In previous articles, I have written about container images and runtimes. In this article, I look at how containers are made possible by a foundation of some special Linux technologies, including namespaces and control groups.
Linux technologies make up the foundations of building and running a container process on your system. Technologies include...
System76, a manufacturer that specializes in Linux-focused hardware and also develops the Pop!_OS distribution, has added new AMD Ryzen 5000 application processing unit (APU) configuration options for its newly restocked Pangolin laptop.
AMD introduced the Ryzen 5000 series of processors in January with two distinct product lines: the performance focused H-series and the mobility focused U-series. The processors started to appear in laptops and desktops alike several months later.
The Pangolin laptop is a thin and light notebook from Linux PC maker System76. Available with a choice of Ubuntu or Pop!_OS software, the notebook has a 15.6 inch full HD display, support for up to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. And the Pangolin only weighs about 3.6 pounds and measures less than 0.8 inches thick.
When the notebook first launched earlier this year, customers had a choice of AMD Ryzen 5 4500U or Ryzen 7 4700U processors. Now System76 has given the Pangolin a spec bump – it’s now available with Ryzen 5 5500U or Ryzen 7 5700U processor options.
In this episode, we interview Michael W. Lucas about his latest book projects including Git sync murder, TLS Mastery, getting paid for creative work, writing tools and techniques, and more.
joysticks, power supplies, and good things
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage....
Last week I wrote about AMD adding 17 more RDNA2 PCI IDs to their Linux driver which is rather unusual given the amount and the number of PCI IDs already found in the AMDGPU kernel driver for these latest-generation GPUs and the Radeon RX 6000 series already being mid-life. As noted in that article and seemingly in agreement with the various other industry articles following that Phoronix news, it seems to be for some sort of RDNA2 refresh likely. Now those new PCI IDs are being queued up for introduction in the current Linux 5.15 cycle.
Rather than waiting until Linux 5.16 to add those 17 new PCI IDs, they were submitted yesterday as part of an initial batch of AMDGPU "fixes" for Linux 5.15. Those PCI IDs had missed the main DRM pull request for Linux 5.15 but should be able to safely land as a "fix" since it doesn't risk regressing any existing new hardware support since it's just adding new PCI IDs for hardware support.
The sound/audio drivers have landed for the ongoing Linux 5.15 kernel driver.
There are some "intensive" sound changes this time around with some low-level ALSA core audio work to help reduce code among the sound drivers. These new helpers are at play now among the sound drivers, memory allocations were refactored, and other improvements.
Linux Torvalds, the founder of the Linux operating system kernel, used by many GNU/Linux distributions and Android, criticized Intel some more, saying that they pushed “shit” products which kept ECC (error resilient) computer memory out of the consumer market.
Apple did one better. Their Mac Pro comes with an Intel Xeon that actually does support ECC RAM, and then they ship them with non-ECC RAM.
FingerPaint is a simple tool for Linux that allows drawing using the laptop's touchpad. It supports all X11 desktop environments and GNOME with Wayland.
The most obvious use for this tool is to digitize your signature to sign PDF documents, but you can also use it to enter complex characters or to... doodle.
The application needs to run from the command line, in order to specify various parameters, but once you run it, a GUI is displayed which shows what you're drawing on the laptop touchpad in real time.
This step by step guide explains how to download latest AlmaLinux 8.4 version, and then how to install AlmaLinux 8 with screenshots.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Zoom Client on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Zoom is an easy-to-use video conference app and is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, and all other common platforms interesting as a Skype alternative in the home office or distributed teams. Zoom service provides a free basic plan that offers 40-minute video calls with up to 100 participants. Beyond 100 participants, you will have to settle for the pricing model that suits your needs. There are three main pricing models namely: Pro, Business, and Education.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Zoom Client on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.
As a Linux system administrator, various operating system responsibilities demand that you should always be a few steps ahead in terms of your administrative prowess.
One of them is ensuring your WordPress site’s user-related and system-related database backups are scheduled and made on time. There are several reasons why you need to schedule and make several database backup copies. One of them is data security and the other one is data integrity.
Despite the reputation of the WordPress Content Management System exceeding all expectations in terms of flawless content publishing and seamless user-access control, there are still some worrying security breaches that need prioritized handling.
Two important access points on a WordPress website should be protected at all costs. The first one is the wp-login.php page responsible for accommodating both normal and privileged users.
When things go wrong on the Linux system, it allows the user to repair the system by booting into a different troubleshooting mode, such as recovery mode, single user mode, and emergency mode.
The rescue mode of the installation DVD or ISO image differs from the rescue mode (equivalent to single-user mode) and the emergency mode, which are provided as part of the systemd system and service manager.
This guide describes how to boot into rescue mode from installation DVD or ISO image to troubleshoot the system issue.
So, you managed to install Google Chrome on Ubuntu. It is the most popular web browser in the world, after all.
But perhaps you dislike Google products for the heavy tracking and data mining they employ on its users. You decided to opt for other web browsers on Ubuntu, perhaps a non-Chromium browser.
Now that you are no longer using it, it would be wise to remove Google Chrome from Ubuntu.
How to do that? Let me show you the steps.
Swift, often referred to as “Objective-C, without the C,” is an open-source programming language developed and maintained by Apple. Swift is a general-purpose programming language built using modern safety, performance, and software design patterns. The Swift project aims to create the best available language for systems programming to mobile and desktop apps, scaling up to cloud services.
If you are getting the error "Host does not support any virtualization options" when trying to create a virtual machine on Virtual Machine Manager(Virt-Manager) this means your cpu doesn't support any virtualization, but what about when your cpu supports virtualization and virtualbox works but virt-manager doesn't. Follow the steps below to troubleshoot this error
When you are absolutely new to Ubuntu, things could be overwhelming at the beginning. Even the simplest of the tasks like opening a terminal window in Ubuntu could seem complicated.
That’s okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You are in a completely new environment and it could take some time to getting used to it.
Unlike changing a WordPress admin user password where the needed steps are superuser-oriented, the steps needed here are system-oriented. In such circumstances, a WordPress user is usually completely unaware of their Admin user password. Also, going for the “Lost Password” option might be out of the question as to the associated WordPress Admin user email address may also be inaccessible.
In such circumstances, only a system administrator that has full control of the MySQL database daemon is in a better position to reset all the Admin passwords for all the privileged WordPress users.
PostfixAdmin is a free, open-source, and web-based interface used for managing Postfix mail server from the web browser. It allows you to add users, aliases, set a disk quota, add and remove domains from the web-based interface. It supports several database backends including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite. It can be integrated with Squirrelmail and Roundcube via plugins.
In this article, I will explain how to install PostfixAdmin on Debian 11.
I'll admit that I've always been terrible about backing up my personal computers. I used to be a frequent user of different file sync and sharing platforms before I became a full-time Linux user. While some of these services work with desktop Linux, I always found them clunky to use, and their necessity disappeared once I started using only one computer daily. Moving away from these platforms left many of my files unprotected, and I recently decided to fix that.
I always enjoy hearing about other people's desktop Linux strategies, so I decided to share my backup strategy in this article. I think many readers are in the same spot as I was: They want an easy-to-use, turnkey backup solution that requires very little maintenance beyond some initial setup. In this article, I'll walk you through the "set it and forget it" backup strategy that works for me.
Node.js is a platform that allows developers to developed tools using Javascript and also prepares scripts to run on the server-side. The best thing. it is an open-source Javascript framework that can be used on all popular operating systems. Nodejs uses the Google V8 engine and executes Javascript code outside a web browser.
Here, we will know the steps to install Node.Js latest and current version on Debian 11 Linux using a command terminal that also works for Ubuntu 20.04/18.04, Linux Mint, and other similar Linux distros.
