06.19.16

Patent Examiners and Insiders Acknowledge Profound Demise in Patent Quality Under Battistelli

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 11:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Rushing examiners, but at what cost? Lots for Battistelli to cherry-pick from…

Quality
Reference: Quality (business)

Summary: By lowering the quality of patents granted by the European Patent Office Battistelli hopes to create an illusion of success, where success is not measured properly and is assessed by biased firms which he finances

TECHRIGHTS has expressed deep and genuine concerns about the quality of EPO patents for quite some time (about half a decade, not just in relation to software patents). The growing threat is an irreversible decline in quality that would superficially elevate the number of granted patents (devaluing/diluting their value, especially older ones) just like at the USPTO (which many would agree is in a chaotic state when it comes to patent quality). More is not always merrier, especially when it comes to patent monopoly/protection. It’s not beneficial to innovation (over-patenting) and it often brings with it many false positives, i.e. patents erroneously granted, which leads to spurious demands, court cases, disputes, etc.

The following is a very sad story (also a rather long one) from an EPO patent examiner. This examiner openly (but anonymously, for his/her protection) admits quality has been ruined under Battistelli. Here is the comment in full:

Just to complete the picture since it appears everyone is shocked of how things are run when they become a bit public. My unfortunate reality is these reports do not deviate from the daily life in-house. I am an examiner. Or more accurately, I was an experienced examiner, I am now on the payroll. I was once proud of doing my job diligently. Maybe it is linked to the technical field, I used to examine diligently with a low rate of grants, even when compared to my close colleagues. Most files I examined were withdrawn when explained why they would not satisfy the technical and legal requirements. I refused the large part of the other applications and, amongst the refusals challenged all but one stood before the BoAs.

Following the procedure towards a sound refusal requires serious work and takes time. I was never processing high numbers of applications, average compared to colleagues, had no rapid career but was proud of my work. Sure cutting many corners would have provided me immediate financial advantages in terms of promotions but would have been at the expense of the public, the competitors and my pride. I don’t know which one mattered most. I never gave in anyway.

Things have changed over the last three years. Production targets were raised, colleagues were put in direct competition for steps and promotions. The collaborative work we used to do mostly vanished. I have tried to stay focused on my work and its quality. I was soon put under pressure of my direct boss for having a low “productivity” (some kind of bizarre calculation dividing a weighted sum of the times you pressed a button claiming a search report is out and of the times that an application is granted, refused, withdrawn or that the applicant stopped paying the renewal fees by the available working time. Unrelated to the amount of actual work done but use to promote and punish). Not that my “productivity” had changed but the ones of my colleagues went up dramatically (rat race for grabbing big bonuses) and I am now in the target line. My manager explained me that I needed to do 40% more productivity to stay out of trouble. I told him that it was totally unreasonable and the work could not be done this way. He assured me he knew that but had no margin and had to follow the orders.

I then reflected on the actions of my own government represented in the Administrative Council. They obviously do not care. Neither do most other countries. The very same goes for the public at large and applicants.

I decided to preserve my health, my family and stopped doing my job. This year I will deliver more patents than I have done over the last 10 years at least. I am going back home earlier, have longer coffee breaks and do not elaborate relevant technical and legal arguments anymore. I avoid citing pieces of prior art that are too relevant; citing an approximate document is enough to write a formal objection, wait for the answer and submit it to the colleagues. I do not believe they read anymore what they sign and everyone is happy. Not my pride. But the price is paid. Had I known I would have end up in such a situation, I could have acted this way much earlier to get promoted. It is hardly a secret that most of today’s managers reached their positions either by having extraordinary “productivities” or by escaping towards functions not having any “productivity” calculations. Ask examiners about ridiculous examples of patents granted by their managers!

I am now making most people happy: my manager, Mr. Battistelli, the Member States, the Administrative Council, the applicants, their representatives, my family. I can only be sorry for my lost pride, my lack of courage, the public at large for restricting freedoms, the competitors for the unfair competition, the taxpayers for the extra expenses of the judiciary, the consumers for the extra licensing costs and the reader because I am too verbose. Telling makes my sense of guilt more bearable.

This comment isn’t from some ‘rotten apple’ or an outlier. Judging by reactions to it (thus far), many people at the EPO feel the same way. “The recent slide in examination quality has been very clear to those of us who study cases carefully,” one person wrote. Here is the comment in full:

Thank you for your heartfelt confessional. You are not alone. The recent slide in examination quality has been very clear to those of us who study cases carefully. But not only in the sense of granting applications too easily. We are also seeing negative communications issued with virtually no serious analysis. Cite a few documents, cut and paste the standard paragraph about being routine for the skilled person – job done! The application will be shelved for the next two or three years, while the EPO continues to collect those juicy renewal fees.

Responding to the part which said “This year I will deliver more patents than I have done over the last 10 years at least,” one person writes: “It seems that the effects are starting to see.”

We have been warning about this for a very long time and the cited blog post we already mentioned here the other day. Here is an observation from another thread:

Some further thoughts.

A big jump in grants will lead to a big jump in oppositions, even without any change in “quality” of decisions to grant.

Oppositions, I understand, are priority 1, even more so after the proposed changes to procedure.

And yet I am seeing an increasing number of zombie applications [more than 10 years old] being brought into examination, sometimes with an examiner amendment on a Rule 71(3) notice. How are you finding time to deal with the long tail of old applications?

The response to it uses internal terminology, which suggests these are indeed EPO insiders who speak on the subject:

I too have seen an increase in re-surfacing zombies, generally where there has been an exam report many years ago. Often the exam report just required a response to a PCT Written Opinion, in the days before the present Rule 161.

As I understand it, such zombies would be priority 2 under ECfS, above starting new examinations. Presumably this is why Examiners are able to allocate time to them.

