Desktop/Laptop

• Forget Windows, I just installed Elementary OS on my Chromebook and it’s awesome

  In my path to Chrome OS enlightenment, I’ve explored many method with which users can run non-native applications and even alternative operating systems. My most recent endeavor involved installing a full-blown version of Windows 10 inside the Linux container on Chrome OS. While I have absolutely no use for such a monstrosity, the path that brought me there was fun and I believe a lot of users were excited about the premise of running Windows alongside Chrome OS. All of this was made possible thanks to an update to the Linux kernel that is available to some users inside the Chrome OS Linux container. My first theory was that this was being tested exclusively on ‘Hatch’ devices that are equipped with the Comet Lake family of processors. After some input from some colleagues, it appears that the ability to run qemu/kvm in a nested environment is more widely available than I presumed. I have seen reports that users have successfully installed Windows on devices ranging from a Core i5 Pixel Slate to the aging Dell Chromebook 13 that has a Broadwell CPU. Perhaps it is the Core i CPU that is the key. Who knows?

  [...]

  Elementary OS is an Ubuntu-based OS but make no mistake, it stands out as its own operating system. Many have called the the macOS of Linux but as you can read in a blog post from the Elementary CEO, the OS design and function are very intentional and quite unique in its own right. All of that is neither here nor there. Elementary OS caught my eye as a distinct and very different distro that I had never used and I wanted to give it a try and see how it ran on Chrome OS. My Windows experiment was a success, for the most part, but Windows is chunky and often times I found the OS struggling to work well inside the VM. Elementary OS is a “pay what’s fair” platform which means exactly what you’d think. While you can technically download the .iso image for free, a donation of your choosing is recommended and I’m sure, well appreciated as it is open-source software.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Destination Linux 185: Let’s Fix Linux Tech Support

  On this week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re transitioning from the topic of Bug Reporting last week to Tech Support in Linux this week. We’re going to check in on Wayland’s progress with Plasma’s new release, we have an sandbox MMO for gaming, and our popular tips/tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more, coming up right now on Destination Linux.

• FLOSS Weekly 590: Rensselaer Center for Open Software – A Community of Open Source Developers

  RCOS is a group of RPI students who work on open-source projects. The goal of RCOS is to empower students to develop open-source solutions to real-world problems. They have created 300+ open source projects over the years. Doc Searls and Simon Phipps talk with Wes Turner, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the Director of the Rensselaer Center for Open Source. They discuss teaching open source and the hardships that come along with that, especially with e-learning. They also discuss what the future could look like if we could have more open-source programs like RCOS in other universities.

• The Best Raspberry Pi Laptop Kit | CrowPi 2 Review

  The Best Raspberry Pi Laptop Kit | CrowPi 2 Review of the kit, usage, and examples.

• 2020-08-05 | Linux Headlines

  LibreOffice 7 dodges its rebranding controversy, the Pinta bitmap editor sees its first new version in 5 years, Red Hat accommodates certification seekers with new pandemic-friendly rules, and ownCloud 10.5 brings background sync changes to the platform.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.7.13

  I’m announcing the release of the 5.7.13 kernel.

  All users of the 5.7 kernel series must upgrade.

  The updated 5.7.y git tree can be found at:
  git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.7.y
  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

  https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s…

• Linux 5.4.56

• Linux 4.19.137

• Linux 4.14.192

• Linux 5.8 launched: Linus Torvalds’s ‘biggest release of all time’ brings these new updates

  Linux 5.8 has finally been released, previously described by Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds as “one of our biggest releases of all time”.

  The new version of the Linux kernel brings a number of updates to Linux 5.7 spanning security, core components, drivers, memory management, networking and improvements to the kernel’s design, amongst others.

• Kernel 5.8: Collabora’s biggest & most significant contributions yet!

  Earlier this week, the Linux 5.8 kernel was released. It is one of the biggest releases of all time, as if developers started to code more during the recent lockdowns across the globe. As usual, you can the find the most important changes for this release in the always great LWN.net articles – part 1 and part 2.

  According to Linus himself, the 5.8 release is big. While Collabora modestly contributed to this massive release, Linux 5.8 marks our biggest and most significant contributions yet. Everyone at Collabora has been impressed by the efforts put together by our kernel developers. Working directly upstream, contributing to the Linux kernel has long been a key objective of Collabora as an organization. Over the past decade we have been growing our participation in this essential effort that Linux is.

  The ability for a relatively small software consultancy such as Collabora to contribute at this level demonstrates a fantastic improvement in vendors’ mindset when it comes to working Open First (hence Collabora’s tagline). Providing mainline support out-of-box as early as possible is really becoming a priority for all our customers and we appreciate them all the more for it.

  So a big thank you to all our clients for the continued trust they are placing in Collabora. We look forward to continuing to contribute on their behalf of years to come.

• Collabora’s Contributions to Linux Kernel 5.8 Were Their Biggest Yet

  Collabora reports today on their contributions to the latest Linux 5.8 kernel series, which is one of the biggest releases of all time according to Linus Torvalds. Collabora’s contributions to Linux kernel 5.8 would be its biggest yet too.

  Linux kernel 5.8 was released over the weekend by Linus Torvalds, after almost two months in development, which kicked off as one of the biggest releases of all time. Now, the final release is here and it turns out it’a indeed a massive update to the Linux kernel.

  Highlights include Shadow Call Stack and Branch Target Identification (BTI) support for ARM platforms, LZO-RLE compression for the F2FS file system, new boot parameter to specify the initial RAM disk image, inline encryption support in the block layer, and a new event-notification mechanism.

  Additionally, Linux kernel 5.8 features Thunderbolt 4 support, Kernel Concurrency Sanitizer (KCSAN) dynamic data race detector for kernel space, support for multiple private instances in the /proc file system, and mitigations for the SRBDS/CrossTalk hardware vulnerability.

• Application Ecosystem Microconference Accepted into 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference

  We are pleased to announce that the Application Ecosystem Microconference has been accepted into the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference!

  The Linux kernel is the foundation of the Linux systems, but it is not much use without applications that run on top of it. The application experience relies on the kernel for performance, stability and responsiveness. Plumbers is the perfect venue to have the kernel and app ecosystems under one roof to discuss and learn together and make a better application experience on the Linux platform.

• Google Opens Patches For “METRICFS” That They Have Used Since 2012 For Telemetry Data

  The METRICFS file-system has been in use internally at Google since 2012 for exporting system statistics to their telemetry systems with around 200 statistics being exported per machine. They are now posting the METRICFS patches as open-source for review and possible upstreaming.

  A “request for comments” on METRICFS was sent out today on the Linux kernel mailing list. Their motives for now finally publishing these patches is as a result of the recent Statsfs proposal by a Red Hat engineer for a RAM-based file-system for exposing kernel statistics to user-space. METRICFS has a similar aim to Statsfs.

• FS-Cache Rewritten But Even Its Developers Are Hesitant About Landing It For Linux 5.9

  FS-Cache provides the Linux kernel with a general purpose cache for network file-systems like NFS and AFS but also other special use-cases like ISO9660 file-systems. FS-Cache has been rewritten for better performance and reliability, among other benefits, and while it has been sent in as a pull request for Linux 5.9 even its own developers provide some caution over landing it this cycle.

  FS-Cache has seen work to “massively overhaul” it with a variety of improvements. The new and improved FS-Cache will now use async direct I/O in place of snooping for updated pages that in turn means less virtual memory overhead. The new FS-Cache implementation has simpler object management, changes to object invalidation, and a variety of other work.

• Corsair Commander Pro Driver Sent In To Linux 5.9

  The hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem has a new driver that is likely to excite some enthusiasts wanting greater control over thermal monitoring and fan control for their systems.

  The previously covered Corsair Commander Pro Linux driver is now coming with Linux 5.9. The Commander Pro offers six 4-pin fan ports with PWM controls, two RGB LED channels, and four thermal sensors. An interested user/developer created this Linux driver without the support from Corsair. The thermal and fan control support is in place with this new HWMON driver while the RGB lighting controls are available from OpenRGB.

• Graphics Stack

  • mesa 20.1.5

    Hi all,
    
    I'd like to announce Mesa 20.1.5, the fifth bugfix release for the 20.1 branch.
    
    The next bugfix release is planned for 2 weeks from now, on 2020-08-19.
    
    Cheers,
    Eric
    
    

  • Mesa 20.1.5 Released For The Latest Stable Open-Source Vulkan / OpenGL Drivers

    Mesa 20.1.5 provides the latest stable open-source Vulkan/OpenGL graphics drivers for the Linux desktop as the newest bi-weekly milestone.

    Mesa 20.2 remains under development as this quarter’s feature release due out in about one month’s time. Mesa 20.2 is running behind schedule as it should have been branched around the end of July but has yet to happen. In any case, more Mesa 20.2 feature work continues to land and more than likely will ship sometime in September. But until that occurs, Mesa 20.1 is the latest stable series.

  • Intel Workaround For Graphics Driver Regression: “The Platform Problem Going Crazy”

    Sent out over the weekend was a patch series for the Intel Linux kernel graphics driver entitled “Time, where did it go?” This set of 42 patches aims to provide incremental improvements to the driver to offset a performance regression in Linux 5.7 that Intel hasn’t been able to track down. This increased complication of the driver to offset the regression is now under the microscope.

    The set of 42 patches by longtime Intel open-source developer Chris Wilson provides incremental improvements to reduce the execution latency. He was upfront that the intent of these improvements are to “basically offsets the small regressions incurred when compared to [Linux kernel] 5.7.”

  • RadeonSI Resorts To Disabling SDMA For GFX9/Vega Due To APU Issues

    AMD’s RadeonSI Gallium3D driver has resorted to disabling SDMA (System DMA) async DMA engine support for all GFX9/Vega hardware due to issues plaguing some APUs.

    While SDMA has the potential of helping performance, GFX9 (Vega) is now seeing the support disabled due to bugs seeming to only affect APUs. Though it’s not entirely surprising as the open-source AMD Radeon Linux driver also is not enabling SDMA at this point for GFX8 (Polaris) or GFX10 (Navi) hardware either.

    Opened three months ago was the merge request for disabling SDMA on GFX9 and to back-port it to the stable series as well. Longtime AMD open-source developer Marek Olsak noted, “This is somewhat a radical step. All opinions welcome.”

Benchmarks

• Intel’s Clear Linux Still Outperforming Other Distributions For Mid-2020

  Being well past the half-way point for the year, here is a look at how Intel’s performance-optimized Clear Linux distribution is performing compared to its rolling state last December. Plus there are also benchmarks looking at how the current Clear Linux is performing against other rolling-release distributions.

Applications

• Pinta Image Editor Gets First Update in 5 Years

  The Pinta image editor and drawing tool was a one-time must-have for the Linux desktop thanks to its broad feature set and user-friendly interface.

  Sadly development just kinda stopped…

  But five years on — or 283 weeks if you’ve been keeping count — Pinta is back from the dead with a brand new release. in this post we take a closer look at what’s new, and show you how to install it on Ubuntu using a PPA.

Instructionals/Technical

• Linux commands for user management

• CONSOOM All Your PODCASTS From Your Terminal With Castero

• Install Blender 3D on Debian 10 (Buster)

• Things To Do After Installing openSUSE Leap 15.2

• How to Install Mumble and Murmur Voice Chat on Debian 10

• How CloudLinux Plans to Keep CentOS 6 Alive

• How To Rescue Virtual Machines With Virt-rescue

• How to Automatically Build and Configure Custom Docker Images with Dockerfile – Part 3

• Getting Started with Ansible 07 – The ‘when’ Conditional

• How to Install Arch Linux on a Raspberry Pi 4 [Step-by-step Tutorial for Beginners]

• How to Install, Run and Delete Applications Inside Docker Containers – Part 2

• How to change the login picture in Ubuntu 20.04

• How to create compressed encrypted archives with tar and gpg

• How to install KDE NEON 20200723

• Install Libreoffice 7.0.0 on Ubuntu / LinuxMint / CentOS & Fedora

• Network Policy in Kubernetes

• apt-get hold back packages on Ubuntu / Debian Linux

• Packaging and deploying .NET Core for Linux – Part 1 [Ed: Microsoft sees "Linux" as something to toss Microsoft frameworks on]

• ASUS B350 PLUS EFI settings for Linux

Games

• AWOW AK41 Mini Desktop PC – Gaming – Week 5

  This is a weekly blog chronicling my experiences of running the AWOW AK41 Mini Desktop PC on Linux.

  I’ve already touched on the graphics capabilities of the AWOW AK41. To recap, this Mini PC uses the Intel UHD Graphics 605, an integrated processor graphics unit from the Gemini Lake generation. Performance of the graphics unit is widely reported as in the low-end segment and rarely sufficient for modern games.

  It’s often touted that integrated graphics are not meant for gaming. But what does that really mean? There are tons of free games available for Linux. Many of them aren’t that graphically demanding.

• Narrative-driven adventure Impostor Factory has new teaser trailer

  Following on in some way from To the Moon and Finding Paradise, the next title from Freebird Games is the previously announced Impostor Factory and now they have another teaser out. The question is: are you ready to have your heart broken again?

  Imposter Factory sounds downright bizarre too. Freebird Games describe it as a ‘narrative-driven adventure game that is categorically out of its mind’. The game follows Quincy, who apparently found a time machine in a bathroom at some party located at a suspiciously secluded mansion. After that, people start dying and ‘things get a little Lovecraftian and tentacles are involved’.

  [...]

  Since it appears to be coming somewhat closer though, I do wholeheartedly recommend you check out To the Moon and Finding Paradise both of which are loved and praised by a huge amount of players and critics like. You don’t need to have played either though as they’re all self-contained stories. That said, they all take part in the same universe as part of the To the Moon series and Freebird themselves often call it To the Moon 3. If you wish to, you can buy them both here:

• Gaming on Linux in 2020: Way Better Than You Think

  Linux has always been seen as a rather rigid operating system for gaming. Many games used to be unavailable on Linux, and the ones that you could play used to have all sorts of bugs. However, the situation’s not the same anymore with Ubuntu 20.04.

  The OS is way better for gaming than you may think. In certain situations, games even run better on Linux than on Windows. This is quite impressive so let’s see what lead to Linux’s improvements.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • The 10 Best KDE Plasma Widgets for KDE Desktop Environment

    If you were looking for the best KDE Plasma widgets for your Linux desktop, then you are in the right place. There is much debate about the fact of who implemented the widget feature first on a computer GUI. But nobody can deny that the widgets have brought a new era in the modern user interface. Most of the people rely on beautiful widgets for performing different tasks without opening the main instance of the program. Although Windows ditched their native desktop widgets feature with their Windows 8 for the sake of the live tiles. Linux still has a great library of widgets that are being maintained by the developer community.

  • Linux App Summit Goes Online in November

    Once again, KDE and GNOME are teaming up to bring you THE conference for people interested in establishing Linux as a great end-user platform. At the Linux App Summit we work on making app creation for users easy and worthwhile.

    Since travel is complicated nowadays, we decided to make LAS 2020 a virtual conference. The event will open Thursday, 12th November and we’ll wrap up on Saturday, 14th November. Our goal is to engage people in multiple time zones and make the content available online after the conclusion.

    The Call for Talks is now open! Please take a look at the suggested topics and send in your ideas. We encourage new speakers, so don’t hesitate to submit a proposal!

    Save the date on your calendar and we look forward to seeing you at LAS 2020!

  • KBibTeX 0.10-alpha2 aka 0.9.81

    The release of KBibTeX 0.10 is approaching with the release of KBibTeX 0.10-alpha2 aka 0.9.81.

Distributions

• BSD

  • GSoC Reports: Fuzzing Rumpkernel Syscalls, Part 2

    I have been working on Fuzzing Rumpkernel Syscalls. This blogpost details the work I have done during my second coding period.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Release Team to have retrospective meeting about openSUSE Leap 15.2

    Members of the openSUSE community will have two retrospective meeting on the release of openSUSE Leap 15.2 after receiving feedback from the recent survey.

    The meetings are scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, at 06:00 – 08:00 UTC and 15:00 – 17:00 UTC.

    Release Manager Luboš Kocman provided a short summary about the feedback received and information about the meeting in an email this week to the project.

    “Thanks to everyone who participated in our openSUSE Leap 15.2 release retrospective that took place on survey.opensuse.org,” Kocman wrote. “The survey was fully anonymous and questions were: What went well and What didn’t go too well.

  • SUSE Documentation Survey 2020 – Second Take. Your Call to Action to Help Us Improve.

    The very first documentation survey we conducted last summer was a real success. We got a great amount of responses and highly valuable feedback about what we do right, but more importantly also where we can improve and what is missing in our documentation at SUSE. Now it is time for a sanity check. And to see if your needs and challenges have changed during the past 12 months. Of course we could not yet implement all the ideas and requirements you shared with us. The disastrous COVID-19 pandemic also had some impact and foiled some of our plans. But anyway, I assume we are all clear about the fact that enhancing documentation is a continuous process. And we would like to find out if we are at least on the right track.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • PAM by example: Use authconfig to modify PAM

  • Learning NFS through server and client configuration

  • World domination with cgroups part 8: down and dirty with cgroup v2

    Thanks for joining me again as we continue to look at cgroup v2, which became available with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. This time around, I’d like to take a very deep look at the virtual file system used to control the cgroup controllers and the special files inside. Understanding this will be necessary for doing custom work that used to be the domain of libcgroup (first introduced in RHEL 6, and not recommended for use in RHEL 8). We’re also going to try some fun with cpusets, which are now fully working with RHEL and systemd for the first time ever!

