Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 18/7/2021: Release of pgAdmin 4 Version 5.5, Debian 11.0 “Bullseye” Soon



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • Moving my blog to Oracle cloud

        At least, at the moment, since I will no longer be operating my own network as of September, I plan on running my services on a mix of Vultr, Oracle and Linode VMs, as this allows me to avoid Intel CPUs (Oracle have ARM, but also AMD EPYC VMs available, while Vultr and Linode also use AMD EPYC). I will probably run the more FOSS-centric infrastructure on fosshost’s ARM infrastructure, assuming they accept my application anyway.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • This Week in Linux 160: Valve Steam Deck, PineTime Smartwatch, Solus, Windows 365, Ubuntu Touch | TuxDigital

        On this episode of This Week in Linux, Valve has announced the Steam Deck, which is their new handheld gaming device powered by Linux and Pine64 announced the PineTime Smartwatch is now available to order. We’ve got a lot to check out in Distro News such as releases from Tails, Solus, Escuelas Linux, and apparently a Linux Distro from Microsoft. Then we’re going to take a look at the latest release of Ubuntu Touch with OTA-18 and we’ve got some App News from Nextcloud and Firefox. All that and so much more coming up on episode 160 of This Week in Linux, recorded live on July 17, 2021. Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

      • GNU World Order 417

        Learn **git** with **git-cola**.

      • Linux Action News 198

        Steam Deck looks impressive; we cover the details you care about and one aspect that concerns us.

        Plus, how Microsoft just gave a boost to the Linux Desktop and more.

      • Pacman Parallel Downloads Way Better Than Expected

        A while back I did a video about the Pacman 6 beta which included the ability to download packages in parallel theoretically offering much higher speeds and now that it's here I am incredibly impressed by how much faster it can really be.

    • Kernel Space

      • Coreboot Starts Seeing Bits For AMD Barcelo

        Early work is underway on Coreboot for AMD's Barcelo as the successor to Lucienne.

        Merged on Saturday were the first bits of new code referencing AMD's Barcelo landing in Coreboot. The Barcelo code so far is building off the existing Cezanne Coreboot code while the bits added this weekend were for a new GPU PCI ID and vBIOS ID remapping. More code is needed moving forward but this shows they are already working towards Barcelo bring-up for Coreboot with these initial baby steps.

      • Linux 5.15 To Bring More Scalable + Reliable Open vSwitch - Phoronix

        Linux 5.15 later this year will bring improvements to the kernel side of Open vSwitch, the open-source virtual multi-layer switch implementation that is commonly used in large virtualized environments.

        Red Hat's work on per-CPU upcall dispatch handling for the Open vSwitch kernel code has made it into net-next this week, thereby effectively making it among the material now waiting around for the Linux 5.15 cycle.

      • Linux 5.0 shown to boot on ESP32 processor - CNX Software

        ESP32 IoT processor supports up to 8MB PSRAM which makes it just enough to run a minimal version of Linux. There’s little practical application for it, but it may be fun to try, and one developer apparently managed to boot Linux 5.0.0 on a board with an ESP32 dual-core Xtensa processor connected to 8MB PSRAM and a 2MB SPI flash.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Squeezing More Performance Out Of Intel Tiger Lake Xe Graphics By Using Mesa Git - Phoronix

          For OpenGL games the performance benefits to Mesa Git tended to be smaller than with the Vulkan tests. More benchmark results here. But in any event during the OpenGL and Vulkan testing I haven't run into any issues or regressions when using the current Mesa Git, thanks to Intel's very reliable QA/CI these days around their open-source graphics driver stack. Moving to this latest Mesa code for some Tiger Lake Xe Graphics benefits is easily achievable on Ubuntu systems by way of the Oibaf PPA. As it pertains to the Xe Graphics performance. at this stage there wasn't any clear benefit from moving past the Linux 5.11 kernel as shipped by Ubuntu 21.04.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Install Nginx PageSpeed Module on Ubuntu 20.04

        The Google PageSpeed module, also known as mod_PageSpeed, is an open-source Apache HTTP or Nginx server-level package with modules that helps optimize your site using various filters to pages that optimize server stylesheets, JavaScript, and HTML files and images through caching and rewriting among the top features.

        You will learn how to install and do a basic setup with Nginx PageSpeed on a Ubuntu 20.04 server in our guide.

      • 5 Simple Bash History Tricks Every Linux User Should Know

        Whether you are a bash beginner or expert, you cannot go on working in the command line without using the super useful bash history feature.

        You probably are already aware that if you use the up or down arrow keys in Linux terminal, you can go through the commands you had run earlier.

      • Kushal Das: A few bytes of curl

        curl is most probably the highest used software in the world. I generally use it daily (directly) in the various scripts at the SecureDrop, starting from inside of Dockerfiles, to Ansible roles or in CI. I never read much about various options available other than a few very basic ones. So I decided to look more into the available options. Here are a few interesting points from that reading:

      • How To Install Asterisk on AlmaLinux 8 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Asterisk on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Asterisk is a free and open-source framework for building communications applications and is sponsored by Sangoma. Asterisk powers IP PBX systems, VoIP gateways, and conference servers to create VoIP systems. It comes with various features that will VoIP communication possible and as desired.

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

      • [Old] How to Type in Indian Languages on Ubuntu Linux

        I’m sure that there are a lot of different languages worldwide. But, did you know that India has 22 major languages?

