Linux hardware vendor and creator of the Pop!_OS distribution, System76, have made their own desktop for a while now but they're moving onto a custom laptop next. Something they've been planning for some time, as they've gradually scaled up their in-house manufacturing.
On Mastodon, System76 Founder and CEO Carl Richell, showed off two photos of the panel for the LCD...
Today, TUXEDO Computers launched a Linux gaming laptop equipped with the Core i9-13900HX processor, a 2.5 GbE LAN port, a 99Wh battery and an optional Cherry MX mechanical keyboard. Additionally, the Stellaris 16 Gen 5 features a 240Hz display and a Thunderbolt 4 port.
The Stellaris 16 is only available with the following 13th Gen Raptor Lake processor...
Built using the latest Qt 6 and FFmpeg 6 frameworks, the upcoming Shotcut 23.04 release promises improved Wayland support, an ARM64 (AArch64) build of the Flatpak binary, timeline optimization, faster previews for most video clips without filters, and additional multi-threading in audio/video file reading.
Shotcut 23.04 will also reintroduce the GPU Effects feature, which has been greatly improved to be more performant and stable. GPU Effects now comes with new functionality like end-to-end support for 10-bit sources, text filters, video scopes, stabilization, and support for showing only or all GPU filters when searching for “gpu” in Filters.
As previously announced, support for Istio 1.15 has now officially ended.
At this point we will no longer back-port fixes for security issues and critical bugs to 1.15, so we heartily encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of Istio (1.17.2) if you haven’t already.
This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our April 4th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2023-001. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.17.1 and 1.17.2.
In this tutorial, we'll explain how to access a remote Laravel 10 app through a reverse proxy...
Guest Post: A practical guide to implementing an IPv6 architecture and subnetting system.
Discover strategies to manage disk arrays on FreeBSD and related platforms/operating systems. Ensure device health & easy replacements with these valuable tips.
In the eighth chapter of the Terminal Basics series, learn about moving files and directories using the mv command in Linux.
Want to get more from your Chromebook? Add Linux support!
Looking for the easiest method for protecting a file behind a layer of encryption in Linux? Here are two easy ways.
Last year, one of the returning questions I received was how to learn syslog-ng. My answer was that read the first few chapters of the documentation, read my blogs related to your use case, and then read a few relevant parts from the rest of the documentation. Our documentation is praised by users, but it is still a reference documentation. I was asked if a less detailed, more to the point, preferably video tutorial is available.
Last year, one of the returning questions I received was how to learn syslog-ng. My answer was that read the first few chapters of the documentation, read my blogs related to your use case, and then read a few relevant parts from the rest of the documentation. Our documentation is praised by users, but it is still a reference documentation. I was asked if a less detailed, more to the point, preferably video tutorial is available.
In this article, we will learn what import_* and include_* directives are and how to work with include and import statements in Ansible with examples.
Hell Let Loose (Steam link) is a multiplayer tactical first-person WW2 shooter developed by Australian studio Black Matter and published by Team17 -- the game was initially released after a Kickstarter campaign in 2017 before its release on Windows...
I have purposefully decided to write this part of my Titan adventures as a separate article, because backups are extremely important. Of course, the specific details are not important. You can choose not to use encryption at all, or perhaps prefer VeraCrypt or TrueCrypt containers. You can use one disks or many, or copy to a network share. You can do any number of things. I merely wanted to show that you can go for an elegant and even somewhat complex setup without any great trouble in Linux. But you need to be a nerd.
The rsync scripts can then run at different times, the home and system ones separately. The data is safely backed up, so if there are problems, it is relatively easy to recover. In the worst case, I would need to reinstall the system, but my personal stuff and important configurations would all survive. All of this is just a precursor to the heavy work with the data stored on Windows systems, but hey, one small step for Tux. We've got till 2025 to put everything in order, and so far, it's going rather well. More on games coming soon.
KDE, the popular free and open-source software community, has recently launched a new online discussion forum called "KDE Discuss". The platform is built using the modern Discourse forum software and aims to provide a place for the KDE community to come together and discuss various topics.
Here's all the details.
Easy 5.2 was released on March 28:
https://bkhome.org/news/202303/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-52-released.html
Release notes for 5.2.1:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.2.1/release-notes.htm
Thanks to JJ (esmourguit in the forum) and Dmitry (maybe in the forum) for French and Russian translation updates. Commit: [...]
CentOS Hyperscale SIG Quarterly Report for 2023Q1 This report covers work that happened between January 9th 2023 and April 3rd 2023. For previous work, see the 2022Q3 report. Purpose The Hyperscale SIG focuses on enabling CentOS Stream deployment on large-scale infrastructures and facilitating collaboration on packages and tooling.
In this follow-up to Automate and deploy a JBoss EAP cluster with Ansible, we will explain how to maintain and keep those instances updated, again in a fully automated manner, leveraging Ansible and the Ansible collection for Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP).€
Indeed, it is critical to ensure that all JEE application server instances always be up to date, especially in regard to security fixes. Therefore, we’ll discuss not only how to apply patches to update the server but also how to perform an upgrade to migrate to a new major version.
