𝕿𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖘 Bulletin for Monday, January 04, 2021 ┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅ Generated Tue 5 Jan 02:40:45 GMT 2021 Created by Dr. Roy Schestowitz (𝚛𝚘𝚢 (at) 𝚜𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚣 (dot) 𝚌𝚘𝚖) Full hyperlinks for navigation omitted but are fully available in the originals The corresponding HTML versions are at 𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈 Latest in 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒕𝒙𝒕 and older bulletins can be found at 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒕𝒙𝒕-𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 Full IPFS index in 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒊𝒑𝒇𝒔 and as plain text in 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒊𝒑𝒇𝒔/𝒕𝒙𝒕 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐒 ════════════════════════════════════╕ Previous bulletins in IPFS (past 21 days, in chronological order): QmdXfrL6vz8jFumCUchTsn25vMWff8gnK48LzAbN6StXRM QmeaBomXSM7Mc53Kq6ifnZkFjL5raWVHd4xdvZ9UzJxXgB QmXf3HB6Jq9wMuXp5vFfkaXztzF9P8W4KPSrjLhYhM6V2m QmXzsVS69veQV4wbmm5RatdgHTFJcrsrh9FBMtUzEBqMMN QmbJS9vucziTqe4eGSR9un6EoifwTo4y3oYap1EqCtiEZJ QmSAYUFrCv96gXitnJ8gDGZj7xGiXMyWaEsog4tkRBPshu QmT1eNxN6hLuYyaPNLfaNNzeKF64xWsLazqhpFcUYV7WVx QmSfJ73cH6MLEHhch8bgEhBGC43kVNADRJUpeQv2hcUsrE QmXGEdtH99MG2mdPMztAxsUXJWBLMXyuYaqdnx6inpuX7c QmfVbepdUPJyP7uetx4BJryV4hgoNKQfrTCxSWgQPN1Rdx Qmerspha5sBXhxrSkZzuXGw8WeXrUmG8Gn1nDfz6fRSY8K QmXjVc4NJjr6RYHKPa7EFWknSzg9ZwLN4YnErbmcqdcEKL QmbKJcqeWwdwEZRmynaB1QUsBfphEamM17YNSFjDbd967Q Qmb7Vc3ijMXKkDXwdbFmKva484B1Txefyq476N1SQzkaPz QmYqhYrKEV9gAAitfZidCc8mCztdegVqsSjGntAvWHtCKY QmWzJPniMtb3SfrYyRRc9aN9sx4BQcsVRaBipsquzkyPyP QmTc7fVWDZAd8Hhdj4NZkukktpS3GgF3bkCCEsEPzBFQ8b QmQteVnu669KJD3aGFG9pTaha5NeLdUVvog8v7rtH7aAif QmZQ6Pn5zz59X5DotEqu3wFU1Zv7NgnekWx1XnZmEtgxoJ QmSFbBNGkS4rhKR4CEWoVvxihh6PGXm91pwQceXjQRvbqH QmU9utRxait6DvuC5UtvxHGqvGucHEXPr6tugdaE6zwHa9 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐗 ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ ⦿ IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 03, 2021 | Techrights ⦿ Julian Assange’s Extradition DENIED by British Court (Updated) | Techrights ⦿ InteLeaks - Part III: Intel Treats Linux Like Linux is Just Microsoft Windows | Techrights ⦿ Microsoft Hosts a European Software Patents Propaganda Event (in ’Hey Hi’ Clothing) Featuring Thierry Breton and Litigation Firms | Techrights ䷼ Bulletin articles (as HTML) to comment on (requires login): http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/irc-log-030121/#comments http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/julian-assange-wins-extradition-battle/#comments http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/linux-as-windows/#comments http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/microsoft-ai-swpats-event/#comments ䷞ Followed by Daily Links (assorted news picks curated and categorised): http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/emmabuntus-debian-edition-4-alpha-2/#comments http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/extix-deepin-21-1-live/#comments ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 56 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/irc-log-030121/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 01.04.21⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ IRC_Proceedings:_Sunday,_January_03,_2021⠀✐ Posted in IRC_Logs at 2:55 am by Needs Sunlight 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇H 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇HTML5_logs⦈_ #techrights_log_as_HTML5 #boycottnovell_log_as_HTML5 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇H 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇HTML5_logs⦈_ #boycottnovell-social_log_as_HTML5 #techbytes_log_as_HTML5 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇t 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇text_logs⦈_ #techrights_log_as_text #boycottnovell_log_as_text 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇t 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇text_logs⦈_ #boycottnovell-social_log_as_text #techbytes_log_as_text Enter_the_IRC_channels_now ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 99 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/julian-assange-wins-extradition-battle/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 01.04.21⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Julian_Assange’s_Extradition_DENIED_by_British_Court_(Updated)⠀✐ Posted in Courtroom at 6:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Related: Support_Julian_Paul_Assange Updated: The decision is now public Breaking: UK judge rules against extradition of Assange to US #AssangeCase — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January_4,_2021 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇Wikileaks quotes⦈ Summary: Julian Assange is staying in the UK or going back to Australia (unless Donald Trump’s regime… or Biden’s… appeals today’s decision) THE freedom to expose crime is on the line. This morning (at this very moment) the decision is being prepared for public delivery (not officially out at the time I type this). “…it’s probably fair to say that a lot of powerful and well-connected people work overtime to convince the public Assange is an enemy and a threat. Who is he actually a threat to and why?”Julian Assange is not a criminal. The media which supports crimes by states is trying hard to portray him either as a criminal or as a terrible person. This is not out of the ordinary. A lot of the smears and distortions can be traced back to those who fear accountability (for what’s shown in Wikileaks). Recently we had some terrible experiences ourselves. Some people tried telling Richard Stallman that we were hostile towards him and/or the FSF. This is false. It’s correct to assert that defence of Stallman and Stallman’s mindset can be spun as “hostility” (towards the coup); it’s too easy, isn’t it? Over the years I read a lot about (sometimes leaked internal documents) the tactics of fracturing and dividing people who otherwise collaborate and coordinate. We know that three-letter agencies in the US do this (Wikileaks is one example) and we saw documents from Microsoft suggesting similar tactics. Last year I was sent about 20,000 E-mails (a bit more) from FSF servers, causing me to interact with FSF staff including their ‘chief of staff’, John. I don’t know who weaponised FSF servers against me (not just one but two of my accounts, including a private email account I do not advertise). Regarding John, I strongly disagree with some of the things published in Techrights about him (and some other people), however I’m compelled not to hide how some other people feel. Burying sentiments is not the way to go. Self-censorship can come at a high cost. The above two paragraphs, put together, can lead to “conspiracy theories” about someone trying to drive a wedge between myself and people whom I generally support. Similarly, it’s probably fair to say that a lot of powerful and well- connected people work overtime to convince the public Assange is an enemy and a threat. Who is he actually a threat to and why? █ Update: The Assange decision is finally_available_online, so it need not be judged by corporate media and social control media hearsay. “410. I order the discharge of Julian Paul Assange, pursuant to section 91(3) of the EA 2003.” 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇decision-assange⦈_ Released on health/safety grounds. The judge cites section 91(3), which says: Physical or mental condition (1)This section applies if at any time in the extradition hearing it appears to the judge that the condition in subsection (2) is satisfied. (2)The condition is that the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him. (3)The judge must—    (a)order the person’s discharge, or    (b)adjourn the extradition hearing until it appears to him that the condition in subsection (2) is no longer satisfied. So it’s rather unclear whether it’s a win for freedom of the press. ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 209 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/linux-as-windows/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 01.04.21⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ InteLeaks_–_Part_III:_Intel_Treats_Linux_Like_Linux_is_Just_Microsoft Windows⠀✐ Posted in Deception, Free/Libre_Software, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 2:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇Intel hub⦈ Summary: GNU/Linux developers inside Intel are being surrounded by non- technical and harmful employees; it’s as if Intel wants to merely pretend that it supports “Linux” when all it really supports is Microsoft The series was preceded by an introduction and part_I, which was a bit of a deliberate spoiler. Part_II has the first actual leaks in it. Today we dive a little deeper and explain the scandal at hand. Have a look at this: 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇intel1⦈_ “Looks like whatever they’re building is remarkably fragile and they’re bringing a Windows mentality to Linux where you should pay consultants to work on a program targeting already-rotten software as if it will never become unsupported,” Ryan noted in IRC some moments ago. But wait, it’s going to get worse as we dive yet deeper. They not only adopt a “Windows mentality”; they wish to outsource the whole shebang to Microsoft. That’s the subject of future parts. “Microsoft is still fostering this mindset with LTSC versions of Windows 10,” Ryan explained, “which are quite different than consumer ones. Companies are so resistant to change that even the built-in components that are being deprecated and removed in favor of Universal Windows Platform on other SKUs still have the legacy components in LTSC. Even the calculator. Because you move even the smallest thing around, and something breaks. LTSC doesn’t even have UWP, so the name is misleading. If you build a Universal Windows App, it will not work at all on Windows 10 LTSC. Which is because the UWP runtime and the Windows store are trash and corporations know that. The Win32 “Classic” API is actually far more capable, and Microsoft doesn’t want to admit it.” How about this: 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇Intel_DX_rant⦈_ Or this: 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇Intel_DX_mistkaes⦈_ Sometimes you must wonder why companies insist on outsourcing to Microsoft (GitHub), perhaps forgetting that many important decisions aren’t being made by geeks with a clue but by clueless nontechnical managers and so-called ‘consultants’ who may be covertly working for cults such as Microsoft. █ “Working behind the scenes to orchestrate “independent” praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy’s, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. “Independent” analyst’s report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). “Independent” consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). “Independent” academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). “Independent” courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.” –Microsoft,_internal_document [PDF] ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 303 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2021/01/04/microsoft-ai-swpats-event/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 01.04.21⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Microsoft_Hosts_a_European_Software_Patents_Propaganda_Event_(in_‘Hey_Hi’ Clothing)_Featuring_Thierry_Breton_and_Litigation_Firms⠀✐ Posted in Deception, Europe, Microsoft, OIN, Patents at 2:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇HEY HI. You don't even know what it means. You never wrote any code.⦈ Video_download_link http://techrights.org/videos/ip-tech-summit.webm Summary: The so-called ‘IP’ ‘Tech’ ‘Summit’ (webchats or video streams of lawyers rather than techies) is another example of think tanks, this time hosted by Microsoft to push a controversial software patents agenda, both in Europe and worldwide (by extension) SOME things don’t change, can’t change, and barely ever change at all. The marketing strategy (e.g. “Microsoft loves Linux”) may change a bit, but underlying tactics or more so objectives are largely the same. The extortion artists from Microsoft are pushing the lie of “IP” to manufacture consent for Microsoft’s ongoing (it never stopped!) patent blackmail and software patents racket. 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇IP tech summit⦈ Shown on the right is the banner of the latest so-called ‘event’ that is ‘hosted’ by Microsoft. And yes, as noted in the video above, that’s Microsoft in Munich — the very same ploy (relocation) that was used to undermine Munich’s already-completed migration to GNU/Linux. Some “love”, eh? Microsoft loves Linux funerals… Or, as Dave Lane put_it_many_times_before, “as I like to point out #MicrosoftLovesLinux like a tapeworm loves a healthy digestive system.” “Is this blog, which was founded by a scholar, just a think tank of litigation companies?”Either way, let’s consider for a moment what’s shown in this_new, albeit_belated,_post (belated by a whole month), which I’ve remarked on in the video just moments ago. There has long been this agenda of promoting software patents by calling them “4IR” and other buzzwords like “Hey Hi” (AI), which amount to nonsense. Julian Asquith (Marks & Clerk), quite frankly as usual, did so as_recently_as_days_ago (we’ve already included that in our Daily Links). Marks & Clerk openly said that nowadays it’s easier to get software patents in Europe than in the United States. In support of this agenda they still use all sorts of misleading buzzwords and shamelessly promote not only the UPC but also illegal software patents. They receive help from corrupt EPO management that nowadays also besieges judges (especially those who reject software patents) and they receive support from patent_propaganda_mills_which_repost_their_marketing (Lexology). It gets syndicated as “news” (e.g. in Google News). It’s sad, isn’t it? Watch what shows up as top results when searching Google News for EPO “news” this morning (it’s just Lexology and Watchtroll, not actual news sites or journalism). 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇Google News on EPO⦈ Nobody will ever become aware of crimes committed by rogue_officials if this is what Google presents to people. And speaking of Google, it too played a role in the above ‘summit’ (webchats basically) in support of software patents. But Microsoft is mentioned many times, including the opening part: “This year’s Summit was hosted by Microsoft and focused more broadly on global digitalization and its impact on IP, highlighting topics such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, open data and open innovation.” “There has long been this agenda of promoting software patents by calling them “4IR” and other buzzwords like “Hey Hi” (AI), which amount to nonsense.”Buzzwords for software patents (“digitalization”, “Hey hi”, IoT”) and the typical openwashing, not with actual source code (“open data and open innovation” — meaningless, especially the latter). “Hosted by Microsoft” (see the image). The arm of Microsoft that blatantly attacked GNU/Linux in Germany. The post was published by a UPC pusher and former Bristows spinner (Annsley Merelle Ward), who adores Microsoft and used other Microsoft-organised events to push that same agenda, whitewashing the chief extortionists (such as Smith). She has been distorting facts [1, 2] and her years-long_promotion_of_software patents_has_long_been_documented_here. Perfect vector for such agenda-setting… She says: “The AmeriKat’s friends at Dutch IP firm Brinkhof – Alexander de Leeuw, Boukje van der Maazen, Jonathan Santman and Jasmijn de Groot – were on hand to report on this year’s proceedings.” “The post was published by a UPC pusher and former Bristows spinner (Annsley Merelle Ward), who adores Microsoft and used other Microsoft-organised events to push that same agenda, whitewashing the chief extortionists (such as Smith).”So it’s a sort of secondhand account. For an employer. For a bunch of allies/colleagues at Brinkhof (another litigation firm, though she works at WilmerHale now). Throughout the text the term “CII” is used sparingly, e.g. “protect an AI/CII invention” (yes, they’re conflating those two things, intentionally). Why is this sort of junk being published? Is this blog, which was founded by a scholar, just a think tank of litigation companies? Well, yes. Look who’s actually_running_it nowadays… Maybe it shouldn’t be so shocking. Here are some portions of the long text: Many of the AI debates concern the protection and licensing of data sets. Access to data can be restricted and can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Dr. Julia Keim (Microsoft) confirmed that an interesting derivative market has developed where companies claim license fees for the use of their data. [...] The IP Tech Summit had an impressive amount of experts on AI and CII patenting. Before going into what they had to say about IP, one cannot help but wonder what we mean when we mention the buzzword “AI”. [...] It quickly became apparent that one’s ability to navigate through existing patent law in order to protect an AI/CII invention depends greatly on claim drafting, both in Europe and in the US. The fact that there is no standardized terminology, makes an already difficult topic even more complex. In any event, it was recommended to avoid mathematical equations and terms like ‘neural networks’. Another difficulty is that AI systems largely depend on data, which is difficult to include in a patent application, and that it can be problematic to reproduce an AI achievement due to the large amount of parameters involved (the so-called “replication crisis”). This requires guidance from patent offices. The EPO has already issued guidance on this topic (see here), and guidelines will soon follow from the USPTO (see here). Likewise, Dr. Ulrike Till (Director of the AI Policy Division at WIPO) hinted at the near arrival of guidelines, strategies and instruments applicable to AI and IP prepared by WIPO. [...] Thierry Breton (EU Commissioner for the Internal Market) stressed in his keynote speech that “the licensing of standard essential patents is a cumbersome and costly exercise for both patent holders and technology implementers” and that “there is a need for a much clearer and much more predictable framework incentivizing good faith negotiations rather than recourse to litigation.” According to Thierry, this is essential in order to ensure the EU’s lead position in standardization and the internet of things. He referred to the recently adopted IP action plan (available here), which includes initiatives to improve the framework regarding essentiality declarations, licensing and enforcement of SEPs, including a pilot study for the essentiality assessment of SEPs (see here), and further indicated that the European Commission will enter into a sectorial dialogue with industry players in order to find appropriate solutions. This talks of “EU’s lead position in standardization and the internet of things.” More buzzwords like IoT with a small “i” (wrong grammar). As EU Commissioner, Thierry Breton nowadays_covers_up_EPO_crimes for his friend Benoît_Battistelli. What does that make him? “OIN is what’s sometimes referred to as “controlled opposition”.”Cabals of extortionists patting each other over the shoulder isn’t a legitimate debate or genuine panel but a think tank named after misleading propaganda terms, piggybacking a bucket of buzzwords (even the principal author, named above, admits that those are just buzzwords). In short, the so-called ‘event’ was a sham and looking at who was actually participating would be quite a giveaway. The video mentions the role played by OIN, which can nowadays be seen in many such panels, sort of faking a “voice” of the “Open Source” “community” when in fact paying lip service to monopolies in a subtle kind of way. OIN is what’s sometimes referred to as “controlled opposition”. █ ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 518 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐃𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 ═════════════════════════════════════════════╕ ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 01.04.21⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Links_4/1/2021:_Emmabuntüs_Debian_Edition_4_Alpha_2_and_More_on_Microsoft Getting_Cracked_(Blaming_‘SolarWinds’)⠀✐ Posted in News_Roundup at 1:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇GNOME bluefish⦈ § Contents⠀➾ * GNU/Linux o Distributions o Devices/Embedded * Free_Software/Open_Source * Leftovers * § GNU/Linux⠀➾ o § Kernel Space⠀➾ # ⚓ Linux_5.11_rc2⠀⇛ Time to slowly crawl out from under all the xmas wrapping paper piles and go test… # ⚓ Kernel_prepatch_5.11-rc2⠀⇛ The second 5.11 kernel prepatch is out for testing. # ⚓ Linus_Torvalds_says:_Crawl_out_from_under_the_wrapping