        Almost all the Linux distros provide support for Indian languages/keyboard layout — but typing is where the issue arises.

      • How to install VirtualBox Guest Additions for an Ubuntu Virtual Machine

        VirtualBox Guest Additions are important in VirtualBox because they provide excellent graphics acceleration, as well as other useful features such as shared folder support, better graphics support, and others things too.

        If you plan to use Ubuntu in a VirtualBox virtual machine, you’ll need to install these guest additions. In this guide, we’ll go over exactly how to do that.

        Note: Although this guide focuses on an Ubuntu VM, the installation instructions should also work on any guest Linux operating system in VirtualBox. However, the Linux header installation instructions will differ.

      • What Exactly Does tar xvf Do? – Linux Hint

        Linux is known for its broad functionality and the hands-on approach it offers its users. This same functionality comes into play when you want to create Archives on Linux, compressed files. Tar commands, short for tape archive, let you create, extract, and maintain Archived files. This article will mainly be looking at the tar xvf command, its purpose, usage, and everything else you need to know.

      • PipeWire Audio Server on openSUSE Tumbleweed

        Linux audio has been considered a sore-spot with some audiophiles. Personally, I have been very happy with Linux Audio since about 2009 or 2010 or so and enjoyed its continual improvements as the project has matured. The high point for PulseAudio has been the intuitive, input / output switching. The downside has been the latency (which I happen to think has been an inflated claim) and the lack of granularity control on sound sources. Jack Audio has been the audio system for professional users with the benefit of lower latency and more granular control. In general, PulseAudio was the “consumer grade” solution with Jack Audio for the pros and require pro-level knowledge.

        The promised solution for Linux has been PipeWire which combines the benefits of both. With some distributions just now starting to include it, some by default, others as an option, I thought it was time to see how it would work on my EliteBook running openSUSE Tumbleweed. The impetus for this decision is, all of a sudden, my Bluetooth headphones started to have terrible quality and I figured, I have nothing to lose here. I can always just roll back my installation if I totally break it.

      • Nikto web scanner for gathering Website information Guide 2021

        Nikto is one of the most popular web server scanners designed to fingerprint and test web servers for a variety of possible weaknesses including potentially dangerous files and out-of-date versions of applications and libraries. It is written in the Perl language. Nikto is an Open Source (GPL) web server scanner which performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 6700 potentially dangerous files/programs, checks for outdated versions of over 1250 servers, and version specific problems on over 270 servers. It also checks for server configuration items such as the presence of multiple index files, HTTP server options, and will attempt to identify installed web servers and software. Scan items and plugins are frequently updated and can be automatically updated.

      • Rainbow Tables Attack (Cryptanalysis attack) and winrtgen Complete Guide

        The Rainbow tables attack is one of the most favorite attacks for hackers to crack password easily. But getting a rainbow table on the internet as per your requirements is no easy task. In this article, one more interesting topic will cover (how to use winrtgen to generate a rainbow table)

        You have read two articles on cracking passwords 1. Cain and Abel software for cracking hashes tutorial 2. Dictionary attack For Cracking passwords using Cain and Abel and 3. Brute Force Attack for Cracking Passwords using Cain and Abel

        In this article, I am going to tell you about another attack for cracking passwords called Rainbow tables attack and some time Cryptanalysis attack. before performing attack we need to create rainbow tables help of winrtgen.

    • Games

      • First, let me say welcome to the Resistance, Captain.e

        Last year we added support for games from the Ultima series including Ultima 8. Starting from the Ultima 8 engine, Origin Systems also created two other games in a quite different style: Crusader: No Remorse and Crusader: No Regret.

        We are happy to announce the first of these (Crusader: No Remorse) is now ready for testing in ScummVM. If you have a copy of this game and are ready to take on the World Economic Consortium, grab the latest daily build of ScummVM. If you see any issues, please file them in the issue tracker.

      • About Godot4, Vulkan, GLES3 and GLES2

        As the alpha of Godot 4.0 comes closer and closer, we wanted to spend some words to clarify the direction that Godot 4 has taken in regard of rendering back-ends.

        [...]

        Support will definitely be implemented by the time 4.1 is out, hopefully some months later. One of our main goals for the 4.x releases it to provide them in a timely manner, so you will not have to wait a whole year for it. That said, given 4.0 has so much new code (the engine was rewritten significantly), it will also require a large amount of time dedicated to bug-fixing and stabilization even after stable.

      • Why the Steam Deck won’t flop like Valve’s Steam Machines

        You’re not having deja vu. Six years after launching a line of Linux game consoles that went down as one of the biggest tech flops of the past decade, Valve is trying once again. Only this time, its Steam Machine dreams and unusual touchpads have been rolled into a 7-inch handheld PC that looks and works like a Nintendo Switch.

        It’s called the Steam Deck, and you can read all about its specs, extensive controls and TV docking station right here.

        I’m not deluding myself into thinking it’s a Switch-killer. (Even if the Steam Deck’s $399 starting price might seem close to Nintendo’s $350 Switch with OLED screen, you’re not getting Mario, Zelda and Metroid on a Steam Deck.) But having watched Valve closely over the past nine years, I don’t believe it will flop like the Steam Machines either.