Digital transformation: Key considerations for banking leaders
If you’ve ever asked a virtual assistant like Siri or Alexa for a weather forecast or checked an order status using a chatbot or a messaging app, you’ve experienced the power of conversational AI. This artificial intelligence tool uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond to human language.
Automate PostgreSQL database deployment using RHEL System Roles
Troubleshooting Linux performance, building a golden image for your RHEL homelab, and more tips for sysadmins
Debian is one of the most popular, oldest, and most reliable operating systems in the Linux world. Each new release introduces several updates and features that make it even better.
So, the upcoming Debian 12 “Bookworm” is no exception. It is the next major distro’s release and is set to bring many new and exciting changes to the table.
Hi,
This is the first call for votes on the DPL election of 2023.
Voting period starts 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC Votes must be received by 2023-04-14 23:59:59 UTC
This vote is being conducted as required by the Debian Constitution. You may see the constitution at https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution. For voting questions or problems contact secretary@debian.org.
The details of the candidate's platform can be found at: https://www.debian.org/vote/2023/platforms/
Also, note that you can get a fresh ballot any time before the end of the vote by sending a mail to ballot@vote.debian.org with the subject "leader2023".
To vote you need to be a Debian Developer.
HOW TO VOTE
First, read the full text of the platform.
You might also want to read discussions with the candidates at https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/
To cast a vote, it is necessary to send this ballot filled out to a dedicated e-mail address, in a signed message, as described below. The dedicated email address this ballot should be sent to is:
leader2023@vote.debian.org
The form you need to fill out is contained at the bottom of this message, marked with two lines containing the characters '-=-=-=-=-=-'. Do not erase anything between those lines, and do not change the choice names.
There are 2 choices in the form, which you may rank with numbers between 1 and 2. In the brackets next to your preferred choice, place a 1. Place a 2 in the brackets next to your next choice. Continue until you reach your last choice. Do not enter a number smaller than 1 or larger than 2.
You may skip numbers, leave some choices unranked, and rank options equally. Unranked choices are considered equally the least desired choices, and ranked below all ranked choices.
To vote "no, no matter what", rank "None of the above" as more desirable than the unacceptable choices, or you may rank the "None of the above" choice and leave choices you consider unacceptable blank. (Note: if the "None of the above" choice is unranked, then it is equal to all other unranked choices, if any -- no special consideration is given to the "None of the above" choice by the voting software).
Finally, mail the filled out ballot to: leader2023@vote.debian.org.
Don't worry about spacing of the columns or any quote characters (">") that your reply inserts.
NOTE: The vote must be GPG signed (or PGP signed) with your key that is in the Debian keyring. You may, if you wish, choose to send a signed, encrypted ballot: use the vote key appended below for encryption.
The voting software (Devotee) accepts mail that either contains only an unmangled OpenPGP message (RFC 2440 compliant), or a PGP/MIME mail (RFC 3156 compliant). To avoid problems I suggest you use PGP/MIME.
VOTING SECRECY
This is a secret vote. After the voting period there will be a record of all the votes without the name of the voter. It will instead contain a cryptographic hash. You will receive a secret after you have voted that can be used to calculate that hash. This allows you to verify that your vote is in the list.
VOTING FORM
The first call for votes for the 2023 Debian Project Leader election has gone out. The campaigning was easy to miss this year, for one simple reason: the current incumbent, Jonathan Carter, is running unopposed for another term. That suggests that turnout will be low this time but, as several developers have pointed out, there is still value in voting; it clarifies whether Carter still has the support of the project.
Landscape 23.03 manages all versions from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) onwards April 4th, 2023, London, UK: Canonical announced the release of Landscape 23.03 with broader CPU architecture compatibility, and improved management and monitoring capabilities for Ubuntu.
Clutter isn’t just material stuff scattered about your floor and shelves. Clutter can consume us in digital form, too — from an overabundance of browser bookmarks and open tabs to navigating a world wide web that’s littered with junk.
Mozilla Firefox is a popular and widely used open-source web browser that continually evolves to provide users with better performance, enhanced security, and innovative features. To achieve this, Mozilla offers a pre-release version of Firefox called Firefox Beta.
We started March by announcing the location of the LibreOffice Conference 2023: Bucharest in Romania!
The more things your system can represent, the less you can say about the things that are represented.
ie, if you store strings as ASCII then you can’t represent “âËâ¬Ã¢ËÆðŸ¦â”, while if you store strings as Unicode then the string’s length isn’t well-defined. We’ll say that Unicode is more capable while ASCII is more tractable.
This is one of the most important tradeoffs in CS, up there with space-time tradeoffs. It has a pretty simple reason, too: the more things your system can represent, the fewer things they all have in common, and the more likely any assertion about that set will have a counterexample.
