Live from Denver, we chat with old friends and new. We get the inside scope on what has been going on at System76, and what's coming up next.
Plus we catch up with a few members of our crew, and find out what Linux tech they're loving these days.
Special Guests: Aaron Honeycutt, Alex Kretzschmar, Brent Gervais, Carl Richell, Cassidy James Blaede, chzbacon, and Ian Santopietro.
We need to talk about Distrotube's data archival video, please do not use blu ray to backup your data if you want it to last into the future. Blu ray is a dead storage media and will fade out of existence within the next 10 years
Today we are looking at Deepin 20.2.3. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.10, based on Debian 11, and uses about 1.8GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
In this video, we are looking at Deepin 20.2.3.
Sent out last year was a "request for comments" on "Maple Tree" as a new data structure for the Linux kernel. The latest version of the Maple Tree patches were sent out today with mixed results but for where gains are being made they can be quite significant.
The Maple Tree is a data structure for storing index ranges that map to a single pointer and work well on modern CPUs (modern CPU caches) in an RCU-safe manner. Post-RFC, earlier this year Oracle sent out their Maple Tree patches with promising results and have now been succeeded by the "v2" patches.
At the 2021 Xen Developer and Design Summit, Tamas K Lengyel, Senior Security Researcher at Intel Corporation, gave a deep dive into the latest developments of Intel’s Xen-based fuzzer that the organization open-sourced last year. A fuzzer is a program that helps detect bugs in code.
Since open-sourcing, Tamas and his team have gained operational experience while fuzzing a variety of kernel modules in Linux. In this talk, he showcases the workflow that led to the discovery of several security issues in the Linux kernel, such as NULL-pointer dereferences, array-index out-of-bounds, and infinite loops in interrupt-context. All the issues were triggerable by an external device via DMA but thanks to the fuzzing effort, are now fixed upstream. This talk covers how Xen can be used to fuzz Windows VMs and even Xen itself!
Happy Birthday, Linux. At 30 years old, you have made quite a reputation for yourself. Having spirited the rise of open-source software, you have turned the world of proprietary computing upside down.
Of course, you had a bit of a premature start. You entered the world of technology with little more than a kernel to call your own. That was the intent of a young computer science student from Helsinki named Linus Torvalds in doing this personal fun project. In 1991, he created your code that would become the basis for a completely new approach to operating systems for computers.
The rest of that story, as they say, is history.
You suffered a name change at first. You started out being called Freax, as in "free," "freak," and "x" (referencing the Unix computer OS). But eventually, your creator came around to sharing his own lineage with you, christening you Linux.
The LLVMpipe driver providing a generic OpenGL implementation that's CPU-accelerated for Mesa - and more performant than alternatives thanks to LLVM - can now support OpenGL 4.5 compatibility profile contexts.
LLVMpipe has already supported OpenGL 4.6 with core contexts when making use of NIR and all the other improvements in recent time to this Gallium3D driver. Now for any software still relying upon OpenGL compatibility contexts, OpenGL 4.5 compatibility profile support is in place for this software GL driver.
The change led by AMD engineers for adding AV1 VA-API acceleration support to the Gallium3D "VA" state tracker front-end has landed in Mesa 21.3.
This is the change we talked about last week when the patches were still pending but have now made it to mainline. The Gallium3D VA code now supports the royalty-free AV1 video codec with 10-bit decode capabilities. Of course, it's contingent upon the Gallium3D driver having AV1 capabilities. On the AMD front, AV1 decode is available with the latest-generation Radeon RX 6000 series "RDNA2" GPUs.
In addition to Tuesday seeing the Zink sub-allocator merged for sharply improving the performance of this OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation within Mesa, the Zink Gallium3D code subsequently merged support for OpenGL compatibility contexts.
While Zink supports OpenGL 4.6 for a while now with the core GL contexts, it hasn't supported compatibility contexts. Creating an OpenGL compatibility context with supported drivers allows making use of legacy/deprecated GL functionality that is otherwise not available with the core context.
Mesa's Zink Gallium3D code for implementing OpenGL-over-Vulkan can now run a heck of a lot faster with the newest Mesa 21.3 code.
Back in June was when the news of Zink seeing "massively improved performance" thanks to a suballocator for Zink. Zink's suballocator was based on Gallium3D auxiliary / pipebuffer code started by RadeonSI and led to significant performance improvements. It's that suballocator code that as of today has been merged into Mesa 21.3-devel.
One of the biggest challenges that people face today is being productive. Compound it with procrastination; it feels like you can't get anything done. However, it does not have to be the case. You can use many productivity tools to get more done.
Pomodoro is one of them. This simple, easy-to-use productivity technique enables you to spend time doing the things that require longer periods of concentration. Here are some free, open-source Pomodoro apps you can use while on your computer to be more productive.
SMPlayer media player released version 21.8.0 with official dmg package for macOS, and more binary packages for Linux users.
SMPlayer is a free open-source video player for Windows and Linux. By releasing v21.8.0, it finally adds macOS support officially. It uses MPV and/or MPlayer multimedia engine, so it can play virtually all video and audio formats.