paper_and_go_test_Linux⠀⇛ 5.11 rc2 is tiny in comparison to rc1, Torvalds explained, which included a “huge dump of AMD GPU descriptor header files” that account for around two-thirds of the entire update. These file additions, codenamed Van Gough, are destined for the upcoming generation of AMD Ryzen mobile accelerated processing Unit (APUs) expected to arrive this year. Torvalds said these files “completely dwarf[s] all the ‘real’ changes in Linux 5.11.” Given the lull over the festive period, rc2 of Linux 5.11 is far smaller – “tiny”, in fact – than rc1, with the main fixes centered around small computer system interfaces [SCSI] and block devices, according to Torvalds. He added that the quiet festive period may or may not end up affecting the release schedule of Linux 5.11: given that most of the code was submitted before the holidays, the merge window shouldn’t have been hugely impacted, he said. Despite this, a similarly small rc3 could result in delays to the final release of Linux 5.11. “I expect next week to slowly start ramping up fixes, but I know some people are still on vacation or just in an extended food coma, and there’s a delay from testing to fixes, so we’ll see. Maybe rc3 ends up being fairly small too,” Torvalds wrote. # ⚓ Linux_NVMe_Simple-Copy_Support_Inches_Closer_To_The Kernel⠀⇛ Another one of the features you won’t find in the Linux 5.11 kernel is support for the recently ratified NVMe Simple Copy but work on supporting that feature continues. Last month we wrote about Linux preparing support for the NVMe Simple Copy command that allows for copying multiple contiguous ranges to a single destination LBA with that copy operation being handled by the SSD controller. The NVMe Simple Copy specification was ratified in 2020 and it’s looking like the Linux kernel could soon see support for it. Among the initial use- cases in mind for this command are during F2FS garbage collection or Btrfs relocation/balancing. # ⚓ [RFC_PATCH_v4_0/3]_add_simple_copy_support⠀⇛ # § Graphics Stack⠀➾ # ⚓ Mike_Blumenkrantz:_New_Year_New_Corrections⠀⇛ As long-time readers of the blog know, SGC is a safe space where making mistakes is not only accepted, it’s a way of life. So it is once again that I need to amend statements previously made regarding Xorg synchronization after Michel Dänzer, also known for anchoring the award-winning series Why Is My MR Failing CI Today?, pointed out that while I was indeed addressing the correct problem, I was addressing it from the wrong side. [...] A script-based git blame revealed that ANV has a different handling for implicit sync than other Vulkan drivers. After a well- hidden patch, ANV relies entirely on a struct attached to VkSubmitInfo which contains the swapchain image’s memory pointer in order to handle implicit sync. Thus by attaching a wsi_memory_signal_submit_info struct, everything was resolved. # ⚓ Intel_Keem_Bay_Accelerated_Hashing_Driver_Positioned For_Linux_5.12⠀⇛ Keem Bay, Intel’s third-generation Movidius VPU (Vision Processing Unit), continues seeing more upstream open-source hardware support within the Linux kernel. Coming to the Linux 5.12 kernel in a couple months will be more support within the crypto subsystem. The Keem Bay VPU features much faster inference performance over its predecessors and intended for edge computing with use- cases from drones to other computer vision scenarios. The ARM-based SoC that is part of Keem Bay has yielded a lot of upstream kernel bits over time as well as a brand new DRM kernel driver needed for display support with this latest Movidius product. # ⚓ RADV_Vulkan_Driver_Begins_Landing_Optimizations_For AMD_Smart_Access_Memory⠀⇛ Following RadeonSI seeing optimizations around AMD Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) support last month, the Radeon Vulkan driver “RADV” within Mesa 21.0 is also seeing similar treatment. Linux has been seeing more work in recent weeks around Smart Access Memory / Resizable BAR support and that continued this morning with Mesa 21.0 Git seeing the initial RADV support. o § Benchmarks⠀➾ # ⚓ AMD_Performance_On_Linux_5.11_Remains_Mixed_Due_To Schedutil_With_Frequency_Invariance⠀⇛ Back on Christmas I wrote about Linux 5.11 regressing for AMD performance on Zen 2 and newer systems where the just-added CPU frequency invariance support was often hurting various workloads when using the default “Schedutil” scheduler utilization frequency scaling governor. Since then and through the holidays I have been carrying out many more benchmarks looking at the Linux 5.11 performance with a particular focus on the AMD desktop/server platforms. Long story short, the new AMD frequency invariance support found with Linux 5.11 and utilized by Schedutil is often causing performance regressions. I have found some Zen 2 systems not being plagued by slower performance but have found more systems reaffirming my prior report and benchmark results. The regressions happening for Linux 5.11 on AMD do indeed appear to be squarely due to frequency- invariance/Schedutil and if switching over to the CPUFreq “performance” governor will avoid the regression (and generally better performance too, but a pity most Linux distributions do not default to that preferred governor for optimal performance). o § Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ Linux_at_Home:_Digital_Art_with_Linux⠀⇛ We are told by our governments that in the current crisis the single most important action we can take is to stay at home and minimise the amount of contact with others. The new variant of Covid-19 is much more transmissible than the virus’s previous version. The advice to stay safe is therefore even more important. It’s only with everyone abiding by the law can we protect our health services and save lives. In this series, we look at a range of home activities where Linux can play its part, making the most of our time at home, keeping active and engaged. The change of lifestyle enforced by Covid- 19 is an opportunity to expand our horizons, and spend more time on activities we have neglected in the past. Now is a great time to take up a new hobby. How about digital art? Instead of painting on canvas or paper, digital art software allows you to paint and draw directly onto a computer, which has a number of amazing advantages: It’s a lot less messy, and you can do it in even the smallest spaces. It’s more forgiving, and offers an unlimited number of experimental possibilities. Many beginners are attracted to digital drawing because drawing software allows them to more easily produce visually appealing illustrations. # ⚓ QuiteRSS:_A_Free_Open-Source_RSS_Reader_for_Linux_Desktop⠀⇛ Personally, I utilize services like Feedly to keep up with the latest happenings across the globe. But, it is a web-based service offering some optional premium features that I may never require. So, I looked at some feed reader apps available for Linux and QuiteRSS seemed like an impressive solution as an alternative to web-based services. In this article, I’m going to share a few key highlights about QuiteRSS along with my experience with it. # ⚓ Release_Roundup:_Scrcpy_1.17,_BpyTOP_1.0.55,_BleachBit 4.2.0,_Safe_Eyes_2.1.1,_SimpleScreenRecorder_0.4.3_And_Gammy 0.9.61⠀⇛ Quite a few applications were updated recently, and this article covers the changes in these new releases. o § Instructionals/Technical⠀➾ # ⚓ Manually_install_a_DEB_package_on_Debian_or_Ubuntu_– PragmaticLinux⠀⇛ Sometimes you want to install software that is not readily available in the Debian or Ubuntu online software repository. Luckily, a lot of third party software providers make a DEB package available for you to install. This article explains how you can manually install software bundled as a DEB package onto your Debian system. Since Ubuntu derives from Debian, the explanation applies to Ubuntu based systems as well. # ⚓ VirtualBox_&_VERR_SYMBOL_VALUE_TOO_BIG_error⠀⇛ By and large, my VirtualBox experience is largely pleasant. There are some problems here and there, sometimes serious problems – like the bridged networking issue – but overall, it offers a useful, flexible environment to test operating systems and software quickly, efficiently, smartly. Network isolation, snapshots, Bob’s your uncle. Then, all of a sudden, a few days back I tried to launch a virtual machine, and it wouldn’t. The error message contained the following: Failed to load R0 module … for device ‘usb-ehci’ (VERR_SYMBOL_VALUE_TOO_BIG). Well, that sounds rather cryptic. Let’s troubleshoot. # ⚓ Ubuntu_21.04-_Download_latest_Daily_Build_Live_ISO_file⠀⇛ The final stable release of Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo will officially be released in April 2021, however, if you are a developer or one who just wants to try out it then its daily LIVE ISO is available to download. Yes, daily a new version of Ubuntu 21.04 will be available to download on the official website of Canonical. However, after installing it once on your virtual machine or physical machine you don’t need to get the latest copy of the daily build ISO every time. # ⚓ Create_Live_bootable_USB_using_Ubuntu_20.04’s_Startup_disk creator⠀⇛ Ubuntu’s official Startup Disk creator is a very lightweight tool available since Ubuntu 8.04, even on the latest 20.04/18.04 LTS versions. It has a very simple interface with just three buttons and a two-step process for creating a bootable USB drive using the ISO file of any Linux or Windows OS. # ⚓ How_To_Encrypt_Root_Filesystem_on_Linux_–_devconnected⠀⇛ As a system administrator, you probably already know how important it is to encrypt your disks. If your laptop were to be stolen, even a novice hacker would be able to extract the information contained on the disks. All it takes is a simple USB stick with a LiveCD on it and everything would be stolen. Luckily for you, there are ways for you to prevent this from happening : by encrypting data stored on your disks. In this tutorial, we are going to see the steps needed in order to perform a full system encryption. You may find other tutorials online focused on encrypting just a file or home partitions for example. In this case, we are encrypting the entire system meaning the entire root partition and the boot folder. We are going to encrypt a part of the bootloader. Ready? # ⚓ How_to_Update_Kali_Linux_–_buildVirtual⠀⇛ After you have gone through the steps to install Kali Linux, one of the first tasks you should carry out is to update Kali Linux to ensure you have the latest patches and software packages. If you have a default installation of Kali, it is recommended that you check for updates every few weeks. You should check more often if you need an updated version of a tool, or if a security update has been released however. This article covers what you need to know about how to update Kali Linux kernel. First, it details how to update the Kali Linux repository configuration, and then how to update Kali Linux using the command line. # ⚓ How_to_create_Live_Ubuntu_20.04_USB_using_Rufus_–_Linux Shout⠀⇛ The benefit of using a Live USB of Ubuntu, that you don’t need to install anything on your internal hard drive, directly from the USB drive, we can use a full-fledged Linux operating system. We can access all system hardware, storage devices on Live Linux even can install software just like we normally do. The best thing is as you restart your PC everything installed or done on the LIVE Linux will be gone, I mean it gets reset to its original form every time we restart our PC or laptop. However, if you want to store data of the LIVE Linux on the same USB drive then use the persistence storage method. # ⚓ Booting_my_Raspberry_Pi_4_from_a_USB_device⠀⇛ The Raspberry Pi 4, however, has fixed both of those problems. USB boot is enabled by default, and the Pi 4 has two USB 3.0 ports which make USB mass storage devices noticeably faster than SD cards. So, in theory, USB boot should be gaining in popularity, but it seems to me that is not happening. Perhaps it is because of a lack of familiarity with the possibility, or a lack of detailed examples of doing it. So I will run through various aspects and examples of it in this post. The first question to ask, I suppose, would be why is USB boot interesting at all? Well, one good reason I have already mentioned is that a USB 3.0 device is faster than an SD card. Another is that USB drives tend to cost less than microSD cards of the same size, and as the storage capacity goes up, the price difference gets larger. The reason I have gotten into this, however, is that I recently got a Raspberry Pi 4 case which includes an M.2 SSD adapter, and that drive connects via USB. (I will be writing about that case in my next post.) # ⚓ RHEL/CentOS_8_shim_kernel_signatures⠀⇛ Due to hardening within the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel, which was released as part of the CVE-2020-10713 update, previous Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel versions have not been added to shim’s allow list. If you are running with Secure Boot enabled, and the user needs to boot to an older kernel version, its hash must be manually enrolled into the trust list. This is achieved by executing the following commands: # ⚓ How_to_Set_Up_ModSecurity_with_Nginx_on_Debian/Ubuntu⠀⇛ This tutorial is going to show you how to install and use ModSecurity with Nginx on Debian/Ubuntu servers. ModSecurity is the most well-known open- source web application firewall (WAF), providing comprehensive protection for your web applications (like WordPress, Nextcloud, Ghost etc) against a wide range of Layer 7 (HTTP) attacks, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and local file inclusion. # ⚓ How_to_Change_a_User’s_Default_Shell_in_Linux⠀⇛ In this Linux quick tip we will discuss changing a users (or your own) shell. There was once a time when bash was the default shell on almost all Linux systems. That is not necessarily true anymore. However, after this short tutorial you will feel comfortable changing your default shell to any that you desire. # ⚓ How_to_Use_Virtualbox_VMs_on_KVM_In_Linux⠀⇛ Are you considering making a switch from VirtualBox to KVM hypervisor? One of your greatest concerns would be starting all over again by creating new virtual machines in KVM – an arduous task to say the least. The good news is that instead of creating new KVM guest machines, you can easily migrate the VirtualBox VMs which are in VDI format to qcow2 which is the disk image format for KVM. In this guide, we are going to outline a step-by- step procedure of how you migrate VirtualBox VMs into KVM VMs in Linux. # ⚓ LHB_#21.01:_Docker_Notify,_Ansible_e-book_and_Planned Improvements_for_2021⠀⇛ You probably have made your new year resolution. So have I, for Linux Handbook. Here are the plans for Linux Handbook in 2021. # ⚓ Testing_2.5_Gbps_Ethernet_on_the_Raspberry_Pi_CM4⠀⇛ Only 2.5 Gbps? What about your 5 Gbps post? “But wait a second,” I hear you say, “didn’t you already get 4.15 gigabits through the Intel i340 card last month?” Well, yes. But that was in aggregate, through five separate 1 Gbps interfaces. And while you can bond interfaces sometimes, life is simpler with a big fat pipe. And 2.5 Gbps, as I’ll demonstrate later, is probably about as much as the current BCM2711 Raspberry Pi processor can handle. # ⚓ Hacker_News_vs_Lobste.rs_in_C++,_an_exercise_in_parsing json_http_api’s_and_date/time/timezones⠀⇛ I recently wondered how many top posts on the Hacker News frontpage are also on Lobsters. At first I reached for my trusty Python, because when I need to do some JSON API parsing that’s what I’ll use. (Otherwise bash is my default goto for small things, except when json, networking or associative arrays are involved.) But, then, a thought came to my mind. Why not try it with reasonably modern C++. It’s what I do at work, so why not a simple personal project. It would involve dependency management (json & http library), parsing both API endpoints and, most importantly, doing stuff with time. Time, timezones and dates are hard. This article contains a bit of my learning process, compilation and usage instructions and an example run. Go look at the code and run the code yourself. Let me know if my timezone calculations are working outside of GMT+1. # ⚓ How_To_Install_AnyDesk_on_Linux_Mint_20_–_idroot⠀⇛ In this tutorial, we will show you how to install AnyDesk on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, AnyDesk is the world’s most comfortable remote desktop application. Access all your programs, documents, and files from anywhere, without having to entrust your data to a cloud service. You can say it’s an alternative to the TeamViewer, which is available free. Anydesk provides a faster remote connection than any other existing remote desktop application. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of AnyDesk on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana). # ⚓ Network_address_translation_part_1_–_packet_tracing_– Fedora_Magazine⠀⇛ Network address translation is one way to expose containers or virtual machines to the wider internet. Incoming connection requests have their destination address rewritten to a different one. Packets are then routed to a container or virtual machine instead. The same technique can be used for load-balancing where incoming connections get distributed among a pool of machines. Connection requests fail when network address translation is not working as expected. The wrong service is exposed, connections end up in the wrong container, request time out, and so on. One way to debug such problems is to check that the incoming request matches the expected or configured translation. # ⚓ Create_your_first_serverless_function_with_Red_Hat OpenShift_Serverless_Functions_–_Red_Hat_Developer⠀⇛ Serverless is a powerful and popular paradigm where you don’t have to worry about managing and maintaining your application infrastructure. In the serverless context, a function is a single-purpose piece of code created by the developer but run and monitored by the managed infrastructure. A serverless function’s value is its simplicity and swiftness, which can entice even those who don’t consider themselves developers. This article introduces you to Red Hat OpenShift Serverless Functions, a new developer preview feature in Red Hat OpenShift Serverless 1.11. I will provide an overview, then present two example applications demonstrating Serverless Functions with Node.js. Please check the OpenShift Serverless Functions Quick Start document for the example prerequisites. # ⚓ Bootlin_training_courses_for_beginning_of_2021_–_Bootlin’s blog⠀⇛ It’s the beginning of 2021, and Bootlin’s offering of online training courses continues. We have dates available for our 5 training courses, at an affordable cost, and with the same quality characteristics of all Bootlin courses: trainers with proven in-field experience, fully open-source training materials and worldwide recognized training contents. # ⚓ How_to_Check_port_is_Listening_or_currently_Use_in_Linux⠀⇛ Last week, we had a problem with our System through which I could not share my screen remotely from my network computer. Then we check the port status, and the port was closed. So, I thought many other Linux Folks also facing this kind of issue in every day. In this guide, We will show you how to check the port status in Linux and the method to close the unwanted port. o § Wine or Emulation⠀➾ # ⚓ Fifth_time_for_some_more_fixes_–_Wine_6.0_RC5_is_out_now⠀⇛ No squashed grapes here as the Wine team continue cleaning up ready for a huge new release of the Windows compatibility layer with Wine 6.0 Release Candidate 5 out now. Currently in a feature-freeze, this means no big new features go in, only the fixes needed for the release. o § Games⠀➾ # ⚓ OBS_Studio_looks_set_to_get_useful_Browser_Panel_Docking_in the_Linux_version⠀⇛ Are you a video content creator on Linux using OBS Studio? Chances are if you livestream you have lots of windows open for chat and all sorts and OBS Studio might be about to make that easier for you. There’s an open Pull Request on the OBS Studio page on GitHub (meaning it’s not in the project yet), which adds in the ability to add in dedicated web browser windows docked directly into OBS Studio. The idea is to bring the browser integration closer in parity to the Windows version. # ⚓ Godot_Engine_had_a_very_productive_2020,_lots_coming_to this_FOSS_game_engine_in_2021⠀⇛ Godot Engine is probably the most promising free and open source game engine around, and they clearly had a very productive 2020 with big plans for 2021. Just before the year was up, and as we took our holiday break, developer Fabio Alessandrelli wrote up about the ongoing and impressive progress on the Web Editor and the HTML5 export. The progress on it has been somewhat mind-blowing with it now having GDNative supported with HTML5 exports from Godot, and the web editor itself has now hit what they say is the Beta stage and you can try it out at this new temporary address. # ⚓ Mad_Max_and_Shadow_of_Mordor_delisted_for_Linux_and_macOS on_Steam_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ It seems Feral Interactive have a few less ports available to buy supported for Linux and macOS to start off 2021 with as both Mad Max and Shadow of Mordor have been delisted for both platforms. The change happened just before the end of 2020 on both titles, as seen on SteamDB (#1 – #2). On the macOS side, they lost even more as a few Lego titles also vanished and Batman: Arkham City too from mentioning macOS. Why? They all have a common publisher – Warner. Confirming this to me on Twitter, Feral Interactive stated “Hi, these games have been removed from sale on macOS/Linux due to their licenses expiring.”