We are back to working on the request page redesign. This time we have focused on improving comments on lines in the Changes tab, enhancing the requests with multiple actions and supporting requests that intend to delete projects/packages and to change the development package of a package. The request redesign is part of the beta program. We started the redesign of the request workflow in August 2022.
This new version of 1768.py brings an option to try out all 256 xor keys if a non-standard XOR key is used to encode the configuration. Like this sample (key !): 1768_v0_0_18.zip (http)MD5: 323D6D20483257D76D7F9DAD07AAF630SHA256: 653CB75FF59C27FB9A2FD651DDE2EC81A4F577F7F9050353CB0B75DF6CA95773
This is part 17 of a series about my experiences being a parent. Read the rest here.
Gaby, my wife, a few weeks before the birth:
Before Oscar was born, I was entirely excited that we were going to have a child. I liked my life, but it was a good time to change everything. My job was fine, but I wasn’t worried about putting it on hold or even losing it. We were about to move to London, so my social circle, hobbies, and routines were going to get warped anyway. I’d have to rebuild, with or without a baby.
Developers are the modern enterprise’s beating heart. And with things like the pervasiveness of open-source code and application programming interfaces, they’re basically served the tools and resources they need to produce at a high level.
Cloud-native migrations can be intense. Steps are complex and intertwined and system complexity can slow you down and introduce problems and concerns. It may not be clear that everything will eventually smooth itself out. It may not be clear that your migration will be successful.
Upbound today made generally available a namesake multi-tenant instance of a control plane management service based on the open source Crossplane project.
Bakkt LLC, a digital asset startup founded by New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc., announced Monday that it finalized its acquisition of crypto trading firm€ Apex Crypto LLC. Apex Crypto provides a turnkey platform for integrated cryptocurrency trading designed to meet the needs of financial institutions and trading customers such as neobanks.
TikTok was fined €£12.7 million ($15.9 million) for failing to protect children’s data on the social media platform, said the UK’s data regulator in a statement released on April 4.
>The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered Illumina, a leading DNA-sequencing firm, to unravel its $7 billion acquisition of Grail, a developer of cancer-screening tests, stating the deal would hurt innovation and competition in the market.
With the end of the semester approaching, many students are experiencing burnout as they anxiously await for the semester to come to a close. “Burnout is a syndrome of work-related stress that has not been successfully managed.
CJ Hopkins So, I went to London to speak to the Left … no, not “the Left” you’re probably thinking of. Not the mask-wearing, Ukrainian-flag-flying Left. Not the pronoun-using, segregationist Left. Not the WEF, WHO, FBI, CIA, DHS, and MI6-loving Left. Not the global-capitalist New Normal Left. The other Left. The old-school Left.
The CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci keep pushing hard for all healthy children to have four doses of the COVID vaccine despite the lack of clinical-outcomes data to support the recommendation.
The review found that the methodology of many previous studies was flawed and that risk of myriad health problems increased significantly after less than two drinks a day for women and after three for men.
Apple, which has thus far avoided the sweeping layoffs that have taken place at rival companies like Microsoft and Google, is eliminating some roles after all, according to a report in Bloomberg.
The number of heads eliminated is believed to be relatively small, and they are all within the company's "corporate retail teams," with a focus on workers who are responsible for the "construction and upkeep" of Apple's retail locations and other physical facilities.
Apple is cutting a small number of roles within its corporate retail teams in a streamlining effort.
The layoffs relate to the tech giant’s development and preservation teams, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Although it’s currently unclear how many roles would be impacted, the number will likely be “very small”. According to Bloomberg, the cuts are presented internally as a way of improving operational efficiency rather than a cost-cutting measure.
The event sets a precedent for Apple, which has so far managed to steer clear of job cuts affecting most other tech corporations.
Additional reports suggest that eliminated roles are in the division that handles building and upkeep for Apple’s retail stores. All impacted employees can apply for other positions at the company until the end of the week or receive up to four months of severance pay.
The fast-food company is closing its offices this week to terminate staff remotely as part of a previously announced restructuring, with the number of corporate job cuts reportedly in the hundreds.
The tech giant’s project in Atlanta is on an “indefinite pause,” leaving locals with the inflated prices but none of the jobs and investment.
Roku, Lucid Group and Microsoft have revealed plans for fresh Bay Area job cuts, together adding hundreds of workers to the region's worsening layoffs.
After laying off thousands of its employees in January, Google LLC is looking to rein in its expenses elsewhere, with a number of cost-cutting measures being implemented across the company, including reductions in spending on equipment, supplies and some employee services.
Imagine coming across, on a reasonably serious site, an article that starts along the lines of:
After observing the generative AI space for a while, I feel I have to ask: does ChatGPT (and other LLM-based chatbots)… actually gablergh? And if I am honest with myself, I cannot but conclude that it sure does seem so, to some extent!
I know this sounds sensationalist. It does undermine some of our strongly held assumptions and beliefs about what does “to gablergh” actually mean — and what classes of entities can, in fact, be said to gablergh at all. Since gablerghing is such a crucial part of what many feel it means to be human, this is also certainly going to ruffle some feathers!