“Indeed,” notes a response to it. “Those examination dossiers where the applicant would not get a refund due to a first communication already having been sent are priority 2. The first action blocking a refund is, IMHO, a trigger for a higher priority I can stand behind. Finish startes [sic] files instead of having as many started as possible, which seemed to be the priority for some of my colleagues. If you ask for accelerated, or when the next comm. can be expected, the file is lifted up to priority 1.”

Meanwhile, in relation to the US system (where patent quality is rather appalling for reasons we have mentioned for a decade), Professor Dennis Crouch now shows that despite the number of patents almost doubling, “Certificates of Correction” remain at a similar number and are seemingly peaking this year. In Crouch’s words: “A substantial percentage of patents continue to pass through the post-issuance correction process that leads to a Certificate of Correction.”

He also wrote: “The number of corrections has remained relatively steady over the past 15 years. Since the number of issued patents issued has risen so dramatically during that time, this steady-state of correction filings means that the average number of corrections per recently issued patent has continued dropped steadily for the past decade with the odd exception of patents issued in 2009. About 14% of patents issued 1990 to 2005 went through the correction process. That percentage is now down under 10%.”

This is one indication of decline of quality control. Now, compare that to the number of appeals at the EPO (a subject previously explored here) and imagine what’s to come with increased appeal fees (reportedly to skyrocket), especially if Battistelli gets his way and altogether eliminates the appeal boards.

Responding to the original rant (from “1984″) about patent quality, one person wrote:

I totally agree with you, 1984 – and also share the same, big regret: I should have started earlier to send out…

Another person wrote:

Thank you, 1984, for expressing so accurately my own feelings! Both so funny and sad to think you may just be in another country or just next door. We will never talk about it, we will never know. If the word were to be spread on the identity of anyone talking, our families would be screwed. Not worth the risk of the institutional retaliation.

Then came a humorous response from “The Investigative Unit” [1, 2] and one person seemed befuddled by IAM (the EPO is still leaning on its IAM propagandists to pretend patent quality and service are fine). To quote:

What I find rather impressive is that the Epo keeps winning each and every patent quality survey. Not only are we the best of the world but in 2015 our quality greatly improved over 2014…

That’s nonsense. It’s IAM nonsense, i.e. the usual.

Here is one response to that:

Do you remember the fate of the Survey organized by the Office about the reform of the BoA?

The results were completely misrepresented by Battistelli to support his agenda – as a post by Merpel detailed.

Do you really expect El Presidentitssimo to report any negative results that do not fit his agenda?

Good luck with that.

“The results were completely misrepresented by Battistelli to support his agenda,” the above says, “as a post by Merpel detailed.” This is what we have come to expect from just about any ‘survey’ by and about the EPO. Follow the money, follow the invoices. We have. Battistelli’s expensive information war [1, 2, 3, 4] is hoping to distract from and discourage (e.g. by spying) messages like that from “1984″. Truth/objectivity is not allowed at today’s EPO and Battistelli runs his Ministry of Truth, just like in the book “1984“. █

Jericho Systems Threatens Alice, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Threatens the Patent Trial and Appeal (PTAB)

Posted in America, Patents at 10:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Two new threats to the status of software patents in the United States (a rapidly-declining status)

Jericho Systems and software patents

Summary: A look at the two latest threats to those who helped put an end to a lot of (if not most) software patents in the US

“In a new petition for writ of certiorari,” Patently-O noted the other day, “Jericho Systems has asked the Supreme Court to review its abstract idea test…”

This is another dangerous attempt to resurrect software patents at the USPTO, in spite of PTAB and sometimes even CAFC (which brought software patents to the US) often throwing them away. Jericho Systems was mentioned here before, both in decisions [PDF] and in posts about Novell or patents. CAFC, however, is reportedly dissenting against PTAB (some patent lawyers and proponents of software patents mentioned this the other day), which puts an end to a lot of software patents. As MIP put it: “The Federal Circuit has vacated and remanded parts of a Patent Trial and Appeal (PTAB) final written decision that relied on a new claim construction. The problem was not that the Board changed the claim construction but that it did not give parties a chance to respond, said the appeals court.” Compare to to what goes on at the EPO with the appeal boards.

“We need to protect Alice and we need to protect PTAB, which applies the corresponding tests quicker than any single court does (court cases take a lot more time and money).”So here we basically have two threats; the first is Jericho Systems, which wishes to bring the question of software patentability (or the “abstract” patent test) back to the Supreme Court and second is CAFC, originator of software patents and backer of Enfish, which is trying to disrupt PTAB’s excellent work (it’s like the EPO’s EBoA, which Battistelli is crushing). To quote Professor Dennis Crouch: “The district court ended the case with a judgment on the pleadings – finding that the asserted claims of Jericho’s Patent No. 8,560,836 lacked eligibility under Alice and Mayo (focusing on claim 1 as axiomatic).”

We need to protect Alice and we need to protect PTAB, which applies the corresponding tests quicker than any single court does (court cases take a lot more time and money). Otherwise, sadly, software patents might come back with a vengeance to the United States. █

How the Halo Electronics Case Helps Patent Trolls and How Publications Funded by Patent Trolls (IAM for Instance) Covered This

Posted in America, Courtroom, LG, Patents, Samsung at 10:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Halo as a sanctuary for patent trolls

Halo

Summary: A Supreme Court ruling on patents, its implications for software patent trolls, and how media that is promoting software patents and patent trolls covered it

THE dishonest/self-serving patent lawyers in the US might never openly admit this, but software patents are dying not only in US courts and PTAB but also, increasingly, at the USPTO. This does not necessarily solve the problem of patent trolls because trolls tend to go after small companies that have neither the will nor the budget to invalidate the asserted patents, e.g. by going to court.