The player remembers the settings of all files you play, so when you open an unfinished movie it will be resumed at the same point you left it, as well as the same settings. It also has built-in YouTube browser, allows to search for and click to play YouTube video directly in the media player.
In this tutorial we’ll learn the fundamentals of the ps, pstree, and top commands, to monitor processes in Linux.
When we start a Linux system, it starts with several processes. Some are system processes, and some are application processes set to trigger when we start a system.
We need to be able to monitor these processes. Depending on the situation, we may need to monitor active and child processes, or the amount of system resources they consume. To do this, we can use various commands, based on what we need to monitor.
Today we are looking at how to install Wavebox on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
Has your Wi-Fi stopped working again on Ubuntu? Don't worry. Check out these four ways to fix your Wi-Fi problems for good.
Ubuntu is popular for its robustness and relatively fewer errors. But it's not without its bag of problems, for sure. One such problem is with its Wi-Fi driver. You might power up your system only to find that your Wi-Fi is not working.
While there is no definite answer to why this happens, there certainly are various kinds of fixes that you can try to get it working again. Let's start with the simplest one first.
Download managers are a popular tool to manage all your downloads within a single application and provide you with some handy features. If you've recently transitioned from the Windows operating system to Linux, you might be looking for an alternative to the famous Internet Download Manager (IDM).
With uGet, your search for a download manager compatible with Linux ends here. Should you consider using such a tool, and what features does it have to offer? Find out in this article.
Psychonauts is a platforming game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Majesco Entertainment in 2005 and later made its way to Linux and Mac OS in 2011. It follows the character Raz, a boy gifted with psychic abilities who runs away from the circus. Here’s how to play it on Linux.
lsmod is a command-line tool used to display kernel modules that are currently loaded. Kernel modules are pieces of code that can be loaded and unloaded into the kernel upon request. It will extend the kernel functionality at runtime. The most common functionalities of kernel modules are device drives to support new hardware, filesystem support, system calls, and more.
Kernel modules are loaded either automatically ( by udev) or manually. You can manually load modules using the modprobe command. Modules explicitly listed in /etc/modules-load.d/<program>.conf to load on boot.kmod package provides tools to manually handle kernel modules.
The kernel modules are kept in the /lib/modules/<kernel_version> directory. Use uname -r command to find the kernel version.
The Silver Searcher is a reputable command line code-searching tool that is attributed to be cross-platform, open-source, and free. It shares most of its functional attributes with grep’s plain-text search features. The primary difference between these two tools is that Silver Searcher offers a faster performance overhead.
When you're using a GUI, deleting a file and/or a folder is as simple as right-clicking and selecting delete. But when you're logged into a GUI-less server, you won't have that option. What do you do?
As you probably expected, there's a command for that. In fact, there's a single command you can use for both instances. How you use that command varies, depending on what you're deleting.
If you are movie or TV lover, then you should already know what KODI is. For those of you who still don’t know about Kodi, it is an open source media center for playing all sorts of movies, TV series, games etc. Kodi is available to download for Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android & IOS as well.
It supports a number of features like multi audio/video format playback, streaming of online contents, watch and record live TV & best feature of them all is ability to install hundreds of user created add ons, which only enhances its abilities.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Kodi on Ubuntu, Debian systems. But before we proceed to the installation steps, I would like to warn you that Kodi users are always on the surveillance radar of ISPs and Governments due to the rapid increase in copyright infringements. If you want to avoid unnecessary legal issues, it is best that you get a Kodi VPN.
MacroMind/Macromedia Director-based games to be supported.
Iskrich, a GSoC student, laid down the engine’s first lines of code, based on the initial reverse engineering efforts of fuzzie, which she wrote in Python as part of the continuity project. Then, the work was continued by sev in 2017 when Lingo compiler development was started and stevenhoefel started adding Director 5-related code. In 2018, there was practically no development, but in 2019, moralrecordings made some advancements for Director 4. Finally, in 2020 and 2021, there was a big chunk of development, first by npjg and djsrv, then by sheep and djsrv, while rvanlaar set up a continuous integration buildbot for the project.
SPRAWL is yet another promising upcoming FPS that we managed to get some new footage of thanks to the Realms Deep 2021 event, and it's looking really good. Mentioned here on GOL in a previous article, where the developer mentioned their clear plan to release it for Linux (plus a teaser shot of it running on Linux) so we've been itching to see more.
"SPRAWL is a hardcore retro FPS set in an endless cyberpunk megapolis. Escape the walled city and take on the militarized government of the sprawl. Fuelled by the blood of your enemies and a mysterious voice in your head, make your way towards the spire to topple whatever lays within."
Kythera AI, a company recognized for its powerful, all-encompassing AI middleware for video games, has started freely sharing its AI middleware as a Gem with the Linux Foundation’s new Open3D game engine (O3DE).
Kythera AI’s toolset will now be distributed as a binary Gem packaged with O3DE, making it the first middleware provider to make its advanced AI solution available to any developer at any level; free for non-commercial use, with royalty and upfront licensing available for commercial products over a certain threshold.