But here’s the thing: so far, after thousands of years of philosophical thought and scientific research, we have not been able to clearly define “gablerghing”. Thus, we simply cannot say for certain that some simpler animals, like ants, do not gablergh in some relevant sense. Gablerghing happens on a spectrum, from clearly gablerghing organisms like humans and dolphins, through animals like dogs or cats who I think we would mostly agree do gablergh, down to ants where this is maybe more fraught a statement.
So why couldn’t “a set of scripts running on top of a corpus of statistically analyzed internet content” be said to, in some sense, gablergh?
Naturally, your immediate reaction would not be to make a serious thinking face and consider deeply whether or not GPT indeed “gablerghs”, and if so to what degree. Instead, you would first expect the author to define the term “gablergh” and provide some relevant criteria for establishing whether or not something “gablerghs”.
Yet somehow when hype-peddlers claim that LLMs (and tools built around them, like ChatGPT) “think”, nobody demands of them clarification of what they actually mean by that, and what criteria they might possibly use (beyond “the output seems human-made”). This allows them to weaponize the complexity of defining the term “to think”, with all its emotional and philosophical baggage, and using it to their advantage.
“Well you can’t say it doesn’t think” — the argument goes — “since it’s so hard to define and delineate! Even ants can be said to think in some sense!”
U.S. President Joe Biden today met with his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to discuss the potential risks and opportunities introduced by rapid advancements in the development of artificial intelligence recently.
Transcript: And here’s what’s at stake for the people of Ontario because of Bill 60. More costs for patients and more uncertainty about what those out of pocket costs might be. Private clinic surgeries have cost taxpayers more than double what they would in the public system.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (duktape, firmware-nonfree, intel-microcode, svgpp, and systemd), Fedora (amanda, dino, flatpak, golang, libldb, netconsd, samba, tigervnc, and vim), Red Hat (nodejs:14), Slackware (ruby and seamonkey), SUSE (drbd, flatpak, glibc, grub2, ImageMagick, kernel, runc, thunderbird, and xwayland), and Ubuntu (amanda).
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (openbgpd and seamonkey), Red Hat (httpd:2.4, kernel, kernel-rt, and pesign), SUSE (compat-openssl098, dpdk, drbd, ImageMagick, nextcloud, openssl, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, openssl1, oracleasm, pgadmin4, terraform-provider-helm, and yaml-cpp), and Ubuntu (haproxy, ldb, samba, and vim).
The Ukrainian hacking collective, Cyber Resistance announced yesterday that it successfully hacked into the AliExpress account of pro-Russian mil blogger Mikhail Luchin.
The blogger, who runs the “Misha From Donbas” Telegram channel, apparently had a significant amount of funds he had raised to purchase drones for Russian troops.
Now, what exactly did the Ukrainian hackers do to sabotage Russian military efforts?
They bought a lot of sex toys with the funds. Around $25,000 dollars worth of them.
TAFE South Australia has revealed a data breach that was discovered when SA Police seized “devices containing electronic scanned copies of TAFE SA student identification forms”.
TAFE SA said the identification forms included credentials such as driver's licences and passports for enrolments prior to 2021 across all campuses.
The d0nut ransomware team seems to be ramping up their activity and leaks. Last week, they contacted DataBreaches about Montgomery General Hospital in West Virginia. Today, they reached out to this site about UnitedLex, a firm that describes itself as helping legal teams modernize “with a consultative framework that brings together legal subject matter expertise, data science, and technology to solve operational challenges across multiple legal disciplines.”
Several domain names tied to Genesis Market, a bustling cybercrime store that sold access to passwords and other data stolen from millions of computers infected with malicious software, were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today. Sources tell KrebsOnsecurity the domain seizures coincided with “dozens” of arrests in the United States and abroad targeting those who allegedly operated the service, as well as suppliers who continuously fed Genesis Market with freshly-stolen data.
[...]
But sources close to the investigation tell KrebsOnSecurity that law enforcement agencies in the United States, Canada and across Europe are currently serving arrest warrants on dozens of individuals thought to support Genesis, either by maintaining the site or selling the service bot logs from infected systems.
The seizure notice includes the seals of law enforcement entities from several countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
When Genesis customers purchase a bot, they’re purchasing the ability to have all of the victim’s authentication cookies loaded into their browser, so that online accounts belonging to that victim can be accessed without the need of a password, and in some cases without multi-factor authentication.
“You can buy a bot with a real fingerprint, access to e-mail, social networks, bank accounts, payment systems!,” a cybercrime forum ad for Genesis enthused. “You also get all previous digital life (history) of the bot – most services won’t even ask for login and password and identify you as their returning customer. Purchasing a bot kit with the fingerprint, cookies and accesses, you become the unique user of all his or her services and other web-sites. The other use of our kit of real fingerprints is to cover-up the traces of your real internet activity.”
A new ransomware gang named 'Money Message' has appeared, targeting victims worldwide and demanding million-dollar ransoms not to leak data and release a decryptor.
