three Haitian Americans now arrested in the attack, along with 18 Colombians. Five Colombians are still at large, and three were reportedly killed. The United States, meanwhile, has sent Homeland Security and FBI officials to Haiti to aid in the investigation but has so far declined a request to send military forces to the country. “We are in an extraconstitutional situation,” says Magali Comeau Denis, a former Haitian minister of culture and communication who acts as coordinator for the Commission to Find a Haitian Solution, a civil society group to resolve the ongoing political crisis. She says none of the people claiming authority in the country right now has any legitimacy, and that political actors and civil society groups need to come together to create a broad consensus on how to move forward. “There is no other legal answer to that situation of exception.”
There is emerging in the US and European media what we might call the “deepening spiral” narrative in the wake of the repugnant assassination of Jovenel Moïse in Haiti. The news bulletins open frequently with this phrase or others like it. Here’s the New York Times front-page news story on July 8 about the killing: “The assassination left a political void that deepened the turmoil and violence that have gripped Haiti for months….”
I can’t think of anything the country needs less than the allegedly inside conversations from the alleged “four corners of American power.” But Ioffe made a splash on Friday with a piece comparing what it’s like for big-name reporters—and she uses their big first names, to prove her integrity, that she is friends with them, and that this is an inside conversation—to cover the Biden White House after covering Donald Trump. And they don’t seem to like it!
They don’t like it for a lot of reasons, but the main one is: After four years of being able to chase the rats leaving a sinking ship, as well as the rats holed up in their offices trashing Trump on background, the Biden White House is… disciplined. There’s a communications strategy and structure. They’re a team. Apparently, there are no rats!
Jonas Backstrand, deputy director general of the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority, confirmed the findings. According to Backstrand, this is interesting, but he added that there is a risk of overinterpreting the data before there is a bigger and more general picture.
Former President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that the U.S. Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was the "head of security" for a "high-ranking" Democratic member of Congress.
That is false, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the matter.
Each year, upwards of 60 million tonnes of dust from arid areas North Africa – made up of particles of iron, silicon, mercury and phosphorus, among other chemical elements – are dragged by wind currents 7,000 kilometers west to the Americas. The resulting cloud will sit above the peninsula until Monday causing misty, reddish skies before heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, Nuevo León and Coahuila. A second cloud will reach the peninsula on July 14.
Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is simple: graze.
Goats are an unlikely but increasingly popular weapon in California's fight against the wildfires that rage through the western US state every year.
As we face the urgent crises of climate and extinction, we need every tool available — including the law — to fight for life on Earth. By identifying “ecocide” as a prosecutable crime, as a panel of 12 lawyers recently proposed to the International Criminal Court, we can set up a practical framework for tackling these emergencies.
In San Francisco, we're finally starting to put away our masks. With 74% of the city's residents over 12 fully vaccinated, for the first time in more than a year we're enjoying walking, shopping, and eating out, our faces naked. So I was startled when my partner reminded me that we need to buy masks again very soon—N95 masks, that is. The California wildfire season has already begun, earlier than ever, and we'll need to protect our lungs during the months to come from the fine particulates carried in the wildfire smoke that's been engulfing this city in recent years.
With hundreds of thousands of acres burning across swaths of the U.S. West that have already endured record-breaking heat this summer—and mounting concerns about the GOP and centrist Democrats watering down federal infrastructure legislation—the climate movement on Monday reiterated demands for ambitious government action and investment.
"This 'unprecedented' weather must serve as a wake-up call for our politicians."—Ellen Sciales, Sunrise Movement
For five years, economic development officials in Toledo, Ohio, have operated a pilot program that allows residents to borrow money for energy-saving home renovations without paying exorbitant interest rates. The program has been widely seen as a success, with only one of 61 borrowers currently delinquent on their repayments.
But now officials at the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority are preparing to expand the program to other parts of Ohio in a way that has led to trouble for some homeowners in other states — by turning over the program to a private, for-profit lender.