        Here are six reasons why this isn’t Steam Machines all over again — and, a few brand-new reasons to be skeptical.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • VirtualBox guest additions in FreeBSD

          I just wrote about a simple and straightforward way to bring KDE Plasma Desktop to a VirtualBox guest with FreeBSD. After a bunch of package installations and a bit of system-configuration tweaking – it can be condensed into two commands if you like – there’s a running KDE Plasma Desktop. This post examines some subsequent tweaks.

        • Phase-1 GSoC-Krita

          I have received the Phase 1 evaluation from the mentors . For the Phase 1 I planned to implement two new features in the Reference Image Tool. Most of the work for them with updating the transformation for Pinned Reference Images Layer and the Crop in Reference Image is complete .

        • GSoC’21 Week 5 and 6: Programming Maze

          This activity teaches to program Tux to find the fish using simple instructions like move forward, turn left or turn right, it is created by Aman Kumar Gupta.

        • Latte Dock v0.10 | Second Beta Release

          Let's welcome Latte Dock v0.9.98 the Second Beta of v0.10.x branch!

          A new beta was needed because some core parts were updated such as Last Active Window implementation (L.A.W.) . LAW is responsible to track windows per panel/dock level and provide these information to latte centric applets such as appmenu, title, buttons etc. Through LAW, Latte is possible to provide information for windows on inactive VDs/Activities/Screens. By reimplementing some of its parts the multi-screen users that use appmenus/titles/buttons applets in different screens should now get one of the best experiences. You can check how this fix was tracked down from: https://github.com/psifidotos/applet-window-appmenu/issues/172

        • KDE DEVLOG: Fixing Plasma Corners
    • Distributions

      • Top 5 Best Linux Distributions that Looks Like MacOS

        Want to use Linux but want to feel like using Mac at the same time? You can surely try out these Linux distributions. These are the ultimate distributions you can go with that look just like Mac. With this, you will get the same feeling like you are using Mac. Along with the looks, we have also kept in mind the features and most importantly, your privacy. We know Mac users love privacy. Hence, our first pick is the best Linux OS for privacy. You can surely try out any of these OS. You will surely feel like you are using your Macbook.

        Here are our top 5 choices of Linux desktop distros, which give a little look like macOS. The below list has numbers to count only, they don’t denote any order or priority.

      • New Releases

        • LE 9.2 fix #2 for widevine

          Today we are releasing a LibreELEC update for the 9.2 branch to primarily fix Widevine, its that piece of software that allows playback of Netflix, Amazon Prime and other paid video services.

          The new version of widevine (4.10.2252.0 or newer) is mandatory to keep it working after the streaming services finally switched to the new version. With that new version (that is taken from ChromeOS) all ARM devices need additional libraries to make it work again.

      • BSD

        • dhcpleased(8) and resolvd(8) enabled in base, replacing dhclient(8)

          We are moving from a model where dhclient on 1 interface believes it is MASTER of /etc/resolv.conf and a bunch of system aspects, and the userbase is familiar with a pile of hacky control knobs in dhclient.conf.

          Towards a model where multiple interfaces + unwind can advertise their DNS resolution abilities to resolvd, which then sorts the offers and maintains a configuration.

          dhclient will remain available for people who want that old model, but I suspect they will encounter increasing difficulty sticking to it.

      • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

      • Debian Family

        • Debian 11.0 "Bullseye" Is Very Close To Release - Now Under A Full Freeze

          Following the soft freeze and hard freeze, Debian 11 "Bullseye" is now under a full freeze ahead of its official Debian 11 stable release.

          The full freeze marks the period shortly before the actual release. Packages wanting to get into Bullseye now need a manual review by the release team to proceed.

        • Debian bullseye fully frozen
          Hi,
          
          

          We have just reached the next milestone in the bullseye release: full freeze. From now on, each and every package that needs to migrate from unstable to testing needs to be manually unblocked by the Release Team.

          Please only request unblocks for changes that we really need in bullseye and double check our freeze policy [1] and FAQ [2] for what we mean by that. If you request an unblock, please use `reportbug` to get the tags right, we heavily rely on them in our workflows.

          If there's any issue that our users should know when upgrading, please don't forget to file a bug against the release-notes pseudo package if it's not yet included [3].

          On behalf of the Release Team, Paul
        • Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, June 2021

          Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • 10 Open-source free Self-hosted Document Search Engines

        When you're using a search engine to find the closest coffee shop, you're probably not thinking about the technology behind it all. But later, you might wonder how did that search engine do that?

        How did it sort through the entire internet so quickly and choose the result you saw on the page?

        Each search engine uses its software program, but they all work similarly.

        They all perform three basic tasks. First, they examine the content they learn about and have permission to see; that's called crawling. Second, they categorize each piece of content; that's called indexing. And, third, they decide which content is most useful to the searchers; that's called ranking.

        Document search engines are useful for a large volume of the dataset. Because it is hard to get any useful information from that volume of the dataset, it's necessary to come up with a solution that can help the business needs in the short term as well as the long term.

      • Open Source services that respect the user’s data privacy – librem.one – Mail Chat Social VPN

        so it seeeems like these service are aimed at selling and be used mostly by app with the pretty expensive Librem 5 phone.

        it is kind of unclear how to proceed “in browser” from that login screen X-D

      • 17 open source technologists share their work-from-home uniforms | Opensource.com

        As the world turns and some folks begin returning to the office, I feel it's a good time to ask our community of open source techies: What's your work-from-home (WFH) uniform?