  • Build secure applications with OpenShift 4.3 on public cloud

    Building secure applications that ensure data privacy and security when deployed to a cloud environment is crucial for businesses that collect customer data, particularly for regulated industries like finance, retail, banking, and others. In this article, I introduce you to an example credit card application my team built to explore and share approaches for creating secure cloud-based applications with OpenShift 4.3 on IBM Cloud.

    We built the example credit card application with just a few straight-forward microservices that record dynamic user transactions in a PostgreSQL database. The JavaScript simulator application presents a Web-based view of a mobile application run by a Node.js service running inside an OpenShift cluster.

  • Ben Williams: F32-20200804 updated Live isos Released

    The Fedora Respins SIG is pleased to announce the latest release of Updated F32-20200804-Live ISOs, carrying the 5.7.11-200 kernel.

    This set of updated isos will save considerable amounts of updates after install. ((for new installs.)(New installs of Workstation have about 900+MB of updates)).

    A huge thank you goes out to irc nicks dowdle, dbristow, Southern-Gentleman for testing these iso.

  • Dan Williams: Kubernetes Watches will ghost you without warning

    Alternate title: if you’re ahead of Clayton you’re doing well, at least for a few hours.

    [...]

    Watches can and do terminate at any time, gracefully or not. Sometimes a new apiserver leader is elected and the old one terminates watches and clients must reconnect to the new leader. Sometimes the leader just goes away because its node got rebooted. Sometimes there’s a network hiccup and the HTTP connection backing the watch times out. Regardless of the cause, they happen and your code needs to handle them. OpenShift CI forces frequent leader elections to specifically catch these issues before they get to customers.

    A watch stuffs events into a Go channel. The code using the watch reads events out of the channel, usually in a for loop (to continuously grab events) with a select block (to ensure individual read operations don’t block which enables cancelation when the channel returned by ctx.Done() is closed). Reading from a Go channel (case event := <-pvcWatch.ResultChan()) returns an optional second boolean indicating whether the channel has been closed.

    The testcase loop doesn’t exit until either the testcase times out and the ctx.Done() channel is closed, one of the event handler cases fails the testcase, or the PersistentVolumeClaim is deleted. So what happens if the Watch is closed unexpectedly and nothing checks whether the channel is closed?

  • Copr: EOL Copr APIv1 and APIv2

    During Copr history, we got three APIs. For a long time, we maintained all versions.

    We decided that it is time to remove the old versions. We are going to start with APiv1.

  • Red Hat Virtualization 4.4 To Be Generally Available This Week

    Red Hat has announced that Red Hat Virtualization 4.4, the latest update to its virtualization solution for traditional virtual machine (VM)-based workloads, will be generally available this week.

    With this latest release, Red Hat Virtualization is now rebased to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2. It is said to offer a more seamless integration with Red Hat OpenShift, providing a solution that can launch the next-generation of cloud-native applications while providing a foundation for VMs today.

    “Based on RHEL 8.2, Red Hat Virtualization 4.4 inherits all of the stability, performance and security improvements that you trust for your most business critical workloads while adding new capabilities that make it even easier to manage a large virtual environment,” the company said.

• Debian Family

  • Debian, Chris Lamb, NXIVM sex cult prosecution

    NXIVM was operated by Keith Raniere in collusion with his associate/girlfriend, the actress Allison Mack. Debian was officially led by Chris Lamb, while his girlfriend Molly de Blanc had created the infamous Anti-Harassment team, analogous to Scientology’s Sea Organization, to promote submissiveness and obedience under the guise of a “Code of Conduct”.

    [...]

    Early in 2018, Alexander “formorer” Wirth had set up Debian’s public Git repositories, hosted in the Salsa.debian.org service. Shortly after this, at DebConf18 in Taiwan, Lamb had started the discussions about how to brand volunteers with adverse records in Git / Salsa. A few days before Christmas, this weapon was unleashed on Dr Norbert Preining, who maintains the LaTeX packages used widely in the academic world.

    [...]

    Just as Debian oligarchs often use nicknames and acronyms, NXIVM’s founder, Raniere, had chosen to hide behind the pseudonym Vanguard, taken from an arcade game in which the destruction of one’s enemies increased one’s own power. It is a remarkable parallel to the style used by some of the worst leaders in Debian over the years.

    In fact, every year there are public discussions about who to kick out of Debian. Enrico Zini, one of the Debian Account Managers who is currently engaged in blackmailing a volunteer, asked candidates in the 2006 leadership election to publicly name five people they would expel.

    [...]

    Lamb, de Blanc and their associates, the Anti-Harassment team and Debian Account Managers, had been making secret findings of misconduct against volunteers and then making veiled threats to disclose these abusive decisions if the volunteers were not submissive enough. Dr Preining called their bluff by releasing a bundle of their nasty emails himself.

  • Holger Levsen: DebConf7

    DebConf7 was also special because it had a very special night venue, which was in an ex-church in a rather normal building, operated as sort of community center or some such, while the old church interior was still very much visible as in everything new was build around the old stuff.

    And while the night venue was cool, it also ment we (video team) had no access to our machines over night (or for much of the evening), because we had to leave the university over night and the networking situation didn’t allow remote access with the bandwidth needed to do anything video.

    The night venue had some very simple house rules, like don’t rearrange stuff, don’t break stuff, don’t fix stuff and just a few little more and of course we broke them in the best possible way: Toresbe with the help of people I don’t remember fixed the organ, which was broken for decades. And so the house sounded in some very nice new old tune and I think everybody was happy we broke that rule.

Devices/Embedded

• ThinkCentre M75n IoT Nano Desktop Features a 6W AMD Athlon Silver 3050e Processor

  Earlier today, we wrote about AMD 3015e dual-core/quad-thread Zen processor with 6W TDP found in some upcoming education laptops from Lenovo. We also noted that two other recent 6W AMD processors had been introduced by the company AMD 3020e and AMD Athlon Silver 3050e.

  When looking for AMD 3020e I got ACER ASPIRE A314-22-A8ST 14″ laptop with 4GB RAM and 256GB SSD listed for 9,590 Baht ($309 inc. 7% VAT) – but out of stock – on several Thai websites, but after switching to a US VPN all product reference disappeared, except for Lenovo Ideapad 3 soon getting an AMD 3020e model. None of the laptops are available now, but at least that means AMD does not only target the education market with its 6W SKUs.

  [...]

  The company offers the computer with Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro, but I suppose both Ubuntu or Red Hat Linux distributions should work just fine since those two operating systems are certified for the mini PC…

• Wolf Audio Systems Releases Alpha 3 SX Music Server

  It features a modified-for-audio Windows 10 Pro or the new, proprietary Linux-based WolfOS operating system and offers 4TB storage capacity (expandable to 32TB), 24-bit and DSD playback capability, an upgraded Flux Capacitor 24 MHz master clock and additional improvements. It is a one-chassis design that fits easily into any audio or home entertainment system, and can play back a wide variety of stereo and multichannel audio formats including FLAC, WAV, AIFF, ALAC, SACD, DSF, DFF and (PCM) from 16 – 32 bits, 44.1, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192 and 384 kHz audio and DSD Native up to DSD1024.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Interview: RISC-V CTO Mark Himelstein

    RISC-V doesn’t have the necessary sacks of cash to spread around, however. The brute force approach is closed to Himelstein and his colleagues, so how does he motivate developers who might be on the fence? “I’m working on it,” he admits. “Look at Linux, at Hadoop, at Eclipse, at Apache… They grew up around the contributor model. Contributors to Hadoop are rock stars. It’s exciting. There’s cachet. It’s like being in an exclusive club. It’s hard to say how that happened. It just evolved.”

    He contrasts that process to seemingly similar open-source processors like OpenSPARC or OpenPower. Those examples are ex post facto open source, he says. They started out as proprietary commercial products (at Sun and IBM, respectively) and then backed into the open-source world after the fact. “They just hopped on the open-source train.” Nobody in those groups seems to have the same level of enthusiastic self-motivation that you see in, say, Hadoop or Linux circles, he says. “We want to be more like Linux or Hadoop.”

  • nRF9160 Feather LTE IoT and GPS Board Launched for $99

    The board is certified by the Open Source Hardware Association with the hardware licensed with CERN 1.2, mcuboot firmware with Apache 2.0, and documentation with CC-SA-4.0. While we noted in the introduction the board runs on Zephyr and nRF Connect SDK, support for other toolchains and languages should be released soon.

  • Arduino X-ray imaging phantom simulates lung movement

    Imaging phantoms are used to evaluate and test medical devices, such as X-ray machinery, where a human subject would be impractical and/or dangerous. In order to simulate the motion and deformation of a lung, Stefan Grimm created an Arduino-powered phantom at a materials cost of around $350 USD.

    Much of the project’s structure is printed with dissolvable PVA, used as a form for silicone that mimics tissue and plaster for bone. Movement is controlled via three linear and rotary actuator setups outlined here, and the structure can either be pre-programmed or manipulated in real-time using a USB cable and PC.

  • The Science Journal is graduating from Google — coming to Arduino this fall!

    Arduino and Google are excited to announce that the Science Journal app will be transferring from Google to Arduino this September! Arduino’s existing experience with the Science Journal and a long-standing commitment to open source and hands-on science has been crucial to the transfer ownership of the open source project over to Arduino.

    The Google versions of the app will officially cease support and updates on December 11th, 2020, with Arduino continuing all support and app development moving forward, including a brand new Arduino integration for iOS.

    Arduino Science Journal will include support for the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense board, as well as the Arduino Science Kit, with students able to document science experiments and record observations using their own Android or iOS device. The Science Journal actively encourages students to learn outside of the classroom, delivering accessible resources to support both teachers and students for remote or in person activities. For developers, the Arduino version will continue to be open: codes, APIs, and firmware to help them create innovative new projects.

  • This stepper-driven mechanical clock can be set to two different time zones

    Clocks normally tell you the time in your particular location, but what about that person that you know across the country or even on the other side the world? What time is it there? While it’s easy enough to do a web search or do a calculation, in order to find this out at an instant, Jeremy Cook made his own mechanical dual time zone clock.

    The device is powered by an Arduino Nano, which drives a stepper motor to advance each minute. Using physical gear reduction, dual hour gears move at 1/12th the rate of the minute indicator gear, which can be offset to the secondary time zone of your choosing.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Motorola Edge review: Motorola’s best phone since the Moto X

  • Google Pixel 4a review: Google’s best phone in years

  • Tap, Tap brings iOS 14/Android 11’s Back Tap gesture to any Android device

  • Android 10 users get access to Android 11′s new emojis in a quirky way

  • The final OxygenOS 11 developer preview arrives August 10th as OnePlus preps for Android 11

  • Unihertz Jelly 2 is a tiny smartphone on Kickstarter with Android 10

  • LG Q92 passes through Geekbench with Snapdragon 765G chipset and Android 10

  • Download: Xiaomi Redmi 8 and Redmi 8A get Android 10 update with MIUI 11 stable-beta builds

  • Xiaomi Mi A4 not coming as Android One program gets the axe

  • Leak: The Google Pixel 5 could get a 120Hz display

  • Google: This Android PIN-protected ‘Safe’ folder lets you lock away private files

  • Oppo Kash Wants Root Access on Android, Giving It Total Control Over Your Phone: Security Researcher

  • Thomson to launch ‘Make in India’ 75-inch Oath Pro Android TV on 6 August, priced at Rs 99,999

  • Xiaomi Mi TV Stick with Android TV 9 launched in India, priced at Rs 2,799

  • Kodak launches Android smart TV series launched in India, prices start at Rs 10,999

  • Casting to Android TVs is going to get a whole lot better with Cast Connect

  • Android TV’s new home screen will now recommend movies, shows, and apps

  • Disney+ Hotstar Rolls Out 4K HDR Support on Android TV, Apple TV

  • How To Stop Your Android Or iPhone Tracking You—New NSA Advice

  • TeamViewer QuickSupport now lets you fully control your Android device remotely

  • DJI refutes allegations against Android ‘Pilot’ app

  • The Galaxy Tab S7 Looks Like It Has Everything You Could Want in an Android Tablet

  • Samsung just announced it’s committing to 3 years of Android OS updates

  • Samsung launches Galaxy Tab S7, S7+; Its most powerful Android tablets

  • Samsung commits to delivering 3 years of Android OS updates with the Galaxy Note 20

  • 9to5Google Daily 495: Nearby Share now available for Android, Wear OS weather tile gets redesign, plus more

  • PowerA’s MOGA XP5-X Plus could be the ultimate Android controller

  • Android just got one of iPhone’s best features — here’s how it works

  • High-Severity Android RCE Flaw Fixed in August Security Update

  • Twitter says security flaw may have exposed Android users’ direct messages

  • Twitter fixes security issue affecting some Android devices

  • Twitter discloses another vulnerability in its Android app that could have allowed access to DMs

  • Twitter users urged to update over Android security flaw

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Daniel Stenberg: Upcoming Webinar: curl: How to Make Your First Code Contribution

  Abstract: curl is a wildly popular and well-used open source tool and library, and is the result of more than 2,200 named contributors helping out. Over 800 individuals wrote at least one commit so far.

  In this presentation, curl’s lead developer Daniel Stenberg talks about how any developer can proceed in order to get their first code contribution submitted and ultimately landed in the curl git repository. Approach to code and commits, style, editing, pull-requests, using github etc. After you’ve seen this, you’ll know how to easily submit your improvement to curl and potentially end up running in ten billion installations world-wide.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Review of Firefox “Fenix” for Android

      Mozilla has begun a staged roll-out of its redesigned and rearchitected Firefox browser for Android (codename “Fenix”). So far, Fenix has only been released in 14 countries through the Google Play Store. Here’s my review of Mozilla’s new flagship mobile browser as a long-time user and as an extension developer.

      Fenix’s user interface is minimal, but it represents a large amount of work under the hood. It’s built on GeckoView and Mozilla Android Components (MOZAC); a set of reusable components for mobile app developers that makes it easier to build a web browser based on Mozilla technology. These components are a modernization of the old codebase as well as a direct competitor to WebView — the web engine that’s built-in to Android, as well as Google’s ChromiumView.

    • Firefox extended tracking protection

      This Mozilla Security Blog entry describes the new redirect-tracking protections soon to be provided by the Firefox browser.

    • Karl Dubost: Browser developer tools timeline

      I was reading In a Land Before Dev Tools by Amber, and I thought, Oh here missing in the history the beautifully chiseled Opera Dragonfly and F12 for Internet Explorer. So let’s see what are all the things I myself didn’t know.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Announcement of LibreOffice 7.0

    LibreOffice 7.0: the new major release of the best FOSS office suite ever is available on all OSes and platforms, and provides significant new features

  • LibreOffice 7: Now more Microsoft-compatible — and still free

    Microsoft has made it clear that it sees the desktop office suite future on the cloud, not on your PC. As a “last resort” — Microsoft’s words, not mine — Microsoft recommends Office 2019. Maybe paying an eternal subscription fee for Microsoft works for you. It does for many users. But, if you want an old-style office suite which lives on your PC, LibreOffice is now your top choice. Oh, and did I mention? LibreOffice won’t cost you a cent.

    This new major release comes with several improvements. At the top of the list for users who’ve spent their working lives with Microsoft Office, the best feature is better compatibility with DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX files. LibreOffice 7′s DOCX is now saved in native 2013/2016/2019 mode, instead of 2007 compatibility mode. This greatly improves interoperability across multiple MS Office versions. The program can also now export to XLSX files with sheet names longer than 31 characters and exporting XLSX checkboxes. A long time Office XLSS bug, the “invalid content error” when opening exported XLSX files with shapes has also been resolved. Finally, he PPTX import/export filter has been improved.

  • LibreOffice 7.0 Officially Released, This Is What’s New

    Many months in development, the LibreOffice 7.0 open-source and free office suite is finally here and will soon be available for installation from the stable software repositories of many popular GNU/Linux distributions, so you can enjoy a better and more modern office suite experience.

    As you can imagine, this is a major release that adds numerous new features and improvements over previous versions. Highlights include ODF 1.3 support with the ability to add visual digital signatures in existing documents, encrypt XML documents with the OpenPGP/GPG standard, change tracking, and additional details in the description of elements in first pages, text, numbers and charts.

  • LibreOffice 7.0 Released As The Open-Source, Vulkan-Accelerated Office Suite

    LibreOffice 7.0 has been released! Making LibreOffice 7.0 so exciting is that the Cairo code was replaced with Google’s Skia library and in the process gaining optional support for GPU accelerating the user-interface with Vulkan.

    Beyond the Skia+Vulkan support, LibreOffice 7.0 brings ODF 1.3 document support, better compatibility for Microsoft Office formats like DOCX / XLSX / PPTX, icon and other user-interface improvements, HiDPI improvements, removal of Adobe Flash export support, other import/export improvements, different performance optimizations, and other changes. At the last minute for the 7.0 release they did revert the “Personal Edition” branding their marketing folks originally proposed for this release.

  • LibreOffice 7.0 released

    Version 7.0 of the LibreOffice office suite is out. It brings a long list of new features, including: “support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3; Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration for better performance; and carefully improved compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files”. The plan to create a differentiated “enterprise edition” that was discussed in July has been deferred and is not part of this release.

  • LibreOffice 7.0 Released, This is What’s New

    Naturally LibreOffice 7.0 boasts a raft of welcome improvements and notable new features, the bulk of which we take a look at in this post.

    The Document Foundation, the non-profit organisation driving the development of this free office suit, say LibreOffice 7.0 is a “new major release providing significant new features”.

    If you just want to download LibreOffice 7.0 for your Windows, macOS, or Linux system you can skip to the download section near the bottom of the post.

  • LibreOffice 7.0 is released. This is what’s new

    The latest version of LibreOffice 7.0 is here with major improvements and features. It is a massive release in terms of user features, compatibility and more.