In our previous article, we have seen 20 Netstat Commands (netstat now replaced by ss command) to monitor or manage a Linux network. This is our another ongoing series of packet sniffer tool called tcpdump. Here, we are going to show you how to install tcpdump and then we discuss and cover some useful commands with their practical examples.
In looking to moving my phone to LineageOS, I've started thinking about moving my mail, contacts and calendar data to my own server. After researching solutions for a while, I decided to try out xandikos. A simple Python carddav/caldav server intended for a single user with a basic feature sit and Git backend.
We can easily download Git from almost all Linux distributions using the integrated package manager. Here we will see how to install GIT on Amazon Linux running on AWS Ec2 Instance.
Git is a freely available open-source system for distributed versioning. It is fast, scalable, and system version control (logging of adjustments) of files. As we know in the programming world while writing hundreds of codes there are always frequent changes happened. And these changes can be monitored and reversed with the help of GIT; further files can be made available to others via “repositories” or changes can be obtained from others.
If required, adjustments from publicly accessible repositories (repos) can be imported into a “working copy” or you can make your own adjustments available to others. This gives a programmer better control over each version of the file’s, complete history and track of changes done. This is all without any central server. It is an open-source, hence Git is also often used as a development platform, including for the Linux kernel.
ImageMagick is a free, open-source application installed as a binary distribution or as a source code. ImageMagick can convert, read, write and process raster images. ImageMagick is also available across all major platforms, including Android, BSD, Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, iOS, and many others.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install ImageMagick on Debian 11 Bullseye using the APT or Source installation method.
Jellyfin is a free, open-source multimedia application designed to organize, manage, and share digital media files to networked devices on an internal network and can be accessed remotely desired. It is a cross-platform and alternative to such other major players, Plex and Emby. You can access it from a range of devices such as Mobile, Tablets, TV, and PCs or popular media devices like Roku or Nvidia shield. Jellyfin also serves media to DLNA and Chromecast-enabled devices and can fetch metadata just like Plex and Emby do so that you can organize your media into categories in a rich multimedia experience.
In July -- the same month as Valve announcing the Steam Deck -- the Steam on Linux marketshare hit 1.0%. That 1.0% marketshare was a +0.14% bump and the highest seen in years since Steam on Linux's debut nearly a decade ago back when it commanded around a 2% marketshare.
The Steam on Linux marketshare has been slowly but surely climbing since Valve introduced Steam Play as their Proton (Wine) based solution for running Windows games on Linux. Steam Play opened up many more games to running on Linux at a time that many Linux game ports had become stagnate and many game studios not investing into native Linux game support. Now with Steam Deck shipping later this year, more gamers have become intrigued by Linux gaming.
We don't usually comment directly on the Steam Hardware Survey every month, not unless it's something real interesting and this is the second month where it is because we're still officially above 1%! It was actually quite big news last month because it's the highest we've seen in many years.
The trend appears to be continuing, with the August numbers up from Valve which show Linux now at 1.02%. You can see a bit of history over on our dedicated Steam Tracker.
After being in Early Access for close to a month now, Stephan Hövelbrinks has posted a brief summary of sales for Death Trash on Steam across the different platforms.
It's worth reminding that so far the game has been pretty successful, with Hövelbrinks noting previously that the game has sold well enough to cover development and that they can finish it on their own. They've also released a roadmap which goes over their plans.
Another classic shooter is getting a Nightdive revival with Powerslave Exhumed and to celebrate the original classic PowerSlave is available on GOG and Steam.
Okay, so admittedly we're really late on this one and we only noticed the classic being re-released due to the remaster announcement at the recent Realms Deep Event. It's amusing though because I personally griped about it not being available to buy when writing about PCExhumed early in 2020. The GOG release actually appeared late last year, with a Steam release only seeing the light back in July this year.
Arcadian Atlas from Twin Otter Studios and Serenity Forge is a crowdfunded upcoming 2D isometric tactical RPG. It looks awesome and it's got a new trailer. It's a game we showed in our 2021 list, although since then it has been delayed into 2022 for various reasons. Development on it is going well, with Serenity Forge now publishing it they have the resources to get it done.
Allowing you to customize "everything", the tycoon management and building game City Block Builder plans to enter Early Access shortly with a Linux version to come too.
"The 1950s. The start of the quintessential American Dream is here. Los Angeles is in the midst of a cultural revolution and is bustling with immense amounts of growth throughout the city. Skyscrapers are being built. Tentwood is taking the city by storm and a utopia is on the rise with beaches, warm weather and palm trees. Los Angeles has become a real estate paradise with millions migrating from all over the world."
Below is a list of known issues in this release and the place to add a report if you find problems not listed here.
In Calamares, on the Partitions module, the top panel will cover the dropdown menu to select the installation target; this occurs because the Partitions module is not QML; it’s QWidgets-based. As a workaround, bring up the Latte Dock by holding the Super key, right-clicking the Calamares icon, and selecting More actions > Keep above others.
KaOS is as distribution that has, for whatever reason, not been top of mind at all during my time with Linux. I think it is unfortunate that this has been the case because I really like what is going on here with this project. The developers and maintainers have done a lot to ensue that you have the latest and greatest Plasma and KDE Gear packages to use and enjoy. The theme applied to KaOS is their own and not just another near-vanilla experience.
Bottom Line Up Front: KaOS is a highly focused distribution that keeps a well curated set of applications that do indeed work and work well. This is a tightly focused distribution with vision that aims to bring its users the best Plasma experience possible. After a little reflection, I am not focused enough to use this constrained set of packages. As much as I like the idea of being incredibly focused, it doesn’t personally suit me. As much as I like this distribution, it doesn’t hit enough of the marks necessary to really pull me from the warm comforts of openSUSE. It also doesn’t help that I have an almost unhealthy obsession with the openSUSE project and rather biased as such. I also think this is a distribution worth visiting. The installation is easy, the applications hit all the basics.
KDE Gear 21.08.1 is here only three weeks after the release of the KDE Gear 21.08 software suite to fix various bugs and annoyances in the Dolphin, Elisa, Spectacle, Konsole, Skanlite, KAlarm, Kate, Kdenlive, KMail, KolourPaint, KOrganizer, and Okular apps, as well as several core components.
For the Dolphin file manager, the KDE Gear 21.08.1 update fixes a bug that occurred when quitting the app and the embedded terminal panel was open, improves the “Reset Zoom Level” action to work when file previews are disabled, adds the ability to rename items from the Folders panel context menu, and fixes an issue that made Dolphin to open a new window after compressing or extracting files in Ark via the context menu action.
Over 120 individual programs plus dozens of programmer libraries and feature plugins are released simultaneously as part of KDE Gear.
"Themes in GNOME" is a complicated topic in technical and social terms. Technically there are a lot of incomplete moving parts; socially there is a lot of missing documentation to be written, a lot of miscommunication and mismatched expectations.
The following is a brief and incomplete, but hopefully encouraging, summary of the status of themes in GNOME. I want to give you an overall picture of the status of things, and more importantly, an idea of how you can help. This is not a problem that can be solved by a small team of platform developers.
I wish to thank Alexander Mikhaylenko for providing most of the knowledge in this pos
Effective storytelling in IT can help leaders win buy-in for an idea, rally their teams to take on a tough project, and make work meaningful for people on the front lines. But getting everyone on board with your vision is rarely as simple as telling a single story. It takes patience, repetition, reflection, and practice to hone this valuable core skill.
We asked CIOs who recently won the 2021 Seattle CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards what storytelling victories from their career they are proud of. The awards were presented by the Seattle CIO Leadership Association, a professional community that annually recognizes CIOs for their excellence in technology leadership.
One-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports have always been important to beneficial employee-employer communications. But they are even more important in the current hybrid work environment.