        Do you dress like you would if you were going into the office? Or are you more comfortable in workout clothes or even your PJs? Do you have a template you stick to most days?

        I have a format that helps me feel both productive and comfortable, and if I need to run an errand in public, I don't have to change first: A clean, nice-fitting shirt (T-shirts are OK) on top of comfortable pants (yoga is OK but not pajama). I've leaned into my stash of T-shirts from fun conferences I've attended with people I miss seeing and locales in my home state that make me proud.

        Some Opensource.com friends and contributors weigh in on their work-from-home uniforms below. What's yours?

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • The Talospace Project: Firefox 90 on POWER (and a JIT progress report)

            Firefox 90 is out, offering expanded and improved software WebRender (not really a problem if you've got a supported GPU as most of us in OpenPOWER land do, though), an enhanced SmartBlock which ups the arms race with Facebook, and private fields and methods in JavaScript among other platform updates. FTP is now officially and completely gone (and really should be part of registerProtocolHandler as Gopher is), but at least you can still use compact layout for tabs.

            Unfortunately, a promising OpenPOWER-specific update for Fx90 bombed. Ordinarily I would have noticed this with my periodic smoke-test builds but I've been trying to continue work on the JavaScript JIT in my not-so-copious spare time (more on that in a moment), so I didn't notice this until I built Fx90 and no TLS connection would work (they all abort with SSL_ERROR_BAD_SERVER). I discussed this with Dan Horák and the official Fedora build of Firefox seemed to work just fine, including when I did a local fedpkg build. After a few test builds over the last several days I determined the difference was that the Fedora Firefox package is built with --use-system-nss to use the NSS included with Fedora, so it wasn't using whatever was included with Firefox.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • pgAdmin 4 v5.5 Released

          The pgAdmin Development Team are pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 5.5. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 18 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.

          pgAdmin is the leading Open Source graphical management tool for PostgreSQL. For more information, please see the website.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Week #6 - GSoC Weekly Report - 100 Paper Cuts

          I wanted to add diagonal borders to the table toolbar > borders but realized that LO doesn’t have diagonal left and diagonal right borders under ./icon-themes/*/svx/res/*. Then on the LibreOffice Design EN telegram channel, I said that these icons are necessary for tdf#51665. Designers wanted me to open a new report dedicated for the icons, so that Rizal Muttaqin(huge thanks for the icons) could draw them. Diagonal border icons will be added for all themes soon.

      • Programming/Development

        • JavaScript, GitHub, AWS crowned winners in massive survey of 32,000 developers [Ed: Microsoft Tim on survey that limits itself to Microsoft serfs (GitHub) and proprietary software embracers]

          A survey of nearly 32,000 developers has confirmed the dominance of JavaScript, showing a remarkable 91 per cent using GitHub, and growth in use of AWS despite the efforts of Microsoft and Google.

        • Excellent Free Tutorials to Master Programming

          A quick search of the internet reveals a plethora of tutorials for programmers. No one has time to read even a minuscule fraction of the available material.

          What you need is a curated list of tutorials. Better than that. A curated list of the finest free tutorials. Free and open source tutorials still have a cost — your precious time. And just because a tutorial is free/open source doesn’t, itself, signify any great quality to the work. Hence the need for recommendations for free tutorials to help you learn C, C++, Java, Python, R, or whatever language takes your fancy.

          The tutorials we recommend will help increase your technical skills and make you proficient in the language of your choice. And some of them even provide a little light relief on the way. Humor can be a great aid to learning.

          If you need more in-depth information, we recommend you check out our series on the best free programming books. They offer a deeper foundation in learning the relevant programming languages. Many of the books we recommend offer a solid foundation in learning the relevant programming language. Some are very specialist, some offer a quick overview.

        • Perl/Raku

  • Leftovers

    • Walking Around Blind Without a Cane
    • Turning Point USA Struggles to Bar White Nationalists From Student Summit
    • Opinion | Good Trouble: We Have Come Too Far and Fought Too Hard. On Our Watch the Clock Will Not Be Turned Back
    • Is Cinema Dead Again?

      Any history of cine-death would have to begin in 1895, when Louis Lumière purportedly called the cinematograph “an invention without a future.”

      Thirty years later, critics like René Clair, Rudolf Arnheim, and Béla Balázs worried that technological advances would precipitate cinema’s demise. In their view, the advent of sound and color would make the movies too much like real life. How would spectators fall into a dream-like trance if the images were realistic?

    • How I clean my home as an eco-friendly minimalist | Hund

      I use something rather old school; green soap. It’s a pine oil based soap that’s all natural, environmentally safe, non-toxic and it has been around in the Swedish homes for more than 125 years now.

      Pine oil is a by-product of the pulp and paper industry. It can be used to clean everything in your home, it’s cheap and widely available in all local stores. It can’t get any better than that.

      You shouldn’t get fooled by all the expensive (and often exclusive and hard to get) hip “eco-friendly” products that’s designed for just one specific part of your home. It just hurts your wallet and most importantly; it hurts the planet with unnecessary waste if you have to buy a dozen of different products to clean your home.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Fauci: US might 'still have polio' if media back then opposed vaccine

        Fauci was responding to a CNN interviewer who asked if he thought "we could have defeated the measles or eradicated polio if you had Fox News, night after night, warning people about these vaccine issues that are just bunk."