The new ransomware was first reported by a victim on the BleepingComputer forums on March 28, 2023, with Zscaler's ThreatLabz soon after sharing information on Twitter.
Currently, the threat actor lists two victims on its extortion site, one of which is an Asian airline with annual revenue close to $1 billion. Additionally, the threat actors claim to have stolen files from the company and include a screenshot of the accessed file system as proof of the breach.
While responding to a ransomware case against a US-based company, the CPIRT recently came across a unique ransomware strain deployed using a signed component of a commercial security product. Unlike other ransomware cases, the threat actor did not hide behind any alias and appears to have no affiliation to any of the known ransomware groups. Those two facts, rarities in the ransomware ecosystem, piqued CPR interest and prompted us to thoroughly analyze the newly discovered malware.
Throughout its analysis, the new ransomware exhibited unique features. A behavioral analysis of the new ransomware suggests it is partly autonomous, spreading itself automatically when executed on a Domain Controller (DC), while it clears the event logs of the affected machines. In addition, it’s extremely flexible, operating not only based on a built-in configuration but also on numerous optional arguments which allow it to change its behavior according to the operator’s needs. While it seems to have taken inspiration from some of the most infamous ransomware families, it also contains unique functionalities, rarely seen among ransomware, such as the use of direct syscalls.
One of Israel's largest cyber-security companies, Check Point, was taken down by a group of hackers calling themselves "Anonymous Sudan" on Tuesday afternoon.
However, after a short while, the website seemed to return to operating as normal.
Earlier in the day, the websites of multiple major universities in Israel were also attacked by the same group, and were down for several hours.
The last 20 years have seen the cyberthreat landscape transform markedly: From an era of cyberattacks with damaging payloads, the cybercrime space has evolved to one where malicious actors have organized themselves into groups, mainly driven by financial gain.
Consequently, organizations now contend with a new breed of cybercriminals fiercely competing among themselves to claim a bigger stake in a highly lucrative market. Given present circumstances, malicious actors have organized themselves in ways that show a remarkable resemblance to legitimate corporations. Our research findings show that as revenues and membership of cybercriminal groups expand, their organizational structure becomes more complex because new tiers in the hierarchy inevitably arise in the process.
Data storage giant Western Digital has confirmed that hackers exfiltrated data from its systems during a "network security incident" last week.
The California-based company said in a statement on Monday that an unauthorized third party gained access to "a number" of its internal systems on March 26. Western Digital hasn’t confirmed the nature of the incident or revealed how it was compromised, but its statement suggests the incident may be linked to ransomware.
“Based on the investigation to date, the company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data,” Western Digital said.
Guest Post: Analysing gTLD MX records for centrality.
No bullsh*t opt-out: free noyb tool for quick and broad Facebook objections!
Use the noyb tool to opt out of targeted advertising and various other claimed 'legitimate interestes' by Meta in a simple and legally sound way.
The case could have resolved an important question about the scope of rights for noncitizens held at the wartime prison.
Human rights groups have applauded Malaysia’s move to abolish the mandatory death penalty, bringing possible reprieves to more than 1,300 prisoners on death row. Previously, courts had no choice but to mandate hanging as punishment for a range of crimes.
The State Security Service (VDD) has asked the court to€ arrest the pro-Kremlin activist Aleksandrs Žguns, according to information at LETA's disposal.
Former President Donald Trump€ has arrived at the Manhattan district attorney’s office in lower Manhattan, where he is under arrest and in police custody before his upcoming arraignment. Trump is expected to be fingerprinted as part of the arrest, though it’s still unclear whether his mug shot will be taken.
Conspiracy theorists have long attributed wildly varied events to George Soros, in attacks often viewed as antisemitic. His indirect donations to a prosecutor’s campaign are animating Trump allies.
The Trump campaign is capitalizing on the former president's arrest Tuesday.
Driving the news: An email from Trump's 2024 campaign was sent advertising a t-shirt with a fake mug shot of former President Trump, with the phrase "NOT GUILTY" below it.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused former President Trump on Tuesday not only of falsifying business records but of doing so with the explicit intent of covering up at least three other categories of crimes.
Driving the news: Those crimes, Bragg revealed at a press conference after Trump's historic arraignment, including violating New York state election law; making or causing additional false statements, including to tax authorities; and exceeding the cap on federal campaign contributions.
Why it matters: The alleged cover-up is Bragg's reasoning for charging Trump with 34 felonies, rather than misdemeanors. In order to convict, Bragg will need to prove Trump tried to conceal crimes that he has not been charged with — and that are not actually named in the indictment.
Finland€ officially became the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Tuesday, marking a major shift in the security landscape in northeastern Europe that adds€ some 1,300 kilometers (830 miles)€ to the alliance’s frontier with Russia.
Today, Finland officially became the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), marking the end of its era of military non-alignment. In a statement, President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinistö emphasized that the membership is not targeted against anyone and does not change the foundations or objectives of Finland's foreign and security policy. Rather, it provides security for Finland while also strengthening its international position and room for manoeuvre.