Anticipating more negotiations ahead of a meeting in China scheduled for October, conservation advocacy groups on Monday warned that a new draft of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework fails to adequately address the human-caused crisis of species loss.
"To truly minimize future pandemic risk, we need to rethink commercial use of wildlife."—Tanya Sanerib, Center for Biological Diversity
Reproductive rights advocates welcomed the Monday advancement of a House funding bill that, for the first time in decades, does not include the Hyde Amendment.
"This is a huge win for our rights," tweeted the National Women's Law Center.
Beginning with a "massive national call-in to every U.S. senator," the Poor People's Campaign on Monday launched a monthlong€ campaign to push Congress to eliminate€ the 60-vote filibuster, pass the For the People Act, restore the gutted Voting Rights Act, and raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour—progressive goals that have been thwarted by a combination of€ Republican obstructionism and Democratic€ acquiescence.
"Democracy versus autocracy is the battle of our time," Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, said Monday during an address that kicked€ off€ a "season of nonviolent moral direct action to save our democracy."
Progressive politicians and advocates this week responded to the so-called billionaire blastoff—the space race between Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos—with derision and calls to solve earthly problems of people and planet before spending billions of their own and taxpayers' dollars shooting for the stars.
"Our social, political, and economic systems are built around the idea that tax breaks for billionaires buying leisurely space travel is more important than feeding, clothing, and housing all our children."—Rep. Jamaal Bowman
The case of a Houston man facing decades in prison for allegedly voting while knowing he was ineligible has thrown into stark relief Texas Republicans' drive to limit access to the polls and criticism of the cash bail system.
Hervis Rogers, now 62, was arrested Wednesday, facing what critics say is an "outrageous" prosecution by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, for having voted while still on parole on Super Tuesday in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Nearly 60 Democratic members of the Texas state House of Representatives plan to leave town on Monday in an effort to thwart—for the second time—their Republican counterparts' attempt to ram through a sweeping voter suppression package.
"I think it's hard for us to look at this and see any other option for us but to break quorum again."—Texas state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez
Ever since Ronald Reagan became governor of California in 1967, we have relied on two native informants about his time in power: Joan Didion, of Sacramento, and Mike Davis, of the San Bernardino Valley.
As Texas state Democratic lawmakers on Monday undertook a daring effort to deny their Republican colleagues the quorum needed to ram through a sweeping voter suppression package, progressive advocates and observers implored congressional Democrats to act boldly to protect U.S. democracy from the GOP onslaught.
According to the Texas Tribune:
Countless times over the years, I have asked civic group leaders about the outcome of their€ “petition,” their deliberative letters, their serious requests regarding desired policy changes, public€ hearings, new initiatives, and reversal of courses of actions. Their replies have almost always€ been no answer, no response, didn’t hear from them, and not even an acknowledgment of€ receipt.
This government of the incommunicado, by the incommunicado, and for the incommunicado€ infects both Congress and Executive Branch agencies.
The Republican Party that once claimed to be the party of keeping government out of business and that actions have consequences has moved far, far beyond that. These days, it's a parody of everything it once derided. Take a look at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's newly announced Framework to Stop the Bias and Check Big Tech. Even from the naming you can see quite clearly ridiculous victim-playing. There remains no evidence of any "anti-conservative bias" in social media content moderation. It is true that some Republican supporters have faced moderation... for breaking the rules. Just as some non-Republicans have faced moderation for those same reasons. It's just that these Republicans -- with no other fundamental principles to go on -- have tried to turn basic content moderation for policy breaking into a whiny victimhood.
As lawmakers return to Washington, D.C., following a two-week recess, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about efforts to pass major infrastructure funding that could address child care, climate change, education and poverty. President Joe Biden has already struck a $1 trillion infrastructure agreement with a centrist group of lawmakers concentrated on roads, bridges and highways, but a fight is brewing over a larger package that Democrats want to pass in the Senate using the budget reconciliation process, which can pass with just 50 votes and avoid a filibuster. “The Progressive Caucus is rather united in the fact that we will not support bipartisan legislation without a reconciliation bill, and one that takes bold and large action on climate, drawing down carbon emissions, but also job creation and increasing equity and resilience for impacted communities, particularly frontline communities,” says Ocasio-Cortez, who represents New York’s 14th Congressional District. “That’s where we’ve drawn a strong line.”