        Fauci said: "We probably would still have smallpox and we probably would still have polio ... if we had the kind of false information that's being spread."

      • The surgeon general wants Facebook to do more to stop Covid-19 lies

        US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says that misinformation — much of it on tech platforms — is a public health threat that has cost people’s lives and prolonged the Covid-19 pandemic.

        As Murthy said in a Thursday press conference, health advisories are usually about things people physically consume: food, drinks, cigarettes. But the first advisory of his tenure in the Biden administration (he was also the surgeon general under President Obama) is about what we consume with our eyes and ears: misinformation.

        The advisory comes with a set of guidelines on how to “build a healthy information environment,” with recommendations for everyone from social media users up to the platforms themselves (also: health workers, researchers, and the media). Murthy also went on some of those very platforms to spread the message, including Twitter and Facebook.

      • Biden grappling with ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’

        Cases of COVID-19 have tripled over the past three weeks, and hospitalizations and deaths are rising among unvaccinated people. While the rates are still sharply down from their January highs, officials are concerned by the reversing trendlines and what they consider needless illness and death. And cases are expected to continue to rise in coming weeks.

        While the national emergency may have faded, officials say the outbreak is now a more localized crisis in communities where not enough people have rolled up their sleeves.

        “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated,” Biden said Friday, echoing comments made earlier in the day by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Is Open-Source Software Secure?

            Being someone who prefers Linux for desktop and encourages using open-source software, you may expect the answer to the question raised in the headline with a big “Yes“.

            But I am not going to limit discussing the benefits of open-source software. Let us explore more!

            Here, I plan to share my thoughts on if open-source software is secure and what are the things involved in it that make secure or insecure.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Killing Castro

        Five or six assassination plots is a sobering number, especially if you happen to be the intended target of these “executive actions.” But even here Colby was dissembling. He certainly had the opportunity to consult a secret 1967 report on the plots against Castro by the CIA’s Inspector General John S. Earman, and approved by Richard Helms. The CIA had in fact hatched attempts on the Cuban leader even prior to the revolution. One of the first occurred in 1958, when Eutimio Rojas, a member of the Cuban guerrillas, was hired to kill Castro as he slept at a camp in the Sierra Maestra. To read this article, log in or or Subscribe. In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

      • As US Troops Withdraw, Afghans Needs Reparations Instead of More Drones
      • Former Trump official: GOP now a bigger national security threat than "ISIS, al Qaeda and Russia”

        On Thursday, a Trump administration official called the Republican Party the nation's "No. 1 national security threat," suggesting that the party surpasses that of ISIS, al Qaeda and Russia.

        "I've spent my whole career not as a political operative. I've never worked on a campaign in my life other than campaigning against Trump. I'm a national security guy," said former DHS official Miles Taylor in a Thursday interview on MSNBC. "I've worked in national security against ISIS, al Qaeda and Russia."

        He added: "And the No. 1 national security threat I've ever seen in my life to this country's democracy is the party that I'm in: the Republican Party. It is the No. 1 national security threat to the United States of America."

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Anthony Bourdain’s AI-Faked Voice in New Documentary Sparks Backlash

        In the documentary, editors Eileen Meyer and Aaron Wickenden weave in narration by Bourdain pulled from audio clips, show outtakes, video interviews and audiobooks. However, when asked how he obtained some quotes from Bourdain in a new article in the New Yorker, Neville tells writer Helen Rosner that he used artificial intelligence to create three quotes with Bourdain’s voice. “I created an AI model of his voice,” Neville says. He goes on to say, “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the AI, and you’re not going to know.”

    • Environment

      • Oregon's Growing Bootleg Fire is One of 70 Now Raging in US West, Where Another Heatwave Looms

        Bolstering the case for meaningful action to address the climate emergency, the out-of-control Bootleg Fire that began on July 6 in southern Oregon has scorched more than 280,000 acres and is only 22% contained. It is the nation's largest wildfire so far this year, and€ one of 70 large blazes€ currently torching the U.S. West, which is bracing for yet another heatwave.

        To put Bootleg's destructiveness into perspective, the fire—one of 10 burning in Oregon alone—has spread over 25,000 acres per day on average, or more than€ 1,000 acres every hour. According to CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller, "That's an area larger than the area of Central Park each hour, or a rate of a football field burned every five seconds" for 11 days.

      • Companies Must Disclose—and Face—Mounting Climate Risks

        Mindy Lubber, the CEO of€ Ceres, a nonprofit known for galvanizing the investment community around climate change risk, chuckled to remember how puzzled many attendees were at her organization’s first summit on the subject in 2003 at the United Nations.

      • Manchin Wants to Invest More Taxpayer Money in Propping Up Fossil Fuel Industry
      • Energy

        • California Oil Lobby Seeks to Strip Environmental Protections for Groundwater Amid Drought

          By Aaron Cantu. This story originally appeared in Capitol and Main and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

          A prominent oil and gas lobbying group€ seeks to strip environmental protections from groundwater sources designated by the state for agricultural use and which may grow increasingly important to California’s water-scarce future, according to a memo obtained through a records request.

          Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

      • Wildlife/Nature

      • Overpopulation

        • Far more adults don’t want children than previously though

          National fertility data provided by the U.S. Census and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lump together all adults who aren't parents, making it difficult to understand how many people identify as child-free.