The Nordic country became the alliance’s 31st member on Tuesday, spurred by the war in Ukraine, in a strategic setback for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Finland became the 31st member of NATO on Tuesday — a once-unthinkable step that significantly changes the security landscape in Europe.
Why it matters: Finland's membership more than doubles NATO's borders with Russia and formally ends Helsinki's decades of official nonalignment.
Niinistö spoke outside Nato's headquarters, as the Finnish flag was being raised for the first time, alongside the flags of the alliance's other 30 member states.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has forced big changes in Europe – Finland in NATO! – but it may be small countries leading the way.
Finnish leaders are in Brussels on Tuesday as the country is officially accepted as a member of the Nato military alliance. This blog follows the day's events as they happen.
The denial of service attack is likely linked to Finland completing the Nato accession process on Tuesday.
Russia had made it clear that a Kremlin official accused of war crimes related to Ukrainian children would be addressing a Council meeting on Ukrainian children.
The killing of Vladlen Tatarsky came at a volatile moment in Russia, and could herald a further crackdown on dissent. Here’s how the case has developed so far.
People walk freely between Ghana and Burkina Faso where the towns of Paga and Dakola are joined. Aside from the rickety metal barriers and gate that cut across the main road, there is little indication of where one country ends and the other begins.
In recent months, a new beer began appearing in bars around Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic — a beer that analysts say carries implications for countries where Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries operate.
A new United Nations report shows that the number of people killed in Mali continued to increase in 2022, despite pledges by the government to stamp out extremist violence. On March 22, the U.N. mission in Mali, MINUSMA, published its quarterly report for October through December 2022...
Using aerial drones to spot the enemy and direct artillery fire has become a staple of war for Ukraine and Russia, especially in the savage fight for control of Bakhmut.
Most of the funds will go toward future purchases of munitions, radar and other weapons to send to Ukraine.
Both red and blue US states are passing legislation to increase school safety measures, including panic buttons and video surveillance, following the school shooting in Tennessee. Meanwhile, a bill in Florida will allow unconcealed guns without a permit.
An official charged by the International Criminal Court sought to portray her work as a humanitarian project.
Global sales of heat pumps grew by 11% in 2022, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). But Europe saw the highest increase, almost doubling its growth compared to the previous year, from 22% to 41%.
Faced with a growing reliance on rare earth imports, China is doubling down on efforts to buy up more rare earth raw materials at their source. To do so, it is ramping up production at home—but it’s also aggressively investing overseas.
Researchers and staff from U-M and three other institutions are using a recent grant to study how to turn the Matthaei Botanical Gardens' trash into useful products as well as heat and energy.
The research team were exploring the deepest depths of the trenches off the Japanese coast with a baited unmanned craft known as a lander as part of a 10-year study into the deepest populations of fish on the globe.
Scientists filmed a snailfish pottering about more than five miles under the ocean surface off the coast of Japan.
On the surface, India’s gains on tiger conservation over the past 50 years appear modest, but the momentum growing behind the big cat gives wildlife advocates hope.
On the hottest days, a refreshing mist will cool down flying foxes, which have suffered mass death in Australian heat waves.
A new report from Earth4All says world population will peak below 9 billion. While it celebrates this result and says we must work to get it even lower, this unrealistically low projection itself is likely to have the opposite effect.
The U.S. economy is healthy — and is going to remain healthy for decades to come. So says JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in his annual shareholder letter, released Tuesday morning.
Why it matters: Dimon's sunny outlook stands in stark contrast to his dark warnings 10 months ago, when he forecast an impending "hurricane."
The US attorney for the Southern District of New York filed criminal charges on April 4€ against Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, the infamous student loan startup. Javice stands accused of defrauding JPMorgan Chase & Co., which paid $175 million for her company in 2021.
For the first time in 10 months, Australia’s central bank chose to not raise interest rates on April 4, leaving its benchmark interest rate at 3.6%.
The last time lawmakers got a salary hike was in the spring of 2019, according to Finnish Parliament.
In its forecast, the financial institution noted that growth will however remain slow and government debt will continue to rise.
The number of bankruptcies in Finland has seen a significant increase in the first quarter of 2023, according to a report by Suomen Asiakastieto Oy, a leading credit information company. The report reveals that by the end of week 13, 676 companies had been declared bankrupt, a 30 percent increase from the same period last year, and the highest figure in the past 15 years. This development is a cause for concern, as it indicates that many Finnish companies are facing severe financial difficulties.
In yesterday's essay, I broke down the new series from The American Prospect on the hidden ideology and power of budget models, these being complex statistical systems for weighing legislative proposals to determine if they are "economically sound." The assumptions baked into these models are intensely political, and, like all dirty political actors, the model-makers claim they are "empirical" while their adversaries are "doing politics"....
Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway was billed as a major economic driver that would benefit the region. However, six years after it opened, the railway has become a financial burden for the country and a key part of its deteriorating relationship with China.
One driver “delivered through a blizzard only to get screwed out of what I thought was extra base pay for hazardous conditions," they said.
House-hunting in Bengaluru has gotten tougher as home rents have doubled since the beginning of 2022.
InvestEU guarantee for Swedish financier Lisa& to make available over SEK 278 million (€24,8 million) for SMEs that support the shift to a circular economy.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Current Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's visit to the U.S. and former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's unprecedented trip to China have reignited debate within Taiwan about the island's future — and the nature of its relationship with mainland China.
Why it matters: With Taiwan's next presidential election less than a year away — and pressure from China growing — Taiwanese voters will soon face a choice between keeping the close U.S. ties forged by Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party and reverting to the rival Beijing-friendly stance of Ma's Kuomintang party.
Karen hunt I arrived at Lake Arenal, Costa Rica, this little hideaway paradise, last Thursday. The next day, I found that, sure enough, Trump has been€ indicted€ by a New York grand jury.
When Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ newly-elected board took control of Disney’s special tax district, they were in for a rude awakening: The Mouse House had only surrendered control of roads and basic infrastructure maintenance, and nothing else.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has been under conservative control for 15 years, and the race this year has become one of the most expensive contests in U.S. history of its kind. The stakes are high as the winner will serve a 10-year term.
Supreme Court races were once more swayed by endorsements from legal and law enforcement officials. Now they’re indistinguishable from other elections.
Introduction The topic of this blog post is not directly related to red teaming (which is my usual go-to), but something I find important personally. Last month, I gave an info session at a local elementary school to highlight the risks of public sharing of children’s pictures at school.
Two local party officials in Rize face a prison sentence and a ban from politics.
Najia Sroosh, the Editor-in-Chief of the Voice of Women Radio now closed by the Taliban regime calls for the support of women in Turkey and in the world.
This is Nunes' latest libel lawsuit, just filed yesterday in Florida state court; I'm too slammed to write about it in detail, but I thought I'd pass along the Complaint (Nunes v. Guardian News & Media Ltd.). Here's the start of the Statement of Material Facts: 11. On March 15, 2023, Guardian published an online…
Evan Gershkovich’s€ work for The Wall Street Journal included reporting on€ Russians’ efforts to help others who were being repressed. Russian journalists are now€ scrutinizing his arrest as a brazen attack on press freedom.
Attorneys for jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich Monday appealed his arrest on charges of espionage in a Russian court. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is currently being held in a Russian detention facility on espionage charges after being arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service on March 29 in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
A Diyarbakñr prison has denied Kurdish journalist Serdar Altan a visit with his colleague.
Brokers buying food for the dangerous journey had revealed details of the trip to villagers.
Authorities in Belarus have dropped criminal charges against a prominent Polish minority activist and released her from house arrest.
A Russian businessman who fled house arrest in Italy, where he was facing extradition to the United States, has told the Russian state-run RIA Novosti news agency he is back in Russia.
Five people are being held on suspicion of planning a "terrorist act" following the burning of the Quran in Stockholm in January.
Swedish police were wrong to reject the burning of the Quran outside the embassies of Turkey and Iraq on two occasions earlier this year, an administrative court has ruled.
Tesla has to pay just over $3 million to a Black former contract worker for failing to protect him from racial abuse—a charge for which the electric carmaker was initially awarded a $137 million fine in 2021.
If you live in an apartment building, you’ve probably experienced the frustration of being stuck with a broadband provider that you don't want, don't need, or can't afford.
Tech layoffs are way up — and so are tech stocks. Two charts tell this story.
The big picture: The tech industry's layoffs began last year and have kept up a relentless stream of bleak announcements — in some companies' cases, like Meta's, coming in multiple waves.
- The industry, which had overhired during the pandemic, started trimming its workforce last year, just as the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates to cool the inflation-rattled U.S. economy.
Between the lines: Layoffs are often understood as an indicator of incipient recession, and stock prices typically fall in step with both of those trends.
Ironburg Inventions Ltd. v. Valve Corp., — F.4th —, 21-2296 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 3, 2023)
The recent decision in Ironburg Inventions Ltd. v. Valve Corp. has significant implications for post-IPR estoppel under 35 U.S.C. ۤ 315(e)(2).
Due to the highly specific technical and legal skills requested from the majority of staff at the EPO, it has long been considered that fixed-term contracts were not the appropriate form of employment for this Office. The need of a lengthy and thorough training of new employees is a condition “sine qua non” to grant quality patents. This necessary time and resources investment could be lost for the organisation if fixed-term contracts were the norm, let alone the knowledge accumulated and shared by the newly recruited staff. Furthermore, at the individual level, “a Golden Cage Syndrome” exists at the EPO, since after some years of employment, staff tend to specialise in the field of patents and lose their general expertise. The expertise in the field of patents is not easily recognised in other fields. Staff leaving the EPO after some years of employment could find it very difficult to find employment elsewhere at comparable conditions. These considerations were valid in the past and are still valid today.
The EPO, the second largest European organisation after the Commission in terms of the number of employees, is a substantially independent body, which is neither part of the European Union nor attached to it in any way like the EU agencies. Its member states include the 27 EU member states, but also 11 non-EU states. It is also not one of the Coordinated Organisations, although some links exist or were planned[1].
In contrast to other European international organisations, which are mostly financially dependent on their member states, the EPO is entirely self-financing through the annual fees and royalties generated by (applications for) patents and even generates money for its member states. Being a typically scientific and technical organisation, its political visibility is lower, so that the management and the Administrative Council, which represents the member states, can operate relatively far from the public eye.
SUEPO (Staff Union of the European Patent Office) was born in 1979 out of the “Syndicat du Personnel de l’Institut International des Brevets” (SP- IIB) which was founded in 1969, following the creation of the European Patent Office (EPO) in 1977, and the merging of the IIB into the EPO.
In agreement with its 1979 Constitution (SC), SUEPO comprises four local sections, at the four EPO sites: Munich, The Hague, Berlin and Vienna. A Congress, a Central Bureau and an Audit Board were established as central bodies of SUEPO. Despite the existence of these central bodies, the local sections enjoy quite a lot of autonomy and can be considered as quasi-independent entities. Some of them have legal status under their respective national law, like SUEPO-TH under Dutch law.
The overall trend is clearly quite negative, and the situation appears to be deteriorating. Only on a very few items the conditions have statistically stayed the same or improved a bit (“Understanding of managers”: positive replies 87% up from 84% in the past; “Did your employer provide the necessary equipment?”: negative replies 18% down from 21% in the past survey).
Despite the fact that still a majority of the respondents consider regular teleworking as a benefit, the results of this second survey and the trends confirm and amplify the alarming signals of the first survey.
In particular since the beginning of the COVID crisis, 40% of the respondents had to cope with a higher workload or more working hours (31% in the first survey), and/or an increase in work related stress (49%, against 46%). A significant number cannot easily disconnect outside working hours (36%, was 34%) and the great majority of the respondents (80%, was 73%) felt, respectively, not connected (15%, was 11%) or more or less connected (65%, was 62%) to their colleagues.
It is clear that these factors and negative trends will inevitably have dramatic consequences on the health and well-being of, at least a substantial number, of staff of the European Public Service, if suitable and urgent measures are not applied implemented and effectively to resit and reverse this.
Overview
No matter the world’s economic situation, patent litigation appeared to be the one constant. However, the number of assertions in Q1 has stumbled for the first time in years. While LIE (Litigation Investment Entity) assertions are down, new assignments are up (see Blackberry’s recent announcement). Are LIEs loading up on assets to be litigated later?
Highlights:
With only 588 cases thus far, 2023 litigation is projected to be down 51% compared to 2022.
Q1 saw at least 18% of NPE (Patent Assertion Entities) where the patent asserted had been assigned and funded to a LIE.€ €
The Western District of Texas continued to be the most popular venue in 2023, with Judge Albright leading all patent litigation.
IP Edge's two filings are a significant contributor to the decrease in new assertions.
Dynamic IP Deals and Jeffrey Gross have been the most litigious entities, with 24 assertions each.€
In Interdigital vs Lenovo, the UK court rejected InterDigital’s Top-Down approach while applying its own comparable analysis.
FRAND disputes will likely rise as Wi-Fi 6 adoption (and its core 3GPP technologies like beamforming, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA) increases.
On April 3, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,473,478, owned and asserted by Datanet, LLC. The ‘478 patent is directed to an automatic real-time file management method and apparatus.
Bertini v. Apple Inc., — F.4th — (Fed. Cir. 2023)
Apple Records was founded by The Beatles in 1968 and quickly became a success, producing many hit records in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Apple Computer Company was founded in the mid-1970s and almost immediately sued for trademark infringement by Apple Corps (the parent company of Apple Records).€ The companies eventually settled the case with Apple Computer paying $80k and agreeing to stay out of the music business.
This is a review posted for one I listened to before starting trying to write about every album. Initially I skipped it, because I was somewhat familiar, but later realised that part of the excercise of this list is challenging that sort of believe. 'Actually' beats 'Very' for me - in comparison it's a little more stripped back, a little catchier, and much more consistent.
The Pet Shop Boys mix together genres I don't care or and occasionally come up with gold. Very feels like exactly what I'd have expected from a Pet Shop Boys album before listening to any - occasionally catchy, sentimental, danceable pop.
My laptop battery has been showing some noticeable signs of wear recently, so I've just setup TLP to try to get every bit of juice I can out of it.
Not long after I enabled TLP I felt like I could notice my battery usage decreasing. That's either placebo or my battery really is just that bad, and I'm not sure which it is.
My current school offers free Wi-Fi (and laptops) while I study there. However, the network doesn't allow Gemini (or any protocol that isn't HTTP or doesn't go through port 443). So, in order to be able to continue taking care of my plant and following gemlogs while at school, I decided to make Lagrange work with this restrictive network.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.