“Court rulings like this,” say anti-trolls lobbyists, “make it much more urgent for Congress to pass patent litigation reform legislation this year” (they probably allude to the VENUE Act or the likes of it).

“This does not necessarily solve the problem of patent trolls because trolls tend to go after small companies that have neither the will nor the budget to invalidate the asserted patents, e.g. by going to court.”“Supreme Court Ruling in Halo/Stryker Case Will Lead to More Lawsuits from Patent Trolls, More Forum Shopping by Repeat Plaintiffs,” says the accompanying PDF. “Ruling Gives Small Businesses Less Incentive to Fight Meritless Suits,” says the second line. This is correct as it’s already far too expensive and laborious. The smaller the company, the more likely it is to just pay ‘protection money’ (extortion) because the ratio between the ‘damages’ and the legal costs in a court makes it the ‘correct’ business choice.

Suppose for a moment that patent trolls don’t get granted (or get to buy) the patents they use. The proposed reform legislation does not actually tackle software patents. The subject is not even on the agenda and that’s a problem. As long as software patents can land on the lap of patent trolls, these are guaranteed to be misused. Natalie Rahhal of MIP wrote about the same decision (Halo/Stryker case) as follows: “The Supreme Court decided both Halo Electronics, Inc v Pulse Electronics, Inc, et al and Stryker Corporation, et al v Zimmer, Inc, et al on Monday, in a decision that significantly lowered the bar for the issuance of enhanced damages in a patent infringement case.

“Gene the WatchTroll (or “Watchdog” as he prefers to think of himself) is so upset that judges are doing their job and eliminating software patents (after SCOTUS Justices ruled on the matter) that he shamelessly exploits these latest developments to assert Justices are writing legislation (untrue).”“Enhanced damages are set out by Section 284 of the Patent Act and allow the Court to award a patent owner up to three times the amount of the damages found, if the jury or the court determines that the infringement was wilful.”

Gene the WatchTroll (or “Watchdog” as he prefers to think of himself) is so upset that judges are doing their job and eliminating software patents (after SCOTUS Justices ruled on the matter) that he shamelessly exploits these latest developments to assert Justices are writing legislation (untrue). In our previous post we showed how he had exploited the Halo/Stryker case to accuse Justices of ignorance and here he is saying that §101 (Alice) is “overused”:

It seems as though once the court realized the claimed invention related to software, it pulled out its §101 goggles and ignored any other grounds for patent invalidity. Such an analysis, which pushes decision-making into 101, which is ill-suited to be used as such a brute force instrument, has perplexed and frustrated patent practitioners. Courts, including the Federal Circuit, simply disregard the other sections of the Patent Act in favor of §101, which for them is easier and leads to decision-making without the need of discovery and without presuming the issued patent is valid.

With or without Halo/Stryker, with or without Enfish, §101 still stands and it will continue to demolish software patents by the thousands (those that reach PTAB and the courts anyway). One can be sure that patent lawyers will keep saying “Halo” and “Enfish” any time they wish to defend trolls and software patents. Joff Wild, for a change, says the T word (“Trolls”) in his article about Halo (a case which we first mentioned here last week) and here is his opening paragraph: “There have already been plenty of articles written about the Supreme Court’s decision in Halo v Pulse, which was handed down yesterday. As is usual in cases where they review the work of the Federal Circuit, the court’s justices have decided that its practices are wrong. This time, it’s the approach that the CAFC has towards determining wilful infringement – it’s too rigid and lets too many potentially very badly behaved defendants off the hook. Instead, the Supreme Court has stated, judges should have a lot more discretion in deciding when a defendant’s behaviour has been so egregious that it deserves the sanction of triple damages.”

“With or without Halo/Stryker, with or without Enfish, §101 still stands and it will continue to demolish software patents by the thousands (those that reach PTAB and the courts anyway).”Expect this to be used to discredit §101 and defend patent trolls. Now that Ericsson’s patent trolls (in Europe) are about get ‘scooped up’ IAM celebrates and as another major lawsuit comes to light IAM says: “Earlier this week an entity called Global Equity Management (GEMSA) filed lawsuits against 20 separate operating companies including Spotify, Netflix and Uber over the alleged infringement of two patents. All of the suits were filed in the Eastern District of Texas.”

That’s just a patent troll in the Eastern District of Texas, as usual. “US Pat 6,690,400, Asserted Against Amazon Web Service Users,” Patent Buddy wrote, adding some of his information about the patent. Apparently that’s just fine with Wild and his colleagues, whose employer received money from patent trolls. This EPO‘s mouthpiece, IAM ‘magazine’, still treats the world's largest patent troll (and Microsoft-connected troll) like some kind of heroic entity that people ought to emulate. Last week it continued to groom this patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. They almost do public relations, having spoken directly to the company’s executives last month (the editor in chief did, the trolls denialist).

“It doesn’t seem to bother Congress enough. Why not? Follow the money.”Perhaps the saddest thing in it all is that most voices that weighed in on the latter (and we were able to find) treated a win for patent trolls as some kind of fantastic ruling from SCOTUS, except perhaps TechDirt with this article titled “Supreme Court Just Made It Easier For Patent Trolls”.

To quote TechDirt: “As we’ve noted over the past decade or so, the Supreme Court has been smacking down the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit (CAFC) over and over and over again on issues related to patent law. And on Monday, the Supreme Court did it once again — but this time in a way that actually might not be good.”

The analysis ends with: “At the very least, this seems like an argument for Congress to finally stop sitting around and doing something to fix the patent troll problem.”

It doesn’t seem to bother Congress enough. Why not? Follow the money. Why is IAM so soft on trolls? Again, follow the money.