          As social scientists, we think it's important to distinguish child-free individuals from those who are childless or not yet parents. People who are child-free make the conscious decision not to have kids. They're distinct from childless individuals – adults who want children but can't have them – and from people who plan to have children in the future.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • To Honor John Lewis, Progressives Say, 'End the Filibuster' and Pass Voting Rights Legislation

        On the one-year anniversary of his death, progressives on Saturday made the case that the best way to honor the legacy of former Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, who risked his life to contribute to the struggle for€ Black Americans' right to vote and live with dignity,€ is to repeal the Senate€ filibuster and pass bills aimed at strengthening U.S. democracy.

        "Remembering and celebrating John Lewis today is important," said Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.). "Abolishing the filibuster to secure the right to vote for everyone is how we must protect his legacy."

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Black Feminist "Back Talk" Anchors Resistance on Both Sides of the Atlantic
      • Eliminating the Hyde Amendment Would Be a Big Win for Abortion Care in the South
      • Iran protests: One killed in water crisis demonstration

        Iran is facing a severe drought, and there is growing public anger over water and power shortages.

      • What we’ve learned about Britney Spears’s conservatorship case changes everything

        There’s been a trilogy of revelations in the Britney Spears saga over the past few weeks. A June 22 article in the New York Times revealed damning new evidence of how controlling the conservatorship has been, and showed that Spears has been actively trying to get out of it since 2014. A July 3 article in the New Yorker painted a picture of Jamie Spears as an emotional abuser obsessed with the control he has over his daughter’s life, with Britney a hapless victim forced to play out spy-movie-style heists just to gain access to an unmonitored cellphone from time to time.

        Most explosively, on June 23, Britney Spears spoke before the court in public for the first time. Spears made shocking claims about her conservatorship: She has an IUD she’s not allowed to take out, she said; she’s been put on lithium against her will; she’s been forced to perform against her will.

        She made it very clear, once and for all, that she is not happy living in her conservatorship.

      • Historical Racism Is Not the Singular Cause of Racial Disparity

        In summary, whites fled the urban centers to settle in suburban areas and were followed by capital. Blacks were left trapped in the projects and consigned to subpar public housing in industrial areas without public transport or widely available low-skill jobs after the decline of the manufacturing sector. The concentration of poverty and the loss of investment led to a swell of social pathologies—addiction, violence, trauma, single parenthood, undereducation—that compounded with time and which neither the welfare system nor the criminal justice system were equipped to fix. The civil rights movement and its pivotal legislative victories were effectively too little too late. The condition of poor blacks is precisely what we should expect based on our history, it is argued. As Coates puts it, “It is as though we have run up a credit card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.”

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • California legislature approves ‘historic’ broadband [Internet] bill

        Under the plan, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) will “identify priority statewide open-access middle-mile broadband network locations, including areas that can be built expeditiously, areas with no known middle-mile network access, regions underserved by middle-mile networks, and regions without sufficient capacity to meet future middle-mile needs,” according to the text of the legislation.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Stinging Oral Arguments from Chief Judge Moore [Ed: Moore as CAFC chief; I liked Sharon Prost more]

          Chief Judge Moore does not mince words — especially when she senses that a party is attempting to mislead her as to the record. I transcribed the following from recent oral arguments in Shure Incorporated v. ClearOne, Inc. This is a discussion between Chief Judge Moore and ClearOne’s attorney Christina V. Rayburn — discussing whether Shure’s briefing was frivolous.

        • Court of Appeal grapples with US v UK confidentiality in Autostore v Ocado without prejudice discussions [Ed: Team UPC's litigation fanatic Annsley Merelle Ward on breach of confidentiality; how many lawyers even use encryption at all? Almost none.]

          Last week the Court of Appeal upheld a decision of His Honour Judge Hacon in Autostore v Ocado [2021] EWCA Civ 1003 where he refused an injunction to stop the use of materials in the US by AutoStores where Ocado contended that such use was in breach of confidentiality as part of confdiential and without prejudice discussions. Over to Brussels-based trainee patent attorney, Henry Yang, provides a summary for readers below.

          [...]

          "AutoStore and Ocado were in a multi-jurisdictional patent dispute including the UK and the US. Their English solicitors were negotiating settlement. Before the third settlement negotiation meeting AutoStore’s solicitor sent a document (‘the Document’) as advance materials. During the opening remarks of this meeting, Ocado’s solicitor stated that ‘this meeting was a continuation of the confidential and without prejudice discussions between Ocado and AutoStore and that any US law discussions were to be governed by rule 408 of the [US Federal] rules of evidence [FRE 408].

          Ocado later discovered that AutoStore intended to use in the US the Document as evidence, and applied to the English court for an injunction restraining AutoStore from doing so, based amongst others on the opening remarks. AutoStore responded that the confidential and without privilege character did not apply to the US proceeding. In the High Court, HHJ Hacon ultimately refused the injunction: [2021] EWHC 1614 . Ocado appealed.

        • TrippBio receives Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent Office for Therapeutic Treatment of COVID-19 Infections [Ed: More patents on -- or related to -- COVID-10 basically mean more monopolies rather than actual solutions]

          TrippBio, Inc. (TrippBio), a clinical development-stage company developing antiviral treatments with an initial focus on COVID-19, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Notice of Allowance for patent application No. 16/875,487, and the European Patent Office (EPO) has issued a favorable opinion in a counterpart European application. The claims of the allowed US application titled "Methods of Using Probenecid for Treatment of Coronavirus Infections", assigned to the University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc. and exclusively licensed to TrippBio, are directed to the use of probenecid to treat patients infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19. The resulting patent will provide protection into at least 2040.