  • LibreOffice 7.0 is Finally Available Now! Here are the Key Changes in this Major Release

    The much awaited LibreOffice 7.0 is finally released. Check out the key changes in this new release and learn how to get the latest release on your Linux distribution.

  • A new Writer Outline folding mode in LibreOffice

    Jim Raykowski, one from LibreOffice developers, realized so much requested feature – Writer Outline folding mode. You should enable Experimental features in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced dialog to see “Show outline content visibility button” checkbox in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice Writer ▸ View dialog.
    After checking it you’ll can see a button with arrow near any selected heading in your document. Click on it to fold all text from the current heading to next heading. Right click on it to fold all text from current heading to next the same level heading with all its subheadings.

• FSF

  • Geoffrey Knauth elected Free Software Foundation president; Odile Bénassy joins the board

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the addition of a new director to its board, and the election of a new president.

    Long-time free software activist and developer Odile Bénassy, known especially for her work promoting free software in France, was elected to the FSF’s board of directors. Geoffrey Knauth, who has served on the FSF’s board for over thirty years, was elected president.

    On her election, Bénassy said, “I’m happy and proud to accept FSF’s invitation to be part of the board. I want to help keep steady the principles of free software, and the philosophical values around it. Free software counts among what the world badly needs nowadays.”

    Knauth welcomed Bénassy, saying, “I am delighted that Odile Bénassy has agreed to become a director of the FSF, FSF’s first director from Europe. Odile is a mathematics educator, researcher, software engineer, and leader of the GNU Edu project. She has been advocating for and developing free software for more than twenty years.”

    FSF’s executive director, John Sullivan, added, “Being on the FSF’s board of directors means first and foremost standing as a guardian for free software and the associated user freedoms. With such a long track record, Odile has shown herself to be someone FSF members and supporters can count on. I’m really looking forward to working with her, and I’m excited to see all the ways she’ll help the FSF be better and stronger.”

    Describing his approach to his new position as president, Knauth posted a statement which begins, “The FSF board chose me at this moment as a servant leader to help the community focus on our shared dedication to protect and grow software that respects our freedoms. It is also important to protect and grow the diverse membership of the community. It is through our diversity of backgrounds and opinions that we have creativity, perspective, intellectual strength and rigor.”

  • FSF Has Finally Elected A New President

    The Free Software Foundation has elected Geoffrey Knauth as the new president. Knauth has been a FSF board member dating back to 1997. Knauth is a computer science professor in Pennsylvania and has contributed to the GNU Objective-C stack and other longtime involvement in the GNU and FSF.

    The Free Software Foundation announced the new president today while also naming French free software promoter Odile Bénassy to the board.

  • Statement from FSF’s new president, Geoffrey Knauth

    The FSF Board chose me at this moment as a servant leader to help the community focus on our shared dedication to protect and grow software that respects our freedoms. It is also important to protect and grow the diverse membership of the community. It is through our diversity of backgrounds and opinions that we have creativity, perspective, intellectual strength, and rigor.

    It is the community that has selflessly built the impressive collection of free software the world now enjoys. The community must be given credit for this achievement. The free software movement may have started with Richard Stallman’s passion and lifelong commitment, and we all are grateful to that spark of imagination that gave us high purpose. At the same time, we are all aware that this community has grown large over the years. That’s a very good thing.

    It requires renewed focus to achieve our goals. We must remember what unites us and why we came to free software in the first place. What inspired us in the past? What will keep us inspired, and what will inspire new generations of free software developers? We must be kind to each other and respect each other when our good faith arguments differ, in order to produce the best solutions together. I pledge to support honest dialog and emerging leaders in the quest to secure the future for free software for generations to come, and not to alter the tenets of the free software vision.

    I have been an active supporter and contributor from the moment the GNU Manifesto appeared, and by accident of time and space, I was lucky to witness the birth of a movement truly great and wonderful. To be honest, at the time my first thought was, “What a noble idea, but one person cannot do all this.” Then I saw how over time, many good people from literally every corner of the planet gave of themselves to make free software a reality. It is you who are important, it is you who joined the effort to help the world see the virtues of free software, the dedication of its thousands of contributors and volunteers, the high quality of free software used every day around the world, and its sheer endurance and ability to find itself in widespread use even by those who were once fierce opponents to free software. Take that to heart, let’s keep it going. Tell it to your children, and let’s make sure your children have the freedoms you have achieved, and more.

• Programming/Development

  • Podcast: COBOL development on the mainframe

    Nic reached out when COBOL hit the news this spring to get some background on what COBOL is good for historically, and where it lives in the modern infrastructure stack. I was able to talk about the basics of COBOL and the COBOL standard, strengths today in concert with the latest mainframes, and how COBOL back-end code is now being integrated into front ends via intermediary databases and data-interchange formats like JSON, which COBOL natively supports.

  • What I learned while teaching C programming on YouTube

    The act of breaking something down in order to teach it to others can be a great way to reacquaint yourself with some old concepts and, in many cases, gain new insights.

    I have a YouTube channel where I demonstrate FreeDOS programs and show off classic DOS applications and games. The channel has a small following, so I tend to explore the topics directly suggested by my audience. When several subscribers asked if I could do more videos about programming, I decided to launch a new video series to teach C programming. I learned a lot from teaching C, and in the process, I came across some meaningful takeaways I think others will appreciate.

    Make a plan

    For my day job, I lead training and workshops to help new and emerging IT leaders develop new skills. Outside of regular work, I also enjoy teaching as an adjunct professor. So I’m very comfortable constructing a course outline and designing a curriculum. That’s where I started. If you want to teach a subject effectively, you can’t just wing it.

    Start by writing an outline of what topics you want to cover and figure out how each new topic will build on the previous ones. The “building block” method of adding new knowledge is key to an effective training program.

  • Google’s Flutter 1.20 framework is out: VS Code extension and mobile autofill support

  • Google Engineers Propose “Machine Function Splitter” For Faster Performance

    Google engineers have been working on the Machine Function Splitter as their means of making binaries up to a few percent faster thanks to this compiler-based approach. They are now seeking to upstream the Machine Function Splitter into LLVM.

    The Machine Function Splitter is a code generation optimization pass for splitting code functions into hot and cold parts. They are doing this stemming from research that in roughly half of code functions that more than 50% of the code bytes are never executed but generally loaded into the CPU’s data cache.

  • Python

    • Responding to SMS Text Messages with Python & Flask

      Short Message Service (SMS) text messages are easy to send from Python applications with a web application programming interface (API). Flask applications can also receive incoming text messages and respond back to the sender with just a few lines of Python code.

    • How to Send SMS Text Messages with Python

      Short Message Service (SMS) text messages are ubiquitous for communication all over the world. It is easy to send SMS text messages from a Python application using a web application programming interface (API). Let’s take a look at the tools we need to quickly add SMS capability to our Python apps.

    • What Are Python Wheels and Why Should You Care?

      Python .whl files, or wheels, are a little-discussed part of Python, but they’ve been a boon to the installation process for Python packages. If you’ve installed a Python package using pip, then chances are that a wheel has made the installation faster and more efficient.

      Wheels are a component of the Python ecosystem that helps to make package installs just work. They allow for faster installations and more stability in the package distribution process. In this tutorial, you’ll dive into what wheels are, what good they serve, and how they’ve gained traction and made Python even more of a joy to work with.

    • PyCharm: Webinar Recording: “Simplify Your Tests With Fixtures” with Oliver Bestwalter

      Enjoy pytest and curious about fixtures? Last week we hosted Oliver Bestwalter for a webinar on how to use pytest fixtures to simplify your test code. The recording is now available.

    • Python 101 – Learning About Sets (Video)

      In this video you will learn about the basics of Python’s dictionary data type.

    • PSF GSoC students blogs: Weekly Blog Post | Gsoc’2020 | #10

    • PSF GSoC students blogs: Weekly Check-In #10

  • Rust

    • Modernize network function development with this Rust-based framework

      The world of networking has undergone monumental shifts over the past decade, particularly in the ongoing move from specialized hardware into software defined network functions (NFV) for data plane1 and packet processing. While the transition to software has fashioned the rise of SDN (Software-defined networking) and programmable networks, new challenges have arisen in making these functions flexible, efficient, easier to use, and fast (i.e. little to no performance overhead). Our team at Comcast wanted to both leverage what the network does best, especially with regards to its transport capacity and routing mechanisms, while also being able to develop network programs through a modern software lens—stressing testing, swift iteration, and deployment. So, with these goals in mind, we developed Capsule, a new framework for network function development, written in Rust, inspired by Berkeley’s NetBricks research, and built-on Intel’s Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK).

    • This Week in Rust 350

Health/Nutrition

• Are COVID-19 vaccine advance purchases a form of vaccine nationalism, an effective spur to innovation, or something in between?

  No vaccine for the novel coronavirus has been approved anywhere. Nevertheless, governments and international organizations around the world are announcing deals for billions of dollars to procure tens of millions of doses of vaccines from companies that are still running clinical trials, including a $2.1 billion deal with Sanofi and GSK announced by the US on Friday. What’s going on? And what do these deals tell us about innovation policy for COVID-19 vaccines? In this post, we lay out the landscape of COVID-19 vaccine pre-purchases; we then turn to the innovation impact of these commitments, and finish by asking what role patents and compulsory licensing have to play.

  [...]

  The US federal government has made substantial pre-purchases, including up to $2.1B for 100M doses from Sanofi-GSK, $1.95B for 100M doses from BioNTech-Pfizer, $1.6B for 100M doses from NovaVax vaccine, and $1.2B for 300M doses from AstraZeneca-Oxford. This is unusual! Most vaccines for US adults are purchased by the private sector or public insurers. (Also unusual is that the federal government will be directing allocation choices through the CDC and the Pentagon—which hopefully will go more smoothly than the distribution of the COVID-19 treatment remdesivir by FEMA and HHS.)

  Other governments are also making advance purchases of yet-to-be-approved vaccines, particularly the UK and other European countries. The UK has secured 250M doses from four suppliers; it has 66M people. (Obviously, it has planned in case not all of them work out.) Italy, Germany, France, and the Netherlands set up the Inclusive Vaccines Alliance—which other EU countries may join—and signed a €750M contract for 400M doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. The EU is also concluding talks to purchase 300M doses of the Sanofi-GSK vaccine. China is developing its own vaccines, which other countries may struggle to access. And the few wealthy countries like Canada that are not making substantial COVID-19 vaccine investments face pressure to do so.

  These investments have led to charges of “vaccine nationalism” in the popular press, although as Professor Ana Santos Rutschman explains, these strategies are not new. Rutschman also describes the growth of public-private partnerships to offer a more global solution. Most notably, Geneva-based Gavi has created the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility, which can be joined by both “self-financing” countries and donor-supported countries. COVAX will distribute vaccines to “all participating countries at the same rate until all countries have received sufficient doses through the Facility to ensure coverage of 20% of their populations,” although potential inequity in access by non-self-financing countries has led to some criticism. Many countries have expressed interest, though only 16 of the 36 OECD states, not including the US, Germany, France, Italy, or Spain. The European Commission has advised EU states not to join COVAX for the purpose of buying vaccines.

  [...]

  Compulsory licensing doesn’t address these concerns. Whatever merits compulsory licensing offers for some basic pharmaceuticals, vaccines are quite different. In the small-molecule context, entry by numerous generic manufacturers is relatively inexpensive and can rapidly increase supply. But for vaccines, as we’ve detailed before, the more significant impediments to producing a successful coronavirus vaccine lie on the manufacturing side, including issues regarding manufacturing scale-up, the risk of shortages, supply chain management, and other logistical hurdles. That doesn’t even include issues like administrative distribution (e.g., would people receive the vaccine from their employer, physician, or a third-party provider?), or vaccine skepticism that are bound to dog implementation of a COVID-19 vaccine.

  The scholarly attention to patents in the pandemic, rather, is part of a long-standing academic debate as to whether patents efficiently mediate a tradeoff of access to the goods they cover and incentives to develop them. But this tradeoff—especially in this context—doesn’t have to be, and often isn’t antagonistic. As we previously explained, whether developers receive high financial incentives from patents and other policies is a separate question from whether consumers face barriers to access; several proposals include provisions that a COVID-19 vaccine will be available to most patients for no out-of-pocket costs. More broadly, the economic and public health impact of COVID-19 counsels that whatever risk exists from payers overpaying for a patent-protected COVID-19 vaccine is a mere rounding error compared to the enormous harm—both economic and human—from the pandemic. If Pfizer stands to reap $2 billion to end a scourge that has already claimed 700,000 lives and stands to cost $82 trillion globally, it’ll be worth it. Given the difficulties of manufacturing and distributing a vaccine, it’s not clear how patent licensing would address the access problem frequently complained about. Rather than focusing on the margins, now is the time for policymakers to “go big. Really, really big.”

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Vivaldi Web Browser 3.2 Released with Improved Pop-out Video

    Vivaldi web browser 3.2 was released today. The new release added a mute button to the pop-out video (picture-in-picture) mode.

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • New Open Source Initiative Consolidates Security Goals [Ed: This initiatives was founded by companies that put back doors in everything, so only fools and crackpots would believe it's about genuine security rather than domination]

          The Linux Foundation on Monday announced the formation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) as the latest initiative to improve software security.

        • Linux Foundation Addresses Open Source Security

          The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) will consolidate the efforts of existing open source security initiatives Core Infrastructure Initiative and the Open Source Security Coalition previously launched by GitHub. In addition, various security projects launched by other founding governing board members including, Google, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, NCC Group, OWASP Foundation, Red Hat and others will be incorporated.

  • Security

    • Zoombomber crashes court hearing on Twitter hack with Pornhub video

    • Security updates for Wednesday

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (net-snmp), Fedora (mingw-curl), openSUSE (firefox, ghostscript, and opera), Oracle (libvncserver and postgresql-jdbc), Scientific Linux (postgresql-jdbc), SUSE (firefox, kernel, libX11, xen, and xorg-x11-libX11), and Ubuntu (apport, grub2, grub2-signed, libssh, libvirt, mysql-8.0, ppp, tomcat8, and whoopsie).

    • The CNCF etcd project reaches a significant milestone with completion of security audit

      This week, a third-party security audit was published on etcd, the open source distributed key-value store that plays a crucial role in scaling Kubernetes in the cloud. For etcd, this audit was important in multiple ways. The audit validates the project’s maturity and sheds light on some areas where the project can improve. This sort of audit is required criteria for any project in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to qualify for graduation from the CNCF.

      Read the CNCF blog post that I co-authored to learn more about the audit and what it uncovered. As one of the project maintainers and one of two members of the etcd Project Security Committee, I’d love to share a few reasons I’m hopeful for etcd’s future and why now is a great time to contribute to etcd’s open source community.

Defence/Aggression

• Why Hong Kongers Fight

  The West was still congratulating itself on the “end of history” when Hong Kong, one of Great Britain’s last colonial holdings, was handed over to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. The event was seen as a denouement to the age of colonialism, heralding the arrival of a new capitalist modernity unifying East and West. There was ample reason to believe China’s government—then negotiating its membership in the World Trade Organization—would before long become a steward of the liberal world order.
  Hong Kongers thought they would lead the way. It was not only the city’s capitalists who saw “One Country, Two Systems” as an opportunity. Beijing agreed to preserve Hong Kong’s way of life for at least “fifty years without change” and pledged to implement universal suffrage for the city’s leader. Progressives saw a chance to spearhead democracy in China.
  Twenty-three years later, the disillusionment of Hong Kong’s idealists is stark. Tidal waves of new wealth from China have failed to raise most residents’ wages, instead creating record inequality. And mainland elites’ enthusiasm for using Hong Kong as a conduit for their ballooning capital—aided by the city’s Beijing-backed bureaucrats—is equaled by their contempt for free elections. Hong Kong’s new “national security” law, recently passed unilaterally by the Chinese Communist Party, has essentially outlawed dissent, slamming the door shut on any hope of universal suffrage and ushering in a new era of repression.
  The city’s postcolonial constitution, the Basic Law, explicitly requires the local government to “safeguard the free flow of capital.” By contrast, the protest slogan “If we burn, you burn” describes a strategy of seeking leverage by damaging Hong Kong’s business operations, in defiance of the territory’s postcolonial compact. Protesters have smashed and even set fire to the symbols of the enemy: branches of the Bank of China, Xiaomi retailers, train stations run by the mega-landlord MTR. Recent surveys show the Hong Kong public continues to support the movement by a ratio of two-to-one even amid the pandemic, suggesting a broad acknowledgement that the city cannot be saved without forms of strategic destruction.

• What the Beirut blast could mean for a battered Lebanon

  As rescue workers continue to look for survivors amongst the rubble of a massive explosion that killed a reported 100 people in Beirut’s port on Tuesday night, the humanitarian implications of the blast in Lebanon’s capital will likely not be clear for some time.

  At least 4,000 people are said to have been wounded, and the death toll from the blast could still rise. Hospitals have been struggling to deal with the influx of injured people as buildings collapsed and windows shattered throughout central Beirut.

  While the exact cause of the explosion was unclear, government officials said it was related to a large amount of ammonium nitrate confiscated years ago and stored at the port. Ammonium nitrate can be used as both a fertiliser and in bombs, but must be mixed with another substance to ignite.

  [...]

  Tuesday night’s explosion came as Lebanon was already at a crisis point: The economy has been in freefall for months, unemployment is rising, and the country’s foreign minister resigned on Monday, warning that the country risks becoming a “failed state”.

  The financial meltdown, which has seen the local currency collapse, has been worsened by COVID-19, as lockdowns slowed economic activity and remittances from abroad dropped off (a problem that has recently plagued many other countries that rely on money sent home from relatives).