“Particularly in the hybrid world, it’s important to stay visible and connected to your direct reports,” explains Suzanne Bates, founder of Bates Communications and managing director at global consultancy BTS. “One on one check-ins are important to find out how things are going beyond what you see in meetings – what your team is learning and what they think could be coming up and needs to be addressed.”
Our work lives have changed, uncertainty persists, and talent turnover is a constant threat. “One-on-ones are a key tool for leadership to connect with employees on a personal level in this period, demonstrate core organizational values, and establish open lines of communication,” says Phillip Hattingh, head of strategic advisory at Capgemini Canada. “These meetings play a critical role in aligning (or re-aligning) their personal career and organizational goals and serves as a platform for mentoring them through difficult decisions. In return, it helps create a sense of belonging by helping them navigate key decisions and challenges – and address any uncertainty so employees feel valued and heard.”
Welcome to the new monthly roundup from Red Hat Developer. Each month, we'll offer a dealer's choice of new articles that we think you won't want to miss, along with recently published cheat sheets, quick starts, and activities in the Developer Sandbox for Red Hat OpenShift.
Microservices need access to shared data. Microservices also need to be loosely coupled. Just how are developers supposed to reconcile these diametrically opposed ideas?
Enter Apache Kafka, Debezium, and the outbox pattern. By combining messaging and change data capture technologies with good programming practices, you can meet both microservices demands with ease.
In Otter I have adopted a style where I try to avoid giving code mutable access that doesn't need it, and try to make mutable access come with some code structures to prevent "oh I forgot a thing" type mistakes. For example, mutable access to a game state is only available in contexts that have to return a value for the updates to send to the players. This makes it harder to forget to send the update.
But there is a downside. The game state is inside another struct, an Instance, and much code needs (immutable) access to it. I can't pass both &Instance and &mut GameState because one is inside the other.
My workaround involves passing separate references to the other fields of Instance, leading to some functions taking far too many arguments. 14 in one case. (They're all different types so argument ordering mistakes just result in compiler errors talking about arguments 9 and 11 having wrong types, rather than actual bugs.)
I felt this problem was purely a restriction arising from limitations of the borrow checker. I thought it might be possible to improve on it. Weeks passed and the question gradually wormed its way into my consciousness. Eventually, I tried some experiments. Encouraged, I persisted.
I'm glad to finally be able to send out this invitation for the "Debian Reunion Hamburg 2021" taking place at the venue of the 2018 & 2019 MiniDebConfs!
The event will run from Monday, Sep 27 2021 until Friday Oct 1 2021, with Sunday, Sep 26 2021 as arrival day. IOW, Debian people meet again in Hamburg. The exact format is less defined and structured than previous years, probably we will just be hacking from Monday to Wednesday, have talks on Thursday and a nice day trip on Friday.
Since joining Fujitsu I am permanently running a VM (kvm/qemu) with Windows 10 (unfortunately necessary). While the usaged disk space is about 50G, the actual qcow2 file had grown to over 180G, not good.
Searching the web the very promising virt-sparsify is mentioned again and again, and the man page gives hope, but as it turns out it is broken and calls qemu-img with incorrect/not-working arguments (see this bug).
This was my 6th month of actively contributing to Ubuntu. Now that I’ve joined Canonical to work on Ubuntu full-time, there’s a bunch of things I do! \o/
I mostly worked on different things, I guess. But mostly on packaging keylime and some Google Agents upload(s) and SRU(s). Also did a lot of reviewing, et al.
I was too lazy to maintain a list of things I worked on so there’s no concrete list atm. Maybe I’ll get back to this section later or will start to list stuff from next month onward, as I’ve been doing before. :D
Have you ever installed OpenStack from scratch? I know, it sounds geeky, unnecessary and maybe even overcomplicated … It is after all 2021, OpenStack is mature, there are hundreds of OpenStack distributions available out there, configuration management tools are all the way around and installing OpenStack from scratch almost sounds like compiling the Linux kernel or using make scripts to install software on Ubuntu. I went through this process, however, back in 2014 when I was first learning OpenStack. That was long before I got to know model-driven OpenStack.
I set up physical nodes in my lab environment. I put Ubuntu on them. Then I installed all supporting services, including the SQL database and the message broker. And then, basically, for each OpenStack service, I was creating databases, creating identities in Keystone, installing packages and adjusting configuration files. When I finally finished this exercise two months later I had my first instance running on OpenStack, a few grey hairs and a well-formed opinion about OpenStack: it is super complex!
In order to clarify what OpenRAN is let’s start from RAN. A radio access network is a technology that connects individual devices to other parts of a network through radio connections. It is a major part of modern telecommunications, with LTE and 5G network connections for mobile phones being examples of radio access networks.
[...]
While vRAN is a closed network, as RU, DU and CU, which are all part of the RAN, are provided by a single vendor and use internal means of communication instead of open interfaces.
In OpenRAN, the O-RAN alliance made a great job creating a specification for open fronthaul, mid haul and backhaul interfaces.
This means that finally you can mix and match different vendors, and use different approaches depending on what is the
Applying for Ubuntu membership just became a lot easier. After a long discussion on Discourse, we’ve made the necessary changes to lower the technical barrier of entry to apply for Ubuntu membership. It’s now a simpler process with a focus on contribution, not on technical ability. In this post, I walk through the new process itself and talk about what it means to be an Ubuntu member.
[...]
First things first: you have to agree to abide by the Ubuntu code of conduct. If you don’t agree with it, then unfortunately you cannot become an Ubuntu member. Please make sure you read it, it’s not the normal T&Cs that everyone ignores. It is a commitment that you will be considerate, respectful, collaborative, and abide by the set structures and guides within the Ubuntu community to make it a safe, open, and ultimately enjoyable place to be.
On August 4th 2021, Kubernetes (K8s) upstream announced the general availability of Kubernetes 1.22, the latest version of the most popular container orchestration platform. At Canonical, we actively track upstream releases to ensure our Kubernetes distributions align with the latest innovations that developers and businesses need for their cloud native use cases. Usually, we would announce the availability and support for the latest Kubernetes, and also highlight any exciting new features in Charmed Kubernetes and MicroK8s.
So why does this blog not read like a release announcement? This time, we wanted to try something different. How about having a look at the most exciting features from Kubernetes 1.22 and assessing how they address industry challenges? A few months ago, we published the Kubernetes and cloud native operations report 2021 (hereafter “the report”). A sample of 1200 respondents and 7 industry thought leaders helped us gather and analyse data on the usage, challenges, goals and aspirations that users and enterprises have for the new way of building and delivering software – the cloud native way. Let’s see how Kubernetes is addressing the needs of the general public.
TECHBASE ClusBerry Rack supports up to four Raspberry Pi CM4 modules which can be added and removed on the fly thanks to a lockable mechanism that reminds me of hot-swappable drives found in NAS.
Using the same ClusBerry I/O mainboards as found in the earlier ClusBerry 9500-CM4 and ClusBerry-2M industrial systems, each Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 inside the ClusBerry Rack offer one Gigabit Ethernet port, one USB host, one micro USB service port, and an RS-232/485 serial port.
Many plants are notorious for how picky they are about their environmental conditions. Having the wrong temperature, humidity, soil type, and even elevation can produce devastating effects. But none are perhaps as important and overlooked as water/soil pH, which is a measure of how acidic and/or alkaline the growing medium is. In hydroponics, maintaining optimal growing conditions is how high yields can be ensured without becoming too wasteful. Janet N on Hackster had the idea of harnessing the powers of embedded machine learning to let her know when the water had become unacceptable for her plants.