The winner of the New York City Democratic primary election for mayor, Eric Adams, focused on what he called his more conservative plans to address an increase in gun violence, and is set to meet with President Biden today at the White House. “The way that we counter these increases in incidents [of crime] is through economic opportunity and community investment in communities where these surges are happening,” responds New York Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “The message should not be that we should continue to overpolice and oversurveil people in order to create reductions in crime and increase public safety.”
During his annual call-in show on June 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to write an article to back up his much-touted claim that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” As promised, on July 12, the Kremlin published Putin’s take “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In an essay that spans the Middle Ages to the present day, Putin touches on everything from the Mongol invasion to the collapse of the Soviet Union and more. In addition to claiming that modern Ukraine is the “brainchild” of the Soviet era, Putin blames the West and Ukrainian elites for allegedly working to turn the country into an “anti-Russia.” Despite Putin’s repeated claims about Russian and Ukrainian being “almost identical,” the Kremlin chose to publish his essay in both languages. Meduza summarizes Putin’s “historical article” here.
Eric Adams, the man poised to be the next mayor of New York City, is a bundle of contradictions.
Oppositionist Ilya Yashin has resigned from his post as head of the council of deputies for Moscow’s Krasnoselsky municipal district.€
Violetta Grudina, the former head of Alexey Navalny’s campaign office in Murmansk, announced her candidacy for the upcoming City Council election back in April. But in the midst of campaigning in June, she fell ill and decided to self-isolate — she didn’t leave home for 16 days straight. However, on July 9, the authorities opened a criminal case against her for allegedly violating epidemiological rules and thus, by negligence, creating a threat of mass infection. According to police officials, Grudina knew she had tested positive for the coronavirus but broke mandatory quarantine and “came into contact with an indefinite number of persons.” A source in law enforcement told the local news agency SeverPost that Grudina left home to organize the distribution of leaflets promoting her election campaign when she was supposed to be under quarantine. In conversation with Meduza, Grudina described herself as a “law-abiding citizen” and insisted that she complied with the self-isolation instructions, as she understood them. According to Grudina, who has faced repeated threats and attacks on her campaign office since announcing her City Council run, the criminal case against her is simply the latest attempt to pressure her politically.€
"Biden’s Cuba policies, just like Trump’s, are causing misery and could lead to chaos, violence, mass migration. This must stop!" —Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK
The anti-government rallies erupted spontaneously in several cities as the country endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine and a recent worsening of the coronavirus epidemic.
There was no formal organizer of Sunday’s protests; people found out about the rallying points over social media, mostly on Twitter and Facebook, the platforms most used by Cubans. The thousands of Cubans who took to the streets — protesters and pro-government activists alike — wielded smartphones to capture images and send them to relatives and friends or post them online.
On Monday, Cuban authorities were blocking Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram, said Alp Toker, director of Netblocks, a London-based [Internet] monitoring firm. “This does seem to be a response to social media-fueled protest,” he said. Twitter did not appear to be blocked, though Toker noted Cuba could cut it off if it wants to.
With the feckless Democrats at the federal level unable and unwilling to stop the ruthless Republicans from assaulting voting rights and impartial elections at the state level, it is time for the Green Party to expand the agenda of pro-democracy demands and fight for them.
With the Republican Party now not merely a conservative party but an extremist party of racism and autocracy, progressive-minded voters have more incentive than ever to vote for centrist corporate Democrats to stop extremist Republicans, making it harder than ever for Green candidates. Ranked-choice voting—and particularly ranked-choice voting in multi-member districts for proportional representation on legislative bodies—are game-changing reforms the Greens must champion in order to be able to run candidates who are not marginalized by the spoiler problem inherent in the prevailing system of single-member-district, winner-take-all plurality voting.