.desktop file is a special kind of script that is optimized for launching application. It can use custom icon and name to represent application. However, this feature can be abused as it can disguise it as any type of file. To prevent this security breach, I introduced a “trused” flag to mark whether this .desktop file is safe to execute. By utilizing GVFS-metadata, there is no way that the flag of any downloaded file. A user will be warned about the safety hazard until the user sets “trusted” flag up.
Kdenlive 21.08 now requires MLT7, which comes with a new time remapping feature and a more stable and concise code base.
Kdenlive, perhaps the most robust free video editor on Linux, is a non-linear and cross-platform program that enables you to create compelling video content without paying a dime. It processes all video operations using the MLT framework.
Kdenlive is one of the best non-linear multi-purpose video editing software. It provides support for dual video monitors, a multi-track timeline, clip list, customizable layout support, basic effects and basic transactions. It is very easy to use even by users who do not have much knowledge about video editing.
We’ve got a new video for you! Ramon Miranda uses the set of crayons brush brush presets to make a drawing, and tells you what he’s doing along the way.
Hi everyone! GSoC coding period is in its last stage, The final evaluation has started yesterday, I am really happy that all activities have been finished on time, 3 of them already merged in master and I hope the last one would also merge soon.
Well, we all know that the work on open source projects is never truly finished, but most of the core goals have been achieved and the time is up :). In this post I’ll briefly summarize my GSOC work and then talk about one last small but user-facing feature that I’ve implemented.
I’ve successfully implemented a new DSO backend and smoothed out most of the bugs. The python framework does work satisfactory and all existing catalogs have been ported. There remains the UGC catalog which will be imported in the future, either by me or by another member of the project. The latter option would be a good way to battle-test the documentation and I would prefer this option because I do not want to remain the only person familiar with the system.
To wrap up the recent series of posts about input topics, lets talk about text editing in GTK 4.
GNOME 41 is now UI frozen, so without spoiling the release much, I’d like to share some of the explorations that led to some of the onboarding in both app space (mostly Connections) and the new Tour.
Manjaro 21.1 is now available as the latest stable version of this Arch Linux based operating system.
Manjaro 21.1 is an incremental update over Manjaro 21.0 from earlier this year. Manjaro 21.1 brings with it many improvements to its Calamares installer. In particular, Manjaro 21.1 has better support for Btrfs. With the Btrfs support, the default sub-volume layout has been improved for easier rollbacks and less wasted snapshot space, support for swap files on Btrfs, and there is also now automatic backups of any package upgrade action thanks to Btrfs snapshots.
Zorin OS 16 is an ultimate Linux desktop distro designed to appeal to those coming from popular proprietary OSes, namely Windows and macOS.
Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed especially for newcomers to Linux. It is designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure, and privacy-respecting.
There are several ways you can get started with Zorin OS. The first is to download Zorin OS Core which is the free edition of the distro. If you prefer the XFCE desktop environment, you can try their Zorin OS Lite which is targeted for basic use on low-spec PCs.
Windows 11 is a very good operating system, and it hasn't even gone gold yet. In fact, despite only being Beta, I can confidently call it the best version of Windows ever. It is shockingly polished and beautiful -- the true successor to Windows 7. Windows 10 wasn't bad, but it never felt complete. Windows 11 feels purposeful and well-loved by developers. Microsoft has impressed me with the upcoming operating system. It is appearing to be more than a superficial update as I once thought.
With all of that said, understandably, not everyone wants or needs Windows 11. Due to some rather lofty hardware requirements, some consumers will find their computer simply can't run Windows 11 even if they want it to. While Microsoft and the overall computer industry would love to see these consumers buy new computers, that simply is not necessary. Instead, a Linux-based operating system can breathe new life into your aging PC.
Unfortunately, picking a Linux-based operating system can be confusing, as there are just too many options. It's a good problem to have, I suppose, and ultimately, you really can't go wrong. Whether you pick Ubuntu, Manjaro, Linux Mint, Linux Lite, or something else, you are likely to have a solid experience. One of the best choices, however, is Zorin OS. Not only is it specifically designed for Windows converts, but it even has an optional Windows 11-like user interface.
NetBSD is an open-source operating system. Like Linux, NetBSD aims for broad compatibility with Unix, offering similar utilities and behavior.
NetBSD is based on the Berkeley Software Distribution version of Unix, hence the "BSD" in the name. It's a branch off of the 386/BSD release that supported PCs in the early 1990s.
Where FreeBSD focuses on the PC platform and OpenBSD focuses on security, NetBSD focuses on portability to different platforms. While NetBSD might look like another Linux distribution, the entire system, including the kernel and user utilities, is developed together as a whole. This contrasts with the way Linux distributions cobble together components from multiple sources.
I am not kidding. Zorin OS 16 is visually stunning. Have a look at its new features.
SUSE open source offers the ability to avoid vendor lock-in which can limit commercial agility in the long run and stymie the ability to innovate and bring new service offerings to market that unlock more revenue streams.
Digital transformation is a team sport, requiring deliberate coordination between application developers, infrastructure administrators, IT security practitioners, and even finance. At Red Hat Summit this year, we shared some of our recommendations to help you better align these different domains within your organization. In this post, we’ll cover what you might have missed at Summit and share how Red Hat Insights can support these efforts.