The device uses an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense to continuously monitor the pH of the hydroponics water supply with a simple probe. This data was initially loaded into Edge Impulse’s Studio where it was split into features and then sent to both a Keras classification model and an anomaly detection model for training. After she was satisfied with the performance of both, they were deployed back onto the Arduino.
Do you know Android-x86? It is a version of Android OS that runs on your PC and laptop rather than phone. It is a Free, Open Source Software of its kind that is actively developed. You might find it very similar to Ubuntu thanks to its LiveCD feature although it is not a GNU/Linux. This article introduces you to it by downloading, running, and trying it out on a real computer as well as a virtual machine. We will take benefit of it to run completely Free Software apps by adding F-Droid, an alternative play store. To give you the bigger picture, we will try running web browser, video player, YouTube downloader and other apps on it with software freedom. Finally, I hope someday we could enjoy a Replicant-x86 perhaps by someone reading this article. Now let's try!
SOGo is an open-source groupware and IMAP/ SMTP webmail client for teams and enterprise.
The interface design follows Material design system which gives it a pro look and makes it more comfortable and productive for every-day use. It is responsive, reactive and real-time interface with full drag-and-drop, full-screen view, no-distraction mode with touch-screen support.
UVdesk is an enterprise-grade ticketing support system. It comes in two editions an enterprise edition and a community-skeleton open-source edition.
The solution is a features-rich and comes with a large set of apps and integration options, makes it ideal for enterprise use.
Unlike its other competitors, UVdesk focuses on workflow by providing two workflow options: a condition-based workflow and an event-based workflow. These workflows support different types of customer services which increase the productivity, and improve customer satisfaction.
 LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.
While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.
There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.
The Qt Company recently compared the latest Long Term Releases Qt 5.15 and Qt 6.2 of its software development platform consisting of design, development, and quality assurance applications plus various software libraries, referred to in this post as modules. This blog post, intended particularly for product and R&D leaders, summarizes the main findings of the comparison.
Comparing two major releases is never trivial, especially when there are eight years between their initial releases, the comparison highlights that there is enough feature parity for most customers to move to the Qt 6.2 LTS release., It’s important to stress that we at Qt have been laser-focused on providing Qt 6 with as much source compatibility as feasible. In addition, Qt projects can find plenty of resources in the Qt online documentation helping with the source code migration. We also offer professional services helping with the transition to Qt 6.
When the Qt 6.0 tool-kit debuted last year much of the early criticism stemmed around it not having all the modules/functionality ported over from Qt5 meanwhile The Qt Company was restricting newer Qt 5.15 LTS point releases to paying customers only. Since then the developers have been working to address the voids in Qt6 and with the upcoming Qt 6.2 as their next long-term support release, all of the important functionality should be in place.
The Qt Company is sharing that for Qt 6.2 LTS, it should effectively be at feature parity to Qt 5.15 LTS. There still is some missing modules and other functionality not directly ported over from Qt 5.15, but those missing elements appear to be for unpopular items that might not have any users or at least ones visible to The Qt Company.
Today, I am releasing Deployment from Scratch, 1st edition. It was a long journey of more than three years, and it’s time to make it a reality. Of course, I could always do a one more read and rewrite a paragraph or two, but it’s just as important to stop at some point and let the world benefit from all that work.
Welcome to the September 2021 edition of the monthly Fortran newsletter. The newsletter comes out at the beginning of every month and details Fortran news from the previous month.
The great classics aren’t always taught at home or in schools these days and Bullwinkle’s very educational show was cancelled long ago, which is unfortunate being that these stories contain some of the cornerstones of what was once called wisdom. Now there’s a word that has gone out of style, wisdom, not through any fault of its own, it just isn’t used very often these days in the main stream. It’s a shame to lose it too, such a pretty word. It flows through the mouth like water from a spring and out into the air like a big, fluffy cloud, wisdom.
Anyway the story is from the Aesop collection of stories that were read to children a lot back….back then, back in “the old days” which are still considered the old days even when they happen right now! More strangeness I suppose. So the boy is watching sheep, which is another old timey thing to do, at least that’s what he’s supposed to be doing, and not having a cell phone (no cell phones in those days), he starts to get bored, mighty bored, which children are not allowed to do now days.
When I spoke with journalist Lizzie Johnson back in spring, catastrophic blazes hadn’t yet struck much of the West Coast. We were wary, though, with the image of last fall’s sickly orange sun burned into memory, and the promise of new and devastating fire seasons exacerbating a tedious waiting game. This summer, for example, the impacts of Western wildfires weren’t limited by region: Smoke that traveled from fires in Oregon and eastern California induced the very same orange-tinged skies in Brooklyn, and even as far as coastal Maine.1
In fulfillment of that solemn commitment, the framers proposed, and “We the People” adopted in Article II, Section 3, our inalienable right to a clean and healthful environment – not as an aspiration, or a gauzy goal – but as one of the Article II fundamental constitutional rights guaranteed to every Montanan.
This right has been honored only in the breach by many.
I am writing this from a bus somewhere in West Virginia. It’s lightly raining, and the air is chill to the touch. We are headed to an unknown location, or at least it’s unknown to me.
In a bench ruling delivered over several hours on Wednesday, a U.S. judge approved a Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan widely criticized for giving the Sackler family immunity from civil lawsuits related to the company's drug OxyContin and and profiteering that critics say escalated the nation's opioid epidemic.
"The deal grants 'releases' from liability for harm caused by OxyContin and other opioids to the Sacklers, hundreds of their associates, as well as their remaining empire of companies and trusts," NPR explained.
A new study released Wednesday€ by researchers at the University of Chicago showed that air pollution is cutting short the average global citizen's€ life€ by more than two years, with people in parts of the world dying as many as eight€ years earlier than they would without exposure to pollution.
Lately it has been with growing dismay at the new nationwide surge, thanks to the Delta variant, that threatens to undo all the progress we’ve made. On a national scale, this is a self-inflicted setback inasmuch as the great preponderance of serious infections and fatalities is among those who remain unvaccinated.
Although the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine on Aug. 23, providing cover for government agencies and private employers to require inoculation and/or frequent testing, and those who had demurred because the Pfizer vaccine was experimental had one less excuse, the road to anything approaching herd immunity through inoculation remains a long and winding one.
I realize that I sound like the proverbial broken record (and that many of the younger people reading this might not even know what that reference means), but I’ve been at this a long time. I was countering quackery and antivaccine pseudoscience on Usenet back in the 1990s into the early 2000s and then have been blogging about it since 2004. I like to think that two decades of combatting antivaccine misinformation have given me some perspective, which is why I sometimes get so frustrated with so many “reasonable” doctors, scientists, and pundits who, before the pandemic, had paid scant, if any attention to the antivaccine movement, and are shocked—shocked, I say!—to discover the conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric that I’ve been documenting for nearly two decades. Some of them who had paid a little attention would sometimes even periodically castigate me for being a “frenzied, self-righteous zealot” who supposedly couldn’t tell the difference between vaccine-hesitant parents and antivaxxers, never mind the number of times I’ve discussed exactly that difference.
But SB 8 is unlike most other laws in that it was written to prevent courts from blocking it before it takes effect.
The anti-abortion law, which is before the Supreme Court in a case called Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, presents a maze of procedural complexities that are rarely seen in even the most complicated litigation. The law appears to have been drafted to intentionally frustrate lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. And Texas, with an assist from a right-wing appellate court, has thus far manipulated the litigation process to prevent any judge from considering whether SB 8 is lawful.
For all Docker's container technology popularity, Docker, the company, has its problems. First, Docker had trouble finding a working business plan. Then, Docker ran short of funds. In late 2019, it seems to have solved both problems by selling its Docker Enterprise product line and business to Mirantis. But, unable to catch a break, Docker was dropped from Kubernetes. That wasn't as much of a problem as it sounds, but it still left users concerned about Docker. Now, in another attempt to revitalize its business, Docker is restricting the use of the free version of its Docker Desktop to individuals, small businesses, and non-commercial open-source projects. All others must pay for a subscription.