The resources provided here focus on federal legislation, but Greens can advance some of these demands—particularly nonpartisan election administration, fair ballot access, and proportional representation—at the local and state levels.
But QAnon is far from winding down. Federal intelligence officials recently warned that its adherents could commit more violence, like the deadly Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. At least one open supporter of QAnon has been elected to Congress. In the four years since someone calling themselves “Q” started posting enigmatic messages on fringe [I]nternet discussions boards, QAnon has grown up.
I posted a comment, just a few words, with link to my blog post. Comment got posted OK, but a little bit later saw that my comment was deleted. I sent an email to Dori, asking why she deleted my comment, and she replied that she didn't. She checked in the "held for review" folder, it wasn't there either. So, I posted again, this time as a reply to '26realmc', no link this time, just a short inoffensive text message, refreshed the page, and once again the comment was deleted. Tried a third time, different text, deleted again. I have posted comments to YouTube before, and they have not been deleted, so what's up????
In what should have been a reliable way for Twitter to show how you can tell if an account is real, the social network somehow went in the opposite direction and showed that it might not deserve your trust. A data scientist announced that fake accounts were found on Twitter and were bearing the blue checkmark that shows the accounts have been verified. Discovery of Fake Accounts How else would a data scientist notify the world of his Twitter discovery?
You may recall that last summer, we mocked how Parler was speed running the content moderation learning curve. It seems that every year a new social media service pops up, insisting that it believes in "free speech" and won't "censor" anything. And then... reality hits. And it realizes that if you do no moderation at all, your website is a total and complete garbage dump full of spam, porn, harassment, abuse and trolling. And just as Parler learned it needed to do some moderation (and its then CEO even bragged about kicking off "leftist trolls"), every new platform learns the same damn thing eventually. Though, amusingly, it seems to happen faster and faster each time.
In that decision, the Supreme Court tossed an action by Trump critics blocked from following him on Twitter, but only because Trump’s defeat mooted their case. Before that, both lower federal courts held that Trump’s Twitter account resembled a public forum in which Trump, a government official, could not exclude speakers simply because he disliked their viewpoints.
Justice Thomas echoed this analysis, and added that the tech giants might also be akin to common carriers and public accommodations, whose rights to discriminate and restrict service are limited. Sounding surprisingly liberal, Thomas wrote: “[H]ighly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure … gives some digital platforms enormous control over speech. … Google is the gatekeeper between [a] user and the speech of others 90% of the time.” Even though the First Amendment does not usually constrain a private company, it can, Thomas opined, “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.”
Demonstrating the mainstream media’s aversion to publishing alternative foreign policy views, my contract with Business Insider was put in the shredder before they published a single word of mine on their website. The whole process began and ended quicker than a CIA orchestrated interim presidency.
The controversial bills are the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) Act amendment bills.
The former sought lawmakers’ cooperation to include “all online media” among the media organisations the government seeks to be able to censor.
Notes: Nolan Higdon teaches media studies at California State University, East Bay. He and Emil Marmol are frequent contributors to Project Censored. Their forthcoming article will be titled, “Returning to Neoliberal Normalcy.” Jennifer Lyons teaches History at Diablo Valley College; her forthcoming article on left-populist media was coauthored with Nolan Higdon and will be published in an academic communications journal this fall.
Lashkarava, according to his colleague Miranda Baghaturia, was beaten by a mob of 20 people. Local TV channels later showed him with bruises on his face and blood on the floor around him. Media reports say he sustained multiple injuries and had to undergo surgery but was discharged Thursday from a hospital.
The cause of his death was not immediately clear.
Russian journalist and political scientist Fyodor Krasheninnikov confirmed on July 12 that he has left Yekaterinburg and is€ now living in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he plans to stay there “for the foreseeable future.”€
Pornography features highly in this effort.€ In April former opposition leader and shadow minister for government services Bill Shorten remarked to the National Press Club that, “Children have too easy access to pornography in this country online … I think a lot of parents are oblivious.”€ While not claiming to be a censor, he still insisted that children “shouldn’t be getting their sex education from hardcore pornography.”