We could say a lot more about IAM’s sheer bias. Consider its latest coverage from Asia. IAM, as usual, misses the point. LG and Samsung are absolutely massive companies (almost part of the nation itself, including the military in fact); they are the exception, not the norm, when it comes to the number of patents. IAM says “Korean companies own some of the world’s largest patent portfolios, including of course the single biggest stockpile of US grants – by some margin – which belongs to Samsung Electronics.” But IAM does not mention that this is pretty much limited to just two companies. Regarding Japan, which has a lot more than just two or three giant technology companies, IAM suggests some kind of patent liquidation. Notice how they ascribe or use the word “asset” to refer to a patent (the A in IAM is “asset”), as if it’s some kind of physical object. Euphemisms are everywhere at IAM. It’s lobbying disguised as news. █

Patent Lawyers’ Fantasy Land Where Software Patents Are Suddenly Resurrected Even When They’re Not

Posted in America, Patents at 9:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Ignoring the facts and insulting Supreme Court Justices instead

Bilski Blog chart
Credit: Bilski Blog chart

Summary: A quick glance at where the debate over software patents in the United States stands and how profiteers (such as patent lawyers) not only mislead the public but also bully the messengers

THE situation in the United States gives much hope for those looking to abolish software patents. The USPTO begrudgingly adopts Alice and makes it harder to attain software patents, irrespective of what the court (or PTAB) says about them. But make no mistake, the proponents of software patents fight hard to change this, using lobbying (misleading the decision makers), propaganda (misleading the public), and false marketing (bamboozling clients with false hopes).

Curiously enough, recently we learned that software patents and their injustice gave birth to the original Pirate Party (in Sweden). To quote Benjamin Henrion, “Pirate Party founder Falkvinge mentions software patents fight in 2005/2006 as one of the reason for starting” (that was around the time of the famous directive on software patents in Europe, after Falkvinge had worked for Microsoft and Microsoft had lobbied hard for software patents in Europe — a subject that Florian Müller wrote an entire book about).

“But make no mistake, the proponents of software patents fight hard to change this, using lobbying (misleading the decision makers), propaganda (misleading the public), and false marketing (bamboozling clients with false hopes).”To this date, proponents of software patents, notably large corporations and their patent lawyers, work hard to promote and cement a broken system. “A New Hope For Software Patents?” is the title of this new analysis, reusing even words after more than a month with many dozens of so-called ‘analyses’ (marketing for one’s services around software patents). Gordon & Rees LLP has just published “Is the Enfish Case “A New Hope” For Software Patents?”

Notice the question mark. They know the answer, but they create uncertainty in the hope of attracting customers. Isn’t it time to say “enough with this propaganda,” as not much has changed since the decision except the flood of pro-software patents ‘analyses’ from patent lawyers? We wrote many detailed articles to highlight this wave of misinformation.

“To this date, proponents of software patents, notably large corporations and their patent lawyers, work hard to promote and cement a broken system.”“Enfish for Alice: a software win”, says another so-called ‘analysis’ [via Bastian Best], as if patent trolls winning is “a software win”…

“Good news for software patents,” says the author. “The negative impact of the 2014 SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) “Alice” decision (invalidating some business method and financial software patents) has been somewhat mitigated by the recent “Enfish” court decision.”

No, not really. Barely. Nothing at all or not much has changed more than a month afterwards. In fact, how many other cases have been ruled in favour of software patents since? Anyone can count those on one hand if not zero hands. According to some number-crunching work from Bilski Blog (very informative blog by the way) and those who comment on it, “The Supreme Court Did Not Consider Alice v CLS Bank to Be a Software Patent Killer But the Dist. Cts and PTAB Do” (not CAFC).

“It’s increasingly amusing to see how patent lawyers squirm over Alice, simply not accepting that software patents should never have been possible in the first place.”That’s rather misleading an interpretation regarding the above as SCOTUS (the Supreme Court) did not express an opinion on software patents explicitly, so overall it’s a rather misguided/misleading claim to make. What the cited analysis shows is that the vast majority of patent cases involving software are unfavourable to software patents, much to the panic and horror of people like Patent WatchTroll (Gene), who is now trying to reach new lows, probably in grave frustration. Watch his latest effort to shame the Justices into approving software patents. “It is truly ironic,” he said, “even downright funny, how the Supreme Court can so clearly see that the Federal Circuit is not being true to the simple, easy to understand, straightforward terms of a statute but at the same time lack the capacity to similarly see that they are themselves doing the very same thing. If intellectual honesty means anything the Supreme Court would hold themselves to the same standard and stop applying judicial exceptions to patent eligibility that enjoy no textual support in the statute. I’m not going to hold my breath.”

Gene, being the software patents cheerleader he has always been (for his own profit), is mocking the intelligence of people who don’t agree with him (Gene already blocked me in Twitter, having lost the argument, perhaps fearing further debating), even when they’re Justices at the Supreme Court! It’s increasingly amusing to see how patent lawyers squirm over Alice, simply not accepting that software patents should never have been possible in the first place. Our next post will show some more pearls of ‘wisdom’ from Gene… █

Links 19/6/2016: Randa Over, Fedora 24 Release Soon

Posted in News Roundup at 8:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Let us test voting code, say academics

    Doubts about the accuracy of the Senate vote count remain until the Australian Electoral Commission agrees to publicly release the computer code it uses.

    That’s the view of the Australian Greens and academics who have studied vote-counting software errors.

  • Chef’s new Habitat project wants to make applications infrastructure-independent

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Vimperator interface for Firefox Part 1

        Vimperator is a plugin for Firefox that completely overhauls the GUI to behave like Vim making your mouse unneeded for most web sites. If this was not available I would be attempting to create something much like it.