If you use Linux on your Chromebook, you probably know that the underlying container on Chrome OS is based on Debian. As of now, the latest version of Debian for Chrome OS is Debian 10, code-named ‘Buster.’ It appears that this will soon change with the arrival of Debian 11 ‘Bullseye’ on Chrome OS.
Gabriel Brangers from Chrome Unboxed was playing around on the Canary channel with a Tiger Lake Chromebook (I presume the ASUS Chromebook CX9) and noticed that there is now a flag to enable Debian 11 on your Chromebook. This brings some kernel improvements and also the possibility of running Vulkan games on a Chromebook, which coincidentally is our next topic. You won’t notice much difference from Buster to Bullseye if you aren’t a Linux power user, but this is exciting stuff for Chrome OS fans.
The process of automation with autonomous mobile robots (AMR) is challenging. Is not only about the budget for companies looking to automate. It also requires a deep understanding of your processes, from material handling to end product. Automation taps into having a broader sense of where you are and where you want to be.
All of this adds complexity to an already demanding task. It starts with, figuring out the type of devices you need to buy. Then looking for options, reviews, reports, or going to conferences as you try to get as much context as possible. Figuring out safety and security regulations. Listening to cobots more than once. But just like when buying a car, you will end up taking a risk.
This blog post won’t provide a definite guide for adopting AMRs. How could it? The market is constantly changing and everyone’s needs and goals are different. Standards and regulations are domain-specific. So instead we wanted to focus on what you shouldn’t miss; the structure of AMR. By understanding the main components you will be able to understand the most important requirements and points of discussion with your AMR vendors.
Cloud storage is extremely useful, enabling you to access your files from any device, wherever you are. The downside is that since your data is held on remoted servers by a third-party company, you don’t have total control over its security and privacy. In addition, cloud providers may well charge you for extra storage.
One alternative is to host your files on your very own cloud server running on a Raspberry Pi computer in your home or office. But which self-hosted platform should you use? We explore the three main options for Raspberry Pi cloud storage: Nextcloud, ownCloud, and Seafile.
Forward-looking: Pine64 is mainly known for manufacturing alternative single-board computers to the Raspberry Pi and a few other budget-oriented electronics. At the moment, Pine64's lineup includes laptops, phones, smartwatches, and tablets, but it will soon grow with the launch of PineNote, an e-ink reader running Linux and powered by the Quartz64 SoC.
Inside the Quartz64 SoC in the PineNote, you'll find a quad-core RK3566 CPU with four Arm Cortex A55 cores clocked at 2.0GHz. There's also 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 128GB eMMC flash storage, two microphones, two speakers, a USB-C port to transfer data or fast charging, and 5GHz AC Wi-Fi.
For the display, there’s a 10.3-inch touchscreen panel with a 1404Ãâ1872 resolution, capable of displaying 16 levels of grayscale, but Pine64 also added added a capacitive glass layer and a Wacom electromagnetic resonance layer (EMR) on top of it for pen input.
PINE Microsystems, producer of Raspberry Pi alternative single board computers, has announced the PineNote, an e-ink tablet powered by the same SoC as found in the Quartz64 single-board computer. The first batch of units comes with a caveat, don't expect to write your dissertation or read too many e-books, unless you have the coding skills to make it happen.
For those unfamiliar with the Quartz64, it was released in June 2021, and packs a Rockchip RK3566 Quad-Core ARM Cortex A55 64-Bit Processor with a MALI G-52 GPU. Key features include a PCIe x4 open ended slot (on the model A, which also has the e-ink interface) or M.2 (for the model B) using one Gen 2 lane electrically, and up to 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM.
The CPU in the PineNote is clocked at 1.8 GHz, and uses the full complement of eMMC, plus 4GB of RAM. Wireless connectivity is taken care of by Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5, and the 10.3in e-ink screen has a resolution of 1404x1872 pixels, for a density of 227ppi. The screen can be rotated thanks to a built in rotation sensor. The screen may only be able to display 16 levels of grayscale, but is a full multi-touch panel with a pen digitizer, and the front light has 36 levels of intensity. There are stereo speakers and four microphones built in, but no webcam. Charging the onboard 4000mAH LiPo battery is via USB-C.
Pine64, a Hong Kong-based electronics manufacturer, has introduced one of the most powerful e-paper devices to date. Priced at $399, the E Ink tablet is called the PineNote and it runs a custom version of Linux OS. It will support first-party EMR pens (sold separately) and third-party Wacom EMR pens upon release. Users will also be able to buy magnetic covers for the e-paper device.
The PineNote boasts a 10.3-inch 1404Ãâ1872 (227 DPI) E-ink panel with a 3:4 aspect ratio and is capable of showing 16 levels of grayscale. There’s an adjustable frontlight that can display cool to warm tones of light. The display consists of capacitative glass and a layer of Wacom electromagnetic resonance (EMR). A final protective layer of anti-scratch and glare-proof glass reinforces the display. Pine64 initially touted a 60Hz refresh rate for the display panel but has since reverted that claim.