The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs is also exercised about the subject, having tabled a report in February 2020 asking the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), working with the Australian Cybersecurity Centre, to develop a regime for online verification that would limit access to such services as online wagering and pornography.€ “These standards will help to ensure that online age verification is accurate and effective, and that the process for legitimate consumers is easy, safe, and secure.”
My friend and colleague Sherwin Siy died suddenly last week, way before his time, way before any of us were ready to lose his friendship, and way before the Internet and the principles he defended could afford to be without his help defending them.
Let us gaze again in shock at the pathetic weakness of powerful people, unable to handle targeted criticism without resorting to violating people's rights. That's right, we're talking about cops again.
The city of Lexington, Kentucky recently passed a ban on no-knock raids by the local police department. A long string of no-knock raids that have ended tragically likely contributed to this, but a recent high-profile raid in which a 26-year-old black ER technician was shot and killed by Louisville, Kentucky police officers probably hit closest to home.
In a show of solidarity with thousands of Cook County, Illinois employees on strike over stalled contract negotiations, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders this weekend admonished county officials for failing to agree to a fair deal for workers who have risked and sacrificed so much—including their lives—during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
"I watched those close to me get sick and die. All we are asking for as Cook County workers is what we are due."—Shadonna Davis,SEIU Local 73
Canadian academic and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, Michael Lynk, made waves on Friday.
Four Tibetan Buddhist monks were handed prison sentences as long as 20 years last fall after a secret trial in southern Tibet, according to a Human Rights Watch investigation revealed on Tuesday.
The punishment is heavy even by Chinese penal standards considering the nonviolent nature of the allegations and the monks' lack of prior offenses. The U.S.-based human rights organization believes the case reflects China's heightened scrutiny of online activity and increasing pressure on local officials to take harsh "preemptive" action over even minor infractions, especially in minority regions like Tibet.
This detention set in motion a chain of events: a contingent of police and other security forces traveled from Lhasa to Choegyal Wangpo’s home village of Dranak, and raided the village and adjoining monastery of Tengdro. During the night raid, police severely beat a number of Tengdro monks and villagers, and detained about 20 of them. Like Choegyal Wangpo, they are believed to have been held on suspicion of having exchanged messages with other Tibetans abroad, of having contributed to the earthquake relief sent to Tibetans at the sister monastery in Nepal, or of having possessed photographs or literature related to the Dalai Lama.
The 61-page report, “‘Prosecute Them with Awesome Power’: China’s Crackdown on Tengdro Monastery and Restrictions on Communications in Tibet,” details, for the first time, the government’s crackdown on Tibetan monks in the little-known Tengdro monastery. In September 2019, police in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, found private messages on a cell phone lost by Choegyal Wangpo, a Tibetan monk. Several messages had been exchanged with Tibetan monks living in Nepal, including records of donations after the 2015 Nepal earthquake. The police responded with a raid on the monastery that resulted in multiple arrests, a suicide, and, in 2020, a secret trial of four monks.
But Ven Bagdro remains anguished, fearing Tibet is being overlooked as the world’s attention focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the extinction of democracy in Hong Kong and growing calls for a Beijing Olympics boycott.
“People are suffering in Xinjiang and Hong Kong but also in Tibet,” the 45-year-old said. “It is deadly to the Tibetan spiritual language and its culture.”
This is a dangerous idea. If we establish that a phonemaker can quietly throttle on a user’s behalf, what’s to keep them from doing that whenever they like? For years, conspiracy theories have swirled about how gadget makers slow down or otherwise cripple devices to force their users to upgrade, and many of them were dismissed as just that — conspiracy theories — until it was revealed that Apple actually did something of the sort in 2017.