        • District court filings H1 2021: top patentees, defendants and firms [Ed: The crooked court that operates like it is a private for-profit corporation rather than a place of law]

          The Western District of Texas is on track for 1,000 cases, Cedar Lane Technologies is the most litigious entity and Samsung is the most sued firm so far

        • FOSS Patents: Apple could PROFITABLY leave the UK market, would still sell millions of iPhones to UK resellers and make British patent judges look very bad (to say the least)

          Today's my International Trade Day. The previous post discussed the Munich I Regional Court's anti-antisuit injunction in IP Bridge v. Huawei and mentioned a European Commission request for information from China at the WTO level, though in my opinion China would have far more valid reasons to question the European (meaning both the EU's and the UK's) case law relating to standard-essential patent (SEP) enforcement.

          As I've said many times, including in a presentation at a European Commission webinar, the current proliferation of antisuit (and anti-antisuit) injunctions is merely a consequence of other forms of extraterritorial SEP rulings: judgments that force implementers to either take a global portfolio license (regardless of whether a single infringement of a valid SEP from that portfolio was identified elsewhere) or be subjected to a sales ban in that jurisdiction. The culprits in that respect are the courts in the UK and Germany. They started it, and the courts in jurisdictions like the U.S. and China, which have the authority to order antisuit injunctions, should absolutely defend their jurisdiction over national patents by barring SEP holders from forcing implementers into global licenses only because they won a single SEP case in some European country. Ideally, no one would engage in any kind of overreach. I suggested this much in my presentation.

      • Copyrights



Recent Techrights' Posts

South America: GNU/Linux Grew to 8.15% Venezuela, Steadily Over 3% Overall
holding steady above 3%
Clownflare (Cloudflare) Debt Grows, Losses Continue
debt of nearly $400,000 per employee
[Meme] GAGAM: Google, Apple, Gulag, Amazon, Microsoft, and the Rest
The Web has never been more dangerous and hostile
The L Word (Not Linux)
Championing Software Freedom is "dangerous"
It's Easy to Snyk in Marketing SPAM (and FUD) Into BetaNews
The latest marketing piece (disguised as information, not shameless self-promotion)
GNU/Linux at 4% in Algeria
So it more than doubled since last year
[Meme] The Failure of Microsoft Rebranding Campaigns
market share down, costs soared, back to basics
Why Your Web Site Should Also Support HTTP (Without 'Secure')
sites which force everybody to use HTTPS have an inherent accessibility problem
Microsoft Windows is Technically at 0% in Some Countries
It's not an important platform to target anymore
 