  While those hit hardest by the crash have been society’s most vulnerable – including an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees – more and more Lebanese are feeling the pain too. Food prices are rising at a time when people have less money in their pockets, and aid groups have said eviction threats are increasing.

• What happens to migrants forcibly returned to Libya?

  The killing last week of three young men after they were intercepted at sea by the EU-funded Libyan Coast Guard has thrown the spotlight on the fate of tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers returned to Libya to face detention, abuse and torture by traffickers, or worse.

  The three Sudanese nationals aged between 15 and 18 were shot dead on 28 July, reportedly by members of a militia linked to the Coast Guard as they tried to avoid being detained. They are among more than 6,200 men, women, and children intercepted on the central Mediterranean and returned to Libya this year. Since 2017, that figure is around 40,000.

  [...]

  Unlike official detention centres run by the GNA’s Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM) – also under the Ministry of the Interior – and its affiliated militias, neither IOM nor the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has access to these data-collection facilities, which are intended for the investigation of smugglers and not for detaining migrants.

  “We have been told that migrants are no longer in these [data-collection] facilities and we wonder if they have been transferred,” Safa Msehli, spokesperson for IOM in Libya, told TNH.

  “These are people going missing by the hundreds. We have also been told – and are hearing reports from community leaders – that people are going missing,” she said. “We feel the worst has happened, and that these locations [data-collection facilities] are being used to smuggle or traffic people.”

Desktop/Laptop

• Here’s the glaring potential flaw in Windows 10X devices as Chromebook competitors

  Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Imagine an operating system that’s focused on using the web browser and you can’t install traditional desktop apps on. No, I’m actually not talking about Chromebooks, and if I was, that would be an outdated thought experiment since you can install full desktop Linux apps on Chrome OS. I’m talking about upcoming devices running Microsoft Windows 10X, a “lite” software platform that is reportedly debuting in roughly 9 months.

  You may not recall that Microsoft tried a similar approach in 2012 with Windows RT and the first Surface device.

• Linux Marketshare Dipped in July – But Not By Much! [Ed: No, it is wrong to base one’s assessment on a Microsoft partner that pretends Android, ChromeOS etc. don’t even exist]

Linux Magazine

• Halloween candy vending machine

• Record and publish actions in the shell with asciinema

• A package search engine for Linux repositories

• Zack’s Kernel News

• Steampunk portable Rasp Pi lunchbox

• View a remote desktop with UltraScreen

• Advanced command-line navigation

• Two Terrific Distros on a Double-Sided DVD!

• Distros, documentation, and support

• Easy steps for optimizing shell scripts

• Updates on technologies, trends, and tools

• The sys admin’s daily grind: Formatting JSON for readability

• Tips for speeding up your Linux system

• Sparkling gems and new releases from the world of Free and Open Source Software

• Monitor resource contention with Pressure Stall Information

• The openSUSE/SUSE relationship

• This month in Linux Voice.

• Social proof and the year of the Linux desktop

• Reliable videoconferencing

• Considering Computing Resources

• Tools for collaborative office work

Audiocasts/Shows

• mintCast 340.5 – Will It Blend?

  1:41 Interview with Jason van Gumster
  1:01:48 Feedback
  1:11:03 Check This Out
  1:15:27 Outro

  In our Innards section, we become blender experts with Jason van Gumster’s help.

  And finally, the feedback and a few suggestions.

• This Week in Linux 111: Linux 5.8, BootHole & GRUB2 Flaws, Firefox 79, JellyFin, Nitrux, & More

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got some really cool hardware news, we’ve finally got some Linux laptops equipped with an AMD Ryzen 4000H series processor. These laptops are thanks to Tuxedo Computers and KDE Slimbook. Cooler Master has launched a kickstarter campaign to make a pretty slick Case for the Raspberry Pi 4. We’ve also got a LOT of App News this week with the latest release of the most popular open source email client, Thunderbird 78 from Mozilla. KDE has released version 7.0.0 of digiKam. If you’ve been wanting an open source way to control your RGB lights on your devices then OpenRGB may be the tool for you. And finally, PeerTube has announced the 2.3.0 release that comes with the much anticipated Global Search feature! All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

• There’s a Hole in my Boot! | LINUX Unplugged 365

  We explain why BootHole is getting so much attention and break down the key issues. Then we review our favorite Linux-compatible headsets.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.8 released, features Thunderbolt 4.0 support and improved security

  Linux’s creator Linus Torvalds has released a new version of the Linux kernel following seven release candidates.

  While he did consider creating an eighth release candidate for Linux 5.8 last week, on Sunday Torvalds decided “it’s not just worth waiting another week when there aren’t any big looming worries around”.

  Linux 5.8 succeeds the latest stable Linux Kernel 5.7 and includes all of the changes that were pulled out during the kernel 5.8 merge windows. As Linux 5.8 received a surprisingly high number of merge requests during its merge window, Torvalds said that it is one of the biggest Linux releases yet in terms of the number of commits and close to Linux 4.9.

• Checkpoint/Restore Of Unprivileged Processes Sent In For Linux 5.9

  Linux 5.9 is bringing another feature that’s long been baking and of interest to a growing number of stakeholders… checkpoint/restore functionality of unprivileged processes.

  With Linux 5.9 all the pieces should be in place for allowing checkpoint/restore of processes not running as root. This saving and restoring of processes can be used for functionality like container migration, moving workloads in HPC environments, or for the Java JVM to speed-up startup time. The Linux kernel has supported checkpoint/restore of processes but only as root until now.

• Linux 5.9 Continues Working On A Variety Of Scheduler Improvements

  Among the many pull requests sent in for the Linux 5.9 merge window by longtime developer Ingo Molnar are the usual assortment of scheduler improvements.

  [...]

  - The deadline scheduler is now capacity-aware and has seen other improvements too.

  - UClamp performance improvements for this utilization clamping functionality.

  - Cleanups to the energy/power-aware scheduling.

• Top 10 New Features in Linux Kernel 5.8

  Linus Torvalds recently announced the release of Linux Kernel 5.8, and he seems delighted with it. He has pointed it out as the most significant release of all time. To developers, this new kernel comes with an addition of 800,000 new code lines and more than 14,000 changed files. To the average user, you might not see many eye-candy changes, as seen in the earlier releases.

  Overall, the Linux Kernel 5.8 releases include a bunch of driver support, optimizations, processor improvements, and a variety of security enhancements. In the Linux Kernel mailing lists, Linus Torvalds wrote, “So I didn’t expect this, but 5.8 looks to be one of our biggest releases of all time.”

  Given the release timeline for Linux 5.8, it may be available for testing in distributions like Ubuntu 20.10 and Fedora 33 soon. Let’s take a look at some of the features you can expect in Linux Kernel 5.8.

• Wrap it before you tap it? No, say Linux developers: ‘GPL condom’ for Nvidia driver is laughed out of the kernel

  Linux devs have dismissed a proposed patch to the kernel that would only work with a Nvidia driver, motivating a second patch that will prevent disguised use of proprietary code in GPL modules.

  The Linux Kernel licensing rules make provision for proprietary third-party modules but state that they must be tagged as such.

  This “cannot be used for modules with source code in the kernel tree. Modules tagged that way are tainting the kernel with the ‘P’ flag when loaded and the kernel module loader refuses to link such modules against symbols which are exported with EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL().”

  Facebook developer Jonathan Lemon put forward an RFC (Request for Comments) on a proposal to implement DMA (Direct Memory Access) zero-copy between a network card and a GPU to enhance network performance, while keeping the protocol processing on the CPU. The use case is for “GPUs used for machine learning, which are located near the NICs, and have a high bandwidth PCI connection between the GPU/NIC,” states the RFC.

  The code relies on Nvidia’s proprietary driver for Linux, noticed by kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman, who observed: “OK, now you are just trolling us. Nice job, I shouldn’t have read the previous patches. Please, go get a lawyer to sign-off on this patch, with their corporate email address on it. That’s the only way we could possibly consider something like this.”

• Power Management and Thermal Control Microconference Accepted into 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference

  We are pleased to announce that the Power Management and Thermal Control Microconference has been accepted into the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference!

  Power management and thermal control is an important area in the Linux ecosystem to help with the global environment. Optimizing the amount of work that is achieved while having long battery life and keeping the box from overheating is critical in today’s world. This meeting will focus on continuing to have Linux be an efficient operating system while still lowering the cost of running a data center.

  Last year’s meetup at Linux Plumbers resulted in the introduction of thermal pressure support into the CPU scheduler as well as several improvements to the thermal framework, such as a netlink implementation of thermal notification and improvements to CPU cooling. Discussions from last year also helped to improve systems-wide suspend testing tools.

• Graphics Stack

  • Defaulting Radeon GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs To Better Linux Driver Is Held Up By Analog Outputs

    Switching from the “Radeon” to “AMDGPU” kernel driver on Linux is possible for Radeon GCN 1.0/1.1 era graphics cards and doing so can mean slight performance benefits, the ability to run the AMDVLK or RADV Vulkan drivers, and simply making use of this better maintained driver. But having these original GCN graphics cards default to the modern AMDGPU driver appears held up by the lack of analog video output support with that driver.

  • Intel’s Open-Source H.265/HEVC Encoder Sees First Release Of 2020

    Intel’s Scalable Video Technology team is known for their open-source video encoder work particularly on AV1 and VP9 formats, but they also continue to maintain a high performance H.265/HEVC encoder as well. Intel SVT-HEVC 1.5 was released on Monday as their first major update of the year.

    Intel SVT-HEVC 1.5 fixes “all memory leaks” following a refactoring of their allocation/deallocation code that also leads to the ability for FFmpeg to run multi-instance encoding in parallel. SVT-HEVC 1.5 also has a number of optimizations, fixes for a random hang issue with few threads (something we’ve seen as well with SVT-HEVC in our own benchmarks), and a number of other fixes.

  • GNOME’s Mutter Adds Support For Launching “Trusted Clients” On Wayland

    Merged to GNOME’s Mutter compositor is an API for Wayland to allow the launching of trusted clients.

    This “trusted clients” support is namely about allowing child windows to be signified as being from a parent window/process. This can also allow for some nifty use-cases for GNOME on Wayland. The patch explains:
    Unfortunately, although the child process can be a graphical program, currently it is not possible for the inner code to identify the windows created by the child in a secure manner (this is: being able to ensure that a malicious program won’t be able to trick the inner code into thinking it is a child process launched by it).

  • Wayfire 0.5 Wayland Compositor Brings Latency Optimizations, More Protocols

    Wayfire, a Wayland compositor inspired by the likes of Compiz with different desktop effects, is out today with a new feature release.

    Perhaps most exciting with Wayfire 0.5 is the work done to improve (reduce) the latency. Wayfire now better tracks how much time it needs to draw a frame, support for the presentation time protocol, and other work. Aside from latency improvements, there are Wayland protocol additions for primary selection for allowing middle-click-paste to work plus the output-power-management protocol for better handling display output power management behavior.

  • Intel Tiger Lake OpenCL Support On Linux Now Considered Production Ready

    With all the recent work on Intel’s open-source compute stack around the vector back-end and GPU code generation with their ISPC compiler there was another significant milestone achieved that went unnoticed until spotting the change a few days ago.

    The open-source Intel Compute Runtime in the past two weeks now has “production” ready OpenCL support for the forthcoming Gen12 Tiger Lake graphics. That’s good news with Tiger Lake laptops expected to market soon.

  • RADV ACO Back-End Begins Tackling Navi 2 / GFX10.3 Support

    With the “Sienna Cichlid” and “Navy Flounder” open-source driver support as what appear to be the first “Navi 2″ GPUs and the first of the “GFX10.3″ generation on the graphics engine side there is the initial kernel support with Linux 5.9 and the initial Mesa support for 20.2. That Mesa support has been focused on RadeonSI as the official OpenGL driver as well as Mesa’s RADV driver as the Radeon Vulkan driver in-tree but not officially supported by AMD. That RADV support is currently un-tested. Both drivers currently depend upon the “AMDGPU” back-end found in the forthcoming LLVM 11.0 with its initial GFX10.3 support. But now on the RADV driver side there is preliminary GFX10.3 bits landing for the popular “ACO” back-end.

    ACO is the back-end worked on by Valve and other stakeholders like open-source graphics driver engineers from Google and Red Hat. But as ACO isn’t officially supported by AMD, there hasn’t been any patches from them in wiring up the Navi 2 / GFX10.3 support for this AMDGPU LLVM alternative. Rhys Perry as part of Valve’s Linux driver efforts though has worked out what should be the initial changes needed for this yet-to-be-released hardware with ACO.

Applications

• Flash ISOs to Multiple USB Sticks on Linux with Popsicle

  This handy tool, which is written in Rust, lets you write an .iso (or other compatible image file) to more than one USB stick, SD card, or external drive at the same time.

  If you’ve been tasked with preparing multiple flash drives for your favorite OS to hand out to attendees at an event or the like then this would certainly be useful.

  But even if your needs aren’t as demanding as that being able to prep two installers, e.g., an SD card and a USB stick, to work with two different devices is made easier by this tool.

• Meet The Beautiful Linux App You Need In Your Terminal

  There’s no shortage of apps to monitor your PC’s system resources, regardless of the operating system you’re running. But it’s less common to stumble across a piece of software that looks this gorgeous running in a terminal window. Seeing is believing, and I dare you not to fall in love with the unique beauty of Bashtop.

  Bashtop is a cross-platform resource monitor for Linux, macOS and FreeBSD. It tracks your PC’s CPU core usage (and per-core temps!), RAM and disk usage (including current read/write speeds), bandwidth consumption and running processes. You can also filter processes and send various kill signals.

  It does everything you’d expect a resource monitor to do, and a few things you don’t.

• Pinta Open-Source Image Editing and Drawing App Sees New Major Release After 5 Years

  Pinta 1.7 is now available and it looks like it’s a massive update to the open-source drawing and image editing application, which most of you probably forgot about.

  Highlights of this release include support for tabs to make it more easy to switch between multiple images with the ability to dock them side-by-side or transformed in new windows, support for zooming and panning in the Rotate / Zoom dialog, which now rotates in-place.

  Also new is a Smooth Erase tool that can be enabled when using the Type menu on the toolbar of the Erase tool, as well as support for JASC PaintShop Pro palette files and the ability to open images just by dragging and dropping an image URL from a web browser.

Instructionals/Technical

• Oracle Linux 8 Kernel Module Configuration

• How to Set Colors for ls Command

• How to Install and Configure Checkmk on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

• 10 Amazing Tips & Tricks to Work with Linux

• How to Install Security Updates in Ubuntu

• ZFS basics: enable or disable compression

• How to install Dropbox in Ubuntu and other-distros

• Andre Roberge: Identifying misleading type hints

• Monitoring .NET Core applications on Kubernetes

• Install Docker and Learn Basic Container Manipulation in CentOS and RHEL 8/7 – Part 1

• Marcel – A More Modern Shell for Linux

• Managing Oracle WebLogic Server with Oracle Enterprise Manager

• Vim Fugitive Turns Git Into A SEAMLESS Vim EXPERIENCE

• Install Linux Kernel 5.8 In Ubuntu / LinuxMint

• How To Install Nagios on Debian 10

• How to Install Apache Solr on Ubuntu 20.04

• A Simple Guide to Using Telegram Web

• Creating and debugging Linux dump files

• Re-enabling OpenGL compositing automatically after it crashes KWin at login to KDE Plasma

Games

• Cursed Gem is a pretty charming and amusing challenging platformer out now

  I have to admit, Cursed Gem is quite a nice surprise. Throwing in a little comedy into a challenging pixel-art platformer.

• Action RPG ‘Last Epoch’ laughs at your free time with the biggest update ever

  Free time be damned, it’s time to jump back into Last Epoch for another dozen hours or so because Eleventh Hour Games clearly don’t want me to sleep tonight. On August 4 they released update 0.7.9, which they said was the “BIGGEST update in Last Epoch history”.

  What’s the big fuss about with this update? It splits off The Monolith of Fate end game into its own zone, with several islands each containing “a Timeline representing a reality that never was”. Confused? Well, Last Epoch is an action RPG that involves a wee bit of time travel. As you progress and conquer timelines, you get all sorts of fancy rewards and you they’re repeatable with different layouts. Sounds awesome.

• Minesweeper but it’s a rogue-lite with tons of features – DemonCrawl is out for Linux PC

  Oh no, I think DemonCrawl might just end up being my next 100 hour game and it’s now available for Linux PC.

  Released originally in November 2019, the developer decided to support Linux to ensure people can get the best experience rather than relying on the Proton compatibility layer. Two weeks after announcing it and the Linux version has been released.

• Jagged Alliance 2 game engine ‘Stracciatella’ has a big new release

  The community working to keep the classic Jagged Alliance 2 alive with the Stracciatella game engine have put out their first release in a few years.

  With the Stracciatella project their aim is to provide good cross-platform support, improve stability, fix bugs and provide a stable platform for mod development. It’s a noble aim, especially when it’s an old game long left behind by the original teams and in this case the original developer and publisher no longer even exist.

• Master of Orion inspired open source 4x strategy FreeOrion has a new release

  Inspired originally by Master of Orion, the free and open source FreeOrion project has a brand new release.

  For the FreeOrion, this was a reasonably quick release considering they had another release back in February and they don’t usually update too often. For a good reason this time though, as they’ve managed to do a major tech move from Python 2 to 3 to enable FreeOrion to stay up to date with modern code. That wasn’t the only big change though.

• Take an emotional trip through the mind in Into A Dream out now

  Into A Dream is a brand new release from indie developer Filipe F. Thomaz, telling a tale about diving into the mind of someone diagnosed with severe depression.