It's historically always been true that however bad a hack scandal is when initially announced, you can be pretty well assured that it's significantly worse than was actually reported. That's certainly been true of the recent T-Mobile hack, which exposed the personal details (including social security numbers) of more than 53 million T-Mobile customers (and counting). It's the fifth time the company has been involved in a hack or leak in just the last few years, forcing the company's new(ish) CEO Mike Sievert to issue yet another apology for the company's failures last Friday:
Over the past 15 years, a cybercrime anonymity service known as VIP72 has enabled countless fraudsters to mask their true location online by routing their traffic through millions of malware-infected systems. But roughly two weeks ago, VIP72’s online storefront — which ironically enough has remained at the same U.S.-based Internet address for more than a decade — simply vanished.
Why? Well, you folks keep abusing this simple Ethereum-native document signing tool to run contests for airdrops and pre-sales, so we thought we’d make your lives a bit easier! :)
Apple has been€ caught off guard by the overwhelming resistance to its August 5th announcement that it will begin. In addition to numerous petitions like ours, over 90 organizations across the globe have€ urged the company€ to abandon its plans. But the backlash should be no surprise: what Apple intends to do€ will create€ an enormous danger to our privacy and security.€ It will give ammunition to€ authoritarian governments€ wishing to expand the surveillance, and because€ the company has compromised security and privacy at the behest of€ governments in the past, it's not a stretch to think they may do so again.€ Democratic countries that strive to uphold the rule of law€ have also pressured companies like Apple€ to gain access to encrypted data, and are very likely already considering how this system will allow them to do so more easily in the future.
EFF applauds this decision by the FTC and the message it sends to those who facilitate by technical means the behavior of stalkers and domestic abusers. For too long, this nascent industry has been allowed to thrive as an underbelly to the much larger and diverse app ecosystem. With the FTC now turning its focus to this industry, victims of stalkerware can begin to find solace in the fact that regulators are beginning to take their concerns seriously.
The FTC case against Support King is the first to outright ban a stalkerware company and comes two years after EFF and its Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin launched the Coalition Against Stalkerware to unite and mobilize security software companies and advocates for domestic abuse victims in actions to combat and shut down malicious stalkerware apps.€
Stalkerware, a type of commercially-available surveillance software, is installed on phones without device users’ knowledge or consent to secretly spy on them. The apps track victims’ locations and allow abusers to read their text messages, monitor phone calls, see photos, videos, and web browsing, and much more. It’s being used all over the world to intimidate, harass, and harm victims, and is a favorite tool for stalkers and abusive spouses or ex-partners.
Apple is not not the only one rolling out digital driver’s licenses in the United States. New York State is working with IBM on the possibility of expanding its Excelsior Pass vaccine passport system to include driver’s licenses, according to a New York Times report. The federal government is also on board with the concept. In April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it was looking for input on upcoming rules for mobile digital driver’s licenses.
Both speeches coincided in the rejection of blockades and embargoes imposed on some countries in the region, in the respect for the principles of non-intervention and self-determination of peoples and in the need to use integration platforms as political coordination bodies in various fields. Specifically, they pointed out that the Latin American region, unlike others, did not even outline common public policy guidelines or coordinate joint purchases of vaccines to combat the pandemic through existing regional cooperation mechanisms.
Unlike Latin America and the Caribbean, several Southeast Asian countries, the African Union (AU) – composed of 56 nations of different ideological creeds – and the European Union, jointly procured part of the vaccines and established some common public health criteria. The AU went further and took a unanimous position in support of the proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily suspend patents on vaccines against COVID-19 until an offer was made to provide the vaccines to the entire population within the framework of the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) forum.
For well over a decade, scholars and pundits have proclaimed that democracy is in a state of crisis. Some argued that the epic failure to bring democracy to Iraq and Libya, and events in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, indicated a global “democratic recession.” Meanwhile, China’s political rise and economic advance, have indicated a viable political alternative to the “Western model of democracy.” Indeed, the Western model of democracy has not only become the embattled cause of right-wing nationalists, but the pandemic has shown that these states are ill equipped to deal with national emergencies requiring high levels of coordinated international solutions. On all sides, the critics argue, democracy appears endangered.
In the 20 years since the September 11 attacks, the United States government has spent more than $21 trillion at home and overseas on militaristic policies that led to the creation of a vast surveillance apparatus, worsened mass incarceration, intensified the war on immigrant communities, and caused incalculable human suffering in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere.
"The end of the war in Afghanistan represents a chance to reinvest in our real needs."—Lindsay Koshgarian, National Priorities Project
Joe Biden provided a stirring soundbite days ago when he spoke from the White House just after suicide bombers killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghans at a Kabul airport: "To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive.€ We will not forget.€ We will hunt you down and make you pay."€ But the president's pledge was a prelude to yet another episode of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."
With the final U.S. soldiers leaving Afghanistan earlier this week after nearly 20 years of occupation and war, a new analysis released Wednesday shows the United States will ultimately spend upwards of $8 trillion and that nearly one million people have lost their lives so far in the so-called "global war on terror" that was launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"What about the people left behind in Afghanistan, in Iraq—after a drone strike in Somalia—what about them? Do they get any care? Do they get any compensation? Absolutely not. So what would be the cost of war if that was actually the priority for the United States?" —Dr. Maha Hilal, Justice for Muslims Collective
I was a college student on 9/11. The ensuing "War on Terror," anchored by the bombing and U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, has been with us ever since—virtually my entire adult life.
Addressing Marines who served in Afghanistan who are now frustrated and angry over the result in Afghanistan, Sloane tells them that there is no disgrace in defeat because U.S. soldiers “took an oath to the Constitution.”€ He says, “Loyalty to that oath has helped preserve the right of Americans and others to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for more than 200 years.”€ He points not only to “the failed effort to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of the Taliban” but also to “the failed effort to keep Vietnam free from communism.”
That’s just sheer nonsense.€
President Joe Biden has forcefully defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, describing the removal of U.S. forces as an “extraordinary success.” He noted in a speech Tuesday that the U.S. helped more than 120,000 people flee Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power, and called for a new era in foreign policy. Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, says Biden’s speech was honest about the costs of war and the need to get out, but she says it’s “clearly not true” that the U.S. is winding down the war on terror. “The U.S. is still waging war in a host of other countries.”
Afghan doctor Wais Aria describes how he fled Afghanistan with his family after the Taliban takeover, packing up his wife and four children and trying for days to leave from the Kabul airport, where he was beaten by the Taliban. They managed to catch a flight out of the country Thursday and arrived in the U.S. on Saturday. “It was a disaster for me and my children,” says Aria, now in Alexandria, Virginia.
Pres. Dwight Eisenhower’s great warning made in his farewell address of January 17, 1961, has never sounded so prescient:
To repeat: “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Though the word “moderate” appears 14 times in the story’s body (and three times in a graphic outlining “ideological measures and electoral statistics” for the nine Democrats in question), Rakich never explicitly defines the term other than implicitly as describing “centrist” politicians who sometimes cross party lines on contentious issues.
Webster’s offers a clue as to what might constitute a real moderate: “[O]bserving reasonable limits; not excessive, extreme, violent, or rigorous; limited; restrained.”
With public awareness of U.S. war spending elevated in the wake of American troops exiting Afghanistan, a House of Representatives panel on Wednesday approved a $37.5 billion increase to the Pentagon budget from last year, angering progressive lawmakers and anti-war activists.