Links 03/12/2024: Googlebombing "Windows 12", Games Preservation, and Public Domain Game Jam
Links for the day
It's FOSS? No, It's SPAM.
Another sellout
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) 'Works' for Linux Foundation (LF) on SPAM Campaigns, Just Like Spamnil's TFiR (Swapnil Bhartiya)
How can he publish something like this under his name?
Microsoft's Debt Ratio is Awful
It owes almost 150% of what it can give
Microsoft Has Already Laid Off Tens of Thousands of Workers, "Headcount" is Misleading Spin From Microsoft-Funded Sites
Expect Microsoft to suck up to Trump, looking for more bailouts (those typically manifest themselves in the form of "defence" contracts)
Gemini Links 03/12/2024: December Adventure and Social Justice Gone Wild
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Falls to 12.5% in Cuba, Android Soaring
Windows isn't even doing too well on desktops/laptops
ChromeOS Isn't Freedom, But It's Killing Microsoft's Ability to Profit From Windows
ChromeOS has shot up to 22% in Sweden
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 02, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, December 02, 2024
Did IBM Layoffs Stop? Ask Dr. Krishna, The 'Genius' of IBM...
Trust AK to solve all the problems of IBM by creating bigger problems
[Meme] Sportwashing vs Code of Censorship (CoC)
Expectation of censorship (censor for me... or else!)
With 4 Weeks to Go (Before the End of 2024) the FSF Has Already Raised Close to 100,000 Dollars
The FSF must be doing something right
"Linux on the Desktop" (Less Than a Third of Web-connected Computers Still a Desktop or Laptop)
It's like we're chasing a goal that's 2 or 3 decades in the past
2 Years Have Passed Since ChatGPT Vapourware and Bing Gained Nothing, Yandex is About to Overtake Microsoft in Search
A cause for concern at Microsoft?
GNU/Linux Rises to 4% in Ireland, ChromeOS Grows and Android Takes Windows' Lunch
Windows down to 22%
[Meme] Meanwhile at Intel (Where the CEO Got the Boot)
Well, if taxpayers pay to save Intel, then Intel should be publicly owned (by those taxpayers)
A Cult of Fake Security
It's almost as if there's a coordinated effort to weed out and drive away people who are passionate about security for the users, as opposed to the financial security of companies like Google and Microsoft
Gemini Links 02/12/2024: Long Hair and Spirituality, Technology and Nature
Links for the day
Windows Not Even a 'Thing' Anymore... in North America (Where It Originally Came From)?
StatCounter shows Windows isn't even listed as a leading platform in any country in North America
Links 02/12/2024: Obesity Crisis to Worsen, Syrian Coups Rebound
Links for the day
Months After Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Nigeria Windows "Market Share" Collapses (Now Measured at 5%)
Of course the winner is Android (new all-time high of 77.3%)
Windows Measured at 5.7% 'Market Share' in Philippines, GNU/Linux Rose to 5%
It was 3.62% last month
South America Has Made It (Android Majority Everywhere) and in North America New Records for GNU/Linux Usage
Windows monopoly rents cannot be salvaged
Windows Down to Only One in Six Internet- or Web-Connected Devices in Asia
it's not looking good for Microsoft
Microsoft Windows Market Share in the United Kingdom Has Fallen to About 20%
Microsoft knows the true numbers, but it would rather not tell
statCounter: GNU/Linux Up to 4.6%, Windows Down Sharply This Month (Almost 22% Worldwide)
Let's see it the figures stay stable throughout the month
Figures of Note: Tesla's Debt Has More Than Doubled in Two Years and It's a Symptom of a Fake Economic Order
Cash infusions by taxpayers can create "billionaires" who aren't "job creators" (see what happened to Twitter) and bring no benefits to these taxpayers, only poverty
Linux Foundation Let Linux.com Rot for Two Months and Now It Posts Ridiculous Spam
Mindless shopping site
Links 02/12/2024: Journalists Arrested, Tesla Factories Destroying the Planet and Public Health
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/12/2024: Adventures With Bevy, Google Very Evil, Jumping Into Gemini
Links for the day
BetaNews is Still a Shrine of Microsoft, and Casually Also an LLM Slop Factory
Fake articles, anti-Linux FUD, and Microsoft propaganda make a sound "business model"?
[Meme] Cyber Monday is Not a Thing; There's No Such Thing (It's a Corporate SPAM Campaign Plaguing the Web)
Enough with these fake 'holidays' that billionaires (business oligarchs) keep inventing to make more money at other people's expense (debt)
Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and Linux Foundation: Same Mentality of Revisionism and Plunder
Lie about history and then 'cash in'
[Meme] Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Begs You for Donations
How does one even spend 20,000 dollars per month???
Why Software Freedom Conservancy Does Not Deserve Money (Karen Sandler is Already a Millionaire and Her Organisation Attacks Free Software Leaders)
These people speak for "Big Money" interests, not for freedom
On the internet [sic] (Lowercase), They Spread Misinformation About the Internet
Hugh Grant remembers what happened before he was born
Richard Stallman Was Getting Honorary Doctorates Almost Every Year Until 'Cancel Culture' Stepped in, Distracting From Jeffrey Epstein's Ties to Bill Gates
This finally ended... earlier this year (October)
Self-Deprecating Attacks on RMS
Drew DeVault seems to have deleted all of his social control media accounts
When Bills Are Rising, Whereas the Demand Isn't (OpenAI is Insolvent)
Latest month on record shows traffic fell about 3 times lower than earlier this year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 01, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, December 01, 2024
Links 02/12/2024: Climate, Sportwashing, and Software Patents
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/12/2024: Words and Apologies, Being Rude, and Geminauts 0.1.0 Release
Links for the day
today's howtos
some older leftovers
The Microsoft OSI: All the Latest Blog Posts Are Written by Microsoft Operative Salaried by Microsoft
OSI is truly occupied. Microsoft more or less 'bought' the OSI...
Links 01/12/2024: Russian Police Raiding Gay Bars, Zelensky Wants NATO Membership
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/12/2024: Recycling and Interest in Computers
Links for the day
Links 01/12/2024: 23andMe's DNA Bubble Imploded, Web Server Survey Shows Microsoft Nosediving
Links for the day
Vulture funds war-gaming Ireland loss of corporation tax revenue, Donald Trump
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gerry Hutch & Debian: suicide by Monk?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch: criminals vs geeks, multinationals vs Ireland
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
"Microsoft suffered the next largest loss, down by 634,406 sites (-3.24%)"
Microsoft is now in only 2 of the 5 tables; over time Microsoft slips out of visibility in more categories
The Post Offices Have Turned Into Trash. They Swallow Packages and Only Spit Them Out If You Get Lucky.
Nom nom nom
Four Years of Videos (Self-Hosted, Not Social Control Multimedia)
Seeing how the "hey hi" (AI) hype spreads to GulagTube and ruins GulagTube, we're glad we need not worry about Google (Gulag) policing our "content" via supposedly 'free' (not really) platforms, such as GulagTube, the social control (multi)media "market leader"
[Meme] Hiding From Bullies Not the Solution
‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 30, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, November 30, 2024
If You Support Free - is in Freedom/Libre - Software, Then Support the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
2024 was the most productive year so far
CNN's Front Page is About 250 Times Heavier Than Techrights' (Also Far Slower)
Those who value performance and users' experience will give bloat the boot
[Meme] What 'Social Justice Warrior' Has Come to Mean by 2024
People who have long called themselves "SJW" aren't exactly any of those things
We Already Know What Makes Techrights So Attractive to Online Abuse and Cybercrimes
Techrights helps explain how to dismantle the 'cancel culture' against Free software (it also names the key perpetrators)
Microsoft Controlling Apache by Proxy/ies
This is a broader attack on what "Open Source" actually means