While most folks didn't notice ahead of the holiday weekend, the FTC on Friday announced it would be giving chipmaker Broadcom a bit of a wrist slap after the agency found it had become an "illegal monopoly." In the FTC's complaint (pdf), the agency notes that Broadcom "illegally monopolized" both the cable modem/gateway and cable set top box markets by preventing its customers from buying products from other vendors. It did this by forcing both OEMs and service providers into long-term agreements that prevented them from purchasing chips from Broadcom's competitors, then bullying them if they went off script:
As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, less than 0.1% of vaccine doses have been administered in low-income countries, according to data available at the end of March, with more than 86% of shots being administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries. “We are not protecting ourselves from the virus, and we frankly are setting up the virus and COVID for being around for generations,” says New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She calls on the United States to use tools like the Defense Production Act to mobilize mass production of vaccines to export for free around the world.
Two medical ethicists are the latest to argue that the World Trade Organization must lift patent protections on Covid-19 vaccines to save lives both in the Global South, where inoculations against the virus are lagging, and in wealthy countries which is likely to face future€ infectious disease outbreaks if they continue hoarding the supplies needed to fight the current public health crisis.
"Everyone, but especially wealthier nations, needs to help develop vaccine-manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries because Covid-19 unfortunately won't be the last pandemic the world faces."—Nancy Jecker, University of Washington
The German Federal Constitutional Court announced on 9 July 2021 the rejection of two applications for a preliminary injunction against the German Act of Approval to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA). The decisions mark a key step towards the implementation of the Unitary Patent and UPC.
[...]
The Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court are the building blocks of the Unitary Patent package which will supplement and strengthen the existing centralised European patent granting system. They will offer users a cost-effective option for patent protection and dispute settlement across Europe's participating member states.
I'm sure there are many companies and other entities who would agree, as would I, that there are important issues to be addressed in connection with SEPs. It's just that some will say the current situation is unfair for licensees ("hold-out") while others will say licensors get overcompensated ("hold-up").
The "type of act" specified is "[p]roposal for a regulation." The summary refers to a potential combination of legislative and non-legislative action." I believe one possible direction this may take is an EU directive (which would then have to be transposed into national laws by the EU'S 27 Member States) on SEP licensing and enforcement.
It's not totally surprising as something like this was mentioned, inter alia, in the 2020 IP Action Plan. Now they're going to start with the public consultation (likely after the summer break) and their initial impact assessment, and they're shooting for a Commission adoption (i.e., a decision by the College of Commissioners) in the fourth quarter of next year. A Commission Regulation would take immediate effect, but if the Commission adopted a proposal for a directive, the process would just start as the EU Council and the European Parliament would then act as co-legislators.
Major SEP holders like Ericsson and Nokia have enormous political clout in Europe. If net licensees sought to capitalize on this process to weaken SEP enforcement, they'd face an uphill battle (of the kind they just lost in Germany, where the patent injunction regime is going to be the same as before, just more costly for defendants).
Eight years (!) after complaints of dozens of EPO staff members against the way they were treated after having participated in strikes, a final decision in their cases is finally there: former EPO president Benoit Battistelli abused his power in various ways when and after implementing new rules in July 2013 to restrict the rights of staff members to strike. The Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT) made this clear in several decisions it issued last week. In two other cases the EPO has to pay high moral damages plus costs to former staff members.
[...]
Battistelli was succeeded in 2018 by president António Campinos and the situation seems to have improved, but social conflicts are not over at the EPO. Recent issues were reforms of education and childcare allowances, for instance. Last week the Central Staff Committee issued a paper condemning Campinos’ decision to disband secretarial support for staff representation (by not replacing the last of three secretaries, who retired in May), something which had existed for thirty years, as an “attack against staff and its representation”.
If conflicts lead to legal procedures, they should be dealt with in a timely manner. Not only by the ILOAT, but much more so internally. In several conflicts which started in 2013 it took the EPO appeals committees six years to come to a final conclusion. Only after such decision a complainant could go to the ILOAT.
Brazilian law enforcement agencies have announced the third wave of anti-piracy "Operation 404." With support from the United States and the UK, the authorities blocked or shut down 334 websites and 94 piracy apps, while making five arrests. The blocking targets include 1337x and The Pirate Bay but those domains were not seized.