  You’re quite literally exploring their mind too, using the power of medical science. You will be travelling through the mind of Luke Williams, as their last hope before “fading away”. You need to find the events that led to their darkened mind, meeting family and friends (well, memories of them anyway) while finding a way to “trick him into letting you access his darker dreams and unveil the emotional, powerful and heartbreaking journey of his life”.

• Need another building and farming RPG? Verdant Village enters Steam Early Access

  Littlewood and Stardew Valley not enough for you? Need more farming, crafting and exploration? Verdant Village is now live in Early Access on Steam.

  “You’ve washed ashore in a foreign land. With nothing to your name other than a few tools you’ll have to learn how to live off the land. Explore, grow crops, and meet the locals. How you live is up to you. Can you create a new life for yourself in the small town of Amberglen?”—well, luckily for you the King seems nice and gave you an abandoned piece of land to call your own and it’s up to you to bring it back to life.

• LunarG releases new Vulkan SDK with DirectX Shader Compiler for Linux and more

  LunarG have today, August 4 2020, released a new and enhanced version of their Vulkan SDK (software development kit).

  What exactly is it? The Vulkan SDK is a collection of essential tools used by developers to assist in development and debugging of Vulkan applications. LunarG works with the Vulkan Working Group over at The Khronos Group to keep it open source, and provide ongoing upgrades to it.

• Littlewood is a seriously peaceful town-building RPG out now

  After a successful Kickstarter campaign in the beginning of 2019 and an Early Access release later that same year, Littlewood has grown into a wonderful town-building RPG.

  In a world where the evil has already been defeated, it asks the question: what now? The answer, of course, is to rebuild everything and attempt to live out the rest of your lives in peace and perhaps find a little love along the way. Easily comparable to the likes of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, it offers up a similar experience of letting you do what you want at your own pace and just relax.

• GOverlay makes Linux gaming overlay MangoHud even easier to use

  MangoHud has become the go-to way to get a decent readout of game performance with an overlay on Linux, and now with the latest improvements the GOverlay interface has made it much easier to use.

• Free to play collectible card game ‘Doomtrooper’ enters Early Access

  Reviving the collectible card game from the 90s, developer Secret Cow Level has now launched Doomtrooper CCG into Steam’s Early Access program.

  “Get ready for demonic aliens, cyber-mechanical vehicles, and interplanetary chainsaw warfare! Doomtrooper is a digital adaptation of the physical card game by the same name. Play Warrior cards to form your squad and earn victory points by eliminating the enemy’s forces.”

• Ecosystem building sim ‘Terra Nil’ now gives you a whole continent to restore

  A building sim that’s as relaxing as it is challenging, Terra Nil has a truly wonderful idea and I absolute love following it along in development with a new big update out now.

  In Terra Nil, you’re tasked with turning a barren wasteland into an ecological paradise complete with different flora and fauna, then clean up after yourself to leave the environment pristine. Quite clever mechanically, giving you a certain percentage you need to hit on each map with your greenery. Originally it just gave you random maps to play through but now the progress is evolving.

  As for Terra Nil 0.4, it gives you a whole continent to restore with different biomes across the areas you’re trying to restore. When you do complete a level, the menu map then covers that area in greenery and it’s actually quite slick.

• Award-winning strategy game The Battle of Polytopia is now on Linux PC

  After winning awards and gaining popularity in the mobile space, Midjiwan AB have ported over The Battle of Polytopia to PC (Linux, macOS, Windows) and it’s out now.

  They’re calling the PC version The Battle of Polytopia: Moonrise, although the Steam page still has the original name, in an attempt to differentiate it from the mobile version. The PC release does come with some enhancements like larger maps, better map generation, map customization options, random multiplayer matchmaking, player avatars, a Russian translation, the ability for more than one player to play with the same tribe and they sat it gives them room to develop new features more quickly.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • The structure of KDE, or how anarchy sometimes works

    KDE is a funny beast. In a lot of ways, it’s an anarchic society that actually works!

    Engineers and designers work on KDE software and websites, but none of them are paid by KDE itself. Most are volunteers but some (myself included) are paid by 3rd-party companies. These people work on what they want or what they are sponsored by their company to work on, not what anyone in KDE tells them to work on.

    KDE has a board of directors, but they are elected by KDE’s membership rather than stockholders (there is no stock lol), and do not control KDE’s strategic direction the way the board of directors does in a corporation. Rather, they mostly take care of financial and legal matters, sort out copyright claims, help to organize the yearly Akademy conference, and so on.

    There is no formal “upper management” or even “middle management” layer. We have the “gardening team” whose members constitute volunteer managers, but we mostly do things like triaging bugs, following up on stuck merge requests, perform QA on unreleased software, and so on. We support the people doing the work, rather than telling them what to do.

  • Announcing Krita’s Scripting School!

    In 2018, we reintroducted scripting to Krita. Unlike our previous attempts to provide scripting, this time it took off! People are making all kinds of useful and fun extensions for Krita. Like a new color picker and mixer, a plugin to modify the way Krita’s subwindows are handled, new toolboxes, integration with other applications like Autodesk Shotgun,

    But what was missing was a good overview of the various areas that could be scripted. Tutorials and example code on how to use the scripting API in bite-size chunks. The regular API documentation is generated automatically from the APIDOX comments. It is a good reference but can be difficult to understand since it is generated from the C++ code that provides the scripting bindings.

  • Plasma Browser Integration 1.7.6

    I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.7.6 on the Chrome Web Store as well as Firefox Add-Ons page. This release comes with a few bug fixes, performance improvements, and translation updates.

    [...]

    As usual, this release brings some improvements to media controls. Short sounds and videos are currently ignored to avoid trying to control e.g. a “new message” sound or short hover video previews. However, some live stream implementations don’t report the correct duration of Infinity but gradually fill up their time bucket every few seconds. Previously, the extension only checked duration once to determine whether to provide media controls. With this update duration is continuously checked and media controls would become available eventually.

    Furthermore, for websites that do not set album art through Media Session API, the video player’s poster is now used as album cover. This is the cover image that is often shown when the video isn’t playing.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Clarissa Borges: Which library is the GNOME UI extending from?

    About two weeks ago I did some research and learned about some libraries to choose one to extend from to use on my GSoC GNOME UI library project, and it turned out to be a very interesting topic that I’d like to share and take the opportunity to talk about how’s the project going, as it’s been a while since I don’t blog

    In case you don’t know what my project is about, I recommend you to visit my first post where I provide an explanation of the project goals.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Pantheon Desktop Review: A Beautiful Alternative to macOS

    The Pantheon Desktop is designed specifically for elementaryOS and is considered one of the most visually appealing desktops around. It clearly draws a lot of inspiration from macOS, which makes it a great alternative for those who are looking to make the switch or who have always wanted to master that workflow. In this Pantheon Desktop review, I take a look at user experience and performance, as well as some notable features, and deciding who should use the Pantheon desktop.

• BSD

  • An Introduction to ZFS A Place to Start

    ZFS has become increasingly popular in recent years. ZFS on Linux (ZoL) has pushed the envelope and exposed many newcomers to the ZFS fold. iXsystems has adopted the newer codebase, now called OpenZFS, into its codebase for TrueNAS CORE. The purpose of this article is to help those of you who have heard about ZFS but have not yet had the opportunity to research it.

    Our hope is that we leave you with a better understanding of how and why it works the way it does. Knowledge is key to the decision-making process, and we feel that ZFS is something worth considering for most organizations.

  • GSoC Reports: Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD, Part 2

    As a part of Google summer code 2020, I have been working on Enhance the Syzkaller support for NetBSD. This post summarises the work done in the past month.

    For work done in the first coding period, you can take a look at the previous post.

  • The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD (Part 3)

    I’ve written an integration of GDB with fork(2) and vfork(2) events. Unfortunately, this support (present in a local copy of GDB in the base-system) had not been merged so far, because there is a generic kernel regression with the pg_jobc variable. This variable can be called a reference counter of the number of processes within a process group that has a parent with control over a terminal. The semantics of this variable are not very well defined and in the result the number can become negative. This unexpected state of pg_jobc resulted in spurious crashes during kernel fuzzing. As a result new kernel assertions checking for non-negative pg_jobc values were introduced in order to catch the anomalies quickly. GDB as a ptrace(2)-based application happened to reproduce negative pg_jobc values quickly and reliably and this stopped the further adoption of the fork(2) and vfork(2) patch in GDB, until the pg_jobc behavior is enhanced. I was planning to include support for posix_spawn(3) events as well, as they are implemented as a first-class operation through a syscall, however this is also blocked by the pg_jobc blocker.

  • BSD Router Project Release 1.97 (04/08/2020)

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • KDE Plasma 5.20 Pre-Beta Run Through

    In this video, we are looking at KDE Plasma 5.20 Pre-Beta. Enjoy!

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Stasiek Michalski answers Richard Brown’s questions as the openSUSE election campaign progresses

    Community members are welcome to ask the candidates questions about their views on the project and to comment on some of the pertinent matters within the community. Richard Brown, former Chairman of openSUSE, put a few questions to Stasiek Michalski about his views on conflict resolution, the board structure and the project’s key sponsor SUSE.

    Stasiek expressed his views as he answered Richard on the project mailing list.

  • Leap 15.2 Install party @ GOLEM – A quick report

    Ah, the event was also recorded, but they still have to let me know whether that worked well or not.

    I decided to do a live install as I think our installer is great, and wanted to show it off a bit. In fact, I’ve heard a few times people saying that installing openSUSE is difficult, and I wanted to give it a shot to busting that myth.

    I showed how it is possible to install the distro with just a few clicks, which is the opposite of difficult. After that, I went back and explained all the various possible customizations that one can make – but only if she wants to– at each stage.

    Feedback on this was extremely good, and I think I’m going to reuse this same approach for other similar occasions.

    While the installer was copying packages, there was the time to talk a bit about the characteristics of Leap such as its goals, release cycle, development process, relationship with SLE, etc.

    I quickly mentioned the maintenance process, taking advantage of some slides kindly provided by Marina (thanks to you again as well!), and this also was perceived as very interesting.

    After the system was ready, I had the time to showcase YaST a little, to explain how to add Packman repos for the codecs and to introduce BTRFS snapshots, snapper and demo a reboot into a previous snapshot and the rollback.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Remembering Thomas Gilliard (satellit)

    I’m sad to report that Thomas Gilliard (satellit), who was a valued member of the QA team for many years, passed away last week. His wife contacted me with the news. Thomas was a regular and reassuring presence at QA and blocker review meetings and ran many thousands of tests since he first joined the team in 2009. He was particularly dedicated to testing our Sugar builds. We’ll miss him.

  • Implementation of varlink support for libnmstate – GSoC’20 nmstate project

    This blog is about the varlink implementation in nmstate and my experience in this during this period. As a computer science enthusiast I’m interested in researching new topics. This project is my first experience in open source development has been a challenging experience. The project aims to enable libnmstate to be used by other programming languages, systems which don’t support python and via remote connections. I have also included some links which I referred to. I hope it will be helpful for students like me.

  • Announcing the release of Spacewalk 2.10 for Oracle Linux

    Oracle is pleased to announce the release of Spacewalk 2.10 Server for Oracle Linux 7 along with updated Spacewalk 2.10 Client for Oracle Linux 7 and Oracle Linux 8. Client support is also provided for Oracle Linux 6 and Oracle Linux 5 (for extended support customers only).

    In addition to numerous fixes and other small enhancements, the Spacewalk 2.10 release includes the following significant features…

  • Why I switched to Fedora

    As stated above Fedora has a software freedom commitment similar in spirit to that of Debian. This means that you should be able to give Fedora to anyone, anywhere without violating intellectual property laws. Any software which is either not licensed in a way that Fedora finds acceptable or that bares US patent encumbrances can be found in the rpmfusion.org repository.

    After the install your next concern is undoubtedly configuring things and installing new packages. Fedora’s command-line package manager is dnf. It works as you would expect.

    Note also that since rpm uses file-based dependency tracking instead of package-based dependency tracking, as almost all others do, there are very few traditional metapackages. There are, however, package groups.

• Debian Family

  • DebConf6 (20200804-debconf6)

    DebConf6 was my 4th DebConf and took place in Oaxtepec, Mexico.

    I’m a bit exhausted right now which is probably quite fitting to write something about DebConf6… many things in life are a question of perception, so I will mention the waterfall and the big swirl and the band playing with the fireworks during the conference dinner, the joy that we finally could use the local fiber network (after asking for months) just after discovering that the 6h shopping tour forgot to bring the essential pig tail connectors to connect the wireless antennas to the cards, which we needed to provide network to the rooms where the talks would take place.

    DebConf6 was the first DebConf with live streaming using dvswitch (written by Ben Hutchings and removed from unstable in 2015 as the world had moved to voctomix, which is yet another story to be told eventually). The first years (so DebConf6 and some) the videoteam focussed on getting the post processing done and the videos released, and streaming was optional, even though it was an exciting new feature and we still managed to stream mostly all we recorded and sometimes more…

Devices/Embedded

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • DSLR Motion Capture with Raspberry Pi and OpenCV

  • mOLOID is a pet like no other

    As a part of their masters program at the University of Stuttgart, Jan Ingo Haller and Lorin Samija created a robotic pet that moves in a manner that may not be immediately evident. With the internals obscured by a cloth covering, the moving OLOID, or mOLOID, seems to roll from one vague lobe section to another like some sort of claymation creature.

    The mOLOID’s unique locomotion is due to an internal “oloid” structure, an arrangement of two circles at 90°. Two servos move weights around the perimeter of each circle to vary its center of gravity, causing it to flop back and forth.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Lava Z66 with 13 MP selfie camera, Android 10 launched in India at Rs 7,777

  • Nokia C3 launched with 5.99-inch display, Android 10: Check price, specs

  • Android 11 to rollout on September; Here’s a list of devices

  • Stream Game Pass games to your Android with xCloud in September

  • Chrome for Android may soon send notifications reminding you to use Chrome

  • Groupe PSA to use Android infotainment from 2023

  • Google targets bargain-hunting Android fans with the Pixel 4a

  • TeamViewer Expands Remote Access and Control Capabilities to all Android devices

  • Samsung Galaxy S20+ running Android 11 appears on GeekBench

  • Android’s ‘Nearby Share’ file sharing feature is finally launching

  • PSA Group’s Vehicles To Use Built-In Android Infotainment Systems From 2023

  • Save 33% on the unlocked Moto G7 Android Smartphone at the 2020 low of $200

  • Hulu’s latest redesign is now rolling out on Android TV [Updated]

  • How Librem 5 Solves NSA’s Warning About Cellphone Location Data

    The NSA has published new warnings for military and intelligence personnel about the threats from location data that is captured constantly on modern cellphones (originally reported by the Wall Street Journal). While privacy advocates (including us at Purism) have long warned about these risks, having the NSA publish an official document on the subject helps demonstrate that cellphone tracking is a real privacy and security problem for everyone.

    We have been thinking about the danger of location data on cellphones for a long time at Purism and have designed the Librem 5 from scratch specifically to address this risk. The NSA document describes and confirms a number of the threats I wrote about almost a year and a half ago when I introduced our “lockdown mode” feature on the Librem 5–a feature that disables all sensors on the Librem 5. In this post I’ll describe the threats the NSA presents in their document and how we address them with the Librem 5.

  • Librem 5 Web Apps

    Applications have proven to be a major obstacle to bringing a new smartphone platform to market. Our approach leverages our core apps, thousands of native desktop apps, and web apps. In the future, we will also be adding virtualized apps, and cloud emulated apps, all of which will help secure and isolate applications that you may need while keeping them far away from the main device.

    To add a web app, simply navigate to a web page, select the top-right menu in the browser, then “Install Site as Web Application”. This will create an Icon and a container to isolate passwords and settings.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • How to speed up the Rust compiler some more in 2020

      First up is a process change: I have started doing weekly performance triage. Each Tuesday I have been looking at the performance results of all the PRs merged in the past week. For each PR that has regressed or improved performance by a non-negligible amount, I add a comment to the PR with a link to the measurements. I also gather these results into a weekly report, which is mentioned in This Week in Rust, and also looked at in the weekly compiler team meeting.

      The goal of this is to ensure that regressions are caught quickly and appropriate action is taken, and to raise awareness of performance issues in general. It takes me about 45 minutes each time. The instructions are written in such a way that anyone can do it, though it will take a bit of practice for newcomers to become comfortable with the process. I have started sharing the task around, with Mark Rousskov doing the most recent triage.

      This process change was inspired by the “Regressions prevented” section of an excellent blost post from Nikita Popov (a.k.a. nikic), about the work they have been doing to improve the speed of LLVM. (The process also takes some ideas from the Firefox Nightly crash triage that I set up a few years ago when I was leading Project Uptime.)

    • Data@Mozilla: Experimental integration Glean with Unity applications

      You might notice Firefox Reality PC Preview has been released in HTC’s Viveport store. That is a VR web browser that provides 2D overlay browsing alongside immersive content and supports web-based immersive experiences for PC-connected VR headsets. In order to easily deploy our product into the Viveport store, we take advantage of Unity to help make our application launcher. Also because of that, it brings us another challenge about how to use Mozilla’s existing telemetry system.

      As we know, Glean SDK has provided language bindings for different programming language requirements that include Kotlin, Swift, and Python. However, when we are talking about supporting applications that use Unity as their development toolkit, there are no existing bindings available to help us achieve it. Unity allows users using a Python interpreter to embed Python scripts in a Unity project; however, due to Unity’s technology being based on the Mono framework, that is not the same as our familiar Python runtime for running Python scripts. So, the alternative way we need to find out is how to run Python on .Net Framework or exactly on Mono framework. If we are discussing possible approaches to run Python script in the main process, using IronPython is the only solution. However, it is only available for Python 2.7, and the Glean SDK Python language binding needs Python 3.6. Hence, we start our plans to develop a new Glean binding for C#.