. # ⚓ FNA_dev_and_porter_Ethan_Lee_stops_future_macOS_ports, Linux_to_be_their_focus_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ Ethan Lee, the developer responsible for the XNA reimplementation FNA along with around 50 game ports to Linux and macOS has announced they’re stopping future macOS ports with a big update to a bunch of existing games. Don’t know who they are? You’ve probably played plenty of games either ported by them or running on tech created / maintained by them including: Streets of Rage 4, Superliminal, FEZ, Transistor, Rogue Legacy, Salt and Sanctuary, Owlboy and loads more. # ⚓ Latest_free_games_for_Stadia_Pro_out_now_includes_F1_2020, Hotline_Miami_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ As a new month has begun, Google has rolled out multiple new titles for subscribers of the optional Stadia Pro subscription. Here’s what they are and what else is to come to Stadia. While not quite as big as December 2020 which ended up giving Stadia Pro subscribers 9 games to claim overall, there’s still some good stuff going in. o § Desktop Environments/WMs⠀➾ # § K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt⠀➾ # ⚓ KDE_will_hopefully_have_a_‘Production-ready’_Wayland session_for_Plasma_in_2021⠀⇛ A KDE developer who regularly blogs about all the work going into the KDE ecosystem through the likes of the Plasma desktop environment and the various applications, has given an overview of what they expect to see through 2021. Sounds like there’s plenty of exciting work coming up for KDE and Plasma this year! Nate Graham mentions in the latest post that amongst other things, they might finally have a “Production-ready Plasma Wayland session”. A lot of work went into this through 2020 and before that Graham mentioned that it “felt like a mess” but a whole year of progress changed that. Through 2021 we can expect to see a “trend of serious, concentrated Wayland work to continue in 2021″ and to be in a better shape for more people to use. Quite a long time coming, as it’s been said that Wayland would replace X11 for years now and having KDE in top shape with it will certainly help push it forwards even more. o § Distributions⠀➾ # § New Releases⠀➾ # ⚓ Slackware-Based_Puppy_Linux_7.0_Adds_UEFI_Boot Support,_Many_Improvements⠀⇛ Designed to boot on any x86 computer, the Slackware-based Puppy Linux 7.0 distribution is here about three and a half years after the previous release with support for booting on 64-bit and 32-bit UEFI computers. Additionally, this release introduces experimental support for UEFI tools like efivar, efivarfs, mokutil, and sbsigntoo, as well as support for Puppy Linux’s FrugalPup installer to install the distribution on 64- bit or 32-bit UEFI and BIOS computers to either local disk drive, USB or SD/MMC devices. # ⚓ ExTiX_21.1_Released_based_on_latest_Deepin_Desktop_ [Review]⠀⇛ The ExTiX team announced the release of the latest version of the desktop – ExTiX 21.1 based on the latest Deepin desktop 20.1 which released a while ago. # ⚓ ExTiX_21.1_based_on_Deepin_20.1_Released_with_New Features_and_More_Improvements⠀⇛ ExTiX is a desktop Linux distribution based on Debian and Ubuntu that offers alternative desktop environments. It also comes with several pre-installed applications and system tools. Recently, the developer of ExTiX has announced the release of ExTiX Deepin 21.1, which is based on Deepin 20.1. Let’s take a look at what’s new with the release. In case you didn’t know, ExTiX is developed by Arne Exton, a Swedish developer who is quite known for Exton Linux distributions. ExTiX versions are usually based on Ubuntu with alternative desktop environments like LXQT and KDE. # § IBM/Red Hat/Fedora⠀➾ # ⚓ What_actions_do_you_take_when_patching_goes_wrong?_| Enable_Sysadmin⠀⇛ Patching and updating systems is a key step in reducing possible attack vectors against your infrastructure. When there are systems in your environment that are not up to date with patches, there could be attack vectors that you don’t know about potentially affecting your entire organization. However, what steps do you have in place for when a patching event doesn’t go as expected? For example, dependencies might not be met, there could be mismatched versions across i686 and x86_64 RPMs, new package versions might not work as expected, or something else might go wrong. When something goes wrong, it’s important to have a plan for how to proceed. This will reduce the stress level and ensure that everybody working on the task knows what the other people are doing. # ⚓ 8_Kubernetes_insights_for_2021⠀⇛ The end of the year is the perfect time to look back and explore where we’ve been and where we’re going in the Kubernetes world. I particularly want to focus on the ecosystem that formed around Kubernetes in 2020, which several great articles on Opensource.com covered. I’ll review them in the order they were published. It all started in February with a great article called Basic kubectl and Helm commands for beginners by Jessica Cherry. Jess introduces readers to two simple tools to get started with Kubernetes: kubectl, technically part of Kubernetes, and Helm, which makes it easier to install and set up applications on Kubernetes. These tools are extremely useful for new Kubernetes users. In March, Lee Carpenter wrote about Directing Kubernetes traffic with Traefik. The article gives a good background on how networking works in Kubernetes and how to configure things in the application definition (Kube YAML). Before reading Lee’s article, I hadn’t tracked Kubernetes networking closely for a while, and I learned that Traefik comes preconfigured now as an Ingress controller. Very cool. # ⚓ 10_ways_Ansible_is_for_everyone_|_Opensource.com⠀⇛ Here we are again at the end of another year with a great set of articles about Ansible from Opensource.com. I thought it would be nice to review them in a series of progressively advancing topics. I hope to help stimulate the interest of people just getting started with Ansible. There were also a series of summary articles, which I’ve included for your casual follow-up. # ⚓ Paving_The_Road_Ahead_For_A_Better_Ride⠀⇛ We always sit behind the wheel of the present as we drive to the future with our baggage from the past in the trunk. It is with this in mind that we contemplate 2021 and the uncertainty of regional, national, and global economies as well as how the coronavirus pandemic will be handled around the world in some pretty tricky political climates. These forces will affect all IBM i customers, of course, and we are not so much interested in describing all of these complex turbulences as they intertwine. What we do want to do is provide a few ideas as we start this new year to help get the IBM i community to a place with a better climate, which we all know of out there. This is not a wish list or a New Year’s resolution as such, but rather a listing of ideas that we think can be implemented that will increase the viability and resilience of the IBM i base and therefore Big Blue’s own IBM i business as well as the many downstream software and services companies that live in the IBM i community. The very first thing that Big Blue can do, and this is so simple, is to admit that among enterprise customers, the IBM i base is still its very largest enterprise computing customer base. There may be millions of licenses of Red Hat Enterprise Linux out there, but we would guess – and we have to because neither Red Hat nor IBM has ever given us a customer count – that there are still, at somewhere around 120,000 unique customers worldwide, more IBM i customers than there are Red Hat customers in the enterprise. (We are not counting supercomputing facilities and massive server farms at the telcos and service providers here, and besides, there are only a few thousand supercomputing centers worldwide and probably only a thousand or so relatively large service providers at that.) So what we want, right off the bat, is for Arvind Krishna, IBM’s chief executive officer since April 2020, right when the coronavirus pandemic was really kicking in, and for James Kavanaugh, its chief financial officer, to actually talk about the IBM i business and its customers like they matter to International Business Machines. Not IBM Systems customers, not Power Systems customers, not Cognitive Systems customers, but IBM i customers. Let the IBM I customer base know that they are on the CEO’s and CFO’s radar, and that they matter. That leads me to the next thing I want IBM and its Power Systems channel partners to do. I want IBM to actually make a concerted effort to identify the workloads that are running on X86 iron at IBM i shops and figure out ways to either port this code to Power Systems through integrated runtimes or find alternatives running on Linux partitions. There is a vast amount of work that can be brought back onto Power iron, and it is amazing to me that Big Blue doesn’t even try to do this. If the market is going to shift to Linux and away from Windows Server in the long run for many kinds of workloads – and that is what it looks like to me from the trend data – then get on the front of that curve and help drive Power Systems as well as Red Hat revenues using IBM i shops as the testbed for this. # ⚓ 5_Things_to_Know_About_IBM’s_New_Tape_Storage_World Record⠀⇛ Data has been around for thousands of years in physical form, all the way back to cave paintings where primitive civilizations innovated ways to preserve tribal memories. The human race’s quest for knowledge, and with it the inexorable and exponential growth of data, has required ever more sophisticated ways of storing, securing and retrieving information. Even as new technologies have arrived, tape media has proven to be one of the most secure, most reliable and most enduring ways to store data. Tape has progressed a long way since the reel-to-reel images one might think of from the 1960s. Today’s tape technologies are the cornerstone of the world’s largest enterprises and hyperscale cloud providers because of the cost, security and durability. At IBM, we continue to reinvent tape, from working with the largest hyperscale providers to future proofing the technology for decades to come. # ⚓ IBM_Sets_New_Tape_Storage_Record⠀⇛ IBM recently demonstrated a new record in magnetic tape storage capabilities. With this new milestone, scientists “discovered that a single tape cartridge has the potential to store about 580 terabytes (TB) of data.” To help put that into perspective, IBM says, “580 TB is equivalent to 786,977 CDs stacked 944 meters high, which is taller than Burj Kalifa, the world’s tallest building.” # § Debian Family⠀➾ # ⚓ Septor_Linux_2021_Released_With_Kernel_5.9.15_And_KDE Plasma_5.20.4⠀⇛ As we enter the new year, a brand new edition of Septor Linux distribution has been released with upgraded applications and an upstream distribution version. For those who don’t know, Septor Linux is a Debian GNU/Linux-based operating system that aims to provide a private computing environment for surfing the Internet anonymously. # ⚓ Emmabuntüs_Debian_Edition_4_Distro_Sees_Second_Alpha Release_Featuring_Xfce_4.16⠀⇛ Coming more than eight months after the first alpha release, Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 4 alpha 2 is based on Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” alpha 3 and features the recently released and awesome Xfce 4.16 desktop environment. If you want to get a taste of Xfce 4.16 and your current GNU/Linux distribution doesn’t offer it in its software repositories, you can download the Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 4 alpha 2 release and run it live from a USB stick. o § Devices/Embedded⠀➾ # ⚓ 100_Allwinner_A20_EOMA68_CPU_cards_manufactured_for testing⠀⇛ Last week, and technically last year, we wrote Dragonbox Pyra open-source hardware handheld Linux PC was ready to ship after 6 years in the making, and 4 years after initial pre-orders, highlighting that such projects can take a long time. But it’s not the only project to have suffered from long delays, but still slowly getting things done. Rhombus Tech started working on earth-friendly EOMA68 (Embedded Open Modular Architecture Standard) computing cards based on the 68-pin PCMCIA form factor in 2012, before launching Allwinner A20 based EOMA68 cards on Crowd Supply in 2016 together with laptop and micro PC shells. # ⚓ AMD_Ryzen_Embedded_V2000_mini-STX_SBC_to_power_gaming machines,_digital_signage,_PoS…⠀⇛ While the main change against the earlier Ryzen V1000/R1000 mini-STX SBC’s is clearly the new choice of processors, there were some other small modifications including an extra USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port, a USB 2.0 header, an SPI header, and it looks like the M.2 socket does not support SATA anymore, but only NVMe SSD’s. SAPPHIRE V2000 FS-FP6 mini-ITX SBC is said to be best suited for high resolution visual embedded applications such as electronic gaming machines, medical imaging, interactive digital signage, thin clients, POS terminals, etc… The company does not mention OS support, but being an x86 platform for embedded applications, I’d assume both Windows 10 and Linux distributions are supported. # § Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ Promote_your_love_for_Android_while_learning_a_new skill_from_Google⠀⇛ # ⚓ OnePlus_reveals_eligible_phones_and_release_schedule for_Oxygen_OS_11⠀⇛ # ⚓ Xiaomi_Mi_11_has_winning_display_technology_that rivals_the_best⠀⇛ # ⚓ PSA:_Android_11_will_no_longer_let_you_connect_to some_enterprise_WiFi_networks⠀⇛ # ⚓ Xiaomi_halts_Android_11_rollout_on_Mi_A3⠀⇛ # ⚓ TWRP_3.5.0_adds_support_for_more_Android_10_devices including_Pixel_4,_Note_10_series⠀⇛ # ⚓ With_Snapdragon_480_5G,_Qualcomm_paves_way_for cheaper,_faster_Android⠀⇛ # ⚓ 9_Best_Fixes_for_Google_Podcasts_Not_Downloading Episodes_Error_on_Android⠀⇛ # ⚓ Best_controller_for_iPhone_and_Android⠀⇛ # ⚓ Android_11,_One_UI_3.0_update_is_more_widely disseminated_in_the_states_to_Galaxy_S20_series⠀⇛ # ⚓ [Update:_Jan._04]_Samsung_Android_11_(One_UI_3.0) update_tracker:_Galaxy_devices_that_have_received_the beta/stable_OS_so_far⠀⇛ # ⚓ Nokia_5.3,_Nokia_8.1_to_soon_receive_Android_11 update⠀⇛ # ⚓ OnePlus_Nord,_OnePlus_7,_and_OnePlus_7T_Series Smartphones_Will_Be_Getting_OxygenOS_11_Next,_Company Confirms⠀⇛ # ⚓ Android_10_update_rolled_out_for_Redmi_7_in_India⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_generate_a_QR_Code_using_Google_Chrome_for Android_for_websites⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_Set_Google_Photos_as_a_Screensaver_on_Android TV⠀⇛ # ⚓ Top_10_Best_Android_Apps_January_2021⠀⇛ # ⚓ [Working]_5_Ways_to_Fix_Bluetooth_Not_Working_on Android_Issue⠀⇛ o § Free, Libre, and Open Source Software⠀➾ # ⚓ Ardour_Digital_Audio_Workstation_Finally_Exploiting_Intel/ AMD_FMA_For_More_Performance_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ The Ardour open-source, cross-platform digital audio workstation rung in 2021 by mainlining support for using Intel/AMD FMA functionality for greater performance. FMA3 has been supported by CPUs for years going back to AMD Piledriver and Intel Haswell for fused multiply-add. Now in 2021, Ardour is supporting optional usage of FMA on capable processors. The initial use-case for FMA in Ardour is for the multiply accumulate operations within audio channel mixing. The initial code was found to indeed reduce the number of CPU instructions as a result during the channel mixing. # ⚓ Private_Patreon_Public_Beta⠀⇛ This is built on Woocommerce, just like the rest of my store. The software is a $398 annual fee. If everyone was to switch from Patreon to direct, it would more than cover the expense. I don’t expect that to happen. But many folks have said that they’d patronize me if they didn’t have to go through Patreon. I expect most of them were just spewing hot air, but here’s their chance. If I can come close to breaking with Patreon fees, I’ll consider it a win. Disintermediation is valuable in and of itself. # ⚓ Commenting_via_Mastodon!⠀⇛ Following Carl Schwann’s post, I have now enabled comments on my blog, starting with this post. It’s surprisingly simple for someone who has not done much mucking around with Hugo before! If you’re also using Hugo, here’s how I did mine: [...] # § CMS⠀➾ # ⚓ 19_Free_open-source_self-hosted_Invoicing_and_billing solutions⠀⇛ In a dynamic business environment invoices are created regularly and require custom workflow according to the enterprise business process. Invoice and order management solutions are built to manage billing and invoicing documents generally. Some of them manage orders and post-sale subscription billing. Most of ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) solutions include invoice, billing and order management features. # § Openness/Sharing/Collaboration⠀➾ # § Open Access/Content⠀➾ # ⚓ A_new_mandate_highlights_costs,_benefits_of making_all_scientific_articles_free_to_read⠀⇛ The group, which calls itself Coalition S, has fallen short of its initial aspiration to catalyze a truly international movement, however. Officials in three top producers of scientific papers—China, India, and the United States—have expressed general support for open access, but have not signed on to Plan S. Its mandate for immediate open access will apply to authors who produced only about 6% of the world’s papers in 2017, according to an estimate by the Clarivate analytics firm, publisher of the Web of Science database. # § Programming/Development⠀➾ # ⚓ The_GAMECHANGING_features_of_PHP_8!⠀⇛ I’m excited about PHP 8! In this video we explore 10 of the most EXCITING new features in this NEW version of PHP! # ⚓ Software_will_eat_Hollywood._Whose_software?⠀⇛ Much of that disruption is due to how content is produced. A traditionally produced blockbuster movie can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and can take up to a year in CGI and other task after the last shot. Software hugely costs those costs, together with production times and economics risks. It’s software that makes it possible to produce and distribute a whole eight-episodes season of The Mandalorian, make millions of people worldwide watch it at a cost of about 120 USD millions. # ⚓ Software_development_stuck_in_the_1990s⠀⇛ MIT research fellow Jonathan Edwards has warned that while software “is eating the world. But progress in software technology itself largely stalled around 1996″. Writing in his bog he said that in 1996 there were LISP, Algol, Basic, APL, Unix, C, Oracle, Smalltalk, Windows, C++, LabView, HyperCard, Mathematica, Haskell, WWW, Python, Mosaic, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Flash, Postgress [sic] and afterwards it was expected to have been IntelliJ, Eclipse, ASP, Spring, Rails, Scala, AWS, Clojure, Heroku, V8, Go, React, Docker, Kubernetes, Wasm. However all that stalled in the internet boom around 1996 that caused this slowdown because programmers could get rich quick. Then smart and ambitious people moved into Silicon Valley, and founded startups. # ⚓ Learn_Fortran_by_writing_a_“guess_the_number”_game_| Opensource.com⠀⇛ The first compiled programming language I learned was Fortran 77. While growing up, I taught myself how to write programs in BASIC on the Apple II and later in QBasic on DOS. But when I went to university to study physics, I learned Fortran. Fortran used to be quite common in scientific computing. And once upon a time, all computer systems had a Fortran compiler. Fortran used to be as ubiquitous as Python is today. So if you were a physics student like me, working in the 1990s, you learned Fortran. # § Perl/Raku⠀➾ # ⚓ Let_us_Have_a_Productive_Year_of_2021⠀⇛ In February, I started to join “The Weekly Challenge”(PWC in short, as initially it was called “Perl Weekly Challenge” while the name “Perl6″ hadn’t been replaced by Raku). Then I slowly involved in the Perl community as a beginner. At first, my codes are messy! I have forgotten from where I heard of Perl Best Practices(by Damian Conway; btw, I have to revisit it again), and adopted some of its advice. And then I read more codes and decided to maintain my code more modularized and structured; in addition, I have learnt to use the unit testing package in Perl (thanks to Perl Monks). At a very early time, I just want to use programming for my ameteur mathematician dream. My codes are encouraged by the code reviewer Ryan as “analytic”. The second week I joined PWC, I hit on my favorite stuff ‒ number theory in math. I provided a different but optimized solution. [1] It started a series of email conversations with Ryan Thompson. Besides “hard knowledge” of Perl I learnt from the discussion, I started blogging here with his encouragement. # § Rust⠀➾ # ⚓ Feeling_a_little_Rusty?