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) voted 42-17 to approve Ranking Member Mike Rogers' (R-Ala.) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 (H.R. 4350). Fourteen Democrats joined with the panel's Republicans to support it.
Over 100 crew members aboard an ultra-deepwater drill ship were left to ride out Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico — and local news reports indicate that the crew remains aboard the damaged ship. The Coast Guard has dispatched a cutter to determine the extent of any damage to the drillship and to assess the crew’s safety. Four injured crew members have reportedly been evacuated.
On Wednesday, the Coast Guard (USCG) issued a statement on the drill ship’s current status. “The master of the vessel has told the Coast Guard that the vessel is not in distress but information released reportedly from the crew of the Globetrotter II indicates potential issues with safety,” Petty Officer Third Class Gabriel Wisdom said in a statement read to DeSmog, adding that a Coast Guard cutter, the Venturous, was en route to the drill ship “to better determine whether the crew is in any immediate danger and whether the crew should be removed from the vessel.”
NORCO, LOUISIANA — For over a century, the Shell Norco Manufacturing Complex has dominated Norco, Louisiana’s skyline as it refines up to 10.1 million gallons of oil a day and produces up to 3.33 billion pounds of ethylene a year.
Shell’s Norco refinery was one of multiple Louisiana oil refineries that shut down on Friday, August 27 as Hurricane Ida gained strength crossing the Gulf of Mexico’s unusually warm waters. Ida made landfall on Sunday, August 29 as a Category 4 hurricane — and remained a hurricane for 16 hours after its official landfall, maintaining strength as it passed over the swampy southern Louisiana coastline.
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The number of extreme weather disasters driven by the climate crisis has increased fivefold over the past 50 years, killing more than two million people and costing $3.64 trillion in total losses, a United Nations agency said on Wednesday.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says its "Atlas" report is the most comprehensive review of mortality and economic losses from extreme climate and weather incidents ever produced. It surveyed some 11,000 events between 1970 and 2019.
Stressing that every stage of natural gas production pollutes the Earth's air and water, a coalition of climate and social justice groups on Wednesday launched an initiative aimed at strengthening a proposed federal energy policy by ensuring that it excludes gas.
"The science is clear: There is nothing clean about gas."—Lauren Maunus, Sunrise Movement
Indigenous resistance to fossil fuel projects in the United States and Canada over a recent decade has stopped or delayed nearly a quarter of the nations' annual planet-heating pollution, according to a report released Wednesday.
"The only way forward is to center Indigenous knowledge and keep fossil fuels in the ground."—Dallas Goldtooth, IEN
We can all agree to go carbon-neutral, but how easy is it? A Network editor describes his battle to abandon fossil fuels.
Over two thirds of academics who recently wrote to the EU disputing the climate benefits of electric cars are petrol or diesel specialists, with a third having worked in the motor industry, DeSmog can reveal.
The International Association of Sustainable Drivetrain and Vehicle Technology Research (IASTEC) wrote to the European Commission in June, claiming the EU body had made a miscalculation when assessing the effectiveness of electric vehicles at cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr. deVos used the fact that four wolves in 20 years have been roadkill in and around the Flagstaff area as one of the reasons for removing Anubis. It’s true that Mexican gray wolves can be hit by cars; twelve percent of lobo mortalities between 1998 and 2018 were caused by vehicle strikes, mostly within the designated recovery area. Removing Anubis doesn’t protect him from cars, but the agency’s justification reveals something else: wolves are regularly moving north of Interstate 40, the politically established boundary line intended to prevent wolves from re-establishing populations in certain parts of their original range. Rather than translocating the wildlife, the agency could be looking at creating safe wildlife passages for all of Arizona’s animals across highways like I-40. Deal with the problem – roads – rather than trying to block the natural processes of wildlife dispersal and migration.
The Department also used the presence of other wolves in the existing recovery area as a good reason for moving Anubis: “Now he’ll be back in an area with females, finding a female partner, forming a pack and contributing to wolf recovery.” There could be females up around Flagstaff if the Department wasn’t opposing management rule changes that could expand the recovery area to include areas north of I-40. Anubis was contributing to wolf recovery by demonstrating that there is suitable and abundant habitat, and the agency could have instead allowed females to join him. It may take some time for it to manifest on the landscape, but we know that wild wolves are capable of taking care of themselves and finding mates in new territories.
Nearly a third of the world's tree species are at risk of extinction largely due to agriculture, logging, and, increasingly, the global climate emergency, according to a report published Wednesday by a U.K.-based conservation group.
"Every tree species matters—to the millions of other species that depend on trees, and to people all over the world."—Paul Smith, BGCI
Yet a just published€ study by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences,€ Dams Ineffective for Cold-Water Conservation€ – 8/25/21,€ has found that dams are ineffective for the cold water conservation that is needed to preserve€ imperiled salmon,€ steelhead and trout.
”Dams poorly mimic the temperature patterns California streams require to support the state’s native salmon and trout — more than three-quarters of which risk extinction,”€ according to€ the€ study€ published in the journal PLOS ONE by the University of California, Davis. “Bold actions are needed to reverse extinction trends and protect cold-water streams that are resilient to climate warming.”
This is hugely important, not only because it can mean that millions of additional workers get jobs, but also because high unemployment has been a major factor contributing to inequality over the last four decades. When the unemployment rate rises, it is disproportionately the most disadvantaged workers who lose their jobs. This means Blacks and Hispanics, workers without a high school degree, disabled workers, and workers with a criminal record.
Not only does a rise in the unemployment rate prevent these workers from getting jobs, but it also puts downward pressure on the pay of workers at the bottom of the wage ladder. When we have sustained periods of low unemployment, such as the late 1990s and the four years before the pandemic, workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution were able to secure pay increases that outpaced inflation, and those at the tenth percentile saw the largest gains.
The Education Department will forgive $5.8 billion in student loans taken out by borrowers who became seriously disabled, the latest in a series of reforms to a troubled program that left many vulnerable borrowers mired in debt they couldn’t repay.
A 2011 investigation by ProPublica, published in partnership with Columbia University’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, revealed that a flawed Education Department program for assessing disability was leaving many borrowers facing financial hardship from federal student loans they were legally entitled to have dismissed.
The collective wealth of the seven wealthiest Americans has now reached nearly $1 trillion. And these seven pay virtually nothing in income tax.
Underscoring what critics call the out-of-touch nature of Republican and right-wing Democrats' opposition to the Build Back Better bill supported by the Biden administration and progressive U.S. lawmakers, new polling published Wednesday confirmed that a majority of likely American voters favor the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.
The Invest in America and Data for Progress survey (pdf) of 1,201 likely U.S. voters, conducted from August 27 to August 30, found that 61% of all respondents supported the $3.5 trillion spending proposal. Among Democratic voters, support for the measure soared to 83%, while 58% of Indpendent and third-party voters, and 40% of Republicans, backed the bill.
With Trump no longer president and the January 6 insurrection thwarted, the danger may appear to be behind us. “Democracy survived.”
Rampant corruption, cronyism, and grifting; a bungled response to the pandemic (apart from the vaccine rollout, this thanks to the NHS); the mishandled aftermath of Brexit; growing inequality; a housing and hunger crisis; a fund-starved healthcare system; window-dressing measures with regard to global heating; a hopelessly inadequate response to the debacle in Afghanistan: an untrustworthy media, extending from the Murdoch press to the BBC, committed overwhelmingly to securing the interests of the Ukanian plutocracy; all this presided-over by a government of third-rate power-grubbers and charlatans.
Add to this a feeble Labour opposition headed by the Blairite “soft Tory” Keir Starmer.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez early Wednesday publicly condemned President Joe Biden for his nomination of Rahm Emanuel to be the next U.S. ambassador to Japan, calling the selection "deeply shameful" given the former Chicago mayor's record.