• CMS

  • WordPress 5.5 Release Candidate 2

    The second release candidate for WordPress 5.5 is here!

    WordPress 5.5 is slated for release on August 11, 2020, but we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.5 yet, now is the time!

• FSF

  • Help the FSF tech team empower software users

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) tech team is the four-person cornerstone of the primary infrastructure of the FSF and the GNU Project, providing the backbone for hundreds of free software projects, and they epitomize the hard work, creativity, and can-do attitude that characterize the free software movement. They’re pretty modest about it, but I think they deserve some serious credit: it’s only because of their everyday efforts (with the help of volunteers all over the world) that the FSF can boast that we can host our own services entirely on free software, and help other people to become freer every day. It’s also largely to their credit that the FSF staff were able to shift to mostly remote work this spring with barely a blip in our operations.

  • GNU Projects

    • GNU Debugger Adding eBPF Debugging Support

      The GNU Debugger (GDB) has merged initial support for debugging of eBPF code that is traditionally consumed by the Linux kernel as part of this in-kernel special purpose virtual machine.

      Oracle engineer Jose Marchesi contributed the new target of (e)BPF for basic debugging at this point.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Freedom Isn’t Free

      Seen in that vein, the radical undertones of open source didn’t just come out of nowhere, and they’re not unique to software. Instead, open source is simply a response to the very real contradictions that abound when property rights are applied to information. Where it fails is by offering an easy way out—by creating a microcosm, itself commodified, that suspends intellectual [sic] property [sic] conventions on a small scale, without ever presenting a viable alternative to the wider intellectual property regime required under capitalism.

• Programming/Development

  • RcppCCTZ 0.2.8: Minor API Extension

    RcppCCTZ uses Rcpp to bring CCTZ to R. CCTZ is a C++ library for translating between absolute and civil times using the rules of a time zone. In fact, it is two libraries. One for dealing with civil time: human-readable dates and times, and one for converting between between absolute and civil times via time zones. And while CCTZ is made by Google(rs), it is not an official Google product. The RcppCCTZ page has a few usage examples and details. This package was the first CRAN package to use CCTZ; by now at least three others do—using copies in their packages which remains less than ideal.

  • Kafka Monthly Digest – July 2020

    In this 30th edition of the Kafka Monthly Digest, I’ll cover what happened in the Apache Kafka community in July 2020.

  • GDScript progress report: New GDScript is now merged

    As some of you might be aware, the refactor that I have been working on lately is now merged into the master branch. This is the work explained in previous progress reports.

  • An open source solution for continuous testing at scale

    In Sogeti’s most recent World Quality Report, software testing ranked No. 1 in terms of its contributions to business objectives and growth, making it a key enabler for business digitalization. Despite this, the software testing industry still reports major pain points related to test maintenance, automation, tooling, and skills. Most of the tooling in common use lacks capabilities, is too complex to integrate, provides insufficient intelligence, or is too difficult to use.

    Cerberus Testing provides a solution to these problems. It is a test automation solution built by retail companies to support digitalization initiatives and focuses on usability, scalability, and integration of the test lifecycle process.

  • Use your favorite programming language to provision Infrastructure as Code

    As you navigate the world of IT and technology, there are some terms you come across repeatedly. Some of them are hard to quantify and may take on different meanings as time goes on. “DevOps” is an example of a word that seems (to me) to change depending on the person using it; the original DevOps pioneers might not even recognize what we call DevOps today.

    If you’re a software developer, “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC) may be one of those terms. IaC is using the same software-development practices you’d use to write user-facing features to declare the infrastructure that applications run on. This often means using tools like Git or Mercurial for version control and Puppet, Chef, or Ansible for configuration management. At the infrastructure-provisioning layer, the most common technology is CloudFormation (for AWS specifically) or Terraform as an open source alternative for creating hybrid-cloud resources for your applications to run on.

    Explore the open source cloud
    Understanding clouds
    Free online course: Developing cloud-native applications with microservices architectures
    What is hybrid cloud?
    eBook: Building a hybrid cloud strategy
    What is Kubernetes?

  • Python

    • Multiple File/Image Upload with Django 3, Angular 10 and FormData

      In the previous tutorial we have seen how to implement file uploading in Django and Angular 10. In this tutorial, we’ll see how to implement multiple file uploading with FormData.

      It’s recommended that you start from the previous tutorial to see detailed steps of how to create a django project, how to install Angular CLI and generate a new Angular 10 project along with services and components as we won’t cover those basics in this part.

    • Python Projects for Beginners (Massive 2020 Update)

      Learning Python can be difficult. You can spend time reading a textbook or watching videos, but then struggle to actually put what you’ve learned into practice. Or you might spend a ton of time learning syntax and get bored or lose motivation.

      How can you increase your chances of success? By building Python projects. That way you’re learning by actually doing what you want to do!

      When I was learning Python, building projects helped me bring together everything I was learning. Once I started building projects, I immediately felt like I was making more progress.

      Project-based learning is also the philosophy behind our teaching method at Dataquest, where we teach data science skills using Python. Why? Because time and time again, we’ve seen that it works!

    • Practical Recipes for Working With Files in Python

      Python has several built-in modules and functions for handling files. These functions are spread out over several modules such as os, os.path, shutil, and pathlib, to name a few. This course gathers in one place many of the functions you need to know in order to perform the most common operations on files in Python.

    • Introduction to scheduled tasks helper scripts

      For all PythonAnywhere users who like to automate their workflow using scripts there’s already the pythonanywhere package which provides an interface for some PythonAnywhere API features. If you’re one of them, you might be interested in some recent additions for programmatic management of Scheduled Tasks.

    • Mike Driscoll: Python Malware May be Coming to a Computer Near You

      Cyborg Security reported recently that malware is starting to appear that has been written using the Python programming language. Traditionally, most malware has been written in compiled languages, such as C or C++.

      The reason is simple. Compiled languages let the attacker create smaller, harder to detect, executables. However, Python’s popularity and ease of use has made it more appealing to malware authors. The biggest problem with Python for malware is that it tends to use considerably more RAM and CPU than malware written in C or C++.

      Of course, with PCs being as powerful as they are now, this is no longer an issue. Especially when you consider that there are so many applications being written with Electron. Your web browser is now a huge resource hog!

      As the Cyborg Security website points out, you can use PyInstaller or py2exe to create an executable of your Python code. What that article doesn’t mention is that someone will need to digitally sign that software as well to get it to run on Windows 10. One thing the article mentions that was interesting to me is that you can use Nuitka to basically transpile your Python code to C and you’ll end up with a much smaller executable than you would with either PyInstaller or py2exe.

    • PyCoder’s Weekly: Issue #432 (Aug. 4, 2020)

    • PSF GSoC students blogs: Weekly Check-in #10

    • Python 3.6.9 : My colab tutorials – parts 008.

N.K. Jemisin Wrote a Sci-Fi Ode to New York City—Then It Became Reality

The people of New York City have long been considered its heart, their energies an undercurrent rippling beneath every block. But what if the city itself was a living, breathing entity with a soul so distinct it threatened the existence of other universes? In N.K. Jemisin’s latest book, The City We Became, New York is on the brink of being “born,” fighting to claim its own corner of the cosmos. Her characters represent each of the five boroughs plus one primary figure; the city is them, and they are the city. In the first book of what she is calling the Great Cities trilogy, the avatars, Manny (Manhattan), Brooklyn (Brooklyn), Bronca (The Bronx), Padmini (Queens), and Aislyn (Staten Island) discover that they must work together to find the unnamed primary figure of New York and defeat the Woman in White, the book’s antagonist, who wants to see the city obliterated. While the book is a work of fantasy, many of the Woman in White’s weapons of destruction take the form of real-world harms, such as gentrification, white supremacist propaganda, and police violence.

What Truths Can You Divine From Instagram Paintings?

Which is the real work of art: the one on the wall or the one in your mind after you’ve seen it? Which counts more, the object or the experience? I’ve long insisted that it is impossible to evaluate an artwork—and especially, perhaps, if it’s a painting—without seeing it firsthand. The only exceptions are works made specifically for reproduction—in other words, certain (but not all) kinds of conceptual art, but also graphic arts, comics, and the like. Otherwise, reproductions (whether printed or digital) just don’t do the trick of communicating a work’s innate materiality, however rarefied or seemingly intangible that materiality may be. As the painter Rafael Vega recently told me, reflecting on the move by galleries to take more of their business online, “Like it or not, we need physical space to show those objects, because [paintings] exist in a real time and place. At least for now, I don’t see how online shows can do the same thing.”

Lower Than the World

Mohammed Rafi: Singer and Human Par Excellence

Mohammed Rafi, the greatest humanitarian and singer, breathed his last forty years ago today, on July 31, 1980, due to multiple heart attacks while rehearsing for an album at home. Over 20,000 people, including film people, attended his funeral amidst heavy downpour. Rafi’s versatility; his command over different genres; his modulating techniques to suit a vast variety of actors lip-syncing to his playback singing; but also his principles; his passion for work without monetary greed; his humility; generosity; his smooth relationships with peers; and his popularity among his generation, and even among the new generations have assured him an immortal place not only in South Asia’s music history but also worldwide.

On the Beauty of Life

Some friends were wondering how I spend my days. I told them I write most of the time. I explained my books and essays are invisible conversations, if not with the present, at least with the future. I keep asking questions about life, all of its gigantic spectrum: biological, social, political and historical.

Florida teen accused of Twitter [attack] pleads not guilty

Tuesday’s hearing in Tampa reportedly took place via Zoom. Clark is scheduled for a bond hearing Wednesday, with bail set at $725,000.

Twitter About To Be Hit With A ~$250 Million Fine For Using Your Two Factor Authentication Phone Numbers/Emails For Marketing

There are many things that big internet companies do that the media have made out to be scandals that aren’t — but one misuse of data that I think received too little attention was how both Facebook and later Twitter were caught using the phone numbers people gave it for two factor authentication, and later used them for notification/marketing purposes.

Education

• Teacher Protests Erupt As #DemandSafeSchools Takes Off

  “I do not want to be an experiment.”

• Nearly 500 CC-licensed Education Images are Now Available!

  Captured by Allison Shelly (photojournalist and co-founder of Women Photojournalists of Washington) and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, these images portray “deep learning” both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic at the UCLA Community School in Los Angeles and Sutton Middle School in Atlanta. 

Health/Nutrition

• The Science Is Clear: Our ‘Masks for All’ Plan Will Save Lives

  The coronavirus pandemic is raging out of control under Trump’s leadership, but there are common sense solutions we must urgently implement.

• ‘We Need to See His Plan’: Rights Groups Push Biden to Commit to Ending All Abortion Coverage Restrictions

  “It’s not enough for abortion to be legal. It must also be affordable and available to all people, however much money they have or however they get their insurance.”

• A Naval Officer’s Spouse on Why the US Military Puts Empire Over Public Health

  My husband, in other words, is now unnecessarily risking his own and his family’s exposure to a virus that has to date claimed more than 150,000 American lives—already more than eight times higher than the number of Americans who died in both the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed.

• Democratic Bill Banning Toxic Pesticides in US Applauded as ‘Much-Needed’ Step to Protect Kids and the Planet

  “The Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act says what we all know to be true: that nerve agents have no place on our food, in our workplaces, and in our communities.”

• Statement From Yale Faculty on Hydroxychloroquine and Its Use in COVID-19

• The Pandemic Reveals a Europe More United Than the United States

  During the Trump era, America increasingly seems like a motley collection of states brought together for reasons of territorial contiguity and little else.

• SEC Launches Probe Into Kodak After Warren Raised Questions Over Lucrative Covid-19 Deal With Trump

  “If investors or Kodak employees were trading based on the unauthorized disclosure or discussion of nonpublic information, then it would appear to be a clear violation of securities law. The SEC should hold them accountable.”

• ‘Would Be Comical, If It Didn’t Involve Real Lives’: Unhinged Trump Interview Spotlights Deadly Failure of His Covid-19 Response

  “If you wrote this as grotesque farce” for a movie script, wrote actor and progressive activist John Cusack, “no one would believe it.”

• Trump’s Big Lie About Covid-19 vs. Grieving Families and a Dying Democracy

  The personal and political anger over the coronavirus dead is going to manifest itself even beyond the nation’s obituary pages.

• Public Health vs. Politics: White House Scrapped Nationwide COVID-19 Testing Plan to Hurt Blue States

  As the U.S. coronavirus death toll passes 155,000, there is still no national testing program, with widespread shortages and delays hampering efforts to contain the pandemic. This continues months after President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner launched a White House task force with the goal of establishing a national testing plan. We speak to investigative reporter Katherine Eban, whose explosive Vanity Fair report chronicles Kushner’s fumbling efforts and the sudden decision to abandon the project on political grounds. “The participants expected that at any moment in early April, the plan would be announced,” says Eban. “It vanished into thin air.”

• The President’s Damned Lies Are Killing Us

  If, on the other hand, you recognize the reality that Donald Trump is a calculating egomaniac who cares about nothing save his own political success, then it is necessary to accept that the president is lying to the country that will vote on November 3. And that those lies are killing astronomical numbers of the people he has sworn to protect and serve by faithfully executing the duties of the office of president of the United States.

  Trump has never obeyed that oath, and he will continue not to obey that oath, even in an election year when, polls tell us, he is in political peril.

  He will keep lying. And people will keep dying until he is removed from office in an election that, thankfully, he cannot delay.

  He is already outlining the lies that he will tell as Election Day approaches.

• CDC study finds kids of all ages may play key role in virus transmission amid push to reopen schools

  The study analyzes a coronavirus super spreader event at a Georgia sleepaway camp in June. Several hundred campers (with a median age of 12) and staffers (with a median age of 17) were tested for COVID-19. Of the 344 individuals for whom test results were available, 260 came back positive for COVID-19, or more than 75%.

  Of note: The highest percentage of children who tested positive were the youngest. The attack rate was 51% among those between 6 and 10 years old, 44% among those between 11 and 17 years old and 33% among those between 18 to 21 years old.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Vivaldi 3.2 Brings a Mute Button on Picture-in-Picture Mode, More Improvements

    Vivaldi Technologies announced today the general availability of the Vivaldi 3.2 web browser for all supported platforms, an update that brings various improvements and new features.

    Vivaldi 3.2 comes about two months after Vivaldi 3.1 and introduces a mute button to the Picture-in-Picture implementation called Pop-out Video. This lets users better control the floating windows when watch clips by muting or unmuting the sound of the video.

    Vivaldi devs say that the new mute button on the Pop-out video window is a welcome addition when you work from home and you have to quickly jump into an online meeting or take a phone call as you can now immediately mute the clip without having to close the window.

    You can see the new mute button in action below. Of course, you can also mute the entire tab by right clicking on the tab where the video plays and selecting the “Mute Tab” context menu item or by using the quick commands, but it’s faster with the new mute button on the Pop-out video.

  • Windows 10 Devices Are at Risk From the BootHole Vulnerability

    Unfortunately, because this flaw is related to Windows’ boot sequence, it’s not something that you can fix yourself. Microsoft has to release a patch that fixes the BootHole flaw. However, this isn’t an easy task.

    The boot sequence is an essential part of keeping the operating system stable. As such, if Microsoft rushes out a buggy patch for the flaw, it will cause system instability.

    As a result of this, it may take Microsoft a while to release a patch that fixes BootHole. And we’re all reliant on Microsoft doing so.

  • Greg Joswiak replaces Phil Schiller as head of Apple marketing

    Marketing is a huge role inside of Apple that goes beyond simply advertising products, so this marks a significant change within the company. As Apple puts it, the marketing division is “responsible for Apple’s product management and product marketing, developer relations, market research, business management, as well as education, enterprise, and international marketing.” Joswiak has been in Apple leadership roles for more than two decades, and he’s led Apple’s worldwide product marketing for the last four years.

    Schiller has been with Apple since 1997, helping to steer the company from one of its lowest points to the technology juggernaut that it is today. While he’s been in charge of marketing, Schiller is also known for his involvement in Apple’s hardware, often presenting new products — like the previous Mac Pro — onstage at events.

  • Chromebook perks now include Google’s Stadia service

    In fact, buying a Chromebook comes with two Stadia perks. The first offers $20 off the purchase of the Stadia Premiere Edition, which essentially replaces the Stadia Founder’s Edition cloud gaming hardware that launched and almost immediately sold out. But as the second perk points out, you don’t even need the Premiere Edition hardware: Chromebooks now ship with three months of Stadia Pro, the Stadia cloud gaming service. (Engadget previously reported the new Stadia perks.)

    Be aware that this is a trial. After the three-month service period expires, you’ll be signed up for Stadia Pro at $9.99 per month. Also, you’ll need to own a Chromebook released in June, 2017, or later.

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Openwashing

      • Podcast: CLUECON SPECIAL FEATURE – OrecX not only delivers top shelf stereo recording, but delivers a huge ecosystem of add on technology that may already provide the capability you want to use

        Bruce and OrecX have also been attending the ClueCON Conference from the beginning.

        The founders of OrecX are open source recording pioneers, launching the Oreka GPL in 2005 (used today by millions in over 190 countries).

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • Open Source Security Foundation Joined by Microsoft and Others To Improve Linux Software [Ed: The Linux Foundation isn't about Linux anymore and it isn't about security either (but NSA back doors]

          Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Source Security Foundation, along with “GitHub, Google, IBM, JPMC, NCC Group, OWASP Foundation and Red Hat,” the announcement added. The JPMorgan Chase banking chain is also listed as a founding member, per the Open Source Security Foundation’s FAQ.