PINE64 may have started out as a competitor to the Raspberry Pi’s single-board computers (SBCs), but it has long grown out of its shell to expand into new territories. It is now better known for daring to create open source Linux devices that span laptops, tablets, smartphones, and even smartwatches. Now it is taking that growth a step further with the PineNote, an e-paper reader that’s designed to be just as open as its other Pine-branded devices.
This isn’t the first Linux-based e-reader, of course, and the Remarkable 2 probably holds the title of being the most popular in that respect. The PineNote, however, could very well be the most powerful e-reader in the market while also be being the most open to the point that you’ll be able to install almost any operating system you choose. PINE64, however, is naturally eying a Linux-based OS just as it had with the Pinebook, PinePhone, and PineTab.
Pine64, maker of inexpensive, Linux-friendly laptops, tablets, phones, and single board computer plans to launch its first device with an ePaper display later this year.
While most of the company’s products to date have been low cost devices meant to spur open source software development, the upcoming PineNote will sell for $399, making it one of Pine64’s most expensive devices yet. But it will also be one of the most powerful gadgets to date on the eReader/ E Ink tablet space.
In addition to introducing the new PineNote E Ink tablet, Pine64 announced this week that the PinePhone keyboard will go on sale in September, wireless charging and fingerprint reader accessories are coming soon after that, and software for the phone keeps getting better. Some recent examples: visual voicemail now works, and so does Bluetooth contact synchronization with supported in-car systems.
Frédéric Dubois, aka fairecasoimeme, has recently released ZiGate-Ethernet, an home automation gateway based on Espressif Systems ESP32 wireless SoC with Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth LE connectivity.
The gateway can also take an optional PiZiGate+ Zigbee module for support for a wider range of home automation gizmos, and everything is designed to fit in the official Raspberry Pi 4 enclosure.
If you liked Wemos D1 mini ESP8266 board with stackable add-on boards, you’ll probably love Wemos/Lolin S2 Mini board with the same factor, but fitted with an ESP32-S2 single-core WIFi processor, and offering twice the number of I/Os.
The board comes with 4MB flash, 2MB PSRAM, a USB-C port for power and programming, as well as two 16 pin headers for GPIOs, ADC, DAC, and more.
Normally when an inexpensive wall clock stops ticking, you simply buy a new one. However, ‘Developer Hendrik’ decided to bring his broken clock back to life, or some semblance thereof, using a 3D-printed four-axis robot arm dubbed “Serworm Michael.”
Under the control of a MKR 1010 WiFi and DYNAMIXEL MKR Shield, along with a Raspberry Pi, Serworm Michael is set up to push the minute hand into the next position. Five DYNAMIXEL XL330-M288-T servos drive the robot, which are programmed by physically moving the arm and using a command line interface.
Tribler is a free and open-source file-sharing app for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It adds something unique to the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol: onion routing. Onion routing, best known from the Tor Browser project, is a network routing scheme that relays connections via multiple proxies. Tribler encrypts your connections in layers, so that each relay proxy only knows the IP address of the next and previous hop in the routing chain. This system can help provide more anonymity and obscure what you’re downloading and from where from prying eyes.
I’ve followed the development of Tribler closely over the last two years. In this article, I’ll discuss how Tribler works, which parts of it are anonymized and which broadcast what you’re doing in the clear. Tribler features solid core technology, but the project’s mixed goals and priorities don’t live up to its user expectations of privacy.
Google Keep is a note-taking web app, hosted and managed by Google Inc. As it is simple, easy to use, and comes with mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, it becomes the main note-taking app by people around the world.
Evernote as well as a note-taking free service that comes with paid plans for all sorts of users. It offers dozens of features for enterprise users.
However, some may need their own note-taking service hosted at his server, for privacy reasons and/or to control and own his data. So, we collect the best open-source free Google Keep alternatives, aiming to enrich the community with more choices.
HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. Handbrake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or BluRay sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.
Today you can find hundreds of emulators for dozens of old systems for multiple platforms. However, Dolphin manages to stand out from the crowd by achieving something almost impossible: combining advanced features and a high degree of compatibility with ease of use.
With Dolphin, which is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, you gain access to the vast majority of titles for Nintendo’s GameCube and Wii consoles. Theoretically, since it’s easy to use, you only have to run it, add some games, and play. Practically, though, it’s worth investing some time to customize and configure Dolphin to your liking. This way, you’ll be able to take advantage of its advanced features and play your games better than you would on the actual hardware.
The Apache€® Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced keynotes, sponsors, and program for ApacheCon@Home, taking place online 21-23 September 2021. Registration is open and free for all attendees.
"With dozens of compelling talks on the latest Apache innovations, presented by noted community experts and supported by an impressive roster of sponsors, we expect a record turnout of attendees," said Ruth Suehle, ASF Executive Vice President and ApacheCon@Home co-Chair. "We're excited to enable participants to join us at their own convenience online and to build on the success of last year's inaugural ApacheCon@Home, with nearly 3,500 attendees."
These releases of Firefox 91.0.1 and Firefox ESR 91.0.1 fix two issues; one caused buttons on the tab bar to be resized and the other caused tabs from private windows to be visible in non-private windows. There is also a fix for a header splitting attack, and fixes for various stability issues.