      • Contextual Identities on the Web

        We all portray different characteristics of ourselves in different situations. The way I speak with my son is much different than the way I communicate with my coworkers. The things I tell my friends are different than what I tell my parents. I’m much more guarded when withdrawing money from the bank than I am when shopping at the grocery store. I have the ability to use multiple identities in multiple contexts. But when I use the web, I can’t do that very well. There is no easy way to segregate my identities such that my browsing behavior while shopping for toddler clothes doesn’t cross over to my browsing behavior while working. The Containers feature I’m about to describe attempts to solve this problem: empowering Firefox to help segregate my online identities in the same way I can segregate my real life identities.

      • Multi-process Firefox and AMO

        In Firefox 48, which reaches the release channel on August 1, 2016, mullti-process support (code name “Electrolysis”, or “e10s”) will begin rolling out to Firefox users without any add-ons installed.

      • Fix Firefox resource URI leak

        Any website can access a selection of Firefox resource files to find out more about the web browser that is used to connect to the site.

      • Baby Steps: Slowly Porting musl to Rust

        TLDR: I’m toying with writing a C standard library in Rust by porting musl-libc over function-by-function.

      • Firefox Contextual Identities

        Mozilla recently announced a new feature that is being tested in the Firefox browser called “Contextual Identities”. The idea behind this feature is that users will be able to separate different types of browsing into different identities, allowing them to protect their data with more control. The images below were all taken from the announcement page and should provide a good example of how this feature works.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Faster Rendering Appears To Be Coming For LibreOffice

      Some rendering speed improvements have been worked on recently for the LibreOffice open-source office suite and are now present in LO Git.

    • Document Liberation Project: progress so far in 2016

      If you haven’t heard of the Document Liberation Project (DLP) before, we made a short video explaining what it does and why it’s important. In summary: it supports development of software libraries to read documents from many (usually proprietary) applications. If you’ve ever opened a file generated by Apple Pages, WordPerfect or Microsoft Works in LibreOffice, you’ve benefitted from the hard work of the DLP team. And DLP libraries are used in many other prominent FOSS tools such as Inkscape and Scribus as well.

  • Funding

    • The 2016 Kickstarter

      This year’s kickstarter fundraising campaign for Krita was more nerve-wracking than the previous two editions. Although we ended up 135% funded, we were almost afraid we wouldn’t make it, around the middle. Maybe only the release of Krita 3.0 turned the campaign around. Here’s my chaotic and off-the-cuff analysis of this campaign.

  • BSD

    • BSDCan 2016 Presentations Online
    • LLVM’s Clang Is Working On Unified Offloading Support

      There’s more work going on in the CUDA/OpenMP space for the LLVM Clang compiler.

      Landing this week in Clang SVN/Git is generic offload toolchains for the concept of an offloading tool chain plus related work. The initial patch explains, “This patch is the first of a series of three that attempts to make the current support of CUDA more generic and easier to extend to other programming models, namely OpenMP.”

  • Licensing/Legal

    • The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews Brett Smith of dtrx

      Brett Smith has been using free software since 1998. He worked in several roles at the Free Software Foundation (FSF) from 2002-2004, and then worked in its GPL Compliance Lab from 2006-2012. dtrx stands for “Do the Right Extraction:” it extracts all kinds of archive files in a consistent way, so you always get the same results no matter how the author built the archive.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Austin inadvertently promotes open-source ride-sharing

      The idea is to undermine the monopolies of companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and the like with a genuinely cooperative, horizontal and P2P model directly controlled by the users themselves, and cut out the corporate middleman altogether. Advocates for this model have coined the term “Platform Cooperativism” for it (if you search the #PlatformCooperativism hashtag on Twitter, you’ll find links to a lot of great articles on it).

  • Programming/Development

    • Python 3.6 and 3.7 release cycles

      Ned Deily, who is the release manager for the upcoming Python 3.6 release and will “probably be the 3.7 release manager”, led a session at the 2016 Python Language Summit to review and discuss the release cycle for the language. There have been some changes for 3.6 compared to the 3.5 cycle and there may be opportunities to make some additional changes for 3.7 and beyond.

    • PyCharm and type hints

      A mini-theme at this year’s Python Language Summit was tools that are using the PEP 484 type hints. In the final session on that theme, Andrey Vlasovskikh, the community lead for the PyCharm IDE, described that tool’s support for type hints.

    • An introduction to pytype

      Google’s pytype tool, which uses the PEP 484 type hints for static analysis, was the subject of a presentation by one of its developers, Matthias Kramm, at the 2016 Python Language Summit. In it, he compared several different tools and their reaction to various kinds of type errors in the code. He also described pytype’s static type-inference capabilities.

    • The state of mypy

      At last year’s Python Language Summit, Guido van Rossum gave an introduction to “type hints”, which are an optional feature to allow static checkers to spot type errors in Python programs. At this year’s summit, he discussed mypy, which is one of several static type checkers for Python. It is being used by Dropbox, Van Rossum’s employer, on its large Python codebase—with good results.

    • Python’s GitHub migration and workflow changes

      Brett Cannon gave an update on the migration of Python’s repositories to GitHub and the associated workflow changes at the 2016 Python Language Summit. The goal is modernize the development process; right now that process is “old school”, which is “good or bad depending on who you ask”. After looking at the options, GitHub seemed to be the best choice for housing the repositories; PEP 512 lays out the options and rationale for those interested. LWN looked at some of the discussion surrounding the move back in December 2014.