        • Open Source Security Foundation Launched To Improve OSS Security

          The Linux Foundation has announced the formation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a cross-industry collaboration that brings together leaders to improve the security of open source software (OSS) by building a broader community with targeted initiatives and best practices.

          The OpenSSF combines efforts from the Core Infrastructure Initiative, GitHub’s Open Source Security Coalition and other open source security work from founding governing board members GitHub, Google, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, NCC Group, OWASP Foundation and Red Hat, among others. Additional founding members include ElevenPaths, GitLab, HackerOne, Intel, Okta, Purdue, SAFECode, StackHawk, Trail of Bits, Uber and VMware.

  • Security

    • Dozens of NGOs hit by hack on US fundraising database

      A major ransomware attack has affected dozens of international NGOs and their records of private donations, but details of the hit on a US fundraising platform are scarce, and two weeks after being warned some aid groups are yet to notify their donors or the public.

      International aid groups – and their private donors – are among those whose data was hacked in a security breach at online service provider Blackbaud. Names, addresses, and records of individual donations were compromised by hackers, who were paid an undisclosed ransom to return the data and delete any copies.

      World Vision, Save the Children, and Human Rights Watch are among the large nonprofits impacted by the breach, and media reports suggest at least 200 customers of US-based Blackbaud were involved, although the company has not provided a list of affected clients.

      Alan Bryce, an official at the Charity Commission – the legal regulator in England and Wales – told The New Humanitarian that, as of 4 August, 63 UK-based charities had notified them after being affected by the ransomware attack.

      Bryce suggested NGOs were likely to tighten up procedures following the incident, in which hackers gained control of client data on Blackbaud’s systems and locked the company out until payment was made. “Charities who have suffered cybercrime go on to revise their IT security, their training programmes, or their website security,” he said. “Do not wait until it is too late for your charity.”

    • The fixes to the Linux BootHole fixes are in

      The first release of patches to the Linux BootHole came with a show-stopping problem. The fixed machines wouldn’t boot. For the most part, that problem has been solved.

    • GRUB2 Boot Failure Issues Fixed in Debian and Ubuntu, Update Now

      The recent GRUB2 updates that patched some serious security vulnerabilities also caused boot failure issues for some users, so fixes for these regressions have started appearing for some distros, including Debian and Ubuntu.

      Last week, I was reporting on the BootHole vulnerability (and some other seven flaws) found in the GRUB2 bootloader, which is used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions out there. The issues opened up systems using Secure Boot to attacks, allowing local attackers to bypass UEFI Secure Boot restrictions and execute arbitrary code.

      Due to a highly coordinated effort between the security researchers who discovered the vulnerability and Linux OS maintainers, most GNU/Linux distributions were able to provide patches for their users. However, for some, these patches broke the Secure Boot implementation and left people with unbootable systems.

    • IoT Security Vulnerabilities are Ubiquitous: How To Secure Your Router and Your Linux System Now

      Luckily, there are various measures that Linux users can take to secure their wireless routers and protect their systems – most notably, conducting a Linux firmware replacement. This article will explore the benefits of “flashing” your wireless router with alternative open-source firmware, and will introduce some great alternative firmwares and single-purpose OSes that you may wish to look into.

      [...]

      Recent security research has made it clear that router manufacturers are dropping the ball on security – a discouraging trend in the industry that needs to change. However, given this unfortunate reality, it is imperative that users assume responsibility for securing their wireless routers.

    • Bill Barr Applauds FOSTA Sponsor’s Clone Of Senate’s Encryption-Breaking ‘Lawful Access’ Bill

      I guess those “rule of law” folks don’t care if a law is any good or will do what it intends to do without causing significant collateral damage. All they care about is that it’s a law and, as a law, everyone should just subject themselves to it with a minimum of complaining.

    • Supporting Digital Freedom at the (Virtual) Summer Security Conferences

      During a typical year, EFF staff members would be headed to Las Vegas to present our latest work to the world and ensure legal support for computer security researchers at the long-running hacker events BSidesLV, Black Hat, and DEF CON. These summer security conferences are a natural opportunity for the curious and the professional to geek out on tech. Hackers, tinkerers, and reverse engineers were among the first to embrace the excitement and potential of their own imaginations in digital space. They have been a core part of EFF and the online freedom community since the beginning, and we relish thanking them face to face.

      But this year, as we each grapple with a sobering pandemic, these conferences have had to undergo big changes and are all happening in virtual space. DEF CON is even free to attend. This pandemic, as well as far-reaching protests, have forced us to rethink much of our daily lives—and these questions can feel overwhelming.

    • TikTok Ban: A Seed of Genuine Security Concern Wrapped in a Thick Layer of Censorship

      It is ironic that, while purporting to protect America from China’s authoritarian government, President Trump is threatening to ban the TikTok app. Censorship of both speech and social media applications, after all, is one of the hallmarks of the Chinese Internet strategy.  While there is significant cause for concern with TikTok’s security, privacy, and its relationship with the Chinese government, we should resist a governmental power to ban a popular means of communication and expression.  

      As is too often the case with government pronouncements, the Trump administration has proposed a ban without specifying what the ban would actually be or what authority allows for it. Rather, the President has said broadly, “we’re banning them from the United States,” or most recently, “it’s going to be out of business in the United States.” This could mean a ban on using the app, or perhaps a ban on distributing TikTok in app stores, or maybe something else. Any way you slice it, an effective ban of the scope suggested cannot be squared with the Constitution. 

    • ‘1Password’ App Coming To Linux, Initial Release Available For Download

      The user-friendly and cross-platform password manager app, 1Password, is finally coming for all Linux platforms with full-feature and native support. Currently, a development preview for Linux has been unveiled.

      This is the initial release for testing and validation purposes only. Hence, you should not use its Linux development preview for production or business environments.

      As planned, an official release with long-term support will be announced later this year after including new updates, features, and changes over the next few months. However, if you want a stable version of 1Password for Linux, you can use 1Password X in your browser.

      1Password is available for all devices, browsers, and operating systems such as Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Google Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Firefox. And now it is also going to be available for Linux desktop as well.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Senators Graham And Blumenthal Can’t Even ‘Earn’ The EARN IT Act: Looking To Sneak Vote Through Without Debate

        Senator Lindsey Graham very badly wants to push the extremely dangerous EARN IT Act across the finish line. He’s up for re-election this fall, and wants to burnish his “I took on big tech” creds, and sees EARN IT as his path to grandstanding glory. Never mind the damage it will do to basically every one. While the bill was radically changed via his manager’s amendment last month, it’s still an utter disaster that puts basically everything we hold dear about the internet at risk. It will allow for some attacks on encryption and (somewhat bizarrely) will push other services to more fully encrypt. For those that don’t do that, there will still be new limitations on Section 230 protections and, very dangerously, it will create strong incentives for internet companies to collect more personal information about every one of their users to make sure they’re complying with the law.

      • Privacy Advocates Herald Bill to Curb Corporate Use of ‘Enormously Invasive’ Facial Recognition Technology

        “Do we really want to live under constant surveillance by unaccountable corporations?” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. “I don’t.”

      • Sen. Merkley Leads on Biometric Privacy

        Businesses across the world are harvesting and monetizing our biometrics without our knowledge or consent. For example, Clearview AI extracted faceprints from three billion people, and now it sells face-matching services to police departments. Likewise, retail stores use face surveillance to identify customers they deem more likely than others to engage in shoplifting, often based on error-prone, racially biased criminal justice data. Other businesses profit on tracking of our fingerprints, iris scans, and other biometrics.

        So it is great news that U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders have introduced the National Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The Act requires businesses to get your opt-in consent before collecting or sharing your biometrics; to delete your biometrics in a timely fashion; and to store your biometrics securely. Most importantly, the bill empowers you (and us) to sue businesses that break these rules.

      • The Government’s Failed Track-and-Trace System is a Disaster for England

      • Chinese gamers will need to verify their real names on all games by September

        China is rolling out a real name authentication and verification system for all gamers in the country by September as a way to track gamers and make sure that they aren’t playing too much. Chinese gamers on popular games such as Honour of Kings (aka Arena of Valor) by Tencent have already been subject to a real name verification system put in place by Tencent. In fact, that real name verification system includes a facial recognition step. Fellow gaming giant NetEase has also already rolled out real name verification on their games. Now, the state run real name authentication system will fill in the gaps and need to be used by all gaming companies that haven’t developed their own privacy-defeating system. The long awaited end of anonymity while gaming in China was announced at the country’s biggest gaming expo, ChinaJoy, by an official from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Publicity Department. The official, Feng Shixin, also emphasized that the government would be cracking down on unapproved games as it recently did with a purge from the iOS app store.

      • Apple’s retail technology play

        The system lets retailers accept credit card and smartphone payments using their smartphone and the built-in NFC chips on cards and devices. It’s a simple task: retailer inputs the cost, the card/phone is tapped on the device and payment is exchanged.

        It is interesting to note that Samsung has been working with Mobeewave since 2019.

      • The biggest problem with Microsoft’s fractured TikTok deal

        But there’s a problem at the heart of the deal that no one on either side has addressed — and it’s serious enough to doom the entire project if it can’t be resolved. Microsoft isn’t bidding for TikTok; it’s bidding for the portion of TikTok in four countries: the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. No one has ever split up a social network along regional lines, much less under threat of a national ban from the president. Peeling those four countries away from the rest of TikTok would be enormously difficult, and even if it were successful, it would leave Microsoft with an undersized and strangely regional social network, presenting significant investment and revenue challenges. Trump, ByteDance, and Microsoft have a lot to hash out over the next six weeks, but if they can’t solve that central problem, then none of it matters. And that central problem is much harder than anyone is willing to admit.

      • China will not accept U.S. ‘theft’ of TikTok: China Daily

        China will not accept the “theft” of a Chinese technology company and is able to respond to Washington’s move to push ByteDance to sell short-video app TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft, the China Daily newspaper said on Tuesday.

        The United States’ “bullying” of Chinese tech companies was a consequence of Washington’s zero-sum vision of “American first” and left China no choice but “submission or mortal combat in the tech realm”, the state-backed paper said in an editorial.

      • Google’s secret home security superpower: Your smart speaker with its always-on mics

        Once the deal closes, ADT’s more than 20,000 installers will also sell Google-made smart displays, security cameras and other hardware, and ADT will more closely integrate Google technology into its own home security offerings. “The goal is to give customers fewer false alarms, more ways to receive alarm events, and better detection of potential incidents inside and around the home,” Google Nest VP and GM Rishi Chandra said in a blog post.

      • The Microsoft Police State: Mass Surveillance, Facial Recognition, and the Azure Cloud

Defence/Aggression

• Pulling Out of Germany: Trump Adjusts the Military Furniture

  One noisy theme in the Donald Trump Disruption Show in an otherwise chaotic assemblage of messages has remained fairly constant: winding back US troop commitments.  The US has fought its complement of wars, bloodied and bloodying.  Time to up stakes and head home.  It was a message that sold in 2016 across the aisles of politics, and it is one that continues to resonate.  But the practice of it has proven murkier.  Nothing this president does can be otherwise.  The US military complex remains sprawling, overweight and defiant.  As a result, the military footprint has been not so much dissipated as readjusted.

• ‘Fully Destroyed’: Massive Explosion at Port Rocks Beirut

  The blast sent a shockwave across the city. 

• Document exposes new US plot to overthrow Nicaragua’s elected socialist gov’t

  USAID oversees another far-right coup attempt in Latin America

• Elliot Abrams Confirms to Senate Hearing That US Still ‘Working Hard’ to Overthrow Maduro in Venezuela

  Admission was latest sign that high pressure campaign on Venezuela’s leftist government—including crushing economic sanctions—remains.

• Eight A-Bomb Haiku

  Eight A-Bomb Haiku

• Another Hiroshima is Coming…Unless We Stop It Now

  When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.

• Unsung Heroes of Los Alamos: Rethinking Manhattan Project Spies and the Cold War

  75 years ago before dawn on July 16, 1945, a cataclysmic explosion shook the New Mexico desert as scientists from the top-secret Manhattan Project tested their nightmarish creation: the first atom bomb, called “the Gadget.”

• Belarus to hold reservist training exercises two days after presidential vote

  The Belarusian military has scheduled reservist training in the Vitebsk region on August 11, two days after the country holds its presidential election, according to the news agency Interfax. A spokeswoman for the Defense Ministry told reporters that the drills were planned previously as part of regular readiness exercises throughout the year, clarifying that reservists who are called up won’t always be drafted into military service. 

Environment

• Would-be candidate backed by environmental activists banned from running for governor of Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region

  Election officials in Russia’s far-Northern Arkhangelsk Region have rejected a number of the candidate signatures collected in support of Oleg Mandrykin’s run for governor, thereby preventing him from entering the gubernatorial race, reports the local news site 29.ru. 

• Ireland’s Supreme Court damns climate policies

  The country’s highest judicial authority, Ireland’s Supreme Court, says the government’s climate policies are not up to the job.

• Earth Is Warning Us We Must Change. Will We Listen?

  The Earth is strong, but also vulnerable. As Earth cares for us, we either care for it or bear the consequences of our recklessness.

• 100 Top Economists Call for End of Carbon Economy to Usher in ‘Greener’ and More Just World

  “We must not miss this opportunity to rebuild the economy to fulfill our vision of a just and livable world.”

• Without Urgent Action, Study Warns, Climate Crisis Could Kill as Many People as All Infectious Diseases Combined by 2100

  “We are studying the risk of death faced by our own children.”

• Ocean Heat: From the Tropics to the Poles

  The heat being captured by the increasing load of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is subsequently transferred into the oceans for storage. This process — global warming — has raised the temperature of the biosphere by 1°C (or more) since the late 19th century.

• Energy

  • ‘Has BP Just Woken Up to the #ClimateEmergency?’ Oil Giant Announces 40% Production Cut by 2030

    Green groups say oil giant has much further to go, but announcement marks major industry shift.

  • Big Oil Knew Climate Change Could Be ‘Catastrophic.’ Study Shows Heat Could Become Deadlier Than Infectious Diseases

    Rising temperatures will rank among the world’s most severe public health threats, on par with or even eclipsing infectious diseases, by century’s end unless the world rapidly slashes greenhouse gas emissions.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Framing Wolves in New Mexico?

    Late in May 2020, the Arizona Daily Star ran an article titled, “Advocates question investigations used to target ‘problem’ wolves,” detailing some of the work that Western Watersheds Project has been doing to review and assess Wildlife Services’ work on livestock killed by Mexican wolves in New Mexico.

  • What Happened When a Public Institute Became a De Facto Lobbying Arm of the Timber Industry

    As Oregon Gov. Kate Brown crafted a bill in 2018 to enact sweeping limits on greenhouse gas emissions, leaders at an obscure state agency worked behind the scenes to discredit research they feared would persuade her to target one of the state’s most powerful industries.

    The research, published that March, calculated for the first time how much carbon was lost to the atmosphere as a result of cutting trees in Oregon. It concluded that logging, once thought to have no negative effect on global warming, was among the state’s biggest climate polluters.

Finance

• The 1 Percent’s Attack on Unemployment Benefits is a Sign of Our Broken Democracy

• Why the Idea of Jobless Benefits Scares the Conservative Mind

  When Congress passed the CARES Act earlier this year, lawmakers gave some low-wage Americans who lost their jobs an income they’ve been demanding for years: $600 a week, which works out to $15 an hour for a 40-hour workweek. Because the federal minimum wage is less than half that rate—stuck there due to the intransigence of conservatives waging a class war against the poor—the coronavirus pandemic ironically gave the bottom rung of the American workforce a taste of what they could have had all along. So popular was this $600 in jobless benefits that even some Republicans who had voted against that provision in the CARES Act boasted about it to their constituents and failed to mention that like most of their GOP colleagues, they had initially opposed the provision.

• COVID Stimulus Checks Shouldn’t Penalize One-Parent Households

  Both the HEROES Act passed by the House in May and Senate Republicans’ HEALS Act announced this week would provide a new round of stimulus in the form of one-time cash payments to most Americans, but with some major differences. One of these differences is in how the bills treat one-parent households with children, the vast majority of which are headed by mothers.

• Globalization and the End of the American Dream

  Immanuel Wallerstein provocatively begins one of his essays with the following cautionary note: “Globalization is a misleading concept, since what is described as globalization has been happening for 500 years.”

• We Need an Economic Survival Package Not Another Stimulus

  There continues to be enormous confusion about what we should be trying to accomplish in the next pandemic relief package. This is best demonstrated by Republicans’ obsession with getting people back to work, with a mixture of cuts to unemployment benefits and return to work bonuses.

• Workers Face Retaliation, Including Layoffs, For Organizing Unions During COVID-19 Pandemic

  The coronavirus pandemic has fueled strikes, protests, and union organizing efforts in response to mass layoffs and concerns of safety protections for essential workers around the United States since economic shutdowns began in March 2020.

  As workers try to organize unions to improve working conditions during the pandemic, employers have engaged in retaliation, including laying off workers involved in organizing.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• “No, He Doesn’t,” Say Experts as Trump Claims He Has the Right to Stop Mail-In Voting With Executive Order

  “This is just about him trying to set up a situation to sow seeds of confusion and fear so that if he loses in November, he can try to delegitimize a completely valid election.”

• Biden’s Running Mate Matters. So Does His Cabinet.

  Joe Biden’s choice of running mate will undoubtedly be both important and historic, given Biden’s commitment to choose a woman, and the many women of color in contention. But it’s not the only decision—or position—that matters, nor is it the only chance to make history. Biden’s choices of cabinet members and agency heads will provide another chance to reimagine the leadership we need moving forward.