Great news, we've just released the new WAL-G version.
In the part 1, I talked about the functionality added to LibreOffice to create indexing XML file from the document, which can be used to feed into a search indexing engine. After we search, we expect a search hit will contain the added internal node information from the indexing XML file. The next step is that with the help of that information, we now render that part of the document into an image.
OpenAI has released its new and improved version of Codex, its AI code-completion model, to beta testers through an API.
Co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever demonstrated Codex's abilities during a livestream broadcasted on Twitch, earlier this week. They showed the system was capable of generating Python code for simple tasks like printing and formatting text, given instructions in plain English.
Over the years, the phrase "learn to code" has gained a lot of popularity, most notoriously as a sort of cheeky suggestion to throw at folks that aren't happy with their job. However, I can't count the number of times I've been approached personally for sincere advice on "learning computer coding" or the number of times I see something related asked about in a group on social media where I feel compelled to give advice. This post intends to shed some light on if this path is right for you, how to actually get started and how deep you may need to go, and to share some of my opinions around job prospects throughout the post.
Qt Creator 5 comes with bug fixes and new features that affect CMake projects.
It's not really possible to make a nontrivial Rust project without using cargo. But the build process automatically downloads and executes code from crates.io, which is a minimally-curated repository. I didn't want to expose my main account to that.
And, at the time, I was working on a project which for which I was also writing a library as a dependency, and I found that cargo couldn't cope with this unless I were to commit (to my git repository) the path (on my local laptop) of my dependency.
I filed some bugs, including about the unpublished crate problem. But also, I was stubborn enough to try to find a workaround that didn't involve committing junk to my git history. The result was a short but horrific shell script.
On Discord (yes, we are that cool) MrDispatch wished for a way to collect a bunch of classes right after their declaration. I believe, with the power of the MOP, we can go a step further and register the type-object even before the definition is finished.
There are quite a few programs that let us CLI people view a CSV file as a simple table. I doubt if there any CSV parsers that work perfectly with all variations in the wild of the horrible, awful CSV format, but the two parsers shown here are usually reliable.
With the Delta variant surging across the country, already spread-thin health care workers are facing even sicker -- and younger -- Americans affected by COVID-19 than at the start of the pandemic.
While we won’t know the exact toll the pandemic will take on our essential workers, one thing is clear: The COVID-19 outbreak they’re experiencing right now on the front lines is a far cry from the original strain. They’re scared, exasperated, and crying out for us to pay attention and get vaccinated.
Five health care workers tell WebMD about their experiences working the front lines amid the recent surge and what they think needs to happen -- fast.
There are some things in life that are not meant to be touched – museum exhibits, the biscuit tin that you're not supposed to know about, Microsoft Windows...
People have shoved the operating system into all sorts of places over the years. Even Microsoft itself has crowbarred the poor thing into jumped-up whiteboards and eye-wateringly expensive tables in recent times.
Then there are the signage manufacturers who have taken matters into their own hands, with occasionally less than successful results.
One example of Windows being somewhere it doesn't belong lurks within the hallowed walls of the UK's National Motor Museum at Beaulieu.
Most seem to think containers are secure; that they somehow contain magical powers when it comes to malware protection. But Dan Walsh, a Senior Engineer at Red Hat, says IT managers need to stop assuming that Docker and the Linux kernel protect you from malware.
Netcraft’s research into the Android banking malware FluBot confirms that its operations are expanding rapidly, with a spike in the number of malware distribution pages deployed, and finance applications affected in greater numbers.
In recent days new overlays have been distributed that target a number of Polish and German banks, only days after news that FluBot has begun to target Australian banks.
FluBot is distributed in the first instance using text messages, containing links to so-called “lure” pages: web pages unintentionally hosted by compromised web servers, commonly impersonating parcel tracking services, or voicemail notifications. Lure pages attempt to induce visitors to download the malware.
SUSE announced its flagship Linux distribution has earned Common Criteria EAL 4+ certification. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 SP2 is now EAL 4+ level certified for IBM Z, Arm and x86-64 architectures, signifying compliance with the most-demanding security requirements for mission-critical infrastructure.
At last week’s Black Hat USA, NYC-based financial technology firm Two Sigma Investments took the virtual stage to outline why their existing solution didn’t cut it, the work needed to create an in-house security information and event management (SIEM) system, and the project’s implications. Presenting their experience on behalf of Two Sigma was Ethan Christ (VP of Security Identity, Monitoring, and Response) and Bret Rubin (Security Engineer).
SSL analysis (Secure Socket Layer) is a standard security technology used for establishing an encrypted channel between a server and a client. For example a web server (website) and a browser; or a mail server and a mail client.
SSL allows sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and login credentials to be transmitted securely. Normally, data sent between browsers and web servers is sent in plain text—leaving you vulnerable to eavesdropping. If an attacker is able to intercept (capture) all data being sent over the internet between a browser and a web server they can see and use that information. Http is sent data in plain text over a network. HTTPS protocol is used for establishing secure channel between browser (client) and the web server.
While studying the patch for a recently fixed vulnerability in the GNU C library (glibc), cybersecurity engineers discovered another issue, which they say affected every Linux distro.