_v1.49_arrives_just_in time_for_new_year’s,_elbows_language_onto_64-bit Arm⠀⇛ As usual, the Rust language update also includes a new release of Cargo. This time, Rust’s package manager has learned to build independently reproducible crates with cargo-package, and accept glob patterns for package and target specifications. Version 1.49 also includes a new build-time environment variable called CARGO_PRIMARY_PACKAGE for indicating “root packages requested on the command-line”. This is meant to be especially helpful when using the –fix flag, since it can let lint collection clippy know when to not emit lints to reduce problems in that particular scenario. Speaking of clippy, the collection gained a variety of false positive fixes, and 17 new lints since the last release to help finding issues like loops with just one element, inefficient calls to Mutex::lock, or the integration of less than ideal methods. The lint for identifying drop_bounds has been uplifted into rustc and was therefore deprecated in clippy, while single_char_push_str was renamed to single_char_add_str and zero_width_space is now known as invisible_characters. Developers looking for string_lit_as_bytes or rc_buffer will need to turn to nursery or restriction respectively, as those lints have been moved there. Before making the switch to Rust 1.49, a brief look into the compatibility notes is advised, since changes in the stripping of whitespaces in comments or treatment of macros ending in semi- colons might lead to slightly different behaviour of old programs. * § Leftovers⠀➾ o ⚓ The_Invisible_Shepherd⠀⇛ Happy Twenty Twenty-one We need to hit the pharmacy and pick up some free calendars — the word you know’s from Latin calendarium, account book that’s a book of debts and book’s from beech the tree of death — but, seriously Economy, the Nomos, springs Instead from trees of dogma All of which’ll grow into a labyrinth An invisible shepherd That shepherds you through — Nomos, from nemein, land capture For pasture The nomeus, the shepherd, is a colonizer Exploiter of earth and sheep alike Spreader of strife, and disease, Polluting and looting Your skin, your eyes The other tree, of Physis, Is the tree of life, the tree of ease Whose leaves, says John of Patmos, Are the medicine of the people And just as Nomos pollutes the land And poisons skies and seas Physis, physician, the healer, as the remedy Spreads ease and frees This desecrated Eden o ⚓ Like_Falling_Flowers⠀⇛ These seasonal reflections have me thinking a lot about the state of our world and what we might expect for this new year. I wonder about further glacial melting and rising sea levels in a place like this – as I think all of us around the world who live on islands should. These days though, it feels differently, that all around us, there are heavy stones of despair falling on our heads and between endless wars and climatological disasters looming, one wonders about relief. Any relief. Will the summer come again? Will it continue to be warmer than the last, thus, up here, wetter? Or will it simply be another casualty of the stop and go effects of warmer global temperatures and bring us earlier falls, and even deeper, darker winters? Will sanity rule our politicians? Will there be attempts to stop wars, to forgive debt, create new possibilities out of despair and maybe restore a little hope for a better tomorrow? I do not know, but I have my doubts. So a number of images came to mind as I sat on this eerily quiet January first, all of them potential responses or reactions to the enormity of the new world we face. o ⚓ Same_Procedure_as_Every_Year:_The_Story_of_“Dinner_for_One”⠀⇛ This 90th birthday is characterised by notable absences. After nine decades, mortality has done its bit of gathering.  The venerable lady has been left the sole survivor of a circle of beloved friends.  The bawdy subtext here is that they are all males and must have been a rather naughty crew at that.  She misses them, and longs for their company. The task for James seems, at least initially, innocuous. The table, with Miss Sophie at the head, is set for the spectral guests: Admiral von Schneider, Mr Pomeroy, Sir Toby and Mr Winterbottom.  James assumes the role of each of the departed, standing before each empty seat for each course that will be served.  “They are all here, Miss Sophie,” begins James.  But his task is not merely to mimic them and assume their persona with conviction; he is also required to drink their share.  The task is formidable, challenging both sobriety and liver.  A different set of drinks must accompany the servings for the phantom guests: sherry with the mulligatawny soup; white wine with the fish; champagne with the bird; port with the fruit. o ⚓ Our_need_for_rituals,_and_one_thing_that_really_upsets_it_|_Stop at_Zona-M⠀⇛ Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails. [That] definition, as clever as it is, almost seems to suggest that rituals are merely instrumental. But “We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world… They are to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable.” Rituals are the process by which we fully inhabit time in the way that humans are meant to. Do we experience time in clicks? In bandwidth? In quantifiable streams of data, raw and mindlessly accumulating? o § Science⠀➾ # ⚓ Physics_of_Fluids⠀⇛ As a first entry to my blog I plan to have a series on simulating fluids in Computer Graphics. The first blog posts will be a theoretical introduction to the physical model of fluids, the Navier-Stokes equations. After this I plan to write an article about different ways for fluid simulations in Computer Graphics. The last part of the series should be about implementation details of an actual fluid simulation. Critiques and comments are welcomed. # ⚓ I_do_not_see_Artificial_intelligence_here⠀⇛ Rows of images of baby photograps, only baby photographs, with no results at all about that quote? Huh? Now it is perfectly possible, quite likely actually, that no legally usable version of that shot and quote exist. I mean, OK, sure, everybody who deserved compensation for any creative contribution to that movie is surely long dead by now. But why on Earth should such an insignificant detail hurt the stranglehold Hollywood, and all monopolistic publishers and media, have on culture? o § Education⠀➾ # ⚓ What_If_Free_School_Meals_Became_the_Norm_After_the Pandemic_Ends?⠀⇛ o § Hardware⠀➾ # ⚓ [Old] EU_Signs_€145bn_Declaration_to_Develop_Next_Gen Processors_and_2nm_Technology⠀⇛ Among the itemized points in the declaration, the states agreed to focus on the design ecosystem, supply chain capabilities and first industrial deployment of advanced semiconductor technologies, including scaling towards leading-edge process technologies for processor chips. It also plans to work towards common standards and, where appropriate, certification for trusted electronics, as well as common requirements for procurement of secure chips and embedded systems in applications that rely on or make extensive use of chip technology. The 17 member states who signed the declaration are: Belgium, France, Germany, Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Greece, Malta, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Finland, [and] Cyprus o § Health/Nutrition⠀➾ # ⚓ Opinion_|_America_Was_Always_Going_to_Bungle_the_Vaccine Rollout⠀⇛ “It isn’t hard to think up a simple set of rules that would ensure shots are going into arms as quickly as possible.” # ⚓ Looking_back_on_2020:_Too_many_physicians_behaving_badly⠀⇛ As I sat down yesterday to write this post, it suddenly occurred to me: This will be my first post of 2021. Out of curiosity about the year that just ended, I scrolled back to my very first (substantive) post in 2020 and noticed that it was a about crowdfunding cancer quackery through GoFundMe, with the second post being about the goop lab on Netflix and the third being about a bogus attempt by an antivaxxer to claim that antivax parents could get a medical exemption to school vaccine mandates just by lying about their child having had an anaphylactic reaction to a vaccine. Worthy topics, all, but nonetheless I couldn’t help but think, How quaint. I then realized that it was around that time that what later came to be known as SARS-CoV-2 but then was known just as the novel coronavirus that had first emerged in Wuhan, China was just a blip on the world news. True, by the end of January I had deconstructed the very first conspiracy theory about COVID-19 that I had encountered, namely that a larger-than-usual use of the influenza vaccine in China had led to an increased susceptibility to the novel coronavirus, thus starting the outbreak that was to turn into our current pandemic. It was a strangely precise claim that I ended up revisiting and refuting again and again. Sadly, to this day, the claim that the flu vaccine increases your susceptibility to COVID- 19 by 36% remains one of those viral bits of pandemic disinformation that just won’t die, and I still see it popping up from time to time. Worse, it’s a claim that was popularized by a physician. # ⚓ Emergence_of_New_COVID_Variant_Reflects_Critical_Need_for Vaccination⠀⇛ # ⚓ Reverse_Engineering_Source_Code_of_the_Biontech_Pfizer Vaccine:_Part_2⠀⇛ In short: the vaccine mRNA has been optimized by the manufacturer by changing bits of RNA from (say) UUU to UUC, and people would like to understand the logic behind these changes. This challenge is quite close to what cryptologists and reverse engineering people encounter regularly. On this page, you’ll find all the details you need to get cracking to reverse engineer just HOW the vaccine has been optimized. I thought this would just be a fun puzzle, but I have just been informed that figuring out the optimization procedure & documenting it is tremendously important for researchers around the world, as this would help them design code for proteins and vaccines. So, if you want to help vaccine research, do read on! # ⚓ FarmVille_Once_Took_Over_Facebook._Now_Everything_Is FarmVille.⠀⇛ Then, that June, came FarmVille. If you weren’t among the tens of millions of people tending a cartoon patch of land on Facebook each day, piling up an endless stream of cutesy collectibles, you were still getting copious nags and nudges from your friends asking for help. The game either pulled Facebook users into an obsession or persistently reminded them that they were missing out on one. # ⚓ In_bloody_year_for_U.S._cities,_Akron_lost_several_children to_gun_violence⠀⇛ Jeff Asher, a New Orleans-based crime analyst, has been chronicling the crime data from 57 cities with populations over 250,000 people. Murders are up 36 percent through at least September compared to 2019, he said. “It’s not as bad as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, but I’m not sure it’s fair to compare it to the worst period in modern history,” said Asher, a former CIA analyst. o § Integrity/Availability⠀➾ # § Proprietary⠀➾ # § Security⠀➾ # ⚓ Thoughts_On_Flash⠀⇛ Flash had to die. It had too many knocks against it years before it finally met its maker this week, and the internet moved forward without it. But the groundbreaking internet plugin’s death in many ways reflects a win in favor of a more technical, more methodical internet, one where systems are built to work efficiently, rather than experimental playthings that kind of sit in their own space. In a world where the conventions of user experience win out more times than not, Flash was simply about being creative at the start. And that made it divisive. Today’s Tedium, the first of 2021, ponders the departure of an old friend from our digital lives—and what we might have lost in the process. # ⚓ Grid_regulator_warns_utilities_of_risk_of SolarWinds_backdoor,_asks_how_exposed_they_are⠀⇛ The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), a not-for-profit regulatory authority backed by the U.S. and Canadian governments, said in a Dec. 22 advisory to electric utilities that there was no evidence indicating that the malicious tampering of SolarWinds software had impacted power systems. But the fact that software made by Texas-based firm SolarWinds is used in the electric sector has made vigilance important, according to NERC. # ⚓ Microsoft_Says_‘SolarWinds’_[Crackers]_Viewed Internal_Code⠀⇛ Microsoft acknowledged Thursday that attackers who spearheaded a massive hack of government and private computer networks gained access to its internal “source code,” a key building block for its software. # ⚓ Microsoft_says_SolarWinds_[attackers]_accessed company_source_code⠀⇛ It’s also noteworthy that Microsoft’s approach to source code “means we do not rely on the secrecy of source code for the security of products, and our threat models assume that attackers have knowledge of source code,” the post said. “So viewing source code isn’t tied to elevation of risk.” # ⚓ SolarWinds_Hackers_Viewed_Microsoft’s_Source Code [Ed: Swapnil and team as megaphones of Microsoft face-saving spin]⠀⇛ Microsoft has revealed that the nation state group behind the recent SolarWinds cyberattack managed to view source code repositories for some of the company’s products. The tech giant said it detected malicious SolarWinds applications in its environment, which the company isolated and removed. # ⚓ Microsoft_Says_Russian_[Crackers]_Viewed_Some of_Its_Source_Code⠀⇛ The [attack], which may be ongoing, appears to have begun as far back as October 2019. That was when [crackers] breached the Texas company SolarWinds, which provides technology monitoring services to government agencies and 425 of the Fortune 500 companies. The compromised software was then used to penetrate the Commerce, Treasury, State and Energy Departments, along with FireEye, a top cybersecurity firm that first revealed the breach this past month. # ⚓ Linux_Pentesting:_What_Is_It_and_How_Can_It Improve_Network_Security?⠀⇛ When setting up and testing a network security system, it is critical to make sure it is working properly and free from vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious hackers. The best way to improve and guarantee the security of your network and prevent attacks is by continuously testing it for potential flaws – which is where pentesting comes in quite handy. This article will introduce the concept of pentesting to improve and verify network security, explain basic pentesting methodology and explore some excellent pentesting tools, distros and OSes available to Linux users in 2021. [...] Pentesting, or the practice of staging cyberattacks that mimic legitimate security incidents, can help improve network security by allowing administrators to identify and improve weak points in network security systems, and verify that the modifications they make are working as they should to prevent future attacks. There are many excellent tools, distros and OSes designed to assist in the pentesting process available to Linux users – Kali Linux, Parrot Security OS, Nmap and WebShag being among our favorites. Pentesting requires careful planning and methodology, and should be one element of a comprehensive, defense-in-depth approach to network security. # ⚓ Security_updates_for_Monday⠀⇛ Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, dovecot, flac, influxdb, libhibernate3-java, and p11- kit), Fedora (ceph and guacamole- server), Mageia (audacity, gdm, libxml2, rawtherapee, and vlc), openSUSE (jetty-minimal and privoxy), Red Hat (kernel and kernel-rt), SUSE (gimp), and Ubuntu (libproxy). # ⚓ mdBook_security_advisory⠀⇛ The Rust Security Response Working Group was recently notified of a security issue affecting the search feature of mdBook, which could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary JavaScript code on the page. [...] The search feature of mdBook (introduced in version 0.1.4) was affected by a cross site scripting vulnerability that allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary JavaScript code on an user’s browser by tricking the user into typing a malicious search query, or tricking the user into clicking a link to the search page with the malicious search query prefilled. mdBook 0.4.5 fixes the vulnerability by properly escaping the search query. # ⚓ What_Is_The_SSL_Certificate_And_How_To_Get It?⠀⇛ SSL certificates have become crucial for any website. You can get an SSL certificate for free with the help of LetsEncrypt and SSL for free. If your site has subdomains, you can get a wildcard SSL as well. # § Privacy/Surveillance⠀➾ # ⚓ Banning_Government_Use_of_Face Recognition_Technology:_2020_Year_in Review⠀⇛ On January 9, after first calling and threatening to arrest him at work, Detroit police officers traveled to nearby Farmington Hills to arrest Robert Williams in front of his wife, children, and neighbors—for a crime he did not commit. He was erroneously connected by face recognition technology that matched an image of Mr. Williams with video from a December 2018 shoplifting incident. Later this year, Detroit police erroneously arrested a second man because of another misidentification by face recognition technology. For Robert Williams, his family, and millions of Black and brown people throughout the country, the research left the realm of the theoretical and became all too real. Experts at MIT Media Lab, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology have shown that face recognition technology is riddled with error, especially for people of color. It is one more of a long line of police tools and practices that exacerbate historical bias in the criminal system. 2020 will undoubtedly come to be known as the year of the pandemic. It will also be remembered for unprecedented Black-led protest against police violence and concerns that surveillance of political activity will chill our First Amendment rights. Four cities joined the still-growing list of communities that have stood up for their residents’ rights by banning local government use of face recognition. Just days after Mr. Williams’ arrest, Cambridge, MA—an East Coast research and technology hub–became the largest East Coast City to ban government use of face recognition technology. It turned out to be a distinction they wouldn’t retain long. # ⚓ Spot_the_Surveillance:_How_to_Identify Police_Surveillance_at_Protests_and_Large Gatherings⠀⇛ The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Kurt Opsahl with show you how to identify surveillance technologies that law enforcement may use at protests and other public gathering to spying on people exercising their fundamental rights. Learn how to spot the surveillance so you can advocate effectively for the policies necessary to protect your rights and bring transparency to the police surveillance. # ⚓ Brexit_Deal_Mandates_Old_Insecure_Crypto Algorithms⠀⇛ In what is surely an unthinking cut-and-paste issue, page 921 of the Brexit deal mandates the use of SHA-1 and 1024-bit RSA: [...] # ⚓ Alexa,_who_else_is_listening?⠀⇛ This talk investigates smart assistants like Alexa and Siri. For half a year we collected in an experiment our own Alexa voice data, analyzed and investigated it. We deeply looked into accidental triggers. These are words and sentences which wake Alexa and Siri up, even if they shouldn’t. Every time for a couple of seconds, audio data, is transmitted to Amazon or Apple. And as it is widely known, real people are listening to that. Sex, children, employers talking to their bosses – we met whistleblowers and transcribers, who have worked for the big tech companies. They improve the artificial intelligence of smart speakers for the price of private eavesdropping. The analyzed metadata revealed even more how deep smart speakers intrude your private sphere – and that in the end Amazon, Apple and Google will know (nearly) everything about you. Disclaimer: This research was part of a journalistic research, which was already published in june 2020. # ⚓ Wrong_About_Signal⠀⇛ Signal has been moving in the direction of adding PINs for some time because they realize the danger of relying on the phone number system. Signal just mandated PINs for everyone as part of that switch. Good for security? I really don’t think so. They did it so you could recover some bits of “profile, settings, and who you’ve blocked”. [...] In summary, Signal got people to hastily create or reuse PINs for minimal disclosed security benefits. There is a possibility that the push for mandatory cloud based PINS despite all of the pushback is that Signal knows of active attacks that these PINs would protect against. It likely would be related to using phone numbers. I’m trying out the Element which uses the open Matrix network. I’m not actively encouraging others to join me, but just exploring the communities that exist there. It’s already more featureful and supports more platforms than Signal ever did. # ⚓ Should_you_allow_telemetry? [Ed: Surveillance by any other name...]