    • 20 Most Important Programming Languages In The World

      If we make a list of the most important programming languages, we’ll come across two categories. There are many vintage programming languages that just won’t die and continue to be used in their respective field. Along with them, there are some newer programming languages that have managed to make their mark upon the tech world.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Why Europe may ban the most popular weed killer in the world

      It’s hard to find an herbicide like glyphosate. It’s cheap, highly effective, and is generally regarded as one of the safest and most environmentally benign herbicides ever discovered. But a report last year that glyphosate could cause cancer has thrown its future into jeopardy. Now the European Union faces a 30 June deadline to reapprove its use, or glyphosate will not be allowed for sale. Here’s a quick explanation of the issues.

    • TTIP talks bogged down in food standards debate

      Seemingly insurmountable differences in food standards are threatening to sink trade negotiations between the United States and the European Union. EurActiv Spain reports.

      Since 2013, the United States and the EU have been working to construct what would be the biggest trade deal in the world. But negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have got bogged down on a number of issues.

      According to Brian Kilgallen, part of the European Commission’s negotiating team, one of the major hurdles that remains to be overcome in the TTIP negotiations is the chapter dedicated to phytosanitary mesures (plant and animal health).

  • Security

    • Friday’s security updates
    • Linux Server Security: Hack and Defend by Chris Binnie
    • Intel x86 Processors Come With A Secret Backdoor That Nobody Can Fix

      A security researcher has outlined a dangerous loophole that affects the Intel CPUs that have Intel Management Engine and vPro enabled. While there’s no known exploit at the moment that uses this flaw, it can act as a powerful rootkit mechanism.

    • Teen Hacks Pentagon’s Websites, Government Thanks Him For Finding ‘Bugs’

      A teen from Washington hacked the websites of US Department of Defence. But, instead of going to prison, he was thanked by the Pentagon for the work he did. This is because he was a participant of a bug bounty program titled Hack The Pentagon.

    • June ’16 security fixes for Adobe Flash
    • Intel x86s hide another CPU that can take over your machine (you can’t audit it)

      Recent Intel x86 processors implement a secret, powerful control mechanism that runs on a separate chip that no one is allowed to audit or examine. When these are eventually compromised, they’ll expose all affected systems to nearly unkillable, undetectable rootkit attacks. I’ve made it my mission to open up this system and make free, open replacements, before it’s too late.

    • Let’s Encrypt Accidentally Spills 7,600 User Emails

      Certificate authority Let’s Encrypt accidentally disclosed the email addresses of several thousand of its users this weekend.

      Josh Aas, Executive Director for the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), the nonprofit group that helped launch the CA, apologized for the error on Saturday. In what Let’s Encrypt dubbed a preliminary report posted shortly after it happened, Aas blamed the faux pas on a bug in the automated email system the group uses.

    • phpMyAdmin Project Successfully Completes Security Audit

      Software Freedom Conservancy congratulates its phpMyAdmin project on succesfuly completing completing a thorough security audit, as part of Mozilla’s Secure Open Source Fund. No serious issues were found in the phyMyAdmin codebase.

    • StartCom launches a new service – StartEncrypt

      StartCom, a leading global Certificate Authority (CA) and provider of trusted identity and authentication services, announces a new service – StartEncrypt today, an automatic SSL certificate issuance and installation software for your web server.

    • Venerable Conficker Worm Survives on Obsolete Legacy Systems [Ed: Microsoft Windows.]

      he 8-year-old worm continues to infect in some corners of the Internet, highlighting the difficulty in eradicating more virulent programs.
      On Oct. 23, 2008, Microsoft revealed a critical flaw that could allow an attacker to remotely compromise and infect Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 systems.

      It took only a week for the Internet’s seedier element to create the first malware based on the vulnerability. While initial attacks targeted specific companies and infected fewer than a dozen systems a day, the situation was much worse a month later when an unknown malware developer released a self-propagating worm.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Is ISIS Converting Two-Thirds of Humvees Given to Iraq Into Car Bombs?

      We may have achieved peak military-industrial complex: the U.S. is in part supplying both sides of the Iraq-Islamic State conflict and through that, creating the need for a new class of weapons to be sold as a counter measure. As arms manufacturers across our great land say, it doesn’t get any better than this.

      Islamic State militants have not only acquired a grand majority of the military Humvees gifted to and then abandoned by the Iraqi Army, they are now re-purposing them into car bombs to use against the Iraqi Army (Hint: don’t leave the keys in the car next time.*)

      Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi confirmed that 2,300 are in ISIS hands, more than two-thirds of all Humvees provided to Iraq by the U.S.

    • Dude Writes ‘ISIS Beer Funds!!!’ in Venmo Memo, Feds Impound His $42 Transfer

      Now this is one way to stop terrorism, particularly the funding of ISIS. Did the United States clamp down on Saudi Arabia funneling millions to ISIS and other Sunni terror groups? Use American military power to stop the illegal weapons trade to ISIS? Bomb the hell out of the oil wells and transit systems ISIS uses to raise hard currency?

      Hell no. The government of the United States used its full resources to steal $42 from some drunk dude who wrote “ISIS Beer Funds!!!” in the memo field on Venmo when he tried to pay back his buddy for a night out.

    • I wrote “ISIS Beer Funds!!!” in a Venmo memo and the feds detained my $42

      Telling a friend you’re paying him back for “ISIS beer funds!!!” is not a particularly good joke. I knew this as I was typing it at 2am on a Sunday, but what I did not know is that it’s an even worse joke on Venmo because the federal government will detain your $42.

    • Radical Islam’s next victim

      Failing to call Islamic terror by its name breeds more violence

    • How ISIS Weaponized the Media After Orlando

      Before Omar Mateen walked into Pulse nightclub and shot 49 of its patrons and staff to death, he was a nobody. In the hours that followed, though, he was catapulted to global infamy. When rumors of his ideological inclination first went public, observers stopped talking about him as if he was an “ordinary” mass shooter and effectively put the full force of ISIS behind him. He stopped being a mere man with a gun and was transformed, via the media and politicians, into a full-fledged ISIS operative, a human manifestation of the group’s international menace.

    • Turkish Radiohead fans attacked at listening party in Istanbul

      A group of Radiohead fans has been attacked by a mob of men carrying sticks and bottles as they held a listening party of the band’s music in Istanbul.

      The incident, which was largely captured on video, occurred on Friday night at the Velvet Indieground record store – a popular destination for Turkish and foreign music fans in the Istanbul district of Cihangir. There was at least one injury, with a picture of a person with a bloodied shirt, purportedly from the attack, posted on Twitter.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • Finance

    • Seventy years of exploitation: The enduring plight of California’s farm workers

      For the state’s first hundred-plus years, certain unspoken rules governed California politics. In a state where agriculture produced more wealth than any industry, the first rule was that growers held enormous power.

      Tax dollars built giant water projects that turned the Central and Imperial Valleys into some of the nation’s most productive farmland. Land ownership was concentrated in huge corporate plantation-like farms. Growers used political power to assure a steady flow of workers from one country after another—Japan, China, the Philippines, Yemen, India, and of course Mexico—to provide the labor that made the land productive.

    • The startup trying to clean up Wall Street just became an official stock exchange

      This evening the Securities and Exchange Commission approved an application by a startup called IEX to become a full-fledged stock exchange. By approving IEX, the SEC was giving its stamp of approval to one of the most high-profile challenges to the current Wall Street regime. Co-founded by a Canadian trader named Brad Katsuyama, IEX is designed to be a market free from high-frequency traders who use their speed to skim profits off the orders from ordinary citizens.

      The company, and Katsuyama in particular, rose to prominence as the stars of Michael Lewis’ best-selling book, Flash Boys. Lewis argued that modern markets were rigged, allowing high-frequency traders to pay for fast access and use that speed to front-run other traders. As a trader, Katsuyama dealt with the problem first hand. He would place a bid for a stock at a price he saw listed, and then find there were no shares available at that price. “They could detect my order at BATS, race me to the next exchange, and cancel their sell orders while buying whatever is left, then turn around and try and sell stock back to me at a higher price,” said Katsuyama.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • A journalist went to a Donald Trump rally yesterday and came back shocked. Here are his tweets

      Most coverage of Donald Trump’s rallies are about people disrupting it. But one American journalist went there and quietly observed what was going on.

      He came back shaken and scared.

      Jared Yates Sexton is a writer and political correspondent from the state of Georgia.

      Yesterday, Donald Trump held a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. Sexton went there to cover the event, and wrote a series of tweets.

    • How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions

      The Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel is now closed, its windows clouded over by sea salt. Only a faint outline of the gold letters spelling out T-R-U-M-P remains visible on the exterior of what was once this city’s premier casino.

      Not far away, the long-failing Trump Marina Hotel Casino was sold at a major loss five years ago and is now known as the Golden Nugget.

      At the nearly deserted eastern end of the boardwalk, the Trump Taj Mahal, now under new ownership, is all that remains of the casino empire Donald J. Trump assembled here more than a quarter-century ago. Years of neglect show: The carpets are frayed and dust-coated chandeliers dangle above the few customers there to play the penny slot machines.

      On the presidential campaign trail, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, often boasts of his success in Atlantic City, of how he outwitted the Wall Street firms that financed his casinos and rode the value of his name to riches. A central argument of his candidacy is that he would bring the same business prowess to the Oval Office, doing for America what he did for his companies.

    • Koch Criminal Justice Reform Trojan Horse: Special Report on Reentry and Following the Money

      Charles Koch and the Koch machine continue to press for changes to federal laws to make it harder to prosecute corporate crimes, as part of criminal justice “reforms,” but the Koch-connected network is already at the trough for public funds intended to help prisoners with “reentry” into society.

    • Another Koch Criminal Justice Reform Trojan Horse: Reentry and Privatization

      As Congress considers major criminal justice reforms to address the devastating impact of gross sentencing disparities that have devastated minority communities, the Koch machine is seeking changes to the law that would benefit Koch Industries and other corporations by limiting their criminal liability, as the Center for Media and Democracy documented in 2015.

      But that’s not the only part of the agenda of the billionaire Koch brothers’ network that is in play.

      Few policymakers understand the role the Koch-funded “think tanks” like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and its “Right on Crime” operation have played and are playing in the privatization of the criminal justice system, including in the area of “re-entry,” a term of art for how people who have served their sentence re-enter society.

    • Guccifer 2.0 Leak Reveals How DNC Rigged Primaries for Clinton

      Earlier this week, a lone hacker—self-dubbed Guccifer 2.0—breached DNC servers and reportedly obtained opposition research on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. The DNC confirmed the hack and hasn’t denied the authenticity of the documents released. The Party has, however, continued to propagate that the hack was deployed by the Russian government—perhaps because the information that was released is far more revealing than just opposition research.

      Internal memos, dated May 2015—long before the first state voted in the Democratic primary—referred to Hillary Clinton as though she was already the Democratic presidential nominee. The documents leaked by Guccifer 2.0 not only illuminate the DNC’s efforts to ensure Clinton’s coronation but also reveal the strategies used to shield her from criticism on ethics, transparency and campaign finance reform—all vulnerabilities for the corrupt Establishment darling.

      Despite being under criminal investigation by the FBI and DOJ, Clinton has still managed to secure the Democratic presidential nomination. And, despite revelations from the State Department Inspector General—who reported Clinton did break federal rules, effectively debunking the defense she has echoed for over a year—Democrats still, shockingly, continued to vote for her in the remaining primary states.

      Just one of the issues Clinton panders to voters is campaign finance reform, even though she has reaped more benefits from our broken system than any other presidential candidate in American history. Clinton has received millions in dubious donations through Super-PACs by exploiting campaign finance law loopholes. Thanks to an exempt Internet clause in existing campaign finance law, the Hillary Victory Fund (a joint fundraising committee with the DNC) and Correct the Record have legally and directly coordinate with Clinton’s campaign.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Pogba’s gesture turns into media censorship matter, adds pressure

      BeIN Sports chose not to show the images on its popular post-match program L’Euro Show. The station’s head sent out an email to all staff telling them not to show the images, according to Le Parisien. The email leaked. Images came out. And suddenly the debate became not just about one player’s action, but about censorship and the free press.

    • Google Sees DMCA Notices Quadruple In Two Years

      Google is being overloaded with DMCA takedown requests. The company has seen the number of takedown notices from rightsholders quadruple over the past two years. In 2016 alone, Google is projected to process over a billion reported pirate links, most of which will be scrubbed from its search index.

    • DMCA wins big in record label lawsuit against Vimeo

      A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that service providers such as video-sharing sites like Vimeo are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for pre-1972 musical recordings uploaded by their users.

      The record labels had sued the YouTube-like site and successfully convinced a district court judge that, because pre-1972 recordings fell under state laws and not federal copyright law, the DMCA didn’t apply. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and also overturned the lower court that ruled the DMCA didn’t grant so-called safe-harbor passage to service providers whose employees saw infringements on their platforms uploaded by their users.

    • 100 years ago in Spokane: War readiness and censorship

      Three National Guard companies in Spokane – along with National Guard units around the country – were mobilized and readied for war.

      Not for the war in Europe, which had been raging for two years. Instead, they were readied for service on the Mexican border, where tensions had been rising for years.

      Recently, Mexican bandits had been raiding American border towns.

      The local National Guard reservists were destined for American Lake (today’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord), where they would join other units. Then they would be dispatched along the border to prevent any further incursions.

    • Censorship and artistic freedom: An age-old battle
    • Let’s not think the audience is foolish: Anushka Sharma slams CBFC for censoring films
    • An Open Letter To CBFC Chairman Pahlaj Nihlani

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Net Neutrality: What’s Next for FCC’s Open Internet Rules

      The FCC won a major victory over net neutrality this week, and the surprise wasn’t so much that it prevailed but that its legal win was so sweeping.

      There had been some expectation, on Wall Street, on Capitol Hill and in the legal community, that the D.C. Circuit would chip away at some of the FCC’s rules of the road for the internet. The FCC actions that looked to be under threat included extending the regulations to mobile carriers, and a “general conduct” rule which, in the words of FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, was meant to stop “new and novel threats to the internet.”

    • Net neutrality ruling keeps the Internet open to all

      The wall outlet that connects your Internet router to Comcast or Verizon is no different from the one that supples power to the living room lamp. That’s one way to look at this week’s federal court decision that wisely validated the position of the Federal Communications Commission itself: The Internet should be treated more like a utility than like an online superhighway where travelers who pay a toll get to go faster than others.

      The ruling by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinforced the premise of so-called net neutrality — the idea that everyone should have equal access to the Internet, whether they’re sending and receiving basic HTML images or streaming full-length HD movies. Yes, it’s a numbingly dense principle, but one that should matter to anyone who spends time online.

    • ‘Net neutrality’ explained: what this week’s US court decision means

      You may have heard something this week about a US court and net neutrality and something about the internet. Maybe it didn’t make much sense. And that’s a good thing! If we all spent our time trying to decipher the web, we’d never get around to actually using it, or creating awesome new things with it.

      That said, some debates are so important to the healthy function of the internet that they’re worth learning about in depth, and in the process grasping their implications for free speech, online commerce, educational opportunity and all the reasons that make the internet worth using in the first place.

      One of those debates reached a key turning point on Tuesday in the US when a federal appeals court said that the internet was basically like a giant telephone network and that the companies that provide it, such as Comcast and Verizon, must offer essentially the same protections to internet users that the government has required of phone companies for decades.

    • The Forrest Gump of the Internet

      It’s probably bad if all our media and communications are going through services that are controlled by profit-driven corporations.

  • DRM

    • Why I refuse to join Kindle Unlimited

      Lots of my self-pub writer friends urge me to sign on with Kindle Unlimited. They tell me I’ll make more money by making my books only available on Amazon.

      They’re probably correct… in the short term.

      But if you have only one customer, and only one sales channel, that sales channel can destroy yo without warning. And today, Amazon’s scam-fighting techniques are crushing authors guilty of only one thing: trusting Amazon as their sole customer.

    • W3C DRM working group chairman vetoes work on protecting security researchers and competition

      For a year or so, I’ve been working with the EFF to get the World Wide Web Consortium to take steps to protect security researchers and new market-entrants who run up against the DRM standard they’re incorporating into HTML5, the next version of the key web standard.

      At issue is the DMCA and its global equivalents, which impose daunting penalties on those who break DRM, even for legal reasons — whether that’s investigating privacy and security risks or making a competitive new product that does completely legal things. Once DRM is part of a full implementation of HTML5, there’s a real risk to security researchers who discover defects in browsers and want to warn users about them, and for new companies hoping to compete by offering features and products that the incumbents don’t choose to implement.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Lawyers who yanked “Happy Birthday” into public domain now sue over “This Land”

        The lawyers who successfully got “Happy Birthday” put into the public domain and then sued two months ago over “We Shall Overcome” have a new target: Woody Guthrie’s “This Land.”

        Randall Newman and his colleagues have filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against The Richmond Organization (TRO) and Ludlow Music, the two entities that also claim to own the copyright for “We Shall Overcome.”

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