CloudLinux engineer Nikita Popov chanced upon what can essentially be classified as a denial-of-service vulnerability in the upstream glic. Popov believes the bug, tracked as CVE-2021-38604, can be exploited to cause a segmentation fault, causing an application to crash.
Taiwanese chip designer Realtek has warned of four vulnerabilities in three SDKs accompanying its Wi-Fi modules, which are used in almost 200 products made by more than five dozen vendors.
The mysterious miscreant who exploited a software vulnerability in Poly Network to drain $600m in crypto-assets, claims the Chinese blockchain company offered them $500,000 as a reward for discovering the weakness.
Most of the digital funds have been returned over several transactions. “We appreciate you sharing your experience and believe your action constitutes white hat behaviour ... Since, we believe your action is white hat behaviour, we plan to offer you a $500,000 bug bounty after you complete the refund fully,” the thief wrote in their transaction metadata, seemingly quoting or paraphrasing a message received from Poly Network.
AlgorithmWatch, a non-profit group based in Germany, said it has been forced to end its efforts to monitor Instagram's newsfeed after parent company Facebook intervened.
In July, the advocacy organization shuttered its Instagram transparency project, launched in March, 2020, because of alleged veiled legal threats after Facebook claimed the group's data-collecting browser extension violated its Terms of Service and Europe's GDPR.
Internet can be ugly sometime, and this is why I will keep a strict eye on the comments, and I will probably adjust moderation settings in the future, based on how things evolve - maybe no-one will comment, then no need for any strict moderation! The only rule I ask you to abide, and I’ve put as moderation policy, is: “Be excellent to each other”. I’ve read it at the CCC Camp 2015, and it sticks with me: as every short sentence, cannot capture all the nuances of human interaction, but I think it is a very solid starting point. If you have any concern or feedback you prefer to do not express in public, feel free to reach me through email. Otherwise, I hope to see you all in the comment section ;-)
IP matters. Or, at least, IP should matter to companies. But what if markets didn’t really care about IP? What if IP doesn’t really matter? My co-author Professor Andy Vivian and I are trying to better understand IP’s role by analysing the market reaction to the theft of a company’s trade secrets. Plot twist: the market is remarkably nonplussed.
To address these questions, we use what is known as an ‘event study.’ Event studies take an event, in this case the announcement of case of trade secret theft, and analyse its impact. Our analysis models the firm’s stock market performance before and after the event, while controlling for any fluctuations in the market as a whole. Differences between the market and the firm’s stock price are subjected to statistical analysis, and those differences that survive the harrowing experience of stats are considered ‘abnormal returns.’
The basis of event studies using stock market prices is the ‘efficient market hypothesis.’ This hypothesis, common to financial economics, argues markets efficiently ‘price-in’ changes. The market adjusts prices to account for the present and future financial impact of information revealed by the event. The consequence is that stock market prices reflect the fair market value of the firm, including the impact of the trade secret theft.
On June 22 2021, the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office issued decision G 4/19 (Double patenting), in which it held that a European patent (EP) application can be refused if it claims the same subject matter as a granted European patent (i.e. not just a co-pending EP application) which has been granted to the same applicant and has the same effective date.
The application can be refused irrespective of whether it (a) was filed on the same date as, or (b) is a parent application or a divisional application of, or (c) claims the same priority as the European patent already granted.
In other words: if an applicant already achieved grant of an EP patent on a certain subject matter, the Examining Division will deny grant to claims on the ‘same’ subject matter in later examination proceedings pertaining to an application having the same ‘effective date’ as the granted patent.
NetScout had lost a case against Packet Intelligence in the Eastern District of Texas in 2018. Id. at 1303. Packet Intelligence owns three patents at issue in the district court case: US 6,665,725, US 6,839,751, and US 6,954,789 (the “asserted patents”). Id. At their core, the patents involve packet transmission and monitoring in a computer network. Id.
Packet Intelligence asserted these patents in a jury trial against NetScout’s “G10” and “GeoBlade” products. Id. at 1304. NetScout unsuccessfully brought invalidity defenses, and the jury found all asserted patents’ claims infringed, awarding pre- and post-suit damages, along with enhanced damages. Id. at 1304-05. Upon appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed all aspects of the district court’s judgment save for vacating the pre-suit damages award. Id. at 1303.
In April 2021, the European patent office published their report on patents and the energy transition1. The report comes amidst both the Covid-19 pandemic and a concerted commitment from many companies and a large number of countries to significantly reduce, if not entirely eliminate, their greenhouse gas emissions.
This second joint report by the European patent office and the International Energy Agency analyses global trends in clean energy technology innovation by determining which fields in the low-carbon energy sector are seeing an increased number of patent filings. The authors of the report believe that it could be used to influence how both the public and private sectors manage their strategies for meeting the ambitious, but much needed, target of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by identifying key trends and opportunities for value creation.
On May 20th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") filed its Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 in Interference No. 106,127 (which names ToolGen as Senior Party), asking the Patent Trial and Appeal Board for benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/652,086, filed May 25, 2012 ("P1"), U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/716,256, filed October 19, 2012, ("P2"), and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/757,640, filed January 28, 2013 ("Provisional 3"), pursuant to 37 C.F.R. ۤۤ 41.121(a)(1)(ii) and 41.208(a)(3) and Standing Order ۦ 208.4.1. On July 15th, ToolGen filed its opposition.
Duncan Ironmonger and Simon Burgess founded the UK companies Scuf Gaming and also Ironburg with the goal of reengineering the gaming console. Corsair purchased the companies in 2019, but by that time the litigation with Valve was well underway. Ironburg won a $4 million judgment regarding two patents (now on appeal) and the district court stayed the litigation regarding U.S. Patent Nos. 9,289,688 and 9,352,229. Those two patents are the subject of this appeal.
The latest episode in the long-running dispute between the NHS and French pharmaceutical company Servier has been marked by a UK Supreme Court judgment of July 2, 2021 on Servier’s application to strike out the NHS’s unlawful means tort claim.
In this article, we summarise the Supreme Court’s judgment which upholds the lower courts’ decisions in refusing to allow the NHS to avail itself of the tort of unlawful means against Servier, and we comment on the reasoning of the Supreme Court.
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The patent was granted by the EPO in 2004 and upheld by the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2006.
Intellectual property laws are lagging behind the latest advances in AI tech, but should intelligent systems ‘own’ the inventions they come up with?
High-performance cloud-based compute power has brought AI within reach of a wide range of businesses, giving the technology the chance to show how it can make commercial processes run more profitably. ‘Revenue from AI’ (RAI) looks set to become a trending industry acronym and to help win more funding for next-generation AI product development.
On 7 August 2021, Germany formally ratified the Agreement on a Unified EU Patent Court ("UPC Agreement"). The ratification came after battles in recent years over the constitutionality of the ratification bill.
In 2017, the German ratification was put on hold because a constitutional complaint had argued that the German law approving the UPC Agreement was passed without the required quorum of the German Parliament. After the German parliamentarians fixed their mistake and approved the draft law with a two-thirds majority on 26 November 2020, the ratification was stopped for a second time due to two applications for an interim injunction against the ratification bill. On 23 June 2021, both complaints were held inadmissible by the Federal Constitutional Court as the complainants had failed to sufficiently substantiate a possible violation of their fundamental rights.
The ratification concludes the German national ratification process, but the prospects of the Unified EU Patent Court and the EU Unitary Patent entering into force anytime soon remain uncertain, especially after the UK ceased to be a member of the EU in 2020.
The key legislation underpinning the Unified Patent Court (“UPC“) and the unitary patent system has been ratified in Germany. The Federal President signed the legislation on 7 August 2021, and it was published in the Federal Law Gazette on 12 August 2021.
The next step is for the Protocol on Provisional Application (the “PPA“) to be deposited with the Council of the European Union, and for two other UPC Member States to sign it. It is likely that this will happen during the Autumn of this year. The PPA provides for a provisional application period in which various preparations will be made so that the UPC can become fully operational, including the employment of judges and finalising the UPC Rules of Procedure.
The patent in suit EP 2 305 255 protects the compound of a tosylate (a type of salt) of the active ingredient sorafenib. It is the basis of Bayer’s drug Nexavar, which is used to treat various types of cancer, including kidney, liver cell and thyroid cancer.
EP 255 is still valid until mid-2022, but the original patent for sorafenib has already expired. When the SEP based on the basic patent also expired in mid-July 2021, imitation products threatened to enter the German market.
Ready, set, generics
A total of seven generic drug companies have applied to the IFA to list their products containing the active substance sorafenib in the German pharmaceutical database “Lauer Taxe”. The IFA is an information service provider which maintains an online database containing information on the medicinal products and pharmaceuticals available in Germany. Products that are not listed in the IFA database cannot be sold at pharmacies.
In Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., ___ F.4th ___, Nos. 2020-1715, -1716 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 2, 2021), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the University of Michigan’s technology transfer bylaws did not constitute an automatic assignment of a professor’s patent rights. This decision has important implications for the drafting of employee agreements as they relate to the ownership of inventions, which in the U.S. vest initially in the inventors.
This week ended with two separate patent-related blows against Apple and Google in the United States.
On Friday, a jury in Texas awarded $300m in damages to Optis Wireless and its constellation of companies, to be paid by Apple because the 4G/LTE tech in its iPhones, iPads, and Watches were deemed to have infringed Optis' communications patents.
On August 12, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,725,924. The patent is owned by Longhorn HD, LLC, an NPE. The '924 patent generally relates to an information backup system with a storing mechanism, a power supply, and a host microcontroller. It has been asserted against Kyocera, TCT Mobile International, OnePlus Technology, and Samsung.
On August 13, 2021, less than four weeks after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the USPTO granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,397,318. Formerly owned by Mitsubishi Electric Corp, the ‘318 patent is currently owned by Arigna Technology Limited, an Atlantic IP Services Limited subsidiary, and has been asserted against several auto makers such as Daimler AG, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Nissan, and others.
A new study reveals there has been a surge in computer-assisted healthcare IP protection. This will have a significant effect on IP strategies in the life sciences and high-tech sectors.