• Violence Is Donald Trump’s Mother Tongue

  Teargas, shock grenades, lasers, commercial-grade fireworks. Gunshots, broken storefronts, cars accelerating into crowds, fires set, soldiers in camo swinging batons with abandon: sights and sounds—tragically real—appropriated and accentuated in the latest episodes of the Trump show. President Trump needs these symbols of lawlessness and disorder because he wants to present himself as the candidate of “LAW AND ORDER!”—his tweet echoing the title of the popular television show. The president tweets of anarchists, looters, and violent gangs and, as July comes to a close, he writes, “If the Federal Government and its brilliant Law Enforcement (Homeland) didn’t go into Portland one week ago, there would be no Portland—It would be burned and beaten to the ground.” Burned and beaten, as if burned to the ground were not enough.

• Government Accountability Has Been Long Gone in the US

  Whether you consider the appalling death toll or the equally unacceptable rising numbers of Covid-19 cases, the United States has one of the worst records worldwide when it comes to the pandemic. Nevertheless, the president has continued to behave just as he promised he would in March when there had been only 40 deaths from the virus here and he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

• Siberian city of Ulan-Ude to spend $2.7 million on buses featuring Putin quotes

  The Mayor’s Office in the city of Ulan-Ude (located in Eastern Siberia) has announced two tenders for the purchase of buses featuring quotes from Russian President Vladimir Putin, reports the local publication Baikal-Daily. 

• Local authorities in Russia’s Chechnya are forcing 100 people to perform community service over alleged misbehavior in Moscow

  The regional authorities in Russia’s Chechnya have announced that 100 people from the Southern republic are being handed compulsory community service for alleged “undignified” behavior while living in Moscow. 

• Not All Presidential Liars Are Created Equal

  One hardly needs to make the case that Donald Trump is a liar. Neither is it news that this is true of previous presidents as well. At the same time, the depth and breadth of Trump’s dishonesty is something decidedly new. As the MSNBC host Chris Hayes wrote in a New York Times book review 18 months after Trump’s inauguration: “The president is a liar. He lies about matters of the utmost consequence (nuclear diplomacy) and about the most trivial (his golf game). He lies about things you can see with your own eyes. He lies about things he said just moments ago. He lies the way a woodpecker attacks a tree: compulsively, insistently, instinctively.”

• Follow the Leader?

• ‘Impossible for Democracy to Function’: Study Reveals Growing Mistrust of American Media

  The findings from the Knight Foundation and Gallup suggest lack of trust in news media has far-reaching effects. 

• Belarusian president describes plot to stage a ‘massacre’ in downtown Minsk ahead of presidential vote

  In a speech on Tuesday, August 4, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (Alyaksandr Lukashenka) reported an attempt “to organize a massacre in downtown Minsk” and “billions in resources” spent on destabilizing the country ahead of the presidential election on August 9. 

• ‘Get out of our way and let us save the country’: Key quotes from Lukashenko’s national address ahead of presidential elections in Belarus

  On August 4, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (Alyaksandr Lukashenka) delivered his annual address to the nation and the parliament. The speech went on for about an hour and a half, so we’ve distilled his speech into a few key quotes.

• The GOP Is Trying to Steal Away Our Right to Vote—Time to Fight Like Hell to Keep It

  Donald Trump—aided and abetted by Republican senators and governors—has sought to discredit voting by mail, blocking funds for the U.S. Postal Service and the states to gear up for mass voting by mail, the sensible, safe way to vote in the midst of the pandemic.

• The GOP Are Standing on Trump’s Sinking Ship, But Democrats Need a Vision Beyond Electing Biden

  What the Republican collapse fueled by the president means for the nation.

• How Mitch McConnell’s Republicans are Destroying America

  Throughout it all, McConnell has insisted his priority is to shield businesses from Covid-related lawsuits by customers and employees who have contracted the virus.The inept and overwhelmingly corrupt reign of Trump, McConnell, and Senate Republicans will come to an end next January if enough Americans vote this coming November.But will enough people vote during a pandemic? The HEROES Act provides $3.6 billion for states to expand mail-in and early voting, but McConnell and his GOP lackeys aren’t interested. They’re well aware that more voters increase the likelihood Republicans will be booted out.Time and again, they’ve shown that they only care about their wealthy donors and corporate backers. If they had an ounce of concern for the nation, their priority would be to shield Americans from the ravages of Covid and American democracy from the ravages of Trump. But we know where their priorities lie.

• Postal Union Leader Warns Trump Assault on USPS and Mail-In Voting Puts Nation on ‘Dangerous Path Toward Dictatorship’

  “Anyone who believes in the right to vote should enthusiastically embrace voting by mail. Without it, tens of millions of voters will be denied the opportunity to safely exercise their cherished right to vote.”

• ‘Media Took These Statements From the OAS and Ran With Them’

• Tennessee Court Strikes Down Law Criminalizing Calling Political Candidates ‘Literally Hitler’

  Free speech keeps getting freer in Tennessee. The state was once home to a host of vexatious defamation lawsuits — including one where someone subjected to mild criticism sued a journalist over things someone else said. Thanks to the state’s new anti-SLAPP law, litigation is slightly less vexatious these days.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Josh Hawley Introduces His Latest Attack On Section 230

  Guys, I’m beginning to get the feeling that Senator Josh Hawley doesn’t like Section 230. I mean, beyond creating a laughably inaccurate and misleading “True History of Section 230,” Hawley has now introduced at least four bills to modify or end Section 230. Perhaps if he introduces 10 he’ll get a free one. His latest, introduced last week would remove Section 230 for any internet company that has “behavioral advertising.” Now I’ve been skeptical of the value of behavioral advertising in many cases, but this new bill is absurd.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Activists and former political prisoners release video defending suspects in controversial Russian extremism case

  A group of activists and former political prisoners from Russia are calling on people to attend the announcement of the verdicts in the “Novoe Velichie” (New Greatness) extremism case at Moscow’s Lublinsky Court on August 6.

Civil Rights/Policing

• ‘The World Is Watching’: Amnesty Report Details Human Rights Violations by US Police During Racial Justice Protests

  The use of force detailed in the report “is ultimately a symptom of the very issue that started these protests: unaccountable police violence.”

• Migrants clash with Russian law enforcement as they attempt mass crossing of Russia-Kazakhstan border

  A group of approximately 500 Uzbekistani citizens have attempted to break through the border in Russia’s Southwestern Samara Region and enter Kazakhstan, in order to make their way home to Uzbekistan, Interfax and TASS report. 

• Proud If Delusional Police: An Incredible Amount of Restraint

• “It’s Basically a Death Sentence”: Hunger Strikers Demand Release as Virus Surges in ICE Jails

  People being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails are holding work strikes and hunger strikes over the lack of access to personal protective equipment or quality medical care, and to demand their release. We speak with Joe Mejia, an asylum seeker who was among a group of prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California who led a hunger strike while he was held there for nearly 11 months. “That place is dangerous,” Mejia says. “It is a death sentence to detainees, especially right now with the coronavirus.”

• “Release Them All”: Calls Grow to Stop Jailing Immigrants as Transfers & Deportations Spread COVID

  The U.S. government continues to hold tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants in detention centers and jails, ignoring the advice of medical experts as the coronavirus continues to spread. ICE has also continued to transfer and deport people — including those who are infected — making it a global superspreader. We speak with Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, an immigration attorney and co-director of Pangea Legal Services in San Francisco, who himself is undocumented and recently got arrested at a protest outside the mansion of California Governor Gavin Newsom demanding the release of people in state prisons and immigration jails, calling the situation “really alarming.”

• Escalating State Repression and Covid-19: Their Impact on the Poor in Kenya

  Soon after Kenya experienced its first Covid-19 case on 13 March 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta invoked the Public Order Act to activate a series of tough measures, including wearing face masks at all times, the closure of schools and all ‘non-essential’ businesses, and a dusk till dawn curfew. Reports of police brutalities quickly followed. Even before the start of the curfew on 27 March, police in downtown Nairobi reportedly whipped and kicked people on the street, and in Embakasi, forced people walking home from work to kneel before them.

• Russia’s Justice Ministry seeks disciplinary action against defense lawyers in the Safronov case

  The Russian Justice Ministry’s Moscow Department has asked the Moscow Bar Association to initiate disciplinary proceedings against four of the lawyers defending jailed journalist Ivan Safronov, a fifth lawyer from Safronov’s defense team, the head of the human rights organization “Team 29,” Ivan Pavlov, told Interfax.

• Only Belarus soldiers on Alexander Lukashenko describes his government as an island of stability in a volatile, violent world

  The entire planet is in chaos, sliding slowly but surely into the abyss. Protests have consumed the United States. Hong Kong is boiling over in China. The Indian-Chinese border is flaring up. There are sparks flying at the border between India and Pakistan. There are still burning pockets of instability in Northern Africa. Passions are being inflamed around Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. The post-Soviet space isn’t doing so well, either. And on this fault line, Belarus is the only place of calm in central Eurasia. Russia is afraid of losing us because it has no allies left without us. The West is showing an interest in us. China, too, is relying on our stability. Belarus has a multi-vector future: we will partner with the West, with China, and with countries far and wide. And Russia will always remain our ally, no matter who is in office there or here. That is true, despite the fact that Moscow has traded deep fraternal ties for a partnership.

• Militarized BORTAC Border Patrol Raids & Ransacks Medical Camp on U.S. Border, Arrests 30 Migrants

  In Arizona, heavily armed Border Patrol officers raided the medical camp of humanitarian group No More Deaths and detained 30 migrants whose whereabouts are now unknown. It was the second raid in just two days on the camp, which provides water, food and medical attention to refugees crossing into the United States through the scorching Sonoran Desert. “Immediately after they entered the camp, the first thing they did was round up all of the No More Deaths aid workers and zip-tie them, remove their phones,” says Montana Thames, a humanitarian aid worker with No More Deaths. “It was very clear they didn’t want any witnesses.” No More Deaths also recently published documents revealing the Border Patrol Union, a pro-Trump and anti-immigrant extremist group, had instigated a 2017 raid of the same camp.

• Her Rapist Threatened to Make Her “Disappear.” Instead of Asylum, ICE Put Her in a Hotel and Sent Her Back.

  A teenage girl carrying her baby arrived at the U.S. border this summer and begged for help. She told federal agents that she feared returning to Guatemala. The man who raped her she said had threatened to make her “disappear.”

  Then, advocates say, the child briefly vanished — into the custody of the U.S. government, which held her and her baby for days in a hotel with almost no outside contact before federal officers summarily expelled them from the country.

• On Diversity, Silicon Valley Failed to Think Different

  Renewed vows in June by tech companies to diversify their workforces recall years of failure at Microsoft, Facebook, and Google. At those companies, Black employees make up 3.3%, 1.7%, and 2.4% of technical roles, respectively. Proxy statements show there was only one Black executive among the leadership teams at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon.com last year. He was at Google, and he left in January.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Space X’s Starlink Won’t Be The Broadband Disruption Play Many People Think

  After initially obtaining an FCC license for up to 1 million Starlink satellite broadband customers in the United States, Space X last week quadrupled that estimate, and is now hopeful that 5 million Americans will sign up for service. To be clear: Space X’s service won’t be taking on traditional broadband providers in major metro areas. Instead, the company will be using thousands of low orbit satellites (with lower latency than traditional satellite broadband) to deliver marginally decent service to under-served rural Americans, assuming it winds up being profitable longer term.

Monopolies

• From The Stupid To The Bizarre: Trump Demands That His Government Should Take A ‘Substantial’ Cut Of TikTok’s Purchase Fee

  The whole TikTok story keeps getting dumber. While we still believe that the weird moral panic about TikTok is overblown and Trump’s threat to ban the company from the US over the weekend is crazy and unconstitutional, people are still taking things seriously. On Friday evening Trump said that he planned to issue an executive order banning the company (which is not quite how any of this works). He didn’t actually do this. He also said he was against an American company like Microsoft buying TikTok, which apparently put the ongoing acquisition talks on hold.

• Microsoft’s proposed purchase of TikTok would be its biggest yet

  Microsoft’s shareholders appear to welcome the acquisition, despite the political uncertainties and a mooted purchase price of $50bn—twice as much as its biggest previous purchase, LinkedIn, a professional-networking and job-search platform. Microsoft’s share price has risen by 4% since the announcement of the prospective deal, adding around $60bn to its market value. In recent years America’s five biggest tech firms have all been eager acquirers of other, smaller firms (see chart)—one of the complaints of congressional Democrats. If Microsoft buys the American bit of TikTok, it will cement its position as the biggest spender in the group.

• Patents

  • Proving Infringement by Standard Essentiality — Also, Interesting Ebay Question

    In the case the patentee proved infringement by showing (1) that the claims-in-suit are essential to the LTE standard and (2) that TCL’s accused devices are LTE-compatible. The patentee did not walk through the elements of the claims and prove how each element is found in the accused product. In several prior cases, the Federal Circuit has held that this standard-essential-therefore-infringing approach is proper. See, e.g., Ericsson, Inc. v. D-Link Sys., Inc., 773 F.3d 1201, 1209 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (because a “standard requires that devices utilize specific technology, compliant devices necessarily infringe certain claims . . . cover[ing] technology incorporated into the standard”).

    On appeal here, the court focused on the question of “who decides: Judge or Jury?”

    [...]

    On appeal, the Federal Circuit sided with the patentee — holding that the issue was properly before the jury and that “TCL’s entire appeal rests on its misreading of a single statement from Fujitsu.” Basically, the court explains that it spoke loosely in Fujitsu because that case was decided on summary judgment in a situation with no material facts in dispute.

  • Watchdog Demands to Know If Drug Maker Sitting on Possible Covid-19 Treatment Due to Patent, Profit Concerns

    “It is sadly predictable that Big Pharma responds to a global pandemic by trying to bring to market only those drugs that maximize its profits.”

• Copyrights

  • AVG Anti-Virus Made The Pirate Bay Unusable

    Over the past days, The Pirate Bay was stripped of all content for users of AVG anti-virus. The security software flagged Pirate Bay’s resource domain apibay.org as a potential threat. The exact problem with the domain was not revealed, but AVG informs TorrentFreak that it was likely a false positive.

  • French Anti-Piracy Agency Generated €87,000 in Fines From €82m in Public Funding

    French anti-piracy agency Hadopi has published its latest annual report, revealing data on its fight against pirates using P2P systems such as BitTorrent. Since its inception 11 years ago, the agency has sent 12.7 million warnings to pirates generating 87,000 euros in fines. Over the same period, the agency itself has cost French tax payers 82 million euros.

  • Ex-Google engineer sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing self-driving car files

    Levandowski pleaded guilty to the theft of trade secrets in March. In his admission, Levandowski said that he had stolen over 20 files from the tech giant. He was initially charged with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets, though the plea deal reduced it to just one count.

  • Levandowski gets 18 months in prison for stealing Google files

    The dispute between the companies is ongoing. Levandowski filed for bankruptcy in March because he owes $179 million to Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google for his actions before resigning in January 2016.

    Google last week asked the bankruptcy judge to reject Uber’s argument that it is not responsible for paying the $179 million under his old employment agreement.

  • Ex-Google Engineer Levandowski’s Jump to Uber Ends in Prison

    Autonomous driving engineer Anthony Levandowski was ordered to spend 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets from Google as he defected to Uber Technologies Inc., in one of the highest-profile criminal cases to hit Silicon Valley.

    U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco imposed the sentence Tuesday after Levandowski pleaded for mercy and prosecutors said anything short of locking him up would render similar crimes by future engineers a mere cost of doing business. Alsup subtracted nine months from what government lawyers wanted, and said the engineer should serve his term only once the coronavirus has been wiped away from prisons.

  • Former Google exec Anthony Levandowski sentenced to 18 months for stealing self-driving car secrets

    Levandowski was once a superstar engineer in the fast-growing world of self-driving cars who helped jumpstart a Google division dedicated to the technology. He was later accused of stealing documents from his time at Google before founding Otto, a self-driving truck company. He would go on to sell Otto to Uber in 2016, which allowed him to join the ride-hailing company as a high-ranking executive in its self-driving division.

    Shortly after the sale, Google’s self-driving unit, then called Waymo, filed a lawsuit against Uber for trade secret theft, alleging its acquisition of Otto allowed the company to gain access to sensitive and confidential Waymo technology Levandowski illegally took with him on his way out.

    Uber and Waymo settled the lawsuit, but Levandowski was still on the hook for criminal charges of trade secret theft brought by the US Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of California after he refused to hand over any documents during the court case. Levandowski ultimately reached a plea deal, and as part of today’s sentencing he will pay nearly $757 million in restitution to Google and a fine of $95,000, TechCrunch reports.

  • Tencent in Talks to Create $10 Billion Streaming Giant

    The Chinese social media titan — which owns a 37% stake in Huya and 38% of DouYu — has been discussing such a merger with the duo over the past few months, although details have yet to be finalized, said the people, who asked not to be identified because discussions are private. Tencent is seeking to become the largest shareholder in the combined entity, one person said.

    A deal would create an online giant with more than 300 million users and a combined market value of $10 billion, cementing Tencent’s lead in Chinese games and social media. Faced with rising competition for advertisers from ByteDance Ltd. and its rapidly growing stable of apps, the WeChat operator would be able to sell ads across an expanded content network. Huya and DouYu would keep their respective platforms and branding while working more closely with Tencent’s own esports site eGame, said the people.

  • Taylor Swift Changes Artwork For New Album, Merch After Online Retailer Complains Of Similarities

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