"I urge the Senate to vote NO on his confirmation." —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Final passage of a sweeping voter suppression measure in Texas on Tuesday led civil rights advocates and other progressives to redouble their calls for congressional Democrats—and President Joe Biden—to urgently approve legislation that would preserve and strengthen ballot access at the federal level.
"Right now, we have an ally on voting rights in the White House. What we need is a leader."—Sean Eldridge, Stand Up America
There are high hopes surrounding the upcoming round of negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the extreme right-wing of the opposition. The sides are set to meet on September 3 in Mexico after having signed a memorandum of understanding in August.
Shortly after the nonviolent protests began, the government tabled the reforms, but both the Finance Minister and Foreign Minister were forced to resign in response to the people’s pressure. The demonstrations rejected them for proposing austerity measures that burden the poor in the midst of a pandemic. This victory was followed by the decades-old government response to resistance: repression, outrageous lies, racist and misogynist violence, and sheer terror. At the marches most carry only instruments and placards, and are met with murderous state forces shooting indiscriminately or targeting community leaders who defend human rights and collective decision-making. In the face of this, the protests have grown stronger in number and location. They are now across the country, proving that the demands are shared by many more than those who can brave the streets.
The right to protest is denied daily by the militarised forces that are well-equipped with U.S. funding. They shoot from helicopters, motorcycles, and from the massacres, forced disappearances, sexual violence, and real and constant fear. While the state and paramilitary focus their brutality with unprecedented intensity against the people, the protesters focus their demands on an alternative agenda that builds popular power. This agenda emerges out of the most poor sectors, and out of Indigenous and Afro-Colombia whose resistance is over 500 years old.
There was plenty of attention paid OnlyFans decision recently to ban "sexually explicit" content -- a policy the company suspended following an outcry. However, more and more people are noticing that the same kind of thing is happening across the internet due to FOSTA.
Summary:€ From August to October of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic had no end in sight and plenty of people were still stuck at home, on lockdown, unable to gather with others, the video game€ Among Us€ became€ incredibly popular€ as a kind of party game when there were no parties. The game had already been out for a while, but for unclear reasons it became€ the go-to game€ during the pandemic. It was so popular that the company behind it, InnerSloth,€ cancelled its plans€ for a sequel, promising instead to focus on fixing up the existing game and dealing with some of the bugs that were popping up from such widespread usage.
Dagley is charged with four criminal counts, including two counts of simple assault, one of disturbing the peace and another of violating an emergency curfew, according to the Gulfport Police Department.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, it's pretty much legal for US law enforcement officers to kill people in Mexico. I know, that doesn't seem right but that's the way it plays out. So long as only bullets cross the border, the extraterritorial, extrajudicial killings are incapable of being remedied by a civil rights lawsuit.
As Haitians cope with the devastating aftermath of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, Tropical Storm Grace and the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July, a coalition of over 300 rights groups is denouncing the Biden administration’s ongoing deportations to Haiti and urging it to expand temporary protected status. “How do you tell somebody not to come when they are dealing not only with man-made crisis, political crisis and violence, and on top of it dealing with natural disasters?” asks Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance.
Is there anything law enforcement won't use geofence warrants for? The answer appears to be "no."
When New Jersey passed a bill banning new, renewed, or extended contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August 2021, it came as a shock. Just two years earlier, The Nation reported on the cynical profiteering of deep-blue counties where Democratic officials denounced the Trump administration while generating immense revenue by holding ICE detainees in county jails. While the passage of S3361/A5207 is a movement victory—bringing New Jersey to the national forefront of immigrant justice—it raises the question of what abolishing ICE at the state level entails in the Biden era.
Indeed, Huerta continues to be a powerful voice in her quest to help develop leaders and advocate for the working poor, women, and children. According to the Dolores Huerta Foundation website, “she travels across the country engaging in campaigns and influencing legislation that supports equality and defends civil rights. She often speaks to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy.”
When She was 58, Huerta suffered a brutal police beating while protesting against the policies of then presidential candidate George Bush in San Francisco. A baton-swinging cop broke four of her ribs and shattered her spleen. she fought her way back to the frontlines of social change
Amid the fear and outrage caused€ by the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to€ block Texas' extreme€ anti-choice law Tuesday night, legal experts and rights advocates urged lawmakers to focus on what can€ be done to protect reproductive rights across the country, particularly the passage of the Women's Health Protection Act.€
"It is up to Congress to pass the Women's€ Health Protection Act to end this assault on reproductive freedom once and for all."—Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
In a major setback for reproductive rights, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed a Texas law to go into effect that bans abortions after six weeks — before most people even know they are pregnant. Until now, no other six-week ban has ever gone into effect in the United States. The law is seen as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and allows private citizens to file civil suits against abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks. “What Texas has done is blanket unconstitutional,” says Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
It’s the most restrictive abortion law in the country, imposing a huge burden on women without the means or money to travel to another state where later abortions are legal.
A draconian Texas law banning abortions beyond around six weeks of pregnancy took effect at midnight after the conservative U.S. Supreme Court did not act to block it on Tuesday, a decision that could have major implications for reproductive rights across the country.
While the Supreme Court could still grant an emergency request to suspend the law in the coming hours, the justices' decision to remain silent Tuesday allows Texas to begin implementing what rights groups have characterized as the most restrictive state-level abortion ban since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Abortion providers estimate that the measure could bar care for "at least 85% of Texas abortion patients."
The following was originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music. David Strickland is a successful Grammy-winning producer and engineer, who over a two-decade career worked with several hip-hop luminaries including Redman, EPMD, Drake, and a wide range of notable Canadian rappers.In 2020 Strickland stepped out of the background and released the excellent album, “Spirit of Hip-Hop.” On the album, he tapped into his Mi’kmaq heritage, a lineage that can be traced back five generations. He explored indigenous themes while also addressing universal concerns, such as police brutality. Strickland followed up that album with a companion piece, Spirit of Hip Hop (Remixes). He recently released his latest single “Messenger,” a collaboration with Erick Sermon, Outlaw By Nature (featuring Treach from Naughty By Nature and the late Hussein Fatal of The Outlawz), and veteran Canadian rapper Saukrates. The€ tune is about Strickland’s dedication to delivering messages through his art while also celebrating indigenous heritage.“Messenger is€ a deep song€ on many levels.€ It’s about me using music as a way of sending messages throughout my career without speaking but speaking through the music. It’s also a message to all those negative ones against me, you,€ something everyone can relate to,” Strickland stated. “Mostly it’s a homage to Hussein Fatal, who passed too soon in a car accident and gives his message€ to live on through positivity because life is too short and the world’s a beautiful place and it’s all how you look at it and your perspective.”“Ultimately you control your outlook. We are all messengers.”€ Strickland concluded.In these difficult times, music can play an integral role in delivering a message of positivity and healing. Strickland knows as well as any artist how to speak through the craft of hip-hop.
My confidence in the continued viability for my safety in the US began earlier this summer, when a transphobic activist invented false allegations that a transgender woman flashed her genitalia at other women at Wi Spa in Los Angeles. These allegations resulted in violent demonstrations by white supremacists. Don’t worry, the message was received.
This isn’t strictly about safety, however. I also recognize that leaving the US is a selfish choice, and that I have a lot of privilege that others may not have. But the thing is, I’ve worked my tail off to get where I am, on my own.
As a skilled tax-paying worker, I believe the US has an obligation to respect me as a person, if they wish for me to retain my patronage. In other words, they should be competing for myself and other skilled labor to remain. Instead, the lack of any tangible action to bring an end to Trumpism and lack of any legislative resistance to trans people being the next stop in the culture war, shows that I am not wanted here, and so I will move somewhere else, where I will be safe and respected as a person.