⠀⇛ Let’s start the year with some important philosophy – an article discussing the pros and cons of data telemetry in software products, including functional and financial objectives, indirect and direct data analysis, personal and non- personal data, privacy implications, data leaks, product quality, and more. All your base are belong to us. Enjoy. # ⚓ Downloading_Twitter_Data_or_Not⠀⇛ At this rate I already forgot why I initiated the download in the first place! I am old. Then I remembered, I’m only doing this because I was having a chat with some friends, and mentioned a tweet I’d sent about 10 or so years back, but couldn’t find it online. With the download taking so long, I decided to investigate Twitter search a little further. I had previously been searching for it with the only word I could recall, “chopper”, but turned up no results. With a fresh, New Year brain I remembered another word from the tweet – “spooks”. Boom! found it. o § Defence/Aggression⠀➾ # ⚓ OPCW_chief_dodges_questions_on_Syria_cover-up_after_new leaks,_attacks_on_whistleblowers⠀⇛ # ⚓ Nomination_of_Julian_Assange,_Chelsea_Manning_and_Edward Snowden_for_the_2021_Nobel_Peace_Prize⠀⇛ Our hope lies in lives like those of Chelsea, Ed and Julian, their altruism helping restore our faith in ourselves and in our brothers and sisters everywhere. We allow ourselves to be inspired by their courage and example as they motivate us to act. If they are capable of such great acts of love, maybe we too can do something for others – at least we can try to keep the Golden Rule, ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’ (which all religions preach). We each can try to do no harm, and try to do what is right.Chelsea Manning, as an American soldier based in Iraq, could not go along with the murder of Iraqi civilians. Julian Assange, as a publisher, had to do his duty and disclose facts of the Iraqi and Afghan wars to the public. Edward Snowden, working in U.S. intelligence, could not remain silent knowing that his government was carrying out illegal surveillance of US citizens and world governments.They could have remained silent but chose the hard road to tell the truth. Now they are being punished cruelly and vindictively by those who broke international laws, the very people who should be held responsible for the deaths of children and civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen…Currently Assange is in Belmarsh Prison, UK, facing extradition charges to USA, as the British government cooperates with the American Grand Jury to condemn him (an Australian citizen and publisher) to cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment, which could even lead to the death penalty.Even more insidious, with a few honourable exceptions, the Main Stream Media–if not silent at the unjust torture of Assange by the UK and US governments–collude in the abuse of Assange, a fellow publisher. If Assange is extradited to USA to stand trial and imprisoned for truth telling, thereafter no reporter, newspaper or publisher in the world will be safe from the same treatment by the USA and other repressive governments opposed to public accountability and scrutiny. Snowden is seeking asylum in Moscow (Russia have just granted him citizenship to help protect his life) and is unable to return to his home in the USA lest he be arrested and confined to an American prison for life.Manning is in an American prison, having been re-arrested and held because she courageously refuses to give testimony against Assange. All of these three Champions of Peace followed their consciences, did their duty with love. I am sure that they were afraid, but they endured their Dark Nights of the Soul, they each did something beautiful and magnificent in service of others. We must all be grateful for their uplifting spirits.The Nobel Committee could protect and help save the lives of these three champions of peace by awarding them the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. By doing so you would honour the will of Nobel, in acknowledging true heroes of Peace. The Nobel committee would also give great hope to publishers, journalists, writers, and many who face repression and persecution by their governments as they struggle to be the writers of truth and history of humanity. Thank you. Peace, Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate # ⚓ 100_Dead_in_Attacks_on_Two_Villages_in_West_Niger⠀⇛ The two villages are about 120 kilometers north of the capital, Niamey, in the Tillabéri region, bordering Mali and Burkina Faso. This region known as “the three borders” has been regularly targeted for years by jihadi groups. # ⚓ Pakistan_coal_miners_kidnapped_and_killed_in_IS_attack⠀⇛ The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the killing of 11 coal miners in the western Pakistani province of Balochistan. # ⚓ Situationer:_Mourning_the_butchered⠀⇛ Though sectarian violence has decreased the number of Hazara coal miners in Balochistan in one and half decades, there is still a sizeable number of them in Mach and other coal mines in the province, who are compelled to work as coal miners due to economic crunch. Their economic activities in Quetta have dwindled to their ghettoised communities in eastern and western parts of the city: Marriabad and Hazara Town. # ⚓ Minorities_protest_torching_of_Hindu_shrine⠀⇛ The participants said the historical building was set on fire by people due to negligence of the local police, and demanded of the provincial government to take action against the district police officer, the DSP and the area SHO. The people did not act all of a sudden as they had had planned it in advance, but the police did not take notice, they lamented. The protesters said the destruction of the historical shrine had caused serious unrest among the Hindu community. They urged the government to ensure protection to the people and their worship places. The minority community members expressed satisfaction over the suo motu notice taken by the Chief Justice of Pakistan. o § Environment⠀➾ # ⚓ Taiwan_addresses_water_shortages_following_unusually_dry year⠀⇛ Last year marked the first time since 1964 that a typhoon did not hit Taiwan during flood season which is from May to November, said Wang Yi-feng (王藝峰), deputy director-general of the Water Resources Agency (WRA). As a result, there were only 661 millimeters of rainfall from June to November, an all-time-low, compared with average annual rainfall in the period of 1,635 mm, WRA data showed. During the fall, Feitsui Reservoir in New Taipei and Shihmen Reservoir in Taoyuan saw their water storage level fall to 48 percent and 43 percent, respectively, according to the agency. In response, the government introduced a raft of measures, including ceasing water supplies for agricultural irrigation in some regions south of Taoyuan. # ⚓ One_in_Three_US_Rivers_Changed_Colors_Between_1984_and 2018⠀⇛ o § Finance⠀➾ # ⚓ Opinion_|_Want_Bargaining_Rights_With_That?⠀⇛ “We can now say that New York City is the first place in the country where fast-food workers will no longer be at-will employees.” # ⚓ The_Marxist_Pioneer⠀⇛ Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2020. 213 pp., $74.99 When the French left looks at its founders, the socialist Jean Jaurès is often fondly remembered as a great orator, historian, and a champion of peace who was murdered for that belief in 1914. By contrast, his Marxist contemporary, Jules Guesde is dismissed as sectarian and dogmatic. Yet Guesde deserves better than this. Thankfully, French historian Jean-Numa Ducange has written an accessible, well-researched, and largely sympathetic biography of Guesde. Ducange’s biography not only rescues Guesde from neglect but shows how indispensable he was to introducing Marxism into France and making it a political force to be reckoned with. # ⚓ Financialization_of_Big_Tech_is_BIG⠀⇛ This post concludes (for 2020, at least) my summaries of an important SOMO report about the main characteristics of the Big Tech model and how it is a mix between feudalism and Animal Farm. # ⚓ The_Richest_500_People_in_the_World_Added_$1.8_Trillion_to Their_Wealth_in_2020⠀⇛ # ⚓ People_in_Debt_Have_Formed_a_Union_to_Fight_Back⠀⇛ o § AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics⠀➾ # ⚓ Trump’s_Chaos_Casts_Shadow_Over_Electoral_College_Vote_as Nation_Awaits_Stimulus⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_Steve_Bannon_Tried_to_Destroy_Pope_Francis⠀⇛ After nearly two decades, the Best Picture Oscar- winning Spotlight, and a purported top-to-bottom institutional reform that has defrocked hundreds of clerics while leading to the disgraced retirement of a bevy of Bishops, Cardinals, and maybe even a Pope, what more could be said about the Catholic Church’s clergy child abuse scandal? How could this grisly episode, a moment that tore away one of the most painful scabs on one of the world’s oldest theological bodies, still have any novel insights? For the casual observer, the recent headlines about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who almost overnight went from jet setting with Davos elites to a defrocked hermit’s existence in an undisclosed location somewhere in the United States, seemed like a tragic yet just conclusion to a Shakespearean saga of power and perversion. The Vatican published the so-called McCarrick Report in November 2020, an extra-ordinary text the Holy See allowed to be authored by a lay attorney who in turn invoked copyright protections in a fashion I have not seen on any judicial document before. It not only condemned McCarrick once and for all but laid substantial guilt at the feet of Pope St. John Paul II. The Polish pontiff was allegedly appraised repeatedly of McCarrick’s awful behavior and yet, due to his own history in Krakow dealing with a Communist government that frequently made similar accusations against clerics for seemingly- politicized reasons, allowed the American to continue to ascend upwards through the hierarchy to become a Prince of the Church. # ⚓ Sanders,_Other_Critics_Denounce_GOP_Senators’_‘Pathetic’ Attempt_to_Undermine_Biden’s_Election_Victory⠀⇛ “It is a sad and tragic day for our country that 140 members of the House of Representatives, 13 senators and a defeated president are attempting to undermine American democracy and our Constitution.” # ⚓ Opinion_|_Trump_and_Iran_in_Last_17_Days:_Will_They_or Won’t_They?⠀⇛ “Trump’s economic and financial blockade on Iran is such that things could always spiral out of control.” # ⚓ Opinion_|_A_Year_Ago_the_U.S._Assassinated_a_National Leader⠀⇛ The Soleimani assassination and its anniversary ought to provide occasion for Americans to think carefully about the nature of what each side in this badly plagued relationship has done to the other.  # ⚓ Opinion_|_I_Never_Thought_Democrats_Could_Win_Georgia. Could_It_Happen_Twice?⠀⇛ The critical Senate run-off race is too close to call. But a massive voter mobilization effort may just tip the balance. # ⚓ Trump_pressures_Georgia’s_Raffensperger_to_overturn_his defeat_in_extraordinary_call⠀⇛ # ⚓ Trump_Accused_of_‘Criminal_Extortion’_After_Asking_Georgia Officials_to_‘Find’_11,000_Votes_for_Him⠀⇛ “Knowing what Trump has said in leaked phone calls, just imagine what he’s said in calls that weren’t.” # ⚓ Pelosi_wins_Speakership_for_fourth_time_in_dramatic_vote⠀⇛ House Democrats rallied Sunday to elect Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as Speaker in the 117th Congress, overcoming opposition from a handful of restive moderates urging new leadership to grant Pelosi her fourth term at the top of the chamber. The 216-209 vote was more dramatic than anyone would have guessed just two months ago, when Democrats went into the elections predicting big gains to pad their House majority in 2021. Instead, they lost at least 13 seats, trimming their numbers to a mere 222 seats — the smallest House majority in decades — and complicating Pelosi’s effort to keep the Speaker’s gavel for another two-year term. # ⚓ France_reportedly_resumes_collecting_digital_services_tax from_tech_giants⠀⇛ France has resumed the collection of a digital services tax from major tech companies such after pausing the levy earlier this year, according to a new report. An unnamed French official cited by the Wall Street Journal this morning said that the tax, which stands at 3%, is now once again in effect. The tax is levied on revenues generated in France from certain types of digital services. It applies to large tech companies such as Google LLC and Facebook Inc. that have annual sales of at least €25 million, or about $30 million, in France and at least €750 million or about $921 million globally. # ⚓ After_embracing_remote_work_in_2020,_companies_face conflicts_making_it_permanent⠀⇛ Although the pandemic forced employees around the world to adopt makeshift remote work setups, a growing proportion of the workforce already spent at least part of their week working from home, while some businesses had embraced a “work-from- anywhere” philosophy from their inception. But much as virtual events rapidly gained traction in 2020, the pandemic accelerated a location-agnostic mindset across the corporate world, with tech behemoths like Facebook and Twitter announcing permanent remote working plans. o § Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press⠀➾ # ⚓ MEDIA_ADVISORY_–_Julian_Assange_Extradition_Case_Decision⠀⇛ Julian Assange Extradition Case Decision Location: Court 2, The Old Bailey, London EC4M 7EH Time: 10:00 Start Date: Monday 4th January 2021 o § Civil Rights/Policing⠀➾ # ⚓ The_RBG_Affect:_Where_the_Rubber_‘Meats’_The_Road_On Science,_Global_Warming_And_The_Convenience_Of_Hypocrisy⠀⇛ US Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg knew a lot about activism and the fight for women’s rights. And like the current battle to arrest global warming, RBG also knew a bit about people ignoring the bleedingly obvious when it suited. Geoff Russell explains. # ⚓ REAL-ID_Act_amended,_but_DHS_doesn’t_get_the_exemptions_it wanted⠀⇛ Amendments to the REAL-ID Act of 2005 were included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which was signed into law by President Trump on December 27, 2020. But somewhere in the sausage-making that saw the REAL-ID Modernization Act and numerous other unrelated measures inserted into the 2,124-page omnibus pandemic relief and appropriations bill, the key provisions sought by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were removed from the final bill. That leaves the DHS still required by existing Federal laws to respond to our objections, to request and obtain approval from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and to post OMB-approved notices at TSA checkpoints explaining what is required, and on what legal basis, before it can try to deny anyone passage through a checkpoint or travel by common carrier on the basis of their failure or refusal to show ID. # ⚓ Pinduoduo_Worker’s_Death_Renews_Scrutiny_of_996_Work Culture⠀⇛ The e-commerce company confirmed on Monday that an employee died after working past midnight last week, without providing additional details. That sparked a social media backlash against the company and the relentless working schedules expected of its employees, with a hashtag about the incident drawing more than 150 million views on the Twitter- like Sina Weibo service. The so-called 996 office schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, plus overtime — has spurred criticism in previous years following complaints from tech workers and earlier deaths. Still, tech billionaires from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder Jack Ma to JD.com Inc. chief Richard Liu have endorsed the practice as necessary for survival in an intensely competitive industry and the key to accumulating personal wealth. # ⚓ Time_to_speak_up_on_Tibet⠀⇛ In this context, the TPSA provides an opportunity for India to re-articulate its position on the subject. This is in the background of China violating all agreements (such as 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2013 agreements) on the borders and the resultant military stalemate since May 2020. As China itself has been raising the Kashmir issue at the United Nations (four times in the last one year), India must seriously reconsider its Tibet policy. First, India needs to send, in a synchronous manner, signals of its displeasure to China and insist on reciprocity on Tibet and Kashmir issues. Second, India must coordinate with the US on Tibet issues. Third, on trans-boundary water issues, India must seek Tibetans’ support as well as organise multilateral pressure along with Bangladesh and affected Southeast Asian countries. Fourth, India must organise international Buddhist conventions, with the participation of the Dalai Lama and the head monks of the trans-Himalayan region, Mongolia and Southeast Asia. # ⚓ The_New_Humanitarian_|_Humanitarian_policy_trends_2021⠀⇛ Past mega-crises have spurred reforms, so 2020 could be a historic turning point for the humanitarian sector. So the theory goes. But in practice, there’s the likelihood not much will change. Given the growing numbers of people affected, the disruptions to conventional ways of working, and the prospect of dwindling funding, the pandemic year reignited conversations about aid reform. Sheer necessity made things possible that previously seemed out of reach: Donors showed greater flexibility; international organisations took more of a back seat to local leadership; and COVID-19 drove a super-charged appetite for delivering aid as cash. Whether that momentum will continue as vaccines are rolled out, travel restrictions are lifted, and life moves towards some semblance of normality is uncertain. As we said in last year’s list, reform in the aid sector never comes easily. # ⚓ Cowboy_Confederates_|_Dissent_Magazine⠀⇛ The Clint Eastwood Western The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), a genre-defining fantasy of anti-government violence, finds redemption for the failed ideas of the white South in the bloody plains of the American West. Eastwood’s character, and the entire idea of the American West in the film, are the product of two of the biggest blows against white supremacy in U.S. history: the Civil War and the civil rights movements. The book on which it was based, The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972), was written by a former Klansman named Asa Earl Carter who went by the pen name Forrest Carter (a nod to Confederate hero and Grand Wizard of the postbellum Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest). Carter had been on the lunatic fringe of the struggle to maintain white supremacy in Alabama during the 1950s and 1960s. His biggest claim to fame was writing George Wallace’s 1963 inaugural gubernatorial address, which included the infamous line, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” As the civil rights movements advanced, however, Carter came to believe that George Wallace and even the KKK were too soft for his particular brand of racism. So he moved to Texas. Out west, he rebuilt his identity and carried forward the struggle to maintain his idea of freedom. Carter’s book, and Eastwood’s movie, tell an allegorical story of a Missouri farmer who loses everything to a merciless band of Union soldiers who slaughter his family and burn his home after the Civil War. In the novel, the desperate Wales nails G.T.T. (Gone to Texas) on his door and joins a guerrilla band of Confederates who exact their revenge on the soulless Yankee intruders. In one famous scene from the movie, Eastwood wipes out an enormous swath of Union soldiers with a Gatling gun. The Civil War never ended for Josey Wales, just like it—and the struggle against the civil rights movement—never ended for Carter himself. The film’s initial director, Philip Kaufman, who was eventually fired by Eastwood, found the whole story of redeeming the Confederacy in the West through violent anti-government rebellion to be “fascist” and “nutty.” The historian Heather Cox Richardson also finds the connection between South and West troubling—but accurate. In How the South Won the Civil War, Richardson shows how once-defeated ideas and politics stayed alive and then flourished by moving west. “In the West,” she writes, “Confederate ideology took on a new life, and from there, over the course of the next 150 years, it came to dominate America.” White Southerners continued their resistance to federal incursions on white supremacy through a geographic shift to what they saw as “the only free place left in America.” They believed that Reconstruction-era “Republicans who passed laws to protect freed people were not advancing equality; they were destroying liberty.” The mythology (and she stresses that most of it was myth) of the American cowboy took on the individualism that once belonged to the Jeffersonian yeoman. Both stock characters were capable of heroic feats of grit, pluck, and determination. # ⚓ The_Murder_of_a_Witch_|_Dissent_Magazine⠀⇛ Several years ago, a local Veracruz paper carried news of a horrific murder. A woman had been found mutilated, floating face up in the river. It was yet another case of femicide in a country with one of the highest rates in the world—a rate that has doubled in the last five years. Mexican activists have recently ramped up the scale and urgency of decades-long protests against officials and their reluctance, or in some cases active resistance, to address the problem: this past spring, thousands of Mexican women went on strike in the capital to protest the ongoing violence. The woman murdered in Veracruz had been known locally as “the Witch.” She was killed by her ex-lover after he became convinced that she was bewitching him to force him to return to her side. When Mexican journalist and author Fernanda Melchor came across the story, she thought about traveling to the town and writing an investigative account of the murder—her own version of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Instead, she wrote a novel, Hurricane Season, published in 2020 and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Set in the imagined town of La Matosa, recognizable in its details as a version of Veracruz, the story begins with a band of young boys, carrying a pail of rocks for an unknown “battle,” who come across “the rotten face of a corpse floating among the rushes and the plastic bags swept in from the road on the breeze, the dark mask seething under a myriad of black snakes, smiling.” The dead woman, the Witch, had disappeared as hurricane season approached—just as her mother, who had also been known as the Witch, had vanished years before amid the equally devastating hurricane of 1978. This is one of many repetitions in Hurricane Season, where traditions of physical brutality, unhappy liaisons, and broken dreams of escape are passed down between generations, like family heirlooms. The beginning scene is the shortest of the book’s eight breathless, ranting chapters, which distend out into space and move backward and forward in time. Each chapter foregrounds one of several interrelated characters in La Matosa. There is the young Yesenia who struggles to support her siblings and seethes against her grandmother’s obvious preference for her indolent cousin Luismi, one of the Witch’s ex-lovers, whom she witnesses whisking the corpse into a car. There is Luismi’s new lover, the thirteen-year-old Norma, who is carrying her stepfather’s child, and will end up in the hospital after an abortion gone awry; Luismi’s stepfather Munra, who inadvertently abets the gang of young men preparing to make the Witch answer for her power over them; and another member of the gang, the angry and repressed Brando. o § Monopolies⠀➾ # ⚓ What_the_cyberoptimists_got_wrong_–_and_what_to_do_about it:_Tech_unexeptionalism_and_the_monopolization_of_every goddamned_thing⠀⇛ They stole our future. Let’s take it back. Here at the end of the world, it’s time to take stock. Is technology a force for good? Can it be? Was it ever? How did we end up with a world made up of “five websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other four” (h/t Tom Eastman)? Should we worry that machine learning will take away our free will through A/B splitting and Big Five Personality Types? Where the fuck did all these Nazis come from? # ⚓ Cory_Doctorow_–_Fireside_Chat:_Reading_and_Q&A⠀⇛ Fireside Chat with Cory Doctorow. Make sure not to miss Cory’s main talk “What the cyberoptimists got wrong – and what to do about it” one hour earlier, day 19:00h in rc1. # ⚓ Chaos_Communications_Congress⠀⇛ I’m about to go offline until 2021 and I had planned to do absolutely no work of any sort while on break, but I made an exception, for an exceptional opportunity: the 32nd Chaos Communications Congress, which is remote this year. https://rc3.world/ # ⚓ The_Big_Tech_Model⠀⇛ While the individual business activities of our seven Big Tech companies differ extensively (see Table 2.1), this section details a generic framework – the Big Tech model – distilling the common features of these firms. This framework builds on the concepts of monopoly rents, platformisation and financialisation. Where monopolisation and financialisation are recurring characteristics in the history of modern capitalism, platformisation is how these features are expressed and augmented under contemporary digital-and-digitising capitalism. According to political philosopher Nick Srnicek, platforms like those operated by our Big Tech firms share four essential characteristics. First, platforms function as intermediary infrastructures that bring different user groups together – whether as users/buyers and developers/ sellers in the Apple App Store, or as private individuals who build their own content on social media like Facebook. # ⚓ Big_Tech_=_Feudalism_+_Animal_Farm,_digitized._Via_tax havens⠀⇛ Note that some companies – notably Alphabet and Facebook – have a share structure that consists of multiple classes of shares. In this structure, class A shares carry the right to one vote during the annual shareholder meeting, class B shares carry the right to ten votes and class C shares carry no voting rights at all. For companies with such a share structure, the share ownership presented here represents only class A shares. As a consequence, individual shareholders might exert disproportional voting rights compared to the share of the respective company’s stock that they hold. While the ownership shares presented above thus appear to suggest that institutional shareholders, such as the Vanguard Group, BlackRock or State Street, wield the most power over the Big Tech companies, this is often not the case. In the case of Alphabet, Sergey Brin and Larry Page own less than 13 per cent of stock but control more than 51 per cent of the company’s voting power. In the case of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg owns just 0.17 per cent of the company’s class A shares, but 81.8 per cent of its class B shares. Together with some proxy voting power he exerts for other shareholders, Zuckerberg’s total voting power amounts to 57.9 per cent. In both cases, shareholder proposals to change this structure to a one-share-one-vote model were frequently rejected by those controlling the existing voting power. # ⚓ Financialization_of_Big_Tech⠀⇛ The coronavirus and its political management have brought forward clear economic winners and losers. Giant technology companies, often referred to as ‘Big Tech’, unambiguously lead the first category, as investors swarmed to tech blue chip stocks during the pandemic. This was caused by the massive increases in digital communication, shopping, and streaming services across the globe. Businesses and universities moved some if not all of their activities online, while governments worldwide have tried to harness Big Tech’s mounting capabilities to manage and ultimately overcome the virus. # ⚓ Guest_post:_The_new_IP_[sic]_Court_in_Ukraine:_is_there_any room_for_improvement?⠀⇛ As a result of comprehensive judicial reform, Ukraine has set out to establish a new specialised intellectual property court (the IP Court). The UK has provided technical assistance to Ukraine on the establishment and functioning of the new IP Court. This DFID/FCO funded project was implemented by the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (QMUL) and led by Dr Noam Shemtov and Prof Ioannis Kokkoris. It was guided by the International Advisory Board, chaired by Lord Neuberger (former President of the UK Supreme Court) and comprising eminent international and Ukrainian IP judges and practitioners. The administration of the project was managed by Maria Tymofienko. In her role as project Research Coordinator, Dr Olga Gurgula, Lecturer in IP Law at Brunel University London, led the research team that prepared the final report and recommendations. In a previous guest post, patent expert Dr Olga Gurgula provided updates from Ukraine as well as highlighting important next steps for the Ukrainian Patent Office. In this post, she talks about the new IP Court in Ukraine and highlights some findings and recommendations prepared by the project. Over to you, Olga. # § Patents⠀➾ # ⚓ Practical_Implementation_of_the_Requirements_of_the SPC_Waiver_Regulation⠀⇛ Regulation (EU) 2019/933, amending the Regulation (EC) No 469/2009 concerning the supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products (hereinafter referred to as the Regulation) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 11th June 2019 and thus came into effect on 1st July 2019. The amended Regulation establishes the so-called “SPC waiver”, that excludes certain acts, which would otherwise require the consent of the SPC holder, from protection conferred by the SPC, if the prescribed conditions are met. In order to avail from this waiver, the maker shall, inter alia, timely notify the Industrial property office(s) of the EU Member States in which such making is to take place (hereinafter referred to as the Offices), using the standardized form (Annex -Ia of the Regulation). To this end, the Regulation lays down several requirements on the Offices vis- à-vis the prescribed conditions for parties wishing to benefit from this waiver. Implementation of these requirements was the subject of my personal study. # ⚓ Top_trends_in_European_patent_law_2020 [Ed: Juve says "UPC is still alive" but that's just part of the lobbying and the lie; with the UK 'out' UPC can never ever start]⠀⇛ The beginning of 2020 brought a shock for UPC supporters – although the UK’s final ‘no’ was no longer a surprise. Then, another setback in March followed the UK’s rejection of the project, as the German Constitutional Court upheld the constitutional complaint made against the UPC. The court ruled that the Act of Approval to the Agreement needed a two- thirds majority by the Bundestag. This is because the act would have entailed a substantial amendment of the constitution. Thus, the ruling brought the UPC process to an abrupt halt. Many experts foresaw the death of the UPC once and for all. But, only a few days after the ruling, the German Federal Government announced it would once again put the UPC law before parliament again. The government wanted to ensure Germany could complete UPC ratification, with at least a continental version of the UPC able to commence its work. With great speed, in the following months the government pushed the legislation. At the end of November, the German Bundestag agreed by the two-thirds majority required. Then, shortly before Christmas, this decision was followed by the Bundesrat, the second chamber of the German parliament. # ⚓ USPTO_Provides_Update_on_COVID-19_Prioritized Examination_Pilot_Program [Ed: The patent extremists will continues taking advantage of a pandemic to introduce self-harming (to the patents' quality and the patent system) changes]⠀⇛ In an e-mail News Brief distributed last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reported on the participation to date in its COVID-19 Prioritized Examination Pilot Program. The pilot program, which was implemented last May, allows applicants that qualify for small or micro entity status to request prioritized examination without paying the fees typically associated with such prioritized examination (see “USPTO Announces COVID-19 Prioritized Examination Pilot Program”). In announcing the pilot program, the Office noted that it would endeavor to reach final disposition of applications within six months, provided that applicants respond promptly to Office communications. In addition to providing expedited examination for qualifying applications, the pilot program also eliminates the requirement to pay the prioritized examination fee set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(c) ($1,050 for micro entities and $2,100 for small entities) or the processing fee set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(i)(1) ($35 for micro entities and $70 for small entities). In addition to the requirement that applicants qualify for small or micro entity status, the claims of a participating application must cover a product or process related to COVID–19, and such product or process must be subject to an applicable FDA approval for COVID–19 use. Such approvals may include, for example, an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE), a New Drug Application (NDA), a Biologics License Application (BLA), a Premarket Approval (PMA), or an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). When the pilot program was announced, the Office noted that it would accept up to 500 requests. # § Copyrights⠀➾ # ⚓ A_Smorgasbord_of_Bad_Takedowns:_2020_Year_in_Review⠀⇛ In terms of takedowns, 2020 prefaced the year to come with a January story from New York University School of Law. The law school posted a video of a panel titled “Proving Similarity,” where experts explained how song similarity is analyzed in copyright cases. Unsurprisingly, that involved playing parts of songs during the panel. And so, the video meant to explain how copyright infringement is determined was flagged by Content ID, YouTube’s automated copyright filter. While the legal experts at, let’s check our notes, NYU Law were confident this was fair use, they were less confident that they understood how YouTube’s private appeals system worked. And, more specifically, whether challenging Content ID would lead to NYU losing its YouTube channel. They reached out privately to ask questions about the system, but got no answers. Instead, YouTube just quietly restored the video. And with that, a year of takedowns was off. There was Dr. Drew Pinsky’s incorrect assessment that copyright law let him remove a video showing him downplaying COVID-19. A self-described Twitter troll using the DMCA to remove from Twitter an interview he did about his tactics and then using the DMCA to remove a photo of his previous takedown. And, when San Diego Comic Con went virtual, CBS ended up taking down its own Star Trek panel. # ⚓ Top_10_Most_Popular_Torrent_Sites_of_2021⠀⇛ As another year kicks off, we take a look at the most popular torrent sites are at the start of 2021. Continuing a long-standing top 10 tradition, we see that The Pirate Bay is the favorite among torrenting users, beating YTS and 1337x. What stands out is that the number of popular English-language torrent sites has declined, while foreign language sites are growing. # ⚓ Police_Have_a_‘Secret_Weapon’_to_Stop_Fans_Streaming Pirate_TV_For_Free⠀⇛ Police, anti-piracy groups, and sports companies are fighting a battle, not only to prevent pirate IPTV services from operating but also to stop fans from becoming illegal streaming customers. Interestingly, a potent part of their arsenal consists only of carefully constructed words that, when delivered into the hands of the lazy and unscrupulous, can be amplified to distort and mislead. ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 3835 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐃𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 ═════════════════════════════════════════════╕ ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 01.04.21⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Links_4/1/2021:_Linux_5.11_RC2_and_ExTiX_Deepin_21.1_Live⠀✐ Posted in News_Roundup at 1:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇GNOME bluefish⦈ § Contents⠀➾ * GNU/Linux o Distributions o Devices/Embedded * Free_Software/Open_Source * Leftovers * § GNU/Linux⠀➾ o ⚓ Linux_Weekly_Roundup:_Deepin_20.1,_Linux_Mint_Updates_and_More⠀⇛ Here’s this week’s roundup series, curated for you from the Linux and open-source world on application updates, new releases, distribution updates, major news, and upcoming highlights. Have a look. o ⚓ Linux_Weekly_Roundup_#111⠀⇛ Hello and welcome to our first Linux Roundup of 2021! We wish that you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration! Deepin 20.1, Septor 2021, OpenMandriva 4.2-rc, Nitrux OS 2020.12.31, Arch 2021.01.01 and Garuda Linux 210101 have been released this week. o ⚓ 9to5Linux_Weekly_Roundup:_January_3rd,_2021⠀⇛ The fourteenth installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here, for the week ending on December 27th, and the first for 2021, keeping you guys up to date with the most important things that have happened in the Linux world. As you can imagine, this past week has been relaxing due to the New Year’s break, but we did had some very nice releases on the first day of the year as it looked like everyone rushed to push their brand-new release out the door in 2021. There were also many updated packages and distros, so check them all out below. o ⚓ Linux_Release_Roundup_#21.01:_Planner_2.6,_TeXstudio_3.0.2,_& More_New_Releases_–_It’s_FOSS_News⠀⇛ In the Linux Release Roundup series, we summarize the new application and distribution versions release in the last few days. This keeps you informed with the latest developments in the Linux world. o § Audiocasts/Shows⠀➾ # ⚓ Linux_Action_News_170⠀⇛ A lot of open source development was packed into 2020, we recap some of the standout moments you should know about. # ⚓ Open_Source_Security_Episode_252_–_Is_open_source dangerous?_Open_source_won,_who_cares,_shut_up!⠀⇛ Josh and Kurt talk about a report on open source security from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The title pretty much sums it up. # ⚓ GNU_World_Order_387⠀⇛ A look at **iostat** , **mpstat** , **cifsiostat** , **tapestat** , **sar** , **sadf** , **sadc** , and **terminus-font**. # ⚓ This_Week_in_Linux_132:_Dragonbox_Pyra,_KDE’s_2021_Roadmap, Snap_Themes,_Linux_Instant_Replay_Tool_–_TuxDigital⠀⇛ On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got some roadmap news to talk about for some upcoming changes for KDE’s Plasma desktop and Application Suite, Ubuntu announced improvements for theming of Snaps and we’ll check that out. We’ve also got some hardware news for a much anticipated device with the Dragonbox Pyra. We’ve got some distro releases to discuss with Slackel & Septor Linux. Then in App News we’ll check out an IP Ban Tool called Crowdsec, a Personal Health Record App, a Instant Replay Tool for Linux. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews! o § Kernel Space⠀➾ # ⚓ Linus_Torvalds_On_The_Importance_Of_ECC_RAM,_Calls_Out Intel’s_“Bad_Policies”_Over_ECC⠀⇛ There’s nothing quite like some fun holiday-weekend reading as a fiery mailing list post by Linus Torvalds. The Linux creator is out with one of his classical messages, which this time is arguing over the importance of ECC memory and his opinion on how Intel’s “bad policies” and market segmentation have made ECC memory less widespread. Linus argues that error-correcting code (ECC) memory “absolutely matters” but that “Intel has been instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with it’s horribly bad market segmentation… Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously…The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage… Now even the memory manufacturers are starting do do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to. And the memory manufacturers claim it’s because of economics and lower power. And they are lying bastards – let me once again point to row-hammer about how those problems have existed for several generations already, but these f*ckers happily sold broken hardware to consumers and claimed it was an “attack”, when it always was “we’re cutting corners”.” # ⚓ Linux_5.11-rc2⠀⇛ Ok, let's be honest - not a lot has happened in the last week or two. The merge window itself may not have been hugely impacted by the holiday season, but that's because all the new code should already have been ready before the merge window even opened, so the holidays just didn't end up affecting things all that much. But people have (rightly) mostly been offline since, presumably over-eating and doing all the other traditional holiday things. And just generally not being hugely active. That very much shows in a tiny rc2 release. I expect next week to slowly start ramping up fixes, but I know some people are still on vacation or just in an extended food coma, and there's a delay from testing to fixes, so we'll see. Maybe rc3 ends up being fairly small too. It's much too early to say whether this will then end up causing some delays in the final release - it's possible, but with 5.11 not being a particularly big release maybe it doesn't even matter that we had a fairly quiet week or two in the early rc series. Anyway, for whatever reasons, the few fixes we _do_ have in rc2 tend to be mostly in SCSI and block devices. But there's a random smattering of other things too. For once, the shortlog is so small that you might as well just read it. Time to slowly crawl out from under all the xmas wrapping paper piles and go test... # ⚓ Linux_5.11-rc2_Released_–_It’s_Tiny_Due_To_Developers Offline_With_“Holiday_Things”⠀⇛ So there isn’t much at all to Linux 5.11-rc2 besides a number of SCSI fixes, Intel Snow Ridge C- stable tables added to the Intel Idle driver, a few Ceph fixes, and other random fixes throughout. o § Benchmarks⠀➾ # ⚓ New_+_Updated_Benchmarks_For_December_2020_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ In ending out a strong year for OpenBenchmarking.org growth in 2020, there were also many test profile updates and some new test profiles (benchmarks) that were made available in December for Phoronix Test Suite / OpenBenchmarking.org users. Among the updates over the past month worth pointing out for those running their own benchmarks via the Phoronix Test Suite are listed below. First up the new tests followed by the updated ones. o § Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ BleachBit_4.2.0_–_Neowin⠀⇛ When your computer is getting full, BleachBit quickly frees disk space. When your information is only your business, BleachBit guards your privacy. With BleachBit you can free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean thousands of applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and more. Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications, and vacuuming Firefox to make it faster. Better than free, BleachBit is open source. # ⚓ Docker_Alternative_Container_Tools_in_2021⠀⇛ Docker is the most popular and widely used free and open-source container management system. Docker helps in building, deploying, and shipping software applications in an isolated environment; known as a container. A container contains the libraries, dependencies, and configurations required for the software package to run and work properly. In the past, Docker has been the only go-to easy- to-use containerization technology. Many projects have come as Docker alternative and competitors in the market over the past few years. Some of the common Docker alternatives in the market are listed as follows. # ⚓ Linux_Schools:_New_Client_Version_Available⠀⇛ Linux Schools client version 7.0.1 is now available for download from https://sourceforge.net/projects/ karoshi/files/karoshi_client/ This version is being released to address EFI support which was broken on version 7.0 and intermittent slow log in times. # ⚓ wtwitch_–_A_Twitch_client_written_in_Bash⠀⇛ I just found out about a new Twitch client called wtwitch. It’s written in Bash and it uses the Twitch API and the streamlink package to provide Twitch browsing, subscription, and playback functionality without signing up for a Twitch account and without loading or executing Twitch’s proprietary JavaScript. Here’s how it looks when you list the online channels you have subscribed to: # ⚓ Introducing_Tumpa,_to_make_OpenPGP_simple_with_smartcards⠀⇛ Generating OpenPGP keys in an offline air-gapped system and then moving them into a smart card is always a difficult task for me. To remember the steps and command-line options of gpg2 correctly and then following them in the same order is difficult, and I had trouble enough number of times in doing so when I think about someone who is not into the command line that much, how difficult these steps are for them. While having a chat with Saptak a few weeks ago, we came up with the idea of writing a small desktop tool to help. I started adding more features into my Johnnycanencrypt for the same. The OpenPGP operations are possible due to the amazing Sequoia project. [...] A lot of work 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇:)⦈ This is just the beginning. There are a ton of features we planned, and we will slowly add those. The UI also requires a lot of work and touch from a real UX person. The default application will be very simple to use, and we will also have many advanced features, say changing subkey expiration dates, creating new subkeys, etc. for the advanced users. # ⚓ The_10_Best_Linux_Remote_Desktop_Tools⠀⇛ Remote Desktop tools are essential if you want access to resources or services from another PC that is not in the same physical location as you. Say, for example, you are on a camping trip but wish to remotely access your work machine. This remote machine can be in your office desktop computer or laptop with updates on what is happening in your work environment. A practical scenario is a checkup on your work network performance. Under such circumstances, you need a remote desktop tool with authenticated access to your office computers to perform tasks that would also be possible if you were physically present in the target environment. o § Instructionals/Technical⠀➾ # ⚓ Unable_to_boot_into_ArcoLinux_–_pass_on_parameters_to_the Linux_kernel⠀⇛ There are other options you can add besides nomodeset nouveau.modeset=0 (this is a zero) or 1 (false = 0 and true = 1) i915.modeset=0 or 1 radeon.modeset=0 or 1 modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia # ⚓ How_to_Convert_PDF_to_Image_in_Linux_Command_Line⠀⇛ pdftoppm converts PDF document pages to image formats like PNG, and others. It is a command-line tool that can convert an entire PDF document into separate image files. With pdftoppm, you can specify the preferred image resolution, scale, and crop your images. # ⚓ How_to_Install_Scribus_(Desktop_Publishing_Tool)_on_Linux⠀⇛ Scribus is a free and open source desktop publishing (DTP) tool available for Linux, UNIX and Windows platform. Scribus is used to create PDF files, e-books, newsletter, magazines and posters etc. It can also be used to edit the existing PDF file. In this article, we will learn how to install and use scribus on different Linux distributions to create publication. To Install scribus, sudo rights or privilege access is needed # ⚓ How_to_Install_VeraCrypt_and_Create_Encrypted_Disk_in Ubuntu_20.04_|_UbuntuHandbook⠀⇛ This simple tutorial shows how to install VeraCrypt and create encrypted hard drive, USB stick in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Linux Mint 20, Ubuntu 20.10. VeraCrypt is a free and open-source disk encryption software based on TrueCrypt 7.1a. It works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. # ⚓ How_to_Run_Traceroute_in_Linux_–_Linux_Hint⠀⇛ Traceroute is a tool in Linux that allows you to investigate the routes of network packets. It can help you in identifying the limiting factor of network packet journeys. Traceroute is also useful for troubleshooting sluggish network connections. This guide shows you how to run traceroute in Linux. # ⚓ How_to_Check_Running_Processes_in_Linux_Mint_20?_–_Linux Hint⠀⇛ We know that it must be sent to the central processing unit (CPU) whenever we want to execute a program on any computer system. However, as soon as a program is brought from hard disk to RAM for getting scheduled on to the CPU, the status of this program is changed to a process. That is why, whenever we talk about anything that is running on the CPU, it is always known as a process. Whether you are using the terminal application, or browsing the Internet, or even editing a document, all of these tasks and many others like these are known as processes. In the Windows operating system, we have the task manager utility that can be used to see all the currently running processes. However, if you are a Linux user, you might also want to know which processes currently consume your CPU cycles. Fortunately, there are multiple ways in Linux as well through which you can conveniently get the information about all the processes that are currently running on your system. Now, we are going to look at some of these methods. # ⚓ How_To_Make_an_Awesome_Custom_Shell_with_ZSH_–_Linux Stans⠀⇛ Are you tired of that boring old standard bash shell you get after a generic install of your exciting new Linux OS? – if so, there are a few different shells to choose from, you have csh, ksh, bash, to name but a few; In this tutorial, I will show you how to install, configure and customise the ZSH shell and make it how you want it. For this tutorial, I will be using an install of Manjaro Linux with XFCE desktop, however, the steps will be fairly similar across a broad variety of desktop environments and console terminals. # ⚓ ::meta_synthax:::_Emmanuel_Kasper:_How_to_move_a_single_VM between_cloud_providers⠀⇛ I am running since a decade a small Debian VM, that I use for basic web and mail hosting. Since most of the VM setup is done manually and not following the Infrastructure As Code pattern, it is faster to simply copy the filesystem when switching providers instead of reconfiguring everything. # ⚓ How_to_get_email_done_with_BlueMail_for_Linux_–_Real_Linux User⠀⇛ We still mail each other an awful lot, despite the enormous growth in alternative electronic communication tools such as WhatsApp, Telegram and the Apple Messages app. In addition to emailing each other directly, we also frequently register on websites to receive newsletters, we receive confirmations for actions, we receive financial updates from formal instances, and we are also overloaded with email that we just do not want to receive but get anyway. Our mailboxes are therefore overloaded day in, day out, and Inbox Zero, the digital goal so much sought after by many, is usually unreachable for most of us. But that might change for you with the free BlueMail email application for Linux, that offers unique functionality not seen in other email applications. In this article I will describe how to get email done with BlueMail for Linux. # ⚓ How_to_install_Runescape_on_a_Chromebook⠀⇛ Today we are looking at how to install Runescape on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below. # ⚓ How_to_install_notepadqq_in_Ubuntu_20.04.⠀⇛ Today we are looking at how to install notepadqq in Ubuntu 20.04. The process is rather easy as you can see in the video tutorial. A person opens a terminal and runs the command below in it. Enjoy! # ⚓ How_to_install_notepadqq_on_Ubuntu_20.04_–_YouTube⠀⇛ In this video, we are looking at how to install notepadqq on Ubuntu 20.04. # ⚓ Where_to_find_the_wallpaper_of_a_nice_screenshot_| Arcolinux.com⠀⇛ People always ask me where can I find this or that wallpaper. When making tutorials variety is providing new wallpapers all the time. I never go look for a wallpaper. If there is a wallpaper I like, I will save it on my account at https://desktoppr.co/erikdubois. As a result it will be saved on my dropbox that is linked to that website. # ⚓ Solving_the_message_:_reboot_and_select_proper_boot device⠀⇛ # ⚓ Mount_exFAT_USB_from_Linux_|_Pen_Drive_Linux⠀⇛ How to mount, access and use an exFAT formatted USB drive from within Linux. Most newer Linux distributions already ship with exFAT FAT64 filesystem support via the FUSE library and related utilities. However, many older Ubuntu based distributions did not. The following solution covers the simple process of enabling exFAT detection from older Ubuntu based distributions. exFAT (Extended Fat), a proprietary filesystem created by Microsoft, was introduced to remove the 4GB file size limitation. Making it a suitable replacement for the older Fat32 filesystem. Most modern USB flash drives arrive exFAT formatted from the factory. So it is nice to be able to use them out of the box across multiple operating systems without the need to reformat. # ⚓ Install_and_Configure_Squid_Proxy_Server_on_Debian_10_ (Buster)_–_Linux_Hint⠀⇛ Squid is one of the most used proxy servers for controlling internet access from the local network and securing the network from illegitimate traffic and attacks. They are placed between the client and the internet. All the requests from the client are routed through an intermediate proxy server. Squid works for a number of services like HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and other network protocols. Besides serving as a proxy server, Squid is mostly used for caching frequently visited web pages from a web server. So when a user requests a page from a web server, the requests first go through the proxy server to check if the requested content is available. This reduces the server load and bandwidth usage and speeds up the content delivery, thus improving the user’s experience. # ⚓ Changing_your_shell_from_bash_to_zsh_and_back_–_any desktop⠀⇛ Our systems have Bash as our standard shell. We could change to Zsh as shell. You can find the Zsh website here, the github here and the themes here. o § Games⠀➾ # ⚓ Valve_Revises_Steam’s_December_2020_Linux_Marketshare_To 0.74%⠀⇛ The numbers Steam posted on New Year’s Day for the December 2020 Linux gaming marketshare showed a drop of 0.33% down to just 0.57%. That is a rather large drop but now Valve has updated their numbers and point to Linux still regressing percentage wise but not as bad as originally reported. After being at 0.9% for the month of November, Valve’s revised December 2020 numbers put the Linux gaming marketshare at 0.74%, or a drop of 0.16% but at least not as significant that was pushing the Linux gaming size at just a half-percent. o § Distributions⠀➾ # § Reviews⠀➾ # ⚓ Review:_MocaccinoOS⠀⇛ Though it is not explicitly stated, it looks like the idea here is to provide new applications and dependencies through containers to better handle dependencies and allow for for more stable upgrades. At the time of writing there are two editions of Mocaccino. The first is Mocaccino Micro, a distribution which runs on the musl C library. It is stated to be based on Linux From Scratch using Luet for package management. Micro is minimal and reportedly suited for cloud and Docker, deployments. The second edition is Mocaccino Portage, a Gentoo-based operating system suited for desktop environments. At the moment it appears Mocaccino Portage is available in one desktop flavour: GNOME. The Mocaccino website repeatedly warns us development of the project is still in its early stages. The distribution is not, the developers tell us, ready for production. We should regard Mocaccino, therefore, as an interesting work in progress. This approach is reflected in the documentation which is sparse and mostly talks about how to migrate from an existing Sabayon installation to Mocaccino and set up the new project’s software repositories. I downloaded both editions of Mocaccino. The Portage edition with the GNOME desktop is a 2.2GB ISO file while the Micro edition weighs in at a relatively small 334MB. # § New Releases⠀➾ # ⚓ ExTiX_Deepin_21.1_Live_based_on_Deepin_20.1_(latest) with_Skype,_Spotify,_Refracta_Snapshot_and_kernel 5.10.4-exton_::_Build_210103⠀⇛ I’ve released a new version of ExTiX Deepin today (210103). This ExTiX Build is based on Deepin 20.1 released by Deepin Technology 201230. # § SUSE/OpenSUSE⠀➾ # ⚓ GRUB,_u-boot,_kernels_and_DTB_loading_(on_the_BPi_M2 Zero_and_others)⠀⇛ While I was experimenting with the BananaPi M2 Zero board, I soon needed to adopt its device tree file (dtb). Fortunately, the friendly members of the openSUSE:Factory:ARM community quickly hinted me at the grub2 “devicetree” command which can be specified similar to “linux” or “initrd” to name a file that’s loaded as device tree. Unfortunately, there is no way to make this really persistent, short of editing the grub generator scripts which will get lost on every grub2 update. The other option would be to decompile the board’s DTB file (“/boot/dtb/sun8i-h2-plus- bananapi-m2-zero.dtb” in my case), change and then recompile it, replacing the original file. This has two downsides: first, it will get overwritten with every update of the “dtb-sun8i” package (no idea how often this will be the case) and second, you might want to have the original file as fallback ready. In general, editing package managed files is not a good idea in my book, if it can be avoided it should be. # ⚓ openSUSE_Stickers_to_Enhance_your_Tech⠀⇛ I have not been one that has been real huge on stickers. Historically, I have not been one to sticker anything up, I have enjoyed keeping things plain, ordinary and uniform or incognito. With my recent computer acquisition, the very nice, sleep albeit cold HP EliteBook felt very impersonal. I felt, it needed a touch of green, a touch of happiness and maybe a little less of the cold and detached presentation it provides. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for that, just not today on this machine. I did a little searching on the webs and I found a site that provides many, many options for stickers. That company is called RedBubble. What is interesting about this site is that it is like an Etsy of stickers and merchandise. If you do a search for openSUSE or Ubuntu, you will get different products by different designers. I do not know the business model here but I am very fascinated by having these options available. Since I have an almost unhealthy obsession with openSUSE, I had to take my rather plain and uninspiring, cold, metal machine into something with a bit of warmth. # § Debian Family⠀➾ # ⚓ Utkarsh_Gupta:_FOSS_Activites_in_December_2020⠀⇛ This was my 24th month of contributing to Debian. I became a DM in late March last year and a DD last Christmas! \o/ Amongs a lot of things, this was month was crazy, hectic, adventerous, and the last of 2020 – more on some parts later this month. I finally finished my 7th semester (FTW!) and moved onto my last one! That said, I had been busy with other things™ but still did a bunch of Debian stuff # § Canonical/Ubuntu Family⠀➾ # ⚓ Check_for_Outdated_Snaps [Ed: Canonical: let's hook up with Microsoft for surveillance to scan your system]⠀⇛ I don’t consider myself a ‘Developer’ but I maintain a bunch of snaps in the Snap Store, and threw together a shell script which I’m sharing here in case it’s useful to other publishers. The goal of the script is to go through each snap and check to see if there’s a newer version of it upstream than currently published in the store. As such it’s not meant for end-users, but for people like me who publish multiple snaps from different places, and want to keep on top of them. o § Devices/Embedded⠀➾ # ⚓ OE_compile_for_Raspberry_Pi_4⠀⇛ I added this layer to my port of OE-Dunfell, and with the same package list as for the x86_64 build, started the build. It went right through, with only these failures: network-manager-applet gutenprint xresprobe libvdpau-va-gl restarter netpbm Good that none of those are a dependency for other packages. Next thing to do is examine the failure logs and see if they can be fixed. If not, I can still build a bootable SD card, with ‘devx’ SFS, and compile them in a running system. Note, OE TUNE_FEATURES variable is “aarch64 cortexa72 crc crypto”. So if I wanted to run on the Pi3 would have to do a separate compile. # ⚓ Booting_A_Raspberry_PI_Using_An_SSD_–_Raspberry_PI_User⠀⇛ In this guide I will show you how to boot your Raspberry PI using an SSD instead of the SD Card. It is assumed you are using a Raspberry PI 4 or 400 and that you are using Raspberry PI OS. You will need an SSD plugged into the Raspberry PI and an SD card to boot the Raspberry PI initially. # ⚓ Display_System_Info_On_Your_Raspberry_PI_Using_Conky_– Raspberry_PI_User⠀⇛ There is a tool called Conky that allows you to display system information on your desktop and the information that is displayed is customisable to your needs. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to install Conky, how to get it to run when your Raspberry PI boots and how to configure Conky to display key pieces of information such as the date and time, the temperature the PI is running at, the CPU usage and RAM usage, how much of your file system is used and network usage. # ⚓ Overclock_The_Raspberry_PI_4_and_400_–_Raspberry_PI_User⠀⇛ This guide shows how to overclock a Raspberry PI 4 and 400. It is assumed that you are running the stock Raspberry PI OS and not another distribution such as Ubuntu. # § Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ One_UI_3.0_with_Android_11_now_rolling_out_for_Galaxy Note_10_series⠀⇛ # ⚓ Android_11_is_rolling_out_to_the_Xiaomi_Mi_A3_and bricking_phones_left_and_right⠀⇛ # ⚓ Motorola’s_Android_11_OS_update_plans_aren’t_doing company_any_favors⠀⇛ # ⚓ [Update:_Jan._03]_Realme_UI_2.0_(Android_11)_update tracker:_Devices_that_have_received_the_beta/stable_OS so_far⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_you_can_get_Google_Pixel’s_camera_features_on your_Android_phone⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_open_up_and_go_through_PDF_information_on Android⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_set_your_alarm_to_play_music_from_Spotify_on Android⠀⇛ o § Free, Libre, and Open Source Software⠀➾ # ⚓ Daniel_Stenberg:_Age_is_just_a_number_or_two⠀⇛ Kjell, a friend of mine, mailed me a zip file this morning saying he’d found an earlier version of “urlget” lying around. Meaning: an older version than what we provide on the curl download page. urlget was the name we used for the command line tool before we changed the name to curl in March 1998. I’ve been reckless with some of the source code and keeping track of early history so this made me curios and when I glanced through the source code for urlget 2.4, shipped in October 1997. Kjell had found a project of his own where he’d imported the urlget sources as that was from before the days curl was also a library. [...] I could now also once and for all note that the first release of HttpGet (version 0.1) was done on November 11, 1996. My personal participation in the project began at some days/weeks after that, as it is recorded that I provided improvements in the HttpGet 0.2 release that was done on December 17 the same year. I’ve always counted the age of curl from March 20, 1998 which is when I first released something under the name “curl”, but since we released it as curl 4.0 that is certainly a sign that the time up to that point could possibly also be counted into its age. # ⚓ dav1d_0.8_Released_With_More_Optimizations_–_More_AMD Performance_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ Dav1d 0.8 was released this weekend (and subsequently 0.8.1 too) as the latest major release for this CPU-based AV1 decoder hosted by the VideoLAN project. Dav1d continues to be about offering the best AV1 decode speed and with the v0.8 series are even faster results — so here are some of our initial data points as well from some weekend benchmarking. Dav1d 0.8 offers up more optimizations. One of the main optimizations this cycle is the introduction of a picture buffer pool. Under Windows at least the usage of this picture buffer pool can improve performance by up to 10%. There are also more AVX2 and SSE/SSSE3 optimizations too. # § Events⠀➾ # ⚓ 7_enlightening_talks_from_All_Things_Open_2020⠀⇛ All Things Open, a technology conference held in October every year, is always a wonderful learning experience. For 2020, the conference shifted to an online format, which had its ups and downs. The chance encounters with acquaintances in the hallways and having lunch with friends were noticeably absent, but the learning experience was as good as always. Honestly, in some ways, it was better because everyone got a front-row seat, and there were no standing-room-only talks. One major advantage of the online format was that all of the talks were recorded, so people who missed the conference can watch the hundreds of talks available in an All Things Open 2020 playlist on YouTube. Hundreds of talks is a lot, so to provide some suggestions of where to start, I’ll briefly cover seven of the talks I attended. I also attended an excellent talk by Opensource.com’s Jen Wike Huger about how to write an article, but I will let her explain her talk in her own words. # § FSF⠀➾ # § GNU Projects⠀➾ # ⚓ GNU_Chinese_Translators_Team_–_News:_2020 summary⠀⇛ Thank you all for the great effort in 2020. Despite the difficulties from many directions, we as a team have achieved something proudly. 1. This year, the total number of new translations was more than in 2019. The Turkish team made an impressive progress, both in terms of new translations and in terms of updating the existing ones. Other notably good teams are Chinese ("Simplified"), Spanish and French. The Japanese team considerably reduced the amount of outdated translations throughout the year. The table below shows the number and size of newly translated articles and the translations to convert to the PO format in important directories (as of 2020- 12-31). # § Public Services/Government⠀➾ # ⚓ A_key_finding_from_OSOR’s_report_on_Open_Source⠀⇛ The importance of OSS in public sector across Europe is affirmed by governments increasingly incorporating OSS as part of their country’s political and legal framework, with 26 out of the 28 countries studied having put in place legal and political initiatives referring to OSS. The first identified initiative within the policy and legal framework addressing OSS dates back to 2001. Since then, every year, both political and legal initiatives have increased significantly, reaching a total of 100 initiatives over the course of two decades. Although OSS is just one digital technology that can help guide the digital transformation, the benefits afforded to users in terms of transparency, adaptability, and collaborative potential positions OSS as a highly unique offering available to all public sector bodies. This report highlights the impact of this gradual realisation across Europe, culminating in the implementation of various OSS initiatives and the establishment of OSS bodies. # § Programming/Development⠀➾ # ⚓ LLVM_Adds_Initial_Support_For_PowerPC_LE_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ LLVM has added support for PowerPC LE (32- bit) as its newest target. While LLVM has supported the PowerPC architecture for years, to date it’s been focused on the big endian support. Most PowerPC hardware supports both big and little endian modes and can be switched at run-time. While Linux and others tend to focus on PowerPC support in big endian mode, LLVM has added a PowerPC LE option. # ⚓ Side-Effect_Learning⠀⇛ # § Perl/Raku⠀➾ # ⚓ Raku_Performance_and_Physics::Unit_–_Physics:: Journey⠀⇛ I have been able to spend some time on the Physics::Unit module over the holidays and to expunge some of the frustrations that have crept in regarding the compile times of raku. The basic problem I have been wrestling with is the desire to express physical SI units using the raku custom postfix operator mechanism without having to wait for 30 mins for raku to compile my module. This is the story of how judicious design, lazy execution, trial & error and the raku power tools got from 30 mins to under 13 secs! Let’s start by looking at the sunlit uplands. Imagine a raku which provides a simple and intuitive tool for scientists and educators to perform calculations that automatically figure out what the physical units are doing. # ⚓ gfldex:_Internal_indirection⠀⇛ With writing more and more shell scripts in Raku, I realised that I call a MAIN by a MAIN in a very indirect manner. I wondered if I can find a way to reduce the indirection to get rid of the extra process and at least some of the overhead of Proc::Async. First we need a script to call. [...] Quite in contrast to Perl 5, for Raku I never used EVAL much. Not because I’m scared — there was little reason for code generation. After all, between the two of us I have always been the more evil twin. # § Python⠀➾ # ⚓ Validating_XML_Schema_of_OVAL_Documents_with Python⠀⇛ OVAL is the Open Vulnerability Assessment Language, which uses XML based documents to define vulnerabilities based on characteristics of a host system. It can also be used to gather information about the host. When an OVAL file is evaluated, it generates a report file with the results of the vulnerability evaluation or a system characteristics file containing information gathered from the host. [...] There are, however, still scenarios where a Definition file can use elements from more than one additional schema. This will commonly occur when using elements from the independent- definitions-schema, which contains functionality that can be used across multiple operating systems such as hashing files, checking environment variables and reading file contents. A Definition file written for Windows that uses both the Windows schema and Independent schema would not be possible to validate with lxml by passing in any single one of the default schema files. Passing in only one of the required schemas would cause the validation to fail on elements found in the schema that has not been provided to the Python script. # ⚓ This_is_Why_Python_Will_Stay_Among_The_Top Languages_in_2021_–_Python_Land⠀⇛ Python has a long history, starting around 1991 with its first release in a newsgroup called alt.sources. Since then, we all know how omnipresent the language has become. Last year, Python ranked second in Redmonk’s list of the most popular programming languages. And I can tell you… this year won’t be different. # § Java⠀➾ # ⚓ Avoid_the_Telescoping_anti-pattern_in_Java⠀⇛ The Telescoping anti-pattern is widely- spread, just like a virus. It starts with good intentions. [...] With the above, you preserve the original constructor with two parameters and it calls a new constructor with three parameters and a default value of 0 for z. This will ensure that the new z property will not break previous implementation of the Example object. This saves you from having to fix older code and that’s why it’s a widely spread practice recognised as a design anti-pattern. The drawbacks of the telescoping constructor is that it is confusing, ugly and incorrect from clean code point of view. Instead, the correct way to address such a problem with an increasing number of class properties is using the so called Builder. # ⚓ How_to_create_immutable_objects_and_properties in_Java⠀⇛ Being able to create an immutable object in Java is one of the most essential skills for any Java programmer. Such objects are needed when you want to rest assured that a created object cannot change for whatever reason. The common approach is to create an object with private final fields and allow only getters for these fields. However, if you reference directly these properties when returning them you are making them mutable. * § Leftovers⠀➾ o § Education⠀➾ # ⚓ What_is_more_important,_reading_or_job_prospects?⠀⇛ In the past several years, UNESCO and UNICEF have sounded the alarm about an “education crisis” in developing countries. Worldwide, says UNESCO, 56% of primary-school-age children are not achieving minimum proficiency levels (MPLs) in reading. In sub-Saharan Africa, the figure is 85%. o § Integrity/Availability⠀➾ # § Proprietary⠀➾ # § Pseudo-Open Source⠀➾ # § Openwashing⠀➾ # ⚓ How_open_principles_will_impact_the future_of_work_|_Opensource.com⠀⇛ Consider the transformation of work throughout the Industrial Revolution (between the 1700s and 1800s). It drove many people from rural farm work into factories in the cities, fundamentally altering their lifestyles. It required new, more specialized skills (rather than the kind of artisanship common in rural economies). As we examine our own personal work environments in the decades to come, we’ll see a potential reversal of the trends we saw during the Industrial era: from hierarchy and interchangeable general skills and activities to the reinstatement of horizontal collaboration and more specialized mastery (back to artisanship). This time, though, these changes come on a global scale rather than a local one, and the speed of change is far more accelerated. And in this new work environment, open organization principles will play a vital role. In this series, I’ll review The Shift, a book by Professor Lynda Gratton—a book that, while written in 2014 from data assembled in 2010, still rings true today (and will in the future, too). In this book, Gratton projects how work will change around 2025 and 2050. This is vital information, as it will help us make sound choices when preparing for and developing our careers moving forward. [..] These five forces will prompt fundamental changes to the way we work in the future, Gratton argues. But we need to begin preparing for that future now. In the next article of this series, I’ll explain Gratton’s outlook and a few scenarios for grappling with a rapidly changing future. How could a person look at those changes as career opportunities? On the other hand, what would happen if a person simply ignored those changes to come? I’ll review Gratton’s thoughts on those questions. Also, I’ll also explain how open principles can form the heart of necessary changes. # § Security⠀➾ # § Privacy/Surveillance⠀➾ # ⚓ Lessons_from_Sweden_about_going cashless⠀⇛ In ten years the proportion of Swedes using cash has fallen from 40 to 9%. Today, Just 1% of Sweden’s GDP circulates as cash, compared to 11% in the Euro zone. # ⚓ When_algorithms_meet_debt…⠀⇛ Everyone must be aware of four (no, five) problems. Especially lawyers. We “First World” countries love to hate the so called “China’s Social Credit System”. And surely there is a lot to object to such system. The problem is being unable to recognize the same thing, when it happens at home. Especially, maybe, when it comes to debt. Debt has been in society probably since well before the formal adoption of “money”, but (both as individuals, and at the social level) we haven’t quite managed how to deal with it yet. That is why, probably, debt and its “management” are a growing problem today. The snapshot below is about how Indians could land in a debt trap without even realizing it, and the thumbnail of this post comes from a 2018 report on Silicon Valley startups working on debt collection algorithms. # ⚓ Really_smart_cities_help_their_stores_to go_Dark⠀⇛ The digital dark side or retailing is more smart than dark. Two weeks ago, I commented a very sensible proposal to protect brick and mortar local stores, based on building small local “Amazons”, rather than actually boycotting Amazon. In addition to that strategy, or maybe as complement of it, here is a very interesting development coming out in (at least) the UK and the USA: shops going over to the “dark” side. [...] On one hand, this is bad, because many of those places may end up strenghtening big players like Amazon, the only ones who can surely “pay all of their rent and they pay it on time”. In London, and everywhere else, of course. Another reason why that could be the end result is that “Overburdened courier services like the US Postal Service prioritise pick-ups from huge warehouses”, not lilliputian, isolated “High Street Stores”. [...] Less fablabs and startup incubators, more community owned warehouses, with local staff with decent contracts, bike-based, properly slow delivery… It may be less glamorous, but it could be much, much smarter. # ⚓ Sometimes_the_best_data_are_those_that_do not_exist⠀⇛ Or, what you can learn about privacy from Soviet weapon’s philosophy. [...] The AK-47 assault rifle was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947. Since then “up to 100 millions AF-47s have been made” One of the main reasons of the AK-47 success is that Kalashnikov did not design a rifle to achieve greatness: he designed it to “achieve averageness – under any possible conditions”, and one of essential ways to achieve that goal was to have “a SMALL number of moving parts”. However search engines and advertising services are regulated, make sure they work in the same way. The less personal data are there to begin with, the less can break. Just like with AK-47s. # § Confidentiality⠀➾ # ⚓ What_THIS_“Google_Down”_put_in_full view⠀⇛ On December 14th, for about an hour, the most famous broker of behavioral advertising did not allow the world population to give it monetizable data, due to technical problems. This is how Paolo Vecchi rightfully described the Google outage happened three days ago. What is important is what the outage demonstrates. o § Environment⠀➾ # § Wildlife/Nature⠀➾ # ⚓ Cambodian_conservationists_find_five_nests_of_frog- headed_turtle⠀⇛ WCS Cambodia’s Mekong Regional Coordinator Nhuon Chanty told The Post that the first nest they discovered had 32 eggs, but within a week the team had found four more nests. “If we total the number of eggs in the five nests we found, there were more than 150 eggs. We will collect these frog-headed turtle eggs and put them in a safe place for them to hatch, ” he said. The frog-headed turtle breeding season runs from November to May. # ⚓ Five_critical_things_for_our_oceans⠀⇛ Money is needed to rescue the oceans, of course. Lots and lots of it. That is not the point. It is the “mainstream” part that concerns me. Because, today, “mainstream finance” is what still does, thanks to digital technology, totally dumb stuff like high speed trading. # § Overpopulation⠀➾ # ⚓ The_planet_is_obese⠀⇛ In the last years, a team of scientists has calculated, as accurately as possible, the current values and composition of both masses. According to their conclusions, in 2020 biomass amounts (not counting water) to a little less than 1.2 trillion tonnes. Anthropogenic mass, instead, was a little over half a trillion tonnes by the end of the 20th century. Since then, in just 20 more years, it has doubled and this year became equivalent to the biomass. In other twenty years, if we keep doing things the same way, anthropogenic mass will be three times the (left) biomass. o § AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics⠀➾ # ⚓ Sad_follow-up_on_that_small_problem_with_e-voting_in Italy⠀⇛ Twenty days ago, I reported a “small” problem with e-voting in Italy. This is the sad (for now) conclusion of that story. o § Monopolies⠀➾ # § Trademarks⠀➾ # ⚓ Around_the_IP_Blogs⠀⇛ The seemingly never-ending saga of the United Patent Court being challenged in Germany courts continues [see an earlier post by The IPKat here], this time with two new constitutional complaints filed against the UPC. Juve Patent has reported on this recent turn of events. [...] Following the transposition of Art. 45 the Trade Mark Directive (EU) 2015/2436 at the end of 2019, the French IP Office (INPI) acquired new competences with regard to revocation and declaration of invalidity of trade marks. Kluwer Trademark Blog reviewed the INPI’s first decisions on the matter. # ⚓ The_ICC_IP_Roadmap_2020 [Ed: International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) as lobbyist and think tank for oligarchs with their protectionism agenda]⠀⇛ The ICC IP Roadmap 2020 is a guide addressed to policymakers, researchers, legal and business professionals as well as the general public. Over 60 contributors from around the world participated in the publication. The latest edition covers patents, trademarks, copyrights, designs, trade secrets, traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, big data, artificial intelligence, sustainability, climate change, piracy, and counterfeiting, among other topics. The ICC IP Roadmap 2020 is available in English. However, the Spanish and Portuguese versions will be published in 2021. # ⚓ Washington_and_Cleveland_football_teams_review names⠀⇛ Janet Satterthwaite reports on the latest developments regarding the rebranding of the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians. Sometimes we need to be grateful for a win, even if it’s not for all the right reasons. In this case, the Washington football team is changing its name from THE REDSKINS because of a general backlash against all kinds of racism, as opposed to the narrower and long- running cause of indigenous rights and trade marks. # ⚓ How_Is_The_French_INPI_Coping_With_Its_New Attributions_Since_1st_April_2020?⠀⇛ Decision [DC20-008/3319571/SGU of 10/07/2020] clarifies how the exclusivity, attributed to both the Administration and the Courts, but in different situations, is to be understood. Indeed, INPI has exclusive jurisdiction for rectification/cancellation actions for non- use, as a principal action, save where the rectification/cancellation for non-use is in fact related to a infringement or unfair competition claim, previously filed before the Civil Courts, in which case, the Civil Courts retain exclusive competence. The Respondent for rectification had sued the Applicant before the Marseille IP Court for infringement of its FADA COLA mark in classes 32 & 33 of the international classification. The Applicant then filed for total rectification/cancellation for non-use of the FADA COLA mark in classes 32, 33 & 43, as a principal claim before INPI. Notwithstanding the fact that the claims were only partially identical, INPI’s decision specifies that Article L 716-5 of the Intellectual Property Code does not provide for the competence to be divided out so that the Marseille Court is exclusively competent to hear the cancellation for non-use in its entirety. The decision also relied on the traditional principle of the proper administration of justice but also a fairly unheard-of principle of “litigation unity” [«unité des litiges»]. # § Copyrights⠀➾ # ⚓ Finnish_Article_17_implementation_proposal_prohibits the_use_of_automated_upload_filters⠀⇛ On Monday, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture held a public hearing on the implementation of Article 17 of the Copyright Directive. As part of this meeting, the Ministry outlined its proposal for a user rights-preserving “blocking procedure” that substantially deviates from all other implementation proposals that we have seen so far. The procedure presents a radical departure from the approach that is underpinning other user rights-preserving implementation proposals (such as the Austrian and German proposals) and the Commission’s proposed (and much delayed) Article 17 implementation guidance. Instead of limiting the use of automated filters to a subset of uploads where there is a high likelihood that the use is infringing, the Finnish proposal does away with automated blocking of user uploads entirely, but not with automated detection of potential infringements. The Finnish proposal relies on mandatory use of content recognition technology by platforms and the rapid notification of rightsholders of uploads that match works for which rightsholders have provided them with reference information. However, platforms are only required to disable access to uploaded content after rightsholders have provided them with a properly justified request to block a particular upload… # ⚓ Web_Scraping_Is_Vital_|_Stop_at_Zona-M⠀⇛ Web scraping means collecting data from websites automatically, by writing programs, sometimes very simple ones, that do all the job (I have written several tutorial myself on how to do it. It is what Google, and every other search engine, do every second, if they must provide any service. In general, it is hard to overestimate the importance of this activity for students, researchers, businesses, watchdogs and “fact checkers” of any kind. Journalists, for example, have used scrapers to collect data that rooted out extremist cops, tracked lobbyists, and uncovered an underground market for adopted children. Web scraping is essential for democracy, and human rights in general. This is why The Markup filed an amicus brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court this week that threatens to make scraping illegal. ╘══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╛ ¶ Lines in total: 5714 ➮ Generation completed at 02:41, i.e. 22 seconds to (re)generate ⟲