After Hurricane Katrina, in 2008 the FCC passed rules mandating that cellular towers be upgraded to include battery backups or generators capable of delivering at least 8 hours of backup power, basically the bare minimum for usefulness. But the US cellular industry, you know, the one whose rates are some of the highest in the developed world, cried like a petulant child about the requirement and sued to successfully scuttle the rules.
The ruling, by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, does the opposite of what Congress intended: it threatens people’s access to local news and vital information during a global pandemic and a season of unprecedented natural disasters. What’s more, it treats copyright law not as an engine of innovation benefiting the public but a moat protecting the privileged position of the four giant broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.
Locast, operated by Sports Fans Coalition NY, Inc. (SFCNY), enables TV viewers to receive local over-the-air programming—which broadcasters must by law make available for free—using set-top boxes, smartphones, or other devices of their choice. Over three million people use Locast to access local TV, including many who can’t afford cable and can’t pick up their local stations with an antenna. The broadcast networks sued SFCNY, and its founder and chairman David Goodfriend, arguing for the right to control where and how people can watch their free broadcasts.
EFF joined with attorneys at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to defend SFCNY. We told the court that Locast is protected by an exception to copyright law, put in place by Congress, that enables nonprofits to retransmit broadcast TV, so communities can access local stations that offer news, foreign-language programming, and local sports. Under that exception, there’s no infringement if nonprofits retransmit TV broadcasts without any commercial purpose, and without charge except to cover their costs. Locast viewers can voluntarily donate to SFCNY for this purpose.
Private Internet Access has become extremely unreliable and slow lately.
Many of their servers are now showing ping times of 500 ms to 2,000 ms on their own client software. This should be an embarrassment, except that things have been moving in this direction for a while.
Kape, the new owner, immediately started degrading the service, and now users are probably fleeing and it creates a need to cut corners. Well, I think I’ve seen the bulk of it play out a month or two back when many of their “US” servers started getting redirected to foreign countries, such as Seychelles and South Africa (I noticed because Walmart made me solve CAPTCHAs, and my banks started just blocking me or challenging me with 2FA every time I went there.), and then came back here, at least that’s how it appears, under some company called “FreedomTech Solutions”, which has a site full of buzzwords. I’m not sure where these servers really are or who is managing them, but things have gotten so bad that I decided to uninstall PIA from my computers and remove my auto-renew and move to another VPN provider.
[...]
PIA wasn’t so bad when “Dan” and “Max-P” were around to maintain it and engage with their customers, but Kape ruined that too. Now you get some nameless “support” person in one of those “chat boxes” that pops up on their site, instead of just going on IRC and asking questions directly.
What’s more, instead of funding their actual network, PIA has funded a program for referrals and “influencers”. Well, they influenced me, to write this. Hopefully, I’ve influenced you as well. It’s a sure sign that a company is in decay when they place a larger emphasis on graft and getting people to corruptly influence others to buy a product that they know full well doesn’t work properly.
Microsoft has operated like this for some time with their MVPs program and “partners” like Best Buy, who renamed the computer sections “Windows” and “Mac”, like there aren’t even other choices.
Then there’s the separate situation where Kape and Andrew Lee are inextricably linked to the disaster that happened to the Freenode IRC network, which has lost over 85% of its users since the power grab.
So goodbye to this Free Dumb Tech mess. It looks like NordVPN for me from now on. At least as long as nobody screws it up.
In-house sources say creating fake profiles on social media has helped them lure unsuspecting consumers into hearing the anti-counterfeiting message
Apple’s latest malicious misconduct was to purchase an app that streamed a huge collection of classical music, in lossless format. They shut down the service entirely and sent the users a spam email with a coupon code for 6 months of Apple Music, which has less than a quarter of the type of music as the service they shut down did.
You relied on streaming music disservices. Sentence: SIX MONTHS APPLE MUSIC. To be carried out immediately!
I wonder if it comes with a complimentary blindfold and cigarette at the Genius Bar.
A non-profit organization in India's Rajasthan region has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple and the App Store, which is expected to lead to a full investigation.
Apple has been accused in India of abusing its market position to force developers to use its in-app payment system. It's a similar accusation to the current investigation by the European Union. It also follows South Korea voting to force Apple and Google to allow alternatives, if they want to continue operating in that country.
Yesterday Ericsson won a key appellate decision against HTC, and today there is good news for some other standard-essential patent (SEP) holders. Today, patent pool firm MPEG LA announced that "TCL Electronics Holdings Limited ('TCL') has become a Licensee to MPEG LA's AVC Patent Portfolio License" and that "all legal disputes related to patent enforcement actions brought by patent holders in MPEG LA’s AVC License against TCL have been resolved." In complaints filed with the Dusseldorf Regional Court and announced by MPEG LA on July 27, 2020, TCL was accused of infringing patents declared essential to the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard used in mobile devices, TVs, and other products.
I've been able to find out that the plaintiffs in those German patent infringement cases were NEC, Panasonic, and IP Bridge. The Dusseldorf court would have held trials pretty soon, but TCL folded.
After many twists and turns over more than four decades, the implementation of a so-called “Unitary Patent Package”, i.e. the establishment of a Unitary Patent and a Unified Patent Court (UPC), now seems close to coming to fruition.
A Unitary Patent is a single patent right that is expected to cover 24 Member States of the European Union (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden). Spain has chosen not to take part, and the United Kingdom withdrew on 21 July 2020, following its departure from the European Union. Poland and Croatia are not currently parties to the scheme but may join later.
On August 31, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit summarily affirmed the PTAB’s ruling that all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,971,914, are unpatentable in a summary affirmance under Rule 36, effectively ending the longstanding assertion of those claims. The ‘914 patent, directed to controlling a multimedia video device to play video data through the operation of a wireless device, has been asserted against Google and Roku. See Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC. v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2021-1085 (Fed. Cir. August 31, 2021) (Rule 36 Affirmance). The case was argued by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander, Roshan Mansinghani, and Jonathan Stroud. Unified was also represented by Angela Oliver, Raghav Bajaj, Debbie McComas, David O’Dell, and David McCombs at Haynes and Boone.
On August 30, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 10,795,457. The patent is owned by D3D Technologies, an NPE. The '457 patent generally relates to an interactive 3D cursor facilitates selection and manipulation of a three-dimensional volume from any three-dimensional image. The ‘457 patent has been asserted against Microsoft.
British man George Bridi, an alleged member of the infamous SPARKS release group, has been extradited to the United States from Cyprus. He faces several charges including conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, wire fraud conspiracy, and other offenses, which carry sentences of up to 20 years. Bridi will be arraigned today before a US judge.
Bill Omar Carrasquillo, aka Omi in a Hellcat, has revealed that the US Government wants to put him behind bars for alleged crimes related to his Gears IPTV service. According to Carrasquillo, pre-indictment discussions indicate that the feds could seek 210 months in prison for criminal copyright infringement, money laundering and tax evasion.
During her session, she will present the ways in which Wikipedia Serbia cooperates with cultural institutions, how they have established good relations, how they have educated them about the importance of CC licenses, but also their perspective before and after using CC licenses on the Internet. She hopes to see you in as many numbers as possible at her session!
Late last year, we discussed a predictably odd move by Nintendo to shut down a Smash Bros. tournament called The Big House over its use of a mod called "slippi." Slippi essentially unbreaks the 20 year old game when it comes to competitive online play. Otherwise, the whole thing basically doesn't work from a online play perspective. And, with all kinds of events going virtual, The Big House attempted to run its tournament virtually, meaning that participants would have to use a digitized version of the game they owned, along with the mod, in order to participate. After it nixed the tourney, Nintendo put out the following statement:
